Elfhome

Tinker scowled at her and turned back to Lain who was gathering up the swabs. “One through three are the dead children. I’m four — just in case you destroyed what you had from me. Five thru nine are my Hand. The other four kids are scattered in among the rest. I didn’t want it obvious that I was mainly after them. I hit Merry too — she’s another Stone Clan child but the oni didn’t get a hold of her. She’s number ninety-five.”

“Good. She can stand as a control.” Lain stowed the swabs in a drawer and locked it. “I scanned in the spell. I’ll have to print off more copies.”

Tinker checked the printouts on top of the printer and found that Lain had already printed a dozen copies. “Do you really need the spell? Can’t you use your lab?”

“The spell might not be doing something as straight forward as a simple DNA scan. For all we know, it might be predicting what the children’s DNA would be if subjected to gene manipulation. We still don’t know if the scans you found were from the children and a traditional lab scan might not produce the same results as the spell.”

Tinker nodded, following Lain’s logic. “I’ll have to talk to the tengu. They might have some clue what oni spell-working—” Tinker frowned at the spell in her hand. “Damn. This is elf magic too.”

“Are you sure?” Lain asked.

Tinker slowly shook her head. “Not really.” She handed it to Pony to study. “I’ve only done a little with healing spells. You and Grandpa were pretty much against me experimenting with them.”

“For a good reason,” Lain said. “You could have killed someone if you got the spells wrong.”

“Yes, and I understood that, so I left them alone. The first one I ever cast was to save Windwolf’s life.”

Pony was shaking his head. “You are right that this is Elvish. The command word is ancient Elvish, common to the type that the Skin Clan would have used. I do not know enough about spell-working to recognize this, domi. Wolf would know.” He caught her look of surprise. “The domana are taught their clan’s esva and spell-working.”

She sighed as it reminded her yet again of what she should know but didn’t. She wondered it Windwolf was home yet from the daily wild goose chase of trying to find the oni encampments. She frowned as she realized that the Stone Clan domana always joined Windwolf. And this spell was printed from a computer…

Tinker turned to face both Pony and Stormsong. “Did Sparrow know spell-working?”

“No, domi,” Pony said.

Tinker continued to frown as facts pointed to a logical answer. “Sparrow could drive. Could she work computers?”

Stormsong laughed. “She could drive badly. She could use the telephone with difficulty. Why she made the effort to learn is now obvious, but she hated technology. Computers were beyond her.”

Tinker held up the spell. “Who printed off this spell then? I really doubt the Stone Clan knows computers well enough to set up and print a spell.”

“The oni could have done it for them.” Stormsong pointed out. “The oni would only need one copy of the spell to scan in.”

Tinker considered that. Some of the oni forces, especially the ones raised on Earth like the kitsune Chiyo, knew computers enough for it to work that way, but it still didn’t seem right. “The timing keeps being off, over and over again. The Stone Clan just got to Pittsburgh and True Flame has had them running in tight circles ever since. There has to be someone else other than Sparrow and the Stone Clan. Could there be other domana in Pittsburgh?”

Her Hand shook their heads.

“We would know.” Pony said. “Domana do not travel without notice.”

Was that true? Considering that of the several thousand elves in Pittsburgh, only five were domana, the sekasha might not have trouble keeping track of the entire caste. How many domana were there on Elfhome? A couple thousand? A few hundred? Less than a hundred? She needed more data.

“Who else would know spell-working and computers?” Tinker asked. “The healers at the hospice?”

They shook their heads.

“The magic they do is not the same as spell-working,” Pony explained.

“Nor are they any more versed in computers than say,” Stormsong paused to find the perfect analogy. “Wraith Arrow.”

Tinker winced, knowing that Windwolf’s First was a technophobe. “Who is taught spell-working? Only domana?”

They nodded.

She stared at the spell as the insidious suggested itself. Spell-working had been created by the Skin Clan. The oni’s greater bloods took spell-working to levels undreamed of on Elfhome. If this was a sample of the oni’s magic and it was elfin, then perhaps the oni greater bloods weren’t oni at all. “Is it possible that the Skin Clan escaped to Onihida?”

#

All the dangerous links to spell-working locked away, they drove toward McDermott’s in dark brooding silence. By now the dead children had been reduced to small piles of cold ash. Their betrayal, though, might have been the tip of a massive iceberg.

“We have no proof.” Stormsong finally murmured.