Dusk

Chapter 18

KOSAR’S FINGERS HURTlike the Black. Yet now more than ever he needed his delicate touch, the gentle manipulation that years as a thief had bestowed on him, even after his self-inflicted branding. His fingertips were raw and bleeding, but the fresh blood was all his own. He did not appear to be infected with the slayer venom.

He breathed quietly and slowly through his mouth. His bare feet followed the contours of the ground, flexing and settling comfortably around stony protrusions, a patch of hay, a clump of horseshit. His hands were held out from his side so that his clothing did not rub and whisper. Each step took many heartbeats, so his weight had time to settle on its own.

He had not stolen anything for years. His heart was beating hard and fast-he knew the man could not hear, yet still he willed it to quieten-and the mere act of metaphorically tracing his own steps was thrilling. However near A’Meer was to death, however much danger they were in from Red Monks and whatever else might be on their trail, he was actually enjoying exercising the talents of a thief. He could not make himself calm, composed and collected, but he was still pleased to find that his skills were not as rusty as he had believed. He had already passed two horses without so much as making them move. The stable was dark-only a little of the dusky light found its way through the holed roof-and the ground underfoot was uneven. There was a whole range of sounds ready to alert the guard to Kosar’s presence.

He came to within an arm’s reach of success before he gave himself away. It was his sword, its unfamiliar length finally swinging and tapping against a wooden stall as he shifted.

The man stood and spun around, eyes wide and glassy with rotwine, hand reaching instinctively for his own sword.

So much for silent theft. Kosar leapt forward and punched him in the throat, silencing any shout he might have made, and as the man sank to his knees Kosar kicked the back of his neck three times in quick succession. The guard went limp and collapsed to the floor.

The horses stamped in their stalls and snorted, and Kosar did the only thing he could to quieten them down: he stood and waited. It did not take long. They were all but asleep anyway, and the flurry of noise had been brief enough.

Kosar bent to the shape on the ground, felt his wrist to make sure he was still alive, then slipped the ring of keys from his belt. He opened the first stall and saddled the horse quickly, soothing it and whispering into its ear as he moved. The horse in the second stall stood still and let him saddle up, and then he led them both out into the moonlight.

He looked up at the big house. No lights had come on, no windows were opened, no raging owner had come running from the doors. Even if they had heard they would more than likely leave the trouble to the stable hand, not wanting to face any potential problems themselves. They were rich enough to buy new horses. Kosar had no qualms about stealing their best two. The only fact that troubled him was how much he may have hurt the lad, but it had been necessary. He was not dead. At worst he would wake up to a headache and a screaming match with his employer.

Kosar opened the yard gates and led the horses outside, wincing at the din their shod hooves made on the cobbled road. Once out in the street he did his best to blend in. A few people gave the two horses appraising glances and that was good, that kept attention away from Kosar, with his bloodied hands and blood-spattered clothing camouflaged in the failing light.

He made his way quickly through the park gates that Hope and Rafe must have exited while he and A’Meer were still battling the Red Monk. There were few people using the park now; night must bring new dangers, people and things drawn from below the ground at dusk’s first touch.

A’Meer was where he had left her, propped against a tree with her sword clasped in one hand. She was unconscious now, blood painting her beautiful pale face from eyes and nose and mouth. The veins on her temples and forehead stood out in stark relief, but Kosar was reasonably sure that they had not swelled any more. Perhaps the poison had slowed, its effect come to a head, but it might yet kill her. He bent closer, trying to make out her face in the weak moonlight. Where blood did not touch her skin, it was pale and sickly as the death moon.

“Come on,” Kosar said, holding A’Meer beneath her armpits and lifting. His fingertips stung, but she seemed to help herself up, pushing weakly at the ground until she stood propped against him. He held her there for a while, gathering his strength to hoist her into the saddle. He knew that he would have to lay her across the horse’s back, tie her there, and he had no idea what damage the pressure on her stomach might do. For all he knew it would aid the slayer’s poison in bursting her innards, but there was no alternative.

That was his problem: he knew so little.

Something rustled the leaves in the tree above their heads and Kosar glanced up. He was badly on edge, and exhaustion was only just around the corner. He stared through the branches and leaves at the glow of the life moon, and the rustling stopped.

“A’Meer,” he whispered into the unconscious woman’s ear, “I have to lift you onto a horse. Go limp, let me help you up, then I’ll tie you there to stop you spilling off.” He wrapped an arm around her waist, held her uninjured arm across his shoulders and half carried, half dragged her to the horses. The animals stood still as he bent and let A’Meer fall across his shoulder. “Going to lift you up now.” He stood, placed both arms under A’Meer’s small waist and pushed. “Maybe I’ll take advantage of you,” he said. She slid onto the saddle and he paused, both arms locked straight to stop her from falling. “Come on, A’Meer, don’t give me this shit, you’re doing this on purpose.” He pushed at her arm and shoulder, slipping her sideways across the saddle so that her arms dropped down the other side.

She was totally limp. There was no help from her, no attempt to aid him at all, and for the first time Kosar seriously thought that she might be dead. He dashed around the front of the horse and knelt by A’Meer’s head, listening hard to hear her breathing, sighing with relief when she expelled a hot breath against his neck.

“A chair,” she whispered, “I like it over a chair.”

Kosar laughed quietly. “I’ll get you out of here,” he said, “then we’ll see if the witch keeps her promise.”

“Northeast,” A’Meer said. “Away from Trengborne.”

“And toward Noreela City?”

A’Meer moved her shoulders in what must have been a shrug.

Kosar jumped onto the other horse and led them from the park. The darkness was waking behind them-more rustling in the bushes and shrubs, splashes in the large pond as something rose from the depths, hoarse giggles from a gang of shadows flitting around the park’s perimeter-and he was glad to leave.

Once back on the streets he rode fast, conscious that night was here at last and that the darkness turned the town into a whole new place. He saw shadows darting through deeper shadows, and they may have been wraiths. A huddle of fodder wound their way along the street, their inbred insecurity making the dark their preferred home. Metal scraped along stone, and wet slapping sounds came from the dark infinity between two large buildings. Machines were silhouetted against the moonlight here and there-not as many as in the hidden districts, but there were always some-and Kosar tried not to see their sharp spears, curved shells, blocked facades. On his travels he had heard rumors of machine graveyards, and dusk gave Pavisse that appearance. They disturbed him more at night; it was then that their purpose seemed so close to the surface.

More so tonight of all nights. Tonight, magic was on the run.

They left Pavisse quickly and without incident. He saw no Red Monks. That was a good thing for him now, but a bad thing for the future. It meant that the Monks had probably left Pavisse ahead of them, moving out from the town in pursuit of Rafe and the witch. And that meant that, whether Hope delivered a message to him and A’Meer or not, the Red Monks stood between them.

THE MESSAGE CAMEsoon after they had left Pavisse.

If Kosar had had his wits about him, the messenger would have been killed. If he had been paying attention, the witch’s words would have never found their way to him and A’Meer. Many things changed in the land of Noreela that night, and many destinies were entwined. If Kosar had not fallen asleep on his horse, the future may have been a very different place.

He was on a boat, bobbing in the network of drainage ditches he had been digging around Trengborne for thirty years. They had expanded into canals, taking up most of the land and negating their original purpose, but their digging had become a purpose in itself. The boat was of his own making. He rode it alone, pulled along by a horse on the bank, and the people of Trengborne had gathered in the distance to welcome him back from another digging expedition. They had furbats and flowers and bottles of their best wine, and one of them, a boy called Rafe, held two tankards of Old Bastard for both of them to enjoy.

In the distance, past the crowds, the village of Trengborne had changed. When he had left sometime in the past it had been a dead place, filled with people waiting to die, the crops failing and the animals showing ribs through their weak hides. Now…

Now there were things in the village, large and small, fast and slow, moving and still, colorful and bland. Most were solid with pulsing sacs at various points around their constructs, stone mantels bearing dull yellow masses of fleshy parts, shimmering and steaming in the heat. Appendages shifted in the sunlight, turning on multijoints, digging or scraping or building, forming solid curved limbs that propeled them over the ground like carts, except that these steered themselves. Many had long, tapering tendrils sprouting from their bodies, dipping down to touch or pierce the ground, drawing energy, drawing magic. Because these were machines.

“Machines!” Kosar said, but then the people waiting for him along the banks of the canal drew suddenly nearer, and he saw that all but Rafe wore red.

And madness colored their faces.

“MACHINES!” KOSAR SCREAMED, and as his eyes sprang open he tumbled from his horse in shock.

“Kosar,” A’Meer said, “I know where Rafe is.”

The impact had winded him, his foot was tangled in the stirrup, his bare bloody fingers grated with dust, and now A’Meer-half-dead, infected with a poison that may yet kill her-was talking to him. He twisted his foot free and kicked at the horse’s side as it trotted away. Then he glanced back at A’Meer’s horse… and froze.

In the death moonlight he saw a skull raven perched on her back.

“Kosar!” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re still asleep after that fall. Did you hear me? I know where Rafe and the witch are. Help me sit up, and then we have to ride. Ride fast. ”

“Keep still,” Kosar said. “Very still.” He stood slowly, painfully, and started drawing his sword.

“No!” she said. “This is the witch’s message.”

Kosar kept his hand on the hilt of his sword, moving closer to A’Meer’s mount. The raven fluttered its huge wings and he felt the breeze lift his hair. It stared at him with black pearl eyes, reflecting a moon in each. “I don’t understand.”

“It spoke to me when I was unconscious, gave me the witch’s words. They’re camped a few miles north of here.”

“That’s a skull raven.”

“Yes, she gave it the message. She’s a witch, Kosar, she has her ways. Now, please, let me sit on my own. What blood I have left inside me is collecting in my head, and I can’t think straight. At least let me die sitting up.”

“You’re not going to die,” he said.

“I hope not. I don’t know how much worse it is. I feel… strange inside. I think I might be bleeding in there.”

Kosar helped A’Meer down from her horse, the skull raven flapping off to a nearby tree to watch their efforts. It cawed quietly, and Kosar kept glancing its way. He had never been this close to a skull raven, but all the tales he had heard were bad. He did not trust it one bit.

“How did it tell you?”

“In my sleep. In my dream.”

“I had a dream,” he said. “I saw machines in a village filled with Red Monks.”

“We should get there as fast as we can,” she said weakly, leaning against him, smelling like death. “If there is an antidote for this and the witch has it, the sooner I take it the better.”

“And then what?”

“And then we run with Rafe.” She said it simply, matter-of-factly, as if Kosar should have known that all along. Run with Rafe. So that was it? His future was running from murderous Red Monks?

The bird called out again, louder this time, and it was answered from somewhere far away.

A’Meer sat in her saddle, leaning forward so that she almost breathed in the horse’s mane. Kosar found his own horse and remounted, and this time he and A’Meer rode side by side. The skull raven fluttered on ahead, waiting for them, flying on again, never quite losing itself to the dark. It circled overhead once or twice as if catching moonlight.

After hours spent traveling through the night, the bird still hovering but joined now by more shapes, all of them calling quietly, they mounted a small hill and saw the flicker of a campfire at its base.

RAFE WAS THEfirst to hear the horses.

He and Alishia had been watching each other through the dancing flames of the campfire, smiling, glancing away, looking again. Something about her eyes drew him in, but there was a disturbing factor there repulsing him as well, a sense that beneath her outside beauty lay something rotten. If he closed his eyes as she watched him he could smell bad things, feel the breath of the world stuttering against the walls of his heart, hear worried whispers passing through blades of grass, apprehensive heartbeats pulsing from the depths of the land. So he kept his eyes open, and while he knew that she was wrong, the young lad in him reveled in her smile.

The horses came quietly, but not so quiet as to be secretive. He knew who rode them. Hope panicked and Rafe spoke soothingly, reminded her of the skull ravens she had sent out, and soon Kosar and A’Meer rode into the circle of light cast by the fire.

A’Meer was dying.

Kosar took her gently from the horse and asked Hope about cures, antidotes, all the while refusing to see the witch shaking her head. Alishia watched, and Trey sat back in the shadows, keeping away from these new topsiders.

Rafe was told of a deep dread in the fledge miner’s mind. The whispers told him. The echoes of sunlight filled his mind with news.

Something huge was growing inside. It was a potential already fat with possible futures, all of them far wider and deeper than any he had ever dreamed possible. He looked down between his feet at the pale green grass, the dust, the corpse of the land that had been rotting for three centuries since the Cataclysmic War, when the Mages had taken nature’s trust and torn it asunder, corrupting themselves and that trust in the process. And the growing knowledge promised him a second chance. It was still hidden away, developing in safety, but already its tentative tendrils were exploring outward, experiencing Rafe’s own senses instead of feeding sensations to him. He knew the whole world-a million facts and the truth of a million rumors-and it would have driven him mad, had not the world itself been protecting him right then.

He went to A’Meer and she smiled at him, even though she could surely not see him through eyes so bloodshot that they looked black in the firelight. Her face and scalp were networks of raised veins, some of them burst and hemorrhaging beneath her skin, filling her insides with life-giving blood that would soon kill her.

“All because of me,” Rafe said, but A’Meer kept smiling because she knew who and what he was.

And then he touched her.

THE SHADE SAW, and rose to the fore. Alishia stood and screamed, an exhalation of pure rhapsody, because the shade knew that it saw the future: its life, long and everlasting; its potential, realized again and again; its reward from its god, all of it earned, given and taken freely and with love.

It saw magic.

Behind it, repressed beneath the sudden exultation, Alishia’s true mind recoiled in terror, letting out a scream far beyond the physical. The shade reveled in the feelings that evoked, rolled its soul around the other and pulled away quickly, tearing scraps from Alishia and watching them spin away into infinity. The time it had spent in here was a time without end compared to the eternity it had been less than nothing. And yet, alive though the shade was, it knew that it had to leave.

Magic! It had seen magic! The woman lay whole unbloodied and afresh, and the people watching had stood back or fallen down in terror… all but the boy who had laid his hands on the dying woman, dying no more.

The shade had something to tell its god. One more brief period of nothingness, back into the void, back into the blankness it so hated, and then as promised its god would reward it fully. Reward it with forever.

The shade’s scream belittled Alishia’s continuing psychic tumult, shattering her mind as it tore itself away, ripping her up as its immeasurable shadow tendrils withdrew, screaming again as it left the body and plunged back into less than nothing.

All the way back the shade screamed. But deep within the new thing that was its mind, where memories now dwelled and sensations vied to be recalled, it knew that its god would be pleased.

AFTER ALMOST TWOdays flying day and night, Lenora had lost several hawks and their riders. None of her Krotes had shouted or pleaded for help as their mounts slowly drifted seaward, and she respected them for that. They died with honor, having not even sighted their target. They were as much victims of the coming battle at those that would die on Noreelan soil.

They had fallen below the cloud cover now, and the sighting of their first boat caused much excitement. Lenora sent three down to kill the fishermen, and when they came back up they carried the heads of five people with them. They shouted, kissing the mouths of the dead, tossing the heads across to friends and branding themselves with Noreelan blood for the first time. Lenora let them celebrate. She knew that by the end of that day they would have reached the tip of The Spine, and from there it was another day’s flight across the Bay of Cantrassa to their target.

She listened for her daughter’s shade, but there was nothing but wind in her ears.

As she neared Noreela for the first time in centuries, she thought briefly of their initial discovery of Dana’Man, and how the Krotes and Mages had made it their own.

TEN DAYS AFTERdrifting northward from Noreela, they spied land. It was a vast white island, stretching as far as they could see to the east and west, and the Mages commanded that they should land there. Their ships had no supplies, the Krotes were injured and downtrodden, and a couple more days at sea would likely kill them all. Ice hung from their charred rigging, weighing the vessels down. The stink of death seemed to exude from the timbers. And although Lenora felt strangely reborn since Angel’s kiss, she knew that in those desperate days, death was never far away.

They approached a natural inlet and anchored. There was no sign of civilization anywhere: no buildings or boats, and no indication that anyone had ever set foot here before. No wildlife, either, and though that was strange, they were too tired and defeated to let it worry them.

The Krotes had all come from the many diverse races on Noreela, and they knew the legends of the northern seas. Wild lands, dead water, an infinity of lifelessness. Great snow clouds were already oozing over the white mountains inland, promising more heavy falls soon. Ice groaned and creaked around the bay. It nudged against the ships, exerting a painful pressure on the already damaged hulls. Lenora wondered what they would eat, should they decide to stay here. But right then, hope did not stretch that far.

S’Hivez appeared on the deck of one of the Krote ships. He took a rowing boat ashore on his own, climbed a rocky formation sticking out into the bay, made his way to the mainland proper and took out a knife. Even from where their damaged ships were anchored in the bay, most of the Krotes could see the splash of red blood on this virgin land. “You are Dana’Man!” S’Hivez shouted, and the land was named.

Thus ended Lenora’s journey from Noreela as a Krote of the Mages, and began her time on Dana’Man as one of their lieutenants. The time of the Cataclysmic War was over, and the beginning of their three-hundred-year exile was beginning. Magic had gone, though sorcerers like the Mages always had something about them. Chemicala, some said, tricks available only to those with the knowledge. But Lenora always believed that they had held on to some of the effects of magic, at least. They had been too wrapped up in it-and it in them-for all effects to vanish in that one instant.

Angel had given her endless life, after all.

DRIFTING DOWN TOsea level, spying the faint haze of Noreela on the horizon, Lenora thought only fleetingly of her three hundred years on Dana’Man: finding the old civilizations there; the slaughter and enslavery; the eventual changing of each tribe to live the way of the Krote. That seemed more like ancient history than even their rout from Noreela beforehand, a brief, motionless interval in the long story of the Mages. A story in which she had become a major part.

As she led the first assault on the giant land of Noreela, and a new age began, she heard a shadowy voice at the back of her mind. As yet she could not make out what it had to say. But there was plenty of time.

LUCIEN MALINI LEFTPavisse on the fastest horse he could steal.

Behind him, the remaining Red Monks spread north and east from the town out across hills, through valleys, scouring forests and ravines, hamlets and farmsteads, searching desperately for the fleeing boy. They knew that if he and his band reached Noreela City they would be lost; they could go to ground there and remain hidden for weeks, and in that time the boy’s curse would be working its way out, filling him and spilling eventually to offer itself up again for abuse. Common folk of Noreela would welcome the magic back into their hands, but so would the Mages. And this time-Noreela’s armies too weak to fight, its people apathetic-the Mages would have their way. There would be no rout. There would be no repeat of the Cataclysmic War. There would be true cataclysm.

The horse pounded across the foothills, Malini urging it on, plains and woodland to their left and mountains to the right. As they skirted an old swallow hole the horse stumbled and almost spilled Lucien to the ground. He hung on to the animal’s mane, gripping with his knees, glancing back at the hole in the land and wondering how many more were waiting beneath the surface. Perhaps they would erupt and conjoin in one final explosive event, swirling the whole of Noreela into a giant whirlpool of earth and flesh, mountains and cities, people and dreams. The land was fading fast-he had traveled far, he had seen it all-and the Monks knew that its eventual demise, or a transmutation into something else entirely, would be the only final outcome. That saddened him, but it pleased him too. It meant that the Mages would be defeated forever. With no land there was no magic, and with no magic… the Mages would rot their lives away, unfulfilled, powerless, their evil fragmenting into eternity.

That thinking did not detract from his aims today. The future was a shy place, and it might be far different from how any of them imagined. The Red Monks believed in the final cataclysm, but there was no guarantee, no sure way to confirm their beliefs. It could happen tomorrow, it could happen a thousand years from now. However soon, now that magic was bleeding back into the land they had to fight to keep it from the Mages’ hands.

He was riding for the Monastery. The rest of the Order had to be warned that magic had returned. It had gone far beyond those few Monks who had searched through Pavisse, the one that had died in Trengborne without killing the boy. Rafe Baburn was young, naive and inexperienced, and he should have been killed long before now. Three Monks dead already-each worth a dozen men in strength and tenacity-and still the boy ran, accompanied by the Shantasi and those others that had taken to his cause. Lucien did not mourn the dead Monks, but their failure rankled. This should have been finished already. And he knew that the more time passed and the more powerful the boy became, the more likely it was that the Mages would hear of magic’s reemergence.

There would be no recriminations, no blame, no reprimands; the Order was too mechanical for that. The fleeting idea that one of them should have ridden for the Monastery days ago, when they first got wind of the magic in the boy, flashed across Lucien’s mind but he pushed it down. The rage had been upon him. There had been no reason to believe that the boy would survive.

So he rode, heading south for the Monastery on Lake Denyah. Night fell and he spurred the horse on, riding by the light of the death moon. Howling things closed in on him and veered away again, smelling his rage and the heat of his hate. Heading away from the boy only kindled his hatred more. The horse stumbled and fell, tipping Lucien onto rocks, but he shrugged off his smashed shoulder and remounted, kicking the horse into a gallop once more. His shattered bones ground together in concert with the horse’s snorting. Blood clotted around the bones, easing them apart and stiffening his shoulder into a solid knot of scar. In one small valley he rode through decay, a place where the ground itself had died and was slowly rotting away to the bedrock, giving off a gaseous miasma that caught the moonlight and kept it for itself. Wavering images passed through. Lucien rode through the souls of the land, dispersing them, feeling their coolness, grinning as they tried and failed to freeze his blood. Wraiths called to him in the night but he ignored them, unconcerned at such nebulous entities. His mind was focused on two things: the future-the magic, the return of the curse that had ruined the land.

And reinforcements.

Tim Lebbon

Dusk

Tim Lebbon

Dusk