Wintercraft: Blackwatch (20 page)
‘And what would that be?’ asked Silas.
‘I am not your enemy,’ said Dalliah. ‘We are the same. Equals.’
‘If that is true, why send the Blackwatch to hunt me?’
‘Because I can no longer afford to leave anything to chance. Do you know how many people are looking for you? Securing the Blackwatch was a necessity. If they had found you before I did, they would have delivered you straight to the Continental leadership. I knew you would be weakened here and they are very effective hunters. I could not risk them finding you first, so I made Bandermain an offer. I secured his services and those of his men for as long as it took us to find you. As you can see, their efforts were successful.’
‘We knew where you were,’ said Bandermain. ‘My men have had eyes upon you from the moment you left Fume’s walls, but we could not approach you within your own country. We had to lure you here, where you would be weakened enough to control. Fortunately, I have an asset posted within your capital that you and your council have overlooked for a very long time. One of my agents is stationed within your city walls. His orders are to gather information about your capital’s weaknesses, its routines and the people in power. He has been very useful to me over the years.’
‘Spies within Fume are nothing new,’ said Silas. ‘I have killed dozens of Blackwatch agents myself.’
‘You hunt your enemies in the shadows,’ said Bandermain. ‘This one lives in clear sight. All I had to do was point him in your direction when the opportunity presented itself and I knew he would lead you to me. The right amount of gold placed in the right hands carries a great deal of influence in Albion society. At first he was just a spy, but the right opportunities taken at the right time allowed him to become much more. While you were gathering up your own people to send to war, he became a trusted friend of one of your High Councilmen. In time, every decision the old man made was discussed with my agent first. Through him, the Blackwatch were able to hear every secret the council had – secrets they never would have shared with someone like you. I know more about your country’s leaders than you do, Silas. When the old man died, he had already named his successor. The indispensable friend who had been so helpful to him in his final years.’
‘You have an agent on the High Council,’ said Silas. ‘Who?’
‘Did you not find it suspicious that a High Council member would arrange a meeting with one of your known associates at a place you just happened to be?’ said Bandermain. ‘It was a gamble, sending him there, but when he talked to your friend about Dalliah Grey you took the bait perfectly. Who do you think has been coordinating the deliberately incompetent search for you? Do you really believe the wardens would not have found you by now unless someone was intentionally leading them away from your trail? My men have been inside Fume for years, watching your people eat themselves away from the inside. You and your wardens have done more damage to your country than we ever could. All we have to do is sit back and watch you destroy yourselves.’
‘When I return to Albion, your man will be the first to die,’ said Silas.
‘I do not think so. You have already had a hand in the murder of one councilwoman. The wardens will not let you anywhere near the High Council again.’
The room flooded with Silas’s rage. He was about to challenge Bandermain when Dalliah stepped calmly between them.
‘We do not have time for your petty disagreements,’ she said. ‘We are all well aware of Silas’s history, and we know the fate that befell his former mistress.’
‘Da’ru is dead,’ said Silas. ‘As Bandermain and his men soon will be.’
‘She and I communicated many times when she was alive,’ said Dalliah. ‘There was a time when I believed she might eventually be strong enough to help me complete my work. You cannot deny what she did was impressive. She did not have the abilities of a Walker, yet she mastered Wintercraft enough to bind a soul to her own.’
‘I was there. I know what she did.’
‘Da’ru’s death was no surprise to me,’ said Dalliah. ‘I may not have foreseen it, but I knew it was inevitable. I followed her progress from childhood, and it was my research that first allowed her to locate the book hidden within a Winters grave. At that time, I believed all of the greatest Skilled families were long dead and that someone like Da’ru would be my only chance to regain what I had lost, but from the moment Kate Winters first entered the veil I knew I was wrong. Da’ru was a distraction. She was not ready for the world I planned to show her. Kate is different. She is the one we need.’
‘I do not need anything,’ said Silas.
‘It has not been long since your spirit was broken. You may accept it now, but in fifty, eighty years, when everything you have known has changed, you will not be so amenable,’ said Dalliah. ‘Only the two of us know what it is like to be feared by the living and turned away by death. Our fates are the same. We will be left to walk this world together long after the last of our enemies and allies are dead and gone. But fate
can
be changed. We can reclaim our spirits and free them from the dark. This is your chance to make things right.’
can
be changed. We can reclaim our spirits and free them from the dark. This is your chance to make things right.’
‘I am not interested.’
‘You will be.’ Dalliah reached out to touch Silas’s face and he snatched her hand away.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Opening your eyes,’ said Dalliah. ‘The veil will answer us more easily upon my land. With my help, you can see what has become of Kate for yourself. If she dies before her time, our hopes will die with her.’
Silas felt the energy of the veil gathering around Dalliah and saw frost creeping across her fingernails and along her eyelashes as the veil closed in. He had no reason to trust her, but, suspicious as he was, a part of him was interested in what she had to say. She was the only person who knew what it was like to live his life, and how much he wanted to undo the damage done to his spirit. He wanted to trust her, so he allowed her hand to rest against his face and let his thoughts lift gently into the veil’s cold mist.
The veil swept icily across the room, allowing Silas to see the energies of life carried deep within the people around him as if a filter had been placed across his eyes. Normally, the spirit carried in a person’s body was visible as a bright all-encompassing glow that spread from the core of their body into a pale aura that misted around them. Dalliah’s spirit was very different. She barely carried any light at all, only a tiny speck of white focused in the very centre of her chest, offering proof at least that she truly did possess a broken soul. But Bandermain’s energy was the biggest surprise.
Instead of the soft light that normally surrounded the living, Bandermain’s body was shrouded in a sickly glow. His spirit was there, but it was pulsing weakly, trying to pull away from a body that could no longer support it within the living world. Only Silas’s veil-sight could reveal the truth. Bandermain’s body was weakened to the point of collapse, his spirit eager and ready to pass into death. With energies like that, he should already have been dead, yet on the surface he still looked relatively well.
Bandermain was certainly a curiosity, but Silas turned his attention away from him and concentrated upon searching for Kate instead. He did not need to look very far.
The spirit of a living Walker who had not been trained to control her ability acted like a powerful magnet within the veil, attracting everything else towards it and shining brightly like a blazing light. The physical distance between them made no difference. The veil did not recognise distance or time; everything within it was connected. When Silas focused upon Kate, the veil revealed her to him.
Kate was barely alive, her body huddled limply inside an empty tomb of stone. Seeing her there, so close to death, sent a pang of guilt coursing through his soul. He had warned her to leave the city. When he left her behind he had trusted she would be protected. She was not supposed to be there. Not like that. She was supposed to be safe.
Aware of Dalliah’s presence close by, Silas could not afford to reveal his fears for the girl. He focused all his concentration upon finding her instead. That tomb could have been anywhere within the maze of Fume’s ancient underground caverns. There was no way to tell where.
Dalliah’s spirit moved beside him, joining him in the veil.
‘The Skilled turned against her, just as you warned her they would,’ she said. ‘They tried to kill her. She and the boy barely escaped. Now she is overwhelmed. The only knowledge she has of the veil is that which you gave her, and it was slim at best. She cannot control her connection to it, and if she does not gain control soon the veil will claim her, have no doubt of that. Even death will not find her spirit if it wanders too far, and if she survives the Skilled will still find her and finish her. You left Kate to the mercy of the wolves, Silas. This is the consequence of what you have done.’
There were many things in Silas’s life that he had reason to regret, but at that moment he regretted nothing more than riding his stolen horse out of Fume knowing that Kate would be hunted. Knowing that there were precious few people she could trust. He had been alone for too long. He had let his own fears cloud his judgement. Kate had helped him when every other living soul feared him, and he had abandoned her.
‘Walkers have lived in Fume for centuries,’ he said. ‘None of them were affected in this way.’
‘That is because none of them lived in times like these,’ said Dalliah. ‘Something has changed. The veil is weakening. The barrier between this world and the next is coming to an end.’
‘That is impossible. The veil cannot fall.’
‘Everything dies,’ said Dalliah. ‘This world will die one day. Even we, eventually, will cease to live, though it may not be the form of death that we expect. All it takes is the right conditions. The correct sequence of events. Five hundred years ago, the bonemen made a mistake. They experimented with Wintercraft and changed the course of history. They were the ones who first tore the veil with their experiments upon the dead and the dying. They were ignorant. None of them knew what they were doing. History does not record the darker aspects of their work, but I was there. I saw the damage they caused with my own eyes. It took great sacrifices to repair what they had broken. They suffered for their mistakes and it was well deserved.’
Silas caught the bitterness in Dalliah’s voice when she spoke about the bonemen, and what was left of her spirit flared in anger at the memories her time with them had left behind. He was willing to assume that whatever ‘sacrifice’ the bonemen had made, she had been a part of it. She had been with them when they disappeared from history and it had left a mark upon her. He could not tell if it was rage or fear, but it was there.
‘What has that got to do with Kate?’ he asked.
‘When the bonemen tore the veil open, Walkers helped them to seal it again. The veil had threatened to overtake all of Albion, exposing the living to the half-life and blending the two realms into one. Albion was not ready for that, but our attempt to close the tear was only ever meant to be a temporary solution. As soon as the tear was brought back under control and the living world was separated from the veil once again, the seal we had created started to degrade. In those times, five hundred years was almost an eternity. The bonemen assumed that those left behind would have plenty of time to repair the breach fully before it ever became a threat to the living world again, but the bonemen do not exist any more – the High Council saw to that – and no one has risen to take their place. The Walkers are dead and the Skilled have ignored the threat of the veil for generations. They did not carry on the bonemen’s work. Recently, one or two of them have dabbled with the remains of the dead, attempting to rediscover and understand the old ways, but it is too late. The Walkers knew that this was coming. They saw the threat from the very beginning, and now there are only two of us left. Me and the girl. The Winters family were always the best of us. It does not surprise me that their descendants were the only ones to survive.’
‘If you are what you say you are, why do you need her?’ asked Silas. ‘What does she have that a Walker who has lived for five centuries does not?’
‘She possesses something both you and I have lost,’ said Dalliah. ‘The power of a soul can be almost infinite when it is used the right way. We may have lost ours, but Kate Winters’s spirit carries all the potential of her parents’ family lines focused into one young life. The book of Wintercraft teaches the Skilled how to master their spirit; to use its energy as fuel to do what ordinary people cannot do. With the right guidance, Kate could bring the restless dead down upon this world with the force of her will alone. You and I are echoes of the souls we used to be, Silas. We are revenants: neither truly dead nor truly living. We belong nowhere and trust no one. Only we know what it is like to suffer for the mistakes of the past. Kate has not suffered as we have. Her spirit is still intact. She is the only one who can influence a falling veil now.’
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