19. A MOST UNUSUAL WIZARD

“What’s a glimmerling?” Minerva asked, huffing, drawing her skirts up around her to travel quicker, as they began their walk back to the village. “I’ve never heard of one of those.”

“Neither have I,” Elyse murmured, and Martimeos could feel her eyes upon him, bright with moonlight, wondering, questioning.

Ritter, though, was quiet, waiting for an answer, simply staring at the wizard. Martimeos walked along, quickly making large strides along the path, lost in thought. A glimmerling; Ezekiel was a glimmerling. He had known it the moment he had seen the man walking upside-down, as he was, known it when he had heard that discordant hum carried to them across the wind. Finally, he spoke. “A glimmerling is...something that can happen when a wizard goes Outside, to another world, and...comes back the wrong way.”

They all digested his words for a moment, but he knew by their silence that he had not explained it well enough. “A passage to Outside….it isn’t just like a door, see,” he continued. He drew his sword halfway from its scabbard, and then slammed it home. “The blade, the sheathe is its home. It is shaped for it, it is where it belongs. Such it is with folk and their own world. When you come back, it’s like putting your sword in its sheath. You miss by a bit, and your sword is still going to be in the same general place it should be….but it’s still obviously wrong.”

“So are you saying he’s halfway Outside and halfway here?” Elyse asked cautiously, drawing confused and nervous glances from Minerva and Ritter. They did not like that even one of those who knew of the Art might be ignorant of this. Martimeos merely shook his head at her.

“No. He’s all the way here. He’s just here wrong.” He paused for a moment on their path, to look out at the island. No light shone there, now, other than the touch of the moon upon its dead trees and the flat stone of the manor. “And that can be very dangerous.”

He walked again, and fell silent once more, deep in his own thoughts, until he was pulled out of them again. “How is it dangerous, then?” Minerva asked him.

Martimeos puzzled over this for a bit, silent for long enough that Minerva actually asked the question of him again. “Think of it this way,” he said finally, though unsure of his words. “You can play your favorite song on the flute. fBut it’s going to sound very different if you play it on the harp, or the fiddle. And more different still, if you keep the tune, but change the strings.” This was drawing blank stares from Minerva and Ritter, though Elyse was nodding thoughtfully. “In the same way, when a glimmerling comes back wrong, it might see the world, changed just a bit from how it actually is. Perhaps the colors of it seem wrong, or perhaps it sees Or it might see the world entirely differently from the way we do. So much that it walks upside down. Or,” he added, after a moment, “kidnaps children without even knowing what it’s doing.”

Silence once more. “So,” Ritter said, and his voice was tired, tired with defeat, the defeat of someone who had known the truth long ago but could not help but hold out hope, who was now seeing that hope crushed. “So. It really was Ezekiel who was taking those children, is what you’re saying.”If you are telling the truth, but those words went unsaid.

Martimeos might have been of more even temper in another time, but he wanted away from these questions already, wanted the space to think his own thoughts on the matter. There was so much that this all changed. “I’m saying we don’t even know if that’s what he thinks he’s doing,” he replied, harshly. “But it would explain why he did it. Ezekiel could have thought he was hunting rabbits. Or fighting bandits. He might think he’s walking along a beach, picking up pretty seashells. But he’d actually be making children disappear.”

“But that’s awful,” Minerva gasped, short of breath in trying to keep up with Martimeos’ strides. “To do such terrible things and not even know you’re doing them.”

Elyse reached forward, and tugged on the wizard’s sleeve. He glanced down at her, frowning, then back at the two old folk falling behind, and slowed his pace. “It is terrible,” he agreed grimly, as Minerva caught up to him. “That is why glimmerlings are dangerous.” He was quiet for a moment, and then said, “Though this is not the only reason they are dangerous, and I cannot actually say for certain that it is down to him. Where a glimmerling is, there the path has been laid bare for other creatures from other worlds. He might have done nothing, and simply attracted a demon here which did the crime.”

“I know of a few demons who might be interested in children specifically,” Elyse muttered beneath her breath. “But I have not sensed them in this place.” Martimeos nodded at her. He had not sensed one, either, with the feeling the Art gave them for their presence, the feeling of something wrong and crooked with the world when a demon was nearby. And if one had been in this place for that long, taking children from about the town, then there should have been the feel of it, the stink of it all over the place. Though it was always a possibility. He would know better, once he actually made his way out to the manor. Truth be told, Martimeos did not think it was the case, but if Ritter wanted to chew on hope of Ezekiel’s innocence, why not give the man another avenue other than one that would place the blame at the feet of his brother?

But this thinking led Ritter to a thought that Martimeos had not expected, though perhaps he should have. “Can he be brought back?” Ritter asked quietly. He had stopped walking, and the others turned to him. There was an unmistakable note of longing in his voice.

“Ritter…” Minerva’s voice was gentle.

“You say he’s alive,” the innkeep went on, his voice growing stronger. His eyes, strong and clear, stared at Martimeos, and the wizard’s face, cloaked by the shadow of a branch, revealed nothing. “He’s alive, and might not even be the one who…who did all this, to the children…could we bring him back?”

And, finally, Martimeos saw Ritter for what he was. Not as a mercenary, not as a slave to the White Queen. Not as a potential danger, not as one whose beliefs must be managed delicately to steer clear of trouble. But simply as an old man. A tired, lonely old man.

He considered his answer, and whether or not to be perfectly honest. “No,” he said finally. “Once they are gone, there’s no coming back. The only answer is to kill him.”

“But what if ‘twas not Zeke who took those children?” Ritter protested. “We’d be killing him for no crime. Is there nothing that can be done?”

“There is nothing,” Martimeos replied with flat finality. “Even if Ezekiel were not responsible for the children directly, certainly his mere presence here was what spelled their doom, if he attracted a demon. And the longer he is here, the more he attracts attention. Eventually he might draw the eye of things that might do much worse than simply steal children. And think of more than the children; think to your own safety too. Glimmerlings are always dangerous. In the state he's in, Ezekiel might pluck off your head thinking he was merely picking a flower. No, he must die.” He moderated his tone, and he was surprised by the degree of honest sympathy that was in it. “Even if I thought it could be done, I don’t know that you’d want me to do it. I think a man might go mad, learning what he had done without even knowing. What he’d been responsible for.”

Ritter seemed taken aback by this, and for a moment there was a fire in him. He clenched his fist, and set his jaw like one looking for a fight, his face harsh and dangerous in the lamplight. But while the man may have been a soldier in his past, Martimeos was young, tall and broad-shouldered, and knowledgeable in the Art besides. He crossed his arms and stared back, wordlessly, at the innkeep. Ritter stepped back, and then age seemed to rush in on him. His shoulders slumped, and the anger bled out of him into the cold night. “Alright,” he said quietly, miserably, speaking into the night, speaking to everyone and no one at all. “You’re right. Of course. Alright.” It was impossible to tell in the dark, but Martimeos thought the man might be blushing, ashamed. Well, it was his own fault for acting a fool. Still, he had a little pity for the man.

“Men,” he heard Minerva murmuring disparagingly to herself.

The rest of their walk back to the village was in silence, then, and Martimeos fell deep into his own thoughts. A glimmerling. It explained much, but it set him ill-at-ease that one might be here. More so than he might be simply from knowing that such a dangerous creature was nearby. The forest passed him by as half-glimpsed shadow and cold silver moonlight. He barely noticed that they were back in the courtyard of the inn until Elyse tugged at his arm again, and he shook his head, staring around, half-surprised to find that they walked among buildings now instead of trees. “Hmm? Yes?”

“I asked if you planned to stand out here all night, wizard,” the witch said, giving him a bemused look. Minerva and Ritter still stood nearby as well, watching him carefully. “I think we’d all like to know, as well, what you plan to do now.”

“Oh.” Martimeos coughed for a moment, and then drew out his pipe. “Well,” he said, as he packed the bowl with a pinch of tobacco, “It seems clear to me. I told you I will be taking a visit to the manor. And if I can kill Ezekiel, I will.”

Minerva was glad to hear that, of course. Obviously she would be. She was disconcertingly like the shattered one, down in Valerie Tuck’s well, in that way. Martimeos did not like that the path he would take would so serve an Old Power. There is a risk in serving the dark powers, demons and powers of this earth alike, his last teacher had told him. Even in chance. They should love to tell you that you must do what you planned to do anyway. They can draw power from just the act of obedience. If Ezekiel had been the one to kidnap the children of Silverfish, if he had been the one Valerie Tuck wished for revenge against, then by killing him Martimeos would be doing just that.

Ritter was less enthused about this, though. “Zeke was a man of power,” the innkeep told him. “Not to insult you, of course, but he was much older and long-studied in the Art. Studied enough so that many came to visit him and learn from him. Could you do it?” The doubt in his voice was clear.

The bowl of his pipe flared into life as Martimeos puffed on it. “I think that I could,” he replied. “The fact that he is a glimmerling would make the task easier. A mage is still just a man, and a glimmerling a blind one. If he cannot see the world around him because his eyes see something else, a glimmerling might be killed as simply as walking up and putting your sword in him.” Doing so might be serving an Old Power, but he had seen enough. He must go to the manor to find his brother’s trail, and if he could put paid to Ezekiel while he was there, he would. He would not leave behind a glimmerling that would take more children, if he could help it. And not just for the children, but to free Ezekiel as well. No man, he thought, would want to live like that, as a monster, without even knowing it. This, Martimeos told himself. Except he knew it was all foolishness. I would have left tonight if I had been convinced no trace of my brother was to be found. “I will put him down, but in return I ask for the right to claim all that I might find there. No exceptions for sentimentality on your part or the part of anyone in the village, mind you. What I want from his home, no questions or protests.”

“Nothing comes to mind that people might want to keep of his,” Minerva replied, but her face was stern. “Other than…if you find the remains of…”

“I am not a ghoul. I should not want to keep those.”

Ritter was quiet, and then he touched the sword at his hip. “I should like to go with you, then,” he said, and there was steel in his voice. “If Zeke must die, then perhaps it would be fitting that I should be the one to put him down.”

The man might be old, Martimeos thought, but he was a former soldier, and he was not so old that he could not swing a sword. But to have him at his back? “I do not think so,” Martimeos told him, and raised a hand before the old man could protest. “For a glimmerling such as this, I think the matter is simple. Either we take him by surprise in ambush and kill him, or he will kill us with the Art, and it will not matter how many sword-arms we have with us. It will just mean more death.” Though that was not the only reason. His contempt for the innkeep had dulled - he could not really bring himself to say he hated Ritter - but Martimeos still did not trust the man fully. Especially not to put down what was left of his old friend. A moment of hesitation could spell death for them both. “If I do not survive, then I would say that you must flee the village with everyone who will go with you, and leave the rest behind. It is deadly to live next to a glimmerling.” Ritter’s face had turned sour as he talked, and the old man looked as if he were about to protest further, and so Martimeos added in, “You have been lucky so far.”

Ritter’s objections, whatever they might have been, were swept away by the outraged squawk this elicited from Minerva. “Lucky!” The old apothecary swore beneath her breath. “Lucky to have our children taken away! Lucky to have the ones who fled butchered!”

“Yes, lucky,” Martimeos replied, his voice harsh enough to make the old woman fall silent. “It could have been much, much worse. There are demons for whom your torment is sweet nectar, and other dark powers besides, woman. You might have begged for the mercy of death for them, instead. So you must leave if I do not come back. Or how long will it be before someone else like Finnel comes, ignorant of the curse, and another child’s death is on your hands?”

They stood in silence, for a time, in the dark before the inn. Through the window, the curious eyes of King, the inn's black cat, watched them, two green, wary dots in a patch of featureless black fur. The flame in the black iron lamp held by Ritter cast long, strange shadows into the cobblestone street, and Martimeos stayed staring at them, the embers in the bowl of his pipe glowing fiercely, plumes of smoke billowing from the corners of his mouth.

“When will you go?” Ritter asked, finally.

Martimeos bit down on the stem of his pipe hard, but he swallowed his anger and decided to ignore that they had not assured him of what he demanded. He blew smoke into the air, then coughed. “Tomorrow,” he said. “I intend to be done with my business tomorrow.” And done with this place. I will tarry here no longer once I’ve found my trail. “I will need a rowboat of my own.”

Elyse remained uncharacteristically quiet as Martim made plans with Minerva and Ritter, plucking at one of the sleeves of her robes, watching the conversation with large, curious eyes. The two villagers said their goodbyes, eventually, with Minerva going back now to her home and shop, and Ritter stepping inside the inn, but Martimeos did not join them. He drew his cloak about him, and stepped off into the night, looking down at the ground, his eyes not seeing her as she followed him, too wrapped in his own thoughts. He walked down the cobbled streets to the pier, where the moonlight reflected off the calm waters of the lake, ice just beginning to form at its banks, puffing still at his pipe, lost in thought. Elyse stood just a bit behind him as he blew smoke rings into the air and caught the silver moonlight much as the mist did, watching him as he stared out at Rook Island, out at the manor that squatted upon the hilltop there. Finally, she said, “Martimeos.”

Martim gave a small jump, then glanced backward at her, as if surprised to find she was here. He frowned as embers spilled out of the pipe in his surprise, and batted glowing orange crumbs away from his cloak in small showers of sparks. “You startled me,” he said, giving her an accusatory look, as if she had done anything other than simply walk behind him. “I thought you’d be in the inn. What is it?”

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She felt irritation flare inside her. What was it? He must have been being deliberately obtuse. “How is it that you know so much of these...glimmerlings?” she asked quietly. “I have never even heard of them. And my mother was no stranger to the Outside.”

“’Tis not so surprising. They are rare.” The wizard kept his tone light, but he was not looking at her. He was looking out across the lake again. “I simply got my hands on a book which spoke of them.” He truly must have been lost in thought, because the lie on his tongue could not have been more obvious. She ignored the voice in her head telling her to bite him, and instead reached out and pinched his arm, hard. He yelped, and then glared at her.

“You are lying to me,” she said softly, once she had his attention again. “Didn’t you ever learn not to lie to a witch?”

“Didn’t you ever learn not to draw the ire of a wizard?” he snapped in return, rubbing his arm.

Elyse laughed derisively at him. “Go on then, mighty wizard. Set me ablaze or make me vanish in a puff of smoke. Turn me to stone. Show me that wizard’s wrath.” Sometimes it seemed to her that Martim must lie or keep secrets on sheer general principle. And it plucked her ire now more than ever. And yet what reason do you have to spite him keeping secrets from you, a little voice inside her whispered. When you keep such important ones from him? She gave a start at that errant thought, and guilt nearly drowned her anger.

Martim did not notice her expression change, though. He hemmed and hawed, chewing on the stem of his pipe, staring at her. But eventually, his frown turned into a bashful grin. Look how he trusts you, the voice in Elyse’s head stabbed at her. More secrets you’ve wrestled from him, all while not giving up any of your own. “Alright,” he told her. “Just so you know, I was not lying about the book. But I have...seen a glimmerling before.”

Elyse tried to strangle the voice in her head, to stuff it back down into the dark back of her mind, where it could hide until later, until she tried to sleep, when it could come out with its sharp needles to poke at her skull. Martim did not mind telling her! He wanted to tell, look at that beautiful smile. Why should she mind that he spilled secrets when he wanted to spill them? “When?”

Something about his smile changed, and he seemed to look inward, quiet for a long moment. He glanced back towards the lake, thoughtfully watching some ripples spreading across its mirror-like surface from where some creature had disturbed it some distance out from the pier. He was strangely quiet, and Elyse had begun to wonder if he was actually going to answer her when he turned back to her and spoke again.

“My brother,” he said eventually, softly, “had a knack for stepping Outside. And sometimes he would come back as a…as a glimmerling.”

Elyse stared at him, not comprehending. “What do you mean? How did he do this?”

But Martim merely shrugged at her, and gave her an apologetic, sad smile. “I do not know. He never taught me the secret. But he could step through a door, and simply be gone, or sometimes simply go down a path some ways…I only know that he said it was possible so long as none watched him do it, though I could never understand the reasons he gave for why. He said that being watched pinned him to this world, somehow.” What he was saying was stunning. Was the wizard lying? Was he lying to her again…? But she did not think that he was. He was only watching her, the moon in his eyes, waiting to see what she said. But what he was saying was very, very strange indeed. He must have seen the skepticism in her face, because he gave a wry laugh. “Here I am, a fool giving my secrets up to a pretty girl, and she does not even believe me.”

But Elyse merely continued to stare.

Her mother had consorted with demons, and knew the summoning of them, and while Elyse had only ever assisted her mother in her dark rituals, she knew the doing of what it took to draw something from another world to this one. Where the world grew thin, you might step from one to another, if you knew how to see it; or to bring a demon to this world, you might offer up a sacrifice. To give up something from your world that the demon might understand, that it would consume in its crossing. But always was this done with great difficulty and danger, and never as a small or trivial matter, never as simple as walking through a door. “Where did he go…?” she asked.

“Many places.” Martim glanced back over his shoulder once more, and his hands dipped into his pocket to refill his pipe with tobacco. “Many places. Sometimes, he would speak of worlds that were close reflections of this one, with only small differences. An old barn that had remained standing against the test of time in our world might be collapsed in another. Others…” he fumbled a bit with his pipe, muttering under his breath. His hands seemed clumsy, and he did not continue until he had it firmly lit and was puffing away at it. “Others,” he said finally, “Others, he said, were stranger. Full of peoples who did not speak any language we knew. Some were simply empty.”

Stranger and stranger. She had heard of worlds such as these, in reading; she had read letters of witches and wizards who spoke of such things. The Land of Mirrors was meant to be another such world, a Land you looked into when you looked at your own reflection, and which was very similar to our own. But her mother, she had known of the demon worlds, where the Outsiders dwelt, from where dark powers came. Not of worlds which were so close to her own. “Did he ever take you with him?”

“No,” the wizard lied, but with much more skill than he had lied before. “I was much too young, before he left. He did not want to put me in danger. I merely waited for him in this world.” She was sure it was a lie, but she was in her guilt, and she let him have that one.

“And you say that he came back as…as these glimmerlings…?”

“He did, yes. But never as a very…crooked one,” the wizard added quickly. “If you understand my meaning. Perhaps how crooked you come back depends on the world which you visit. If it is very similar to ours, perhaps you cannot come back so crooked at all.” Elyse looked out, across the lake, at the manor, and he added, “Never…never like that. He was never so crooked that he hurt anyone. And we thought it harmless, because he knew how to fix it. He could make himself see the world right again.” She turned her attention back to the wizard as he stepped closer to her. He had lied, then, to Ritter, and with ease. A glimmerling might indeed be fixed. She wanted to think of this, but he held her eyes with his own, dark in the night and full of the moon, and he was close enough now that she had to look up to see his face. And there was something about him, and the night, and the dark of the forest which surrounded them, something was there that felt familiar, but she could not think of what it was, just at the edge of her thoughts..

“While he was a glimmerling,” the wizard went on, and it felt almost as if he were whispering in her ear rather than speaking to her, as if the night wrapped around them and left them alone, “he still saw the world as it was…mostly. He could only ever tell me what he saw. Sometimes he said the world was full of colors that he did not think he had ever seen. Sometimes he saw the dead walking among the living, and interacting with the world as if they still were alive. One time he came back and he said he could see, in the distance, a strange city, with thousands of lights everywhere, with towers of gleaming metal, impossibly tall. One time he came back and he said Flit spoke with my voice, and I with his.” Martimeos chuckled, lost in memory.

He did not know why he was telling this to the witch. He had never spoken of this to anyone. Normal folk would not understand, and any who practiced the Art would think he was lying. His last teacher, the gruff and drunken wizard who had come to Pike’s Green to teach him once his brother had left for the Queen’s War, even he had thought that Martimeos was lying at first, and Martimeos had nothing he could to do prove himself. His brother had taken his secrets with him away to the war. But some part of him wanted someone to know, wanted that it should be said, this thing, this marvel was done, and a part of him that flew with laughter through his blood said that this was a secret that should be told and believed. And he thought now that Elyse believed him. She looked up at him, silent in the dark, eyes wide with awe, and the laughing shadow in him said that was as it should be.

“Your brother must have been a most unusual wizard to travel so easily back and forth to the Outside,” she whispered to him.

He had been. He was. But he knew that was not right, no. No matter how grand it had been, when he was younger, to learn from his brother. “He was a fool.” Sighing, Martimeos stepped back from her, and all at once the laughter in his blood stopped. The witch shook her head, as if to clear it. It had been grand. The grand adventures of foolish and ignorant children. “We both were. We did not know the dangers. It...” he paused, blowing smoke, the clouds swirling into strange shapes in the pale moonlight. “We were lucky. The Traveling Folk came to our village, and carried with them a collection of books. One an Aurelic treatise on the Art, and the craft of crossing between worlds. Seldom-scribed, I am certain, and for many, forgotten, but my brother, he…purchased it, out of curiosity. It was from there that we learned what a glimmerling was.”

“Do you still have the book?”

Martimeos looked at her for a long moment, then looked away. “No,” he said. “It was burnt. And a very poor thing that it was, too. It may be that there was no other copy of it. But it served a purpose to correct our foolishness, for there were tales of glimmerlings in there to chill your blood. Even the least of glimmerlings ended in tragedy. In one tale, there was a man who passed through where the world was thin, and came back only slightly wrong. He could….see poetry, you might say. When he looked in his wife’s eyes, he saw stars. When someone was sad, he saw rainclouds above their head. People thought it was romantic. Until he buried his infant son alive, outside of town.” Martimeos felt his jaw clench. Funny that words might have had such an effect on him, but the author of the Aurelic text (a wizard, centuries dead, named Nivard) had been quite skilled at getting his point across, and he could still remember the dread he had felt as he turned the pages, or the sickening feeling in his stomach when he came to the end. “When he looked at his son, you see, he saw the greatest treasure he could ever imagine. And he didn’t want anyone to take it from him. It was the happiest ending for a glimmerling in the entire book.”

Silence fell between them, and Martimeos could not help but look out over the ruins of Silverfish. The empty homes, all dark in the night, overgrown with thorns, candles lighting the windows of only a select few. An inn that would never be full again. And all the children gone, caught between a glimmerling and the White Queen’s murderous ambition. The idea that he had once foolishly, ignorantly dabbled in powers that might have led to such calamity was enough to make him feel weak-kneed.

He was lifted from his contemplation, however, by the voice of the witch. “Why did you speak as if you were going alone to face the glimmerling?" she asked, her voice suspiciously light-hearted. "Do you not suppose you might need my aid?”

Immediately, his thoughts stopped drifting and focused on Elyse. He knew that tone. It was a very odd one, but he knew it. In his experience, it was used by women when they were upset at you, and immediately it let you know that they were upset, but they for whatever reason wanted to pretend that they were not. His father knew how to deal with that tone; his mother had used it on occasion, but his father somehow would know just the right things to say to have her laughing and smiling within a few moments. Martimeos had not yet unlocked the secret of this before he had left home, and so he was more cautious. “It is as I told Ritter,” he said slowly, tapping out his spent pipe and tucking it back into his pocket. “Either I take Ezekiel unawares before he can work the Art, or he will kill me and anyone with me. He is very likely blind, and I am confident it can be done. But more people coming along would just mean more people dying if I fail.”

But it was as if Elyse had not listened to a word he said. She stood with her arms crossed, and her face seemed unreadable, but he could sense the anger in her all the same. “Have I not been useful so far, wizard?” she asked him. He nearly stumbled backwards as she reached out, quick as a striking snake, only to delicately trace her fingertips along his throat, where Coxton’s blade had come within a hair’s breadth of killing him, and where a shallow, irritating cut still lingered. “Have I not been a boon companion, and healed your wounds? Or perhaps you think I am too small and delicate for such murderous work.”

Martimeos suppressed an impish urge to immediately reply 'yes', and she glared at him as if she knew the jab he had been tempted to make. The witch was fairly small, after all. But it was not this that he was worried about. He could not help but think of their travels together thus far. Twice had the witch come to the edge of death; once shortly after they had first met, when he had to carry her away from the pursuing vulture-men demons, and once when Valerie Tuck had very nearly pushed her into the well with the shattered one. It was true that he had come close to death as well, and that she had saved his life, certainly. But he risked his life in the pursuit of his brother, it was his task, his errand. And the truth was that while he thought it would be a good thing to put the glimmerling down, that was the true reason he would visit the manor. He might be tempted by the thought of undoing the curse of Silverfish, and he might also be tempted by what he could find at the manor, but if his brother’s trail had not led there, he doubted he would take the risk. “Certainly not delicate,” he managed to say. “Simply that I should not want to risk you.”

The witch arched an eyebrow at him. “What an odd thing to say. You do not risk me at all. Did you think I held no interest in seeing the manor that one of Véreline Valoir’s lovers built for her? Or to see what relics of the Art Ezekiel had interest in, in that place? Or perhaps you want to keep what you may find for yourself.”

He supposed that she indeed might have her own reasons for wanting to visit the manor, though he did think that simply visiting it on the rumor that Véreline had once been there was a foolish reason indeed. But the thought of what he might find there tempted him, as well. Only not enough that it might make the difference. Still, could she not simply listen to reason? “I would share whatever I found,” he muttered irritably. “Only that this is a job best for one person.”

“If that is so, then perhaps I should be the one to go. Alone.” Elyse replied, her tone mockingly agreeable. “No need to wait until tomorrow. I am not tired, I will go right now. You can stay here. Do not worry, I will share whatever I find.” She tossed her long, dark hair defiantly over her shoulder at him, the clumsy ribbons tied in it fluttering, and turned to as if to leave. With a muttered curse, Martimeos reached forward, catching her arm, and the witch looked back at him with dangerous eyes. But with a sly smile upon her face. “Oh? Did you not want me to go alone?” she asked, innocently.

“Fine,” Martimeos sighed, releasing her arm. “You may come along if you wish.” But the witch’s smile told him that she was not done with him yet. She stood on the pier, her arms crossed, tapping her foot on the worn wood, staring at him. He knew her well enough, by now, that he knew what she wanted to hear. He had insulted her, and now she would not have it any other way. Eventually, he threw his arms up in frustration. “Fine. Fine. Elyse, would you please come along with me?”

The witch made a great show of deeply considering his request. “No,” she said finally, then laughed delightedly when Martim growled. “A jest, wizard! You sound like a wolf. Yes, we will both go tomorrow. I should like to see what the home of one so powerful as Ezekiel might look like, even if the manor may not truly be in Véreline’s honor.” Suddenly she yawned, stretching until her body shook.

Her yawn reminded him that he, too, was tired, as he stifled one of his own. “It is perhaps best to get a good night of sleep,” he said. “For what tomorrow brings.”

“A good idea, finally,” the witch replied, yawning again. “Though, Martim.” She grinned sharply, teeth glinting in the moonlight. “If you think of sneaking off without me, tomorrow, the glimmerling will be the least of your worries.”

Martimeos’ eyes widened, and he pushed back the half-forged plans he had already been formulating in his head for making his way to the island without her. Elyse laughed at him, and as they made their way back to the Night Fisher Inn, she continued to glance at him and chuckle, unable to contain her mirth.

===***===

The witch might have been in good spirits for what they might face tomorrow. But as Martimeos came into the courtyard of the Night Fisher inn, as he passed beneath the dead tree in its center, and its lace of thorns, he could not help but feel a foreboding, a sense of something reaching out towards him, and in the dark of the night, he dreamed.

Surrounded by walls of black thorns, once again, except that now, it was not a maze. The ground sloped beneath him, bare and dusty stone, sloped downwards sharply, and he slipped and fell, scrambling, desperate to find some purchase but failing, as he slid into the tangles of thorns. They pierced him, and no matter how he tried to drag himself out, no matter how he tried to free himself, they only seemed to weave themselves around him even tighter, digging their thorns into his flesh, until they ran red with his blood. And they seemed to be endless, breaking, so that he fell ever downward, downward, down where his blood fell, down into darkness.

But even so he could not help but struggle, for even as he fell, he knew what was in that darkness that the thorns disappeared into. It should not be there, that voice should not be there, that face should not be there, and yet he knew it was, in the dark, in the thorns, watching him, and soon it began to speak to him.

“It’s been so long, Martim,” it whispered to him from the depths, and he screamed and tried to climb, the thorns slicing open his palms, but there was no escape, and he fell, fell, ripped to tatters, and just as he woke up screaming, drenched in sweat, gasping in his bed, gasping in the dark, the final words it said to him echoed in the back of his mind.

“I’m so glad I’ll get to see you again.”