Black Halo

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.

‘You’re safe … not quite dead.’

The voice should not be nearly so comforting.

‘Yet.’

There it was.

Yet?

‘We’ve got time.’

I can’t see.

‘For the better, one would think.’

I feel sand.

‘A warm and pleasant beach.’

I can’t move my hands.

‘They are bound.’

What happened?

Something without words answered.

Echoes of a panicked sorrow sounded in his mind, the question ‘why’ resounding off the walls of his head, accompanied by muttered self-deprecations and a thousand ‘should haves’. Through the thicket of noise, he could see himself: sitting, alone, the crowds of Owauku dispersed, not a slender body in sight, as he stared into a cup of mangwo blankly.

I remember that part, not the bit that ended with me here, though.

‘Wait.’

They came flooding into the valley, sweeping through the fog of his mind and into memory: purple-skinned, long-faced, iron-voiced. He saw himself look up, saw them through eyes not his own.

Another emotion: fury without echoes, a long, keening wail of rage as he launched himself at them. The first at the pack, the first that would die, recoiled, stunned at the sudden assault. She looked to her cohorts for assistance, found his hands wrapped around her throat a moment later. She did not fight back as he drove her to the ground and slammed her head against the earth, over and over; she stared at him, aghast, the breath to voice her fear not found.

‘What?’ one of them grunted. ‘Do they all do that?’

‘It’s getting back up!’ another shrieked.

He had risen, leaving the creature motionless beneath him. He lunged at another, reaching out hands. She met him with hesitant challenge, eyes wide over her shield as she raised it before her. He spoke words that were not from his tongue, reached out on hands that felt like ice wrapped in skin the colour of stone.

What happened then?

He felt cold all of a sudden; the voice shifted to something frigid and sharp.

‘This happened.’

They looked worried.

‘They were right to feel fear.’

They don’t fear anything, I’m told.

‘They fear us.’

That can’t be right. Were those my hands?

‘Hands of the willing.’

But were they mine?

‘Are yours?’

My head is hurting. It probably wouldn’t do that if I were dead.

‘Not dead.’

Are you sure?

‘This one isn’t moving,’ a voice, distant and harsh spoke. ‘Give it a kick.’

A blow erupted against his ribs. He felt a scream tear through his throat.

‘Yes.’

His eyes snapped open, blackness replaced with a blinding flash of red. His breath returned to him slowly, his sight even more so. When both finally came to him easily, his vision was a field of purple, broken only by the milky white eyes and the deep frown scarred into a long face.

‘Yeah,’ the netherling grunted, flashing a jagged sneer. ‘It’s still alive.’ She peered intently at him. ‘And it turned back to pink.’ She glanced over her shoulder. ‘You want me to kill it?’

‘It strangled a low-finger earlier,’ another voice snarled in reply. ‘Not worth killing over that, really.’ The sound of a black chuckle emerged over iron sliding from a scabbard. ‘Still …’

The sound of grating metal brought his attention to the shore. Longfaces gathered there in a knot of iron and purple muscle, some watching Lenk, some hauling a boat hewn of black wood onto the shore. One emerged from the crowd with a snarl and a sword, only to be stopped by a sudden iron gauntlet cracking against her jaw. She staggered, then stalked back into line, herded by the scowl of a larger female.

‘No one kills anyone,’ the larger female grunted, ‘until the Master says so.’

A collective sigh of disappointment swept the gathered females, including the one standing over Lenk, who quickly lost interest in him and stepped back to rejoin her companions. His attention swayed on them, his focus lost as he felt his eyes rolling in his head, desperately trying to retreat back into his skull and plunge him into a soothing dark.

He might have heeded their wishes, as his head swivelled from them on a rubbery neck to survey the beach, but shutting his eyes to the sight that greeted him quickly became impossible.

If the skeletons could still make noise, he reasoned, they would be screaming. Their mouths gaped open, bone-white jaws turned skyward, black eye sockets vast and empty. And, he further reasoned, the screams that emerged from their colossal maws would have shook the earth.

They lay on the sand in dozens, titanic hills of arching spines and reaching claws, held fast to the ground by chains that refused to release, heedless of the rust that threatened to break or the fact that their prisoners were long dead. They lay in silent agony, bound, heads stoved in, ballista missile shafts jutting from empty eye sockets and temples, screaming.

They were Abysmyths, he recognised, from their titanic fishlike skulls. They were giant Abysmyths. What could they have to scream about? What could have caused them such pain? What had pulled them to the earth?

‘Something cruel and pitiless,’ the voice uttered with a warm whisper. ‘They died screaming.’

Ah.

‘And we made them scream,’ it laughed coldly.

What? We killed them?

‘You didn’t have to.’

But …

‘We did.’

You’re not making sense.

‘More important problems.’

He blinked, suddenly aware of his hands tied behind his back, suddenly feeling the agony in his flank, suddenly hearing the sounds of very violent, very muscular women with very sharp swords. So taken by the ancient carnage on the beach was he that he almost forgot he was probably going to die.

Against that, he supposed he should consider himself lucky he noticed Dreadaeleon, similarly bound beside him, at all.

‘Awake,’ the boy noted with a characteristic lack of concern. ‘Good.’

‘What’s going on?’ Lenk asked.

‘Difficult to figure out, is it?’ Dreadaeleon’s sigh was heavy enough to bludgeon Lenk. ‘The convenience of the longfaces’ arrival following the fact that we were plied with copious amounts of unregulated alcohol? The fact that the only things tied up on this beach have pink skin instead of green?’

Even with his head swimming, it was obvious to Lenk that the unpleasant situation had done nothing to temper Dreadaeleon’s snideness, but that was all that was obvious. His thoughts were too scattered for comprehension, let alone retort. Punching, he thought, would have been suitable, if not for the obvious.

‘We were betrayed, Lenk,’ Dreadaeleon said, ‘and if you ask by whom, I swear I’m going to vomit on you.’

The temptation to ask anyway was banished as Lenk caught a shiver of movement from the corner of his eye.

At the edge of the shore, great white knucklebones rose from the moist earth, the great skeleton they belonged to far behind, the claws attached to them so very far from the sea the dead beast had tried to crawl into. Atop it, the figure of Togu was insignificant, a gloomy little growth staring distantly over a vast ocean.

‘Togu …’

The word crawled out of Lenk’s mouth, uncertain. He searched the lizardman with desperate eyes, for explanation as to how this had happened, for elaboration as to why it had happened. Answered with nothing but impassive silence, uncertainty shifted to anger, and the next words charged from his mouth on wrathful legs.

‘You slimy piece of diseased stool,’ he snarled, trying to ignore the impotency of his words and muscles as he pulled at his bonds. ‘You sold us, you green little sack-sucker! You betrayed us, you … you …’

‘He’s not going to answer,’ Dreadaeleon spoke, preventing any further displays of futile fury. ‘I tried the same thing, with better insults.’

The answer was unsatisfactory; anything short of leaping up and strangling the lizard-thing before chewing out his withered throat would be, Lenk knew. Togu didn’t so much as flinch, his head hanging from shoulders that looked too small for him. He was burdened, by guilt, regret, something else; Lenk wasn’t satisfied by that, either.

Short of strangulation, another round of verbal hate seemed futile, yet came rampaging up to Lenk’s lips all the same. And there it died, frozen to death as a cold realisation struck the young man firmly across the face. He swept wide, fevered eyes about the beach, saw nothing but sand, bones, netherlings. Plenty of flesh, none of it pink. Plenty of teeth, all of them jagged and frowning. Plenty of ears …

‘Where are they?’ Lenk asked in a halting, breathless voice, terrified to ask each word, horrified of the answer, scared pissless of not knowing. ‘Where is she, Togu? Where’s Kataria?’

‘He won’t tell you,’ Dreadaeleon said, ‘about her.’ He paused, choked. ‘Or Asper. I … I tried, Lenk.’

‘Hardly matters,’ a voice echoed in his mind. ‘Did us no favours, no harm.’

‘He … he betrayed us,’ Lenk whispered back, his voice strained. ‘He … he …’

‘Will be punished. Betrayers die along with abominations.’

‘Too calm,’ Lenk muttered. ‘You’re too calm.’

‘You brought this on yourself. You could have fled.’

‘She is … she’s …’

‘Most likely. Maybe not. She can be saved.’

He breathed in, feeling overly warm.

‘Does not matter. A task is at hand.’

‘What task?’ he asked, shivering.

‘They have waited for this moment. They have waited for it to arrive. They have come. They are close.’

‘Who?’

There was no explaining how he instantly knew beyond the sudden well of dread that sprung inside him, rising up through him on oily darkness as it tried to choke the breath from him.

Tried, and failed. His breath came to him, regardless, creeping from his lips, sharp, crisp. Cold.

‘They are close.’

Lenk knew exactly of what the voice spoke, knew it did not lie.

‘Tonight, we will kill.’

That, too, was inevitable.

‘My father told me, as his father did, that the Owauku were born without life.’

Togu was speaking, his bass voice tinged with more weariness than sorrow. Lenk looked up without fury, without hatred, saw only the throat from which the words emanated, the blood pumping underneath. He knew that he would watch it spill upon the earth.

‘We were born in death,’ the lizardman continued, unaware of what the young man saw. ‘This land was alive when we did not have it, dead when they gave it to us. They fought here, the servants of the Gods and the brood of Mother Deep. For us, they fought here, they said, to keep us free from slavery. They killed one another for days. When only one stood, he gave us this dying land and abandoned us. We were born in death, we lived in death, we survive in death … betrayed.’

‘I know how you feel,’ Dreadaeleon replied, ‘poor dear.’

‘We were betrayed,’ Togu said, turning on the boy with bright, angry eyes. ‘By everyone who claimed to love us. The servants of the Gods gave us a dying land, the Gods themselves refused to heal it, the humans …’ He muttered, turning back to the sea. ‘We do what we can to survive, cousins. You will help us. I do not like it, but I cannot shed tears for you. You would do the same thing.’

‘She …’ Lenk whispered, voice a hiss of air. ‘Where is she, Togu?’

‘A place I do not want to know.’

‘And the others? Where is—?’

The answer came in the hollow sound of flesh struck, the agonised groan that followed. Lenk struggled to look behind him and spied the a long, lanky body on the earth, hands bound behind him, unmoving as the ability to writhe in pain had apparently been beaten from him.

The answer to that, too, was evident in the towering mass of purple muscle, white hair and grey metal standing over him.

‘I expected a struggle,’ Xhai said, her voice following an iron-shod toe to the man’s ribs. ‘I expected wit. I expected the man that cut me to be one who spoke more.’

‘I expected that I was going to be sailing home tomorrow,’ Denaos replied through a voice thick with pain, ‘wearing pants and not having various fluids being bludgeoned out of me.’ He cleared his throat, looked up at her and grinned. ‘That,’ he said, ‘was wit.’

‘This,’ she replied, ‘is my foot.’

The force of her kick lifted him off the earth, sent him rolling away from her, his groan tinged with red fluid. His attempt at escape, however unintentional, did not go unpunished as she stalked after him and seized him by his scalp, pulling his eyes up to the level of her neck.

‘And this,’ she gestured to a wound still mending upon her collarbone, ‘is your doing. Before you, the little weakling I sent to the earth with one blow, I was untouched by metal, unmarked.’ She pulled his gaze upwards, towards her snarling, jagged teeth. ‘They called me Unscarred.’

‘Well, they’ll no longer call me un-pissing blood,’ Denaos replied, ‘but I suppose you’re not willing to call it even at that?’

A resounding answer came upon the back of her hand.

‘You don’t even realise the insult, the unnaturalness of it all,’ she growled. ‘I’ve killed more overscum, underscum and netherlings than you will ever know, and you, filthy little piece of pink, scar me, after I laid you low?’

‘That,’ he said, ‘is irony.’ He paused. ‘Wait, no, that might just be coincidental. Let me ask Lenk—’

‘NO ONE,’ her roar silenced him as she hauled him to his feet, ‘scars a Carnassial and lives.’

‘And yet … here I am.’

‘Only because no one,’ she whispered sharply, ‘scars Semnein Xhai and dies swiftly.’

The face that stared at Denaos, it was evident, was a face used to rigid, expressionless demands for obedience. The trembling of her lips, the clenching of her teeth, was something her face struggled, and failed, to contain. Rage boiled beneath her skin like a purple stew of skin, bone and hate.

Lenk assumed it was rage, anyway, not possessing the unique brand of insanity that accompanied the ability to guess at a longfaces’ emotions. How Denaos remained calm in the face of them was likewise a mystery. He was used to seeing Denaos as a trembling, scurrying thing, not the kind of man that would stare down a tower of quivering muscle and iron without so much as flinching.

The sight, Lenk thought, was impressive enough that he would remember the rogue as this, instead of the splattered mess of quivering red chunks he was undoubtedly about to become.

‘You cut me,’ she all but squealed, her voice brimming with something beyond anger.

‘It’s what I do,’ he replied, without blinking.

That the man was thrown to the earth, Lenk expected. That the longface’s foot rose up was likewise predictable. That Xhai stepped over the rogue and stalked towards her fellow netherlings instead of bringing the foot down in a spray of bone shards and porridge spatters, however, threw him.

‘Get me my scumstompers,’ she roared to the longfaces. ‘The big, spiky ones!’

That was more like it.

‘Denaos,’ he grunted.

‘Oh, I’m just fantastic, thanks,’ Denaos groaned back. ‘What’s that? You didn’t ask? No. Why would you? I’m just getting my meadow muffins kicked out of me. You have to sit on the cold hard ground. How are you doing, Lenk?’

No time to humour him, Lenk made his question swift. ‘Where are they?’

‘He didn’t see, obviously,’ Dreadaeleon replied. ‘If he was drunk enough to start showing remorse, he didn’t see anything but a pool of his own vomit before he passed out.’

‘I didn’t have enough time to do something nearly so satisfying before that fish-woman put me under,’ Denaos grunted.

Lenk blinked, the echoes of a fading song bleeding in his mind. The siren, he thought, Greenhair. She’s responsible for this? For knocking me out?

‘Tried to be,’ the voice chuckled blackly. ‘Was not. Took iron and fists for that.’

‘She likely put the others out, as well,’ Denaos muttered. ‘Thank goodness we had someone who could shoot lightning out of their a*shole on-hand to not do a gods-damned thing about it.’

‘As though it’s my fault,’ Dreadaeleon snarled. ‘I was as powerless as you!’

‘You cannot piss fire and be powerless!’

‘You’re not even supposed to be talking about this! You said you wouldn’t!’

‘Oh no! Denaos lied? Really?’ The rogue gasped, rolling his eyes. ‘Is this still even a surprise anymore?’

The boy made a reply, shrill and whining. Lenk could hear the tall man growl back. He could see the longfaces looking anxious, tending to blunted weapons with whetstones. He felt Togu’s presence, breath leaking from a quivering throat begging to be cut. He knew he had been betrayed, that he was likely to be killed, very soon, very messily.

Somehow, that seemed so … unimportant.

‘I’m not afraid,’ he whispered. One of the two prisoners beside him replied; he ignored them both. ‘Why is that?’

‘Fear is useless to us. It is for other … things. Not us.’

‘I am concerned, though … for her.’

‘Also useless.’

‘I wish I knew she was safe.’

‘Why?’

‘I left things … unsatisfied.’

‘Satisfaction is important.’

‘I need her to be safe.’

‘She does not feel similarly.’

‘You know this?’

‘Yes.’

‘You can sense her?’

‘No.’

‘Then how do you know?’

‘Inevitable.’

‘I … need …’

‘We do not.’

He had no more words for the voice; they, too, were unimportant. He knew no words would convince the voice. He knew he could say nothing to deny the voice. He knew nothing would make the voice wrong. He knew this, without knowing it.

He knew this, because the voice knew it.

And the voice sighed, or seemed to, for it, too, knew something of him.

‘She is not dead.’

‘No?’

‘You don’t need her.’

‘I need her to be—’

‘She will.’

‘How do you—’

‘BRING HIM FORWARD.’

A shudder through the sand, feet charging forward; Denaos put up no particular resistance as a pair of netherlings hoisted him up and brought him toward Xhai.

And her scumstompers.

She still possessed feet, but he was only fairly certain. The amalgamations of metal wrapped about her ankles, forged with enough care to only passingly resemble boots, belonged on something that used them to crawl out of hell. They brimmed with spikes, rough and jagged, no space left uncovered.

He saw it, widened his eyes. Dreadaeleon saw them, all but squealed. Denaos undoubtedly saw them, said nothing, did nothing.

The voice answered the question before he asked it, slowly, softly. ‘He is at peace. He knows his sins, did what he could for them. His life is complete.’

‘It isn’t,’ Lenk whispered. ‘Is it?’

‘His duty is to accept the inevitability.’ It spoke firmly, swiftly. ‘Ours, no different.’

‘You’re not making sense,’ Lenk said, eyelids twitching. ‘You say one thing, then another, and they contradict each other and I don’t know which to listen to.’ He swallowed hard, gritted his teeth, almost afraid to ask the question that plagued his mind. ‘Are … you alone in there?’

‘We are not.’

‘Do you mean “we” as you and I or—’

A groan of agony drew his attention back.

The netherlings dropped Denaos before Xhai. He fell to his knees and no farther, staring up at the female impassively. She stared down at him, cruel, contemptuous, trying to hold back the rage trembling beneath her face.

‘Why don’t you scream?’ she asked.

‘No reason,’ he replied.

‘I’m going to kill you.’

‘I’ve had worse.’

‘I’m going to stomp you into the ground, stomp your bones into jelly, stomp the jelly into pulp and stomp the pulp until there’s nothing left. I’m going to spill you out on the earth and splash in your entrails.’

He stared up at her, grinned.

‘I scarred you.’

She shrieked, raised her foot, the spikes glistening in the moonlight.

And nothing more came of it.

Something happened: a shift in the night breeze, a calm of the waves, a collective twitch through a dozen purple faces. Suddenly, milky white eyes turned upwards; the fury that fuelled each of them leaked out of their mouths as they opened and turned out towards the ocean. A strange placidity settled over them, a pack of purple hounds scenting meat, stilling their barking maws and wagging tongues in anticipation.

‘Coming,’ the voice whispered.

‘Them?’

‘He.’

‘He always comes like this,’ Togu whispered from his perch. ‘The world knows when he arrives. The sea knows it first. The sky knows it next because the sea is quiet. We know it last, because the night is too dark and the world is quiet. It doesn’t want him to see. Nothing good wants him to see.’

He hopped off his perch, glanced at Lenk with eyes too narrow for anything but fear.

‘Don’t look into his eyes, cousins. You don’t want him to see, either.’

The netherlings cleared a space at the beach, parting as though bidden by a wind unfelt and hauling Denaos with them. That same wind seemed to continue to blow through, cut across his flesh and chill him.

‘I can feel it, Lenk,’ the boy said on weakening breath, ‘a power … constant … wrong. It doesn’t stop. It should stop. It needs to stop.’ He grimaced, in pain. ‘Hot, cold, cold, hot. Why won’t it stop?’

Lenk, too, felt it; not the wind, but the leaves it picked up, the scent of smoke on it, the humidity it carried. A taint, one he was familiar with.

‘A demon?’

‘Their servant.’

‘Ulbecetonth?’

‘Her enemy.’

‘Our friend?’

He knew the answer as soon as he saw the shadow upon the water.

A ship, he recognised, pulling itself through the water, towards the shore, with no oars, no sails, no source of motion. At the prow, a pillar of gloom. A man, tall and black, crowned by three pinpricks of red light, fire upon shadow upon shadow.

Him.

It came to a perfect halt, barely grazing the sand. The figure waved a hand, dismissed everything, demanded everything. Everything complied.

The netherlings backed away. The earth quivered; the sand drew itself together, smoothed itself out and made itself presentable to him. It rose to meet him in a perfect staircase. His foot hit the step with no sound, and the netherlings took not a breath, dared to utter the word.

‘Master,’ bubbled out amongst them.

‘Sheraptus,’ Togu said, silent as the figure descended the stairs and regarded him.

The three red lights swung back and forth, tiny fires in a halo of black wrapped around a long, purple brow. His sigh crept out of a pair of thin, purple lips. Long, silky white hair rested on thin, drooping shoulders. Seas were silent, skies were still; the world held its breath, for fear that it had angered him.

‘And all that greets me,’ he whispered on a voice long and dark, ‘is death.

‘I have seen death before.’ He tilted his head up towards the distant forest. ‘But in my land, Togu, I have never seen green. I have seen no rivers and blue skies, no birds and insects, no rain clouds …’ He shook his head. ‘And you meet me in the dark, on a clear night, on a beach laden with death. Death, I have seen before.’

A pair of eyes opened. Bright. Crimson. Fiery.

‘I will see more of it.’

The voice was languid, liquid, the threat inherent in it ebbing away as soon as it passed his lips, wasted. Or rather, Lenk thought, unnecessary. There was something inherently threatening about the man, something that went beyond the black robes, the glowing red jewels and the black crown about his brow.

‘Power …’ Dreadaeleon whispered, his voice pained. ‘He’s leaking it.’

Magic, perhaps, Lenk thought; that wasn’t hard to believe, given that the characteristic crimson pyres that lit up a wizard’s eyes were perpetually burning in his stare. But what Lenk sensed was not magic. It was the unseen, unmoving breeze about him, the unscented stench about him.

The taint all too plain to both Lenk and the creature inside his head.

‘Sense it,’ the voice muttered. ‘He’s killed many. Demon, mortal … child, mother … he’s watched them suffer; he’s drunk their pain.’ It shifted, becoming hard and rigid. ‘He will again if we do not do our duty.’

‘Who …?’ he asked. ‘Whose pain?’

Cold sigh. Warm sigh. Two answers.

‘You know.’

‘Where is it?’

Another voice, neither warm nor hot, brimming with boredom and hatred. Him again. Sheraptus.

Togu did not bother defiance against his question, did not bother to interpret it as anything other than the demand that it was. He glanced over his shoulder, spoke a word in his native tongue. From around a standing skull, a quartet of Owauku approached, bearing a wooden palanquin upon their shoulders with Bagagame, head heavy and eyes thick, at their head.

They passed Lenk, keeping their gazes low. He paid them no mind, watching instead the objects heaped upon the wooden platform: all of them his or his companions’. He spotted Denaos’ knives, Asper’s pendant, Kataria’s bow. His sword was up there, too; he supposed that should have galled him. The fact that his pants were right next to it should have enraged him.

Neither of those was the reason for the sudden flash of icy heat that seared through his head on a pair of voices.

‘NO!’

‘What?’ he asked, wincing.

‘He cannot be allowed to have it! It does not belong to him! It belongs to … no one … no, to YOU! TO NO ONE!’ His head pounded, seared with fever, frozen with cold before the voice finally howled in twisting cacophony. ‘HE CANNOT HAVE THE TOME.’

Sheraptus glanced over to the boat, raised a white eyebrow. The netherlings followed his gaze, reverence shifting to scorn the moment their gaze left his face. The male seemed to take no notice, though, as he glanced to the bound companions.

‘This is them?’ he asked.

The shape that rose up from his vessel was instantly recognisable. The skin, white even in darkness, and the crown of emerald-coloured hair were extraneous detail. The palpable aura of treachery denoted the siren’s presence long before she showed her gills.

‘That is … most of them, yes,’ she replied, shaking her head. ‘There was another with them … a beast on two legs with red skin.’

‘Dead,’ Denaos muttered. ‘Thankfully.’

‘If that is the case, then they are all here and—’

‘You three,’ Sheraptus said, pointing to a trio of netherlings, ‘search the island for signs of this thing. If this is the same red thing that netherlings could not kill, I doubt he was slain by anything else.’ He ignored Greenhair’s stammered protests as the trio grunted and set off down the coast, instead turning his gaze to the palanquin. ‘Now, then … where is it?’

‘That is it,’ Greenhair replied, arriving beside Sheraptus and pointing a finger at the palanquin. ‘It is in there.’

He swept his burning gaze back to the objects. His hands rose, the air quivering between them as he gently separated his palms, an invisible force parting the clothes and weapons to expose a pair of books resting gingerly upon the wood. The first one was musty, old, well-worn pages trembling in the breeze, as if taking the cue to quiver before the man’s eyes. The other …

Too clean, too black, too shiny, too still and smug and noticeable while the rest of the world darkened for fear of being seen by a pair of bright red eyes. The tome met the man’s gaze fearlessly, sparing only enough time to look at Lenk with papery eyes and wink. Or so it seemed to, at any rate.

Surely, Sheraptus must have seen it, too. What could escape that stare? What sense did it make for him to reach down and pluck the musty, frightened book up first?

‘It does not call to him,’ a voice, he wasn’t sure which, answered. ‘He cannot hear it. His ears are cloyed with pride, arrogance. He will never hear it. Will never hear us before we take his head.’ He glanced to Greenhair, biting her lip, not daring to say anything as he plucked up the wrong book. ‘She … betrayed us. Those who betray … die.’

Warmth, then cold. Agreement.

If Sheraptus saw the intent in Lenk’s stare, he made no comment. Instead, he thumbed through the pages of the musty tome, heedless of Dreadaeleon’s whimper. Ah, right, Lenk realised. His spellbook. He hadn’t seen it ever unattached to the boy’s hip. He guessed that watching another man thumb through something that had been attached so long would be unsettling, at the least.

‘Humans use nethra,’ he hummed thoughtfully. ‘I wasn’t entirely sure I believed it.’ Idly, he flipped page by page, his frown deepening. ‘They scrawl their words on parchment, learn to burn, to scorch.’ He glanced up. ‘How many trees were rent asunder by such? How much green turned black?’

His eyes narrowed as he thumbed towards the end of the book. ‘Possessed of everything, you ruin it all. Spill more blood over imaginary things, like gods and ideologies, never once deigning to fight over the bounties surrounding you.’ He looked up, thoughtful. ‘You’re so concerned with these false notions of higher powers that you never once realise it’s all within your grasp.’

‘Merroskrit,’ Dreadaeleon whispered, ‘merroskrit … that’s another wizard he’s touching, another person and he’s just … he’s going to …’

He took a thin, white page and rubbed it gingerly between two fingers. The flinch of his lips, the ripping of the paper was short, bitter. Dreadaeleon’s scream was longer, louder. And at that sound, the longface’s lips twisted into a wry smirk.

‘But that’s part of your charm, isn’t it?’

‘Sheraptus …’ Greenhair spoke, then immediately stammered out: ‘M-Master … that is just a book of lore, nothing important. The true object is—’

‘Not moving, for the moment.’ He reached down and took a severed head from the palanquin, staring at its closed eyes, golden locks and frowning. ‘And they even carry death around with them … fascinating.’

The head, Lenk recognised. The Deepshriek’s head. The lizards kept it.

‘They know nothing of its importance. It will be ours again soon. Patience.’

‘There is a word for this sort of thing …’ Sheraptus hummed, tossing the head away. ‘It is either “macabre” or “deranged”, but it’s unimportant. I came for something else. Where is it?’

‘There, Master,’ Greenhair said, pointing to the palanquin. ‘The tome is there.’ Her glance flitted towards Dreadaeleon for a moment. ‘It will be safer with you.’

Sheraptus, however, merely stared at her, as unexpressive as a man with flaming eyes could be, before he looked over her to Xhai.

‘Where is it?’ he asked the Carnassial.

She shot him back a look, as wounded as a woman with spike-encrusted shoes could. ‘The Grey One That Grins only wants the tome. The other things are—’

‘I would very much like to have it … them,’ Sheraptus said. ‘It would make me very happy.’ He pursed his lips, furrowed his brows; beneath the fire, he looked almost hurt. ‘Xhai … do you not want me to be happy?’

She recoiled, as if struck. An emotion, close to but not quite the fury that was present earlier, shook her features. After a moment, her face settled into one of cold acknowledgement. She turned her head away and barked a command.

‘TCHIK QAI!’

There was a scrabble of boots, a few muffled curses from behind a massive, jutting ribcage half-buried nearby. Lenk’s ears immediately pricked up, his attention drawn towards the movement, his heart beating faster at the noise. The reaction did not go unnoticed.

‘Ignore that,’ a cold voice snarled.

‘The enemy is before you,’ a hot voice growled.

‘Duty first. Betrayers die.’

‘They will all die. They all betrayed you. Forget everything else.’

‘Kill.’

‘Listen.’

He did not hear them, felt them as nothing but flashes of hot and cold in his body. His eyes were locked upon the twitches of movement between the bones. He spotted glimpses of purple, but did not pay attention them. Before them, glimpses of colour, white and silver under the moonlight, moved swiftly, but erratically.

The movement stopped momentarily. There was another shout of protest, this one louder but not clear enough to be heard well. It was met with a snarling iron retort and a faint cracking sound. Lenk found himself surprised that he was wincing at the unseen blow, found himself surprised that he was leaning forward, craning his neck to see what emerged from behind the bones.

And despite the fear that had been growing in his chest since he had awoken, he found himself surprised to see a pair of emerald eyes, wide, terrified and searching.

He tried to cry out, tried to scream when he found he couldn’t. His throat was constricting, voice choked.

‘No,’ another voice answered his unspoken question, ‘speak not. Draw no attention. Not yet. He does not need you, does not want you. Survive first. Kill later.’

She looks hurt. She needs help. I need to—

‘Soon. Tome first. Duty first.’

No! Not duty first, she’s more important. She—

‘Fled. From you.’

What?

‘Fear was in her eyes. She was right to show us.’

No, she—

‘Does not understand.’

‘Cannot understand.’

‘Your duty … our duty … more important. She cannot see that. Looks away from it.’

She isn’t looking away now.

No response came; he wouldn’t have heard it, anyway. His eyes were locked on Kataria’s, and hers on his, as she was marched forward by ironbound hand and guttural snarls from purple lips. She put up minimal resistance to such, not that her bound hands would allow her much, in any case. Still, Lenk found himself surprised by her passiveness as she was ushered towards the knot of netherlings; he had expected her to be snarling, thrashing, biting and cursing.

To see that anticipated furious resistance emerge from the pale form emerging behind Kataria, however, was slightly more surprising.

‘And after I’ve chewed those off, because I’m sure you things only claim to be females,’ Asper snarled at the netherling shoving her forward, ‘I’m going to rip your eyes out and eat those, too!’ She dug her heels in, shoved back at her captor, tried to break away. All futile efforts, their failures doing nothing to curb her tongue. ‘Get back, you slavering, sloppy little cu—’

‘I know maybe three of those words,’ the netherling snarled back, raising an iron fist. ‘And I don’t know what to say to make you shut up, but I do know what to hit you with.’

‘No.’

Bones shook in skin, sea retreated from shore, all eyes looked up and instantly regretted doing so. Sheraptus’ eyes were narrowed to fiery slits as they swept up to the netherling holding the priestess. Like a flower before fire, the females’ resolve withered, hands trembled, gaze turned towards the sand.

Asper’s did not, however. And from the sudden widening of her eyes, the slackness of her jaw, the very visible collective clench of every muscle in her body, it wasn’t clear if she even could. Nothing had seemed to leave her, least of all her fight. Rather, it was apparent that the moment she had met his eyes, something had instead entered her and had no plans of leaving.

And, judging by his broad smile, it was more apparent to no one than Sheraptus.

‘This is it,’ he whispered, stalking closer to her. ‘This is what I came to see, what I continue to see. This … utter rejection of the world.’ He lifted a long purple hand to her, grinned as she flinched away from it. ‘That. What is that? Why do you do such a thing? You know you can’t flee, know you can’t escape, but you still try. Instinct dictates that you sit there and accept it, yet you refuse to. Why?’ He glanced up towards the sky. ‘I had once thought it was your notion of gods, with how often you pray to them, but I see nothing up there.’

His voice shifted to something low, something breathy and born out of his heart. Yet as soft as it went, it remained sharp and painful so that none could help but hear him. His eyes drifted from Asper’s horrified stare, searching over her half-nude body. Slowly, his hand rose to follow, palm resting upon her belly, fingers drumming thoughtfully on her skin.

Her choked gasp, too, could not be ignored.

‘It’s not gods, though, is it?’ His hand slid across her abdomen, as if beckoning something to rise from the prickling gooseflesh and reveal it to him. ‘No, no … something more. Or less?’ His smile trembled at the edges, trying and failing to contain something. ‘I just … can’t tell with your breed.’ His gaze returned to hers, a lurid emotion burning brighter than the fire consuming them. ‘But I dearly look forward to finding out.’

He turned away from her, his stare settling on Kataria for a moment, white brows furrowing. ‘And this one … doesn’t even put up a fight?’ He gave her a cursory glance, then shrugged. ‘I like the ears, anyway. Load them up.’

‘W-what?’ Asper gasped. Vigour returned to her as she was forced towards the black vessel, and she struggled against her captor’s grip. ‘No! NO!’ At that moment, she seemed to notice the others, bound on the sand. ‘Don’t let him do this to me. He’s going to … to …’ Tears began forming in her eyes. ‘Help me … help me, D—’

A rough cloth was wrapped about her mouth, tied tightly as she was hoisted up and over the netherling’s purple shoulder and spirited to the boat.

‘Asper!’ Dreadaeleon cried out. ‘I can help you … I … I can.’ He gritted his teeth as crimson sparked behind his eyes, the magic straining to loose itself. ‘It’s just … it’s …’

‘Intimidating, isn’t it?’ Sheraptus shot a fire-eyed wink at the boy. ‘I felt the same way when I first beheld it … well, sans the pitiful weakness, anyway.’ He ran a finger along the crown upon his brow, circling its three burning jewels. ‘One can’t help but behold it, like a candle that never snuffs out.’ He considered the boy carefully for a moment. ‘Which, I suppose, would make you a tiny, insignificant moth.’

As soon as he said the word, the boy collapsed, tumbling backwards with his eyes shutting tightly as if to ward against the burning. Immediately, his breathing slowed, his body went still. Lenk couldn’t help but widen his eyes in fear. Nothing he had known – human, longface or otherwise – could kill with a word.

‘Dread?’ he whispered.

‘Ignore it.’

‘He’s …

‘Unimportant.’

‘Should we … do something?’

‘I, for one,’ Denaos interjected, ‘fully intend on rising up and enacting a daring rescue, as soon as I finish crapping out a kidney.’

‘Plenty of time for that when I take you to the ship,’ Xhai snarled as she seized the rogue by his hair and hoisted him up. ‘This is better, in fact.’ Her smile was as sharp and cruel as the spikes on her feet. ‘Now, I can take my time.’

‘Semnein Xhai.’

She looked up with an abashed expression that had no business on a face so hard. Sheraptus’ befuddled dismay was just as out of place and somehow even more disturbing as he canted his head to the side.

‘Do I not make you happy?’ he asked. ‘You require this … pink thing?’

‘But you …’ She bit her lower lip, the innocence of the gesture somehow lost in her jagged teeth. ‘We are taking prisoners, aren’t we?’

‘It’s necessary to understand the condition of humans, yes,’ he replied. ‘But it’s only ever seen in females, and two is more than enough. We have no need for males. Leave this one behind.’

She glanced from Sheraptus to Denaos, gaze shifting from confused to angry in an instant. With a snarl, she hurled the rogue back to the earth and swept her scowl upon the remaining netherlings.

‘If any of you kills him,’ she growled, ‘you will do it quickly and you will not enjoy it. Or I’ll know … and I will.’

‘We have what we came for, in any case,’ Sheraptus said. He made a gesture, and the tome flew from the palanquin to his hand. He spared a smile for Togu. ‘As promised, we leave your island in peace.’

‘Good,’ Togu replied bluntly.

Lenk was aware of movement, netherlings returning to their vessels, chatter between them. He paid attention to none of it, his eyes locked, as they had been for an eternity, on Kataria’s.

Her lips remained still, her ears unquivering. It was only through her eyes that he knew she wished to say something to him. But what? The question ripped his mind apart as he searched her gaze for it. A plea for help? An apology? A farewell?

He was likewise aware of his inability to do anything for her. His bonds would not allow him to rise, to escape. The searing heat and freezing cold racing through him would not allow him to weep, to speak. And so he stared, eyes quivering, lips straining to mouth something, anything: reassurances, promises, apologies, pleas, accusations.

‘Take that one to the ship, as well,’ Sheraptus ordered the netherling holding her.

It was only when Kataria was hoisted up onto a powerful shoulder, only when her eyes began to fade as she was hauled through the surf, only when her gaze finally disappeared as she was tossed over the edge of the black boat that he recognised what had dwelled in her gaze.

Nothing.

No words. No questions. Nothing but the same utter lack of anything beyond a desperate need to say something that he had felt inside of him.

And only then did he realise he could not let her disappear.

‘Very well, then,’ Sheraptus said, pointing to a cluster of netherlings. ‘You five. You have … pleased me. I think you deserve a reward.’ He barely hid his contempt at their unpleasantly beaming visages. ‘The tome is all we require. Everything else can be destroyed.’

‘What?’ Togu spoke up, eyes going wide. ‘We had a deal! You said—’

‘I say many things,’ Sheraptus replied. ‘All of them true. It is my right to take what I wish and give as I please. And really, you’ve been quite rude.’

‘Sheraptus … Master,’ Greenhair spoke, ‘I gave them my word that—’

‘Bored,’ the male snarled back. ‘I am leaving. Come or stay, screamer. I care not.’

Confusion followed as netherlings hurried back to their boats, Sheraptus idly shaping his earthen staircase and returning to his own vessel. Greenhair reluctantly followed him aboard. Blades were drawn, cruel laughter emerging from jagged mouths. Togu shouted a word and his reptilian entourage fled. White, milky eyes settled on helpless, bound forms.

Lenk cared not, did not hear them, did not look at them. He watched the boat bearing Kataria slide out of view, vanishing into the darkness. He swallowed hard, felt his voice dry and weak in his throat.

‘Tell me,’ he whispered, ‘can you … can either of you save her?’

No more heat. No more fever. Something cold coursed through his blood, sent his muscles tightening against bonds that suddenly felt weak. Something frigid crept into his mind. Something dark spoke within him.

‘I can.’