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The biggest sticking point to the plan turned out to be how they went up the lighthouse. Johan insisted they needed to go up the inside, as he believed the entrance to von Nighburg’s hidden position needed a controlled environment to work. Based on a sketch the sheriff made he believed it was halfway up the tower. However Roy insisted entering the lighthouse from the beacon room at top would allow them to avoid any traps and ambushes the blackguard had left at the base of the tower. Warwick pointed out that von Nighburg was the type to cover both directions. However he’d seen some of the defenses on the ground floor when he’d tried to help his late predecessor drag von Nighburg out of it before.

Roy was clearly invested in using the skiff he’d spent all that time on acquiring and Johan was sympathetic. He’d spent a lot of time and money gathering his supplies for the job, too. However the sheriff’s familiarity with the tower wasn’t the only reason to go bottom upwards, there was also the issue of the beacon itself. While moon prisms were part of more than just the Teutonic tradition, all accounts suggested that school of magic was what von Nighburg used most. If that was true, there were dozens of ways he could use the lighthouse beacon itself against them.

With those two points Johan eventually won Roy over to his way of thought. From there it was just a matter of deciding who was going up the tower and what they would do. After a brief deliberation they decided to leave a small group to guard the entrance to the hidden space, both so von Nighburg couldn’t escape and so it wouldn’t close and trap them there. Two other groups would go into the structure, one to find Jennifer Riker and one to kill the blackguard himself.

Roy set himself and Proud Elk the task of running down von Nighburg and gladly accepted Samson Riker’s offer to look for his daughter along with a pale but determined looking Chester Tanner. When he offered Johan the choice of guarding the entrance or going with Riker his initial impulse was to stay by the door. Warwick was the town sheriff, after all, and it seemed fitting he go save his townsfolk. However, Roy correctly pointed out that Johan was the only one able to break a moon prism in the event that von Nighburg had trapped Jenny in one one like he did with Hank.

So Warwick and Brandon were left to watch the entrance. That was when Roy made the tactical mistake of suggesting the sheriff could maintain their lines of communication from that point using his candles. “Not possible, Harper,” Warwick said. “First off, there’s no guarantee it’ll work on you. Sure, we walked through a mindscape together but that was purely accidental and there were a lot of other kinds of magic mixed in when we did it. There’s no saying telepathy will work out in the field, without any practice and without understanding how they mix with your firemind. Second, I’m not lighting one of those around von Nighburg’s magic until I have a better idea what otherworldly powers he’s dealing with. That thing in the prism was nasty and I have no idea how to counter its influence. We got away from its mindscape once, by luck. I don’t want to have to try to do it again unless we absolutely have to.”

“I have the bracelets,” Proud Elk suggested, holding up a trio of beaded bands he’d brought in his bag of tricks. “Only three, unfortunately, but I wasn’t sure how many people would be in our group and these were as many as the Dry Bluffs people could spare when I set out. Fortunately it’s enough to give one to each group.”

“Yeah but they require communication via tap and they have to be bound to their user,” Roy said. “Only you know how to do that. If someone using one is out then the rest of their group is unreachable.”

“Talk by candle is even less secure,” Warwick pointed out. “No matter how many are lit they rely on me to keep the connection working. One point of failure rather than three.”

“It could be a backup,” Roy said.

Johan gestured to Cassandra. “Why not arrange for a signal similar to what you used when we arrived? If we need a backup signal we know Miss Fairchild’s song works even in the mindscape you two visited. Why not leave her by the entrance, so she can use her gift to keep us in touch?”

Brandon glanced over at his sister, his expression very carefully neutral. “It will be dangerous.”

The young lady hesitated for a moment and Johan caught a brief glimpse of a nervous young girl beneath her normally serene attitude. Then she cleared her throat and the girl vanished. “Not any more so than half the other errands we’ve gone on, Brandon.”

“So you think your stone song will work in the other space von Nighburg has created in that tower?” Roy asked, seeming dubious.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Cassandra said, turning her attention to the sheriff. “But thanks to Sheriff Warwick we do have another option. You see, I don’t know anything about fireminds and telepathy but merging the magic of stone singers and thistledown candles is a common thing in Avalon.”

Warwick coughed something that might have been a suppressed chortle. “Common? How common is anything involving stone song?”

“Not very,” she admitted with a gracious smile. “But it was something I have practiced many times and it provides a unique benefit. If everyone knows the tune, and if the tune is properly chosen to harmonize with everyone using a candle, it prevents anyone who doesn’t know the music or cannot harmonize with it from joining the link.”

“Is that possible?” Roy asked. “Can strangers just listen in if you discuss something using those candles?”

“Yes, just like they can overhear you talking on the street corner,” Warwick said.

Roy’s head swung around to Proud Elk. “What about those beads? Can someone just pick up on the taps you’re sending along them, too?”

“Only if they know the exact pattern of beads in your bracelet,” Proud Elk said. “That is why they are often changed between uses.”

“That’s a little better,” Roy muttered.

“The point is no one can overhear if you have a stone singer take the proper precautions,” Cassandra said, sounding a tad testy.

“No person can,” Warwick countered. “Did you get any sense of what that thing in the square was, though?”

“If you want to say that, why should we think anything we do will effect it?” Johan said, starting to feel a little testy himself. “That kind of thinking will just paralyze us when we could be doing something useful. Besides, even creatures with greater power than mankind still operate under the same principles. A horse is faster than we are but its legs move by sinew and leverage, same as ours.”

“That wasn’t a horse.” Roy let his dry retort hang in the air for a moment then went on. “Regardless, picking a tune we all know and is appropriate for us sounds like a tough thing to work out with only a couple of hours before we need it.”

“Teach her Tyson’s Nine,” Warwick said. “I know it and it’s about you three so as long as the lady can pick up tunes as well as she sing’s ’em we’re good to go.”

Roy rolled his eyes and Johan laughed aloud. “He has you there, Roy.”

“We’re not teaching anyone that stupid bit of trash,” he grumbled. “She said the tune has to harmonize with us not be written about us so it wouldn’t work in the first place.”

Cassandra leaned forward, a glint of interest in her eyes. “What’s this, then? I’ve never heard this tune so I can’t say if it fits you or not. How could you not tell us there was a song about you, Mr. Harper?”

“It’s not about me,” Roy snapped.

“True.” Proud Elk gave his friend a curious look. “It’s about all of us who entered the Leondale Pact and hunted the hungry ones during the Summer of Snow, some years ago. It’s a tribute to the living and the departed, offered in gratitude. I never realized this tribute displeased you, Bright Coals.”

“Forgive me,” Brandon said, “we’re strangers to this part of the world. I gather this Summer of Snow is what brought you and Mr. van der Klein together with Mr. Harper initially?”

“That’s right,” Johan said. “A bunch of nasty elementals, or hungry spirits as the Sanna call ’em, came down from the North and devoured their way through four or five counties. Ate up the livestock, the crops and the people. That would be bad enough but they were so powerful and so numerous they brought winter with them, too. Killed most of the season’s planting and froze a lot of unprepared people dead. These creatures are called wendigo, although it’s best not to use that word most of the time.”

“Why?” Cassandra asked.

“First,” Proud Elk snapped, shooting Johan a dark look, “because sometimes they come when named. The Columbians doubt the import of words and thus are are too careless with them. Second because the hungry ones are spirits of the Sanna, ours to contend with, just as the gold drinker and the children of Eternity are spirits of Columbia and the lands over the Sea. It’s not fitting for you to speak of them unless they trouble you.”

“They troubled us plenty, once,” Warwick said with an edge to his voice.

“But no more,” the Sanna replied with equal heat.

“And we are grateful that you and many others offered us your help in subduing them,” Johan said, tilting his head in respect. “But as the Sanna know, spirits must be named in their stories and this is a story about the wendingo.”

Proud Elk worked his jaw back and forth once, then nodded. “You speak truly, Silver Glass. To tell a story about a spirit without its name is a slight and far more likely to draw them here than speaking it. It is your story, what’s more, and the name is yours to speak.”

The phrase was a formal sign of respect from the Sanna and Johan bobbed his head in acknowledgment of it. “As I said, these wendigo came against us with hunger and cold as their weapons. With the help of men from across the West and many Sanna braves we lured them – well most of them – into a canyon called Tyson’s Run. There was an old lumber mill belonging to Graem Tyson in it. The sixty of us, plus one, made a stand there for forty days and forty nights. At the end of it, all but three of the hungry ones were destroyed and nine of us left the canyon and went home.”

“What about the three creatures that survived?” Brandon asked.

“Those were the ones that didn’t follow us into the canyon. One of them was killed by the Regulars, who had mobilized against the threat but refused to cooperate with the Sanna,” Roy said. “Another crossed into Sanna territory and the local tribes got it.”

“And the last?” Cassandra asked.

Johan ignored the question. “The interesting thing about these creatures is they grow in direct proportion to the amount they eat. If they devour a pound of meat they get a pound heavier and a suitable amount larger. Sometimes they divide in half but only once they’re truly enormous. It’s nearly impossible for a person to kill one single handed. Yet I know of two people who have done it. You’ve met one of them.”

Brandon’s eyes were drawn to Roy like a magnet. “Giantkiller.”

“A load of nonsense,” Roy said, his attention on the lighthouse blueprints. He’d looked over both pages of the building’s plans a dozen times in the last hour so Johan suspected he wasn’t looking for something particular in themnow. “I had to burn the town of Hampburg to the ground to stop that thing and it’d gotten to half the people there already. It’s not something praiseworthy.”

Proud Elk shook his head. “You cannot expect to strike down such a thing with the swing of a sword, Bright Coals. You are no the Strongest Man in the World. Yet you did kill it. Isn’t it enough that you did what was required of you?”

Roy glanced up from the blueprints, towards the back wall of the pavilion. Out towards the town’s graveyard. “If I’d done that, Jonathan would be here to sort this out himself.”

“Pa wasn’t in the business of staying places,” Samson said. “No saying he’d be here, even if he was alive. But you are. Not many men out in these parts who’d go that far for a man they knew less’n two months. Give yourself a little credit.”

“Fine.” Harper threw the papers down on the table. “Teach her the coalstoking song. Then gather anything you’ll need and say your goodbyes. We’re going after von Nighburg in two hours.”

---

The actions men take before walking into danger reveal far more than the words they say to encourage one another or the prayers they offer to their gods. Jonathan Riker’s last night in the Cove was spent with his wife. His son did much the same in the hours before they climbed the lighthouse, walking home to sit with his own wife on their home’s front step as the shadows grew longer. His father’s statue watched them from its place on the bluff.

It was also in position to see the sheriff return to his own house next to the jail where he presumably slept for the few hours they had. The Fairchild siblings likewise returned to their hotel for that time. The Sanna man walked to the eastern edge of town and found the stables where the sheriff had put up his horse, perhaps to make sure it was taken care of if he didn’t survive. Roy Harper walked to the town’s Hearthfire. He spent most of the afternoon in the building, although what purpose drew him there was not something a simple statue could speculate on.

Aside from Samson Riker, only Johan van der Klein spent any time in a place in the statue’s view. The pale, slim man walked out to the end of the town’s shortest pier and sat there. Every so often he would look down into the bay but for the most part he just stared at the lighthouse, kicking his legs back and forth absently.

As the sun sank towards the waters of the bay the rest of the group gathered on the beach and eventually van der Klein got up to join them. Mayor Hughes followed them out to the long, stone promontory that led to the lighthouse. A few last words passed between the group then they parted ways with the Mayor and walked out to the forbidding stone tower.