Dusk

Chapter 22

ON THE SECONDday of their journey south, dawn rose red. The Monks were probably still pursuing them. The rain had stopped during the night and now the ground had begun to steam. Their clothes were sodden, their horses exhausted and they needed to rest. Kosar found himself turning more unsettled, not less. Rafe was becoming a stranger to them all, and for the first time Kosar had begun to feel a particular, easily defined emotion toward the boy. Fear.

THE PREVIOUS EVENING, as they sheltered from the rain on the edge of a small woodland and tried to prepare a meal, A’Meer revealed what Kosar had already guessed: she wanted them to go to New Shanti. She stated her case as plainly and honestly as she could. It was her cause and aim to protect new magic should it arise; it was her duty to return to New Shanti to report its recurrence; and the safest place for all of them would be Hess. It was as far south as they could go without venturing into Kang Kang. They would be protected by Shantasi warriors, and Rafe’s magic would have a chance to mature and reveal itself more in its own time. If the Mages returned to Noreela with an army, Hess was the best place for them all.

Hope objected vehemently. Want it for yourself! and Can’t trust a Shantasi, and Where do we go from there? It did not descend into an argument-not quite-mainly because A’Meer was still so tired from her injuries. Hope’s distrust simmered, but eventually the others discussed the matter and talked her around. Even Hope finally admitted that it was the only place to go. North to the Duke was madness, not only because it would send them against the pursuing Monks, but because the Duke no longer held power. He may well have the dregs of an army, but none of Rafe’s protectors had any faith in a failed leader. Directly east was Ventgoria and eventually the Poison Forests; west took them closer to the Monk’s Monastery, a place they did not need to be. And any way they went, the Mages could well be on their trail. We can fight them, Hope whispered, trying not to let Rafe hear. Sitting on his own at the edge of the forest, he was as distant as he had been all day. We have magic!

Fighting is exactly what they want, A’Meer said, and that silenced them all. None of them had seen the Cataclysmic War, but they all knew the stories. They had no wish to see its like in their time. And yet, the storms were gathering. Kosar felt more and more controlled, edged along a preordained path that none of them would have chosen. A descent toward pain and conflict seemed inevitable. Kosar was angry at Fate for entangling him in this, because at last he had begun to feel settled. Trengborne was a nothing village with nothing going for it, but it had started to feel like home.

Now here he was again, wandering the land, heading toward places he had not visited for decades, if at all. And though he was not wise or particularly learned, this journey felt more ill-fated than any he had ever undertaken.

That night, huddled beneath a blanket with A’Meer and enjoying their sharing of warmth, he had told her of his thoughts. She had not answered.

They slept without eating. Trey and Kosar gathered roots, fruits and some edible bark from within the woods, but upon returning to their makeshift camp and starting to prepare the produce, they found it to be rotten. Maggots crawled through the tuskfruit, themselves stinking of decay. The steady shifting of the trees, the soft low groaning of timbers grinding together in the breeze, took on new connotations. In Rafe, new magic slept, but old magic had turned the land sour.

“WE’LL BE ATthe River San soon,” Kosar said. He and A’Meer rode on ahead, sharing a horse now so that Hope could ride next to Rafe. Trey followed on behind, leading the horse with comatose Alishia tied into its saddle. Her mount kept staggering, blood dripping from its nostrils, and yet it plodded on. Kosar had some vague intention to steal another horse when they came to San, but something held him back from planning that far ahead. It was the next hour that mattered the most; if they made it past that, they could plan ahead another hour, and then another. At the end of their journey New Shanti may well be waiting, but they had to move one small step at a time.

“Have you ever been to San?” A’Meer asked.

Kosar nodded. “A long time ago. It was a river-fishing port then. Not much more than a village, but it’ll have food we can buy, maybe a horse.”

“We need to go around it, not through. Any trace of us in San will give the Red Monks a trail to follow.”

Kosar thought about it, knew that she was right.

“And there’s the river itself,” A’Meer said. “It’s wide and slow. We’ll need to cross it somewhere. We use a bridge, we’ll be seen. We use a ferry, we have to pay our way and the ferryman will see us.”

“We could swim it,” Kosar suggested.

A’Meer glanced behind them, looked across at Kosar and raised an eyebrow. “I could, even though I’m still weak. You could, even though you’re an old man.” He protested, and she smiled. “Hope I suspect is stronger than she looks, and Rafe I’m sure could make his way. Trey? Alishia? The horses?”

“We could go upstream. The river’s narrower there in the foothills, easier to cross.”

“And lose a day. Have you forgotten where this river leads?”

He frowned for a moment, and then shivered as if someone was staring at his back. He turned in his saddle and met Hope’s eyes, offered her a smile and faced front again before being disappointed. “Lake Denyah,” he said.

“The Monks’ Monastery is there.” A’Meer rode in silence for a couple of minutes, and Kosar could see her thinking. She frowned and her little nose creased at the bridge. He had kissed her there sometimes, when her face relaxed after sex. He surprised himself at his depth of mourning for older, gentler times.

“We have to assume that word has reached the Monastery,” she said. “If they’d known at the Monastery much before now there would have been hundreds of Monks against us in Pavisse, not just a few. But at least one would have ridden south as the others tried to keep on our trail. There’s a chance we’ve thrown them for now, but they saw me and they know where I’m from. They’ll know for sure where I’ll want to take Rafe.”

“The Monastery must be two hundred miles from Pavisse,” Kosar said. “There’s no way one of them could have made that journey yet.”

“They’re not people, Kosar. They’re obsessed. They’re powerful. And do you think we’d be traveling this slowly if we didn’t have to?”

Kosar glanced back again. Trey and Alishia had fallen behind, their horse struggling under the unconscious woman’s weight, snorting, blood misting the air around its nose.

“What are you two plotting?” Hope said, spurring her horse to catch up to them. Kosar wanted to believe that there was a hint of humor in her voice, but her face said otherwise. Her tattoos were sharp and defined, displaying her intense concentration.

“We’re plotting how to tumble you from your horse and bury you up to your neck in quicksand,” A’Meer said.

Hope stared at the Shantasi, raising her eyebrows. “You and which army?”

Kosar could not help uttering a bark of a laugh. The fact that Hope did not berate him could have been a sign that she was relaxing. .. or perhaps she disregarded him totally. “We’re debating how to cross the river,” he said. “There are several bridges and a ferry, but we’d rather not be seen.”

“Steal a boat.”

“It would need to be a big boat for all of us,” A’Meer said.

“Steal a ferry.”

“And the ferryman?”

Hope shrugged. Kosar did not like the look in her eyes.

“We’re no killers,” he said quietly. A’Meer and Hope both looked at him, perhaps both doubting their own thoughts. There was an uncomfortable pause, during which Kosar was silently pleading, Agree with me!

“That’s right,” A’Meer said. She did not sound convincing, nor convinced.

“You think the Monks will be coming upriver?”

“Almost certainly.”

They rode in silence for a while, the only sound the clump clump of horses’ hooves on the stony surface. They had been walking across dead ground for an hour now, a place where life had been sucked from the soil. There were no birds, no animals, nothing to eat or be eaten. Here and there, weathered white bones protruded from the hard soil, leathery skin draped across them in defeat. Kosar craved greenery, and he breathed a sigh of relief when they crested a small hill and saw a long, sweeping panorama of grassland and trees heading down to the distant River San.

They paused for a while partway down the hill, giving the horses a chance to drink from a gurgling spring, drinking from their own water bottles. Kosar’s throat was parched and scored by the dust of that dead place behind them, and he wondered if things would ever return to normal.

“There’s San,” he said, pointing into the distance. The village was a thin spread of buildings strung along the riverbank. From this far away it was little more than a smudge on the landscape, but he knew that there were quays in front of each building, small fishing boats tied to them, sprawled nets being repaired or untangled, the stench of fish permanently ingrained in the wood of the place. He had not spent any time there other than to eat and trade for some food, and that had been a long time ago, but he still remembered some of the people he had met. Hard people, their life filled and ruled by the fishing that kept them alive. Sometimes they would spend days traveling down the river, almost as far as Lake Denyah, and return home with nothing more than a few weedy slinks in their holds. Other times-rarer-they would haul in a full catch, and then the village would celebrate for a week. They lived day by day, bartering rather than selling their fish. They had seemed excited when he arrived, and pleased to see him go. Strangers had no place in San; they were just another mouth to feed.

“We need to go around,” A’Meer said. “We’ll go as far as those hillsides.” She shielded her eyes against the sun and pointed east. “We can work our way around behind the hills, down into the valley, find some way to cross the river and then head south.”

“Easy,” Hope said. “Piece of piss.”

“Easy,” Kosar agreed. Hope glanced at him and raised one eyebrow. Her tattoos twitched into something that could well have been the beginnings of a smile. “And then the River Cleur to cross,” he continued, “Cleur to bypass, then down to Mareton and into the Mol’Steria Desert, providing the Cataclysmic War hasn’t changed the landscape beyond all recognition. I’ve heard of places this far south where the air is frozen into glass.” They sat contemplating their journey, the horses splashed in the stream, he nodded. “Piece of piss.”

“We should get Trey to do his thing,” A’Meer said. “See if the way is clear.”

“Every second we sit here brings us closer to being caught,” Hope said. “We should move on, chance it. Even if he does look and see the plains between the rivers swarming with Monks, what choices do we have?”

“If that’s the case, we could always head east through the Widow’s Peaks,” Kosar said.

“And meet Ventgoria’s steam dragons? No thanks. I’ll take my chances with a handful of Red Monks any day.”

“How about a hundred?” A’Meer asked. She called Trey over, pointed out their route and nodded as he moved away and sat with his back against a rock. “He’ll see what he can see,” she said. “And we could all do with a rest. An hour to regain some strength. I’ll try to catch some meat, though we’ll have to eat it raw.”

“No we won’t,” Hope said. “You catch us something decent and I’ll make sure it’s cooked before the fledger comes out of his trance. No fire. No smoke to give us away. You haven’t tasted spiced sheebok until you’ve tasted mine.”

A’Meer smiled at the witch, clapped Kosar on the shoulder and plucked her bow and quiver from her horse’s saddle harness.

As Trey chewed on fledge and Hope sat with Rafe, Kosar stared down at San, the wide river running past the fishing village, and beyond. Way over the horizon lay the Mol’Steria Desert, and two hundred miles south of that was Kang Kang. Beyond that, places that few had ever seen and survived. Once past these rivers and little fishing villages, they truly were entering the wilds.

Air frozen into glass; ground stripped to its bedrock; places where the sky itself erupted into flame. He had heard many tales of how these lands were changing. He had never felt the need to see for himself.

SOMETHING WAS DIFFERENT. The fledge had become stale, perhaps, or maybe he had taken too much in too short a time. He chewed and it was rough, gritty, not smooth and sweet as it broke across his tongue.

For a few seconds Trey panicked. Soon he would have no fledge left at all, and then his final link to his underground life would be gone. He would only have his memories, and those were ruled by his terrible flight from below, his mother’s final sacrifice and the fledge-fueled touch of a Nax as it awoke, raging. But then as he chewed he looked around him at the greenery of the landscape, the blue sky peering through the dispersing rain clouds, the glinting strip of the river in the distance, and the fledge found its way into his veins and his mind, ready to move him on.

He closed his eyes and slumped back against the rock. He did not need to sleep to travel with the fledge, but his body’s natural reaction was to slip into a gentle slumber. He did not dream-he was still aware of the sounds around him, the breeze stirring the fine hairs on his face and arms, the weight of the mountains in the east-but his mind was buoyed by the drug and given a freedom, released by the first touch of fledge on his heart.

Things were still different. His mind soared but it did not see, not properly. It perceived the outlines of things, mere impressions as if shapes had been pressed into the receptive clay of his awareness. He rose, and as he looked back down he saw the hillside laid out below him, but not in detail. He could sense the cool tumble of the stream somewhere to his right, and below him were the blots of his companions like living rocks mired in the ground.

He dipped down again and touched on Alishia’s mind, afraid of what he would find. As before, it was vast, and though he could not comprehend the scope of that mind, he could understand its emptiness. He drifted, passing through places where Alishia should have been. They were cold, and deep. He moved on toward the single light in the darkness, where he had touched on her consciousness back in the cave. As he drew near he heard her muttering. Yes, yes, there’s plenty to see, plenty to know, and yes, yes, I want to. He edged forward and touched on her mind. What? she said, startled. Who? Has it gone, has it gone for good?

Whatever harmed you has gone.

Harmed? Killed! It slaughtered me.

Who were you talking to?

Made me empty! Everything I was is in tatters.

Alishia, I’m here to help you. Trey edged himself forward, trying to sense just how much of the girl was left. This could have been madness, or an echo, or even the voice of her wraith, still connected to her dying body through disbelief and an unwillingness to let go.

There’s no help to be had, she whispered, and then Trey felt a heavy darkness pressing in from all sides. Alishia did not withdraw; the darkness grew. And it pushed him out.

He was sent away, spinning, rolling through the distorted planes of awareness that the fledge had opened up. He steadied himself and drifted past Kosar, past the witch with her scheming stew of thoughts. The closer he came to Rafe, the clearer the boy’s face became, until Trey’s mind reached out and touched on something beyond comprehension. So much space in there. So many places to hide.

Reeling, Trey guided his mind across the hillside and down toward the village in the distance. He was glad to be away from Alishia and Rafe-such strangeness hurt him-and he saw the gray-blue of sky and the green smudge of the grasslands, and little else. His mind was soft and blurred. Small rocky outcroppings were lost. Clouds became shadows. Here and there living things passed by beneath him, and he was angry that he could not discern them more clearly.

Solidness suddenly disappeared beneath him and the ground was moving, flowing, carrying a million mixed sensations. The river. Trey followed its course, his knowledge of what was below him hazy at best. He passed by places where the river was interrupted, still blank areas like solid shadows compared to the fluid shades of the running water. He tried a mental blink to clear his vision but it was not sight that was affected, nor his ability to project himself. Stale fledge, he thought. Growing staler. This might be the last time he journeyed like this.

And then? What would the witch and the others do with him? Would they cast him aside with poor, flailing Alishia, submit them to the mercy of whatever place they happened to be at the time?

Trey dropped down closer to the river, and then sound and taste changed as he plunged in. The water around him was filled with life, so much more than the dead air above, and for a few seconds he reveled in its multitude. Still he could not truly see, touch, query the alien minds around him. But he was there with them, and for a while that was enough.

Then he rose again and moved quickly along the course of the river. He traveled in the wake of centuries, riding the ripples of the river’s changes of position over time. It had worn rock here, deposited silt there, shaped the floodplain to its own design, twisting over the space of thousands of years like a giant snake shifting its way from the mountains to the distant sea. Histories lay buried in its silty bed-dipping in, Trey sensed the troubled wraiths of the crew of a sunken barge, already rotted to little more than memories but still haunting the place of their demise-and its banks held more recent stories in their embrace. A buried body here; the prow of a smashed boat there.

He moved on. His vision did not improve, his senses remained vague, but he found that with effort he could still identify what he was seeing and sensing. His own intelligence filled in the gaps.

And then the blood.

The river turned red. The color was a brash blow against the sepia view he had grown used to so quickly. He rose quickly from the bloody waters, trying to look away but fascinated by the wash of red traveling against the flow. He drew in his questing thoughts, afraid of being seen, trapped and pulled down… and then the red coalesced into individual parts, and each part was a boat. He drew closer, hiding behind a fold in the plane of reality, and tried to see more clearly.

Each boat was small, topped with a grimy sail, moving across the water like a giant spider, paddles splashing down and hauling them against the flow. They moved fast and the rowers did not tire. They were dressed in red from head to foot.

Trey pulled up and away, fleeing from the river lest he be seen or sensed. These things were powerful, awful and terrifying, but he was sure they could not see as far as him. If they could he would feel them… their senses crawling across his mind, engulfing it in their rage.

Mage shit, Trey thought as he shifted quickly back to his own body, Mage shit, we don’t want to meet them.

“BOATS, FILLED WITHRed Monks,” he said. Kosar and A’Meer frowned at him. Rafe sat a small distance away, watching him as he spoke, but saying and revealing nothing. His eyes-haunted and pained when they had first met-seemed to have settled into something stranger.

“How many boats?”

“Four or five,” Trey said. “Maybe twenty Monks in each. So inhuman. Men and women, but not all there. Like they’re stripped away to the bare bone, their souls… fractured. Flayed down to the basic. What are those things?”

“Things we don’t want to meet,” A’Meer said. “How far?”

Trey closed his eyes, trying to remember; not sure, but unwilling to reveal his uncertainty. They need me, he thought, and I need them to need me. “Not that close,” he said. “Misted by the distance. It’s difficult to judge; I’m not used to casting so far. Before a few days ago, I’d never been more than a couple of miles from home.”

“Never mind,” Kosar said. “At least-”

“Think,” A’Meer hissed. “Give us a best guess! We can’t leave it to chance. Kosar and I barely fought off just one of those red fucks. We meet up with a hundred of them, the first thing I do is fall on my own sword, I swear. We need to know, Trey. We need to know how much time we have.”

He blinked at the short warrior woman. Her black hair was tied back from her pale face, her eyes were beautiful. She wore her weapon harnesses and sheaths like a second skin. He was not sure who scared him the most: the Red Monks, or A’Meer.

“Far enough,” he said, looking past A’Meer and down at the river in the distance. “We’ve got time. They’re moving quickly, but against the flow of the river. We have the horses.”

A’Meer spun away. “We leave now.”

“The rabbit you caught,” Hope said. “I was about to spice it.”

“Do it on the move,” A’Meer said.

“Bad,” Trey said. “I smell something bad about to happen.”

“The river’s not what we think,” a voice said, and they all turned to Rafe. He had barely spoken since the night before, seemingly content to let them guide the way, steer him forward and take control. “It’s much more temperamental than you imagine. It’s just as likely that it will bring the Monks to us as we’re crossing.”

“Your magic tells you this?” Kosar asked.

Rafe looked at the big thief, and for a brief instant Trey saw something flash across the boy’s face that made him look very old. Then he looked out across the plains. “It’s not my magic, Kosar. And no, it doesn’t tell me, it shows me.” He closed his eyes, but they sprang open again. “Look. It shows us already.”

As Trey turned to see what Rafe had seen, he heard Hope gasp: “You’re doing that?”

“The land’s doing it to itself,” Rafe said. “It’s all mixed up, it’s balance is going awry, has been for decades. Air frozen to glass, Kosar? Sinkholes, Trey? The land is eating itself, and we arrived here at just the wrong time.” He shook his head and looked down into his open hands, as if expecting to find himself holding something. “Whatever’s in me, it might already be too late.”

INSIDE, RAFE WASin turmoil. Like the river across the plains, he was battling against himself, feeling the old Rafe-confused, frightened, wanting nothing more than the peace to mourn his dead parents-trying to ignore the strangeness growing within. He could see it, sense it, taste its power and its need for him to nurture and understand. But he did not want it. He willed it away with every breath he took, but like his heartbeat it was always there in the background, whispering to him however hard he tried not to hear.

Such spaces opening up. Such pressure, so precious. And yet this most powerful entity was still much like a baby, needing him, body and mind and soul, to protect it until revelation.

Now it screamed.

“WHAT IN THEname of all that’s fucking magic?” Hope whispered.

“Maybe,” Kosar said. “Maybe.” He reached out to touch A’Meer and found her hand outstretched, waiting for his.

Even from far away they could heard the noise. It came in at them across the plains, rolling like thunder, vibrating through the ground, grasses shimmering in waves as if struck by a sudden wind. Downriver from San, three miles distant from them, the river was in revolt. It looked like a liquid eruption, an explosion of water and spray that rose hundreds of steps into the air, fanned out into a mushroom shape and fell, constantly fed from the tumultuous river. Spray was caught in the high breeze: white where the water was fresh, a dirty red where it had plucked clay from the riverbed, spiky green where trees and shrubs had been ripped out and thrown downstream by the upheaval. The river burst its banks and coursed out onto the floodplain, shoving vegetation before it, mud, other things too small to make out.

“What’s happening?” Kosar said. Nobody answered because none of them knew.

The river flowing downstream past San continued to meet the watery explosion, feeding it like air feeds fire. Rainbows danced within the eruption’s destructive depths, shimmering left and right as the contours of the water mountain changed and shifted. Two rainbows, three, flirting with the water like butterflies. But there was no ceremony here, no one to impress; this was basic, elemental force unleashed, a thrashing power that was whipping out its frenzy on the river surrounding the lowlands.

Downriver, away from the chaos, Kosar noticed that water still seemed to flow along the riverbed. He thought the flow would have lessened, such was the amount being pumped into the air and across the plains, but it seemed full and flush, turbulence transmitted from upstream causing white breakers to batter the shores as far as he could see. Trees downstream started to tilt into the river, their roots exposed and pulled into the mire. But they did not float away. Instead, they bobbed into each other, rising and falling on the disturbed waters but not seeming to move apart from that. Motionless, as if the river was now a lake with no current or flow.

Birds were startled into the air-a flock of geese gobbled their way overhead-and he could see the darting shapes of animals fleeing toward them to seek the high hills. Some were small and he had no concerns about them, but there were a few larger shapes bounding from hedge to bush to copse, instinct still telling them to utilize cover even though their lives may be about to end. What are they? Kosar wondered. They looked big. Most were probably cattle kept by the villagers of San, but maybe there were wolves in there, and perhaps a foxlion or two. His hand stole to his sword, but the sheer power of what they were witnessing soon wiped any threat from his mind.

This is the power of nature gone bad, he thought. And then he realized the truth and he knew that he was wrong. This was all-powerful, yes, but it was not nature, not as it should have been. Rivers in nature ran one way only.

“It’s turning,” he said to no one, but they all heard. “It’s flowing the opposite way. It’s like the land has tilted and the river’s changing direction.”

“It hurts,” Rafe muttered, and then he screamed: “It hurts!”

Kosar turned and saw that the boy had gone to his knees. Hope was there to hold him, talk to him, but there was no comfort to be had.

“It’s flooding the plains,” A’Meer said.

The tumult in the river had lessened somewhat, but now a wave formed and began its journey back upstream. It growled by the banks, scouring them clear of vegetation, picking up boulders and rolling them along, and the roar was like the land screaming as it was cleaved in two. The wave was way beyond the normal confines of the river now, stretching out across the plains a mile wide and still growing. It rumbled, and the land before it cried as if knowing what was to come.

“San,” he said, and he remembered the faces of some of the people he had met. They would be different now, mouths opened in terror and eyes wide, too shocked for tears.

“It won’t take long,” A’Meer said, as if that could make everything better.

There was a relentless inevitability about the wave. It rolled upstream and over the small village of San. From this far away Kosar could make out little detail of San’s destruction, and for that he was glad. A few buildings broke upward, timbers thrusting at the sky, forced up by the deluge. Some of the fishing boats rode the wave for a few seconds before tumbling and being smashed into flotsam, still topping the wave but now in pieces. A couple of the jetties-their posts cast down into the riverbed years before the land had even heard of the Mages-rolled over and over, ripped out and were sent tumbling upstream away from the village.

Of the people from the village of San, he saw nothing.

As if San had been the true target of its upheaval, the wave seemed to spread out and diminish after it passed by. It left little behind. Vague outlines of some of the larger buildings remained, shorn of their roofs and walls collapsed outward. The landscape, the village, the route of the river itself had taken on a uniform gray-brown color, silt coughed up from the bed now smothering everything. The water defied its previous confinement, settling into new shapes: lakes and ponds that bubbled and foamed from their unnatural and forceful births.

It took a few minutes for the waters to calm down.

Kosar and the others were silent but for Rafe’s quiet crying. He shed no actual tears, Kosar saw, as if not wishing to add to the flood. There was little to say so they simply watched. A large rainbow hung over the scene of devastation, its colors too pure to be welcome. The air was filled with swathes of mist, and the watchers soon found its cool touch coalescing on their skin, bringing with it the smell and taste of the disaster.

Eventually the noise subsided, the mists parted and the river ran upstream.

RAFE CRIED ONthe outside, and inside the magic still discovering itself howled. Like a sentient thing it mourned the death of its old existence, and though now resurrected it still felt the pain and betrayal at being misused by the Mages so many years ago. It mourned also the ongoing destruction their misuse had eventually caused. Rafe could not shut out the thoughts because he was not party to them; he was an observer-sympathetic, concerned and unequivocally entwined-but still separate from the power raging within. His fingertips prickled with its potential, his toes and other extremities warm and tingling with the force coursing through him. And in its blind rage and raging sorrow, he was not sure what he could see. Anger and hatred, hope and yearning, sorrow and vengefulness, he was not certain where the crying took root, nor what drove that fearsome energy he knew was building somewhere deep inside of him.

Rafe cried from the pain, the sorrow and the fear. But his tears were also for himself because he felt so hopeless.

He had no idea what would happen next.

“WELL, NOW IT’Smore than a river to cross,” A’Meer said quietly.

“We can ride up into the foothills,” Kosar said. He turned to look at Rafe, thinking that perhaps the boy could help them. But Rafe barely looked as though he could help himself. “Cross the river at its source.”

“Yes,” A’Meer said. She was still staring down into the shallow valley, stunned.

“Not its source any longer,” Trey said. “What do you think we’ll find if we go up into the Widow’s Peaks?” He stared at them, his thin face sad.

Kosar barked a bitter laugh. “We’re stupid,” he said to A’Meer. He pointed at the river, uprooted trees floating slowly from right to left. “Upriver. We’ll find only floods when we get there. How can a river flow the wrong way? For how long?”

“The water will gather in the hills and mountains, and within days or hours it’ll come back this way again,” Trey said. “Maybe within minutes.”

“More than just a river then,” Hope said. “It’ll be a lake rushing down this way. A sea. ”

“It’ll make this look like a splash in a pond.” Trey waved his hand to encompass the scene before them, and Kosar knew that he was right. Whatever unnatural cause, however wrong this was, the river could only flow uphill for so long before its tremendous energy would be unleashed once again. And then it would return the way it had come, faster, a million times more deadly.

“But why…?” Trey said, glancing down at Rafe as if expecting an answer.

“This is happening all over,” Hope said. “It’s the land wearing down and turning bad. Swallow holes, frozen air, flaming skies… and rivers running upstream. We’re just here at the wrong time. Bad luck. There’s plenty of bad luck in Noreela.”

“But the magic is back, in him. Isn’t it? Isn’t that why we’re all risking so much to protect him?”

“You’re giving magic a character,” Hope said. “It’s so much more alive than us, so much more meant to be, but that doesn’t mean it has thought. And why should it? Thinking like us, with our greed and avarice and disregard… that’s what made the Mages what they are. That’s why they did what they did, and magic tore itself from us after the Cataclysmic War. The effects of that are still being felt-we’ve just seen that-and we can only hope that if it does choose to return through Rafe, then it will make everything better again.”

“Or much, much worse,” Kosar said. The force he had just witnessed was nothing compared to what true magic could accomplish. The stories he had heard, the legends of machines spanning valleys, flying through the air, churning the ground…

“The Red Monks!” A’Meer said suddenly. “They may still be on the river, and now its flow is with them. We have to move! Now!”

Confused, shocked, they gathered their gear together, mounted the horses and started off down the hillside. Hope walked beside Rafe once more, and Trey guided the unconscious Alishia on her mount. As they reached the flatlands and the fringes of destruction, Hope ran from horse to horse, giving the riders a torn shred of the rabbit A’Meer had killed before the river’s upheaval. She had used some powder or potion to heat away its rawness, and although still cold, it tasted cooked and spiced.

Kosar chewed on the leg Hope had given him, not really enjoying the taste. There was too much on his mind, and since the idea had suggested itself to him a few minutes before… perhaps the Monks are right… he had been more confused than ever. Here they were racing across Noreela to deliver Rafe to New Shanti, this boy who seemed to have magic awakening within him, using him as a conduit into this world, testing the waters before revealing itself fully. And at the same time it was highly probable that were they still alive, the Mages would have heard about Rafe and perhaps seen what happened when he cured A’Meer. Alishia was evidence of that, the girl whose mind had been torn apart by some psychic invader before the thing fled back whence it had come. The Mages would covet him and this new magic. And if they caught him, snatched him from their grasp or waged war on Noreela to steal him away, magic may well be back in their hands.

And then?

Burning air or rivers running upstream would be the least terrible things. Last time, the Mages had practiced out of greed and lust for power. This time, were they to harness the magic, theirs would be a triumphant return from exile. If their armies were dead and gone to dust, they would make new ones. If their soldiers could not run fast enough, they would build machines. This time, revenge would be their prime motive.

… perhaps the Monks are right…

AT THE DIVIDINGline between normality-long grasses wavering in the slight breeze, the ground dry and hard beneath them-and the watery transgression of the river’s unnatural flood, the horses and travelers paused. Kosar and A’Meer’s mounts stamped the ground and snorted, while the weaker horses carrying Rafe and Alishia merely stood with their heads bowed, foaming pinkly at the mouth.

Alishia mumbled something and twitched in the saddle.

Rafe frowned at the ground.

A’Meer headed off first. Her horse splashed its hooves through the first puddle of water, and sidestepped the corpse of a sheebok that had been burst open by some huge impact. Split timber planks were embedded in the mud. In raised areas the grass had been washed flat, most of its subsoil having been washed away, its blades doomed to dry and die in the sun. Other bodies lay scattered around: several chickens’ feathers ruffled and coated with mud; a furbat, leathery wings spread as if trying to fly; a girl, braided hair twisted like ropes about her neck. Her eyes stared skyward, filled with its blue reflection, and there were no marks upon her body, no bloody patches on her white dress.

They tried to keep to the high ground. Kosar’s horse stumbled once into a deeper puddle, the dip in the ground hidden by the murky water, and he had to twist and hold on tight to prevent being thrown. His mount panicked and struggled to regain its footing, kicking, legs churning the water, and a dead thing bobbed to the surface. It was a fish as big as a man, yellow and bloated. Even the river life had not escaped a violent death.

The sun bore down on the watery destruction and soon a fine mist rose, drifting slowly on the breeze and dancing where air currents were confused. They began to sweat in the balmy atmosphere, but Rafe seemed not to notice. He was looking down at his horse’s hooves, watching the dead things they stepped over or around, hiding whatever he felt inside.

They came across a knot of bodies, seven or eight of them tangled together where they had been deposited against a huge rock. Unlike the drowned little girl, these all showed signs of the trauma they had been through. There were men and women, and a couple of corpses that were damaged beyond identification. No carrion picked at their tattered remains; no flies buzzed their opened, washed-out gray wounds. Perhaps it was because they had only just died and the things that fed on dead things had yet to discover them. Or perhaps those things did not wish to feast upon corpses created by nature’s upheaval. There would always be plenty of dead things elsewhere.

The mist did not hide the horrific sights, but it made them hazy. In a way that was worse. Truths half hidden were dwelled upon endlessly, their realities filled in with imaginations overwrought by what was around them.

Rafe barely raised his head. If he had magic to cure the ills of the land, he did not show it now.

As they neared the river, higher areas of ground became less and less frequent. The floodwaters were deeper and more expansive, and eventually the landscape changed so that there was more water than land. The horses found it easy wading through the water at first, but Hope and Trey were soon struggling, and eventually they stopped and were hauled up, Hope behind Kosar, Trey behind A’Meer. The four horses continued on their way, the water sometimes touching their bellies.

As they drew closer to what was still, they supposed, the River San, they could make out more of what was left of the village. Its riverside areas had been totally torn away; piers, jetties and fishing sheds all gone, smashed up and spread across the plains along with those unfortunate enough to have been on or in them at the time. Farther inland, there was still little recognizable as part of a village. A stone wall here, a boat there, smashed in half, come to rest against a mound of stones that may have been the remains of a home. There was little evidence floating on the water-the ruins of the village had been washed along the river and distributed inland, floating and bobbing now around their horses’ feet, wood and cloth and dead fish and dead people all that was left of San.

“We’ll be at the old riverbank soon,” Kosar said. He glanced down at where the water washed against the horses’ thighs. “It’ll be much deeper there. We’ll need a boat, a ferry, something to get us across.”

“There’s nothing left,” Hope said behind him.

“There has to be,” A’Meer said. Whether she spoke with certainty or desperation was not clear.

“How far away can those Monks be?” Kosar asked. “Trey, they were in boats. Did they have horses?”

Trey, sitting behind A’Meer, frowned and shook his head. “No horses, I don’t think,” he said. “Just lots of Monks. Small boats, but fast. They were rowing, and sailing as well.”

“So if they do reach us before we’re across, we’ll still have a chance,” Kosar said. “We can run faster than them.”

“Two of us on each of the good horses?” Hope asked. “And those back there… I traded them from farmers who could barely feed themselves, let alone their livestock. I’m surprised they’re not dead already. Two minutes galloping and they’ll collapse. We should swap. .. Rafe should have one of them, he’s the important one.”

“We’re all important,” A’Meer said.

“But he’s the one we’re trying to save,” Hope said quietly, tattoos in turmoil.

“Whatever, we can’t get much farther than this,” A’Meer said. They came to a halt on a mound with its tree-lined head protruding slightly above the water. There was room to dismount and walk to the river’s edge, look out across the wide expanse of muddied water at the opposite side, ambiguous in the mist, the true edge of the river indistinguishable from the flooded plain. The waters flowed from right to left, the results of its violent upheaval floating along with it. Trees and bushes, bodies and smashed timber-boarding and a few things still struggling to remain afloat, wings waving, legs kicking. It seemed the animals were stronger in a disaster such as this, because the only people they saw were dead.

“Shit, it’s hot,” Trey said. He had stripped to his trousers and boots, and Kosar saw the varied scars on his yellow skin, wounds from innumerable accidents belowground. He wondered what Hope looked like beneath her rough dress, whether the tattoos continued out of sight, forming their own secret designs. There was much secrecy about her, however open she claimed to be, and he feared that her shoulder bag held much they had not yet seen.

“Rafe?” Hope said. “Is there anything you can do for us?”

Rafe blinked as if she had spoken an unknown tongue.

“Rafe?”

“I’m only a farm boy,” he said. He frowned as he spoke and leaned sideways in the saddle, splaying his fingers and touching this island of grass and trees. “This is good soil.”

Hope shook her head, glanced at Kosar, looked across the river once more.

“I could swim it,” A’Meer said. “Get over to what’s left of San and see if there’s a boat there, something left undamaged.”

“And then?” Kosar said. “Will you paddle it against the flow for us? Dodge the trees that will hole the boat if they hit you?”

“What else do you suggest?”

“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “We have to risk it with the horses, I suppose. It may be shallow enough most of the way for them to walk, and then they can swim when they have to. Horses are good swimmers. And-”

“We’ll drown,” Trey said. “And I can’t swim. Not much need of it in the mines.”

“He’s right,” A’Meer said. She kicked a stick, watched it tumble into the waters and drift up toward the Widow’s Peaks. “We’ll drown.” She turned and looked at Rafe, silently asking him the question Hope had just posed.

He had dismounted and was down on his knees, not only running his fingers through the grasses now but digging them in, thrusting his fingers into the wet soil up to the knuckles, kneading it, pushing himself as close to the ground as he could. And he was whining, like a dog about to be whipped or missing its master, punishment or loss, both the sounds of heartache.

“Rafe?” A’Meer asked. He looked up at them. But his eyes were glazed, and in them they saw something much, much more than human.

HE SAW MAGICacross the land. The old magic, accepted and revered and honored many generations before the Mages had betrayed it. He saw the good it had done, the ease with which it was incorporated into lives, the benevolent power it exhaled. It demanded no sacrifice, homage or worship, but it honored the respect it engendered, and grew along with the world it served. Its energy was limitless, its boundaries without end. The people of the land translated its efficacy as far as their imagination allowed, and although there was much more-so much more-the magic did not provoke beliefs or understanding that the people were not able to comprehend. They used it to run the machines that turned soil in their fields, when it could have grown the crops themselves. They used it to provide succor to those dying from awful illnesses, when in fact it could have cured those illnesses with a touch. It fed fires when it could have made them, gathered building materials when it could have constructed the buildings themselves, carried messages across the land when it could have passed them at the speed of thought. The people used magic to serve them and entertain them and aid them in the way of life they chose, and even though it could have done so much more it was content with that. It was not a jealous god.

Rafe saw this and recognized the potential he carried, that growing knot of power that seemed so far down that it was deeper than his soul, more a part of him than his own personality, memories and thoughts, and yet totally alien. He fed it his wonder and it fed back a sense of calmness, confidence and security. He thought of where he had come from-rescued from out on the hillside, his parents had told him-and wondered who had left him, what they had known of his origins. He supposed he been destined for this, and though his bloodline was a mystery he did not concern himself with it. It was the here and now that mattered. That, and the love he would always feel for his parents, even though this fledgling magic had indirectly caused their deaths.

And yet beneath all of this, the magic was a child. That such power could labor under such vulnerability was a shock to Rafe. He had not taken time before to consider why it was inside him and nowhere else; he had not wondered at its secrecy; he had assumed that it was a seed, planted and waiting to germinate when the time was right. He had never guessed that it might be hiding.

He, a farm boy of mysterious beginnings, protected by a band of people who all had different reasons and motives, was this new magic’s sole protector.

That made him sad. It exposed the true disorder of things, the random and unfeeling dangers of existence, and it was that more than anything that gave Rafe his first truly autonomous touch of magic. And when he fisted his hands around rich soil, he felt a surge of energy pulsing both ways: from him into the ground; and up out of the land, feeding him, trading itself for the small thing he had to do.

Healing A’Meer had been an example for his own benefit. Now, convinced at last, he began to take some control.

“THERE’S SOMETHING HAPPENINGout there,” Trey said. “I can’t see. .. the mist…”

“Something in the water,” Hope said.

Kosar watched Rafe squeeze both hands tightly around clots of mud and drive his fists into the ground. A’Meer glanced across and he nodded down at the boy, not saying a word. The Shantasi’s eyes were wide and amazed.

The Monks are not right, Kosar thought. No one has a right to destroy this.

Out in the river the waters were boiling, sending spouts of spray and steam into the air. The river continued to flow but the disturbance remained in the same place, directly across from the small hillock where they stood watching. A huge tree, snapped by the force of its upheaval, flowed along the river and was nudged aside by the foaming water. The violence in the river began to lessen and something appeared at its center, a solid shape breaking the surface and turning over, like some leviathan touching sunlight for the first time, exposing a moss-encrusted underside as it balanced on end, turned and dropped down into the river with a huge splash.

A boat. It turned in the water, spinning in the current, and then began slipping sideways against the flow. The sound of water breaking against its hull was like a giant voiding a century’s worth of flooded lungs.

Kosar looked at the boat, Rafe, A’Meer, back to the boat.

“Witchcraft,” Hope muttered. And then she smiled, the tattoos on her face actually forming something beautiful.

As the boat nudged the hillock, Trey and Kosar ran down and grabbed its slimy hull.

“It’s been down for a long time,” Rafe said. He had dropped the handfuls of dirt and stood now next to the horses, his eyes serene and confident. “There are plenty of others down there-some just added-but this one was the most complete. No mast, no sails of course, no paddles. But it was swamped, not broken. The hull should be sound enough to get us across, at least.” He looked suddenly tired, swaying slightly and holding a horse’s reins to keep his balance. He glanced back at the ground, seeing something invisible there.

“How did you…?” A’Meer said.

“That’s all I can do for now.” Rafe let go of the horse and knelt, lay down on his side, closed his eyes.

The four of them stood for a few silent seconds-Kosar and Trey holding the ragged old boat against the river’s pull, Hope and A’Meer unmoving, amazed-and then Kosar shook the surprise from his mind.

“Hurry!” he said. “We can’t hold this thing for long, and with him asleep…”

“Will it take the horses?” Hope asked.

Kosar shrugged. “We can try. The fit ones first, then we’ll see if there’s room for the other two.”

They guided the first two horses over the lip and into the center of the boat, lifted Alishia and Rafe and placed them gently at the stern, then tried to urge the two weaker horses on board. They refused, and no amount of cajoling would convince them otherwise.

“Maybe they’re so tired they’d rather just stay here and die,” Trey said.

“Maybe they know what they’ll face if they come with us,” Hope replied. There was nothing else they could do, so they stripped the two horses of their gear, stowed it on deck and shoved off into the river. The horses watched them go.

The current grabbed them instantly, and swept the boat out into the center of the river. Its bow twisted around, streamlining it against the current, and they were soon moving past the remains of San.

They were moving too fast to stand and stare.

“We need to get over to the other side,” Kosar said, standing on the bow, legs propped wide. He looked across at where the flood had burst through the banks. Less that a hundred steps would take them to safe ground.

“The river’s got us,” Trey said. “It’s hungry. It’ll carry us uphill until the back-surge sets in. The wave coming down will be ten times the one we just saw, twenty, a hundred. ”

“We won’t be here when that happens,” Kosar said.

“Oh? And how do you-”

“Stop whining and start thinking, that’s how,” Hope said. A’Meer raised her eyebrows at Kosar and glanced skyward-he was glad to see the humor there, it comforted him and saved him after the dreadful sights of the past hour-and then she started stamping at the deck.

“What the hell are you doing?” Trey shouted. The noise unsettled the two horses and they stamped their hooves in sympathy.

A plank of wood suddenly sprang free of rusted nails, and A’Meer caught it before it fell back. Hefting it in both hands, she walked to port and started rowing. “Paddle,” she said.

Kosar, Trey and Hope prised planks from around the gap A’Meer had already created. Within two minutes they had lined up along the port side of the boat and started paddling, turning its nose slowly for shore. The current drove them on but was not strong enough to fight their combined effort, and gradually they came closer to where the old riverbank lay.

They found it with a crunch that almost tore the bottom from the boat. Kosar and Hope went sprawling, while Trey and A’Meer had to clutch at each other to keep their balance. The horses skidded across the wet timbers, snorting in fear, but A’Meer grabbed both sets of reins and talked in a low, calming voice, soothing them. As soon as the boat had grounded firmly A’Meer was over the side, up to her thighs in water and leading the horses out and away from the river. They tried to rear up in panic, but her soothing continued, and she kept eye contact with them as much as she could. They seemed calmed by that. Kosar smiled; he knew how they felt.

The water was trying to tug the boat back into the river-it seemed to be flowing even faster now, as if the waters were keen to force themselves up into the mountains-and Kosar did his best to keep it grounded while Trey and Hope heaved first Rafe and then Alishia out. They held them out of the water and struggled across to where A’Meer waited, and she helped them lift the two unconscious forms up onto the horses. Rafe stirred as they moved him, trying to aid them with weak attempts to pull himself up into the saddle. Alishia was like a corpse, only lighter.

Kosar let go of the boat and stepped back, allowing the river to grab the stern and twist it around the pivot of the grounded bow. Lighter now by six people and two horses, it was snatched from the shore and taken out into the stream. He went to A’Meer and took the reins of a horse from her, patting its nose when it seemed to object to its change of master.

“Let’s go,” A’Meer said. She was aiming for a spread of higher ground a few hundred steps inland, a place where trees still stood free of the flood and a few small animals milled, frightened and confused. Nobody disagreed with the Shantasi. As if successfully crossing the river had instilled a new sense of urgency, there was no petty arguing about which way to go or how to get there. They all knew that the Red Monks were on the river and heading their way, and now that they were on the other side the need to put distance between themselves and San was great. The Monks would expect them to be coming from the north. Now that they had crossed and could head south, it was just possible that they might fool them and have a clear run to New Shanti.

But Kosar knew just how vain this thought was. He had seen a Red Monk in action, and he knew how persistent they were, how committed. He and the others may well have crossed the flooded river, but there were still three hundred miles of wild terrain between them and Hess, including the Mol’Steria Desert. If the Monks had sent so many of their number upriver, there must be other complements traveling in from a different direction, spreading across the land, searching.

The two horses seemed strong, and they carried the prone forms of Rafe and Alishia with ease. A’Meer was tireless, even after the terrible wounds and infections of the past couple of days; perhaps Rafe’s magical touch had done more than cure her. Trey seemed distant, never keen to meet Kosar’s eye. Hope stayed as close to Rafe’s horse as possible, reaching out now and again to touch him, looking around at the others with barely concealed suspicion. Kosar worried about her. It seemed that she was constantly there, awaiting any dregs of magic that Rafe might throw off, ready to take them into herself. In her eyes, below the suspicion, there lay a deep-rooted madness.

Kosar no longer wondered just how he had come to be mixed up in this. He pushed through the water with the others, sometimes slipping and going beneath the muddy surface, shivering at its coolness, trying not to see the dead things bobbing all around. More and more his eyes strayed to Rafe. More and more he believed that the future of Noreela lay on the back of this stolen horse.

HOPE WALKED ALONGSIDERafe, reaching out every now and then to touch him and make sure he was still real. He had long been in her dreams; she was afraid that he would vanish.

So the Shantasi was taking them to her people. Much as Hope hated that idea, she knew it to be the only logical one. The Shantasi were mysterious and powerful, a race apart in Noreela, and if anyone could protect and nurture this new magic, they could.

But once there, the boy would be gone. What would they want with an old witch? They would likely cast her out into the Mol’Steria Desert.

So she walked, her mind in turmoil and her allegiance only to herself. She was terrified of Rafe. She loved Rafe. Perhaps when her mind settled, she could decide her own best course of action.

LATER THAT DAY, when they had cleared the farthest extremes of the flood and were traveling as fast as they could toward the River Cleur, they heard a great roar from back the way they had come. The River San had piled itself into the mountains over the preceding few hours, and now the flooded valleys, lakes and underground reservoirs let go in one powerful surge.

The ground shook. Looking back, they found their view occluded by great gray clouds, but they felt the power of the tidal wave scouring across the land, destroying any trace of their passing. Hopefully wiping out the Red Monks on the river too. Even they would surely not survive such a monstrous release of energy.

“I only hope that sweeps all the way across Lake Denyah,” A’Meer said. “Although I suspect the Monks’ Monastery is empty now.”

Rafe twitched in unconsciousness and whined, and his horse stamped its feet and shook its head, as if hearing something unthinkable in the sound.

RAFE WAS AFLOATin his own mind, unconscious of the outside, barely aware of himself. Fleeting memories came by, images of his parents and his time in Trengborne, and stronger images from the past few days. But behind all these loomed that great dark place, countless and limitless and endless, overshadowing everything with its promise and threat. When the river revolted, this dark place had screamed out, raging at the wrongness of things, and the scream had all but driven Rafe out of his mind. And like a parent giving its child a gift to apologize for some unconscious rage, Rafe had been allowed a bleed of magic to draw the old boat from the silty riverbed, guide it to shore, effect their escape. Even magic was possessed of a survival instinct.

Rafe was a speck in the multitude of existences he imagined. He floated through them like a small fish drifting in an endless, sunless sea, seeing evidence everywhere that the sea itself was alive and exuding power. Each sign was something different: a light; a speck darker than night; a song; a breeze in an autumn forest; a centipede three feet long. Countless images with countless meanings, and each of them whispered to him in a language he was beginning to understand. They babbled like children and hinted at knowledge older than time. There was a pent-up excitement and a wise concern in the voices; excitement at what was coming, concern at what had been. This was magic growing again, simmering and wallowing in its infinite womb, ready to reveal itself when the time was finally right.

But already the threats were great.

The things Rafe passed continued to babble but they issued warnings now, sounds that faded as they drifted to another part of his mind, or he drifted away. Heat behind him, acidic burning before him, and the only place that felt safe was somewhere far away, a land of madness and dangers that Noreelans had all but forgotten.

The voices whispered and cajoled, guiding Rafe, giving him the words to mutter as soon as he came out of his sleep. But his fatigue was great and he slept on, drifting through his own mind and wondering at the greatness it contained.

Tim Lebbon

Dusk