The Witch's Eye Read online

  Her mind fell away. She dreamed.

  She rides an iron dreadnaught across a vicious sea.

  Thick clouds fleck the red sky. Cold waves crash against the metal hull. Jags of coral litter the waters.

  The dreadnaught sails towards an island of granite and bone. Gnarled rocks form a perimeter around the pale beach. The shoreline is wreathed in smoke and flame. Silhouettes of winged creatures and airships circle overhead.

  She stands alone on the deck. Bodies float by in the water. The lonely mast creaks in the cold sea wind.

  She smells burning ice. Soft collisions echo from the sky, an ominous vibration. Everything pauses like a held breath. Electricity dances across her skin. The air tenses and swells.

  A blast of darkness launches up to the heavens. Something massive cracks apart in the distance.

  It is the sound of the world breaking.

  “The Witch’s Eye,” she said. She wasn’t sure why. She didn’t even know where she was.

  “What about it?” Lynch asked. He didn’t seem pleased.

  “I…” She looked around. She was dressed in a robe. Her false arm had been reattached. She was no longer in the bath. Her skin was clean and pale, yet somehow she felt grimy, like she’d slept in soot.

  The cold chamber was wreathed in smoke. Bone altars and runic circles covered the floor. Everything was cast from dark stone. Dim sunlight barely pierced the high windows, and black curtains dangled over the alcoves. Wherever they were, it smelled of the dead.

  “What?” Lynch asked. He wore an elaborate black and gold cloak decorated with red slashes.

  “I dreamed about it,” she said.

  “Tell me.”

  “An island,” she said. “Covered with ice and graves.”

  “What else?”

  “A battle had taken place,” she said. The details were already slipping. “I was afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?” His tone shifted from anxious to understanding. “Please. Try to remember.”

  She closed her eyes. Everything fell away, one detail at a time, like dominos lost in a fog.

  “An iron ship. Shadows...” She focused, but the rest of the dream wouldn’t come. She felt like she was sliding out to sea, grasping at a crumbling shoreline. “There isn’t any more.”

  She opened her eyes. Lynch watched her quietly.

  “You tried,” he said.

  She shuddered from the cold, and realized she was naked beneath the silk robe. Goosebumps ran up and down her skin. She knew she could release her spirit to bring warmth to her body, but she felt it would be unwise to do so. He moved against the bonds of his metal prison, probed and prodded, testing his boundaries. He wanted out, and there would be trouble if she granted him his wish, at least without exercising the proper control, and she didn’t feel strong enough for that. Not yet.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “The Temple of the Lost,” Lynch said. “You’ve been here before.”

  “I have?”

  “Yes,” he smiled. “You never remember.”

  “What are we doing here?”

  “Preparing you.”

  “For what?”

  “For your next task, my child. Your most grueling test yet.”

  “What task?” she asked.

  He moved towards the altar, an edifice carved from such pure black rock it could have been a piece of discarded night. Dragon’s bare feet shivered at the touch of the cold smoke that seeped from the stone.

  “Her Lady Riven – our gracious host, the Vizier of Lorn and emissary to the Ebon Cities – has uncovered the location of an entire nest of Witchborn. You’re being sent to deal with it.”

  Lynch ran his hand across the top of the altar, causing it to split at the central seam and come apart into four distinct sections, each of which receded into the floor with the sound of grinding rock. Icy mist fountained up around their feet and made her shiver. Arctic light spilled from the newly formed hole.

  Her spirit prisoner roiled in his cage. He screamed at her to back away, to separate herself from what waited in that pit, but she ignored him. She had no choice.

  “A nest?” she asked as the altar finished its descent. A granite tip pushed up noisily from the depths of the smoke.

  “Yes,” Lynch answered. His eyes glittered blue and black as a narrow plinth holding a dark blade emerged from the curling fog. “Some place where the disease has taken hold. There are many Witchborn there, and you will destroy them. More importantly, you will investigate the nest. Lady Riven believes there may be some clue there, some information that could help us locate the Witch’s Eye.”

  The Witch’s Eye. Dragon had been told about it before.

  “This is the most important mission the Lady Riven has ever sent you on,” Lynch explained. “You’ve proved to be adept at slaying Witchborn, but killing them one at a time will never resolve the greater threat they pose. This will. This is why the Spider brought you to us.”

  The Spider. She had only vague recollection of the beast, the trans-dimensional marauder that had snatched her away from a life she no longer remembered.

  You’re special. She remembered the thought tearing through her mind, but it hadn’t been her thought. It had been planted there. Everything she’d once been had been stripped away.

  What makes me special? she’d asked.

  I do.

  “Dragon,” Lynch said. “It’s yours. Take it.”

  He pointed at the jet black sword, a large Necroblade shaped like a falchion. Its black grip was indistinguishable from the rest of the weapon. She thought she saw movement within the layers of hammered steel, intangible fluctuations, oozing patches of molten darkness. A film of shadow covered the blade, and when Dragon reached for it her arcane arm went rigid and her spirit recoiled, but she took command and forced him forward.

  The shock of cold as she wrapped her metal fingers around the hilt almost made her cry out. The blade slid from the stone with a sharp ring. Sparks rained down into the mist. She stepped back as the altar resealed itself.

  The weapon was called Claw. She wasn’t sure how she knew that, but she did. Black voices crashed into her mind like violent waters. Her spirit faded, trapped like a drowning man in the tide.

  The souls in the blade had been stolen away, sundered from their mages. She knew from touching the weapon that it had been crafted by the cruel giants called the Cruj deep in their mountain forges, places buried in shadows and madness.

  Something about the Cruj was familiar. Something else they’d built. Some place.

  Lynch led her away. His hands moved over her body, but she ignored him. He didn’t dare try and take her, not with how important she was to the vampires. He’d done this before, this molestation, and somewhere in the back of her mind she stored the information away so she wouldn’t forget. One day he’d pay for that, just as he’d pay for having her brought to Lorn.

  But only after she learned more about the Spider. About who she really was.

  She disrobed, not caring that Lynch saw her, and dressed there in the cold black church. The apartment bore the illusion of creature comforts, but she felt the bitter fane was more fitting for someone whose existence had become a flash of violent scenes, one battle after the next.

  She existed solely to kill the Witchborn. They were creatures soiled with magic. Information about her prey poured through her mind, granted by her connection to the vampire collective consciousness in the form of razored whispers.

  Vampires weren’t capable of yielding magic the way humans could, in spite of numerous efforts made by Ebon Cities theurges, and while they could use captured souls with the aid of their Bonespires, harnessing those energies was wildly unpredictable and dangerous, and the end result still wasn’t true magic. The Ebon Cities could never replicate the power and precision available to human mages, but that hadn’t stopped them from trying, and the result of their greatest failure was the Witch’s Eye. The Eye, in turn, had created the Witchborn.
r />   The Witch’s Eye infused vampires with arcane power. It granted magic to the undead, but the end result was nothing like a witch or a warlock. The Witchborn were feral and mindless. The eldritch energies boiled within their minds and made them lose all semblance of self-control. Violent creatures to begin with, those vampires subjected to what came to be known as the Witchborn Virus turned bestial and ravenous. They craved the flesh of other vampires.

  To date, the Witchborn had all been encountered in just a few isolated areas. Most of them had appeared outside of Lorn.

  Dragon readied herself. One of the cold stone rooms had been fully stocked with armor and armaments. Her bare feet touched frigid cobblestones as she dressed, which was still an awkward process with the metal arm, but she managed.

  She sees the manor. Leaves blow across the open courtyard. Towers of steel and stone loom overhead. She hears water nearby, a fast-flowing river.

  The large building behind her is inviting and warm. Friends she used to know wait for her just beyond the doorway. She wants to go to them, but something stops her.

  She can’t move until she remembers, and she can’t remember until she moves.

  Clouds drive across the city. She hears a bustle of activity: foot traffic and dirigibles, wagons and industry. She smells fried foods and greasy smoke. The crackle of thaumaturgy hangs in the air, and the sun shines silver through the morning mist.

  She knows this place…wants this place. She longs to be a part of it again. The people here are important to her, and she wants to go to them.

  Her sadness weighs her down. Tears flow from her eyes.

  I want to come back. I want to remember.

  Time passed. She wasn’t sure how long she’d spent gripped in the memory of her former life.

  She narrowed her mind and focused.

  Armor straps tightened and blades slid into sheaths. Light from a sea of flickering candles illuminated the moldered stone walls of the windowless chamber. The air was muted with cold and stillness.

  The new blade, Claw, was lightweight and well-balanced. When she gripped the weapon in her steel hand she felt a moment of scalding cold in a limb where she normally felt nothing. It wasn’t real pain, just the memory of something that wasn’t really there.

  Like the manor.

  The sword was flat black and offered no reflection. Its weight adjusted to her, became an extension of her false arm. Her spirit and the souls trapped in the blade pushed against one another like opposing magnetic forces. Power slithered up the sword like a black worm.

  She sheathed the weapon. She knew it couldn’t do well for her to stare at it for too long.

  Dragon slung Claw’s sheath across her back. The other Necroblades – the katars – were strapped lower down so she could draw them from either side at waist level. She’d ask Lynch for a firearm or two, and she knew she’d get them, because he wanted her to succeed.

  She passed an iron-bound mirror hanging on the wall over the fireplace. The face staring back at her was not her own. A heavy scar ran down one cheek. Her eyes were cold and hollow. Her night-black hair was short and messy. She recalled it being blonde, and before that…

  Red. You have red hair.

  Her armor jacket was black and grey, cut high at the shoulders and tight around the waist to accommodate the double katar sheaths. She wore cargo pants, combat boots and thin leather gauntlets.

  Who are you?

  The image in the mirror pulsed and throbbed, like she stared into a pool of water. A chill ran over her skin. For just a moment she glimpsed a figure in the mirror behind her, a shadow. He moved quietly through the rigid darkness.

  I know you.

  Once, she’d searched

  We search.

  for him, had given up almost everything to save him. Now he searched for her.

  We search.

  We can be more.

  The shadow faded. She stood still for a long time before she was finally able to pull herself away.

  Lynch informed her she’d be traveling via Razorwing with a pair of revenants named Renaad and Cristena. She wondered why their names sounded so familiar.

  She knew about revenants. Animated undead were usually mindless and ravenous, but revenants were zombies possessed of vampire’s intelligence. They were cunning and swift, strong and determined.

  Both Renaad and Cristena were scarred and broken beings with pale skin and solid black eyes. Renaad’s long hair drifted down past his armored shoulders. His skull had been ruined by a head trauma, so what was left of his rotted face was concealed beneath a steel plate. Jagged scars covered the rest of his magically preserved flesh, and he wore steel and leather armor set with sharp epaulets, iron gauntlets and bladed boots. Cristena had short dark hair, and her dead flesh was pale and bore an almost icy sheen. Like her once husband, she was tall and thin. She wore purple and black leather armor beneath her thick black cloak. She’d once been a witch, but now her weapons were short-spears, chained knives and serrated ebon swords.

  The revenants’ cold presence filled Dragon’s captive spirit with apprehension and dread. His anxiety clawed at her mind, but she pushed him back into the cold and lightless depths of his bloodsteel prison.

  The plains were dry and cold as they stepped out of Lorn and approached the Razorwing. Lynch and a host of Lorn’s ministers and dignitaries waited for them out in open ground. They wore pale robes and heavy iron chains that denoted their servitude to the Ebon Cities.

  Pale-skinned Raza mercenaries stood at attention nearby, as did the vampire shock troops of Lady Riven’s honor guard. The vampire countess herself was nowhere to be seen, as she rarely emerged from her steel-capped tower at the edge of the city.

  The Razorwing’s oily black flesh creaked like leather as Dragon approached. Its white eyes narrowed, squeezed in by scaly lids.

  It was just past dawn. Stars burned high in the sky, and the fading face of the moon vanished behind iron clouds and drifts of night smoke.

  This is wrong, she told herself. This isn’t who you are, and this isn’t where you’re supposed to be.

  In spite of her thoughts and her spirit’s protests, Dragon stepped onto the Razorwing. Within minutes the beast rose into the cold morning sky with its trio of riders secured to the platform on its back.

  They soared past hills covered with scorched trees and shattered rock. A black river wound its way south towards the coast, but the Razorwing flew east, towards the ruins of Wolftown.

  NINE

  STORM

  “Let’s go. Now.”

  The wagon had just stopped. Jaro, the sniper, yanked the cage door open, and Saul aimed his shotgun inside. The smile on his face made it clear he wanted someone to try and escape.

  Cross sat up in a daze. He’d been hypnotized by the rhythm of the wagon’s motion and the monotony of the landscape. Bitter clouds stained the sky, and blue-black ice coated the bases of nearby pines. The sun shone silver off the walls of a tiered and fractured ravine. Cross could see straight down into the trench as they pulled him from the wagon. The shallow chasm was maybe seven or eight feet deep, and its rock and bone floor was littered with dark holes.

  Flint watched with fear in his eyes. Cross recognized the former Marine as a good man, even if they’d only known each other for a few days. All Flint cared about was keeping Shiv safe. Cross nodded to him, and faked a smile. He knew Flint could tell it was false, but the older man nodded back just the same.

  Jaro handed Cross off to Saul and closed the cage door. The Vuul wasn’t gentle: his arms were as thick as tree trunks, and he held the back of Cross’s neck with an iron grip. What was left of Cross’s rotted boots offered little protection against the sharp stones underfoot, and he winced in pain with every step as Saul pushed him to the edge of the trench.

  Most of Tain’s men stayed on horseback and maintained a perimeter around the wagon, but Tain and Kala waited down in the ravine. Both of them were dressed in pale animal hides. Cross’s sword was on the ground
at their feet.

  “Watch your step,” Saul said, and he shoved Cross down the slope.

  Cross tumbled to the bottom, and rocks cut into his knees and forearms. His landing kicked up a cloud of grey dust.

  Tain and Kala stood over him.

  “Time for you to show me how to use your blade,” Tain said quietly. Kala smiled.

  “I’m not a fencing instructor,” Cross coughed. He was out of breath, and so weak he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to stand, but when he felt Kala’s blade at the base of his spine he leapt to his feet.

  “Show me,” Tain said quietly. “Now. Or I’ll kill your friends in the wagon.”

  Cross nodded. The smell of hex was thick in his nostrils as Tain’s spirit wove around him.

  “I need…I need the sword,” Cross coughed.

  “Like hell you do,” Kala said.

  “Look…” Cross said after he coughed again. “My spirit is trapped in there. The only way I can channel her is to actually touch the blade.”

  Tain watched him impassively. The man’s face was a mask.

  Remind me to never play poker with this guy.

  “You have to touch the blade?” Tain asked calmly.

  “Yes,” Cross said, not caring how exasperated he sounded. “If I could use the magic from a distance, don’t you think I would have done it by now?”

  “And I presume no one can use it but you,” Tain said. Cross didn’t answer, but Tain nodded.

  The air went quiet. Cross smelled a blast of rot and filth, and while such an odor wasn’t uncommon in the Bone March, something about it caught him off guard. The strange thing was neither Tain nor Kala seemed to notice the stench, but the horses did – Cross heard them stamp and whinny with fear.

  A presence pushed against him. For a moment he thought Tain had set his spirit on Cross to torture him again, but the feel of the cold power as it scraped against his flesh was different than before. A sudden rush of energy filled his body.

  Neither Tain nor Kala were looking at the blade. Tain stared at Cross, while Kala’s attention had shifted topside, so neither of them saw the sword take on an icy-blue sheen. Thin lines of rust smoke leaked from the double-edged surface.