Abruptly the White jerked its head back from the docker with a growl that contained a clearly discernible note of frustration. Whatever it had hoped to find in this unfortunate apparently wasn’t there to be found. Sirus finally looked away when the White’s claws closed on the fellow, talons piercing his torso like spears. From the resurgence of squawking from the infants it was clear they had been given a new toy to play with.
When he looked again he saw that the White had uncoiled much of its bulk from the part-melted statue, revealing two objects that had previously been hidden by its wing. Sunlight glittered on two huge crystals about the size of a man, one green and one blue, both pulsing with some kind of inner light. Sirus found his gaze immediately caught by the pulsing, both the green and the blue crystal flaring and fading in steady, synchronised rhythm, oddly soothing in its ability to entice the eye. Sirus felt the sickening chill of his fear fade as he continued to stare at the crystals. The many aches and pains of his strained and part-starved body slipped away along with all sense of time. There was only the light, the wonderfully soothing light . . .
“No!” He never knew where he found the strength or the will to look away, clamping his eyes shut and jerking his head to the side. The crystals’ gifts were intoxicating, and he longed for the absence of fear and pain, but some primal instinct screamed a warning in his mind: This is taking more than it gives!
Strong hands clamped on his shoulders and head, forcing it forward, whilst implacable fingers prised his eyelids apart. Sirus tried to shout but the sound was muffled by the hands holding his jaw and he could only spout angry spittle as the Spoiled held him in place and let the crystals’ light flow into his mind. After only a few heart-beats, he found that the desire to look away had vanished.
? ? ?
. . . still sleeping. Probably dreaming about her again . . .
Sirus groaned as Katrya’s voice banished the dregs of slumber, her tone more sullen and bitter than he remembered. He shifted, blinking rapidly as a confusion of images greeted his eyes. It took some time before he could make sense of what he saw. There were so many colours, as if he lay in a room bathed in light from a multitude of stained-glass windows. More blinking and things became marginally more comprehensible. The colours, just confused smudges at first, soon resolved into people. They were outlined in some kind of red haze, like the glow of a lantern, but still recognisably people. No, he corrected himself as their features came into focus. Not people. Spoiled.
They lay or sat on a collection of beds or mattresses arranged in a loose order that resembled a barrack room, albeit one occupied by soldiers with scant regard for military order. The floor was littered with various refuse, from discarded bones to empty bottles. A closer look at the Spoiled brought an instant of sickening recognition. These were his fellow captives, though their faces now featured the same nascent deformities as Majack’s.
Sirus fought down panic and reached up to place a tremulous hand along the new ridge of dome-like protrusions extending from the centre of his brows into his hair. They followed the line of his skull to the base of his neck where they grew yet larger, proceeding down his back in parallel to his vertebrae. A quick inspection of his face confirmed the presence of soft but scaled skin around his eyes and mouth. Had he a mirror he knew he would now be staring at the visage of a yellow-eyed monster.
Isn’t so bad, Katrya said. Doesn’t hurt any more, at least.
His gaze snapped towards Katrya, finding her sitting on the next bed, her face betraying the same deformities as the others. As he tried to overcome the shock provoked by her appearance another realisation came to him. She hadn’t spoken, and yet her words sang clear in his mind.
He saw her scaled mouth twitch in faint amusement. Clever, isn’t it? Like magic or something. I think it, you hear it.
Sirus recalled the silence of the Spoiled in the plaza, the way their captors had moved with a shared purpose despite not exchanging a word. The crystals, he thought, remembering the pulsing light, the way it had seemed to flow into him. They did this . . .
That’s what I think too, Katrya agreed, smiling wider as he started.
This . . . His hands came up to paw at his face, fingers exploring the scales and the ridge of bumps with fevered disgust. It’s horrible . . . I can’t . . .
He got to his feet, casting about wildly for some kind of weapon, anything with a sharp edge capable of opening a vein. He spied a discarded bottle near by and snatched it up, raising it high to smash the glass. I will not be this!
STOP!
The command rang in his head like a bell, implacable and inescapable. He froze in place, the bottle slipping from suddenly numb fingers. It hadn’t been just one voice this time, though he heard Katrya’s in there amongst the multitude. Looking around their makeshift barracks, he saw the rest of the former captives all staring at him intently. He could feel their thoughts in his head like the low buzz of a disturbed beehive. Words began to form out of the buzz, jumbled for the most part but some leaping out with sufficient force of will to make him wince: . . . needed . . . He needs us . . . This one is smart . . . He will be valuable . . .
More than the jumble of voices was the sense of something beneath it, something spurring them on, a will far greater than all of them combined.
Sirus reeled under the onslaught and fell to his knees, clutching his head in pain. Then came a new sensation, something softer, kinder, subduing the commanding babble and its overwhelming accompaniment. Best if you don’t fight it. Katrya knelt to gently pull his hands away from his temples. Her slitted eyes met his and a fresh wave of sensation rushed forth. The voices faded to a whisper as a collage of images ran through his head.
A small boy in a garden, seen through the eyes of someone whose head didn’t yet come level with an old sun-dial which the boy studied with complete attention. A small but insistent hand reached out to place a ball on the sun-dial, drawing an irritated scowl from the boy that soon softened into a smile, and then a laugh. The image shifted and Sirus saw the same boy, older now and glimpsed through a half-open doorway. He stood at stiff attention, fighting tears whilst his father harangued him for a lack of attention to his studies. Sirus could feel the sympathy that coloured this memory, the desire to comfort. The vision blurred again, swirling into something different, something tinged with a dark stain of hurt and jealousy. The boy is perhaps eighteen now, standing with head bowed in the garden of his house, stuttering through some poorly written verse as a bored girl with a doll’s face regards him with ill-concealed contempt. When the boy has finished his poem the girl simply rolls her eyes and walks away without a word . . .