Black Halo (43 page)

Those not ill or in exceeding poverty were doing well enough, Bralston had been told, but his concerns were not for this city and its people. He had a duty that went beyond poor fish harvests, illnesses or anything that a priest might claim to be able to cure.

They emerged from the abandoned district, setting foot on sand. Undeveloped beach, marred only by scrub grass and two small buildings stretched as far as the cliffs where the island ended entirely. Apparently, when development of Yonder had stopped, it had stopped swiftly.

‘The prisoner is in the warehouse,’ Mesri said, pointing to the closer of the two buildings. ‘I guess it’s a prison now? We had to move a few spare skiffs and a crate or two … or three. He’s an immense man. Ask the two boys we assigned to guard him if you require protection.’

‘It will not be necessary,’ Bralston said. He glanced to the more distant of the buildings, a crumbling work of stones and pillars to which a small, beaten path of haphazardly laid stones led. ‘What’s that, then?’

‘That?’ Mesri followed his gaze and sighed. ‘That is our temple.’

In that instant, as much as he might have loathed to admit it to himself, Bralston knew he liked the man. As far as priests went, it was difficult to find fault with him beyond the obvious. He was a man who clearly cared about his people; that much was obvious by the
many
delays they had suffered on their trip through the city, Mesri insisting on stopping to hear every problem and plea. He had considered them all carefully and offered each one, from a sick child to a broken net, a clear and logical answer. Never once had the man even uttered, ‘The will of the Gods.’

Bralston had suffered each delay, each problem, in silence, no matter how trivial he had considered it. But it was only now, now that he saw the crumbling, run-down temple, barely any more noticeable than the buildings of the decayed abandoned district, that he deigned to look at the man with admiration.

‘Is it not an insult to your gods that it remains in such a shape?’ he asked.

‘I wager They’d be more insulted if I used the few coins it would have taken to feed one of Their starving followers on a new rug.’

Bralston clenched his teeth behind his lips, looking thoughtful. After a moment, as if in defeat, he sighed.

‘The Venarium has a policy of paying stipends for research purposes,’ he said. ‘If we are forced to repurpose a settlement without its own standing government for our means of research’ – he paused, coughing – ‘such as studying the cause for a change in fish migrations … we are bound to offer a stipend.’

‘Such as one that might put food in hungry bellies and blankets over cold shoulders,’ Mesri replied, a smile curling beneath his moustache. ‘The offer is appreciated, Librarian.’

‘We do, of course, insist on a policy of extreme secularism,’ Bralston said, eyeing the decaying temple. ‘Given the general laxity of upkeep, though, I don’t foresee this as being too objectionable an—’

‘It is,’ Mesri answered, swift and stern. ‘The offer
was
appreciated, Librarian, but I must decline. I cannot ask the people to part with their matron.’

‘It’s a simple request,’ Bralston muttered, heat creeping into his voice. ‘Worship in your own homes, if you must. Simply keep it out of sight of the Venarium and no one needs to know. It’s a generous offer.’

‘It is, sir,’ Mesri said. ‘But I must decline, all the same. We are men of Yonder. Men of Yonder are followers of Zamanthras. She is a part of the city and us.’

‘Faith cannot feed the hungry.’

‘Money cannot define a man.’

‘So you say,’ Bralston sneered. ‘I will never understand your profession, Mesri – you or the priest who guided me here.’

‘No one mentioned a priest.’ Mesri’s brows furrowed. ‘Who was he?’

‘Evenhands. Miron Evenhands. Lord Emissary, so-called, of the Church of Talanas.’

‘Evenhands?’ Mesri’s face nearly burrowed back into his skull, so fiercely did it screw up. ‘How is that—’

‘
Mesri! Mesri!
’

The priest’s attentions were seized by the young, dark-skinned man that came barrelling out of the poor district. He did not even look at Bralston as he rushed up to the priest.

‘Another fell ill,’ the young man panted. ‘Swears it was shicts.’

‘Of course,’ Mesri sighed. ‘It’s always shicts … or ghosts … or whatever fell spirit has been thought up.’ He turned to Bralston. ‘Sir Librarian, please—’

‘Time is limited,’ the Librarian replied curtly, shoving past young man and priest alike. ‘Those endeavours that cannot be pursued must settle behind those that can.’

Mesri was calling something after him, he realised, as he walked toward the warehouse. But he shut his ears to the sound, all the same. It was foolish to have offered; a stipend would require paperwork, endorsements, evaluations. He had a job to do.

One that led him into a dark, dank place.

S
hicts were created from Riffid, the Huntress. Shicts had been birthed from Her blood, given Her voice in their ears and nothing more. Shicts were created. Shicts were born. Shicts were meant to be here on this world.

This was fact.

Naxiaw knew this.

Humans were born from no gods, despite the misguided fanaticism they tried to justify their infectious presence with. Humans, instead, began as monkeys that learned how to pick up swords. Humans adapted. Humans evolved. Humans did not belong here on this world.

This was fact.

Naxiaw was convinced of it now.

From their humble origins when the first monkey stabbed his brother and called himself human, the round-ears had shed their body hair, built houses over stone and birthed the corruptions of politics and gold and found more productive uses for their feces. They had evolved.

Logical
, Naxiaw told himself.
Sickness is a predator. It mutates, learns to resist medicine and bypass immunities to spread its infection. That the human disease should learn to become more efficient at killing and destroying should be no surprise
.

And truthfully, he admitted, when he had been brought amongst the longfaces and witnessed their brutal devastation, their efficient destruction, their utterly gleeful murder, he had not been surprised.

Shocked, of course.

Horrified, naturally.

And
, he thought as he peered through the bars of his cage,
ever more curious …

From high atop the crumbling stone ruins upon the sandy ridge that overlooked the valley in which they crawled, he watched them. For the past six days, he had studied them as they crushed the earth beneath their iron-shod feet, as they blackened the sky with their forges, as they broke their scaly, green servants with whip and blade.

Horror and repulsion for the purple-skinned brutes had long ago faded. He scolded himself now for wasting time on indulgent loathing. What he was watching was no longer something disgusting, something vicious and cruel to be loathed. What he was watching was something ominous, something miraculous, something wholly terrifying.

He had thought them to be one more aberration on an already-tainted world, one more threat for the shicts to destroy, one more disease to cure. But as he continued to watch them, to study their cruelty and monitor their rapaciousness, he realised they were no new illness. They were merely one strain of the same sickness he had been attempting to purge since he could first carry his Spokesman stick.

They might have been purple instead of pink, thicker of bone and harder of flesh, long of face and white of eye, but he recognised them all too swiftly. And the more he watched them as they spread across the island, purple patches of disease contaminating a pure and pristine land, the less ridiculous it seemed.

After all
, he reasoned,
if humans could evolve once, they could surely do it again
.

More aggressive and violent than the human strain had ever been, the longface infection continued to amaze him, even after six days of being held prisoner by them, watching them boil across the sands.

The females were the dominant infection, the true ravagers of flesh and blood. That much was obvious from watching them, tall and muscular, chewing the earth beneath their feet, staining the sand red with the blood of their slaves and themselves, filling the air with the iron challenges and grinding snarls they hurled at each other like spears.

They were the sickness that drove the green lizard-things to do what they did, the fever that boiled their minds and forced them to act in ways unwise. Under the cracks of their knotted whips and the threats from their jagged teeth, the pitiful, scaly creatures worked with broken backs and dragging feet as the females drove them forward. They hewed down the trees from the forests that flanked the beach, dragging the logs to feed the forge pits and build the great black ships that bobbed in the roiling surf.

The land was thick with iron, the sky was thick with smoke. Those females who worked the forge pits, fire-scarred and shorn-haired, relentlessly thrust and pulled glowing iron rods from the embers, tirelessly hammered them into cruel-edged wedges and vicious-tipped spikes, eagerly sharpened their edges to jagged metal teeth.

Not a grain of sand remained undisturbed amidst the activity. The disease swept across the land as the females worked tirelessly. They drilled in tight, square formations under the barking orders of their white-haired superiors. They brawled and attacked each other in impromptu displays of dominance that quickly turned fatal. They hauled the bodies of those scaled slaves too exhausted to work to a pit ringed by iron bars, tossing them in and filling the air with screaming as the denizens of the massive hole let out eerie cackles through full mouths.

And through it all, Naxiaw watched, Naxiaw studied, Naxiaw noted.

This was not the first time he had witnessed such a scene. Voracious greed, heedless industry, the smell of blood and sweat so thick the violence was a collective hunger in the belly of every female present. He had seen these sensations in the round-ears many times before, if never to such an extent.

He knew a war when he saw one.

For what, he did not know. For why, it did not matter. These things, these evolutions of disease, were preparing to spread their infection.

The sole comfort he took was in their numbers. He had counted no more than two hundred since he had first been thrown into his cage. Theirs was nothing like the teeming masses of the smaller, pinker strain.

And
, he thought as he lowered his head and raised his ears,
it falls to the shicts to make certain that they never will have such numbers
.

He closed his eyes. His ears went rigid. Through the carnage below, he attempted to hear.

It began quickly, as it always did, with a sudden awareness of sounds without meaning: feet on sand, breeze in sky, air in lungs, snarls in throats. This awareness amplified, sought specificity in noise: trees shuddering under blunted axes, black-bellied ships bobbing in the surf, muscles stretching and contorting under purple flesh.

Close to its goal, the awareness pressed further, reduced the world to nothing but those few sounds that bore significance, the essence of life. Splinters falling in soft, pattering whispers in tiny droplets of sweat-kissed blood. Breezes colliding with clouds of smoke. A crab’s carapace scratching against grains of sand as it stirred in a hibernating dream beneath the earth.

And then, silence: the sound with the most meaning, the sensation of his own mind blooming into a vast and formless flower within his head. No more sound, no more thought. The flower stretched out silently, instinctually, reaching out, muttering wordless sounds, whispering unheard speeches. Somewhere beyond his mind, he felt something stir.

The Howling had heard him.

The Howling had found him.

Had he the consciousness to feel his heart stop, he still would not have been afraid of it. The Howling had long ago ceased to be something strange and mystical, long ago ceased to even be the instinctual knowledge that all shicts shared. He had spent many years within it, listening to it, learning it. It was a part of him, as it was a part of all shicts. As he was one with the Howling, so too was he one with all shicts.

And they would hear him as they heard their own thoughts.

Emptiness passed in an instant; then his head filled. Images of sand and blood consumed him, swirled together with sea and ships, purple faces, clenching teeth, red iron, bleeding bodies, fallen trees. War, disease, mutation, danger, anger, hatred. Through these things, coursing as blood through his thoughts, his intent boiled over.

Find
.

Rescue
.

Kill
.

Harvest
.

The intent flowed across the emptiness, dew across the petals of the flower. It would reach his people, he knew: a whisper in their ears, a sudden chill down their spines as they knew what he knew in an instant. They would hear him, they would feel him, and they would come with their blood and Spokesmen and hatred and—

Wait
.