The Watchtower

subtle, but he was looking at it from exactly the right angle now. It seemed the bricks might have been placed there more recently than the others, or by a different set of hands. Curiosity flooded him, but he couldn’t explore the anomaly with Marguerite a few feet away. The bricks could not likely be removed easily, let alone silently.
    The abbey’s bell rang the half hour, Marguerite stirred, and Will cast aside any absurd second thoughts that he wasn’t immediately rushing off to see Dee without the required objects. Awakening suddenly, Marguerite began to struggle up into a sitting position, and Will took her in his arms and kissed her passionately. Soon enough they had dressed and were on their way out to sup at Goat & Boar. Will cast a glance at the errant bricks as they left the room, and something stirred deep within him, something with wings that were akin to hope.
    *   *   *
    Sometime in the middle of the night, Will was awoken by a thunderclap so loud it was as if he had been sleeping on a nearby cloud. A reddish orange cloud, he imagined, from the strange light that filled the room. He sat straight up in bed, and before he knew his own name observed that Marguerite was not in their bed, nor in the room. He was lacerated by panic for several long seconds, even as he fumbled about for clothes to go outside in, before he had the thought that she could simply be taking a walk. She loved to walk and had slept a lot more yesterday than he had, hence might have arisen because she was unable to sleep.
    Will went to the window and saw immediately the source of the strange light: the full moon had a bloodred cast to it. Despite some nearby thunderclouds, it bathed the town in ruby light. Perhaps this was why Marguerite had gone out—to observe the effects of the crimson moonlight on the abbey and the lake. But as he looked about anxiously, he saw no sign of her or anyone else in the street. As he turned back to the room, planning to leave and search for her, he caught another glimpse of the irregular bricks he’d noticed the night before.
    He approached them with that same tingling hopefulness, almost breathlessness, he’d felt the previous evening. Will sat on the side of the bed and with gentle fingertips established that four of the bricks were loose. Tenderly, brushing off dust as it fell on his hands, he removed the bricks and placed them on the bed. Then he extended his right hand into a dark opening and, feeling around in a space that seemed to have no rear boundary, brought out the ring and the shallow silver box that Dee had referred to, neither of them with any covering or wrapping over them, and laid them on the bed. Nothing else seemed to be in the opening. He gazed with sentimental fondness at the gold-and-black ring. For the first time he noticed a pattern carved into the stone—a tower with an eye above it. The eye made him feel doubly like a thief as he slipped the ring into his pants pocket. He felt so guilty that he took off his own ring, the silver signet ring with his family crest of a swan rising, and put it in the compartment as a token of his commitment to return.
    Will glanced next at the box: it was the one Dee had described, and it also had a fine oval pattern of lines etched into the cover that seemed to be moving now, rippling as if it were the image of the ocean in a tidal surge. As if calling him to the ocean.
    As if calling him to Pointe du Raz.
    Will blinked at the dizzying motion of the lines and turned away. He tried to collect himself. He might have stuffed the ring in his pocket, and he might be intrigued by the box, but he’d made no decision to go to Pointe du Raz. None! Especially after the coach to Paimpont horror. Going would also mean leaving Marguerite, for he could hardly ask her to cooperate in his quest for immortality after they’d had such conflict over it. That Dee had been able to track his whereabouts to Paimpont was almost certainly due to reports from miseries such as Lightning Hands and Russwurin, or worse, and that hardly recommended Dee as a person he wanted to put his fate in the hands of. Theft was theft, and to leave with these items, even if he’d somewhat replaced one of them, was theft from his beloved.
    A flash suddenly erupted from the box as if some incendiary material inside it had exploded. The lid flew open and silver flames erupted upward, nearly reaching the ceiling. Will could smell something like gunpowder in the air, with a