Black Halo

by Sykes, Sam

  She hasn’t killed us.

  ‘Yet.’

  Yet.

  ‘I don’t have my sword,’ he said.

  She reached down and plucked up a length of steel from beside the rock, handing it to him. The moment he clenched the weapon, the vigour inside him boiled instead of surged, his muscles clenched to the point of cramping.

  ‘It washed up on shore just an hour ago. The Owauku wanted to throw it back before you could use it on them. I stopped them.’

  ‘It has purpose,’ the voice whispered. ‘It knows what it is used for. That’s why it comes back to us. It knows what it craves.’

  ‘I could,’ he whispered, ‘kill you right now.’

  ‘You won’t,’ she said, not even bothering to look up. ‘And I haven’t killed you yet.’ She smacked her lips. ‘I’ve had so many opportunities. I’ve thought of a hundred ways to do it: poison, arrows, shove you overboard when you’re doing your business …’

  ‘Kill her now!’

  Right now?

  ‘If I was a true shict, I would have killed you when I first set eyes on you.’ She sighed. ‘But I didn’t. I followed you out of the forest. I followed you for a year. I tracked you to a dark cave that you went into and I waited on this rock because I knew you’d be all right.’ She bit her lip. ‘You’re always all right.’

  She bowed her head for a moment, then rubbed the back of her neck.

  ‘And that’s all I’m ever sure of these days. I go to sleep not knowing if I’ll dream shict dreams or what shict dreams are, but I know you’re going to be there when I wake up.’ She blinked rapidly for a moment. ‘And back on the ship, when I wasn’t sure, it … I …’

  The silence did not so much cloak them as smother them this time, seeping into Lenk so deeply that even his mind was still for the moment. He glanced at her, but she was pointedly looking into the forest, staring deeply into the trees as though she would die if she looked anywhere else.

  Perhaps she would.

  ‘How’s the shoulder?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s fine,’ he replied. ‘I’ve had worse.’

  ‘You do seem to have a talent for getting beaten up.’

  ‘Everyone’s good at something.’ He shrugged, then winced. The pain in his shoulder had returned; it hadn’t been there when he had emerged from the cave.

  ‘You should let me take a look at it,’ she said. ‘I don’t trust Asper to do a good job anymore. She …’ She shook her head. ‘She’s distracted these days.’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t.’

  ‘I understand.’ A bitter chuckle escaped her. ‘I understand that. I understand you.’ She sighed. ‘And that doesn’t feel as bad as I thought it would.’

  He glanced down. Her hand had found his again, squeezing it tightly.

  ‘What now?’ she asked.

  ‘With what?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘We go after the tome.’

  ‘I thought you wanted to go back to the mainland, forget the tome and the gold.’

  ‘Things change.’

  ‘They do.’ She rose to her feet, knuckled the small of her back, and loosed the kind of sigh that typically preceded an arrow in the neck and a shallow grave. ‘And that’s not fair.’ Slowly, she began to walk away, slinking towards the forest. She hesitated at the edge of the brush. ‘I’m not going to apologise, Lenk, for anything.’

  ‘I don’t blame you,’ he replied.

  For the first time, she looked at him. It was a fleeting flash of emerald, nothing more than a breath during which their eyes met. It took less than that for her to frown and look away again.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you do.’

  He didn’t protest. Not as she said the words. Not as she walked away.

  Forty

  BROKEN PROMISES

  Awarm droplet of water struck his brow, dripped down a narrow cheekbone and fell to his chin. He caught it on a purple finger before it could fall and be lost on the red and black cobblestones.

  The word for it, Yldus recalled, was rain. He knew only a little about it. He knew it fell from the sky; he knew it made things grow. There was meaning behind it, too. It was a symbol of renewal, its washing of taint and sin considered something sacred. This he had been told by those prisoners who had begged for water from the sky, from the earth, from him.

  He had given none. He didn’t see the point. Where he came from, things did not grow. The sky never changed. And as he looked up at the sky now, the rain falling in impotent orange dots against the burning roofs of the city’s buildings, he wondered what reverence could possibly be justified for it.

  The fires continued, unhindered, belching smoke in defiant rudeness to the meek greyness. There were faint rumbles of what was called thunder, but they did nothing to silence the war cries of the females or the distant cries of the weak and hapless overscum they descended upon.

  He picked his way over the bodies, lifting the hem of his robes as he walked through the undistilled red smears upon the cobblestones. He glanced down an alley, frowning at the flashing jaws and errant cackles of the sikkhuns as they feasted upon the dead and the slow with relish. Their female riders, long since bored with the meagre defences that had been offered to them and subsequently shattered, goaded their mounts to gnash and consume with unabated glee.

  Wasteful, he thought. Pointless. Disgusting.

  Female.

  He left them to the dead. His concerns were for the living.

  Or the barely living, at least.

  The road was slick with blood, clotted with ash, littered with the dead and the broken. Yldus searched the carnage with a careful eye. He had seen much more and much worse, enough to recognise the subtle differences in the splashes of bright red life. He saw where it had been squandered in spatters of cowardice, where it had leaked out on pleas to deaf ears, where it had simply pooled with resignation and despair.

  His eyebrows rose appreciatively as he saw one that began a bright crimson and turned to a dark red as it was smeared across the road, leaving a trail thick with desperation.

  He followed it carefully, winding past the stacks of shattered crates and sundered barrels, the spilled blood and split spears that had been the last defence the overscum had offered the females. Some had fled. Many had stayed. Only one lived.

  And as the road turned to sand beneath Yldus’ feet, he heard that solitary life drawing his last breaths.

  The overscum lay upon the sand. Unworthy of note: small, soft, dark-haired, dark-skinned, maybe a little fatter than most. Yldus watched with passive indifference as the human continued to deny the reality of his soft flesh and leaking fluids, pulling himself farther along the sand, ignoring Yldus and the great black shapes that surrounded him.

  Yldus glanced up at the warriors of the First: tall, powerful, their black armour obscuring all traces of purple flesh and bristling with polished spikes. The spears and razor-lined shields they clenched were bloodied, but stilled in their hands.

  Yldus offered an approving smile; the First, as the sole females proven to be able to overcome their lust for blood enough to follow orders, held a special place in his heart. They could slaughter and skewer with the best of them, but it was their ability to recognise, strategise and, most importantly, obey that made him request their presence in the city.

  He was after answers, not corpses. And this was delicate work.

  At his approach, they turned, as one, their black-visored gazes towards him: expecting, anticipating. He indulged them with a nod. One of them replied, stepping forward, flipping her spear about in her grip and driving it down into the human’s meaty thigh.

  Delicate, as far as the netherling definition of the word went, at least.

  He folded his hands behind him, closing his ears to the human’s wailing as he approached, being careful not to tread in the blood-soaked sand. He stood beside the overscum, staring, waiting for the screaming to stop.

  It took some time, but Yldus was a patient male. />
  It never truly stopped, merely subsided to gasping sobs. That would serve, however. Yldus knelt beside the overscum, surveying him carefully, waiting for the inevitable outburst. The human looked back at him through a dark-skinned face drawn tight with pain and anguish.

  ‘Monsters,’ he spat out in his tongue, ‘demons. Filthy child-killers!’

  Defiance, Yldus recognised, saying nothing as the man launched into a litany of curses, only a few of which he recognised.

  ‘Whatever it is you came here for,’ the human gasped out, the edges of his mouth tinged with blood. ‘Gold, steel, food … we have barely any. Take it and go. Leave the rest of us in peace.’

  Rejection. Yldus still said nothing, merely watching as the man continued to leak out onto the earth, merely waiting until he drew in a ragged breath.

  ‘Spare me,’ he finally gasped.

  Bargaining.

  ‘Spare my life,’ he croaked again, ‘help me and—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What?’ The man appeared shocked that such was even a possible answer.

  ‘You ask the unnatural,’ Yldus replied. ‘You are here, beneath our feet. We are netherling. Because of this, you are going to die. It will not be swift. It will not be merciful. But it will happen. Ours is the right to take. Yours … the right to die.’

  ‘Then do it,’ the human spat back.

  ‘To demand is not your right. We require something in this city. You will offer it to us.’

  ‘Why should I? Why would I? You’ve killed …’ He paused to gasp, hacking viciously.

  ‘We have. We do.’ Yldus turned his gaze to the burning skyline. ‘To kill, to bleed, to die. This is simply what it means to be netherling.’ He glanced back at the man. ‘What does it mean to be human, overscum?’

  ‘It means … it …’

  ‘Hard to say, I realise. Females may only be concerned with your breed as to how much you glut their sikkhuns, but I have taken great pains to learn about your breed. It’s been difficult, but I have learned something.

  ‘To be human,’ he said, ‘is to deny. It is to fight, to flee, to beg or to pray, despite that each action leads to only one outcome. Your people can run, but we can run faster. Your people can fight, but we can kill them. Your people can pray …’ He glanced down at the man, taking note of the chain hanging from his neck. ‘Hasn’t worked so well for you, has it?

  ‘You are faced with inevitabilities: you will die. We will have what we need. Your people will die. How many of them, though, is undetermined. To kill is female. I cannot stop them from doing this. To direct is male. I can point them away from your people, let your people hide, flee, think that their gods are listening to them while we collect what we require and leave.’

  He regarded the man evenly.

  ‘This is the choice you are offered. Deny it if you wish.’

  The man’s face was too agonised to allow for any lengthy contemplation. His answer was swift and tinged with red.

  ‘What do you want?’

  Yldus reached down, plucking the chain from the man’s neck. It ended in a symbol: a crude iron gauntlet clutching thirteen arrows. He studied it briefly, then held it before the man.

  ‘I know what this is,’ he said.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So you already know what I want.’

  ‘No,’ he said, shaking a trembling head. ‘No, I cannot do that. I swore an oath.’

  ‘Oaths are broken.’

  ‘Before the Gods.’

  ‘Gods are false.’

  ‘To perform a duty.’

  ‘You have failed,’ Yldus said. ‘Whatever you might have done for those you looked to is no longer a concern. Whatever you might do for those who look to you can still be effected.’

  The man’s neck trembled under the weight of acknowledgement, forced him to nod weakly after a moment.

  ‘The temple,’ he said. He thrust a trembling finger to the distant cliffs and the humble building upon them. ‘What you seek is in the temple, beyond the pool. Do as you swore.’

  ‘It would be pointless,’ Yldus replied, rising to his feet. ‘I will do as netherlings do.’

  ‘Then whatever you do,’ the man said, grimacing, ‘whatever makes you need that cursed thing … you will die.’ He spoke without joy, without hate, without emotion. ‘And whatever you are, you will remember this day. You will know what it is you’re trying to kill. And you will know why we pray.’

  He met Yldus’ eyes. He did not flinch in pain.

  ‘And I wonder who will answer yours?’

  The man’s eyes were still, rigid with insulting certainty. Yldus felt his own narrow despite himself. He raised his hand and levelled it at the man, his vision bathed in crimson. The man did not flinch.

  The man did not breathe.

  Yldus lowered his arm, letting the power slip from his hand and eyes alike. The rain fell a little harder now, its droplets cold on his skin. The sky was grey now, the orange of the fire-painted clouds going runny as the blazes fell to impotent smoke.

  He spared only another moment for the sight of the skyline, for the man, for this city before he trudged towards the distant cliffs, the metal solidarity of the First’s footsteps following him.

  ‘UYE!’ one of the longfaces howled.

  ‘TOH!’ six replied in grating harmony.

  And then there was the sound of thunder.

  Hidden behind the largest of the pillars marching the circle of the temple’s pool, the Mouth could not see the doors give way, but he heard them splinter open. He heard the sound of longfaces cursing as they made their way in; the defenders of Yonder had come here to the temple first, barricading the doors with crates and sandbags.

  Not enough to stand against the invaders’ ram, of course, but the people of Yonder knew nothing of the creatures that had come in great black boats to their city. They could not have been prepared for the merciless heathen assault that came to their streets on howling war cries and clanging iron. They were people of fear and memory. Those people protected their churches, as much out of instinct as out of principle.

  Their dedication to defending the doors, and later the streets, had made it easy enough for him to slip in unnoticed. The longfaces were complicating things, though.

  ‘This is why I hate coming in unannounced.’ A voice echoed: harsh, iron, female. ‘Look at what they put out to stop us. Wood. Sand. Barely more of an obstacle than the overscum. You know not a single female netherling died today?’

  ‘As I planned.’ Another voice replied: deep, arrogant, male. ‘These were not creatures worth bleeding over.’

  ‘If we had let them know we were coming, they might have been. They had weapons. They were clearly preparing for something.’

  ‘They had spears. For fishing,’ the male said. ‘Like Those Green Things back on the island. They are chattel. These were obstacles. Neither are worth losing females over.’

  ‘We’ve got plenty of females. What we don’t have is things worth fighting.’ The female muttered over the sound of more bodies entering. ‘I heard the Master’s ship sank. Everyone but him died in it. That must have been a fight.’

  A chorus of female voices grunted their agreement.

  ‘And now we have sixteen fewer females for the final attack,’ the male replied wearily. ‘I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that, yet again, no one but me seems to be taking account of the long term. We have more important foes than pink things.’

  ‘Right, the underscum,’ she said. ‘But the Grey One That Grins says this thing will kill them, right? What’s the point, then?’

  ‘The point is to kill the underscum.’

  ‘We’ve done it before. With the poison.’

  ‘The poison is limited, and it’s far too weak to destroy what we’re meant to kill. This … relic, I believe it’s called, will give us the edge we need.’

  ‘We’re netherling. We have enough edges.’

  ‘And yet, here we are,’ the male sighed. ‘I don’t
ask that you understand, Qaine, merely that you do.’ He hummed. ‘The overscum said it was beyond the pool … but where?’

  The female echoed his thoughtful hum. The Mouth heard her shuffle around the pool’s perimeter. He slid lower against the pillar, shrouding himself further in the shadow of the temple. His hands slipped down to the satchel at his side, producing a short knife and the vial.

  He stared at the latter intently. If he was discovered, there would be no time to use it, no time to deliver it to the pool, no time to free Daga-Mer, to complete his mission.

  He had a mission, he reminded himself. He had a deal. He would deliver the vial, pour Mother’s Milk into the water and free Daga-Mer. In exchange, he would remember nothing. He would be free of sinful memory, at long last. He would not remember the pain, the tragedies, his name …

  He had a name.

  He grimaced.

  The sound of stone shattering pulled him from his brief reverie. A cry of alarm was bitten back in his throat. He hadn’t been discovered, he recognised. Rather, something had been shattered. The statue of Zamanthras that stood at the head of the pool, he recalled. Zamanthras was uncaring. Zamanthras did not save his family.

  He had a family.

  ‘Hah!’ the female barked. ‘See? Found it! It’s like they say: Smash the biggest thing in the room and you’ll find your answer.’

  ‘No one says that,’ the male replied.

  ‘I say it. I’m a Carnassial. So they will say it now. Won’t they?’

  The females grunted their agreement, chuckling. There was the sound of stone sifting, rocks sliding.

  ‘What … this is it? It’s just a heap of bones!’

  ‘That’s what we came for,’ the male replied. ‘Take it back to the ships. We’re done here.’

  ‘Done? The sikkhuns are still hungry.’

  ‘They are always hungry.’

  ‘The females haven’t killed enough.’

  ‘They will never kill enough.’

  ‘There’s still overscum here!’

  The male paused.

  ‘Find the ones with heads bowed, talking to invisible things. Kill them. Don’t waste time on anything else. Ships need rebuilding, and Sheraptus is not pleased because of it.’