Hexed_ The Iron Druid Chronicles - Kevin Hearne [82]
“Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune!” I cried with all the venom of Charlton Heston.
“It’s a Shakespearean word for whore.” I snorted. “Indeed.” “Fortune. It’s a quote from Hamlet. The idea is that Fortune is fickle or unfaithful, like a whore. The character who says it continues, ‘All you gods, in general synod take away her power;’ because he doesn’t like what Fortune has in store for him. Well, I’m not a god, nor am I in general synod with anyone, but perhaps I have a way to take away Fortune’s power to do you harm.” I had three amulets of cold iron that I could use like talismans—three people I could protect. “Come here, Oberon. Let me see your collar.” “Not this time. This is a special magical talisman to protect you from the Man.” “You’re going to need to hold still for a few minutes while I activate it. We have to make sure the Man can’t get past all the juju to grind you down, you know?” “Excellent.” Protective talismans are fairly simple to construct from most objects, but they vary in strength depending on the base material and the skill of the caster. Cold iron naturally provides the strongest protection, but its magic-negating properties also make it tremendously difficult to twist to one’s own purposes—unless you’ve been watching how iron elementals do it. Like wards, you have to be specific about what you want the talisman to protect against—you can’t simply say, “Protect me against everything,” because absolutes are not only impossible to empower but dangerous in practice. Cold iron is almost an absolute in itself, but I specifically crafted Oberon’s talisman to watch for Fae magic, infernal hexes, several forms of old craft from Europe that the hexen might employ, and Kabbalistic spells. He’d be at least partially open to Obeah, Voudoun, and Wiccan craft, as well as most anything from the Indian and Asian traditions and the vast sea of shamanistic practice, but I had to put my money down somewhere. Granuaile was knocking on the door as we finished up, and after she confirmed that she’d picked up some bats and baseballs for my Satyrn Massacre alibi, I got to repeat the practice on her. “Aw, sensei, you shouldn’t have,” she said, as I presented her with the amulet. She was wearing a gold chain already, and the amulet was a bit heavy-looking once she had strung it up. She had a couple of freckles near her collarbones, and I resolutely kept my eyes up there. “I hope it won’t throw off your wardrobe too much,” I said. “But you should wear this from now on. If you’re not wearing it, then it’s doing nothing for you. Eventually you’ll bind this to your aura as I’ve done with mine, but until then it’ll just be a talisman for you. I’m going to empower it for you now. Want to see what it looks like?” “What do you mean?” “I mean I’ll turn on my faerie specs to make the magic visible and then bind your sight to mine so you see what I see.” “You’re going to let me watch you do some cool Druid shit?” “Yep. But you should always remember to speak of such things with reverence and awe.” She didn’t miss a beat. “You mean you’re going to initiate me into the sacred mysteries of Druidic craft?” “That’s much better; well done.” I turned on my faerie specs, found the threads of Granuaile’s awareness, and bound them to mine. She gasped when the knot was completed and her point of view wrenched outside her own head. “Whoa!” Her arms splayed out, searching for balance. “My first out-of-body experience.” “Don’t move or you’ll probably fall over. Shut your own eyes.” “Okay, okay. That