The Dark Passenger (Book 1)

by Joshua Thomas

  THE DARK PASSENGER

  By Joshua Thomas

  THE DARK PASSENGER

  Copyright © 2013 Joshua Thomas

  All rights reserved.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1: The Night-Mahr

  Chapter 2: Five Candle-Made Maidens

  Chapter 3: The Dirty Sacrifice

  Chapter 4: A Boy Returned

  Chapter 5: Of Dreams and Beans

  Chapter 6: The Lucent Speaks

  Chapter 7: The Cost of Magic

  Chapter 8: Blind With Fury

  Chapter 9: Blue and Red Tickets

  Chapter 10: An Imp on the Road

  Chapter 11: A Conversation in Blood

  Chapter 12: An Injury Best Not Seen

  Chapter 13: The Winter Fair

  Chapter 14: Nothing But Ash

  Chapter 15: Truths and Consequences

  Chapter 16: A Home For Mischief

  Chapter 17: A Pinch of Spice

  Chapter 18: The Fallen Roger Goodfellow

  Chapter 19: Three Tests

  Chapter 20: The Umbrage Box

  Chapter 21: A Meal to Remember

  Chapter 22: Through The Black Keep

  Chapter 23: The Great Herald

  Chapter 24: Preparations at the Gate

  Chapter 25: Parlor Tricks

  Chapter 26: A Boy Taken

  Chapter 27: Borrowed Magic

  Chapter 28: The Skeleton Key

  Chapter 29: The Host's Tomb

  Chapter 30: The Gates of Newick

  CHAPTER 1: THE NIGHT-MAHR

  As the woman ran, the mahr felt her anxiety, her desire to move faster. Stairs of uneven height lined her path, and each step was a trap, threatening what she worried would be a fatal fall. Even though she heard nothing but the slapping of her bare feet, she knew others were near, coming for her. She took solace in the mahr, drawing on its strength while letting it absorb her fear. With the mahr, she was calm.

  The darkness may have made the path more difficult, but she was glad for it. Her pursuers couldn’t see either. Each step was quick and confident; she had given herself to the mahr and was following its intuition.

  The staircase was narrow, steep and had no railing, and the rock was wet and warm to her touch. She could only guess what the cavern looked like around her, but she stopped herself when she began imagining how far she would fall if she tripped or missed a step. Instead, she focused on counting stairs. From the mahr she knew that it would be only a few more steps before she turned up another stairway that crisscrossed its way up the cliff.

  By the time she reached the last stair, she was out of breath and covered in sweat. Her stamina wasn’t what she remembered it to be, and the pain in her stomach was growing worse. Feeling along the edge of the wall, she found the crack that she knew to be there. It was the edge of what the mahr had seen when it was alone, before she had called for it. Until that moment, she had focused only on getting to this crack in the wall, but she was unsure of what she would find once she stepped through.

  As her pace slowed, she felt forward with one hand and anchored herself to the side of the cave with the other. The mahr helped her take slow, controlled breaths, which helped her focus her other senses. The air smelled damp, and the ground beneath her bare feet was covered in a downy coat of moss. Her hand was still pressed against smooth, wet rock, and it seemed to lead straight in one direction. She had no sense of time in the darkness, but she knew she had been walking a while when her hand hit a different kind of rock. These rocks were cut and jagged, like they had been placed there. She also felt a change beneath her feet. The moss suddenly ended, and she was walking on cobblestone. The wall started to turn slightly to the right, and she turned with it.

  When her shin hit rock, she found that the wall had stopped turning, and that she had come upon another staircase. She was heading straight again, up stairs. How close her pursuers were now, she couldn’t guess, but she feared the worst and stumbled quickly up the stairs, feeling wildly above and in front of her with her outstretched hands. She counted one hundred forty-seven steps before she found wood above her. A trapdoor. The hinges protested loudly as she opened it, and the sound of the falling door echoed in the large chamber. Her heart quickened when she realized she could see. Much had changed since the last time light had reached her eyes.

  Moonlight shone through a huge, broken window at the far end of the hall, as well as through a gaping hole in the ceiling. She stood there stunned, but only for a moment. As she approached the window, she saw a trail outside leading away from the building. Closer now, she saw the dull outline of a door in a shaded antechamber. Going left, she ran to the door and pushed. It was twice as tall as she was and its hinges were covered with rust. She leaned into it with all her strength until it gave and lurched open.

  She was outside now, and it was a new world. Everything was a soft blue in the moonlight. There were moss-covered boulders all around her, and she saw the statues of a man, a woman, and a box. Having suddenly realized where she was, the woman fell to her knees and wept. Looking behind her, she stared at the remains of the Black Keep, the broken building that had once been her home.

  Feeling a pang in her stomach, she forced herself up. She had more than just herself to consider, and this knowledge gave her new life. Ahead, far in the distance, she saw a man’s silhouette.

  “Stop!” a man commanded. “Surrender now. You have nowhere to run.”

  She didn’t stop, but she dreaded the man’s words. As she ran she whispered a word she knew well, and a blue-white bolt escaped her outstretched hand. Its power was less than she had expected.

  “Your magic will not work here, witch,” said the man, the last word a curse.

  “Witch? I’m no witch,” she said, momentarily taken aback. She raised her arms and, through the mahr, pooled energy into her hands like opposite ends of a pole. When she brought them together, another bolt leapt towards the man, stronger this time, but it didn’t explode as it should have. Instead, it reached the man and disappeared. The woman cursed and muttered, “The hallow tree’s amber was rare in my time and only given to a great warrior. What else has changed?”

  But she kept running and didn’t slow down; she felt with her entire being that there was no time. Again she said the word, louder now, directing its energy to the cliff above. Rocks tumbled down the cliff and sideswiped the man, who only had time to let out one brief shrill scream.

  Over the ledge she saw the village below and was horrified to see it so close to the Black Keep. It wasn’t until she passed the rubble and crushed man that she saw the pass leading up the cliff. She had a choice to make now. The desire to be free and out in the open would lead her up the pass, but that’s what they would expect. What their intent had been in settling the bottom of the crater, she could only guess, but she knew instinctively that whatever she found down there would be better than what she’d find above. That only left the option of approaching the village below head on.

  The pass weaved back and forth but was easy to see. After running for what felt like an eternity, she found herself surrounded by a small outcropping of trees at the bottom of the crater. Leaving the trail, she ran through them directly, thankful for the little light that made its way through their branches. Holding her engorged belly, she ran past boulders and around fallen trunks, feeling awakened by the clean, crisp air hitting her face. Between the trees, she caught sight of flickering orange lights from the village itself. They were close enough that she could smell their smoke. The pain in her stomach was growing, and she knew what would happen soon. Although she was breathing heavily through clenched teeth, she kept reminding herself that she had to keep moving.

  There was no w
all between her and the village, but the houses were stacked on each other, leaving her no breaks to the other side. Following the perimeter, she ran past locked doors and blackened windows until she hit a small alley—a vein into the village.

  From her first step into the village, the mahr’s energy within her dampened. She worried its power might be gone, but she was afraid to test her reserves. Any show of power would only attract attention, so she continued on. Seeing no one, she stumbled through the empty paths with only the slightest hint of a plan, but while it formed, she meant to lose herself and maybe her pursuers for a short while. The pain in her stomach continued to grow, and her steps became more labored. Turning down one road after another, she lost track of where she was. And then, in a moment of pure joy, the woman sensed what she was looking for. She allowed herself to fall at the house’s doorstep and grab her stomach.

  Having given everything in her escape, she was relieved to no longer have to hold it in. Her stomach kicked beneath the weight of her hands, and she knew that it was time for her baby to come. Clenching her eyes shut, she gasped for the air she would need to push, but held her hands over her mouth when she heard herself scream.

  Luckily, it was a quick delivery. Not allowing herself time to hold her son, the woman wrapped him in her shawl and whispered a word that turned it into the warmest of blankets. Also wrapped in the blanket was a book that she had carried out of the cave and down the pass.

  With her baby born, she held him in one arm as she let herself in the stranger’s house. Walking silently to the room where she sensed another baby, she knelt down and gave her boy one kiss on the forehead. She then picked up the other baby, whispered a few horrible words, and put her own baby in its place. Knowing the book and blanket would be conspicuous, she hesitated a moment, but there was no time to do anything else. In the gray moonlight, the small pile of ash that had once been another woman’s baby looked like liquid at her feet.

  Leaving the house as quickly as she had entered, she closed the door behind her and crossed the street. Looking back a minute later she saw the outline of three figures heading towards her. Running now, she glanced behind her and saw that they were running too. Weak and covered in cold sweat, she ran with energy she didn’t even know she had, energy that came only from the hope of luring her pursuers away from her baby. Taking a quick turn, she ran down a narrow street, and houses with little orange lanterns flew past her. Once again she was letting the mahr guide her, knowing that it had long ago sensed where she needed to go.

  An explosion of sound suddenly filled the air. It sounded like a horn, and its cry carried across the village, stirring people from their sleep. Still running, she didn’t look back, but she could hear the steps slowly gaining behind her. In every house she passed now lights were beginning to illuminate small windows. A minute later she found herself out of the narrow streets and in the middle of the large village square. There in the middle she saw what she and the mahr needed. It was a tree, bigger than any she had passed running down the pass, and it marked the heart of the village. She ran to it and stopped, and when she turned around she saw that her three pursuers had stopped with her.

  One man slowly approached and the other two moved off to her side, keeping their distance while cutting off any escape around the tree. Other people were also beginning to fill the square: men, women, and children, all of them holding weapons. The villagers moved cautiously, like they knew that she had already killed one of their own. Some people, including the original three following her, had swords at their sides, but they kept them sheathed. Most of the people, though, held a wooden staff in one hand and a spear in the other. The small bloodstones at each spear’s end glistened in the moonlight. Holding the spears above their heads, they watched the woman intently, ready to strike.

  And then, for reasons she barely understood, she started laughing. “You think the gift we gave you will protect you? How much time must have passed! In my time one of my kind would never be allowed so close to the hallow tree.”

  She backed towards the tree while the villagers looked on dumbly, as though too scared to make any sudden movements.

  “It doesn’t matter how long you have had to stockpile your weapons,” she continued. “Yes, I see the bloodstones set atop your every spear. You are a race of fools, and I shudder to think the damage you’ve done.”

  At last her hand landed on the tree. Muttering a word, the bark began to glow black and ash rained down from above. The villagers were charging her now, yelling, but she was no longer inhibited by the tree and was already casting a greater spell. Feeling her skin scaling, her limbs stretching, and her teeth growing, she let out a scream, only it was a monster’s voice, not hers. When the men grew near, green fire erupted from her mouth. Some splashed on the ground, sending a sulfurous smoke into the air, but most hit its mark: the many villagers before her. But even with the tree dead, the bloodstones, fruit of human sacrifices to the tree she had just destroyed, still retained their power and absorbed her fire.

  Charging forward, the woman snapped at a row of men, all the while trying to crush the villagers behind her with her tail. One of her claws connected with a man so hard that he flew back into the first, the second, and even the third villager behind him. Using her massive hind legs, she leapt to her side and crushed many other villagers beneath her. But then she screamed. There were too many around her, and they were releasing spear after spear, each of which sent a wave of intense heat through her skin. The spears were poison, made from the very tree she had just destroyed.

  Releasing the mahr, a mere puff of smoke outside her body, she returned to her normal size and found herself lying on the ground, panting. Blood pooled at her side, bubbling around the spears. The mahr hovered before her, unsure.

  “Go,” she croaked, gasping for air. “Take care of my baby.”

  As the mahr fled, the woman cried out once last time before she died.

  CHAPTER 2: FIVE CANDLE-MADE MAIDENS

  Five hags hobbled into the village of Chardwick. “Keep your heads down,” Gretchen told her four sisters. She was the oldest, but even with her deep wrinkles, thinning hair and severe stoop, she was by far the least ugly of the five.

  In a small, wispy voice, one of the triplets asked, “What if we’re recognized?”

  “Don’t be foolish. Look at us,” another triplet retorted.

  The last triplet agreed. “Indeed, the years have not been kind, sisters.”

  “Silence, all of you,” Gretchen hissed. The first triplet, who was about to ask another question, closed her mouth and choked back her words.

  The hags walked in a straight line, each taking care to appease her individual ailments. Leaning on a wooden staff, Gretchen set a slow pace, but her sisters didn’t mind.

  Behind Gretchen was Mina, a waif whose cloudy eyes and nearsightedness kept her close behind her older sister, and behind Mina, in no particular order, were the triplets. In their youth, people could tell the triplets apart by the colors of their hair—Pyre’s was red, Meryl’s an unnerving blue, and Mistral’s the whitest of blondes. As hags, gray had claimed even that, and all that differentiated them now were their dresses, which were reminiscent of the colors of their hair. But their dresses were hidden under long black cloaks at the moment, as the hags were doing their best not to draw attention to themselves.

  The cobblestone road stopped in the village square, and the hags found themselves walking through black dirt. Gretchen stopped, turned to her sisters, and said, “This is the place.”

  While the triplets gathered around, Mina bent to inspect the ground. Her knees cracked and her hand trembled as she reached out, grabbed a pinch of black dirt, and put it to her tongue. After spending a moment smacking it around her gummy lips, she spit it out, and then scooped a new pile of dirt into her hand, which she lifted to the air and watched trickle back to the ground.

  “Yes,” Mina said in a small voice. “There was great sorrow here.”

  “Speak up, s
ister. You forget that you’re speaking to old women,” crowed one of the triplets.

  Gretchen shot her sister a hard look; the triplets should know better than to tease Mina. Then, in her most encouraging voice, she said, “Tell us what you see, Mina.”

  Mina’s milky eyes stared forward, past her sisters and beyond the worn buildings around them. A tear rolled down her face and splashed in the black dirt. “There was a recent death here, a warrior slain.”

  Another triplet sighed, tired after their days of travel. “Yes, we know this. We all heard the Calling.”

  “Hush,” Gretchen said, and then, leaning precariously over her staff, she patted Mina’s arm. “Go on, Mina.”

  Mina’s distant expression hadn’t changed, and it was doubtful she was much aware of her sisters’ bickering. “The battle consumed great power, but in the end it was a quick death—a warrior’s death.”

  The sisters moved in closer, perhaps better to hear, or perhaps out of anxiety, sensing that Mina’s words were growing in import.

  “Was there—” a triplet began before Gretchen silenced her with a quick jab of her staff.

  Mina said, “The warrior fought bravely, but there were too many, oh so many.”

  Straining to hear, the sisters were almost audibly holding their breaths.

  “The warrior was not alone,” Mina continued. “She had a mahr.”

  The triplets gasped.

  “A mahr,” one triplet whispered to herself.

  “After so long,” another triplet added.

  “But we’re too late! A chance to regain our youth, our power, lost,” cried the third.

  Gretchen pounded her staff to the ground and the earth shook. “Silence,” she repeated as the triplets struggled to maintain their balance. “Not another word from any of you until Mina finishes.”

  The triplets hushed.

  “But the mahr was not lost,” Mina cooed. Smiling wickedly, she turned to Gretchen. “The creature lives, dismissed from the Host’s service by her dying breath.”