Your writing vlog this week – nothing happened and it’s kinda frustrating.

Previous Chapter

There were more floors to von Nighburg’s hidden world than the one they arrived on. They found stairs leading downward in the room just outside the central chamber and, after a brief deliberation, Johan ruled out exploring them until they had gone through everything on that floor. The room with the stairs looked very much like a kitchen. There wasn’t anything like a place to cook but there were cupboards and cabinets with dried food and dishes in them. A pitcher of water stood on the corner of the counter by a tin sink.

The other two rooms on that floor proved equally mundane. Riker and Tanner wanted to split up and search them as quickly as possible but Johan put his foot down and insisted that they move together so he could keep an eye out for arcane meddling from the master of the manse. By the time they actually descended the stairs into the bottom floor he was starting to share their impatience.

If not for the fact that he’d had to spend a good ten minutes breaking the wards and traps on the mirror gate between the Cove lighthouse and this place Johan could have easily mistaken the building for a simple house in the countryside. There were no windows but the storage room, kitchen and small reading room they’d seen on the main floor were painfully mundane. It wasn’t until he peeked around the switchback in the stairway and saw the mirrors that the illusion of normalcy faded.

The bottom floor consisted of two rooms. One formed a large ring around the outside of the manse, the other was a circular room on the interior. The part of the outer room where the stairs let out was mostly empty but an open door to the interior stood just to the right of the last step. The inner walls of that room were lined with mirrors. Unnerved, Johan carefully peeked in the door, confirmed it was empty, then gingerly closed it.

“Something wrong?” Riker asked.

“Not as such, although I have a bad feeling about what I saw.” Johan started forward, hustling to get around the outer ring as fast as he could while still acting with prudence.

“More mirrors than a funhouse,” Tanner muttered. “What does a black hearted murderer want with a place like that?”

“Most likely he stored the children there, in moon prisms, when he wasn’t using them for whatever he used them for,” Johan said. “A mirrored box is a good way to store magic based on light while maximizing its longevity. My own lightbox functions on similar principles.”

“But the room was empty,” Riker protested.

“Which means he’s most likely taken your daughter out for some reason.”

“Such as?” A dark done filled Samson Riker’s question.

“Hopefully we find her before we find out.”

Further discussion was cut off when they rounded the bend to the final quadrant of the outer ring and found it stuffed to the gills with blacksmith’s tools. The ringlike corridor was a good fifteen feet wide and the central room added an equal distance to the diameter. So there was plenty of room in the outer space for all kinds of things. Johan was not an expert on the craft but even he recognized an anvil, several different kinds of hammers and tongs, a post for beating out bowls or helmets and a sulfurite powered forge suitable for smelting metal a few ounces at a time.

“Dust and ashes,” Tanner muttered. “Now I’ve seen everything.”

Johan ignored the old sailor’s words and focused on the lit candle Sheriff Warwick had given him before they stepped through the mirror. It took a moment to tune in on the sheriff, which was an odd sensation. He’d expected the experience to be like talking to someone else except in his mind and the constant buzzing of Tyson’s Nine in the back of his head had reinforced that impression. It shouldn’t have.

In reality he found himself sharing loose sensations and glimpses of vision with the sheriff and, once Warwick understood what he’d found, Roy in other parts of the manse. It took a bit for Johan to make Roy understand what he’d found and ask if he thought it was significant. Unfortunately neither of them knew for sure. However a quick look told Johan there was no iron in the area where as he did find several small ingots of silver and brass. Ultimately they agreed there probably wasn’t anything there of consequence.

After that Warwick expressed curiosity about whether they’d found signs of von Nighburg yet. He was growing concerned that their quarry might have created a second exit to the manse and used it to slip out past them. Johan tried to show that it was impossible to build two entrances into a shallowing. A second gap in the walls of the space would weaken it to the point of collapse, which he tried to show the others. It didn’t seem like they understood but he got a sense they were willing to take his word for it. After that they broke contact.

Johan blew out a sigh and stood up from the crate full of brass he’d been sitting on, wondering where they should move next. Tanner was examining the end of the hallway where the stairs came down from above. He’d poked and prodded the floor and walls there but came away empty. “If there’s another floor below this one the entrance isn’t here and, structurally speaking, it’s the best place for it.”

“What about the mirror room?” Riker asked.

“It’s worth looking at, I suppose,” Johan said, “although my gut tells me he’s not here. If he was I don’t know how he got past-”

The constant hum in the back of his mind cut out abruptly. For a split second he wasn’t sure what had changed, Johan had basically tuned it out by that point, but then he realized the candle magic was gone. “Riker,” he said, voice suddenly hoarse, “get ahold of Brandon by tap.”

The big man grunted and rapped out a pattern on his bracelet. “Something wrong?”

“Cassie’s song just cut out and we need to figure out why.” He unlocked the panels of his lightbox then readied one of his two remaining spare mirrors in his off hand. “We should head back to the central chamber.”

Tanner glanced from him to Riker. “We haven’t heard back from them yet.”

“We can start moving that way, won’t hurt anything so long as we keep an eye out.”

“Ears open, too,” Riker added.

“Fair, that.”

Knowing the layout of the tower made the return trip shorter, but only marginally so. Something was afoot in the tower now so Johan made it a point to use his mirror to carefully glance through each doorway and stairway before they went through. By the time they got to the kitchen they were all wound pretty tight. Hearing Sheriff Warwick laughing on the other side of the door did very little to help them relax and Johan saw that Tanner, in particular, got very tense.

However Johan wasn’t expecting Riker to push past the two of them and through the door before he could check it. The big man didn’t speak much and took his time moving around. In that moment Johan realized he’d foolishly conflated that with a steady and deliberate personality. Maybe Samson Riker was such a man. Even if he was in most cases Johan should have been ready for erratic behavior in matters pertaining to his daughter. His usual deliberate pace was gone as well, replaced with a speed surprising for a man of his size.

Johan snapped his lightbox open and hurried in Riker’s wake. Their rearguard were scattered through the central sanctum in various states of unreadiness. Over by the entry room, Brandon stared at the bookshelves with an inscrutable look on his face while the sheriff leaned against the table, still laughing. Cassandra crouched by the door opposite Brandon, eyes wild. The door to the entrance stood open.

Tanner pointed to a loose pile of clay bits and a broken string on the floor. “Look!”

Riker did not look, instead making a beeline for the open door. Johan stayed with him, dragging Tanner along by one arm. “I see it but there’s no time.”

“What about the sheriff?” Tanner demanded.

Johan continued to tug on his arm as he spoke. “I tried to counter that laughter once and nothing worked. Proud Elk and Cassie have the strongest gifts against this hex and if their arts haven’t helped I can’t. Can you?”

The sailor finally relented and let himself be taken along by the other’s insistent pull and they scrambled into the antechamber with the mirror. Riker had at least had the foresight to stop and wait for them. He gestured once at the mirror and looked at Johan. “Is it open?”

There wasn’t time for a detailed investigation but he’d already confirmed the safety of the portal once and hopefully von Nighburg hadn’t had time to do anything else with it in the few moments he’d had before they arrived. “It should be. But we can only go one at a time so I should go-”

However Samson Riker was not willing to wait for him to go first and immediately slapped his hand onto the glass pane and was drawn into the reflective surface.

“Coalstoking idiot.” Johan waited three seconds for the image in the glass to change from distorted smears roughly the same color as Riker’s clothing back to a clear reflection of the room they were in. As soon as the image stabilized he slapped his own hand down and made the trip himself.

He’d been ready to see just about anything except an empty room. There was no battle under way, no corpse or corpses of dead men or, worse, a dead girl. Just the sounds of footsteps on metal stairs. There were times he wished the Sons of Harmon had learned some of the famous magics from other traditions that made people physically stronger and more enduring. Struggling up three flights of stairs, trying to catch up to Riker’s dead sprint, was one of them.

Johan was about as tall as Riker and his stride was a bit longer but the big man was leaning far forward, dragging himself upwards via the railing with all his strength of arm and Johan just couldn’t close the gap. If anything, he fell a few steps behind. Riker reached the top of the stairs while Johan was still halfway down and this time he didn’t wait for anyone to catch up.

Once Riker left the tower silence fell like a guillotine. With only his and Tanner’s clanking footsteps on the stairs and the breath wheezing in his throat there was little to keep Johan’s foreboding at bay. It was his own fault, really. He hadn’t been thinking about how a father would act when his daughter was in danger so he hadn’t been ready for Riker’s erratic behavior. Of course, he wasn’t a father yet himself. That didn’t stop him from feeling like he’d missed something important, something he owed to Roy and even his own wife to understand about leading a family. It wasn’t until the second wave of guilt built up to roll over him that he realized what was really happening.

Johan’s lightbox snapped open and the mirrors angled to give him a look in all directions. He’d placed his sunstone back in the center of the box after the events by the docks that morning and added a couple of charms to the box itself so he could see into the places beside. The places you could just see out of the corner of your eye, where the nastiest things in old tales lived. For a brief moment Johan caught a glimpse of something in the mirrors. He couldn’t say what it was with certainty, there was only a brief impression of a massive head that seemed to be covering its face with its hands in guilt. Or maybe its hands were merging with its face, he couldn’t tell. Then the glass shattered and the lightbox became useless.

With an effort of will Johan pushed back on the unnatural emotions while he clamped the remnants of his lightbox under his off arm then pried the sunstone out of it. He discarded the shards of the box and it clattered away down the stairs. Somewhere behind him Tanner gave a yelp as he dodged out of the way but Johan didn’t have the time or breath to apologize to him. There were still another twenty to thirty stairs to climb.

Stopping to pry the sunstone out was a mistake, starting up again took far more energy than it should have. As he dragged his feet into motion again Johan tried to think of a plan. The creature von Nighburg used to attack their minds was on the move while the eclipse was probably already underway. He had one sunstone and one mirror to work with. He wasn’t an accomplished duelist, like Roy, but maybe Riker could accomplish something through pure mass. Tanner had a cutlass on him but he hadn’t drawn it yet. Roy made him sound like a privateer of some sort but that didn’t necessarily make him a dangerous fighter. It would have to be enough. If it wasn’t then Heinrich von Nighburg was going to get away with whatever he was trying to do and that just wasn’t acceptable.

None of it was acceptable. With another exertion of effort Johan dragged his thoughts away from those emotions and focused on sketching a new pattern on his surviving mirror. A few seconds later he reached the top of the lighthouse. He nearly tripped over Samson Riker when he burst out into the beacon room. The big man was collapsed on the roof, sobbing, his face twisted into such an exaggerated state of grief it would’ve been comical if it wasn’t Johan’s fault.

The air rushed out of him as the futility of his efforts rushed over him. He felt his footsteps slow and his exhaustion drag him down to the floor. Johan let the mirror slip out of his fingers as the futility of trying to make up for his failures this way finally became clear to him. Von Nighburg was taking a girl with a blank expression by the hand and helping her climb up onto the central platform where the lighthouse beacon burned. Far overhead the moon faded to a sliver. The blackguard would be done with his task soon but Johan felt that long before that he would be crushed under the weight of his own guilt…

A few words on the many projects this week. Not much new to report on any of them but you may find some of the rambling about technique interesting.

Previous Chapter

There were four doors out of the Array’s room and Brandon made it a point to check on each of them every five minutes. He wasn’t sure what he expected to change about them. However that didn’t stop him from walking the perimeter of the room, listening at each door and making sure they were still unlocked. It was the best he could do.

Sheriff Warwick and Cassie were both wrapped up in keeping the lines of communication between the two search teams open. That didn’t leave him with much to do as he made his slow circuit of the room. To pass the time he picked up various pieces of paraphernalia from the shelves and examined them as he walked, putting them down where he was when he lost interest. He could tell by his sister’s wrinkled brow she didn’t approve. Based on what he’d seen so far, Brandon thought leaving von Nighburg’s sanctum in disarray was the mildest possible rebuke the blackguard could get so he didn’t feel bad about doing it.

He’d just started his second loop around the room when Warrwick stirred and said, “Your sister wants to know what’s so interesting about the books.”

It was a little annoying to have Cassie’s messages relayed to him but Tyson’s Nine didn’t harmonize with him nor was he adept with thistledown candles so they had little choice at the moment. “Just checking the titles,” Brandon answered. “The fact that Mr. Harper is checking von Nighburg’s books in the other rooms doesn’t mean we can’t look through his materials here.”

A few seconds of silence passed then Warwick asked, “Do you see anything interesting?”

“Mostly the kinds of advanced Teutonic texts you might expect,” Brandon said. “Verner von Stuttgard’s Introduction to Higher Symmetry. A Brief History of Attempted Solutions to the Tesseract Problem by Herman Bernbach. That kind of thing.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Warwick said dryly. “Never heard of either of those myself.”

Brandon paused at a thin volume bound in blue cloth with a surprising number of slips of paper jutting out of the worn pages. The spine wasn’t wide enough for a title so he opened it to the first page. “How about A History of Black Sun Mesa? I don’t see an author listed here.”

“I’ve heard of the mesa but not the book,” Warwick replied. “It’s about three hundred miles northeast of here, near the border of the Treaty Lands. The Sanna swear up and down it’s a place of evil. I hear they were almost giddy to shove it over onto our side of the border although I’ve never heard of anything coming from there and going after our people so maybe whatever’s there only hates the Sanna.”

“I wonder why von Nighburg thought it was important…” Brandon started to set it back then changed his mind and slipped it into his coat pocket before proceeding onwards. It was a mystery and one that perked his interest enough to look into, later. The door across from where they’d arrived was unlocked and quiet. Brandon continued forward, passing a stack of what looked like spare parts for the thing Warwick called an Immelmann Array. Brandon was very tempted to take them away, too. He didn’t know whether the sheriff’s story about the shield of winter and Stonehenge’s Founders was true or not but if it was the Array wasn’t a thing they should leave lying around.

Also, he still had access to the leaders of Stonehenge. Although Brandon hadn’t reached a level where they would tell him about such things of their own volition they might choose to tell him how true Warwick’s claims were. Showing them the parts would lend credence to the story and increase his chances of an answer. If there were such things as a shield of winter being made in Columbia, Brandon wanted to be on guard for them. However, there wasn’t any point burdening himself with them until they were ready to leave.

“More Teutonic texts,” Brandon continued, pausing to pick up an object the size of a book but with no spine or pages that he could detect. The letters on the front looked similar to Avalon’s but were just different enough he had to struggle. “An Introduction to Particle Technologies. What kind of techniques involve particles?”

“Maybe the Teutonic tradition found some way to successfully embed sulfurite particles in the human body like Arthur did,” Warwick suggested.

Brandon pulled on the ends of the short sides of the object, wondering if it would open up like a scroll. However, after half a minute of fiddling he failed to get the thing open so he put it back. He passed the next door, listened and moved on. “There’s a lot here but, outside of the Array, I don’t see much that you couldn’t find in a well stocked magical library in Avalon. Disappointing, really.”

“It’s unusual, to say the least.”

“I know you have library’s here in Columbia, sheriff.”

Warwick was quiet for a few minutes. “Sorry, van der Klein’s group found a metal shop and he and Harper were debating whether it was used for steel or not.”

“Any signs of the man himself there?”

“No.” Warwick frowned. “Seen from the outside it doesn’t look like a huge shallowing. Perhaps he has a second exit and he’s slipped around us. Van der Klein doesn’t find that likely, something about the inherent structure, but I know if I had an otherworldly bolt hole I’d want two exits no matter what the structure wanted.”

“I don’t think it works that way.” Brandon picked up a book with Cyrillic characters and thumbed through it. The whole thing was in Slavic and that was a language he’d never picked up in written or spoken form and, while that suggested where von Nighburg had learned to create ghouls, there wasn’t much more that he could glean from it.

“My point was, it’s unusual to find such a large collection of esoterica in private hands, especially this far west. Even in Palmyra, the availability of texts from outside the druidic traditions is pretty limited.” Warwick paused as he picked out a new candle from his bag and carefully lit it from the old, then extinguished the stub of the first candle in the traditional form. “I was once considered for advancement to our Founder’s Circle but I’ve never heard of any of those books. Morainhenge had a strong emphasis on military readiness and less of a scholarly bent. There’s a year set aside during squiring for studying what’s known about Sanna magic but that’s about all we look outside our own spellcraft.”

Brandon became very interested in the bindings of the books in front of them, a vague feeling of frustration settling in his gut. “That’s not surprising. All the studious druids stayed in Stonehenge, all the proactive ones set out for the other Henges. We hardly ever go out on errantry now.”

“Present company excepted, of course.”

“Of course.” He wished he didn’t taste bitterness as he said it. Everyone seemed to default to the thought that he was he on a task of his own, the first knight sent out to seek the Secrets of Steel in generations. In truth, he’s just been sent to take care of his little sister. Even his father had seen fit to remind him he’d only ever sing harmony before they’d left, the same insipid warning he’d given so many times in the past. The Fairchilds could trace their line back even further than the great candlemaker families. However, he hadn’t inherited his father’s gift for stonesong and so, it seemed, all the honor of that lineage was destined to bypass him and settle on Cassie.

“Brandon.”

Warwick’s voice cut through his thoughts like a knife and Brandon whirled to face him. “What?”

The sheriff reached one hand up and carefully pointed at the beads around his neck. Brandon repeated the gesture, his fingers brushing against the small clay spheres, only to feel them crumble in spite of his light touch. The quiet drone of Cassie’s song faltered. Annoyed, Brandon grabbed the string and yanked it off, snapping the thin threads and sending the remaining beads clattering to the floor in clouds of dust. “Worthless junk.”

Cassie abruptly stopped humming. “Brandon, what are you doing?”

“What business is it of yours?” Somehow he’d started yelling without realizing it. It felt quite cathartic.

His sister hurried towards him, her eyes wide as saucers. “Brandon you need that to protect-”

“Don’t lecture me, Cassandra, the last thing I need is more of your constant smug talk!” Brandon waved her off as she tried to pass him her own string of beads. She flinched away from his flailing hand. “Look at you, always acting like you know what’s best simply because father had time for you that he never had for anyone else in the family. Some days it seemed more like he was married to you than mother!”

“I-I-” she stuttered before rallying, “Brandon, I had to learn the repertoire and proper control, you know that.”

There was a soft clank as Warwick set his candle down on the table bedside the Array. In spite of how quiet the noise was Cassie still jumped and whirled to look at him, eyes wild. He held up his hands in a calming gesture, saying, “Let’s slow down, you two. You’re probably feeling some really wild emotions now that Proud Elk’s charms have broken. Why don’t we-”

“This doesn’t concern you,” Brandon hissed. “This is a family matter.”

“Doesn’t concern me?” Warwick shook his head in annoyance. “We’re in the middle of hostile territory looking for the most dangerous man I’ve seen in my five years out west, we all need to be working together. Don’t be absuh-”

The sheriff guffawed mid word. Cassie slowly backed away from him, shaking like a leaf, as his shoulders shook and a second deep laugh burst out of him. “You’re so foolish, both of you.”

Finally the laughter broke through in earnest and he slumped against the table and slid down to the floor, cackling uncontrollably. Cassie backed into a bookshelf and dropped to the floor herself. Brandon watched it all then snorted and spat in contempt, turning to stalk to the opposite side of the room with his hands shoved deep in his pockets. It felt like he was on the eve of his fifteenth birthday again, standing in his father’s library.

Theodore Fairchild had called him there to warn him that he was past the age where the gift of stone song could manifest. Cassandra was the only one who could carry on that legacy, now. “It’s not surprising,” his father had said. “There’s no melody to you, Brandon, no driving tempo or clever improvisation. You’re the harmony to our family. We must have you, I suppose, so you’ll stay with us but the center of stage isn’t for you.”

It was a cruel thing to say to a child about to become an adult and Brandon had turned his back on his father just like he did now, ignoring his father until he left the room. When the door closed behind him some part of Brandon was aware that there shouldn’t have been anyone going through it. Certainly not his father, who was thousands of miles away. However he was too wrapped up in his own bitterness to turn and see who it was and that was exactly what Heinrich von Nighburg had wanted in the first place.

A ramble about writing and publishing in this week’s writing vlog:

This week’s writing vlog: Hyping up Anvil #2! And a couple of other things I’m writing.

Hey, folks!

I sold a short story to Anvil Magazine that is due to come out in October. How can you read it?

Well, the magazine is currently crowdfunding. You can get it in digital or physical formats! If you like independent fiction or just want to support my work give it a look!

https://www.fundmycomic.com/campaign/197/anvil-iron-age-magazine-issue-2

Previous Chapter

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.

Lots of other stuff going on this week, only a little progress on the writing front. Full details in this week’s writing vlog.

Previous Chapter

Roy took the news that Low Noon would likely empower von Nighburg with his typical grace and good humor, stalking off to retrieve his skiff while grumbling under his breath. Proud Elk went with him, both to keep him out of trouble and likely to ride the skiff again. Johan watched them go, bemused. When Roy had joined the Regulars as a kid he’d had a much more positive attitude and outlook but time had changed him a lot. It was tempting to say it was the war that did it but even during the Summer of Snow he hadn’t been quite so… intense.

From the rumors, most people thought that intensity was what made Roy successful in his work. Johan worried that it was a sign of strain. He’d tried to work out what was bothering Roy when he came to Leondale for his wedding but hadn’t gotten anywhere. Given the constraints they were under at the moment Johan assumed he wouldn’t get another chance. At least not before they went up the tower.

He finished marking up the mirrors and moved over to the crystal itself, examining the burnt out candles the sheriff had left there. As if the thought conjured the man, Warwick appeared. “I can get those out of your way.”

“They’re not an issue, sheriff,” Johan said, handing him the stump of wax. “These are a tool to show things that normally go unseen, correct?”

Warwick slipped the stub of wax into a pouch on his belt. “That’s the idea.”

“We might be able to combine them with the mirrors and work out exactly what is inside the prism before we use the sunstone to dissolve it,” Johan said. He pointed to the child trapped inside. “If nothing else it will let us see if the child is poisoned or injured in some hidden way before we restore him to normal time.”

“They’re intended to reveal magic, not wounds or poison,” Warwick said, moving around the prism. “Besides, I’ve never heard of a candle of revealing and a mirror being used together, much less a candle and a magic mirror. We don’t know as it will do anything.”

“Can it hurt to try?” Tanner asked.

“Mixing magic is always dangerous,” the sheriff said, scooping up the last candle stub, “even magics that exist only to look at things.”

Johan nodded. “There are many very dangerous entities in the world that know when you are looking for them. That’s how people like von Nighburg typically get their start. They go looking for the forbidden and the forbidden finds them eventually.”

“Beyond that,” Warwick added, “I only have three of the things left and we might very well need them. The more magic the candle needs to do its job the faster it burns.”

“Only three?” Johan raised an eyebrow. “Why so few? I would think a druid as skilled as yourself would have many of such a useful thing on hand.”

Warwick spread his hands. “The wicks are very hard to come by since Morainhenge fell and the climate here isn’t right for me to grow the ingredients myself. I reached out to someone I know who tries to keep us supplied with such things months ago but… well, it’s not so easy to find what I need these days. I’d like to have a hundred of the things on hand all the time.”

“That’s unfortunate.” Johan pressed his face against the side of the prism, his nose pressing flat against the surface of the spell. Nothing he saw inside spoke of poisons or wounds. The problem was that both the First Son’s magic and the older Teutonic magics he derived it from excelled at illusions. “Could you spare just one of your candles?”

The sheriff joined him, his frown clearly visible in his reflection on the prism’s surface. “You’re very fixated on this.”

“A moon prism is a very flexible kind of magic, sheriff,” Johan said, stepping away from the crystal to look the other man in the eye. “There are many applications for them in the literature. They were used to preserve food, to keep people from dying until they could be healed and, very often, to create boobytraps. With what we know of von Nighburg I can’t imagine he spent the time and effort to make one of these with no purpose. You know him better than I. Why do you think that was?”

Warwick wordlessly reached into a different pouch, pulled out a new candle and offered it to him. Johan took it and opened up his lightbox, removed the sunstone and replaced it with the candle. Once he had it in place he held it up to the sheriff and said, “Is there a correct way to light this or can I just use a match?”

“The trick isn’t in lighting them it’s in putting them out,” Warwick said. He struck a match and lit the candle for Johan. “I’ll show you how to do that later, for now just try not to breath too deeply. The smoke’s not toxic but if you don’t have the tolerance eventually it will make you see things that just aren’t there.”

“This shouldn’t take more than five minutes.”

“Then you shouldn’t see any side effects if the candle burns steady. Just remember they burn faster the more you draw on their magic and when I was scrying the crystal they burned pretty fast indeed. That won’t just burn through the candle faster, it will strain your mind in the same way.”

The Fairchild siblings approached as Johan adjusted his lighbox. “Good morning, Mr. van der Klein,” the young lady said, her voice sounding unusually scratchy that morning. “Can we assist you?”

Johan spared them a glance as he checked the box’s alignment by feel. After meeting Roy’s friends on the train he’d taken some time to probe the extent of their abilities and experience. Not a great sacrifice given they were stuck on a train. Still, he’d guessed from the look and feel of them that they couldn’t help meddling in Roy’s affairs so he figured he’d best have a good read on them and it seemed his intuition was correct. “I appreciate the offer but I don’t believe so. Both my own magic tradition and the Teutonic school that the moon prism comes from specialize in the manipulation of light. I don’t believe either of your areas of expertise will contribute to that. A river seer would be even better than this candle but I’m afraid we don’t have any of them handy.”

Brandon gently took his sister by the arm. “As I said, Cassie. Besides, you’ve been pushing yourself very hard the last few days and I’m worried about your voice. Take a few minutes to rest.”

He led her several paces away and coaxed her into sitting on a bench outside one of the town’s saloons. Honestly, Johan was glad to see it. It was true that neither one of them had magic that would directly contribute but there were always precautions they could help with. But, if the name was anything to go by, a stone singer relied heavily on their voice and hers sounded markedly strained at the moment. He’d rather not push them if he didn’t have to.

There was also the nature of the magic at hand. On a fundamental level all magic was the combination of a source of power with a vessel to give that power a purpose. That said, regardless of the tradition it was founded in, almost all understandings of magical forces mixed those two concepts. In the druidic tradition fire, water, earth and air formed the basic elements of magic. Of these, fire and air were the forces and water and earth the vessels.

However fire had both a form, in flame, and an energy, in heat. Likewise with air, which was always in motion yet also tangible in the form of wind. The Teutonic tradition spoke of thought as the power and pattern as the vessel but both things were said to reside the mind. All aspects of Teutonic magic thus must be contained by a single vessel. For the Sons of Harmon it was a bit different.

Rembrandt’s magic came from the contrast between light and darkness, with light as the power and the darkness around its edges the vessel that gives it meaning. Most practitioners considered them the purest forms of power and vessel in existence. It was a very different kind of magic, built as much on contrast and negative space as powers and vessels. In the centuries since the First Son’s death many of his followers had tried to integrate other traditions into their own methods with little success. The few successes that did exist all revolved around traditions that had some kind of light source among their paraphernalia. Avery Warwick’s magic candles, for example.

To Johan’s delight, it worked. As he adjusted the lightbox’s mirrors to focus the candle’s light on the larger perimeter mirrors he felt a subtle shift in the way the magic normally felt but no actual rejection like the treatises mentioned when they discussed failed experiments. The perimeter mirrors split the light to form an almost solid ring around the moon prism. The world outside the ring was cast in harsh, impenetrable shadows that turned Tanner and the other townsfolk watching them work into vague silhouettes. Only the sheriff and the Fairchilds were inside the ring and visible.

Cassandra’s mouth opened slightly in wordless amazement. Her brother lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the harsh glare but Warwick nodded in grudging admiration. “Not bad,” he said. “But the candle won’t put out that kind of power for long. You have a minute, maybe more, so make it fast.”

“Hold this, please, Mr. Fairchild.” He put the lightbox in the druid’s hands, gently pressing up on his elbow to keep the box perfectly positioned. Then he reached down to the perimeter mirrors and began to add the last few lines in was on the glass to finish the spell he had in mind.

From its position in the graveyard Jonathan Riker’s statue was in the perfect position to see everything as it happened. At the north end of the cove a flying skiff came into view. A minute later a harsh light glinted off the windows of the houses down by the docks, as if late morning had suddenly transformed to high noon. Something glinted at the top of the lighthouse.

And rising high and distant over the cove, barely audible over the rolling waves, came distant echoes of wild laughter.

Avery watched in amazement as the light suffused the crystal, causing it to almost entirely fade from view. There was still nothing to see inside but Hank. “Looks clear to me. How do you plan to check for poison or the like?”

“Trying a few things,” van der Klein said, scribbling on his mirror and erasing the scribbles a few seconds later. “Let me know if the light changes colors. That means the scrying has discovered a poison or spell at work.”

The sheriff snorted and started counting in his mind. At the rate things were going they were definitely going to need at least one more candle to get through this. He took it out from the pouch on his belt and handed it to Brandon. “No changes so far.”

“That’s poisons and diseases done,” van der Klein said, dusting his hands off and getting up to carefully switch the old, burned out candle for the new one. Fifteen seconds later he finished making his marks with no changes in the color of light from the prism. “No enchantments at work in there either. No point taking the whole thing down and starting over.”

“You’re going to break the prism now?” Avery asked, watching the mirror man carefully scribbling things on his glass.

“Melting might be a better way to put it.” Van der Klein moved around the mirrors in the circle and started to draw on them. “The boy may be a bit disoriented once the prism melts. Miss Fairchild, would you be so kind as to help him if he needs it?”

As the Son of Harmon finished his work all the hair on Avery’s head suddenly stood on end. “Wait.” Suddenly it occurred to him that there was something he hadn’t tried. He scrambled in the paraphernalia in the pouches of his belt, dragging out a thistledown candle. “Wait a moment, Mr. Van der Klein.”

He froze, one hand still on the top of his mirror. “What do you mean? It’s already melting.”

Avery’s stomach did a flipflop, anxiety inexplicably squeezing him like a vice. He jammed the candle into his candle holder with fast, jerky motions. “Something’s wrong here.” Brandon and van der Klein were both staring at him in bafflement and for a brief moment Avery doubted himself. Then he met Cassandra’s eyes and saw they were wild and fearful. “What do you hear, stone singer?”

“Laughing,” she whispered. “A song like laughter – no, like everything was taken away until all that was left laughter or extinction.”

The candle snapped to life with a sputtering flare and Avery centered himself on the flame, intending to probe Hank’s mind. But as soon as he touched the magic there a surge of malicious glee hit his mind so hard he dropped the candle holder.

“Sheriff?” Brandon asked.

For a moment, as Avery collected himself, he saw everything around him with perfect clarity. He saw the moon prism vanish – not melt, just cease to exist. He felt the magic of his two candles meld together, pulling thoughts out of the air and forcing them to reveal themselves to the human eye. He saw dozens of mouths full of rows and rows of blunt, horselike teeth gaping wide in gruesome grins. He saw Hank’s head snap up as he came free of the prism.

Saw the boy’s lips peel back in an ugly grin. Then watched his mouth open wider and wider, his jaw stretching then tearing itself apart with a wet crack. Peel after peel of malevolent laughter filled the square.