The Iron Druid Chronicles 6-Book Bundle
Page 185
He obviously wasn’t one for talking, but I wished I could have asked him how he did it. I guessed that he had never really died so much as dissipated. Here, near Crocodilopolis, he’d slowly collected a shadow of himself and engineered a method by which he could return to power, influencing this priest or possessing that sorcerer to write down what he needed to reconstitute himself in a physical form, binding a piece of himself to ink and parchment, and then, gulled by visions of power and thinking it was all for Amun, someone like Elkhashab would assemble what Nebwenenef needed to bring himself back. I’d have to reexamine my other Egyptian grimoires to see if any of them could be used in a similar fashion, and likewise go through Elkhashab’s writings to make sure he hadn’t been influenced to write down anything in modern Arabic. I wondered, not for the first time, what else might have been destroyed at the Library of Alexandria. That fire might have inadvertently delayed Nebwenenef’s return by many centuries.
I put the parchment on the altar to burn out and then picked up the Grimoire of the Lamb and set it alight as well. I would make sure to torch the other parchment pages I’d dropped, but picking those up could wait until after I had a chance to heal. I’d give them a read and see if they listed other books besides the “lost book of Amun” that would grant an enterprising sorcerer power for the low, low price of a blood sacrifice. Stepping around to the stairwell, I saw the Sobek sculpture sprawled awkwardly, facedown, in a manner that would be extremely difficult to explain to scientists. No one would believe that someone had carved the stone that way, and yet there it was, inanimate rock. I placed my foot on the back of the head, not as a gesture of victory but to make doubly sure that Nebwenenef was thoroughly exorcised from the stone. The glimpse I’d seen of his power had been centered at the back of the throat or head, and it cost me nothing to apply a little bit more cold iron there.
Climbing the stairs was a slow exercise in hurt and lightheadedness. I thanked the gods below that Sobek hadn’t chosen to manifest like Bast had. Two sorcerers with the ability to use his magic had given me more than enough trouble.
Night had fallen by the time I tumbled out of the boulder and reconnected with the earth with a sigh of relief.
Oberon? Can you hear me?
A bit far away, I guess. Kind of messed up and need to heal. Will you be okay there until the morning?
I’m worried someone will catch you if you run through the streets by yourself.
Maybe you’re right. Can you remember how to get to Elkhashab’s place?
Okay. Run to the back of his place and I’ll give you directions from there.
While I began to heal in earnest, I gave Yusuf a call in Cairo and told him to bring some of the boys down to Al Fayyum. They could go down into Elkhashab’s hell with me and dismantle that Sobek sarcophagus lid and loot it by way of compensating the pack. I’d unbind that anchor from the back of his house and try to cover up evidence of my break-in. I’d also hug every single one of those sarcophagi to dispel any trace of magic about them. I didn’t want there to be the slightest chance of Nebwenenef surviving this time. After I took whatever additional grimoires Elkhashab had hiding in his library, we’d dial up some real authorities and let them find one hell of a crime scene and an archaeological bonanza. Hopefully before Hamal woke in the hospital and told them where everything was.
“Hopping in the car now,” Yusuf said. “See you soon.”
Since Bast would be eager to enlist the help of a human to spread the word about her old mysteries, I’d try to snatch Nice Kitty! before I shifted back to Arizona, but if it didn’t work out, I now thought it would be an acceptable loss for ridding the world of Elkhashab and Nebwenenef for good. Defeating such was my raison d’être, after all, the sole reason Gaia had gifted me with my powers. Though as the last of the Druids I am sometimes afflicted with survivor’s guilt, that day I felt that I had justified my continued existence. I deserved a beer.
Oberon found my hiding place about a half hour later and sneezed.
Sorry, buddy.
Completely understandable. I want to get cleaned up as well. How’s your brain? Have you unboggled it yet?
So you and I would be members of the band in this visual metaphor?
All right. Then who am I?
I laughed, and my ribs reminded me they weren’t healed yet. You advise me well.
As briefly as possible. I’m more than a little creeped out, and I almost didn’t make it out of there.
All right. But you should be thankful the Egyptians didn’t have a squirrel god.
That’ll make us even. I’m going to have nightmares too. Plenty of variations of being eaten by cats, crocodiles, and demons.
And Hamal would no doubt have his share of night terrors. He’d be haunted for the rest of his life by his experience in Elkhashab’s crypt. I’d try check on him before I left Egypt and see if there was anything more I could do.
Damn all hieroglyphics for making the ancient Egyptians look cool. Those old gods were best left in oblivion; you’d think the fact that they appeared most often on tombs would be a big hint that they weren’t friendly. I’d happily spend the next thousand years never hearing about Bast or Sobek or any of them, but I knew I’d have to come back to face them again someday—and more sorcerers like Elkhashab. The lure of power is simply too attractive, and the pyramids still float like bait in a sea of sand, waiting to hook the next person mad enough to trade his humanity for his ambition.
Read on for an excerpt from Kevin Hearne’s
Shattered
Few things trigger old memories so quickly as authority figures from our youth. I’m not saying those memories are necessarily good ones; they’re simply old and tend to cast us back into roles we thought we grew out of long ago. Sometimes the memories are warm and blanket us like a mother’s love. More often, however, they have the sting of hoarfrost, which bites at first, then numbs and settles in the bones for a deep, extended chill.
The ancient man who was pushing himself up into a sitting position in front of me triggered very few memories of the warm sort. Apart from being brilliant and magically gifted, my archdruid had frequently been abusive and had made few friends during his life—a life that, until recently, I thought had ended millennia ago. After he bound me to the earth prior to the Common Era, I’d seen him only a couple more times before we drifted apart, and I’d always assumed he’d died, like almost everyone else I knew from my youth. But for reasons unknown, the Morrigan had frozen him in time in Tír na nÓg, and now he was about to confront the fact of his time travel—with, I might add, flecks of spittle and bacon around t
he edges of his wrinkled lips.
I hope that if I ever travel two thousand years into the future, there will still be bacon.
His voice, a sort of perpetually phlegmy growl, barked a question at me in Old Irish. He’d have to learn English quickly if he wanted to talk to anyone besides the Tuatha Dé Danann and me. “How long was I on that island, Siodhachan? You still look pretty young. By the looks of ye, it can’t have been more than three or four years.”
Oh, was he in for a surprise. “I will tell you in exchange for something I’d like to know: your name.”
“My name?”
“I’ve never called you anything but Archdruid.”
“Well, it was right that ye should, ye wee shite. But now that you’re grown a bit and a full Druid, I suppose I can tell ye. I’m Eoghan Ó Cinnéide.”
I grinned. “Ha! If you Anglicize that, it’s Owen Kennedy. That will work out just fine. I’ll call Hal and get you some ID with that name.”
“What are ye talking about?”
“That’s a question you’ll be asking a lot. Owen—I hope you don’t mind me calling you that, because I can’t walk around calling you Archdruid—you’ve been on that island for more than two thousand years.”
He scowled. “Don’t be tickling me ass with a feather, now; I’m asking seriously.”
“I’m answering seriously. The Morrigan put you on the slowest of the Time Islands.”
Owen studied my face and saw that I was in earnest. “Two thousand?”
“That’s right.”
He flailed about for something to hold on to; the number was too huge to register, and the stark fact that he had been uprooted and could never go back to his old earth was a deep, dark well into which he could fall forever. He opened his mouth twice and closed it again after uttering a half-formed vowel. I waited patiently as he worked through it, and finally he latched on to me, having nothing else in front of him. “Well, then, you were on one of those islands too. She must have set us there around the same time.”
“No, I didn’t get to skip all that time in an eyeblink. I lived through it. And I’ve learned a few things you never taught me.”
He grunted in disbelief. “Now I know you’re pulling me cock. You’re telling me that you’re more than two thousand years old?”
“That’s what I’m telling you. You might as well brace yourself. The world is far bigger and far different than it was when you left it. You’ve never even heard of Jesus Christ or Allah or Buddha or the New World or bloody buffalo wings. It’s going to be one shock after the other.”
“I don’t know what a shock is.”
Of course he didn’t. He’d never heard of electricity. I’d thrown in a modern Irish word with my Old Irish.
“But your lack of hair is certainly a surprise,” he said, gesturing at my close-cropped skull. It was starting to fill in from when I’d had to shave it all off—a consequence of a recent encounter with some Fae who’d tried to chew off my scalp—but to Owen’s eyes it must look like an unnatural cosmetic decision. “And what in nine worlds happened to the rest of your beard? Ye don’t look like a man. Ye look like a lad who had a rat die on his chin.”
“It works for me,” I said, dismissing it. “But look, Owen, I’m wondering if you can do me a favor.”
“Do I owe ye one?”
“You’d still be on that island if it weren’t for me, so I’d say so.”
My archdruid huffed and wiped at his mouth, finally dislodging the bacon bits that had rested there. “What is it?”
I raised my right sleeve over my shoulder, revealing the ravaged tattoo at the top of my biceps. “A manticore destroyed my ability to shape-shift back to human, so I can’t shift to any of my animal forms until it gets fixed. Would you mind touching it up?”
He scowled and flared up. “I fecking taught ye how to tame a manticore, didn’t I? Don’t try to tell me I didn’t! That isn’t my fault.”
“I didn’t say—”
“And I remember ye complaining about it too.” He affected a falsetto to mock me. “ ‘When am I ever going to meet a manticore?’ ye said. ‘Why do I have to learn Latin? When are we going to learn about sex rituals?’ ”
“Hey, I never said that!”
“Ye didn’t have to. There was a year ye couldn’t sneak up on anyone because your knob would peek around the corner first and everyone would say, ‘Here comes Siodhachan!’ and then the rest of ye would follow. Ye remember that?”
Desperate to return the conversation to more recent scars—a much safer topic than my uncomfortable puberty—I said, “The manticore struck first, and taming him was never an option.”
“It’s always an option.”
“No, it’s not. You weren’t there, and you’ve never had to deal with manticore venom. It requires all of your attention to break it down, trust me. And once I managed to do it, I was so weak that I’d never have been able to survive another dose. I was severely wounded and unable to confront him without leaving myself open to another shot. Any attempt to tame him would have been fatal. I was lucky to get out of there alive.”
“All right, fine, but why me? Can’t ye have some other Druid do it? I have some catching up to do.”
I carefully neglected to mention that he and I were two of only three remaining Druids in the world. Time enough for that later. “That’s true, you do. We have a lot to talk about, and I have a new language to teach you if you’re going to get along. And the other Druid I’d trust to do this is busy working on another project.”
Granuaile was training her new wolfhound, Orlaith, to speak and was also taking care of Oberon in the meantime. I didn’t want her talking to Owen anyway, until I’d had the chance to teach him modern manners. If he spoke to her the way he spoke to me, there would be blood in short order, most of it his.
My archdruid winced, sighed, and rubbed at his temples as if he had a major headache. “Dagda fuck me, but I need something to drink. I don’t suppose ye know where we can find something besides water?”
“Sure. I’ll buy. Can you walk yet?” I glanced at his legs, which had been broken in the stress of removing him from the Time Island. He’d had some time to heal here, under the ministrations of the healer Fand, Manannan Mac Lir’s magic bacon, and his own healing powers, but I didn’t know if it was enough.
“I think so.” He nodded. “Bones bind quickly, but it’s the bruising to your muscles that always takes time. We’ll walk slow and drink fast.”
He leaned on me a bit for support and walked gingerly, but we made it off the barge and into the boat I’d taken out to the island. Once we reached the riverbank, it would be a short walk to a tree tethered to Ireland. We’d be able to shift to someplace with plenty of potables on tap and a comfortable spot to talk. In a strange way, I was looking forward to it. It felt strangely empowering to know something my archdruid didn’t already know.
Somebody didn’t want us to have that talk, however. No sooner had the boat ground into the gravel of the bank than an angry, high-pitched bark greeted us from downriver.
“Oi!” A hopping-mad Fir Darrig bounded toward us—literally hopping and literally mad, as evidenced by the bulging of his eyes and the belligerent brandishing of his shillelagh—intent on accosting us at the least and teeing off on our skulls at the worst. Rat-faced, red-coated, and only three feet tall, Fir Darrigs have a five-foot vertical leap and a quick hand with the shillelagh; their single-digit IQs couple with that to make them think they are eight feet tall and four times as fearsome.
Usually you can just toss something shiny at them and they will stop to investigate, because they’re greedy little goblins and tend to hoard anything that appears valuable. I had a quarter in my pocket and I lobbed it at him, making sure it caught the sun, but his eyes never wavered. He was determined to take a swing at me for some reason.
Another one bounced out of the trees downriver, spied us, and leapt forward. “Oi!” A second later, three more appeared. “Oi! Oi! Oi!”
“Oi! Oi! Oi!” Whoops. Make that eight.
The first one was obviously the most immediate threat, so I crafted a binding between the wool of his natty red coat and the silt of the riverbank and let the earth pull him to the ground. I wasn’t quick enough to bind the coat closed, however, and he wriggled out of it and came at us nude, because Fir Darrigs don’t wear anything except those red coats. He was filthy and ugly, and his yellow choppers gnashed out a series of incoherent snarls. Belatedly, I realized it would have been a better choice to bind his shillelagh to the riverbank. I drew my sword, Fragarach, from its scabbard and stepped forward, setting myself; there would be little time for other bindings.
Behind me, Owen began to tear off his ragged tunic and pants. He had no weapon; he was a weapon when he shape-shifted to his predator form.