Hounded

« Granuaile’s eyes bugged.
    » I just told you about twelve years of study up front and you didn’t even blink, and now you’re worried about five months? «
    » Well, this is five months of getting stabbed with a needle, right? «
    » Thorns, actually. This is very old-school. Doesn’t get much older. «
    » Yeah, see, that’s a bit different than curling up with a book and a mug of hot chocolate. «
    » But it’s necessary if you want to perform Druidic magic. It’s a ritual that binds you to the earth and allows you to tap its power. And once you’re bound to it, you will never want to do anything to harm it. Aenghus Óg might be dealing with demons these days, if Brighid’s right, but even he wouldn’t dare mess with the earth. « After I said that, it occurred to me that a man willing to deal with demons might do much worse, so I added, » I hope, « sotto voce.
    » You talked to Brighid? And who’s Aenghus Óg? You mean the old Irish love god? «
    » Yeah, him, « I said, mildly surprised and impressed that she was able to place the name, though I shouldn’t have been after she had correctly identified Airmid. » But forget I mentioned him. The point is, Granuaile, it will be more than a decade before you get to feel anything that can be called magical power. If you’re anxious to start wielding magic, Laksha might know a ritual that can get you started tonight. What kind of patience do you have? «
    » The right kind, « she said. » And I have enough. « She reached out and covered my hand with hers, giving it a gentle squeeze. » I truly want this. «
    » You said you’re twenty-two. Don’t you have a college degree already? «
    She rolled her eyes at me. » Yeah, I graduated in May with a degree in philosophy. And now I tend bar because what the hell else am I going to do with a philosophy degree? «
    All right, « I said after studying her face. » I’ll take your application seriously and consider it. But before I make a decision, I need to speak to Laksha. «
    » I figured as much. « She twisted her lips in an expression of regret and let her hand slip back to her side. » I need to work a bit before I let her take over, though. She doesn’t know jack about bartending. Hold on. « She quickly revisited her lingering patrons, getting a refill here, closing out a check there, distributing smiles and thanks and drinks with equal facility.
    Tullamore Dew trickled down my throat as I considered her and reviewed why I hadn’t had an apprentice in more than a thousand years. Mostly it was because everyone thought the Druids had all died out, and they didn’t know there was still someone around to ask for training. I was kind of like Yoda chilling out in the Dagobah system. But even when people found me—as they occasionally did, as Granuaile just had—training someone had been impractical, because I had to remain mobile and I couldn’t afford to stay in one place for so long. I had also been working on my necklace for much of that time, and you can’t concentrate on a project like that with constant questions and the need to plan instruction for someone else.
    My last apprentice had left this plane near the very end of the tenth century. He was a bright, earnest lad named Cibrán, who managed to play the role of an illiterate Catholic peasant convincingly while learning the mysteries of the earth from me. I was hiding underneath the skirts of the Holy Roman Empire at the time—a far-flung fold of its skirts, really, near the city of Compostela in the kingdom of Galicia. I had a modest farm a couple of miles from town, and everyone liked me because I gave all the credit for my crops to Jesus and paid the clergy generous tithes. Cibrán’s father was a smith in town, and he sent his son out to my farm a few times a week to get fresh produce and eggs from the chickens I kept. He paid me with Cibrán’s labor on the farm, and that’s how we found time to conduct his education. He had nearly completed his studies, and we were about to travel into the woods to begin his tattoos, when Al-Mansur’s forces swept up from the southern Caliphate and sacked the city in 997, killing him and his father before I could get there to protect him. That was when I gave up on trying to be a teacher. Neither I nor the Iberian Peninsula was stable enough to allow it to bear fruit. I packed my things and headed off to Asia, eventually coming back to Europe with Khan’s hordes.
    Since then I had from time