We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Asunder, a new standalone fantasy novel by Kerstin Hall—out from Tordotcom Publishing on August 20th.
Karys Eska is a deathspeaker, locked into an irrevocable compact with Sabaster, a terrifying eldritch being—three-faced, hundred-winged, unforgiving—who has granted her the ability to communicate with the newly departed. She pays the rent by using her abilities to investigate suspicious deaths around the troubled city she calls home. When a job goes sideways and connects her to a dying stranger with some very dangerous secrets, her entire world is upended.
Ferain is willing to pay a ludicrous sum of money for her help. To save him, Karys inadvertently binds him to her shadow, an act that may doom them both. If they want to survive, they will need to learn to trust one another. Together, they must journey to the heart of a faded empire, all the while haunted by arcane horrors, and the unquiet ghosts of their pasts.
And all too soon, Karys knows her debts will come due.
Chapter 1
The shore. Black sand as fine as powder, the slick gleam of washed-up kelp. Over the restless grey waters, rain clouds loomed low and heavy.
A lot of people died here, thought Karys. The sea breeze ruffled her dark hair, and she drew her coat tighter. Died violently.
Coren Oselaw was watching her, his hands buried deep in his pockets. His jaw worked languidly as he rolled osk around his mouth. He had been chewing the resin stimulant since they left Psikamit, and the crunching had frayed Karys’ nerves to their breaking point. He noticed her scowl and raised an eyebrow.
“Well?” he said.
In all honesty, Karys had wanted to refuse the job. She had wanted—and still wanted very much—to tell Oselaw to take a hike into the sea. But that risked offending Marishka, and people who pissed off the Second Mayor usually found themselves floating facedown out on the honey reef.
Besides, the money was good; she couldn’t deny that.
“It was here,” she replied. “Something happened near the beach, something bloody. Probably within the last three days.”
“Was it our boys, then?”
“Maybe. I can’t tell from this distance.”
He grinned, revealing red-stained teeth. “Then I guess we’d better take a closer look, eh? After you, deathspeaker.”
The path down to the beach had crumbled. Fallowgrass and whiteblossom pushed up from the thin soil and rustled in the breeze. Salt glittered on the rocks. Karys moved with thoughtless assurance, picking her way along the steep track, her mind elsewhere. It had taken three hours to reach this stretch of the coast. Three full hours of Oselaw’s prattling, and he still hadn’t told her what they were looking for.
Some of the boss’s people failed to make a delivery, he had said with an evasive shrug. She wants you to find out why.
Karys didn’t like it, and with every step toward the water, her unease mounted. Over the hush of the waves, she could hear a deep, discordant droning—a sound like swarming wasps. The hairs on her arms and neck stood up. She did not know what the noise signified, but it felt like a living creature was trying to burrow into her ears.
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Asunder
She glanced over her shoulder at Oselaw. He was struggling down the track, sweat glistening on his forehead, eyes narrowed in concentration. Didn’t seem like he could hear it. Which suggested… nothing good.
The path ended at a rocky scree below the base of the cliffs. Beyond, the beach stood desolate and untouched, and the sour stink of rotting seaweed hung thick in the air. Small copper-winged flies scattered in front of Karys’ feet. No gulls, she noted. If there were bodies here, she would have expected scavengers. The grey cliffs hunched around the shore, forming a jagged cove.
“How late was the delivery?” she called back to Oselaw.
“Two days.”
That fit. She walked a little further and then stopped, listening. Death pressed up against her skin like a wet cloth.
“How many people?”
“Five to ten? It can vary.”
That, on the other hand, felt wrong. Too few. Frowning, Karys closed her eyes and listened deeper, seeking out the edges of the Veneer and the bitter-bright whistle of snagged memories. She found the seam, and eased open the surface of reality. Opalescent light oozed through her eyelids. Waves crashed on the shore, and the strange droning continued, relentless and unchanging.
There. The faint murmur of a woman’s voice.
Are those lights? A pause. Then the memory reset, and it spoke again: the same words, the same tone of puzzlement. Are those lights?
Oselaw’s boots crunched on the sand behind her. Karys kept her eyes closed, still listening, but that was all she could hear—that single thread of memory, the last words of a stranger.
“They were caught by surprise,” she said.
“In the water?”
Sand flies whined around her legs. Karys shook her head. “I don’t think so. Maybe in the shallows, depending on the tide. But not past the breakers.”
Are those lights?
“It happened so quickly,” she murmured. “There wasn’t even time for fear, just… confusion.”
“You can’t tell what killed them?”
“No, not without a body.” She let the Veneer fall closed, and opened her eyes. “What’s going on here, Oselaw?”
“Getting spooked?”
“Getting tired of your bullshit. What were you smuggling?”
He folded his arms and continued chewing his osk with deliberate slowness. Karys stared at him flatly, but he remained unmoved. The barest hint of a smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“Is this amusing to you?” she asked.
“Am I laughing?”
“People died. Your people, specifically.”
He paused to spit a wad of soggy resin onto the sand. He took a fresh osk ball out his pocket and popped it into his mouth. Resumed chewing. “Keep your nose out, deathspeaker. I thought you were supposed to be a professional.”
Nuliere alive, but he was getting under her skin. Karys forced herself to unclench her jaw. It wasn’t even Oselaw, really, but the whole job: the secrecy, Marishka’s refusal to speak with her beforehand, and the sense that something deeply wrong had occurred here. A gust of wind caught the sea spray and whipped it through the air. Oselaw was right, she was spooked. With effort, she moderated her tone.
“Look, all I’m asking is whether the cargo itself might have killed them,” she said. “That’s all.”
Oselaw crunched a harder shard between his teeth. He raised his gaze in thought, then shrugged.
“I doubt it,” he said. “Not based on what you’re telling me. What else can you sense?”
Too many people for a routine smuggling job. Which meant that either Oselaw was lying to her—entirely plausible—or that someone else had lied to him. At least eight had died on this stretch of the beach alone. Karys pursed her lips and scanned the water.
“I think their bodies might have washed out to sea,” she said. “But not everyone died here. Come on.”
The cliffs grew taller as they walked down the shore. The dark sand was strewn with kelp, but no footprints, no sign of life apart from the flies. All the while, the droning in Karys’ ears grew louder. Oselaw slouched along behind her, humming to himself, but even his nonchalance seemed a little forced.
You can feel something too. Karys’ skin itched. She slowed.
“There,” she said.
Ahead, the dolomite wall veered sharply inward, forming a bowl-like indentation at its base. Heaviness lingered over the stone-strewn sand: the weight of many deaths, the crush of memory. Tucked inside the curve of the rock was a dark oval. Kelp and driftwood choked the mouth of the cave, and a fringe of green slime hung from the roof. The droning was coming from inside.
“Well, look at that,” said Oselaw. “You found our collection site.”
“What?”
He gestured to the cave entrance. “The place where our boys usually leave the goods. The boss does a retrieval every few weeks; sends me out on a fishing boat to collect. It keeps us out of the port authority’s—”
“You knew this was here?”
“Well, yeah, that’s kind of my role, logistics and such. Makes you wonder if the boys managed to bring along any merchandise before they snuffed it.” Noticing her expression, he raised both hands. “Kidding, kidding! Although I don’t see what’s wrong with making the best of a bad situation.”
Karys gritted her teeth. “Why not bring me here in the first fucking place?”
“Because this place is need-to-know. You didn’t. But seeing that we’re here now anyway, want to take a look inside?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Oh, don’t be like that.”
“I have no intention of crawling into that hole, Oselaw. Not in my job description.”
“Sure, but you are getting paid to find out what happened. And there’s more likely to be a body stuck inside, right? Harder for the sea to reach?”
Karys returned her gaze to the narrow opening. The waves rocked the shore behind them. Oselaw was, annoyingly, right.
“Coward.” Oselaw ambled past her, grinning. “I’ll even go first.”
“How gallant.”
He crouched and awkwardly manoeuvred his legs through the gap, sliding inside on his back.
“You’ll find it interesting.” He pushed himself forward and disappeared down the hole. His voice drifted out of the darkness. “It’s not what you’d expect.”
Karys looked back at the beach. There were still a few hours of daylight left, and the weather would hold until evening—even with the delay, they should be able to get home to Psikamit before the storm hit. She just couldn’t shake her sense of foreboding.
“Hey! Deathspeaker!” yelled Oselaw.
She sighed and crouched. The sand was damp and fine under her hands, and the rocks proved smooth as polished metal. She crawled into the gap, and the temperature dropped sharply. The passage ahead only stretched about eight feet in length, but it sloped downwards at an uncomfortable angle, and she suddenly understood why Oselaw had tackled it feetfirst.
She felt like she was going to fall on her face.
The perfect way to finish this job. She reached her hands out in front of her, groping her way forward. By breaking my own nose.
Oselaw’s chewing sounded even louder in the closed space. Her outstretched fingers met a flat, glassy surface, colder still than the air. Floor tiles.
“Mind your head,” said Oselaw affably.
Karys stood up. Judging by the light filtering through the passage and the way that noises echoed, they were inside a small chamber. She shivered. The cold cut straight through her clothing.
“The boys stumbled upon this place a few years ago.” Oselaw walked forward. “Asked around town and apparently no one’s heard of it, leastwise nobody willing to talk, except some crab-haulers down in Creakers. And they won’t touch the place; they warn us off, don’t even like speaking about it. Superstitious old bastards.”
He snapped his fingers. Blue light bloomed across the walls, spiderwebbing outward along thin channels scored into the stone. In seconds, the whole chamber was illuminated.
“It was perfect for us,” he said. “We couldn’t believe our luck.”
Karys blinked in the sudden icy brightness. The chamber was small, dank, and curiously shaped: the polished stone walls undulated like frozen waves. The light gleamed crisp and cold through the rock.
“That’s hallowfire,” she said slowly.
Oselaw flashed his teeth at her. “Worried your master will be mad?”
She couldn’t help it; she flinched. “We shouldn’t be here. This isn’t the sort of thing you mess around with.”
“The Lady is superstitious, who would have thought?”
“I’m being serious. Your people are all dead; surely that’s a hint?”
He brushed aside her concern with a careless wave of his hand. “We’ve been using the place for years. Besides, you said that most of them died on the beach.”
“I never said that.”
“All right, fine, but you said that they were ‘surprised’ on the beach. Right? So it seems to me that the threat came from outside and our boys ran inside to hide. Whatever killed them just followed.” He pressed on before she could object. “Trust me, there’s nothing left to haunt this place. Let’s just finish up here and head back to town, hey?”
Karys bit her tongue.
“Come on,” he coaxed. “It’ll be fine, you’ll see.”
She wavered, and then relented.
“Hazard pay,” she said. “And Marishka owes me a favour.”
The chamber grew brighter as they walked, the hallowfire reacting to their presence. Goldback crabs scuttled away from their feet, and water dripped and echoed all around. By the looks of it, the passage flooded at high tide; driftwood and sand gathered in mounds around the edges of the room, and the smell of decaying kelp was suffocating. Set into the far wall was an ornate stone archway, where the hallowfire converged like lightning drawn to a rod.
“We’ve only ever used the outer chambers,” said Oselaw. “But it makes you wonder what it used to be like, back in the old days.”
Karys made a noncommittal sound, and sought out the edges of the Veneer again. A panicked rush of whispering washed over her; unnatural colours swarmed her vision. Nothing clear, nothing but a distorted haze of fear, and the droning growing ever louder.
“It gets drier a little way further in,” said Oselaw, oblivious. “And hey, look at this.”
He gestured to the stones of the archway. Karys released the Veneer and leaned closer, then recoiled in disgust. Pitted human teeth studded the granite, flecks of pale yellow in the grey. There must have been hundreds of them, scattered in random, incomprehensible patterns—dice cast over a tekki board.
“Marishka said the Bhatuma’s name was Lilikess,” continued Oselaw. “Said that she ruled Psikamit’s waters back in the day. Isn’t that interesting? Must have liked teeth.”
“Please stop talking.” Karys stepped through the archway.
“Ships that sail this coast without her mark still get wrecked, you know.”
“Give it a rest, Oselaw.”
He sniggered. “I wonder how old Lili would feel about an Ephirite lackey trespassing on her Sanctum. My guess is unhappy. Maybe even mad.”
“In her position, I’d be more annoyed about smugglers using my home as a loading bay.”
“Heh. Maybe.”
The hallowfire branched over the walls ahead, bifurcating and rejoining in streaks of silver-blue. A set of stairs led upwards into the cliffs, each step dressed in a layer of fur-soft saltmoss. Their footfalls echoed.
Am I making a mistake? Karys tucked her hands into her armpits to keep them warm. If Sabaster did uncover that she had been nosing around Bhatuma ruins, he would probably call her compact in a heartbeat. And then, in all likelihood, spend the next three hundred years knitting her skin into a quilt of penitence.
Even so, she could not entirely quell her curiosity at the blazing lines of the hallowfire. Remarkable, for a Sanctum this large to have survived the the most powerful heralds, but far from inconsequential. Foul-tempered, vain, lustful, inclined to fits of jealousy—fairly typical for a Mercian Bhatuma. She had been slaughtered out on the reef by three Ephirite; her faithful and Favoured later called it the Day of Black Waters.
The stairs came to an end at a second archway. Beyond it, a passageway curved away to either side, the walls covered in large silver disks like the scales of a gigantean fish. Hallowfire rippled out across the floor and the ceiling, bright as the midday sun.
“The boys usually leave the goods here,” said Oselaw, with obvious disappointment.
“They must have fled further in.” Karys’ teeth chattered, and she rubbed her arms. “Embrace, why is it so cold?”
“It’s always like this. Want me to warm you up?”
“I’d freeze to death first.”
“Suit yourself.” He gestured to the left. “This way.”
The walls continued their smooth, gleaming curve down the passage. By now, the droning had grown so loud that it drowned out the sound of Oselaw’s chewing. A byproduct of the hallowfire? The Veneer here felt sodden with old power, heavy and difficult to penetrate. Karys didn’t like it. Twenty feet ahead, the lights ended where the passageway opened up to a kind of cavern or hall. She slowed.
“What?”
She pointed to the floor tiles at her feet. “Blood spray.”
Fine black flecks splattered the glassy surface. Oselaw crouched to study them more closely. He spat again, meditatively, then nodded and stood back up.
“That’s a promising sign,” he said. “Good to know the boys did come through here. We must be getting warmer.”
“Oselaw.”
He ignored her, and continued forward into the hall.
“Whatever killed your people, how do we know it’s not still here?”
He snorted, and made a curt gesture over his shoulder. “No body, no payment.”
The droning grew louder, and Karys rubbed her forehead. This is a mistake, her instincts urged. Leave, get out of here.
Ahead, Oselaw came to a sudden stop.
“Oh,” he said, in a markedly different tone. “Well, that’s disturbing.”
She followed him out of the passage. Her impression had been wrong: the space beyond was not a cavern, but a kind of hollowed-out tower. Rings of hallowfire ignited in reaction to their presence, lighting up the floors directly appeared fathomless and infinite. Eight sets of intricately carved stairs folded around the perimeter of the chamber, connecting the higher and lower levels like cells in a beehive.
It looks like a stepwell, Karys thought. But why build one right beside the ocean?
Oselaw stood beside the low central balustrade. At first she thought that he was staring into the pit below, but as Karys drew closer she saw that he was actually looking at something on the floor.
“Ah,” she said.
A human foot lay in a pool of blood. It still wore a fitted sandal and a silver anklet, but the flesh had been cleanly severed just below the calf. The yellow-white gleam of bone stood out from the dark gore.
“I don’t suppose you can use that?” asked Oselaw.
His tone was idle, but Karys noticed that he was sweating in spite of the chill. She shook her head.
“We should leave,” she said.
Oselaw leaned over the edge, peering down at the lower levels of the stepwell. When he failed to reply, Karys took a step forward.
“Listen to me.” Her heart beat fast. “I don’t like saying this, but we’re too far out of our depth here. This doesn’t feel right.”
Nothing from him. He kept gazing into the dark, acting like she wasn’t even talking. Karys waited, her nerves strung tight, expecting him to move or speak, to do something. The silence dragged. Nothing.
“Oselaw? Coren?”
He seemed focussed; he was squinting a little, straining to penetrate the pit’s darkness.
“There’s something down there,” he said.
His voice made Karys’ skin prickle: he sounded absent, distracted. She shivered and backed swiftly toward the passageway. Enough of this. The droning burned her ears—it was like two white-hot needles drilling into her skull.
“I’m going,” she declared. “If you want to stick your neck out, that’s on you. I’ve seen enough to report back to Marishka.”
“No, there’s something… someone’s down there.” He leaned further over the edge. “They’ve got lights.”
Karys was only a few feet from the passage when his words sank into her brain. She felt like ice water had been upturned over her head.
“Maybe it’s one of the boys,” Oselaw muttered. “They could have hid, laid low for a couple—”
“Oselaw, get away from there.”
Startled by the vehemence in her voice, he turned around. At the same time, an amorphous, translucent figure rose from the stepwell behind him. It moved silently through the air, liquid and softly shining and fast as quicksilver, and wrapped itself around Oselaw, enveloping him completely.
What happened next happened quickly, and was almost too horrific for Karys to comprehend. In the blink of an eye, Oselaw’s skin peeled back and inverted. A snatched glimpse of organs, a single heartbeat, and then his flesh erupted with blood. The creature’s body flushed scarlet.
Karys’ thoughts ground to a dead stop. The creature hovered in the air, swaying slightly. Glowing gold pinpricks played across its skin, growing dimmer and brighter like waves lapping the shore.
Are those lights? Are those lights? Are those lights?
Karys drew a shallow breath. Her head spun. What just… what just happened? Oselaw had vanished like conjurer’s trick, one second whole and human, the next a bloom of red. Gone. Dead.
She stood within the mouth of the passage, and the creature seemed yet to notice her. About thirty feet separated them, perhaps less. Probably less. Digging her fingernails into her palms, Karys slid one foot backwards. Her head felt like it was going to explode from the droning in her ears, and this… this thing was the source. Another step. She needed to retreat around the curve of the passage, out of its line of sight. The redness was slowly fading from the creature’s body; it was digesting, she realised. It was dissolving Oselaw down to nothing. Another step. Embrace, all the smugglers, this was why she had not found bodies; there had been nothing left to find. The hallowfire shone down from the ceiling like a floodlight, leaving her devastatingly exposed. Could the creature see? Could it hear her heart pounding out of her chest? Another step. She willed the abomination to remain still, willed it like a prayer or a mantra: don’t move, don’t move, don’t move. Her mouth tasted sour. Another step and the walls shielded her from sight.
Karys’ limbs went weak. She trembled violently, clenching her jaw to stop her teeth from chattering. Fuck, Oselaw! He had been right in front of her, right there, and she had just… fuck. She drew a small, silent breath. He had been right there, and she…
No, she needed to keep it together. Not much further. Not much further, and she would be back at the stairs. Her mind burned with the vision of Oselaw’s body disintegrating, like someone had ripped the stitches from cloth.
The first archway stood ten feet from her now. Karys could not help it—she moved faster, less quietly. They should never have trespassed on the Sanctum; from the start, she had sensed the quiet, watchful malice of this place. But she would claw her way back to daylight, and return home to Psikamit, and never take a job from the Second Mayor again. The stairs were slick and treacherous; she took them two at a time. What am I going to say to Marishka? Oselaw was… I was—
Like a floodgate bursting open, the droning suddenly amplified to a roar in her ears. But this time, it emerged from the darkness ahead of her. Karys stumbled to a halt, catching herself against the wall.
Where the hallowfire ended at the threshold of the tooth-studded archway, yellow lights rippled like stars reflected on the surface of a wave. A second creature.
Karys ran, heedless of the noise. Her boots hit the tiles, each stride loud as a drumbeat in the silence. Into the shining passage again, but this time she took the right fork, nearly losing her footing as she careened sideways over the smooth floor. She did not dare look backwards. Hallowfire blazed to life around her as she sprinted deeper into the Sanctum, and the droning dogged her steps.
The passage ended at a new set of stairs leading to a lower floor. Karys flew down them—too fast, too careless—and tripped. Her knees struck the tiles, and pain shot upwards through her right thigh. A heartbeat later, she was back on her feet. The walls here were different, darker, carved with strange spiralling designs, and the hallowfire had dimmed. At her back, the droning grew louder and louder; she was losing ground and all she could see was Oselaw’s expression of surprise before his face collapsed, the twisting of skin and sinew and muscle, the way he turned inside out.
She reached another landing, and ran straight into something hard. The impact knocked the air out of her lungs. She staggered, gasping, and realized there was a person in front of her, an unfamiliar man, and then he grabbed her arm and yanked her sideways through a new archway.
Excerpted from Asunder, copyright © 2024 by Kerstin Hall.
