Chapter 6
Oddly enough, Manannan’s news about the dark elves relaxed me somewhat. I didn’t have to wonder anymore: Everyone really was out to get me. Still, after we bade our hosts farewell and shouldered our packs once more, with Flidais and Perun tagging along, I felt confident enough to show Granuaile a few highlights of Tír na nÓg before we shifted back to earth.
“The land of eternal summer is also the land of the dead, but fortunately the dead tend to keep to themselves.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, you know how you can attract senior citizens to certain communities by offering shuffleboard courts and bingo nights? Plop down an IHOP nearby for them to lounge in during the daytime?”
Granuaile looked lost. “What?”
“Have you ever been to an IHOP on a weekday morning, when everyone else is at work?”
“No,” Granuaile admitted.
“Well, that’s where all the senior citizens go. Or they go to a Village Inn or a Denny’s or whatever. It’s because, once you hit sixty or thereabouts, you don’t ever want to make your own pancakes again.”
“You’re over sixty,” Granuaile pointed out.
“And I never make pancakes. I go to IHOP with all the other old people.”
“But I don’t want to make my own pancakes now,” Granuaile said. “Does that mean I’ll start wanting to make them when I’m old?”
“I don’t know. The point I was trying to make is that part of Tír na nÓg is very attractive to dead people.”
“What’s so attractive about it?”
“Mostly the lack of living people. They don’t like being reminded that they’re all dead. And there might be a pancake buffet. Twenty-four-hour keno. Concerts featuring Elvis impersonators. That sort of thing.”
Always.
“You’re making Tír na nÓg sound like Las Vegas,” Granuaile said.
“Well, it might be. Because what happens in the land of the dead stays in the land of the dead. I simply don’t know and I’m not anxious to find out. Manannan and the Morrigan won’t tell you anything if you ask them either. They won’t even say how they decide who comes here and who goes to Mag Mell or the other Irish planes. It might not be their decision. But the point is, there is plenty of real estate left over for the living. And for the Fae and other curiosities. Check this out. I mean, in a minute.” I gestured to an oak in front of us. “Put your hands here and get ready to go.”
“How do you know where you’re going?” Granuaile asked.
“Can’t really explain until you’re bound and you can see things in the magical spectrum,” I said. “But, basically, every destination has its own unique sequence of knots. Think of it like airport codes back on earth.”
“Do I have to memorize them all?”
“Not unless you want to hate your life. The ones on earth are based on coordinates. Tír na nÓg is odd, though, as you might expect. You kind of need to know where you’re going or else you’ll appear in the middle of an ogre orgy or something horrific like that. We’re going to a popular destination here—there will be plenty of Fae around, but Flidais and Perun will follow.”
I cast a glance behind us and saw that Perun was now carrying Flidais, supporting her buttocks with his hands as she wrapped her legs around his waist and locked them behind his back. They were playing tonsil hockey already and making soft, muffled moans. Granuaile followed my gaze and flinched.
“Ew. How did she even find his mouth behind all that hair?” she wondered aloud.
“Honestly, I’m surprised at how much restraint they’ve shown so far. I expected them to slip off to a room in the castle somewhere. I don’t care at this point if we ditch them. Do you?”
My apprentice shook her head. “No, I think that would actually be good. I don’t want to listen to them.”
Foodgasms, yeah.
We shifted to a well-traveled riverbank in Tír na nÓg, and I smiled as Granuaile gasped and dove for cover, while Oberon began to bark loudly.
Heh. Calm down, buddy, it won’t get us.
“Oh, my God! Is that a dragon?” Granuaile said, peeking from behind the trunk of the ancient tree we’d used to shift.
“Yep.”
“Like, for reals? It’s not a wax replica or something like that?”
“No, it’s very much for reals.”
“Then how come it’s hanging in the air there and not moving?”
“It is moving. It’s just in a slower timestream. Welcome to the Time Islands, the source of all those stories about how time moves differently in Faerie than in the mortal world.”
We stood on the bank of a river not quite as wide as the Mississippi but doing very well for itself. In the middle, stretching both upriver and down, islands of various sizes displayed rather interesting vignettes. One of the more stunning was the huge golden dragon floating only thirty yards in front of us. Its wings were outspread and beating slowly downward against the air, its jaws open and presumably hissing. An egg warmed in the sand of the island beach beneath it.
“Can it see us?”
“Nope. We’re a blur to it—sort of like mist—since we’re in a faster timestream. See those islands there?” I pointed downriver to some nebulous shapes. “They’re moving even faster than we are. To anyone standing there looking at us right now, we’re either moving very slowly or as good as frozen, like that dragon seems to be frozen to us.”
“So that dragon thinks it’s flying in its normal timestream?”
“Yep. Eventually, if it keeps going in the same direction, it will bust out of there. That will be an exciting day for the Fae, if they let it happen. About a thousand years ago—the last time I checked—the claws of its hind legs were still touching the sand. She’s launching an attack, you see, defending her egg.”
“Defending it from what?”
“Whatever asshole faery decided to go bag it centuries ago. Maybe it was one of the Tuatha Dé Danann who brought it here, I don’t know. Somebody wanted to show off.”
Granuaile cocked her head to one side. “Isn’t that what you’re doing right now, sensei?”
“What? Well, no,” I said. “This is definitely somebody else’s show. I just thought you might like it. Don’t you think it’s cool and neato-schmeato and stuff?”
“Oh, yes. I do.” She fluttered her eyelashes at me. “Is there anything else you’d like to show me?”
“There’s someone upriver you might recognize,” I said. “It’s not that far. Keep your eyes open as we go.” I pointed up into the canopy, where several pairs of eyes were already watching us. Pixies and other flying varieties of Fae hovered or perched in the tree above us.
“Right,” Granuaile said, her tone businesslike. She hefted her staff in her hand. At my suggestion, which she accepted readily at the time, she had affixed iron caps to either end. The Fae would see that and know that messing with her came with a certain amount of risk. “Ready.”
We hiked upriver along the bank by ourselves; as Oberon had predicted, Flidais and Perun had not followed us and were no doubt engaged in heated, hirsute carnality in Manannan’s field.
I asked Oberon to take point; Granuaile was next, and I brought up the rear. Oberon had my permission to treat anything that didn’t look human as hostile, provided they wouldn’t get out of our way first.
Give them a warning growl and a commanding bark, at least, before you destroy them, I said.
Well, it is inevitable. You’re like a Terminator hound.
Oh. Right. I take it back.
Whoa, there. You’re forgetting something. Jules didn’t eat pork. That means no bacon or sausage.
I think you’re a badass in your own right, buddy.
Nah. They were all for show. I bet she never takes them hunting. And they weren’t very bright. Brighid hasn’t taught them to talk the way I taught you. I touched their minds briefly while we were at Court. All they know are a few basic commands and a few random words.
Food. Potty. Bitches.
Don’t you think that including bitches in the trinity is sexist? You need to think about it from their perspective, too, if you’re trying to come up with some sort of universal canine dogma, heh-heh.
Are you setting yourself up as the prophet of a new religion?
What do you need money for? I give you everything you need.
Sure. What’s this religion going to be called?
And the name of the holy writ I will be typing for you?
Granuaile’s voice interrupted our plans to revolutionize canine belief systems. “Is that an airplane?” she asked, pointing ahead to a long, narrow strip of an island. A twin-engine metal airplane hung suspended above it, a trail of smoke coming from the left engine, and it appeared to be headed for what might be charitably called a rough landing on the island.
“Yep. That’s a Lockheed Model 10 Electra.”
“No. Wait. There’s a pilot in there?”
“None other than the famous aviatrix herself.”
“Shut up. You’re telling me Amelia Earhart is in that plane? Alive?”
“Until she crashes, yeah. She might survive the crash; we don’t know. Hasn’t happened yet. But generally airplane crashes don’t leave many survivors.”
“You have Amelia Earhart alive and you’re casually speculating on whether she will survive a crash? Atticus, we have to save her!”
“How? Think about the problem. Once you enter that timestream, you’ll be moving as slowly as she is. You can’t prevent the crash. No one can.”
“But that’s horrible! Prolonging the moment of her death—”
“For her, nothing is prolonged. It’s still the last few seconds before she crashes.”
Granuaile clenched and unclenched her fist several times before she spoke again. “Gah! What’s the point, then? Why is she here? Do the Fae enjoy watching people die in slow motion?”
“No, that’s not it at all,” I said, puzzled that she didn’t see the miracle here. “She’s inspirational, Granuaile. A strong, brave woman like Amelia—well, the world could use a few million more of her.”
Granuaile paused to consider, an angry set to her jaw at first, but after a moment it relaxed into regret and she shed a tear for Amelia. She wiped it away impatiently. “So is that what you have up and down this river? Bits and pieces of history?”
“That’s exactly it. Some of it is accidental—lots of those missing ships from the Bermuda Triangle wind up here—and some of it is purposeful, like Amelia. Here we preserve what otherwise would have disappeared forever.”
“Have you preserved anything here?”
“No, too dangerous for me to keep coming back here when Aenghus Óg was around. Too tricky to retrieve things anyway.”
She frowned. “I thought you said you couldn’t retrieve things. Don’t you slow down when you try to access them?”
“Think of those arcade games you see in restaurants and grocery stores, where a hook comes down and epically fails to snatch the plushie. They use hooks on really long staffs. As long as the majority of the staff remains in this timestream, it won’t slow down. It just moves superfast in the slow stream, which means you need to be careful about touching objects—they’re easily breakable. And that illustrates the point about why we can’t save Amelia: If we tried to yank her out of her plane, we’d break her neck or snap her spine.”
“Okay. I think I’ve seen enough. Can we go?” Her words were clipped, annoyed.
This hadn’t gone the way I’d imagined. When I was first shown the Time Islands by my archdruid, I’d been filled with wonder. So had all my previous apprentices. Granuaile, however, had become upset. Occasionally this happened: Modern values and the ancient ones I grew up with were radically different, and sometimes I misjudged rather badly what was cool and what was repulsive.
“Sure,” I said, walking over to the nearest tree. We needed to talk about this, but there was no need to do it in front of the many faeries in the canopy, who no doubt were eavesdropping on our conversation. Not wanting to take Lord Grundlebeard at his word, I placed my hand on the trunk and attempted to find the tether to one of my favorite spots in Gaul—or, rather, France. It wasn’t there. Nor were any other of my accustomed destinations in Europe. Resigned, I searched all available points to which we could shift and chose a tree in the eastern foothills of Mount Olympus. I pulled us through to that spot and half-crouched, listening and scanning the area, expecting trouble. When nothing like trouble presented itself, I straightened and enjoyed the view below us.
“Well, here we are,” I said, gazing down at a town of seven thousand souls, orange-tiled roofs, and white buildings in a cushion of green; beyond it, the blue flag of Poseidon’s sea stretched to the horizon, where it met a lighter sky. We were underneath the canopy of a pine; most of the trees here were pine, cedar, or fir. Olympus loomed behind us, and the path to the summit was visible nearby.
“Where is here?” Granuaile asked.
“That is Litochoro, Greece. ‘City of the Gods,’ if you want to buy the tourist name. Lots of people come through here. We need to find a place off the beaten path where we can safely get to work on your binding. When we need supplies, we’ll come down to this town to get them.”
“All right,” Granuaile said. “Lead the way.”
I led the way, picking a careful path between trees and staying on the south side of the trail. I was heading for the course of a natural wash in the foothills; there would be some runoff there for water and plenty of deadwood for fuel. Oberon kept pace beside me instead of zipping off through the forest to sniff that tree or mark that bush.
Yeah?
I know she is, buddy. I’m not sure why, but I’m going to find out tonight once we make camp. Now is not the time to press her. She might not know precisely why. The hike will give her time to mull things over.
Not really. A wise man wouldn’t have irritated her in the first place. Do us a favor?
Scout ahead a little bit, but not too far—make sure you can hear us. We’re looking for a good place to make camp, but it has to have little to no evidence of human traffic, and we need a thornbush.
Usually. This is a special case, however.
Normally I am not the sort to indiscriminately whack bushes. The undergrowth grew thicker, however, as we climbed the slope and strayed ever farther from the path, until there was no space between the brambles. We had to push our way through what turned out to be rather thorny bushes indeed. I could almost feel Granuaile’s mood worsening behind me as scratches appeared on our arms, and occasional punctures through our jeans made us curse. My own mood was beginning to sour as well.
“Can’t you ask the earth to clear a path for us through this stuff?” Granuaile finally asked.
“I could,” I admitted, “but that sort of thing might draw the wrong kind of attention here.”
“Whose attention?”
“The Olympians. Both sets. We’re in their territory now, and it’s not just them we need to worry about—it’s all those nymphs and dryads and the entire mythological zoo that the Greeks dreamed up and the Romans ripped off. If I take off my sandals and start drawing on the elemental here, it’s a fair bet the Greco–Romans will be tipped off that someone’s using magic in their backyard. I haven’t completely given up on my paranoia yet. I want us stationary and isolated if possible before I take any risks.”
The two of us silently fumed as we waded and picked our way through a sea of uncomfortable thorns and woody branches. After a half hour of this, Oberon’s voice in my head was a welcome relief.
A broad black wingspan sailed overhead, moving from my right to left, angling toward a steep hillside.
I see it.
Normally, vultures alight in trees or they alight on the ground next to something dead; they are not cave dwellers. But this vulture sailed right into a sizable cave entrance up on the hillside, and I could plainly see that there were thornbushes nearby.
How’d you spot this?
Yeah. And probably up for grabs too. Either that’s a nest or there’s something dead in there. We can probably use it either way.
I pointed the cave out to Granuaile and said we should go check it out. She merely nodded in reply and followed me in grim silence.
It’s funny how when someone is Not Talking to You their every movement speaks volumes. Granuaile had little holsters on either hip, each with three flat, leaf-bladed throwing knives nestled on top of one another. She could throw them accurately with either hand to finish off opponents or take them out to begin with; her staff was more of a defensive weapon, meant to disarm or trip rather than deliver lethal blows to someone in heavy armor. Her knives made a soft clinking sound with every step she took, though I hadn’t heard them before. Perhaps I simply hadn’t noticed. Now, however, they communicated her burning desire to draw one and toss it between my shoulder blades.
Negotiating the hill was tiresome, and the clinking of the knives soon tapped out a different message: This had better be worth it.
We were joined by Oberon, who was panting happily, his tongue lolling out. The forest was full of wonderful smells to him.
“Hi, Oberon!” Granuaile said, stopping to pet him. “Are you having a good time?”
I repeated this for Granuaile’s sake and she laughed.
“You are certainly top dog,” she said to him.
Yep. Every time she strokes your ego.
That light feeling evaporated after a few minutes as Oberon wandered sideways to investigate a rustling noise. The accusatory clinking of Granuaile’s throwing knives resumed behind me, and I began to wonder when she would say something. Since we were by ourselves she couldn’t be waiting for a private moment, so I had to conclude that she was waiting for something else. I would simply have to wait along with her.
Oberon halted abruptly as we approached the mouth of the cave; he laid his ears back flat against his head and grumbled softly in his throat.
I stopped hiking and so did Granuaile. She didn’t have to ask what was going on; she could tell Oberon was talking to me.
What’s wrong with it?
A human and a bear? That makes no sense. Unless the human is wearing a bearskin.
Maybe it’s a bearskin rug.
Well, let’s go check it out. Cautiously.
I drew Moralltach as silently as I could from its scabbard and knew that Granuaile would be readying a knife and her staff behind me. I crept forward, the soft noises my feet made in the gravelly hillside unnaturally loud to my ears. I heard some scratching ahead and the soft, dry rasp of a bird’s throat.
My sword crested the lip of the cave’s mouth first, and I paused to see if anything wished to attack the bare blade. When nothing did, I risked a peek.
Two black eyes glared at me over a sharp beak. Oberon’s vulture was perhaps ten yards away, standing in a pile of bones and rotting tissue and watching me. There wasn’t anything suggestive of a nest; it was more of a mess hall, with an emphasis on the mess. It wasn’t convenient to water and it reeked, but it would work if we cleaned it out. The high ceiling was kind of a bonus. We had to convince the current resident to leave first.
“It’s just the vulture,” I said. “Come on up, but watch out for the beak.”
Vultures have no strength in their talons to speak of, because their prey typically doesn’t try to run away from them. Their beaks, on the other hand, are perfect for piercing skin. Strangely, the vulture showed no signs of alarm when I advanced to the lip of the cave. Even when Granuaile hauled herself up, I didn’t see a threatening display of the wings. The bird continued to stare as if it expected us to drop dead and provide it with lunch.
It was when Oberon appeared that the vulture finally showed signs of alarm—and also showed signs of not being a vulture.
Oberon barked and growled, showing his teeth, the hair on the back of his neck raised.
What?
As we watched, the vulture screeched, spread its wings, and grew—but not into a nastier vulture. It morphed into something else entirely. The neck thickened, the beak became a snout, and fur replaced feathers. Stubby vulture legs became stubby human legs, but what roared at us from the top half—
“Gods damn the Greeks and their unholy hybrid monsters!” I muttered, then addressed the creature in Greek. “Are you a talking bear-man or just hungry?”
The bear roared again and Oberon tried to bark louder, but then the creature spoke in a malicious rumble: “I am Agrios of Thrace, son of Polyphonte. Who are you?”
I was tempted to tell him “nobody,” but I wasn’t Odysseus and he wasn’t Polyphemus.
“I am Atticus of … Attica,” I replied. Saying anything else would be meaningless to him. His myth was coming back to me. This fellow had been turned into a vulture by Hermes and Ares long ago; his mother and brother, because they were the “kind of nice” Thracian abominations, were only turned to owls. Agrios was the loathsome one. He’d been spawned because his mother, Polyphonte, had managed to tick off Aphrodite, so the goddess of love made her couple with a bear, and rawr, Agrios and Oreios were born.
“Aren’t you supposed to stay a vulture?” I asked.
“I was taught how to transform by Thracian witches. I served them for a time, until I opened their bellies and ate them. Olympus has forgotten me. As long as I don’t hunt the puny mortals and take only that which is given me, I am left alone. It has been many years since I was sent a sacrifice. Who sent you?”
“Whoa. Hold on. We’re not sacrifices. We’re just out looking for the handsomest caves in Greece and thought this was a likely one.”
I shot some quick instructions to Oberon: When we fight, circle round behind him and bite him on the back of the hams.
“You like my cave?” Agrios said, idly scratching his belly in confusion.
“Oh, yeah. Love what you’ve done with the carrion. Most people don’t think of using carrion as an accent for their décor, but I think you’ve stumbled onto something special here. It’s trendsetting.”
Granuaile whispered to me in Russian, “What are you doing?”
“Knives only. Do not engage him,” I whispered back in the same language.
The Thracian groused, “If you are so interested in décor, why do you come with a sword and a giant dog who growls at me?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes people in caves are impolite. But I can tell you are civilized.”
The bear threw back its head and laughed an ursine laugh.
“Knife to the throat now,” I told Granuaile, and she had thrown it before I finished the sentence.
Go, I told Oberon, and he charged around the creature’s side. I charged too, straight toward the outraged roar as the knife sank into his throat. I didn’t want him lumbering after Granuaile. Her staff would be of little use against such brute strength in close quarters, and her knives, however accurately thrown, were probably not enough to bring him down. Bear hide is tough, and the layers of fat serve as a sort of biological Kevlar.
When Agrios lowered his head and charged me, Oberon was behind him. Instead of biting the creature in the back of the thigh, Oberon caught an ankle and yanked, stretching Agrios out until he did a face-plant in front of me. The fall drove Granuaile’s knife deeper into his throat and left me an ideal opportunity to take a free strike. I hacked down with Moralltach, expecting to end it there, but he rolled out of the way in a very human move and tore free of Oberon’s jaws. He ignored the hound and me and launched himself after Granuaile, who had nothing but wee irritating needles and a staff that he’d treat like a toothpick. I didn’t have an angle to cut him off in time.
Oberon was faster than I was, and he snagged the guy by the ankle again. It didn’t halt his charge, but it slowed him down a bit, giving Granuaile a chance to toss another knife. It hit right between his eyes but didn’t penetrate into the skull and mess with his brain. Roaring, Agrios lunged at her again, dragging Oberon with him, but Granuaile twisted away and chose to tumble down the hillside, out of his claws’ range. That helped me, because now I could swing Moralltach without worrying about clipping her; the enchantment on its blade would spread necrosis through friend as easily as foe. Diving toward the creature before he could follow my apprentice downhill, I thrust Moralltach desperately at his side and managed to open a shallow groove in his flank. He bellowed and yanked his leg free of Oberon’s jaws again, trailing tendons and flesh. He wanted Granuaile more than anything. Using the three limbs that Oberon hadn’t savaged, Agrios grunted and leapt in a frantic attempt to break free of us. Victory erupted from his muzzle as he fell over the lip of the cave, but it cut off with a surprised yip once he landed on the steep hillside. Moralltach’s necrotic enchantment had reached his heart, and he could no longer control his fall—or, indeed, anything at all. He rolled in a growing billow of dust down to the bottom, a blackened ruin. Granuaile, who’d found the trunk of a young tree to cling to, watched him in horror.
“Well, go, team!” I said, trying to distract from the fact that he’d been much faster in action than I’d anticipated. “Is everyone all right?”
Granuaile was staring at the corpse splayed at the bottom of the hill. “I didn’t know they were all real. I mean, the gods I knew about, but the mythological creatures too?” She tore her eyes free and looked up at me for an answer.
“Well, the Greeks’ more than anyone else. Their tales keep getting told and reinforced.”
“So the manticore? Bellerophon? The chimera? Pegasus? They were all real?”
“Oh, heck, yeah. They had much more press than this guy did.”
Granuaile shook her head. “Please tell me I won’t be bound to the earth here.”
“No. We’ll find someplace else.”
“Then let’s go. Now.” She turned and began to pick her way gingerly down the hillside. I resheathed Moralltach, vowing to clean the blade as soon as I could.
Oberon said.
I know. We need to find a safe place for her to yell at me.
Yeah, but it stinks, see.
Yeah.
I caught up with Granuaile at the bottom of the hill and flashed a grin at her. She gestured for me to lead the way and said nothing, a bleak expression on her face. I resumed picking a thorny path through overgrown bushes. There was no peace in the valley because there was no peace between us.
And so of course the bloody Norse chose that moment to swoop in and make everything worse.
Where? I looked up and saw that most of my view was obscured by scraggly trees.
North? I turned to my right and saw the ravens after a moment. They were huge and familiar. They were Hugin and Munin, Odin’s ravens. Hugin was new; I’d killed the first one in Asgard years ago, but Odin had eventually hatched a replacement—or rather, Munin had. As they circled nearer, a rainbow arced down from the sky and terminated a few feet from us. I wasn’t surprised there was no pot of gold, but I was faintly disappointed anyway.
A serene woman floated—or, rather, seemed to float—down the rainbow to meet us. Her long blond hair, gently curling, blew softly in the wind, and a dress of muted oranges and reds completely concealed her feet. The dress was tied underneath the bust and billowed somewhat, giving her a disturbing resemblance to a Dalek as she moved. Still, her bearing spoke of peace and quiet strength, and the tiny smile on her face made it up to her blue eyes once she reached the end of the rainbow and stepped onto the earth.
“Well met, Druids,” she said.
“Indeed. A good day to you, Frigg,” I said. Granuaile’s eyes were only slightly widened as I introduced her to Odin’s wife.
“I’m honored,” Granuaile said. She tried to curtsy but remembered too late that she wasn’t wearing a dress to do it properly, so her gesture turned into a sort of awkward bow with a flourish.
“As am I,” Frigg said. She turned her gaze back to me. “Odin sent me to visit you.”
I squinted up at the sky. Hugin and Munin circled overhead but didn’t look as if they had any intention of landing.
My adversarial relationship with the Norse had been blessed with a truce about six years ago when I returned Odin’s spear and admitted that I owed them something for the slaughter I’d brought to their door.
A blood price was mentioned, but it wasn’t my blood they wanted. As ever, Odin was concerned most with preventing or delaying the onset of Ragnarok, and he recognized that I could be instrumental in addressing those concerns. I had agreed to help if I could, since I had been the idiot who’d kicked off the apocalypse by slaying the Norns, crippling Odin, and aiding Leif Helgarson in his quest to slay Thor.
That didn’t mean everything between us was now Kool and the Gang. Frigg was simply better than any other surviving member of the Norse pantheon at concealing her urge to kill me.
“I expect you’ve heard something about Loki?” I said.
“We have heard and seen much,” she said. “May we speak for a time?”
“Sure.”
“Good. Events are moving toward the cusp of disaster, and we need to make our move soon if we want to avoid the worst.”
I steeled myself for unpleasant news. Regardless of what Loki had been up to, I was at least partially responsible for setting events in motion. Frigg reminded me of this immediately.
Shortly after your raid on Asgard twelve years ago, Hel realized she could freely travel the nine planes of Yggdrasil, for that had been forbidden her until then. When Odin had cast her into Niflheim long ago and given her control of the nine realms, her authority extended to only the old and infirm and those unfortunate enough not to be called to Valhalla or Fólkvangr. She could never leave her frozen land on her own, not without the Norns telling Odin and him casting her down again.
Once freed, she spent much more time on Midgard than we’d originally thought. Odin missed much while he was recuperating, and Hel took advantage of this. She returned to Niflheim with several conclusions, no doubt, one of them being that she needed to learn English, the new dominant language, just as many of the Æsir did some centuries before. We can infer she thought it best that Loki learn it as well, for she sent a shade, one gifted with speech, to teach him the language. We had guards posted at the entrance to Loki’s cave, of course, but they could do nothing to stop the shade. Seeing that it could not possibly set Loki free, and seeing also that it was providing him a welcome distraction from his captivity, we let the shade remain. However, we increased the guard at the cave—fifty Einherjar, outfitted and trained in the use of modern weapons—and also installed some … observers inside. These were sort of like Odin’s ravens.
We began to receive reports that Hel was building forges in her realm and trading for raw materials from the Svartálfar. The dwarfs, bless them, refused to do so. Hel had learned from her time in Midgard that swords and shields would not be enough to carry the day. About nine years ago she started to manufacture weapons in earnest and to train her draugar in their use. She now has a massive army of soldiers with automatic weapons, who cannot be killed unless their heads are destroyed or struck off from their bodies.
Odin has been preparing the Einherjar to meet them, but even with modern body armor, they are at a disadvantage. The dwarfs have chosen to cast their lots with ours and have likewise been making preparation for the final battle. They have new transports and weapons unlike any I have seen.
According to our estimates, Hel could have begun Ragnarok during the past year with a fair chance of success, especially once Surtr and the sons of Muspell got involved. With no Thor to meet Jörmungandr, and no one to stop Fenris, her victory seemed assured—at least on paper.
What has prevented her seems to be a psychological inability to proceed without her father, Loki. She could have the world for her own right now, she could lay waste to Midgard and shape it howsoever she wills, but instead she craves his favor.
Some days ago, she made her move. She brought two thousand armed draugar to the cave against our fifty Einherjar. She stepped over their honorable corpses and entered the cave, wearing the form of a bent old woman.
Sigyn, Loki’s wife, recognized her and demanded that she leave.
“You have no cause to be here!” she cried. “Is not Niflheim enough for you?”
Hel ignored her and spoke in her sepulchral voice to Loki, as the snake dripped its venom into the bowl Sigyn held above his face.
“Father,” she rasped, “we can leave this place today and win Ragnarok. The old prophecies are null. The Norns are dead. Heimdall, who was fated to slay you, is dead. Freyr is dead. Týr and Vidar are dead. Even mighty Thor is dead, and my army is ready.”
The god of mischief did not stir until he heard the name of the thunder god. “What?” Loki said. “You say Thor is dead? How?”
She told him of your party’s invasion of Asgard and how you surprised us with defeat. She named your party: the werewolf, the vampire, the alchemist, the Druid, the wizard, and the thunder god.
“What thunder god?” Loki wanted to know.
“Perun. The Slavic god. He has disappeared.”
“But he is not dead?”
“I do not know, Father,” she said. “He may be dead.”
“I know how to find out,” Loki said, grinning in such a way as he had not for centuries. “Set me free, daughter.”
“Father, I cannot unbind you. Only you can do this. But I can make you do it sooner rather than later.”
“How?”
“Answer me first: Do you still love this cow?” Hel jutted her chin toward Sigyn, who had protected Loki as best she could from the snake’s dire venom all these years. But she was not Hel’s mother. Loki’s monstrous children were all borne by a giantess.
“Her?” Loki sneered. “No, I hate her. She has neither killed the snake nor erected a roof over my head, despite my pleading that she do so. She is thoughtless, worthless.”
“And so I set you free,” Hel said. She sloughed off her human visage and appeared in her true form, sprouting like an unwholesome weed to the roof of the cave. She pulled the wicked knife, Famine, from its scabbard in her exposed rib cage and plunged it into the neck of the faithful Sigyn.
Loki’s wife gurgled her last breath, and the bowl of caustic venom toppled full into Loki’s face. He screamed and writhed violently, and still the snake dripped on, under the goddess Skadi’s command to continue. Loki jerked and pulled at his restraints, and the earth shook underneath Hel’s feet. He cursed her. He swore vengeance upon her. And then, as the venom continued to eat at his eyes and chew at the substance of his flesh, he begged her for mercy.
But Hel had none. Mercy was an empty room in her heart, where nothing at all was sacred and no living creature, not even her father, could cry so piteously as to make her take heed.
Loki bucked and howled as the venom bore deeper. He thrashed and shouted his defiance. The earth trembled more violently, and this grew and grew until his bonds were finally snapped and he was set free. Blood and tears streamed down his purpling cheeks, and he seized the snake that had tormented him so and burned it alive in his hands, his fire returned to him now that he was unbound. No freedom had ever been bought with so much agony, and he vowed it would be avenged sevenfold, beginning with the Slavic thunder god.
We do not know why he focused on Perun rather than on the vampire who killed Thor; perhaps it was because he was a target of convenience. Loki knew that the entrance to the Slavic plane lay hidden somewhere in the Ural Mountains, and it was to these he flew upon first leaving his cave.
He left Hel behind, without thanks, bereft of approval, and with no signal that she should begin Ragnarok. Unable to follow him, she returned to her realm, sullen and uncertain, to await further word from her father.
“And that is why we must strike now and slay Fenris,” Frigg finished, clearly angling for the non sequitur of the year.
“I beg your pardon?” I said.
“We must demoralize Hel and prevent her from launching an attack on Asgard. Odin has decided that the best way to do that is to slay Fenris.”
“Well, that’s nice, but we can do it a bit later.”
“Now is the perfect time.”
“I disagree. Vehemently.”
Frigg’s eyes clouded, and the ravens above squawked. “You swore you would help us. You swore to render what aid you could in place of a blood price.”
“And render it I shall. But not right now. I have an apprentice to bind to the earth, and until she’s bound, I’m not doing anything else.”
Frigg shifted her eyes to Granuaile and pursed her lips in dislike, realizing that my apprentice was an obstacle to her goals. “Bring her along, then,” she said.
“No way.” I shook my head to emphasize the point. “She isn’t ready yet. After she’s bound she could actually be helpful and may choose, of her own free will, to give us her help. But right now she’s a liability and a potential hostage.”
I flattened my hand and used it as an impromptu shade against the sun as I searched out Odin’s ravens. I called out to them to make sure the mind they represented heard me.
“If my apprentice falls victim to an ‘accident,’ Odin, I won’t help you at all, you hear me? Just be patient a while longer.”
“And if Ragnarok begins while we are being patient?” Frigg asked.
“I’ll take on Jörmungandr myself if it does,” I said. “That’s how confident I am that it won’t happen, okay? I think we have a year left.” At least, I hoped we did.
“Based on what information?”
“I’ll keep that to myself. But nothing is changed here, Frigg. I will keep my word as soon as my apprentice is bound.”
Frigg had nothing nice to say, so she didn’t say anything. She nodded curtly and turned her back on us, floating up the rainbow into the northern sky. The ravens followed her.
I hoped that after this encounter Granuaile would be more willing to talk, but my optimistic expression was immediately crushed when she shook her head at me and scowled.
“A liability and a hostage, Atticus?” she said. “Really?”
“Well—”
“I put two knives in that bear thing and distracted it while you missed,” she said, “but I’m a liability?”
“Look, Granuaile, against human opponents, I’d say you could take just about anyone,” I said. “But Frigg was talking about messing around with the supernatural, and you’re not in that power class yet. You will be soon.”
“So a vulture that turns into a bear-human hybrid isn’t supernatural?”
“Yes, it is, Granuaile, and you handled it superbly, no doubt. But right now you can’t heal yourself if you get wounded. You can’t speed up or cast camouflage or take advantage of any of the spells I regularly use to stay alive. I would very much like to make sure you stay alive, so I hope you’ll forgive my poor choice of words. I wanted Frigg to go away, that’s all.”
She gazed at me, her disbelief every bit as plain as her disapproval, but she had no more desire to wrangle over it. She turned her back on me, leaving me unforgiven, and we trudged westward toward Olympus without speaking a word to each other.
A hot hour’s hike up the valley finally brought us good news from Oberon.
You did? Where?
I looked around me and saw nothing but more trees, stubborn undergrowth, and a few stretches of bare rock wall ahead, where the mountain fell precipitously into the wash. I could hear it running with winter snowmelt but couldn’t see it yet.
I don’t see you, I told Oberon.
It is indeed.
After I gave Granuaile some encouragement that we were near a possible campsite, we shoved our way through the brush to the water’s edge. It was a narrow, rocky stream, easily jumped in some places but running fast.
Can you still see us? I asked Oberon.
Where do we go from here?
I looked in that direction and saw the place he was talking about—I saw the tree on the ledge, anyway. Awesome. Any animal tracks or other sign in there?
Is the cave deep enough for us to lie down, tall enough to stand?
The difficulty we faced getting up to the ledge only made it more attractive to me once we finally arrived; there was very little chance we’d be disturbed by any humans in a place like this—few people are trailblazers anymore, when it’s so much safer and easier to follow the trails already blazed.
We hopped the stream about thirty yards past the tree, then struggled our way up to the ledge. Oberon waited at the mouth of the cave, wagging his tail. The entrance was completely choked with brush, but it was spacious inside.
How did you ever think to look for this? I asked Oberon.
Oberon, come on.
Well, this is perfect. We owe that squirrel for leading you here.
I was thinking he’d get all the credit and you’d get all the sausage.
“We’re going to camp here, then?” Granuaile asked, peering into the cave and breaking the silence.
“Maybe,” I said. “Let me scope this out first.” Using the magic stored in my bear charm, I triggered my faerie specs and looked for any indication that there was a magical booby trap here or an alarm that would go off if I drew power from the earth. This cave could be the favorite spot of a cyclops or a nymph or something spookier than an old monster like Agrios. It took a while to check thoroughly; any magic performed by the Greeks wouldn’t look like the Celtic bindings of my own work. I found nothing. The ceiling of the cave wasn’t blackened by the smoke of ancient fires, which corroborated my growing belief that we were the first humans to set eyes on this cave in centuries—perhaps the first humans ever.
“It looks good,” I said, shrugging off the straps of my pack. “This might work out perfectly.”
“Okay,” Granuaile said, extricating herself from her pack and setting it down with a relieved sigh.
“Oberon, I’ll need you to scout all possible approaches to the cave. We can see pretty well down below, but we need to know what’s behind us. Would you mind?”
“Don’t hunt yet. Scout all you want, but let’s just establish what’s normal for the area so we can spot any intruders later.”
“Agreed.”
Oberon turned and disappeared with a swish of his tail through the brush. Granuaile began to unpack in brooding silence.
Backpacking is different when you can cast night vision. Items like flashlights and lamps and oil are unnecessary. We had plenty of food—mostly soup mixes and jerky and dried fruit. It was a nutritionally deficient diet, but it was only for a few months, with resupply available at a tolerable distance in Litochoro. Water and wood for fuel were plentiful. The large pine tree would help diffuse the smoke from our cook fires.
Granuaile was yanking goodies out of her pack with increasing force and tossing, then throwing, them down on the ground. She was working herself up for something; the whistle on the old pressure cooker was about to go off.
“Fire away whenever you’re ready,” I said quietly.
She did not appear to hear. She still had a few more items to yank out and slam down, and I approved. Violent unpacking should never be interrupted or unfinished.
“Those weren’t gods!” she finally exploded.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I mean the Tuatha Dé Danann. Frigg was fine. But I expected something a bit nobler from the Irish, you know? Not a festival of pettiness and gamesmanship and freezing people in time, staring at them morbidly before they die. Why should I pray to them?”
“That’s an excellent question. You don’t have to.”
Her expression, full of challenge, morphed into confusion. “I don’t?”
“No, of course not.”
“I thought all the Druids worshipped the Tuatha Dé Danann.”
“They do.” I smiled wryly. “But that’s because I’m the only Druid right now.”
“No, I meant … in history. When there were more of you around.”
“It varied a bit. The Druids on the continent tended to like Cernunnos, for example, more than those of us who came from Ireland. The Wild Hunt was bigger on the mainland too. There was no central doctrine for all the Celts.”
“So I can worship who I want? Or not at all?”
“Of course. Gaia doesn’t give a damn who you worship; when the Tuatha Dé Danann became the first Druids, you can bet they didn’t worship themselves. You’re going to be bound to the earth, Granuaile, not to a religion. You can dress like a pirate on Fridays and worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster if you want. Gaia won’t care as long as you protect her.”
“Oh.” Granuaile settled back on her haunches but then gave that up and carefully arranged her legs in the lotus position. She rested her hands lightly on her knees, kept her back straight, and fixed her eyes on mine. I recognized the posture; she was about to argue with me.
“Please explain why you continue to worship the Tuatha Dé Danann when you have no need to do so and you are clearly aware they are flawed beings.”
I settled myself so that my posture mirrored hers before answering.
“Your question assumes that gods must necessarily be perfect. That is a prejudice of monotheism. People of pagan faiths are not upset by gods that reflect human foibles. In fact, it’s rather comforting.”
“I grant you the prejudice, but the question remains. If you are not required to worship them—if you retain all magical powers regardless of your faith or lack thereof—why do you persist?”
“I’m in it for the afterlife, same as anyone else.”
She frowned. “Are you throwing some sort of pagan Pascal’s Wager at me?”
“Catch!”
“Thpppt.”
“Don’t be so dismissive. Where is the downside to spending eternity in Mag Mell, or even in Tír na nÓg? Both are beautiful places.”
“So are most versions of paradise.”
“Hence the reason I encourage you to believe what you wish. The heaven of the Pastafarians is supposed to have beer volcanoes, which sounds like a fantastic idea to me. Imagine eruptions of a mellow chocolaty stout. There might be all-you-can-eat hot wings.”
Granuaile’s tone turned accusatory. “You’ve been training me in the rituals of your faith for twelve years and allowing me to believe that worshipping the Tuatha Dé Danann was bound up with being a Druid.”
“For me, it is. My own prejudice. I apologize for the omission.”
“They were once merely Druids, you say. The Tuatha Dé Danann.”
“Yes. But they were skilled in their own magic even before that.”
“How did they become gods? What powers did they accrue when they did?”
“They became gods once people worshipped them as such. They became vessels for Celtic faith, tuning forks for our yearnings, keepers of our hopes and prayers. And the powers they gained were those assigned to them by worshippers. Manannan Mac Lir was not a psychopomp until people thought he was; he was only a Druid with some extra powers in the sea.”
“So why don’t cult leaders achieve godhood?”
“Because they’re megalomaniacs drenched in douche juice.”
“But so was Thor, right? And let’s not forget that there was certainly no shortage of douchebaggery in Tír na nÓg today. I’m asking seriously. Some cult leaders inspire fervent devotion in their followers. Shouldn’t they gain godlike powers?”
“No, because they all die in thirty to fifty years and their cult dies with them. Godhead transcends generations and requires the concerted belief of a large number of people.”
“How does your belief in Manannan Mac Lir as a psychopomp give him the powers of one?”
“Figuring that out is one of the reasons I’m hanging around. I think the Large Hadron Collider might yield some clues.”
“You’re talking about particle physics now?”
“Yep. They’re slowly discovering why we have more matter than antimatter in the universe. Smash a proton, and you don’t get simple matter and antimatter. Some particles degrade and change very quickly.”
“Change into what?”
“Damn it, Jim, I’m a Druid, not a physicist!”
Granuaile rolled her eyes at the allusion. “I understand, but what’s the connection with godlike powers?”
“The connection is that there are clearly some powers and processes in the universe we simply don’t understand yet. They are ineffable—for now. I don’t know how it’s possible for Gaia to have a magical nature. And the Tuatha Dé Danann cannot tell you how, precisely, they gained the powers of gods on top of the powers of Druids. But they can tell you they didn’t always possess them. Some grew slowly, and some were discovered abruptly. And it’s no different with any other gang of gods. Some of them have bought into their own origin myths, which is distilled shite on its face—the world can’t have been created in hundreds of different ways—but the smart ones will tell you they’re not sure how they got the gig they got and they don’t remember creating humanity, much less the world. For most of space and time, they weren’t there; and then, one day, they were, complete with a small but hopefully growing collection of praying humans.”
Granuaile slumped and let her lotus position tumble apart. Her face was sad and haunted.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nobody has the answer, do they?” she asked quietly.
“No. I’m sorry.”
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