Part 1: A Disorderly House
Tucked discreetly among the narrow, winding Lanes that radiate out from the Harbour Market, the brothel keeps a low profile behind a weather-worn façade of faded paint and shuttered windows. This part of Stormhaven, while far from its grandest, is not entirely insalubrious. It is an area where merchants, dockhands, and minor guildsmen mingle. The authorities rarely interfere, so long as such establishments remained unobtrusive and the clientele do not spill trouble into the streets. Inside, the brothel is normally modestly kept, with worn furnishings in an unexpectedly elegant salon that now bears the marks of recent horror.
Sergeant Ongrin Stormfist stood in the centre of the salon surrounded by blood on the walls and floor, and bodies lying around her. She had counted the bodies of six men and eight women — five in the reception room on the ground floor and nine in the bedrooms on the two floors above. The dead had been left where they were. Thora Proudfoot, the only survivor, had been taken to the infirmary at Stormhaven Abbey. Thora was the proprietor and mistress of the brothel. She had been repeatedly bludgeoned and her face was a mess of blood, but she was Dwarakai — a ‘dwarf’ — like Ongrin Stormfist, and therefore very tough. Ongrin did not doubt that Thora would survive.
Three guardsmen were checking the rooms upstairs, and more were outside the premises asking questions of neighbours and passers-by. The Guards Captain, Julian Greatfield, stared grimly at Ongrin from near the door.
“Who’s that?” he asked, nodding towards an elderly man sitting on a chair by an overturned table.
“His name is Sam Scarff. I know him, he’s a regular at the Sleeping Dragon Tavern. And apparently a regular here. Meister Scarff is a blacksmith.”
Sam looked up. Tears were welling in his eyes. The old widower had been coming to the brothel for the past three years, mostly just for conversation and sometimes for more intimate attentions. Thora had eventually told him that she would charge him friends’ rates before saying that he should pay whatever he wanted. The old man, in his turn, was more than generous.
“Meister Scarff has been able to identify all of the women and three of the men,” continued Ongrin.
Greatfield raised an eyebrow. Ongrin’s use of the title ‘Meister’ told him that, despite Scarff’s presence at the brothel, she considered him to be a man of substance and to be treated with a degree of respect.
“Meister Scarff is the owner of the Scarff Foundry. He arrived just after the slaughter and says he saw the killer leaving.”
“As I told the Sergeant, he was a big man, pale-skinned. Renlai, I think,” Sam began. “A little taller than I am and broader, younger. It was difficult to see more. It was dark and he had his hood pulled over his head. He was stumbling as he walked. Maybe he was wounded.”
“Is there anything else you can tell us, Meister?” asked the Captain.
“No,” said Scarff. “I heard groans, cries. And then I came in and saw all this. These women, dead or dying. I called for help and checked to see who was still alive. Only Thora was barely breathing. Her face was broken. It was minutes before anyone came. Then people were screaming. Someone must have called the Guards because … you came.”
“We had two guards in the area, Captain,” said Ongrin.
“Can I go now?” asked the blacksmith. “I should look in on Thora in the Abbey.”
Greatfield looked at Ongrin.
“Yes, I got your story. But go home first and get cleaned up before you go to the Abbey,” said Ongrin kindly.
The old man was covered with blood. Ongrin told him to wait and then told Guardsman Thom Topherson to see that the old man got home and then go with him to the Abbey. She said that she would meet Thom there.
When they had gone, the Captain asked Ongrin if she suspected the blacksmith. She said that she didn’t. Nor did she think that this was the work of a single killer.
“Look around,” began the Sergeant. “There are three women in the room: Thora, Fanny and Lia. (Sam has identified Fanny and Lia’s bodies.) There are also three men.”
“One of the men is the brothel’s doorman, identified by Sam as ‘Hassan’. The two other men’s names are not known. Call them ‘John’ and ‘Mark’. Lia and John are going up the stairs, then she turns and starts biting and clawing at him. See the scratches on his face and the blood and flesh under her fingernails.”
“At the same time, Fanny is being stabbed again and again by Mark.”
“Hassan is standing at a table with Thora. He shoves her into the table. It falls and Thora falls back against it. Hassan uses his fists to beat Thora about the head. Her broken nose and teeth show how hard he was hitting her, and see the bruises on his hands? Two fingers are broken. Dwarakai heads are hard.”
“At this point, Mark, who has finished with Fanny, plunges his knife into Hassan’s back. Hassan lifts Mark and breaks his back over his knee, then he collapses on top of Mark.”
“Lia is dead. She has been strangled, her windpipe crushed by John.”
“At this point a man — our escapee — comes down the stairs and smashes John’s head with a heavy statuette, which he drops at the bottom of the stairs before running out of the door and onto the street. He is heavily wounded and leaves a trail of blood.”
When Ongrin had stopped talking, her captain was looking at her with open astonishment tinged with scepticism. As she spoke, the Dwarf had been pointing to evidence such as the knife in Hassan’s back, the blood under Lia’s fingers and the bloodstained statuette. Everything seemed to fit, but he couldn’t believe that she could be seeing all this.
Ongrin was a sensible woman and she very often got things right with her reconstructions of events, but Greatfield thought that she sometimes took things too far. He didn’t say anything. The Captain and the Sergeant had a relationship that suited them both very well. Ongrin did most of the work and made most of the decisions, and he took most of the credit.
Ongrin herself didn’t truly know whether what she said was an accurate description or not. She had once discussed her ability with Boz Taverner. He had just said that she had “a wonderful creative imagination” and should keep using it.
Captain Greatfield decided that his report would say, “From the placement of the bodies, we determined that at least some of the victims had killed each other. We cannot say what had caused them to turn on each other.” But that left the questions of why they had done it and why they had seemed to go mad at the same time. This was not the only case of apparently maniacal killings and outbursts of violence during the last fortnight, and the murder rate had more than doubled in the past month. Julian Greatfield had no idea what was going on. Ongrin Stormfist did have an idea, and it chilled her.
Part 2: An Orderly House
Stormhaven Abbey rises in quiet dignity at the heart of the city, its white-stone towers visible from the harbour’s edge. It stands not far from the Administrative Palace and the Guild Houses, a reminder that the Light Keepers serve not only the divine but also the temporal order. Within its cloistered grounds live monks and nuns devoted to prayer and healing. Hosteled here are also Paladins, the Light Warriors, often considered the Order’s military wing. The Abbey is both sanctuary and stronghold, its very walls steeped in a serenity earned from decades of meditation, prayer and service. But in its infirmary this night, serenity struggles to hold back a tide of fear and pain.
The bell had just struck the fourth hour after midnight. Within the Abbey, monks and nuns of the Order of Light Keepers would normally be beginning their quiet rites — ablutions, meditation, the soft chanting of ancient names for the Divine. But this was not a normal morning.
Sergeant Ongrin blinked slowly. “You look like you need some sleep, Ongrin Stormfist,” smiled Hildegard of Stormhaven Abbey.
“So do you, Abbess.” Replied the sergeant.
They stood in the tiled passage outside the infirmary. The air held the scent of healing herbs and candle wax. The muffled moans of the injured drifted faintly behind the heavy oak doors.
The two women had been close since Ongrin’s arrival seven years ago. Hildegard had welcomed her as a kindred spirit. The tall, dark-skinned Abbess had once been Subira Iwu of Durdessa. Now named Hildegard, elected by the Order, she wore the Steel Collar of Service above the white and black robes.
Hildegard pushed open the infirmary doors. Beds had been removed to make more room for the wounded on mattresses on the floor. Monks and nuns sat beside the injured, comforting, tending, restraining.
“You and I are used to seeing wounds, Sister Hildegard, used to fear in the eyes of men and women,” Ongrin said softly. “But this,” she said, looking at the casualties, “this is different.”
Hildegard nodded. “Many here are wounded not only in body, but also… in soul.”
The Abbess looked at her friend, as if to ask if the Sergeant could see the darkness hovering like a mist above some of the injured.
Men and women and children moaned and screamed in distress.
In the centre of the room, a group of nuns and monks sat on the floor cross-legged, eyes closed, in intense meditation. Ongrin could not see the dark mists that Hildegard saw, but she could see the spiritual Light emanating from the seated clerics — it was the Light that she had often seen playing around the Abbess.
“You think they’re possessed?” asked the Dwarakai.
“I don’t know, Ongrin” Hildegard said slowly, “Maybe it’s not possession, yet some darkness is surfacing. And not just surfacing. Feeding on our people … On their own, darker, passions.”
She turned, meeting Ongrin’s gaze.
“Stormhaven is a good place — better than most. Our people are of many races, we hold many beliefs, but we’ve held together, Ongrin. Now something, a Darkness, is at work here, making neighbours suspicious, angry, afraid.”
Ongrin nodded. “That’s what it felt like. At the brothel. Like something else was present … a dark, heavy, presence.”
“The Keepers must act, and so must the Paladins,” Hildegard said. “We can fight the Darkness with True Light. It’s far easier here in the Abbey where the walls themselves echo the prayers and meditations of a hundred years. But we need to go into the city where things are getting worse.”
Ongrin said nothing for a moment.
“Then we do what we must. How can I help?”
Before Hildegard could reply, a robed novice approached, breathless.
“A message from Prime Administrator Mistborn, Abbess. You are summoned to a conference. At once. At the Palace.”