A few hours later the sun warmed the edge of the horizon. The dim waters lightened and settled into a calm like glass.
Glim saw a dock on the shore and headed towards it. He berthed the canoe in the shallow flats. Gerard helped him carry it onto the bank. As the other canoe joined them, Gerard and the others checked and found but one meal left in their packs.
Glim watched Lhani closely. She shrugged, dismissing the significance of their dwindling provisions.
“You mustn't think that way,” he said silently, for her ears alone.
Glim didn't know what she was thinking, precisely, but he had a general idea, because it was in his mind also: We won't need another meal anyway. Somehow her apathy frustrated him. Hypocritical, to be sure.
“Certe’s affliction drives our thoughts in a downward spiral. Cast out those thoughts! The future is not set!”
He watched Lhani until she nodded. Glim came aware of other eyes on him, who’d been watching their silent exchange. Arrad and Tomyko looked at each other with raised brows.
Tomyko cleared his throat. “What has happened, Gerard?”
“Your sister saw into Glim's mind. It has stolen her voice as surely as if she had seen the thing herself.”
Arrad's brow wrinkled as he looked at his sister. “Is this true, Lhani?”
She nodded. Glim shot Arrad a warning glance, as effective as an arrow made out of straw: Don't drive her thoughts that way! But of course, Arrad could not hear him.
Tomyko frowned. “How will we warn Hammerfall if we don't know what to warn them against?”
“We can do only our best.” Gerard shouldered his pack and walked into the town, which grew clearer in the waxing dawn. “Awake, Hammerfall! Awake!”
The brothers took up the call and people trickled from their homes, groggy and irritated. A burly man arrived bearing a sword. His nearly bald head bore many scars.
“What is the trouble? Are you injured?”
Gerard cleared his throat and raised his voice.
“Forgive me for waking you. I do it to spare your lives. A storm comes. A summer storm unlike any I have seen.”
This got their attention. The elders looked at each other with knowing glances and began chattering to each other. Some of the children looked excited. Gerard hushed them.
“People of Hammerfall! This is no mere storm. It has a will behind it. This lad here has lost his home to it. Yet the storm rages unabated, and comes this way. We know only that at its heart lies the Eye of Algidon.”
Gerard had the people hanging on his every word up until that point, but his last statement drew groans and eye rolls. They’d seen their fair share of charlatans before. Why, Glim did not know. He’d never been this far south before. But he recognized their look of incredulity. Perhaps the people of Hammerfall were about to turn them all away. Or maybe something more physical than that.
Glim did not give them time. They needed to know the power that pursued them. He leapt into the center of the crowd, glared at them, and launched three massive ice shards. The missiles lanced into the sky, then came whistling back towards Æronthrall. The people screamed as the ground shattered under the impact of the shards.
Glim saw the utter disbelief, and fear, on the faces of his companions. He tried not to let it bother him. But he knew they would never view him as a person again.
They had a point.
The people of Hammerfall ran, but a few held back.
“How long do we have?” said the burly man with the sword.
Glim looked at the brightening horizon. Darkness blighted it in a way that that could easily be mistaken for a bank of cloud. He pointed at the shards of ice in the ground, then pointed at the darkness and brought his hands together with a resounding clap.
“Why Hammerfall?”
An old woman shuffled forward. Her body seemed frail, but her eyes were clear within her cowl. A medallion hung from her neck, just visible inside her gray cloak. Glim recognized a triangle within a circle, with wavy lines about.
The same symbol worn by Ryn.
Ryn. The “gardener” he’d trusted his innocence to. Until three of these “gardeners” had run off with Master Willow and left Wohn-Grab to its destruction. Until even more of them had swarmed him in a dell and died at his hands.
Glim closed his eyes and winced. His hand found the hilt of his sword. He didn’t know who this woman was. Only that she was one of those snakes who’d colluded with Master Willow.
You’ll pay for this, Glim thought, keeping his eyes shut tight. All of the fury of all of the dead, and the long years of suffering, coalesced into a white hot point of rage. At last, one stood to face what her sisters had wrought.
The woman stood firm. Glim heard her voice once more. “Perhaps Algidon seeks something that can only be found here. Perhaps his will can nae be wrested.”
Glim took a breath, remembering Ryn’s laughter, and how fiercely she’d rattled his comfort level. This woman’s calm voice had the same effect. Tentatively, Glim opened his eyes just a hair. Though the blur of his eyelashes, not trusting his own actions, he watched the scene unfold.
Arrad looked at the woman as though she were mad, but Lhani nodded as though her words were perfectly reasonable. Dread blossomed in Arrad's eyes when he saw his sister’s reaction.
“You mean that Algidon himself comes?”
Lhani nodded again. She held her hand at head height, then lowered it a few inches off the ground and put her other hand as high as she could reach.
The old woman watched closely. She cried out fell back, clutching her breast.
“Why do you not speak?”
At her words, Glim’s eyes flew open. His sword rang free of its sheath. He held the sword at the woman’s throat. Preparing to strike, Glim paused at the abject fear in the woman’s face. Not fear of his sword, which she ignored.
Fear of him.
She grabbed her pendant and kissed it with trembling lips.
“Your eye. You bear the eye of Certe. You… You are the candle. You speak only breath?”
Fear trickled within Glim. What did this woman know about him? But he hadn't a voice to ask her. The woman took Glim's hands and a tear streaked down her face.
“I thought I was going to live the rest of my natural life. Alas! It is not to be. Caeorn! Sheathe your sword.”
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The burly man who’d greeted them sheathed his scimitar.
“And you?” she asked Glim. Reluctantly, he sheathed his sword.
She led Glim to the town circle. Hammerfall resembled Hiehaven in many ways. Lodges of log and thatch surrounded stonework ovens, long tables, and a handful of trading posts and alchemical shops. But Hammerfall distinguished itself by an Elderkin tower at the center of the town; a black pillar that towered far above the buildings. Its glossy stone composition reminded Glim of the cavern walls beneath the ancient tower. The pillar spired from the bedrock of Æronthrall itself. Ornately carved with concentric rings at its base, a graceful narrow curve at its middle, and a flare at the top with more rings and a starburst of nubs. A word etched in quicksilver ran up one side of the pillar, and another word ran down, but Glim could not decipher the script.
As they walked, the woman talked to them, hurried, as though trying to cram a lifetime of lore into a few minutes.
“You are here, so it has begun. He” – she jerked her head at Glim – “has awakened Algidon.”
The others glared at Glim, but the woman shushed them.
“Oh, cut that out. Do you think he did it intentionally? Or even accidentally? Start blaming each other and you might as well lie down in the dirt and wait for Algidon to trample you. And he will.”
“What is Algidon?” Gerard asked.
“Something you cannot hope to destroy. Stay out of his path. Ah, here we are.”
Glim walked around the base of the tower, searching for some clue as to what the woman wanted to show him. He squinted at the cap of the tower against the darkening gray of the sky. Storm clouds swirled. A wind picked up around them.
“We must hurry!” The woman threw back her cowl. Her white hair whipped in the breeze. “Æolia seeks us even now! Stay back! Get ye back!”
She straightened and Glim found her less frail than she let on. Her eyes flashed warning and she drove him back with the force of her will. She pulled the medallion from her breast and lifted it high, chanting words he could not comprehend.
Æronthrall trembled. The lodges listed, then buckled. The tower vibrated so violently that the ground at its base loosened and it started to sink. The old woman leapt onto the obsidian pillar and wrapped her arms around it. A sinkhole formed and the ground sloughed into the hole.
Glim realized that the tower wasn't falling, but shrinking. It took him longer to realize that it wasn't a tower at all, but a hammer. He saw it in the bottom of the hole left behind from the shrinking tower, laying next to the woman who had summoned the transformation. At great cost to herself.
Glim clambered down into the bottom of the cavernous pit. His companions followed. The smell of damp soil and the acrid tang of crushed stone filled his nose. The old woman stirred at his approach and looked around with clouded eyes. She smiled at him through teeth stained red.
She wheezed and looked at Gerard.
“What is the lad's name? I would know it before I pass.”
“His name is Glim.”
Gerard's reply amused the woman, who laughed until blood flecked her chin.
“Why did your words disturb him so? What lore were you quoting?”
“It is called The Candle Proclamation.” She settled herself then quoted lore Glim already partially knew, though recent events had given him new insights:
A candle raised in frost's breath,
bearing the eye of Algidon,
shall wake the Fathers.
A candle drawn to frost
draws frost's first breath,
bearing the eye of Algidon
to the eye of Algidon.
A candle flickers in frost's first breath.
The eye of Algidon
meets the eye of Algidon.
The candle speaks only breath.
A candle awakens the unhearing.
The unhearing flee.
Candle flees the flight of the unhearing.
Candle burns bright.
The unhearing hear no more.
Children find the candle.
The candle speaks only breath.
The children hear and wail.
The hammer unfalls.
Each sentence drew more of her failing breath. Glim bent to pick up the hammer, but the woman stopped him with a raised hand. She pointed a trembling finger at Arrad.
“If Algidon... gets the hammer... Æronthrall is lost. Seek the sickle.... and the sling.” She coughed, staining her tunic with blood. With a shuddering breath, she spoke once more. “At least I die fulfilled.” Her arm fell, still pointing at Arrad, and her eyes closed.
Glim stared at the pale boy with colorless hair and stubborn blue eyes. Arrad was no pushover, neither physically nor verbally, but Glim scrutinized him now as never before. Why Arrad? Why had the woman insisted he receive the hammer?
If Arrad wondered the same thing, Glim could not tell. Arrad reached into the dirt and grabbed the hammer. Its handle went into a block of black stone crisscrossed with silver etchings. The ends of the block tapered and flared into rounded heads, also with silver etchings on their sides. The raw faces of the hammer were dappled as if through aeons of pounding. They looked like dirt that had been trampled by many feet until the clay beneath shined like glass.
The hammer seemed like it would be far too heavy for Arrad to bear. But he lifted it easily. Arrad's composure impressed Glim.
Lhani shook Glim. She hissed into his ear, which none but him could hear.
“We must get Arrad away from here! Algidon comes even now for this hammer!”
Arrad answered her.
“You are right, Lhani. We must get this hammer away. I have no wish to meet Algidon.”
Tomyko started, looking around in confusion. “Lhani has said nothing, Arrad. She cannot speak.”
Arrad's smile held no mirth. He held Glim's gaze as he replied to his brother.
“Perhaps you cannot hear. But my ears are unplugged.”
Glim detected an odd tenor in Arrad's voice. Arrad touched his sister on the back and looked at her with something like sympathy, though an unwholesome incarnation of sympathy. At first she seemed warmed by his touch and grateful for his concern. But that touch lingered overlong, and Lhani moved away with a look of faint disgust on her face which she quickly shrugged off. Glim resolved to keep an eye on Arrad.
“We must get her out!” Tomyko tried to lift the dead woman onto his shoulders, but Arrad stopped him with a cold look.
“We cannot afford the time, brother.”
The group clawed their way out of the sinkhole to find townspeople milling about in confusion and horror. Gerard went to the swordsman who had first greeted them, who introduced himself as Caeorn.
“I gauge you a seafarer, are you not?” Gerard asked.
“Aye, I have seen a fair bit of the seas.”
“Do you care for this town? Have you family here?”
“Never thought I would set roots. It sneaks up on you.”
“Then I have a proposition. A fair trade, I think you'll find. Provide us with a map of Æronthrall, a week's provisions, and passage to Peakseye. Now—as quickly as you can untether your ship.”
“What do I get out of the deal?”
“We will take this hammer away and never return. My guess is that the storm will pass your loved ones by in pursuit of it.”
“Where does that leave you lot?”
Gerard sighed. “Hunted.”