“What happened here?” Brother Gillespie’s voice was gentle but firm.
“He was after me,” she said. “I didn’t kill him. I don’t understand why he’s dead.”
“The lass speaks the truth. I saw it happen.”
“Nannie!” Kaetha threw her arms around the woman. “I thought you’d been taken.”
“Well, of course she speaks the truth, Nannie. Did you think I’d doubt her?” said Brother Gillespie. “He’s clearly one of Murdo’s men. But why would the new thane behave in such an underhand way?”
“Murdo,” breathed Kaetha through clenched teeth.
It will soon be done. An image came to her of the two stones beside the memorial cairn. She felt an itching to take a stone back. I will win. More of Murdo’s thoughts shocked her as they gripped her mind, swelling so that they overwhelmed her own thoughts. Brother Gillespie gave her a strange look.
“Because he has no evidence and he’s too impatient to wait for it,” she said. “And he thinks arresting people openly without proof could lead to rebellion. He doesn’t care about what’s right. This is a game to him. Once he’s captured those he wants, he’ll fabricate whatever evidence he needs. While we’re alone, we’re vulnerable,” she said, clasping Nannie’s hand.
“You must come and live here, Nannie,” said Brother Gillespie.
“It’s a bit late to ask me to share your roof, Gippie,” said Nannie. “Or are you having second thoughts about certain vows you were once so keen on taking?” She gave him a wicked smile and he turned a deep shade of red.”
“Be serious, Nannie,” he said. “There’s nowhere safer. Please.”
Nannie sighed.
“I’ll take that as agreement,” he said. “So, do we know how this man died? You said you saw it happen?”
“I saw a stone in his hand,” said Nannie. “Pick it up with cloth but don’t let it touch your skin or you’ll be food for maggots too.”
Kaetha saw the stone at the man’s fingertips. It looked like an arrowhead of black, polished stone, flecked with white. She felt a hum in the air around it and didn’t need telling it was powerful.
Covering her hand with her cloak, Kaetha retrieved the stone. “What is it?”
“If they find that in the possession of either of you—” said Brother Gillespie.
“They won’t,” said Nannie.
Just then, builders and stonemasons trudged into the building site, gathering into a circle of shocked faces around the dead man.
“What happened here?” said a stocky man who carried a hammer and an air of authority.
“This poor man fell, Jack,” said Brother Gillespie, “from the scaffolding. Why he was trying to climb so high, I don’t know. Drunk, it seems.”
Kaetha stared at the monk. Several men took off their hats.
“These women were nearby and I asked them to help attend to his injuries,” continued Brother Gillespie, “but by then it was too late.”
“Poor fool,” said the man called Jack.
“What are those cuts on his hands from?” someone muttered.
They took the path beside the common, Kaetha clutching her bundled cloak with the stone tucked inside it.
“What is this, Nannie?” she said. “Why did it kill him?”
“Whether by chance or fate, he touched an elf-shot. Bad fortune for him that the builders unearthed such a thing.”
“Good for me, though. But how could someone be killed by touching a stone?”
“Elf-shot is an ancient thing and there are different tales surrounding it. But I’ll tell you what my old healer, Bess Hardy, told me. It comes from ancient times when all that men and women ate was what they found growing in the forests, their only meat such prey as they scavenged like carrion birds, from the kills of other animals. At this time, they befriended the Fiadhain of Earth—”
“Baukans?” Kaetha thought of the rock at Cannasay. If a Fiadhain was trapped there, surely it’s element would be earth.
“Aye,” said Nannie. “As guardians of beasts and the land, they taught man what they were permitted to hunt and how to make a clean kill. They gifted man with stones, imbued with power and shaped into arrowheads or spearheads that would always reach their targets, killing prey quickly and without pain. We fashioned similar weapons for ourselves out of flint but the magic of the Baukan stones was much prized and sought after, leading to wars between the first clans of this land.
“But the Calliack,” continued Nannie, “the ruler of the Fiadhain, grew to despise man and his ways and cursed the Baukan-made weapons so that they killed any mortal who touched them. Such stones are extremely rare to find now, yet whenever a story is told of one being unearthed, it is followed by tales of death.”
Kaetha uncovered the point of the elf-shot and looked at it in the sunlight. It was the size and shape of an arrow head, black with spidery threads of white but it gleamed green and purple in the sunlight, like the sheen of a starling’s feathers. She found it hard to take her eyes from it. “It’s beautiful.”
“Cover it up!” shouted Nannie.
“I was being careful,” she said. “What are you going to do with it?”
“For now, I’ll hide it in the cottage. Bess once borrowed an elf-shot from a family of Tyrrosian travellers or Wayfarers as they call themselves. She kept it in water from sunset to sunrise, turning the water into a healing potion to kill cankers of the flesh. The treatment is risky, potentially fatal. Though,
