Good morning, sweet hound.

"Granuaile! Hello! Happiness! Need stretch."

I’ll stretch with you. We stretch together, arms and legs, a thoroughly delicious exercise, and not for the first time I reflect on what a blessing it is to have a hound. Already she is helping me through this, showing by example that life goes on and it is a thing to be enjoyed.

"Go for a run?"

Yes. We must definitely run.

I was far too wrecked to manage it last night, but now I really need to escape this property. I was fortunate not to have run into my stepfather, and I didn’t want to risk meeting him now. I pick up my weapons, then we run the long miles back to the Osage Hills, where we can shift away. Orlaith and I are both famished by the time we get there, and I take us back through the tethers to our cabin above Ouray, where the first order of business is breakfast.

Once I sit down at the table, I see the note I wrote for Atticus before I went to pick up Fuilteach. It’s a hopeful note, so I leave it alone. Let Atticus find it and feel that hope, as I did, that all would turn out well. There is no need to burden him with worry.

I’m sure Atticus will have plenty to do with his archdruid when his tattoo’s finished, anyway. The two of us would catch up soon enough, the threads of our lives intertwined once more, and we would both be stronger for it.

In the meantime, I still need some answers regarding my dad, and perhaps I can get them. Laksha had mentioned in passing that the vessel containing the raksoyuj had come from a dig north of Thanjavur. Maybe some answers will be waiting for me—like, why was he there in the first place? He’d never been a particular expert on artifacts from the Indian subcontinent. Had he been looking for this thing intentionally, or was it an accidental find? And even if I can’t satisfy myself that this was all accidental, the very least I can do is try to help out somehow as the city recovers from what must seem like the most mysterious plague ever.

I shower and pack a small bag, including a touchpad and my passport for the Nessa Thornton identity. I throw Laksha’s necklace in there as well, even though I haven’t heard from her yet and am not sure what to do with her. With Scáthmhaide in hand and Fuilteach strapped to my left thigh, I shift with Orlaith back to that familiar banana grove outside Thanjavur.

It is strange to be back in India so soon. It is a raw wound into which I have plunged my fingernail before the scab can grow. The smell of the air is enough to bring prickly tears to the corners of my eyes. Unfortunately, the time difference means it’s already dark here; it’s the end of the day rather than the beginning of it.

I speak to the elemental Kaveri in hopes that she can tell me where the humans are digging in the earth to the north of town. After casting night vision on Orlaith and myself, I follow her directions to several sites. The first four of these are merely construction of some kind, but the fifth is an archaeological dig. Noting its location, I set off with Orlaith in search of lodging. We find a hotel, and I camouflage her through the lobby; once in my room, I flip open my laptop and start to look for news.

English newspapers report in subdued tones the miraculous overnight recovery of every ill person from what health officials had worried would be an unstoppable pathogen. Though I never saw the headlines while it was getting worse, I presume they made much more noise about people growing ill and quickly dying. Doctors are still baffled about what caused the disease and caution that it might not be over and people should continue to take basic precautions against contagion.

I do a search for my father coupled with the key word Thanjavur and discover a brief article reporting him missing a week ago. His disappearance was flagged by a couple of members of his team who were in India on a short-term visa. They were colleagues of his from the university. That might be an angle worth exploring.

More searching on the university and its archaeology faculty. It appears that the department chair—who would presumably be the one to approve such digs and perhaps help secure grant money—is still in the States, teaching classes for the fall semester. I remember the name: Michelle Liu. She’s an old friend of Dad’s who preferred the lecture hall and the cozy office to the heat and dust of digs. They often published findings together. I think they kind of had a deal: She’d minimize his teaching responsibilities and the agony of academic bureaucracy, and he’d brave the mud and the icky bugs to dig for treasure. Each thought the other one was doing all the dirty work. I’d drop her name if I had to; I figured I had enough to proceed now and a safe place to keep my stuff.

“Ready to head back out?” I ask my hound. Orlaith is curled up on top of the bed, hogging all of it.

"Nap first."

“You’ve been napping already. Come on, let’s go, unless you want me to leave you here.”

"No, go with you!" she says, and climbs down off the bed, her tail up and wagging. I leave my bag in the room and put a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door. I take my weapons, though. I’ll need Scáthmhaide to snoop around.

It’s after midnight when we return to the dig, and I approach the trailer sitting off to the side with the hope that it contains an office instead of sleeping archaeologists. I camouflage both of us, to be safe, and gently try the door. Locked.

I’ve not done it before, but Atticus told me that you can bind tumblers into the unlocked position with very little trouble. Despite his assurance, it’s quite troublesome for me; I’m not so accustomed to free-form binding as he is, and I can’t actually see the tumblers. I don’t know how to target them without visual aid, and we haven’t had time since my binding to the earth to go over Breaking and Entering for Druids. After ten frustrating minutes, I give up and unbind the entire metal doorknob and lock, letting it melt away out of the hole. Problem solved.

“Stay here and let me know if anyone comes?” I whisper to Orlaith.

"Okay. I watch."

The trailer contains three desks, a mini-fridge, and a garbage can stuffed full of empty soda bottles and sandwich wrappers. No slumbering archaeologists.

I turn on a light and dispel my night vision, figuring that Orlaith will let me know in time if anyone comes to investigate. I can’t imagine that anyone would, besides the archaeologists themselves, and they’re surely sacked out in a hotel somewhere.

It takes little time to discern which desk is Dad’s. Two are messes and one is neat. And the papers on the neat one are covered with my dad’s tight, crabbed script.

They’re not interesting to me—catalogs of artifacts found and reports on soil composition and radiocarbon dating and so on. I try the drawers of the desk, only to discover that they’re locked too. I don’t waste time but unbind the lock right away. I find what I’m looking for in the bottom drawer: Dad’s personal diary. I skip forward to the last couple of entries, beginning with one dated October 3:

I am in India now, drawn by a call from a former student about a very odd discovery. It is a sealed clay vessel with Sanskrit markings on the outside, warning that it should not be opened. We will, of course, be opening it in the interest of science. I have never seen its like before; this may turn out to be a stunning discovery. Have spent the day preparing samples for the lab. Cannot wait for the results.

I skim through the rest of that paragraph, because I know how it ends. But I do wonder who the mysterious former student is and what happened to him, because this indicates that my father didn’t find the vase himself—as Laksha told me—but rather had it given to him. I would dearly love to speak to whoever was responsible for that. In the entry of October 4 I get a clue:

Nothing new today in terms of artifacts, but Logan claims to have reliable information about location of the Lost Arrows of Vayu. He says they must be buried somewhere near here, north of Thanjavur. If I didn’t have this magnificent find sitting in front of me, I would dismiss it as the worst kind of silliness—arrows supposedly crafted by a god of the wind, imbued with magical properties? Ridiculous. And without a credible source of origin, as far as I can tell, though he tried to argue that these arrows influenced the creation of fabled weapons owned by Thor and Odin. But perhaps there are some arrowheads of historical significance buried out there, which we can creditably say were made in honor of the god rather than by the god himself. After we publish our work on this vessel—Ray has taken to calling it “the Sorcerer’s Urn”—perhaps we will get additional funding to look for them.

No entries after that. I have two names to inquire about now—Logan and Ray—and a search to run about those arrows. I take the diary with me and leave everything else untouched, though I do scan the tops of the messy desks to see if I can determine to whom they belong. Hard copies of memos and emails reveal that one belongs to Chirayu Parekh—who might be Ray—and another to Miriam Vargas. I’d come back to the dig at dawn and try to catch one or both of them before they got to the trailer and realized it had been burgled.

Okay, my favorite hound, I say as I exit the trailer. Nap time. Let’s go back and get you snuggled into bed.

"No nap for Granuaile?"

Maybe later. I need to work on a problem for a little while. Durga’s suggestion that I might have occasion to wonder at the weapons she brought two nights ago comes back to me. I think this might be the proper occasion. The mention of the arrows makes me realize that she hadn’t brought a bow with her.

When I get back to the hotel and run a quick image search of Durga, I discover that she is often depicted as having a bow, and the stories that delve into the gifts given her by the gods of the Hindu pantheon do include mention of Vayu’s arrows. However, I cannot find any specific mention of the bow in the stories, beyond a symbolic religious meaning. Vayu’s arrows, then, must be the important weapons, and she had come without them. Perhaps because they truly were buried somewhere north of Thanjavur? If so, why? And why did she not simply explain?

When I review the last entry, Dad’s journal makes another connection for me. The idea that Vedic culture influenced the Norse somehow is certainly true in my own experience: The asuras I’d seen surrounding my father were blue-skinned and four-armed, like the shape Loki had taken when he confronted us in Poland. I remember thinking at the time, what the f**k, why is he blue, but it never would have occurred to me to think it was anything but the product of his own derangement. We had the Olympians to worry about, and Loki had to be put on the back burner. And now all I can think is, what if that was my big clue—my one chance to walk the path to which Durga alluded, where none of this happened?

I hide my face in my hands and mutter, “Oh, shut up.” Orlaith hears me and raises her head from the bed.

"What? I didn’t say nothing."

I was talking to myself. And watch out for double negatives.

"I meant I didn’t say no nothings neither. Um. Yeah?"

I know it is pointless to speculate and torture myself with what might have been, but I expect I’ll take a good long while doing it. Later. To prevent a spiral of second-guessing and self-recrimination, I’d try to grab a few hours of sleep to get myself adjusted to Indian time, so I could begin again at dawn. I’d search for this Logan guy, and when I found him, I’d ask where he got that urn.

It’s an excellent plan, and the flaw doesn’t become clear until I stop Ray in the morning, before he makes it to the trailer and sees that the doorknob is gone. I am so very smooth: I tell him my name is Beverly Childress, drop Dr. Liu’s name, and say I’ve been hired by the university to investigate the disappearance of Donal MacTiernan. My American accent in this place gives me instant credibility with him.

Indian-born but educated in America, Chirayu Parekh is an adorable if slightly doughy man with glasses and a mustache imported from the seventies. Like many people from overseas who spend any time in the United States, he had grown tired of repeating his name over and over again and had hacked it down to Ray to simplify it for the ’Mericans. He carries a leather messenger bag in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, and he’s very eager to help once he checks me out and decides that he wants me to like him.

“Mr. Parekh, in my preliminary investigation we came across a student of Dr. MacTiernan’s named Logan, who was working here on site,” I say. “Can you tell me anything about him?”

“Oh, sure, that guy. Kind of tall, blond, sort of kept to himself. Or at least kept away from Miriam and me. He hung around with Dr. MacTiernan a lot.”

“Where can I find him?”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know.”

“All right, what was his last name?”

“I don’t know that either. He was always just called Logan.”

I try to hide my irritation, but I’m uncertain that I manage it. “Will he be joining you here at the dig today?”

“No, I don’t think so. He disappeared at the same time Dr. MacTiernan did. But we couldn’t report it, you know, because we didn’t know his name.”

I frown at him. “We? You mean Miriam Vargas doesn’t know either? How do you let someone work on a university-sponsored project like this without knowing his name?”

Ray begins to panic at the implication that he screwed up somehow. “Well, Dr. MacTiernan vouched for him and he knew his stuff, so who was I to question? I mean—”

“This man may be responsible for Dr. MacTiernan’s disappearance. Can’t you think of any way to find out his name?”

I fear that the opposite might be true—that my father, once he was possessed by the raksoyuj, caused Logan to disappear—but I can’t share that with Ray.

“Well, no, I mean, I hardly even think about living people; it’s not in the job description of an archaeologist, you know—”