The Cornerstone Read Free

face and curled over his immaculate white collar. “Well met, m’lady. I am at your service.”
    At this the sorceress laughed out loud. “Aye, I’ve no doubt of’t. ‘Tis ‘im as should be worried.” She hooked her thumb at Dee, who regarded them both with a sense of dread. Cold as he was, sweat broke out over his brow.
    Rain-dampened winds swept over the valley and up the eastward ridge, tugging at their cloaks. The horses turned their noses away, backs toward the approaching storm.
    “When ye spoke of a cohort to aid in the spellcasting, I’d naught guessed y’meant this one.” She retreated further behind the earthen rise of the tomb.
    Dee wiped his brow. The damned hag, was she refusing to cooperate? “Monsieur’s part in this is to seal the stone the moment the elemental has been caught.”
    “And what else is’t he’s here t’do, eh, once I snare the bain-sídhe for ye?”
    Before Dee could form an answer, she veiled herself in mist. He blinked as light rain blew into his eyes, and then suddenly she was kneeling by the opening to the tomb.
    “This will become your buachloch , your object of power,” she said, pushing a rounded stone carved in spirals and sun disc emblems away from several others like it wedged partially into the ground, guarding the tomb’s entrance. It was about the size of a human head.
    Dee approached and knelt, reached out his hand. “May I?”
    “Aye, thus far ‘tis naught but a stone, though a very old one.” She searched his eyes for a fleeting moment, then stood up, keeping Dee between herself and his tall compatriot.
    Dee put his hands on the stone and believed he could feel its thrum under his fingers, gloved though they were. He was certain some power of the ancients lingered in marked stones like this, the bones of the earth. He nodded to C and said, “The stone will serve.”
    Radha Ó Braonáin stared down at the unconscious young woman in the grass. What thoughts may have passed through her mind Dee could not imagine, but his relief was visceral when at last she turned and went to the tumulus. Stooping under the heavy slab lintel, she disappeared into its dark maw. Moments later she reappeared, dragging a threadbare blanket weighed down by a body wrapped in funereal garb. She pulled the blanket up beside the drugged girl and unwrapped the body of her son.
    Dee studied the young man. He might have been a pretty youth, possibly around age twenty, had not the wasting of disease overtaken him. The sunken cheeks, gray-white skin, and drawn lips masked a beauty that had just begun to flower before it was cut short.
    “His life for hers, as we agreed.” She touched the cadaver’s hollowed cheek. Dee imagined he saw a tear slide down, but when she looked up her eyes were hard. She reached under her shawl and pulled out a small cloth bag. Rubbing it briskly between both palms, a pungent scent was released into the wind, riding moisture-laden gusts over the clearing. Dee’s face was damp, although it wasn’t precisely raining…misting, perhaps. The real rain wasn’t far away. He not so much heard the distant thunder as felt it...a bone deep shudder he could not throw off.
    The tang of the witch’s herbs swirled in the air—he recognized hazel, monkshood, rowan, nightshade among other scents he could not identify. A practiced alchemist, this simple fact irked him and increased his sense of unease. He cut a glance toward C, who stood still as stone, an impassive observer for all he could tell.
    The crone stood up and beckoned them closer. “Keep well inside the circle if ye value life and limb.” Dee noticed this was addressed directly to him. Even more disquieting was the faint smile on the thin lips of Monsieur C. She then pointed at the grass a few steps away from them and it began to smolder in spite of the weather. She turned slowly widdershins, continuing to point, inscribing a complete circle that burned the grass to ash but never erupted into actual