“Not quite. There are horrors which roam the wastes. A few living things were changed, warped. That much magic usage always has consequences. It twists the very fabric of our bodies. Even breathing this dust will make you sick. It is best to pass through here quickly.”
Faye had thought she’d seen ugly before. The blackened circle that had been Mar Pacifica had been ugly, but it had been a fresh wound. This was an old scar; a scrar that had never fully healed.
“You have not seen real war, Faye. You have seen skirmishes. This is what happens when magic truly goes to war against magic. You have not seen the utter savagery that comes from something of this magnitude. Second Somme was one of the largest battles in history, and it was the greatest loss of Active lives ever. Day after day they killed each other, magic being flung back and forth like nothing you could possibly imagine. The laws of physics were broken. Men became something more, and sometimes something less, and afterwards the land was so blighted that we could not even stay long enough to bury the dead without growing ill. We gathered what we could, and most of the rest were left to sink into the mud.”
“I’ve heard it was real bad.”
“If it had not been for General Roosevelt sacrificing his American Volunteers, then my country would have been conquered by the Kaiser’s undead hordes. It was only through a combination of luck, courage, and tenacity that this line held. Oh, how the Power must have grown fat on us.” Jacques sounded tired. Bitter and tired. “It must have been a feast.”
In the distance, Faye could see hills with living plants on them, so thankfully the battleground didn’t go on forever. All scars had to end somewhere. “You were here?”
Jacques was staring out the window. “For part of it, but I was drawn away when I received word of the Spellbound’s whereabouts. I missed the final offensive because I was a few miles away hunting Sivaram. He had been difficult to track during the war. With all of that death to choose from, there had been little need for him to strike out on his own, so this opportunity could not be missed. I was not alone. Knights from both sides deserted in order to assist me. All of us put aside our war in order to stop the greater danger. I was the only survivor, so perhaps in some sad way, Sivaram saved my life.”
“Because you missed this?”
“Yes. We caught him minutes after he had murdered Whisper’s entire family. She had no one else, so I took her in and raised her as my own.” Jacques wiped his eyes. “I loved her very much.”
“I didn’t know all that,” Faye said.
“All you need to know is that it is only because of Whisper you are still alive. You see that, Faye? If you are wrong, if the Power decides that the Spellbound is the next step in its relationship with mankind, then it will be Active against Active, killing and taking, no better than animals. It will reduce us to predator and prey.” Jacques glared out the window at the tainted wasteland. “If you are wrong, then that is our future.
Chapter 9
No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human breast and seeks to wrestle with them can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.
Wannsee, Germany
The Berlin Wall was much taller than she’d expected. She had heard of the great wall which had been erected around Dead City to keep the zombies inside; everyone with access to a radio had heard stories about it at some point, but maybe it was because she’d spent those years on the Vierras’ dairy farm that she’d always figured it would have been more like the sort of fences they used to keep cows in than an actual giant wall made out of stone. If she’d thought that through, she would’ve realized how naïve she’d been. After all, cows and zombies were very different in temperament.
“So the man you want me to talk to is inside there?”
“That is correct, Faye,” Jacques said.
Was he trying to get her killed on purpose? Faye had dealt with the undead before, so she knew how dangerous they could be. Was Jacques trying to get rid of the Spellbound again? Skip another elder’s vote, send her on a wild-goose chase into one of the most dangerous places in the world, and just let the ravenous zombies get her instead? It made a sick sort of sense. “Are you crazy?”
Jacques chuckled. “Can anyone who has lived for this long in this field truly be sane? I think not.”
The train station was on the outskirts of the city which had once been known as Berlin. It, like most of the wall’s surroundings, seemed grey and worn. Faye had always assumed that Heinrich always wore grey simply because he was a Fade and it helped him blend in everywhere. Now she wondered if he always wore grey because that was the only color he had seen growing up. Maybe grey was just his favorite color?
She hadn’t spoken out loud, but Jacques knew what she was thinking. “The people on the outskirts of Dead City do not use bright colors. Should any of the undead make it over the walls, those who still have eyes are attracted to bright colors, just as those who can still hear are attracted to noise.”
Now that he mentioned it, Faye realized it was abnormally quiet here. Obviously there had been the noise of the train engine, but after it had rolled out, the city was oddly silent. The porter who had carried their bags had spoken in muted tones. There were no loud announcements, no music playing anywhere, no loud conversations from the locals. It was like being in the shadow of the dead sucked all the life right out of a place. The grey stone walls loomed over the town, so she supposed it would be hard for anyone to forget. “That’s too bad.”
“Most of the undead have gone so mad that they are not capable of rational thought. Should some get out, which I have been told is not too uncommon an occurrence, it is better to let them wander aimlessly for a time rather than to have them hone in immediately on the living. It gives the tower guards more time to spot them.”
“What about the ones that are still smart?”
“Thankfully for us and them, there are not so many of those left anymore. If an undead who has retained his reasoning truly feels the need to escape into the world of the living, heaven help us all. Hunting down the occasional wrathful undead who escapes these walls is a specialty of our German Grimnoir brethren.”
The feeling in the air was not that different from the fields of Second Somme. This was a place where magical energy had torn a hole in the world and left a gaping wound. She had been in Mar Pacifica, and had survived the Peace Ray impact there—a hit which had been a tiny fraction of the size of this one—but when she’d come out of the ground, Mar Pacifica had felt different. Everything had still been smoking and burning. It hadn’t had time to turn grey and dead yet. She hadn’t been back to Mar Pacifica to find out what it looked like now, but in her gut she knew it would be another dead, blighted place forever… And it had been so pretty once.
“I can’t believe we’re going in there.”
“We? I plan on renting rooms for the night and enjoying a warm meal. In the morning, you are going in there and I will stay in my room and enjoy a good book. If you are not back in twenty-four hours, then I will simply assume you are gone, board another train, and head back to Paris.”
“That’s awfully yellow of you.”
“Says the girl who can teleport to the portly old man with bad knees who could not outrun the slowest of shamblers. I was only a Brute of medium talent in my prime. Now, I would be consumed in minutes.”