The Mosque Hill Fortune (The Sons of Masguard, Book One)

Chapter One

Along the Bannered Shore

(Twenty-Five Years Later)

It was the salt.

The fishing from this stretch of beach was poor, at best. The low tide and lack of competition were pleasant enough, but those too could be found elsewhere. No, there was a reason the two hunters returned to this particular cove night after night to set their traps, and that reason was far from practical. Tattooed and fierce. Hardened, these two. Never daring to openly acknowledge the childish reminder of a home they'd been forced to leave too soon, when they were young and careless and didn't know any better. Saying it aloud would have been as silly as refusing to discard a blanket after waking. But here, in this unique joining of grassland and ocean deposits, the aroma played at a memory that left them feeling all of those things; an aroma unlike that of any place they had ever been – save one. Though they went about their work in silence, they both knew it was the intensity of the smell that brought them here. The smell of balsam... and salt.

By evening, the shore was lined with handcrafted crates of wood and cord. Most were empty, but they were used to that. When the smaller hunter hauled at the final towline and found resistance, her shoulders slumped in dismay. Grand as it may have been to assume the trap was overburdened with something marketable, she shuddered at the more likely scenario that one of the dolphin Regulators had gone snooping and gotten snagged for his efforts.

Imagine explaining that one to Her Majesty. 'Pardon me, milady, but I'm afraid I've drowned one of your officers with twine. Quite by accident, of course. So sorry.'

For shame.

Maybe Fate had been kind and simply placed the trap on the edge of a riptide. That would explain the pull, and it would do so without the gruesome side effects.

She might have known better.

Fate was never kind.

"Something is wrong?" The other noted and came to her side.

"I can't be sure." She evaded, feeling the lie as acutely as she would a pinprick. Something was wrong. She could sense it in her very bones.

Recognizing he shouldn't press the issue, the larger joined her in heaving against the line with the full of his weight. When the crate emerged from the surf, it seemed more the will of the sea than a result of their efforts.

The trap was occupied, but not by any dolphin. It was a stone. Far too large to have entered the trap by conventional means, it glowed with an alluring light, as though it had devoured the dusk and now spat its remnants upon the shore. Waters that should have washed over the caged artifact instead held back, diverting their flow around the crate in an unnatural and tentative surge.

The hunters exchanged stony glances.

This thing – whatever it was – did not belong on their beach.

As if to confirm their suspicions, the stone began to pulse. A quiet, rhythmic sound that the sea rose up to match. Unafraid, the delicate hunter nodded to her weathered companion and the two approached, watching the light from the object grow ever more intense until its heat was almost unbearable, but familiar in the strangest of ways.

Like salt.

Discarding any trace of sentiment, the large one drew a utility axe from the sheath on his leg and hacked through slat and twine until the stone fell to the shore with a wet thud.

It rolled once and stopped at their feet.

The two gazed upon the carvings of ocean, wind, fire, and air that made up a single face and an all-too clear expression of fury. Then the light of Fate exploded around them, completely consuming their corner of the shoreline, there in the fruitless cove.