Besieged

by Kevin Hearne

  Having located it, I surveyed the rest of the shelves and noted many books and scrolls that looked promising. I put the unprotected ones in my bag first. The protected ones, limned in red and yellow in the magical spectrum, I saved for later. I mapped out a course, a sequence beginning with Ogma’s box and then proceeding with the others I wished to take, all leading me ever closer to the door. I opened the bag and kept the flap open with my right hand and ran the gauntlet, expecting some kind of juju to thump me good every time I touched something.

  But nothing happened. I snagged and shoved all my prizes into the bag, one by one, and felt nary a magical kick to the kidneys. That was odd. Could Ogma’s torc be protecting me that well? Or were the nature of those curses more of the long-term variety?

  I closed up the bag, drew Fragarach, stepped across the threshold, and waited for something heinous to happen, but nothing did. Grinning at my success, I secured the bag around my shoulder and back, crosswise from Fragarach’s sheath. I kept the sword itself in hand as a precaution, but I was feeling jaunty and edging toward ebullience as I approached that button at the end of the hallway that would open up the portal and let me climb the ladder to the library proper.

  The door started to open well before I pressed that button. Someone was coming down. I scrambled back, flattening against Bast’s door, and cast camouflage on myself.

  The bare-chested figure who came down the ladder rippled with muscles, and I knew right away he wasn’t merely a buff librarian, and I knew he wasn’t a high priest either. I knew this because the figure lacked a human head. Rather, he had the sleek, twitching head of a falcon, and not some elaborately painted spacey-techno mask from Stargate either: It really was a falcon’s head, albeit an abnormally large one, with a razor beak that opened and closed and scary black eyes that blinked as he stared down the hallway at the open door to his chamber.

  It was Horus in the flesh.

  And apparently both eyes worked just fine. He’d lost one in a fight with Set, and after it was magically reconstructed he offered it up to help resurrect Osiris, but I guess he had bonus XXL-falcon eyes hanging out in a jar somewhere, waiting to be plugged in whenever he had a free socket. He was doing that bird thing where the head shifts from side to side to aid with depth perception, and that wouldn’t be necessary if both eyes weren’t functioning. Which meant, unfortunately, he didn’t have a blind side.

  What had summoned him here? Surely not opening the door. I doubted it was the triggering of his little trap either, because he’d never come to clear out the body of the last fellow who ran across it or to clean up the mess he made. It must have been laying hands on his magical doodads—maybe even the very one Ogma had sent me to steal. Most likely it was precisely that, because the lacquered box had been untouched by the previous thief. It occurred to me that the juju I’d seen wasn’t a curse, per se, but rather an alarm calling Horus to provide his own security. And he responded with alacrity.

  He was so focused on the breach and finding out why the door to his chamber remained open that he forgot to close the portal, leaving me an escape route. My exceedingly clever plan was to remain still in camouflage, wait for him to pass me by as he went to check on things, and then scramble up the ladder before he realized he’d been had.

  My plans rarely work out the way I want them to.

  Horus strode right by the first pair of doors but then stopped directly opposite me, that dead left eye looking at me in profile just like a hieroglyph—though I hoped he wasn’t looking at me at all. I should have been functionally invisible, but who knew what extrasensory abilities—or even finely attuned regular senses—he had. He might be able to smell my elbow or hear my toenails growing or something.

  His right hand moved at his hip, taking out something like a metal baton. It telescoped in both directions and morphed into two distinct shapes on either end: the sloped head of a bennu bird at the top, a sharp-bladed crescent at the bottom. He had himself a fancy was scepter, a symbol of power but also clearly a weapon in this case. His chest rose with a deep breath, and that was my only warning: On the exhale, he tried to take off my head with a wickedly fast strike.

  I ducked underneath it, but just barely. It shattered the stone, and a shard of it opened up a furrow on my scalp even as I lashed out with Fragarach during his follow-through and drew a line of red across his belly with the tip. That was both encouraging and very bad news, because it meant that he could bleed, but he’d leapt back to avoid the worst of the blow, which meant that he knew I had a weapon and saw it coming. Or, if he didn’t see through my camouflage, he sensed it somehow.

  Horus danced backward, blocking my path to escape. I spun to my left, into the center of the hallway, backing up a little bit to give myself time to activate the binding that would increase my natural speed and reflexes. The torc was running low on juice and wouldn’t be able to cast much else.

  While I was casting that, Horus looked down briefly at his wound and screeched. His voice modulated into some kind of low-frequency chirps after that, either cooking up a heal or a buff or something to snuff me. I didn’t want to let him finish.

  The neuromuscular boost snapped through my body like a tuning fork and I lunged forward, fully expecting to be parried by the scepter this time, and I was: Horus could definitely sense it somehow, despite my camouflage. But I followed up with a straight kick to the gut and that got through easily, forcing the breath from his lungs and cutting his chant short. He reeled back, stunned, and I pressed my advantage, kicking him right in the beak since his head was lowered. Horus squawked, reared, and nearly fell over backward, and I grinned as I realized what it meant: He could somehow sense my sword but not the rest of me. As long as I kept the sword away from my body, he couldn’t see my attacks coming. His first well-aimed strike at my head had been an excellent guess based on how I’d held Fragarach in my right hand.

  I took too long to process that, however. Horus recovered and cried out, swinging his scepter in a twirling pattern very similar to the sort of thing that I now teach. I was still about seven centuries away from my martial-arts training in China, however, and I hadn’t seen that before. I backed up, thinking of how best to disrupt his flailing offensive and regain the advantage. If I could successfully interrupt him, he’d be vulnerable for a precious half second or more. Maybe. I didn’t know what counters he might have, honestly, and I felt outclassed.

  But since he was focused on the location of my sword, I feinted right with it and then, as he swerved that way to knock it aside, I kicked from the left side. My foot caught his forearm and did interrupt the twirling, but the scepter slid through his hand to lengthen out at the top, and he whipped it in a vicious backhand swing that I couldn’t avoid. It caught me just below the collarbone, and I grunted and staggered back until stone stopped me.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t a mere wall: I’d been driven back into the ultra-warded door of Seshat’s chamber. I don’t know if it was Horus’s intention to do that, but it made him look damn clever.

  My muscles spasmed and pain lanced through all my nerves as I collapsed to the ground, Seshat’s defensive wards lighting me up in spite of the supposed protective bindings woven into my torc. Ogma had said they might be only partially effective, and I screamed the Irish equivalent of “Fuck partiaaaal!” as I rolled away in a sort of fetal position to open up some distance between myself and Horus. I was practically back at his chamber door when I felt I could function again, and I realized that had it not been for the torc’s half-assed protection, Seshat’s wards might well have killed me instantly.

  Horus certainly seemed to have expected it, for when I came to my feet, he was still where I’d last seen him, blinking in confusion. He clearly had driven me into those wards on purpose, and perhaps now he was feeling a measure of the uncertainty I was feeling: How in nine hells was I ever going to win this?

  My personal calculus determined that it couldn’t be won but only escaped. He was a superior martial artist and not de
pendent on a limited supply of strength. I reminded myself that I only had to get past him, not destroy him.

  He had no defensive martial screen in place now, so I charged, right arm held far out so that Fragarach would draw his attention and he’d therefore misjudge my center. He raised his scepter and brought it down in a two-handed swing just to the right of my body as I launched myself at his face, left foot extended for his throat. I withdrew my right arm as he committed, and his blow whiffed past my right side while my heel connected with his throat. He made a short choking noise and fell back, my foot planting on his chest as he fell, and I kept running for the exit.

  Not that I got away without injury. He stabbed out blindly over his head with the scepter, and the sharpened steel crescent punched into my lower back just above my left ass cheek. I muttered a binding to keep all my blood inside and leave nothing for Horus to use later: It drew all the blood from his blade back into my body.

  If adrenaline can add any speed to limbs already quickened by bindings, then it surely did at that point. I was down the hall and up the ladder before you could hum the triumphant opening bars to Star Wars.

  But there was a figure waiting for me at the top, between the stacks, every bit as surprised to see me as I was to see her: Seshat, keeper of knowledge, whose wards had nearly snuffed me.

  I knew who she was because she matched her hieroglyphic representation: a sheath of cheetah skin draped over her body and a headdress featuring seven points. Like Horus, she had a clue that I was in front of her, despite my camouflage. She hissed, muttered something in ancient Egyptian that I didn’t catch, and thrust a hand at me.

  I felt as if I’d been thirsty for years—all the moisture of my throat sucked away and my breath choked off besides—but I spun around clockwise and ran past her to the stairwell that would lead to the ground floor and freedom. I sheathed Fragarach on my back, hoping that the leather might somehow have a cloaking effect on the Egyptian gods’ ability to target me. Nothing else hit as I ran, and I was able to reach the ground floor and even make it outside before I realized that I had been severely handicapped.

  I breathed, “Thank the Morrigan, Brighid, and all the gods below,” once I thought myself safe, except that I heard not a syllable of it.

  “What?” I said, except that once again there was no sound.

  “Am I deaf? Am I mute?” Nothing.

  It couldn’t be the former. I heard other noises—people walking, sandals grinding against stone. The torc ran out of energy, which caused my camouflage and increased speed to fizzle away, and then men passing by stared at me, a strange pale fire-haired man in the streets of Alexandria, and bid me peace in Coptic or Greek or Latin. Locusts buzzed in the date palms. Horse hooves clopped on the streets. My hearing functioned just fine.

  “I’m mute,” I said, but heard neither word, and since I couldn’t be heard, I added, “Seshat has cursed me.” That was the buffet of throat shenanigans I’d felt, which Ogma’s torc had not prevented at all.

  It was a perfect curse for someone wishing to protect secrets: Ensure that whoever stole them could never speak of them. And it was also the perfect curse for a Druid, since I couldn’t bind or unbind a damn thing without the ability to speak.

  My exertions must have torn something, for my stab wound from Horus began to bleed freely and now I had nothing to stop it but manual pressure, since I’d been robbed of my power to bind it closed. But of Horus himself or Seshat, I saw no sign. Perhaps they had decided to track me later and were instead assessing what had been stolen.

  I did think of asking an elemental to help with Seshat’s curse, but this was the one place in the world that didn’t have one, thanks to the wizard who’d consumed the Saharan elemental for his own purposes in the time of the pharaohs. The remnants of that magic formed the Nile elemental, but I would have to travel some distance out of Alexandria to reach its sphere of influence. I retrieved the horse I’d left at a stable and joined the light traffic of people heading to Cairo. As soon as I reached the delta area—it wasn’t all that far—I dismounted and reached out to the Nile through my tattoos, which didn’t require verbalization.

  //Help Druid// I said. //Heal wound / Remove curse//

  The healing began immediately, but the curse was a different matter. Nile finally had to ask me for clarification.

  //Query: Curse?//

  //Unable to speak// I explained. //Binding now impossible / Curse on throat needs removing//

  There was a wait and then a disheartening reply: //Cannot remove//

  Elementals don’t kid around. If the Nile said it couldn’t be done, then it couldn’t. What I didn’t understand was why, so I had to ask.

  //Unfamiliar magic / Unbinding must be human craft// Nile said.

  I sighed in defeat. I’d have to make it all the way back to Jerusalem and hope Ogma could unbind it.

  //Or iron could eat it// Nile said, and my confusion must have been broadcast plainly, because the elemental continued. //Iron elemental can consume magic / Remove curse / Leave tattoos / I will control//

  All I managed in reply was an //Okay// because I was a bit lost. My archdruid had never mentioned that anything of the kind was possible. We’d heard that there were lesser elementals running around associated with this or that, but it had never been suggested that we could communicate with them, much less ask them to be useful.

  //Remain here / Iron elemental on way//

  That was a worrisome time, because it was most of the day before one finally arrived. I spent it being eyed suspiciously by travelers worried that I was some kind of brigand lying in wait for them. And I worried that someone would try to take advantage of me, of course, but worried more that Horus or Seshat or even Bast would find me.

  Perhaps they would come for me in the night, when they could pass among humans unnoticed. Or perhaps the reason they hadn’t found me was because they truly didn’t know where to look.

  I considered my mighty bag of holding, which held many treasures now. Only those of Horus were cursed with an alarm or whatever he had on them: What if that curse provided not only an alarm but a location? If that were the case, the bag was the safest place possible for them. As soon as I touched them again, Horus would know where to find me. He was simply waiting for me to finger them.

  Or they could probably find me and their lost treasures through divination; I wasn’t sure how proficient the Egyptian pantheon was at the art, but I felt sure they’d find me if I remained in one place too long.

  The iron elemental arrived as the sun sank burning into the sands.

  //Be seated and remain still// Nile said. //Touch left hand to sand//

  I did so and black iron filings crawled up my arm like ants, crested my shoulder, and encircled my neck. For a brief time they formed a solid band and constricted, but before I could communicate my panic to Nile it loosened, the filings slid back down my arm, and I could talk again.

  “Gah, thank the gods below!” I said. “Except maybe Ogma. Yeah. Let’s not thank him right now.”

  //Gratitude// I told Nile, and then, after a sudden thought, added a request: //Query: Can iron elemental eat magic surrounding items inside bag?//

  //Query: Which items? / Cannot see//

  The road was clear at that moment, and no one was nearby. I upended the bag of holding over the sand, allowing the lacquered box and everything else to spill out without touching my hands. //These items / Please remove magic outside them but not inside//

  I appended that last because the items inside the box might be fantastically powerful, but I didn’t particularly want to be carrying around cursed items that would summon Horus as soon as they were touched.

  It was done in less than a minute. In the magical spectrum the box looked completely normal, and I placed it back inside the bag with a grin.

  //Gratitude / Harmony// I said to Nile, and I rode out of there, powers restored, to meet Ogma in Jerusalem. Gaia and her elementals are ever our friends and salvation, even as Dru
ids are theirs.

  I made it to the Sinai Peninsula before I realized what a terrible error I had made and compounded it with another. Resting at an oasis during the heat of the day and assured of some privacy, I opened the books only, one by one, to evaluate what I’d managed to take for myself.

  I began with the books I’d taken from Horus and that the iron elemental had attacked to eat away the curses I’d seen in the magical spectrum. Upon opening them, however, I discovered that they were entirely blank. I had no way of knowing if they had always been blank or if their contents had been erased by the wards on them once they left the room, or even accidentally destroyed by the iron elemental. Regardless, they were worthless, and Horus had lost nothing. I hoped that the scrolls inside the box were still valuable and worried that my entire infiltration had been for naught. I scrambled to check the rest of my haul.

  The books of Osiris were still in fine shape, having no scrap of magic about them to begin with, and the knowledge inside regarding wards was priceless and worth the trip by themselves. I sighed in relief and thanked the gods below.

  I went through Bast’s books last. One of them was the Grimoire of the Lamb, the true purpose of which I did not discover until centuries afterward, when someone came looking for it at Third Eye Books & Herbs. Another was full of descriptions of protective wards and, like the books of Osiris, proved quite valuable. The last was the book of Bast’s mysteries, which had a horrifying effect once opened and perused—though it quite literally crept up on me.

  The text was in Coptic and I was reading through it, mouth half open in horror and unable to look away, like watching someone embarrass himself or rubbernecking at a traffic accident on the side of the road. And then my peaceful reading time was rent at once by yowling, screeching, and hissing from all directions. I scrambled to my feet and drew Fragarach, thinking I was under attack, but once I had time to assess the threat, I realized that I was surrounded by fucking cats! And by that I mean the cats were all actually, if grudgingly, fucking. They didn’t seem to enjoy it much, and maybe that’s why they were making such heinous noises. For the record, I didn’t enjoy it either, and honestly we should all be grateful that cats usually do this in the dead of night, well out of our sight, and usually as a couple rather than as a massive, writhing chorus of carnality. I dove back to the ground, closed the book, and soon afterward the cats stopped what they were doing and even ceased to be cats: They melted into the sands or the wind and disappeared entirely. And then I laughed, for I realized that Bast had woven an unseen curse into the book: Unless you were one of her high priests or otherwise approved, you couldn’t read it without being afflicted by a deafening, shivering, teeth-grinding feline orgy.