Shattered: The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Seven (22 page)

She drives us up to this Mogollon Rim, the very southern tip of the Colorado plateau and another elemental’s territory, and takes a left at a sign marked W
OODS
C
ANYON
L
AKE
.

“We’re up on the Rim now,” she says. The road is paved for a few miles, until we get to the turnoff for the lake, but she keeps going and it becomes dirt. “Most everyone turns off at the lake, so after another five miles we won’t see anyone. Great place to run around.”

She’s right about that. It’s mostly tall ponderosa pines mixed with the occasional juniper, and the undergrowth isn’t bad at all—only sage and something she says is called manzanita. She pulls over and we get out of the car, and I enjoy the silence after the slam of the door. No industrial hum here. I say hello to the elemental, and it welcomes me. Through it I am able to discover that there are bound trees within easy running distance.

“Let’s get out of sight of the road before we shift,” she says, and together we jog into the trees until the car and the road are out of sight. I can pretend it’s old days again.

“Have you ever seen a werewolf shift?” she asks me.

“Aye. Saw a lad in Flagstaff do it. Ty Pollard.”

Her face lights up. “Oh, I know Ty! Sam’s husband. Nice fella
and good to have at your shoulder. Anyway, I’m glad you’ve seen the change before, so you won’t be shocked.” She pulls off her shirt and adds, “It’s not a pretty sight.”

“Well,
those
are pretty—”

“Ha! Stop. You know, my wolf is going to want to play with your bear. And when I say play, I mean fight. You up for it?”

I grin and say, “Yes. That’s what I was doing with Ty.”

“Throat and spine are off-limits.”

“Those are the rules,” I agree, as she continues to undress and I get started doing the same.

“My wolf is going to be pissed. Changing during the day with the moon out of phase is painful. I mean more than usual.”

“Understood.”

“Talk to you later.” She smiles and winks at me and then, free of her clothes, winces as the transformation begins. Bones snap and shift underneath the skin, threatening to burst through in places, and she falls to all fours. The worst part has to be the knees popping and reforming in the other direction for the back legs. I feel a bit guilty as I mouth the words and bind my spirit to the shape of a bear, a process that Gaia has made quick and painless for us. We are her creatures, and our bodies are hers to shape as she wishes.

Greta’s wolf is powerful and angry, as she promised. She growls once low in her throat and then launches herself at me. I stand up, take her charge in the chest, and then we tumble, clawing and snapping at each other. She gets in a good bite on my left chest, near the crook of my arm, and I’m able to rake my claws down her left ribs. She makes a few superficial scratches, but her claws aren’t like mine. We disengage and face off. She barks, I bellow, and then her aggression dissolves and she wants to play in a different way. She splays out her front legs and lowers her head to the ground while her tail rises and actually wags. She barks once and then takes off deeper into the forest. I give chase, surprising her by closing the gap on the straightaway, but I’m not nearly so agile. Every time she changes direction, I lose ground. We run for ten minutes, top speed, then she leads us
into a meadow, where we scare a small herd of elk that had bedded down for the day. She’s not interested in hunting them, though; she turns and faces me, tongue lolling out, happy, and then begins to circle me and growl again. It’s back to fighting.

Our second tussle lasts much longer than the first, and we mess each other up pretty good. There’s no audience, no one to stop us, and it’s savage. She takes plenty of punishment and delivers it right back. We stagger away, bleeding like lambs, both trying to give the impression that we’re ready for more, but in truth we’re maybe ready for a break. We’re panting, too concerned with breathing to waste anything on vocalizations, and that’s a reliable sign that we have worn each other out. She walks up to me, ears and tail up, nonaggressive, and sits down, her bloody muzzle raised to look at me. I sit too, then decide to go ahead and lie down on my right side to draw more energy for healing. She slumps over onto her left side so that we’re lying in the meadow facing each other.

I hurt in places I didn’t know were places. Somewhere, Siodhachan had picked up a binding to shut off pain, and he taught it to me, but I don’t use it now. Greta doesn’t have a binding like that. It wouldn’t be fair.

Gradually our breathing slows and our eyelids grow heavy. I see hers flutter closed a couple of times before mine do the same.

I awake later to popping and crunching noises as she shifts back to human form. We lost a few hours, judging by the sun, and I feel warm and much better when I shape-shift myself.

“Thank you,” Greta says. “I needed a good fight.”

I lack skills for expressing emotions other than anger and impatience. I feel them quite often but rarely communicate them. All I manage to say is, “Me too.”

Her eyes trail down my body. “You heal well.”

“A good thing, that is. So do you.”

“Ready to go back?”

We walk to where we left our clothes—a decent hike, during which she talks a lot and I grunt in all the right places and try to
think of something appropriate to say. I’m uncertain if she wants to see me again. I still think our time together might be more about her past than about a present attraction. Her rate of speech might indicate her own nervousness about where we go from here, but, if so, why exactly is she nervous? Is it a sign that she likes me and wants to share everything, or is it a desperate bid to fill the time so that I won’t ask to turn a dalliance into something more?

She finally stops talking when we reach our clothes, yet I’m not ready with anything to say. I must look as scared as I feel, because, after we’re dressed, she examines my face for a few moments and then smiles in an attempt to put me at my ease.

“Thanks for listening to me ramble on,” she says. “You’re quite good at it.”

I have never been accused of being a good listener before. It was probably a result of my discomfort with the language. Or else it emphasized how much this jump forward in time has changed me.

Greta throws up her hands and lets them fall back down to slap against her legs. “This was fun.”

“Well—yes. It was.” Unexpected and very welcome fun.

“I know you have to go now, but feel free to visit again.” She comes closer until her nose almost touches mine. Light dances in her blue eyes. “You know. If you’re free. And if you feel like it.”

“I will.” I nod at her, relieved at the invitation. “I like you.” Gods below, you’d never think I came from a family of bards. If me uncle had heard me say that shite he would have taken me balls because I wouldn’t be needing them anymore.

“Good. Let’s leave it at that.” She kisses me quickly on the mouth and heads for the car, with me standing there stunned. She’s almost out of sight before I can compose a sentence.

“Balance and blessings go with ye!” I call after her. She doesn’t answer, but I’m sure she hears me.

I shake my head, trying to clear it. I desperately need to find me own balance. I have so much catching up to do.

First on the list is catching up in Tír na nÓg, because I can speak Old Irish there and not sound like I took a hammer to me skull.

The elemental tells me to run toward Woods Canyon Lake, where Siodhachan has tethered a tree. He said he’d spent hundreds of years tethering the world to Tír na nÓg, back when kings were grinding their people to early deaths and using priests to tell them it was the plan of their god and it was not their place to question. It kept him busy and away from Aenghus Óg in the short term, but in the long term it ensured that he’d always have somewhere to run if anyone else came after him. If I had to point to one thing he’s done that’s a hundred percent good, that project would be it.

My thinking is that I need to be training Druids again—it’s me mission, really—but it will be quite some time before there are enough of us to matter. In the meantime, this ability to travel around the entire world instead of just to Europe will make our wee numbers as effective as possible.

When I find the proper tree, I shift directly to a place on the edge of the Fae Court. It’s nighttime there, and no one is around except for a few guards. One of them, a flying faery dressed in some kind of silver and green bollocks, yells at me to state my business. My patience disappears right away.

“Why don’t ye state yours first?” I says.

“I’m doing my assigned duty, guarding the Court.” He draws a sword on me and opens his mouth to demand my business again, but I interrupt him.

“From what, I might ask? Are ye afraid someone will drop their pants and water the grass? There’s nothing to guard, lad. It’s a meadow!”

“Someone could craft an ill binding while no one is looking. And sometimes messengers arrive at all hours from other planes. Now, who are you?”

“I’m the man who’s wondering who taught ye to talk like that. Are ye serious, lad—‘ill binding’? The Fae used to be a proud folk who spoke plainly and dressed sensibly. Now look at ye!”

He points the sword at me. “State your business or be gone!”

“My business is with Brighid, First among the Fae. I’m a Druid of Gaia long gone from the world, here to announce my return.”

He shrinks back. “A Druid? Not the Iron Druid?” That physical reaction to the mere idea of Siodhachan tells me an epic or two. Me apprentice was right: He wasn’t popular here at all. As much as I hated to admit it, it would be best to take his suggestion and pretend I didn’t know him.

“No, lad, I’m fresh out of iron, and mixing iron with Druidry sounds dumber than having a swim with the Blue Men of the Minch. Would you let Brighid know I am here, or let someone else know who will then speak to her?”

“I require your name to do that.”

“Eoghan Ó Cinnéide.”

“Wait at the foot of her throne. She will receive you there when she is ready.” He uses his sword to indicate an iron chair on a small mound of dirt.

“Fine.” I brush past him and prepare myself for a long wait. I’m sure it’s hours until daylight and Brighid might take her time waking up. I plant myself in front of the throne, legs crossed, and take off me shirt so that the tattoos will be plainly visible to anyone who wishes to check me out in the dark. It won’t reveal anything except that I’m telling the truth about being a Druid.

Less than an hour has passed, I’m guessing, when an orange globe of fire drops from the sky into the iron throne, startling me. A wall of it spreads out from the impact and I roll backward, away from the heat. When I look back, Brighid is sitting on the throne, and the small hill is circled by a ring of fire. She is dressed simply in a belted blue tunic and wears a golden torc around her neck.

“I am told you are Eoghan Ó Cinnéide,” she says.

“Yes.”

“I can see that you are bound to the earth, so you are who you say you are. My son, Goibhniu, tells me that you spent two millennia on one of the Time Islands.”

“Yes.”

“He also says it was the Morrigan who put you there and Siodhachan Ó Suileabháin who removed you. Will you tell me why?”

“I’ve been entrusted with a message from the Morrigan in the event of her death. She told Siodhachan where to find me, knowing that he would bring me back into the normal flow of time.”

“Then we have much to talk about.”

“Aye, Brighid, we do.”

Perhaps deities spend more time talking things over in whatever realm they reside. I have noticed, though, that once they are on earth, they have a very specific to-do list and waste no time getting to it. It’s disorienting to go from passive observation to full battle in the space of a few seconds, with no time to discuss objectives or strategy or tactics. I have to scramble to take up a position on the left side, and Laksha brings up a very tardy flank on the right. When Durga and her lion meet the vanguard of the rakshasas, I understand the true meaning of Shakti, a divine weapon. The demons are bowled over as the lion keeps plowing through them and Durga lays about her with her weapons, tossing some of the demons into the air and crushing others, cutting and spearing and painting the air and ground with blood and viscera.

For a second I feel entirely superfluous; Durga can surely take care of everything by herself. But the rakshasas keep pouring out of the house as fast as she slays them. A growing roar from behind me earns a glance, and I see that another army is advancing
from the city. The raksoyuj has called all the rakshasas back to defend him, giving the city a respite from ruin while giving us a significant problem.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Laksha spread her hands in front of her and fall forward into the dirt, lifeless. She wasn’t hit by anything, so I presume she’s left the woman’s body and intends to do battle in the ether, working her way through the rakshasas until she gets to my father. I hope the woman has the good sense to stay down and play dead, or she won’t have long to enjoy the sole possession of her faculties.