vpstandings

Dear Sandy,

By the Unicorn, Sandy, why haven't you replied to my letters? Have none of them got through to you? I'm trying a third courier and bribing two local officials with my last pennies to expedite things but if this doesn't get through I don't know what I'll do.

Unless you've received none of my previous letters, you'll know I'm with Canon Zurich investigating a series of gruesome incidents on the Chalcedony marches. When we arrived at Nigh Jaezelberg a week ago, we saw several incidents of cattle mutilation; good healthy cattle torn to pieces and others with strange suppurating sores.

The only clue were some odd-looking indentations, two or three feet across, featuring radial striations similar to some of the mechanical combat walkers used in the further technocracies, only I didn't think that sort of stuff worked here and everyone local thinks it's some sort of furtive beast from over the border. Since then I've seen those markings twice more, once at the scene of a wrecked barn, and then again this morning at some flattened farm buildings.

I tell you this morning gave me a terrible turn; it's one thing to see dumb animals torn apart, quite another to see the rent bodies of people you'd only been talking to a few days ago, their corpses barely recognisable from the appalling atrocities heaped on them and the unwholesome sores festering on faces, hands – wherever the flesh was exposed.

I'm really frightened, now, and I badly need to return to Amber and forget all this but Canon Zurich refuses to release me. He says he doesn't want Amber to think Jasper cannot manage its own affairs, but I suspect he thinks King Random will come down on Chalcedony's side in any dispute and I'm sure he thinks solving the problem will be the making of his career.

Initially, I think he wanted to get irrefutable proof of Chalcedony's involvement or even kill the thing himself but now I'm not sure he's thinking at all; his behaviour has become very erratic in the last few days, especially in private, though for that matter I'm not at all sure my own is as steady as it was last week.

So he won't let me go: it's my exams soon and it'll be a disaster if I'm not there to take them but that's not at all important compared to just getting out of here. Canon Zurich is now sure whatever it is comes from Chalcedony and intends to lead a hunting party at the next incident, even across the border, if necessary – and just a week ago he was talking of 'diplomatic incidents' as things to be avoided at all costs.

Chalcedony scares me, Sandy; scares me badly: with strange, henge-crowned hills emanating evil and its degenerate eldritch people – you know I've always been a little envious of Skitty's ability to make your miniature talking portrait work but right now I'd give my right eye to do the same, just to talk to you. I fear only someone like you can get me out of here, now.

Yours in the Faith, Saint

PS: We've just heard of another incident, the Jaeger farmstead to the northeast. Canon Zurich just told me we're going hunting in the morning and I really can't say I like the gleam in his eye. I'd call it unsettling but I'm unsettled enough already.

If you get this, Sandy, please respond – I'm desperate!