Swallowing Darkness - Laurell K. Hamilton [137]
“Take us back,” Ash hissed in my ear.
“I didn’t bring us here.”
“Liar,” he whispered, and his fingers tightened just a little around my neck. That one flex of fingers, the firmness of his palm against my throat, made my pulse speed.
I spoke carefully, not wanting to do anything to make his fingers tighten any more. “I cannot change winter to summer, or transport us to a different country.”
His fingers squeezed just a little more, until swallowing was uncomfortable. “What do you mean, ‘a different country’?”
I spoke even more carefully. “There are no standing stones in America, not like this.”
His hand tightened until my breath wheezed under his grip.
“Then where are we?” he asked.
“A place between,” a woman’s voice answered.
Ash went very still beside me. His fingers didn’t tighten, for which I was glad, but they didn’t loosen either. My breath still wheezed out from between his fingers as he turned slowly toward that voice.
Holly said, “Who are you?”
The woman’s voice said, “You know who I am.”
Ash turned so that he saw her before I could, but I knew what we would see, or what I would see. She wore a hooded cloak that hid most of her face, but for an edge of chin or a glimpse of lips. She held a staff, and her hand would be pale one moment, dark the next; old and young; slender and not. She was the Goddess. She was all that was female, all that was woman, and all at once.
It was Ash who said, “Why have you brought us here?” Holly was still facing the figure with his sword out, as if he meant at any moment to attack.
She wasn’t flesh and blood, I knew that. I didn’t think his sword could hurt her, but it seemed wrong to be threatening her. I might have protested except that Ash’s hand squeezed too tightly for words.
“Take us back or your chosen one dies.”
“Harm her and you will never have the power you seek, Ash.”
His hand eased a little so that I could breathe without fighting for it. “So if I let her go you’ll give me power?”
“She is the key to your power. Without her there is nothing.”
“I do not understand.”
Holly lunged toward the figure. A sword clanged down the length of his blade, pushing it against the grass, and a body was on the other end of that sword. He was tall and short, muscled and not, dark and light, all men and none. He had thrown off the cloak that they wore to save our minds so that you simply had to see all the many forms at once. He stood bare in all his beauty and terror, for a long, muscled body can be just for pleasure, but that same muscled weight can thrust a sword and spill blood. He was the greatest of tenderness and the greatest of destruction all at once. The potential was all there in that swirl of images, shapes, scents, and sights.
He disarmed Holly, but he had to cut the goblin’s hand to do it. It spoke of Holly’s skill or the God’s impatience. His voice was deep and rumbling as gravel, and the next light and airy as any, all men echoed in his voice. “Who am I?”
Holly went to his knees with the sword point at his neck. “You are the God.”
“Who is my consort?”
“The Goddess,” Holly answered.
The God stepped back to the cloaked Goddess, but the moment they touched hands her cloak was gone, and they stood side by side. I don’t know what the goblins saw, but I saw a dizzying swirl of faces and bodies. They were all these beings at once, but my mind could not hold it all. I finally closed my eyes, for I could not take it all in.
Ash began to move, and I opened my eyes as I realized that he was moving us both to kneel on the summer grass. He’d stopped choking me somewhere during the revelation. In fact, now the arm that had been choking me was around my shoulders. What had been hurting me was holding me almost tenderly now.
“It has been long since the goblins saw the face of God,” Ash said. “And Goddess,” the Goddess said, and there was chiding in her voice. It was the voice of every mother, every big sister, every aunt, every teacher, all rolled into one echo.