Текст книги "Black Halo"

Автор книги: Sam Sykes

Соавторы: Sam Sykes
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The s’na shict s’haknew how to kill snakes.

His foot was up and curled into a fist in one breath, then down again in one crunching, choked gurgle. The longface ceased to writhe, ceased to shriek, but her hand did not leave her face. Just as well, Naxiaw thought; he had seen the seething red mass beneath those digits before. It had lost its appeal after he had earned his first feather

There was little time for it, anyway. His ears pricked up again, sensing the sound of metal scraping up sand, cursing from behind.

Oh, right …

‘Clever, clever …’ He turned and saw that the longface’s voice matched the anger painted on her face. ‘But cleverness doesn’t spill blood.’

He had barely noticed her hand without the large iron spike or heavy metal gauntlet that had been lost in her near-fall. He continued to ignore it right up until it slid behind her back and came out in a flash of jagged metal, the weapon flying from her hand and chased by her shriek.

‘ THIS DOES!’

The strike was too fast to dodge; he could only angle his shoulder. Even that wasn’t enough to stop the pain. The blade carved through with a beaming iron smile, ripping through green flesh and drawing great gouts of red. He shrieked, staggered backward, clutching his shoulder as the Spokesman collapsed to the earth, at a loss for words.

He could barely muster the consciousness through the pain to see her hand, which had plucked up her companion’s weapon. The blow came swiftly and fiercely, and he narrowly managed to seize her by the wrist to stop it, biting back the pain lancing through his arm.

And still, the spike drew ever closer. She was spiteful in her attack, but aware enough of his condition to smile. She need only press until the pain became too much to bear. He, too, was aware of her advantage, but more aware of the vein that throbbed under her purple wrist. It pulsed, pumping all the blood she had into her hand, with an inviting wriggle.

Naxiaw was not one to disoblige.

Lips parted, head jerked, canines gnashed and the longface screamed. Her life came spurting out in short, sporadic bursts as the sword fell to the earth. Her other hand came up to strike his head with its heavy gauntlet, but he narrowly caught it before it could crack his skull open.

He had only given her frenzy a desperation that drove her to even more vicious strength. She continued to press her attack, her life leaking out with every twitch of her muscles, intent on driving him into the earth itself. She would succeed, he knew, unless he ended it quickly.

He eyed the spike on the ground.

Legs began to buckle under him, but he pushed up with them, springing off the ground and curling six long toes around her belt buckle. His other leg craned down, toes twitching eagerly, violently. The longface spared enough hatred to glance at them, her eyes going wide as she saw his foot grasp the spike by its hilt and, on a quivering green leg, bring it back up.

‘No!’ she screamed. Her voice grew louder as her arms pressed harder as the spike drew closer. ‘ No, no, no, NO! That’s not fair!’

‘ Shict n’dinne uah crah,’ he replied. Shicts do not fight fair.

His leg twisted; he ignored the cracking sound as he brought the spike up between them. He sucked in his belly to allow his foot to pass up, past his chest, the spike angling upward sharply and aiming for a writhing, shrieking part of her.

‘ CHEAT!’ she roared. ‘ I’LL KILL YOU! I’LL RIP OFF YOUR-’

His leg twitched. She stopped moving. He felt blood trickle down from below her jaw and smear his foot.

His leap from her falling body was less nimble than he had hoped; his shoulder stung and his legs buckled as he hit the ground. The fight had gone on too long, his body had taken too much of a toll. If they had been humans, he would have walked away whistling a tune. But they were … These things were …

He ran a hand over his bald scalp. He did not know. But he must tell the others.

He plucked up his stick from the earth. His canoe lay hidden in the reeds nearby. All he need do was reach it, row out until he could concentrate enough to reach the other s’na shict s’hathrough the Howling. From there, they could make it to friendly territory, the forests of the sixth tribe, maybe. They could deliver their report; Many Red Harvests would gain a new, purple crop to reap.

Yes, he told himself as the blood seeped out of his shoulder and sizzled on the ground, this will work. Everything will-

‘Interesting …’

No … no, no, no!

As fervently as he tried to deny them, as much as he tried to shut them from his sight, from his mind, every time he blinked and opened his eyes, they were still there.

A dozen long, purple faces, staring back at him.

‘A rather unique approach to combat, I must say,’ the one in the lead said.

If he didn’t know what the other ones were, Naxiaw might have thought it to be a female surrounded by burly, hulking males. The scrawny effeminate creature swathed in violet robes looked tiny against the sea of iron skins behind him. Only his goatee gave him away, the colour of bone instead of night like the hair of the females behind him, as he stroked it contemplatively.

‘It looks surprised,’ the female beside him snickered.

This one stood taller and more muscular than any of the ones present, carrying a massive wedge of steel hacked and hammered into a single, haggard edge. The smile she levelled at Naxiaw’s very visible shock was no less crude or cruel.

‘Oh, come on,’ she said, her laughter deep and grating. ‘You thought we only sent two up here? Who would do that?’

‘I am not sure it understands you,’ the goateed male said, leaning forward slightly. ‘I do not think it is even human.’ His face twisted up, puzzled. ‘What is it, anyway?’

‘No idea,’ the large female said, hefting her giant blade over her shoulder. ‘Better kill it.’

‘I suppose.’

Naxiaw did not wait for the war cry, not the tensing of muscle or the groan of iron skin. He exploded first, charging, his stick held high, his plan a dizzy, swirling collection of images inside a head that swam from blood loss.

The male leads, he told himself. Kill the male. He looks weak. One blow. That’s all it will take. Kill him, break through, run to the water, drown. The others will find you, they’ll pull the map out of your stomach. Don’t watch the female. Watch him.

The male did not move at this sudden charge, instead raising a single white eyebrow. Had Naxiaw glanced to the side, shifted his eye half a hair’s breadth, he would have seen the females backing away. The fear that should have been on their faces was replaced with morbid bemusement, as though they expected something bloody and glorious to happen.

But Naxiaw did not see that.

Watch him. Kill him. Kill the male.

The male’s lips started to move, just barely, beginning as only a few twitches. His eyes shut, not with the tightness of panic, but with a gentleness that suggested some kind of boredom. His breath leaked from his mouth in faintly visible lines of mist.

Kill him.

The male’s eyes opened, milky whites gone and replaced with a burning crimson energy that poured out of his gaze. Naxiaw’s stick was up, feet off the ground. It was too late to worry about the crimson, too late to do anything about the inflation of the male’s chest as he inhaled deeply, too late to do anything but strike.

One blow.

But that would come far too late.

The male’s face split in half with the opening of his mouth; the mist poured from his throat on echoing words that bore no meaning to Naxiaw. The chill that enveloped his body, the frost that formed on his skin – those had meaning.

His feet struck the earth, far, far heavier than when they had left it. The blood crystallised in blackish smears, the healthy green of his skin turned quickly to a light blue. The Spokesman felt light in a hand gone numb. His muscles creaked, cracked under his skin. His jaw opened in a cry, of war or of fear he knew not, and he found he could not close it again.

Then he could not move at all.

When the mist cleared, he saw the male, eyes a disinterested white again. The longface glanced to the side, noting the Spokesman, a finger’s length from his head, and clenched in a frozen blue grip. Paying little attention to that, he reached out and plucked something from beneath Naxiaw’s broken nose.

‘Interesting,’ he muttered, regarding the tiny little crimson icicle. Separated from the shict’s body, it quickly became liquid, sizzling between the longface’s fingers. He hissed and shook his hand. ‘Envenomed blood … curious.’ He leaned forward and studied Naxiaw intently. ‘That may explain why this one is still alive, despite being frozen.’ He rapped a knuckle against Naxiaw’s forehead, smiling at the tinkling sound. ‘It is not a pink. They could not survive such nethra.’

‘Well, I could have told you that. I mean, it’s green.’ The large female chuckled. ‘No wonder you’re in charge, Yldus.’

‘Hush, Qaine,’ the male called Yldus muttered, his voice lacking her snarling ferocity. ‘Whatever it is, Sheraptus will want to look at it closer.’ He glanced over his shoulder to a pair of nearby females. ‘You and you, take it carefullyback to the ship. And do be careful not to let any extremities break off.’

‘The restof you,’ the female called Qaine growled, sweeping her white-eyed glower over the remaining females, ‘retrieve ink and parchment. Remain here and take note of the city’s defences: numbers, weapons, positions, everything. Master Sheraptus demands thoroughness.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘And while I remain appreciative of a female’s need to spill blood, I remind you that your duty is reconno … reconna …’

‘Reconnaissance,’ Yldus sighed.

‘Whatever,’ she snarled. ‘You are notto be seen. Whoever objects answers to me. Whoever violates this order … answers to Sheraptus.’ Her grin broadened at the stiffness that surged through them. ‘Get to work, low-fingers. We return in days.’

‘With an army behind us,’ Yldus added, his face a long, grim frown.

There were grunts of salute, the shuffling of metal as the females reorganised themselves. Naxiaw could not turn his neck, could not even think to turn his neck. He could barely muster the worry for such a thing, either. His mind felt distant, as though whatever rime covered his body also seeped into his skull, past the bone and into his brain.

The sensation of movement was lost to him. He could not recognise the sky as two females gripped him by his arms and legs and tilted him onto his back. They proceeded to carry him down the hill, behind Yldus and Qaine, as though he were little more than a fleshy blue piece of furniture.

‘ Days, she says,’ one of them muttered, her voice muted to his ears. ‘How does anyone expect us to wait that long?’

‘The Master demands patience,’ the other replied.

‘The Master demands a lot,’ the first one growled. ‘He never asks the females to hold their iron.’ She glowered. ‘Rarely does he ask netherlingfemales to do anything for him, so absorbed with the pinks …’

‘No one questions the Master,’ the other one snarled. ‘Leave complaining to low-fingers.’ She glanced over her shoulder at the remaining females. ‘Weaklings.’ She glanced at Naxiaw, stared into his wide, rime-coated eyes. ‘This thing is hardly heavier than a piece of metal. How did it kill the other two?’

‘As you said, they were low-fingers pretending to be real warriors. They should have stuck with their weakling bows instead of thinking they knew how to use swords.’ She snorted, spat. ‘They die first when we attack.’

‘They can’t even speak right. What was it she said before she died?’

‘“Eviscerate, decapitate, exterminate.”’

‘That can’t be right. It’s “eviscerate, decapitate, annihilate,” isn’t it?’

‘Right. Exterminate means to crush something under your heel and leave its corpse twitching in a pile of its own innards. It is what humans do to insects.’

‘What does “annihilate” mean?’

‘To leave nothing behind. Low-fingers can’t even remember the stupid chant.’ The other one hoisted Naxiaw higher as a sleek, black vessel drifted into view on the beach below. ‘That’s why they’re dead.’

Ten

DREAMING IN SHRIEKS

Lenk had never truly been in a position to appreciate nature before. It was always something to be overcome: endless plains and hills, relentless storms and ice, burning seas of trees, sand, salt and marsh. Nature was a foe.

Kataria had always chided him for that.

Kataria was gone now.

And Lenk wasn’t any closer to appreciating nature because of it. The moonlight peered through the dense foliage above, undeterred by the trees’ attempts to keep it out. The babbling brook that snaked through the forest floor became a serpent of quicksilver, slithering under roots, over tiny waterfalls, to empty out somewhere he simply did not care.

When he had found it and drank, he had thanked whatever god had sent it. When he used it to soothe his filthy wound, promises of conversion and martyrdom had followed.

Now, the stream was one more endless shriek in the forest’s thousand screaming symphonies. His joy had lasted less than an hour before he had began to curse the Gods for abandoning him in a soft green hell.

It was murderous, noisy war in the canopy: the birds, decrepit winged felons pitting their wailing night songs against the howling and shaking of trees of their hatred rivals, the monkeys.

His eyes darted amongst the trees, searching for one of the noisy warriors, any of the disgusting little things. His sword rested in his lap, twitching in time with his eyelids as he swept his gaze back and forth, back and forth like a pendulum.

None of them ever emerged. He saw not a hair, not a feather. They might not even be there, he thought. What if it’s all just a dream, a hallucination before Gevrauch claims me?A shrill cry punctured his ears. Or could I ever hope to be that lucky?

He clenched his scavenged tuber like a weapon, assaulting his mouth with it. It was the only way he could convince himself to eat the foul-tasting fibrous matter. Kataria had taught him basic foraging, in between moments of regaling him how shicts were capable of laying out a feast from what they found in mud.

She could have found something else here, he thought. She could have found some delicious plant. ‘ Eat it,’ she would have said, ‘it’ll help your bowel movements.’ Always with everyone’s bowel movements …

No, he stared down at the floor, always withmy bowel movements.

He wasn’t sure why that thought made him despair.

‘ But she’s dead now. They all are.’

The voice came and went in a fleeting whisper, rising from the gooseflesh on his arm. It had grown fainter through the fevered veil that swaddled his brain, coming as a slinking hush that coiled around his skull before slithering into silence.

He supposed he ought to have been thankful. He had long wished to be free of the voice, of its cruel commands and horrific demands. Now, as he sat alone under the canopy, he silently wished that it might linger for a moment, if only to give him someone to talk to preserve his sanity.

He paused mid-chew, considering the lunacy of that thought.

He grumbled, continuing to chew. It’s not as though you could ever preserve your sanity talking to the others, either. If anything talking to Kat would only drive you madder in short order.

‘ It matters not,’ the voice whispered. ‘ She’s drowned, claimed by the deep. They all are. They all float in reefs of flesh and bone; they all drift on tides of blood and salt.’

Lenk had never recalled the voice being quite so specific before, but it slithered away before he could inquire. In its wake, fever creased his brows, sent his brain boiling.

That isn’t right, he told himself. The voice made him cold, not hot. It was the fever, no doubt, twisting his mind, making his thoughts deranged. Of course, your thoughts couldn’t have been too clear to begin with.

There was a rustle in the leaves overhead, a creak of a sinewy branch as something rolled itself out of the canopy to level a beady, glossy stare at him. It hung from a long, feathery tail, tiny humanlike hands and feet dangling under its squat body. Its head rolled from side to side, rubbery black lips peeling back in what appeared to be a smile as its skull swayed on its neck in time with its tail.

Back and forth, back and forth …

It’s mocking me, Lenk thought, his eyelid twitching. The monkey is mocking me. He put a hand to his brow, felt it burn. Keep it together. Monkeys can’t mock. They don’t have the sense of social propriety necessary to upsetting it in the first place. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Of course it does. Monkeys have no sense of comedic timing. It’s not in their nature …

He stared up, found his tongue creeping unbidden to his cracked lips.

Their juicy … meaty nature.

His sword was in his hands unbidden, glimmering with the same hungry intent as his fever-boiled eyes, licking its steel lips with the same ideas as he licked his own rawhide mouth.

The monkey swung tantalisingly back and forth, back and forth, bidding him to rise, stalk closer to the tiny beast, his sword hanging heavily. It wasn’t until he was close enough to spit on it that the thing looked at him with wariness.

‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he growled. ‘This is nature. You sit there and swing like a little morsel on a string, I bash your ugly little face open and slurp your delicious monkey brains off the ground.’

The beast looked at him and smiled a human smile.

‘Now, doesn’t that seem a bit hypocritical?’ it asked in a clear baritone.

Lenk paused. ‘How do you figure?’

‘Are you not aware of how close the families of beasts and man are?’ the monkey asked, holding up its little paws. ‘Look at our hands. They both suggest something, don’t they? The same fleeting, insignificant, inconsequential lifespan through us both …’

‘We are notclose, you little faeces-flinger. Mankind was created by the Gods.’

‘That sort of renders your point about “nature” a bit moot, doesn’t it? Gods or nature?’ The monkey waggled a finger. ‘Which is it?’

‘That isn’twhat I meant and you know it!’ Lenk snarled, jabbing a finger at the monkey. ‘Look, don’t argue with me. Monkeys should notargue. That’s a rule.’

‘Where?’

‘ Somewhere, I don’t know.’

‘What is the desire to be shackled by rules, Lenk? Why did mankind create them? Was the burden of freedom too much to bear?’

‘And if monkeys shouldn’t argue,’ Lenk snarled, ‘they damnwell shouldn’t make philosophical inquiries.’

‘The truth is,’ the monkey continued, ‘that freedom isjust too much. Freedom is twisting, nebulous; what one man considers it, another does not. It’s impossible to live when no one can agree what living is.’

‘Shut up.’

‘Thusly, mankind createdrules. Or, if you choose to believe, had them handed down to them by gods. This wasn’t for the sake of any divine creation, of course, but only to make the thought of life less unbearable, so that these thoughts of freedom didn’t cripple them with fear.’

‘Shut up!’ Lenk roared, clutching his head.

‘We both know why you want me to be silent. You’ve already seen this theory of freedom in action, haven’t you? When a man is free, trulyfree, he can’t be trusted to do what’s right. The last time you saw someone that was free-’

‘I said …’ Lenk pulled his sword from the ground. ‘Shut up.’

‘He attacked a giant sea serpent and caused it to sink your boat, killing everyone aboard and leaving you alone.’

‘ Shut up!’

Lenk’s swing bit nothing but air, its metal song drowned out by the chattering screeches and laughter of the creatures above. He swung his gaze up with his weapon, sweeping it cautiously across the branches, searching for his hidden opponent.

Back and forth, back and forth …

‘It’s very bad form to give up the argument when someone presents a counterpoint,’ Lenk snarled. ‘Are you afraid to engage in further discourse?’ He shrieked, attacked a low-hanging branch and sent its leaves spilling to the earth. ‘You’re too good to come down and fight me, is that it?’

‘ Now,’ a voice asked from the trees, ‘ why is it that you solve everything with violence, Lenk? It never works.’

‘It seems to work to shut people up,’ Lenk replied, backing away defensively.

‘ That’s not a bad point, is it? After all, Gariath isn’t talking anymore, is he? Then again, neither are Denaos, Dreadaeleon, Asper … Kataria …’

‘Don’t you talk about them! Orher!’

He felt his back strike something hard and unyielding, felt a long and shadowy reach slink down toward his neck. He whirled around, his sword between him and the demon as it stared at him with great, empty whites above a jaw hanging loose.

‘Abysmyth …’ Lenk gasped.

The creature showed no recognition, showed nothing in its stare. Its body – that towering, underfed amalgamation of black skin stretched tightly over black bone – should have been exploding into action, Lenk knew. Those long, webbed claws should be tight across his throat, excreting the fatal ooze that would kill him.

‘Good afternoon,’ Lenk growled.

The Abysmyth, however, did nothing. The Abysmyth merely tilted a great fishlike head to the side and uttered a question.

‘Violence didn’t work, did it?’

‘We haven’t tried yet!’

The thing made no attempt to defend himself as Lenk erupted like an overcoiled spring, flinging himself at the beast. My sword can hurt it, he told himself. I’ve seen it happen. Even if nothing else could, Lenk’s blade seemed to drink deeply of the creature’s blood as he hacked at it. Its flesh came off in great, hewed strips; blood fell in thick, fatty globs.

‘Is the futility not crushing?’ the creature asked, its voice a rumbling gurgle in its rib cage. ‘You shriek, squeal, strike – as though you could solve all the woes and agonies that plague yourself and your world with steel and hatred.’

‘It tends to solve mostproblems,’ Lenk grunted through a face spattered with blood. ‘It solved the problem of your leader, you know.’ His grin was broad and maniacal. ‘I killed her … it. I took its head. I killed one of your brothers.’

‘I suppose I should be impressed.’

‘You’re not?’

‘Not entirely, no. The Deepshriek has three heads. You took only one.’

‘But-’

‘You killed one Abysmyth. Are there not more?’

‘Then I’ll take the other two heads! I’ll kill every last one of you!’

‘To what end? There will always be more. Kill one, more rise from the depths. Kill the Deepshriek, another prophet will be found.’

‘I’ll kill them, too!’ Lenk’s snarl was accompanied by a hollow sound as his sword sank into the beast’s chest and remained there, despite his violent tugging. ‘ ALL OF THEM! ALL OF YOU!’

‘And then what? Wipe us from the earth, fill your ears with blood and blind yourself with steel. You will find someone else to hate. There will never be enough blood and steel, and you will go on wondering …’

‘Wondering … what?’

‘Wondering why. What is the point of it all?’ The creature loosed a gurgle. ‘Or, more specifically to your problem, you’ll never stop wondering why she doesn’t feel the way you do … You’ll never understand why Kataria said what she did.’

Lenk released his grip on his sword, his hands weak and dead as he backed away from the creature, his eyes wide enough to roll out of his head. The Abysmyth, if it was at all capable of it, laughed at him with its white eyes and gaping jaw.

‘How?’ he gasped. ‘How do you know that?’

‘That is a good question.’

The Abysmyth’s face split into a broad smile.

Abysmyths can’t smile.

‘A better one, however,’ it gurgled, ‘might be why are you attacking a tree?’

‘No …’

Words could not deny it, nor could the sword quivering in its mossy flesh. The tree stared back at him with pity, wooden woe exuding through its eyes.

Trees don’t have eyes. He knew that. Trees don’t offer pity! Trees don’t talk!

‘Steady.’ His breathing was laboured, searing in his throat and charring his lungs black inside him. ‘Steady … no one’s talking. It’s just you and the forest now. Trees don’t talk … monkeys don’t talk … people talk. You’re a people … a person.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘Steady. Things are hazy at night. In the morning, everything will be clearer.’

‘They will be.’

Don’t turn around.

But he knew the voice.

It was her voice. Not a monkey’s voice. Not a tree’s voice. Not a voice inside his head. Her voice. And it felt cool and gentle upon his skin, felt like a few scant droplets of water flicked upon his brow.

And he had to have more.

When he turned about, the first thing he noticed was her smile.

‘We never get to watch the mornings, do we?’ Kataria asked, sliding a lock of hair behind her long ear. ‘It’s always something else: a burning afternoon, a cold dawn, or a long night. We never get to sit down at just the right time when normal people get up.’

‘We’re not normal people,’ he replied, distracted.

It was difficult to concentrate with every step she took closer to him. The moonlight clung to her like silk slipped in water, hugging every line of her body left exposed by her short green tunic. Her body was a battle of shadow and silver. He felt his eyes slide in his sockets, running over every muscle that pressed against her skin, counting every shallow contour of her figure.

His gaze followed the line that ran down her abdomen, sliding to the shallow oval of her navel. His stare lingered there, contemplating the translucent hairs that shimmered upon her skin. The night was sweltering.

And she did not sweat a single drop.

When he returned from his thoughts, she was close, nearly pressed against him.

‘We aren’t,’ she replied softly. ‘But that doesn’t mean we must be expected to not enjoy a morning, does it? Don’t we deserve to see the sun rise?’

His breath, previously stale with disease, drew in her scent on a cool and gentle inhale. She smelled pleasant, of leaves on rivers and wind over the sea. His eyelids twitched in time with his nostrils, as though something within him spastically flailed out in an attempt to seize control of his face and turn it away from her.

‘This doesn’t sound like you.’ His whisper was a thunderous echo off her face. ‘Not after what you said on the boat.’

‘I regret those words,’ she replied.

‘You never regret anything.’

‘Consider my problems,’ she said. ‘I am just like you. Small, weak and made of the same degenerate meat. I share your fears, I share your terrors …’

‘This isn’t you,’ Lenk whispered, his voice hot and frantic. ‘This isn’t you.’

‘And you’ – she ignored him as her hands went to the hem of her shirt, her face split apart with a broad smile – ‘share my meat.’

His confusion was lost in her cackle, attention seized by her hands as they pulled her tunic up over her head and tossed it aside, exposing the slender body beneath. His eyes blinked wildly of their own volition, and with each flutter of the eyelids, she changed beneath him. Her breasts twitched and writhed under his gaze for three blinks.

By the fourth, they blinked back at him.

Eels, perhaps? Snakes? He could contemplate their nature for one more blink before they launched from her chest, jaws gaping in silent, gasping shrieks forced between tiny, serrated teeth. His own scream, he felt, was nothing more than a fevered sucking of air through the hole that was quickly torn in his throat by their vicelike jaws.

His hands were iron, their bodies were water. He slapped, clawed, raked at them. They chewed, rent, ripped his flesh, brazenly ignoring his desperation. He felt blood weep from his face and mingle with his sweat in thick, greasy tears.

He collapsed under the assault of their teeth and her shrieking laughter, curling up like a terrified, squealing piglet, marinating. He shivered through his tensed body, expecting the teeth to return at any moment and start raking his back and chewing on his spine.

The agony never came. Nor did the death he was certain would come from having one’s face torn off and eaten. He reached up and touched his face, feeling greasy and sticky skin beneath. He looked up.

She, or whatever had been posing as her, was gone.

Shaking, he pulled himself to his hands and feet and crawled to the brook, peering in. His face was red, smeared with blood, but from long lines that raced down his cheeks. Long lines, he thought as he noticed his hands, that perfectly matched the strip of fingernails glutted with skin.

Though it seemed slightly redundant to say so after engaging in philosophical debate with a simian and committing bodily assault on a tree, Lenk felt the need to collapse onto his back and mutter in a feverish whisper.

‘You’re losing it, friend.’

‘ Understatement.’

Lenk blinked at the voice, coldly familiar after such a long and fiery silence inside his head. He fought the urge to smile, to revel in the return of a more intimate madness. It didn’t matter how hard he strained to resist, though; the voice sensed it.

‘ Seems pointless to try to resist.’

‘Where were you?’ Lenk asked.

‘ Always with you.’

‘Then you saw … all that?’

‘ Know what you know.’

‘Your thoughts?’

‘ Our thoughts.’

‘You know what I meant.’

‘ The point is no less valid. Nothing that has happened tonight was real.’

‘It seemed so-’

‘ It wasn’t.’

‘How do you figure?’

‘ For one, she’s dead. Fact.’

‘It’s a distinct possibility.’

‘ A certainty. Listen to reason.’

‘Greenhair said she didn’t find any other bodies. It’s perfectly sane to believe the others might be alive.’

‘ One would be hard-pressed to take advice on sanity from he who hears voices.’

‘Point.’

‘ Referring to your dependence on them. Why bother insisting that they live?’

‘I … need them. They watch my back, help me during the hard times.’

‘ We have each other.’

‘ Wehave nothing buthard times.’

‘ Their deaths are clearly a sign from heaven. We waste time and effort mourning them.’

‘No one’s mourning anyone yet. They could still be alive.’

‘ We could be back in Toha right now if not for them, the book safe and away where it belongs and our body aching to wreak vengeance upon the next blight that stains the earth. They are a hindrance.’

‘No, they aren’t.’

‘ It isthem who needsus. They wouldn’t survive without us. Theydidn’t survive without us. They are useless.’

‘No, they aren’t!’

‘ We have our duties. We have our blights to cleanse. The demons fear us, fear what we do to them. We were created to cleanse the earth of impurities. These companions can only be called thus because they were considerate enough to cleanse themselves for us. They’re better off dead.’