Elfhome

“Is that the direction of the Stone Clan Spell Stones?” Tinker asked.

Pony nodded and Stormsong added, “It’s roughly in the same place as Huntsville, Alabama is on Earth.”

Tinker knew where Huntsville was — birthplace of Saturn rockets — so it gave her a good idea of the location. “Wow, why so far from the coast?”

“The stones must be built on very powerful springs of magic. There are very few points in the world where they can be placed.”

Oilcan dropped his resonance with the spell stones and waited for her to cancel the spell. “Okay, so you do know what the spell does.”

“I’m so hurt by your lack of faith.”

“I let you cast the spell on me.”

Tinker supposed that did forgive a host of things. She canceled the divination spell and shooed him out of the center.

Merry took courage from the lack to Oilcan to return to the center without any prodding.

Tinker made sure that none of the lines had blurred or shorted out. Once she was sure that spell hadn’t been altered by the previous casting, she spoke the command word.

The entire building lit up brilliant with streams of energy pouring through the focus.

Merry danced at the center of the spell, whimpering. “Sama?”

“It’s okay!” Oilcan called. “Cancel the spell.”

Tinker canceled the spell and Merry darted out of the center and into Oilcan’s arms.

“What was that?” Oilcan whispered urgently in English.

Tinker shook her head mutely. She didn’t know but it couldn’t have been good.

#

What the hell were Oilcan’s kids?

Tinker couldn’t even be sure all of the kids were like Merry. She wanted to test them all, but the spell’s spectacular reaction to Merry had rattled the kids badly. She couldn’t look into their fear-filled eyes — remember the excrement-filled pits she found them in — and force them to cooperate. They were still too fragile. She let Oilcan take them off to do something soothing: play music or pet baby animals or something.

It left Tinker with two meager data points: the children were all genetically similar and Merry, the control, was connected to something big.

Tinker had theories. The Skin Clan obviously had bred the kids to harness some kind of exotic power. Just like she and Oilcan, the ability had been passed down, generation after generation, locked away only by ignorance. Obviously the Skin Clan knew the key to unlock the kid’s abilities and desperately wanted control of that power.

Tinker flicked through the digital pages of the codex, tapping on the links to her notes relating to the various finger diagrams. She had applied every encryption method she could think of to the diagrams. The closest she had gotten was assigning five digit numbers to each set of drawings. Zero for laedin position where the finger curled tight. One for sekasha position where the finger curled from the first knuckle. Two for domana position with the difficult only first knuckle crooked. Three for the full royal position with the finger fully extended, bowing to no one.

She had noticed the “numbers” corresponded to a periodic table-like hierarchy, since the numbers never repeated. She had theorized that the codex was missing spells since there were numbers skipped — like 32103—which set up resonance to the Spell Stones.

If she had ever grasped the meaning of the drawings, it would have been only a matter of time before she unlocked it all. She giggled at the thought of a six-year old human wielding the power of the Spell Stones. Oh the elves would have been horrified.

She sobered as she considered everything that could have happened. Sooner or later, the Stone Clan domana in Huntsville would have noticed that she was tapping their Spell Stones. The sekasha

would have been alerted that there were unaccountable domana in Pittsburgh. The Wind Clan elves would have searched for the interlopers. If they had been found, she and Oilcan would have been exiled to Stone Clan holdings.

Tinker frowned down at her datapad. Had her grandfather withheld the one spell, rendering the rest inert? Had he kept it secret to protect her and Oilcan?

She blew out her breath. She should be focusing on the kids.

The children themselves might be ignorant of what they were — but it was possible that one of the Stone Clan adults would know. Unfortunately, Forest Moss was the only adult in Pittsburgh.

33: Hit by an Arrow

Tommy was so screwed. Strange he didn’t see it coming.

He should have known when they fell asleep locked together and he noticed that she fit perfectly to him. He should have realized it when she woke him up by sliding down onto him and he had to smile at her look of fierce determination. All day he had little warning signs as they scrambled up and down hills, across streams and marshes, dodging lone oni scouts here and killing them there. He missed the subtle evidence.