Black Halo

Two

There was no difference between the sky and the sea that Lenk could discern.

They both seemed to stretch for eternity, their horizons long having swallowed the last traces of land to transform the world into a vision of indigo. The moon took a quiet departure early, disappearing behind the curtain of clouds that slid lazily over the sky. With no yellow orb to disperse the monotony, the world was a simple, painful blue that drank all directions.

The young man closed his eyes, drawing in a breath through his nose. He smelled the rain on the breeze, the salt on the waves. Holding up his hands as though in acknowledgement for whatever god had sent him the unchanging azure that emanated around him, he let the breath trickle between his teeth.

And then, Lenk screamed.

His sword leapt to his hand in their mutual eagerness to lean over the edge of their tiny vessel. The steel’s song a humming contrast to his maddening howl, he hacked at the ocean, bleeding its endless life in frothy wounds.

‘Die, die, die, die, die!’ he screamed, driving his sword into the salt. ‘Enough! No more! I’m sick of it, you hear me?’ He cupped a hand over his mouth and shrieked. ‘Well, DO YOU?’

The water quickly settled, foam dissipating, ripples calming, leaving Lenk to glimpse himself in ragged fragments of reflections. His silver hair hung in greasy strands around a haggard face. The purple bags hanging from his eyelids began to rival the icy blue in his gaze. Lenk surveyed the pieces of a lunatic looking back at him from the water and wondered, not for the first time, if the ocean was mocking him.

No, he decided, it’s far too impassive to mock me …

How could it be anything but? After all, it didn’t know what it was requested to stop any more than Lenk did. Stop being the ocean? He had dismissed such thoughts as madness on the first day their tiny sail hung limp and impotent on its insultingly thin mast. But as the evening of the second day slid into night, it didn’t seem such an unreasonable demand.

The sea, he thought scornfully, is the one being unreasonable. I wouldn’t have to resort to violence if it would just give me some wind.

‘Hasn’t worked yet, has it?’

His eyes went wide and he had to resist hurling himself over the ledge in desperation to communicate with the suddenly talkative water. Such delusional hope lasted only a moment, as it always did, before sloughing off in great chunks to leave only twitching resentment in his scowl.

Teeth grating as he did, he turned to the creature sitting next to him with murder flashing in his scowl. She, however, merely regarded him with half-lidded green eyes and a disaffected frown. Her ears, two long and pointed things with three ragged notches running down each length, drooped beneath the feathers laced in her dirty blond hair.

‘Keep trying,’ Kataria sighed. She turned back to the same task she had been doing for the past three hours, running her fingers along the fletching of the same three arrows. ‘I’m sure it will talk back eventually.’

‘Zamanthras is as fickle as the waters she wards,’ Lenk replied, his voice like rusty door hinges. He looked at his sword thoughtfully before sheathing it on his back. ‘Maybe she needs a sacrifice to turn her favour toward us.’

‘Don’t let me stop you from hurling yourself in,’ she replied without looking up.

‘At least I’m doing something.’

‘Attempting to eviscerate the ocean?’ She tapped the head of an arrow against her chin thoughtfully. ‘That’s something insane, maybe. You’re just going to open your stitches doing that.’ Her ears twitched, as though they could hear the sinewy threads stretching in his leg. ‘How is your wound, anyway?’

He attempted to hide the wince of pain that shot up through his thigh at the mention of the wicked, sewn-up gash beneath his trousers. The agony of the injury itself was kept numb through occasional libations of what remained of their whisky, but every time he ran his fingers against the stitches, any time his companions inquired after his health, the visions would come flooding back.

Teeth. Darkness. Six golden eyes flashing in the gloom. Laughter echoing off stone, growing quiet under shrieking carnage and icicles hissing through his head. They would fade eventually, but they were always waiting, ready to come back the moment he closed his eyes.

‘It’s fine,’ he muttered.

Her ears twitched again, hearing the lie in his voice. He disregarded it, knowing she had only asked the question to deflect him. He drew in his breath through his teeth, tensing as he might for a battle. She heard this, too, and narrowed her eyes.

‘You should rest,’ she said.

‘I don’t want-’

‘In silence,’ she interrupted. ‘Talking doesn’t aid the healing process.’

‘What would a shict know of healing beyond chewing grass and drilling holes in skulls?’ he snapped, his ire giving his voice swiftness. ‘If you’re so damn smart-’

Her upper lip curled backwards in a sneer, the sudden exposure of her unnervingly prominent canines cutting him short. He cringed at the sight of her teeth that were as much a testament to her savage heritage as the feathers in her hair and the buckskin leathers she wore.

‘What I mean is you could be doing something other than counting your precious little arrows,’ he offered, attempting to sound remorseful and failing, if the scowl she wore was any indication. ‘You could use them to catch us a fish or something.’ Movement out over the sea caught his eye and he gestured toward it. ‘Or one of those.’

They had been following the vessel for the past day: many-legged insects that slid gracefully across the waters. Dredgespiders, he had heard them called — so named for the nets of wispy silk that trailed from their upraised, bulbous abdomens. Such a net would undoubtedly brim with shrimp and whatever hapless fish wound up under the arachnid’s surface-bound path, and the promise of such a bounty was more than enough to make mouths water at the sight of the grey-carapaced things.

They always drifted lazily out of reach, multiple eyes occasionally glancing over to the vessel and glistening with mocking smugness unbefitting a bug.

‘Not a chance,’ Kataria muttered, having seen that perverse pride in their eyes and having discounted the idea.

‘Well, pray for something else, then,’ he growled. ‘Pray to whatever savage little god sends your kind food.’

She turned a glower on him, her eyes seeming to glow with a malevolent green. ‘Riffid is a goddess that helps shicts who help themselves. The day She lifts a finger to help a whiny, weeping little round-ear is the day I renounce Her.’ She snorted derisively and turned back to her missiles. ‘And these are my last three arrows. I’m saving them for something special.’

‘What use could they possibly be?’

‘This one’ — she fingered her first arrow — ‘is for if I ever do see a fish that I would like to eat by myself. And this …’ She brushed the second one. ‘This one is for me to be buried with if I die.’

He glanced at the third arrow, its fletching ragged and its head jagged.

‘What about that one?’ Lenk asked.

Kataria eyed the missile, then turned a glance to Lenk. There was nothing behind her eyes that he could see: no hatred or irritation, no bemusement for his question. She merely stared at him with a fleeting, thoughtful glance as she let the feathered end slide between her thumb and forefinger.

‘Something special,’ she answered simply, then turned away.

Lenk narrowed his eyes through the silence hanging between them.

‘And what,’ he said softly, ‘is that supposed to mean?’

There was something more behind her eyes; there always was. And whatever it was usually came hurtling out of her mouth on sarcasm and spittle when he asked such questions of her.

Usually.

For the moment, she simply turned away, taking no note of his staring at her. He had rested his eyes upon her more frequently, taking in the scope of her slender body, the silvery hue pale skin left exposed by a short leather tunic took on through the moonlight. Each time he did, he expected her ears to twitch as she heard his eyes shifting in their sockets, and it would be his turn to look away as she stared at him curiously.

In the short year they had known each other, much of their rapport had come through staring and the awkward silences that followed. The silence she offered him now, however, was anything but awkward. It had purpose behind it, a solid wall of silence that she had painstakingly erected and that he was not about to tear down.

Not with his eyeballs alone, anyway.

‘Look,’ he said, sighing. ‘I don’t know what it is about me that’s got you so angry these days, but we’re not going to get past it if we keep-’

If her disinterested stare didn’t suggest that she wasn’t listening, the fact that the shict’s long ears suddenly and swiftly folded over themselves like blankets certainly did.

Lenk sighed, rubbing his temples. He could feel his skin begin to tighten around his skull and knew full well that a headache was brewing as surely as the rain in the air. Such pains were coming more frequently now; from the moment he woke they tormented him well into his futile attempts to sleep.

Unsurprisingly, his companions did little to help. No, he thought as he looked down the deck to the swaddled bundle underneath the rudder-seat at the boat’s rear, but I know what will help …

‘Pointless.’

Gooseflesh formed on his bicep.

‘The book only corrupts, but even that is for naught. You can’t be corrupted.’ A chill crept down Lenk’s spine in harmony with the voice whispering in his head. ‘We can’t be corrupted.’

He drew in a deep breath, cautiously exhaling over the side of the ship that none might see the fact that his breath was visible even in the summer warmth. Or perhaps he was imagining that, too.

The voice was hard to ignore, and with it, it was hard for Lenk to convince himself that it was his imagination speaking. The fact that he continued to feel cold despite the fact that his companions all sweated grievously didn’t do much to aid him, either.

‘A question.’

Don’t answer it, Lenk urged himself mentally. Ignore it.

‘Too late,’ the voice responded to his thoughts, ‘but this is a good one. Speak, what does it matter what the shict thinks of us? What changes?’

Ignore it. He shut his eyes. Ignore it, ignore it, ignore it.

‘That never works, you know. She is fleeting. She lacks purpose. They all do. Our cause is grander than they can even comprehend. We don’t need them. We can finish this ourselves, we can … Are you listening?’

Lenk was trying not to. He stared at the bundle beneath the bench, yearning to tear the pages free from their woolly tomb and seek the silence within their confines.

‘Don’t,’ the voice warned.

Lenk felt the chill envelop his muscles, something straining to keep him seated, keep him listening. But he gritted his teeth, pulled himself from the ship’s edge.

Before he knew what was happening, he was crawling over Kataria as though she weren’t even there, not heeding the glare she shot him. She didn’t matter now. No one else did. Now, he only needed to get the book, to silence the voice. He could worry about everything else later. There would be time enough later.

‘Fine,’ the voice muttered in response to his thoughts. ‘We speak later, then.’

Ignore it, he told himself. You can ignore it now. You don’t need it now. All you need is …

That thought drifted off into the fog of ecstasy that clouded his mind as he reached under the deck, fingers quivering. It wasn’t until he felt his shoulder brush against something hard that he noticed the two massive red legs at either side of his head.

Coughing a bit too fervently to appear nonchalant, he rose up, peering over the leather kilt the appendages grew from. A pair of black eyes stared back at him down a red, leathery snout. Ear-frills fanned out in unambiguous displeasure beneath a pair of menacing curving horns. Gariath’s lips peeled backwards to expose twin rows of teeth.

‘Oh … there you are,’ Lenk said sheepishly. ‘I was … just …’

‘Tell me,’ the dragonman grunted. ‘Do you suppose there’s anything you could say while looking up a Rhega’s kilt that would make him not shove a spike of timber up your nose?’

Lenk blinked.

‘I … uh … suppose not.’

‘Glad we agree.’

Gariath’s arm, while thick as a timber spike, was not nearly as fatal and only slightly less painful as the back of his clawed hand swung up to catch Lenk at the jaw. The young man collapsed backward, granted reprieve from the voice by the sudden violent ringing in his head. He sprawled out on the deck, looking up through swimming vision into a skinny face that regarded him with momentary concern.

‘Do I really want to know what might have driven you to go sticking your head between a dragonman’s legs?’ Dreadaeleon asked, cocking a black eyebrow.

‘Are you the sort of gentleman who is open-minded?’ Lenk groaned, rubbing his jaw.

‘Not to that degree, no,’ he replied, burying his boyish face back into a book that looked positively massive against his scrawny, coat-clad form.

From the deck, Lenk’s eyes drifted from his companion to the boat’s limp sail. He blinked, dispelling the bleariness clinging to his vision.

‘It may just be the concussion talking,’ he said to his companion, ‘but why is it we’re still bobbing in the water like chum?’

‘The laws of nature are harsh,’ Dreadaeleon replied, turning a page. ‘If you’d like that translated into some metaphor involving fickle, fictional gods, I’m afraid you’d have to consult someone else.’

‘What I mean to say,’ Lenk said, pulling himself up, ‘is that you can just wind us out of here, can’t you?’

The boy looked up from his book, blinked.

‘“Wind us out of here.”’

‘Yeah, you know, use your magic to-’

‘I’m aware of your implication, yes. You want me to artificially inflate the sails and send us on our way.’

‘Right.’

‘And I want you to leave me alone.’ He tucked his face back in the pages. ‘Looks like we’re all unhappy today.’

‘You’ve done it before,’ Lenk muttered.

‘Magic isn’t an inexhaustible resource. All energy needs something to burn, and I’m little more than kindling.’ The boy tilted his nose up in a vague pretext of scholarly thought.

‘Then what the hell did you take that stone for?’ Lenk thrust a finger at the chipped red gem hanging from the boy’s neck. ‘You said the netherlings used it to avoid the physical cost of magic back at Irontide, right?’

‘I did. And that’s why I’m not using it,’ Dreadaeleon said. ‘All magic has a cost. If something negates that cost, it’s illegal and thus unnatural.’

‘But I’ve seen you use-’

‘What you saw,’ the boy snapped, ‘was me using a brain far more colossal than yours to discern the nature of an object that could very well make your head explode. Trust me when I say that if I “wind us out” now, I won’t be able to do anything later.’

‘The only thing we might possibly need you to do later is serve as an impromptu anchor,’ Lenk growled. ‘Is it so hard to just do what I ask?’

‘You’re not asking, you’re telling,’ Dreadaeleon replied. ‘If you were asking, you’d have accepted my answer as the decisive end to an argument between a man who is actually versed in the laws of magic enough to know what he’s talking about and a bark-necked imbecile who’s driven to desperation by his conflicts with a mule-eared savage to attempt to threaten the former man, who also has enough left in him to incinerate the latter man with a few harsh words and a flex of practised fingers, skinny they may be.’

The boy paused, drew in a deep breath.

‘So shut your ugly face,’ he finished.

Lenk blinked, recoiling from the verbal assault. Sighing, he rubbed his temples and fought the urge to look between Gariath’s legs again.

‘You have a point, I’m sure,’ he said, ‘but try to think of people besides yourself and myself. If we don’t reach Teji by tomorrow morning, we are officially out of time.’

‘So we don’t get paid in time,’ Dreadaeleon said, shrugging. ‘Or don’t get paid at all. Gold doesn’t buy knowledge.’

‘It buys women with knowledge,’ another voice chirped from the prow.

Both of them turned to regard Denaos, inconsiderately long-legged and slim body wrapped in black leather. He regarded them back, a crooked grin under sweat-matted reddish hair.

‘The kind of knowledge that involves saliva, sweat and sometimes a goat, depending on where you go,’ he said.

‘A lack of attachment to gold is an admirable trait to be nurtured and admired,’ Asper said from beside him, ‘not met with advice on whoremongering.’

Denaos’ scowl met the priestess’s impassively judgemental gaze. She brushed his scorn off like snow from her shoulders as she tucked her brown hair behind a blue bandana. Her arms folded over her blue-robed chest as she glanced from Denaos to Dreadaeleon.

‘Don’t let it bother you, Dread,’ she said, offering a rather modest smile. ‘If we don’t make it, what does it matter if we go another few weeks without bathing?’ She sighed, tugging at the rather confining neck of her robes to expose a bit of sweat-kissed flesh.

The widening of the boy’s eyes was impossible to miss, as was the swivel of his gaze to the aghast expression Asper wore. Powerful as the boy might be, he was still a boy, and as large as his brain was, Lenk could hear the lurid fantasies running wild through his skull. Asper’s movement had sparked something within the boy that not even years of wizardly training could penetrate.

A smirk that was at once both sly and vile crossed Lenk’s face.

‘Think of Asper,’ he all but whispered.

‘Huh? What?’ Dreadaeleon blinked as though he were emerging from a trance, colour quickly filling his slender face as he swallowed hard. ‘What … what about her?’

‘You can’t think she’s too comfortable here, can you?’

‘None … none of us are comfortable,’ the boy stammered back, intent on hiding more than one thing as he crossed his legs. ‘It’s just … just an awkward situation.’

‘True, but Asper’s possibly the only decent one out of us. After all, she gave up her share of the reward, thinking that the deed we’re doing is enough.’ Lenk shook his head at her. ‘I mean, she deserves better, doesn’t she?’

‘She … does,’ Dreadaeleon said, loosening the collar of his coat. ‘But the laws … I mean, they’re …’

Lenk looked up, noting the morbid fascination with which Denaos watched the unfurling discomfort in the boy. A smile far more unpleasant than his gaze crept across his face as the two men shared a discreet and wholly wicked nod between them.

‘Give me your bandana,’ Denaos said, turning towards Asper.

‘What?’ She furrowed her brow. ‘Why?’

‘I smudged the map. I need to clean it.’ He held out his hand expectantly, batting eyelashes. ‘Please?’

The priestess pursed her lips, as though unsure, before sighing in resignation and reaching up. Her robe pressed a little tighter against her chest. Dreadaeleon’s eyes went wider, threatening to leap from his skull. Her collar, opened slightly more than modesty would allow at the demands of the heat, slipped open a little to expose skin glistening with sweat. The fantasies thundered through Dreadaeleon’s head with enough force to cause his head to rattle.

She undid the bandana, letting brown locks fall down in a cascade, a single strand lying on her breasts, an imperfection begging for practised, skinny fingers to rectify it.

Lenk watched the reddening of the boy’s face with growing alarm. Dreadaeleon hadn’t so much as breathed since Denaos made his request, his body so rigid as to suggest that rigour had set in before he could actually die.

‘So … you’ll do it, right?’ Lenk whispered.

‘Yes,’ the boy whispered, breathless, ‘just … just give me a few moments.’

Lenk glanced at the particular rigidity with which the wizard laid his book on his lap. ‘Take your time.’ He discreetly turned away, hiding the overwhelming urge to wash apparent on his face.

When he set his hand down into a moist puddle, the urge swiftly became harsh enough to make the drowning seem a very sensible option. He brought up a glistening hand and stared at it curiously, furrowing his brow. He was not the only one to stare, however.

‘Who did it this time?’ Denaos growled. ‘We have rules for this sort of vulgar need and all of them require you to go over the side.’

‘No,’ Lenk muttered, sniffing the salt on his fingers. ‘It’s a leak.’

‘Well, obviously it’s a leak,’ Denaos said, ‘though I’ve a far less gracious term for it.’

‘We’re sinking,’ Kataria muttered, her ears unfolding. She glanced at the boat’s side, the water flowing through a tiny gash like blood through a wound. She turned a scowl up at Lenk. ‘I thought you fixed this.’

‘Of course, she’ll talk to me when she has something to complain about,’ the young man muttered through his teeth. He turned around to meet her scowl with one of his own. ‘I did, back on Ktamgi. Carpentry isn’t an exact science, you know. Accidents happen.’

‘Let’s be calm here, shall we?’ Asper held her hands up for peace. ‘Shouldn’t we be thinking of ways to keep the sea from murdering us first?’

‘I can help!’ Dreadaeleon appeared to be ready to leap to his feet, but with a mindful cough, thought better of it. ‘That is, I can stop the leak. Just … just give me a bit.’

He flipped through his book diligently, past the rows of arcane, incomprehensible sigils, to a series of blank, bone-white pages. With a wince that suggested it hurt him more than the book to do so, he ripped one of them from the heavy tome. Swiftly shutting it and reattaching it to the chain that hung from his belt, he crawled over to the gash.

All eyes stared with curiosity as the boy knelt over the gash and brought his thumb to his teeth. With a slightly less than heroic yelp, he pressed the bleeding digit against the paper and hastily scrawled out some intricate crimson sign.

‘Oh, now you’ll do something magical?’ Lenk threw his hands up.

Dreadaeleon, his brow furrowed and ears shut to whatever else his companion might have said, placed the square of paper against the ship’s wound. Muttering words that hurt to listen to, he ran his unbloodied fingers over the page. In response, its stark white hue took on a dull azure glow before shifting to a dark brown. There was the sound of drying, snapping, creaking, and when it was over, a patch of fresh wood lay where the hole had been.

‘How come you never did that before?’ Kataria asked, scratching her head.

‘Possibly because this isn’t ordinary paper and I don’t have much of it,’ the boy replied, running his hands down the page. ‘Possibly because it’s needlessly taxing for such a trivial chore. Or, possibly, because I feared the years it took me to understand the properties of it would be reduced to performing menial carpentry chores for nitwits.’ He looked up, sneered. ‘Pick one.’

‘You did that … with paper?’ Asper did not conceal her amazement. ‘Incredible.’

‘Well, not paper, no.’ Dreadaeleon looked up, beaming like a puppy pissing on the grass. ‘Merroscrit.’

‘What?’ Denaos asked, face screwing up.

‘Merroscrit. Wizard paper, essentially.’

‘Like the paper wizards use?’

‘No. Well, yes, we use it. But it’s also made out of wizards.’ His smile got bigger, not noticing Asper’s amazement slowly turning to horror. ‘See, when a wizard dies, his body is collected by the Venarium, who then slice him up and harvest him. His bones are carefully dried, sliced off bit by bit, and sewn together as merroscrit. The latent Venarie in his corpse allows it to conduct magic, mostly mutative magic, like I just did. It requires a catalyst, though, in this case’ — he held up his thumb — ‘blood! See, it’s really … um … it’s …’

Asper’s frown had grown large enough to weigh her face down considerably, its size rivalled only by that of her shock-wide eyes. Dreadaeleon’s smile vanished, and he looked down bashfully.

‘It’s … it’s neat,’ he finished sheepishly. ‘We usually get them after the Decay.’

‘The what?’

‘The Decay. Magical disease that breaks down the barriers between Venarie and the body. It claims most wizards and leaves their bodies brimming with magic to be made into merroscrit and wraithcloaks and the like. We waste nothing.’

‘I see.’ Asper twitched, as though suddenly aware of her own expression. ‘Well … do all wizards get this … posthumous honour? Don’t some of them want the Gods honoured at their funeral?’

‘Well, not really,’ Dreadaeleon replied, scratching the back of his neck. ‘I mean, there are no gods.’ He paused, stuttered. ‘I–I mean, for wizards … We don’t … we don’t believe in them. I mean, they aren’t there, anyway, but we don’t believe in them, so … ah …’

Asper’s face went blank at the boy’s sheepishness. She seemed to no longer stare at him, but through him, through the wood of the ship and the waves of the sea. Her voice was as distant as her gaze when she whispered.

‘I see.’

And she remained that way, taking no notice of Dreadaeleon’s stammering attempts to save face, nor of Denaos’ curious raise of his brow. The rogue’s own stare contrasted hers with a scrutinizing, uncomfortable closeness.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asked.

‘What?’ She turned on him, indignant. ‘Nothing!’

‘Had I said anything remotely similar to the blasphemies that just dribbled out his craw, you’d have sixty sermons ready to crack my skull open with and forty lectures to offer my leaking brains.’

His gaze grew intense as she turned away from him. In the instant their eyes met as his advanced and hers retreated, something flashed behind both their gazes.

‘Asper,’ he whispered, ‘what happened to you in Irontide?’

She met his eyes, stared at him with the same distance she had stared through the boat.

‘Nothing.’

‘Liar.’

‘You would know, wouldn’t you.’

‘Well, then.’ Lenk interrupted rogue, priestess and wizard in one clearing of his throat. ‘If we’re spared the threat of drowning, perhaps we can figure out how to move on from here before we’re left adrift and empty-handed tomorrow morning.’

‘To do that, we’d need to know which direction we were heading.’ She turned and stared hard at Denaos, a private, unspoken warning carried in her eyes. ‘And it wasn’t my job to do that.’

‘One might wonder what your job is if you’ve given up preaching,’ the rogue muttered. He unfolded the chart and glanced over it with a passing interest. ‘Huh … it’s easier than I was making it seem. We are currently …’ He let his finger wander over the chart, then stabbed at a point. ‘Here, in Westsea.

‘So, if we know that Teji is northwest, then we simply go north from Westsea.’ He scratched his chin with an air of pondering. ‘Yes … it’s simple, see. In another hour, we should see Reefshore on our left; then we’ll pass close to Silverrock, and cross over the mouth of Ripmaw.’ He folded up the map and smiled. ‘We’ll be there by daylight.’

‘What?’ Lenk furrowed his brow. ‘That can’t be right.’

‘Who’s the navigator here?’

‘You’re not navigating. Those aren’t even real places. You’re just throwing two words together.’

‘Am not,’ Denaos snapped. ‘Just take my word for it, if you ever want to see Teji.’

‘I’d rather take the map’s word for it,’ Asper interjected.

Her hand was swifter than her voice, and she snatched the parchment from the rogue’s fingers. Angling herself to hold him off with one hand while she unfurled the other, she ignored his protests and held the map up to her face.

When it came down, she was a twisted knot of red ire.

The map fluttered to the ground, exposing to all curious eyes a crude drawing of what appeared to be a woman clad in robes with breasts and mouth both far bigger than her head. The words spewing from its mouth: ‘Blargh, blargh, Talanas, blargh, blargh, Denaos stop having fun,’ left little wonder who it was intended to portray.

Denaos, for his part, merely shrugged.

‘This is what you’ve been doing this whole time?’ Asper demanded, giving him a harsh shove. ‘Doodling garbage while you’re supposed to be plotting a course?’

‘Who among us actually expected a course to be plotted? Look around you!’ The rogue waved his hands. ‘Nothing but water as far as the eye can see! How the hell am I supposed to know where anything is without a landmark?’

‘You said-’

‘I said I could read charts, not plot courses.’

‘I suppose we should have known you would do something like this.’ She snarled, hands clenching into fists. ‘When was the last time you offered to help anyone and not either had some ulterior motive or failed completely at it?’

‘This isn’t the time or the place,’ Kataria said, sighing. ‘Figure out your petty little human squabbles on your own time. I want to leave.’

‘Disagreements are a natural part of anyone’s nature.’ Lenk stepped in, eyes narrowed. ‘Not just human. You’d know that if you were two steps above an animal instead of one.’

‘Slurs. Lovely.’ Kataria growled.

‘As though you’ve never slurred humans before? You do it twice before you piss in the morning!’

‘It says something that you’re concerned about what I do when I piss,’ she retorted, ‘but I don’t even want to think about that.’ She turned away from him, running hands down her face. ‘This is why we need to get off this stupid boat.’

They’re close to a fight, Gariath thought from the boat’s gunwale.

The dragonman observed his companions in silence as he had since they had left the island of Ktamgi two days ago. Three days before that, he would have been eager for them to fight, eager to see them spill each other’s blood. It would have been a good excuse to get up and join them, to show them how to fight.

If he was lucky, he might have even accidentally killed one of them.

‘Why? Because we’re arguing?’ Lenk spat back. ‘You could always just fold your damn ears up again if you didn’t want to listen to me.’

Now, he was content to simply sit, holding the boat’s tiny rudder. It was far more pleasant company. The rudder was constant, the rudder was quiet. The rudder was going nowhere.

‘Why couldn’t you just have said you didn’t know how to plot courses?’ Asper roared at Denaos. ‘Why can’t you just be honest for once in your life?’

‘I’ll start when you do,’ Denaos replied.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

The humans had their own problems, he supposed: small, insignificant human problems that teemed in numbers as large as their throbbing, populous race. They would be solved by yelling, like all human problems were. They would yell, forget that problem, remember another one later, then yell more.

The Rhega had one problem.

One problem, he thought, in numbers as small as the one Rhega left.

‘Because we shouldn’t be arguing,’ Kataria retorted. ‘I shouldn’t feel the need to argue with you. I shouldn’t feel the need to talk to you! I should want to keep being silent, but-’

‘But what?’ Lenk snapped back.

‘But I’m standing here yelling at you, aren’t I?’

Things had happened on Ktamgi, he knew. He could smell the changes on them. Fear and suspicion between the tall man and the tall woman. Sweat and tension from the pointy-eared human and Lenk. Desire oozed from the skinny one in such quantities as to threaten to choke him on its stink.

‘It’s supposed to mean exactly what it does mean,’ Denaos spat back. ‘What happened on Ktamgi that’s got you all silent and keeping your pendant hidden?’

‘I’ve got it right here,’ Asper said, holding up the symbol of Talanas’ Phoenix in a manner that was less proof and more an attempt to drive the rogue away like an unclean thing.

‘Today, you do, and you haven’t stopped rubbing it since you woke up.’ Denaos’ brow rose as the colour faded from her face. ‘With,’ he whispered, ‘your left hand.’

‘Shut up, Denaos,’ she hissed.

‘Not just accidentally, either.’

‘Shut up!’

‘But you’re right-handed, which leads me to ask again. What happened in Irontide?’

‘She said,’ came Dreadaeleon’s soft voice accompanied by a flash of crimson in his scowl, ‘to shut up.’

Their problems would come and go. His would not. They would yell. They would fight. When they were tired of that, they would find new humans to yell at.

There were no more Rhega to yell at. There never would be. Grahta had told him as much on Ktamgi.

You can’t come.

Grahta’s voice still rang in his head, haunting him between breaths. The image of him lurked behind his blinking eyes. He did not forget them, he did not want to forget them, but he could only hold them in his mind for so long before they vanished.

As Grahta had vanished into a place where Gariath could not follow.

‘It’s not like this is exactly easy for me, either,’ Lenk snapped back.

‘How? How is this not easy for you? What do you even do?’ Kataria snarled. ‘Sit here and occasionally stare at me? Look at me?’

‘Oh, it’s all well and good for you to-’

‘Let. Me. Finish.’ Her teeth were rattling in her skull now, grinding against each other with such ferocity that they might shatter into powder. ‘If you stare, if you speak to me, you’re still human. You’re still what you are. If I stare at you, if I speak to you, what am I?’

‘Same as you always were.’

‘No, I’m not. If I feel the need to stare at you, Lenk, if I want to talk to you, I’m not a shict anymore. And the more I want to talk to you, the more I want to feel like a shict again. The more I want to feel like myself.’

‘And you can only do that by ignoring me?’

‘No.’ Her voice was a thunderous roar now, cutting across the sea. ‘I can only do that by killing you.’

The wind changed. Gariath could smell the humans change with it. He heard them fall silent at the pointy-eared one’s voice, of course, saw their eyes turn to her, wide with horror. Noise and sight were simply two more ways for humans to deceive themselves, though. Scent could never be disguised.

An acrid stench of shock. Sour, befouled fear. And then, a brisk, crisp odour of hatred. From both of them. And then, bursting from all the humans like pus from a boil, that most common scent of confusion.

His interest lasted only as long as it took for him to remember that humans had a way of simplifying such complex emotional perfumes to one monosyllabic grunt of stupidity.

‘What?’ Lenk asked.

Whatever happened next was beyond Gariath’s interest. He quietly turned his attentions to the sea. The scent of salt was a reprieve from the ugly stenches surrounding the humans, but not what he desired to smell again. He closed his eyes, let his nostrils flare, drinking in the air, trying to find the scent that filled his nostrils when he held two wailing pups in his arms, when he had mated for the first time, when he had begged Grahta not to go, begged to follow the pup.

He sought the scent of memory.

And smelled nothing but salt.

He had tried, for days now he had tried. Days had gone by, days would go by forever.

And the Rhega’s problem would not change.

You cannot go, he told himself, and the thought crossed his mind more than once. He could not go, could not follow his people, the pups, into the afterlife. But he could not stay here. He could not remain in a world where there was nothing but the stink of …

His nostrils flickered. Eyes widened slightly. He turned his gaze out to the sea and saw the dredgespider herd scatter suddenly, skimming across the water into deeper, more concealing shadows.

That, he thought, is not the smell of fear.

He rose up, his long red tail twitching on the deck, his bat-like wings folding behind his back. On heavy feet, he walked across the deck, through the awkward, hateful silence and stench surrounding the humans, his eyes intent on the side of the tiny vessel. The tall, ugly one in black, made no movement to step aside.

‘What’s the matter with you, reptile?’ he asked with a sneer.

Gariath’s answer was the back of his clawed hand against the rogue’s jaw and a casual step over his collapsed form. Ignoring the scowl shot at his back, Gariath leaned down over the side of the boat, nostrils twitching, black eyes searching the water.

‘What … is it?’ Lenk asked, leaning down beside the dragonman.

Lenk was less stupid than the others by only a fraction, Gariath tolerated the silver-haired human with a healthy disrespect that he carried for all humans, nothing personal. The dragonman glowered over the water. Lenk stepped beside him and followed his gaze.

‘It’s coming,’ he grunted.

‘What is?’ Kataria asked, ears twitching.

Not an inch of skin was left without gooseflesh when Gariath looked up and smiled, without showing teeth.

‘Fate,’ he answered.

Before anyone could even think how to interpret his statement, much less respond to it, the boat shuddered. Lenk hurled himself to the other railing, eyes wide and hand shaking.

‘Sword,’ he said. ‘Sword! Sword! Where’s my sword?’ His hand apparently caught up with his mind as he reached up and tore the blade from the sheath on his back. ‘Grab your weapons! Hurry! Hurry!’

‘What is it?’ Kataria asked, her hands already rifling through the bundle that held her bow.

‘I … was looking into the water.’ Lenk turned to her. ‘And … it looked back.’

It took only a few moments for the bundle to lie open and empty as hands snatched up weapons. Lenk’s sword was flashing in his hand, Kataria’s arrow drawn back, Denaos’ knives in his hand and Dreadaeleon standing over Asper, his eyes pouring the crimson magic that flowed through him.

Only Gariath stood unconcerned, his smile still soft and gentle across his face.

The boat rocked slightly, bobbing with the confusion of their own hasty movements. The sea muttered its displeasure at their sudden franticness, hissing angrily as the waves settled. The boat bobbed for an anxiety-filled eternity, ears twitching, steel flashing, eyes darting.

Several moments passed. An errant bubble found its way to the surface and sizzled. Denaos stared at it, blinked.

‘What?’ he asked. ‘That’s it?’

And then the sea exploded.

The water split apart with a bestial howl, its frothy life erupting in a great white gout as something tremendous rose to scrape at the night sky. Its wake tossed the boat back, knocking the companions beneath a sea of froth. Only Gariath remained standing, still smiling, closing his eyes as the water washed over him.

Dripping and half-blind with froth, Lenk pulled his wet hair like curtains from his eyes. His vision was blurred, and through the salty haze he swore he could make out something immense and black with glowing yellow eyes.

The Deepshriek, he thought in a panic, it’s come back. Of course it’s come back.

‘No,’ the voice made itself known inside his head. ‘It fears us. This … is …’

‘Something worse,’ he finished as he looked up … and up and up.

The great serpent rose over the boat, a column of sinew and sea. Its body, blue and deep, rippled with such vigour as to suggest the sea itself had come alive. Its swaying, trembling pillar came to a crown at a menacing, serpentine head, a long crested fin running from its skull to its back and frill-like whiskers swaying from its jowls.

The sound it emitted could not be described as a growl, but more like a purr that echoed off of nothing and caused the waters to quake. Its yellow eyes, bright and sinister as they might have appeared, did not look particularly malicious. As it loosed another throat-born, reverberating noise, Lenk was half-tempted to regard it as something like a very large kitten.

Right. A kitten, he told himself, a large kitten … with a head the size of the boat. Oh, Gods, we’re all going to die.

‘What is it?’ Asper asked, her whisper barely heard above its song-like noise.

‘Captain Argaol told us about it before, didn’t he?’ Denaos muttered, sinking low. ‘He gave it a name … told us something else about it. Damn, what did he say? What did he call it?’

‘An Akaneed,’ Dreadaeleon replied. ‘He called it an Akaneed …’

‘In mating season,’ Kataria finished, eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t make any sudden moves. Don’t make any loud noises.’ She turned her emerald scowl upward. ‘Gariath, get down or it’ll kill us all!’

‘What makes you so sure it won’t kill us now?’ Lenk asked.

‘Learn something about beasts, you nit,’ she hissed. ‘The little ones always want flesh. There’s not enough flesh around for this thing to get that big.’ She dared a bit of movement, pointing at its head. ‘Look. Do you see a mouth? It might not even have teeth.’

Apparently, Lenk thought, the Akaneed did have a sense of irony. For as it opened its rather prominent mouth to expose a rather sharp pair of needlelike teeth, the sound it emitted was nothing at all like any kitten should ever make.

‘Learn something about beasts,’ he muttered, ‘indeed. Or were you hoping it had teeth so it would kill me and save you the difficulty?’

Her hand flashed out and he cringed, his hand tightening on his sword in expectation of a blow. It was with nearly as much alarm, however, that he looked down to see her gloved hand clenching his own, wrapping her fingers about it. His confusion only deepened as he looked up and saw her staring at him, intently, emerald eyes glistening.

‘Not now,’ she whispered, ‘please not now.’

Baffled to the point of barely noticing the colossal shadow looming over him, Lenk’s attention was nevertheless drawn to the yellow eyes that regarded him curiously. It seemed, at that moment, that the creature’s stare was reserved specifically for him, its echoing keen directing incomprehensible queries to him alone.

Even as a distant rumble of thunder lit the skies with the echoes of lightning and split the sky open for a light rain to begin falling over the sea, the Akaneed remained unhurried. It continued to sway; its body rippled with the droplets that struck it, and its eyes glowed with increasing intensity through the haze of the shower.

‘It’s hesitating,’ Lenk whispered, unsure what to make of the creature’s swaying attentions.

‘It’ll stay that way,’ Kataria replied. ‘It’s curious, not hungry. If it wanted to kill us, it would have attacked already. Now all we need to do is wait and-’

The sound of wood splitting interrupted her. Eyes turned, horrified and befuddled at once, to see Gariath’s thick muscles tensing before the boat’s tiny mast. With a grunt and a sturdy kick, he snapped the long pole from its base and turned its splintered edge up. Balancing it on his shoulder, he walked casually to the side of the boat.

‘What are you doing?’ Lenk asked, barely mindful of his voice. ‘You can’t fight it!’

‘I’m not going to fight it,’ the dragonman replied simply. He affixed his black eyes upon Lenk, his expression grim for but a moment before he smiled. ‘A human with a name will always find his way back home, Lenk.’

‘Told you we should have left them,’ the voice chimed in.

The dragonman swept one cursory gaze over the others assembled, offering nothing in the rough clench of his jaw and the stern set of his scaly brow. No excuses, no apologies, nothing but acknowledgement.

And then, Gariath threw.

Their hands came too late to hold back his muscular arm. Their protests were too soft to hinder the flight of the splintered mast. It shrieked through the air, its tattered sail wafting like a banner as it sped toward the Akaneed, who merely cocked its head curiously.

Then screamed.

Its massive head snapped backward, the mast jutting from its face. Its pain lasted for an agonised, screeching eternity. When it brought its head down once more, it regarded the companions through a yellow eye stained red, opened its jaws and loosed a rumble that sent torrents of mist from its gaping maw.

‘Damn it,’ Lenk hissed, ‘damn it, damn it, damn it.’ He glanced about furtively, his sword suddenly seeming so small, so weak. Dreadaeleon didn’t look any better as the boy stared up with quaking eyes, but he would have to do. ‘Dread!’

The boy looked at him, unblinking, mouth agape.

‘Get up here!’ Lenk roared, waving madly. ‘Kill it!’

‘What? How?’

‘DO IT.’

Whether it was the tone of the young man or the roar of the great serpent that drove him to his feet, Dreadaeleon had no time to know. He scrambled to the fore of the boat, unhindered, unfazed even as Gariath looked at him with a bemused expression. The boy’s hand trembled as he raised it before him like a weapon; his lips quivered as he began to recite the words that summoned the azure electricity to the tip of his finger.

Lenk watched with desperate fear, his gaze darting between the wizard and the beast. Each time he turned back to Dreadaeleon, something new looked out of place on the wizard. The crimson energy pouring from his eyes flickered like a candle in a breeze; he stuttered and the electricity crackled and sputtered erratically on his skin.

It was not just fear that hindered the boy.

‘He is weak,’ the voice hissed inside Lenk’s head. ‘Your folly was in staying with them for this long.’

‘Shut up,’ Lenk muttered in return.

‘Do you think we’ll die from this? Rest easy. They die. You don’t.’

‘Shut up!’

‘I won’t let you.’

‘Shut-’

There was the sound of shrieking, of cracking. Dreadaeleon staggered backward, as if struck, his hand twisted into a claw and his face twisted into a mask of pain and shame. The reason did not become apparent until they looked down at his shaking knees and saw the growing dark spot upon his breeches.

‘Dread,’ Asper gasped.

‘Now?’ Denaos asked, cringing. ‘Of all times?’

‘T-too much.’ The electricity on Dreadaeleon’s finger fizzled as he clutched his head. ‘The strain … it’s just … the cost is too-’

Like a lash, the rest of the creature hurled itself from the sea. Its long, snaking tail swung high over the heads of the companions, striking Dreadaeleon squarely in the chest. His shriek was a whisper on the wind, his coat fluttering as he sailed through the air and plummeted into the water with a faint splash.

The companions watched the waters ripple and re-form over him, hastily disguising the fact that the boy had ever even existed as the rain carelessly pounded the sea. They blinked, staring at the spot until it finally was still.

‘Well.’ Denaos coughed. ‘Now what?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lenk replied. ‘Die horribly, I guess.’

As though it were a request to be answered, the Akaneed complied. Mist bursting from its mouth, it hurled itself over the boat, its head kicking up a great wave as it crashed into the waters on the other side. The companions, all save Gariath, flung themselves to the deck and stared as the creature’s long, sinewy body replaced the sky over them, as vast and eternal. It continued for an age, its body finally disappearing beneath the water as a great black smear under the waves.

‘It was going to leave us alone,’ Kataria gasped, staring at the vanishing shape, then at Gariath. ‘It was going to go away! Why did you do that?’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Denaos snarled, sliding his dagger out. ‘He wanted this. He wanted to kill us. It’s only fair that we return the favour before that thing eats us.’

‘Gariath … why?’ was all Asper could squeak out, a look of pure, baffled horror painting her expression.

The dragonman only smiled and spoke. ‘It’s not like you’re the last humans.’

Lenk had no words, his attentions still fixed upon the Akaneed’s dark, sinewy shape beneath the surface. He watched it intently, sword in hand, as it swept about in a great semicircle and turned, narrowing its glowing yellow eye upon the vessel.

‘It’s going to ram us!’ he shouted over the roar of thunder as the rain intensified overhead.

‘The head!’ Kataria shrieked. ‘Use the head!’

He wasted no time in hurling himself to the deck, jamming his hand into their stowed equipment. He searched, wrapped fingers about thick locks of hair and pulled free a burlap sack. Holding it like a beacon before him, he outstretched his hand, pulled the sack free.

The Deepshriek’s head dangled in the wind, eyes shut, mouth pursed tightly. It regarded the approaching Akaneed impassively, not caring that it was about to be lost with every other piece of flesh on board. In fact, Lenk had the presence of mind to think, it’s probably enjoying this.

No time for thought, barely enough time for one word.

‘Scream,’ he whispered.

And was obeyed.

The head’s jaws parted, stretching open impossibly wide as its eyelids fluttered open to expose a gaze golden with malevolence. There was the faint sound of air whistling for but a moment before the thunder that followed.

The head screamed, sent the air fleeing before its vocal fury, ripped the waves apart as the sky rippled and threatened to become unseamed. The blast of sound met the Akaneed head-on, and the yellow gaze flickered beneath the water. The dark, sinewy shape grew fainter, its agonised growl an echo carried on bubbles as it retreated below the water.

‘I got it,’ Lenk whispered excitedly. ‘I got it!’ He laughed hysterically, holding the head above his own. ‘I win!’

The water split open; a writhing tail lashed out and spitefully slapped the hull of the boat. His arms swung wildly as he fought to hold onto his balance, and when he looked up, the Deepshriek’s head was gone from his grasp.

‘Oh …’

The eyes appeared again, far away at the other side of the boat, bright with eager hatred. The sea churned around it as it growled beneath the surface, coiled into a shadowy spring, then hurled itself through the waves. Lenk cursed, then screamed.

‘Down! Down!’

He spared no words for Gariath, who stood with arms hanging limply at his side, snout tilted into the air. The dragonman’s eyes closed, his wings folded behind his back, as he raised his hands to the sky. Though he could spare but a moment of observation before panic seized his senses once more, Lenk noted this as the only time he had ever seen the dragonman smile pleasantly, almost as though he were at peace.

He was still smiling when the Akaneed struck.

Its roar split the sea in half as it came crashing out of the waves, its skull smashing against the boat’s meagre hull. The world was consumed in a horrific cracking sound as splinters hurled themselves through the gushing froth. The companions themselves seemed so meagre, so insignificant amongst the flying wreckage, their shapes fleeting shadows lost in the night as they flew through the sky.

Air, Lenk told himself as he paddled toward the flashes of lightning above him. Air. Air. Instinct banished fear as fear had banished hate. He found himself thrashing, kicking as he scrambled for the surface. With a gasp that seared his lungs, he pulled himself free and hacked the stray streams out of his mouth.

A fervent, panicked glance brought no sign of his companions or the beast. The boat itself remained intact, though barely, bobbing upon the water in the wake of the mayhem with insulting calmness. The rations and tools it had carried floated around it, winking beneath the surface one by one.

‘Get to it, fool,’ the voice snarled. ‘We can’t swim forever.’

Unable to tell the difference between the cold presence in his head and his own voice of instinct, Lenk paddled until his heart threatened to burst. He drew closer and closer, searching for any sign of his companions: a gloved hand reaching out of the gloom, brown hair disappearing into the water.

Green eyes closing … one by one.

Later, he told himself as he reached for the bobbing wooden corpse. Survive now, worry later. His inner voice became hysterical, a frenzied smile on his lips as he neared. Just a little more. Just a little more!

The water erupted around him as a great blue pillar tore itself free from a liquid womb. It looked down at him, its feral disdain matching his horror. It wasn’t until several breathless moments had passed that Lenk noticed the fact that the beast now stared at him with two glittering yellow eyes, whole and unskewered.

‘Sweet Khetashe,’ he had not the breath to scream, ‘there’s two of them.’

The Akaneed’s answer was a roar that matched the heavens’ thunder as it reared back and hurled itself upon what remained of the boat. Its skull sent the timbers flying in reckless flocks. Lenk watched in horror, unable to act as a shattered plank struck him against the temple. Instinct, fear, hate … all gave way to darkness as his body went numb. His arms stopped thrashing, legs stopped kicking.

Unblinking as he slipped under the water, he stared up at the corpse of the ship, illuminated by the flicker of lightning, as it sank to its grave with him. Soon, that faded as his eyes forgot how to focus and his lungs forgot their need for air. He reached out, half-hearted, for the sword that descended alongside him.

When he grasped only water, he knew he was going to die.

‘No,’ the voice spoke, more threatening than comforting. ‘No, you won’t.’

The seawater flooded into his mouth and he found not the will to push it out. The world changed from blue to black as he drifted into darkness on a haunting echo.

‘I won’t let you.’