Hexed_ The Iron Druid Chronicles - Kevin Hearne [59]
“I can have Goibhniu make an amulet for me,” she said. He was not only a brewer of magical draughts, but also the most accomplished smith of the Tuatha Dé Danann, after Brighid herself.
“Good idea.” I nodded. “Have him make as many as he can from the material you have here. At a guess, I’d think you have enough to make two at least, perhaps as many as four. I’d like to have one for my apprentice, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. I think it is good you are training Druids again. You should train more than one, Siodhachan. The world could use a strong grove.”
That was suspiciously close to a compliment for the Morrigan. She had even spoken kindly. I figured it would be dangerous to point it out, however, so I said briskly, “Thank you. If suitable candidates present themselves, I will consider it.”
The Morrigan pivoted quickly back to business. “Let us say that I have returned from Goibhniu with a cold iron amulet weighing sixty grams and a chain of silver rope. What happens next?”
“Next you have to bind the cold iron to your aura. Unless you’d rather just use it as a talisman.”
“Bah. I already know how to make those. They are only good against direct external threats, and they do nothing to your aura.”
“Right. So look at my aura. Where do you see the iron?”
The Morrigan narrowed her eyes and directed her gaze slightly above my head. “It appears like filings inside the white interference of your magic. Specks of cookies in the cream.”
“What? I had no idea you liked ice cream.”
The Morrigan’s eyes flashed red. “If you tell anyone, I’ll rip off your nose.”
“Okay, back to the aura, then. Those iron specks are actually tiny knots. I have bound the iron to my aura all over, so that when a spell targets me or locates me via aural signature, it runs into iron right away and fizzles out. You have to be scrupulous about making a good scatter pattern, so there aren’t any holes in your coverage for a spell to get through, and be so thorough that whole-body hexes cannot distinguish you from the iron. That saved my life just two days ago.”
“What happened?”
“Some German witches slapped an infernal hex on me. When it works, you simply go up in flames. But since the iron bindings in my aura are aliases that—”
“Stop. What do you mean by aliases?”
I grimaced at my own foolishness. “I apologize, Morrigan; I forgot you are unfamiliar with computer jargon. An alias is nothing more than a tiny file that points to another, larger file. It’s a proxy because it only represents the real thing rather than being the thing itself. I cannot very well walk about with an actual cloud of iron filings around me, can I? But magical proxies that point to a real cold-iron amulet are easy to live with.”
“Ingenious.”
“Thank you. When this hex hit me, instead of my body burning, the iron proxies bound to my aura directed the entire thing to my amulet.” I tapped it a couple of times for emphasis. “It heated up so quickly that it burned my skin. I would have been bacon without it, and in fact the same hex turned a local witch into cinders.”
“Remarkable,” she said. “This happened two days ago, you say?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“I received absolutely no premonition of your impending death at that time.” She shook her head slowly in fascination. “You were completely protected.”
I wondered if she thought I was completely protected against the Bacchants last night. And then I wondered if she would get any premonitions about my fate at all, now that she had agreed never to take me. “Well, the burning skin was torturous. It was like watching fifth graders trying to perform Wagnerian opera.”
The Morrigan waved the point away. “But you have the means to deal with that. You were never in mortal peril. And this protects you from hellfire as well.”
“Yes, even that which is spewed from a fallen angel.”
“How do you bind the cold iron to your aura? Doesn