Hunted (The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Six) (30 page)

Lord Grundlebeard was overdue for a visit. He was my best lead on finding out who had orchestrated my hunting and attempted assassination. But I didn’t know his real name, and if I asked about him in Tír na nÓg he might hear of it before I could get to him. A better gamble, I decided, would be to seek out Midhir. Either he was the man behind it all anyway or he could tell me where to find Grundlebeard.

If Midhir truly was the mastermind, then I didn’t want Oberon and Granuaile along; neither of them had the magical defenses I had, and Midhir truly was the sort of magician who could turn someone into a newt. They’d be safe with Goibhniu.

Instead of shifting to our cabin in Colorado, I shifted to Brí Léith in Ireland, the old
síd
of Midhir. It’s near the modern wee village of Ardagh in County Longford. Some people call such hills “faery mounds” today, and some may even harbor a genuine superstition about them but don’t understand their true function: Every single
síd
of the Tuatha Dé Danann is an Old Way to Tír na nÓg. In fact, they are the oldest of the Old Ways.

When the Milesians defeated the Tuatha Dé Danann with their iron, they said—thinking they were clever—“We’ll split the land with you. You can have the bit of Ireland that’s underground.” The Tuatha Dé Danann said, “Okay,
fine,” though in much more heroic language. But of course they didn’t live in their barrows forever; they simply used them as the first fixed points for channeling the earth’s magic to create the plane of Tír na nÓg and bind it.

Almost all of the
síde
were filled in now, and the Tuatha Dé Danann didn’t leave enough artifacts behind to tempt archaeologists to go mucking around in them. But Ireland’s elemental, Fódhla, remembered all the interior spaces as they used to be. It would take little effort on her part to restore the interior of any
síd
. And once a
síd
recovered its original space, then a Druid looking to use the Old Way hidden inside could do so.

I wanted to do it this way rather than shift internally in Tír na nÓg to Midhir’s land. The internal tether would land me outside his castle or fortress or whatever he called his home, which would doubtless be guarded. The old
síd
, however, long abandoned and forgotten, would put me somewhere inside his walls. That’s why most of the old mounds were filled in now; the Tuatha Dé Danann didn’t want random citizens appearing by accident in their parlors. I heard it happened a few times to Aenghus Óg in recent decades, whose
síd
at Newgrange had been closed and overgrown for centuries before archaeologists reopened it in the 1960s. By utter chance, a bloke or five had stepped along the precise path to take them to Tír na nÓg, and then Aenghus had to feed the unfortunate sods to something hungry. Couldn’t have them returning and telling everyone the way to Faerie.

I took a moment to take in the view and enjoy the sun and air. It had been too long since I’d been home. Fódhla—a poetic name for Ireland in the same way Albion was for Britain, named after one of the tutelary goddesses of the isle—welcomed me back and was only too happy to restore Brí Léith to its former shape. The
surface changed only slightly, but underneath it was hollow and spacious again, and the entrance appeared on the south side of the hill. I asked Fódhla to oblige me with a small skylight at the top to provide some light in the inner chamber, and she knocked that out in a few seconds. After checking my surroundings to make sure no one was watching me, I cast camouflage on myself and ducked inside.

It took some time to discover the proper path. Every
síd
was different, and the paths were laid out in such a way that accidental passage was unlikely—but not impossible. As I looked at the ground in the magical spectrum, the path began to show up as a binding once I took the first two steps in the correct order. So there was a significant amount of shuffling to be done, because the path itself wasn’t something the elemental could help me find. I stepped and pranced around for three hours, my back and left forearm healing all the while, before a sidestep on the north side revealed the third step to me, and then the fourth, and so on. I paused to draw Fragarach and boost my speed and strength. I fully expected defenses of some kind on the other side. As I wound my way along the path, the dim ambience from the skylight faded until I was plunged into total darkness and the air cooled precipitously. I had passed through to a damp, dark chamber somewhere in Tír na nÓg, most likely a cellar on Midhir’s grounds. I froze and silently cast night vision through the silver charm on my necklace. It didn’t help me at all. There wasn’t any light to magnify.

I smelled mildew and—over a coppery tang—peat and something that reminded me of bitter almonds. The white noise of industrial earth was gone, no background hum of electronics or motors or anything of the kind. But nature was missing too: no wind or water or scurrying of tiny feet. Except that something was breathing softly nearby. Perhaps more than one something. I
couldn’t locate it; the acoustics were bizarre, and the noise seemed to echo faintly from all sides. The chamber I was in might be stone and rather large.

Slick quarried stone or tile lay underneath my feet, so I was cut off from magic here. I’d have to rely on my bear charm, and it was already draining because I’d never dispelled my camouflage. I let it go, along with magical sight, because the darkness was camouflage enough and I might need the magic for something else—and besides, the magical sight wasn’t showing me what waited there. The night vision I left active in hopes that I’d find a minuscule light source to help me survey my surroundings. Not for the first time, I wished I had some way to summon light, or even fire, the way some witches and wizards could. I’d wrap my shirt around Fragarach and use it as a torch if I could. As it was, I had no choice but to explore by touch and hope I didn’t wake whatever slumbered in the dark. Or stumble into a trap. I felt like the Inquisition victim in Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum.”

Stretching out with my left foot and feeling with my toes to make sure there was something solid underneath them, I took a slow step forward. Nothing happened, but there was progress. But when I lifted my right leg to take another step, I must have triggered a magical motion sensor, for a loud
fwoosh
announced the sudden lighting of candles all along a high shelf that circled the room—which was, in fact, circular, once I was able to focus. Though candlelight is generally quite soft, so many lighting at one time in total darkness while I had night vision on blinded me for a few moments. I dispelled the night vision and saw that I had lots of company in the room. The light also woke—and blinded—the many, many small creatures that had been sleeping on another shelf below the candles, about waist high.

They were tiny pale-green winged humanoids with
flat black eyes and mouths out of proportion to the rest of the head. Hairless and sleek, they had stumpy legs and thick, overlong arms with large, three-fingered hands. In the middle of each palm—though I couldn’t see them yet—they had another mouth. I recognized these guys. I didn’t know what their proper name was, but I called them pieholes, because they didn’t really care what they shoved into the three they had. Goibhniu claimed that these were the original tooth faeries, but I didn’t know how humanity could have possibly transformed these things into stories of kind critters that gave a damn about children’s teeth. These could never be mistaken for anything but what they were—the ravenous, swarming bastard spawn of the Dagda and something he humped one day.

I supposed many pantheons had some incurably horny figures in them, viewed by their adherents with everything from amusement to fear. For the Greeks it was Zeus and Pan; in Vedic tradition it was Indra; and for the Irish, it was the Dagda, whose reputation, like that of many pagan deities, suffered somewhat at the hands of Christian scribes. He was sometimes depicted as a rather oafish sort with an abnormally large reproductive organ. It wasn’t because he was freakishly gifted in truth; it was merely to mock and stigmatize his sexuality. To the Irish he was unequivocally good, gifted with vast powers, and his carnal proclivities represented his urge to create life rather than an aberrant personality. Sometimes the life he created was a son or daughter of extraordinary magical talent—namely, Aenghus Óg, Midhir, and Brighid. But sometimes the life he created was bloody dangerous, and over the years a vast menagerie of magical self-sustaining horrors was born. Pieholes were one of the worst, and I thought they’d been wiped out centuries ago for everyone’s safety.

Unfortunately, once they blinked a few times, the pieholes
recognized me as well: I was food and they were hungry. That bitter-almond smell was their collected shit, which ringed the base of the walls in discolored chalky mounds like mine tailings. Their wings snapped up from their backs, and their yawning mouths grumbled with a low rolling sound between a drone and a growl.

“Guys. Wait,” I said, foolishly thinking they’d listen. The warning growl stopped in unison and there was a half second of silence before they screeched and launched themselves at me, hundreds of them from all directions, hands outstretched and miniature mouths gaping with sharp, yellowed teeth.

I dropped to the ground on my right side, tossed aside Fragarach, and curled into the fetal position, managing to throw a protective left arm across the side of my face and ear. They fell upon me, and their hands latched on to whatever they could and bit down with those palm-jaws like lampreys, uncaring if it was cloth or raw meat underneath. My cold iron aura destroyed them in a puff of ashes before they could take a bite with their much larger mouths, but that didn’t stop them from tearing up two little gobbets of my flesh each and then plopping them wetly back onto my ruined skin as they expired. More of them kept coming; they weren’t quick learners. All they saw when their brothers exploded was a clearer path to dinner. Some of them chomped onto the half-masticated pieces of me that didn’t have to be torn free, but plenty more kept going for the freshest meat available. My whole left side seethed with them, a boiling mess of blood and cloth and ashes mixed with shredded muscle tissue. I triggered my healing charm and let it draw all the magic it wanted; it wasn’t the time for conservation. Even if I somehow survived the onslaught, I’d bleed out quickly if I didn’t get the wounds under control. I didn’t try to shut down the pain, because there
was no point in diverting my limited magic to comfort. The verdict on whether I lived or died would be delivered soon enough.