The Kin Stone was gone. How could that be? Her eyes must be deceiving her; it had marked this ancient domain since a time of story, since the first man and woman of the Folk settled on the Whaleback. It could not be gone; the ancestors would not allow such sacrilege.

“Guard,” Nessa whispered as a terrible cold began to creep through her, “I don’t think I can go on. Guard?”

But Guard went forward, and she followed. There was no choice. What carried her was fiercer than pride, darker than fury, more powerful than love. It was something old and deep, something that had no name.

The Kin Stone was broken: shattered. It lay in pieces on the sward, the crescent split apart, the carven king sundered from his sons, who gazed blindly up into the empty sky. Here was the eagle, its flight cut short, here the sea-beast, fractured and crumbling. Somerled had not been content with his slaughter of the Folk, it seemed, but must obliterate the very core of their identity. Nessa knelt by the broken pieces, reaching to touch the ancient king’s curling hair with her finger. Such blind hatred was surely born of fear; there could be no other reason for it. And Somerled was right to fear. What spoke in her blood now was powerful and dangerous. It was the same pulse that beat in every fold of this land, that sounded in every surge of waves on the shore, that rang in the heart of the standing stones and cried in the wind from the west. The islands live. The islands endure. The islands do not forget.