Текст книги "Black Halo"

Автор книги: Sam Sykes

Соавторы: Sam Sykes
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Текущая страница: 33 (всего у книги 41 страниц)

He, however, was just as focused on her. And only one of them had crimson light in their eyes.

His hands, pitifully scrawny, clutched her throat, indomitably thick. The word, soft in his throat, went unheard through her snarling. The blue electricity that raced down into his fingertips, however, demanded her attention.

Crackling became sizzling became sputtering as her snarling became screaming became frothing convulsion. Her teeth all but welded together as the lightning coursed from his fingers into her body, snaking past purple skin and into thick bone. As though she were some blackening bull, Dreadaeleon fought to hold on as she seized violently on the deck, his fingers digging into flesh growing softer, eyes turning to red spears as they narrowed.

When it was finally over, he slid his fingers from well-cooked meat, wisps of smoke whispering out from ten tiny holes. He clambered off, exhausted, but not spent as he looked to Lenk accusingly.

‘You could have fought back,’ he said angrily.

‘No point …’ Lenk said. ‘She’s gone, she’s gone.’

‘Who? Asper?’

‘Kataria.’

‘Oh … well, yeah, why wouldn’t she? She’s a-’

‘Yeah,’ Lenk said, reaching up to clutch his bleeding shoulder. ‘Yeah.’

‘So … what now?’

Lenk made no reply, but an answer came to him as a great red hand appeared at the railing. They heard the grunt, saw Gariath haul himself up and over onto the deck. He spotted them just as quickly and rushed over, panting heavily, ignoring the battle raging between the two wizards.

‘Up,’ he snarled. ‘Get up.’

‘What’s the problem?’ Dreadaeleon asked.

‘Big problem,’ Gariath muttered. ‘ Bigproblem.’

‘Where’s Togu?’

‘Dead, maybe? I don’t know. Now get up. We’ve got a big problem.’

‘You’ve said that already but-’

There was the sound of a distant voice shouting commands in a deep, rolling tongue, audible even over the carnage on the deck. They looked out to see the ocean alight with a swarm of fireflies, dozens of little orange dots reflected upon the waters.

‘Are those …?’

At another distant command, the fireflies rose. One more and they flew. By the time Lenk and Dreadaeleon realised the lights were no insects, they heard nothing but the shrieking of shafts and the sizzling of fire.

‘Get down!’ Gariath snarled, shoving the two of them behind the mast.

The arrows came plummeting, singing mournful dirges accompanied by crackling fire. Sheraptus glanced up just in time to throw his hand out, the air rippling as the missiles struck an unseen wall and went quivering. Those females surrounding him that had not noticed in time to bring shields up became smouldering porcupines in an instant.

The entire ship seemed to shudder with the sound of heads biting deeply into wood and flames snarling angrily as they passed through sails. After an eternity of waiting, Lenk dared to peer around the mast.

Across the sea, he saw them, their green faces and yellow eyes aflame as they lit fresh arrows. Their tattoos of red and black were stark against the firelight, causing them to resemble ghouls fresh from a grave, rotted wrinkles and throbbing veins bright on their dire expressions.

Shen, he recognised. Three long canoes full of Shen. Drawing arrows back.

‘That …’ he whispered, ‘that is a problem.’

Gariath shook his head. ‘No, moron. I said we had a bigproblem.’

‘That’s notbig?’ Dreadaeleon said, astonished.

He was answered as the sound of a distant horn rose from the canoes.

And in the next moment, the horn, too, was answered.

In the eruption of the sea and the violent vomit of froth, a resonating roar tore through the sea and ripped into the sky. Combatants and companions alike were thrust to the deck as the ship rocked with the force of a violently disturbed wave. Black against the night sky, a creature rose into the air, a great, writhing pillar topped with two menacing yellow eyes.

The Akaneed stared down at the deck as those upon it stared back up at the titanic snake. Its head snapped forward, jaws parting to expose rows of needlelike teeth, a roar tearing out of its throat on sheets of salty miss.

‘ That,’ Gariath roared over it, ‘ is big.’

You served your people.

Kataria heard it over her own footsteps.

Yours was a duty to all shicts.

Kataria heard it over her own thoughts.

You did the right thing.

Kataria did not believe it.

And yet, she continued down the stairs of the companionway, all the same. She may have doubted the quality of the Howling’s message, but was driven forward by the frequency and urgency of its insistence. It spoke inside her a dozen times with each step she took.

You did the right thing. You did the right thing. You did the right thing.

By the time she reached the end of the stairs, she knew it was right, because the shict who spoke to her knew it was right. It had ceased to be reassurance, ceased to be a message. It was knowledge now, as primal a knowledge as knowing how to swim and to hunt.

But with the next step, between the two hundred and forty-first time and the two hundred and forty-second time she heard it, she knew she still didn’t believe it.

Perhaps it was that doubt that no shict could ever feel for the Howling that brought the tears to her eyes. Perhaps those came from a different instinct altogether. She didn’t dare think on it. She brushed them from her face with the back of her hand. If she began weeping now, over a human, over the doubt, that knowledge would become shared.

And she could not bear the thought of descending and finding her kinsman weeping as well.

The sight that greeted her in the vast ship’s hold, however, was one of emptiness. Benches and cots lined the hull, presumably for the netherlings to sleep upon when they weren’t fighting, crushing, killing, shoving jagged blades into throats from which her name emerged on blood-choked screams …

Stop it, she told herself.

Stop it, the Howling agreed.

And she did. It was powerful here, speaking to her with greater clarity, greater urgency. It needed only to speak once, and she knew it to be true. She felt her eyes drawn to the darkness at the end of the cabin, the great void that ate the light of overhanging oil lamps. She could see the shadows of a cage’s cold iron bars, and while she could see nothing beyond that, she could hear something; she could feel something.

A heartbeat. A thought. A knowledge that was hers. A knowledge that was theirs.

A shict.

She had barely taken another step when she noticed the lone netherling in her path, and then only after she noticed the jagged blade hurtling towards her. She fell to the deck, hearing the blade’s frustrated wail as its teeth sheared only a few hairs from her head.

‘Just how many colours do you things come in?’ the longface grunted.

Kataria’s answer came with a growl.

The arrow was up and in the bow, drawn back as far as she could force the rigid thing to go, and launched a moment later. A moment was all it took, however, for the longface’s shield to go up, sending the missile ringing off.

Stupid piece of …Kataria thought irately, glowering at the weapon. Who the hell would call this stick a bow?

The netherling, apparently, agreed, if the broad grin with which she raised her sword was any indication. Still, she refused to advance, holding her shield up defensively as she watched Kataria draw her final arrow back. Such lack of a willingness to have a piece of iron wedged in one’s brow, the shict figured, was likely what led this one to be below.

And yet it served her frustratingly well as Kataria aimed and launched, slipping past the longface’s shield to find an unyielding iron breastplate below. It was clear, then, that what the black bow lacked in accuracy it made up for in power. The longface was driven back a step, nothing more than an inconvenience before she readied to charge upon the now-defenceless shict.

Still, Kataria smiled. A single step was all she had needed.

The green fingers that came slithering out between the bars would handle the rest.

The longface’s cry was brief as the long fingers, attached to longer hands and longer arms still, wrapped around her throat in five tiny pythons. They scarcely trembled as they intertwined and pulled her back towards the bars, possessed of a cold passionlessness that suggested this was just one more neck, like all the other necks that had been strangled. Cold hands. Killer hands.

Shict hands.

Kataria forced herself to watch as the crown of the long-face’s head was pulled between the bars, her screams choked as she was fed head-first into an unyielding iron mouth. There was nothing to silence the sound of bone groaning and popping as, hairsbreadth by agonising hairsbreadth, she was pulled between bars that would not accommodate her thick skull.

This, she reminded herself, was what shicts did. Shicts did what they had to. The world, filled with diseases of pink and purple, left them no choice.

The long, purple face was consumed in the void of the cage. Her body twitched soundlessly for but a moment before her legs went slack, bending her back at an awkward angle as she lay still, thick neck wedged between the bars and suspending her in standing, artificial rigour.

Cold, killer fingers slipped out and calmly reached into a pouch at the longface’s belt. A few moments of deft search revealed a wrought-iron key that was drawn out neatly between two green digits. A faint clicking noise emerged after those fingers vanished back into shadow. The cage door groaned as it swung open, dragging the corpse frozen in its grip across the deck with it.

He stepped out of the void, a great green plant out of dark earth, stepping lightly on feet bearing thumbs. Countless time in a cramped cage had done nothing to stunt his stature as he rose high enough for his bald pate to scrape the underside of the oil lamp above him. From his groin up, a long line of symbols ran the length of his body, each one a story.

And each one a death. Of wife. Of child. Of their murderers.

Each symbol was no bigger than a thumbprint, but each sorrow and every hatred was condensed into a pattern of lines that only a shict would know.

Kataria knew.

‘What is your name?’ she asked.

He stared at her with even blue eyes.

‘You already know.’

Upon his lips, the shictish tongue, theirtongue, sounded so eloquent. She wondered absently if he could hear the dust on her own tongue.

She searched herself, listened to the Howling.

‘Naxiaw,’ she said, looking up at him. ‘I am … pleased you are well.’

‘Pleased?’ His lips peeled back into a broad smile, his canines twice as large as hers. Long arms parted in a gesture almost warm enough for her to forget they had just been used to pull a longface through bars. ‘Sister. We are not strangers.’

She would have been shocked to find herself laughing, possibly a little worried to find the sound so hysterical. That thought was lost in a sea of emotion that carried her on running feet to leap into him. His arms wrapped about her, drew her close to a broad chest. A great weight had fallen from her, evidenced by how easily Naxiaw drew her up off her feet.

In his arms, she found memory. She found a hand on her shoulder, reassuring her after her ears were notched. She found the scent of rabbits cooking and fires. She found the dirge of bows and the song of funeral pyres. She found memories of her father, his sternness, his words, his speeches, his memories. Of her mother, she found only lightness.

She found everything the Howling said she would find.

‘Little Sister,’ Naxiaw said, holding her closely, ‘you are far from home.’

‘The world is our home,’ she replied. ‘No matter what round-ears say.’

‘It heartens me to hear such words.’

Her father’s words.

‘The creature above,’ the greenshict said, ‘that caused you such sorrow. I felt him. Is he dead?’

No, she thought, he wouldn’t die so soon. He’s above, bleeding out under a rusty knife. Right where I left him.

Notthat creature, stupid, she scolded herself.

‘You are worried,’ Naxiaw said.

Watch what you think, moron, she hissed mentally. And don’t look at him! If he can’t tell through the Howling, it’ll be obvious once he sees your face.

‘I was,’ she replied, keeping her voice steady. ‘But I draw strength from my people.’

‘As all shicts should.’

Her grandfather’s words.

‘It is well now, Sister,’ Naxiaw said, easing her down and laying her head upon his chest. ‘I live. You live. We are safe.’

Her ear against his chest, she could hear the sound of memory in his heartbeat. Slow and steady, purpose resonating with every pump of blood through it. It was comforting to hear, at least at first.

The more she listened, however, the more she was aware that she had never heard such a thing before. She had heard nothing so slow, so certain, so sure. And it caused her to pull away, her ears attuned to her own body. There was no more thunder in her ears; there had been, she was certain, when the Howling spoke to her, had urged her to hear it.

Now, she heard her own heart. It was swift, erratic, uncertain, conflicted.

Light.

Unpleasant.

Terrifying.

‘Sister,’ Naxiaw said, furrowing his brow. ‘What is wrong?’

You, she thought. You’re wrong. Your heartbeat is too steady. You’re too sure of yourself. You know everything a shict should know and you hear the Howling like it was another shict. You’re probably hearing this right now because the Howling is … isn’t it?

She said none of that. Instead, she shook her head and spoke words that none of her family had ever said before, that came from her light, erratic heart.

‘I don’t know.’

Naxiaw looked certain, as though he were about to speak with the voice of the Howling and whatever he were to say next would assure her of everything. She watched eagerly as he stared back at her, then said nothing, looking down at the floor of the hold.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘they are almost here.’

‘Who?’ Kataria asked, confusion overriding despair.

‘You cannot hear them?’ Naxiaw asked. He released her, knelt down on long legs to stare at the floor thoughtfully. ‘They have been following this ship for hours now. They are waiting for something.’

His fingers ran over the wood. His ears, six notches to a lobe, perked up. She heard it, too: the groaning of wood, a cry of protest that it knew was useless as something insistent pressed up against it. Naxiaw looked up at her, his eyes keen and his face dire.

‘And now,’ he whispered, ‘it has come.’

The boat rocked suddenly as something struck it from below, sending tremors through the floor, past Kataria’s feet and into her heart. The ship’s groan became a scream as jagged rents veined the wood and bled saltwater.

Naxiaw leapt up and back, putting himself between her and the rapidly spreading crack in the floor. He’s trying to protect me, she realised. Who … no one’s done that for me before. The thought should have caused her less distress than it did.

She herself took a step backwards as another great blow shook the ship. From beneath the widening crack, she heard them: voices, proclamations, hymns, chants, urges, each one brimming with purpose, each purpose rife with death.

Another blow and the floor erupted into a spray of splinters, the crack became a wound leaking clear, salty blood onto the floor. And at the centre, like a black knife, the arm rose: titanic, emaciated, jointed in four places and ending in a great webbed claw.

‘Not them,’ Kataria whispered with what breath she had left.

‘What are they?’ Naxiaw asked.

His question was answered as another webbed fist punched through the hull, ripping the wound into a great, gaping hole. Claws sank into the wood, gripped tightly and hauled an immense black shape onto the floor.

A skeleton wrapped in shadow, crowned with a wide head sporting vast, gaping jaws, it pulled itself free from a womb of water and wood. Its flesh glistening under a cowering flame, it rose from its knees, each vertebra visible beneath its black skin as it rose to its full, imposing height. On webbed feet, it slowly turned about and levelled the head of a black fish upon the two shicts.

The Abysmyth stared at Kataria, its eyes wide, white and empty.

‘At the midpoint on the pilgrimage,’ it said, its voice choked with the voices of the drowned, ‘I looked upon the pristine creation and saw a floating blight. Mother bade me to act on her behalf, unable to bear the agony of the faithless longfaces upon her endless blue. And within the black boil, I found the lost and the lonely.’ It extended a great webbed hand, glistening with thick, viscous ooze. ‘Come to me, my children. I will take the agony of this waking nightmare from you.’

‘Run,’ Kataria said as much to herself as to Naxiaw, ‘run.’

‘What is it?’ the greenshict asked.

‘Salvation,’ the Abysmyth answered.

‘The Shepherd has come,’ a chorus of voices burbled on the rapidly rising water. ‘The faithless tremble. The fainthearted cower. Fear not, fear not …’

‘For I am here,’ the Abysmyth continued, ‘to ease your agony.’ It gestured to the wound. ‘Rejoice.’

And, as one, they came boiling through the hull like a brood of tadpoles. Glistening bodies, bereft of hair or pallor, rejected by the great blue body of the sea and vomited out in a mass of writhing flesh, gnashing needle teeth, colourless eyes. The frogmen came in numbers immeasurable, pulling themselves out of the rising water in a gasping, rasping choir.

‘We have come,’ the great black demon said, ‘to deliver. Messages. Sinners. Everyone.’

‘Run,’ Kataria said, grabbing Naxiaw by the arm. ‘ RUN!’

Naxiaw heard and did not question, following her as they sprinted for the stairs leading to the deck. Struck breathless from fear, they spoke in short gasps of air.

‘How do we escape?’ the greenshict asked.

‘The shore isn’t far from here,’ she said. ‘Shicts can swim.’

‘Those things … they came from the water. Is it wise to go in?’

‘We don’t have a whole lot of choice, do we? The ship will go down in a few moments and we’ll be drowning, anyway.’

‘Then we swim. I trust you, Sister.’

Someone else trusted me once, she thought with a pain in her chest. I … I need to. I have to go back for him.

‘Wait!’ she cried as they neared the companionway. ‘I have to …’

He paused, looked at her curiously. What could she say? That she had to stay on this sinking tomb, now rife with demons as well as longfaces, for the sake of a human? The great disease? How could she tell him that? How could she tell herself that, after all the time she had yearned to feel this knowledge, hear this comfort, feel this lightness?

How could she ask herself why her heart beat different than his?

She could not say that, any of that.

‘I have to do what I must,’ she said instead, continuing up to the deck, ‘for my people.’

Someone’s words.

Not hers.

Thirty-Four

MOTHER AND CHILD

Gariath was not dead yet.

Not for lack of opportunity, of course. He darted through a web of iron and curses, batting away clumsy blades, suffering the blows of those too cunning or lucky for him to avoid. Every metal favour bestowed upon him he reciprocated with claws and teeth, forcing his assailants back.

He was vaguely surprised that he could feel the many cuts on his body. He didn’t remember the longfaces being quite so strong as they had been when he first encountered them. But Irontide, and the flesh he had rent in suicidal frenzy, had been many eternities ago.

He was less aware of death this time, and so was aware of many more things as he caught an errant blade in his hand and tore it free from the offending longface’s grasp.

Pain was among them, but so, too, were the humans.

What had began as a chaos of fire and thunder on the deck had since degenerated into a chaos of fire, thunder, steel, cursing, spitting and screaming.

Arrows fell from the sky in intermittent fiery drizzles, longfaces scrambling to seek cover from them or return fire with hasty shots. Those few who simply couldn’t be bothered to hide had either sought another target or clung by their master’s side, occasionally intervening between him and a lightning bolt thrown from the dark-skinned human.

Of their sacrifice, the longface with the burning eyes took no notice, consumed wholly with his target. Whatever bemusement had been present on his face had been consumed in the vivid anger with which his eyes flared. He was no longer even making an attempt at appearing as though he was swatting a gnat. Now, he displayed the anger appropriate to a man swatting at a gnat that spewed fire and frost at him.

Those netherlings that had decided to seek easier prey had found them in the leaking weaklings pressed against the deck. Lenk refused to move, clutching his shoulder and staring quietly into nothingness, murmuring something equally stupid. The squeaky little human seemed torn between uselessly trying to get him on his feet and uselessly trying to assist the flying human, apparently by squealing and occasionally hurling something limp-wristedly at the longface.

Impotent, drained, useless and otherwise weak; they deserved to die, he knew.

What he didn’t know was why the netherlings seeking to kill them found him imposed between them. Such a thought rose to him again as he caught a rampaging blade in his palm and snarled, shoving the wielder back and meeting her grin with a scowl. After all, it wasn’t as though there weren’t bigger problems to handle.

Bigger problems with tremendous teeth.

Such a problem made itself known in a shadow that blossomed like a flower over the netherling, blackness banished by the resounding thunder of blue jaws snapping, a scream leaking out between teeth, purple legs flailing wildly as a great serpentine head swept up and shook back and forth to silence its writhing, shrieking prisoner.

No guttural roar that boiled behind its teeth could drown out the noise of flesh rending as an errant leg went flying before the rest of the sinewy mass disappeared behind fangs and down a throat.

The Akaneed, far from sated, levelled its yellow stare at Gariath. The dragonman forgot his other foes in that instant, as the great serpent seemed to forget its other meals. Their gazes went deeper into each other, curiosity turning to respect turning to anger in an instant. In each other, they saw something familiar.

In the great serpent, Gariath saw sharp teeth stained with blood, narrowed yellow slits glowing in the night. He saw in them now what he had seen a week ago, upon a beach he had intended to be his grave: hunger, hatred, an end.

To everything.

In Gariath, the Akaneed saw something distinctly different.

This was made violently clear as its neck snapped, sending gaping jaws hurtling towards him. The dragonman lunged backwards as the serpent’s snout speared the deck, shattered the wood and scattered the living and the dead.

The ship shook and groaned as the serpent tried to pull its maw free from the ship’s hull, sending combatants rolling about the deck as they struggled to keep their footing. Gariath clung to the deck, his claws embedded in wood as he swept a fervent gaze about the deck.

A good chance to escape, he noted. Lenk won’t move. The runt won’t leave. You could make them, though. They’re small, stupid. You want to protect them, don’t you? Life is precious now, right? Worth saving and all that. The snake is distracted. The longfaces are distracted. The Shen are …

Watching, he noticed, dozens of yellow eyes staring from canoes.

Waiting, he realised, their bows lowered, bodies tense.

For him, he knew, as he found a single amber eye in the throng of lizardmen and met Yaike’s gaze.

They were watching him. Waiting to see what this red thing was. Waiting to see if what they knew of Rhegawas true or if they had all died long ago.

He would show them.

He rushed forward, striding over the dead, trampling the living, sliding on claws as the Akaneed pulled itself free, its jaws tinted red and brimming with shards of wood. He leapt, flapped his wings to pull him aloft and towards the creature’s snout. He fell upon it with a snarl, sinking claws into blue flesh.

In an eruption of splinters and a thunderous roar, the dragonman became an angry red tick, clinging tenaciously with claws dug firmly into the tender flesh of the creature’s nostrils as its serpentine neck twisted and writhed like a whirlwind as it struggled to dislodge this clawed, fanged parasite.

Gariath could not let that happen. His path became all the clearer as he clawed his way, arm’s length by arm’s length, up the creature’s snout, hands digging fresh wounds, feet thrust into old ones. Each time, for a moment, he knew it would be easy to let go and fly into dark water, to sink until he could see, feel, breathe no more. Each time, he continued to claw forward.

He was Rhega. They would see. They would know.

‘I haven’t met you,’ he growled to the Akaneed. ‘There was another one. I took much from him. Eyes, teeth …’ It replied with a roar and a futile attempt to shake him off. ‘You, you’re going to give me more. The fight, the blood … it means a great deal more than eyes and teeth.’ He clawed his way up to eyes which burned yellow hate. ‘Thank you.’ He drew back a fist. ‘I’m sorry.’

Through the squelch of membrane and the ensuing, wailing howl, Gariath’s first thought was that an eye was very much like a hard-boiled egg, in both texture and the way yellow crumbled into sopping goo. His second thought was for the feeling of air beneath him and the ocean rising up before him as the Akaneed threw him from its head.

He flapped furiously, found a writhing blue column as he fell and twisted himself to meet it. His claws found rubbery skin, shredding it and drawing forth red blood and echoing howls from the beast as he slid down the Akaneed’s hide, struggling to slow his fall. His hands tensed to the point of agony, claws threatening to rip from his fingers.

When he slowed to a halt, the beast had no more agony to spew forth, its roar becoming a low growl. It swayed dizzily upon the waves, fighting the pain inside it, struggling to stay awake, afloat, alive.

Gariath felt a pang of sympathy. It was only momentary, though, as he turned to face the dozens of yellow eyes fixated upon him. They were wide with appreciation … or he thought, or he wantedto think. It was so hard to see their stares at this range, swaying on the serpent’s hide, his own eyes veiled by pain and weariness.

‘I am alive,’ he cried to them, his voice hoarse. ‘The Rhegais alive. The Rhegastill live.’ He slammed a fist to his chest. ‘I am alive. Look. Look at me.’ He couldn’t hear the shrill desperation in his voice, couldn’t feel the tears welling up in his eyes. ‘I am Rhega. Answer me!’ He forced the words through a choked throat. ‘ Talk to me!’

They said nothing, showed nothing behind their yellow stares. One by one, the fires of their arrows were snuffed into darkness. One by one, each Shen disappeared into gloom, bodies lost among the shadows.

‘No!’ Gariath roared at them. ‘You can’t leave now! Not when I’m so close!’

They continued to wink out, ceasing to exist as their flames did, giving no sign that they heard him, or cared what he had to say. He continued to shriek at them, as though they might provide an answer, any answer, before they vanished completely.

‘How do you know the Rhega?’ he howled at them. ‘Where are they? How do you speak the language? Where are they? What happened to them?’ His voice became a whining, wailing plea. ‘ WHY WON’T YOU ANSWER ME?’

They continued to say nothing, continued to disappear until all that remained was a single, flickering flame, illuminating a single yellow eye. Yaike stared, expressionless, the ruin of what had once been his eye seeming to stare far deeper, speak far louder, than his whole eye or his rasping voice.

‘Jaga, Rhega,’ he spoke. ‘Home. All that we do, we do for it.’

‘And what does a Rhegado? Tell me.’

And the last light sizzled out, cloaking the lizardman in darkness, leaving nothing but a voice on lingering wisps of smoke.

‘I am Shen.’

Gariath stared at the darkness, listening for the sound of oars dipping into water through the distant carnage of the deck and the flesh-deep groan of the Akaneed. And through it all, he could hear the voice of the grandfather, speaking with such closeness as to suggest the spirit was right next to him.

‘What does a Rhegado, Wisest?’

His answer came slowly, his eyes and voice cast into the darkness.

‘Life is precious,’ Gariath whispered. ‘A Rhegalives.’

‘Is it, Wisest?’

Gariath became distinctly aware of the two creatures alone on the ship behind him, so weak, so helpless. He had fought to defend them moments ago. He had chosen them, moments ago. He had been one of them moments ago.

Now, he was Rhega.

‘Life is precious, Wisest,’ the grandfather reminded him.

Without looking back, Gariath muttered, ‘To those who earn it.’

And then hurled himself into the water, pursuing the darkness.

Dreadaeleon couldn’t think.

Ordinarily, he would chastise himself for such a thing. He was, theoretically, the smart one and took an immense amount of pride in living up to that expectation.

Still, between the lingering crackle of electricity and the deep-throated groan of the wounded Akaneed, the stench of brimstone caked with the coppery odour of blood and the vast, vastnumber of corpses on the deck, he found himself hard-pressed to assign himself any blame.

His senses were overwhelmed, not merely blinded and deafened by the chaos of the deck, but struck dull in the mind. The continuous clash of magical energies of lightning, fire, frost and the occasional exploding paper crane had bathed his brain in a bright crimson light that he sought to force a thought through.

Moments ago, he had felt something else: a surge of something that he had never felt before, a bright inky black stain on the endless sheet of red. It was new, carrying a stinging, clean pain that always came attached to unknown agonies.

And yet … had he neverfelt this before? he wondered.

He recalled vague hints of it, here and there: errant black patches in his vision that came, agonised, and left instantly. He recalled it in Irontide before, on the beach with Asper …

Asper, he thought. I should be saving Asper, shouldn’t I? That’s what we came here to do … Where is she? What was the plan? Damn it, why can’t Ithink straight?