Netherkind
Page 12
“Take our hands,” they said.
The feat, the distance, between he and the Stygma, seemed impossibly far away and yet so close. Thomas strained and stretched and soon he felt the cold, clammy, rubber-like texture of Stygma hands. In moments, Thomas rose through the grey fog and was hauled out of the depths, like an infant from the womb.
Into even more gloom.
Thomas was standing in a crypt surrounded by Stygma, dozens of sunken eyes considering his naked flesh.
“Cover him,” Shal-Ekh said.
One of the Stygma moved to a crumbling coffin and removed a death shroud from around an ancient corpse. The bones toppled to the ground, clunking together in the dust.
“Where are we?” Thomas asked, as the Stygma monk wrapped the shawl around him.
Shal-Ekh outstretched his pale, skeletal arms. “This is our Sepulcrum—our domain,” he said. “This is where we sleep and eat and fall to dust when Okin calls us.”
“Wow—sounds real cosy,” Thomas said. “Not as gloomy as the Flesh Home though, I’ll give you that.”
Shal-Ekh’s eyes widened. “The Flaeschama—you have seen it?”
Thomas frowned. “Of course—I’m a Phagun.”
“Yes, all Phaguns live there, but I sense that you do not see it as your home?”
Thomas studied Shal-Ekh and all of his monks, the way they seemed to feed off his every word. Why, when he was their enemy? Why weren’t they trying to kill him, like the Skiift—or even his own tribesmen?
“I still don’t understand how you know my name?” Thomas said.
“We all know your name,” Shal-Ekh said, his monks nodding along with him.
“How is that? I’ve never met you before.”
Shal-Ekh moved closer and the monks parted and retreated to file behind their leader.
“We Stygma…have a gift…handed down by the Great Flesher—Okin. We know of all souls.”
“Really?”
“You doubt me, like the apostle of Christ?”
“Christ—how do you know of Christ? You only believe in this…Okin guy, right?”
“Yet we dwell in a Christian church—we have for a long time. It would be…disrespectful for us not to know the name of the previous owner.”
Thomas glanced at Shal-Ekh’s plastic skin and the myriad of tattoos upon its surface.
“You are curious as to what purpose these markings serve?” Shal-Ekh said.
“How many do you have on your body?”
“Thousands—they are the words of Okin. He talks to me, to us, in our dreams. Did he not speak to you when you were resting in the pit?”
Thomas cocked an eyebrow. “Should he have?”
Shal-Ekh turned and moved to an altar in the centre of the crypt.
“Perhaps you are not yet ready to listen to him.”
Thomas tried to approach Shal-Ekh, but the monks gathered to form a barrier of black to protect their master.
“Look, I’m getting a bit tired of all these games that you Fleshers are playing. What do you want with me?”
Shal-Ekh turned a sneer on his greasy face. “You Fleshers—do you not see yourself as one of Okin’s children?”
“No, that’s not what I meant—I know what I am.”
“Do you—and what is that?” Shal-Ekh said, pushing his way through his dark bodyguards. Thomas began to retreat, but he ground to a halt when he realized, he was on the edge of the pit.
“I’m…one of the Phagus!” he said.
Shal-Ekh reached out and pressed his finger, barbed with a broken fingernail, into his chest.
“And what is that!?”
“What do you mean?” Thomas said his foothold slipping.
“What are you!?” the Stygma prophet’s bellow seemed unnatural for a creature so lacking in life.
“I’m a killer—okay—a fucking monster!”
Shal-Ekh slipped his hand into Thomas’ shawl and pulled him to veritable safety.
“Yes, you are—an eater of human flesh and perhaps others?”
“So what?’” he said. “You Stygma eat flesh too, don’t you?”
“The dead.”
“What?”
“We eat the flesh of dead humans and humanity is so willing to die, is it not?”
“Please, just tell me what you want.”
Shal-Ekh smiled a black grin, rotten from the inside out. “What do you want?”
“I just…want to be left alone.”
The Stygma leader’s face dropped with mock sadness. “But you are a Phagus—you must adopt the ways of the Phagus.”
“What if I don’t want to?”
“You sound like a child, not a savage beast. You are meant to be a bloodthirsty warrior—willing to die in ferocious combat!”
Thomas turned his back. “I’m not interested in any damn war.”
“How can you say that when it is in your blood, handed down over centuries, from generation to generation?”
“I didn’t even know about the war or even the Phagus until two days ago!”
“Yet it is still your war!”
Thomas snarled defiantly and the monks hissed in retaliation, making Thomas think twice about their level of perceived weakness.
“It’s your war too,” Thomas said. “And the Skiift. I never asked to be a part of it. I was happy living in the city until—”
“Until?” Shal-Ekh said with an eager light in his pale eyes.
Thomas pushed the Stygma leader away and tried to leave, again the monks swarmed, but around him this time.
“You have to let me go!”
Shal-Ekh’s cold hand slinked across his shoulder.
“You cannot leave. At least, not yet.”
To show Thomas they meant him no harm, Shal-Ekh ordered his monks to build a fire for their guest.
“We do not feel warmth in the same as way you,” Shal-Ekh said to Thomas as he sat him down before the fire. “But perhaps it will help you to join me in conversation?”
Thomas watched the flames dance and die in the air, the smoke billowing to the roof of the crypt like a great serpent rising from a lake of fire.
“What do you expect me to tell you?” Thomas said, wrapping himself tighter in his shawl.
“That is up to you, but as long as you know I am glad to listen.”
Thomas looked over Shal-Ekh’s face, a skull wearing a mask of decrepit humanity—a Flesher long dead. Thomas was amazed to see so much wisdom in something so withered.
“I don’t understand—the Phagus told me you were these all-powerful beings.”
“Perhaps we are,” Shal-Ekh said. “Yet we are Flesher just like you.”
“But they told me you hated all the Skiift and Phagus, that we’re abominations.’
“Hate: such a wasted word, an excuse for intolerance and violence.”
“So, you don’t hate us?”
Shal-Ekh considered the fire, almost mesmerised by it.
“Okin had intended all Fleshers to live in harmony,” he began. “But our animalistic nature got the better of us and became our downfall. A forbidden act drove us apart and ever since, the three tribes have tried to lay the guilt upon the other. Yes, we Stygma accused the other tribes, but Okin made us realise we are each at fault and war will solve nothing.”
“So, you’ve seen this…Okin?” Thomas said. “He exists?”
“Oh, yes,” Shal-Ekh breathed.
“What does he look like?”
Shal-Ekh shook his head. “No, that is not for me to say, but rather for you to discover.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Okin has much to tell you, Thomas and he has been waiting to tell you for a very long time.”
Thomas watched the flames again, how they faded and wished he could join them.
“Why am I so goddamned special?”
Shal-Ekh stood and walked around the fire, his skin like liquid gold. Behind him, his monks kept their vigil, chanting and cutting tattoos into themselves.
He recalled eating Nero’s flesh and the flesh of the minion in the arena, the memories tugged at the urge and he had to fight to stifle it.
“I…don’t know,” he said finally.
“No Phagus or Skiift, or even Stygma has ever eaten the flesh of its own, yet you did it so liberally.”
Thomas shook his head. “That’s not true—Steph—I mean Calea—she ate my flesh!”
Shal-Ekh and the monks were speechless.
Calea—the King’s daughter?’ the Stygma leader said, appalled.
“Yes, she attacked me.”
“But she was exiled—to the human city.”
“That’s where I first met her. She tricked me and fed on me. She even told me she—” Thomas stopped short, unwilling to reveal too much to the Stygma prophet.
Shal-Ekh came to Thomas quickly and crouched beside him, desperation in his gaze.
“What happened Thomas?” he whispered.
“She…abandoned me,” he said. “I had to fend for myself, then I met Nero—”
“Another exile!” Shal-Ekh said, a half smile on his face. “And now you are an exile, perhaps you are right when you believe you do not feel like one of the Phagus? Perhaps your speciality comes from your reluctance to conform?”
“I’ve got no problems being an exile as long as it means everyone else leaves me that way!”
Shal-Ekh took Thomas by the shoulders. “No, don’t you see, boy? You don’t conform! You’re not tainted by the sins of the rest, which is why Okin needs you to help him end the war!”
“No, I told you I don’t want to be involved in any war!”
Shal-Ekh slapped Thomas’ face. “Stupid boy you are already involved—more than you know. There is only one way for you to see it.”
Thomas tried to pull away, but Shal-Ekh’s bony grip and sunken eyes were impossibly strong.
“It’s time for you to sleep!”
16
When Stephanie came to, Thomas and the Stygma were gone, replaced by the infuriated figure of her brother Malik.
“Where is the intruder?” he said, pointing the tip of his sword at her.
Stephanie tried to shake the fog from her head. The sunlight stabbed at her eyes and the lush green woods loomed large and oppressive. She got to her feet and looked past her brother for any sign of Thomas, but he was long gone.
“Calea—I am talking to you!” Malik took a step forward, threatening her with the blade.
“Is that how you greet your long-lost sister?” she said. She blinked to desperately remove the white light from her vision. The last thing she saw was the Stygma leader exploding with it.
“I would rather you hadn’t reappeared at all,” Malik replied. “So, where is he?”
Stephanie picked up her dagger slowly from the ground and sheathed it as an indicator of truce. She had to allay her brother’s concerns and find a way to convince him to let her go. Malik raised an eyebrow at her gesture but refused to lower his blade.
“I found him with a Stygma Flesher,” she said.
“Who?” Malik said.
“Shal-Ekh.”
Malik’s eyes widened and he began to scan the woods. She watched him become more alert, more defensive. It was one of the many things Stephanie disliked about him—that he was always ready for a fight, even when it wasn’t necessary. She moved around her brother and he kept one eye on her and the other on the woods.
“Before I could stop him, the son-of-a-bitch opened himself up,” she said. “He must have captured Thomas and taken him with him. I don’t know why I’m still alive though.” She rubbed her eyes, the motes of Stygma light still dancing across her vision.
“Then he is lost,” Malik said. “Probably the best outcome we could hope for.”
“What? No, we have to find him!” Stephanie argued.
“Why?”
Stephanie bit her lip, hesitating. “The asshole owes me…big time. We crossed paths in the human city—he stole a meal from me.”
Malik sneered. “He mentioned he’d met you, but he told it differently.”
“What’d he say?”
“That you attacked him and ate his flesh.”
Stephanie tried to conceal her tell. “Well he’s lying—he’s not even one of us.”
Malik nodded in agreement. “True, he is so…foreign.”
“Which is why we have to find him. If he joins with the Stygma he could help them get inside the Flaeschama.”
Malik’s frowned. “Why would that concern you? You tried to lead a rebellion there yourself.”
Stephanie swallowed. “I want back in.”
Malik almost dropped his sword. “I never thought I would hear you say such a thing.”
“I feel I’ve served my time, maybe father will want me back.”
Malik’s eyes narrowed and she could almost see his mind ticking over with contempt. Stephanie had to try and win his trust again, at the very least convince him to take her back to the Flaeschama. She may have been the defiant sister who who led an army against her own blood, who sacrificed her own heart in a meaningless crusade, but she was his sister, nonetheless.
“I don’t believe you,” he said, as he tightened his grip on the sword.
“I guess I can’t blame you, but what if I could offer proof of my sincerity.”
“How?”
“I’ve spent a lot of time with the Skiift and I’ve observed the Stygma. I have valuable information that Gavenko—I mean, Father—would find very useful.”
Malik crossed the gap between them before she could even blink. She felt the edge of the blade against her throat. “And what have you told them about us?”
Stephanie stared into her brother’s eyes. His hatred of her was as sharp as the steel in his hand. “Nothing that would jeopardise the safety of the people—”
Malik scoffed. “You expect me to believe that?”
“You know how I feel about the people Malik,” she said. ‘I know I was misguided, but I only ever did it for them.”
She watched him ponder her words. She’d expressed similar sentiments when she stood in the Sederunt, begging for her life. She prayed that he too only wanted the war—their people’s fear—to end.
“What is it about this Thomas fool that entices you, really?”
“I told you—he owes me a blood debt.”
Malik sneered. “This will not go well if you continue to deceive me, sister.”
Stephanie sighed, relenting. “He’s too neutral Malik,” she said. “He doesn’t have any allegiances and that makes him dangerous. He’s elusive, I mean just look at how easily he escaped the Skiift.”
Malik snarled and she felt blood trickle down her neck. “Only because he had help from you!”
“Oh, will you stop it Malik! I’m not trying to fight with you—not this time! Thomas is more than an imposter—he’s a threat. You might not see it yet, but it’s going to happen.”
Malik looked into her eyes for several moments. “He has rejected his kind. I saw him eat one of the minions in the arena. He even argued that we shouldn’t eat human children.”
“Then it wouldn’t take much for the Stygma to convert him, Malik. You need to go to Father and get him to launch an attack and get Thomas back.”
“Get him back—what for?”
“To execute him in the Sederunt—then we’ll know he’s dead and gone.”
“We’ll need reinforcements if we’re going to launch an assault on the Stygma.”
“What if I could convince Re-Kul to forge an alliance with us?”
Malik hissed in disgust. “With the red skins—are you insane!?”
“I told you I’ve spent time with them. I’ve earned their trust. Let me go back to him and make him see sense.”
Malik shook his head and Stephanie’s face blanched.
“Why not?” she said.
“Beca
use who’s to say that if I let you go that you won’t lead the Skiift to our gates?”
“I’d never do that Malik!”
“Never? Like you never led that rebellion? Like you never tried to kill Father?”
Stephanie knew she was losing her grip on the argument, so she decided to go for Malik’s psychological weak-spot.
“Tell me you wouldn’t have sat in that throne if I’d succeeded—that you don’t still dream of being King?”
“Be silent,” Malik said, his whole body seething with repressed rage.
“Don’t you want to end this war Malik? Stop the bloodshed? If we can get the Skiift to pledge a truce with us, then together the two tribes have a chance at destroying the Stygma. The Stygma are the only ones who really want the war to go on—they’re still clinging to the old myths.”
Malik stepped backward and rested the point of his blade at Stephanie’s eye. Stephanie slipped a tentative hand on her own dagger.
“We will go and see Father, together,” he said.
“All right,” she said.
“But you will come as my prisoner—not my sister.”
Stephanie wanted to claw out her brother’s eyes. “As you wish,” she said.
His gaze went cold, and she was taken aback to those times when their father used to have them fight each other to hone their skills—and their resentment.
“Rest assured sister—if you try and deceive me again, or try to escape, I will kill you.”
Stephanie nodded and Malik reached down to disarm her, then he made her about face. She felt the point of his blade in her back.
“Now march,” he said.
And she began to walk through the woods, dreading the fate that awaited her at Gavenko’s hands.
This is the ancient dream that foretold Thomas’ coming:
Shal-Ekh awoke alongside his maker, the Great One, Okin. The heavens, their blanket, the earth their bed. Their flesh naked, Okin’s radiant, Shal-Ekh’s fresh and alive. The air was warm and the Stygma prophet could smell the salt of the waters of the earth. Somewhere Flesher children—Phagus, Skiift and Stygma, played and laughed together. The Flesher kingdom as it was meant to be.
The Great One reached out and took Shal-Ekh’s hand in his.
I must return, Shal-Ekh, Okin said, his voice the thunder that heralded the rain.