Previous Chapter

“How far around the bluffs did you get?” Roy asked, grabbing the new stair step with both hands and giving it a hard push and pull. When it didn’t move he got to his feet with a satisfied grunt.

“Covered the southern five and the one to the west,” Georg replied, leaning forward to stomp down on the repaired section of the stairs with one foot. It didn’t bend or break, which was good. “No sign of Mr. Menendez that I could see, no tracks, no campsite, no animals. That leaves the northern bluffs.”

“I’m surprised he’d choose those for his lookout point, they don’t have a very good view of the manor.” Roy got to his feet and studied the afternoon’s handiwork. The repaired stairs were noticeably newer than the rest but otherwise they looked fine so he decided to call them fixed. “Maybe there was some element of lithomancy to it.”

“The sun will set soon,” Brandon said, sliding leftover lumber into the rack by the workbench. “We’ll have to set shifts for watching the Armory tonight. Tomorrow I want to go and search the north bluffs. I can serve as your second as well as Georg can, Roy, and I’d like to make sure Cassie is all right with my own eyes.”

“That’s fine with me.” Roy gestured towards the stairs. “Head on up. I’m going to ward the ground for the night.”

Brandon eyed the dirt floor. “What kind of ward are we talking about? I don’t think a few talismans or iron plates are going to dissuade a lithomancer.”

“All the Tetzlani with a knack for magic are lithomancers, Brandon, there’s no point in having defenses down here that won’t work on them.” Roy walked down the stairs and over to his supply shelves. 

His wendigo bone necklace hung on the wall over them, between the yew branch and an amulet emblazoned with the Eternal Throne, and Roy took it down, wrapping it around his right hand. With his left he reached down and uncapped a clay jar on the floor beside the steel mirror frame. He tipped it over and water gushed out. Far more water than the jar could reasonably contain, rapidly covering the armory floor half an inch deep.

Roy walked back to the stairs holding the jar, surrounded by a small dry patch of floor that moved with him. When he reached the stairs he set it on the bottom step then climbed up next to it. Once there he reached down and touched one bone in the necklace to the surface of the water, taking care not to let any part of his hand do the same. Distant whispers seemed to fill the room for a second or two. Then the surface of the water froze with a crackling shriek, covering the ground in a layer of ice far darker that seemed right for such a thin surface.

Brandon made an uncomfortable sound. “You call that a ward?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Roy said, dropping the leather cord that held the bones around his neck. “Hungry things tend to fight over prey rather than share it. I’m not saying a spirit of famine and cold is the equal to a god of blood and stone but so far it’s kept everything looking for Huaxili out.”

“Don’t take this as a criticism,” Brandon said in a tone that suggested it was, in fact, a criticism, “but is it really a good idea to have that many hungry things running around your house?”

Roy made a pained face. “Based on what I’ve read in Pellinore’s Journal it’s probably not. I haven’t had much time to reassess the Manor’s defenses since I started transcribing it, though.”

“Well, once we’re done with this Menendez fellow you and Cassie can address them, I suppose.”

“Are you not interested in playing a part?”

Brandon gave Roy a skeptical look. “I could, but this isn’t a very good region for my flavor of magic. Too windy for large trees. Not sure I want to try and set up anything here while you have a piece of Morainhenge’s master in your trophy case, either.”

“Noticed that, did you?”

“That you had a branch of yew from someone who cultivated it?” Brandon laughed. “I could hardly miss it, although I don’t blame you for not knowing that. I wasn’t sure it came from Master Southwick until just now, that was just a guess, and I can’t begin imagine how you got ahold of it.”

“His yew tree is still planted in Palmyra,” Roy said with a shrug. “It wasn’t exactly hard. I didn’t realize having a cutting from it would interfere with your own grafts, though.”

Brandon’s eyes darted over to the branch then away towards a corner of the room. “It’s not interference, exactly. They say a firemind hears the thoughts of a flame, yes?”

“Don’t know as I’d call them thoughts but there’s definitely something inside a fire that makes itself known from time to time.”

“Well there’s a mind in trees, same as fire. That’s why they start waking, when they get to be big enough, and that’s why they obey when a druid tells them to do something. Because they have a mind, so they can obey.” He gestured vaguely towards the yew on the wall. “That is awake, even though it’s nowhere near large enough to be so naturally. It’s not hungry, per se, like your rock or those bones but it’s aware and it’s looking for something. I’d prefer not to perform any workings while it’s like that.”

Roy’s eyes narrowed, as he glanced between his friend and the old branch. “Is it talking now? Has it spoken to you?”

“No and I don’t know. All that’s clear to me is that it has a purpose and is still looking to carry it out.” Brandon shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t know how to put it better than that. Trees don’t contain their thoughts in words so all I get are impressions from time to time. I can tell you it knows there’s someone around here that has grafted a yew tree and it wants to be joined to a living root again. Beyond that I can’t say anything for sure.”

“Is it going to be an issue if you stand guard with it for a few hours tonight?” Roy started up the stairs. “I was hoping we could take turns on watch while the other two sleep.”

“I don’t think it will be an issue?” Brandon shrugged. “Honestly, that ice you just laid out bothers me more than the yew branch does but I think I can deal with that, too. As long as my grafts stay quiescent it should be manageable.”

“You’re the authority on it so let’s hope you’re right. I’ll grab a chair from the sitting room and take the first watch, so you and Georg can get some sleep.” Roy turned his attention to his employee. “Unless you wanted to join Mrs. Sondervan in town until this blows over?”

“I appreciate the offer, Mr. Harper, but I’d rather not leave you hung out to dry and I don’t think she’d approve of it if I did, either. If you need me I’ll be in my quarters.”

They’d gone their separate ways and Roy was in the process of dragging an upholstered armchair through the halls of the house when he noticed something odd. The sound of the chair moving across the floor turned from a soft screech to a rough rumble. When he stopped to check if something was caught under the legs he realized the deeper rumbling wasn’t coming from the chair. Understanding dawned and he left the chair aside, yelling, “Brandon! He’s here already!”

It took him only a few seconds to get back to the Armory and dash down the stairs but in that time things had gone wildly awry. A pyramidal shaped assembly of rocks had thrust themselves in through the ice ward. The hostile hunger of the ice had shattered one of the wagon-sized chunks of stone into loose boulders but four of them remained and as Roy watched they folded open like the petals of a flower. Crouched in the center of them was Marius Menendez.

This time they didn’t bother talking to each other or feeling out each other’s positions; they just leapt to action. Menendez dashed towards the plinth in the corner, covering the distance in a huge leap. 

Roy reached out with his ability and drew the flames in scattered sulfurite crystals in the Armory’s weapons towards himself as he clambered down the stairs. By the time he reached the bottom he had a globe of fire larger than his head. However he was immediately confronted with the four stone plates Marius had conjured, which folded up into a jagged barrier across the middle of the room. On occasion Roy had managed to crack open a stone with nothing but a focused flame but these plates were far thicker than that had been and were backed by the will of an elemental on top of it.

He started to back up the stairs, thinking he might be able to jump over them. Then Brandon appeared at the top of the steps, his yew grafts already spreading over his body in a suit of bark, and swung himself down off the top stairs, dropping onto the bedrock elemental with both feet. He’d taken off his shoes for bed and his feet had transformed into a mass of roots that probed into the stone with voracious rapidity. The elemental’s focus immediately switched to him.

The heavy stone plates shifted and ground together rapidly, seeking to crush the human tree into paste, but Brandon’s incredible strength and inhuman flexibility let him slip between or shove aside all its attempts to kill him. In the process the elemental created a small gap between itself and the far wall. Roy quickly dashed towards it, grabbing a short hafted halberd along the way, and scrambled over the elemental’s flank.

He was just in time to see Menendez locking a small, elegantly engraved box closed around the cornerstone. Roy leveled the halberd’s point at the Tetzlani man and said, “Put that down, Marius.”

The other man offered a slight smile and tucked the box under his left arm as he drew his rapier and presented the point with a flourish. “Not today, senor.”

Roy set his teeth and waded forward, point circling, and the battle was joined.

Previous Chapter

It didn’t take very long for Cassie to understand how seriously Marius was taking his mission. Although his lithomancy was very different from her father’s stone songs she could still discern the tone and tenor of his working and it was deep and rich indeed. At its heart, stone song was an invitation to the earth, a request for the stones to join in a greater pattern and purpose. Marius was doing something similar, but as a command rather than an invitation.

Her vision had improved to the point where she could pick out his dark hat and jacket from the long shadows cast by the nearby bluffs. Sadly, that did not make her feel any better about her current situation. Marius was a very unsettling creature when she couldn’t see him. His light, catlike grace made him sound like a predator on the prowl and his speech didn’t make things any better.

Like most native speakers of Iberian his voice had a natural rolling cadence to it which Cassie normally found very pleasant and almost musical. However, there was an abruptness to Marius’ speech that undid it. Instead of sounding like waves rolling down a river his speech sounded like a barber whetting his razor on a leather strap.

Seeing him looming around the campsite in black only added to his intimidating presence. It was a stark contrast to what he was actually saying and doing because so far he had only been polite to her. She shifted on the log he had set out for her, pulling the rough blanket around her shoulders, and said, “Do you have a place for a fire?”

“I am afraid not, senorita,” Marius said, the echoes of his voice changing just enough to tell her he’d turned to look at her. “I could not risk the smoke. The sun is getting low and I’m afraid it is going to get colder soon. Would you like to use the tent? Departing in haste was always a part of my plan and I intended to leave it behind so you are welcome to use it as long as you wish.”

“No, thank you.” She wasn’t about to go into a stranger’s tent whether he was planning to use it again or not. “I don’t suppose I could convince you to…” She faltered, casting her mind about for something, anything she could think of to offer as an alternative to another attack on the Manor.

“Your consideration does you great credit, senorita,” Marius replied, his voice echoing ominously over the constant clacking of his lithomancy tiles. “However, I’m afraid the die is cast at this point. We have to have the cornerstone back in order to undo its blight on our land and, frankly, even if we didn’t I don’t trust Mr. Harper to keep it safe.”

“He got it back when your people lost it, senor.”

“As he pointed out to me earlier. Yet I cannot help but notice he is not doing a very good job of defending it here.” Marius deposited a stack of tiles onto his lithomancy board with an ominous thud. “You’ve seen his basement. Wait, have you been down there before?”

“No, senor, today was my first visit so I haven’t really seen it but I do take your meaning. The floor was raw earth. The walls smelled like pine wood, though I suspect there were iron nails driven into them from time to time. He had some kind of warding alarm but it was just that. An alarm, not some kind of powerful hex, barrier or trap. The stone itself sits on an iron plate but beyond that it is not exactly well protected.”

The tiles slid across the board with raspy swiftness, the earth underfoot quietly rearranging itself in sympathetic fashion. “Adequate for most purposes, when he is here.”

“But he is not always here, as I am well aware. How long has Mr. Harper had the stone in his possession, if I may ask?”

“Six years, unless he left it in the hands of his captain while Oakheart Manor was under construction in which case it would be five and a half. We’re not entirely sure.”

“He managed to keep ahold of it for six years, then.”

“Not that impressive, since we had it for almost forty before it was stolen.” Another pile of tiles crashed onto the board. “Forgive me if I ask an impertinent question, Miss Fairchild, but how accustomed are you to the life in the violent vocations? You are from a family of knights, yes?”

“Yes, but a family of Stonehenge knights from Everton, senor.” She sighed, thinking of the way her father’s attention would sometimes wander during lessons, drifting to the family’s collection of swords, displayed over the coat of arms. She knew he had never had cause to use any of them. “Avalon is a very peaceful nation these days. My brother is the first knight sent on errantry in the last decade and I doubt another will be sent out for another ten.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” Marius said. “Although it is true that a certain perspective on things will be lost. For example, a man of arms in a violent world will find a lot of market for his abilities. Even if he is wise enough to limit the clients he accepts to those he finds at least a little morally upright he will be forever in demand.”

“Sounds very dangerous.”

“Incredibly so, senorita, and not always in the ways you would think.” A single tile landed on Marius’ board with an almost inaudible tap. “You see, it warps a man’s perspective. And the more the man tries to be upright and honorable in his ways the more his own perspective is twisted in unnatural shapes. The more you safely solve problems by scattering danger among others, the more invincible you think you are. The more you champion causes you believe are just the more infallible you think your conscience becomes.”

There was an odd, mournful harmony to his words. It wasn’t in his voice itself but seemed to resonate from something deeper within. Listening to it forced her to look past her immediate annoyance at what he said because she sensed this was what was really driving him, not his claims about serving Tetzlan or the future of lithomancy in that nation. “What does that have to do with Mr. Harper and the stone?”

“As I said, his perspective is warped. He overestimates how safe his place for the stone is and, just as importantly, he underestimates how dangerous the stone is to him.” The tiles began to scrape across Marius’ board. The earth below began to rumble in harmony with them, subtly shifting as the powers below stirred to waking. “Simply put, Mr. Harper is not taking the necessary care with the cornerstone. It’s not even a question of whether or not he can properly safeguard it from people who would try to steal it for their own ends, although I am very concerned about that as well. The real danger is that the stone will eventually ensnare him.”

“I’ve seen him under the influence of powerful entities, senor, and it didn’t do as much to him as you might think.”

“Oh, I have a good notion of how much or little influence Huaxili might have. The problem is that a god doesn’t need much influence over a mortal, just a moment of weakness long enough to fool a person into touching the stone is sufficient for him.” The tiles came to a stop on the board but the earth underfoot continued to sing. Its melody was deep and dark, full of the rhythms of grinding bones and gnashing teeth, the dire chant of the restless deeps. “A mercenary makes a very poor guardian, senorita. We take a job, we complete it and we move on, taking a respite when we have the chance of it. All the while growing more confident in our abilities. A guardian can never rest, never move on, and never knows when they are falling short in their duties. Confidence is their greatest poison. Just by keeping the stone nearby, Roy Harper is constantly exposing himself to one of the dangers he is least suited to deal with.”

An anxious vice closed in on Cassie’s heart and her breath quickened. “I suppose that could be. What would happen if he touched the stone? Surely it couldn’t be powerful enough to kill him on its own, could it?”

“He might be better off if it did.” The ground trembled as the bluff underfoot split open and the dirge of the deep paused as if the earth itself was waiting for a cue. “The gods of Tetzlan were blood masons, senorita. Their power came from a gluttonous thirst for the living essence of mortal creatures. Living essence, senorita. You cannot get blood from the dead so Huaxili has no use for them. If the fallen lords of Tetzlan wake enough to cast their influence over Mr. Harper then I doubt he would die for a long, long time.”

In the lengthening shadows it was difficult for Cassie’s weakened eyes to make out what it was Marius had conjured, but she could guess. Plates of stone ground together, creating a constant basso profundo foundation. Pebbles rang as they clattered to the ground. The dirt all around sang in adoration as the bedrock elemental moved through it.

Although she couldn’t make out the true shape of the elemental she could see Marius’ long shadow step up into the elemental as he said, “Trust me, Ms. Fairchild, it’s better for us all if I take it back with me. We can cleanse our land. Your host gets rid of the danger lurking in his blind spot. You don’t have to agree with the way I’m going about it but I know you can hear the truth of it in my voice. So stay here and let me take care of this. We’ll all be better off that way.”

The elemental folded up with Marius inside, burrowing into the earth off towards the Manor leaving Cassie in the growing dark, wrapped in a blanket and struggling to think of a reason not to do exactly as Marius suggested. Try as she might, she couldn’t think of any at all.

Previous Chapter

Sir Douglas Norton Warwick was Captain of B Company of the 18th Riverford Infantry Regiment during the Great River War. The Great River is the accepted border between us and Tetzlan, if you were wondering, though that wasn’t the case back then. There wasn’t really an accepted border then, which was why there was a Great River War in the first place.

You probably never heard of that one over in Avalon, on account of it being so short. A lot of that is because of Captain Warwick, although I’ve found that most of the people back east aren’t aware of that little detail. He wasn’t a man to ask for credit and there were plenty willing to take it from him in those days, not that things are much different now.

Morianhenge knew about it, though. They seemed to resent their boy not getting credit. Sometimes I wonder whether that contributed to things a couple decades later, when they kicked off the Lakeshire War.

Anyway, no one really agrees on what started the Tetzlani and the Columbians stoking fires against each other but we all agree it happened. Riverford County is right there on the Great River so the Captain didn’t have to go far to get to the action. The brains in Hancock wanted our men to capture a bridgehead south of the river immediately. A natural thing to want, if you ask me. So natural, in fact, that whoever was in charge of things on the southern side of the river was just as anxious to get a foot on the ground on our side of the Rio Grande, as they call it.

Now you might have guessed that there’s a natural crossing in the river. That’s why we call the county Riverford, after all. The locals on both sides of the river knew about it and both sides scrambled to get to it as fast as they could. That’s where Captain Warwick met Capitan Julius Costanzo Molina Menendez. The folk tales say they first met in the middle of the fording although the official records say they sent messengers across to each other instead.

Regardless, neither commander was eager to have their men cross the river into the arms of a waiting company of hostile soldiers. Yet their orders were unambiguous. They were expected to cross the river regardless of opposition. It was a very difficult position to be in as neither man could reasonably expect to break the stalemate until reinforcements arrived.

Now I’m aware that the Warwicks are a very ancient line of druids, going back to the lifetime of Arthur Phoenixborn himself. They have a reputation as gifted magic wielders who specialize in candles. However the Palmyran line of Warwicks were also famed duelists among the Knights of Morainhenge and this was in the days when sulfurite weapons hadn’t come into common use yet so dueling was still in style. Thus Captain Warwick offered to duel Capitan Menendez, with the loser withdrawing from the river.

The histories don’t say for sure but I don’t think Warwick expected the Capitan to accept. My suspicion is that he was just trying to buy time by sending messages back and forth, keeping everyone busy until someone got reinforcements. The Menendez family wasn’t famous on our side of the river at the time, although that was going to change shortly, so Warwick didn’t know they were also noted duelists. As a consequence a single message became four or five, ending with an appointment the following day.

The biggest challenge to the duel was finding an appropriate judge. Fighting to the death would be the obvious workaround for that but it’s difficult to hold your men to agreements made when you were alive when you’re dead and their resentment towards your killer is quite natural. Menendez pitched a dueling style he called “witnessed by stone and silver.” Nowadays we call it a “three coin duel” in the west and, as best I know, it hasn’t made its way back east, much less the continent or Avalon so I doubt it’s called by another name anywhere else. Dueling being out of fashion these days.

The rules are pretty simple. The challenged party chooses heads or tails and the challenger throws a coin in the air. Both sides then make as many passes as they can before the coin falls to the ground, at which point the winning party for that round is whichever is chosen by the face up side of the coin. This is done three times, with the chooser and thrower swapping back and forth each round. The idea is that the earth chooses the winner by exerting control over the coin, removing the need for an impartial judge to call the match. Or you’re just testing your luck, depending on who you ask.

No one’s sure why Warwick agreed to a three coin duel with Menendez but he did. They agreed that the winner would cross the river unopposed and the other man would take his troops and withdraw a day’s march into their own territory. They would settle the matter at noon the next day.

That was what actually led to the two of them meeting in the middle of the river. There’s a big, flat topped stone there we call the Border Rock. Saw it with my own eyes when I went down south a few years back. It’s about six feet wide and twenty feet long, almost as if the river left it there in anticipation of that particular moment.

Anyway, they went out and met each other there when the river ebbed and fought their three rounds. Menendez called heads. Warwick threw the coin and Menendez won the exchange. Then Warwick called tails, Menendez threw and Warwick won the exchange. On the final pass Menendez called heads and Warwick threw but from there things went very, very strange.

The coin fell between the men and got caught on one of the blades, no one’s sure who’s, prompting both of them to stop in the middle of their exchange. On previous exchanges the coin had bounced a few times before coming to a stop. This time it landed exactly once. It caught in a deep fissure in the stone almost exactly in the middle of the rock and it stuck there, edge up, without bouncing or rolling at all.

Now you have to understand, the outcome of a three coin duel is final, you can’t take it back or do it over, and believe it or not a coin on its edge is covered in the rules. That round is a draw. Which means that neither man won the duel and both would have to march a day away from the river. That is exactly what they did.

You might think their superiors wouldn’t be thrilled with this, and you’d be right. However, life is not as simple as pleasing your superiors in every situation. The people living on either side of the river thought the story was noteworthy and it spread very quickly. Long before the armies could fully mobilize word had gotten around and people began to wonder if ignoring the outcome of the duel was somehow tempting fate. The mood turned against war overnight.

Eventually the men in charge negotiated a straightforward agreement. The middle of the Great River was proclaimed the official border, with the exact center defined as the coin stuck in the Border Rock. Warwick and Menendez became folk heroes and a great deal of pain and suffering was avoided all around. Each man took the coin from the exchange they won and went home.

No one on this side of the river knows what happened to Menendez’s but Warwick would eventually use his in another three coin duel with another knight and it changed hands afterwards. In fact, that silver mark has changed hands at least four other times since then. Going against its verdict in a duel is profoundly unlucky as the only man who ever did it died in a flood a week later. They found the coin in his mouth when he washed up downstream. 

No one’s eager to try that again.

So believe you me, everyone out here believes a Menendez keeps his word, just like no one would ever call a Warwick a liar. That goes double if you can best one in a duel and triple if you wager the dueling mark on the match.

---

“Wait, are you saying that thing you’ve been tossing around for the last ten minutes is Captain Warwick’s coin?” Brandon asked, eyeing the silver mark in Roy’s hand.

“The one and only.” Roy held it by its edges so the other man could study it. “I won it from the sheriff who fished the previous, deceased owner out of the river.”

“Why did you duel a sheriff?”

“Disagreement over who would take a prisoner.” Roy tossed the coin once and shoved it back in his pocket, where it felt unnaturally heavy. The dueling mark knew there was conflict afoot and it was eager to take part, which was unnerving on the face of it and doubly so because Roy so clearly felt the emotion radiating from a silver coin. “My point is, Menendez won’t be able to turn down a three coin duel if he sees I have it. If I win, he’ll definitely keep his word, return Cassie and leave.”

Brandon folded his arms and leaned against the wall of the armory, his expression pensive. “If I’ve understood everything right he’ll only accept the duel if you offer up something he wants in the event of your losing. The only thing you have to offer that he’d want is the rock. I doubt he’s risking that kind of loss just for the coin.”

“He might. But yes, my plan was to offer him the cornerstone. That’s the way these duels work. You can’t win something unless you risk losing something.”

“In that case, doesn’t a lot of this hinge on whether you can win or not?” Brandon rubbed the back of his neck, looking uncomfortable. “Don’t misunderstand, I have the highest opinion of your capacity for violence in general, Roy. You’ve given me no reason to believe you’d lose a straight up fight. However, a duel isn’t exactly the same thing, is it? Unless you can convince him to let you use magic in the duel, in which case the same will go for him and he looks like he’s not unskilled in that area, either.”

“Not unskilled, sure,” Roy said. “But the Warwicks were much more famous for their dueling skill than their magical studies. Countering a dolmen burner with a sulfurite weapon isn’t easy and enhanced weapons replaced normal blades for a reason. If he agrees to a duel with magic I think my odds are pretty good.”

“Do you think he’ll agree to a duel with magic?”

Roy shrugged. “We’ll know once Georg finds him and extends the challenge. Until then we wait and see.”

Previous Chapter

Marius helped the young woman to her feet and said, “I apologize for this, senorita.” She shook his hand away from her arm and backed up several steps, trembling as she heaved in deep breaths. For a moment he was worried she would inhale too much and faint. He held up his hands and did his best to speak in a soothing tone. “I don’t bear you or Roy Harper any malice, I assure you, and if you will give me your word not to interfere further I am happy to leave you here until the matter is concluded.”

The woman took a final, shuddering breath and said, “Why should I trust you?”

“Do I sound untrustworthy?”

Giving her a question to answer forced her to focus on something other than panicking and her breathing evened out. Her head turned towards him, though her eyes remained distant. “No. You’re telling me the truth. Strange.”

“That I should tell you the truth?” Marius asked, moving through his small camp site to retrieve the split log he’d used as an improvised bench.

“That you would know I could tell from the way you sound.”

“Do you think cantorrum della terra are only known to the people of Avalon, senorita? The name Iberians use for them is derived from the Mortal Speech, meaning they have been known to us since the Forever Wars, if not before.” He set the smoothed piece of wood beside her and gently guided her to take a seat on it. “Once I saw how easily you severed me from my servant it wasn’t difficult to deduce what you were. Especially since you had already admitted you couldn’t see the stairs.”

She hesitated a minute before sitting, clearly still uncomfortable even if she was over her fear for the moment. “I have to admit, Senor Menendez, you’re not like most of the briggands I’ve met in the Columbian West.”

“It helps that I am not Columbian.” Marius seated himself on a large rock nearby and studied her for a long moment, wondering where to start. After some debate, he chose the obvious. “I’m afraid you have the advantage on me, senorita.”

“I am Cassandra Fairchild, of the Everton Fairchilds, a daughter of the stone circle.” She mimed a curtsey without standing. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Senor Menendez.”

“I am delighted, Miss Fairchild.” He considered her accent and name for a moment. “Am I right in presuming the Everton Fairchilds are from Avalon? A branch of the original stone circle?”

“Not quite original, but my father does serve Stonehenge.”

“A very respectable man either way.” Pleasantries over he moved on to the most difficult topic at hand. “Mr. Harper says you are his guest yet I can’t help but notice that you have undertaken his defence in depth. May I ask why?”

“What do you mean?”

“The land within a quarter mile of Oakheart is almost impossible to access via lithomancy and likely any other form of magic that uses earth as its medium.” Marius raised an eyebrow, intending it as a question, then remembered that she couldn’t see at the moment. “You’re a stone singer, Miss Fairchild. If it wasn’t you who did that, who do you think did? I doubt someone could perpetrate such a large scale working on the earth around you without your noticing.”

Cassandra pursed her lips and turned her head away, facing directly towards a large, scraggly bush. “You’re quite well informed, Senor Menendez.”

“Lithomancy is a necessary skill for anyone who works magic in Tetzlan, given the history of those mountains. We all know the stones a little. Two of my own cousins are stone singers, so I have some first hand knowledge on that front as well and my family has a history with Morainehenge on top of that. The stone circles and stone singers are closely entwined so I would have a reason to study them regardless.”

“Then you understand that taming the ground is a natural side effect of my presence. The earth wishes to attend to me over others, that’s all. As you clearly already know it is possible to get its attention if you try hard enough. I wouldn’t call that defense in depth.”

“You have stayed there long enough for the earth to lay itself at your feet, which is a choice in and of itself. That takes what, two weeks? Perhaps three in something as rocky as these bluffs.” His gaze wandered over Cassandra as he savored about the puzzle she presented, a mix of feminine charm and worrying power he would have to deal with somehow but that he could not harm directly. “You were also guarding the basement. What did Harper do before a stone singer came to visit his house, I wonder? Whatever it was, I’m sure having you and the living tree to fall back on was a significant upgrade to his household defenses.”

From the way she reflexively looked down Marius could tell he’d struck a nerve. It was clear she wasn’t a stranger to this kind of sparring, however, because she countered immediately. “Do you have the time for this, senor? I don’t know what you did to move us here but I can tell we didn’t go far from the manor. How long do you think it will take my brother and Mr. Harper to find their way here?”

The brother had to be the living tree, she didn’t look anything like the man who served as Harper’s gardener. Marius smiled to himself, conceding that she had scored a point on him, if a small one. He’d operated on the assumption that everyone in the house was loyal to Harper first and if that wasn’t the case it did make things more complicated. “Your brother might. However, I suspect Mr. Harper will weigh his priorities very differently, given what is at stake.”

Cassandra raised her chin defiantly. “I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.”

“So we shall.” Marius slapped his hands down on his thighs and got to his feet, feeling quite satisfied with himself. “I trust your patience will be well rewarded.”

The stunned expression on her face told him she realized he’d trapped her with her own words. It was a gamble whether it would hold, of course, which was what made scoring the point that much more delicious, but he had confidence in the outcome. She said she would wait and see. He’d been told that for a stone singer, those kinds of words were a kind of foretelling all of their own. It would pain her to act contrary to them, now that they were spoken, so he shouldn’t have to strive too hard to keep her from wandering off or getting in his way now.

However that didn’t cut her off from her most dangerous ability, which lay in her voice. “You intend to stay here with me? I’m surprised. I would think that, now that you’ve lost the advantage of surprise, you would cut your losses and retire. Roy Harper caught by surprise is dangerous. Now he’s on guard and I’ve never seen him fail when he takes his time to prepare and come at a problem with the advantage of his full resources.”

“I’m not exactly a new hand to this kind of work either, senorita,” Marius replied. He moved over to his small tent, dug out a spare blanket and his bag of tiles. He placed the blanket on the log beside her. “It’s windy up here so use this if you get cold.”

She placed her hand on it and nodded. “Is the stone really that important to you?”

Marius hesitated, considering the tiles in hand. He had a lot of work to do to prepare for his next gambit but he hadn’t lied when he said he didn’t expect Roy to leave the house to hunt him down. He had some time before it night fell and he was ready for his next move. “When we funnelled through the earth did you hear anything?”

She frowned. “Not particularly… A distant whining noise, perhaps. Did we travel through the ground? I find that hard to believe, given how quiet the passage was.”

“That’s because it wasn’t traditional lithomancy. It was Tetzlani blood masonry, an art we learned when we came to this continent, a far darker thing than we practice in Avalon or Iberia.” Marius’ gaze wandered up over the tops of the bluffs towards his ancestral home, somewhere far to the east. “Some say the Seventh Son of Eternity forbade such dark arts. That even we Iberians did bathe in the depths of depravity we found here, once upon a time.”

“The wizards of the Teutons say much the same in their traditions and histories,” Cassandra said. “What prompted you to revive their dark ways?”

“There are ways to use the arts without taking the blood from others,” Marius said, rubbing absently at the cut on his palm. He needed to patch that up. “Some people say the temptation to use it that way follows them everywhere, while I myself only feel the call at times.”

She sat up, suddenly rigid. “That was the noise I heard, wasn’t it? When we passed through that thing I heard something calling you.”

“Most likely. Not even the best lithomancers in modern Tetzlan know for sure. We believe that it is Huaxili, or one of the other Tetzlani gods, who taught these arts to the ancient Tetzlani in the same way the Mated Pair taught druidic arts to Avalon. The magic served as a way for those dark presences to remain in contact with our realm.”

“All the more reason not to tamper with it!”

Marius sighed. “Would you believe I had this exact discussion with my own father when I was learning his craft? It’s not that simple.”

Frustration warred with curiosity on her face and curiosity won out. “What makes it so complicated?”

“The stones of their temples. They spent centuries or even millennia capturing the living and binding them into the earth, allowing the dark creatures to seep their essence into the very bedrock of Tetzlan.” Marius clenched his fist and let the aching in his hand focus him on his task. “So long as that influence remains no lithomancer can practice their art there without Huaxili and the others reaching them. A little blood masonry here and there makes no meaningful difference. We’ve spent generations carefully leeching their power out of the ground and back into their beloved cornerstones. We are close to finishing the work. A decade, maybe two and the land will be cleansed and whole again. Until then, we can’t let the stones be destroyed.”

“And Roy is determined to do just that,” Cassandra murmured.

Which didn’t surprise him. It was dismaying, as Marius could believe the mercenary more than capable of finding the secret to doing so if given enough time, but hardly surprising. “So you see, whether he knows I’m here or not, I cannot leave. Until I get that stone back, or Roy Harper strikes me dead, this is going to continue. But this isn’t a matter that concerns Avalon, senorita. This is a matter between Tetzlan and Columbia, between myself and Harper, and you’d do yourself and the both of us a favor if you let us sort it out ourselves.”

“Perhaps.” She took the blanket and wrapped it around her legs, her face settling into a thoughtful position. “Still, you’ve been very chivalrous to me, Senor Menendez. I would hate to leave you to Mr. Harper’s tender mercies.”

Marius smiled. “We will see whose mercies are needed in the end.”

Previous Chapter

Roy doubled back through the front hall, heart pounding in his chest. He should have gone with his gut instinct and headed straight for the Armory rather than pursuing Menendez directly. Problem was leaving a hostile person unobserved in your home territory was a terrible idea. At least the Fairchilds had agreed to stay in the basement as a backstop against whatever tricks the Tetzlani man had up his sleeve.

Unfortunately that left them alone with Menendez while Roy was catching up. From the sound of all the smashing wood things weren’t going as well as he’d hoped it would. If any of that splintered wood was Brandon it was going very badly indeed.

Roy made it to the top of the basement stairs and found them in ruins. Not only had something smashed the top three steps, the lower half was mostly obstructed with the shattered pieces of one of his sword racks, with a few of the swords mixed in for good measure. A lump of stone and dirt about three feet across was thrashing about under the broken wood. That made things tricky.

Grabbing hold of the railings along the stairs, Roy made a running jump that carried him over the broken steps. As he slid along the railing he aimed a double footed kick at the trapped earth elemental. The impact jarred him from his heels up to his teeth. It also sent the creature flying out of the rubble and into the wall at the base of the steps. The wood paneling shook under the impact and the elemental crashed to the floor where it sank several inches into the dirt.

The elemental was the closest threat so Roy kept after it. He jumped off the stairs and plunged down on top of it with both feet once more, driving it deeper into the earth. The sphere shuddered under his feet, becoming spongy and gravelly for a brief moment, the elemental force animating it losing its connection to the material it had given motion. Before it could fully reform Roy drew his messer and slammed its clipped point into the center of the mass. He triggered the weapon’s sulfurite and its fuller filled with flame.

The stone underfoot groaned and cracked but still surged into motion, slipping out from under foot. As it rolled away it dragged his sword with it. The weapon clattered to the ground, skidding to a stop in a heap of other weapons. The sight triggered a surge of annoyance. He’d known they made a mess of his Armory but that didn’t mean he liked having it rubbed in his face.

Roy glanced over at the wall, reached out with his abilities and triggered the sulfurite in a pole ax. The back of the blade exploded with flame, driving the ax head down towards the elemental. The creature dove into the dirt floor to avoid the blow.

“Roy!” Brandon’s voice echoed with the woody overtones of his awakened yew grafts. “Stop!”

The urgency in the man’s voice told Roy this wasn’t a casual request so he instantly froze in place, eyes sweeping the room for the source of trouble. It was Menendez, as he’d suspected. The Tetzlani man had grabbed hold of Cassie somehow, which Roy had not expected, and was holding her with his left arm wrapped around her shoulders as if to protect her. Roy fixed the duelist with an ugly glare. “Let her go, Marius.” 

“Of course,” Menendez said, gently but firmly maneuvering Cassie towards the steps. “Senorita, please head up the stairs before we carry on.”

“I… I can’t see them,” Cassie squeaked.

Roy’s attention focused in on her immediately. There was a tightness around her mouth and a wildness to her unfocused eyes that raised alarms in his mind. It sounded almost like she was bordering on panic. He did his best to smooth things over. “Don’t worry, Cassie,” he said. “The stairs are in bad shape but I can call Georg down and he’ll -”

“I think he should remain upstairs,” Menendez said, his tone unyielding. “I will have my friend take care of her.” Something clicked together in his off hand and the earth elemental spun about and came towards him.

What control Cassie had been holding together vanished in that instant. Roy saw the primal fear spread across her face and his heart skipped a beat, well aware that something ill advised was about to take place but with no idea what it was. So when she pursed her lips it was so comically out of place he froze.

Then she whistled a single note and whatever Menendez was holding in his hands cracked, shards of it tumbling out of his hand. At the same moment his elemental came to an abrupt stop and lost its shape. Roy felt a shiver run through the ground as the earth below vibrated in sympathy with the note. There was no mistaking what had just happened.

From the way Menendez looked from the shards of stone stuck in his bleeding palm to Cassie, still sustaining the fading echoes of the note, it was clear he hadn’t missed it either. Up until that moment he hadn’t been looking at her as a threat. He’d been willing to let her leave peaceably because he didn’t think she had the desire or ability to get in the way of what he wanted. She’d just proven him wrong on both counts.

“Menendez,” Roy snapped. “Let her go.”

The two of them locked eyes as Menendez lifted his off hand to his lips and pulled the stone shards out with his teeth, crushing Cassie to him in the process. He kept his rapier levelled at Roy the whole time. As he spat the stone bits on the ground he said, “You have impressive allies, Harper, especially for someone who famously works alone.”

“She’s a guest in my house, Marius.” Roy’s eyes flicked around the room, trying to work out something he could do in the current situation. Unfortunately, even with half his arsenal scattered on the floor at his feet, he didn’t think he could make a play that would stop Menendez before he did something irreversible. “Let her go and we’ll talk.”

“We already talked, Roy. Surely you realize we’ve both moved on to discovering other solutions.” Without further ado he dropped down to the dirt floor, pulling Cassie down with him, then smeared something on the floor with his blood. The dirt liquified beneath them and they sank into it with unnatural speed.

Roy and Brandon slid to a stop at the place they disappeared a second later. Brandon slammed one wood covered leg down onto the ground, screaming, “Dust and ashes.”

The thing Menendez had drawn on the ground was a funnel shaped pair of curved lines which Roy recognized immediately. “Blood masonry.”

Brandon let out a long groan as he drew his grafts back into himself, the layers of bark drawing themselves back into his body in a way that was unsettling to look at. “You’ve seen this before?”

“A few times. Before you ask, I have no way to figure out where it goes. A blood funnel draws someone – or multiple people, in this case – through the earth from one end to the other.”

The Avaloni man knelt down and glared at the symbol. “Does that mean we can use this to follow them?”

“They only work once.” Roy turned in a slow circle around the armory, taking in the disaster it had turned into. “They only work if they’re put directly onto the ground. I never expected someone to get this far or I might have taken countermeasures against them.”

Brandon turned his baleful gaze towards the plinth in the corner. “He’s going to offer to trade Cassie for the rock.”

“Possibly. But possibly not. I won’t do it either way.”

Brandon slowly turned to him, shoulders square, and glowered down at him. “I hope you have a coalstoking good reason for that, Roy.”

“I’ve got three. First of all, Menendez has a reputation to hold up.” Roy held up a hand to forestall Brandon’s coming objection. “This isn’t just one of those ‘legendary mercenary’ kind of reputations either, he’s an officially sanctioned Tetzlani bounty hunter. He can cross the border and take prisoners back across it under color of Tetzlani law. Relations between our countries aren’t the best right now and if it comes out he’s taking hostages to fulfill his goals it won’t just make him look bad. It could provoke official retaliation.”

“That’s a start,” Brandon admitted. “What are the other two reasons?”

Roy crossed to his miscellaneous shelves and ran his fingers along it until he came to a single silver coin. He picked it up and turned it over in his palm. “Second, he’s a Menendez. They play by the rules.”

“That’s a much worse reason than the first.” A hard edge was working its way into Brandon’s voice. “I hope the third is a lot better than that.”

“The third reason is Huaxili,” Roy said, dropping the coin into his vest pocket and turning to point towards the rock. “The reason is the rock itself.”

“What’s so special about the coalstoaking rock, Roy? It looks like a hunk of granite broken off of an amateur sculpture’s first work.”

“It’s the cornerstone, Brandon.” Roy crossed to the rock and looked down at it, disgusted but not surprised to see the fingers still clinging to it. “This is the cornerstone of Huaxili’s temple and whoever holds it becomes the foundation of his newest place of worship.”

Brandon peered over his shoulder at the stone. “How is that possible? Does it make them an architect?”

“They don’t build it, Brandon. They become it.” He pointed to the fingers. “Living stones, paving the way to the worship of the darkest deity in the history of Tetzlan and Oyaxil. The Tetzlani government had this stone in a vault for eighty years and they lost track of it multiple times. Possibly as many as six. When one of the cults worshiping it came onto our side of the border we stamped them out and you can’t expect us to just give it back to them after all that. So I’m sorry, but I can’t just hand this thing to Menendez. It’s staying here.”

Previous Chapter

“Watch out for that shelf, Cassie.”

“I can see it,” she assured her brother, listening to the Armory door close behind Roy as his footsteps faded towards the front of the house. “Bronze is brilliant, after all. It stands out, even to someone who can only see the outlines of things.”

“Well, don’t go fiddling with it, you’re in no condition right now. Not that this thing is any safer.”

His voice was dimmed by the influence of the iron in the corner, suggesting he’d moved closer to whatever it was Roy kept there. “What is it, do you think?”

“I don’t know.” Brandon’s tone suggested he wasn’t interested in finding out, either. “It looks like a chunk of rock someone found on the side of a mountain and gave to a statue.”

“Gave it to a statue?” She couldn’t keep the smile out of her voice. “How can you tell that, Brandon? Does it have a dedication plaque attached to it?”

“There’s a couple of stone fingers stuck to it still, that’s all,” Brandon said, disgust creeping into his tone. His voice grew slightly stronger as he moved away from the iron’s influence. “It’s not right, I tell you. Wish I knew why Harper kept it.”

“He sounded like he wants it destroyed,” Cassie said, her own mood turning dark as well as a new set of footsteps scraped across the floor overhead. They slid lightly, like a sheet of paper drifting on the breeze. She could almost see the source of them in her mind. Tall but whip thin, lithe and dangerous, like a mountain lion stalking its prey.

“That might explain all this magical paraphernalia he’s collected. I don’t know what that rock is but I can tell it’s a major working of some sort and I imagine just smashing it with an iron hammer won’t do a lot to it. He must be looking for some way to unravel it. That would explain the yew branch, it’s used as a foundation for many of our hex breaking compounds.”

Cassie let Brandon’s musings distract her from her sudden bout of nerves. “Those are only intended to counter plant toxins, though.”

“Just because he sounds like a druid doesn’t mean he’s an initiate of the Stone Circles, Cassie. He just looted one after the war. He might not have known what yew is used for, just that it’s a counteragent. Reasonable enough place to start.”

“If an iron plate hasn’t sapped the magic from it then it must be getting more from somewhere or another,” Cassie mused. “Do you know anything about Tetzlani magic?”

“I believe the modern lithomancers there work based on the Iberian traditions brought over by their settlers. They use fire as the power and stone as the vessel.” Cassie was familiar enough with Brandon’s habits to hear him shrug in mystification. “I couldn’t tell you whether something from old Tetzlan follows the same principles or not. The Mated Pair taught Arthur most of the magic Avalon relies on to this day, I suspect this Huaxili did much the same for Tetzlan.”

Cassie hissed air through her teeth, frustrated. “We should have studied more about the local magics before this, Brandon. No matter how settled the Columbians think they’ve made the place, the old ways are still sleeping all over this continent.”

“It was a gold drinker that nearly broke my knee. We’ve had plenty of those -”

There was a thump overhead and the roof rang like a bell. Then a moment later a similar tone echoed back from underfoot. “It’s coming.”

“The workbench is three steps to your right and two steps forward. Pull the stool out and get under it.”

“Brandon, I’m hardly -”

“You’re in no condition to sing, Cassie.” Brandon’s tone was gentle but firm, backed by the creaking of yew wood as he covered himself in bark. The branch on the wall groaned in sympathy with Brandon’s grafts as they transformed him. “You can barely see. Another song now could strike you blind decades early.”

Cassie scowled, well aware that he was right but annoyed that he knew about the fact. Their father must have told him about that possibility before they left Avalon for Columbia. Assuming he hadn’t figured it out on his own. Brandon could be deviously clever when he wanted to and when he was being clever it was best to listen to him. So she stepped forward and to the right then felt about until she found the bench.

As she climbed underneath it she heard the sudden, staccato clattering of something churning up from deep below. Setting dignity aside, Cassie placed her ear flat against the dirt floor. The crunching noise of an advancing elemental became much clearer, the glorious percussive song of the waking earth. “It’s a small elemental,” Cassie said, one finger tracing a slow arc through the air as she tracked the creature’s movements. “Travelling that way.”

The floor crunched underfoot as Brandon moved in the indicated direction. “Just one?” He asked, his voice taking on a reedy tone, like an oboe, as his transformation took deeper hold. “Or can you tell?”

“Just one. If there were more there would be harmonies.”

“Oh, naturally. I should have known.” His tone suggested that, in fact, he should not have known.

“It stopped.” Cassie frowned and lifted her ear from the floor, refocusing her attention overhead once again. It was difficult for her to get a clear idea what was going on. Roy Harper was what druids like Brandon would call a firemind, a person who thought in flames. To her his presence was always accompanied by the sound of a small, crackling fire. It made him very easy to locate.

The problem was, when he was in certain moods the sound ramped up to incredible levels and right now he was definitely in one of those moods. It was impossible to make out anything Roy or his guest were saying over what sounded like a bonfire blazing overhead. Cassie cupped one hand to her ear. In practical terms it didn’t really help her gift perform any better but she’d learned it as a technique to improve focus when she was a child and it still worked.

Improved focus just made it easier for her to hear how much Roy was struggling to control his temper. It was kind of fascinating. She’d seen him annoyed with a lot of people in the past but generally her focus had centered on the people annoying him, listening for ways to back them down. Now that she could only hear him she noticed things she’d never realized before.

There was a definite cadence to Roy’s flames, something she’d never noticed in other magics that drew power from fire. She’d always assumed flames burned in ways that were totally random. Either that or she just couldn’t hear any music in fire. Stone singers drew power from air and invested it in the earth so the forces of fire and water hadn’t been a large part of her education.

Regardless, she found an audible pattern in Roy’s sound that she’d never heard before. The flames snapped like a rattling drum, the tempo slowly ratcheting higher and higher, before suddenly slowing down. She found she could picture his expression. Eyes narrowed under the brim of his hat, shooting daggers at whoever was getting under his skin, until a new fact or thought came to mind and he paused to consider it.

She was so focused in on it that the second tone that rang out nearly deafened her. Cassie hissed and yanked her hand away from her ear, shaking her head in annoyance. She was already half blind, she was not about to let some other disaster take her ears as well.

Brandon’s voice cut through the buzzing sound the deafening tone left behind. “What happened?”

“He just signaled the elemental,” she croaked out, still trying to shake out her ears. “It’s on its way now.” She couldn’t actually hear the thing coming with certainty but signaling the elemental was the only reason she could think of for such a loud burst of earth magic.

“On my way.” Brandon’s footsteps headed towards the quiet corner where the strange rock sat, pausing briefly by the wall. Cassie thought she heard him taking something from a niche there but she couldn’t guess what.

The floor of the Armory was little more than compressed dirt and the earth elemental was able to come up through it with less noise than a turtle surfacing in a still pond. Cassie could hear it but because the song of the dirt turned grumpy as it was pushed aside. As soon as it rolled out of the earth a glassy voice came from Roy’s collection of magic paraphernalia, yelling, “Hey! Who are you? Who goes there!”

Cassie jerked in surprise, then chided herself. Obviously Roy would have set up some kind of alarm system to keep watch on his Armory, he wasn’t a fool.

The elemental ignored the squawking thing and rolled towards the corner where Brandon was waiting. A whistling noise cut through the air and something metallic hit the rolling ball of stone. Cassie pulled herself deeper under the workbench as the elemental flew up so violently it struck the ceiling before thudding back to the dirt with a dull impact. It dispensed with any semblance of stealth and made a beeline for Brandon. In the process it toppled over one of the weapon racks with a spectacular crash, the sound of clattering weapons mixing with pounding footfalls overhead. The cacophony overwhelmed any nuance she could draw from the sounds and Cassie found herself completely lost.

Just like that, terror gripped her. A small voice in the back of her mind told her to sing, to take the pressing noise and spin it into a melody, but it was lost in the shouting rage of the moment. Even if she could have found a song there she wasn’t sure she could have given it voice. She wasn’t ready to live in darkness like this for the rest of her life. She just couldn’t do it.

A second metallic impact cut through the noise followed by a thunderous crash. Panicked, Cassie pulled her knees up to her chest and pushed herself as deep into the corner under the table as she could. The light, stalking footsteps she’d heard before scampered down the stairs. The weight of the elemental thumped along behind them.

A clattering noise came from Brandon’s direction. Then a louder one, mixed with the sound of wood scraping across dirt and finally the sound of a massive shelf crashing into the stairs as Brandon threw it at the intruders. Debris clattered off the ceiling, walls and workbench. Cassie whimpered involuntarily as pieces of wood banged off the table overhead.

The thrown shelf apparently hadn’t hit because the unfamiliar footsteps continued until they stopped by the table. Then a hand grabbed her and dragged her out into the open.

Previous Chapter

“Good morning, Miss Fairchild,” Roy said, walking into the sitting room with Brandon right behind him. “How are your eyes today?”

“Good morning, Mr. Harper.” Cassie’s eyes fixed on a spot just to the left of his shoulder. “My eyes are improving, though slowly. Are you wearing your brown suit today?”

“He only owns brown suits,” Brandon replied with an amused chuckle. “Message came in for us via semaphore. Do you want me to read it to you or would you rather wait until you can look at it yourself?”

A strange expression crossed Cassie’s face, a mix of doubt and anxiety that struck Roy as a slowly unfolding crisis of purpose. He knew the Fairchild siblings had come seeking the Secret of Steel. Cassandra had gotten some hint to it via the clairvoyant powers of her stone singing gifts that had eventually brought them to him. He’d pointed them to the only lead he knew of and it hadn’t panned out.

Now, Roy suspected she was wondering if she should keep looking.

“Who is it from?” She asked, clearly stalling for time.

“The Palmyran librarian we spoke to when we visited,” Brandon said, glancing over the envelope. “It doesn’t say anything about the message being urgent. There’s no harm waiting a day or two for your vision to return fully, either he’s going to suggest a new place to investigate or invite us back to review the records again. Either way, I doubt you want to travel until you can see again.”

“No, I think not.” The doubt on her face bled away and she gestured in the general direction of the writing desk in the sitting room’s corner. “Put it in my letter drawer and I’ll look at it when I’m able.”

“Your letter drawer?” Brandon asked in a teasing tone, although he still did as she’d asked. “Are you planning to move into the Manor long term?”

Cassie made an unimpressed sound and Roy tuned them out. He’d gotten used to their banter and he had a letter of his own to look at, one delivered in a more conventional fashion. He sat down in an armchair and slit the envelope open with his knife. By the handwriting he already knew who it was from and he was curious what it was about.

He’d just skimmed past the general greetings when Cassie’s voice broke into his thoughts again, asking, “Will you be going out on work again, Mr. Harper?”

“Probably not,” he said, skimming the rest of the letter. “This is from Lost Crow, the last of Tyson’s Nine, the one who couldn’t join us in Riker’s Cove. It looks like he’s just explaining why he wasn’t there. Sounds like he’s trying to sort out some issue with Columbians on their side of the border, wants me to check if there’s prices on their heads. He’s got names but he doesn’t say what they look like…”

“Is that important?” Brandon asked.

“I’ve told him before that the Territorial governments put out bounty posters that have drawings of faces on them,” Roy said, putting the letter on a table and pointing to a folio on his desk. “That’s my collection of the latest in Winchester County. Grab it for me. The problem is that the Sanna think names are one of the most important things about a person, it’s got to do with the way they respect language. In their view a person who uses a fake name is well on their way to transforming into a monster.”

“Ah.” Brandon handed Roy the leather folio with a wry look. “So they never suspect Columbian criminals might not give them their real names?”

“I think Lost Crow knows it can happen.” Roy pulled out his stack of posters and started thumbing through them, glancing over the names. “The problem is he doesn’t think about how to work around that. You or I might think of describing how a person looks to work around a false name, Crow tells me how the men introduced themselves and their favorite turns of phrase. Might help us identify a Sanna criminal. Not very helpful with Columbian ones.”

“You know their culture very well, don’t you?”

“For a Columbian I’m better than most.”

Cassie cleared her throat. “Did either of you hear that?”

The two men exchanged a glance, both well aware that they couldn’t hear the majority of what she could. “No,” Brandon said. “The only thing I could hear was Mr. Harper going through his papers.”

“It sounded like something in your basement falling over, Mr. Harper.”

Roy froze in the process of shoving a stack of posters back into his folio. “Falling over?”

“Yes. A clattering sound, nothing large.”

“Stone, wood or metal?”

A wave of confusion crossed her face. “Not wood. It was hard to make out with the two of you talking over it, but…”

“Was it stone?” Roy demanded, throwing the folio down on his chair as he scrambled to his feet.

“It was hard to tell but possibly?” 

Cassie and Brandon trailed along behind him as he stormed through the house to the kitchen. “Mrs. Sondervan,” Roy barked, poking his head into the kitchen. “Send Georg in, then go and keep Nat company. He’s fishing, right?”

“Yes?” Gertie looked quite shocked at his sudden intrusion. “Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know. Stay with Nat until I send Georg to get you. If you don’t see him by sundown do not come back in the house. Have the semaphore in town send the message ‘smoke and wax’ to the bean office. Do you understand?”

Gertie shook her head. “Not in the least. But I’ll keep the boy out of the house and send Mr. Booker your message if I have to.”

“Good.”

Roy continued to the south side of the house, digging a key out of the breast pocket of his vest. Behind him, Brandon asked, “Do you want either of us along on this adventure or should we stay with Mrs. Sondervan?”

“I’d like you to come along, as Miss Fairchild is the one who can sing to the stones, but it could go very badly so don’t feel that you must.”

From the eager look on Brandon’s face Roy knew he was keen. The problem was the flicker of hesitation he saw from Cassie, a moment of indecision that was out of character for her. She’d been very withdrawn for the last few days. Whatever was bothering her, crisis of purpose or otherwise, it seemed to have sapped her resolve in all areas. That wasn’t surprising. At the moment it wasn’t helpful, either. However it didn’t last very long as she quickly rallied and put on a brave face again.

“I’m fine, Mr. Harper.” Once again she pointed her face not quite in his direction, a habit that was becoming a little uncanny. “I heard the noise. I’m just as curious about what it is as you are.”

“Curious is not the word I would use,” Roy muttered, unlocking the door to the Armory.

“Which one would you use, then?”

“Concerned. I’m very concerned about the things I keep down here.” He shoved the key back into his pocket and pulled a bead of fire from his sulfurite cufflinks, sending the flame darting around the large, underground room to ignite a quartet of lanterns. He heard Brandon whistle softly as they made their way down the stairs into the Armory proper.

“Sounds like a large room,” Cassie said. “I know you’re a professional mercenary, Mr. Harper, but how many weapons do you need at one time?”

“There’s a workshop for basic maintenance down here,” Brandon replied. “But a lot of this is very niche stuff. I always suspected you liked to be prepared but this is much worse. You’re a collector.”

“Guilty as charged.” Roy grimaced as he walked past his whetstone and workbench into the twin racks of swords he’d collected over the years. On his right were the backswords, to his left the rapiers and cut and thrust models. Leaning in niches on two walls were an array of even more varied polearms. Under normal circumstances, which is to say when he was in the Armory alone, he quite enjoyed surveying his collection. However, whenever he brought someone else there he felt vaguely uncomfortable.

“Got a few empty slots down here,” Brandon mused, studying the sword racks. “What happened?”

“Combat. Swords don’t last forever and I’m told I’m particularly hard on them.” Roy pointed to the spot where his prized Alexopoulos falcata had rested until just a few months ago. “I broke that one a couple of days before I met you, believe it or not.”

“I’ve never seen you use a pike or poleaxe before.”

“Like you said, I’m a collector. Most of those I took off of other people, mainly to make sure they wouldn’t stick them in me when my back was turned.” He grabbed a Tetzlani rapier with a silver gilded hilt. The leather sheath had a brass plate depicting a snarling panther wrapped around the center. “This one is what got me started. I got it off a cult leader south of the border seven or eight years ago.”

Brandon took the rapier and drew it a few inches out of the sheath, studying its bronze blade with a critical eye. “No sulfurite crystal. This thing must be an antique.”

“You should have seen the guy it belonged to.”

“Did you plant a tree down here?” Cassie’s voice came from the far wall, where Roy kept his equally extensive collection of other magical junk he didn’t have a use for. His most recent addition was the steel mirror frame they’d acquired from von Nighburg. However that wasn’t what held her attention. She’d found the six foot long, twisting yew branch that was mounted over the shelves of smaller artifacts and her fingers traced its old, cracked bark lightly. “What is this?”

Roy swallowed once, mouth suddenly dry. “It’s a reminder that even the greatest men can fail.”

With a soft thunk Brandon pushed the rapier back into its sheath then handed it back to Roy. “There’s time for stories about these things later. What was it you were so concerned about down here? I doubt you just wanted to check on trophies from old jobs.”

“Actually, I did.” He put the sword back and headed to the corner furthest from the stairs. There was a small stone plinth there, set apart from the rest of the shelves and racks by a few feet, with an iron plate covering the top. A misshapen lump of rock sat on top.

It was the first thing he’d looked for when he lit the lanterns and he was glad to see it was still in place. Yet the simple fact it hadn’t moved didn’t mean much. He knew this. Roy gently took Cassie’s arm and led her over to the plinth. “Do you still hear the noise that bothered you?”

She waited a moment, turning her head one way and another, eyes closed. She looked quite serene like that. Finally she shook her head and said, “Nothing. It’s almost totally quiet here. I can’t even hear you crackling, there must be something deadening the sound. Do you have an iron weapon here? That can dampen stonesong.”

“Not a weapon but yeah, there’s iron here.” Roy chewed on his lip for a moment, wondering. “Well, at least we know it wasn’t Huaxili causing mischief. That does leave the question of what you were actually hearing…”

“Who-axe-eel-lee?” Brandon pronounced the word with exaggerated care. “That doesn’t sound like a Sanna word and, while I know you Columbians mangle the language, it doesn’t sound Avaloni either. That makes it Tetzlani, no? A person? Organization?”

“A god, though one mostly forgotten now.”

The door at the top of the stairs clicked open and Georg’s voice echoed down. “You sent for me, Mr. Harper?”

“Grab a weapon and keep it with you, something odd is going on and I want us all ready for it, whatever it is.”

“Right away,” Georg said, clunking down the steps, rolling down the sleeves of his shirt with dirt stained fingers. “What kind of trouble are we expecting today?”

“It’s not clear at the moment. I thought something malicious was working down here but I’m not seeing any signs of it at the moment.” Roy moved back to his sword racks and selected a weapon for himself. “We may have unexpected guests.”

“Certainly do, Mr. Harper,” Georg said, taking a simple cut and thrust sword off the rack and shoving it into his work belt. “He met us at the door as Mrs. Sondervan was explaining things to me. Said his name was Menendez. Come all the way from south of the River to see you. Given the circumstances I had him wait outside and sent the missus and my boy off to town.” 

Roy hesitated in the process of beIting his messer on. “You don’t say.”

“Someone you know?” Cassie asked.

“Only by reputation.” Roy added an iron dagger to his bell and took a few things off the knickknack shelf and tossed them in his pockets. “Marius Menendez is rumored to be the best duelist for hire in Tetzlan, that’s all.”

“Ominous,” Brandon muttered.

“Could be nothing,” Roy said, affecting a lightness he did not really feel. “I’ll go see what he wants. Would you and your sister do me a favor?”

To Cassandra Fairchild, going blind was simply a part of life.

Or that was what she had told herself over and over in the seven years that had passed since her father first sat her down and explained the nature of stone song. She had inherited his gift for the song and the accompanying fate of blindness. She had never really spent much time considering what that would mean for her practically speaking.

At first singing a song or two just made the edges of her vision blurry. As the years passed and her powers grew the cost became more pronounced. She would see spots or flashes of light as she sang. Then the world would turn fuzzy for a few minutes, then a few hours. Yet she could still see, even if it wasn’t with great clarity and that was some comfort to her. The fear of darkness was still a long ways away.

Certainly she had never once wished she couldn’t see.

Not once, that is, until a black hearted wizard dumped terror itself into her brain and it refused to leave. Then, it seemed, blindness might offer some respite from the fear. So she’d sung recklessly, seemingly endlessly, until the wizard fled and left the fear to pursue her into the dark. For a time she’d held it at bay, keeping herself busy. However, business in Riker’s Cove could only keep them occupied for so long and she’d been forced to make the long train flight back to Keagan’s Bluff in complete darkness.

During that time she learned what dread really was. 

It took a full week for light to come back into her vision. Five of those days were spent blindly stumbling around Oakheart Manor, trembling at every sound. The panic von Nighburg set on her had faded as sight crept back in. The dread, however. That remained.

It made itself known at all hours of the day. In the sound of animals scurrying past the walls at night, in the roar of winds on stormy days. Even in the sound of footsteps passing down the hall or even stopping in the doorway.

“Morning, dear,” a bright, clear voice said, chasing the specters away and grounding Cassie in the present. “Did you sleep well?”

“Better, thank you, Mrs. Sondervan.” Cassie turned her face towards the sound of the housekeeper’s voice, imagining the woman’s round, pleasant face beaming with her customary smile. “I can almost see you this morning. Are you wearing blue?”

She tutted under her breath, something Gertie Sondervan was in the habit of doing when she was upset but didn’t want other people to know about it. Cassie knew Roy had explained her remarkable hearing to his employees when she first came with her brother but she wasn’t sure Gertie really understood what he was saying when he said she heard better than most. However, the woman didn’t mean ill so Cassie was willing to overlook it.

“More of a green dress, dear,” Gertie said in her normal tone. “Not to worry, though, the gentlemen aren’t planning to hare off on any errands today, once they’re back from Mr. Harper’s customary visit to the post. They aren’t likely to leave you here with such poor company as myself.”

“I’ve spent my time in far worse company, and recently.” Cassie closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting her hearing slowly submerge her in the song of the stones. Pebbles trembled and sang. The dirt churned in the slow and ancient dance of the earth. A shovel cut through the ground outside as Georg Sondervan dug weeds from the garden and the pattering footsteps of Nat Sondervan echoed up the bluff as he scampered towards the river at the base of the hill.

Beyond that, the steel clop of horseshoes echoed on the dirt path up from Keegan’s Bluff. Cassie’s eyes fluttered open and she got up from the chair at her dressing table, extending a hand towards Gertie and said, “Could you take me down to the sitting room, Mrs. Sondervan?”

“Of course, dear.” A feminine hand with a surprisingly strong grip took her elbow and gently guided her through the hall and down the stairs. “The gentlemen aren’t back yet, though. Would you like to eat breakfast while you wait?”

“They’ll be back soon,” Cassie said. “And I’m sure your breakfast is delicious, Mrs. Sondervan, but I’m afraid I’m not hungry this morning.”

Another tutting came but Gertie didn’t say anything else as she helped Cassie navigate the stairs. At the bottom Cassie paused, a strange wave of foreboding washing over her. The songs of the earth had their own tone and tempo, far different from human music, but she knew them just as well. Yet for a brief moment she thought she heard an unnatural staccato among them.

The grip on her arm adjusted slightly. “Something wrong, dear?”

“No…” Cassie listened a moment longer but the strange rhythm didn’t repeat itself. “I just thought I heard something from the basement.”

“The basement?” Gertie sounded incredulous. “Nothing making noise down there when the gentlemen are out.”

“Might have been rats?” She’d heard rats in the pantries before and they didn’t sound like that. Then again, Roy had never told them what he kept in the basement, just that he kept it locked for a reason.

“Not likely,” the housekeeper replied. “Mr. Harper’s Armory isn’t a place the living would like spending a lot of time. I used to go down once a month to tidy up but it’s so very unsettling down there.”

Cassie frowned. It made sense that a professional firespinner like Roy Harper would have a large collection of weapons and a place to store them. It was strange that his employees would find them distasteful. Especially since she’d seen both the adult Sondervans carrying blades on trips into town. There were mountain lions living in the higher bluffs, after all.

“I see. Well, let’s hope we won’t have need of the Armory today, then.” She patted Gertie’s hand and they continued on to the sitting room, a warm room on the eastern side of the house. Cassie’s shoes sank deep into a thick, comfortable rug. A few steps later Gertie rested her hand on the back of an armchair and she found her way into the seat. “Thank you, Mrs. Sondervan.”

“Of course, dear. I’ll let your brother and Mr. Harper know where you are when they get back.”

The housekeeper bustled away and Cassie leaned back into the chair, listening to the hoofbeats in the distance. The quiet rumble of the men’s voices echoed off the bluffs. Between the walls and the wind off the highlands it was impossible to make out the words but she could guess they were only five or ten minutes away. She settled in and waited, taking deep breaths and trying to ignore the dread creeping back.

Something felt wrong. It might have been the last echoes of Heinrich von Nighburg’s malice but it might not. Maybe the temporary loss of her sight had made her more sensitive to whatever was in the Armory that made Gertie so wary. It was impossible to tell. Whatever it was, there wasn’t much she could do but keep her ear to the ground and listen for that strange staccato rhythm to come again.

---

Marius lowered the spyglass once Harper and his companion vanished inside the house. He didn’t know who it was the firespinner was riding with, everything he’d heard told him Columbia’s best mercenary preferred working alone. That was an unfortunate wrinkle. Marius was working on a very tight timetable and he hadn’t anticipated an additional fighting man at Oakheart Manor.

And the new man was definitely used to violence. He was enormous and carried himself with an air of comfortable power that made that clear. It was hard to tell when he was in the saddle but Marius thought he’d been favoring one leg once he dismounted, so at least that was something. There was still no getting around the fact his job had become much more difficult.

Making matters worse was the fact that he could not get the earth elementals around the house to answer when he called them. Some other working kept him from establishing a connection with them. That might explain the new face among Harper’s employees. The stories agreed that Roy Harper himself was not particularly skilled in magics of the earth. 

Perhaps he had hired someone to offset that weakness. If a powerful lithomancer had done something that bound the local elementals to him it would make it much more difficult for Marius to summon them. There were countermeasures one could take, of course. The problem was that many of those countermeasures would make it obvious to the lithomancer that there was an interloper on hand. Much of Marius’ plan relied on speed and subterfuge.

Of course, he could also be reading too much into things. Elementals were finicky things where mercenaries set in their ways very much were not. Perhaps Roy Harper was just entertaining a friend from when he served in the Columbian Regulars and the stones were so deeply asleep they couldn’t be bothered with answering Marius’ summons.

Whatever had happened Marius would have to figure out how to respond to it quickly. He had given his word that he would sort matters out by the end of the month and a Menendez did not go back on his word. He collapsed his spyglass and tucked it into his jacket then scrambled away from the edge of the bluff he’d been observing from. He would cast the tiles on his lithomancy board again. Perhaps the stones would speak to him this time.

If not, there was nothing else to do but press forward.