by R J Murray
“What’s so funny, lass?”
“I don’t know you. Why would I go anywhere with you? For all I know you’re slavers.”
His face darkened at that and she took an involuntary step back, breath catching in her throat and humour vanishing from her eyes to be replaced by fear at what she saw as she looked at him, at the threat that seemed to radiate from him.
Jochum, held up a hand, palm outwards and tried to will himself to calmness.
“Nay, lass. Don’t fear, I mean no harm. Slavers are… a difficult thing for me. I would sooner die than be a slaver. If you believe nothing else of me, you can believe that.”
Somehow, she did, and she nodded slowly. “But still. Why would you want me? I have no skills but pouring ale and as you saw last night, not even that well.”
It was Jochum’s turn to laugh and his shoulders shook as he remembered her poor attempt at pouring his ale.
“True enough, lass. Tis not your ale pouring skills we have need of.”
“What then? I’ll be no man’s whore.”
“Nay, lass! Enough now. My friend, the fat man.”
Mia rubbed her arm where he had grabbed her and inclined her head slowly. She remembered him and not well. While the big man before her radiated confidence and strength, the other had a darker presence that disturbed her.
“Aye, well, he thinks you have a gift.”
“What gift?”
“One of magic…” his voice trailed off as her face drained of colour and she shook her head from side to side with such violence that her hair whipped through the air around her.
“No! No! Take that back! You lie!”
“Lass? What is it?”
“No! I’m no witch and I’ll not burn for your lies!”
With that, she turned and dashed through the trees, leaving a startled Jochum staring after her. He scratched at his chin and let out a long sigh as he realised he could have handled that better than he had.
Chapter 4
Kristdor Stigursson clenched his fists in frustration as the bodies were loaded onto the cart. An entire family were being carefully lifted and placed onto the weathered wooden flatbed and as he watched, more were being brought out.
Eleven people in total. Eleven citizens of the great city of Rial. Eleven subjects of the City Lord. Three generations, men, women and children, all dead and it wasn’t the first such home he had visited since the seven-day had started.
The city watch was doing the best they could to keep people away, but he could hear the murmurings beginning, and could almost feel the tension rising. Two full seven-days of death was too much and if it continued, there would be riots.
“A bad business.”
He glanced over at the priest, a devotee of Itris, the goddess of medicine and healing. The thin man looked grim, mouth drawn down as he wiped his hands with a damp cloth that a young novice passed him.
“What’s your verdict?”
“Same as the others.” His voice was rough and his manner brusque but Kristdor had worked with him for a number of years and respected his skills. “Bodies cold and drained of all life.”
“Do we have a nest of vampires or something darker?”
“There’s been none of the undead in these lands for almost two centuries. Not since the last purges.”
“Some could have come out of the Wilds.”
“You may find some haunting the ruins out there, but I find that unlikely.”
“From beyond them then! From further to the east.”
“Calm yourself, man,” the priest said, eying the watch captain warily. “There’s no evidence such a creature is here and even if there were, it would require a great host of them to need to feed on so many as we have found.”
“Pah!”
Kristdor gripped the hilt of his short sword and looked back to the men still loading the bodies into the cart. The eyes of a child, perhaps three years old, were open and staring back at him from where she lay beside her mother. Condemning him for his inability to find the ones responsible for the killings.
He reached up, smoothing down the greying hair of the goatee he had always been so proud of and he spat on the cobblestoned street.
“The city lords will not be pleased, not at all.”
“Which is why I’m glad that you are the one to report to them and not I,” the priest said as he handed the cloth back to the novice and smoothed down the brown robes of his order.
The priest reached up to touch the simple wooden medallion that hung from a leather thong around his neck. It had an aspen leaf carved into it and as he touched it, a shimmer of golden light ran across its surface.
“I shall pray for answers, old friend.”
“Pray if you must, but for men such as me, I fear there will be little help.”
He didn’t watch the priest leave, taking his novice along with him. There was no need for him to stay as there was no need for his healing magic. The poor souls that had been killed during the night were far beyond his powers.
It always happened at night, Kristdor knew that. Neighbours would be questioned and as with the others, they would confirm the family were alive and well the day before and then, when the neighbours left their homes to head to their places of work, they would notice an opened door or a body lying on the steps where they had fallen and would raise the alarm.
Kristdor approached the door as the last of the bodies was loaded onto the cart. He waited a moment as bedsheets taken from the house were thrown over them and one of the men clambered up to the seat.
The horse trotted away, taking with it the cart and its grisly cargo and the workmen followed after. They would unload at the temple where the bodies would be prepared as their faith required. He waved at one of his officers and they jogged over.
“Sir?”
“Clear the men away and send them back on their patrols then come back to me.”
“You’ll be in the house?”
“Aye.”
He left her staring after him as he stepped inside. She, like most of the men and women in the watch, was superstitious and had no desire to enter the house where so many had died. Kristdor, while not as superstitious, was still reluctant to enter himself but was if nothing else, a man of duty.
It was a two-storey dwelling on the edge of the poor quarter. Not quite part of the slums, but close enough to have the stigma attached. The furnishings were worn, most likely handed down over the years, but well cared for none the less and clean too.
Like many of those houses bordering the slums, the homemakers made it a point to ensure their homes were kept spotless. They might not always have enough coin for meat with their meals, but they would be damned if they couldn’t afford soap.
In the kitchen, clay plates with cheap tin utensils still sat on the table, their contents long gone but left out. That told him much as no homemaker who kept her house so clean would not wash up after a meal was done. Which gave him a rough time they were attacked.
There was no sign of forced entry. The windows remained shuttered and the thin, cloudy glass panes were unbroken. The locks on both front and back door were intact, as were the door frames. The family had opened the door to their assailant.
The fireplace in the living room was cold, the ashes still with a small pile of logs and tinder sitting beside it, untouched. While the days were warming as spring turned to summer, the nights were still chill. A fire unburnt then was another sign that they had been attacked early in the evening.
Kristdor continued on, climbing the narrow stairs to the second floor. There, in the bedrooms he found the beds to be made and the curtains undrawn. All of which confirmed his suspicions and it was with a thoughtful expression that he descended the stairs.
“Sir.”
Constable Asa Jespersdottir saluted smartly with one clenched fist to her polished breastplate and he waved a hand in acknowledgement.
A young woman, with corn blonde hair poking out from beneath her leather helmet, sh
e was competent and had been marked out as suitable for advancement when the opportunity arose. Unlike some of those in the city, Kristdor was one who recognised ability rather than lineage.
“Like the others, constable.”
She swallowed hard and closed her eyes tight a moment before whispering a silent prayer. Kristdor waited patiently for her to finish and then gestured for her to follow him.
He led the way along the city streets, walking comfortably on the worn cobbles that lined the road. Whereas in other parts of the city he would be greeted with polite nods from the populace, there so close to the slums, his presence was a reminder of times when the watch had to come down hard on them.
Normally, children would be playing underfoot as their parents worked, sixth-day being a day when they were released from their schooling. But with the string of grisly deaths, they were being kept close and rightly so.
Whispers were spreading through the city of a demon haunting the night. Though none had seen such a beast, it was hard to quell such rumours and in truth, he couldn’t say it wasn’t such a creature. For all he knew it was a magical beast that had been let loose by some mad mage or a leftover from the Age of Ascendants.
Whatever it was, it was the job of Kristdor to find it, stop it and if necessary, kill it. How he was going to do that, he wasn’t entirely sure.
The city of Rial rested atop a small range of hills that eventually met the Windshield mountain range in the east that ran roughly north to south for several hundred miles. It was a city that had ample farmland and lush forests for miles around.
Far to the north was the closest of the Tilessian citadels that bordered the Wild, just outside of Rial’s natural borders. Like many of the northern city-states, Rial traded well with the Tilessians, knowing that they were the first line of defence against the Wild.
East and south were rival city-states and beyond them, the kingdoms that made up the bulk of the northlands. Rial then, was a city far enough from any true enemies to be able to prosper and it had done so over the past seventy years.
As the craftsmen’s district had grown, so too had the merchant’s quarter and the vast market at its centre. The guilds had prospered, and a mage’s college had formed close to the temple district. But, as with all such things, the growth had brought other problems too.
The population had grown as people came, looking for work and when they didn’t find any or at least any that paid well, sections of the city had filled with people who could pay little and over time, the slums had formed.
A sprawling mass of tenements and hovels with a maze of rubbish strewn streets linking them. They were home to criminals and the people they preyed upon. It was a large part of the watch’s job to contain those thieves and other sundry unwanted folk.
Bordering the slums were the homes of the common folk, still poor, but with coin enough to rent lodgings outside of the slums, albeit not that far outside. It was in this area that the monster was preying upon families. In the south-western corner of the city, between the south and west gates and bordered by the temples and crafts districts.
Which was where Kristdor was stationed. His watch-house, one of the largest in the city and in the eyes of many, the most important for it kept the rabble away from the rest of the populace. With almost a hundred watchmen for the seven thousand or so people contained in the slums, it was a daunting task.
There was pressure from both the city lords and the small businesses that eked out a profit in the slums and surrounding areas. Not to mention, the fear and anger of a people who were seeing their own kind being killed.
They wanted answers and more than that, they wanted an end to the killings and for peace to return.
“Where are we going, sir?”
Kristdor looked back at his constable, noting the sword and baton on her hip and the shackles hanging from her belt. He doubted they would be of much use for what they faced.
“Mage’s college,” he said gruffly.
She nodded slowly, though her eyes widened, and she swallowed hard. Like many in the city, she had a natural aversion to magic. Too close to the wilds and the lingering effects of the wars of ascension.
They left the slums and walked through the cleaner streets of the temple district. All around them, great edifices of stone and glass rose up, adorned with statues and sigils of the gods they represented.
Novices filled the streets, running here and there, overburdened with produce from the market or stacks of books and scrolls. Older members of the priesthood meandered through the streets, talking quietly and often arguing good-naturedly about one thing or another.
There was no real enmity between the various religious orders in the city as the pantheon had been quiet for several centuries. The various celestial beings licking their wounds as they quietly tended the faithful and counted themselves lucky not to have met the same fate as Kembris and Egyn, the malevolent twins that were no more.
Kristdor wandered past their temple often and could never quite suppress the shiver that ran down his spine. Their grounds overgrown with weeds and their great doors hanging open, there was a cool darkness within them that no light could chase away.
But that day, he took another route, moving swiftly through the district to the college of magic just beyond.
It was a building that sprawled across several streets, its walls of stone had been added upon over the years and it showed with mismatched styles of construction and materials. There were no windows and only a single entrance.
Few lingered in the streets outside and fewer still dared venture within. Rial, unlike other cities, had yet to embrace Ethereum and so the mage’s earned their keep by selling their services to the various people of the city.
Love spells for the young and foolish who believed in such things, charms to ward off ill spirits, spells to cleanse the halls of rats and other vermin, amongst other things. If you had coin, they would cast their spells and do so with glee.
Kristdor stopped outside the wooden doors and raised his fist, ready to bang it against the wood. He merely shook his head as they swung open revealing a young man with stooped shoulders and weak eyes.
“Watch Captain, Kristdor,” the young wizard said by way of greeting. “Master Vala is awaiting you.”
“Captain?”
He glanced back at the young constable and read the fear she wore openly. He held back a sigh of exasperation and gestured curtly for her to wait. Her presence was not required with the wizards after all.
“Lead on,” he told the young wizard brusquely.
As he stepped through the doors they closed behind him silently and he glanced suspiciously at the dim light emanating from the globes set in sconces high in the wall. While he wasn’t quite as distrustful of the magic users as others, he still couldn’t quite feel comfortable around such blatant usage of their power.
He followed the young wizard silently, his boots squeaking on the polished tile floor of the entrance hall. They passed several doors and he looked in through each of them, disappointed to see nothing more exciting than young men and women sat at desks reading or listening to lectures.
A thunderous roar echoed along the hall and the walls vibrated. Kristdor gripped the hilt of his short sword, ready to draw it in an instant. The young wizard smiled condescendingly at him as he saw that.
“Master Enok is demonstrating some battle magic this morning. You have nothing to fear.”
“Take me to your master,” Kristdor snapped back and the young wizards smile widened.
“As you command, Watch Captain.”
He led the way down one long, empty hall and into another before coming to a stop outside an iron-bound door of thick oak. He gestured with one hand and the door swung open, then simply stared at Kristdor with that smug smile still in place.
“My thanks.”
There was no response from the young wizard, so Kristdor just walked into the room, not at all surprised when the door closed behind him.
&nb
sp; Inside, it was cool and richly appointed, with the little wall space not covered by cabinets or shelves, instead filled with the charts and drawings that hung from them. Scrolls and books lay everywhere, some open, many not.
On the wide mahogany desk in the centre of the room, a stack of books as tall as his arm was long rose up and beside it, assorted items that he assumed were magical in nature. Paper filled the rest of the desk, covered in drawings or symbols and strange creatures or full of endless lines of words in a language he didn’t understand.
“Kristdor.”
The voice was warm and welcoming and the faintest of smiles tugged at his lips as he turned and bowed to the tall woman who had entered behind him.
“Vala. As always, it is a true pleasure to see you.”
She pulled back the hood of her velvet robes, revealing a round face that was as full of warmth as her voice. Large brown eyes sparkled with genuine humour and she pursed full lips as she leant forward and kissed him delicately on the cheek.
“How is mother?”
“As well as she ever is. She misses you dearly and wonders quite often and quite loudly about whether you will ever leave these ‘dusty halls’ and visit her.”
The wizard flashed a grin and shook her head, auburn hair falling loosely around her face as she did so. She crossed the room and took a seat behind the wide desk, waving her brother towards another.
“I’ll visit her when she ceases her attempts to block every request by the college to begin work on an ether-tower.”
“She’s set in her ways, as are all of the city lords. You know that.”
“Oil lamps were good enough for our fathers, they’re good enough for us!” she mimicked with a shriek of laughter. “The world moves on, but you wouldn’t know that here.”
“The scars…”
“Haven’t faded,” she finished for him. “I know! I’ve heard that a dozen times a day since I entered these halls.”
He leant back in the chair, a smile playing on his lips as he gazed at his sister. She’d changed little over the years and while they had taken different paths, they had still somehow managed to remain close.