Half Discovered Wings (7 page)

‘
I wanted to see a church other than the one at home,’ she
replied, and allowed him to lead her away. She wasn’t much taller
than him in height, as the magus was shorter than most men, and she
taller than most women. ‘You never said if
you
were religious or not, when we
were discussing it.’

‘
I am, though not in the way you think. I believe in
justification by faith, and one visit to a church was enough for me
to decide that my God would save me only if he wanted. I don’t
pray, nor do I worship trees. It simply isn’t needed.’

‘
I never thought of it that way. If the goddess Irenia were
ethereal, then she wouldn’t be concerned with material things, such
as idols and churches. They were built by men, after all, and not
God.’

‘
That’s true,’ said the man, and smiled. ‘You’re already
thinking for yourself.’

They entered the inn to the sound of the musicians’ second
set. Gabel sat at their table they had occupied earlier, hunched
over a sheet of yellow paper, writing. They left him to it, but
much later, when they were all in their rooms with the rain
drumming them to sleep, Rowan sat up in her bed.

The chair in
which Gabel had sat, watching over her like an angel in shadow, was
now empty, and on it lay the rolled up parchment. She read the
words that he had written on it by the pallid light from outside,
those luminous snakes swimming over her skin:

When all the
grass is ghostly white

And the birds
rot in the street;

When the Earth
is lost to eternal night

And baked in
atomic heat—

When the
planets collide and break apart

And spin on as
astral dust;

When the sun
goes cold out from its heart

And dies as
all things must—

When all the
stars have fallen in

And light
reaches us no more;

When the
galaxy begins to boil within

And collapses
out from its core—

When eternity
has broken down

And the
universe is finished;

We shall
reside in the angel’s town

And our love
shan’t be diminished—

When all the
rest have burned or drowned

Our love
shan’t be diminished.

Rowan finished reading the words, scribed in Gabel’s ornate
handwriting. She had never known the hunter was capable of such
work, nor that he harboured such thoughts. His mood was somewhat
dark, but Rowan hadn’t imagined that Gabel had been affected by
Maeia and Taeia’s music in so melancholy a fashion.

Having realised this, she sensed that his words were not a
promise, as most poetry was, but his reflection of how he viewed
the world. Surely he didn’t really believe the world was lost to
perpetual darkness? That the war that had swept across the planet
had actually succeeded in turning it into
a dead
globe
, despite the evidence to the
contrary? People were still here. Plants still grew. But Rowan felt
with a certainty she couldn’t explain that, as far as Gabel was
concerned, the Earth was simply a ruined, savaged world, still
spinning on and refusing to accept that it was finished.

Hastily she rolled up the parchment, re-spun its twine and
then put it back where she had found it. She was still dressed,
having not had the space in her satchel to bring bedclothes, so she
wandered down the oaken stairs in her blouse and past the empty
bar. She stopped by the front window and peered through, and was
surprised to see Gabel standing by himself in the full fury of the
storm, looking outward over the trees.

~

The following
morning, the three sat silently eating breakfast until the magus
told Rowan that they would be recruiting their final comrade
shortly. She nodded, and asked questions that weren’t answered.

They thanked the barkeep and left the inn, walking through
the town toward the road that left the square and led them
eastwards. One house sat by itself at the very end, beside the road
that turned to a muddy trail partway through the trees. The magus
knocked firmly, but received no reply.

‘
Gone hunting,’ said a voice behind them. A man was up a
ladder, trimming the thick branches that hung over the road. ‘Says
he’ll be back in a few days.’

‘
A few days?’ Gabel asked the magus. ‘Can we wait that
long?’

‘
It’s necessary, so yes is the answer. Our journey isn’t so
urgent at the moment that a few days’ rest is hazardous. Let’s
enjoy what peaceful time we have until our friend returns
home.’

They walked as
they talked. ‘How important is this man to our mission? And what is
his name?’

The magus eyed
the hunter from under his hat. ‘He is exceptionally important. Your
job is to protect this man as we travel, so that he may stay alive.
This is your mandate. We don’t leave without this man.’

~

The next six days were long and wet and, though Gabel found
the waiting unsettling, Rowan had spent her time being shown around
Pirene, seeing the various night-time attractions with Maeia and
Taeia. She had marvelled at great water wheels, and at the electric
bulbs of glass that shone like haloes inside dark buildings. She
prayed by the
petrified
tree
, just so as she could say she’d
done so, and again after the violinists had gone on their way,
heading out toward the next city. Afterwards seemed grey in
comparison, and she mostly wandered about by herself, or washed her
clothes with the townsfolk for company.

A week after they first arrived, they returned to the house
at the edge of town and knocked on the door. A voice called out:
rough and tired, heavy with experience. The accent was odd to
Rowan, as if this was the man’s second language. Twangy, and
dry.

‘
What is it?’

‘
There’s a visitor outside,’ said the magus. ‘Answer your door,
or he’ll come in.’

‘
Whatever. I’m busy.’

To Rowan’s
surprise, the magus opened the door as promised and walked
inside.

The large room spanned the entire width of the floor. In the
centre was a small table littered with worm-like stubs of wiring.
Around the perimeter ran a workbench, studded with drawers at
random places. It looked homemade, and the only breaks in the
circumference were where the door was, and where a flight of stairs
without rails ran up the right-hand wall, disappearing into
darkness. On the wall hung an astonishingly life-like portrait, the
hair of the depicted woman streaked with vivid colour, and beside
it in a wooden bracket rested a Japanese short-sword, sheathed in
onyx.

A figure with
his back turned was seated on a stool, occupied with something on
the workbench.

‘
With you in a minute,’ he said, half-turning. Rowan caught a
glimpse of a weathered face, a streak of silver across the
temples.

The man turned, rinsing his hands on a cloth. He looked
around sixty years old, despite his muscular physique. A scar,
inches long, ran diagonally from the bridge of his nose down to the
corner of his jaw. He looked tired and worn, blinking the weariness
out of his eyes as a tattooed hand scratched his chest. The image
was a black-and-white eight-pronged star.

‘
What is it?’ he asked—

—
and in a gleaming, golden arc, the short-sword was off the
wall, out its scabbard, and singing toward the magus’s shoulder.
The stranger’s scarred face was dark with sudden, inexplicable
rage. The sword rang once as it was in half-arc, and then again
causing it to fly from the man’s grasp; two bullets ricocheted from
the blade and struck the ceiling rafters.

Gabel stood
before the magus and stared at the stunned stranger, wreathed in
grey smoke from the muzzle of his revolver.

‘
Put it down,’ Gabel ordered.

The man stared at him in shock, and then something like
chagrin crossed his face. His hands were clenched in the air, as if
they still held the sword. He lowered them, laughed, and picked up
the sword and examined it. It was undamaged.

‘
What are you laughing at?’ Gabel demanded.

‘
Nothing,’ he chuckled. He pushed the hunter one-handed and the
hunter fell across the floor as if kicked by a horse. The scarred
man examined the magus.

‘Long time no see,’ he said. ‘Wish you’d kept it that way.
You’re not going to vanish on me again, are you?’

‘
Not this time,’ the magus replied. ‘You know why I’m
here.’

‘
You’ve appeared to me enough times over the years to let me
have an educated guess. Time to save the world?’

‘
Something like that, yes.’

The man pushed a hand through his short dark hair. An angry
grin split his scarred face. ‘Damn it, thought I’d got rid of you.
Now you come to my house in the middle of nowhere, in the flesh.
You’re doing it just to drive me crazy, right? If that’s possible
for a man like me.’

‘
Of course it is. You saw what happened to your
friend.’

‘
Oh yeah. I’d almost forgotten about that. Thanks,’ he added
sourly, rubbing the back of his neck with his tattooed
hand.

Leaning
against the wall, Rowan contemplated this stranger in front of her,
his unusual accent and curious clothes. This man, who stood staring
at the old magus so tiredly, was statuesque in the dusty air.

The magus
turned as the other man crossed his arms, and said, ‘Joseph, Rowan:
This is Caeles. He’ll be joining us on our way to Shianti.’

*

Five

THE
STEEL-WINGED ANGEL

Until two hours after dark they followed the river, knocking
away insects and saying little between themselves. Whenever the
magus spoke with the newcomer, Caeles, they did so in whispers. At
three hours from midnight they built a fire in a small clearing in
the trees and sat around it.

Rowan was the
first to speak once the food had been handed out.

‘
How far until the next town?’ she asked. ‘Are we still heading
west?’

‘
West until the great lake Lual, where the river ends,’ said
Gabel. ‘Then around it, if we have time to spare. I hope you’ve
brought something to sleep in, Caeles.’

The newcomer
looked up as Gabel spoke. ‘I’ve got blankets,’ he replied.

They slept spread out evenly around the fire that dwindled in
the late-night wind. By the time it was out all were asleep except
Gabel, who lay looking at the stars through the band of sky over
the river. He considered this odd stranger Caeles, beside whom lay
the onyx-sheathed sword. He had called it a
wakizashi
, and it lay resting cold
and hard in the dry grass. The sparse light made the intricate
handle glitter, made the golden studs down the scabbard
gleam.

He had done little to ingratiate himself with the group.
During the week that Gabel and the others had been travelling, the
basis of a bond had already begun to form between the three of
them; a bond that threaded itself neatly between hunter, magus and
girl, drawing them together. Despite the fact that the magus
largely kept his thoughts to himself, and that Rowan contained
within her a bundle of furtive emotions that she hesitated to
reveal in the factotum’s presence, a gel comprised of trust, need
and hope kept the three as one.

Caeles, on the other hand, appeared to suffer from an illness
that rendered him rude, inhospitable, and unapproachable. He
carried the bulk of his body very well, revealing his familiarity
with long journeys of this kind, and his leathered expressions
occasionally belied his cavalier façade.
Here is a man
, thought Gabel,
who has not a lot to hide, but too much to ever
tell.

The next morning came late, as usual for November. There
seemed to be no life in the forest here, and the plants were pale
with lack of light and scattered sparsely around the muddy path.
Rowan was surprised and delighted by a thin frost which lay over
everything.

Gabel had seen how much of a struggle it had been for Rowan
to wake up. She’d been stiff, and found frost over her hands and
had rubbed them to clear it. Even now, as they walked through the
trees by the drifting river, she seemed to have difficulty just
keeping her blood running through her veins.

His
attentions, though, were mostly on the conversation held by the two
men in front of him.

‘
Where are we headed?’ Caeles asked quietly. ‘And why do you
need me?’

The magus was rubbing his palms together as he said, ‘Our
goal is Hermeticia. Don’t get full of yourself, though; you and
Gabel
both
are
important to this undertaking.’

They later came to a split in the river. A smaller stream
came off at an angle of ten degrees, the wider arm carrying on as
before. They stood at the point where the river diverged, blocked
by the smaller stream.

‘
We should follow the thinner route,’ Caeles said quietly.
‘That will take us directly to the Lual.’

‘
The Lual is a lake, not an ocean,’ Gabel replied. The thought
that this newcomer was already moving to take control got his back
up immediately. Even as he wondered if he was seeing things that
weren’t there, he was saying, ‘The rivers to the south run away
from it, not toward it.’