The Witch's Eye (5 page)

S
he was a good ten feet away, but it was the first time Cross had been able to get a good look at her.  The woman was lithe and thin, not unattractive but alien-looking and covered in grime and strange war paint.  Her shirt was a tattered mess, ripped open at the stomach and one shoulder, and the cloth she wore around her waist only barely concealed her sex.  She wore tall sandals that reminded Cross of the gladiators of Krul, and her arms were muscular and layered with crude runes cast with charcoal or oil paints.  She wore a dark metal band around her right arm, and her blonde and white hair was held back with bone clasps.  Her nails were black, and her unnaturally pale skin was layered with cold sweat.

“What do you want?!” he repeated,
angrier this time, and still she said nothing.  She looked him up and down and then silently walked back into the cave, where she faded into the darkness and smoke.  Cross thought about calling out again but decided against it.  He just sat shivering in the icy wind over a field of frozen stone, naked and afraid.

He woke in the sky.  Again and again. 

Cross
lost track of time.  Deep fog filled the cave.  Dim torches in the walls below filled the bone-dry air with pale light.

At one point t
he blonde woman used twine to attach a pair of small vials to the end of her wooden staff and sent them into the cage.  One of the vials contained water, while the other held a thick and pasty gruel that tasted like an unhealthy mixture of corn and milk.  It made his stomach sour, but he forced it down anyways.

Cross
tried his best to keep his wits about him.  He urinated into the air, not caring if he hit anyone.  He slept as best he could, but it was a nerve-wracking experience in the cage, and he was afraid he’d unbalance his prison and make it shift so much that the rope holding it in place would snap and he’d plummet to his death.  He watched the mist and waited for some sign that the women actually
wanted
something.  His eyes were heavy, and his skin was frozen.  His insides felt twisted and foul, and the slop they fed him clung to his throat and nostrils.  His hands wouldn’t stop shaking, and his blood-crusted wounds ached from exposure. 

He wished there was a way to know how long
he’d been there.  He heard the women’s shuffling feet and whispered voices in the distance.  At one point he thought he heard an animal howl from somewhere in the caves.  Fear gnawed at him.

So helpless
, he said to himself. 
Without magic, you’re nothing.  Even with that blade you let three women overpower you.  Now you’re going to die here, alone in a cave.  Some hero you turned out to be.

His mind drifted.  He thought he saw shapes in the fog,
the phantom forms of men and women. He heard the sounds of battle and the distant calls of ravenous birds and rumbling from deeper in the Rift.  He heard crashes and echoes, stone collapsing on stone, metal explosions.  Something was shifting.

The train
, he thought. 
The remains of the train are still falling.  I left her there.  I left her on the train.

He thought of Snow, and
he wept. 

They took him down.  Cross wasn’t sure how long it had been. 

H
e tried to rub warmth back into his body, but he was so cold it hurt to touch anything.  His limbs trembled from lack of sleep and malnutrition.  His senses were blurry, and his mind was slow. 

The blonde woman hooked the cage with a new staff, a grey shaft of bone and wood covered in wire
and capped with a jagged hook.  The bones creaked beneath his weight as he was pulled close.  He felt the void of space beneath him, the distance he’d fall. 

The cage
was brought to the cave high in the wall.  The woman opened the door.  She seemed unafraid of him, as she just turned and walked away.  Cross slowly stepped out of the cage and stood on solid ground, naked and freezing.  He had no choice but to follow.

The cave curved into a tunnel lit with icy white flames.  The air was
almost silent save for the whistle of the dry wind.  Darkness seeped in around him like oil.

He heard something ahead
, a deep and guttural growl.  He hesitated, steeled himself, and moved forward.

The tunnel ended
at a short round chamber filled with bones and teeth.  Black ice covered the walls.  Thick liquid dripped from short stalactites and pooled on the floor. 

A m
an waited there, large and pale and as naked as Cross.  His hair was long and unkempt, and his muscular arms were covered with ice scars, blade burns and runes like those the women wore, eyes and slashes and moons cast in rough ink made from charcoal or shale oil and burned onto his skin.  The man’s eyes looked frozen, and his fingernails were black and jagged, like he’d spent hours clawing at the stone. 

He held an old and oddly-shaped sword, a wide-bladed weapon with a short hilt
.  The sword looked unbalanced and heavy.  The steel was red and shone with an unusual sheen, like shaved diamonds.  Cross’s blade was embedded in the floor at the center of the room. 

The man growled and leapt forward.
  Cross’s blade was suddenly in hand, heavy and familiar.  He brought it up and deflected the other man’s crimson weapon.  Sparks flew against the wall.

The tunnel and cave were too tight to allow
much maneuvering.  Cross and the berserker went at each other blade to blade, fist to bone, snarls and teeth.  He saw flashes of steel.  Cuts went deep, and blood flew everywhere.  Cross felt his skin hammered and sliced.  He fell against the wall, lashed out, fell against the other man, beast versus beast. 

He was outside himself.  When it was
all done and he stepped away he was covered in blood and his blade was soaked in the other man’s viscera.  Oozing wounds covered his chest.

Cross
looked at the body where it lay on the ground.  He was out of breath and dizzy with fatigue and blood loss.  He felt himself back in the gladiator pits of Krul, awash in remains, separated from his own actions.  Kill, or be killed. 

The
corpse was barely recognizable.  He’d torn his opponent to bits.  Cross fell to his knees, exhausted.  His breaths came cold and hard, and his vision swam.  His frozen skin ran with fresh blood, both his and the other man’s. 

Blackness inv
aded his mind.  He felt himself floating, and then he faded away.

Days passed.  Maybe it was longer.  It was difficult to tell. 

Cross swam in and out of consciousness.  He remembered being nursed back to health
.  His wounds were stitched together, and healing salves were applied to his skin.  He was wrapped in warm furs and put near a fire. 

He was no longer caged.  There was no need: he was barely conscious, and when
awake his mind drifted through haze.  It occurred to him they’d drugged him, that they fed him some alchemical medicine or else filled the air with mind-altering fumes.  Either way he was barely cognizant.  Everything seemed distant.  He felt adrift. 

He slept and ate in the small cave.  His strength slowly returned
as he healed.  His world consisted of jagged obsidian walls riddled with tiny holes dripping oily water into the corners.  The floor was covered with wolf and bear hides.  White frost mist filled the air, which smelled of melted silver and burning roses. 

Cross had fitful dreams of the man he
’d killed.  When he sliced the man apart in his dreams, his own heart exploded in his chest and spurted thick dark blood that stained his insides. 

He woke to the
sensation of the blonde woman touching him.  He was kissing her, and didn’t even remember her arrival.  He knew it was wrong, knew they’d brought him here for this.  He’d been pit against their other, their old male, to see which of them was stronger. 

Her breasts
pressed against his scarred chest, and the cold of her flesh burned, but Cross wasn’t in control of himself, could just look on, a spectator, not sure if he would have been able to resist her even if he
had
been in control.  Body aching, he found himself virulent and eager, and he knew from the start that whatever they’d drugged him with to keep him compliant also enhanced his stamina, because he made violent love to the blonde woman, needful, angry.  His body ached worse when they were done, and he was covered in fingernail marks.

The drug persisted.  The other women came
to him, one at a time.  He wasn’t sure how much time passed between visits, or how he was able to maintain their needs.  His body twisted with pleasure and pain.  Juices ran and pooled on the wolf hides.  His nostrils filled with the aroma of women and sex, blood and saliva.  After a time he faded, bone weary and exhausted.

They kept him there, drugged and alone.  He was given time to recuperate before they started in again.

Do they want children?
he wondered. 

It was hard to think clearly
.  He remembered a time when he’d frequented the brothels in Thornn, when women, who he’d always had trouble relating to, could only be purchased.  Some years ago this situation – being trapped in a cave and used by three ravenous women for their carnal pleasure – would have been a dream come true.

He had to get out.  He had to save someone…but it
was difficult to remember her name.  He saw her face, beautiful and pale, dark red hair hanging down over gem-blue eyes.  She was in pain, he knew she was in pain, but he couldn’t do anything to help her.  She was just out of reach, just like…

Just like who?

It was so hard to remember.

The
y came again, one and then the next, never together.  Their need was more anxious, their treatment of him less kind.  He could do nothing to stop them, even though he wanted to.  His lust was overpowering, and even as his mind raged at him to rebel, to dash their heads against the stone and seize their weapons, he couldn’t.  He was theirs, completely and utterly.  He didn’t even know how they drugged him.

Maybe they don
’t need to anymore
, he thought. 
Maybe they’ve broken me, and I just don’t realize it yet. 

Hair dangled across his face and rough nails tore open his back.  His skin was raw and bloody and covered in puss and stains.  They stitch
ed him back together afterwards.  Black threads tightly bound his wounds.  He couldn’t lie back, for his skin ached too much. 

H
e tried to stand when they were gone, but he didn’t have the strength.  The fog was so thick it blocked sight of the walls.  He floated in a silver nowhere. 

All
he could do was lie down and wait for them to come for him again.

Screams of ecstasy and anguish rang through his ears.  He spilled his seed into the dark-haired woman as she raked her nails across his chest.  He fell back, yelling in pleasure and pain.  He felt hollow inside.

Everything was fading.  He felt the poison in his blood, turgid and thick. 

Every time one of the women came for him he felt less alive.  They were killing him slowly with their passion.  He knew he didn’t have much longer.

Will they keep me alive until they find another, like they
did with the man I killed?
he wondered.  They’d already proved their healing abilities – how long had his predecessor been their slave?  How long had they prolonged his life to serve their need, even after his mind had gone?

He
tried to hang on to something,
anything
.  He knew he had to find someone.  Sometimes he could even see her face.

I can
’t fail her, like I failed before.

Who did he fail before?  He couldn
’t remember.  He tried, but he couldn’t.

One woman,
and then the next.  They licked his flesh with icy tongues and took him inside, roughly ground their bodies against his and clawed open his skin.  He swam through a haze of naked flesh and juices.  Pleasure drowned his agony.

Drowned.  She
didn’t drown.

He lay still in the dark.  His body
felt soft and liquid, as if rotting from within.  Drugged smoke filled the air.  He clawed his way towards consciousness, fought to narrow his vision through the ice blue light.  Scabs and blisters and scar tissue covered his back.

She
didn’t drown.  She died burning on the train.

He stumbled forward.  He didn
’t remember getting up.  He moved slowly through the dark.  His bare feet scraped against sheets of rough ice and broken stone.  Pale mold ran down the cracks in the walls.

She died on the train.  Snow…burning on the train.

Anger welled inside him.  Blood pumped through veins turned frozen and stiff.  His muscles ached with every step, but he had momentum, and he used it.  He left the narcotic fog behind him.  His mind slowly started to clear as he moved through the darkness of the tunnels.

Danica
.  I have to find Danica.   I won’t fail her, like I failed my sister.