“What about her?” I murmured.
“Jennifer Ruidera.” He pronounced “Ruidera” like “Rivera,” but with a D sound.
“What does she do?”
“You don’t want to find out. And call her Jenn.”
My luck with women named Jennifer wasn’t exactly great, so “Jenn” would work just fine.
Behind the pair stretched a camp. People walked back and forth, some naked, some clothed, most painted. Weapons waited in racks. The magic was so thick that if it were fog, we wouldn’t be able to see past three feet. Here was hoping there were no wicker men present, because if they tried to sacrifice someone or something by burning them alive, I wouldn’t be able to sit on my hands, professional relationship or not.
Drest met my gaze. “You said Neig.”
“Yes.”
He looked at Jenn. She shrugged. “Anything is possible.”
Two men joined us, one old and stooped, wearing an ankle-length tunic, his white beard stretching down to his waist. The other was in his thirties and looked like he got his exercise by tossing cows into the air for fun.
Roman bowed. I did, too.
Drest held up one finger to us and turned to the old man. “This woman says she spoke with Neig.”
“Ah?” the old man asked.
“Neig!” Drest repeated.
“I can’t hear you. Stop mumbling.”
Drest sucked in a lungful of air. “SHE SAYS SHE SPOKE TO NEIG!”
People stopped what they were doing and stared at us. Drest waved them off.
“Neig?” The old druid peered at him. “Oh, that’s not good.”
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.”