Half Discovered Wings (44 page)

They headed out pessimistically, crossing the vast grykes and
long, dusty plateaux. The pace at which they travelled soon slowed
in the heat. The knight suggested that they begin travel at noon
and continue until near midnight, rather than just in the daytime.
That way they could recover from the day as they travelled, rather
than as they slept. It didn’t seem to make much sense to Gabel, but
he trusted in the magus, despite what the rusalki had told him, and
didn’t argue when the old man said they would change their
timetable.

‘
I’m surprised you lasted this long out here, Hînio,’ Sarai
said as she walked abreast with the knight. ‘You must be
strong.’

‘
Thank you,’ he replied. ‘I was valued in the group, before I
was exiled.’

‘
You never told us why you were cast out.’

‘
I think I did. I wasn’t strong enough.’

‘
You had all the training, from birth. And you could have quit
at twelve, like you told me.’

Colan didn’t reply, only continued onwards, armour clunking
as he walked. Sarai looked away, at the horizon, and tried to make
conversation. She didn’t know why; perhaps it was because the
knight, like herself, was an outsider in this party, joined long
after its conception and now merely an addition to an already
established group. Sarai found that she could speak to Hînio much
easier than she could with Gabel or Caeles. Was it that Hînio hid
his face behind a helmet, or that his confidence and strength
reminded her of her son Isaac?

She asked
about his armour.

‘
It is designed to strike fear into the hearts of enemies. The
helmet is carved into a serpent’s head, and the horns have demonic
connotations. The large shoulders exaggerate our size. The carving
of the chest plate mimics the muscles of the body, suggesting that
our bodies are equally constructed. The gauntlets remind enemies of
claws, primed to tear and shred.’ He turned to face Sarai. ‘You
will find an enemy is often more afraid of being cut by a knife
than shot by a pistol, even though a pistol can be far more deadly.
This is the kind of fear we prey on.’

‘
You know fear tactics well,’ Sarai said quietly.

‘
As you said, I was trained from birth. I have had a lifetime
to learn. Are you not frightened of me?’

‘
Yes,’ she admitted, ‘but you’re the first person to make me
feel so. I find that impressive.’

~

‘
They’re getting awfully close,’ Caeles said to Rowan,
eyeballing Sarai and Colan. ‘She hangs around him a
lot.’

‘
Maybe it’s the other way around,’ Rowan replied.

‘
Maybe. Still, I’d feel a hell of a lot better if I could see
his face.’

‘
You’re just indignant because he bested you,’ Gabel said,
stepping closer as they walked. ‘Maybe you should go and take petty
revenge.’

‘
Maybe you should go and find a nice soft bit of desert to bury
your head in, factotum,’ Caeles said. Gabel walked away.

‘
Leave him alone,’ hissed Rowan. ‘You still have a conversation
to finish with me.’

‘
I can’t,’ Caeles replied dolefully. ‘Rowan, it’s not for me to
say.’

‘
Then who?’

Again, she got
no reply.

~

They were a
week into the wilderness before the knight inquired about Sarai’s
missing child.

‘
How old is he?’ Colan asked quietly. He and the ninja sat
close together, in front of the fire as the others slept or waited
for sleep. Fires were a requirement even out on the Plains, as the
nights were arctic cold.

‘
Too young to be a prisoner,’ she said, and sighed. ‘Too old
for me to feel responsible.’

‘
What’s his name?’

‘
Isaac. My son Isaac. I miss him so much!’

‘
You are his mother. Of course you miss him.’

Sarai turned
her head, and the soot-black hair hung in circlets about her face.
Her green eyes reflected the fire.

‘
Hînio,’ she said. ‘Do you have any children?’

‘
No. I have never married.’

‘
Nor loved?’

‘
No. Only Arlo,’ he said, and she could tell he was grinning
behind the gruesome twists of metal of his visor.

‘
Do you miss him?’

‘
Every day. I can’t believe it’s only been a month since I had
to kill him.’

‘
And do you regret it?’

‘
No. He would have suffered anyway, and he had a broken leg.
How … did you and your son become separated?’

The all-green eyes looked away, into the fire. It burned
exactly as the campfire had burned on the night that Isaac had
left. ‘We were travelling east to find his father, a man I’d known
a long time ago. Isaac had never met him. On the way, we found that
we were being chased by … animals, monstrous creatures. They
tracked us through the rainforest on the other side of the Plains.
I knew who was chasing us.’

‘
Who was it?’ he asked.

‘
I’d heard that an old man in a white coat was looking for me,
asking questions. He seemed to be getting closer all the time,
finding people who knew me
personally
, not as “the errant” or
“the Scathac ninja” or the “green-eyed woman”. My friends got hurt
when they wouldn’t help him, and I knew I had to leave. So I talked
to Isaac, and we discussed what would be best. He suggested we go
and find his father. Isaac seemed to have always known that,
although I never spoke of the man, I knew where I could find him if
I ever needed to. Even as a young boy Isaac never questioned me
when I said that we shouldn’t speak of his father.

‘
The
things the man sent to chase us were getting closer. They gained on
us. Then one night, when I was asleep, Isaac got up and left. He
thought he was the reason we were being followed, but he didn’t
know the truth. All he did was place himself in the hands of our
pursuers. I’ve trained him, so he’s strong, and fast, and
dangerous. But they caught him anyway. I found evidence of his
capture: a woman, with long dark hair and pale clothes, in the
rainforest. She came down from the trees and landed in front of me,
saying she knew by my smell that my offspring had been nearby a
week previously, the time I left. The boy had smelled of the
desert, she told me, that he had been out here and turned back. She
was a sanguilac, a very high-functioning the likes of which I’ve
never heard. She wore a brass pendant.

‘
The stranger told me that she had been about to feed upon my
son, but his blood had curious scents to it. My own scent, she
said. Curious; errant blood. She told me how men had advanced upon
my son and put him to sleep, then taken him away. She attacked me,
but I defended myself. I believed she was trying to mislead me, but
she was the only clue I had to Isaac’s whereabouts, so I chased
her.

‘
She moved around the Plains, past Iilyani, further into the
forest. I pursued her. I came across the group we travel with now
and attacked them, thinking that they too were in league with my
enemy. After this I left in pursuit of the sanguilac once more, but
lost the trail. I turned around, all the while thinking how much
time I was wasting, and caught up with Gabel and the
others.’

‘
This man,’ Colan said. ‘The one who holds your son. What’s his
name?’

‘
His name is Tan Cleric. He has a facility in the rainforest to
the west. That is where Isaac is being held.’

‘
How do you know this now?’

‘
Because as I was pursuing the sanguilac, I met someone in a
town who I hadn’t seen for nearly two decades.’

‘
Isaac’s father.’

‘
Yes! He was surprised to see me. As was I, of course, but he
was shocked. He told me how I was in danger, and should hide. It
turned out that he was employed by Cleric, who was searching
ardently for errants. All that time ago, at the start, he’d told
Cleric my name, where to find me – so that I could be with him, the
father of my child! He said he counted on Cleric to find me, so he
could take me away and we could live together with my
son.’

Colan was
quiet. ‘So what happened?’ he asked.

Sarai noticed
the change in his voice. ‘I found that I no longer felt anything
for him. When I told him that we could never be a family, he said
that he no longer wanted that. He’d met someone else, whom he
loved.’

‘
I see. What is Isaac’s father’s name?’

‘
Johnmal,’ Sarai said, pronouncing the name as clearly as she
could. ‘Johnmal Hermann. He is Isaac’s father.’

~

The next few
days led them deeper into the desert, until they were all sick of
the dust blowing in their eyes, and the sand scouring their skin,
and the unrelenting heat that was the only constant there.

Colan questioned Sarai on her story, asking her to elaborate
on certain elements. The sanguilac, for instance … Where had it
gone to? Colan had doubts that the rescue was even possible, if
what she had said about this Cleric man was true; allied with
skilled hunters, and unearthly creatures that chased them through
the rainforest.

He asked what
the plan with Johnmal was.

‘
He intends to find a way to rescue Isaac as soon as he can,’
she told him, as they protected themselves from the dusty,
throat-clogging air. ‘Set him free and send him to me. We’ve
arranged a meeting place, and a signal.’

‘
You think he can do it?’

‘
Johnmal is an errant too. He can do anything.’

That day, the journey through the plains took an unexpected
turn. As they walked, the knight spotted a glare off the surface of
the baked wasteland in front of them, something gleaming and
glinting in the light quite a way away. It didn’t take long until
the others spotted it too.

‘
What’s
that
?’ Gabel asked, consulting the magus.

‘
It looks like a lake,’ Rowan said, but she knew better than to
believe it.

‘
A mirage,’ Caeles suggested.

‘
One that we all share?’ Gabel sneered. ‘Use that mechanical
mind of yours, Caeles.’

‘
One: my mind is entirely organic, thank you, and two: in a
desert, prompted by reactions from others, a mass mirage of water
wouldn’t be uncommon. So use
your
mind,
factotum
.’

‘
Well, it’s something,’ said Colan, in a moment of unexpected
mediation. ‘And it’s stretching right out in front of us, so I
guess we’re going to get to it sooner or later.’

Onwards they
trudged, the soles of their shoes scuffing along the hard arid
ground and stumbling over deep cracks. All moisture was gone from
this barren land. No lake could exist in the Sinh-ha Plains.

It was night-time when they reached the reflective surface
they had seen from such a distance. The “lake” had a rough texture,
but tiny parts of it were smooth and reflected the moonlight. The
whole area glittered before them. Thousands of glinting facets
winked behind the shimmering air.

‘
It’s glass,’ Caeles said, staring at his broken reflection on
the ground.

‘
Glass?’ Rowan repeated. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘
It takes extreme temperatures, Caeles,’ the magus said. ‘Even
the sun here doesn’t heat the sand hot enough enough to make
glass.’

‘
Something did,’ Sarai said, and as she spoke, the ground
trembled. They heard the muted roar of something unnatural growing
beneath them.

‘
It’s a dragon!’ Colan yelled, and the others looked at him
sceptically.

‘
Look,’ said Caeles, and pointed to where something rose from
the baked ground. It was dull and large and flat, and as it rose
soon towered metres above them toward the sky.

‘
What
is it?’ Rowan asked, steadying herself on Gabel as the ground
vibrated.

It was a giant steel door twenty feet high. It rose to its
peak, and then began to lower itself over on massive hinges,
powered by gargantuan sets of hydraulic rods and pistons. With a
tremendous crash, the door flattened over the glassy
surface.

‘
It’s not finished,’ Caeles said, looking at the gaping hole
before them in the centre of the super-heated sand. ‘I think we
should back away a little. Away from the glass.’

They ran, and as they did more vibrations took their feet
from under them. Turning back toward the door, they saw wisps of
steam rising up from the opening, wisps that turned to tendrils,
then to great jets from all sides until, with a resounding
calamitous shriek, the whole opening was filled with a single
column of steam, reaching a hundred feet into the sky.

They felt the
heat hit them like hammers, and they fell back into the sand. Colan
put himself over Sarai, using the armour over his body like a
shield. They felt their skin warm, and their hair curl. Rowan
moaned in discomfort as hot air rushed over them, rippling the
world with heat distortions.

The jet slowed over the space of a few seconds, and the doors
were left open as the remainder of the steam floated off toward the
clear night’s sky. The heat vanished instantly.