Tales from High Towers' Study

By Niall Teasdale

Five short stories of urban fantasy.

Bedtime Story: What kind of fairy tales what an incubus tell his half-human daughter at bedtime?

Birthdays: On the wildest, most magical night of the year, Ceridwyn Brent has her birthday.

Black Lily: Lily Carpenter goes hunting for a snack at the Dubh Linn pub and gets more than she bargained for.

Redemption: Carter Fleming celebrates his forty-ninth birthday by hiring a hooker who is about to change his life, and hers.

Nightshade: A murder mystery featuring John Radcliffe and Kate Middleshaw, the Met's finest supernatural detectives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Niall Teasdale
• Release date: Jan 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465765055

Niall Teasdale

I'm a computer programmer who has been writing fantasy and sci-fi since I was fifteen. The Thaumatology series is, therefore, the culmination of 30 years work! Wow! Never thought of it like that.

Book preview

Tales from High Towers’ Study

An anthology of short stories from the Thaumatology Universe

Niall Teasdale

Copyright Niall Teasdale 2012

Smashwords Edition

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Cover artwork suggested by Tera S

Contents

Foreword

Bedtime Story

Birthdays

Black Lily

Redemption

Nightshade

Foreword

Manchester, England, January 2012

Hello and welcome to the Thaumatology Universe. Some of you reading this will have read one or more of the three published novels, perhaps you’re waiting impatiently for the fourth to be released (well, I can but hope). Some of you will have picked up this anthology because it cost you nothing and you figured it might be worth a try. So, I have a couple of groups to address in this introduction.

To you wonderful people who know all about Ceri and Lily, and the other people in these stories I’d like to say, thank you. I keep writing partially because I don’t seem to be able to stop, but mostly because people buy them, which presumably means they enjoy them. Knowing someone else enjoys my writing is the biggest spur I can think of to keep doing it.

For those who are coming to this without prior experience, I think some introductions are in order. The Thaumatology stories are set in a world a little different from ours. The most obvious thing is that magic is real, and creatures we consider mythological walk the streets. It was not always so. At the end of World War II a series of disastrous events triggered The Shattering, a cataclysmic release of magical energy into a non-magical world. Societies across the world were broken and are still recovering in the Twenty-First Century. The most advanced societies left are those which were isolated from the magical rifts by sea water and distance: Great Britain, Australia, and the Chinese Dragon Empire. The United States is catching up, Europe is starting to struggle back from being thrust back into the Middle Ages. The Thaumatology stories so far take place in Great Britain, largely in London.

The heroine of the novels is Ceri, Ceridwyn Brent. By the time of Thaumatology 101 she is about to become a research assistant in thaumatology at the London Metropolitan University, but in these stories we meet her at a much younger age. She was born in the evening on October 31st, 1986 and Birthdays follows her through a few of her birthdays (strangely enough) prior to meeting Lily. Her parents were two very skilled enchanters, and when she was just a baby they gave her a very powerful enchantment, taking the form of tattoos on her forearms, which protected her through her early life. Her parents die in a car accident in March 2004 turning her into a near recluse with a tendency to suffer panic attacks when travelling, especially in cars.

Ceri’s best friend and housemate is Lily Carpenter, a stunningly beautiful half-succubus. She has not always had an easy life and you’ll get some idea of that in Bedtime Story, Black Lily, and Redemption. The last of those features Carter Fleming, Lily’s boss by the time of the novels. A playboy millionaire, he runs several clubs throughout Britain and other parts of the world. He lives a life of glamour and leisure, but his past has some very dark parts to it. Long ago, he was in love with Ceri’s mother and the best friend of Ceri’s father; he took their deaths pretty badly.

The last of the stories in this book, Nightshade, has none of the major characters in it. Instead it spotlights the work and life of three minor characters: John and Lorna Radcliffe, and Kate Middleshaw. John and Kate are partners in the Greycoats, the branch of the Metropolitan Police Force charged with dealing with supernatural crime, much as Scotland Yard is the branch handling criminal investigation. John’s wife Lorna is a vampire, not by choice, and her turning is the reason he