Shattered: The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Seven (15 page)

she says.

For the record: Cooking a frozen animal on a spit in a frozen yeti cave while you’re thinking about freezing takes a really long time. And all of it is time I do not feel I can afford while my father is possessed and people are dying in Thanjavur.

But it does give me the opportunity to review what I have seen. According to what Atticus told me, the yeti have been around for centuries. The bacon I brought ensures they will live yet longer. But what do they do for fun? Aside from carving the occasional ice sculpture and playing the odd fidchell game, how do they not go mad—especially when one considers that they’re siblings? I saw no reading material in my exploration of the cave. No card games. No evidence of The Settlers of Catan. Maybe they spend most of their time out of the cave, frolicking in the snow, animating snowmen and playing war games with them. That would be pretty fun, honestly. If I had their talents,
I’d make a giant snow berserker and call him Snowdor. He’d have a Chill Blade of Harrowing and Hoarfrost Armor of Eternal Winter and—sweet gods below, I never should have let Atticus get me into gaming. But sometimes, when taking a break from my training, we’d fire up the PlayStation and slay digital monsters for a few hours, and inevitably it had colored my thinking.

I force myself to stop daydreaming of the ass-whupping Snowdor would deliver to his icy enemies, but because I still need something to distract myself from worrying that this delay will doom my father, I work with Orlaith on forms of the verb
to be
. I’ve noticed she often leaves it out of her sentences. I think we’ve scored a breakthrough when her ears perk up and she says, is
coming!>

I clap a couple of times and say, “You are such a smart hound! You did that very well!”

is
coming. Real. Now.>

“Oh! I think we should go behind the table, in case they get angry at trespassers.” I suddenly feel like Goldilocks caught eating porridge when the three bears come home. Perhaps I should update the old tale to “Redhead and the Five Yeti.”

I grab Scáthmhaide and hurry behind the table, the only available cover in the hall should the yeti throw or shoot before talking. With that in mind, I start to talk—yell, really—in Old Irish, so that they won’t be surprised by my presence.

“Welcome home! I come from Manannan Mac Lir to bring you bacon! I am Granuaile MacTiernan, a Druid of Gaia! Please come in and warm yourselves! I have a fire going!”

Orlaith reports.

I repeat my friendly greeting and hope it carries well enough to be understood. We are some distance away and catercorner from the exit now, so there is a small sort of foyer outside my vision into which the yeti can step without my seeing them. I still know when they do, however, because the ambient light from outside darkens perceptibly, indicating the presence of something huge blocking it.

A flurry of snow blows into the room, some of it hissing and melting as it drifts near the fire pit, and then a solid mass of snow above eye level moves cautiously around the corner. A half-moon peeks around the stone.

“Hello!” I say. “Well met!” And I reiterate that I’m a Druid sent by Manannan Mac Lir, father of the yeti. I hold up the paper-wrapped package of bacon, then toss it gently onto the table.

The figure that steps out of the entrance and into my view appears to be my daydream of Snowdor come to life. It is an almost shapeless goliath of white powder, humanoid in figure but lacking features—except for the significant fact that it stands close to eight feet tall. It holds still, perhaps waiting to see if I will attack, and when I do not, its head turns slightly to take in the fire nearby.

“Oh, yes, sorry about that,” I say. “We didn’t know when you would return, and we were cold and hungry. I will of course replace all the wood and game that we used.”

The head turns back to me, and then a transformation begins. The figure remains still but sheds mass, as snow flies away from it like full-body dandruff at the mercy of gale-force winds. The snow escapes out the side of the mountain, leaving in its wake the true form of the yeti. It’s not as bulky and not quite as tall, but it is still the progeny of a frost giantess—and I use the pronoun
it
only because I don’t know if I’m looking at a male or female. My immediate guess is that it’s a male, because of the thicket of white fur dangling from the cheeks on down. It can’t be called a beard, can it, when the hair on the face is of the same thickness and consistency as the rest of the, uh, pelt? Maybe I should call it a mane. Its … well, let’s say
his
mane is gathered, braided, and looped through little circles of solid frosted ice, partly in a practical fashion to keep his nose and mouth clear of hair, but partly in an aesthetic arrangement that makes his face and neck wink with blue reflected light. Above the cheeks, the skin is a pale blue around deep-set dark eyes. The brow is white-furred, as is the forehead and all else, save the lips, palms, and
tips of the fingers, which are also pale blue. He doesn’t have claws, but he does hold an exquisite knife in his right hand—no doubt the ice knife I had come to find.

Shaped like the khukuris employed by the Gurkhas of Nepal, it looks heavy and larger than something that could creditably be called a mere knife. It’s a knife that deserves modifiers like
damn big
or even
huge fucking
. And unless it’s a trick of the firelight, it shines from within along the top of the blade. The blade itself is a translucent blue along the cutting edge, frosted opaquely on the flat, but along the blunt edge it’s clear and smolders with a disturbing, unnatural red. I privately note that he had hidden it completely in snow until he saw I did not intend to attack.

He doesn’t trust me, however. He doesn’t smile and say howdy or welcome or gosh I’m glad you got dinner started. Instead, in a low thrum of a voice, he says in Old Irish, “Prove you are a Druid.”

He can’t see most of my tattoos, since I’m wearing a coat, but I show him the back of my right hand so that he can see the healing circle and the triskele.

“That is only ink. It is not proof. Remain where you are, but summon a piece of this wall to your hand.” He points to the wall behind him, the one opposite me. I nod at him, acknowledging the request, but hold up a hand, palm out, asking him to wait.

“Okay, I’ll need to remove my shoe.”

I have some energy stored in the metal knots of Scáthmhaide, but I don’t want to reveal that, and the point here is to prove that I’m a Druid and bound to the earth. Despite my elevated core temperature, my toes alternately leap up and curl in their attempt to shout, IT’S COLD, DAMN YOU, as they touch the frigid stone floor. But I draw power from the Himalayan elemental, focus on a fist-sized portion of the wall opposite, and begin my unbinding. It’s odd to speak the words in front of someone who can understand them besides Atticus, but of course it’s not
the Old Irish language that makes me a Druid—it’s the binding to Gaia.

A fault line in the shape of a sphere appears, and then I bind the rock to the skin of my palm to make it fly across the room into my hand. A simple test of unbinding and binding, but not something that could be performed by many magic users apart from Druids. I hold up the baseball-sized hunk of granite for the yeti to see, and his lips spread in a satisfied grin. The teeth are somewhat sharp, but I wouldn’t characterize them as serrated razors or treacherous fangs or anything. I unbind the rock from my palm and set it down on the table.

“Good enough?” I ask. “Because I’d like to put my shoe back on before my foot freezes.”

“Yes, good enough. Welcome to our home, Druid, and thank you for making the journey. I am Skúfr Jötunson, third eldest of the yeti.” I blink in surprise at the name, and then I realize that they have followed Old Norse instead of Irish naming conventions, which makes sense, considering their mother. But instead of using a patronymic or matronymic surname, she chose to call them
giant’s son
.

“I am grateful for your welcome. Though you may have heard me shout it before, I am Granuaile MacTiernan, and this is my hound, Orlaith.”

She wags her tail at the introduction and says,

Yes, he seems nice, doesn’t he? But he can’t hear you
.

He has magic, but it is very different from mine
.

Skúfr waves for the others to follow, then comes farther into the room. “Come on, she’s a Druid sent by Father. Say hello.”

One by one, four more yeti come into view, the snow shedding off them and revealing their features. Most of them have ice rings about their face, but each is different from Skúfr’s.

The first to enter is as tall as Skúfr and carries a musk deer over his left shoulder, confirming that they had been out hunting.

“I am Erlendr Jötunson, the eldest. Welcome.” He has far more ice rings in his mane, so many that some of them clink against one another. “Please excuse me while I store our kill.” He moves past Skúfr to visit the freezer, and I see that his ice knife has the same disturbing red glow to it.

The third yeti introduces herself as Hildr Jötunsdotter, second eldest. There is nothing in her voice to indicate that she is female, nor do I see any physiological differences. Whatever the yeti have or don’t have swinging between their legs, it’s hidden behind a curtain of white fur, and Hildr, at least, has no breasts bigger than those of her brothers. Hildr’s mane decoration falls between Erlendr’s and Skúfr’s, and I hypothesize that the number of braids and the complexity of their grooming is a marker of age as much as personal preference.

The fourth yeti, also fourth eldest, lends some weight to the idea. He has only two braids on either side of his face, and he introduces himself as Ísólfr Jötunson.

The last to enter is both the smallest and the youngest, with only a single braid on either side of her mouth, simplicity itself. I bet privately that this is the Zen yeti.

“I am Oddrún Jötunsdotter,” she says. She’s a full head shorter than her siblings but still towers over me. “Welcome. Can we offer you refreshment?”

“Yes, that would be great,” I say, suddenly aware of my thirst. I had brought a canteen, but the water inside was a solid block of ice now.

“We have mead and water,” Oddrún says.

I request mead for me and water for Orlaith. Oddrún asks Ísólfr to take care of Orlaith’s needs, while she takes long strides across to my side of the room, stopping in front of the counter where the stoneware rests. She lays her ice knife on the counter next to the plates and then squats down and pulls aside a panel of stone, revealing a hidden cupboard that I might have discovered had I looked any closer. She retrieves a small cask of mead and a mug of horn, then slides the stone panel closed. While she’s working on pouring me some mead, my eyes are drawn to
Ísólfr, who has put his knife down on the far counter and extended his right hand, palm up, toward the cave entrance. As I watch, a flurry of snow flies into the space above his palm and hovers above it like an upside-down tornado. More snow keeps coming in, feeding it, and the bottom of the funnel begins to pack together and solidify, then harden into a bowl of ice, which clarifies until it is largely transparent but with swirls of decorative white flurries in it. Snow fills the bowl, then Ísólfr waves his left hand over it and it melts to clear water.

“Your hound will need to drink this before it freezes again,” he says.

We move out from behind the table, and he puts the bowl down in front of Orlaith while Oddrún offers me a mug of mead. It’s delicious to an almost unbelievable degree, and I wonder aloud where it came from.

Hildr grins and answers me. “Father buys it from Goibhniu and sends it to us.”

Orlaith laps up her fill, and the yeti invite me to sit at the table. Erlendr returns from the freezer as I seat myself, and I remember that I should be paying attention to the food.

“I will take over cooking,” the eldest yeti says, picking up the package of bacon. “Thank you for bringing this. I’ll be right back.”

He disappears again, and the four remaining yeti sit at the table with me, once they all fill their own mugs of horn with Goibhniu’s mead. Orlaith lies down next to my chair, and my head spins a bit over how strange and wonderful my life is now. I am drinking mead with the yeti in the Himalayas. And they’re very polite hosts.

But not especially talkative. They all look at me, expectant, but I am not sure what they’re waiting for.

It turns out to be Erlendr. They must not have wanted him to miss anything, for Hildr speaks as soon as he returns carrying an armful of wood. “We have never met a Druid aside from our father. Always he sends one of the Fae when he cannot come himself, and he has not visited us in person for more than a hundred
years. Does your presence here mean that the secret of our existence is now known in Tír na nÓg?”

“No, you are still very much a secret,” I say, “but I have been let in on it. I confess I have come with hopes that you could help me.”

The yeti exchange glances, and then it is Oddrún who speaks next. “We could use some help as well. Perhaps we could exchange aid. What is it that you require?”

“I need an ice knife.”

Skúfr snorts. “That is all?” His hand shoots toward the cave entrance, much as Ísólfr’s had when making a bowl for Orlaith, and in a few seconds he summons snow and shapes it into a serrated knife, similar to the kind you’d find in a steakhouse. He lays it on the table with the handle facing me. “Done.”

“No, that’s not what I meant. I need a knife like yours. One that won’t ever melt.”

They all lean back, and Erlendr, who was inspecting the musk deer on the spit, whips his head around to stare at me. I fear I might have crossed a line.

Seconds tick away and I remain silent, afraid that I will make it worse if I add anything else. Finally Oddrún says, “She doesn’t know what she’s asking.”

“Clearly not,” Erlendr says, and holds up his blade. “She thought this was an ice knife.” They all kind of snort in derisive unison, and this succeeds in making me feel stupid.