by Kevin Hearne
“A sort of Druid World Tour? We could make T-shirts with a list of all the elementals on the back.”
“Yeah. But first let’s go somewhere with a name I can’t pronounce that has a really nice hotel with a giant bed in it.”
“Gods below, you are brilliant.”
Oberon roused himself to full wakefulness in the living room.
Epilogue
The giant bed we found in Tlalpujahua, Mexico, had been sufficient for our purposes, and it was not long after that we picked up Oberon from his guest stay at a poodle ranch in Vermont and embarked on the Druid World Tour. I was showing Granuaile some of the Old World doorways to Tír na nÓg that humans could walk. Occasionally, humans discovered them by accident and found themselves in Tír na nÓg, and if they were extraordinarily lucky they managed to find their way back.
The old doors were good to know, I argued, because even though they were sparsely distributed, they functioned even when the trees did not. They were constructed in caves, which were not subject to the same whims and forces that trees were.
Part of the exercise was just damn cool, because caves are like that, and I emphasized this to Granuaile. But, in truth, I had another agenda: I wanted Granuaile to be impossible to catch. Strategically speaking, falling in love with her was a mistake, the sort of thing that Machiavellian types would exploit, for my enemies—vampires, dark elves, you name it—would always view Granuaile as a lever to use against me. She was quite the badass in her own right now, capable of feats I couldn’t match, but during our connubial sequestration in Mexico it occurred to me that we would have precious little chance to lay low going forward. She’d never get an opportunity to truly enjoy her powers and nurture a sense of harmony in the world as it stood. I kept thinking back to that conversation with Jesus where he said if I’d remained meek, I would have inherited the earth. But there was no going back to that idyllic time when only one god wanted to kill me. Now I just wanted the earth to stick around so someone meek could inherit it. And I hoped that we two Druids would manage to stick around as well. I wasn’t nearly through staring at her yet.
We emerged from a cavern in the Apuseni Mountains in Romania; the range—in the western part of the Carpathians, in the old province of Transylvania—was famous for its hundreds of caves. The vista we beheld at the cave’s mouth smacked of the bucolic rather than the vampiric. Sheep and cattle competed contentedly for their share of abundant grassland directly below, a friendly forest waved at us a short distance beyond, and zero stone edifices loomed over the landscape with palpable auras of ickiness.
“Yes, I did. It is.”
“Vampires are a bit more discreet than that these days, Oberon.”
“Feel what?”
No sooner had I asked him than I felt it: a trembling in the earth—a building one. I shot a hello and query to the Apuseni elemental. //Greetings / Harmony / Query: Plate event?//
//Greetings / Druids welcome / Advice: Run / Not plate event / God event through me//
“We need to get out of here,” I said, as the ground bucked beneath us. We heard loud cracking reports of stone shattering to our rear: The cavern from which we had just emerged was crumbling and filling in with stone that had been stable for centuries. We scrambled down the hill, across boulders and shale, into the forest below. A minor landslide followed us.
“Someone’s after us,” I explained to Granuaile, who probably hadn’t heard my quick conversation with Apuseni. “Some god is causing this through the elemental. Let’s shift to Colorado.”
“Got it,” she said.
Once down to the friendly forest we’d spied from above, we put our hands to a tethered tree, but it wouldn’t respond; the paths to Tír na nÓg were cut off somehow.
“Pandemonium,” a voice croaked from the branches above. We sought the source and found it: A crow with red eyes stared back at us. It was the Morrigan.
“You won’t find anyplace on the continent that will let you shift away,” she said, and I shuddered involuntarily. It was always disconcerting to hear the crow speak English. “They’ve trapped you here. That earthquake was Neptune’s work, and Faunus will deny you every tether to the Summer Lands. You’ll find the old ways collapsed or guarded. You’re going to need to run for the British Isles, Siodhachan—and I mean literally run all the way there. It’s the only path I’ve seen where you live through this.”
“Live through what?”
“You’ll see. The ankle-winged boys are coming to tell you now.” The crow tossed its beak at something behind us. We turned and looked up.
Hermes and Mercury descended from the sky, pale savage beauty paired with golden pomposity, and the Roman demanded to know what I had done with Bacchus.
“Ask the Fates,” I said, shrugging.
A bolt of lightning lanced down from the heavens to strike Oberon, who first yelped, then barked at the sky.
Oberon was unharmed because of Perun’s fulgurite on his collar, but one of the Olympian sky gods had clearly intended for him to die. It was a message meant to put me in my place, to reduce me to quivering obeisance.
I looked up and spoke loudly: “That was damn rude, Jupiter. The last god of Olympus who was rude to me was Bacchus.”
“Where is he?” Mercury demanded again.
“Why do you wish to know? Have the Roman wine cellars run dry?”
“You will return him or suffer the consequences.”
I shifted my gaze to Hermes and asked, “What is the Greek interest in this?”
Hermes shrugged and spoke in his taut melodious tones: “Olympian solidarity, officially. But, in truth, Artemis was extremely vexed about the kidnapping of the dryads. As was Diana. All nymphs of the wood are sacred to them. This Bacchus affair is their chance to exact revenge for what they promised to forgive.”
I could almost hear Granuaile saying, “I told you we shouldn’t have touched the dryads.” I carefully kept my gaze on the Olympians so I wouldn’t have to see it in her face.
“Well, Bacchus and Faunus should be blamed for it, not I. They forced me to do it, and, besides, I returned the dryads unharmed as promised.”
Mercury said, “We won’t let you do to the Olympians what you did to the Norse, Druid. Return Bacchus or die.”
“Return him or die? That’s not much of a choice. If I bring Bacchus back, he will kill me.”
The messenger gods didn’t even bother to shrug. They merely raised their eyebrows as if to say, “So?”
“Haven’t you ever heard of Catch-22? Throw me a bone here, guys. If I’m going to die either way, what’s the point of giving Bacchus back?”
They ignored my question completely and Mercury said, “Choose, mortal. Will you return Bacchus or no?”
Fuck these guys. “No,” I said. “He’s a dick.”
“Then so be it.” They flew straight up and away, revealing two floating chariots behind them in the distance, almost hidden against the hillside. Two helmeted figures with bows released arrows at us—Artemis and Diana. They knew I would say no. They’d planned for it.
The Morrigan crunched down in front of us in her human form, now fully armored, and took the arrows in a massive ebony shield. I had never seen her bother with armor before.
“I am here to fulfill my oath to you, Siodhachan Ó Suileabháin. Run now,” she said, “for England. You have two immortal goddesses of the hunt on
your trail. I shall hold them as long as I can, but it won’t be forever.” She drew a sword from a scabbard at her waist.
“Morrigan?”
Artemis and Diana goaded their chariots forward. The Morrigan turned and pointed west, her red eyes blazing through an ebony helmet. “Go, Siodhachan! They come!”
I grabbed Granuaile’s arm to pull her away and we ran, Oberon at our side, into a forest we suddenly found foreboding rather than friendly.
To those who have glimpsed divinity in beauty
or
to anyone who’s ever had to think about baseball
Acknowledgments
To my family, friends, and all my wonderful readers: Much love and a raised flagon to you!
As always, the keen insights of my alpha reader, Alan O’Bryan, helped me tremendously in the process of writing. He also got me playing Magic: The Gathering again and smooshed me with a Boneyard Wurm. Friends are rad like that.
I am so blessed to have editors at Del Rey who are capable of both geeking out and rocking out—often at the same time. Thanks to Tricia Narwani and Mike Braff for throwin’ up the horns and encouraging all the world-building.
I recently discovered that my agent, Evan Goldfried, knows more about beer than I do. In my eyes, this makes him An Authority on Just About Everything. I respect his authori-tah!
Amalia Dillin (@AmaliaTD) knows more about Norse mythology than most humans. I’ve enjoyed chatting with her, bouncing ideas off her, and occasionally pleading for her help. If you find my representation of Norse mythology heinous, please don’t blame her; I’m the guy who wrote the heinous stuff.
For those who may be interested, the Poetic Edda in its entirety can be found online for free. You’ll see where all the dwarf names come from, discover the circumstances of Loki’s binding, and so much more. If you keep reading different sources of Norse mythology, you’ll also discover that they contradict one another in myriad ways. (And that is nothing to be ashamed of; it’s an endearing feature of most belief systems.) One point of confusion is naming the Nine Realms of Yggdrasil and deciding where they’re located. The map I’ve included at the front of the book (drawn by Priscilla Spencer) is organized according to various sources and a few core beliefs o’ mine regarding Norse mythology: 1) Three is a magic number, so there are three realms on each of three levels; 2) dwarfs and elves are not the same thing. No, they are not the same thing at all, and as for all those sources that say they are, well, I think the dark elves must have gotten to them; and 3) given number 2, the dwarfs live in Nidavellir, and the Svartálfs live in Svartálfheim, and they’re not the same place either.
Thanks again for reading! You can find me on Twitter @kevinhearne or on Facebook if you’d like to say hello.
Don’t miss the first four and a half books of The Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne
Hounded
Hexed
Hammered
Tricked
Two Ravens and One Crow: An Iron Druid Novella
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