Celtic Fire. Alex Archer

don’t mean to be difficult—” which of course was exactly what he meant to be “—but what exactly are you are planning to do with this thing now?” Geraint tilted his head slightly, making a show of thinking about it. “I suppose it could make an interesting flowerpot. Maybe you could turn it into a water feature?”

      “Or I could hit you over the head with it,” Awena said. Her twin was proving more obstinate and much less enthusiastic than she had hoped he’d be, but then it hadn’t been his idea to steal the stone in the first place, so perhaps it was all just a case of sour grapes. The important thing was that he agreed with her—the stone wasn’t what the museum curator had thought it was. Unfortunately, he didn’t agree that it made it any more important than a well-preserved whetstone. That it had been used to hone blades rather than crush grain made no difference to him.

      She took a deep breath, refusing to let him wind her up.

      “Do I really have to spell it out to you?” She shook her head.

      “Spell away, dear sister. I’m clueless.”

      And he really was. He couldn’t see why she’d been compelled to steal it before it was consigned to some dank storage area in the bowels of the museum, never to be seen again.

      She wanted him to be as wrapped up with possibilities as she was, not just humoring her. It might have been her idea, but he was her other half and she didn’t just want him to be in this with her; she needed him to be part of it.

      “Don’t laugh, but I’m ninety-nine percent certain what you are looking at is the Whetstone of Tudwal Tudglyd.” She let that sink in. The whetstone was one of their father’s obsessions. He’d spent most of his life chasing around the country in search of it.

      Geraint stood in silence, running a finger over the stone. “Could it be?” What he really meant was: What makes you so sure that it’s one of the things Father wasted his life on?

      And it had been a waste.

      They’d grown up with the stories and knew all about the thirteen Treasures of Britain and their supposed properties. She’d grown up with the myths even if she hadn’t grown up with a father, as he’d spent most of their childhood and adolescence chasing shadows.

      “Don’t do this, Awena,” he said finally, not unkindly. “Once you start on this trail it’s going to be impossible to stop. You know that, don’t you? Don’t let it steal your life like it stole his.”

      “It won’t.”

      “I’m serious. He can’t think about anything else. He’s obsessed. It’s like madness that’s worried away at him over the years, removing all trace of his personality. Now all that’s left is this compulsive need to prove he’s right. Take a good look at this thing, see it for what it really is.”

      “And what’s that?” she asked guardedly.

      “A lump of stone.”

      “Of course it isn’t just a lump of stone. We’ve both read Dad’s notes. Look at it. Think about what he worked out.... This has to be the whetstone. It was found in the same area where Tudwal Tudglyd’s whetstone was last known to have been, and there’s no denying it was found with other relics from the same era. It can’t be a coincidence.”

      “Can’t it? Or is that just what you want to believe? Dad spent his entire life looking for this. Do you really think he’d have missed it if it was simply sitting in a display case in a local museum? He isn’t an idiot, Awena.”

      She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. He doubted her. “Certainly it’s the real thing,” she snapped.

      “Is it? Can you prove it? Is it supposed to have some kind of property that no other stone has?”

      “If it’s used to sharpen a blade and a brave man uses the weapon, then it is guaranteed to draw blood. But if the blade belongs to a coward it won’t even sharpen.”

      “But how do you prove that? Or do you have a convenient coward in mind? And who uses swords nowadays. It’s not exactly the weapon of choice, is it?”

      “Blade. Not sword. There’s no shortage of knife crime in the city, is there?” She shook her head, refusing to be drawn into it. “It’s not about proving it and you know it. I believe that it’s the genuine article and for the moment that’s all that matters.” She prepared herself for a patronizing response, but surprisingly none came. It had been a while since their father had returned to the cottage, so by rights he ought to be home soon. He’d know just by looking at it and that was all the proof she would need. It was all the proof she had ever needed.

      “The question remains—what are you going to do with it?” He still hadn’t conceded that it could be the real thing, never mind that it was. Awena hadn’t really thought much beyond liberating the whetstone.

      “I’ll keep it safe until Dad comes home.”

      “If he comes home, you mean.”

      “He’ll be back,” she said. “He always comes back.” Which was true, but there was no way of knowing when. She was planning on accelerating the process by sending a photo of the whetstone to his cell phone. With luck it would be enough to bring him running.

      Geraint covered the stone with the blanket. It was as though he didn’t want to have to look at it.

      Awena decided that it might be for the best if she adhered to the old adage of out of sight, out of mind. If he didn’t keep being reminded of it, maybe they wouldn’t have to talk about it until they knew for sure she was right.

      She tried hard to hide her disappointment by asking, “How was your trip?”

      “Not bad,” he replied, nothing more.

      When he’d come bursting into the house he’d been so full of life, desperate to tell her all about his trip; now it was just “not bad,” as though what had happened was suddenly unimportant. The theft had sucked all the joy out of his life. She hadn’t for a minute considered the prospect that he’d see it not as the beginning of some grand adventure they could go on together, but rather her catching their father’s particular madness.

      The sooner the stone was out of sight, the better—that much was clear.

      The best place for it was in their father’s study.

      Geraint never went in there.

      He wasn’t interested in reading the volumes and volumes of notes that made up Dad’s journals, the vast quantities of used and battered books he used as his points of reference for the great hunt, or the huge chart hanging proudly on the wall, tracing back their family tree to the last of the true princes of Wales.

      The room contained a lifetime’s work, a lifetime’s obsession.

      Geraint was right, though; she was in danger of following in his footsteps. She really was her father’s daughter. She was more than capable of becoming obsessed with the search, even though she knew most of them would never be found. There were worse things that might consume her life, especially now that she’d found one of the lost treasures. And didn’t finding one prove the existence of all of the others? In all the years her father had been hunting, he’d never laid his hands on a single one of them. And yet that only fueled his obsession. How would he react now, to actually hold one of them in his hands? To know he’d been right all this time. How would he take that vindication?

      What he’d never said on those rare occasions when they’d talked about the quest was what he would do if he ever found one of them. What they did talk about was the history of oppression that was the foundation of Wales, how the English had beaten them down into submission and how these lost relics really were the inheritance of her people. They may have been called the Treasures of Britain, but they belonged to the Celts, not the invaders who came later. These treasures had nothing to do with the Romans, the Danes or the French who invaded their shores. Some of the treasures had their histories in Scotland, but the only documents