“Don’t listen to her,” said Tam. “Water magic flows through her words.”
Kaetha felt dizzy, her head heavy. Cries of the gulls were muffled and swathes of shingle drifted out of focus. Her muscles loosened as her anger trickled away and she gazed up at Meraud’s face. What if she’s right? Maybe I need her. Perhaps I belong with her.
“Come with me,” repeated Meraud.
“Kaetha,” said Tam, “you have the strength to fight it,” but his voice was faint and his words were not as important as Meraud’s.
What am I thinking? She shook her head. No, she told herself, remembering the anger in Donnan’s face back at Neul Carraig, his disappointment. Meraud’s lies had already begun to sew themselves into her mind, once again. This is not me. I have to cast her magic out of my head. Feelings of loyalty to Meraud – the desire for greater magical power – to go now and save her father with her by her side – these feelings and wishes were bright and loud and enticing, whilst dull and numb and shrinking was her desire to stay with Donnan, Mairi and Tam. Soon she couldn’t tell what was real and what was not.
Through the battle of emotions swelling within her, she held firmly to one thought – Cast her magic out. Naru had done it; so could she. As she willed her Fire magic to dredge through her heart and mind to rid her of the darkness of Meraud’s lies, light streaked across her closed lidded eyes and she grew hot. Beads of sweat gathered on her forehead. Then a cold, empty feeling slithered through her, like a snake seeking a rock to hide under, but her Fire found it and it dispersed like steam. Cast it all out.
When she opened her eyes again, it was to glare at Meraud who staggered backwards, her smile buckling. Kaetha’s anger was as raw and consuming as a flaming execution pyre. She had felt Meraud’s defences against her Air magic; they had been hard and numbing like walls of ice, but that ice was cracking now and Meraud’s thoughts drifted through it.
“Stop,” Meraud whimpered, cradling her head in her hands.
A thought came to Kaetha then. It felt like a memory. There was a wall of stone and, below it, the sea. It was odd, most of her thought-reading began with sound but this was just image. She could see the panic in Meraud’s eyes now – a chink in her armour. Fire and Air working together, Kaetha opened up this vision and now she saw an ashy smudge growing in the dark sky. Dawn. Thoughts grew out from the memory – whispers of the ships in Longmachlag Bay – of power – a great destructive power which would cause all aboard the ships to perish.
Then she saw something glinting. A gold band around a wrist. How can it be? thought Kaetha when she saw the ornament held by that gold band. It was a stone that looked like elf-shot only paler in colour. How can Meraud have worn such a stone without it killing her? This stone was powerful in a way that Kaetha did not understand, yet she felt sure that it was connected to the deaths at Longmachlag Bay.
Kaetha drew her knife and pointed it at Meraud who threw up her arms, though to shield herself or to attack, it was hard to tell. “I don’t wish to hurt you, Kaetha.”
Tam was now snarling beside Kaetha in wolf form.
“I don’t care what you do to me,” said Kaetha. “Just tell me, where is it? Where’s the stone?”
Meraud whistled a high ringing note and water burst in a great splash. As Tarshruth rose from the sea, his face and body changed form, limbs and back stretching, face lengthening, though Kaetha still recognised those same, sorrowful eyes. His weed-like hair flicked up into a shaggy mane. In moments, he became a great dappled grey horse, dripping water as his hooves beat into the shingle. He reached Meraud who leapt onto his back.
She looked down on Kaetha with the proud face of a victor of a battle, though she backed away like a deserter. “The future is a vast sea. I believe we will meet again. Find your aunt. Leave this land.” She kicked Tarshruth with her heels. “Only stay away from Ciadrath, that way lies death,” she warned before Tarshruth’s hooves thundered and her cloak billowed after her like a storm cloud.
THIRTY ONE
The Crown of Dead Kings
It hurt to leave Aleas and Arran, both broken in their grief, but they had to go.
“It was Meraud,” said Kaetha as they left Longmachlag, following the Murchads’ directions south-west towards the village of Kempston.
“How do you know?” asked Donnan.
Kaetha said nothing.
“That woman . . . she wasn’t here, was she?” said Mairi. “You didn’t see her?” Mairi gripped her hand. “Answer me. Have you seen her?”
She nodded. The image of the stone like pale elf-shot came to her mind again. There was so much she was ignorant of, so much worry twisting and fraying her thoughts that she felt queasy.
“And she’s behind all this?” said Mairi. “She could have killed you. I shouldn’t have left you alone.”
“Why didn’t she?” said Donnan. “When she so easily took the lives of all those others?”
She couldn’t answer him.
Her relief at surviving was marred by the stinging of guilt. Why did she live when they had died? It was made all the worse as it was by her encouragement that the Order decided to board the ships. It was upon her insistence that the prisoners of Creagairde chose exile instead of a trial. She wondered how many might have survived without her interference. She pictured her friends, the townsfolk, the silent ones, lining the
