The dead body had been real enough, but anyone can fake horse sounds. It bothered me that I hadn’t seen anything.
“If it is the White Horse, can you take it down with your armour?” said Molly, casually.
“Oh, sure,” I said. “I’d bet the strange matter in my armour against anything with four legs and hooves. Maybe we could offer it some sugar lumps.”
“A concept, made manifest, and then buried for centuries because its own priests grew frightened of what they’d created,” said Molly. “What do you want to bet, Shaman, that when the Horse woke up, it woke up angry?”
“But how powerful can it be after being asleep for so long?” I said. “That must have weakened it.”
“Unless,” said Molly, “it’s been quietly rebuilding its strength, all this time. I’m more concerned with its state of mind. Finally released from its prison, after so many years, and immediately someone tries to break it to their will, to make it their slave. . . .”
I looked at her steadily. “You were there, at the meeting, after they called it up. How much of that do you remember, now?”
“Still only bits and pieces.” Molly scowled fiercely. “I’m pretty sure I wasn’t there at the Working. My parents would never have allowed that . . . I can’t believe I forgot so much!”
“You were in shock,” I said. “You didn’t want to remember.”
“My past isn’t what I thought it was,” said Molly. “I’m not what I thought I was.”
“Yes, you are,” I said firmly. “You’re the wild witch, the laughter in the woods, kicking arse in the name of the good and the true. And I wouldn’t have you any other way.”
And then we both looked round sharply as we heard a scream. It sounded like a man, facing something truly horrible, and then the sound broke off, and stopped. Molly and I were already off and running. It didn’t take us long to find Joe Morrison, lying dead on the rucked-up, bloody carpeting. Torn and broken, his ruined flesh was stamped with hoof-marks. There was no sign of Troy or Coll anywhere. I checked the body, shook my head at Molly, and then studied the surroundings carefully.
“Odd,” I said. “I don’t see any hoof-marks in the carpeting, the whole length of this corridor. Or in the spilled blood around the body. Nothing to show anything else was ever here.”
“Apart from the very thoroughly trampled body,” said Molly.
“Well, apart from that, yes,” I said. “I suppose . . . if the White Horse is a supernatural creature, it wouldn’t have to make impressions on its surroundings if it didn’t want to.”
“Try the Merlin Glass again,” said Molly. “I really don’t like this place.”
“You could always teleport us out of here yourself,” I pointed out.
She shook her head quickly. “I already tried. This whole island is set inside a mystical null, remember? I can’t get my bearings. . . . The only way off Trammell Island that doesn’t involve a boat or a hell of a long swim are the established dimensional doors, like the Fae Gate. The Merlin Glass was powerful enough to get us in; I’m hoping it can get us out.”
I shrugged, and tried the Glass again. I murmured the activating Words, and the image in the looking glass changed immediately to reveal the Horse’s huge white head, filling the Glass. It shone out of the mirror like a spotlight, supernaturally bright. The long bony face glared at me, and then surged forward, as though trying to reach out through the Glass. The crimson eyes were wide and wild, and full of a terrible old knowledge. Great blocky teeth showed in its snarling mouth. Molly cried out. I shut down the Glass, shouting the words at the mirror, and the image disappeared. The hand mirror was just a mirror again. I put it away, in my pocket dimension.
“It was coming through,” said Molly. She sounded shaken. “And it felt . . . so much bigger than any living thing has any right to be.”
“Okay,” I said. My voice didn’t sound quite as steady as I would have liked, but I pressed on. “We are facing a very determined living god. It’s already killed two people, for reasons that aren’t clear yet. What does it want with us?”
“Not us, Eddie,” said Molly. “With me. It wants me, because I was part of the group that tried to tame it, and break it to their will.”
“But you weren’t a part of the Working! You didn’t know anything about it until it was all over!”
“I don’t think the White Horse cares,” said Molly. “You saw it, in the Glass. Did that look like a rational Being to you? No, it saw me. It’s marked me. And soon it will come for me. . . .”
“Well, tough,” I said. “It can’t have you. You’re mine.”
She smiled at me, and put a hand on my chest. “Am I?”
“Forever and a day,” I said, putting my hand over hers. “I know you’ve been through a lot, Molly, but you have to get a grip on yourself. It’s just a horse.”
“Yes,” she said. “It is. And I have faced far worse, in my time.” She seemed to straighten up, and her gaze sharpened. “Time to get back in the saddle . . .”
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s track the bloody thing down. I’ve got my armour, and you’ve got your magics; we can do this. Bloody horse isn’t going to know what’s hit it.”
“Damn right,” said Molly. “Been a while since I’ve punched out a living god.” And then she stopped, and frowned. “But I can’t help feeling . . . that just maybe the White Horse is the innocent party in all this. It didn’t ask to be buried, called forth, and used.”
“It’s killing people,” I said flatly. “And that crosses the line. My family exists to keep things like living gods from killing people.”
There was another scream. It sounded like a woman, this time. Horrified, hysterical, and once again cut off, abruptly. Molly and I ran through the narrow corridors, to find the next body lying crumpled in a doorway. Stephanie Troy, who only ever wanted to do good and protect people, had been trampled to a bloody pulp. Broken bones protruded in splinters through the torn flesh, and one side of her face had been completely smashed in, a single great hoof-mark obliterating half her features. Her one remaining eye stared helplessly out, at the world that had betrayed her.
I knelt down beside her, but didn’t try for a pulse this time. I couldn’t see the point. They were all gone now; three good-natured and good-intentioned young people, who would have been the next-generation leaders of the White Horse Faction. They had such great dreams; I should have taken them more seriously.
“I let them down,” I said to Molly. “I was right here, and I couldn’t even keep them alive.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” said Molly. “Blame the mission. We weren’t briefed for any of this. There’s no way we could have anticipated . . . what’s happened here. There’s nothing you could have done for any of them. We got here too late.”
“We’ve been too late all along,” I said angrily. “Always one step behind, while something else has been leading us around by the nose. I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this, Molly. I don’t think we understand what’s really going on here.”