Shadowbaby

By Barbara Hambly

A novelette of 15,000 words; a sequel to Hambly's Dragonsbane (Winterlands) series. Everyone knows that when the faerie-folk of the marshes kidnap a human child, they replace it with a changeling, a shadow-baby. When John Aversin, Dragonsbane and Thane of the Winterlands, hears that the inhabitants of a local village are accusing a changeling child of murdering its human foster-mother, he is alarmed and appalled. He knows that changelings don't kill their foster parents - and that if the villagers harm the changeling, the shadowy faeries are capable of taking horrible revenge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barbara Hambly
• Release date: Jul 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311240064

Barbara Hambly

Since her first published fantasy in 1982 - The Time of the Dark - Barbara Hambly has touched most of the bases in genre fiction. She has written mysteries, horror, mainstream historicals, graphic novels, sword-and-sorcery fantasy, romances, and Saturday Morning Cartoons. Born and raised in Southern California, she attended the University of California, Riverside, and spent one year at the University of Bordeaux, France. She married science fiction author George Alec Effinger, and lived part-time in New Orleans for a number of years. In her work as a novelist, she currently concentrates on horror (the Don Simon Ysidro vampire series) and historical whodunnits, the well-reviewed Benjamin January novels, though she has also written another historical whodunnit series under the name of Barbara Hamilton.Professor Hambly also teaches History part-time, paints, dances, and trains in martial arts. Follow her on Facebook, and on her blog at livejournal.com.Now a widow, she shares a house in Los Angeles with several small carnivores.

Book preview

SHADOWBABY

by

Barbara Hambly

Published by Barbara Hambly at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 Barbara Hambly

Cover art by Eric Baldwin

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Shawdowbaby

About The Author

The Further Adventures

Shadowbaby

by

Barbara Hambly

You better get out to Qwethmire Village, lad. Sergeant Muffle, blacksmith of Alyn and unofficial second-in-command of the Winterlands militia, dropped off his horse in the lower courtyard of the Hold before the animal had even come down out of the canter that had brought it through the gate. John Aversin set down his yoke-pole and tried to wipe spattered pig-muck off his spectacles, with predictable results.

What’re they up to this time? Had there been danger to that tiny settlement – two dozen families who had pointedly moved away from the village that huddled around the walls of Alyn Hold after a long-ago dispute with John’s father – Muffle would have come through the gate at a full-bat gallop yelling, Get your armor, Johnny! Flaming Bone-Rippers (or whatever) attackin’ Qwethmire!

In a way, John would have preferred Flaming Bone-Rippers, or giant tentacled swamp-monsters, or any other perils in which ancient ballads abounded – or even very real dragons, bandits, Iceriders or griffs – to whatever the villagers of Qwethmire were likely to come up with by themselves. They were the sons and granddaughters of people who’d preferred stony tillage, bandit attacks, and wight-haunted boglands to compromise or negotiation with old Lord Aver, not that John wouldn’t have run away and gone with them if he’d had the chance. But since that long-ago conflict, they had been a constant source of nuisance, not only to John as Thane – the sole government, judiciary, and trained warrior in thousands of square miles of granite, peat, and permafrost – but to the inhabitants of the other small villages of the Winterlands.

They were the last to pay their share of the ward-geld that supported the militia, as often as not sending in half or a quarter of what was due. Missing livestock had a way of wandering north to pens in that village (We didna know whose mark that was on it – you expect us to keep track of every mark in the land?) (Everybody else did), and cursed John as a persecuting tyrant when he routinely checked there for strays. They argued constantly with their Alyn relatives over the few small patches of fertile ground in all the frostbitten wastes, and sued one another at vituperative length in the law-court that was the part of being Thane that John loathed the most.

They’re goin’ after the faes in the Mire, said Muffle.

John said a word that would have gotten his mouth washed out with soap by any of his aunts, Dragonsbane and Thane of the Winterlands notwithstanding, and yelled Bill! for the yardman – who had taken advantage of the high-summer lull in bandit activity to trade a thorough clean-out of the stables if John would take over his secondary duty of pig-slopping for two days. As Thane I’m givin’ you double duty, lad, he informed the graying little man who emerged from the stable, stripped to singlet and braies and liberally coated with muck. Have Battlehammer saddled ready for me when I come down.

You’re a despot and a swine, replied his henchman imperturbably. I bet you rigged it with Muffle to come ridin’ in here sayin’ there’s Flamin’ Bone-Rippers comin’ out o’ the Dank Caverns, just to get out of doin’ the pigs—

You’ve caught me in the act. John dug in the pocket of his worst old breeches for a half-copper, which he handed to the smith. Have those pigs slopped and me horse ready for me, he added, as he turned to stride toward the steps that led up to the Hold, or I’ll have you beheaded.

Up your nose.

But John was already halfway up the steps. I don’t get any respect ‘round here, he called back, but Muffle was already pushing his way to the pig-troughs with John’s buckets. And somebody go find Jenny, he added, halting. I think she’s gone to the Gray Stanes – tell her to catch up with me. His wife – the only semi-trained enchantress in the whole of the desolate Winterlands – could travel very quickly when she had to, and he hoped she would. He had a feeling he’d need her help.

He only hoped he could reach Qwethmire before its inhabitants got themselves killed and unleashed