Without a Spring (a brief except of a book in progress)

I'd like to begin by offering five imaginary internet points and an eventual free book to anyone who can figure out the reference in the title.

Cale reined his destrier to a halt at the hill's crest and bit back the urge to scream as he looked down on Freya's Fist below. He was too late. He'd already known that when he heard the war drums pounding, but seeing it with his own eyes was a completely different kind of horror. An armed throng of thousands had the high-walled keep surrounded. The red and bronze of their armor had a wicked gleam in the in the midday sun. They were biding their time for the moment, like a noose waiting to tighten when the pedestal dropped.

The Fist was already battered and scarred from at least one assault. It didn't look like it would hold out against another. The walls were chipped where siegestones had made their mark. The peak of the northwestern tower ended in a jagged stump where the trebuchets had nearly broken through.

Cale's men fell into place behind him, two hundred of his own greenbacks and another thousand men at arms. He didn't have to look back to know the looks on their faces. He could hear their voices running together into one long, collective sigh down the ranks. “I'm sorry,” he whispered, not sure to whom exactly. To himself, maybe. To his men. To the the meager three hundred poor souls charged 
with the hopeless task of holding Freya's Fist. “I'm so sorry.”

The white lion banner still flew over the keep in futile defiance of the northmen's red and gold. Saner men would have surrendered by now, but these were men of the mistcrags. They practically bled ice. Still, Cale had seen too may cities fall in his short career. And when the stones fell and the battering rams struck, all the stubbornness in the world would only buy a little extra time. Time that only mattered if help was on the way. But help wasn't coming. It was just him and his paltry host. A thousand men could have made all the difference from behind a sturdy wall. But in an open field against three times their number, they were as helpless as the men Cale had sworn to protect.

That was the part that gnawed at him the most. Cale had made a promise to Raelin that he'd return with an army before the first day of the new spring. If only he'd known that the enemy would get there sooner.

Holding back tears for his men's sake, Cale leveled his spear forward, its black tip catching the sun like newly cut obsidian. “This is our target,” he shouted back to the ranks, pointing to the battered castle with the black and silver haft of his weapon. “This is what we promised our friends, our brothers, our countrymen. This is our word and our sacred bond.” Every word that came out was a struggle against himself, but he had to appear strong.

“I won't force any man to ride into certain death beside me. Nor can I promise that the fist will hold with our aid. But every man who keeps his word will keep that banner flying, if even for just one more heartbeat. Our allies will have time to reinforce, or time to retreat. That's all I can promise.”

Shivering on the inside, Cale waited for an answer. He gripped his stallion's reins, ready to make his charge down the hillside. He would keep his promise to Raelin. He would ride to his countrymen's aid, alone if he had to.


“The choice to kill off Cale was a hard one,” Frederick Barnes admitted into the microphone to a packed auditorium of his fans. “But in the end it was a necessary choice, even if it may have caused a few readers to throw their copies of Spears of the South across the room.”

He paused to let the audience laugh. The interviewer, a skinny brunette named Rita who ran his fan site, joined in with a chuckle, adding, “I won't lie. My hardcover of Spears still has a crack in the spine from that chapter. I assume you must have gotten quite a bit of hate mail from your readers.”

“It's funny you should mention that,” he said once the laughter died down. “I'd get amazing fan letters from my readers about how bold and brave they think my writing is. Then two years later the next book comes out and I'll get a letter from one of those same people saying 'How dare you kill off my favorite character.' A lot of my fans like to think I've gotten used to giving main characters the axe by now, but to be honest, it never gets easier. I actually wrote four different endings for the Battle of Freya's Fist, and by the end of each one there was no kidding myself. I knew what had to happen.”

“Can we expect more of that in Heart of the Void?” Rita asked.

With a coy smile Barnes threw up his arms and said, “RAFO?”

“Fair enough. Well, I'm afraid that's all the time we have, folks,” Rita announced to a disappointed audience. “Mr. Barnes will be back tomorrow for a public signing at the Cold Steel panel. Remember, Flame of the North is in stores now, and Heart of the Void, the eighth and final book of the Cold Steel Chronicles, is scheduled for release in Spring of 2015. Thank you so much for being here, Mr. Barnes.”

“The pleasure was all mine,” Barnes said. The crowd applauded as he took a bow and made his way backstage.

The Path to Redemption is a Mobius Strip (Almost a Villanelle)

The paths unerringly converge

No road has ever seemed so clear

For nothing new lies past the verge

(There's nothing left for me elsewhere)

I've miles to go and thoughts to purge

About mistakes that brought me here

The paths unerringly converge

(And where they lead I do not care)

Driven by no more than an urge

To turn my back on all my fears

For nothing new lies past the verge

(I took the lighter load to bear)

And to the day they sing my dirge

I'll take this road and never veer

The paths unerringly converge

For nothing new lies past the verge

(I set out with a backward stare)

The beginnings of a spy story

Another day passes and he's still not back.

It's evening by the I come back from my investigations. I rap on the door of our apparentment and wait. No response. Not even the usual noises that tell you if someone's inside. No creaking floor or TV buzzing. Just silence. “Come on, Jim,” I plead, knowing it's no use. “I'm back from the store. I picked up the like little potato dumplings you like. I even got you some smazhek, whatever the hell that is.” I'll admit, my Czech isn't as strong as I thought it was. Three weeks here taught me that quickly enough.

I give him another moment, just in case, but nobody comes. With a sigh I let the grocery bags fall by the door and let myself in with the key he keeps under the mat. You'd think an international super-spy would come up with something a little more clever, but that's not Jim's style. He said if the wrong people ever learned where we live we'd be dead, simple as that, and no fancy lock would save us. He was probably right.

I step inside, dragging the groceries behind me, and the place looks untouched since this morning. The apartment is nothing special: two bedrooms, a tiny kitchen, some crummy couches facing a crummier TV, but still a steal at 1800 euros a month considering the locale. The view of Prague from the living room window is stunning when the street lights go on. When I first signed on to this job, I pictured  nothing but private planes and lavish hotels. Turns out that's the quickest way to draw attention to yourself when you want to blend in.

After a long shower I slump down on the couch with a plate of cold dumplings in one hand and Jim's case notes in the other. The TV's on and I've already tuned out whatever nonsense it's blaring. The Secret Service doesn't cover cable, so I'm stuck between soaps, Star Trek reruns, and the local news. Dubbed in Czech, Captain Picard sounds like a burly street thug who's probably named Ivan. That actually makes some of the earlier episodes more tolerable.

 Jim's notes don't prove to be any less frustrating. Half of his writing is vague conjecture, and the other half is written in a cypher I can't decode. It's like he was expecting them to fall into the wrong hands. That, of course, leaves me worried about who might come looking for them, hence the SIG in the holster under my jacket.

I take out my decoding tool and flash the screen over the encrypted text. After a minute of loading, it comes back with no result. I already knew that, but it feels wrong not to try one more time. The thing's still running on old algorithms, I remind myself. It helps keep me sane to tell myself that's the problem. With a shrug I turn the decoding tool off and put back into my jacket pocket. Most agents would be idiots for keeping their tools in plain sight, but as Jim put it, “No one thinks twice about the gadgets when you look like a dork.” He didn't exactly have a way with words.

Highway Tale

 Hannah couldn't feel her hands. Still dripping wet, she'd gone numb in the evening chill. At least she couldn't feel the ache building up in her arms as she stood with her thumb raised high by the highwayside. Cars passed by one at a time, and no one seemed to give her so much as a sideways glance. Frustrated, she checked her phone for perhaps the hundredth time. No reception. She'd been stuck by the roadside for nearly an hour, trying in vain to get a ride home. In the first twenty minutes she wore out half of her cell phone's battery trying fruitlessly to call almost every contact on her list. By the time she'd given up, she came to loathe the automated voice telling her she had no signal. The next several minutes she spent counting license plates and pacing a few yards at a time in the direction she assumed was south.

By now she'd gotten used to the near-blinding glare of approaching headlights. She had stopped  muttering to herself that someone would eventually come for her. Any hopeful mantra, repeated enough times, eventually seemed bleaker than resignation. Hannah cursed under her breath as more cars passed by paying her no attention. And yet she knew she probably would have done the same to some stranger waiting by the side of the road. She had heard stories about killers and worse things roaming the highways at night, and not believing them did little to help. Stories had a way of sneaking past people's logical filters at inopportune times.

With a futile sigh, she weighed her options once again. There were no signs in sight, and the next town could be miles away. She could make a call from a gas station if any were still open. Maybe someone would give her a ride if she offered what little money she had in her pockets. She no longer even bothered with the possibility that a passing car might pick her up. After an hour that hope seemed like no more than a cruel tease.

For that reason she stood awestruck moments later when a pair of white lights approached and came to a sliding rest just a few feet away from her. She stared silently at the shape of the long, white truck that stopped beside her, as if staring hard enough might reveal it for some desperate illusion her mind conjured up. But there it stood, too solid, to real to doubt.

A deep voice from inside broke her stupor. “I can't imagine you're just out here taking a stroll. Where are you headed?” The man in the driver's seat looked safe enough. She made out bluish eyes and and greying brown hair under a cap, with a somewhat pudgy frame under a heavy jacket. His face seemed inviting enough, if not exactly warm and happy.

“Um, Northamp,” she shouted back eagerly, “It's only about an hour and a half south of here.”

“Northamp, hmmm...Shouldn't be much trouble. Hop in.” He wasn't even shouting, but his gravelly voice carried effortlessly over the sounds of wind and passing cars.

Hannah nearly tripped as she ran toward the truck. She pulled the side door open and jumped in without hesitation, too happy just to be warm. Except she wasn't warm at all. The inside of the truck was just as cold as the air outside. She looked uneasily into the driver's eyes. He certainly didn't look like a serial killer, not that she knew what a serial killer might look like. “Th...thank you for this. I really appreciate it.”

“Don't thank me just yet,” the driver said. “This ride's going to cost you.”

Of course, she thought. There was always a catch.  She had lost her purse, along with her coat and everything else valuable. She'd be lucky if she even had anything more than a handful of change in her pocket, and the truck driver didn't look or sound like the type to be won over with a sob story. “Um, how much?” she asked, hope once again escaping her.

“Don't know,” the blue-eyed man said with a shrug, “I'm willing to bargain.”

Hannah sighed and dug maybe seven or eight coins out of her pocket. Extending her palm, she said, “Please don't laugh, but this is all I have.”

The driver didn't laugh. Instead he scrutinized each coin carefully as if they were priceless artifacts, and after several seconds of what looked like painful deliberation, he picked two that seemed to please him most. He gently pushed her hand shut and pocketed his prize. “Turns out we're both in luck,” he remarked, “It's been quite a while since I've seen a bicentennial quarter. There were a billion six hundred sixty nine million nine hundred two thousand eight hundred eighty five of them  minted and this is only the fourth one to come into my hands. Strange, isn't it?”

Hannah nodded blankly. Strange indeed, she thought, but she wasn't going to comment on the man's eccentricities if he was willing to give her a ride. She buckled herself in as the engine's quiet hum turned to a tremolo rumble and the truck merged back onto the highway.



“Name's Charles, by the way.”

“Hannah.”

“Pretty name. Means 'favored by god.' Did you know that?”

“No, never occurred to me to think about it, to be honest,” Hannah replied, .

“It's ancient Hebrew,” he added, his eyes fixed on the lines of the road.

“Oh,” was all she could think to say. Then after short, silent pause, “So are you some kind of coin collector?”

“I guess you could call me that,” he answered. “It's the closest thing I have to a hobby.” Another minute slipped away watching street lights pass, one after another. Hannah held her hands by the heating vents, but they didn't get any warmer or drier. “So what's your story?” Charles asked, shooting Hannah a curious glance.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, for the seven hours I've been on this road I haven't seen a single drop off rain. And here you are, dripping like you'd just taken a swim.”

“Well, I guess I did take a bit of a swim” Hannah admitted with a blush. “Long story short, my boyfriend left me last week. I figured a weekend at my family's old lake house would do me some good. I had a little wine in me when I took my dad's boat out for a little moonlight ride and well, you can probably guess the rest.”

“Boat sank?”

“Completely tipped over,” she said, gesturing with her hands. “I nearly drowned, and when I finally got to shore I was on the other side of the lake, just a few hundred feet from this highway. Well, I guess I'm just lucky to be alive.”

Charles gave her a sympathetic look but didn't say anything. Hannah checked her phone every mile or so. Still no reception, but she was lucky it was working at all after nearly ending up at the the bottom of a cold, dark lake. It was only then that she realized the full magnitude of that mental image. She had almost died. Among the last hour's chaos and desperation it was an afterthought. Now with nothing but the night's quiet to occupy her mind, the thought overwhelmed her. Even in her mind she was speechless. Tears slid down her face, lost in the wetness that wouldn't seem to leave her. She wiped her eyes with moist, clammy hands, but it did no good. White with embarrassment, she glanced over to Charles, who did his best not to appear to notice.

“I'm sorry,” she sobbed quietly, “It's just, well...it's just hit me that I nearly died. I mean, for the first time, really hit me. And I...I don't know what to think about all this.” She took a deep breath, relieved that she could at least vent her frustration. “Again, I'm sorry,” she said, looking down at nothing in particular. “You didn't need to hear that.”

“Don't worry about me,” Charles answered, “I've picked up quite a few people in my day, and if I've learned anything, it's that no one ends up alone on the side of the road without some sad story to tell. If I had a nickel for every poor soul lost on their way home,” he paused and chuckled for a moment, “Well, come to think of it, I do.”

“Why do you do it?” Hannah, asked.

“Do what?”

“Pick up hitchhikers. Not to sound ungrateful, but if I were you, I'd be worried about the sort of people who wander dark roads at night.”

Charles replied, “Well, I figure dangerous people have better things to do than walk dark roads at night. Besides, when you spend practically all your days on the road, it's nice to have someone  to keep you company. They rarely make any trouble for me, and they're never too far out of my way. Plus, I've always said it's the journey that matters, not the destination. It's like, hmm....” He stroked his chin pensively, “Have you ever seen the Coyote and Roadrunner show?”

“Um, yeah.” Hannah answered, not sure how that could possibly relevant. But she had already accepted that predicting Charles' train of thought was futile.

“Well, every episode the Coyote would set up some elaborate scheme to catch the Roadrunner,  but the scheme would always backfire terribly-”

“Right, right, I remember,” Hannah added smiling at the childhood memories it conjured. “And of course the Coyote never caught the Roadrunner, and-”

“Not quite,” Charles corrected. “In the very last episode the Coyote finally catches the roadrunner. And then after a moment of silence he just holds up a sign that says 'I got him. Now what?' Always got to me. How's that for an ending? After all that time it was the chase that gave him meaning. You never expect that kind of philosophy from a children's cartoon, you know?.”

“Yeah, I guess not,” Hannah answered, half lost in her own thoughts as she watched  random lights speed by through the window. Her head drooped at an angle and beads of moisture still rolled down her face. She was getting tired.

“It's just a little while longer,” Charles reassured. “Soon enough you'll be back where you belong and...you know what? I'm not doing you any good by patronizing you, and there's really no way I can soften the blow. You're dead, Hannah.”

Hannah's head rose and she snapped immediately back into full awareness. Staring back, baffled yet scared, into Charles' face she saw no evil intent in his expression, nor any indication that it was just a mean-spirited joke. Only a slight contortion of regret hung in his face.

“W...what?” Hannah stuttered. She suddenly felt cold spread across her entire body, and something vaguely wrong in her stomach. She saw the lights outside all blur and bleed into one another, melding with the blacks into a single dull yet blindingly intense shade of grey. Her skin shivered and she struggled for breath. What was going on? Her mind scrambled for answers. Had Charles drugged her with something?  No, impossible. A hallucination? No, too real. What then?

Charles continued, “You misunderstand me, Hannah. That wasn't a threat.” His voice was unchanged.

“What did you do to me?” She gasped, erupting into a choking cough.

“I didn't do anything to you, Hannah. You're dead. Dead at the bottom of a cold, dark lake. I'm just taking you home.”

Hannah couldn't even fathom those words; her own thoughts were muffled by the sound of water rushing in her ears. Choking harder, she coughed up whole mouthfuls of water, until it rushed out in a stream, too strong to force back. The cold grew deeper, more intense, covering even her eyes and hair. Every sight around her faded to a murky black, with spots of grey light somewhere distant.

“For what it's worth,” a voice, distorted, sounded in the distance, “You were very good company.”

Then something new appeared, and Hannah didn't know what to make of it. But for the moment she 
was warm and dry.

The Ritual...

...was almost ready to begin. Cyrus slipped the jeweled amulet over his neck, the pendant hanging squarely over his heart. One by one he lit each candle. They cast a shifting aura of orange firelight as the flames bent and flickered in the mild evening wind. Slowly and carefully, he double-checked every corner of the pentacle he'd carved into the ground, knowing that the slightest gap could mean disaster. Then with the same care he circled around the triangle where the black dog was was chained. With a subtle nod to himself and the faint crack of a smile he deemed the spot ready.

He stood in the center of the pentacle and waited patiently until the setting sun was just a blood-red haze on the horizon. Grinning with anticipation he pulled his book out from under his cloak and opened to the right page almost by muscle memory. He rolled his finger over the proper incantation and silently mouthed the words in Latin. It was just a formality of course; he knew every word by heart. He closed his eyes and whispered the phrase the to himself. He repeated it, louder, then again, louder still, keeping precise time and perfect meter. He continued, again and again, until his voice became a chorus that snuffed out every other sound. And from that eerie silence all around him, a voice called out. “Cyrus...”

“Cyrus! There you are!” Sarah shouted from the other end of the backyard. “Mom was looking for you. Wait, what's the neighbors' poodle doing here?” Cyrus didn't answer.

“Oh Jesus, you know mom's going to kill you if she finds out you've been playing Faust again. Why can't you just play cops and robbers like a normal kid?” Rolling her eyes, she turned back toward the house. “Make sure you clean up the pentagram or whatever before bed. And give the Jensens back their poodle or else I'm telling mom.”

Red with embarrassment, Cyrus kicked over the circle of old birthday candles, leaving him alone in the dark. He smeared the pentagram under his shoe until it was just a smudge in the dirt. Walking over to the triangle, he let Mr. Barkley off his leash. He ripped off the hooded cloak from the Dr. Doom costume he’d worn last Halloween. The cardboard pendant fell off with it. Welling with tears, he stomped the cloak into the dirt-covered ruins of the triangle.

“Oh yeah, I almost forgot,” Sarah's voice called out again, “Dad wants his Black Sabbath records back. And he said quit playing them backwards. It scratches the vinyl.”

Cyrus shooed the dog away and ran back home home to shut himself inside his room, still clutching Sarah’s old Latin textbook. Mr. Barkley drooped his ears in disappointment, thinking he had the kid for sure that time.

Servant of the Black and White

 "I guarantee you won't find the same quality for a cheaper price," the merchant insisted. “Well, not in these times anyway,” he added with an uneasy laugh. He moved a skinny, wrinkled hand over his wares in a way that reminded Den of  a spider crawling on a web. “Hmm, yes,” he said with a spark of interest in those too-dark eyes. “I think I know just the thing for you.”

Three months had passed since that day, and the merchant's words still echoed in Den's mind as he sat and examined his newest prize in the dim light that crept in through small cracks from abovedeck. The elegant dagger balanced perfectly on the tip of his finger, at the exact spot where the obsidian blade met the ivory handle.

A Kathevir, he thought with a smile, admiring how easily he could make the dagger spin and dance from finger to finger. A real kathevir.  He'd heard of the weapon before, but only in myths and childhood scaretales. The name meant “black and white” in a long-dead dialect of Ghaldish. It was an assassin's weapon from a bygone age, or so the stories said – an age when that title meant more than just a hired blade with a few kills to boast.

Den still wondered how an old man peddling trinkets from a mule cart could have come across such a masterwork. He couldn't even guess at the weapon's value; he only knew that it had cost him entirely too much. But I can regret that another day, he thought, feeling an odd serenity while he balanced the blade against the ship's rocking.

“So you never did tell me how you stole that thing, Den,” Bram said from the other side of their cell. In the dark, he was barely more than one more shadow among dozens. Duller eyes might have forgotten he was there at all, but Den had . There were four of them in that hot, cramped box that smelled of sweat and salted fish. Jed was sitting at his right side, head perking up from half-sleep at the sound of conversation. Wilem was at his left, using a half-rusted nail to write something onto a loose piece of wood.

“And I never will,” Den answered coolly as he flipped the knife back and forth between hands, careful to match his motions to the ship's. He had no problems with being called a thief. It wasn't an insult, just a fair assessment of his trade, and a trade he was better at than most. And a good thief knows when to boast and when to keep a secret, he reminded himself. It was a relief, for once, to have an ocean between himself and some of those secrets.

“Oh, I get it,” Jed chimed in. “He wants to keep us guessing so he can keep up his little shadowy enigma act. That's how those guild men are, you know. You'll never get a straight answer out of them.” With that, he slouched back against the wall and closed his eyes again.

“Former guild man,” Den corrected, even if Jed wasn't listening anymore. His days as a local legend back in Ravenloft were well behind him. Of course, he didn't expect a couple of farmers and pig-herders to understand the distinction.

“You know, that's something I've always wondered about,” Bram said, leaning in closer so Den could almost make out a face. “How does one leave a thieving guild? I heard that when you join, you have to swear your loyalty for life. Or is that just just another one of the rumors?”

Den's hands were busy palming and and revealing the kathevir, practicing all the forms he'd been taught from childhood. For him, that was the worst part of imprisonment: not the boredom, the hunger, or the squalor, but how easy it was to see his skills get dulled, like a sword too long without a whetstone. “No, you're quite right,” Den said while switching between forms. “Once you're in, you can't simply walk away. If there's anything guild agents excel at, it's hunting down a vow breaker.” He spat the name and the foul taste it left on his tongue.

“So does that make you a-”

“No,” Den cut him off. He wouldn't stand the insult, even if the boy didn't know any better. “I didn't break my vow. I broke the second most important rule: I got caught caught..”

“Caught? How?” The disbelief in Bram's voice almost made Den laugh. Guild agents were legends among common folk. They were supposed to be infallible. Before today, the boy must have assumed that Den was just a conscript like the rest of them, forced into indenture for a debt or some minor transgression against the wrong lord.

“I've been turning over the same question for the last two months, and there's only one answer. I was be-” he broke off, suddenly jolting to attention. “Quiet,” he whispered.  “Footsteps.”

“Is it food?” Bram whispered back.

Den listened more closely. Two pairs, both from behind. The first was easy to interpret: strong, purposeful, rhythmic, and as loud as a man could be out of armor. General Caius. The second pair gave Den a little more trouble. This one gave a gentler, softer sound, with a grace that went beyond mere agility. It was the sort of sound only bare feet made when they took their time to feel the ground beneath them. After a moment the answer dawned on him: Mother Helena. But if they were coming, that could only mean one thing. Could it have been two months already?

“Well, is it food?”

“No, better. It's land.” With a subtle flourish, Den palmed his dagger and tucked it away into his shirtsleeve. Getting caught with a weapon, let alone an assassin's weapon, meant a quick trip to the headsman's block.

The top hatch opened and a wooden ramp crashed clumsily to the floor. The tiny room filled with a painfully bright light from above. The others cursed and groaned. Den kept his eyes half-shut, opening them slowly to a manageable brightness. He saw his cellmates fully for the first time since they'd been thrown into this hole. They were no longer the chubby-faced, clean-cut youths he remembered. Instead he saw three weary, gaunt figures who looked exactly like they smelled.

Don't judge, he told himself, running a hand through an unkempt beard and a  long, greasy mat of black hair, you don't look or smell any different.

“Get up, you sorry lot,” the general barked, almost drowning out Mother Helena's murmured greeting. “Today's the lucky day you get to be someone else's problem.”

“Hold your tongue, Caius,” the blue-robed priestess said with a subtle power in her voice. She put a hand putting a hand on the brawny man's shoulder and pushed him aside with only the strength of her presence, “Come, lads. I'm sure you're all eager to be out in the gods' free air again.” Despite her frail figure and graying hair, she looked prettier than Den remembered. Or maybe he just hadn't seen a woman in too long.

Den was the last to be ushered up the ramp to the top deck. A pair of the general's men grabbed his hands and tied them behind his back like they did with the other three. He paid careful attention to the number of folds, loops, and pulls they made. Even without his knife it was an easy enough knot to break, but Den knew well enough to bide his time. He was outnumbered and they were armed, not that it made a difference. He'd waited two months already. A few more hours would do him no harm.

A clamor of voices rang in Den's ears from every direction. It all bled together save for the once phrase that seemed to leap from every tongue: “The new world!” The inviting smell of ale and salt breeze reached his nose, along with a thankfully weakened stench of bodies. He savored this awareness for a moment then opened his eyes the rest of the way.

He blinked away the sting as searing whiteness softened to more natural colors: The sky and sea were the sort of saturated blue he'd only seen in paintings. Men and women clad in their finest blacks,  silvers and grays crowded on the deck, pointing, cheering, and pretending not to notice the four sorry looking figures in their midst. But most importantly, Den could see the green and brown of land on the horizon, almost within reach.

So this is the new world,  he thought, grinning deeper than he had in months.  A wide expanse of rolling hills stretched on to either end of his vision. The city of First Hope stood on twin deltas where a river formed a jagged trident in the land. The city had a rough-hewn, rural look, with no building but the temple reaching above a single story. Farmlands and plantations spotted the country just beyond until the distant, white-capped mountains cut short his view. Compared to Ravenloft, First Hope was a city in name only. But that did not stop Den from gaping like he'd never seen a city in his life.

He stood and stared, barely noticing when the ship finally landed. Exhilaration coursed through his body, like the soft prickle of numbness fading. It was the same exhilaration he'd felt before a mission in his guild days, a feeling he'd sorely missed. You won't find the same value for a cheaper price, a voice echoed in his head again, old and gruff but not without a certain spark. Den gave the knot around his wrists a gentle tug just to test it. Satisfied, he took his place in the procession marching to the harbor.

“Makes you wonder, doesn't it?” Bram mused as they were shoved together by the crowd, “I've seen First Hope on my father's maps before. I've heard the sailors' descriptions, and yet-” he trailed off, looking confused as if searching for the right words.

“It's different from how you imagined it?” Den asked

“Well, no actually. It's disturbingly similar, but that's not the odd part. You're probably going to laugh, but when I was just a boy, my father had a farm just south of Brightwater Keep. I used to gaze out at the ocean thinking I could see the edge of the world. If someone had tried to tell me then that one day I'd be looking the same ocean from the opposite shore, or that there even was an opposite shore, well, I'd have thought they were mad.”

“None of us knew any better at the time,” Den replied. Then the moment his feet touched sand, a pair of the general's guards shoved him and Bram in opposite directions, He tried to shout over the crowd. “Keep your chin up. Put in your five years and a piece of this land will be yours.”

“Good luck with...whatever it is you do,” Bram's voice was almost lost over all the noise.

Stumbling to keep pace, Den followed the two men who half-led, half-dragged him away. Nearly half an hour's walk passed before First Hope fell out of sight, and a carriage stood waiting on what could loosely be called a path through the countryside.  A slender, old man in a black riding cloak was standing by two reined horses, one black, the other white. As they drew near, the old man gave Den a knowing look with eyes so dark a blue they almost looked black. And with a calm, stern voice that betrayed his frail appearance, he gave a slight nod and said, “Now, Denziel.”

“Yes, master,” Den whispered back with a foxlike grin.

Den kept his motions steady even as his heart began beating like a war drum. He waited for the just the right instant between steps, between breaths, and shifted his weight a fraction. He forced all his strength against the weakest point in in his bindings. The knot budged by a hair's breadth and he twisted his right hand free, the black and white blade falling into his grip with a flick of the wrist. His eyes shot to the man on his right. With the momentum of his step, Den pivoted and spun, planting the kathevir into the man's throat. Then his heart beat again.

Another heartbeat and the man to Den's left recoiled, mouthing a silent scream as a well-placed elbow knocked the air from his lungs. The old man by the carriage reached into his shirtsleeve and flashed a kathevir of his own, the polished blade glimmering for just an instant then gone. Den's eyes followed its motion as it found its mark, and the second guard fell without a sound.

“Not bad, Denziel,” his master said, straightening his cloak just a fraction. “Clumsier than I remember, but not bad. Now clean your blade. There's more work to be done.”

“Yes, master,” Den answered as he pulled his weapon free and brushed it clean against the damp grass. “What about the bodies?”

“I have men to take care of that. Now get in the carriage and lose the smirk. Lord Esric expects a servant just out of debtor's prison.”

“Lord Esric, master? Is that what Marius is calling himself now?”

His master claimed his own knife and said, “Yes, Denziel. Marius thought a change of name would trick us and fleeing to the other side of the ocean would deter us. Let us make sure he never underestimates the guild again.”

Den took his place in the carriage and his master took the reins. The horses led a path through the hilly landscape. Den drew the kathevir again, practicing his forms while the first distant signs of a lavish plantation came into view.

“Remember, you strike when I say and not a moment sooner. ”

“Yes, master.”

“Until then, you play the good little servant to both of your masters.”

“Of course, master.” Den's eyes were on the far-off shape of the plantation, the obsidian and ivory dagger dancing in his hand. In his head, he weighed the costs. Master was right, he thought, conjuring a distant memory of spider-like fingers crawling over that marvelous blade. Justice like this doesn't come at a cheaper price.

Arkham's Finest (that's right, I'm not above writing fanfiction)

Journal found on the body of Dr. Daryl Hawthorne

March 27th

It's a thankless job working in an asylum. The way movies and comic books paint us you'd think we're all a bunch of sadists and authoritarians with no better outlet. The warden will probably have some kind of fascism fetish and, invariably, there'll be an electric-shock therapy scene set up to look like some kind of medieval torture. Then of course the patients will all be cured when some eccentric newcomer crashes down the walls and teaches them how to live again. Bonus points and maybe an Oscar nomination if they tack on some half-baked philosophy about how the outside world is the real asylum and we're the crazies with our consumer culture and internet-induced ADHD.

People look at me funny when I tell them I work at Arkham Asylum, like the expect some kind of evil supergenius. It's gotten to the point where I just tell women I'm a doctor and leave it at that.

I'll give them this much credit, though: all the urban legends and pop-culture stereotypes are a hell of a lot more interesting than what we actually do for a living. In truth I pack a bag lunch and a briefcase to work like anyone else, then I play nanny to a bunch of grown men and, day after day, make a futile effort to help them change their lives. I might sound ungrateful, but believe me, I'm not. Less than a year ago I was fetching coffee and double-checking paperwork for the people who had my job. I was Dr. Crane's intern when I started. He hand-picked me after reading my post-graduate thesis on the fear-inducing properties of certain sub-species of the red monkshood flower. It was the biggest honor of my life to get that kind of distinction from my idol. Ironic, in a way, that he's my patient now. It's always the sad ironies that put things in perspective.

I had Crane for a session of hypnotherapy today. We sat across from each other in my small, drab office. It was one of the few rooms in the upper levels of the asylum that didn't carry the emptiness or the gothic feel of a Victorian mansion. He sat in the psychologist's chair while I took the couch. He likes to pretend that he's still the one running the asylum, and I humor him or else it's all tantrums and night terrors. “You've been getting thinner,” I remarked, observing his slimming frame. His skin was impossibly pale and his hair a starker black by contrast. He resembled the Jonathan Crane I once knew in the same way a fresh corpse resembled a living body: all the components were there but something vital was missing.

“I can't eat while it watches,” he whispered, staring nowhere in particular. “Have you tried the food here? You'd lose a few pounds yourself,” he replied with a suddenly cool expression, glancing my way. He had a way of making even passing eye contact feel like piercing stares. He asked how my research was coming along and I indulged him. We didn't talk long; he loathed idle chatter and I didn't like the idea of getting too personal with my patients, especially one with whom I had such a history. I lulled him into a trance using a simple countdown, and once asleep he told me about his childhood and his family's farm.

“I was always quite fond of crows,” he explained, “They were clever, elegant creatures that just fit perfectly into the mysterious quietude of the night. Sometimes when I couldn't sleep I'd stare out my window and watch them scurry around the cornfield.” There was a childlike calmness about his face that lacked the arrogance or the piercingly cold demeanor that I was used to. “I had an issue of Superman that I hid between my volumes of Goethe and Chaucer. My father disapproved of such base entertainment, but sometimes I read it by candlelight. I had imagined,” he paused to laugh, “This will sound dreadfully silly but I always imagined that if I were a hero, I'd wear a black cape and fight crime by night, like a human crow.

My parents, of course, didn't share the same appreciation for crows. My father put up a scarecrow in the center of the cornfield to keep them out of our crops. After that the crows stopped coming. It was only then that I was aware of the vast loneliness on those sleepless nights, and there were many. I could feel the scarecrow stating at me, taunting me. Even when I slept he'd be there watching me in my dreams. And when I didn't sleep I'd imagine him in my exhausted state, with a voice stern like my father's, but with a hollow echo like there was nothing inside. It was then that I had my first inklings of an idea: an idea that I wouldn't put into action or even into coherent words until years later. I knew that one day I would master fear, perhaps even become it, and then my own fears would be solved.”

It was a touching story, I'll admit. It was also the third touching story he'd given me in less than a month, each contradicting the last in some major way. I still haven't quite figured out which pieces are true and which ones he either subconsciously believed or just made up in retrospect. What I did gather, though, was that there was always a watchful father figure that preceded the nightmares and hallucinations. I think that's why he trusted me, insofar as he trusted me at all. He saw me as more of an adopted son, as someone outside the Asylum's strict patriarchy. Though sometimes I get the feeling that, even from the depths of his subconscious mind, he's just having a laugh at me, spewing out one cliched Freudian riddle after another just to keep me off his trail.

The session ended and I had Crane escorted back to his room. “Thank you, Dr. Crane,” was all I said before the orderlies took him back. Of course his doctorate had been revoked after last Halloween's incidents, but it's the only name he'll answer to. Well, there's also the the other name he'd given himself, but I make a rule of not humoring my patients' alter egos. It only gives them an inflated sense of pride in the crimes they've committed.

My break dragged on longer than I hoped. I sat in my office trying to make what I could of Crane's story. I tried to draw parallels between Crane's own breakdown and the psychoses found in rats exposed to his fear gas, but the differences were too extreme. I read through some of Crane's own papers from his years working here looking for any signs of mental instability; whatever killed time until my next appointment. When the clock read more or less five I left to meet with my next patient: Edward Nigma. Today I had orders from Gotham PD to ask him some questions in relation to a recent spree of crimes.

Two security guards accompanied me down the lift to the lower levels of the asylum. The basement floors were the servants' quarters back when people lived here by choice, though one would never guess from looking that the place wasn't made to be a madhouse. I braced myself for the smell but somehow it always caught me off-guard. It was a graveyard smell of death and fresh earth. To the inmates it probably smelled like home. The place was a maze of rooms and corridors under hazily dim fluorescent lights. I got the usual mix of profane jeers and suspicious looks from the patients as I passed one room after the next. Waylon Jones gave me a hungry stare when I walked by. He sat perfectly still, basking under his heat lamp; only his bright red eyes moved, following me like a portrait's eyes in a bad horror movie.

The smell got worse as we passed Solomon Grundy's cell. Grundy's appearance always baffled me. His massive build seemed impossible, almost surreal, as if a child had drawn him to life and taken some liberties with the proportions. “Born on a Monday,” he greeted me in a low rumble. I returned with a nod. That scared the hell out of me the first time I was down here. I was born on a Monday myself and no one had told me about his, um, condition yet. That coincidence between us was the reason he liked me more than the other psychiatrists. I mean, he'd still try to strangle me if I got too close, but by his standards it counted for something.

“You're early,” Edward taunted as I approached his room. Nearly every inch of wall around him was covered in puzzles, mazes, riddles, and cyphers. In isolation he only had himself to outsmart.

“Well, Mr. Nigma, maybe I was just so eager to see you,” I quipped back. His eyes opened wide. He sensed a challenge.

“You're a terrible liar. If I had to guess, you're early because Crane just told you about his childhood.” He had a foxlike grin on his face as he said it.

I'd like to say that I was shocked by Nigma's perceptiveness, but after months of working with him it had more or less become the norm. “Alright Edward, I'll bite,” I replied casually, “How did you know?”

“Well, it's really quite obvious, isn't it?” he said. It never was to anyone else, which is why he always said it with such relish. “Why else would you be down here even two minutes early? I've seen the way you recoil at the sight of us, to say nothing of the smell. In all probability you had a little journey inside your former role model's mind and didn't like what you saw. You didn't want to be alone with your thoughts afterwards so you came down here to the safety of our sick and depraved but nonetheless familiar company. Seeking asylum, if you'll pardon the pun. You figured as ugly as exorcising our demons can get, it's better than facing your own. Am I right?” He knew he was right no matter what I might say. Asking just gave the illusion of fallibility, which he loved to use as a lure.

“Now where's the sport in me just telling you?” I replied. It spoke to his love of competition. He moved in as close as the thick glass screen between us would allow.

“So then,” he said, “Another futile foray into the mind of yours truly?”

“Not today, Edward,” I answered flatly, “We need your help with something a little more pressing.” I slid a playing card through the slot in the glass and pushed it his way. “Gotham police recovered it from the scene of a murder. I think you know what it means.” I knew immediately that it would pique his interest.

He picked up the card and studied it carefully, grinning back at the grinning joker's face on its front. He scrutinized it, holding it so close he could all but taste it. “A little bit too heavy to be a real playing card,” he muttered, mostly to himself. “The slight imperfections in the cross-hatching would be too obvious a tell, so clearly not from a trick deck. Definitely inked by hand, and painstakingly so. This isn't from any kind of deck at all; probably made by request for a customer with very particular tastes. And this tiny spot of red here, doesn't quite match with the rest of the color scheme. An inking mistake or...” He held the card to his tongue and then lingered on the taste for a moment as if evaluating a fine wine. “I stand corrected: it's blood. And not fresh blood either. How recent was the killing?”

“A day ago at most,” I replied.

“This is older.” He paused, staring into the card's face with a familiar hatred. “It's unmistakable. The chance of this being the work of another imitator....less than 0.5 percent” He slipped the card back into the slot and shoved it my way, face frozen in a curious expression. “He's back.”