Half Discovered Wings

by David Brookes

  ‘I’ll say nothing,’ Paul said, shifting his gaze to his sandaled feet, ‘but my concern is for you. I don’t want you banished from our Sect.’

  ‘I’d join another.’

  ‘They’ve all been summoned west,’ said Paul. ‘You would only be sent—’

  At this point he caught Teague out of the corner of his eye, and turned to face him. ‘You. Boy! What do you mean by listening in on us?’

  ‘Don’t call me “boy”,’ Teague said, striding forward. ‘This body’s not mine.’

  ‘On loan, is it?’ Brother Paul sneered. ‘Get lost.’

  Teague turned to the girl. She was staggeringly beautiful up close. He said, ‘What goes on to the west? Why have the Sects been summoned there?’

  ‘A letter was delivered to Sister Caroll here, penned by the Regent of São Jantuo. It says the ones we’ve been looking for are heading west to face the enemy.’

  ‘Which “ones”? Which enemy?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, giving an apologetic smile. ‘I’m only an acolyte, like Sister Caroll. We aren’t told such things.’

  Teague looked over Paul’s shoulder to Verlaine. ‘Is Brother Michael one of the ones in charge?’

  ‘He is one of the Four of the Ministrati.’

  ‘Where can I find him?’

  ‘I shouldn’t say,’ she said, giving a small bow.

  ‘It’s okay, Verlaine,’ Paul said quietly. ‘You’ll find him in the Hall of Prayers.’

  ‘I think I’ve just been to that place,’ Teague said. ‘He wasn’t there.’

  ‘Then do you know the passageway under this plateau?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Through the pool room is a door to a passageway that leads through the cliff. It will take you to the Hall of Eating and to the Ministrati’s place. It’s not secret, you should be allowed through.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He turned to leave.

  ‘Wait!’ Verlaine called. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘For now, you can call me Brother William,’ Teague said, and skidded his way down the slope.

  ~

  Finding the passageway wasn’t difficult. He remembered the way to the pool room, and stayed there a short while hoping that Brother Michael would pass through. The monks around the pool sat and prayed in silence, ignoring his presence. He opened a door and passed through a low-ceilinged corridor dug straight through the dusty earth. It was supported by heavy-set wooden girders. The gas-powered torches that lined its walls made it uncomfortably hot.

  The door at the end opened into a kind of foyer that led off in three directions, each of which was labelled. The left path led to the Hall of Eating, the right to Den of Recreation, which sounded suspiciously sordid to Teague, and the centre path was simply labelled “Ministrati”. Teague walked down the centre path.

  The four members of the Ministrati sat in a loose square, cross-legged, eyes closed, turned inward to face each other. None of them were speaking. The room – small, and bare as the rest – was completely still in their silence.

  Teague made a polite cough.

  ‘Henrique,’ Brother Michael said, not moving or opening his eyes. ‘Welcome.’

  ‘Can I have a word?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘In private?’

  ‘They won’t listen if I ask them not to,’ said Michael, eyes still closed.

  ‘First, my name is not Henrique. Please stop calling me that.’

  ‘Yes, I know. There is another spirit inside Henrique’s body now. William Teague. You were in Hadentes and you managed to find a way out. That was very fortunate of you; I’ve never heard of such a thing. Astonishing.’

  ‘Are you afraid?’

  ‘No, I don’t think that will be necessary. You’re different now to what you once were.’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Really. Do you remember how you escaped?’

  ‘I only remember the taste of blood in my mouth.’

  ‘You swapped your spirit with that of a sanguilac. Henrique had been attacked by one of those creatures, and their blood had mixed, angering the demon spirit. It meant to destroy Henrique’s soul for the heresy, but you took its place, and inhabited his body.’

  ‘Am I a sanguilac then?’

  ‘No, no. You’ve been outside, haven’t you? In the sunlight? And as far as I know, you haven’t killed anybody.’

  ‘Not recently,’ he said.

  ‘What do you remember of Hadentes?’

  ‘Only what I’ve seen in my dreams. My memories are … vague. Did you say I was in a fever?’

  ‘For the last month. I can help you remember what happened, if you wish.’

  ‘I don’t want to remember,’ he said. Such thoughts were not pleasant, and the few misty outlines of recollection he could dredge up were unpleasant. They tasted sour, bringing a metallic taste to his mouth. No, he didn’t want to remember at all.

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked the monk. ‘There might be things you didn’t even know you knew.’

  ‘Like what?’ asked Teague

  Brother Michael opened one eye, and the smile on his lips widened. ‘Come to the pool and I’ll show you.’

  ~

  The pool room was empty, the water still and lit from beneath. The bare stone walls were cast with a serene glow.

  ‘There are salts in the water that cause that sense of calm you’re feeling,’ Brother Michael said quietly, closing the door behind him. ‘Help you to relax.’

  ‘I didn’t think monks needed stuff like that to relax.’

  ‘We’re all under a lot of pressure, even the Ministrati.’

  ‘How did you know all that about me in there?’

  ‘The Ministrati could sense the change. Brother Elkin knew Henrique but didn’t recognise his presence within you. How he mourns for his death.’

  ‘I imagine my own body is rot by now.’

  ‘Quite possibly. I doubt there would be any way to restore you, even if you wished it.’

  ‘What makes you think I don’t?’ Teague asked, looking into the pool as they sat beside it.

  ‘Because that body had something you didn’t want.’

  They held each other’s gaze for a second until Teague turned uncomfortably away, looking down into the pool. ‘So what’s this for?’

  ‘Just relax and submerge yourself.’

  Teague did as he was told, lying flat in the water. It was just deep enough for him to submerge completely. He opened his eyes underwater and found that they didn’t sting, and after a short while of lying in the deep silence realised that he no longer needed to breathe.

  He watched the playing of the light on the undulations of the surface, the unrest caused by his intrusion. The lines of blue and green washed over one another, criss-crossing to make webs of luminescence that rotated above him.

  The minerals in the water were doing their job. He suddenly felt intensely tired, and fought to stay awake, but it took him regardless and he slipped into a dream state.

  He saw something he didn’t understand. A darkness loomed far in front of him, sprinkled with tiny dots of colour: red, brown and grey, all encased in a ring of white fire that he realised he was tumbling through. It was a tunnel of blazing ice, freezing flame, casting him down toward some unknown place. He saw a square of black on the clay-coloured ground, and realised it was the walls of a castle, and within it the courtyard.

  He hit the ground in a tumult of pain, and made a crater. He stood up in his self-created basin and looked around at the Courtyard of Hadentes, which was filled with people and creatures, bodies suspended on pikes and balls of flame tumbling from the sky. There were black clouds spinning above him. Looking down at his own body, he saw it was burned and scarred. He had no nails, and when he checked found that he also had no teeth. His eyeballs were gone.

  Teague screamed and surged up out of the water, sending shining droplets flying over the boundaries of the pool. Michael looked at him, from his crouched position at the pool’s ed
ge.

  ‘Try again,’ the monk said softly.

  ‘It’s frightful.’

  ‘Are you a man or not?’

  Teague emitted a growl he hadn’t heard in a long time, the vulpine snarl he had given the hunter Joseph Gabel the night he’d been shot through the skull with a silver bullet. Yes, he remembered that. He lay back down in the water, and watched the colours.

  A whirlwind of smoke rushed around him, and he stood before a creature with cracked black skin, clawed hands and feet, dark wings and eyes of infinite blackness, sweeping away into infinity. He knew what it was, this demon. It was his guide through Hell: Charos.

  He saw the thing in a different light now. Before, he had been shredded with pain as the thing had torn him into five versions of himself. It had turned to smoky vapour that covered him like a cloud and drifted into his lungs and heart. He was a spectator now. He felt his original charred body around him, not the weak vessel that lay in a pool of water in the monastery. This body was wracked with pain, but strong. It was also saturated with the stink of the theriope.

  Charos had eyes that looked like pits, and they smoked a little. A wind from somewhere cast the smoke to the side, where it dissipated quickly. It had no mouth, just a face like insect’s armour, smooth and reflective, but always black, and rough and split. Except for the folded wings on its back, its shape was vaguely human. Teague gestured with his hand, and, as if the thing was his puppet, it opened the huge flaps of skin, and on it were—

  A single eye on each wing. Swivelling and unblinking, they were just like the innumerable eyes fixed within the wings of Erebis. The thing with the filthy matted hair and black face, horned and fanged, had endless eyes filled with nothing but blackness and that tiny star of light in the centre, like a single snowflake in an entire ocean of darkness.

  Teague burst up once more from the water.

  ‘What are you putting me through?’ he panted. He could taste the smoke and char at the back of his throat, hot and foul.

  ‘Did you see the Guide? The Charos?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘You must follow it! Relive the eternal moment you shared with the Daemon when its eyes met yours. You once looked into those eyes, and you came back to tell us what you saw in its soul. So tell us, Brother William, what did Erebis communicate to you before you escaped its realm?’

  ‘It said nothing to me!’

  ‘Its eyes. Were they like black holes, with stars in the centre?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve seen into its black Soul, Brother William. You know everything.’

  ‘I know nothing!’ he cried, splashing the water like a child.

  ‘Go back into the water and listen to what it says,’ Michael ordered. He watched Teague lie slowly back in the pool, completely submerged once more.

  The three members of the Ministrati entered the room silently and stood by Michael. The twice-folded hems of their robes touched the tile and stone, silently absorbing moisture like a sponge. Darkness welled up the fabric as if it had a life of its own.

  ‘Has he told you anything?’ Brother Elkin asked quietly.

  ‘Has he seen into the Soul of Erebis?’ asked Brother Lius. ‘What has he learned from it?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Michael, surveying the still body of Teague, who lay with his eyes closed in the pool. He was stirring slightly, making the light dance on the surface. ‘He’s still searching for answers.’

  ‘Maybe he won’t be able to find them. Maybe he’ll refuse to recall.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Sister Latily. ‘What happens when he remembers?’

  ‘He was talking to two of the acolytes today. Sister Verlaine and Brother Paul. They told him of the journey.’

  ‘The acolytes should know better.’

  ‘He told them to call him “Brother William”. They have no doubt that he considers himself one of us, for the time being at least. He knows he has nowhere else to go, that only we can give him answers,’

  ‘Maybe he’ll stay, then ,’ said Elkin.

  ‘He should be fine,’ Michael replied. ‘And – maybe – when he sees what’s planned in Erebis’ soul, he’ll want to join us.’

  ‘Do you think that’s wise?’ asked Brother Lius.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘I think he’ll be of use. He knows the ones we are looking for.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He is the factotum’s enemy.’

  ‘Then he must be stopped!’ Sister Latily gasped. ‘He can’t be allowed to—’

  ‘Relax,’ Michael commanded. ‘And go. He’s about to awake again.’

  The three members of the Ministrati vanished through the door, soundlessly and effortlessly. It closed silently shut just as Teague shot up from the pool a third time, gasping for breath.

  ‘You’re putting me through torture! I hear nothing in its Soul!’

  ‘You will if you are fearless!’

  ‘How can I not be afraid when I look that thing in the eye?’

  Michael smiled again, this time with as much warmth as he could muster. Even in his state of unrest, Teague noticed the crow’s feet that were the evidence of a happy spirit, one that often smiled and attempted to spread his contentment whenever he could. Teague envied that talent.

  ‘Remember that it’s only a memory,’ the monk said. ‘Memories have no means of harming you. Lay back down, Brother William.’

  Teague did so and, as the cool water slowly covered his face – his cheeks first, then filling in his eye sockets, then over his nose and forehead until finally his entire head was submerged – he tried to relax and picture the Daemon.

  He found himself in the courtyard again, the garden of the damned, where evil re-blooms. He tried to propel himself onwards – he had seen all this – and the dream-vision switched to fast-forward, zipping across the ramparts of the courtyard and through the Tall Tower, then over the river Achronne where his innards had been falling out, the result of a punishment for questioning Charos; past the Round Tower and the Square Tower to the great pit, falling down that tunnel of stone he had seen in his dreams, then being trapped in the prison ball that spun and speared him … All the pain and suffering non-evident as he relived it, simply watching instead of feeling. However he couldn’t help but recall the agony.

  The heat on his back, the cold fear running through him … He knew this part. Turning, and seeing the black-faced Daemon, the Devil of Hadentes … He cried and screamed, unable to help it. The fear was too real for Teague here, but he fought against himself when he felt like he was going to sit up again.

  A minute later Brother Michael was waiting when he emerged, and he saw the all-too-apparent fear in his eyes. Water dripped from Teague’s face. The noise of it echoed around the room. The pool lit him up from below, putting snaking lines of blue and green on his suddenly pale skin.

  ‘The Ministrati are planning on travelling the Plains?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s right, along with the rest of the Sects,’ Michael nodded. ‘Why? What was it you saw?’

  Without breath, he said, ‘You should probably just pack.’

  ~

  There are plans being made without me, Johnmal thought. There are thoughts that aren’t my own.

  The walls of the booth hummed around him. This was Cleric’s first and only gift to him, a metal alcove in a wall that burned invisibly with old electronics. Panels lit up with displays he couldn’t read, digital gauges showing him colours that represented something he could never understand. That was the boss’ department.

  It was for his own good. The waves of alien molecules were rinsing his cells – deeper than that, his very genes. They excited and scrubbed the microscopic things that made him who he was. He pushed his shoulders back against the cold steel. For his own good.

  Rosanna always disappeared during his sessions in the booth. Perhaps she didn’t enjoy being in the same room as the boss’ obscure technology, although the facility was filled with it, even made from it in places. The rainfore
st would swallow them up otherwise. Invisible energy fields kept the vegetation from flooding into the complex, although it was perfect. The jungle was trapped between another field generated by the facility, the thermal barrier that had deadened a great portion of the rainforest until it had become a desert. Since only a year after the end of the Conflict, Tan Cleric had activated the engines that created both fields.

  Maybe the reason was that she couldn’t stand to watch Johnmal’s errant ability being controlled, diminished by the second. It had to be done though, he reasoned to her, and it was an important part of his life now. It prevented his errant genes from consuming him forever.

  The lessons of the boss drifted through his mind. It was always something to console him during these cold minutes in the metal niche, something to keep his mind off the not-so-surgical operation.

  Things have a place and a purpose. Sometimes things break from their given place and expand, enhanced by nature or God. They evolve and mutate. Their purpose changes.

  The cable clipped to his skin was biting. There was nothing he could do about it, now that the procedure was taking place. It was almost over however, and then he could move as far away from this cold place as possible.

  Johnmal tried to remember what he had been thinking about when he stepped into the booth a few minutes ago.

  He couldn’t recall.

  *

  Twenty-Three

  A KNIGHT IN THE MIST

  The blank-eyed seraph glared at Caeles and refused to answer. In the stillness of the Goyan church, the statue stood proudly, with its six wings and long flowing hair, and simply returned the man’s steady gaze.

  ‘You’re not going to answer,’ Caeles asked, ‘are you…?’

  The seraph gave no reply.

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Caeles said to himself. ‘I get what I have to do.’

  ‘Caeles?’

  The voice of Sarai called him back. The walls of the church vanished into mist, then the pews all around him melted to gravestones, cold and grey, and finally the statue, the perfect carving of the seraph, the warrior of Heaven, lost its wings and robe and became the Scathac ninja, dressed in black with shoulder-length hair hanging in twists over her dark face. The blank stone eyes now became green ones, glinting in the firelight.