Black Halo

by Sykes, Sam

  ‘Stupid,’ Dech snarled. ‘Those stupid high-fingers get all the fighting already. Why give them more?’

  ‘Weak,’ Vashnear scoffed. ‘The First are there to break backs and crush heads only when the backs are too stiff and the heads too high. And you think you need them to take a single … whatever it is you are seeking?’

  ‘No,’ Xhai uttered. ‘The First cannot be commanded by you. They answer only to the Master, only to—’

  ‘Yes.’

  Of all the eyes that swept toward Black-clad, Xhai’s were the widest, lingered the longest, boiled with the most anger. Though she doubtlessly desired to erupt in a violent torrent of her grating, snarling language, she kept her voice low, language clear and neck so rigid it appeared as though her spine had turned to iron.

  ‘He doesn’t have the authority to command the First,’ she whispered harshly. ‘It undercuts you, makes you look …’ She clenched her teeth together. ‘I already told him—’

  ‘Leave.’

  She recoiled, to Naxiaw’s surprise, with a look of shock. He hadn’t thought any of the longfaces capable of any expression beyond varying degrees of anger. Thus, it was with particular interest that he watched her face melt slightly, whatever force holding her visage so taut snapping and sloughing off to reveal a look of parted lips, quivering eyes.

  He certainly hadn’t thought that any longface could look so hurt, least of all this one.

  ‘As you wish,’ Yldus replied. ‘We will depart swiftly and return all the more quickly for it.’

  Slowly, one by one, they began to dissipate from the ridge. Yldus strode as tall as he could beside Qaine. Vashnear skulked with Dech following reluctantly. Xhai was the last to leave and took the longest, stopping to turn and look behind with each step.

  But she, too, left, as did they all, without so much as looking at Naxiaw, leaving the shict and the black-draped longface alone.

  And no sooner did they than Naxiaw made ready to leave, as well. He lowered his head and closed his eyes, prepared to withdraw into his mind, to touch the Howling and send out his panicked warnings, his fevered shouts to his kin.

  Longfaces coming, his thoughts ran like terrified deer. Poison soon. Let them all die together, purple and pink alike. Kill the human evolution before it begins again. Cleanse all diseases.

  A good list, he thought, one he would eagerly relay once he vanished into sounds without meaning, once he reached his people, once they heard—

  ‘Not answering, are they?’

  He felt cold, the words echoing through his ribs to clench at his heart. Black-clad’s face had not turned, yet there was no doubt who he spoke to.

  ‘You’re shocked,’ the longface said, chuckling softly. ‘Your kind typically is. Overscum, that is. I like that about you, though.’ He made a long gesture over the valley. ‘Everything with netherlings is always a foregone conclusion. When they’re born, they know what they’re going to do. Males use nethra to lead the females, who use iron to kill each other. Low-fingers use bows, high-fingers use swords, bridge-fingers become Carnassials. Those with black hair die; those with white hair kill. It’s so …’

  His sigh drained the air from the sky, left Naxiaw breathless, helpless, staring in astonished silence.

  ‘And what’s more,’ Black-clad continued. ‘They don’t just know what it is they do, they love doing it. Males love leading, females love killing, none of them knowing they could do something different. But these … humans, if you’ll pardon the mention of their race, these are fascinating creatures. They never know what’s going to happen, the females, especially. And when they find out …’

  Naxiaw felt the longface’s smile, even without seeing it. He could feel the stretch of lips, the baring of teeth, the long, slow drag of a long pink tongue across them.

  ‘Really, I’m surprised you don’t think more of the females. You seem to be of similar mindsets: both always thinking about killing, both always thinking about death. Though you don’t think of it as death. You think yourself to have medicine, to cure.’ His fingers drummed. ‘Lying … we’ve never had reason to, what with everyone knowing everything about themselves and each other. What a fascinating creation.’

  Naxiaw opened his mouth, urged his voice into his throat even as it fought to stay down, stay hidden from this creature, to avoid matching itself against his sounds full of meaning. Before the shict could even squeak, though, Black-clad continued.

  ‘No, I can’t read your thoughts. Not the ones you keep to yourself, anyway. But whenever you bow your head and start thinking … well, it’s so loud, I can hardly hear anything else. Even then, I can’t garner much besides some general information, bits and pieces, mostly. I know you hate us, but that’s hardly surprising, what with you being our prisoner and all. I know you’re looking to kill … apologies, “cure” the humans, but who isn’t? And I know you can understand me, even if you never speak.’

  Naxiaw felt his eyelids begging him to blink, his breath begging him to suck in more, but he had the wits to do neither.

  ‘No, I don’t particularly care, really. You want to kill them, kill Yldus and Vashnear, kill Xhai … kill me, even. I could put an end to that right now, you know. But then, that would be just one more foregone conclusion, wouldn’t it? I rather like the idea of something new and interesting happening if I let you live. If you kill a few females, that’s fine. I have more than enough to spare. Will you kill me, though?’

  He chuckled again.

  ‘I’d really like to see if you could come close, actually. Everything I learn about you … you people and your bright red sun fascinate me. Your lying, your railing against truth, fighting against what you know. I must know more … Perhaps you’ll tell me eventually?’

  Naxiaw had not the voice to reply.

  ‘Eventually, of course. For the moment, I’m not interested in much else … except that voice. You heard it, too, didn’t you? Whining, whimpering, and then … screaming. What was that, anyway? One of your people? But not one you were trying to reach … I can sense that much. But it was trying to reach you, even if it didn’t know it. How curious it was, though. So lost, so alone, so blind. I can’t know if you can tell or not, but I, for my opinion, think it sounded strange, unique … female.’

  The words rolled off his tongue like a dagger, hanging in the air, its echo the smooth and relentless edge that pierced Naxiaw’s heart. Was the voice, that lost and whimpering voice, a female? He could not know. But it was a shict, this was fact, and it was a shict he must warn. But how? If he could not use the Howling without this longface knowing, what would he do?

  ‘It is a confusing dilemma, isn’t it?’ Black-clad asked. Slowly, he turned to face the shict, his grin broad and white. ‘I might have an answer, though. This thing you use, your loud thoughts. It can’t be too hard for me to figure out. Why don’t you just relax …’

  Naxiaw swallowed hard as he met the longface’s eyes, bright crimson and burning like pyres.

  ‘And let me have a look inside?’

  Something reached out, slid past Naxiaw’s brow and into his brain. He threw his head back, pricked his ears up. In a word without sound, a noise without speech, he let out a long, meaningless scream.

  Twenty-One

  THE KING OF TEJI

  ‘She did it again.’

  The voice came subtly this time, without cold fingers of rime. It came this time as soft as snow falling on his brow, accumulating and growing heavier.

  ‘She thinks you don’t see her.’

  Growing impossible to ignore.

  ‘Thinks we don’t see her.’

  Still, Lenk tried.

  He focused on other distractions in the hut: the oppressive moisture of sweat sliding down his body, the stale breath of the still and humid air filtered through the roof of dried reeds, the sounds of buzzings, chirpings, the rustling of leaves.

  And her.

  He could feel her, too, just as easily as the sweat. He could feel her body trembling
with each shallow breath, feel her eyes occasionally glancing to him, hear her voice bristling behind her teeth, ready to say something. He could feel the brief space of earth between them. When her hand twitched, he felt the dirt shift beneath his palm. When his fingers drummed, he knew she could feel the resonance in hers.

  He felt her as he sat, felt her smile as easily as he felt his own creeping across his face.

  ‘She isn’t smiling.’

  He furrowed his brow suddenly, resisting the urge to speak to the voice, to even acknowledge it. Try as he did, though, he couldn’t stop the thought from boiling up in his head.

  She isn’t?

  ‘Look.’

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her for the first time since they had entered the hut. She was not smiling, not even looking at him. Her stare was tilted up to the roof, along with her ears, rigid and twitching with the same delicate, wary searching that he had seen before, once.

  But she had been looking at him, then.

  ‘She listens.’

  That makes sense. He was distantly aware of a voice in the room. Someone else is talking.

  ‘Not to them.’

  Why wouldn’t she be listening to them?

  ‘You aren’t.’

  Point.

  ‘Watch carefully. She searches for something that you can’t hear.’

  But you can …

  ‘Only fragments of … wait, she is going to hear it again.’

  As if she had heard the voice herself, she suddenly stiffened, her chin jerking. Her neck twisted, face looking out somewhere, through the stone walls and beneath the soil. He followed her stare, but whatever it was that she saw, he obviously could not.

  ‘She does not see it, either. She hears. It is loud.’

  And at that cue, her ears trembled with a sudden violent tremor that coursed down her neck and into her shoulders. He saw her lips peel back in a teeth-clenching wince, as though she sought to hold on with her jaws to whatever it was she had found with her ears. He felt her shudder, through the soil, as she clung to it.

  And he saw her release it, head bowing, ears drooping and folding over themselves, seeking to drive it away with as much intensity as she sought to hold on to it.

  He listened intently and heard nothing but the frigid voice.

  ‘Didn’t like the noise. Pity.’

  You … did you hear it?

  ‘Mmm … are we on speaking terms again?’

  Did you or did you not?

  ‘Heard, not so much. Sensed, though …’

  Sensed what?

  ‘Intent.’

  What intent?

  No reply.

  Whose intent?

  Silence.

  ‘Whose?’

  It was only after the snow had flaked away, after the numbing silence in his head passed and was replaced with the distant ambience of the village outside, that Lenk realised he had just spoken aloud.

  She turned to regard him with a start, eyes more suited to a frightened beast than a shict.

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘What?’ he repeated, blankly.

  ‘You said something?’

  ‘We didn’t.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Well, you didn’t, did you?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She shook her head a tad too vigorously to be considered not alarming.

  ‘Are you …?’ He furrowed his brow at her, frowning. ‘You looked a bit distracted just now.’

  ‘Not me, no,’ she said, her head trembling again with a tad more nervous enthusiasm. Just before it seemed as though her skull would come flying off, she stopped, her face sliding into an easy smile, eyes relaxing in their sockets. ‘What about you?’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘Are you well?’

  ‘I’m …’

  ‘Calm.’

  What?

  ‘When was the last time we felt like this? No concerns, no fears, no duties …’

  ‘You’re what?’ Kataria pressed.

  He opened his mouth to reply, but became distracted by the sudden, fierce buzzing that violated his ears. A blue blur whizzed past his head, circling twice before he could even think to swat at it. And as he felt a sapphire-coloured dragonfly the size of a hand land on his face for the twenty-fifth time, he was far too resigned to do anything about it.

  ‘I’m a tad annoyed, actually,’ he replied as the insect made itself comfortable in his hair.

  ‘You could always swat it off, you know,’ she said.

  ‘I could and then its little, biting cousins would flense me alive,’ he growled, scratching at the red dots littering his arms and chest. ‘The big ones, at least, command enough fear that the little ones will flee at the sight of them.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s for the best that we’re leaving,’ Kataria said, ‘if you’ve been around long enough to figure out insect politics.’

  ‘It’s not like I’ve got a lot else to do,’ he growled. He cast a glance over her insultingly pale flesh, unpocked by even a hint of red. ‘How is it that they’re not biting you, anyway?’

  ‘Ah.’ Grinning, she held up an arm to a stray beam of sun seeping through the roof and displayed the waxy glisten of her skin. ‘I smeared myself in gohmn fat. Bugs don’t like the taste, I found.’

  ‘Is that what that smell is?’

  ‘I’m surprised you didn’t notice earlier.’

  ‘Well, I noticed the smell, certainly, I just thought it was all the gohmns you were eating.’

  She grinned broadly. ‘Every part is used, you know.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, scratching an errant itch under his loincloth. ‘I know.’

  He could feel her laugh, seeping into his body like some particularly merry disease. And like a disease, it infected him, caused him to flash a grin of his own at her, to take in the depth of her eyes. He could scarcely remember when they had looked so bright, so clear, unsullied by scrutinising concern.

  ‘It is nice, isn’t it?’

  It is.

  ‘It could always be this way.’

  It could?

  ‘Is that not why you wish to leave?’

  It is, yes, but … well, you hardly seem the type to encourage that sort of thing. In the back of his mind, he became aware of an ache, slow and cold. In fact, you’re being awfully polite today. That’s … not normal, is it?

  It should have occurred to him, he supposed, that it would take a special kind of logic to try and ask the voice in one’s head what constitutes normalcy, but his attentions were quickly snatched away by Kataria’s sudden exasperated sigh.

  ‘How long have we been sitting here, anyway?’ she asked.

  Lenk gave his buttocks a thoughtful squeeze; there was approximately one more knuckle’s worth of soil clenched between them, as far as he could sense.

  ‘About half an hour,’ he replied. ‘You remember how we’re going to go about this?’

  ‘Not hard,’ she said. ‘Tell Togu we’re leaving, ask on the progress of our stuff, get it back, find a sea chart, ask for a boat, head to shipping lanes, quit adventuring and the possibility of dying horribly by steel in the guts and instead wait to die horribly by scurvy.’

  ‘Right, but remember, we aren’t leaving without pants.’

  ‘Are you still on about that?’ She grinned, adjusting the fur garment about her hips. ‘You don’t find the winds of Teji … invigorating?’

  ‘The winds of Teji, muggy and bug-laden as they may be, are tolerable,’ he grumbled. ‘It’s the subsequent knocking about that I can’t abide.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Yours don’t dangle. I don’t expect you to understand.’

  ‘Oh … oh!’ Her understanding dawned on her in an expression of disgust. ‘They knock?’

  ‘They knock.’

  ‘Well, then.’ She coughed, apparently looking for a change of subject in the damp soil beneath them. ‘Pants, then?’

  ‘And food.’

  ‘What about your sword?’
<
br />   Not the first time she asked, not the first time he felt the leather in his hands and the weight in his arms at the thought of it. The image of it, aged steel, nicked from where he and his grandfather had both carved their professions through anything that would net them a single coin. His sword. His profession. His legacy.

  ‘Just a weapon,’ he whispered. ‘Plenty more to be had.’

  He could feel her stare upon him, feel it become thick with studying intent for a moment before he felt it turn away, toward the opposite end of the hut. She leaned back on her palms and sighed.

  ‘Chances are it might be here,’ she said, sweeping an arm about the hut, ‘given all the other garbage he seems to collect.’

  He followed her gesture with a frown; it was a bit unfair to call the possessions crowding the hut ‘garbage’, he thought, especially considering that most of it was stuffed away in various chests and drawers. He did wonder, not for the first time, how a monarch who presided over lizards with little more to their collective names beyond dried reeds and dirty hookahs managed to assemble such an eclectic collection of antiques.

  The hut’s stone walls looked as though they might be buckling with the sheer weight of the various chests, dressers, wardrobes, braziers, model ships, crates, mannequins sporting everything from dresses to priestly robes, busts of long-dead monarchs and the occasional jar of … something.

  And over all of them grew a thick net of ivy, flowers blooming upon flowers, leaves twitching as insects crawled over them. They seemed a world away from the dead forests beyond with no life.

  ‘All that grows on Teji,’ the lizardman Bagagame had said as he escorted them in, ‘grows for Togu.’

  Of course, the reptile hadn’t bothered to say why, amongst the various pieces of furniture, there wasn’t a chair or stool to spare the honoured guests the uniquely displeasing sensation of having soil crawl up one’s rear end. Then again, he hadn’t bothered to say why the king never moved or spoke before he vanished behind the throne … and presumably stayed there.

  ‘We’ll ask him if we can sift through this’ – he paused – ‘collection.’

  ‘You were going to say “garbage”.’

  ‘You don’t know what I was going to say.’