The Witch's Eye

by Steven Montano

  Cross could only imagine. He’d heard some terrifying stories about young mages who’d never received proper training. Sometimes loved ones were killed, or the mages themselves were malformed and turned half-mad because they never learned how to block out the incessant whispers of their spirits.

  “I’m still not sure what this has to do with Shiv,” he said. “How is activating the latent arcane powers in others going to help us find Danica?”

  “It won’t,” Ankharra said. “But it can help us find the island with the Witch’s Eye.”

  “Ok,” Cross said. “How?”

  Ankharra knelt down and looked at him.

  “Your sword,” she said. “You said it saved you.”

  “And them.”

  “Exactly. It saved all three of you while you were in the presence of one of the shards of the Eye, correct?”

  “Yeah…”

  “The Eye leaves a very distinguishable hex field resonance,” Ankharra said. “That residue clings to living matter. There’s little you can do to get rid of it. It adheres to your body and soul like glue.” Cross made a face, but Ankharra lifted a reassuring hand. “It’s not harmful,” she said. “But we can use it. Because in some ways, this residue behaves like the latent arcane powers in others…”

  “Which Shiv can activate,” Cross finished. He looked out to sea. “So she awakens this residual power from the Eye…what will that accomplish?”

  “It’s a bit of a hunch on my part,” Ankharra said, “but I have a feeling that activated power won’t like being stuck out here all alone.”

  “You think it’ll return to its source…” Cross said.

  “Exactly. And with any luck, Shiv will be able to see it, and then we can track it.”

  “Holy shit. You’re smart.”

  “I know,” Ankharra smiled.

  “But can Shiv do that?” Cross asked. “She can’t exactly control her abilities…”

  “I was hoping you could help her with that,” she said.

  Cross looked back at the camp. The soldiers had nearly finished piling the cargo containers onto the airship, which was anchored and hovered just over the ground. Shiv stood on the deck, smiling. In the time he’d know her Cross had never seen her look so happy. She and her father shared a mango and looked up at the sky.

  They think they’re going home.

  “That means she’ll have to come with us…” he said.

  The witch hesitated.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Cross swallowed. His stomach soured. He nodded, rose, and slowly walked towards the ship. His boots sank in the sand. Talon Company soldiers watched him as he passed; he recognized a few of them from Karamanganjii.

  The airship’s metal hull sparked with thaumaturgic currents as it drifted back and forth on the length of cable running down to the ground. The sky grew darker. A storm was coming, but no natural storm: there had barely been any rain since The Black, but some arcane cycle of pressure kept the seas filled.

  Cross climbed the rope ladder. It swung unsteadily beneath him, but before he knew it he stood on deck. This vessel was much larger than most airships he’d been on. Coils of rope, hammers, boxes, munitions, tents, and supply boxes were everywhere, still being hauled into storage.

  Shiv came over and hugged him. Flint was behind her, smiling. Even though they’d washed, their faces were still dirty, and their eyes were lined with fatigue. Flint’s thin beard was covered with grime, and Shiv’s hair was tangled and gnarly.

  “Are we going home?” Flint asked.

  Cross tried to smile, but he couldn’t. He looked at Flint, and down at Shiv.

  “Not yet,” he said. “Shiv…”

  “I know,” she said. “You need my help.”

  “What?” Flint asked. He stepped up, angry. “What are you talking about?”

  “Flint, listen…”

  “No!” Flint said, and he pushed Cross’s hand away. “No, God damn it, this is my daughter! She’s going to live! I…you…are going to get her home, you understand me?” His anger was punctuated with fear. “Eric.” He took Cross by his shoulders and looked him in the eyes. “Please.”

  Shiv was watching, her big eyes full of life.

  When Cross looked at her he saw his sister. He couldn’t help it. He so wanted to leave those memories of her in the Rift. He wanted to move on, to let her go…but he knew that would never happen.

  “I will,” he said to Flint. “I swear to you I will.” His chest ached like a blade had been twisted there. “But I can’t just yet.” He looked at Shiv. “There are things you can do, Shiv, things that few others can. You’ll help people. Maybe save a lot of lives.”

  “What about your friend?” Shiv asked. “Will I be able to help you find your friend?” Shiv’s eyes seemed to penetrate him. “You love her. Don’t you?”

  Flint looked uneasy. He sensed power in his daughter, and likely had for a long time, even if he’d never been able to admit it.

  “Yes,” Cross said. “You will. And…yes. I think I do.”

  Shiv smiled. Flint looked at Cross with a mixture of anger and fear.

  “I’m sorry,” Cross said. “I really, truly am. I wish there was some other way.”

  Flint sighed. He looked so weary, so beaten. “We were meant to be here with you,” he said with some resignation. He looked at Shiv. “She told me, on that first night after you’d been captured, that she’d dreamt about you before. She’d dreamt we’d go with you.” He laughed. “Didn’t think we’d be coming this far, but…”

  “I’m glad you did,” Cross said. “I’m very happy to have met you. Both of you.” He leaned in and put one hand on each of their shoulders. “I’ll do everything I can to keep you both safe. I promise you that.”

  They hugged him. Cross held them tight. He never wanted to let go.

  TWENTY-TWO

  PASSAGE

  The boat came to a stop in a coral-addled cove near the center of Rimefang Loch. A battle raged in the distance as a pair of Southern Claw battle cruisers and some Bloodhawks took on a host of Razorwings and a massive vampire war vessel armed with spine guns and flame cannons. Danica heard bomb blasts, and the echoing rattle of gunfire. Draconian voices echoed deep into the sky. If not for the smell of gunpowder and hex energies the thunderous booms in the distance could almost be mistaken for thunder.

  “I’m not taking my boat another knot in these waters,” Rourke said. He stood at the helm with his arms folded, while his men stood to either side of Danica and Ronan. The swordsman’s cowl was up, meaning only his steel blue eyes were visible beneath his mess of black hair. His loose cloak concealed at least two blades, a katana and a kodachi. He had no firearms, but then he’d never really needed them.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Danica said. “We came all this way… are we just turning around?”

  “Well, you see, there’s the problem,” Rourke said with a wry grin. “You two paid for a trip out here. You didn’t pay for a trip back.”

  Rourke’s men moved closer. Danica’s spirit coiled around her body like an oiled snake. She heard his bloodthirsty whispers.

  “We paid for a trip you never finished,” Danica said.

  “Yeah, well, that’s the way it goes,” Rourke said. He drew a double-barreled shotgun and pointed it at them. “Our trip stops here. I’m not getting any closer to that mess of a battle than I have to. I’m not risking me or my men.”

  On cue, those same men drew longknives and pistols.

  “So what now?” Danica asked. Ronan stood still as a statue beside her.

  “Now, either you negotiate payment for a return trip,” Rourke smiled, “or you get off here.”

  She didn’t need to ask what he wanted as payment. He and his men had been eyeing her body like she was a piece of meat ever since they’d left the shore.

  “You know we could kill every single one of you,” Danica said. “Right?”

  Rourke laughed.

  “Then why
haven’t you?” Rourke asked. “Oh, that’s right…the boat. You don’t know how to operate it.”

  “We haven’t killed you for the same reason you won’t kill us now,” Ronan said. His voice was almost a growl. “Because we’re not stupid. Even with the fighting going on, too much noise might attract an Ebon Cities patrol. Or a Southern Claw recon ship. And you morons don’t want to see either.”

  Rourke clenched his fingers around his gun. He licked his teeth, and clacked his ringed fingers together.

  “Fuck this,” he said. “We’re done here.” He aimed the shotgun at Ronan and pulled the trigger.

  Danica’s spirit fused into a crimson shield around Ronan. Buck-shot bounced away like broken pebbles. Ronan spun around and cast a dagger into the throat of the closest man, then ducked and dove forward with his katana in hand.

  Rourke shouted. Guns turned on Danica. She released her spirit in a fan of icy flames and immolated two of Rourke’s men, then raised her G36C and gunned them down while they writhed and burned. Ronan sliced through the last man’s face. Blood sprayed onto the deck, and the swordsman calmly kicked the corpse into the water.

  As quickly as the fight had started, it was over.

  Danica walked up to Rourke. He’d taken bullets in his side, and lay crumpled and bleeding on the deck. He snarled as Danica drew close, and at the last moment leapt at her with a curved dagger he’d kept hidden in his shirt. Danica easily moved aside and used a backhanded strike from her metal arm to shatter the bones in his hand. Rourke screamed and fell to his knees.

  “You were wrong about one thing, Rourke,” she said. “I know perfectly well how to drive your shitty little boat.” His eyes went wide as she whipped her metal hand forward and crushed his face. The bones in his skull cracked and blood spurted out, and even though he wasn’t quite dead she used her boot to push him overboard and into the water.

  Ronan walked up next to her, his blades sheathed. Danica let her spirit wrap around her. The air was cold and crisp, and the clouds grew thick overhead. She tasted hex energies in the atmosphere, the charnel scent of rot.

  “I think there are Ebon Cities patrol boats nearby,” she said. “We’d better get moving.”

  “Do you still know where we’re going?” he asked.

  Danica focused. She cleared her mind.

  She sees carnivore fog and vampire shores. Claws like cracked razors under the full moon. The vampires stand shoulder to shoulder and face the sea.

  They are naked and dark, scarred and mindless. Their link to the vampire collective consciousness has been severed. They share a new master, a dark intelligence which drives them to destroy.

  She drifts closer. Her consciousness stretches and bleeds like a beam of light. The world compresses, squeezes in, falls away. She is a leaf on the black wind.

  She floats between ranks of dead faces and navigates passages of smelted rock, where the torn earth smokes with coal fumes and fire. She weaves through the splintered remains of once proud forests. Serpentine twists of smoke curl into the darkening sky.

  Even in that ethereal body she smells the age of that place, the burning. She tastes destruction in the wind. Something ancient has been unearthed, some dread relic upturned from the corroded island’s skin.

  She moves closer. She is afraid.

  She descends into a smelted crater. Mounds of ash cover the charred bones of forest beasts.

  The Witch’s Eye is there, along with its smaller sibling. They float and orbit each other, spinning faster and faster.

  The gate hums with the sound of an engine. Burning runes on the archway slice through the fog and reveal a surface made of black ice. The doorway is ready to break. Some barely contained terror of the night lands pushes from the other side.

  There is a towering woman in command, a six-armed creature with sleek muscles and bloody eyes. Her skin glitters with the sheen of black diamonds. Runes and piercings cover her body. Her garbled arcane speech echoes into the storm of shadows above.

  She turns, and looks at Danica.

  I’m waiting for you, she says.

  Danica fell back from the vision. The details of the gate and its location had never been so visceral. She gasped for breath, and nearly fell to her knees. Her head was spinning.

  “Dani?” Ronan’s voice was distant, an echo that seemed to come from the far side of a vast field. She looked at him. His face wavered and shook. Hurt flared through her mind.

  “I saw,” she said. She coughed, and shook herself. Ronan helped her up. “I think I was seeing through the eyes of some captives.”

  “Captives?”

  “Vampire captives,” she said. “Prisoners of the Eye, and the six-armed witch.”

  “Dani,” Ronan said. “You’re going to have to repeat that…”

  “I can, but it’s not like I know what I’m talking about,” she said with a bitter laugh. “There’s a six-armed woman…a witch. I’m not sure who or what she is, exactly, but I think she’s somehow taken control of the Witch’s Eye. I think the Witchborn report to her, and I think she’s creating them and taking vampire captives so she can open some sort of…gate. I don’t know where it goes, and I don’t know who she is.” She swallowed. “I don’t know much of anything.”

  “You know a hell of a lot more than I do,” Ronan said. “Wherever this gate goes…”

  “It’s nowhere good,” she said. She took a deep breath. “Ronan…we may be going about this all wrong.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I…I’m still not completely sure what was done to me. The Revengers…” She looked at her steel arm. “They gave me this fucking thing after a vampire bit me. And then the vampires of Lorn molded my mind.” She looked at him. “Maybe you should have killed me.”

  Ronan stared at her. He was probably wondering the same thing.

  “No,” he said. “Absolutely not.”

  She had the image of their destination in her mind, and realized they’d spotted the island they needed to get to just a few minutes before Rourke had brought them into the cove.

  The sky was full with dark clouds, and the wind was colder than before. Danica cranked the engine into gear. The boat roared across the waters.

  Her instincts guided her. She hoped they wouldn’t lead her astray.

  They sped through freezing mist and fog. Beams of failing sunlight pushed through the veil of clouds, and dark birds flew close to the Loch’s surface. Danica steered them through narrow channels of jagged granite and glacial flow. The remains of ships and broken pillars littered the dark waters.

  The waterways were tight. Soon the ship could barely squeeze between the derelict isles, and Danica knew it wouldn’t be long before she and Ronan would have to abandon the boat altogether. She didn’t relish the notion of swimming in those waters.

  Her spirit was restless, and it grew more and more difficult to keep the vampire’s voices out of her head. Even with her spirit shielding her she still felt the undead slither through her mind like a poison song.

  Ronan stayed close, but didn’t say anything. He sharpened his knives and swords and polished a pair of bladed brass knuckles he’d found in one of the ship’s cupboards next to more whiskey and a lot of coin.

  Good to know we’ll have some compensation if we come out of this alive, Danica thought.

  They sailed on. The dull hum of the motor was lost beneath the sound of the churning waves. They navigated clusters of tall rock that obscured view of the wider sea. Smoke rolled at them in waves.

  They were close to the eye of the storm. They’d almost reached the center of Rimefang Loch. The air was noticeably crisp, and colder. The icy waters turned clear enough for them to see the twisted volcanic stone at the bottom of the sea.

  The whispers in Danica’s head suddenly turned to screams. She heard the roar of engines.

  “Ronan!”

  They only had moments to react. Two flying warships appeared out of nowhere, their red-black hulls decorated with chains and bla
des. Bone cannons bore down on the pirate vessel, and the hum of pulse engines growled through the darkening sky.

  Danica pushed the boat faster. Her spirit shielded her and Ronan’s bodies in a carapace of red light. Incendiaries tore through the hull and blazed across the deck. Even with the shield Danica felt the roiling heat.

  The ship exploded beneath them. She grabbed Ronan around his waist and threw them both forward and into the water. There were faces beneath the surface, leering pale visages wrapped in rusted chains and barnacles. Flayed skins floated like moss.

  Her spirit stayed wrapped around them so they could breathe. They swam with their hands linked and kicked their way through the murk, past columns of corpses and towers of bone.

  Cold canisters sank into the depths. The first explosion ripped through the water in a wave of frozen light. She heard a bull doom, a ripple of cold white force. Danica’s spirit absorbed the brunt of the destructive energies, but the blast still tore into them. Water flooded her lungs. She turned end over end and fell up towards the light.

  They floated to the surface. Air rushed into her lungs.

  Chained nets wrapped around them. Edged weights cut into her flesh, and hooks latched onto her armor. She grabbed at the netting with her metal arm and ripped it away. Ronan sliced through the bindings with his katana as he struggled to stay afloat.

  Bone darts struck her in the stomach and back. Her spirit screamed, and faded. More nets wrapped around them. She and Ronan slammed into each other.

  Her limbs twisted and locked. She couldn’t see past her own hands as they were lifted into the air. Blinding floodlights blazed down from the ships.

  They were dropped onto a slick deck. Metal rammed hard against her spine. Her breath was gone, and she floated in pain.

  Danica tried to move, but the net held firm. She felt herself fading, and when she called for her spirit he didn’t respond.

  Narcosm, she realized.

  A scarred man stepped into view, a man cloaked in black. His eyes were hungry, and he wore the slash and claw insignia of the Ebon Cities on his chest. A pale figure stood beside him, tall and regal with death-pale skin, her red-clad bodyguards at her sides.