“He was as good as his word—he brought Étaín to Tara. But he also brought forty-nine other women whom he had enchanted to look just like Étaín. He presented the fifty women to King Eochaid and said, Go ahead, dude, choose your wife.
“The High King chose one and they had a kid together, and for a minute you think, aww, how nice, a royal successor and a happily-ever-after! But Midhir returned after a year and a day and said, ‘So, King Eochaid, how do you like your wife?’ And Eochaid replied that he was vastly pleased. That’s when Midhir crushed him forever. He said, ‘Did you know that Étaín was pregnant when we took wing together all those years ago? She gave birth to a daughter—your daughter, though the child was never told this. And it was she whom you chose, in the likeness of her mother, to be your queen. You are now married to your own daughter and have lain with her and brought forth issue with her. And you have given me Étaín once again. So you are paid for trifling with the Tuatha Dé Danann.’”
<Auggh! You didn’t say it was going to be gross!> Oberon said.
“Yeah, Atticus, I’m with the hound on this one,” Granuaile said. “Turbo ew, okay?”
“Why are you blaming me?” I said. “I didn’t make it up. That is what Midhir did to the High King of Ireland.”
“Well, if that’s how it happened, I don’t like how Étaín was never given a choice. Both Midhir and Eochaid should have been kicked in the marble bag for behaving like her hoo-ha was something they could buy and sell.”
“Should you ever meet Midhir, I urge you to deliver that kick to the marble bag and tell him why,” I said, “but, again, it’s not my story. It’s an illustration of Midhir’s character and abilities. What did you learn?”
<He’s so powerful that he can turn you into a newt!>
“Well, not us—that would be a direct spell, and your cold iron talisman would protect you from that. It’s not preventing people from divining your location, but it does protect against targeted magical attacks. What I hoped you’d learn is something about how Midhir operates.”
“He’s shady,” Granuaile said. “And patient. Once he knows what he wants, he’s willing to wait to get it and will set up everything so that his victory will be assured. Not afraid to do his own dirty work either—though he hasn’t shown himself to us yet, if he’s the one behind this.”
“It’s a different situation,” I said. “He can’t afford to be directly involved. Remember that, until recent events, the Morrigan was very much in my corner. He had to tiptoe very carefully to make sure she wouldn’t discover his involvement. And there are others among the Tuatha Dé Danann who are favorably disposed toward us. Goibhniu, for one, and Manannan Mac Lir, who are powerful and influential in their own right.”
“But wait a second,” Granuaile said. “If he’s doing all this to avenge his brother’s death at your hands, shouldn’t he have been destroyed years ago when Brighid and the Morrigan did their purge? They went around putting people down after Aenghus Óg tried to take over, didn’t they?”
“Excellent point. He must have concealed his allegiance very well.”
“Unless he was never allied with Aenghus at all. If he’s Aenghus’s half brother, then he’s Brighid’s too, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“So he might have been in Brighid’s camp all along.”
“True. But if that’s the case, that would still make him antagonistic to us now, since we are not Brighid’s favorite Druids.”
“Speak for yourself,” Granuaile said. “She likes me just fine.”
I grinned, acknowledging that she had a point there. “Either way, he’s still around and could have both the means and motive to wish us harm. We need to investigate when we get the chance.”
<You know what I think? I think Brighid’s only jealous of Atticus because I’m so much smarter than her wolfhounds. And I’m more handsome by an exponential factor of shepherd’s pie.>
“What? Oberon, that doesn’t make any sense.”
<It makes perfect sense to me.>
“Do you perhaps mean pi, the mathematical symbol?”
<No, Atticus, I mean shepherd’s pie. I’m not going to confuse that with math. Shepherd’s pie is delicious and desirable, and math is not.>
My efforts over the years to instruct Oberon in basic timekeeping and other mathematical concepts had failed utterly—except in the realm of vocabulary, I suppose. He soaked that all up and spouted it out later in unpredictable combinations. He had tried, for example, to rate dry dog food on “the quotient of the beef correlation coefficient” and sausage on a “pork echelon matrix.” But he still got confused if you asked him to count beyond twenty.
“Oh, I think I see now,” I said. “You are using shepherd’s pie as a unit of measurement.”
<That’s right. It measures how awesome something is.>
“But that’s math.”
<No, it’s food. It makes perfect sense to dogs, Atticus. You’re human, so you wouldn’t understand.>
“Didn’t you use gravy in this manner before?”
<Shepherd’s pie contains a rich beef gravy. So pie is on another level than gravy, see?>
“I think so. This means that cold chicken, for example, would be a kind of gravy, while a slow-roasted tri-tip would be…?”
<A big slice of pie. Or, looked at another way, greyhounds are gravy. Poodles are pie.>
“Got it. I think you’re right, buddy,” I said. “Brighid is totally jealous.”
Granuaile and I shifted to our hooved forms and we picked up our pace again.
Chapter 9
It was unfortunate that we had no time to savor our surroundings on such a beautiful day. The mixed woods of Germany were the sort that deserved a good savoring—no, a savouring, with a British u in there for the sake of decadence, as colours are somehow more vibrant to me than mere colors. It was in the woods of Germany that big bad wolves ate grandmothers and girls who dressed in red. It was Germany that hid the gingerbread house of a witch who hungered for children to roast in her oven. And somewhere in the mountains that we were doing our best to avoid, Rübezahl still wandered with his storm harp, shaking the earth or fogging the skies as the notion took him.
We had successfully navigated northwest through farmlands and river crossings and had recently threaded the space between Bergen on the north and Celle on the south. As we headed into a lovely wooded stretch that gave way to dank moors here and there, the sun sank before us and filtered through the needled branches of evergreens.
Usually there are only two kinds of script one sees in forests: signs that warn off trespassers and hunters, and carved hearts in the trunks of trees with the initials of a couple who felt there was no more romantic thing they could do to celebrate their love than scar the local plant life. So when I saw a neat white envelope pinned to a tree, addressed to The Shakespearean Scholar in a neat calligraphic hand, I stopped to check it out and shifted to human.
“Hold up,” I called to Granuaile and Oberon. “I need to take a look at this. Stay alert.”
Granuaile shifted to human also. “What is it?” she whispered.
“A note.”
The envelope was sealed with red wax and the Old Norse word hefnd. Vengeance. The paper inside was a fine linen. There was no date or salutation or signature, just two lines from The Merchant of Venice, written with ink and quite possibly an old-fashioned quill. I read it aloud: “Thou call’dst me dog before thou hadst a cause; But, since I am a dog, beware my fangs.”