The Inner Circle: Holy Spirit (42 page)

Ilgrin glanced about in
panic, but was soon relieved to see El-i-miir
gliding safely toward the ground beneath Teah’s protective wings.
He sighed and put a hand over his mouth as he headed toward the
ground. The strange thing was that when he pulled it away it was
covered in blood. Perhaps he’d been struck in the face and hadn’t
noticed in the heat of battle.

*

Among the throngs of silts he was
a mere speck of dust. If he’d ever hoped to reach such heights--a
near impossibility considering the wind--his chances were further
dashed by how crowded the sky was. Any time Seeol attempted to
reach even a few strides into the air he was knocked out of the way
by wings hundreds of times larger than his.

After fluttering down onto the hot roof
of a small building, Seeol surveyed his surroundings. There was so
much death around him. He knew he was simple. He was only an elf
owl, but he wished he could understand why everyone always wanted
to kill each other. In all his travels around the entire world, it
was all he’d ever seen. When life became too beautiful, darkness
soon returned. Perhaps it was him. Perhaps it was his darkness
that’d brought all of this on their heads. No . . . it was just the
way of things. Animals killed each other all the time, from the
smallest beetle to the largest beast. Death existed as a means to
arrive at who should be allowed to live.

Tilting his head at the sky, Seeol
watched the silt masses squirming and writhing as they snatched men
and women from the ground and killed them in increasingly creative
ways. Beldin soldiers fought back, but proved to be an insufficient
fend. A cannonball sailed through the air and carved a hole of
destruction through the demon masses. Seeol shook his head in
bewilderment. It was a shame they couldn’t all just be friends.

Seeol’s heart was saddened. Dark
clouds rolled over. His heart ached in fear for his friends. Wolves
howled in the distance. He felt . . . wet. Seeol shook his face but
couldn’t shake the feeling. He put his beak against the thatch roof
and rubbed it back and forth and examined a smear of bright red
blood left behind. He couldn’t understand why he would be bleeding.
Perhaps one of those stray silt wings had hit him a little harder
than he’d realised.

*

Seteal watched El-i-miir and then
Ilgrin disappear into the crowd. She watched Seeol flutter weakly
after them and realised she was alone in the middle of the largest
battle she’d ever seen.

‘
Come on, baby.’
Seteal cupped Parrowun’s head in her hand and sprinted across the
road. ‘We’ll go in here.’ She wriggled the handle on the first door
they came to, but it was locked. ‘No, I guess we won’t.’

A large dog growled across the street.
There was something wrong with it. It was far larger than Seteal
had first realised and beneath its fur its muscles bulged to
unnatural proportions.

‘
Unnatural.’ Seteal
choked on the word. A whisp had made the animal its victim. ‘Good
dog,’ Seteal said nervously, putting a hand out in front of her and
backing away. ‘Good dog,’ she said with a quivering voice. The
mutant dog snarled and leapt toward her. ‘Good dog!’ Seteal
screamed and turned to run.

Parrowun wriggled irritably and
sniffled in preparation to cry. ‘Not now.’ Seteal gritted her teeth
as she raced down an alley between two houses and across a small
backyard. The dog barked menacingly as it came closer. Seteal leapt
up the back steps of one of the houses, raced through an open door
and slammed it shut behind her. Parrowun’s face was a red mass of
tears. His chest rose and fell as he became increasingly upset.
‘We’re safe now,’ she shushed him. ‘I’ve got you Parrowun. Mommy’s
got you. Mommy’s here.’

Parrowun’s mouth burst open, an
inhuman scream tearing from his throat. The dog slammed against the
door, scratching, barking and yelping. Seteal raced over to a small
table and snatched up a dagger. Spinning on her heels, she faced
the door and waited for the animal to break through. Parrowun
screamed louder still and the scratching and banging ceased. Seteal
moved to the door and opened it just a crack. The dog was dead in a
puddle of blood.

‘
Stop it, Parrowun,’
Seteal pleaded, checking her nose, grateful to discover that it was
free of blood. ‘You want to feed?’ She moved Parrowun’s head toward
her breast, but he refused to take.

‘
Stop it!’ Seteal
cried, rocking his tiny body. ‘Just stop it!’

She turned in a slow circle, her ears
filled with her son’s piercing cries of distress. There was
something wrong. Beyond Parrowun’s miserable wailing she could hear
nothing: no clashing swords or battle cries . . . just nothing.
Moving cautiously through the empty home to the front door, Seteal
took the handle and turned it.

The house was situated at the centre of
the city overlooking the square. The square was full of soldiers
and silts, but they didn’t fight. Instead, they stumbled about
coughing and choking. Seteal stepped out onto the landing and made
her way over to the stairs to further investigate the peculiar
scene before her. She raised her eyes in time to see the first of
the air born silts tumbling to the earth, blue sprays of blood
trailing behind them.

A nearby an’hadoan fell to his
knees and vomited. Bright red chunks splashed across the pavement.
He wiped a hand across his lips and stared at the mark on his
sleeve as though he were unable to recognise what it was.
Parrowun’s scream pierced the square as countless others fell,
rolling and moaning in pain as blood trickled from nostrils, ears,
eyes, and anywhere else from which it could possibly
escape.

Seteal stumbled onto the square
and watched as a bead of blood fell from the tip of her nose. She
watched the red spot fall to displace the dust at her
feet.

‘
Parrowun,’ she
choked out as silts rained down around her. ‘My Parrowun,’ Seteal
sobbed. ‘Please. You’re killing them. You’re killing us all.’ The
child’s scream intensified only to be interrupted occasionally by
short gasps for air. ‘You’re killing Mommy.’

Seteal sat down, stars dancing
across her vision. She felt blood trickling from her ears and her
stomach became nauseous. She vomited up the red liquid as she’d
very well expected she would. ‘Mommy loves you,’ she whispered
before coughing and spraying blood across the dirt.

The world twisted sideways as
Seteal’s head hit the pavement. She gasped, but felt little pain. A
soft fluttering sound brought an old friend clumsily into view.
Seeol hit the ground and stumbled several steps, blood having
matted his facial feathers.

‘
No.’ Seteal felt a
tear trickle from her eye. ‘Not Seeol.’ She reached out a hand and
touched a finger to the side of his face.

‘
Is okay,’
he
croaked. His legs gave out, forcing
him to rest on his keel bone. The little bird stared into Seteal’s
eyes as his began to close and she sobbed uncontrollably. The wind
screamed in blind fury as the Ways boiled in their tormented desire
to protect him, just as they always had. Seeol’s features warped
and for fractions of a second Seteal saw his other self, the
beastly presence moaning on the edge of reality. But Parrowun was
too strong. The air surrounding the bird warped and curved forward
and backward and swirled about in fury as his feathers twitched and
squirmed under the pressure. Those unfortunate enough to be close
to him started screaming in their miseries, amplified a thousand
times beyond that which Parrowun could’ve accomplished on his own.
Of course, Seteal knew the answer. She’d known it all
along.

‘
It’s not okay,’
Seteal panted.

‘
Is
okay,’ Seeol repeated, his voice almost
inaudible.

‘
You can’t ask this
of me,’ Seteal sobbed, her eyes filling with red tears. ‘It’s too
much.’

‘
I know.’ Seeol’s
face drifted toward the dirt. ‘Too mush.’ His claws turned inward,
bunching together like a clenching fist.

Seteal felt for Ways, but there
was nothing for her to find. ‘Must I do it myself?’ She sobbed
bitterly. ‘Must it be so cruel?’ Numb fingers slid away from
Seeol’s face and traced their way along the pavement. They touched
soft warm flesh. Cold fingers slid along Parrowun’s tiny legs as
Seteal found her way to his screaming face. Blank eyes stared at
Seteal from a square where countless lives had been
lost.

‘
Mommy loves you,’
Seteal said through gritted teeth, wrapping her hand around
Parrowun’s throat. ‘I will always love you!’ she cried, in an
attempt to drown out the sound of Parrowun’s wheezing. ‘I’m so
sorry,’ Seteal sobbed, her body shaking as she tightened her grip
around the baby’s neck. She felt his pulse diminishing and his
struggling limbs coming to rest. By the time he’d stopped wriggling
and his pulse had faded to nothing, Seteal found that she too was
quite unable to move. She couldn’t think. She’d done the
unthinkable. She couldn’t breathe. She was a monster.

‘
Sss,’ Seeol hissed
weakly. ‘Seteal?’ But she couldn’t respond. No words abandoned her
lips: but rather the wailing of bitter mourning. ‘It’s done,’ Seeol
croaked. ‘Is so sorry.’

Seteal opened her eyes to find
the elf owl standing shakily a handswidth from her nose. Through a
blur of tears she saw tired figures dragging themselves to their
feet, many even weakly resuming their senseless battle. Those silts
who hadn’t been killed while they were down, reascended to swoop
clumsily over Beldin.

‘
I can’t look at
him,’ Seteal choked, scarcely able to tolerate the feel of his limp
body in her arms. ‘Oh . . . I cannot have done this! I cannot have
done this.’

‘
Go into the house,’
Seeol said.

‘
Yes,’ Seteal sobbed,
climbing to her feet and stumbling back up the stairs she’d
descended earlier. ‘He can rest in here for a little
while.’

Moving through the house, Seteal found
that the only parts of her body not completely numb were the parts
in contact with him. She still cradled his head. She didn’t want to
knock it. Maker forbid she disturb him. He might wake up and start
crying. But he wouldn’t wake up. Seteal pulled back the covers of a
child’s bed. It might’ve been his, had he been able to get a little
older. Without looking she put his body into the sheets and pulled
up the cover.

‘
Mommy loves you,’
Seteal sobbed, sitting on the side of the bed. She kept her eyes
locked on the white painted wall before her. ‘I’ll never forget
you.’

‘
Love him? You won’t
even look at him.’ Master Fasil put a gnarled old hand on her
shoulder. ‘I loved our son. You . . . you’re a
murderer.’

‘
No,’ Seteal
recoiled. ‘I loved him. I did!’

Master Fasil vanished and Seteal forced
herself to look at her son. ‘Oh,’ she gasped. His face was without
colour, his eyelids half shut. There was a great deal of redness
around his neck, but Seteal hid that by pulling up the blankets to
his chin. ‘I’m sorry you didn’t get to grow up, Parrowun,’ she said
breathily, releasing a fresh batch of tears as his name rolled off
her tongue. ‘You truly will be wept for. There won’t be a tearless
day. I love you, my darling son.’

She kissed his forehead, making believe
that it was still warm. ‘I loved you.’

Revelation 2

20. Notwithstanding, I have a few
things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman, to teach
and to seduce mortal men to commit fornication.

21. And I gave her space to repent of
her fornication, and she repented not.

22. Behold, I will
cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into
great tribulation.

23. And I will kill her child with
death, and all the churches shall know that I am He that searcheth
the reins and hearts, and I will give unto every one of you
according to your works.

Revelation 16

3. And the whisp poured out his
darkness upon the city: and it became as the blood of dead men,
intending that every living soul died.

4. And the streets became as rivers and
fountains of blood.

Scriptures of the Holy Tome

CHAPTER
Thirty-Three

The Disquiet Spirit

Seteal
stumbled through the front door and down the steps. She
pressed the dagger’s blade against her stomach, but couldn’t find
the strength to end her own life. She threw back her head and
screamed, hating her mother for having given birth to her: a
monster capable of taking her own child’s life. For the barest
moment, she closed her eyes, resting to the sounds of reignited
warfare. When she opened them something caught her
attention.

The old man swung his sword, cracking
it against a swooping demon skull. He spun in a semicircle, taking
out another silt with the precision of an expert swordsman. He made
small gestures as he manipulated the Ways--although seemingly with
some difficulty--to do his bidding. He was War Elder
Far-a-mael.