22. THE GLIMMERLING

There was a sharp pain in Martimeos’ face.

It was very near his eye, actually. That alarming fact sent jolts of dim panic rushing through him. He would not like to lose his eye. And there was an even worse pain in his ankle, throbbing, like someone was pushing hot needles into the flesh there.

He tried to focus on this pain, on the reality of his body, but his mind was full of color, insistent color, color that demanded his attention. And it was not just color, it was thoughts, feelings, it was something important, or so he thought, but it kept slipping away from him, more and more, the pain a constant distraction. He really must do something about that pain. However important the colors were, they could wait.

And so he pushed the colors aside in his mind, and it was like clawing his way out of the deepest dream he ever had, like swimming upward through thick honey, and all the way the colors insisted that they must be seen, insisted that they must have his thoughts. Until, finally, he breached the surface, and reality came rushing in like a gasp of desperate breath.

His eyes fluttered open to barely-lit gloom, a low, weak orange light the only way he could see.

Another jolt of pain ran through him as something jabbed at his temple. “Damn it!” he snapped, slapping a hand there, only to be met with a furious chirp and the fluttering of delicate wings narrowly avoiding his blow. That chirp…I understood it. Yes, I speak the bird-tongue, don’t I. In this life. He shook his head. What other life might he have? Dozens, hundreds. A torrent of images swam behind his eyes.

Dizziness overcame him then, and the world seemed to spin about him. Memories, too many memories, flashed through his mind. Memories of countless other lives which he desperately tried to cling to, but it was like trying to hold on to water as it flowed down a drain. Scraps and pieces of it he clung to, not knowing what they signified. A memory of him charging on horseback, running down a creature that looked like an enormous cyclopic frog; a memory of standing before a tower of glass in the midst of a desert, so tall that it seemed to touch the sky; a memory of blood-drenched snow and an agonizing grief that seemed to tear his heart in two, but he could not remember what the grief was for. There was the lingering awareness of something enormous, so many lives that left their residue on his thoughts. But like a nightmare, a dream, the aftertaste of emotion remained, a drained, heavy feeling, but what had caused it drifted away like smoke. It was gone, and the world - his world, his life, the thought echoed through him - came back.

His familiar, Flit the cardinal, had been pecking at the side of his face, and as he looked down, he saw that Cecil was chewing at his ankle, as well. “Off, damn you!” he snapped, jerking his ankle away as the large cat sank frightfully long fangs into his flesh, even as he watched. He cursed, noticing that the edge of his pants were now wet with blood, and glared at the creature.

Do not be too cross with them, the thought flittered through his mind. They were trying to wake you.

Wake him? Wake him from what? Flit was perched on his shoulder again, and chirping frantically in his ear, and as Martimeos listened to the bird-speech, it all came crashing down onto him. Where he stood, in the glimmerling’s lair, and the last thing he had done, looking into the pool of water that filled the basin before the odd beam that resonated with ancient Art. The danger that they were in.

Frantically, he looked around. The torches that they had placed in the wall-sconces now burned low with flame that only barely formed a blue and yellow nimbus around their end. He reached out with the flame of the Art to stoke this, and the flames leapt up again, pushing back the darkness. How long had they been standing here, such that the torches had burned so low?

The renewed flames lit up the room in fullness once more, and revealed Elyse, who still stood staring, glassy-eyed and vacant, at the water in the basin that lay before the beam. It was no longer gray and cloudy, but rather swirled with vibrant luminous color that tugged at his eyes. Martimeos turned away, refusing to look at it, and seized the witch by the shoulders, shaking her. “Elyse!” he whispered furiously to her, but she did not respond until he bodily spun her around, away from the alluring glow of the water.

Even then, it took a few moments for light and awareness to come back to her eyes. To his surprise, the moment it did, the moment recognition dawned on her face, she flung her arms around him. “Martim, you live!” she cried, the words muffled into his chest. “I thought that…that you…it was…” She pushed him back, and looked at him, confused. “It was so terrible…why can’t I remember…?”

He was sympathetic to her - the echo, the enormity of what he had seen still lingered on his mind, as well. They had peered into other worlds, but the details of each were like ghosts to him now. He would like nothing more than to try to grasp some of these, to try to bring the memories back solid, but they had precious little time now for the witch to get her bearings. “Remember,” he told her, gripping her shoulders, his eyes intent on hers. “Remember where we truly are. The glimmerling approaches.”

That was the warning that Flit had been shouting at him in the bird-speech, and they had but little time, now, to prepare their ambush. He shuddered to think what might have happened to them without their familiars. Ezekiel would have come upon them. What would he have seen, with his clouded eyes? Might he have seen them at all? Would they have starved to death, staring into the visions of other worlds, other lives? Or might their bones have joined those of the children in the dark waters below?

It was the memory of this that steeled his resolve. Whatever might have happened to them, whatever might happen, this wickedness cried out for action. He left the witch to recover for a moment, shaking her head and muttering to herself. Grabbing a torch from the wall, he left the room, going back out into the long cave that formed a branching hallway. A hallway from lifetimes ago. The thought of it made his stomach lurch. A part of him knew he had seen the hallway hours past, at most, but there was the sense that so much had passed in the dream, so much time. Might the pool and its visions have been a trap for them? Martimeos did not think so. Whatever it was Ezekiel saw, whatever he perceived, if he were still laying traps, Martimeos thought they would have encountered them long before this. No, he thought the pool was what had tempted the man. He had unlocked a way to see these other worlds, and had endeavored to travel to them. To live a new life, even.

Even so, it had acted as a trap all the same. Martimeos had wanted time to plan out an ambush in utmost certainty. Now they were left scrambling in the dark, and it made him nervous. What about the demon that they had both sensed? He might have had time to lay down sigils-

It does not matter. He put this aside, glancing into the rooms, and the plan for an ambush took place in his head. Simple, he told himself. As easy as killing a blind man. When he came back out into the hallway-cave again, he found the witch there, holding her torch, Cecil by her side. Before he could ask her whether she was ready, she hushed him. “Listen, wizard,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

He paused, for but a moment, in the dark. At first, he heard only the breath of their torchfire, the occasional echoing drop of water dripping down from the ceiling of the caves. But then it came to him, faintly, faintly, from a distance. A haunting, lilting hum, discordant chimes.

The sound of the glimmerling approaching.

They had little time, now, and so they swiftly prepared. Martimeos gave his loaded crossbow to the witch. She took it, still shaking her head as faded memories drifted through her thoughts, and laid crouched at the end of the hallway, in the room where the children’s bones lay discarded on the flooded steps. Martimeos himself had his sword, and he stayed hidden in the cave that served as Ezekiel’s bedroom. He was quite certain that the glimmerling would come down here, to this end of the hallway, where the bedroom was; where it had experimented with the Art when it was still a man. All the other rooms that branched off from the hallway were empty. Cecil and Flit, he wished he would have had time to let them escape, but if they were to make their way out now their paths might cross directly into that of the glimmerling. Despite Flit’s offers of battle, he convinced them that they might stay hidden in the bedroom as well. Cecil’s claws and teeth might be deadly - his ankle still throbbed - but not so much as bolt and blade.

The last thing he did was douse their torches with the Art. Who knew if Ezekiel might even be able to see them, but there was no point in risking it. He did not strangle the flame entirely, but left them glowing with dim red embers. Darkness wrapped around them, the total darkness of a cave untouched by sunlight. Martimeos clutched the hilt of his blade, hard, and tried to make his breath as silent as possible. It would be over soon. Just like killing a blind man. It would be over, and they would be safe, very soon. He waited.

He did not have to wait for long.

That long, dim hum, those lilting chimes, they grew louder and louder, echoing off the cave walls. And then, from the other end of the cave came a blue glow, faint but obvious in the total darkness. It grew stronger, and stronger, pushing back the darkness, a blue light that was not the comfortable warmth of torchlight, but a blue light that was cold somehow, cold and wrong, a queasy, wicked light. Like the dead light of Oxxos, the thought whispered in the back of his mind, but he pushed it away.

Martimeos looked to Elyse. There was enough light to see the witch, now, crouching down in the room at the end of the hallway to his right. She sat with her back to the wall, clutching his crossbow to her chest, ready to move on his word. Her wide eyes caught his own for a moment, but other than this she was perfectly still, waiting, waiting as the hum grew louder and the blue glow brighter. The discordant chimes were a din, now, tumultuous enough to push back thought. The glimmerling must be very close. Martimeos risked a peek around the corner, into the main hallway of the cave.

And there it was. There he was, Ezekiel, tall and slender, halfway down the hallway and headed for them, glowing with a blue light that cast a soft nimbus against the damp and water-slick walls. This close, he could see the intricateness of his dress, the swirling floral designs in the Ezekiel’s robe, the buttons on his ruffled blouse and pants, even the ring he wore on his finger, in fine detail, even as his form faded in and out, first crisp, now indistinct, first almost solid, now translucent. The only thing that was never clear, however, was his face - it was always a pulsing, swirling blur, a faded cloud, which breathed and moved like a heartbeat. He still walked upside down, and at an angle, his feet almost as if he were walking on the upper corner of the hallway , while his head dangled along near the floor. Not Ezekiel, Martimeos reminded himself. He is not Ezekiel anymore. He is a glimmerling now.

He felt his heart skip a beat as the glimmerling froze, and for a moment he thought he had been spotted, that he was going to die, and he very nearly leapt out from his hiding space to rush at the creature, to at least go down with a fight. But instead, it turned towards one of the empty rooms further down the hallway. And then it spoke.

Or at least, that was what it seemed. The voice came from far away, as if from down a long, long tunnel. And it was not really speech. It sounded as if it may make sense, sounded almost as if it were a properly spoken tongue, but it was nothing but broken babble, noise. At least that was what it seemed to him. Ezekiel - the glimmerling, the glimmerling - had its arms crossed, and was looking into the empty side cave as if someone or something was actually there, and he was carrying on a conversation with it. What did he see, with his eyes clouded by other worlds? What did he think was there which was not? Or perhaps there really was something there, just something that they could not see, but the glimmerling could. Martimeos was not sure whether he wanted to know.

Finally, it turned away, and came back down the cave towards them again. Martimeos drew back, once more, and tensed himself, every muscle in his body feeling like a coiled spring. That humming grew so loud now that it seemed to drill itself into their heads, and beneath it they could hear a whining buzz beneath it, like that of a bloodfly. A blind man. Blind and deaf. It will all be over soon.

And then, finally, the glimmerling passed in front of the cave in which he lay waiting, close, so close he could reach out and touch it. And this close he could see, around the edges of the creature, a faint, crackling outline, as if the air itself was galled by its presence, as if it knew something here was wrong.

Easy. He’ll be dead, we’ll be safe. Fortune grant it so. “Now,” he shouted.

The moment he spoke, the glimmerling immediately began to turn towards him. So it can hear, at least. From the end of the hallway, Elyse dipped out from around the corner, and loosed the bolt from the crossbow. Martimeos did not wait to see where it had landed. The moment he heard the twang, he pounced, blade-first, and drove his sword into the glimmerling’s chest up to the hilt.

He did not see where Elyse’s bolt had landed to know whether it had been a fatal shot, but he was certain that he had his sword buried where the heart ought to be. But the glimmerling did not die. No, instead it screamed, a long, warbling scream that came as if from a great distance, through countless tunnels - and then spoke a word that shook Martimeos to his bones.

And then he felt as if he was being crushed.

His head felt so heavy it seemed as if it might snap his neck, his cloak felt as if it weighed as much as a boulder, his arms far too heavy to lift, even his fingers felt like they were made of lead. He stumbled forward, toppling like a statue, clawing at the glimmerling to keep himself from collapsing into the floor, where he was sure his bones would shatter under the weight. To his side, beneath the humming buzz, he could hear Elyse struggling to breathe, and he could hear behind him the feeble tweets of Flit, and the strained hisses and spitting of Cecil. He felt like he could barely draw breath into his lungs himself. He tried desperately to raise an arm to grab his blade stuck into the glimmerling’s chest, to twist it and finish it off, but he could not lift it that far. All he could do was claw with fingers that barely had the strength to respond at the place where the glimmerling’s face should be, to perhaps claw at its tongue, to prevent it from speaking again.

He was slipping down; the hum was filling his head, the blue light of the glimmerling felt like it was cutting into his skull. Desperately holding on to the glimmerling’s robe as hard as he could, he lost his footing. The world spun wildly around him. His heart leapt into his throat as the floor loomed before his vision; he knew with this terrible weight pressing down upon him that he would be crushed against it. Martimeos forced his numb and heavy fingers to claw and tear at the glimmerling's robe's, frantically trying to find purchase, until his fall slowed and stopped. He would have sobbed with relief, had he the breath to do so. He was holding on, clinging to the glimmerling as it struggled against him. It felt like it vibrated and hummed beneath his touch as he held on to it, and beneath the drowning hum of the thing, he could still hear a long, echoing scream of pain, and he could feel the hot blood ebbing from it, flowing onto his own leathers. Let this thing die, let it die!

Something in the glimmerling’s robes tore, and he slipped for a long, horrifying moment before with desperate strength he tangled himself further with the creature, flipping over. He was staring at the ceiling of the cave now, as he struggled to maintain his grip, where the glimmerling’s boots met the rough stalactites above. His vision blurred as he fought to remain conscious; his compressed lungs failing to draw any air, feeling his bones creak under the strain. As Martimeos held on, he noticed that the glimmerling was actually slowly sinking away from the ceiling, being pulled down by his weight. And as his eyes focused, he saw something black and serpentine coiled around one of the glimmerling’s boots. Something alive, and twitching like a tail, and pulled along with it. Something long and writhing, covered with black feathers, torn from the very air almost as if it was drawn out from the wall of the cave itself.

Suddenly, the glimmerling’s robes tore again, and Martimeos sank down even further. Gritting his teeth, groaning against the strain, he summoned all the strength he could muster, desperately reaching for the hilt of his sword stuck in the glimmerling's chest. His muscles screamed as he reached upward, struggling against the invisible weight pressing down on him; his arm trembled and shook. Just before his vision went dark, he felt his fingertips brush against the hilt. With all his might, he grasped it, and gave his blade a twist.

The long, echoing scream of pain abruptly stopped. And suddenly, he was no longer crushed under his own massive weight. He collapsed to the ground with the glimmerling’s corpse, as it all at once stopped being held up under its own power, gasping for breath. The hum faded away, the last echoes of it drifting off into the darkness, and with it went the eerie blue glow of the glimmerling.

In that last moment before darkness, just before the glimmerling’s light faded away, he saw, illuminated, the creature attached to its foot. It looked like a long, thick snake of jet-black feathers. As he watched, it twisted to face him, revealing a large, sharp black beak, at least a foot long, like a crow’s beak. It opened this, and there was the thundering cacophony of heavy ringing bells, the tolls echoing off the cave walls. A sense of profound wrongness washed over him, and he knew then that this was the demon they had both sensed. He heard Elyse scream in terror. And then they were plunged into darkness.

Martimeos tried to move, but became tangled with the glimmerling’s corpse. Those bells grew louder, maddening, and then he felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his shoulder as the demon struck him with its beak, punching straight through his leathers. He howled in agony as he felt its beak clattering, tearing at his flesh; he tried blindly to grab hold of whatever it was in the pitch black, but his hands passed through it completely. It was as if its body were made of nothing but feathers. For a long agonizing moment Martimeos could do nothing but scream as it burrowed into his flesh with a furious strength.

Suddenly, there was light again. Elyse had grabbed her torch and she stood somewhere above him, trying to hit the demon with it; as she did, the fanning movements rebirthed a small flame upon it, giving them at least some light to see by. He heard the creature’s call of tolling bells once more, and felt its beak leave his shoulder, flecking his face with his own blood. As soon as he was free, he rolled away, pushing the glimmerling's corpse from himself, and reached out with the Art.

The small flame on Elyse’s torch leapt up as he stoked the silent hunger of the glowing embers into open flame. Light bloomed in the darkness, and he could see. The demon was turning, twisting in midair, undulating as if on some unseen wind, aiming that sharp, bloody beak at Elyse now, who swung the torch at it again. It was as long as a man was tall, a serpent of black feathers floating in the air, thick and tapering at the end, its feathers all ruffling as it reared high. The witch swung the torch at it again with an inarticulate shout, but it passed right through the creature as if it had made no contact at all, leaving just some smoking, smoldering feathers. The feathered serpent opened its beak at the witch, and the roar of tolling bells drowned the world. She screamed in panic, scrambling backwards, nearly dropping the torch, as it coursed in the air towards her.

Something within Martimeos screamed in fear. The creature’s beak was as sharp as a dagger. His shoulder throbbed with pain from its bite, and his blood spattered on the floor. Time seemed to slow, and he could see that wicked, bloody break coursing towards Elyse with deadly accuracy, the witch defenseless, and he knew it was going to take her in her eye and drive through to her brain, she was going to die, die because she had come with him. And in his fear for this thought, in his loathing for this thought, he reached out with the Art to touch the flame of Elyse’s torch, and his desperate need drove it to higher heights of screaming hunger than he had ever brought it before, and it was his hunger too, his need to save the witch.

A sheet of roaring flame billowed forth from the torch, engulfing the demon, immediately setting its black feathers ablaze, and it screamed. Screamed like humongous bells cracking and shattering, and it slammed against a wall, crawling against it, as if trying to put out the fire, but Martimeos would not let this thing live. His hunger was the flame’s hunger, and he was not sated. He would devour it. The blaze grew stronger, baking heat searing him, flames bright and merciless. The creature began to spin in the air, desperately trying to put the flames out, shedding stinking, burning feathers everywhere, causing Elyse and Martimeos to back away lest they be burned. Its cry grew shrill and reedy, as its form grew smaller and smaller, until finally, it disintegrated completely, its beak and a burnt black tongue falling to the floor with a thunk as the last of its feathers drifted away to ash. There was nothing else solid to it.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

It was only then that the hunger he felt died, and Martimeos felt his wits returning to him. Never had he felt so close to the flame before. His need, his hunger had never been the same as what he stoked with the Art. He sagged against the wall, catching his breath, panting. It had all taken mere moments, he was certain, from the point that they had first ambushed Ezekiel, but he felt as if he had just run as hard as he could for half a day. He looked at the witch, and for a moment there was silence between them, their eyes gleaming in the orange torchlight, as they both simply breathed. Finally Martimeos swore. “What sort of demon was that?” he asked, raggedly, forcing himself to stand on his own two feet. He hissed, clapping a hand to his shoulder as he did so. The pain there was deep, throbbing.

“It…wait.” Elyse was about to answer him, but when she drew closer, she noticed the blood coursing down his arm. “Did it bite you?” she asked, her eyes wide, leaning in with her torch to see his shoulder.

“Nowhere important,” Martim muttered in reply, not noticing the alarm in her voice. But before he knew it, she was holding the torch to light his face, her large, dark eyes filling his vision. She apparently did not like what she saw, for she gave a small gasp and a curse, and the next thing he knew, her hand was on the side of his face, warm, except for the ring she wore upon it, ice cold.

“Martimeos,” she said urgently, “We have to go. We have to get you back, right now.”

He knew immediately from the tone of her voice that something was terribly wrong. “Should we not at least-” he began, but she immediately cut him off.

“You are poisoned, wizard,” she told him. He felt a tingle spread out from where her hand lay on his face, and she shook her head, and when she spoke again, her voice trembled. “You are poisoned, and I cannot stop it. Minerva may be able to treat you, but we must get you back right now.” She bit her lip, as she looked at him, and what scared Martimeos the most were the beginnings of tears that he saw in her eyes.

He remembered what that voice had said to him, in his dream last night. I’m so glad I’ll get to see you again.

The witch told him to sit and be quiet, as she went to fetch his sword, her torchlight silhouetting her as she walked down the hallway to the glimmerling’s corpse. “He is most definitely dead,” she snapped at him, when Martimeos called out the question to her. “Would you like me to take his head as proof? Didn’t I tell you to hold your tongue? Damn you, we must keep your blood as still as we can!”

When she returned to him, she held out his sword, wiped clean as best as she could on her dress. Cecil walked by her side, as well, and on his back rode Flit, the flight-feathers on one of his wings askew, and he held it oddly. The cardinal chirped proudly about his battle-wound, and looked for all the world as if he considered the cat his noble steed. “I think that Flit may have had one of his wings injured,” the witch told him. Martimeos was grateful that an injured wing was all Flit had. He remembered that crushing weight that Ezekiel had woven on him, and wondered what sort of Art that must have been. Not Ezekiel. The glimmerling, the glimmerling, and dead now. “Hopefully, it is not broken. But he does not seem able to fly at the moment.” Elyse knelt beside him, and again placed her hand on his face. “You will have to walk yourself down to the rowboat, at the very least. Do you think you can?”

“Certainly,” Martimeos told her. “In all truth, I do not feel poisoned at all. Perhaps I was lucky, and avoided the sting. Perhaps it merely bit me.”

Elyse gave him such a look that he thought the witch might be about to lace into him, but her voice, when she spoke, was soft. “You are poisoned, wizard. I may not be able to do anything about it, but I can feel it in your blood.” She slid her hand down to his neck in an oddly gentle manner. “Feel my hand, Martimeos. I am your anchor to the world of the living. Do not slip. Let us go.”

She dragged him to his feet, and together they followed the path they had taken, up and out of the dark, their familiars trailing behind them.

Martimeos truly did not feel poisoned, and at first he was hopeful that the witch’s fears were overblown. But by the time they had gone up the stairs from the caves, and then up the stairs from the wine cellar, back into the grounds of the manor, he knew something was wrong. He had broken out in a cold sweat, and simply walking up a set of stairs had left his breath labored. The pain in his shoulder had lessened, as it was going numb. Elyse stopped him, handing him the torch, and placed both of her hands on either side of his face, staring at him angrily. “Damn you,” she snarled.

Martimeos chuckled softly. “Sorry,” he told her, leaning back against a wall, feeling woozy. “I did not mean to be poisoned.”

Elyse blinked at him, startled, and then her expression softened. “I am not angry at you,” she told him soothingly. “It is the poison itself I am angry at.” He did not dare tell her that this gentle manner of hers scared him far more than her anger. She removed his gloves, and with one hand laced her fingers with his, tightly. “If you feel yourself slipping, focus on the warmth from my hand,” she told him. “And listen to my voice. As long as you can feel and hear me, wizard, you live.”

She led him through the manor at a steady pace, never too swiftly, but once they were outside, she cursed, and Martimeos cursed with her. He did not know how long they had been inside the manor, but in the time since, the sun had gone down, and darkness was falling upon them. And the mists of the lake had come in, as thick as they ever were, wrapping them in white so that they could barely see past three strides. The shadowy trunks of the courtyard’s trees loomed up through the fog, and the thorns that wove around them, the blackthorn vines…

The thorns rattled in the wind, and they called to him. I’m so glad I’ll get to see you again. “I’m glad too,” he murmured back.

“What is that?” Elyse asked him, immediately peering at his face. The color drained from her as she did. “Martimeos, please, you must stay with me,” she told him, and there was more than a note of desperation in that pleading. “Please, it is just a little walk down to the rowboat. Then you can relax, and I will row us to shore. ‘Tis good we asked for a beacon in this fog, isn’t it?”

She dragged him through the courtyard, past the garden of skulls that lay at the entrance to it, down the path they had walked up to the manor. But even before its walls had disappeared from view behind them, Martimeos felt himself becoming sluggish, the corners of his vision darkening. And he was cold, so cold that Elyse’s hand in his almost felt uncomfortable with how warm it was. Crows cawed above them, flying away as they passed. And from the blackthorn brambles, the voice whispered to him.

He tried to ignore it. He tried to focus on Elyse’s warmth, as she had told him to; tried to focus on her voice. The witch was talking, it seemed, just to talk. And her words were kind, too kind for her. “What do you suppose it was that Ezekiel did to us?” she asked, as she led him down the path, then shook her head. “No, don’t talk. I felt nearly crushed. I thought my ribs might break. You must be quite strong, wizard, to have been able to still move and hold on through that. Valiant, I should say. Think of all the things we may be able to learn, once we come back to take Ezekiel’s notes. And you found evidence of your brother, did you not? You will be back on his trail in no time. Think of that.” She glanced back at him, cursed, and then quickened her pace. “Think of all the pretty girls who will be impressed by your knowledge of the Art. Think of their kisses, Martimeos, does that warm your blood? Perhaps I will give you one too. Remember what it is to live, wizard…”

He did not know why she was speaking so, but by the time that they had reached the shore, it had all faded away to a dull blur. Elyse’s hand in his no longer felt merely uncomfortable; it felt like her fingers were hot iron bars, scorching him. He was vaguely aware of stumbling in the sand, and Elyse by his side, begging him to get up. Then the rowboat was before him, and he was falling into it, not feeling the pain of the fall at all, feeling so numb, so cold. He looked back, and saw Elyse struggling mightily to push the boat out onto the water. He tried to sit up, to help her, and the last thing he remembered was her screaming at him to lay down, idiot, before he slipped away, fell away into darkness, darkness and sharp black thorns.

===***===

Elyse was almost unable to get the rowboat out into the water. It was not until she braced herself against a nearby stone and pushed it with her legs that it slid and scraped off from out of the brush that Martimeos had hidden it in, and out onto the wet stones and hard packed sand of the shore. Even then, it seemed every time she assailed the back of the rowboat that it would only move a finger’s width. And she knew she simply did not have the time. With every passing moment, the poison sank deeper into Martim’s blood. She dared not look at him where he lay in the bottom of the boat. She feared she might find him already dead.

There is no point, witch. You know that he cannot be saved. He has come to be with me, now.

This voice scratched at the back of her mind with the cold whisper of the wind, but Elyse ignored it, not noticing that it was not actually her own. She screamed with frustration and launched herself at the back of the rowboat, pushing with all her might. I will not give up and leave him to die, she thought, lips pulled back in a snarl, sweat dripping from her forehead as she strained and her muscles felt near ready to burst. Not now. Not again!

She could not remember all the details of what she had seen when she was entranced by the pool of colors, down in the glimmerling’s lair. The memories of other lives and other worlds had slipped from her like the last gasp of a dream. But she knew that she had seen Martim die, in those other lives, watched him die over and over and over again, and she would not let it happen here. What if this is simply another vision, and another death you can do nothing about? She shook her head, defiant of the thought. This was real, this was real, and Martim would live, damn him.

Finally, the nose of the boat dipped into the water, and she gave a cry of relief as it and glided out over the fog-shrouded surface of the lake. She splashed out and clambered over the side of the boat, and immediately crouched over the wizard. He was pale and cold, very cold, and his lips were taking on a ghastly purple color, but he breathed still. Flit nested in the tangles of her hair, and chirped at her forlornly. She closed her eyes, resting her hand against his neck, and listened for the red song, the rhythm of Martim’s body. It was discordant and untuned, all the poison in his blood a darkness, a darkness that seemed to seep and pour into the wicked scar on his back. Such a poison could be resisted for a time, if one kept one's mind on the glories and the passions of life, but the wizard was beyond this, now.

He won’t live, witch. He’s gone.

“No,” she muttered to herself. “No, he’ll live, damn him.” Martim had saved her life. She had felt what he had done below, when he had summoned flame to engulf the demon. He had called upon the flame much more strongly than he was normally able to, and he had done it to save her. Why could she not do the same for him with healing? Did she not fear for him, was her need not desperate? And yet she did not know what else to do besides work her Art with the red song, and she could not drive the poison from him. It mocked her with its cold indifference to her craft. “Minerva will be able to do something,” she told herself. Of course the old apothecary would, she knew herbcraft well. She had to be able to do something.

Elyse took up the oars to row. And that was when she noticed that the beacon on the other side of the shore was not visible. She looked around, and all the could see was endless gray, luminous with the moon’s silver - they had drifted far out enough now that even the island and its manor had faded behind them. All that she could see was the dark water around her, and gray, all gray. “Useless fools!” she cursed. Martim had risked his life, she had risked her life, and these senseless villagers could not have the decency to build them a fire large enough to be seen? They saw the fog, didn’t they? Shouldn’t they know to build a blaze large enough to shine through it?

Still cursing under her breath, she began to row in the direction that she thought the shore was. She could not move it nearly as fast as Martim had, and she felt more keenly aware than ever how small she was compared to him; he had rowed across the lake and dragged the boat ashore with ease, while she had not rowed for very long before she breathed raggedly and her arms screamed. But her fear for him drove her forward, the rowboat moving smoothly over the surface of the lake, and she looked always for the light she hoped to spot, the flame that was meant to be guiding them back. She rowed until she thought that certainly she must have hit the shore by now, that even if she could not see the flame she ought to be able to see the trees along the bank through the fog. Still there was nothing but mist and black water.

And something in the water.

Elyse thought she had imagined it, at first, and ignored it; the way the water swelled nearby, the way the fog swirled where it should not. But as she became more desperate, she could no longer deny that there was something following her. She caught flashes of pale flesh beneath the surface before they faded into the depths, and it could be no fish, she knew. What she had seen was too large. Too unnatural. She continued to row, breathless, pulling at the oars as hard she could, her arms and shoulders burning.

She screamed as something suddenly scraped against the bottom of the boat, hard enough to set it rocking, and Cecil yowled and hissed and spat as water sloshed over the side, pooling around the wizard, who did not react at all to its chill. The thought of land fled from her mind, then, and she thought only of getting away, away, as far away as possible. She dug the oars in deep. And the one she held in her right hand got stuck.

No, not stuck, she realized, as she peered over the side of the boat. Held.

Held beneath the water by a creature there, pale beneath the murk, a creature of dirty white flesh, a shapeless trunk covered in wriggling fingers, and in that flesh a face, a human face, a face that grimaced in pain and moaned as the trunk pulled back, tugging at the oar, and nearly tugging Elyse into the water with it. A face with cloudy, ruined eyes, and broken, shattered teeth, a face that whispered her name-

Elyse fell back with a shriek, but she could not give up her oars, she could not, if she did she was doomed. And so, scrambling about the boat for some weapon, she found first the fae-stick she had brought with her, that Martim had first given her as a walking-stick but which she always fancied as a cudgel. She took it up and bludgeoned at the pale thing beneath the water with it, smashing at that face, screaming all the while, screaming in rage and terror, and black blood flew from its ruined nose as she broke it.

Even as she did so, though, a seam opened up beneath the skin, opened wide, revealing a maw with rows and rows of sharp teeth, and those grasping fingers seized her weapon, guided it towards those teeth, and struggle as she might she could not resist them. Until, finally, it closed down on it with a crunch, and Elyse stumbled back, holding only splinters left now of her bludgeon, the boat rocking perilously close to capsizing.

She had seen this thing before, she was sure. Seen it in her visions of the other worlds. And she knew now why she could not see the beacon-flame the villagers had lit. The dangers of the fog, of becoming lost in it; lost and crossed over into other worlds. The stories of the barge-men, who feared the lake at night and in the mist. She was lost. She had drifted away into another world, through the fog, or she was between worlds, irretrievably lost, worse than having wandered through the fae-woods.

She struggled to her knees, to look out over the water again. The thing was gone for now, but it had taken one of her oars with it, and her other oar had slipped out into the water in their struggle. Even as she saw it, it drifted away, disappearing into the mist, gone, and she was left stranded, without any way to move the boat. And she knew the thing, demon or monstrosity or whatever it might be, it would be back. It would not leave her alone. It would devour her. It knew her name.

She twisted the dark ring that lay on her finger, and it was cold, ice cold. “Father?” she whispered. “Father, can you hear me?” But there was no answer, no matter how many times she called.

She looked down at the wizard, his face pale, his breath thin and reedy, and scrubbed hot tears from her eyes. She had failed. Martim was going to die, she was going to die. A chill numbness settled into her at this realization, something that strangled her fear, her anger, which cooled her hot blood until even she shivered. She was going to die.

Yes. There is nothing to be done. He could never have been saved. Do not blame yourself. We cannot all die the way we’d like.

“I’m sorry, Martim,” she told the wizard, sitting down next to him. She reached out to touch his neck. He was freezing cold, now, and the beat of his heart weak. She had not thought that her time with him would have ended like this. But perhaps that was simply the way of the world, now. Her mother had told her, once, that much had been lost of the Art, and it was hard to regain, for the urge to wander it bred in you led many a witch and wizard to die, unknown, in the wilds of a dangerous world. So perhaps she should have expected their fate. Still, it was bitter. A bitter way to die, after they had seized victory against the glimmerling.

He would not have held it against you.

Something scraped against the bottom of the boat again, and there was a splash, a large splash, in the fog to her right. An indistinct gray shadow in the fog loomed above them, the size of a large tree, before slithering back beneath the water. Elyse wondered whether or not it might be best to simply take Martim’s sword and grant them both mercy, rather than waiting to be devoured.

And then, while she was pondering this, she heard it. Someone was singing. A woman, her voice gentle and pure.

“My love has gone away, away,

Across the waters, dark and clear,

To bring me treasure, so did he say,

To bring me gold, so dear, so dear.”

Her voice was achingly, agonizingly beautiful, and so, so near. “Hello?!” Elyse called out, leaning over the edge of the rowboat, out towards where the voice came from. “HELLO? Please! Is anyone there?” The woman, though she must have heard, gave no sign. She simply continued to sing.

“Where is my love? I fear, I fear,

For too long has he gone to roam,

Beneath the waters, dark and clear,

He has found his final home.”

Still, Elyse found hope in it. She must be close to shore, or close to another boat, close to someone that might help her. She could not simply give up and accept her fate, here. The beauty of the song and the flame of that hope burned the chill numbness out of her, and she realized that she may, as yet, have a way to move the boat.

She reached into the voluminous pockets of her dress, and drew out the small frog-flute. She placed it to her lips, and began to play, and reached out with the Art as well to take the water, to dance with it. She could feel the water, deep beneath her, swirling, dancing chaotically with something, something enormous, that writed beneath her boat, and in her terror she nearly lost the dance. But she kept on, still, blowing on the flute, and the water about the rowboat swelled, and began to push.

To move the currents of the water to push the boat was well beyond what she had done before. But perhaps her fear and need did for her, with the water, what it had not been able to do for her with her healing. For she gave herself over to the dance, lost herself in it, and the rowboat at first jerked forward, slowly, then faster, more steadily, until at last it was gliding across the surface of the lake faster than she had been able to row it, faster even then Martim had been able to row it. She followed after the sound of the woman’s voice, the sound of the song, though it never seemed to grow any closer.

“My love, my love, why did you go?

To laugh and knock upon death’s door,

Now I’m cursed with widow’s woe,

To grieve your bones forevermore.”

She danced with the song, and below her, she could sense the thing dancing with the water, as well, dancing with great swirls and eddies as it moved its awful, blasphemous bulk to follow her. But she turned its enormity against it, for she danced with the water as it was thrown about by the creature as well, danced with it and sent its movements to her rowboat, pushing it faster, faster. Until, eventually, with triumph in her heart, she felt the creature fall behind, leave her, its dancings with the water fading away.

The singing voice had faded away now, too, but this no longer mattered. For now, coming out of the fog, she saw mainland’s shore. It was not the meeting space she had expected, though, the one they had set up with Minerva and Ren, however, but rather the shore that lay by Silverfish itself. She was gliding up next to the half-submerged temple to the Lady of Calm Waters. Who had been singing? She could not see anyone on the shore. But she put this out of her mind. She had more immediate concerns.

“Help!” she screamed, as the rowboat ground itself in the reeds. It was dark, now, but she could still see flames dancing in some windows. She leapt out of the boat, pulling on Martim, but there was no way she would be able to move him by herself. “Help, damn you! Help us!”

Finnel came dashing out of the temple, and the skinny man stopped dead in his tracks, eyes wide, when he saw her, though only for a moment. “What - what happened?” he asked, as he splashed into the water beside her. “I thought that…the plan…” he tried to hoist Martim himself, but could barely lift him; the wizard was a dead weight.

“He’s dying,” Elyse snapped. “We need to get him to Minerva - go, rouse others! Go, man, and damn the plan! He is poisoned, and will die if we do not get him help quickly!”

Finnel gulped, and nodded. “I’ll go fetch Ritter,” he said, and then he ran into the fog, the patter of his feet disappearing quickly into the night. He would be back with help, soon, soon enough, Elyse told herself. Knee-deep in freezing water, she placed her hands on Martim’s neck again, where he lay half-in, half-out of the boat. She could barely feel his heartbeat, and his red song felt so faint, so dim. It will be enough. It has to be enough. He will live.

Elyse looked out again, into the fog-shrouded streets that Finnel had disappeared into. Who had sung her in? She could see no one, and no one was singing any longer. The only sound she heard now was a gentle splash, somewhere beyond the mist.