When I woke, it was getting near dark. The sun rested low on the horizon, showing its face for the first time since we'd come to the Tir. Caimbeui had turned the vid to some music station as he drove. The vid flickered and changed, turning his pale face a rainbow of colors.

It took me a moment to orient myself. I felt groggy and irritated at the sensation. My scalp itched and my eyes felt gritty. A few hours of sleep to make up for the three days I'd missed weren't enough.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"Just south of Galway City," he replied.

"Has it changed much?" I asked.

"Has what changed?"

"Galway City."

"Compared to what?"

"Compared to what it was before the Awakening." "A bit," he said. "The old ways have taken hold pretty firmly there."

I pulled my bag out from under the front seat and began rummaging through it. Gum wrappers, ciga- rettes, shoelaces-then I found it: a small tin whis- tle. It rode on a thin copper necklace that I slipped over my head and nestled down between my breasts. I looked out at the passing countryside.

It had gone wild here. No fences marked property lines. The roads were mostly unpaved, little more than dirt ruts. It reminded me of a time long ago, long before this world. Back when another world was young. No, it was me who was young then.

I remembered what happened in that place so long ago. How could I ever forget? And now it seemed that the mistakes of the past would be repeated. This world would be torn apart unless I stopped them. Unless I stopped him.

Just as the sun was setting, I saw the place. Stone tombs silhouetted against the red sky.

"Pull over here," I said.

Caimbeui slowed the car.

"Are you sure?" he asked. "I can't feel any- thing…"

"It'll do. This place is lousy with caims. The whole area is Awakened."

A blast of cool air hit me when I opened the car door. The magic was heavy here. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Then I noticed a strange feeling I hadn't had in a time out of mind: excitement. Things couldn't be worse, yet I felt alive for the first time in years. Had the centuries finally worn me down? I knew they had for some of the others. Some until they resorted to terrible means to stop the emptiness.

'But I had a reason to live. I knew my purpose. It was a sacred task. To keep the world safe. To protect it. To protect the people in it. Or so I'd told myself.

As I started for the tombs, Caimbeui grabbed my arm.

"Are you certain this is the only way?" he asked.

I turned and looked at him. In the flat red twilight his face looked like the very vision of Lucifer. A dark, yet beautiful, angel.

"Why, Caimbeui, I almost think you care," I said.

He frowned. "Don't be flip," he said. "If Ysrth- grathe has found you… how can you be safe?"

I reached up and touched his face. I can't describe how it felt, only that it felt like him. Like Caimbeui. My flesh remembered his as surely as it might re- member the smoothness of velvet or the scratch of sandpaper.

"Nothing is safe anymore," I replied. "Besides, I've been alive for so long, it might be good to rest. Don't you ever want to just… stop?"

"No," he said. An angry look crossed his face, and he pulled away from me. "It's always better to be alive. Life is better than death."

I wanted to stay and argue with him, but there was no time. It almost made me laugh. After so many years, to have no time.

Instead, I turned and began walking to the caims.

The sun had disappeared and the sky was fading from scarlet into plum. The wind had died down, and the air was still. No birds sang. No leaves rus- tled. No animal noises carried to me.

Once I reached the cairns, I turned to see if Caim- beui had followed me. He was a shadow against the fading light. I held my hands out to him and, after a moment, he took them. Though I didn't need him to call up the Hunt, I wanted him to be there with me.

I closed my eyes and relaxed. In my youth, I had learned magic as part of the fabric of life. I saw it not as a force to be manipulated, but as integral to life itself. A thread broken here could cause some- thing there to unravel. Pulling threads together could create something where there had been nothing.

But the mages today saw magic as something else. Their way of seeing the world was strange and alien to me. I objected to any kind of cybernetic enhance- ment. Machines can't create. They can only do what they're told.

As I began to chant the words to the spell, I opened my eyes. The moon was dark and the stars had yet to appear. I couldn't see Caimbeul's face, but could just make out the shape of him before me.

My eyes adjusted, and gradually I could see again. The granite of the cairns glowed ghostly pale. Caimbeul's face looked as though it floated in the air, unattached to his body. He joined me in saying the words to the spell. It was a strange duet, our words conjuring up the Hunt. I blew the whistle, and it made no sound that either I or anyone else in this world could hear.

At first there was nothing but our voices breaking the silence. Then the wind began. It howled across the open fields and whistled through the tombs. Caimbeul's hair was pulled free of his ponytail and whipped across his face. The ground began to trem- ble.

The magic flowed through me. Into me. It filled me and shook me. My muscles screamed with the agony of trying to hold this power. To mold it to my will. Sweat broke out across my face. It ran down my back and streamed over my breasts.

It was terrible, this force. This chaos and madness which threatened to engulf me. It wracked my muscles. I felt as though it would rip me apart. Tear from me my soul. That it would allow the insanity of the past to come and claim me again.

In the distance I could hear the thundering of hooves. I raised my voice, barely able to hear my- self. Barely able to force the words from my throat. Caimbeul's words were snatched away by the wind as he uttered them.

The magic trembled in me, flew around me, pulled at the world and drew things from me. Terrible things. Apparitions from the past. Nightmares from the future. We stood there, trembling, and chanted the old words. Words of power. Until our voices grew hoarse and our throats were raw and our legs would barely support us.

At last we stopped.

Abruptly, the air was still and silent.

I released Caimbeul's hand and turned. 94

Below us, at the base of the hill where the cairns stood, was what we'd called.

They looked up at us expectantly. Their eyes re- flected red iridescence. Black coats melted into black night.

In the distance, I heard the howling of the hounds and wolves. The gabriel ratchets. Their cries were lonely, as though they realized that they'd been abandoned by the steeds which led them. At their head was a tall, cloaked form. Though I knew that this was the apparition who tended the beasts, its ap- pearance was so close to Ysrthgrathe's that, for a moment, I thought my enemy had come for me.

A long, bony arm appeared from the depths of the apparition's cloak. It beckoned us. I glanced for a moment at Caimbeul. His lips were set in a hard line.

"You don't have to come," I said. "What?" he replied. "And miss all the fun?"

At the bottom of the hill we were gestured to two horses. These were the horses of the ancient Tuatha de Danaan. Created from fire, not earth, and able to live for hundreds of years. I had not ridden one in a thousand years.

As we tried to mount the horses, they began to dance away and reached back every now and again to nip us with their long, yellow teeth. I grabbed a handful of long mane to help pull myself up. I hoped I would have enough strength left in me for the ride I knew was ahead.