Magic caused the war. Magic is forbidden. Magic will save us. The Relic Guild is the award nominated first book in The Relic Guild trilogy.
It was said the Labyrinth had once been the great meeting place, a sprawling city at the heart of an endless...
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It was agony worse than anyone should have to endure.
The bullet had shattered Clara's hipbone; it felt like half her body had been ripped away too. She searched inside for a sign that Marney was still with her. She asked for guidance to calm the panic, begged for soothing medicine to ease the pain. What she found was the empath's box of secrets, imparted by a kiss, alive and vibrating at the back of her mind. It told the changeling to let go, to accept the inevitable, to realise that this was a good thing . . .
Clara withdrew from the advice like it was counsel offered with a poisonous sting.
Alone, bathed in silver light, slumped upon the hard and wet cobbles of a foul-smelling alleyway, she was finding it too hard to recall who she was, to remember all she had learned. Hot blood slicked her skin; her heart thumped a fiery tempo. The pain had sapped much her strength and she couldn't open her eyes, let alone move her body. And in this state, lost and incapacitated, Clara decided she would die.
That was when the first growl came to her throat.
"Clara! Did the avatar give you a symbol? Quickly!"
She recognised the voice, but could not remember the man who used it. She wanted to reply, but the blood in her veins had turned to molten metal, and only a groan passed her dry lips. Her temples pounded, her muscles cramped, her skin suddenly felt too tight for her skeleton.
"Do not touch her," another man hissed.
Clara growled as her magic gathered momentum. Broken bones began to knit; torn flesh began regenerating. A ache pulsed in her jaw; her teeth felt long, her tongue a fat slug in her mouth. Skin burning as hairs sprouted from follicles like thick, hot needles, Clara used a supreme effort of will to pull from her pocket a tin filled with tablets of monkshood, the medicine she had taken for most of her life to keep her inner monster buried inside her.
Greasy fingers struggled to open the medicine tin, but she had no real control over her actions. When the lid gave, the tin slipped from her grasp, and her medicine spilled in a small fountain of tiny white pills. With another growl, she looked up and forced open her eyes to meet the glaring silver disc of the moon, high and cold in the sky.
Vision painfully sharp, Clara faced the two men in the alleyway. They stood either side of a slim pedestal that was topped by a stone box. One of them, metal plates covering his eyes and dressed in simple black garb, held a cane made from glass so deeply green its facets seemed to ripple in the moonlight like emerald waters. The other man seemed older than the first, his short hair and goatee beard practically white, his face lined with age. He wore a long brown coat, and held a rifle in his hands, its glowing power stone reeking of thaumaturgy.
Both men were covered in grime, and Clara could hear them breathing. She could taste their fear. Didn't they know they should be running from her?
