Hexed_ The Iron Druid Chronicles - Kevin Hearne [83]
“Patience. I haven’t started yet. But look here.” I raised the back of my right hand into my sight and examined the power glowing white through the loop of my tattoo. In the visible spectrum my tattoos did nothing, but the strength of the earth shone underneath them like a back-lit neon sign when I looked at the truth of things. It appeared that I had an indigo racing stripe down my right side with a pulsing white halo.
“Wow! You’re lit up like Vegas! How does it glow under the tattoos? Never mind, tell me what all these threads and knots are—Wait. No. What the hell are all those knots coming out of my head? They’re really intricate.”
“You’re looking at the binding of your sight to mine.”
“No way! You can see spells? They just hang around in the air like Celtic artwork?”
I laughed softly. “Most Celtic works of art are spells, or at least they were at one time. The bonds between all living things are there for Druids to witness and manipulate as we choose. There are so many bindings that choosing what to see and focusing on it will become your most treasured skill.”
“Really? I’m having no trouble focusing.”
“That’s because you’re using my eyes,” I reminded her.
“Oh yeah. Dunce cap for me. So all spells look like this?”
“No, just Druidic ones. Some spells I cannot see very well or even identify, but you can always tell that something is wrong when parts of people are cut off from the world, when their ties are smothered or altered somehow. I will show you what other spells look like as the occasion arises.”
“Cool. This is so fucking cool.”
“Reverence and awe?” I prodded her gently.
“I meant to say this blessed mystery fills my soul with light.”
“Heh! That’s excellent. All right, now I need to concentrate, and you should probably keep your exclamations to yourself while I’m doing this,” I said, as I refocused on the amulet. “Don’t move either.”
“Okay.”
I gave Granuaile the same protections I had given to Oberon. Though she kept quiet as she saw the dim green web of protection spread out across her body from the amulet, she gasped when the binding was complete and energized, since the threads flashed and shimmered briefly with white light before fading back to a soft green.
“All right, that’s finished. You’re protected from line-of-sight magical attacks only. If someone gets hold of your hair or blood, this won’t do you a lick of good, because they can then cast a spell that attacks you from within, underneath this shell of protection.”
“You mean the kind of stuff Laksha can do.”
“Precisely. And the coven living on the floor above you. Now watch what happens when you remove the amulet from around your neck—can you take off that necklace using my eyes?”
“I think so. Hold on.” She reached behind her neck and loosed the clasp of the chain, removing the amulet and holding it in her right hand, which she dropped to her side. The gossamer threads of my binding sloughed off, retracting like a tape measure into the amulet in her hand.
“See that?” I said. “If you don’t wear it, it’s useless.”
“So I have to wear it all the time?”
“That would be safest, but you can remove it when you know you’re secure in a warded room. Your condo counts, because I’ve warded it.”
“So if I looked at my door through your sight, I would see the wards you’ve put there?”
“Yep. You can see the wards on my house here if you’d like. I can lead you outside to check them out.”
“How bitchin’ would that—I mean, you honor me, sensei.”
I chuckled. “Put the amulet back on first, and watch yourself armor up.” She did so, and it was a serendipitous bit of caution. Hands on my shoulders, she followed me out front to the edge of my lawn, commenting as she went on the network of bindings all across the porch and the grass and the mesquite tree that had helped me fight off the wheel bug demon. Then, as we were about to turn around to appreciate the wards on the house itself, I heard a sharp thumping noise behind me, as though someone had slapped their hand down onto the cushion of a couch.