Dawn

Chapter 22

WE’RE THERE, FLAGE SAID. Now you can open your eyes.

I’m not sure I’m able, Alishia said. Everything’s spinning. Everything’s changing.

It’s due to change some more. We’ve been let inside, and I think you need to see.

Alishia opened her eyes to darkness. She could feel herself being transported in uncertain steps down toward a warmth, and a light. She could sense this light but not yet see it. She tried to lift her hand to rub her eyes, but could not move. Her whole body pained her, and she felt things stabbing into her leg, her shoulder, her hip. These things flexed with every movement, and she bit her lip to prevent herself from crying out.

Can you see? the amazed voice of Flage said. Can you see the light?

“Yes,” Alishia replied, and her voice echoed.

Good, Flage said, and he faded away.

Alishia now could see the stone ceiling of the cave passing by above her. The light increased with each jarring movement, and soon she could make out cracks in the rock, spiderwebs, pale green moss spotting here and there. Where’s that light coming from? she thought. And why is it so warm? She sniffed for a fire, but the only smell was one of old dampness.

She felt the roughness of the tumbler beneath her. It stopped and rolled gently to the side, and as her feet touched the ground the sharp things invading her body withdrew quickly. She cried out and fell on all fours, hair framing her face and hiding the surroundings from view. For a while she was glad. She stared at the stone floor and saw ancient human footprints, a thousand or a million years old, marking a route in the dust that led up and out.

Where am I?

No one and nothing answered. The sleeves of her dress swamped her hands and she felt cold and exposed in the huge garment. She looked down at herself and saw how small she had become.

What am I to do?

Still no answer. She looked up at the great tumbler that had brought her here, and crushed into its side were the remains of a Red Monk. Its hood was wrapped around the shattered remnants of the skull. All flesh had long since been scoured away, and her shock was only slight.

She sat back and turned her head, ready to take in everything else. The Womb of the Land!

Here was potential. Here was a library of blank books yet to be written. Here was the future awaiting discovery, and in her there was the future’s seed ready to plant.

Alishia blinked slowly, trying to digest what she was seeing.

The cave was quite large, and perfectly spherical. She sat in an opening at its edge, and the walls rose around her in a flawless curve. It was warm, though there was no sign of fire. The air was damp, the walls slick with moisture, and as she moved her hand across the ground she felt the warmth of it.

“I’m Alishia,” she said. Her voice came back to her, one name echoing into a confusion of noise that could have contained every word ever spoken. She said something else, something personal to her, and the resultant sound was the same. Whatever idea she gave birth to in here held the potential to grow into anything.

She stood slowly, uncertainly, and she was amazed at how light she was. How old could she be? Eight? Six? Younger? She put her hands to her face, pleased at the familiarity of the touch. “I’m still myself,” she muttered, and the echoes said she could have been anyone.

Alishia stepped from the tunnel entrance onto the slope of the sphere. Moving down toward the lowest point of the cave, she glanced back, surprised to see that the tumbler had withdrawn. She had not heard it leave. There’s so much more to them, she thought, but that idea probably applied to much of Noreela. “So much more to everything,” Alishia said, and this time her words carried no echo, their meaning clear.

As she walked slowly down the slope she felt herself changing, regressing faster than ever. The dress slipped from her shoulders and she left it behind, though she was not cold. This place was welcoming and safe. It was a place of comfort.

Something appeared back at the entrance tunnel, a dark shape that drove back the strange light emanating from the walls. “Soon,” Alishia said, and the Birth Shade withdrew. It was ready for its offering, and she was ready to make it.

At the lowest point of the cave there were hollows in the ground. They were shapes she recognized. Some had been used, their glossy texture turned rough, veined trace works in their sides gone to dust. I wonder which one was Rafe’s, she thought. Others were fresh and clean, dips in the land filled with promise.

She chose one of these, sat close by and brushed her fingers through her hair. It came out in clumps. She tried to stand again but her legs would not hold her, so she crawled those last few steps and settled herself into the hollow.

She was not surprised to find that it fit her perfectly.

THE LIBRARY THIS time was whole and undamaged, but it was also characterless, and every book spine was blank. There was a reading area, and all the furniture was new and untouched. The leather chairs were fresh and unworn, the unmarked table carved from wellburr wood. No books sat on the table waiting to be read.

There was nothing with Alishia in the library: no rampaging shade, no man, no fire eating away at every moment in history. There was only her. She had the very real sense that she was waiting here for something to happen. And while she was waiting, she might as well read.

She left the reading area and entered the towers of books. She was only a baby, yet her mind was full, and in this dream her child’s legs would carry her anywhere.

She walked for some time before gathering the courage to take down a book. She climbed a shelf to reach it; the spines were all the same, the blank books uniform, but she knew that this particular tome was the one she needed.

Hugging the book against her chest she walked back to the reading area. Here and there shadows were appearing on book spines. They were not yet whole words, but their potential was deafening.

She hauled herself up into the reading chair. It was far too large for her, but still she managed to lay the book on her stubby legs, open the cover and stare at the first blank page.

Alishia closed her eyes and something left her forever.

When she looked again, the page was no longer blank. She began to read of a new moment in time.

The land begins to heal…

THEY WOULD BE on her and she would be dead.

Hope kept her eyes closed, hands by her sides, suddenly willing to accept death with dignity. She would not fight. It had been a long time in coming, and in her final moments she had helped.

If I look, I’ll see that thing coming at me. Angry. Enraged. Ready to exact weak revenge by spilling this false witch’s blood.

She heard a roar, the sound of something hard striking something soft, and in the screams from the Mages she made out the dregs of words. They formed little sense. The Mages were mad, but unlike her their madness was deep and irredeemable.

At last, Hope could keep her eyes closed no longer, and when she looked, the Mages were battering at the entrance to the Womb of the Land. The Shades had returned, three of them this time, growing from the cave mouth like giant trees. They seemed to shrug off the abuse of the Mage’s magical weaponry. They absorbed fireballs, deflected shock waves from the male Mage, opened shadowy arms to collect hatred and fury and closed them again, swallowing everything meant to do them harm. Each Shade was huge and unchanging now, as though they had recently been fed. And Hope could not help but pick up on the optimism being exuded from these shadows of nothing.

Nothing can touch them, she thought. The Mages, with all their dark magic and three centuries of hate, they can’t touchthem!

The male Mage turned and stared directly at Hope. His eyes were blazing red coals, narrowed to slits. His mouth opened and displayed long teeth, made longer because his gums had been burned away. He growled, and it rumbled from the earth and into Hope’s bones like an earthquake.

She closed her eyes again. And now he’ll turn on me. Something warm touched her face and scalp, and for a second she thought that he was at her, hot breath caressing her as he decided how best to kill. But then she realized that the heat felt good, and familiar, and the one word echoing in her mind as she opened her eyes again wasAlishia!

KOSAR PARRIED THE Krote’s first sword swipe, ducked below the second, and then the land began to bleed.

“Alishia!” Kosar shouted. He looked to the east, and the foothills of Kang Kang were silhouetted against an orange and red sky, their slopes and peaks cut in stark relief against the lightening sky, and the glow was spreading up and out like a growing bruise, seeping through the Mages’ dusk from the ground up. Smudged lines of sunlight stretched across the landscape, reached at the sky, probed behind the mountains.

And then, like a giant birthed anew from the fading land, the curved head of the sun started to rise.

Cheers rose across the hillside, and the noise of battle lessened as warriors-Shantasi and Krote alike-paused to take in the incredible sight.

Kosar glanced at the female Krote. She was watching as well, and the amazement on her face slowly melted into what could only be relief. The fresh sun stroked across her scarred scalp and bloodied shoulder, and her few remaining teeth glittered as she smiled.

Kosar looked to the east again. He felt the fledgling heat of the sun on his skin, and it was like dipping into a warm bath. Wisps of fine cloud scratched the sky red. It was the most beautiful thing Kosar had ever seen.

“You’ve lost,” he said. “Your filthy Mages are dead, and you’ve fuckinglost!”

“So magic me away,” the Krote said. But Kosar could see the strange look in her eyes-part confusion, part relief-and when he raised his sword again she merely glanced at it before turning away.

A hundred mimic soldiers melted back into the ground. The surface flowed northward, down the slopes of the battlefield and out onto the long plains that led toward whatever was left of Noreela. Kosar mourned their passing, but he realized that their purpose was fulfilled. What happened to the few hundred remaining Shantasi, and their Krote enemies, was of no concern to the mimics.

“Going home?” Kosar shouted after his enemy. “Fleeing again?”

The Krote turned and stared at him, and Kosar began to regret his words. “I have more things left to do,” she said. She gazed around the field of battle, the piles of bodies, the shambling dead and weary living, the Krotes and machines, the Shantasi cheering here, regrouping there, all of it now lit by the sun rising triumphant. “Do what you will. My time is moving on.” She mounted her machine and sent it a command.

Kosar screamed at the Krote, “I made you fall!” She glanced at him again, dismissive, then rode away. He threw A’Meer’s sword. Its bloodied blade glowed red in the sunlight as it spun at the Krote woman’s head. It hit her neck and bounced off, rattling from the back of the machine and dropping beneath its stone legs. She did not even turn around. The machine stomped on the sword and moved on.

As the Krote and her machine seemed to shimmer away down the hillside, Kosar realized that he was crying.

KOSAR PICKED UP his sword, amazed to find it undamaged even by that monster’s weight. Unlike Lucien. He felt little at the death of the Monk; no sadness, and certainly no delight. Lucien had killed A’Meer, but her murderer had been a Red Monk, not a man. Perhaps sometime in the future Kosar would have time to dwell upon what that meant.

He went to war again. With sunlight flooding the hillside-its heat and rays fresh and energizing-the fight became that much easier. The Shantasi used the confusion of dawn to regroup and change tactics, forming into four large circles, fighting their way up the slope. There were more pallid wolves to send against the Krotes, and a dozen young grinders were attached to machines confused by the dawn. They chewed and melted their way through stone and metal alike, eating out the hearts of these unnatural constructs.

The Mages’ warriors lost something as day dawned. Whether it was a true sense of purpose or the confidence of victory, their fighting became less effective. Conversely, the Shantasi had gained so much more. These were the inhabitants of New Shanti that had refused to flee. These were the warriors and farmers, the poets and carpenters who had taken up arms against the aggressor, instead of following their Elder Mystics’ lead and accepting defeat. It was confidence that fueled them now, and perhaps a hint of pride in knowing what they had already achieved. Both gave them strength and grace.

In between attacks, the Shantasi glanced skyward and smiled. The warm sun-free of Kang Kang now, and rising confidently above Noreela once more-smiled back.

There were no more serpenthals to aid their fight. The surviving tumblers had also disappeared from the battle, rumbling east and west along the mountain range. Many remained on the plains, the smoke of their pyres forming a dirty brown cloud that drifted slowly to the east.

It quickly became apparent to the Krote army that this was not their hour. Some of them turned and fled back to the north. Others dropped their weapons and stepped forward to surrender, a sense of weary relief on their faces. They were cut down by the Shantasi. This was not a battle where mercy held much meaning.

Kosar fought on. And hours later, as the sun peaked and scorched any remaining shadows of dusk from the land, he felt an urgent calling from the south. Alishia, he thought. Trey. Hope. He had been away from his friends for too long. He needed to know whether any of them were still alive.

HOPE WAS WHISPERING to the ground.

The words she used were old, and to many in Noreela they would have no meaning. But she came from a long line of witches, both true and false, and a witch could never forget the language of the land.

She spoke to the soil, stroked the grass, glanced up at the sky yet again to see where the darkness was being eaten away by the sun. She buried her fingers in the soft ground and touched the roots of the grass. She felt things down there caressing her fingertips, cold and old.

Her tattoos widened across her face as her mouth fell open, and suddenly she knew.

She rubbed her hands together and pooled magic in her palms. She laughed, sniffed her fingertips and smelled way past the soil, down to the depths of magic and what it could do, what itwould do. And she realized just how blinkered the Mages had always been.

When she stood, she knew that they would be close. The female Mage was tall and thin and beautiful, but such beauty remained far from her eyes. The male was still ruined from the fire. In the sudden daylight, his scorched black wounds were grotesque, but his eyes were bright and undamaged, glittering orange as though still filled with the fire that should have killed him.

“Hello,” Hope said. She laughed again, and it felt good.

“I know you,” the male Mage growled.

“I don’t think so,” Hope said. “I’ve fucked a lot of people in my time, and I’m sure I’d have remembered someone as ugly as you.” She was completely unafraid, even though she knew that this would end in her death. Her life might stop here, but it was complete, fulfilled, and she felt the true blood of her ancestors coursing through her veins for the first time. I could heal his burns, she thought. I could see her future, I could cast myself from the here and now, pass through the land and arrive wherever I wished. I could do all that and so many other things, but the first is something I owe. And I owe so much to so many.

“You mock us?” Angel asked.

“Mockery is no answer to evil,” Hope said.

Angel spat. “Isee you! You’ve got evil hiding in you, just as surely as you have those markings on your face. Shall I pull them? Rip them out to see what they drag from your depths?”

“I can live with my own wrongdoings,” Hope said. “But don’t you see what else I have?”

“You’re a witch,” S’Hivez said.

Hope nodded.

“A witch,” Angel said. “How cute.”

“You’ve lost,” Hope said.

Angel frowned and S’Hivez glanced at the sky.

“A brief setback,” Angel said.

“No,” Hope said, shaking her head. “You’velost. And you never even knew how to win. You ply your bastardized magic, but true magic is the language of the land. You never knew how to listen to it. And you willnever speak it.”

“And you, a sad old witch with no magic, can say this?”

“Oh I have magic,” Hope said quietly, and she muttered words from ancient memory.

The ground below the Mages split open. They shouted in surprise as they fell, trying to cast some dark spell at Hope that fizzled to nothing. Angel coughed a blue fireball that sputtered out beneath the strengthening sun. S’Hivez threw a shock wave that parted around the witch and killed trees, flattened grass. Hope muttered a backward phrase and the shock wave reversed, slamming into S’Hivez, knocking him back, and behind her trees came back to life and grass stood up.

Hope felt the limitless power of the land thrumming inside. Her heart thundered in her chest, blood pumped so fast that her eyes and ears began bleeding again, but the pains were all good. They were good, because they meant that she was doing something right.

When the hole was deep enough to cover the Mages, Hope reversed her words, and the stone sides began to close in.

Angel rose, levitating from the hole, but Hope smiled and the Mage fell back down. S’Hivez screamed, and deep below his feet a cave opened up, rock crumbling and soil pouring in.

Hope frowned and spoke faster.

The stone sides of the hole were crushing Angel now, but S’Hivez, much of his frame stripped of flesh, scurried down into the cavern beneath his feet. His last look he spared for Angel. Hope could not see his eyes, did not catch what passed between them, but as the female Mage started screaming, S’Hivez slipped away.

She felt the Nax return to the valley before she saw them. She cringed, their senses existing for a few heartbeats in her mind. And then two of them whipped past her and darted into the crack, passing Angel and disappearing after S’Hivez.

Angel screamed. For a moment Hope considered mercy. The ground was closing in slowly on the Mage, pressing her face against rock, gripping her torso and legs and head, and the scream was one of true agony. But there were only three more words left to say.

Hope looked to the sky and spoke to the new daylight.

Angel’s screams were cut off as the sides of the hole met. A weak blue light sizzled across the ground and faded away. With one final crack, the top of Angel’s skull popped up, and a flow of brain matter sparkled in the sun as it pattered down across the grass.

Hope closed her eyes and the noises came to an end.

“Lost him,” she said. “After all that, I lost him.” But with the Nax on his trail, the escaped Mage would not survive for long.

A while later she lost so much more, as she knew she must. The magic leeched away, leaving her an old false witch once again, but this time she was no longer sad. Alishia had planted the seed of magic and it had lent itself to Hope, just for a while.

Someday soon, the seed would bloom.

Tim Lebbon

Dawn