Dawn

Chapter 6

THEY HAD PARTED company with Kosar half a day before, and already Trey believed that they would not reach Kang Kang alive. The mountain peaks seemed no closer, still evident as ragged shadows on the horizon. The landscape had flattened into one vast plain, with few places to shelter from the chill breeze that seemed to constantly blow from the north. And Alishia had spent more time asleep than awake.

Trey had carried the librarian most of the way. At first the feeling of her flesh against his had pleased him: he could sense the warmth of her through their clothing, enjoying its immediacy. He carried her on his back, her head resting on one shoulder and legs slung over his arms by his side. He could feel her breasts pressing against him, though they were smaller than he had imagined, and the touch of her thighs under her rucked-up dress was both a shock and a pleasure. Sometimes he had been certain that she was awake; a twitch of her limbs, or a flick of her hair against his face. But the farther they went, the more Trey came to believe that Alishia was merely dreaming. When she did wake, she asked to be put down, hugging herself to the ground like a newborn sheebok.

Adult though she appeared, Trey found her incredibly light, as though she were being hollowed from the inside.

Worse, the fledge rage was upon him. It had been almost two topside days since he’d had his last crumb of the drug, and the effects of its withdrawal were beginning to tell. His mind wandered of its own accord, drifting to the past or into the hazy future as though determined to travel on its own, without the drug to guide it. He had sore feet and heavy hands, and his joints ground as though rock dust had been poured into them. He had seen the effects of fledge withdrawal several times underground, and it was never pleasant. In the world of the fledge miners, it had been used as a punishment. Whenever they stopped, he would search through his shoulder bag six or seven times, looking for crumbs of the drug that he may have missed. He knew that shreds that small would have turned completely stale by now, and would likely do him more harm than good, but the need was upon him. If he put the mouth of the bag around his face he could breathe in and smell fledge, and even the memory started to take him away. Never far, though. There was always the terrible here and now to draw him back.

At least the withdrawal served to divert his attention from the pain of carrying Alishia.

Hope knew what was happening to him. She never mentioned it outright, but her look spoke volumes. He would find the witch staring at him when he reined his mind in from vague wanderings, her gaze switching back and forth between Trey and the girl on his back. When she realized he had seen her, she would look away, but he did not like her expression. Her tattoos did not help. Trey did not understand them. He resolved to ask her, but the time never seemed right.

Hope was carrying his disc-sword. He had been unsure about that to begin with, but the practicalities of carrying the sleeping girl as well as his weapon had soon proven impossible. The witch hefted it over her shoulder as though she had carried one her whole life. It made her appear more dangerous than ever.

“We just don’t seem to be any closer,” Trey said. He paused, lowered Alishia to the ground, then slumped down beside her.

Hope walked on a few steps before sitting. “Kang Kang is always misleading,” she said. “Maybe it doesn’t want us there.”

“It’s a mountain range,” Trey said.

“It’s much more than that.” Hope plucked something from her deep pockets and started to chew. She offered some to Trey, but he shook his head. One taste of her dried meat had already put him off it for life. When he’d asked where it came from she had smiled and turned away. For all he knew it was the flesh of a child.

“I don’t know how much farther I can carry her,” he said. “She’s lighter all the time, but she feels heavier with every step.”

“If you weren’t craving that fucking drug you’d be stronger.”

“I can’t help it,” he said, hating his appealing tone.

“Fledgers are all the same, useless without their fledge.”

“Hope…” But Trey trailed off. There was no arguing with the witch. She had never liked or trusted him, and her brief talk about them being on the same side now seemed ages ago.

“I’m going to look around,” Hope said. She stood and walked away, staring at the ground and kicking at the grass as she went.

“She’s not safe.”

“What?” At first Trey thought he was hearing things. Perhaps desperation for fledge was putting false echoes in his mind, talking to him from the shadows of his need. He turned left and right, listening for a voice but hearing none, then he saw that Alishia’s eyes were open. They were glazed and creamy like ruptured eggs. Open, but vacant.

She was still asleep.

“She’s not safe,” Alishia said again. Her jaw moved strangely, stiff and mechanical.

“Alishia?” Trey leaned in closer and waved his hand in front of her eyes. She did not blink, but her eyelids drooped slowly shut. A tear ran down one cheek.

“Her book speaks volumes of danger,” Alishia murmured. Her mouth kept moving but soon the words became distorted, and the sound drifted away to a mumble, and then to nothing.

Trey moved closer to the librarian and held her hand. It was cool, like the hand of a doll. His mother used to make dolls for children in the home-cave, heads carved from light snowstone, bodies woven with reeds brought down from topside. She had painted the faces herself, and Trey had always been amazed by the life she could bring to those things-eyes filled with light, simple smiles that gave away so much. It was as if his mother saw real potential in every doll. They all attracted their own name and personality purely through the expressions she gave them, and different children preferred different dolls. But that had been years before, back when his mother could still work with her hands.

Alishia’s expression was less lifelike than any doll Trey had ever seen.

He leaned over her and turned his face, feeling her stale breath tickle his cheek. It was cool and shallow. He touched her skin, turned her head, smoothed the wrinkle between her eyes, touched his finger to her lips and felt their dryness. Her cheeks were filling out, nose flattening, and she seemed to be turning into someone else.

Growing younger, Trey thought. How can that be? He lifted the front of her dress and let go, and it settled down onto her slight frame. When he first met her on the slopes of the Widow’s Peaks, she had filled that dress. He’d thought she was a young girl at first-the way she spoke, the things she said-but when he’d become used to the sun, he had seen that was not the case. Now she was turning into that girl he had first imagined.

“Hope,” he whispered into her ear. “What about her? What book? Does she have it in her bag?” In the poor light, with birds fallen silent and the breeze pausing every few seconds, his whispers seemed incredibly loud.

Alishia’s eyes opened a crack and she muttered something.

“What?” Trey leaned in closer, unable to hear. He pressed his ear to her mouth, and felt it grow cool as she took in a breath to speak again.

“Hope’s book…not yet scribed…new, bad chapter…”

Trey frowned, straining to hear. But Alishia said no more.

He sat up, closed his eyes and felt a sickening punch to his stomach. Mage shit, he so needed some fledge.

“Did she speak?” Hope asked.

Trey jumped. He hadn’t heard the witch approaching, and now she was standing just a few steps away. “No,” he said. “Where have you been?”

The witch patted her pocket. “Harvesting.”

“We need to move on, Hope,” Trey said. “I don’t think she’s well.”

“Are you up to carrying her again?”

“I’ll have to be.” Trey stood and bent down for Alishia, lifting her into a sitting position. She was not as limp as she had been before, and he thought maybe she was trying to help. Her eyes were still closed, though, and her head rolled on her neck.

Hope helped him lift Alishia and then she led the way, walking ahead and looking left and right, down at the ground and up at the sky. Trey liked to think that she was watching out for dangers, but he thought it was more likely that she was searching for things she did not want him to see.

Her book speaks volumes of danger, Alishia had whispered. If only Trey understood what that meant.

HOPE FELT MOVEMENT in the deep pocket of her coat. She slapped it hard, stunning the spider into immobility once again. As soon as she found some hedgehock she’d be able to dope it, but in the meantime she was doing her best to avoid being bitten. It was a risk, but she needed to arm herself. And there was no harm in having an advantage that the fledger did not know about.

She should be able to smell hedgehock before she saw it, but her senses felt strangely numbed by the darkness.

Over the past few hours, Hope had been looking everywhere for the light of dawn. This endless twilight had started to feel heavy, squeezing her heart, crushing her lungs so that she could barely draw breath, and she was so desperate to see a sliver of dawn that she felt like running at the eastern horizon until it appeared. As a witch and a whore she had spent much of her life conducting business at night, and she had only just begun to realize how much she missed the daylight. The landscape was silenced by what had happened. It was as though Noreela was in shock at the Mages’ audacity. Several times she had to close her eyes and breathe long and deep to prevent panic from settling in.

Hope had spent so long with nobody in her life but herself. Since her mother had died decades ago, she had been on her own, a witch without magic, and anyone who did come into her life went out of it just as quickly. Following Rafe had given her a purpose, and someone else to care about. In him she had seen the possible realization of her own potential. Magic would have brought much of what was missing from her life. She had lived her whole life craving to fulfill the promise of the name “witch.” She had the ways and means, the knowledge and experience, the hexes passed down through her family line. She had an open mind, and the understanding of the land that would have allowed magic to embed itself comfortably in her life. Many others would have been scared of it, and some would have run from its influence. But in Rafe, Hope had seen her entire future.

Now he was gone, and Hope had another child to follow.

Alishia carried something different, but whatever it was had come from Rafe. Hope felt her own life drawing to a close-this darkness seemed like a precursor to her own light fading slowly away-but there was still one chance, in Alishia. And however unlikely it may be, all she had left to believe in was this girl.

The obstacles were beyond measure: the Mages, with magic twisted to their perverted use, and the Mages’ army that was undoubtedly readying to assault Noreela. And Kang Kang. But Hope had nothing left to live for. Alishia, and whatever she carried, was all that mattered to her now.

The spider in her right pocket jumped and squirmed. Hope flicked the outside of her coat and the creature fell still once again.

Hedgehock! she thought. Where’s the Mage-shitting hedgehock? She walked faster, pulling away from the fledger and Alishia, and then that familiar warm, herby smell hit her.

It was as though Fate had guided her this way.

She knelt down, plucked the shriveling leaves of the hedgehock plant and proceeded to tear them into tiny shreds.

ALISHIA’S LIBRARY WAS still burning, but she was immune to the flames. The books were not. She could smell the tang of blistering paper and warping card, and the stench of ancient inks released a smoke that she knew to be hallucinatory. But could she hallucinate when she was already in a dream? She breathed in deeply to find out, and a staircase took her down to another level. The stairs curved down to the left, spiraling beneath the library but never leaving its identity behind. Books still lined the walls, all with titles she did not, or could not, understand. Even though she could not speak many old languages, still she usually recognized them for what they were. These were all unknown to her. She took out one book at random, sat on the stone step and rested it across her thighs. It was bound in thick red card, its color still vivid even though she was sure it had been shelved here for hundreds, or thousands, of years. When she opened it, a flattened spider fell from between the pages, shattering to dust when it hit the floor. The smell of age wafted out. She turned the pages, not recognizing any of the words or the language they formed, but still distressed at the way they looked on the brittle paper.

She closed the book and shelved it again, moving farther down the staircase. She thought perhaps she was going deeper into her own mind, but at least the flames were only burning above her now. They were eating away at history, but something told her that the history that really mattered to her-the stories from the past that could help her future-were stored down here. She hoped that the staircase would not act as a chimney and suck the flames down.

There was another library. This one was in a cave rather than a building, its ceiling hanging with stalactites of ancient paper that had petrified into solid carvings. She saw forms that did not bear seeing, and shapes that hinted at more terrible things she could never know. She looked up, expecting floorboards, but the roof of the cave was impossibly lined with books. The floor too, row upon row of spines facing upward, and wherever she walked she heard the crackle of old bindings breaking beneath her feet.

She knew where she was going. The book she plucked from the wall was not as old as many of the others, but its spine was worn and the pages weathered as though it had been read thousands of times. She checked inside the front cover, but there was no marking to show that it had ever been taken from the library.

“That’s because this isn’t really a library,” Alishia said, and the books seemed to lean in disapprovingly.

She sat on a pile of books leaning against one wall and opened the new volume. One Afternoon in Pavisse, it was titled, and the first page told her about a witch called Hope who had stilled a man’s heart with a long, thin knife while he was rutting with her. The witch had smiled and welcomed the gush of blood across her chest. The description of his penis shriveling within her as he died was long and detailed, the sensations lovingly rendered in words. Alishia closed her eyes and turned a few more pages, reading again, seeing how the witch had eaten a meal from a plate resting on the cooling man’s back and then carefully used her fruit knife to carve away a tattoo that covered one side of his scalp. She would paste it to one of the small windows in the basement room to dry, and later she intended to sell it for information. There was no mention of the information the witch sought. The book ended with the witch preparing to dispose of the body.

Alishia slammed the book closed and reshelved it. We’re in danger, she thought. She never was out for us; she’s only for herself. She’ll kill us as easily as that man, and cut out anything she needs. She stood and walked to the other side of the room. She did not know which book she was looking for, but shedid seem to know the ones to discard. She ran her fingers along many spines and received a rush of sensation. She felt disgust, fear and revulsion, and mixed in with that was a brief moment of ravenous hunger. Just moments in her life, been and gone, done with now. No threat to us. But theywere a threat, she knew that, because every book in this new cavernous library told Alishia what a desperate woman Hope really was.

She plucked a book from the shelf without reading the spine. She remained standing this time, not wishing to settle down to view something from Hope’s life, but when she opened the book she realized that only the first page had been used. It was an illustration with a few notes beneath. The picture was of a spider, fat and orange, and the caption readgravemaker spider. Underneath, the words read: stilled for now, numbed with hedgehock, but a pinch of salt will wake it.

Her book speaks volumes of danger, Alishia thought. Then she said it as well, but smoke from the fire above had started to seep down the staircase, and her throat was dry and sore.

She ran back up to the main library and lost herself again amidst the towering stacks of books. There was more here that would help her, she knew, much more. All she had to do was find it.

KOSAR HAD SPENT many of his younger years traveling across Noreela, working and stealing and living his life as he wished it to be lived. He had seen many worrying, wicked and strange things, and almost all of them had happened during the day. It seemed as if the rot setting into the land gave weirdness more audacity, so that it was no longer relegated to dark places. Daylight had slowly become an alien place.

The dark had always been simply another part of Noreela. Nothing fearful hid there, because it no longer needed to.

But now the constant twilight was squirming beneath his skin, setting him on edge and starting to affect his judgment.

To begin with he was certain that he was heading east, but as more time passed his doubt began to grow. The toothed shadow of Kang Kang silhouetted against the sky had faded over the horizon to his right, yet it still felt as though he was traveling in the wrong direction. He ignored the sensation initially, looking down at the ground before him and walking on. Then he started pausing, looking back the way he had come, wondering whether his senses had become so confused that he was actually walking exactly the wrong way.

The moons offered him no clues, and all certainty was fleeing him.

When he came to a copse of trees, he examined the trunks and exposed roots, looking for moss or sun bleaching so that he could tell direction. But the trees seemed to swim in his vision, swaying as though his eyes were watering. When he wiped his sleeves across his face and looked again, the trees had changed position. They hissed and spat.

He stood and backed away, looking up into their canopies. Leaves had shriveled and already started to drop, and the exposed branches looked like skeletal fingers reaching for the moons. They waved at the sky and groaned as they rubbed together, and Kosar turned and ran.

In his panic, he tripped and banged his head. He lay dazed for a few heartbeats, rolling onto his back and looking up at the blank, black sky. No stars with which to plot his position; no sun to chart his course; just a uniform darkness, so distant and yet so heavy and close that he felt it crushing him into the soft subsoil that was the skin of Noreela itself.

“Fuck!” Kosar leapt to his feet and drew his sword. “Fuck! Fuck!” Shouting scared him-the sound was loud across this silent landscape-but it also made him feel better. The blade could do nothing against darkness, but his words could penetrate the silence. He shouted again, mixed curses and pleas, and in the distance something crashed through some trees and bushes and took flight. He saw a shadow heading up into the sky, and though he did not know what it was, it did not frighten him. It was something of Noreela, not of the dark. It was just as afraid as he.

Kosar backed away from the trees and headed across the landscape again, wiping a dribble of blood from his temple. He touched it to the sword to sate the metal and resheathed it. It was A’Meer’s sword. It had seen some blood at his hand, but not much, and he wondered at its history. She had told him it was her father’s before her, but that was all. She had kept so much truth from him.

Going to New Shanti suddenly seemed a comforting idea. There he would see many more Shantasi, and he had no doubt that they would remind him of A’Meer. He remembered her pressing against him in a stranger’s house as a Red Monk passed by outside, the heat of her flesh on his, the fear transmitted through her body and breath. She was a warrior, but she found it easy to rely on me.

He walked on. He wondered whether those strange trees had been turned that way by the Mages’ twisting of the new magic, or whether they were simply another factor of the land’s long decline. Or perhaps Kang Kang could affect the land even this far out. It was not a good place. He was shamefully pleased that he was not going there, but he pitied Trey, who had become as near to a friend as Kosar had ever had.

And Hope. The witch, the whore, someone Kosar had never trusted. She was going with them.

Hess was maybe a hundred miles from here. At a push he could walk it in two days-if there were no interruptions along the way-or he could try to find a village or farm and steal a horse. He touched his fingertips together, winced at the ever-present pain and wondered whether his stealing days were over.

SOMETIME LATER, KOSAR realized that he was being followed.

He did not stop or glance back; the feeling was so intense that he did not want to give away the fact that he knew. He sped up slightly, but could hear nothing in pursuit. And yet his blind sense prickled: the hairs on his neck stood up and his balls tingled. His sword was a comfortable weight on his belt rather than an annoyance. It’s tasted Monk blood, he thought, but the idea of a Red Monk following him was not one he wished to entertain.

The landscape was becoming more hilly, bringing the horizon closer and providing more valleys and dips in which the darkness could hide. Moonlight still gave the land a monotone splash of weak illumination, but great lakes of darkness lay here and there, as though the light was not heavy enough to penetrate that deeply. There could be anything on the floors of these valleys. Perhaps they had been this dark for a long, long time. Where he could, Kosar decided to keep to the hills.

He climbed a long, slow incline, panting with the effort and realizing how hungry he was. He had a water pouch that was half full, but he had not thought about food for a while. He would have to stop soon and set some snares, maybe see if he could find some berries or roots to strip and eat. But the plants were dying. Leaves were shriveling and drying, and when he passed a clump of common black bushes there was an unpleasant odor underlying everything, as though the ground itself was slowly going to rot. Maybe this is how it will end, he thought. Maybe the land will just fade away and die. It may take a year, but the Mages have been waiting three centuries for this. Less effort for them. And a weakening land would never fight back.

There was a sound behind him, a distant thud like something dropping to the ground. Kosar paused, head tilted to pick up anything else. He realized that anyone or anything watching would now know that he had heard them, but the pretense could do him no good. Perhaps whatever it was would not reveal itself.

Kosar held on to the sword and felt comforted at the way it fit his hand.

He carried on walking, reaching the top of the hill in one final hard climb. He was sweating and panting now, shaking with the exertion, but stopping for a rest would help bring his follower closer. He could smell rotting plants again, and to his left he saw the outline of a huge old machine rusting into the ground. Yellow moonlight from the death moon bathed its interior and made it more defined than anything Kosar had seen since darkness fell. He had often heard it said that the death moon favored the dead with its light.

He turned around and stared down the hill he had just climbed. For a few seconds he saw the shape way down the slope, struggling upward like a huge beetle. Then whoever or whatever it was must have seen him silhouetted against the moonlit sky, because the shadow grew still and merged with the ground.

“Come on!” Kosar shouted. “Don’t be a coward!”Should be running, not shouting, he thought, but terror had brought out a new bravery. If he was to confront whatever this was, he’d rather do it now than have it follow him at a distance. “Comeon!” But the shadow remained hidden.

He looked across at the machine and considered hiding within its rusted embrace. But then he thought of those old machines rising to fight in the graveyard, the flesh and blood flowing to them from out of nowhere, and quickly moved on.

HE FOUND THE village in a fold in the land. The landscape dipped and rose, and it was maybe a quarter of a day after leaving the hilltop machine that he first saw the faint glow in the distance, all that time aware that someone or something was on his tail, fearing attack from behind and equally afraid of what might lay before him. The darkness was bleeding the strength from him, much as it was killing the plants.

At first he thought it was moonlight reflecting from a huge lake-the life moon had risen higher now, pale, wan and defiant-but as he drew closer across a ridge he realized that it was light rising from a deep wound in the land. A crevasse or a crater, carved into the bedrock by particularly violent waters. He had never been to this part of Noreela before-New Shanti and its environs were generally not high on a wanderer’s list of destinations-and he tried to envisage a map of the area. The darkness still confused him. The Mol’Steria Desert should lie to the north, Sordon Sound to the northeast, and as far as he could recall, there should not have been a river anywhere near here. And yet Kang Kang still lay to the south, hidden by a horizon brought closer by the dusk. Perhaps in the strange years since the Cataclysmic War, one of its rivers had broken out from underground and torn the land.

At the highest point of the ridge, he turned back to try to see his follower. He saw no shadows running for cover, no shapes falling still out of the corner of his eye, but that could mean that the follower was becoming more careful. In this poor light it could be standing motionless a hundred steps away and Kosar would never see it.

It took him an hour to walk down the hillside and approach the edge of the ravine. The glow barely rose above the ground surrounding it, but it lit Kosar’s way for the final few hundred steps. It was a refreshing change being able to see the grasses part around his feet, but he also saw the withered remnants of mollies and chloeys, testament to the dark, and he wondered whether the sun would ever return.

Kosar paused frequently to look back, but nothing else emerged from the darkness.

The light came from a fire. He could smell the tang of burning wood, and a haze of smoke hung low in the air, mostly hidden from sight but detectable by smell and taste. Hangman’s wood! Kosar thought. It was often used on the Cantrass Plains to smoke fish and other meats, because it burned slow and not too hot. Its smoke was spicy and almost as mouthwatering as cooking meat, and he increased his step almost without realizing.

At the edge, looking down at the ravine floor two hundred steps below, he realized how foolish he had been.

There was a village down there, built in a huddle against the sheer cliffs on either side, and through its middle flowed a stream. From this high up the water looked black. The area around the village was illuminated by two huge fires, one built at either end of the settlement. He could make out maybe two dozen buildings, and between them the shapes of people going to and fro.

The fires had not been there for long. Everyone in Noreela must be reacting differently to the fall of dusk; these people were digging in for a fight.

And he had walked right up to the edge of their territory like a sheebok to the slaughter.

Something approached from behind. Kosar spun around, hand on sword, and he just had time to glimpse three dark faces before a heavy blow crunched into his nose, and all he saw was light.

A’MEER WAS LOOMING above him, and he thought that the mimics were back. But when he opened his eyes and looked past the pain he saw that she was smiling, not gasping, and her dark hair was parted into the usual plaits instead of being cleaved by a sword blow, and when she opened her mouth he knew that she was going to tell him it had all been a mistake, that Rafe was fine and Kosar was just coming out of a long unconsciousness after that final terrible battle in the machines’ graveyard.

“Wake, yer scummer!” A’Meer splashed across his face, and she tasted of piss. Someone giggled and was cut short by a harsh grunt. “Wake, scummer. Or I’ll cut yer throat where you lay!”

Kosar opened his eyes. The bright pain had vanished and it was twilight once again. He was lying on his back, and above him stood two men and a woman. They had dark skin, long hair formed into elaborate sculptures and fixed with dried, painted mud, and their faces and bodies glittered with dozens of metallic piercings. Breakers. Kosar had run into them once before. They were even further removed from Noreelan society than the rovers.

He groaned. His face was hot and sore, his nose streamed blood. One of his teeth had broken. He could feel the stump of it with his tongue, and shards had buried themselves in his lip. He turned his head and spat blood and tooth. His neck hurt and his head throbbed, and he wondered whether there was more damage he had yet to discover.

“He’s spying on us. We should take his eyes,” the woman said.

“And his tongue,” a male voice added.

Kosar looked up at the three Breakers. One of the men was buttoning his fly after pissing on Kosar. He seemed to be the one in charge; he stood close to Kosar while the other two hung back, side by side for security. “I’m no spy,” he said.

“Then what in the Black are you?” the lead Breaker said.

“A thief.” Kosar slowly raised one hand to display his marks.

“And so?” the Breaker said. “Why should I trust a thief any more than a spy? And one that’s got caught too. Yer no thief, yer a fool, and fools deserve to have their throats aired.”

“Maybe he came to steal from us, Schiff,” the woman said.

“I didn’t even know you were here.” Kosar rested his head back on the ground and closed his eyes, trying to fight off the sickness welling in him. “What did you hit me with?”

“Magic,” the Breaker said.

Kosar’s eyes snapped open and he looked at the thing in Schiff ’s right hand. It was a club, a mad merging of stone and metal and wood held together by dried mud and twisted grasses. There was no magic about it, and if the light had been better he would see it decorated with his blood. “No magic there,” he said.

Schiff squatted beside Kosar and thumped the club down beside his head. “Yet this bastard’ll open up your skull easy enough,” he said. “Open it up like magic!”

“I know why it’s dark,” Kosar said. Got to be careful here, he thought. Got to feed them just enough, but not too much. The Breakers spent their lives traveling Noreela and dismantling old machines, opening up rusted metal hulks and cracking stone limbs, searching through long-dried arteries and funnels and routes for dregs of the old magic they still believed to be there somewhere. They came into towns and villages in small groups and lived apart from the local populace, setting up their own commune, growing their own food and keeping sheebok and sometimes sand rats for meat. Out in the wilds, Breaker communities often sprouted up around old mines or abandoned farms, and the centerpiece was always a giant machine. Sometimes they worked a machine for a whole generation, taking it apart meticulously and carefully, laying the component parts out to view. Magic had made the machines long ago, and now Breakers were dismantling them. They knew more about how the machines were made-and perhaps how they had worked-than anyone in Noreela.

Kosar had never heard of any magic being found, of course. And therein lay the Breakers’ madness. After three hundred years of failure, they were more hungry than ever.

“It’s the land,” Schiff said. He stared past Kosar down into the ravine. “Noreela’s been dead a long time, and now it’s finally starting to rot.”

“It’s magic,” Kosar said. “It’s back in the land, but the Mages have come and taken it.”

“What in the fucking Black are you talking about, scummer?” The big Breaker stood and lifted the club, letting gravity swing it into the side of Kosar’s head.

It was not a heavy blow; there was no strength behind it. But the pain bled through Kosar like molten silver, and when he looked up at the life moon he saw it turning red. For a second it had eyes and a face-a mad, angry face obsessed with purpose and flooded with blood. Maybe it really would have been better if we’d not run so fast, if A’Meer hadn’t fought so well, if I hadn’t loosed that tumbler to kill the Monk. If they’d caught Rafe and slaughtered him, maybe the magic would have gone with him. The Mages would have returned to nothing, and perhaps they would have been killed by the Monks. They were old, and probably mad.

“Better if he’d died,” Kosar muttered.

“What was that, scummer?”

“Better if he’d never shown us anything.” Kosar’s head swam, as though he’d had too much rotwine. Sickness still threatened. He wished a tumbler would come and roll him away.

“Kill him, Schiff!” the woman said. “He’s mad and raging, and he’s nothing for us.”

Schiff knelt again and touched Kosar’s belt. “He has a Shantasi sword,” he said.

“So? He’s a thief.”

Schiff looked at Kosar, really looked at him for the first time, and Kosar returned his gaze. “He has something for us,” the Breaker said.

“What in the Black could he have for us?”

“Don’t know,” Schiff said. He frowned, still looking at Kosar. Then he moved closer and sniffed. Kosar heard his piercings clinking and scratching at one another. “Maybe we’ll have to cut him open to find out.”

“So are Breakers butchers as well?” Kosar asked. He formed his words closely, trying not to slur and show weakness.

“I’m whatever I need to be,” Schiff said. He nodded down at Kosar’s sword. “Who did you steal that from?”

“It’s not stolen,” Kosar said.

“Then who gave it to you?”

“A friend.”

“Come on, Schiff, stop playing with him. Brain him and leave him for the sand rats.” The woman seemed to be getting nervous. Kosar saw her glancing around, trying to see into the dark. The glow of the huge fires down in the ravine reflected pale yellow in her eyes.

Schiff reached out quickly, nudging Kosar’s hand aside and grabbing the sword handle.

Kosar sat up and closed his own hand around Schiff ’s, wincing as piercings in the back of the Breaker’s hand rubbed against his raw fingers. “The sword’s mine.”

Schiff leaned forward, his nose pressed against Kosar’s. “I’ll have it from you like this, or I’ll smash your skull open and then have it from you. Your choice, scummer.”

“Aren’t you going to kill me anyway?” Kosar breathed long and deep, fighting the nausea for a few seconds more.

“If you don’t continue to interest me, yes.” Schiff pulled hard, knocking Kosar’s hand aside and drawing the sword. He ran his fingers along the blade, sniffed at it, tasted it. “You’ve seen some action,” he said.

“Some,” Kosar said.

“Who did you kill?”

“Red Monks.”

Schiff fell silent, but his two companions broke into laughter, even the nervous woman. “Red Monks!” she said. “I’d have like’d to have seen that!” Her laugh broke into a cackle, reminding Kosar of Hope. Where is she now? he thought. I hope she’s safe. I hope she’s looking after Trey and Alishia.

“Bring him!” Schiff said. He stood and held the sword before him, turning it this way and that as he inspected its surface, its cutting edges, the designs on the hilt and the sweat-darkened leather looped a hundred times around the handle.

“It needs blood,” Kosar said.

“It’ll have it.” Schiff tapped the sword against his face, neck and chest, creating a mess of metallic notes.

The other two Breakers hefted Kosar to his feet and shoved him toward the lip of the ravine. For a terrifying instant he thought they were simply going to push him over and let the jagged rocks do what they would not. But then he saw the path cleverly concealed behind a pile of rocks at the cliff edge and, their way illuminated only by the flickering light of the two huge fires, they began their descent to the ravine floor.

Kosar was still dizzied from the blow to his head. He spat more blood and wondered what would become of it. Would it soak down into the sand, solidify, form part of a stone that would perhaps be found in ten thousand years? What would that finder of the future think of a stone with teeth shards and fossilized blood seaming it? They could build a story about him, and it would be far from the truth.

Or maybe a sand rat would lick up the bloody splash, teeth specks and all, and Kosar’s spit would end up as rat shit.

Fate had many tricks in store, and the future felt so insecure.

Breakers did not welcome strangers. Halfway down the sloping path, Kosar became certain that if he let them reach the ravine floor he would be dead within the hour.

“MAGIC’S BACK IN the land,” he said. “The Mages have it. I was with the boy it was being reborn into, and they stole him away and killed him and took it for themselves. They made the skies grow dark. It’s the beginning of their revenge.”

“Shut up, scummer!”

Kosar felt A’Meer’s sword prick his back and urge him on. He winced at the feeling of metal parting his skin, and the warm dribble of blood that followed. At least the blade’s blooded, he thought. The wound was not deep but it stung. Schiff’s voice had changed. Before it had been dismissive and harsh, now there was more thought behind it. He’s going to kill me, Kosar thought. For some reason I scare him, and he’ll kill me as soon as we get down, run me through with the sword A’Meer gave me, but he’ll do it in front of his Breaker clan to show that he’s protecting them from whatever new rot has set into the land.

“Why don’t you believe me?” Kosar said.

“Move on or I’ll help you on your way.”

“You’ve been looking for it forever, and now when it’s actuallyhere, in the land instead of rotting away in old machines that were dead before you were an itch in your father’s cock, you’re not even close to ready-”

The sword pricked in again, digging into Kosar’s right shoulder above the shoulder blade, splitting skin and flesh, and Kosar fell forward and spun at the same time, landing on his side and kicking out at Schiff’s legs. The path cut into the side of the cliff was barely wide enough for two people and, with the other Breakers behind him, Schiff had nowhere to go. Kosar was confident that one good kick would send the Breaker tumbling from the path.

His right foot connected with Schiff’s left leg. Schiff did not move, and Kosar cried out as pain tore up his leg and into his hip. He kicked again and Schiff stepped back, swinging out with the sword, sweeping it across the path in an arc that would take off Kosar’s foot. Kosar pulled back, cringing as the wound in his shoulder gushed. More blood spilled, he thought. I can’t have much left. The sword scraped across the path and sparks flew.

Schiff grinned. He moved back a step or two, forcing the other two Breakers back behind him, and pulled at his trouser leg. It rose away from his foot and gathered at his knee, and Kosar saw the fires reflected on the metal skin of his leg. “Machines give us everything we need,” he said.

“But I’ve seen them alive,” Kosar said. And for the first time, he saw something like belief in the Breaker’s eyes.

“I’m going to fucking kill you, scummer,” Schiff whispered.

“Why?” Kosar said. He was bracing himself against the ground, testing his right arm to make sure he could lever himself upward. The wound on his shoulder was painful, but it didn’t appear to have damaged the muscles. As soon as Schiff was distracted he was going to launch himself at the big Breaker and shove him from the path. Easy, he thought. Piece of piss, as Hope would say.

Schiff seemed unable to answer Kosar’s question.

Kosar glanced over Schiff’s shoulder at the woman. She looked confused, and scared. “Because with magic back, your lives mean nothing,” he said. “That’s why. I’ve brought a truth you can’t bear.”

“Schiff, what’s he-?”

Schiff turned, already starting to shout at the woman, and Kosar pushed himself up from the path. A stone rolled beneath his hand, his shoulder jarred and the wound seemed to stab at him again. He cursed and pushed harder, tearing a muscle in his shoulder and adding to the pain already nestling there. The woman’s eyes opened wider as she stared past Schiff at Kosar. Kosar saw fire reflected there, yellow then red, as though her eyes were slowly filling with blood, and Schiff started to turn back, sword rising, legs bracing, mouth opening in a scream of rage and realization. He believes me, Kosar thought, and I’ve made his life meaningless.

Kosar stood and drove forward, striking Schiff across the nose with his elbow and feeling the crunch of cartilage giving way. The Breaker’s piercings tinkled and scraped as they were ground together.

Schiff roared, swinging his arm, but Kosar had pushed himself into the Breaker’s fighting circle and the sword slapped harmlessly across his lower back. Five heartbeats, he thought, that’s all it’ll take, five heartbeats to draw back and stab in and then A’Meer’s father’s sword will gut me. He thought much, much more in those few moments, a slew of images rather than words: Rafe raising the boat from the River San; watching A’Meer in the Broken Arm without her knowing he was there, the way her plaits swung, her constant wry smile; running across the plain toward the Gray Woods, fearing the Monks behind them and having no idea of what they were about to face; the machines, rising; the Mages, falling out of the sunset; the darkness. And he realized that he had never been this close to death before.

The other male Breaker screamed.

Kosar looked over Schiff’s shoulder.

The Breaker was behind the woman, ten steps back along the path, and he was staring down at a sword protruding from his chest. Behind him, a flash of red. And above this confusion of colors, a face, teeth bared and eyes blacker than mere darkness.

“Monk!” the woman shouted. Her voice was low and rough, as if her throat were already slit.

The Red Monk lifted the Breaker with the sword through his chest, pivoted and leaned forward. The man shrieked, waving his arms and legs, then slid from the sword and fell. When he struck the rocks his scream ceased, replaced by the thuds and crunches of his body tumbling to the foot of the cliff.

The woman backed toward Kosar and Schiff, but the Monk was on her quickly, a blur of robe and glittering sword sweeping her from the cliff path. She did not scream as she fell into the dark.

Kosar shoved against Schiff but stumbled over his own ankles, falling down again. He remembered fighting the Monk in the square in Pavisse. Now he did not even have a sword.

Schiff stood his ground. Kosar had a fleeting sense of respect for this Breaker, hefting a strange sword and planting his feet on the narrow cliff path in readiness to take on a Red Monk. But then the demon strode in, grunting as Schiff buried the sword in its shoulder, pushing itself further onto the blade until it was close enough to strike out and bury its own in Schiff’s gut.

The Breaker screamed. His hands went to the wound, leaving Kosar’s sword protruding from the Red Monk, and the Monk glared down at Kosar.

“I know you,” it said. Its voice was deep, and belonged to this darkness.

The Monk lifted Schiff and jerked its arms, tearing the blade up through the Breaker’s stomach until it reached his ribs, and all the time Schiff was screaming and crying, thrashing at the Monk standing just beyond his reach. He was hanging out over space now, with the demon standing at the edge of the path seemingly unafraid of the drop before it.

Kosar pushed himself up, ran at the Red Monk and shouldered into it. For a terrible instant he imagined that nothing would happen. He would bounce from the Monk just as his foot had rebounded from Schiff’s metallic leg; the Monk would drop Schiff after his companions, turn around, place the point of the bloody sword against Kosar’s throat and push.

I know you, it had said.

The Monk toppled over the edge of the narrow path. It held on to its sword lodged in Schiff ’s stomach, so the two of them fell together. The Breaker screamed. The Monk made no sound at all.

Kosar watched them bounce from rocks and hit the ground, their impact illuminated by the giant fires. The Monk lay with arms and legs outstretched, its robe settling around it like a dead bird’s wings. The Breaker’s back was broken. The sword glistened in his belly. Beside them, the remains of the other two fallen seemed to shift in the echo of flames.

Kosar looked along the ravine and saw movement there, shapes darting between buildings, several more gathered in the heart of what must once have been a giant machine. It rose around them, ribs or struts or limbs curving up out of the ground as though the machine had died emerging, or trying to bury itself. It framed the Breakers against the fire. They had spent untold years gutting and deconstructing it, and now they hid behind it.

More shapes were slipping from shadow to shadow, coming closer to the foot of the path. Even if they did try to chase him down, Kosar was confident he could make it out of the ravine before the Breakers reached him. But he had lost his sword. He had a long way to go before he reached Hess, and between here and there were untold dangers. He had never been a fighter, but that metal had made him feel safer-perhaps because it had been given to him by A’Meer.

The first Breaker reached the foot of the path and started up, and Kosar turned to flee.

But then he saw more movement below. The Monk had shifted, brought in its arms and legs and was slowly rising to its feet.

I know you, it had said.

It reached out and prised its weapon from the dead Breaker’s gut, before tugging A’Meer’s sword from its own shoulder. It looked up directly at Kosar. From this distance he could not see the thing’s eyes, but flickering light from the fires seemed to make some connections between the two of them. And when the Monk started limping toward the village and those hiding there, Kosar found himself silently urging it on.

The Breaker at the foot of the path spotted the Red Monk coming toward him. He obviously knew what he was seeing, and sprinted back to the small village, ducking in behind the big machine and adding his shadow to the others hiding there. Above the roar of the giant fires, Kosar could hear shouting from the houses, echoing back into caves that were invisible from this angle. They sounded like the calls of an injured, cornered animal, terrified yet filled with fury.

The Monk reached the village. Kosar heard a crossbow being fired, and immediately he was taken back to Trengborne, watching a Red Monk ride into the village and slaughter every person there in its relentless search for Rafe Baburn.

The Monk grunted, then walked on.

It fell a hundred steps!

It met the first Breaker and killed her with one swipe of its sword.

When it came to the harvested machine, the Monk paused, as if waiting for magic to erupt and set the machine upon it. And then, when nothing happened, the Monk entered into battle.

Kosar sat on the path and watched the slaughter. He felt bad for the Breakers-especially when he saw several small shapes dart from a house straight into the Monk’s path-but he could not forget that they had been readying to kill him. They had been brainwashed by their ancestors into believing that they could gain magic by breaking. They were, he supposed, as much victims of the Mages as anyone in Noreela. And now their harsh world had turned harsher.

The Monk fought past the machine, leaving dead and dying in its wake. Shadows emerged from houses and tried to flee, but the Monk ran them down and killed them. It crossed the stream, pushing through the waist-high water. It knocked aside crossbow bolts with the two swords, taking several hits in its torso and limbs, and then attacked those on the other side. The ones who fought back, it killed quickly; those who fled, the Monk seemed to take its time over. It was a demon, a monster, a killer risen from the ashes of dead magic, and now it fought in a world where new magic had made it redundant.

Kosar wondered what the thing was feeling and thinking right now. Was this revenge killing, a rage-filled slaughter? Or was it simply killing out of habit?

He knew he should have left. The fighting went on for half an hour, the final few minutes punctuated only by a single, mournful scream. But he sat and watched. And when the Monk emerged from the Breaker village, strode past the old machine and ran to the foot of the cliff path, Kosar found that he could barely stand. The wound on his back was sticky with blood, and his crunched nose meant that he could only breathe through his mouth. He swayed, trying to retain the knowledge of which way was up and down, as the Red Monk ran up the path toward him.

Both swords raised.

Kosar tumbled forward. In his delirium, he decided that a quick fall and death on the rocks would be better than being hacked to pieces. I know you, the Monk had said. So Kosar fell into space. He heard the Monk panting and wheezing, bloody bubbles bursting on its lips.

A hand closed around his ankle and pulled. Kosar pivoted flat against the cliff face, staring down at the dead Breakers spread on the rocks below, and was jerked over rough rock.

As he was turned onto his back, he stared into the face of the demon.

Tim Lebbon

Dawn