Will Wight - Of Dawn and Darkness

Everything was dark. Not only was the lighthouse unlit, but not a single window in the town winked. None of the chimneys blew smoke. A half-open door creaked as it swung in the breeze, audible over the wind and the shrieking of birds.

“I think we’ve seen enough of Silverreach,” Calder said. With a brief thought, he Read the Lyathatan. For the first time, the Elder actually seemed…wary. It did not sleep, here in the shallows, but kept its eyes and its Intent fixed on the shores as though waiting for a threat. That, accompanied by the eerie absence of an entire town, was enough to persuade Calder that they needed to turn back out to sea as soon as physically possible.

Mr. Valette scratched at his sideburns, watching the shore. He was in full Blackwatch costume—black coat, iron spikes tucked into loops at his belt for easy access, with the squirming Elder Eyes badge of his Guild displayed proudly over his chest. A case of tools sat by his feet, ready to be carried onshore, though Calder couldn’t imagine what tools the man would actually need. He was here to discover Elder activity, and obviously there had been some. He’d discovered it. The mission, in Calder’s mind, was over.

“I may not have been entirely honest with you, Captain,” Valette said. “There was indeed the… remote possibility of danger on this venture, aside from the usual. I don’t mean to alarm you, but it seems that there has been a significant Elder presence here.”

Calder tried to feign surprise, but his heart wasn’t in it.

“I was expecting to question the locals,” the Watchman went on. “However, I very much doubt there’s anyone here in the shape to be questioned. If you could assist me, I’d be grateful. I would even be willing to pay an additional fee to you, out of my own pocket.”

As interested as Calder was in making further progress toward his debt, he couldn’t help but wonder what the man meant by assistance. “I don’t see any reason for any of us to go ashore, Mr. Valette. You included. Nor can I determine what help I could possibly be to you; after all, I’m hardly a trained Watchman.”

From her own position by the longboat, Jerri snorted. Behind the passenger, Andel raised an eyebrow at Calder. Calder ignored them both.

“Well, Captain Marten, I’m not a Reader. I have to do all my research the tedious way, and I don’t think it likely that I will be able to do so here. If you could take a few Readings, get a sense of the Intent in the general area, that would be of great help to my task.”

“I’m sensing something from here,” Calder said. “I’m sensing danger, and a foolish risk that we don’t need to take. If it helps you, sir, I’d be happy to swear in the Emperor’s name that you overturned every rock in the town before leaving baffled.”

Jerri frowned at him. “We can’t just leave after coming all this way. The town is empty, so we can surely spare an hour or two to explore.”

“I’m sure it’s uninhabited,” Calder said. “I’m not at all certain it’s empty.”

Andel scanned the shore from beneath his white hat, expression unreadable as usual. “This may surprise you, Mr. Marten, but I agree with the lady. All of us can go ashore together, as there’s no chance of the ship drifting and no one could steal her. It’s five o’clock now. If we leave before sunset, I don’t anticipate too much risk.”

Jerri held out a hand toward Andel, as though presenting him. “I’m seeing you in an entirely new light, Andel.”

If the two of them had not read Valette’s journal, Calder would have understood. Even he would have been tempted to investigate the empty town, if he didn’t know there was a Great Elder underneath it. How could they have forgotten that?

“Tell me, what do we stand to gain from this risk?” Calder asked. “Because we have enough of a report to send to the Blackwatch. ‘The town is empty, it seemed abandoned, and we thought it too dangerous to travel further.’ Sounds reasonable to me.”

Andel turned to him, face as clear as ever. “We won’t gain anything. But the citizens of the Empire trust the Guilds to prevent things like this from happening. If we can learn anything here that prevents Elderspawn from emptying another village, that’s worth some risk.”

Mr. Valette nodded approvingly at Andel’s words, his expression as close to smiling as Calder had ever seen it.

He could sense when he was beaten. Especially when he knew they were right. The smart thing to do from their own perspective was to leave, sail away and never look back. But something had happened to these people, and he had the chance to find out what. His mother risked her life for that every day.

Jerri slapped the side of the longboat. “Lower the boat, Mr. Marten. We’re going ashore.”

Another quote floated to mind, from the journals of Estyr Six: “If you’re not giving the orders, you’re not the one in charge.”

Calder sighed. “Yes, Captain.”

The air swirls with Intent, so thick that Calder could swear he’s standing in a Capital crowd. Curiosity, terror, greed, and a strange, burning hunger blend and drift together so that Calder can scarcely tell one emotion from the other. There’s something strange about it, something that violates common sense; it feels as though the people of this town were passionate about research. Too much so. It’s like a thousand people were so desperate for answers that their hearts might burst…

Calder took his hand from the beam of the house. He tried to shake away the lingering impressions hanging like cobwebs inside his mind; a thirst for knowledge, an inquisitive spirit desperate to be satisfied.

Jerri leaned over with her hands behind her back, smiling like a delighted child. “Well? Any gruesome deaths in the dockside house?”

He would have suspected that the unquenchable curiosity belonged to Jerri, if he didn’t know better. She was entirely too enthusiastic about their trip to an abandoned, Elder-haunted village. “Nothing from the house,” he said. That wasn’t unusual; the structure of a house would usually contain, at most, the skills and memories of the carpenter who constructed it. “Everything I could read came from the air, which is unusual enough. Intent seeps into objects like a dye and stains them, it doesn’t hang around like a fog. Except here.”

It was hard to explain to someone who had never experienced a Reading, like explaining a chorus to a man who had never heard music.

Jerri lifted her eyebrows. “Any visions? Any idea what happened?”

“No visions, which is strange on its own. Normally I have to sort through pictures and impressions, but this was pure emotion. Like it pooled here.”

She thumbed her earring, looking thoughtful. “What emotions?”

“Someone here, or everyone here, very much wanted answers to all their questions. But it was more than curiosity, it was…greed, it was hunger. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear these people all stabbed each other over a riddle.”

“Ach’magut,” she said.

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

Ach’magut, the Overseer, was said to feast on the collected knowledge of humanity. Calder hadn’t been a Watchman long, but he’d learned that much. He hadn’t, unfortunately, learned where the Great Elder was buried.

Though circumstances now suggested that he was right under their feet.

Valette came walking out of a nearby home, carrying his travel-case in one hand like an itinerant alchemist. “Not what I expected,” he said. “Whatever happened here, I thought it was sudden, but the evidence suggested these people packed up and left. There are no meals on the tables, no clothes strewn on the floor. Everything is tucked away so neatly I would almost expect that the town itself is a fake.”