Hunted (The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Six)

fence that bore a plaque linking it to supernatural history.
    //Druid requires aid// I sent to Albion. //Request: Contact Herne / Old steward of this place / Express our wish to meet//
    //Done// Albion replied. //Soon he will come//
    “Oh,” I said aloud. “That was fast.”
    “What?” Granuaile asked.
    “Apparently Albion has a direct line to Herne.” That intrigued me. I was curious to know if Albion granted Herne any of his magic, or if Herne was living like the gods, suckling at the magical teat of belief. If it was the latter, then it was a highly localized belief. “He should be coming soon, but I don’t know from where.”
    I doubted he would ride in from the north, where there was a golf course now. We scanned the landscape around us until Granuaile spotted something moving to the south, and she chucked my right shoulder to point behind me. “Over there, I think.” Even with night vision, it was difficult to see. She was pointing at something that had detached itself from the shadow of a veteran oak tree even more ancient than the one marked as Herne’s. Behind it, several other somethings moved. The figures brightened as they got closer—that is to say, they took on a minimal albedo, reflecting moonlight and providing faint outlines. There were three men on horses and hounds walking alongside. The figure in the center had a large rack of antlers floating over his head, but his features were largely occluded by a hooded cloak. Part of me wondered how he’d managed to pull a hood over those antlers and added that there was no good reason for a ghost to wear a cloak or anything at all, but another part reasoned that one of the few perksto being an unhoused spirit must be the ability to wear impractical clothing for effect.
    The riders became clearer as they approached, but it wasn’t merely a function of shrinking distance; they were becoming brighter, flaring into luminosity as the spirits manifested fully. The horses and hounds were supposed to be black, according to legend, but in the light of the moon and their own ghostly glow—perhaps aided by a certain transparency—they took on more of a midnight-blue color.
    Herne rode in leathers of the hunt. His eyes, visible under his hood once he drew near, lacked pupils; they were holes made of lambent cobalt.
    The bottom half of his face billowed with a dark thicket of a beard. Trimming it would require pruning shears.
    The antlers were quite imposing up close, and taken together with his face and disturbing eyes, they suggested what Bambi’s dad would look like if he ever decided to kick the ass of anyone who dared to be stupid in his forest.
    His companions lacked headgear, but their eyes and beards were of a kind with Herne’s. Evidently, men’s grooming products had yet to penetrate the spectral market.
    Herne looked first at me, then at Granuaile. “Wich is the Druyd?”
    I blinked and was slow to reply. I’d been kind of expecting to hear something raspy and whispery out of his throat, or something choked with phlegm, the way ghosts always seem to sound when they vocalize in popular entertainment, but Herne spoke in a perfectly clear baritone—in Middle English. If he used short, simple sentences, he could probably make himself understood to a speaker of Modern English, but longer sentences would be difficult for contemporary speakers to decode,since half the vowels would be pronounced differently. Amongst the tales of him that purported to be historical, this fact suggested that he was much more likely to have been a subject of Richard II than of Henry VIII.
    “Did he ask which was the Druid? We’re both Druids,” Granuaile said.
    Herne’s brow furrowed at first, perhaps trying to process Granuaile’s modern pronunciation, but then it smoothed out and his mouth quirked up on the left side.
    “Bothe of yow?”
    “Is he okay?” Granuaile asked.
    “Yes. It’s Middle English,” I said.
    
    I ignored Oberon’s question and addressed Herne. “Aye, bothe.”
    “An Druides be, thanne answere me: Whos love in Eire is moste fyn and fre?”
    “Did he just rhyme on purpose?” Granuaile whispered.
    I replied in kind, though Herne could easily hear us. “Yes. It’s a riddle in verse. If I can’t answer in the same fashion, then I’m not the old Druid I claim to be and I’m trespassing here. Even though Albion’s obviously told him I’m a