by Kevin Hearne
We failed miserably to find any dik-diks, but Oberon wasn’t the least bit disappointed. He was highly amused by the entire trip, because Granuaile kept sneezing and didn’t get used to her new sense of smell. She’d always been a bit sensitive to odors; her first exposure to demons had caused her to retch miserably for ten minutes. Once we passed near an impressive pile of rhino feces, she gagged and tried to run away from it, but her gagging turned the normally smooth mechanics of a jaguar into a jerky, trembling dance. Oberon chuffed so hard he fell over and pawed helplessly at the sky.
Granuaile was still gagging and trying to pull herself away from the smell on the ground, her belly on the grass of the savanna. Then she remembered she had other options and shifted to falcon form. She screeched and took wing, elevating herself above the rank odor of the grassland.
All right, we’d better go. We can’t keep laughing at her expense.
We’ll go to Tír na nÓg and visit Goibhniu. I’ll bet he has a snack for you.
We began trotting back to the tethered tree as Granuaile circled high above.
No, he doesn’t have anything like that. He’s one of the Three Craftsmen though.
Not much of one. They’re all sons of Brighid, with skills in various arts.
No, they tend to be jolly lads. Goibhniu is into smithing and brewing. Luchta is a master woodworker. And Creidhne is a master with gold, bronze, or brass.
You must be thinking of stories from other cultures. Irish women tend to kick ass and do whatever they want. For exhibits A, B, and C, I give you the Morrigan, Brighid, and Flidais.
I don’t think there is one.
We had our priorities straight.
He always has something lying about—pretzels or something to anchor the porter. Allows you to drink more, see. Priorities.
We padded in silence for a while after that, which gave me time to consider the implications of vampires converging on us in the Pyrenees.
Since I hadn’t been actively hunted by vampires, ever, this had to be a result of an order issued by Theophilus. That meant I’d need to eliminate him if I wanted it to stop—that was much more logical than attempting to eliminate all vampires. But even then, his successor might issue the same order. Vampires weren’t renowned to be live-and-let-live types. To earn myself a modicum of safety, I’d have to make sure Leif Helgarson was the most powerful vampire in the world.
And as soon as I thought of it, I knew that was his plan.
By pretending to act in my interest, he was serving his. Just as he did back in Arizona, he was manipulating events so that I’d eliminate his rivals and elevate him to the position he desired. And he knew that if he got to that position, he could safely ignore me, unlike every other vampire in the world. The aid he gave us in Thessalonika—tearing apart those last three dark elves—wasn’t an act of generosity or concern but pure selfishness. I was his ticket to the top, so he couldn’t let me die.
I could hate him all I wanted for it; he still saw that I needed him and was going to take full advantage of it. And he knew that I wouldn’t do anything to him as long as there was a chance he could help me eliminate Theophilus.
Granuaile was fairly incensed when she landed and shifted back to human. I shifted as well and called up our weapons from their hiding places in the earth.
“That wasn’t very nice, Oberon,” she said, yanking on her clothes with irritation.
“You hoped it would be.”
“What!”
Auggh! That didn’t help, buddy.
That’s better.
“Well, I clearly need to adjust if I’m going to be worth a damn in that shape. I’m sure I disgraced every jaguar on the planet today and deserved to be laughed at. But Gaia chose that form for me, so I need to deal with it if I’m going to serve the earth well. Promise you’ll let me try again later?”
Granuaile petted him and looked over at me. “Where to now?”
“Well, if I’m right, there’s a sort of graduation present waiting for you in Tír na nÓg.”
“An envelope filled with cash and a card signed by all the Tuatha Dé Danann?”
I snorted. “No, something a bit more epic.”
Chapter 23
The proud grin on Goibhniu’s face could have lit up Broadway. He placed a work of art into Granuaile’s outstretched hands and said, “This is Scáthmhaide.”
Granuaile admired it in silence for a few moments, her mouth open and her eyes wide in shock. It was a beautifully wrought staff of oak, carved with knotwork beyond my ken.
Luchta, watching her over Goibhniu’s shoulder, asked, “Why doesn’t she say anything?”
“Silence is the perfectest herald of joy,” I said.
I was quoting Shakespeare, Oberon; therefore, it’s allowed.
A giggle blurted out of Granuaile before she could hold it in, and she blushed.
“Sorry. I was laughing at something the hound said.”
Goibhniu and Luchta nodded in understanding.
“It’s wonderful,” she added, and it was. Flush with the wood, the Celtic bindings for strength and speed were carved and inlaid with iron on one end and with silver on the other. The metal was not raised in a ridge or nestled in a valley; it would contact the target at the same time as the wood around it. In this way the craftsmen had created a weapon that would be lethal to Fae, Bacchants, and werewolves, and the bindings meant that Granuaile would enjoy enhanced strength and reflexes while wielding it—even when separated from the earth for a time. It functioned much like my bear charm did: It stored up magic while Granuaile was in contact with the earth and then shared it when she wasn’t.
“Unb
reakable, o’ course,” Luchta said. “And waterproof.”
“The iron won’t rust and the silver won’t tarnish,” Goibhniu added.
“Amazing,” Granuaile said. “But what are all these bindings here along the length of the staff? Atticus, do you recognize them?”
“That’s actually Flidais’s work,” Luchta explained. “Or, rather, it’s my work but her bindings. They’re the reason for the name: Scáthmhaide means ‘shadow staff’ in modern Irish. Say the proper words and it’ll turn ye invisible. True invisibility, now, not camouflage. There’s some fine print, but I don’t know it all. I just carved it according to instructions. You’d best talk to Flidais about it.”
Granuaile was stunned. “Flidais did this for me?” The craftsmen nodded. “Why?”
“Wish I knew the answer to that meself,” Goibhniu said. “She hasn’t taught that binding to anyone else, ye know.”
“Aye, and everyone from Brighid to brownies a’beggin’ fer it,” Luchta said.
“But now you know it, right?” Granuaile pointed to the knots.
“Nope. She’s got all kinds o’ stuff going on there. I don’t know which part of it is invisibility and which is pure decoration. I imagine it all accomplishes something, but these aren’t standard bindings. They’re unique. Ye have something truly special there.”
Granuaile remembered not to thank them directly. “You do me great honor. I will do my best to live up to it.”
“Attagirl,” Luchta said.
“Shall we have a drink to celebrate?” Goibhniu asked. “I happened to bring a few bottles along.”
We were at Luchta’s studio, one of the most pleasant work spaces I have ever visited: sawdust on the floor, milled wood stacked against one wall along with shelves of burls and knots and branches, and polished finished pieces resting against another. We were near the workbenches, where lathes and chisels and peelers awaited the attention of Luchta’s expert hands. The smells of pine and cedar and aged oak filled the space, and these were much more agreeable to everyone’s nose than rhino shit.
We had made a brief stop at Manannan Mac Lir’s estate to clean up and get a fresh set of clothes. We looked more old-fashioned Irish now than modern American, wearing tunics and pants in his blue-gray color palette. Manannan gave Granuaile a silver belt of cockleshells and sea horses as a sort of graduation gift and made much ado about the strength of her animal forms. Fand gave her some silvery hair-clip thingies and some cookies that may have been magical. Oberon and I got ignored; they didn’t remember I was there until I said we had to get going to Luchta’s.
Granuaile had her hair all brushed out and shining with silver bits, and I wasn’t the only person at Luchta’s shop to think she looked like a goddess. A large shadow darkened the doorway and a deep voice called, “Flidais! You are even more fetching than usual today!”
Granuaile turned toward the voice and discovered Ogma there, who blanched once he realized his mistake.
“Oh! I beg your pardon,” he said, a flush coloring his cheeks. “I meant no offense.”
“No offense taken, sir,” Granuaile said, casting her eyes sideways at me with a tiny smirk. “There are worse fates than to be mistaken for a renowned beauty.”
Ogma smiled. “I see you are now bound to the earth. Congratulations. And you have a new weapon—congratulations on that also. Are you anxious to try it out?”
“I am, actually,” Granuaile replied, casting an admiring glance at Scáthmhaide.
“Shall we have a friendly sparring match, then?”
“How friendly?”
“Say, two falls out of three. Winner takes clothing.”
Granuaile raised an eyebrow and replied, “Done,” before I could counsel her not to. Ogma was a famed champion of the Tuatha Dé Danann, brother to the Dagda, half-brother to Lugh, and grandfather of the Three Craftsmen. He used to take care of the king’s problems; the rumors of his demise in some tales were greatly exaggerated. He was too much of a badass to die. Nuada Silver-Hand, the old king of the Tuatha Dé Danann, used to point at this unbeatable monster or that unstoppable atrocity and tell Ogma to wreck it, and it would be wrecked. One day he said, damn it, Ogma, the Irish need a writing system, and Ogma came up with Ogham script. Granuaile probably knew all this, however, and had decided to accept anyway. The time for me to offer unsolicited advice was over.
Ogma, again dressed only in a kilt, muscles rippling with every movement, asked Luchta if he could borrow a staff. He was much taller than anyone, and his reach far exceeded Granuaile’s. Granuaile moved to the far side of the workshop, choosing her spot in the sawdust. She twirled it about experimentally, getting used to its weight and length. These twirls gradually grew faster until the staff blurred like a propeller blade.
Ogma stepped through some of his own warm-up exercises, twirling his staff in one hand at such speeds that Granuaile’s hair was blown back a bit. He wasn’t one to be psyched out.
Well, not with words, anyway.
As part of Granuaile’s training in martial arts, I taught her to take advantage of men’s weaknesses prior to the first strike.
If her opponent was a patriarchal, misogynist asshole, she could taunt him into a rash attack by the simple expedient of calling him a bitch; the same man could be set off his guard by feigned displays of fear.
Ogma wasn’t that type, and indeed it would have been difficult to find any of that sort amongst the Tuatha Dé Danann, who had comfortably accepted Brighid’s dominance for centuries.
If her opponent was a younger, inexperienced man or perhaps unattractive, loud speculation about the diminutive size of his penis would take him out of the cool, quiet place required for martial discipline.
Ogma wasn’t that guy either. Ogma was the third kind of guy, like me, who would find Granuaile’s skill not uppity or challenging but rather madly attractive.
As long as Ogma didn’t check her out in the magical spectrum and discover that Granuaile and I were bound together rather tightly, some part of his brain—perhaps a large part—would fantasize about seducing her, and he wouldn’t want to hurt her because of it. Granuaile’s job was to make him think he had a chance.
So she smiled at him. She complimented him on his earrings, and then on his six-pack, and stared pointedly at his kilt while she waited for him to respond.
“Thank you,” he said, smiling.
“Begin,” Granuaile replied, and then she spun and leapt twice to add gravity and centrifugal force to her first blow, aimed at his head. It was an aggressive attack—perhaps too aggressive. Ogma met it with his staff held crosswise, and, once Scáthmhaide rebounded, he extended his arms to knock it back again, preventing a graceful redirection. She was on the defensive now and off balance. Ogma took long strides, lunging with his staff and forcing Granuaile into a series of desperate parries.
Manannan Mac Lir’s instruction about the political situation in Tír na nÓg burst through the door of my frontal lobe and plopped itself down on the couch. Ogma was definitely on Brighid’s side, and if he, however erroneously, thought Granuaile was in the Morrigan’s camp, this friendly sparring match might not be so friendly. Could Ogma be behind the attacks on us? He certainly had the connections to pursue us if he wished.
I almost dismissed the thought, because it didn’t jibe with the perfectly civil and generous behavior of his grandsons, Luchta and Goibhniu—if anyone was on Brighid’s side, it was them, and yet they’d been nothing but kind to us.
Still, Ogma could have his own agenda, independent of theirs. There was no monolithic thought police in Tír na nÓg, and nothing was what it seemed. Even combat.
Granuaile anticipated a strike and caught it as it was still coming up; she had the leverage and should have been able to force Ogma’s staff down, since she was already over the top. Instead, Ogma’s upswing halted and held. He was too strong to be driven down, despite his disadvantage. She lifted and whipped her staff to whack at his head, when the smarter move would have been to shift do
wn and sweep at his legs; he was pretty firmly set, however, his balance impeccable, so perhaps the wild strike at his head was the slightly wiser move to rattle him—it would certainly have rattled him had it connected. However, Ogma leaned back and turned his cheek, avoiding the blow, while extending his arms and striking down with his staff. It cracked painfully against Granuaile’s kneecap—it numbed her for a second—and that was all Ogma needed. He pushed, she was off balance and couldn’t keep up with the flurry of strikes he unleashed, and he was able to sneak past her guard and buckle her knees from behind.
She knew she was going down and shouted, “Damn it!” as she fell.
“Ha! Excellent.” Ogma grinned. “You have been well trained.” He shot out his hand to help her up and Granuaile glowered at him. I smiled, recognizing that expression. Oberon recognized it too.
Yes, I saw it, I said, but careful what you say here. Remember, people can hear you. Luchta and Goibhniu had cast a couple of amused glances at Oberon when he’d spoken up, but thankfully Ogma hadn’t been tuning in.
I’m not sure if Ogma’s patronizing tone had been intentional or not—whether he had meant to goad her, in other words—but, regardless, Granuaile was well and truly goaded. She had a fascinating tendency to access another level of ability when she was angry—not rage-fueled barbarism but rather a hyperawareness and clarity that one needs for combat. I had tried to make her access it without the emotion, because the very peak of her abilities should not be dependent on such, but I’d failed miserably. Emotion could motivate her like nothing else; her long-simmering anger at her stepfather had pushed her to become a Druid in the first place.
She was squaring off for round two when Flidais entered the shop. She had abandoned her court apparel and returned to the greens and browns of her leathers.
“What is this?” she asked. “A contest?”
“A friendly one,” Ogma answered. Granuaile did not affirm this. Perun lumbered in behind Flidais. He looked pleasantly exhausted, and he had found a tailor somewhere to fashion him a new set of clothes. Apparently Perun had given instructions that his abundant chest hair should be displayed to best advantage, for it was, bursting forth in coppery curls from a deeply cut V-neck tunic of walnut brown.