Besieged

by Kevin Hearne

  “I will confirm the kills and see if there is anyone they missed or simply did not know about,” Leif says, “but it appears Kacper sent his thralls here to help defend the nest, without occupying it himself.”

  “He knew we could divine his thralls but not him.”

  “I suspected he would prove to be a challenge. But we shall not have to face him tonight anyway. You should go home and get some rest. We eliminated twelve vampires here in accordance with the treaty. That is fine progress and should send a clear message that the treaty will be enforced. I may be able to find out the locations of other nests once I search their files. I will contact you when I know more.”

  I have no will to argue. I want a shower and some sack time more than anything else. I still have another day off from the pub, and I might as well use it to recuperate.

  Halfway through my hike up to the bound tree above Krakow, I snort to myself. I guess I now know what my grand adventure will be as a bartender at Browar Szóstej Dzielnicy: I’ll be a vampire hunter. And a student of Szymborska.

  Honestly, that suits me perfectly: I do not see a path I can walk on the earth that is not strewn with beauty and horror in equal measure. My road ahead is poetry and blood, and after today, I know I’m prepared to walk it.

  This story, narrated from Owen’s point of view, takes place after the events of Staked and Oberon’s Meaty Mysteries: The Purloined Poodle.

  Back in me own time—I’m fecking allowed to start like that because me own time was two thousand years ago—elementals never asked Druids for help with the environment. Humans weren’t sophisticated or numerous enough then to cock up the planet on an industrial scale. So when a call shudders up through me bones and it’s the elemental Colorado, asking me directly for help on behalf of another elemental, ye could knock me over with a spider whisper—and I’m talkin’ about one o’ those giant, silent, brooding bastards that lurk in your house high up on the walls and wait for ye to see them and ruin your pants.

  The elemental wants me to save a species on the path to extinction, and that’s even stranger. Animals go extinct all the time and Druids never hear so much as a sad trombone noise. But some species are key to the healthy functioning of their ecosystems, and sometimes, in small places, Druids can help out. I hear Granuaile helped clean out an invasive species of crawfish from an Arizona river while she was still an apprentice, saving some native trout that were getting all their eggs eaten. That kind of thing makes sense: The invasive species is still vital in its own space, and balance is restored where they were causing trouble. This job sounds different, though.

  The request for help comes from an elemental I’ve never even heard of: Tasmania.

  //Devils dying from disease / Mutated cancer / Contagious / Must cure//

  Images flood me head of what a Tasmanian devil looks like: the size of a small dog with a face akin to something in the rat family, black fur with a white stripe crossing at the collarbone and again on its back near the tail, which did have hair on it like a dog instead of naked like a rat. And Tasmania emphasizes that the devils are important to keeping its ecosystem balanced—Greta tells me the popular term for that nowadays is keystone species.

  I get the idea that it’s not going to be a nice afternoon’s work: It’s going to take a while, because I’ll have to cure every devil individually until the disease is wiped out. I can’t leave me apprentices for so long—but then it makes me wonder if I can bring them along.

  //Query: Can apprentices help?//

  //Yes / Harmony//

  //Harmony// I says, and then I have to hunt down Greta. We can’t shift there: For some reason there are no bound trees on the island, and I’m not confident that I know the kids well enough anyway, so we’ll have to fly. That’s going to take money. And of course it would be best to have the parents along, so that’s more money. But at least the full moon is recently past and the werewolves can travel safely.

  Greta is excited by the idea and welcomes the idea of a trip to the other side of the globe. Especially since we’ll probably be there the next time a full moon rolls around and the pack can run together in the woods there. She says she’s going to charter a private flight for us—using either the pack’s funds or her own, I don’t know which. I have a project to complete while she’s at it: something to keep the elemental spheres the apprentices use to talk to the earth safe. I’m thinking they’re going to need both hands for this project, and holding the spheres in one hand won’t be effective anymore.

  Back up in the woods on Greta’s property, I have a small patch of hemp I’m growing—stupidly illegal in the United States, but a fantastically useful plant for all sorts of things because ye can use every bit of it. I started the patch to teach the grove the beginnings of botany and how plants can help us as we help them. Tuya, especially, seems keen to learn more about plants, and since her father passed, I’m keen to make sure she’s engaged in her apprenticeship.

  Right now I want hemp fibers. I harvest one plant, and it’s more than enough for me purposes. Using me fingers and a little bit of binding to maintain the shape I want, I weave a spherical cage made of triskele knotwork, separated in halves with a hinge on one side and a clasp on the other. I coat this in gold—helpfully supplied by Colorado—and when it’s finished I have a locket suitable for an elemental sphere. We can string a chain or maybe a leather strip through the clasp end, and the apprentices can wear the spheres like a necklace and keep in contact with elementals that way, while also reducing the chance of losing the spheres. They’ll get new ones in Tasmania, of course, but for now they can practice communicating to animals with Colorado’s help.

  I make five more lockets out of gold-coated hemp and run into Flagstaff to get some chains, figuring they’d be a bit sturdier. Then I call me apprentices together with their parents and the few translators and announce our plans.

  “We have to heal all the affected Tasmanian devils and wipe out the disease, one by one,” I tell them. “It will take some time, but it’s going to be worth it.”

  Ozcar’s mother, Rafaela, is a pre-med student at the university and wants to know more about the disease.

  “It’s called devil facial tumor disease, and it appeared—or was first reported—in 1996. I’ve looked into it a bit, and your scientists think it originated in a single devil and got transmitted to others, mostly through biting. Devils like to bite and scratch one another quite a bit, but especially during mating season, and this disease is getting transmitted from the bitten devil to the biter as the tumors get punctured. Those tumors grow and swell up on the face until eventually the devils can’t eat and they starve to death. Or else the cancer spreads throughout the body and they die of organ failure.”

  Ozcar casts a worried glance at his mother. He knows she’s not going to like this. I catch him often watching other peoples’ faces, evaluating expressions, and trying to say something positive when he thinks it’s needed. “We’ll fix it somehow, Mama,” he says. She puts a gentle hand on his head to thank him for the reassurance but doesn’t take her eyes off me.

  “So it spontaneously occurred from a single source?” she asks.

  “Aye. Genetic tests confirm this. But since then it’s evolved or mutated into four different strains.”

  Rafaela can’t go with us because of her classes, but Ozcar’s father, Diego, can make the journey, and so can the other kids’ parents. None have landed jobs since coming to the United States.

  “Greta says we have a couple days before we can fly over there. In the meantime, we’re going to practice bonding with animals here first. Do ye all have your spheres from Colorado?”

  They all nod at me and I tell them to get them out. As the sandstone appears in their tiny fingers, held up as proof of their responsibility, I give them the lockets. This is utterly delightful to them, and there is some spontaneous dancing as they put Colorado’s spheres in the lockets and then fasten them around their necks. They tell me thank you in tiny kid voices, and it�
��s so fecking cute I can hardly stand it.

  “Welcome,” I says. “Right. We’re going to learn a couple of different bindings today. Normally I wouldn’t teach you these until you were much older, but we have to save some animals on the other side of the world, so we can’t wait.”

  “Are we going to give them medicine?” Ozcar asks, clearly thinking of what his mother was learning in her pre-med training.

  “No, we’re going to cure them with bindings. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  Normally, Tuya, Luiz, and Amita need translators, but they are getting pretty good with basic English and I figure we can muddle through without help. What we can’t do is expect other animals to hang around with werewolves nearby—and all the translators are part of the pack. So it’s just me and the six apprentices crunching into the pine needles uphill from the house, headed for a small herd of deer that have been keeping their distance since more of the pack started hanging out at Greta’s. I stop the kids as soon as we’re in far enough to startle a squirrel and some birds cry out an alarm. The deer can wait a wee while: basics first.

  “I’m going to do this one at a time now. Your eyes only see part of the world, ye know: You’re filtered from seeing all there is to see by default.” As soon as I say it I realize that the kids aren’t going to know about filters and defaults. “I mean your brains are only ready to see a small piece of the world. Like looking through a dirty window. Ye can’t see as well as ye should until ye do something about it. Most people can’t do anything about it, but Druids can. We can see better at night, for example. Or ye can see the bindings between all things in the natural world. It’s what allows us to create new bindings or unbind what’s already there. And that’s what you’re about to do: See the world for how it really is.”

  They all look excited by this, but I notice Mehdi’s eyes especially, because they’re wide and shining. He’s normally a levelheaded lad, much like his father, Mohammed, extremely polite but rarely showing ye what he feels except for being interested or bored. He’s more than interested now, and it gives me a clue about him: His wonder is reserved for mysteries.

  “Some people call it magical sight, and I’ve even heard it called faerie spectacles, because it allows ye to see what the Fae are doing, but I call it true vision. Call it what ye want; I’ll know what you’re talkin’ about. But I have to warn ye now: It’s a lot of information. It’s not the way you’re used to looking at things. You’re going to have to learn to focus on what’s important and ignore the rest. Is there any one of ye who would like to go first?”

  All six hands shoot up, of course. Being the first to experience a new binding is going to be fecking cool and they know it. They also know how they get to go first.

  “Quiz time.” I point at a ponderosa pine. “These pines feed both squirrels and fungi. Squirrels eat both parts of the tree and the fungi, and the fungi give the tree phosphates and nitrogen to grow tall and strong. The squirrel spreads fungi spores around to other trees and sometimes spreads the tree seeds as well. All of them benefit. What kind of relationship is that?”

  “Symbiotic!” Amita says first, though the others are close behind. Amita is learning her English very well, I see.

  “That’s right, Amita. Well done. I’m going to have Colorado give ye true vision first. Don’t try to move anything but your neck, okay? I mean, look around, but don’t try to walk. First time I saw the world with true vision I fell down. Ready?”

  “Yes!” She jumps up and down and then remembers her manners, goes very still, and folds her hands together in front of her. “Yes, please, Archdruid.” Those aren’t any manners I’ve taught her: She must be hearing her father’s instructions on how to address me. He’s very strict about proper behavior, but he was smart to teach Amita first that behaving properly means she is in the right and can face the world with confidence, even if the world seems to disagree. Whenever she knows precisely how to behave, a calm settles about her shoulders and she is at peace. New situations can stress her out a wee bit, but she immediately seeks clarification on how to proceed and then executes her instructions flawlessly, trusting that she’s been told the truth. I think that’s going to be trouble for her once she’s a teen, but for now it makes her a fine student.

  “Okay, here we go. And the rest of ye be patient; ye will all get to see this.”

  I can cast night vision on other people, but not true vision. It’s a tougher binding to peel that veil away from your senses; ye need the earth’s permission to see the unfiltered version of nature. Since me apprentices are twelve years away from being bound to the earth, I have to ask Colorado for help—which will eventually allow us to help Tasmania.

  Amita blinks and jerks when the true vision kicks in, the binding applied through the sphere in her locket.

  “Ah! Uh, what? Whoa.” Her head can’t stop moving as she tries to match what she sees now to what she saw before. And then a stream of her native language comes out as she looks around, trying to get her bearings. She’s seeing how everything’s tied together, and my warning not to move is forgotten. Overwhelmed by what she sees, she takes a step back, and that shift in balance is too much for her brain to handle on top of everything else: She falls over, just as I did, but laughs about it with everyone else.

  “Maybe ye should all sit first while I do this.” Once they’re all seated and all bound, I switch to true vision meself and direct their attention up to the trees, where that squirrel is high up in the branches.

  “Do ye see the life of the tree, kids, and the life of the squirrel? Colors around them both. And a connection, yes? Do ye see how the tree is aware of the squirrel, and the squirrel is aware of the tree? They know each other. The tree is not mere bark and wood, needles and pinecones. It has its own intelligence. Different from the squirrel, and different from us, but it’s there. It’s aware.”

  “I see it!” Tuya says. “I like the tree.”

  “Yeah!” Mehdi agrees. “There’s green between them. I mean connecting them. Like vines tied in knots.”

  The others tell me they see it too. “Good. That green you see can mean many things, but it’s all positive. The tree is glad the squirrel lives in it and near it and will therefore be able to make new trees. The squirrel is glad the tree feeds it and gives it a safe place to run from scary creatures like us. Now let’s try something. I want you to very carefully, very slowly, get to your feet and walk to that tree. Hands out in front of you, and then put them on the tree. Watch how the colors and knots and everything you see changes once you put your hands on the trunk.”

  They rise and stagger on uncertain feet toward it, arms outstretched, and once their wee hands plant themselves against the trunk, they see new patterns expand and flourish underneath their fingers.

  “Whoa,” Thandi says. “What is that? What does it mean?”

  “It means the tree knows you’re there. It can feel ye against its bark, sense the carbon dioxide you’re breathing out of your lungs. And o’ course ye can feel it underneath your fingers. You’re seeing the magic of our shared existence together and much of the science as well. Ye can tell the tree you love it and that you’re glad it’s growing here—just ask Colorado to relay the message. The tree won’t understand your words any more than Colorado does, but the emotion will get through just fine.”

  They spend a few seconds doing this, and they get a response from the tree through the spheres at their neck—a combination hello and welcome—and they squeal their excitement. Tuya throws her wee arms as wide as she can and hugs the pine. “I love you, tree,” she says.

  “Good. Now I need to turn off that true vision for a bit. I don’t want you to get headaches. We’re going to find some deer and see if ye can talk to them as well. Ye need to learn how to connect with animals first before ye can heal them. There’s a laying on of hands needed to heal, but ye can’t do that if the animals don’t trust ye first.”

  They blink and rub at their eyes when the true vision leaves them, but th
ere’s a new sense of wonder there, floating in the waters of their eyes. They’ve seen a glimpse of the hidden world, and they know that what they perceive is only a small fraction of what’s really going on all around them.

  “We have some running to do. Quietly, now. We don’t want the deer to hear us coming.”

  I set off at an easy jog, which is a fine clip for the kids, but I ask Colorado to provide them with some stamina, and they’re able to keep up easily over three miles uphill to a high mountain meadow ringed with aspens and pines. I hold up me hand and they stop, breathing heavily.

  “Where are they?” Luiz whispers. I look down at him and his mouth is slightly open, showing off the gap between his front teeth. All me apprentices love animals, but I think Luiz loves them the way Tuya loves plants.

  “They’re bedded down for the day on the other side of the meadow, hiding in the tall grasses. I’m going to have Colorado urge one to stand up, but be quiet now—we don’t want to scare them off.”

  After a few moments, a big buck rises above the grasses, and the kids give tiny little gasps.

  “Okay, I’m going to give ye true vision again. I want ye to watch and listen to how I reach out to the deer and form a basic mental bond that will let me tell him I won’t hurt him and he shouldn’t be afraid. Ye create this binding in Old Irish, not English or Latin, so listen carefully.”

  I speak the words slowly, laying out the targeting, the effect desired, the draw of power, and the execution. The stag is startled when the binding’s made and jumps a bit, but I soothe him and ask him to cross the field to us. While he’s doing that, the kids are seeing the new binding in the air between us, and I point out features of the knotwork and what they mean. I review the language needed and have them repeat it back to me without actually drawing any power from Colorado to make it work—and it won’t work unless they say the words correctly, because that’s part of the craft, part of the binding itself.