The gravelly voice that interrupted them was somehow familiar, but it took Cross a moment to recognize it.
The Gol stood over them with a handful of brown lard. His short shadow blocked out the dull orange fire of the desert sun. His hood was drawn, but his face-wrap was down, revealing a grayed face lined with scars, cuts and pores. He looked like a leper, but such was the case with all of the Gol. They were a race of hostages. Once, they believed, they’d held another form, a larger form closer to that of humans. But that larger race’s collective consciousness was ripped away during The Black and deposited into new bodies, those of vile dwarves.
The worst part was that the Gol seemed to have no memory of who they truly were, what they’d been, or where it was they came from. Just like Earth itself, they had been re-written by The Black, forever cast into an unfamiliar shape with no means of escape, doomed with the knowledge that they had once been something different, something greater, but cursed to have that memory suppressed from their ever destabilizing minds.
“
Say what?” Dillon said.
“
You’re not escaping,” the Gol said. His teeth were black, as were his jagged fingernails. “No one does. To think otherwise is…pretty stupid.”
“
We
have
to get out,” Cross said. Even seated on the ground, he only barely had to incline his head to look right at the little man’s ugly face.
“
Oh, well, that’s
different
!” the Gol croaked with what passed for a smile. “Just tell the vampires
that
! I’m sure they’ll let you go.”
“
Do you
want
something?” Dillon said angrily. “Or are you just lonely?”
“
Of course I’m lonely!” the Gol barked with another laugh. “Most of the other humans here are farmers or criminals…not my class of people at all. We don’t get many Southern Claw Hunters.”
Cross stilled at that.
“
How do you know that we’re Hunters?” he asked.
“
Because I’m a genius,” the Gol smiled. “But only
you
are a Hunter. He’s a ranger,” he said with a thumb at Dillon.
Cross and Dillon exchanged glances.
“
They already know,” the Gol said, addressing the unasked question. “That’s probably why you’re still alive.”
“
Who in the hell
are
you?” Dillon asked him.
“
Tega Ramsey,” the Gol answered with a short bow. “Smuggler. Negotiator. Acquisitions expert. Obtainer of rare and difficult things. And just as fucked as you, at least at the moment.”
“
And what brings you to this little paradise?” Dillon laughed.
Cross gave him a look. He didn’t share the ranger’s amusement at the odious little troll.
“
Vampires don’t like when their weapons technology is sold to other races without their knowledge or permission,” Ramsey smiled. “I suppose in this case, ‘without their permission’ is the more accurate statement on its own, since they obviously had some knowledge, lest I wouldn’t be here…”
“
We’ve got it,” Cross interrupted. “What can you tell us about this place?”
“
What would I know that you don’t?” Ramsey asked in return.
“
How long have you been here?” Cross asked.
“
How long have
you
been here?” Ramsey asked in return. Cross almost answered him, but realized he couldn’t. Reading his confused look, Ramsey smiled. “Exactly.”
“
Look, you know
something
,” Dillon said impatiently. “Or else you wouldn’t still be alive.”
“
That’s why you’re talking to us, isn’t it?” Cross said. “You have something to offer us. In return…” Tega Ramsey was obviously fishing for friends, and for protection from other inmates. He’d likely survived in Krul by goading or coercing others into protecting him; he
had
to have done so, based on his size alone. One could only go unnoticed in an environment like Krul for so long, especially when the Gol made such easy prey. Most of the other inmates would have eaten him alive without someone watching out for him.
“
You’re smarter than you look, mage,” Ramsey told Cross.
“
Obviously not,” Cross said bitterly. “Or else we wouldn’t be
here
.”
“
Sometimes, you can’t control where you end up,” Ramsey smiled. “Sometimes the fates just have it in for us.”
Dillon nodded, but Cross shook his head.
No. For some damn reason, I think I’m
supposed
to be here.
Follow and you will find.
“
So tell us,” he said aloud.
“
Tell you what?”
“
Anything useful.”
Tega, it turned out, knew quite a bit, though little of it would prove terribly beneficial in terms of securing their freedom. Cross and Dillon also learned very quickly that it was best not to ask exactly how Ramsey came by his information. Cross believed every word of what he told them. If Ramsey was lying, he was a fantastically dramatic liar, but his words still rang true.
Besides, what the hell else are we doing to do aside from listen to what he has to say? And if he
is
completely full of shit, he deserves a medal for his storytelling.
Ramsey told them that Krul was five-hundred vampires strong – which was actually a much smaller number than what Cross and Dillon had guessed – and that there were twice that many prisoners. At least half of those prisoners were human commoners, farmers, laborers and criminals purchased from the corrupt wardens of Black Scar. He knew that the city was controlled by a vampire named Morganna, who among other luminaries had under her command the infamous Talos Drake, the same vampire smuggler to whom Cradden Black had planned to sell Lucan Keth. Ramsey knew that the tower they were housed in was one of the three tallest in all of Krul, part of a triad of towers called The Talons: Scar, Blight, and Fist. Scar was the prison tower, Fist was the command tower, and Blight was where prisoners were taken to be broken, experimented on, Turned, tortured, or transformed into some useful substance for the vampire legions. He knew that arcane dampeners made it so that nothing inside of the walls could be tracked from the outside, just as no arcane messages or missives could pass in or out of Krul.
But most importantly, Ramsey knew that there were other prisoners brought in with Cross and Dillon, and that they were still alive.
“
Two of the women,” he told them as they sat baking in the sun, nibbling on dried bits of brown food that looked and tasted like horse dung, “are in Fist. I don’t know why, and that bothers me. I like to know things.” Ramsey had covered up his face. His eyes were dull yellow, the pupils so faint they were almost impossible to see in the glaring sunlight. “The other two are in Blight. I wouldn’t count on seeing them again.”
“
Which two women are in Fist?” Cross asked.
“
The brunette and the redhead.”
Black and Cole. Which means Kane and Ekko are in Blight, and likely dead by now, or worse.
“
What the hell are they doing in Fist?” he asked Dillon, but it was Ramsey who answered.
“
They’re from Black Scar,” he said with a shrug. “Black Scar deals with Krul often. The trafficking of live flesh between the two cities is quite lucrative, I understand.”
“
Son of a bitch,” Dillon laughed.
Cross tried to think about what that would mean for Dillon and himself. Probably nothing, he decided. Likely any chance he and Dillon had that Danica Black would exercise her influence with the vampires to buy their freedom were dashed the moment Dillon shot and killed her brother. Cross looked at Dillon, and the ranger’s sullen nod told Cross he was thinking the same thing.
There was no reason to ask Dillon why he’d shot Cradden Black. It didn’t really matter anymore.
“
Even knowing all of this,” Ramsey said after he let them ruminate on the information, “the truth is still quite simple: there’s no getting out of here.” His gray and milky eyes were unblinking. “Others have tried, and failed. And so will you.”
Bone-white trees protrude from the earth like enormous stakes. He is deeper in the forest this time, on the shore of a dark lake with a surface like fused glass. The air smells like cold smoke and ancient mold. Lichen dangles from the pale trees and lifts and sways like silk in the hot wind. He sinks ankle-deep into a blood marsh.
Muted yellow light rains down from above in clouds of ash colored amber and jade. The shadows of avian raptors cut across the ground as the distant fliers pass overhead through the pulsing orange sky.
Behind him, the valley of the lost is on fire. Cold flames race up the face of the steep black mountain. The air turns to frost before the advance of the roaring blue-white flames, and it cracks and shatters like crystal. Clouds like skulls reflect the fires back in a haze of blue shadow.
They move as if frozen. He feels his spirit with him, he can even almost see her, and she clings to him like a layer of clothing pasted against his panicked skin.
Ahead, the pale doorway shrinks. The female silhouette that is trapped there melts like a black snowflake.
The manic breathing of angry and ravenous mouths fills the air. Something bleeds across the sky and turns the world black. They try to run, but they are utterly consumed and crushed by a vast and hungry shadow.
Cross woke as he was pulled from his cell.
His muscles were stiff. His bones felt weak, like wood left too long in the rain.
The dreams, or the visions, or whatever they were, had grown more and more vivid and more difficult to shake off. They were different than before. A year ago, he’d started experiencing visions of women dying in a mountain glade, slain by black unicorns. That vision, it turned out, had been his glimpse into the obelisk prison of arcane spirits, the place where they were held until called upon by their witch or warlock masters.
This was something else, something far more dangerous, and entirely alien to him. He felt like an intruder on that dark mountain, and the presences that chased him – the fires, the shadow, the eyes and the teeth in the trees – didn’t want him to reach the woman in the doorway. There was something familiar about her, something he felt he should have known, and he was so close to understanding it threatened to drive him mad. It was like a song whose music he could hear, but he couldn’t remember the words.
The gauntlets were locked in place over his hands, as ever. By now his wrists had been rubbed raw from the constant treatment. He’d taken to drying out his feet in the sun during his “exercise” time. His clothes were a ragged mess, barely held together by filth and their last few rotting threads. His skin was so covered in grime he looked like a burlap sack. His skin itched all over.
I’ve been worried about trench foot or an infection, and here instead I’ll get some skin disease.
Gray-skinned gargoyle minions, hulking brutes with leathery wings and faces like bladed bricks, lifted Cross into the hollow tower shaft with ungentle claws. They did not take him as far as usual. Cross noted the change in the mind-numbing routine immediately, and while he tried his best to maintain his composure, he panicked inside.
What had happened? Was it because he and Dillon had spoken to Tega Ramsey? Cross had been suspicious of the Gol from the start, but it had taken him a while to realize it. The little bastard knew too much to be just a common prisoner. But to what purpose had they decided to haul Cross away now? Or had this been their plan all along? Did this even have anything to do with Ramsey?
Rather than lift him all of the way to Scar’s apex, the gargoyles set Cross down on a platform next to a dark metal hall roughly halfway up the tower. The hall led into darkness.
Cross wasn’t afforded a chance to hesitate. Vampires in pale white armor emerged and took hold of his arms with iron-clad hands. He smelled foul musk and charnel breath. Their claws had been honed to a razor’s edge, and they wore featureless masks. They seized him with stone-hard grips and plunged him forward into shadow. Cross steeled himself, as he expected to be shoved into some hard surface at any moment.
A door opened into a pale and featureless room. The vampires tossed Cross inside. His leg stung with sharp pain, and he almost blacked out as he collapsed on bruised knees and sore hands. The door slammed shut behind him with an echoing boom.
A cold white flame dangled in a smoking iron pot. The eye-numbing light shone on the other occupant of the room, Danica Black, who stood near the opposite door.
Any notions Cross might have had that Black was getting special treatment were dispelled by Danica’s appearance. She looked pale, thinner than before, and while he was sure Black looked a far cry better than he did, Cross still thought the Revenger’s eyes were sunken and distant, and that she held the restless and nervous demeanor of someone who hadn’t slept for days. And while her dark leather armor – the uniform of the Revengers – looked relatively clean and well kept, its wearer was unquestionably worse for wear.