Rogue Angel 50: Celtic Fire by Alex Archer Page A

actually realize it was a burial plot. But it doesn’t matter. Not anymore. His bones, God rest his soul, were never as important as the sword that lay with them.”
    “Okay, old man, how about you tell us why this sword is so important. Forewarned is forearmed and all that. I’ve got a nasty feeling we’re about to walk into a boatload of trouble, and you’re cryptic crossword stuff isn’t helping my mood,” Garin said.
    Roux scratched at his white beard, then inclined his head slightly, offering a particularly Gallic shrug that seemed to say, What can it hurt now?
    “As I told you, this pivots around a fulcrum of the Treasures of Britain, supposedly magical artifacts that possess great power and could be used to cause a great deal of harm in the wrong hands, particularly if someone came into possession of more than one of them. And before you say there’s no such thing as magic swords, let me remind you that there are more definitions of the paranormal than there are sticks to shake at them. To paraphrase, any culture sufficiently developed may seem to be in possession of magic. These treasures are from a time of superstition where anything not understood was immediately classified as magical.”
    Annja nodded.
    “I had hidden one of the most potent of these objects here, making sure there was always someone to watch over it. The Sword of Rhydderch Hael.”
    “Roderick Hail?” Garin mangled the Welsh pronunciation.
    “Rhydderch Hael,” Annja said, her Welsh pitch-perfect. “His blade was called Dyrnwyn.”
    “It means nothing to me,” Garin said.
    “Dyrnwyn had a special blade,” she said. “Wielded in battle, it transformed into fire.”
    “Sweet,” Garin said, letting out a low, slow whistle between his teeth.
    Even as she said the words she understood why the sight of the corpse had been enough to rattle Roux and serve as proof that the sword had been discovered. That deep wound could quite easily have been caused by something matching the description of Dyrnwyn biting deep into flesh but cauterizing the cut in an instant.
    “And very dangerous,” Roux said. “Don’t think about the Matter of Britain in the abstract, consider it in the collective sense. Imagine what powers might be at play if Dyrnwyn was brought into contact with another of the treasures. Alone, they are strong, but together...together they are unstoppable.” He let that sink in. “But all of that pales beside the one unassailable fact we know to be true—a man is dead because I left him to a task I should never have asked him to do. I should have found a safer resting place for the sword a long time ago. This is my fault. The burden of his death falls on my shoulders.”
    “So, you want us to find whoever killed your friend? I can make a few calls. A guy with a flaming sword isn’t going to get far,” Garin said.
    Roux shook his head. “This isn’t about vengeance. Two wrongs do not make one right. No. We need to find the sword, neutralize the threat it poses—that is the only revenge I need.”
    “So where do you suggest we start?”
    “Right here,” Roux said, looking at an innocuous patch of ground beneath the shade of a weeping tree.
    Annja didn’t see it at first; there were no ribbons of police tape to keep people away from the crime scene. Then she remembered what the coroner’s assistant had said about the body being found beneath a bridge, which meant it had been moved for some reason. Perhaps that reason had been to keep the grave secret?
    They almost missed the simple stone slab; the summer grass had grown across it, though there were fresh signs of disturbance around it where it had been levered up. If she hadn’t known what had happened here she never would have guessed from the scene.
    “This is it?” Garin asked, his question loaded with incredulity. “It doesn’t look much like a grave. Certainly not for someone who was supposed to have been pretty famous in his day.”
    “And that was exactly