It was as good an idea as any. He chose a courting song Buffalo Singer had taught him, a song his uncle had learned from his father, who had learned it from his father before him. Like most of the songs his uncle had taught him, it had no words but plenty of meaning. It had been composed by Charles’s great-grandfather as he sought to win the hand of the shy woman who became the mother of his children. It was a song rooted in love, carrying the weight of the generations of people who had sung it.

Charles had not sung this song since his uncle had died in his arms, raving with fever.

The rich notes filled him from his chest and up through his sinuses in a way most music did not, bringing with it the memory of men singing in the dark in the world of his childhood. As with Anna’s music, the amphitheater gave depth and power to his voice—and so, in a way he did not pause to examine, did his memories.

Charles was forced to stop walking because he couldn’t keep moving and allow Brother Wolf to sing at the same time—and the song was doing something.

He closed his eyes to better sense the flows and currents of magic that were mixing, driven by his music and Anna’s trapped song. But he kept getting caught up in the voice of the tragic and broken land—he knew now why Brother Wolf thought this place had been used as a blood altar. It had that feel, layers upon layers of death.

He wasn’t sure whether the land’s twisted spirit was caught up in this or if it was something else. The not-scent he’d noticed earlier, the one that reminded him of how Leah had smelled when he’d first met her, was noticeably stronger than it had been before Anna had started singing. But he knew unraveling the magic in play was beyond his abilities right now. He’d have to go about it another way.

Brother Wolf joined in. As he did so, Charles was certain the tide of magic was about to change.

But when it stopped, it all stopped. There was no gradual defeat, no unraveling, no sense of victory. Just a sudden withdrawal of everything opposing Charles’s attempt to defeat it. The air became clear and easy to breathe, the strange scent entirely gone.

Even the darkness that emanated from the land died away until he was tempted to believe he’d imagined it. Shadow-ladened land could be healed, but only by a great shaman over a period of months or years. It didn’t just disappear.