Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
World Map
Part One Chapter One - Cara
Chapter Two - Sandu
Chapter Three - Cara
Chapter Four - Cara
Chapter Five - Jagger
Chapter Six - Gwen
Chapter Seven - Gwen
Chapter Eight - Seanna
Chapter Nine - Seanna
Chapter Ten - Gwen
Chapter Eleven - Sandu
Chapter Twelve - Sandu
Chapter Thirteen - Cara
Chapter Fourteen - Sandu
Chapter Fifteen - Jagger
Chapter Sixteen - Seanna
Chapter Seventeen - Gwen
Chapter Eighteen - Seanna
Chapter Nineteen - Gwen
Chapter Twenty - Jagger
Chapter Twenty-One - Sandu
Chapter Twenty-Two - Gwen
Chapter Twenty-Three - Gwen
Chapter Twenty-Four - Cara
Chapter Twenty-Five - Seanna
Chapter Twenty-Six - Gwen
Chapter Twenty-Seven - Cara
Chapter Twenty-Eight - Jagger
Chapter Twenty-Nine - Sandu
Part Two Chapter Thirty - Seanna
Chapter Thirty-One - Gwen
Chapter Thirty-Two - Seanna
Chapter Thirty-Three - Cara
Chapter Thirty-Four - Sandu
Chapter Thirty-Five - Seanna
Chapter Thirty-Six - Sandu
Chapter Thirty-Seven - Seanna
Chapter Thirty-Eight - Cara
Chapter Thirty-Nine - Gwen
Chapter Forty - Sandu
Chapter Forty-One - Seanna
Chapter Forty-Two - Cara
Chapter Forty-Three - Gwen
Chapter Forty-Four - Cara
Chapter Forty-Five - Gwen
Chapter Forty-Six - Seanna
Chapter Forty-Seven - Sandu
Chapter Forty-Eight - Gwen
Chapter Forty-Nine - Cara
Chapter Fifty - Alex
Epilogue
Coming Soon
Glossary
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright © 2020 Vista McDowall
Cover art Copyright © 2020 Craig McDowall
Published by Anvil Graphics LLC
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Place of publication: Crestone, CO, U.S.A.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020906923
ISBN: 0-9795113-5-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-9795113-5-6
For Dad, who always told me I'd be a better writer than an actress.
You were right.
Part One
Chapter One
Cara
ULTON THE COOK lay dead on the table. No scars nor wounds traced his pale corpse, yet the unmistakable air of murder clenched to him.
Around him, the manor home lay silent and still. On a normal night, Ulton would be cleaning his kitchens with the help of a scullery maid while the steward readied the stock lists for the following day. As the lady of the house prepared for bed, the watchman and his apprentice would check the manor's perimeter walls.
But this night, the lady of the house had vanished into the void, and Ulton lay dead on the large oak table in the great hall, seeming peacefully asleep. Havershim the steward, Merick the watchman, and Cara his apprentice stared at the corpse. Merick grunted and leaned back, his hand held tightly to a rag on his stomach. Blood soaked through it, stinking strangely of decay.
"I'll get you another one," Cara mumbled. She staggered to her feet and left the room to pull an armful of blankets from the chest at the end of the hall. For just a moment, she leaned her forehead against the wall and dragged in a long breath. Her lungs still felt full of that overwhelming stench...
Merick pulled at the chain around the gate, satisfied. In the darkness beyond, Cara could see the silhouettes of trees and shrubs lining the road to the village. She followed her master along the wall, somewhat bored with the routine. As she breathed deeply of the warm late-summer air, Cara gagged. She took another breath, and found not sweet pine in her nose, but old eggs and feces mixed with a sickly sweet odor.
The ground shook, throwing Cara and Merick off their feet. As they struggled up, a purplish hue spread out from the manor house, struck through with veins of deepest black. A low whine buzzed in their ears, and the stench crept into their mouths and throats, choking them.
Cara shook her head to dispel the memory. She swallowed and found that her throat opened up again. She wouldn't focus on those thoughts, wouldn't awaken the monster inside her that rose at such pain. Build the walls, she reminded herself. Keep the beast below. Back in the great hall, she saw that Merick had lain down on the bench, one eye cracked open.
Merick took a blanket and pressed it to his stomach. He asked, "Is the girl back yet?"
"No," Cara said. "It shouldn't be long now." The scullery maid, upon seeing Merick's injury, had bravely resisted fainting and went to fetch the local healer.
They sat in silence, each trying to understand the night's occurrences. The Nellestere Manor, which ran the fief in and around the village of Kell, had always been peaceful and quiet. Markets occupied the town square once a quinn in summer and once a deshe in winter – every five and ten days, respectively – and the manor's lord held harvest and spring festivals on the estate each year. Mountains surrounded the large valley, summers brought ample sunshine for crops, spring rains were cool and plentiful, and bountiful harvests came each autumn.
Nothing strange nor unexplained had ever happened in the Nellestere fief.
Cara ran through the dim light toward the house, her breath ragged. Each step fought against the power of an ocean wave, the purple light trying to pull her feet out from under her. Normal evening sounds were lost in a cloud of otherworldly silence. A journey that should only have taken a few minutes seemed to last twice as long as Cara and Merick swam through the darkness.
Cara rolled her shoulders. Her limbs ached from the effort of that journey, her legs trembling under the table. Deep within the dark places of her belly, the beast stirred. She clenched a fist over it, urging it to stay down. Not tonight, she prayed. I can't deal with you tonight.
"What's going on?"
The three survivors jerked their heads up. The new stablehand, Sandu, stood at the door. He cautiously stepped forward, looking between them and the corpse on the table. His clothes smelled of horse and dirt speckled his face. "Good gods, what happened here?"
"Maid Nellestere is gone," Havershim gritted out. "Someone took her."
"Some magical bastard," said Merick. "Ulton were the only one in the room when it happened. He were already dead when we ran in. We saw...there were a..." Words weren't enough, so he stopped trying.
A void, blacker than black, as tall as a stained glass window and twice as wide, hung in the air of the great hall, the purplish light emanating from it. Black tentacles burst from the void, and, between them stood a hooded figure in dark robes, a shining light emanating from his hand. Cara froze on the threshold, transfixed. Her friend and lady, Renna Nellestere, stood tall in the center of the room, her long blonde hair rising around her in a crackling halo. Ulton was dead on the floor in front of her. The hooded man held out his free hand, and, as if in a trance, Renna stepped forward.
Merick shouted and ran at the figure, drawing his sword. With barely a glance at
Merick, the stranger waved his hand. A black tentacle lashed out, striking Merick's torso and sending him sprawling across the floor toward Cara. She knelt beside him, and when she looked back up, the man and Renna had vanished into the void.
A lump formed in Cara's throat. She swallowed past it and blinked away tears. She had failed her lady, her only friend. Who knew what dark rituals the hooded man had in store for poor Renna?
"Gods." Sandu sank onto the bench. "Ulton doesn't even look hurt. Like he could be sleeping."
"Black magic," Merick said darkly. "No other explanation for it."
The scullery maid appeared just outside the great hall. An older woman with flyaway hair pushed her way past the maid, carrying a large bag that smelled of herbs and spices and clinked as she walked. The woman paused, taking in the scene, then hurried into the room.
Havershim sent the maid away. "Go home and try to get some sleep, there's a good girl. I'll send for you in the morning. But not a word to anyone else, understand? Not until we know what's going on."
The scullery maid hurried away. Cara made room on the bench for the healer and asked, "Is he badly hurt?"
The healer, Madame Freebane, peeled off the blanket and lifted Merick's shirt. Tutting to herself, she rummaged through her leather bag. "He'll live, I should think. Needs rest, though, for a few days at least. And a poultice changed every few candles. The cut isn't deep enough to require stitching, but the edges–"
"Just the poultice," Merick grunted. "And some o' your special potion as makes the pain go away."
"I haven't any sweet-milk on hand," Freebane said. "But the poultice will help. So Ulton's really dead. I hadn't quite believed poor Ella. Where's Maid Nellestere?"
"We don't know," Cara said. "There's been dark magic here tonight."
"Clearly. See the edges of Merick's wound? They're black and hard. This isn't the work of a blade or bludgeon. Were you struck by the magic?" Freebane asked. Merick nodded.
"Mm. Then we must pray the poultice is effective against such things." Madame Freebane quickly packed the cut, then wrapped a bandage around Merick's torso. Cara merely watched, tiredness settling on her. Part of her wished she had been the one to rush forward, to take the magical blow...maybe then she wouldn't have been so useless.
For almost as long as she could remember, Cara had been apprenticed under Merick. He was an ex-mercenary, and though he balked at teaching a girl how to fight, he agreed after seeing the sack of gold her mother offered him. Cara, only five years old at the time, cried and clung to her mother at the sight of Merick's cragged cheeks, partly-missing nose, and roped scars. He had leaned over her, breath smelling of beer, and tousled her hair. She remembered his callused hands being incongruously gentle. That first night, he told a story in his gruff voice of a warrior who rescued a child from a witch. It became her favorite, and she begged him to tell it for many years. But as she grew older, stories turned into explanations of battles and fighting, small lectures on survival or teamwork. Lessons turned into practical applications of sword and shield, then into daily sparring. When he was hired as the watchman of the Nellestere house, he brought Cara with him and assigned her to protect the lord's daughter, Renna. By that time, she no longer thought of his scars as frightening: they told their own story.
He had also taught her to be brave, in those dark moments when the beast overcame her and she couldn't control the rage and fear that welled up with it. He lent her his courage. Cara vowed that her fits, as she called them, wouldn't interfere with her duty to Renna.
But Cara hadn't stopped Renna's kidnapping. She hadn't leapt forward as Merick had. All those years of sparring, training, and patrolling, yet when Renna needed her most, she did nothing.
"We have to tell Earl Stonetree," Havershim said. Madame Freebone closed her bag, but did not leave.
"And who'll go?" Merick asked. "You?"
"Well," Havershim blustered, "I'm not sure travel would be good for me. Bad humors, and all that. You and Cara should go."
"Merick's not fit for the road," Freebane said.
"Then just Cara," Havershim said. "She's got her sword, hasn't she? And she's young enough, the trip won't be hardly a bother."
"No chance in the nine hells am I send'n Cara off on her own," Merick grunted.
"I'm perfectly capable–" Cara started, but Sandu interrupted her.
"Earl Stonetree won't be at his keep," Sandu said.
"Why not?" Havershim asked.
"Because of the Masque. All the earls and nobles will be in Riverfen by now for the month of parties before the festival."
"Mott is on the way," Cara said, latching onto the idea. "If anyone would know anything about magic and sorcery, it would be the scholars there. They might be able to tell us who could possess such powers."
"'We'? Who's this 'we'?" Havershim protested. "Merick and I should stay here, and Sandu knows nothing about Renna – no offense meant, lad, but you see–"
"I know the roads to Riverfen and Mott," Sandu interjected. "I used to peddle goods all along these mountains. Merick doesn't want Cara to go alone, so I'll go with her."
"Why would you bother? You're not a proper member of this household," Havershim said.
"I'm not send'n Cara off alone, nor with a stablehand," Merick said. "If'n she leaves this house, I'm goin' with her."
"Not with an injury like that!" Madame Freebane said.
"Try and bloody well stop me, woman!"
"I still think that Stonetree is the best place–"
"What good would that do if'n the earl ain't even there?"
Havershim, Merick, and Madame Freebane yelled over each other.
"Well, the earl may not have left yet! And it's our duty to report to him the goings-on of this household."
"And what if'n Maid Nellestere is killed afore we can get to her? Would the duty of tell'n the earl have helped her at all?"
"You can't help anyone if you die on the road, Merick!"
The table quieted for a moment, the air hanging with seething anger. The three glared at each other, and Cara caught Sandu's eye. He quirked a brow, a silent question. Before any of them could start shouting again, before she could second-guess herself, Cara said, "Renna is my mistress, and I vowed to protect her. I'm going to Mott, and then on to Riverfen. Sandu knows the roads; I don't. He'll come with me, and we'll bring Renna's horse in case we find her. Havershim should send a messenger with a letter to Stonetree in case the earl hasn't left yet, and then wait here: tell the staff what they need to know, arrange a burial for Ulton, and keep the house running until we return." For a second, everyone was speechless, taken aback by her confidence. A confidence Cara felt was plainly false. Freebane sank slowly into her seat as Havershim and Merick awkwardly looked away from each other. In that moment, Cara could plainly see their fatigue.
"And what about me?" Merick asked.
Not meeting Freebane's eye, Cara said, "I can't force you to do anything you don't want to do. If you feel well enough, I think you should come with me. If not–"
"I'm well enough."
"Hmph," Madame Freebane snorted. "And what if that wound doesn't close properly?"
"Then I'll find another healer. You're not the only one in the damn country."
"We can take some of your salves and potions," Cara said quickly as Freebane's nostrils flared. "You've shown me well enough how to pack and bandage a wound."
Madame Freebane sniffed, but nodded. She pulled out more bandages, two vials, and a handful of moss. Giving the lot to Cara, she said, "Use the moss to pack in the salve, which is the blue ointment. There should be enough bandages to last two or three changes, but you'll have to buy more after that. The green liquid is a few mouthfuls of jirriloe. A few drops at a time can be a powerful sedative, but too much will kill."
"Thank you." Cara laid the bandages and moss on the table, then placed the vials in the pouch she kept on her belt. She looked to the rest of the group. "We'll leave in the morning. Sandu, can you prepare our ho
rses and Renna's gelding for the trip? Merick, you should rest tonight. I'll make sure we have rations and full water bladders."
To Cara's surprise, none of the others argued. They all looked vecking tired. After covering Ulton's body with a blanket, Havershim went upstairs, his steps dragging. Madame Freebane wished them good luck before departing. Merick clapped a hand to Cara's shoulder, and asked in a low voice, "Are you sure you've got the humors for this, Cari?" He didn't need to ask aloud, but Cara knew he referred to her fits, those times when the beast rose from its hiding place. If I had the time, I could conquer them...but I don't. Renna doesn't. Cara nodded to Merick, and he squeezed her affectionately, then left. Cara listened as he went up the stairs, the sounds pausing every other step. He hurts, she thought, wishing she could do more.
Soon, only Cara and Sandu remained in the great hall with poor Ulton.
"Why do you want to go to Riverfen?" Cara asked. "It can't just be for Renna's sake."
Sandu shrugged. "Assuming we don't find your mistress, then I'll be needing a new job. Riverfen's the place for that now, what with the Masque and all. If we do somehow get lucky and find her, then I've had a bit of an adventure."
"That's not how most people would see it."
"I get bored easily."
Cara gave him a funny look. "Aren't you afraid of the man who took Renna? He killed Ulton."
"Not really. I'm a coward – if there's any fighting, I'll just run away 'til it's over." Sandu stood up, stretched, and said, "I better go now. Goodnight. I'll see you bright and early."
Cara watched him leave. She had often dreamt of grand adventures and shining knights. When she and Renna were little, Renna would play the damsel while Cara pretended to be a brave knight come to her rescue. But their games had never included the stink of death or the cold body left over after the fight.
If all went as planned, their travels would take them to Mott, the ancient city of scholars with its enormous libraries where countless secrets lay hidden in stacks and tomes. And then they would go to Riverfen, the city of lights, where every night thousands of lanterns of all colors were lit and strung over the streets and canals. Like the land of the faeries, Cara's mother had said when Cara was very young. A land where magic is real and good always wins in the end.
The Lantern-Lit City Page 1