You know you're a writer when you write with your own blood. A writer of spells and incantations, of dark prayers and deadly curses.
Mordreth dipped his quill in the fast coagulating ichor. Dark red, already blackening, just as the heart of the curse seeker would blacken once the words were read.
"You realise the cost of this incantation," he asked the customer.
The man, a thin, dry, creature with a pointed nose and bright beady eyes that darted around, nodded. His voice was soft and dry, like cobwebs being brushed off a tomb.
"Two golden guineas." The word ended with a hiss.
"That's not the full price. It demands its own commission, once the words are read."
They never understood this, most customers. When you wrote a curse, the writing itself became an entity. You spoke the words and the entity was cast off to do its dark bidding.
But an entity needs a soul, and so it would take part of the caster's soul. Mordreth's blood and the thin man's soul would give it the force it needed to wreak havoc on the subject of the curse.
The thin man leered, showing narrow, greyish teeth. Mordreth suspected this was not the first curse he had cast. Despite the brightness of his eyes one could sense the black hollowness growing within him.
Cast enough curses and your soul would be spent. Mordreth himself had never written a curse for his own enemies. He knew how the thin man would end up: nothing but a husk.
YOU ARE READING
Fantastic Fragments
Paranormal* an old man captures a moon sprite * a dark witch visits a fairy market * a child takes a ghost train to nowhere Read these strange tales and more in "Fantastic Fragments", a new collection of short stories by mystery writer Edward Turbeville.
