Part Three: Into the Black

18. A STRANGE LIGHT, ACROSS THE LAKE

The somber darkness of the night, swallowing up the common room of the Night Fisher Inn, was interrupted only by the faint glow of a candle, barely able to fend off the darkness, and the breathing orange embers of Martim’s pipe, flaring to life as the wizard took a pull from it and dying down as he breathed out smoke in a great cloud. He did not bother with his tricks now, not caring if the smoke were rings or not. The wizard was silent, and had been silent for quite some time. And Elyse, sitting across from him, reading by candlelight, had been silent too. Silent, though there was much she wanted to ask of him, but the wizard had been so lost in thought and she herself did not know how to form the questions. She could feel, though, that there was some thread hooked on his heart now, a rope that had snared him and pulled at him, unseen.

Or perhaps it was simply that the fear and the shock of Coxton’s attack this morning had left her jittery, even now. It had all happened so quickly, and if it were not for the slightest twist of fortune she might have seen Martim’s throat cut before her very eyes. But what had shocked her the most was that she had not seen the danger in Coxton at all. She had been beguiled by his beautiful words, by the lovely way he had of telling a story, even though she had seen the madness in him. She looked across the table, to Martim, to the thin red line across his neck - it was a shallow cut, to be sure, but even the best healing she could work had not been able to close it yet - and the blushed. She had nearly led the wizard to his death in her incaution, and it rankled at her. The wizard had said nothing of it, and she thought he would probably laugh at her if she brought the notion up, but the guilt twisted in her heart just the same.

But finally, she put aside her uncertainty, and set down her book - tales of the Aurelic empire’s early days, and the Nudmen, that she had looked for among Ritter’s collection after hearing Coxton’s tale - and broke the silence that had stretched between them since dusk. She must know at least one thing. “So,” she said. “Your brother was a wizard, as well?”

Martimeos turned his head slowly to stare at her. He could see little of the witch in the candlelight, other than her face and her hands. “Yes,” he said simply, but inwardly he grimaced. It was less for the witch - he did not mind so much if she knew, he supposed - but too many others knew that now, too many others whose tongues might flap or whose thoughts might go askew.

After Coxton had attacked him - Martimeos still shuddered at that, he had been a hair’s breadth from death, and all that had saved him was that a madman had come to his senses just in time - the ruckus had drawn both Minerva and Ren out of their rooms. They had bound the hunter, and gagged him to stop his babbling, but not before learning of where Ritter was. True to Coxton’s word they had found the innkeep tied up in the stable, with quite a nasty split in his scalp. Minerva and Elyse worked their healing with herbcraft and Art on both Ritter’s battered skull and his own injury. The cut across his neck, while in a delicate place and a hair’s breadth from deadly, was superficial, though the witch had insisted on healing it for him, and Minerva had given him a salve as well that would keep it clean.

Ritter, on the other hand, was in a worse way. The innkeep had regained consciousness by the time they had gone to fetch him from the stable, but the back of his head was drenched in blood, and he was groggy, unfocused, and Minerva had pushed him firmly down into a chair and told him to stay. They had drawn water to boil for bandages, steeped in the heady, thick aromas of various leaves that Minerva had added, and after wrapping his head in these and Elyse working what Art she could, the apothecary had given the innkeep a tea, examined his eyeballs, and declared that he should be alright.

It was then that they had turned their attentions to Coxton, bound and mute and weeping, it was then that they had put him to the question, and Martimeos wished they hadn’t. He was glad that the questioning happened, but he wished that he might have interrogated the man alone. For once they had ungagged the man and he had babbled out his apologies, once his feverish and half-mad words had calmed and slowed, there was truth in Coxton’s words, and useful truth too, but the way he had painted and shaded the truth had not been to Martimeos’ liking at all.

They had listened to Coxton’s blubbering tale, his explanation for why he had come to them with murder in his heart, and in it were the answers that Martimeos had been looking for. For Coxton had been at Durnholde during the bloody siege, had seen his brother there, and then later had seen his brother come to Silverfish - and so the Dolmec had spoken true, his brother had come here in years past, when the Queen’s War still raged. And he had come here to visit Ezekiel. To Martimeos, that was all that mattered, that was the only useful thing the man had to say, and as far as he was concerned they could have stuffed the gag back in his mouth and jailed the man for attempting to kill him. Or hanged him, that would have been fine too.

But Coxton could not tell his tale without speaking nonsense, as well, nonsense that made Martimeos’ blood burn, nonsense that got the thorns creeping back into his head.

“Was he as skilled with the Art as Coxton made him out to be?” the witch went on.

Except, of course, that was not what she was asking. His brother had been very clever and very skilled in the Art. His brother was who had first introduced him to the Art. But however skilled and capable his brother had been, that was not what she was really asking. “If you are asking whether he really made the dead walk in Durnholde,” he snapped, and could not keep the anger from his voice, “If he were a necromancer, he never told me. Nor do I think he was the one to curse Silverfish, nor the one to burn down Cross-on-Green.” He regretted the anger in his voice, but he had said as much already to Minerva, and Ritter, and Ren. It was nonsense, the ravings of a broken madman, and he hoped that they saw it for what it was.

He had no doubt that his brother might have put Coxton and his fellow slaves to the Queen through suffering in Durnholde, in fact, he took a certain amount of pride in that. And he had no doubt that the dead walked there, too. He had been to Durnholde, and even to this day the very bones of the earth there were haunted; in a place of so much death, it was not unusual for the world to grow thin, for ghosts and spirits to arise as the Lands of Death grew close. But, clearly, the man had left the pit that the city had become cracked in the head. They knew already that the Queensmen were responsible for burning down Cross-on-Green for certain, that to claim it was his brother was a lie. And they already had the oddity of people spotting Ezekiel’s ghost when the children had gone disappearing. But it was the dangerous sort of lie, the sort of lie that might get them caught in a noose. He thought that Minerva had believed him, and Ren, well, the thief was not even of Silverfish, and he doubted whether the lad cared all that much besides.

Ritter might have been a problem. But the man had stared at Coxton for a long time, a very long time, as Martimeos had given his explanation. In the end, the innkeep had quietly said that he thought Martimeos had the right of it. Truth be told, Martimeos almost grudgingly admired the old mercenary for it. Ritter wanted to believe otherwise; Martimeos could tell by the man’s eyes that he wanted to believe something that absolved his friend of responsibility for the curse, something to cling to. And yet the man had the heart to admit to himself the hard truth. Perhaps the long years had helped him in admitting it. Either way, Ritter would not throw his belief after the word of a madman (And Coxton, in his babbling and sobbing, was clearly mad), no matter how much he might like to, no matter how much he may not care for Martimeos personally. He may have been the White Queen’s slave, in the past, but he had some sense and honor to him. Still, Martimeos could not help but wonder what doubts the man harbored. It would go very poorly for them, he thought, if Ritter began to take Coxton at his word, insane though it might be.

Elyse shook her head at Martim’s answer. That hadn’t been what she had meant at all. She could understand the wizard’s anger, though, or at least she thought she could. Coxton had been scourged in Durnholde by Martim’s brother, that was clear, but she did not know that she had much pity for the man’s weeping herself. Wasn’t that just what war was, and how could he expect any less, when it was clear the White Queen had driven people to starvation and freezing when it suited her? Whatever had happened in Durnholde, it had stained him, and he could not bring his mind away from it, seeing echoes of it everywhere. But some of the things he had described seemed the acts of one very mighty in the Art indeed - flame which came alive, which burnt quickly through flesh, and engulfed entire buildings of stone, turning them into ovens; or shadows into which people walked and never returned, nights where the man next to you screamed and disappeared, torn away by something unseen. There were tales of mighty works of Art, of course, in the days of Old Aurelia, or in other stories, but so often it had seemed that these must certainly be some boasting on the part of the author or whoever told the story, and always they were told of days so long ago. But Martim had not contradicted anything Coxton had said, and it made her wonder. “I believe you in that, wizard,” she told him. “But was he the one who mended you?”

Martimeos gave a start at the witch’s question, and knew immediately that even this had given something away to her, given her an answer. He looked closely at Elyse once more. He could not tell what she was thinking. Candleflame danced in her eyes. “He saved my life,” he replied eventually. “He did not do it alone, but I think without him, it might not have been done at all.” Foolish wizard, telling your secrets to a pretty girl.

She reached out suddenly, and grabbed his free hand, the skin of her hands so warm against his, she herself so very warm, as she always was. He felt the familiar tingle of the Art as she closed her eyes, and he knew then that she was listening to the Red Song, the song of life in his veins, what he still could not hear. Feeling, he knew, along the wound in his back, tracing along that worming scar. She opened her eyes again and stared at him very intently. “He must have been very powerful, indeed,” she murmured. “He worked a wonder in you, I think.”

“Well, perhaps it is not all as wonderful as you suppose. After all, you have much to learn in healing yourself.”

The witch gave him a very frank stare, and then she actually laughed, and her laugh was such that he could not stop his lips from twitching into a smile too. “If I were a simple bricklayer,” she told him, “I might not know how to build it alone, but I think I would recognize a building as a wonder if it stood as tall as a tenday’s walk was long. Such is it here.” She paused, and then the laughter was gone, and she seemed more serious. “Do you really mean to go?” She did not let go of his hand.

He knew what she meant. Did he really mean to go to the manor. To row across the murky waters of Nust Drim and visit Ezekiel’s home, where a mage much more learned than them - or, at least, what remained of him - resided. He knew the danger of it, but he also did not see any way around it. That was where he would find answers about where his brother had gone. He was sure of it. “Let us see what Ritter has promised us, and then I might know my path better,” he told her.

She nodded, but he thought she must know as well that now there was only one path forward. He could almost feel it, the Art whispered it to him, and he thought too that she must feel it as well. Some named Fortune as a god of the Art as well as chance and luck, and perhaps this was true, for what he could feel in the Art was a serendipity that had led him here. If Coxton had not fled from his home, he probably would have been murdered by the man in the woods, and that would have been the end of the path. What he cursed as bad luck had been Fortune smiling upon him. He was not a godly man, but it would be foolish to scorn the love of one, as strange a god as Fortune might be.

===***===

What Ritter had promised them was to see a glimpse of Zeke’s ghost, so that they might know what it was, and perhaps see with the eyes of a witch or a wizard what normal folk might not.

The day after they had listened to Coxton’s meandering tale (and after they had locked the man in Ritter’s cellar, which contained a small room that served as gaol, for what few prisoners the village might have had to deal with back when Silverfish still lived and breathed), Martimeos had declared his desire to visit the manor. Minerva was unabashed in her delight for this idea, nodding and smiling, and it was clear the old apothecary clearly thought that a wizard and a witch out on the island might do well for the village. Ritter, however, had urged caution.

The innkeep, having recovered somewhat from Coxton splitting his scalp, had seemed wearily resolved to the idea that they knew everything, now. Martimeos even found himself having some pity for the man. If he was as close to Ezekiel as both Minerva and Coxton said…it was a hard thing, Martimeos knew, to lose a friend, and it must be harder still to see him blamed for such monstrous crimes, and still force yourself to admit the truth even when another offered you an excuse. And it was hard to keep your contempt for a man who seemed to have genuine concern over whether you lived or died, though Martimeos knew that, probably, the innkeep’s concern was more for Elyse than it was for him.

“D’you want to get them killed?” the innkeep had snapped at Minerva’s approving murmurs. “Remember what happened to Valerie, and all those fools who rowed out there with her?” Martimeos certainly could - the image of Valerie’s scarred and Art-carved face, looking more like one of the dead than the living, stood large in his mind, and her snapping, cracking, bloody end. He had no wish to end up like that.

“Don’t you try barking at me, Ritter,” Minerva snapped right back, her hands on her hips. “I’m not one of your old soldiers. Don’t you think that, knowing the Art as they do, they might be able to do something?”

Ritter had merely rolled his eyes and snorted. “They are too young for such, woman. Wizards and witches are not born with the Art in their blood. And I do not want any more death!” This last came as a strangled yell, and the innkeep had blinked in surprise, as if he had not meant to be so loud. “I do not want any more death,” he repeated, quietly.

And yet, for all of the danger, Martimeos was intrigued. Others seemed to have accepted that it really was Ezekiel who must have been responsible for the disappearances of the children, and to him it seemed likely, as well. And yet what had happened to the man? For Martimeos, he wagered it was something to do with the relics of the Art that supposedly lay beneath the manor. The tale of seeing his ghost, and the disappearances, the deaths, the scarring of Valerie… “Is there anything else known of the man? Of Ezekiel? Of what happened to him, or anything, really? Even the slightest detail may be important.”

And Ritter, reluctantly, had told him. Zeke, he said, could be seen some nights, from this shore of Nust Drim. The spirit of the mage appeared with some regularity on one of the shores of Rook Island on which the manor stood. “Not dangerous,” Ritter had told him. “Or, at least…I’ve gone out there, to watch him, from time to time, when the fog was not so thick that it would hide the island entire…”

So they spent an idle few days waiting, waiting for the time that Ritter said that Zeke might appear. Flit offered that he might fly to the island and see what was there himself, but Martimeos had forbidden him from doing that before, and he was glad he had. His worry earlier had been of the fog that lay thick on the lake and came billowing into the village, and the tales he heard from the bargemen that still served to bring trade there from other villages on further shores of the lake; the tales and the cautions they gave sounded grave. Ships lost in the fog, sunk, men drowned if they swam out too far, and he wondered now whether it was the world growing thin, or something that perhaps Zeke himself was working. He had only let his familiar fly such that he could see both shores at once, and never have one out of sight, and with this the cardinal could report back only little more than Martimeos could see with his own eyes; there was a family of crows that lived on the island, apparently, and a duck nesting grounds on the other side that seemed long abandoned. He was glad for his caution, now, knowing that it was not merely the fog that they had to worry about, but a wizard of some power too, or what remained of him anyway. If Flit had drawn close to the island, and if Ezekiel had spotted him, as a wizard he would have known a familiar right away.

He and Elyse spent their time practicing the Art. The witch struggled to learn sigils, and he struggled to know what she was doing wrong. He had started her with the learning of the sigils which he himself had first learned - those which he would inscribe around himself while camping, which would alarm him if someone approached him meaning to do him harm. His old master had called these one of the “Sigils of Intent”. And she had the writing of them correct, as far as he could tell, and yet there seemed to be no power in them. When he had first learned their writing, that had been all it took - merely by scribing them, writing them in the correct order, the Art had filled them, blazed within, as if the symbols were the Art. And yet hers were powerless. It must be something in the way they were drawn - a sigil must be made just so, it was not enough to merely have the same symbol, the symbol must be made in the same way - and yet he could not tell what was wrong with what she was doing.

She was not the only one with frustrations, though, for try as he might he could not hear the song that was the first step in healing with the Art, the red song that she spoke of. He could not hear it in her body, and he could not hear it in his own body; he could not hear it in Cecil or Flit’s body, when he had tried it on them. And some of what she talked of sounded strange, to him, that when she heard the song in herself she could feel so much more than when she didn’t - the very slightest stirring of the air she could sense on her skin, or the most minute shifting of clothing. But Martimeos did not know that he would ever still his mind enough to be able to sense such things. The body was meant to ignore these sort of things, or so it seemed to him - only when something was truly wrong should the body intrude on the mind, as in injury or illness. And so this strange awareness and sensitivity the witch spoke of, he could not grasp, though he would not give up on trying; to heal with the Art was a very useful skill indeed. He wondered whether this was the way his brother had thought of it.

In glamor and flame they made more progress, even though they did not see eye-to-eye on what they were. Elyse thought of glamor as the dancing and weaving of shadows, while to him it was the trickery of the mind, but even so he found his practice with her sharpened his abilities with it. He could make a crow appear, for a brief time, that could fool Flit, and it became easier to enchant himself such that people’s eyes would pass over him. And the witch did better with the flame, as well, but she said she thought of it as the flames and smoke dancing, and could make a leaf smolder and turn black with her working of it, and set a torchlamp to flaring higher for a brief moment. She seemed to think of much of the Art in terms of song and dance, and there were others, he knew, who thought of it in the same way - wizards or sorceresses who sang the Art into working, and some of these sort would disguise themselves as bard. Which is why it was amusing to him that the witch seemed to have no talent for such things herself. She could not play the flute well, and her singing was discordant, and when he asked if she liked to dance, she told him that actually, growing up in her swamp she had never learned to do so. And then, to his surprise, when he had asked her if she would like to, she had blushed brighter than he had ever seen from her and declined, and then gone to her room shortly after. How could she be so embarrassed by a dance, when she had so casually undressed in front of him? He had meant for nothing more than to show her the steps to a barndance jig.

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It was not as if they did not already dance together, for that was what it was like when they worked the Art with water. They danced together with the Art and with water, a graceful, slow dance as of yet, but he could see already that they might steer it faster, with power. The working of it was strange, though. They brought up a bucket of water to his room, and sitting at the edge of his bed tried to work it with the flute, but it barely responded beyond the tiniest ripple on its surface. The dance within it was small, and he had the sense that they must be small themselves to dance with it, or their work with the Art must be very small and fine, and yet they did not know how to do that. It was much easier instead to dance with larger bodies of water, and so they went away from Silverfish and to the shores of the lake to dance together with it once more, and it was joyful enough that they spent nearly an entire day doing this without seeing where the hours went until twilight gloom came upon them.

When he was not working at the Art, he was playing at a game of Foxes and Hens with Ren, and though the thief might look young, he was better at the game than Martimeos might have thought, often able to trap the fox when he played as hens, or capturing more than half the hens when he played as the fox. He was more clever than he appeared at first glance in general, Martimeos thought as he watched the child-faced, blond-haired lad move a smooth white stone and capture yet another hen, which made it all the more curious that he had not fled, yet. He had told Elyse that he wished to have someone to travel with to the nearby town of Twin Lamps, and perhaps he had told the truth about that, and was simply hoping that their path might see him there safely. Or perhaps he had other ideas. Martimeos saw how Ren’s eyes followed Elyse across the room, whenever she would walk through, watching and considering.

The witch, somewhat to Martimeos’ disapproval, had a habit of visiting Coxton down in his little gaol-room in the cellar. “You are right that he is wretched,” she told him, when he asked her about it, as she was coming up from the cellar one night, “And yet he does have the tongue for stories, and tells them well.” She sighed, and raised the candle she was holding, that it might cast light down into the darkness of the cellar, and frowned down at it. “It is a shame,” she murmured sadly, after a moment.

He snorted. “What is? That he is imprisoned? I am not convinced that if he were let loose that he would not simply try to kill me all over again.”

Elyse gave him a look as if he were being very foolish. “No,” she replied. “It is…” she struggled for a moment, as if she didn’t know how to put what she was trying to say into words. “It is just a shame, is all,” she finished weakly. “I think that he might have been a good storyteller, and a happy one. Now, when I talk to him, sometimes he wants to tell stories, and other times he just weeps and says his tongue should be torn out.” She glanced at him, and added quietly, “I think it is a shame what this Queen’s War did to folk.”

It was a shame, she was right about that. A black shame that had sunk into the very heart of the land. Martimeos could have some feeling for what the Queen had done to her own folk; he still had the shame in him from when his heart had been hardened and numbed to mercy for them. But one such as Coxton, he could not. He could think of it, for certain. He could hold the idea of Coxton’s suffering in his head, the torment he had been put through, but he could not make himself feel that it was a shame. The children of Silverfish had deserved mercy. Even their parents, though they had taken up a foolish oath to a wicked master, deserved some degree of mercy. Finnel, who had run from the Queen’s service and still lost a child when he returned, he deserved mercy. One such as Coxton, though, a man who had sworn to serve the White Queen for coin, who had seen her bloodiness, had seen her cruelty and stood by and did nothing, he deserved what he got. He deserved to be broken.

The dreams returned to him now, as well. They were not as bad as they had been before, not so bad that he could not sleep, but they were there, waiting for him, when he laid his head down upon the pillow.

No shadows now, no distant laughter, no voice that should not be there whispering to him. He dreamed of the maze of black thorns, the ground of fractured shale rock, the starless night sky and the fat, heavy yellow moon, but all was silent now as he moved amongst the thorns. Still, he felt that something was there, as he moved along the endless maze, something was watching him, something was waiting. It was only quiet now because he was close, and drawing closer. And as he walked amongst the tangles of thorns, he could not help but feel as if he was walking someplace familiar, walking home.

===***===

The time came when Ritter told them they might see Ezekiel one night.

“Now, this might be,” he told them, raising a lamp that was a little iron cage for an orange flame, as they gathered outside of the front door of the inn. The shadows of the flame danced over the scene of Churr’s capture of Serafina, and made the Nudman warlord look even more wicked than the carver had shaped him. His head was still wrapped in bandages, but cold blue eyes were sharp again, and he peered out at the night, where the mist drifted around the streets and was illuminated by gentle moonlight. He looked very much like the soldier he had once been. “Fog’s not so bad, but it’s been some time since I’ve gone out to see him myself. But around this time, he’ll be out for a few nights in a row.” He looked back, and then frowned. “This is going to be a bit of a walk. We’ll be back late.”

He was talking to Minerva, Elyse knew. She had thought, at first, that it would be just her and Martim going out to witness what Ritter had to show them. But Minerva had said she wanted to come along as well, and she stood right next to the youngsters in her dress of thick brown wool, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow at Ritter’s comment. “I probably walk more in a day gathering my herbs or going out to the farms to treat folk’s sick then you do in a year sitting on your bony arse in your inn, Jak Ritter,” she snapped. “I’ll walk just fine, don’t you worry.” Elyse barked a laugh, and strained to contain it beneath a grin as Ritter whipped his head around to stare at her. He had asked for quiet. He didn’t want this little procession of theirs attracting eyes as they went out of the village.

“That’s as may well be,” he muttered. “But even a little walk at night…well, you know what they say. The land is strange, these days…” he ran a hand through his short-cropped silver hair, and darted his eyes about. “One-Road Wood isn’t so far away, and there are demons there. And what you told me about the…the thing, at Valerie’s farm…may she rest in Karilail’s love.”

“And Demesque’s grace,” Minerva replied quietly. “I know. I know you want to keep us safe.” Ritter gave a start at that, and muttered, touching the sword he had bucked to his hip. “But we’ve got two strapping young men for that, too, and one of them a wizard besides, and a witch-”

“Hush, woman! If someone hears-”

“No one is going to hear,” Minerva told him sternly, “Barely two dozen people live here anymore, and they’re all sleeping by now because most of them left are old. And if anyone did hear, and made a fuss, all it would take is some hard words from me and you and they’d step in line.”

Ritter raised his lamp high, to peer at the woman, who merely stared back at him unblinking. “You could have been a sergeant, Minerva,” he told her. “Alright, let’s go.”

Most folk might have been sleeping, or otherwise shut in their homes, in this chill autumn night - they could see the orange lights of fires flickering through a number of windows, where folk had hearths blazing - but Ritter still took them out of the village and far away as quickly as possible, rather than walking through it; into the sparse woods and meadows, where they stepped high over tall grass and thorns, and eventually came in a wide arc down to the shores of Nust Drim, which they followed along. It was the same path that Martim had taken when he came out here, and indeed it was not long before they passed by the remains of the fire that he had made when they had bathed together. Elyse gave the wizard a fierce grin, and even in the moonlight she could tell that the memory of it embarrassed him, which was no small source of delight. “Do you know anything of what Ezekiel did, in the manor?” the wizard asked, breaking the silence, refusing to look at her. “Did he ever speak of the Art he worked there, or did you ever see anything unusual from him? What crafts of the Art was he skilled at?”

“Eh…well…” Ritter hrrmed a bit, scratching his head, his forehead wrinkling as he concentrated in thought. “I am no expert, you see. I know a bit of what wizardry is, but mostly I saw Zeke working what he called the soldier’s sorceries - fire-making, wound-salving, boot-mending and the like. The drawing forth of water where there was none, or the cleaning of dirty water. A dozen little charms that would keep men marching and happy, where they would have fallen to sickness or become miserable without them. I knew him to do other things on occasion, though. I have seen him make men collapse, unable to rise, though I do not know how he did it - there was no sign of what work he had done. And he could move the tides of Nust Drim when the lake flooded.”

“He never spoke of his work in the manor, though?”

“He did,” Ritter conceded, “But I never knew much of what to make of it.” Though it was dark and his back to them as he led the way, he seemed obviously and at once reluctant to speak, glancing back at them hesitatingly. “He…ah, well, you know what they say of those who work with the Art, as they grow old…”

“Certainly,” the wizard replied, at the same time Elyse said “I know of a lot of nonsense that folk speak.” Ritter glanced back at them, face illuminated by lamplight, quiet and searching, while Minerva’s mouth quirked up in a smile. Martim, for his part, simply frowned at her, then shook his head.

They both knew what Ritter spoke of. Those who worked with the Art were usually seen as strange, unusual, but how else could those who wandered the lands and were strangers everywhere be seen? But it was more than simple strangeness and wanderlust that came upon you with long years working the Art, it was madness. Or so the legend went. There were many opinions on what this madness actually was. Elyse had read those who claimed that the madness was nothing more than the ignorance of the common folk towards the Art, and that as you delved deeper into its mysteries the more difficult it became for those ignorant of it to know what you spoke of, and that this seemed like madness. And there were the stories of the Mad Mage-King, Alain the Dweomer.

“I had thought,” Ritter went on, “That…that maybe, perhaps, the madness was what came on him…it was why…”

Martim gave her another cautioning look before continuing on. The wizard really did too well at hiding his thoughts from others. She knew that he thought this was all nonsense. “Perhaps,” he replied carefully, “though I do not think so myself. The strangeness that comes upon wizards in their grayhair years is not of the sort that would make them a killer where before they had not been. And becoming a spirit is a bit of a step beyond merely getting some gray hairs, I should say. But even if you did not understand, might you tell me what he said?”

Ritter sighed, and ran a hand through his hair, and raised the lamp higher to peer into the shadows, as if afraid that someone might be listening. There was nothing there except the fog curling around the pines, and the luminous glow of the moon softly blurred upon the mirror of the lake. “I don’t remember everything. But I thought of it, much. The things he said. After…” He fell silent, and when he spoke again, his voice was lower, barely above a whisper. “He…spoke to me of the Outside,” the innkeep replied at last, speaking slowly, dragging every word out of his chest. “He said there were…other places. Other worlds. That he could see. That he wanted to reach.”

Martimeos was quiet, on hearing this, and he exchanged a meaningful glance with Elyse. Worlds other than this one. Even in these days, when the world grew thin, and in some places the bounds to the Outside were unraveling, there were many folk who did not know of this. Demons came from the Outside, from these other worlds, and some said to walk too far into the fae-woods was to make your way to another world as well, a world of endless strange forests. But even those who practiced the Art did not know, for certain, the nature of these things, and most folk did not know to distinguish them; like they did not know the Old Powers from Demons, it was a particularity of the craft of the Art. And meddling with such things could be very dangerous. You could not open a door to the Outside without attracting the attention of what lived in the other worlds. Or what lived between them.

“He had long spoke of this,” Ritter went on. “But not long before it all…went wrong, it seemed to me he had some new thought on it. He spoke of…tuning. I don’t know what he meant by that, but he said he must be tuned, somehow, to the other worlds. He went on about the mind, body, soul and spirit…at that point, though, I did not know what he was saying. He seemed excited, though. But then…” he sighed again, and in it was the weight of all his years. “I don’t know. I did not speak to him for some time before the children began disappearing. I couldn’t know what was on his mind then.”

“I see,” Martimeos said quietly, and said no more. And so then they continued on in silence.

The woods by the shores of the lake of Nust Drim had a beauty all their own, even when autumn had stripped the leaves from most of the trees and the wind promised that the bite of winter was not long off. Just as the mist had caught the golden light of a sunset and bathed the lake and forest in gold, now it held the silvery light of the moon, and it was an eerie, colder beauty, but beauty all the same. Flit winged above them, at a distance, the silhouette of a bird in the sky darting from tree to tree, when he could be seen in the dark, and Cecil snaked gracefully between the trunks of trees, watching his witch, his eyes catching the light and seeming to glow in the darkness. Dry and brittle undergrowth crunched beneath their boots when they were not passing through patches of pine which suffocated it beneath a blanket of needles. They followed through the remains of a packed dirt path which had been long-disused and which, in spring, would probably disappear beneath the green.

“It is the same path that children here used to follow,” Minerva said sadly, when Elyse questioned who had used it, whose feet had beaten the dirt down hard. “This is where they came to play.”Martimeos could almost wish that he did not know the answer. The quiet of the woods seemed heavy, knowing that once it had been broken by the laughter of children who were gone now, who would never live to know adulthood.

The land sloped upwards, after a time, and they walked up the hill, to the crest of a rocky cliff that dropped down to the waters of Nust Drim below. The cliff was not so far, though, not so far that adventurous youth would not dare each other to jump off it, and Martimeos thought that was exactly what the children of Silverfish must have done. For there were signs, here, that this had once been a favorite spot of theirs. A circle of stones lay in the center of it, now half-buried in dirt and leaves, and a nearby oak tree was scored with years of carvings. Some were declarations of young love, others simply a name, or initials, proclaiming ‘I was here’.

“There I am,” Minerva said softly as she moved towards the tree, running her hands over a part of the bark where the names were faded and old. She bore a wistful expression, and her eyes glimmered for a moment, as if soft tears were held in them, but she did not cry.

“Who was ‘Nestor’?” Elyse asked, peering at the carvings over Minerva’s shoulder.

The old apothecary laughed fondly, and the glimmer in her eyes became sharper. “My first love. First husband, too, I suppose. He was a fine man, but didn’t last me very long, I’m afraid. He never lost his love for horse races, and one day his horse stepped in a gopher hole in the middle of one. It broke its leg, and poor Nestor, he broke his neck.”

“Oh,” Elyse said, somewhat taken aback by the casual manner in which the old woman spoke. “I…did you not love him very much?”

The witch frowned at him as Martimeos coughed noisily into his cloak, but Minerva simply laughed at her question. “I loved him fine, girl. It’s just been many years. And you learn eventually that dying is simply what men do. They’re in love with death.”

“Very wise words,” Ritter said dryly. “And from one who would certainly know what’s in a man’s head, and better than any man himself, no doubt.” Martimeos snorted, and the innkeep hung his lantern from a branch of the oak. The small circle of its light made the shadows dance as it dangled and swung, and he pointed then out over the lake.

The shore of Rook Island, on which the manor lay, was not far from this spot, and the moonlight was such that much of the island was visible. The island itself was a hill, with the manor on its peak, and the slope facing them was swept with leafbare oak and maple and patches of green pine, down to a rocky shore. Still, it was dark, and Martim gave the man a dubious look. “Are you saying he will be there? And we’re meant to see him from here?”

“You’ll be able to see him, wizard,” the innkeep replied. “You’ll be able to see him. If he comes, tonight. Now we must wait.”

How long to wait, Ritter did not know. He knew only that if his old friend had not made an appearance by the time the approaching light of day turned the sky gray, then he would not show. The cold was hard, especially on the old ones, who could not conceal shivering now that walking was not keeping their blood up, and so they built a small fire in the circle of stones, but kept their backs to it so they might keep their night eyes, and waited.

They were not waiting very long.

It was nothing but a light in the forest, at first, a bluish light of something moving between the trees out on the island, seeming almost like moonlight itself. Ritter spotted it immediately. “There he is,” he whispered furiously into the dark silence they had waited in. “There he is. Look, see!”

Martimeos thought at first that perhaps it was a will o’ the wisp, or some other sort of fae-light, as he watched it move a winding path down the slope, only catching glimpses of whatever the light was between the branches of the trees. But eventually, the light moved out from the cover of the forest, moved out to the edge of the shore of the island, and he knew immediately what had happened to Ezekiel and what had happened to Silverfish.

It was a man. And though the island was some distance out, they could see him clearly in the night, for he glowed like the moon. He cut a tall and slender figure, though they could not see more of him from this distance, and he seemed to walk with a certain grace and dignity of movement. He seemed at times to blur and fade, as if he might dissipate into the mist which surrounded him. Martimeos squinted at the figure. There was something odd about it. Hard to tell, from this distance, but…suddenly, he blinked.

“He is upside down,” Martimeos said.

Upside down, and crooked. His head floated above the rocks on the shore, and his feet hung in the air, treading on some unseen surface that ran at an angle to the actual ground. When the wind blew to them from the island, it carried with it the distant notes of a strange, discordant hum.

Ritter nodded, and spoke in a whisper that nearly died beneath the wind. “Sharp eyes, wizard. I couldn’t tell, from this distance. I’ve…well, I’ve tried rowing out, to get closer. To call out to him.”

“Foolish man!” Minerva snapped.

The innkeep ignored her. “He never responded, though. Like he couldn’t hear me at all.”

Even as they watched, the man walked above the shore, until it seemed as if he must be floating above the water itself. He pointed at something, back at the hill, though what he could be pointing at was unseen to them, and then he moved back, and seemed to climb a set of stairs that none of them could see. For time unknown, the sight of the spirit entranced them, as it seemed to interact with objects unseen, and even at times seemed to speak, gesticulating with its arms, and all the while over the wind a soft and odd chiming hum, like no instrument they could name, was carried to them across the waters. And then, just as soon as he had come, Ezekiel was gone; he was back among the trees, his haunting blue light growing dimmer and dimmer.

The wind moaned.

“That’s him,” Ritter said again, and now his voice was hoarse, and he wiped his eyes to hide his tears. “That’s him. I got close enough to tell before, it’s him. I don’t know why he’s upside down. I figure that maybe it had something to do with the way he died.”

“I know why,” Martimeos said quietly.

The others turned to look at him, but he barely felt the weight of their eyes. “Well, why, then?” Ritter asked after a moment.

Martimeos shook his head, his expression grim, and turned his back to the island. “He’s not a ghost,” he answered. “He’s not even dead. He’s a glimmerling.”