The Legacy of Lord Regret: Strange Threads: Book 1 by Sam Bowring Page B

rocked as her tears flowed, and Forger grew stronger with each racking sob. She would not get
     over this quickly, he knew, and maybe there was a father about too, who would soon discover this pain himself. With any luck,
     Forger could lurk about this house until he was well satiated.
    He realised he was growing heavier, perhaps too heavy for his current vantage. The branch beneath him crackedand fell, and he gave a little squeak as he went tumbling after, to land on his feet beside the mother. She flinched, blinking
     at him rapidly. He must have grown, for although she knelt and he stood, they were eye to red-and-weepy eye.
    ‘There goes that idea,’ he said.
    Somehow she associated him with what had happened, and reached for his throat with a shriek of rage. Forger flicked his fingers
     at her feet and rooted her in place. Quickly he decided that, although less thorough than what he’d intended, there were faster
     ways to eke more pain from her.
    ‘Who did I think I was fooling?’ he asked. ‘I don’t have the patience to sneak about unseen while you mourn! Ha.’
    He gave a wave, and, directing her body for her, sent her stumbling towards the cottage.
    ‘Stop!’ she cried. ‘Stop!’
    He considered the dead children for a moment, then floated their corpses after her.
    ‘I think we shall prop up your boys at the table,’ he told the hysterical woman, ‘so they can watch what I do to you.’
    Bouncing up the porch steps, he opened the cottage door and stood aside, hand held out in a gesture of welcome.
    ‘Come on in!’
    The lurching woman screamed at him without words.
    ‘Really,’ he said, ‘can’t you understand? I’m just trying to be happy. Why don’t you want me to be happy?’
    And he took them all into the house.

PRESENT TRUTH
    Rostigan drew deeply on his pipe, filling up his lungs with smoke. He enjoyed the bite of it, strangely, the hot prickle of
     damage done.
    Nobody bothered him here, sitting in a dark corner of the busy tavern. His stern face and heavy sword usually made sure of
     that, but tonight people were skittish, distracted by all they had heard over the past few days. This town lay in the plains
     some leagues from Silverstone, and enough travellers from that direction had given accounts of the missing city to leave the
     townsfolk frightened.
    ‘I’m telling you,’ said a farmer at the nearest table, ‘it’s just not natural.’
    ‘Oh,
thank you
for that, Borry,’ replied a pock-marked man. ‘A whole city up and vanishes, and you declare it’s not natural? What insight!
     It’s a wonder you’re just a common farmer and not some famous, wealthy scholar.’
    ‘Settle down Tanis,’ said a woman, ‘there’s no need for that. We’re all worried.’
    ‘I’m not worried. Has any of you actually
seen
Silverstone?’
    ‘That’s the whole problem,’ said Borry. ‘It can’t be seen!’
    ‘I mean, coal and ash, has anyone here actually verified the truth of these claims? It could just be some traveller spreading
     lies as a trick.’
    ‘But it weren’t just one. It was –’
    ‘At least three,’ said the woman. ‘Different ones too, not travelling together.’
    ‘You mean,’ said Tanis, growing ever more exasperated, ‘that they didn’t
arrive
together. Maybe they met on the road beforehand, and said to each other, “Let’s conjure a tale before visiting town one by
     one, so the poor fools don’t suspect that we’re lying sons of goats. What fun it will be to scare whatever semblance of wits
     they may or may not have right out of their hollow heads!”’
    ‘You believe what you want,’ said the woman. ‘I saw the look in one of ’em’s eyes, and I’m telling you, he believed what he
     saw. Said there was a voice in the air, just … hovering.’
    ‘Haw!’
    As the conversation grew louder, it attracted attention from other tables.
    ‘I heard that too,’ put in someone. ‘Ghost words, no one there to speak them.’
    ‘And what about rumours