The Witch Hunters, Book 1: The Prophet of Ash

Kurt woke up. Sabine slipped her arms from around a trim waist as the world returned and he felt himself become what he was now. He sat up and looked around the room, lit up by dim blades of light invading through the cracks in the curtains. His thoughts turned immediately to Martin. What was it like where Martin was, right now? Was his son safe? What did those monsters want with his boy?

Kurt rolled out of bed and got dressed. He picked up his sword by the scabbard and carried it out into the hall with him. A low, constant buzz of conversation rose up the stairwell from the inn’s first floor. What time was it, anyway? Kurt knocked on the door to Janus’ room and Biana opened it. The female runner nodded to him and let him in. Kurt took in the layout, and was a bit surprised to find Janus on the floor by the fire. The male was just waking up, untangling himself from a pillow and blanket. He looked around, saw Kurt and nodded tiredly. Biana had already made the bed.

“Would you like me to make yours?” she asked.

“No thank you. We should go out to this temple you mentioned as soon as we can.”

“Of course. Do you want to go right now?”

“I think there’s time for breakfast,” Kurt said. He smiled at runner in a human woman’s clothes. When they had helped her pack her things, all she owned fitted into a single bag. Kurt had only seen one other dress. “You must be hungry. Get your knight up, and I’ll meet you two downstairs. Breakfast’s on me.”

“I will. Thank you, Mr. Bauer.”

“Just call me Kurt, please. I hate being Mr. Bauer. It reminds me how old I am.”

“Alright,” she said, offering him a smile. “Kurt. Thank you.”

*

They were down in short order, just in time for the coffee to arrive with a serving boy to take their orders in the common room. Kurt had picked a thick bench in the corner where already curious patrons might struggle to hear them. He had no idea how legal what he was about to do was. He watched the two runners carefully as they manoeuvred their way past occupied tables to get to his. Biana was holding Janus’ hand. The male looked bashful, a state Kurt could never have imagined the former witch hunter being in. In the light of day now, Biana’s age was obvious, at least compared to her benefactor’s. It did not detract from her in any way, other than adding a tired wisdom that she carried well. She led Janus towards him, while the male held her hand tightly, as if he were afraid she might slip away.

“You look like shit,” Kurt said with a grin.

“We were up most of the night talking,” replied Janus, sitting down opposite him. He finally let Biana go.

Kurt nodded. Somehow he knew that was probably all that they did do. He and Sabine had had nights like that when they had been young, waiting for the grant from the King to buy their land and build their life together. His eyes fell to examine the old wood of the table they sat at. Wrinkling fingers traced darkened lines in the oak and he couldn’t help but wonder if there was something to what the runners believed, about merciless sadistic gods torturing mortals for their amusement. “Is the temple far?”

Biana shook her head. “No, Kurt. If you have horses we should get there quickly enough. I used to walk there on Sunday mornings, when there were less people around. Most of the humans would be praying in the Cathedral, asking your god to forgive last week’s sins so they could get started on this week’s. I don’t know how many people might be there now.”

“There’s no need to worry,” Janus said. He placed a hand over hers, offered a rakish smile. “I can protect us. I’m a witch hunter.”

“Aye, he is,” Kurt said quickly, fighting the urge to laugh.

“Really? That’s…amazing.” Biana’s eyes lit up, and she looked at Janus in wonder. “I didn’t know any of our kind were allowed to be hunters. Why didn’t you say anything about that last night?”

The male’s ears reddened visibly. “Well, I don’t like talking about it. The work is unpleasant.” He reached to his neck then, pulled the star stone pendant out from where it had been obscured by a number of others around his neck. “This is the symbol of office. It’s not much, but it can carry you far with important people around here.”

Kurt watched the exchange quietly, sipping his coffee. On the runner’s advice he had gotten a leather thong for his own star stone, and was now wearing it securely under his shirt. A thought occurred then, as he remembered what Theo had said about them.

“Janus, have you still got the spare? The one from the house?”

The male seemed to realise what was being asked of him immediately. The stone that he looted from the grave was produced, and quickly put around Biana’s neck.

“What a lovely bit of jewellery! Thank you Janus!”

“Never take it off, Biana,” the runner told her, his tone authoritative, and firm. “Magic can’t hurt you if you wear this.”

“Does this mean I’m a hunter now, too?” the female asked.

“If you weren’t already,” Kurt whispered into his coffee, trying to hide a grin.

*

They left after breakfast. Kurt was mounted on one horse, while Janus’ carried his and Biana’s weight easily. Under her direction, they cantered through the ruined streets, passing only the occasional lone wanderer, or small group of guards returning from watch duty. She led them a different direction from the old park area, going instead along avenues that must have boasted wealth and breeding several generations ago. Great houses with empty windows and caved in roofs lined several roads they went down. Massive trees grew here and there, the walls or fences that had held them back once long broken and destroyed. Moss covered many buildings. Plants grew up amid the cobbled ground.

“What do you suppose this place was like when people lived here?” Kurt asked, casting an envious eye over some of the finer houses.

“Like any place with humans,” Janus replied. “Loud, and probably very smelly.”

Biana laughed. She wrapped her arms around him and lay her head on his shoulder. Kurt looked away. Sabine lingered around him. He clutched the reins of his horse, and felt her hair between his fingers.

*

It was not long before another sort of decay began to show itself. Twelve blocks outside of the palisade wall, the trio started to encounter people: men and women in ragged, filthy clothes with bemused, incurious children in tow. A few caravans lined one side of a road. Their occupants, a mix of swarthy humans and suspicious members of the scaled, watched them pass as they smoked pipes or played with juggler’s balls...or knives.

“Stay close, Kurt,” Janus whispered, loosening the loop around his axe.

Cow skulls propped up on sticks crudely marked out where they were headed: a vast open space that seemed to creep up on them as they turned a crumbling corner. The ground was not cobbled here, but appeared to have been hewn from one single, perfect stone. The detritus of centuries lay in crude piles here and there, but there was no mistaking that this was their destination.

“There are no trees here,” Kurt said, more to hear his voice than start any kind of conversation. The silence was oppressive, and the horses were spooked. There did not seem to be any birds in this quarter of Eichen. Nature seemed to have held at bay here. Janus grew visibly agitated.

There were fires burning amid rubble, and trash. A minotaur preacher, emaciated and mad, was exchanging screams with a pair of wild looking, white haired men in filthy brown robes, while a crowd of bored looking people watched them, sitting around the rubble or on the unnaturally smooth ground.

“That’s it there,” Biana said, pointing past the arguing preachers, to where there was a subtle dip in the solid stone ground. “The shrine to the Stag is in the lavatory. There’s an old dwarf named Urba that acts as cleaner. He’s one of the Ashen.”

“What are they?” Kurt asked.

“Elf worshippers,” said Janus. He slid down off of his horse and pulled his bow and his quiver of arrows down after him. “You two stay here.”

“Not a chance,” Kurt snapped. He hauled himself off of his own horse and unpacked his sword from his saddle. “Biana, you can watch the horses. We won’t be long.”

“I can move faster on my own, Bauer.”

“Is there a chance my son’s in there? Might there be a clue we could get to tell us where the people who took him are going?”

Janus sighed and nodded. “Alright, we’ll talk with this Urba, and anyone else inside we find. Will you be safe out here on your own?”

“I can look after myself,” the female runner said, offering a smile that revealed her fangs. “Besides, I know where richer worshippers have their horses looked after here. I’ll put your mounts there and wait out here for you. I know some of those people watching Aldred screaming at those two men. I’ll be fine. You two go on and find out what’s happening with your pup. I’ve got your backs.”

“Thank you.” Janus almost sighed, as he looked at her. “Alright, Kurt. Lead on.”

*

The entry into the lower levels was a sloping ramp, rather than the stairs Kurt would have expected. He noticed no lines in the stone anywhere, as if this entire structure had occurred naturally.

“How did they make this place?” he asked Janus.

“Black magic. At least, that’s what Klara always told me. My people did not have much contact with the Elves. My tribe moved to the Black Woods to escape their harvests.” The runner notched an arrow then. Kurt stopped and made him put it away.

“We don’t want to provoke these folk. They outnumber us, so pissing them off is just going to get us both killed.” He paused and surveyed Janus’ throat, looking for the star stone, and tucked it back under the wolfman’s collar. “Also, we should probably keep quiet about your old job.”

“I know, Kurt. I’m not a bloody fool.”

“Just making sure,” the human teased.

A couple of beggars were sitting to one side of the ramp. There was no sign of a door, so the growing light from outside was able to find a little purchase in the hallway that rolled out before them. Kurt cast a quick look back up at the sky, and felt his stomach become uneasy. He did not like being underground, and this place reminded him too much of the horror stories he was told as a boy. Janus seemed to be just as concerned.

“We’ll make it quick,” Kurt said, and they began.

Braziers were set up here and there, but they were few in number, and not all of them had fuel inside to burn anymore. Flickering shadows danced everywhere in the poor light. Any noise, no matter how small, echoed loudly through the passageway. They found priests for a number of religions whose worship or even acknowledgement in Sturmwatch could get one hanged in a hurry. They were mostly human and dwarf, but there were a few minotaurs scattered about as well. This was but the first floor of three, they learned, and Kurt became a little sick. People would come and stay here all the time, he was told, as all the floors and the big rooms and shrines they held were for anyone, except the bottom floor. People avoided it.

“Why?” the human asked, not wanting the answer.

“It’s where they worshipped their new god,” the old woman they had been talking with said. She was a priestess of some sort, and was reluctant to talk about it at first. “Their last one. It’s where the…the rites happened in Eichen. No one goes down there now, but the Ashen.”

“Fuck,” said Janus.

The old priestess nodded and gave them directions. She would not let them proceed before she blessed them. Kurt tried to protest but Janus jabbed him in the ribs with his claws once, sharply, and the big man fell silent and let the woman perform her sacrilegious rite. Kurt loosened his sword in its scabbard once she was done. Janus did likewise with his knife and axe. Flickering fires and sloping ramps stretched out before them.

The bottom floor was surprising, being far larger than the two above. It was the first sign of mortal stonework, their ramp stopping suddenly to a steep drop of nearly three feet. A rickety wooden staircase off to one side offered safe descent. The walls and floor were scarred by old wounds from picks and hammers. Someone was coughing somewhere beyond in the dark. Few lights burned down here, and yet the sounds of life were unmistakable.

The first Ashen they encountered was one of the scaled. It was impossible for Kurt to tell what colour his body was, though he was naked except for a rag around his hips. His thin frame was covered in thick layers of ash. He was incoherent, babbling as he rocked on the floor. They found some humans next, both male and female, and some minotaurs, and dwarves. Most were in the same condition, numbering maybe thirty out in the main hallway.

Despite the lack of coherent directions, Urba was relatively easy to find. His name was called several times by weak voices in unison, coming from what must have been the main shrine down here, if the crude stone statues that directed them in the space’s direction were anything to go by. Kurt did not want to go into that room. His senses and his own humanity repelled him. Beyond granite demons the king’s hammers could not destroy lay a place that seemed lost in time, trapped in a world that should never have been.

“You can stay here if you want,” Janus told him, looking afraid.

Kurt thought of his boy, and that was enough. They walked together into the shrine of an old, dead world. They made it only a few steps. Janus cursed and drew his weapons. Kurt just stared.

"Good god…”