A Quiet Road to Saltwick
The rest of Greywake Moor took the party a day and a half, and for once nothing found them on the road. Saltwick proved to be a small fishing settlement at the fjord mouth: gray timber houses, drying racks, a stone jetty, and eleven boats riding the shallow bay. Its single inn and shop belonged to Marla Tam, who had run it for thirty years and asked fewer questions than the toll clerk in Marrow's Cliff. Saltwick knew nothing of the Kindling Rite or the clifftop violence; the village's great recent scandal was a dispute over a net. Brask listened to the dispute in full and later called it the best hour he had spent in three weeks. The ordinary concerns of the place took some adjustment after everything the party had left behind.
Hesk's Bargain
The party spent most of the next day trying to secure a boat north to Kaldrek, but no captain would sail beyond the Scaries. Three weeks earlier, the fish had begun turning up dead in nets and along Saltwick's shore; two boats that ventured past the black islets never returned, while a third limped home holed through like a door had been torn in its hull. Marla Tam made clear that the Harbor Council's letter could not outweigh local grief. Hesk Dunmer, owner of Saltwick's largest boat, finally offered terms: if the party accompanied him to the Scaries and learned what was destroying the fishing grounds, he would take them to Kaldrek without charge. He knew only that the survivor from the damaged boat had seen something from beneath the water. The party accepted, then gathered rope, a second lantern, replacement cold-weather gear, and Hesk's hard-earned advice about the limits of his boat; Brask also bought a blue fishing float and kept it without a reason he could name.
The Mark on the Shore
Late that afternoon, Faro and Ilsevir walked to Saltwick's north point to study the Scaries from land. Instead they found a quarter-mile line of dead fish along the tide line, joined by three seabirds and the remains of a seal. The seal's skull had not been broken. An iron tag had been driven into the bone behind one eye and wired in place, stamped with the circle crossed by three lines. Faro and Ilsevir carried it back to the jetty in a sack, where Hesk regarded it in silence. Ilsevir said aloud what the finding meant: the Kindling Rite's work had reached waters far south of Hollowpeak, far beyond the roads and mines where its presence had previously been known.
What the Rocks Remembered
That evening, an old fisherman who had worked Saltwick's inner bay for sixty years supplied the last piece of local knowledge. The Scaries had once been called the singing rocks, because in a certain wind they made a low sound that could carry for miles. His grandfather had warned that no one should listen to it for long. Ilsevir wrote the name down and sat with it, seeing its place beside the dead sea life and the Kindling Rite's tag. The party would sail with Hesk at first light to face whatever lay around the islets. Yet Hesk would take only four passengers, and by the end of the night the party had not agreed on who would be left behind.