Yann didn’t see anything on the side road where Costico led Yann and Anríq away from the ordinary towns.

  The countryside spread out in a rolling patchwork of farmland with mountains, rivers, and clumps of forest dotted in between.

  The sun shone in the sky and fluffy clouds drifted past up there. Flocks of birds winged back and forth on the breeze.

  It didn’t seem possible that this idyllic landscape could exist in the same dimension as all the chaos, Darklings, danger, and threat that Yann and the Watch had been facing ever since that fateful night in Middleborough.

  Costico’s presence spoiled the illusion. He brought Yann and Anríq here to save his daughter from the Darklings. Whatever forces threatened the Coil threatened this peaceful Island, too.

  Yann couldn’t get the cursed townspeople out of his mind, either. If they weren’t Darklings themselves, the Dark caused their sickness, too.

  He’d seen that with his own eyes when Anríq pulled the Dark out of them.

  Yann didn’t see any sign of human habitation on this side road—none at all. The Corsair captain must live in a rustic cottage in the woods for it to be so well hidden.

  Without warning, the man walked through an invisible barrier across the road. He led his horse through it, too.

  The animal followed him without any protest and they both vanished behind a sheet of watery energy.

  The sheet wavered once when Costico and his horse passed through. Then the whole thing evaporated as if it was never there. It returned to being invisible and left the view of the landscape as perfect and empty as ever.

  Yann stopped in his tracks and stared at the spot. Costico wasn’t there.

  Anríq kept walking. “Don’t worry,” he told Yann on the side. “It’s his concealment spell. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  Anríq stepped forward, broke the barrier, too, and vanished following Costico.

  Yann couldn’t stay here, so he stepped forward. He passed through the barrier and wound up on exactly the same road with Costico, the horse, and Anríq all in front of him.

  A giant castle rose in front of him. Its high, white marble turrets touched the sky with flags flapping in the breeze and armed men guarding a drawbridge across the moat.

  Costico trudged down the road as if he came this way on foot all the time. None of the guards acknowledged him when he crossed the bridge and entered the castle.

  “Follow me,” he told Yann and Anríq after Costico gave his horse to a boy in the courtyard. “I will show you something that will make everything clear.”

  Yann couldn’t stop staring at the opulent halls, vaulted ceilings, and magnificent furnishings crowding the castle’s every room.

  Costico led the two boys up a sweeping staircase to the third floor and then up another long flight of stairs into one of the highest turrets.

  Costico opened a door carved out of gold and ushered the two boys into a massive drawing room leading to an equally large veranda.

  This room must have been on the opposite side of the castle. The view from the veranda didn’t match the countryside through which Yann and Anríq had been traveling these last few days.

  A bottomless gorge plunged away behind the castle. Towering mountains stood over the castle from behind.

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  Costico went out onto the veranda and pointed up at the sky. “Take a look. You’ll see what I mean.”

  Yann and Anríq followed him. As soon as they got there, they saw what he was pointing at.

  The sky looked different here. The vaulted heavenly blue dome dotted with fluffy clouds and flocks of birds that Yann had just been admiring so much—it wasn’t there anymore.

  Instead, Layer upon Layer of Darkness swirled and revolved in a never-ending sea of chaos. It covered the whole sky as far up as the human eye could see.

  Churning vapors of wild magic rumbled from one side to the other and then revolved in a gigantic whirlpool of Darkness and color.

  The funnel plunged toward the earth with Layers collapsing on each other, exploding outward, reforming, and falling in on each other again.

  Yann’s eye followed the whirlwind downward…..and saw at last what the Corsair captain had been trying to tell him all along.

  The point of the funnel—the vortex moving the fastest and wreaking the greatest destruction on both the Coil and everything around it—it came to an apex right on top of the town Anríq had been trying to save.

  “All the Darkness channels through that town,” Costico murmured. “You can’t tell me that just happened by accident. Either those people are communing with the Dark or they are the Dark masquerading as people.”

  “And your daughter?” Yann asked. “You said she vanished into the town.”

  Costico compressed his lips, clamped his eyes shut, and turned his head aside. “I’ll never forget the day it happened. My daughter was riding to another city farther west. She had to pass through that town on her way. She didn’t plan to stop there.”

  “What happened?” Yann asked.

  “Some of my warriors and I escorted her to make sure she was safe. We always went with her. It was our usual habit—not anything out of the ordinary. We were approaching the town when Darklings rose out of the streets behind the walls. We saw men transform before our eyes—and they snatched my daughter straight out of her carriage. They took her into the town….”

  “How do you know she survived and that they’re holding her as a captive?” Yann asked. “How do you know the Darklings didn’t kill her right away?”

  Costico went back inside and stopped in front of a painting hanging on the wall. An elaborate, carved gold frame surrounded an oil painting of a different landscape.

  Costico passed his hand downward in front of the painting and it changed to an image of the town with its entrance gates standing open.

  “My father-in-law gave me this painting when my daughter Amala was born,” Costico husked. “It is enchanted to show her to me wherever she is—no matter where she is. She appeared in this town for two months after the Darklings took her. They kept her in a house in this town…..here.”

  He passed his hand downward in front of the painting again and it started to move. It migrated up the road getting closer to the entrance gate.

  The painting gave the exact view someone would see walking into town on foot.

  The image passed through the gate and down the street between the houses Yann and Anríq just visited.

  Yann’s hair stood on end when the image turned toward the church and then entered the house where Yann and Anríq spent the night.

  “I watched her through this picture every day,” Costico rasped. “The Darklings stayed right there inside the house with her. They tormented her and terrorized her with threats and roars around the clock. They reduced her to a nervous wreck….and then she vanished out of the town.”

  “Are you sure she’s still alive?” Yann asked.

  “The enchantment on the picture will make it turn black the moment she dies.”

  Yann glanced over at Anríq. How would anyone test the picture to see if it actually worked? Costico’s daughter could have died and the picture didn’t show it.

  Anríq read Yann’s mind, stepped close to the picture, and passed his own hand downward in front of it.

  A shimmer of magic radiated from his palm and made the image waver. “No, she is still alive,” Anríq announced.

  “They took her somewhere under the town,” Costico explained. “They’re holding her there along with the other captives.”

  “Did you see that, too?” Yann asked.

  “Yes, I saw the vortex strike that house. The Darklings brought in a dozen other captives while they held my daughter. The Darklings kept all those people packed into one small house. Then the vortex hit it and lifted everyone out of the house.”

  He pointed up at the Layers collapsing over the mountaintops.

  “All those people and Darklings tumbled through the air and then the vortex sucked them all down underneath the town—under that very house. They vanished through a breach in the Island and disappeared into the Layer below.”

  “Have you asked a magic-user to search the Layer below?” Yann asked. “I don’t know anything about your magic, but you obviously have it. Someone could have gone to look for her—and the other captives.”

  Costico turned away again with another pained grimace. “I’ve spent a fortune hiring magic-users to search the whole Coil. None of them can find her anywhere. You two are my last hope. If you can’t find her and bring her back to me, I’ll have to give up and accept the fact that I’ll never get her back.”

  Yann and Anríq exchanged another glance. “I will serve,” Anríq replied.

  “I sure hope so,” Costico croaked. “I don’t know what I’ll do if anything happens to her.”

  End of Chapter 41.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

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