Tam nodded. “Ultimately, they would be safest with the Calliack. The destruction Meraud has caused is like a grain of sand on a beach. You have no idea what might happen if all four fell into the wrong hands.” The muscles in his face tensed as if he was in pain.
“Then maybe I shouldn’t even have these.” She held them out so he could take them.
“You should,” he said.
“Why do you think that?” She was frustrated that she couldn’t read his expression and that he gazed out over the hills instead of looking directly at her.
“Because I trust you. You have a good heart. You won’t misuse them and I believe this is the only way.”
Distant voices interrupted them, calling her name.
“I’m here!” she shouted.
“You should tell them,” said Tam, “about this power you have now, about the chance you have of saving your father.”
She looked at the stones then curled her fingers over them. “Not yet.”
“Kaetha!” they called again.
She stood up on the rock at her feet so that they had a better chance of seeing her.
“Over here!” she called. Then her face drained of colour. She had set her feet in the smooth, indented patch of rock where countless generations of monarchs had stood to be acknowledged as rulers. She leapt down, as if it had burned her feet.
“The dead kings saw that,” he said with a sweeping glance across the dark stones. “They saw you claim your power. Now it’s your duty to wield it.”
THIRTY TWO
Loss
The Air stone was smooth and warm in Kaetha’s palm and her eyes were fixed on Tam. A shadow had seemed to pass over his face, as though he were lost in memories of his past. Not for the first time, she wondered what kind of a past it was, what had led to the scars that streaked his face, what events had ended in the Calliack’s curses upon him. Certain that he would not tell her if she asked, she willed the power of the Air stone to show her his true name, to link his mind to hers so she could hear his thoughts.
He turned to her, dark eyes flashing angrily.
“You – you felt that?” she asked.
“My thoughts are not yours pry into, Kaetha.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“No.” He sighed, the fierce edge to his features softening. “It’s alright. You must understand, Baukans are more cautious than other Fiadhain. We value our privacy. I wasn’t honest with you before when I said that shape-shifting was the only Baukan skill I had left after the Calliack stripped me of other powers. Earth magic is, by nature, protective. Guarding thoughts and feelings from others is a power that runs deep in my kind.”
“I wonder . . . Do you think that with this,” she said, holding up the Earth stone, “I could also do that? That is, protect myself from Meraud? Stop her manipulating my feelings?”
“I don’t see why not. I think of it as building a wall around myself, if that helps at all. However, something you could practise with the Earth stone which might be more useful to you right now is manipulating matter. Why don’t you fashion something you can wear that carries the stones?”
“Like Meraud’s gold wrist band.” She looked over her shoulder. The others were still a little way off, Donnan having slowed down to match Mairi’s pace. She drew the witch hunter’s knife with its elaborately crafted hilt. Holding the Earth stone, she passed her hand across the surface of the hilt, picturing a slice of the metal stripping away to give her something to work with. Nothing happened so she tried again. “I can’t do it.”
“Looks like that hilt’s made of iron.”
“So?”
“Iron inhibits the powers of Fiadhain.”
“Why should it?”
“I believe that long ago, before humans discovered how to extract iron from the earth, the Calliack foresaw humanity’s future use of it to hunt, to tame the land and wage great wars. She didn’t want Baukans to help them use iron as they’d helped them hunt with spears, so she stretched her power through all the iron in this world so that only her magic could have power over it.” He touched the copper clasp on her cloak. “This on the other hand—”
“It was my mother’s,” said Kaetha, clutching it. Pulling out the leather drawstring purse from her bag, she tipped the last six copper pennings they possessed into her palm, coins left over from the money the stranger in Neul Carraig had given them.
“They would work,” said Tam. “Give me your arm.” Kaetha glanced at Mairi and Donnan who were busy talking, then stopped walking and pushed back her sleeve. Tam balanced the coins on her arm in three piles of two, then placed an elemental stone beside each. “There,” he said. “The copper should feel out its new shape as you guide it with the power of the Earth stone.”
Around the coppers, her skin prickled into goose bumps. Then the coins started to scrape against one another, spinning until the royal thistles stamped on the coins blurred into nothing. Metal stretched like spinning wool, warming and twisting as it clasped hold of each stone, reaching around her arm in thin bands. When she was happy with it, the metal grew still and cooled. She touched the stones, secure in their copper settings, and traced the bands of metal, grooved like twine, to their rounded ends which almost met on the underside of her arm, and she couldn’t help grinning when she saw how pleased Tam was.
“What are you up to?” asked Donnan.
Kaetha pulled down her sleeve to cover the stones.
“Nothing.
