Kevin Hearne - Hexed

“Did any of the Tuatha Dé Danann fall?”

The Morrigan shook her head. “They were all lesser Fae to one degree or another. But they had some impressive weapons bequeathed to them by Aenghus Óg. Brighid’s new armor got a strenuous test.”

“Brighid took up arms herself?” The Tuatha Dé Danann are loath to put themselves in mortal peril when they can get someone else to die for them.

The Morrigan nodded. “Aye. And I am forced to admit she acquitted herself well. She is as fearsome a foe as she ever was.”

“So it’s all over now?”

The Morrigan shrugged. “The fighting is over, so it is as far as I’m concerned. I’m sure there’s something political going on, but that holds no allure for me. What does hold allure for me,” she narrowed her gaze and pointed at my amulet, “is that fascinating necklace of yours. We have a deal, you and I, and it is time you began to fulfill your end of it.”

Our deal was simple: I’d teach her how to make her own version of my necklace, which protected me from most magic by suffusing my very aura with cold iron, and she’d never, ever take my life. It wouldn’t save me from accidental injury or the effects of old age, but it sure was nice to know I couldn’t end violently without the Morrigan breaking her word.

“I’m perfectly happy to do so. Did you bring any cold iron?”

“Yes. A moment,” she replied, and got up to fetch the leather bag I’d seen earlier on my patio table. I cleared away the dishes and told Oberon he was the best hound a Druid could ever want.

You were extraordinarily patient this morning, and I appreciate it , I told him.

I understand completely. I’ll try to send her away as soon as I can .

I gave his head a couple of scratches as he padded by, and then the Morrigan returned. She loosed the drawstring on the bag and upended it on the table, spilling out several chunks of cold iron meteorites of varying sizes and purity. None was larger than the size of my palm.

“Which one should I use?” she asked. I sat down and picked up each one, examining them carefully.

“Well, as the wee green puppet once said, size matters not,” I replied. “At least as a raw meteorite. You want the purest amulet possible without sacrificing strength. Totally pure iron is actually weaker than aluminum, so you have to alloy it with something to give you some kind of steel. These here look like they’re mixed with iridium instead of nickel, so you’re in good shape. You can simply melt ’em down and cast them into whatever mold you like.”

“Melt them down? I beg your pardon, Druid, but doesn’t the amulet need to be cold forged?”

“No, that’s a myth of the mortals. The power of cold iron isn’t the temperature you use in forging it. A better term would be sky iron , because the power is in its alien origin.”

“Ah, I see,” the Morrigan said. “If it has no bond to this earth, it will repel or destroy magic better than iron born of Gaia.”

“Exactly,” I agreed. “Now, my amulet weighs sixty grams,” I said as I flicked it, “and that’s after I punched a hole through it to string it on my necklace.”

“Is the necklace silver or white gold?”

“Mine is silver, but you can use whatever you’d like.”

“Will the amulet be more powerful if I make it weigh more than sixty grams?”

“Yes, it grants you more protection, but it also precludes you from casting your own spells. To my mind, that’s a severe drawback. You have to find a weight that strikes a perfect balance between protection and magical flow, and for me it’s sixty grams. I don’t know if that’s a universal constant; perhaps a different weight would work best for you. But I arrived at that size after much trial and error.”

“I can have Goibhniu make an amulet for me,” she said. He was not only a brewer of magical draughts, but also the most accomplished smith of the Tuatha Dé Danann, after Brighid herself.

“Good idea.” I nodded. “Have him make as many as he can from the material you have here. At a guess, I’d think you have enough to make two at least, perhaps as many as four. I’d like to have one for my apprentice, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. I think it is good you are training Druids again. You should train more than one, Siodhachan. The world could use a strong grove.”

That was suspiciously close to a compliment for the Morrigan. She had even spoken kindly. I figured it would be dangerous to point it out, however, so I said briskly, “Thank you. If suitable candidates present themselves, I will consider it.”

The Morrigan pivoted quickly back to business. “Let us say that I have returned from Goibhniu with a cold iron amulet weighing sixty grams and a chain of silver rope. What happens next?”

“Next you have to bind the cold iron to your aura. Unless you’d rather just use it as a talisman.”

“Bah. I already know how to make those. They are only good against direct external threats, and they do nothing to your aura.”

“Right. So look at my aura. Where do you see the iron?”

The Morrigan narrowed her eyes and directed her gaze slightly above my head. “It appears like filings inside the white interference of your magic. Specks of cookies in the cream.”

“What? I had no idea you liked ice cream.”

The Morrigan’s eyes flashed red. “If you tell anyone, I’ll rip off your nose.”

“Okay, back to the aura, then. Those iron specks are actually tiny knots. I have bound the iron to my aura all over, so that when a spell targets me or locates me via aural signature, it runs into iron right away and fizzles out. You have to be scrupulous about making a good scatter pattern, so there aren’t any holes in your coverage for a spell to get through, and be so thorough that whole-body hexes cannot distinguish you from the iron. That saved my life just two days ago.”

“What happened?”

“Some German witches slapped an infernal hex on me. When it works, you simply go up in flames. But since the iron bindings in my aura are aliases that—”

“Stop. What do you mean by aliases?”

I grimaced at my own foolishness. “I apologize, Morrigan; I forgot you are unfamiliar with computer jargon. An alias is nothing more than a tiny file that points to another, larger file. It’s a proxy because it only represents the real thing rather than being the thing itself. I cannot very well walk about with an actual cloud of iron filings around me, can I? But magical proxies that point to a real cold-iron amulet are easy to live with.”

“Ingenious.”

“Thank you. When this hex hit me, instead of my body burning, the iron proxies bound to my aura directed the entire thing to my amulet.” I tapped it a couple of times for emphasis. “It heated up so quickly that it burned my skin. I would have been bacon without it, and in fact the same hex turned a local witch into cinders.”

“Remarkable,” she said. “This happened two days ago, you say?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“I received absolutely no premonition of your impending death at that time.” She shook her head slowly in fascination. “You were completely protected.”

I wondered if she thought I was completely protected against the Bacchants last night. And then I wondered if she would get any premonitions about my fate at all, now that she had agreed never to take me. “Well, the burning skin was torturous. It was like watching fifth graders trying to perform Wagnerian opera.”