Celtic Fire

She glanced at the display before answering.

“Garin,” she said. He only ever seemed to call when it was bad news. That had become the nature of their relationship. Save a girl once, she’d joked, and you think it gives you the right to ruin her life. “What can I do for you?”

“Ah, Annja, sweetheart, how I’ve missed your dulcet tones,” he said, making no effort to hide the sarcasm in his voice. “Not missing me too much, I hope?”

“I’ve not even been here a day—besides, it’s hard to miss you.” She checked her watch and tried to work out what the time was where he was, but then realized that she had no idea where he was in the world.

“Well, according to this little gadget I’m looking at you’re in Wales of all places.”

“Spying on me?”

“Hardly. It’s just this new box of tricks we’re trying out that tracks back signals when they bounce off satellites. It’s a refinement on the old caller ID. You never know when it might come in handy.”

“I’m not sure I want to think about why you’d need to know exactly where someone’s calling from—mainly because every reason I imagine will probably be suspicious if not illegal.”

“Oh, ye of little faith.”

“So what can I do for you? Got some relatives you want me to visit?” She looked across the fields at a flock of sheep nuzzling along the barbed wire of the perimeter fence, and pushed a toe against a pile of rotting cigarette butts. She could never understand why people would litter in a place like this.

“Ask not what you can do for me, ask only what I can do for you.”

“What on earth are you babbling about?”

“I’m nearby, someplace they call London. Ha! I figured if you were at a loose end I could nip over and entertain you.”

“Entertain me?.”

“I’m a lover of beautiful women, Annja, you know me. I don’t discriminate—black, white, in color—doesn’t matter, beauty is beauty. And I like to collect beautiful things.”

“And vacuous ones.”

“Oh, you wound me...though I will admit to a weakness for the odd dumb blonde. I can’t help myself. That isn’t a crime. So, let me entertain you.”

On a bucket list of wants and desires, that was right down there on the bottom of Annja’s bucket along with the dregs. But for all his lecherous ways, Garin was charming, and good company, hence the ease with which he took to womanizing. “I’ll give the offer its due consideration, but right now I’m hoping for a couple of days of me time.”

“Well, if you change your mind...”

“You’ll be the first to know,” she replied.

“Excellent,” he said. “Have fun and try not to miss me too much.”

“I’ll do my best,” she said, but he’d already killed the call.

A boy peered over the edge of the grassy bank, looking down at her, Roman emperor to her gladiator waiting in the pit. He disappeared back behind the edge without giving her the thumbs-up.

Annja left the amphitheater, climbing the hillside that would have been banked seating back in the day. She then spotted her Roman emperor; he’d moved on to the shelter of a hedge at the end of the field with a couple of his friends. They were huddled together. She saw the spark of a lighter, which therefore explained the cigarette butts.

Behind the boys she could see a lonely spire.

She left them to smoke their coffin nails and went to check it out.

Chapter 8 (#ulink_8da79d3a-10e1-5e23-b187-e6c87ed6036d)

“I don’t mean to be difficult—” which of course was exactly what he meant to be “—but what exactly are you are planning to do with this thing now?” Geraint tilted his head slightly, making a show of thinking about it. “I suppose it could make an interesting flowerpot. Maybe you could turn it into a water feature?”

“Or I could hit you over the head with it,” Awena said. Her twin was proving more obstinate and much less enthusiastic than she had hoped he’d be, but then it hadn’t been his idea to steal the stone in the first place, so perhaps it was all just a case of sour grapes. The important thing was that he agreed with her—the stone wasn’t what the museum curator had thought it was. Unfortunately, he didn’t agree that it made it any more important than a well-preserved whetstone. That it had been used to hone blades rather than crush grain made no difference to him.

She took a deep breath, refusing to let him wind her up.

“Do I really have to spell it out to you?” She shook her head.

“Spell away, dear sister. I’m clueless.”

And he really was. He couldn’t see why she’d been compelled to steal it before it was consigned to some dank storage area in the bowels of the museum, never to be seen again.

She wanted him to be as wrapped up with possibilities as she was, not just humoring her. It might have been her idea, but he was her other half and she didn’t just want him to be in this with her; she needed him to be part of it.

“Don’t laugh, but I’m ninety-nine percent certain what you are looking at is the Whetstone of Tudwal Tudglyd.” She let that sink in. The whetstone was one of their father’s obsessions. He’d spent most of his life chasing around the country in search of it.

Geraint stood in silence, running a finger over the stone. “Could it be?” What he really meant was: What makes you so sure that it’s one of the things Father wasted his life on?

And it had been a waste.

They’d grown up with the stories and knew all about the thirteen Treasures of Britain and their supposed properties. She’d grown up with the myths even if she hadn’t grown up with a father, as he’d spent most of their childhood and adolescence chasing shadows.

“Don’t do this, Awena,” he said finally, not unkindly. “Once you start on this trail it’s going to be impossible to stop. You know that, don’t you? Don’t let it steal your life like it stole his.”

“It won’t.”

“I’m serious. He can’t think about anything else. He’s obsessed. It’s like madness that’s worried away at him over the years, removing all trace of his personality. Now all that’s left is this compulsive need to prove he’s right. Take a good look at this thing, see it for what it really is.”

“And what’s that?” she asked guardedly.

“A lump of stone.”

“Of course it isn’t just a lump of stone. We’ve both read Dad’s notes. Look at it. Think about what he worked out.... This has to be the whetstone. It was found in the same area where Tudwal Tudglyd’s whetstone was last known to have been, and there’s no denying it was found with other relics from the same era. It can’t be a coincidence.”

“Can’t it? Or is that just what you want to believe? Dad spent his entire life looking for this. Do you really think he’d have missed it if it was simply sitting in a display case in a local museum? He isn’t an idiot, Awena.”

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. He doubted her. “Certainly it’s the real thing,” she snapped.

“Is it? Can you prove it? Is it supposed to have some kind of property that no other stone has?”

“If it’s used to sharpen a blade and a brave man uses the weapon, then it is guaranteed to draw blood. But if the blade belongs to a coward it won’t even sharpen.”

“But how do you prove that? Or do you have a convenient coward in mind? And who uses swords nowadays. It’s not exactly the weapon of choice, is it?”

“Blade. Not sword. There’s no shortage of knife crime in the city, is there?” She shook her head, refusing to be drawn into it. “It’s not about proving it and you know it. I believe that it’s the genuine article and for the moment that’s all that matters.” She prepared herself for a patronizing response, but surprisingly none came. It had been a while since their father had returned to the cottage, so by rights he ought to be home soon. He’d know just by looking at it and that was all the proof she would need. It was all the proof she had ever needed.