Black Halo

by Sykes, Sam

  ‘If he’s got only one arm,’ Gariath whispered, ‘that will keep him busy, right?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  The dragonman didn’t wait. Hurling Togu at the long-face, he howled and fell to all fours, charging after the squealing green projectile. The females made no movement to intervene as Sheraptus lifted a hand and casually waved it.

  The air quivered with force. A gale unseen and unheard spawned from nothingness and swept over the deck, striking both Togu and Gariath from sky and deck alike and sending them hurtling over the ship. Lenk stared in astonishment as his companions’ roar ended in a brief splash. Sheraptus didn’t spare nearly as much shock, glancing disinterestedly over the ship’s edge and then back to Lenk.

  ‘Well?’ he asked. A moment later, recognition dawned on his face. ‘Oh, it’s you. Still alive?’

  Lenk nodded weakly, only just beginning to pull himself from his shock.

  ‘I assume my females are dead, then?’

  Another nod. Sheraptus regarded them carefully before canting his head to the side.

  ‘And?’

  Lenk recoiled, having expected nearly any other response.

  ‘And … what?’ he asked.

  ‘Did you need something else?’

  ‘What? We …’ He shook the confusion from his face, replaced it with as steely a resolve as he could manage. ‘We came for our friends.’

  ‘That hardly seems fair,’ Sheraptus said, looking offended.

  ‘Fair?’ Lenk asked, the incredulity of the statement shocking him into inaction.

  ‘I left close to two fists of females on the beach and you killed them all,’ Sheraptus said before gesturing to the deck. ‘You killed three more here and who knows how many more in Irontide.’ He frowned. ‘I take two of yours and you come onto my ship and make such a ruckus as to draw me out of enjoying them?’

  ‘Of … of course we did.’

  ‘Fascinating. Why?’

  ‘Because …’ Lenk blinked, his face screwing up. ‘What?’

  ‘Kindly don’t live up to your stereotype. You know exactly what I mean. To have come here, you would have to be led here, thusly you knew what awaited you. It would have been more pragmatic to flee … yet you came here, into a ship brimming with my warriors under my limitless control, into certain death. For what? Two females? You could have found more somewhere else.’

  Kataria, he thought.

  ‘Duty,’ the voice insisted.

  ‘What is it you hoped to accomplish, then?’ Sheraptus asked.

  ‘Realistically?’ Lenk replied.

  ‘Of course.’

  The young man shrugged, seeing no particular point in lying. ‘The idea was to keep you busy until the other fellow who was with us could sneak into your cabin and escape with the females.’

  Sheraptus nodded, seeing no particular point in reacting. ‘And ideally?’

  ‘Kill you and render the rest of the situation something akin to making gravy.’

  ‘I apologise to say that the metaphor is lost, though I grasp the meaning,’ Sheraptus sighed. ‘No matter how lofty the goals, no matter how staunch the ideal, it always ends in base instinct: eat, breed, die. It’s so …’ He glanced at a nearby female and frowned. ‘The sole difference between you and them is that you try so hard to deny it.’

  He waved his hand. Bows creaked, arrows levelled at the companions as his eyes smouldered with burning contempt.

  ‘I’m not sure there’s anything to be learned from you, sadly.’

  ‘Now,’ the voice said inside Lenk’s head. ‘NOW!’

  Lenk’s hand slipped into the burlap sack, fingers wrapping around thick locks as he pulled the object within free. Strings sang, arrows flew as he held the severed head aloft and spoke a word.

  ‘Scream.’

  And it obeyed.

  The air shuddered in an explosion of sound as the mouth found a macabre life and sprang open, eyes flaring with golden awareness. The arrows found no soft flesh, but a wall of noise that shuddered out of him and tore the air apart, sending the missiles twisting away, scattered like rats before a flood.

  With a shriek unheard, Dreadaeleon hurled himself to the deck as Lenk turned, levelling the head and the quavering wail tearing itself free from its mouth towards the surrounding longfaces. In great waves, it swept over them. Hands were clenched to bleeding ears, shields rose in futile defence, the truly unprepared were sent sprawling over the railings, their screams lost in the shrieking onslaught.

  Unable to bear it any longer himself, he lowered the head. His ears rang; his heart throbbed as the echoes of the shrieking lingered in the sky on distant, fading thunder. Dreadaeleon rose on shaking legs, breathing heavily. The longfaces rose not at all as they groaned and bled on the deck.

  All save one.

  ‘You didn’t mention that in your plan, I note,’ Sheraptus said, twisting his little finger inside his ear.

  ‘Surprise?’

  ‘You are adorable.’

  Sheraptus flung his hand out, the wave of force rippling from his fingertips to strike Lenk and hurl him towards the mast. He struck it with an angry cracking sound, letting out a breathless cry before he collapsed, unmoving.

  As Dreadaeleon stared at his companion’s unconscious body, he began to feel it. His breath sought to flee his lungs, his eyes his head, his legs out from under him, regardless of whether or not the rest of him decided to come. It was painfully familiar: the same sensation that had driven him into darkness a week ago, rendered him helpless only an hour before, showed him to be nothing more than an impotent weakling …

  In front of Asper, he added mentally, twice.

  He felt it now – that sensation of power, that great light that never extinguished, that unnatural presence that made nature go still. He felt the burning stare, from eyes and stones alike, and knew that the curiosity behind it was all that kept him conscious at the moment.

  ‘Little moth?’ Sheraptus asked, a smile tugging at his lips. ‘I thought that might be you. Apologies, between the screaming and the distraction, I hardly noticed you.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me,’ Dreadaeleon hissed, painfully aware of his breaking voice.

  ‘That would make me a terrible host.’

  ‘You’re a heretic, a renegade,’ the boy snarled. ‘You disregard the laws of magic, the laws of the Venarium. You will be stopped.’

  Sheraptus stared at him for a moment. ‘By you?’ He held up a hand. ‘No … no, don’t answer that. Don’t even think about it, if you can help it. The strain might put you under. Again.’

  ‘That last time, you … you cheated,’ Dreadaeleon growled. ‘Somehow, I don’t know. That’s why you have to be stopped.’

  ‘I have to be stopped because you don’t understand how I did it? How will you ever learn?’

  ‘Shut up,’ Dreadaeleon snarled.

  His voice came with all the conviction of a constipated cow, the pressure around him threatening to shatter his jaw. Breath came harder; standing came with great difficulty. But he still breathed. He still stood. He forced his fingers straight, levelled them at Sheraptus. He forced his eyes open through the sweat dripping down his face. He forced the words to a mind that sought to shut itself down, into lips that sought to seal themselves shut. Electricity, however faint, danced in blue sparks on his fingertips.

  ‘Really?’ Sheraptus asked, levelling fingers of his own. ‘You know how this will end.’

  ‘I do,’ the boy grunted.

  ‘You want to go ahead with it?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘For your … Venarium?’

  ‘Not them.’

  Sheraptus glanced over his shoulder, towards his cabin, and smiled. ‘Ah, I see. The tall one?’

  ‘If you touched her …’

  ‘I did,’ he said, turning his smile upon the boy. ‘There’s more to her than you could know, little moth. There’s more I will learn from her. And I will do it slowly.’

  It was a scream that tore itself fr
om Dreadaeleon’s lips: unfocused, angry, wild. The electricity that launched from his fingers was no different, snaking out in a wild, twisting tongue. It was only the sheer inaccuracy of his aim that allowed the sparks to fly past a purple hand meant to ward it off and lash against a shoulder.

  The longface hissed and recoiled. It had done no damage that Dreadaeleon could see: barely anything more than a black mark, barely visible against the longface’s ebon robe. He supposed it was the indignity of the blow, an electric slap in the face, that caused Sheraptus’ visage to screw up in fury, his eyes to become two angry miniature suns.

  ‘Pity,’ he hissed as he raised a hand and levelled it at the boy, ‘that she didn’t see that.’

  It occurred to Dreadaeleon that such a blow shouldn’t feel quite as satisfying as it did. Even if it had done any discernible damage, his victory was dampened by the groans heralding the rise of the netherlings.

  Slowly, shaking blood from their ears, grinding curses between their teeth, those remaining staggered to their feet with murder in their eyes. His companions remained lost to unconsciousness and the sea respectively. Sheraptus’ fingers began to crackle with blue sparks just as his eyes went alight with red.

  He was going to die, Dreadaeleon realised. And all he had done was sully a robe a little.

  Still, he thought with a smile, considering he had been in a coma induced by the man’s stare alone just moments ago, this didn’t feel like such a bad note to end on.

  His only concern was why it was taking so long.

  Sheraptus’ face twitched, neck jerked, as though a gnat were buzzing in his ear every moment he thought to discharge the lethal electricity and reduce Dreadaeleon to a smouldering husk. That same buzzing lingered in the boy’s head, too annoying to allow him to feel fear or a need for flight. It chilled him, burned him, alternating and intensifying with each breath.

  Even before he felt the shadow sail over the deck, he recognised the presence of another wizard.

  That hardly kept his jaw from going slack as his eyes rose to the sky, followed by a dozen wide whites and two narrowed orange slits. The presence of the newcomer felt an anathema to Sheraptus’ power, bidding the seas to churn and the moon to peer out from behind the clouds and shed light on him.

  Beneath a broad-brimmed hat, a pair of hard eyes stared down at the deck from high in the sky. A coat fanned out into leathery wings behind a tall and slender body, flapping to keep him gracefully aloft above the carnage on the deck. At his hip hung a dense tome supported by a silver chain, its cover marked with a sigil of authority.

  A sigil of the Venarium.

  ‘Oh, hell,’ Dreadaeleon whispered, ‘a Librarian.’

  ‘It’s quite rude to come announcing yourself with that particular presence, sir,’ Sheraptus snarled to the man. ‘Come down and let us speak without you buzzing in my head.’

  Not possible, Dreadaeleon recognised. The power roiling from the Librarian was faint, but constant, worn like the easy mantle of authority that settled about his features. It was a power that came from no crown or stone, but from years of practice and merciless discipline.

  ‘Bralston,’ the man spoke by way of callous introduction. ‘Librarian under the authority of Lector Annis of the Cier’Djaal Venarium branch, unlimited jurisdiction, all treaties foregone, lethal force authorised and pre-absolved.’ His eyes ran over the scene with cool surveillance. ‘I have come seeking a violator of the laws of Venarie. A heretic.’

  His gaze shifted from the sweaty boy in a filthy coat before settling on the purple creature with electricity dancing effortlessly on his fingers and the fire burning on his brow and in his eyes. Sheraptus recoiled, offended.

  ‘What makes you so sure it’s me?’ he asked.

  ‘Violators are offered a singular chance for absolution,’ Bralston said, descending to the deck. ‘Surrender your body for research and your crimes will be considered absolved.’

  ‘No one,’ a nearby netherling snarled, stalking to impose herself between Sheraptus and the Librarian, ‘speaks to the Master like—’

  ‘Offered and declined. Noted.’

  With one smooth movement, Bralston doffed his hat and uttered a word before tossing it gently at the longface. The steel ring within instantly sprouted several glistening thorns that gnashed together with harsh, grating noise. It caught the netherling in the face, her screams muffled behind the leather as its brim wrapped about her head and the headgear’s teeth began to noisily chew.

  ‘Carnivorous hat,’ Sheraptus noted as the female staggered off, clawing at the garment. ‘Impressive.’

  ‘Librarian!’ Dreadaeleon called out, finding his nerve and voice at once. ‘Wait!’

  ‘All involved parties will be questioned pending execution,’ Bralston replied, his eyes burning with crimson as he extended an arm glistening with flame.

  ‘I recognised two of those words,’ Sheraptus said, matching the Librarian’s burning gaze and hand alike. ‘Oh, my friend, I have so much to learn from you.’

  Thirty-Two

  MERCY IS FOR THE DENSE

  The din outside the cabin was enough to shake the ship. There had been the clash of metal and the roar of battle, a brief moment’s pause before the shuddering wail that caused the panes of glass to crack in their portholes and the doors to threaten to buckle under the pressure. Now, the snarling, roaring, grunting, clanging, hissing ruckus of fighting had resumed in earnest.

  Each noise clamoured to be heard over the others, and each told Kataria nothing in their haste to tell her everything.

  The din inside her head was still more aggravating. The fear, the doubt and the frustration that twisted inside her skull like so many screws were bad enough without the voice of instinct, of the Howling, of the shict she knew to be speaking to her through it, echoing in her brain.

  Survive, it told her. Shicts survive. Shicts preserve. Shicts cure. You are a shict. You have a duty to your people. She found it hard to ignore the voice. Ignore the human. Her duty is to live and die. Your survival is worth more.

  Especially when she couldn’t find the will to agree with it.

  The will of the unseen shict came with nearly every breath, and was as impossible to ignore as it was to stop breathing. Yet for every time it bade her to look within herself, she found her eyes all the more pressed on the pale, bound figure in the corner.

  Asper was still alive, though her shallow breathing and still body did not do much to support it. The priestess did not move, did not speak, did not so much as shiver anymore. The soft weeping and violent trembling had left her body and left her nothing more than a pile of limp bones and skin that muttered the same thing on soft, silent breaths.

  ‘You let it happen,’ she whispered. ‘I gave everything. I did everything right. You just let it happen.’

  What could I do? Kataria thought to herself. How could you not have known what he was? How could you not have known to stay silent?

  She is human, the Howling answered her. There is no instinct in her. She survives through other methods that she does not have now. You are a shict. You have instinct. You survive so that all shicts may survive. You have a duty to your people.

  The thought was hers and not hers, a dormant, feral logic awakening within her. And it came more and more frequently, with more and more urgency. It was no longer shared knowledge. It was no longer instinct. The Howling was all her people condensed into a single thought.

  It was impossible to ignore, yet impossible to grasp. The unseen shict’s will brushed her only in fleeting thoughts, prodding the Howling to awaken and tell her of his location. Nothing more was offered, no advice given or instructions handed down. She racked her mind, searching for a possibility for escape, to reach him.

  And then, she would look at Asper, and forget everything.

  She would hear the priestess’ sobbing, see the priestess’ agonised tears. She would forget that she stared at a human, one of many. She would forget that Asper should mean nothing to her, forge
t that she should think of herself, her people, her duty. She would remember Asper was her friend.

  That Asper was the reason she was not lying on the floor and sobbing.

  And nothing more than that: she recalled no words of comfort, remembered no reassurances of safety. The Howling would speak to her in these moments of lapsed clarity, and it would begin anew.

  Survive, it implored as it knew she should. You must survive. We must survive. You must—

  Her bones rattled in her flesh as the wooden pillar trembled with the force of the purple fist slamming against it. A harsh, grating growl filled her ears and drowned all other thought.

  ‘What’s taking so long?’

  Kataria felt slightly comforted to know she wasn’t the only one wondering.

  It seemed too mild a comparison to think that Xhai paced the cabin like a nervous hound as she stared at the door. Hounds, as far as she knew, didn’t show nearly so many teeth when they growled.

  Hounds, too, had instinct. When they sensed danger, they acted, even in spite of their master’s orders. Xhai clearly sensed danger, clearly wanted to act, but remained in the cabin. She had been given an order and was determined to obey it. As vague as that order might have been, she rigidly clung to it as though it were the word of a god, or whatever equivalent longfaces worshipped.

  Him, she reminded herself. They … she worships him.

  ‘What do you think it is, then?’ Xhai grunted at her. ‘Your pinkies come to take what the Master owns?’

  Kataria did not answer, for it was clear Xhai didn’t want one.

  ‘We should have killed all of you,’ she muttered. ‘Netherlings don’t need pink things.’

  Whatever caused Kataria to speak up, she was certain it was no instinct.

  ‘He seems to disagree,’ she said.

  ‘The Master needs nothing,’ Xhai snapped. ‘He wants. He wants everything.’ Her gaze became hard and looked straight through Kataria. ‘He deserves everything.’