It had three stud-like grooves on one edge, and beneath the shimmer of varnish it was made of metal.
A sound like a plucked string shuddered through the space and vibrated through Nicole’s bones. She gripped Remi and Kyan was suddenly there – but the stack wasn’t coming down. The piece merely resonated with the temple, and with it, more of the varnish flaked away.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Nicole breathed as Remi raised the piece of the divine instrument before the engraved wall.
‘The Gáe Bolg isn’t here,’ Kyan said, having checked the temple’s hiding places.
‘You said she had a fortress here?’ Nicole asked.
He nodded. ‘Her Fortress of Shadows: Dún Scáith.’
‘Maybe she hid the weapon there instead?’ Remi asked.
Kyan seemed doubtful but nodded, looking back to the altar.
‘Are you all right?’ Nicole asked gently, as Remi busied herself with putting the bridge back in her pack.
He nodded, and squeezed her fingers when they snuck into his hand.
‘Then, let’s go.’
Kyan
SCÁTHACH’S FORTRESS WAS BUILT INTO THEJUTTING CLIFFSbeside the famous Old Man of Storr – a rock formation much like the sea stack temple.
The light was waning when they hiked up to the great structure, the grass dark and rich on the foothills and speckled with rocks and loose chunks of grey stone of every size. Free of trees, the spires of the disguised fortress cut into the skyline, as severe and sharp as Kyan remembered Scáthach to be. To the right of the stark four pieces of rock towered a hill, as wide and high as a great defending wall.
From here, the sea around the island and its loch in the foothills reflected the steely sky like a great mirror.
‘I thought you said it was varnished, or hidden?’ Nicole asked. ‘Why would she pick such an obvious location?’
‘She didn’t,’ Kyan said. ‘Humans think her fortress is a castle structure to the south, and while this has become a famous location for hikers and photographers, no one knows what’s inside.’
‘Speaking of which,’ Remi said, ‘what will we do about them?’ She nodded her chin to a few straggling hikers.
‘They should be gone soon,’ Kyan said, but his gaze was focused on the towering structure.
Over the next hour they searched the fortress’s boundaries for a way to get inside, to no avail. Kyan grew increasingly certain that Scáthach had locked it and perhaps never returned.
‘I need the weapon,’ he said, pressing his forehead to one of the structure’s old stone doors. ‘There is a great danger. I can’t defeat it onmy own.’
He thought of the crack of Logan’s neck in his hands. Alexander’s.
The warnings of the Wake; the image of Freya on the database, killed.
And Nicole.
‘Where is the Gáe Bolg?’ he asked in Irish.
Perhaps it was the language, perhaps his desperation, but the stone glowed faintly under his hand.
Kyan followed the light’s darting flight as it moved through the stone and around to a ledge that jutted out over the time-scraped landscape.
Nothing but wind and dark stone and silence.
He cursed Scáthach’s eternal tests.
But before he turned, his gaze was drawn to a carving in the stone, low enough to miss.
