Half Discovered Wings (24 page)

Lanark agreed with a nod, and the magus seemed to comply only
by spreading his hands for a moment before interlacing his fingers
again. Gabel took a slow bite out of his stale bread, no doubt
thinking of Rowan and the degenerative illness caused by the
bolt-hornet.

Caeles’ decision to continue as though nothing had happened
drove the discussion into silence. No-one felt like finishing the
food, and they all left the table. Lanark went back to steering the
ship, under the guard of Gabel.

‘
How come it’s taking so long?’ the hunter asked.

‘
I don’t know why, but the captain only had us on twenty
percent.’

‘
What does that mean?’

‘
It means we can get the hell out of here a lot faster than we
came in. I’m putting us up to sixty; any faster and we’d risk
scudding a bank and flyin’ right out of the water. And,’ he added
needlessly, ‘we don’t want that.’

~

It was already evening and clouds swarmed once more.
The
Tractatus
sailed further and faster through the graveyard, and once
night fully set in the shipwrecks stopped appearing. Sensors
displayed a vast empty circle with nothing but mysterious shadows
here and there. It was past midnight when the first of the
sensor-wraiths became visible from the deck: they were coral
formations, sometimes as high as ten feet, curling upward like an
octopus’ tentacles, sometimes tree-like or man-like or simply vague
structures formed by the reef that meant nothing to the people
seeing them.

It was then
that Caeles heard the singing clearly for the first time. Wonderful
voices, like silk ribbons that swept and spiralled when dropped
from a great height, twisting down through the air, then caught on
warm breath and taken up again.

Apart from the
pure elegance of those voices, they had no effect on Caeles.

Gabel was
another matter entirely.

~

The mist surrounded him, spinning in colourful formations on
all sides, illuminated by what sounded like fireworks not too far
away. He was standing on the water, and it felt like stone to his
naked feet; marble, or maybe glass, it was so smooth.

In the dream he looked down between his feet and saw what was
beneath the surface, dark and foreboding, just like the stormy sky
above him. A black shape, claw outstretched, slowly advanced
through the murk, but Gabel ignored it, and it was instantly
forgotten. It was like a submerged memory, a demonic shape reaching
toward him through fire. A nightmare so familiar it could only have
been real. But when had he ever seen anything like that before? He
had no memory of it…

There was a light nearby, and it shone in warm hues of red
and pink, edged in purple. He arrived quickly, running over the
smooth surface of the lake. It was frozen, he could see it now and
feel it; the cold scalded the soles of his feet. They stuck to the
ice as his porous skin was vacuumed against the frozen
water.

When he
stepped into the light, his feet felt warm as if they had never
experienced the icy lake. All he knew then was tender warmth, and
the soft colourful light that moved in ripples over his body.

Looking up,
Gabel saw a formation of coral before him, five tentacular growths
coming up and over almost to meeting-point in the centre of a
pentagon of reef.

As he stepped
inside the coral edifice, the rest of the universe faded away and
he was in a dark, frightening place. There was no light, no noises
except the blowing wind, a sound he had not heard since they
departed from São Jantuo.

He looked
around, and longed for release from this depressing and fearful
place.

Son. You left,
but you must return. There can be no other.

Whose voice,
and why?

A light, a blinding orb, appeared in front of him. He
followed it away from the darkness, away from the deep, resonant
voice.

Gabel closed his hands around it. As he did so, mist swam
outward from the orb, engulfing it as it side into the shape of a
human figure and began to condense, solidify. He let go and stepped
back.

The young woman standing before him was completely naked. Her
abdomen was bloated, the skin pulled tight over her belly where,
inside, a tiny person developed. She stroked the fleshy curve with
both hands and smiled softly. Her eyes, a deep blue, were watery
with tears of joy. Her hair flowed over her shoulders and wavered
as if in water.

‘
Oh god,’ Gabel cried silently, hot tears streaking down his
cheeks and marking his face. His lips moved in random formations as
he attempted to find the words to express his pain.

You can have her
, said a voice in
his ear.

She can be yours again
, said
another. Both were harmonious, warming to his soul, cheering him.
The pain subsided enough for him to stand and step closer to the
woman clutching her stomach.

‘
Rebekah,’ he said, reaching out toward the mirage.

The two
beautiful voices sang in his ears, joined by a third:

Your friends are your enemies. The old man knows what you
really are, the smoke and flame that bore you, even though you do
not. He is using you for his own purpose
!

‘
I want her!’

We know
…
Three unseen figures hovered by his ears, gently nipping his
lobes with invisible teeth, breathing hot breath over the skin of
his cheeks.
Do what we ask of
you
, they say,
and she is yours once more
.

~

Gabel woke up
and heard the singing through the hull. He absorbed the song, drew
it into himself. He didn’t register the voices, but they had their
intended effect, and he rose from where he had been lying.

He
understood.

Alone in the berth, he had nothing to worry about. The icy
chill of the graveyard had compelled the crew and passengers to
sleep in the lower deck, so he didn’t have to be worried about
disturbing anybody for the time being. He headed toward the stairs,
which led him outside.

His eyes saw the coral formations, just visible through the
white mist that pacified the night’s darkness. His brain didn’t
register them; they were simply another signal to reinforce what he
had promised to do. He turned, walked past the door to the shrine,
ignoring it, and entered the bridge where the wheel stood locked
and unmanned. Caeles was supposed to be steering, but had left it
on auto while he gazed out across the Lual, letting the sensors
make the minute adjustments that may or may have not be necessary
on top of his programmed instructions.

Gabel noticed
there was no resistance on this level, but didn’t dwell on it – in
fact he was already through the bridge and down the stairs to the
lower berth, where three of the remaining passengers slept. Because
he had accepted that the bridge was clear of all danger, he didn’t
hear the voice from the entrance to the bridge calling out:

‘
Gabel? That you?’

Gabel cracked his knuckles, quietly, almost silently, as he
crept past the sleeping Lanark. He didn’t hear the footsteps coming
down from the bridge behind him.

The captain slept in the fold-out bunk on the wall adjacent
to the rear of the deck, and Gabel had to creep past not only
Lanark, but the magus to get to him. He didn’t hesitate before
placing his sturdy weather-worn hands on either side of the
captain’s skull and twisting violently. The sound and feel of the
snap settled into the hunter’s mind, but didn’t sink in. Not just
yet.

From the bottom of the steps, Caeles looked through the
darkness in disbelief as Gabel moved on, the factotum expelling a
long sigh.

Further up the wall, back toward the deck, was the bed where
Rowan lay. Gabel walked quietly over, stopped by her sleeping form,
and for a second something twitched inside his mind. His body
spasmed slightly, as if it wanted to be elsewhere, but it was over
as quickly as it began – and the song was still playing.

He propped Rowan up against the wall. His fingers, like a hot
nest of worms, slid behind her ears, and his palms flattened her
cheeks. Muscles popped all down his arms, preparing to
twist—

Caeles yelled and lunged, tackling Gabel in such a way as to
knock his arms back before the fatal twist was carried out. The
hunter had knocked his head in the scuffle and, through a haze of
dizziness as the awakened others piled upon him, simultaneously
realised what he had done, and forgot the dream. All he knew was
suffering, confusion, and the song that drifted over the water,
fading to silence.

~

‘
Restrain him,’ Caeles said to the magus. ‘He looks like he
won’t put up a fight. And him too,’ he said, pointing a finger at
Lanark.

‘
What? Why me?’

‘
Lanark: don’t argue. I’ll talk to you later. Old man, just do
it. Take them up to the passengers’ berths.’

Caeles moved to where the captain was lying. He didn’t need
to check for a pulse this time: he was undoubtedly dead. Checking
on Rowan, he found her unharmed but still comatose. Her pulse was
thready and she was thin, desperately thin. He would feed her when
he had this more immediate problem sorted.

He helped the magus chain Gabel to one wall, and the
complaining but compliant Lanark to the other. Each link seemed
strong enough to hold them.

‘
Why do you not chain me as well?’ the magus asked brightly,
already knowing the answer.

‘
I don’t think you’ll be a problem,’ Caeles replied, then
rushed to the bridge.

Checking the
controls and displays, Caeles assured himself everything there
seemed okay and untampered with. He let out a puff of breath that
had never been processed by his long-dead lungs.

When he looked
up, he saw the centre of the Lual.

~

The magus
joined him on the deck as they sailed past the massive coral
formation. In the centre, perched upon makeshift seats in the reef,
sat three women.

The two on
either side were piscine in appearance. One, salt-bleached and
scaled, pinched together her eel-grey lips, twitching her webbed
fingers. Bare legs rippled with tiny fins. The other woman had a
single flat fishy eye, round and unblinking, and was spotted with
mould from wrinkled breasts to slimy fishtail. She had dead seaweed
in her hair.

In between was
a woman completely different. Standing she would have been nearly
seven feet tall, and even sitting she towered above the others.
Soft red hair hung down to her waist, obscuring her body, and in it
she had downy feathers that stuck up at the crown like the crest of
a grebe. Her right arm was more like a wing, and was gangrenous and
twisted back in a birdy cystic fibrosis. She had a sallow face with
one eye encircled by white knobbly skin. This garishly thin face
was perched upon a crooked neck, which twitched left and right,
left and right, avian eye swivelling to look at the passing
vessel.

‘
Who are they?’ Caeles whispered.

The three
women looked at them with empty eyes, in total silence. The music
had stopped completely.

‘
Rusalki,’ the magus murmured. ‘They’re called
rusalki.’

*

Fifteen

THE WATCH OF
THE SENTINEL

As far as Caeles could tell, the magus seemed unaffected by
the allure of the songs, though Caeles had his suspicions. He knew
that he himself felt no compulsion to do anything out of character,
and had dreamt no strange dreams (he rarely did, and whenever they
occurred they were twisted memories of the past, or frightening
visions of the future that he had no intention of participating
in). He didn’t, however, know if the magus harboured his
own
suspicions. Did the
old man’s silence mean he didn’t think Caeles affected, or that he
thought he could handle him if he was?

Caeles spent most of his time on the bridge, using what
little knowledge of the vessel he had gleaned from observing the
captain to steer and program their way through the graveyard. They
traversed this far side of the ring of dead ships far quicker than
before, with the Tractatus now operating at faster
speeds.

They passed the final shipwreck in the second afternoon
following Timothy’s death. The magus was sitting with the confined
Gabel and Lanark, describing to them the trio of creatures and
sparing no detail. It was difficult to know if Gabel found any of
it interesting; the hunter suffered greatly from the guilt that had
overwhelmed him as the result of his actions, and spent all his
time looking at the floor as he sat on it, one hand chained to the
bed, the other resting limply on his leg. His twisted wrist
throbbed, but his conscience was killing him.

The effects of the rusalki’s singing seemed to have diluted,
or else they were no longer sending their voices out to meet them.
In the little sleep they managed, no-one mentioned any odd dreams.
Gabel had dreamt ones similar to the ones he’d had earlier, though
said nothing. These dreams were made worse by the gradual inclusion
of a figure that had often haunted his sleeping hours: a
leathery-winged person, concealed by shadow, who whispered his name
over and over. It didn’t help to find that sudden mild hair loss,
the first signs of which he’d had the day before finding the bunker
in the woodland before São Jantuo, was becoming more pronounced by
the day. Scabs developed on his scalp.