Black Halo

‘STOP! STOP! STOP! STOP!’

Asper did, her grasp shattered under the hail of blows. She collapsed, weeping, heedless of the looming purple shape as she rose up. Xhai stared at her through trembling eyes, looking from her to her ruined arm. Her face quivered, jaw hung open, as though on the brink of asking why, of demanding how, of weeping along with the priestess.

Instead, when her mouth found her voice, it was only a scream that came out.

‘QAI ZHOTH!’ she howled.

And nothing more came of it as a force exploded across her back.

She buckled under the attack, tried to look over her shoulder and caught a glimpse of the tall man in black leather holding up her master’s chair. Her eyes, and her face, were driven back down as he smashed the chair against her back again and again. It cracked, splintered, shattered in his hands, and still he brought it down upon her until she no longer moved and he was left holding two hewn chair legs.

He set them down six blows later.

Panting, Denaos spared only as much attention for the netherling as it took to confirm that she wouldn’t get up. Once that was clear, and after he had given her rock-hard flesh a kick for good measure, he turned his attentions to his companion.

‘Asper,’ he whispered gently.

She was curled in on herself, trying to bury her left arm under the whole of her shuddering body, weeping violently. With some trepidation, he knelt beside her, wary to touch her after what he had seen, wary to even look at her.

Kataria had run. He could, too. Asper was safe now. There was no reason to stay here. He could escape now, too. She wouldn’t want him around, either, when she finally looked up. He was a coward, a thief, a brigand. She had called him these before. He had run from her before. He could do so now. It would be easy.

That was what he told himself.

That was not what he did.

He placed a hand gently on her, paused as she recoiled from his touch. Undeterred, he gently rolled her over.

And resisted the urge to scream.

She stared up at him through one tear-stained eye. The other was nothing more than a black socket bathed in crimson light. Her naked breast rose and fell with each breath as the ribs where the other one should be shuddered. Half a pair of lips whispered in shuddering words to him as half a black jaw moved up and down with mechanical certainty.

‘I think …’ she said. ‘I think there’s something wrong with me.’

Thirty-Three

TO OUR PEOPLE

His head was burning. If he knew nothing else in the darkness that he had been plunged into, he knew this.

And the voice that accompanied it, hot with emotion.

‘Could have been so easy …’ it sizzled on his skull, ‘it all could have been so easy. You could have been away now and we could all have been happy. You could have forgotten her, forgotten everything. It would have hurt, but you would have survived. Now? ’

The darkness became bright, angry red inside his head.

‘Now I’ll watch you die.’

Lenk’s eyes snapped open. He knew they were open, even if he wasn’t quite sure whether he was awake or even alive. His eyes swam and his head rang. He could see purple shadows moving through great red sheets. He could hear the distant cracking of the sky. His head was still burning, his face still dripping with sweat.

That might have been because of all the fire, though.

The wave of heat that rolled over him returned him to his senses. The wave of crackling orange flame came rolling shortly after. He scrambled to his hands and knees, crawling hurriedly behind the mast before he could feel anything more than the vague sensation of a branding iron tickling his rear end.

Ample reason to figure out what was going on, he thought.

He peered around the mast and was greeted with a sight of carnage. The great red tongues that came lashing out of thin purple palms had long forgotten Lenk. Behind the veil of fire, his face painted orange with the heat, Sheraptus snarled and drove the flames skywards, leaving the deck charred beneath him.

His target, the source of his fury-screwed face, became apparent as the night sky was set alight.

A man, he was at least vaguely sure it was, sailed overhead, the fire licking at his heels as leathery wings carried him over the deck. Those netherling females not lying in various states of cinders, icicles or both surrounded their master protectively, angling drawn bows towards their target.

The man’s hand flashed, in and out of his coat, and produced three scraps of paper. Only when he hurled them did Lenk realise that they were folded into the angular shapes of cranes. That realisation was not quite as interesting, Lenk thought, as the fact that their little papery wings were flapping of their own accord.

The man spoke a word. Whatever language, whatever command, the folded cranes heard and obeyed. Instantly, they turned from white to silver, from dull to shining, from angular to wickedly sharp. Spinning through the air, they found three purple throats and dipped steel beaks into tender flesh.

Bows clattered to the deck. The ensuing gasps and breathless screams as the netherlings clutched at severed windpipes went unheard. Sheraptus appeared less than concerned with the females, thrusting his fingers, and the ensuing whip of lightning, at his elusive prey.

‘Why is this such an issue for you?’ he cried to be heard above the crackling electric blast. ‘I’ve never heard of you before. Why are you so obsessed with me?’

‘Your eradication is a service to more than one power. You are a violator,’ the man replied sharply. ‘In every sense of the word.’

‘Meaning?’

‘I met your victim.’

‘Which?’

‘You took everything from her, including her name.’

‘It comes down to females again?’ Sheraptus snarled, thrusting a finger and sending a jagged blue arc over the man’s bald, brown head. ‘Are vaginae truly so scarce on this world as to be worth this much trouble?’

Lenk took it as his good fortune that the longface’s attentions were so focused elsewhere. His eyes were drawn past the robed figure to the doors of the cabin, just as his thoughts were drawn to Kataria, undoubtedly inside. It would be a simple matter of crossing, infiltrating and retrieving with Sheraptus so distracted.

As simple as matters involving wizards can be, at least.

As if on cue, he felt a familiar hand, far too scrawny and sweaty as to be particularly worrying, on his shoulder. He turned to see Dreadaeleon’s sweat-slick visage and purple-circled eyes staring intently at him.

‘You’ve been busy,’ he noted.

‘It’s incredible.’ The intensity of the boy’s grin raised some concern in Lenk. ‘All of a sudden, the weakness … it was gone! I … I can cast again, Lenk. I can channel it. It feels …’

His eyes went unnervingly wide as he rose up. His pelvis, Lenk noted, was far too close to Lenk’s face before the boastful thrusting began.

‘Look! Not a drop of moisture, not a trace of fire, not a wisp of smoke!’ the boy proclaimed loudly. ‘Look! Look!’

‘No! No!’ Lenk seized him by his belt, pulling forcibly down. ‘Now, listen, the longface is distracted and you’re feeling …’ He paused, shook his head. ‘We’re not talking about that anymore.