Crown of Ash (Blood Skies, Book 4)

by Steven Montano

  Something struck her from behind, and everything went dark.

  SIX

  BODIES

  Do you?

  Danica woke in the dark. She was sure she’d heard a voice, but it faded in the shadows of her dreams. Images floated through her mind as she came to: blood-soaked horses and iron juggernauts, columns of dark ice and vampire faces behind bladed masks. She woke frightened.

  Her wrists were bound behind her back, and she sensed her spirit, adrift and unable to reach her. Something held him at bay.

  Sweat rolled down her skin. She tasted oil and exhaust. Her face pushed against a warm metal floor.

  “Hello?” she said. Her voice echoed into the darkness. She wasn’t blindfolded, but she might as well have been. The black air was thick with heat. She heard machinery rattle in the distance, but the echoing dark made it all but impossible to pinpoint its exact direction. Her knees ached, and she felt dried blood on her shins where the razor bola had grappled her. She struggled to her feet and bumped her head against something metal.

  “Shit!”

  She tried to summon her spirit again, but he couldn’t answer.

  What have you done to him, you assholes?

  Her first suspicion was that they’d given her Narcosm, an illegal narcotic that sedated a mage’s spirit. Narcosm was difficult to come by and dangerous to use, since forcing a witch or warlock to drink too much could potentially send their spirit into a slumber so deep they’d never come out of it. She’d been forced to use some on Cross to quell his murderous spirit, and while there had really been no other way to save his life she still regretted it.

  That might even be the reason why he can’t wake up.

  Aside from Ilfesa Warfield – a black marketer who had doubtlessly provided Cross with the dose they’d found in his possession, a matter Danica intended to take up with the witch if they ever made it back to Thornn – the only people that Black knew of who made regular use of Narcosm were The Revengers.

  “You might as well come and talk to me,” she said loudly. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”

  No answer. She hadn’t really expected any.

  It was possible she was on an airship, but in spite of the rumbling floor and shaking walls she didn’t think so. The heat and utter darkness made her wonder if she hadn’t been shoved into a boiler room or a storage container.

  For all I know I’m in a giant lunchbox that’s been thrown to the bottom of the ocean and covered up with concrete.

  She’d be alone for a while…perhaps even a long while. Keeping her in the dark and surrounding her with noise so she couldn’t pinpoint her own location was all part of the process of breaking important captives. Had she been a common chattel slave she would have been crammed into a box with forty other prisoners and shipped straight to the prison, where she would toil and die in the red diamond mines.

  Oh, no, that would be too simple for a “traitor”, wouldn’t it?

  They had her. And that meant sooner or later she’d have to face Rake.

  Black had no desire to confront the Head Warden of Black Scar. Even for the brief span of time when she’d completely bought in to The Revenger’s mercenary lifestyle without question, Rake had always struck her as a highly dangerous man. He wasn’t as excessively violent as some of the other enforcers like Mauser or Crane, but in his own way he was more frightening. Rake was cold and calculating, possessed of a quiet and confident sense of authority. Between him and his right-hand man, Geist, hundreds of prisoners had been tortured to death in Black Scar, and many more had been killed.

  She had no doubt he’d taken her defection personally. There was a cold reception waiting for her, if indeed they planned to return her to Black Scar.

  They weren’t in Blacksand just looking for me, she told herself. They had to have been in the area on other business, searching for new prisoners or making a prisoner drop. But they did go through an awful lot of trouble to bring me in once they realized I was here.

  Something didn’t add up.

  Her eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness. There was actually a subtle trace of light, so faint and dim it was all but impossible to tell where it came from. She could see her hands, but only barely.

  Danica saw the outline of a bulky metallic structure close by, so she cautiously walked over to it, moving her feet carefully as she tread through the dark for fear of tripping over something. The anticipation of running into anything in her near-blind state put her nerves on edge.

  The object was cold and still, and Danica guessed it was an old boiler or a generator. She put her back up against it and slowly edged along its face.

  Danica found a short piece of broken metal sticking out of the equipment. She set her bonds against the edge and quietly sawed up and down to cut herself free.

  Danica couldn’t begin to count how many people had died by her hand or on account of her orders in Black Scar. It was a corrupt and utterly deadly place, a repository for the lost. Prisoners of all races, ages and creeds suffered in inadequate living conditions, where they were kept malnourished and exhausted. They were forced into the deep mines where they searched for the elusive red diamonds; marched through underground fields of decaying matter to meet slave buyers from the renegade necropolis of Koth; put to the test in gladiator games or races. Whenever the prison ran out of room, surplus inmates were slaughtered.

  She saw the faces of the dead when she closed her eyes. Their voices haunted her dreams. Danica had spent over two years trying to empty her soul of guilt, but there was no escaping the past.

  There never is. You just learn to live with it.

  Time passed. She had no idea how long it was, but she guessed a few minutes went by before she’d managed to snap the rope binding her raw and bloody wrists. Her entire body was sore, and her spirit remained just out of reach.

  She stumbled through the dark. There was absolutely no way to see in the sweaty shadows, and she couldn’t locate the walls. Once she left the piece of machinery behind she might as well have been wandering through a black desert.

  Danica walked slowly. She couldn’t even hear her own footsteps. There was a nasty cut on the left side of her face from her battle with the Talon, and it stung when she so much as put a finger to it. Her shoulders and arms ached, and her head felt light from lack of food or water.

  She walked. Someone would eventually come and make sure she hadn’t tried to escape.

  Unless I’ve been left for dead somewhere…now there’s a refreshing thought.

  With no sight of her surroundings, Danica continued to walk cautiously, and held her hands out in front of her. She was all but defenseless without her spirit, and the fact that she couldn’t reach him was driving her crazy.

  She passed through metal noise, half-expecting to crash into an obstacle or fall into a hole. Danica chided herself for moving so slow and tried to increase her pace, but she still flinched with every step.

  Just get down and crawl, you dumb shit.

  Danica dropped down and leopard-crawled across the floor. The ground was slick with what smelled like oil, and she struggled to make good time, but she no longer worried about crashing into anything.

  She went what felt like a considerable distance. Her elbows and knees grew sore.

  Remember Krul. Nothing was as horrible as that place. Just keep it together. If you made it through that, you can make it through anything.

  Stench filled her nostrils, a different smell than the industrial bile and smoke haze she’d encountered thus far. This new miasma clung to the back of her throat, and after a moment she identified it as rot and body waste. The smell was so strong she nearly gagged on it. Danica steeled herself, clenched her fists, and kept crawling.

  Oil became something more viscous, gummy and thick. Danica knew she was in the presence of dead bodies. She pictured the corpses in her head, festering and piled on top of one another. She smelled innards and dried blood, oozing wounds that had gelled over. Blood and urine an
d brains and opened stomachs had spilled onto the floor.

  She froze, and held herself still. Something stirred in the dark.

  Awesome.

  Danica froze. The scrape of metal tore through the air, and a sudden blast of light sliced out of the darkness to her left. She was blinded for a moment until her eyes could adjust.

  Silhouettes moved in the grainy white haze. Armored men marched towards her. She heard the whir of machinery gears and the sizzle of industrial juices as they struck the ground.

  Gaunt armored bodies like black iron skeletons approached. They were grinning animated corpses with glowing diamond eyes, heavy 20mm rifles and gangly claws. Each metal-clad corpse stood at least seven feet tall and walked on cloven feet. Cold steam peeled away from their armored hides.

  “Well you’re new…” she said, and one of the iron sentries reached down and forcefully hauled her to her feet. “Let go…”

  Danica saw a mound of corpses. She’d crawled to within just a few feet of a putrid pile of mangled bodies. The room was some sort of massive container, a metal repository for the dead. The bodies had been cut and mutilated by hammer and blade. She saw crushed skulls and open chest cavities and discarded limbs. Pools of congealed blood and intestinal juices covered the floor.

  Black closed her eyes and willed the image away. She’d been near mass graves before. She’d never wanted to be there again.

  The skeleton sentries pushed her out of the container and into the light. Dank wind stung her face. She heard crashing waves and the roar of enormous beasts.

  They were still in Blacksand, or at least close to it. The Revenger’s camp was larger than she’d thought it would be. Three warships formed a loose perimeter around a Sherman tank and a pair of war wagons. A group of black-skinned Ebonbacks grazed in the sandy slopes to the east.

  They were half-a-mile outside the crude city gates, at the edge of an expanse of pale sands dunes and granite hills littered with towers of salt. Palm trees swayed in the bitter ocean breeze. The sun hid behind a thin veil of crystal clouds, and the air was startlingly cold. Dirigibles and gargoyles filled the sky over Blacksand.

  They could take the city over if they wanted to. She imagined they had some need to leave the criminal port alone, if even because it would have been an inefficient use of resources to take it. The Revengers were nothing if not frugal with their hard-earned cash.

  The rusted iron disposal bin they’d stuck Danica in was at the edge of the Revenger camp. She couldn’t imagine where all of the bodies had come from.

  “Prisoners,” a voice said from behind her. The voice was heavy with a British accent. “Your friend, Klos Vago, had a large number of slaves he’d proved incapable of selling, so he handed them over to us.”

  The man was tall and lean and had thick brown hair. Easily six-foot-three, the imposing Warden wore dark armor that tightly hugged his muscular frame, and he appeared unarmed, which Danica knew, of course, wasn’t the case.

  “Burke,” she said. “I’m surprised they let you out of your hole.” She looked back at the bodies. “So why kill them? No room in the mines these days?”

  “They served their purpose,” Burke smiled. “How’ve you been, Dani?”

  “Better.”

  “I can see that. Nasty blow to the head you took there…”

  “Cut the shit. What do you want with me?”

  Burke just smiled.

  “Come on, Dani. What do you think?”

  Burke nodded at the skeletons, and they lifted her up off the ground. Her arms felt like they’d crack within their iron grip, and her shoulders felt ready to come out of their sockets.

  “Ouch! Damn it, Burke!”

  “Shut up, Dani. All right? There’s a good girl.”

  They led her down the slope and into the center of camp. Men wandered about, shaving themselves or eating from tin cans, cleaning weapons or throwing knives at crude targets. Boxes of ammunition and equipment were kept under careful watch inside of white tents. A dozen men lined up at a long table covered with bowls and a cauldron of steaming soup.

  They all looked at her as she was marched by. Some seemed to recognize her, others didn’t. They all regarded her with the same cold contempt.

  The skeletons took her straight to one of the war wagons, ugly and brutish devices made of black steel and arcane iron. Turbine engines on the backs of the vehicles could propel them rapidly across the ground, and anti-personnel mines, motorguns and flak cannons lent them considerable firepower.

  A dark-skinned woman waited near one of the wagons. She had braided hair and form-fitting black and purple armor, a pair of katanas strapped across her back, and runic tattoos that covered her cheeks, neck and bone-thin arms. The woman smiled as the golems brought Danica close to her.

  “Danica Black,” Burke said with a smile. “This is Raven Darkmoon. Your replacement in our ranks.”

  “Charmed,” Danica smiled.

  “Likewise,” Raven said. Her smile was broad and skeletal, and her voice was deep and smooth.

  “Right,” Burke said. “Listen, Dani, I’d rather not beat around the proverbial bush, so tell us…where is your friend Cross?”

  Danica looked at him. An Ebonback roared in the distance.

  “Eat shit,” Danica replied.

  Raven nonchalantly drew a blade and sliced Danica’s forearm open. The sharp pain made her cry out. Blood poured from the wound. She winced and tried to twist away, but the golems held her tight. Her feet barely touched the ground.

  “Bitch!” she shouted.

  Raven just smiled.

  “That was a love touch,” Raven said seductively. “I know a lot of games we can play…”

  “I’ll bet you do,” Black said. “What do you want with Cross?” she said to Burke.

  “That’s not your concern,” Burke said. “What is your concern is what will happen if you don’t cooperate.”

  Raven smiled, and then whistled. Two Revengers in dark armor brought a gagged and struggling prisoner around the corner of the nearest wagon.

  Black’s heart jumped into her throat. She couldn’t believe it. It had been over two years since she’d seen her.

  “Lara!”

  Cole looked at her through dark and mottled hair. Her face was badly bruised, and her ranger’s armor was torn and bloodied.

  “Now,” Burke said. “As I was saying…where is Cross?”

  Raven’s eyes glowed with delight. Cole started to cry.

  Black couldn’t stop shaking. She’d never been so afraid.

  SEVEN

  SKINS

  The black lands batter him with coal rain. Hills like scars loom on the uncertain horizon. The air is a blood haze, and the ground is brittle and dry. Cracks in the earth hold pools of stagnant water. Voices linger in the black wind.

  The city is behind him. He’s left the Eidolos alone with its painful desires to be free. Now he stumbles across a stygian world filled with frozen ash.

  Something in the sky seems to follow him, a vague shadow like an obtuse hawk. Distant shapes fold and distort, clouds twisted into dark faces.

  He moves with purpose. He searches for the entrance to the Shadow Lord’s territory.

  I can escape this place, he thinks, but the thoughts don’t come easy to him. His blade gives him the strength to retain a sense of his own identity in this shadow-drenched world. Without it he would be a formless shade, another refugee of the perpetually eclipsed landscape. I can be free.

  We can be more. The Eidolos’ words ring in his mind.

  The land slopes up. He is suddenly close to the trees, which are sharp and twisted like handfuls of blades. Dark fumes fill the air. The roars of beasts echo from deep within the black forest.

  The constant blood sun dips lower, obscured by phantom clouds.

  He’s never walked near these woods before. Somehow, in spite of years spent exploring the Whisperlands, he’s never witnessed this forest, not until the Eidolos directed him to it.

&nbs
p; The dread wind carries leaves that crackle like bones. Every step he takes kicks up ecologies of shadow insects. Pitiless moans ooze from the dark.

  Vaguely humanoid creatures twist and slither like half-melted serpents at the edge of his vision. Loose stones and twigs roll down the hill as he ascends.

  Distant storm clouds boil and churn with electric light. Thunder echoes through the tin sky.

  His body groans with tension. He feels eyes on in him in the dark, the gaze of cold and hungry shadows.

  Natives stand at the edge of the forest. They look out over the path that leads to the heart of the grim woods.

  He can’t make the figures out clearly. They aren’t the same arcane wanderers he’s spied before, those people made black by the necrotic essence of the calcified plains. These new creatures are different. They aren’t human, but conglomerations of dissident life forces. One moment they resemble hawks, and in the next they are simian. They are leopards and then wolves, humanoid and then serpent.

  Whatever they are, the creatures keep their distance. He wonders if maybe they’re the bastard offspring of fused worlds, randomly jettisoned souls that have melted together into unstable forms. They are hybridized survivors without any true identity, creatures so drenched in darkness they don’t even realize what abominations they’ve become. They mewl and growl at his passing, but they keep their distance.

  The world is vast behind him. He looks back over his shoulder and sees endless plains like dry oceans. The wastelands are broken and withered. Fissures in the ground leak vapors that congeal into mist-sludge. The horizon is preposterously far away, a tiny cut at the edge of a blank nowhere. There are mountains and hills and the ruins of cities in the distance. Black lightning scars the sky.

  He can see further than before. The shadows seem less thick.

  Things are more real here, he realizes. I’m closer to the border. Closer to the edge of the Whisperlands.

  He follows the Eidolos’ directions, empathic knowledge not so much known as felt. His instincts guide him, even though he knows they are not his instincts, for the knowledge has been instilled in his mind.