Wand SMoke:
Broken

Chapter one
The Lord of the Black Flame

We received the news this morn, delivered by ship with the arrival of the final refugees. Mine high homeland of Yggdrasil hath at last fallen to the Skræling. Now only I, my kin, and these puritans remain of our once great race, cast into exile on this fay-enslaved island. Sealand, I have decided to name this place. My new kingdom, by right of conquest. I shall make subjects of these primitive natives.

—from the journal of King Gøtrik: as preserved in the Union Archives

Men call us troglodytes, though we were human once. At least our ancestors were before the Great Transmogrification. Back then, we’d named ourselves the Clan of the Antler after the stags that battled on the mountain ridges of Oldholm. That was a long time ago; only the clan still remembers, and no living members linger in the caverns below. For all I know, I am the last. And good riddance for that.

My name is Canti, but in Village South the yokels know me as the Lord of Fear and a dealer of Crown. They are the ill, the bored, the guilty—the weak who can’t bear the pain meted out by the world. Inevitably, they find their way to River Deep, for all waters run west east of the valley. They all feed into the mouth of Black Lake and seep beneath Oldholm’s mountain peaks. By way of the river, the weaklings find me in my cove, and I give them relief in the form of mushrooms that grow only on the salt-washed rocks of my home. My home, and it is mine alone, for no creature can drink the bitter waters of the lake or those that flood the caves. Even above is dead and desolate. The last elk of the ridges rests a bleached skull on my shelf. I don it now, my headdress, just as dawn purges the shadows in the west—except for here, at my cove upon the lake. No light shall defile the Vault of the Black Flame.

But Village South offers no such safety. From there, a girl must flee, for she is Broken, afflicted with the Serpent’s Curse: shedding skin, raw and blistered. Only by night can she return to the place of her birth. Come morning, there is naught for her but loathing and burning at the sun’s very touch. And so she runs, under cover of canopy, west through the forest, bloody feet fluttering to keep ahead of the beasts. Yet even the trees seem hungry. Greedily, their branches tear the girl’s flesh. Spiny roots trip her up, bruises ruddy her ankles. And the shrubs, they hunt, thorns heavy with beaded blood like the fangs of a snake dripping venom. Every time, whether she’ll die or escape to the bank alive is a surprise, and today proves no different. She gasps in relief padding across the cold, soft mud into the balm of the River Deep. Slowly it flows; and numbly she floats, Broken, her wounds soothed in the cool of the water, at least until she arrives at the brine of Black Lake.

She swims toward the Vault as soon as the tingling starts, and I wait away from the threshold, away from the hateful rays from the east. Soon, I hear her dripping at the entry, shuffling impatiently, yet this time she remembers. Her tiny voice calls out to me, “Canti, Lord of Fear! Hail!”

I beckon for her to enter. She sees the gesture and steps inside timidly for fear of rough fragments invisible on the shadowed floor. This too she will learn in time, how safely worn the ancient surfaces are within the Vault. But just now, her mind has room only for abating the pain—for consuming the Crown clutched in my hand. It takes her a moment of groping in the shade, but eventually she finds my open hand and the blessing within, takes the spongy cap into her mouth, and chews wildly as an animal. Then she swallows, breathes into her chest like a pair of bellows stokes a flame to get the Crown circulating a few seconds faster. The relief seeps in. She steps back more bravely than she had forward. Hailing again, she says, “Lord of Fear, my eyes are opened. I am your Seer. Help me show you what I found.”

I fight back a smile, though I know that between the mask of the headdress and the black of the Vault, she could never see it. Still, it would not do for my only thrall to perceive her master was appeased so easily. Grimacing—looking fierce, I hope—I probe her hallucinations for useful memories.

“The rumors were true,” she starts, her voice swaying, “about Mister Billar. They caught him digging up graves yesterday night. But he got away; even the hounds couldn’t catch him, so they stole through his house. What they found made them scream.”

“Did you see Billar escape?”

“No, I’m sorry, Lord Canti.”

I pat her matted head—the only skin spared by the curse, where hair grows. “I forgive you,” I say, “for you are Broken, my Seer. But we mustn’t let Mister Billar get away.” He is our only lead. “What did you see when they raided his house?”

“It was dark; the moon was covered, but a few of them had lanterns. I could see the Constable and his shiny deathwand through the window. They looked around for a long time. I don’t think they knew what they were looking for. My feet were hurting, it took so long, but then one of the men started reading some notes on a table. He was showing the Constable when someone else called them down into the cellar. That’s when the screaming started, then they all ran out, and then I had to sit down for a while.”

“They didn’t take anything with them?”

The girl squirms. “I don’t think so. I didn’t see.”

I sigh and pat her on the head again, then give a second Crown Cap for her to eat. She tucks it into the pocket on her smock still dripping with saltwater while I search the pile of my sparse belongings. The blanket I use for bedding I give to her to dry with, then we wrap ourselves in woolen sheets for cloaks to keep safe from the sun. A troglodyte’s skin isn’t as vulnerable as is the cursed, but it’s sensitive enough that light makes us sick. Broken knows as much and begs for us to wait until dark. “We can’t take the risk,” I explain to her. We need that evidence before it is taken or burned. If things go wrong, a whole summer will have been wasted, waiting for nothing. I wouldn’t let that happen, the humiliation.

Armored against the sun, we march in the mid-morning autumn wind east under the forest canopy for Village South. It is weary walking, though less dangerous now than when the girl traveled alone. Beasts are not inclined to hunt my kind—something to do with our scent, or perhaps my headdress; though I’ve been told that the naked face of a trog is frightening enough on its own. Whatever the truth, it makes no matter. There is danger aplenty ahead of us.

Ever since the Transmogrification, mankind has rallied against their common enemies: spirits and hobs and faeries and elves, and even the gremlins—nasty things made by human design, kept as slaves throughout much of the country, places like Sinnic, Glassborough, Merrigold, and others further south of the northern mountain range. That’s where South got its name, by the way. It’s the last village to remain just before the foothills after the miasma came and drove mankind out—until now. There was talk over the summer about an expedition hosted by Merrigold’s Apothecaries’ Guild. I got excited when Broken first told me, but soon the rumors grew to include the Union Church. The Guild might overlook a couple degenerates in its ranks, but a Shield-Maiden would see us fettered for sure—though that’s not much worse than the villagers.

We arrive in town in time for the midday market. I say, “town,” though the way traders talk down from Burg or up from Glassborough, South is too small to be a township by half. “A one-hob-stop,” they call it, because of how many people we lose each year to miasmatic consumption, or black lung, or the frequent accidents in the Gaston coal mines. At this rate, all it would take to erase South off the map is a single hobgoblin on a long winter night—or a vengeful troglodyte, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Just now, we’ve got to grit our teeth and bear the loathsome remarks spoken under breath by those we pass on our way to the village square. We cross under their shade, their hatred, their stench of sweat, horse manure, pigsties, and chicken coops, then of barley wine, wood rot, and thatch roof mildew as the cold stone foundations of houses grows closer and closer then apart again till it’s all stalls and horse carts in the open-air market. I hate it here worst of all. It makes me nervous how many sounds there are, and that they bounce off the surrounding inns and taverns and shop fronts so there’s no way to say where any one comes from or what is making it. Wagon wheels, hobnails, barking hounds, barter, and banter fade in and out without source or warning. The only constants are Broken’s wet footsteps and the villagers’ ever-present grunts of disgust. Just enough for a trog to find his way till the girl gets us close enough that I can smell the catastrophe hidden in Mister Billar’s basement. Unfortunately, it seems the humans can smell it as well. I guess my Seer’s story was accurate.

There is a man posted outside the house, a young man by the pitch of his sighs and mutterings—something about his father gone hunting without him. I ask Broken who’s guarding the door.

“I think it’s—” she starts, but the young man must have noticed us approaching.

He shouts so loudly he scares half the market to a halt. “You! I knew you’d be lurking around here eventually. You and your addicted mushroom minion!”

Broken rustles through the pocket of her smock and pops the Crown Cap into her mouth.

“You see this!” he gasps exasperatedly to the gathering villagers. “Peddling poison to a poor, afflicted child and parading her around without a care whether her curse spreads to the rest of us.”

“You tell him, Grant!” cheers someone from the crowd. Another shouts, “Yeah! Run’em out before they turn our children into hobs.”

Grant? So it’s the Constable’s son. At last I recognize his voice from our prior altercation. It wasn’t my fault. I tried to explain; there was no way Len could have died from the Crown I gave him.

Leonard was a coal miner for the Gaston Company branch here in South. Every day he crawled miles north through underground tunnels to arrive safe beneath the mountains before his day’s labor could even begin. Backbreaking work, you can imagine. He was one of many I traded Crown to through my contact in town. That’s how I know it couldn’t be the caps that killed him. We have an arrangement. The mushrooms are doled out slowly, no more than a cap or two a day, and I receive my payments in barter: bread, meat, blankets, that sort of thing. If Broken had come back with a week’s worth of provisions, then maybe our deputy would have a point. But that’s not what happened, and a cap a day for back pain didn’t put a man in an early grave. Of course, the deputy wouldn’t listen, and now I’m to blame for Len’s death and consequently his family ditching the village, not for Merrigold but Glassborough—only one kind of widow’s work Len’s wife can find there...

I spin to face the crowd and let my headdress make its impression. Their feet shuffle on the dirt road. “The Serpent’s Curse isn’t contagious, idiots. And if we were hobs, you’d all be dead or changed by now.”

“There have been deaths, Poison Peddler,” says Grant.

“What? Are you dredging up Len again? Let the dead bastard rest.”

The deputy steps forward. The cool of his shadow falls over my feet. “There have been others since then. Three. And we know it’s your poison that killed them. If Father and I hadn’t been so busy with Billar, we’d have hunted you down already.”

“Three more?” I utter the thought aloud. Something’s wrong, but there’s nothing to do about it during daylight hours. “First I heard about that. Has nothing to do with me. Funny that you don’t suspect it was Billar who did it.”

Grant steps closer, his self-righteous huffing humid even through the skull. “I knew you were involved somehow. What do you know about Billar?”

I tap Broken on the shoulder. She skitters off. “The banker?” I say, “I don’t know a damned thing. But I’ve heard rumors you and the Constable are bringing him up on false charges. Something about buying illegal books. But there’s no contraband law on the occult in South, Grant. None on Crown either.”

A couple people in the crowd start murmuring. The doubt spreads, mouth to mouth, till the deputy shouts them down, calling, “Order! Order, I say! Do not believe this degenerate miscreant! Mister Vaughn Billar has been charged on his own negligence. He’s gone derelict on tax payments and has unfulfilled contracts with customers who deposited with him.”

I turn to the crowd again and ask, “Unfulfilled contracts? Is that any of you?” There is silence, then murmurs. I continue with Grant, “No one here’s been cheated, deputy. Sounds to me like you’re making this up just to fill your pockets. I bet Billar’s safe is still stashed full of the people’s money. That’s why you’re out here, isn’t it? So that once your father’s manhunt comes back with their mark, they can crack it open and collect their ‘derelict taxes.’”

Heat rages from the deputy’s body, yet when he speaks, he sounds more shaken than angry. “I’m here because some curious soul will undoubtedly want to see for himself the effects of Billar’s extreme desperation and be tempted to mimic his grievous error. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it, Lord of Fear?” His tongue flaps the title, sodden with sarcasm. The crowd laughs as if they’d not lost their nerves moments before. “Isn’t it?” Grant insists that I answer, but Broken has yet to return.

So I ask one of my own. “What was it Billar was up to that you’re so terrified I’d repeat? Reading some evil books?” I wave a hand in front of my face hoping to win back the crowd with humor. A couple chuckle, but the rest bite their tongues, their prejudices against magic stoked as I stand here surrounded with my vulnerabilities exposed. I’m such an idiot.

“I was right, then. Your question proves it; and to think you’d lead the village against itself just to get ahold of some nefarious tomes. There’s no one—nothing you wouldn’t sacrifice for your own selfish benefit. If it were up to me, we’d string you up right now.”

Movement among the crowd becomes louder, and the most vocal men speak out, their voices feverous. “Yeah! String him up!” “We’re behind you, Grant!” “Let’s show him how we deal with pests!”

“Calm yourselves!” the deputy commands. He means it for the frothing crowd, but it might be me who’s happiest to obey. My heart is racing, slowing slowly as the fervor dissipates; I thought for sure they’d at least rough me up and lock me in a cell. I guess I got lucky this time, and Grant confirms my suspicion. “I said if it were up to me. Fortunately, here in South it isn’t. We hold to the Old King’s justice. You would do well to remember that.” He pauses, and I feel the wind from his finger as he pans the crowd. “All of you.”

There’s a sudden tug on my cloak. Broken. I’d been such a coward that I couldn’t hear her bloody feet padding on the dirt over my own trembling heart. Shamed and embarrassed, I excuse myself while the villagers are distracted, turn and follow her to the village edge. Then I urge her further, frightened that we might be followed, or perhaps I just want to get as far from what happened as I possibly can.

We stop at the bank of the River Deep before I order the girl to show me what she found. A small pile of books falls into my hands: old books bound in rotting leather, the most ancient of them boxed in petrified wood. Only one seems to me to have the smooth of new binding. A ledger perhaps, or maybe a journal. The girl asks if she can swim in the river, and though I know the pain is creeping back into her body, I tell her, “No. We have to get going soon, and I need you to read these, and we can’t let them get wet.” She is resistant at first, but after a few more attempts, I convince her to start with the ledger, or journal, or whatever it is. What she reads makes the humiliation worth it.

It’s a record of Billar’s attempts, trials and errors, to perform a resurrection on a number of animals. As you’d expect from a banker, the man’s detail is meticulous. Each entry lists materials, measures, time of night and the position of the moon, and how successful or not the resurrection was executed—not very well by the sound of the first dozen entries. Seems he was cautious in the beginning, testing only on rats he’d trapped within the borders of his basement. Nary a one could he bring back to life, though he writes excitedly of his twelfth attempt, a twitching making all the difference. But then Billar got confident. He started using larger and larger animals: chickens, dogs, wild pigs, even a horse—just to see that twitch replicated. He needed something more, he writes and mentions two books, old and occult. I assume the tomes we stole are those that he mentions and that the new materials and incantations found further in the record are adaptations Billar made after studying their pages. Unfortunately, we have no idea what they say. They’re written in a language Broken’s never seen, but at least the results of his experiments are described plainly, namely the deformations.

From here on out, it’s hard to say his attempts were successful. Certainly, he’d accomplished something, but to call the twisted abominations resurrected would bastardize the word. These were monsters—dead ones—but they did more than twitch and lay silent. The first was a cock who grew scales and cawed a scream shrill as a woman’s before decomposing into base elements. He tried again, this time with a cat; its skin turned to carapace, its tail like a scorpion’s till the creature’s own blood dissolved it from the inside out. There’s only one entry left after that. Broken says the writing’s hard to read, scratchy, and there are more of the foreign words scattered among the components list. As she tells me what happened, I can imagine the desperation that must have drove the banker’s hand to shake so uncontrollably.

With the last of the money from the deposits in his safe, Billar bought a gremlin slave and had it shipped in all the way from Sinnic. It was a material component; the actual subject was a man—a recent corpse and one of the four who’d died mysteriously. So now I know Billar didn’t kill them, though it’s arguable his crime is worse. Broken describes the blood sacrifice, how the gremlin’s life, its unwilling soul, was forced into the body and rendered it into animate horror. “There was no hint of human left,” the banker wrote. “The head was stolen up by horns and snout, its arms turned long, clawed, and scaled like a fish. Its legs were jointed wrong, hairy and hooved. And worst of all were the tendrils which hung down from its belly like squirmy, slimy slugs. I retched at once, then shot the abomination with my deathwand. To my shock, the thing did not seem the least bit bothered. Thank the Patriarch the monster was penned in. I opened the flue and set fire to the hay lining the floor of the cage. Spent the night at an inn, and when I returned, the monster was nothing more than a purple impression on the wall. Good riddance, but that will have to be my last experiment. I’m out of time and out of resources. It’s now or never, my beloved. One way or another, we’ll see each other again.”

“That’s all it says,” Broken yawns, pushing the record into my hands. “Can I swim in the river now?”

“No,” I tell her again. “We’ve got our lead, but we need to move quickly.”

The village catacombs are a few hours’ march from here. South never had its own Union chapel, so the rich still make use of the old burial grounds. I figure that’s where a widower like Billar would have buried his wife. But if I can figure that out, so too could the Constable, and he started his manhunt the previous night.

I promise Broken two more Crown Caps and a whole day of swimming when we get back. This appeases her, though just barely. Reluctantly, she leads us through the forest for the foothills of the northern mountains. Unlike the jaunt between the Vault and the village, this is a three-hour slog over fallen leaves and needles, spiny cones and pods, and brook-fed bushes overgrown in spots where the sun beams through the canopy. And if not for the remains of the path left by the recent funeral procession, we wouldn’t reach the crypt before the end of the day. Feels like that anyway. The whole time, I’m worrying to myself; if we miss this chance, another might not come up again for years. This is my opportunity to become what I’ve always longed to be: the Lord of Fear, powerful enough to enact my revenge on a world cruel and shameless in its prejudice and inequity. And all I need is Billar’s wisdom: where he learned of witchcraft in the first place and how he came upon sources to further his work. And if he can teach Broken to read the old tomes... No, don’t get your hopes up. You don’t even know if the widower is still alive.

It’s still daylight by the time we reach the catacombs tucked under the rolling hills north of the forest. The ground here feels firmer, like the soil that surrounds the Vault, and I imagine the crypts as I do Oldholm, a place discovered only to be stolen again by the unknown. The same feeling loiters about the air—the trace of miasma. It rolls off the poisoned mountains, making laborious our breaths as we quicken over the open hills for the entrance. Broken mentions footprints where boot heels cut clods from the ground. The Constable and his men must have been through already. But were they running as we are, to escape the poisoned air? Or were they hot on the heels of Mister Billar? I guess we’ll find out, I tell myself as we cross from the evening sun into the cool of shadow.

Inside the crypt, Broken and I switch lead. I hand her the books and find the eastern wall, follow its gentle curves around bends and switchbacks, reaching carefully with hands and feet as we delve deeper toward the true catacombs. These are mere tunnels, the walls filled with embedded effigies of lesser folk. I feel the smooth of their stone bodies between the rough of the tunnel walls and wonder how many of them are still remembered, if anything remains of their lives’ legacies aside from these statues. Likely not.

The air grows cooler and damper as we delve, so much so that I can feel the warmth of the girl’s body and breath even an arms distance away through the layers of our cloaks. And I can sense the cavern entrance as well. It’s just ahead, the true catacomb threshold where the man-carved tunnels give way to the vast expanse of nature and darkness. It is a place where humans can find no comfort, where the warm light of lanterns and torches is swallowed up in the depths of the dark. “Stay with me, and keep to the walls,” I say to Broken. To get lost here, even for a trog, is to take permanent residence.

We enter the catacomb, and at once something is wrong. I can feel a flickering, a warmth in the distance, even before the girl whispers that there’s a lantern burning ahead. “Do you see anyone?”

She says she doesn’t, but then she gasps, “It’s the Constable! He’s dead! And the other men—”

Before I can hush her, there’s someone coming from behind. He’s soft on his feet, moving slowly, hardly breathing at all, but the heat and odor of his portly body give away his position well before the click of the flint-hammer of his deathwand.

“Don’t move,” echoes Billar’s voice, hushed and quivering. “I’ve got you in my sights.” He’s afraid—I can feel him trembling because we both know it’s an empty threat. Deathwands are useless in the dark.

“Go on, then,” I call his bluff, “waste your shot. Not so easy in the dark, is it? Still, I’m impressed you managed to take out the Constable and all his men. I didn’t expect—”

“Be quiet!” he hisses.

Broken squeezes herself between me and the wall. Her breaths are small and shallow.

“Relax,” I say, for all our sakes, “we’re not part of the Old King’s justice.”

“‘Quiet,’ I said! You’ll kill us all!” Sweat drops big as bullets patter like rain on the cavern floor. He’s terrified, and not of us.

I ask in a whisper, “You raised another one of those things, didn’t you?”

Billar sighs, guilty.

I feel myself getting nervous. “Oh well, maybe next time you’ll get it right. Why don’t we step outside where we can speak freely? We’ve come a long way just to talk to you, and—”

“No,” he says, the fear going out of him, “there won’t be a ‘next time.’ I’ve lost everything now: my Mabelle, my wealth, my home; and they’ll blame me for the Constable as well. It doesn’t matter. There is no time after now.”

“But,” I start to say.

He cuts me off, no longer bothering to whisper. “But what? You think I’m going to share this disaster? If you want to talk, I’ll tell you this—Vaughan Billar’s final words. If you know what I did, don’t replicate my mistakes. You can’t cheat life, only yourself...and all the people around you. Go, now. Get out while you can, and tell the village I’m sorry for what I did... Mabelle...”

What follows is the click of a trigger, the clink of flint as it swipes the striker, the ping against the powder pan, the hiss of ignition. Gasps empty our lungs, both Broken’s and mine, in the moment before the explosion. It’s deafening, the echoes of Billar’s words ricocheting off every surface of the catacombs. I don’t hear his body fall but feel his fading warmth spill onto the floor.

In the distance, the flickering lantern dies beside the Constable.

Billar’s body goes cold.

I stand, immobilized. This is the first time I’ve experienced someone dying, but fortunately for me, the girl has seen it before. She tugs at my cloak, her arms and feet hurting from heavy books and rough stone. It’s enough to wake me from my frightened stupor. I take back the late Billar’s tomes, ready to retrace our steps, but then new sounds echo, the clopping of a goat, the slithering of slugs all tangled together—and no trace of heat, no scent but of the catacombs.

“Run!” I say to Broken. Now we’re out of breath, tripping over rocks and outcroppings ascending subterranean switchbacks, and I resent my frail form more and more as the resurrected abomination clops ever closer. But the dead, still air is coming alive again; we’re nearing the crypt entrance; just a little more and we might lose it in the forest. Then a claw snags my cloak, tears a fist-sized hole, and I know we both won’t make it.

“Hold!” calls a voice from without the crypt tunnels. “Someone’s coming. Bring that torch forward, quickly!”

The girl tells me what she sees between breaths: Grant, villagers, weapons in their hands—visions that fill us with a last gasp of stamina. We bolt right through the ranks of village conscripts.

“It’s you!” the deputy bellows. “Grab them! Don’t let them escape!” One of the men screams. Grant turns his attention. “In the name of the King!” is all he has time to say before the abomination is on them. Shafts clatter against one another—the muddled thunder of farm tools in the unskilled hands of improvised soldiers—but even the deputy’s partizan won’t do a damn to that thing. That’s alright. It’s all behind us now. Broken and I have escaped with our lives.

Once we’re safe in the forest, she asks me, “Canti, can we go home now?”

It’s tempting, but there’s too much at stake to delay our return to South. Billar’s house might still yield something useful—translation notes or journals or bills of sales from when he bought the tomes that Broken found. If we wait, and Grant comes back before we do, I doubt he’ll give us a chance to ransack the house. And if he doesn’t come back, it’s likely that I’m to be blamed somehow. They won’t allow us back in town—and that’s the best I can hope for. It’s more likely they will come hunt us down under the mountains of Oldholm. Assuming the monster doesn’t slaughter us first. The night wind blows cold on my back where my cloak was torn. We need to prepare.

“I’m sorry,” I answer, “We still have work to do, but why don’t we go see Doctor Edger first?”

That cheers her up some. Doctor Edger is my village contact. He’s how I peddle to my regular customers as well as my go-between for business transactions. Few of the yokels are willing to sell to a poison pushing trog, and those that do charge harshly for the stigma that falls upon them. Edger solves that problem by paying me for Crown in whatever goods I might need. Lucky me, his last few deliveries were larger than normal, and I’ve yet to collect on the debt he owes. Well, now’s the time. I’ve got something special in mind and some questions as well; I haven’t forgotten about the unaccounted deaths. Impossible. Crown Cap doesn’t kill on its own.

The village is asleep when we arrive at the Doctor’s door. I knock with soft, regular blows; usually it takes a minute or so to stir him out of bed, but tonight he’s already up and at work. On what? I wonder as the hinges creak and a sliver of light stripes my body.

“It is you,” grunts Edger. The door widens, and we step inside. There’s a creak and a thud as he drops a crossbar behind us. The air becomes still as the crypt’s, but thicker, saturated with the smell of saltpeter and formaldehyde. “You’re early. I wasn’t expecting another delivery for at least a week.”

“This isn’t one. I came for payment.”

The Doctor coughs, the way he always does to conceal his jeering. “Then you’ll have to come back tomorrow. Or did you forget? The shops are closed at night.”

“Not yours, though. What are you doing working so late?” I hand Broken the pile of books, tap her shoulder—our signal for “eyes open” and “fingers searching” and “pay attention.”

Edger crosses the room and begins stowing whatever vials he’s got strewn about his worktable. Each piece of glass clinks as he hides them away in chemist’s chests and cases. “If you must know,” he says after several seconds, “I’m experimenting with ways to grow Crown in laboratory conditions. That’s why the deliveries have been sizable as of late. I intended to let you know the next time we met.”

“So you’re cutting me out?” I ask, skeptical of his story. He wouldn’t admit something like this unless he’d already succeeded, and even then, he’d keep it a secret, at least until he was sure he could distribute safely and securely. That’s my part in our arrangement, to be the face that draws away suspicion. Cut me out and it’s him Grant will be hounding. The deputy will run him out of South same as the Enforcers ousted him from Sinnic.

“Cut you out?” Edger repeats the question. “You’ve got it reversed, my troglodyte. I’ll be excising myself from the village soon. You’ll have the whole profit to yourself.”

Leaving? This catches me off guard. “Surely you’re not going to market Crown in Merrigold? The Guild might have you, but the Union Church would never—”

“What trog thinking. Of course not!” he exclaims. “I’m headed for Glassborough. Gaston Mining has had problems with gremlin riots lately, and apparently, it’s impossible to hire competent Taskmasters from the local labor. That’s where I come in. If I can supply a way to sedate their slaves, the company representatives will draft a contract.”

Gaston’s main operation houses almost a thousand gremlin slaves. That’s a lot of mushrooms, too much for one man to produce even if he could grow them outside Oldholm. I don’t press him on this, though; there’s no time. Footfalls are on the march, drawing nearer to the Doctor’s shop. It’s Grant and the conscripts. I tell Edger, but it seems the Doctor is already aware. He throws open his chemical closet, urges Broken and me to hide inside as they come knocking on his door.

“Doctor!” sounds Grant’s voice muffled through the wood. “Doctor, open up! We have a wounded man! Open up, quickly!” I listen as the cross bar is slid from its fittings. Hinges creak, and several men storm inside. “Thank the King you’re awake. Kevan’s been gored, horribly.”

“Set him on the table,” Edger replies. “You there, fetch me some fresh water from the canal. And you! We need more wood for the fire. There are logs around back. Quick! Get chopping!” The two conscripts comply, the rest he dismisses save the deputy for questioning. “What in Hell happened? I was expecting bullet wounds, but this looks more like a bear attack.”

“Worse,” answers Grant. “It’s Billar’s work. He conjured some kind of freakish monster. It got Kevan before we could fend it off.”

“Fend it off? You mean you didn’t kill it?”

The deputy’s tone turns stern. “Don’t worry. I’m all but certain it’s dead. We stabbed the fiend near a hundred times, but it fled into the woods when Kevan shoved a torch in its face. That’s when it clawed him. His wounds were so grievous, we didn’t dare give pursuit. Can you help him, Doctor?”

It takes my every ounce of willpower not to shout out loud. Fled into the woods? That idiot is going to get us all killed, and from the sound of things, Kevan will be the first.

“We’ll have to amputate,” says Edger. “Animal wounds are prone to fester, and the tendons have been severed anyway.” The water arrives and the wood shortly after. “Good, get the fire nice and high, and you, dump that bucket into the cauldron. I need it bubbling. Now where is the axe—the one you used to chop the logs. You left it outside? Then go get it, you dolt! How am I to perform an amputation without an axe?”

The procedure lasts about an hour, during the course of which Grant says next to nothing. He doesn’t have the stomach for it, I think. But then, perhaps neither do I. The thud of the axe biting into the table is enough to make me sick, then comes the sizzle of hot iron pressed against Kevan’s severed flesh. The smell of melting skin and tissue fumigates the room. The two village conscripts rush outside to retch. What I wouldn’t give to join them. Instead, I’m trapped in this closet, swallowing my vomit, imagining the burning in my throat like it’s being cauterized—then it strikes me: is this what it’s like to be Broken? For every touch, every gust of wind, every ray of the sun to feel like fire? I realize that this little girl trapped here with me in the dark is tougher than I’ve ever been.

I’m weak...pathetic...useless. The world would be better off if I’d died with the rest of them. But I was an outcast, even then. This life is my punishment...but for what?

“There, it’s done,” sighs Edger in equal parts contempt and exhaustion. “If he survives tonight and the shock upon waking, his wife will need to change his bandages every few hours. Tell her to soak them in wine or brandy; I can sell her a cask if need be.”

“He’s unmarried, Doctor,” utters Grant stupidly, his voice drained of its usual authority.

The Doctor chokes back laughter. “At his age, really? Makes sense, I suppose. All the good prospects are down in Merrigold. Regardless, I won’t keep him here. With all the moaning he’s like to do, I won’t be able to get a wink of rest.”

“But Doctor—”

“You’ll be fine, deputy.” He pats him loudly on the shoulder. “But you should hurry and find someone before Village South becomes a ghost town.”

Grant calls the conscripts back inside, asks if either are married. Neither are, but one says he’s got a sister at home who could look after Kevan while he’s out working in the mine. Satisfied, the deputy sends them away hauling their companion’s unconscious body.

Not a second passes before Edger suggests he follow. “Now, if you would excuse me, deputy, I’d like to get some sleep. And I think it would be good should you do the same.”

“Not yet,” Grant says, his feet dragging toward the door. “We still haven’t secured Billar or my father and his men. I’m headed back to the catacombs. Hopefully I won’t be bothering you on my return.”

“With speed,” replies Edger, shooing the deputy out the door and dropping the crossbar into place. No later than we hear the wood hit its iron fittings, Broken and I burst out of the cramped closet, limbs stiff and muscles aching. “Oh, that’s right. I forgot about you two. Let’s finish our business tomorrow. I’ve had more than my share of monsters tonight.”

The prospect of rest sounds appealing, but this might be my last chance to search Billar’s house before it gets scoured. And then there’s that abomination lurking in the woods, most certainly still alive if the record is accurate. An elk skull won’t be enough to scare it off. “You’ll have to brave the monsters a little longer. Take out from what you owe me for two Crown Caps, eleven ounces of saltpeter, three ounces of powdered cinnabar, two ounces of ground charcoal, and a flask of proxylic spirit.”

There is a pause; even the air stands still within the room.

“This again?” Edger breaks the silence. “It’ll be quite expensive, Trog. You might end up owing me after.” He goes to the closet, fetches jars and bins and other clanging things, then dumps them onto the axe-marred table. “Remind me of the proportions.”

I rattle off the list a second time from memory. It’s a recipe engraved deep onto my heart, an ancient discovery from when my ancestors were still the Clan of the Antler, the only piece of their wisdom passed down to me, and the reason I call my home the Vault of the Black Flame. The powders are mixed and wrapped in cloth that’s been soaked in spirit, then all it takes is a spark or candle to conjure the fires that fissured the earth and loosed the floods that destroyed Oldholm.

My order makes two satchel charges, and to the Doctor’s chagrin, his debt is enough to cover the cost. The caps I give to Broken which she eats at once. I don’t blame her. We’re both exhausted, and I don’t want to imagine how badly bloodied the bottoms of her feet must be. But our work isn’t over. We part with Edger while the village is still sleeping and head for Billar’s house, now unprotected, the door left unlocked in the deputy’s haste.

Broken and I steal inside. All’s silent and still and cold as death—and black as pitch, according to the girl. So I grope either side of the entrance till I find a usual side table with a striker and simple candle lantern, warm and flickery when lighted, and risky that someone might see from outside. Relax, I tell myself. Grant won’t be back for a quarter day at least, if at all with that beast lurking out there. We take our time, start from top to bottom, but the upper floor yields nothing but tragedy, pain, and sorrow. It’s a bed chamber according to my Seer, immaculately clean and adorned in the trappings of Billar’s late wife. There’s a big four-poster bed with a canopy of soft sewn linen; chests of drawers, every one full with Missus Billar’s clothes; an antique vanity that’s probably worth more than a small cabin in South; and even a mannequin dressed in her wedding gown. And on a small bed-side table beside the down feather mattress is another striker and lamp—and a journal as well. Her journal. The girl takes this of her own volition.

Downstairs, in the main rooms, we find somethings a bit more useful. On the desk where Broken stole the tomes we have now, there are piles and piles of papers. Most are mundane: bills of sale, loan agreements, tax notices; but among these we glean pages with strange symbols written next to letters that the girl can actually read. Translation notes. We’ve struck gold, finally, a wave of triumph washes over my body. “Broken,” I say, “Once we get home, we’re going to spend the whole week doing nothing but swimming and playing and eating mushrooms.”

The girl’s voice goes shrill. “Hurray!” she cheers, happier than I’ve heard her since she became my thrall.

“‘Once we get home,’ I said.” It pains me to hush her, but the basement yet remains to be searched. The basement, where Billar performed his ritual experiments, where he created his first abomination like what chased us through the crypt and catacombs. In his record, he claimed to have slain that monster with fire. I can only hope that is true. Hope and prepare. I give the books and lantern to Broken, grip the striker in my left hand, hold the charges in my right. Every step we descend is slight, subtle, slow—as soundless as bare feet can be on rickety wood until we reach the dirt floor bestrewn with cinders. Here is only the scent of soot, the soft crinkle of ash like snow underfoot. And barren: no tables or chairs or stools, not even crates or barrels, just an empty safe left agape in one corner and a cage of iron built into the far wall. Its bars are blackened, my Seer tells me, as are the high wooden ceiling and stone walls—save for the aforementioned stain where the monster dissolved. Billar got lucky he didn’t burn down his own home, but then again, maybe he did. I can still hear the click of his deathwand bounding off the catacomb walls, the scrape of the flint, the explosion’s echo. Stop it, Canti. He was him, and you are you. I tell myself to put it out of mind, announce aloud, “We got what we came for. Nothing left here but to go home. Finally.”

There’s a creak on the stairs.

“Broken, don’t get ahead. I know you’re excited, but—”

“I’m not,” she says, her voice hushed beside me.

Another creak, like a muffled clopping, creeps down the stairs. No heat, just the sound of slithering, writhing tendrils—and dripping too, pattering on the wood of blood spilt from wounds where Grant’s partizan had bitten. For each step the abomination descends, I match in my retreat, increasingly vexed how loud the soot sounds under heel till my back contacts the cold stone wall. Where my cloak is torn open, the acidic twinge of the dead monster’s stain on my bare skin wakes me from my fixation. I realize my mistake: cornering myself in the cage, causing Broken and me to get separated. I listen for her breathing but hear the soft clopping instead, the crunch of soot, the slithering and writhing, the dripping of blood thick and dead. It’s close now, in the cage with me. There’s no escape. Even in my mind, I imagine the thud of the axe during the amputation, how much worse this monster’s claws will be.

“Canti!” Broken screams. Glass shatters; she must have thrown the lantern at the beast, and now it’s frozen, moaning from contact with the little flickering flame. This is my chance. I bolt around where I think the creature is, hear the cage door slam behind me, the latch locking in place—it’s Broken. She’s saved us, I believe, but only until the fiend makes a noise I’ve never heard before but that somehow I recognize as the whinge of iron bending, then the shriek of its break.

The girl screams for me again, as does my conscience. Use the Black Flame! Before it breaks out! It shouts what was, until now, drowned out by fear. No longer, I tell myself. This is my chance to show everyone my power, for I am the Lord of Fear! I shall burn this beast to ashes! I’ll show all of South that I’m to be...

My right hand squeezes, empty. Open, closed; empty again. A chill falls upon the exposed skin of my back as I realize I lost both the satchel charges. Idiot! I start, then think, No, there’s no time for this. “Broken! The Black Flame, where is it?”

“Umm, umm,” she stutters, her eyes searching. “There! They’re there! By the door straight in front of you!”

One of the bars snaps, its pitch sharp as a dagger.

“Distract it,” I shout, swallowing hard my cowardice. I force my legs forward while the girl lures the monster to the corner of the cage. I make it to the bars faster than I thought, my whole body shaking because now’s the hard part. Close as I am, that abomination could easily snatch out my throat from behind the bars. But the Black Flame satchels lie inside. I have to reach in my arms, grope for them, and pray that Broken can hold its attention until I find... Yes! I feel the rough of spirit-soaked linen, dry now, but the residual essence still abundant on the surface. I jab the striker adjacent and start sparking as quickly as my fingers can squeeze. “Come on...come on...” I mutter, involuntarily. My hand is cramping. Another bar breaks. Broken calls my name, and I know the monster is lunging for me, but what can I do but continue to squeeze the striker and plead, “Light, dammit!”

A spark catches, begins hissing violently. I rip my arm free, throw my body back from the sizzle and spit—then comes the eruption, the surge of heat, the secret power handed down by my ancestors! A cloud of colorless flame consumes the cage in darkness. For this, I need no Seer to know, only the wailing of the monster as it reduces to component parts: ashes and salts, soot and dust.

For a while after, I stand stupefied by what happened, my limbs suddenly heavy, my head dizzy—maybe from the smoke? I feel a tug at my sleeve. It’s Broken. “Let’s go home,” she says, and we leave Billar’s house with arms full of books, empty bellies, and a desperate need for sleep.

We’re just in time to flee the sunrise as we arrive at the Vault of the Black Flame. I place my headdress on its shelf along with the tomes and notes, make a promise to start studying them soon, after we find some food—and some answers. There remain four dead bodies we haven’t accounted for, and from what Broken told me on our way from Billar’s basement, something more is going on with Edger. But that is for another day. For now, there is only rest ahead of us. I lay my aching body on the woolen blanket spread out over the smooth floor of the Vault. I hear the girl do the same with her own pile of threadbare cloth. Then it’s silent for a while, just the hush of the river feeding into the lake. Its soft, constant sound pushes out my thoughts, my worries, my consciousness. But then, on the cusp of sleep, Broken asks me, “Canti?”

“Yeah? What is it?”

“Are we still going to go swimming in the river tomorrow?”

I’d laugh if I wasn’t so exhausted, but I am so I answer her instead, “Of course, just like we promised.”