Year 22 A.B. (After the Black)
There was a white apple on the tree. It was like an orb of frozen snow. A tiny spider, also as white as ice, crawled across the apple’s face. The small and withered apple tree, which bore only that single and pale fruit, sat in a shallow river bank filled with muddy water and foul runoff from the Reach. Wind blew in from the vast eastern tundra and whispered through the reeds like a sad and quiet song.
The sky was low and oppressive, and the air was raw with cold. Cross stared out past the tree and the dense skeletal foliage that stood behind it and into the Reach, an endless and colorless plain of ice floes, snow-covered hills, arctic waters and drifts of snow deep enough to drown in. The horizon was a thin line of shadow that lay compressed beneath the dead white sky. The harsh white color of the Reach marked the end of civilization, for it was where Thornn’s sphere of influence ended, and where the deadly hostility of the wilderness began. There were no other cities of the Southern Claw Alliance this far north — the closest, Ath, was several days travel — so in many ways Thornn truly did stand alone.
“ Eric? Are you okay?”
His sister, Snow, stood behind him near the gravestones. The cold ground was nearly blue. The cemetery was a long and thin field that stretched all of the way back to the lower defensive tiers of Thornn, a funnel of reinforced red stone walls embalmed in arcane ice and surrounded by enchanted concertina wire. The city was squat and ugly, a troglodyte atop a twisted snowbound hill. Thick plumes of dark smoke slithered like serpents into the stale sky. Cross heard the distant wail of klaxons and machinery.
His sister wore a pale cloak. The cemetery, in contrast, was dirty and grey, and the grave markers were just low plates of steel etched with the names of the departed. Thornn’s citizens couldn’t actually be buried, as the danger of the dead coming back as vampires could not be dismissed, so they were instead cremated. Cross understood that reanimation had been a real problem about fifteen years ago, back in the early days of the war. Now the melting down of the deceased was so standard a practice no one even thought twice about it.
“ I’m fine,” he said. “Come and look at this.”
Cross’ eyes roamed up to the sentry gargoyles that hovered over Thornn like a murder of stone crows. Arcane storms invisible to the naked eye formed a quiet cyclone of protective magical energies over the city. Those energies emitted a constantly collapsing field of destructive power specially attuned to necrotic flesh.
Cross’ spirit drifted out and away, and she floated near the edge of the grave field before she moved back close to him. There was no danger in the cemetery, so his spirit was at peace, and her calm filled him. She fell around him like warm vapor that enveloped his body. She’d been with him since he was eight, when it had been discovered he was a warlock. He could barely remember being without her.
“ What is that?” Snow asked. She was shorter than Cross by several inches. There was little mistaking their relation, as she had the same coal black hair and large green eyes as he, and they were both exceptionally pale of skin. Her hair was cut short along the sides and on the back but was long on top, and there was a single streak of white that ran down from the center of her temple. Her choker was black leather set with a black cross. “Is that an apple? God, it must be rotten to the core.”
“ I don’t think so,” Cross said. “Look at it. I think it’s fresh. It’s just…white. Maybe it was drained of its color by this place.” It was possible. Entire crops had been leeched of color near inhospitable regions. Cross had heard of whole forests in the Bone March that had been rendered bone white by the unnatural landscape, and the Wormwood was so corrupt that even vampires feared the vegetation there. There was the Reach, that vast tundra that had been sucked of its life, and the Ebonsand, with its intelligent crabs that muttered arcane curses and Vuul pirates who’d claimed control over waters infused with occult blood. The world was a diseased and broken place. Cross knew that a better one had once existed, back during his youth, but it was becoming harder and harder to remember what that place had been like.
“ It’s beautiful,” Snow said.
“ Yeah,” Cross said. “I guess it is.”
She and Cross stood shoulder to shoulder. Their long cloaks were blown back by the baleful winter breeze. The arctic sun was rapidly setting. Behind them, past Thornn and on towards the lowlands, lay a brittle landscape filled with loose stones and shallow riverbeds, salt marshes and estuaries, cliffs of dark clay and low-rolling mists. If you took too long to pass through the plains it became difficult to remove the smell of decay and rotting vegetation from the clothing or skin. It was a few days travel from Thornn to the northeastern tip of Rimefang Loch, where armored boats sailed south to other Southern Claw cities on the coast. The outposts scattered along the western coast of the Loch formed the Thirteen, a defensive barrier against the dark stain of the Ebon Cities Bonespire fortresses.
The chill grew worse. Cross estimated they had less than an hour left before sundown, by which point they had to be inside the city walls. His spirit drifted close, then passed between Snow and himself (she pressed tight against him, as if jealous of his flesh and blood sister) before she circled out and away, cognizant of their surroundings, always on watch for anything that might do them harm.
“ Do you think Mom is doing well?” Snow asked.
They stared at the apple, and into the Reach. Snow didn’t like to look west, towards the Bonespire, even though it was hard to see from there in the grave field. The western plains were level with Thornn, while the graves were lower by a good hundred feet. A winding path led up the hillside and back to the eastern city gates, through the barbican and into the eastern guardhouse. It had been some time since Thornn had actually seen a Gorgoloth attack from out of the eastern Reach, but the ebon-skinned barbarians had historically wrought so much devastation that hostility from the Reach was considered inevitable, just as a similar, eventual attack from the Bonespire to the west was expected. Thornn was prepared for the next assault, regardless of which direction it came from.
“ I don’t know,” Cross said with a shake of his head. “I hope so.”
Snow was nineteen now. Cross hated seeing her grow older, but he was glad, at least, that she’d stopped asking if he could see their mother’s ghost, if she’d be able to communicate with it like she and Cross did with their own spirits. It had been so hard to explain to her that it didn’t work that way, that what a mage and his spirit shared was a bond, a melding together of souls. Besides, a mage’s spirit was an entirely different type of creature, and while Cross’ spirit could sense the souls of the recently dead, Cross had explained to Snow that there was no communication with the deceased, no way of interacting. The soul of their dead mother, like all dead souls, was mindless: it would be like trying to talk to a wolf.
“ I miss her,” Snow said quietly. “And I miss you.”
“ I’m here now,” he said.
“ You haven’t been around very much,” Snow said. “You’re not in the city too often. On the rare occasion that you are, it would be nice to see you.” Snow put her arms around his waist. He remembered her when she was young, when he used to take her toys away and hide them, and even after their mother took his toys he still wouldn’t tell them where Snow’s were. Now she was almost grown up, and a stronger person than he was. And she was a witch, just as he was a warlock. They were both cursed with that power. They had a great deal of natural talent between them, they’d been told, maybe the most of any brother and sister that had ever served the Southern Claw.
One mage in the family was enough, he thought. One was probably too much, actually. Why did you have to be one, too, little Sister?
He didn’t want to delude himself. He knew that Snow would have to serve in the army someday. It was the price you paid for having the gift of magic.
“ How’ve you been?” he asked. He hugged her back, and then slowly led her back towards the city. “We didn’t get much of a chance to talk before we came down here.”
“ I’m fine,” she said, the note of sadness in her voice unmistakable.
“ How’s the job?”
“ Librarians are all the rage now,” she said with a bit of sarcasm. “All of the boys want to talk to us, and we get to play with the latest, most amazing technology.”
“ Right. So really, how is it?”
“ Boring. Much more boring than what you do.”
“ I doubt that,” he smiled. He knew that she knew better, but he always tried not to worry her. As it was, he’d made clear he wouldn’t tell her any details of being a Hunter. The life expectancy of personnel in the military wasn’t very long, and for members of vampire Hunter squads that expectancy was even less. At two years spent in the service, Cross was halfway to the average.
I hope you’re different, he thought as he looked at Snow. I hope to God you don’t choose to do this, too.
They paused by their mother’s gravestone. It was covered with a thin trace of frost. The hammered bronze plate on the cracked marble base read ALICE CROSS. There was no matching plate for their father, as he had died before The Black, so his name had instead been inscribed on the obelisk memorial on Ghostborne Island. Cross tried to get out and see the monument at least once a year, and while his work made that possible, he had long stretches where he didn’t make it to see Dad. Snow had never been there. Rimefang Loch was just too dangerous to navigate lightly.
That’s okay. You’re safer here than anywhere else. There isn’t much out there worth seeing.
There were hundreds of gravestones. Ice and gravel crunched beneath their boots as they slowly walked through the neatly spaced rows. Some of the older stones had almost fallen apart, or else their copper and iron face plates had been covered in grime or frost or been worn away by the unnatural lightning storms that sometimes ripped out of the Reach, storms summoned by Gorgoloth shamans before the barbaric race had given up its magic to the Cruj in exchange for weapons. Cross glanced back at the glacial horizon and saw endless fields of white, icy canyons filled with swirls of windblown snow, and low clouds as thick as iron that clung to the ground as if with claws. Somewhere out there, hidden deep in the clefts of cracked ice and the valleys of dark rime, were the subterranean homes of the Gorgoloth, barbaric humanoid creatures with black skin and stark white hair who were driven by a need to destroy. They were just one of many non-human races that, so far as anyone knew, had not existed before The Black. Human memory, however, was by and large incapable of recreating the period of time before The Black. Everything had changed, but it was rare that anyone remembered how things had once been.
As terrible as battles against the Gorgoloth and their Crujian puppet-masters had been, they were hardly the real threat that faced Thornn or the Southern Claw: that was the vampire legions of the Ebon Cities. Cross’ chest seized up at the notion of returning to the field. He had only three days of leave left, and he anticipated it was going to be cut short any day now, since the search for the outlaw woman called Red hadn’t made any progress.
Being a Southern Claw war mage for two years hadn’t done much to quell Cross’ nerves. Even with his spirit doing her best to keep him calm and protected, Cross still hadn’t learned to sleep well. The thought of what he might face in his nightmares later that night made him shudder.
“ Are you okay?” Snow asked. They held each other close as they walked across the field and towards the hill.
“ Yeah,” Cross smiled. “I’m just cold.”
“ What are you doing tonight?” Snow asked after a long pause.
“ I’m going to The Black Hag with Sam. You want to come?” He knew that she wouldn’t. Snow was a bigger drinker and socialite than he was, by far — last he heard she was still capable of drinking almost any member of Viper Squad under the table — but for some reason she preferred to keep her brother in quiet company. That was fine with Cross, who liked to delude himself into thinking that she was still eight years old. To see her drinking, dancing and flirting with local industry workers and city guards would probably make his blood boil and force his spirit to lash out in anger.
“ Not tonight,” she said. “But I expect you for dinner tomorrow. How many days of leave do you have left?”
“ Three. I hope.”
“ You can’t leave without me making you dinner at least once.”
“ It’s a deal.”
There was a lone building that stood elevated over a narrow stream that ran the length of the grave field. The structure was badly in need of repair, and it looked like a refugee from the older, smaller city that had stood in the area before Thornn had been built back in A.B. 9. All but one of the windows of the building had been boarded up, and various machinery parts, iron sheets, metalworking tools and broken weapons had been scattered on the petrified grass and frozen clay in the front yard. That debris surrounded another lone and dead tree. A humanoid doll that was maybe a foot tall and made from tin cans and funnels and bound together by wire and glue dangled from the branches like a piece of metallic fruit. Eyes made from buttons and a mouth made of discarded cable formed the semblance of a face, and the tiny figure dangled by a string noose tied about its neck, so that it swung suspended in the dry and freezing wind, clanging against the trunk, its infantile face frozen in that happy grimace. It looked like the Tin Man, hanged.
The grey sky groaned with something that sounded like thunder, but wasn’t. It hadn’t rained much since The Black. Storms were unnatural and filled with hateful energies, sometimes even the screams of the dead. Growing up, Cross had wondered why more people weren’t completely mad.
Maybe they are. Maybe we’re all insane.
“ 'But I don’t want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
'Oh, you can’t help that,' said the Cat. 'We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.'
'How do you know I’m mad?' said Alice.
'You must be,’ said the Cat. 'or you wouldn’t have come here.'”
“ Can you get me a copy of Through the Looking Glass?” he asked Snow.
“ Wow. Random,” Snow smiled. “You want ‘Alice’, too?”
“ Sure.”
“ I will. But you can only have it if you come to dinner tomorrow.”
“ Are you going to make me meet your boyfriend?” he asked with a mawkish groan. “Groff?”
“ Geoff,” Snow said curtly. “And the answer is ‘yes’. Probably.”
“ Can I think about it?”
“ No.”
“ All right, then. Just bring the books, and nobody has to get hurt.”
They walked in silence for a time.
“ We’re in the looking glass,” Snow said softly. “I feel like that most days. Like we’re on the wrong side of some broken mirror.”
“ Yeah,” Cross said. He didn’t know what else to say.
The siblings drew close to the city. Flame cannons sputtered hot white flames and emitted the smell of burning fuel as they swiveled on rusted iron mounts at the southeast barbican. Electric currents ran up and down the black iron poles that stood on either side of the steep dirt path that led from the grave fields up to the rear city gates. They passed hexed concertina wire hung with what looked like voodoo implements that rattled in the chill breeze. Masked sentries bound in heavy armored coats regarded them from behind sandbags set atop the barbican. The guards all held assault rifles and sabers and wore black grenades on bandoliers.
Cross carefully positioned himself to Snow’s left as they advanced the last few meters of the trail, which leveled out with the ground at Thornn’s base just before reaching the city gates. There was no way to avoid seeing the frozen salt fields and the Bonespire on the far side, but Cross always did his best to shield Snow from the site, out of habit if for no other reason.
Estuaries of salt and brine lay to the west of Thornn’s cone-shaped outer walls. It was a massive expanse of broken white and grey earth torn up by mortar blasts, trenches, dried-up riverbeds and the grind of now abandoned vehicles that still sat there, unused. Soldiers milled about in small groups, and they kept low in spite of the absence of any visible enemy, their feet stuck in the white mud and cold water. The fields were miles wide and mostly flat, broken up only by the dead vehicles and occasional bunkers, some bivouacs and half-shattered stone and iron walls. The air smelled of saline, rust and dead fish.
Far in the distance was the nearest of the Ebon Cities’ Bonespires, a structure they’d simply dubbed The Black Spike. It was a dark ebon needle enshrouded in shadow, as if a black storm raged there day and night. The Spike darkened the sky. It was a tower made of black steel and blacker stone, a barbed protrusion that jutted from the earth like an obscene razor blade. Jagged crenellations and nail-like barbs covered the tower like a porcupine’s quills, and at its base moved organic vehicles covered in greasy shadows and clouds of black steam. Occasional bursts of lightning from within the dismal clouds cast the Spike in eerie silhouette.
Cross stared at the structure, and wondered how many Ebon Cities vampires were stationed inside. It had been some time since battle had occurred between Thornn and the Bonespire, but everyone remained vigilant. The war raged on elsewhere, but the battle for Thornn, at least for the moment, had drawn to a stalemate.
Because you bastards are busy waiting for Red and the Old One to finish their deal, he thought with equal parts bitterness and fear. Why waste your resources fighting when the key to killing all of us is about to be delivered right into your hands?
“ Please tell me you won’t be going back there,” Snow said. Cross hadn’t realized they’d stopped walking.
“ I’m not,” he said. “No, I’m not going back there.”
“ Are you going to be sent to look for Red?”
“ You know I can’t talk about that,” he said, but he said it more for the benefit of the sentries posted there at the gate. He’d tell her later, or maybe when they met for dinner.
He looked at Snow for a moment, and found himself at a loss for words. There she was, nearly a woman grown, and for some reason it struck him as so odd, so strange that she should be standing there, this old now, this mature, when he still saw in his mind the lanky and long-haired little girl who would only refer to him as “My Eric”, who’d walk around the house in his shirt that fit her like a sack, who as a toddler told their mother “I don’t think so” and nothing else for almost a month, who he’d grown up being taught he had to protect, and seeing her there now, so tall, so beautiful, filled him with worry and nearly brought tears to his eyes. His spirit felt it, too, and she held him tight, drew him close and slid across his skin like a warm shroud.
“ Eric?” she said. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“ Yeah,” he smiled. He wouldn’t tell her about the ache he got in his chest when he thought about how young they’d been, or the fact that he would go on whatever mission they sent him on in spite of how afraid he was, because he was always driven by the notion that he had to keep her safe. “Let’s get you indoors,” he said. “It’s getting cold.”