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Roy took the news that Low Noon would likely empower von Nighburg with his typical grace and good humor, stalking off to retrieve his skiff while grumbling under his breath. Proud Elk went with him, both to keep him out of trouble and likely to ride the skiff again. Johan watched them go, bemused. When Roy had joined the Regulars as a kid he’d had a much more positive attitude and outlook but time had changed him a lot. It was tempting to say it was the war that did it but even during the Summer of Snow he hadn’t been quite so… intense.

From the rumors, most people thought that intensity was what made Roy successful in his work. Johan worried that it was a sign of strain. He’d tried to work out what was bothering Roy when he came to Leondale for his wedding but hadn’t gotten anywhere. Given the constraints they were under at the moment Johan assumed he wouldn’t get another chance. At least not before they went up the tower.

He finished marking up the mirrors and moved over to the crystal itself, examining the burnt out candles the sheriff had left there. As if the thought conjured the man, Warwick appeared. “I can get those out of your way.”

“They’re not an issue, sheriff,” Johan said, handing him the stump of wax. “These are a tool to show things that normally go unseen, correct?”

Warwick slipped the stub of wax into a pouch on his belt. “That’s the idea.”

“We might be able to combine them with the mirrors and work out exactly what is inside the prism before we use the sunstone to dissolve it,” Johan said. He pointed to the child trapped inside. “If nothing else it will let us see if the child is poisoned or injured in some hidden way before we restore him to normal time.”

“They’re intended to reveal magic, not wounds or poison,” Warwick said, moving around the prism. “Besides, I’ve never heard of a candle of revealing and a mirror being used together, much less a candle and a magic mirror. We don’t know as it will do anything.”

“Can it hurt to try?” Tanner asked.

“Mixing magic is always dangerous,” the sheriff said, scooping up the last candle stub, “even magics that exist only to look at things.”

Johan nodded. “There are many very dangerous entities in the world that know when you are looking for them. That’s how people like von Nighburg typically get their start. They go looking for the forbidden and the forbidden finds them eventually.”

“Beyond that,” Warwick added, “I only have three of the things left and we might very well need them. The more magic the candle needs to do its job the faster it burns.”

“Only three?” Johan raised an eyebrow. “Why so few? I would think a druid as skilled as yourself would have many of such a useful thing on hand.”

Warwick spread his hands. “The wicks are very hard to come by since Morainhenge fell and the climate here isn’t right for me to grow the ingredients myself. I reached out to someone I know who tries to keep us supplied with such things months ago but… well, it’s not so easy to find what I need these days. I’d like to have a hundred of the things on hand all the time.”

“That’s unfortunate.” Johan pressed his face against the side of the prism, his nose pressing flat against the surface of the spell. Nothing he saw inside spoke of poisons or wounds. The problem was that both the First Son’s magic and the older Teutonic magics he derived it from excelled at illusions. “Could you spare just one of your candles?”

The sheriff joined him, his frown clearly visible in his reflection on the prism’s surface. “You’re very fixated on this.”

“A moon prism is a very flexible kind of magic, sheriff,” Johan said, stepping away from the crystal to look the other man in the eye. “There are many applications for them in the literature. They were used to preserve food, to keep people from dying until they could be healed and, very often, to create boobytraps. With what we know of von Nighburg I can’t imagine he spent the time and effort to make one of these with no purpose. You know him better than I. Why do you think that was?”

Warwick wordlessly reached into a different pouch, pulled out a new candle and offered it to him. Johan took it and opened up his lightbox, removed the sunstone and replaced it with the candle. Once he had it in place he held it up to the sheriff and said, “Is there a correct way to light this or can I just use a match?”

“The trick isn’t in lighting them it’s in putting them out,” Warwick said. He struck a match and lit the candle for Johan. “I’ll show you how to do that later, for now just try not to breath too deeply. The smoke’s not toxic but if you don’t have the tolerance eventually it will make you see things that just aren’t there.”

“This shouldn’t take more than five minutes.”

“Then you shouldn’t see any side effects if the candle burns steady. Just remember they burn faster the more you draw on their magic and when I was scrying the crystal they burned pretty fast indeed. That won’t just burn through the candle faster, it will strain your mind in the same way.”

The Fairchild siblings approached as Johan adjusted his lighbox. “Good morning, Mr. van der Klein,” the young lady said, her voice sounding unusually scratchy that morning. “Can we assist you?”

Johan spared them a glance as he checked the box’s alignment by feel. After meeting Roy’s friends on the train he’d taken some time to probe the extent of their abilities and experience. Not a great sacrifice given they were stuck on a train. Still, he’d guessed from the look and feel of them that they couldn’t help meddling in Roy’s affairs so he figured he’d best have a good read on them and it seemed his intuition was correct. “I appreciate the offer but I don’t believe so. Both my own magic tradition and the Teutonic school that the moon prism comes from specialize in the manipulation of light. I don’t believe either of your areas of expertise will contribute to that. A river seer would be even better than this candle but I’m afraid we don’t have any of them handy.”

Brandon gently took his sister by the arm. “As I said, Cassie. Besides, you’ve been pushing yourself very hard the last few days and I’m worried about your voice. Take a few minutes to rest.”

He led her several paces away and coaxed her into sitting on a bench outside one of the town’s saloons. Honestly, Johan was glad to see it. It was true that neither one of them had magic that would directly contribute but there were always precautions they could help with. But, if the name was anything to go by, a stone singer relied heavily on their voice and hers sounded markedly strained at the moment. He’d rather not push them if he didn’t have to.

There was also the nature of the magic at hand. On a fundamental level all magic was the combination of a source of power with a vessel to give that power a purpose. That said, regardless of the tradition it was founded in, almost all understandings of magical forces mixed those two concepts. In the druidic tradition fire, water, earth and air formed the basic elements of magic. Of these, fire and air were the forces and water and earth the vessels.

However fire had both a form, in flame, and an energy, in heat. Likewise with air, which was always in motion yet also tangible in the form of wind. The Teutonic tradition spoke of thought as the power and pattern as the vessel but both things were said to reside the mind. All aspects of Teutonic magic thus must be contained by a single vessel. For the Sons of Harmon it was a bit different.

Rembrandt’s magic came from the contrast between light and darkness, with light as the power and the darkness around its edges the vessel that gives it meaning. Most practitioners considered them the purest forms of power and vessel in existence. It was a very different kind of magic, built as much on contrast and negative space as powers and vessels. In the centuries since the First Son’s death many of his followers had tried to integrate other traditions into their own methods with little success. The few successes that did exist all revolved around traditions that had some kind of light source among their paraphernalia. Avery Warwick’s magic candles, for example.

To Johan’s delight, it worked. As he adjusted the lightbox’s mirrors to focus the candle’s light on the larger perimeter mirrors he felt a subtle shift in the way the magic normally felt but no actual rejection like the treatises mentioned when they discussed failed experiments. The perimeter mirrors split the light to form an almost solid ring around the moon prism. The world outside the ring was cast in harsh, impenetrable shadows that turned Tanner and the other townsfolk watching them work into vague silhouettes. Only the sheriff and the Fairchilds were inside the ring and visible.

Cassandra’s mouth opened slightly in wordless amazement. Her brother lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the harsh glare but Warwick nodded in grudging admiration. “Not bad,” he said. “But the candle won’t put out that kind of power for long. You have a minute, maybe more, so make it fast.”

“Hold this, please, Mr. Fairchild.” He put the lightbox in the druid’s hands, gently pressing up on his elbow to keep the box perfectly positioned. Then he reached down to the perimeter mirrors and began to add the last few lines in was on the glass to finish the spell he had in mind.

From its position in the graveyard Jonathan Riker’s statue was in the perfect position to see everything as it happened. At the north end of the cove a flying skiff came into view. A minute later a harsh light glinted off the windows of the houses down by the docks, as if late morning had suddenly transformed to high noon. Something glinted at the top of the lighthouse.

And rising high and distant over the cove, barely audible over the rolling waves, came distant echoes of wild laughter.

Avery watched in amazement as the light suffused the crystal, causing it to almost entirely fade from view. There was still nothing to see inside but Hank. “Looks clear to me. How do you plan to check for poison or the like?”

“Trying a few things,” van der Klein said, scribbling on his mirror and erasing the scribbles a few seconds later. “Let me know if the light changes colors. That means the scrying has discovered a poison or spell at work.”

The sheriff snorted and started counting in his mind. At the rate things were going they were definitely going to need at least one more candle to get through this. He took it out from the pouch on his belt and handed it to Brandon. “No changes so far.”

“That’s poisons and diseases done,” van der Klein said, dusting his hands off and getting up to carefully switch the old, burned out candle for the new one. Fifteen seconds later he finished making his marks with no changes in the color of light from the prism. “No enchantments at work in there either. No point taking the whole thing down and starting over.”

“You’re going to break the prism now?” Avery asked, watching the mirror man carefully scribbling things on his glass.

“Melting might be a better way to put it.” Van der Klein moved around the mirrors in the circle and started to draw on them. “The boy may be a bit disoriented once the prism melts. Miss Fairchild, would you be so kind as to help him if he needs it?”

As the Son of Harmon finished his work all the hair on Avery’s head suddenly stood on end. “Wait.” Suddenly it occurred to him that there was something he hadn’t tried. He scrambled in the paraphernalia in the pouches of his belt, dragging out a thistledown candle. “Wait a moment, Mr. Van der Klein.”

He froze, one hand still on the top of his mirror. “What do you mean? It’s already melting.”

Avery’s stomach did a flipflop, anxiety inexplicably squeezing him like a vice. He jammed the candle into his candle holder with fast, jerky motions. “Something’s wrong here.” Brandon and van der Klein were both staring at him in bafflement and for a brief moment Avery doubted himself. Then he met Cassandra’s eyes and saw they were wild and fearful. “What do you hear, stone singer?”

“Laughing,” she whispered. “A song like laughter – no, like everything was taken away until all that was left laughter or extinction.”

The candle snapped to life with a sputtering flare and Avery centered himself on the flame, intending to probe Hank’s mind. But as soon as he touched the magic there a surge of malicious glee hit his mind so hard he dropped the candle holder.

“Sheriff?” Brandon asked.

For a moment, as Avery collected himself, he saw everything around him with perfect clarity. He saw the moon prism vanish – not melt, just cease to exist. He felt the magic of his two candles meld together, pulling thoughts out of the air and forcing them to reveal themselves to the human eye. He saw dozens of mouths full of rows and rows of blunt, horselike teeth gaping wide in gruesome grins. He saw Hank’s head snap up as he came free of the prism.

Saw the boy’s lips peel back in an ugly grin. Then watched his mouth open wider and wider, his jaw stretching then tearing itself apart with a wet crack. Peel after peel of malevolent laughter filled the square.