Black Halo

The stone … he had to retrieve it.

A violation of Laws, perhaps, but there was no other option. It was the stone of the longfaces – that chipped, red sphere – that had kept his body in check, that had kept it from being overwhelmed. He had to retrieve it; he had to return to the sea, search the wreckage, find the damn thing and return to normal.

But how? More scrying would mean more magic. More magic would kill him sooner than later, it was becoming clear.

Voices burbled out of the hut.

Togu.

Of course, he thought as he staggered toward the door. He would beseech the king, convince his companions to delay the voyage. He needed the stone; they didn’t need to know why beyond the fact that it gave him the power to move their ship. The lizardmen had trawled the sea for their belongings and found nothing, Togu had said, but that simply meant they weren’t looking hard enough. He could convince them. He could force them.

He would have believed it, too, if he hadn’t paused outside the king’s door to retch again.

‘What was that?’

He pulled himself up from his spewing, holding his nausea-soaked breath at the sound of voices burbling out of the king’s hut.

‘There is someone out there,’ Togu’s deep voice spoke.

‘Soon to be many more,’ another voice replied, a lilting, lyrical phrase that flooded into Dreadaeleon’s ears on a song that would be soothing if the recognition didn’t shock him into wide-eyed silence.

Greenhair, he thought. The siren … here?

‘The longfaces have just arrived, Togu,’ she continued from within the hut, ‘ahead of their master. He will arrive shortly and he will expect you to be there to greet him with the human offering.’

‘They haven’t arrived yet, Togu,’ another voice, this one gruff and hissing, spoke. ‘There is still time to avert this. The forests are dense and the longfaces are not given to caution. You can flee.’

‘And they will burn the forests down,’ Greenhair replied sharply. ‘They will find you, Togu, one way or another. Embracing this way means that your people live. Hongwe should understand this better than even I.’

‘I do understand this,’ the speaker identified as Hongwe snarled, ‘and that is why I know what it is you’re sending the humans to. I saw it happen on Komga, to my people. I will not watch you do this to others.’

‘You intend to stop this?’ Greenhair’s voice contained an edge of harmonious threat.

Hongwe muttered in return. ‘They are your people, Togu. I can only ask that you see the stupid villainy in this plan.’

Dreadaeleon, heedless of the vomit hissing on the sand or the lancing pain in his stomach, held his breath, listening intently to the long silence that followed. In the valley below, the sound of drums were dimming, the noises of jubilation quieting. In the quiescence, Dreadaeleon could hear the king’s body rise and fall with the force of his sigh.

‘I do what is best for my people. Do as you must to make the humans ready to give to the longfaces.’

Dreadaeleon turned, bit back a shriek as he stepped in the pile of his sizzling bile, dragged his foot on the earth as he made to run down as fast as his cramping body would allow him. The pain shot through him in great spikes that he forced himself to ignore. He had to get below, to warn his companions, or at least one of them.

He collided suddenly with a bare chest and looked up, frowning. This wasn’t the one he had hoped for, but still …

‘Denaos,’ he gasped, ‘we have to get below. Togu, he’s—’

‘Who cares?’ the rogue asked, on a reeking chuckle that sent him swaying. ‘Who gives a flying turd what’s going to happen anymore?’

He wasn’t sure how much the tall man had actually drunk to push him over the edge and he hardly cared. The man’s only purpose now was to perhaps stall Togu and his conspirators when they emerged. Thus, Dreadaeleon wasted no more words and tried to push his way past, only to find a long arm in his path.

‘You don’t see what’s going to happen, do you?’ Denaos said, laughing. ‘Not as smart as you thought you were, huh? Can’t see we’re all damned without Asper following us, without the Gods on our side.’

‘No one’s following anyone if you don’t get out of the way,’ Dreadaeleon growled. ‘The longfaces are—’

‘I said who cares?’ Denaos emphasised the question with a hook that sent the boy sprawling to the earth. ‘Don’t feel bad, Dread. I’ll be punished for that. For a hell of a lot more.’ He held a hand to his temple, pointing to eyes that had gone from sunken to two fevered, black-lined pits. ‘I can’t … I can’t stop seeing her. The whispering just doesn’t stop. I thought it was the demon, but … but it’s something inside me. Something I did, can’t you see?’

‘I can’t, and I don’t care,’ Dreadaeleon’s words were laced with wincing whines as he struggled to regain his feet. ‘I … I’m having a hard time moving. Denaos. You have to get down there and warn the others that—’

‘Not important,’ Denaos replied. ‘Asper’s leaving. She was going to hear my sins, tell me it was fine, but not yet, not now. She’d never forgive me now. Neither would They.’ He pointed to the sky. ‘Whatever happens now is just … just …’

As his voice crumbled on his tongue, the music sliding through them could be heard. He recognised the siren’s song in the same instant that Denaos did not. One clapped his hands over his ears; the other collapsed to the earth. Dreadaeleon spared a glance for his fallen companion before looking up as he felt a presence beside him.

Greenhair’s alien expression was indifference laid thick to try to choke the pity in her eyes, to no avail. Dreadaeleon shot back a scowl intent on conveying all the curses and venom his mouth could not produce. The siren said something he dared not hear; an apology, perhaps, or a brief explanation, or an insult.

Though whatever she said could have only been half as insulting as the fact that she turned from him as she might a gnat and strode away, towards the mouth of the valley.

He snarled, reached out a hand to wrap about her pale ankle and pull her back, only to find the reason for her disregard. No sooner had his fingers stretched out than they were forced to clench. The pain that ripped through him was extraordinary, bludgeoning breath from his lungs, tearing vigour from his body, sending blood from his head as though it were split open. He collapsed into a quivering, curled position on the ground, unable to form even a sentence through the agony.

Through eyes vanishing into darkness, he stared at Greenhair as she walked down the valley, toward his companions, leaving him coiled in a pile of his own uselessness.

Drums dying with leathery gasps. Unseen liquor vapours wafting out on snores. Gohmns chittering to each other in the night.

‘So loud,’ she whispered, clawing at her ears.

Futility. Trees groaning, shedding leaves. Rivers muttering curses to those who defecated in them. Gonwa jaws clenching together in ire.

‘Shut up,’ she fervently whimpered, ‘shut up, shut up, shut up.’

The sounds were impossible to tune out, impossible to ignore. Every last one rang angrily in her ears, the soft ones intolerably loud, the moderate ones deafening. She couldn’t hear her thoughts, couldn’t hear her tell herself to breathe, couldn’t hear herself chant over and over.

‘It’ll pass,’ she was barely aware of telling herself, ‘it’ll pass, it’ll pass. It’s just a symptom, just a symptom, just a symptom.’

It was a symptom, she confirmed to herself, a symptom of the round-eared disease. It had to be, she reassured herself, because it had come from him.

She cursed him, spewed a torrent of verbal venom into the sand as she trudged across it. She didn’t hear her own curses. She hoped they were good ones.

It had been brewing all afternoon in her head, coming in flashes of clarity: a mutter of resentment from the bottom of the valley, a wistful sigh on the breeze, feet dragging heavily on sand exactly four-hundred and twenty-six paces away from her. The sounds, sounds usually too insignificant to be worth hearing, had reached her ears with crystalline clarity.

She hadn’t worried when she had sat beside Asper, heard the twitches in the priestess’ back and felt the blood flowing with ire, with fear, through her body. That was good. Humans were supposed to feel fear around shicts. Shicts were supposed to hear.

But then, Asper had taken her hand. Kataria had heard the muscles in her body relax, had felt the fear turn to concern, the ire turn to some maladjusted form of affection. That was not good. Humans were not supposed to feel that. Shicts were not supposed to hear that. She was a shict. She had heard that.

And that was cause for worry, for violence. She hadn’t regretted what she had done to the priestess. It was a natural response. It was treating a symptom before it became an infection. It was a cure.

The noises hadn’t stopped, though. She had tried to dull them with liquor, tried to ignore them with chatter. That might have worked, she reasoned, if not for him.

He had ruined everything by making it all quiet.

Standing beside him, the sounds slowly went soft, became mute. Staring into his eyes, her ears stopped throbbing. Breathing in his liquor-stained breath, smelling the stink of his sweat-laden flesh, watching him smile with crooked sheepishness, she had just begun to stop hearing altogether.

That was not good. She knew it as much then as she did now, but it was difficult to recall why she had not worried at that moment. The noise was so inoffensive, suddenly; the world’s noises ceased to press upon her in intangible walls of racket. No more worries, no more weight, just lightness, just her, and …

And then he had done what he had.

And she had heard him.

She had heard things in him that humans were not supposed to feel, that shicts were not supposed to hear. And she had felt …

Well, there was really no other way she could feel.

The howl was what had coursed through her, a sourceless noise that did not obey the laws of noise, starting in her brain, clawing its way out and tearing through her ears. It lasted for but a moment, all the time it took her body to realise what she had pressed her lips against, but it hadn’t needed more. It had ripped its way free, rang in her skull.

She had heard him. She had heard the Howling.

And then, she heard everything.

Instinct had told her to run, and she did, fleeing far into the forest, into the night. It was the right thing to do, she knew, because it was the voice of her body. What had happened before, what had made her quiver when he snaked his arm about her middle and press her body against his, what had made her slide her own arms around him and draw him tighter, what had made her think she enjoyed it …

No, not her body’s voice. Something from somewhere else inside her. Not her body.

Her body had told her to run; her body had howled at her. It was a natural defence, a rejection of the disease, of the infection that had plagued her and made her do those things. The noise – the unbearably, agonisingly loud noise – was just a side effect, the lingering symptoms of which were the last go.

That made sense, she told herself as she trudged to the nearby brook. It was a symptom; it just needed to be cured. She splashed the water gently over her face, ears ringing with the ensuing splash. That would pass, she told herself; it would all pass. She had been tested, passed, survived the disease, for that’s what he was.

‘He’s a disease,’ she tried to hear herself say, ‘he’s a disease, he’s a disease …’

The water settled. She stared down at her reflection. The face staring back at her didn’t look convinced.

A realisation dawned on her just as the entire island conspired against her, the forest and creatures all falling silent so that she might voice it and hear it ring through her ears and heart with one painful echo.

‘He didn’t come after me.’

She found herself surprised that the face in the water frowned back at her at that. She found herself surprised that she didn’t bother to lie to herself and say it was because she missed the silence. But found herself surprised it hurt.

What, then, she asked herself as the noises began again, is left? You can’t do this, she silently told the reflection. You’ve tried – I know you’ve tried – but you just can’t do what you need to do, what shicts do. If you could, you would have killed him when you first saw him, when you knew you had to, when you were given no choice. But you didn’t, so what else is left? She leaned forward. No, the water’s too shallow to drown yourself. Once more, what else is left?

But to live with the disease?

Footfalls crunching on sand. Soles sinking with shoulders heavy with dried blood. Breath short and irritated, gasped out.

Him.

She sat up on her knees, pulling her spine erect, staring into the water, saw herself biting her lower lip and forced herself to stop. Dignity, she reminded herself; she could afford a little of that when she said what she knew she had to, what a shict never would. The world fell silent again as the footfalls came upon her; she would hear every word she said. One more cruel joke she resolved to be defiant in the face of.

She closed her eyes, whispered as softly as she could.

‘You came after me, Lenk.’

‘What’s a “Lenk”?’

Iron on iron.

Her eyes snapped open, spied a leering face in the water: long, hard, purple. She whirled about just in time to see the boot’s toe coming up to kiss her jaw.

Twenty-Eight

BESIDES THE OBVIOUS

INTERNAL BLEEDING

It was cold enough to freeze his lungs, dark enough to weigh his eyelids shut with gloom. Lenk thought he was drawing in deep, steady breaths, but found the air thick and oppressive enough that he couldn’t be sure.

Dead?

In the gloom, a voice on a warm and fevered wind whispered. That wasn’t right, Lenk thought; the sensation here should be cold, not hot.