Hunted (The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Six)

newt. They’d be safe with Goibhniu.
    Instead of shifting to our cabin in Colorado, I shifted to Brí Léith in Ireland, the old
síd
of Midhir. It’s near the modern wee village of Ardagh in County Longford. Some people call such hills “faery mounds” today, and some may even harbor a genuine superstition about them but don’t understand their true function: Every single
síd
of the Tuatha Dé Danann is an Old Way to Tír na nÓg. In fact, they are the oldest of the Old Ways.
    When the Milesians defeated the Tuatha Dé Danann with their iron, they said—thinking they were clever—“We’ll split the land with you. You can have the bit of Ireland that’s underground.” The Tuatha Dé Danann said, “Okay,fine,” though in much more heroic language. But of course they didn’t live in their barrows forever; they simply used them as the first fixed points for channeling the earth’s magic to create the plane of Tír na nÓg and bind it.
    Almost all of the
síde
were filled in now, and the Tuatha Dé Danann didn’t leave enough artifacts behind to tempt archaeologists to go mucking around in them. But Ireland’s elemental, Fódhla, remembered all the interior spaces as they used to be. It would take little effort on her part to restore the interior of any
síd
. And once a
síd
recovered its original space, then a Druid looking to use the Old Way hidden inside could do so.
    I wanted to do it this way rather than shift internally in Tír na nÓg to Midhir’s land. The internal tether would land me outside his castle or fortress or whatever he called his home, which would doubtless be guarded. The old
síd
, however, long abandoned and forgotten, would put me somewhere inside his walls. That’s why most of the old mounds were filled in now; the Tuatha Dé Danann didn’t want random citizens appearing by accident in their parlors. I heard it happened a few times to Aenghus Óg in recent decades, whose
síd
at Newgrange had been closed and overgrown for centuries before archaeologists reopened it in the 1960s. By utter chance, a bloke or five had stepped along the precise path to take them to Tír na nÓg, and then Aenghus had to feed the unfortunate sods to something hungry. Couldn’t have them returning and telling everyone the way to Faerie.
    I took a moment to take in the view and enjoy the sun and air. It had been too long since I’d been home. Fódhla—a poetic name for Ireland in the same way Albion was for Britain, named after one of the tutelary goddesses of the isle—welcomed me back and was only too happy to restore Brí Léith to its former shape. Thesurface changed only slightly, but underneath it was hollow and spacious again, and the entrance appeared on the south side of the hill. I asked Fódhla to oblige me with a small skylight at the top to provide some light in the inner chamber, and she knocked that out in a few seconds. After checking my surroundings to make sure no one was watching me, I cast camouflage on myself and ducked inside.
    It took some time to discover the proper path. Every
síd
was different, and the paths were laid out in such a way that accidental passage was unlikely—but not impossible. As I looked at the ground in the magical spectrum, the path began to show up as a binding once I took the first two steps in the correct order. So there was a significant amount of shuffling to be done, because the path itself wasn’t something the elemental could help me find. I stepped and pranced around for three hours, my back and left forearm healing all the while, before a sidestep on the north side revealed the third step to me, and then the fourth, and so on. I paused to draw Fragarach and boost my speed and strength. I fully expected defenses of some kind on the other side. As I wound my way along the path, the dim ambience from the skylight faded until I was plunged into total darkness and the air cooled precipitously. I had passed through to a damp, dark chamber somewhere in Tír na nÓg, most likely a cellar on Midhir’s grounds. I froze and silently cast night vision through the silver charm on my necklace. It didn’t help me at all. There wasn’t any light to magnify.
    I smelled mildew and—over a coppery tang—peat and something that reminded me of bitter almonds. The white noise of industrial earth was gone, no background hum of electronics or motors or anything of the kind. But nature was missing too: no wind or water or scurrying of tiny feet. Except that