by Kevin Hearne
“I want to make clear,” Ísólfr says, “that you are welcome here anytime. Please visit whenever you wish. And we have made you a gift.”
“It was my idea!” Hildr says. She flashes her teeth, reaches down by her feet, and then produces an ice box, which she places in front of me. It’s a beautiful, shimmering thing, and inside is a leather scabbard proportioned to Fuilteach’s dimensions.
“Oh, you saved me some work! Thank you!” The leather strips I brought with me serve to tie it to my left thigh, and once I have it on, Skúfr groans, sighs, and then allows the whirling blade to stop whirling.
“It is finished.” He lowers his hand and the blade descends to rest on the table. “Fuilteach is yours.”
The soul chamber is full blue now. Using more of the leather, I wrap the bare handle and then carefully slip it into the scabbard, thanking the yeti all the while for their hospitality and help. They assert that meeting me was pure powder and wish me success in freeing my father. I give them all hugs, because I’m going to make a T-shirt that says I HUGGED A YETI and I want it to be true. But after the farewells, Orlaith and I scamper downhill to the trees as fast as we can manage.
Thanjavur is very different when I return. There are police, or perhaps army troops, in plain sight, wearing masks to ward off contamination. Anyone on the streets is likewise masked and presumably subject to search and curfew and all the other measures governments take to exert control and institute a quarantine. If the blight had been a traditional virus, then it quite probably would have spread far beyond the city by now, but since the rakshasas were the source, it had contained itself to the local area. Of course, rakshasas wouldn’t respond at all to modern medicine. I shudder to think how many more must have died while I was gone.
I shed layers of clothing that were necessary in the Himalayas but stifling down here, then cast camouflage on Orlaith and use the bindings carved into Scáthmhaide to turn myself invisible. Keeping a hand on my hound to guide her, I thread my way through the quarantine to Laksha’s house, only to find that it has been burned down. The smell is awful, even to my human nose, and smoke still rises from some of the beams. Had my father attacked her or sent a rakshasa to do this? Or had some portion of the townsfolk decided that she was a witch and needed to burn?
“Oh, gods,” I breathe, and whip out my cell phone, unable to believe that she’s trapped inside. My call goes directly to voice mail. “Laksha, I’m back in town and looking for you. I hope you’re okay. Please call or find me.”
If her body is in the ruins, I won’t find her without drawing attention to myself.
I don’t know what to do now, but I flail and grasp at something just to get us out of the neighborhood. Let’s go south, where we last saw her. She seemed to know people in that area and might be around there somewhere.
We exit the city. The agricultural areas do not look much different but somehow feel neglected already, as if the fields sense that they are fallow in the minds of those who used to tend them. The air trembles and ripples around me, disturbed by what floats in the atmosphere. The sun sets as I run next to Orlaith, and I cast night vision.
Laksha is nowhere to be found near the last two houses we visited, and Orlaith says her scent is either missing or “very old.” But at the first house, where we stabbed the rakshasa in the eye and buried him in an alley, a group of people cluster together and speak in hushed, urgent voices. As I draw closer, I see that the mother of the boy we saved is crying, wiping tears from her cheeks as she speaks. She stiffens suddenly and her eyes flick in my direction, but then she relaxes and resumes talking, her tone suggesting that she is tired and would like to go inside. She begins to hug people and wave farewell, and I guide Orlaith toward the door of her home, around the edge of the group. We flatten ourselves along the front wall, unseen, and wait for her to open the door. The neighbors leave one by one, and as the woman turns to open her door, she says in clear but accented English, “Follow me inside, Granuaile.”
“Laksha?”
“Come inside.” She turns the knob and pushes open the door but leaves it ajar so that we can dart in behind her. Orlaith follows close on my heels, and Laksha closes the door once she hears Orlaith’s paws on the floor. I drop the invisibility and camouflage and tilt my head at the woman.
“Is that you in there?”
“Yes,” Laksha says, and pulls out her ruby necklace from her sari. “I’m possessing this woman for the time being. I need a new body. Selai Chamkanni has been proclaimed a witch, and they burned her house down while she was still inside.”
“Who are they?”
“This very woman was responsible,” she replies, pointing to herself, and then gestures angrily at the door. “Along with those friendly people out there and others who helped burn my house down.”
“Why?”
“The boy we saved was taken over by a new rakshasa the night after you left, but this time it did not linger. It came in under the door in a foul fog, showed itself to the woman, then deliberately attacked and killed her son in front of her. I can see her memory of it. She blamed me, thinking that I sent the rakshasa.”
“But that—”
“—Makes no sense, I know. Grief can make us do terrible things. Still, she and her friends caught me by surprise. They surrounded the house and set it on fire, and there was no way to escape without marking the body of Selai forever as a witch. So I tossed my necklace at this woman, left behind the body of Selai, and took over this woman’s mind. It is not the friendly arrangement that you and I enjoyed. I would like to find a more willing vessel. But I don’t think there will be time for that.”
“You know where my father is?”
“No, but I know who does. Were you successful in acquiring a yeti ice knife?”
I don’t bother to correct her on the name. I draw Fuilteach from its sheath and hold it up as an answer. She steps closer, her eyes losing focus as she employs her own version of magical sight. She doesn’t see bindings the way a Druid does, but whatever she sees, she can interpret correctly. Her eyes refocus and she looks awed.
“That is an extremely dangerous weapon. Did the yeti tell you what would happen if you use the tip?”
“Yes. I won’t use that on my father.”
“Good. Are you ready, then, or do you need to rest?”
“Ready.”
Hidden from view again with my bindings, Orlaith and I follow her out of the house. She leads us east until we reach Nanjikottai Road, a route that runs north–south. We trace it south until we come to a bus stop, but Laksha makes a disgusted sound. “We have missed the last one,” she says, looking at the sign. “We will have to walk.”
“How far?”
“Only a couple of miles. We can afford the time. South of here is the Thanjavur Air Force Station and a government high school. And once we pass through the village of Nanjikottai, there will be nothing but fields for some distance. I have been able to determine that the rakshasas are coming from the south, so your father must be summoning them from somewhere down there.”
“Who’s this person who knows where my father is?”
“The devi, Durga.”
I blink. “You’ve spoken with her in the recent past?”
Laksha shakes her head. “Not yet. But I think I will soon. The raksoyuj has drawn her attention, and my prayers regarding him have also been heard. I can feel her watching, benevolent and kind.”
Statements like that defy commentary, so I keep my mouth shut. She might be right, after all. Though they rarely deign to manifest on the earth, the gods can and do watch us when we are up to something interesting. Aside from a few of the Tuatha Dé Danann, however, I wouldn’t call them benevolent and kind. Maybe Durga would prove to be so.
My education on the Hindu pantheon suggested that Durga was a great protector of humanity. In the old Indian epics, she is not shy to employ her many weapons, slaying rakshasas by the score and smiling all the while
, as if to say, “Sorry, fellas, you’re living this life the entirely wrong way, so let me help move you along to the next one.” She smiles because she is restoring balance, never acting out of anger or malice. And, as Laksha pointed out, this business with the raksoyuj certainly qualified as the sort of thing to which Durga would attend.
We walk mostly in an uncomfortable silence, not only because of our tension and worry but because the insects and animals of the area seem to sense it too. They are all silent, and our footsteps sound abnormally loud. The occasional passing car is magnified to a roar, and its lights blind us in the darkness until it passes.
I feel it too. A fight may be coming, and they may have weapons. Please do not attack. I can fight well. Instead, guard my back and warn me if anyone approaches from behind.
Laksha leaves the side of the road and walks southwest, directly into a recently harvested field. Its clumpy dirt and severed stems wait to be plowed soon with a winter crop. Once we cross that field and stand on the raised berm that borders another, I can see a lone house perhaps two hundred yards away, maybe more. Surrounding it on all sides are more fields, suggesting that the owner of the house farms all this land. At night, no one from the road would see Laksha here—not that they would even look at anything but the road in front of them during a night drive.
Halting and taking her ruby necklace out of her sari, Laksha clasps it around her neck. “Fighting this woman is tiring.” I had not seen any evidence of a struggle, but I have no doubt the woman is fighting Laksha with all her spirit. “Once I leave her head, I will not return. I will preserve myself in the necklace instead. If you would be so kind as to take it from her and then lead me to a hospital, where I can find another comatose person willing to become my vessel, I would be indebted to you.”
“Of course. What now?”
“Now we let Durga know that we are ready and hope that she is ready too.”
“Forgive me for asking, but how do you know you have a direct line to the goddess?”
“Your question is not offensive; it is a good one. Durga is unlike the other devas in that she is completely independent of the male. She is no one’s wife or consort and is not associated with domesticity. She is a warrior alone. And thus she listens to those who are like her. Nontraditional women, shall we say. Like myself.”
Laksha kneels down on the berm and draws a circle around her. She produces a small candle and a book of matches from her sari and lights the candle. I expect a chant or something next, but before Laksha can begin, Orlaith startles beside me and her voice fills my head.
I whirl around, staff held defensively, and look into the yellow eyes of an enormous lion no more than six feet away. Even though I’m invisible, he’s staring directly at me. And so is the goddess astride him.
Stay still, I tell Orlaith. It’s fine.
Durga is represented in art with varying numbers of arms, but tonight she has manifested with eight. In six of these arms, she wields the trident of Shiva, the sudarshana-chakra of Vishnu, the thunderbolt of Indra, the spear of Agni, the mace of Kubera, and the sword of Yama. She raises one empty hand in greeting and nods ever so slightly at me.
“Laksha, I think she’s ready,” I say.
Laksha spins around on her knees, gasps, and gushes a stream of words that I can only imagine are praises and thanks. Durga waits until Laksha pauses for breath, and when she does speak, I hear the words both in an unfamiliar language and in English. Her voice is a calm contralto, warm and comforting, like hot tea with honey.
“Druid. Witch. You are closer to evil than you know. The raksoyuj is in that building,” she says, pointing with the trident at the farmhouse we had spotted earlier, “and he is surrounded by rakshasas. He knows I am here and even now orders them to attack us. See where they come.”
Dark shapes boil out of the house and form ranks. It will not be an undisciplined mob rush, then, but a coordinated attack. Far more of them appear than should be able to fit inside the house. In a matter of seconds, there’s an army of demons mustered between my dad and me. I’ve never been in a battle of this scale before.
I grip Scáthmhaide tightly and boost both my strength and speed.
“Ready,” I say.
Durga’s lion roars and leaps forward, in a charge at their center.
Back in 2010 I had sold Third Eye Books and Herbs to Rebecca Dane for the absurdly low price of $1.72, setting her up in pretty fine style with a functioning business, and I also gave her a first-edition copy of Leaves of Grass to auction off for a nice chunk of capital. The revelation that she was somehow responsible for the meddling of a multi-pantheon conclave in my life thus rocked my socks—or would have, if I had been wearing any. Inari refused to tell me anything more of substance beyond that, however, and I must admit that it tested my patience. Like many people, I don’t appreciate being manipulated so baldly that I can see the string of the puppeteer. Her entire conversation with me boiled down to, “Do something about Loki. Because Rebecca Dane,” and she wouldn’t tell me anything else about what had worried the gods so much that they felt they had to nudge me into action.
“The future is a many-forked path,” she said, “and only you can choose which one to follow.”
“I know that. What I don’t know is what waits at the end of those paths.”
“Victory or death. Choose well.”
She means I should choose my path well, Oberon, and the paths won’t be clearly labeled VICTORY or DEATH.
You do remember that the Sicilian who uttered the original version of that sentence died?
“Thank you for inviting me to speak with you, honored Inari,” I said, pressing my palms together and bowing. “It has been most enlightening. I will retrieve my sword and take my leave.” She didn’t reply but nodded her head at me, serene and still, as if posing for a portrait next to her kitsune.
Turning the oni over onto his back nearly tore a muscle in mine, and Fragarach, when I pulled it out of his guts, was fouled with juicy juices and in dire need of a de-goring. The Uncompahgre River near our cabin would get that started.
“Farewell,” I said, bowing again and receiving no reply. Oberon and I stepped through the ruined doors where Tsukino Hideki stood watch. The bodies of two more oni and four more swordsmen lay in pools of blood in a very public street. I cast an uncertain glance at Tsukino-san, and he bowed to me.
“Do not worry. Inari will not allow this to be seen. All will be hidden and the damage repaired before anyone walks this street.”
Thus reassured, Oberon and I trotted back to the top of Mount Inari, where we shifted to our cabin in Colorado.
I found a note from Granuaile dated October 25 waiting for me on the kitchen table. It was a couple of days old, but she didn’t mention her father and didn’t ask for help, and it sounded as if everything had gone well with the yeti, so I didn’t need to worry about her.
“Absolutely. Let’s go.”
“I’m not sure that’s a word, Oberon.”
“Your poodle addiction? Really?”
Oberon drooped both his head and his tail.
“That’s not even a thing!”
“Oberon, where are you getting this? You don’t have a problem.”
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Tell me where this is coming from.”
“All right, look, I promise never to tell Orlaith about your addiction. You’re over it now, right? No more poodles for you?”
“Okay, then, you are no longer a poodler, we don’t need to go to meetings, and you may consider your secret safe.” I turned the bathtub faucet on and placed the plug in the drain. “I won’t tell her you asked for this bath either.” Oberon hopped in and I searched for the liquid soap. He would need a good scrubbing to get all the blood out of his fur.
“I would love to, Oberon, but I never knew any ninjas, and they tend to keep their personal histories a secret.”
“True, but not those.” At one time I had been prepared to tell Oberon the story of a samurai I had met personally in the sixteenth century, before Tokugawa solidified his power, but decided against it because that fellow had met a bad end and Oberon tended to take these stories to heart. I could, however, tell him about another warrior who had lived and died with honor. “What would you say to a story about a real samurai sword master, perhaps the greatest who ever lived?”
“Miyamoto Musashi. Or, if you want the Western order for names, Musashi Miyamoto. In Japan they usually give the family name first.”
“Well, you can have mine, if you want.”
“No, I don’t think you did.”
“Sure.”
