Free Half Discovered Wings by David Brookes Page A

hometowns neighboured, we agreed to stay
away from each other, and signed an agreement. That was many years
ago and if he’s still there – which I’m certain he is – then I
can’t go through the city.’
    ‘ But the city is right on the lake!’ Gabel pointed out.
‘There’s no other way across.’
    Caeles started to rub sticks together, which soon caught.
‘Sorry.’
    ‘ That isn’t good enough,’ Gabel growled. He took off his hat
and dropped it on a log. ‘You should have warned us
earlier.’
    ‘ Wouldn’t have made a difference. I’m willing to carry on to
São Jantuo to see if the Mayor is still alive, and if he isn’t the
agreement will be void. It’s only valid until one of us is
dead.’
    The magus sat
by Gabel’s dropped fedora, picked it up, and examined its cold
steel rim. ‘And if your old enemy is not yet deceased?’
    Caeles shrugged – that annoying little habit of his. ‘Then I
guess I go around. Find another way across, which I’m sure there
must be, seeing as the lake is so big. There must be a private dock
somewhere along the coast beyond the town. There’s miles of
it.’
    ‘ What if there isn’t? Are we supposed to wait for you on the
other side? You’d be weeks behind us.’
    Caeles stoked the fire and seemed to think for a while, his
hand absently pushing the burning logs with a stick. ‘It has been a long time.
Maybe he’ll let me through, if he knows the reason.’
    ‘ How much of an enemy are you to him?’
    ‘ I killed a lot of his friends,’ Caeles replied quietly. His
eyes closed. ‘But that was ages ago. If he’s still alive then he’s
monstrously old. He wouldn’t pose too much of a problem if it came
to that.’
    He looked up
at the others. ‘It would mean a quick pass through the city. No
stops, not even one night.’
    ‘ That would be impractical,’ said Gabel, ‘but we’ll see when we
get there. Now isn’t the time for creating plans, while the sky
prepares to drop more snow on us. Better we get into our bags
before that.’
    They ate and then
slept , all waking the next morning to
a fresh blanket of snow. The going became harder then, and Gabel
was glad that at least the winter had come at the start of the
journey, rather than near the end when they would be too exhausted
to manage. At least the snow was thin and sparse; heavy snowfall at
this point would slow them down considerably.
    He worried
about other things. In particular, his body was showing strange
signs of some other illness. He knew that his stress was to blame:
he had never enjoyed being around other people. In fact, he
preferred the company of a quiet horse and the twittering birds as
he hunted. His concern for Rowan only made his anxiety worse. That
morning, when rising to consciousness in the snow, he had scratched
his scalp and his fingers returned with a thick lock of dead
hair.
    *

 
    Seven

    TEAGUE
     
    William Teague, once devout, smelled the burning first. Then
came the stench of bubbling flesh, and his ears, though blocked
with ash like his mouth, could hear screams.
    Pain; pain in his eyes … He felt in his sockets and
they weren’t there . He let the useless flaps of skin that were his eyelids open
and (somehow still with the power of sight) implored the heavens –
but they were too far away, and neither they nor he could hear his
cries.
    He was in a pit. Alive, somehow, and in his human form, not
the monstrous hulk of the theripe. He touched the hole where Joseph
Gabel had shot him and found it clogged with the soot: solid and
immovable. If any of the soot came away onto his fingers, he
couldn’t tell. He was filthy, scarred and burned.
    He scrabbled in the grey dustiness of the pit until he
reached its rim, and looked out.
    So there was a sky in Hell.
    He’d never expected it, never really thought about it. But a
sky there was, black and revolving as if he was inside an eye of a
tornado, looking up. Clouds spun head hundreds of miles above. He
found it easier to