Gabel approached him quietly. He had already decided that the magus was not a man whom he would like to startle. ‘This is the home of the final party member?’
‘That’s right. He’s waiting, I think. He knows that I’m coming for him. He just doesn’t know which day I’ll arrive.’
‘Then let’s go and meet him.’
‘Tomorrow, when it’s lighter,’ the magus said. ‘I would meet him again only with the sunlight full on his face.’
~
The downpour became too heavy for comfort, and the night had long since set in. The magus stopped by the petrified tree for a short white, contemplating its detail. It was remarkable for the first few moments, but the magus was old, and it took less time to make up his mind than in his youth. Remarkable it was, and that was that; there was no point in looking at it further. He turned to the church.
Rowan stood nearby, only a little wet from the weather. She was under the shelter of a bakery’s thatched roof, looking out past the spire at the forests behind the town. She turned when the magus arrived.
‘You shouldn’t be out in the dark and rain,’ he said reprovingly, taking her hand.
‘I wanted to see a church other than the one at home,’ she replied, and allowed him to lead her away. She wasn’t much taller than him in height, as the magus was shorter than most men, and she taller than most women. ‘You never said if you were religious or not, when we were discussing it.’
‘I am, though not in the way you think. I believe in justification by faith, and one visit to a church was enough for me to decide that my God would save me only if he wanted. I don’t pray, nor do I worship trees. It simply isn’t needed.’
‘I never thought of it that way. If the goddess Irenia were ethereal, then she wouldn’t be concerned with material things, such as idols and churches. They were built by men, after all, and not God.’
‘That’s true,’ said the man, and smiled. ‘You’re already thinking for yourself.’
They entered the inn to the sound of the musicians’ second set. Gabel sat at their table they had occupied earlier, hunched over a sheet of yellow paper, writing. They left him to it, but much later, when they were all in their rooms with the rain drumming them to sleep, Rowan sat up in her bed.
The chair in which Gabel had sat, watching over her like an angel in shadow, was now empty, and on it lay the rolled up parchment. She read the words that he had written on it by the pallid light from outside, those luminous snakes swimming over her skin:
When all the grass is ghostly white
And the birds rot in the street;
When the Earth is lost to eternal night
And baked in atomic heat—
When the planets collide and break apart
And spin on as astral dust;
When the sun goes cold out from its heart
And dies as all things must—
When all the stars have fallen in
And light reaches us no more;
When the galaxy begins to boil within
And collapses out from its core—
When eternity has broken down
And the universe is finished;
We shall reside in the angel’s town
And our love shan’t be diminished—
When all the rest have burned or drowned
Our love shan’t be diminished.
Rowan finished reading the words, scribed in Gabel’s ornate handwriting. She had never known the hunter was capable of such work, nor that he harboured such thoughts. His mood was somewhat dark, but Rowan hadn’t imagined that Gabel had been affected by Maeia and Taeia’s music in so melancholy a fashion.
Having realised this, she sensed that his words were not a promise, as most poetry was, but his reflection of how he viewed the world. Surely he didn’t really believe the world was lost to perpetual darkness? That the war that had swept across the planet had actually succeeded in turning it into a dead globe, despite the evidence to the contrary? People were still here. Plants still grew. But Rowan felt with a certainty she couldn’t explain that, as far as Gabel was concerned, the Earth was simply a ruined, savaged world, still spinning on and refusing to accept that it was finished.
Hastily she rolled up the parchment, re-spun its twine and then put it back where she had found it. She was still dressed, having not had the space in her satchel to bring bedclothes, so she wandered down the oaken stairs in her blouse and past the empty bar. She stopped by the front window and peered through, and was surprised to see Gabel standing by himself in the full fury of the storm, looking outward over the trees.
~
The following morning, the three sat silently eating breakfast until the magus told Rowan that they would be recruiting their final comrade shortly. She nodded, and asked questions that weren’t answered.
They thanked the barkeep and left the inn, walking through the town toward the road that left the square and led them eastwards. One house sat by itself at the very end, beside the road that turned to a muddy trail partway through the trees. The magus knocked firmly, but received no reply.
‘Gone hunting,’ said a voice behind them. A man was up a ladder, trimming the thick branches that hung over the road. ‘Says he’ll be back in a few days.’
‘A few days?’ Gabel asked the magus. ‘Can we wait that long?’
‘It’s necessary, so yes is the answer. Our journey isn’t so urgent at the moment that a few days’ rest is hazardous. Let’s enjoy what peaceful time we have until our friend returns home.’
They walked as they talked. ‘How important is this man to our mission? And what is his name?’
The magus eyed the hunter from under his hat. ‘He is exceptionally important. Your job is to protect this man as we travel, so that he may stay alive. This is your mandate. We don’t leave without this man.’
~
The next six days were long and wet and, though Gabel found the waiting unsettling, Rowan had spent her time being shown around Pirene, seeing the various night-time attractions with Maeia and Taeia. She had marvelled at great water wheels, and at the electric bulbs of glass that shone like haloes inside dark buildings. She prayed by the petrified tree, just so as she could say she’d done so, and again after the violinists had gone on their way, heading out toward the next city. Afterwards seemed grey in comparison, and she mostly wandered about by herself, or washed her clothes with the townsfolk for company.
A week after they first arrived, they returned to the house at the edge of town and knocked on the door. A voice called out: rough and tired, heavy with experience. The accent was odd to Rowan, as if this was the man’s second language. Twangy, and dry.
‘What is it?’
‘There’s a visitor outside,’ said the magus. ‘Answer your door, or he’ll come in.’
‘Whatever. I’m busy.’
To Rowan’s surprise, the magus opened the door as promised and walked inside.
The large room spanned the entire width of the floor. In the centre was a small table littered with worm-like stubs of wiring. Around the perimeter ran a workbench, studded with drawers at random places. It looked homemade, and the only breaks in the circumference were where the door was, and where a flight of stairs without rails ran up the right-hand wall, disappearing into darkness. On the wall hung an astonishingly life-like portrait, the hair of the depicted woman streaked with vivid colour, and beside it in a wooden bracket rested a Japanese short-sword, sheathed in onyx.
A figure with his back turned was seated on a stool, occupied with something on the workbench.
‘With you in a minute,’ he said, half-turning. Rowan caught a glimpse of a weathered face, a streak of silver across the temples.
The man turned, rinsing his hands on a cloth. He looked around sixty years old, despite his muscular physique. A scar, inches long, ran diagonally from the bridge of his nose down to the corner of his jaw. He looked tired and worn, blinking the weariness out of his eyes as a tattooed hand scratched hi
s chest. The image was a black-and-white eight-pronged star.
‘What is it?’ he asked—
—and in a gleaming, golden arc, the short-sword was off the wall, out its scabbard, and singing toward the magus’s shoulder. The stranger’s scarred face was dark with sudden, inexplicable rage. The sword rang once as it was in half-arc, and then again causing it to fly from the man’s grasp; two bullets ricocheted from the blade and struck the ceiling rafters.
Gabel stood before the magus and stared at the stunned stranger, wreathed in grey smoke from the muzzle of his revolver.
‘Put it down,’ Gabel ordered.
The man stared at him in shock, and then something like chagrin crossed his face. His hands were clenched in the air, as if they still held the sword. He lowered them, laughed, and picked up the sword and examined it. It was undamaged.
‘What are you laughing at?’ Gabel demanded.
‘Nothing,’ he chuckled. He pushed the hunter one-handed and the hunter fell across the floor as if kicked by a horse. The scarred man examined the magus.
‘Long time no see,’ he said. ‘Wish you’d kept it that way. You’re not going to vanish on me again, are you?’
‘Not this time,’ the magus replied. ‘You know why I’m here.’
‘You’ve appeared to me enough times over the years to let me have an educated guess. Time to save the world?’
‘Something like that, yes.’
The man pushed a hand through his short dark hair. An angry grin split his scarred face. ‘Damn it, thought I’d got rid of you. Now you come to my house in the middle of nowhere, in the flesh. You’re doing it just to drive me crazy, right? If that’s possible for a man like me.’
‘Of course it is. You saw what happened to your friend.’
‘Oh yeah. I’d almost forgotten about that. Thanks,’ he added sourly, rubbing the back of his neck with his tattooed hand.
Leaning against the wall, Rowan contemplated this stranger in front of her, his unusual accent and curious clothes. This man, who stood staring at the old magus so tiredly, was statuesque in the dusty air.
The magus turned as the other man crossed his arms, and said, ‘Joseph, Rowan: This is Caeles. He’ll be joining us on our way to Shianti.’
*
Five
THE STEEL-WINGED ANGEL
Until two hours after dark they followed the river, knocking away insects and saying little between themselves. Whenever the magus spoke with the newcomer, Caeles, they did so in whispers. At three hours from midnight they built a fire in a small clearing in the trees and sat around it.
Rowan was the first to speak once the food had been handed out.
‘How far until the next town?’ she asked. ‘Are we still heading west?’
‘West until the great lake Lual, where the river ends,’ said Gabel. ‘Then around it, if we have time to spare. I hope you’ve brought something to sleep in, Caeles.’
The newcomer looked up as Gabel spoke. ‘I’ve got blankets,’ he replied.
They slept spread out evenly around the fire that dwindled in the late-night wind. By the time it was out all were asleep except Gabel, who lay looking at the stars through the band of sky over the river. He considered this odd stranger Caeles, beside whom lay the onyx-sheathed sword. He had called it a wakizashi, and it lay resting cold and hard in the dry grass. The sparse light made the intricate handle glitter, made the golden studs down the scabbard gleam.
He had done little to ingratiate himself with the group. During the week that Gabel and the others had been travelling, the basis of a bond had already begun to form between the three of them; a bond that threaded itself neatly between hunter, magus and girl, drawing them together. Despite the fact that the magus largely kept his thoughts to himself, and that Rowan contained within her a bundle of furtive emotions that she hesitated to reveal in the factotum’s presence, a gel comprised of trust, need and hope kept the three as one.
Caeles, on the other hand, appeared to suffer from an illness that rendered him rude, inhospitable, and unapproachable. He carried the bulk of his body very well, revealing his familiarity with long journeys of this kind, and his leathered expressions occasionally belied his cavalier façade. Here is a man, thought Gabel, who has not a lot to hide, but too much to ever tell.
The next morning came late, as usual for November. There seemed to be no life in the forest here, and the plants were pale with lack of light and scattered sparsely around the muddy path. Rowan was surprised and delighted by a thin frost which lay over everything.
Gabel had seen how much of a struggle it had been for Rowan to wake up. She’d been stiff, and found frost over her hands and had rubbed them to clear it. Even now, as they walked through the trees by the drifting river, she seemed to have difficulty just keeping her blood running through her veins.
His attentions, though, were mostly on the conversation held by the two men in front of him.
‘Where are we headed?’ Caeles asked quietly. ‘And why do you need me?’
The magus was rubbing his palms together as he said, ‘Our goal is Hermeticia. Don’t get full of yourself, though; you and Gabel both are important to this undertaking.’
They later came to a split in the river. A smaller stream came off at an angle of ten degrees, the wider arm carrying on as before. They stood at the point where the river diverged, blocked by the smaller stream.
‘We should follow the thinner route,’ Caeles said quietly. ‘That will take us directly to the Lual.’
‘The Lual is a lake, not an ocean,’ Gabel replied. The thought that this newcomer was already moving to take control got his back up immediately. Even as he wondered if he was seeing things that weren’t there, he was saying, ‘The rivers to the south run away from it, not toward it.’
Caeles shrugged. ‘I’m talking from experience. Have you ever travelled this far before?’
‘It doesn’t matter if I have or not,’ Gabel growled. ‘I know the route. We’ve been travelling in a straight line so far, it would be ridiculous to change direction completely just because of a stream.’
Caeles shrugged again and brushed a hand through his hair, upper lip raised on one side. ‘I heard you misjudged the distance to Pirene by a whole day, before you signed me up for this merry chase. Can you be sure you aren’t making a similar mistake?’
Gabel almost lunged at him, but the magus intervened. Gabel was sure it had been the magus who’d told Caeles about his mistake in the forest. Clearly the two of them had some sort of history together, and thus far the two had made few attempts to work closely with the factotum. All that was happening now was a disintegration of their already flimsily-knit group, primarily due to the inclusion of this new, pale-faced foreigner.
Eventually they took Gabel’s route, and walked until darkness fell and they found a suitable place to rest. The trees there were of a different type to those around Niu Correntia; these were thinner and more widely spread, and finding a space large enough for a fire wasn’t difficult.
Caeles had some hard cheese that he brought from Pirene, made from goat’s milk, and he broke a corner from the block and had it with his crust.
‘How come you eat cheese and we eat dry bread?’ Gabel asked.
From across the fire, Caeles swallowed and tore some more crust from his roll. He chewed with his mouth open.
‘Because I brought cheese and you didn’t,’ he said simply. ‘Don’t ask me to share while you have good food. When you run out you can have some of mine, if there’s any left.’
Before the hunter could say anything further, Rowan asked, ‘Where is it you come from?’
‘A long way north. Another continent.’
‘And how did you come to live in Pirene?’
He didn’t answer right away, his eyes drifting elsewhere for just a second, and then back again. ‘This was where I found myself after the war.’
‘The Conflict?’ Gabel scoffed, mouth full of food. ‘That would mean you’re nearl
y two hundred years old, unless the war still rages in some land far away from us.’
Caeles stood, swallowed his food, then waved cavalierly at them as he walked out into the trees. From over his shoulder he said, ‘The war pretty much ended when the nuclear weapons hit.’
‘What’s his problem?’ asked the hunter once Caeles was out of earshot. He picked at the remains of his dry meal, flicking crumbs out of the weave of the blanket. ‘He acts like a child.’
‘He’s much older than he looks,’ said the magus. ‘In fact, he is ancient; he’s seen twice what you have. He has seen the war, and he fought like a cornered lynx. He has also, unfortunately, suffered twice your pain.’
Gabel looked up, fingered what was left of his bread, and then slipped it back into his satchel. ‘He doesn’t look as old as that.’
‘He’s very different from you or I. His outsides are the same: they age, albeit slowly. However, his insides are not flesh and organs. He is a cyborg, altered for the war.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Rowan. She had never known that such things existed.
‘There were many remarkable things created before our little world rolled over and died. Caeles is one of them. Mister Gabel, you must protect him, and he you. You’re here to support each other. You must not be stubborn or proud. No more arguments.’
The hunter stood.
‘I’ll try,’ he said, ‘but I can’t promise anything.’
~
Gabel stooped and picked up another dry branch, putting it in his bundle. As he moved he was careful not to kick the leaves – he had a strange feeling that something was near, moving with them as they travelled, monitoring them.
A figure stepped out from the trees in front of him.
‘Caeles.’
Half Discovered Wings Page 5