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halfway. Peering around the corner of the door, she realized that the hideous horse hair sofa she’d always detested was jamming the door. It had been completely gutted, the back slashed open in a big X, wiry hair spilling across the floor, mingling with the feathers from the eight ornate cushions she had embroidered herself. The ebony Edwardian wood cabinet was lying at an angle against the upturned easy chair, drawers and doors hanging open, the dark wood scarred as if it had been cut with a knife.
    Hundreds of delicate china teacups she’d spent a lifetime collecting were scattered on the floor, broken into a thousand fragments. All of the photographs had been pulled off the wall, a lifetime of memories torn and stamped to shreds.
    “The police are on the way.” Sarah reached out to the older woman, but Judith reflexively pulled away. “Is there anything I can do?” she asked lamely.
    “Nothing,” Judith said as the realization gradually sank in that her life, as she knew it, was now over. “Nothing anyone can do.” She put her hand on the banister to steady herself. “I need to look upstairs.”
    “Do you want me to come with you?”
    “No. Thank you. Please just wait for the police.”
    The worst destruction had been wrought in the bedroom. The bed itself had been slashed to ribbons by a razor-sharp blade. The canary yellow down comforter, in which her late husband used to wrap himself when he watched television, lay in shreds on the floor. She held a sliver of the torn material, trying to smell a fragment of the memory of the man with whom she had shared a lifetime.
    And Judith knew that she would be seeing him soon.
    Surveying the rest of the room, she noted that nothing had been spared. Every item of clothing had been pulled out of the closet and systematically slashed and torn. The remains of a pair of expensive silk heels she had long ago worn at her nephew’s communion were shoved in the overflowing toilet. The smell of acrid urine was almost unbearable. Judith closed the door and leaned her forehead against the cool wood, while tears burned at the backs of her eyes. But she was determined not to cry.
    The bedroom she had converted to an office was similarly ruined. The floor was awash with paper, decades of carefully collected and collated notes once neatly filed and cataloged in her cabinet were unceremoniously dumped out, scattered everywhere. Not one of her beloved books remained on the shelf. Paperbacks had been torn in half, every hardback cover was ripped, and some of the older volumes were lacking their leather spines and covers. The original artwork to her children’s books was all on the floor, the glass shattered, wooden frames broken, filthy footprints on the delicate watercolors. The twenty-five-year-old Smith Corona typewriter on which she’d written her first book lay crushed, as if someone had jumped on it. Her iMac was completely destroyed, a huge hole in the center of the screen. Stooping, she lifted a random page from the floor at her feet. Page twenty-two of the manuscript of her latest children’s book: It was smeared with excrement. Judith allowed the page to flutter to the floor, and the bitter tears finally came. Even if she had the time, it would take her years to sort out the mess. But it didn’t matter: Whoever had done this hadn’t gotten what they were looking for.
    They would be back.
    After placing her shoulder bag on the scarred wooden desk, she removed the books and papers she’d been carrying around with her all day. Nestled at the bottom of the bag, still wrapped in its newspapers, was the treasure her assailants had been after.
    Dyrnwyn, Sword of Rhydderch.
    The old woman smiled bitterly. If only they knew how close they’d been to getting it. Her gnarled fingers closed around the rusted hilt, and she felt a ghost of its power tremble through her arms. She had never harmed anyone in her life, but if she could get her hands on the savages who had done this, who