Previous Chapter

Oddly enough Cassie found it easier to see the bluffs in the growing darkness than she had during the day. As the sun slipped behind the hills she found it easier to make out the low scrub brush and the subtle differences between the color of grass and open dirt. It was probably wiser to wait at the campsite for someone to find her. Yet the discordant echoes rising from below the dirt made her more and more anxious.

So she set out to follow Marius’ path through the earth via sound, carefully picking her way over the bluffs while occasionally pausing to press an ear to the ground. Thankfully, the Tetzlani man had conjured a particularly large elemental and it was easy to hear. Far easier than crossing the bluffs herself.

As she picked her way down the hill Marius had chosen for his campsite Cassie found her mind wandering. The mercenary had told her the ground below Oakheart Manor resisted his calls. This reluctance to answer him he assigned to her, which was a very curious conclusion to reach in her opinion. She didn’t know the bluffs very well. She hadn’t stayed in the vicinity long and, in the time she’d spent there, she hadn’t invested any of it in walking the hills or singing to the stones in the way she might have in Avalon.

Yet there was no reason to doubt Marius’ assessment, either. The man was clearly a very skilled lithomancer, perhaps the best she had met in person, and that was a much more formal school of magic than stonesong. He undoubtedly did a lot of book study in the process of mastering his craft. He didn’t have a reason to lie to her about it, either. Perhaps it had something to do with the bluffs themselves or some quirk of their history. She would have to ask Roy about it at some point, when there were less pressing issues to deal with.

However the issues of the moment left little time for her musings. As she made her way across the valley between one hill and the next an incredible racket rose up from nearby. That made it very apparent which bluff Oakheart Manor stood on, although with her vision clearing more by the minute she could probably have made her way there without the sound to guide her in another half an hour or so.

Whether going to the Manor at that moment was a good idea or not was an open question.

In point of fact, it wasn’t. As Cassie’s foot fell on the worn dirt path leading up to the Manor house she heard the distant whine from Marius’ blood funnel once more. This time it rang clarion through the open air, filled with a deep, heartbreaking hatred. Layered through the long, keening note was a story of loss, of broken bonds, of a fellowship once strong and nourishing now reduced to dust and ashes.

With the sound came a wash of hot, dry air. It smelled of warm stone, beat on her skin like sunlight and sucked the moisture out of her mouth and nose all at once. A lifetime of experience warned her this wasn’t real. It was a revelation, an echo in the earth so powerful it moved beyond sound and became a full sensory apparition. Stone song at its most powerful and sinister.

Not even her weakened vision was immune to the influence of the wail, the view shifting from dim shadows on a dirt path to the sharp stone edges of an early morning mountainside. Cassie’s head spun with vertigo as the rocks rushed past her. It had been a long time since the song had brought her an apparition like this and her body hadn’t been prepared for it.

Somewhere else, Cassie sat down hard on the ground. In the vision, she ran over the rocks, looking around frantically as she scrambled down the mountainside.

Brennan!

It was Roy’s voice, high and desperate, coming from her. Cassie had never seen a vision from a living person before and briefly wondered why this would be her first. Seeing through his eyes it was impossible to tell if this was a glimpse of the past or the future.

Their shared vision latched onto a patch of pale blue cotton that stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the brown stones and brown dirt of the mountain. They turned and ran towards it at full tilt, skidding around brush and leaping over rocks with reckless abandon. At first Cassie thought it was just a jacket. Then she realized her mistake.

It was a jacket wrapped around a strangely misshapen pile of rock.

Brennan!

They dropped to the ground and grabbed the jacket and one edge of the stone within it then heaved it up and over. The ugly thing resisted their efforts for a moment then finally rolled over as they let out an anguished groan. As she’d feared, it wasn’t just a rock. It was a man whose body had hardened to stone, his eyes blank and unseeing. The individual hairs of his neatly trimmed beard were clearly visible for a moment before the movement broke the delicate rock threads apart. The most surreal part was his mouth, half open as if to say something, with the teeth and tongue clearly visible inside.

Dust and ashes. They reared up to their feet, gaze fixed on a familiar, pitted hunk of stone cradled in the statue’s hands. Coalstoking cult!

In that moment, as Roy stood up, rocked back on one leg and stomped Huaxili’s cornerstone out of Brennan’s hands, Cassie felt herself separate from the vision. As the apparition faded one last whisper drifted down the side of the bluff to her. But it wasn’t Roy’s voice this time. It was deep, husky and feminine, full of contempt and desire, and it said one word. Mine.

The mountainside faded into the shadowed bluff once more, leaving Cassie shivering and confused. The rumbling, crackling cacophony on the top of the bluff was still going but she ignored it. Dread gripped her again but she was starting to understand it. There was a difference between this and the mindless panic she’d experienced at the top of the lighthouse but they both felt unnatural.

One was the work of a deranged man’s conjurings, the other the influence of Huaxili. The fact Roy hadn’t mentioned the Tetzlani god was, in fact, a goddess annoyed Cassie, as it probably had something to do with why she was the only one Huaxili had influenced. When she was young she’d spent a year with the Heath Keepers. Her father believed developing a closer connection with the Lady in Burning Stone would give her songs greater force. However it was possible it had also made her more open to other earthly elementals like Huaxili.

The other possibility was that Huaxili herself disliked Cassie. Though their connection had been brief and veiled in a vision of Roy’s past, Cassie could sense the deep bitterness and jealousy of the entity. She suspected it had little of it was directed at her but rather originated from the nature of the goddess. Where the Lady was a warm, nurturing creature who balanced her husband’s cold, distant nature; Huaxili was grasping and possessive and, if she had ever had a relationship to balance her flaws, it was now long gone.

Clearly, when Roy had claimed the cornerstone the goddess had marked him in some way. If Marius was right about how the artifact’s malicious magic lived in some blindspot inherent to firespinners that made matters worse, since he had no idea Huaxili had staked a claim on him. For a split second Cassie saw another vision.

Roy Harper, turned to stone, wedged into the base of a sprawling temple complex built on the backs of countless people transformed to statues, aware of their fate for millennia as they slowly wore away to dust. She wasn’t sure if this apparition came from Huaxili or her own talents but she knew it was unacceptable. As it passed Cassie scrambled to her feet, trying to clamp down on the unnatural panic.

She managed to stagger a few steps up the trail but quickly found herself gasping for breath, heart racing, physically unable to continue. Frustrated, she stopped and forced herself to breathe slowly and deliberately. She had performed in front of hundreds of people, sung to ghosts on behalf of death and seen the faces of creatures from beyond the horizon. She should be able to master this. 

She felt a spark of annoyance at the waves of unnatural emotion and seized on it with a flash of inspiration. That was how Roy did it, after all. Whenever he wandered into a situation where normal people might get discouraged or afraid he would stoke up a disgruntled fury in himself to replace that feeling. She’d seen him do it time and again.

Of course, Cassie wasn’t nearly as irritable as he was but when she contemplated Huaxili’s constant meddling she got more and more angry. Inhaling deeply she slapped the side of the bluff with the flat of her hand. “This is my stage, Huaxili. Get off. Your whining is a terrible tune to begin with.”

A shrieking crash came from overhead as the sky lit up with a boom then everything went quiet. Cassie wasn’t sure what had happened but she took it as an opportunity and started towards the top of the bluff. Another wave of panic washed over her but she muttered, “What do you want with Roy, anyway? Annoyed that he’s ignoring you? He’s quite good at that you know, gets caught up in his work and can’t think about anything else. You’re more used to ignoring people than being ignored, aren’t you?”

A final wave of panic, the weakest yet, broke over her but now she could ignore it, her march up the path picking up speed as she gathered her skirts in one hand. “He’s not yours, Huaxili,” she muttered, “and it’s high time you left him alone.”

Previous Chapter

The first thing Harper did was throw the dagger at him, which took Marius by complete surprise. It was a good throw, the dagger seemed quite well balanced for an implement made of cold wrought iron, and it was aimed squarely at Marius’ torso. Supposedly there were duelists in the world who could deflect arrows and daggers with their blades. If those stories were true, Marius envied them. He’d never had the courage to practice such reckless stunts, much less employ them in the real world.

He wasn’t sure how sharp the dagger’s tip was, iron being notoriously hard to sharpen, but it was iron and that was bad enough. So Marius was forced to throw himself to one side of the hallway to avoid the projectile. However, that proved to be exactly what Harper had wanted to happen because the pinewood wall he landed against immediately erupted with flames, driving him away. Marius beat at his jacket, brushing the embers off it, marveling at how willing Harper was to burn his own house just to win the fight.

In fact the firespinner seemed determined to end things with nothing beyond his own magic. Although he continued to hold his messer on guard, Harper did not close the distance. Instead the point of his sword wove back and forth, sending the curtain of fire jumping about the hallway and setting the walls and floor around Marius aflame. From the look in Harper’s eyes, Marius knew the circle of fire was meant as his grave.

There was no point trying to husband his strength for a successful escape at this point, Oakheart Manor had transformed into a deathtrap and just escaping would take some doing. Marius felt himself grinning, finally warming up to the work at hand. It was so rare to find someone who really knew what they were doing.

The wall was on fire and it had started burning far faster than was natural, so Marius began with the assumption that it had weakened far faster than normal as well. Gritting his teeth, he lifted one leg and kicked against the wall as hard as he could. As he’d hoped, the wall caved in easily, scattering sparks and embers everywhere, and his foot passed through to slam into a solid wooden wall on the other side of the frame.

A moment later the ring of fire Harper had built around him constricted, smothering him in unbelievable heat. With no time to ponder why the whole wall wasn’t burning, Marius slammed shoulder first into the battered section of wall, arms over his face, crashing through the burning barrier on one side and solid boards on the other. Along the way his body caught painfully on a remarkably sturdy object.

When he tumbled through the wall and into the dining room he had to pause long enough to rip off his burning jacket. In the process he caught a glimpse of the wall and finally understood what Harper had done.

On his first visit to Oakheart Manor Marius had figured the dark yellow pinewood that lined the room where Harper met him was some kind of veiled threat. A coffin for the unwary. His subconscious had noticed it everywhere else as he saw more of the house. But it was only now, as he watched the soft wooden boards lining the walls burn without damaging the pale hardwood frames that supported the house, that Marius truly appreciated why the Manor was named the way it was.

Roy Harper had not just built a house to enjoy when his life of professional violence was over. He had built a manse, designed from the very beginning to cater to his personal abilities in a way that even savvy invaders wouldn’t understand until it was too late. The one great weakness of abilities that manipulated fire was that they needed an open flame to manipulate. Someone who planned to use such powers a lot required an equal amount of stored magic or a great deal of fuel, both things that were difficult to find at the drop of a hat and easy to spot from a distance when stockpiled.

Yet Harper had hidden his fuel in plain sight by lining his walls with it. It must require incredible control to burn the soft planks on the walls but leave the hardwood untouched but that was the only explanation for it Marius could think of. It was an impressive feat.

And that feat was still ongoing. There was a large, plate glass window in the dining room and Marius made directly for it. Now that he understood the secret of Oakheart Manor he could spare even less time for care in his escape. He scooped up a chair one handed and put it through the window then leapt out onto the side of the bluff.

Ten steps later, as Marius fished his spell tiles out of his pocket once more, the wall of the house turned a deep, molten red then fell apart into ashes and embers. Harper strode out between the oak beams, a veritable tidal wave of flames following behind him. In spite of the incredible wave of heat that washed out of the house as he did so, not a single tongue of fire brushed against one of the hardwood pillars. The fire split into streams and flowed around them rather than anger its master.

The power was impressive, but nothing compared to what slept in the earth. The discipline needed to command it so perfectly was another matter entirely and Marius quietly moved the firespinner a notch higher in his ranking of skilled magicians he’d encountered.

As a wave of heat washed over Marius the solid plates of his bedrock elemental rose out of the ground once more, folding around him in a defensive posture. Unfortunately, Harper’s weapon of choice was fire and that was a far swifter offense than his stone could defend against. Running on foot was out of the question. With his elemental wounded by Harper’s wards he doubted it could sink him into the earth before the flames killed him, either.

That left a preemptive strike as Marius’ only option.

So he charged forward, pushing the elemental’s plates in front of him. Three plates formed a wall about twelve feet long and eight feet high and the fourth reinforced the center, rumbling forward like an avalanche that had learned to slide uphill. Three flaming orbs, each the size of a large dog, flew around the wall. One came around from each side of the elemental and the third looped over the top, neatly boxing him in, but Marius didn’t let that slow him.

Harper’s power and control made a side strike a natural solution but the line of the attack was too long. Marius was confident his thrust would connect first.

Or he was until a sudden whirlwind whipped across the bluff and his elemental slammed into a wall of howling ice. Cold whipped around his legs while a huge backdraft swept up from behind him, broiling the back of his neck. Surrounded by danger, Marius stuck to his guns, gambling that it was more dangerous to stay put or turn back than it was to go forward. 

Besides, he had the wind at his back.

So the duelist leaped upward, grabbing the edge of a stone plate and using it to lever himself upwards, feet kicking against the elemental’s side as he scrambled over it. As he vaulted over top a wave of bitter cold sucked the air from his lungs. It felt like some titanic creature had opened its mouth and inhaled all the warmth from the hillside leaving Marius in the grip of a winter whirlwind pulling him towards the ground. A lesser man might have gotten caught in it and slammed into the earth before he was ready.

But Marius wasn’t any ordinary mercenary. He braced one hand against the top of the stone just long enough to slow his fall and get his legs under him. His left arm came away from the surface completely numb but he landed on his feet, rapier at the ready.

Behind him three explosions backlit the elemental’s bulk like temporary suns. A blast of heat followed and the bulk of Marius’ elemental cracked with a teeth rattling noise, reducing the creature’s animated form to so much loose rock. The tiles in Marius’ hand bucked and twitched as the elemental spirit withdrew. He wouldn’t be able to call on it again without another hour or two of work which made it effectively useless now.

Shattering the bedrock wasn’t the only result of the explosions. They also melted the ice into a cold, clinging mist that surrounded him in cold and damp. For a brief moment Marius thought he heard his father’s voice calling his name, even though Tiberio Menendez had been dead for years. Bewildered, Marius relaxed his vigilance for just a moment, a sudden confusion deadening his senses.

Then the ongoing rush of air from the explosion whipped the mists away and replaced them with Roy Harper, who was aiming a cut at Marius’ left arm. It was already numb from its brush with the ice and when he tried to yank it out of the way the movement was too slow. The firespinner’s blade landed unevenly, opening only a small cut there, but the impact was enough to jar his lithomancy tiles out of his hand. They went clattering into the wreckage of the elemental where it was impossible to pick them out in the dark.

Marius scrambled back, his guard raised once more, and worked the point of his rapier as he he glared at his opponent. In spite of his annoyance he found himself grinning. “Touche, Harper. Touche. The stories don’t do you justice.”

The other man snorted, annoyance clear on his face. “I never thought I would burn out half the house and someone would laugh about it afterward.”

“If you find that a surprise let me show you another!” Marius started to work his leading foot towards his opponent but Harper withdrew two paces and let the point of his own blade drop a few inches, digging in a pocket with his off hand. Curious, the duelist stopped his own advance to see what he was doing. It didn’t seem hostile.

Then the firespinner held up a single silver coin and he understood. “I’d give one to you and one to me so far,” Harper said. “What say we settle the last round properly?”

Previous Chapter

The hardest thing to deal with when wielding a dueling rapier was a heavy polearm and Marius wasn’t surprised that Harper knew that. His attacks with his halberd were sharp, pointed and professional, though hardly those of a maestro. However what made the mercenary’s attack most difficult to deal with was not his weapon’s superior weight or reach but rather the large mass of fire that wove around him like a shield, always on his most vulnerable side, presenting a baking heat that Marius couldn’t strike through. He needed to be able to walk back to his horse, after all.

Without the searing barrier Marius was confident he could have grabbed onto the haft of Harper’s weapon and brought the situation to grips. His opponent was savvy enough not to give him the chance. The elemental was an option but it was busy with Cassandra’s brother and Marius’ hands were both busy at the moment so he couldn’t grab the tiles he needed to give it new orders. 

Setting the box holding the cornerstone down was out of the question. So was putting his rapier aside. There were enough weapons in the basement to outfit a small mercenary company but with the way things had shaken out he couldn’t actually reach any of them without getting around his own elemental or his dueling opponent. With no opportunity presenting itself, Marius set out to make one of his own.

There was a lot of strange stuff sitting on the shelves along the wall. As Marius fell back before Harper’s onslaught he found small hiccups in the timing of his opponent’s strikes and used them to complicate his life. When the halberd’s tip went a slight bit high the rapier slashed left and knocked a small jar onto the floor. It smashed open and strange green glitter spilled out in a low hanging cloud.

Harper’s attention darted to the cloud for just a second then his huge ball of flame swept down and swallowed up the glittering fog in a shower of sparks. It wasn’t a huge opening but Marius couldn’t be sure he’d get anything better. Before he could waste the moment overthinking it he darted forward, pushing hard against the halberd’s haft with the flat of his blade to open up a path towards his target. He’d been reluctant to kill Harper up til that point but he could only indulge that feeling for so long.

Marius broke from the bind and let his momentum carry him lower, allowing him to strike under Harper’s guard. The point of his weapon shot forward towards Harper’s gut. At the last moment the other man twisted out of the way. The tip of Marius’ rapier scraped Harper’s flank and poked a hole in his suit jacket but did little to incapacitate him. 

As Marius tried to recover from his strike Harper took one hand off his halberd, folded his elbow into a point and smashed it into his nose. Overextended as he was, Marius lost his balance and tumbled to the ground. A scramble ensued. Harper stomped a boot down on the blade of Marius’ rapier before swinging in with his halberd, aiming at the box in the duelist’s left hand. 

Worried that the weapon might damage the wards carved into the sides of the box, Marius dropped it as gently as he could. The box bounced once and came to a rest by a large silvery mirror by the wall. Harper ignored it once it was out if Marius’ hand, choosing to press his offensive instead.

From the vicious series of jabs and chops the firespinner threw down at him, Marius guessed he wasn’t worrying about lethal strikes anymore either. Leaving his rapier under the boot, he kipped into a handspring that got the duelist back to his feet. The acrobatic stunt took Harper by surprise, letting Marius get ahold of the halberd’s haft and use it as a lever to throw Harper sideways into the grinding stone of the bedrock elemental. Rather than try to retrieve his weapon or the cornerstone, Marius pulled his tiles out of his pocket. With a few sharp movements he redirected the elemental’s focus from blocking anyone trying to cross the room to squashing Harper to paste.

The creature’s behavior changed immediately. Given how badly the cold had hurt it when they broke through Harper’s frozen ward, serving as an impediment against intruders was the task the elemental was least suited for. Its triangular shape and the rectangular dimensions of the room made it a poor obstacle. Once freed from that task it became much faster, twisting its plates around towards Harper and repeatedly slamming them to the floor. Harper scrambled between them, narrowly escaping one crashing attack and foiling another by bracing the elemental’s plate from underneath with his polearm.

A third plate shook from a large impact and one corner of it broke off. Cassandra’s brother had grabbed a large bearded axe from a rack and swung it about him with incredible fury. The irony of a living tree swinging an axe brought the touch of a smile to Marius’ lips but it wasn’t something he could ignore. Another shift of the tiles and the elemental’s fourth and final surviving plate swung sideways, sending axe and wielder sliding across the floor after a massive impact with the bedrock.

Marius took his attention off the battle long enough to scoop up his rapier and the cornerstone, cradling both in his left hand while his right held the tiles. In the process he noticed something disturbing. The etching on one side of the warding box had turned a brownish black, creating an odd crease with strange flourishes. He realized they were where the box had been in contact with the silvery frame.

Was it iron? No, that didn’t make sense. It was too bright in tone to be iron, not yellowish enough to be iron gilded with gold. Yet something about it had weakened the wards on the cornerstone’s new prison and that made Marius very nervous. Suddenly he wasn’t sure he could safely get the stone back to Tetzlan without its whispers getting into the mind of some innocent person along the way. Or worse, into his own mind!

Still, there wasn’t much he could do for it at the moment. He would have to take a closer look at the warding box once he was out of hostile territory. With his prize in hand he turned his attention to his elemental once more, planning to have it dig him out through the ground once more. Instead, as he raised the tiles to issue it new orders, a cord of strong, cool wood wrapped around his wrist. Startled, Marius followed the branch back to its owner, who had pulled himself up into a sitting position braced against the wall.

“Impressive, Sir Fairchild,” Marius said. “You and your sister have made this far more difficult than I ever anticipated it being.”

Near the top of the pillar of living bark a knot hole opened and a voice spoke with an unsettling, reedy overtone. “I’ll accept your surrender, if that’s what you’re offering.”

“You impress me, senor, but not that much.” It was difficult to manipulate the tiles as Fairchild dragged Marius ever closer but not impossible. Three of the elemental’s plates folded around him and the fourth slammed down on the yew branch, snapping it clear off halfway between them and just like that Marius was free. Or so it seemed.

Fairchild had also extended a branch from his other arm, the one hidden against the wall, and it snagged up the old, dead chunk of wood hanging just overhead. With shocking alacrity the branch put out buds, twigs and roots. As Fairchild slammed it into the ground his broken branch formed into a new arm and pulled a sulfurite crystal from a pocket, pressing it into the growing tree.

Except it wasn’t really a tree. It was more a mass of roots, digging deep into the ground and spreading in every direction with supernatural speed. It was an excellent guard against Marius’ planned escape. It was possible his elemental could tunnel through the roots if everything went fast enough. It was also possible the roots grabbed and crushed him. Or worse, broke apart the stone forming his elemental’s body and left him buried alive for the few minutes it took him to suffocate.

No, Marius could not risk going down anymore. He would have to go up.

Another set of commands issued by the tiles, another shift by the bedrock plates, and suddenly the four stone triangles were touching along their long edges. They began to spin like gears, tossing one plate up towards the ceiling, which its blunt, heavy corner easily tore through. This done, they shifted again, into a rough stack of stone steps that Marius was already climbing.

With only four of the elemental’s plates to stack up he couldn’t climb all the way up to the basement’s new exit. But it was a simple matter to throw his weapon and cargo up through the hole and jump through after them. A quick set of orders instructed the elemental to meet him outside. Hopefully it could get past the druid’s root wards now that it didn’t have to worry about trying to keep him safe as well.

For a brief second Marius considered doing something to try and bar the basement door. However, that ultimately took him away from the only exit he knew of and he didn’t see the point of that. So he turned towards the front of the Manor and took off in a dead sprint.

It was just as well he did, since he’d only gone a few steps when Harper’s voice came from below, crying, “One! Two! Three!”

From the way he flew up through the hole, Fairchild must have given a handhold for him to spring off of, an impressive feat of improvised teamwork. Harper’s presence filled the hallway with an angry red glow, which rapidly got brighter. Marius kept running, waiting until he felt an uncomfortable heat on the back of his neck to throw himself to one side of the hallway, letting the firespinner’s globe of flame shoot past him. The duelist skidded as he slowed, expecting the orb to double back at him.

Instead, it slammed into the wall at the end of the hallway and scattered fire everywhere. The flames took hold of the walls and started devouring the soft pinewood, rapidly burning backwards towards Marius. Shocked, he took one step back then realized Harper was still behind him. Taking his rapier in his right hand he pivoted, trying to watch the flames to one side as he studied the man on the other.

It was not a happy face that confronted him. There was a deep crimson glint in Harper’s eyes as he brandished a clipped bronze messer in one hand and an iron dagger in the other. “Your stones are very impressive,” Harper sneered as he advanced. “But we’re on my home ground.”

“Are we?” A weak riposte and Marius knew it. “Then I suppose we’ll have to see if you’re everything the stories say you are.”

Sliding his right foot forward, Marius slipped into his stance, moved away from the fire and towards danger…

Previous Chapter

“How far around the bluffs did you get?” Roy asked, grabbing the new stair step with both hands and giving it a hard push and pull. When it didn’t move he got to his feet with a satisfied grunt.

“Covered the southern five and the one to the west,” Georg replied, leaning forward to stomp down on the repaired section of the stairs with one foot. It didn’t bend or break, which was good. “No sign of Mr. Menendez that I could see, no tracks, no campsite, no animals. That leaves the northern bluffs.”

“I’m surprised he’d choose those for his lookout point, they don’t have a very good view of the manor.” Roy got to his feet and studied the afternoon’s handiwork. The repaired stairs were noticeably newer than the rest but otherwise they looked fine so he decided to call them fixed. “Maybe there was some element of lithomancy to it.”

“The sun will set soon,” Brandon said, sliding leftover lumber into the rack by the workbench. “We’ll have to set shifts for watching the Armory tonight. Tomorrow I want to go and search the north bluffs. I can serve as your second as well as Georg can, Roy, and I’d like to make sure Cassie is all right with my own eyes.”

“That’s fine with me.” Roy gestured towards the stairs. “Head on up. I’m going to ward the ground for the night.”

Brandon eyed the dirt floor. “What kind of ward are we talking about? I don’t think a few talismans or iron plates are going to dissuade a lithomancer.”

“All the Tetzlani with a knack for magic are lithomancers, Brandon, there’s no point in having defenses down here that won’t work on them.” Roy walked down the stairs and over to his supply shelves. 

His wendigo bone necklace hung on the wall over them, between the yew branch and an amulet emblazoned with the Eternal Throne, and Roy took it down, wrapping it around his right hand. With his left he reached down and uncapped a clay jar on the floor beside the steel mirror frame. He tipped it over and water gushed out. Far more water than the jar could reasonably contain, rapidly covering the armory floor half an inch deep.

Roy walked back to the stairs holding the jar, surrounded by a small dry patch of floor that moved with him. When he reached the stairs he set it on the bottom step then climbed up next to it. Once there he reached down and touched one bone in the necklace to the surface of the water, taking care not to let any part of his hand do the same. Distant whispers seemed to fill the room for a second or two. Then the surface of the water froze with a crackling shriek, covering the ground in a layer of ice far darker that seemed right for such a thin surface.

Brandon made an uncomfortable sound. “You call that a ward?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Roy said, dropping the leather cord that held the bones around his neck. “Hungry things tend to fight over prey rather than share it. I’m not saying a spirit of famine and cold is the equal to a god of blood and stone but so far it’s kept everything looking for Huaxili out.”

“Don’t take this as a criticism,” Brandon said in a tone that suggested it was, in fact, a criticism, “but is it really a good idea to have that many hungry things running around your house?”

Roy made a pained face. “Based on what I’ve read in Pellinore’s Journal it’s probably not. I haven’t had much time to reassess the Manor’s defenses since I started transcribing it, though.”

“Well, once we’re done with this Menendez fellow you and Cassie can address them, I suppose.”

“Are you not interested in playing a part?”

Brandon gave Roy a skeptical look. “I could, but this isn’t a very good region for my flavor of magic. Too windy for large trees. Not sure I want to try and set up anything here while you have a piece of Morainhenge’s master in your trophy case, either.”

“Noticed that, did you?”

“That you had a branch of yew from someone who cultivated it?” Brandon laughed. “I could hardly miss it, although I don’t blame you for not knowing that. I wasn’t sure it came from Master Southwick until just now, that was just a guess, and I can’t begin imagine how you got ahold of it.”

“His yew tree is still planted in Palmyra,” Roy said with a shrug. “It wasn’t exactly hard. I didn’t realize having a cutting from it would interfere with your own grafts, though.”

Brandon’s eyes darted over to the branch then away towards a corner of the room. “It’s not interference, exactly. They say a firemind hears the thoughts of a flame, yes?”

“Don’t know as I’d call them thoughts but there’s definitely something inside a fire that makes itself known from time to time.”

“Well there’s a mind in trees, same as fire. That’s why they start waking, when they get to be big enough, and that’s why they obey when a druid tells them to do something. Because they have a mind, so they can obey.” He gestured vaguely towards the yew on the wall. “That is awake, even though it’s nowhere near large enough to be so naturally. It’s not hungry, per se, like your rock or those bones but it’s aware and it’s looking for something. I’d prefer not to perform any workings while it’s like that.”

Roy’s eyes narrowed, as he glanced between his friend and the old branch. “Is it talking now? Has it spoken to you?”

“No and I don’t know. All that’s clear to me is that it has a purpose and is still looking to carry it out.” Brandon shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t know how to put it better than that. Trees don’t contain their thoughts in words so all I get are impressions from time to time. I can tell you it knows there’s someone around here that has grafted a yew tree and it wants to be joined to a living root again. Beyond that I can’t say anything for sure.”

“Is it going to be an issue if you stand guard with it for a few hours tonight?” Roy started up the stairs. “I was hoping we could take turns on watch while the other two sleep.”

“I don’t think it will be an issue?” Brandon shrugged. “Honestly, that ice you just laid out bothers me more than the yew branch does but I think I can deal with that, too. As long as my grafts stay quiescent it should be manageable.”

“You’re the authority on it so let’s hope you’re right. I’ll grab a chair from the sitting room and take the first watch, so you and Georg can get some sleep.” Roy turned his attention to his employee. “Unless you wanted to join Mrs. Sondervan in town until this blows over?”

“I appreciate the offer, Mr. Harper, but I’d rather not leave you hung out to dry and I don’t think she’d approve of it if I did, either. If you need me I’ll be in my quarters.”

They’d gone their separate ways and Roy was in the process of dragging an upholstered armchair through the halls of the house when he noticed something odd. The sound of the chair moving across the floor turned from a soft screech to a rough rumble. When he stopped to check if something was caught under the legs he realized the deeper rumbling wasn’t coming from the chair. Understanding dawned and he left the chair aside, yelling, “Brandon! He’s here already!”

It took him only a few seconds to get back to the Armory and dash down the stairs but in that time things had gone wildly awry. A pyramidal shaped assembly of rocks had thrust themselves in through the ice ward. The hostile hunger of the ice had shattered one of the wagon-sized chunks of stone into loose boulders but four of them remained and as Roy watched they folded open like the petals of a flower. Crouched in the center of them was Marius Menendez.

This time they didn’t bother talking to each other or feeling out each other’s positions; they just leapt to action. Menendez dashed towards the plinth in the corner, covering the distance in a huge leap. 

Roy reached out with his ability and drew the flames in scattered sulfurite crystals in the Armory’s weapons towards himself as he clambered down the stairs. By the time he reached the bottom he had a globe of fire larger than his head. However he was immediately confronted with the four stone plates Marius had conjured, which folded up into a jagged barrier across the middle of the room. On occasion Roy had managed to crack open a stone with nothing but a focused flame but these plates were far thicker than that had been and were backed by the will of an elemental on top of it.

He started to back up the stairs, thinking he might be able to jump over them. Then Brandon appeared at the top of the steps, his yew grafts already spreading over his body in a suit of bark, and swung himself down off the top stairs, dropping onto the bedrock elemental with both feet. He’d taken off his shoes for bed and his feet had transformed into a mass of roots that probed into the stone with voracious rapidity. The elemental’s focus immediately switched to him.

The heavy stone plates shifted and ground together rapidly, seeking to crush the human tree into paste, but Brandon’s incredible strength and inhuman flexibility let him slip between or shove aside all its attempts to kill him. In the process the elemental created a small gap between itself and the far wall. Roy quickly dashed towards it, grabbing a short hafted halberd along the way, and scrambled over the elemental’s flank.

He was just in time to see Menendez locking a small, elegantly engraved box closed around the cornerstone. Roy leveled the halberd’s point at the Tetzlani man and said, “Put that down, Marius.”

The other man offered a slight smile and tucked the box under his left arm as he drew his rapier and presented the point with a flourish. “Not today, senor.”

Roy set his teeth and waded forward, point circling, and the battle was joined.