Trading into Darkness

by C. M. Simpson

  Taking their pies, they followed him into the corridor and to the cavern founder’s office. To their surprise, he accompanied them inside and closed the door. This time Brigitte was not present.

  “I did not want to delay sending the teams to seal the caverns,” Monsieur Gravine explained. “They left just after breakfast.”

  While we were speaking with the Master of Shadows, Marsh thought and frowned, but Monsieur Gravine ignored her expression and turned to Roeglin.

  “Tell me, what did your Master of Shadows have to say?”

  “He agrees to us being your envoys, but we must also represent the monastery.”

  “Very well, and?”

  “And he requests reinforcements for the waystation at the Ariella’s Grotto/monastery junction and the prospector’s junction.”

  “It shall be done. I’ll have them on the road in the morning. Is there anything else?”

  “Yes. Marchant Leclerc is no longer a trainee, but a shadow mage in her own right, and my partner in monastery undertakings.”

  Marsh noted that he left out her junior status and felt strangely elated.

  “Well, congratulations, Shadow Mage Leclerc!” The cavern founder stood and offered her his hand. “Well-earned,” he said when she accepted it.

  Seating himself again, he nodded to Gustav, who was standing to one side.

  “I have the paperwork for your task to Kerrenin’s Ledge.”

  He reached over and accepted the thick sheaves of paper Gustav had lifted from one of the shelves closest him.

  “If you will sign here…and here…and here,” he said, indicating where he meant.

  Gustav handed Marsh and Roeglin hollowed-out joffra claws filled with ink and they read, then signed where the founder wanted. Marsh noted that the contract said nothing they hadn’t already agreed to. She’d give the man this: he was thorough.

  As soon as they’d signed, he lifted two small cloth bags from beneath the desk and set them down in front of them.

  “Payment for being my envoy to the Master of Shadows. You’ll need something to trade when you reach Kerrenin’s Ledge, and it won’t hurt them to remember what they gain access to by allying with us.”

  Marsh mirrored Roeglin as he reached for the bag and cautiously peered inside. Seconds later, he was staring at the founder.

  “It’s too much!”

  The founder shrugged.

  “I added a bonus for your assistance in defeating the last shadow raid, assisting with Madame Monetti’s arrest, and your rescue of Ruins Hall citizens. There is also compensation for your injuries. I can give you an itemized list of the value if you insist, but the payment is fair for the dangers and discomforts you have faced in my service.”

  This last was delivered with a long look at Marsh, and Marsh returned it with a cool look of her own.

  “I also have unfinished business in Kerrenin’s Ledge,” she said, and the founder propped his chin on his hands and gave her his undivided attention. She was surprised when Roeglin didn’t intervene. Nice to see he’d made the adjustment to partner so fast.

  I don’t think either of us adjusted to you being a trainee, he told her, his amusement quivering through her mind.

  Marsh frowned and looked back to the founder.

  “Trader Kearick may be working with the shadow raiders, and I will be investigating this. I’ll start by asking him why he tried to have me assassinated, and why he tried to retrieve a delivery scheduled for Madame Monetti.”

  “I have no objections to you following this inquiry to its conclusion,” Monsieur Gravine told her, “and it lies well within my interests for you to do so. If you’ll agree to report your findings to me, I’ll pay you for the information. Further, should you discover that Kearick is working for the shadow raiders, I will pay a bounty to have him neutralized, and more for any details you retrieve regarding his business partners and dealings. Agreed?”

  It was more than she had hoped for, and much more than she had expected. Marsh swallowed hard. “Agreed.”

  Once that was settled, she and Roeglin chatted a little longer with Monsieur Gravine and then took their leave.

  He let them get to the door before he called to them. “There is just one more thing…”

  They stopped, Roeglin taking his hand from the door handle before he turned back. Marsh followed his example.

  “Yes?”

  “You’ll take Gustav with you—as an independent party overseeing my interests alone.”

  “Agreed.”

  “As of now, he will accompany you.”

  Roeglin sighed.

  “Very well. Will that be all?”

  “Yes. Thank you. You can have two more days for preparation, and then the other teams will be free to follow you to clear and repair the route. Is that enough time?”

  The tone of his voice said it had better be, and Roeglin smiled.

  “More than enough, Monsieur. Will there be anything else?”

  “No, that will be all.”

  He bent his head to the paperwork in front of him, and Gustav crossed the room to join them. The bodyguard looked at Marsh.

  “Just like old times,” he said, looking far too pleased with the idea of going with them.

  Marsh smiled in return. “That it is, Dear Man.”

  He blushed but laughed, remembering Fabrice using that term the last time he’d left Ruins Hall with Marchant. It didn’t take him long to recover, though.

  “You have to provide pancakes and croissants to call me that.”

  26

  Into the Dark

  Three days later, Marsh, Roeglin, and Gustav said goodbye to Marc, the owner of the eatery on the main street of Ruins Hall. They were followed by Henri and Jakob, as well as Gerry, Zeb, and Izmay, all of whom had enjoyed their last hot meal before Kerrenin’s Ledge. They’d be moving fast and light, hoping to cut the two- to three-day journey to just over one. Any nerves about the road ahead had been channeled into good-natured teasing.

  “I don’t think there are enough pancakes in the world to let you call me ‘dear man’ one more time,” Gustav grumbled, and Marchant held up a chocolate croissant.

  “Well, in that case…” he began, and Marsh laughed and handed it to him.

  “I think you’ve been ‘dear manned’ enough. This one’s for the road.”

  “The road is not getting a single crumb,” Gustav told her through a mouthful of croissant.

  Crumbs sprayed as he spoke, making an instant liar of him, and they were still laughing as they swung into their saddles and turned their mules away from the rail. Roeglin joined them as he led the way out.

  They made it to the edge of Ruins Hall and then to the cavern, their good spirits from the morning meal evaporating as they neared the entrance to the tunnel leading from Ruins Hall cavern to Kerrenin’s Ledge. Marsh remembered what had happened the last time she’d come down that path and wished she hadn’t.

  Taking a deep breath, she tapped the mule’s sides and rode into the darkness, aware of the hoshkat pacing the shadows before them. She slowed to a halt and looked at Roeglin.

  “You ready?” he asked, and Marsh passed him the lead rope clipped to her mule’s bridle.

  “I’ve got this,” she said. “Let me know when you want to camp for the night.”

  He caught the lead and waited until she’d taken a good grip on the pommel.

  “I’ll let you know if there’s anything we need to be aware of. Is Master Envermet coming?”

  “He left the fortress this morning. Tamlin’s not happy with you, you know. He thinks Aisha should be going back to the monastery and not gallivanting around the caverns looking for trouble.”

  “She’s only charging glows!”

  “Yeah, well, you know Aisha. She’s more like you than you realize. When isn’t she looking for trouble?”

  Marsh didn’t dignify that with an answer. It wasn’t something she needed to be thinking about. She had enough on her mind as it was.

&
nbsp; Besides getting to Kerrenin’s Ledge and hunting Kearick down before the little weasel got wind that she was in town, she had to think of what she was going to say to the Kerrenin’s Ledge council to convince them to make a formal alliance with Monsieur Gravine.

  And then there was her uncle…

  As much as she was looking forward to letting him know she was okay, she was dreading their next meeting, too. So much had changed between them, and then she’d changed. Now she could call the shadows, and…

  It’ll be fine, Roeglin reassured her. Besides, you’ve got to get there first.

  Reminding her there was a good chance she mightn’t.

  “Thanks, Ro. Thanks a lot!”

  But he had a point. The trail from Ruins Hall to Kerrenin’s Ledge stretched ahead of them in the dark, and it hadn’t been traveled in weeks. Who knew what cavern denizens and tunnel crawlers had come to reside along its length, or what shadow monsters remained?

  Marsh sighed and stretched her magic into the dark, blending her desire for the shadows to reveal those hiding in their depths with her ability to sense the life forces of the creatures ahead. She could trust the folk around her. She knew that.

  Even Gustav, for all his loyalty to Monsieur Gravine—or perhaps because of it.

  She could do this. She had to do this.

  Once she’d wanted to be a seeker, finding treasures from the past in the hope of making the future better. She still wanted to be a seeker, but not of the secrets of humanity’s past. She wanted to be a seeker of shadow raiders, and when she found them, she’d destroy them all.

  The end game was almost the same, except instead of just making the future better, she was hoping to ensure that humanity had a future. After that? Well, after that she could see about making it better.

  First, though, there was going to be a journey through the caverns’ dark.

  Author Notes - CM Simpson

  February 22, 2019

  Again, many thanks for taking the journey as Marsh tries to sort out the mess and menace stalking the porous underside of a devastated Paris. I hope you’ve enjoyed the story, as much as I enjoyed discovering it, because, outlines aside some characters have minds of their own.

  As I write these notes, I can hear the dulcet tones of Penfold and Danger Mouse wreaking havoc in an imagined London, and I’m reminded that the podling needs to go to bed... or she’ll turn into the muck monster by tomorrow morning. I did promise her she could watch the end of the cartoon, however, and I’m desperately trying not to get suckered by the silliness, too. I’ve always enjoyed the humour of that cartoon. It’s quirky, and reminds me to look at the world in a whole different way.

  It reminded me of Michael picturing elves on his dad’s shoulders while being told off, or when I was a kid running over the red earth a few miles south of The Gap just south of Alice Springs. It was a dangerous place out there.

  I hunted alien smugglers, human traitors, and my cousins... with paddy melons. I taught myself how to move across the hot ground in bare feet without leaving tracks – and while avoiding the bulls-head and goats-head burrs – how to keep my head down while keeping my prey, er, cousins in sight, how to plan a rapid paddy melon bombardment, and then execute an escape over rocks and rough ground... and the occasional inch ant nest...– and to return home at dusk and dinner time when the grown-ups were too busy getting dinner and doing other grown-up chores to remember to tell me off.

  And, if I was very lucky, I’d get to catch an episode of Doctor Who on the only television channel we had – the good old ABC. Tom Baker was the Doctor back then, and he remains my favourite today. That series, and that character, has been a major source of inspiration and hope for much of my life and my writing.

  Because I wrote, back then, too.

  Both science fiction and fantasy.

  Science fiction was my favourite genre, and I dreamed of what it would be like to travel out among the stars... because that beat trying to imagine what it would be like to survive a nuclear strike. In the late nineteen-seventies, early eighties, kids in the Alice were very aware of the Cold War and what we called ‘The Space Base’ south of town.

  And we all knew it made us a potential target... whether it really did or not.

  Fiction was a refuge from being afraid, whether I was reading it, or writing it. The worlds in my head were much safer places than the one I lived in... regardless of who got eaten, or whose ship crashed into a swamp of stinging fish, or who was trying to shoot who, or blow who up. In my stories, things eventually went right for people, no matter how wrong they went to start with.

  Like they did for Keill Randor, Douglas Hill’s Last Legionary, or his Huntsman, or the Colsec survivors. Those stories, along with Anne McCaffrey’s and Andre Norton’s fiction were my constant companions, and form some of my fondest memories. Their character’s stand alongside Tom Baker and Jon Pertwee as some of my fondest childhood memories, and their stories were a welcome escape from the hazards of everyday life, where it was hard to not get yelled at at home, or bullied at school, or to worry about what was happening in the world around me.

  Their stories taught me to dream, and to work towards my dreams, to not give up, and to believe in the impossible. When I write, those are the stories at the back of my mind, the stories I hope to find every time I sit down at the keyboard.

  Thank you for coming on this part of that quest with me.

  Author Notes - Michael Anderle

  March 13, 2019

  THANK YOU for not only reading this story but these Author Notes as well.

  (I think I’ve been good with always opening with “thank you.” If not, I need to edit the other Author Notes!)

  RANDOM (sometimes) THOUGHTS?

  So, my colleague (in crime…not really, just thought it sounded fun) just spoke to her memories of Dr. Who, and if that didn’t give away her British background, certainly the other author names she mentioned did.

  It so happens that I am in England at the moment, attending the London Book Fair, and Dr. Who was mentioned yesterday during a business meeting discussing the vast need for IP (Intellectual Property), which television and movie companies are supposedly in desperate need for.

  Personally, I don’t think they need ‘more’ IP, they need to discover the massive amount of IP that is already available. Barring that, perhaps there needs to be a better discovery tool which provides those who need to review the already-available IP in a form (usually graphical) which allows for an easier understanding of the premise.

  For those paying attention, if you want your book to be reviewed more often for video, create a bite-sized chunk to show someone. The days where (most) will read the book are gone, and the chances someone will read it all the way through are dwindling.

  On the positive side, you can be ahead of the game by planning ahead.

  The London Book Fair (for me) is the bigger brother of Book Expo America (New York) for Indie Publishers. I will see this May if BEA has continued to relegate Indie publishers to the sidelines, or if they have figured out that Indie Publishers are just a new generation of publishers whose companies only know the new paradigm of publishing.

  And refuse to do business like the old.

  For myself, I’ve studied major parts of the old system (of which Barnes & Nobles is a major player) and I am working to completely bypass it. To accept returns (a remnant of a problem from the Great Depression in America) is not part of my DNA. I feel that a different type of distribution system can be created to help both parties, and I intend to implement to the best of my abilities a test of this system.

  Will I fail?

  Possibly.

  But if I succeed, we will have changed an industry.

  FAN PRICING

  $0.99 Saturdays (new LMBPN stuff) and $0.99 Wednesday (both LMBPN books and friends of LMBPN books.) Get great stuff from us and others at tantalizing prices.

  Go ahead. I bet you can’t read just one.

  Sign up here: http://lmb
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  HOW TO MARKET FOR BOOKS YOU LOVE

  Review them so others have your thoughts, and tell friends and the dogs of your enemies (because who wants to talk with enemies?)… Enough said ;-)

  Ad Aeternitatem,

  Michael Anderle

  Other Books from C.M. Simpson

  The Magic Beneath Paris (with Michael Anderle)

  #1 Trading into Shadow

  #2 Trading into Darkness

  #3 Trading to the Light (coming soon)

  Mack ‘n’ Me ‘n’ Odyssey

  #1 Mack ‘n’ Me: Origins

  #1-1 The Depredides Dance (a stand-alone short story)

  #1-5 Rogue Retrieval (a stand-alone novella – coming soon)

  #2 Mack ‘n’ Me: Blaedergil’s Host

  #3 Mack ‘n’ Me: Arach

  #4 Mack ‘n’ Me: The Transporter’s Favour

  #4-3 What Happens on Axis 58… (a stand-alone short story)

  #4-6 Cloud Door (a stand-alone short story)

  I also write fantasy, urban fantasy and short stories across the genres, all of which can be found on my Amazon author page.

  Connect With The Authors

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  https://www.amazon.com/C.M.-Simpson/e/B0086QFGFO

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