Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Rostikov Legacy
    The Rostikov Legacy
    The Rostikov Legacy
    Ebook105 pages1 hour

    The Rostikov Legacy

    By Charlotte E. English

    5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Detective. Judge. Executioner.


    In an icy, Victorianesque world, a harsh god rules, and He has one law: a life for a life.


    Konrad Savast is the Malykant: detective, judge and executioner in one. It's kill and be killed in Konrad's world, and his unhappy duty to mete out his Master's implacable justice.


    The body of an aristocrat lies in the mist-shrouded reaches of the Bone Forest. Her killer has signed their own death warrant; but first, Konrad must learn who could have wanted the delightful Lady Rostikova dead...


    With a pair of bloodthirsty ghosts to assist him, Konrad will hunt her ladyship's killer the length and breadth of the city — and stop at nothing to finally bring them down.


    The supernatural meets classic murder mystery in this tale of dark justice, deduction and black magic.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFrouse Books
    Release dateFeb 4, 2012
    The Rostikov Legacy
    Author

    Charlotte E. English

    English both by name and nationality, Charlotte hasn’t permitted emigration to the Netherlands to damage her essential Britishness. She writes colourful fantasy novels over copious quantities of tea, and rarely misses an opportunity to apologise for something. Spanning the spectrum from light to dark, her works include the Draykon Series, Modern Magick, The Malykant Mysteries and the Tales of Aylfenhame.

    Read more from Charlotte E. English

    Related to The Rostikov Legacy

    Titles in the series (12)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Fantasy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Watching The Detectives

      Dec 30, 2020

      Watching The Detectives
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Short Slice Of Fantasy

      Apr 7, 2022

      A Short Slice Of Fantasy
      6 min read

    • Article

      Books Of The Month

      May 20, 2022

      By Alastair Reynolds Reynolds is best known as an author of hard science-based space operas, yet his latest novel begins on board a ship sailing up the coastline of Norway in the early 19th century. The mystery deepens as the same group of people, on

      2 min read

    • Article

      Perfect Prose II

      May 15, 2020

      Perfect Prose II
      4 min read

    • Article

      Spell

      Apr 25, 2018

      Spell
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Tale Of Two Christmases

      Dec 17, 2020

      A Tale Of Two Christmases
      7 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Mar 4, 2024

      To Err Is Human; to Forgive, Supine —S. J. Perelman, Baby, It’s Cold Inside, 1970 You must know the bees have come early this year too: I see them visit aster, sweet Williams, bleeding hearts, and azalea blossoms hardy enough to not have crisped with

      3 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Nov 1, 2018

      In a hotel in a small town in Norfolk I am listening to someonethrowing glass bottles into a metal bin: toss-shatter, toss-shatter.There are no other sounds; it’s a quiet afternoonbut the one tossing them has a sense of rhythm and I havea sense that

      5 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2021

      I learned the world through the bottoms of my feet, barein the creeks of summer, stepping on pebbles, the squidgeof moss between my toes. On hot asphalt, the hop and skipover cracks, feet already toughened by bramble, dirt, the pricklyground of pine

      4 min read

    • Article

      Hernan Diaz, Fiction

      Mar 20, 2019

      Hernan Diaz, Fiction
      2 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems by Eavan Boland

      May 1, 2020

      Four Poems by Eavan Boland
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Pandemic Can’t Lock Down Nature

      Apr 9, 2020

      Needing to clear my head, I went down to the Penobscot River. There they were, swimming with the mergansers, following an early pulse of river herring to the mouth of Kenduskeag stream: two harbor seals, raising sleek round heads for a few long breat

      4 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Sep 1, 2022

      1. Here there’s no rainy season.Sun scalds my forehead,yet the pool is empty. Beside it,a toppled table, its glass surface shattered.The asphalt is too hot for bare feet. 2. Far away: white hillocksand white dunes under a deepblue sky. Swirling winds

      5 min read

    • Article

      Earthlings

      Apr 9, 2021

      Earthlings
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Dragon’s Perspective

      Jun 10, 2022

      There once lived a dragon named Deathwing. Well, at least that’s what they called him. Deathwing was growing old, far too old for his liking. The joints of his claws ached and groaned under his ever-growing weight and his scales were beginning to los

      18 min read

    • Article

      Hope Springs

      Feb 22, 2021

      The Thin Places in the title of Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s intense memoir-cum-nature book are “places where a veil is lifted away and light streams in”. They are pools of stillness in a “broken, burning and bleeding world”. They are remote havens where t

      2 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Jan 1, 2020

      How slow is all of this dying? Across the county linea fossil in the making, off-road exhaling last lightin nightmud. A small cat in a steel trap. Pendulous sparrows preen. Holding on for the last bluedark nightwe ate fruited scabs off each other’s m

      4 min read

    • Article

      Jude THE OBSCURE

      Jun 18, 2021

      Jude THE OBSCURE
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Remains Of The Day

      Jan 11, 2023

      The Remains Of The Day
      5 min read

    • Article

      In The Thick Of It

      Feb 23, 2022

      In The Thick Of It
      3 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Jun 3, 2019

      You are old when your longtime friend Melvin, turned seventy-five, writes you in rage about becoming old. … Melvin knows nothing about old age: Melvin can walk upstairs! Melvin flies to the West Indies with his girlfriend and his wife! In your eighti

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Whale Who Will Come Soon

      Sep 8, 2021

      The beachfront narrows to an ocherous ribbon, belted by blue, above and below. After a while, a handful of shearwaters appear in the air above the Cat Balou. The birds flash around us; like knife-thrower tricks at a circus. Diving through the water,

      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Rostikov Legacy

    5/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Rostikov Legacy - Charlotte E. English

      The Rostikov Legacy

      The Malykant Mysteries, 1

      Charlotte E. English

      Copyright © 2011 by Charlotte E. English

      All rights reserved.

      No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by EU copyright law.

      Contents

      1. Chapter One

      2. Chapter Two

      3. Chapter Three

      4. Chapter Four

      5. Chapter Five

      6. Chapter Six

      7. Chapter Seven

      8. Chapter Eight

      9. Chapter Nine

      10. Epilogue

      Chapter One

      The Bone Forest at night is a dangerous place to be. The ground is marshy, spread with silent pools of water waiting to catch the steps of the unwary. A permanent fog shrouds the air in the colder months; in winter little can be seen of the landscape save the twisted trees looming out of the dark, their branches reaching into the sky like stripped bones.

      Once in a while, though, the moon shines briefly from between layers of heavy black cloud and the mists gleam bone-white in response. And even more rarely, a flicker of ghostly white near the black earthen ground begs to catch the eye: a glimpse of a marsh spectre, so easy to miss.

      The marsh spectre is not, as might be inferred, a spirit but in fact a flower. It grows in only the wettest of marshes; were its delicate petals to dry out it would crumble and fade into the wind like a wraith.

      It crouches low to the ground, its foliage ash-grey veined with silver. It is rare. The conditions for its growth are specific; a particular temperature, a significant degree of moisture, not too much light. Without these it will never thrive and its coveted blossoms — only one per plant — will never appear.

      On one particular frosty night, few souls were abroad to witness the delicate white glow of the marsh spectre as it unfurled its petals. Coveted as it was, few could brave the dangers of the night-shrouded Bone Forest with impunity. Konrad Savast was one such, and as he navigated with care through the dripping fog a bright glow caught his eye, blazing briefly but powerfully in the grey forests that ringed the city of Ekamet. It was a light he recognised, for he had set out on this cold, wet night in search of this very blossom.

      Swirling his long, dark coat out of the way of his legs, he was on his knees in an instant, heedless of the ice-touched, waterlogged mud staining the thick fabric of his trousers.

      But he was not the first. He swore at finding himself too late; too late to prevent this most virulent of poisons from being harvested, processed, sold and above all, used. The centre of the flower was gone; only a few petals remained.

      Konrad sat back on his heels, disturbed. Whoever had harvested this particular specimen was not a professional poison master; the drooping, bruised state of the few surviving petals spoke of the rough lack of care with which the valuable parts of the flower had been removed.

      When amateurs played at poison craft, the results were never good.

      He closed his eyes and let his consciousness shift into the spirit-world. In his mind’s eye the landscape drained further of colour, becoming a faded tableau in hazy white. He could see the wind streaming through the trees, feel the faint traces left by the passage of wraiths through the aether.

      ‘Eetapi,’ he murmured. ‘Ootapi.’

      An answering whisper touched his thoughts, and then a second close behind. Twin phantoms twined through his senses like a persistent cold wind, making him shiver.

      Yes, Malykant, they both said together.

      Search the aether, he told them silently. Bring me news of the unquiet.

      His companions caught the ribbons of the wind and sailed away. He opened his eyes and watched them go, their long serpentine bodies fading into the mist. They had been brightly coloured in life, their beaded hides advertising their venomous natures in vivid purple and red. In death they were moon-pale, insubstantial and cold as winter.

      Abandoning the broken marsh spectre, Konrad straightened and continued on, picking his way expertly through the sluggish pools of water that saturated the forest. He threaded through the hillocks of drier land that dotted the landscape, ignoring the steady trickle of dampness that ran off the brim of his hat and flowed down the waxed cloth of his coat. After some minutes his workshop materialised out of the fog, a wooden structure raised on stilts high above the stagnant water. A rope ladder served as the only means of entrance; he climbed up it to his trapdoor entrance and let himself in.

      The pockets of his coat were stuffed with folded cloth packets. He drew these out one at a time, storing the fruits of his ramblings in the jars and boxes that crowded the shelves in his one room. Dark purple inkwort he had found in plentiful quantity, and sunbane and weak orange pepperroot. He’d even discovered a pocket of ashleaf sheltering on the lee side of one of the taller hillocks, hidden behind a mess of tall, prickly grass. Were it not for the loss of the marsh spectre, he would have considered it a fruitful day’s work.

      Harvest stored, Konrad shrugged out of his coat, stepped out of his tall boots and removed his hat. He flopped gratefully onto the rude and untidy bed, yawning. He had been walking all night and most of the day, covering many miles of the marsh in his search for the materials of his trade.

      But he would not sleep yet. Not until the serpents brought him the news from the spirit lands.

      He sensed their return as he framed this thought. They came billowing through his open door, bringing a renewed chill with them. He sensed agitation, some manner of disturbance in the normally placid minds of his familiars.

      ‘Peace, Eetapi,’ he said to soothe them. ‘Ootapi. What have you discovered?’

      An unclean death, a hissing voice replied. One of your kind, Malykant. He recognised the melodic tones of Eetapi, her voice like the tolling of funeral bells.

      We sense the displeasure of The Malykt, added Ootapi, in a voice like splintering ice.

      Konrad tensed. The Malykt was the spirit Overlord who presided over the transition from life to death, and incidentally he was also Konrad’s master. Years ago now, The Malykt had made Konrad His chief servant, granting him the serpent-seers as his aides. As the Malykant, head of the Order of Death, Konrad’s duties were clear.

      That the Overlord was displeased by this particular death did not bode well. It meant that it was time for Konrad to go to work.

      Show me, he instructed, and the serpents complied, seizing his mind and carrying it away, back out into the marsh. Along the aether they sped, weaving through the ghostly trees, their essence mingling with the mist.

      Less than a mile from Konrad’s workshop a wide hillock rose out of the fog like a barrow, and here they stopped. The patch of ground was dry and largely bare of trees, clothed in short, half-frozen grass. Atop it lay the corpse, shreds of its soul still lingering at the scene of death. Konrad sensed the Malykt: the Spirit Lord had been here, drawn by the dank and acrid aura of defilement that polluted the air.

      An unclean death indeed. Konrad felt The Malykt’s anger and shuddered under it.

      As he took note of these details Konrad was distantly aware that his body followed where his mind had already gone, drawn inexorably through the trees until consciousness and physical form merged at the splayed feet of the corpse. He stood motionless for a moment as his mind and body merged once more, waiting until

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1