“Bright Coals, have you considered why The Blackguard has not released the daughter of Samson Riker, the Cliff Over Waves?”
Roy felt a twinge of amusement when he heard the obvious formality in the way Proud Elk said the word blackguard. He wasn’t sure how the Sanna made it so clear they were saying a name, not just a regular word. However he never had any doubt when they were. “I assumed von Nighburg thought having that man’s granddaughter as a hostage would give him more leverage over the town than the other two boys.”
Proud Elk pulled the end of his whip club out of the lock on the chest he was working on and it popped open. They’d discovered von Nighburg’s bedroom down a short hallway and were ransacking it. Under normal circumstances Roy would have just looked under the bed and in the closet for potential ambushes then moved on but Proud Elk’s lock breaking skills opened new possibilities. As he rummaged through the contents of the chest Proud Elk said, “Your theory makes sense at first glance. The problem is Cliff Over Waves. He does not have a disposition that encourages defiance. There are many people in this town that would be dangerous to cross, the sheriff and the mayor not least among them, yet he strikes me as the hardest to placate. In this he is like his father.”
“That’s so. Not everyone rides out to destroy famine incarnate at the age of fifty eight.” There was a bedside table with a small pile of books on it beside von Nighburg’s bed but Roy didn’t see anything unusual in the titles of the books he could read. Two had titles in Cyrillic characters and those he couldn’t read. He set them aside for later examination but he didn’t want to drag them all over the manse when he needed his hands free for fighting.
“It seems to me there must be some significance to choosing to provoke that man’s son in this way.” Proud Elk had emptied the chest of a pile of clothes and boots and now he took the container and turned it upside down and gave it a hard shake. Something rattled. He put it back and started prying at the bottom with a knife.
“You think he has some beef with the Rikers, father or son?”
“No, no, I’m afraid I did not state my point correctly.” The Sanna man paused with the point of his knife buried in the wood, his gaze focused in the middle distance for a moment. “I believe there is a point to choosing that man’s granddaughter. I think the advantages she offers surpass those of all other hostages and The Blackguard thought those advantages were worth provoking Cliff Over Waters.”
Roy paused rummaging through von Nighburg’s wardrobe long enough to give his friend a thoughtful look. Proud Elk was getting at something but he couldn’t figure out what it was. “This one of those famous Sanna intuitions you have?”
“In a way. It is something more likely to occur to us than to a Columbian, even a well educated one like Sheriff Warwick.” The bottom of the chest popped out and Proud Elk carefully set it aside and pulled out a thin metal case. “I have heard several people call the missing girl Jenny. This is an abbreviation that makes it more difficult to properly name a person, is it not?”
“It’s a nickname, sure. We don’t really use them to create confusion, kind of the opposite in most cases, but then we treat names differently than your people.” Roy thumped the back of the wardrobe carefully and stopped when he heard a hollow noise. “In most cases Jenny is the shortened version of Jennifer.”
The Sanna man gave him a meaningful look. “That is the name of the first queen of Avalon, is it not?”
“Yes.” Roy found a knot in the wood that served as a place to hook his thumb and pulled a narrow door open. It revealed a small compartment that could hold a sword or staff. At the moment it was empty. “Your people deal in names, Proud Elk. What’s the significance of that?”
“That man founded this town, Bright Coals. His son is a man of some importance here and his granddaughter shares a name with a queen who founded a kingdom. If you wished to work a magic that involved the life and death of this town, her life and name would be very powerful.” Proud Elk opened the case and removed a ring on a thin metal chain. “This… this is something I could not guess at.”
“Metal rings can do a lot of things depending on the alloys and patterns on them,” Roy said. “Better put it away. That’s a mystery we can spend more time on when its safe.”
“I defer to your expertise, Bright Coals.” Proud Elk put the ring away, closed up the carrying case then tucked it into his belt. “And the girl?”
“Your logic has a lot of merit to it but there is one thing I think you’ve mistaken.”
“Which is?”
Memories of irrational laughter and stifling anger flitted past. “Whatever von Nighburg is dealing with here it far surpasses the life and death of a town. Perhaps even a kingdom.”
“Let us hope you are the mistaken one on that score.” The Sanna man stood up and headed back towards the door. “Shall we explore the stairs next?”
Roy took his thistledown candle off the top of the wardrobe and followed him. They’d discovered a set of stairs leading up to a second floor, which wasn’t that surprising given that he’d seen when Warwick burned his revealing candles and showed the place from the outside. The top floor was dominated by some kind of astrolabe. The brass contraption was easily fifteen feet from one side to another and featured seven long, twisting arms circling the central sphere. Unlike most astrolabes it didn’t look like the solar system.
In fact as he peered through the slowly revolving arms Roy thought the centerpiece looked more like a globe representing the known world than anything else. Maybe it wasn’t a traditional astrolabe. Proud Elk walked around the outside of the room and found a few telescopes looking out but reported there was nothing to see through them but odd swirls of color. There were large stacks of paper covered in unfamiliar letters on the counter that ran around the outside of the room but both men ignored them. Given the circumstances it was just one more thing that would have to wait. Roy was about to suggest they try looking through a telescope while wearing the ring they’d found when Warwick interrupted.
After a brief aside about forges, steel and back doors Roy returned to the moment. “Johan and his group found a bottom floor but it looks just as empty as this one which tells me we chose the wrong doors at first. Von Nighburg is through the last one.”
“Why do you think he hasn’t retaliated against us so far?”
“I think what happened in the central room twenty minutes ago was him doing just that in the same way Hank Tanner was a response to the Fairchilds saving Stu Strathmore.” Roy was briefly tempted to dance around the issue of Hank Tanner but it didn’t help at the moment. He knew the Sanna recoiled from naming the dead and in most cases he deferred to that sensibility when dealing with them but it didn’t bother him at the moment. “Whatever von Nighburg uses to do that is his best weapon against superior numbers.”
Proud Elk shifted in discomfort and Roy felt a brief twitch of irritation but it quickly faded. The man couldn’t help how he was raised. “You have a point, Bright Coals. Did you have a chance to consult with the book you said might explain what it was he did?”
“I managed to spend an hour on it, yes. Unfortunately I didn’t find a record of anything like what we encountered in Pellinore’s Journal. Part of that may be my ignorance. The first entries are supposedly seven or eight hundred years old and the language in them is very different from what we speak today.”
“Many Herons is gifted with languages. He has spent much of his life tracing dialects of the Sanna back to their roots and trying to unify them into a single tongue again. He may be able to help you untwist your book.”
Roy felt a flicker of amusement at that. Most Sanna were gifted with languages, speaking six or seven of their own dialects plus Avaloni, but Many Herons knew some fifteen languages outside of Sanna dialects. Columbians as far east as Hancock knew him as a learned man. He was certainly likely to understand High Avaloni easily enough. “I think he’d be an excellent choice but there is a problem – Pellinore’s stories are to us much as creatures like the cold ones are to you. They are ours and not meant to share.”
Proud Elk broke eye contact and stared at one of the telescopes. For a brief moment Roy wondered if he’d made the other upset somehow, even though it was the kind of logic he’d expected a Sanna man to immediately understand. It was out of character, which was when he understood. “Proud Elk, this is going to sound strange but take stock. Are you feeling alright?”
The Sanna man froze and, although he still avoided eye contact, Roy could clearly see he was running through his own thoughts from the way his lips pursed and frowned. “No. There is something strange about my thoughts right now. I do not feel anger, even when I think of the captured girl, nor do I feel worry or fear when I think that I may die in the same way as the dead child from this morning. I only feel that I am watched and that is unsettling.”
“In the morning we laughed and just before we got angry. Now you feel embarrassed. Definitely seems like its the same thing… better let the others know before we decide what to do.” Roy tried to get Warwick’s attention via his candle but it didn’t work. In fact he no longer got annoyed at sensing the background hum of Cassie’s singing, either, and when he tried to get some response via the tap beads nothing came back that way either.
Proud Elk watched the proceedings with growing discomfort. Finally he said, “We should go down and check on them.”
Roy nodded his agreement and the two quickly retraced their steps to the central chamber only to find the guard team in complete disarray. They spent a few seconds trying to snap the trio back to normal. Proud Elk had brought a canteen of water from the bay and worked one of the most powerful dousings Roy had ever seen, sending globes of water circling around himself and Warwick in a large scale version of the soothing beads he’d bought with him. That broke the power of laughter enough that the sheriff came back to himself.
In the mean time Roy slapped Brandon out of whatever strange funk he’d fallen into. Both men told him they didn’t remember much but they had the impression that Johan and the others had left through the mirror room. Roy ran through a quick assessment of what had happened and came up with their next move. “Proud Elk, keep that ward going and cover the others in it. Brandon, snap your sister out of her panic and grab anything you can in the time it takes the sheriff to rig the Array.” Roy passed his lantern and its two siege grade sulfurite crystals to Warwick. “I trust you used these in the war?”
“I know the drill.” Warwick dragged himself to his feet and started working on the Immelmann Array.
“What will you do?” Proud Elk asked, spreading his water ward out further.
“Johan left the manse for some reason and I got one guess as what it is. I’m going after him.”
The transition back to the lighthouse seemed to take forever but when he stepped out into the tower he could still hear footsteps climbing the metal stairs overhead so he couldn’t be that far behind Johan and the others. It was a long climb up but Roy made it as fast as he could. As he ascended Roy took stock of his options. He had his falcata, sulfurite still unused, and the small crystals in his cufflinks that would give him a few sparks to throw around if his sword went out. Pellinore’s Journal rested in his inner jacket pocket. Unfortunately, while the book was a powerful piece of magic he didn’t have time to peruse its pages in a pitched battle.
There was the lighthouse beacon itself, far up above. It had a five gallon oil reserve he could ignite if he really needed extra firepower. Hopefully there were three other people he could count on. That was pretty much all the thinking he had time for, dashing up the stairs two at a time. He drew his falcata, ignited it and used it to catapult a fireball through the opening ahead of him and followed it straight up into the beacon room.
Two men – Samson and Johan – were collapsed right at the top of the stairs. Samson was sobbing so Roy guessed they were both suffering the influence of von Nighburg’s techniques. He made this guess as he leaped over the two of them to avoid tripping, so there was a real chance he was just imagining things. Two others fought by the beacon.
From the archaic dress and long staff he was using, Roy recognized one as Heinrich von Nighburg. The other was Chester Tanner. A thrashing girl was tied up and laid out atop the unlit beacon, the five reflectors intended to focus the light out towards the sea instead all pointed in at her, like a hand of glass was reaching down for her. A strange collection of mouths, twisted flesh and flailing limbs were visible in them. It was like the mirrors had turned into windows but rather than showing the ceiling above or the seas outside they looked into nightmares.
Roy landed heavily and cursed, distracting Tanner. Von Nighburg proved the more disciplined duelist, taking advantage of the opening and tripping the other man with the fast moving end of his staff. Tanner went down on one knee. The blackguard snatched up a sword that was laid out beside Jenny and raised it up to run her through.
It was at least fifteen feet from the stairs to von Nighburg and Roy did his best to cross it in the time he had but even as he lunged forward he knew it wasn’t enough. Tanner plunged the point of his cutlass into the ground and pushed up, diving across the beacon. He pushed Jenny out of the way, sending her tumbling to the ground with a panicked shriek.
Von Nighburg pinned him to the top of the beacon with his sword and every mouth in the mirrors opened wide in howls and screams.
Nate Chen Publications 