Black Halo

by Sykes, Sam

  Kataria knew.

  ‘What is your name?’ she asked.

  He stared at her with even blue eyes.

  ‘You already know.’

  Upon his lips, the shictish tongue, their tongue, sounded so eloquent. She wondered absently if he could hear the dust on her own tongue.

  She searched herself, listened to the Howling.

  ‘Naxiaw,’ she said, looking up at him. ‘I am … pleased you are well.’

  ‘Pleased?’ His lips peeled back into a broad smile, his canines twice as large as hers. Long arms parted in a gesture almost warm enough for her to forget they had just been used to pull a longface through bars. ‘Sister. We are not strangers.’

  She would have been shocked to find herself laughing, possibly a little worried to find the sound so hysterical. That thought was lost in a sea of emotion that carried her on running feet to leap into him. His arms wrapped about her, drew her close to a broad chest. A great weight had fallen from her, evidenced by how easily Naxiaw drew her up off her feet.

  In his arms, she found memory. She found a hand on her shoulder, reassuring her after her ears were notched. She found the scent of rabbits cooking and fires. She found the dirge of bows and the song of funeral pyres. She found memories of her father, his sternness, his words, his speeches, his memories. Of her mother, she found only lightness.

  She found everything the Howling said she would find.

  ‘Little Sister,’ Naxiaw said, holding her closely, ‘you are far from home.’

  ‘The world is our home,’ she replied. ‘No matter what round-ears say.’

  ‘It heartens me to hear such words.’

  Her father’s words.

  ‘The creature above,’ the greenshict said, ‘that caused you such sorrow. I felt him. Is he dead?’

  No, she thought, he wouldn’t die so soon. He’s above, bleeding out under a rusty knife. Right where I left him.

  Not that creature, stupid, she scolded herself.

  ‘You are worried,’ Naxiaw said.

  Watch what you think, moron, she hissed mentally. And don’t look at him! If he can’t tell through the Howling, it’ll be obvious once he sees your face.

  ‘I was,’ she replied, keeping her voice steady. ‘But I draw strength from my people.’

  ‘As all shicts should.’

  Her grandfather’s words.

  ‘It is well now, Sister,’ Naxiaw said, easing her down and laying her head upon his chest. ‘I live. You live. We are safe.’

  Her ear against his chest, she could hear the sound of memory in his heartbeat. Slow and steady, purpose resonating with every pump of blood through it. It was comforting to hear, at least at first.

  The more she listened, however, the more she was aware that she had never heard such a thing before. She had heard nothing so slow, so certain, so sure. And it caused her to pull away, her ears attuned to her own body. There was no more thunder in her ears; there had been, she was certain, when the Howling spoke to her, had urged her to hear it.

  Now, she heard her own heart. It was swift, erratic, uncertain, conflicted.

  Light.

  Unpleasant.

  Terrifying.

  ‘Sister,’ Naxiaw said, furrowing his brow. ‘What is wrong?’

  You, she thought. You’re wrong. Your heartbeat is too steady. You’re too sure of yourself. You know everything a shict should know and you hear the Howling like it was another shict. You’re probably hearing this right now because the Howling is … isn’t it?

  She said none of that. Instead, she shook her head and spoke words that none of her family had ever said before, that came from her light, erratic heart.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Naxiaw looked certain, as though he were about to speak with the voice of the Howling and whatever he were to say next would assure her of everything. She watched eagerly as he stared back at her, then said nothing, looking down at the floor of the hold.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘they are almost here.’

  ‘Who?’ Kataria asked, confusion overriding despair.

  ‘You cannot hear them?’ Naxiaw asked. He released her, knelt down on long legs to stare at the floor thoughtfully. ‘They have been following this ship for hours now. They are waiting for something.’

  His fingers ran over the wood. His ears, six notches to a lobe, perked up. She heard it, too: the groaning of wood, a cry of protest that it knew was useless as something insistent pressed up against it. Naxiaw looked up at her, his eyes keen and his face dire.

  ‘And now,’ he whispered, ‘it has come.’

  The boat rocked suddenly as something struck it from below, sending tremors through the floor, past Kataria’s feet and into her heart. The ship’s groan became a scream as jagged rents veined the wood and bled saltwater.

  Naxiaw leapt up and back, putting himself between her and the rapidly spreading crack in the floor. He’s trying to protect me, she realised. Who … no one’s done that for me before. The thought should have caused her less distress than it did.

  She herself took a step backwards as another great blow shook the ship. From beneath the widening crack, she heard them: voices, proclamations, hymns, chants, urges, each one brimming with purpose, each purpose rife with death.

  Another blow and the floor erupted into a spray of splinters, the crack became a wound leaking clear, salty blood onto the floor. And at the centre, like a black knife, the arm rose: titanic, emaciated, jointed in four places and ending in a great webbed claw.

  ‘Not them,’ Kataria whispered with what breath she had left.

  ‘What are they?’ Naxiaw asked.

  His question was answered as another webbed fist punched through the hull, ripping the wound into a great, gaping hole. Claws sank into the wood, gripped tightly and hauled an immense black shape onto the floor.

  A skeleton wrapped in shadow, crowned with a wide head sporting vast, gaping jaws, it pulled itself free from a womb of water and wood. Its flesh glistening under a cowering flame, it rose from its knees, each vertebra visible beneath its black skin as it rose to its full, imposing height. On webbed feet, it slowly turned about and levelled the head of a black fish upon the two shicts.

  The Abysmyth stared at Kataria, its eyes wide, white and empty.

  ‘At the midpoint on the pilgrimage,’ it said, its voice choked with the voices of the drowned, ‘I looked upon the pristine creation and saw a floating blight. Mother bade me to act on her behalf, unable to bear the agony of the faithless longfaces upon her endless blue. And within the black boil, I found the lost and the lonely.’ It extended a great webbed hand, glistening with thick, viscous ooze. ‘Come to me, my children. I will take the agony of this waking nightmare from you.’

  ‘Run,’ Kataria said as much to herself as to Naxiaw, ‘run.’

  ‘What is it?’ the greenshict asked.

  ‘Salvation,’ the Abysmyth answered.

  ‘The Shepherd has come,’ a chorus of voices burbled on the rapidly rising water. ‘The faithless tremble. The fainthearted cower. Fear not, fear not …’

  ‘For I am here,’ the Abysmyth continued, ‘to ease your agony.’ It gestured to the wound. ‘Rejoice.’

  And, as one, they came boiling through the hull like a brood of tadpoles. Glistening bodies, bereft of hair or pallor, rejected by the great blue body of the sea and vomited out in a mass of writhing flesh, gnashing needle teeth, colourless eyes. The frogmen came in numbers immeasurable, pulling themselves out of the rising water in a gasping, rasping choir.

  ‘We have come,’ the great black demon said, ‘to deliver. Messages. Sinners. Everyone.’

  ‘Run,’ Kataria said, grabbing Naxiaw by the arm. ‘RUN!’

  Naxiaw heard and did not question, following her as they sprinted for the stairs leading to the deck. Struck breathless from fear, they spoke in short gasps of air.

  ‘How do we escape?’ the greenshict asked.

  ‘The shore isn’t far from here,’ she said. ‘Shicts can
swim.’

  ‘Those things … they came from the water. Is it wise to go in?’

  ‘We don’t have a whole lot of choice, do we? The ship will go down in a few moments and we’ll be drowning, anyway.’

  ‘Then we swim. I trust you, Sister.’

  Someone else trusted me once, she thought with a pain in her chest. I … I need to. I have to go back for him.

  ‘Wait!’ she cried as they neared the companionway. ‘I have to …’

  He paused, looked at her curiously. What could she say? That she had to stay on this sinking tomb, now rife with demons as well as longfaces, for the sake of a human? The great disease? How could she tell him that? How could she tell herself that, after all the time she had yearned to feel this knowledge, hear this comfort, feel this lightness?

  How could she ask herself why her heart beat different than his?

  She could not say that, any of that.

  ‘I have to do what I must,’ she said instead, continuing up to the deck, ‘for my people.’

  Someone’s words.

  Not hers.

  Thirty-Four

  MOTHER AND CHILD

  Gariath was not dead yet.

  Not for lack of opportunity, of course. He darted through a web of iron and curses, batting away clumsy blades, suffering the blows of those too cunning or lucky for him to avoid. Every metal favour bestowed upon him he reciprocated with claws and teeth, forcing his assailants back.

  He was vaguely surprised that he could feel the many cuts on his body. He didn’t remember the longfaces being quite so strong as they had been when he first encountered them. But Irontide, and the flesh he had rent in suicidal frenzy, had been many eternities ago.

  He was less aware of death this time, and so was aware of many more things as he caught an errant blade in his hand and tore it free from the offending longface’s grasp.

  Pain was among them, but so, too, were the humans.

  What had began as a chaos of fire and thunder on the deck had since degenerated into a chaos of fire, thunder, steel, cursing, spitting and screaming.

  Arrows fell from the sky in intermittent fiery drizzles, longfaces scrambling to seek cover from them or return fire with hasty shots. Those few who simply couldn’t be bothered to hide had either sought another target or clung by their master’s side, occasionally intervening between him and a lightning bolt thrown from the dark-skinned human.

  Of their sacrifice, the longface with the burning eyes took no notice, consumed wholly with his target. Whatever bemusement had been present on his face had been consumed in the vivid anger with which his eyes flared. He was no longer even making an attempt at appearing as though he was swatting a gnat. Now, he displayed the anger appropriate to a man swatting at a gnat that spewed fire and frost at him.

  Those netherlings that had decided to seek easier prey had found them in the leaking weaklings pressed against the deck. Lenk refused to move, clutching his shoulder and staring quietly into nothingness, murmuring something equally stupid. The squeaky little human seemed torn between uselessly trying to get him on his feet and uselessly trying to assist the flying human, apparently by squealing and occasionally hurling something limp-wristedly at the longface.

  Impotent, drained, useless and otherwise weak; they deserved to die, he knew.

  What he didn’t know was why the netherlings seeking to kill them found him imposed between them. Such a thought rose to him again as he caught a rampaging blade in his palm and snarled, shoving the wielder back and meeting her grin with a scowl. After all, it wasn’t as though there weren’t bigger problems to handle.

  Bigger problems with tremendous teeth.

  Such a problem made itself known in a shadow that blossomed like a flower over the netherling, blackness banished by the resounding thunder of blue jaws snapping, a scream leaking out between teeth, purple legs flailing wildly as a great serpentine head swept up and shook back and forth to silence its writhing, shrieking prisoner.

  No guttural roar that boiled behind its teeth could drown out the noise of flesh rending as an errant leg went flying before the rest of the sinewy mass disappeared behind fangs and down a throat.

  The Akaneed, far from sated, levelled its yellow stare at Gariath. The dragonman forgot his other foes in that instant, as the great serpent seemed to forget its other meals. Their gazes went deeper into each other, curiosity turning to respect turning to anger in an instant. In each other, they saw something familiar.

  In the great serpent, Gariath saw sharp teeth stained with blood, narrowed yellow slits glowing in the night. He saw in them now what he had seen a week ago, upon a beach he had intended to be his grave: hunger, hatred, an end.

  To everything.

  In Gariath, the Akaneed saw something distinctly different.

  This was made violently clear as its neck snapped, sending gaping jaws hurtling towards him. The dragonman lunged backwards as the serpent’s snout speared the deck, shattered the wood and scattered the living and the dead.

  The ship shook and groaned as the serpent tried to pull its maw free from the ship’s hull, sending combatants rolling about the deck as they struggled to keep their footing. Gariath clung to the deck, his claws embedded in wood as he swept a fervent gaze about the deck.

  A good chance to escape, he noted. Lenk won’t move. The runt won’t leave. You could make them, though. They’re small, stupid. You want to protect them, don’t you? Life is precious now, right? Worth saving and all that. The snake is distracted. The longfaces are distracted. The Shen are …

  Watching, he noticed, dozens of yellow eyes staring from canoes.

  Waiting, he realised, their bows lowered, bodies tense.

  For him, he knew, as he found a single amber eye in the throng of lizardmen and met Yaike’s gaze.

  They were watching him. Waiting to see what this red thing was. Waiting to see if what they knew of Rhega was true or if they had all died long ago.

  He would show them.

  He rushed forward, striding over the dead, trampling the living, sliding on claws as the Akaneed pulled itself free, its jaws tinted red and brimming with shards of wood. He leapt, flapped his wings to pull him aloft and towards the creature’s snout. He fell upon it with a snarl, sinking claws into blue flesh.

  In an eruption of splinters and a thunderous roar, the dragonman became an angry red tick, clinging tenaciously with claws dug firmly into the tender flesh of the creature’s nostrils as its serpentine neck twisted and writhed like a whirlwind as it struggled to dislodge this clawed, fanged parasite.

  Gariath could not let that happen. His path became all the clearer as he clawed his way, arm’s length by arm’s length, up the creature’s snout, hands digging fresh wounds, feet thrust into old ones. Each time, for a moment, he knew it would be easy to let go and fly into dark water, to sink until he could see, feel, breathe no more. Each time, he continued to claw forward.

  He was Rhega. They would see. They would know.

  ‘I haven’t met you,’ he growled to the Akaneed. ‘There was another one. I took much from him. Eyes, teeth …’ It replied with a roar and a futile attempt to shake him off. ‘You, you’re going to give me more. The fight, the blood … it means a great deal more than eyes and teeth.’ He clawed his way up to eyes which burned yellow hate. ‘Thank you.’ He drew back a fist. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Through the squelch of membrane and the ensuing, wailing howl, Gariath’s first thought was that an eye was very much like a hard-boiled egg, in both texture and the way yellow crumbled into sopping goo. His second thought was for the feeling of air beneath him and the ocean rising up before him as the Akaneed threw him from its head.

  He flapped furiously, found a writhing blue column as he fell and twisted himself to meet it. His claws found rubbery skin, shredding it and drawing forth red blood and echoing howls from the beast as he slid down the Akaneed’s hide, struggling to slow his fall. His hands tensed to the point of agony, claws threatening to rip from his
fingers.

  When he slowed to a halt, the beast had no more agony to spew forth, its roar becoming a low growl. It swayed dizzily upon the waves, fighting the pain inside it, struggling to stay awake, afloat, alive.

  Gariath felt a pang of sympathy. It was only momentary, though, as he turned to face the dozens of yellow eyes fixated upon him. They were wide with appreciation … or he thought, or he wanted to think. It was so hard to see their stares at this range, swaying on the serpent’s hide, his own eyes veiled by pain and weariness.

  ‘I am alive,’ he cried to them, his voice hoarse. ‘The Rhega is alive. The Rhega still live.’ He slammed a fist to his chest. ‘I am alive. Look. Look at me.’ He couldn’t hear the shrill desperation in his voice, couldn’t feel the tears welling up in his eyes. ‘I am Rhega. Answer me!’ He forced the words through a choked throat. ‘Talk to me!’

  They said nothing, showed nothing behind their yellow stares. One by one, the fires of their arrows were snuffed into darkness. One by one, each Shen disappeared into gloom, bodies lost among the shadows.

  ‘No!’ Gariath roared at them. ‘You can’t leave now! Not when I’m so close!’

  They continued to wink out, ceasing to exist as their flames did, giving no sign that they heard him, or cared what he had to say. He continued to shriek at them, as though they might provide an answer, any answer, before they vanished completely.

  ‘How do you know the Rhega?’ he howled at them. ‘Where are they? How do you speak the language? Where are they? What happened to them?’ His voice became a whining, wailing plea. ‘WHY WON’T YOU ANSWER ME?’

  They continued to say nothing, continued to disappear until all that remained was a single, flickering flame, illuminating a single yellow eye. Yaike stared, expressionless, the ruin of what had once been his eye seeming to stare far deeper, speak far louder, than his whole eye or his rasping voice.

  ‘Jaga, Rhega,’ he spoke. ‘Home. All that we do, we do for it.’

  ‘And what does a Rhega do? Tell me.’

  And the last light sizzled out, cloaking the lizardman in darkness, leaving nothing but a voice on lingering wisps of smoke.