The Witch Hunters, Book 1: The Prophet of Ash

The air was stale from too many bodies being kept together for so long. Even worse, it stank. Martin’s only prior experience with this sort of stench—a miasma so thick it could be tasted—had been on the farm on hot summer days near the manure piles for fertilizing the trees. It had taken a while for Martin to get used to it. Now it was just part of the background of crackling fires and wild, degenerate singing that echoed down the sharp, disturbing black halls. He did his best to tune it all out, and watch the fire burn in the brazier near the centre of the room.

“I know what you’re trying to do,” Volkard said. There was a hint of amusement in his deep voice.

Martin shut his eyes, willing the beast out of his thoughts, before returning his stare at the fire.

“It wasn’t fire for me, my first time. It was snow.”

Martin said nothing. He stared past the flames, upon the coals and logs that burned and fed the flames. They were black and red and grey. He focused in particular on one single, glowing red coal. He observed it. He willed it to stop burning.

Nothing happened.

There were sounds of leather and steel being disturbed behind him, and after a moment a shadow loomed great and ominous at his side.

“It was cascading down the mountains toward me,” the black bull began, his voice powerful, and cutting. “My big sister was with me. Orla…she loved to explore. I don’t know what started the avalanche. It should have killed us. I was afraid. More afraid than I have ever been in my entire life. My fear became a wall of air between us, and the snow. It swept past us like waves against a great rock. I thought it was God at first, but when I turned to ask my sister what had happened, she was lying on the path. I still did not understand, until I brought the elders back to help me carry her…and they realised that it was I who killed her.”

Martin had stopped looking at the coal by then. He had turned somewhat, to stare up into the dark and terrible eyes of the fiend that held him.

“It comes from fear?” He asked, looking for something in that face, beyond the terrible eyes. He saw nothing, though. The face gave nothing away.

“What are you trying to do, exactly?”

“I want to me one of the coals stop burning,” the boy explained.

The black bull smiled. “I’m not going to teach you how to snuff out a light, Martin.”

“If you want me to be any use to you,” the boy countered. “Then you’ll have to teach me sooner or later.”

“Yes. I know. When we are away from here, and back in the safety of the Dead Lands, I will show you why you are blessed as I was.”

“Your blessing killed your sister,” Martin said, before he could stop himself. He waited for a blow, or some other sign of pain, or rage but there was nothing.

“Yes,” was the eerily calm response. Had this creature always been a monster, or had tears dried long ago. “Tt saw me driven from my home.”

“Then how can you think this is a good thing?”

“Beyond the borders of this filthy place there is another world, Martin. It is an abandoned paradise. I spent years there, learning its secrets. It made me what I am.”

“You’re a monster,” Martin snapped at him. He looked away then, tears welling in his eyes, as in the dark he watched his life, and the lives of everyone he knew destroyed by the devil at his side.

“I am a prophet,” said Volkard. “I give voice to a great world that passed us by, but which we might be able to bring back.”

“The Elves were evil,” Martin snarled stubbornly. He returned his gaze to the flames.

“They made the world, Martin. None of us would be what we are if it weren’t for them.”

Martin stared into the blazing coals. Snuffing out light seemed to be second nature to Volkard. The soldiers that they had encountered upon entering the city had stood no chance. Rahm had collected their weapons before they resumed walking towards this strange, vile place as if nothing had happened. When they had found the wreck of the Elvish temple, there had been pandemonium. These insane people, these Ashen as they called themselves, flocked to the black bull and his companion. Their high priest had been slain, and his ashes were still being distributed among his flock to smear over their repulsive bodies. Volkard had needed to do nothing to make them his. He sent them out, and they swept over the other cults and vagrants that could not get away quick enough.

Some had tried to fight. Volkard slew them, and any of the Ashen who were too close when he summoned a blazing sphere around them. The bull did not care, and neither did his worshippers. The horses in a primitive stable nearby had been some of his first victims. Volkard had not cared here, either. None were large enough to carry a minotaur, anyway. Captives were being brought to him still, as if he were a king having conquered a new land: men, women and even children of the races of Sturmwatch. Naked, shivering in fear, they would swear fealty to him or he would kill them right then and there. Thus their ranks swelled until sunset, and the procession of victims ceased. The bodies of those who had refused were being stored in a room in one of the upper levels of the temple. Martin did not like to think about them.

He had been allowed to wait in another room for most of the time, watched by Rahm and a pair of large, angry looking Ashen. The new converts were taken back to the surface, usually carrying the bodies of those who would not join in their arms. Martin found himself trapped in a world of darkness and death, where fires offered little light and no heat. Every surface made his skin crawl to the touch. There was no restful silence down here. The air still rang with screams or mad laughter echoing throughout ragged, cavernous halls.

“Do you know what happened to them?” Martin asked, then. He did not know if he would get an answer, but he suddenly craved to hear a voice, even if it meant it had to be Volkard’s.

“Yes. They were mere legends where I come from,” the monster replied. “They were fiends that would come and steal children away from their parents in the night, and take them far away to their black cities, where the sun dared not show its face.”

“That sounds ridiculous.”

“I would have agreed, when I was younger than you,” Volkard said with a nod. “But it’s true: all of it. I have seen the Dead Lands. I have walked where they walked, and gone places all before me feared to tread.”

“Why did you go there at all?” the boy asked.

The black bull shrugged. “I can’t really say what drove me there. It was a feeling, of sorts. I wandered down the paths of the mountains into the valleys of the world where clans meant nothing, and you could be what you pleased. I kept walking. There was little to stop me, and there were very few people about. Sometimes, I would meet people. Some tried to take me in, or abuse me. I escaped the former. The latter became my first teachers, as I slew and hid them. They gave me the coin that meant I did not need to steal. In time I learned that the Dead Lands were real, and had the direction pointed out to me. To my people I was damned, a devil that walked on the earth, and I had been told that the Dead Lands were a place for devils. I wanted to see it. I wanted to know if the stories were true.”

Martin said nothing as Volkard finished his tale. Screams echoed down to them from above.

Volkard turned then, looking out into the blackness beyond in the hallway, where a few of the larger members of the Ashen shuffled with new swords and spears in their hands. The black bull had given the star stones which guarded life from his power to the members of the cult he had selected to be his bodyguard. What the fate of the rest of his little army would be should the soldiers come did not seem to occur, or matter, to the minotaur. The callousness this fiend displayed was like nothing Martin had ever thought possible. Even the very Elves this creature worshipped had not been as monstrous, if any of the tales he’d been told at bedtime growing up were true. The black bull grew more repulsive to Martin by the second, and yet the fiend insisted that they were alike. The very idea was horrifying. Martin did not want it to be true, and yet when Volkard used his terrible magic, the boy never felt anything despite not wearing a star stone. He had learned something of their properties from the dead men they had left behind, and yet he still knew very little. If he could not kill the beast with the power lying dormant within him, might there be another way?

“What are the star stones?” the boy asked.

“They are stones that protect the wearer from being used to fuel the power we wield.”

“What if one of us were to wear one?”

“Their magic is suppressed, until they take if off. I understand our compatriots in the Sanctum are made to wear one at all times by the guardians of that prison. They will not be held hostage there forever. We have plans for the Sanctum.”

The tone of the bull’s voice sent a shiver down the boy’s spine. “Where did they come from, though?”

“I think they formed part of what happened during the Last Day,” said the black bull. “The books in the Great Library in the Black City do not refer to them at all.”

“You can read Elvish?” This was said with real astonishment. Martin had never even seen a word, or even a letter written in that ancient, cursed tongue. He knew no one who had. It was a death for any who daredto search out such things.

“I was taught to speak it too,” Volkard went on with a smile. “As well as other tongues. My education was thorough. Yours shall be as well.”

“What happened on the Last Day?” Martin asked, then.

Volkard was silent. He stared down towards the entrance to the shadowy hall as if he did not hear the question, but of course he had. Martin did not press. Living with his father had taught the boy when to push someone, and when to wait them out. He looked back towards the fire, and fantasised about an evil act for a good purpose.

“Do you ever look at the stars, Martin?”

The boy turned back to regard Volkard, who was glancing at him over a huge, armoured shoulder. Martin nodded.

“I love to look up at them. I have done it since I was a boy. The mountains where I come from were above the clouds in many places. I could watch them drift above us until the sun came up. Down here the clouds get in the way. In the Black City though…there is a tower, and if you climb it you will find yourself in a place above the clouds.”

“It must be tiring, climbing something so tall.”

“But it’s not. It’s no taller than any other in the city, but at its peak it is always night, and the clouds are gone, and you can watch the stars for as long as you like. It doesn’t make sense, but it’s there. They made it, to see if they could.”

The boy nodded, trying to comprehend what he was being told. Volkard was facing him by then, his gait and tone betraying an earnest wonder that seemed anathema to the black armour and blood stained hands.

“The stars are not angels that light up the dark for us. They are suns, Martin. Just like the one we have that rises and falls each day. Around these stars are other worlds, such as ours. The Elves had made this world perfect in their image, by their will. Time passed, and they began to grow weary of this place and its primitive creations. The choice before them then was to stagnate, or spread. They made their choice, and directed their power and their brilliance towards stretching out, and reaching the stars.”

“Did it work?” Martin asked, staring up at Volkard, his disgust forgotten, his young mind grasping some of what the black bull was telling him. It left him awestruck, and afraid.

“I don’t know,” Volkard said then with a sad, tired smile. “The Last Day came, and then passed by. They were gone, leaving their empire and their cities, their art and their knowledge behind. They took nothing with them, to wherever they went. The streets of the Black City are covered in discarded jewellery, and piles of decaying clothes. It is these things that tempt trespassers and looters. Rahm was such a person, as were most of the others who came to follow me. Now they are gone, as the old magic was.” Volkard took a step towards the boy, his eyes burning then. “Before the Last Day magic was different. Afterwards, it became what it is now. The star stones appeared. Even the slightest spell would weaken or kill living things nearby. It is rare, and feared. But it is all that can save us, Martin. Without it, the Elves cannot return and make this broken world right again.”

“And how many people are you willing to see dead to achieve this?” Martin Bauer asked.

“As many as I have to,” Volkard replied instantly. “What I seek to do is worth any sacrifice.”