16. THE CURSE

It went like this:

Silverfish had a wizard, once.

It was a long time ago, perhaps twenty years or so, that two men had come to Silverfish up from Farson’s pass. This was the White Queen’s Land, in those years, and it was the time before her madness. Silverfish had signed a concord with Her Majesty, along with Cross-on-Green, a few years back, signing over their independence to her rule. It was done without the threat of arms, for she offered protection and the policing of roads by her knights, to rid them of bandits. This had put Silverfish close to warfare - the White Queen’s armies marched through the One-Road Wood to the Freetowns of Dorn - but in those days, it had seemed that she would surely conquer the Freetowns, and swiftly. They had not yet banded together in the Durnholde Concord, and the worst days were yet to come.

Into this frontier village had come Ritter, when his hair still had some color to it, and with him had come his close friend, Ezekiel the wizard. Both flush with coin from having served as quite accomplished mercenaries, they had recognized when they were starting to get too old for the rigors of an active war. Ritter had no taste for being the sort of commander who stayed in his tent and away from danger, and Ezekiel had long harbored a desire to delve deeper into the mysteries of the Art, and not just in service of battle.

“Silverfish was growing in those years, too,” Minerva told them. The words were pouring out of her. She wanted to tell this tale. Unlike everyone else they had met here, she wanted people to know. Or at the very least, she wanted them to know. “We’re named after what people wanted from us most, and believe it or not, merchants, they’d pay a pretty penny to our fishermen. If things kept on, there was a thought that we might even outgrow Cross-on-Green. Some even thought that we might grow together, merge with the town. Might even become something close to a city.”

In those heady days of prosperity, even those villagers born in Silverfish, reserved by nature, were more open to outsiders. Barges plied Nust Drim with trade, the fog had not overtaken the lake, and if the Queen’s knights looked down their noses at folk, well, they kept the roads safe. People were glad to welcome two very wealthy retired mercenaries, and delighted when Ritter used his wealth to restore some of the Hallic ruins and turn them into his inn. Ezekiel, for his part, took up residence in manor of the Hallic Prince Tennelyan, supposed lover of Véreline Valoir, who had built the domicile out on Rook Island, in the midst of the Great Lake of Nust Drim, in her honor and for her love.

“Why the manor, though?” Elyse was enraptured by what she heard, leaning forward, hanging on Minerva’s every word with wide eyes. Martimeos was more quiet, leaning back in shadow, pipestem in his mouth, expressionless. “Was he really wealthy enough to clean all that up? Did he have that many servants?”

Minerva gave a soft laugh, crows feet wrinkling the corners of her eyes. “No, child. Old Zeke never cleaned the place up, as such. They were wealthy mercenaries, but not nobility. He only took part of the house, part of the first floor and the cellar.” The cheer went out of her face, and her expression became more stern, deep lines of worry in her cheeks. “He chose it because Tennelyan - if there ever was a Hallic prince by that name, sometimes I think it’s nothing but a story - well, if he were real, they say he built the manor on top of a site of power. The Art, you understand. Old things, from times gone by. Part of his bid to convince Véreline to marry him, or so it goes. I don’t know if Tennelyan were real, but Zeke sure found plenty to occupy his time there.”

Yes, of course. It would be that, wouldn’t it. There were places that you could find such. The Art was woven into stone and steel and stranger things besides. The Aurelics had left things behind, of course, but there were older and more unusual ruins, too; from before the long rule of the Aurelic Crown, all the way back to the fabled time when man had live beneath the ground, or even before, things forged when the world was ruled by monsters. The Art could seem strange between two people working the same craft, and it could seem so much more strange between two peoples separated by thousands of years and an alien tongue. It could be dangerous to toy with such powers, but only a coward would refuse the thought entirely. Did Ezekiel, adventurer and mercenary, sound like he had been a coward? Martimeos didn’t think so. Suddenly, with a sinking feeling, he felt like he already knew the rest of the whole sorry tale.

For years Silverfish had known peace and good fortune beneath the Queen’s rule. Night Fisher inn was often full of customers paying good coin, and men from Farson’s Pass, if they were nearby, made it a point to come and visit Ritter’s new business, and to see Ezekiel as well. It seemed good that the old building had, at least once, known light and love and music and laughter. Perhaps, if it had kept going, the Hallic kingdom might have been restored as it once was, lakelords of Nust Drim bowing now to the White Queen instead of the Aurelic Crown. A grandiose dream, certainly. But the sort of dream folk longed for.

It hadn’t lasted, of course. And looking back there had always been signs, whispers, seeds of what was to come that would, in time, bear bitter fruit. The Queen’s march against the Freetowns of Dorn was not going as she would have liked. They had pushed her forces back nigh-miraculously time and again, even though she sent her blizzards to blight and freeze their crops. And now the Freetowns had rallied under the banner of the Durnholde Concord, a pact by which they swore to set aside their differences and to push the White Queen out of their lands for good.

Slowly, slowly had the darkness settled. It was taxes, at first. The White Queen demanded more in taxes to support her faltering conquests. Then more. Then yet more. Her knights - nobly-born from her heartlands, true Queensmen - began to take a heavier hand in trade. Folk must sell a certain portion of their produced food to the Queen’s armies, and must do it at a certain price. The Queen’s bondsmen could demand shelter and housing from folk, and confiscate their homes in extremity.

Then, a new law that men could be summoned and must respond to muster and join the Queen’s armies. And then men were so summoned. Again and again, and again. And each time, the Queensmen marched away men who were younger and younger than what they had taken the first time, and older and older as well. The Queen’s knights, not so long ago praised for the safety they brought, began to eye everyone with suspicion. A gibbet was constructed in Cross-on-Green, and more and more folk were brought forth to hang. The charges were always the same. Treason. Sedition. The Queen’s knights confiscated the property of those they executed.

What had once just years before seemed like the start of a prosperous new era withered and wilted. Coin dried up, and so did trade, with so much of it going to the White Queen’s coffers. Folk were suspicious of one another, always wondering if a neighbor might accuse them of treason for speaking their mind, and they fled from the sight of a Queensman. At least, that was how it was in Cross-on-Green, where Queensmen were garrisoned, and which might come under siege if the war’s fortunes truly reversed themselves.

Silverfish escaped the worst of it. Trade still dwindled, and merchant’s lake-barges sat idle by the piers, eventually scuttled or rotted through and sunk from neglect. But so focused were the forces of the Queen on holding Cross-on-Green that they rarely visited the smaller village, except to take more men as conscripts. That was bad enough. Still, Silverfish got its fair share of visitors. Ezekiel would entertain traveling wizards, and old mercenary friends still came to visit Ritter.

“We thought it was the darkest days, when Coxton Praet came to visit Ritter and Zeke,” Minerva mused. “If only we knew how much worse it would get.”

Martimeos gave a start. “Coxton Praet? The huntsman?” He still had not managed to meet the man. Coxton might have fled his home in the forest, but even in taking residence here, he woke early in the morning, when the stars still shone, to be among the trees, and did not come back until dark. He was a man who truly did not seem to like being amongst people.

“Aye, but before he was a huntsman, he was a mercenary, from Farson’s Pass, just like Ritter and Zeke.”

Had he been? The wizard couldn’t help but wonder how things might have gone, then, had he actually met the man out in the middle of the woods. Would their conversation have turned to the subject of the past, or would he have found something, some clue, that told him who Coxton used to serve? It seemed unlikely…and yet still, he could not stop a distinct vision from forming in his mind. One where he met with the huntsman, alone in the woods, discovered his past, and killed him. And then, when he came to Silverfish, with fresh murder in his thoughts, the shattered one in the well would have been able to seize him, and make him its slave. A path not taken. It could just be idle thought. Or perhaps not. Perhaps the vulture-men, demons though they had been, had done him a boon. Perhaps Fortune really was looking out for him, in its laughing, roundabout way.

Minerva had never known Coxton, but she could tell that something had happened to him. He didn’t seem like a mercenary with steel in his eyes, like Ritter or Zeke. He seemed like a broken man. He came bearing news of the siege of Durnholde; the White Queen had attempted to take the very Freetown the Durnholde Concord was named for, and thus break the men of Dorn. The battle had gone on for over a year, and according to Coxton, it had been a disaster. However much they had bloodied Dorn, the Queen’s forces had been bloodied much worse. Coxton was convinced it was all done, now. The Queensmen had lost their minds, he said. Their Queen was cracked, and they had lost the war. It was all over except the dying. The Queen, she’d have to be satisfied with what she already conquered, because another atrocity like Durnholde and the souls of the dead themselves would come for her.

“Some of the things he said,” Minerva whispered. Even now, the old apothecary looked somewhat frightened. “I think he must have lost his wits. He was ranting and raving…entire fields covered with the dead, forests of headless men on pikes, folk burnt alive…”

Martimeos could only keep a grim silence. He had been to Durnholde. He believed it. Whatever Coxton said, he believed it.

Coxton’s appearance had touched off a huge row between Zeke and Ritter. Minerva wasn’t sure what it was about exactly, but she thought she had the jist: Ritter, upon seeing Coxton, had felt pity move his heart, and had wanted to venture out to make sure that, at least, the mercenaries of Farson’s Pass that were in the Queen’s service were taken care of. Zeke had objected, and violently: He felt as if the Queen’s forces had gotten their hands on him again, once they got a measure of his power they’d never let him go until he was as broken as Coxton was. A good wizard could be as useful as a hundred men. Even the most unlearned mageling could be good in a war. A little warmth, a little mending of boots with charms; these things could keep men marching far longer than they otherwise might have. And Zeke was far from unlearned. He was a man of power. When Nust Drim would flood, he would drive back the waters and keep Silverfish from being swept away; after bad storms, he would come to the mainland in a little rowboat and lift the trees from roofs with the force of the Art. This was not idle, trivial craft, but Zeke did it easily. It was likely that and his isolation on the island that had stopped the Queen’s forces from conscripting him yet.

There had been shouting, and curses, and Ritter had called Zeke a coward to his face. “And it was all foolish men nonsense,” she muttered, giving Martimeos a sideways glance as if he might start in on some foolishness right this very moment. “Ritter and Zeke stopped talking, and the wizard went and holed himself up in his manor, and all for what? Ritter, he tried to convince Coxton to go with him, but Coxton wasn’t in any shape to go back to war himself, and it wasn’t long before he went to go live in the One-Road Wood anyway. And what was Ritter going to do? One old man, all alone, abandon his inn, take up his sword long past his time, was he going to save anyone? No. He would only get himself killed. So he stayed anyway, and he stayed angry at Zeke exactly because he knew the wizard was right.” She shook her head. “Foolishness.”

It was then that the real darkness had come.

Little Tana Evett had been the first to go. Others weren’t so sure about that, but Minerva was. “She was a bright, cheerful, dutiful child,” the old apothecary murmured, and though she had told her sad and bloody tale so far with no sign of distress, tears appeared in her eyes now. “We would lose children to the lake every now and then, you see. Usually the very foolish ones, who go swimming out further than they can make it back. They thought this happened to Tana, at first. But I was suspicious right from the start. She was a smart child. Too smart to drown like that, even if she were very young. Still, people looked for her, and when they didn’t find her, they mourned.

“People started to worry when the second child went missing not soon after. Leo Polk.” That had been the same last name as the farmer who had bought them in; Jace Polk, who Martimeos had run to fetch help from. At their questioning looks, Minerva nodded. “Leo was Jace’s grandson,” she said sadly. “He had such a happy family, once. His son married a woman who journeyed here from far out west; she was a strange one, with an accent that sounded like she was singing, but she knew horses better than anyone else here, and could trade with the best of them. Veretta, she was called. But his son died fighting the Queen’s War, and Veretta…well…”

Suddenly, Minerva was weeping, and it almost seemed as if she was having trouble breathing. She only waved them away when they rose to help her, though, and after a few moments of dabbing away tears from red-rimmed eyes, she continued on. She did not say what had happened to Veretta, however. “After Leo disappeared,” she continued, “Folks began worrying a little more. They thought perhaps children had found some dangerous new jumping place into the lake, with hidden rocks; or perhaps some strange currents had opened up in Nust Drim, or even a creature of some sort was preying on them. Some folk were certain that some of the children had to know what had happened; that two little ones just wouldn’t disappear without some of their friends seeing. But none of the children knew anything, and they were getting more and more frightened. We told them to stay away from the lake.

“When the third child disappears, panic sets in. Ada Tuck. Valerie Tuck’s only daughter. Well, only one that survived. She had other children, but they all died young of sickness or injury. Ada was her last, before she got too old to bear any more, I suppose. The girl grew up strong, and Valerie always said that Fortune had finally smiled upon her and given her a healthy child. And now she was gone, just like that. She was fourteen years old, on her way to womanhood; not so young, like the others. Nobody thinks these children are drowning, anymore. Nobody’s looking at the lake. Now they’re thinking the children are being taken, and they’re looking at each other. Who could be able to take a child like Ada without anyone noticing? Some say she would have put up a fight if someone had tried to take her by force, raised some cry, and so it had to be someone they knew. Others are saying it must be an outsider to blame. They tell the children to stick together, to never be alone, only trust their parents, even a neighbor might be dangerous…

“Then it happens again. And again. Two in one day. Within hours of each other. Thane Lockett and Elinor Crayton. They’re both gone, just like that, and worse nobody seems to know how. Even though folk were supposed to be watching their children, even though children were supposed to be sticking together. Little Thane, he was barely more than a babe, and under the watchful eye of his parents in their own home, when they took their eyes from him for but a moment, so they say, and he vanished. They tore their house down - actually began tearing apart the walls - looking for him, but it was too late. He was gone. Elinor though, was even worse. She was with a group of friends, and no adults looking after them, and because she disappeared and none of her friends know how, now you have some folk suggesting that it’s some of the children themselves who are doing this, that some of them are little murderers.” Minerva shook her head slowly in disgust. “I knew what was coming, then. I think everyone could, in a way. Some of the older folk, they were scared, they were angry, but they kept their wits about them. But others, the parents, the ones who had children who were disappearing, they just lost their minds. I don’t even know that it mattered to them who to blame. Just someone needed to be held responsible.”

“Everyone came under suspicion. You had neighbors calling the Dark Stranger down to curse people. Even praying to the Dark Stranger, right out in the street, saying they’d give anything to have their son or their daughter back. Well, if you ask me, the Dark Stranger did visit us, but not in the way anyone wanted. People were fighting, hurting each other in the street, damn near killing each other. Breaking into each other’s homes, setting them on fire. Ritter near had his inn burned down for being an outsider, and he had been here for years and years by that point. Folks lynched an innocent merchant, for no other reason than he happened to be in the village at the wrong time. I had people I’d known all my life come into my shop and accuse me of chopping up children for potions, and I think the only reason I lived is because they figured out someone else to be angry at.

“See, Zeke had still been holed up at the manor, and no one had seen the man for quite some time, now. So four lads, they get the idea that they are going to go row out to his home and have a chat with him. Pure foolishness, on their part, because if they were going to go out to accuse Zeke of stealing children and he actually had been the one doing it, there was no way a mage of his power would be letting them leave alive. But went they did. And only one came back. He can’t say what happened to the other two, but he saw Zeke himself, and he swore he was dead. The wizard, he said, was a ghost.

“Children are still disappearing the whole time this is happening, and now people are sure that either Zeke is the one doing it, or that something killed Zeke, and whatever that was, that’s what’s doing all of this. So out go two boatloads of parents, the ones who have lost their only children and have nothing left to lose, rowing out to the island.” Minerva paused, to take a deep breath. This was all coming out in a rush, and her own voice was growing quick, as the panic of that time was coming back in echo or memory. “I told them it was a stupid thing to do. But nobody listened, nobody cared, and what could I say? Could I look an aggrieved parent who had lost everything that mattered to them in the eye, and tell them not to take a chance on vengeance? A dozen folk, in all. And eleven of them never came back. The only one who did?

“Valerie Tuck. We found her floating in a rowboat between the shore of the mainland and the island. Three days later. Just there one day, with her face carved and skinned so that I could barely believe she was alive, and with no memory of what happened. Or so she always said, when she could say anything at all.” The old apothecary gave a long, weary sigh. “It was a miracle that she lived. Some of my greatest healing. Perhaps I should never have bothered.”

Martimeos remembered those eyes blazing with hate, even as she was pulled down into the well, into the dark, into forever with the shattered one. She had sold her soul, damned herself, for revenge. Perhaps she might not have remembered exactly what happened, but he thought she probably had some notion of who, or what, was responsible.

“...Either way, that was the end. Nobody wanted to be in a village where their children could be snatched away from them at any moment, mayhaps by a mad wizard, mayhaps by something even worse. Everyone who still had a child to lose, everyone who planned on having a child, they packed their things and left. The only ones who remained were those who had lost everything and could hope for no more children, the old, the childless, the madmen. So you see, then, why the Art is not thought of so fondly ‘round here these days.”

Minerva fell silent. But it was a fragile silence, one that could be shattered like glass if only one of them spoke up. The old woman did not want them to speak up. That much was obvious. She had told all she really wanted to tell. But those poisonous thorns were digging into his thoughts again, and Martimeos needed to hear it all. He needed to hear what he already knew was the truth. It was obvious enough. The awful, terrible, total truth had to be said aloud. “That wasn’t all that happened, was it.”

“No,” Minerva said in a hoarse whisper, and there were tears in her eyes again.

“Then tell what happened next.”

Elyse was looking at him curiously, then back at Minerva, her brow knitted. She didn’t understand. But it was so, so obvious to him. Maybe he had become too used to the black nature of the times.

“Well,” Minerva said, and now she had a cloth out to dab at the tears running channels down her face, and she was speaking through hitching sobs, but he was going to make her say it, damn it, it was going to be said out loud instead of hidden in fog, in whispers, in the ramblings of madmen, it was going to be said out loud. “Well, when people packed up to go, where do you think they went?”

“No,” Elyse gasped in sudden shock. Now she understood.

“Yes,” Minerva replied miserably. “Cross-on-Green.”

Blackened shells of buildings, looming over empty streets, never to know comfort again. A tree’s branches weighed down with corpses.

“A-and…not long after…th-the news came of the White Queen’s death, and…” That was all she could say before she buried her face in her hands.

And that was it, wasn’t it. There had been no salvation, in the end, for these cursed and doomed folk. Those who had fled in hopes of saving their children had instead been chased into the teeth of something worse; an implacable demon of thousands of sickened minds, of thousands and thousands of marching feet, a demon that held ten thousand blades and burned and ruined and slaughtered and had not stopped, perhaps could not stop, until the one head that had worn the crown was dead. And so the living children and folk of Silverfish had burned, and all for nothing, nothing, nothing.

So it was with the White Queen, in the end; death to even those who had sworn loyalty to her. Death even after she had already died, and for what? Perhaps simply because those who served her could no longer think of what else to do. He raised tired eyes to gaze around the common room of Night Fisher inn. The black cat, King, stared at him from across the room. In those yellow eyes, he felt like that damned cat had seen everything that his master had done and was mocking him with the knowledge.

“How is it that none came for him?” he said, mostly to himself, but Minerva heard him.

“You have to understand,” she was saying. “The day it happened…Ritter used to have a banner for the White Queen hanging on the walls, here. The day we heard the news, he took it down and burned it. And…and…the others…”

Suddenly, he understood perfectly. Of course, none had sought revenge on Ritter. What revenge was there to be had? They had all been servants of the White Queen, many of them had likely served in her armies, others had most certainly voted for or advised on signing over sovereignty to her. Who could blame him without blaming themselves? And who was left with the flame of vengeance in their heart, with all those young so effectively purged? And the shame of it all had bound their tongues. Who would want to tell an outsider of the awful, bloody thing they were guilty of? Suddenly, Valerie Tuck seemed absurdly admirable.

“So that is it, then?” Elyse asked. The witch looked pale and drawn, and her expression was that of someone who had just taken an unexpected blow to the stomach. She asked like one who was expecting that there would be worse to come.

“Yes,” Minerva said, and then shook her head, denying her own words. “Except for poor Finnel.”

“Finnel.” The haggard, starving-looking man who worshiped the Lady of Calm Waters? The man who had been the first to greet them to this damned town? What special Hell has he earned?

Minerva's shoulders rose and slump, in a great big ragged sigh. Out with it all. “Finnel, he…when the Queensmen came to press him into service, Finnel fled. We thought for certain that he would have been caught and killed for treason, or…” she trailed off, not knowing what other fates might have befallen the man. “But he didn’t. He was gone for years and years, but…not so long ago, half a year ago, he came back, and when he came back, he had a wife. A strange woman, who he said he had met in a land across the seas…she was so beautiful, a tall, graceful thing, she looked like she was dancing even when she was just walking…oh, and damn him, damn him, he had a son with him…”

“How could you let him bring a child here?”

“We didn’t know!” Minerva wailed, and here it was, the final damnation of this entire miserable place. Finnel might have fled out of some noble sense of defiance against the Queen or he might have fled out of simple cowardice, but the one man who would not serve the Queen would share the same fate as the rest of them, wouldn’t he. “He came back in the night, and before we knew he was here, it was too late, too late…”

And what else was there to tell? Finnel’s wife, grief-stricken, had hanged herself, and Finnel, having lost his son and the love he had traveled across the world to find, had shattered. He began hearing voices, swearing that the Lady of Calm Waters was speaking to him, and these days barely ate anything anymore. He spent all his time in the old Hallic temple on the shore of Nust Drim, and it was likely a miracle that he had not hanged himself as well.

It was sickening. Martimeos felt disgust and a long, slow, aching pity, having heard it all, and yet he also felt that this was something that had to be heard. He could feel those thorns scratching the inside of his skull; he felt as if he looked outside he would find that they had grown up all around the inn.

“And the thorns?” Elyse asked, and he almost leapt out of his skin, staring hard at the witch. Had she read his mind? But no, she was looking at Minerva instead. “You said you know something of herbcraft. The thorns that have overrun this place, they cannot be natural.”

But Minerva merely shrugged, a crooked smile beneath tear-reddened eyes. “I honestly don’t know, child. Perhaps they are not. I call it corpseblood, for the ichor it bleeds looks like old blood. It began to grow here shortly after the White Queen’s death. That’s when the fog came, too, and I had never seen it before, nor heard any tale of it from any other who practices herbcraft. What could it be? Perhaps the Dark Stranger thinks we have not suffered enough, and has decided to curse us further? If the thorns are the second act, I have to say I think it is a weak followup to the first. If they overgrow us all, it is certainly not as bad as taking away our children and sending so many of us to our deaths.” And then he heard from her the same thing he had heard from his old teacher. “Some folks say the world’s just getting tired, getting thin, getting old. Maybe that’s all it is.”

Martimeos rose, and Minerva looked up at him, and he felt ashamed at himself for the anger that flared in him when he saw the hopeful look on her face. What hope? What hope could he offer her? Surely she didn’t expect to ever see the missing children again. She seemed like a sensible woman. Too sensible to believe that there could be any hope for them. They must be dead.

And yet, weren’t there the tales? Tales of children snatched by the fae, not to be killed but to be raised by them? Perhaps it would bring people comfort, if they learned that their children, while stolen, still lived. And there were other stories, weren’t there? There were the tales of clever Jack Rabbit and his wily foe, the fox Quick Red, who forever tried to hunt him. They were meant as fables for children, and yet some of them touched on reality at times. And in one tale, Quick Red chased Jack Rabbit into a cave, only to get lost within it and find that, once he had finally stumbled out, one hundred years had passed while he had only aged a day. If it could happen in the stories, couldn’t it happen in truth, through some strange working of the Art?

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It could, but it would be foolish to hold out hope for such a possibility. But he thought he knew what she wanted to hear. A wizard and a witch, shouldn’t they be able to say something, anything, about what had happened to them? If they knew the Art, perhaps they even knew of some way to undo what had been done. Perhaps that was why they stayed on, here, in this dying and doomed village. Simply to know, and to perhaps one day see their doom unmade.

That look of hope stung, and the truth, though it was necessary to have it out, made him feel filthy. More filthy, anyway, than he had already felt from being at Valerie Tuck’s farm. “A grim tale,” he said to her, as gently as he could. “I am sorry to hear it. It certainly explains why Valerie might have sold herself as she did.” He looked away from her; he could not stand those eyes, and he would not give her promises he could not keep. “I will think on it, for a time.” At any other time, he might have smiled inwardly at himself for speaking in such a manner; just as one might expect from a mysterious wizard. But now he was too urgent to leave, he could not stand to be here any longer. “If you might excuse me. I think I must go find a place to bathe and wash my clothes.”

He wished he had not said what he did. Minerva saw hope even in his promise to think on it, when he had meant it as a way to dismiss her. He strode away, quickly, his furred cloak flapping behind him, and he was out the door even as the apothecary’s voice called out behind him that Ritter could heat water for a bath if he wished it.

===***===

A hot bath would have been tempting, more than tempting, at any other time. The chill of autumn had truly settled in, and Martimeos did not think there would be any more temperate days. He kept his black-furred cloak becharmed against the chill even during the day, now, and when he took it off, sometimes the chill of the wind bit through his leathers and down to the bone. Hard frosts and bitter snows, he thought, were in store; harder than they had seen since the Queen’s War had ended. Those years had brought truly bleak winters, and it was said that the Witch in the West was responsible. And it had certainly seemed that they had earned a reprieve once she had died.

But as tempting as such a bath might be, he simply could not stand for it right now. He couldn’t stand to be in Silverfish at the moment, in fact. The old bloody tale had seemed too damned familiar, and more despicable than ever. He had started his journey in the Freetowns of Dorn, and had seen the death the White Queen had dealt, and never had it rankled his heart so as it did seeing it in Silverfish and Cross-on-Green. Perhaps it was the sheer stupid senselessness of it, here. Dornmen had died, but at least it could be said they died spitting defiance at the Queen, died for their own liberty, died with nobility and purpose. And they had won, as terrible as the toll had been. Here? It was just death, senseless death, black death for nothing.

And what had sickened more than the story were his own thoughts, for it would be a lie to say that there was not a part of him that thought that they deserved it. They deserved it for selling their souls as they had. A dark part of him had received the tale with glee.

But of course, this was nonsense. The children themselves were not to blame. They had no say in whom their parents had decided to swear fealty to, and it was not any sort of justice that they should be killed. And even those full-grown had likely only done what they thought would let them continue to live in peace. Such unworthy thoughts could happen from time to time, of course; every man had the voice of wickedness in him. It could be ignored. But this time, Martimeos had found himself shocked at just how persuasive those evil little whispers of thoughts had been, and shame burned in him for it.

It was this damned village. And his damned dreams, with the thorns, always the thorns reaching in, and the voice that should not be there whispering to him. He could not say why the nightmares that had plagues him in his youth might return here, but they were worse than they had ever been. Could it be that this was like the tree, in Cross-on-Green? Could it be that there had been so much simple death here that the world thinned and the Land of the Dead drew close, such that spirits might find their way here and wander the living world? Then why would that voice find him here, of all places? That voice had not found its death anywhere near this place.

He whistled for Flit, hoping that his familiar might be nearby, but he was not. Flit had found a lady-cardinal - or perhaps more than one - and these had taken his interest. A wizard’s familiar was usually brighter and larger than most of its kind. Flit was no exception, and his vivid scarlet plumage and vigor caught the eye of ladybirds. And it was (or so Flit had claimed) an honor to mate with those who partnered with a wizard, those touched or called by the Art. This was not the first time that Flit had been thus distracted. Martimeos did not know how many eggs and children the cardinal had left behind, but he suspected it was no small number.

And so he shook his head, and stalked away quickly, not wanting to be by the Night Fisher inn any longer, not wanting to stand in the shadow of the thorn-wreathed tree standing in its courtyard. He tried not to look at the buildings that he passed by, the homes both abandoned and not, and if any folk walked the street or watched him, he saw them not.

He came down to the shores of the great lake of Nust Drim. Though the mist was returning at the end of day, it hung low to the ground and curled around his ankles. The golden light of the setting sun caught both the clouds above and the fog hanging on the surface of the lake, twinning in the water, and for a moment Martimeos could only stop and stare. It was beautiful, achingly so, the light and the lake and the dark trees beyond all blurred together by the fog, and it all seemed like a dream. Perhaps it was not the Land of the Dead that was near to this place, perhaps it was the Land of Dreams. Life itself was a dream, or so said the fae. That fog was in his head too, alongside the thorns, and it had only grown thicker as he lost more sleep.

He wandered along the edge of Nust Drim for some time, out along its western bank, and as he did he felt as if he were melting into that light. The further he walked from Silverfish, the more it felt as if some sickness was draining away from him, dissipating in that luminous mist. The thorns retreated from his mind even as they retreated from the land, as well; the blackthorn, the corpseblood as Minerva called it, none grew here, out along the further edges of Nust Drim, only the reeds and the blackened leafbare maples of autumn.

Eventually those gave way to the comforting green of a pine barrens, and Martimeos stopped. Here was as good a place as any. A pressure had left him, and he felt more relaxed than he had been since he had first come to Silverfish, but he still felt filthy. In body, mind and soul. His clothes still had the black remains of rotten pumpkins from Valerie’s farm flecking them, and he could feel the lingering touch of the shattered one when it had slithered amongst his thoughts. Old Power or no, whatever it was, it had been vile.

He stripped, and at the shore of the lake first he washed his clothes, and when he was done he touched them with the flame of the Art, delicately so that they might warm and dry themselves. In some cases, the black pumpkin-gore that clung to them was not easy to clean off, and and he grabbed fistfuls of dead brown pine needles to scrub it from his boots. The pine-scent drifted up from the needles, and that too was comforting.

When he was done, he stood at the edge of the water and took a deep breath. The water was calm, and clear, and the lakebed by the shore hard-packed sand. Quickly, and without hesitation, he waded in.

It was as cold as he knew it would be, from when he had washed his garments. He quickly submerged himself, holding his breath, keeping his eyes open in the dark and then rose, gasping, brushing back the long wet strands of his hair from his eyes. The cold seeped into him, into his guts, into his flesh. But it was not the death’s grip of wintery ice. It was the brisk embrace of cold that stirred the blood, quickened it and set it racing, and which cleared the mind. The poison in his thoughts left behind by the shattered one was swept away, and the fog in his head cleared, as the cold poured into him and his blood roared with heat to fight it.

He felt more clarity of mind than he had felt since had first come to Silverfish. He still felt tired, yes - nothing but sleep would cure that - but he could think more clearly than he had been able to, and was sharper and more aware of the world. If he had not been, he might not have heard the twig snap behind him.

Martimeos whirled around, but he could see no one in the shadows of the pines. His eyes went immediately to his sword and his crossbow, lying next to his drying clothes, and he began to make his way back towards them with haste. “Who is there?” he cried out, but the words died on his lips. He stopped his clumsy scramble back towards the bank as Elyse stepped out from behind a tree.

For a moment, he merely stared at the witch, and she merely stared back at him, unblinking. “How long have you been there?” he managed, finally.

Elyse gave him a look that was very deliberate and just a tad too considering for his liking. “Long enough, I suppose.” Her eyes had a mischievous gleam to them, reflecting the golden light of the setting sun.

Martimeos felt his cheeks burn, and she actually smiled at that. Memories of sunlight catching in golden hair drifted through his mind, and he sank further into the water to hide himself. “Did you really come here to spy on me bathing?”

“I did no such thing,” the witch snapped back at him, crossing her arms. “But you did not seem well, wizard, after hearing Minerva’s story, so I…I followed you. I was worried for you.” She gave a start after she said this, and then her smile turned into a fierce frown and a glare for him.

“Why did you not say anything to me, then?”

“You were well out of the village already before I spotted you. I was not going to run after you. I was tired.”

Martimeos noted that this did not give an excuse or an explanation for why she had spied on him, then. She had used glamor to hide from him too - he could recognize the lingering feel of it, now that he was looking for it. He was about to say something about this, but whatever words he had for her were choked off when she bent and began lifting her dress above her head. He whirled around to face the lake, but the glimpse he had got of her pale, bare legs already dimmed the clarity of mind he had found. “What are you doing?”

“Bathing,” she replied from behind him. She sounded annoyed, and also a touch amused.“Or did you think that you were the only one who wished to do that?”

He could hear the witch wading into the water behind him. “It is not normally customary for men and women to bathe together, you know.”

“Those who work the Art give up all custom,” she replied lightly, and he flinched as cold water hit his back. She had splashed him. “Mother never cared what I wore or didn’t wear in our swamp, but she did have me dress when visitors came to see her, especially as I got older. I knew folk could be odd about it from stories, but it is funny to see. ‘Tis a body, not a viper. Do you fear that if you look your eyes will be put out?”

There was no sign from her speech that she was deep in chill water. She sounded as if she might be taking a bath in a gentle spring stream. Meanwhile, his own teeth were chattering, and the initial fiery response of his blood was beginning to die away to simple numbness. I should look at her, and see if she really is as unconcerned as she says. Instead, he waded back to shore, trying his best to avoid her, not thinking about the slender white glimpses in the corner of his vision. He knew the witch was odd, certainly, but this was a new height of strangeness for her.

She was right that working the Art and wandering the land meant that you gave up your own customs - a wanderer must be ready to bear witness to the strangeness of other people’s ways. And when he had traveled the Freetowns of Dorn, customs could change from town to town, and some had seemed very strange to him. He had come to one town called Lerremat where the custom for folk was to kiss each other on the mouth simply to greet one another, and that had baffled him. He had not come across any towns where men and woman bathed together, though, and he thought it likely that Elyse would be in trouble if she tried that pretty much anywhere.

He picked up his cloak - though it was not yet dry, it was at least warm - and wrapped it about himself, and then about gathering wood to build a fire while she bathed. When he returned, she sat cross-legged atop a rock, dripping wet and careless of her nudity, with her washed dress stretched out beside her. She laughed as he threw his cloak at her. “I am not cold, wizard. You should keep it if you are.” So she said, but she immediately wrapped it tightly around herself and threw the hood up, wriggling her shoulders into the fur. Perhaps she did feel some effect of the cold, after all.

He struggled to pull his breeches on (still wet, though warming) to cover his shame, something that the witch unashamedly watched with interest. Why he even bothered at this point, he did not know. He made to pull on a linen undershirt, as well, but even as he raised his arms to slide into it, Elyse blurted out, “What is that awful scar from?”

There it was. There was the question that was always asked of him, eventually. Everyone who ever saw him with his shirt off, for the rest of his life, would ask him about it. The thick line of purple scarflesh that crawled like a snake across his back, all the way from his left shoulder down to his right hip.

The witch was standing now, and walking towards him. Her eyes were very intent on his face, and he did not know what he could read in them. They held his own with some strange pull. “I could feel it, you know. Whenever I healed you, I could feel that wound.” He knew. He had been healed by others before, and they would always remark on it. His expression was stone, and he could not tear his eyes away from hers. He was not even aware of the sight of her body as the cloak fell open and she reached out with one hand, as if to touch his back.

And then, all at once, he turned away from her and pulled the shirt down over his head. “A Queensman gave it to me,” was all he said.

“When?”

He could be as dark and secretive and cold as an abandoned wolf-den with his back to her. But when he turned to face the witch, her dark blue eyes - not cold, like so many blue eyes were, but full of a laughing warmth - those eyes were on his again, and he softened. There was a voice in his mind cursing him for a fool, for letting a pretty girl worm her way into his head. That was probably why she undressed in front of you. You’re thinking with your nethers, and no good decisions ever came from there. This cautioning voice was loud in his thoughts, very often loud enough that he knew he had to temper its words most times. But it was quieter when it came to Elyse, for it was hard to remain suspicious of someone you had come through great danger with, someone who had saved your life and whose life had been saved by you. That she was pretty had nothing to do with it.

Still, he would not tell her every painful detail. “During the Queen’s War,” he said. “Some of her forces managed to maneuver in secret to Pike’s Green, which had been supplying her enemies. They struck at a few villages. Eventually they were routed, but not before I got the scar from them.” There. It wasn’t so bad when you put it like that, was it? A few brief words describing what had happened. They were insufficient, but words would always be insufficient in describing what had happened.

The smell of smoke, burning flesh, thick in your mouth, oily. A large yellow moon hanging in the night’s sky like a demon’s eye, watching him. The screaming, so fierce that it barely seemed human, you would never think that your neighbors might have made those noises as they died. Dying and dead friends. Ruined faces and blood that looked black in the moonlight.

These were all old, deadly memories, but they were just that now, old. They still came to mind whenever he spoke about it, but he could talk of it, and keep an even temper while he did so. At least, now he could. In Silverfish he had not been able to, and it bothered him that it was so. What was it about that place that made the memories so much worse?

He thought that she might ask more about what had happened, and dreaded it, but to his surprise she did not. Instead, she asked the other question that healers had for him about his scar. “Who healed you?” This, he could not answer. It raised too many questions, got too many tongues wagging. It could bring trouble for himself, or the one who had done it.

“What caused that scar cut you deep, wizard,” Elyse went on, when it became obvious he was not going to break his silence. Her words were weighted with wonder and awe. “I do not see how it did not kill you. Assuming the miracle that you are not dead, the wound should have left you crippled and maimed, even under the care of the most learned in the healing Art. And yet here you are. Standing though you should not be able to, healthy, vigorous.”

He could not answer her, but neither did he want to give her any lies. So, instead, he moved around her to begin building up a small campfire to warm themselves by while their clothes dried. Within a little circle of stones, he stacked a tent of sticks of dried pine on a carpet of dead needles, and touched them with the flame of the Art. Within moments, white smoke was drifting upwards, and in the next an orange flame licked at the wood.

Elyse sat down next to the fire as he tended it, until it was going well enough to eat away at the portions of a fallen log’s trunk that he went and fetched, her eyes always on him, watching over the flames, her face a shadow in the curls of his cloak’s hood. And, thankfully, she did not press him. Though he almost felt as if he could feel her hungry curiosity now, and truly, he could not blame her. It was a hunger to know how something was done with the Art. He wanted to know himself. He was not sure that this curiosity of hers would stall itself in the silence. But there were other things for them to talk about.

The sun was closer now to the horizon, though that simply made the sunset more glorious. Tennelayan’s manor - Ezekiel’s manor - was a dark shadow against the dying light of day, out amongst the waters of Nust Drim. Disquieting to see, now that he had heard what had happened there. “So,” he asked, as he joined Elyse in sitting by the fire, “What do you make of Minerva’s story?”

“Make of it?” The witch seemed almost startled by the question. “I…had not thought much on it. Other than that it was monstrous, what was done. I…” She looked at him, for a long moment. “I am very glad that this White Queen is dead,” she said finally, and there was a gentleness in her voice that made Martimeos feel a great embarrassment and shame.

He cleared his throat, and looked away from her, back to the fire. “She hopes that we can lift the curse, you know,” he said.

“What?” She seemed genuinely baffled by this. He had thought it obvious, from the old woman’s manner. Perhaps she really was raised in a swamp, with no one but her mother to talk to. She did not seem very skilled at reading people. “I don’t know how she can expect that. We are young, there is much of the Art we have yet to learn…”

“The common folk does not think on that. One who practices the Art, they are like a craftsman; we have an eye for the Art and its workings, and they do not. Think of a cobbler just beginning his trade - he likely has the sense to spot a good boot from a bad, and the knowledge to know one whose craft exceeds his own. But those who don’t work it, they have much more trouble. Such it is with most folk and the Art. There is much that they do not have the sense to know what a mageling might handle, and what is something that a man of power might have wrought.”

Elyse merely frowned at this. “I think that I could tell a good boot from a bad.”

He snorted, stifling himself when the witch gave him a sharp look, and only just managed to stop from letting loose a full-blown guffaw. The witch could tell a good boot from bad? Her boots were sad, misshapen things, cured skins held together with rawhide lace. He did not know how she could stand to walk in them. They might be serviceable, certainly better than wrapping your feet in rags at least, and he had seen worse, but he thought she only managed with them through long years of her feet having adjusted to them. “You ought to get yourself some proper boots, someday,” he told her. “Then, I think, at least in wearing them you might know the difference.”

“Mine are proper boots,” she muttered. But she glanced behind her, to look at her shoes, and then to look at his much larger, more properly-made ones, and when she turned back to the flames she was thoughtful. “Well. Unless you know something I do not, there is nothing we can do to help their curse.”

“I don’t,” he replied. “If I could, I would, for the children’s sake if no one else’s, but I don’t even know enough to be certain about what might have happened.” He looked out over the lake again, to the shadow of the manor. “Even without the curse, I might have wanted to visit it, to know what relics of the Art that had been found there.”

“And your brother? Do you think he might have gone there, when he was here?” When Martimeos did not answer this, after a moment, she went on. “What was your brother doing here?”

That was a question that had crossed his mind more than once, as well. “He…after Pike’s Green was attacked, he set out with some friends to fight against the witch in the west,” he began.

And what then? In the Freetowns of Dorn, it had not been easy to track down word of his brother. Too many men killed, too many lost, and the land a maze of the scars of battles and unmarked graves. He had thought, for a long time, that he would never find any evidence of what had happened. That he would have to return home with unanswered questions. But his travels had brought him eventually to Durnholde, or what remained of it, the broken ruins of what had once been a city, where it seemed that the burnt and destroyed buildings outnumbered the people who actually lived there.

There, the problem had not been that nobody knew his brother. There, the problem was that everyone claimed to have known him, once they had puzzled out that his brother had fought there, with no way to sort those telling the truth from those who merely wanted to fleece him of his coin. But finally, on the words of a crazed drunk, he had gone south from Durnholde, eventually to the village of Congar. And Congar had no answers for him, but they did have Mother Pris, and the tale of a demon that he could put the question to, a tale that had led him into the One-Road Wood.

He had always wondered, all the while, if he had actually had a trail, or if he was chasing after rumor and phantoms. It was why he had gone to the Dolmec, at the last, in hopes of answers. To find that he had indeed been on his brother’s trail was a relief. But even now part of him still wondered if the demon had found some way to lie. For what was his brother have been doing here? What would a man who fought against the White Queen be doing journeying into her territory while the war still went raging on? What would you think of any other man, who had just been put through the teeth of a slaughter, and now ran towards the enemy with open arms?

But that was not something Martimeos could countenance. He could not see his brother turning traitor. He could not see it even crossing his mind. But why then had his brother come here…? Had he come here? There was still no sign, no evidence that he ever even had. All of this was still on the word of a demon.

“Martim?”

Martimeos startled out of his reverie. Elyse stared at him from across the flames, looking puzzled. “Apologies,” he told her. “Lost in thought, I suppose. He might have been tempted to visit the manor, perhaps, but not, I think, if he knew who was there. I do not know what he was doing here, but I suspect his aim in these lands was to remain as hidden as possible.” It was irritating to have not seen the manor, irritating to not look beneath every stone, but continuing to search the farms, in fact, might be best. The Dolmec had said that he had come to Silverfish, but who knew how a demon thought of human dwellings? Perhaps his brother had never come into the village proper at all. Perhaps he had taken refuge with a sympathetic farmer, or hidden himself in an abandoned farm. He hoped this was not the case, with how many of those seemed to be totally overgrown with the ‘corpseblood’ blackthorn vines. Would he end up having to work himself at burning those away, just to see a barn that may or may not hold a trace of his brother? He did not relish the thought.

This was, at least, what he thought in the part of his mind that reasoned, and cautioned, and sought the most likely path. But he could not help but remember the words of the shattered one in the well, at Valerie’s farm, that he would be the instrument of her revenge. And a laughing voice in the back of his mind whispered to him that the manor called, and he would not leave this place before he visited it. But at the moment, he buried these voices; he had no wish to think himself the unwitting servant of some Old Power, and he was not here to risk his life for the redemption of Silverfish.

He realized he had been quiet for quite some time again, lost in his own thought once more. Across the flames, the witch was staring at him once more, but now her expression was unreadable. “I get the impression that you are keeping secrets from me, wizard,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“You must let me keep some of my secrets,” he told her. “What is a wizard without them? And besides, I am sure you have some of your own.”

He had said this in jest, and thought that she might react in anger. Instead, her cheeks reddened and she looked ashamed, casting her eyes to the ground. “I’ll show you a secret,” she said after a moment, and moved to kneel beside her drying clothes, casting aside his cloak carelessly as she did so, to rummage through the pockets of her dress.

He convinced her to dress once more, with her laughing at his insistence all the way. But once she had finally slid into her dress, she pulled out from one of its many inner pockets the figure of a small, fat frog, made from baked gray clay, and hollowed so that it might serve as a flute of sorts. He remembered this, though he had not thought on it much since; it was the gift that Elyse had gotten from the Traveling People that she had met when they passed through Cross-on-Green. It had the touch of the Art upon it, though he still did not know what it did.

He gave her a curious look as she took his hand, and led him to the lakeside, but she would not say what this secret was. They sat down on the edge of that water, careful not to get their newly-dried clothes wet, and the witch drew her legs up beside her and placed the frog to her lips, as if she were kissing it, and placed her fingers clumsily upon the holes formed in its back.

She was not well-skilled with the flute, but she did not need to be. When she played notes upon the curious little thing, nothing happened at first. But before long, the calm, flat surface of the water before them began to stir, rippling, dancing with the golden light of the sunset, pushing this way and that, as if something were moving just beneath the surface. But nothing was, Martimeos knew, for he could sense what was happening; the Art of the frog-flute was touching the water. When the witch stopped playing, the ripples died away not long after the notes did, the water flat and calm once more.

He grinned unabashedly. There was a simple joy to be found in the puzzling out of the Art.“Well! We know what that does now, at least. Though I wonder if it is all it is meant to do. When did you discover this?”

“Not long after I was given it,” the witch admitted sheepishly, as she handed over the frog to his waiting hands so that he could inspect it. “When we were camped outside of Cross-on-Green, I played it by the creek there. It was a bit harder to tell what it was doing with moving water, but I could feel the Art working through it. I have managed since to work out how to do some of what it does on my own.” She raised a hand towards the lake, and after a few moments, gentle ripples appeared on the surface of the water once more. Less than what the frog had wrought, and not as strong, but there, and the product of the Art too.

She had kept this secret from him? He could not help but feel a bit wounded. Whatever else, he had thought that they had become companions in the Art; they had promised to teach each other what they knew, and Martimeos would not have thought that she would keep such things from him. He would not have kept it from her. “But why did you not tell me?”

Elyse gave him a defiant look, crossing her arms, though her cheeks reddened once more. She eventually looked away as he simply continued to stare at her, awaiting an answer. “Because you were being stubborn and secretive at the time, and I did not feel like telling you,” she muttered. “Sometimes asking you simple questions can feel like pulling teeth from a serpent. So you see, you have told me some of your secrets, and so I share one of mine with you. Fair trade.”

So that was how it was. It was true that he kept his secrets from her, but he had thought their time together with the Art had been a bright spot untouched by all else. The witch had a quick wit, and he had thought it a simple joy to learn with her. That it might have been something she would bargain with for some reason hurt, though he could not see the reason why it mattered to him.“I see,” he replied sadly.

But the witch whipped her head around at the sound of his voice, and when her eyes touched his she frowned. “Oh, do not look so forlorn,” she cried, and then slammed her mouth shut, eyes widening, almost as if she was surprised at herself for the heat in her voice. She paused, looking at him for a few moments, as if unsure what she was going to say, until with some apparent effort she tore her eyes from his and looked at the ground. “I did not mean to keep it from you. I know we promised to teach each other what we knew of the Art. Let me teach you now.”

And so they spent their time by the lakeshore on a reprieve from the cursed village, playing with the Art. Martimeos took his turn to play on the frog-flute, and while he could carry a tune far better than Elyse could, it did not seem to matter, though perhaps it only meant that they did not know the right song. Someone had made this, after all, and he did not think that they had made it to simply cause water to swirl around itself. Then again, who knew what reasons someone might have had to make such a thing?

He could feel the working of it upon the water, and when Elyse worked it as well, he could see what she was doing. And it seemed that, for the first time, they were in agreement. In other workings of the Art, they saw things differently; Elyse did not think of fire as a devouring hunger, as Martimeos did, and Martimeos could not hear the red song of the body as Elyse could when healing. Even in glamor, which they had learned the most about from each other, they saw things very differently, with Elyse seeing the working of it as the twisting of shadow and Martimeos seeing it as the tricking of the eye and the lying to of the mind.

But in water, in the working of it, they saw things exactly the same. To work with water was to dance with it. A slow, gentle dance, a sweeping dance that bore both the water and you with it. You could not push the water to do what you wanted, otherwise you would simply knife through it and it would part around you. But it was always dancing itself, always, even when the surface was calm it slowly danced beneath, in currents like billowing lace caught on the wind, and if you joined in this dance with the Art you could, after a fashion, take the lead, and steer it where you wanted it to go. And it was a wonder, a delight to find that they both knew water in the same way. They could only dance with the water a bit, steer it but a little, since they were both so new to the working of it. But they found that in knowing it in the same way they could better help each other understand. Martimeos wondered if, perhaps, this was what the frog had actually been for. To teach, to get two people to see the working of water in the same way, or if he and Elyse simply thought the same on this matter.

But either way, the joy of the Art was with them. In the long ago age when it was said that man lived in ignorance and primitive brutishness in the caves of the earth, knowing nothing of the Art, when they first crawled out of that darkness, when they first touched the Art, this must have been the sort of joy they had felt. It is said that any can learn the Art, and some do; there are crafty old merchants who might know a glamor or two that can make their wares seem more appealing, and perhaps a fortunate gambler might know a charm of luck that has some true power in it. But it is when your soul is seized by the simple pleasure of working the Art, when it seems as impossible to live without as it would be to live without love, that is what makes one a wizard, a witch, or whatever a practitioner of the Art might call themselves.

That golden sunset slowly faded from the sky as the sun sank, turning from gold to a deep purple as twilight came on, and their fire had faded to ash before they became aware of the encroaching darkness, and realized they ought to be making their way back to Night Fisher Inn. They laughed as they returned to the village, chiding themselves for their own foolishness, and their hearts were light. And Elyse repeatedly told him that she would not hide what she knew from the Art from him again, and just as he had not known why that had saddened him, he did not know why it was important to the witch that she tell him that. But even though she had hidden something from him, she seemed so sincere about it now that he believed her.

And Martimeos, as he walked back to Silverfish, back to that damned village, back to the curse, he could feel the thorns creeping into his mind again even as they came back to where the wicked vines grew. But it seemed to him that they struggled to take root in his thoughts now, that they could not poison him there as easily as they had before. This village did do something to his mind, and it was likely just the simple darkness of it, of what had happened to its people and what its people had done to themselves and to others. But joy and laughter could prove a shield against such things, and for the first time since he had come to Silverfish, Martimeos slept soundly, and no nightmares plagued him.

Later, he would think back on that night, on those few hours of respite he had, on the joy and laughter he had shared with Elyse that had lightened his heart. And he would think that if it had not been for that time, he likely would not have lived.