Black Halo

twitching impatiently for bones to break and flesh to rend. Above the sounds of his hatred, it was near impossible to hear anything else. But she heard a sound regardless, faint and quiet. Between the flickering of his fury and the rumble of his growls, his nostrils twitched, searched the air.

And found nothing.

He can’t smell me. The thought raced with the beating of her heart. Or is he just drawing it out? No, he’s not that patient. But it makes no sense. Why can’t he-?

The answer came on an invisible cloud of reek, filling her nostrils with knowledge and the pungent stink of roach innards. She glanced up, peered out of the foliage and saw the roach’s corpse loosing its incense onto the sunbeams filtering through the canopy.

And an idea came.

She could barely keep from laughing. The dragonman, the terror of all things that walked on two legs and four, laid low by a stinking bug. He had a weakness after all. And, if one of the many curses about shicts was true, it was that they knew weaknesses could be exploited.

Shicts, she thought with obscene pride, don’t fight fair.

The sole obstacle to capitalising on this pride was the expanse between her and the dead insect, dominated by a mass of red flesh and eager claws.

But that suddenly did not seem so grievous an obstacle anymore. He was only flesh and claws … and teeth, she admitted, but she was a shict. She was cunning, she was stealth, she was hunter. These were things the Howling taught her, reminded her of in faint echoes as she fell to all fours and crept about the bush.

‘What’s that?’

She froze.

‘What?’ he growled again. ‘No, I never said I couldn’t learn.’ Gariath sighed, unaware as she pressed on through the brush around him. ‘It’s just that the humans, round or pointy, have nothing to teach me. They know few things: desecration, degradation and indignation.’

He laughed blackly, a sound that made her skin crawl as it never had before.

‘No, it means she thinks she’s claiming some sort of victory here … no, an invisible victory,’ he growled. ‘It’s as stupid as it sounds. She pretends she’s avoiding me because she doesn’t deserve to be splattered on the ground. That is indignation, something humans claim to possess when everything else is taken from them.

‘In this case,’ he continued, ‘it’s stupid of her to think she’s going to die with anything more than mud in her teeth and a rock in her skull. That’s as invisible as victories get, I suppose. Eh? No, it makes sense to them morally.’

He’s speaking to you, she told herself, not the air … maybe both.

‘It basically means she’s lying to herself. Really, all we’re fighting over is killing rights, which is acceptable.’ He snorted disdainfully. ‘But she wants to kill the others, the stupid weaklings, to prove she’s less stupid and weak. This is a lie … sorry, a moral victory.’

He’s taunting you, trying to lure you out. Keep going. Don’t fall for it.

‘And this is why they look at her with hatred, why Lenk feared to turn his back to her.’

She froze.

‘She is a liar, a schemer. She tells herself they have to die for reasons she thinks will help, that she’ll stink less like a human after rubbing against their soft skin for so long. They know this. They hate her. What?’ He grunted. ‘Yes, I’d kill them, but only because I don’t like them. Honesty is an admirable trait.’

She was not prepared for this. Claws, fists, bellowing roars she had steeled herself against. But when he spoke with confidence, not rage, when his words were laced with cunning rather than hatred, she was stunned into inaction.

‘Ironic? Yes, I know what the word means. That’s different, though. I don’t protect Lenk. If he needed protection, I would laugh as he died. I give him the respect and honour of a fair fight by killing her first. He’s a stupid bug, all wings and stinger, that will leap into the jaws of a snapping flower because he can’t tell that the pollen stinks. He knows there’s something foul about the stench, but he sniffs it, anyway. She is the pollen. I’m just clearing his nostrils.’

Well? she demanded of her body. What are you upset about? That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Lenk’s hatred, his fear … if you’ve got that, it’s all so much easier, isn’t it?

It was supposed to be, anyway.

‘No, no …’ Gariath’s voice drifted softly over the leaves like a breeze. ‘That’s not the funny part. The real humour is that she’s running away when I’m doing her a favour she doesn’t deserve. If she does fear, as you say she does, not being so pointy-eared, then how is what I’m doing a bad thing? Eh? No, I disagree. The kindest thing here …’

She felt the shadow on her back, looked up into hard black eyes.

‘Is a swift and fair death.’

Move.

She did, too late.

His claws raked her, dug into the tender flesh of her back. She felt blood weeping down her skin, shallow muscles screaming, but not the numbing agony that would suggest a crippling blow. She tried to ignore the pain and scrambled away. She leapt to her feet, heard him fall to his feet and his claws as he charged. The bug grew large in her eyes, its stink brilliantly foul in her nose.

He lunged; she jumped.

He caught her ankle in a grasping claw; she seized a handful of pasty yellow innards.

She twisted and saw his teeth looming forward. With a growl to match his, she thrust the glistening, guts- laden fist at him and smeared the insect’s ichor into his nostrils.

Though he didn’t let go, he did howl. The roach’s juices vengefully filled his nostrils, seeped over his snout to sting his eyes. He threw his head back enough that she could pull her ankle from his weakened grip, claws scratching at her heel as she did.

He sprang to his feet, swung his fists out, lashed his tail out, stomped the earth in a blind, anosmic rage.

His roar filled her ears, as did the sound of his nostrils futilely searching the air for her. Such sounds continued as she ran into the forest, leaping over the river’s shallows and leaving him far behind. Without direction, without stopping, she ducked branches, leapt over logs. And through his howling and snarling she could hear his words, spoken with such venomous clarity. She could feel them continue to seep into her, as she could feel her eyes brim with tears.

She ran, and lied to herself that she wept because of the pain in her back.

She flew past a roach, the rainbow-coloured insect’s antennae twitching curiously as she sped past it without so much as a glance. It chittered quietly, confused. She did not look back at it.

Perhaps if she had, she might have noticed the pair of wide yellow eyes peering out of the foliage. Perhaps, if she had, she might have heard the sound of long, green footsteps that set off after her.

Thirteen

SCORN

Bralston, like most wizards, resented the term ‘magic’ as it pertained to his gifts.

Magic, in the accepted application of the word, was a dismissive means of explaining the inexplicable. The word ‘magic’ was uttered, whispered and squealed at everything from stars falling across the sky to a flower