Hunted (The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Six)

fell.
    “Can we run as humans for a while to save Oberon the effort of relaying our conversation?” Granuaile said.
    I shrugged. It would be slower going, but we had a bit of a lead and we needed to talk. “Sure.” We adopted a ground-eating pace and trusted Saxony to guide us around developed areas as much as possible. With any luck, our streaking would go unnoticed. Or, if someonedid see us, they might reasonably conclude we were running away from the very large dog behind us.
    “So who’s in charge of the Old Ways on the Tír na nÓg side?” Granuaile asked. “Who would inform Brighid if there was a problem?”
    “Ah! The rangers. I see where you’re going with this now. If Brighid isn’t responsible and no one’s told her what’s going on, then someone has suborned the rangers.”
    “Exactly. And remember when we first went to Tír na nÓg together, and there was that one Fae lord who told us the rangers had reported all the tree tethers were malfunctioning throughout Europe?”
    “Yes! Snooty, foppish type. I called him Lord Grundlebeard.”
    “Right, and so he’s not a good buddy of yours. And he’s in charge of the rangers, or he wouldn’t have been reporting that at the Fae Court.”
    “Gods below,” I breathed, realizing she was right.
    “Yeah. Would Lord Grundlebeard have the power to do all this?”
    I thought aloud for her benefit. “Use the rangers to organize some sort of obstruction at every Old Way throughout Europe? Yes. He could do that. But reliably divine your location the way that the Tuatha Dé Danann or other gods can do? That’s doubtful. And consider what we’ve had thrown at us in the past few months: dark elves, Fae assassins, vampires, and now the Olympians. You’d have to have vast resources and serious power to push all those buttons and still keep yourself hidden. Grundlebeard can’t have that kind of juice on tap.”
    “Wait. You think this person is working with the Olympians?”
    “Now that we’re talking through it, I think they have to be. Just remember how this all went down. I was giving you a tour of the Old Ways. We got to a specific spotin Romania and the trap was sprung. The Olympians were already there waiting for us—and so was the Morrigan. Now, the Olympians have their own methods of divination and they could have figured out where to find you in advance, and of course it’s Pan and Faunus who are spreading pandemonium and preventing us from shifting through tethered trees, but there’s no way they could have set a manticore to guarding one of the Old Ways in Germany from the Tír na nÓg side. They have to be colluding with someone on the Fae Court, but I don’t think it’s Lord Grundlebeard. I think he’s involved, don’t get me wrong, but it’s more likely that he’s getting his orders from someone higher up.”
    “Okay, I won’t argue with that. But the manticore tells us something else.”
    “What?”
    “Whoever’s after us, they’re spread really thin. You don’t use manticores as mercenaries unless you’re desperate, am I right?”
    “That’s a good point,” I said. “I think we should address that and other points with Lord Grundlebeard at our earliest opportunity. Find out who’s giving him orders.”
    “Agreed. Who knows what revelations would follow?”
    
    “What is it?” I asked him.
    
    “Okay, that will do.”
    
    “Oberon, we can’t play that now.”
    
    “What do you want? A story?”
    
    “All right. There’s one that may be relevant to our current situation. I just thought of someone amongst the Tuatha Dé Danann who might have the means, motive, and opportunity to arrange all this.”
    
    “Obsess? I’d call it dutiful attention to self-preservation. Come on, Oberon. It has birds behaving badly,