Free Hammered [3] by Kevin Hearne Page B

over Fagles’s mind!” She was referring to a binding placed on the Tempe police detective who’d shot me six weeks ago. Since the Tuatha Dé Danann were bound to the earth like me, they had to follow the same rule.
    “He did. But that binding didn’t directly harm Fagles. Fagles was killed by the Phoenix police.”
    “But didn’t he make Fagles shoot you? Wasn’t that harming you?”
    “The magic was directed at Fagles, not at me. And Fagles shot me with a completely ordinary, nonmagical gun.”
    Granuaile tapped her fingernail on the table. “These are really hair-thin distinctions.”
    “Yes, and they’re the sort that Aenghus Óg knew very well.”
    “Why bother making them? I mean, the earth has to be aware that you’re using her power to strengthen your sword arm or make you jump higher and so on.”
    “Yes. I’m using the power to compete. To prove myself worthy of living another day. Competition, strife, and predation are natural and encouraged by the earth. I still have to be smarter than the other guy, more skilled than the other guy to survive. I can’t simply fix everything by melting people’s brains.”
    “Wait. You mess around with skin cells all the time. You give people wedgies by binding the cotton of their underwear with the skin high up on their backs. You started a slap fight between two cops in front of Satyrn.”
    “No damage was done. The skin never broke. No harm, no foul.”
    “All right, then, what about the demons? You used Cold Fire on them.”
    “They’re not living creatures of the earth; they’re spirits from hell that take on a corporeal form here. But I have to warn you not to try anything standard on them. They are bound together differently than the flora and fauna of earth, so no Druidic magic works except for Cold Fire. It’s better just to hack them up. That unbinds them from their corporeal form quite well.”
    Granuaile puffed an errant lock of hair away from her face and then tucked it behind her ear, thinking through the implications. “Does this
tabu
extend to healing?”
    “Not in so many words, but in practice, yes. Messing around with tissues and organs is vastly complicated. It’s too easy to make a mistake and do more harm than good, and then you’re dead. That’s why I never go there with other people; I use magic to heal only myself, because there’s no prohibition against screwing yourself up and I know my body extremely well.”
    “Ah, so that’s why you only use herblore for your healing.”
    I nodded. “That’s right. You can perform bindings on harvested plants and the chemicals in them all you want. It’s slower than directly healing someone, but it’s safer all around. You can’t trespass against the prohibition to do no direct magical harm, and it keeps your abilities secret. If people wonder why your teas or poultices are so effective, you can plausibly point to your unique recipes or fresh ingredients or something else, and magic is never an issue.”
    “Are you positive that you’re the last Druid alive today?”
    I waggled the flat of my hand in the air in a sorta-kinda motion. “The Tuatha Dé Danann are technically Druids because they’re all tattooed like I am. They can do whatever I can do and then some. Best not to call them Druids, though. They like to think of themselves as gods.” I grinned sardonically. “Druids are lesser beings, you see. But so far as such lesser beings are concerned, I do believe I’m the last one walking the earth. Unless you want to count all the happy hippie neo-Druids who do seem to love the earth but lack any real magic.”
    “No, I meant Druids like you.”
    “Then there are none like me. Until you become one. If you live long enough.”
    “I’ll make it,” Granuaile said. “You gave me this completely unsexy amulet to make sure I do.” She lifted a teardrop of cold iron strung on a gold chain out from her shirt. The Morrigan had given it to me, and I had passed it on to my