Rose Red

By Shay Price

When the entire population of Carrondale vanishes, Zeidra sets out to discover the cause. She's not all surprised to find magic is involved, but what she doesn't expect is to be drawn into a strange world where reality is fluid and the haunted memories she's so long held at bay are pulled to the surface.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shadow Portal Books
• Release date: Oct 28, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386903604

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

It was the silence that first alerted Zeidra to the fact that something wasn’t right. Midday and Carrondale’s busiest shopping district was deserted; no loud voices haggling, no children laughing, not even the distant sound of a dog’s bark.

Dust kicked up beneath the hooves of her cinnamon mare, the sound of the horse’s breathing loud in the stillness. Zeidra dismounted outside Pike’s Place and tied the mare’s reins to the hitching post. Keep a wary eye out, old girl. She scratched the mare between the ears. I have a bad feeling about this.

The mare gazed at her with large dark eyes, then dropped her head to crop a patch of weeds growing up through the wood planking of the sidewalk.

Zeidra glanced down the empty street, then entered the tavern. The common room was large, with a fireplace at one end, a bar at the other, and two dozen tables evenly spaced between. It was the largest and most frequented tavern in the city, it’s only real competition being the Sow’s End, which tended to lose transient business because of its poorly chosen name. Pike’s brother Poole ran the Sow, but though the two had spent every day of their lives in Carrondale, they hadn’t stood face to face in ten years.

So far as she could see, everything was in perfect order. Except there was no Pike filling glasses behind the bar, no customers laughing and cursing and singing, no barmaids hurrying past with heavily laden trays.

The door to the kitchen was closed. Zeidra stared at it. As many times as she’d been here through the years she was certain that door always stood open. Her heightened senses suggested someone stood on the other side, someone who ought not to be there.

She made her approach on silent feet, drawing a dagger from her belt. She pulled the door open, then dropped to a crouch. A large pot flew over her head, followed by several plates and a teapot. Behind this barrage of kitchenware, stood a tall, thin man, who was busy scrambling for more objects to fling in her direction.

Poole, stop. It’s me.

He turned with a soup ladle in his hand, blinking as if awakening from a dream. Zeidra?

Once it was clear no more projectiles were forthcoming, she stood and sheathed her dagger. What are you doing here? Where’s Pike?

Gone, like everybody else.

What do you mean gone? Zeidra stepped into the kitchen. What happened?

Poole shook his head, staring down at the floor.

Well, something must have happened. People don’t simply disappear into thin air. Except maybe here, she thought to herself.

Poole raised his eyes to meet hers. I thought the same thing. First person came in the Sow’s End and told me what was going on, I thought they were crazy, or drunk. Until I saw it with my own eyes. A man I known almost as long as I known you, up and disappeared, standing right in the doorway of the tavern. One minute he was there, the next ... He made a gesture with his hands. Gone.

He was just gone? Like that? She snapped her fingers.

He nodded. You can bet I ran real quick out the back, but there weren’t no place to run to. People were in the street, yelling, an running, an disappearing right an left. So I come here, looking for my brother. All I found was nothing.

How many gone?

Don’t know. I been hiding in here the best part of two days, praying and such. He shrugged. Never was one to think much of the gods, but I sure feel different about it now. Sweat dripped down the sides of his face. "Haven’t heard nothing from out there