Half Discovered Wings (38 page)

‘
Please Irenia, don’t let Rowan need this later on…’

He jabbed the cork back into the keg, and looked up to see
Sarai signalling discretely from across the clearing. Shadows began
to move; the crowd of ghouls danced before the fire. Some moved
toward the kegs. Rough hands collected around the wooden barrels
and they were hefted from their stands by half a dozen men each,
the corrupted liquid sloshing inside.

Gabel shrank
back into the forest, unseen in all the excitement.

The Grand
Wizard had finished his speech, and joined in with the
merry-making. The moon shone a spectral white above as the barrels
were passed and rolled around. Everyone drank, each anonymous
member swilling the alcohol as if it would run out the next day,
the men and women only distinguishable by the pitch of their cheers
and cries of merriment.

It didn’t take
long. Almost as soon as the party started, it ended.

The first to
vomit was a woman, tearing away her mask as she was violently sick,
covering her robes. It took only a further few seconds before
others were joining her, painting the clearing in vomit.

‘
You used too much,’ Sarai accused. ‘It isn’t going
to—’

‘
Be quiet.’

Those not
being sick were in confusion. They milled around, concerned about
their comrades. The barrels were left alone as the unaffected stop
drinking.

‘
They should be feeling tired,’ Sarai whispered to
herself.

‘
No, it’s not an anaesthetic.’

True enough, those being sick spasmed and fell, pulling
against themselves, coiling into foetal positions, groaning and
lying in their own messes. Then their muscles weakened, and they
rolled onto their backs, totally slack.

‘
Come,’ Gabel said quietly. ‘It’s working, and we’ve already
been still here too long…’

‘
What if—’

‘
If I don’t want to see this, I’m sure that you don’t either.
Let us get back. It’s done.’

Together they
returned to where the river ended, and mounted their horses. As
they untied the reins from the trees, the branches above them
rustled. A shower of dried leaves drifted about them.

~

In the
clearing, everyone was motionless. They had consumed the
contaminated liquor, and now they all lay limp, not a single muscle
responding to commands. Several had suffered heart attacks, unable
to cry out, throat muscles ignorant of the commands their brains
issued.

The Grand
Wizard McNair lay panting on his back. He tried to speak but he
simply couldn’t manage it. Every muscle in his body was perfectly
slack.

‘
Hhhh
…’ he said. ‘Hhhhhh…’

All about the
clearing, the trees were alive.

The goyles attacked in swarms. Great clouds of the tiny
creatures flocked toward the immobile Luxers, lured by the heat of
their gathered bodies. Before, during the speeches and the dancing,
the movement had frightened the apish creatures. Now the Luxers
were like a feast laid out for them by generous hosts.

Winged hordes thronged upon the robed victims, fangs and
claws bared. Tiny arms and legs lashed out, tearing fabric and
flesh. McNair’s mind struggled within his inert body. Although it
was utterly limp, it still felt every moment of pain his nerve
impulses sent to his brain. Busy snouts buried themselves in the
slitted hoods of his congregation, and gorged upon soft open
eyeballs.

The clearing
was no longer clear. It was the site of a massacre.

~

When two men on horseback were caught riding slowly across
the flats toward Iilyani, watchers sent messages to Saykaan. He
took three of his best men to intercept this pair of
invaders.

When he saw that once again it was Gabel and Sarai who rode
toward him, he ordered his men to stand down. He asked what they
had been doing in the forest, and Gabel told them.

At first, there was disbelief. An attack on the whole Luxer
clan? He’d not heard of such a sure impossibility before, but he
sent out three scouts toward the camp to investigate. When they
returned, describing the horror flooded the clearing at the end of
the river, Saykaan insisted on checking himself. He returned half
an hour later, and silently shook Sarai’s and Gabel’s
hands.

~

Rowan was no longer
Rowan. In less than two hours, her dark hair, previously hanging
down to the small of her back, had been cut to the shoulders in a
hastily layered fashion. Her skirt had been split then hemmed up
both sides, leaving slits that went thigh-high. She wore an
impossibly tightly-strung corset of deep crimson, and the rest of
the bodice was a light lilac, trimmed in crimson lace.

The
fire of the buildings was reflected on the sheen of her exposed
skin. She walked down the ruined streets, circled each toppled
structure in horror. People groaned and wept on all
sides.

‘
Turenn?’ she called from between rouged lips.
‘Turenn?’

It
had been a long night, and not simply because of the violence. Her
time in the great hall had stretched the hours out for her. The
period after that, when she and Turenn had laid together, had been
devoid of time altogether. It was a moment drawn out for blissful
eternity as her lost memories were made up for. Possible
virginities forever forgotten were taken as gently as she’d
imagined. The dark culpture of his body was a new warmth against
hers, the thick sensation of their coition bringing hot tears to
her eyes, not because of pain, or of uncertainty, but because of
the blistering thrill of her resurrection, of her returning to life
after having hers taken from her. Rowan’s amnesia was, via a form
of ironic justice, forgotten. She had tasted the phoenix’s
ecstasy.

Turenn had left her to get changed, saying that he must see
what he could do outside – their time together, for the evening,
was over. He had to help repel what intruders remained, and he left
her in the care of his girls.

There were no intruders left to repel. There were only the
wounded, the grieving, and the few benevolent stoics who already
helped to clear away the wreckage.

Rowan didn’t know where she was going. Fear made her
uncertain, and as she called for her love she received only echoes
for replies, until—

‘
Rowan.’

She turned. Down an
alleyway, half-obscured by a resigned wall, stood Turenn. He was by
the body of one of his other girls, her form cruelly burnt on one
side, and left remorselessly atop a mound of rubble to die.

‘
She
just went,’ Turenn said sadly. ‘My poor Peridot.’

Rowan knelt by the blackened body, tenderly touched the
scorched cheeks, once red as hers. ‘I don’t understand,’ she
sobbed. Tears streaked her make-up, and ruby droplets vanished into
the dark lace of her bodice.

‘
Don’t worry,’ he said quietly, lifting her. ‘Come
on.’

‘
Where are we going?’

‘
Back
to mine, where you belong.’

‘
What?’

‘
Where you’re safe,’ he corrected, a bright smile erasing the
scowl for a second, then dropping from his face as if his lips had
weights.

‘
Wait, I need to find Joseph, and Caeles…’

‘
We
can find them later.’

‘
But—’

‘
Look,’ he said sharply, catching her by the shoulders and
spinning her around. ‘Listen to me, all right? I’m in no mood. One
of my girls just died. What a waste of money!’ he snapped, jerking
his head toward crumpled Peridot.

‘
Turenn,’ Rowan murmured.

‘
Just
leave talking about it.’ He frowned, and the fire, like the candles
once did, put darkness to his features. Now they were harsh, and
heavier than regret. ‘Come on. I’m not—’

Rowan fell back with
surprise. Her uncomfortable new heels snagged on the heat-cracked
cobbles, and she fell badly against the floor of the alleyway.
Directly in front of her slid the body of Turenn, eyes still
bright, but dead.

Dropping a hefty club of fallen girder, a grey shape advanced
on Rowan from the darkness. Out of the shadows stretched a pale
hand, knuckles bloody and darkly glistening, and it clutched the
cobbles and dragged the rest out into the light.

A face, streaked with
red, slapped with bruises, scowled at her. The breath of the
escaped Luxwoman put hot updrafts to her matted hair, and her eyes,
sharp and dark as rotten teeth, seemed to lance Rowan from where
she lay.

‘
How
about you?’ she croaked, her chest heaving. She wracked with sobs.
‘You as well? Well, come on…’

Tears streaked down her beaten cheeks.

Rowan cried with her, tried to retreat but the wall blocked
her.

‘
Please
…’ she said.

‘
Please
what
?’ the Luxwoman barked. ‘Didn’t do
me
much good…’

She
dragged herself further across the ground. Ashes blackened the
white robe. There was already a tear near the ribs, and it caught
on wreckage and ripped to her knee, exposing a thigh blue with
bruises. The skin there was as streaked with blood.

‘…
Not much good when he did
that
to me…’

‘
No…’ Rowan gasped. ‘Wait…’

‘
When he
fucked me in
chains
,’ she spat. She was almost on Rowan
now, inches away. With a tortured lunge she grasped her skirt,
dirtying the fabric. ‘
In
chains
…
!
’ she screamed, pulling.

With
a hiss and a thud, the Luxwoman spasmed. A silver sword had been
driven between her shoulder-blades, and blood rushed out into the
stained robes, leapt onto Rowan’s face, and ran into her
mouth.

‘
My
God,’ Caeles said, dropping to his knees in front of her. It had
been his wakizashi that had killed the Luxer.

‘
Rowan,’ he whispered, eyes wide. He frantically wiped the dead
woman’s blood from her cheeks, from her lips, thumbed it out of her
eyelashes.

‘
Caeles,’ she said, pushing him off.

‘
What happened to you?’ he croaked, seeing her new hair, her
new clothes. ‘What did he
do
to you?’

‘
Let
me stand!’ she said, pushing herself up off the floor, rushing past
the body of the Luxwoman.

‘
Wait!’ he said, but she was already gone around the corner.
He caught up with her in the street. He went to take her hand but
she refused, and she looked in horror at the blood that covered his
naked chest, painting half his neck and face. He was wet with
it.

‘
Get
away from me,’ she groaned.

‘
No,’ he insisted. ‘Rowan,
wait
, will you? What have you done
to your
hair
?
What did Turenn
do
?’

‘
Nothing more,’ she hissed. ‘He’ll do nothing more.’

‘
Don’t grieve for him!’

‘
Get
away,’ she repeated. ‘Leave me alone!’

‘
Rowan, just
look
at you! What will Gabel say?’

‘
Gabel,’ she snapped, glaring at him before running away, ‘can
go and
fuck himself
.’

Caeles watched her go,
speechless. Behind him the still-warm bodies of Turenn and the
Luxer prisoner were leaking blood between the cobbles. Caeles eyed
the sinking islands of stone, then sheathed his stained sword.

*

Twenty-Two

MEMORIES
THROUGH WATER

The young man
awoke with a start, pushing himself up in the bed. The poorly-woven
blanket slipped from him and crumpled to the floor. He sat like
that with his arms barely supporting him as his chest heaved and
his eyes, which were wide with shock and confusion, absorbed his
surroundings: the bare walls, without paper or paint, and the
floors which were a fine but dusty hardwood. There was only one
small table in the room. He didn’t notice the chair in the corner,
with the monk sitting patiently in it, leg up on one knee, face
resting on his fist.

‘
Staying awake this time, are you?’ he asked. He leaned
forward. ‘Do you know who you are?’

‘
Where am I?’

‘
The monastery in San Bueto,’ the monk said. ‘You came here a
good few weeks ago, remember? You gave one of the acolytes a
message for me.’

‘
I’ve never heard of San Bueto. Who are you?’

‘
I’m Brother Michael,’ he said, and stood, taking a step closer
to the bed. He had a shaven head that gleamed in the sunlight, and
the tanned olive skin of a Spaniard. The lower half of his face was
dark with shaven beard, which still revealed itself despite being
cut to the skin every day. He wore a light robe draped over his
shoulders, red in colour.

‘
Your robe,’ the awakened man croaked. His throat was deathly
dry. ‘It’s like…’

‘
Blood?’

He nodded.

‘
Yes, you might have such thoughts once in a while, Henrique.
You were attacked by sanguisuga.’