Lost Lore: A Fantasy Anthology Read online

  Lost Lore: A Fantasy Anthology

  Copyright © 2018 by The Terrible Ten

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Introduction: © 2017 Mark Lawrence

  Interior and cover design by Write Dream Repeat Book Design

  Cover illustration by Andreas Zafeiratos

  First Edition 2018

  “No Fairytale” © 2017 by Ben Galley

  “And They Were Never Heard from Again” © 2017 by Benedict Patrick

  “A Tree Called Sightless” © 2017 by Steven Kelliher

  “Barrowlands” © 2017 by Mike Shel

  “Into the Woods” © 2017 by Timandra Whitecastle

  “Paternus: Deluge” © 2017 by Dyrk Ashton

  “I, Kane” © 2017 by Laura M. Hughes

  “The Huntress” © 2017 by Michael R. Miller

  “The Prisoner” © 2017 by Phil Tucker

  “A Simple Thing” © 2017 by Bryce O’Connor

  “Palesword” © 2017 by T. L. Greylock

  “The Light in the Jungle” © 2017 by Jeffrey Hall

  “Black Barge” © 2017 by J. P. Ashman

  “Making A Killing” © 2017 by David Benem

  “The First Thread” © 2017 by Alec Hutson

  Introduction

  by Mark Lawrence

  Call me Dr Love, Ph.D, for it seems that an unintended consequence of my competition for self-published fantasy authors (SPFBO) has been to spark a great number of authormances. Many of those entering the contest cite meeting and befriending other authors as an even bigger benefit than any publicity gained.

  The ten authors who initially got together on this lovefest were all SPFBO alumni. Those ten have now multiplied into nearly thirty (let us not speculate on the mechanism, gentle reader). And this anthology contains work from across a spectrum of writers, from those not yet published to some who earn their living solely by selling books.

  Lost Lore comprises short tales that serve as introductions to the worlds in which each of these authors have chosen to write. Hopefully they will inspire you to take a more extended journey through those creations at some later date.

  Every fantasy world sits icebergian (yes that’s a word) upon a hidden nine tenths lurking below the waterline, a history that the reader sees only as hints. This hidden lore, replete with its own stories, mythology, lies, feuds, and vendettas, can be wholly real as in the case of the great JRR Tolkien, where endless notebooks heavily outweigh the final manuscript. Or it can be imagined, just as the scenery in many films extends no further than a façade supported by canvas and wood. This latter state is the more common situation but it is one that requires considerable writing skill. Writing is all about creating an illusion of depth, an impression of a reality that exists without the reader, one that had a ‘before’ and will have an ‘after’. The writer needs to make the reader believe that around every corner, behind every curtain, rich lives are being lived, just waiting for discovery. And even if the hidden part of a fantasy world remains submerged in a writer’s imagination its existence is vital to the health of the novels in that world. In Lost Lore we journey with the authors into that background and see what happens when the dots are joined, the colours applied, and new adventures start.

  Table of Contents

  Titlepage

  Copyright

  Introduction by Mark Lawrence

  1: No Fairytale by Ben Galley

  2: And They Were Never Heard From Again by Benedict Patrick

  3: A Tree Called Sightless by Steven Kelliher

  4: Barrowlands by Mike Shel

  5: Into the Woods by Timandra Whitecastle

  6: Paternus: Deluge by Dyrk Ashton

  7: I, Kane by Laura M. Hughes

  8: The Huntress by Michael R. Miller

  9: The Prisoner by Phil Tucker

  10: A Simple Thing by Bryce O’Connor

  11: Palesword by T L Greylock

  12: The Light in the Jungle by Jeffrey Hall

  13: Black Barge by J. P. Ashman

  14: Making A Killing by David Benem

  15: The First Thread by Alec Hutson

  About the Authors

  Lost Lore

  1

  No Fairytale

  Ben Galley

  We are all stories. Line after line, chapter after chapter, written at the rate of one’s heartbeat. We have no control over this. We do, we act, we live. That is the way of it. We must accept the inevitable, and know that we only have control over the story we leave behind.

  Some stories are short; anecdotes for the night-fires. Some are long, winding tales and glorious at their finish. Some are full of darkness. Others light. Others still are grey in their ambiguity.

  Most of our stories are indistinguishable from the next. Unremarkable, was the word. Not everybody can have their name roared at roof-beams over the clash of tankards and foreheads. Few ever have that honour, my father told me. Fewer still keep hold of it. For stories change with the writing and the telling.

  These teachings are of my father, and were his father’s before him. They were the height of wisdom once, and they curbed the boundaries of my ambition. That was before I realised the root of this wisdom, and how rotten it was. A man must make his peace with being unremarkable, my father says, but that is only because he inwardly rages at his own insipidness.

  To spend a life wishing it was different is like never living at all, and that was not I.

  Not I.

  I mouthed that promise until my tiptoeing had taken me to the inner door. I’d greased its hinges with lard after supper, and it did me proud with its silence. The frigid wind gusted around my bare ankles. I saw the outer door straining against its locks. I braced it as I loosed each one, but despite my efforts the blizzard wrenched it open, and me along with it.

  Snow enveloped me, filled my mouth. My teeth crawled with its cold. I was up before the door could buck again, wrestling it into place and tying it fast with the mouldy old rope.

  The cold made the dozen yards feel like a hundred. For me, in my hole-infested trews, borrowed bearskin and brother’s boots, it felt like two. I kept my eyes on the dark lump of the barn amidst the rushing snow. The light of the farmhouse windows behind me turned the night a pale gold.

  Bent double, I reached the barn door and thumbed the cogs of the lock into the right positions. Father was never too careful. At least once a week, he lectured me on how uncertain the times were. Danger in the north. Danger in the south. Krauslung this. King Malvus that.

  The air was calm in the barn, but still cold enough to show me my breath in the thin light of a lantern. This too, I had organised post-supper, and I was thankful the cold hadn’t got to it. I felt the heavy scent of sawdust and month-old manure in my numb nostrils.

  ‘Not I,’ I said aloud, rubbing my deadened fingers together.

  I moved to my usual spot, above the covered well in the centre o
f the barn. The two ancient cows penned up nearby shuffled in their slumbers, paying me no heed.

  Squatting down over the well, I moved the lantern so I could press my hands to the ashen wood. They were so cold I felt fingerless. It took a long time for the feeling to return. When it did, I bent my concentration to feeling every knot, every splinter beneath my palms, pressing and pressing all the while. My straining became a gurgle in my throat. I clenched my teeth so hard they squeaked, and something in my jaw twanged.

  I felt the skin of my forearms grow hot, sweaty against the bearskin. I pushed the heat down to my fingertips until they began to steam. Harder, I pushed, until my eyes began to twitch. The pounding in my head was so loud it felt as though my brain and heart had switched places.

  I smelled the smoke before I saw it curling around my splayed fingers. The elation almost broke my concentration, but I held fast until the heat became a glow. Something seared my arms then; the sharpest pain I had felt in my short fifteen years.

  With a yelp that awoke the cows, I fell away from the well, clutching my hands to my breast. I had to clench them between the waves of pain to make sure they were still attached. It bit my tongue to fight from yelling out.

  At first I thought the scream was my own, and that I’d failed to ground it down into a squeal. Then a second rang out, and I froze, pain forgotten.

  A sickly green light shone through the gaps in the wooden cladding. Something heavy slammed against the wall, showering me in ice and dust. I tried to get up but my hands felt too raw. Not a mark could be seen on my red palms, but they felt like bare flesh and nerves. I cursed as I collided with the dusty flagstone.

  Steel clashed somewhere in the cottage, and I heard another scream. It was cut short with a bang.

  Addled by pain but galvanised by fear, I crawled to the cows’ pen on my elbows. Even in their dopey and arthritic years, they’d heard the commotion. The smell of smoke on my hands did nothing to calm them. They kicked their gnarled hooves at me as I wormed into the mouldy straw.

  The doors of the barn burst open, ripping from their old hinges and landing in flaming pieces on the stone. The cows flew into a panic, pressing against the far side of their pen, almost trampling me in the process. I clutched my bruised legs and held my breath as I spied a bald figure in the wreaths of smoke. He walked without sound despite wearing armoured boots.

  He stood in the middle of the barn, the length of a broom from me, and stared down at the well. Leather squeaked as he bent down, and put two gloved fingers to the wood where I’d lain my hands moments before.

  He sniffed his fingers, long and deep. The chill wind fanned the smoking door, snowflakes joining embers in a spiral dance around him. I fought not to move as his gaze turned on my pile of straw.

  The man had the fairest eyes I had ever seen: a blue so pale that for a moment I thought him blind. His skin was flawless like a child’s, bereft of beard or moustache, and perfectly proportioned. I was entranced until I realised his eyes hadn’t moved from mine.

  I squirmed to get up, but found his hand on my nape before I’d made it to my knees.

  ‘Shhh,’ he whispered against my ear. His breath smelled foul, of pipesmoke and old meat. It made me gag. ‘Pretty thing, you are.’

  Before I could scream, I felt my body leave the floor in a shower of straw, and a sharp shoulder dig into my gut. No matter how much I struggled, his arm pinned me like an iron shackle. I was helpless, left to stare past his legs at the red of the snowdrifts.

  It could not have been dawn…

  The heat of the flames found me. They were just starting to blossom in the cold, but already they coloured the murky night. I stared at my home, and for a moment my upside-down view dampened the horror of the scene.

  The sooty windows and gaps in the thatch glowed. Both doors had been staved in. A blazing yellow burned beyond them. Only silhouettes stood in their jambs. My brother, unmistakable by his wild hair, dangled from the fist of a stranger. His feet kicked in the air before he was thrown to the flames. My mother’s screams drowned out mine. I saw my father face-down in the snow, and I did not know whether it was blood or fire that painted the snow around his head.

  I struggled anew, but with every thrash, the man’s grip only grew stronger. My father had brought a tricksome toy back from Jorpsund once; the sole trinket of a failed trade journey. It had been no more complex than a tube of wire and knitted thread that wrapped about my finger. But the more I had tried to free myself from it, the tighter it had gripped me. After an hour, father had bestowed its secret: slow and patient efforts.

  Steeling myself, I attempted that now. With gradual, worming movements, I managed to touch my hands to the roughness of my captor’s jerkin. I felt mail underneath and reached for his nape instead.

  I let the bright fire fill my eyes. I let the dying screams of my burning brother and mother crowd my ears. I yelled with them, and poured all the fright and sorrow and confusion into my palms, as I had done with my desperation. I had wished for different, and here it was. I cursed it.

  ‘Fuck you!’

  The heat flowed into my hands immediately, scorching the skin beneath. I was dropped unceremoniously in the cold drifts. My palms hissed against the snow as I flailed to crawl away. A boot found my ribs; a fist my shoulder. Something pressed me down as I tried to rise, but nothing touched me. Green light mixed with the fiery glow.

  A threat was growled in my ear, so close I felt the spittle. ‘Stay down!’

  ‘Problems, Barag?’ A voice called out against the crackle of flames.

  ‘Fucking shrew singed me! Every fucking time! Why’s it always me that has to ‘andle the brats?’

  ‘Because you’re shit at everything else. Take that spell off her.’

  The pressure, which was now forcing me to chew snow just to breath, lifted with a snap of fingers. I moved my head to gasp, catching sight of my father as I did so. His face was hidden, but through the bloody gap in his skull, I saw more of him than I had ever seen.

  Hands were set to my ankles, and I was hauled over the snow drifts. The tongues of the flames thrashed in the icy wind, but their roots were firmly planted. My cottage now burned like a pyre. Tears froze on my cheek as I wailed for my family.

  ‘Why?!’ I cried at my captors. There were four altogether, gathered at my heels. The leader was hooded, guiding his small pack into the woods. The other three, including the one dragging me, let their black hair thrash against their faces. All of them wore the same white and unblemished skin.

  None of them answered my wails. Only once did the hooded man snatch a look over his shoulder. I saw nothing but white eyes; stripped of hue.

  The journey passed agonisingly, measured only by my burning home fading behind the black and white pillars of snow-clad pines. For a time it clung on as a mere glow between the rushing flakes of the blizzard. Then with one gust of wind, it was robbed from me, like the family that burned within it.

  I sobbed, both with anguish and with the pain of being dragged through the snow. It seemed my captors had no care for my wellbeing, perhaps not even for my survival.

  Hidden stones scraped me. Skeletal branches tore further holes in my trews and bearskin coat. My teeth chattered so violently I thought my teeth would crack. Only the clasping of my hands gave me some warmth. I was in too much pain to concentrate on bringing the heat to them. It was such a new talent to me, I wondered if I had spent it already.

  Spell.

  The word brought more fear. These were no wandering rogues. No mere bandits from the big road. These must have been mages. At the very least they had proper magick in them, far more than my strange charm. Outlaws twice over then: both for their crimes and their abilities.

  I cried out to them several more times, but the cold stole the edges from my words and made unintelligible mumbles of them. Not that I had any complex requests, mind; I only demanded ex
planations.

  When my shouts turned to savagery and foul curses—the kind my brother used to bring back from the tavern—spilled from me instead, I got my reaction. The hooded man turned to face me as he walked. He didn’t break his stride for a moment, as if his wickedness had a deadline.

  ‘Fiery bitch, aren’t we? Ha, pardon the pun.’

  I cursed him again, and he stared at me with those milky eyes.

  ‘Keep ahold of that anger, child. It’ll serve you well. Maybe keep you ali—’

  An orb of white fire interrupted him. It sprang from the darkness between the trees and blasted his almost clean off. Only a charred neck and half a jawbone remained behind to flap grotesquely. His body stayed upright for a moment before it toppled into the snow.

  Like his fellows, I was too stunned to move. Two arrows made use of their hesitation, thudding into the chest of the rogue who still held my ankles. The man next to him—the gangly one who had tossed my brother to the flames—made a dash for a pine, but something green chased him. It ran him through before vanishing in the murk. With a hoarse cry, he landed in a drift, blood spurting from a hole in his spine.

  The final man chose the coward’s way and thrust his hands high. Excuses streamed from his pale lips. Another arrow put silence in him, punching through his teeth.

  I didn’t know whether it was elation or a deeper fear that gripped me, but I know that it made me crawl. Boots and hands sprayed snow in all direction. My panicked breath clouded my face. Tears stung my eyes. Sobs wracked me.

  When rough hands grabbed my arms and pinned me, I screamed so loud I made my ears whistle. I felt hot hands seek my face, and I did all I could to bite them. When fingers found my cheek, they stuck fast to my frigid skin, and I heard a gruff word in my ear.

  ‘Sleep.’

  And I did, no matter how hard I fought.

  The light of a winter dawn sun awoke me. I heard the sounds of a ladle against an iron pan, and smiled as I wondered what mother was cooking up to break our fast. I could smell bubbling fat, and strange spices. She must have been experimenting with father’s supplies again.