Half Discovered Wings (6 page)

Rowan felt
herself frown as well. Just for a divided second she thought she
had seen the hunter’s eyes flash, as if someone inside him had
flicked a switch and made red light bulbs blink behind his darkened
face.

*

Three

ISAAC
CAPTURED

A cloud of bats screamed and weaved their way through the
sun-bleached canopy. Their screeches, though out of the running
man’s range of hearing, gave him a headache. Though the day was not
yet over, light streaming between the boughs and vines that formed
a vivid green net above him, the nocturnal wildlife was out in
force.

Other dark, bulky monsters chased him through the dense
rainforest, herding him the west. As these snarling animals, big as
horses, tore their way after him, he ran – a young man frightened –
and though he was fit and healthy he knew the things were gaining
on him.

Wiry muscles creaked beneath soaking clothes, as stiff as if
someone had coated his sinews with concrete. As he vaulted the
fallen trees and wove between clawing branches, the young man
gradually felt the burning in his throat return. It was as if he
had swallowed sun-roasted sand, and with this fierce burning came
the pop of his leg muscles, resigned once more.

His pursuers were far enough away to grant him a moment’s
stop. His teeth and eyes were like torches compared to his dark
skin. His forehead poured with sweat, his ears had an insistent
pressure behind them, and even surrounded by all this dripping
green vegetation his tongue was thick and dry against the roof of
his mouth.

Bats and bats.
A few hours previously, a spiralling fog of insects had drilled its
way through the trees, and Isaac wondered if the sky-rodents were
chasing food.

The pursuers had been following him a long time. They’d
chased him even over the baked Sinh-ha plains to the east, but then
they had only been a few black shapes against the shifting disc of
the dawn sun. Now he dared not sleep, nor stop too long to rest,
because with the sounds of those fearful animals he could also hear
angry voices from time to time; angry at being forced to chase him
for this long, through the rainforest and then the plains, and back
again.

He had been confused in the desert. He’d turned around almost
entirely, too tired to follow the sun properly, and limbs exhausted
from the constant abuse he gave them. It had been an entire week
since he had last heard his sweet Sarai’s voice, telling him
to
not worry, Isaac, everything will be
fine
. He had gotten up by the light of the
fire one night, pulled his satchel over his chest and left – he was
the reason, he’d realised, that they were being chased.

Isaac spotted a tunnel in the thick foliage, a wet green
hideaway that he crawled through. Tiny insects buzzed around him.
Prickly, tufty caterpillars wandered across his knuckles as he
waited on all fours, listening as the voices of the hired forest
nomads surrounded him, then disappeared. He realised he was free,
for the time being. Pulling back a thorny veil of vines, he stepped
back out into the thick atmosphere of the rainforest.

He sat for a
while, throat deathly dry. He could feel the cracks as they broke
their laborious way through the once-phlegmy membrane. Restless but
exhausted beyond words, Isaac attempted to settle in the leaves.
Water seeped into his tattered trousers, making him uncomfortable
as he rubbed his ankles.

He didn’t see the creature drop silently behind him, clawed
feet leaving no impression on the wet plant-life. The talons were
around his neck in a second. He felt his feet part from the ground,
and he choked off a torrent of hot breath as a decidedly feline
countenance barked just an inch from his face. It drew back its
yellow lips to show teeth of iron; Isaac managed a scream as the
sanguilac twisted for his throat but caught his shoulder instead.
After a blissful numb second, he felt sudden ferocious pain down
his arm and up his spine, exploding in his skull.

His feet
buckled as he was dropped and, landing on his knees, he felt cool
air on his neck once more.

He heard rapid
footsteps, barely audible, running away from him, and the sound of
branches whipping as the sanguilac disappeared.

Whilst rubbing his bruised throat, he gingerly touched his
savaged shoulder, mildly curious as to what frightened the
beast.

Pain in his
neck, and then he knew.

~

Awakening, Isaac stretched out with his hands, running his
palms over the hard surface he was lying on. A tiled floor. He
opened his lead-heavy eyes and saw a dirty wall of semi-transparent
plastiplex: it was thick and had slits in the top and bottom for
air. Dreary light put emphasis on the streaks of dirt and grime,
each single scratch shining brightly. The door was
locked.

He sat up,
touched his neck and felt a tiny puncture mark where the somnadart
had hit. Dried blood crusted on his shoulder.

Where the hell
was he?

A reasonably small room, about seven metres each way. A
mattress in the corner. Toilet, dirty – by the side of a small
sink, dirtier. There was a strange earthy smell to the
place.

A breeze licked him through the plastiplex wall, and so he
stood and moved over, held his hands to the holes. Outside the cell
was a corridor, poorly-lit with a trail of windows running along
its length. Dried mud caked the outside, piled up against each one.
Small green vines and earthy roots snaked through the cracks, and a
few sprinkles of soil were mounted on the hard tiles beneath. There
were streaks of mould and rot underneath the frames. One window was
cracked from one corner to another, and water trickled in and
puddled on the floor.

Closer to the plastiplex, he could smell the rainforest. And
wet earth.

Captured
, he thought.
Captured at last.

Isaac inhaled deeply and slumped against the floor. He closed
his eyes listened intently. There was the ever-present cacophony of
the rain on the leaves, and little else.

*

Four

BULLETS AND
BLADES

The hustle before sunset took them into forest much less
dense; they began to see shafts of warm dusk-red light sieved
through the trees, churning with dust. The bark of the trees looked
as though it was on fire with the light, and that fire spread to
the river as it turned upon itself until they arrived at the
outskirts of Pirene.

It was different to how Rowan had imagined. The houses were
taller. The road was cobbled, and some of the buildings had decking
in front made of trampled but sturdy-looking wood. Ropes were cast
in a broad polygon around the petrified, held up by wooden staffs
that dug into the very edges of a large crater.

The sun set
behind the trees on the other side of the town, and they turned
darker until they were nothing more than a crowd of jagged
silhouettes. Maeia and Taeia clapped their hands as soon as they
stepped on the first cobbles, gazing out over the town.

‘
We haven’t played here yet,’ the older said.

‘
We’ve been staying here for the past few days,’ said Taeia to
the magus. ‘We’ll show you to our inn, if you like. We’re
performing there tonight.’

As the two girls galloped off, Rowan turned to Gabel and
asked if they might hear them play.

‘
We need somewhere to spend the night,’ the hunter replied. ‘It
may as well be somewhere entertaining.’

Rowan smiled tiredly and wandered toward the petrified tree
enclosure. It stood a foot and a half taller than her, but the
tallest branches were so thin that it didn’t seem so high. She
wondered how the brittle-looking boughs didn’t break in strong
winds.

The magus,
keeping an eye on Rowan, stood close to Gabel. He said in a hushed
voice, ‘We have another member of our party to employ.’

‘
Don’t have enough hangers-on already?’

‘
Three is a pitiful number for a travelling group, Mister
Gabel.’

Gabel looked across at Rowan, who was quietly studying the
petrified tree. She was an adolescent, a brittle blade disguised by
a weathered sheath. She had seen the world and then forgotten it;
her amnesia had robbed her of all she’d experienced.

‘
There’s an old saying that ends, “three’s a crowd,”’ Gabel
said. ‘We don’t need any more companions.’

‘
This last one is important,’ said the magus. But he wouldn’t
elaborate no matter how persistently the hunter urged.

They found the inside of the inn warm with candles and
bodies, and pleasantly dark. Crowds of people pushed their way
around them, between the many tables and the thick pillars that
supported the low ceiling. It was night outside, and the draught
from the doorway was enough to make Rowan shiver.

They chose a table in a secluded corner and sat waiting for
the innkeeper to take their orders. The magus noticed the two
violinists setting up on the small stage to the right of the bar.
Both waved in greeting, then went back to cleaning their
instruments and uning their strings.

The innkeeper
came to them. His eyes, sunken in rosy flesh, sparkled with either
mirth or moonshine. ‘What’ll it be?’

They ordered their food, and then sat in silence as most of
the candles were blown out. The stage was now the only place lit,
and on it Maeia and Taeia stood side by side. The innkeeper yelled
for silence, and the girls smiled thanks at him.

Maeia put bow to strings and from them drifted into a slow,
resolute adagio. After a subtle two verses, in joined Taeia,
drawing the horsehair with a tap of her toe and swaying of her
head; the two tunes bled into one another, a pair of fountains
flowing into the same glistening pool, where they acknowledged and
accentuated each other, frothing to an ending that excited the
gathered audience.

Maeia and
Taeia bowed and took the applause gratefully, always appreciative
of a compliment. They settled back down and began to alter the
strings of their instruments once more. Slowly the chatter was
reborn amongst the patrons of the inn, and the spell was
relaxed.

~

The snaking rain on the crude, misshapen windows of the inn
was projected inside by the moonlight. The floor and walls seemed
alive with luminescent worms, and these shimmering lines slid down
the face of the barkeep as he and Gabel talked quietly to each
other.

Rowan sat with the two musicians, congratulating them on
their performances. Maeia and Taeia both seemed happy with the way
the inn crowd had responded to their playing, and talked animatedly
with the occasional slap of delight on the surface of the table,
laughing uproariously.

When Maeia and
Taeia retired for the night, Gabel and the barkeep came to show
Rowan to their room.

‘
Here you are,’ the barkeep said, opening a wooden door from
the upstairs landing. ‘Small, but big enough for two, I
think.’

Rowan looked
around the small, sparsely-furnished room. ‘But there’s only one
bed.’

‘
I’ll sleep on the floor,’ the hunter told her. He turned to
the barkeep. ‘If it would not be out of the question to ask for a
mattress…’

‘
I’ve one to spare, though it’s a little on the filthy side. I
think you would fare better with blankets, though the mattress
isn’t all that bad, if you’re not picky.’

‘Springs or cloth, I don’t mind.’

After checking the room that would be the magus’s, Gabel paid
in advance then opened the windows to let the air in.

‘
I’d like to see the town,’ said Rowan.

‘
It’s raining,’ Gabel pointed out bluntly. ‘Tomorrow is better
for exploring.’

He left her to unpack her few things, and stepped out of the
inn to take the air outside. He found the magus out in the square,
looking across the road with a dark row of trees behind him. He
stood in the centre of their long shadows, observing a house across
the street. A corona of rain fell around his head and shoulders as
he watched for movement behind the windows.

Gabel approached him quietly. He had already decided that the
magus was not a man whom he would like to startle. ‘This is the
home of the final party member?’

‘
That’s right. He’s waiting, I think. He knows that I’m coming
for him. He just doesn’t know which day I’ll arrive.’

‘
Then let’s go and meet him.’

‘
Tomorrow, when it’s lighter,’ the magus said. ‘I would meet
him again only with the sunlight full on his face.’

~

The downpour
became too heavy for comfort, and the night had long since set in.
The magus stopped by the petrified tree for a short white,
contemplating its detail. It was remarkable for the first few
moments, but the magus was old, and it took less time to make up
his mind than in his youth. Remarkable it was, and that was that;
there was no point in looking at it further. He turned to the
church.

Rowan stood nearby, only a little wet from the weather. She
was under the shelter of a bakery’s thatched roof, looking out past
the spire at the forests behind the town. She turned when the magus
arrived.

‘
You shouldn’t be out in the dark and rain,’ he said
reprovingly, taking her hand.