by Kevin Hearne
“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, Ai
llil. 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.
“King Eochaid searched for her for many years, tearing up the faery mounds of the Tuatha Dé Danann until finally he hit upon the correct one: Midhir’s síd, called Brí Léith. He demanded the return of Étaín, and Midhir eventually agreed, saying he’d bring her to Tara forthwith.
“He was as good as his word—he brought Étaín to Tara. But he also brought forty-nine other women whom he had enchanted to look just like Étaín. He presented the fifty women to King Eochaid and said, Go ahead, dude, choose your wife.
“The High King chose one and they had a kid together, and for a minute you think, aww, how nice, a royal successor and a happily-ever-after! But Midhir returned after a year and a day and said, ‘So, King Eochaid, how do you like your wife?’ And Eochaid replied that he was vastly pleased. That’s when Midhir crushed him forever. He said, ‘Did you know that Étaín was pregnant when we took wing together all those years ago? She gave birth to a daughter—your daughter, though the child was never told this. And it was she whom you chose, in the likeness of her mother, to be your queen. You are now married to your own daughter and have lain with her and brought forth issue with her. And you have given me Étaín once again. So you are paid for trifling with the Tuatha Dé Danann.’ ”
“Yeah, Atticus, I’m with the hound on this one,” Granuaile said. “Turbo ew, okay?”
“Why are you blaming me?” I said. “I didn’t make it up. That is what Midhir did to the High King of Ireland.”
“Well, if that’s how it happened, I don’t like how Étaín was never given a choice. Both Midhir and Eochaid should have been kicked in the marble bag for behaving like her hoo-ha was something they could buy and sell.”
“Should you ever meet Midhir, I urge you to deliver that kick to the marble bag and tell him why,” I said, “but, again, it’s not my story. It’s an illustration of Midhir’s character and abilities. What did you learn?”
“Well, not us—that would be a direct spell, and your cold iron talisman would protect you from that. It’s not preventing people from divining your location, but it does protect against targeted magical attacks. What I hoped you’d learn is something about how Midhir operates.”
“He’s shady,” Granuaile said. “And patient. Once he knows what he wants, he’s willing to wait to get it and will set up everything so that his victory will be assured. Not afraid to do his own dirty work either—though he hasn’t shown himself to us yet, if he’s the one behind this.”
“It’s a different situation,” I said. “He can’t afford to be directly involved. Remember that, until recent events, the Morrigan was very much in my corner. He had to tiptoe very carefully to make sure she wouldn’t discover his involvement. And there are others among the Tuatha Dé Danann who are favorably disposed toward us. Goibhniu, for one, and Manannan Mac Lir, who are powerful and influential in their own right.”
“But wait a second,” Granuaile said. “If he’s doing all this to avenge his brother’s death at your hands, shouldn’t he have been destroyed years ago when Brighid and the Morrigan did their purge? They went around putting people down after Aenghus Óg tried to take over, didn’t they?”
“Excellent point. He must have concealed his allegiance very well.”
“Unless he was never allied with Aenghus at all. If he’s Aenghus’s half brother, then he’s Brighid’s too, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“So he might have been in Brighid’s camp all along.”
“True. But if that’s the case, that would still make him antagonistic to us now, since we are not Brighid’s favorite Druids.”
“Speak for yourself,” Granuaile said. “She likes me just fine.”
I grinned, acknowledging that she had a point there. “Either way, he’s still around and could have both the means and motive to wish us harm. We need to investigate when we get the chance.”
“What? Oberon, that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Do you perhaps mean pi, the mathematical symbol?”
My efforts over the years to instruct Oberon in basic timekeeping and other mathematical concepts had failed utterly—except in the realm of vocabulary, I suppose. He soaked that all up and spouted it out later in unpredictable combinations. He had tried, for example, to rate dry dog food on “the quotient of the beef correlation coefficient” and sausage on a “pork echelon matrix.” But he still got confused if you asked him to count beyond twenty.
“Oh, I think I see now,” I said. “You are using shepherd’s pie as a unit of measurement.”
“But that’s math.”
“Didn’t you use gravy in this manner before?”
“I think so. This means that cold chicken, for example, would be a kind of gravy, while a slow-roasted tri-tip would be …?”
“Got it. I think you’re right, buddy,” I said. “Brighid is totally jealous.”
Granuaile and I shifted to our hooved forms and we picked up our pace again.
Chapter 9
It was unfortunate that we had no time to savor our surroundings on such a beautiful day. The mixed woods of Germany were the sort that deserved a good savoring—no, a savouring, with a British u in there for the sake of decadence, as colours are somehow more vibrant to me than mere colors. It was in the woods of Germany that big bad wolves ate grandmothers and girls who dressed in red. It was Germany that hid the gingerbread house of a witch who hungered for children to roast in her oven. And somewhere in the mountains that we were doing our best to avoid, Rübezahl still wandered with his storm harp, shaking the earth or fogging the skies as the notion took him.
We had successfully navigated northwest through farmlands and river crossings and had recently threaded the space between Bergen on the north and Celle on the south. As we headed into a lovely wooded stretch that gave way to dank moors here and there, the sun sank before us and filtered through the needled branches of evergreens.
Usually there are only two kinds of script one sees in forests: signs that warn off trespassers and hunters, and carved hearts in the trunks of trees with the initials of a couple who felt there was no more romantic thing they could do to celebrate their love than scar the local plant life. So when I saw a neat white envelope pinned to a tree, addressed to The Shakespearean Scholar in a neat calligraphic hand, I stopped to check it out and shifted to human.
“Hold up,” I called to Granuaile and Oberon. “I need to take a look at this. Stay alert.”
Granuaile shifted to human also. “What is it?” she whispered.
“A note.”
The envelope was sealed with red wax and the Old Norse word hefnd. Vengeance. The
paper inside was a fine linen. There was no date or salutation or signature, just two lines from The Merchant of Venice, written with ink and quite possibly an old-fashioned quill. I read it aloud: “Thou call’dst me dog before thou hadst a cause; But, since I am a dog, beware my fangs.”
“It’s Shakespeare, Oberon.”
There was no postscript. Nothing written on the back. Nothing else in the envelope.
“He expresses himself with economy.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Thinking aloud. Unwisely.” The clue was in the quote: Vampires ahead. The last time I saw him, back in Thessalonika, Leif Helgarson had told me that he would try to warn me with Shakespeare when Theophilus was getting close. Theophilus was the old vampire who’d set the Romans after the ancient Druids and had, until recently, thought we were all dead. Now that he knew we were alive he wanted to finish the job. But it wasn’t quite dark yet on our second day of running: That meant if Leif had left this note for me, he had to have left it before dawn, while we were still chugging through Poland. That spoke of an uncomfortable prescience regarding the route I was taking, even if someone in Tír na nÓg was doing the divining. The wind was behind us and I was sure he wouldn’t be able to tell, but I asked my hound anyway:
Oberon, do you smell the dead? Vampires?
My hound paused to sniff the air.
Smell this envelope. Any trace of the dead on it?
So Leif had written the note, but someone human had left it here, most likely at his instruction. Oberon confirmed this after snuffling around a bit at the base of the tree.