Black Halo

by Sykes, Sam

  ‘Would that be me or the roach she shoved up your nose?’ The grandfather chuckled. ‘If it means there’s one less dead body on this island, I won’t object to it.’

  ‘You were the one to tell me she was going to kill Lenk!’ Gariath snarled in response. ‘If she hasn’t already, she’s still planning to.’

  ‘And if she has? Then what?’

  ‘You’re the elder. You’re supposed to know!’

  ‘My point remains,’ the grandfather said. ‘What do you suppose happens when you find the humans again? Given it any thought?’

  ‘By following him this far, I’ve found Grahta and I’ve found you. That’s a start.’

  ‘But where is the end? Will you just go chasing ghosts your whole life, Wisest?’

  He glanced up, regarding the elder with hard eyes. ‘What are you trying to tell me, Grandfather?’

  He blinked and the elder was gone. He turned about and saw him perched on the lip of the ravine, staring down the river.

  ‘I want you to know, Wisest,’ he whispered, ‘that what you find may not be what you’re looking for.’

  Gariath raised an eye ridge as the elder’s figure quivered slightly. The sunlight seemed to shine through his body a little more clearly, as though golden teeth seeped into his spectral flesh and devoured his substance, bit by bit.

  ‘So much was lost here, Wisest. Sometimes I wonder if anything can really be found. But the scent, since you mentioned it …’

  There was reluctance in Gariath’s step as he walked toward the elder. ‘Grandfather?’

  ‘This place was not dug,’ he said. ‘Not by natural hands, anyway.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Suffering was more plentiful back then,’ the grandfather replied, his voice whispery as his body faded briefly and reappeared in the river. ‘Swift death was the sole mercy, and a rare one, at that. Many more died in agony … many more.’

  ‘Back when?’

  ‘We didn’t want any part of it,’ the grandfather continued, heedless of his company, ‘but maybe that’s just how the Rhega are destined to die … not by our own hands, our own fights. What is it we were even fighting for? I can’t remember …’

  Gariath stopped and watched as the elder trudged farther down the river, growing hazier with each step. Every twitch of the dragonman’s eyelid saw the grandfather fading more and more, leaving a bit of himself in each ray of sunlight he stepped into and out of.

  Gariath was tempted to let him go, to keep walking that way until there was nothing left of him, nothing heavy enough that he would have to drop, nothing substantial enough about him that could ache.

  He watched the grandfather go, watched him disappear, leaving him in the riverbed …

  Alone again.

  ‘Grandfather!’ he suddenly cried out.

  The outline stopped at the edge of a sunbeam, all that remained of him being the single black eye he turned upon Gariath. The younger dragonman approached him warily, head low, scrutinising, ear frills out, wary.

  ‘Grandfather,’ Gariath asked, barely louder than a whisper, ‘how long have you been awake?’

  ‘For … quite some … no! No! You won’t send me away like that!’

  This time, when Gariath noticed the elder beside him again, he was defined, flesh full and red, eyes hard and black. The elder gestured farther down the river with his chin.

  ‘Up ahead.’

  ‘What?’

  Gariath glanced up, saw nothing through the beams of light. When he looked back to his side, the water stirred with a ripple and nothing more. The grandfather was up ahead, trudging through the river, vanishing behind each beam of light.

  ‘What’s ahead?’

  ‘A reason, Wisest, if you would follow … and see.’

  Gariath followed, without particularly knowing why, save for the urge to keep the elder in sight, to keep him from fading behind the walls of sun. With each step he took, his nostrils filled with strange scents, not unfamiliar to him. The chalky odour of bone was prevalent, though that didn’t tell Gariath much; he doubted that he could go anywhere on the island without that particular stink.

  Thus, he was not particularly surprised when he spied the skeleton, its great white foot looming out of sunlight. It was titanic, the river humbly winding its way beneath the dead creature, flowing with such a soft trickle to suggest it was afraid the bleached behemoth might stir and rise at any moment.

  Gariath found that not particularly hard to believe as he stalked alongside it, ducking beneath its massive splayed leg, winding between its shattered ribs, approaching the great, fishlike skull.

  His eyes were immediately drawn to the massive hole punched through its head, a jagged rent far wider than the smooth round sockets that had been the creature’s eyes. Its bones bore similar injuries: cracks in the ribs, gashes in the femur, the left forearm bent backward behind a spine that crested to challenge the height of the ravine as the right one reached forward.

  Towards what, though?

  The great dead thing, when it had been slightly greater and not so dead, had stopped with its arm extended, skeletal fingers withered in such a way to suggest that it had reached for something and failed to seize it.

  He stared back down the ravine, noting the cut of the rock: too rough to be wrought by careful tools and delicate chiselling, too smooth to have been made by any natural spirit. Rather, it was haphazardly hewn, as if by accident, as though some great thing had fallen …

  And was dragged, he thought, looking back to the cracked skull, or dragged itself through until …

  ‘This land is not our land. Not anymore.’

  Gariath looked up and saw the elder crouched upon the fishlike skull, staring at the rent in the bone intently.

  ‘This island is a cairn.’

  ‘Those dark stains upon the rock,’ Gariath said. ‘They are—’

  ‘Blood,’ the elder answered. ‘Flesh, spilling out, sloughing off, tainting the earth as this thing’s screams tainted the air when it dragged itself away from the weapons that had shattered its legs and broken its back.’

  Gariath looked to the gaping jaws, the rows upon rows of serrated teeth, the shadows cast in the expanse of its fleshless maw.

  ‘What did it scream?’

  ‘Same thing all children scream for … its mother and father.’

  He did not ask if they had come to save their titanic offspring, did not even want to think what kind of creatures could have sired something akin to this tremendous demon. He knew he should have looked away, then, away from the mouth that was suddenly so pitiably silent, away from the eyes that he could see vast, empty and straining to find the liquid to brim with tears. He tried to look away, forced his stare to the earth.

  But it was impossible. Impossible not to hear the cries of two voices moaning for their mother. Impossible not to wonder if they had died screaming for their father. Impossible not to see their eyes, so wide, so vacant, their breath vanished in the rain. Impossible not to—

  ‘No.’

  His fist followed his snarl, striking against the skull and finding an unyielding, merciful pain that ripped through his mind, bathing vision and voice in endless ringing red.

  ‘Why this, Grandfather?’ he asked. ‘Why show me?’

  ‘I have heard it said,’ the elder replied coldly, ‘that all life is connected.’ His laugh was short, unpleasant. ‘Stupidity. From mouths that repeated it over and over so that no one may speak long enough to point out their stupidity.’ He crawled across the skull, staring down into the skull. ‘It’s deaths that are connected, Wisest. Never forget that. One life taken is another one fading, one life gone and another one vanishes because of its absence. Each one more horrible, more senseless than the last.’

  ‘I don’t understand, Grandfather.’

  ‘You do, you’re just too stupid to realise it, too scared to remember it.’ He stared down at the dragonman, eyes hard, voice harder. ‘Your sons, Wisest.’

  Gariath’s
eyes went wide, his hands clenched into fists.

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘They died, horribly.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Senselessly.’

  ‘Grandfather …’

  ‘And you would so willingly follow them. A senseless, pointless, worthless death.’

  No reply came this time but a roar incomprehensible of everything but the anger and pain melded together behind it. Gariath flung himself at the skeleton, scaling up the ribs, pulling himself onto the spine and leaping, vertebra over giant vertebra, toward the skull.

  The grandfather regarded him quietly before he tilted just slightly to his left and collapsed into the rent, disappearing into shadow.

  ‘You brought me here to mock me? Them?’ Gariath roared, approaching the cavernous hole. ‘To show me this monument of death?’

  ‘A monument, yes,’ the grandfather’s voice echoed from inside, ‘of death, yes … but whose, Wisest?’

  ‘Yours …’ Gariath snarled, leaning over and into the hole. ‘AGAIN!’

  The elder gave no reply and Gariath did not demand one, did not have the sense to as he was struck suddenly, by the faintest, lingering memory of a scent, but recoiled as though struck by a fist. He reeled back, blinking wildly, before thrusting his face back down below and inhaling deeply, choking back the foul staleness within to filter and find that scent, that odiferous candle that refused to extinguish itself in the dark.

  ‘Rivers …’ he whispered.

  ‘Rocks …’ the elder replied.

  ‘A Rhega died here,’ he gasped.

  He felt the rent beneath his grip, felt the roughness of it. This was no clean blow, no gentle tap that had caved in the beast’s skull. The gash was brutal, messy, cracked unevenly and laden with jagged ridges and deep, furrowed marks.

  Claw marks, he recognised. Bite marks.

  ‘A Rhega fought here.’ He stared into the blackness. ‘Who, Grandfather? Who was it?’

  ‘Connected,’ the elder murmured back, ‘all connected.’

  ‘Grandfather, tell me!’

  ‘You will know, Wisest … I tried so hard that you wouldn’t, but … you will …’

  A sigh rose up from the darkness, the elder’s voice growing softer upon it.

  ‘And the answer won’t make you happy …’

  ‘Grandfather.’

  ‘Because at the end of a Rhega’s life … there is nothing.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘All you are missing, Wisest … is darkness and quiet.’

  ‘Grandfather.’

  Silence.

  ‘GRANDFATHER!’

  Darkness.

  His own echo returned to him, ringing out through the skull and reverberating into the forest. It seemed to take the scent with it, the smell dissipating in his nostrils as the sound faded, dying with every whispered repetition as it slipped into trees that had suddenly gone quiet, leaving him alone.

  Again.

  That thought became an echo of its own, spiralling inward and growing heavier on his heart with every repetition.

  Alone. Again, again, again.

  No matter how many spirits he found, how many rocks he stomped, how many soft pink things he surrounded himself with. They would leave him, all of them, leaving him with nothing, nothing of weight, nothing of meaning.

  Except that word.

  ‘Again, again,’ he whispered, smashing his fist against the bone impotently with each repetition. ‘Alone again and always … always and again …’

  ‘Again …’

  It was not him who spoke this time, nor was it the grandfather’s voice. It certainly was not the scent of either of them that filled his nostrils and drew his head up. His lip quivered at the odour: pungent, iron, sweaty, familiar.

  Longface.

  The creature appeared farther down the ravine, black against the assault of sunlight, but unmistakable. Its frame was thick, tall, laden with the contours of overdeveloped muscle and the jagged ridges of iron armour. A thick wedge of sharpened metal was slung over its shoulder as a long-jawed face scanned the rocks. He recognised the sight immediately, his eyes narrowing, lip curling up in a quiet snarl.

  Female.

  ‘And again and again and again,’ she snarled, her voice grating. ‘Until you tell me what I want to know, you green filth.’

  ‘Shi-neh-ah! Shi-neh!’ the creature at her blood-covered feet spoke a language he did not understand. ‘Maw-wah!’

  At a glimpse, it resembled something akin to a bipedal lizard … or it had been bipedal before both its legs had been crushed. It now strained to crawl away on long, lanky arms, leaving the sands of the cliff they stood upon stained red. Over the corpses of other creatures, identical to it but for their severed limbs, split chests and lifeless eyes, it crawled towards Gariath.

  It caught sight of him, looked up. Its yellow eyes were wide, full of fear, full of pain, trembling with a life that flickered like a candle before a breeze. It reached out a hand to him, opened its mouth to speak. He stared back, anticipating its words to the point of agony.

  They never came.

  ‘I don’t have time to learn how to speak your language.’ The longface seized the creature’s long tail, hauled it up with one hand. ‘You have exactly two breaths to learn how to speak overscum!’

  ‘MAW-WAH! MAW-WAH!’

  The sounds of its shrieking mingled with the sound of claws raking against the sand stained with its own life, straining to find some handhold as it was hoisted up by its tail. Gariath saw its eyes wide as it looked to him, saw the pleading in its eyes, the familiar fear and pain that he had seen in so many eyes before.

  ‘RHE—’

  One breath.

  Her thick blade burst out the creature’s belly, thick ribbons of glistening meat pouring out. She paused, twisted it once, and dropped the creature. The blade laughed a thick, grisly cackle as it slowly slid from the creature’s flesh.

  Gariath continued to stare at the creature’s eyes, at its mouth. He saw only darkness. Heard only silence.

  ‘Hey.’

  It was the sheer casualness with which she spoke that made him look up to the longface. Her expression was blank, unamused and only barely interested in him. She slammed the blade down, embedding it in the sand as she dusted blood-flecked hands together.

  ‘They come in red?’ she asked. Narrowing white eyes at him, she snorted. ‘No. You aren’t one of them, are you?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘That’s fine,’ she said. ‘You want to fight, yeah?’

  He wasn’t sure why he nodded.

  ‘That’s fine,’ she said again as she sat upon a rock with a grunt. ‘Just give me a moment.’

  He wasn’t sure why he waited.

  ‘What are they?’ he asked, at last.

  ‘Those Green Things?’ she replied with a shrug. ‘They don’t have names, as far as I know. They don’t need names.’

  ‘Everything has a name.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Wise—’ He paused, grunting. ‘Gariath.’

  ‘Dech,’ she said, slapping her shoulder. ‘Carnassial of Arkklan Kaharn, chief among my people, the netherlings and—’

  ‘I know what you are,’ he replied. ‘I’ve killed a lot of you.’

  ‘No fooling?’ She grinned at him. ‘Yeah, I’ve heard of you. The Ugly Red One, they called you. You cut open a lot of warriors, you know. I knew a few of them.’ Her lips curled back, the grin evolving from unpleasant to horrific. ‘You’re good at what you do.’

  ‘You’re calm about that.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ she asked. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to kill you, but it’s not going to be personal or anything. It’s just what I do. It’s what you do. Just like dying was just what those warriors did.’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘Yeah, I don’t blame you. A lot of overscum have trouble understanding it, which is why they’re always rushing around. They don’
t know what they’re supposed to do.’ She gestured to the eviscerated lizard-creatures. ‘Take These Green Things. We got plenty of them back at our base. Slaves. Some of them try to fight against us, some of them pray to some kind of sky-thing, some of them beg for mercy, some of them try to run, some of them talk about how things were …’ She looked up at him. ‘And some of them cry. Big, slimy tears come pouring down their faces when we kill one of them. That’s what baffles me.’

  ‘They mourn.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To honour their dead.’

  ‘The dead don’t care.’

  ‘They do.’

  ‘You talk to them?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ he replied.

  ‘Huh … well, they shouldn’t. What do they got to ask for once they’re dead?’

  ‘Honour. Respect.’

  ‘You and I both know that’s … what’s the word? Shnitz?’ She shrugged. ‘If you believed that, you wouldn’t have watched this ugly thing’ – she kicked the eviscerated corpse – ‘do what he did.’

  ‘He didn’t do anything. You killed him.’

  ‘Ah, see, this is where the overscum stop learning,’ she said, smirking. ‘You all talk about death like it’s a sole decision. It takes two to die. The person with the sword does the least amount of work.’

  He furrowed his eye ridges.

  ‘See,’ she elaborated, ‘these dumb things are quick. I only caught them because there was no other place to run.’ She gestured to the river rushing beneath the cliff. ‘Now, when I grabbed one, the others could have run away. They all stood and fought, though. They made the decision to die.’

  She looked up at him disdainfully. ‘You could run now, too. I’ve killed plenty today. I can kill you later, if you want.’

  ‘You could run, too,’ he replied.

  ‘No, I couldn’t. There’s nothing for a female but death. I kill or I die.’ She spat on the ground. ‘You?’

  He stared at her, unblinking. He closed his eyes. Darkness. He inhaled sharply. Quiet.

  ‘Nothing,’ he replied.

  ‘Didn’t think so,’ she said. She rose from the rock, pulled her blade from the sand and slung it over her shoulder. ‘You ready, then?’

  He nodded. She furrowed her brow at him.

  ‘No weapon?’