Drest looked like he wanted to slap himself. “Brendan, he has to wear his hearing aid when he comes to the rites.”
Brendan raised hands the size of shovels. “What do you want me to do? Sit on him and shove it into his ear? He takes it out. He says he wants to be one with nature.”
“Aha!” a male voice called out.
I turned. A man was striding toward us. Thin and painted with blue, he wore a cloak of crow feathers and carried a large black chicken.
Drest’s face drooped.
“I told you I had a vision about it,” the chicken man announced. “I told you last Thursday. I said Neig is coming. And you said, ‘Alpin, stop sacrificing your chickens. Stop putting yourself into a trance, stop looking at the entrails, and stop calling me in the middle of the night.’ You said that if I couldn’t fall asleep, I needed to drink a beer and suck it up.”
“He’s right,” Jenn said. “You need to leave those chickens alone. It’s unnatural.”
“For the last time, I don’t sacrifice chickens,” Alpin declared.
“I saw a dead chicken in your kitchen last week,” Brendan told him.
“I was going to cook it for dinner. I bought it at the market! I don’t eat my friends. I like to have them, because they help me with astral projection. Their squawking is soothing.”
Jenn dragged her hand over her face.
Roman cleared his throat.
Drest looked at him.
Roman unzipped the duffel bag and held it open for me. I took the box out.
The druids took a step back in unison. Only Jenn remained. She reached out, touched the box, and withdrew her hand.
“Open it,” Drest said.
I opened the lid.
They peered at the contents. The old druid reached out, ever so slowly, his ancient hand shaking, grasped some ash between his fingers, and let it fall back into the box. His face went slack. He looked like he was about to weep.
“It will be all right, Grandfather,” Drest said gently. “It will be all right.”
“Everything will burn,” the old man said. “He will set the world on fire.”
“No, he won’t.” Drest nodded to Brendan, and the big man gently steered the elderly druid away.
Drest turned to me. “Put it away.”
I did.
“Come with me.”
He led us deeper into the camp. “What did Neig say when you spoke to him?”
“He told me that he gave the world a break, but now he is back, and he is going to conquer it. We think he has a place outside of time, like Morrighan’s mists. We’ve had people disappear, whole settlements. Serenbe and Ruby in Milton County. He took them, killed them, and boiled them to extract their bones. Any idea why he would be doing that?”
Jenn shook her head. “No. But he is a crafty old bastard. If he’s doing that, it isn’t for anything good.”
Alpin just looked like he would collapse at any moment.
We reached the back of the camp. A big slab of rock protruded from the ground, one side polished and covered in Pictish symbols. Kudzu had climbed it, covering the top. An outline of Ireland and the British Isles was carved in the corner. Drest pointed to Ireland.
“First came the sorceress Cessair and her people. They inhabit the isle for a bit, then die out. Then comes Partholon and his people. They start farming, fishing, building houses. Then in one week they all die of plague.”
“Then comes Nemed,” I said. I had brushed up on British magic history. Most people thought it was one-tenth history, and the rest was equally myth, wishful thinking, and bullshit, but I’d read it all the same.
Roman threw me a cautious look.
“The correct name is N-e-i-m-h-e-a-d-h,” Jenn said. “When you pronounce it correctly, it sounds like . . .”
“Neig,” Drest finished.
Only Celts would use nine letters to make one sound.
“He called himself that because he wanted people to think he was holy.” Jenn sneered. “Neig of the skies. Neig the unkillable. Neig the mighty.”
Drest snorted. “He conquers Ireland and moves on to Scotland.”
“That’s not how the legend goes,” I said.
“Legends are often wrong. This isn’t legend,” Alpin said softly. “It’s our history.”
“He steals babies and turns them into his army,” Drest continued. “The Picts fight him, until he pushes them all the way to the eastern edge of Scotland. There is nowhere to go but the sea and the Scottish cliffs. So, they outsmart him. They build the standing stones. There are many kinds. Some warp the magic around them; they are the curving kind. Others sound an alarm; they are the warning kind. And so on.”
He pointed to the carvings on the surface of the stone. “The curving stones hide the villages. Neig’s troops can’t find the settlements so he can’t find the settlements, and if he does, the shielding stones give people protection long enough to escape.”
“What do the symbols mean?” I asked.
“Disc and rectangle,” Alpin said. “The settlement has a warning stone that will let others know when Neig is coming. The crescent and V-rod means the shield is holding over the settlement. Don’t fire arrows at it even if Neig is coming because they won’t pierce it. Disc and rectangle means the settlement has the sun disc to signal for help.”
They were explanatory signs. Like traffic signals. So bloody simple.
“Double disc and Z-rod?” I asked. “He signed the box with it.”
Alpin grimaced. “He picked that symbol for himself. His troops would mark things with it to remind you of what happens when you disobey him.”
“What is it?”
“Shackles,” Jenn said. “Neig doesn’t have servants. Only slaves.”
Alpin traced the outline of the symbol on the stone. “When you see it with the broken arrow, it means here Neig can’t see you. Here you are free.”
“What about this one?” Roman asked, pointing at another symbol, which looked vaguely like a flower.
“Bagpipes,” Drest said.
“What do bagpipes have to do with anything?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Bagpipes were battle music.”
“He would’ve killed everyone eventually,” Jenn told us. “But then the Fomorians invaded and kept him busy. They killed his wife. His children he either killed himself or ran off.”
“He doesn’t like competition.” Drest grimaced. “His brother tried to fight him, lost, and sailed off with his own portion of the army. They got their asses kicked somewhere in Europe. Only one ship came back.”
“What about the Tuatha Dé Danann?” I asked.
“They made a bargain with Neig,” Drest said. “Gave him tribute. By that point he’d moved on to Scotland, anyway. Bigger place. More land. He had both islands before he was done.”
“How did your ancestors beat him?” Roman asked.
“They didn’t.” Drest’s face was grim. “They outlasted him. Eventually the magic fell, and one day he disappeared. He’d clawed himself a lair outside our world and took his hoard and army with him. Occasionally, he’d raid while the magic held. You never knew when or where he’d pop out. Our people were so scared of him, they kept building curving stones centuries after he went dormant.”
“In all that time, nobody managed to get close enough to hurt him?” I asked. “I understand he has fire magic, but I fought Morfran and I met Morrighan. You’re telling me nobody could get to this guy?”
“You don’t get it,” Drest said.
“Show her,” Jenn told him.
Drest touched the kudzu. It rolled back, creeping up and over. The stone lay bare. I looked at the carving in the top of it. My insides went cold.
“Neig isn’t a man,” Alpin said softly.
“He is a dragon,” I whispered.
A colossal dragon reared up on the battlefield, the figures of fighters tiny next to him. A cone of churning flame tore out of his mouth, disintegrating the palisade.
That was whom I’d felt in the clouds above me. That was why he’d tried to kill Yu Fong. Goose bumps ran up my arms.
“But his magic is blue,” I said. “Like a human.”
“All dragon magic is blue,” Alpin said.
“Everyone knows that,” Jenn said.
“Neig will never find us,” Drest told me. “We have curving stones. But you, you’re fucked.”
* * *
? ? ?
ROMAN AND I didn’t talk until we reached the city.