Half Discovered Wings (57 page)

A group of Shianti citizens were moving to action. They had
formed a battalion of sorts, and already fired their weapons at the
flying creatures. Now a makeshift leader called them to order and
set them on to the very centre of the excavation site. They moved
forward into the light, their tools brandished as weapons. They
were swallowed by the orange light, as the remainder anxiously
waited to see what would happen.

Nothing
happened.

The rest moved in. Almost instantly the earth began to shake.
Houses creaked and groaned as the centre of the crater’s basin came
alive with vibrating earth. The air went cloudy with disturbed
dust. The bowl of the crater erupted into a crown of rocky
pinnacles, forming a shield around itself. The earth continued to
fracture, some segments rising like craggy platforms, other
crumbling into dust. The rest of the Shiantis were either torn
apart by the shifting earth or knocked backward, smothered in dust
and soil and falling boulders.

A terrific wind had taken up. Slates were whipped from the
roofs of buildings, slicing through the air. The creatures in the
sky were buffeted from side to side on the roiling currents, their
diaphanous wings trembling like mirrored rainbows.

The monks began to tackle the rocky outcroppings, attempting
to find purchase on these new obstacles, but as soon as they had
climbed to the top of one the wind smashed them from it. The
torrential rain hammered the rest to the muddy floor. Lightning
streaked across the underside of the clouds, illuminating the robed
bodies that littered the site.

Gabel pulled
sharply on his reins and steadied his steed. ‘Magus,’ he said, ‘how
can we get past those rocks?’

‘
Those on the ground aren’t faring well,’ the old man pointed
out.

Gabel turned
next to Teague. ‘William. What did the two musicians mean when they
said you were listening to what your insides were telling you?’

‘
They were telling me that this body’s more like my old one
than I thought. There is a burning inside the very trenches of my
stomach, like a flaming serpent. It’s what I thought I had left
behind.’

‘
Can you make this serpent do your bidding? You might need it.
For now, take Rowan, and tie her horse to yours.’

‘
You’re going down there? Look at the Sects!’

‘
Just take her reins,’ he ordered, and his expression was like
thunder. He jumped down off his horse and watched as the
Caballero
knights began
their attack.

It was fruitless. Their horses were well bred and smart and
found paths up the rocky ledges, but they were soon halted by the
hot gale and terrified by the lightning. The knights dismounted and
persevered, scaling the top of the pinnacles as atmospheric
electricity flickered over the sharp edges of their armour like St.
Elmo’s fire.

There was a surge of activity from inside. A sudden burst of
hurtling black shapes spewed from within the pillar of light and
pierced the wall of armour. Some of the knights fell to their
deaths, battered inside the coffins of their armour. Others were
torn open like paper bags in the rain. The rest seemed to disappear
into the thick cloud of creatures, vanishing like mist within the
living storm and rendered to rusty smoke.

The black shapes moved outward in a wave, running over the
rim of rocks and washing down through the buildings – toward Gabel
and the rest.

The magus
turned to him quickly. ‘Joseph, you have to go now!’

The hunter
nodded, but hesitated, and looked back at Rowan.

‘
Take her with you,’ said the magus. ‘That’s the safest place
for her now. Hurry!’

~

Gabel could barely see; his eyes were clouded by black smoke.
He could make out the advancing shapes and saw them smash into the
people around him like a tsunami, but he felt nothing, even when
the creatures collided with him.

They looked like
people, but they were not. Their bodies were covered with hard
reflective carapaces, and they were sinewy and gaunt. They had
wings that shimmered like the surface of oily water. They were
savage and barbarous. Gabel barely saw them. The smoke enveloped
him completely, and before he even had a chance to register what
his eyes were seeing, he saw no more.

There was a bird
inside him. Its wings were made of hellfire, its beak was of ashen
soot, and its claws were molten metal. It flapped and coursed
through his veins, growing in size and strength until it filled him
entirely.

Gabel was conscious during this second transformation. He
felt his shoulder blades crack and move, the flesh on his back tear
like the skin of a drum pulled too tightly. The fiery bird filled
his body with magma and his head with smoke, and he knew his form
was something different now, as if he had been turned inside out,
his spirit on the exterior. His back shuddered, and he knew he now
had great leathery wings. His skin was hard and black, and his
hands were clawed and sharp, his teeth likewise.

It all
happened in a second, and he had acknowledged everything that had
happened around him: the magus had been looking at him but was now
turned away, defending himself against the onslaught of the
chitinous attackers.

Isaac had been
halfway from dismounting. His face couldn’t be seen for shadow, but
the light accented his muscular torso and thighs, and his dark hair
was frozen in a glistening arc.

Teague was
leaning forward in his saddle, and the black horse he rode was
rearing and in mid-grimace, the reins tight around its neck. The
spurs were dug into its sides, and its eyes were ball-like and
white.

Rowan was just behind him. Her eyebrows were faintly upturned
in the centre, a single crease across her forehead. Her viciously
short-cut hair had been beaten down over her skull by the rain;
wisps and curls were glued to her skin. The crimson bodice given to
her by Turenn was hard and wet, and Gabel saw the clumsy stitching
around the hemlines, the irregularly sized buttonholes, the damp
and frayed lacing. Her skirt was sodden, tied around her thighs so
that she could sit on the horse. Her legs glistened. The barely
substantial muscles in her arms stood out as she gripped tightly to
the reins, her horse about to buck. Her feet were half-in the
stirrups, and he noticed the way in which the light shone and faded
around the dips and rises of her ankles. Her skin was pale against
the nimbus of light that shrouded her, as if covetous of her in
this frozen instant of beauty.

Gabel saw all this at once, in less than a second, less than
a nanosecond, and in this time he had transformed, and his great
wings had beaten back the smoke and were taking him up into the air
like a silver bullet. His clawed hands reached for Rowan and hooked
under her corset. As she was lifted from her saddle her eyes
widened in sightless shock, but she had been rescued from the wave
of attackers and carried up and over them. In her blindness she
didn’t see what Gabel saw: the torrent of insectoid men, the slow
dip of the crater as they rushed toward its centre, the rough edges
of the hastily-cut excavation site, and the burning rosy glow of
the pillar of light, as they pierced its edge and disappeared, down
toward its source.

~

The dense light from the machine had cut its own way through
the cave ceiling, leaving a narrow downward tunnel. Descending
through that flaming pillar and then swooping outward had been like
suddenly having one’s eyes torn out, when all the light in the
world couldn’t restore their lost vision.

That was how
the cave seemed at first, black and hellish, but Gabel had enough
sight to glide smoothly down and carefully place Rowan on the
ground against the edge of the rocky wall. He carefully put her
hair away from her eyes, gently lifted her chin with a clawed
finger.

‘
Rowan?’ he asked quietly.

‘
Joseph…?’

‘
Wait here,’ he said, but his voice didn’t carry over the roar
of the immense machine, and he had to tell her twice. She only
nodded, confused, as he stood straight-backed and made a silent
examination of this new place, folding back his wings as his eyes
adjusted. He still wore fragments of his shirt and trousers, a
broken satchel and the heavy black scabbard of Caeles’ wakizashi
sword.

The great machine was in the centre of the cave, half-buried
in its peaty floor and resting on a dais of earth. It was made up
of rings, great coils of metal with little mechanical arms that
pulled the coils this way and that. They span around a central dome
that rose to a flat snub of steel. Around this, bands of polished
glass rotated, and the mirrors reflected the light that poured
forth from the snub and amplified it. Tiny jets of steam rose from
the dome, lit up by the great ray at its centre so that they seemed
like streams of rising fire, all rushing toward the head of this
great thing, this creature that rose and fell like some monstrous
mechanical abomination, like lungs inflated; a device whose moving
parts made up a complicated whole and turned it to something alive
and calculating. It oscillated and steamed and roared at Gabel, who
stared dumbly.

He heard voices and, after casting a worrisome glance back at
Rowan, moved to scrutinize. He saw two people at the back of the
cave, underneath a great crowd of dripping stalactites. They were
white beside the pillar of fire, bent over a table of computers.
They seemed protected from the heat by a patchy, liquescent energy
barrier. Around their feet in muddy pools sat a mass of cables and
wires.

There was a girl. She was a stranger to adulthood, Gabel saw,
but tall and athletic, hair twisted into a long tight ponytail. She
stood with an air of confidence, her hands on her slender hips,
observing with indifference the work of the other. A long staff
weapon was strapped to her back, the ends of which fixed with
gleaming scythes.

The other was an old man, with hair like a nest of tiny
infuriated snakes. He had a pair of goggles with black lenses,
which the girl also wore. He was leaning over a vast workspace of
computers, the wires from which trailed into multiple sockets that
were attached to the massive machine. He was furiously pushing
buttons, typing on a tray of yellowed keys, and watching with
excitement the brightening of the light.

‘
Do you see?’ he cried. ‘Rosanna, do you see?’

‘
I see, father,’ the girl replied. She blinked slowly at the
light, distracted, with her brow knotted slightly, the smooth skin
there darkened. Her eyes had the shine of restrained
tears.

‘
You don’t. You’re thinking about him, aren’t you? Forget him.
If Johnmal had wanted to be here so badly, he’d be here. Doesn’t
matter, he’s safe. He’s one of the few who will survive. And you
got out here by yourself, didn’t you?’

She nodded.
‘Is it working properly yet?’

‘
The elements are ancient, I think they’ve…’ He trailed off,
playing with the machines. ‘The half-life is so short. In a sense
that’s why it’s so powerful. It releases all its energy in a very
short space of time … but I think it’s lost its
radioactivity.’

‘
Then it won’t work?’

‘
Perhaps not in the way we hoped. It’s there … only it’s weak;
it’s all concentrated inside here.’ The man kicked the tables.
‘It’s barely even leaving this cave!’

Gabel had seen enough. He could tell from the girl’s build
and posture that she was powerful, and from her scent that she was
dangerous.

His thoughts coalesced; he felt himself beat his wings and
clench his fists, and the fire that was running through his veins
ate into his mind. He felt his consciousness slip into the
background and his instincts take over.

He launched, rushing forward with just two beats of his
wings, and barrelled into Rosanna. She spun at the last second,
hand reaching for her weapon, but she was moving in slow motion.
His arms had moved before they were even instructed. He lifted her
from the ground with a preternatural screech and turned her body to
ribbons, flooding the cave floor with blood, and throwing her
remains against the wall.

The man looked at him in shock. His face was as white as
foam. He staggered backward, took a leather pouch from the table
and cast it forward. Gabel hit it with the back of his hand and
knocked the pouch away, but it spilled its dusty contents and he
felt them fall against him like knives. He shook the sand from his
toughened flesh and roared.

‘
You can’t take me yet!’ the man cried. ‘I’ll not go so easily.
Does your father know you’re here? Does it know you’ve come
for
me
?’

Gabel
advanced, clawed feet stepping into the girl’s spongy flesh and
squeezing blood from it. The wings on his back blew the blood into
rivers that trailed before him, as if his very presence commanded
it.

‘
That sound!’ the man cried. ‘I knew I felt the wind blowing
tonight. The beating of vast wings!’

He fell and scrabbled on the ground. ‘Where are my
creatures?’ he said. ‘
You
, your father will tear you to
pieces when he comes, you should know your place … Only Erebis
decides who shall go and when – you are not needed here,
Charos…’

‘
You call me
Charos
?’ Gabel’s body
roared.