Witchbreaker (Dragon Apocalypse)

by James Maxey

  She led Trunk up the stairs to the top of the wall. She shielded her eyes from the fierce noon sun as she studied the jungle, gray and withered, devastated by the cold. From her vantage point, she could see a slope of black beyond the trees, evidence of the recent lava flow. If Stagger’s description was correct, it looked as if the lava hadn’t covered the area of the graveyard.

  Two hours later, she’d barely made it a hundred yards into the jungle. The ground was mushy, and Trunk kept sinking up to his knees. Sorrow grew coated in mud herself as she worked to free him and drag their supplies forward. She lost one of her boots in the sucking mire. She pressed her lips tightly together as she stared at her now bare foot.

  She wasn’t overly sentimental, but she missed her toes. After her strange dream of witnessing dragons debating the fate of mankind, the changes in her legs had gotten worse. Her feet were now covered in overlapping bands of scales that tapered to points. If she pressed hard, she could barely feel the bones of her toes still present beneath the hard surface.

  The uncertainty over whether her physical changes had halted added a sense of urgency to her quest to find the Witches’ Graveyard. The few remaining practitioners of the art of weaving placed great value in their privacy, and the handful she’d tracked down had seldom given Sorrow a warm welcome. Sorrow’s pursuit of power had earned her more than a few enemies; no living weavers wanted to make themselves a target of the forces allied against her.

  Her hope of pushing her education further now lay with dead weavers. She was certain that if she could study the skulls of witches, she could learn a great deal by documenting how they’d placed nails into their brains. With any luck, she wasn’t the first weaver to tap the power of a primal dragon. She might yet discover the secret to using Rott’s power without corrupting her body.

  It was nearly sunset when she finally found the hilly slope covered with rows of long narrow depressions that Stagger had described. Her nostrils twitched as she hacked her way through the spiky vines that draped the area. Was she smelling fire? Or was it just a lingering odor from the volcanic eruption?

  She sliced her way through a curtain of dying vines and found herself in an area relatively free of undergrowth. The canopy of trees here was particularly thick, blanketing the area in a perpetual gloom that suppressed smaller plants. She looked up the hill and saw a granite bolder, nearly the size of a house, shaped something like a heart. It looked top heavy and a little out of place despite being girded with thick vines. She suspected it had rolled down the mountain many years ago. Next to the boulder, she saw a small makeshift tent, little more than a large blanket stretched over some branches. Near this was a smoldering fire pit.

  She cocked her head. She could hear voices from the other side of the boulder.

  She looked toward Trunk and motioned for him to drop his pack. She opened a bundle of tools and supplied him with an axe, then nodded for him to follow. Armed with her machete, she crept silently up the hill. Stagger had warned her that treasure seekers often tried their luck around the Knight’s Castle. From what she knew, these were desperate men of low morals who might not behave honorably. She had no fear that they were an actual danger to her, but if they did look problematic, she saw no reason to waste the advantage of surprise.

  She pressed herself against the heart-shaped boulder and listened to the voices from the other side.

  “Here’s another one!” said a man in a curiously high-pitched, falsetto tone.

  “Gold?” a second man asked, sounding hopeful.

  “No. It’s green. Maybe more glass? The light’s getting bad.”

  “Let me see,” said the second man.

  Sorrow furrowed her brow. She’d heard these voices before. What were they doing out here? Then she realized why she hadn’t been able to find her map when she abandoned the Freewind.

  She marched around the boulder and saw a mound of damp earth piled a few dozen feet away. A tall blond man was standing in the pit beside the mound, visible only from his bare shoulders up.

  “Brand!” she shouted, stomping toward him.

  The blond man looked up. His eyes grew wide. “Sorrow? I didn’t expect to see you out here.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t!”

  He grabbed a root near the edge of the pit and started to pull himself up. He was half out of the hole when she placed her boot on his shoulder and knocked him back in. He landed next to the second figure in the pit, a pot-bellied dwarf wearing a platinum blonde wig.

  “Villain!” the dwarf shrieked, shaking his fist. “You’ll pay dearly for striking the scion of King Brightmoon!”

  “It’s okay,” said Brand, rising to his knees. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”

  “You stole my map!” said Sorrow.

  “Technically, I found a map in the rubble when we were hastily packing. How was I to know it was yours?”

  “It was in my cabin!”

  “Things got sloshed around when the ship capsized. There’s no telling where it originally came from.”

  “You knew it wasn’t yours!”

  Brand nodded. “Okay, sure, that’s true. But, honestly, when I found it, I saw the word ‘treasure’ in large letters, underlined, and thought it was a joke. I doubt that most people who hide buried treasure do that.”

  “You took it seriously enough to come out into the jungle.”

  “Also true,” said Brand. “But after Gale fired me, all the princess and I had were the clothes on our backs. We need to raise some scratch to get back to the Silver Isles. What did we have to lose?”

  “The princess?” Sorrow rolled her eyes. “Bigsby still thinks he’s Innocent Brightmoon? And you’re still humoring him?”

  “‘Him’?” asked Bigsby. “Who’s she talking about?”

  Brand shrugged.

  “I should just fill in this hole with both of you in it,” grumbled Sorrow. “The world has more than enough thieves.”

  “Have a care, commoner,” said Bigsby, wiping a muddy strand of blonde hair from his face. “We don’t care for your tone or your accusations.”

  “I’m not a thief,” said Brand. “I’m just lucky at finding stuff.”

  “Like those shovels and pickaxes? Since you’re broke, you obviously didn’t acquire them honestly.”

  “It depends on how you define honest. We holed up on the Black Swan for a few days during the worst of the blizzard. I earned a few moons reading palms for the patrons.”

  “You read palms?”

  “To the extent that anyone reads palms, sure,” said Brand. “It’s a talent I picked up traveling with the circus.”

  “He’s very good,” said Bigsby.

  Sorrow clenched her fists. “You’ve no magical powers. I’d spot it in your aura if you did.”

  “I didn’t say I knew magic,” said Brand. “Fortune telling is ninety per cent listening to your clients, and ten per cent repeating their words back to them with a twist.”

  “So you swindle fools,” said Sorrow. “All the more reason the world won’t miss you if I fill in this pit.”

  “I didn’t swindle anyone. My clients are very happy with my work. Let me do you.”

  “I think not,” said Sorrow. “You’ve nothing to tell me about myself I don’t already know.”

  “I can tell you you’re not going to bury us,” said Brand.

  Sorrow sighed. “No, I suppose I’m not. I’ll let you out if you promise to leave peacefully. If you refuse, you know what I’m capable of.”

  “How about this?” asked Brand. “We get out of the pit, we all eat dinner together, and tomorrow we work as a team to look for the treasure, whatever it is.”

  Sorrow studied Brand’s face. He smiled at her, but this didn’t help his cause. She hadn’t much liked him when they traveled together on the Freewind. Brand was little more than a prostitute, a pretty young man who served as the sexual toy of Captain Gale Romer, a woman old enough to be his mother. On the other hand, one reason that Gale ha
d been so smitten with him was that Brand was a rather impressive physical specimen. Having a gravedigger with broad shoulders and a strong back could speed up her search.

  “Fine,” said Sorrow. “But you’ll work as my employees, not my partners. I’ll pay you a set fee to dig graves. What we find will be mine alone. At least you won’t be digging blindly with the chance of winding up empty-handed. I’ll compensate you and Bigsby a moon for each grave you excavate.”

  “I’m not Bigsby!” the dwarf shrieked. “Why does everyone keep calling me that? Has the whole world gone mad?”

  Sorrow closed her eyes and rubbed them. It wasn’t too late to have Trunk dismember them both with his axe.

  She sighed. She’d always thought of herself as a defender of those outside of the mainstream of society. An insane cross-dressing dwarf certainly fell into that category. How much did she truly believe in her own cause if, when confronted by a person who was an even more of an outcast than her, her first instinct was to bury him in an unmarked grave?

  “Sorry, Innocent,” she said softly. “I’m just tired. I got confused.”

  “You’re still confused if you think you can address me in such a familiar fashion,” Bigsby said huffily.

  “Sorry, your highness,” she said.

  “The apology is accepted,” said Bigsby. “But we reject your offer. Any treasure we find is rightfully ours.”

  “Hold on,” said Brand. “We only need enough money to get passage back to the Silver Isles. We’ll be rich once we’re home. Why be greedy?”

  “That’s quite rational of you,” said Sorrow. “You wouldn’t be trying to trick me?”

  “Nope,” said Brand. He grinned. “If you can’t trust royalty, who can you trust?”

  “By the pure metals,” Sorrow said, shaking her head. “I’m probably going to regret this.”

  She turned toward Trunk. “Help them out.”

  Brand helped Bigsby steady himself as Trunk lifted him to the surface. Brand didn’t wait for Trunk to bend back again, but once more grabbed a root and scrambled out.

  “If it was your map, do you have any idea of what it is we’re looking for?”

  “Some,” said Sorrow.

  “I don’t suppose we’re looking for very fancy knitting needles, are we?” Brand asked, holding up a slender jade shaft.

  “You found one!” said Sorrow. “Where’s the skull that held it?”

  “There wasn’t a skull,” said Brand. “If these pits used to be graves, any human remains rotted away a long time ago.” He pulled two more of the shafts from his pocket. “We also found these rods of onyx and glass.”

  Sorrow took the glass rod, feeling both excited and disappointed. She already had a nail of glass, and saw no benefit to adding a nail of jade or onyx. “How much do you know about my abilities?”

  “We know you’re a witch,” said Bigsby.

  Sorrow nodded. “More precisely, I’m a materialist. By using these nails, I can gain mastery over objects made from the same base materials.”

  “How?” asked Bigsby.

  “You really don’t want to know.”

  “I do! I command you to tell me how to use these items!”

  Sorrow drew back her hood, revealing her shaved scalp. “Fine. You take a hammer and nail these into your head.”

  “Really?” Bigsby asked. “It’s that simple?”

  “I wouldn’t call it simple. A misplaced nail can kill a weaver. If you’re lucky enough to live, you’re marked forever as a dangerous heretic who can be legally put to death on sight. All power comes with a price.”

  “But you could show me how to place one of the nails in my scalp?” asked Bigsby. “I could gain your powers?”

  “Only women can do it. For reasons I’m not sure of, men always cripple themselves if they try.”

  “Why should that be a problem for me?” Bigsby asked.

  “It’s a problem because we’re royalty, sister,” said Brand. “We represent not just our people, but our religion. Since the Church of the Book says that witches are sinful, imagine the scandal if a princess showed up in court with a nail in her head.”

  “Good point,” said Bigsby.

  Sorrow had to admire the calm tone Brand used in addressing Bigsby. She wasn’t certain he was doing the right thing by manipulating the dwarf’s delusions, but he seemed good at it.

  She said, “You can keep these nails. They will be of interest to collectors. The jade nail might be worth a hundred moons. What I’m looking for are nails I’ve never seen before. And skulls. Especially skulls.” She looked around the darkening jungle. There were hundreds of depressions. She shook her head. “Why did you choose to dig here?”

  Brand pointed down the hill. “This is pretty much the highest point among the graves, so I didn’t think we’d have to deal with a lot of groundwater. The graves further down would probably fill up with water faster than we could dig.”

  “Probably,” she said. “Still, I hate to think that our search is going to be so... random. This could take a long time.”

  “Do you know anything that might help us pick the best targets?” Brand asked.

  Sorrow shook her head. She glanced at the smoldering fire of their pathetic campsite. She said, “Why don’t the two of you get that fire going again while Trunk and I unpack? No point digging further tonight. We can eat dinner, get some sleep, then figure out the best way to tackle this in the morning.”

  Bigsby looked the golem up and down. “I confess, I’ve not been as good a student of theology as I should have been. Why does the church hate witches? Being able to build a helper like this seems rather useful.”

  “Indeed,” said Sorrow, giving Trunk hand signals to clear ground to pitch their tent. “Perhaps a bit too useful. Weavers lived in peace for a long time among the rest of humanity until Avaris, Queen of Witches, used her powers to carve out her own kingdom. She upset the existing order of the world by crafting a society in which women were held in higher esteem than men. The church’s hatred of witches has more to do with politics than theology.”

  Trunk tossed aside a small boulder nearly a yard across that had to weigh several hundred pounds. Bigsby looked impressed as the rock rolled down the hill.

  “This thing’s as strong as Infidel,” he said.

  “Probably,” said Sorrow. “And much more cooperative. I don’t know why I wasted my time trying to persuade Infidel to join my cause. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from life, if I’m to truly have companions I can rely on, I must build them myself.”

  SORROW LAY AWAKE through the night. Though she had pitched her tent twenty yards distant from the brothers, she could still hear Bigsby snoring. But that wasn’t the main reason she couldn’t sleep. Partially, there was a sense of anticipation. She’d first heard about the Witches’ Graveyard almost seven years ago, and it felt unreal that she’d found something she’d been searching for after all this time. The fact that three nails had been discovered in the first grave was a good omen. Honestly, she hadn’t expected to find any. If these were the graves of victims of Lord Tower, the Witchbreaker, she would have guessed the nails would have been removed either before or after execution. Perhaps only valuable nails had been treated this way. Jade and onyx resembled colored glass; perhaps they’d been left in the grave by mistake.

  Underlying her excitement was dread. There had been no skull, or any bones at all. What if she’d come all this way in vain? What if she spent the next year of her life digging for secrets and found none?

  She was almost tempted to put Brand’s fortune-telling talents to the test. Almost. He’d as much as admitted his skills were mere trickery. But perhaps there was some value in having someone listen attentively as she spoke. She’d kept her talks with the Romer family short and professional. They’d been employees, not friends. She’d opened up a bit with Infidel, but, in the end, they’d had little to say to one another.

  She found it interesting that Brand might be a good enough listener th
at other people paid for the service. Perhaps it was worth spending a moon or two for a demonstration.

  Still unable to sleep, she turned on her side, lowering her hand to scratch her left ankle. Her nails slid along the hard, glassy surface of the scales without managing in the least to relieve the itch. She scratched with more pressure, and succeeded only in slicing open the tip of her finger along the edge of one of the scales. She sat up in her tent and reached for her belt. She used the hard surface of the buckle to scrape her ankle vigorously.

  She stopped scraping as she heard someone laugh directly behind her.

  She spun around and found a pygmy standing not a yard away. How had he gotten into the tent? At least he didn’t appear menacing. For starters, he was elderly, his face looking like wrinkled leather over his skull. He was so thin she could have counted his ribs. He was bald, devoid of any of scars that most pygmies sported. He was also missing the pygmy dyes that rendered river pygmies blue. He was white as cotton, save for his eyes, black and empty sockets in the dark tent. The skull-like quality of his face was enhanced by his grin, which showed his teeth.

  She reached out to grab him as she said, “How did you get in here?” He stepped backward and her fingers closed on empty air. He laughed softly, then sighed, shaking his head.

  She lunged, this time trying to grab him with both hands. He jumped backward. He laughed as he watched her hands flail uselessly in the space he’d stood a heartbeat earlier. But his back was now pressed against the wall of the tent. There was no more room to retreat.

  “You aren’t going to think this is funny when I’m through with you,” she said, reaching for his throat.

  He stepped backward, fading through the tent as if it were made of fog instead of heavy oilcloth. Her hands smacked into it with a thump. She stared at the empty wall. Was she dreaming again? Admittedly, she was exhausted, and had been drifting in and out of the antechamber of sleep. But she was definitely awake now. Wasn’t she?