‘It’s really quite an honour, you know.’ The girl pushed back her waist-length red hair.
‘Yes,’ El-i-miir moaned. ‘You’ve said that about twenty times.’
‘Well, it is!’
‘Yeah,’ Seteal snorted. ‘It’s such an honour to have dinner with a mutant elf owl. El-i-miir has just been so excited.’
El-i-miir responded only by pulling a face through the mirror.
‘That’s blasphemy!’ Ieane cried furiously. ‘If you’re not careful, the Holy Spirit will smite you!’
‘That’s right,’ Seteal said mockingly. ‘Show a little respect, El-i-miir. You don’t want to be pecked to death.’
El-i-miir attempted to supress her laughter for Ieane’s sake, but ended up snorting instead. ‘You really are terrible, Seteal.’
‘I’m not going to sit here and listen to this heresy.’ Ieane’s eyes filled with tears. ‘You’re wicked, wicked people,’ she spat before hurrying out of the tent.
‘Right.’ El-i-miir put her makeup bag on the floor. I think I’m ready.’
‘About time.’ Seteal rolled her eyes. ‘You two lovebirds have fun.’
‘I’m not going to bite.’ El-i-miir turned with a sickly sweet smile. ‘You want me to, but I’m not going to give you the satisfaction.’ She abandoned the tent with a swish of her dress.
The night air was cool and crisp, but not at all unpleasant, which was of no great surprise considering how far south they’d travelled. El-i-miir set her sights on the large tents in the distance, but she froze in her tracks at the sound of stifled sobs coming from a quiet patch several strides away.
‘Ieane?’ El-i-miir whispered when she found the girl sitting in the grass with her knees tucked up under her chin.
‘What do you want, Elglair,’ she sobbed, angrily wiping away her tears.
‘Look.’ El-i-miir sat beside her. ‘I’m sorry if we hurt your feelings. Seeol sure is important to you, isn’t he?’
‘He’s more than just the Holy Spirit,’ Ieane choked out through tears. ‘He’s my friend and you’re all so mean to him. He tells me things. You really hurt his feelings when you’re all so unkind.’
‘I suppose,’ El-i-miir said as empathetically as she could manage while secretly wanting to shake some sense into the girl and scream at her for her stupidity. ‘I guess we’ve just always known Seeol as a little bird, not as this great Holy Spirit of yours. It’s difficult for us to see him as anything other.’
‘He’s not, is he?’
‘Not what?’
‘The Holy Spirit.’ Ieane’s voice was filled with devastation.
‘Who can say?’ El-i-miir said reassuringly, not wanting to be the one to destroy the girl’s faith. ‘Come on, let’s get you back to your tent.’
‘You’ll be late,’ Ieane warned.
‘I’m sure the Holy Spirit won’t mind,’ El-i-miir stood up and offered the girl her hand. ‘Come on.’
‘He’s gone to a lot of trouble,’ Ieane said quietly once they’d arrived at her tent. ‘Try to be gentle with him.’
‘I will.’ El-i-miir smiled. ‘You get some rest.’
*
Seeol looked over the table for what felt like the billionth time. At its centre were bunches of flowers and expensive scented candles. The circumference of the tent boasted even more candles and lanterns burning scented oils. Rose petals had been strewn across the floor and the finest Jenjen chef had created a banquet befitting a woman of such exquisite beauty as El-i-miir. She would not be disappointed. Ilgrin had never gone to such lengths for her.
‘Seeol?’ The sweet melody of El-i-miir’s voice entered the tent before she did, moving as gracefully as ever. ‘Seeol! What have you done?’ Her eyes bulged in disbelief.
‘Are you happy?’
‘No,’ El-i-miir gasped, before rushing in to blow out the candles. ‘Oh, dear Maker! All that food.’
‘Stop!’ Seeol wailed. ‘I dids all thish for you.’
‘We are an army going to war,’ El-i-miir said incredulously. ‘We have little enough resources without you floundering them so carelessly.’
‘I’m sorry!' Seeol cried. ‘I loves you.’
‘Oh, for Maker’s sake,’ El-i-miir glared at him. ‘This has got to stop. You’re just an--’
‘Yes! I know,’ Seeol cut her off bitterly. ‘Is just a bird. Just a stupid little elf owl.’ He beat his arms a few times before remembering he couldn’t fly and then covered his face with his hands instead. He hated being human. He’d only done it for El-i-miir and she still despised him. ‘I’m just a stupid, stupid owl.’
‘I can’t handle this.’ El-i-miir threw up her hands. ‘What are you playing at? You’re not the Holy Spirit and when these fools figure that out they’re going to kill the lot of us.’
‘I am the sprit!'
‘No, you’re not!’ El-i-miir shouted. ‘You’re an animal. That’s why this is all so disgusting. Don’t you get it? How could anyone love an animal like that?’
‘You love a demon!’ Seeol shouted back, suddenly furious.
‘That’s right,’ El-i-miir hissed. ‘I do love Ilgrin and you will never stand in the way of that. Goodbye, Seeol.’ She turned to leave.
‘Wait.’ Seeol reached out to her.
‘What?’ El-i-miir paused at the entrance her silky black hair moving gently in the wind, her beautiful blue eyes, and piercing white pupils locked on his. ‘What do you want?’ she said more softly.
‘If I could given you everything,’ Seeol pleaded. ‘If I was a man forever, woulds you love me?’
‘No,’ El-i-miir whispered, her face vanishing as the tent flap fell shut.
A powerful gust of wind blew into the tent and the remaining candles went out, leaving Seeol standing alone in the dark. A deep moan bubbled up from within his chest. It was a sorrow unlike anything he’d felt before. All hope vanished. Thunder rumbled, lightning flashed, the weather changed in the space of a second and the rain fell with his tears.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
RAIN
‘We must hurry,’ Jakob urged, doubling his pace. ‘I don’t like the look of those clouds.’
Ilgrin did as he’d been told and hurried after the human. The great whisp cloud sat dauntingly above them, purple flashes of sheet lightning intermittently draining what little light remained in the sky.
‘Surely we must be close,’ Ilgrin replied, fatigued from weeks in flight and the constant walking thereafter. ‘I could fly the rest of the way.’
‘My associates are in the cliffs up there,’ Jakob murmured, ‘but I only know how to get there on foot. Watch out!’
‘What?’ Ilgrin gasped in surprise as he felt his foot becoming tangled in a vine. ‘It’s just a patch of weeds,’ he reassured Jakob, but when he tried to get free the vine only tightened further. ‘What is this?’
‘These are the kinds of things you have to watch out for in Old World,’ Jakob stated, the irritation clear in his voice. ‘Whisps have infested these lands for hundreds of years. Most things are mutilated--corrupted in some way or another. If you wish to survive this place, you have to live by the assumption that everything is trying to kill you.’
‘Get it off me,’ Ilgrin said nervously as the vine elongated and began snaking around his body in increasingly tightening circles.
‘Not yet,’ Jakob said nervously. ‘It may dissipate before it can finish. This isn’t the work of a particularly powerful whisp.’
‘Please,’ Ilgrin gasped as the vine wrapped around his chest, making it difficult to breath.
‘Wait,’ Jakob tensed, a hand resting inside his pocket.
‘Do something,’ Ilgrin wheezed, unable to draw in any air.
‘Damn it.’ Jakob snatched a flask out of his pocket and popped the cork. He flipped it upside-down at the base of the vine. Tentatively at first, and then with more purpose, a pure white mist slithered away from the flask, its behaviour and appearance matching an ordinary whisp perfectly aside from its colou
r, or lack there of. ‘What a waste,’ Jakob grumbled.
Spots danced across Ilgrin’s vision as the vine loosened and he bent over gasping for breath. ‘What was that?’ Ilgrin clawed off the vine and tossed it to the ground.
‘That--by its proper name--was a sieift. For obvious reasons they’re more commonly referred to as “white whisps.”’ Jakob’s voice resonated with frustration. ‘It was my last one, so for Maker’s sake, be careful where you put your feet from now on.’
‘How?’ Ilgrin asked as he hurried after the man, who’d already resumed his journey. ‘How can it exist? What is it?’
‘It’s the exact opposite of a whisp,’ Jakob replied. ‘Regular whisps come into existence to make atonement for the giving of life. Sieifts come into existence through means of the exact opposite. It is the angels alone who possess the power to create them. In the same way you’re able to reverse death, angels are able to induce it in the most hideous and agonising way imaginable. The result of which are sieifts, a substance of pure good--but there are so few angels left these days that sieifts are very hard to come by.’
‘But you bottled it,’ Ilgrin stated in confusion. ‘Whisps are not of this world. They can’t be bottled.’
‘The bottle didn’t hold any real physical barrier to the sieift, it just made it easier for me to carry it around.’ Jakob shrugged. ‘In the same way that whisps do whatever they want whenever they want, sieifts tend to be somewhat more amicable to our desires. They’re usually willing to be bottled if your intentions are good. If you keep them too long, though, they do tend to get bored and either dissipate or wander off to find something else to do.’
‘Where do these angels come from?’ Ilgrin asked, becoming increasingly disturbed with the more he learnt about the strange silts.
‘Legend has it that when the demons were cast out of Hae’Evun, Maker sent a few trusted angels to rule over them and ensure they didn’t get out of control or do too much damage to the world. Of course, that all changed about a hundred years ago when the angel hunts began. Many were burned alive at the stake. Others had bricks tied to their feet and were thrown into the sea. That’s why there are so few around anymore, but you’ll meet one soon enough.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘One of my associates is an angel,’ Jakob replied. ‘Don’t worry, she won’t hurt you,’ he added, observing Ilgrin’s distress. ‘She’s on our side.’
‘Who are you?’ a child’s voice enquired.
Ilgrin glanced about anxiously until he spotted a silt boy no older than six or seven semi-hidden behind a tree. ‘Hey there.’ Ilgrin smiled, his heart warming.
‘Ignore him,’ Jakob encouraged. ‘We have to keep going.’
‘Just a minute,’ Ilgrin replied, turning his attention back to the boy. ‘What’re you doing out here alone?’ He smiled at the child, gleeful to encounter another silt who, for the first time, wasn’t trying to kill him.
‘I’m not alone.’ The boy giggled. ‘You’re funny.’
‘He lives here,’ Jakob hissed. ‘Now let’s keep moving.’
‘We’re in the middle of nowhere.’ Ilgrin frowned. ‘How can he live here?’
Jakob shook his head and pointed up. Ilgrin craned his neck, his vision moving up the tree trunk to find it bulging out near the top. The circular tree-mass had windows embedded across its surface in which curtains fluttered on the late afternoon breeze.
‘They live in trees,’ Ilgrin hissed in astonishment. ‘Of course.’ He turned in a slow circle to admire the many trees that bulged out at various levels above him. Silts in common clothing--for once not military--occasionally leapt from one branch to another.
‘Where’s your tree?’ the boy asked.
‘Far away from here,’ Ilgrin replied, gazing in awe at the living buildings above his head. It was beautiful. Somehow the silts were able to grow structures out of organic plant material. There homes were alive.
‘Come back inside, Jobe.’ A woman popped her head through one of the windows and glared at Jakob suspiciously. ‘What’s a Sa’Tanist doing this far in? You shouldn’t be allowing him this close to town.’
‘Town . . . ?’ Ilgrin trailed off only to recognise a small forest in the middle distance. There grew a patch of fifty or so trees with massive bulges in various places that seemed to be a hub of life. Silts flitted this way and that through the trees going about their daily business. Some of the trees had wheat growing around their circumference. Others had small pens with pigs or chickens in them.
‘I’m sorry.’ Ilgrin smiled up at the woman. ‘I’ve got important business with this human. I didn’t realise there was a town this close.’
‘How in Maker’s name could you miss it?’ The woman shook her head. ‘Come inside now, Jobe,’ she called before disappearing from the window. The young silt flapped his wings clumsily and landed on a branch far above their heads. Ilgrin turned once more to admire the silt town. These people weren’t monsters as he’d been taught--they were farmers. He stifled a gleeful laugh.
‘Hurry up--’ Jakob grabbed Ilgrin’s arm and pulled. ‘--before you get us both killed.’
‘These people aren’t going to hurt us.’ Ilgrin allowed himself to be dragged along. ‘They’re townsfolk.’
‘Maybe not,’ Jakob growled under his breath, ‘but they’d be happy to contact those who will if they think anything is amiss. I’ve sacrificed too much to have you ruin it now.’
‘All right, all right.’ Ilgrin yanked his arm free. ‘I’m coming.’
After crossing an expansive field devoid of any signs of life, other than the knee-high grass, Ilgrin found himself confronted by a steeply inclined cliff-face. ‘How do you intend to get up there?’ he asked, seeing no option other than flight.
‘There is a way just a little farther up,’ Jakob said weakly. His tone had changed. He didn’t sound nearly as certain of himself as he had before. Something tapped against Ilgrin’s shoulder and his own mood darkened. He put out his hand and a murky grey droplet splashed into his palm. It was rain. But it wasn’t. Ilgrin’s palm was not wet. He slid a finger through the droplet and watched it smear grey and sink in to his flesh. The dark smear remained. Ilgrin could not wipe it off. He felt anger building in his chest. He was furious that Jakob hadn’t told him about whatever this stuff was.
‘Whisp rain.’ Jakob’s eyes shone with fear. ‘We need to get back to the others right now! I’m going to need a ride.’
‘But I thought you said--’
‘Never mind what I said,’ Jakob barked. ‘If we’re caught out in a storm there will be no hope for either of us.’
Ilgrin gasped as the droplets became a drizzle, coursing across his flesh and sending waves of nausea running through his stomach along with an impending sense of doom.
‘Hold on.’ Ilgrin threw his arms around Jakob and beat his wings into the air. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Just stay close to the cliffs and keep moving south,’ Jakob called back, his voice coming out in sudden bursts. ‘When you see a small but slender opening, you’ll have found it.’
Purple lightning exploded from the clouds and struck the earth. There it lingered, snaking about for a while before fading, leaving a black streak stained onto Ilgrin’s vision. The place that’d been struck was bathed in darkness, the very light having been sucked out of the air. A second flash of lightning crashed into the silt town in the distance and terrified screams filled the air as the tree-houses burned, froze, exploded, or shattered.
‘We have to do something!’ Ilgrin cried mournfully, the rain now beating against him in torrents.
‘Nothing can be done for them,’ Jakob hissed malevolently, before opening his mouth and biting into Ilgrin’s arm. Ilgrin howled in pain and punched the man in the face. Jakob laughed hysterically as blood trickled from his nose. ‘Do it again! Do it again!’ He giggled, eyes rolling in their sockets.
‘Just breathe,’ Ilgrin encouraged himself, despite facing the increasingly dif
ficult challenge of maintaining his sanity. He needed to go back to the town. He had to go back to kill the child. His name was Jobe. Ilgrin pictured it in his mind’s eye. The little boy would be struggling to escape from his burning home. Ilgrin would clench his throat and squeeze it, squeeze it until the child was dead. He’d squeeze and squeeze. A gagging sound snapped Ilgrin free of his thoughts. He’d been strangling Jakob.
‘You deserve to die,’ Ilgrin hissed, despite having intended to apologise.
Jakob whipped out his knife and pressed it against Ilgrin’s throat, but he battered it away and watched the piece fall. ‘That’s mine,’ Jakob shrieked, pushing against Ilgrin so hard that he had no choice other than to let go. Jakob plummeted. He screamed and laughed as he went.
‘Good riddance,’ Ilgrin spat, watching Jakob’s descent. As the man fell closer and closer to the jagged cliffs, Ilgrin found himself becoming increasingly excited, but he also felt disappointed that he’d never get to see the impact. An unknown silt leapt away from the cliffs, raked his toes forward, caught Jakob, and banked back to the safety of the cave from which he’d come.
‘This way.’ The silt waved urgently before disappearing from view.
‘No!’ Ilgrin cried, having come to enjoy his dance in the rain. But wait . . . he could kill them. It’d be worth leaving the rain to kill them. Ilgrin tilted his wings and plunged toward the crevice in the rocky cliff-face. He found himself in an extremely narrow tunnel devoid of any life.
‘El-i-miir,’ he heard himself murmur, voice full of malice. ‘El-i-miir.’ The name was familiar. He wanted so badly to kill, or at least to die. Ilgrin slammed his head against the wall of the cave and laughed hysterically as blood poured from the wound. He caught some in his hands and lapped at it in his excitement. She was beautiful, his El-i-miir. Come back, she whispered in his mind. Her voice was a soothing stream in the mayhem of Ilgrin’s soul. Come back.
Ilgrin sobbed and clenched his fists as the narrow tunnel opened out to reveal a large cavern lit by lanterns hanging from the wall. There was a table at the centre of the room. Jakob was on the floor. A woman with long black hair leaned over him. Ilgrin struck at her, his fists clenched.
‘Teah,’ a male voice boomed when a second silt leapt out from the dark and attempted to restrain Ilgrin. ‘Can they be helped?’