The Merchant of Dreams by Anne Lyle - Sample Chapters

head. “I do not know English word. Perhaps you have none.”

“English word for what?”

“Creatures that haunt dreamlands, lurking in shadows.”

“I know the things you mean.” He shuddered. He well remembered the creatures he had seen – or rather not seen. They lurked on the edge of vision, filling their victims’ hearts with the terrible certainty that to look upon them was to go mad. “I don’t think we do have a word for them.”

“Hrrith, they are called in Vinlandic. It holds meaning of hunting, and hunger, and emptiness beyond death.”

“That’s a lot to put into one small word,” Mal said. “Hunting and hunger, eh? Perhaps we should call them ‘devourers’.”

It felt good to pin them down with a name. Naming a thing gave one power over it in the old stories his nurse had told him.

Kiiren nodded his approval. “You remember Erishen’s murder, how his soul – your soul – fled into the darkness, seeking haven from hrrith.”

“They would have destroyed Erishen. Devoured his soul.”

He wished they had, then none of this would have happened. Erishen’s soul would not have tried to take refuge in unborn twins, and he and Sandy would both have been whole and sane and spared this damnation.

“Erishen would have truly died that night,” Kiiren said, echoing Mal’s thoughts. “If his murderer