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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.”