Hunted (Iron Druid Chronicles)
Page 6
Or not. How do you guard a place that’s open to the air—and open to the public—without generating some attention? With caves you can hide the guardians inside.
We had to turn due south to get to Dubringer Moor, skirting a huge lignite strip mine at Kausche but otherwise enjoying the mixed evergreen and deciduous forests that surrounded wee hamlets until we arrived at the moor. Trees grew out of some juicy ground around the edges of it, but near the center it was a swampy marshland. I stopped at a birch tree that had three knots reminiscent of a triskele on one side. After looking around to make sure we were unobserved, I shifted to human and drew Fragarach from its scabbard.
“Ready?” I asked.
Granuaile shape-shifted and held Scáthmhaide at the ready. “Yep. Go.”
In the magical spectrum the Old Way was plain to see, but Oberon couldn’t see it at all and I didn’t want him to step off. “We’ll go slow. Look and listen for guardians. Don’t forget the treetops. And, Oberon, if you smell anything weird, let us know.”
“And stay close to us. Single file. No chasing squirrels or anything else.”
We advanced ten paces to another birch, directly south of the first one. “Walk around this counterclockwise,” I said, demonstrating, “and then we go west.” They followed me to the tree next door and then we turned south.
Oberon asked,
“No, you can’t, buddy, I’m sorry. The path itself is the tether to Tír na nÓg. It can be walked both ways. If a tree dies, then the path gets adjusted a tiny bit, but it essentially remains the same. The alder tree at the end of this must be the twentieth different tree anchoring this Old Way since I learned about it. And the same goes for the birch where we began. But if you step off the path, you have to start over.”
We crept through the birches, following a sinuous trail and stopping periodically to listen and watch for trouble. Nothing alarmed us, aside from the paranoia that every step brought. We kept expecting faeries or some sort of monster from Greco–Roman myth to jump on us, but we had this portion of the moor to ourselves. When we reached the alder tree, I grew super-cautious, peering up into the canopy.
“There has to be something here,” I said. “It can’t be that easy.”
“What’s easy?”
“This is it right here. We walk around that tree three times and we’re in Tír na nÓg. Boom. Escaped. We shift to the New World and send all these ass bananas a postcard that says, suck it, you’ll never trap us again. But it doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe they forgot about this one?” Granuaile ventured.
“Maybe. Maybe they’re just being clever with their ambushes. Maybe someone’s invisible?”
“Let’s check the magical spectrum.”
“Already there, but go ahead, you might see something I didn’t.”
Granuaile scanned the tree and noted it had a whisper of color about it as a tether, but there wasn’t anything else to be seen. Nothing glowing in the canopy. Nothing glowing on the ground.
“Oberon, what do you smell?” Granuaile asked.
His nose twitched for a few moments before he gave a mental shrug.
“All right, we’ll just take it slow.” I crept forward and led them toward the alder tree. We had to go clockwise around this one. I peered up into the branches but spied no threats. The first orbit around the tree was uneventful, and I began to hope. But the second trip around put us halfway between the planes, and we saw what was waiting for us if we kept going: A semitransparent second world overlaid the one we were walking. And waiting there, in Tír na nÓg, one more circle around the tree, was the guardian we’d been expecting all along.
I should say, rather, that we expected a guardian—but not this particular guardian.
“Eep!” Granuaile squeaked, startled. Oberon barked at it. I raised Fragarach and watched it carefully. It smiled at us with three rows of jagged teeth but did not move, except to raise its tail. The end of it was blackened and bristling with what looked like very large cactus thorns. Except for the tail and the human face with an abnormally toothy grin, it had the body of a red lion. The face was framed all around by a magnificent mane, with the lush hair growing out from the neck reminding me of nineteenth-century American Romantic poets.
“If that’s what I think it is, then it’s not Greco–Roman,” Granuaile said, “and it’s not Fae either.”
“No, this guy would be Persian,” I said. “But I have no idea why he’s involved in this.”
“It’s a manticore,” I said. “And it shouldn’t be in Tír na nÓg.”
Oberon growled low in his throat, a steady rumble of warning.
“Can it attack us?” Granuaile asked.
I lowered my sword. “Not from where it currently is.”
“It’s right in front of us.”
“No, it’s in Tír na nÓg and we’re not quite there yet. We’d have to go around the tree once more, and then he could attack us.”
“Or he could go around the tree the other way.”
“No, that wouldn’t get him here. He can’t get out of Tír na nÓg without walking the proper path—it’s just as complicated from that side as it is from here. We had to take many steps to get this far, and he would have to take as many to get to us. And I bet you he doesn’t know the way. He can’t see the path in the magical spectrum like we can. He was placed there by somebody else, and he has to wait for us to come to him.”
“But he’s in Tír na nÓg, right? So if we get past him we’re golden, correct?”
“Well, yes. But getting past a manticore is next to impossible. Their venom is supposed to be a death sentence. Doesn’t matter if it comes out of the tail or from his bite. Even the claws are deadly, if reports are accurate.”
“Reports or myths?”
“Myths, you’re right; I’m sorry. There are no reports of people surviving manticore attacks, because they would have to survive to report it.”
“Couldn’t we break down the venom ourselves by unbinding it? I mean, we’re sort of immune to poison, aren’t we?”
“I suppose we are in some sense. But that takes concentration, and while you’re working on not dying from poison, he’ll spill your guts on the grass or bite your head off. And the third member of our party is not immune.”
Oberon stopped the barrel roll of his growling.
The manticore’s face, a malevolent visage promising painful death, abruptly turned to one of earnest appeal. He raised a paw to beckon to us, indicating that we should come through.
“Okay, that’s really creepy,” Granuaile said.
“Yeah. It’s kind of a ‘step into my parlor’ kind of thing, isn’t it? Well, we’re not going to play his little manticore games. We have our answer now. The Morrigan was right—everything’s being watched. But it’s a bit staggering.”
“You mean, all this effort to kill us?”
“Yeah. It could be done in a simpler fashion, but whoever’s behind this wants to make sure no blame accrues to them.”
“Huh. Atticus, could every Old Way in Tír na nÓg be guarded without Brighid’s knowledge?”
I considered. “Probably not for an extended period of time, but for a short while I don’t see why not.”
“Well, I don’t see why. How can she be unaware?”
“She has to be informed, just like a president or a prime minister does. She won’t know there’s a problem until somebody tells her.”
“Okay, so that means she could conceivably be the one behind this, or she’s aware of it and complicit, or she’s flat-out clueless.”
“Don’t forget aware and incompete
nt. Conceivable, but doubtful.”
“All right. I want to talk about it some more, but let’s step away from those teeth first.”
“Yep, good call. We need to move on.” We’d doubtless ceded some ground to Artemis and Diana during this little side trip, and we could ill afford to give them any more.
The manticore’s face melted into desperation once we began to backpedal, and then he gave up all pretense of pacifism and sprang at us, mouth agape and claws extended. It was entirely silent and phantasmal: He passed right through me, not being quite on the same plane as I was.
The manticore faded entirely from view once we stepped off the path. We agreed to resume our run and continue northwest through Germany until we safely cleared the Harz Mountains, and then we’d head straight west for the Netherlands according to the path laid out for us by the elemental Saxony. It was already somewhere around midday, and we wouldn’t get out of Germany before night fell.
“Can we run as humans for a while to save Oberon the effort of relaying our conversation?” Granuaile said.
I shrugged. It would be slower going, but we had a bit of a lead and we needed to talk. “Sure.” We adopted a ground-eating pace and trusted Saxony to guide us around developed areas as much as possible. With any luck, our streaking would go unnoticed. Or, if someone did see us, they might reasonably conclude we were running away from the very large dog behind us.
“So who’s in charge of the Old Ways on the Tír na nÓg side?” Granuaile asked. “Who would inform Brighid if there was a problem?”
“Ah! The rangers. I see where you’re going with this now. If Brighid isn’t responsible and no one’s told her what’s going on, then someone has suborned the rangers.”
“Exactly. And remember when we first went to Tír na nÓg together, and there was that one Fae lord who told us the rangers had reported all the tree tethers were malfunctioning throughout Europe?”
“Yes! Snooty, foppish type. I called him Lord Grundlebeard.”
“Right, and so he’s not a good buddy of yours. And he’s in charge of the rangers, or he wouldn’t have been reporting that at the Fae Court.”
“Gods below,” I breathed, realizing she was right.
“Yeah. Would Lord Grundlebeard have the power to do all this?”
I thought aloud for her benefit. “Use the rangers to organize some sort of obstruction at every Old Way throughout Europe? Yes. He could do that. But reliably divine your location the way that the Tuatha Dé Danann or other gods can do? That’s doubtful. And consider what we’ve had thrown at us in the past few months: dark elves, Fae assassins, vampires, and now the Olympians. You’d have to have vast resources and serious power to push all those buttons and still keep yourself hidden. Grundlebeard can’t have that kind of juice on tap.”
“Wait. You think this person is working with the Olympians?”
“Now that we’re talking through it, I think they have to be. Just remember how this all went down. I was giving you a tour of the Old Ways. We got to a specific spot in Romania and the trap was sprung. The Olympians were already there waiting for us—and so was the Morrigan. Now, the Olympians have their own methods of divination and they could have figured out where to find you in advance, and of course it’s Pan and Faunus who are spreading pandemonium and preventing us from shifting through tethered trees, but there’s no way they could have set a manticore to guarding one of the Old Ways in Germany from the Tír na nÓg side. They have to be colluding with someone on the Fae Court, but I don’t think it’s Lord Grundlebeard. I think he’s involved, don’t get me wrong, but it’s more likely that he’s getting his orders from someone higher up.”
“Okay, I won’t argue with that. But the manticore tells us something else.”
“What?”
“Whoever’s after us, they’re spread really thin. You don’t use manticores as mercenaries unless you’re desperate, am I right?”
“That’s a good point,” I said. “I think we should address that and other points with Lord Grundlebeard at our earliest opportunity. Find out who’s giving him orders.”
“Agreed. Who knows what revelations would follow?”
“What is it?” I asked him.
“Okay, that will do.”
“Oberon, we can’t play that now.”
“What do you want? A story?”
“All right. There’s one that may be relevant to our current situation. I just thought of someone amongst the Tuatha Dé Danann who might have the means, motive, and opportunity to arrange all this.”
“Obsess? I’d call it dutiful attention to self-preservation. Come on, Oberon. It has birds behaving badly, love rectangles, and even a cameo appearance by the late, not-so-great Aenghus Óg.”
“That was twelve years ago, Oberon, but, yes, that god.”
“No, Aenghus wasn’t, but his half brother, Midhir, was. They were both sons of the Dagda. And it’s Midhir who might be behind all this.”
“I haven’t met him, have I?” Granuaile asked.
“No, he was at the Fae Court the day you were introduced, but he did not introduce himself. I remember seeing him seated with the Tuatha Dé Danann on the right side of Brighid, but he didn’t come up to say hi with the rest of them.”
“That’s my theory.”
“All right. I don’t think I should tell you the whole thing—it would take too long. It’s practically an epic, called Tochmarc Étaíne, or The Wooing of Étaín. These events took place before I reached my first century of life. I had already discovered the secret to Immortali-Tea, thanks to Airmid, daughter of Dian Cecht, but I had yet to acquire Fragarach. Ready for the short version—the version I heard from people living at the time, not the one written down by Christian monks centuries later?”
“Okay. Midhir desired a woman who was not his wife—a beautiful woman named Étaín. With Aenghus Óg’s help, he got her, and he lived with her for a year and a day—which effectively divorced him from his first wife, Fúamnach, according to the laws of the time. Fúamnach disapproved of the match, as you might expect, and being no slouch at magic herself, she turned Étaín into a large purple butterfly that was blown about on the wind for seven years, until the poor lass landed on the shoulder of Aenghus Óg.
“Realizing it was Étaín and that Midhir was especially talented in shape-shifting others besides himself, Aenghus warded Étaín with wild magic and tried to return her to Midhir, in hopes of saving her. But Fúamnach again summoned winds and blew Étaín away. This time the butterfly fell into a flagon and was consumed by the wife of a warrior who’d been trying to start a family. Aenghus Óg’s wards preserved Étaín’s life in singular fashion: She made the leap from digestive system to womb, shifted from butterfly to egg, and was eventually reborn to this woman, still beautiful but remembering nothing of her former existence.”
“Well, it was a big-ass wooden flagon, Oberon, not a glass brandy snifter. You don’t take dainty sips out of a flagon. You gulp giant draughts at a time and let rivulets of mead flow out the sides of your mouth. If she felt anything at all, she’d probably chalk it up to something going down the wrong tube.”
“That was Aenghus Óg’s wild magic ward at work. It’s supposed to protect you, but its effects are unpredictable since it improvises its responses to danger. Most of the wards I craft are simply wards of repulsion, to prevent certain kinds of beings from passing—like a ring of salt can prevent the passage of spirits but not much else. Wild magic is capable of doing most anything.”
“As far as I know it’s true. The details were given to me by the Morrigan and Airmid after the fact. The Morrigan heard part of it from Aenghus Óg, and Airmid heard part of it from her father, Dian Cecht, whose role in this I’m kind of skipping for brevity.”
“Years later, the High King of Ireland, Eochaid Airem, had his pick of the most beautiful women in Ireland for his bride and naturally chose to wed Étaín. The Tuatha Dé Danann always took note when the High King took a wife, and that is how Midhir learned that his old love was walking the world again. Midhir still loved her, but she, of course, didn’t remember him at all. So he set about wooing her in epic fashion.
“The story here goes on for quite some time about the love rectangle between Étaín and three men: Midhir, King Eochaid, and Eochaid’s brother, Aillil. Aillil was basically a puppet in all of this, his behavior controlled by Midhir and Aenghus Óg, but he at least escaped from the whole mess with only a few months’ suffering. Not so the High King.
“Midhir performed four magical tasks for the High King on behalf of Ireland and also gave away vast sums of wealth, all with the goal of winning Étaín. Once he figured that she rightfully belonged to him, he showed up at court in Tara, turned both himself and Étaín into swans, and flew away in full view of the monarch.