I shrugged. “I already told you. Airmid taught me.”
“Yes, but why? Why you and no one else?”
I put down my spoon and exchanged glances with the Morrigan. She knew the answer, but no one else did. “Oh. That is quite a story.”
Odin gestured at the table. “We have four more courses.”
“It is not that long, but it is a story I have never shared before and I am reluctant to share it. It has a certain value.”
Odin’s eye bored into mine. “Understood. Consider it a part of what you owe us.”
“Very well.” I saw the waiter and sommelier approaching. “I will begin once we’ve been served the third course.”
The third course was pan-fried pike with a side of white asparagus and some other assorted vegetables artfully arranged on a white plate, drizzled with a beurre blanc. The sommelier, an older gentleman with thinning hair but crisp movements and a steady hand, served us all a glass of chardonnay. After that, I had to share a secret I thought I’d never speak aloud.******
In the days when the Tuatha De Danann were puissant in Ireland, the most famous physician of the time-if I may use the modern word-was Dian Cecht. During the First Battle of Mag Tuireadh, the king, Nuada, lost his right arm in battle, and he applied to Dian Cecht for remedy. Despite his victory over the Fir Bolgs, he was no longer fit to rule with such a disability.
Together with the craftsman Creidhne, Dian Cecht fashioned a magical silver hand and arm for Nuada; once it was attached, it functioned just like a regular arm would, and Dian Cecht’s fame grew ever greater throughout Ireland. People began to call the former king Nuada Silver-hand, for it was truly a miraculous sight and all who saw it were amazed. In public, Nuada was mightily pleased and recognized the fame his silver hand brought him. But in private-well, there were issues. It repelled his wife, who did not want it to touch her. And whether he wore it or not, Nuada could not help but feel incomplete and out of balance. Despite the miracle of the silver arm, he was diminished.
But Miach, son of Dian Cecht, felt Nuada’s pain and dared to help him. He was an extraordinarily talented and empathetic healer, who avoided conflict with his father whenever he could. But in the case of Nuada, he could not withhold help when it was in his power-and his power only-to give it.
Over nine days and nights of chanting and ritual, he managed to regenerate a new arm and hand of flesh and blood for Nuada. The king was whole again and could return to the throne. Miach had surpassed his father, however, and Dian Cecht was not the sort of man who suffered such things in passive silence. Indeed, rather than feel pride for his son’s accomplishment and broadcast it far and wide, he was consumed with jealous rage and confronted his son with a sword.
Miach protested that he did not want to fight and bore only love and goodwill for his father, but Dian Cecht was beyond reason. His first stroke grazed Miach’s skin, but his son healed it immediately. Such a display only drove Dian Cecht to further violence. Despite Miach’s attempts to dodge, his father’s second attempt stabbed him in the gut-but Miach healed even that. Dian Cecht became more animal than man when he saw. His third stroke cleaved all the way down into Miach’s brain, and that overcame his son’s ability to heal. He died, and then Dian Cecht threw down his sword in horror at what he had done.
His horror was not a fraction of Airmid’s, however. Airmid, sister of Miach, was quite a healer in her own right and a powerful Druid. Her rage was such that she did not attend her brother’s funeral for fear that she would kill her father. Instead, she waited until the funeral had ended and everyone had gone home, and then she visited her brother’s grave to pay her respects. She wept for three days and nights on his grave and sang him songs in broken sobs. She wept for love and loss and memories she could no longer share but had to keep in trust for them both, and she wept for all the memories that would never be now that he was dead. Exhausted, she collapsed next to his grave and slept.
When she woke, a wonder greeted her eyes. Out of Miach’s grave, watered by her tears and the blood of Miach’s body, grew 365 herbs of medicinal power. Possessed with a purpose, realizing the gift before her, Airmid spread out her cloak and began to test and catalog the herbs, examining their qualities and preserving in her mind their unique properties. But before Airmid was finished, Dian Cecht, possessed by grief and guilt, came to visit the grave of his son.
He saw Airmid’s cloak spread on the ground and the world’s medicinal herbs laid out in order upon it. He saw the herbs themselves growing from the grave in the shape of Miach’s body, and his jealous rage rose again.
“Even in death he mocks me and renders my life meager in comparison!” Dian Cecht roared. He tore at the herbs growing in the earth, then yanked Airmid’s cloak from the ground and snapped it in the wind, scattering the herbs into the sky. Because of this deed, it is said that no one alive knows the sum of the earth’s herblore.
It was at this point that Airmid lost her composure. Wielding a stick as her weapon, she attacked Dian Cecht, battering him about the face and body with all the strength a Druid could bring to bear, until he crumpled to the ground. Throwing down the stick, she picked up a boulder and raised it over her head, intending to bring it down upon her father’s head. But a voice from Tir na nOg stopped her.
“Airmid, no!” it cried, and she froze. It was the voice of Miach, calling her from beyond the veil. “For the love you bear me, do not slay our father!”
The rock tumbled from her fingers, and she left Dian Cecht bleeding on the ground to heal himself. She picked up her cloak and walked away from the grave without speaking a word. She did not speak to anyone for nine days, in fact, and the first person she spoke to was me.
I was in the twilight of my normal lifetime and dwelling on my approaching death. I wasn’t decrepit or arthritic, for Gaia sustains us well, but my physical prime was four decades gone at the least, and the prospect of a steep decline into death’s embrace had somewhat soured my disposition. I was drinking alone at an inn when Airmid entered, searched the room, and picked me out. She saw the signs of morbidity in my aura, no doubt. But she also saw the tattoos on my arm and knew I was a Druid.
She sat down across from me with a satchel and said, “Old man, indulge a young woman. What would you do to have your youth again? To feel the bounce of vigor in your step, to feel the hard wood of your cock again, and to nevermore lose it to the ravages of age unless you will it?”
I did not know who she was. She was robed and gloved, so I did not even know she was a Druid, much less a member of the Tuatha De Danann. “Do you jest or do you ask in all seriousness?” I said.
“I am in earnest,” she replied. “I truly wish to know what you would be willing to do for a gift like that.”
“I would kill for that,” I said. Men have killed for far less.
“Then I have a proposal for you,” she said, and withdrew a sheaf of skins from her satchel, filled with all the herblore she could remember from before Dian Cecht threw her work to the wind. “I am a Druid, and I have discovered a blend of herbs that, when slightly altered with a simple binding and brewed as a tea, confers the blessings of youth on he who drinks it. That secret and so many others are contained in these pages. They are yours if you kill a man for me.”
I perused a few of the pages and realized that the herblore set down therein was far beyond my ken. I examined her aura and saw no hint of deception there or in any gesture of her body. That is no guarantee of honesty, for we can all be deceived easier than we would like to think, but so far as I could tell she was making me a genuine offer, and I was desperate enough to accept. But I had to ask: “Why not simply kill him yourself? I can see that you are a powerful Druid.”
“I cannot kill him, because he is my father.”
“I must kill your father in exchange for this herblore?”
“Yes. What say you?”
“Who is your father?”
“Dian Cecht of the Tuatha De Danann.”
She recounted for me the story of her brother’s death and told me how she managed to classify and catalog 327 of the 365 herbs before her father destroyed her work. “A Druid doesn’t forget,” she said. “I have spent the last nine days writing down this lore and experimenting further. This new tea of youth is the best of my discoveries, but there are more.”
“I am engaged,” I said. “Tell me where to find him.”
Legends say that Dian Cecht died of a terrible plague. To the bards who told it that way, it seemed like an ironic and just ending for a villainous physician. The truth of his end involves a terrified chicken.
