Black Halo (38 page)

Summer, pleasantly so

One of the more sobering realisations I have stumbled across since I first picked up a sword is that society, at least as we know it, does not exist
.

Of course, I’m actually a little disappointed to put it down on paper. After all, I had rather enjoyed the ideas behind civilisation: linking together against common enemies, joining like-minded trades and arms for mutual prosperity, the coalition of many single gods for the benefit of all and, of course, the keen urge to keep one’s neighbour close so that, when he finally did knife one in the kidneys and steal one’s sheep, at least one couldn’t claim they didn’t see it coming
.

Regardless, my most horrific discovery has been that society is nothing more than a series of carefully calculated choices based solely around economics. That’s it. No like-minded philosophies, no common gods, not even healthy distrust made it possible
.

Just gold and greed
.

Any other thoughts I’ve had about this were quickly banished once I arrived on Teji and was subjected to the curious company of the Owauku. As far as I’ve been able to tell from as far as I’ve been able to understand their language, Teji
was
a thriving trading post, as Argaol informed me … once, anyway
.

Humans
used
to live here. That much is clear by what has happened to the locals. I’d seen some of the more remote societies on the outskirts of Toha when we first began looking for the Aeons’ Gate, as Miron originally hired us to do. They tended to have both a keen distrust for me and a keen intent on putting something sharp in my guts
.

Or an arrow in my shoulder, as the case may be
.

The tall, tattooed lizardmen … they’re called ‘Shen’, the Owauku tell me: raiders, scavengers, generally as uncivilised as one would expect loincloth-clad reptiles to be. Of them, I know not much else, save that the Owauku have driven them off. They’re gone
.

So they tell me
.

The Owauku … are friendlier than most. Almost too much. They offer us freely their meat and drink, at least what passes for meat and drink, but with the subtle gleam in their eyes that suggests something would be appreciated in return. That gleam, anyway, is what I deduce from the times I can stand looking in those giant melons they call eyes. They do this … thing … where they look at me with one eye, then look at something else with the other, and they keep moving in different directions and …

Never mind. It’s too disgusting to recount. It does make one yearn for the company of the Gonwa, though. Those taller, bearded things that I saw in the forest apparently share the village with the Owauku. I can’t imagine why; the Gonwa are tall and stoic where the Owauku are short and spastic. The Gonwa are reserved and distrustful where the Owauku are almost offensively open. The Gonwa only look at me when they think I’m not looking at them, and sometimes with murder in their eyes, while the Owauku look at me …

No. No. Disgusting
.

The point is that the Owauku have and love and the Gonwa lack and loathe everything one might find in a city: gambling; smoke, in both cigar and hookah form; alcohol, from their own making; and various other sundries and goods remnant from when humans still traded with them. The little ones adore the idea of trade, and constantly ask us if we have anything to put forth in that regard
.

What they think we have, I really can’t even begin to wonder. They’ve already taken our pants …

Anyway, as I was saying, the idea of everything important being driven by economics does not apply solely to society. In the age we live in, it’s become a healthy substitute for instinct. If something costs more to get than it’s worth, then it’s not worth the effort. It’s that easy
.

And, with that in mind, I’ve decided to follow my instincts …

And give up
.

I’m through. I’m through with everything. I don’t want to have anything to do with Miron, with books, with bounties or monsters or netherlings or demons ever again
. Especially
nothing to do with books. I nearly lost all my companions, and did lose at least one, searching for the stupid thing
.

Once, long ago, that thought wouldn’t have seemed so bad. But … that was before. Before I stopped fighting, before I put the sword down and had a chance to breathe. It wasn’t by choice that I stumbled across this realisation. On Teji, there’s nothing to fight, nothing to kill, nothing to worry about killing me
.

And … I find that I kind of like it
.

Without anything’s entrails to spill upon it, I find myself doing a lot of walking on the ground instead. I spend most of my days walking down the beaches with Kataria, listening to her tell me about the various plants, shells and driftwood we find. At least half of the stuff she spews, I’m certain she’s making up, but every time I feel like accusing her, she smiles and … looks at me
.

Not
look
looks at me, but … looks at me, like I’m something she wants to look at. She stares at me, not in the way that suggests she’s looking for something beneath my skin, but like my skin is fine as is. She stares at me and I don’t mind. There’s nothing screaming in my head
.

I’m … not hearing the voices anymore so much
.

I’m even starting to remember my old life, before this all happened. I can remember my family. Not their names, but their faces, the colour of my grandfather’s beard, the feel of the calluses on my father’s hands, the smell of the tea my mother brewed in the morning. I can remember cows I’ve milked, dogs I’ve fed, barns I’ve swept …

All while I’m around her
.

It’s not all great, to be perfectly honest. I still dream, and when I do, I dream of flames, of big blue eyes without pupils. And while I’m at ease with the Owauku, their taller, bearded friends, the Gonwa, eye me with distaste. Perhaps they knew, at one point, I planned to kill them? I don’t see why they would take offence at that, really. I didn’t know them at the time; it was going to be a perfectly honest killing
.

And … I’m still hearing the voices
.

That’s another thing. I did just write ‘voices’, with an ‘s’. There’s another one, I think … a fainter one than the first one, not so loud, not so demanding. The first one was like a fist: jabbing, pounding at the door to let it in. This one … is subtler, like a wiggle of the knob, a hand pulling at the sheet around me, someone moving a cup of tea from where I set it down
.

And sometimes, it’s not so subtle. It tries to break the door down, tears the sheet off, slips and breaks the cup. It gets so loud … so ANGRY …

But let’s not think about that. There’s more important things to worry about
.

For example, Sebast is now almost a week overdue. The ship that Argaol promised to send to pick us up has never been seen, even when Kat and I wait on the beach for any sign on the horizon. The Owauku assure me that if any did arrive, they would tell me. Frankly, I believe them, since any boat that came would be instantly harried by them as they sought to trade with it
.

I should be more worried about this than I am. But I’ve since decided that Argaol wasn’t as good as his word. It’s really not that big a surprise; he managed to get six bloodthirsty lunatics off his ship. Why would he send anyone to go get them back?

Still, I’m not too worried. Even if it’s fallen into disuse, this is still a trading post. It’s still close to the shipping lanes. There’s no reason to expect that a ship
won’t
eventually come by. If all that means is a few weeks stuck in a loincloth walking down the beach alongside Kat, who I must say looks pretty smashing in her own, then I’m fine with that. Naturally, I’m a little disappointed that there are no more humans on the island
.

Strange, though, I don’t recall if Togu ever told me what happened to them
.

Not that I go out of my way to spend time with Togu, actually. Amongst the Owauku, or even amongst all the horrible things I’ve seen, he definitely ranks as one of the worst. He is living proof that the Gods exist and that their sense of humour appeals only to themselves. It’s as though they made some dwarfish, scaly creature with giant gourds for eyes and a horrifyingly strange accent and decided he just wasn’t irritating enough without having the insufferable speech prowess of a six-headed politician crossbred with a forty-handed merchant
.

I’m content to mostly spend time with my companions, even if the reverse isn’t true
.

Asper has nothing but harsh words and ire for me, though I gather she’s short with everyone these days. Why, I cannot say. I know something … occurred when she was tending to my wounds, something that is largely accredited to the stress of the situation and her lack of clothes. Denaos tells me something similar occurred shortly after she woke up and spoke to Dreadaeleon. He didn’t have any time to check on her, of course, since shortly after, he made the acquaintance of the Owauku and became wise to their insatiable voracity for human pants
.

Either way, his attentions are solely on her, in the same way a voyeur’s attentions are solely on a lady’s unguarded window. Dreadaeleon isn’t much better. His conversation is curt and brief and, every time, he always scampers behind a hut or a bush to avoid me. If I wasn’t so trusting, and if I didn’t care so little, I’d say he was hiding something. And every day I thank Khetashe that pubescent wizards are as loath to share their problems as I am to hear them
.

We’ve kept eyes open for signs of Gariath, albeit not very widely. Perhaps it’s just the peace that Teji has infected me with, or perhaps it’s the fact that he’s a deranged, flesh-eating lunatic, but I can’t say there’s much of a reason to look very hard
.

In short, I have to say that Teji might be the best thing that happened to me. Despite the disappearance of my sword, the tome and all my clothes, I’m … almost happy
.

A ship will come, eventually. We’ll get new pants. We’ll get new boots. We’ll clean the sand from our buttocks, wash our faces in fresh water, read books with real words and never have need to pick up a sword again
.

Hope … doesn’t seem such a bad thing
.

O
n the very small list of upsides that came with wearing a loincloth, Dreadaeleon counted the ability to urinate without adjusting the garment to be somewhere between gross exposure to insects with a taste for his flesh and the persistent sensation of having a dead rodent lodged up one’s rectum.

Though he had been enjoying all in obscene measure since his arrival on Teji, he found the former to be the one most practised.

Of course, he told himself, it wasn’t his fault. Venarie was not a precise art. Even the most careful practitioner could find himself strained too much, his spells improperly channelled, and end up with the occasional premature liver spot or loose bladder.

Surprisingly enough, the boy didn’t take much comfort in that.

Instead, he pressed his hands against the reed wall of a nearby hut and attempted to convince himself that clenching his teeth and grunting would pass as casual behaviour amidst a plethora of lizardmen. If they had taken notice of this the first dozen times he had done it, they had long since ceased paying attention to the scrawny fellow with the trail of yellow dripping down his leg.

‘Come on,’ he whispered, ‘finish, finish …’

Even knowing this was far beyond his physical control now, let alone his verbal control, he couldn’t help but urge it along. Thus far, he had been able to convince himself that such commendations were all that kept his companions from finding out. Relief had come when Kataria began tending to Lenk, and Denaos had never really taken an interest in him before.

It was Asper’s outburst that caused him conflict. On the one hand, the doubtless endless inquiries as to his health that she would have usually hurled at him were better off avoided. Fortunate, he considered, for he hadn’t yet figured out a way to make loss of bladder control sound like the kind of thing she would want to concern herself with. But at the same time, she was snappish and curt with him, as well as everyone else, and did her best to avoid them all.

And, he thought with a sigh, he had indeed grown fond of the sight of her in Teji’s native garb.

The stream ended with a shudder as he carefully wiped himself down with a handkerchief one of the Owauku had offered him in exchange for a brief display of fire dancing along his fingers. Not quite an even trade by his reckoning, since that display had likely been the reason behind his sudden breakings of the dam.

He found himself hard-pressed to stay mad at the creatures, though, if only because he found himself hard-pressed to even look them in their tremendous, rotating eyes. This became doubly difficult due to the fact that he was especially hard-pressed to find any way to avoid the creatures.

He looked down from the lip of the sprawling, spiralling valley that was their village. Sandy paths topped the concentric rings of stone that formed their streets and held their reed huts. Tiny, swift-moving streams flanked each road. And walking upon these roads, swimming in these streams, dozens of little green blobs scampered about.