Witchbreaker (Dragon Apocalypse) (5 page)

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.”

S
ORROW 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 that 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?

From outside the wall, the pygmy giggled.

She scrambled to the door of the tent, wearing only her cotton slip. She ran around the canvas walls and found the pale pygmy glowing in the moonlight. He was standing a few feet in front of the heart-shaped boulder. He laughed harder as he saw her, tears running down his cheeks.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

“You,” the pygmy gasped, pointing at her. He spoke in the Silver Tongue, but she didn’t recognize his accent. “The demons in the Forest of Torment told me I should bear witness to the return of the Destroyer.” He wiped his wrinkled cheeks. “I can’t believe they mistook you for something so dangerous.”

“Demons? Forest of Torment? What the hell are you talking about?”

The pygmy shook his head. “It’s precisely hell that I’m speaking of, but there’s no point in explaining. You’re nothing but a desperate and foolish girl.” He sighed. “Demons. I should have known they were trying to trick me. The dragon will devour you and return to his slumber.”

“The dragon?” she asked. “Are you talking about Rott? What do you mean, he’ll devour me?”

“You’re nothing but a tick, clinging to Rott’s flesh. You may feast upon him only a little while before he catches you between his teeth.”

“Who are you? How do you know this?”

He turned away, facing the boulder. He glanced over his shoulder and said, in a serious tone, “I’ve had my fill of conversation with the dead this day. At least those other souls accepted their fate.” He took another step toward the boulder before looking back again. “Struggle if it amuses you. In the end, this is all there is of life. Take some comfort in the notion that your death may serve as a cautionary tale for others. Now, I must depart. I’m late for the Inquisition.”

There was the sound of leaves crunching from the left side of the boulder. Brand appeared around the corner and asked, “Who are you talking to, Sorrow?”

Sorrow glanced at him, then back to the pygmy. But the pygmy was gone.

She ran forward and placed her hands on the rock. “Did you see him?”

“See who?”

“A pygmy. He was albino.”

“They’re all albino, I think,” said Brand. “They just dye themselves different colors.”

“Did you see him?”

“No.”

“But you heard us talking?”

“I heard you talking, sure,” said Brand. “But I never heard the other half of the conversation. I thought you might be sleepwalking.”

She shook her head. “I think I saw a ghost.”

“Really?”

“Don’t sound so skeptical,” she said. “You’ve been to the Sea of Wine. You know that souls survive death.”

“I don’t doubt the existence of ghosts,” said Brand. “But I’ve never met one. I have, on the other hand, met sleepwalkers. And crazy people.”

“I’m neither.”

“Just throwing out some theories.” He stretched his back and yawned. “What time is it?”

“Time for us to dig,” said Sorrow, heading back to her tent.

“Can’t we wait until dawn?”

“You can go back to sleep if you wish. I’ve got things to do.”

“Like what?”

“For starters, I’ve got to move this boulder.”

“What? Why?”

“Because I’m pretty sure the pygmy just walked into it.”

“You think it’s hollow?”

“I don’t know. But it occurs to me if it really did roll down the mountain and came to rest here, it’s probably sitting on top of more graves. Maybe no treasure hunters have ever dug here. With a house-sized rock on top of them, on this high ground, maybe these graves have been protected from rain. Maybe the skeletons haven’t rotted.”

“That’s a lot of maybes. While you strike me as a person who generally gets what she wants, I highly doubt that golem of yours is strong enough to move this boulder.”

“I have more tricks up my sleeve than mere brute force,” she said, looking back at him as she reached her tent.

“Fine,” he said, scratching his head. “You can show me your tricks in daylight. Right now, I’m going back to... to...”

His voice faded off as he stared at her. She followed his gaze and realized he was staring at her feet.

“Are you... are you wearing...”

“These aren’t boots,” she said. “I think... I think I might be turning into a dragon. I’m hoping I can find something in one of these graves that will help me avoid that. Perhaps you can grasp my sense of urgency.”

“I see,” said Brand. He nodded, then headed back toward his tent. “Let me grab my shovel.”

CHAPTER THREE

CLATTER

A
S
B
RAND WENT
to wake Bigsby, Sorrow ran her hands along the boulder. The surface was heavily weathered and cracked. Vines had dug deep into crevices in the rock. Sorrow closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the stone. She took a deep breath and calmly expanded her senses. Since tapping into Rott’s power, she’d been more aware of the decay that surrounded her. She’d noticed it first when she’d returned to the
Freewind
from the Great Sea Above. The second she’d stepped onto the ship, she’d felt the torn and broken wood fibers in the timbers beneath her feet and been keenly aware that the ship was doomed.

Worse, when she’d looked at Gale Romer, the ship’s captain, she’d been able to see that Gale was dying. Not in an immediate, urgent sense, but Gale was well along the path of her inevitable fate. Gale was only forty, robust and active, strengthened by life at sea, but Sorrow’s new awareness had focused on the woman’s gray hairs and weathered skin. It was as if she could watch Gale’s life slowly but inexorably seeping away.

Save for dealing with Eddy, she’d barely used her powers since returning to the material world. Her hyper-awareness of the creeping decay had faded. But it was time to summon that sense once more. Just as humans didn’t last forever, this imposing mound of stone before her was on a one way trip toward becoming sand. She spread her arms across the rock and could feel the veins of weakness that radiated through the seemingly solid surface.

She closed her hands around the vines that corseted the rock. The roots and tendrils had weakened the stone over the centuries, but now the thick vines did as much to hold the boulder together as tear it apart. Fortunately, they were easily removed. She closed her eyes and found the dark doorway inside her, carefully opening it. The vines in her grasp crumbled to dust. She opened her eyes as the rot spread through the remaining vines, which twisted and crackled as they withered. In moments, the last of the vegetation peeled away, leaving a ring of dirt around the boulder. She took a deep breath and willed the portal to close. It wasn’t so difficult, when things were quiet and calm. But could she ever control the force during the heat of combat?

“Not bad,” said Brand, who stood behind her holding his shovel.

“I’m just getting started,” she said. She motioned for Trunk. He was now armed with a large sledgehammer. Sorrow pointed toward the top of the stone, where it dipped down into a narrow depression that formed the indentation of the heart-shape. “Climb,” she said.

Trunk’s inhuman limbs had no trouble scrambling up the cracked surface. Sorrow guided him with a string of commands to what she sensed was the boulder’s weakest spot.

By now Bigsby had left his tent and found his brother. He looked like he was still half-asleep. He mumbled, “Whash going on?”

“Sorrow’s hunting for ghosts,” said Brand.

“Ghosts?” asked Bigsby, rubbing his eyes. “That’s crazy.”

Sorrow bit her lip to avoid responding. She couldn’t let the dwarf distract her. She finally had Trunk right where she needed him.

“Strike the crack before you!” she shouted. “Use your full strength!”

Trunk swung the hammer back behind him. It cut through the air with a loud
WHOOSH
and smacked into the rock with a deafening
BANG
. All throughout the waking jungle, monkeys and birds screeched in alarm.

Sorrow turned and said, “Gentlemen, I’m fairly certain I know how the stone will fall, but I suggest you take a few steps back as a precaution.”

Bigsby’s eyes narrowed. Sorrow could tell she was about to be scolded for addressing the two men as ‘gentlemen.’ She quickly added, “You also, your highness.”

Behind her, the stone was popping and trembling as the shock of the impact continued to reverberate. She stepped away as the loudest crack yet made her flinch. She looked back in time to see the two halves of the heart-shaped boulder split, then tumble away from each other. Both of the top-heavy pieces flipped as they tumbled down the respective halves of the hill they’d been perched upon.