The Magic Below Paris Boxed Set Read online

  Magic Below Paris Boxed Set (Books 1 - 4)

  C. M. Simpson

  Michael Anderle

  This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright © 2019 C.M. Simpson and Michael Anderle

  Cover by Mihaela Voicu http://www.mihaelavoicu.com/

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  A Michael Anderle Production

  LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  LMBPN Publishing

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  Las Vegas, NV 89109

  First US edition, August 2019

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-64202-483-8

  The Kurtherian Gambit (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are copyright © 2015-2019 by Michael T. Anderle and LMBPN Publishing.

  Contents

  Trading Into Shadow

  Trading Into Darkness

  Trading Close To Light

  Trading By Firelight

  Dedication

  This is for all those who believed in me enough that, eventually, I had the courage to believe in myself.

  Thank you.

  —C.M. Simpson

  To Family, Friends and

  Those Who Love

  to Read.

  May We All Enjoy Grace

  to Live the Life We Are

  Called.

  — Michael

  Trading Into Shadow

  Book 1

  1

  Shadow Monster Ambush

  Marchant ran through the caverns, fleeing shadows that reached through the dark. She ran from their flaming eyes, and grasping claws, trying to get out of the range of limbs that stretched and flowed like molasses through the cracks of the Irth. It wasn’t long before she’d put some distance between herself and the shadow monsters, but still, she ran. A little distance was never going to be enough.

  Marsh towed a frightened pack mule—ridden by the two children she’d managed to grab and toss aboard—along the trail of glow rods. They were meant to mark the safe zone, forming a barrier the shadow monsters could not cross. Trouble was, the damned things stalked the line of light, and if any of the glows went out? Well, that was what caravan guards were for—if you could afford to hire them.

  Or if your boss wasn’t too tight-fisted and hired light, or stuck you with a caravan and no guards of your own. You’da thought he’d take better care of the goods he needed her to deliver, even if he didn’t give two gems’ worth of a damn about her. Well, she’d be saying something about that when she got back to Kerrenin’s Ledge. If she got back…

  Screams rang out behind her as she fled the battle, the rest of the caravan proper strung out in her wake. She wondered how many of the guards would survive, and how many had already died. They’d stepped in to fill the path between the sudden black of a section of dead glows and the leading mules just as the monsters had struck. It soon became clear they were outmatched, and the caravan’s mage would have had no time to repair the trail and drive them back.

  Obeying the orders to run, the rest of the caravan had turned back toward the safety of the last waystation. Having paid the least to join it, Marchant and her mule had been assigned the last position in line—the most dangerous place in any traveling party. Even the families looking to settle in the caverns around Ruins Hall had paid more, but Marsh hadn’t thought twice about scooping up their kids and giving them a ride out of danger, when she’d taken the lead.

  Their parents were following a little way behind, having had to round up their other children. They were trying to control two mules apiece, not an easy feat when the beasts were panicking. Marsh kept moving, the rest of the caravan trailing behind her. She even thought they’d make the waystation— right up until the glows on either side of the path went out.

  She’d barely had time to register the loss of light before the mule brayed in terror and dropped to its knees, pulling the lead tight in her hand. Marsh ducked and felt the air move above her, but she didn’t stop. She spun and snagged the kids before they fell or became shadow fodder, then picked a gap where the shadows seemed lighter and bolted toward it.

  They’d passed a side tunnel leading into the gods knew where. Its only importance was that it sat just off the main trail and the caravan hadn’t avoided it, so maybe the shadows didn’t come from there. Maybe it led somewhere they didn’t like to go.

  She pushed aside the idea that anything that frightened shadow monsters into avoiding a place should frighten her as well. The glows frightened them, and she wasn’t afraid of those. Struggling to carry both children beyond the path, Marchant let her eyes adjust to the dark. If she was lucky, the mule’s thrashing and bellowing would distract the shadows long enough for them to get away.

  Marsh didn’t want to think about what was happening to those still on the path as they made it to the tunnel wall. Stopping long enough to set the bigger child on his feet, she tucked his little sister under her arm more securely, grabbed the boy’s hand, and hurried quickly around an outcropping of rock, seeking to put anything she could between her and the chaos at her back.

  If their luck held, the monsters would go after the easy prey on the path before seeking any stragglers who made it into the dark. A quick glance showed her that the markers farther up the trail were still alight. She didn’t want to count on them staying that way, though, so she headed for the junction, leaving the glow behind her.

  They reached the side passage, glad of the darkness wrapping around them like a cloak. The ground was rougher here, not worn smooth by the passage of thousands of hooves and feet, and Marchant slowed.

  “Don’t stop,” the boy whispered, his eyes flashing white, his voice too loud in the dark. “Please don’t stop.”

  He bolted past her, dragging her forward as he wound around boulders and stalagmites, his breathing fast and panicked. Under her arm, the little girl hung, as silent as a sack of shrooms but ten times heavier. For a minute Marsh worried that she might be carrying a dead weight, but there wasn’t any time to check.

  The way the boy was running, the shadow monsters had to be hot on their heels. She almost looked back but couldn’t risk taking the chance. If the monsters were behind them, the last thing she needed was to fall. The only trouble was that not knowing how much of a lead she had meant she didn’t know how much faster she needed to go—and the ground was growing more uneven by the second.

  Soon it wouldn’t matter how far behind them the monsters were; they were going to have to slow down. Even as Marchant thought it, the boy suddenly pulled her sideways, ducking between two stalagmites and wriggling his way into a crevice barely wide enough to take them.

  Stopping just in front of it, Marchant dropped his hand so she could shift the girl from under her arm to across her chest, then she squeezed into the gap after him. Why she should didn’t even cross her mind. She was just running on instinct, the same as he was—and he seemed to know the way.

  Stupid, she thought, feeling rock scrape and catch at her pack and clothes. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  But it was done, and there was no going back.

  She almost g
ot stuck a few feet in, but the boy grabbed her by the pack’s shoulder straps and pulled her free. This time, when she noticed them, his eyes looked almost black, but the impression faded as he dragged her to one side of the crevice, then tried to push the closest large rock in front of the entrance.

  “You’re sure?”

  It was a dumb question, but Marsh asked it anyway. The boy gave her a look that told her just how dumb it was and put his weight behind the boulder. If she didn’t intervene, the kid was going to do himself an injury.

  “Here, let me.”

  She set the girl on the ground beside her, ignoring her whimper even as it relieved her mind, and slithered back against the wall. Putting her hands on the rock beside the boy’s, Marsh helped him push it across the floor into the narrow gap, then they filled the space above it with smaller rocks and wedged pebbles around its base.

  “Let’s hope we don’t need to go through there to get back,” Marsh said, and he glared at her.

  “We’re not going back,” he countered and looked around the cavern they’d crawled into.

  Marsh followed his gaze—and gasped when something wrapped itself around her leg. Her hand dropped to her sword as she looked down. Two large blue eyes looked back at her, and the grip on her leg eased.

  “Up,” the little girl demanded, stretching out her hands. “Up.”

  Taking a shaky breath, Marchant lifted the child.

  “You’re heavy, you know,” she grumbled, but the child merely wrapped her hands around Marsh’s neck and clung tight.

  Marsh sighed.

  “Fine!”

  She surveyed the cavern, noting the presence of glow moss in shiny gold patches on its walls and several of the upright pillars. After the darkness they’d run through, it was almost blindingly bright, and Marsh found she needed to adjust her eyes. Like so many of the spaces in the caverns, this one was manmade.

  Marsh eyed the soaring pillars. Their edges were too square to have resulted from a stalagmite and a stalactite meeting, and they had the dull finish of ancient concrete in any case. The cavern walls were far too straight to be natural formations as well, even with the holes left by fallen rubble. The whole thing made her pause. She stretched out a hand and grabbed the boy by the shoulder.

  “Wait.”

  He hesitated, briefly looking back at her over his shoulder, before turning to stare at the cavern. Marsh kept her hand on him and searched her memory for any mention of these ruins, but there was none. She couldn’t even be sure the side tunnel had been explored, let alone the crack she’d crawled into.

  Running her mind back over the path she’d taken, Marsh tried to work out where she was—and exactly how she was going to get down to Ruins Hall. In spite of losing the mule and everything it had been carrying, she still had one delivery to make. She hadn’t entrusted everything to the pack saddles—and Kearick, her boss had been especially anxious that this package made it to its destination.

  Well, she could do that.

  Turning what she thought she knew of the caverns through her mind, Marchant tried to solve the problem from two angles. She could try heading up to the surface to work her way through the canyons of the ancient city’s ruins. That thing was vast, stretching as far as the eye could see from the watchtowers above Kerrenin’s Ledge.

  Or she could try to work her way through the tunnels until she could get back to the main trail. It would probably be as easy as going up to the surface, given that the ruins would block her view of the hills. Most likely safer, too. People came back from the Underneath, not so much from the surface lands.

  That made the decision easy. After all, she had two other lives to think of, not just her own.

  “This way,” she said, setting out across the glow moss cavern, and ignoring the expression on the boy’s face. She could do without having to explain herself to a ten-year-old.

  He stared at her for a moment, then trotted after her. Either he agreed with her decision, or he wanted to go wherever she was taking his sister. Marchant didn’t care which; she just kept walking. Stepping over the pointed caps and bulbous mounds of fungi, she headed for the far side of the cavern, and then followed the broad, flat-ceilinged corridor farther into the complex.

  This one led to an even wider space, one with small chambers around its edges. Marchant imagined that the Ancients had once lit all these spaces, but now they crouched in the dark, and she had no way of knowing what lay within. Surveying the area before her, she noted the two ledges tiered above the first, running up to a sweeping overhang that ringed the cavern. There were three wide corridors leading off from the center of each wall, and more overhangs draped in glow moss, lichen and stalactites.

  The size of it gave her pause, and she wondered just how high the walls of the chasm ran. From the looks of it, it might even lead to the surface. A tug on her sleeve interrupted her thoughts, and she looked down. Before she could utter a word, the boy laid a finger across his lips, his eyes wide with alarm.

  Marchant nodded and raised her finger to her mouth to show she understood.

  No talking.

  The boy didn’t move, but regarded her carefully, his eyes wide as a schrobuck’s caught in a search lamp. Marsh waited for him to explain, feeling his little sister’s arms tightening around her neck. When the kid gave her a swift nod and pulled her around a corner and through a narrow gap, Marsh followed without a sound.

  In the small chamber beyond, she was surprised to see the child drop into a swift crouch and turn to face the door. She took a breath, meaning to ask him what was going on, but he raised his finger again, the whites of his eyes flashing in the dark. Marsh lowered his sister to the ground and turned to face the gap.

  A sharp tug on her leg made her look down as the boy signaled her to crouch beside him. Frowning, she glanced back to the gap but obeyed, starting when she heard the sudden rush of claws and muffled barks from the hall beyond, and again when the girl wriggled between them.

  The three of them stayed that way for some time, barely breathing as they listened to the pack foraging in the main cavern. Panicked rustles and squeaks would be followed by an excited yap, and then a whistling squeal. The sounds kept on for what seemed like forever, and then suddenly ceased. The boy laid a hand on Marchant’s knee.

  “What…” she began, but he shook his head.

  Frowning with impatience, Marsh pushed to her feet. It didn’t matter how scared the kid was; they had to get going.

  “We don’t have time—”

  She choked on her words when a huffing cough echoed through the hall and down the corridor—a hoshkat!

  Frenzied barking greeted the sound, and claws rushed and scrabbled again. Marsh imagined the pack scattering in a dozen different directions, each animal desperate to get as far from the big feline as it could. The kat screamed in reply, the echoes of its cry rebounding through the complex. The little girl gave a squeak of fright, and her brother clapped his hand across her mouth.

  2

  Kids, Kats, and Krypthunds

  Marsh stood, and crept closer to the gap leading out of their hiding place. Looking back, she surveyed the room and saw the faint outline of what might be a hidden door at the rear. There wasn’t any other obvious way out. Peering up the corridor, she strained her eyes trying to look through the black, but she couldn’t see the kat. The barking stopped, and a shadow crossed the reflected light of the glow moss.

  Marsh backed quietly away, touching the boy’s shoulder as she passed. He’d wrapped his arm around his sister and was holding her tight, his focus torn between Marsh and keeping an eye on the entrance. With his free hand, he searched the floor for loose stones—like that would do him any good.

  One hit from a piece of rock and the hoshkat would be on him like a fly on manure, but with far worse consequences. A rock to the head was only going to piss it off. Marsh hurried over to the outline and pulled her dagger, running the short blade along it until she found a groove. It didn’t take long to wor
k out that they didn’t have time to free the door from the frame.

  She moved slowly back to where the boy and his sister were crouched. He looked at her, his eyes holding the question he was afraid to ask.

  Marchant shook her head.

  There was no other exit.

  The hoshkat’s distinctive cough came, again, followed by a loud snuffling as it scented the air. Marsh wrapped her arm around the two children and gave them a brief hug, then stood and set herself squarely between them and the door. There was no way in the Shadow’s Dark she was going to be able to save them, but she had to try. She drew her short sword and settled into readiness. Maybe she could keep the big beast busy long enough for them to sneak out of the room past it. Maybe…

  Sudden movement exploded in the corridor, followed by a yelp of fright and the frantic scrabble of claws. A small, dark form shot through the gap in the wall and bolted toward them, looking over its shoulder as it came. It fled past Marsh, who had to choose between trying to hit it or dealing with the hoshkat that was sure to follow.

  Their only hope was that the kat wouldn’t be able to fit through the gap, or… Marsh grabbed hold of her whirling thoughts. She knew the kat would fit. A full-grown hoshkat could go where most adult humans went, especially a slightly-smaller-than-average-one like her. She would just have to face it, and either hope she could beat it or that something intervened.

  The kat sniffed the air again, then rubble shifted beneath its weight. The shadows deepened beyond the gap as the hoshkat’s large form blocked the light. Her eyes caught the slightly lighter shadows of the clear space above its back.

  “Shadow’s Heart,” she whispered.

  The damn thing really was going to fit.