There was a wait and then a disheartening reply: //Cannot remove//
Elementals don’t kid around. If the Nile said it couldn’t be done, then it couldn’t. What I didn’t understand was why, so I had to ask.
//Unfamiliar magic / Unbinding must be human craft// Nile said.
I sighed in defeat. I’d have to make it all the way back to Jerusalem and hope Ogma could unbind it.
//Or iron could eat it// Nile said, and my confusion must have been broadcast plainly, because the elemental continued. //Iron elemental can consume magic / Remove curse / Leave tattoos / I will control//
All I managed in reply was an //Okay// because I was a bit lost. My archdruid had never mentioned that anything of the kind was possible. We’d heard that there were lesser elementals running around associated with this or that, but it had never been suggested that we could communicate with them, much less ask them to be useful.
//Remain here / Iron elemental on way//
That was a worrisome time, because it was most of the day before one finally arrived. I spent it being eyed suspiciously by travelers worried that I was some kind of brigand lying in wait for them. And I worried that someone would try to take advantage of me, of course, but worried more that Horus or Seshat or even Bast would find me.
Perhaps they would come for me in the night, when they could pass among humans unnoticed. Or perhaps the reason they hadn’t found me was because they truly didn’t know where to look.
I considered my mighty bag of holding, which held many treasures now. Only those of Horus were cursed with an alarm or whatever he had on them: What if that curse provided not only an alarm but a location? If that were the case, the bag was the safest place possible for them. As soon as I touched them again, Horus would know where to find me. He was simply waiting for me to finger them.
Or they could probably find me and their lost treasures through divination; I wasn’t sure how proficient the Egyptian pantheon was at the art, but I felt sure they’d find me if I remained in one place too long.
The iron elemental arrived as the sun sank burning into the sands.
//Be seated and remain still// Nile said. //Touch left hand to sand//
I did so and black iron filings crawled up my arm like ants, crested my shoulder, and encircled my neck. For a brief time they formed a solid band and constricted, but before I could communicate my panic to Nile it loosened, the filings slid back down my arm, and I could talk again.
“Gah, thank the gods below!” I said. “Except maybe Ogma. Yeah. Let’s not thank him right now.”
//Gratitude// I told Nile, and then, after a sudden thought, added a request: //Query: Can iron elemental eat magic surrounding items inside bag?//
//Query: Which items? / Cannot see//
The road was clear at that moment, and no one was nearby. I upended the bag of holding over the sand, allowing the lacquered box and everything else to spill out without touching my hands. //These items / Please remove magic outside them but not inside//
I appended that last because the items inside the box might be fantastically powerful, but I didn’t particularly want to be carrying around cursed items that would summon Horus as soon as they were touched.
It was done in less than a minute. In the magical spectrum the box looked completely normal, and I placed it back inside the bag with a grin.
//Gratitude / Harmony// I said to Nile, and I rode out of there, powers restored, to meet Ogma in Jerusalem. Gaia and her elementals are ever our friends and salvation, even as Druids are theirs.
I made it to the Sinai Peninsula before I realized what a terrible error I had made and compounded it with another. Resting at an oasis during the heat of the day and assured of some privacy, I opened the books only, one by one, to evaluate what I’d managed to take for myself.
I began with the books I’d taken from Horus and that the iron elemental had attacked to eat away the curses I’d seen in the magical spectrum. Upon opening them, however, I discovered that they were entirely blank. I had no way of knowing if they had always been blank or if their contents had been erased by the wards on them once they left the room, or even accidentally destroyed by the iron elemental. Regardless, they were worthless, and Horus had lost nothing. I hoped that the scrolls inside the box were still valuable and worried that my entire infiltration had been for naught. I scrambled to check the rest of my haul.
The books of Osiris were still in fine shape, having no scrap of magic about them to begin with, and the knowledge inside regarding wards was priceless and worth the trip by themselves. I sighed in relief and thanked the gods below.
I went through Bast’s books last. One of them was the Grimoire of the Lamb, the true purpose of which I did not discover until centuries afterward, when someone came looking for it at Third Eye Books & Herbs. Another was full of descriptions of protective wards and, like the books of Osiris, proved quite valuable. The last was the book of Bast’s mysteries, which had a horrifying effect once opened and perused—though it quite literally crept up on me.
The text was in Coptic and I was reading through it, mouth half open in horror and unable to look away, like watching someone embarrass himself or rubbernecking at a traffic accident on the side of the road. And then my peaceful reading time was rent at once by yowling, screeching, and hissing from all directions. I scrambled to my feet and drew Fragarach, thinking I was under attack, but once I had time to assess the threat, I realized that I was surrounded by fucking cats! And by that I mean the cats were all actually, if grudgingly, fucking. They didn’t seem to enjoy it much, and maybe that’s why they were making such heinous noises. For the record, I didn’t enjoy it either, and honestly we should all be grateful that cats usually do this in the dead of night, well out of our sight, and usually as a couple rather than as a massive, writhing chorus of carnality. I dove back to the ground, closed the book, and soon afterward the cats stopped what they were doing and even ceased to be cats: They melted into the sands or the wind and disappeared entirely. And then I laughed, for I realized that Bast had woven an unseen curse into the book: Unless you were one of her high priests or otherwise approved, you couldn’t read it without being afflicted by a deafening, shivering, teeth-grinding feline orgy.
I met up with Ogma in Jerusalem some days later and handed over the lacquered box of scrolls. He opened it, briefly unrolled and inspected the scrolls within, and then beamed at me.
“You owe me big for that,” I reminded him, wagging a finger at the scroll. “I got stabbed. Lost my voice. Had to listen to the worst cat sex ever. Someday I will send you on an impossible quest.”
“Understood,” he said, and held out a hand, palm up. “The torc, if you please?”
“That’s not a keeper, eh?”