Black Halo (Aeons Gate 2)

by Sam Sykes

  She did so, facing the forest.

  Now take a step forward.

  She did so.

  Now don’t look back.

  That, as ever, was where everything went wrong.

  She glanced over her shoulder, ignoring the instant frustration she felt for herself the moment she spied something dark out of the corner of her eye. Tucked behind a dune, bobbing in the water, she could see it: the distinct glisten of water-kissed wood.

  Her heart rose in her chest as she spun about and began to hurry toward it, despite her own thoughts striving to temper her stride.

  It’s wood, she told herself. It doesn’t mean anything beyond the fact that it’s wood. Don’t get your hopes up. Don’t get too excited. Remember the wreck. Remember the Akaneed.

  As she drew closer, the boat’s shape became clearer: resting comfortably upon the shore, intact and unsullied. She furrowed her brow, cautioning her stride. This wasn’t her boat; hers was now in several pieces and probably jammed in one or two skulls right now.

  So it’s someone else’s, she told herself. All the more reason to turn back now. No one with any good intentions would be out here. It’s not them. It’s not him. Turn back. She did not, creeping around the dune. Turn back. Remember you’re alive. Remember he’s dead. Remember they’re dead. They’re dead.

  And, it became clear as she peered around the dune, they were not the only ones.

  A lone tree, long dead but clinging to the sandy earth with the tenacity only a very old one could manage, stood in the middle of a small, barren valley. She peered closer, spying rope wrapped tightly about its highest branches, hanging taut. The grey, jagged limbs bent, creaking in protest as macabre, pink-skinned fruit swayed in the breeze, hanging by their ankles from the ropes.

  She recognised them, the humans hanging from the tree. Even with their throats slashed and their bodies mutilated, their blood splashed against roots that no longer drank, she knew them as crewmen from the Riptide, the ship she and her companions had travelled on before pursuing the tome, the ship whose crew was supposed to come seeking them after they had obtained the book.

  Apparently, they had found something else.

  About the base of the tree, they swarmed. Kataria was uncertain what they were, exactly. They didn’t look dangerous, though neither did they look like anything she had seen before. She peered closer, saw that they resembled roaches the size of small deer, sporting great feathery antennae and rainbow-coloured wing carapaces that twitched in time with each other. They chittered endlessly, making strange clicking sounds as they craned up on their rearmost legs to brush their antennae against the swaying corpses.

  And then, in an instant, they stopped. Their antennae twitched soundlessly, all in the same direction. A shrill chittering noise went out over them and they scattered, scurrying over the dunes before whatever had alarmed them could come to them.

  But Kataria came out around her cover, unafraid as she approached the whitetree. She was unafraid. She knew its name. She knew the men whose blood-drained bodies hung from it.

  And she had seen this before.

  ‘They had swords.’

  Kataria had heard such a voice before: feminine, but harsh, thick and rasping. Her ears twitched, trembled at the sound, taking it in. It was a voice thick with a bloody history: people killed, ancestors murdered, families avenged. She heard the hatred boiling in the voice, felt it in her head.

  And she knew the speaker as shict.

  ‘Humans always have swords,’ this newcomer said, her shictish thick as shictish should be. ‘They always move with the intent to kill.’

  ‘You killed them instead?’

  ‘And fed the earth with them. And warned their people with them.’

  Kataria stared down at the red-stained ground. ‘So much blood …’

  ‘This island is thick with it. That which was shed here is far more righteous.’

  Kataria clenched her teeth behind her lips, stilled her heart. ‘Have you found others?’

  ‘I have.’

  At that, Kataria turned to look at her newfound company.

  She was a shict, as Kataria knew, as Kataria was. But in her presence, her shadow that stretched unnaturally long, Kataria could feel her ears wither and droop.

  The shict’s, however, stood tall and proud, six notches carved into each length, each ear as long as half her forearm. The rest of her followed suit: towering over her at six and a half feet tall, spear-rigid and steel-hard body bereft of any clothing beyond a pair of buckskin breeches. Her black hair was sculpted into a tall, bristly mohawk, her bare head decorated with black sigils on either side of the crude cut. She folded powerful arms over naked breasts that were barely a curve on her lean musculature and regarded Kataria coolly.

  And, as Kataria stared, only one thought came to her.

  So … green.

  Her skin was the colour of a crisp apple … or a week-old corpse. Kataria wasn’t quite sure which was more appropriate. But her skin colour was just a herald that declared her deeds, her ancestry, her heritage.

  And Kataria knew them both. She had heard the stories.

  She was a member of the twelfth tribe: the only tribe to stand against humanity and turn them back. She was a member of the s’na shict s’ha: headhunters, hideskinners, silent ghosts known to every creature that feared the night.

  A greenshict. A true shict.

  And Kataria knew dread.

  ‘I have found tracks, anyway,’ she said, pointing to the earth with a toe. Kataria glanced down and saw the long toes, complete with opposable ‘thumb,’ that constituted the greenshict’s feet. ‘There are other humans here, for some reason.’ She stared out over the dunes. ‘Not for much longer.’

  ‘Why would they be here?’

  ‘This island is rife with death. Humans are drawn to the scent.’

  ‘Death?’

  ‘This land is poisoned. Trees grow, but there is death in the roots. That which lives here feeds on death and we feed upon them.’

  ‘I saw the roaches …’

  ‘Unimportant. We come for the frogs. They eat the poison. The poison feeds our blood. We feed on them.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Three of s’na shict s’ha came to this island.’

  ‘Where are the others?’

  ‘They seek. Naxiaw seeks humans. Avaij seeks frogs. I seek you.’

  Kataria felt the greenshict’s stare like a knife in her chest.

  ‘I heard your Howling long ago. I have searched for you since.’ The greenshict fixed her with a stare that went far beyond cursory, her long ears twitching as if hearing something without sound. ‘You come with strange sounds in your heart, Kataria.’

  Kataria did not start, barely flinched. But the greenshict’s eyes narrowed; she could see past her face, could see Kataria’s nerves rattle, heart wither.

  ‘What is your name?’ Kataria asked.

  ‘You know it already.’

  She should know it, at least, Kataria knew. She could feel the connection between them, as though some fleshless part of them reached out towards each other and barely brushed, imparting a common thought, a common knowledge between them. The Howling, Kataria knew: that shared, ancestral instinct that connected all shicts. The same instinct that had told the greenshict her name.

  That same instinct that Kataria could now only barely remember, so long had it been since she used it.

  But she reached out with it all the same, straining to feel for the greenshict’s name, straining the most basic, fundamental knowledge shared by the Howling.

  ‘In …’ she whispered. ‘Inqalle?’

  Inqalle nodded, but did not so much as blink. She continued probing, staring into Kataria, sensing out with the Howling that which Kataria could not hide. Kataria did not bother to keep herself from squirming under the gaze, from looking down at her feet. In a few moments, Inqalle had looked into her, had seen her shame and judged.

  ‘Little Sister,’ she whispered, �
�I know why you are here.’

  ‘It’s complicated,’ she replied.

  ‘It is not.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘You are filled with fear. I hear it in your bones.’ Her eyes narrowed, ears flattened against her skull. ‘You have been with humans …’

  Funny, Kataria thought, that she should only then notice the blood-slick tomahawk hanging at Inqalle’s waist. She stared at it for a long time.

  Amongst shicts, there were those that loathed humans, there were those that despised humans and then there were the s’na shict s’ha, those few that had seen such success driving the round-eared menace from their lands that they had abandoned those same lands, embarking on pilgrimages to exterminate that which had once threatened them.

  And for those that had consorted with the human disease, slaughter was seen as an act of mercy to the incurably infected. As such, Kataria remained tense, ready to turn and bolt the moment the tomahawk left her belt.

  The blow never came. Inqalle’s gaze was sharp enough to wound without it.

  ‘Kataria,’ she whispered, taking a step closer. Kataria felt the greenshict’s eyes digging deeper into her, sifting through thought, ancestry, everything she could not hide from the Howling. ‘Daughter of Kalindris. Daughter of Rokuda. I have heard your names spoken by the living.’

  Her eyes drifted toward the feathers in Kataria’s hair, resting uncomfortably on a long, ivory-coloured crest nestled amongst the darker ones.

  ‘And the dead,’ she whispered. ‘Who do you mourn, Little Sister?’

  Kataria turned her head aside to hide it. Inqalle’s hand was a lash, reaching out to seize her by the hair, twisting her head about as Inqalle’s long green fingers knotted into her locks.

  ‘You are … infected,’ she hissed, voice raking Kataria’s ears. ‘Not voiceless.’

  ‘Let go,’ Kataria snarled back.

  ‘You speak words. That is all I hear.’ She tapped her tattooed brow. ‘In here, I hear nothing. You cannot speak with the Howling. You are no shict.’ She wrenched the white feather free, strands of hair coming loose with them. ‘You mourn no shict.’

  ‘Give that back,’ Kataria growled, lashing out a hand to grab it back. With insulting ease, Inqalle’s hand lashed back, striking her against her cheek and laying her to the earth. She looked up, eyes pleading. ‘You have no right.’ She winced. ‘Please.’

  ‘Shicts do not beg.’

  ‘I am a shict!’ Kataria roared back, springing to her feet. Her ears were flattened against her head, her teeth bared and flashing white. ‘Show me your hand again and I’ll prove it.’

  ‘You wish to prove it,’ Inqalle said softly, a statement rather than a challenge or insult. ‘I wish to see it.’

  ‘Then let me show you how to make a redshict, you six-toed piece of—’

  ‘There is another way, Little Sister.’

  Kataria paused. She felt Inqalle’s Howling, the promise within its distant voice, the desire to help. And Inqalle heard the anticipation in her little sister’s, the desperation to be helped. Inqalle smiled, thin and sharp. Kataria swallowed hard, voice dry.

  ‘Tell me.’

  *

  ‘You know you talk in your sleep,’ her daughter had said years later, long after she was gone from the world and her daughter wore a white feather. ‘I could have shot you from four hundred paces away.’

  ‘Lucky for me that you were only six away,’ the thing with silver hair had said in return. ‘Which, coincidentally, is the sixth time you’ve told me you could kill me.’

  ‘Today?’

  ‘Since breakfast.’

  ‘That sounds about right.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Do it already. Add another notch to your belt … or, is it feathers with you?’

  ‘I don’t have any kill feathers.’

  ‘What are those for, then?’

  Her daughter had tucked the white one behind her ear. ‘Lots of things.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You’re not curious?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘You’ve never wondered why we do what we do?’

  ‘If the legends are true, your people’s connections with my people tend to be either arrows, swords or fire. That all seems pretty straightforward to me.’

  Her daughter had frowned.

  ‘You, though …’ he had said.

  ‘What about me?’

  He had stared, then, as he hefted his sword.

  ‘You stare at me. It’s weird.’

  He hadn’t told her daughter to stop. He hadn’t told her daughter to leave. And Kataria never had.

  *

  They stretched out into the distance, over the sand, a story in each moist imprint. They spoke of suffering, of pain, of confusion, of fear. She narrowed her eyes as she knelt down low, tracing her fingers over two of the tracks. The voices in the footprints spoke clearly to her, told her where they were heading.

  She knew her companions well enough to recognise their tracks.

  ‘There are more,’ Inqalle said behind her. ‘They are familiar to you.’

  ‘They are,’ Kataria replied.

  ‘They are your cure.’

  She turned and saw the feather first. Inqalle held it in her hand, attached to a smooth, carved stick. She held it before Kataria.

  ‘You know what this is.’

  ‘I remember,’ she said. ‘A Spokesman.’

  ‘It speaks. It makes a declaration. This one says that you shall not mourn until you are a shict.’ She regarded Kataria coolly. ‘This one will tell you when you are a shict.’

  ‘I remember,’ she said. ‘My father told me.’

  ‘This is a cure for the disease. This is a cure for your fear. This restores you.’ She handed the Spokesman to Kataria. ‘Keep it. Use it. Survive until you become a shict again.’

  ‘And when I do. You will know?’

  Inqalle tapped her head.

  ‘We will all know.’

  Six

  CHEATING LIFE

  The heavens move in enigmatic circles.

  In the human tongue, this translated roughly to ‘it’s not my fault.’ Gariath had heard it enough times to know. Those humans he knew had been happiest when they could blame someone else.

  Formerly humans, he corrected himself, currently chum. Lucky little idiots with no one to blame.

  Not entirely true, he knew. If their heavens did indeed circle enigmatically overhead, and they had indeed gone to them, they were likely hurling curses upon his head from there at that very moment. A tad hypocritical, he thought, to praise their mysterious gods and resent being sent to them.

  Or is that what they call ‘irony’?’

  But that was a concern for dead people. Gariath, sadly, was still alive and without a convenient excuse for it.

  The Rhega had no gods to blame. The Rhega had no gods to claim them. That was what he wanted to believe, at least.

  He had been able to overlook his inability to die, at first, throwing himself at pirates, at longfaces, at demons and at his former humans and coming out with only a few healthy scars. They might have cursed him, if he left them enough blood to choke on, but they were lucky. Death by a Rhega’s hand would be as good a death as they could hope for.

  When a colossal serpent failed to kill him, he began to suspect something more than just mere luck. The sea, too, had rejected him and spat him onto the shore, painfully alive. If gods did exist, and if their circles were wide enough to touch him, they took a cruel pride in keeping him alive.

  Now that is irony.

  The former humans, he was certain, would have agreed. And if he had learned anything from them and their excuses, it was that their gods rarely seemed content to allow a victim of their ironies merely to wallow in their misery. They preferred to leave reminders, ‘omens’ to rub their jagged victories into wounds that had routinely failed to prove fatal.

  And, as his own personal omen crested out of
the waves to turn a golden scowl upon him, he was growing more faithful by the moment.

  Like a black worm wriggling under liquid skin, the Akaneed continued to whirl, twist and writhe beneath the sun-coloured waves. It emerged every so often to turn its single, furious eye upon him, narrowing the yellow sphere to a golden slit that burned through the waves.

  Just as it had burned all throughout the morning when the sea denied him, he thought. Just as it had continued to burn throughout the afternoon he squatted upon the sand, watching it as it watched him.

  He wasn’t quite sure why either of them hadn’t moved on yet. For himself, he suspected whatever divine entity had turned him away from death thought to inspire some contemplation in watching the sea.

  Humans often thought sitting and staring to be a religiously productive use of their time. And they die like flies, he thought. Maybe I’ll get lucky and starve to death.

  That seemed as good a plan as any.

  The Akaneed’s motives, he could only guess at. Surely, he reasoned, colossal sea snakes couldn’t subsist purely on angry glowers and snarls from the deep. Perhaps, then, it was simply a battle of wills: his will to die and the snake’s will to eat him.

  Though those two seem more complementary than conflicting …

  By that reasoning, it would be easy to walk fifteen paces into the surf until the sea touched his neck. It would be easy to close his eyes, take three deep breaths as he felt the water shift beneath him. It would be easy to feel the creature’s titanic jaws clamp around him, feel the needles merciful on his flesh and watch his blood seep out on blossoming clouds as the beast carried his corpse to an afterlife beneath the waves.

  The Akaneed’s eye emerged, casting a curious glare in his direction, as though it sensed this train of thought and thoroughly approved.

  ‘No,’ he assured it. ‘If I do that, then you’ll have an easy meal and I’ll have an easy death. Neither of us will have worked for it and neither of us will be happy.’

  It shot Gariath another look, conveying its agreement in the twitch of its blue eyelid. Then, in the flash of its stare before it disappeared beneath the waves, it seemed to suggest that it could wait.