Tricked
Authors: Kevin Hearne
Tags: #Action & Adventure, #Paranormal, #General, #Fantasy, #Fiction, #Contemporary
THE IRON DRUID CHRONICLES
BY KEVIN HEARNE
Hounded
“This is the best urban/paranormal fantasy I have read in years. Fast paced, funny, clever, and suitably mythic, this is urban fantasy for those worn-out by werewolves and vampires. Fans of Jim Butcher, Harry Connolly, Greg van Eekhout, Ben Aaronovitch, or Neil Gaiman’s
American Gods
will take great pleasure in Kevin Hearne’s
Hounded
. Highly recommended.”
—J
OHN
O
TTINGER
III,
editor of Grasping for the Wind
“Filled with snarky descriptions … comradely characters, thumping action and a plot as stylized as a Renaissance Faire, this tale is outrageously fun.”
—The Plain Dealer
“A superb urban fantasy debut … with plenty of quips and zap-pow-bang fighting.”
—Publishers Weekly
(starred review)
“Fans of fantasy and urban fantasy will eat this one up.…
Hounded
is a series debut that is absolutely not to be missed!”
—My Bookish Ways
“For both the urban fantasy and non–urban fantasy geekoids,
Hounded
is a tremendous read. Fun, well-written, and entertaining.”
—Blood of the Muse
“A page-turning and often laugh-out-loud-funny caper through a mix of the modern and the mythic.”
—A
RI
M
ARMELL
, author of
The Warlord’s Legacy
Hexed
“Kevin Hearne … cranks out action and quips at a frenzied pace … in this fun and highly irreverent read.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Hearne’s writing is fast paced and spot on.…
Hexed
is steeped in magic and wrapped in awesome. It really doesn’t get much better than this!”
—My Bookish Ways
“The humor in
Hexed
is nonstop.… Hard to read without a smile plastered across your face.”
—Blood of the Muse
Hammered
“In this adrenaline-spiked third Iron Druid adventure … Hearne provides lots of zippy plotting and rocking action scenes.… Fans will be thrilled.”
—Publishers Weekly
“I love, love, love this series, and
Hammered
is the best so far.… You’ll be turning pages in warp speed until the final battle, then you won’t be able to turn them fast enough.”
—My Bookish Ways
Tricked
is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A Del Ray eBook Edition
Copyright © 2012 by Kevin Hearne
Excerpt from
Trapped
by Kevin Hearne copyright © 2012 by Kevin Hearne
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
D
EL
R
EY
is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book
Trapped
by Kevin Hearne. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.
eISBN: 978-0-345-53463-7
Cover illustration: © Gene Mollica
v3.1
There’s a reason the Navajo Code Talkers were so invaluable to the Marines in WWII. Their language, while beautiful, is really difficult to describe, filled with little glottal stops and special characters and mind-shredding verb constructions like the optative-semelfactive. They have no adjectives but rather use their verbs in an adjectival way. To illustrate how complicated it can get, there is no Navajo word for the verb
to give
but rather eleven different words that vary depending on the size and shape of what is being given. I don’t use many words of their language in this book, but I’ve done my best to give you a clue about the few you’ll see below. None of them are verbs. Also note that there are regional differences in pronunciation, just as there are different dialects in English, so some of these pronunciations may differ slightly depending on where you are in the Navajo Nation.
Navajo
Áłtsé Hashké = Aht SEH hash KEH (Translates to
First Angry
, or perhaps
First Mad
or
First Scolder
. It’s the proper name of one of the First People, Coyote.)Áńł’įįh = unn TEE (Means the
Witchery Way
, or
the Corpse-Poison Way
.)ch’įįdii = CHEE dee (A ghost, but specifically the part of one’s spirit that wasn’t in harmony with the universe at the time of death.)
Diné = dih NEH (Means
the People
. It’s what the Navajo call themselves; the term
Navajo
was slapped on them by the Spanish and it stuck. In this book, art will imitate life; the Diné will call themselves Diné, and everyone else—including Atticus—will call them Navajo.)Diné Bahane’ = dih NEH bah HAH neh (Means
Story of the People
. It is the Navajo creation story, parts of which are sung in various ceremonies.)Hataałii = hah TAH hlee (This translates to
singer
, a person who sings at ceremonial occasions and creates sandpaintings, important in many rituals from blessing structures to restoring balance in those who have lost it; in crude terms, a medicine man.)Hózh
= hoh ZHOH (This means
very good
, or
great energy
, everything spiffy and balanced in the world, which English sometimes translates to
blessing
. To be honest, it doesn’t translate well into English; it’s just one of those words that are too big for Anglo-Saxon noises.)Hózh
Blessing Way
.)Nílch’i = NIL cheh (Literally,
air
, but in stories this is the name of the wind. And, yeah, that
l
with the cross through it doesn’t really get pronounced like an English
l
, but it’s more of a guttural noise behind your molars; using an
l
is just an expedient approximation.)
Stunning Sandstone Edifices
Tyende = tee YEH in DEH (This mesa is located about ten miles southwest of Kayenta. Incredibly beautiful sandstone—just don’t be in a wash after a rain. Get to the high ground FAST, because they aren’t kidding about flash floods.)
Wolverines of Especial Interest
Faolan = FWAY lawn (This isn’t a Navajo name, by the way; we’re back to the Irish here.)
Tuatha Dé Danann
Ogma = OG mah (Pronounced
og
as in
log
. It’s not like the
Ó
in Aenghus Óg. That had a diacritical mark over it so you’d pronounce it as a long
O
. This one’s short. Ogma is credited with teaching Druids Ogham script, among other things.)
The best trick I ever pulled off was watching myself die. I did a respectable job of it too—the dying, I mean, not the watching.
The key to dying well is to make a final verbal ejaculation that is full of rage and pain but not tainted in the least by squeals of terror or pleas for mercy. This was my father’s wisdom—about the only shred of it that has managed to lodge firmly in my mind all these years. He died while trying to steal somebody else’s cows.
It would be an ignominious end today, but before the common era in Ireland, it was honorable and manly to die in a cattle raid, as such theft was called. Before he left to meet his doom, my father must have had some dark premonition about it, because he shared with me all his opinions about dying properly, and I will never forget his final words: “A man’s supposed to shit himself
after
he dies, son, not before. Try to remember that, lad, so that when your time comes, you won’t make a right girly mess of it. Now fuck off and go play in the bog.”
Like many silly codes of bravery and manliness, the meat of my father’s instruction on how to die well can be distilled to a simple slogan: Die angry at maximum volume. (Dying silently is out of the question; the world’s last Druid should not go gentle into that good night.)
