Black Halo

by Sykes, Sam

  She cursed him, spewed a torrent of verbal venom into the sand as she trudged across it. She didn’t hear her own curses. She hoped they were good ones.

  It had been brewing all afternoon in her head, coming in flashes of clarity: a mutter of resentment from the bottom of the valley, a wistful sigh on the breeze, feet dragging heavily on sand exactly four-hundred and twenty-six paces away from her. The sounds, sounds usually too insignificant to be worth hearing, had reached her ears with crystalline clarity.

  She hadn’t worried when she had sat beside Asper, heard the twitches in the priestess’ back and felt the blood flowing with ire, with fear, through her body. That was good. Humans were supposed to feel fear around shicts. Shicts were supposed to hear.

  But then, Asper had taken her hand. Kataria had heard the muscles in her body relax, had felt the fear turn to concern, the ire turn to some maladjusted form of affection. That was not good. Humans were not supposed to feel that. Shicts were not supposed to hear that. She was a shict. She had heard that.

  And that was cause for worry, for violence. She hadn’t regretted what she had done to the priestess. It was a natural response. It was treating a symptom before it became an infection. It was a cure.

  The noises hadn’t stopped, though. She had tried to dull them with liquor, tried to ignore them with chatter. That might have worked, she reasoned, if not for him.

  He had ruined everything by making it all quiet.

  Standing beside him, the sounds slowly went soft, became mute. Staring into his eyes, her ears stopped throbbing. Breathing in his liquor-stained breath, smelling the stink of his sweat-laden flesh, watching him smile with crooked sheepishness, she had just begun to stop hearing altogether.

  That was not good. She knew it as much then as she did now, but it was difficult to recall why she had not worried at that moment. The noise was so inoffensive, suddenly; the world’s noises ceased to press upon her in intangible walls of racket. No more worries, no more weight, just lightness, just her, and …

  And then he had done what he had.

  And she had heard him.

  She had heard things in him that humans were not supposed to feel, that shicts were not supposed to hear. And she had felt …

  Well, there was really no other way she could feel.

  The howl was what had coursed through her, a sourceless noise that did not obey the laws of noise, starting in her brain, clawing its way out and tearing through her ears. It lasted for but a moment, all the time it took her body to realise what she had pressed her lips against, but it hadn’t needed more. It had ripped its way free, rang in her skull.

  She had heard him. She had heard the Howling.

  And then, she heard everything.

  Instinct had told her to run, and she did, fleeing far into the forest, into the night. It was the right thing to do, she knew, because it was the voice of her body. What had happened before, what had made her quiver when he snaked his arm about her middle and press her body against his, what had made her slide her own arms around him and draw him tighter, what had made her think she enjoyed it …

  No, not her body’s voice. Something from somewhere else inside her. Not her body.

  Her body had told her to run; her body had howled at her. It was a natural defence, a rejection of the disease, of the infection that had plagued her and made her do those things. The noise – the unbearably, agonisingly loud noise – was just a side effect, the lingering symptoms of which were the last go.

  That made sense, she told herself as she trudged to the nearby brook. It was a symptom; it just needed to be cured. She splashed the water gently over her face, ears ringing with the ensuing splash. That would pass, she told herself; it would all pass. She had been tested, passed, survived the disease, for that’s what he was.

  ‘He’s a disease,’ she tried to hear herself say, ‘he’s a disease, he’s a disease …’

  The water settled. She stared down at her reflection. The face staring back at her didn’t look convinced.

  A realisation dawned on her just as the entire island conspired against her, the forest and creatures all falling silent so that she might voice it and hear it ring through her ears and heart with one painful echo.

  ‘He didn’t come after me.’

  She found herself surprised that the face in the water frowned back at her at that. She found herself surprised that she didn’t bother to lie to herself and say it was because she missed the silence. But found herself surprised it hurt.

  What, then, she asked herself as the noises began again, is left? You can’t do this, she silently told the reflection. You’ve tried – I know you’ve tried – but you just can’t do what you need to do, what shicts do. If you could, you would have killed him when you first saw him, when you knew you had to, when you were given no choice. But you didn’t, so what else is left? She leaned forward. No, the water’s too shallow to drown yourself. Once more, what else is left?

  But to live with the disease?

  Footfalls crunching on sand. Soles sinking with shoulders heavy with dried blood. Breath short and irritated, gasped out.

  Him.

  She sat up on her knees, pulling her spine erect, staring into the water, saw herself biting her lower lip and forced herself to stop. Dignity, she reminded herself; she could afford a little of that when she said what she knew she had to, what a shict never would. The world fell silent again as the footfalls came upon her; she would hear every word she said. One more cruel joke she resolved to be defiant in the face of.

  She closed her eyes, whispered as softly as she could.

  ‘You came after me, Lenk.’

  ‘What’s a “Lenk”?’

  Iron on iron.

  Her eyes snapped open, spied a leering face in the water: long, hard, purple. She whirled about just in time to see the boot’s toe coming up to kiss her jaw.

  Twenty-Eight

  BESIDES THE OBVIOUS

  INTERNAL BLEEDING

  It was cold enough to freeze his lungs, dark enough to weigh his eyelids shut with gloom. Lenk thought he was drawing in deep, steady breaths, but found the air thick and oppressive enough that he couldn’t be sure.

  Dead?

  In the gloom, a voice on a warm and fevered wind whispered. That wasn’t right, Lenk thought; the sensation here should be cold, not hot.

  ‘You’re safe … not quite dead.’

  The voice should not be nearly so comforting.

  ‘Yet.’

  There it was.

  Yet?

  ‘We’ve got time.’

  I can’t see.

  ‘For the better, one would think.’

  I feel sand.

  ‘A warm and pleasant beach.’

  I can’t move my hands.

  ‘They are bound.’

  What happened?

  Something without words answered.

  Echoes of a panicked sorrow sounded in his mind, the question ‘why’ resounding off the walls of his head, accompanied by muttered self-deprecations and a thousand ‘should haves’. Through the thicket of noise, he could see himself: sitting, alone, the crowds of Owauku dispersed, not a slender body in sight, as he stared into a cup of mangwo blankly.

  I remember that part, not the bit that ended with me here, though.

  ‘Wait.’

  They came flooding into the valley, sweeping through the fog of his mind and into memory: purple-skinned, long-faced, iron-voiced. He saw himself look up, saw them through eyes not his own.

  Another emotion: fury without echoes, a long, keening wail of rage as he launched himself at them. The first at the pack, the first that would die, recoiled, stunned at the sudden assault. She looked to her cohorts for assistance, found his hands wrapped around her throat a moment later. She did not fight back as he drove her to the ground and slammed her head against the earth, over and over; she stared at him, aghast, the breath to voice her fear not found.

  ‘What?’ one of them grunted. ‘Do they all
do that?’

  ‘It’s getting back up!’ another shrieked.

  He had risen, leaving the creature motionless beneath him. He lunged at another, reaching out hands. She met him with hesitant challenge, eyes wide over her shield as she raised it before her. He spoke words that were not from his tongue, reached out on hands that felt like ice wrapped in skin the colour of stone.

  What happened then?

  He felt cold all of a sudden; the voice shifted to something frigid and sharp.

  ‘This happened.’

  They looked worried.

  ‘They were right to feel fear.’

  They don’t fear anything, I’m told.

  ‘They fear us.’

  That can’t be right. Were those my hands?

  ‘Hands of the willing.’

  But were they mine?

  ‘Are yours?’

  My head is hurting. It probably wouldn’t do that if I were dead.

  ‘Not dead.’

  Are you sure?

  ‘This one isn’t moving,’ a voice, distant and harsh spoke. ‘Give it a kick.’

  A blow erupted against his ribs. He felt a scream tear through his throat.

  ‘Yes.’

  His eyes snapped open, blackness replaced with a blinding flash of red. His breath returned to him slowly, his sight even more so. When both finally came to him easily, his vision was a field of purple, broken only by the milky white eyes and the deep frown scarred into a long face.

  ‘Yeah,’ the netherling grunted, flashing a jagged sneer. ‘It’s still alive.’ She peered intently at him. ‘And it turned back to pink.’ She glanced over her shoulder. ‘You want me to kill it?’

  ‘It strangled a low-finger earlier,’ another voice snarled in reply. ‘Not worth killing over that, really.’ The sound of a black chuckle emerged over iron sliding from a scabbard. ‘Still …’

  The sound of grating metal brought his attention to the shore. Longfaces gathered there in a knot of iron and purple muscle, some watching Lenk, some hauling a boat hewn of black wood onto the shore. One emerged from the crowd with a snarl and a sword, only to be stopped by a sudden iron gauntlet cracking against her jaw. She staggered, then stalked back into line, herded by the scowl of a larger female.

  ‘No one kills anyone,’ the larger female grunted, ‘until the Master says so.’

  A collective sigh of disappointment swept the gathered females, including the one standing over Lenk, who quickly lost interest in him and stepped back to rejoin her companions. His attention swayed on them, his focus lost as he felt his eyes rolling in his head, desperately trying to retreat back into his skull and plunge him into a soothing dark.

  He might have heeded their wishes, as his head swivelled from them on a rubbery neck to survey the beach, but shutting his eyes to the sight that greeted him quickly became impossible.

  If the skeletons could still make noise, he reasoned, they would be screaming. Their mouths gaped open, bone-white jaws turned skyward, black eye sockets vast and empty. And, he further reasoned, the screams that emerged from their colossal maws would have shook the earth.

  They lay on the sand in dozens, titanic hills of arching spines and reaching claws, held fast to the ground by chains that refused to release, heedless of the rust that threatened to break or the fact that their prisoners were long dead. They lay in silent agony, bound, heads stoved in, ballista missile shafts jutting from empty eye sockets and temples, screaming.

  They were Abysmyths, he recognised, from their titanic fishlike skulls. They were giant Abysmyths. What could they have to scream about? What could have caused them such pain? What had pulled them to the earth?

  ‘Something cruel and pitiless,’ the voice uttered with a warm whisper. ‘They died screaming.’

  Ah.

  ‘And we made them scream,’ it laughed coldly.

  What? We killed them?

  ‘You didn’t have to.’

  But …

  ‘We did.’

  You’re not making sense.

  ‘More important problems.’

  He blinked, suddenly aware of his hands tied behind his back, suddenly feeling the agony in his flank, suddenly hearing the sounds of very violent, very muscular women with very sharp swords. So taken by the ancient carnage on the beach was he that he almost forgot he was probably going to die.

  Against that, he supposed he should consider himself lucky he noticed Dreadaeleon, similarly bound beside him, at all.

  ‘Awake,’ the boy noted with a characteristic lack of concern. ‘Good.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Lenk asked.

  ‘Difficult to figure out, is it?’ Dreadaeleon’s sigh was heavy enough to bludgeon Lenk. ‘The convenience of the longfaces’ arrival following the fact that we were plied with copious amounts of unregulated alcohol? The fact that the only things tied up on this beach have pink skin instead of green?’

  Even with his head swimming, it was obvious to Lenk that the unpleasant situation had done nothing to temper Dreadaeleon’s snideness, but that was all that was obvious. His thoughts were too scattered for comprehension, let alone retort. Punching, he thought, would have been suitable, if not for the obvious.

  ‘We were betrayed, Lenk,’ Dreadaeleon said, ‘and if you ask by whom, I swear I’m going to vomit on you.’

  The temptation to ask anyway was banished as Lenk caught a shiver of movement from the corner of his eye.

  At the edge of the shore, great white knucklebones rose from the moist earth, the great skeleton they belonged to far behind, the claws attached to them so very far from the sea the dead beast had tried to crawl into. Atop it, the figure of Togu was insignificant, a gloomy little growth staring distantly over a vast ocean.

  ‘Togu …’

  The word crawled out of Lenk’s mouth, uncertain. He searched the lizardman with desperate eyes, for explanation as to how this had happened, for elaboration as to why it had happened. Answered with nothing but impassive silence, uncertainty shifted to anger, and the next words charged from his mouth on wrathful legs.

  ‘You slimy piece of diseased stool,’ he snarled, trying to ignore the impotency of his words and muscles as he pulled at his bonds. ‘You sold us, you green little sack-sucker! You betrayed us, you … you …’

  ‘He’s not going to answer,’ Dreadaeleon spoke, preventing any further displays of futile fury. ‘I tried the same thing, with better insults.’

  The answer was unsatisfactory; anything short of leaping up and strangling the lizard-thing before chewing out his withered throat would be, Lenk knew. Togu didn’t so much as flinch, his head hanging from shoulders that looked too small for him. He was burdened, by guilt, regret, something else; Lenk wasn’t satisfied by that, either.

  Short of strangulation, another round of verbal hate seemed futile, yet came rampaging up to Lenk’s lips all the same. And there it died, frozen to death as a cold realisation struck the young man firmly across the face. He swept wide, fevered eyes about the beach, saw nothing but sand, bones, netherlings. Plenty of flesh, none of it pink. Plenty of teeth, all of them jagged and frowning. Plenty of ears …

  ‘Where are they?’ Lenk asked in a halting, breathless voice, terrified to ask each word, horrified of the answer, scared pissless of not knowing. ‘Where is she, Togu? Where’s Kataria?’

  ‘He won’t tell you,’ Dreadaeleon said, ‘about her.’ He paused, choked. ‘Or Asper. I … I tried, Lenk.’

  ‘Hardly matters,’ a voice echoed in his mind. ‘Did us no favours, no harm.’

  ‘He … he betrayed us,’ Lenk whispered back, his voice strained. ‘He … he …’

  ‘Will be punished. Betrayers die along with abominations.’

  ‘Too calm,’ Lenk muttered. ‘You’re too calm.’

  ‘You brought this on yourself. You could have fled.’

  ‘She is … she’s …’

  ‘Most likely. Maybe not. She can be saved.’

  He breathed in, feeling overly warm.

/>   ‘Does not matter. A task is at hand.’

  ‘What task?’ he asked, shivering.

  ‘They have waited for this moment. They have waited for it to arrive. They have come. They are close.’

  ‘Who?’

  There was no explaining how he instantly knew beyond the sudden well of dread that sprung inside him, rising up through him on oily darkness as it tried to choke the breath from him.

  Tried, and failed. His breath came to him, regardless, creeping from his lips, sharp, crisp. Cold.

  ‘They are close.’

  Lenk knew exactly of what the voice spoke, knew it did not lie.

  ‘Tonight, we will kill.’

  That, too, was inevitable.

  ‘My father told me, as his father did, that the Owauku were born without life.’

  Togu was speaking, his bass voice tinged with more weariness than sorrow. Lenk looked up without fury, without hatred, saw only the throat from which the words emanated, the blood pumping underneath. He knew that he would watch it spill upon the earth.

  ‘We were born in death,’ the lizardman continued, unaware of what the young man saw. ‘This land was alive when we did not have it, dead when they gave it to us. They fought here, the servants of the Gods and the brood of Mother Deep. For us, they fought here, they said, to keep us free from slavery. They killed one another for days. When only one stood, he gave us this dying land and abandoned us. We were born in death, we lived in death, we survive in death … betrayed.’

  ‘I know how you feel,’ Dreadaeleon replied, ‘poor dear.’

  ‘We were betrayed,’ Togu said, turning on the boy with bright, angry eyes. ‘By everyone who claimed to love us. The servants of the Gods gave us a dying land, the Gods themselves refused to heal it, the humans …’ He muttered, turning back to the sea. ‘We do what we can to survive, cousins. You will help us. I do not like it, but I cannot shed tears for you. You would do the same thing.’

  ‘She …’ Lenk whispered, voice a hiss of air. ‘Where is she, Togu?’

  ‘A place I do not want to know.’

  ‘And the others? Where is—?’

  The answer came in the hollow sound of flesh struck, the agonised groan that followed. Lenk struggled to look behind him and spied the a long, lanky body on the earth, hands bound behind him, unmoving as the ability to writhe in pain had apparently been beaten from him.