Black Halo (85 page)

‘
What is the point?
’

A question that he knew he could not answer, despite how much he wanted to. A question he knew this man could not answer, despite the way the priestess looked at him as she approached.

And yet … approach she did, with a barely alive question in her eyes.

To the man he was so close to incinerating.

Right before her eyes.

He knew what would happen. He knew that the emptiness in her eyes would consume her wholly, that question snuffed out and leaving nothing but a wonder without an answer. No matter whom she had chosen to place her faith in, faith was all she had left.

And he decided, lowering his finger, that fourteen hundred and two lives was too many to give this man credit for.

Bralston would wait, then. Wait until she found herself with a cause. Wait until he found himself alone. It would be a monumental task, to keep himself from killing this man, this traitor, this murderer, this liar.

But he was a Librarian.

He could wait.

Denaos was a man of many fragments, Asper decided as he whirled on her. The masks he had worn, delicate porcelain facades that guarded him, had begun to crumble in different areas. The visage of the cynic, the sarcastic, the indifferent was gone from his face.

Caught without his masks, his face quickly tried to find a new one to don.

At the jaw, there was a clench of animal fury. Around the eyes, weariness and desperation. In the furrow of his brow, worry that bordered on panic. Which of these was the face that lay beneath them all, she was not sure. Nor did she care.

This wasn’t about him.

She knew exactly why she stepped forward, however, under his wide and wary stare, before his tense and trembling form. She knew exactly why there could be no stepping back, no retreat back to contemplation and prayer.

That sort of thing never got anyone anywhere. This she knew now.

‘You don’t look well,’ she said.

‘Thanks, I haven’t been sleeping well,’ Denaos replied.

‘You didn’t sleep at all last night.’

‘How would you know?’

‘I didn’t, either.’

Not for lack of trying, she knew. Exhaustion had come to claim her several times. Her eyes had fallen shut only as long as it took to see grins in the darkness, hear her own shrieks and hear no one reply back.

I asked … I begged … it was my moment of uttermost need. I always believed that—

No, no, NO!
She gritted her teeth, forced the thoughts down her throat and into her stomach.
No more dwelling on it. No more fear. If you fear, you start wondering. If you wonder, you ask why
. Her frown broadened into a bitter gash.
If you ask, no one ever answers
.

She was keenly aware of the absence of a heavy weight that had once been upon her chest. To leave her pendant, her symbol, was blasphemous, at least as much as the suggestion she made by unlacing the front of her robes. The Gods, she was aware, would not approve.

This wasn’t about them, either.

Bitterly, she hoped they were watching right now.

Though what was happening, she wasn’t so certain of anymore. Nor was Denaos, it seemed, as he backed away from her like a hound beaten, glancing about nervously, hoping for a reward and fearing a lash, too scared to sit still, too curious to run outright. That was fine, she thought; his input was not needed.

This was her decision.

His back struck the tree and his eyes stopped their fervent flutter, focusing on her as she approached him. Her legs did not tremble as she feared they might have. Resolve flooded her body, turned to iron in her blood, so heavy that, with one more step, she tripped and was sent falling into him, her arms flying out to seize him.

His body was cold, she thought as her hands slithered under his vest, his flesh clammy and sweaty beneath as she pressed against him. She had expected him to be warm. His breathing was quick, erratic and hare-like. As she leaned up, thrusting her lips at him like weapons, she hadn’t expected him to pull back, his eyes fighting against the urge to close and give in.

‘You don’t know what you’re—’ he began to whisper, silencing as she pressed a finger to his lips.

‘I do,’ she replied. ‘I know exactly.’

He pulled back again, but she was swifter. She forced her lips upon his, pried his apart with her tongue. They came loose willingly enough after a time, as she had known they would. The man was, after all, a felon. He wanted this as much as she did. His reluctance was only due to her forwardness.

She confirmed this as his tongue came out to touch hers, hers wrapping about his, searching his mouth with a purpose she wasn’t aware of. His body trembled; she pulled him all the closer. He made a soft moan; she drowned it with a chest-borne growl. She could feel him staring at her; she shut her eyes tighter. She didn’t want to look at him. She just wanted to—

She was spared thinking of an answer as she felt his arms deftly slither up between them, breaking her hold. His hands lashed out with a fury normally reserved for combat, slamming against her and knocking her back. The iron resolve left her, a rush of leaden weakness flooding her and sending her crashing to the ground.

And when she met his gaze, it was not a look normally reserved for companions that he struck her with.

‘I don’t know what happened to you on the ship before I got there,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t even exactly know what happened after. But no matter what it was, you don’t want this.’

‘I do,’ she said, drawing herself up to her knees. ‘It’s my choice.
Mine
.’

‘Not if you keep doing this, it isn’t.’

‘You’re a brigand,’ she whispered spitefully. ‘What do you care where you get it? You think I couldn’t do better?
I’m
the one settling here.’

‘And you chose to do that?’

‘It … it doesn’t matter,’ she said, wincing. ‘I need this. I need to know that I can still … that it’s still my …’

‘Not this way.’ He turned. ‘Not with me.’

She watched him stalk away, his shoulders heavy, weighing down his stride. She whispered to him on a breathless, stagnant voice.

‘I have been through …’ She shook her head violently. ‘I’ve given so much. And every time I ask for a blessing, try to take a favour, I am denied.’ She stared fire into his spine. ‘At the very least, I thought I could count on
you
to do what you always do. I should have remembered that what you always do is fail me in every way conceivable. You’re pathetic.’

‘I can live with that, at least,’ he replied, continuing to stalk away.

‘I hate you.’

‘That, too.’

He disappeared into the forest. And she was left alone. She did not weep.

Who would hear it?

The stream continued through the forest, Lenk discovered, and its whispering voice went with it. It murmured between trees, whimpered under rocky brooks, roared through hard ground, grew softer as it thinned into shallows, grew louder as it deepened. Lenk followed it all, listening to it.

It was probably a bad sign that he was beginning to understand it.

Never long enough to get a complete sentence, sometimes not even a full word; the stream was always freezing as he walked past, its flows and ebbs becoming hissing, crackling ice every time he laid eyes on it. But when his own breath grew soft and the water was thin enough to freeze with barely a sound, he could hear it.

The words were ancient, or alien, or simply incomprehensible. He could not understand them, anyway, but he could grasp the message behind them. They were not happy words spoken from a pleasant voice. They uttered, decreed, spewed messages of hate, vengeance, duty.

And betrayal.

Always betrayal.

Every other word seemed to carry that frustrated, seething hatred born of treachery. It rose from the stream, hammering at the ice with its voice, its words mercifully muffled behind the frigid sheets.

It was probably a worse sign that the voice was familiar.

‘I remember it,’ he whispered, ‘in the forest on my first night here. It spoke of betrayal then, too.’

‘
This island is a tomb
,’ the voice answered. ‘
The dead have seeped into it with all their hate and their sorrow. Most have had centuries to let the earth consume them and their emotions with them. For some hatreds, that’s not nearly long enough
.’

‘They sound so familiar, like I’ve heard them before.’

‘
One of us has
.’

He frowned, but did not ask the voice anything more. He pressed on through the forest, following the winding stream and its angry voice. He couldn’t tell if it was speaking to him. He didn’t want to know. If he did, and if it was, he would want to turn back.

And turning back, returning to
them
, was not an option.

It never was.

Before long, he found the stream’s end. Like an icy tongue from a great, black maw, it slithered into the shadows of a great cave set in the hillside. Here, the forest was at its deepest stage of decay. The leaves hung black off trees that had been brimming with greenery only a few paces back. The air was stale, stagnant and frigid.

It was most certainly a bad sign that he wasn’t bothered by any of this.

He watched as the ice continued without him, continuing down its freezing, murmuring path into the darkness. His ears pricked up, however, as for a few fleeting moments, he could hear them: words, clear and coherent, echoing in the gloom.

‘
Don’t like it
,’ a voice whispered. ‘
Don’t like it and don’t want to go in there. Not with him …
’

‘
We have our orders
,’ another replied. ‘
They’ve got to die, all of them
.’

‘
They helped us at the battle, though, killed more demons than any—
’

‘
Don’t act like you haven’t been thinking of it. They’re unnatural. Abominations. Make it swift. In the back. Just don’t look in his eyes
.’

‘
Follow me
,’ a third voice, cold as the air outside. ‘
This cave is supposed to lead to a way around the enemy. We will cleanse this earth of their taint. Our duty is upheld
.’

His eyes widened at the sound of it, the feel of it. It rang inside his ears as he had felt it ring inside his head before. Its rasping chill was all too familiar, the force behind it all too close to him. He heard it as it echoed inside the cavern.

He heard it as it spoke to him.

‘
Go inside
.’

‘What will I find there?’ he asked.

‘
Nothing good
.’

‘Then why should I?’

‘
We will only find truth in the dark places
.’

‘I’ve gone this far living a lie. It’s not been all bad.’

The voice didn’t need to respond to that. Immediately, the memories of the previous night, of the screaming, of the backs of his companions, came flooding into his mind. He sighed, lowering his head.

‘I’m afraid.’

‘
Wise
.’

‘I don’t understand what’s happening.’

‘
You will
.’

An urge, not his own, rose within him and bid him to turn around. He beheld the figure instantly, standing upon a nearby ridge. A man, it appeared, cloaked in shadow with white hair. Lenk took in his harsh, angular features immediately, ignoring them as soon as he spied the hilt of a sword peeking over the man’s shoulder.

But before Lenk could even recall he didn’t have a weapon of his own, he found himself arrested by the man’s stare. His eyes were a vast blue that seemed to take in Lenk as a shark swallows fish. They stared at him: intense, narrow …

Bereft of pupils.

The man approached. Lenk found it hard to keep track of him as he walked down the ridge. His form was there, and not there, vanishing each time he stepped into a shadow, appearing when the wind blew dust that became his body. He took a step and was somewhere else, moving with an erratic fluidity Lenk had only seen in dreams.

He did not move as the man approached, held by his great stare. He did not move as the man walked right through him, unflinching. He turned and watched him disappear into the shadows of the cavern, vanishing completely the moment his foot touched gloom.

‘This … this isn’t real,’ he told himself. ‘But it feels so …’ His head began to ache. ‘Have I seen this before?’

‘
One of us has
.’

He turned and saw more figures approaching over the ridge: more men, though softer of body and eye than the one that had just come. They approached in the same winking step, and each time they appeared in his vision, their faces were harder set. There was fear there, hate there, intent there.

They were clad in old armour, carried old blades, old spears. Their cloaks trailed behind them, stained and battered and torn. Clasping them together upon their breasts, Lenk saw a sigil.