Book Read Free

Staked (Iron Druid Chronicles)

Page 16

by Kevin Hearne


  “You got it on the first guess. Wait here, please.” He nods and I shape-shift to a chestnut mare, which I must confess is my favorite animal form. Running is so effortless, and I love the feeling of my mane and tail whipping in the wind—not that there is any wind in this cavern. Just a nervous, twitchy stallion. I figure if I approach him as a horse, he won’t feel immediately threatened and will let me get close enough to make contact and soothe him before he charges at me.

  He keeps bucking as I grow closer, however. The sudden appearance of another horse is not as calming as I had hoped. He is a smart horse who knows how to count, and there had not been two horses in this cavern until this very moment. He knows something odd is going on.

  Gods below, he’s magnificent. Milk-white hide and a coal-black mane. I switch my vision to the magical spectrum, examine his turbulent aura, and find the threads of his consciousness. I reach out with my own, bind them together, and send him feelings of peace and harmony and my unabashed admiration for him. He rears back at first, pawing at the air with his hooves, but when he returns all four legs to the earth, he snorts once and grows still, open to hearing—or feeling, or seeing—more. I send him visions of the sky above Rügen and an invitation to go there with me. He nods his head, and I also feel his great desire to go. He hates it down here. No sky. No other horses. He has been so very lonely. I respond with happiness at his decision to accompany me and am about to tell him to follow, when movement tears my attention away from him.

  Someone is coming through the gate that leads to our exit. He is like a stick of charcoal, dressed all in black and topped with a drape of black hair. Only his forehead, cheeks, and nose are pale; all else is darkness. He glances at me and the horse of Świętowit, dismisses us, and then he spies Perun by the stable. His hands curl into fists, his jaw juts forward, and his teeth are bared in a snarl; Perun does the same when he sees the man in black, who I suppose must be Weles. It’s glaringly obvious that they hate each other.

  Perun shouts a challenge at him and I expect to hear Russian, but it’s something older, because these gods are much older than that language. But I do recognize the name Świętowit, and maybe a few others; Perun is most likely demanding to know where they are. I don’t understand anything that Weles says in return. His voice is full of spite, though—he probably told Perun off in the rudest possible terms—and that looks like the end of diplomacy. What happens next is a bit comical: Perun lifts his axe and tries to summon lightning, but that’s a nonstarter underground. Weles spreads his hands to either side, palms up, fingers clutching as if he’s holding an invisible goblet in each, and raises them up in dramatic gesture. When there’s no response to this, he blinks and looks down at the grass, bewildered that nothing has happened. No earth magic for him, no thunder for Perun. I’m thinking they’re going to have to duke it out with good ol’-fashioned fisticuffs, but they surprise me and shape-shift instead. Perun tosses down his axe and takes wing as the biggest damn eagle I’ve ever seen, while Weles flops, twitches, stretches, and becomes a horror-show serpent, a truly gargantuan snake that could swallow me whole as a horse. Perun screeches and the snake hisses, and it makes me shudder.

  I say, my mental voice slightly changed by my animal form,

‹ Prev