Stained Glass Monsters

Andrea K Höst

Stained Glass Monsters

© 2011 Andrea K Höst. All rights
reserved.

www.andreakhost.com

Cover art by: Julie Dillon

ISBN: 978-0-9808789-7-4

Published by Andrea K Hösth at
Smashwords

World Map can be found at:

www.andreakhost.com/p/etc

All characters in this publication

are fictitious and any resemblance

to real persons, living or dead,

is purely coincidental.

When a motionless woman dressed in white
appears in the village of Falk, Kendall Stockton has no inkling
that the strange apparition will soon leave her homeless, and
tangled in the affairs of mages and monsters. For the white figure
is the first sign of a spell which will shatter cities, and make
the caster as powerful as the gods.

Saved by a stranger who claims her goal
is to stop the woman, Kendall is torn between admiring the mage
Rennyn Claire's strength, and doubting her methods. What is Rennyn
willing to do to win? Do the best of intentions justify pragmatic
sacrifice, or is Rennyn Claire no better than the monster she is
trying to stop?

ShhooTHuMP!

The whole of the small shed which was
Kendall Stockton's home shuddered, sending specks of grit pattering
into her cropped blonde curls and sliding down the newssheet she
held. The strange sound was gone as soon as she'd registered it,
leaving all the geese and ducks and chickens which roamed the Back
Green squawking their heads off.

Not able to guess what was happening,
Kendall dashed outside. Nothing odd in the garden or around the
blackened remains of Gran's house, so she ran round the other side
of her shed, and stopped to stare. There was someone lying in the
middle of the Green.

It was still well before evening, and
the Green fell inside the village's circle, so Kendall felt safe
taking a few halting steps closer. Lying there unmoving was a woman
in a white dress, her arms stretched to either side, and her long
pale hair fanned out around her.

"Are – are you hurt?"

There was no reply, only the retreating
protest of fowl, and a shout from the Lippon house. Kendall hadn't
been the only one in Falk to hear and feel...whatever had happened.
Wanting to see more before the entire Lippon clan arrived, Kendall
crossed to within a few feet of the strange figure.

The woman didn't move at all, just lay
there in the grass. She was beautiful. Her long hair curled from a
wide forehead, around her pointed face and all the way out to the
very tips of her fingers. That hair wasn't much darker than her
dress, and her skin was whiter than seemed possible. Though her
eyes were shut, and Kendall could see no sign of movement, the
woman didn't look dead. Her chin was up, and her head didn't sag to
either side. Even her feet were neatly together.

"It's a lady!" The first of the Lippons
had arrived. Fearless Jessamy, skidding to a halt just beside
Kendall. "Ever so fine!"

True. The long, white dress shimmered in
the sunlight, and the stitching was better than any fancywork
Kendall had ever seen. Unlike Kendall, Jessamy didn't shy off
taking the last few steps to the woman's side, but gasped and fell
back, sitting down in a heap.

"What happened, Jessa?" asked Harry, the
oldest of the Lippon boys, panting up at the head of the second
wave of tow-headed Lippons.

"The – the air got heavy," Jessamy
replied, sounding confused but not hurt.

"Heavy? What do you mean?" Harry moved
beside his sister, and held forward a cautious hand. This didn't
make him fall over, but Kendall saw sudden surprise on his face,
and his hand trembled.

All the younger Lippons were crowding up
now, fanning out in a circle behind Jessamy, while others from the
village were appearing at the edges of the Green. Miller Best had
brought his new musket, but lowered it after seeing the woman.

"Isn't she pretty?"

"Look at that dress!"

"Is she dead?"

"Where–?"

"How–?"

"Who–?"

As the crowd and the questions grew,
Kendall edged around to one side, and held her hand toward the
woman until she felt it go strange and heavy. It was possible to
keep it there, but it was like holding a full bucket out at
arm's-length. No wonder Jessamy had fallen, running right into
this. Kendall's nose itched, and she backed away.

Then Mayor Dorstan arrived from the
bakery, his arms still streaked with flour, though he'd left his
apron behind.

"Stand back, the lot of you," he ordered
impatiently. "Give the woman some air." He started to kneel beside
the stranger, then grunted with sudden effort. The mayor was a big
man, all muscle except in the gut, and they could see the struggle
it was for him not to fall. But Mayor Dorstan was stubborn, too,
and he continued slowly down on one knee and reached out to touch
the woman's hand.

"My Lady?" he said. "Can you hear
me?"

No response.

"She's warm." His fingers circled her
wrist as if to lift it, but the only thing that happened was the
muscles in his arms and shoulders stood out, and his face went
slowly purple.

"What in Fel's name is this?" Mayor
Dorstan muttered, then gave up and pushed himself to his feet,
staggering away. Sweat dripped from his face, and he took quite a
time to get his breath. The woman just lay there while more and
more villagers gathered, and stared, and wondered.

"Did anyone see her arrive?" Mayor
Dorstan asked finally, still huffing a little.

"No-one's come in since Cooper Robbins,"
said Kalan Huxtal. "I would have seen aught else. Sure as shine
would have seen this'un."

"If you'd been using your eyes, maybe,"
Mayor Dorstan growled, glaring about him. He didn't like magic,
wasn't even glad when the Circle-Turners arrived to make their
rounds, and hated more anything that didn't make sense. "Someone
must have seen her."

It was hard to imagine any lady, dressed
beacon-white and with all that hair, getting even a step into Falk
without half the village spotting her. But no-one had. She was just
there, unmoving, and immovable.

-oOo-

A morning in the sitting room had sent
Rennyn Claire's eyes blurry. She'd been conscientiously
transcribing one of the older books into neater, less faded script,
adding commentary as she went. Surely she could allow herself an
afternoon's work on the much-neglected garden until the world
became less fogged.

She was passing by the Map Room when a
muted THuNK froze her in place. Not quite believing, Rennyn stared
through the doorway at the model of Tyrland. For the whole of her
twenty-five years, and long before, a black spindle had been
suspended above the map, swaying at the end of a single hair fixed
to the ceiling. Now it was buried an inch deep in a flat patch near
the city of Sark.

The Verisian clock's ticking caught her
attention, as if it had deliberately grown louder to remind her
that time was marching on.

"So." Rennyn couldn't think of anything
less feeble to say, and went upstairs to pack. Sark was a day, a
day and a half's ride away. Cuddy wouldn't appreciate the pace, and
would make her regret not keeping the bay properly exercised, but
it was better to ride than attract attention travelling more
quickly.

"Ren! Ren!" Her brother came tearing up
the stairs, only to notice her travelling gear. "Oh, you've
seen."

She nodded, keeping herself cool for his
sake. Sebastian was just sixteen, and most-ways sensible, but he
fretted. "Can you start on the calculations while I'm gone,
Seb?"

He tugged at his hair impatiently, eyes
bright in his thin, clever face. "Yes. Yes, of course. You will –
I'll have them done before you get back. Three days, right?"

"Thereabouts. Perhaps a little more,
depending on what I find."

"Ren." He was thinking ahead now,
concern edging through the excitement.

"This is the easy part, Seb," she said,
touching his arm.

"Just – remember Great Grandfather."

That made her smile. "As if either of us
ever forget."

After rechecking the location on the
map, she paused in the hall and carefully tugged a comb through her
hair, handing it to Seb when she was done. Turning her attention to
arranging her hat, she frowned at the sight she presented. Cold
determination had set her features into lines she barely
recognised.

With some effort, she wiped any trace of
her thoughts from her face, became the picture of a young
countrywoman out for an afternoon's ride. All their lives, she and
Seb had been preparing for that spindle to drop. She refused to
falter at the first hurdle.

The village was called Falk, and lay
just south of one of Tyrland's major cities, Sark. Rennyn was
fairly certain Cuddy would never forgive her for riding till the
very edge of night, then rising so early the next morning, but
there was a time limit to what she had to do, and she needed to do
it without being observed.

Somehow. Falk swarmed, as overrun as a
harvest fair, and Rennyn shook her head at the mass of people
buying, selling and gawping. It had been little more than a day:
how had they assembled so quickly?

Attention was centred around a grassy
area behind the main body of houses. It had been roped off, and was
barely visible through the stalls and crowds lined up to pay for
entry. This was not how Rennyn had pictured this day, but she
decided that it was after all an advantage. Among so many, she was
wholly unremarkable. It should be possible to hide her actions in
plain sight.

Paying a coin, she left Cuddy to be
watered and rubbed down while she waited in line. It was hot, a
little past midday, and the press of folk made it seem hotter
still. Rennyn adjusted her hat and gazed about at all the people
come to see something strange and intriguing. Children who
chattered or squabbled. Merchants bargaining over vegetables. Young
couples, standing close together. A hired guard carefully cleaning
his musket. She felt like she was on the other side of a pane of
glass, as if she were in the world beside this one, and none of
these people could see her.

Sternly, Rennyn forced herself to smile
and look excited. Remember Great Grandfather, Seb had said.
Remember the threat of violent death.

The people of Falk were charging a
petthine to view their newly acquired curiosity, controlling the
influx by only allowing groups of ten through at a time. Rennyn
might have been annoyed by their greed if she did not have a
reasonable idea of what the area would look like in a week's time.
They would need more money than this soon enough, so she paid over
her petthine ungrudgingly, and gazed across a sward of
daisy-studded grass to the centre of her existence.

"So lovely," murmured one of the women
in the new group of sightseers.

It was true. The figure on the ground
was much younger than Rennyn had pictured, but a semblance of youth
was common where mages and magic were concerned. The face reminded
her faintly of a cat, with those very curved lips and large,
wide-set eyes. A white cat, sleek and pleased with itself, somehow
imperious lying in that fan of carefully arranged hair. Rennyn had
known about the white hair, but was still puzzled by it. Had the
bleaching occurred during the casting, or was it some by-product of
the woman's long sojourn in the Eferum?

And so? Nearly sixty years of planning
had led to this day. Niggling questions were no more useful than
thinking too much about whether it was fear or anger knotting her
stomach.

Her fellow sightseers were holding their
hands into the circle of distortion, marvelling at the sudden
weight. Rennyn tried it herself, recognising the sensation from her
own transitions, though there was no true comparison. She glanced
around at the crowds, the village beyond, relieved that there was
sufficient space left empty, since there was no way to stop what
would happen that night. What would she have done if the
manifestation had been among the buildings? But – she forced
herself to ignore all but the task. She had to focus on doing what
she must.

Ignoring the others, she moved within
reach of the woman's left hand. The smallest finger was missing its
tip, severed cleanly at the upper joint, the injury long ago
healed. Rennyn frowned at this tiny, vital thing, but didn't
hesitate longer, curling her own finger to press against a pin
threaded through her sleeve.

Dropping down to her heels, she held her
hand into the circle again and allowed a bead of red to fall to
that blunted tip. Then she waited, trembling with an effort of
will. Blood to blood. They would call to each other. Almost
anything else could not truly touch her, would be slowly shifted by
the distortion to the edge of the circle. But – yes. This bright
mote did not. With a sluggish shimmer it sank beneath flesh and was
gone. Blood to blood.