Black Halo

by Sykes, Sam

  He bit back the pain in his shoulder and his head alike as he scrambled across the demon’s body, narrowly avoiding its many jagged teeth as he grabbed at the loose folds of leathery skin in its throat and swung himself onto its back. His sword went up, a fervent scream echoing through his head.

  ‘DON’T YOU TOUCH MY CHILDREN!’

  It came down again.

  The pain was agonising, the shrieks of the Abysmyth and the one in his skull making his ears ring. But he drove the blade into the creature’s back again and again, forcing it as deep as he could atop his precarious perch. Such a task only became harder as the creature flung itself into a flailing frenzy, swinging its arms in an attempt to remove the silver parasite from its back and succeeding only in smashing away those frogmen that rushed to its aid.

  ‘I tried! I tried!’ it wailed as it flailed wildly with one arm and clutched at its blossoming wounds with another. ‘Mother, I tried! But he won’t listen! He’s hurting me! It hurts!’

  ‘STOP IT, STOP IT, STOP IT, STOP IT!’ the voice shrieked, pounding on his skull with fiery fists and sending waves of burning pain through his head.

  He clung to the beast for as long as he could, despite the pain, but it took only another breath for him to feel the grasping water again. When he could see through the pain, he saw the deck vanished completely, swallowed by the rising tide. The frogmen stood calmly, their black eyes fixed on him as their heads slowly slipped beneath the water, glittering like onyxes even as their white flesh disappeared.

  ‘Survive,’ the voice whispered frigidly.

  Between the two voices, there was no room in his head for contemplation about how infeasible such a command was quickly becoming. There was no room left for anything but a compulsion that pulled his eyes to the side, to the sole wooden salvation.

  Blackened and splintering as it might have been, the sloping mast reached out like a pleading hand, the ship’s last, desperate attempt to keep above water. Fleeting as any salvation might have been, Lenk leapt for it anyway, leaving his demonic mount to sink beneath the waves.

  It was far away, only growing smaller as it continued to slide under the water. He swam in a violent frenzy, kicking up froth as he struggled to bite back the pain in his shoulder and hold onto his sword as he did. Still, beneath his body, he could feel the presence of eyes staring, arms reaching.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of something. A soft, blue light pulsing beneath the waves in a trio of azure heartbeats moved steadily towards him. Through the waves, through the pain, he could hear the whispers as they drew closer.

  ‘Noescapenoescapenoescapenoescape …’

  ‘Mercyathandmercyisheremercyforall …’

  ‘SheknowsSheseesShesympathisesgiveingiveingiveingivein giveingivein …’

  ‘No!’ the voice and he spoke as one as he found the mast and pulled himself out of the water, tumbling and facing the black water below.

  The Abysmyth came rising up, its white eyes wide and stark in the gloom as it crept out, black claw glistening, reaching out of the water. He swung at it, the sword heavier in his hand than it had been, the pain in his limbs more pronounced. The beast accepted the blow, gurgling from below as it hauled the rest of its body onto the mast as he scrambled backwards.

  The frogmen behind it moved with a similar inevitable purpose, staring at the blood-slick blade that had already seen its brethren, its masters spilt upon salt, without fear. They boiled up behind the Abysmyth, climbing over its body, onto the mast, reaching their webbed hands for Lenk.

  He could feel the fear in his eyes, if not his head. He could see his wide stare reflected in the blade’s face. He could feel the blood seeping out of his shoulder, the fire searing his skull. What he couldn’t feel was the numbness, the callous cold that had swept over him and seized control before and delivered him. The voice was shrieking still, but it was faint, fading, disappearing behind a veil of fire and drowning in a sea of darkness.

  He was alone. Abandoned.

  ‘Your song is ending, lamb,’ the Abysmyth croaked, reaching for him once again. ‘Fleeting sounds and errant voices offer no sanctuary. Things made of paper flesh and wooden bones provide no redemption.’

  ‘Forsakenforsakenforsaken …’

  ‘Abandonedabandonedabandoned …’

  ‘Noonenothingnobodyleftleftleft …’

  ‘But Mother hears you,’ the Abysmyth said, its eyes growing wider at the mention. ‘Mother wishes you to hear Her, to know what we know, to feel what we feel. Let Her speak. Let the pain end. Let the sinful thought end.’ Its claw reached out not to seize, but to offer, to beckon. ‘Let yourself hear.’

  ‘I … no …’ For lack of thought to do anything else, for lack of voice to say anything better, he shook his burning head. ‘I can’t … I can’t.’

  ‘Nolongeryourchoice …’

  ‘Nolongeranychoice …’

  ‘Letushelpyou …’

  He heard the water rip apart beneath him, an eruption of froth at his back. He managed to see them in glimpses: soft lips within gaping needle jaws, bulging black eyes set in bulbous grey heads, long grey stalks of flesh pulsing with soft blue light. He managed to feel them as they wrapped scrawny grey claws around him, coiled eel-like tails about him, pressed withered breasts against his body.

  He managed to scream only once before the mast shattered under their weight and they pulled him below.

  Drowning wasn’t so bad.

  Lenk absently wondered what the fuss was all about, really, as he continued to drift, pulled lower by liquid hands. The water was not as cold as it looked, enveloping him in a gentle warmth. It wasn’t as dark as he had suspected it would be, either. The creatures saw to that.

  To call them ‘demons’ seemed a little insulting. Demons were twisted beings, foul things that found the natural world intolerable. These creatures, circling the waters far above him, their azure lights forming a bright halo, did not look so twisted. They were emaciated, true, with their bulbous heads at odds with their bony torsos, their slithering eel tails in place of legs. Below the surface of the water, though, they looked delicate instead of underfed, graceful instead of writhing.

  And their whispering had become song.

  He could hear it more clearly the deeper he drifted: lilting, resonating, wordless songs that carried through water and skin, seeping into him. They sang everything at once, lullabies and dirges, love and agony. It was a familiar song, one he had heard before. But he could not think of where, could not think of anything. With the song in his ears, there was no room left for any other sound. He found comfort in that. He found peace in the deep.

  So much so that he didn’t know he shouldn’t be able to breathe.

  That didn’t seem so important, though. There was no fear in the warm, welcoming depths, for drowning or for the corpses that sank around him. Down here, the anger was erased from the netherlings’ long faces, their eyes open and tranquil as they sank softly, shards of the ship drifting around them like unassembled coffins. Down here, the creatures that swam around him, with their black eyes and white skins, didn’t seem so menacing.

  Down here, for the first time in weeks, he felt no fear.

  ‘Enjoying yourself?’

  The voices came from nowhere, clear as the water itself. He caught a glimpse in the shadows surrounding him as something swam at the edges of the halo of light. A grey hide shifted, an axe-like fin tail swept through the water, manes of copper and black wafted like kelp in the water.

  He remembered the Deepshriek.

  She appeared. No, he reminded himself, it’s not a she. Rather, a face appeared, a soft and milk-white oval, framed by long and silky hair the colour of fire. Its eyes were golden and glittering above soft lips set in a frown. It drifted closer to Lenk and he saw the rest of it, the long grey stalk that served as its body snaking into the darkness.

  Another head emerged, black hair lost in shadow, attached to an identical stalk. They circled him, as the hulkin
g grey-skinned fish that the stalks crowned circled him. There was another stalk, hanging limp and bereft of a head. He remembered there had been another head. He remembered taking it.

  He remembered the Deepshriek wanted to kill him for that.

  That thought prompted the realisation of his lungs working. That realisation prompted his question.

  ‘Why am I alive?’

  ‘There was a time when sky and sea were not the petty rivals they are today,’ the Deepshriek answered in disjointed chorus. ‘They shared all. We remember that time. Ulbecetonth remembers that time.’ Their eyes narrowed to four thin slits. ‘This is Her domain.’

  ‘No, that wasn’t what I meant. Why am I not dead?’

  ‘Not because of us,’ the creature said. ‘We wanted you to die.’ The heads snaked around him, golden scowls and bared fangs. ‘You took our head. You destroyed our temple. You took the tome. You ruined everything. We wanted you to drown, to die, to be eaten by tiny little fish over a thousand years.’

  ‘And yet … here we are,’ he said, no room in the depths for fear.

  ‘We were overruled.’

  ‘By whom?’

  The heads glanced at each other, then at Lenk, then through Lenk. He felt himself turning, spinning gently in the halo as unseen hands turned him upside down to face the sea floor. He stared for a moment and saw nothing.

  And then, he saw teeth.

  He tried to count them at a glance, absently, and found the task tremendous enough to make his head hurt. Rows upon rows of them opened, splitting the endless sandy floor into a tremendous smile.

  ‘Lenk.’ They loosed a voice, deep and feminine. ‘Hello.’

  He stared into the void between them, vast and endless.

  ‘Hello,’ he replied, ‘Ulbecetonth.’

  It laughed. No, he thought, it’s a she. And her voice was far more pleasant and matronly than a demon’s ought to be, he decided. Then again, he only knew the one. It was a comforting warmth, a blanket of sound that soothed the ache in his head, banished chill from his body.

  He remembered this voice.

  ‘You’re not real, are you?’ he asked the teeth. ‘You’re in my head, just like your voice was.’

  ‘Voices inside your head can be entirely real,’ Ulbecetonth replied. ‘Have you not learned this by now?’

  ‘It’s simply a form of madness.’

  ‘If you hear voices, you’re mad. If you talk back, it’s something far worse.’

  ‘Point,’ he replied. ‘So are you real, then? Or am I dead?’ He glanced around the shadows. ‘Is this—?’

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘This is a far too pleasant to be hell; your hell, anyway. Murderers of children go to far darker, far deeper places.’

  ‘I have killed no—’

  ‘I told you to stop,’ the teeth said, twisting into a frown. ‘I begged you to spare my children. You killed them, regardless. Both of you.’

  ‘There was only one of me.’

  ‘There is never only one of you.’

  He took in a deep breath that he should not have been able to.

  ‘You’ve heard it, then?’

  ‘Many times,’ she replied. ‘I remember your voice well. Both of them. I heard them many times during the war that cast my family into shadow. I heard them on blades that were driven into my children’s flesh. I heard them on flames that burned my followers alive in their sacred places. When I heard them in your head again …’

  The teeth snapped shut with the sound of thunder, sending his bones rattling. The echo lasted for an age, after which it took another for him to muster the nerve to speak.

  ‘Then I ask again, why am I alive?’

  ‘Pity, mostly,’ Ulbecetonth said. ‘I have seen your thoughts, your desires, your cruelties and your pains. I have seen what you have. I have seen what you want. I know that you will never have it and it moved me.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You do,’ she said. ‘You don’t want to, though. We both know this. We both know you desire something resembling peace: sinful earth to put your feet on, blasphemous fire to warm your hands by, a decaying thing of tainted breath and aging flesh to call your own. But not just any flesh …’

  ‘I’ve heard this rhetoric before,’ he snapped back, finding resolve somewhere within himself. ‘They say that I’m mad to want her.’

  ‘And we have established that you are not mad,’ she replied smoothly. ‘You are something worse, and that is why you cannot have—’

  ‘Her?’

  ‘Any of it. Your earth will always be soaked in blood. Your fire will always carry the scent of death. There will be many things made of flesh that you call your own, but they will all die, and before they do, they will look into your eyes and see what I have heard in your head.’

  ‘You’re wrong.’

  ‘You don’t want to admit it. I cannot blame you. Nor can my conscience let you cling to harmful delusion.’

  In his mind flashed the ship, the fire, his companions. He saw the dragonman who had leapt into the water after sparing him a glance. He saw the wizard who took off without even looking in his direction. He didn’t see the rogue and the priestess, for they never so much as looked at him before they disappeared. Those were fleeting, though.

  The eyes, the emerald stare that had seeped into his, and then turned away …

  That image lingered.

  ‘She left me,’ he whispered. ‘She looked into my eyes … and left me to die.’

  ‘It hurts. I know.’ Ulbecetonth’s voice brimmed with sympathy, sounding as though she might be on the verge of tears if she were more than just teeth. ‘To see those who you once loved betray you, to know the sorrow that comes with abandonment. I’ve seen the fear grow inside you. I know the times you felt like weeping and could not. I wept for you, despite your countless sins against me. I saw your grief and your sorrow and knew I could not give you the death you deserved. Not now.’

  ‘What?’ he asked, shaking the images from his eyes.

  ‘I am offering you a generosity,’ Ulbecetonth said. ‘Return to your world of petty sea and envious earth. Forget about my children, as surely as we will forget about you. Go elsewhere and cling to fire and stone and whatever flesh makes you happy. Find someone else to kill. Your voice will be satisfied all the same.

  ‘Between the longfaces and the Shen,’ she continued, ‘I have far too many enemies for my liking. The green heathens are an ancient enemy. The purple ones serve a foe older still. I have no need or wish to worry about a misguided creature with misguided desires. Take my offer. Leave these waters. I will not try to stop you. I will never again speak your name if I can help it. You need never feel the anguish you felt tonight again. All you need do … is leave.’

  ‘I can’t leave,’ he whispered, shaking his head. ‘There’s more to do. The tome …’

  ‘Will be safe, its terrible knowledge far from any who would use it for ill.’

  ‘In your hands?’ he asked. ‘That’s not right. Your Abysmyths—’

  ‘My children,’ she snapped back, ‘are without their mother. They long for family, for my influence. They seek to use the book to return me to their embrace. Afterwards, we will have no further use for it or for bloodshed. Let us live in peace beneath the waves. Forget about us.’

  ‘All you want … is your family?’

  ‘What does any mother want?’

  ‘But Miron said—’

  ‘PRIESTS LIE.’

  The ocean quaked. Sand stirred below; light fled above. The song of the creatures died. The swimming frogmen vanished into engulfing shadows. Corpses fell like lead; wood fell upon them in cairns. Lenk felt his breath draw tight in his chest, unseen fire searing his body.

  ‘Priests send children to die, condemn them to death, sit too high for the ashes of the burned to reach them and wear hoods to mute the screaming.’ The teeth twisted, gnashed, roared. ‘Priests betrayed me. Betrayed you.’

  ‘Betrayed me? How? I don’t
—’

  ‘NO.’ The ocean boiled around him, the comforting warmth turning horrendously hot. ‘No more explanations. No more answers. No matter what they call me, I am still a mother. My pity spares you this once. But remember this, you tiny little thing: This is my world. You have a place in it only as long as I will it.’

  And with that, his breath was robbed from him. His lungs seized up, throat closed as it fought to keep out the water that flooded his mouth. He clenched at his neck, started thrashing desperately for air that was far too far above him now.

  The teeth parted, loosing a long, low bellow, a command in a language far too old for mortal ears to hear. The seas obeyed, rising up to drive Lenk towards the surface. Struggling to hold his breath, he watched the teeth grow faint as he was sent hurtling above.

  And yet, her voice only grew louder.

  ‘A final kindness, mortal. Follow the ice to see what I tried so hard to protect you from. Follow it … Follow that wickedness inside your head and realise that I was only trying to protect you from yourself and everything else. This is all I can offer you. Happiness is far out of your reach. Truth and survival is all you can hope for. Take them while you can.’

  In the darkness below, two great golden eyes opened and stared at him with hate.

  ‘Before I take them back.’

  Thirty-Five

  THE SINS IN THE STONE

  The statue of Zamanthras was well tended. Her high, stone cheeks had been polished. The waves of Her flowing hair were lovingly carved so that each granite strand was distinct and apparent. Her bountiful breasts, uncovered by the thin garment about Her hips, were perfectly round and smooth.

  The rest of the temple was in decay, ignored. It had been easy enough to sneak into, unseen. The pillars that marched the crumbling walls were shattered and decayed. Those tapestries that still hung from their sconces were frayed and coated in dust. Supplies, crates and boxes had been stacked beneath them. It appeared that the church had lost its original purpose and had been resigned to storage and other practical needs long ago. He would have accepted that. He would have smiled at that.