The Cornerstone Read Free Page A

flame.
    Then she began to hum, at first to herself and then more audibly over the din of the approaching storm. Dee took a breath and planted his feet firmly. The witch had begun her foirteagal , the spell of binding by names and words of power.
     
    “To myself I bind this day the blood of the ancestors laid under these stones.
    To myself I bind this day the breath of those who walked this ground.
    To myself I bind this day the elements of earth, air, fire, water.
    To myself I bind this day Bandia, Bbantlarna, Banrion, Mathair.
    Goddess, lady, queen, mother, I summon thee!
    Morrigan, Red Queen of Death, I summon thee!”
     
    More followed, but in the ancient tongue of the Gaels. Dee caught a word here or there, but he didn’t need to understand them. The effects of her incantation were evident.
    Rain pelted the horses’ backs and the two figures supine on the heather. Lightning split the cloudbank.
    “Néallta fola!” she shrieked at the blackening thunderheads. Clouds of Blood . Dee knew that phrase, an ancient cry shouted at the onset of battle or in the thick of it, to prevent the tide of victory from turning. It was the invocation to slaughter.
    Finally, faintly, the banshee’s wail could be heard riding the wind, a keening scree just at the edge of hearing, then louder. Suddenly it was deafening, a sound so painful it could stop the heart, and it seemed to be inside Dee’s own head, as if some raging animal were trapped there and clawing its way out. The storm broke over their heads in torrents of whipping wind and rain; he staggered to hold his stance.
    Hovering above the tomb, mist coalesced into form, dissolved, formed again. At first it seemed one of the fairy folk, dangerous and beautiful, but then its features slipped and a terrifying corpselike mask froze Dee’s blood where he stood, hands clapped over his ears.
    The horses screamed and bolted, a flash of brown and black racing over the hillside back the way they’d come. He felt a rumbling of the ground under his feet. In terror he wiped rain from his eyes and scanned the scene beyond the witch’s circle. Over the crest of the ridge above them came the Black Coach, a terrifying silhouette barely visible against the cloudbank. In the driver’s seat, the fabled headless dullahan whipped a pair of horses so black to look at them was to see the emptiness of the starless night sky. Dee lost his breath and shook as if with a palsy. He’d seen many phantasmagoric manifestations in his studies and pursuit of the arcane, but never this. The carriage came to a stop beside the wing-shaped outcrop. Although he wished to turn away, he could not tear his eyes from the presence of Death’s courier on the ridge.
    “I advise you not to hesitate, my good doctor.” C’s friendly, collegial voice had taken a hard edge. “Once the Black Coach has been summoned to the land of the living, it cannot go back empty. Surely you don’t intend to offer yourself? Sacrifice the trollop, as we agreed, and let us proceed.”
    Dee took an unsteady breath and let it leak out. He reached inside his cloak and found his pearl-handled athame, a blade sharp with a swordsmith’s edge he’d used to perform many a symbolic ritual. It had tasted animal blood, but had never been asked to kill a human. It fit immediately into his hand, ready to do his bidding. His fingers closed around the handle.
    Hands trembling, he took hold of the girl. Pulling her head back in a hellish mockery of Abraham slaughtering the sacrificial ram, Dee cut the big artery in her throat. Bright blood spattered over his hands and quickly bathed her shoulder. For good measure, he slit the veins in her wrists as well. Breathing in shallow jerks Dee completed the task, holding up her torso as she bled out over the stone. Somewhere in the maelstrom that threatened to cleave his skull, he heard the rough commands of the sorceress, bending the ancient elemental to her will. The roiling form of the banshee coiled and