Black Halo

Twenty

THE SOUND OF SICKNESS



Shicts were created from Riffid, the Huntress. Shicts had been birthed from Her blood, given Her voice in their ears and nothing more. Shicts were created. Shicts were born. Shicts were meant to be here on this world.

This was fact.

Naxiaw knew this.

Humans were born from no gods, despite the misguided fanaticism they tried to justify their infectious presence with. Humans, instead, began as monkeys that learned how to pick up swords. Humans adapted. Humans evolved. Humans did not belong here on this world.

This was fact.

Naxiaw was convinced of it now.

From their humble origins when the first monkey stabbed his brother and called himself human, the round-ears had shed their body hair, built houses over stone and birthed the corruptions of politics and gold and found more productive uses for their feces. They had evolved.

Logical, Naxiaw told himself. Sickness is a predator. It mutates, learns to resist medicine and bypass immunities to spread its infection. That the human disease should learn to become more efficient at killing and destroying should be no surprise.

And truthfully, he admitted, when he had been brought amongst the longfaces and witnessed their brutal devastation, their efficient destruction, their utterly gleeful murder, he had not been surprised.

Shocked, of course.

Horrified, naturally.

And, he thought as he peered through the bars of his cage, ever more curious …

From high atop the crumbling stone ruins upon the sandy ridge that overlooked the valley in which they crawled, he watched them. For the past six days, he had studied them as they crushed the earth beneath their iron-shod feet, as they blackened the sky with their forges, as they broke their scaly, green servants with whip and blade.

Horror and repulsion for the purple-skinned brutes had long ago faded. He scolded himself now for wasting time on indulgent loathing. What he was watching was no longer something disgusting, something vicious and cruel to be loathed. What he was watching was something ominous, something miraculous, something wholly terrifying.

He had thought them to be one more aberration on an already-tainted world, one more threat for the shicts to destroy, one more disease to cure. But as he continued to watch them, to study their cruelty and monitor their rapaciousness, he realised they were no new illness. They were merely one strain of the same sickness he had been attempting to purge since he could first carry his Spokesman stick.

They might have been purple instead of pink, thicker of bone and harder of flesh, long of face and white of eye, but he recognised them all too swiftly. And the more he watched them as they spread across the island, purple patches of disease contaminating a pure and pristine land, the less ridiculous it seemed.

After all, he reasoned, if humans could evolve once, they could surely do it again.

More aggressive and violent than the human strain had ever been, the longface infection continued to amaze him, even after six days of being held prisoner by them, watching them boil across the sands.

The females were the dominant infection, the true ravagers of flesh and blood. That much was obvious from watching them, tall and muscular, chewing the earth beneath their feet, staining the sand red with the blood of their slaves and themselves, filling the air with the iron challenges and grinding snarls they hurled at each other like spears.

They were the sickness that drove the green lizard-things to do what they did, the fever that boiled their minds and forced them to act in ways unwise. Under the cracks of their knotted whips and the threats from their jagged teeth, the pitiful, scaly creatures worked with broken backs and dragging feet as the females drove them forward. They hewed down the trees from the forests that flanked the beach, dragging the logs to feed the forge pits and build the great black ships that bobbed in the roiling surf.

The land was thick with iron, the sky was thick with smoke. Those females who worked the forge pits, fire-scarred and shorn-haired, relentlessly thrust and pulled glowing iron rods from the embers, tirelessly hammered them into cruel-edged wedges and vicious-tipped spikes, eagerly sharpened their edges to jagged metal teeth.

Not a grain of sand remained undisturbed amidst the activity. The disease swept across the land as the females worked tirelessly. They drilled in tight, square formations under the barking orders of their white-haired superiors. They brawled and attacked each other in impromptu displays of dominance that quickly turned fatal. They hauled the bodies of those scaled slaves too exhausted to work to a pit ringed by iron bars, tossing them in and filling the air with screaming as the denizens of the massive hole let out eerie cackles through full mouths.

And through it all, Naxiaw watched, Naxiaw studied, Naxiaw noted.

This was not the first time he had witnessed such a scene. Voracious greed, heedless industry, the smell of blood and sweat so thick the violence was a collective hunger in the belly of every female present. He had seen these sensations in the round-ears many times before, if never to such an extent.

He knew a war when he saw one.

For what, he did not know. For why, it did not matter. These things, these evolutions of disease, were preparing to spread their infection.

The sole comfort he took was in their numbers. He had counted no more than two hundred since he had first been thrown into his cage. Theirs was nothing like the teeming masses of the smaller, pinker strain.

And, he thought as he lowered his head and raised his ears, it falls to the shicts to make certain that they never will have such numbers.

He closed his eyes. His ears went rigid. Through the carnage below, he attempted to hear.

It began quickly, as it always did, with a sudden awareness of sounds without meaning: feet on sand, breeze in sky, air in lungs, snarls in throats. This awareness amplified, sought specificity in noise: trees shuddering under blunted axes, black-bellied ships bobbing in the surf, muscles stretching and contorting under purple flesh.

Close to its goal, the awareness pressed further, reduced the world to nothing but those few sounds that bore significance, the essence of life. Splinters falling in soft, pattering whispers in tiny droplets of sweat-kissed blood. Breezes colliding with clouds of smoke. A crab’s carapace scratching against grains of sand as it stirred in a hibernating dream beneath the earth.

And then, silence: the sound with the most meaning, the sensation of his own mind blooming into a vast and formless flower within his head. No more sound, no more thought. The flower stretched out silently, instinctually, reaching out, muttering wordless sounds, whispering unheard speeches. Somewhere beyond his mind, he felt something stir.

The Howling had heard him.

The Howling had found him.

Had he the consciousness to feel his heart stop, he still would not have been afraid of it. The Howling had long ago ceased to be something strange and mystical, long ago ceased to even be the instinctual knowledge that all shicts shared. He had spent many years within it, listening to it, learning it. It was a part of him, as it was a part of all shicts. As he was one with the Howling, so too was he one with all shicts.

And they would hear him as they heard their own thoughts.

Emptiness passed in an instant; then his head filled. Images of sand and blood consumed him, swirled together with sea and ships, purple faces, clenching teeth, red iron, bleeding bodies, fallen trees. War, disease, mutation, danger, anger, hatred. Through these things, coursing as blood through his thoughts, his intent boiled over.

Find.

Rescue.

Kill.

Harvest.

The intent flowed across the emptiness, dew across the petals of the flower. It would reach his people, he knew: a whisper in their ears, a sudden chill down their spines as they knew what he knew in an instant. They would hear him, they would feel him, and they would come with their blood and Spokesmen and hatred and—

Wait.

His ears went taut of their own volition, sensing something he had not the consciousness to. A sound without meaning? No, he realised, a sound craving meaning. It ranged wildly, whimpering quietly one moment, snarling angrily the next, then letting out a terrified howl and searching for an answer beyond its own echo.

Impossible to listen to. Too loud, too painful.

Impossible to ignore. Too close, too familiar.

His people? No.

No s’na shict s’ha. Then … what?

‘Oh! Look, look, look! He’s doing it again!’

Another voice. Distant, meaningless.

‘What is it that he’s doing, then?’

Words for those without minds, terrified of emptiness.

‘No idea. He always does this, though. Never says a word, just … sits.’

Words for those without thought, terrified of silence.

‘Well, it’s boring. Wake him up.’

An explosion of sound.

His eyes snapped open as the flower of emptiness wilted in his mind; he turned to see the iron blade rattled against the bars of his cage. Behind it, white hair, white eyes and jagged teeth set in a long, purple face. He recognised this one, gathered her name long ago, associated it with her ever-present, ever-unpleasant grin.

Qaine.

The longfaces behind her, the male with the wispy patch of hair beneath his lower lip, the male with the long nose and red robe, the female with the long, spiky bristles of white serving as hair, he recognised too.

Yldus, Vashnear, Dech.

Behind them, standing with arms crossed over her chest, taller and more powerful than any male or female assembled, face drawn so tight it appeared as though it would split apart and bare glistening muscle underneath at any moment … This one, he knew only by the venom with which the others spewed her name.

Xhai. Carnassial.

He repeated their names to himself whenever he felt his anger towards them slipping. He collected their names like flowers and wore them about his neck in something fragile that he would pluck, petal by bloody petal and crush under his six toes. Names for now, targets for later. Just as soon as his people heard, just as soon as they knew …

‘Must you really do that?’ the one called Yldus asked, making a look of disapproval that seemed perpetual.

‘It’s not fair,’ Qaine replied, peering into the cage. ‘I caught him, I should get to kill him.’

‘I froze him, thank you. I suppose the irony is lost on you that we are gathered here to discuss the ways in which you can kill more than just one overscum and you’re barely paying attention for want of killing this one?’

‘He killed two females! I didn’t even get a chance to fight him!’

‘Two?’ Dech asked, raising an eyebrow. ‘I didn’t think they were that hard.’

‘Did you not also say he bled all over them?’ The one called Vashnear, long of nose, red of robe, twisted his upper lip in disgust. ‘Filthy creature. Keep it in its cage.’

‘It’s obvious by now that the overscum won’t infect you with anything,’ Yldus replied, rolling his eyes.

‘You cannot know that,’ Vashnear snapped back.

‘Just a moment out of the cage,’ Qaine whispered. Her hands drifted, one toward the lock on his cage, the other toward the blade on her belt. ‘It’ll be quick. Those others were weaklings. He can’t be that strong.’

Naxiaw held his belt, already calculating how he would kill her, then leap to the spike-headed one and rip her throat out, seize her sword and move to the males. They were small, delicate – one stroke would finish them both. The big one with the taut face … he would have to flee and come back for her later. Just as well, though; shicts didn’t fight fair.

His breath came slow and steady as her fingers drifted closer to the lock. He was prepared for this. He was ready to spill their blood. He was s’na shict s’ha. He would kill them all as soon as she just drew a little closer and—

‘No.’

There wasn’t even enough air left to gasp with after the voice spoke. There was no threat in it, Naxiaw discerned; threats implied uncertainty, conditions that must be met. The voice spoke with nothing of the sort. It was a word full of certainty, a sound full of meaning.

This one sat so still at the edge of the ruined terrace, demurely seated upon a hewn brick, idly drumming his long fingertips on a crumbling trellis, staring down at the valley with what Naxiaw was sure was extreme boredom, even if he couldn’t see the male’s long face.

This one had no name as far as Naxiaw knew. His was whispered so softly, with such quiet reverence, that it escaped even the long reach of his ears. It seemed, rather, that the other longfaces took great care not to mention his name within earshot of the shict. They turned their eyes away from him, and even Naxiaw felt the urge to look away, to avoid the sight of his void-black robes and long and stiff white hair.

But he forced himself to look, to give this one a name, one more flower to the necklace. This one would bleed. This one would die. This one, Black-clad, would suffer most of all.

After a moment, the sound of fingers drumming resumed. Air returned to their lungs, meaninglessness to their voices.

‘As I was saying,’ Yldus continued, ‘the subject of the invasion is of some concern to me.’

‘As to us all,’ Vashnear replied with a sneer. ‘The fact that you were chosen to lead it is a decision of unending concern.’

‘I suppose you have a better idea?’ Qaine replied, stepping in front of Yldus, returning his sneer.

This, Naxiaw gathered, was their function – to be hounds to the males. To bare their teeth and snarl at those who looked at them without their express approval. These tall, white-haired ones, the Carnassials, were the fiercest and most protective of their charges. And Naxiaw waited with morbid anticipation for the spike-headed Dech to return Qaine’s aggression with the grim hope that one of them would die shortly after.

‘Granted, given the company,’ Yldus said before Dech could make a move, ‘I know that to request an end to your female posturing and snarling is to ask the impossible, but I was hoping we could get at least a little business done before you start tearing each other apart.’

‘The Master’s decision,’ Xhai uttered, ‘was made.’

A long silence trailed her words, suggesting that any event of tearing apart, as far as she was concerned, would end with her in possession of all her limbs and possibly one or two extra. The remaining females met her gaze briefly before snorting derisively and stepping back to their respective males.

‘If Sheraptus has anything to tell us,’ Vashnear snarled, ‘then he can speak without the use of females. Until then, nothing is decided.’ He glanced fleetingly at Black-clad. ‘I still advocate overwhelming force. The males lead, use the nethra to burn the city to cinders without having to set foot in it and risk contamination.’

‘The cost would be enormous,’ Yldus protested.

‘You act as though we do not possess the stones.’ Vashnear tapped the red sphere dangling from his neck, smiled as it glowed brightly at his touch. ‘The cost is trivial.’

‘You aren’t considering the resources spent.’

‘Oh no,’ Vashnear moaned, rolling his white eyes. ‘More dead slaves? If only we had some inexhaustible source of working flesh and …’ He blinked suddenly, holding up a finger. ‘Oh wait.’ His thin hand made a dismissive gesture. ‘Ours is the right to take. We can always get more overscum.’

‘Really?’ Yldus strode to the edge of the ridge and stared down at the valley below. ‘We’ve already rounded up every green thing on the island and killed half of them already. Attempts to collect and subjugate the painted lizards have gone …’

Naxiaw peered through his bars, following the longface’s stare to the valley. Two females below dragged an unmoving compatriot by her ankles. Naxiaw’s eyes widened as he spied the female’s head, or the red pulp that used to be the head. He had but enough time to make out a miasma of colour, red-stained grey porridge rolling around in bits of exposed, glistening bone held together by a web of tattered purple flesh.

Then the two females tossed their fellow unceremoniously into the spike-lined pit. Shadowy figures moved beneath, stirred with sudden, violent movement. Naxiaw caught flashes of red and brown fur, bright teeth against black lips. An eerie cackle rose from the pit, to be drowned out by the sound of chewing and ripping.

‘Not as well as we had planned,’ Yldus finished.

‘If the worst that comes from our attempts is that the sikkhuns eat a little better and we lose a few females, so be it.’ Vashnear spoke with a very pleased smirk he was certain to swing toward Qaine. ‘Of course, we have an entire wealth of green-things that will not fight back readily, just waiting for—’

‘Not them.’

Black-clad’s voice lingered for just a moment this time, a spear instead of a cloak that he aimed directly at Vashnear. The red-robed longface nodded briefly, his smile disappearing.

‘Of course.’ He turned his stare back toward his fellow male. ‘But it is not as though there is a shortage of overscum in this world. We will use what we have to ruin their city and eliminate the need for this useless chatter or for useless females. The three of us. Burn them out. Burn them up. The problem is solved.’

Dech snorted. ‘What would be the point in just burning them, though?’

‘That’s what I was beginning to illuminate,’ Yldus replied. ‘The specifics simply have to be—’

‘Specifics?’ Dech frowned deeply. ‘You have a city full of pinkies. Stomp their faces in, cut their heads off, and if you want to get really specific, rip their arms out of their sockets and stab them in their throats with them.’

‘Stab them,’ Yldus repeated, ‘in the throat.’

‘With their arms, yeah.’

A silence settled over the assembly. Yldus stared at the Carnassial for a very long, unblinking moment before pursing his lips together and taking a deep breath through his nose.

‘At any rate,’ he continued, clearly biting back words far more suited to his mood, ‘burning will not work. The considerable resources that such a plan would utilise aside, our goal is not actually to burn as many overscum as possible, you will recall.’

‘Right,’ Qaine chuckled blackly. ‘Just a bonus.’

‘Rather,’ Yldus continued, shooting her a scowl, ‘I am hoping to minimise the amount of casualties needed, at least as far as our forces are concerned. Every female we lose in this battle will be a female we will not have for further conflicts. Hence, I will need more to attack the city.’

‘I don’t follow,’ Dech grunted.

‘Really.’ Yldus rolled his eyes. ‘The logic is simple. The overscum has a sizable presence. Not enough to hold my current force back, of course, but enough to take a toll that would make future conflicts with the underscum more of a difficulty than they need be.’

‘You have been given three venri to use,’ Xhai growled curtly. ‘More than enough for any true warrior.’

‘Females are warriors,’ Yldus countered. ‘I am not. And if we hope to have any warriors to fight the underscum with—’

‘The underscum are yet to be a problem.’

‘Really?’ Vashnear eyed her, noting the mass of thick purple tissue near her collarbone. ‘How did you get that mark again, unscarred? Or are we still able to call you that?’

‘This was given to me,’ she snarled, thumping the scar, ‘from no black-skinned, slime-spewing piece of krazhak.’

‘From the overscum you reported, then?’ Vashnear asked, smirking. ‘Perhaps you should have kept that to yourself, no?’

‘I have plans for that,’ she uttered, rubbing the scar with an intensity that went far beyond grudge-filled memory.

‘Could we perhaps get back to my plans?’ Yldus asked. ‘You know, the important ones?’

‘Proceed.’

Yldus shuddered slightly at Black-clad’s voice, gritting his teeth before continuing.

‘We …’ He paused to inhale. ‘We are in agreement that the overscum city must be sacked, yes? The relic must be procured. Our allies demand it. However, our knowledge on the subject’s location is as delicate as our allies’ patience is. We lack the time to spend sifting through ashes. Hence, burning is not an option.’ He glanced toward Xhai. ‘Neither is failure. To that end, it would be easier to crush them in one overwhelming force, rather than bleeding them, and our forces, over a longer period.’

‘And what are you asking for, exactly?’ Xhai asked. ‘How many more venri?’

‘One.’

‘One?’

‘The First.’

At this, a collective inhale of breath, a collective call to objection and insult, coursed through the longfaces. Naxiaw saw that even Black-clad’s head tilted slightly at the mention.

‘Unnecessary,’ Qaine growled. ‘I’m going with the invasion. One Carnassial is more than enough to kill a bunch of pinkies.’

‘Stupid,’ Dech snarled. ‘Those stupid high-fingers get all the fighting already. Why give them more?’

‘Weak,’ Vashnear scoffed. ‘The First are there to break backs and crush heads only when the backs are too stiff and the heads too high. And you think you need them to take a single … whatever it is you are seeking?’

‘No,’ Xhai uttered. ‘The First cannot be commanded by you. They answer only to the Master, only to—’

‘Yes.’

Of all the eyes that swept toward Black-clad, Xhai’s were the widest, lingered the longest, boiled with the most anger. Though she doubtlessly desired to erupt in a violent torrent of her grating, snarling language, she kept her voice low, language clear and neck so rigid it appeared as though her spine had turned to iron.

‘He doesn’t have the authority to command the First,’ she whispered harshly. ‘It undercuts you, makes you look …’ She clenched her teeth together. ‘I already told him—’

‘Leave.’

She recoiled, to Naxiaw’s surprise, with a look of shock. He hadn’t thought any of the longfaces capable of any expression beyond varying degrees of anger. Thus, it was with particular interest that he watched her face melt slightly, whatever force holding her visage so taut snapping and sloughing off to reveal a look of parted lips, quivering eyes.

He certainly hadn’t thought that any longface could look so hurt, least of all this one.

‘As you wish,’ Yldus replied. ‘We will depart swiftly and return all the more quickly for it.’

Slowly, one by one, they began to dissipate from the ridge. Yldus strode as tall as he could beside Qaine. Vashnear skulked with Dech following reluctantly. Xhai was the last to leave and took the longest, stopping to turn and look behind with each step.

But she, too, left, as did they all, without so much as looking at Naxiaw, leaving the shict and the black-draped longface alone.

And no sooner did they than Naxiaw made ready to leave, as well. He lowered his head and closed his eyes, prepared to withdraw into his mind, to touch the Howling and send out his panicked warnings, his fevered shouts to his kin.

Longfaces coming, his thoughts ran like terrified deer. Poison soon. Let them all die together, purple and pink alike. Kill the human evolution before it begins again. Cleanse all diseases.

A good list, he thought, one he would eagerly relay once he vanished into sounds without meaning, once he reached his people, once they heard—

‘Not answering, are they?’

He felt cold, the words echoing through his ribs to clench at his heart. Black-clad’s face had not turned, yet there was no doubt who he spoke to.

‘You’re shocked,’ the longface said, chuckling softly. ‘Your kind typically is. Overscum, that is. I like that about you, though.’ He made a long gesture over the valley. ‘Everything with netherlings is always a foregone conclusion. When they’re born, they know what they’re going to do. Males use nethra to lead the females, who use iron to kill each other. Low-fingers use bows, high-fingers use swords, bridge-fingers become Carnassials. Those with black hair die; those with white hair kill. It’s so …’

His sigh drained the air from the sky, left Naxiaw breathless, helpless, staring in astonished silence.

‘And what’s more,’ Black-clad continued. ‘They don’t just know what it is they do, they love doing it. Males love leading, females love killing, none of them knowing they could do something different. But these … humans, if you’ll pardon the mention of their race, these are fascinating creatures. They never know what’s going to happen, the females, especially. And when they find out …’

Naxiaw felt the longface’s smile, even without seeing it. He could feel the stretch of lips, the baring of teeth, the long, slow drag of a long pink tongue across them.

‘Really, I’m surprised you don’t think more of the females. You seem to be of similar mindsets: both always thinking about killing, both always thinking about death. Though you don’t think of it as death. You think yourself to have medicine, to cure.’ His fingers drummed. ‘Lying … we’ve never had reason to, what with everyone knowing everything about themselves and each other. What a fascinating creation.’

Naxiaw opened his mouth, urged his voice into his throat even as it fought to stay down, stay hidden from this creature, to avoid matching itself against his sounds full of meaning. Before the shict could even squeak, though, Black-clad continued.

‘No, I can’t read your thoughts. Not the ones you keep to yourself, anyway. But whenever you bow your head and start thinking … well, it’s so loud, I can hardly hear anything else. Even then, I can’t garner much besides some general information, bits and pieces, mostly. I know you hate us, but that’s hardly surprising, what with you being our prisoner and all. I know you’re looking to kill … apologies, “cure” the humans, but who isn’t? And I know you can understand me, even if you never speak.’

Naxiaw felt his eyelids begging him to blink, his breath begging him to suck in more, but he had the wits to do neither.

‘No, I don’t particularly care, really. You want to kill them, kill Yldus and Vashnear, kill Xhai … kill me, even. I could put an end to that right now, you know. But then, that would be just one more foregone conclusion, wouldn’t it? I rather like the idea of something new and interesting happening if I let you live. If you kill a few females, that’s fine. I have more than enough to spare. Will you kill me, though?’

He chuckled again.

‘I’d really like to see if you could come close, actually. Everything I learn about you … you people and your bright red sun fascinate me. Your lying, your railing against truth, fighting against what you know. I must know more … Perhaps you’ll tell me eventually?’

Naxiaw had not the voice to reply.

‘Eventually, of course. For the moment, I’m not interested in much else … except that voice. You heard it, too, didn’t you? Whining, whimpering, and then … screaming. What was that, anyway? One of your people? But not one you were trying to reach … I can sense that much. But it was trying to reach you, even if it didn’t know it. How curious it was, though. So lost, so alone, so blind. I can’t know if you can tell or not, but I, for my opinion, think it sounded strange, unique … female.’

The words rolled off his tongue like a dagger, hanging in the air, its echo the smooth and relentless edge that pierced Naxiaw’s heart. Was the voice, that lost and whimpering voice, a female? He could not know. But it was a shict, this was fact, and it was a shict he must warn. But how? If he could not use the Howling without this longface knowing, what would he do?

‘It is a confusing dilemma, isn’t it?’ Black-clad asked. Slowly, he turned to face the shict, his grin broad and white. ‘I might have an answer, though. This thing you use, your loud thoughts. It can’t be too hard for me to figure out. Why don’t you just relax …’

Naxiaw swallowed hard as he met the longface’s eyes, bright crimson and burning like pyres.

‘And let me have a look inside?’

Something reached out, slid past Naxiaw’s brow and into his brain. He threw his head back, pricked his ears up. In a word without sound, a noise without speech, he let out a long, meaningless scream.