Текст книги "Black Halo"

Автор книги: Sam Sykes

Соавторы: Sam Sykes
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‘ No, they aren’t!’

The last echoes of the voice vanished, forced out of his mind as he threw himself into a fervent rampage of thought. He sprang to his feet, began to pace back and forth, muttering to himself.

‘Think, think … you don’t need that thing. Think … it’s hard to think. So hot …’ He snarled, thumped his temple. ‘ Think!This isn’t just fever causing the hallucinations. How do you know?’ He ran a finger at one of his scratches. ‘Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it?

‘No,’ he answered himself. ‘ Nothingmakes sense.’ He gritted his teeth, the effort of thought seeming to cause his brain to boil. ‘You were hallucinating strange things, thoughts that never occurred to you before. Why is that odd?

‘Because hallucinations are a product of the mind, are they not?’ He nodded vigorously to himself. ‘You can’t hallucinate something you don’t know, can you?’ He shook his head violently. ‘No, not at all. You can’t hallucinate monkeys with philosophical ideas or trees with latent desires for peace, or …

‘Kataria.’ He blinked, eyes sizzling with the effort. ‘She wasn’t wearing her leathers when you saw her. You’ve never seen her without them, have you? No, you haven’t. Well, maybe once, but you always think of her in them, don’t you?’ He threw his head back. ‘What does all this say to us? Hallucination of things that are notthe product of your disease or your mind? Either you’re dead and this is some rather infinitely subtle and frustrating hell as opposed to the whole “lakes of fire and sodomised with a pitchfork” thing, or, much more likely …’

‘ Someone else is inside your head.’

His breath went short at the realisation. The world seemed very cold at that moment.

He glanced down at the brook. Eyes cloudy with ice stared back. A thin, frozen sheet crowned the water. As he leaned down to inspect it, it grew harder, whiter, louder.

Ice doesn’t talk.

But this one did, voices ensconced between each crackling hiss as the frost formed thicker, denser. They spoke in hushes, as though they groaned from a place far below the ice, far below the earth. And they spoke in hateful, angry whispers, speaking of treachery, of distrust. He felt their loathing, their fury, but they spoke a language he only barely understood in fragments and whispers.

He stared intently, trying to make them out. There was desperation in them, as though they dearly wanted him to hear and would curse him with their hoary whispers if he didn’t expend every last ounce of his will to do so.

As far as events that made him question his sanity went, this one wasn’t the worst.

‘What?’ he whispered to it. ‘What is it?’

‘ Survive,’ something whispered back.

‘ Yo! Sa-klea!’

‘ What?’ Lenk whispered.

‘ Didn’t say anything,’ the voice replied.

‘Not you. The ice.’ He looked up, glancing about. ‘Or … someone.’

‘ Dasso?’

‘Hide,’ Lenk whispered.

‘ Sound advice,’ the voice agreed.

Too weary to run, Lenk limped behind a nearby rock, snatching up his sword as he did. No sooner had he pressed his belly against the forest floor than he saw the leaves of the underbrush rustle and stir.

Whatever emerged from the foliage did so with casual ease inappropriate for such dense greenery. Its features were indecipherable through the gloom, save for its rather impressive height and lanky, slightly hunched build.

Denaos?He quickly discounted that thought; the rogue wouldn’t enter so recklessly. Any further resemblance the creature might have borne to Lenk’s companion was banished as it set a long-toed, green foot into the moonlit clearing.

Even as it stepped fully into the light, Lenk was at a loss as to its identity. It stood tall on two long, thick legs, like a man, but that was all the resemblance to humanity it bore. Its scales, like tiny emeralds sewn together, were stretched hard over lean muscle, exposed save for the loincloth it wore at its hips, from which a long, lashing tail protruded.

Its head, large and reptilian, swung back and forth, two hard yellow eyes peering through the darkness; a limp beard of scaly flesh dangled beneath its chin. It held a spear, little more than a sharpened stick, in two clawed hands as it searched the night.

Suddenly, its gaze came to a halt upon Lenk’s hiding place. His blood froze; chilled for the stare, frigid for the sudden sight of red splotches upon its chest and hands.

If the creature saw Lenk, it gave no indication. Instead, it swivelled its head back to the underbrush and croaked out something in a gravelly, rasping voice.

‘ Sa-klea,’ it hissed. ‘ Na-ah man-eh heah.’

The brush rustled again and a second creature, nearly identical to the first, slinked out into the clearing. It swept its gaze about, scratched its scaly beard.

‘ Dasso. Noh man-eh.’ It shook its head and sighed. ‘ Kai-ja.’ It raised two fingers and pressed them against the side of its head in pantomime of ears as it made a show of baring its teeth. ‘ Lah shict-wa noh samaila.’

His eyes lit up at the word, spoken with an ire he had felt pass his own lips more than once.

Shict, he thought. They said ‘shict.’ Did they find her?

He saw the ruby hues of the spatters upon their chests. Lenk felt his heart turn to a cold lump of ice.

That chill lasted for all of the time it took him to seize his sword and tighten his muscles. His temper boiled with his brain, fevered rage clutched his head as he clutched his weapon. He made a move to rise, but the pain in his thigh was too great for his fury to overcome. He fell to one knee, biting back a shriek of agony as he did.

‘ What was that supposed to be?’ the voice hissed.

‘They killed her … they killedher,’ he replied through clenched teeth.

‘ She is dead.’

‘They killed her …’

‘ Is that important? That she is dead? Or is what is important that they must die?’

‘ Ka-a, ka-a,’ one of the scaly creatures sighed as it knelt by the brook and brought a handful of water to its lips. ‘ Utuu ah-ka, ja?’

‘ Ka-a,’ the second one apparently agreed, hefting its spear.

‘What do you mean?’ Lenk muttered.

‘ She is dead. We are in agreement. Now vengeance is craved.’

‘And you want to stop me?’

‘ Only from getting killed. Vengeance is noble.’

‘Vengeance is pure,’ Lenk agreed.

‘ Ka-a,’ the first one muttered again, rising to its feet. ‘ Utuu ah. Tuwa, uut fu-uh mah Togu.’

‘ Maat?’ The second looked indignant for a moment before sighing. ‘ Kai-ja. Poyok.’

The first one bobbed its bearded head and turned on a large, flat foot. It slinked into the underbrush as it had emerged, like a serpent through water. Its companion moved to follow, taking a moment to sweep its amber gaze over its shoulder. It narrowed its eyes upon Lenk’s rock for a moment before it, too, slid into the underbrush.

‘ Vengeance …’ the voice began.

‘Requires patience,’ Lenk finished.

He huddled up against his rock, snatching up a nearby tuber and chewing on it softly, as much as in memory of Kataria as for sustenance. Tonight, he would rest and recuperate. Tomorrow, he would search.

He would search for Sebast. He would search for his companions. If he found neither, he would search for bodies.

If the lizard-things had left nothing, then he would search for them.

He would find them. He would ask them.

And they would tell him, Lenk resolved, when they all held hands and plummeted into lakes of fire together.

Eleven

THE INOPPORTUNE CONSCIENCE

Reasonable men had qualities that made them what they were. A reasonable man was a man of faith over doubt, of logic over faith, and honesty over logic. With these three, a reasonable man was a man who was prepared for all challenges, with force over weakness, reason over force, and personality over reason.

Assuming he had all three.

Denaos liked to consider himself a reasonable man.

It was around that last bit that he found himself lacking. And, as a reasonable man without honesty, Denaos turned to running.

He hadn’t been intending to, of course. The plan, shortsighted as it was, was to get Dreadaeleon far away from whatever was sending him into fits of unconscious babbling with intermittent bursts of waking, wailing pain. They had done that, dragging him into the forest. From there, the plan became survival: find water for Dreadaeleon, food for themselves.

He had liked that plan. He had offered to go searching. It would give him a lot of time out in the woods, alone with his bottle.

Then Asper had to go and ruin everything.

‘Hot, hot, hot,’ Dreadaeleon had been whispering, as he had been since he collapsed on the beach. ‘Hot, hot …’

‘Why does he keep doing that?’ Denaos had asked.

‘Shock, mild trauma,’ Asper had replied. ‘It’s my second problem.’

‘The first being?’

She had glowered at him, adjusting the wizard over her shoulder. ‘Mostly that you aren’t helping me carry him.’

‘We agreed we would divide the workload. You carry him. I scout ahead.’

‘You haven’t found anything.’

Denaos had smacked his lips, glanced about the forest’s edge and pointed. ‘There’s a rock.’

‘Look, just take him for a while.’ She had grunted, laying the unconscious wizard down and propping him against a tree. ‘He’s not exactly tiny, you know.’

‘As a matter of fact, I didn’t know,’ Denaos had replied. ‘From here, he looks decidedly wee.’ He glanced at the dark stain on the boy’s trousers. ‘In every possible sense of the word.’

‘Are you planning on taking him at all?’ she had demanded.

‘Once he dries out, sure. In the meantime, his sodden trousers are the heaviest part of him. What’s the problem?’

She had glowered at him before turning to the wizard. ‘You shouldn’t make fun of him. He’s done more for us than we know.’ She glanced to the burning torch in the rogue’s hand. ‘He lit that.’

‘I don’t think he meant to,’ Denaos had replied, rubbing at a sooty spot where he had narrowly avoided the boy’s first magical outburst. ‘And afterward, he pissed himself and fell back into a coma. As contributions go, I’ll call it valued, but not invaluable.’

‘He can’t help it,’ she had growled. ‘He’s got … I don’t know, some magic thing’s happened to him.’

‘When did this happen again?’

She slowly lowered her left arm from the boy’s forehead. ‘It’s not important.’ She frowned. ‘He’s still got a fever, though. We can rest for a moment, but we shouldn’t dawdle.’

‘Why not? It’s not like he’s going anywhere.’

‘It’d be more accurate to say,’ she had replied, turning a scowl upon him, ‘that I’d prefer not to spend any more time in your company than I absolutely have to.’

‘As though yours is such a sound investment of my time.’

‘At least Ididn’t threaten to kill you.’

‘Are you still on that?’ He had shrugged. ‘What’s a little death threat between friends?’

‘If it had come from Kat or Gariath, it would have meant nothing. But it was you.’

The last word had been flung from her lips like a sentimental hatchet, sticking in his skull and quivering. He had blinked, looked at her carefully.

‘So what?’

And she had looked back at him. Her eyes had been half-closed, as if simultaneously trying to hide the hurt in her stare and ward her from the question he had posed. It had not been the first time he had seen that stare, but it had been the first time he had seen it in her eyes.

And that was when everything went wrong.

Like any man who had the right to call himself scum, Denaos was religious by necessity. He was an ardent follower of Silf, the Severer of Nooses, the Sermon in Shadows, the Patron. Denaos, like all of His followers, lived and died by the flip of His coin. And being a God of fortune, Silf’s omens were as much a surprise to Him as to His followers. Any man who had a right to call himself one of the faithful would be canny enough to recognise those omens when they came.

Denaos, being a reasonable and religious man, had.

And he had acted, running the moment her back was turned, never stopping until the forest had given way to a sheer stone wall, too finely carved to be natural. He hadn’t cared about that; he followed it as it stretched down a long shore, where it crumbled in places to allow the lonely whistle wind through its cracks.

Perhaps, he wondered, it would lead to some form of civilisation. Perhaps there were people on this island. And if they had the intellect needed to construct needlessly long walls, they would certainly have figured out how to carve boats. He could go to them then, Denaos resolved, tell them that he was shipwrecked and that he was the only survivor. He could barter his way off.

But with what?

He glanced down at the bottle of liquor, its fine, clear amber swirling about inside a very well-crafted, very expensive glass coffin. He smacked his lips a little.

Maybe they accept promises …

Or, he considered, maybe he would just die out here. That could work, too. He’d be devoured by dredgespiders, drown in a sudden tide, get hit on the head with a falling coconut and quietly bleed out of his skull, or just walk until starvation killed him.

All decent options, he thought, so long as he would never have to see her again.

‘Do you remember how we met?’ she had asked, staring at him.

He had nodded. He remembered it.

Theirs had been an encounter of mutual necessity: hers one of tradition, his one of practicality. She was beginning her pilgrimage, to spread her knowledge of medicine to those in need. He was looking to avoid parties interested in mutilating him. Their motives seemed complementary enough.

It wasn’t unheard-of for people with either problem to hang on to an adventuring party to get the job done. Though, it had to be said there were a fair bit more adventurers suffering his problem than hers.

They had met Lenk and the creatures he called companions: a hulking dragonman, a feral shict. They had looked strong, capable and in no shortage of wounds to inflict or mend, and so the man and the woman had left the city with them that same day. They had gone out the gate, trailing behind a man with blue eyes, a bipedal reptile and a she-wolf.

She had smiled nervously at him.

He had smiled back.

‘We met Dread not long after,’ she said. He had thought he could make out traces of nostalgia in her smile … or violent nausea. Either way, she was fighting it down. ‘And suddenly I was in the middle of a pack consisting of a wizard, a monster, a savage and Lenk. I wanted to run.’

So had he. He hadn’t been planning on staying with them longer than it took to escape the noose, let alone a year. But he had found something in the companions and their goals that, occasionally, helped people.

Opportunity, however minuscule, for redemption, however insignificant.

‘And I couldn’t help but think, through it all,’ she had sighed, looking up at the moon, ‘“Thank you, Talanas, for sending me another normal human.”’ Her frown was subtle, all the more painful for it. ‘Back when I had no idea who you were, you seemed to be the only familiar thing I could count on. We were the same, both from the cities, believed in the Gods, knew that, no matter what happened, we had each other to fall back on. So I stayed with them, no matter how much I wanted to run, because I thought you were …’

A sign, he had thought.

‘But you are what you are.’ She had looked up to him, something pitiful in her right eye, something desperate in her left. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘No,’ he had said.

‘What?’ she had asked.

‘Hot, hot, hot …’ Dreadaeleon had whispered.

And she had turned to the wizard.

And Denaos had dropped the torch and run.

It was a sloppy escape, he knew. She might come looking for him. He hoped she wouldn’t, what with him having threatened to cut her open, but there was always the possibility. He knew that the moment he had looked into her eyes and she had looked past his, into something deeper.

She had seen the face he showed her and realised it wasn’t his. And in her eyes, the quaver of her voice, he knew she would want to know. She would want to know … everything.

And he had worked too hard for her to know. Things had become sloppy even before he beat his retreat. She had heard him whisper over her. She had seen his face slip off. She had seen something in him that didn’t make her turn away.

He couldn’t have that.

Better for it to end this way, he thought as he rested against the wall and took a long, slow sip from the bottle. Better for her to never know anything. If he had stayed, she would keep pushing. If she kept pushing, he would eventually break. He would come to trust her.

And she … she would begin to relax around him, a man that no one should relax around. She would sigh with contentment instead of frustration. She would stop twitching when she heard him approach. She would give him coy smiles, demure giggles and all the things ladies weren’t supposed to give men like him.

She would come to trust him.

And you remember how that turned out last time, don’t you?

He blinked. Red and black flashed behind his eyelids. A woman lay beside him and smiled at him, twice: once with her lips, once through her throat.

He shook his head, pulled the bottle to his lips and drank deeply.

It was all very philosophically sound. It was better for her, he thought, that he leave. That was a lie, he knew, but it was a good lie, a sacred lie blessed by Silf. The Patron would be pleased at such a reasonable, philosophical man.

But philosophy, too, required honesty. And like any philosophical man without honesty, Denaos turned once more to drinking.

He was in a haze, but a pleasant one. The lies were making sense now. The logic was clear and, most importantly, he could close his eyes and see only darkness. The drink did that for him. It made everything quiet.

And everything was quiet. The mutter of the ocean was distant and faint. The sound of stone was earth-silent. The clouds moved across the moon without any fuss from the wind that gently hurried them along. Everything was quiet.

So quiet that he heard the whispers with painful clarity.

They began formlessly, babble rising over the grey stone without words. But as they hung over him, they coalesced, formed a spear that plunged into his head with a shriek. Accusations lanced his mind, condemnations tore at his brain, pleas punched a hole in his skull for so much hateful, violent screaming to pour. It was enough to make him drop his bottle and torch alike and fall to his knees.

His dagger was out and the whispering faded. His head pounded, his eyes sought to seal themselves shut. He strained to keep them open as he looked up and caught a glance at the far end of the wall.

And his blood went cold.

Slender fingers gripped the edge. Half a face peered from behind, locks of long and dark hair framing pale cheeks with a broad and horrifically unpleasant smile. An immense eye, round, white and knowing stared at him.

Into him.

‘No …’ he whispered.

And the woman said nothing in return.

The whispering came back, grazing his skull and forcing his hands over his ears and his eyes shut tight. They dissipated again and when he was again able to look, she was gone.

He rose, plucking the bottle and dagger up from the sand and sheathing both in his belt as he stared at the space where she had just been.

Hallucination, he told himself, or delusion or both, wrought by any number of causes, all sinful, of which you have no shortage. Paranoia, drink, sleeplessness. Reasonable, right?

He nodded to himself.

Whatever the cause, we can agree that …that wasn’t her.

It seemed reasonable.

Then why are we following it?

Because Denaos was a reasonable man, he told himself, a reasonable man with plenty of reasons for not wanting to see a woman who he knew was already dead and none of them convincing enough to turn him back.

He rounded the corner and the land changed in the blink of a bloodshot eye. Forest and shore were conquered by a sprawling courtyard: the stone wall was joined by many, crowding the trees above, smothering the sand below. The walls bore carvings, mosaics twisted in cloaked moonlight, of faces he did not recognise, gods that no one had names for.

Those same gods rose over him, massive statues challenging the moon as they towered over the courtyard. Their robes were stone, their right hands were extended, their faces had long crumbled away and been shattered upon a floor swathed with mist, tendrils of fog rising up to shake spitefully at the moon attempting to ruin its shroud. The stench of salt scraped his throat, seared his lungs. But he could not care for that now.

Not when she was standing there in the centre of the courtyard, staring at him.

It was the same gown she had worn when he saw her last, the simple flowing ivory, now the same colour as her skin, rendering her body and the garment indistinguishable. Her hair was the same, frazzled still, undoubtedly still thick with the scent of streets and people. But he couldn’t be sure it was her, not until he took a step closer.

Not until she smiled at him twice.

Once with her mouth.

‘ Good morning, tall man,’ she said suddenly, her voice still thick and accented from a tongue that had no taste for lies.

He stared back at her, a silence thick as the death that seeped into the courtyard hanging between them. When he spoke, his words wilted in his mouth.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

She said nothing.

‘There was no choice,’ he said, weakly. ‘I had no choice. There were … obligations, promises.’ He swallowed a mouthful of salt. ‘Threats.’

She simply smiled back.

‘But … I made a choice, anyway. I made it. What would you have done?’ His vision was hazy, but not with the fog. Tears were stinging his eyes, their salty stink worse than the ocean’s. ‘ What was I supposed to do?’

No curses, no weeping, no wailing, no whispers. She simply stared. He stepped forward.

‘Please, just talk to me-’

His foot struck something soft. The sound echoed through a conspiracy of silence. He looked down. He blanched.

As though it possessed a particularly morbid sense of humour, the white blanket of mist parted to expose a face twisted in death. Black eyes glistening in a pale, bony face bereft of blood stared up at him, a mouth filled with needles open in a silent scream as wide as the wound in its hairless chest.

A frogman, he recognised, a servant of the horrific Abysmyths. It was dead. It was not alone. Other silhouettes, black against the mist, corpses gripping spears in their chest, clutching wounds in their bellies with webbed hands.

Beside them, their faces contorted in unquiet death, he could see the longfaces, the netherlings. Their purple skin was painted with crimson, their iron and armour stained and battered with the battle that had just raged between them and their pale, hairless foes.

Something about the scene of carnage was unsettling, even beyond the death and decay that permeated the mist. The netherlings were dead, but not from wounds that would have been delivered with the bone spears and knives that the frogmen clutched. The injuries were universal across the dead: each one large and jagged, having wept the last of their blood just hours ago. They had all been made by the same weapons.

And the frogmen hadn’t killed any of them.

Then, he narrowed his eyes, what would make the netherlings turn upon each other?

‘It is the way of the faithless to clean itself of its sins,’ a deep, gurgling voice spoke from nearby, ‘in blood.’

Denaos whirled, his dagger out. The Abysmyth stared back at him, down at him, from its seven-foot height. Its eyes were vast, white voids. Its mouth hung open in its dead fish head, breathing ragged breaths through jagged teeth. Its towering body, a skeleton wrapped in a skin of shadow, stood tall, four-jointed arms hanging down to its knobby knees.

But the arms did not reach. The legs did not advance. It stared, nothing more.

The massive wedge of metal that was jammed through its chest and which pinned it to the wall might have had something to do with that.

He glanced back to the courtyard. She was gone. He was alone.

Almost.

‘Before the Sermonic, the longfaces were confronted,’ the Abysmyth croaked. ‘Before the Sermonic, they beheld their own sins of faithlessness. She spoke to them in the dark places where they could not hide from her light. She spoke to them, she offered them salvation.’

The Abysmyth craned one of its massive arms up. A longface’s corpse hung from its webbed, black claw, a sheen of suffocating ooze coating a face smothered in its grasp.

‘You fought the netherlings, then,’ Denaos whispered. He glanced at the weapon jammed through its chest. ‘Doesn’t look like it ended well for you.’

‘The faithful can never find joy in the slaughter of lambs,’ the Abysmyth gurgled in reply. ‘Our solemn task was to follow the longfaces here, to blind their prying eyes, to silence their blasphemous questions.’

‘They were searching for something?’

‘It is the nature of the faithless to search. They crave answers from everything but She who gives them. In Mother Deep, there is salvation, child.’ It extended its other arm, far too long for Denaos’ comfort. ‘Approach me. My time ends, my service endures. I can save you. I can deliver you from your agonies.’

Denaos took a step back at the sight of the glistening, choking ooze dripping from its claws. He had seen men die from that ooze, drowned on dry land, committed to a watery grave while their feet still touched sand.

‘I already have a god,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

‘God? God?’ It roared. The wound in its chest sizzled with acidic green venom, the same sickly sheen that coated the blade. He had seen this, too, and what it did to the demons. ‘You have nothing!Your gods care not for you! They are deaf to your cries! They are deaf to your suffering. To mysuffering.’

The creature looked up above it, to one of the towering, robed monoliths.

‘We remember them. We remember how they were driven to us, uncaring in stone as they are in heaven. The mortals, they prayed to them, while wewere the ones who protected them, who saved them. And now they mock you, child, impassive even as they drain me.’

‘The statues … kill you?’

‘Merely remind us,’ the Abysmyth said, ‘as they will remind you of your own impotence. They take our strength. They take our faithful. It is the way of gods to take.’

‘I don’t know,’ Denaos said. ‘I’ve seen what that poison does to you. You’re as good as dead and you can’t reach me. Seems the Gods are doing fine, as far as I’m concerned.’

‘And do they protect you from the whispers, my child?’

He froze, staring at the demon. As far as he knew, the creatures lacked the ability to smile at all, let alone smugly. But in the darkness, it certainly looked like the thing was trying its damnedest.

‘Do they care that you live in torment? Do they hide your prying eyes from visions of your shame? Do they guard your thoughts against the sins that lurk beneath them?’

‘Shut up,’ Denaos whispered.

‘I speak nothing but the truth. The Sermonic speaks nothing but the truth. Find salvation in her whispers.’

‘Shut up,’ he snarled, taking a step backward.

‘Where will you run, child?’ it croaked. ‘Where will you hide? There is no darkness deeper than your soul’s. She will find you. She will speak to you. You will hear her. You will rejoice.’

He resolved not to listen any further, resolved to remove himself. He was supposed to be running, to be hiding from her. And from her. He took another step backward, sparing only a moment to rub a spiteful glare into the dying demon’s wound. He turned.

She was there. He stared directly into her smile.

Both of them.

‘ Don’t you scream,’ she whispered.

Denaos disobeyed.

His terror echoed through the courtyard, reverberated off every stone, every corpse, ringing clear as a bell. The woman was gone, but the sound persisted. In its wake, a thick silence settled with the mist. The world was quiet.

And he heard the whispers.

Hearyouhearyouhearyou, they emanated in his head, comingcomingcoming …

At the distant edge of the courtyard, he spied a gap in the wall, illuminated by a faint blue light. It pulsed, growing brighter, waxing and waning like an icy heart beating as it grew more vivid, as it drew closer. He held his breath, stared at the light as it came around the gap.

And he beheld the monstrosity from which it emanated.

At first, all he saw was the head: a bulbous, quivering globe of grey flesh tilted upward toward the sky. Black eyes shone like the shrouded, starless void to which they stared. From a glistening brow, a long stalk of flesh snaked, bobbing aimlessly before the creature and terminating in a fleshy sac from which the azure light pulsed.

It glowed mercilessly, refusing to spare him the sight of the creature as it slithered into view. Withered breasts hung from a skeletal rib cage as it pulled the rest of its body – a long, eel-like tail where legs should be – upon thin, emaciated arms.

It wasn’t until it emerged fully from behind the gap, until Denaos could see its face in full that he felt fear. But the moment he beheld it, he was frozen. Beneath the fist-sized eyes, skeletal jaws brimmed with teeth like bent needles. They gaped open, exposing another mouth between them, a pair of soft and womanly lips, full and glistening, twitching, moving.

Whispering.

‘She comes, child,’ the Abysmyth gurgled, its dying voice fast fading. ‘She comes to deliver you … You cannot hide …’

Denaos disagreed.

Perhaps Silf truly did love him enough to send the clouds roiling over the moon to bathe the courtyard in darkness. Perhaps it was dumb luck. Denaos didn’t intend to question it. He flung himself to the earth, finding the thickest corpse in a particularly well-armoured netherling and hunkering down behind her.

He chanced a look, peering up over his cover of flesh and iron, to see the creature, this Sermonic, dragging itself bodily into the courtyard. Its void-like eyes swept the mist as its outer jaws chattered, the sound of teeth clacking against bone heard with every twitch. All the while, the soft and feminine lips pouted behind those jagged teeth, muttering whispers that shifted from formless babble to sharp, honed daggers.

KnowyouarethereKnowyouarethere …

He heard them keenly now, felt them rattle through his being. The urge to scream rose within him; he nearly choked on it. He averted his eyes, but he could not protect his ears, even as he pressed his hands over them.