Dusk

Chapter 15

IT WAS NOTreally a tunnel, not in the true sense, but rather a shortcut between streets. Kosar and A’Meer were never immersed in complete darkness. Most of their journey was in half-light, shady passageways barely illuminated through cracks in the ceiling from basement rooms, where even now people were stirring themselves from slumber. In some places the passageway had true design-steps cut into the bedrock, brackets rusted on the walls where lamps had once hung-but in other places it took on a random effect. Sometimes their route was little more than an unintentional void between building foundations, the rough walls showing where builders had cut corners, the floor piled with rubble and other refuse, crawling with rats. The tunnel was spanned here and there by huge spiderwebs, many of them carrying silk-spun packages as big as an adult furbat. A’Meer pushed through these without pause, and at these moments Kosar was glad that she was in the lead. He never saw a spider. He wondered where they had all gone.

Here and there they heard voices, and once they must have passed under a narrow road; above them, just visible through mud-clotted slats in the ceiling, shadows passed quickly by, and shoes cast dust down into their eyes. The scent of cooking followed it down; fresh bread, and meats frying on a street skillet, breakfast for those who could afford it. Kosar’s mouth watered at the thought, but then he remembered the house they had just left and the mess coating the walls and floor of the upstairs room. His stomach rumbled and he felt sick.

Kosar tapped A’Meer on the shoulder. “Not far,” he whispered. “I think we’re under the outskirts of the hidden districts. If we look for a way out anywhere soon, we’ll be where we want to be.”

“Good,” A’Meer said. “But we should be moving faster. The Monk that killed Rafe’s uncle did so hours ago. It could be anywhere in the town by now. I wonder whether it knew where to look for Rafe, or whether it thought the same thing we did.”

“We can’t know,” Kosar said. A’Meer looked paler than ever down here. He reached out and touched her face, and was pleased at her grateful smile. “But we have an advantage. We know people here, you more than me. Instead of just searching, we should ask around, see if anyone knows of a strange boy in the districts, someone who might be harboring him.”

“The word will spread quickly, especially with me in full Shantasi armor. The regulars at the Broken Arm would be in for a shock.”

“By the time word spreads, we’ll either have found him or…”

“Or they will. They’re very efficient, the Red Monks. No emotions cloud their vision, other than hate. And that’s cleansing.”

“Is it?” Kosar asked, but things instantly felt different, as if the two of them were talking about something forbidden.

A’Meer turned away and started down the passageway again. Kosar followed.

Within a few heartbeats they sensed a breeze of aromatic air coming from their left. They took a fork in the passage, ducking under the twisted spiral of a metal machine where it supported the ceiling, and ascended rough steps cut into the side of some gargantuan buried thing. To left and right ran a crevasse, bridged only here by the steps that led up. It was pitch black, but Kosar had the sense of something massive hiding down here, not dead but dreaming, its exhalations making the dark darker. He shook his head but could not vent the visions. A’Meer glanced back, wide-eyed. She had felt it too.

Kosar had never been so pleased to see the filthy streets of the hidden districts. They emerged through a rent in the side of a building, framed by twists of fossilized machine, and a few curious stares greeted them. A’Meer shook herself, as if to shed her black hair and white skin of the dust of underground, and her packed weapons whispered together.

Kosar looked away from each set of eyes he met, only to meet another.

“Come on,” he said. “We don’t want to cause a stir.” They headed off quickly, running deeper into the districts.

It was usually held that those who lived here were criminals-thieves, murderers, rapists, bandits on the run-but it was also true that the districts offered shelter for those poets and prophets who still listened to their heart. It was a rough, dangerous place, but at least here life still sang through the air on occasion, and the future held possibilities.

Most people carried weapons, much more so than out in the normal streets, but few to the extent of A’Meer. And as the two of them progressed, they drew attention whichever way they turned. Chatter stopped, trading paused, and Kosar could hear whispers from those hunkered in doorways or pressing themselves back against walls to let the two of them pass. Most of them had never seen a Shantasi warrior, and the crowd’s fear was palpable.

“This won’t help us find Rafe,” he whispered to A’Meer. “It’ll more likely hide him from us more.”

“There’s someone I know,” she said. “She’s not far from here; we’ll go to her. She’s always listening out for news of strangers passing through. She’ll know if Rafe has been seen.”

“Who is she?”

“Shantasi spy.”

Kosar allowed A’Meer to draw ahead so that he could follow. He tried not to catch anyone’s eyes, but after staring at the Shantasi they would inevitably move on to him, their gaze questioning, eyebrows raised in query. A few glanced down at his hands and saw the bloodied strips around his fingertips, and their curiosity grew. A mercenary and a thief, one of them whispered. I wonder what he’s hired her for? Kosar stared at the whisperer, not moving away until the man averted his eyes.

But everywhere the looks and mutters were the same, and it did not take long for Kosar to become paranoid, fearing that the whole of Pavisse knew their business. In reality, much as their appearance caused a brief commotion as they passed, he knew that in the hidden districts there was always something else to draw attention. They may well be talked about, but their presence would not alter anyone’s day.

He followed A’Meer blindly. Every time he heard someone raise their voice he turned around, convinced that he would see a Red Monk, blood-hungry sword drawn and eager to bathe itself in Shantasi flesh.

… and now mercenaries, and this is a dark day dawning for sure.

Kosar stopped, turned, trying to make out who had spoken. A group of children stood huddled against a timber fence surrounding a scorpion-plant garden, eyes wide and afraid. To their left an elderly couple stood arm in arm, and when he met the woman’s eyes she glanced away, looking for something in the dust.

“ What and mercenaries?” he asked quietly.

She did not answer until her partner jerked her arm, nudged her in the side. His eyes had strayed over Kosar’s right shoulder to A’Meer.

“Monk,” the woman whispered. “Red Monk.”

“Where? When? Alone?”

“Last night, passing by my house. I couldn’t sleep. I was sitting at the window watching the stars, writing a poem.” She glanced up, perhaps expecting ridicule, but seeing only stern interest on Kosar’s face. “I saw it walk by below my window. Even in the dark I could see its color.”

“You didn’t tell me-” the man said, but the woman continued, ignoring him.

“It stopped just past my window and raised its head, sniffing at the air. I could hear it, sniffing! It knew I was there, and it must have heard my heart. But then it went on into the shadows.”

“In which direction?”

“No. It went into the shadows. It did not move, it slipped away. No direction.” She was crying now, an old woman’s tears that looked like those of a child.

Kosar glanced back at A’Meer, whose attention remained focused on the woman. “We should go,” he said. “Find whoever it is you think can help.”

“Was it a good poem?” A’Meer said suddenly.

The woman’s crying stopped, shocked into silence.

“The poem,” A’Meer repeated. “Was it good?”

“I’m not sure,” the old woman said. “I think I’ve forgotten.”

“Never forget the poetry in your heart,” A’Meer said. “It may yet have some use one day.” And then she turned and marched away.

Kosar followed, wondering what had happened back there. The old woman was not crying anymore, and as he looked back one last time Kosar saw the old man questioning her, touching her, trying to tear her gaze from the morning sky. Yet another surprise from A’Meer.

“If they came here and found nothing, maybe they moved on?” Kosar said.

A’Meer stopped and guided him over to a building, its walls composed entirely of the outer shell of an old machine. Breakers had obviously been at work here-a slab of the machine lay discarded in the street, and people walked around it rather than touch it or move it aside.

“If the Monks came here they came for a reason,” A’Meer said. “We know there’s more than one or two-there may be many-and coming out in force means that they know Rafe is here. They’ll not leave until he’s dead.”

“How do they even know of him?”

A’Meer shrugged. “Whispers on the wind. Rumors. Mostly I think they can sense it; magic is their madness, and they’re well attuned to its cadences.”

“So why not do what they did in Trengborne?” Kosar asked. “Kill everyone so that they’re sure Rafe is one of them?”

“It may yet come to that,” she said. “But for now, I guess they know that if they start wholescale slaughter, Rafe will disappear in the panic. Pavisse is a little bigger than Trengborne.” She smiled, but it barely touched her eyes.

Too many memories resurfacing in there, Kosar thought. Memories of her training, perhaps, and what she had been charged with. And recollections of her battle with the Monk in Ventgoria. Perhaps she was scared that she could not repeat that victory after living so long as a normal person.

“A’Meer,” he said. “I don’t have a weapon other than my pathetic little knife.”

She sighed and rested her head on his shoulder. “Just how prepared are we, huh?” She drew a long, thin blade from a scabbard at her hip and handed it to him. “Listen to me, Kosar. I know you can take care of yourself, but this is a Shantasi blade. It’s not charmed or cursed, but it is hungry. And it’s sharper than anything you’ve ever seen.” She was unlacing the scabbard as she spoke, slipping the leather cord out through other knots that held her own weaponry. She removed it in seconds without disturbing anything else. “If you draw this, you draw blood.” She reached out and touched her hand to the sword he held, wincing as a line of blood appeared across her palm.

“Don’t!” Kosar said, shocked. He stepped back and held the sword to his side, looking around to see if anyone had noticed. There were several people watching, too interested to let their fear drive them away.

“It didn’t hurt,” she said, smiling. “Believe me, once drawn, the sword won’t settle until it’s wet.”

He looked down at the weapon, expecting it to curl around his hand like a snake. He touched one fingertip to its flat surface and a drop of A’Meer’s blood slicked across the metal, catching the morning sun.

“You speak as though it’s alive.”

“No.” A’Meer shook her head. “Of course not. Not alive, not magical, just… hungry. The Monks’ swords are the same, but fed by their owners’ madness so that the effect is magnified. With me it’s more tradition, I guess, something that was drummed into me by the Mystics in Hess. But every tradition like that has some root cause.”

As Kosar strapped on the scabbard-it was uncomfortable, as if molded specially for A’Meer’s hips and not his own-he asked where they would go now.

“The woman I mentioned,” A’Meer said. “She’s a madam. Works out of an old machine a little way from here. Five girls, a couple of them fledgers. She even has a fodder. Novelty value, I guess, although I wonder how she stops men from biting her.”

“You know the most charming people.”

“Hey, I work in a tavern full of criminals, wrongdoers and misfits.”

“Where you met me.”

“That’s right, thief.”

They smiled at each other, not knowing what to say next. Banter did not feel right given the circumstances. Things were winding up, like a sling spinning and ready to release its shot. The direction it fired in depended wholly upon what happened over the coming day. By evening they may be on the run from Red Monks, taking with them the boy from Trengborne. Or perhaps they would be burying his remains, A’Meer mourning the magic that might have been. Or maybe they would both be dead.

“How did this happen?” Kosar said, not sure exactly what he meant.

“These things do.” A’Meer stretched on tiptoes and planted a kiss on Kosar’s lips, and then she turned and walked on.

THE WOMAN WAShuge. Her name was Slight-a misnomer if ever there was one-and Kosar had no idea how she could move. Her arms rested on massive hips, her legs were all but hidden beneath rolling waves of fat, and her eyes were tiny beads in a face that looked like a ball of pasty dough.

“A’Meer!” she screeched upon seeing them. “You’ve decided to come to work for me after all, then! But what’s with the blades, vixen? You know I don’t cater for that side of things.”

“Slight,” A’Meer said. “It’s good to see you. Been cutting down on the fried sheebok fat, I see.”

“I weigh almost as much as all my girls combined,” she said proudly. “Who’s the cock? He want some? You want some, cock?”

Kosar shook his head, unfeasibly embarrassed in front of this mountain of a woman. The inside of the great machine was unrecognizable, hung as it was with drapes and curtains. It was an assault on the eyes, so much color and form stealing concepts of up or down, left or right. Someone passed by on the other side of a drape wall, but they were little more than a shadow. Someone else snored gently nearby. From elsewhere, he thought he heard the muted sounds of lovemaking.

“Slight, I’m looking for someone,” A’Meer said.

“Someone other than him?” the madam said, nodding at Kosar. The movement sent her whole bulk shaking. Her loose breasts, each almost the size of a small sheebok, quivered as if possessing of a life of their own.

“A boy,” A’Meer said. “Slight, it’s important. This boy is precious to me, and his life is in danger.”

“Precious to you, or precious to New Shanti?” A’Meer did not reply. Slight looked her up and down. “And you all tooled up.”

Kosar did not like her. She seemed too casual, too ready with a witticism, and all the while he sensed a wily mind working behind her button eyes.

“There are a few things about me I’ve never told most people,” A’Meer admitted.

“I’ve heard about Shantasi warriors,” Slight said, shifting her weight to one side and moving, slowly, toward a wall of curtains.

A’Meer looked at Kosar and shrugged. He frowned, trying to communicate his distrust.

“Girls!” Slight called. “Slight wants a word!”

“I’m busy,” a voice said, sounding as if it came from the next street.

“When you’ve finished, then, Honey. Don’t rush the gentleman; he’s paid his way.”

Shadows came first, appearing on curtains and drapes from different directions, slowly manifesting as women. They pushed through into the central room where Slight, A’Meer and Kosar waited. One of them was beautiful. One was fodder, fat and scarred with bites. One was with child, another looked half dead from rotwine and bad fledge, and the last was a fledger, tall and yellow-eyed.

“The boy a stranger?” Slight asked, and A’Meer nodded.

“Girls, my friend here’s looking for someone. A boy. You won’t have seen him before. Maybe he was on his own; or if he’s a stranger, someone in the districts may have picked him up. You seen anyone with a stranger? Anyone we know?”

“Hope,” said the fledger. “That mad old fucking witch-whore threw a sac of poison spiders at me. She had a boy with her, filthy little bastard farmer boy, scared.”

“When was this?” A’Meer asked, but the fledger stared through her.

“When was this?” Slight rumbled.

“Yesterday.”

“Where does Hope live?” A’Meer asked Slight, and the fat woman asked the fledger, and she told them.

“Street down south, Fifthborn Circle. Not too far from here.” The fledger addressed A’Meer directly for the first and last time. “When you find that old witch-whore, are you going to slit her throat?”

“No,” said A’Meer.

The fledger raised her eyebrows at Slight. The big woman nodded and her girls disappeared back through the curtains, their movement sending a whisper in every direction.

“Thank you, Slight,” A’Meer said.

The huge woman smiled. “And yet again, you owe me. You’ll have to come and work for me soon, Shantasi.” She eyed A’Meer’s weaponry, and through the fat Kosar could not be sure of her expression. Perhaps being inscrutable served her well.

A’Meer nodded, performed a low bow and then nudged Kosar out of the old machine ahead of her.

THEY HEADED SOUTH, moving as fast as they could through the serpentine streets. Kosar kept one hand on the new sword at his belt. It banged his leg as he ran, uncomfortable and yet reassuring with its presence. He could not shake the feeling that they were rushing headlong into trouble.

When they reached Fifthborn Circle A’Meer strolled quickly along the street, looking at doors as if she would perceive a witch’s abode by its appearance.

“We’ll have to ask,” Kosar said.

A’Meer had stopped in front of a building, the door closed tight, windows shaded and mostly still unbroken. She stood back slightly and looked up at the facade, down at ground level, back to the front door again. “This is it.”

“How do you know?”

“A witch marks her ground,” she said, offering no more.

Kosar followed her gaze but saw nothing.

“She’s in the basement rooms,” A’Meer said, kneeling to take a look at the narrow slits piercing the building just above ground level. “Her signature is Willmott’s Nemesis root, I can smell it.”

“Let’s go, then.”

A’Meer stood and nodded. “Quickly, but quietly. And I’ll go first.”

Kosar did not argue. A’Meer stood with her hand on the door handle, paused, looked around at him, frowning.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Something-”

The door burst open, smashed from its hinges. It crashed past the frame and splintered wood stung the air. Kosar stumbled back as A’Meer was thrown against him. A shape burst from the opening, a Red Monk, its decidedly feminine mouth wide open in a frozen grimace of agony and shock. Kosar kept stumbling backwards, certain that his own feet would trip him, and the Monk trampled over A’Meer to get him. Its hood was snagged back by a spear of wood, and Kosar could see its bald head, veins standing out like worm-trail, red, leaking where they split the skin. Its eyes were wide and surely sightless, such was the rate of their expansion and the scarlet pooling of blood in their whites. Its hands stretched out, one of them grasping a sword that seemed to twitch at Kosar, smelling his blood.

He fell, finally, still trying to draw the sword from his belt, and kicked up as the Red Monk came at him. His feet connected and the Monk staggered back, screaming at last. Kosar was momentarily pleased, but then the Monk stumbled quickly away, still screaming, the shriek high-pitched and ragged as if its throat was being boiled.

“A’Meer!” he shouted, but the Shantasi was already on her feet, one hand holding a sword, the other sporting a slideshock. Her eyes were wide and terrified, her mouth hanging open as if to gasp in air, and Kosar felt terrified for her.

The Red Monk was running along the street. People scattered out of its way. Its arms flailed, and blood misted the air as veins on its scalp began to burst. It fell suddenly and moved onward on hands and feet, jumping from one place to the next like a foxlion, still shrieking.

“A’Meer!” Kosar called again, running to her. She had splinters in her face, several of them drawing dribbles of blood. She looked at him and shook her head, unable to speak. “We have to go after it!” Kosar said.

She shook her head again and looked at the shattered door, stepping back as if expecting another Monk to come through.

Kosar drew his sword and stepped in front of A’Meer in a foolish act of bravery. Here he was, a lowly thief, offering to protect a Shantasi warrior. He would have laughed had he not been so petrified.

“Inside,” she said at last. “We have to check, quickly, and then we’ll follow. But be careful, there are things in there. I think it was bitten by a slayer spider.”

“Mage shit,” Kosar whispered. He had heard about these creatures. Right then, he was not sure which he would rather face: a Red Monk, or a slayer.

A’Meer darted around him and slipped through the door. Her arm twitched and the slideshock whipped out, hitting something in the dark.

Kosar ran in behind her and sidestepped the still-twitching spider on the floor, fat as an eyeball. “Is that it?” he asked.

“No, I’ve never seen one like that before. The slayer must still be around somewhere.” She headed downstairs to the basement rooms, Kosar on her tail. They were checking for Rafe, but Kosar was certain that his body would not be here. The Monk-inflamed by pain as it was-had also been clean. There was no blood on its sword, none splashed on its face other than its own.

“A’Meer, that Monk is on Rafe’s trail.”

A’Meer nudged open the door at the bottom of the stairs and went in, flipping her arm out and slicing a scorpion in two as it dashed from behind a cupboard. Kosar followed more cautiously, looking around, checking the walls to either side and above the door for any telltale shadows.

“Well, he’s not here, at least,” A’Meer said. “Stay alert, there are at least five smashed jars on the floor.”

Kosar checked around his feet amongst the smashed clay shards. Nothing there. He glanced at the shelves, lined with hundreds of other jars and leather containers, wondering just what else Hope kept in here. He had never known a witch, let alone been in the home of one. The hanging herbs, the jars, the charts, the paraphernalia disturbed him, perhaps because of how this place would be perceived by many: one step closer to magic.

“We have to go,” A’Meer said. She turned around, her eyes went wide and her arm flipped up quickly, the slideshock’s weighted wire lashing out and plucking something from Kosar’s shoulder. He felt the splash of its insides pattering his bare arm as the dead slayer spider dropped to the floor. “We really should go,” A’Meer insisted.

“I agree.”

They left the room to whatever was left alive, shutting the downstairs door in an effort to keep the dangers within.

A crowd had gathered outside. Children ran back and forth, collecting handfuls of the smashed front door to show their friends later as they bragged of what they had seen. Adults hovered farther away, their caution born of experience telling them that, really, this was not their business. And striding down the street, three militia rattled their swords with self-importance.

“Oh Mage shit,” Kosar said. “They’ll keep us talking till dusk.”

“Stay close to me, don’t say a word and try not to listen too hard to what I have to say.” A’Meer glanced back at Kosar. “Think of something else, how we can track the Red Monk. Just how do we do that?”

The militia stopped, standing side by side so that they blocked the street and the route Kosar and A’Meer had to take. What had she meant? They would track the Monk easily. There would be a trail of people in the streets, chattering about what they had just seen, how much blood there had been: Did you see that thing, it was running like a dog, a woman, it was a woman you say, but where did all that blood come-

“Urgh!” One of the militiamen was holding his ears, and the others, cowering back against a fence on the opposite side of the street, looked so terrified that A’Meer may as well have been the Red Monk itself.

“Kosar, come on!” she called. She ran past the militia, and Kosar heard her mutter a gentle apology.

“What was that?” he asked as he followed. She did not answer. They ran to the end of Fifthborn Circle and turned left, following knots of startled people that were still drifting in the street like sparrows bobbing in the wake of a passing hawk. People stepped quickly out of their way and Kosar tried to smile at them, to tell them that there was nothing to fear. But suddenly, in the distance, there was. A scream, high and loud and enraged, not from a human throat. From much farther came a similar response, winging across the rooftops and startling birds and giant moths into flight.

“What in the name-”

“Shit!” A’Meer cursed. “There are more. It’s calling them.” She paused, panting, slideshock hanging from one arm and dragging in the dust. “If we keep following we’ll come up against other Red Monks. Unless we catch it in the next couple of minutes, take it on, take it down and then get away.”

“So what are we waiting for?” Kosar said, expecting her to offer him another quick, easy way out. He was only a thief, after all.

“I’m scared.”

Kosar reigned in his surprise. “So is Rafe, I suspect.”

A’Meer lowered her eyes, examined the dust-caked mass still stuck to her slideshock. Then she nodded and set off again, running, expecting people to get out of her way. They did not disappoint her.

The trail was easy to follow. The dried road dust held splashes of black blood, but even had they not been there, the expressions on the faces of those around showed the way. The streets were lined with stunned people, some of them shocked at the sight of the bleeding, screaming woman, others-those few who perhaps knew the true nature of the Red Monks-even more terrified. Rumor of the Monks’ presence must surely have spread throughout Pavisse by now, but seeing one agitated and in action drove home the mortal danger that the town was in.

A’Meer went first. Kosar watched her black braids bobbing as she ran, the weapons in their slings, belts and scabbard tied in tight to her body so that they did not rattle and shake.

What did she do back there to those militia? A few muttered words and she had them whimpering like babies. What power, what talents could do that?

The Monk screeched again ahead of them, closer than before.

“How long ago?” Kosar asked a startled sheebok herder. He stood with his herd pulled in tight around him, as if they would offer protection.

“A couple of minutes.” He glanced down at Kosar’s sword, still unsheathed and warm in the thief’s hand. “You’ll need more than that.”

Kosar ran fast to catch up with A’Meer. “It’s close!” he called, but she did not need telling. They skirted around a huge old machine, its tendrils long since fossilized into broken stone spurs that still reached in vain for the sky. On its far side a man was lying on the ground, holding a heap of slippery intestines in his lap. He too was looking to the sky. A small girl was hugging him and shouting. She had her face buried in his neck. People hovered around, not knowing what to do.

“Come on,” A’Meer said quietly over her shoulder, as if afraid that Kosar would stop to help.

Kosar glanced at the man as he ran by and for a second their eyes locked. He looked away quickly. There was nothing that could comfort a man about to die with his daughter’s tears wetting his skin.

The Monk screamed again and was answered by several separate cries. The complex warren of streets and alleys misled the echoes, confused direction, until Kosar was sure that they were surrounded by Red Monks, closing in quickly and ready for the fight. We could die here, he thought. We probably will. A’Meer is terrified of one injured Monk, and now there are several closing in, almost as if they’re herding us.

A’Meer ran fast, and it was not long before Kosar began to feel his age. The summer heat sucked sweat from him, soaking his shirt and trousers and fusing them to his skin. A’Meer seemed not to tire. It was as if she were eighteen, not over a hundred. Another Shantasi mystery, he thought.

They came to a courtyard filled with milling people, and sensing the urgency, a few of them pointed the way. A’Meer ran into the mouth of a small alley, glancing down now and then at the blood spotting the ground, and Kosar followed. They passed a line of wash hung out to dry, and he saw spray patterns of blood across the lower edges. Either the Monk had caught someone here, or its veins were still bursting from slayer venom.

“Not far now,” A’Meer said.

At the next corner Kosar caught sight of the Monk’s red cloak flitting out of sight around a bend in the alley. A machine bridged the path, and several people stood high up, whooping and waving and urging them on. Kosar had been to tumbler fights once or twice, and this small crowd reminded him of that. How much more would they be entertained soon?

Around the bend, the Monk was revealed, loping along on feet and fists like a wild dog. Blood spattered every time it landed on its hands, dripping and spraying from ruptured veins. The toxin should have killed it long before now-it would be bleeding inside too, stomach filling with blood, arteries ripping and demanding more and more of its heart-but it seemed as strong as ever. The madness A’Meer had spoken of was serving the Monk well.

They ran through another square, people shying away from the blood-soaked demon, and into another small street.

“Here!” A’Meer called, and the Monk turned at the sound of her voice.

Kosar stopped. He almost turned around and ran, ready to find himself a hiding place from which he would hear the quick battle to come. Because it would surely be over in seconds. The Monk was an image from Kang Kang, every bad dream, every demonic legend ever told in Noreela; blood-soaked, insane, its skin red with rage where it was not already pasted with its own vital fluids. One eye had burst, yet still it saw, sensed, sent its fury their way through a long-fanged mouth. Its teeth dribbed with saliva, diluting the mess on its chin. Its arms waved, feet pounded at the ground, and it did not slow down for an instant.

The Monk still sought its quarry, and no threat from behind would tear it from its pursuit.

A’Meer plucked a small crossbow from a pocket on her shoulder, brought her arm down and fired in one swift movement. The bolt struck home in the thing’s burst eye socket and it screeched, turning and running faster. The Shantasi reloaded without slowing, fired again, reloaded, fired. Each bolt found its mark-one in the back of the Monk’s head, one at the base of its spine-but the impacts seemed only to pin its cloak tight to its body.

“I’ll take it, you get the boy,” she called.

Kosar wanted to argue, but he knew that she was right. She was the warrior here and he was the thief, used to stealing things and concealing them.

They turned another corner and emerged into a large square, the crowds already apparently disturbed by something… and then Kosar saw them. On the far side of the square, heading for a wide gateway leading into a park, Rafe was running with an old woman. The witch, Hope. Kosar hoped that she lived up to her name.

The Monk screamed then, too loud to be human, too enraged to be sane. The witch and the boy stopped and turned, wide-eyed and terrified of this frenzied thing closing in on them.

The witch reached into her shoulder bag and pulled something out.

A’Meer flicked out with her slideshock and caught the Monk’s ankle, tripping it and pulling herself down into the dust.

“Take them away from here!” A’Meer shouted at Kosar. She was already on her feet, thrusting her arm at the Monk, slicing its cloak and flesh with the slideshock.

Kosar skirted the fight and went to the witch and Rafe, smiling at the boy, hoping that he could ease his own fear as well. The witch’s eyes flickered down to Kosar’s drawn sword and she raised her hand, ready to throw something at him, something green that squirmed and flexed in her palm with sickly, stagnant life.

“No!” Rafe said. “He’s a friend.”

Kosar reached the boy and hugged him tight, an unconscious gesture.

“Shantasi warrior,” the witch said, and the tattoos on her face twitched in surprise.

The Monk was standing again, pure insane determination overcoming the ragged break in its ankle, and it was trying to make its way to Rafe. Between it and Rafe, however, stood A’Meer. She closed in, lashing out with her sword, ducking, parrying, thrusting again, sinking its tip into the Monk’s exposed neck and spinning on her feet. Blood arced from the wound and splashed a sheebok tethered to a stall nearby, setting the creature screaming as secondhand slayer venom burned into its eyes.

The crowds had pulled back to the edges of the square, fascinated with the fight, some of them calling out and cheering as a blow was landed by either side. They had no loyalties, Kosar realized, and no real understanding of what was happening here. They were simply enjoying the spectacle.

“We have to get away from here!” Kosar said.

“That thing’s come for me,” Rafe said. “But who is she?”

“She’s a friend. Rafe, we have to get you away.”

“Aren’t you going to help your friend?” the witch said.

Kosar glanced at the fighting couple. “No. She told me to take Rafe and find safety. She’s trained in this. She’s taken a Monk before.”

The witch’s strange tattooed face showed mocking disbelief. “She can’t be much of a friend if she lies to you like that. And you can’t be much of a friend leaving her alone to die.”

“The boy’s precious-”

“I know that! That’s why he’s coming with me!”

A’Meer shouted behind him and Kosar spun around, afraid of what he would see. The slideshock had wrapped around the Monk’s thigh, and now the Monk was twisting on the spot, blood flying, hauling A’Meer in. She was struggling with the clasps on her wrist and forearm, trying to free herself, when the Monk stopped and lashed out with both swords. She ducked. A trimmed lock of her black air floated on the agitated air. And then she stood quickly, flinging a spiked ball into the Monk’s face. She used the second’s respite to cut the blade of the slideshock and step back out of the Monk’s killing range.

“We have to go now!” Kosar said again. “The Monk called others, and if they converge here everyone will die.”

“Then we should slow them down,” the witch said. And cupping her hands around her mouth she shouted: “There are more of these things coming! Quickly, get out of here! Go! Find somewhere safe to hide! They’ll kill you all!” The crowd started to stir, a few people hurrying away, but most remained.

At that moment the Monk landed a sword blow on A’Meer’s arm. She screamed and fell, and a flap of skin fell back along her forearm, exposing the meat beneath.

“There! See?” Hope shouted. “These demons will slaughter every single one of you and eat your children!”

This time the reaction was more extreme. Most of the people poured out of the square, clogging narrow alleys and streets, pushing and falling and fighting as panic took over.

“You’ve sent them straight at the other Monks,” Kosar said, but even as he spoke he realized the cool logic of what she had done.

“It may give us some time,” Hope said. “Your friend needs help.” She nodded past Kosar and he turned to see A’Meer on the ground, kicking out in an effort to put distance between her and the advancing Monk. It had raised both swords and was grinning through shattered teeth, spitting blood and enamel ahead of it. A’Meer rolled away from the shower of gore-with her open wounds, the slayer toxin would be the end of her-and the Monk bore down.

“A’Meer.” He took a faltering step, paused, felt the sword in his hand send a hot pulse through his palm.

“I’ll tell you where we are!” the witch called out. Kosar turned in time to see her and Rafe moving toward the park with a few other people.

“How?” he called.

“I’ll tell you.” The witch’s voice faded quickly amongst the shouts and screams of the others. Rafe glanced back once before he vanished, and the look on his face convinced Kosar of what he had to do. The boy was scared and bewildered, but he seemed to trust the witch.

A’Meer was in trouble. Her arm was bleeding badly, and as she scurried backwards across the ground the Monk gave her no chance to stand. It thrust down with its swords, A’Meer spun in the dust and dodged them, kicking out at its wrists and snapping one with an audible crack. The Monk screamed and stood back… and then, eyeless though it now was, it knew that Rafe had gone. It kicked A’Meer out of its way and advanced on Kosar.

He had to make a choice: step aside and let the Monk pass, pursue Rafe and the witch, make everything A’Meer had gone through pointless; or stand and fight.

The sword knew what it needed.

Breathing hard, tucking the sword under one arm, Kosar pulled down his sleeves and wrapped them around his hands, protecting the open wounds on his fingertips.

“Don’t let it pass!” A’Meer screamed, standing, drawing more weapons from her belt and a slip around her stomach.

Kosar hefted the sword and parried two blows from the Monk, three, staring all the time at its ravaged face, the exploded mess of its eyes sliding down its cheeks, the gore that ran from its mouth. He tried to remember everything he knew about fighting-all self-taught and used frequently during his earlier years of travel and robbery-and as the Monk brought back both arms to stab at him he ducked inside its fighting circle, lashed out with the sword and felt it grind against bone.

The Monk screeched and sent a splutter of blood at Kosar. He ducked and rolled, keeping a tight grip on his sword, twisting it as it slipped out of the Red Monk.

“Hey, you’re turning me on,” A’Meer said weakly, and then she darted at the Monk’s back, driving in a barbed fork.

The square was all but empty now, save for a few diehard fight fans who had weighed the risks and decided to remain. They kept to the edges, moving around so that they could get a better view of proceedings, still cheering each time a blow was landed… but now Kosar felt their allegiance polarize. As the Monk walked toward the park Kosar ran to its left side, ducked a backward sweep of its sword and hacked at its leg once, twice, three times. With each blow a cheer rose from the few spectators. Kosar smiled, hacked again.

The Monk fell toward him, its slashed cloak falling open to reveal sagging breasts. He backed away, losing his sword where it had become lodged in the thing’s thigh bone, and leapt out of the way as it hit the dirt. It growled, crawled after him, and as a bloody hand closed around his boot Kosar knew that it had fallen on purpose.

“A’Meer!” he shouted.

She came at them, right hand and forearm tucked into her shirt to shelter the bleeding wound from the Monk’s blood. She hefted a small axe in her left hand, leapt at the last moment and buried it in the Monk’s wrist.

Kosar kept crawling, the Monk’s severed hand still clasped tightly around his boot.

The crowd cheered again.

A’Meer went at the Monk with the axe, aiming for its other hand as it waved its sword at her. It parried her first few blows, then slid quickly across the ground and surprised her with a stab to the ankle. She grunted and stumbled away, dropping the axe, slipping to her knees as blood flowered over the lip of her boot.

The observers fell silent.

“Hey!” Kosar was running to A’Meer, kicking the still-flexing hand from his foot, and he glanced up. A man stood in the corner of the square, waving his hands. “Hey! There’s a tumbler pit this way!”

“Tumbler,” A’Meer moaned as Kosar reached her.

“Are you all right?”

She looked up at him, and he could see veins standing out on her temples, edging their cruel fingers under her scalp. Her eyes were already bloodshot. “No,” she said.

“Oh Mage shit, A’Meer!”

“One chance,” she said. “I’ll keep it here, fend it off. You go for the tumbler. Follow the idiot who shouted, make him show you.”

“What about you, what about-”

“One death at a time, Kosar. I’ll make sure the Monk doesn’t get me. We’ll worry about what’s in my blood later.”

The Monk had gained its feet and was walking once again toward the gated entrance to the park. There were a thousand places to hide in there, but by now Kosar was sure the witch and Rafe would have reached its far side. The Monk screeched again, and from nearby something answered.

“They’re close!”

“We don’t have much time, Kosar. Go!”

He started toward the corner of the square, then glanced back at A’Meer. She was struggling to her feet. He ran back past her, ducked under the Monk’s sword and rescued his own blade from its leg, thrusting hard and sticking it in between the thing’s ribs. He pushed, toppling the Monk onto its front, and then ran. He mustered a smile for A’Meer as he passed her, and she smiled back. We’re both going to die, he thought.

The man who had shouted about the tumbler headed off before Kosar could reach him, trotting along a street, turning left, right, bringing them quickly to a high-fenced compound, a fighting ring for a tumbler. Kosar had been to a contest once or twice but it had not entertained him. However willing the combatants, the sight of them impaled on the giant rolling thing, the thorns and barbs taking out their foolish eyes and hearts, had done nothing for him.

You red freak, he thought. Escape from this!

“Where’s the gate?” he asked.

“Here!” The man pointed along the fence, and Kosar saw the look on his face for the first time. He was more than excited; he was turned on.

“How do I aim this thing?”

“You can’t. Once it’s out there’s little you can do but run.”

“Great.”

Kosar shook his hands free of the stretched sleeves. He drew his knife and hacked at the gate’s wooden hinges, breaking one, hearing the scream of the Red Monk from the square behind him, seeing movement as the tumbler shifted slightly in its bed of moss. It was taller than him, though certainly not the biggest he had ever seen; they were twice this size on the foothills of Kang Kang. It wore evidence of many kills. Bones were hugged to its hide by barbed hooks, some of them still retaining fleshy scraps, the tatters of clothes, jewelry. As Kosar forced the second hinge the tumbler flexed, shifted and then rolled with startling speed at the gate. The gate smashed open and he ducked behind it, gasping as it swung wide and pinned him against the fence. The tumbler rolled straight down the street, bouncing from wall to wall, the sound almost musical; the rustle of vegetation on stone, bones on dust, barbs scraping walls and offering a rhythm to its escape.

Kosar heaved the gate away and ran after the tumbler. Something screeched up ahead. It was not A’Meer’s voice, and it sounded too strong to belong to the injured Red Monk.

“A’Meer!” he screamed, trying to shout above the grind and rattle of the tumbler. “It’s coming!”

He reached the square in time to see the tumbler roll across its first victim. A Red Monk, just emerging into the square from an alley a few buildings along, became instantly impaled on its hide. The Monk screamed, and the tumbler paused to roll back, forward, and back again, working barbs through its victim until they held it firm. The Monk shouted again, hacking at itself, determined to cut itself free even if that meant evisceration.

A’Meer was where Kosar had left her, hobbling in a circle around the other mad Monk, launching throwing knives at its face and chest. The thing was hardly moving now, though it still stood and roared and spat blood at her, perhaps its final effective weapon.

The tumbler rolled in a small circle, still crushing down the Monk it had trapped… and then it paused.

“A’Meer, run!”

The tumbler accelerated across the square. It hit the wounded Monk a heartbeat later, smashing it down into the dust in a rain of blood, continuing on until it struck the wall to one side of the park gates. It pulled back and rolled again, crushing into the wall, pressing its prey deeper onto and into itself.

A’Meer had hobbled to a doorway, and she glanced across at Kosar. He waved her over but she seemed to be waiting, holding back, watching the tumbler. It rolled away again, trundling across the square. She hopped down from the doorway and retrieved Kosar’s sword from where it was ground into the bloody dust. Then she started backing away from the tumbler, moving from door to door, following a woman who had been watching the battle as she too tried to slip away.

Kosar met A’Meer at the corner of the square.

“A’Meer!” he said. “Mage shit, A’Meer, I thought you’d be dead.”

“It was only a splash,” she said. “Only a…” Her white skin had grown livid as blood pooled beneath its surface. Veins stood proud on her forehead and cheeks, her eyes were flowered with bursting vessels and her nose leaked blood, but still she held out the sword to him. “It was my father’s.”

“We have to get away from here,” Kosar said. He took the sword and sheathed it. Blood-caked dust fell from the scabbard. “The other Monks are heading this way. Most of Pavisse must have heard.” He quickly unwrapped the sodden strips of cloth from his fingers and discarded them, fearful that some of the Monk’s blood may have splashed there. He felt fine so far. No burning in his veins. No hint of death approaching, at least not from within.

“Rafe?”

“The witch took him through the park. She said she’d tell us where to find them.”

A’Meer’s eyelids were fluttering, and when she coughed she brought up blood. “She may have slayer antidote,” she whispered. “Hey, done two Monks now. Getting good at this.”

The tumbler was roaming the square, rebounding from walls and the park gates, pausing every now and then when one of the Monks cried out. It would rest on them, shifting position like a dog making a comfortable place to lie, and then roll on. Its movements were slower and more ponderous, as if it was sated for now. It left bloody prints on the ground, and soon it looked as if a hundred battles had been fought there, not just one.

Kosar bent down and let A’Meer fall across his right shoulder. She was heavier than she looked-perhaps because she still carried much of her weaponry, even though she’d left a good portion of it in the Monk-but Kosar headed off quickly, fear driving him on, thumping his heart and pounding his legs as he ran. He bore right and they passed from street to alley to courtyard, heading across the hidden districts to the other side of the park. Many people watched them pass, and a few pointed and nudged their neighbors. There they are, fighting a red demon, I tell you! Amazing that even one of them survived.

Kosar knew that they had to leave Pavisse. There was no point in searching for Rafe Baburn now; the witch had taken him away, and for whatever reasons she coveted him, she wanted to keep him safe. She would take him out of town and head north or east, away from Pavisse and Trengborne. If Hope kept her promise she would get a message to them somehow, although Kosar had no notion of how she would achieve this. If they could escape Pavisse, if they were not caught by Monks or militia, if A’Meer did not die and leave him floundering through this on his own… they were still back at the beginning. Rafe was as distant now as he had been before they left A’Meer’s home.

Everything depended on Hope.

RAFE RAN. ITfelt as though they had been running forever. Out of the square and away from the thief and the warrior woman, through the streets with the panicking hordes, Hope pulling him into an open doorway when the crowds ahead of them parted around a rushing figure clad in red. It swung its sword from side to side as if hacking its way through a jungle. Most people moved aside in time; a few did not. Rafe thought of Trengborne again, and his parents, and Hope need not have placed her hand over his mouth to keep him silent.

Although the witch was old it was Rafe who tired first. The last couple of days had been exhausting, physically and mentally, and the voices were bringing him down. The incessant whispering in his mind, as if there were things scheming in there that were apart from him, presences that used him as a channel to their own ends. He knew that this was wrong-there was nothing inside but him, his own wounded soul-and yet that frightened him more. It frightened him because it meant that perhaps the witch was right.

The voices spoke in images, like a dream trying to make itself known, and although some of the smells and sounds and tastes they gave him were familiar, combined they were an enigma. Perhaps they marked him out and made him special. But as yet they were doing little to really help.

Upon reaching the outskirts of the town they slowed to a fast walk. Hope paused at a stall now and then-bought some food, bartered for some warm clothing-but they never stopped for long. Because there were more of those things after them, those things that kept coming when they were shot and stabbed and beaten and knocked down, and even after they’d been bitten by a slayer spider they kept coming…

At the edge of Pavisse, beyond the final rough human encampment at a place where nothing ahead of them was man-made, Hope stopped at last. She looked at Rafe and smiled, and her tattoos smiled as well.

“It’s dangerous out there,” she said, nodding the way they had to go. “People don’t travel that much anymore, and mostly for good reason. Things are changing. I’ve heard lots of gossip and myth, son, but if even a small part of it is true… well, it’s dangerous out there.”

“Worse than back in the town?”

She looked at him for a long time, so long that he thought something had happened to her. Maybe she’d fallen into some witchy sleep. But she was merely looking, and in her eyes he saw wonder.

“You know those things were coming for you, don’t you, Rafe?”

“I suppose I do.”

“And you know why. I’ve told you why.”

He did not want to answer that, but he found himself nodding. The voices, he thought. Because the land talks to me. It talks, and the Red Monks think that the Mages will hear.

“I have to keep you safe,” she said.

“What about the thief?”

“The thief and his Shantasi? Well, I did give my word. And I suppose we could always do with someone who knows how to use a sword. Don’t worry, I’ll get word to them, if they’re still alive. Which I doubt.”

“How will you do that?”

The witch stared across the plains at the horizon shivering in heat haze. “First, you have to help me find a skull raven.”

They set off away from Pavisse and into the wilds. A steady breeze brought cooler air from the north. It seemed to quieten the voices in Rafe’s head, but they were not calm. They were waiting.

Tim Lebbon

Dusk