Half Discovered Wings

by David Brookes

  ‘The stranger told me that she had been about to feed upon my son, but his blood had curious scents to it. My own scent, she said. Curious; errant blood. She told me how men had advanced upon my son and put him to sleep, then taken him away. She attacked me, but I defended myself. I believed she was trying to mislead me, but she was the only clue I had to Isaac’s whereabouts, so I chased her.

  ‘She moved around the Plains, past Iilyani, further into the forest. I pursued her. I came across the group we travel with now and attacked them, thinking that they too were in league with my enemy. After this I left in pursuit of the sanguilac once more, but lost the trail. I turned around, all the while thinking how much time I was wasting, and caught up with Gabel and the others.’

  ‘This man,’ Colan said. ‘The one who holds your son. What’s his name?’

  ‘His name is Tan Cleric. He has a facility in the rainforest to the west. That is where Isaac is being held.’

  ‘How do you know this now?’

  ‘Because as I was pursuing the sanguilac, I met someone in a town who I hadn’t seen for nearly two decades.’

  ‘Isaac’s father.’

  ‘Yes! He was surprised to see me. As was I, of course, but he was shocked. He told me how I was in danger, and should hide. It turned out that he was employed by Cleric, who was searching ardently for errants. All that time ago, at the start, he’d told Cleric my name, where to find me – so that I could be with him, the father of my child! He said he counted on Cleric to find me, so he could take me away and we could live together with my son.’

  Colan was quiet. ‘So what happened?’ he asked.

  Sarai noticed the change in his voice. ‘I found that I no longer felt anything for him. When I told him that we could never be a family, he said that he no longer wanted that. He’d met someone else, whom he loved.’

  ‘I see. What is Isaac’s father’s name?’

  ‘Johnmal,’ Sarai said, pronouncing the name as clearly as she could. ‘Johnmal Hermann. He is Isaac’s father.’

  ~

  The next few days led them deeper into the desert, until they were all sick of the dust blowing in their eyes, and the sand scouring their skin, and the unrelenting heat that was the only constant there.

  Colan questioned Sarai on her story, asking her to elaborate on certain elements. The sanguilac, for instance … Where had it gone to? Colan had doubts that the rescue was even possible, if what she had said about this Cleric man was true; allied with skilled hunters, and unearthly creatures that chased them through the rainforest.

  He asked what the plan with Johnmal was.

  ‘He intends to find a way to rescue Isaac as soon as he can,’ she told him, as they protected themselves from the dusty, throat-clogging air. ‘Set him free and send him to me. We’ve arranged a meeting place, and a signal.’

  ‘You think he can do it?’

  ‘Johnmal is an errant too. He can do anything.’

  That day, the journey through the plains took an unexpected turn. As they walked, the knight spotted a glare off the surface of the baked wasteland in front of them, something gleaming and glinting in the light quite a way away. It didn’t take long until the others spotted it too.

  ‘What’s that?’ Gabel asked, consulting the magus.

  ‘It looks like a lake,’ Rowan said, but she knew better than to believe it.

  ‘A mirage,’ Caeles suggested.

  ‘One that we all share?’ Gabel sneered. ‘Use that mechanical mind of yours, Caeles.’

  ‘One: my mind is entirely organic, thank you, and two: in a desert, prompted by reactions from others, a mass mirage of water wouldn’t be uncommon. So use your mind, factotum.’

  ‘Well, it’s something,’ said Colan, in a moment of unexpected mediation. ‘And it’s stretching right out in front of us, so I guess we’re going to get to it sooner or later.’

  Onwards they trudged, the soles of their shoes scuffing along the hard arid ground and stumbling over deep cracks. All moisture was gone from this barren land. No lake could exist in the Sinh-ha Plains.

  It was night-time when they reached the reflective surface they had seen from such a distance. The “lake” had a rough texture, but tiny parts of it were smooth and reflected the moonlight. The whole area glittered before them. Thousands of glinting facets winked behind the shimmering air.

  ‘It’s glass,’ Caeles said, staring at his broken reflection on the ground.

  ‘Glass?’ Rowan repeated. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It takes extreme temperatures, Caeles,’ the magus said. ‘Even the sun here doesn’t heat the sand hot enough enough to make glass.’

  ‘Something did,’ Sarai said, and as she spoke, the ground trembled. They heard the muted roar of something unnatural growing beneath them.

  ‘It’s a dragon!’ Colan yelled, and the others looked at him sceptically.

  ‘Look,’ said Caeles, and pointed to where something rose from the baked ground. It was dull and large and flat, and as it rose soon towered metres above them toward the sky.

  ‘What is it?’ Rowan asked, steadying herself on Gabel as the ground vibrated.

  It was a giant steel door twenty feet high. It rose to its peak, and then began to lower itself over on massive hinges, powered by gargantuan sets of hydraulic rods and pistons. With a tremendous crash, the door flattened over the glassy surface.

  ‘It’s not finished,’ Caeles said, looking at the gaping hole before them in the centre of the super-heated sand. ‘I think we should back away a little. Away from the glass.’

  They ran, and as they did more vibrations took their feet from under them. Turning back toward the door, they saw wisps of steam rising up from the opening, wisps that turned to tendrils, then to great jets from all sides until, with a resounding calamitous shriek, the whole opening was filled with a single column of steam, reaching a hundred feet into the sky.

  They felt the heat hit them like hammers, and they fell back into the sand. Colan put himself over Sarai, using the armour over his body like a shield. They felt their skin warm, and their hair curl. Rowan moaned in discomfort as hot air rushed over them, rippling the world with heat distortions.

  The jet slowed over the space of a few seconds, and the doors were left open as the remainder of the steam floated off toward the clear night’s sky. The heat vanished instantly.

  Caeles stood.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Gabel asked, sitting up in his sweat-drenched clothes. ‘It could activate again.’

  ‘We’ve been close enough to see it for days, and there was nothing. Looks like it vents only once a week, or less often than that.’

  ‘We should go around,’ the knight said. ‘It’s not safe to move over the glass with that thing as it is.’

  ‘I don’t want to go around,’ Caeles said, ‘I want to go inside.’

  ‘What for?’ Gabel cried, astounded. ‘It’ll be the death of you.’

  ‘You’ll be the death of me, Joseph,’ he replied. ‘This thing, whatever it is, is pre-Conflict. And there’s no way I’m leaving it behind this time until I’ve checked it out.’

  ‘Madness,’ Sarai muttered.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said the knight, his voice conveying a concealed grin. ‘It’d be an adventure.’

  ‘You’d think you would’ve had enough of adventure, Hînio,’ she replied, but a bright smile broke across her dark features.

  ‘Anyone coming?’ Caeles asked, standing by the hinge of the giant steel door. ‘Or just me?’

  Gabel sighed and looked at the magus.

  ‘I don’t like it much either, Joseph,’ the old man said, ‘but Caeles is needed here.’

  He walked off over the coarse glassy surface. Sarai and the knight were already by the door, and she was untying his bonds.

  Gabel turned to Rowan. ‘I’ll stay out here with you, if you don’t want to go.’

  Rowan barely looked at the hunter, already off following the rest. He pursued them up over the lip of
the giant door, and further as they moved down heavily scorched ladders, built up the inside of the giant vent.

  As they disappeared into the pitch-black hole, the pistons began their work again. The earth trembled as the massive steel door rose and then closed above them.

  *

  Twenty-Five

  BLOOD AND DUST

  The daytime desert was a harsh place, the ever-present sun scalding all who crossed it, but by night it could be equally cruel. Its visitors were subjected to intense cold and bitter winds. William Teague pulled his cloak tighter around himself and glanced uneasily at the waning moon, three nights past full. There were no clouds, nothing to obscure his view of it, but there were stars as well as the moon, and they made him feel at peace. All around him, the rest of the Sect slumbered peacefully.

  ‘Look up there,’ he said.

  Beside him, Sister Verlaine, swathed in her robes and cloak, gazed upward and found the star Teague pointed at.

  ‘It looks red,’ she said.

  ‘It’s Mars,’ he replied quietly. ‘It’s another planet.’

  ‘I know about planets,’ she rebuked. ‘Don’t think me a fool.’

  ‘Sorry. You’re young, and I have no idea what you’ve been taught.’

  ‘I’m no younger than you are!’

  He rolled over in the dust and looked at her. ‘You still don’t believe me, do you? About what happened to me.’

  ‘Oh William, don’t begin to try to convince me of that. Too often already you’ve told me stories of demons and sanguisuga.’

  ‘Well, maybe you’ll see one day.’

  She followed his gaze and stared at the red star, bright in the sky above them. ‘Is it just when you taste blood?’

  ‘Or when I smelt it, sometimes. And it can be anybody’s, even an animal’s. I used to believe that it had something to do with the cycles of the moon, but I was mistaken. It seems that with my rebirth I have also been granted a touch of enlightenment. Perhaps it was the nightmares that Charos showed me that taught me such.’

  After a moment’s reflection on this, Verlaine asked, ‘Does it hurt when you change?’

  ‘Every time.’

  ‘Don’t ever change,’ she said, and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

  ‘I have already,’ he replied. ‘Before I was sent there, I was completely different. Now … Maybe the experience of it, or of being switched…’

  He sighed, and let his eyelids slip closed. The moonlight still penetrated them. He couldn’t risk telling her about his other sickness, the one that blurred his sight and made his senses swim. Whatever ailment he had – possibly heat-related – it might even be fatal. Sometimes he thought he was seeing things, fleeting shapes almost immediately in front of him, like spectres.

  ‘Have you checked to see if you can still change?’ Verlaine asked.

  ‘I daren’t. What if I can?’

  She gave a little smile and asked, ‘What was your body like before this fantastical journey to Hadentes?’

  ‘One older and stronger than this,’ he hissed in disgust. ‘This boy must have been so weak. It’s pathetic. I feel tired just walking in this body.’

  ‘Would you rather be a theriope?’

  ‘No. But I wouldn’t mind my old human body back. I miss my hair,’ he said absently, and opened his eyes to stare upward.

  ‘You’re fine as you are,’ whispered Verlaine, and kissed him again.

  ~

  The trek during the daytime was torture. Two people had already suffered from heatstroke, and were callously left behind in a small recess where they would be partially sheltered from the sun until they perished from heatstroke or dehydration.

  Relentlessly the vast disc of the sun bore down upon the thirty-strong group of travellers. Teague walked in the centre of the procession. He wore his cotton robe, which hung in deep folds on all sides. He felt like a corpse, laid to rest wrapped in a sheet.

  Sister Verlaine always walked beside him now, and behind her, ever watchful, was her twin, Brother Paul. Teague always held Verlaine’s hand, which felt small in his own. She wore a robe like his, thin and semi-transparent, and hung the hood low over her face, concealing her short white hair and brown eyes.

  Every once in a while Teague would peer under the hood and give her a smile, which she would always return; but Verlaine was ill, suffering badly from the heat, and the skin on her bare forearms was blistered. She would always return the smile, but it would be weak.

  The Sinh-ha Plains were barren and empty, the Four of the Ministrati said. Brother Lius, who carried the water on his back and still drank as little as everyone else, had told them nothing could live for long out there.

  However, a few days before there had been a shaking of the ground, and a vast eruption of steam or smoke could be seen far to the northwest, tiny against the shimmering horizon. None of the Four had been able to explain it.

  ~

  ‘William,’ Verlaine said, as she fell. Staggering in the dusty sand he caught her, and lifted her up to him as the rest of the travellers numbly passed them by. She whispered something hoarsely, and then fell unconscious against his chest. He hefted her onto his back and carried her until the sun fell, and the group rested for the given hour.

  He set her down, pulled back the hood. Her neck was red with sun blisters, and her cheeks were burned almost black.

  ‘God,’ he muttered, and checked her pulse. ‘Go and get Brother Lius,’ he said to Paul. ‘Tell him to bring water.’

  Teague sat in an exhausted heap beside her and covered himself as best he could against the fading light. It was already getting cold. He pulled Verlaine’s robes back over her, wrapping them tight, and waited for Paul to return. It didn’t take long.

  ‘Brother William,’ said the Ministrati member, and offered a skin of water. ‘For Sister Verlaine.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Teague replied. He poured it slowly over her cracked lips. Her eyelids fluttered, and she sat up and took the skin, swallowing the water. Asking permission first, she then poured some over her burnt skin.

  ‘…Sunstroke,’ she told Lius quietly.

  ‘Not quite yet,’ he replied, and turned to Teague and Brother Paul. ‘Look after her. Make sure she’s well covered in the day. We’re not going to lose another of our Sect to this sun.’

  He left, leaving Teague and Paul together. ‘Watch her,’ the latter said. ‘I’m going to check on Marête. She’s also ill.’

  Teague was left alone with Sister Verlaine. ‘What am I going to do with you?’ he muttered. ‘You’d better not die, love.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ she croaked. Then: ‘You called me love.’

  ‘Quiet now. We’ve got an hour until we have to set off again. Get some sleep.’

  The sun’s face finally disappeared behind the horizon, and all that was left was its rouge glare on the underside of the clouds. The sky suddenly darkened, as if some vast godly hand had flicked a celestial light switch.

  ‘Tell me another story about William Teague,’ Verlaine said.

  ‘I’ve told you pretty much everything.’

  ‘You never said how he was sent to Hadentes to see Erebis.’

  A sigh. ‘I wish you believed me.’

  ‘If you want me to sleep you’re going to have to tell me a bed-time story.’ She closed her eyes in mock petulance. ‘I’m waiting.’

  Teague lay down beside her on the cracked ground and gazed upward.

  ‘Once upon a time, William Teague was only a boy who lived in a town called Niu Correntia. One night, William saw another boy collapse at the edge of town, completely naked and bloody, as if he had been attacked by animals in the woods. The Father of the town took him in, and William became the young man’s friend.

  ‘When they were young they worked on the same town service projects, fixing fences, cutting down overgrown trees, that sort of thing. They became fast friends, but when they grew to be adults, they got their own occupations.

  ‘One day, a young girl f
rom the town went missing. For three days the townspeople looked for her, until eventually they found her body, bloody and abandoned just in the woods outside of town. It looked like some animal had mauled her, so they buried her and left it at that. Then a few weeks later there was another killing, an old man. Then, a month later, another victim. It seemed as if someone was methodically killing the townspeople and making the murders look like animal attacks. Soon there were vigils being set up at night and, a couple of weeks later, somebody spotted something moving through the town square. They saw a person who looked like a beast – or the other way around. They hunted it but never caught it.

  ‘While William was out fixing fences, his friend became concerned – or obsessed – by this creature. He read literature and gave it the name that best fit: a theriope. He said he knew how to stop it, and began his work as a monster-hunter. He killed sanguisuga and theriopes for miles around, but always the same creature kept coming back.

  ‘William found out, after about a year of these killings, that the theriope was his own mother. I’ve told you this, how she was dying of an illness the doctors couldn’t cure, and she then bit William to pass on her “gift”. He became a theriope as she died – his only love, his precious mother. ‘Blood for blood,’ she’d said. He succeeded her, compelled by this spiteful malady. William’s deep desire to be loved drew him to families, couples, lovers; he ripped them from each other and then ate. At least one day a fortnight, he would return home caked in human blood.

  ‘He burned down his mother’s home – this, as well, I’ve told you – and buried her body in secret. He continued to kill, hunt down people and tear them open like a wild beast.