Black Halo

But he could not dwell on that. His feet moved beneath him as the sun disappeared behind the sea, and already his nostrils were quivering, drawing in the scent of living things.

Seven

HONEST AFFLICTIONS

No matter how hard she stared, the sun refused to yield any answers to her.

It had been a long time since she had first turned her stare upward, mouth agape and eyes unblinking. If her throat was dry or if the tears had been scorched from her eyes, she didn’t care. Her breath had evaporated long ago, dissipating on the heat.

And Asper continued to stare.

The sun was supposed to reveal truth to her. This she knew. Every scripture claimed as much.

‘And when the Healer did give up His body and His skin and His blood until there was nothing left for Him to give to mankind, and only when the entirety of His being was spent for His children, then did He leave the agonies of the cruel earth and ascend to the Heavens on wings heavy with lament.

‘He left no apologies, He left no excuses and He left no promises for those He had so freely given His body. He left but this: hope. The great, golden disc that reminded His children that He had taken only His bones and breath back to the World Above, leaving His body, His skin, His blood and His great eye.’

She could recite the hymn until her lips bled and her tongue swelled up, and that used to be fine, so long as the words that were uttered were the words she had sought comfort in all her life.

Now words were not enough. And the sun refused to answer her.

Her arm burned with an intensity to rival the golden heat she raised it to. Flickering, twitching crimson light engulfed it, the bones blackened as over-forged sin beneath the red that had been her skin. Each bone of knuckle and digit stretched out, reaching ebon talons to the sun, seeking to wrest truth from it.

Her reach was too short. And lacking that, she could but ask.

‘Why?’

The sky sighed, its moan reaching into her body and racking the bones boiling black inside her.

‘I’m sorry,’ the sun answered. ‘It’s my fault.’

No room for pride in her body, no room to take pleasure or offer forgiveness. She could feel the crimson slip up over her shoulder, sliding over her throat on red fingers and crushing her breasts in blood-tinted grip. The pain shoved out all other feelings, scarring her skeleton black beneath her.

She saw the ebon joints of her knees rise up to meet her as she collapsed, pressing skeletal hands against the dirt. The sun was hot now, unbearably so. She threw back an ebon skull, cried out through a mouth that leaked red light between black teeth, pleading wordlessly for the great eye to stop.

‘I’m sorry,’ it replied. ‘I couldn’t. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’

Her screams were wasted on the pitiless sky, her pleas nothing beneath its endless, airless droning. It repeated the words, bludgeoning her to the floor and beating her into darkness.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry …’

*

Eyelids twitched in time with the breath that rained hot and stale upon her face. They ached as they cracked open, encrusted with dried tears. The light assaulted her, blinding.

She blinked a moment, dispelling the haze that clouded her to bring into view a pair of dark eyes rimmed with dark circles, staring vast and desperate holes into her skull as a smile full of long yellow teeth assaulted her widening stare. She felt leather fingers gingerly brush a lock of brown hair away from her sweat-stained brow with arachnid sensuality.

‘Good morning,’ a voice rasped.

The scream that followed was swiftly silenced.

Long-fingered hands snapped over her mouth, drowning her shriek in a tide of leathery flesh. Another hand was under the first and she felt a heavy thumb press lightly against her throat, seeking her windpipe with practised swiftness.

‘Silence is sacred,’ the voice suggested in a way that implied it was no impotent hymn.

Whatever threat not implicit in the voice was frighteningly apparent in the hands, coursing down the palm and into the fingers that slid across her throat. Her breath came in short, terrified gulps. Her heart pounded in her chest, eyes terrified to meet the dark and heavy stare that bore down on her like a bird of prey.

Breath after desperate breath passed and the light ceased to sting. As a face came to the eyes staring over her, breath came more swiftly and confidently. The smile ceased to be so menacing once she remembered well the crooked bent to it. And, at the look of recognition that crossed her face, the hands slipped off her mouth and neck.

‘Not that I’m not thrilled to hear your melodic voice,’ Denaos whispered, ‘but it does get a little tiresome after hearing it for a few days.’

‘A … few days?’ Asper felt her voice scratch raw against a throat turned to leather.

‘A few days, yes,’ Denaos replied, his nod a little disjointed. ‘You took a nasty blow to the head.’ He rubbed a tender spot against her brow, wincing in time with her. ‘Not surprising. Lots of wood flying this way and that. Hard to keep track of, no?’

‘Wood … flying …’ And wet, she remembered, falling like slow-moving hail, herself only one more fleshy stone descending in an airless blue sky. Her eyes widened with the realisation. ‘We were attacked. Sunk! But …’ She felt the sand beneath her, smelled the sea before her. ‘Where are we?’

‘Island. Archipelago, maybe?’ Denaos tapped his chin thoughtfully. ‘Peninsula, coast, beach, shore, littoral … left side of an isthmus. Not sure, lost the map.’ He stared out at the sea. ‘Lost everything.’

‘And … the others?’

‘Lost everything.’

Everything.

The word echoed inside her mind and down her body. Her heart pounded against it, feeling surprisingly light, a familiar weight removed from her chest. She glanced down and saw her robes parted, exposing a generous amount of bosom, a patch of particularly pale skin in the shape of a bird where her pendant had once hung dutifully.

She should have been more alarmed at that, she knew. The pendant had been with her since she had first been admitted to the priesthood. It had seen everything, from her initiation as a novice, to her rise to acolyte, to her full initiation.

It saw Taire, she told herself grimly. It saw the longface. It’s seen my arm. It knows. And now it’s gone.

Perhaps it wasn’t any wonder she was breathing more freely now.

‘I don’t wear my robes like this,’ she muttered. A horrific suspicion leapt from her mind to her eyes and she turned them, wide as moons, upon the tall man. ‘I was out for a few days.’

‘Three.’ He canted his head to the side, looking to some imaginary consultant. ‘Four? Six? No … three sounds right, thereabouts.’

‘You didn’t …’ She grimaced as she readjusted her garments. ‘You didn’t do anything, did you?’

‘Seems a little pointless, doesn’t it?’ He sneered at her blue garment. ‘I’ve already seen you naked.’

‘What? When?’ She put that thought from her mind, however difficult it was. ‘No, don’t tell me. Just … did you do anything?’

‘I might have. I am well versed in Sleeping Toad.’

She opened her mouth to protest further, but something in his grin caught her eye. It was not the smooth, rehearsed split of his mouth that he so often wore like a mask. It was strained at the edges, frayed, as though the porcelain of that mask had begun to crack, exposing a desperate grin and wide, shadow-rimmed eyes.

She forced her next words through a grimace. ‘You don’t look so good.’

His parched lips peeled off glistening gums like leather in the sun, seeming to suggest that he was aware of as much. His hair formed a greasy frame about his strained, stubble-caked expression.

‘Not so good at sleeping these days,’ he whispered. ‘There could be enemies anywhere.’

‘All this time?’

‘Doesn’t seem that long now,’ he replied.

She furrowed her brow; she had seen him function on three days’ insomnia without any ill effects before. That he would suddenly seem so rabid didn’t make any sense to her until he loosed a long breath, its stale air reeking with old barrels and barley.

‘You managed to save the whisky?’ she asked, crinkling her nose.

‘Wasn’t easy,’ he grunted. ‘Had to do some diving. Had the time, though. Couldn’t sleep, obvious reasons.’ He patted his breeches and smiled grimly. ‘No more knives, see? Felt naked, insecure. Whisky helped me alert stay …’ He trailed off for a moment before snapping back with a sudden twitch. ‘Stay alert.’

‘You could have slept, you know.’

‘No, I didn’t know,’ he snarled. ‘I’m not the healer here. I didn’t know if you would even wake up.’

‘So, you …’ Her eyes widened slowly this time, the realisation less horrific, but no less shocking. ‘You watched over me all this time?’

‘Not much choice,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘You were out. None of the others made it. Dread was absolutely worthless.’

‘Dreadaeleon? He’s alive?’

‘Fished both of you out. You were unconscious. He wasn’t. Had him make a raft with his ice … breath … magic-thing.’ He gestured to the beach. ‘Floated here. He stalked off to the forest shortly after, never came back out.’

She followed his finger to the dense patch of foliage over her head, saw the scrawny figure leaning against a tall tree, in such still repose as to appear dead. Perhaps he was, she thought with a twinge of panic.

‘Gods,’ she muttered. ‘What’s the matter with him?’

‘What isn’t?’

‘You didn’t check?’ She turned to him, aghast. ‘You didn’t ask?’

‘Not the healer.’ The rogue sneered. ‘I couldn’t watch over both of you, and you were the one with breasts. Process of elimination.’

‘How delightful,’ she muttered. ‘I suppose since I’m awake now …’ She made to rise, then paused as she became aware of a sudden pain in her cheek. She winced, pressing her hand to her jaw. ‘My face hurts.’

‘Yeah,’ he grunted, scratching his chin. ‘I’ve been hitting you for the past few days.’

She could but blink.

‘All right … should I ask?’

‘I’ve seen you do it before. Seemed like an easy medical process.’

‘You hit people who are in shock, idiot.’

‘I was a bit startled.’

She sighed, rubbing her eyes. When she looked up again, an unsympathetic sea met her gaze with the uninterested rumble of waves.

‘Lost everything?’ she repeated dully.

‘Does it somehow make it more believable if I say it three times?’ Denaos sighed. ‘Yes, lost everything, up to and including the derelict reptile that got us here.’

‘And Lenk, and Kataria …’ She sighed, placing her face in her hands and staring glumly out over the sea. ‘It …’ She winced, or rather, forced a wince to her face. ‘It had to happen, I suppose.’

‘It did,’ Denaos grunted, casting her a curious eye. ‘I’m shocked you’re taking it so well, though. One would expect you to be all on knees and hands, cutting your forehead for Talanas and praying for their safe return … or at least safe passage to heaven.’

She scratched the spot her pendant had hung. ‘Maybe it’s not so necessary these days.’

‘Gods are always necessary,’ he replied. ‘Especially in cases like these.’

She said nothing at that, instead letting the full weight of the words sink upon her. Lost everything … everything …

‘The tome,’ she gasped suddenly, turning to the rogue. ‘The tome! Did you at least look for it?’

‘Did,’ Denaos grunted, then gestured up the hill to Dreadaeleon. ‘Or he did, rather. Used some kind of weird bird magic that didn’t work before running off like a milksop. Useless.’

That thought plucked an uncomfortable string on her heart. She should have been more upset about the loss of her companions, she knew. But somehow, the loss of the book carried more weight. It seemed to her that the loss of the tome, merely the topmost piece in a growing pile of disappointments, was just a spiteful afterthought to drive home the pointlessness of it all.

It was for nothing. It was futile.

Those thoughts were becoming easier to endure with their frequency.

She looked up at a hand placed on her shoulder, doing her best not to cringe at his unpleasant smile.

‘Losing faith?’ he asked.

‘I didn’t know faith concerned you.’

‘Washed up on an island. No food, little water, friends dead and book lost.’ He shrugged. ‘Not much left but faith.’

She frowned; faith used to be all she needed. Somehow, Denaos seemed to sense that thought, however. He rose up, offering her a hand and a whisper.

‘I’m sorry.’

It came back on a flood of sensation, images carried on the stink of his breath, sounds in the warmth of his grasp.

‘I’m sorry.’ It was his voice that slipped through her memory, clear and concise, stored in the fog of her mind. And he repeated it, over and over. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry … but why? Why does this always happen to me?’

Was it merely an echo? An errant thought emerging from her subconscious? She had been unconscious, she knew, sleeping. She couldn’t have heard him. But, then, why did his voice continue to ring out in her mind?

‘This is the second one,’ he had said, she was certain. ‘I didn’t even do anything this time! It’s not fair! First her, then … her.’ She could remember a hand, lovingly brushing against her cheek. ‘Please, Silf, Talanas … any of you! I deserve it, I know, but she doesn’t! And she didn’t! Please. Please, I’m sorry, I’m sorry …’