Wintercraft: Blackwatch

by Jenna Burtenshaw

  ‘It’s a spirit wheel,’ said Kate.

  Only the right hand side of the wheel had been cleared of its covering bricks. Kate could see half of the stone tiles that ran round the central palm-stone, but the main carving in the middle had been scraped away.

  ‘I’ve never seen one of these before,’ said Edgar, reaching out to one of the exposed tiles. ‘What is that? A wolf?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Kate.

  Edgar touched the tile and the wall quivered, making him snatch his hand back. ‘It still works,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t they uncover it the whole way?’

  ‘And why did someone wall it up in the first place?’ said Kate.

  There was something not right about that room. Edgar shivered, and Kate felt it too.

  ‘Maybe we should ask it something,’ he said. ‘We could ask it to tell us the quickest way out. Wasn’t that what these things were made for? To give directions?’

  ‘Not all spirit wheels can be trusted,’ said Kate. ‘This one has to have been bricked up for a reason.’

  ‘It’s got to be worth a try,’ said Edgar. ‘I’ve got enough food and water in my pack to last us a couple of days, but after that we’ll need more. If this thing can help us reach the surface, I say we give it a go.’

  Edgar pressed his palm against the centre of the circle. The hidden tiles rattled gently behind the wall, but other than that nothing happened. There was no movement, no illuminated symbols, or at least nothing either of them could see. ‘It’s broken,’ he said. Then a faint glow like gentle firelight spread along his outstretched arm and one of the tiles shone with a splutter of inner light before fading again. ‘Did you see it?’ he asked. ‘Which symbol was that?’

  ‘It was the closed eye,’ said Kate. ‘That means no. The open eye means yes.’

  ‘So that means it heard me! It’s saying it’s not broken, right?’

  ‘I still don’t think this is a good idea.’

  ‘I suppose we have to stick to yes and no,’ said Edgar. ‘Unless you know how to read the rest of these things.’ He kept his hand on the wheel and concentrated on his question, speaking the words slowly and clearly out loud. ‘Are we heading the right way to reach the surface?’ He waited a few seconds and looked at Kate expectantly. ‘Anything?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  The wall shuddered. Edgar snatched his hand away and the circle of tiles began grating slowly round in a clockwise direction. A handful of them sank back and rotated as they passed the cleared space in the wall, but they kept moving steadily, refusing to settle.

  ‘It’s not meant to work without someone’s hand on it,’ said Kate. ‘Why is it moving?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Edgar. ‘What do we do now?’

  Old mortar sprinkled down from the spaces between the bricks as they rattled against the force of the vibration behind them. Kate and Edgar stepped back to a safe distance, knocking against one of the tables and sending one of the covered shapes rolling out from beneath the cloth and cracking on to the hard floor. It was a soft crack, as if whatever it was had offered little resistance, smashing instantly. Kate looked down. Beside her feet was an upturned skull, its empty eye sockets staring up at her.

  Edgar raised his lantern as the spirit wheel kept turning, and the light cast soft shadows from all of the cloth-covered shapes in the room. ‘They’re all skulls,’ he whispered. ‘Someone is collecting skulls down here!’

  Then the wheel stopped, Kate and Edgar looked back at the wall, and a dull light glowed behind the covering of bricks. Edgar walked up to it and pressed his cheek up against the tiles, trying to see where the light was coming from.

  ‘How do I read it?’ he asked.

  ‘The important symbols glow,’ said Kate. ‘What can you see?’

  ‘There’s only one,’ said Edgar. ‘It looks like . . . a snowflake, I think.’

  That got Kate’s attention. ‘Ask it something else.’

  ‘All right.’ Edgar pressed his palm against the wheel again and spoke out loud. ‘Where can we go where no one will find us? Where will we be safe?’

  The stones tiles trembled a little and then the wheel ground into action. The tiles turned heavily round their clockwise path, and the snowflake carving settled at the three o’clock position where Kate could see it clearly. All other movement stopped at once, and the fiery glow brought the symbol to life even more brightly than before.

  ‘Still the snowflake,’ said Edgar. ‘This is a waste of time.’

  ‘It’s my name,’ said Kate. ‘It means Winters.’

  ‘Does that mean it wants to speak to you?’

  The open eye tile flickered weakly.

  ‘Ask it something,’ said Edgar.

  ‘No. I’m not touching it.’ Kate had used spirit wheels before, but this one was different. Just by being near it she could tell that it was older. Darker. A feeling of sadness spread from it and filled the room. She could feel it clinging to her soul. The whispers in the walls returned, and Kate could hear the spirit in the wheel speaking to her in a voice that was distant and strange, but the words made no sense to her.

  ‘All right then,’ said Edgar, who could hear nothing. ‘Let’s leave this creepy room of death behind. We’ll find our way up on our own.’

  The whispers in the room grew gradually louder. Kate’s eyes were drawn back to the wheel, and to the illuminated snowflake that burned brighter as she concentrated upon it. Then the tiles began to spin.

  ‘Is that meant to happen?’ asked Edgar. ‘Why is it moving like that when no one’s near it?’

  The tiles quickly gathered speed, then one . . . two . . . three of them settled together where the snowflake had just been. A bird, a dagger, and a pointed mask. Each symbol burned fiercely in the dark, but for Kate, looking at that spirit wheel was like staring into a void. The symbols appeared to float upon a black mist. Her mind emptied of every thought and darkness spread round the edges of her vision, leaving nothing but the image of the wheel. Her body slipped into a dead calm as a halfheard voice whispered through her mind. The wheel wanted her to listen. It wanted her to touch it. To connect with it.

  Bird. Dagger. Mask.

  She stepped forward, barely aware of what she was doing, and pressed her hand into the centre.

  The moment her palm made contact with the stone the three symbols’ images focused powerfully in her thoughts, overlapping with a burst of memories that flooded past her eyes faster than she could acknowledge them. She tried to focus. She tried to understand what the wheel was trying to say. The less she resisted it the clearer the images became.

  The symbol of the bird flickered over memories Kate had of Silas and his crow, and she knew at once that he was what it was meant to represent.

  ‘The bird is Silas,’ she said out loud.

  ‘Silas? What’s he got to do with anything?’ asked Edgar, as Kate gripped his hand tight, using it to anchor herself to the living world.

  The dagger dripped blood, and Kate saw it gripped in the hand of a dangerous man dressed in red with a long scar trailing across his jaw. She did not recognise his face, but she could sense that he had taken many lives before, and there was a small body, bloodied and still, curled up at his feet. She tried to see more, but the details blurred if she concentrated too hard, and she did not need to see whose body it was to get the wheel’s message.

  ‘The dagger means danger,’ she said.

  ‘Silas is in danger? Why is it telling us that?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s Silas. I think it means us.’

  ‘No surprise there then,’ said Edgar. ‘What about the last one?’

  Only the mask was left, but the images that came when Kate focused upon it did not make any sense. She could see a town full of white buildings, a ship sitting in a covered dock and a line of black cliffs with waves crashing against the rocks. Beyond them was a wide green forest and two spires of a much older, darker building rising in the distance. It looked like two tall towers that had been
built side by side and it was surrounded by a wide patch of stony ground patched with pockets of green earth.

  The wheel took her closer to the spires; right up to a boarded window that had once been painted black. One of the wooden panels had fallen away and she could see into a room that looked warm and inviting. A small fire was burning in the hearth, the floor was covered in deep wool rugs and there were dozens of beautiful mirrors and old paintings leaning up against the walls. Kate looked closer at those walls and saw words carved into the bare stone. Names and dates had been etched into the spaces where the paintings had once hung.

  Her senses sharpened. She could feel someone close by, watching her. She turned away from the window and found herself face to face with an older woman – maybe sixty years old – with black hair that was clipped smartly short and grey eyes that had seen more years and held more memories than Kate could imagine.

  A hand squeezed Kate’s shoulder and she jumped, pulling her hand away from the wheel and breaking out of the vision to find Edgar standing where the woman had been.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

  Kate nodded and Edgar blew out his lantern. ‘The corridor,’ Edgar said quietly. ‘Someone’s out there. They’ve found us.’

  8

  The Secret in the Skull

  Kate could not see anything in the darkness. All the symbols on the spirit wheel had stopped glowing and it had returned to its dead state. She pulled Edgar down behind one of the table as voices moved towards the door.

  ‘There is a spirit wheel in there,’ said one, as the shadows of two men filled the doorway. ‘If Kate went near it, it could be dangerous.’

  ‘I don’t care! She is out here somewhere, and I can’t go back without her. If there’s even a chance she’s in there, we have to look.’

  ‘That’s Baltin and Artemis,’ Edgar whispered close to Kate’s ear.

  ‘This room is a restricted space,’ said Baltin. ‘I can go in, but you have to stay outside. You must stay back.’

  Kate heard a whispered argument between the two men and then a lantern swung into the room. Its sudden light was blinding and Baltin squinted behind it, edging his way in.

  ‘Kate? Edgar?’

  The spirit wheel thrummed with energy as Baltin drew closer. Kate could feel it reacting to his presence, but Edgar felt nothing.

  ‘Stay there, Artemis,’ said Baltin. ‘It is not safe in here. The floor is unstable. You have to know where to put your feet.’

  Kate and Edgar held their breaths in the dark. Baltin was lying. The room was as safe as any other in the City Below. They ducked beneath one of the covered tables before Baltin’s lantern light swept too close, and he moved down the rows oblivious of the two pairs of eyes watching his boots walk by.

  Baltin stopped a few steps from the spirit wheel and shone his light on to the ground. He had found the fallen skull. Kate looked between two of the tables and saw him slide his fingers into the eye sockets and lift the skull unceremoniously to his face for a closer look. Fragments of bone splinted to the floor from the damage caused by the fall and he kicked them aside as if they were worth less than dust. ‘I told them to clear this place up,’ he muttered quietly. ‘Not that this one will be any good to us now.’ He dropped the skull back on to its table and left it rocking awkwardly on its side. ‘Waste of time.’ He moved on and ran his hand round the exposed part of the halfexcavated spirit wheel.

  ‘Anything?’ Artemis’s voice carried in from the corridor.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Baltin, holding his light up to the symbols. ‘No one has been in here.’

  Fear climbed into Kate’s throat. Baltin had been in that room before. He had noticed something that was out of place. The symbols were in a different position and from the look on his face he was quickly realising why.

  ‘She made it work,’ he whispered.

  He turned quickly, scowling beneath deep eyebrows as he searched the room for signs of life, holding the lamp out in front of him. Kate and Edgar stayed still as he lifted the corners of the cloths one by one. Any sound was likely to give them away.

  ‘How did you make it work?’ he whispered. ‘What did you do?’ He kept moving, his light spreading dangerously close. They had to move.

  Kate had only the fleeting light of Baltin’s lantern to see by, but it was enough to notice a few seconds’ gap between his lifting one cloth and reaching the next – not enough time for them to slither between tables, but there was another way. Kate pulled Edgar close to her and whispered in his ear. ‘Follow.’

  Baltin thrust his light beneath the next table, and before he could drop the cover and step towards theirs Kate crawled as fast as she could out of the back of her tablecloth with Edgar rolling out behind her. Baltin’s lantern shone into the space they had left and the two of them stayed completely still until the light pulled away and he moved on to the next.

  They were out in the open, exposed in the wide space between the table and a stone wall. Kate did not want to stay there, and as soon as Baltin was far enough away she tugged Edgar’s arm and began crawling back towards the spirit wheel. Baltin had his back to them and Artemis was still blocking the doorway they had entered. Their only choice was the broken door.

  ‘Baltin? What are you doing in there?’ said Artemis.

  ‘Quiet!’ Baltin snapped back.

  ‘There are other tunnels to search. We should keep moving.’

  Artemis was becoming restless and he continued to question Baltin, eager to move on with the search. Kate used the distraction to get to her feet. She could move more quickly and quietly that way. The spirit wheel was right ahead. The symbols were so dark and lifeless it was easy to think she had imagined them glowing with light. She did not realise how close she was to the table beside her until her hand brushed the cloth and a rush of energy rippled against her skin.

  She could feel the shape of the skull under her fingertips, but it was too late to pull her hand away. Sudden images flooded her thoughts, confused and garbled, as if the spirit the skull belonged to was trying to share everything it remembered with her at once. Baltin was just on the other side of the cavern, but frost glittered along Kate’s fingers and swept past her wrist. The spirit in the skull was dragging her into the veil, and she had no choice but to let it happen. The images kept coming, faster than thoughts, as the frost reached her eyelashes and she was drawn completely in.

  ‘The wheels are all we have left. This is the right decision. We have already waited too long.’

  Kate was standing in the same oval cavern, only now it was washed with candlelight. Dozens of oozing candles burned in the alcoves cut around the room and the tables were gone, replaced by groups of wooden chairs arranged in four separate circles, their legs roped together, each circle leaving a single space leading into the centre of the room where an ornate spiral had been carved into the floor.

  Most of the chairs were empty, except for the three that sat closest to the wall where the spirit wheel should have been. But instead of a circle of ancient carved stone, there was a deep hollow cut into the wall. Three men were hunched over on the chairs, drawing sharpening stones along bright silver blades and talking quietly, not wanting to be overheard. They all wore simple grey robes, each with a belt that had a book hanging from it; tiny books the width of fingers, each one perfectly bound in silver and black.

  Kate looked down at the hand that had touched the skull and saw a silver blade grasped between her fingers instead. But they were not her fingers. She was looking down at a woman’s hand some years older than her own, a hand that was well used to digging in the earth, with a bracelet of herbs knotted around the wrist: a talisman Kate recognised as one worn by those often dealing with the dead. The sight of the strange hand shocked Kate. This had happened to her before, but that did not make it any less terrifying. She was inside someone else’s memory, witnessing an event as it had once been seen through that person’s eyes; the eyes of the woman who had once owned the skull.

/>   Kate felt the woman’s heartbeat rise as she walked towards the three men and one of them looked up.

  ‘Is he prepared?’ he asked.

  ‘There was some . . . resistance,’ said the woman, her words vibrating in Kate’s throat as if she were speaking them herself. ‘He has been restrained.’

  ‘Good. No one wishes to relive last night’s events. It was wise to take action.’

  ‘Are you sure he is ready?’ asked the woman.

  ‘We need the wheels,’ said the tallest man. ‘We have already waited too long. The city will fall in the end, but after what we have done . . . it is our duty to put it right.’

  The woman bowed her head curtly, then turned to lead the three men out of the cavern. As they made their way out into the corridor a cry of anguish echoed through the tunnels nearby.