Black Shade…

*

‘Montgomery’s Men’… ‘The law of unintended consequences’ …

The two phrases now ran in Sergeant Patrick’s mind like an insane tape loop…

As they ran, quicker and quicker, going nowhere, getting nowhere, a dark form grew in the corner of Patrick’s room.

Sergeant Patrick did not at first notice it for his lips were now following the lead of his mind, incessantly tripping over the two impossible phrases which merged with a third…

‘We let ‘em go!’… ‘Montgomery’s Men’… ‘The law of unintended consequences’ …

Perhaps it was a form of prayer?

‘Montgomery’s Men’… ‘The law of unintended consequences’ … ‘We let ‘em go!’

Or an invocation?

Eventually, inevitably, Patrick’s mind finally snapped as would the tape of an overused recording and the hum of sound now issuing from his lips became a blurted question, “How come Montgomery has Men?”

Two eyes of flame flickered open in the dark corner of Sergeant Patrick’s room.

“I thought you would never ask,” drooled the dark form from the corner.

Had Sergeant Patrick known anything about High Magic he would have been immediately alerted to the festering presence of the form that now inhabited his room.

He would not have asked it a direct question and he would not have been expectantly awaiting an answer to his question.

For thus, are lambs led to slaughter.

“Allow me to instruct you,” whispered the dark form from the corner.

Its voice sounded a little like laughter.

But Sergeant Patrick still had a choice.

A simple shake of the head would have sufficed and sent the dark form fleeing.

Instead, a mesmerized Patrick nodded his head, and was lost…

Excerpt from ‘Kith ‘n’ Kin…

***

Lands of Exile:

KITH ‘N’ KIN

Stuart France & Sue Vincent

The Beeley Stone, ‘liberated’ from the churchyard at Bakewell, stands proudly in the centre of its village green once more. While the locals enjoy the fruits of its restoration, Ben, who had led the daring raid against authority, still languishes in jail.

Don and Wen, arrested and released without explanation in Ireland, now plot an erratic course through the wild places of Wales, while Jaw-Dark and Kraas, seeking the legendary stone of Fergus Mac Roy, have been separated in the most uncanny of circumstances…

As the darkness closes around them, the Black Shade haunts the moors above Beeley and, in the shadowy rooms of the old tower, an ancient and even stranger story begins to unfold…

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