From the Deep of the Dark (55 page)

Authors: Stephen Hunt

BOOK: From the Deep of the Dark

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Dick pulled his coat in tight and crossed over to see what Sadly was serving today.

‘Listen to me and listen well,’ said the clan’s wise-woman. ‘For this is the story of the scar that cuts the world and what may emerge from the deep of the dark.’

The three seanore nomads, the wise-woman’s chosen disciples, bobbed warily along the edge of the great trench, for there were strong currents about here said to stir out of the depths. Strong enough to suck many an unsuspecting swimmer down into the maw of the world. A premise far more disturbing to them than the legends which were spun out of such mortal dangers.

The wise-woman sensed their lack of conviction and found their disrespect irksome, banging her rotor-spear in the seabed and sending up eddies of black dust. ‘Attention to me. The wisdom of these songs was ancient when the orb of the sun and the rays it casts into the sea were yellow rather than the red that warms your cheeks. I have not dragged you to gaze into the abyss so you might have a tale with which to scare unruly children. Listen you well, to the song of two thieves, one young, one old, who risked all to cast the demons of the mirror-realm back into the darkness from which they crawled.’

The three disciples quietened down to listen to the songs. Perhaps there was hope for them. After all, the passage of time could, or so it was said, make diamonds from even the crudest of coals.

By Stephen Hunt

The Court of the Air

The Kingdom Beyond the Waves

The Rise of the Iron Moon

Secrets of the Fire Sea

Jack Cloudie

From the Deep of the Dark

Copyright

HarperVoyager

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Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

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This paperback edition 2012

Stephen Hunt asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

EPub Edition © December 2011 ISBN: 978 0 00 730173 7

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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