Hammer of the Witches

by Kai Wai Cheah

  “I hadn’t noticed. But to be fair… It’s not like I had that much distance from her.”

  “Yeah, I only noticed it when I was in the galley, helping her with cooking and stuff.”

  “What do you think is going on?”

  “Well, I’d say she’s into you, but–”

  “She’s not a normal girl,” I finished.

  “Yes. She could be playing you.”

  I paused for a drink. I thought we were over that. I thought the experiences we’d shared would have cemented our partnership. All they had done was inspire even more doubts.

  “Penny for your thoughts?” Pete asked.

  “She’s an outsider. She’s an asset, we may like her, but we have to be careful around her.”

  “Okay, but why do you think she’s acting that way around you?”

  “My best bet? We—the Nemesis Program—are the only way for Hexenhammer to survive. And her. Yes, they can go underground, but once you’re on a terror watch list, you stay there until you’re captured. Or killed. For Hexenhammer to keep going in the long run, they need someone to prove that they are not, in fact, terrorists. And that someone must have the backing of a nation. Like the National Intelligence and Security Agency.”

  “She’s buttering you up?”

  “Can’t say I blame her. That’s how you make allies in this business.”

  “True. But do you think you can trust her?”

  I would have said yes. The word formed on my lips. Then, I remembered Hakem’s words: Eve lied to you. She may have her own reasons for lying, but in this line of work you do not lie to your comrades. If you want them to trust you, you cannot keep vital secrets from them.

  But then wasn’t that exactly what I was doing myself to everyone else in the Program? Including Pete?

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  ***

  Despite my best efforts, Hakem didn’t show his face at night. Nor did he answer any of my mental messages. I just had to make do without him.

  In the morning we set out on foot. A group of tourists had gone ahead of us. Hesperian, by their language and accents, armed with walking sticks and enormous hiking packs and expensive cameras. The three of us stuck to our cover, following them at a respectful distance, but otherwise conversing in German.

  Paved roads and street signs gave way to weathered walking trails and thick forests. Civilization disappeared behind us. The mountains of the Supramonte range loomed all around us, reaching for the sky. Picking our way across the rugged landscape, we encountered groups of hikers and climbers. Some ignored us; others exchanged friendly greetings.

  Eve set the pace. Every hour we hiked for forty-five minutes and rested for fifteen. We didn’t sit during rest periods; that would make getting up harder. Instead, we checked our maps and bearings, tended to our feet, inspected our gear and took photos to reinforce our cover.

  Eve led us off the trail, and the wilderness greeted us. Rabbits stared curiously at us, hopping away when Eve tried to get closer. Martens scrabbled up trees and dashed across the forest floor as we approached. Unseen birds sang to one another. Far away, through a gap in the branches, I spotted a buzzard flying in wide, lazy circles.

  Pete was uncharacteristically quiet. So was Eve. We didn’t say much beyond the absolute minimum. We weren’t here for fun after all. We were here for work.

  We thought we were in shape. We were in shape. But to make it to our destination by nightfall, we had to go far and fast, and it had been a long time since I’d been on a route march like this. My legs grew sore, and the ache sank deep. Sweat stuck my clothes to my body. I guzzled freely from my water bladder.

  Eve had it hardest. As the day passed, her pace grew slower and slower. She spoke less and less. She didn’t want to show it, but the trail was wearing on her.

  At noon we broke for lunch. As she ate, Eve checked her holophone and frowned.

  “Any connection?” I asked.

  It was the first time I had spoken in hours.

  “No,” she replied.

  We rested for an hour, and then we moved out again. Here, the trees were ancient. Gaps opened in the canopy, and where sunlight filtered through, I saw fungi and shrubs and long-dead stumps. Mossy rocks covered the ground. I kept an eye out for rodents, insects and other surprises.

  As we climbed higher and further, the vegetation grew sparser and drier. There was no more moss now, just pale, bare rock and thin tufts of sun-dried grass. A few curious animals shadowed us, but none dared approach.

  When night fell, we made camp at a flat piece of ground. Pete started a fire, and Eve checked her map.

  “We made good time,” she said. “From here we’re just thirty minutes away from the cave.”

  “Finally,” Pete said.

  I took off my boots and socks. My feet, calves, thighs, hips and back ached in that old familiar way, back when I was a twenty-something infantryman humping my body weight across the Near East. But I was older now, and I didn’t have powered armor.

  I dumped enough powder on my feet to turn them white and then massaged the stiff muscles. Eve sat next to me and did the same. Pete opened a few cans of food and boiled their contents in a field stove.

  “Eve, I’m meaning to ask…” Pete began.

  She looked up. “Yeah?”

  “This place is in the middle of nowhere. How did you find the cave?”

  “By accident.”

  “Pretty damn lucky to find it by accident,” I said.

  “Well, the landscape has changed a lot since the first time I found it.” She pointed downhill. “I was over… There, I think, when I first caught sight of it. I was birdwatching at the time. I saw a goshawk fly past me and into the sky. As I tracked it, I saw what looked like a cave opening. I made my way up, and, well, there it was.” She scooted around, scanning the mountains behind us with her flashlight. “Hey, there it is. See that opening over there?”

  Obscured by a shelf of rock, it appeared to be a tiny doorway into the mountain.

  “How did you see it from so far down there?” I asked.

  “I caught a glint of something over there. When I arrived, I saw it was a nugget of aetherium. Pure aetherium. I went deeper into the cave, and I found the spring.”

  “Good eyesight,” I said.

  “Thanks.”

  “And you found the cave all by yourself?” Pete said.

  “Yes.”

  “So you’re saying you went off the beaten path, solo, in a forest where anything could happen to you, and nobody would know?”

  She clicked her tongue. “Back then, I was… moody. Extremely so. But even then, I made sure people knew where I was going, and I kept track of my surroundings.”

  “You said you came here because you needed to think,” I said. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “Yes.”

  She said nothing after that. Pete served us dinner, and we tucked in. It was some kind of meat and vegetable stew. Passable by my standards, but I caught Eve blanching at it.

  “So what answers did you find here?” I pressed.

  “That’s…” She sighed. “Well.”

  “Well?”

  She looked at me, a strange expression on her face. Thoughtful and predatory, intense and earnest, her pupils dilated.

  I leaned in.

  “Well?” I repeated.

  She said nothing. She just stared.

  “Fifty bucks if ya kiss the girl!” Pete called unhelpfully.

  Eve and I quickly withdrew from each other.

  “Trust you to kill the mood,” I said.

  He grinned. “Thank you very much.”

  Eve snorted and looked away. “Well, three years ago, the Pantopian Examiner published cartoons of the Prophet Alim. The backlash was enormous. Protests all around the world, companies pulling advertisements, hackers attacking our site, boycotts against Anglian products. The directors called an all-hands meeting to discuss our next move.

  “We didn’
t have a conventional newsroom. Most of us were scattered all over the continent. We barely even saw each other in person more than once a year or so. Everything we did was over the Net. But we did have a brick-and-mortar office in downtown London.

  “It was a small space inside a commercial building. Just big enough for the editors and to receive guests for high-profile interviews. Everyone was there: the board of directors, the editors, the senior writers.

  “The discussion was intense. We were split into two groups. Half of us, the editors included, wanted to stay the course. We stood for freedom of speech and expression. Nothing we did was illegal. The Home Secretary herself said we had done nothing wrong. If we backed down now, we would be undermining ourselves.

  “But the rest of us said we should withdraw the article and apologize. This group included one of the directors. They hadn’t anticipated such… vehemence. They thought we should appease the crowd before we lost our readership. Before it was too dangerous for us.

  “During a break in the discussion, I left the office to visit the toilet. While I was… doing my business, I heard a man scream, ‘Hakemu valfur!’”

  “It was the terrorists.”

  “Yes. The DW gunmen had arrived. They kicked the door open and tossed in a couple of Soviet grenades. The explosions were so powerful I felt them in the toilet. They yelled, ‘Hakemu valfur,’ again. Then… then they went into the office and shot everybody still alive. Long, long bursts of full-auto fire. Again and again and again.”

  She bit her lip and looked at the ground. “I… I couldn’t do anything. I remember thinking I didn’t want to die sitting on the toilet. I got up. Flushed—I actually remembered to flush—and got dressed. Then, I heard more shooting. Now the terrorists were killing passers-by. They were coming closer. I heard them outside. They were trying to kick down the door. I thought that I was going to die.

  “And… they left.”

  “That was rough,” I said.

  She curled up into a ball. “Yeah. The doors were all keycard locked. Even the toilets. That must have been only way I survived. But, back then, I couldn’t think. I was… just waiting for them to kick down the door and shoot me. And all I could of was that I did not want to die on the toilet.

  “Then they fired through the door.

  “The walls, the wood, everything around me exploded. I curled up on the floor and covered my mouth. I couldn’t let myself scream. I thought this was it.

  “But after a moment, they left.

  “I don’t know how long I stayed in there. Hours, maybe. There wasn’t anything I could do. Then, the armed police came. They called out for survivors. Helped me out of the toilet.

  “It was over. The terrorists were dead. But so were so many more. As the police escorted me out, I saw blood on the walls, bodies on the floor. So many dead.

  “They took me to the hospital. But I was all right.

  “I… The terrorists… They’d killed all my friends. And all I could do was…”

  Her voice trailed away. She looked down, wiping at her eyes. I patted her head. Her hair was so soft.

  “It’s all right now,” I said. “You made it.”

  “Yeah.” She sighed and continued speaking, mostly to the ground. “When it was over, the Examiner was gone. A few other staff members survived. The ones who weren’t there. We… we tried to keep things going. But DW had sent their message loud and clear: cross us, and you will die.

  “Even with insurance and donations, it just wasn’t enough to keep things going. Nobody wanted to talk to us. The families of the dead told us that DW had threatened to kill them if we carried on. Our advertisers pulled out. Without money, we had to fold after half a year.”

  “Damn,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “Without the Examiner I was… lost. One day, I decided I should stop moping around. I had always wanted to visit Sardinia. It was as good a time as any other.

  “I came here. To the mountains. And I found the spring.”

  “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “Yeah. I decided I did not want to be afraid again. I decided to take the war to the enemy. To DW. I am not going to die inside a toilet. If I am going to die, I’d rather die on my feet, sword in hand.”

  I nodded. “I’m glad you’re fighting alongside us.”

  She looked up at me. Her blue eyes wide and glistening. “So am I.”

  “We’re not just fighting DW anymore,” Pete said. “We’re fighting the death squad and the Unmaker, too. We’re in this together. All the way to the bitter end.”

  “All the way,” she agreed.

  ***

  At first light we set off again. Eve set an easy pace, taking extra care to navigate the rocky terrain. When we arrived at the cave, I realized how tiny it was. Pete could barely squeeze through the entrance. If not for the glint of aetherium, she couldn’t possibly have seen it from the ground.

  But her story didn’t feel right.

  Nuggets of pure aetherium do not just lie around waiting for people to pick them up. And the angle was wrong. The rock shelf would have shielded the reflection from casual view.

  “Where did you find the aetherium nugget that led you here?” I asked.

  She pointed at the roof of the cave. “Well, it was more like a stalactite, dripping down from the ceiling. I removed it a couple of years ago.”

  In marked contrast to the smooth, worn rock, there was a tiny, rough stump, as though something had been broken off. The root of the broken stalactite was barely the size of my fist. I wasn’t a mineralogist or a physicist, but I wondered how Eve had seen something so tiny from so far away. Or how nobody else had seen it until she came along.

  Trap?

  Can’t be. She had had plenty of opportunities already. Why go through all this trouble just to kill or capture us?

  So what was going on?

  Metal bars set in concrete blocked off the cave entrance. It had a gate secured by a massive steel lock.

  “Looks like no one tampered with the lock,” Eve said.

  She shone her flashlight into the cave. Thin, barely visible filaments winked back, strung at ankle height at irregular intervals down the depths of the cave.

  “Telltales are still intact,” she continued.

  “Or you might have had intruders who cleaned up after themselves,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  “Why?”

  She winked. “I’ve got more telltales. And it’s almost impossible to bypass the lock if you don’t have the right key.”

  She fired her charagma and opened her right hand. White light flowed down her arm, gathering in her palm. The light condensed into a long metal rod. From the rod grew a forest of teeth running down the shaft in every direction.

  It was the most precise psionic working I had ever seen, and Eve had pulled it off without breaking a sweat. It must be nice to have covenanted with a god.

  Early in my youth, I had quickly discovered I could bypass most locks in the market. I simply had to stuff a small bar of aetherium into the keyhole and then mold the aetherium until it took the shape of the key needed for that specific lock. Ultra-high-security locks had extremely complex internals, requiring a would-be burglar to exercise utmost concentration for several minutes, and the slightest mistake might cause the aetherium key to break off inside the lock.

  But this… I had never seen a key like this before.

  “What kind of lock is it?” I asked.

  “Custom made. It’s one of a kind, and there are no physical keys in existence. The only key is in here.” Eve tapped her temple. “Only Hexenhammer’s most trusted psions know how to create the key.”

  “That’s one way to ensure security,” I said.

  The lock popped open with a heavy SNAP. Eve reabsorbed the aetherium key and opened the gate.

  “There’s a main passage with several secondary ones,” she said. “The secondaries lead to dead ends. Just follow the passage, and
we’ll be fine. But be careful; there is a steep downward grade with plenty of breakdown, and we may encounter animals inside.”

  Eve lithely stepped through, her footing swift and sure. I followed, flashlight in my right hand, my left pressed against the limestone wall to keep my balance. Behind me, Pete performed an elaborate, twisting dance in slow motion, carefully inserting his bulk into the passage.

  “Everybody in?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Pete replied.

  “Okay. Flashlights on. Let’s go.”

  We went down, down, down. Rocks littered the floor. The air was stale and wet. Eve called out the telltales as we approached them, and we took pains to step over the wires.

  “Hey!” Pete said. “There’s a lizard!”

  He shone his light on a rock, revealing a long, thin specimen with mottled green and black coloration. Its moist skin shone in the light. The reptile raised its head, looking at Pete, and blinked.

  It’s a cave salamander,” Eve replied. “Don’t disturb it; it’s an endangered species.”

  The salamander turned its head, tracking me as I passed. Its huge, black eyes revealed nothing, but I couldn’t help but wonder if there was a spark of intelligence in them.

  “Sorry, buddy. We don’t have anything for you,” Pete said.

  The salamander said nothing.

  Narrow tunnels branched off from the main passage. Eve led us past them without comment, but I saw more wires glinting in the light.

  High-pitched squeaks and chirps reverberated in the dark. The passage opened into a large room. Eve played the light across the ceiling, revealing scores of bats.

  The small brown creatures hung upside down from the rock or roosted in crevices. The bats clambered over and around each other, cheeping and chittering, drawn to the light. Guano plastered the walls and floor, thick and pungent.

  “They’re harmless,” Eve said. “Don’t startle them, and you’ll be fine.”

  I did my best not to step on the bat droppings, switching my attention between the bats overhead, the rock around me, and Eve. The bats continued watching us as we passed.