Dawn

Chapter 4

O’GAN PENTLE STARED at the moons and craved a sign of hope. He searched between the shades of dusk for the shapes of stars he knew, and perhaps those he did not. But there were no stars to be seen. And though the sound of panic had been prevalent in Hess since the sun had failed to rise, he refused to submit to its lure. It would be too easy to curl up and cry, find a dark corner in which to await the inevitable doom. That act took no courage, only resignation. It would gain him nothing. The Mystics had been following events and divining news from the sun and stars, and the fall of dusk had been the clearest sign of all. The Mages were coming, and when they attacked New Shanti with their inevitable army of Krotes, death would make equals of them all.

O’Gan had been atop the Temple for the last two days. Other Mystics had come to begin with, sitting with him and trading ideas, fears, hopes. They walked the Temple’s roof and inhaled the Janne plants, breathing in their mystic pollen and closing their eyes to read the visions it inspired. Most of them ended up frowning and sniffing again. Their collective mind remained blank, as though darkened by whatever had stolen light from the day. O’Gan had conversed with many other Mystics, and though his conviction that the end was not yet here remained as strong as ever, eventually the others had slipped away. He was sad to see them go. Many of them were friends, and he felt a certain betrayal at their desertion, but there was also unease at being the only one to remain up here for so long, waiting for a sign. Was he wrong? Was hope truly lost?

Two hours ago, one of the Elder Mystics had come to talk to him. She had been told of O’Gan’s solitary watch on the Temple platform, and came to see for herself. It was the first time she had climbed those steps for years, and he heard her coming from a long way off. Her breath was harsh, her groans of pain loud as bones ground together in her knees, and O’Gan moved to the head of the steps to welcome her up. He believed that this was a turning point for the Mystics. He looked out over Hess-still burning lights proudly into the dusk-and a sense of immense pride flooded him. It warmed him against the dark, emboldened him against the terrible times to come, yet as he held out his hands to help the Elder Mystic onto the Temple’s highest point, her voice slashed him like a knife.

“You’re a fool, Pentle, to even think of hope.”

He was so taken aback that he could not respond.

“The Mystics are fleeing Hess, those who have not already taken their own lives. The Guiders have already gone. Politicians!” She shook her head. “The future is a place darker than the Black, and to stay here will be to call doom onto your shade.”

“My shade is strong,” O’Gan said. “We’ve lived with fear forever, and only now will we let it defeat us?”

“There’s a difference between bravery and stupidity. We’ve lived bravely, O’Gan, but Hess is no place to make a stand. It’s a Mystic city, not built for war. And the Mages…the Krotes…” She trailed off, dropping to her knees near the edge of the Temple and trying to catch her tears as they fell.

“We can’t just give them the city without a fight!”

“They’lltake it without a fight,” the Elder said. “It’ll be a slaughter! They’ll ride across the desert, fly in across Sordon Sound, and anyone left will be butchered. Back in the heart of New Shanti, in the hills of Mallor where O’Neakin stood, that’s where we’ll make our stand. Not here on the edge.”

“But you can’t just give up. Hess is our home!”

“We have no true home on Noreela. We’re merely borrowing this place.”

“A thousand years of history and you still feel misplaced.” O’Gan sighed. “That’s why I never wish to become an Elder. Bitterness like that must eat at you. Do your insides melt under such sourness?”

“It’s history, and history is a fact, O’Gan.”

“History can wallow in my waste.”

The Elder looked up, and the darkness seemed to hold its breath. “Ahh,” she said, “the true wise words of a Mystic.” She stood and started back down the steps. They curved around the outside of the tall Temple, like a giant snake wrapped around a column.

O’Gan walked to the edge of the roof and watched her go. He should call down to her, he knew, and talk of hope and defiance in the face of the Mages’ return. They should discuss how their army should be placed, where the fight would be best entered into, how many Shantasi warriors would come back to their homeland from across Noreela now that dusk had fallen and war was close. But the Elder shuffled onward, and in her determined gait O’Gan saw no room for thinking of this sort. She believed that every step brought death closer. He was not the one to shake those beliefs.

Since then he had been walking the circuit of the flat Temple roof. This was the most holy site in New Shanti, the place where the hundreds of Mystics spent much of their time watching for signs in the heavens and discussing Shantasi business, both political and spiritual. The stone was worn smooth by centuries of footfalls, and here and there had taken on a deep, oily sheen.

O’Gan wished that more Mystics would come to see him. He possessed a faith that he had so far failed to share, try though he had. He believed that hope would never be fully extinguished, and that the Mages would always have a vulnerable point. He had been shocked over the past day to discover just how little the other Mystics were willing to share in his conviction. I cannot be alone in this, he thought, but with each passing hour it seemed more and more that this was so.

He knelt at the edge of the roof and looked down into the streets. The Temple was ten stories high, and from here the people looked like beetles scurrying through cracks in the ground. Shantasi hurried to and fro, some of them pushing or pulling small carts, others walking their families east toward the edge of the city and the long open spaces that lay beyond. They were ill equipped for such a journey: not enough food, not enough water, too heavily laden with weapons or possessions. Panic had scarred their minds. It was the calling of the Mystics to ease such panic and guard against rash actions, but O’Gan could see the several robed shapes of Mystics in the streets as well, making their own shameful escapes.

He stood and walked to the center of the Temple roof, sat down, then stared up at the sky.

He remembered his first time climbing the steps to this lofty place of rumination and spiritual enlightenment, almost fifty years ago. He had been a humble young man then, keen to begin training the Shantasi warriors who were sent out into Noreela to await magic’s return. He had done his best to hide his excitement, standing patiently at the foot of the tower, careful not to look up and betray his awe. Everyone knew what he was feeling-Mystics smiled as they made their own way up the tower, and even people in the streets seemed to sense his restrained enthusiasm-but temperance was part of the ceremony, and he had no wish to fail. He had stood there for several hours awaiting his turn, and when that time came he had started to climb.

Most other buildings in Hess were one or two stories high, their walls built from thick layers of intricately carved stone, roofs usually lined with timber and waterproofed with dried mud and reeds from the banks of Sordon Sound. Many walls were plastered and decorated with vibrant colors depicting family histories. Windows were formed of thick glass shaded against the heat, and here and there were communal gardens, fed by underground springs that kept them luscious and green all year round.

The Temple was a different building entirely. More ceremonial than functional, its base housed a huge hall where the Mystics would gather when the weather prevented them climbing to the roof. The base itself was over a hundred steps across, buried deep in the bedrock of the land and giving support to the thousands of carved rocks that went to make up the walls. Above this a circular building rose, narrowing slightly until, at ten stories high, the flat stone roof provided the main area for the Mystics’ work. Around the building curved the staircase, stone slabs fixed at regular intervals in the walls to provide a narrow, steep climb to the roof. People had fallen from here, and some had died. The Shantasi had a strong belief in the whims of time, and if that was the way for them to find the Black, so be it.

O’Gan had begun the climb with his whole body shaking, as though cold. Each step had seemed a hundred steps above the previous; his feet were heavy, his thighs burned and the climb had taken forever. He glanced to his left often, viewing Hess from an angle and height he had never seen before; spotting familiar landmarks had enabled him to feel grounded, real, still there. Climbing the Temple was such an unreal experience that he valued that feeling. He was born in Hess, he was a part of Hess, and climbing up and out of that place in no way lessened his commitment to the city.

And then the wide roof had opened up before him, startling him with its expanse. There were no railings around its edges, only the thin stems and scant blossoms of the legendary Janne plant, whose unique seedlings had been brought from Shanti so long ago.

O’Gan felt as if he could see forever. He stood on the final step for some time, trying to come to terms with the view and the fact that he was here at last, until an Elder Mystic took his hand and guided him onto the roof.

He had remained there for three days, smelling the plants and welcoming visions. Descending had been like entering a strange new life. The buildings of Hess had taken on a darker hue, the people’s faces held more mystery than enlightenment and the air always seemed to carry a hint of the Janne pollen. Ever since then, the Temple was where he had felt most at home.

Now home was a strange concept. Dusk hung low over the city when it should have been day. Birds were silent, and many had been seen tumbling from their perches, as if shocked to death by the confusions of light and dark. Livestock in the meat markets were unsettled and flighty, and one herd of sheebok had kicked their pen to splinters and escaped into the wilds. A lantern hung above every door, all windows were lit and the smell of burning oil drifted across the Mystic city, corrupting the usual aromas of street cooking and spice. The people of Hess were doing their best to hold back the night, but the real battle had not yet begun.

Fear, O’Gan knew, would be the Mages’ greatest ally. If they waited before venturing to New Shanti, her people would crumble and fall without lifting a weapon.

Perhaps it was like this all across Noreela. He hoped not.

He looked north, out over the misty Sordon Sound, and a great blackness seemed to hang there like a weight ready to fall. There was no telling what was happening right now in the north of Noreela. Most in Hess believed they were already at war, but they could not know for certain, and it was the not knowing that chilled O’Gan most of all. The Mystics had tried for much of the previous day, sniffing the Janne until the purple blossoms started to shrivel and fade, sitting spaced across the roof or huddled in warm groups, opening themselves to visions. But the world of their collective mind was blank. And perhaps it was this more than anything that had eventually driven them to flee.

Magic was a fickle thing, so one Elder had said. There was no knowing what it would do, or could do, nor how the Mages would handle it. The future was a mystery darker than the blackest night, and O’Gan wished for a sign that would give illumination to the dark.

He sat in the center of the Temple roof, searching the darkened heavens for hope. He closed his eyes and wished for a happy dream, but the cool breeze singing in across Sordon Sound offered only tales of woe.

“We can’t just give in,” he said. “We have tofight!”

And then the sign he had been hoping for finally arrived.

AT FIRST, O’GAN thought it was the breeze, blowing sand from the Mol’Steria Desert and dusting it against the side of the Temple. He closed his eyes tighter and hugged his legs to try to present less of a target for the incoming storm.

Then he realized that there was no breeze, and no sand pricked his skin.

Yet the sound continued. O’Gan kept his eyes closed, hoping that this was the beginning of a vision. He had not breathed Janne pollen for several hours, though sometimes visions would come as the effect of the pollen wore off. But this was sensory: he washearing the hiss of sand. His mind was devoid of vision as ever, and as he opened his eyes he saw the sign that he had been waiting for finally present itself.

A shadow rose above the edge of the Temple roof. It came a hand’s width higher than the roof before falling and flowing across the stone. And it kept coming, like dark water pouring up instead of down. O’Gan stood and backed away, checking behind him to make sure the shape was not rising all around. His heart stuttered, skipping beats. He pressed his hand to his chest and breathed deeply, trying to calm his nerves. Not the Mages already, he thought. Please, not so soon! But then a true vision took root and bloomed, faster than any he had ever felt. Whole new vistas opened up to him, blank for now, but begging to be filled. Something spoke through the vision, asking him to open his mind.

“What are you?” O’Gan whispered. This high above Hess, his voice seemed loud. From below came the continuing sound of underlying panic in the streets: voices raised higher than usual, children crying instead of laughing, the clatter of wheels and the steady clomp of shoes on stone. Up here was silence, but for the whisper of this shadow and his own muttered response. His question remained unanswered, hanging in the air like a shape waiting to find itself. This thing had not harmed him-the distant vision suggested that there was no harm here-and yet it was dark, and O’Gan Pentle feared this darkness. Shadows moving within shadows only posed more questions, and however peaceful its intent, O’Gan could not calm the fear he had of this thing.

He moved back until he felt a Janne touching the bare skin of his neck. He felt the kiss of its blossom, but it was cool and moist, rotting rather than growing. The Janne reveled in sunlight and now they were being starved. This will happen everywhere, O’Gan thought. Grasses and herbs, trees and shrubs, our spice farms, they’ll all start to die. This will become a world of rotting things. The spreading shadow paused, as if listening to his thoughts.

“What are you?” he asked again. “What do you want?”

The shadow whispered and flexed like thick water, darker waves forming on its surface. It flowed closer to O’Gan but paused several steps away. He could smell nothing, see nothing other than the shadow, and yet he heard the constant whisper, as though a sea of sand were being stirred by an unseen hand.

“If you’re here to help, then I’m ready to listen,” O’Gan said. “The other Mystics have given up on Hess, but there is fight left in the Shantasi.”

The shadow began to rise higher before him, taking on depth and tone. It formed the shape of a person, and gave it color and character: the dark rents of wounds, the fading light in its eyes.

Her mouth opened and closed as if trying to speak or breathe.

She was Shantasi. And O’Gan knew her. “A’Meer Pott!” She had been one of his first students over fifty years ago, before going out into the land and never returning. Now here she was again, a living corpse rising before him, showing him her wounds, shouting a plea he could not hear.

She did not react to her name. Her eyes did not change, and her mouth continued opening and closing, dripping lines of dark blood and clear saliva silvered by the moonlight. She had lost teeth, and an eye was gone. Her head had suffered a terrible injury. She was surely dead.

Yet this was no vision. “A’Meer, are you there, can you hear me? Are you A’Meer’s wraith? Have you come for me to chant you down?” Her one good eye glittered with tears. “Are you really there?”

O’Gan reached out. A whisper, a hiss, and her image retreated across the roof before him, remaining a steady five steps away. He walked faster and still she retreated. He stopped and backed away, the image of A’Meer following as though bound to him.

“What is it?” he said. He squinted, trying to make out what A’Meer was saying or whether she was actually saying anything. Her mouth fell open, cheeks sucked in, lips pressing together before the whole movement began again.

O’Gan backed away to the edge of the roof and turned to sniff at a Janne. He chose a bloom that had withered and died, and the smell that came from it was one of rot and surrender. He winced, turning to the next plant in line. This one was tall, its blooms few, and a couple of them still seemed to be drawing strength from the ancient stone in which it was buried. He pressed his face to a bloom, closed his eyes and breathed in.

Hope…a voice whispered, but it was like no voice he had ever heard before. It was a breeze through the bare branches of a tree, the wash of foamy waters on the shores of Sordon Sound, the whispered exhalation of a lover passing seed and giving life. It was the language of the land.

Panting, he breathed deeply of the bloom. He felt the pollen abrading the insides of his nostrils and the sting of rupturing blood vessels, and he tasted the blood that dripped over his top lip. But he did not hear that voice again. He moved to another bloom and inhaled its pollen, glancing back at A’Meer’s image, upright and dead, listening for the single word that had been breathed to him from the first intense vision.

“Hope!” he cried, his mind buzzing from so much pollen. He walked toward A’Meer, swaying across the Temple roof and falling to his knees. “Hope? Is there still hope, poor dead A’Meer?” To see her like this was distressing, but to hear that word uttered at the moment of her death, tofeel it, seemed to justify every Shantasi death. “Hope!” O’Gan screamed, and for a few seconds the bustle of the streets below the Temple died down, and he imagined pale faces looking up to see who dared shout this word.

A’Meer began to grow indistinct and hazy and O’Gan reached out to save her. She was coming apart before him, fading as though she were a painting splashed with water. He moved forward quickly, and this time the image of the dead Shantasi did not drift away. His fingertips reached her and passed inside, pressing against her fragmenting chest and finding a subtle resistance that surrounded his hand, like a thousand flies alighting on his skin. He gasped and pulled back, and for a second a smear of A’Meer came with him, dropping from his arm and merging with the shifting shadow at his feet.

The whisper came again, and the shadow filtered back over the edge of the Temple. O’Gan sat nursing his hand and repeating that word again and again, hoping the repetition would imbue it with some power, some truth.

There was hope. He had not been wrong. Now he only had to spread this knowledge.

WALKING DOWN THE steps from the Temple, O’Gan entered a world he no longer knew. He had been on the roof for almost two days, and in that time Hess had changed forever. It had once been a city of contemplation and consideration, a calm place where street markets sold food and drink to the many people lingering in the communal gardens, musing on the problems of life and death. Mystics had wandered the streets, eyes closed and hands folded as they considered the meaning of a vision from their last time on the Temple. Sometimes they would pause and begin to talk, using their Voice to gather an audience. Their words would have depth, their depths would give meaning, and a dozen people would move on possessed of more knowledge than before. The Mystics were the brain of Hess, the rest of the Shantasi living there its blood. The Mystic city troubled some; its atmosphere did not suit everyone. But of all the places O’Gan had been in New Shanti, Hess had always felt most like home.

Now it was strange to him, and he was a stranger within it. Halfway down the Temple staircase he paused to look down into the streets. He could make out more detail than had been possible from the Temple roof, and he could see just how much Hess had changed. Not only the city itself, but the people. Panic had overtaken contemplation, fear had usurped thoughtfulness and the streets had grumbled with the last of Hess’ population of half a million fleeing. He had been watching from the Temple for some time, but this close he could make out individual expressions and hear muttered curses rather than apologies when people walked into one another. One family pulled a large cart behind them, their belongings piled high, and they shouted at people to move out of the way, tugging the cart through a street barely wide enough to contain it. The father kicked a market stall aside, pushing it against the wall and stomping on spilled fruit so that the cart would not be slowed. The mother argued with the fruit seller, while two children sat wide-eyed in the back of the cart, surrounded by what their parents believed were their whole lives. Lamps still hung outside most buildings in an attempt to drive away the night, and the flames gave the children’s eyes a haunted look.

Many Mystics had joined in the flight. He still could not understand. “There’s hope,” he said, but he wondered how he could make them believe.

At the foot of the Temple, stepping down onto the ground for the first time in two days, O’Gan realized that the land itself had changed. It felt different beneath his feet, as though ages had come and gone. It was strange to him now, the rock beneath him unknown, the sand between his toes unfamiliar.

“Mystic,” a voice said. “Mystic!”

“O’Gan Pentle,” he said, already turning to confront the voice. A woman faced him, the hood drawn over her head barely hiding the bruising around her mouth, the dried blood beneath her nose. “What happened?”

“Mystic Pentle, I can’t leave the city,” she said. “It’s my home. My children’s home. Always here, always been here, and now this, this darkness that brings such madness…” She was barely coherent. Her eyes were jumping in their sockets, as though not wishing to focus on anything.

“What happened to you?” O’Gan asked.

“My husband wanted to leave. Said it wasn’t safe here. Took the children. I went after him but they’re lost to me now…I fell, and the crowds walked on me.”

“No one helped you up?”

The woman nodded. “An Elder Mystic. Then she left me bleeding and crying.” She suddenly seemed to find focus, eyes locking on O’Gan’s, pleading and desperate. “What’s happening? Where is everyone going?”

“They want safety, that’s all,” O’Gan said. “Your husband did what he thought was best. Your children…” But O’Gan could not finish. Mystics did not have children, and he could never hope to understand.

The woman looked up at him, tears slipping down her cheeks and reflecting flickering light from a nearby lantern. “I know he’s right,” she said. “That’s the worst. I know he’s right, and still I can’t leave.” She held her face in her hands and started crying, real tears that rose from deep within and shuddered her shoulders.

“There’s still hope,” O’Gan said, touching her face. The tears were hot, and neither his words nor touch seemed to help.

He moved past the woman and approached the door to the Temple’s huge inner hall. It was ajar. A sliver of darkness peered out-no light, no evidence of candles or lanterns burning within. He tried to drive away the bitter disappointment. Coming down, he had started to believe there would be Mystics gathered here, ready to plan the defense of Hess. Now it seemed that he had been wrong, and that the Elder Mystic had been right. Fleeing the city was the only plan they had.

He shoved the heavy wooden door with his foot. The hinges squealed, weak light filtered in and what O’Gan saw shocked him to the core. It was Elder Garia, a woman five decades older than O’Gan with whom he had often spent time on the Temple. She had enjoyed his company, and she had been close with several other Mystics, her natural disposition one of companionship and friendship.

But Elder Garia had spent her last moments on Noreela alone.

She was splayed on the tiled floor just inside the door, as if at the last moment she had changed her mind and sought help. In her right hand was the knife that had opened her wrists; in her left, a clutch of Janne blossom, stolen from the roof, rotten and rank and bleeding black sap between stiff fingers.

“Oh no,” O’Gan said. He closed his eyes, but that did little to hide the image. He thought of the other corpse he had just seen-the image of A’Meer-and the word she had given him in her silent plea: Hope. However that vision had been brought to him, whatever that shadow had been, he had to believe it was true. If not, then Mystic Garia’s fate was perhaps the wisest choice she had ever made.

O’Gan fled the Temple. The crying woman had crumpled to the ground, and he knew that he should help her, offer guidance through her confusion. But if he helped her, there would be another, and another, and eventually he would be drawn into hopelessness. He could help one, or he could help one million.

He closed his eyes and moved on. He often walked this way through the streets, continuing his inner dialogue as he moved, but now his dialogue was confused and the streets were unforgiving. He bumped into a man after a dozen steps. “You’re going north, Mystic,” the man said.

“And which way should I be going?”

“South, away from those damn Mages and whatever they’ve brought to Noreela!”

“I don’t think they brought anything,” O’Gan said. “I think they came and found it here.”

“Either way, magic’s theirs now,” the man said.

“Who told you that?”

“It’s the word everywhere!” The man lowered his eyes, uncomfortable at talking this way to a Mystic.

“There’s hope,” O’Gan said. “That’s another word-my word-and I want you to spread it. Will you do that for me?”

The man glanced up, frowning, looking over O’Gan’s shoulder at the tall, empty Temple. “Hope when all the Mystics flee with us?”

“Not all,” O’Gan said. He thought of Elder Garia dead by her own hand.

“Some are dead,” the man whispered, awed. “My brother saw them down by the coast, kneeling in the sand and drawing their swords and-”

“Mystics?”

“A dozen of them!”

“Your brother lied to you.”

The man’s eyes narrowed, but even in such a time he could not express anger at a Mystic.

I hope, O’Gan thought. I hope he lied. I’d have known if so many had died; I’d have felt it. Our collective mind would have screamed and railed against it…

And his mind when he breathed in the Janne pollen was a blank, devoid of life.

“He lied,” O’Gan said again, more to himself than the man.

“Forgive me,” the man said. He moved past O’Gan and hurried away.

There must be some of us left, O’Gan thought. An Elder Mystic, someone I can tell about the appearance of A’Meer. Someone who’ll know what that means, and what to do. Where to go.

A group of Shantasi warriors trotted past him heading north, going against the flow. Their long dark hair was tied, pale skin made paler by the poor light, and their extensive weaponry was worn so precisely that it made no sound.

“Good,” O’Gan said, and the last warrior in line turned to look at him. O’Gan saw terror in the woman’s eyes.

He walked on through the streets, looking for someone who could tell him what he had seen.

Tim Lebbon

Dawn