Black Halo

cautious stare, the Owauku’s incomprehensible babble. All that mattered, at that point, was her charge, her patient, her companion. At that point, she could ignore everything.

Everything except her arm.

She was too well-used to it: the aching, the burning. She could feel it coming, feel it tense, feel it hunger beneath her skin. The scream that had torn itself from her lungs had been cleverly disguised, the pain concealed beneath a command that they all leave. They might have suspected something by the second and third screams, too shrill to be commanding.

But they left, left her alone.

With him.

The arm might have been merciful in waiting until the others had gone to erupt. Or it might simply not have been able to contain itself. She didn’t care any more now than she did then; thinking on it brought far too much fear now, far too much pain then. There was no slow eating away this time; the arm simply burst into crimson, the bones black beneath the suddenly transparent red flesh, pulsating, throbbing, burning.

Hungering.

It had pulled itself of its own volition, for a reason she could not bring herself to fathom, towards Lenk. And try as she might to tell herself there was likewise no fathoming why she let her body follow its burning grasp, she had to live with the fact that, at that moment, she had simply let go.

There was no thought for what might have happened next, had her hand clenched on his throat, had he become twisted and reduced to nothing, like those who had felt the crimson touch before. There was no thought for what her god, his god or any god might have said of it. There was only pain, only hunger.

And a blessed, unconscious meal before her. A relief from pain, from the agony that racked her.

But where her hand had slid slowly and carefully towards him, his was swift and merciless. It snapped out suddenly from the sand, without a snarl or curse or even any indication that Lenk had known what was about to happen. Her body went from burning to freezing in an instant as his fingers wrapped about her throat. Her arm fell at her side limply as he opened eyes that weren’t his and spoke with a voice that belonged to someone else.

‘Do not think,’ it had said, ‘that it will ever stop if you do it.’

It could have been Lenk, she thought, probably was him. He was feverish, if not enough to cause a hallucination, and he was starved and beaten. Trauma was known to cause such changes in personality, she knew from experience, and the fact that he remembered nothing of waking up would support this. But the eerie sensation that it was something more, some madness that gripped him, gripped her, too.

Fear had made her recoil and hold her arm away from him as his slipped from her throat and he fell back into feverish slumber. Or maybe it was compassion, a sudden shock of shame that made her spare her friend. Maybe she had finally claimed some victory over the arm.

Maybe.

The pain was too intense to think, though, the burning from her arm and the cold from his grasp conspiring to plunge her into agony. There she remained, huddled against the hut’s wall, choking on her sobs so that no one outside would hear her.

The pain passed, after it had thrust her into agonised sleep and she had awoken to find her arm whole again and Denaos standing over her. She had no idea what he had seen. He stared at her with what looked like concern, but that was a lie.

It had to be.

It was greed, she was sure, the presence of an opportunity to gain an advantage over her for whatever vileness he was planning that kept him around. It was greed that made him lean down and brace her up and offer her water. It was greed that made him ask with such feigned tenderness if she was all right. It was greed that she used to justify cursing at him and driving him out again that she might tend to Lenk and go through the ordeal of forgetting everything.

She had not forgotten, of course. She never would.

She spoke of the event often, posing questions and theorising answers with brazen frequency, but never to anyone with a mouth to reply with. Any time she was alone for a moment, she asked the same questions, as she did now.

‘Why?’

And answers now, as they had then, did not come.

‘Why him?’ Her tone was soft, inquisitive; all her previous indignant, tear-choked anger had long boiled out her mouth and soaked into the earth. ‘What is it about him that you want?’

That seemed a fair question to her. It had never really sought anyone with the unerring grip that it had sought Lenk. Of course, fair or not, it didn’t answer. Perhaps it had heard that one before. Or maybe she wasn’t asking the right question. And, in its silence, she furrowed her brow as a new thought occurred to her.

‘Who sent you?’ She held her hand up to the sun, as though the light would finally deign to give her an answer she had been asking for all these years and shine through the flesh to reveal its purpose. ‘Why is it you wanted him? What did he do to …?’

And she remembered his eyes, his voice, his cold grasp. And so, she asked.

‘Did he …?’ she whispered. ‘Does he deserve it? Should he die?’

A sudden breeze struck. Clouds shifted. Branches parted. The sun shone down with more intensity than it had before, focusing a great golden eye upon her. She gasped, beholden, and stared back at the eye, unblinking.

‘Is that it?’ she whispered. ‘Is that the answer? Is what I’m meant to do with this?’ She bit her lower lip to control the tremble that racked her as she raised her head and whispered with a shrill, squeaking voice. ‘Please, I just want to-’

A shadow fell. Light died. She blinked. Giant green orbs and bright white angles assaulted her senses, narrowing and twisting into horrible shapes as greasy yellow strands dangled down and pricked at her skin.

She recognised Kataria too late. Too late to keep herself from starting and far too late to avoid the shict’s forehead as it came down upon her own with a resounding crack. She cried out, clutching her throbbing brow and scrambling to get away. She raised herself on her rear, staring at the shict, caught between shock and anger.

Kataria’s own expression seemed settled on a grating, irritating grin.

‘Hey,’ she said.

‘Why did you do that?’ Asper shrieked.

‘Do what?’

‘You headbutted me.’

‘Yeah, you looked busy.’

Asper stared intently at her. ‘How … how does that even-?’

‘You seem like you’re going to dwell on this for a while and leave me no opportunity to give you the present I brought you.’

‘What?’

The question was apparently enough of an invitation to spur the shict into action. She snapped her arm, sending a brown, multilimbed body into Asper’s lap. The priestess looked down at the gohmn, aghast; it was browned from cooking and, if the sticky substance dripping onto her legs was any indication, basted in something of origins she fiercely fought the urge to inquire over.

Instead, she merely scowled up, her distaste compounded as the shict brought a barbed roach leg to her teeth and tore a tough chunk from it.

‘Like venison,’ she said with a grin, her teeth white against the brown smear on her mouth, ‘except a tad roachier.’

‘I’m …’ ‘Leaving’ would be a good thing to say, Asper thought, or ‘furious’ or ‘about to strangle you.’ ‘Not hungry.’

‘Eat while you can,’ Kataria said. ‘You don’t know how much you’ll miss basted bug meat when there’s no room for them on the boat.’

‘There’s a boat?’ Asper asked, eyes widening. ‘Sebast! He’s all right? He’s come?’