20. IN THE DARK, BELOW THE MANOR

Martimeos wanted to remain as quiet and inconspicuous as they could in reaching the island. The villagers here, they might be broken, beaten down, tired, old, but too much of their suspicion had already been roused with the death of Valerie Tuck, and the news of what had happened to Minerva and Mercy. Already, as of mornings, some would find an excuse to linger outside the Night Fisher Inn, hoping for a glance of the strangers, and Minerva was plagued with questions about them. It would not do for them to see the strangers rowing out to the island, it would not do at all - tongues would wag and rumor would spread. No, if this were done, best that it were done quietly as possible.

And yet the need for a boat necessitated that they gain the suspicion of at least one other, for Ritter had no boat of his own and would need to borrow one so that Martimeos and Elyse might use it. And the way the innkeep handled this, Martimeos was not at all happy with. For a boat might have been borrowed from a fisherman with a pack of lies. And yet what Ritter chose to do instead was to borrow a boat from Finnel, and not by lies but by telling him exactly what their plans were.

The thin, broken man had already been in the common room when he and Elyse had woken, and he had greeted them both with a downcast demeanor. He did not like outsiders knowing of the village’s shame either, and to Martimeos, this seemed the most cruel thing of all. Finnel had not sinned, like the others in the village; the man had fled the service of the White Queen, and he had no reason to feel ashamed. Yet he was as broken as the rest of them. It was not long, though, before Finnel’s silence and timidity turned into a crooked smile and glassy eyes and praise for what they were doing. On the one hand, if any deserved to know what their plans were, it might be Finnel, who had not shared in the sins of Silverfish, only to lose his son anyway upon his return. On the other hand, Martimeos did not know that the man could at all be trusted to keep what they were doing a secret. Worse still was that he seemed to be under the delusion that his son might be saved.

“Oh, I know,” he said, still grasping Martimeos’ hand, having clutched it in a handshake upon greeting them and not letting it go. “I know. I know ‘tis not likely that he is to be returned to me. But still, I think that it might be so. The Lady of Calm Waters, I have prayed to her on this, and she has told me that it might well be that I should see him again.”

Martimeos gave the man an amicable nod and extricated his fingers, and then glowered across the room at Ritter. The innkeep did not see him, setting out a large meal as he was, or perhaps he was simply refusing to look. The innkeep’s objections to the whole plan had started once again when he learned that Elyse planned to go along, and had not stopped until the witch herself had told him to forego the nonsense. Minerva had come this morning too, to see them off, and along with her there was Finnel, Martimeos, Elyse and Ren. With enough people for one full table, it seemed almost like a proper inn. One could even count Coxton, still locked down in the cellar.

The plan was this: They would depart in the middle of the day, when the fog was at its weakest. Thick mist, in fact, was the only thing that might have caused Martimeos to delay a day. If he could not see the mainland from the shores of the island, and vice versa, he would not go. But barring this, Finnel would row his boat to a shore from where the village was not visible, and they would sneak out of the village to meet him there. On the shore of the mainland, both Ren and Minerva would take turns keeping a campfire burning all night to serve as a beacon for them. In the best case, they might not even need to be there long enough to burn more than a log or two. Just enough time to kill a man and search his things.

“I should think we might be able to leave right from the middle of the village itself,” Elyse muttered, as she snuck a scrap of cheese off the table to Cecil. “We are doing them a service, are we not? I would not think any of them would object.”

Minerva had brought up this possibility as well, but Martimeos had rejected it out of hand. Folk could be very strange. Hopes raised and then dashed could quickly turn to violence against the ones who had raised them in the first place. It was a possibility that they might find his brother’s trail in the manor but then find themselves unable to kill Ezekiel. What might happen if they came back to a village who they had promised to relieve of their curse, only to leave them? No, best to do this as secretly as possible. In fact, if all went as he wished it and they did manage to kill Ezekiel, the villagers would not even know of it until they had already moved on. Folk could be very strange indeed, and especially so when they had lived with the memories of the sort of terror and barbarism such as had been inflicted upon the people of Silverfish. There was no guarantee that everyone would react with gratitude. Ritter and Finnel had both wanted to wait by the campfire beacon for them, as well, but so wary was Martimeos of rousing suspicion that he said they should remain exactly where they usually were, Ritter in his inn and Finnel in his temple. Minerva, he had only agreed to because she had the excuse that she was usually out and about, foraging for her herbcraft.

The waiting was not long, but it was nerve-wracking. Martimeos tried to keep his confidence up about him, and to not think of the risk of death. To kill a glimmerling really could be as easy as killing a blind man, only a blind man would not be able to slay you with a word if he somehow puzzled out that you were there. The day was fine, with the fog not so thick, and burned away mostly by mid-morning, and so they set out a bit earlier than they had intended to. They left in pairs, Finnel first, and then himself and Elyse, to be followed by Minerva and Ren a bit after, so that they would not head out all at once in a large group and draw attention to themselves.

When it came time for them to depart, Ritter had a brisk, businesslike handshake for him. The man was sore about the fact that he was not being taken along, especially now that he knew that Elyse was going to be going with him as well. He had accepted it, with the excuse that she was a witch and that two with the Art were better than one, but it was clear that the man still wished to go. It was a strange thing, or at least Martimeos thought so, to want to be the one to kill a former friend, and yet mercenaries could have a strange sense of honor. And he thought he understood, in a way. For Elyse, though, the innkeep had a warm smile, and a gift of a honey cake wrapped in cloth. “Fortune smile upon you, and Demesque and Karilail shelter you,” he said, ostensibly to the both of them, but he was looking mostly at the witch as he said it. “Come back to us alive, the both of you. I know you may not want the village to know of your deeds before you are gone, but I, at least, will have a feast for you upon your return.” Not for the first time, Martimeos was grateful for Elyse’s charms, such as they were. He thought he had a much easier time with Ritter than he might otherwise have, because of them.

And then, they were off.

The place where they had agreed to meet Finnel, where they were to row out to the island, was the pine barrens where they had bathed, not so long ago. They knew their way there on their own, now. They took off out the back of the inn, to avoid the courtyard and the stares of the few curious folk there, and went out into the woods as quickly as they could. Their familiars followed discreetly, and joined with them after a time; Flit flying down to ride on Martimeos’ shoulder, and Cecil’s paws soft as velvet even on a carpet of dried leaves, making not a sound.

“So,” Elyse said, as they made their way to the meeting spot, once they were truly amongst the woods and the village had disappeared behind them, “Do you really suppose it will be so easy to kill Ezekiel?”

Martimeos looked down at the witch. She had brought with her the fae-stick that he had given her to hobble on, back when she had sprained her ankle while they were still journeying to Silverfish; she carried the knotted branch over her shoulder like a club. Blue ribbons adorned her long dark hair, which was looking much more well-combed than it had when he first met her, and she had gotten better at knotting the ribbons as well, though they were still haphazard. She looked forward as she walked, seeming uncaring, slight color in her cheeks, but she was afraid. He could see it in her unblinking stare, hear it in her voice that she had made sound just a touch too unconcerned.

It might have been a last opportunity to convince her that she ought to stay behind, but after some deliberation, he did not take it. He thought most likely that she would refuse him still, and it would be better to go into this in harmony than with an argument. “I do,” he replied. “There were times that my brother came back where he could barely tell what was going on about him at all.” And thank merciful Fortune that he had never seen the world so crooked that he had tried to kill me. “Even a wizard with all his wits about him might be struck down in ambush.” He touched his hand to the sword at his hip, and to the crossbow slung across his back. He might have wished for a larger one; his was good for hunting, but it was small and not so powerful at a distance. He knew the use of bow and sling as well, and had borrowed a sling from Ritter, and carried a pouch of heavy stones to use as bullets, but as far as bows went the innkeep had only had one which had not seen use in years and which would no longer shoot true.

He tried to keep his mind on the minutiae of his preparations, and to not think about his answer to the witch so much. He tried not to think about his dream. Tried not to think about whether it was a simple nightmare or whether it held some truth to it. It did not matter, either way. He could not shy away from this now. He had to find his brother’s trail. That pulled at him just as certainly as the Art itself had pulled him onto the road.

And that pull seemed to reach through time, to pull him along through that as well, so that the moments now seemed to pass too quickly. They arrived at the meeting place, and it seemed only moments before they found Finnel approaching them along the banks of the river, his boat cutting a path through the mist that hung on the surface of the lake, his oars dipping quietly and smoothly into the waters. He greeted them with the same enthusiasm he had earlier this morning, and stared in open wonder at their familiars. It was one thing for the man to know that they worked with the Art, he supposed, and another thing entirely to see with his own eyes the reality of that.

It was not long before Ren and Minerva arrived for the keeping of the fire-beacon, as well, and then, before he knew it, his fate gave him another tug, and it was time for them to depart, time for them to row to the island, time for them to know their destiny.

“I will pray to the Lady of Calm Waters for your return,” Finnel told them, as they stood on the gentle shores of the lake, by the grounded rowboat. “She has told me that she will do what she can for you. She is just a little goddess, now, but she will do what she can.”

Who knew whether the man had honestly talked to some goddess or spirit of the lake, or whether he was simply mad, but Martimeos thanked him anyway. And then, while Minerva pulled Elyse aside to speak some quiet words to her, Martimeos spun at the touch of a hand on his shoulder, only to find himself face-to-face with Ren.

The thief seemed somber, more serious than Martimeos had seen him before; it made his smooth, boyish face seem more adult. “Good luck, wizard,” the lad said in a low voice, grasping his hand, and then his blue eyes darted over to Elyse. “Take care of her, will you? See her safely back. It is a man’s duty to do so.”

Of course, the lad had eyes for Elyse. Martimeos had to suppress an urge to laugh. True, he himself had tried to convince the witch that it would be best to remain behind, but he had reasons of his own for this. Still, he could sympathize with Ren. Those who worked the Art gave up their customs, but they lingered, and he had been raised as such as well; to feel a responsibility for women and their safety, in this way. He wondered, though, what the witch might say if he told her this.

And then it was time. Elyse sat in the rowboat, with Cecil by her feet, and Flit perching on her hair, and the sand of the shore crunched beneath his boots as he pushed the rowboat out, until the cold water of Nust Drim caught the edge of his pants and he hoisted himself in, and when the boat had settled rocking they were floating free.

He seized the oars to steady them, and turn them towards their destination, towards the island, and took one last look back towards the shore. Finnel and Minerva stood there, waving, the hope etched clearly on their faces, and for a moment, all other considerations aside, Martimeos hoped purely that he might deliver them from the curse, purely for its own sake. Ren did not wave, but rather crouched by the campfire, watching after them, staring.

He turned back, where Elyse sat across from him, rubbing Cecil’s shaggy stomach as he mewed piteously on the floor of the rowboat. Behind her, the island and the manor loomed.

He rowed.

===***===

It was not a far distance to go, and not long before they reached the island, Martimeos leaping out of the rowboat to ground it on a shore of coarse and rocky sand, behind an outcropping of brush. When he turned around to look, he could still easily see the campfire on the shore of the mainland, and could even make out the figures standing by it. They could still see him as well, he supposed, and likely still watched, as well.

They would not be able to watch for long, though. Here, the island sloped upward, quickly, into the cover of a dense forest. Ritter had directed them where best to land, and here a stone-paved path carved into the woods, overgrown now with grass and weeds between its flagstones but still serviceable. He and the witch followed this quickly, deep into the gray shadows of the autumn wood, and left gently lapping waters of the lake behind.

They were silent, as they did so. Martimeos carried in his arms his crossbow, loaded with a bolt and ready to fire, as they moved through the woods. The most dangerous situation would be to stumble across the glimmerling unawares right now, but this was unlikely. Even if the creature - for that was how Martimeos thought of it, now, not as a man, but a creature - even if it were not blind, glimmerlings gave away their presence. Ezekiel had glowed like the moon when they had seen him, and a strange, chiming hum had carried to them across the waters of the lake, and such noise would warn them of his approach. They heard nothing of the sort now. Still, they sent their familiars ahead to scout; Cecil to prowl the woods and Flit into the sky, to tell them of anything unusual.

For even if they did not run across the glimmerling now, their path was not free of danger. A wizard such as Ezekiel might have some manner of protection; sigils laid into the ground and disguised cleverly to catch the unwary foot. And so they advanced slowly, always careful of the ground before them, open to the Art that they might sense any subtle workings of it. Crows cawed raucously at them from the dead branches of the trees around them, and Martimeos wished that he knew the crow-speech, but even Flit did not know how to talk to them. It made him nervous. A crow had been Ezekiel’s familiar, or so Ritter had told him; but it had died long before they came to Silverfish, felled by a bandit’s arrow, and the mage had never taken another familiar. Or, at least, so Ritter had said, but perhaps he would not know. And the blank, staring eyes of the blackbirds weighed down on him.

And the thorns were here, as well. The blackthorn vines which so plagued the mainland, the ones which Minerva had morbidly named corpseblood, they choked the space between the trees, and curled around branches, and grew across their path, and Martimeos thought once again of his dream as he stepped over them.

The island was not large, though, and the path led directly to the manor, and so it was not long before its moss-covered walls were looming above them, above the trees. From a distance, it was hard to appreciate the enormity of the place. If the stories were true, it had not been made to be a fortress, but rather to impress a lover, and yet perhaps it was the Hallic style of thick walls that made it seem like one. They seemed solemn and stern; mournful at having been forgotten and abandoned, with their windows bricked over.

It was then, when the shadows of the manor’s walls touched them, that they discovered their first oddity.

On the side of the path, a pyramid of bones had been erected, as if making a small shrine. Rib, leg and arm bones were stacked delicately, interlocking with each other, and the top was crowned with a circular arrangement of skulls - some raccoon, some bird, but most unsettlingly of all, three of which were human. Beyond being merely macabre, the shrine made them uneasy to look at – something about how the bones locked with each other did not seem natural. It did not seem right that a collection of bones so varied should fit in with each other so neatly. They could sense nothing of the Art about it, and so they passed on by, unconsciously giving it a wide berth.

Flit warned them of the next strangeness before they saw it, fluttering down from a treetop to chirp fiercely in Martim’s ear. The wizard's eyes widened to hear what his familiar was telling him, but he barely had time to be surprised at the message. As they drew close to the manor, they saw that its thick walls enclosed a courtyard, much as the walls of the Night Fisher inn did, though this one was, of course, much larger than the inn’s had been. And right at the entrance to the courtyard, right across their path, was something very peculiar indeed.

It was a garden of skulls.

In the dirt that stood on either side of the path and in the path as well, as if they had sunk into the earth and stone itself, were nine skeletal corpses, many of them nothing more than yellowed skulls poking out above the leaves – though some had skeletal hands peeking out above the dirt as well, and one was buried only up to its chest, with his skull toppled forth to lie before him. Dark, empty sockets stared, still and silent. Martimeos told Elyse to stand back, and cautiously circled the area, giving the corpses a wide berth. The pale, cracked bone peeking out of the dark earth made him think absurdly of cabbages. This was sigil work, he was sure of it – but any evidence of the sigil once traced into the ground here had long since faded, its power gone. Cautiously, he stepped into the circle of corpses. When nothing happened, Elyse joined him. “What happened here?” she asked, wondrously, prodding at a skull with her foot.

“A sigil, if I had to guess,” Martimeos muttered, eyeing the bones. He remembered what Minerva had told them, about the folk who had come for vengeance againse Ezekiel, Valerie Tuck among them. He supposed they had just discovered what had been their fate. “Any traces of the Art which was scribed in it are gone, but I don’t think it was meant to kill in itself. Perhaps only to trap those who approached within the earth. Though once that had happened...who knows what the glimmerling saw when it looked at them. Or what it did.” He grimaced, crouching down to examine a skull. It bore thin, straight lines in the bone in a strange geometrical pattern, the unmistakable sign of a knife having been taken to it. The patterns looked familiar to what he had seen carved into Valerie Tuck’s face. He shuddered.

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The courtyard beyond would have been very grand, in its day. The stone paths wove through plots of apple trees, all planted in a row, small orchards, though they seemed dead beyond what autumn would have made them, some collapsed or nothing but withered dry husks which the crows made their homes in. They were choked heavily by the blackthorns, and it seemed they were being choked to death. In the center of the courtyard was a fountain, and in the middle of it, on a stone plinth, was a carved statue of the Lady of Calm Waters. The artisan who made it had been very skilled; her hair floated as if it was underwater, and every scale on her fish-tail had been finely carved. She had the features of a beautiful, even alluring woman, and she looked down on them with a small, kind smile. Martimeos hoped that Finnel had spoken true. She seemed like the kind of goddess that would offer succor and protection, and he would like very much to have it.

Her beauty was marred, though, by long years of neglect. The water in her fountain’s basin had gone black and brackish, filled with layers of dead leaves. Reeds grew from it, and moss and lichen crawled over the statue and plinth both. Still, interestingly enough, they could both feel the very faint touch of the Art upon the fountain, so long faded that it could not be certain what it was meant to have done, but still there, like a flower which has wilted and dried but still kept its power. It had the touch of water-working upon it, and Martimeos supposed it may have once been enchanted to keep the water flowing and clean.

Past the courtyard and the smile of the Hallic goddess lay the front entrance to the manor, up a flight of crumbling stone steps, nothing but a gaping portal to darkness. Surely once doors had actually filled the entranceway, but they were gone now; robbed, or rotten, or perhaps chopped into kindling by some scavengers of this place long ago. Martimeos listened hard, standing by the entrance, but he could hear no sound of the glimmerling, and see no light. He called for Flit in the whistles of bird-speech, and at his request his familiar fluttered into that darkness, the feather-soft whispers of his flapping wings echoing off the interior, and he returned after some time saying that he had spotted nothing.

Unloading his crossbow and letting the tension go out of the string, Martimeos slung it over his shoulder and from his satchel produced two torches, and lit them with the Art. While he focused the flame, Elyse tried to speak to the trees here, but many were dead, and others in the sleep much like death that they would have for the winter. But just as he had both of the torches finally burning, the witch raised a cry, and he hurried to her to find her standing, befuddled, before a very odd tree. It was young, not yet rising above his head, but where the other trees here were either truly dead or leafbare for autumn, this one appeared to be healthy, thriving even. The thorns had not yet strangled it, and most peculiar of all were its leaves, which it had not yet shed at all and which were an almost startling shade of blue. This, however, compared not at all to what the witch told him.

“There is a child’s soul in this tree,” she said.

Martimeos very nearly dropped the torches he was holding. “What?”

“There is a child’s soul in this tree,” she repeated, and he saw that she was just as wide-eyed and shocked as he was. “Or, it is the only thing I can think of. It uses the tree-speech, but it does not speak as a tree would, does not speak of the things they would. It…it is hard to tell, because tree-speech is not made for saying such things, but I think that it is saying it is a child from the village. From Silverfish.”

“Can it give us a name?”

Elyse merely shook her head. “No. There is much that cannot be said in the speech of trees. Their words are made for the wind, made of the wind; they speak of the land, of seasons, of illness. It is a very rare tree that even knows what a name is, and the ones that do have a name, they are things that cannot be said. The feeling of what it is to have one’s middle branches weighed down by fierce winds, that might be a tree’s name.” She laid a pale hand on the odd tree, and shook her head. “This one, it aches to use the tree-tongue as a man might, but it cannot. It says that it came across the waters, and that it is a human child. Of that at least I am certain. Trees do not have words for many animals, but they do have a word for us.”

Martimeos held the torches out away from him; the heat of them was beginning to make him sweat. Flit darted from his shoulder to settle brazenly in the branches of the young blue tree. “How strange,” he murmured, unable to take his eyes from it. Ezekiel must have done this, though he could not think of why, and it was no small work of the Art to make another take on a new shape, though the fae were rumored to be very adept at it. He could sense the traces of the Art here, now, though they were nearly gone - the working of this must have taken place long ago. “Can it tell us…anything else, really? Anything about Ezekiel? What happened to it? Are there any other children changed as it is?”

Elyse tried to put the questions to the tree, which to Martimeos merely seemed as if she laid her hand upon the bark of it and closed her eyes. But after a while, she shook her head, and drew back. “It does not know what happened to it, or it does not know how to tell. And it has not seen any others. All I can tell for certain is that it says it has not been here for a very long time. Less time than it takes for all the seasons to change.”

“If it has been here for less than a year, then it must be Finnel’s child.” This was certainly a surprise. He would have never thought that the sad, emaciated worshiper of the Lady of Calm Waters might have been right that he would see his son again. Though he did not know if Finnel would be so glad to know his child was turned into a tree. “I wonder if this is what he’s done with all the children. Perhaps they are all trees now, and simply planted across the island.”

“One can hope,” said the witch. She frowned at Martimeos’ sharp glance. “What? ‘Tis not a bad life being a tree, I think. A long life of casting shade for travelers. And ‘tis better than what might have happened to them.”

She was right, he supposed. But the child-turned-tree unnerved him. What strange things must Ezekiel be seeing, that he would do such? Then again, he might be so far gone that he didn’t even know what it was that he did. He thought of Valerie Tuck’s face, and the runes carved there, and traced into the bones of the skulls they found in the corpse-garden. He doubted Ezekiel had known what exactly it was he was doing then, either. Glimmerling that he was, he might do anything now.

Elyse offered the tree what little comfort she could give, and Martimeos handed her a torch. They returned to the manor’s entrance, and the yawning darkness that awaited them. To their familiars, they gave the task of scout and lookout. It seemed likely to them that the glimmerling may still make its home within the manor itself, and if it were not within at the moment, now was an opportunity to set up an ambush for when it returned. Flit and Cecil would keep watch, ever from a distance, to see if they might spot the glimmerling and whether it was headed towards them. Though even this made Martimeos uneasy. “Be very careful,” he told Flit, but he knew that the cardinal was too brave and too proud for its own good.

They stayed for a while, lingering, watching Cecil slip between the trees, watching Flit disappear into the sky. And then they made their way into the dark.

The interior of the manor was cold, dusty stone, and the entrance hall so vast that the light of their torch did not reach the walls when they stood in the center of it. What windows that the manor once had which might have let the light in had been filled with brick, perhaps in an attempt to preserve what was within. It had crumbled away from one small window far above, and from it a single bar of white light stretched across the floor, catching the swirls of dust that their passage sent swirling through the air.

Any furniture or decoration that may have once been here had long since been taken, leaving nothing but the stone, or the occasional stain of rust where metalwork had been, but there were still whispers of the makers of this place left behind. A grand staircase dominated the center of the entrance hall, and the walls were lined with long basins which may have once held water but were now bone-dry. In bas-relief, along one wall and above the basin, was carved the image of men aboard a fat ship with two broad sails, men who wore long, conical caps and full beards, while in the waters they sailed on, women with fish-tails swam alongside.

Carved on the other wall, a group of these same men clutching spears and long shields faced off against another group of men, pikemen in long feathered hats. Between the two groups, one of the cone-capped men knelt before a king in long flowing robes and a high, pointed crown. And along the bottom of the carving were the words: THE MEN OF HALLIC NUST SWEAR FEALTY AND UNDYING LOYALTY TO THE AURELIC CROWN. Words in another script ran below this, but neither Martimeos or Elyse could read it - it was in another language, perhaps that which the Hallics had spoken long ago, before the Aurelics had conquered them and made their script the official one.

These stone carvings were well preserved, and might have been perfect, except for that someone or something had scratched out and carved away the faces of the Aurelic King and his pikemen.

“Who do you suppose did that?” Elyse asked, and her whisper, though low, seemed to echo in the empty darkness around them.

“The Gully Man,” Martimeos whispered back to her, although he had no way of knowing. He only thought it might be so. When the Gully Man had brought forth his army of traitors against the Aurelic Crown, many of those who followed him had been servants of the nobles which pledged their allegiance to it, or so the stories went. And where you could find blasphemy against the rule of the Aurelics, even in the heart of their power where it should not be, there you felt the touch of the Gully Man.

The witch was staring wide-eyed at the relief, holding her torch close to it so that she might see more of the details, but this was not what they were here for. With a tug on her sleeve he pulled her away.

Ritter had told them of the space Ezekiel took up in the manor, and how to get there. They passed through what was likely once a kitchen, with its grand fireplace taking up most of one corner. Martimeos imagined that he could still smell the ashes from it as he passed it by, though he knew it was centuries dead. And past the kitchen were a set of narrow stairs into a cellar. As he stepped down these, holding his torch high, the witch behind him and peering over his shoulder, he could not help but remember Valerie Tuck’s cellar, the horror that had been waiting for him at the bottom of those steps, and the darkness he was descending into seemed to grow.

But there was no mutilated madwoman waiting for them at the bottom of these steps, and the cellar here was much larger, meant for the storing of barrels of wine, not the goods of a farmer. There were no barrels here any longer, nothing but empty stone walls, except that, in a corner, they found their first signs that Ezekiel actually lived here.

It was simple furnishings, just some bare wooden chairs arranged around a small table, such as a humble man might use to entertain guests. It lay nearby a larger iron bowl which served as a hearth, full of ashes and char which had been burnt not so long ago. And also a much fancier upholstered chair made from woolcloth, and draped over with a large wolf pelt. On its cushion lay a book bound in black leather. He held a torch up for light as Elyse delicately leafed through its densely-scribed pages, but the witch merely shook her head after a few moments. “I think it is a book of history,” she told him, as she took her own torch back. “I saw words speaking of a siege the Aurelics laid upon a place called the ‘City of Bells’, and other things I did not understand.”

She made to slip the book into his satchel, but he shook his head.. “Leave it be, for now,” he told her. “We do not want to disturb anything in such a way that it might throw off Ezekiel when he comes by here, if indeed he’d be able to tell.”

As Ritter had said, there ought to be another set of stairs in this room. Beneath the manor lay an extensive basement, half-cave, where they had uncovered ancient workings of the Art while laying the foundations for this place. But it was truly dark down here, now, where not even the light from an unblocked window might filter. And so he and Elyse split up to trace along the walls, to find where Ezekiel truly made his home. And so it was that Martimeos stumbled across something that made his froze his blood.

In one lonely, cold corner of the cellar lay discarded children’s toys.

He stopped and stared at these. The orange torchlight revealed them, dancing fitfully over them in the dark. A blocky horse, clumsily carved from wood, and crudely painted. A doll made from stuffed burlap, with hair of rotting straw. A leather ball, and a pair of small wooden swords.

Uneasiness wormed its way through his stomach. He had heard the tale of what had happened to the children of Silverfish, and he had sympathy for them. But seeing these toys drove the reality home. How awful it must have been for the children, to have been torn from their families by something they could not stop, frightened of every shadow, doomed either way. It angered him to think of the Art used for such perverse purposes.

“Wizard!” Elyse called out from across the cellar. “Over here. I’ve found it.” Martimeos merely looked back at her, in her own island of torchlight across the room. “Wizard?”

He glanced back at the toys, and then tore his eyes away. “Coming.” He made his way over to the witch, to find her holding her torch over a small stairwell in the wall, down into a darkness even deeper than the one they already stood in, so black it nearly seemed to bubble up out of the stairs.

“Did you see something?” she asked him quietly, as he stood staring down into that dark.

He glanced at her. Her eyes were very intent on his face. “Nothing,” he muttered. “Nothing important.”

He took a deep breath, as if readying himself to dive into cold waters. And then he stepped down, deeper, deeper into the dark.

===***===

Down here, they could feel the Art. They both could. The lingering taste of the Art, far more ancient than what had been used on the fountain in the manor’s courtyard. Their torches revealed what looked to be a cave system, stalactites brushing their head, in places joining together with stalagmites to form large pillars, and the Art seemed to be in all of it, in the stone itself, melting, dripping away, seeping into the earth itself. They could not say what it was used to craft, not even the slightest guess. They could only say that it was old, extremely old. Not as old as the shattered one that Martimeos had talked to in Valerie Tuck’s well - that power, whatever it was, was born deeper in the depths of time than Martimeos had ever conceived. But this was very, very old, and must have been crafted very, very strongly, for it to not have faded away entirely yet.

And, as they moved cautiously forward, they realized that this was not a cave. Could not be. It ran too straight, too long at the same width the whole way through. It felt more like a hallway than a cave. There were some places where the cave walls were far too smooth, as if they had been carved, and it branched off far too regularly into smaller caves, each of which were just about the same size. As if each was a room connecting to the hallway.

And beneath it all, beneath the intoxicating and alluring sense of the Art well-crafted and strong, there was something else that set them both on edge. The sense of a demon’s touch. Small and weak, and barely there, but well-settled into this place, like a faded stain that could never be fully washed clean. It was not here, not now, not waiting for them in the dark, but something had unmistakably made this place its home.

“Perhaps Zeke truly was innocent,” Elyse murmured from somewhere behind him. “Perhaps whatever this demon was, it was this that took the children.”

Perhaps. But he did not think that a demon would turn a child into a tree. Even if it might, why would it have lived in the same space as the glimmerling? The more wicked in their strength a demon was, the stronger they might be sensed, the worse the stain they left behind on the world, and what he sensed here did not seem so large or powerful. Curious.

The sense of the Art grew stronger the further they went into the cave, strong enough that it began to seep into them. When the Art was strong in you, it could seize your heart, lift you, make you giddy, or so it was said. Martimeos could not let himself taste the joy of it here, though. He kept thinking of the sad pile of children’s toys, and it all felt befouled.

Eventually, they came to where Ezekiel slept.

It was in one of the small caves which branched off the hallway, and modest. A simple, small bed lay in the corner, a mattress laid on top of a wooden frame and covered in woolen blankets. Martimeos could feel the working of the Art upon those blankets, a very familiar one - the same which he used to keep his cloak warm, faded now, but worked enough that the threads had taken hold of it. A small lectern and a chair stood there, as well, made of dark polished wood, and a sheaf of papers lay on the lectern’s shelf.

Martimeos leafed through these, quickly, torchlight dancing over the pages. It appeared to be a treatise on the Art. Curiously, many of the pages seemed to be pure gibberish. Not even words, merely gibberish - chaotic scribblings. Though, as he looked at them, he wondered if they might be in another language. Many of the patterns repeated themselves. If they were, they were in no language he knew, using no alphabet he had ever seen. Stranger still, though, was that he could read the pages on top - it was as if the language it was being written in changed partway through. He briefly read through the earliest words.

“THE FUNDAMENTAL TETRAD or the GOD’S TETRAD is the Mind, Body, Spirit and Soul. It is the general architecture of what makes up the SELF. Of those who work the Art, many are ignorant of this architecture, and its vital importance in some of the crafts they attempt. Those who wound themselves in the working of our craft are often victims of this ignorance. Injuries to the Body are obvious enough, but there are injuries to the Mind, Spirit and Soul done as well. Those struck senseless or afflicted by moroseness or melancholy have wounded themselves in this way. Knowledge of the TETRAD is of particular importance when traveling OUTSIDE. One must align and attune the SELF with the place one travels to, or they risk the destruction of more than merely their Body, but the mutilation of their Soul.”

It went on like this for some time; the script was very dense. And it was not much further in that it became complicated; like many wizards, Ezekiel had his own style of notation, and what he wrote was nearly indecipherable unless you took the time to learn it, which Maritmeos did not have.

“Very interesting,” Elyse said. She had crowded next to him so that she might read along as well, and he quickly jerked his torch back before she could notice that the flames from it had scorched some of her hair. “But what is that mess on the back pages?”

“Yes, very interesting,” he agreed. He put the sheaf of papers back where it came from for now. At any other moment, it would have been hard to contain his excitement. Such treatises were rare to come across, and a well-written one could be as useful to the learning of the Art as a good mentor might be. He would have spent all he had, down to the last tin penny, to get his hands on such a script, and considered it a good deal. But right now they were still in danger. “But I have no idea what’s wrong with the rest of the script. Perhaps when I read it, I will find the reason. But for now, let us move on.”

It was not much further down, however, that the hallway-cave came to an end, in another small cave-room that jutted out from it. And it became yet more obvious that once, this had not been a cave, for in here the rock was carved into the shape of steps descending into the earth. Rough stone still crawled over it, like mold grown onto the steps, but it was unmistakable that this was what they once had been. But as Martimeos lifted his torch over this, he saw that only a few steps down they descended into water, as if whatever lay below had been flooded. He could not help but feel disappointed. He could feel the Art there, beneath that water, and he glanced away, looking around futilely to see if there might be another way down, as if any way down would not be equally as flooded.

“Martim,” Elyse said, her voice hushed, strangled. He glanced at her, and she looked stricken, unable to look away from the stairwell. “Look. Look close. The water.”

Martimeos lifted his torch high, so that it might cast more light over the water. It was surprisingly clear. And the orange light of the torch, filtering down through the water that had drowned the stairwell, revealed…

Bones. A large pile of bones at the bottom of the stairwell. Small skulls – children’s skulls – dotted here and there amongst the pile, deep within the water, as the orange light of the torch danced lazily over them. Elyse put a hand to her mouth to muffle a string of curses as Martim shook his head and spat. It looked as if the glimmerling hadn’t turned all the children into trees after all.