Wintercraft: Blackwatch

by Jenna Burtenshaw

  Silas could feel the energy of the circle weakening him as he fought, draining him slowly, sapping his strength as the battle waged on. The blood-filled vials shone upon their cords all around him as Bandermain launched another attack, wheezing and wavering as blood returned to his lips. Silas knew then that he was fighting the wrong enemy. Those vials were used in blood work. He had seen Da’ru attempt similar experiments during her work for the High Council, using the energy in a person’s blood to weaken their body, trap their spirit within the veil or bind them to a certain place. Bandermain and Silas were as helpless as each other under Dalliah’s influence. She had sprung her trap and she was using them both.

  Bandermain roared with rage as his sword swung back for a mighty strike. Silas anticipated it, but instead of blocking the blade he dodged to one side, landing a hard kick to the back of Bandermain’s injured leg. The momentum of his swing threw Bandermain off balance as his knee buckled, the sword crashed from his hands and he fell to the floor. Silas stood over him, blade pointed down at his throat, and Bandermain looked up.

  ‘You won’t do it,’ he said, whistling in each difficult breath. ‘You won’t risk angering her. You need Dalliah as much as I do.’

  ‘You are a leech,’ said Silas. ‘You feed from her skill with the veil, while she feeds from your connection to it. Without her, you will die. She has given me nothing.’

  ‘You came here for answers, exactly as she said you would,’ said Bandermain. ‘You will not throw the opportunity away.’

  ‘You are beaten,’ said Silas, pressing the blade closer to Bandermain’s skin. ‘Your life is mine to claim.’

  ‘No,’ said Dalliah. ‘It is mine.’ The door to the courtyard had opened and she was already walking inside. ‘You are stronger than I anticipated, Silas,’ she said. ‘The veil should still have you, but it will claim you again soon enough.’

  Silas could already feel his blood thinning and his muscles beginning to ache. He kicked Bandermain’s sword away and swung his own weapon up through the air, slicing through the cords holding the vials closest to him and smashing them to the floor. Blood crept out of the shattered glass and spread eerily towards the centre of the room.

  ‘Smash them. Crush them. It makes no difference,’ said Dalliah. ‘I can still use them.’

  Silas sliced through more of the strings, raining glass and blood around the room as long as his strength remained.

  ‘You want to feel you are doing something. I understand that,’ said Dalliah. ‘You do not want to admit that you are no longer in control. But I am not your enemy, Silas. This blood the Blackwatch took from you is not truly yours. It is as good as Winters blood now. Kate’s essence lives within every drop. You did well to find her, but you cannot protect her from me. She is as much a slave to the forces of Wintercraft as you are. The veil has shown me her future. You cannot stop fate.’

  ‘You will not subdue her with tricks like this,’ said Silas, snatching a vial in his hand and throwing it to the floor. ‘She will resist it.’

  ‘She has not resisted me so far,’ said Dalliah. ‘The right thought, the right memory presented to her at exactly the right time . . . she is already mine. You gave her to me, Silas. The blood link between you and Kate allowed me to influence her mind. She had no defence against me. Even if she had tried to resist, it would never have been enough. She is not like the rest of her family. She trusts too easily, and her greatest mistake was in ever trusting you.’

  Silas took a step back as the blood pooled around his feet, spreading into shallow grooves on the floor and tracing the faint outline of a skull cut into the stone. It was so faint that he had not even noticed the carving until the blood filled its curves like poured ink. He looked closer at the floor around it and saw the faint ghosts of more carvings: a skull, a bird, a wolf and a flame, and beneath his feet was a snowflake, the ancient mark of the Winters family. They were exactly the same symbols as those found on spirit wheels within Fume, and the more he looked, the more he found, spread in a spiral around the room.

  ‘Kate has protected Wintercraft well,’ said Dalliah. ‘She has kept it close to her and she has studied it. You walked into the veil together and her blood lives within you. Experiences as powerful as that create bonds as inescapable as family and kinship. I recognised your loyalty to the girl long before you did. You let her live for a reason. You knew her life meant something, and you know that what I am doing is right. You just refuse to accept it.’

  The energy of the veil vibrated in the air. Silas could sense Kate close by.

  ‘Your work is over,’ said Dalliah. ‘Now you will stay silent. This room will help you to do what is right. It is here to help you, as it will help Kate.’

  ‘I know what this room is,’ said Silas. ‘It is a prison.’

  Dalliah smiled. ‘You should have used your mind more often than your blade. Perhaps then you would not have found yourself in this situation. You might still have been free.’

  ‘You cannot hold me here. My blood is not bound to yours. Only Kate can work a circle in that way.’

  ‘And she is working it,’ said Dalliah, touching one of the remaining vials of blood and making it swing upon its string. ‘Kate has barely begun to understand what Wintercraft truly is. I manipulate her connection to the veil in any way I see fit. Having your blood to work with allows me to open her eyes to the heart of the veil. Have you looked into the darkness, Silas? Have you seen the place where your spirit lies?’

  Dalliah snapped the vial from its cord and trickled a line of blood over her fingertips. The last time he had seen someone attempt blood work was the day his spirit had been broken, but this was something very different. Silas’s eyes clouded white and a high-pitched screech pierced his mind. Bandermain got to his feet, watching with interest as Silas struggled to block out a sound that only he could hear. It was the screech of lost shades; a cry of torment and desperation.

  Silas knew that sound. He had spent the first two years of his new life hearing those voices every day, drowning out every other sound and haunting him in his sleep. It had taken him a long time to ignore them, until eventually he had learned to block them out almost completely. Souls bound so deep within the veil were beyond the reach of all but the most skilled Walkers. They were the truly lost. Every one of them abandoned, forgotten and sealed away with no hope of release into life or death.

  Echoes of his soul’s prison still bled into Silas’s life every day. Now Dalliah had used his blood to break down the barriers he had built between himself and the truth, throwing the door within his mind open once again. His knowledge of that place gave him some defence against it. He was ready for the wave of anguish, pain and desperation, but his was not the only blood Dalliah was working with, and somewhere inside the veil he heard Kate scream.

  The dark-haired guard pressed his hand over Kate’s mouth, muffling the scream that began the moment their carriage rattled through the last of Grale’s back streets. They were travelling through a dark frosted forest, following a trail so narrow that branches snapped and scratched against the windows as the carriage rattled past.

  Edgar was sitting in the seat opposite Kate, watching as her eyes blackened and changed to white, swirling with the clouded energies of the veil. ‘What’s happening to her?’ he demanded.

  Kate grabbed the carriage door handle but the guard held her still. Edgar had never seen her act that way before.

  ‘We were warned this could happen,’ said the leader. ‘It will pass.’

  ‘What do you mean, “it will pass”? It shouldn’t be happening in the first place,’ said Edgar. ‘Look at her!’

  ‘It will pass,’ the leader said again. ‘We will be there soon.’

  ‘Kate!’

  Kate opened her eyes, shivering, and saw Edgar crouching in front of her, clasping her icy hands. The two Blackwatch officers were watching him, the atmosphere in the carriage was heavy with threat, and for a moment it was hard for her to tell whether she was still i
nside the veil or not.

  ‘You’re all right,’ said Edgar. ‘You’re back. You’re safe.’

  No words came anywhere close to the terrifying void Kate’s mind had just been shown. Emptiness. Lifelessness. Nothingness. She had walked into the half-life before, but even that was nothing compared to the empty terror of what she had just seen. It was the worst kind of prison; a prison of the mind and soul, and she never wanted to see anything like it again.

  Silas was the only person who had ever been able to draw Kate’s mind into the veil against her will, but this time she knew that he was not the one responsible. She could feel the shadow of a woman close by, watching her within the veil.

  The trees parted outside the carriage windows, giving way to a high stone wall broken by a pair of open gates. The land within those walls was filled with death; thick with the memories of many lives that had been ended too soon.

  Kate glanced out of the carriage window as the wheels rattled slowly across the cobbles and caught sight of a large house on the other side of a wide courtyard. She recognised its twin spires, its boarded black windows with candlelight flickering behind them, and the sense of cold isolation, as if nothing existed outside its walls.

  The driver pulled the horses to a halt outside a small circular building, beside a door made from glass and iron. He opened the carriage door and stepped down first, holding out a hand to help Kate to the ground. Kate jumped down without his help and a woman stepped out of the shadows beside the door. If she had not come forward to greet them, Kate would have believed she was a statue, she looked so lifeless and still. She felt the same sensation she experienced whenever she stood near to Silas: a feeling of emptiness and a sense of threat that could only come from people with broken souls. The woman pressed a bloodstained hand to her chest and bowed slowly.

  ‘Welcome, Kate,’ she said coldly. ‘My name is Dalliah. I have been waiting to meet you for a very long time.’

  20

  Blade & Claw

  Now that Kate could see the woman for herself, she had no doubt of who she was. She was the person she had seen in her vision through the spirit wheel. She might be older, but for someone who had to have lived for centuries she did not look very different from the young woman Kate had seen in her vision of the past; the woman who had condemned so many of the bonemen to death. She had the same sharp eyes, the same aura of dominance, and a sense of secrecy that made Kate think she was missing something that had been put out in the open for her to see. ‘You knew the bonemen,’ she said, not caring how impossible her words seemed. ‘You ordered them to kill each other and bound their souls into the spirit wheels.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Dalliah. ‘Few people possess a mind open enough to accept the truth of my existence during our first meeting. Even Silas was uncertain, and he and I are very much alike.’

  ‘You’re not like him,’ said Kate.

  ‘In certain ways, of course, you are right. Silas was blind to the truth of this world before his eyes were opened, whereas I saw the truth from the very beginning. The veil has shown me everything. All that has been, and all that will be. You may see the same, in time.’ Dalliah reached her bloodied hand out to Kate, who did not take it.

  ‘Why are we here?’ asked Edgar.

  Dalliah looked at him as if a dog had just opened its mouth and spoken. ‘We are standing upon the brink of everything,’ she said. ‘We are about to bear witness to the birth of a new world. Everything that has happened was preordained, the future is the same, and even you will have your part to play.’ She stepped aside and gestured to the door. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Silas is waiting for us inside.’

  Kate stepped forward, but the Blackwatch leader held her back.

  ‘Our work is done,’ he said. ‘What news do you have of Bandermain? Is he alive?’

  ‘He is close to death,’ said Dalliah. ‘Had you taken much longer it is doubtful he would have survived. This girl will give him the help he needs.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  A man’s strained voice carried from inside the building. ‘Let her in!’ it said. ‘The girl. Now!’

  The Blackwatch leader handed Kate over at once. ‘Take her,’ he said. ‘We have done as ordered. I trust it will be enough.’

  ‘As do I,’ said Dalliah. ‘Wait here with your men. You two, come with me.’

  With three of the Blackwatch and Dalliah Grey surrounding them, Kate and Edgar had no choice but to walk through that door and face whatever was on the other side. Kate went first, determined to lead the way. She could sense Silas close by. The veil, which had seemed faint and erratic since she set foot upon Continental soil, thrummed against her senses, her connection with it strengthening with every step. Kate knew how to recognise a listening circle when she sensed one, but what had been created inside that room was something else. Something older, more primitive and infinitely more powerful.

  She stood still just a few steps inside the door and saw the bones lining the walls, the hanging vials, and the dimly glowing carvings on the bloodstained floor that her sensitive eyes could see clearly in the candlelight. The air was thick with energy but there was no listening circle there, no half-life and no shades. This was something she had not read about in Wintercraft.

  Edgar was beside her. ‘Now that is something I never thought I would see,’ he whispered.

  When Kate saw what he was looking at it took a few seconds for her mind to take it in. Silas was lying on the floor on the other side of the room, with a red-coated man standing over him holding the blade of his own blue-black sword to his neck. Silas was conscious, but only just. His eyes were shot with blood as they turned slowly to meet hers and his body was still.

  ‘Silas,’ she said; her nervous voice was barely more than a breath. She tried to cross the room to reach him, but Edgar held her back.

  ‘Don’t, Kate,’ he said, looking round the bone-covered walls. ‘There’s something wrong in here. Don’t . . . move.’

  Kate caught the flicker of a warning in Silas’s eyes and stayed still, clenching her fingers into fists as Dalliah stepped between her and Edgar.

  ‘Bandermain, what are you doing?’ demanded Dalliah.

  The red-coated man looked almost as ill as Silas. He was clutching his chest with his free hand, his voice thready and breathless. ‘I have to know,’ he said. ‘I have to be sure.’

  ‘He is no longer here to satisfy your curiosity,’ said Dalliah. ‘Your men have delivered the girl. You have earned my trust. It is time for you to receive your reward.’

  ‘No.’ Bandermain held the weapon steady against Silas’s throat. ‘If you can do this to him, what is to stop you doing it to me once I am changed? Look at him. You caused this. His life may be endless, but that is no way to live.’

  ‘My treatment of Silas is only a precaution,’ said Dalliah. ‘He is a danger to me. You are not.’

  ‘But I will be.’ Bandermain’s voice was growing louder and the strain of talking made him cough hard. ‘No one should have that much power over another life.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ asked Edgar, taking a few steps back.

  Bandermain snapped his head round to glare at him, and then turned his spit-soaked lips towards Kate. ‘I knew Silas Dane long before you and your kind got your hands on him,’ he said. ‘His life was his own. He fought and bled for his country and it was an honour to stand against him. Now all it takes is one witch to set him on his back. One witch to poison his life!’

  Dalliah stepped forward, pulling Kate with her. ‘This is what you wanted,’ she said. ‘The girl is here. Do not turn your back on what we have achieved together. Leave Silas and accept your reward.’

  ‘I will find no pleasure in taking the life of an unarmed enemy,’ said Bandermain. ‘But if what you say about Silas is true, he will survive. If not . . . I must know how far your witchery goes. A swift slice to the neck and I will hold Silas’s head in my hands. Let us see if he is still breathing after that. Let us see if thi
s suffering is worthwhile.’

  Bandermain leaned forward and pulled Silas off the floor by his bloodied shirt. ‘I will give you an honourable end,’ he said, raising the dark blade high over his shoulder. ‘Death by the sword. If you survive, I will accept the path I have been offered. I will take this gift and start my life again. To face death – the ultimate enemy – and live . . . let us see if that truly is a battle Silas Dane can win.’

  Dalliah stood watching as the sword reached its height, but instead of saying something to stop Bandermain she looked interested in what he was about to do. She wanted to see what was going to happen next.