was a ship made of toenails or something?”
“He was,” I said, nodding, “but nothing is going to go the way it was supposed to now. Regardless of any prophecies, a free Loki isn’t a good thing for anyone. How’d he get to your plane, Perun?”
The great Russian god shrugged, his impressive personal thatching communicating the depths of his frustration.
“I don’t know. I was in Alaska in the form of an eagle, eating a trout I’d just caught from a river, when I felt that something was wrong. I went to my plane and found Loki there, setting fire to everything. I threw lightning at him and he laughed. He was not hurt at all, and he said he was waiting for me.”
“Why?” Granuaile asked.
“He was mad because I helped to kill Thor,” Perun explained.
“But he hated Thor,” I said.
“I know. He said that killing Thor himself became his dream during those years he was tied down under the great snake. Then he said, since I had taken away his dream, he would take away my people’s dream. He left me a harvest of ashes.”
“That’s terrible,” Granuaile said.
Perun nodded at her, grateful for the sympathy. “After that he said, ‘You are like Thor, so I will kill you instead.’ He attacked me, and he was very strong. Stronger than I thought he would be. I began to fear him, and I panicked. I asked the earth to find you.”
That didn’t quite compute. “You never heard that I died?”
Perun looked at me curiously. “When was this?” He poked me with a finger to make sure I was real. “You do not feel like a ghost.”
“No, I mean I faked my death. You never heard about that?”
The thunder god shook his head. “I have been an eagle for too long, I think. I lost track of the years.”
I knew what he meant; it was dangerous to spend too much time in animal form, because it became so easy to focus on the basic needs of survival and let all one’s other cares drift away. And once those cares left, the memories began to drift away too, until even one’s identity faded to oblivion and nothing remained but finding the day’s meal in the forest. My archdruid had called it the “last shift.” It was how Druids committed suicide.
“So you have no idea who set Loki free?”
Perun grimaced in regret. “He did not say. I knew nothing until I felt my world … burning.”
Someone cleared his throat to my right. I turned to behold a faery—one of the flying kind, dressed up in the pompous green and silver livery of the Fae Court—hovering just out of throttling range. Gods below, how had he found me?
“Hail, Siodhachan Ó Suileabháin,” he said, his voice redolent of scorn and aristocratic disgust, enunciated with such precision that one could hear capital letters, “the Supposedly Deceased. Brighid, First Among the Fae, summons you to an audience in her Court forthwith, there to answer Certain Questions, among which are Why are you still alive? and More Importantly, Why did you not inform Brighid of this Rather Important Fact?”
I briefly considered making this messenger disappear. I could shake his hand—or otherwise make contact with him—and, as a creature made of magic, he would crumble to ash from the cold iron in my aura. But then Brighid would know something had happened to him, and she’d send more after me. Whatever displeasure she currently felt would only grow if I made her wait too long. Still, this was an extraordinarily inconvenient time to ask me over for tea—or whipping, or whatever else she had in mind.
“I see. I am indisposed at the moment to attend the Fae Court. Will you bear her a message for me?”
“No. I am to bear you to the Court or nothing withal.”
His tone—especially combined with Elizabethan diction—finally annoyed me. Perhaps he needed to be reminded that I was not one of Brighid’s subjects. “Do you truly have the power to bear me there?” I asked him. “Are you immune to cold iron, sir?”
His confident, supercilious manner withered, and he gulped. “No,” he admitted.
“So this talk of bearing me hence is nothing more than bluster, yes?” I took a step toward him, and he back-winged. I gave him a thin smile.
“Yes,” he said.
“Good,” I said, and began to mock his affected accent and language. “It is most unfortunate that you may bear no messages back to your liege. Peradventure you may ask her a question, instead, the answer to which may speed my arrival thither. May I bring my companions—those you see here, including my hound—to Tír na nÓg under her personal aegis? I need a guarantee of safe conduct for us all to and from the Court. An affirmative answer will assure my immediate arrival.”
“I will inquire.”
“I will await her reply for five minutes only.”
The faery nodded, said nothing, and touched the same tree we had used to shift here. He winked out of sight, shifting away, and I drew my sword.
“Spread yourselves and be on your guard,” I said. “He may come back with friends. Or gods.”
Oberon asked, <What if he comes back with snacks?>
Chapter 3
Granuaile didn’t say anything, but I caught a tiny smile on her face as she palmed a throwing knife. I couldn’t read her mind, but I could read her expression well enough: She was thinking, Finally, some action. After twelve years of training and sparring with no one but me, here was the possibility of a real scrap. She took cover behind a different tree and crouched down.
I hoped it wouldn’t come to any sort of fight. This was precisely the crucial period when I’d lost my last apprentice, Cíbran—at the end of his training but before I could get him bound to the earth and give him access to magic. Granuaile had trained both her mind and body extremely well, but she wouldn’t be able to survive the throw-downs I was used to fighting until she was able to speed herself up, boost her strength, and heal quickly using the magic of the earth.
Perun and I took up positions elsewhere, and Oberon lay down, sphinxlike, watching the tree bound to Tír na nÓg, ready to spring up and attack.
<But this is so exciting! I might get to pounce on a faery!>
<Okay, I’ll wait until you say sic ’em.>
It was an excellent precaution, because the faery herald didn’t return. Someone tapped me on the shoulder, but when I whipped around, Moralltach at the ready, I didn’t see anyone. A soft snort of amusement was my only clue that someone was actually there.
“Calm yourself and be at ease, Atticus,” a woman’s voice said, and then Flidais, Irish goddess of the hunt, dissolved the binding that granted her true invisibility. “It’s only me. I’m to escort you and your companions to the Court. I am Brighid’s guarantee no harm will befall them in Tír na nÓg. Good enough?”
It was entirely satisfactory, even if Flidais wasn’t dressed in her customary fashion. She had made some effort to appear courtly; usually she was dressed in her hunting leathers, her bow and quiver were prominently on display, and her red hair was frizzy and wildly adorned with random bits of vegetation that could charitably be called camouflage. Now, however, she wore a plain woven tunic, cream colored, with a band of green embroidered knotwork around the neck and down the sides, underneath either arm. This was belted at the waist, and she wore a large knife there with a handle wrought in polished malachite and mother-of-pearl. I had never seen it before; it was either a recent acquisition or something she wore only to Court. Her hair had been recently washed and brushed, and the flowers in it were clearly put there on purpose instead of resting there accidentally. I noted privately that when she was cleaned up like this, she looked quite a bit like Granuaile. Instead of a skirt, Flidais wore loose cotton pants—like those from a martial-arts uniform—dyed brown to match her belt; she was barefoot. I suspected that the rest of the Tuatha Dé Danann would be similarly dressed. The Celtic ideal for clothing was
