The ravening deep, p.27
The Ravening Deep,
p.27
Sanford hadn’t emerged from the ordeal entirely empty-handed. He’d given Diana and Abel money and encouraged them to move away for a good reason: as the last surviving priest of Asterias, Abel still had a connection to the creature… and if he’d stayed in Arkham, he might have realized that part of the Ravening Deep had returned to shore with them.
While Ruby and Diana were fussing over Abel’s gunshot wounds, Sanford had quietly sliced off a tip of one of the god’s arms and wrapped the fragment in a handkerchief. Abel had naturally sensed the tiny piece of god-flesh, but he’d assumed he was feeling the fragments in the ruins of the temple at first, and later that he was suffering residual effects from the violence of his final visions when Diana healed him with the amulet. Sanford made a point of putting physical space between himself and Abel as soon as he reached the shore, racing off to check on the state of the Lodge, and he’d gotten away with the gambit.
Now Sanford opened his desk and removed a small crystal bottle, its stopper sealed with red wax. A thumb-sized piece of pebbled flesh floated inside. A single eye blinked at him.
“You’re never going to live again, not properly,” Sanford said. “But I can still put you to work.” He put the fragment of Asterias close to his lips and whispered, “I am your god, now.” He pocketed the vial, then left his office, and took one of his personal secret passages into the basement. He turned down corridors that smelled strongly of disinfectant – they’d had to clean up a lot of corpses, and his anatomists were exploring the remains of the comets even now.
Sanford made his way to a corridor marked with eye-twisting sigils in red and yellow, until he stood before a door festooned with chains. “Hello, scholar,” he said. “I’ve come with a query.” He held up the vial. “How would I go about using a small piece of this to create an amulet capable of healing, regeneration… and duplication?”
The scholar from Yith stirred inside the cell, chains rattling. “That… is an interesting question. I believe I could devise a successful process.” The scholar paused. “I do not, however, see why I should help you, when you keep me prisoner here.”
The magus smiled. This part was easy. This was just negotiating, and no one could negotiate better than Carl Sanford. “Perhaps you’d like a few books to help you pass the time?”
Acknowledgments
Writing is a mostly solitary endeavor, but even so, it takes a lot of help to make a book. I am grateful to my spouse Heather and our kid (no, our teenager!) River for making my home life so wonderful, and also for my other nearest and dearests, Aislinn, Amanda, Emily, Katrina, and Sarah, for their support and kindness, and the fact that they always listen, even when I mostly want to talk about horrible starfish monsters. Thanks also to my friend and fellow writer Molly Tanzer for a thousand conversations about horror and the Mythos over the years. I appreciate the good people at Aconyte, especially my editor Charlotte Llewelyn-Wells, for letting me do such weird things, and also the Arkham Horror team for inviting me to play in their sandbox, and to my agent Ginger Clark for handling all the business stuff so I can focus on, well, horrible starfish monsters.
And thanks to you, dear readers, for coming along with me to Arkham! I hope we can visit again sometime.
About the Author
TIM PRATT is a Hugo Award-winning SF and fantasy author, and finalist for the World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Stoker, Mythopoeic, and Nebula Awards, among others. He is the author of over twenty novels, and scores of short stories. Since 2001 he has worked for Locus, the magazine of the science fiction and fantasy field, where he currently serves as senior editor.
timpratt.org
twitter.com/timpratt
Contents
Cover
Arkham Horror
The Ravening Deep, An Arkham Horror Novel
Copyright
Book One Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Book Two Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Acknowledgments
About the Author
World Expanding Fiction
Index
Tim Pratt, The Ravening Deep
