A Candle in the Wind – Chapter Ten

Posted by natechen on

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.

A Candle in the Wind – Chapter Nine

Posted by natechen on

Previous Chapter

The mayor of Riker’s Cove was a compact, beady eyed man in his late fifties. By name, Eustace Hughes. Some disaster, likely of a nautical variety, had taken his left arm but there was still a fierce vitality and charisma to him that made it clear how he’d come to lead the village after Jonathan Riker’s death. Like many villages of its size, the Cove didn’t have a dedicated office for the Mayor. So after they surrendered the body of Hank Birch to the Hearth Keepers the Mayor, who had arrived on the scene some time during Avery and Roy’s stint in the mindscape, asked them all to accompany him back to his dock.

According to the stories Avery heard when he arrived in town, Hughes was once a pirate of some sort. Whether that was true or not, he’d given up the sea when he lost his arm. He’d come to the Cove in an effort to start a serious shipbuilding enterprise there but the difficulty of getting good lumber and woodworkers when most of the timber on the western coast of the continent was in Sanna hands had thwarted him so far. He still employed a handful of shipwrights and managed a small drydock at the south end of town.

Like Riker before him, Hughes discharged most of his mayoral duties from his place of business. In his time living there, Avery had never heard anyone complain about this. Indeed, such things were common out West and of the people who made the five minute trek down to the Hughes dry dock the only ones who seemed surprised by it were the Fairchilds. Perhaps in Avalon they were used to more formal political arrangements. What did surprise Avery was the people who were waiting for them at the docks already.

There was a small, sheltered area atop the dock itself, little more than a pavilion with three walls and open toward the dock’s work area, where Hughes and his workers kept their tools and blueprints at a collection of work benches. However none of the mayor’s employees were there at the moment. Instead, Aaron Strathmore greeted them as soon as they arrived at the pavilion while further inside the hulking figure of Samson Riker stared down at papers scattered on a bench with a brooding expression.

Jonathan Riker’s only surviving son was a big man, about ten years older than Avery was and a similar amount younger than the mayor. His size wasn’t rooted in hard earned muscle nor did it hang from him in rolls of fat. His frame was simply tall and wide, covered with a typical amount of flesh of all kinds, although perhaps a trifle plump around the middle. A dull, red beard streaked with gray tickled the middle of his chest. When he glanced over, noting their arrival, sharp black eyes glinted under his thick, bushy eyebrows. In contrast with his otherwise hirsute face, not a single strand of hair grew from the top of his head although the sides and back of his skull were wreathed in a fringe that fell to his shoulders. Samson set down his papers and walked over to shake the mayor’s hand. “Mayor Hughes.” His polite manner turned hostile as he pivoted to glare at Avery. “Sheriff.”

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Riker, Mr. Strathmore,” Hughes said, ushering the group of them back into the shelter with gentle shooing motions. “Unfortunately Mr. Tanner will not be joining us this morning.”

“Is it true his sister’s boy turned up in a crystal coffin down by the docks?” Aaron asked.

“Not a coffin,” Avery said, “but close enough.”

Samson tugged at the end of his beard, which everyone in town knew meant he was loosing out when haggling. Or, in these circumstances, he was nervous about something else. Since his daughter Jennifer was now the only one of von Nighburg’s hostages still missing it wasn’t hard to guess what. “How bad?”

“Not good, Mr. Riker,” Harper said, pushing up past the group to look over the papers Samson had been studying before they arrived. “I’ve seen a lot of strange and frightful things since I came out West. Whatever von Nighburg did to that boy falls into a very special category of wickedness.”

Samson’s eyes tracked the firespinner around the room although he moved the bulk of his body as little as possible as he tracked Harper’s progress. “Do you know what it was?”

Harper picked up a piece of paper – Avery stepped close enough to see it was a blueprint of the lighthouse – and studied it as he answered. “I’ve never seen anything like it although I’ve heard of a couple of curses that could do something similar. Johan? Was that some kind of Teutonic curse? Or related to that moon magic you mentioned?”

“All Teutonic magic is based on repeating patterns.” Van der Klein clasped his hands behind his back, his eyes looking upward as if reading facts of the back of his eyelids. “Crystals, especially cut crystals, are one such pattern. The cycle of the moon is another, both widely referenced in the existing traditions and literature. However I can categorically say that warping the child into… that… was not done via any Teutonic methodology.”

“Categorically? How so?”

“There was no pattern to his laughter.” Van der Klein snapped back to the present. “And before you ask, yes I did take a moment to listen and count out the beats of the noise he was making. It was entirely chaotic.”

“Laughter?” Aaron looked confused. “Who was laughing?”

“What. The appropriate question is, ‘what was laughing?’” Harper set the blueprint back down. “Miss Fairchild, could there have been a musical pattern to the noise he was making?”

“No.” The stone singer shook her head. “I know it sounded like wild laughter but it was actually very repetitive, Mr. Harper. The rise and fall of the tone in his laugh was the exact same every time.”

The mayor swung his hand up, chopping it between Harper and Cassandra and catching both their attention. “I’m sorry. This is a matter of the peace in my town and the safety of its citizens. I don’t know who you two are but would you mind waiting just a few moments while I sort out the rest of this matter with the sheriff and my constituents?”

Out of the corner of his eye Avery saw Brandon bristle at the slight. He held himself back when his sister put a hand on his arm but Avery could tell he wasn’t sure why the mayor was brushing them off. The Stone Circle was probably used to much more cooperation in Avalon. He was about to try smoothing things over when Samson turned to Hughes and said, “Mr. Mayor, I asked Mr. Harper here to help. I wanna hear his opinion and if he has to talk to his friends to sort it out I reckon we should let him do it.”

The mayor shot the big man a deadly look through narrowed eyes. “You did, did you? I suppose you’re going to explain to Chester why you were willing to let his sister’s boy die like that? Dust and ashes, man, you didn’t even have to look at the corpse.”

A lesser man might have lost his temper at Hughes’ accusatory tone. Samson didn’t even twitch. “You and the sheriff have ignored every thing I’ve suggested for the past two weeks, Hughes. My daughter is no closer to coming home than she was when she vanished and I’m not willing to wait any longer. The most famous monster hunter in the west owed my pappy a favor so I called it in. Frankly, this whole stormwracked town wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the old man so I’d reckon you owe him a little bit, too. If you won’t help me the least you can do is get out of my way.”

Hughes squared up against Samson, a challenge that Riker’s son completely ignored. “Listen, I understand your concerns. The sheriff and I have been contacting everyone we know who’s skills-”

“Giant!” Samson pointed a finger at Harper, his voice razor sharp. “Killer!”

“I’ve heard the stories, Samson! But Hank Birch is dead because Nighburg got wind of your stunt and we might have been able to save him if we’d coordinated this better!”

“No, you wouldn’t.” Harper had focused on the blueprints for the last few minutes, ignoring the bickering around him. Only now did he bother to look at Hughes. “I’m sorry, Mayor Hughes, but in my professional opinion there was no way to save all three children. Frankly, I’m amazed you got any of them back.”

Hughes spun on him so fast the empty sleeve of his jacked whipped out and slapped Aaron, standing next to him. “Listen here, Harper. You’re a hireling here, not a citizen or even an Army man. I got no problem with firespinners but you better remember your place and stick to it. You’re not responsible for the lives of the people in this town.”

“Mighty rich coming from a privateer who nearly started a war with Iberia,” Harper said, a trace of amusement running under the words.

“My coalstoking point, Harper.” If the Mayor was put off by the firespinner’s reputation he didn’t show it, stepping right up into his face and jabbing a finger in the man’s chest. “I’ve been on your side of things and I know the blind spots from that point of view. I’m not saying you’re responsible for what happened out there. Nighburg is. But so help me, if you won’t respect the rule of law in this town I will have the sheriff put both you and Samson in jail until the circuit rider comes to drag you to Hancock!”

“Slow down, mayor,” Avery said, sensing it was time for him to say something. “He hasn’t broken any laws yet.”

“Who’s side are you on here?” Hughes said, glaring at him over one shoulder. “You’re supposed to work for me.”

Technically the sheriff of Riker’s Cove was elected, just like the mayor, so they both answered to the townspeople. The problem there was that Avery wasn’t elected. He was the only deputy to survive the first clash with von Nighburg so he’d succeeded to the office. According to the town charter he’d serve until the next election or until the town mayor and treasurer called for a vote to remove him. Which, in Avery’s opinion, wouldn’t be a great tragedy. Sheriff of a port town in the West turned out to be a difficult and unrewarding job even when there wasn’t a murderous magus threatening it.

However, now that he’d started a fight against von Nighburg Avery was reluctant to give up part way through and Hughes definitely had the political sway and vengeful attitude to strip him of office if he wanted to. Also, there was the fact that Low Noon was that night. If von Nighburg’s ambitions came to fruition then, as Harper and his allies suspected, they didn’t have time for any political shenanigans. “I work for everyone in the town, yourself included.” Avery gestured to Harper. “I originally didn’t think Mr. Harper had much to offer us in solving this problem but, to my surprise, he’s not only brought someone who can break whatever control von Nighburg has over the children; he even found someone who understands the magic he used to hide in the lighthouse. I don’t think we can afford to pass on their expertise if they’re willing to share it.”

Hughes chewed on his lower lip for a long moment. Then he looked back to Harper. “Word is you never work for free but I should make it perfectly clear that the town isn’t paying you. Whatever commission you get from Samson is all that’s in it for you. There’s a price on Nighburg’s head you can split however you like but I don’t want you coming to me with your hand out when this is all over, understand?”

A wistful smile touched Roy’s lips for just a moment then he said, “Don’t worry, Mayor Hughes. Jonathan Riker settled your bill long before we came here. The only ones in a position to ask anything more of you are the Fairchilds and something tells me they wont.”

“That’s so,” Brandon put in.

“Very well.” From the way Hughes scowled when he said it Avery guessed the mayor had brought up payment in an attempt to provoke Harper into giving up the job. Clearly he hadn’t been expecting the firespinner’s response. “Sheriff Warwick will work with you on this and any townspeople you want to go with you will have to prove they can meet his standards to be deputized. If you can wait three more days-”

“We can’t,” Avery said. “I’m sorry, mayor, I know you were trying to call in favors from the Navy just like I was looking for some of the old druids to help me out but there just isn’t time. There’s a good chance von Nighburg’s magic will become much more powerful during Low Noon tonight and he’ll be able to do… whatever it is that brought him here in the first place.”

“Dust and ashes.” Hughes ran his hand through his thinning hair. “Tonight?”

“Almost certainly,” van der Klein put in. “Eclipses of both types are of benefit to Teutonic magic and there’s good reason to believe a lunar eclipse will give his chosen field of magic unique opportunities. The sooner we get into the lighthouse the better.”

“Then I’ll leave you to make your plans. Sheriff, let me know if there’s anything in particular I can do that will be helpful or if there are precautions that will keep people out of danger.” He pointed at Aaron Strathmore. “Mr. Harper, I know the sheriff and your friends already talked to him once but Aaron wanted you to know he’s willing to tell you anything else he knows that might help you save the other children held hostage. I closed the docks today so you’d have a place hidden from view to make any preparations you need. No chance Nighburg will see you here.”

Samson turned to Avery. “Sheriff, I’d like to-”

“Samson.” Hughes took a firm grip on his arm. “Before that, I’d like to talk to you alone.”

The big man glanced between Hughes and Harper, then nodded and followed the Mayor wordlessly. Harper turned back to the blueprints on the table. “Okay, I suppose we’re offically hired now so gather around, everyone, we have a fortress to breach. Van der Klein, tell us how we magic our way into this place.”

Samson stopped for a moment to contemplate his father’s statue. The monument to his father continued to look out over his town, ignoring his son, in a perfect encapsulation of Jonathan’s own behavior. The statue, at least, had an excuse. The younger Riker dismissed the edifice after a moment, turning to the mayor and saying, “Alright, what’s this all about? I hope you’re not going to try and talk me out of rescuing my daughter again.”

“You have three other children to think about,” Hughes said. “You could think of them. I know you Rikers are incredibly big picture people, set on preserving the great and the good without any care for the cost-”

“Stop that,” Samson snarled. “Don’t pretend you know me or my father, Hughes, you and your crew may have won over the town but I don’t trust you. Pa told me about you.”

“Your father hated me for good reasons, Samson. We were professionally and personally incompatible, no doubt, but you hold the grudge just cause your papa did. I ain’t waylaid your ships or taken your cargo, have I?” Hughes shoved his hand in his pocket. “I’m not the heavy hand of Hancock on the high seas anymore. I’m the mayor of this town. I watched your mother slowly pass on from grief after Jonathan died and I don’t want to do it again, see?”

“Don’t bring Ma into this, either.”

Hughes glanced from the man to the statue, his bafflement clear on his face. It was like he couldn’t tell which was the statue and which was the man, which one was completely unyielding and which one was just stubborn. “Then if you really have to go up that coalstoking tower, take Tanner with you.”

Samson’s face turned cloudy. “Your lackey? Why.”

“He went home because I sent him but he wants a piece of old Nighburg, same as you. His sister sent the boy here to learn a trade because she trusted her brother. Hank was a gem, Samson. He didn’t deserve that.”

The big man thumped one heavy hand down on the mayor’s shoulder. “What’s in this for you?”

A weary look crossed Hughes’ face. “If it’s not clear yet, I don’t trust these outsiders. Ironic, I know, since I settled less than a decade ago over your papa’s objections, but there it is. I was the same kind of man as them. Someone needs to keep an eye on them and you two are the ones they’re most likely to bring with you.”

Samson thought it over for a moment. Then he looked up at the statue, nodded to himself and looked back at the mayor. “Fine. If the sheriff is okay with it. Did you talk to him?”

“No. Let Tanner work on him. Don’t mention this conversation to any of them, okay? I brought you out here because I don’t want them hearing we doubt them, not even the sheriff.”

“If you say so.” With that Samson turned his back on the statue and walked back towards town.”

A Candle in the Wind – Chapter Eight

Posted by natechen on

Previous Chapter

“The sheriff told me von Nighburg cursed the waters of the cove at one point,” Roy said, taking them out over the waves. “You know a lot of the Sanna’s dousing magic, right? Can you check ocean waters for magic? Or is it something you can only do with rivers and underwater reservoirs?”

“Not from up here,” Proud Elk said. “And I have never tried a dousing on such a large body of water. Back before your people pushed mine out of the place you call the Lakeshires the elders say we could douse the Lakes. But I’ve never done such a thing and I don’t know if the ways are different than what I’ve learned.”

Roy nodded, shifting his attention to the lighthouse itself. He’d never actually been in one but from the outside, without one of Warwick’s candles to reveal anything, it looked much like any other lighthouse he’d seen before. “In that case let’s take a closer look at this thing. You watch the signal lamp and reflector and-”

A flare of light from the docks caught his attention. In front of him Proud Elk also shifted to look that way, his normally stoic expression suddenly apprehensive. “Is that Silver Glass?”

“Looks like his kind of magic,” Roy said. “But you’ve seen it before and I think you’re feeling something off about it too, am I right?”

“I’m afraid you are, Bright Coals. I think we must leave the tower for now and ensure that all is well with him.” As he spoke he readied his club and a collection of herbs, woven bead talismans and other magic tools of his people. “And hurry. I fear not all is well in that man’s village.”

Roy adjusted the skiff’s helm, putting the skiff in a tight turn and pouring on the speed so that the small, aluminum craft swung about like a paper in a breeze. They shot over the water as fast as Roy dared to go. In truth the docks were so close to the lighthouse that they couldn’t run up to anything like the skiff’s top speed but given the unknowns of the situation it wasn’t wise to approach that quickly anyways. Instead he ran up to the speed of a fast horse and covered the distance to the docks in just over a minute. They found a scene from nightmares.

Johan’s magic had gone haywire, two of the mirrors askew and sending beams of solid light into the air at odd angles and the remaining two beams crossing on the twisted, barely recognizable body of a ten year old boy. Hank’s body looked like giant hands had grabbed it by the top and bottom and twisted it around twice. His arms and legs pumped and churned around the torso at unnatural angles. From the kind of damage he had sustained the child should have been dead but Roy could see his eyes rolling and fingers twitching.

Something was laughing with a wild, shrieking voice that felt like dead iron filings burning their killing paths up and down his back. In the strange beams of light from Johan’s mirrors strips of flesh full of grinning, gaping mouths hung in the air. It was like looking through windows to a world of malicious glee. Roy dropped the skiff to the ground and left it there with the hull quietly sizzling on the ground. He yanked his falcata free of its sheath as he vaulted out of the skiff, his bag of supplies slung over one shoulder.

There was something terrible in the laughter. Some kind of empty, devouring will that sapped every feeling that welled up to him in response to what he saw. For years Roy Harper had traveled the West, disposing of the worst humanity had to offer. In that time his ambition and search for justice had cooled in the face of the daunting task and a certain cynicism and anger had taken root. The sight of Tanner’s nephew writhing, suspended in the air like that brought all those emotions to the fore. But as he took the first few steps towards the boy that changed.

He looked so silly, spinning like that, with nothing to hold him up but a few beams of light and the laughing voices that leaked out of them. How was he supposed to take that seriously? Roy found himself coming to a stop, a strange feeling working up through his chest. His shoulders shook once. Then his throat spasmed as his face contorted a bit. Then a deep, stomach clenching laugh erupted from his lips like a fish, caught on a brazen hook, being dragged from the depths of the ocean.

In his blood and in his bones small reserves of fire, trapped in nearly invisible flecks of sulfurite that had lodged in his body a decade ago flared to life. The traces of magic rushed to his mind and burned away the laughter there. Just like that his equilibrium returned and his rage, his bitterness, his purpose and his hope rushed back in and filled him to overflowing.

Roy snarled and ignited his falcata, the roaring flame drowning out the insidious laughter. He’d never been happier to hear the whispers of fire in the back of his mind even though he still didn’t trust them. With his mind clearer he could take in more than the horrific thing at the center of the square. Johan was wrestling with his lightbox, trying to wrench it out of the teeth of one of the strange mouths that peeked through the beams of light. Whatever they were they were real enough to be dangerous. The yew in Brandon’s body had asserted itself and now covered him from head to toe, with the toes turned to roots that let it dig deep into the ground. His face was still visible but from the grimace on his face he was struggling not to burst into laughter. He’d wrapped an arm around his sister’s waist and she leaned heavily against him, her mouth open in a wordless song that either didn’t carry over the cackling rift in space or resonated at a pitch humans couldn’t hear. Only Warwick was on the ground. He huddled over a single candle that spluttered and flared wildly, threatening to sear the hands he cupped around it.

Outside of the thing fighting Johan, Roy couldn’t see anything like an active threat to deal with. As he traced the beams of light a beaded loop dropped around his neck, dampening the sound of the strange cackling. Beside him, Proud Elk pointed at the mirrors. “You must destroy the glass, Bright Coals,” he yelled, straining to be heard over the laughter. “It’s become a window into something else!”

Roy wasn’t sure how he knew that but for the moment he was willing to trust the Sanna man’s intuition. Instead he dropped the tip of his weapon downward, letting the fat, heavy tip of the blade fill with flame before he drew it back and catapulted the fireball towards one of the mirrors. His aim was a little off so Roy reached out with his mind and tweaked the projectile towards its target. He followed it in just to be sure.

Whenthe fireball hit the small pane of silver and glass dead center it shattered from the heat, spitting slivers all over the ground. As he withdrew his attention from the flame it brushed up against something. At first Roy thought he’d found the connection between light and fire that Johan used though his sunstone. But the thing was far too vast. For a brief moment Roy felt like he’d brushed against an Avatar of the Primeval Fire, a creature so foundational to the universe that it permeated the entire cosmos. He’d seen such things before.

However this wasn’t one of them, although it felt similar in terms of size and scope. From his own, human position Roy couldn’t tell much about whatever it was other than it moved lazily, less like a flame’s insistent whisper and more like an amusing dream. What’s more, Roy somehow sensed it was pure power. Like flame, it was all force with no vessel at all and, by its very nature, it found all attempts to pour it into a vessel as amusing as they were futile. How do you contain a dream? The very notions are antithetical.

It was very tempting to linger on the connection but Roy new he couldn’t. It wasn’t until he tried to come back to the moment that he realized he was lost. He was lost, unsure of where he was or if what was around him was even real. Sight didn’t really apply to what he was experiencing, only his instinctive connection to the Fire gave him an sense of the distorted reality he’d wandered into.

That, and his ears. They picked up a low, steady, wordless tune sung by a dusky, feminine voice that reminded him of a cool, shady forest in the northern Lakeshires. As soon as the thought crossed his mind Roy found himself standing under a mighty stone dolmen. The wild, overgrown roots of a huge yew tree covered the ground around him and its branches loomed low overhead, the leaves turning brown as it slowly died. Roy’s breath caught in his throat as he realized where he was.

Two stone megaliths stood upright to his right and left, holding a third slab ten feet above the ground. It was one of a dozen such structures that formed the Morainehenge. It looked exactly like it had when the 43rd Infantry marched under it at the end of the Siege of Martin Southwick. Roy picked his way forward, carefully stepping over the roots. This wasn’t the first time he’d seen strange things in the middle of a theoretically pitched battle against the supernatural. Tetzlani creatures, in particular, seemed to love this kind of thing.

He was aware, in the back of his mind, of the sound of shattering glass and yelling voices but focusing on them right now was likely to prove counter productive. He did notice that the ground shook underfoot when he heard the smashing sound, though. Lingering too long was probably a bad idea.

“Now where did this come from?”

The question drifted out of the center of the henge. Roy recognized the voice, too, and picked up his pace as much as he could without getting tangled in the roots. “Warwick? Is that you?”

“Harper?” Actually, the voice didn’t sound distant at all. As soon as it reached him Roy found himself standing next to the sheriff by the trunk of the mammoth yew tree that had once been the Master of the Morainhenge. “What’s going on here?”

“I think we’ve come across an aspect of the First Elements,” Roy said. “I brushed up against it while manipulating a fire and found myself here. It’s not a part of the Primeval Fire, that I’m certain of, but it sure feels like some kind of magical power rather than a vessel. So my money is on-”

“It’s not the First Elements,” Avery said, his hand resting on the trunk of the tree and his face pensive. “Whatever it is thinks and only those things that are truly alive think. The First Elements are powerful but they’re not really aware like living things are, they just exist and push towards their own ends.”

“What do you mean they’re not alive? Haven’t you heard of the Mated Pair?”

“They’re no longer truly elementals,” Warwick said, resting his head against the treebark like he was praying. “When the Lord in Raging Skies married the Lady in Burning Stone they created a balance of all four elements that transformed them into a single, living unit. That’s why Arthur gave them a name as a united deity. But the aspects of the First Elements don’t truly think they just seek their aspects and express them.”

Roy walked up to the tree and examined it, wondering if it fascinated the sheriff for the past it represented or as part of their present predicament. “Okay, I don’t fully understand that gobbledygook. Even assuming you’re right about it all, how do you know for sure this thing out here is a real, living thinker and not just an elemental good at faking it?”

“Would you understand the nuance if I explained it?” Warwick asked.

“Probably not,” Roy admitted grudgingly, studying the yew tree. He wondered if it was native to the place they stood or if it was some kind of illusion or figment created by the presence they’d brushed against. “But it might be a hint for how to get out of here and I’m willing to take any chance I can get.”

Warwick jerked away from the tree as the sound of another mirror smashing echoed through the henge. “I take your point. How did you get in here?”

“I threw a fireball at one of Johan’s mirrors since Proud Elk thought they were serving as windows for your living thing to look in at us.” Roy jerked a thumb in the direction he came from. “I’m not sure how it got me here but the mirror’s gone so I don’t think we can get out that way. How’d you get in?”

“I lite a candle of telepathy and got drawn in to the thing’s mind through that magic.” Warwick studied the treeline of the forest outside the dolmen. “Interesting. When we first met I tried to pick up on your thoughts using one but you’re a firemind. I’m not certain but I think the concentration of magic in your ego allowed your mind to burn off the attempt.”

“I’ve never thought of myself as an egoist.”

“It’s a philosophical term, Harper,” the sheriff said, turning in a slow circle as he spoke. “My point is your sense of who you are combined with your gifts allows you to piggyback on the candle’s magic and walk the mindscape. Perhaps the mirror had something to do with it but I don’t think so.”

“Well regardless, if I got in by mirror we can get out that way, so long as they haven’t shattered them yet.” The ground shook and another crashing sound filled the air.

“Dust and ashes,” Warwick muttered. “You’d the mirrors breaking would cause the world to get dimmer since van der Klein wouldn’t have ways to send light in from outside. This place must have its own light source.”

“Or maybe we’re just thinking about seeing too much,” Roy replied. As the last tinkling sounds of glass faded he caught a snatch of the tune he’d first heard when he found the henge. “Did you hear that, sheriff?”

“No, what?”

“Cassandra is calling us. Or perhaps just you, doubt she realizes I’m here.”

Warwick gave him an incredulous look. “Harper, assuming this isn’t an illusion created via an unwise use of telepathy and we are actually somewhere else then what makes you think a stone singer can even reach us?”

Roy’s memories flashed back to his first meeting with the Fairchilds, when he’d watched Cassandra guide a whole army of ghosts into the afterlife. “She can call to the dead and send them on to their final resting place, sheriff. Whether this is an illusion or we were pulled somewhere via your candle magic we can’t be further from her than eternity is. If she can send people to eternity then she should be able to call us back.”

The ground underfoot bucked and suddenly he and the sheriff were born aloft on the back of a skytrain car that erupted out of the ground. The change was dizzying to watch but Roy found he kept his feet quite easily. “What’s this?” Warwick seemed less surprised by the sudden change in venue. “Is it interested in your memories now?”

“Like I said, Miss Fairchild is calling us.” Roy struggled but failed to keep a testy note out of his voice. “C’mon, last time she was at the back of the train.”

He started picking his way along the roof of the train car, occasionally looking over the side for signs of the ghost army. Sure enough they turned up, too, as Roy passed the train’s halfway point. At first Roy thought they were passive figments like the tree and train were, scenery that didn’t feel like it had any effect on what was happening. But as he crossed the gap between train cars he heard a familiar voice calling to him.

The face of Samuel Jenkins when whipping by in the crowd of ghosts, moving so fast Roy wouldn’t have spotted it if he hadn’t heard the specter calling his name. So far he’d been taking the usual amount of care in navigating the train’s roof. When he spotted the ghost moving past he put on a burst of speed, crossing the vehicle’s roof at a dead sprint as he tried to catch up. Behind him, Warwick sputtered in surprise and poured on the speed.

“Harper!” Jenkins’ voice rose over the sounds of the train and the strains of Cassandra’s song. “Sorry I’m not there! Turns out death isn’t at all what I expected it was.”

“What in the name of hearthfire are you doing here, Jenkins?” Roy gasped, leaping between the train cars.

“There’s power in any oath, Harper,” the ghost replied, almost laughing. “Doesn’t matter what you swear it on. So long has the man has honor he gives the words a power we can’t begin to understand. Didn’t think I was a man of honor but I guess I was. At least enough of one to keep my word, at least indirectly, dead or not.”

“I don’t need a ghost to help out again, Jenkins!”

“You have to understand the Voices, Harper!”

“What voices?”

“You wouldn’t know their name and if I use it they’ll hear!” For the first time since he’d seen the specter Roy heard real fear in the ghost’s voice. “You’ll understand soon enough. Be careful not to listen too much, like that blackguard did, but understand them! At least then you can avoid their grasp. Hold them off and he’ll uphold the deal!”

His mad sprint brought Roy to the end of the train and he’d been paying so much attention to Jenkin’s ghost he didn’t see it coming. One moment he was running on the train. The next moment he was tumbling through a strange world full of smoke, the solemn strains of Cassandra’s song the only thing he could see or hear clearly. Then there was a final crash.

Roy dropped to the ground, the shards of the last mirror scattered across the cobbles of the square in front of him. He was back in Riker’s Cove. The strange bars of light full of laughing mouths were gone and Johan was fumbling with his light box as he locked it closed. Proud Elk poked at the remains of the mirrors in suspicious fashion. Brandon was slowly pulling the yew back inside himself while Tanner helped Sheriff Warwick to his feet.

The body of the boy in the prism lay on the ground, twisted and broken but still gasping out wheezing chuckles every other breath. Roy struggled back to his feet and staggered over to the body, carefully turning it over with the toe of his boot. Glazed eyes stared up at him, full of madness, its jaw flopping open in a grotesque, open mouthed laugh. Tanner helped the sheriff over to look at it. “Clara,” Tanner muttered, “I’m so, so sorry.”

Roy wordlessly offered the man the hilt of his weapon. Tanner stared at it for a moment, disgust and pity warring across his face. Finally he shook his head and turned away. It was a decision Roy could respect but it didn’t change what needed doing so he cut the boy’s head off and covered the corpse with his jacket.

When the light in the square faded peace returned to the town again. As if the passing of danger sent out a call, what seemed like every person in town came running to the scene of the disaster. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of people poured out of buildings towards the center of the commotion. None of them looked up towards the lighthouse.

There was no one to see the shadow of a man, watching them with a scowl from the top. He pounded the wall with his fist once then grabbed up a gleaming staff and stalked down into the tower, muttering to himself. Perhaps the men of the Cove would have relished the victory if they knew they’d won it. Perhaps not.

However, the statue of Jonathan Riker saw it.

Writing Vlog – 06-28-2023

Posted by natechen on

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

A Candle in the Wind – Chapter Seven

Posted by natechen on

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.

Weekly Writing Vlog – 06-21-2023

Posted by natechen on

Weekly writing vlog is out! Not much to report this week but things are grinding forward.

A Candle in the Wind – Chapter Six

Posted by natechen on

Previous Chapter

As full night fell on Riker’s Cove something subtle shifted in the waters of the Cove. To the discerning eye it might have looked like the moon was slowly growing closer and closer to the surface of the water as the light it reflected there grow brighter and covered more and more of the waves. A discerning eye was necessary because the moon above did not change from its normal route through the heavens.

Yet as the lesser light reached it’s zenith the rays that shone from the water seemed to catch in the reflectors of the lighthouse, glancing off the surface meant to direct the beacon within out to sea. The reflector turned slowly away from the waves and towards the Cove. No human hands moved it yet move it did. In the market square above the docks, where the fishermen sold the day’s catch, the beam of unearthly light focused to a point.

A few minutes later the light faded and the lighthouse reflector turned back out to sea leaving a five foot tall crystal pillar behind.

In his time working with Books, sorting out lost shipments, tracking down pirates and quietly exterminating foreign blood cults, Roy had worked with a lot of aluminum skiffs. The principles were simple. Heat a sheet of aluminum up until it floated then used tin to propel yourself and there you go. A flying platform to take you over land and sea.

He hadn’t realized how hard it was to find one of the things on short notice, usually Books handled that part of things. It took him the better part of the two days preparatory time they had – not to mention a great deal of his personal silver – to locate a skiff he could buy. Not rent, buy. Some pretty clever banking was necessary to get the money ready to actually make the purchase. Hopefully he’d be able to liquidate the thing later.

In the meantime he had his ride back in to Riker’s Cove and hopefully up to the lighthouse. Flight metal was difficult to refine and its use in transportation quite novel. Roy hoped that novelty would translate to a blindspot for both the sheriff and von Nighburg.

It turned out Johan wasn’t quite ready for it either. Once they got the thing off the ground he took one look over the side, moved to the center of the eight foot by fifteen foot skiff, sat down and refused to move. “If I wanted to fall to my death,” he said, “I could’ve done it at home.”

“I’ve been to Leondale,” Roy said with a smirk. “It’s flatter than flapjacks.”

“Falling off a roof will do the trick nicely.”

“There is no trick to dying,” Proud Elk said. “It happens every day and will happen to us all soon enough. Now flying? That is something special.” The Sanna man leaned against the back wall of the skiff, a smile on his face as he stared up at the sky. He hadn’t wound up steering the skiff but he didn’t seem upset at that.

Roy envied him a bit. He had to spend most of his time looking down for landmarks to ensure they actually reached their destination. Flying a skiff was much different from riding in one. But he’d done his fair share of both whereas this was Proud Elk’s first flight so Roy couldn’t really hold his friend’s wonder against him. Flying really was magic in its truest sense.

In the interest of approaching the Cove from the direction most conductive to stealth Roy looped out to sea for most of the flight south. He stayed about five feet over the waves, which he’d had impressed on him as the optimal height for stable flight. Too high for most waves, to low for sudden breezes.

Lighthouses weren’t common along the shoreline that far south so when they caught a glimpse of one peeking above the horizon line Roy assumed it was the Cove’s and moved the skiff over land and set it down. The whole trip took less than an hour. As they climbed out and Johan shook feeling back into his limbs he remarked on the brevity of the trip.

“Skytrains are huge and heavy,” Roy said. “They take forever to get going and they aren’t that fast once they do. Our skiff has good top speed and gets up to it faster than a locomotive so of course the trip is faster.”

He got a grip on the fist sized sulfurite crystal built into the skiff’s rudder. First he coaxed all the heat still in the vehicle’s underside back into the sulfurite. Then, once he was sure he’d reclaimed all the loose magic left in the skiff, he pulled the crystal out of its setting and carefully put it in a special carrying pouch in his bag.

“How much fire was lost?” Proud Elk asked.

“About two fifths of what it holds,” Roy said. “We’ll need to restoke it before tonight if we’re taking it up to the lighthouse.”

“Must we?” Johan asked.

“It’s the simplest way to get up there, especially if we don’t want to cross paths with the sheriff.” Roy slung his pack over his shoulder and took stock of their location. Large spurs of rock jutted out into the ocean ahead of them, old ridges of volcanic stone well worn by time and tide. They were sheltered from the elements by the stone ridge to the north and dunes in the other two directions. Only a passing ship was likely to catch sight of them. They’d just have to hope no one headed towards Riker’s Cove thought to report their presence there to Sheriff Warwick. “Guess I should try and whistle up the Fairchilds.”

“How exactly do you intend to do that?”

“Watch and learn, Johan. Watch and learn.” The Henge and Hills was an old Avaloni tune that many knights from their Stone Circle learned, although Roy wasn’t quite sure why. It was kind of a slow tune and not suited for march or drill. It opened high and clear, with a rising set of notes that stopped abruptly before opening out into a wider, deeper melody that carried the weight and purpose of the old country’s chivalric tradition. During the gold drinker hunt Brandon had taught it to him. It was the traditional tune used to signal your location to Fairchild stone singers and, while he wasn’t entirely on key, Roy managed to whistle the first six or seven bars correctly nine times out of ten. After hiking up to the edge of the hill, at a place where the dunes still hid him from sight, he repeated them twice then settled in to wait.

The other two collected their things from the skiff and came to join him. Proud Elk had found a dousing rod and collected samples of the local flora in Loewenburg but he’d also drawn several samples from the local water table which he carried with him in a series of flasks. The Sanna divining traditions he drew on were exotic but, in Roy’s experience, not very offensive in nature. Roy hoped the man hadn’t gathered all that for nothing.

Johan had a backpack full of dinner plate sized bundles wrapped in heavy cotton cloth that he’d kept a death grip on during the flight out. The magic system devised by Rembrant, son of Harmon, relied on mirrors to direct and amplify light, the aspect of fire the hardest to transform into practical magic. Roy wondered if he’d had something in mind when grabbing them or if he’d just wanted to hedge his bets. Either way, he hoped van der Klein hadn’t laid out too much of his own money. Von Nighburg’s bounty probably wasn’t even going to cover the expenses they were incurring on this part of the job, to say nothing of transportation costs. Unlike Books or Roy himself, Johan wasn’t in a position to spend money freely.

If he was worrying about his finances Johan didn’t show it when he sat his bag down next to Roy and joined him in peering over the top of the dunes. All he said was, “This wasn’t what I thought you meant by whistling them up.”

“What else did you think I meant?”

“I presumed you had a signal prearranged with them.”

“You presumed correctly.”

They hadn’t waited more than ten minutes when the sound of hoofbeats built over the dunes. Roy frowned. He had expected the Fairchilds to make a more discreet approach. Roy got to his feet and peeked over the top of the hill to spot a short, rather portly man approaching on a horse. He reached down for his sword, an old falcata he’d carried in his younger days before Books had imported his Alexopolous made blade. He’d broken that masterpiece a few months ago. In fact, now that he thought about it, he’d gone through a lot of swords in the last four months or so.

The many grisly fates of his cutlery weren’t germane at the moment, however. What was important was the man coming over the dunes and, from what he could see, that man had the look of a sailor rather than a townie. He was wearing a light blue vest, canvas pants and a battered cotton shirt with no collar. There was no weapon at his side or strapped to his saddle. Roy got to his feet and raised a hand in greeting. The rider pulled up about ten feet away and said, “Hello there! Any one of you go by the name Roy Harper?”

“That’s me.”

“Chester Tanner.” He touched his battered sock cap as if he was tipping a hat although his own headgear wasn’t suited to the motion. “Miss Fairchild asks you join her down in the square by the docks.”

“Is that a fact?” This wasn’t nearly what he’d expected as a result of his signal but perhaps the sheriff had left town or something over the last couple of days. He turned to the other two. “You heard the man, let’s get going.”

Unfortunately Tanner hadn’t brought horses for all of them so they were forced to walk briskly as the local man kept his horse at a very restrained trot next to them. At that pace it took them less than fifteen minutes to make the trip down to the docks. To Roy’s surprise they found both Fairchilds and Sheriff Warwick there. To his even greater surprise, they found them walking around an eight foot tall crystal pillar that looked like it contained a boy of about ten years old.

Roy tilted his hat back and stared at the surreal thing. “What is this?”

“The penalty for our good deeds,” Warwick said, his hands on his hips as he stared at the crystal. A set of eight burnt out candles were laid around the crystal in a circle, the smoke from their burning still ringing the unsettling monolith.

As far as Roy knew a magic candle didn’t burn any different from a normal one. Whatever Warwick and the others had been doing here they’d been at it for hours and hadn’t found a solution. There wasn’t anything for it. Roy took the direct approach and walked up beside the sheriff, folded his arms and stared at the crystal, saying, “What good deed have you done recently?”

“Agreed to save some children.” Warwick hooked a thumb at the Fairchilds, who were a quarter way round the crystal and also studying it with incredible intensity. “Those two found one of von Nighburg’s hostage kids in town and freed him. I met your friends when they returned the boy to his parents and they talked me into working with them – and you lot – to save the others. That was last night.”

Roy nodded. “And this morning the town woke up and discovered how he responded.”

The sheriff turned and spat on the ground. “Dust and ashes, that blackguard gets worse every coalstoking day. The day we drown him in the stormwracked bay can’t come soon enough.”

The torrent of sacrilege took Roy by surprise. The sheriff had never struck him as the type to speak so coarsely, especially in public, but maybe he felt von Nighburg had escalated. A mistake on his part. After crossing paths with several groups of black magicians Roy had largely written the hostages off as dead already. He’d have to try and keep the sheriff on track. “Looks like you’ve already taken a good, long look at it. Have you been able to figure out what Nighburg did here?”

“I’m stumped,” Warwick admitted. “Whatever he’s done it’s not rooted in the earth or its fruits, no matter what the thing itself looks like. Your friends have been humming at it but don’t have anything either.”

“I wouldn’t underestimate that humming, sheriff,” Roy said, tapping on the crystal with his knuckles. “That lady’s voice is something else.”

In spite of Warwick’s insistence that the crystal wasn’t earth or stone it felt like any other piece of quartz Roy had touched in his life. Admittedly he didn’t often handle such things but it was also unavoidable in his life of work. He’d chosen to leave his wendigo bone necklace in his armory at home since he wasn’t sure how such a thing might interact with whatever strange pacts von Nighburg wielded but he still knew magical ice when he saw it. That wasn’t what this was either. There was no voice to the crystal so if there was an element of fire to the thing it was very, very small or similar to the sheriff’s candles and its magic kept the flame silent. His intuition told him there was just no fire.

Light glinted off the crystal next to his hand as he ran it along the crystal facets. Glancing behind him he saw Johan setting up and one of the spare mirrors he’d brought along on the ground. “Sheriff,” Roy said, “this is Johan van der Klein, the Son of Harmon I told you about.”

Avery turned away from the crystal and walked over to van der Klein. The two men shook hands as the sheriff said, “Mr. Harper speaks very highly of your abilities, sir. Do you think you can help us with our problem here?”

“Depends.” Johan manipulated the pieces of his lightbox, the reflective inner panes of glass pivoting and sliding on hidden hinges and poles made of silver, the metal animated by the magic stored within. The six sides of the box split and folded into a formation halfway between a flower and the mirrored sides of a lantern. In the middle was a sunstone.

No one outside the Sons was quite sure how Rembrandt Harmonson transformed sulfurite into sunstone, the process was one of the order’s greatest secrets. But the change in the stones afterwards was unmistakable. Where the average piece of fully stoked sulfurite burned with a dull, rich, red-orange light a sunstone shone with a clear, pale yellow glow. Unless the person wielding the stone put it to work.

Johan adjusted his lightbox a fraction of a degree then it unleashed a vibrant, clearly visible bar of light at the crystal, which caught that light and refracted it in a dizzying spray of colors. Roy and the others around the crystal flinched at the display but van der Klein ignored it entirely. Instead he studied the pillar in his mirror. After about fifteen seconds the mirrors of his lightbox shifted slightly, then shifted again after another thirty seconds. Then the light faded and the box closed.

“It’s a moon prism,” Johan said, tilting the mirror on the ground so that the crystal and only the crystal filled the pane.

“You’ve seen one of these before?” The sheriff asked.

“Not directly but they’re very common in the literature and some of the principles in them were inverted when the First Son invented sunstones.” Johan handed Tanner, Brandon and Roy mirrors. “Place those at the other compass points, please.”

Warwick peered over Johan’s shoulder as Roy and the others moved off to their positions. He heard the sheriff’s questioning continue as he worked to position the mirror he’d been entrusted with as van der Klein had.

“Is Hank okay in this moon prism of yours?”

“Hard to say without knowing how von Nighburg constructed it,” Johan replied. “Most of the references to them outside our own order come from very early Teutonic wizardry, stuff they discovered in even older records from the Forever War. Nothing I’ve seen of them says going in one would be dangerous. But there’s no saying your Hank was in good health when von Nighburg put him in it, either.”

“Fair. Is he gonna get hurt if you tinker with it now?”

“There’s several methods I could try to dissolve the crystal and they should all be perfectly safe, save for the last one. Which is why it will be last.”

“Should?” Tanner perked up. “How should are we talking here?”

“If the boy was healthy going in he should be healthy coming out,” Johan said, carefully drawing a series of precise marks on the glass of his mirror with waxy white chalk. “Save the last one methodology where there’s a chance we could set ourselves on fire. Roy, you’ll be our insurance against that if it comes to it.”

Roy got up from his mirror dusting his hands off. “That’s not how it works, Johan. If you start burning I can move the flames off somewhere else but you have to be burning before I can do it.”

“Well let’s not try that one, then,” Tanner said, folding his arms over his stomach. “If my sister’s boy burns to death on my watch she’s liable to send me him. He’s alive now, isn’t he?”

“Not necessarily. A moon prism holds the things inside it in stasis, so there’s a lot of things that could be wrong with him right now that we cannot even see. For example, the air frozen in there could be full of poison gas, like you’d find in a mine.” Johan moved to the next mirror in the circle and started marking it up, too. “In the hands of a malicious person there are any number of ways you can make an empty looking prism incredibly dangerous.”

“That’s a nasty bit of magic,” Roy muttered, looking at the crystal again. From Warwick’s testimony von Nighburg was exactly the kind of man to bait a boobytrap with a kidnapped child.

“It’s worse.” Johan looked up from his work on the mirror. “Remember why we came back here today instead of yesterday? It’s a moon prism.”

Avery spat again. “Dust and ashes, Low Noon’s comin’.”

Roy sucked in a breath. “I don’t suppose an eclipse will make the kind of magic you use to manufacture a moon prism weaker, will it?”

“Unfortunately, it does just the opposite.”

A Candle in the Wind – Chapter Five

Posted by natechen on

Previous Chapter

Riker’s Cove was quiet that evening. There was nothing unusual about that, of course, but the quiet had a sinister cast to it. A trio of small creatures with a fell light in their eyes crept through the streets, breaking off in different directions and vanishing into the shadows. Then, just after sunset, a wistful melody carried through town. The mood over the town lightened. The sheriff hustled through town to a house near the water.

For the next hour or so two small forms watched that house, their eyes alight with anger and uncertainty. Then they abruptly got up and ran off. They scrambled down the beach to the long pier leading to the lighthouse and the statue of Jonathan Riker watched them go.

There were still many shadows over Riker’s Cove but for the moment the waxing moon banished them out to sea.

Brandon studied the sheriff named Avery with curious eyes. Harper had mentioned that many of the druids from Columbia’s Stone Circle still walked the land but Brandon hadn’t expected to find them holding office in public service. He’d assumed resentment or distrust would preclude it.

Warwick worked his magic for some ten minutes on the boy they’d found by the docks, apparently using a thistledown candle to peer into his memories in an attempt to learn the fate of other missing children from the village. Finally he admitted defeat and extinguished the candle, then thanked the family and spent a few minutes more reassuring them they’d done all they could to help find the other two missing children. The sheriff also took the time to check the house’s perimeter. Finally he approached Brandon and his sister. “Well met, Sir Fairchild,” Warwick said. He touched his fingertips to forehead, a gesture that represented removing a helmet among friends. “I have a lot of questions to ask you but I feel we’ve imposed on the Strathmores long enough. Would you and your companion, Miss…”

“Cassandra Fairchild, sheriff.” Cassie dipped slightly in an abbreviated curtsy.

“If you two would care to join me in my office then we could discuss things without bothering them further.”

Warwick turned and gestured to the door with obvious meaning. Brandon gave Cassie a questioning look. His sister had been quietly humming a tuneless note from when they’d discovered the boy out by the docks at dusk until shortly after the sheriff arrived. Since then she’d kept her peace, which he took as a good sign. Now she gave him a slight nod, telling him she was in fact done with whatever she’d been doing. “Of course, sheriff,” Brandon said. “It would be our pleasure.”

Cassie looped her arm through the crook of Brandon’s elbow and allowed him to lead her through the town. While it was of low intensity she’d spent a long time flexing her talent for stonesong. He wasn’t sure what the exact price for that would be but her vision had to be impaired to some degree at the moment. So Brandon kept an eye on her steps as they walked. He didn’t want to embarrass her by waving a hand in front of her face while the sheriff was present but he wasn’t about to let her fall flat on her face either. However, even if she was completely blind for the time being she could still listen.

While they crossed the town she closed her eyes and tilted her head this way and that as the cool ocean breeze swept through her hair. If she heard anything unusual she didn’t mention it. They reached the town jail without incident. “Thank you for being so accommodating,” Warwick said as he unlocked the front door and ushered them in. “The last month and a half have been trying for the Strathmores. I’d rather they have their peace.”

“I’m happy to give it to them, sheriff.” Brandon replied, guiding Cassie over the step and into the building. “It’s the duty of every Knight on errantry to uphold the virtues of Chivalry. How could I ignore a child in need? How could I impose on his family once the need was met?”

“Fair questions,” Warwick said. He closed the door to the jail and offered the two chairs in the front room. He perched on the edge of his desk. “I’d say your answers do you credit as a knight. I am curious, though. How did you know Stu was in distress? I’m told the ensorcelled children like him appear normal to the passing observer.”

“Perhaps,” Cassie said as she made herself comfortable in her chair. “But he didn’t sound normal to a stone singer.”

Both Brandon and Avery raised their eyebrows. Avery presumably in surprise that she was a stone singer and Brandon that she so easily revealed that fact. Avery set his candle on the corner of the desk and inspected Cassie with more care. “That’s a rare gift, Ms. Fairchild. If its not prying too much into your secrets may I ask in what way you determined something was wrong? Could you repeat it?”

“Every person has a melody to their life, sheriff.” Cassie hummed a few bars of slow, almost sleepy music. “That’s yours, for example. A thoughtful, deliberate tune to reflect a trained and careful mind. When a person is ensorcelled, their tune goes off key or, in extreme cases, it becomes dissonant.”

“That’s the only thing such a sound could indicate?” Warwick asked.

“It could be several other things. But Stewart wasn’t off key at all. He wasn’t even making music. All I could hear was a single note, sustained indefinitely, as if the melody of his life had shrunk into a single, constant scream. I knew we couldn’t ignore that. Unfortunately I’ve never heard anything like that before so I can’t guess whether other people will be the same under the influence of the same magic.”

“Well, your actions are commendable although it’d be better if we knew you could repeat it.” Avery steepled his fingers and studied Cassie in the same way senior knights from Avalon would. Like a new variable on the battlefield. “How did you go about breaking Stu’s enchantment?”

“I just sang a tune.” Cassie smiled her most disarming smile, the kind that kept their father wrapped around her finger. “Everyone has a tune they’re supposed to sing. If they lose track of it often the best way to help them is to sing your own song with them until they find their own again.”

Avery’s lips pursed like he’d just eaten something sour. “That seems a bit simplistic.”

“Simple, perhaps, but not easy to do, even if you know what you’re doing.”

“I suppose.” Avery rose and paced along the side of the building. “Well, it is good that Stu is safe and if you’re willing to help free the other two children that were taken with him I and their parents would be very grateful. But I am curious. You said you were here on errantry, Sir Fairchild. May I ask the nature of your quest?”

Brandon laughed. “You’ll find it ridiculous, I’m sure.”

“No more so than anything else in the Columbian West, I’d say.” Warwick gave them an inscrutable look. “So what is it?”

“The Secret of Steel. What else?”

Avery’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Really? I’d heard Stonehenge still searched for that bit of myth from time to time but why come here? The Sanna aren’t known for their metallurgy. The Hispaniola that rule Tetzlan guard the local magic jealously…”

“Technically we’ve been tasked with retrieving some of the Founder’s writings that came over with the first round of Knights that Avalon sent during the Sanna wars. Pellinor’s Journals, The Archives of the du Lac Lineage. But,” Brandon gestured to his sister, “technically it’s her quest. When she came of age she heard the call and the Founders decided to send her here. As far as I know Stonehenge has never sent a stone singer to this place on this quest so I think they were hoping she’d hear something new.”

Avery returned to his spot on the desk, his attitude curious now. “Have you had any luck?”

“We’ve heard a… name?” Cassie put a note of uncertainty in it. “Perhaps a title? Supposedly there’s a man in brown who carries a sword of steel and is called The Strongest Man in the World. Have you heard of him?”

“Yes, the Hodekkian,” Warwick mused. “He knew Jonathan Riker somehow, came to the dedication of his statue. He carried one of the curved swords their people favor at the time. A tachi, I think it’s called? He never drew it, though, so I assumed it was bronze like any other.”

“We’ve heard its a silvery metal that isn’t aluminum,” Brandon said. “It’s not much to go on but it’s a start.”

Avery frowned. “But he’s not here in the Cove. Believe me, I’d know if he was.”

“No, we haven’t heard that,” Cassie put in. “We came because we heard the sheriff’s deputy was also a knight from Morainhenge. We hoped he might know the fate of the henge’s relics. When we arrived we were told the sheriff had no deputy so we thought the man had moved on. Turns out he was just promoted.”

“As you say,” Warwick agreed. “Unfortunately I can’t help you. The Master did empty the Reliquary before Morainhenge fell but he didn’t pass them out to the standing knights. He gave them all to the assistant master and told him to find new, worthy guardians for them. I clearly wasn’t one of the worthies. I’ve heard rumors about Assistant Master Oldfathers in the years since but I’ve never seen him in person.”

Brandon sighed. “Well, don’t feel too put out. We’ve heard variations on that story at least a dozen times in the last year and a half. As near as we can tell only one Morainhenge knight was chosen by one of your relics. Very strange.”

“Oh?” Warwick’s brows shot up again. “Who’s that, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“A knight of the First Circle, very green at the time of the Lakeshire War, apparently.” Brandon drummed his finger, trying to dredge up the right name. “Was it Nat Thorton?”

“No,” Cassie said. “Nat was the one who survived. The one who received it first was Cole Thurmond. Nat was his squire for most of the war. When the assistant master brought Cole the Bedrock Shackles after the war they found both were able to wield them.”

“That’s right,” Brandon remembered it clearly now. “But Nat told us Sir Thurmond died running down the leader of a rogue Sanna warband about three years ago and the relic passed to Nat.”

Avery nodded. “I remember Thurmond and Thorton. They were good men, although not very remarkable from what I remember. I suppose time changes us all.”

“I suppose so.” Brandon got to his feet and reached down to help Cassie up. “Well, we will keep looking. Do you think we can be of help with the other children missing from the town?”

“Perhaps.” Avery studied Brandon for a moment. “Although I’m not sure if you’re quite up for dangerous work just yet. What happened to your leg?”

Brandon hadn’t thought he’d been favoring it that much but the sheriff must have noticed. “I injured it fighting some gold drinkers a few weeks ago. The Hearth Keepers have done their best but its not back to normal yet.” He wiggled his foot back and forth. “It’s useful for day to day work and if things turn bad, well, I cultivate the yew so I think I can compensate for it. I don’t expect a few ensorcelled children to be that dangerous.”

“So Roy Harper didn’t tell you to expect danger?”

Brandon suppressed a sigh. He’d hoped all the talk about errantry and relics might sidetrack the sheriff. Clearly the man knew his work better than that. When they’d first arrived in town Brandon and Cassie had discussed how to answer the sheriff if he asked them whether they knew Harper directly. Both of them had hoped it wouldn’t be necessary, given the circumstances.

“All we knew is that he left a note saying he had personal business in Riker’s Cove,” Cassie said. “He invited us to join him if we had no other leads to follow up.”

Avery tilted his head. “He left you a note? When was this?”

“About a week ago, according to the date,” Braondon said. “We met Mr. Harper in his capacity as a Railway Detective about three months ago. He offered his home in Keegan’s Bluff as a base of operations for our search. Since then we’ve spent much of our time traveling across the West and so has Mr. Harper. We’re rarely at Oakhart Manor at the same time so we leave messages for each other with Mr. and Mrs. Gardener who watch the house when Mr. Harper is away.”

“And he left you a note about Heinrich von Nighburg?”

“No, as I said he mentioned personal business here and that he’d heard there was an old knight from Morainhenge here. I’m not familiar with the man you name.”

Avery’s eyes narrowed. “He’s responsible for kidnapping Stu Strathmore and the other missing children. Do you often coordinate your work with Harper’s?”

Cassie shook her head. “Mr. Harper supports our quest and lets us know when he hears things that might help us but we only coordinate with him when Brandon’s sense of chivalry drives him to meddle, like with those gold drinkers.”

“Yes, that happens.” Brandon managed not to roll his eyes as he said it but it was a near thing.

“How was it that you wound up on the same train as his friend van der Klein?”

“Mr. Harper suggested we travel with him in his note,” Cassie said. “I suspect it was an offer made for our convenience. He tends to be very considerate of our traveling needs, seems to think it’s his duty as a host.”

“That’s commendable of him.” Warwick grunted and folded his arms over his chest. “He didn’t mention having a stone singer as a resource.”

“Of course not,” Brandon snapped. “He doesn’t speak for my sister or I and he wouldn’t presume to.”

Avery sat a little straighter, looking chagrined. “Of course not.”

“Would it changed your decision to have him leave town?” Cassie asked.

“Not really.” Avery took his thistledown candle and removed it from its base, carefully reforming the still soft wax with his fingers as he spoke. “The fact is I don’t trust firespinners to consider the good of the town first. Just having another ally with unusual talents doesn’t change that equation in a meaningful way. The fact that he was in the Regulars doesn’t help.”

“How did you know he was in the Army?” Brandon asked. “I was under the impression it was rare for people who lived this far West.”

“On the contrary! I’d guess old Regulars are more common out here than in the East these days.” Avery shrugged. “Jonathan Riker ran here to escape the war before it started. Many, myself included, came here after to escape its ghosts. But to answer your question, I knew Harper was from the 43rd Infantry because most people who know about firespinners know that. He’s actually rather famous in these parts.”

Cassie got up and took Warwick’s candle off the desk and held it for him as he worked the wax drippings into it. “So you disliked him because you were at odds during the war?”

“Plenty of Lakeshire born firespinners out here, ma’am.” Avery took the candle from her and held it up for inspection. Cassie favored him with another winsome smile. “Though I suppose the old loyalties did play some factor in my decision.”

She nodded in understanding. “And now that you know there is another druid vouching for him, does that change your opinion of him?”

The sheriff gave her a sharp look. “I thought I was the one who looked into minds.”

“That’s you, certainly,” Cassie said gravely. “But I can hear a great deal that people leave unsaid and often that’s what’s most important. So how is it, Sir Warwick? Will you let the two of us, Mr. Harper and his friends help you save these children?”

Warwick stared at his candle for a long time then sighed and set it down on his desk. “Alright, Miss Fairchild. You’ve got a deal.”