Staked (Iron Druid Chronicles) Read online

  “She’s being more accommodating,” a winged faery explains, “after Fand’s attempted coup. We may have lost our queen, but at least the First among the Fae is listening to us now. And Fand may return someday, just as these others have.”

  She’s probably right about that. Fand won’t remain imprisoned forever. The Fae will start asking soon when she might be released, and eventually their questions will turn into demands. And the same goes for her husband, Manannan Mac Lir. Brighid can delay only so long before this temporary goodwill turns to ashes. But I’m not sure letting a bunch of prisoners free will do anything to keep the peace. Some of them are going to be grateful, sure, and be a grand addition to society. But some are going to be resentful and start throwing shite at things. She’d better be ready to duck.

  But perhaps Brighid’s thinking that she can simply imprison them again and say, “Well, I gave them a chance, didn’t I? Not my fault if they’re stupid gits.”

  I find a chamberlain figure near the front of the crush of beings, dressed all fancy and doused in perfume. I tell him I’d like a brief audience with Brighid, and his eyes stray down to me tattoos. They widen as he recognizes I’m bound to Gaia. “You’re a Druid?” he says.

  “Aye. Eoghan Ó Cinnéide.”

  “She’s left instructions to bring you before her immediately should you appear. Please come with me.”

  That’s a pleasant surprise, and I ignore the scowls I get from a group of pixie widows as the chamberlain interrupts their audience to introduce me—not just to Brighid but to everyone, since he shouts my name. I notice Brighid’s wearing a new kit. It’s a set of lighter armor instead of the heavy stuff she wore during the coup attempt, painted a metallic blue. It leaves her arms and legs largely unprotected, but her vital organs are under wraps. And the area around her throne is warded tighter than a hedgehog’s rolled-up arse anyway; I can feel the bindings warning me away from it.

  “Welcome,” she says. “What news?”

  “I’m starting a grove, taking on six apprentices to be Druids. Wanted ye to know. Whatever protection ye can afford would be grand.”

  “Ah! This pleases me very much, Eoghan. Give the details to my chamberlain and I will see it done. I would speak longer, but I have much to do. Is there anything else?”

  I think of how Siodhachan is trying to wipe out vampires and it’s going to be all blood and exploding organs until he’s done, but she probably already knows that since she had Luchta make those stakes and I don’t need to announce it where everyone can hear. So I says, “No, that is all.”

  She bids me farewell, and I bow to her and chat off to one side with the chamberlain while the pixies resume their audience. I tell him about the property in Flagstaff and how it needs to be warded and after a few seconds become aware that something huge looms over us and smells like sweaty feet.

  A gray-skinned hulk, probably twice me size, stares down at me with tiny black eyes and big tusk-like teeth sticking up out of its mouth. There’s a bit of drool leaking out the side, and there are also patches of lichen or fungus attached to its skin with either mud or shite or both used as an adhesive. It has a cloth wrapped inexpertly around its hips, and it’s doing a terrible job covering up the huge thing it’s supposed to be hiding from view. It’s a great fecking bog troll, the kind that doesn’t care if you see his cheesy dangly dong. The worst kind of troll, in other words.

  “I know you,” it rumbles, and its breath is a visible cloud of decay. “You’re a Druid.”

  “Ye have a keen eye,” I say. “Would ye excuse us, please?”

  “No, we have business. I remember.”

  “I don’t think we do.”

  “I was on a Time Island. Released with many others. So were you. And you owe me gold.”

  “You’re mistaken. I don’t owe you shite.”

  “No mistake. You crossed my bridge in the bog and didn’t pay the toll. You look younger now, but I remember. You owe me gold.”

  When he says that, it triggers me own memory. He’s right. In the old days I’d been crossing a bog on me way to visit a cousin when this troll pops up in the middle of it and demands that I pay him to cross the rest of the way or it’s over the edge for me. I had no gold and no intention of paying if I did, so I cast camouflage and snuck past him. The troll had cursed me and promised someday he’d make me pay, and I’d told him from a distance that no one’s bollocks should ever smell that bad.

  Why Brighid thought releasing trolls would make anything better I cannot fathom. It would only lead to situations like this—bullying people going about their business. This one’s attention had no doubt been drawn when the chamberlain announced me as a Druid of Gaia. Now he knew me name and quite possibly where I lived, if he’d been listening in to our conversation.

  To make him go away, I pull out the Canadian money Greta gave me and thrust it at him. “There,” I says. “Take it.”

  His eyes shift to me hand, his mind churns like thick pudding, and he finally says, “That’s not gold.”

  “It’s better than gold, lad. It’s got the queen of Canada on it, and she walks around wearing pearls, see? It’s like her neck is sweating wealth. And look here: This one has the king of Canada on it. Serious man there, ye can tell by his collar, and this is serious money. Ye can buy anything with this, and it’s a good deal more than any toll I’ve ever heard of.”

  “It’s only paper. Worth nothing. You owe me gold.”

  “I don’t have any fecking gold, do I? This is all the money I have, so you’ll have to take this or nothing.”

  “You bring me gold tomorrow.”

  “You take a bath first,” I says, and walk away, shoving the money back in me pocket. The troll won’t throw any punches in the Fae Court. But I see as I push through the crowd that there are several other trolls present, and their eyes all follow me as I edge to the perimeter of the Court’s meadow, where there are bound trees that I can use to get out of there. I recognize some of those trolls—ugly is hard to forget sometimes—and they no doubt recognize me. I’m the guy who never pays to cross a bridge.

  Why are there trolls at the Fae Court anyway? They’re not creatures given to courts of any kind. They must have a problem and are hoping for an audience of their own. Their bogs and rivers and bridges are probably all gone by now, and they can’t make the same living that they did in the old days. But I represent that old living to them, and they want to hold on to it more than anything, I expect.

  People do that—cling to their past because it’s the only thing they consider safe. Trying something new or just accepting it turns their livers into jelly. But that’s a load of bollocks. Ye take the new and appreciate it if it’s good, like whiskey or poutine or girlfriends who bite, or ye dismiss it as shite if it’s bad, like cell phones and cars, and move on.

  O’ course, there’s people like Siodhachan too: He does everything he can to escape his past but can’t seem to do it. He has a lot more past than the average lad, though. Maybe that’s why he looks so fecking haunted all the time.

  When I reach the trees, I look back and see the trolls are still watching me. I smile and wave to them before I shift away. They couldn’t come after me that way—they have to use the Old Ways to get to earth, and there aren’t any of those in North America. They’d never get any gold out of me. Time to leave the past in the past, boys.

  CHAPTER 8

  I nodded off in the healing pool—fairly safe, since the attending faeries come to the rescue if your head slips underwater. But I wasn’t safe from getting splashed in the face, and neither was Oberon, who drifted into slumber behind me. Both of us got a rude awakening.

  Oberon said.

  When I blinked away the water, I saw that I wasn’t alone in the pool anymore. A woman with jet-black hair and marble-white skin sat across from me. “Hello, Siodhachan,” she said in a throaty rasp.

  “Morrigan? You’re alive?”

  “Quite dead, yet I clin
g to a different kind of existence thanks to those who still worship me. Far easier for me to manifest and visit you on this plane.”

  “Is something wrong? Am I … Is this the end?”

  “No, it’s not the Chooser of the Slain visiting you at this time. It’s a reminder that you have work to do that you haven’t been doing.”

  “Ah. Is this visitation but to whet my almost blunted purpose?”

  “An odd way to put it, but I suppose so,” she replied, completely missing the allusion to Hamlet. “You must visit the Svartálfs, and do it soon.”

  “How soon? I’m getting better, but I’m still a little messed up here.”

  “Tomorrow they will be attacked. You must prevent it.”

  “Attacked by whom?”

  “Dwarfs. Æsir.”

  “Æsir as in Odin and Freyja?”

  “No, none of the gods. But they have full knowledge of what’s to be done.”

  “So by intervening I’ll be contradicting the will of Odin?”

  “Yes, but that’s never bothered you before.”

  “It’s just that we’re supposed to be working together now. I gave him whiskey and Girl Scout cookies. We’re practically … bros.”

  “That shouldn’t change, Siodhachan. The point is to get the Svartálfs working with you as well.”

  I shook my head at the enormity of the task. “There’s centuries of prejudice there on both sides, lots of mistrust. It would be like asking the Fir Bolgs or the Fomorians to work with the Tuatha Dé Danann on a friendly basis. Turning enemies into allies in a day sounds impossible.”

  “It is fortunate then that you don’t have to do that in a day. Merely prevent genocide so that trust can begin to build.”

  “Did you say ‘merely’ prevent genocide?”

  “That’s something you can do in a day, Siodhachan.” She slid forward through the water and planted a cold kiss on my cheek while her sharp, frigid fingernails rested on my throat. “Don’t disappoint me.”

  “Morrigan, the dark elves have tried to kill me recently on multiple occasions. I don’t think they’ll accept me as a diplomatic envoy.”

  “Go anyway.” And her fingers tightened on my throat, drawing blood under her fingernails. “Unless you’d like me to visit you again as the Battle Crow.”

  “Well, no, I can’t imagine why I’d want that—”

  She sank into the water and melted away in it, the visitation abruptly ended. I checked. No one in the pool but me.

  “She’s gone,” I said, mostly to myself, but Oberon thought I was talking to him.

 

  “That’s okay. She scares me too.” I needed to get moving but realized that, while I had a sword and a stake and a hound, I had no clothes. The faeries attending the healing pools had taken my hospital gown. I called one over and asked if she might do a couple of things for me.

  “Please tell Brighid I’m here,” I said, “and need to speak with her on an urgent matter regarding the Morrigan.” That should bring her running. “And then if you could find me some clothes, I would appreciate it.”

  “Very well, but how are you feeling?” the faery asked. “Are you ready to leave?”

  “Well enough,” I said. After she departed, I hauled myself out and checked a bit more thoroughly. Most of the internal organ damage was mended, because that was always a priority of healing, but my muscle tissue in my back and right leg was still tight at best and remained torn in places. I would have to limp for a while and eat some protein to repair that more quickly, and in truth I could use some more time in the pool, but time I didn’t have.

  I also didn’t have any idea of what happened to Werner Drasche after his arrest. Was he still locked up or did he escape? And where was…?

  “Oberon, did you remember to get that binder out of the hotel room in Toronto?”

 

  “Thank you for that, sincerely. You deserve a snack.”

 

  “But the binder was important too. I wonder if it’s still there. I mean, I didn’t check out, so it should be.”

 

  “Thanks, buddy.”

 

  “Excellent.”

  The faery appeared to say that Brighid would arrive soon and gave me a white fluffy robe that had obviously been stolen from a hotel on earth—the logo was still embroidered on the breast. I’d been hoping for something like pants and a shirt, but I guessed I could suffer the stares I would get walking through Toronto in a robe. I would go to the front desk, ask for a key to my room because I’d lost it, and then they would ask me—oh, no.

  “My ID was in my clothes. Which Owen left at the hospital.”

 

  It wasn’t an insurmountable problem. I could still get into the room by unbinding the lock. But the identity of Sean Flanagan would have to be retired permanently. There would be plenty of questions for the gunshot victim who disappeared.

  I mentally reviewed what else I had to do before I took off to Svartálfheim, perhaps never to return. I wished I could check in with Granuaile—I hadn’t heard from her since I left for Ethiopia. All I knew was that she was in Asgard and therefore very difficult to reach at the moment. I hoped she was well. But since reconnecting with her would be impossible, there was one other matter to see to in England.

  Brighid arrived before I could make plans, looking annoyed. It turned out not to be annoyance with me, however—she had loads on her mind after Fand’s revolt. And, much to my surprise, she had no problem whatsoever with me going to Svartálfheim at the Morrigan’s urging. “She gave me the same message,” she said.

  “She did?”

  “Via Eoghan, yes. He relayed the message. And I’ll go with you. Tomorrow, then, at dawn?”

  “Uh … yeah,” I said. Her quick agreement knocked me off balance. “But you’ll want to wear the super-tough armor.”

  “Oh, I will. Would you like some for yourself?”

  I hadn’t worn armor in centuries, but against dwarfs it might be handy, especially in my condition. “Do you have any that would fit me?”

  “I can get you something that will serve,” she said, a tiny smile on her face.

  “Great. At dawn.”

  Brighid departed, and Oberon and I left soon afterward. For the record, Toronto is a wonderfully diverse city and people are used to seeing all types, but a limping man wearing nothing but a robe and a sword will draw attention. Oberon carried the stake in his mouth, because it looked innocent there. If I carried it, I might look like I planned to stab someone, and the sword was already giving that impression.

  I was unclear on just how much time I had spent in the healing pools, but it was morning again in Toronto and we passed by the same Timmie’s we had before. Ed and his companion were there, sipping their coffee and watching the world go by, though I didn’t realize it was them until the first man spoke up as we passed. “Boy, ya never know what you’re gonna see in Trahno, Ed.”

  “Yep.” Ed was the best color commentator in the business.

  We took the elevator to the sixth floor, where I took the time to bypass the lock on my room. It turned out to be gloriously undisturbed. The binder was there and so was my backpack and a very welcome change of clothes. Open-ended stays with a reliable credit card on file can be wonderful.

  If the police were monitoring the financial records of Sean Flanagan, checking out would let the police know that I was still alive. That was fine; they’d never hear from him again, because I’d be getting a new identity from Hal. The hospital could have my old ID.

  Once outside and walking back to Queen’s Park, I had to break the news to Oberon that the poutinerie wasn’t open yet and I didn’t have any money anyway. We would have to snaffle something to eat elsewhere.

  “Let’s head
over to the UK. It’s midafternoon there, that dead time of the day in pubs when cooks are either cleaning the kitchen or taking breaks. They’re not hovering over the food, in other words. Should be able to lift a few bangers without any trouble.”

 

  “Ugh. We can try.”

  We shifted across the Atlantic to a wee place north of Dumfries, where I found one of those small country hotels that doubles as a pub near the bound grove of trees we used. They did not have haggis—a small mercy—but they did have some lamb ready to go, and a camouflaged sneak into the kitchen gave us a much-needed repast. They had an herb garden in a greenhouse out back, and it was doing all right but could be better. I spent some time mending the soil there as payment for our food. They would never recognize that they’d been paid, but it was a salve for my conscience: I already had enough evils clinging to my back and didn’t need to carry around petty theft as well.

  Bellies full, we shifted south to a grove near Windsor Castle, where I followed the instructions Hermes had given me to summon the West Wind if I wanted to get in touch with Olympus. The globetrotting was wearying, especially when I needed a few days more to heal, but I felt that neglecting this duty before traveling to Svartálfheim would be an egregious error.

  Little Lord Ankle Wings himself streaked out of the southern sky after about an hour, coming to a halt some five feet off the ground.

  “Hermes,” I said, nodding to him.

  “Druid. What do you want?”

  “I’d love to set Diana free if she will agree to terms,” I said. The Roman goddess of the hunt had been cut into sections and imprisoned in rock because she had vowed never to rest before she killed both Granuaile and me. Artemis had agreed to live and let live, but Diana held on to one hell of a grudge. “But I would like Jupiter to be present. We agreed we’d visit her monthly, and at this point I’m a bit late and don’t want to let it go any longer. I know Mercury usually delivers such messages to Jupiter, but would you mind relaying the request? I’m about to leave the plane tomorrow, and I would hate for Diana to miss her chance at freedom.”