by Alex Archer
It was only when she reached the door that she realized what she wasn’t seeing: the notebook that Awena had been looking at. It wasn’t on the desk and it wasn’t on the floor amid the other torn papers. There were plenty of journals and books strewn across the floor, but on her hands and knees as she went through them, Annja knew for sure it was gone. Awena had come back into the house for it while Annja was out there looking for her—which meant it was the only thing in the room the woman thought worth saving....
Well, it’s gone now, like the sword. No use crying about it.
She struggled with the whetstone, manhandling it out of the house and into the foot well on the passenger’s side of the Porsche. It was as secure there as anywhere.
She needed to speak to Roux. He’d know what she was supposed to do with it now she had it. First, though, she wanted to put some distance between her and the house. It wasn’t that she expected Awena to return. She was long gone. No, it was about avoiding her brother, Geraint. She really didn’t want to have to do the dance again, trying to explain what had happened. It wouldn’t go well.
She clambered into the Porsche and drove, and kept on driving until the car had dipped into the valley and climbed back up the other side. There she was back within range of the nearest cell phone tower. She pulled over at the side of the road to make the call while her reception was good.
It still showed that one missed call.
Garin.
She tapped the screen to return the call.
He greeted her quickly. “Too busy for me? I’m wounded, Annja, truly wounded.”
“I was a bit preoccupied fighting for my life, nothing personal.”
“Given as you’re not dead, I take it that went well?”
“As well as can be expected,” Annja replied.
“Roux wants to know how you’re getting on.”
“Good news, bad news time. You pick.”
“I’ll take the good news first. I’m just that kind of guy,” Garin said.
“Tell Roux that I’ve recovered the Whetstone of Tudwal Tudglyd.”
“Excellent. And the bad news would be you haven’t recovered the sword, I’m guessing?”
“Good guess. The daughter has it. I lost her.”
“How unlike you. This is the fighting for your life part, I suppose?”
“Yep. And it ended with a defenestration.”
“That’s a little extreme.”
“It was unintentional. I can’t believe she walked away from it, frankly. She slashed one of my tires so I couldn’t chase her.”
“You’re not having a lot of luck with cars, are you?”
“No idea where she’s gone. I do know that she recovered her father’s journal, so I think it’s reasonable to assume she’s following in his footsteps.”
“Which would be great if we knew where he intended to go next,” Garin observed.
“Exactly.”
She heard Garin talking to Roux, but he’d clearly put a hand over the mouthpiece to muffle his words. Then he was back. “The old man says to make your way up to Caernarfon as soon as you can. Forget about the woman. We’ve got bigger fish to fry. We need you here tonight. I’ll sort out a hotel room.”
Garin hung up on her before she could agree.
She returned to the hotel to recover her things.
She wouldn’t be coming back.
Chapter 31
Every inch of her ached.
Every cord of muscle was on fire.
Every sinew stung.
Every nerve sang.
Awena Llewellyn felt as though she was alive for the first time.
She had no idea how she’d managed to get back on her feet after the fall. As the impact happened she was sure she was dead, that she’d crushed her spine and shattered her skull, but when the world didn’t go out, when she didn’t stop breathing, she tried to move. Maybe she’d just been lucky—improbably, impossibly lucky—or maybe it was because she’d clung on to the sword for grim life. It didn’t matter. She was alive and in one piece and she wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth by hanging around to give her father’s killer a second chance.
She was in pain.
While she hurt this much, she wouldn’t be able to defend herself, never mind press an attack. That meant running for now.
She wedged the sword between the seat and the passenger’s door. It was just out of reach, but she felt reassured by its nearness. All she had to do was glance across while she drove to feel the heat of it even though the flame had flickered and failed, leaving nothing more miraculous than cold steel. She wished she’d been able to bring the whetstone, but given the circumstances beggars couldn’t be choosy and she was most definitely the beggar here. Her father had found a far greater treasure. It was a tragedy that he hadn’t lived to see what it was capable of. She wished she’d had more time to experiment in terms of putting the two treasures together and seeing what would have been possible.
It could not be helped.
She needed to find someone to study her father’s journal where they wouldn’t be disturbed. There was more in there about the sword, certainly, but more importantly, there was stuff in there about the other treasures. She’d already found a reference to where he believed another of the treasures might lie, one of the greatest of them all.
If he was right...
If it really was there...
If she could get her hands on it...
She’d be able to do anything she set her mind to, including avenging him.
“I promise, Dad. I won’t let you down,” she told the empty car.
She was still a couple of hours away from her destination. The drive took her through the mountains that lay in the heart of Wales, from the Brecon Beacons in the south to Snowdonia in the north. All she had to do was keep heading north, then eventually she’d see a signpost for her destination. Wales was such a small country that it was possible to make a journey like this without GPS or a map.
She’d call Geraint when she arrived; she’d be in North Wales long before he was due home. She didn’t want him coming after her out of some misplaced loyalty or love. There was nothing he could do to stop her. This was her quest now, like it had been her father’s before. She really was her father’s daughter. And if that meant Geraint washed his hands of her just as he had their father, then so be it. He wasn’t afraid of her wasting her life looking for things that didn’t exist; he was afraid of her finding them.
What she didn’t understand—and had been trying hard not to think about—was how that bitch Creed had been able to pull that sword out of thin air. Had she claimed one of the treasures Awena didn’t know about? She couldn’t think of any magical swords that could supposedly phase in and out of the material plane. And yet, it was always possible it was Creed rather than the sword that was blessed with strange powers.
Forewarned was forearmed. She wouldn’t let the woman reach for her sword the next time.
And she was sure there would be a next time.
Because she was going to make certain there was.
Chapter 32
They sat in the small hotel bar after dinner, Roux nursing a cognac, Garin sticking with coffee because he was the one about to risk life and limb, not the old man. He didn’t fancy being perforated by a hail of a royal guard’s bullets and leaking alcohol. It wasn’t the done thing.
He’d wanted to wait until the following night, take advantage of tonight to watch the routines and get a feel for where the guards were complacent—assuming they were, somewhere. Roux had insisted that if Annja made it back tonight they were making their attempt. It bought them time for a second chance if things didn’t go according to plan. Garin was a fan of second chances, but not necessarily of the circumstances that led
to them being needed.
It hadn’t taken long to locate an outdoor adventure store that stocked decent climbing rope and a good pair of shoes for the job at hand. “There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Garin said. “If you hid this cloak so well, and never told anyone where, why would anyone even think to look for it here?” It seemed a reasonable question and Garin had wanted to ask it all day. The intimation, of course, was that Roux hadn’t been able to keep his own secret. That was akin to walking on broken glass.
“Ah, but I didn’t say I never told anyone. Just as there was someone keeping an eye on the unmarked grave in St. Davids, there was someone who did the same here.”
“And you think he might not have been as trustworthy as you had hoped?”
“She,” Roux corrected. “I have not heard from her for some time.”
“And you didn’t think to contact her?”
Roux shook his head.
“There’s something you’re not telling me here. I don’t know what it is, but I know you, old man. You wouldn’t have us charging up here and breaking in to the castle—sorry, the caer—in the middle of the night unless you thought there was a good chance she’s told someone.”
Roux didn’t reply.
His attention was focused solely on the last of his brandy he swirled around in his glass.
Garin kept quiet until the silence became uncomfortable. It always worked with Roux. It was simple, really; if the old man changed the subject when he finally spoke, Garin would know for sure he was hiding something. That was the time to push.
“We argued,” Roux admitted. “The last time we spoke we argued.”
More silence.
There had to be a compelling reason that Roux was holding back. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a plain ol’ argument. It would come out sooner or later. Sooner would be better, but in the meantime he’d reached his own conclusion: Roux and this mystery woman had been close but kept their relationship from him.
“You need to speak to her. Now,” Garin said, spelling it out for him. No disagreement could be bad enough that it was worth the risk of their failing.
“It’s too late.”
“It’s never too late. Be the bigger man. Swallow your pride. Build bridges. Apologize. You can do it, you silver-tongued old devil. How long is it since you argued?”
“Forty years. Maybe longer. Fifty? After a while you start to lose count.”
Fifty years? Even as he repeated the words inside his head he knew that the mystery woman was almost certainly long dead, but he wasn’t about to voice that thought. Roux knew it, hence his insistence it was too late. There was one question he wanted to ask. “Okay, so it isn’t her, but you think she might have told someone?”
Roux shrugged, draining the last few drops from his glass. “I tried to find her a few weeks ago. She spent her last years in a nursing home. She suffered from dementia. She didn’t know who anyone was because she was living back in the days of her youth. Believe me, it’s the reason why people like us should never get close to anyone. It’s too hard watching them slowly die. It was easier to walk out with her hating me than ever go back and say I was sorry. I didn’t want to watch her go.”
Garin thought that he was capable of being a callous bastard, but he had nothing on Roux.
“Who would she have talked to?”
“No one? Someone? Either is equally possible. She might not even have known she’d said anything. But she had a nephew who was a historian. He worked in the castle. That doesn’t mean she told him, but...it doesn’t mean she didn’t, either.”
“Only one person can keep a secret,” Garin agreed.
“I should have come back to move it years ago. It’s my fault. But I didn’t want to be reminded of her.”
“You’ve never thought of finding someone to take her place? Another watch keeper, I mean.”
“It didn’t seem so important. The world has changed. The whetstone has been unguarded for so long that I haven’t so much as thought about it for decades. I’d buried it beneath a site where the law was supposed to prevent excavation, and when they dug it up no one recognized it for what it was. Or so I thought. Someone obviously did.”
“The family Llewellyn,” Garin filled in the gaps.
“The daughter. The son doesn’t appear to share the same familial obsessions. And the more I think about it, the less likely it seems that Awena Llewellyn is in possession of the mantle.”
“How so?”
“She would have used it to her advantage. Even Annja would have struggled against a woman capable of phasing in and out of sight.”
“And you still sent her with no warning?”
“Would you rather I had sent you?”
Before he had the opportunity to answer the question, Annja walked into the bar.
She did not look happy.
The two men fell silent.
Chapter 33
“Okay, I’m here. Now what’s going on?”
Annja had driven nonstop since picking up her things from the hotel and grabbing a salve from the chemist to treat the burns on her arm and face.
She arched her back, trying to work out the kinks in her spine as she did so. All she wanted was food, a hot bath and the chance to stretch out on a bed for an hour or so. Judging by the older man’s face she’d be lucky to get half an hour to gulp down a soda and a sandwich.
“Where’s the stone?” It wasn’t the most welcoming of greetings but they were the first words she heard from Roux’s lips. Not How are you? Not What happened to your face? Just “Where’s the stone?” Priorities established in three little words.
“In the car,” she told him. “What do you want me to do with it?”
“Garin, go move it into our car.”
Garin looked at Roux like he wanted to slice him up into tiny pieces, but he pushed himself out of his seat and took Annja’s keys from her outstretched hand without a word of complaint. She knew just how much he hated being treated like the man’s squire, but old habits—really old habits—died very hard indeed.
“What happened to your face?” Roux asked when Garin left.
She told him. He listened carefully, stopping her occasionally and asking her to repeat certain parts in the chain of events, making sure he understood everything that had occurred. He couldn’t mask his disappointment that she’d lost the sword, but didn’t chastise her, which only made Annja feel like more of a failure.
“How does it feel?” He touched his own cheek. “It doesn’t look good.”
“I won’t be going on camera for a while,” she said, “but I’ll live.”
“Good job you’re not vain,” Garin said, appearing behind Roux.
“Who says?” Annja teased. “Anyway, as much as I missed you guys, this isn’t my idea of a vacation. I’d go so far as to say nearly getting killed means it sucks. So, are you going to tell me why I had to drive like a bat out of hell to be here tonight instead of arriving tomorrow?”
“The old man wants us to break into the castle,” Garin said, slumping back into his chair. He dropped her keys in front of her, then added, “With no equipment and under the watchful eye of an elite royal guard.”
“Hence not just going in through the front gate, I take it.”
“Yep. I don’t really fancy being shot down in my prime,” Garin said.
“Right, but aren’t there huge spotlights illuminating the whole show at night?”
“Yep again. There are some more secluded angles, but how does free-climbing in the dark sound?”
“Foolish, reckless, downright dangerous. Stupid. How many more adjectives do you need?”
“Not even cool?” Garin said wryly. He wasn’t looking at her; he was looking at Roux as though to say, I told you so.
“Why so
negative, Annja? It’s not as if you’re not a superhero, after all. Think of all those women who’d be empowered by your heroics. You can do it.” That was Garin’s version of a rah-rah pep talk. She almost smiled, purely because she knew he was every bit as vehemently against the break-in as she was.
“I’m not asking you to do something beyond your particular gifts,” Roux said, ignoring Garin to look at Annja. “And you don’t need to go inside the castle itself, just get yourselves up onto one of the towers.”
“And we both need to go up?”
“It’s better, yes.”
“And let me guess, we’re doing it tonight?” She already knew the answer.
“Now.”
Chapter 34
Garin secured the rope to her waist.
She’d free-climbed plenty of times, higher and more complicated climbs than this, but this was sheer. And the heavier the rope was going to feel as it tugged behind her.
Annja rested her hand against the wall.
The stone was slick with moisture.
Not good, she thought.
She’d known that it was a dumb idea the moment the suggestion came out of Garin’s mouth. But the reality of just how dumb was only beginning to settle in now she was confronted by the actual climb and their narrow spot where they were out of sight of the guards and the powerful spotlights.
They were estuary-side of the castle, and while there would be no spray from the almost-still water, the air was damp enough to ensure that the stone was never truly dry.
The trick wasn’t to cling to the stone face but to even her weight distribution out and maintain three points of contact at all time; less than that and the risks increased exponentially. Even so, the toeholds were treacherously slippery, and more than once as she began the slow ascent she felt the rough grip of the shoe’s tread slip, meaning she had to go much slower than she would have liked. It was a long way down should she fall, and she wasn’t even halfway yet. There were so many things she was doing here she wished she wasn’t. Though Roux was adamant, not so much as a scratch on the castle wall, not so much as the tink of a hammer driving in a belay pin. Nothing that might draw the guards, who would almost certainly shoot first and ask questions later.