“We must be quick,” said Kaetha, pushing the silver spoon into the lock.
They helped him up, his frozen grip surprisingly tight, his legs shaking, eyes shiny in the torchlight as he drank in the sight of her face.
There was a quiet, insistent mew from a cat further down the passageway.
“That’s Tam. Someone’s coming,” she said. Tiny tremors from the Earth stone also suggested to her the approaching tread of footsteps. She watched as hope abandoned her father, making his body seem shrunken.
“You have to go. Darling lass, you have to go and you mustn’t come back for me,” he said, pushing her away and pulling the cell door closed on himself again.
“You’re my Pa. I will not lose you again.”
He squeezed her hand. “You never did. Now, lock it. Lock it and get yourselves out.”
She hesitated.
“Lock it – now. There’s a good lass.”
She hated the turn of the key, the click of the lock, the growing distance as Donnan led away from her father. She hated that they were so close and yet so far from setting him free. They ducked into the shadows as a guard drew closer. Realising he would pass them, she feared that shadow might not be enough to hide them. They needed to be invisible.
It’s worth a try, she thought as she took Donnan’s hands in hers. She felt the warmth of his breath but could barely make out his face. She focussed on two points of light where his eyes reflected the torch. Concentrating on the Air stone, she drew her mind away from the dungeons, away from the sensations of her body in the cold, dank corridor. She was Mind and Thought now, Memory and Reason. Such things could not be seen, such things could be as powerful as a hurricane or as unnoticeable as still air. She felt a gust of dizziness and then a floating weightlessness. She could not longer see the reflected light in Donnan’s eyes. He was not there. Neither was she. The guard walked right past them.
Donnan, she thought, automatically talking to him in thought as if he were a Fiadhain. It worked. He couldn’t see us even if he held a torch right in our faces. She sensed his shock, both in the flutter of his thoughts and in the sudden pressure of his hand.
You can speak . . . in my head?
It seems so. You’re the first human I’ve talked with like this.
So you can hear my thoughts too. With those stones?
One of them. But look, you must keep hold of my hand. I don’t think I can reach you with the magic otherwise.
Alright. He paused. Can you hear all my thoughts?
No, Donnan. Just those you direct to me. She didn’t tell him how his other thoughts were like soft whispers, most too far off to hear. She could sense tension and questions in his mind and had to stop herself from probing further.
Don’t make a sound. He squeezed her hand again. The guard is lingering close by.
“Looking for someone smaller than you to beat up, are you?” said Aedan.
What’s he doing? Thought Kaetha.
He thinks the guard will find us unless he draws him towards the cell, answered Donnan.
But he can’t cope with any more pain. We have to do something.
“Got some spirit this evening, worm? Not like yesterday – all night crying like a wee bairn. Sounds like you’re getting a bit too comfortable here,” said the guard.
Kaetha crept closer. Then came the thud. Aedan grunted in pain as the guard’s heavy boot collided with his stomach. Kaetha gasped. She hadn’t meant to. But now, as the guard turned to face them, she knew that, invisible or not, she had put Donnan and herself in great danger.
The guard drew his sword and locked the cell behind him, stepping into the pool of torchlight. Kaetha could see the milky scars on his face and arms, even the large pores on his nose and brow, glistening with sweat.
“Who’s there?” he said, coming towards them.
He’ll hear us if we run, she thought to Donnan. They pressed against the wall as the point of his blade came much too close.
His sword tip scraped the wall. “I heard you. I’ll send you back to your cell or into your grave.”
They edged backwards but the guard lunged, his weapon slicing at them. Donnan pushed Kaetha away, drew his knife, leapt up and stabbed at the guard’s sword arm. The guard looked Donnan in the eyes. Her breath caught in her throat. She could see him too. She tried to reach out to him again but she couldn’t do so without colliding with the guard. Donnan’s knife had merely scratched the leather bracer on the guard’s arm and, before he could strike again, the guard knocked him down, with a fist the size of a ham. Donnan was sprawled on the stone floor in front of Aedan’s cell, the guard standing over him, sword pointed at his neck.
“What are you? A thief or a gaol-breaker?”
“Leave him,” said Aedan. “Look at him, he’s clearly just a servant.”
“A servant who attacks a guard?” the man spat.
“You thrust your sword into the darkness, not knowing who was there, you should expect a lad to defend himself,” said Aedan.
The guard loomed over Donnan. “Gaol-breaker then. Why else would the old man defend you?”
“I’m not,” Donnan managed, staring at the point of the blade.
“Whatever else you are, you’re dead, laddie.”
As the guard raised his sword, Kaetha grabbed the torch from the bracket, abandoning her invisibility to focus on her other powers. Snuffing out its light with Fire magic – perhaps this will make him hesitate – she also used Earth magic to compress the wood of the torch so that it was as hard as
