Sacrosanct & Other Stories

by Various Authors

  Pain flared through him as he hit the floor, and he felt as if something in him had torn loose. But luckily, the barb had missed him and his soul remained his own. He heard the crackle of magics and saw the Collegiate Arcane representative fling aethereal lightning towards Kesh. She snarled and cracked the whip. The spell tore in two, and ragged motes of light danced across the air. Unhindered, the barbed tip caught the wizard in the chest and tore his soul screaming from him. The backlash of sundered magics howled through the chamber, overturning benches and smashing bodies against walls.

  Bok lay still, eyes closed against the glare. When he opened them, the crowd was gone. Most had fled, but the rest had not managed to escape. And Kesh was nowhere in sight, though he could hear the clash of weapons somewhere out in the corridor. For a moment, he considered letting that be the end of it. He could slip out, with no one the wiser. But Neferata would know. And that thought was more frightening than any mystical soul-eater.

  Wearily, he hauled himself to his feet and stumbled out into the hall, after retrieving his pistol. Smoke filled the space. The fire had spread. The corridor was littered with bodies. Some had been trampled, others bore bloody wounds. The unseen alarm bells were still ringing, and he heard the thump of running feet somewhere above him. He staggered down the hall, clutching his side.

  Kesh had carved herself a path to the street. The marks of the chain-whip were evident on the walls and floor, as well as on many of the bodies. When he reached the entry hall, he saw that the heavy door had been smashed off its hinges. There was no sign of the aelf. From outside, he could hear the rattle of steel and the stamp of feet.

  He reached the door and stopped. Outside, the aelf, Shayl, and Kesh spun and fought with a speed that defied description. The aelf moved with all the quicksilver grace of her kind, but Kesh matched her speed, driven to inhuman extremes by the power of the Soul-Lash. Shayl’s blade deflected the chain-whip as it curled around her, sending the barb spinning away. Kesh parried the aelf’s counter-stroke with her remaining axe. The two women stamped and whirled back and forth along the edge of the canal. The ragged remnants of stolen souls clung to Kesh like a smoky shroud, and her laughter boomed out over the waters as she fought.

  Bok leaned against the doorframe, wheezing. His side ached where the chain had crunched against his ribs. Kesh’s three surviving followers hadn’t noticed him yet, enraptured as they were by the duel. He extended his pistol. One shot left. He would need to make it count. Time stretched unbearably. Smoke from the fire billowed past him, filling the street.

  Then, it happened – Shayl lunged, but Kesh smashed her blow aside throwing her off balance. The barb of the chain-whip hissed down, smashing her sword from her hand and throwing her to the ground. Kesh gave a shout and swung the Soul-Lash up, ready to add the aelf’s soul to her collection.

  Bok fired.

  Kesh stiffened. The side of her head was a red ruin. She turned, wobbling on her feet, her remaining eye fixed on Bok as her warriors turned. Kesh took an unsteady step towards him. The Soul-Lash snapped and twisted like an angry viper. Her mouth worked, but no words came out. She made as if to raise the chain-whip, but instead pitched forwards with a disgruntled sigh and lay still.

  Bok swung his pistol towards the remaining cultists. ‘Stay back, or I’ll fire.’ The blood-cultists snarled as one and started towards him, axes raised. He tossed the empty pistol into the face of the closest, and drove a kick into the midsection of another. An axe bit the air dangerously close to his head, and he turned, punching its wielder. The haft of a weapon caught him in the side of the face and he staggered, the street spinning.

  A second blow knocked him from his feet. He covered his head and rolled away. He heard a scream and glanced up. Shayl stood behind one of the cultists, her sword embedded in his back. She ripped it free and twisted, opening the jugular of a second. The third roared and leapt at her, axe raised. Bok snatched up a fallen axe and surged to his feet, catching the cultist in the abdomen. The man folded over with a gurgle and Bok released the axe, letting the dying man slump.

  Shayl looked at him, eyebrow raised. ‘I had him,’ she said.

  Bok shrugged. ‘You’re welcome to the credit.’

  She frowned and studied him. ‘You fight well. For a human. I am sorry we did not get to match blades earlier.’

  ‘I’m not,’ he said.

  She laughed. ‘No. It would have been a shame to kill you.’

  Iron grated against the street. An ugly moan filled the air. Shayl turned, and past her, Bok saw Kesh struggling to her feet. Blood and brain matter dripped down the side of her face as her good eye fixed on them. Bok stared.

  ‘A bullet to the head usually does the trick.’

  Before Shayl could reply, the barbed head of the Soul-Lash rose up over Kesh’s back like a scorpion’s stinger. The links clicked like laughter as the woman took a step towards them, and he realised suddenly that Kesh was no longer in charge.

  Whatever fell power lurked within the weapon, it had obviously decided that it wasn’t finished with them yet. With an inhuman screech, Kesh jerked forwards, slashing at them with the chain-whip. Bok lurched aside and felt the air part before his face as the chain slashed down. Shayl attacked, driving her blade into Kesh’s side. The woman ignored the blow and shoved the aelf aside.

  ‘She’s already dead,’ Bok shouted.

  ‘Then how do we kill her?’ the aelf demanded, ducking beneath the arc of the chain-whip. She scrambled backwards.

  Bok frowned, at a loss. Kesh laughed – there was nothing human in the sound. Broken spirits swirled about her, bound to the monstrous weapon. They moaned in what might have been pain, and the killing sigils hammered into the iron bars of the chain flared with unnatural heat. Kesh’s wrist bulged oddly as she slashed the Soul-Lash out again, carving divots from the street.

  ‘Her hand,’ Bok snarled. Shayl looked at him, eyes narrowed. Bok flung his arm to the side. A twist of the wrist and the weight of his concealed blade slid into his waiting hand. A moment later, the blade was flying through the air. It sank into Kesh’s remaining eye with a wet, hollow sound. She staggered, blind. ‘Now,’ he cried.

  Thankfully, the aelf was quick on the uptake. Her blade chopped through Kesh’s wrist. The Soul-Lash, and Kesh’s hand, clattered to the ground with a petulant rasp of iron links. As soon as the weapon hit the ground, Kesh toppled backwards with a sigh.

  Bok released a shaky breath. He approached the body carefully. But she seemed to have surrendered to the inevitable at last. He pried his blade free and wiped it clean on her ragged furs, before tearing them from her body. He nudged the chain-whip into the furs with his foot and wrapped it up. He could hear its links rasping in frustration.

  ‘What an awful thing you are,’ he said, as he tied the edges of the furs together. ‘The Queen of Mysteries is welcome to you, and good riddance.’

  ‘Is she dead?’ the aelf asked, as he lifted the bundle and slung it over his shoulder. She held a hand pressed to her gashed arm, but was otherwise unharmed.

  ‘For the moment.’ He looked up. The Magpie’s Nest was completely aflame now. It had burned before, and he had no doubt it would be rebuilt, in time. He looked at Shayl. ‘You appear to be out of a job.’

  She shrugged. ‘It was boring.’

  Bok hesitated. Then, he smiled.

  ‘Have you ever considered a career in the book trade?’

  EIGHT LAMENTATIONS: SPEAR OF SHADOWS

  by Josh Reynolds

  Eight mighty artefacts, crafted by the dark servants of Chaos, blight the Mortal Realms. The Ruinous Powers hunt them – and so do a group of heroes, chosen by Grungni for this dangerous and essential task.

  Find this title, and many others, on blacklibrary.com

  The Sands of Grief

  Guy Haley

  ‘I don’t like it here, master. Please, let us go. Too much ma
gic, hurts my bones.’

  ‘Hush, Shattercap, they are nearly done, and then we can leave. Be patient.’

  The second speaker was Maesa, a proud aelf prince in the bronze armour and green-and-grey clothing of the wayfarer peoples. The first was a vicious spite, a small, gangrel creature of ill intent. His appearance did nothing to disguise his nature. He was a clutch of bones and twiggy fingers, garbed in wizened green skin. From a small, apelike face, his button black eyes peered at the world with fearful malice, in marked contrast to the calm benevolence radiated by his keeper. But though a captive, Shattercap was more or less content to live among the folds of the prince’s cloak.

  Content, because the aelf offered a way out of wickedness, and Shattercap desired that in a half-grasped way. Less, because the prince and the spite were at that time within the shop of Erasmus Throck and Durdek Grimmson, providers of the finest alchemical instruments in Glymmsforge in the Realm of Shyish, a place Shattercap feared greatly.

  Throck and Grimmson were comical opposites. Grimmson was a stout duardin with a blue beard and bald head. Throck was a tall scrap of man with a shock of white hair and clean-shaven chin. The duardin rooted about behind the counter near the floor. The man was balanced upon rolling steps, searching cubbyholes high up by the ceiling.

  Grimmson hauled out a leather-covered box and placed it on the glass counter top.

  ‘This is it, aelfling, the soul glass you wished for.’

  Throck tutted from the top of the steps at his colleague.

  ‘Come now, Durdek! Prince Maesa is highborn and worthy of respect.’

  Durdek’s granitic face maintained its scowl. ‘He’s an aelf, and I call it as I see it, Erasmus.’

  Throck shook his head, and pulled the wheeled ladder along to the next stack of cubbyholes.

  ‘Don’t worry, your worthiness,’ said Grimmson to Maesa. ‘I’ve outdone myself for you. Look at this.’

  With a delicacy his massive fingers seemed incapable of, Grimmson took out a tiny hourglass. Its bulbs were no bigger than a child’s clenched fists, decorated with delicate fretwork of silver and gold.

  Durdek flicked open a lid in the glass’ top. ‘Life sand goes in here. Seal it. Tip it over when it’s near run out. Keep on with that to prolong the life within. Away you go. Very simple concept, but simple usage is no reason for drab work.’

  ‘We pride ourselves on the finest equipment,’ said Throck. ‘Durdek here makes the devices…’

  ‘…and it’s him as does the enchanting,’ said Durdek.

  ‘It is a beautiful piece,’ said Maesa. He took the hourglass from Grimmson and turned it over in his hands. ‘Such fine workmanship.’

  Grimmson hooked his fingers into his belt, gave a loud sniff and pulled himself up proudly.

  ‘We do what we can.’

  ‘Aha! Here is the other item,’ said Throck. He jumped from the ladder. From a soft velvet bag, he took out a complex compass. It too had a lid in the top, covering over a small compartment. ‘A soul seeker. This should lead you to the realmstone deposit you seek.’

  Grimmson took the glass and placed it carefully back into the box so Maesa could examine the compass.

  Eight nested circles of gold, each free moving against the other, surrounded the central lidded well. On one side of the well was an indicator made in the shape of the hooked symbol of Shyish. Maesa pushed it with his finger. It spun silently through many revolutions at the gentlest touch.

  ‘It floats on a bath of ghostsilver,’ said Throck. ‘Very good work.’

  ‘Should be,’ said Shattercap. ‘For the money you are being paid.’

  ‘You get what you pay for,’ Grimmson growled. ‘Quality. We are Glymmsforge’s foremost makers of such devices.’

  ‘We are expensive, I admit, but you will find none better,’ said Throck.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Maesa. ‘I have no issue with the cost. Ignore my servant, he has yet to learn manners.’ He handed the compass back and produced a white leather pouch from his belt. ‘Five hundred black diamond chips, from the Realm of Ulgu, as you required.’

  Grimmson took the bag from Maesa’s hand and tugged at the drawstring ready to count the contents.

  Throck patted his partner’s burly arm. ‘That won’t be necessary. I am sure the prince is good to his word.’ Throck was awed by the prince’s breeding, and couldn’t help but give a short bow. Maesa returned the gesture with a graceful inclination of his head. Grimmson looked at them both fiercely.

  ‘You best be careful out there,’ the duardin said. ‘We sell maybe eight or nine of these a year, but the folks that buy them don’t always come to the best end. Most go out into the Sands of Grief, and vanish.’

  ‘How do you know they work then?’ said Shattercap, slinking around the back of Maesa’s head from one shoulder to the other.

  ‘Ahem,’ Throck looked apologetic. ‘Their ghosts come back to tell us.’

  ‘Ghosts? Ghosts! Master!’ squealed Shattercap. ‘Why did we come here?’

  ‘I trust you have supernatural means of sustenance?’ said Throck amiably. ‘I do not mean to pry into your business, but where you intend to go is no place for the living. There is no water, no food, no life of any kind, only the dead, and storms of wild magic. We can provide the necessary protections – amulets, enchanted vittles, all you would require – if you have none of your own.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Shattercap shrieked again. Maesa ignored him.

  ‘I have what I need. My kind have wandered in every place. This realm is no alien land to me. I shall return in person to inform you how well your goods performed.’ Maesa bowed and picked up his packages. ‘My thanks, and good day to you, sirs.’

  The door of the shop banged closed behind the prince. Shattercap cowered from the strange sights of Glymmsforge. The sky was a bruised purple, forever brooding, its long night scattered with amethyst stars. Outside the walls were afterlives ruined by the war with Chaos, and haunted by broken souls. But the streets of the young city were full of life, bathed in the light of magical lanterns that held back the dark.

  Throck and Grimmson’s shop was located on Thaumaturgy Way, along with dozens of other purveyors of magical goods. Market stalls narrowed the street, leaving only a slender cobbled passage down the centre. Humans, aelfs, duardin and all manner of other creatures thronged the market, and not only the living, but the shades of the dead also, for Glymmsforge was situated in the afterlife of Lyria, where some vestiges of past glory still clung.

  The crowd moved slowly. People browsed goods, creating hard knots in the flow that eddied irritably around each other. Maesa could pass through a thicket of brambles without disturbing a twig, but his aelven gifts were of no use in that place, and he was forced to shove through the crowd along with the rest.

  ‘Market days, I hate market days!’ hissed Shattercap. ‘So many people. Where is the forest quiet? Where is the mossy silence?’

  ‘You will yearn for their fellowship where we are going, small evil,’ said Maesa. He slipped through a gaggle of ebon-skinned men of Ghur haggling over an imp imprisoned in a bottle, and reached the relative quiet of the main street.

  Free of the overhanging eaves of Thaumaturgy Way, more of the city was visible. Concentric rings of walls soared to touch the sky. The innermost held within their compass the Shimmergate, a blue slash of light high up in the dark sky. Shattercap and Maesa were in the second district, thus close to the Stormkeep, the College of Amethyst and all the other wonders of the deepest ward.

  Maesa turned his back on the central spires. His destination lay outside the city.

  He returned to their lodgings in the fourth ward, and there arranged his equipment for the journey while Shattercap fretted in the corner. The spite could have bolted at any time, and for that reason Maesa had kept the thing chained for the first part of their association. As the days passed, a bond had
grown between them. Besides, Shattercap was too cowardly to flee, so Maesa had abandoned the fetters.

  Maesa packed his saddlebags with food, drink and sustenance of a less mundane kind. He stowed his unstringed bow into its case on the outside of his quiver. The compass from Throck and Grimmson he hung about his neck in its bag, and he stored the hourglass carefully in his packs. Lastly, he took from the table his most prized possession – the skull of his dead love, Ellamar – and placed it carefully into a light knapsack woven from the silk of forest spiders.

  He called the house boy to take the bags to the stables, and followed him down.

  The inn’s stable block housed every sort of riding beast imaginable. At one end of the stalls was a mighty gryph-charger that rattled its beak in conversation with a pair of its lesser demi-gryph kin stabled next to it. Dozens of horses, flightless birds, great cats and more all whinnied, growled, squawked and screeched. As the air was a confusion of different calls, so the smell of the stables was a mighty animal reek composed of many bestial perfumes.

  There was only a single great stag in the stable. His name was Aelphis and he was Maesa’s mount. He waited for his master, aloofly enduring the clumsy efforts of the grooms to saddle him.

  ‘Aelphis,’ said Maesa softly.

  The giant stag bowed his head and snorted gladly at the prince’s greeting. He dropped to his knees to allow Maesa to load him with the baggage.

  ‘I am sorry, my lord, but I do not think I have your saddle right,’ said the head groom. ‘I have never tacked up a creature like he before.’

  ‘No matter,’ said Maesa. Although the groom had made a poor job of it, he was genuinely apologetic. The prince adjusted the saddle while the groom looked on, and Maesa welcomed his desire to learn. When all was as it should be, Maesa leapt nimbly upon Aelphis’ back. The stag let out a lusty bellow and rose up to his full, majestic height.

  ‘We shall return,’ said Maesa, and took his helm from a groom. Its spread of bronze antlers mirrored the magnificence of Aelphis’ rack. Armoured, he and the beast were perfectly matched.