Black Halo

For now, she told herself, you should be dead. It should have been me to kill you. For now, I’m sitting here feeling like a helpless idiot because I’m the one turning away from your stare. For now, I let you … touch me like that. My father thinks a human touch can infect a shict, and you touched me that way. You touched my ears! For now, I should kill you, I should run, I should kill myself so I don’t have to think about you and your horrible diseased race and your round ears.

As the thoughts ran through her head, only two words made it to her lips.

‘For now?’ she asked.

‘For now,’ he said, smiling. ‘We’re alive.’

‘Yeah,’ she sighed, returning her smile. ‘All of us.’

He blinked, his face screwing up in confusion.

‘Did you say all of us?’

‘She did,’ came a familiar voice from the leather flap.

A smile crossed both their faces at the sight of a head full of thick brown locks over a hazel stare peering through the doorframe. The smile beneath it was slight, but warm, genuine and comfortably familiar.

‘All of us,’ Kataria repeated, gesturing to the door. ‘Including ah-he man-eh-wa here.’

‘I see,’ Lenk said, smiling.

‘You can still call me Asper,’ the priestess replied. ‘The Owauku are fond of long names, apparently.’

‘I noticed.’ A long moment of silence passed awkwardly before Lenk finally coughed. ‘So, uh, are you going to come in?’

‘Yeah … sure, just …’ The priestess fidgeted behind the door. ‘Just don’t rush me.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Kataria said, smirking. ‘Ah-he man-eh-wa apparently means “shy when near-nude.”’

‘You’re near-nude, too,’ Asper spat through the door and tilted up her nose. ‘And those of us without the physique of an adolescent boy have something to be considered worth concealing.’

‘Is that right?’ Kataria snarled. ‘Maybe you can pray some clothes up, then? Like you prayed us to have a safe journey?’

‘Physique and wits to match,’ Asper growled at her. ‘It’s those prayers, and the faith that accompanies them, that are keeping me from bashing you in the head.’

‘With what? Those colossal haunches of yours?’ Kataria bared her canines at the priestess. ‘I’d like to see you try.’

‘So …’ Lenk shifted his stare between the two of them. ‘Did I miss something really fun, then?’

‘It’s nothing.’ Asper’s bashfulness apparently disappeared as she stormed into the hut, a bulging waterskin pressed against her torso. She thrust it into Lenk’s hands as she knelt beside him. ‘I need to check your injury. Drink.’

He did so, greedily, as Asper ran practised hands over his bandaged thigh, applying pressure to certain locations.

‘You tore your stitches open when the Akaneeds attacked,’ she said, not looking up. ‘It wasn’t easy to close you up again. Not to mention clear out the infected skin and salve and stitch up the arrow wound you so charitably left me to work with.’

‘I suppose I should be grateful you didn’t just put me out of my misery, then,’ he replied between gulps.

She hesitated suddenly, spine stiffening. Absently, she rubbed an itch on her arm and returned to work.

‘Yeah,’ she muttered, ‘I guess so.’ She pressed on part of his leg. ‘Did you feel that?’

‘A little,’ he replied, ‘but it didn’t hurt.’

‘Good, good,’ she said, nodding. ‘It wasn’t too bad an infection, thankfully. The Owauku had the medicine and the Gonwa knew how to use it.’

‘Gonwa?’ Lenk arched a brow.

‘The other lizards here,’ Kataria replied. ‘Taller, skinnier … and apparently good with medicine.’

‘Not that their help was all that necessary,’ Asper interjected. ‘Most of the work I did on your wound before held over, so you shouldn’t have been in too much pain.’

At that, Lenk sputtered on his water.

‘Wait, what?’ he asked, gasping for breath. ‘It hurt like hell.’

‘Well, yeah, but not too much, right? You could still walk. Your fever was only mild.’

‘Mild? It felt like my brains were boiling! I was hallucinating! I saw …’

Kataria’s own eyes widened as he turned a cringing, moon-eyed stare at her. She met his gaze for a moment, the sudden quiver in his eyes allowing her to scrutinise him carefully. He turned away.

‘I saw things,’ he muttered.

‘With this infection? I doubt it,’ Asper replied. ‘It was probably just exhaustion.’

‘But I—’

‘You didn’t,’ she said, curtly.

‘He says he did,’ Kataria interjected.

‘Well,’ Asper said, turning a heated glare upon the shict, ‘how nice of you to be concerned for a lowly human.’

At that, Kataria felt her anger quelled only by the shame that blossomed within her like an agonising rose. She’s right, she told herself. I shouldn’t be concerned. She rode that thought to the sandy earth, turning her gaze away.

‘Just eat something,’ Asper said, rising up. ‘You’ll be fine. I’ll check on you later.’ She stalked to the door, heedless of Lenk’s befuddlement of Kataria’s scowl. And yet, she hesitated at the frame, standing in the door flap. ‘Lenk … you know I wouldn’t ever put you out of your misery, right?’

‘Sure, I know.’

‘Good,’ she said. She cast a smile over her shoulder, small and timid. ‘I’m glad you’re all right.’

And then, she swept out of the hut, leaving Lenk blinking and Kataria flattened-eared and hissing at the space left behind.

‘So,’ he said, ‘what was that?’

‘She’s been agitated ever since she started working on you,’ the shict replied, never taking her glower off the door. ‘She started screaming one night, telling everyone to get out … went mad for a while, I don’t know. Denaos certainly hasn’t been a help in calming her down.’

‘Denaos? He’s alive?’

‘And here, as well as Dreadaeleon.’

‘And Gariath?’

She blinked, opened her mouth to reply, then shook her head.

‘Not yet,’ she muttered before quickly adding, ‘if at all.’

‘If at all,’ he echoed, and the weight seemed to return to him.

‘Don’t think about it,’ she said, smiling and placing a hand on his shoulder. ‘It’d be rather anticlimactic if you worried yourself back into a coma. What say we find you something to eat?’

‘That’d be nice,’ he said, rubbing his belly. ‘I haven’t had anything but tubers and roots.’

‘Ha!’ She clapped her hands. ‘You remembered how to forage just like I taught you! And they said humans couldn’t be trained!’ Laughing, she rose up from the sandy floor. ‘I’ll go hunt something down for you.’

‘I appreciate it,’ he replied.

‘You won’t once you find out what they eat out here.’

She walked to the door, feeling no eyes upon her back and taking great relief in that. She could hear his breath coming in short, steady bursts. His heartbeat no longer plagued her ears. She smiled as she pulled back the leather flap.

Just a passing fascination, she told herself. He was just thrilled to be alive and awake. All his attentions were focused on you because you happened to be there … watching over him. No! She had to resist thumping her temple. No, no. Don’t start. He was … was just like a pup. Yeah. He’s momentarily happy. Once he gets some food, he’ll forget about everything else, about how you were there … about how he touched your ears …

She reached up and tugged on her earlobe. The sensation of his finger, the scent of his sweat mingling with hers, still lingered.

He’ll forget all about it, she told herself, and then so can you.

‘Kat?’

Don’t turn around. Don’t look. Don’t even acknowledge him.

‘Yeah?’ she asked.

‘I’m happy you’re alive.’

‘Yeah,’ she said.

She emerged into the daylight, waited for the leather flap to fall so that she could no longer hear him breathing. Then, she let her heavy chin fall to her chest and let her breath escape in a long, tired sigh.

‘Damn,’ she whispered, stalking off across the sands, ‘damn, damn, damn …’

Sixteen

THE SIN OF MEMORY

He found he could not remember his name.

Other memories returned to him, vivid as the city that loomed in the distance.

Port Yonder. He remembered its name, at least.

He had lived there once. He’d had a house on the land, back when dry earth did not burn his feet. It had been made of stone that had seemed strong at the time and bore the weight of a family once. He had known the witless, bovine satisfaction of staring up at a temple and praying to a goddess that priests said would protect him. He recalled living through each night, when such knowledge was all he needed.

He had known what it meant to be human once.

But that was long ago. That was a time before he knew the weight of humanity could not be set on flimsy, shifting land. That was a time before he knew that stone, trees and air all gave way before relentless tides. That was a time before his goddess had found his devotion and offerings not enough and had spitefully taken his family to compensate. His name, too, was from that time.

Before he had become the Mouth of Ulbecetonth.

‘Do you desire to know your name, then?’

The Prophet’s twin voices lilted up from the deep. He looked over the edge of the tiny rock he squatted upon, saw the black shadow of a tremendous fish circling his outcropping. He remembered when he had first seen that shadow and the golden eyes that had peered up at him. There had been six of them, then; now there were only four, two of them put out forever by heretical steel.

‘I desire nothing,’ he answered the water, ‘save that the Mother is liberated.’

The real Mother, he reminded himself, not the Sea Mother.

The Sea Mother was a benevolent and kindly concept, one that took pity upon the land-bound folk and blessed them with the bounty of the deep. The Sea Mother was a concept that rewarded thoughtless prayer, asked for nothing more than humble sacrifice and protected families in return.

The Sea Mother was a lie.

Mother Deep was mercy.

‘Liberation is a just cause, indeed,’ the Prophet replied. ‘And it is because of that cause that we ask you to return to the prison of earth and wind once more. The Father must be freed for the Mother to rise.’

He found a slight smirk creeping upon his face at the naming of the city a prison. Truly, that was what it was, he knew – nothing more than thick walls constructed by fear, doors made of ignorance and the key thrown away by unquestioning faith.

That smile soured the instant he remembered that they were sending him back there, to feel cruel stone beneath his unwebbed feet and languish in the embrace of air. His brow furrowed and he could feel the hairs growing back even as he did, tiny black reminders that the Prophet commanded and the Mouth sacrificed.

And for what?

As if summoned by his thoughts, he heard the sound of flapping wings. He looked up and saw the Heralds descending from the unworthy sky, their pure white feathers stretched out as they glided to the reefs jutting from the surface. Upon talons that had once been meagre webs, clutching with hands that had once been pitiful gull wings, the creatures landed silently upon the risen coral.

He remembered what they had been before: squat little creatures, wide-eyed crone heads upon gull bodies, incapable of even the slightest independent thought. The faces that stared at him now, still withered, were set upside down upon their crane-like necks above sagging, vein-mapped teats. Their bulging blue eyes now regarded him with a keen intellect that had not been present before. The teeth set in mouths that should have been their foreheads were long yellow spikes that clicked as they chattered relentlessly.

He had once looked upon them as evidence of Mother Deep’s power, the ability to effect change where other gods were deaf and powerless. Now, he saw them only as items of envy, proof that even the least of Her congregation evolved where he stood, painfully and profoundly human.

‘Do we sense uncertainty in you?’ the Prophet asked, stacking accusation upon scorn.

‘Uncertainty?’ the Heralds echoed in crude mimic of the Prophet. ‘Doubt? Inability? Weakness?’ They leaned their upside-down heads thoughtfully closer. ‘Faithlessness?’

‘My protests are unworthy,’ the Mouth replied. ‘All that matters is that the Father is freed. I have no other desire.’

‘Lies,’ the Heralds retorted with decisiveness.

‘Irrelevant,’ the Mouth replied. ‘Service is all that is required. Motive is unimportant.’

‘Ignorance,’ they crowed in shrill chorus.

‘What great sin is desire, then? What is the weight that is levied upon my shoulders for my want of vengeance? Mother Deep’s enemies are my enemies. Her purpose is my purpose.’

‘Blasphemy,’ the voices hissed from below.

The Prophet’s twin tones contained a wailing keen, the subtlest discordant harmony that shook his body painfully and caused him to wince. How he longed to abandon his ears with what remained of his memories. How he longed to embrace the Prophet’s shrieking sermon with the same lustful joy as the others.

Mother Deep demanded sacrifice, too, however.

‘You suffer doubts, then,’ the Prophet murmured, four golden eyes regarding him curiously.

‘Intolerable,’ the Heralds muttered. ‘Inexcusable. Unthinkable.’

‘I had not expected to be asked to return here,’ he replied, staring out over the walls. ‘I left this place, and all its callous hatreds, on land where it belonged.’ He hugged his legs to his chest. ‘I found reprieve in the Deep.’