Wintercraft: Blackwatch

by Jenna Burtenshaw

  ‘No!’ Kate and Edgar shouted together as the sword flashed down towards Silas’s neck. Edgar looked away and Dalliah stared wide-eyed as it streaked towards his skin. What came next all happened in a single moment.

  Silas’s sickly eyes looked up at the sweeping blade. He snatched hold of the hand holding his shirt and twisted it hard, snapping Bandermain’s wrist and forcing him to let go. Silas fell back, out of reach of the sword, and Bandermain struggled to recover his balance as the glass in the door exploded in a burst of black feathers and splintering shards. Silas’s crow slammed through it and flopped on to the floor, dazed and unsteady on its glassdusted wings. Its claws scratched the stones and it launched itself, screeching and fluttering over Edgar’s ducked head, towards the man attacking its master.

  Bandermain did not see the bird coming until it was too late. He brought the sword down again, desperate to deliver a mortal blow, but Silas dodged and struck him hard in the throat, making him buckle and fall. The crow took its chance and flew at Bandermain’s face in a feathered frenzy of beak and claws. The sword slid from his hand as he tried to break his fall and Silas reclaimed his weapon, sweeping it up as he got to his feet. Bandermain yelled in fury as the crow scratched at his face, barely managing to keep its snapping beak away from his eyes.

  ‘Crow.’ Silas said the word quietly, but the bird still heard him. It ceased its attack at once and fluttered awkwardly on to Silas’s shoulder, out of reach of Bandermain’s grasping hands.

  Bandermain glared at the bird with a crazed look of fury. ‘Keep that filthy thing away from me,’ he said, drawing a dagger from his belt with his good hand and spinning it in his fingers.

  ‘Get used to that feeling,’ said Silas, glaring at Bandermain from beneath his eyebrows as his own neck twitched with pain. ‘You want to know what it is like to live my life? Well, now you are living it. For weeks you have allowed this woman to take you to the edge of death and claw you back from it. You fear death. I see that. But what she has done to you is a far greater cruelty than simply watching you die. You are a tortured man and you do not even see it. You believe that my life is a reward to be handed out for a job well done, but you do not yet know what it truly means to fear something, Celador. No one should live as I do. No one should be denied the death that is rightfully theirs. That is cruelty. That is pain.’

  ‘I could have killed you,’ said Bandermain. ‘No one can survive a blade to the neck. Not even you.’

  ‘Perhaps one day someone will put that theory to the test,’ said Silas. ‘But not you, and not today. You wanted life. I am proof that you can have it, but it does not come without its price. Do you still want what I have? Do you want to look into the current of death and turn away from it forever?’

  Bandermain looked at the people around him and pointed his dagger shakily at Kate. ‘You,’ he said. ‘You can heal me. You can take this sickness away.’

  ‘She cannot heal this disease,’ said Silas. ‘No one can.’

  ‘She will,’ said Bandermain.

  Dalliah pulled Kate closer to the sick man, so close that she could smell the scent of blood upon his breath. ‘She may not be able to heal you,’ said Dalliah, ‘but she can save you. You are a worthy man, Celador. I will have need of you when the veil falls. Do not allow death to claim you now.’

  Bandermain looked frailer every moment, until he barely had the strength to hold the dagger, and as he weakened Kate felt the energy in the room change. Silas had noticed it too and, whatever it was, it was having a direct effect upon Bandermain. Kate did not know what to do. Silas had had his chance to take his life, but he’d held back. She did not know if Bandermain was truly an enemy or not, but she could not stand by and watch a man die without doing something.

  ‘Let me try,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ Silas said suddenly. ‘Stay away from him.’

  ‘The only thing Kate will do here is what I tell her to do,’ said Dalliah. ‘You cannot afford to waste your time on foolish men, Kate. The veil is falling. If he will not accept the binding there is nothing your Skill can do for him. It will be a shame to see him die like this. I expected more from him. But if he wishes it . . .’

  ‘No!’ Bandermain grabbed Kate’s arm in a feeble grip. ‘Do it,’ he said quietly. ‘Let me have what Silas has. Let me live. They said you could do this for me. I do not want to die like this.’

  Bandermain’s face was wild and terrified. Kate tried not to look directly at him and she looked over at Silas instead, who was trying not to show how ill he was. Just moments ago Bandermain had attacked him, but it was hard to separate who was an enemy and who was a friend in that room.

  ‘You have the book with you,’ said Dalliah. ‘I know Wintercraft is here. It will tell you what you need to do. All you need is a blade.’

  ‘Take mine.’ Bandermain handed Kate his dagger, hilt first, and when she took hold of it she deliberately clasped his uninjured hand in hers. She could feel the muscles quivering beneath his skin and could sense the veil hanging like a silvery aura around him, waiting for death to carry him into its current. He did not have long. As soon as she touched him Bandermain began to breathe more freely and the bird-claw scratches faded upon his skin. Kate heard the crack as his broken wrist snapped back into place and Bandermain stared at it as if it was the most amazing thing he had ever seen.

  Kate could see Silas questioning her with his eyes, unsure of her plan. But Kate did not have a plan. The building they were standing in did not hold a listening circle, but that did not matter. Listening circles were created to channel the veil at places where the barrier between it and the living world was at its weakest. There on the Continent the veil was so far away that it needed to be attracted towards a circle, not pierced by one. With all the bodies buried beneath her land, Dalliah had recreated her own miniature version of Fume: a graveyard inhabited by the restless souls of the dead. Kate could sense hundreds of those souls gathering around her, their presence tingling like eyes on the back of her neck. Every one of them was bound to that place; to the blood that had seeped into the soil, and to the memory of their deaths still hanging over them. Those souls carried the veil with them as Bandermain’s spirit reached out for death.

  Kate reached deeper into the veil, letting it flood across her senses in a way that was very different from what she had felt within an ordinary listening circle. The power of what was happening within that building just outside the reach of normal sight overwhelmed her. The candlelight that had glowed gently when Kate first walked in now revealed itself to be a carefully crafted lie, a veneer created by Dalliah to hide the raging maelstrom of destructive energy brewing underneath. Kate did not know how she had not sensed it before, and she was certain that if Silas had known what he was walking in to he never would have entered that room.

  Opening her mind to the veil there was like lifting her head out of a gently flowing river and being dragged under by the pounding force of a raging waterfall. The full extent of the veil’s attracted energy plummeted down around her; raw and disorganised, primal and wild. Listening circles were built to harness those energies; they tamed the veil and allowed it to be manipulated safely, but this circle simply called it forth and let it slam into its stones, fierce and uncontrolled. Kate braced her mind against it, defending herself against the awesome power of something far greater than any single life. The veil was one of the world’s greatest secrets, one of the unseen threads that held the world together. Standing there, staring right into the heart of it, she could see that it was falling apart.

  Memories flickered in the misted glaze that hung across her eyes, belonging to the living people standing within the room as well as the Blackwatch waiting patiently outside its doors. Kate glimpsed the minds of everyone there; everyone except Dalliah herself. Then she saw Edgar, just standing there, calmly ignorant of the invisible forces thundering down around him. To his eyes this room was just like any other room with bone-clad walls and bloodstained carvings on the floor and
for a moment she envied him. He did not have to see what she could see. He did not have to struggle with the veil every day and be persecuted for something he could not control. Even Silas could not see the truth about this place and its influence was affecting him and Bandermain the most.

  The racing energy scrubbed through the air, making it impossible for anyone except a Walker to connect with the veil. It was moving too fast, leaching into the earth, rejecting the lost souls that were not yet free to pass into death and then retreating back towards Albion. As it moved, its absence left a vacuum in its place, preventing Silas and Dalliah from being able to heal and speeding up the progression of Bandermain’s illness. Kate could not even begin to understand how Dalliah had created that place, or how she was able to stand within it so calmly, conducting conversations as if nothing was happening when it felt as if the ground was about to open up and tear everything apart.

  ‘Bandermain’s spirit shall be bound to me,’ said Dalliah, reaching out to her. ‘The blade. Give it to me.’ Kate handed her the dagger and watched her draw the silver twice across her palm, leaving two deep cuts behind.

  Bandermain walked awkwardly towards Kate, his strength failing. ‘Now mine,’ he said as Dalliah handed the blade back to Kate, and he held out his own already scarred hand.

  ‘This can’t be undone,’ said Kate. ‘If I do this, you will never go back to the way you were. You will never get your spirit back.’

  ‘Yes, yes. I know all that,’ said Bandermain, impatience cutting through his words. ‘Get on with it.’

  Kate hesitated then, allowing the memory of how Bandermain had received those scars to bleed into her mind. Dalliah had already tried to bind his soul to hers twice before, and she had failed. The silver in the blade hummed gently as Kate’s energy ran through it, ready to do something that she knew she might instantly regret.

  ‘Do it!’ said Bandermain.

  Kate lowered the dagger just enough for Bandermain to sense that she was having serious doubts.

  ‘You said she would do it!’ he said to Dalliah.

  ‘She will honour our agreement,’ said Dalliah.

  Silas dug the point of his sword into the floor, helping himself to stand. ‘Things are not as simple as they first seemed, are they, Celador?’ he said.

  ‘Quiet!’ Bandermain’s eyes flickered briefly to Edgar, who was trying, and failing, to get Silas’s attention. He lunged for him, grabbed his neck and locked it beneath his arm, holding him off balance so he could not squirm away. Edgar flailed his arms, trying to wriggle free, but stopped the moment another of Bandermain’s daggers pressed against his back.

  ‘It is a simple enough task,’ said Bandermain, panting to catch his breath. ‘Do it now, girl. Or I will show you how blood spilling should be done!’

  21

  Lost

  Bandermain’s anger flooded into the veil and Kate started to lose control. Everything she was seeing and feeling started to blend together; the veil, the memories, everything that was happening in the room throughout its past, present and future, until she was no longer sure what was happening and what was not. The vision the spirit wheel had shown her dominated her thoughts. Nothing made sense. Her head was splitting with pain, and then Dalliah was beside her, a calm face within the growing darkness as her mind began shutting down, desperate to escape the confusion.

  ‘You are a true Winters,’ said Dalliah. ‘Your connection to the veil is so strong you are more like a shade than one of the living. But like so many of your ancestors, you lack the tenacity to get things done.’

  ‘She is not one of your experiments,’ said Silas’s voice.

  ‘But I will use her, exactly as you did,’ said Dalliah. ‘We have both learned that to achieve anything we must take what we want. Do not pretend that what I am doing is beneath you. You have done far worse.’

  ‘I showed her what she was,’ said Silas. ‘That is all. Nothing like this.’

  ‘And I am showing her what she will become. There is no difference.’

  Kate saw Silas walking towards her; a black shadow against the veil’s silvery light.

  ‘Do not interfere,’ said Dalliah. ‘You knew what was going to happen. You cannot stop it now.’

  Kate could hear Dalliah’s words, but she could also hear something else underneath them; a whisper creeping through the veil. It was Dalliah’s voice, but it sounded different – more distant.

  ‘Bandermain can help us repair what has been broken,’ she said. ‘Save his life. We need his strength.’

  Kate looked over at Edgar, standing completely at Bandermain’s mercy, and all she wanted was for everything to stop and give her time and space to think. She wanted her mind to be clear again, but even in the midst of all the confusion there was one thing of which she was perfectly sure. Even if she could bind someone’s soul she knew that she could never bring herself to do it, and that certainty was more than she had had to hold on to for a long time.

  ‘No.’ She said the word out loud. ‘I can’t do it. I won’t do it.’

  Bandermain’s sickly face turned as red as it could manage, twisting with rage and disappointment. And even though Edgar was scared, he smiled proudly at Kate, letting her know that she had done the right thing.

  But Dalliah was unfazed by Kate’s refusal. ‘How will you learn how capable you are if you do not test yourself?’ she asked. ‘This is your chance to become more than just the girl who made the Night of Souls real again. I will show you how to complete the work your ancestors began centuries before you were born. They knew this time would come. The veil has been weak from the very beginning. They knew it would fall one day, and they knew there would be Walkers here to help it along its way. The bonemen of Albion had a chance to show everyone the truth about our world. They had an opportunity and they turned away from it. You have already revealed the veil to many closed minds. Soon you will be able to show everyone a side of life that they could never have imagined. You are the only Walker I have been able to find. There should have been many more of us here at the end, but the last part of the plan must fall to us alone. We need Bandermain and his men to carry out that plan.’

  ‘I don’t care about your plan,’ said Kate.

  ‘The Skilled should have let you enter the veil from the beginning,’ said Dalliah. ‘They should have helped you instead of holding you back. Do you want to continue denying what you are? Or do you want to accept it?’

  ‘What . . . is happening?’ demanded Bandermain, struggling for breath. Death was close. Kate could not see it, but she could feel it, and so could he. It was coming for him.

  ‘Quiet!’ Dalliah glared at Bandermain, but this time he refused to be silenced.

  ‘If no one here . . . is willing to help me,’ he said, ‘I will not . . . enter death alone.’

  Somewhere inside her, Kate knew what was coming. The spirit wheel had warned her of it, Bandermain had already threatened to do it, but when the moment finally arrived she could not quite accept that it was real. The confusion of the veil pulled back from her eyes as she focused completely upon Edgar, whose brave smile melted into shock and pain as Bandermain’s dagger sank deep into his back.

  Kate stared as Bandermain pulled out the bloodied blade and she stood in horrified silence, unable to react, as he pushed Edgar to the floor. Silas shouted something and stepped towards Bandermain, but it was too late. The dagger fell from Bandermain’s hand and he crumpled to his knees, unable to speak, unable to breathe, as the creeping lung finally claimed what was left of his life.

  ‘Kate!’ Silas turned to her as Bandermain slumped wide-eyed to the floor. ‘Get out of here!’

  But Kate could not move. She was staring at Edgar lying still upon the floor. His blood trailed into a carving of a bird cut into the stone and her eyes stung with tears.

  Something moved across the floor. It looked as if the stones were rippling outwards from Bandermain’s lifeless hand, moving towards Edgar. Kate could tell it was not a trick of the veil
, but it had to be impossible. Silas snatched a candle from a cord hanging from the ceiling and threw it between Edgar and the creeping stones. The flame crackled and spat, and the moving floor changed direction, spreading around the source of burning heat. Only then did Kate really know what she was looking at. The tiny insects that had eaten Bandermain’s lungs away were seeping out of his body and spreading across the floor in search of a new host. The floor was crawling with them, their tiny forms barely visible to the eye, moving across the ground like a cloud of dust.

  Kate reached up, grabbed three ceiling candles and dropped them in front of her. Then she grabbed two more and clasped them in her hands, ready to protect herself as the creatures spread.

  ‘The physical body is so frail and weak,’ said Dalliah, standing beside her. ‘You should know by now that the mind is where true strength lies.’

  ‘Shut up!’ Kate shouted, dropping another candle as the bugs spread her way. She had to get to Edgar.