Dawn

Chapter 14

THE MOL’STERIA DESERT began surprisingly quickly: one moment there was more grass and heather beneath their feet than sand; the next, the only plants they saw ahead were occasional sproutings, like hairs growing from boils on an old man’s face. The Red Monk walked ahead, stomping through sand and hardly seeming to notice the change.

But Kosar did notice. He had been smelling hints of the Shantasi spice farms for several hours now, and it seemed that walking on sand opened the desert to his senses. Heat hushed over him, still radiating from the deep sands even though the sun had been gone for more days than he could count. The sound of their footsteps was dampened, and the Monk looked like a red wraith floating ahead of him. Moonlight turned the ground gray. Kosar had never been to the desert, and the sense of danger was palpable. It was a place of unknown things that hid from sight behind the dunes or buried beneath the surface. Any of these things could be dangerous. All of them could be, and Kosar walked with one hand resting on the hilt of his sword. Not that I could do much, he thought. If something like that sand demon rose against us, it would be down to the Monk to protect me. He was tired, exhaustion wearing down on him and weakening his legs. He thought he had at least one cracked rib, a heavily bruised nose and cheekbone and a stab wound in his back that refused to stop bleeding. He chewed more of the paste Lucien had made for him, but the pain was tenacious. It found its way through the drugs.

The sand produced a strange heat. He could feel the warmth rising up from the ground and touching the sweat on his skin, turning him cold. But he could also feel the intense chill of the clear dark sky, threatening to suck heat from his body and leave him cold and dead. It would not take long for his corpse to be covered by the shifting sands. He wondered how many other luckless travelers lay dead beneath his feet, and he started watching the ground before him for protruding bones or mummified skin.

They walked from loose sand to hard, a compacted surface that was cracked from lack of moisture. Thin, spiky plants grew from these cracks, their pale roots exploring across the surface of the ground as well as below. In some of these roots Kosar spotted the skeletons of small rodents, wrapped tight. He wondered whether there were larger versions of these plants out there somewhere.

Lucien Malini kept a steady pace that Kosar knew he would not be able to maintain forever. He was thirsty and hungry, weak and tired, and he had no wish to die in the desert. A’Meer may have once walked these sands, and he did not want to melt away beneath her memory.

The Monk stopped. There was something to its left-a large, bulky shadow that seemed to be moving slightly, tipping from left to right. Kosar closed his eyes and opened them again, making sure it was not simply his heartbeat shuddering his vision with every thump.

Lucien turned and stared back at him.

Perhaps this is it, Kosar thought. A sand demon ten times bigger than the last, and the Monk knows it’s all over.

“You don’t look like you can walk much farther,” Lucien said. He spoke quietly but his voice carried, unhindered by echoes.

Kosar shook his head, panting.

The Monk motioned him forward and pointed at the shadow with his sword. “We have transport,” he said.

Kosar walked to the Monk. This thing killed A’Meer, he thought. He needed to remind himself of that from time to time.

Standing beside Lucien, he looked at the shape that sat a dozen steps from them. It was large, low to the ground, dark gray and still shifting from left to right. There were protuberances on both sides that appeared to be legs, and it seemed that its head was beneath the sand.

“What is it?” Kosar asked.

“I’m not sure of its name,” Lucien said, “but I know it can get us where we need to go faster than walking. Especially with you like that.” One nod at Kosar encompassed the thief ’s entire range of injuries and weaknesses.

“You made me like this,” Kosar said.

“No, I saved you. The Breakers would have killed you in the end.”

“So you killed their children as well?”

Lucien stared at him, his Monk’s eyes dark pits in the scarred ruin of his face. “Breaker children are dangerous too,” he said. “Just one of them would have bettered you in a fight.”

Kosar looked at the large creature burrowing before them. It looked heavy-its back and sides were armored with scales or thick hide-and he could not imagine it moving quickly.

“You stay here,” Lucien said. “I need to find something. This thing on its own can’t move us, but given the right persuasion it will be fast and safe.”

Kosar waved one hand at the Monk without looking, urging him away. Then he sat on the sand and stretched his aching legs before him, pulling back his feet and toes to try to work out the stiffness in his ankles. His face ached, his back was hot and his ribs spiked a sliver of pain through him each time he drew a breath. His heart was hammering with anger. Stop! it said. Stop right now!

“Can’t stop,” Kosar whispered. “There’s nothing left to stop for.” He glanced after the Monk disappearing into the gloom and then back at the large gray thing, its head still beneath the sand. “I wish I could bury myself away,” he said.

The thing grumbled and groaned. Several feet shifted position and it dragged its head a few steps through the sand.

Kosar lay back. The ground gave a comfortable warmth, and that seemed to ease some of his aches. He stared up at the sky and wondered where everything had gone: no stars, no sun, just the death moon almost directly above and the life moon a smear to the left of his vision. Though his back was warm he could feel the coldness up there, sucking the heat from Noreela like the air taking warmth from a corpse. This land was dead already; there were simply those who refused to believe that.

Don’tbelieve it, A’Meer said. Kosar frowned and opened his eyes. He had drifted off without noticing, finding sleep a strange reflection of being awake. He closed his eyes again and let his breathing slow down, and the memory of A’Meer was there, reading his inner thoughts in her own voice. Kosar was pleased, because he saw that below all the bitterness and anger and exhaustion, he still believed there was a chance.

He slept, meeting A’Meer in his memories, and when he smiled at her the pain in his broken cheek woke him again.

WHEN KOSAR SAT up, the Monk was kneeling beside the desert creature. Lucien kept one fisted hand pressed against his chest, and with the other he was trying to prize the creature’s head up out of the sand. “Some help?” he asked, and Kosar hauled himself to his feet.

“What are you trying to do?”

“Feed it these.” Lucien opened his hand briefly to show Kosar several squirming shapes, each the size of his thumb.

“Why?”

The Monk sighed. “Help me raise it and feed it, then I’ll have time to tell you while they start acting.”

“You’re poisoning it? Killing it? Or seeking the truth like you bled it from me?”

“Do you think this thing will know anything useful? We need a ride. Now help me, or prepare for a fifty-mile walk across the desert.”

Kosar leaned across the creature’s stretched neck and grabbed hold of the bony collar around the base of its head. Its skin was hard and smooth, abraded by decades of sand and possessing a dull shine. He had to curl his fingers beneath the collar to maintain a grip. Then he pulled. Lucien did the same, and slowly the creature’s head rose out of the sand.

Its big eyes opened and blinked lazily. It looked left at Kosar, forward at Lucien, then it slumped to the ground and rested its scaly head on the sand.

“It looks about as lively as I feel,” Kosar said. “You think this thing will carry us across the desert?”

Lucien opened his hand before the creature’s face, displaying the squirming grubs. “Pace beetles,” he said. “It will carry us. Go and sit down, use your belt and straps to prepare a harness. You’ll need something to hang on to.”

Kosar moved away from the creature, still doubtful. Its legs were short and stumpy and it seemed to want to bury its head beneath the sand again. He wondered what it had been eating down there, but had no wish to find out.

He heard the wet snick of the creature’s mouth opening, then the stony sound of its teeth crunching down on the beetles. He sat down and touched his belt, then shook his head.

Pace beetles, the Monk had called them.

And then Kosar remembered the Pace that A’Meer had possessed, and how she had never been able to tell him about it. She had called it a secret.

“You know Shantasi secrets?” Kosar called to the Monk.

Lucien looked up, surprised. “Some,” he said. “It seems you do too.”

“Some,” Kosar said. He touched his belt buckle and started to unthread it from his trousers. He had to untie the sword scabbard from it first. Keeping that veryclose to me, he thought.

“Monks read a lot,” Lucien said.

“So have you been everywhere?”

Lucien fed another beetle to the prone animal. “Not me. But other Monks have, and they come back and write down what they know, and others learn. We all know the same things.”

“Kang Kang?” Kosar said.

Lucien nodded.

“The Blurring?”

Lucien glanced up at him, dark eyes giving nothing away. “Monks have gone there.”

“And?”

“They never returned.”

“I’ve heard that things are undone there,” Kosar said. The Monk did not answer, so Kosar finished extracting his belt and retying his scabbard to his trousers. The belt was thick leather, decades old and tougher and stronger than the day he stole it from a shop on the Western Shores. He fashioned a tight loop at one end which he could hang on to, and the other he left free, ready to fix it somehow to the creature’s neck collar.

“Almost ready,” Lucien said. “Come and tie your belt to its neck.”

Kosar did so, wedging the belt tight into the creature’s bony collar so that the looped end was free for him to hold. “What about you?” he asked the Monk.

“I’ll be making my own handhold. It’ll need a reason to run.”

MINUTES LATER THE gray sand creature was pounding across the desert. Kosar hung on to its back, bent low so that he could hold the belt with one hand and its neck collar with the other. He gritted his teeth and squinted, trying to avoid breathing in the clouds of sand thrown up by the thing’s six feet. Its legs had lengthened from its body, long and slender now instead of short and squat, and it ran with an almost graceful gait, hardly rocking at all. Kosar found the rhythm very quickly, leaning left and right to match the creature’s slight sway and yaw. And below and ahead of him, its mouth opened again in a low rumble of agony.

It’ll need a reason to run, Lucien had said, and behind Kosar the Monk was providing the reason. He sat facing the creature’s rear, his short sword buried to the hilt in the animal’s lower back. There was his handhold.

“Left,” the Monk called, and Kosar tugged slightly on the belt, urging the animal to the left. It seemed just as confident on the soft sands of high dunes as it did on compacted ground. Its long legs ended in wide, flat feet, and they prevented it from sinking, lifting it high and fast up the sides of dunes. On harder, flatter areas its wide feet slapped down and threw it onward. Double-jointed knees dampened the major impacts, giving Kosar and the Monk a soft ride, and soon the rhythms became soporific. Kosar found his eyes closing, head nodding.

Time passed them by, and the creature did not flag. It grumbled now and then, groaned as Lucien twisted his sword or Kosar edged it a fraction to the left or right, but whatever the Pace beetles had given it did not fade away. Kosar noticed spatters of moisture on his face and thought it had begun to rain, but when he looked closer he could see that the animal was foaming at the mouth. He wiped a gob of spittle from his cheek; it was pink with blood. The animal moaned some more, its call starting to sound desperate.

“You’re killing it,” Kosar said. The Monk did not reply.

Always conscious of the movement, smelling the heat of the creature above the more subtle aroma of desert spices, hearing its pain but never sensing it slowing down, Kosar drifted away.

THE MOL’STERIA DESERT is part of our border, A’Meer said. They were outside the Broken Arm tavern in Pavisse, sitting on its crumbling windowsill and drinking Old Bastard from battered metal tankards. Kosar remembered the day well. It had been hot and dry, and he and A’Meer had drunk all day and fucked all night. It was at the time when their lives could have changed drastically. If Kosar had not packed and left three weeks later without saying why, the future would have been a very different place. We have Sordon Sound to the north, A’Meer continued, and Ventgoria and the Poison Forests past that. And the desert itself…it’s not the best of places, Kosar. It’s dangerous. Shantasi warriors have gone out there and never come back. The desert is a whole world, and the surface you see is only a small part of it.

So New Shanti is impregnable, Kosar said. Back then he hadn’t known that A’Meer was a Shantasi warrior. He believed she had left of her own accord, and mixing with a Shantasi excited him. Many people did not like them. Few trusted them, and some called them whiters because of the paleness of their skin. Right then, he was beginning to believe that maybe he loved her.

She drank more ale. Her skin never darkened even in such intense sunlight. Her black hair was loose today, flowing down over shoulders that he would be biting and scratching later that night. This memory was a full, rich place, echoing with the future as well as that moment in time. She opened her mouth to speak, and for an instant she seemed to gape, echoing the mimic’s representation of her.

Not impregnable, she said. But safe.

Then why did you leave?

She smiled at him. Where’s the fun in safe? And he saw a wealth of experience and knowledge in her eyes that he knew he would never match.

ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER place, another mug of ale. They sat on a quay beside the river in Pavisse, watching fishing boats bring in their meager catch and the fishermen haul them ashore. Some fish were dead and stinking already, while others were mutated. The fishermen carried small knives to kill those that were wrong, slicing them in two and throwing them back into the River Pav. They produced a slick of all that was foul with the land.

Look at that, Kosar said. He was more than a little drunk. His fingers were hurting a lot that day, and sometimes alcohol dulled the pain. A’Meer could do that too. She had a special way of soothing his fingers, and later she would do it for him. Just look at that! People eat stuff from that river. Can you believe it? Would you?

You eat sheebok meat, Kosar.

Yes, but the sheebok I see aren’t all twisted up like that.

Aren’t they? Many have three horns. There’s a herd in a farm north of Pavisse with four eyes each.

But their meat’s still fine.

Is it?

Kosar stared at her, and for a moment her wisdom annoyed him. She always seemed to know what was best. Perhaps he wastoo drunk.

Well, it’s all we have, he said.

Yes. All we have. But maybe someday things will change.

Kosar spat into the river. A dead fish with beaks instead of eyes floated by. Nothing will change, he said. Noreela is dying. There’s a cancer in its soul, and it’s dying.

Think positive, lover, A’Meer said, and she leaned over and bled his anger with a kiss. There’s always hope. You just have to watch for it, and grab it while you can.

HE DREAMED OF A’Meer for a long time. Sometimes they were honest memories of what had happened and how things had been, other times they were tainted with his knowledge of everything that would come to pass. She spoke to him and smiled, groaned as she bent over a chair, offering herself to him, and she gave him her wisdom and hope whether he liked it or not. Usually he did not. But it stuck, mostly in places he did not recognize. And even though each successive dream became darker with the knowledge of her impending death at the hands of Lucien Malini, Kosar reveled in these memories. It was as though he had been given one final moment with her. He made it count. I love you, he thought many times over, and her eyes lit up throughout his memory to show him that for her, the same was true.

SOMETHING BROUGHT KOSAR out of his deep sleep. He was watching A’Meer prepare a rabbit for cooking and then the rabbit grunted, loud and hard. He felt the dream recede and reality reassert itself around him, and another loud grunt forced his eyes open.

He was still lying atop of the creature, and it was running at full speed along the base of a low ravine. It dodged this way and that, passing around rocks tumbled from the ravine walls and leaping the long-dried streambed.

“Attack,” a voice whispered. Kosar sat up, turned around and saw the Monk pulling an arrow from his hip. He hissed as the barbed head came out.

“Who?” But he did not have to ask. Ahead and to the right, halfway up the ravine’s slope, A’Meer rose from behind a rock and fired an arrow at them.

Kosar was too astonished to duck. The arrow glanced from the animal’s bony forehead and tumbled into the night. He searched for A’Meer but she had already vanished. He saw a flash of movement farther along the ravine as something crossed from right to left. He squinted, saw another movement from the corner of his eye and turned left to see A’Meer stepping into view. She raised a crossbow and fired, and below him the creature jumped and grumbled in pain.

“A’Meer!” Kosar shouted, confused by his dream memories, but he knew that he was wrong. These Shantasi were not A’Meer. Something flashed across the ravine a few steps ahead of the galloping creature, waited until they were close and then leapt onto its back. Kosar hardly had time to perceive the movement before a male Shantasi stood astride him. The warrior held one arm out for support and raised a sword in his other.

“We’re here to see the Mystics!” Kosar shouted, but the Shantasi’s eyes did not change. He brought the sword down.

Sparks flew as Lucien blocked the blow with his own sword. The Monk shoved hard and the Shantasi tumbled from the creature, disappearing in a cloud of dust.

“We don’t have long!” Lucien said.

“We’re no enemy!” Kosar shouted. Red Monk, he thought. They’ll see me with him and kill me without asking questions. “Lucien, don’t fight back,” he said. He stood, holding on to his looped belt with one hand, knees bent as he braced himself on the running animal’s back.

Two crossbow bolts whizzed past his head from different directions. He saw movement on both sides of the ravine, but he could not focus. Using their Pace, he thought. We don’t have a chance.

“We bring hope,” he shouted. “We need to see the Mystics! The Mages are here, but we have an advantage. Kill us and you’ll never know what that was.”

He saw something ahead, and for a moment it confused Kosar. Straight lines did not belong in this place. It was only a second before the creature ran into the taut rope that he realized what it was.

The animal’s legs were snapped from beneath it, and Kosar and Lucien flew from its back. For a second Kosar was flying, then the ground pulled him down and he tried to curl in his arms and legs, folding his head in his arms, wondering whether his broken body could take any more abuse before giving out entirely.

He did not even recall hitting the ground.

“WHO ARE YOU?”

Kosar opened his eyes and stared up into the face of a Shantasi warrior. She was bigger than A’Meer had been, her pale face divided with a diagonal scar that ran from the corner of her left eye and sliced her lips in two. Her dark hair was cropped short.

“Kosar,” he said.

“Thief?”

He nodded. She had seen his hands.

“Did you steal that Shantasi sword on your hip?”

“No, I was given it by a friend.”

“What friend?”

“A’Meer Pott. A Shantasi warrior.”

“And where is she now?”

“Dead.”

The Shantasi blinked. “You travel with a Red Monk.” There was more surprise than accusation in her voice, and Kosar thought, Perhaps I stand a chance.

“He’s one of the last,” Kosar said. Talking hurt. He tried to move, figure out where else he was hurt, but the Shantasi leaned in and pressed the point of a sword into the hollow of his throat.

“Move and you die! Now…the Monk. We’re close to killing it, but my squad is intrigued.”

“Don’t kill him,” Kosar said. “He’s one of the last, and his meaning has changed.”

“Magic is back. Dark magic. What meaning does a Monk have left in this world?”

Kosar realized that as well as angry and committed, this Shantasi was scared. “To fight that dark magic,” he said. “To defeat the Mages. There’s another hope, another chance for the land. The Monk and I have come here to meet your Mystics, and ask for help.”

“You’re speaking riddles!” the Shantasi said. She shouted something to the soldiers around her, a few terse words in their staccato language. Then she leaned close and Kosar could smell her breath, a curious mix of spice and staleness that gave him a sudden flashback to A’Meer.

“I hear your knives knocking together,” he said. “A’Meer wore her weapons so that none of them ever touched.”

The Shantasi blinked again, processing what had happened and what Kosar had said. He saw the doubt in her eyes, and the reluctance to believe. We’re not killers, A’Meer had told him. We’re not a warrior race. It was thrust upon us.

“How is Lucien?” he asked.

“Lucien?”

“The Monk.”

The Shantasi glanced away, then back again. “Alive,” she said.

“Will you give me a chance?” he asked. “Please? A’Meer died for magic, and I swear that it’s not all over. The Mages have their magic, and I suspect their army is ashore and heading this way even now.”

“We know that,” the warrior said.

“Then you can help. I need to see a Mystic. To tell them. And they will know if I tell the truth, won’t they?”

“They have ways of knowing,” she said.

Kosar thought of the beetle in his throat and shivered.

“You’re hurt,” the Shantasi said. “I’ll carry you.”

“No, I-” Kosar went to stand but the warrior had already grabbed him beneath the arms. She knelt, lifted and stood with him slung over one shoulder.

Kosar groaned as his broken ribs ground together. “How far?” he asked.

“Not far.” The Shantasi issued orders to the rest of her squad. Kosar saw at least eight other warriors, and he wondered how he and Lucien had ever survived. They were trying to bring us down, he thought, not kill us. They were intrigued: a man and a Red Monk traveling together on the back of that desert beast. The creature was dead, a still shadow back along the ravine. If I’d been on my own…

“What’s your name?” Kosar asked.

“Nothing to you.” The Shantasi started walking. Each step jarred Kosar’s cracked ribs, and he was glad when unconsciousness took him away once again.

HE CAME TO when the Shantasi lowered him from her back and propped him against a rock. She was panting and sweating, but she still looked strong. He noticed that she now moved silently; she had retied some of her weaponry.

“Thanks for the lift,” Kosar said. He breathed in deeply, and the inside of his nose prickled with the warm aroma of desert spices. The smell gave him an unaccountable sense of well-being. He looked around. Behind him rose a steep, short hill, shifting here and there where Shantasi moved across its face. Lucien was thirty steps to his left, sitting with his head bowed and his hood pulled down. Three Shantasi stood around him, arrows strung, belts gleaming with weapons. He looked like a helpless old man. He seemed to sense Kosar watching because he glanced up. Kosar looked away.

Ahead of him, the desert. He could see the silhouette of a spice farm. Distance was difficult to judge in such light, but he guessed that it was at least several hundred steps away, a complex network of rods and ropes high above the desert. He could see the shadings of leaves and the webbing of stems and stalks, and he wondered whether the desert spice could survive this dearth of sunlight. A’Meer had once told him about a harvest, how the Shantasi climbed through the supports and across the rope rigging to gather leaves and seed pods, and he felt suddenly sad seeing this farm empty and abandoned.

“Are the farms still alive?” he asked.

The big Shantasi woman wiped a slick of sweat from her face. She followed his gaze, looked back at Kosar. “What do you care? Damned Noreelan, what do you give a fuck about us?”

“You’re as much a Noreelan as I.”

“Pah!” The warrior shook her head and turned away. “We make a new home for ourselves, and still it doesn’t last.”

“You’ve been here for so long,” he said. “You’re a part of the land.”

The Shantasi turned back to him, her anger lessened now. She spoke to him like a child; Kosar was not sure which he preferred. “Thief, none of us are part of the land.”

“So what now?” he asked. “I need to speak to someone. Can you take me to Hess? To the Mystic Temple? There’s something-”

“There’s hope,” a voice said. Older, lower than the warrior who had carried him here. The Shantasi performed a brief bow with her head and backed away, leaving room for a man to squat on the sand before Kosar.

“IS THAT WHAT you came to tell me, thief? That there’s hope? You ride across a desert of dying spice farms, under a twilit sky that hasn’t changed in days, accompanied by a Red Monk that has enough wounds to kill a dozen Shantasi…to tell me there’s hope?”

“The Monk is Lucien Malini. His being with me should show you that things have changed.”

The man nodded. “Things have changed, for sure. The Elder Mystics have killed themselves, the others have fled deep into New Shanti. Hess is a city of ghosts and memories, and dead things that still move. Yes, things have changed.” He bowed his head and fisted both hands together.

“I’m sorry,” Kosar said.

The Mystic glanced up and smiled. He looked embattled and desperate, but the smile touched his eyes. Kosar could not help returning the gesture, because A’Meer used to smile like that.

“I’m O’Gan Pentle,” the man said. “I think you’ve guessed that I’m a Mystic. A young one, comparatively.” He leaned forward. “Are you a spy for the Mages?”

“No,” Kosar said.

“Is there something in you?”

“No.”

“Then the hope you bring us…tell me. I have hope of my own, and I’d be interested to hear whether they’re of the same ilk.”

“I need a drink,” Kosar said. “And the Monk will need food and drink also.”

O’Gan glanced across at the Monk, frowning. “Monks are our enemies,” he said.

“Yes, they used to be.”

O’Gan stared at Kosar for a long time. The thief looked down at his bloodied fingertips, but still he felt the Mystic’s attention upon him. “Things have changed,” the Mystic whispered. “Bring some water and food,” he said, louder. “And feed the Monk.”

“Mystic?” The Shantasi warrior sounded amazed.

“Feed it. And give it water. Things have changed, O’Lam.”

The warrior nodded, gave the brief bow again and went to fetch food and drink.

“It was A’Meer,” Kosar said. He was still staring at his hands, remembering how the mimics had shown him his lover’s last moments. It was a painful memory, but one he felt he had to share now. It was almost like bringing her death home. “I’d left the others, I wasrunning away, when the mimics showed me A’Meer. And that made it clear to me. It solidified what the librarian said, what Hope claimed, and-”

“A’Meer Pott,” O’Gan said.

Kosar glanced up and saw the Mystic’s eyes grow wide, staring at some past memory.

“‘Hope,’ she said to me,” O’Gan continued. “She spoke the language of the land, and she told me ‘Hope,’ but none of the Elders believed me. Their memories are tainted by what came before. They see only the bad. But there has to be good as well.”

“There is,” Kosar said, confused but invigorated. “Her name is Alishia.”

HE TOLD O’GAN of Alishia, Hope and Trey, traveling southward for Kang Kang and the Womb of the Land. He told him of Rafe Baburn and what the boy had carried; their flight south; the pursuit by the Red Monks and their battle in the machines’ graveyard. He glanced sideways at Lucien, trying not to imagine the Monk using his sword to end A’Meer’s life. And finally he told O’Gan why he had come to New Shanti.

“They need time,” Kosar said. “To reach Kang Kang and find the Womb of the Land. And they need protecting.”

“And what happens if they get there?” O’Gan asked.

Kosar shrugged. “You’re a Mystic. I’m just a thief. Don’t you know?”

O’Gan shook his head.

“Alishia thinks she can do something,” Kosar said.

“In Kang Kang? That’s a bad place. They’ll be killed before they get farther than its foothills.”

Kosar closed his eyes. I wish I could believe that isn’t true, he thought. I wish I could believe that Noreela itself is guarding them and guiding them. But Rafe followed that voice in his mind, and still the Mages won.

“There are no guarantees,” Kosar said. “Nothing’s written. We write history with every breath we take.”

“That’s a Shantasi saying.”

Kosar smiled.

O’Gan nodded. “So, you came to ask us to march to Kang Kang with what’s left of the army of New Shanti-leaving Hess open to the Krotes-and stop them from reaching this girl?”

Kosar nodded. “I’ve no way to persuade you,” he said. “But I saw A’Meer, and you…?”

“She was my student.”

“You taught A’Meer!”

O’Gan nodded. “She was one of my first. I haven’t seen her in over fifty years, and a day ago she appeared to me on the Mystic Temple. A vision. A ghost.”

“Mimics,” Kosar said.

“The Elders always told me that mimics are a myth.”

“Myth or not, I’ve seen them, and so have you. And where are the Elders now, O’Gan?”

O’Gan’s pale face actually seemed to take on a darker hue, and his eyes grew narrow. “You’re in no position to demean the Elder Mystics.” His voice was low and threatening, and Kosar knew that he was right. But times were changing.

“They’ve done that themselves,” he said.

O’Gan stood quickly and walked away, heading toward the open desert and the shadow of the spice farm.

Kosar watched him go, wondering what all this meant. The mimics had shown him the way to New Shanti, and now this Mystic claimed to have seen the vision of A’Meer. She spoke the language of the land, he had said.

Kosar groaned, coughed into his hand, saw the splash of darkness in his palm that could only mean blood.

Leaning back, closing his eyes, he tried to shut everything from his mind for a while.

“WE’VE BEEN WAITING here for a day,” O’Gan said. Kosar opened his eyes to see that the tall Shantasi Mystic had sat down beside him. “Waiting for the Mages and their Krote army to attack. I’m confused. I wish there were Elders I could commune with, but…” He shook his head, looked back out into the desert. “The spice farms are dying,” he said. “That’s sad. They’ve been there for a long time-over a thousand years-and they’ve never failed to provide us with a crop. They’ve weathered so much in that time, from drought to floods, and everything in between. Each year, thousands of Shantasi flood into the desert to harvest the spice, take it back and distribute it around New Shanti. It tastes nice, and smells good. It’s used for treating some cancers, and it can guide the mad back to normality. It’s the smell of New Shanti. Soon, the farms will be dead and we’ll never smell it again.” He looked at Kosar. “Your Monk told us that he killed A’Meer.”

“I know,” Kosar said.

O’Gan nodded. “And yet you still travel with him.”

“Only for now.”Do I mean that, Kosar thought. Is there enough hate in me to kill the Monk, when all of Noreela is dying?

“Revenge is a powerful driver,” O’Gan said. “But it bears no reflection of what’s needed and what is not. Revenge has no logic.”

“The Mages are here for revenge,” Kosar said.

“And they’re having it. It could be that they’ve killed Noreela already.”

“I still have some fight in me.”

“Perhaps,” O’Gan said, “although it looks as though you’ve been through enough fights. Can you fight without eating? The sun has been gone for a long time, and it may be absent for a long time more. It’s growing colder. Plants are dying. When the plants die, the animals die. When the plants and animals die…there’s nothing left to eat.”

“I’ve seen the Mages,” Kosar said. He was aware of O’Gan’s surprised intake of breath, but he ignored it and finished what he had to say. “They want more from revenge than dead grass. They want blood.”

“They’ll be having it as we speak,” O’Gan said. “And they’ll come for New Shanti last because they know we’re the strongest in Noreela. At least, we were.” He bowed his head.

“So is this all talking around what you’ve already decided?” Kosar asked. “Are you staying here to fight the Krotes, or will you come to Kang Kang? If the Mages get to know of Alishia-and they have their ways and means-they’ll go for her with all their army and might.”

“You could be mad,” O’Gan said.

“I feel that way.”

“Youcould be insane. I saw a man once-a trader-who believed he was a Sleeping God.”

Kosar smiled. “I’ve seen the like as well. Usually with their face in a bottle of rotwine.”

O’Gan fell silent for so long that Kosar thought he had fallen asleep. When he looked up at last he found O’Gan staring right at him, as though trying to penetrate his skull and see whether the thief told lies.

The Mystic nodded. “We’ll come with you,” he said.

Kosar’s eyes widened. “Just like that?”

O’Gan shook his head. “No. Not just like that. I’ve been waiting for something to happen, and I think your arrival is what I’ve been awaiting.”

“Fate,” Kosar said.

Again, O’Gan shook his head. “History. The Mages expect Noreela to roll over and die before their greater power. I believe we should take the fight to them.”

Kosar closed his eyes and smiled. Alishia, he thought, I really hope you can do what you claim. I hope this is all for real. Because all I want to do is curl up here and sleep, though I know I can’t. “How big is your army?” he asked.

“I have almost two thousand Shantasi warriors, and an equal number untrained.”

“Four thousand. Do they all have the Pace?”

O’Gan raised his eyebrows. “A’Meer?”

Kosar nodded. “But she said she couldn’t talk about it. Hinted there was more.”

O’Gan stood, smiling. “Good for A’Meer,” he said. “The warriors have the Pace, and yes, there’s more. If you live through this, thief, you’ll be able to tell your children you saw the Shantasi at war. It’s not something you or they will forget.”

“HOPE, I NEED to learn more,” Alishia said. “I’ve been told so much, but I still don’t understand.” She looked down at the burn on her palm as though truths were written there.

The witch glared at her. It had started to snow, and flakes hung in her wild hair like bizarre decorations. Alishia was cold. Her skinny body shook and shivered. She tried to hug her clothes tighter around her but they were too large, letting cool air in and allowing her meager body heat to escape. She was certain that if she reached inside and touched her chest she would find only ice.

“If you go back to sleep, you could guide it in! Whatever had you, whatever saw you, it could find you again and bringthem to us!”

“I won’t let it,” Alishia said. “I’ll hide. But I have to go, Hope, don’t you see? Do you really know where the Womb of the Land is? Do you know where we’re going, and what to do when we get there?”

Hope looked up at the mountains looming ahead of them, snowcapped and forbidding, and when she turned back to Alishia her anger was rich and strong. “I’mtaking you to that place, no one else!”

“But you don’t know where it is.” She wanted to question what she had inside her but she could not reach it, not like this, not feeling the cold and misery closing in. I need to go back in.

…and I can.

“Hope, look after me,” Alishia said.

“I am looking after you,” the witch said, voice softening. She almost smiled.

As Alishia closed her eyes, she saw the witch’s smile fade.

She sought the door back into the vastness of that library. Something jarred her, tried to pull her back, but sleep came quickly. Perhaps because the library craved her return, but more likely because she was too weak to remain awake.

Look after me, Hope, she thought, and the library was burning again.

IN THE LIBRARY, she did not feel so tired. Her body was still reduced, but being the size of a twelve-year-old felt more natural in here. She ran, and her girl’s legs were long and slender and strong. Her dress fluttered about her, flattening against her stomach, and her hair bounced behind her as though freshly washed. She felt immensely liberated dashing between these cliffs of books, even though some of them were burning. Books had always been her life, and now here she was existing within the heart of Noreela.

But it’sburning.

She skidded to a stop amongst a pile of ashes and looked down at the marks her feet had made. Shifting the ashes to one side with her foot, she could see the charred timber floor, and the jagged gap in between boards where several half-burnt pages had become jammed. Down there, below the boards and beyond those cracks, was something else.

Something trying to get in, she thought. Something showering in the ashes of Noreela. She shivered and ran on, not feeling quite so free.

She had knowledge inside her, but she was looking for understanding. She knew that it had to be in here somewhere. She had read the stone and heard what it had to tell her, but she needed something more.

Somewhere in here, she thought. It has to be somewhere in here. She ran.

IT FELT LIKE a long time, but it could have been mere heartbeats, before the flames around her suddenly went out.

Alishia gasped. All around her, the burning had ceased, and it felt like a held breath awaiting something momentous. She held her own breath, afraid that something would hear her.

A violent breeze brushed past her, carrying smoke in a swirling storm. Something’s been opened, she thought, and then the wind stopped as quickly as it had begun. Smoke twisted in mad eddies as the air settled once again.

The fires reignited with an explosion that blew Alishia to her knees. To her left and right, and up and down, fire roared across her vision, and she thought, This is it, this is the end, I’ll be burned to ashes and mixed with Noreela’s dying history. But although the firestorm blew around and through her and took her breath away, still the flames did her no harm.

She stood, brushed herself down and realized that the fires were more widespread and more destructive than they had been before.

“Something came in,” she said.

She was no longer alone. She felt a presence searching for her, seeking her through the endless stacks of history and the shelves of moments in time, and this was far darker than the mere shade that had spotted her before. This was something that had lived, not something yet to live. It was a thing with experience and knowledge and hate in its heart. It exuded such menace, and its purpose permeated the air as effectively as the eddying smoke.

“One ofthem. ”

Tim Lebbon

Dawn