Shadow of a Dead God: A Mennik Thorn Novel

by Patrick Samphire

  This wasn’t really about Sunstone. Of course it wasn’t. This was about the bastard who had framed me and Benny and tried to kill us. But I had no idea who that person was, and I couldn’t get my hands on them. Sunstone had screwed me over at the wrong time.

  I reached for the ram’s head doorknocker and slammed it against the door.

  A few moments later, the door swung open and the Estimable Sunstone glared up at me.

  “What the Depths do you want?”

  Maybe I should just punch him. I gripped my hand tight on my mage’s rod.

  “You fired me,” I said. “I get it. All right, I get it. Maybe I would have fired me, too.” If I were an ignorant, arrogant fucker. “But you want the truth? You have ghosts. Real ghosts. That’s a problem. You can’t ignore them. They’ll get inside your mind, inside your dreams. They’ll corrupt the way you think and feel. They could even drive someone in your family insane.” He didn’t look impressed, so I added, “Maybe not you. Maybe your wife or your children.” Did he have children? I hadn’t seen any, but then I would have kept them away from me, too. I thought maybe Galena Sunstone had mentioned kids. Whatever. Go for it. “Do you really want your children growing up with that kind of shadow on the back of their minds? It’ll twist them. You don’t have any choice. You have to deal with the ghosts. Pay me what you owe me, and I will get rid of those ghosts for you.”

  Maybe I should have flattered him or grovelled, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t in me. Benny was right. I did have problems with the rich and powerful of the city.

  He stared at me like I was a dead seagull in his breakfast. Then a smirk spread across his face. “Oh, you have convinced me with your arguments, Mr. Thorn. I am won over.”

  I paused. Convinced? I had intended to threaten him, maybe throw magic around for show. The Estimable Sunstone didn’t strike me as a man who listened to arguments.

  “You are?” I said, cautiously.

  His smirk widened further. “Quite. And that is why we have employed someone to do exactly that.”

  I blinked. Someone? That didn’t make sense. I was the only mage for hire in Agatos. Yeah, sometimes you could make a deal with a high mage or one of the merchants with a mage on staff to borrow their services, but those services were jealously guarded. It would put him in their debt. They might even demand a share of his business in exchange. Would he really do that just to spite me?

  Of course he would, the arrogant prick.

  He reached a finger up and tapped the corner of his mouth thoughtfully.

  “I’ll tell you what, Mr. Thorn. Why don’t you come in? You can see exactly what you should have done four nights ago. Maybe you’ll learn something.”

  The only thing I really wanted to learn was what he would look like if I punched him in the face. But I had too much invested in this. I wasn’t leaving without my money.

  Sunstone swung the door fully open, spilling bright light from a dozen lamps onto the paved plaza.

  Slowly, not sure what to expect, I followed him to the kitchen.

  Galena Sunstone was there, and she wasn’t alone. A couple of maids stood in attendance, holding wine and pastries — no one had ever offered me wine and pastries — and standing before them, belly jutting like a belligerent whale, was a heavily-robed priest.

  “Oh, for Pity’s sake,” I said under my breath. I was tired, bruised, hungry, and my nose hurt. Now this.

  There were more priests in Agatos than fleas on an old dog. Priests of the dead gods, priests of the living gods, priests of the no one’s-quite-sure-whether-they’re-living-or-dead gods. It didn’t make much difference. Gods didn’t answer prayers, dead or alive. I had figured that out a long time ago.

  The priest in front of me wore a large medallion showing a broken eye, which marked him out as a priest of Gwillan-Whose-Light-Falls-on-the-Few-Not-the-Many. Gwillan was a god of commerce and wealth, which I supposed was why the Estimable Sunstone had gone to his priesthood for help. Gwillan was one of the living gods, for all the good it would do. No amount of praying, jangling bells, or waving religious symbols around was going to disrupt the ghosts’ essences, unless the priest was carrying some item invested by his god, and with my magical vision, I could see that he wasn’t.

  “What’s he doing here?” the priest demanded as I followed Sunstone in.

  The Estimable Sunstone smirked again. “Seeing how it should be done.”

  I snorted. What a fucking joke. They were throwing away money on a monkey circus. I would have done the real job for a fraction of the cost. When this guy failed, I was going to put up my prices.

  The priest shot me a look of pure venom, but he knew who was paying him. “He had better not get in the way. This won’t work if he interferes.”

  Like it was going to work anyway. “I didn’t realise that Gwillan had performance anxiety,” I said.

  The priest looked like he wanted to spit acid, but he glanced at the watching Sunstones and instead forced a smile. “Gwillan will be merciful.”

  “That’s big of him.”

  “Enough!” the Estimable Sunstone snapped. “Let’s get this over with.”

  I bowed ironically to the priest, retreated to where the remains of the dinner had been piled, and helped myself to a chunk of bread. I took a bite, chewed it, and closed my eyes. Gods, I had needed that.

  I opened my eyes again and waved a gracious hand to the priest. “Off you go, then.”

  Maybe I shouldn’t have been trying to wind him up, but right now I couldn’t cope with the idea that I had been fired in favour of this fraud.

  The priest shot me another death glare, then smoothed down his robes. I noticed crumbs still scattered across the cloth. Why had I never been invited to dinner before I started work? I hoped the priest would fail horribly. I would love the chance to rub it in his face.

  He waved the maids and Galena Sunstone back and placed candles in a circle. I knew for a fact that candles had no effect one way or another on ghosts. They did add to the atmosphere, though. He could charge double with candles. I had seen them for sale for a dozen a penny in the Penitent’s Ear. I was in the wrong job. All he needed now was … ah, yes. Here was the bloody bell. The priest lifted it up in the air and struck it twice. The sound echoed around the room. I watched with my magical senses. Zilch.

  I was going to enjoy this.

  Running his tongue over his lips, the priest began to chant. As far as I could tell, whatever he was saying was nonsense, just random syllables to impress the suckers watching. Fuck me.

  Then something did happen. In my magical vision, I saw a thin, seawater-blue fog coalesce around him, bleeding out of the air, apparently in response to his nonsense chant. I dropped my magical sight, focused my eyes again, and confirmed that it wasn’t actually visible. The fog wasn’t magic in the way that I knew it. The priest hadn’t pulled in raw magic, and he hadn’t formed it into a spell. It was coming from elsewhere. With a sinking feeling, I realised it was the influence of his god seeping into the mortal realm. Who’d have thought that Gwillan-Whose-Light-Falls-on-the-Few-Not-the-Many would actually be paying attention and be willing to lend his potency to his priesthood? Assuming that was how the whole religion thing worked. I had never really paid close attention, because as far as I could tell, most priests were conmen. I could count on the fingers of my hands the number of priests who could actually do this. Just my luck that the Sunstones had tracked down one who had the favour of his god.

  I unfocused again and watched the fog shape slowly under the influence of the priest’s prayers. It was weak and slow, but it was there. Forget the candles and the bell. They were the just the show. This was the real stuff.

  If this bastard actually exorcised the ghosts, I was going to be really upset.

  The ghosts emerged slowly, white ectoplasm coaxed into existence, one strand at a time, drawn from whatever source kept them in the mortal realm. First they were insubstantial, wisps of forlorn memories and sorrow, more a possibility or a hint th
an anything truly there.

  I knew the moment the ghosts became visible from the scream that cut through the kitchen and the sound of a tray being dropped.

  I blinked away the magic so I could see what everyone else was seeing. A young couple, dressed in clothes that hadn’t been seen in hundreds of years, seemed to be fleeing hand-in-hand across the kitchen, but slowly, as if caught in oil, as the priest’s prayers constrained them.

  I took the opportunity to look more closely. I had been right that there was nothing malign about this pair of ghosts, but I could feel their fear. They had been running from something. If they were left to repeat this night after night, the fear would work its way into the house and into the minds of the people who lived here, whether the ghosts had ill intent or not. I didn’t know what had raised these ghosts to haunt the Sunstones in the last few weeks, but now they had been raised, they would keep returning, and with increasing frequency.

  “See?” the Estimable Sunstone said, triumph turning his voice into a laugh. “This is how you do it. This is why we don’t need you, Mr. Thorn. This is why you are a fraud.”

  I didn’t answer. Calling the ghosts was the easy bit. They wanted to rise. The hard bit was getting rid of them again, and for good, not just for a few nights.

  The priest had used his god’s power to draw them out, but the power had been weak. Dismissing the ghosts permanently would take a whole lot more. We would have to see if the priest commanded that much of Gwillan’s attention. I hoped he didn’t. I really wanted this job back.

  The priest stepped in front of the ghosts, raising the broken-eye amulet of Gwillan-Whose-Light-Falls-on-the-Few-Not-the-Many. I let my eyes unfocus again. You could learn a surprising amount about a mage by watching how they worked, and I figured it would be the same with the priest.

  The seawater-blue fog had wrapped itself around the ghosts, smothering them. Mages drew in and manipulated the raw magic emitted by a dead god. Priests called on the will of a living god and shaped it through prayer. There had to be some relationship between the processes. I wondered if a mage could learn to manipulate the will of a god in the same way they did magic. I had always been fascinated by the way magic worked. Of course, if a god noticed you were doing that without the rituals, sacrifices, and general sucking up…

  The priest’s prayers intensified, and the seawater-blue abruptly sharpened into thousands of tendrils. They began to work at the ghosts’ substance, pulling away and fraying it. He was trying to disrupt the ghosts, scatter them. It wasn’t a permanent solution, but it would be enough for the Sunstones.

  Damn it. He was going to do it. The ghosts would be gone, maybe for decades. I was watching my only hope for a job evaporating under the will of a minor god. There was no way Sunstone would pay me now.

  Then the ghosts changed.

  One moment, they were the echo of a young couple from centuries ago. The next, something surged through them. The power was enough to send me staggering back, and that was what saved me.

  The seawater-blue of the god’s will blew apart. The ghosts twisted, grew, combined. Something hurled itself forwards. It was part bear, part wolf, part great cat. It was still ectoplasm, this thing, but power raged within it. The priest’s shriek of fear was cut off in a spray of blood. He went down, and the beast came over him towards the rest of us.

  I threw everything I had into a shield spell. The beast’s long claws cut through it as if it were thin cloth.

  I was already moving, tearing open my bag and pulling out my sack of charcoal. My fingers fumbled over the string before I got it open. I swung the sack, spraying the charred wood and dust in an arc. The thing, the creature, flinched back. It was still made of ectoplasm, whatever it was. Where the charcoal touched it, it hurt. But not enough. It kept coming. I scrambled back, trying to stay out of reach. There was something wet on the floor — blood, wine, urine, I didn’t stop to look. I grabbed my bottle of arevena flowers and smashed it on the flagstones. The creature reared back, revealing a ghostly, striped belly.

  The Estimable Sunstone chose that moment to flee. I guessed no one had told him you shouldn’t run from a predator. The creature turned, lashing out with its foot-long claws. A single claw caught the Estimable Sunstone across his back, slicing through silk and wool and skin. Blood spattered the wall.

  I grabbed one of the petrified maids. “Silver!” I said. “You have to have silver.”

  She gaped at me. Shit. I wasn’t getting through to this one. I turned to the other.

  “Silver. Anything. Cups, a tray, anything.”

  She gestured mutely at a drawer.

  I glanced back at the ghost creature. It had left Sunstone and was picking its way around the charcoal and arevena flowers, eyes fixed on me with a predator’s gaze. The fear that hit me almost reduced me to a pulp. This wasn’t just ordinary fear. It was a supernatural terror, of things that hunted in the dark of the night, that had stalked our ancestors at the dawn of time when all we’d had were wooden spears and the dim safety of campfires to protect us from the things that saw us only as food.

  No! I wasn’t a primitive hunter. I was a mage of Agatos. I wrenched my mind away. The effort made me sag, and the creature came for me.

  I ripped the drawer out of the sideboard and tossed the whole thing at the advancing beast.

  Silver cutlery spun through the air, glittering like the water of the Erastes Bay, and hit the beast in a hail. Where the silver touched it, ectoplasm parted, sizzled, and reformed. The beast howled, a sound that turned my muscles to water.

  Then it was gone. All that was left were the ghosts of the young couple fleeing the kitchen.

  I looked around at the devastation, at the eviscerated priest of Gwillan, whose light certainly wasn’t shining on his priest any more, at the Estimable Sunstone lying groaning and bleeding among broken crockery, at Galena Sunstone pressed, terrified, against the wall, at the blood, spilled wine, scattered charcoal, crushed flowers, and piss, and at the terrified onlookers.

  “Fuck,” I said. My legs let go, and I slipped to the floor. The impact when I hit travelled up my spine, making my teeth click. “Fuck.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  I felt limp, drained. Images kept sparking in front of me, of the ghost-beast ripping through the priest. I squeezed my eyes shut, but that just made it worse. I could see the man’s stomach open under the ghostly claws, as though it were right in front of me. I wanted to throw up again. If I had been a couple of paces closer, that could have been me.

  Bannaur’s fucking balls. What had happened?

  The priest had trapped the ghosts. I had seen them. Two fairly ordinary ghosts. Routine, as far as ghosts could be, but not threatening. And then … then at the moment the priest had started to pick their essence apart, they had changed. The power had been more overwhelming than anything I had experienced before from any ghost. Depths, I hadn’t even heard of anything like this before.

  I gripped my hands into fists to stop them shaking.

  Thank the gods Sunstone hired that priest, I thought. I didn’t know if I could have dealt with this … thing … even if I had been prepared.

  You wanted the priest to fail, my mind whispered. You hoped he would.

  Where had that power come from, and how had I not seen it in the ghosts? Had it been something the priest had done? I could hardly ask him.

  Groaning, forcing myself onto all fours, I crawled over to the priest’s body. My hands and knees were getting coated in blood, but I didn’t have the strength to stand.

  He had been cut across in four parallel slashes, each maybe two hands apart, and deep enough that they would have killed him instantly. The lowest crossed just below his groin, the highest across his collar. He was staring sightlessly up. He didn’t even look surprised.

  Four cuts. Parallel claws. I felt myself begin to shiver.

  Imela Rush had been killed by four parallel cuts. So had Uwin Bone.

  It wasn’t the same. Their wounds were deeper, mo
re widely spread.

  What? You think it’s coincidence?

  What the fuck is this?

  Galena Sunstone’s ghosts couldn’t be related to the murders. It didn’t make any sense. Ghosts were tied to locations. These ghosts couldn’t possibly have been up in Thousand Walls and down in the Tanneries. They shouldn’t have been able to stray much beyond Sunstone’s house. And Imela Rush and Uwin Bone had been killed in the daytime. With enough power, you could raise ghosts in the day, but they would never spontaneously appear while the sun was up. And no ghosts could do this. It just wasn’t possible.

  Maybe it was Silkstar — or the Wren — coming after me, trying to take me out like they had Uwin Bone, using the same spell they had before.

  It was the ghosts. I saw them. They changed. And it was impossible. Even a high mage couldn’t twist a ghost into something like that.

  And if you’re murdered, the Ash Guard will know someone else is behind it. They would be relentless. The logic hadn’t changed.

  None of it made sense. It couldn’t be the ghosts, but it was. It was.

  Every instinct I had ever developed was telling me to get out of here. The power behind this thing was so far beyond me it didn’t even make sense. I wasn’t even being paid.

  A moan from across the room drew me to the Estimable Sunstone, lying face down in his own blood and piss. He had been lucky. He had been far enough away that only one of the ghost’s claws had reached him, and the wound was shallow, even though it was bleeding heavily.

  I staggered to my feet and grabbed the less traumatised of the maids.

  “Fetch a doctor.” I gave her a push towards the door. “Go on. Before your master bleeds to death.”

  Then I gathered up my rod and my empty bag and headed for the door.

  “Wait!” Galena Sunstone called after me from where she was pressed against a wall. Her thick gold makeup was smeared from where she had tried to wipe away sprayed blood. It hadn’t worked, and now the blood and gold streaked violently across her face. “What are we supposed to do?”