by Daryl Banner
I turn away, gripped at the throat by her words. I want to yell at her and cry. I want to scream at all the suspicious Humans who, even after learning their culprit, now inexplicably blame all us Dead for the one’s crippling mistake. But the screams and the yells and the cries stay in my clenched throat and all I’m left with is a ringing emptiness in my ears.
“Which Undead should I take with me?” I ask quietly.
I hear Megan sigh, then say, “All of them.”
I turn to her, surprised. I’m about to protest, but then I realize too quickly the logic in her decision. We Undead will have strength in numbers, too. If we leave together to find Shee and my mother—however impossible that goal may be—we will be peaceful, and the Humans, left alone here at the Necropolis, will also be at peace. A win/win.
“Nineteen of us,” I say quietly, picking at my nails. One of them pops off, and I issue a small laugh. “We will go, all nineteen of us, as we slowly fall apart. And if we’re lucky, one or two of us might remain when we at long last find Shee or … or my mom.” I laugh, finding it all hilarious suddenly.
“Winter.”
I look up, pressing my lips together to stop myself from the inappropriate, nervous laughter. Megan comes up to me and brings her arms around my rigid body, squeezing. I put my lips to her hair and shut my eyes, calming the hysterics of laughter that threaten to spill from my face. For a moment, it’s the little girl Megan squeezing me again, clutching me in the dark of some night, begging me to protect her, begging to follow me to After’s Hold, insisting to join me on my journey to reclaim Trenton from the Deathless.
“I love you, Winter,” she whispers. “You’re my sister and my mother and my friend.”
“Shush,” I tell her, kissing the top of her forehead. “Shush you, sentimental little bleeder, you.”
“I love you so much. I don’t want you to go. I don’t.”
“Shut up.” I’m smiling so big my face could break in half.
She pulls away from me and both her eyes are wet with tears, even the blue one. She sniffs. “Okay. Alright.”
“I’ll … I’ll gather up all those I know and …” I stop to take a quick mental inventory of who in this city still exists. I’m at a loss, thinking on the Undead I don’t know.
“Don’t worry. I’ll summon them all again for you,” she says. “And … there’s one other whose … help … may greatly assist you. Someone who may prove to be a bit of an expert in handling the Lock-stone, should you come across it. But he may also prove to be a bit of … trouble.”
I lift a brow worriedly. “Who?”
“He was Raised about seven years ago,” Megan tells me, “but he could not be trusted, not by anyone. He was put away into our prison where, regrettably, he still lives. In a matter of only four months, he had his Waking Dream and, in that sorry instant, understood why no one could trust him. Least of all me.” Megan’s worried eyes turn dark, meeting mine. “I haven’t looked on his face since. One of my men checks on him daily but, being Dead, he hasn’t really any needs … I suppose.”
Ice has gripped my gut. “You want us to take this person with us?”
“My Lock-eye has lost all its power. Yours, too. Even the one you buried with John … all of them.” She sighs, gives a regretful shake of her head. “He’s an expert in the powers of these stones. With our only other expert, your mother, lost in the pursuit of Shee, this man may be the secret to saving your kind. He’s the only one who truly knows the mind of Mad Malory.” She puts a hand to my arm and gives a squeeze. “I’ll take you to him.”
I learn today that the Mayor’s Cyclops tower does not only go up twelve floors, but it also goes down three. This tower was apparently built on top of the Deathless King’s infamous Well, which was a giant hole full of dismantled Undead. All those Undead heads simply remained there, crying out, screaming, or drifting off into a sleepless state of silence. When the Necropolis was recovered by the Humans and Undead of Trenton and Garden, the Undead were disinterred from all the Pits and holes and catacombs and crypts—and a special place called the Mausoleum—and the Undead population grew substantially, all these prisoners of the Deathless King’s mad sadism rebuilt and freed. Some of their heads were too-far destroyed and their Anima seemed to have left them. Where Anima goes when it leaves the body, no one can say for sure.
The year Shee found the “great stone” and unleashed its powers on the populace of the Necropolis, nearly seventy Undead had fallen to dust before their eyes. Its power was so great that even nearby trees wilted and a whole crop of cabbage was ruined as Shee fled the city in a whirlwind of death-dust and chaos.
“When you meet him,” warns Megan, “you must not mention a thing about your mother being Julianne.”
“Why not?”
“We will only tell him that our mission is the finding and retrieving of the Lock-stone. Julianne and the secret of her true identity must be kept, no matter.”
I take her word for it as she pulls me through the dungeon-like crypts of the prison, pushing a key into the cellar door that leads into the third and final level of the under-tower prison.
The halls echo menacingly with our every footfall, and even with my Undead eyes, my vision is clouded by an ambush of dust and cobwebs that kick up from the walls and the floors as we pass by. The halls are circular and seem to spiral inward, inward, inward, like a spiral of death. The further in you go, the further in you’re trapped. The moment we’re twelve cells in, I already want desperately to leave.
“Here,” she says at last, arriving at the final cell in the spiral, the deepest into the earth one can possibly dream of being buried half-alive, half-dead, the cell at the end of the downward spiral.
He’s seated in the corner of the cell curled into a ball, leaned against the brick with his eyes wide-open. One of his legs seems oddly deformed compared to the other and his hands are gripped at the knees. The layer of dust upon him gives his body the grey appearance of slate. He seems turned to stone, unmoving, not even flinching at our presence … petrified.
Is this what I looked like at the Whispers?
With a wash of regret, I realize I don’t recognize him at all. I glance at Megan for help, lifting a brow. At my questioning stare, she says, “To be fair, none of us knew his true name at the time. We know it now.”
“True name?”
“He only went by the name of Deathless.” Megan knocks on the bars of the cell. “Lynx,” she calls to him with a cool, steely voice. “Lynx, here. You’ve a visitor.”
Slowly, ever slowly, the man in the corner turns his head. I imagine hearing the creak and groans of rusted metal, or the snapping and popping of stone as a statue comes to life, moving for the first time in years. He blinks and a tuft of dust parts from his face.
Then he speaks: “My name is not Lynx.”
“It is,” insists Megan. “You told us so. I want you to lay your eyes on a familiar friend of yours.”
He does. His forehead scrunches up, squinting with too much effort in my direction. Then, quite slowly, he rises from the floor, a blanket more of dust tumbling off his form. Tiny spiders too, hundreds racing down his arms and over the floor, skittering away into the recesses of the cell, into cracks of stone and the sleeves of his garment.
When I notice how very short he is, the way he almost waddles, limping as though one of his legs were unnatural to him—as if, say, it were once made of metal—I realize who the hell I’m looking at. “The Warlock,” I breathe, feeling stupid for not having allowed myself to realize it sooner. “The Lock … It’s my m-mother’s—The Deathless King’s Human Warlock! … Y-You were killed!”
“And Raised,” he says with an inward snort that somehow blows a cloud of dust and a spider or two out either of his giant ears. “And yes, she has it right. Deathless is my name, whether you call me a Warlock anymore or not. And yes, I do remember you, my sweet Winter. How delightful that you’ve learned of your mother’s identity.”
I catch my
breath after realizing I don’t need any, and back a step away from the bars. “You … You look quite different with two normal eyes,” I remark. He used to have one glowing green one, a look Grimsky later adopted, then Megan herself.
He chortles, showing all his blackened, horrible teeth when his eyes rest on Megan. “The eye doesn’t work if it’s blue, fool.” He chokes, or perhaps it’s just another rasping laugh, and he adds, “You killed the eye, stupid girl.”
“You’ve a chance at redemption,” Megan announces, unfazed by his grotesqueness. “Your intelligences may be of particular service to our kind. That is, your kind.”
“Service?” His eyes flick back and forth between the two of us. “What service?”
“Someone discovered a very, very, very large Lock-stone. It was capable of destroying upwards of sixty Undead in a matter of minutes, and we—”
“So? I destroyed just as many with my tiny one, I’m certain.” He gives me a dark glare, and I remember very much that day in Trenton when he fled the city. Two of the souls whose existences he ended that day were that of Jasmine’s black-braided death-daughter and Judge Enea.
“With all the power leaving the little stones,” Megan explains tirelessly, “we have a suspicion that the large stone is the secret to saving Undeadkind. After it was discovered, it was then stolen away, and ever since its departure, Undead around our city have been crumbling to dust. You’re just as likely to crumble, Lynx. We estimate in a matter of weeks, maybe less, there will be no Undead left. I wouldn’t take this so lightly.”
The dwarf nods, regarding us suspiciously. He’s trying to figure out why we need him. I don’t think he’s deduced that this inquiry is a chance for him to get out of that horrid cell of his for the first time in what I imagine is at least five years, according to Megan herself.
I watch another pair of tiny spiders race across his neck and disappear somewhere in his hair.
“Now that you have had your Waking Dream and recovered all memories of your First Life as a Human Warlock,” Megan goes on, “I was hoping to tap into your wisdom so that we can save our Undead friends’ lives. That includes yours, Lynx.”
“Call me by my real and true name,” he says, his voice like gravel and metal splinters dancing, “and I might consider helping your cause.”
“Our cause is yours, Lynx, and I’ve more to offer than just a ‘thank you’ in return.” Megan’s eyes narrow. “If you are successful in helping us, I will grant you freedom. The rest of your Undead existence won’t be spent buried in this tomb. You’ll have a normal life. All of us deserve redemption in our Second Lives for the troubles we caused in our First. I’m certain I’ll learn that same lesson someday when I die.” Her blue eye turns dull and dark. “You will have the same chance … if you cooperate.”
The dwarf—Lynx, Deathless, whatever his name—gives a singular nod, then crosses his arms. A pair of tiny spiders crawl out a nostril and vanish into his left ear. He doesn’t seem to notice. I wish I hadn’t.
“Freedom,” Megan repeats. “Isn’t it something you’d like? Or perhaps you’re not even aware of how long you’ve been kept down here?”
“An hour or so, I’d reckon,” he answers with mocking sarcasm. His eyes regard me, full of thought and trouble. He’s considering the offer, that much is clear.
“Think on it this way,” I say, throwing my own glove into the circle. “You’ll get to travel alongside the people you helped torture.” I smile just as mockingly.
An ugly smile wrecks his face. The dark humor, that’s what he responds to. “Thrilling,” he murmurs.
“Thrilling,” agrees Megan quite darkly. “Will you cooperate and earn yourself freedom? Or will you turn to dust here in your cell?”
The little man rushes up to the bars of the cage so fast, both Megan and I jump backwards. He grins something foul. “I’ll do this with one condition attached.”
“This is not a negotiation,” Megan begins to say.
“What’s your condition?” I ask instead, taking one daring step toward the little Lock.
He studies my eyes. Then he lifts his chin and says, “Do you remember the certain pale-as-death person who put a sword in my Human body and made me bleed my own blood?”
I frown. “All Humans bleed their own blood, dummy. Who else’s blood would you bleed?”
“You know this traitor, the one who stabbed me deep,” he presses on. “You were there, my dear, sweet Winter. So were you, girl-lady Megan. You both know exactly of whom I speak, don’t you …”
I know the precise moment in my Second Life to which he is referring. When the Warlock tried to stop me in my escape from the Necropolis with Megan and a slew of desperate, frightened Humans at my side, a certain someone-else was there too: Grimsky. He stabbed the Warlock right then, betraying his own kind, and lent us the chance to run.
“Yes, I do,” I answer.
The dwarf grins. “My condition in helping you is, when we happen on the stone, I want to use it for one singular purpose.”
“No,” says Megan.
“What purpose?” I ask calmly.
“I want to end the existence of Grimsky.” His horrible stone-grey eyes study my every reaction. And I, quite deliberately, don’t react at all. “I want to end his existence myself, with my own hands I do … My hands, and one final, fateful glare of my eye. That is my condition.”
“I accept,” I say right away.
The dwarf seems surprised at first. Then, quite gently, he begins to laugh. “Ha, ha, ha, ha … ha …” He licks his lips, drawing the ends of cobwebs to his tongue. “Yes. Good. Ha, ha, ha …” He leans into the bars, his slimy teeth showing, and he says: “Life is so terrible and short and ironic, isn’t it?”
C H A P T E R – T E N
J U D G E
“Why would you say that?”
I glare at Ann. “I’m sorry. Did you prefer to have the conversation with the Warlock?”
“He’s not a Lock without his eye, you realize.”
“Yes, I realize.”
“How could you make that agreement?” Ann shakes her head, huffing and puffing while I sift through the supplies. “Grimsky’s life wasn’t yours to wager.”
“Well,” I say, “John’s life wasn’t Grimsky’s to wager, but that didn’t stop him from taking it, did it?”
Ann was about to say something else, but she holds her tongue, smacked in the face by my point. I feel a pang of hurt using the names John and Grimsky in the same sentence. The memory of that day, no matter the passing of twelve years, feels fresh as a yesterday. I can still hear John’s final words echoing in my skull someplace.
“Winter.” She tries to get in my line of sight, but my head is so buried in this bin of weapons and tools and other crap the guardsmen use that it’s impossible. “I know you’re angry …”
“I’m not angry.”
“I know you’re hurt …”
“I can’t hurt, I’m dead.”
“Winter.”
“If you say my name one more time, Ann, I’m going to pull your head off and remind you how we met.” My eyes are scathing when they meet hers at last.
She smiles tentatively. “So you’re saying, you’re finally ready to play some Headless soccer?”
Near the bottom of the bin, my hand catches something sharp. Gently, I find a handle and pull the weapon from the bin, the helmets and breastplates and broken crossbows falling out of the way. I stare at the weapon with slow but certain recognition.
“Yeah,” Ann answers without my saying anything. “It was hers.”
The Judge’s blade. I thought it’d been broken or lost; my memory’s foggy. From all the countless swords in the world, it’s a wonder that I can look at the Judge’s blade and recognize it. This same blade took off the old corrupt Mayor’s head. This same blade ran through my mother’s body at the edge of a cliff. What else has it done?
“Someone made a sheath for it, too,” Ann mutters, searching through another bin. “Don�
�t worry, I’ll find it.”
“Judge Enea,” I murmur, admiring the sword. Not that I’m any sort of blades specialist or expert swordsman, but I’ve an unusual, deep relationship with this weapon. Come to think of it, it even ran itself through me, first time I met it. The Judge was testing if I was Deathless after the tavern was attacked. That was the night John and I first met. “Can’t believe this was just … tossed in here.”
Ann meets me with a long sheath and, without asking, begins to bind it to my backside. I let her, still calmly observing the sword and remembering the time it gently javelined through the air by Jasmine’s own hand, and not so gently landed into the skull of the Warlock. Yes, this blade even claimed the life of the little Warlock whose intellect we’re about to trust on this journey.
“If I had been the one to have the conversation with the Lock,” Ann tells me, pulling the strap on the sheath tightly, “I … would have done just the same as you.”
I reach behind me and sheath the Judge’s long blade, listening to the scrape of metal and leather as it’s put away. I turn to Ann, then smile. I take an eyepatch I just pulled from the bin and, to her bewilderment, I bring it over one of her eyes, tying it in the back. “You had an eyepatch when I first met you,” I point out. “You look deadly now, like an assassin. No one’s gonna mess with you. Not even Mother Nature.”
Ann smiles awkwardly, takes a knife from her pocket and brings it up to the eyepatch. In a second, she’s made a less-than-pretty hole, her eye peeking through. “There,” she mutters. “Unlike Megan, my eyes still work. All I need’s a scarf now.” Then she adds, “And for the record, Grimsky doesn’t deserve to exist, whether alive or not. He should be turned to dust and I don’t care who does it.”
I can’t with confidence say I agree. My feelings about the Green Prince Of Whatever have considerably had their very-ups and their very-downs. He protected me once. He betrayed me once. He turned me over to the Deathless once. He loved me once. He half-ruined a world for me once. He destroyed many of my friends once. Or twice. Or more.