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.