Previous Chapter
The town was quiet through the early evening. For a moment, if a man looked at the Cove through the corner of his eye, he might think everything was normal. The statue of Jonathan Riker had no such grace. Its eyes stared straight down on the town, unblinking, and watched the people head home early and bar their doors. The Mayor walked the streets every hour, making sure things were quiet. The full moon rose overhead, its bright, baleful light casting the streets in unsettling shadow.
It was a bad night to be about and all could sense it. When the dark shadow of Earth moved over the moon's face even Mayor Hughes went home and locked the door. Only the statue was there to watch as Low Noon moved it. The fell mood didn't bother Jonathan Riker in the least.
It watched as the sky slowly turned dark without flinching, heard the wild laughter without answering and saw the lighthouse bend and stretch up towards the sky without comment. The world changed in the small circle of the bay. When the moon slipped entirely out of view the strange voices echoing faintly over the water grew more numerous and more varied. Then the the lighthouse and the water around it for a hundred feet froze, locked behind the irregular facets of an otherworldly prism.
The second room of Heinrich von Nighburg's hidden fortress was circular, like the lighthouse it was connected to. Stone floor and ceiling sandwiched tall shelves stacked with books, tools and paraphernalia. Bronze lines, about the width of a man's hand, ran across the floor in every direction. Seven of them converged on the table at the center of the room where the strange geometric lattice, mesh globe and golden orb sat pulsing with arcane power.
Experience told Roy it was best to work out what to do about the mad wizard's magic before anything else. "All right, Warwick," he said, stepping through the doorway from the portal room to the Array. "I think it's finally time a druid explained what's so coalstoking dangerous about these things."
Brandon cleared his throat. "Maybe you could explain what an Immelmann Array is, first?"
"It's a shield of winter," Avery said.
Roy felt himself start in shock, a rookie response he immediately regretted. "You're not serious."
"Isn't that one of the godly weapons of the Mated Pair?" Proud Elk asked, studying the array with a skeptical eye. "This does not look very godly, Bright Coals."
"We say the Lord in Raging Skies carries winter as his shield but I honestly don't know what the connection is between one of these and the saying," Avery replied. "However, there are ancient records in the Stone Circle that say Arthur Phoenixborn took a magic weapon much like this into his last battle with the Seventh Son of Eternity. Whether or not he actually wiped out Eternity's Armies in one day, Arthur's victory was decisive. The Forever Wars ended very soon after with Eternity's allied nations on the Continent surrendering two years later. By that point the Circle's Founders had already forbidden anyone building a shield of winter."
"Why?" Roy asked. "They sound pretty handy."
"Well, if it's true that Arthur swept the Armies of Eternity from the world all at once and if he used a shield of winter to do it, the prevailing theory is that the shield is actually a kind of key." Avery waved a hand to encompass the strange space around them. "The records suggest Arthur used it to lock out or lock away the Seventh Son and his forces and placed himself in the doorway to ensure they never came this way again. The concern is that using another key will reopen that door and pave the way for them to return. While there's questions about the veracity of those records the possibility that someone could start up the Forever War again is daunting enough the Founders didn't want to take the chance."
That seemed like a reasonable enough motive to forbid them to Roy. "Is there a way to turn it harmless without doing that?"
"Not that I know of. Our Founders taught us to recognize them but Morainehenge was setup in a rather informal way and we didn't have complete details on... well, anything. If there's a safe way to deal with an Array, the secret stayed in Stonehenge."
All eyes turned to Brandon. He held up his hands defensively. "No help here, lads. I've never heard of Immelmann Arrays or shields of winter and I honestly don't think most knights ever do. That sounds like something usually confined to the Founder's Circle. Our Founders, that is. Why did yours think it wise to spread the knowledge to the whole rank and file?"
Avery's expression turned surly. "We couldn't be sure Immelmann hadn't produced them by the dozen and turned them over to the Columbians! We had to be ready to counter them."
"He wasn't a weaponsmith, Warwick, he was a skytrain engineer," Roy snapped. "He was just trying to improve their furnace design. I don't know that turning one into a weapon every occurred to anyone, unless you count skytrains as weapons."
"Which you could," Brandon said.
Roy shot him a glare. "Not my point."
Avery jabbed a finger at the Array. "That is not something you create accidentally while trying to innovate on a skytrain furnace. He was dabbling with something he shouldn't have, just like von Nighburg, that's why we had to step in and confiscate the Array."
A pulsing flash of anger shot across Roy's vision and took up residence in the front of his mind. "You robbed a man of his life's work, over the objections of your own druid there in town-"
"Harwick?" Avery practically spat the name. "He turned his back on the Circle and never showed his face again. Who cares about his opinion?"
A brief glimpse of a man, dead on the side of a lonely mountain in a forgotten corner of Tetzlan, rose from Roy's memories. It was already fading when Roy closed his grip on the front of Avery's coat and pulled the man down to eye level. "Brennan Harwick was a better man than you could ever hope to be."
Roy's own fury was mirrored in the other man's eyes. "Then maybe he'll find the fortitude to come back and answer for his actions!"
A dozen acid tongued replies rose up but before Roy could pick one a double loop of blue and gold painted beads dropped around his neck and the unnatural pressure on his emotions vanished. He hadn't realized he was being manipulated a second ago. Now that Proud Elk's beads were around him it was obvious that something similar to the laughter from that morning had come over him.
Brandon was prying the two of them apart as the Sanna man looped another set of beads around the sheriff. The same shock and disorientation was clear on his face. Roy cleared his throat. "What was that?"
"I don't know," Avery replied. "I supervised some of Brennan's training when we were squired, I always thought he was a man of respectable intentions. I didn't understand his choices after the Avengard incident but I was never angry about them. Except just now. It was like I couldn't feel anything besides anger... I don't understand it."
"But you use thistledown candles," Cassie said. "Surely you were exposed to all kinds of magic that inflict confusion and arouse unnatural emotions as a part of your training."
"I was. There was still nothing like this among what I experienced." The sheriff shook himself and straightened up. "Something very strange is going on here."
Roy shook himself off, clearing his head, and loosened his falcatta in its sheath. "No doubt. Otherworldly forces and all that. Proud Elk, how long is this going to protect us?"
The Sanna man gave a helpless shrug. "This is something far beyond my experience as well, Bright Coals. A Calming Shoal necklace prevents powerful emotions from overwhelming your mind but it doesn't remove them and it isn't meant for creatures that prey on feelings in this way. I made them after what we saw this morning but I wasn't sure they'd work. I don't know how long they will keep working. We could have minutes or hours before they fail or are circumvented by the enemy."
"Wonderful."
Avery straightened his jacket and cleared his throat. "We've felt this twice now and there's a real sense of change in mental equilibrium when that thing moves against us. Everyone be alert for it. If you feel that change again try pricking a finger with a knife – physical pain can counteract mental influence. Once we have the link through the candles established Miss Fairchild's song may provide some level of defense, too. I'll try and counter any influence from the mindscape as well."
"We'll cut through the problem, then," Roy said. The room had four doors out and he picked one of the three they hadn't been through yet. "Proud Elk, we'll start by going that way. Johan, take your boys and go the opposite. We'll meet in the middle if we don't find what we're looking for or move to support Avery's team if they get in trouble. Let's go."
"Wait." Avery gave him a curious look. "You said Brennan-"
"Not now."
For a moment the sheriff looked like he would protest but then he nodded his agreement. "When this is over, then."
Roy left the obvious caveat unsaid. Instead he held up the beaded bracelet Proud Elk had given him and said, "Final check, make sure the taps are coming through." Suiting actions to words, Roy tapped the large, central diamond in the bracelet's pattern and waited until he felt answering taps from the beads on the opposite side, matching the taps Brandon and Samson made. "Everything's working here. Miss Fairchild?"
She began to hum the slow, mournful notes of Tyson's Nine under her breath as Avery lit his candle. Roy had initially been grateful to learn she didn't have to sing the words to make her magic work. Now he found it didn't matter. The melody brought the first lines to mind unbidden.
When spring turns to winter face the bitter hard truth
'bout the gnawing teeth of the famine
No woman or man has the strength to withstand when
icy cold fear puts its hand in
Roy had always found the rank sentiment and simple lyrics of the song distasteful, to say nothing of the way it seemed to miss all the things that had actually made the mill in Tyson's Run frightening, lonely and miserable. However, as the smoke of Avery's candle wafted into the air he found other opinions mixing with his own. Brandon found them quaint and charming. Tanner didn't quite understand what all the fuss was about, since the tune was far older than the West and the words were the kind of thing sailors sang at sea all the time. Johan found Roy's annoyance far more amusing than anything about the lyrics.
Most interesting of all, Samson took profound satisfaction from them. Roy thought he caught a brief glimpse of a younger Jonathan Riker in an unfamiliar house, speaking with a woman he didn't recognize. Then, something directed their thoughts away from that memory. He had a sudden sense that he'd seen something private and anyway, there were more pressing matters at hand. "It's two hours until the eclipse starts," Roy said. "Whatever else happens we have to cripple the plans von Nighburg has for Low Noon. Sheriff, if he takes out our group and Johan's, or if Low Noon comes and we're not back, destroy the Immelmann Array and go back to the Cove. Hopefully that sends us over the horizon and into whatever place Arthur put the Seventh Son. It's not a perfect solution but it's likely better than the alternative."
"Count on it," Avery replied.
"Should I stand ready to assist you or Johan if you wind up over your head?" Brandon asked.
"Normally I'd be thrilled having a Knight of the Stone Circle as our reserve," Roy said. "But after what just happened I'm not sure you should. I think it's more likely that you'd be lured out by some kind of phantom sensations like what we just experienced than that you'd actually hear us in distress and respond in time to assist."
"We can't spend all our time worried about the enemy's stratagems or we'll never act when we have the chance," Johan said. "Let the man stand ready if he wants."
Roy hesitated for a moment, thinking it over. "Very well. If that's what you want, Brandon, be ready to back us up if needed. But stay here until you get a message from us by candle or tap, understand?"
"I understand."
"Stay safe." Roy turned to the other search group. "Johan, Samson, Tanner. Good hunting."
Then he and Proud Elk turned and headed down their own route into von Nighburg's fortress.
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