The two half sped walked, half jogged wrist in hand as they hurried toward the wharves. Geoff pulled Sammy down one of the wooden roads to the left of those that got closest to the island.

“I have a small skiff we can use,” the old sailor explained as he shot a quick glance behind him at Sammy. “Be ready though. The gulls don’t like people going out to the harbor’s sentry, what they call that lighthouse, so they’re going to be wanting to ask questions when you’re done.”

“No problem,” Sammy said, not adding aloud the thought, I’m really good at escaping from those kinds of nuisances.

Sammy clambered into the small sail boat and sat in the seat Geoff pointed out to her. The old man ran through several checks, but then the sail unfurled and the skiff shot away from the wharf as if alive.

Sammy gulped nervously. She had never been on a boat in her whole life, not even when her parents had still been alive. A dolphin arced out of the water a short distance from the skiff. A moment later, others cleared the water, their strange musical language singing over the entire harbor.

A porpoise sailed clear over the boat, a moment later five more traced arcs of water in a synchronized formation.

“Ahh,” Sammy cried out, drenched in an instant.

A short distance away, several massive heads rose high enough to clear enormous eyes above the surface. Those eyes stared with power at Sammy. The heads lowered back into the water, waves jerking the skiff and throwing the land lubber around without mercy.

All in all, the ride lasted only a few minutes and Geoff somehow managed to glide up to the island’s landing without any trouble, quickly jumping onto the dock and securing the boat with ropes. Still, Sammy swore she would remember that short boat ride till the day she died.

“I’m soaked,” she complained as she accepted Geoff’s offered hand and climbed out of the boat.

“They seem to like you, lass.”

Sammy sighed with a glance at the water. They were still singing for her to play with them. The distant wharves attracted her eye as a lot of people had gathered on them, all of whom were looking her way.

“Dag nab it,” she said, quickly turning away.

“What?” Geoff said, but after tracing where the child had been looking, he chuckled. “Suppose that was fun to watch from over there.”

“Let’s hurry before someone comes. Oh.” Sammy turned back to the water and called out, “Hey, can you guys keep anyone from interrupting me? Don’t hurt them though. Just keep them away please.”

A rambunctious cacophony of chirps and song said they could and would. Then at the end of the song, “Come play with us.

Sammy sighed, but then grinned. This could actually work for her. “When I finish here, I will come play.” Her eyes narrowed as she added, “But I better not drown.”

The sea answered with music and laughter.

Sammy let out an even bigger sigh as she hurried up the short path of stairs leading up to the island’s lighthouse. She walked its circumference, her hand dragging along the white stone. Glyph lines took on the light of life at her touch. Soon, the entire outer surface of the tall, white structure glowed with glyph power.

Sammy stood at the top of the stairs leading up to the lighthouse’s base. No door was apparent, but as she reached out to touch the whitewashed wall, the outline of a doorway formed. A moment later the stone moved, a passage opening before her.

“That is so cool,” Sammy said. She really wanted to know how to make that kind of glyph magic. She really, really wanted to know. “Dag nab it,” she muttered.

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The arch duchess strode through the opening, which led to an empty room and a circular staircase. Without waiting, Sammy began climbing. It took some time, but she finally reached the top. “Not even one landing to rest on,” she mutter-complained to herself. Just like the wall’s lighthouse, this one had a pillar and orb setup, with a large set of seven mirrors on one side, though everything was a little smaller.

Sammy walked around the large room looking out the windows. She could see most of the city from that high up. Down on the piers, the crowd had grown in size. As she watched, the back of the crowd separated for a small group of people. Sammy leaned against the window and looked more closely. Suddenly where she was looking magnified and she could see the small group in detail.

Sammy let out a little squeak of surprise, though because of the magical magnification or the fact that Dista and Jenna were in that group was hard to say. “Actually, we’ll just say both are worthy and leave it at that,” Sammy said, grinning suddenly. She hoped Dista tried to come over. Serve him right to get dunked and tossed onto the piers by those fishies.

The girl turned away from the view and leaned her back on the window that was also a wall. She stared at the pillar and orb until Geoff staggered into the room.

“You made it,” Sammy said, regarding the old man evenly. “Good job.”

“Th, thank you,” he wheezed back, his hands on his knees. “That be one atrocious climb.”

The girl grinned at him. “Not as bad a climb as some. Anyway, since you’re here now, I’ll begin some serious investigating.”

“You waited for me?”

“Of course.” She winked at him as she pushed off the window and approached the pillar and orb. “Whatever happens, it’s better to have a witness, right?’

“Um, thanks?”

Sammy laughed. “Okay, let’s see what my ghostly father friend has for us here.” So saying, she reached out and tapped one of the glyphs on the orb that seemed better to tap than any of the others.

Her finger touched the glyph and stuck to it. Flames erupted around Sammy and lines of power flowed out, bringing that one glyph to blazing life. It pulsed once, then twice, and finally a third time. In response to that third pulse, Sammy’s mark of nobility blazed in full glory, piercing through her clothes, dancing as wind in her hair, flaming in her eyes. Lightning arced from fingertip to fingertip, rippling and arcing against her skin.

Abruptly, the empowering light began jumping to other glyphs in an ever-spreading wave of visible power. The orb’s full composition blazed with life and light, and then that power once more leapt across the gap igniting the pillar, racing downwards to the floor, spreading and engulfing the windows. From the windows it covered the inner ceiling and flowed outside to cover the roof of the lighthouse and race down the wall to the tower’s very foundation. The light then rolled outwards to cover the entirety of the small island before bleeding into the harbor’s water.

A moment of time passed and then lines of power began racing up the lighthouses on the wall and cliff. Something visible in the distance through the harbor’s entrance, a navigational sea buoy, blazed to life. Then another and another flared as power raced across the ocean waters.

The glyphs on lighthouses down the coast and through the Trough flared with the light of power.

In the city, the glyphs on dead street lamps shown bright under the day’s sun.

The power raced up the city walls and jumped to the lights lining the roads beyond. Strings of dual road lamps flared as the power raced away from the city, raced to abandoned way stations on the ill-kept highways and byways. Raced to towns and villages whether abandoned or struggling with life. Raced to secluded forest groves, along dangerous cliffs and rivers, over mountains and hills, into dark valleys and burrowing deep into abandoned mines.

Sammy, in a moment of time, activated and empowered the entire system of lights and warnings set up by Count Iona over a long reign, and by his predecessors before him over an ancient bloodline. Cautionary lights to warn the people of danger. Navigational lights across oceans passages and along the passages of land. Mobile lights that lit the ever-moving boarders of their land contract. Lights guarding against foreign invasion and local peril. Sammy’s life, mingled with the land’s power, flamed in all and through all within that very moment in time.

As the flames erupted around Sammy, Geoff staggered backwards down several stairs. But then he stood his ground as both Sammy’s body and the whole beacon room blazed with glyph power. The power developed into a whirlwind in the enclosed room that buffeted the old man, staggering him against the wall where he clung for dear life.

The whirlwind expanded outside the room to engulf the lighthouse. Lightning arced away from that tower into the sky, though did not go so far as to touch the water. Anywhere Sammy’s power touched developed its own smaller dervish of wind and power.

And then the moment in time ended, Sammy's Contract Flame lit within its chosen housing. The power sank into itself, the light illuminating the glyph lines receding to nothing. In contrast however, the lamps and beacons, dead and dark a moment before, now shown bright and steady as they had been intended to do from the beginning.