Dawn

Chapter 24

SHE RODE HARD, moving by night and hiding by day. During the second night her machine ground to a halt, leaking fluids and stinking worse than the dead. She dismounted, walked to the machine’s face, ready to stare one last time into its eyes. But the eyes she wanted to see-those that would reflect her own guilt at what she had become-had closed for the final time.

Lenora started to walk. On that second full day she kept walking as the sun rose. It was not so bad. Three centuries bearing the cold in Dana’Man, and however many long days merged into one night in the fight for Noreela, had left her craving the feeling of sunlight on her skin. She burned, but that was fine. The sun seemed to soothe her many wounds, old and new.

She was approached by a band of rovers traveling east to west. She hid behind a rock as they passed a few hundred steps away. They were singing and laughing, and she saw several couples rutting in the back of an open wagon, passing bottles back and forth and cheering at the sun. Light danced on their sweat-sheened skins. Lenora supposed there would be many across Noreela celebrating the sunlight, in many different ways.

Now and then guilt pressed down on her for abandoning the Mages’ cause with barely a backward glance. But the small voice growing louder calmed that guilt. Come to me, Mother, the voice said, and it seemed wiser and older than it should. Come and find me.

“I’m coming,” Lenora whispered.

THAT NIGHT SHE slept, and dreamed a dream that would change everything.

She was in a huge library, shelves so high that she could not see their tops, corridors long and winding and confusing. The shelves were stacked with books, but however many she took down, she could find none with more than a couple of pages of writing. There was so much blankness here, and so much potential. She walked for a long time, and occasionally she saw a figure disappearing around a corner ahead of her. It was a small girl, naked, running like a toddler but glancing back with the look of someone carrying the wisdom of ages. Perhaps this was the same apparition that had haunted her in Noreela City, reflected in the swipe of her sword blade or the eyes of those she killed…or perhaps not. The same long hair, but a different shade of brown. The same eyes, but this one showed no fear, nor condemnation.

You’re not her, Lenora thought, but maybe you could be.

She followed the little girl, trying to catch her, but she was always a dozen steps behind. The girl was not afraid…but she was not yet ready to be caught.

Lenora came to a space in the library set aside for sitting and reading. The girl was ahead of her, dashing across the open space. And before she disappeared between book stacks she swapped a glance with a man standing there-a look of recognition, and a smile.

The man stepped forward and guided Lenora into a comfortable leather chair. She was tired, and grateful when he told her to sit. She had been running for so long.

We’ve chosen you, he said, because healing is needed.

What can I heal?

The future.

I don’t understand. Lenora was agitated and afraid, but there was something soothing in the man’s voice, and something so confident and comforting.

A whole new magic, born of humanity.

What will it be like?

The man smiled. That’s where the wonder lies in this: none can know until it arrives. He held out his hand and the small girl emerged once again from the shadows. She was smiling at Lenora. And Lenora looked into those eyes, and recognized them.

Youareher.

SHE WOKE UP panting, hands pressing down on her abdomen, and she lay there for a while as the sun rose and her heart calmed.

AS SHE WALKED she grew heavier, and she feared it was weakness grinding her down. I’m an old woman, she thought.

You’re my mother, the shade of her daughter said.

During the third day she found a dead Red Monk leaning against a tree. The leaves had died and fallen, all but hiding the dead Monk from view. Lenora twisted the stiff body out of its red robe and took it for herself. It hid her weapons and shielded her skin from the sun, and it seemed to make her going easier.

That afternoon she saw a machine running across a distant hillside on long, unsteady legs. There was no rider, and she watched until it disappeared over the horizon, swaying madly from side to side.

LENORA LEFT KANG Kang, and at some point she must have passed the place where she gave birth to her dead daughter over three centuries before. She cried for that whole day, her sobs doing little to hide the voice whispering to her from the hills, the plains, the places where countless old bones lay.

SHE REACHED ROBENNA three days later. Her stomach was swelling, though she denied the impossible truth of that, and as she crested a hilltop and looked down into her old village, she had the shattering sense of time moving on.

Robenna was deserted. It had been for some time, probably decades, and many of the buildings had gone to ruin. Plants had subsumed some, while others had fallen victim to the elements and tumbled into useless piles of stone, timber and mud. She tried to find the place she had called home but that had been far too long ago, and even these old buildings were new to her. She recognized the square, and the path of the stream, and the old stone bridge was the same. It was Robenna, for sure, but it was no longer her Robenna.

Even if the village had been occupied, she doubted she would have ever touched her sword again.

She decided to stay.

That evening, sitting beside a fire in what had been the village square, her daughter’s shade spoke to her for the final time: Thank you, Mother.

She felt the baby kick.

DENYING THE PRESENCE inside her was pointless. Lenora did not understand, but she quickly became calm and accepted what was happening. I’m an old woman, she thought, but the baby kicked and her one undamaged breast grew, and there were moments when she could remember what it had been like before she became a Krote. Those years wandering around Lake Denyah were clear to her once again, and the shame and guilt she had felt then became familiar once more. Finding a place in the Mages’ burgeoning army had been the start of something new, but now, with so much history behind her, that moment in her memory felt like the beginning of something old.

Though she would always carry the scars, Lenora was no longer a Krote.

She made herself a home in one of the least damaged buildings, collected wood from the ruins for her fire, cleaned the well and drew clear water. With careful tending, some of the vegetable gardens began to show signs of life. A splash of blue birth-blooms came into flower around the village, and several trees unfurled tentative buds.

One morning, rising early from a dream that disturbed but did not scare her, Lenora walked out to the stone bridge and sat on the parapet. She had fled across this same bridge three centuries before, poisoned and driven from the village for falling pregnant out of wedlock. She touched her stomach and felt movement.

As she watched the sunrise, she thought of a name.