by Kevin Hearne
Yeah, it was a festival of pain. Let me close up these cuts and I’ll start in on our very late breakfast.
Since I’d completely missed the morning routine I’d been looking forward to upon waking up, I decided I’d have it anyway, even though it was afternoon. I put on a pot of coffee and then spent a few moments in the backyard, soothing my screaming skin. Feeling marginally better, I returned inside and played the latest release from Rodrigo y Gabriela on the stereo while I cooked an enormous breakfast: three-egg omelets with cheese, diced ham, and chives, a couple of packages of maple-flavored sausage (mostly for Oberon), skillet potatoes mixed with chopped white onions and red bell peppers, and toast with butter and orange marmalade.
The Morrigan emerged from the bedroom as I was plating everything. She was freshly scrubbed and groomed and nude, and she sat down at my kitchen table without a shred of self-consciousness. I didn’t have a stitch on either, and I felt pleased to have a small time where I could behave like a Celt again, without worrying about the social customs of Americans.
The Morrigan was making an extraordinary effort to be affable as I served her. I think she tried to smile politely as I gave her a cup of coffee (she took it black), but it was a dismal failure and I pretended not to notice. Oberon, for his part, was eating his sausages as quietly as he could, casting nervous glances at the Morrigan to make sure she wasn’t coming after him with those fingernails.
She paid me compliments on the food and drank five cups of coffee to my one, in addition to a glass of orange juice and a taller glass of water. She also asked for a second omelet and two more slices of toast.
I don’t know. Go ahead and ask her if you like.
Once she finally proclaimed herself full and dispensed with another round of obligatory thanks, the niceties of custom had been observed and she could proceed to business.
“Have you wondered where I’ve been the past few weeks?” she asked.
“Yes, the thought had crossed my mind.”
“I’ve been occupied with a civil war in Tír na nÓg. The battles have been glorious.”
“What? Who was fighting whom?”
“Aenghus Óg’s partisans decided to rise up against Brighid and myself, despite the fact that their leader had fallen and failed to follow through on his promises. After the first wave broke, a purge was necessary, and that took the majority of the time.”
“Did any of the Tuatha Dé Danann fall?”
The Morrigan shook her head. “They were all lesser Fae to one degree or another. But they had some impressive weapons bequeathed to them by Aenghus Óg. Brighid’s new armor got a strenuous test.”
“Brighid took up arms herself?” The Tuatha Dé Danann are loath to put themselves in mortal peril when they can get someone else to die for them.
The Morrigan nodded. “Aye. And I am forced to admit she acquitted herself well. She is as fearsome a foe as she ever was.”
“So it’s all over now?”
The Morrigan shrugged. “The fighting is over, so it is as far as I’m concerned. I’m sure there’s something political going on, but that holds no allure for me. What does hold allure for me,” she narrowed her gaze and pointed at my amulet, “is that fascinating necklace of yours. We have a deal, you and I, and it is time you began to fulfill your end of it.”
Our deal was simple: I’d teach her how to make her own version of my necklace, which protected me from most magic by suffusing my very aura with cold iron, and she’d never, ever take my life. It wouldn’t save me from accidental injury or the effects of old age, but it sure was nice to know I couldn’t end violently without the Morrigan breaking her word.
“I’m perfectly happy to do so. Did you bring any cold iron?”
“Yes. A moment,” she replied, and got up to fetch the leather bag I’d seen earlier on my patio table. I cleared away the dishes and told Oberon he was the best hound a Druid could ever want.
You were extraordinarily patient this morning, and I appreciate it, I told him.
I understand completely. I’ll try to send her away as soon as I can.
I gave his head a couple of scratches as he padded by, and then the Morrigan returned. She loosed the drawstring on the bag and upended it on the table, spilling out several chunks of cold iron meteorites of varying sizes and purity. None was larger than the size of my palm.
“Which one should I use?” she asked. I sat down and picked up each one, examining them carefully.
“Well, as the wee green puppet once said, size matters not,” I replied. “At least as a raw meteorite. You want the purest amulet possible without sacrificing strength. Totally pure iron is actually weaker than aluminum, so you have to alloy it with something to give you some kind of steel. These here look like they’re mixed with iridium instead of nickel, so you’re in good shape. You can simply melt ’em down and cast them into whatever mold you like.”
“Melt them down? I beg your pardon, Druid, but doesn’t the amulet need to be cold forged?”
“No, that’s a myth of the mortals. The power of cold iron isn’t the temperature you use in forging it. A better term would be sky iron, because the power is in its alien origin.”
“Ah, I see,” the Morrigan said. “If it has no bond to this earth, it will repel or destroy magic better than iron born of Gaia.”
“Exactly,” I agreed. “Now, my amulet weighs sixty grams,” I said as I flicked it, “and that’s after I punched a hole through it to string it on my necklace.”
“Is the necklace silver or white gold?”
“Mine is silver, but you can use whatever you’d like.”
“Will the amulet be more powerful if I make it weigh more than sixty grams?”
“Yes, it grants you more protection, but it also precludes you from casting your own spells. To my mind, that’s a severe drawback. You have to find a weight that strikes a perfect balance between protection and magical flow, and for me it’s sixty grams. I don’t know if that’s a universal constant; perhaps a different weight would work best for you. But I arrived at that size after much trial and error.”
“I can have Goibhniu make an amulet for me,” she said. He was not only a brewer of magical draughts, but also the most accomplished smith of the Tuatha Dé Danann, after Brighid herself.
“Good idea.” I nodded. “Have him make as many as he can from the material you have here. At a guess, I’d think you have enough to make two at least, perhaps as many as four. I’d like to have one for my apprentice, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. I think it is good you are training Druids again. You should train more than one, Siodhachan. The world could use a strong grove.”
That was suspiciously close to a compliment for the Morrigan. She had even spoken kindly. I figured it would be dangerous to point it out, however, so I said briskly, “Thank you. If suitable candidates present themselves, I will consider it.”
The Morrigan pivoted quickly back to business. “Let us say that I have returned from Goibhniu with a cold iron amulet weighing sixty grams and a chain of silver rope. What happens next?”
“Next you have to bind the cold iron to your aura. Unless you’d rather just use it as a talisman.”
“Bah. I already know how to make those. They are only good against direct external threats, and they do nothing to your aura.”
“Right. So look at my aura. Where do you see the iron?”
The Morrigan narrowed her eyes and directed her gaze slightly above my head. “It appears like filings inside the white interference of your
magic. Specks of cookies in the cream.”
“What? I had no idea you liked ice cream.”
The Morrigan’s eyes flashed red. “If you tell anyone, I’ll rip off your nose.”
“Okay, back to the aura, then. Those iron specks are actually tiny knots. I have bound the iron to my aura all over, so that when a spell targets me or locates me via aural signature, it runs into iron right away and fizzles out. You have to be scrupulous about making a good scatter pattern, so there aren’t any holes in your coverage for a spell to get through, and be so thorough that whole-body hexes cannot distinguish you from the iron. That saved my life just two days ago.”
“What happened?”
“Some German witches slapped an infernal hex on me. When it works, you simply go up in flames. But since the iron bindings in my aura are aliases that—”
“Stop. What do you mean by aliases?”
I grimaced at my own foolishness. “I apologize, Morrigan; I forgot you are unfamiliar with computer jargon. An alias is nothing more than a tiny file that points to another, larger file. It’s a proxy because it only represents the real thing rather than being the thing itself. I cannot very well walk about with an actual cloud of iron filings around me, can I? But magical proxies that point to a real cold-iron amulet are easy to live with.”
“Ingenious.”
“Thank you. When this hex hit me, instead of my body burning, the iron proxies bound to my aura directed the entire thing to my amulet.” I tapped it a couple of times for emphasis. “It heated up so quickly that it burned my skin. I would have been bacon without it, and in fact the same hex turned a local witch into cinders.”
“Remarkable,” she said. “This happened two days ago, you say?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“I received absolutely no premonition of your impending death at that time.” She shook her head slowly in fascination. “You were completely protected.”
I wondered if she thought I was completely protected against the Bacchants last night. And then I wondered if she would get any premonitions about my fate at all, now that she had agreed never to take me. “Well, the burning skin was torturous. It was like watching fifth graders trying to perform Wagnerian opera.”
The Morrigan waved the point away. “But you have the means to deal with that. You were never in mortal peril. And this protects you from hellfire as well.”
“Yes, even that which is spewed from a fallen angel.”
“How do you bind the cold iron to your aura? Doesn’t the iron resist your magic?”
“That’s the tricky part for sure. Once I had the idea for this in the eleventh century, I spent a couple of decades trying to do it myself, but I couldn’t because you’re right, the cold iron laughs at all attempts to mess with it. You need the help of an iron elemental. You have to befriend one, basically, because it’s a lot of work for them too. Like I said to you before that business with Aenghus Óg, the protective process alone took me three centuries.”
The Morrigan cursed in that Proto-Celtic language of hers and her eyes reddened. “I am not a goddess of smiths! I have no talent for iron, nor for making friends!”
“Perhaps you could view it as an opportunity for personal growth rather than an obstacle. As a goddess of death, making friends wouldn’t make sense, I suppose, since you must eventually take them all. But I can walk you through that process too. It’s not difficult.”
“Yes, it is.”
“I respectfully disagree. Iron elementals like to eat faeries. I’m sure you can lay hands on a few of those.”
“Easily,” she agreed, nodding. “They breed like rodents in Tír na nÓg.”
“Great. Now, when the iron elemental thanks you for the faeries and suggests that you were kind or nice to offer such a tasty snack, do not threaten it with violence in response. Instead, smile and say it’s welcome. You might even share that you rather enjoy a bowl of ice cream now and then and that you imagine faeries must be something like ice cream to them.”
The Morrigan’s face underwent a curious exercise. Her eyebrows knitted together and her lower lip seemed dangerously close to trembling, but then she scowled and the scarlet glow of her anger flared again in her eyes. As quickly as it appeared, it faded, and uncertainty crept again into her features. She looked down at the table, her raven hair falling forward to mask her face, and she spoke to me from behind a black curtain. “I can’t do this. Making friends is not in my nature. I am a stranger to kindness.”
“Nonsense.” I flicked my gloriously shaped right ear. “Here’s living proof of your kindness. Irish generosity thrives within you, Morrigan.”
“But that was sex. I can’t have sex with an elemental.”
Lucky for the elementals, I thought.
“That is true, but there are other ways to be kind to people, as I’m sure you’re aware. I think the trouble is that you never let people be kind to you in return. Tell you what: I’ll get you ready to make friends with an iron elemental. You can practice all the intricacies of friendship with me. I’d be honored to be your friend.”
The Morrigan rose abruptly from her chair and scooped the iron meteorites back into the leather bag, her face hidden by her hair all the while. “Thank you for the sex and the meal and the instruction,” she said formally. “You have been a most gracious host.” She tied the drawstring tightly around the pouch. “I will visit Goibhniu and return when I have the amulets.”
Without another word, she bound herself to a crow’s form right on my table, snatched the pouch in her talons, and then flew out my back door, which opened by itself to allow her egress.
Chapter 14
I spent maybe thirty seconds thinking the Morrigan had left so quickly because she was getting a bit verklemmt over my offer of friendship. I should have known better.
A polite knock at the door startled me and set Oberon off to barking three times before he said,
Brighid is at the door? A note of panic in my mental voice made my hound laugh, for he knew as well as I that I couldn’t answer the door right now. I was still naked and only partially healed from the Morrigan’s abuse—and that, I realized, was precisely what the Morrigan wanted. Nothing about the timing of these visits was accidental. Once again, I would have to play catch-up with the designs of these goddesses and try to figure out what their true motives were. A few weeks ago they had both played me beautifully to achieve their own ends, and now I could see it was starting again. I should have asked the Morrigan more questions about that civil war in Tír na nÓg, for that had something to do with Brighid’s sudden appearance, sure as a frog’s ass is watertight.
“Well, I know how to get some answers,” I said to the door as I scrambled into my bedroom. Oberon met me there with his tail wagging.
“To all my questions,” I said, throwing on a pair of khaki cargo shorts and a green cotton T-shirt. The door thumped again, not as politely as before; there was definitely a note of impatience in the way she knocked on wood. “Now, look, she can obviously hear your thoughts, so I want you to pipe down and head out to the living room and wait. And when she comes in, I want you to stay behind her at all times.”
“Just do it, please,” I said shortly, and immediately felt sorry for my arbitrary tone. Usually I enjoy arguing with Oberon. He’s great with the give and take. But he didn’t understand the stakes here, and I couldn’t explain them to him while Brighid was listening in on his side of the conversation.
Brighid smirked at me when I opened the door, and it was like one of those cheesy commercials they play during football games: An obs
cenely beautiful, sultry woman in next to nothing appears mysteriously; a ghost wind generated off camera blows her hair in a way that suggests wild abandon; she pouts sexily at this utterly regular schmoe with a weak chin; and he completely suspends his disbelief that she’d ever be interested in him, because he’s got an ice-cold beer in his hand. The mysterious wind in this case was almost certainly generated by Brighid herself, and it wafted her scent to me, which was just as I remembered it: milk and honey and soft ripe berries. Damn.
Now, I’m not a regular schmoe, and I certainly don’t have a weak chin, but I’m as susceptible to beer commercials as the next fella, even though it’s just living vicariously in a pubescent male fantasy. None of those commercials came close to the real, live goddess that confronted me in my doorway.
Brighid looked as if she had jumped out of the pages of Heavy Metal. She was wearing several layers of sheer blue material, tied or bunched in such a way as to barely cover her naughty bits, yet providing a tantalizing glimpse of each through the fabric. A golden torc circled her throat, and another accentuated her left biceps, while delicate ropes of twisted metal adorned her wrists. Around her waist were several thin golden chains. Her red hair cascaded around her face in languorous waves like Jessica Rabbit’s, and she had gold thread braided into it here and there. And the pouty come-hither look, achieved by pursing the lips a bit and looking at me with sleepy eyes? She had that down. The ladies in the beer commercials were hot, no doubt, but when a goddess wants to make an effort, no one else can even open the jar of mustard, let alone cut it.
Brighid was much more my type than the Morrigan. She didn’t eat dead people in any of her forms, for one thing, and it was she who ignited the fires of creativity and passion within the hearts of all Irish. But even if I wanted to give Brighid whatever she had come for—and I wasn’t sure I did—I realized that the Morrigan had done her best to ensure I couldn’t.