Besieged: Stories from the Iron Druid Chronicles(3)

“That doesn’t sound all that great to me.”

“Yes, it does. And besides, you are bored. You are, what, more than three hundred years old now? Living with the Visigoths for the last five?”

“They’re charming people and impressive open-air cooks. They know how to roast a rabbit on a spit, let me tell you. And they share amusing stories about their sex accidents.”

“Pfahh. You yearn for more than this, Siodhachan. You stole Fragarach from Conn of the Hundred Battles. You absorbed the most powerful herblore of Airmid and keep it close to your heart. You cannot tell me you are satisfied to live life as a drear pastoral, that you are content with all you know and will never seek to know more.”

“That may all be true. But that does not mean I am anxious to seek my death in Alexandria for your benefit, Ogma, begging your pardon.”

“It is for your benefit too, as I said. And if you do this for me, Siodhachan, I will owe you a favor. That is currency of far more value than any Roman coin.”

He spoke Truth with a capital T there. When a god says he’ll owe you a solid, unspecified, bona fide favor, you need to take time to consider whether you might not be passing up the opportunity of a lifetime. Or indeed something that might preserve your life later on: Some favors, called in at the right time, might equal a Get Out of Death Free card. Though it was clear that Ogma would not be around to get me out of any problems in Alexandria. Whatever he considered to be so deadly there would be doubly so for me.

“I’m not agreeing yet,” I told him, “but you have my attention at least. Tell me more. What am I after, where do I find it, and what’s in my way?”

Ogma smiled as victors do, drank deeply, and refilled both our cups before answering.

“There is a sealed room of treasures beneath the library, similar to the burial chambers of pharaohs in their pyramids. Inside there are some scrolls and even a few bound books. There may be some scepters and the like, remarkable for their power more than their beauty. I want a bundle of four scrolls sealed in a lacquered box marked with the eye of Horus. You are familiar with that symbol?”

“Yes. But it’s fairly common, isn’t it? There might be many such boxes.”

“There are not.”

“If the room is sealed, how do you know that?”

“The Tuatha Dé Danann have their own all-seeing eyes.”

“Ah. The Morrigan?”

“Indeed.”

“What’s so special about these scrolls?”

The god of languages shrugged. “I can’t be sure until I read them.” A transparent evasion that meant he’d rather not tell me.

“Who built the room and sealed it, then?”

“Whoever built it is no doubt dead. But at least part of it is supposed to be the private hoard of the Egyptian goddess Seshat.”

“I’m not familiar with her.”

“Goddess of writing and preserving knowledge.”

“Ah. Preserving knowledge. I imagine in this case she’s preserving it from would-be thieves.”

“Yes. You may reasonably expect some curses.”

“Such as?”

“I have no idea.”

I threw up my hands. “This chamber is underground and sealed in dead, quarried stone, right? I’ll be cut off from Gaia and essentially powerless. I don’t see how it can be done.”

Ogma nodded at me, offering a small smirk. He’d anticipated the objection. “I have something that will help with that, at least.”

He reached into the folds of his tunic and withdrew a golden torc etched in knotwork. “I worked with Brighid on this.”

“Brighid is involved?”

“Yes. She wants to see those scrolls as well.” He handed the torc to me. “That has some energy stored inside that you can draw upon.”

I traced my finger along some of the knotwork. “Are these wards?”

“They are. Broad-spectrum protection against a few classes of Egyptian curses that we’ve seen before.”

“When?”

“In antiquity. Shortly after the Tuatha Dé Danann were bound to Gaia in response to the death of the Saharan elemental.”

“Oh. That makes sense.”

“We came to restore what order we could and bind the dispersed free magic back to the Nile, if nothing else. The Egyptian pantheon was … less than welcoming. These wards allowed us to escape alive. They won’t deflect the curses entirely, but they should reduce their severity.”

“What are you not telling me? Did someone die back then?”

“Of course. We could not have devised wards if we had not seen their curses in effect first.”

“So even though you have this, you won’t go fetch the scrolls yourself. Why?”

Ogma pointed to the torc. “Those wards worked thousands of years ago. But they might have new curses now.”

I exhaled audibly and shook my head. “This is going to be a pretty huge favor you’re going to owe me. What bewilders me is that it’s even something to be risked. Why bother writing down something they don’t want anyone else to know? Why not simply keep the secrets in an oral tradition, like we do?”

“Shared knowledge can weigh heavy in the scales of power,” he replied, and I have seen the truth of it since. “Controlling what you want shared is always the issue, and writing down nothing is the most extreme method of control. But while this preserves our secrets, it also limits our ability to spread our wisdom, does it not? Think of this new religion being spread from Jerusalem called Christianity. They have written down some stories about this Jesus fellow and are spreading it around much faster than we can spread the tenets of Druidry. Few people can read, but his priests hold up some pages and say, ‘Christ will return! It is written,’ and people accept it as truth. I fear what will happen when these priests appear in Ireland. There are mysteries in the written word as well as the spoken one. Think on it, Siodhachan.”