‘He’s dead?’ she asked, eyes brightening but then dimming suddenly. She coughed into her fist.
‘You’re sick.’
‘It isn’t too bad, but Father says it’ll get worse.’
‘I’ll leave you. You should get rest.’
‘Rest is no cure for what I have.’
She looked suddenly pale then, as he examined her, and her eyes had an obscure quality in the low light. She seemed like a wraith, translucent. She told him how the Father had no clue as to the cause of her sickness, and that she felt very tired, always. He took that as his cue to leave.
She said to his back: ‘Was its name … Teague? That killed Bethany?’
Rowan and Bethany had not been related to one other, but ever since Rowan had been found on the fringes of town two years ago, Father and Bethany had taken care of her. They were a family.
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Don’t worry. He’s gone now.’
She smiled sleepily, laying down and pulling the covers up to her chin. ‘Thank you, Joseph.’
‘Goodnight, Rowan.’
~
‘What did she say?’ Father asked quietly.
‘She was happy it was all over.’
Gabel looked toward the back of the apse. Rows of candles sat like soldiers, guttering forlornly in the breeze that stole inward through the decaying masonry.
‘What is she ill with?’ he asked.
Father sat down on the front row of pews, sighed and said, ‘It’s not clear. I believe that she’s simply run down. Perhaps it’s this business over the were-creature…’
‘Didn’t she imply once that it had something to do with how you found her?’
‘Yes, but I get the distinct impression that she’s not quite certain. She still doesn’t remember anything of the time before I stumbled across her in the forest.’
‘At least Bethany was avenged.’
‘And I think the whole town is grateful for that.’
The hunter scowled. ‘The rest of the town looks at me like a leper.’
‘Remember,’ said Father, putting a friendly hand on his shoulder, ‘you’re doing Irenia’s work, whether you like that idea or not.’
~
The town felt deserted. Amidst the long shadows the light swam colourful and rich, but Gabel couldn’t enjoy the sight any longer. He felt tired from the fruitless searching, sapped, and the setting sun only made him feel more exhausted.
As he approached the bench where Bethany died, the cloudy sky turned orange in a sudden flare, and he was left swamped in twilight beside the weathered birch tree. He looked down and found he was standing on the patch of dried-up blood, but made no attempt to move.
He heard a voice behind him saying, ‘You may not believe me, but I had nothing to do with her murder.’
As if a numbing dew had settled over him with the dusk, Gabel didn’t feel the expected ire, but an unnatural serenity. He didn’t turn to look at the old man. In the fading light he was breathing hard, and he saw his own misty breath in the cold. He rubbed the back of his hands.
‘You knew she would be killed.’
‘I did, yes,’ said the speaker. ‘But there are many things that are mysterious in this world – as you know – and many tragedies. That you also know, and you knew even before last month. Bethany is dead, yes, but killed by the theriope, not I.’
‘How did you know that it would happen at all?’
‘You called me magus when we first met.’
‘You can see what’s coming?’ Gabel asked.
‘Sometimes. Your future is to come with me on a journey. I’ve a job for you, Mister Gabel.’
The hunter turned and looked at the man. He dug his fingernails into his palms and said, ‘What would be the point of such a journey?’
‘There’s a monster you need to kill. I can’t tell you much. But we will head toward the distant west, to a city there.’
‘Shianti?’
‘Possibly. You’ll be paid after six months.’ The magus looked up at him through the orange light. His green eyes had strokes of emotional exhaustion within the mistiness, and the sparkling freckles upon the man’s cheeks had darkened. ‘By then you should be on the return journey.’
Gabel looked over at the church, turning his back on the old man. ‘Bethany’s still alive in my mind. I have to say my farewells.’
‘Then say them. There is a lot for us to do between now and when the world ends.’
*
Two
OUTSET
By the time the sun rose above the flatlands behind the church, Gabel was leaning against the large tree by Bethany’s grave. The wind was soft and fast against his face, and he felt hot under his leather jacket. Finally standing and putting on his fedora, he made his way to the front doors of the church.
He knocked, and Father answered. He told Gabel that Rowan was still sleeping, and Gabel agreed to rest inside the church awhile, until she woke or he felt it was late.
Almost an hour later, he knocked on her door and received no reply. He slowly entered.
She was quiet and very still in her bed. Gabel made no move as he stood in the doorway, until finally he saw her breathe and sit up.
‘Joseph…’
He hesitated for a second, his anxiety kicking in. ‘Father did tell you…?’
‘Yes. I won’t be a minute. You can wait outside.’
~
They lingered restlessly at the edge of the forest until the magus met them, and then together they passed out of the sun. When neither Gabel nor the magus spoke, Rowan stayed silent as well, following obediently through the trees until they were surrounded by them.
She had packed few clothes – enough to last – and tied her brown hair loosely back into a ponytail, which hung ragged and knotted down her back. Thin hung in streamers over her eyes, which were ringed with darkness. A warmer outfit was rolled up and added to Gabel’s pack; it looked heavy, but he seemed to have no problem carrying it.
Silently through the leaves, the magus walked beside him.
Rowan didn’t know where they were going, or which route they were going to take. She didn’t know why she was with them, only that Father had spoken to Joseph quietly in the church the day before.
She remembered Bethany’s funeral, when she had last seen Gabel. There had been no words spoken in that quiet hour. Only the three of them had been present. She had stood beside a tree, and once in a while she would steady herself by resting a hand on the gnarled bark. Tears hesitated beneath her brown eyes.
Father had closed the incunabulum and nodded at Gabel, who had been standing a few metres back from the grave under a great birch, shadowed from the moonlight. He had his hat pulled low over his eyes; Father hadn’t seen the tears, but Rowan had.
The night before the departure, Gabel had stayed under the tree by the grave. Rowan had seen him re-enter the church and speak with Father. They’d argued briefly before Father questioned him about the magus’ job offer, and where it might take him. When Gabel had replied Shianti Father blew up.
‘Joseph, you’ve never considered this place your home, even after Rebekah, and William, and … and Bethany. But is that any reason to abandon the allegiances you have here?’
‘I’ve mourned for Bethany today.’ Gabel had replied. ‘Tomorrow I work. I don’t have any allegiances here.’
‘Fine, then. If you leave, then you must take Rowan with you. She’s desperately ill, Joseph. You know that the best doctors live in Shianti. Don’t let Rowan die because you wouldn’t take her.’
‘Hermeticia will take months to reach,’ the hunter replied, using the city’s unofficial name. ‘Even if that is where I am going.’
‘That is why you must take her with you. Otherwise, by the time you get back, she’ll already be dead. We don’t know what her illness is. Whatever this mysterious job is that you’ve accepted from this so-called magus, ignore it as you go. Rowan is your true quest. Save her, Joseph.’
~
‘There’s a footpath just to our right,’ Gabel said suddenly.
They followed him through the forest, and after a few minutes Rowan felt a gravel path crunch under her feet and looked down. It was worn by rainwater, not boots, and she doubted anybody ever used this path. People from the town always walked around the forest.
A thought occurred to her. ‘Aren’t there dangerous animals in the forest?’
Gabel looked around as the magus carried on walking.
‘I’ll keep us safe,’ he promised. ‘You know I do this thing often.’
‘I’ll try to trust you, Joseph,’ she murmured.
She realised then just how little she knew of the hunter. All she learned of him had been glimpsed through the iron latticework of the church windows: he was a character coloured by their stained glass; an image built up both from his reputation as a factotum and from the Father’s unbreakable trust of the man. Rowan had yet to see Gabel’s true colours. Bethany used to speak of him often, usually in an uncertain tone of voice halfway between admiration and despair. ‘He isn’t even distant,’ she had told Rowan once, ‘he’s just not always there.’ They’d both seen him praised for killing whatever beast was harassing the town, but they’d also witnessed the hunter half naked by the lamplight, singing melancholy songs as he staggered from the inn to that dusty little hovel of his.
Rowan looked again at the hunter. Her eyes followed the rim of his hat until it disappeared behind the front of his face; he half turned and she saw the corner of his eye.
She’d seen him once, in a fight in the town square. He had knocked a man across the face with the back of his fist and roared something like, You know why it was done! She’d never learned what the argument was about, nor who the other man was, but – just for a fraction of a second – she thought she saw Gabel’s eyes spark and drip red flame. His anger made corporeal.
Turning her attention to the mysterious magus, she saw that he was old, but seemed to cope well with the walking. He looked like a traveller, with his heavy boots and ragged coat; however she, so many years younger, felt exhausted, feet aching, shoulders slumping, cold in the lack of sunlight. Time had passed since they left – more than she realised – and she became aware that she’d been assessing the two men for some hours.
She asked if they might rest, and though the magus protested, Gabel sat down defiantly on a fallen, moss-covered tree. Rowan sat on the opposite end and looked about herself at the still woods and their ivy-laced trees.
Before she had time to catch her breath, the hunter was sitting next to her. ‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Your feet hurt.’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Your shoes aren’t very suitable. We’ll get you some more when we reach Pirene.’
‘The next town?’ she asked, not looking at him. She had no intention of making herself seem stupid or inexperienced, but she wouldn’t always be able to avoid such straightforward questions. She had never left Niu Correntia, as far as her amnesia allowed her to remember.
‘That’s right,’ Gabel replied.
‘How long will it take to get to Shianti?’
‘A while,’ he allowed. ‘But once we’re there, we’ll get you better.’
‘I don’t want to be a burden.’
‘You won’t be,’ he said absently, peering along the path. ‘Come on. The old man doesn’t want us resting long.’
They moved until it seemed the forest seemed to grow around them. Nets of branches parted for them and closed once they had passed by, and the sparse greenery that sprouted out of the dirt was either pale as soapsuds or brown as rotten fruit. So little wildlife, so few birds, as if the giant creatures that roamed the place had all gathered for a banquet and eaten too much. There seemed nothing left to refill the desolate burrows and empty branches.
It got darker, and she passed the time by counting the seconds until they were minutes, then counting the minutes away … The darkness was upon her before she realised. However, this was nothing to what it became hours later, a pitch blackness in which she could barely see the moving shapes in front of her. They stopped, and Gabel said something quietly to the magus. He moved toward Rowan.
‘Stay close,’ was all Gabel said, and she had no trouble adhering to this order; animal voices chattered and barked around them.
They stopped half an hour later, for fear of losing one another. They each lay out two thick blankets to sleep between, and Gabel started a fire in the centre of a small clearing. Rowan could see the angular shape of something animal-sized near the opposite edge, and Gabel swore, kicking the crusted thing away. The whole place smelled of death, liquid yet knife-sharp.
The magus said nothing to them before going to sleep. He lay extremely still under his blanket, aged fingers resting on the frayed edges. The lids rolled with the movement of his eyes underneath.
‘Is he sleeping?’ Rowan whispered as Gabel kneeled next to her, tending the fire.
‘I don’t know. He could probably hear us anyway.’
There was a crackle as the magus rolled over on the dry leaves.
‘I’m exhausted, Joseph…’
‘Get some sleep,’ he advised.
She fell silent and tried to feel comfortable on the itchy blanket. It was coarse against her skin, but she was too fatigued to even move around to a softer area.
Already she felt like she was being eroded by the journey. Pieces of her were being swept along by this strong, leather-clad current, whilst others lingered back at the church, forever wedged into the crumbling mortar and ground into the dusty wooden floorboards.
She opened her eyes and the only light she saw was the glow from the fire, surfing through the darkness and reflecting off the bark on the trees around her. A few minutes later she rolled over, and saw Gabel disappearing into the darkness.
~
Gabel had heard noises before they stopped to rest, but he wasn’t concerned. The forest was full of creatures, especially around nightfall when they were awakened by the quietness around them, the leaves settling as the day-winds died and the light fell. Even now Gabel could hear small animals crunching through the fallen leaves, or scrabbling in the low branches around his head as he walked alongside a narrow river.
It had been a long time since Gabel had seen the stars outside of the town. He recognised three constellations, but another stranger one had appeared from the east, and he could not think of a shape to go with those six bright points.
The moon wasn’t visible – it was behind the trees now – but its shine illuminated the leaves of the plants across the riverbank. Thoughts returned to William Teague, the theriope. Gabel had been stupid to lead the others into that last clearing before checking it first. The thing he had kicked away was a human torso, rotted almost to the bone. But with the distraction of saying farewell to Bethany he had forgotten Teague and their confrontation, and Rowan couldn’t handle a shock like that. Whatever illness ravaged her, she was weak.
Gabel dipped his hands in the water by his feet, washed them roughly, and wished his old friend good luck in whatever hellgarden he had sprouted in since his death.
‘May it be better than our sad lives together,’ he said, and baptised himself with the cold, clear water from the river. ‘Rest well, William, my friend.’
The slog back to the little camp was short, but it was a long enough period for the factotum to dwell on the place he had abandoned, and the place he was going. The old magus, who still remained only a shade of a personality to Gabel, skilfully managed to avoid giving any direct answers to their true destination. All Gabel knew was that Shianti, also called Hermeticia, was in the region of their destination. There they would seek out medicine for Rowan’s wasting sickness as well as accomplish the magus’ obscure goal.
Upon arri
ving back at the camp he saw that the others were sleeping. He lay down without a blanket a few feet away from Rowan, and rested his eyes until just before sunrise. Then, after a modest breakfast, they began to move on.
~
The three walked alone for five days without meeting any person or creature. Rowan had started to believe that the forest was completely uninhabited, and that the danger the magus and Gabel constantly warned her about was nothing but fiction.
On the sixth day Gabel stopped dead, standing perfectly straight as the few singular rays of light began to shine through the trees. He lowered his hat over his eyes and said, ‘The wider river’s to our left. Not far now.’
Treading softly through the forest, Rowan could hear the sounds of a river in front of her. They arrived half an hour later, where the rushing waters were white by their feet over deep embankments covered in lichen and grass. She watched the waters flow and it made the time pass quicker.
They walked until long after dark, until the hunter absently looked up at the moon and muttered, ‘It’s midnight.’
Rowan stopped then and sat, looking over the waters with her hands in her lap.
Gabel called over to her from further away. ‘What’s the matter?’
She said, ‘It just became Sunday.’
The hunter sighed, muttered to the magus, protested for a few minutes, and then realised the futility of making a pious girl travel on the Sabbath. The hunter sat by her, a few metres away from the magus, and looked up at the stars from under his hat, smiling faintly.
‘You don’t share your employer’s lack of faith?’ she asked him. Gabel seemed to be surprised by her words.
‘I owe a lot to Father,’ he replied, ‘but I don’t accompany him in his religion, nor in the old man’s. I’m here not to comfort you, Rowan, but to try and dissuade you from this respite.’
She listened to the chirping of the insects for a few seconds, as if the little things were speaking. She felt strangely calm, though the cold winds that followed the waters were uncomfortable at best. She gazed at the purple fireflies that gathered around the reeds near her feet.
Half Discovered Wings Page 3
