Shattered: The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Seven (25 page)

“This might be an unrealistic request, but can you remember any details of that prayer and to which gods you prayed?”

“Oh, absolutely, that’s no problem.” Maybe the caffeine was speeding up her memory access as well as her speech. “I prayed more than once. Nine times, actually, to a group of nine gods.”

“Why nine?”

“It’s a magic number—”

“—Amongst the Tuatha Dé Danann,” I finished with her.

“I prayed for your deliverance and guidance in accordance with their divine will,” Rebecca said.

“Exactly that? I mean, you didn’t ask for anything more specific? And thank you, by the way.”

“You’re welcome. I’m fairly certain that was it.” That would allow the gods to work together but give them freedom to do whatever they wished. Remembering the second part to my question, Rebecca continued, “And I prayed to Jesus, Ganesha, Odin, Inari, Buddha, Guanyin, Shango, Perun, and Brighid.”

“Brighid? No shit?” I said. “That is so
very
interesting.”

More than interesting, actually. As the implications filtered through my head, it was more like world-rocking. If Brighid had known about all this since Rebecca had prayed twelve years ago, then the First among the Fae had never been fooled by my fake death at all. On the contrary, she’d played me. Again. She had stood there in the Fae Court, pretending to be outraged as she said, “I was told you died twelve years ago,” but that is a very different thing from “I
thought
you died twelve years ago.”

And it wasn’t just Brighid who had allowed me to feel more clever than I really was. Perun had been watching over me in
person while pretending that I was doing
him
a favor. When I first met him before the raid on Asgard, he gave me a fulgurite to protect against Thor’s lightning. And when Coyote had assumed my shape to allow a group of thunder gods to “kill” me and thus give me time to train Granuaile in peace, Shango had gleefully joined in the slaughter, knowing it wasn’t me all along. Damn. Filthy godses are tricksy, Precious.

Seeing that I was more than a little gobsmacked, Rebecca said, “Oh, I can see that nearly made your head explode. I’m dying to know why you asked and what’s going on, but I don’t want to be rude, and, besides, I have a customer.” She excused herself to tend to a tiny, lost-looking man hovering near the register with a couple of books.

As I viewed the past through these new lenses, the most shocking revelation was Odin’s involvement. Exactly when—and why—had he agreed to participate in my deliverance and guidance? Because, unless I was mistaken, he had to have known about this prior to my invasion of Asgard with Leif Helgarson and others. He lost Thor, Heimdall, Ullr, and Freyr that day, not to mention Sleipnir on my previous solo raid, when he’d tried to kill me. Perhaps he could not have known in advance who would die during that encounter, but he definitely accepted it afterward. Why? What did he and the other gods hope I would accomplish that was worth all that?

With a sense of dizziness, I realized that I was but a single piece on a very large chessboard and that these gods had been pushing me around while I thought I was exercising free will. I immediately berated myself for sloppy thinking, because of course I
had
been using free will—they were just supremely skilled at influencing and predicting my decisions. But if I wanted to run a tad further with the chess metaphor, I had two questions: Who were the gods playing against, and how close were we to the endgame?

I know that time continued to tick away after my father died, but it’s difficult to put a figure on how much of it passed before I became aware of anything besides the ruin of his body. It may have been only seconds, or it may have been minutes. Orlaith brought me back.

My father is gone
.

I clutch at her words, desperate to find anything that might distract me from the horror I’d just witnessed.
Did you know your father?

Yes, I am very sad now, Orlaith
.

That tears my eyes away. Durga’s lion lies to my right, surrounded
by the blackened bodies of the
asuras;
he is alive but wounded. The devi herself is behind me, dancing gracefully through scores of fallen enemies and pursuing the last few rakshasas, demoralized now that the raksoyuj no longer holds sway over their actions. Durga’s weapons flash—Indra’s thunderbolt most visible among them as it continues to flicker and torch fleeing targets—and I can tell it will not be much longer before she has slain them all.

I look down at Fuilteach, still gripped tightly in my left hand, its soul chamber glowing blue and a thin film of my father’s blood along the cutting edge—almost the sum of his remains now. All that time and effort wasted. If I had a rakshasa in front of me now, I would have no trouble splintering its soul with the tip.

“Whoa,” I say aloud, recognizing the anger rising. Carefully, purposefully, I sheathe the whirling blade and then use my left hand for a much better purpose—petting Orlaith. I dispel her camouflage so that she’ll be a little more comfortable; there is no immediate threat now. My eyes mist over as I glance back at the small pile of ash that represents the end of Donal MacTiernan.

“I’m so sorry, Dad,” I say, and before the emotions overwhelm me again, I shake my head and assign myself a task. “I need to understand how this went so wrong, Orlaith. Help me find Laksha?”

Orlaith leads me over a field of hewn and battered bodies, some of them cooked from lightning, and it’s only thirty yards before I can no longer contain my nausea. I retch until my stomach is empty, then signal Orlaith that it’s okay to continue.

Laksha—or, rather, the body of the nameless woman whose son we saved—is still facedown in the field. When I turn her over and check for a pulse, I find none. She is dead, though there is no apparent cause. Perhaps Laksha did it, or perhaps one of the multitudes of rakshasas did it before Durga destroyed them.

My eyes flick down to the ruby necklace, Laksha’s focus and onetime home. Perhaps it is her home again.

“Laksha, are you in there? We have to talk. It’s safe now.”

I get no response, no silky Tamil accent echoing in my ears. It occurs to me that if Laksha had been near my father, floating in the ether about his head when Durga struck, she might have been killed in the same firestorm. She said that she was a thing of the ether like the raksoyuj, and what killed him could have killed her too. Gritting my teeth, I remove the ruby necklace and put it in my pocket, feeling abandoned by everyone save my hound.

“Druid,” a voice says.

Looking up, I see Durga standing before me. I must have lost some more time, dwelling in shock. Her weapons are gone. She holds a conch shell in one hand, a lotus blossom in another. The others are empty but held out in different gestures that I know are significant, because I’ve seen them in art before, but I don’t know what they mean. Her third eye is closed, and her normal ones are pools of serenity.

“I know that man was your father,” the devi says. “But there was no earthly way to sunder the sorcerer from him, short of death.”

Thinking that she cannot possibly possess all the facts, I protest, “I have a knife forged of water magic. I thought if I cut him at the proper chakra points, then it would have …”

I trail off when the devi shakes her head. “Wishful thinking. It would have annoyed him—it did annoy him—but it would not have worked. The raksoyuj bound himself very tightly so that he could not be killed without also killing his innocent host. Your father was a victim, but I was the target.”

“Why?”

“We were very old enemies.”

“So Laksha lied to me about the water magic?”

“No. The witch thought she spoke truth. And against a lesser spirit she would have been correct; the knife would have worked.”

The words are no comfort to me. “Is she dead too?”

The slightest twich of one of the devi’s hands indicates the necklace in my pocket. “She dwells in the rubies. Weakened but alive.”

I cannot hold back my question any longer, impertinent though it might be. “Why did you let it go on for so long? All those people who died in Thanjavur …”

“Yes. Refusing to kill one innocent man—your father—meant the death of many others. Innocents would have died regardless of my action or inaction. Do you wish to judge me?”

I look down at her feet. “No.”

“There were other paths by which this could have been avoided. I hoped we would walk along one of those. But it was not to be.”

“What other paths?”

“Do not torture yourself with what might have been. You may have occasion to wonder at the weapons I brought with me today and the shape of the
asuras
, but the choices of the past cannot be changed. Know this: Your father is free of the raksoyuj. And all the answers he sought in his life, he has them now. One day, so shall you.”

“He knows
why
?”

“Yes, he knows that too. Go now, Druid. I must cleanse this place.”

Unsure of what to do but feeling that some gesture of respect is needed, I clasp my hands together and bow.

“I wish you peace, Durga.” It feels inadequate, but she accepts it.

“You have my blessing,” she replies, and these are not empty words, for I take a breath and the roiling inside me calms down somewhat.

Come on, Orlaith
.

Yes, let’s do that
.

With my mouth pressed tightly together and with tears leaking out of my eyes, I run with Orlaith to the road first and then
head north toward the tethered banana grove. As soon as we turn, a great thump in the air heralds the ignition of the battlefield, a cleansing fire erasing all evidence of what occurred. I do not stay to observe, but I imagine that anything that didn’t burn got swept up into the sky, like at the end of
Raiders of the Lost Ark
. The privilege of Druids, I suppose, is that we get to witness the works of deities on earth without our faces melting afterward. Our bond to the earth sets us apart from the rest of humanity.

Yet I am humbled by the limits of power. We all seek it, and there is no denying I have found a goodly measure. But no gift of Gaia could have saved my father, and in the end, no weapon crafted by the Tuatha Dé Danann or the yeti could set him free. And, yes, I will write it down, for it should be written: Never in my life did I possess the power to make him love me more than he loved his work.

Perhaps that was the power I sought all along. I suspect that many of us, if given the chance to make one person in our lives love us more, would have no trouble in choosing where to point a finger. We are all needy, all vulnerable, all terrified that perhaps that person has an excellent reason to withhold affection. We shape our purposes to make ourselves worthy and often do not see until much later how it was love—or perhaps the lack of it—that both picked us up and dropped us off at crossroads.

I can see what happened to me now. Before I knew what Atticus was, I could have become a witch like Laksha. She would have taught me. She had offered without me ever asking. But I asked her what other sorts of magic existed and learned of Druids. And when Laksha spoke of earth magic, I knew that was what I wanted. The mysteries of the earth—that stuff my father was always digging up—I would master it. Master it and say, “See, Dad? I’m worth your notice after all.” Always was, really.

But that was a fantasy. He would have noticed me, all right, but only as he would have noticed a fabulous new excavation tool. Love can and does push the levers of power, yet there is no power that can force one to love another. It is a thing freely given
and just as freely accepted or rejected. It is by degrees of love that we wither or blossom—and I suspect that this holds true in both the giving and receiving.

I run faster, hoping the exertion will purge the poison building anew in my mind. I know about the stages of grief and that the second one, anger, is trying to assert itself—it’s difficult to linger in denial when I saw my father die and had its reality confirmed by a goddess. I fear what anger might make me do—what I’ve already thought of doing—especially with the power at my command. Yes, it is by our loves and hatreds that we are shaped and manipulated.

Gasping for breath—I draw no power from the earth, craving the exhaustion—I remind myself that, though my father is gone, I cannot wither now. I am loved by Atticus and Orlaith and by Gaia herself, and with such nourishment as that, I cannot choose but blossom.

And how can I bear to see another wither if it is in my power to help her be whole again? Yes, there is someone I can help—that is a power I
do
have. My mother has thought me dead for twelve years. But the very good reasons we had for faking my death are moot now, and I can’t stand the thought of her enduring the pain of that deception for another second. I will go to her and say, “Mother, I am home, and I love you. Please forgive me and hold me and make me hot chocolate like you used to. With extra marshmallows.” So many fucking marshmallows—like, a tide of them that completely hides the cup underneath a tiny mountain of puffy white lumps of sugar.