Novella: The Shinbone Shadowhunter (2024)

Copyright: 2023 David Lee Stone & Kingsbrook Publishing / Cover Art: Roman Dubina

Chapter One

It was midnight in Shinbone and a fine rain peppered the streets, disturbing the pale reflection of the crescent moon in puddles the size of lakes and gently soaking the crowds of drunks that gathered in tavern doorways all over town.

In an ancient study at the top of a rickety house on the edge of one of the oldest streets in the rich district, Fulbert Fairwhack removed his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose as he strained to examine the document on the candlelit table before him. He’d been concentrating on it for the best part of an hour, pausing only once to usher away three large and exceedingly ugly birds that had landed on his windowsill.

Now, the letter was nearly finished and simply required a summary before it would be ready to send.

Fulbert yawned and stretched his arms. Then he took another glance over the document. When he chanced to look up again, a sudden blur in the corner of the room made him start. It was a good few seconds before he reasoned that the dark shape he could see looming beside the bookcase was in fact a discarded cloak he’d hung up on his way out the previous evening.

Breathing an audible sigh of relief, Fulbert returned his attention to the parchment and carefully plucked a quill from an elderly ink-pot beside the blotter. He wrote:

In the matter of the sale of Drain Castle, I must advise you of the findings of Mr Devon Moody. Please be aware that the property foundations have been classified as distinctly unsound and in danger of total collapse into a sinkhole (the proportions of which we are singularly unable to calculate). It appears that the name of the property is both well-earned and accurately descriptive, as history indicates it was indeed built over some sort of vast underground drainage system that appears to bear no relation to the surrounding towns. We strongly suggest that your purchase of the property be cancelled, and we will also refer the matter to the Shinbone Town Council due to the property's proximity and the suspected extent of the subterranean environment involved.

Yours faith-

A book fell off the shelf and hit the floor, causing Fulbert to start. He squinted into the shadows, feeling his breath deepen as he tried to make sense of what had happened. The tome in question was a heavy volume of short stories his grandmother had given him when he was a small boy: it always occupied the same place at the end of his bookcase because it weighed heavily on the shelf and invariably caused the wood to bow if placed in the middle.

A fear gripped him suddenly and he felt paralysed by his own imagination as he tried to think of any rational reason why a book of such proportions would suddenly fall from the shelf without some sort of occult assistance.

Fulbert didn’t believe in ghosts but the existence of dark magic was practically undeniable when you lived in a place like Shinbone, where magicians plied their trade on every street corner and tales of wicked witches and evil sorcerers regularly crowded the noticeboards in the town square.

Fulbert continued to stare at the bookcase, feeling slightly more confident as the seconds passed and everything in the room remained still. At length, he managed to summon the courage to stand, wincing only slightly when the noise of his chair being pushed back invaded the comforting silence.

Groaning with the effort of his morbid obesity, Fulbert attempted to cross the room quietly but the floorboards creaked and yawned with every step of his passage. Arriving at the bookcase, he stooped with no small effort and no shortage of grunts and moans to retrieve the book, employing his knees as resting perches in an attempt to regain his balance.

The blade went through him so fast he didn’t even have time to blink.

Chapter Two

‘I’ve heard some crazy things in my time,’ said Hieronymous Blush, newly appointed magical liaison to the lugubrious town of Shinbone, ‘but I have to offer you my sincerest congratulations, as the story you’ve just told is quite the most inventive piece of tripe I’ve ever heard. It may well earn you a four-poster bed and an ensuite bathroom at the Local Asylum. I’m assuming you’ve just come from there?’

He roared with laughter but the outburst soon reduced to fits and giggles when he realised that nobody else in the room had even cracked a smile. His gaze travelled from the pirate-like visage of constable Lofty O’Keefe and across the typically blank stare of the town’s deceptively smart duty sergeant before coming to rest on the unforgettable features of the man who had reported the crime in the first place.

Fulbert Fairwhack didn’t move a muscle. He was staring at Blush with a look that suggested his expectations for the visit were not quite being fulfilled. Now that the liaison’s laughter had subsided, the two men found themselves sharing the sort of awkward silence that could easily be likened to the irresistible force meeting the immovable object: nobody blinked.

‘Oh come on, now,’ Blush said, finally lowering his glass and sweeping back a ragged lock of hair. ‘You’re NOT serious.’ He flashed a pleading look at the other occupants of the room. ‘You don’t genuinely expect me to investigate this? I’ll be a laughing stock!’ He shrugged and flicked the scroll on the table. ‘I’m not messing around, here: as soon as he fills out an incident report and I put my name to it, I’m finished in Shinbone. You might as well warm the horses up and get the carriage ready. They won’t even let me back in the town hall to get my pyjamas.’

Sergeant Erin Dare, always a pacifying force in situations of conflict involving her superior, fluttered her squid-inked eyelashes and unfurled a scroll in front of Blush. ‘I’m afraid your involvement in our daily work has already been assigned at the Law Courts by three Notaries. Any or all reported crimes must be taken seriously and investigated. It’s a done deal. Mr O’Keefe and I will act for the people of Shinbone and you are ordered to provide consultation on any magical involvement that might become apparent during the case.’

‘Oh, I am, am I?’ Blush countered, glaring back at her.

Erin smiled. ‘Says here you are. I think they’ve written ‘on pain of death’ underneath your name…but that could be an inkblot.’

‘…an inkblot?’

‘I doubt it.’

‘Fabulous.’

‘It DOES also say that if any magical connection is reported, you are in fact the officer in charge of the case. So it’s your lead, sir.’

‘But he’s clearly a NUTCASE.’

‘I take offence to that!’ Fulbert cried.

’So do we,’ Erin agreed. She and Lofty both folded their arms.

Blush rolled his eyes and put the glass to one side. Then, smoothing out the scroll with both hands, he took a quill from the miniature pot on the tabletop and began to scratch out a few notes. At length, he looked up at the morbidly obese man sitting opposite him.

‘Name?’

‘Fulbertson Fortescue Fairwhack the Fourth. My father put a Francis in there somewhere, yet I seldom use it unless I’m at a public function.’

‘We need your full name as it appears in the town records.’

‘Right. Hmm…in that case it would be…’

‘Fulbertson Francis Fortescue Fairwhack the Fourth?’

‘No.’

‘Fulbertson Fortescue Francis Fairwhack the Fourth?’

‘Afraid not.’

‘Fulbertson Fortescue Fairwhack Francis the Fourth?’

‘If only.’

‘WHAT then?’

‘It’s Fulbertson Fortescue Fairwhack the Fourth. Francis.’

‘Genuinely?’

‘As I stand before the gods.’

Blush took great care with the name, only wincing slightly when it ran to a second line.

‘Okay, Mr Fairwhack. Tell me, in your own words, what happened.’

Chapter Three

Fulbert straightened himself in his chair and took a deep breath, visibly shaken at the prospect of the deeply personal story he was about to relay.

‘Well, the fact is - hang on, I must get this right - the fact is, Mr Blush, I was murdered just after midnight.’

‘Murdered.’

‘Brutally murdered, yes. He came out of nowhere. I didn’t stand a chance.’

‘You-‘

‘Out of nowhere, as I said. The bastard. Blade in the dark. I’m guessing he was behind the curtain but it’s difficult to tell. There was a full moon shining in the room, but I’d been writing by candlelight mostly, so I reckon he’d have been cloaked in shadow as it were, waiting for his chance…waiting for me.’

Blush barely glanced at Erin or Lofty, but he could see they were both staring mirthlessly at each other.

‘And you yourself felt the knife go in?’

‘As sure as mustard. Right in my back: never experienced anything like it.’ He shook his head sadly, then frowned with the effort of recollection. ‘I tell a lie: my cousin speared me with a pitchfork when I was seventeen. Admittedly, it went front to back but it was the same sort of pain.’

Silence. Now there was a hint of suppressed laughter in the room.

Blush counted to ten under his breath, during which time he thought of several reasons why he hated working in the more remote, isolated towns on the western fringe of Illmoor: the inhabitants were invariably either suicidal doomsayers or delusional lunatics; occasionally both.

‘Look….I’m sorry to hear that, Mr Fairwhack. For the purposes of this investigation, would you mind taking off your shirt?’

Fulbert looked up, slightly startled. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Your shirt? I’d like to take a quick look at the injury.’

‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ The big man frowned and made a face. ‘Taking off my shirt would be pointless. I already told the officer, here: there’s not a scratch on me.’

‘Nevertheless, Mr Fairwhack, if you don’t mind-‘

‘I DO mind, though. I mind very much.’ Fulbert Fairwhack folded his arms defiantly. ‘There’s a killer on the loose out there, stalking people in the streets – and you’re sitting behind a desk asking the victim a bunch of bloody stupid questions when you should already be at the murder scene with a crack team of – hey – what did you do that for?’

Blush withdrew the finger that he’d poked into the chest of the big man and shrugged.

‘You’re right HERE,’ he snapped. ‘You’re clearly not a ghost and there’s barely a scratch on you: I think we’d have great difficulty getting a murder charge to stick. It doesn’t help when the victim is a corpse who walks into the Town Hall and REPORTS HIS OWN DEATH.‘

Fulbert shook his head in exasperation.

‘You’re not listening, Mr Blush. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times: he went for me tooth and claw but my shadow got in the way. It’s stone dead at the top of that tower just as surely as if I’d cut it loose myself. My own shadow, just lying there, slumped against one wall with a dagger sticking out! What’s more: I can prove it!’

He snatched up a lantern and raised it above his head so that everyone in the room could observe the near wall. ‘No shadow! No outline! No nothing! And that’s not all: I have this weird feeling in my gut: a sort of coldness…and it’s getting worse. I’m telling you, Mister Blush: I feel dead….I might not look it and I know I don’t sound it but I’m telling you that a part of me died tonight…and I want to know right now exactly WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?’

Blush stared at the red-faced giant and marvelled only slightly at the fact that he didn’t appear to be casting any shade whatsoever. Nevertheless, it was known to be quite a simplistic trick that anyone with a modified lantern could produce.

Blush nodded at the display.‘Extraordinary, indeed, Mr Fairwhack, and I promise you faithfully that myself and your dutiful town officers here will endeavour to look into the matter. Lofty! Erin! Please, show the gentleman out.’

Fulbert looked suddenly pained. ‘Y-you’re not coming with me right now?’ He exclaimed.

‘We assure you-‘

‘You can ASSURE me ALL you like. You’re just standing there staring at me: all three of you. Gloaters at the feast of my misfortune! You’re no better than the three ugly birds who sat on my window ledge, waiting for me to die!’

The smile slid off Blush’s face like hot butter running down a wall.

‘Birds?’ he asked slowly. ‘You didn’t say anything about birds.’

Fairwhack grimaced. ‘Why? What difference does that make?’

‘Three of them?’

‘Yes.’

‘Ugly, you say. Like vultures?’

‘Yes!’

‘They appeared before it happened or afterwards?’

‘Before!’

Blush glanced around the room as if suddenly very aware that Shinbone was a very long way from his safe and cosy office in the city.

‘We’ll come at once,’ he said, snatching up a coat from the back of his chair and heading for the door. I’m not going last five minutes in this town, he thought.

Chapter Four

The large, rambling house occupied a lonely hilltop at the end of a street that seemed to meander from one end of Shinbone to the other. It was an ugly property, a fact not really aided by the addition of several strange extensions that looked as though they had grown organically from the central mass of the main building. The largest of these was a tower with a curiously curved gable roof. Even though this unsightly pinnacle clearly constituted the building’s only fourth-floor room, it nevertheless took the group some ten minutes to reach the small wooden doorway that provided its only entrance.

Blush noted that they’d traipsed up no fewer than twelve flights of stairs and wondered, not for the first time, if the town’s enormous murder victim wasn’t some sort of crafty illusionist himself.

‘In there,’ Fulbert panted, dripping with sweat and gesturing, rather pointlessly, towards the only door. ‘But I’m staying put out here: I don’t need to see THAT again.’

Blush stepped forward and turned the handle, expecting a theatrical creak. He wasn’t disappointed.

The room beyond the door was remarkably bare save for a table, a chair, a collection of scrolls and a large assortment of lanterns that conspired with the moonlight to illuminate the chamber. Blush observed that the two most interesting features in the tower were the vast, circular window and the ebony-handled knife embedded in the wall. Then his gaze found a sizeable, body-shaped patch of shadow plastered to the floor beneath it.

‘I’m not quite sure what I expected,’ Blush whispered to his companions, crossing to the wall to get a better look at the scene. ‘But a real, honest-to-goodness blade was pretty low on the list. It’s a glass stiletto, too: the expensive sort that assassins use. It’s needle thin.’

Erin and Lofty glanced at each other.

‘I’ve got a few questions, me’self,’ said the constable.

‘You mean questions like why the dagger didn’t travel down the wall with the shadow as it hit the ground?’ Erin hazarded, frowning.

‘Or why it’s a real dagger at all,’ whispered Blush. He produced a cloth from his pocket and, covering the handle of the knife, slowly drew it from the surface. ‘I don’t understand why it isn’t – well, you know – in some way ethereal? Wraithlike? Translucent?’

‘Me neither,’ said Lofty. ‘I reckon there’s dark magic afoot here and no mistake. What’s the betting Fatty’s sold his mother’s chest hair for a cursed sword or something? Looks the sort.’

‘His mother’s CHEST HAIR?’ Erin flashed the officer a look of mild disgust. ‘Where do you get these ideas from?’

Lofty shrugged. ‘You know what it’s like round these parts. I’m always hearing about folk who come across big-nosed goblins in the woods and end up on the wrong end of a curse.’

‘I thought it was drinking curdled milk that got you cursed?’

‘Nah: it’s burying your dog at the crossroads after midnight that gets you cursed. Drinking curdled milk just gives you the shits.’

‘Will you two shut up!’ Blush snapped, waving the dagger in front of them. ‘Firstly, I’m trying to think and secondly, I tend to at least begin my investigations looking for a rational explanation that doesn’t involve country superstition, burying your dog at a crossroads or some other form of bloody witchcraft.’

Lofty stared down at the dark patch of shadow.

‘Yeah. Good luck with that,’ he said.

Blush held up the knife and examined it in the meagre light of the room.

‘That’s interesting,’ he whispered. ‘Look - it’s beginning to disintegrate.’ As the others moved in to examine the dissolving blade, Blush allowed his jovial mask to drop for just one second.

‘I’m assuming that there haven’t been any other notable crimes in Shinbone recently that I’ve not been made aware of?’

Lofty shrugged. ‘Define recently…’

‘Recently as in ‘prior to my arrival’ and before you ask, by notable crimes, I mean murder.’

Erin thought for a moment. ‘There hasn’t been any real crime in Shinbone for a very long time,’ she said. ‘There was a death just over a week ago, a man fell from a window…but he’d been drinking and that was ruled an accident.’

‘Nothing else?’

‘Nothing.’

Blush examined what was left of the blade and sighed.

Chapter Five

At roughly the same time that Blush was attempting to keep hold of an increasingly insubstantial murder weapon, Devon Moody was searching under a bed in his house at the other end of town. He’d been hunting a rat for nearly twenty minutes and had finally managed to corner the little beast in his elderly mother’s room. Now, all was quiet…but he fancied that he could hear a tiny scratching coming from a small hole in the wainscoting beneath the bed.

A sudden knock on the bedroom door made him start.

‘I told you to wait outside, mum!’ he shouted. ‘I won’t be long.’

He squinted at the tiny hole, trying to figure out if he should pull the bed away from the wall or if doing so would cause the rat to scurry further into the bowels of the building. It was an old house with ancient foundations and some botched improvements: if a tide of vermin got loose in the walls, then entire generations would pass before they’d be free of the infestation.

‘Devon? Devon! Are you still in there?’

He looked around. The door to the room was closed and wedged in place by the proximity of the sideboard, a precaution against his mother’s overzealous enthusiasm for aiming her heavy-duty rolling pin at moving targets (and missing).

He sighed, before shouting back: ‘I’ll be out in a minute!’

‘When?’

‘IN A MINUTE!’

‘Hurry up, will you? Your dinner’s nearly ready! I don’t slave over a hot stove to see a good meal go cold.’

Devon counted to five under his breath and used the bed to haul himself onto his feet. It was at this point that he first noticed a large, ugly bird perched on the window-frame. He stared at it for a time, finding himself almost transfixed by the black beady eyes that stared back at him.

‘Your dinner!’ His mother’s voice cut through the silence, shaking him from his reverie.

‘What is it, tonight?’ he asked, not daring to take his eyes off the creature.

‘Stoat.’

‘AGAIN?’

‘It’s done nice, this time. I got all the whiskers out.’

‘Oh, wow. Thanks, mum. I can’t wait.’

‘You’re a good boy.’

A sudden squawk caused Devon to glance in the direction of the dresser where, somewhat inexplicably, a second bird was now perched. It was just as large and just as unsightly as the first. He frowned and squinted at it. When another squawk indicated a third bird on the wardrobe, he suddenly found himself distinctly unsettled and decided that the bedroom was somewhere he no longer cared to linger, rat or no rat.

‘Your dinner!’

‘OKAY, MUM!’

Devon was just about to leave the room when he noticed a shadow moving very fast across the ceiling. Blinking at the sudden blur, he toppled backwards and gasped as a blade sank into the wall behind him: it vanished on impact. Before he could move or even summon a gasp, the bird on the windowsill flew across the room and landed on the wooden bedpost.

Devon barely had time to flinch before a second knife arced through the air towards him.

Chapter Six

‘It could be a Moonshade weapon!’ Erin cried triumphantly. ‘I’ve been reading about them for years: they were constructed in a forge of dark magic by an evil sorcerer and they dissolve in sunlight!’

Lofty scratched his head. ‘Er…’

‘A few things,’ Blush interrupted, holding the fistful of ashes that now constituted the remains of the murder weapon. ‘Firstly, it’s the early hours of the morning, so there IS no sunlight. Secondly, nothing is MADE OF DARK MAGIC: that’s not how dark magic works.’

Erin nodded, slightly embarrassed. ‘Oh. Right.’

‘I promise that I’ll give you a full magical primer once this nonsense is all over. Thirdly, those Moonshade stories have never been substantiated by any solid evidence: no ‘evil smith sorcerer’ was ever identified and no mystical dark magic forge was ever found. Besides, this dagger isn’t a result of sorcery: it’s a necromantic weapon.’

’Okay…’ Erin glanced sideways at him. ‘Why do I get the feeling that you already know exactly what we’re dealing with here?’

Blush shrugged. ‘I merely recognise the weapon, that’s all. Beyond that, I have no idea.’

‘Really? You genuinely don’t have a clue what’s behind all this?’

‘Not as far as you know.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

Blush took one last glance around the room and crouched beside the fallen shade that still lay on the floor like the drawing of a particularly demented child.

‘Shouldn’t we move that?’ Lofty asked.

Blush tried to hide a knowing smile. ‘You won’t be able to,’ he said, picking at the edge of the shadow with a pair of antique tweezers. ‘It would be like scratching at a drawing done in crayon. Bits of it would come off on your fingers but the thing as a whole would stay exactly where it is.’

‘Hang on a minute: how do you know-‘

‘That’s not important right now. Listen-‘ He turned to them with a grave expression on his face. ‘I need access to a library of esoteric books; grimoires, histories, anything concerned with religion and sacrifice that focuses on Shinbone and the surrounding area. Does the town have such a repository?’

Erin nodded. ‘The basement of the Town Hall has a small selection of such books: it’s not the sort of grand library you’d expect to find in Dullitch or Phlegm but it’s everything we’ve acquired since the town was founded.’

‘Good. Take me there. Immediately.’

He moved out into the corridor and turned his attention to Fulbert Fairwhack. ‘Please do not leave the house under any circumstances,’ he said and, reaching the foot of the staircase, added: ‘Whatsoever.’

Chapter Seven

A dark wind whistled through the streets as tendrils of fog wound their way through the lanes closest to the river. Blush followed his two companions closely but his mind was entirely elsewhere. When they finally reached the small hatch at the side of the Town Hall, he almost walked into them.

He peered down at his feet. ‘What’s this?’

‘The only way into the archives,’ Erin explained. ‘Sadly, the internal staircase has disintegrated and, besides, a lot of the actual basement is flooded.’

‘It’s not as unusual as it sounds,’ Lofty added. ‘‘A lot of Shinbone basements are flooded these days. They say we have the worst sewer system in Illmoor.’

Erin unhooked a rusty padlock from the hatch and hauled open the door. Then she reached for a lantern on the top step and employed a small tinderbox to light a flame inside it.

‘Let’s go,’ she said, leading Blush and Lofty down into the darkness.

The archive wasn’t a library as such, more a sort of evidence room containing a wide variety of books obtained during the operational lifespan of the town hall; books from bequeathed estates, books found in disused houses, books donated by nearby towns and cities. There were, in point of fact, books everywhere. Some were stacked in vertical towers while others formed actual streets and lanes that seemed to go on forever.

Blush moved among them, trying to see the extent of the room and realising that he couldn’t actually make out a wall or a doorway in any part of the basement. Every space between two books was occupied by another book: there wasn’t an inch of wasted territory in the entire room.

‘I don’t suppose it’s indexed?’ he asked, hopefully.

‘A lot of it isn’t,’ Erin admitted. ‘However, in your particular area of interest, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised: the selection isn’t exactly extensive.’

She walked to the end of a row of thin, ringed hardbacks and opened the door of a small cage that might once have formed part of a jail cell. Then she smiled and flourished a hand.

‘May I present to you….the Shinbone Magical Histories Archive!’

Blush found himself looking down at a small footstool containing three heavy leather volumes. He reached down and lifted the top volume into his arms. Comfortingly, it weighed a ton.

‘Take the other two up to my office,’ he said. ‘Then please give me some space: I’ll need an hour or so to go through them.’

A short while later, as the sun came up, Blush sat at a modified desk in the converted store room that had been set up for him in the Town Hall, pouring over all three books. One appeared to be largely useless and was a tome covering the life and works of a particularly dull magician during the reign of Lord Grumlock but the other two contained enough local folklore for a lifetime of study. Fortunately, Blush knew exactly what he was looking for and in this case, all he needed was to flesh out the possible evidence underpinning his suspicions. Shadow magic in itself wasn’t rare…but the appearance of the birds narrowed down the likely source to a few dark possibilities. Neither was particularly appealing in terms of confrontation but there was one root cause that he certainly didn’t want to find himself faced with…and, as he turned page after page of occult lore, he was left in little doubt that his worst fears were about to be realised: if this was the reason he had been sent to Shinbone, then the fools should have forewarned him that so much was at stake.

Blush fanned through the book until he found opposite pages containing two different versions of the same sigil. Pressing the book open, he took out a fresh quill and began to scratch the outline of the first sigil onto his hand. He forced the nib of the quill into the skin, drawing out a thin line of blood until the resulting scar was identical to the icon in the drawing. Then he closed his eyes, whispered a chant and pressed a finger into the wound, which healed and vanished beneath the skin. He repeated the operation with the remaining sigil on his other hand before returning to the original passage he’d been reading.

Marking his place in the text, he moved to his portable case and removed several pouches and vials from within, his attention vaguely attracted by some sort of disturbance in the corridor outside.

‘Mister Blush! MISTER BLUSH!’

The boy burst through the door, leaving Erin and Lofty both spinning in the hallway outside. ‘You have to come with me! Quickly! There’s been a kidnapping!’

‘What? WHERE?’

‘Across the road! Quick, Mister! You have to hurry! The old girl’s in a terrible state!’

Blush cursed under his breath and turned to his companions with a beleaguered scowl. ‘I thought you said this town had hardly any crime whatsoever?’

Erin shrugged. ‘It didn’t until you arrived.’

Chapter Eight

‘It took my son! IT TOOK MY SON!’

Blush put his hands together and offered a silent prayer to the gods, shutting his eyes in an effort to get the woman to say something, anything that wasn’t the same thing she’d been saying for over ten minutes.

‘Please, Mrs-‘

‘It took my son! IT TOOK MY SON!’

‘We know that. If you could just-‘

‘MY SON! IT TOOK HIM!’

‘That’s terrible…but what I’m trying to-‘

‘TOOK HIM, IT DID! MY SON!’

‘Yes…and if we are to have any hope of-‘

‘MY SON!’

‘Somebody slap her in the face! NOW! Before I do!’

Erin darted forward and drove an open palm across the hysterical woman’s right cheek, which would have been a very effective move had Lofty not had the same idea and attacked from the right. The woman took both slaps at the same time and went down like a sack of potatoes.

‘That escalated quickly.’ Blush sighed and rolled his eyes. ‘Do you think we can lift this poor woman and carry her to a chair or should we put the boot in while there’s an opportunity to finish her off?’

He glared at both his companions until they took the hint and carried their unconscious burden to a place she could recover in relative comfort.

‘When you’ve finished assaulting the victim, I want to try to figure out what happened here…and where that smell is coming from.’

He stepped to the foot of the stairs and peered up towards the first floor landing.

‘Shouldn’t we start down here, Boss?’ Lofty asked, moving through an archway that led to the kitchen. ‘The smell’s not so bad over this way.’

‘My instinct says that we move towards the smell,’ Erin suggested. ‘Besides, she did glance repeatedly over her shoulder as she was talking about her son. You know - back when she still had the power of speech.’

‘I wasn’t the only one who hit her,’ Lofty snapped, rolling his eyes.

Ignoring the spat in the hallway, Blush proceeded up the stairs and began to meander through all the rooms on the first floor. The house was pretty run down and cluttered with the sort of debris you get when at least one member of the family is a chronic hoarder. There were rooms full of furniture, rooms full of shabby antiques and even a candlelit room full of…..

‘Is that cheese?’ Lofty gasped, clapping a hand over his nose.

‘I wondered what the smell was…’

‘Who has an entire room full of cheese upstairs?’

‘Who has an entire room full of cheese?’

‘Old Mother Hacklow had a room full of cabbage.’

‘Yeah, let’s never go back there again. I was still washing off that smell three days after the fire.’

Blush peered around the room, frowning quizzically. ‘There are mousetraps everywhere,’ he observed. ‘They clearly have a major infestation.’

Erin rolled her eyes. ‘I’m not surprised.’

‘At least they’re trying to do something about it.’

‘I’d have started by not having a room full of cheese. It’s a known deterrent.’

‘What’s that, exactly?’

Erin and Lofty glanced in the direction Blush had indicated and found themselves face to face with….

‘Is that a cow made of cheese?’

‘It is!’

‘Did someone CARVE that?’

‘Looks like it.’

‘There’s a badger!’

‘And a goat!’

‘What IS this place?’

‘It’s SO weird.’

‘Is that half a chicken?’

‘Quiet.’

The pair turned to Blush, who had picked his way through the mousetraps to the centre of the room and was very carefully staring at the only wall in the room that wasn’t lined with some sort of cheese carving.

There was a human shadow outlined against the light cast by the oddly shaped candle in the corner of the room. Although it was frozen in a sort of hunched stance, it conspired to be both threatening and strangely terrifying at the same time, like those menacing spiders you find on the kitchen floor that play dead until you’re just about to nudge them with your foot.

Nobody moved.

Chapter Nine

Fulbert Fairwhack lay on a large cushioned window seat that afforded him a dismal view of a town waking up, a town he no longer felt to be a valuable part of. He found himself wondering (and not for the first time) whether he had become inadvertently embroiled in something he simply didn’t understand. On the one hand he had suffered some sort of extreme physical trauma that wasn’t exactly physical and on the other he had suffered some sort of extreme psychological trauma that wasn’t exactly psychological. He felt a mixture of grief, pain, anxiety and fear…yet somehow not a huge amount of any one emotion. It was almost like something had been taken from him that he couldn’t quite put his finger on and a strange apathy had taken its place.

Summoning all his courage, he forced himself to go back into the study and just stood there, staring down balefully at what remained of his shadow. He felt a deep and abiding sadness but one that felt strangely muffled and distant, almost as though the entire horrible business was happening to somebody else. He likened it to the sort of feeling you get when you hear a really unfortunate story or see somebody getting completely soaked in the rain outside while you are safe and cosy beside a warm hearth.

Guessing that the investigative team would be busy with the new development, he pushed aside the fear and revulsion he felt when staring at the shadow and tried very hard to think rationally about what had happened to him.

He had been targeted by an unseen enemy.

Targeted and attacked.

He frowned.

How many enemies do I have?

Struggling with the idea that he could be hated enough by anyone to come under the threat of assassination, he nevertheless tried to draw up a mental list of anyone who might conceivably have a reason to wish him such harm.

It was then that he realised two things in quick succession. Firstly, that he couldn’t think of a single disgruntled employee, an aggrieved relative or an accidentally acquired nemesis, real or imagined, in the entirety of his operational lifespan and secondly, that one of his fingers was disintegrating in front of him. Well, not exactly disintegrating…but fading.

He tried to scream but no sound came out.

Feeling no obvious pain but horrified at the sight, Fulbert yelped and snatched at the place where the finger had been. He could still feel a finger there physically…but visually there was only the outline of a digit. He closed his eyes and could only imagine a stump and a fast receding cloud of black ash peppering the floor.

To his horror, when he reopened his eyes Fulbert saw that the shadow on the floor had also begun to disintegrate. He opened and closed his mouth again in another effort to scream but still no sound would come out.

Panicked beyond belief and now fighting back tears, Fulbert drew himself up to his full height and he did what he always did in times of great stress and anxiety. He began to sing. He sang at the top of his not inconsiderable and yet entirely unpleasant voice, progressing through Baker’s Boy and Dead of Day all the way to Winter’s Night and The Five Frog Opera. Eventually, the terror abated and Fulbert was able to return his attention to the situation at hand (as it were).

Fulbert had always been a balanced and straightforward-thinking man who used logic and guile to solve the problems put in front of him and the one in front of him right now was certainly a brain teaser. Something intangible had been taken from him and yet he felt very strongly that something tangible had vanished along with it. If he could only remember what he’d been doing before he was attacked….

If he could only remembered what he’d been doing….

If he could only remember….

Fulbert looked up suddenly and peered around the study, trying to remember anything from the past day, the past week, the past year.

It was at this point that he finally found his voice and screamed. Then he dashed down the stairs and out of the house.

Chapter Ten

‘Is it….alive?’ Erin asked, feeling foolish as she reached down gingerly for her sword.

‘It’s just THERE,’ Lofty observed, stepping forward to examine the shape more carefully. ‘Do you think it’s from the woman’s son?’

‘Undoubtedly.’ Blush stepped forward and squinted at the wall. ‘She was a tall, heavy-set and just about identifiably human woman - that shape has the same build and a similar set to the shoulders. Look at the angles, look at the movement. The good news is that if these shadows are what I’m starting to believe they are then the son hasn’t been taken: he’s nearby.’

‘What do you believe the shadows are?’

‘Death Shades. They’re separated from the body following an enchanted attack…but they also foreshadow the death of - WATCH OUT!’

The shadow shifted. It was only the merest of twitches but the movement was enough to send Lofty stumbling sideways into a stacked mountain of cheese. Erin practically jumped out of her skin. Only Blush remained completely still.

‘How is it moving?’ Lofty managed, scrambling to his feet as the shape shot across the far wall and then changed direction.

‘It’s on the ceiling! Is it dangerous? How is it MOVING? The other one didn’t!’

‘It’s not dangerous…and it’s moving out of habit. Think of it like an echo or an aftershock. But we all need to get out! NOW! We don’t want it to disintegrate too quickly…and we definitely don’t want it to wander too far from the host!’

‘But the host has been kidnapped!’ Erin wailed.

‘Highly unlikely! Just GO! I’ll stop it leaving!’

Blush produced a ball of fire between his hands and was fixing his gaze determinedly on the point in the middle of the ceiling that the shadow seemed to be making for.

Erin and Lofty followed the magician’s instructions and ran headlong for the exit, colliding at the doorway in a tangled mess of limbs.

The shadow shot after them but Blush sent a fireball into the gap between the ceiling and the door, which hit its target like a thunderclap and exploded upon impact.

As the flames cleared, the shadow appeared again, sliding along the ceiling on the opposite side of the room from the door and vanishing into the corner behind a chest of drawers literally covered in cheese.

‘Can it cause any actual harm?’ Erin called, helping Lofty to his feet.

‘No,’ Blush snapped. ‘However, I don’t want it leaving the room.’

‘Where did it go?’ Lofty asked, stepping inside once again.

‘There,’ Blush indicated, pointing to the corner of the room. ‘I suggest we all vacate this chamber and close the door behind us.’

They proceeded outside. When the door had been closed with a satisfying click, Blush waved an admonitory finger in the face of Lofty O’Keefe.

‘Now just you stand guard here and redeem yourself for that mess downstairs,’ he snapped. Then he turned and proceeded to the second floor with Erin in tow.

They soon found themselves on a landing containing two doors. The one on the right yawned open as they approached: it appeared to contain a bed, a carpet and a worrying blood stain that seemed to be smeared across three-quarters of the room, ending at the foot of an attic window.

‘This looks promising,’ Blush said, stepping carefully around the stain as he moved across the room. ‘It seems to centre mainly around the bed. Something happened here and here and then appears to have ended over there. Let’s take a look outside.’

He moved to a point where the stain receded, tapped on the shattered remains of the attic window and peered outside.

‘Hmm….as I said before, I have a strong suspicion that whatever ‘took’ that woman’s son didn’t in fact take him at all. I think he’s still here somewhere. We need to keep searching the house, top to bottom. Also - there’s something on the roof: I’m going out to see what it is.’

‘Be careful.’

‘I’m always careful.’

‘You strike me as a man who is SELDOM careful.’

‘Keen observation. I can see why you’re a sergeant.’

Blush climbed through the broken window and disappeared from view. When he’d gone, Erin searched the rest of the floor but found nothing of note. The house was somewhat dilapidated and definitely in need of rebuilding in places but certainly concealed no further crime scenes if you excluded the state of the bedrooms. At length, she returned to the floor below, where Lofty was still moodily guarding the door to the shadow room.

‘Anything?’

‘Nope. If it’s still in there, it hasn’t come out.’

‘Right. I want to take a closer look at it.’

‘Where’s the boss?’

‘On the roof. We found a bloodbath upstairs.’

‘Corpses?’

‘None. Just a smear on the floor….but a big one.’

‘This is all pretty odd.’

‘You’re telling me. We’ve got a man with a dead shadow, a kidnap victim in a house with a living shadow, blood on the floors and no workable theory about what’s going on. It’s turning out to be a really interesting day!’

‘Glad you’re happy in your work. Want to swap for guard duty?’

Erin grinned at him sweetly. ‘No thanks: as I just mentioned, I want to go in there.’

Lofty looked awkward and uncomfortable.

‘I respect you, Sarge, you know I do…but Blush said-‘

‘I know what he said. Now grow a pair and let me in.’

Chapter Eleven

On the roof, Blush moved swiftly across the slates, casting out handfuls of a pink powder he’d produced from a small pouch at his waist. Wherever the powder landed, it glowed brightly before dissolving into the roof tiles, leaving no trace beyond a small curl of smoke. Every few feet, Blush would stop and stare at the tiles as if he expected to see something elsewhere but each time it quickly became apparent that whatever result he sought eluded him. He dropped onto a lower gable roof and repeated the process, pausing once to examine a large black feather he’d found wedged in a crack between two slates. Holding it aloft in one hand, he carefully produced a pinch of powder and sprinkled it liberally across the feather. It burst into flame.

Ah, Blush thought, it’s one of those: I thought so.

He wandered to the edge of the roof and, nearly slipping on a bunch of loose slates, peered over the gutter at the alley below. He wasn’t entirely surprised to see the body of a man lying amid a large heap of rubbish three floors below the overhang of the attic window.

He was just about to call for the assistance of his companions when the man suddenly moved a leg, emitting an audible groan.

Blush closed his eyes, muttered an incantation under his breath and then made a determined dash for the edge of the roof, swinging wildly from the gutter before shinning down the drainpipe. When he reached the alley floor, he clambered through the rubbish and knelt beside the fallen man. Then he produced a pill from his belt pouch and forced it gently between the victim’s cracked lips.

‘Don’t panic,’ he whispered. ‘I’m just going to make you a bit more comfortable while I try to assess how much damage you’ve done. There’s quite a lot of blood from a cut on your head and we can’t ignore whatever is going on in this area below the waist.’

The man murmured in reply but made no further movement, while Blush waited for the trademark emerald glow that signalled the healing process was beginning to take root.

‘There, there,’ the magician muttered, using a weakened grip to check for broken limbs and a tiny amount of astral projection to check inside his spine for signs of a fracture. Finding no alarming sites, he moved on to the poor man’s cranium and searched for any indications of trauma. However, aside from the psychological soup that passed for the standard Illmoorian psyche, he found nothing of note: nothing at all, in fact. The man had been exceptionally lucky.

He placed a palm on the victim’s forehead.

‘Awake,’ he commanded. ‘Awake…and remember.’

Devon Moody opened one eye and peered around him.

‘Wh-what happened?’ He managed. ‘Wh-where am I?’

Blush held his gaze. ‘You’re in an alley at the side of your house. It appears that you were attacked inside and then fell out of the window. You have been…fortunate.’

‘Fortunate?’ The man’s eyes boggled. ‘FORTUNATE?’

‘….for a given value of fortunate, yes.’

‘I don’t FEEL fortunate,’ he snapped. ‘I feel more like a man lying in an alley, the sort of man who was attacked and fell out of a window.’

‘The sense of humour is a good sign. What do you remember?’

‘Not much,’ he said. ‘Not enough.’

‘I’m sure that’s temporary. Can you tell me what you DO recall?’

‘MUM!’

‘Your mother is fine. She’s lying down inside. However, I don’t think she should see you until you smell a lot better and until you’re slightly more pleasing to the eye.’ He took a deep breath and waited for the man’s mild hysteria to subside. ‘Now…again….what do you remember?’

‘R-rats. I was looking for one underneath the bed.’

‘And?’

‘A-and I thought I’d found it, found a hole at least. Then I looked up and there was a bird, a great big ugly bird.’

‘Your mother?‘

‘How DARE you!’

‘No!’ Blush held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. ‘I meant where was she during all this? Did she see the creature, too?’

‘Oh. Right. I’m sorry. No, she was outside.’

‘And the bird flew at you? Attacked you?’

‘There was a knife. A flash. Corner of my eye but I saw it. I’ve always had quick reflexes. Known for it. Anyway, I dodged the knife and it hit the wall. I went down hard: smashed my head. The bird went crazy. Then I finally got to my feet, saw more of ‘em.’

‘Two more?’

‘Yes! They were all over the place! One on the window, one on the wardrobe, one on the dresser! I managed to get to my feet and suddenly there’s this shadow coming at me…and another knife! This one goes right through me: I knew I’d been hit but I couldn’t feel anything. I fell over so many times as I made for the window, crashed into stuff, and kept going. I just charged in the end and dived through the glass. I thought I was dead either way. I feel different, though….I feel odd.’ Looking up, he seemed to see Blush properly for the first time. ‘I recognise you! Y-you’re that magician from the city. Do you know what’s happened to me?’

Blush sighed, nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I have a strong feeling that I do. Firstly, let’s try to get you back on your feet…and then we’ll reunite you with your poor mother. After that, I’ll try to make sense of things for you. All of you.’

The man frowned. ‘All of us?’

‘You’re not the first victim. Now keep still and don’t move: I’ll fetch some help.’

Chapter Twelve

The door creaked open and Erin peered through the gap, trying to ignore the strong aroma of cheese that immediately assaulted her senses.

‘Anything?’ Lofty asked, suddenly nervous of the silence.

‘Shh.’

‘What?’

‘Be quiet!’

‘It’s a shadow, Erin. What’s it going to listen to?’

She quickly withdrew her head and closed the door again, turning to Lofty with an angry scowl.

‘It shot across the room before Blush cast that fireball, so it clearly perceives us in some sense. I’m just suggesting that we don’t take any unnecessary chances. Agreed?’

‘Fine! I didn’t want to go in there in the first place.’

‘Right! So SHHH.’

She opened the door, stepped through as quietly as the floorboards would allow and beckoned Lofty to follow her inside.

The room was exactly as they’d left it: scorch marks covered the ceiling and cheese covered practically everything else. Her gaze was immediately drawn to the dresser but there was no sign of a shadow around it and no obvious shapes on the candlelit walls.

‘What are you doing?’ Lofty prompted, forcing his voice into a reluctant, rasping whisper. ‘Blush said to wait here!’

‘I know…but he doesn’t always see the bigger picture and, besides, I’m sick of listening to him all the time. I really want to know what’s going on here and it feels like he’s never going to front up and tell us. I remember the first case I saw like this one. There was a sort of residue left behind where….’

She crouched down and began to examine the floor, then started to crawl around on her hands and knees, looking up now and then to check for any signs that the shadow was about to re-emerge.

Lofty stayed close behind her, shifting his attention between the corner of the room and the door, where he continually expected Blush to reappear at any moment.

‘It must still be there,’ he continued. ‘Look! I think I can see the edge of it!’

Erin wasn’t paying attention to him: instead, she was using a small pair of tweezers to pick at something wedged between the floorboards.

‘What’s that?’

‘A feather…I’m taking this AND I’m getting a sample of that shadow.’

‘You think a FEATHER is significant?’

‘It’s definitely significant if it came from a solid creature and not from a phantom…’ she said, proceeding towards the corner of the room and removing a dagger from her belt pouch, ‘…and you should probably keep watch for Blush: if he finds us in here, he’s likely to-’

‘-strongly advise against scratching at the shadow with a blade, as I’m now quite certain that doing so will begin to kill the gentleman lying outside in the alley.’

Erin looked up and Lofty practically jumped out of his skin as Blush appeared in the doorway.

‘The shadow isn’t dangerous,’ he said, definitively, ‘…and in any case it will soon fall still and fade. When that happens, the victim who was once its host will begin to die.’

‘Y-you found him?’

‘Yes. He crashed through the window during the attack and is now lying on a crumpled heap of refuse beside the house. He’s comfortable and not in any immediate danger but we have to help him.’

Erin nodded. ‘So you DO know what’s behind all this?’

‘Yes…I do….but I’m afraid in this instance the knowledge won’t help us. We might have our work cut out dealing with this enemy alone.’

As if in reaction to the statement, the shadow suddenly emerged from behind the dresser, slid up the wall and flowed onto the ceiling. It was slower now, more ponderous in its movement. Erin and Lofty watched it but the imminent threat it seemed to pose earlier was definitely diminished by the magician’s calm assurances.

Erin turned all her attention to Blush. ‘If we’re going to stand a chance against ANY criminal mastermind at work in Shinbone, you’ll need to start sharing some of this knowledge that apparently made you such an indispensable aid to Lickspittle!’

Blush gazed at her levelly…and sighed.

‘The mastermind behind these attacks is an occultist of the sort we in the trade would describe as a Shadow Necromancer. He or she will have conjured something called a Vauntiss Bird to aid them in what I am certain will turn out to be a pre-determined series of sacrifices. The physical manifestation of these creatures is something akin to a vulture…but it’s more of a harbinger in spirit: a sort of cosmic curse.’

Erin frowned. ‘In what sense?’

’They feed on despair, draining life from their victims in quite an unusual way.’

‘Where did they come from?’ Lofty hazarded. ‘Are they flesh and blood? Can they be killed?’

‘Legend says they were created by the snake god Vyss as a dark gift for its followers. As that fact indicates major involvement from the deity in question, we might actually be in an awful lot of trouble.’

Lofty and Erin just stared at him.

‘So that’s why they called you in,’ she said. ‘How do you even know all that?’

‘It’s my job.’ Blush shrugged. ‘I need to get a message to the magical council as soon as possible,’ he went on. ’Identifying the threat is one thing but foiling it is way outside my pay grade and certainly beyond anything I’ve dealt with in the past. We will need experienced help to stop these attacks and bring this esoteric criminal to justice. In the meantime, we take action….’

He straightened himself to his full height and still, rather frustratingly, found himself unable to look down on both of his companions.

‘Lofty, I want you to go to the nearest tavern and round up a group of the toughest mercenaries you can find. A real bunch of bastards, if you’ll excuse my language.’

The constable nodded. ‘Only problem being that nothing’s open yet and in any case, the tavern doesn’t get really busy until lunchtime. Er…also, I don’t really DO taverns, sir.’

Blush glowered at him. ‘I’m sorry if that sounded like a suggestion, Lofty,’ he said. ‘It was, in fact, an order. Go to the nearest tavern and wait until it opens, even if you have to stay there until lunchtime. THEN find a group of mercenaries for me.’

‘What should I do?’ Erin asked, resigned to the fact that none of them was going to get much sleep.

‘You can come with me and together we’ll get Mr Moody to the town hall. Once we’ve patched him up, I’ll contact my superiors and ask for some assistance. Oh - and while we’re on the subject of men who are mysteriously attacked and fall from windows, where did that other death take place? The non-murderous one involving the drunk fellow?’

‘Edge of Fargone Street…but that was an accident!’

‘Just asking.’

Blush fastened his coat and made for the stairs.

‘Let’s not linger here,’ he called back, impatiently. ‘We have little time to lose.’

Chapter Thirteen

When they arrived at the side of Devon Moody, he wasn’t quite the man Blush had left in the alley just a few minutes before. He was somehow…a lot less.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ Erin asked, crouching beside Moody and trying to rouse him from his slumber without actually shocking him awake. ‘He looks REALLY off colour.’

‘Wouldn’t you, if you’d escaped death, fallen out of a window and landed three floors below on a rubbish dump?’

‘No - I mean REALLY off colour. He looks completely bloodless.’

When the man finally opened his eyes, he didn’t seem to know where he was for a moment. Then the recollection clearly dawned and he attempted to scream. Watching his mouth twist and warp in silent exclamation was one of the most terrifying things Erin had ever seen.

Blush moved behind Moody’s head and slid his hands beneath the fallen man’s shoulders to lift him, motioning Erin to get his feet.

‘I-I can stand on my own,’ Moody protested, struggling slightly.

‘I doubt that in the extreme,’ Blush said, nevertheless releasing his grip and stepping back.

‘Let us just help you a little,’ Erin added, reaching for Moody’s hand and trying not to wince as he scrambled clumsily onto his feet.

Moody straightened himself and frowned. ’Where’s mum?’

‘She’s inside,’ Erin said, sharing a glance with Blush. ‘She had a bit of a shock when you went missing, so a colleague and I laid her on the sofa for her to get some rest.’

‘Th-thank you,’ Moody managed. ‘I’d like to go inside and see her, if that’s okay. Why - why do I feel funny? The - the knife DID miss me, didn’t it?’ He suddenly searched his body for any sign of a wound.

‘You’ve had a sizeable shock yourself,’ Blush said, staring at the man with a concerned expression. ‘Let’s get you back inside and I’m sure you’ll feel better once you’ve had a cup of tea and a lie down.’

Behind Moody’s back, Blush caught Erin’s line of sight and made a face, indicating that they needed to have some sort of conversation outside the man’s earshot.

Despite a lot of moaning and complaining and no small amount of physical difficulty, they managed to get Moody into a chair on the opposite side of the room to the peacefully snoring form of his mother.

‘Don’t leave the house,’ Blush warned, getting right in Moody’s face to make sure he got the man’s attention. ‘Do you hear me? Don’t leave the house under ANY circumstances.’

‘Why do you keep telling people that?’ Erin whispered as they made their way to the front door.

Blush sighed. ‘It’s complicated and I’m not one hundred per cent certain that I have all the answers yet but I promise you that you will know the second I’m sure. In the meantime, get back to the Town Hall. If this whole situation is what I think it is, there will be one more murder today. Ideally, we will find out who’s behind all this before that happens…but if there is another attack then the Town Hall will be the first place you’ll hear about it.’

Erin nodded. ‘Where are you going?’

‘I need time to think,’ Blush muttered, ‘and I need to work out if there’s any way I can stop what’s likely to happen next.’

Chapter Fourteen

Blush walked out of the house and into a fine drizzle, surrounded by a whirlwind of his own thoughts. He fancied that he saw a large bird perched on the chimney top across the street from the Moody residence but the more he stared at the thing, the more he was certain it was just an ugly statue. Putting his head down against the rain, he soldiered on. He’d decided against heading directly back to the town hall as he had so much to think about and once the day was truly underway and word of the attacks got out, then everything in Shinbone would change. Research in these matters was a vital ingredient of solving the whole problem but when it came to sorcery, there was always a mind behind the whole thing; a will of intention driving the chaos. When it came to dark magic, you were nearly always looking for the weak and weary, some downtrodden soul with the sort of spite needed to sit in a darkened room muttering incantations and scratching chalk on a candlelit floor. Either that or…..

‘Someone defending themselves from attack,’ Blush spoke the words out loud, buttoning his coat and squinting up at the sky as the rain sheets settling over Shinbone began to intensify. He noticed for the first time how dark and menacing the streets of the town actually were: how close together the houses were built, how incredibly claustrophobic the entire place was. He suddenly yearned for a placement elsewhere: Legrash, Phlegm, Shadewell, anywhere with some space between the houses.

It was at this point that he saw the bird: a huge, ugly monstrosity perched precariously on the steeple of a small chapel at the end of the road. No sooner had he set eyes on the creature than it took off. Grimacing against the rain, Blush hurtled after it, skidding down the cobbles as it suddenly veered in a wild arc and diverted down a narrow lane. He slipped again and fell, rain now sluicing off his forehead in a veritable torrent of heavy splashes.

He peered up at the misty gloom swirling in the streets and closed his eyes, trying to get a lock on the sudden, inescapable urge he had to panic. The bird was now nowhere to be seen but in pursuing it he now found himself in an area of the town he had never seen before, a network of narrow alleys containing rows and rows of tightly packed cottages that almost seemed to huddle together for warmth.

Then he felt the magic: it surged up through the soles of his feet and began to curl around his legs in a lazy pulse of gently throbbing energy.

Somewhere very close by, someone was performing a spell…and in a town like Shinbone, the culprit could be anything from a wizard practising some armchair levitation to a demented necromancer summoning a dark god. As Blush tried to concentrate on the source and proximity of the magical tide, his fingertips began to tingle and his hair stood on end. The residue of a spell wave so strong wasn’t hard to identify, particularly if the caster happened to be close by…and this one was.

He closed his eyes and began to proceed. Approximately halfway along the row of squat cottages, he suddenly turned ninety degrees to his left and headed off down a second alley, only to emerge in a completely new lane.

He closed his eyes and turned again, taking step after step on instinct alone.

As he passed a doorway, he noticed a brass plaque outside a particularly small and uninviting house at the end of the street. It said:

Barber Surgeon (Teeth)

Blush frowned at the sign, trying to decide whether he’d had a toothache before this moment and simply not noticed or whether the sight of the words had initiated feelings of pain on the edge of his gum line.

Nevertheless, the pain was now acute. He reached a t-junction and paused, trying to remember the quickest way back to the town hall before changing his mind and arriving back at the little door.

Three knocks drew a reactive noise from somewhere beyond the portal. The sound of shuffling footsteps grew steadily closer until a latch was lifted and Blush found himself face to face with a short but formidable-looking old woman in a plain grey dress with what looked like a blood-stained tea-towel slung haphazardly over one shoulder.

‘I have a toothache,’ he said, feeling that he was far too busy for such things and that the statement was therefore rather redundant.

The woman glared at him but nodded.

‘I don’t think I had one before I saw your sign,’ he continued.

‘You did,’ she said, looking him up and down. ‘You just didn’t notice it. Same thing with your back: you probably haven’t noticed that either.’

Blush winced as a spasm ran through his lower spine. He vaguely remembered feeling uncomfortable in the chair when Fulbert Fairwhack was describing the attack but hadn’t given much thought to it.

‘Can you do something?’ He asked. ‘About the teeth, I mean? Quickly. I’m working on a case and I don’t really have time to dawdle. Is it a painful procedure? How much will it cost?’

The old woman gazed levelly at him. ‘That’s a lot of questions…but yes, I can. Yes, I know. Fair enough. Yes, it is. Five gold.’

Blush frowned, then nodded and followed her inside.

He soon found himself in a tiny room at the back of the crone’s kitchen, staring up at a wall that was neatly divided into two distinct sections: one containing what looked like a wide variety of torture instruments and one containing a shelf supporting a single bottle. A small, hand-written sign pinned to the front of the shelf read: ‘Annie’s Thetic.’

Blush frowned at the sign, finding that the glaring error did little for his confidence in the upcoming procedure.

‘Who was Annie?’ he said jovially, pointing at the shelf.

The crone sniffed. ‘My sister. Now hold still.’

‘Wait! Don’t I get some of that?’

‘The medicine? That’s for afters.’

‘But anaesthetic is supposed to be used BEFORE treatment! To numb the pain.’

She stared at him. ‘Well, I never. Forty years I’ve been in this trade and you learn something new every day. Now shut up and keep still or you’ll need a lot more help than that bottle is likely to give you.’

The old woman forced a handful of grimy fingers between Blush’s trembling lips and inserted a wooden wedge into his mouth.

‘Besides,’ she said, now that he was unable to reply. ‘You didn’t come here just to fix a toothache. You came for help with the attacks.’ She grimaced through a gummy mouth that contained surprisingly few of her own teeth. ‘You can pretend to be out of your depth with those two idiots they’ve got runnin’ around after you but we both know why you’re really here.’

Blush stared at her while she made her way to the shelf and began to uncork the bottle.

‘The problem you’ve got, Mister Magician, is that you’ve walked into the middle of a situation and you’re used to walking in at the beginning of one.’

Blush remained uncomfortably silent as the contents of Annie’s Thetic were poured all over his gums, triggering a strangely euphoric high that nevertheless rendered him quite inert.

’My family have lived in the Western Woods for generations: when my great-great-grandmother settled in what is now called Shinbone it was nothing more than a few cottages huddled together on a hillside. This was all goblin land, originally: did you know that?’

Blush tried and failed to shake his head.

‘Tunnelled everywhere, evil little buggers.’ She shrugged. ‘To be fair, though, we humans did what we always do when we arrive in new places. We killed. We burned. We drove ‘em underground and then we sent raiding parties down there to clear ‘em all out. Only the gods know what horrors they left down there.’

She stood back and examined Blush for a second. ‘I know what you’re thinking, Mister Magician…but you’re wrong. I’m nothing to do with what’s happening here in Shinbone. I will tell you this, though. Them that calls on the aid of dark gods always cast the longest shadows…and the man you’re looking for is indebted to something that has been growing beneath this town for a long time, gathering power…and soon there won’t be anywhere to hide from it: you mark my words. Now bite down. Hard.’

A series of muffled but surprisingly vocal screams echoed around the room, the street and a fair portion of downtown Shinbone.

‘You’re all done,’ she said, standing back and examining her handiwork, ‘and you just remember what I said. Find the REASON behind this madness…and you’ll find MADNESS behind the reason. Now go talk to those wizard bosses of yours, ‘cause they set you up here, good and proper.’

Blush nodded vaguely and staggered down the corridor. By the time he left the house, he wasn’t entirely certain whether he’d been cursed, enchanted or simply fleeced for a handful of gold…but at least his back felt marginally better and the toothache was gone.

Chapter Fifteen

A flash of lightning lit up a sky that was working hard to keep the morning at bay. In an alley beside the town’s only bank, a small and impossibly insipid figure peeled itself away from a brick wall and moved to block the path of a fast approaching shape that turned out to be Constable Lofty O’Keefe.

‘I don’t really feel comfortable doing this anymore,’ he said, trying and failing to light the stub of a cigar in the rain. ‘It was different before: easier. Now there’s this new feller from Dullitch and he’s not the same as the rest at Town Hall. I know Erin is no dummy but it was far easier to run rings around her when she was on her own. This Hieronymous Blush is no fool.’

‘Do you want the gold or not?’

‘YES.’

A small pouch was dangled from a bony arm as a dumpy little toad of a man leapt from behind the tall, curly-haired woman who now stood in the middle of the alley.

‘Ha! I knew the crooked bastard would take our gold, Mistress Soames: I knew it! I knew it! I KNEW IT!’

She peered down at the bewigged town clerk at her side and raised a finger to her lips. ‘Quiet, Elboid! We’re conducting business here.’

‘Yes, Mistress Soams!’

Lofty watched the exchange between the pair, wondering (and not for the first time) how they ever co-existed. The idea of having such a jobsworth in the role of Town Clerk was a problem all by itself: the fact that he was obsessed with the editor of Shinbone’s only newspaper and shared an office with the woman was beyond a nightmare. These days, they often appeared with unerring accuracy wherever there was bad news to be seized upon and they always came as a pair, albeit in one dreadful package.

‘Well?’ the little man screeched, jumping up and down on the spot with his wig flying all over the place and looking to all intents and purposes like a rabid puppy. ‘Tell Mistress Soames all the details and she’ll give you the money!’

Lofty sighed, trying and failing to avert his gaze from the pouch. ‘How much is in there?’

‘The usual.’

‘This situation is bigger than usual.’

Soames looked momentarily disappointed and appeared to consider raising the stakes before her diminutive companion stepped forward once again.

‘Is it bigger than a whiskey?’ He sneered, reaching up and tentatively lifting the pouch from her fingers before dangling it under the Constable’s nose. ‘More importantly, is it bigger than….five whiskeys?’

Lofty snatched the pouch angrily and fought an insanely powerful urge to deck the little maggot.

‘Two attempted murders in the early hours of the morning,’ he said, somewhat reluctantly.

‘Attempted?’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘I expected more.’

‘That’s not my problem.’ He shrugged. ‘I have to go now: I’m waiting for the pubs to open.’

‘Aren’t you always?’

Lofty grimaced at her. ‘This time it’s work…’

‘Sounds like a job you’re more than qualified for.’

‘GET OFF MY BACK, LADY.’

‘Very well,’ she said, producing a small scroll of parchment and a quill. ‘So, attempted murder suggests both victims are still alive?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘That doesn’t sound like ATTEMPTED murder,’ Elboid screeched, waggling a provocative finger under Lofty’s nose.‘That sounds like the victims are still dying.’

’I didn’t SAY that.’

‘Is there magic involved?’ The little man cried, excitedly. ‘Dark magic?’

‘That’s all you’re getting,’ Lofty finished. He turned and walked back down the alley. ‘And don’t even THINK about printing anything until tomorrow: you’ll cause complete chaos.’

The two companions watched him go. Then they shared a glance and smiled.

‘I want to know everything there is to know about this Hieronymous Blush,’ Soames muttered, turning to Elboid and snaring him with her most persuasive smile. ‘He will be sending reports back home and receiving instructions from his superiors in the city. We must intercept those documents at any cost. Do you understand me?’

‘Yes, Mistress Soames!’

She clapped her hands together and grinned. ‘First of all, go put some pressure on the Sergeant: you know how easily she loses her cool….she’s bound to do something wild and unpredictable.’

Chapter Sixteen

Blush peered into the scrying orb and concentrated on the summoning distance that he was required to close to make the connection. It was all about distance with scrying: a distant receiver was so much more difficult to reach than a receiver stationed somewhere nearby. In this case, the receiver was many, many miles away and the magical energy required was considerable. Nevertheless, Blush managed to find the resources he needed and a stern face glared back at him through the glass.

‘It’s EARLY,’ said Quaris Sands, senior member of the Wizards’ Guild. ‘…and I was sleeping, a filthy habit I seem to have picked up, recently.’

Blush took a deep breath. ‘We have a necromancer in Shinbone,’ he said. ‘Two confirmed attacks, shadows separated from bodies, flesh disintegrating, memory loss, three large birds that resemble the avatars of - well - something I shouldn’t need to outline to you. When I took this job, you assured me that the evil at work here was moving at a glacial pace and that I would have time to settle in and get the lay of the land before anything started. I’ve barely unpacked.’

Sands squinted at him through the haze inside the glass but said nothing. For a man who never ran dry of words, the lack of an immediate reply was concerning.

‘If I’m right,’ Blush continued, trying to keep the resentment from his voice, ‘this situation involves a dark god the name of which I cannot speak during magical convocation…meaning that I am hugely out of my depth here and meaning that you and the council have effectively dropped me into a meat grinder. If you want to stop the threat escalating to engulf the entire region, then I’m going to need some help.’

The foggy miasma around Sands’ image in the glass thickened and swirled but this turned out to be the result of pipe smoke and not any sort of conjured interference. Still, the old wizard remained silent.

‘I know we’re taught to be self-sufficient,’ Blush confirmed in an effort to underline the irritation he felt, his voice tightening slightly. ‘And I’m sure you sent me here following my success with the incident on Lickspittle…but these are exceptional circumstances and I would like to know exactly why I have been placed in this position. An entire army of wizards would be hard pushed to battle what’s coming.’

Sands removed the pipe from his mouth and blew out a thick curl of smoke.

‘The problem is that Shinbone isn’t exceptionally high on the council’s list of priorities,’ he said, regretfully. ‘We have similar and far more advanced situations in Legrash, Spittle, Phlegm and even here in Dullitch. In the case of Shinbone, the only resource we could spare to save the town was you. If all else fails, we’ll simply have to move in and clean up the mess.’

Blush gritted his teeth and took a breath before replying. ‘Mess might be something of an understatement, considering the god in question. Are you saying that you cannot give me any help whatsoever?’

Sands took a long draw on his pipe. ‘Let’s work on prevention instead of a cure,’ he said. ‘The Death Shadow can only be cast when a Vauntiss bird is present but the caster or casters themselves would need to be within a short distance. Lone caster?’

Blush nodded. ‘That’s my theory.’

‘It usually is. Keep your eyes peeled. Don’t overlook the downtrodden and don’t expect the suspect to step out of the shadows easily. There is always a story with those the dark gods use as pawns: find the story and you’ll find your culprit. In the meantime, I will get the guild to draw a Boundary of Leeching around Shinbone: once the town and its environs are cut off from the rest of Illmoor in magical terms, you’re on your own.’

‘I don’t doubt it.’ Blush put his hands together in mock gratitude. ‘Is there anything else I should be looking for?’

Sands nodded and his expression became more severe.

‘An imperfect black bodied sphere. A misshapen, floating orb that will occupy some sort of plinth when it isn’t active. Smash it if you can, in its latent state. If it’s active, attempt to submerge it in water to render it inert. In any case, find the thing. Quickly.’

Blush swallowed a few times and nodded. Then a horrible thought struck him, a thought he was barely able to contemplate. ‘How many sacrifices would be needed for this dark god to manifest fully….in person, as it were?’

Sands shook his head sagely. ‘Do not concern yourself with such things for now: an opportunity like the one you’re suggesting would require a great conjunction of circumstances and a particular alignment of stars.’

‘….but if it was the right time…and the stars were aligned…’

‘….then your necromancer would require five sacrifices, all by shadow, all by the blade.’

Chapter Seventeen

The Wounded Goat was one of the most popular taverns in Shinbone but there wasn’t a lot of competition for the title. In fact, the only other tavern in the town had been converted into a private cottage over a year ago and often drew more customers by accident than the Wounded Goat managed on purpose. Admittedly, the old man who’d bought the cottage occasionally left the original pub sign outside and often sold people drinks from his own stash at extortionate prices but tavern life in Shinbone wasn’t exactly at an all-time high.

The landlord of this particular establishment was a former dealer in rare and precious stones who never stopped reminding his few regulars about the fact that he used to be known as The Jack of Diamonds before his luck had run out.

‘I blame the smoking ban,’ he said, when Lofty expressed dismay at how empty the place was. ‘First, the wizards left, then all the rogues and finally even the barbarians. Now of a morning, there’s generally just me, Joe and Kelly.’

Lofty followed the landlord’s gaze and gaped in amazement.

‘Aren’t they underage?’

‘Probably. They don’t smoke, I know that.’

‘Brilliant. Well, we’ll ignore the fact that I’m the local CONSTABLE and I promise to overlook such a blatant disregard for the laws of underage drinking…IF you can point me in the direction of at least one reliable group of mercenaries still operating in the area. Oh, and don’t expect me to buy a drink: you know I’m recovering.’

The landlord sighed, rubbed an old towel over the counter and raised an eyebrow. Then he sniffed a few times, considered his options and smiled.

‘Good morning, officer,’ he said, as if seeing Lofty for the first time. ‘What can I get you?’

‘It’s five months for serving underage customers, as I recall.’

‘Just the one beer, is it?’

‘Five months in Kraken Lake, I think it was.’

‘Can’t recall a single mercenary round these parts. They’re like rocking horse shit. We seem to live in enlightened times. Bread and cheese with that pint?’

‘Only the gods know how many people die at Kraken Lake every day. It’s more like a bloodbath up there than a prison.’

‘Unfortunately, the lack of mercenaries means we don’t open the kitchen until lunchtime but I’m sure I could rustle up a cheese sandwich…’

‘There’s talk of converting one of the smaller recreation grounds into a graveyard.’

‘That would solve the overcrowding, certainly. I hear the food at Kraken Lake is so good these days that there’s a three-month waiting list to get in.’

‘The waiting list to get out is even longer…’

They locked eyes with each other and neither man flinched. Unfortunately, the landlord was a half-elf, so ten minutes later Lofty was sitting down to a full breakfast with absolutely no idea how he was going to work his way through six pints of ale.

‘I’ll contact some roughs that used to do jobs for me on the weekends,’ the landlord muttered as he laid out the feast. ‘They’re an unusual bunch to be sure but I sent them on a few risky missions back in the good old days and they always came up with the goods.’

Lofty glared at the stacked plate in front of him.

‘I have your word?’ he prompted.

The landlord shrugged and peered despondently around the inn. ‘Sure: it’s about all I’ve got left.’

Chapter Eighteen

Carissa Soames watched the printing presses stamp out multiple editions of the morning news sheets and fervently wished they worked faster. The only problem with living in a town where nothing even remotely exciting ever happened was that people weren’t exactly falling over each other to get their hands on the news.

Nevertheless, things were changing.

In the last few weeks, reports of strange events had begun to crop up in the marketplace and rumours of a growing menace were being whispered about in the taverns. Of course, none of this was enough to form the flesh and bones of a good headline…but in the short space of time she’d had at the helm of the press, she’d certainly done her best.

Man Targeted in Cultist Witch Hunt was actually about a jobsworth who complained about a haircut he’d received so many times that the barber’s wife snuck into his house and drew rude pictures all over the walls in chalk.

Dark Magic Revealed As Source of Poisonings, in fact, concerned a soup kitchen where a woman with a rather unfortunate pointed hat and a very bad head cold had sneezed into a tureen and caused a small outbreak of coughing and sneezing.

As news went, headlines like these weren’t exactly gold dust. The really frustrating thing about the news was that you couldn’t actually make it up from scratch; you had to have some kernel of truth to extrapolate from.

Ancient and Long Dormant Volcano Stirs was a great headline as long as you had a decent-sized hill and enough distant rumbles to make the thing vaguely plausible. You couldn’t use the same headline if the land were as flat as an ice rink. You had to have something…

…and now there was something.

Soames stepped up onto the little platform that gave her the best view of the presses and peered down at the headlines as they were printed.

DOUBLE ATTEMPTED MURDER IN SHINBONE

Dullitch Magician called in as officials insist both victims remain alive…for now.

Before reaching to snatch up the first copy off the press, Carissa beckoned to the tiny figure of Elboid, who was frantically washing a breakfast bowl in the sink.

‘Take this fresh one to Erin Dare at the Town Hall,’ she said, retrieving the paper and waving it in the air. ‘Use it to put some pressure on them. Tell her that the people have a right to know what’s going on…and remind her that we go to press officially at lunchtime. Can you do that?’

‘Yes, Mistress Soames!’

‘Don’t dawdle, there’s a laddie!’

‘Right you are, Mistress Soames!’

She watched as Elboid tripped over several times en route to the door and wondered exactly where he’d originally sprung from: he had the look of a man who was not so much birthed as hatched and that flouncy wig he wore looked as if it concealed more than just a lack of hair. Nevertheless, he was incredibly useful and he would invariably take to any given requested task like a dog fetching a stick.

She had high hopes for him.

Chapter Nineteen

When Blush finally returned to the town hall, Erin was waiting for him with a concerned look on her face.

‘Our victim is here…and he’s lost a finger.’

‘Who?’

‘Fairwhack!’

‘I told him to stay in the house!’

‘I know! But he says his flesh just disintegrated right in front of him.’

Blush rolled his eyes. ‘It will disintegrate a lot faster now he’s been directly exposed to sunlight!’

Erin tried to mask her horrified expression with a hand clapped across her mouth. ‘C-can we do anything for him?’ she managed.

‘Not really. Keep him in one of the back offices and make sure he doesn’t leave again. Anything else?’

She frowned, then lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, indicating the small office visible from the lobby where Fulbert sat in obvious distress. ‘He also says he’s losing his memory. He said it started with a few small things he couldn’t recall and now he can’t remember a single thing. He knows his name and is certainly still coherent but he says that huge gaps are opening up in his mind. He wants to speak to you urgently.’

Blush nodded, removed his coat and hurried into the room.

‘Mister Fairwhack…’

‘Fulbert. Please.’

‘Yes. Listen - I’m sorry I didn’t take you more seriously before: I believe I now know what it is we might be dealing with.’

‘I’m dying, aren’t I?’

‘Well-‘

‘Aren’t I?’

‘The fact is-‘

‘The TRUTH, Mister Blush.’

Heaving a weary sigh, Blush nodded. ‘You are, yes. The shadow disintegrates slowly…and the body follows it.’

Fulbert didn’t scream or shout or even cry. He simply drew in a breath and stared levelly at the magician. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘Yes. You can work with me to overcome this insanity and stop the mind behind it while there’s still time. We may yet be able to avert the worst of what’s happening. Now, you say you’re having trouble remembering….’

Fulbert nodded. ‘Time is pouring away from me, Mister Blush. I have absolutely no idea what I was doing yesterday, last week, last MONTH.’

‘Did it happen slowly or did everything vanish in a rush?’

Fulbert closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose with two trembling fingers. ‘Slowly. It’s almost like time started seeping away from me…backwards.’

‘Do you remember what you do for a living, Mister Fairwhack?’

Fulbert stared back at him. ‘I’m a public notary,’ he said. ‘I also work as a servitor of The Law. Private cases, mostly.’

‘Do you remember any details from the cases you’re currently working on?’

Fulbert shook his head.

‘Past cases?’

‘Y-yes. I think so. Less than before, though. It’s just everything. There are so many holes. I can remember my last birthday but it’s hazy and I KNOW I could remember it just a short time ago. I don’t know what’s happening to me.’

‘I think I do.’ Blush padded across the room and opened the drawer of a small portable case he’d brought with him from Legrash. Producing a bottle of glowing pink liquid, he beckoned to Erin and pressed it into her palm.

‘I want you to return to Fulbert’s study,’ he said. ‘Search the room thoroughly for any scrolls, parchments, letters, any correspondence that-‘

Erin gaped at him. ‘His study is rammed FULL of books and scrolls!’

‘Nothing on a shelf or in a bookcase,’ Blush went on. ‘Only in and around the desk. Look for anything recent. I don’t expect you to find what I’m seeking but I want you to use this on the desk.’ He glanced down at the liquid in Erin’s hands. ‘Pull the curtains and spread the liquid liberally over the area on the blotter and wait. Any indentations should become crystal clear in the darkness. I want to know the contents of this man’s most recent correspondence.’

When she’d gone, Blush hurried to the small arms locker beside the front door and began to search the shelves for a decent weapon. He now had a fairly solid idea of the enemy he was facing but absolutely no clue where that enemy was likely to be found…

Chapter Twenty

The tiny, bewigged and excruciatingly irritating town clerk caught up with Erin as she fought through the market crowds to make her way back to the Fairwhack residence. When she increased her pace, the little idiot had to run to keep up.

‘Get lost, Elbow. I’m busy.’

‘It’s Elboid, as you well know!’

‘Okay, then. Get lost, ELBOID: I’m busy.’

‘How dare you! I have a matter of great importance to discuss!’

Erin guffawed with laughter and further increased her pace: now she was practically running.

‘Mistress Soames will hear about this!’

‘MISSTRESS SOAMES! You do realise that she’s not some entitled noble, right? She’s a bloody hack who runs the local rag.’

‘She is MAGNIFICENT!’

‘Only to you, Elboid. Only to you.’

‘We go to press at lunchtime! A double attempted murder is not something to be swept under the carpet.’

Erin stopped and glanced down at him.

‘Thought that would get your attention!’ he cackled.

‘Who told you?’

‘Hahah! You wish you knew! I’ll never tell! Never!’

‘You can’t print half-truths, Elboid - they will cause panic without any context…and I’m guessing you haven’t got a clue on the details because, well, because even I don’t know what’s actually going on and I’m investigating it.’ She didn’t actually say that last part but it ran through her head nonetheless.

‘We will tell ALL OF SHINBONE unless you give Mistress Soames full access-‘

‘No.’ Erin shrugged and moved off again, fast.

‘Some access-‘

’Not happening.’

‘Any access to the crime scenes!’

‘Drop dead, Emroid.’

‘WE AT THE town council,’ he yapped, ignoring the insult, ‘DEMAND to know what’s going on. The people at The Shinbone Echo-‘ He stumbled briefly and then scrambled to his feet while Erin marched on, purposefully, ‘-say there have been at LEAST two attacks! You cannot keep the public in the dark if there is a known threat to the peace and prosperity of our fine, upstanding community.’

Erin stopped and stared at him. ‘You’re right,’ she found herself saying, as if she’d woken from a terrible, bewildering dream. ‘You’re absolutely right. Shinbone is OUR town and if we want Mister Blush to solve this case, he’s going to need our help. All of us. Now stand back!’

After a short and heated exchange with a fruit vendor nearby, she dragged an old orange box away from a cluttered market stall and positioned it directly in front of the town’s rickety and hugely overburdened notice board. Then she climbed on top of the box and motioned for the wittering little clerk to rally the crowd into some sort of order.

‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ she screamed, trying not to show any obvious signs of irritation when it became clear that she was being completely ignored.

She clapped her hands for silence while the clerk rushed between the rows of squabbling onlookers, pleading for a few seconds’ attention but she received no more than a casual glance from the townsfolk.

‘People of Shinbone! This is your Duty Sergeant speaking!’

Nothing.

‘Your attention, I beg of you!’

Two of the women in the crowd looked up briefly but found themselves distracted by a fly that moved between them and began to swat at each other like a pair of angry children having a playground squabble.

‘Excuse me!’

The crowd simply swam in around her and continued to mingle, snap at each other and argue.

Erin cleared her throat.

‘MURDER!’ she screamed, waving her arms in the air. ‘MURDERS IN THE DARKNESS! DEATH! SHADOWS! DOOM! EVIL AFOOT! BLOOD ON THE STREETS! VAMPIRES! WEREWOLVES! DEMONS! FLESH EATERS! ZOMBIE GORILLAS! HAMSTERS! HAMSTERS WITH HUMAN TEETH!’

The entire crowd stood in attentive silence. Even the market traders stopped haggling to see what all the fuss was about.

Erin rolled her eyes and muttered under her breath, wincing slightly when she saw Lofty emerge from the door of The Wounded Goat and stagger into the crowd. Then she continued: ‘THERE WILL BE AN ANNOUNCEMENT IN THE TOWN HALL TONIGHT AND YOUR COUNCIL STRONGLY ADVISES EVERYONE TO BE THERE! A DARKNESS IS STALKING OUR STREETS: NOBODY IS SAFE. YOU SHOULD ALL BE BACK IN YOUR HOUSES COME SUNDOWN!’

Lofty worked his way to the front of the crowd and reached up to tug on Erin’s arm.

‘What is it? Have you been DRINKING?’

‘Not much.’

‘Blush asked you to fetch mercenaries!’

‘I tried my best…’

‘Great! Well, I’ve got another job for you. Find Blush and tell him we’re now holding an official meeting at the Town Hall tonight to update the people of Shinbone on these attacks. Oh - and tell him some spineless roach told the newspapers. He’ll love that.’

‘Er….right. Where are you going?’

‘I’m off to investigate the contents of Fairwhack’s study.’

As Lofty and Erin continued to talk, the crowd sensed their morning entertainment was over and began to flow steadily away.

As one or two lingered, a single pair of eyes in particular keenly observed the two officers and, more importantly, the crowd’s reaction to the announcement. Indeed, a town meeting would be an opportunity: an opportunity not to be missed.

Chapter Twenty-One

In a dark tunnel deep beneath a jewellery shop on the western side of Shinbone, a brass signet ring was pushed firmly into a blob of sealing wax to secure a small square envelope. The envelope was then taken via a rather exhausting journey to be deposited in an elderly post box that leaned over on a lonely street corner near the marketplace. When the envelope arrived at its eventual destination, it would unleash a poison that would kill everyone in the building where it was received. It was, at best, a very weak and desperate backup plan…but it would serve as a second attack if the Town Meeting didn’t go to plan. Besides, needs must when the harbingers of doom urinate on your very doorstep. The only concern was whether or not the envelope would survive the journey, though a dark and potent magic contained within the confines of the seal should hold its payload firmly in place. Indeed, an entire basement laid out in delicately chalked runes was responsible for maintaining the balance of the spell. The seven watchtowers had been called and the malign intentions of a dark god had been fought for and won…but at what cost? The sender of the letter looked down at a hand now entirely devoid of fingers and thought only of the pain and the sacrifice.

It was worth it to keep the wolves from the door, he thought….and make no mistake, the wolves were hunting. How long before they came sniffing around? Marauding through his plans, invading his destiny. They had to be stopped. They had to be silenced.

Turning from the postbox, he stumbled and practically walked into the irritating magician sent by Dullitch to investigate what had been described in the town scrolls as a recent ‘epidemic’ of magical crime.

‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry, madam,’ Blush stammered, incorrectly identifying him as so many of the townsfolk did when he was wearing one of his many disguises. ‘My fault entirely: do please pass.’

He stepped aside and paused momentarily at the box, attempting to straighten the post a few times before abandoning the effort as a bad idea. Then he carried on down the street, employing that incredibly strange walk he had that made him look vaguely like an ostrich.

This was the man sent to cure a sorcerous epidemic? What nonsense! If the councils continued to purge genuine magic from the lands of Illmoor, there would be no freedom to pursue power and what then? The land would remain in the hands of the rich, who would hold claim to every valley, forest and castle…

…but not Shinbone: this stinking cesspit of a town was headed for greater depths of despair and in more ways than one. The people of Shinbone would pay for their insolence and their dismissal. It would be a pleasure to see them all sink into the abyss.

He watched the shape of Blush recede into the distance and smiled through a mouthful of broken teeth.

Only a few more days to go and then this meddling new city emissary would be a memory, along with those two infernal town servants that scurried along behind him, doing the devil’s work.

I’ll get you all, he thought. I’ll get you all in the end.

When he returned to the shop, he slammed the door behind him and allowed the little bell that hung above the entrance to clang noisily in his wake.

‘Mabel!’ he screamed. ‘MABEL!’

A series of small, hurried footsteps signalled the arrival of the jewellery shop’s only other occupant.

‘Daddy?’

‘I’ve sent our gift to the town hall and it should arrive in due course…but an opportunity has now presented itself and we need to take immediate advantage of the situation. Get the special pouch from inside the piano. Not the green one, the black one….the DUST. I need you to do something for me. Something very, very important.’

Chapter Twenty-Two

Erin spotted the bird before she’d even begun to approach the house of Fulbert Fairwhack. It was circling the gabled roofs of the building in a series of wild arcs. Notably ugly and hugely distinctive, it was nevertheless intent on patrolling the skies over the notary’s house. Erin found this singularly odd, as Fulbert had been the first victim: surely whatever infernal mission the bird had been sent on was therefore presumably over?

Deciding to take a less direct route to the house, she circumnavigated the front gardens and climbed over a wall that surrounded the rear borders of the property. Landing in a crouched position, she watched the bird carefully as it continued to circle the roof. When it landed on one of the higher gables, she made a determined dash for the back door and used a set of lock picks to gain entry to a small kitchen beyond. Then, working her way up to the study, she closed the door behind her and began to search the room.

Noting Blush’s instructions, she moved to the room’s large, circular window and drew across an enormous velvet curtain to block out the light.

Then, stepping over the now depressingly faded outline of Fulbert Fairwhack’s shadow, she crossed to the desk and covered the blotter in the glowing pink liquid Blush had given her.

She stood back and waited. After a few seconds, the liquid began to glow as every single letter on the blotter below suddenly stood proud of the surface. Swallowing, Erin found that she was holding her breath for fear that it might dislodge whatever magic was causing this tiny miracle…but she began to read, her eyes widening with every word she absorbed.

Chapter Twenty-Three

‘Have a drink, Mister Blush.’ Lofty stumbled to the drinks cabinet and was disappointed to discover that the entire contents seemed to consist of wine.

‘Isn’t there any ale?’

‘No. Excepting the occasional glass of wine with a meal, I don’t drink and, clearly, neither should you. Now just spit it out.’

‘Well….the fact is….’

‘YES?’

‘What do you want first? The good news or the bad news?’

‘What’s the good news?’

‘There isn’t any.’

’Terrific…and the bad news?’

‘The taverns are empty,’ Lofty said, wringing his hands and shrugging guiltily. ‘The landlord of our biggest inn promised to get in touch with a group he knows but other than that, we’re on our own. I’m sorry, boss: I did my best. Oh - and the newspapers found out about the attacks. They’re going to press this afternoon, so everybody will know. Oh - oh - yeah…and Erin got on an orange box in the marketplace and called a Town Meeting, so it looks like we’re doing something about the situation. There will probably be quite a turnout, as the people of Shinbone bloody LOVE a good drama.’

Blush closed his eyes and gripped the edge of the table with both hands. Then he thought for a moment, sat back and poured himself a generous measure of red wine from a decanter hidden beneath a stack of ancient letters he’d been reading.

He downed the entire glass in one gulp and immediately poured another.

‘Is that a good idea, boss? I know I’m not one to talk but-’

Blush glared at him. ‘We’re pretty much on our own against an adept necromancer who has enlisted the aid of a dark god, an invisible assassin and three enormous, murderous birds. I have a rogue sergeant who has just enlisted the aid of the ENTIRE town in my investigation and a mole somewhere telling newspapers about everything we’re doing literally AS we’re doing it. Having a drink is a superb idea: I’m getting another bottle when this decanter’s empty.’

The door flew open and Erin burst in, staggered across the room and collapsed into a chair beside the desk. Blush noticed that she wasn’t carrying anything.

‘If it isn’t the TOWN CRYER,’ he snapped.

‘Don’t get on my case, sir. I was cornered by a spineless little newshound: I did my best.’

‘Your best is unlikely to help us identify the third sacrificial victim we’ve been advised to prepare for by the Head of the Magical Council,’ he said, reaching for the wine decanter with one hand and finishing his current glass with the other.

‘There’s going to be a third attack?’ Lofty exclaimed.

‘Yes. They come in threes and I’m afraid that when the next attack happens, we will have a dark god to contend with. Isn’t that nice?’ He turned to Erin. ‘What about the blotter? Any luck? I can’t help noticing that you don’t have any of the scrolls I sent you to get…so I’m not optimistic.’

Erin caught her breath and smiled at him.

‘Didn’t need the scrolls,’ she panted, reaching into her robe and brandishing her notebook. ‘Your blotter trick worked a charm. I think I’ve just narrowed our search: I found a connection between Fairwhack and Moody.’

Blush paused in the act of pouring himself a third glass and replaced the decanter on the desk.

‘Go on.’

‘Moody isn’t actually a rat catcher by trade: he’s the town’s sewer planner and a structural engineer. He was working on an extension of the sewer when he found a new section of tunnels that led out of town. He followed them in the direction of the Western Woods and came up…’ She moved aside several of the books piled on the desk and pointed to a section of the map beneath them, ‘…here. It’s a place called Drain Castle.’

‘But that’s MILES away!’

‘Nevertheless, that’s where the tunnels end. Drain Castle was recently declared structurally unsound and Fairwhack was dealing with the paperwork for the council as it apparently poses a threat to the structural integrity of the town.’

‘The entire TOWN?’

‘Yes…and considering that Drain Castle apparently sits in its own grounds some way into the woods, I strongly suggest that we investigate these ‘tunnels’. Urgently.’

Blush beamed at her. ‘I agree. We can also make a strong assumption that the registered owner of Drain Castle is likely to be our prime suspect - and that would be?’

‘One Jeremiah Blackstock.’ She moved her finger across the map. ‘He also owns a jewellery shop in Baker Lane. HERE.’

‘I know that shop,’ Lofty cut in. ‘Sells inexpensive trinkets at questionable prices. He’s clearly our man: let’s go!’

‘Not yet.’ Blush stood suddenly and leaned forward, placing both hands flat on the desk.

‘As the sewer sections Mr Moody originally found are incredibly close by, it’s not much of a stretch to guess that the tunnels run between the jewellery shop and the castle in the woods. We need to figure out exactly what’s going on here to deal with it properly. If this is some aggrieved, persecuted soul who feels they are defending their rights or their property, they will go down fighting. Expect both locations to be magically defended. The last thing we want to do is walk into an ambush. Besides, thanks to Erin here, we’ve been delayed by the inconvenience of a town meeting.’

‘I’ve already apologised for that,’ Erin snapped. ‘Besides, I’ve more than made up for it with the information I’ve found…and I haven’t finished yet: there’s more.’

Blush raised an eyebrow.

‘One of those Vauntiss birds is still flying around the Fairwhack house,’ she said. ‘I had to sneak in. On my way back, I stopped by Moody’s house and there’s also one on the roof there. As Moody is still holed up in his own house and Fairwhack is now here in the Town Hall, I’m guessing that the birds are connected to the shadows and not the actual living bodies of the victims.’

Blush positively beamed at her. ‘Good work, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘All is forgiven. Now get me a decent map of the town and the entire area around Shinbone: these plans of tunnels and blueprints of sewer systems are all very well but I want to see how they correspond to the streets above them. Hurry!’

Chapter Twenty-Four

A gentle evening breeze blew over the sorry, rain-soaked cobbles of Shinbone. In the poor district, where the houses leaned close together, a cat tentatively padded across a fallen drainpipe that had formed a horizontal bridge between two of the roofs. As it made its way from one house to another, a large black bird landed on the tiny steeple of a nearby window and cawed loudly. The cat froze, aware of some sudden, imminent danger not usually associated with enemies of the feathered variety…and sensibly retreated.

Blush marched into the town hall and fought his way through throngs of panicked residents to get to the podium. The noise was deafening.

‘Please! Everyone calm down! I need you all to take a seat.’

Approximately forty people went for the same chair. It was pure, unbridled chaos for several minutes, during which Blush closed his eyes and counted to ten under his breath. When he opened them again, every seat in the building was filled and the room had acquired a sense of uneasy calm.

‘Right,’ he began. ‘As many of you know, there have been a series of incidents-‘

‘Murders!’

‘INCIDENTS…in the past few days. Your devoted officials and I are looking into this matter as a top priority. I can assure you that the necromancer responsible for these attacks-‘

‘Watth a necromanther?’

Blush looked down at a small girl in the front row. She had blonde hair secured in pigtails, a pointed face and a curious expression that gave the impression of quiet, determined and annoying intelligence. Blush noted that the hand she’d raised was either coated with an odd black powder or literally caked in dirt. She also had at least two teeth missing, which, for some reason, conspired with her features to make her look ever so slightly furious.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I thed wat ith a necromanther?’

Blush thought about ignoring the question but everyone in the crowd was looking at him expectantly. He sighed, rolled his eyes and leaned forward, addressing her directly.

‘Do you know what a sorcerer is? Or a warlock?’

‘No.’

‘What about a wizard?’

‘Yeth. My daddy ith a withard.’

‘He ith? I mean - he IS?’

‘Yeth.’

‘And is your daddy here?’

Blush smiled sweetly, observing that the seats on either side of the child were empty and that she didn’t seem to have any adult company.

‘No…I’m here on my own becoth heath very bithy tonight…but he ITH a wizard.’

Blush frowned. ‘OK. Well…I’m sure your daddy is a great asset to Shinbone even if it seems he’s not the most responsible parent in town, but necromancers are VERY different from wizards: they are the worst sort of villains imaginable and deal mainly with dark magic and raising the DEAD.’

‘That soundth like my daddy but heath a withard.’

Blush smiled carefully, aware of the continuing silence in the room.

‘I am quite sure that your daddy doesn’t speak to the dead, young lady.’

‘He doeth. Heath alwaysth going to the graveyard and making them darnth.’

‘Darnth?’

She got out of her seat and began to wiggle her hips. After a few seconds, inexplicably, one of the idiots in the back row started to clap. Others joined in.

‘SILENCE!’ Blush boomed, leaning further over the podium as the girl reclaimed her seat.

Erin moved across the hall, crouched down beside the child and smiled sweetly.

‘Your daddy is a wizard who raises the dead and makes them dance?’ She enquired.

The girl nodded.

‘Is your daddy in the jewellery business by any chance, sweetheart? Only, we think we know what all this might be about and we must speak to him. Is he at the shop right now? Can you take us to him?’

Suddenly afraid, the girl glanced around her at all the worried, judgmental expressions and back at Erin. She gulped.

‘I can’t do that,’ she whispered.

Erin frowned. ‘Why not?’

‘Becauth I only came here to do THITH!’

She suddenly clapped her hands and the entire hall plunged into darkness.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Blush held up a hand and muttered an incantation, wincing as a flame danced from his fingertips. He hated using magic: despite his training, he always felt like it was the lowest form of problem-solving in the same sense that some people thought of sarcasm as the lowest form of wit.

Nevertheless, the flame served to illuminate the room. Following the chaos that had sprung from the sudden darkness thrust upon them, the crowd in the hall had literally tumbled over each other in an attempt to reach the door…but an odd purple glow strongly suggested that the exit had been sealed, a fact further evidenced by the untidy, writhing pile of humanity in front of it.

Waving his arm in a wild arc, Blush quickly identified positions for Erin and Lofty but could see no sign of the child, who had presumably secured some other means of escape.

Blush found his eyes swiftly drawn to the barred windows and the curved vault of the hall roof and came to the immediate conclusion that the entire event had been a meticulously well-planned operation and that they were dealing with a foe possessed of a determined and malign intelligence. It was also quickly becoming apparent to him that a necromancer equipped with three airborne monsters and the possible aid of a dark god was slightly more than he might be able to cope with in terms of a magical battle. Nevertheless…

‘Lofty,’ he whispered, beckoning over the constable and waiting patiently for the man to wade through an ocean of fallen chairs to get to him. ’Go upstairs and get onto the roof - find out how the door has been barricaded and watch out for an attack.’

As the constable hurried off, Blush dropped to his hands and knees and crawled across the floor of the hall, occasionally glancing up to check his progress. It seemed to take him an age to reach the place where Erin was hunkered down behind a table.

‘We need to find that girl,’ she whispered, before he had a chance to say anything. ‘I don’t think she’s magically trained. There was something in her hands before the clap: she had them balled into fists. I think it was some sort of dust.’

‘I’m not so sure.’

‘You can’t believe a child that age could conjure on her own, surely?’

Blush shrugged and indicated the great double doors, where the people of Shinbone were slowly beginning to help each other to their feet.

‘I’ve sent Lofty to check what’s been done to the doors…but we need to get the people away from them in case there’s some sort of magical charge involved. Don’t forget - if the girl was here and she really is the necromancer’s daughter, then whether she’s adept or not she’s unlikely to be far away from her father.’

‘But if she’s already escaped…’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Blush whispered. ‘We know where she came from and we know where she’s going. We have the advantage. At least, we did before you told her we knew about the jewellery shop: that wasn’t smart.’

Erin scowled at him. ‘I just thought she was a naive little kid! I thought that if we got her on side, she’d be a good diversion if we wanted to set up an ambush!’

Lofty reappeared from the direction of the offices and dashed across the hall. ‘It’s just a block of wood wedged between the door handles,’ he panted. ‘It must have been done after the last of the crowd filed in. I’ll go out the back way and remove it. There’s no sign of the girl.’

Blush nodded, regained his footing and clapped his hands together for silence. When the crowd continued to scramble around the doorway, he mumbled the syllables of a charm and clapped his hands a second time…but the resulting noise was like a thunderclap.

The crowd practically jumped to attention.

‘We’re opening the door for you now!’ he cried. ‘Stand well back! Do not panic. I repeat: DO NOT PANIC. Order will be restored in due course.’

As the horde around the entrance parted, Blush felt a tiredness overcome him. ‘Listen,’ he said to Erin. ‘I’m concerned about what just happened. It makes no sense. I think I was wrong when I suggested that the girl’s father wouldn’t be far away: I think she was sent here as a distraction.’

‘From what?’

‘The third victim: my superior assured me that there would be one but we still have no idea who it might be. There was a connection between Fairwhack and Moody: is there nobody else mentioned in the documents apart from this Jeremiah Blackstock?’

‘Nobody.’

The great double doors were hauled open and the grateful crowd flowed out into the night. Lofty waded through them, picked up a chair and repositioned it between them, slumping onto it with an exhalation of exhausted breath.

‘I can’t lie: I’m just about done for today,’ he panted. ‘There’s still no sign of the kid.’

‘We’re assuming that Jeremiah Blackstock is the man behind all this and not the third victim?’ Erin persisted, ignoring him.

Blush sighed. ‘As it stands, all we know-‘

‘It doesn’t matter, does it?’

Both of them turned to Lofty, who sat back in the chair, took out a pipe and began to fill it with rough shags of wiry tobacco. ‘We have to hunt down Blackstock regardless of whether he’s the necromancer or the last victim and we know that the only two places we’re likely to find him are the jewellery shop or Drain Castle…and, as Erin said, they’re both connected. So I guess we go and flush him out. Him AND his little menace of a daughter, if that’s who she is.’

‘Not tonight,’ Blush muttered, determinedly. ‘Tonight we rest.’

Erin shook her head. ‘You can’t be serious!’

‘I’m deadly serious. I’m going home to get some sleep and so should you. Lofty here already admitted that he’s spent. If you could check on Fairwhack and Moody before you retire for the evening, I’d be very grateful. I think the rate of their decline might be an indicator of how much time we have left. After that, SLEEP. Tomorrow is likely to be one enormous test of endurance.’

Chapter Twenty-Six

Due to the nature of the rising tide that regularly plagued Shinbone, much of the partitioned basement of the Town Hall was underwater. This fact made every trip into the cellars a small expedition on its own but no effort had ever been made to house the town’s insignificantly small criminal population elsewhere.

Erin picked her way down three flights of stairs and past an increasingly damp corridor until she came to the only room on the lower ground floor that couldn’t actually be called a cell.

Peering in, she called: ‘Would you like something to drink before bed, Mr Fairwhack?’

She took a step into the room and approached a large shape huddled under a blanket in the corner. ‘I’m really sorry we can’t let you go home at the moment but Mister Blush says that-‘

She froze.

There was something incredibly still about the shape, the sort of stillness you get when there isn’t actually any sign of visible life at all.

Feeling a slow sickness turn her stomach, she took a few seconds to watch for a breath…but saw no movement beneath the blanket.

‘Mr Fairwhack?’ she called, her voice sounding weak and pathetic in the half dark. She plucked the lit candle from a small table beside the door and raised it, moving towards the corner of the room. ‘Are you okay? If you’re too weak to raise a hand, just turn your head and let me know…’ Even as she said the words, she knew Fairwhack was dead. There was a cold despair to the room that had little to do with the glistening green walls or the dank moss slowly creeping between the bricks.

Moving the candlelight to flood a pool over the carved niche where Fairwhack lay, she took hold of the sheet and closed her eyes.

I know he’s dead, she thought. I just need to prepare myself for it. If I’m prepared, then nothing can shock me and I’ll just nod and walk out and we’ll deal with it all in the morning.

She yanked back the sheet…and screamed.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Blush staggered through the moonlit streets of Shinbone, trying to remember the rough location of the scruffy boarding house where he’d spent the few weeks he’d been stationed in the town, not that he’d actually slept there: most nights he’d simply fallen asleep at his desk. Nevertheless, the rooms were clean, the landlady wasn’t entirely unpleasant and the building itself was a converted tavern, so the attic was a good size as long as you didn’t mind soldiering your way up three flights of stairs to get to it. He headed past rows of quaint little shops in the town square, stopping at the corner of a half-familiar statue on Druid Street. He stared at the stone monstrosity for several seconds before he saw the bird.

Once again, he could swear the thing hadn’t been there when he’d first glimpsed the statue: one second the raised stone arm was empty and the next it contained a sizeable addition that quite literally seemed to materialise from the ether.

Blush didn’t move. Touching his fingertips together, he tried to ascertain how many fireball spells were currently lodged in his memory and how much energy he had to let loose with enough of an offensive volley to damage such a clearly demonic and magical creature.

Two. He had two fireballs at his disposal. If he missed with one…

The bird continued to stare through him as he folded back the sleeves of his robe and prepared to defend himself.

‘So I’m your third victim, am I?’ he muttered, quite certain that the mind behind the creature could understand him. ‘I’ve been suspecting all along that the identity of the third victim mattered but I’m guessing that’s not entirely the case. Your master needs three sacrificial victims, so he’s simply killing anyone who gets in his way. Fairwhack dealt with the legal case against Drain Castle, Moody discovered the danger in the first place and - what - I’m investigating the attacks? I’d hazard a guess that Erin and Lofty are next but I suppose once your master gets his third victim, the entire situation is then out of his hands and your REAL master takes over. Correct?’

The bird squawked. At least, it opened its beak and made the oddest sound Blush had ever heard, more akin to a child crying than the screech of the giant vulture it more closely resembled.

‘Stay where you are,’ he said, lowering his head to stare intensely at the bird from the top of his gaze while raising a single hand towards it. ‘First and last warning.’

A stone glanced off his temple. The impulse to move had forced him to twitch slightly and the pebble barely grazed him before clattering to the ground beside the statue.

Tearing his attention away from the bird, Blush quickly focused on the recognisable shape of the girl standing at the top of an alley that led down to the river. She stepped into the light of the lane’s only streetlamp as he positioned himself midway between the statue and the mouth of the alley in case the next attack came from two different directions at the same time.

‘I have a prethent for you, Mithter Withard,’ said the girl. She held aloft a hand and in that hand was the ghostly image of knife. As Blush gazed at the weapon, it shimmered and vanished, as did the girl’s arm. Then, just as quickly, both reappeared. The sight put him in mind of a distorted image one might glimpse on a hillside during a thunderstorm: one second the suggestion of a blade was there and the next it was gone.

Blush stood his ground and prepared to divert the fireball he had locked between his fingertips. ‘Take your shot,’ he growled.

The girl cackled with glee. ‘I’d love to…but it’th not your time, Mithter Withered….and it’th definitely not your plathe. Leave town now and you might thurvive the night.’

Blush frowned at the girl but made sure the bird was still firmly in the corner of his vision. ‘So you can’t kill me here and you can’t kill me now. How curious. Incidentally, my name is NOT Mithther Withard: my name is Mithther Bluth. ’

Then he fireballed the bird and all hell broke loose.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Lofty had been on his way home when he ran into the old barber surgeon so many of the townsfolk thought of as a witch. He’d politely doffed his cap and was in the process of stepping aside for her when it became apparent that she had no intention of moving.

‘I think you’d better get along to the Moody House, Constable,’ she said. ‘You’ll find a young man dead before his time and an old woman who loved him in great distress.’

Lofty sighed and took out his pocket watch to check the time but nevertheless nodded in resignation.

‘I’ll come with you,’ the crone added. ‘You might need a dose of what I’m carrying in my bag once you set eyes on the body.’

‘That bad, is it?’

‘Worse.’

When Lofty arrived at the house, there was already a small congregation around Mrs Moody, who was still clearly in a state of shock and not entirely conducive to the arrival of The Law. It took several women to hold her back from actually striking Lofty as he fought his way through a cramped hallway to the room where what little remained of Devon Moody immediately became the sole focus of his attention.

‘What am I actually looking at?’ he said, noting that the old woman had sidled into the room after him and assuming from her expression that she had a lot more experience in these matters. ‘For the love of mercy, what DOES that to a man?’

The crone sniffed. ‘Sorrow. Despair. Emptiness. The knife opens up the soul…and the birds eat the sorrow. The more they eat, the more hollow the body becomes.’

‘B-but there’s just a bag of skin! There’s nothing left of him!’

The old woman grimaced.’ That’s at least one of ‘em fed, then,’ she muttered. ‘If I were you, I’d worry about the others. Don’t hang about too long, though: that boss of yours is takin’ his time over this.’

Lofty just stared at her. ‘W-what should I do?’ he said, at a loss for more words.

‘You mean once you’ve cleaned this mess up and taken that poor woman’s son where the sight of him can’t break her? Go get some sleep and start afresh in the morning. Just move the body: leave the mother to me. I’ll come and find you later.’

Chapter Twenty-Nine

‘Stay in your houses! STAY IN YOUR HOUSES!’

Blush tore down the lane, dodging bewildered shop owners left and right as doors and windows opened all around him. The little monster had fled from him at what turned out to be a shocking turn of speed and now she was careering down street after street, hurling stones from a small pouch and determinedly smashing every window she passed. The ensuing chaos and his inability to keep up the pace meant that Blush was regularly running into the confused and angry people who’d been peacefully preparing for bed when their windows exploded in a shower of glass.

‘Clear the way! CLEAR THE WAY!’

Arriving, exhausted, on the banks of the river that skirted the very edge of Shinbone, Blush was just in time to see the girl race along a jetty and leap into a small rowing boat that was moored there. By the time he reached the last few planks that sloped down into the water, she was too far out to reach.

‘Goodbye Mithter Withard!’ she cackled. ‘I’ll tell daddy you thed hello!’

‘We’re coming for you!’ Blush yelled back. ‘We know where you and your father spend your days and we’re coming for you! Your time is up! There’s nowhere to hide! You can tell your father he messed with the wrong town!’

‘Hahaha! When daddy ith finithed here, there won’t BE any Thinbone! You’re all going down into the depthth! All of you!’

Blush watched the boat drift to the far bank and winced with frustration as the girl hurried up the bank and into the Western Woods.

Run, you little beast, he thought, a grim determination taking hold of him. This ends for both of you tomorrow.

Chapter Thirty

Morning found a beleaguered and only partly rested Hieronymous Blush seated at one of several tables they’d had to reassemble following the previous night’s unexpected activity. This process hadn’t been helped as word had spread about the shenanigans from the previous evening.

Lofty, who was far better prepared and had already patrolled the town twice, was waiting to deliver a report that he’d been politely advised to wait for the arrival of the duty sergeant.

When Erin Dare eventually made her way from one of the back offices and slumped into a chair, it became quite painfully obvious that her place of work was also where she spent her nights. The coffee cup she carried was bigger than Lofty’s head.

‘So I heard the little girl gave you the runaround?’ she said, suppressing a smirk. ‘Sounds like you had an even worse night than me.’

‘On that note,’ Blush began, as Lofty stepped forward. ‘I assume both Moody and Fairwhack are now dead?’

‘Yes.’

‘Actually dead?’

‘Yes. Shadows faded completely, bodies decomposed, skin sallow with most of the flesh flaking. Fairwhack is worse because there’s less of him…but they both look like deflated paper bags. We’ve sent an officer to help with Moody’s mother, who - as you can understand - is very distraught.’

Blush pinched the bridge of his nose with the rough balls of his fingers. ‘Any more good news?’

‘The birds seem to have vanished, too,’ Lofty admitted, wringing his hands. ‘At least, the two at the Moody and Fairwhack houses have. There was a third one spotted in the marketplace but we haven’t yet seen that particular specimen ourselves. We’ve got two junior cadets out looking for it, though.’

Blush glanced from one officer to the other. ‘So we have one suspect - Jeremiah Blackstock - and two possible locations of interest: the jewellery shop here in Shinbone and Drain Castle in the Western Woods. The only problem being that we have no serious manpower to employ unless Lofty’s mysterious mercenaries finally show up and the chances of that happening are approximately one in…’

The doors to the great hall exploded open with such force that they dislodged a sizeable section of the brickwork.

‘…..one.’

Three hulking barbarians marched down the central aisle towards the table. Blush genuinely suspected the trio were going to keep going and actually walk over him. He breathed an audible sigh of relief when the biggest one stopped.

‘I am Gorth,’ it said.

Blush waited for more or at least for some introduction or reference to the other two but none came. All three were slabs of human flesh who looked to be constructed entirely of muscle. One was bald, one had a lot of hair that didn’t seem to know which direction it wanted to go in and the third wore a horned helmet that, for some reason, seemed to be missing a horn.

Blush smiled weakly, addressing the bald barbarian who had spoken. ‘Welcome, Gorth!’ he said. ‘Thank you for coming to the aid of the people of Shinbone. We want you to know that-‘

‘I am Grunk!’

Blush flinched so sharply at the sudden announcement from the second barbarian that he smashed his knee on the underside of the table. He found himself locking eyes with a face literally matted in hair.

‘Yes. Okay. Er….Welcome, Grunk! We would like to extend our thanks to you, Gorth and-‘ He waited for something, anything from the third barbarian but the helmeted hulk made no noise whatsoever. ‘-and ALL of you for bringing aid to Shinbone in our dire time of need.’

Erin and Lofty were both staring at the third warrior as if they expected an explosion of noise at any moment but the towering monster didn’t even move.

‘We are of legend,’ Gorth boomed, producing a heavy wooden club, ‘and we require payment.’

‘We are a team,’ Grunk continued, stepping forward and brandishing a club of his own. He fished inside his loincloth with his free hand and produced a small playing card, which he placed face down on the table in front of Blush, gently removing a pubic hair from the edge. ‘We are known in these lands as The TWO of Clubs.’

Blush employed a fingernail to flip the card, finding himself only slightly confused when it did indeed turn out to be the Two of Clubs.

‘As yes, I see.’ He frowned, feeling that something else was expected of him. ‘This indeed confirms that you are…er…as you say ‘THE TWO OF CLUBS’ but I have to say that I can’t help noticing…’

‘YES?’

‘-that-‘

‘WELL?’

‘That there does in fact appear to be three of you….’

The two barbarians glanced to their left.

‘We do not know him,’ they said.

Erin and Lofty shared a worried frown. Even Blush looked momentarily taken aback.

‘Who is he, then?’

Lofty sniggered into his sleeve and motioned towards the giant. ‘Hey - maybe he’s the Ace of Spades?’

The gathered group enjoyed a nervous chuckle together before the massive barbarian finally reached up a hand and removed his helmet.

‘I see you’ve heard of me,’ he said, revealing one enormous black eye, a nose mashed across three-quarters of his face and a mouth so small that it looked like a paper cut. ‘Though my birth name is Russell.’

He sighed, growled and drove a finger at Blush. ‘Nevertheless, you will be sorry if you overlook my talents and choose to hire those musclebound clowns even now COWERING at your back.’

Blush glanced over his shoulder at the space behind him and then frowned at the Two of Clubs, who were both still standing right next to the giant and regarding him quizzically.

‘Er…we’re over this way,’ they said.

The cyclops turned his head and sneered at them, before leaning over Blush and whispering: ‘Apologies. I am partially blind in one eye.’

‘But you’ve only GOT one eye.’

‘I know how it looks-’

‘Yes. Blurry, I’d imagine.’

Blush motioned to Lofty and glared. ‘Cracking find,’ he said, rising from the table. ‘Very well! You’re hired. All three of you. Two of Clubs, Ace of Spades, Five of Diamonds, WHATEVER.’ He kicked the chair away from him and clapped his hands. ‘Lofty, take this motley crew and go directly to Drain Castle in the Western Woods. Take the map from Moody’s report and find the subterranean tunnels that lead back here. Arrest ANYONE you find in them. Erin and I will start at the jeweller’s shop and we’ll attempt to meet in the middle. Don’t dawdle, now! GO!’

Chapter Thirty-One

Lofty was a patient man and a lifetime of grim experience had taught him a lot about the virtues of quiet apathy and a calm, even relaxed attitude in the face of difficult and dangerous situations. Nevertheless, the insanely competitive cock-strutting between The Two of Clubs was beginning to grate quite harshly on his last nerve. Having discovered that their horses were stabled near the gates, he had been forced to accompany the trio halfway across town and had therefore been subjected to so many unlikely brags that he regularly felt compelled to chime in with a lie of his own.

‘Killed four men in Bald Eagle Tavern, east of Legrash,’ Gorth boomed. ‘Three came at me with swords, one with a dagger. None lived to tell the tale. Landlord bought me five beers.’

‘A dark night, indeed,’ Grunk confirmed. ‘The very same night I met an ogre at the Honeydew Inn. Found it in my bed with a lust in its eyes I’ve never seen matched. Damn me to hell if we didn’t break every piece of furniture in that loft. Landlord bought me ten beers.’

Lofty frowned, trying to work out what sort of combat the barbarian was actually describing…but quickly found his attention drawn to the Ace of Spades, who hadn’t said a thing since they’d left the town hall.

‘What about you?’ Lofty prompted, conscious that the other two barbarians were also staring expectantly at the giant.

Russell thought for a moment and shrugged. ‘I’ve never killed five men or had angry sex with an ogre,’ he said, ‘but I guess I’m no stranger to a beer after work.’

They walked the rest of the way in blissful silence until Lofty mistakenly decided to raise the subject of horses. ‘I’ll need to hire one from the stable,’ he said. ‘I’m not really that good with them.’

‘I ride a great stallion that many call The Fury,’ Gorth boomed.

‘My own is a mare that some call The Rush,’ growled Grunk.

Once again, all eyes were on Russell. ‘I ride something else,’ he said, adding. ‘I don’t think people really know what to call it.’

Chapter Thirty-Two

Soames crouched beside an overturned apple cart on the edge of the marketplace and peered out at the Town Hall. She was watching her snivelling companion badly employing a lock-pick in an attempt to gain entry to the hall’s elderly but apparently impregnable post box. Admittedly, it was a long shot…but she still licked her lips in anticipation of something she could report.

The only worry was getting caught: Elboid was making a catastrophic amount of noise as he became more and more frustrated with the lock. Since they’d arrived at the Town Hall, the moronic constable had departed the building with a rogue band of mercenaries but there was no sign of the sergeant or Blush himself, so presumably they were still ensconced somewhere in the building. She’d contemplated following the constable’s group or sending Elboid after them but considering that they’d all left in a storm on horseback, the chances of the little fiend being able to keep up with them were slim to none.

A small yelp of satisfaction drew her attention back to the box, where the little man was now finally having some success. Unfortunately, he utterly destroyed what little discretion there was left after all the noise by leaping into the air and delivering a tiny fist pump to the gods of fate.

‘I got it open, Mistress Soames!’

‘Shut up, you fool!’ she screamed, conscious that the retort was in itself a risk of exposure. ‘Get over here! NOW!’

Elboid turned and bolted for the cart, tripping twice and dropping the handful of scrolls and envelopes he’d snatched from the box but recovering quickly enough to gather them up again. He ended up collapsing in an asthmatic heap mere seconds before the double doors of the hall flew open and Hieronymous Blush strode out with the town sergeant.

‘Get down!’ Soames snatched a handful of Elboid’s wig but it came away in her grasp and left the frantic midget writhing around in the mud with a head like a boiled egg. She ignored him and rifled through the haul until she saw Blush’s name on an envelope. Ripping it open, she scanned the contents but saw nothing of any note so ripped open another addressed to the general constabulary and scrutinised that. Still nothing.

‘It’s all useless junk,’ she spat. ‘We have to follow Blush. It’s the only chance we have of staying on top of the story.’

Cursing her luck as Elboid scrambled to his feet, she tossed the envelopes aside and craned her neck to see over the top of the cart. Blush had strode out of the Town Hall gardens and was heading up Market Street with Erin Dare in hot pursuit.

‘We’ll keep at least one street back,’ she muttered. ‘We can’t afford them to get wise to-‘

She stopped speaking and looked down at her hands, where a thick ebony liquid was seeping between her fingers. At first, she took it to be residue ink from the envelopes but then she realised that the skin on her hands was burning and curls of smoke were rising from her fingers. She clapped a hand over her mouth to stop the scream exploding from her throat but, in doing so, inhaled a plume of the smoke that billowed from the wound: it seeped into her lungs like a burning brand and her arms dropped to her sides. She crashed face-first into the dirt.

Elboid stood frozen in terror as he took in the scene, his face distorted into a horrified rictus as he realised first that his beloved mistress had fallen and second that he too was breathing in some of the smoking tendrils that still snaked from her lifeless body. He began to cough, snatching at his throat with frantic abandon as he found less and less of his breath available to him. Every time he spewed out a lungful of the smoke even more of the accursed stuff seemed to recoil and snake back into his nose and mouth. He gulped a few random breaths and his eyes bulged grotesquely in his head. Then he collapsed, twitching on the ground a few times before rolling onto his back and staring wide-eyed into the abyss for all eternity.

The envelope disintegrated into a shower of tattered paper that gently drifted away on the breeze.

Chapter Thirty-Three

There was a cluttered stockroom behind the jewellery shop and a few sparsely furnished rooms above it, none of which seemed recently used.

‘I found the ledger,’ Erin said, breathlessly, arriving at the top of the stairs. ‘They’re doing quite well. Certainly better than all this would suggest.’ She indicated the empty room and Blush nodded in agreement.

‘This has never been more than a good position from which to move around in Shinbone,’ he said. ‘This place is merely a way IN. We simply need to discover the door.’ He peered around at the drab walls and began to prod them in different places, putting his ear to the plaster and occasionally knocking on it. In this manner, he moved all around both rooms upstairs and then proceeded to repeat the operation in the stockroom.

‘Can you check outside?’ He asked Erin, shaking his head. ‘Every drainpipe, every brick. Look for manhole covers, trapdoors, ANYTHING that seems like it might lead somewhere else. I’m going onto the roof.’

Erin nodded and took up the search. She scoured the tiny yard at the back of the shop, the alleyway that ran alongside it and the slightly longer pathway that meandered behind the entire row of shops and seemed to be used as a dumping ground for anything the locals couldn’t be bothered to steal. She found nothing. Glancing up at the roof, she saw Blush moving towards the chimney stack and hoped fervently that he would have more luck.

Unfortunately, Blush was staring down at Erin, hoping for the same thing. Having climbed out of the window and onto the roof, he’d found himself more inspired by the view than the rooftops themselves. There were certainly no secret doors or available crawlspaces but on a clear day like today, it was evidently possible to see all the way to the Western Woods and the vista certainly served as a reminder of how small a town Shinbone actually was. He produced a spyglass from his belt and peered through the eyepiece, blinking as all the little houses zoomed into sharp relief. He turned in a slow arc, looking from the detailed slates of the narrow streets to the distant bulk of a tower that rose from the trees somewhere far off in the woods. Drain Castle, presumably.

He sighed….and returned his attention to Erin in the alleyway below.

‘There’s nothing!’ He shouted despondently. ‘Let’s meet back inside. I want to take another look at the shop!’

Blush looked around at walls lined with shelves of odd little trinkets the likes of which he would personally not have bought even if they were being given away.

‘This one’s thirty gold pieces!’ Erin gasped. ‘It looks like something a child would make on a rainy afternoon.’

Blush didn’t hear her. He had dropped onto his knees and was crawling across the floor, stopping occasionally to listen at the floorboards.

‘It’s odd that there’s no basement,’ he said, when she gawped at him. ‘These shops nearly always have a basement.’ He began to knock on the floor in the same manner he’d adopted when checking the walls upstairs. Then he stopped and looked up, sharp.

Erin frowned back at him. ‘What? What is it?’

‘Hollow. Right here - next to the counter. It’s UNDERNEATH.’

He leapt up and ran to one side of the heavy glass display cabinet that supported the shop’s only barrier between the stockroom and the display area and began to push at it.

‘Over here: help me.’

Erin joined him and they both applied pressure, sliding the entire counter almost to the wall of the shop. There was a long, narrow staircase beneath the floor that led into the darkness.

‘What’s the betting that this ISN’T just an ordinary basement?’ Blush hazarded, a sly smile settling on his lips.

Blush held up a flaming torch, which illuminated his face in a really unfortunate way and made him look distinctly like a gargoyle. ‘I do hope you’re armed with something at least vaguely threatening?’

Erin looked down at the sword hanging from her belt. ‘It’s not threatening by itself but I’m pretty good with it,’ she said. ‘I brought a claw hammer and a chisel, too. You know, in case we need to prise anything open.’

Blush nodded and, holding the torch aloft, proceeded into the depths. He hadn’t gone more than a few steps when a thought suddenly occurred to him.

‘We need a compass,’ he said, holding the torch dangerously close to his face with one hand while searching his pockets with the other.

‘Why? We have Moody’s plans!’ Erin shrugged and removed a scroll from her pack. ‘Admittedly, they don’t cover the entire route from Drain Castle, but we know we need to go west if we’re heading in the direction of the woods.’

Blush produced an antique compass from his pocket, tossed it into the air and caught it.

‘Exactly. If the maps were correct, then the tunnels below the sewer system are an unknown quantity. Now we have at least some means of determining our direction. Let’s move.’

They entered the cellar.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Lofty was not exactly a natural horse-rider. On two feet, he was awkward, angular and never in full command of his limbs; on four, this situation was thrown into sharp relief and he became a danger to every living thing in a two-mile radius. On this occasion, his usual incompetence on horseback was doubled by the words of Hieronymous Blush still ringing strongly in his ears.

Take this motley crew and go directly to Drain Castle.

He glanced over one shoulder: there was no sign of the mercenary company and yet presumably they must be behind him somewhere.

Snatching the reigns and whipping them around him, he urged the horse on to greater and greater speeds, ducking and dodging tree branches as they flashed past him in dangerous proximity.

The other things flashing past him in dangerous proximity were an assortment of signs all written in different types of scrawl, some recent, many ancient and all delivering messages along the lines of ‘keep out’, ‘danger beyond this point’, ‘beware the castle’ and ‘death to all who venture further’.

Lofty hadn’t seen any of them: he simply galloped headlong towards the looming bulk of a building he hadn’t seen either. In fact, due to the sheer terror he’d felt at a couple of very near misses, he’d had his eyes tightly closed for the last few minutes in the fervent hope that what he didn’t see couldn’t hurt him.

He turned out to be very wrong in that respect.

Shadows lengthened and the very trees seemed to crowd the path, their branches bending to drive the lone rider towards his fate. Fortunately, the threat in the castle was long gone…but it didn’t stop the drawbridge from looking like the jaws of a particularly angry lion.

‘Arghghgh! Argghghghghh!!!!!!’

The noise of Lofty’s frantic scream was enough to make the horse bolt sideways, throwing him over the reins and depositing him squarely on a patch of grass beside the path, where he lost consciousness for several seconds.

At length, he awoke, cold. The horse was grazing a short distance from where he lay, surrounded by a group of tall and impossibly beautiful flowers.

He rolled over and tried to force himself onto his elbows. Getting to his feet was a slow and arduous process but he found himself somewhat surprised when he managed the task: thankfully, nothing appeared to be broken.

The garden he found himself in was a place of wonder. The castle itself appeared to be falling to ruin but the grounds were both immaculate and palatial. At least, they were until…

The Two of Clubs arrived in a storm of dust clouds, closely followed by the Ace of Spades on what appeared to be some sort of magically empowered, morbidly obese pony. He hadn’t leapt clear of the beast by more than a few seconds when it collapsed in a deflated heap and seemed to enter into some variety of epileptic fit. Nevertheless, the Ace of Spades walked away from it as if he’d just dismounted the greatest stallion in the land and strode purposefully towards the castle. Lofty watched him with a mixture of admiration and disgust.

‘Gorth is ready,’ the barbarian boomed, dismounting his horse and moving to stand behind Lofty while Grunk made a song and dance about doing the same thing. They each produced a broadsword which they whirled in a series of wild arcs, clearly preparing themselves for combat.

Only Russell took his time. Crouching on the path and unhooking a long, hefty bag from his shoulder, he proceeded to unpack a variety of misshapen tools which he then fitted together until they became a single, extremely odd-looking weapon.

‘What the hell’s that?’ Lofty exclaimed, genuinely baffled by the contraption. He looked to the barbarian duo for some answer but when they both seemed equally perplexed, he returned his attention to the cyclops. ‘It’s - er - it’s not a sword…is it?’

Russell stared at him and sighed. ‘No,’ he said, somewhat wearily. ‘I can assure you that it is most definitely not a sword.’

Lofty watched as the giant barbarian stepped forward and raised the weapon he was carrying. The serrated blade that extended from the end of the modified Waraxe practically touched his nose.

‘Okay, okay!’ The constable laughed, nervously backing away and jovially holding up both hands. ‘We need to stop messing around and find a way into this place!’

When Russell failed to crack a smile, Lofty found himself looking to the others for support but he was quickly faced with two more swords raised against him. He glanced from Gorth and Grunk to the cyclops and back.

‘I thought you lot didn’t know each other!’

‘We lied.’

Chapter Thirty-Five

Jermiah Blackstock awoke tied to a chair in an attic room overlooking a part of the city he didn’t immediately recognise. It wasn’t until his eyes adjusted to the light that he realised the reason he wasn’t familiar with the view was that it had been painted on a canvas that took up an entire wall of the room. In fact, judging from the light spilling around the chair, he was facing away from the attic’s only window. Still, as prisons went, it was a lot better than the dank and foetid sewer he’d been tied up in for the past few days.

If it were a few days. Whatever poison they’d given him seemed to be affecting his memory but he dimly recalled the morning he’d returned to the shop to find the little girl peering through the front window at the bracelets, all sweetness and light, asking to buy a birthday present for her sick father. The little monster. He’d been standing there, patiently handing her bracelets to examine, when the lights had gone out. He hadn’t seen that coming…

…or this…

The attic itself was familiar. Having lived his entire life in Shinbone and having spent most of that life buying and selling houses, he was therefore extremely used to the style, shape and furnishings in most of the town properties and would put this particular building somewhere around the marketplace. He squinted at several of the paintings adorning the walls on either side of his chair and noted that they were of a far superior quality to the disastrous scrawl that took up the one ahead of him. This was mainly because they were both portraits of regal ladies, whereas the giant canvas appeared to show Shinbone following some sort of calamitous catastrophe, complete with crumbling houses and a vast, devastating pit that yawned beneath the town as it teetered on the brink of disaster. The entire scene looked as though it had been scribbled by an extremely angry child. Indeed, there was an extremely angry child standing right in front of it.

Jeremiah coughed. ‘Wh-what am I doing here?’ he said.

The girl glared at him but said nothing.

‘C-can you untie me, child?’

Smiling somewhat demonically, the girl shook her head.

‘Wh-why not?’

‘Jeremiah Blackstock,’ said a voice behind him. ‘You have been found guilty of the following crimes. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time, being a nuisance, being an unreliable pawn on the chessboard of life and generally being in the way. How do you plead?’

‘What! What are you talking about?’

He tried to peer behind him but the restrictions on his arms were remarkably strong. He found himself unable to turn his head more than ninety degrees and the only thing he could make out from the walls at the corner of his vision was a slow-moving shadow.

As he tried to focus on the shape of it, a large and ugly bird landed on a vertical wooden perch in front of the canvas. There were several such structures dotted around the room that he could see, though only the one before him was occupied.

‘Wh-what is that thing? Who ARE you?’

‘Who are you, Jeremiah? Who are any of us when it comes right down to it?’ I’ll tell you one thing: I was a very successful man when I came to this stinking cesspit of a town. My luck ended the day I walked through those rotting metal gates out there…and I blame YOU.’

‘M-me?’ Blackstock spluttered. ‘Wh-what did I do?’

‘Nothing! You didn’t do anything, Jeremiah. You never DO anything: you and the rest of these grovelling, arse-licking peasants. You do nothing. You are nothing. You’re all so very SMALL.’

A series of footsteps announced the arrival of a figure in an ebony cloak that flapped out around him. He cracked his knuckles and slowly reached up to remove the gloves he was wearing. Jeremiah noticed that he was shimmering in and out of focus in a ghostly haze as if he didn’t quite belong in the world or was tuning in from an alternate dimension. For a few brief seconds, he vanished completely and then he was back, holding a long, thin blade which he raised in preparation to strike. Behind him, the girl began to cackle.

‘Don’t worry, my friend. What’s about to happen to you isn’t painful: you won’t feel a thing and you’ll barely notice a difference. At least….not at first.’

‘B-but why me? You haven’t told me why! It’s not fair!’

‘It really isn’t,’ the figure admitted, suppressing a cackle. ‘Unfortunately, I’m on a mission, so I’m afraid it’s now very much a numbers game for me…and I do need those numbers. No hard feelings, eh?’

It was at this point that Jeremiah recognised one of the portraits on the west wall from an article he’d read in the town newspaper. It was a painting by an elderly Shinbone artist of some renown that had recently been donated to…

‘You!’ he exclaimed. ‘I know who you are! This is The Wounded Goat Tavern! You’re the landlord!’

The figure drew back his hood, smiled and threw the dagger. ‘Call me Jack,’ he said, as Blackstock recoiled and hit the floor.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Having spent an inordinate amount of time hunting around the cellar for a hidden lever or a bookcase that concealed a convenient door, Blush and Erin eventually discovered the hatch to the sewer system under a large barrel in the corner of the room.

‘I’m quite disappointed,’ she whispered as they began the ponderous descent. ‘I thought at the very least it would be well hidden. So far, I haven’t seen any of these magical traps you mentioned.’

‘No,’ Blush admitted, reflecting on the lack of defensive charms they’d encountered. ‘You’re right. It’s quite odd, in fact.’

Erin laughed as they reached the bottom of the steps and began to splash through the sewer tunnels. ‘Is this the part where you tell me we’ve been barking up the wrong tree and we’re NOT going to catch the girl and her father red-handed in a demonic underground ritual?’

Blush stopped dead, the firelight from the torch illuminating his face. ‘That’s what’s odd,’ he muttered. ‘There’s been no traps. None at all.’ He peered along the tunnel in both directions. ‘It’s almost like it doesn’t matter that we’re here.’

For a long time, he simply stood stock still in the sewer with his eyes firmly closed, prompting Erin to worry that he’d actually gone into some form of trance.

‘Will you please tell me what you’re thinking?’ she said, suddenly feeling very alone in the shadowy murk of the sewer. ’You’re beginning to scare me.’

Blush opened his eyes and smiled. Then he hurtled down the sewer tunnel, turning at every new junction and heading off with a purpose that Erin hadn’t seen in the man before: from what she could determine, an entirely misguided purpose.

‘We’re going the wrong way!’ she shouted. ‘Drain Castle is in the opposite direction!’

Blush ignored her and ploughed on, raising the map to check it every few seconds against the blazing light of the torch.

‘Be careful!’ Erin snapped. ‘If you set that alight, we’ll have no way of finding our way out of here!’

‘It’s just up ahead!’

‘WHAT IS?’ She put on a burst of speed and ran around Blush to block the path. ‘Where are you going?’

Blush pointed over her shoulder to a section of the sewer that lay up ahead, bathed in a cool green light. ‘Terminus,’ he said, simply, and walked around her.

The chamber they moved into was full of torch sconces and lanterns: one contained a dim green flame but the rest were strewn with cobwebs. The central feature in the chamber was a large slab of concrete etched with the outline of a vast grid.

‘If you look at Moody’s plan, there are a few of these under the main body of the town: they form a sort of place marker that the constructors put down as they expanded the sewer.

‘And we need this because?’ She frowned at Blush as he began to move around the room, lighting the lanterns from his own flame until the chamber was flooded with torchlight. ‘We already have Moody’s plans. What do we need this for?’

Blush ignored her, moved to the middle of the room and used his sleeve to clear the surface of the slab. Then he looked up.

‘We don’t need the grid,’ he muttered, determinedly. ‘We need the space. Do you still have the town map I gave you? Not Moody’s plan - the actual map.’

Erin took a few seconds to rummage through her pack before producing the larger scroll and helping Blush to unfurl it on the slab. She used her sword to weigh down one edge and Blush deposited a pouch of coins on the other.

‘What if none of this has been about the people involved in the subsidence at Drain Castle? What if that situation simply sped up plans that were already underway? A murderous, sacrificial scheme that was already in motion?’

Erin stared at him. ‘But the murders didn’t START until now,’ she said. ‘That can’t be a coincidence, surely?’

‘I arrived here to investigate a darkness that has been growing in Shinbone for some time. The magical council are aware of it and sent me here with the sole purpose of uncovering the culprit. Moody found the problem at the Castle and involved Fairwhack: the further the word spread, the more urgent the plans became…so the murders started earlier than intended: murders that had been planned for a very long time.’

Erin felt her skin prickle: she was trembling and her rising panic was forcing her to wring her hands together for warmth; the sewer suddenly felt incredibly cold.

‘So-so what is this all about?’ she said.

‘It’s a plot to destroy Shinbone.’ Blush continued to stare at the map. ‘A plot to raise a dark god to swallow the town. Do you know what that requires?’

Erin shook her head very slowly.

‘Sacrifices….and a pattern.’ Blush fished in the coin pouch and produced a handful of gold. ‘Fairwhack was killed here, Moody died here. What about the drunkard who fell from the window? Fargone Street, did you say?’

‘He wasn’t part of the shadow attacks! He died by hitting the cobbles from a third-floor window!’

Blush put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Would Moody not also have died hitting the cobbles if he hadn’t landed on a heap of rubbish?’

Erin gulped back the suggestion that the drunk hadn’t been separated from his shadow when she realised there was absolutely no way of knowing that. Instead, she shrugged off Blush’s condescending grasp, took a coin from the pouch and placed it at the very top of Fargone Street.

‘Good’. Blush nodded. ‘That’s a start, at least. Now let me see if we can discern a pattern.’

He suddenly raised both his hands and turned them inwards. As he did so, the outline of a scar appeared on each of his palms. This raised a gasp from Erin, who couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing.

‘Wh-why do you have those?’

Blush shrugged. ‘Research notes. Let’s join these together and see if we can’t make out the start of something…’

Blush produced a piece of black shale from his pocket and drew a line between the three coins. Then he consulted both hands and used a finger to trace different patterns on the map. None of them seemed to produce the desired result.

Erin watched him try several combinations in this manner but her own attention was fixed firmly on Blush’s left hand. When he wasn’t holding it up to the light and was instead using it to keep himself steady while he leaned over the table with his right, the scar on his palm looked almost…a match.

‘It’s upside down,’ she said, matter-of-factly, reaching for Blush’s hand and tracing her fingertips over his palm. ‘If you start from the bottom and make that the top, then the first three lines would be here, here and here.’

She took the shale from him and drew out every line between the coins. Then she continued the pattern.

‘If it’s the one on your LEFT hand and it’s inverted, then the complete drawing would look like….this.’

She stood back and allowed Blush to examine the overlay, watching as he took more coins from the bag and began to place them.

‘In that case, the next attacks will take place either on or beneath Root Lane and Drain Castle.’

A dark silence reigned in the sewer.

‘Lofty will be okay,’ Blush assured her, smiling humourlessly. ‘He has those three musclebound lunatics with him and I’m sure they’d be a match for anyone.’

Erin didn’t return his grin. She simply glanced back at the map and said, ‘Then I guess we head for Root Lane.’

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Terrified almost to the point of paralysis, Lofty nevertheless found the strength to continue his retreat, his sword drawn out in front of him in what felt like an entirely redundant gesture. The three Barbarians didn’t even give chase: they simply fanned out and moved forward, fully confident that the castle itself was their prey’s only form of escape.

‘I d-don’t understand!’ Lofty said, wielding the sword to demonstrate that he knew how to use one. ‘You’re MERCENARIES! You’re swords for hire! Didn’t Jack explain that when he hired you? There’s no profit in robbing a copper like me! Shinbone will pay for your help!’

Russell moved out in front of the others, his Waraxe calmly swinging at his side. ‘Jack explained everything very clearly,’ he said, with a demonic smirk, ‘…and you’re absolutely right, Shinbone WILL pay. Unfortunately, for that to happen, you need to die first.’

Gorth and Grunk both echoed the laughter that exploded from their companion as he cornered Lofty at the walls of the keep.

‘J-Jack hired you to kill me?’ Lofty spat, exasperated. ‘B-but why? That doesn’t make any sense! I’m nobody! Jack KNOWS me! If you ask him again, he’ll tell you! You have to ask him!’

Russell shrugged. ‘Give us a few last words and we’ll pass on the message.’

As the two bulky warriors moved in on either side of the wall, Lofty prepared to defend himself against the giant cyclops.

‘You work for Jack,’ he said, as the gap closed between them and a stark realisation dawned. ‘…and you’re all one gang. ‘Two of Clubs, Ace of Spades…Jack of Diamonds. How could I be so stupid?’

Russell grinned. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said. ‘You won’t feel stupid for very long.’

All three warriors rushed forward.

Lofty swept his sword out in a strike that glanced off the blade Gorth was wielding and then used Russell’s insanely powerful momentum against him, shouldering out of the warrior’s path and causing him to collide with Grunk, who had evidently had the same idea as his dimwitted partner. As he crashed to the ground, he abandoned the sword and opted for a far more likely means of surviving the ordeal: flee.

Scrambling to his feet ahead of the trio, he had mere seconds to choose the safest path away from them…and that meant gaining entrance to the castle. A frenzied pursuit through the woods would lend victory to the party with the greatest stamina and judging by the speed that his attackers were calling on to find their feet, he strongly suspected that he would come off worse in that case. The castle offered places to hide, places to climb or in a worst-case scenario, the sewers.

He turned and ran for the doors of the keep.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Blush turned the sewer map through a ninety-degree arc as he marched down a section of tunnel that looked identical to the last twenty corridors they’d ventured through.

‘Are you sure we’re not going in circles?’ Erin asked, hurrying to keep up with him.

‘I wish we were,’ Blush answered, taking a sharp right down a new, slightly narrower causeway. ‘Believe it or not, we’re drawing ever closer to Root Lane and I have a creeping feeling that we’re heading here.’

He raised the map as he walked, allowing Erin to illuminate it with the torch she’d been forced to carry.

‘It’s a large chamber very close to the edge of town that I suspect forms the last junction before the Western Woods. It seems to accommodate many exits and intersects with most of the sewer tunnels in this part of the map. It might also be large enough to function as a major sacrificial chamber, so you can firmly expect some sort of lair there.’

‘Lair?’

‘Yes, lair: weird statues, blood on the walls, the works.’

Erin rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, well, I wouldn’t know anything about that,’ she muttered. ‘You’re the expert, after all: I’m just doing my job.’ She drew her sword and looked down her shaking arm at the edge of the blade. ‘Guess if I die along with you, then at least I was doing my duty.’

Blush stopped suddenly and turned to face her, putting a finger to his lips.

‘I want you to listen to me very carefully and don’t say a thing until I’m finished. Now, please nod to show me that you understand.’

Erin dutifully inclined her head but her eyes were wide, tearful and filled with fear.

‘If this situation goes the way I think it’s going to go, then one of us will most assuredly die here…but it doesn’t have to be you. I am a magician with an entire arsenal of defensive spells and although I’m unlikely to be a match for what may well await us up ahead, I will certainly be able to stand my ground for a time. What I need YOU to do is firstly to accept my apology for treating you like an idiot and secondly to forgive me for not letting you in on what’s really been going on here. This is YOUR town and you have every right to risk your life to save it - but only if you know exactly what you’re looking for.’

Erin swallowed and when Blush said nothing further, she whispered: ‘What AM I looking for?’

The magician grinned. ‘Good question. You are looking for an imperfect black-bodied sphere on a plinth somewhere in these sewers, most likely very close to the sacrificial chamber. It may be in a dormant state, in which case it can be smashed, or it may be active, in which case it must be overcome and submerged in water. That is your sole responsibility in this investigation and those are my orders. Do you understand?’

Erin sheathed her sword and saluted. ‘I understand.’

‘Let’s go.’

Chapter Thirty-Nine

A rock hurtled into the remains of a shattered window on the ground floor of the keep and Lofty vaulted through the gap. Dragging himself to his feet, he ran along a corridor and past the ruins of an ancient dining hall before arriving at a set of steps that both ascended to the higher floors and descended to the castle basement. As he leaned on the stone baluster to catch his breath, the great double doors of the keep burst open and the Two of Clubs entered, spotting Lofty immediately and then smashing everything in their path to reach the foot of the stairs. There was no sign of their giant companion.

Lofty took the steps two at a time, reaching the first landing in a matter of seconds. He’d reached the second floor by the time Gorth and Grunk had made a somewhat messy attempt to outrun each other in pursuit of him.

Passing a line of garderobes and bathing halls, Lofty doubled back on himself and attempted to circle the entire floor, arriving at a point where the landing overlooked the staircase below. Observing that Gorth and Grunk had started their search in one of the lower bedchambers, he slipped down the steps and returned to the ground floor, where he found Russell leaning against what remained of the keep’s massive doorframe.

The cyclops grinned at him. ‘You can’t escape, you know. One way or another, you die here, today. You might as well make things easy on yourself and just stop running.’

‘Thanks for the offer….Russell…but you’re okay. I’ve got some steam left in me.’

Lofty turned back towards the staircase but the two barbarians had emerged and were descending to block his pathway back.

‘We’re just toying with you, really,’ the cyclops continued. He moved over to a small ledge behind the door and selected a pack from his belt pouch, laying it out on the cold stone surface. ‘We can’t just cut off your head or run you through with a sword. We have to kill you in exactly the right place with exactly the right weapon.’ He unfurled the pack and raised what to Lofty looked like thin air. ‘I bet you can’t even see it,’ he said nastily. ‘I guess the chances of you feeling it are pretty high, though?’

Chapter Forty

The hexagonal chamber that loomed ahead of Blush turned out to contain a perfectly constructed and nightmarish reflection of everything he’d been dreading since he arrived in Shinbone.

The walls at the end of the corridor he was proceeding along had undergone some sort of mutated transition from glistening green slime to snaking black veins that pulsed with a disturbing amount of energetic life.

Blush stepped over several such tendrils and motioned for Erin to do the same as they approached the chamber and made their entrance.

The interior of the Hexagon was decked out in a wide variety of ebony statues, all containing various forms of serpent symbolism in bas-relief. Blush tried to ignore the towering idol of Hyiss at the back of the chamber, as it was far too lifelike for comfort. Oddly, there were sticks of dynamite fixed to the ceiling in several places, each connected by some sort of fuse-wire.

Blush found his gaze immediately drawn to the chalked map on the floor of the chamber and the collection of perches all around the walls. There were dark feathers everywhere but not a solitary bird in sight. The map was in fact a detailed depiction of the entire town of Shinbone, encompassing the hills, the river border and even the Western Woods.

Blush stopped dead and winced, wondering where the sudden and overwhelming aura of magic was coming from. He didn't wonder for long.

In the middle of the map was a single, sourceless black flame, blazing away merrily and somehow illuminating the entire chamber far more than the army of torches on the walls. Dancing around the fire was a collection of shadows…except that they weren’t exactly dancing. Each one that sprang up contained a recognisably tortured soul that screamed in an effort to escape before being dragged back into the flame. The silence after every distant cry was deafening.

Blush took in the scene with a series of measured breaths, spotting the ghosts of Fairwhack, Moody and a third poor soul before turning to Erin with a determined expression. He said: ‘When I tell you to go, you go.’

The girl signalled her agreement and the pair proceeded into the centre of the chamber.

‘There’s nobody here,’ Erin said, not commenting on the wide variety of environmental terrors surrounding them. ‘Do you think we’re too late?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Blush, indicating the floor. ‘Whatever is going to happen to the town of Shinbone is going to begin in this room. I’m quite certain we’re the first guests to arrive at the party.’

‘You are indeed!’ cried a voice.

They turned as a thin, spindly man Blush didn’t recognise sauntered into the chamber from one of the many side passages. He was employing an incredibly strange, loping stride that made him look like an arrogant skeleton and his grin managed to be both manic and sickly at the same time.

‘Jack?’ said Erin, her face a mixture of surprise and confusion. She moved closer to Blush and whispered: ‘He’s the landlord of the Wounded Goat. He used to sell dodgy bracelets and runny gold: they called him the Jack of Diamonds.’

‘It WASN’T RUNNY!’ Jack screamed, leaping up and down on the spot. ‘It was SOLID gold! My bracelets were PRICELESS!’

‘They were if you tried to resell them!’ Erin barked, stepping forward and yanking up her sleeve. ‘I’ve had to change the links on this one twenty times.’

‘LIAR! SHUT YOUR MOUTH WITH THOSE TAINTED LIES! YOU’LL BE SORRY YOU BESMIRCHED MY GOOD NAME!’

‘Don’t lithen to her daddy!’

The girl who had caused all the trouble at the town hall cartwheeled into the room. ‘Theeth a liar! Theeth a filthy thtinking little liar!’

Jack spun around suddenly, as if he’d been electrocuted. When he finally swivelled to a halt, he was surrounded in a cloak of swirling shadows.

‘It’s okay, Mabel,’ he said, in a disturbingly calm voice. ‘We need these two idiots to complete the ritual. They’re in exactly the right place, now.’

‘Oh! Exthiting!’ The girl skipped around the edge of the circle and beamed at the images in the flames. ‘I can thee Mithter Fairwhack, Mithter Moody and Mithter Marth. Will Mithter Blackthtock be there thoon, daddy?’

‘He will indeed, my little peach,’ Jack crooned. ‘He will indeed. It always takes a while for the birds to eat their fill. While we’re waiting, I’m sure the esteemed Mister Blush and his lovely apprentice would like an opportunity to talk us out of our DESTINY. Am I right?’

Blush held the man’s gaze but said nothing. While they stood facing each other, he slipped his hands inside his sleeves and invoked two drastically different spells, feeling both fire and ice within his grasp.

‘So you’ll have three from the top of the icon and two from the bottom,’ he observed, giving the spells time to gain potency. ’That leaves a bit of a problem for you at Drain Castle: I’m sorry I complicated it with all those mercenaries.’

Jack’s smile stayed exactly where it was. ‘You mean my mercenaries?’ he drooled. ‘Two Clubs and a Spade? They take their jobs very seriously: I’d imagine your man Lofty might well appear in that fire before Blackstock arrives!’

Blush swore under his breath and glanced at Erin, who was practically shaking with anger.

‘Go,’ he said, sidestepping the edge of the circle to block her view of Jack. ‘GO.’

As the sergeant turned and ran, Blush stepped forward and loosed a blue shard of ice from his fingertips. The freezing meteor hit one of the statues beside Jack, which exploded in a shower of black rock.

‘I’ll get her daddy!’

Mabel took off like a rogue missile, racing after Erin in a series of fits and burst that she swapped for the odd cartwheel.

Blush returned his attention to the raining shower of stone, just in time to see Jack pitch forward with one of the shadow-blades.

He shot out a hand and incinerated the knife before it could find its mark.

‘Ha! How many more of those neat little tricks do you have, Wizard!?!?’ Jack threw back his cloak and revealed a second knife. ‘Takes you a while to mutter them up, doesn’t it? You should try necromancy: it’s a far better calling.’

Blush found his eyes drawn to the second blade and wondered how he was ever going to avoid it.

Chapter Forty-One

The Two of Clubs dragged Lofty between them, moving through chamber after chamber in the half-collapsed basement of the castle. The Ace of Spades followed them, the shadow-blade in one hand, dutifully checking a scroll as he walked.

‘Left here, down there, next set of stairs. Right at the door, further along. Down these steps to the bottom. Ah. Here we are. This is perfect.’

Gorth and Grunk wheeled around and deposited their prisoner on the stone floor of the chamber.

‘P-please,’ Lofty said, forcing himself onto his knees and putting his hands together. ‘You don’t have to do this!’

Russell shrugged. ‘It’s the choices we make that define our character,’ he said, hefting his waraxe in one hand and wielding the shadow-blade in the other. He placed the tip of the latter under Lofty’s neck. ‘I want you to know that this is nothing personal: you’re a cog in a very big wheel, my friend…and one day, far from here, young children will listen to fireside stories that mention your name.’ He whistled between his teeth. ‘Well, maybe that’s an understatement.’

He ran the blade across Lofty’s throat…or, at least, he would have done if Gorth hadn’t stabbed him.

Russell looked down at the sword sticking out of his stomach and then up at his barbarian friend of twenty years, his face a mask of confusion. Gorth looked equally shocked and betrayed but his attention was on Grunk, who had in turn stabbed him. Grunk’s own attention was momentarily diverted to the waraxe Russell had swung into his back. All three warriors collapsed to the ground.

‘Told you I’d come and find you later,’ said the crone, sucking on a gobstopper as she descended the stairs. ‘Now follow me and pick up that sword; it’s a long walk and your mate Blush needs you in the sewer.’

Chapter Forty-Two

Erin hunkered down at the edge of a dank corridor and balled her hands into fists. Her usual policy when it came to disciplining children was based around a firm telling off, but in this instance she was prepared to make an exception.

Listening for the perfect moment, she suddenly thrust out an arm and caught the girl mid-cartwheel, feeling a huge burst of satisfaction as she rolled into a crumpled heap on the floor.

‘Up you get, Mabel,’ she said, snatching hold of the girl’s foot and swinging her into the murky sewer water. ‘Don’t take in too many solids while you’re down there: it will spoil your dinner.’

The girl flapped and splashed in the water before clambering onto the far bank.

‘I’m going to thmath you!’ she screamed. ‘I’m going to thmath you and thmath you and thmath you!’

Erin laughed off the threat. ‘Sorry, can’t hang around, kid. Places to go, people to see.’ She turned and hurried off down the corridor, Blush’s words echoing in her head.

It will be close to the sacrificial chamber.

She stopped her forward progress and took a detour, moving through tunnel after tunnel in an effort to stay within a close circle of the hexagon room where Blush was undoubtedly still fighting for his life.

At length, she rounded a bend in the tunnel and stopped dead in her tracks.

The orb hovered over a plinth in the middle of the chamber. It was hard to tell if the surface of the sphere was a quivering skin or a solid mass, in the same sense that it was difficult to tell if the orb was spinning or simply shuddering so much that it appeared to be spinning. It was, nevertheless, a sight to behold and somehow also a terrifying spectacle.

She slowly unhooked the pack from her shoulder, never once taking her eyes from the orb in case it suddenly did something grim and unexpected. She felt keenly observed, as if she was being watched by an enormous, all-seeing eye.

Crouching close to the floor, she began to unravel the pack and rummaged inside until her fingers found the claw hammer she had packed for their journey into the sewers. Slowly, cautiously, she approached the orb.

As she drew near the plinth with the hammer raised above her, she saw that the skin of the sphere was dripping with a black mucus and that it appeared to tighten defensively with every step she took towards it.

Not good, she thought, really not good. This thing knows I’m about to attack it.

Changing tactics, she lowered the hammer and instead moved incrementally closer and closer to the plinth. Then, half turning away from the sphere, she took a run up and leapt at it.

Chapter Forty-Three

Lofty ran along the corridor until even his last breath was gasping for breath…and the old woman was still ahead of him at every turn.

‘If you can kill three barbarians and lap me for twenty miles,’ he panted, staggering on. ‘Why does Blush have to save Shinbone from the bloody Jack of Diamonds? Why can’t you do it?’

The crone shifted her gobstopper to the other side of her mouth and pointed at the ceiling. ‘See all that up there?’ she said. ‘That’s dynamite…and it runs in a line right down to the town. Blush can’t save Shinbone: nobody can. Your man Jack will have his day: he’s made sure of that, one way or another.’

‘I thought he was using magic!’

‘Ha! That boy clearly trusts magic as much as I do. Look at the insurance policy he’s taken out. One bang and that’s the whole town gone.’

‘So why aren’t we doing something?’

‘We are. Keep walking.’

Lofty forced himself into a trot, then a run and finally sprinted along the corridors with the last burst of energy he had in him. When he finally coughed and spluttered to a halt, the crone was leaning against a wall inside an alcove off the path.

‘How are you DOING that?’ he said.

The old woman grinned. ‘Carry on, soldier. Not far now. I think I can hear some movement up ahead.’

Chapter Forty-Four

Erin writhed and twisted in the air, trying desperately to hang on to the orb and realising with increasing despair that it was like trying to keep a pack of angry dogs in a sack. Occasionally, she managed to use her weight to crash to the ground, only to become swiftly overpowered by the chaotic nature of the sphere as it darted wildly in different directions to evade her grasp.

Finally, more out of luck than the sheer bloodyminded determination she was using the snare the thing, she managed to wedge it between the ground and the side of the plinth, employing all her weight as leverage. Reaching for the hammer that had fallen to the ground at her side, she raised the weapon over her head and struck. It rebounded uselessly off the glistening skin of the sphere…and Mabel barrelled into her like a cannonball.

She hit the ground hard.

‘Told you I’d thmath you!’ screamed the girl, kicking Erin twice in the stomach as she tried to get to her feet. ‘You tangled with the wrong girl, thithter. I’m going to-’

She suddenly rose into the air, where she floated, suspended over the water, her eyes rolling back in her head and her tongue lolling pathetically from her mouth. Several snaking tendrils had extended from the orb hovering above her and were slithering into her nose and mouth. It appeared to be feeding on her.

Erin watched the scene with mounting horror before crawling around behind her and snatching up the hammer once again. As she got to her feet, Lofty stepped into the chamber from a side tunnel and froze. He was accompanied by a very old woman who didn’t seem in the least surprised by the scene unfolding in the chamber.

Locking eyes with her friend, Erin motioned for Lofty’s attention and then made a show of pointing at the orb and striking the air with the hammer. Waiting until Lofty sheathed his sword and silently confirmed that he understood what she was trying to communicate, she raised one finger, then two and finally a third.

‘NOW!’ she screamed, tossing the hammer to Lofty and bolting forward, she leapt into the air and wrapped her arms around the girl’s waist. They all went plunging into the sewer water: first Erin, then Mabel and finally the orb, which immediately solidified into a shell.

Lofty hurtled into the water and struck the surface of the sphere with the hammer. It exploded with a noise like a thousand children screaming.

In the resulting chaos, Mabel splashed out of the water, vomited several times and ran off in the direction of the sacrificial chamber. Erin and Lofty hurried after her.

The old woman took one last look at the devastated orb and prodded it a few times with her foot. Then she glanced up at the ceiling, shook her head and decided to make her own way out of the sewer.

Chapter Forty-Five

The shadow-blade flew on an aim so true that the very air around it hummed as the dark magic surrounding it disturbed the fabric of reality. Blush saw the thing in time but had no spells available and resorted to the only tactic he had left: a dodge.

He threw himself sideways, realising almost instantly that he wasn’t going to be in time to avoid the blade. It sang past his neck as he tumbled sideways and he was certain he felt…something.

Crashing to the ground, he rolled over twice and dragged himself to his feet using one of the statues. As he glanced around the chamber, he saw Jack staring at him gleefully.

‘I got you! I GOT YOU!’ Jack leapt into the air and screamed with delight.

Blush clapped a hand to his throat and checked the palm for any signs of a wound, even though he knew there wouldn’t be one. Was this how Fulbert had felt? Or Moody?

No, Blush was certain, this was not the end.

‘You MISSED,’ he said, straightening himself and moving to stand in the centre of the chamber. ‘Try again, Shadow-Jack.’

The necromancer frowned, as if he was looking at something he didn’t entirely understand.

‘I got you, wizard! I KNOW I DID.’

Suddenly, a scream from somewhere in the tunnels pierced the eerie silence of the chamber and, with no warning whatsoever, the black flame went out.

Jack’s eyes widened like billiard balls. ‘No! NO! NOOOOO!’

Blush charged forward, taking the necromancer off his feet in one swift tackle. As they both collided with the closest statue, he brought up a knee and planted it firmly in Jack’s groin, connecting with a punch to the face that broke the necromancer’s nose.

He muttered an incantation beneath his breath and felt the heat of fire in his palm. Balling the hand into a fist, he raised it over his head until it felt like he was carrying a flaming brazier. Then he raised Jack’s chin and said, ‘Jack of Diamonds? Allow me to introduce you to the King of Clubs.’

‘Daddy? Daddy! NO!’

Blush brought down the fist with every ounce of strength he could muster but the girl slammed into his back before he could land the blow and he missed by a mile: the fireball rocketed into the ceiling….

…and hit the dynamite.

Blush saw the entire event take place in slow motion. He was running before he even knew what was happening and certainly before he was aware of anyone running beside him.

The tunnels flew past in a blur, corridor after corridor flashing by as the sounds of the first explosion echoed behind him.

As the explosions began to mount, the sewers collapsed into the mines and the mines fell into the goblin tunnels that were in turn swallowed by the yawning void of the deep.

It didn’t hit me: the fact was all he could think of as tunnel after tunnel collapsed into the giant sinkhole that was gasping to open beneath the town. It can’t have hit me. I’m still alive. I’m still breathing. I’m still ME.

He peered at the walls in a daze, more concerned with the shadow he cast in the corridor than with the direction he ran, conscious that Erin and Lofty were guiding him in places, shoving him in new directions as they all ran for the edge of town.

He thought of the girl, of the way she hugged her father as the world disappeared beneath them. Selfishly, though, in the end…he thought only of himself.

Epilogue

Sunlight gleamed over the gaping sinkhole that commanded the space once occupied by so many streets and houses. Now, the view was a wild abyss peppered in places with sections of labyrinthine tunnels twisting off into the bowels of the land. It was like peering down at an impossibly complicated jigsaw that you had no hope of ever completing. As they stood on the cliff, observing the devastation, Erin noticed a thin line of surviving townsfolk around the lip of the crater: so many people had been lost.

Lofty shivered in the cold, hoping his elderly rescuer had escaped but also wondering if there would be any cosmic punishment for a man who had destroyed what Blush had referred to as a ‘dark god’.

The sinkhole yawned as two more streets were swallowed but the rate of collapse was finally slowing. Far off, one or two buildings outside the danger zone still stood as the only evidence that there had once been a sizeable town on the site.

Still, Erin reflected, at least they had their own lives to be thankful for...and so much of that was down to one man.

‘I’ll say this, Hieronymous Blush,’ she panted, looking out over the distant remains of Shinbone. ‘You cast a long shadow.’

Blush glanced behind him…and wasn’t so sure.

The End.

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