Shattered: The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Seven

I think it’s cool if you read the unusual names in my books however you want. There won’t be a test afterward and I’m not going to withhold a Twinkie from you if you pronounce any of them incorrectly. You’re supposed to have fun here, after all, and it’s usually not fun if someone tells you that you’re doing it wrong. But I like to provide these in case you want to master those names and enjoy the Druids’ globetrotting. So here we go; caps-lock bits indicate stressed syllables.…

Atticus O’Sullivan, born in 83
B.C.E.
as Siodhachan Ó Suileabháin, has spent much of his long life as a Druid on the run from Aenghus Óg, one of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Aenghus Óg sought the return of Fragarach, a magical sword that Atticus had stolen in the second century, and the fact that Atticus had learned how to keep himself young and wouldn’t simply die annoyed the heck out of him.

When Aenghus Óg finds Atticus hiding in Tempe, Arizona, Atticus makes the fateful decision to fight instead of run, unwittingly setting off a chain of consequences that snowballs on him, despite his efforts to lie low.

In
Hounded
, he gains an apprentice, Granuaile, retrieves a necklace that serves as a focus for Laksha Kulasekaran, an Indian witch, and discovers that his cold iron aura is proof against hellfire. He defeats Aenghus Óg with an assist from the Morrigan, Brighid, and the local pack of werewolves. However, he also severely cripples a witches’ coven that wasn’t exactly benevolent but was protecting the Phoenix metro area from more-menacing groups of predators.

Hexed
, book two, forces Atticus to deal with that, as a rival and much more deadly coven tries to take over the territory of the Sisters of the Three Auroras, and a group of Bacchants tries to establish a foothold in Scottsdale. Atticus cuts deals with Laksha Kulasekaran and Leif Helgarson, a vampire, to earn their help and rid the city of the threats.

In book three,
Hammered
, the bills come due for those deals. Both Laksha and Leif want Atticus to go to Asgard and beard the Norse in their mead halls. Putting together a team of badasses, Atticus raids Asgard twice, despite warnings from the Morrigan and Jesus Christ that this would be a terrible idea and it might be best not to keep his word. The carnage is epic, with heavy losses among the Æsir, including the Norns, Thor, and a crippled Odin. The death of the Norns, an aspect of Fate, means the old prophecies regarding Ragnarok are now unchained, and Hel can begin to work with very little opposition from the Æsir. However, a strange coincidence with the Finnish hero Väinämöinen reminds Atticus of a different prophecy, one spoken by the sirens to Odysseus long ago, and he worries that thirteen years hence the world will burn—perhaps in some altered form of Ragnarok.

Feeling the heat for his shenanigans and needing time to train his apprentice, Atticus fakes his own death with the help of Coyote in book four,
Tricked
. Hel does indeed make an appearance, thinking Atticus might like to join her on the dark side since he’d killed so many Æsir, but she is brutally rebuffed. Atticus is betrayed by Leif Helgarson and narrowly escapes death at the hands of an ancient vampire named Zdenik, but the book ends with a modicum of assurance that Atticus will be able to train Granuaile in anonymity.

In the novella
Two Ravens and One Crow
, Odin awakens from his long sleep and forges a truce of sorts with Atticus, enlisting the Druid to take on Thor’s role in Ragnarok, should it come to pass, and perhaps take care of another few things along the way.

After twelve years of training, Granuaile is ready to be bound to the earth, but it seems as if the Druid’s enemies have been waiting for him to emerge in book five,
Trapped
. Atticus must deal with vampires, dark elves, faeries, and the Roman god Bacchus, and messing with the Olympian draws the attention of one of the world’s oldest and most powerful pantheons.

Once Granuaile is a full Druid, Atticus must run across Europe to avoid the bows of Diana and Artemis, who took exception to his treatment of Bacchus and the dryads of Olympus in book five. The Morrigan sacrifices herself to give him a head start and Atticus is
Hunted
in book six. Running and fighting his way past a coordinated attempt to bring him down, he makes it to England, where he can enlist the help of Herne the Hunter and Flidais, the Irish goddess of the hunt. There Atticus is able to defeat the Olympians and negotiate a fragile alliance against Hel and Loki. At the end of this volume, he discovers that his archdruid was frozen in time in Tír na nÓg, and when Atticus retrieves him, his old mentor is in as foul a mood as ever.

Also, along the way, there may have been some talk of poodles and sausages.

Few things trigger old memories so quickly as authority figures from our youth. I’m not saying those memories are necessarily good ones; they’re simply old and tend to cast us back into roles we thought we grew out of long ago. Sometimes the memories are warm and blanket us like a mother’s love. More often, however, they have the sting of hoarfrost, which bites at first, then numbs and settles in the bones for a deep, extended chill.

The ancient man who was pushing himself up into a sitting position in front of me triggered very few memories of the warm sort. Apart from being brilliant and magically gifted, my archdruid had frequently been abusive and had made few friends during his life—a life that, until recently, I thought had ended millennia ago. After he bound me to the earth prior to the Common Era, I’d seen him only a couple more times before we drifted apart, and I’d always assumed he’d died, like almost everyone else I knew from my youth. But for reasons unknown, the Morrigan had frozen him in time in Tír na nÓg, and now he was
about to confront the fact of his time travel—with, I might add, flecks of spittle and bacon around the edges of his wrinkled lips.

I hope that if I ever travel two thousand years into the future, there will still be bacon.

His voice, a sort of perpetually phlegmy growl, barked a question at me in Old Irish. He’d have to learn English quickly if he wanted to talk to anyone besides the Tuatha Dé Danann and me. “How long was I on that island, Siodhachan? You still look pretty young. By the looks of ye, it can’t have been more than three or four years.”

Oh, was he in for a surprise. “I will tell you in exchange for something I’d like to know: your name.”

“My name?”

“I’ve never called you anything but Archdruid.”

“Well, it was right that ye should, ye wee shite. But now that you’re grown a bit and a full Druid, I suppose I can tell ye. I’m Eoghan Ó Cinnéide.”