Martios wanted to remain as quiet and inconspicuous as they could in reaching the island. The villagers here, they might be broken, beaten down, tired, old, but too much of their suspicion had already been roused with the death of Valerie Tuck, and the news of what had happened to Minerva and rcy. Already, as of mornings, so would find an excuse to linger outside the Night Fisher Inn, hoping for a glance of the strangers, and Minerva was plagued with questions about them. It would not do for them to see the strangers rowing out to the island, it would not do at all - tongues would wag and rumor would spread. No, if this were done, best that it were done quietly as possible.
And yet the need for a boat necessitated that they gain the suspicion of at least one other, for Ritter had no boat of his own and would need to borrow one so that Martios and Elyse might use it. And the way the innkeep handled this, Martios was not at all happy with. For a boat might have been borrowed from a fisherman with a pack of lies. And yet what Ritter chose to do instead was to borrow a boat from Finnel, and not by lies but by telling him exactly what their plans were.
The thin, broken man had already been in the common room when he and Elyse had woken, and he had greeted them both with a downcast deanor. He did not like outsiders knowing of the village’s sha either, and to Martios, this seed the most cruel thing of all. Finnel had not sinned, like the others in the village; the man had fled the service of the White Queen, and he had no reason to feel ashad. Yet he was as broken as the rest of them. It was not long, though, before Finnel’s silence and timidity turned into a crooked smile and glassy eyes and praise for what they were doing. On the one hand, if any deserved to know what their plans were, it might be Finnel, who had not shared in the sins of Silverfish, only to lose his son anyway upon his return. On the other hand, Martios did not know that the man could at all be trusted to keep what they were doing a secret. Worse still was that he seed to be under the delusion that his son might be saved.
“Oh, I know,” he said, still grasping Martios’ hand, having clutched it in a handshake upon greeting them and not letting it go. “I know. I know ‘tis not likely that he is to be returned to . But still, I think that it might be so. The Lady of Calm Waters, I have prayed to her on this, and she has told
that it might well be that I should see him again.”
Martios gave the man an amicable nod and extricated his fingers, and then glowered across the room at Ritter. The innkeep did not see him, setting out a large al as he was, or perhaps he was simply refusing to look. The innkeep’s objections to the whole plan had started once again when he learned that Elyse planned to go along, and had not stopped until the witch herself had told him to forego the nonsense. Minerva had co this morning too, to see them off, and along with her there was Finnel, Martios, Elyse and Ren. With enough people for one full table, it seed almost like a proper inn. One could even count Coxton, still locked down in the cellar.
The plan was this: They would depart in the middle of the day, when the fog was at its weakest. Thick mist, in fact, was the only thing that might have caused Martios to delay a day. If he could not see the mainland from the shores of the island, and vice versa, he would not go. But barring this, Finnel would row his boat to a shore from where the village was not visible, and they would sneak out of the village to et him there. On the shore of the mainland, both Ren and Minerva would take turns keeping a campfire burning all night to serve as a beacon for them. In the best case, they might not even need to be there long enough to burn more than a log or two. Just enough ti to kill a man and search his things.
“I should think we might be able to leave right from the middle of the village itself,” Elyse muttered, as she snuck a scrap of cheese off the table to Cecil. “We are doing them a service, are we not? I would not think any of them would object.”
Minerva had brought up this possibility as well, but Martios had rejected it out of hand. Folk could be very strange. Hopes raised and then dashed could quickly turn to violence against the ones who had raised them in the first place. It was a possibility that they might find his brother’s trail in the manor but then find themselves unable to kill Ezekiel. What might happen if they ca back to a village who they had promised to relieve of their curse, only to leave them? No, best to do this as secretly as possible. In fact, if all went as he wished it and they did manage to kill Ezekiel, the villagers would not even know of it until they had already moved on. Folk could be very strange indeed, and especially so when they had lived with the mories of the sort of terror and barbarism such as had been inflicted upon the people of Silverfish. There was no guarantee that everyone would react with gratitude. Ritter and Finnel had both wanted to wait by the campfire beacon for them, as well, but so wary was Martios of rousing suspicion that he said they should remain exactly where they usually were, Ritter in his inn and Finnel in his temple. Minerva, he had only agreed to because she had the excuse that she was usually out and about, foraging for her herbcraft.
The waiting was not long, but it was nerve-wracking. Martios tried to keep his confidence up about him, and to not think of the risk of death. To kill a glimrling really could be as easy as killing a blind man, only a blind man would not be able to slay you with a word if he sohow puzzled out that you were there. The day was fine, with the fog not so thick, and burned away mostly by mid-morning, and so they set out a bit earlier than they had intended to. They left in pairs, Finnel first, and then himself and Elyse, to be followed by Minerva and Ren a bit after, so that they would not head out all at once in a large group and draw attention to themselves.
When it ca ti for them to depart, Ritter had a brisk, businesslike handshake for him. The man was sore about the fact that he was not being taken along, especially now that he knew that Elyse was going to be going with him as well. He had accepted it, with the excuse that she was a witch and that two with the Art were better than one, but it was clear that the man still wished to go. It was a strange thing, or at least Martios thought so, to want to be the one to kill a forr friend, and yet rcenaries could have a strange sense of honor. And he thought he understood, in a way. For Elyse, though, the innkeep had a warm smile, and a gift of a honey cake wrapped in cloth. “Fortune smile upon you, and Desque and Karilail shelter you,” he said, ostensibly to the both of them, but he was looking mostly at the witch as he said it. “Co back to us alive, the both of you. I know you may not want the village to know of your deeds before you are gone, but I, at least, will have a feast for you upon your return.” Not for the first ti, Martios was grateful for Elyse’s charms, such as they were. He thought he had a much easier ti with Ritter than he might otherwise have, because of them.
And then, they were off.
The place where they had agreed to et Finnel, where they were to row out to the island, was the pine barrens where they had bathed, not so long ago. They knew their way there on their own, now. They took off out the back of the inn, to avoid the courtyard and the stares of the few curious folk there, and went out into the woods as quickly as they could. Their familiars followed discreetly, and joined with them after a ti; Flit flying down to ride on Martios’ shoulder, and Cecil’s paws soft as velvet even on a carpet of dried leaves, making not a sound.
“So,” Elyse said, as they made their way to the eting spot, once they were truly amongst the woods and the village had disappeared behind them, “Do you really suppose it will be so easy to kill Ezekiel?”
Martios looked down at the witch. She had brought with her the fae-stick that he had given her to hobble on, back when she had sprained her ankle while they were still journeying to Silverfish; she carried the knotted branch over her shoulder like a club. Blue ribbons adorned her long dark hair, which was looking much more well-combed than it had when he first t her, and she had gotten better at knotting the ribbons as well, though they were still haphazard. She looked forward as she walked, seeming uncaring, slight color in her cheeks, but she was afraid. He could see it in her unblinking stare, hear it in her voice that she had made sound just a touch too unconcerned.
It might have been a last opportunity to convince her that she ought to stay behind, but after so deliberation, he did not take it. He thought most likely that she would refuse him still, and it would be better to go into this in harmony than with an argunt. “I do,” he replied. “There were tis that my brother ca back where he could barely tell what was going on about him at all.” And thank rciful Fortune that he had never seen the world so crooked that he had tried to kill . “Even a wizard with all his wits about him might be struck down in ambush.” He touched his hand to the sword at his hip, and to the crossbow slung across his back. He might have wished for a larger one; his was good for hunting, but it was small and not so powerful at a distance. He knew the use of bow and sling as well, and had borrowed a sling from Ritter, and carried a pouch of heavy stones to use as bullets, but as far as bows went the innkeep had only had one which had not seen use in years and which would no longer shoot true.
He tried to keep his mind on the minutiae of his preparations, and to not think about his answer to the witch so much. He tried not to think about his dream. Tried not to think about whether it was a simple nightmare or whether it held so truth to it. It did not matter, either way. He could not shy away from this now. He had to find his brother’s trail. That pulled at him just as certainly as the Art itself had pulled him onto the road.
And that pull seed to reach through ti, to pull him along through that as well, so that the monts now seed to pass too quickly. They arrived at the eting place, and it seed only monts before they found Finnel approaching them along the banks of the river, his boat cutting a path through the mist that hung on the surface of the lake, his oars dipping quietly and smoothly into the waters. He greeted them with the sa enthusiasm he had earlier this morning, and stared in open wonder at their familiars. It was one thing for the man to know that they worked with the Art, he supposed, and another thing entirely to see with his own eyes the reality of that.
It was not long before Ren and Minerva arrived for the keeping of the fire-beacon, as well, and then, before he knew it, his fate gave him another tug, and it was ti for them to depart, ti for them to row to the island, ti for them to know their destiny.
“I will pray to the Lady of Calm Waters for your return,” Finnel told them, as they stood on the gentle shores of the lake, by the grounded rowboat. “She has told
that she will do what she can for you. She is just a little goddess, now, but she will do what she can.”
Who knew whether the man had honestly talked to so goddess or spirit of the lake, or whether he was simply mad, but Martios thanked him anyway. And then, while Minerva pulled Elyse aside to speak so quiet words to her, Martios spun at the touch of a hand on his shoulder, only to find himself face-to-face with Ren.
The thief seed somber, more serious than Martios had seen him before; it made his smooth, boyish face seem more adult. “Good luck, wizard,” the lad said in a low voice, grasping his hand, and then his blue eyes darted over to Elyse. “Take care of her, will you? See her safely back. It is a man’s duty to do so.”
Of course, the lad had eyes for Elyse. Martios had to suppress an urge to laugh. True, he himself had tried to convince the witch that it would be best to remain behind, but he had reasons of his own for this. Still, he could sympathize with Ren. Those who worked the Art gave up their customs, but they lingered, and he had been raised as such as well; to feel a responsibility for won and their safety, in this way. He wondered, though, what the witch might say if he told her this.
And then it was ti. Elyse sat in the rowboat, with Cecil by her feet, and Flit perching on her hair, and the sand of the shore crunched beneath his boots as he pushed the rowboat out, until the cold water of Nust Drim caught the edge of his pants and he hoisted himself in, and when the boat had settled rocking they were floating free.
He seized the oars to steady them, and turn them towards their destination, towards the island, and took one last look back towards the shore. Finnel and Minerva stood there, waving, the hope etched clearly on their faces, and for a mont, all other considerations aside, Martios hoped purely that he might deliver them from the curse, purely for its own sake. Ren did not wave, but rather crouched by the campfire, watching after them, staring.
He turned back, where Elyse sat across from him, rubbing Cecil’s shaggy stomach as he wed piteously on the floor of the rowboat. Behind her, the island and the manor lood.
He rowed.
===***===
It was not a far distance to go, and not long before they reached the island, Martios leaping out of the rowboat to ground it on a shore of coarse and rocky sand, behind an outcropping of brush. When he turned around to look, he could still easily see the campfire on the shore of the mainland, and could even make out the figures standing by it. They could still see him as well, he supposed, and likely still watched, as well.
They would not be able to watch for long, though. Here, the island sloped upward, quickly, into the cover of a dense forest. Ritter had directed them where best to land, and here a stone-paved path carved into the woods, overgrown now with grass and weeds between its flagstones but still serviceable. He and the witch followed this quickly, deep into the gray shadows of the autumn wood, and left the gently lapping waters of the lake behind.
They were silent, as they did so. Martios carried in his arms his crossbow, loaded with a bolt and ready to fire, as they moved through the woods. The most dangerous situation would be to stumble across the glimrling unawares right now, but this was unlikely. Even if the creature - for that was how Martios thought of it, now, not as a man, but a creature - even if it were not blind, glimrlings gave away their presence. Ezekiel had glowed like the moon when they had seen him, and a strange, chiming hum had carried to them across the waters of the lake, and such noise would warn them of his approach. They heard nothing of the sort now. Still, they sent their familiars ahead to scout; Cecil to prowl the woods and Flit into the sky, to tell them of anything unusual.
For even if they did not run across the glimrling now, their path was not free of danger. A wizard such as Ezekiel might have so manner of protection; sigils laid into the ground and disguised cleverly to catch the unwary foot. And so they advanced slowly, always careful of the ground before them, open to the Art that they might sense any subtle workings of it. Crows cawed raucously at them from the dead branches of the trees around them, and Martios wished that he knew the crow-speech, but even Flit did not know how to talk to them. It made him nervous. A crow had been Ezekiel’s familiar, or so Ritter had told him; but it had died long before they ca to Silverfish, felled by a bandit’s arrow, and the mage had never taken another familiar. Or, at least, so Ritter had said, but perhaps he would not know. And the blank, staring eyes of the blackbirds weighed down on him.
And the thorns were here, as well. The blackthorn vines which so plagued the mainland, the ones which Minerva had morbidly nad corpseblood, they choked the space between the trees, and curled around branches, and grew across their path, and Martios thought once again of his dream as he stepped over them.
The island was not large, though, and the path led directly to the manor, and so it was not long before its moss-covered walls were looming above them, above the trees. From a distance, it was hard to appreciate the enormity of the place. If the stories were true, it had not been made to be a fortress, but rather to impress a lover, and yet perhaps it was the Hallic style of thick walls that made it seem like one. They seed solemn and stern; mournful at having been forgotten and abandoned, with their windows bricked over.
It was then, when the shadows of the manor’s walls touched them, that they discovered their first oddity.
On the side of the path, a pyramid of bones had been erected, as if making a small shrine. Rib, leg and arm bones were stacked delicately, interlocking with each other, and the top was crowned with a circular arrangent of skulls - so raccoon, so bird, but most unsettlingly of all, three of which were human. Beyond being rely macabre, the shrine made them uneasy to look at – sothing about how the bones locked with each other did not seem natural. It did not seem right that a collection of bones so varied should fit in with each other so neatly. They could sense nothing of the Art about it, and so they passed on by, unconsciously giving it a wide berth.
Flit warned them of the next strangeness before they saw it, fluttering down from a treetop to chirp fiercely in Martim’s ear. The wizard's eyes widened to hear what his familiar was telling him, but he barely had ti to be surprised at the ssage. As they drew close to the manor, they saw that its thick walls enclosed a courtyard, much as the walls of the Night Fisher inn did, though this one was, of course, much larger than the inn’s had been. And right at the entrance to the courtyard, right across their path, was sothing very peculiar indeed.
It was a garden of skulls.
In the dirt that stood on either side of the path and in the path as well, as if they had sunk into the earth and stone itself, were nine skeletal corpses, many of them nothing more than yellowed skulls poking out above the leaves – though so had skeletal hands peeking out above the dirt as well, and one was buried only up to its chest, with his skull toppled forth to lie before him. Dark, empty sockets stared, still and silent. Martios told Elyse to stand back, and cautiously circled the area, giving the corpses a wide berth. The pale, cracked bone peeking out of the dark earth made him think absurdly of cabbages. This was sigil work, he was sure of it – but any evidence of the sigil once traced into the ground here had long since faded, its power gone. Cautiously, he stepped into the circle of corpses. When nothing happened, Elyse joined him. “What happened here?” she asked, wondrously, prodding at a skull with her foot.
“A sigil, if I had to guess,” Martios muttered, eyeing the bones. He rembered what Minerva had told them, about the folk who had co for vengeance against Ezekiel, Valerie Tuck among them. He supposed they had just discovered what had been their fate. “Any traces of the Art which was scribed in it are gone, but I don’t think it was ant to kill in itself. Perhaps only to trap those who approached within the earth. Though once that had happened...who knows what the glimrling saw when it looked at them. Or what it did.” He grimaced, crouching down to examine a skull. It bore thin, straight lines in the bone in a strange geotrical pattern, the unmistakable sign of a knife having been taken to it. The patterns looked familiar to what he had seen carved into Valerie Tuck’s face. He shuddered.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
The courtyard beyond would have been very grand, in its day. The stone paths wove through plots of apple trees, all planted in a row, small orchards, though they seed dead beyond what autumn would have made them, so collapsed or nothing but withered dry husks which the crows made their hos in. They were choked heavily by the blackthorns, and it seed they were being choked to death. In the center of the courtyard was a fountain, and in the middle of it, on a stone plinth, was a carved statue of the Lady of Calm Waters. The artisan who made it had been very skilled; her hair floated as if it was underwater, and every scale on her fish-tail had been finely carved. She had the features of a beautiful, even alluring woman, and she looked down on them with a small, kind smile. Martios hoped that Finnel had spoken true. She seed like the kind of goddess that would offer succor and protection, and he would like very much to have it.
Her beauty was marred, though, by long years of neglect. The water in her fountain’s basin had gone black and brackish, filled with layers of dead leaves. Reeds grew from it, and moss and lichen crawled over the statue and plinth both. Still, interestingly enough, they could both feel the very faint touch of the Art upon the fountain, so long faded that it could not be certain what it was ant to have done, but still there, like a flower which has wilted and dried but still kept its power. It had the touch of water-working upon it, and Martios supposed it may have once been enchanted to keep the water flowing and clean.
Past the courtyard and the smile of the Hallic goddess lay the front entrance to the manor, up a flight of crumbling stone steps, nothing but a gaping portal to darkness. Surely once doors had actually filled the entranceway, but they were gone now; robbed, or rotten, or perhaps chopped into kindling by so scavengers of this place long ago. Martios listened hard, standing by the entrance, but he could hear no sound of the glimrling, and see no light. He called for Flit in the whistles of bird-speech, and at his request his familiar fluttered into that darkness, the feather-soft whispers of his flapping wings echoing off the interior, and he returned after so ti saying that he had spotted nothing.
Unloading his crossbow and letting the tension go out of the string, Martios slung it over his shoulder and from his satchel produced two torches, and lit them with the Art. While he focused the fla, Elyse tried to speak to the trees here, but many were dead, and others in the sleep much like death that they would have for the winter. But just as he had both of the torches finally burning, the witch raised a cry, and he hurried to her to find her standing, befuddled, before a very odd tree. It was young, not yet rising above his head, but where the other trees here were either truly dead or leafbare for autumn, this one appeared to be healthy, thriving even. The thorns had not yet strangled it, and most peculiar of all were its leaves, which it had not yet shed at all and which were an almost startling shade of blue. This, however, compared not at all to what the witch told him.
“There is a child’s soul in this tree,” she said.
Martios very nearly dropped the torches he was holding. “What?”
“There is a child’s soul in this tree,” she repeated, and he saw that she was just as wide-eyed and shocked as he was. “Or, it is the only thing I can think of. It uses the tree-speech, but it does not speak as a tree would, does not speak of the things they would. It…it is hard to tell, because tree-speech is not made for saying such things, but I think that it is saying it is a child from the village. From Silverfish.”
“Can it give us a na?”
Elyse rely shook her head. “No. There is much that cannot be said in the speech of trees. Their words are made for the wind, made of the wind; they speak of the land, of seasons, of illness. It is a very rare tree that even knows what a na is, and the ones that do have a na, they are things that cannot be said. The feeling of what it is to have one’s middle branches weighed down by fierce winds, that might be a tree’s na.” She laid a pale hand on the odd tree, and shook her head. “This one, it aches to use the tree-tongue as a man might, but it cannot. It says that it ca across the waters, and that it is a human child. Of that at least I am certain. Trees do not have words for many animals, but they do have a word for us.”
Martios held the torches out away from him; the heat of them was beginning to make him sweat. Flit darted from his shoulder to settle brazenly in the branches of the young blue tree. “How strange,” he murmured, unable to take his eyes from it. Ezekiel must have done this, though he could not think of why, and it was no small work of the Art to make another take on a new shape, though the fae were rumored to be very adept at it. He could sense the traces of the Art here, now, though they were nearly gone - the working of this must have taken place long ago. “Can it tell us…anything else, really? Anything about Ezekiel? What happened to it? Are there any other children changed as it is?”
Elyse tried to put the questions to the tree, which to Martios rely seed as if she laid her hand upon the bark of it and closed her eyes. But after a while, she shook her head, and drew back. “It does not know what happened to it, or it does not know how to tell. And it has not seen any others. All I can tell for certain is that it says it has not been here for a very long ti. Less ti than it takes for all the seasons to change.”
“If it has been here for less than a year, then it must be Finnel’s child.” This was certainly a surprise. He would have never thought that the sad, emaciated worshiper of the Lady of Calm Waters might have been right that he would see his son again. Though he did not know if Finnel would be so glad to know his child was turned into a tree. “I wonder if this is what he’s done with all the children. Perhaps they are all trees now, and simply planted across the island.”
“One can hope,” said the witch. She frowned at Martios’ sharp glance. “What? ‘Tis not a bad life being a tree, I think. A long life of casting shade for travelers. And ‘tis better than what might have happened to them.”
She was right, he supposed. But the child-turned-tree unnerved him. What strange things must Ezekiel be seeing, that he would do such? Then again, he might be so far gone that he didn’t even know what it was that he did. He thought of Valerie Tuck’s face, and the runes carved there, and traced into the bones of the skulls they found in the corpse-garden. He doubted Ezekiel had known what exactly it was he was doing then, either. Glimrling that he was, he might do anything now.
Elyse offered the tree what little comfort she could give, and Martios handed her a torch. They returned to the manor’s entrance, and the yawning darkness that awaited them. To their familiars, they gave the task of scout and lookout. It seed likely to them that the glimrling may still make its ho within the manor itself, and if it were not within at the mont, now was an opportunity to set up an ambush for when it returned. Flit and Cecil would keep watch, ever from a distance, to see if they might spot the glimrling and whether it was headed towards them. Though even this made Martios uneasy. “Be very careful,” he told Flit, but he knew that the cardinal was too brave and too proud for its own good.
They stayed for a while, lingering, watching Cecil slip between the trees, watching Flit disappear into the sky. And then they made their way into the dark.
The interior of the manor was cold, dusty stone, and the entrance hall so vast that the light of their torch did not reach the walls when they stood in the center of it. The windows of the manor had been filled with brick, perhaps in an attempt to preserve what was within. The brickwork had crumbled away from one small window far above, and from the gap a single bar of white light stretched across the floor, catching the swirls of dust that their passage sent swirling through the air.
Any furniture or decoration that may have once been here had long since been taken, leaving nothing but the stone, or the occasional stain of rust where talwork had been, but there were still whispers of the makers of this place left behind. A grand staircase dominated the center of the entrance hall, and the walls were lined with long basins which may have once held water but were now bone-dry. In bas-relief, along one wall and above the basin, was carved the image of n aboard a fat ship with two broad sails, n who wore long, conical caps and full beards, while in the waters they sailed on, won with fish-tails swam alongside.
Carved on the other wall, a group of these sa n clutching spears and long shields faced off against another group of n, piken in long feathered hats. Between the two groups, one of the cone-capped n knelt before a king in long flowing robes and a high, pointed crown. And along the bottom of the carving were the words: THE N OF HALLIC NUST SWEAR FEALTY AND UNDYING LOYALTY TO THE AURELIC CROWN. Words in another script ran below this, but neither Martios or Elyse could read it - it was in another language, perhaps that which the Hallics had spoken long ago, before the Aurelics had conquered them and made their script the official one.
These stone carvings were well preserved, and might have been perfect, except for that soone or sothing had scratched out and carved away the faces of the Aurelic King and his piken.
“Who do you suppose did that?” Elyse asked, and her whisper, though low, seed to echo in the empty darkness around them.
“The Gully Man,” Martios whispered back to her, although he had no way of knowing. He only thought it might be so. When the Gully Man had brought forth his army of traitors against the Aurelic Crown, many of those who followed him had been servants of the nobles which pledged their allegiance to it, or so the stories went. And where you could find blasphemy against the rule of the Aurelics, even in the heart of their power where it should not be, there you felt the touch of the Gully Man.
The witch was staring wide-eyed at the relief, holding her torch close to it so that she might see more of the details, but this was not what they were here for. With a tug on her sleeve he pulled her away.
Ritter had told them of the space Ezekiel took up in the manor, and how to get there. They passed through what was likely once a kitchen, with its grand fireplace taking up most of one corner. Martios imagined that he could still sll the ashes from it as he passed it by, though he knew it was centuries dead. And past the kitchen were a set of narrow stairs into a cellar. As he stepped down these, holding his torch high, the witch behind him and peering over his shoulder, he could not help but rember Valerie Tuck’s cellar, the horror that had been waiting for him at the bottom of those steps, and the darkness he was descending into seed to grow.
But there was no mutilated madwoman waiting for them at the bottom of these steps, and the cellar here was much larger, ant for the storing of barrels of wine, not the goods of a farr. There were no barrels here any longer, nothing but empty stone walls, except that, in a corner, they found their first signs that Ezekiel actually lived here.
It was simple furnishings, just so bare wooden chairs arranged around a small table, such as a humble man might use to entertain guests. It lay nearby a larger iron bowl which served as a hearth, full of ashes and char which had been burnt not so long ago. And also a much fancier upholstered chair made from woolcloth, and draped over with a large wolf pelt. On its cushion lay a book bound in black leather. He held a torch up for light as Elyse delicately leafed through its densely-scribed pages, but the witch rely shook her head after a few monts. “I think it is a book of history,” she told him, as she took her own torch back. “I saw words speaking of a siege the Aurelics laid upon a place called the ‘City of Bells’, and other things I did not understand.”
She made to slip the book into his satchel, but he shook his head.. “Leave it be, for now,” he told her. “We do not want to disturb anything in such a way that it might throw off Ezekiel when he cos by here, if indeed he’d be able to tell.”
As Ritter had said, there ought to be another set of stairs in this room. Beneath the manor lay an extensive basent, half-cave, where they had uncovered ancient workings of the Art while laying the foundations for this place. But it was truly dark down here, now, where not even the light from an unblocked window might filter. And so he and Elyse split up to trace along the walls, to find where Ezekiel truly made his ho. And so it was that Martios stumbled across sothing that froze his blood.
In one lonely, cold corner of the cellar lay discarded children’s toys.
He stopped and stared at these. The orange torchlight revealed them, dancing fitfully over them in the dark. A blocky horse, clumsily carved from wood, and crudely painted. A doll made from stuffed burlap, with hair of rotting straw. A leather ball, and a pair of small wooden swords.
Uneasiness word its way through his stomach. He had heard the tale of what had happened to the children of Silverfish, and he had sympathy for them. But seeing these toys drove the reality ho. How awful it must have been for the children, to have been torn from their families by sothing they could not stop, frightened of every shadow, dood either way. It angered him to think of the Art used for such perverse purposes.
“Wizard!” Elyse called out from across the cellar. “Over here. I’ve found it.” Martios rely looked back at her, in her own island of torchlight across the room. “Wizard?”
He glanced back at the toys, and then tore his eyes away. “Coming.” He made his way over to the witch, to find her holding her torch over a small stairwell in the wall, down into a darkness even deeper than the one they already stood in, so black it nearly seed to bubble up out of the stairs.
“Did you see sothing?” she asked him quietly, as he stood staring down into that dark.
He glanced at her. Her eyes were very intent on his face. “Nothing,” he muttered. “Nothing important.”
He took a deep breath, as if readying himself to dive into cold waters. And then he stepped down, deeper, deeper into the dark.
===***===
Down here, they could feel the Art. They both could. The lingering taste of the Art, far more ancient than what had been used on the fountain in the manor’s courtyard. Their torches revealed what looked to be a cave system, stalactites brushing their head, in places joining together with stalagmites to form large pillars, and the Art seed to be in all of it, in the stone itself, lting, dripping away, seeping into the earth itself. They could not say what it was used to craft, not even the slightest guess. They could only say that it was old, extrely old. Not as old as the shattered one that Martios had talked to in Valerie Tuck’s well - that power, whatever it was, was born deeper in the depths of ti than Martios had ever conceived. But this was very, very old, and must have been crafted very, very strongly, for it to not have faded away entirely yet.
And, as they moved cautiously forward, they realized that this was not a cave. Could not be. It ran too straight, too long at the sa width the whole way through. It felt more like a hallway than a cave. There were so places where the cave walls were far too smooth, as if they had been carved, and it branched off far too regularly into smaller caves, each of which were just about the sa size. As if each was a room connecting to the hallway.
And beneath it all, beneath the intoxicating and alluring sense of the Art well-crafted and strong, there was sothing else that set them both on edge. The sense of a demon’s touch. Small and weak, and barely there, but well-settled into this place, like a faded stain that could never be fully washed clean. It was not here, not now, not waiting for them in the dark, but sothing had unmistakably made this place its ho.
“Perhaps Zeke truly was innocent,” Elyse murmured from sowhere behind him. “Perhaps whatever this demon was, it was this that took the children.”
Perhaps. But he did not think that a demon would turn a child into a tree. Even if it might, why would it have lived in the sa space as the glimrling? The more wicked in their strength a demon was, the stronger they might be sensed, the worse the stain they left behind on the world, and what he sensed here did not seem so large or powerful. Curious.
The sense of the Art grew stronger the further they went into the cave, strong enough that it began to seep into them. When the Art was strong in you, it could seize your heart, lift you, make you giddy, or so it was said. Martios could not let himself taste the joy of it here, though. He kept thinking of the sad pile of children’s toys, and it all felt befouled.
Eventually, they ca to where Ezekiel slept.
It was in one of the small caves which branched off the hallway, and modest. A simple, small bed lay in the corner, a mattress laid on top of a wooden fra and covered in woolen blankets. Martios could feel the working of the Art upon those blankets, a very familiar one - the sa which he used to keep his cloak warm, faded now, but worked enough that the threads had taken hold of it. A small lectern and a chair stood there, as well, made of dark polished wood, and a sheaf of papers lay on the lectern’s shelf.
Martios leafed through these, quickly, torchlight dancing over the pages. It appeared to be a treatise on the Art. Curiously, many of the pages seed to be pure gibberish. Not even words, rely gibberish - chaotic scribblings. Though, as he looked at them, he wondered if they might be in another language. Many of the patterns repeated themselves. If they were, they were in no language he knew, using no alphabet he had ever seen. Stranger still, though, was that he could read the pages on top - it was as if the language it was being written in changed partway through. He briefly read through the earliest words.
“THE FUNDANTAL TETRAD or the GOD’S TETRAD is the Mind, Body, Spirit and Soul. It is the general architecture of what makes up the SELF. Of those who work the Art, many are ignorant of this architecture, and its vital importance in so of the crafts they attempt. Those who wound themselves in the working of our craft are often victims of this ignorance. Injuries to the Body are obvious enough, but there are injuries to the Mind, Spirit and Soul done as well. Those struck senseless or afflicted by moroseness or lancholy have wounded themselves in this way. Knowledge of the TETRAD is of particular importance when traveling OUTSIDE. One must align and attune the SELF with the place one travels to, or they risk the destruction of more than rely their Body, but the mutilation of their Soul.”
It went on like this for so ti; the script was very dense. And it was not much further in that it beca complicated; like many wizards, Ezekiel had his own style of notation, and what he wrote was nearly indecipherable unless you took the ti to learn it, which Maritos did not have.
“Very interesting,” Elyse said. She had crowded next to him so that she might read along as well, and he quickly jerked his torch back before she could notice that the flas from it had scorched so of her hair. “But what is that ss on the back pages?”
“Yes, very interesting,” he agreed. He put the sheaf of papers back where it ca from for now. At any other mont, it would have been hard to contain his excitent. Such treatises were rare to co across, and a well-written one could be as useful to the learning of the Art as a good ntor might be. He would have spent all he had, down to the last tin penny, to get his hands on such a script, and considered it a good deal. But right now they were still in danger. “But I have no idea what’s wrong with the rest of the script. Perhaps when I read it, I will find the reason. But for now, let us move on.”
It was not much further down, however, that the hallway-cave ca to an end, in another small cave-room that jutted out from it. And it beca yet more obvious that once, this had not been a cave, for in here the rock was carved into the shape of steps descending into the earth. Rough stone still crawled over it, like mold grown onto the steps, but it was unmistakable that this was what they once had been. But as Martios lifted his torch over this, he saw that only a few steps down they descended into water, as if whatever lay below had been flooded. He could not help but feel disappointed. He could feel the Art there, beneath that water, and he glanced away, looking around futilely to see if there might be another way down, as if any way down would not be equally as flooded.
“Martim,” Elyse said, her voice hushed, strangled. He glanced at her, and she looked stricken, unable to look away from the stairwell. “Look. Look close. The water.”
Martios lifted his torch high, so that it might cast more light over the water. It was surprisingly clear. And the orange light of the torch, filtering down through the water that had drowned the stairwell, revealed…
Bones. A large pile of bones at the bottom of the stairwell. Small skulls – children’s skulls – dotted here and there amongst the pile, deep within the water, as the orange light of the torch danced lazily over them. Elyse put a hand to her mouth to muffle a string of curses as Martim shook his head and spat. It looked as if the glimrling hadn’t turned all the children into trees after all.
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