Black Halo

‘Stop,’ Mesri commanded. ‘I know now why you haven’t thrown it in.’ His stare went past the Mouth’s hairless flesh, plumbing something darker, deeper. It seized something inside him that was supposed to have been starved to death, banished into gloom. It seized that thing within him and drew it out. ‘We both know.’

The Mouth cringed, turning away from the man’s gaze.

‘What I want to know is why,’ Mesri said. ‘Why you turned to the Kraken Queen and her empty promises.’

‘Mother Deep’s promises are not empty,’ the Mouth hissed back. ‘She demands servitude. She demands penance. Only then are the faithful rewarded.’

‘With?’

‘Absolution,’ the Mouth said, a long smile tugging at the corners of his lips. ‘Freedom from the sin of memory, oblivion from the torments of the past, salvation from the torture inflicted upon us by the Gods.’

‘The benevolent matron does not demand,’ Mesri retorted. ‘The benevolent matron does not reward you by stealing what makes you human.’

‘I am not human,’ the Mouth snarled, holding up his webbed fingers. ‘Not anymore. I am something greater. Something advanced enough to see the hypocrisy within you.’ He narrowed his eyes to thin slits. ‘You speak of benevolence, of rewards. What has your goddess brought you?’

The Mouth gestured wildly to the statue of Zamanthras, her smug stone visage and self-satisfied stone smile.

‘Your city is in decay! Your people lie ill and dying! The seas themselves have abandoned you!’

‘Because of your matron,’ Mesri snapped back. ‘The fish flee because they sense her stirring. Your presence here confirms that.’

‘We won’t need fish,’ the Mouth snarled. ‘We won’t need bread, we won’t need healers and we won’t need gods. Mother Deep will provide for us, absolve us all so that we need never suffer again. We’ll live in a world where someone hears our prayers and guides us! We’ll live in a world where we can talk to our gods and know they love us! We’ll live in a world without doubt, where no one has to spew empty words at empty symbols while his child dies in her bed!’

The Mouth liked to think himself as in control of his emotions, his memories. Perhaps he wasn’t. Perhaps they had been building up all this time, behind a dam of hymns and rehearsed proclamations, waiting for the tiniest breach to come flooding out. Perhaps Mesri’s stare went deeper than he thought, pulled things up that even the Mouth didn’t know he had inside of his skin. None of that mattered; the Mouth had said what he said.

Only now, when tears formed in his eyes, did he realise what it was he had just spoken.

‘How long ago?’ Mesri asked.

‘She would have been sixteen now,’ the Mouth said, aware of how choked his voice sounded. ‘Plague got her. No healer could help. She would be too old for stories now. Too old for gods. They’re one and the same: lies we tell each other to convince ourselves that our fates are beyond our own control.’

‘That was roughly the time I gained these robes,’ Mesri sighed, rubbing at his temples. ‘I believed, at the time, it was a blessing. Port Yonder thrived and I thought it was the will of the Gods.’

‘The Gods have no will beyond the desire to be worshiped and do nothing in return,’ the Mouth spat. ‘They don’t hear us. They don’t do anything except fail us, and we keep coming back to them, scrounging at their feet!’

‘I believed,’ Mesri whispered, ‘that we need simply continue to pray, to receive the blessing. I was wrong.’

‘Then you see? This is the only way …’ The Mouth looked to the vial. ‘The Father must—’

‘I was wrong in thinking that the Gods would treat us like sheep.’ Mesri seized his attention with a sudden chest-borne bellow. ‘I was wrong to think that we need simply to graze upon the blessings they gave us. The Gods gave us wealth and we squandered it. The Gods gave us prosperity and we wasted it. This temple could have been tremendous, like the church-hospitals of the Talanites. We could have helped so many people …’

‘But the wealth vanished. The ill and hungry are everywhere. The Gods failed us.’

‘The wealth is gone and the ill and hungry are as they are because of what we did. The Gods did not fail you.’ Mesri closed his eyes, sighed softly. ‘I did.’

The Mouth was at once insulted and astonished, unable to find words to express it.

‘I could have helped your child. I could have saved her.’ He tugged at his garments. ‘These robes commanded respect. I could have brought the finest healers.’

‘You wouldn’t have.’

‘I wouldn’t have, no,’ Mesri said, shaking his head. ‘I would have languished in my gold and my silks and thought that the Gods would have solved it. But that is not their fault. It is mine for believing that it would happen. If I had knowledge, if I had opportunity … we wouldn’t be in this situation.’

‘But we are,’ the Mouth snarled. ‘And we are left with no recourse but the inevitable.’

‘Inevitability does not exist,’ the priest spat back. ‘There is only mankind and his will to do what’s right. What we have here is knowledge. What we have here is opportunity.’ He held out his hand. ‘Give me the vial.’

There were a thousand replies the Mouth had been conditioned to offer such a demand, most of them involving some form of stabbing, all of them involving a total denial. What he did, what he hadn’t expected to do, was to stare dumbly down at the vial, the key to change, the key to freedom.

To absolution.

‘What will they say when you free Daga-Mer?’ Mesri asked. ‘What will they do when he destroys their lives, their homes, their families? They will do as you did: plunge themselves into a darkness deeper than sin. They will suffer as you have. They will try to convince themselves that they need no memory, that they need none of that torment.

‘What we cannot count on is that they will be in a position to do as you have,’ Mesri said softly. ‘We cannot count on them to realise the value of memory, the treasure that is the image of their daughter’s face.’ He stared intently at the Mouth. ‘You can hurl it into the pool. You can hurl her face, her life, with it.

‘Or you can give it to me. And we can spare a thousand people what you’re feeling right now.’

The Mouth had no desire to inflict what he currently felt on another. The Mouth wasn’t even certain what it was that he was feeling. Despair, of course, blended with anger and frustration and compulsion, but they churned inside him, whirling about so that he received only glimpses of them. And at each glimpse, a memory: his daughter’s laughter, his daughter’s first skinned knee, his daughter’s first toy, his daughter’s death …

And he wanted them to be gone forever.

And he wanted to cling to them always.

And he wanted the world to see how false the Gods were.

And he wanted no one to go into the dark places he had gone to.

‘I don’t know your name,’ Mesri said. ‘I don’t know your daughter’s name. But I know the names of every person in this city. I will tell you all of them so that you know whose lives you hold in your hand.’

‘Do you know Kasla?’ he asked.

‘Her parents are dead. She refuses to come to me for help. She is proud.’

‘My daughter was proud.’

He looked up. He saw Mesri smile at him.

‘Then I think you’ve made your decision.’ He took a step closer. The Mouth did not retreat. He raised his hand. The Mouth raised the vial. ‘It is a wise one, my fr—’

‘QAI ZHOTH!’

The howl rang out over the city sky: an iron voice carving through the air, cleaving through a chorus of screams that reverberated off every wall.

‘WE’RE UNDER ATTACK! RUN! RUN!’

‘ZAMANATHRAS, WHAT ARE THEY?’

‘MESRI! WHERE’S MESRI?’

And for every scream, a war cry answered.

‘AKH ZEKH LAKH!’

‘EVISCERATE! DECAPITATE! ANNIHILATE!’

‘WHERE IS IT? WHERE IS THE RELIC, SCUM?’

Mesri did not have to ask what was happening. The sounds of fire, of pain, of death filled his ears. He did not have to ask who was invading. He did not care. And he did not have time to.

He turned. The Mouth had vanished, fled into some dark recess of the temple and of his own thoughts. He cursed, sparing only a moment to look at the pool. It was still there. Still untainted. Still holding its prisoner.

A muttered prayer was all he could spare for the Mouth as he turned and rushed into the city.

In the temple behind, fate lay in the hands of a troubled servant of demons.

In the city ahead, fate lay in the reek of smoke and the screams of the dying.

Thirty-Six

A SETTLING OF DEBTS

Dreadaeleon had begun to consider the theories behind the purifying quality of fire lately.

Of course, he didn’t believe any of the nonsense of fire burning away sins. Rather, he suspected the appeal was something far more practical in nature. Theoretically, any problem could be solved by fire. If two friends fought over, say, a piece of property, setting it on fire would immediately diminish its desirability. If they still fought afterwards, setting each other on fire would quickly take their minds off of their dispute.

People are only upset, he mused, until they can burn something. Then everything’s fine.

A shaky theory, he recognised, but if the sight of Togu’s hut licking a smoke-stained sky with orange tongues was any indication, his companions would serve as excellent evidence.

‘Explain to me the reasoning behind this again,’ Bralston said, watching the burning hut with intent.

‘It’s typically referred to as “Gevrauch’s Debt”,’ Dreadaeleon replied.

‘Named for the theoretical divine entity that governs the dead.’

‘Exactly. As you can probably deduce, it’s never anything pleasant. Adventurers typically use it as a means of drawing payment from employers who cannot or will not pay them for their services. Looting is frequently involved.’

‘And if the employer does not have anything of value?’

‘Burning.’

There was a loud cracking sound as the hut’s roof collapsed, sending embers flying into the air. Bralston sniffed, the faintest sign of a disapproving sneer on his face.

‘Barbaric.’

‘He deserves worse.’

Asper’s voice was barely audible over the crackling fire. She did not look at the two wizards, her expression blank as she stared into the flames.

‘He betrayed us,’ she said softly. ‘He should be in that hut.’

Perhaps you should ask her, he thought to himself. She hasn’t said anything about what happened, true, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she won’t. Is she simply waiting for someone to do so? Maybe that’s why she’s so moody and dark since she got back. No, wait, maybe you shouldn’t ask. Maybe she needs something more physical. Put your arm around her. Or kiss her? Probably not in front of the Librarian … then again, he might take one look at that and—

‘I’ve seen what the longface is capable of,’ Bralston said to her. ‘I’ve seen what he does.’

‘I don’t care what he does to your laws or your magic,’ she replied without looking at him.

‘The Venarium is concerned with the Laws only as they affect people. The longface was a deviant in more ways than one. His death was warranted.’

‘You said he might not be dead, though,’ Dreadaeleon put in.

Bralston whirled a glare upon him. The boy returned a baffled shrug.

‘Well, I mean, you did.’

‘Do you think he’s dead, Librarian?’ Asper asked.

‘Certainty with any kind of magic is difficult,’ he replied. ‘With renegade magic, especially.’

‘Well,’ Dreadaeleon interjected. ‘We brought down the ship. We sent it to the bottom with all his warriors. There’s at least a strong chance that he’s—’

‘It wouldn’t surprise me if he wasn’t,’ she interrupted.

‘Well … I mean, he was quite powerful,’ Dreadaeleon replied, ‘and he cheated! He didn’t obey the—’

‘Nothing ever works out as it should, does it, Dread?’ she asked, her tone cold. ‘If gods can fail, so can everyone else.’

‘Well, yeah,’ Dreadaeleon said, ‘because they don’t exist.’

He had said such before to her. He anticipated righteous indignation, possibly a stern backhand, as he had received before. He hadn’t expected her to remain silent, merely staring into the fire without so much as blinking.

Huh, he thought, fighting back a grin. Got off easy there. Nice work, old man.

The smile became decidedly easier to beat down once Bralston shot him a sidelong glare. The Librarian said nothing more, though, his attention suddenly turning back to the fire with a rapt interest that hadn’t been present in his stare before. Asper’s gaze, too, became a little more intent at the tall figure emerging from behind the burning building.

He wasn’t quite sure what about Denaos either of them found so fascinating, but Dreadaeleon instantly decided he was against whatever it was.

The tall man paused, tilting the remnants of a bottle of whisky, pilfered from the hut, into his mouth and then tossing the liquor-stained vessel over his shoulder, ignoring the ensuing sputter of flame. His smile was long and liquid as he approached them, smacking his lips.

‘And with that,’ he said, ‘his debt is paid in full.’

‘He betrayed us,’ Dreadaeleon replied. ‘Violated our trust. There is no price to be put on that.’

Denaos shot the pyre an appraising glance. ‘I took a quick estimate when we went rifling through his stuff. I think trust is worth about a hundred and twelve gold coins. Maybe eighty-two in eastern nations.’