Dusk

Chapter 26

THE FLEETING SHAPEemerged from behind a tree ahead of him, the air whispered and an arrow embedded itself in Lucien Malini’s neck.

He tried to scream past the wooden shaft, but blood bubbled in his throat and sprayed from his mouth. The agony was intense, its taste raw and satisfying, and as he fell to the forest floor Lucien’s rage closed around the pain and drew strength. His rage grew, making the pain a good thing, something he could subsist on even while his blood leaked and eventually clotted, thickened by fury, holding the arrow tight. He stood again, staggered sideways into a tree, screeched as the shaft struck the trunk and twisted in his flesh.

His skin burned, his scalp was tight and on fire, his muscles twitched and knotted with pent energy, and when he began to run his speed was borne of wrath.

Those dreams came again-images of people he had killed, women he had taken, the pathetic, quivering flesh-things that had died in their dozens on the end of his sword-and the whispers deep in his mind were confused, shocked and yet unable to let go. Lucien held them there. The images came faster, but rather than guilt and shame he felt only triumph.

He saw the Shantasi darting from behind a tree and roared his warning to the other Red Monks. The scream split the arrow shaft in his throat and sprayed bloody splinters at the pines. A flash of red to his right, a shimmer of movement to his left, and the Monks closed in.

His sword sang and vibrated with bloodlust. A squirrel jumped from a tree into his path, and Lucien struck out, slashing it in two. Another arrow whistled in, glancing from his cheek and taking a chunk of flesh as it spun away. Lucien laughed.

More memories, more deaths, dredged from the depths of his mind and forgotten merely because there were so many to remember.

There was a scream from ahead, the clash of sword on sword, the flash of sparks flying in the shade beneath the trees. Lucien coughed more blood and splinters and ran to join the fray.

“THE GRAVEYARD,” HOPEsaid. “Oh Mage shit, I never in my life expected to really see this. I never believed it.”

But Rafe was leaning against her back, asleep or unconscious, and it was for her to make sense of what she saw. The other horse drew near and she heard Kosar gasp. Trey ran up between them, panting, his breath slowing as he looked at what lay before them.

They had left the gray forest several minutes before, and followed a gradual slope up to the crest of a small hill. Now, in a natural bowl in the land before them, lay the graveyard to which Rafe had brought them.

There were no markers here, no headstones or monuments or mausoleums to the hundreds of machines that lay dead in the heather and grass. Their hollowed carcasses almost covered the ground entirely, starting from a hundred steps down the hilltop from where the observers stood, sweeping into the craterlike valley and then climbing the slopes on all sides, here and there actually lying dead on the hills surrounding the hollow. Some looked as if they had been consumed by fire in their last moments, stony protrusions burned black and melted smooth by the heat. Others had died and rotted down slowly, settling into their final resting places as the living tissues that supported them slowly returned to dust. The smallest machine was as large as a man, its spindly iron legs rusted centuries ago into its final stance, and now almost rotted through by the trials of time and climate. Its shell held only air now, where before its workings had merged in metallic and biologic symphony. There were constructs the size of a horse, others even larger, and one, in the low center of the valley, that must have shaken the very ground it once rolled across. It was as large as a dozen farm wagons, its smooth stone shell curved and notched like the carapace of a giant beetle. Its back bore holes at regular intervals, and a few of them were surrounded by the bony stumps of what may once have been legs, or other less obvious limbs.

The land had continued to grow around this place of death and decay. Grasses grew strangely long and lush on the valley floor, fed perhaps by the water that must gather there from the rains. Bushes and small trees had forced their way between and through the dead machines, protruding from gaps in the constructs’ bony skeletons and metal cages, pressing through cracks where perhaps there should be none, doing their best to subsume these echoes from the past into this stranger, less happy present. Several large trees had sprouted here since the Cataclysmic War, their roots set deep, their boughs and trunks grown around or through dead things. One trunk had split in two and joined again, trapping within itself the rusting metal limb of a large handling device. It clasped the iron like a wound holds an arrow, and though sickened by the rusting metal its growth still seemed a success.

The shades of old machines-the grays of stone, blackened fire-stained limbs, the dark orange of rusting things-were complemented by the brave greenery of the plants trying to hide them from sight. Giant red poppies speckled the solidified hide of one machine like recent wounds. Yet the dead could never be truly hidden. They were too many, too large, and now a permanent part of the landscape.

“They came here to die,” Hope said.

“They’re machines, ” Kosar said. “They must have been brought here. It’s a rubbish yard, not a graveyard. They’re machines, they were brought here… they can’t have come on their own.”

“Why not?” Trey asked. “It was ancient magic that made them, not people. Can we say what they could and couldn’t do?”

“They came here to die,” Hope said again. “Lost, knowing the Cataclysmic War was its end, magic brought them here to die.”

“However they got here,” Kosar said, “why has Rafe brought us here?”

“Maybe we can hide,” Trey said. “That huge one down there, it must have a whole network inside, plenty of places to crawl into and hide.”

“He said magic was going to make us believe,” Hope said. “There’s something else here, not just a hiding place. And the Monks would never give in. It may take them days, but they’d find us.”

“He also said that he might take us away,” Kosar said.

Hope turned in her saddle and nudged Rafe, almost smiling at how she was treating the carrier of new magic. “Wake up!” she said. “Rafe

… farm boy… wake up!” He was not asleep. His breath was too fast for that, his eyes half-open, his hands clasped tight in his lap, so tight that a dribble of blood ran from his fist.

“We should get below the skyline,” Kosar said.

“Down there?” Trey asked.

“It’s where Rafe brought us,” Hope said. “And as you said, we can hide away in there while we’re waiting for… whatever.”

“But…” the miner began.

“It’s either down there, or back toward the forest,” Kosar said.

Hope glanced past the thief at the gray canopy. Farther back in the forest the gray changed to green, but from here the colorless blight looked huge, stretching as far as she could see from left to right, humps of gray trees retreating back into the woods. “A’Meer must be in there,” she muttered, wondering what might be occurring beneath those trees right now.

“She’ll find us,” Kosar said.

Hope looked at him and saw that he knew his lie.

They urged the horses down toward the graveyard of dead machines. Behind her Rafe mumbled something, but Hope could not make out the words. She nudged back sharply to try to wake him, but he merely held tighter and became looser, head lolling against her back, hands reaching around her waist.

Soon, she thought. He’ll show us soon. Soon we’ll know just what it is he has, and it’ll be our choice to have faith in it or not. She looked out over the scattering of dead machines, relics from the last age of magic.

I want it so much, I’ve always had faith.

AS KOSAR LEDhis horse past the first skeletal machine, he thought he heard something move. He paused, turned in the saddle, met Hope’s questioning gaze. Perhaps it had been Trey working his way ahead of them, stopping here and there to look into hollowed metallic guts, lift rusted blades, step over something long since sunken into the ground. The miner kept his disc-sword resting over one shoulder ready to swing, though at what Kosar could not guess. The Monks were behind them, fighting A’Meer in the woods. Here, for now, there were only old dead things to keep them company.

The urge to go back and help A’Meer was almost overwhelming. The cold way she had looked at him when she told him to go had been a mask. She had known that she was committing suicide, and that any acknowledgment that this was their final moment together would have changed her mind. She could have said good-bye, but that would have taken a second too long. She could have smiled and given thanks for their good times, but that would have been a breath too far. She had known that within hours or minutes of turning her back on Kosar, she would be no more. That certainty had left no room for sentimentality.

He could help. He could draw one or two of the Monks away from her, perhaps lose them in the woods, hide while they passed him by, double back and do the same again. There were huge old trees in there, trunks hollowed by rot; deep, dark banks of bushes; high ferns. A thousand hiding places, and other areas where he could lay false trails, snapping branches and then working back. Striving together he and A’Meer could confuse the Monks, and in that confusion perhaps find their escape.

It was a crazy idea, and he knew it. If he went back to the woods he would die with A’Meer. She was trained, her early years dedicated to preparing her for this one purpose. He was only a thief. Three minutes against a Red Monk and he would be dead. And knowledge of his death was the last thing he would want to accompany A’Meer into the Black.

“These are all different,” Trey said. “Inside and out, they’re all different. This one, here… I can see right inside, and it has dried veins or bones strung like strings across the spaces.” He ran to another machine, chopped at the overgrowing ferns and mosses with his disc-sword, smoothed his hand over its surface. “This one: there’s no opening, no way to see inside. Who knows what’s in there?” Moving on, chopping again, hauling on a bundle of thorny branches to expose what looked like a giant set of ribs. “This one, we can all see inside. We can all see those fossilized things.”

“Organs,” Kosar said. “They look like the insides of a living thing, grown hard.”

Trey reached in between the stony ribs with his disc-sword, touched one of the hardened things held in place by dozens of solidified stanchions, thick as his thumb. It exploded in a shower of grit and dust, the long rattling sounds indicating that there was much more of this machine buried deep down.

“I still can’t believe they came here on their own,” Kosar said.

“You’ve heard of the tumblers’ graveyards, haven’t you?” Hope asked. “They’re scattered around in the mountains, dozens all across Noreela. They’re guarded by other tumblers, but there are those that have got through to see for themselves. Thousands of tumblers… they go there to die, mummified in the heat, rotting in the rain, petrified in the cold.” She looked around at the partially hidden history they were now intruding upon. “Once, we thought that tumblers were only animals.”

“They’re not?” Trey asked.

“They’re not,” Kosar said, but he had no wish to continue the discussion. Trey turned away again, exploring, fascinated by this place.

“Is he doing anything?” Kosar asked, halting his horse so that Hope and Rafe could draw level.

The witch half turned in her saddle, reached around and supported Rafe with one arm. “Still asleep,” she said. “Or maybe unconscious. And… he’s hot. Mage shit, he’s burning up!”

“Let’s get him down,” Kosar said.

“But-”

“Hope, there’s no way we can hide in here. They’ll find us. And there’s nothing to fight with, if and when they… break through.” The thought of what “breaking through” meant for A’Meer did not bear dwelling upon.

“And now are you believing? Are you finding enough faith to put your well-being in his hands?”

Kosar shrugged. Rafe’s eyes were flickering, red from whatever fever had sprung up. He was nothing special to look at, yet everything was special about him. “It’s the last thing left to have faith in,” Kosar said.

A scream of agony came from over the hill in the direction of the woods, loud and anguished and rising in pitch.

Kosar shivered, his skin prickling all over, and he turned the horse around, ready to nudge Alishia off and gallop up the slope to the ridge. And what then? Down into the woods, sword drawn, ready to sacrifice himself to the Monks?

“Kosar,” Hope said. He looked at her, momentarily furious that she had drawn him back. “Kosar, help me with Rafe! He’s burning.”

Kosar steadied his horse and slipped from the saddle, easing Alishia down and laying her flat in the low ferns. She moaned slightly, eyes flickering, limbs twitching at the change of position. Later, he thought, I’ll tend to you later.

Rafe was scorching. He grabbed the boy beneath the arms as Hope lowered him down and laid him out next to Alishia. Already the boy’s clothes were soaked through with sweat, his face beaded with moisture, and his skin seemed to radiate heat so violently that Kosar actually looked for flames, expecting the boy to ignite at any moment. And why not? he thought. The magic within has to release itself at some point, once he’s served his purpose. Why not purge itself through fire?

“We need to cool him down,” Hope said. “Mage shit, I had medicines back home, things that would have helped.” She ripped at his clothes, loosing buttons and ties and exposing his chest and stomach, blowing on his slick skin to cool him. He started shivering instantly, so violently that his teeth chattered together.

“Is it happening now?” Kosar wondered aloud.

“Whatever, it had better happen soon. If he brought us here to show us some miracle, we’re in dire need of it. Look.” She nodded up the slope, Kosar looked, and there stood the first of the Red Monks.

It was a bloody red blot on the landscape, a wound to the skyline, a rent in the perfect world through which a dread wind howled, its mouth wide, hooded head thrown back as it sighted its quarry. There were several arrows and bolts stuck in its body; one through each thigh, a snapped shaft protruding from its face, one pinning its voluminous cloak tightly to its chest. Yet it stood strong and defiant, like a standing stone that has seen ages pass. It was close enough for them to make out its woman’s face, and the skin was red. Blood, perhaps. But rage as well. This thing was at its most dangerous. Flushed with the fury of the hunt, enraged by the wounds it already endured.

“A’Meer,” Kosar muttered, because he could not avoid thinking of her body ruptured and spilling its precious insides across that forest floor. Perhaps even now her blood was fading to gray, eager to become a part of that wrong place.

The Monk staggered down the slope toward them. It was only two hundred paces away. Its sword was extended, bloody and glinting in the sun. It would be on them soon.

“Come on!” Hope cried. She shook Rafe brutally. “Fuck you, come on! Do it, do whatever it is you brought us here for!”

Trey had returned from his exploring. Instead of hiding himself away, he stood beside Kosar and held his disc-sword in both hands.

“We take it from two angles,” Kosar said, walking forward a few paces to take the fight away from Rafe and Alishia. “It’s resilient, shrugs off wounds like a splash of water, but it’s not that fast. And its swordplay isn’t the best.”

“Neither is mine,” Trey muttered.

“You have that disc-sword,” Kosar said. “It has a long reach. As long as you don’t let the Monk knock it out of your hands, you can hold the bastard away.”

“And you have that apple-picker?” Trey said, nodding at the sword in Kosar’s hand.

The blade thrummed, the handle was hot and steady in his grasp. “It’s tasted Monk blood before,” he said. “It’ll do.”

“Until the others come from the woods to join their friend,” Trey said.

Kosar did not answer.

“Come on!” Hope screamed behind them, slapping Rafe across the face. The unconscious boy’s fingers were fisted into the soil, delving into hidden roots and routes, holding him there as if the world was about to up-end.

A’Meer, Kosar thought, you must have fought hard. The Monk was close now, and there were several large areas of its cloak that gleamed with fresh blood.

“Not like this,” Hope said, her voice changing from challenging to forlorn. “Not like this, it can’t all end like this! It’s so pointless !”

The Monk was twenty heartbeats away.

Something began to growl. Kosar thought it was the Monk, but then he noticed the thing’s head turning slightly as it too searched for the source of this noise. It was a high, screeching whine, like two huge swords being ground together.

“What’s that?” Trey said.

From behind them, Hope gasped and whispered, “It’s happening.”

A few paces ahead, from where a flat machine lay all but smothered in a rich purple moss, a long limb slowly extended out across the ground. The movement was accompanied by a metallic growl as hinges, junctions and elbows that had been stiffened by three centuries of inactivity, rain, frost and sun began to move once more. It lifted painfully from the ground, rust the color of dried blood dropping away in a shower to speckle the moss below.

The Red Monk had paused in its advance and stood swaying unsteadily a few paces away from this new, strange, wondrous thing.

“Magic!” Hope called out, laughing viciously. “Magic! Do you like that, you red bastard?”

The Monk hissed at her words, stepped forward and struck out at the long metal appendage. Its sword glanced from the limb, throwing sparks and rust specks into the air, and it staggered back with its arm held tightly to its side. The thing continued to rise, bending in the middle like a human arm preparing to throw. And it seemed to be growing thicker.

“It’s changing,” Kosar said in disbelief. “Expanding. It’s-”

“Magic,” Hope said. She turned to Rafe, bent down and put her hand to his face. “He’s holding on to the ground as if he’s afraid he’ll fall off, but at least he’s cooled down. No fever. Whatever was building in him has been let loose.”

The Monk roared again, and Kosar and Trey raised their weapons in readiness. The rejuvenated metal arm of the dead machine might intimidate the Monk, but it would not hold it off forever. Their fight was still to come.

The arm lashed out. It seemed slow and ponderous, too old to move swiftly, too heavy to shift with any speed. Yet still the machine snatched out at lightning speed. Its metal end-a club more than a hand, a fat knot of rusted metal as big as a man’s head-struck the Monk in the chest. An explosion of blood and spittle spattered the metal, and the impact threw the Monk back the way it had come. Its arms waved, its cloak billowing, and when it struck the ground the arm fell across its chest. Kosar felt the vibration through his feet as the heavy metal dented the ground. The Monk gurgled and reached for the sword where it had fallen into the bushes. But it could not shift the weight.

Behind Kosar, Rafe mumbled something, then shouted, and then screamed, a cry filled with fury. His fists delved deeper into the ground and his arms shook, lifting his back and shoulders so that he was supported only on his fists and the balls of his feet. His shoulders vibrated with the effort of holding himself up. His eyes had rolled back to show their whites, lips were drawn away from his teeth, muscles standing out in stark relief on his thin neck and forearms. And his fists kept working, opening and closing, fingering downward into the ground to improve that contact.

Something happened to his wrists. Sparks, Kosar thought, yet a cool, pale blue, powerful and full of energy but cold as the nothing beyond death and before life; cold as the Black.

Rafe screamed again. The metal arm crushing the Monk sparkled and shimmered with cool light and then lifted up, curling in the air and fixing around the Monk as it tried to rise. The arm was not as solid as it had seemed before, its edges less defined. And as it tightened around the figure, its length rippled.

The Monk struggled, thrashed and battered the thing that was holding it up. It was a demon flailing against the good, an horrendous vision of things unnatural and unwanted. But Rafe’s ongoing scream of rage piled more violence onto it, and the flexing metal arm smashed hard into the ground. There was a sound like a fistful of twigs being crushed, amplified a hundred times. This time the Monk did not even scream. The arm lifted it again-the Monk’s own arms still waving, but weakly now; legs dangling uselessly-wavered for a few seconds, flipped it over and crashed down again. The Monk’s head hit something solid beneath the pretty purple heathers. When the arm lifted once more, its skull was ruptured and leaking.

It bashed the corpse down another three times before dropping it into a growth of high ferns. It almost seemed to Kosar that the reanimated machine wanted to hide the awful sight from these terrified, amazed humans.

The small valley was filled with a few seconds of stunned silence. Rafe was calm again, as if sleeping, and the machine was completely still, as hidden away as it had been only moments before. The whole attack had taken less than a minute.

And then the noises began. Stealthy, secretive, rustling and whispering from the undergrowth, groans and squeals of metal and stone things moving after an age lying still. A bush shimmered here, grass shifted there, ferns waved at the sky and were then still again, a tree on the opposite slope seemed to bend at an impossible angle before springing back, shedding a shower of leaves.

Kosar tore his eyes away from the sight and hurried over to Rafe and Hope. “Is he awake?”

The witch shook her head. “Still unconscious. Calmer now, though.” She was staring past Kosar, past Trey. “Did you see? Do you know what that was?”

“A machine,” Kosar said.

“A living machine, moving and functioning!”

“They’re waking all around us,” Kosar said.

Hope looked down at Rafe, stroked his face, wiped sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of her dress. “He’s saving us.”

“We’re not saved yet. And it’s not him. I think Rafe is farther from us than ever right now.” Kosar looked at Alishia where she lay nearby, struck by the similarity between the two unconscious people.

Hope’s eyes sparkled with life, her tattoos stretched her face into the sort of smile Kosar had never seen there before. It was not a pleasant image. She seemed on the verges of madness. “Maybe we can get out of this,” she said.

“Did you see how that thing crushed him?” Trey asked. “It took seconds. If more of those Monks find us here they won’t last long! We’ll be safe, we’ll be saved.”

“And what of A’Meer?” Kosar asked, hating the petulance in his voice but sick at the unfairness of it all. Had she sacrificed herself needlessly? “Is this magic so cruel? Does it kill its protectors that easily?”

“She did what she thought was best,” Hope said.

“Look!” Trey was pointing up at the ridge between the valley and the forest, where several figures had appeared. The Red Monks stood staring down into the valley, the breeze flapping their cloaks around them, and more were joining them all the time. Some were wounded, but most were not.

“She held them off for a while, at least,” Trey said.

“Damn it!”

“Kosar, she held them off. If that first one had come through any earlier maybe it would have reached us before we got here. We could be dead now, and it would have got to Rafe before the magic had a chance to start anything. Now… look around! She gave Rafe time. And it’s working for all of us.”

“We have no idea what’s happening here,” Kosar said. But he did not take his eyes from the Monks still appearing across the ridgeline above them. His sword throbbed in his hand and his heart beat fast, the need for action and revenge rich in his veins. There were so many of them here now, maybe thirty or more, that the idea of A’Meer still being alive somewhere in the forest was foolish in the extreme.

“So what do we do?” Trey said. “Do we just stay here, let them come?”

“What else can we do?” Kosar said.

Hope’s grin was still there, that mad grin. “Let them come and try to take the boy. They’ll see what it is they’re fighting. They’ll know the true power of what they hate.” She touched Rafe’s arm, muttered a few words beneath her breath and waved her other hand over the ground beside her. The smile slipped for a few seconds as whatever she was attempting seemed to fail. But then she looked up again and caught Kosar’s eye. “There’s plenty of time.”

Something rose out of a patch of ferns across the valley, lifting its head from the greenery like a huge snake looking for danger or prey. But this thing had no eyes, no ears, no mouth that Kosar could make out. It was dull black like polished stone. It rose to the height of a man and stayed there, solid, not swaying or shifting in the breeze. The Monks were watching too, some of them pointing, some of them waving their swords at this manifestation of all they hated. A’Meer had been cured and the flooded River San crossed, but here and now the magic was touching and changing the land, establishing itself in the arcane corpses of these old dead machines, moving out of wherever it had been hiding.

And here, facing it in this fledgling state, was the greatest force that existed to ensure its nonreturn. The Red Monks began to howl and screech, voices twisted into something monstrous. They waved their swords and cried out their defiance, anger and hate.

The thing across the valley did not move but was joined by other shifting shapes, several more columns rising around it and shimmering in the fading daylight. The surfaces of these new things seemed to flicker, moving like oil on water, colorless but constantly shifting and confounding to the eye.

“What are they?” Trey asked.

“More machines,” Hope said. “Rafe is raising us an army.”

“It’s not him,” Kosar said again. “He’s just a conduit. And is it only happening here, for us? And if that’s the case, what about when the magic is established back in the land?” He looked down at Rafe’s hands where they were still clenched into the ground beneath him. No sparks now, but the power beneath his skin was apparent, the channeling of magic through flesh and bone. “What happens to us then? To Rafe?”

“Why hate it after all that’s happened?” Hope asked, her amazement real enough.

Rafe opened his eyes.

Hope gasped and fell back. Kosar caught his breath. Rafe looked directly at Kosar, his smile tight and tired. “It is me,” he said. “It’s happening here so that I can protect us, but that’s all. Nothing else. Just… protection.” He looked at Hope. “So there’s no point trying anything like that again, witch.” And then his eyes closed, the smile faded and his skin turned pale and began to glisten with fresh sweat.

“He’s not that boy anymore!” Hope hissed, her eyes wide and scared.

“He hasn’t been just that boy for days,” Kosar said. “How can he be?” He knelt next to Rafe and felt his forehead. “He’s burning up again. Something’s going to happen.”

“Those Monks are coming!” Trey said.

Kosar stood and moved forward, putting himself between the Monks and Rafe. “They won’t stop,” he said. “While there’s one of them left that can crawl across a field of blades to get to Rafe, they won’t stop.” He looked back at Hope and Trey, glanced at Trey’s disc-sword, hefted his own weapon. “Don’t believe that this will be easy.”

Suddenly spooked, the two horses turned and darted away between the machines, heading for the other side of the valley. They took the saddles, bags and blankets with them. Kosar took one step in pursuit and then stopped, realizing instantly that it was hopeless.

As the sun touched the ridge to the west, and cool shadows rose, forty Red Monks screamed down into the valley. And for the first time in three centuries, magic entered into battle.

THE FIRST MONKto die was snatched down into the foliage, pulled quickly out of sight, arms flying up and sword spinning through the air. Its scream was long and loud, but none of its companions spared a glance as they rushed by.

They poured down from the ridge like blood rolling down a darkening face. The sun still lit the slope and picked them out in glorious color, illuminating also the things that rose to block their path. Weed-encrusted, heather-drowned metal constructs rusted almost to nothing, stone things eroded by time, seemed to turn over lazily, trapping a Monk beneath, crushing down and down until its sword protruded from the loam, hand still clasped around the handle. Some Monks fought what they encountered, and the sound of metal on metal, and metal on stone reverberated through the valley.

Most of the things that rose did so slowly, the creaking and crackling of their first movement for three centuries a counterpoint to the Monks’ enraged screeching. The machines appeared tired as they lifted themselves from the ground that had supported them for so long. One seemed to yawn, a great metal carapace opening on a rust-riddled back to reveal thousands of sharp edges. The sun caught the metal teeth, and its touch seemed to be a balm to the recovering machine. Some of the teeth began to shine, as if restored to polished metal; the jaws opened wider, their squeal dying, lubricated by the fading light. And then it fell, gravity guiding its languid way around a rampaging Monk, the giant shell closing, grinding and finally opening to disgorge two twitching halves. It rose again, faster this time, and more teeth shone in magical renewal.

The forty Monks soon found themselves embroiled in battle on the dividing line between light and dark. They drove forward-fighting, dying, learning very quickly that to dodge was much safer than to engage-crossing the line into night and leaving the sunlight behind. Their cloaks darkened immediately, the color of blood grown suddenly old. Their hoods remained raised. As each Monk entered into battle it let out a fierce, jubiliant scream, crying rebellion at the sky, slashing its sword against the machine rising to attack, and in their cries all possible outcomes still existed. There was no resigned defeat here, no brave last stand. Only defiance and bitter determination.

Kosar and the others gathered close, shielding Alishia and Rafe in case any Monks broke through. They watched the incredible scenes before them, frustrated at the failing light because it stole away so much detail. But as light faded and night closed in, two things became apparent: the machines were growing in strength; and they were changing.

One metal limb rose and flicked at the air like a giant whip, its lash a loud crack that set eardrums vibrating. The next time it came up it seemed thicker, its movement more animated. The crack was just as loud but its tone was deeper, heavier. It thrashed again, catching a Red Monk over the top of the head, sending it spinning across the ground. And this time the limb had grown thick with new, muscled flesh.

Blood misted the air around the limb. Blood that rose, drifted in, not dropped and sprayed out. New, fresh blood, borne of nowhere natural. It gave the machine renewed life.

It thrashed at the air again and again, the cracks merging into a thunderous roar, tearing the sky as it pursued its victim across the hillside. The machine’s base was hidden in the dark heathers and bracken, but its newly enfleshed limb rose high and proud, finding the Monk that had scurried away, pulling back and flipping it forward so quickly that the whiplash ruptured its body. The machine had lifted the Monk so high that his discharged insides were richly lit by the sun for a second before they spewed down into shadow.

“They’re growing, ” Kosar said.

“They’re coming back to life,” Hope said. “And there’s more. Don’t you see what’s happening? Look over there.” She pointed up at the ridgeline where the Monks had first appeared. One of them was trapped there, not even allowed to enter the valley, unable to fight its way past a small, thrashing thing that hissed and spat across the ground. Thin silvery limbs spun behind it, throwing up clots of earth and grass. The Monk went one way and the machine followed, lashing at its legs and feet, drawing blood, bringing it down. The Monk’s sword flashed out, sparks flew, and the machine fell back, but it left some of its twisting limbs in the Monk’s face. The Monk stood, swayed, stepped forward… and the thing was there again.

“I don’t see,” Kosar said. He was confused enough by all of this, without the witch trying to create more complications. Besides, most of his thoughts still lay beyond this valley, down in those grim gray woods.

“That’s no fighting machine,” Hope said. “These down here, maybe. They have blades and clubs, and other things we’ve yet to see, I’m sure. But that one up there is a domestic aid, if that. But whatever it is, it’s still fighting the Monks. It’s back from a long sleep, and it’s back for a reason.”

“I don’t care,” Kosar said. He had to raise his voice above the cacophony of battle. He looked around, hefted his sword, ready to use it should any of the Monks come at him.

“You should care,” she said. “It’s back to protect you.”

“No it isn’t. It’s the boy, always the boy. Not me, not you, not this sleeping librarian we’ve carried with us halfway across Noreela.” Kosar glared at the witch, and though her tattoos seemed to writhe around her mouth and her eyes glimmered with menace, he did not break his gaze. “And not A’Meer, out there in the woods. Magic did nothing to protect her then. It doesn’t care.”

Hope turned her back on Kosar and returned to her vigil over Rafe.

“Kosar,” Trey cried. “They’ve changed tactics! Look, over there, past that outcropping.” He pointed with his disc-sword, indicating a hump of dark green rock protruding from the gentle slope. Beyond there was a blur of battle. A splash of red, a spray of sparks as metal clashed, screams and screeches that could have been animal or machine.

“What?” Kosar said.

“There are five or six Monks there,” Trey said. “They leapt down from the rock and took on the machine at its base. But there are others crawling past. See them?”

Kosar squinted, and as he cast his eyes left to right he saw movement along the ground. Slow, careful, methodical. “They’re sacrificing themselves,” he said.

“Ten die to get one through,” Trey said. “Even at those odds, we’re finished.”

Kosar felt the subtle vibrations within his sword growing by the second. Perhaps it was in tune with the awakening ground, or the battle raging around them. Or maybe it was simply picking up on his own anger. He looked at Trey and offered the miner a grim smile.

Trey, yellowish skin seeming to revel in the dusk, grinned back. “We may yet have a fight on our hands,” he said.

“Hope,” Kosar said, “some of them may yet get through. Do you have anything that will help us?”

The witch looked up from where she knelt next to Rafe, and for a second her expression was one of pure menace. The thief caught his breath, startled, wondering what he had disturbed. He glanced down at Rafe but the boy was unconscious, fists turned into the ground. A luminescence still fluttered around the joint between human and land.

“Help?” the witch said. “You have magic helping you, what more do you want?”

“It’s helping, but they’re still getting through,” Kosar said. “The machines can’t stop all of them. If they kill a hundred and one makes it past, we still probably won’t survive. I’m not a warrior, Hope, and neither is Trey. Do you have anything that might help?”

The witch looked down at the boy, moved her hand across his body from forehead to the tips of his toes, closed her eyes. When she opened them again that menace had returned, but it faded into a deep, dark sadness.

“I have nothing,” she said.

“Maybe the magic will help us until the end,” Trey said. “It stands to reason. Whatever Rafe is doing to make all this possible would be pointless if one Monk got through and killed us all.”

Kosar wished he could share the miner’s sudden optimism.

As daylight waned, it seemed that the magic was finding its feet with greater relish. The rusted and rotten bones of dead machines continued to lift themselves from the loam, and within seconds they were clothed in a thin layer of flesh or a liquid covering of molten stone. Fluid flowed in from all around, appearing from nowhere to give the machine back its blood, enclose its old skeleton even as the skeleton itself was solidifying once more. Layer upon layer was built up and around the remains, shifting with new movement, and not always blood and flesh. Wood and stone in one place, water and flexible glass in another, magical new forms of machines arising from the sad remnants of old.

Kosar hefted his sword and kept watch for shadows that should not move. He thought of A’Meer in the forest and tried to imagine her remains, what they would look like, gray forest creatures darting across gray leaves and making away with moist pickings to feed their colorless broods. There had been such pride in A’Meer’s life, and there should have been more purpose to her death.

He hated the fact that she was dead, and he hated the reason more. Glancing back at the boy lying on the ground Kosar caught the witch’s gaze and held it for a second before glancing away. There was something about her eyes that he had never liked.

“It just better be worth it, that’s all,” he said. Hope did not reply.

“Oh, what in the Black…?” Trey whispered. “Look. Up there, on the ridge, the sun’s still just kissing it. Look!” He pointed with his disc-sword, but Kosar had seen them already.

Monks. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds. Perhaps they had been lagging behind the forward group, running from farther afield in answer to whatever call had brought them here. Now they formed an almost solid red line across the ridge between the valley and the forest, bloodred and ready to pour down and flood the machine graveyard.

“If your magic’s still got something up its sleeve, now is the time,” Kosar said, directing his comment to Rafe without turning around. Across the valley the sounds of fighting continued, though they were more sporadic now, metal on stone and the cries of Monks being killed by the magic they so despised. Breathing in, Kosar smelled red.

As the wave of enemy began to flow down from the ridge, the first Monk broke through the barrier of reanimated machines and lunged for Kosar and Trey. Steel clashed. And three dark shapes high up caught the setting sun.

LUCIEN MALINI WASbloodied and torn, yet not all of the blood was his own. As he entered the valley, the Shantasi bitch already drying on his sword, he sensed the stink of magic being wrought. It was not something he had smelled before, but the way it pricked at his nostrils, ran in bloody rivulets down the back of his throat, made him sick to the stomach. Yes, this was magic.

When the first machine appeared and engaged him in battle he was not surprised. Its several long, thin arms rose, creaking and whining as they twisted and turned slowly in the air before him, clothing themselves in flesh and blood and more unnatural fluids, and Lucien lashed out with his singing sword. It bit into one limb and chopped it clean through. The amputated appendage spun in the air but it did not fall. It waited. And then, after dodging Lucien’s second parry, it reattached itself to the growing machine and struck back.

Wounds opened in Lucien’s face, his chest, his stomach and arms. The machine curled itself around every thrust of his sword, and those rare instants when he did make contact caused little damage. As he put a slash into the machine’s new flesh, it healed again before his next strike. He aimed at the more stony protuberances, but his sword raised nothing but sparks, seeming only to add more energy to the magical monstrosity.

Lucien raged inside. He had lived, breathed and worked all his life against this ever happening, and now he felt the magic he so hated thrumming through the ground beneath his feet. The air stank of it, the dusk shone with its reemergence, and all across the valley he heard evidence of magic’s success: screams, the sound of Monks being cleaved in two, stone and metal hacking through the brave, strong flesh of his brethren. So he raged and fought back, but as each second passed by he felt victory slipping farther away. It was being eaten by these unnatural things, sucked into their new veins and arcane power routes, subsumed beneath the dirty magic that had cast so much damage across the land all those decades ago. They had not arrived here in time. An hour earlier, two, and maybe, maybe…

Lucien fought long and hard, taking many hits. He meted out strikes too, hacking chunks from the machine, but its suffering seemed only to increase its strength. It had no mind, of that he was sure. It had no soul, no compassion, it had no place in this world. But each wound it bore made it more real.

Still fighting, Lucien sensed a shadow fall across the valley. And looking up, seeing the shapes circling way above the battle, for the first time he truly believed that the Monks would finally lose.

LENORA RODE HERhawk hard, diving toward the battle, scenting blood and realizing that this was the most important moment of her life. The creature spat and bubbled beneath her, the sudden rapid descent rupturing its side and sending spurts of blood and fluid into the air. Its tentacles folded in to her command. Its head hunkered down. It had turned itself from a gliding shape into an arrowhead, slicing through the air and moving so fast that splashes of its own torn insides were left behind in bloody red clouds. It screeched and screamed but it was essentially a dumb creature, and it obeyed this command that would take it to its death.

Lenora clung tightly to the hawk’s back, knees tucked in and hands twisted several times around the steering harness. She squinted against the buffeting winds. Yet even above this roar she heard the sound of the Mages finally sensing their quarry, the magic they had sought to regain for three hundred years, and which had driven them both completely mad. It was a sound that Lenora, seasoned warrior and soldier in the Mages’ army, hoped that she would never hear again.

Angel sat upright on her hawk’s back. Air tore around her and clapped behind her back, casting wispy vapor trails in her wake. Her eyes were wide-open. She had seen the object of her desire, and there was no way now that she would lose sight of that again.

To Lenora’s left, a few wingspans away, S’Hivez held on to his mount, digging his heels in so hard that they penetrated the creature’s side and encouraged its inevitable demise. Blood flew back from the wounds in a fine spray, though Lenora could not tell whether all of it was from the hawk.

Neither Mage carried any weapons. That did not worry Lenora. She had seen them in action before.

Less than a mile beneath them, the battle raged below the setting sun’s rays. The glitter of sparks from steel striking steel was visible at this altitude, and even though the air was ripping past at an incredible rate, still the scent of blood found its way up to them. And not only blood-Red Monk blood! A sliver of fear slipped into her mind past the bombardment on her senses, and the fear gave her a thrill. A real fight, she thought. A real enemy. She was as conscious of the weapons pinned and strapped around her body as she had ever been, ready to employ them instantly upon landing. They were a part of her life and soul, as much a part of her as her own limbs. Extensions of her body rather than mere tools. And soon they would be blooded again.

She could hear the battle now, a whisper of cries and chaos seeping past the roar of air about her ears. She could make out the lay of the land too… and what she saw amazed her. She had dreamed so much over the centuries, her ancient memories turning into something that resembled myth in her mind, but she had never truly believed that she would ever see magic in action again. Here, now, directly below her diving hawk, machines were entering into battle. The shimmering blue light of magic cast its sheen across some of their weird constructs, and yet others fought in darkness, their magic contained within. The whole area inside the bowl-shaped valley was a slightly different color from its surroundings: lighter, more animated, more alive.

Lenora glanced across at Angel just as the Mage screeched her delight.

Here was their target. Here was magic. And it was mere seconds from their grasp.

TREY HAD FOUGHTfledge blights, vampire bats and cave snakes. Several years ago his cave had battled a plague of the snakes, vicious serpents whose normally pleasing song had been turned shrill and threatening by some weird disease. They had made away with three babies before the men had time to band together and hunt them into the tunnels. Normally creatures such as these would easily elude capture, easing into holes and cracks that could never be penetrated by the fledge miners, however supple evolution had made them. But these creatures had not only grown mad with their illness, but large as well. It gave them a hunger that could not be allayed, and their incessant eating-each other, cave creatures, the babies they had caught-made them large and ungainly. The hunt had been short and brutal. The fat snakes had come apart under the onslaught of the miners’ disc-swords, spilling things onto the cave floor that did not bear closer examination.

That had been a killing, not a fight. The snakes had not fought back. And they had not screamed in ear-shattering rage as they came at him.

The Red Monk had been severely lacerated by its encounters with some of the reanimated machines. Its right arm was all but severed, hanging on by threads of gristle and shredded robe. Blood spewed from wounds in its chest and stomach, and Trey knew that this thing should be dead. Its wounds were fatal, surely, and yet it charged like a fledge blight in full ferocity, its voice louder, its rage more obvious, its blooded sword raised high in its left hand. Trey was too stunned to act.

Kosar’s sword saved his life. The thief stepped between them and lashed out, stumbled as the Monk fell at his feet, stepped in quickly, stabbed down and jumped back again. It screeched and writhed and Trey, instantly shamed by his inaction, swung his disc-sword. It caught the Monk beneath the chin and whipped up its head, burying itself in the jawbone and holding fast.

The Monk opened its mouth, but the scream was choked with blood. It turned to look at Trey. The movement forced the jammed disc-sword handle down toward the ground, and though the pain must have been immense the Monk cast its rage-red gaze upon him, marking him in case it had a future.

“Back!” Kosar hissed. He lunged in and stabbed at the floored Monk again, his sword finding and parting flesh.

Trey squatted, twisted and wrenched at the disc-sword handle until the blade screeched free. The Monk howled and thrashed on the ground, its sword lashing out, and Kosar cursed and staggered back, bleeding hand splayed out before him like a wounded spider.

“Kosar?” Trey said.

“I’m all right. Just watch it!”

Trey lunged with his disc-sword again and again, but the Monk’s mad thrashing seemed to throw off every parry and thrust. The thing stood and advanced, coming straight for Trey. Its lower jaw was hanging by a few red threads, teeth glistening with blood, and the hissing sound must have been its best attempts at a scream. The miner stood his ground and worked his disc-sword, sending the blade at its tip spinning, catching the last of the daylight on its bloodied rim. The Monk aimed a clumsy strike with its sword, which Trey deflected and countered. Another wound opened through its torn robes. He struck again, aiming high for the Monk’s throat and face, but the disc-sword glanced from its bony forehead and took only skin.

Trey looked around, making sure that Hope, Alishia and Rafe were safe, then turned back to see the Monk’s sword swinging at his face.

Kosar screamed and deflected the blow, stepping once again between Trey and the demon. He kicked the Monk and sent it sprawling.

Trey stepped forward to slice at the fallen enemy, but Kosar held him back. “No,” the thief panted. “No need.”

The Monk went to stand but the ground beneath it lifted, an area three steps on edge rising straight up and then folding inward as the wakened machine found its purpose. The Monk was enveloped by green-veined rock, and this strange new machine crushed in and down like a flower in reverse. The Monk’s death was quick and horrific. It took only a few seconds for the machine to retreat belowground once again, leaving little more than a disturbed patch of sod to mark its place.

“Took its time,” Trey gasped.

“I suppose they think we should be doing some of the work,” Kosar said. He smiled at Trey, then winced and looked at his wounded hand. Blood glistened blackly in the dusky light, though Trey could not tell how bad the wound was. He did not want to ask.

“What’s that?” Hope suddenly screamed. “What’s that?” The fear in the old witch’s voice was shocking. Even above the continuing sounds of battle, and the screams of new waves of Monks forging into the valley, her voice held power. Trey had never heard anyone sounding so terrified. His first reaction was to look at Hope, and she was pointing straight up at where the death moon was even now manifesting from the gloom.

Trey saw the shapes high in the sky. They were still within the sun’s influence, but it did little to illuminate them. They were shadows against the dark blue background. And they were growing. Trey looked around at the dozens of battling machines-newly enfleshed arms spinning Monks through the air, great metal fists pounding them into the ground, spinning blades rending them in two, a hundred more of the bloody demons dodging between the magical constructs and coming closer, closer-and he wondered why he felt the true threat coming from elsewhere.

“Hawks?” Kosar said.

“Not this low,” Hope said. “Not this low! They live and die high up out of sight. The pressure’s too much for them down here. They’re not of the land. Unless…”

“Unless what?” Trey demanded.

The witch did not take her eyes from the shapes growing larger above them. “Unless something’s steering them.”

“The Mages,” a voice said. Trey looked down at Rafe where he lay at Hope’s feet. “The Mages are here.” He slowly hauled his hands from the ground, scraping moist earth from between his fingers, and sat up to face his companions. His face was pale and drawn, as if the arrival of dusk had brought defeat upon him.

Trey hated the expression on the boy’s face. It matched the fear he had heard in Hope’s voice. “What do we do?” Trey asked.

Rafe did not reply. Does he know? Trey wondered. Can this farm boy really get us out of here? And he began to wonder.

FIRST THERE WASnothing but pain and shredding, nothing touching the senses but an agony much deeper, searing her wounded soul and burning the exposed endings of her psychic nerves with a cruel conflagration. There was no consciousness of outside, beyond, only of the dark here and now.

I am in pain. I am under siege. And I am not whole.

The thoughts seemed alien, and she tried to pull away from them like an animal from fire. But they were not of a single point, they were the point, and they could not be escaped. Her mind quietened and she could accept that, because to think was to hurt. She had no wish to think these things. They made her feel less than she should have been, and although she had no memory of exactly what that was, she knew that she was much reduced.

The voice that had spoken to her in here had faded away, leaving in its place a pause between breaths. She felt the weight of potential.

She drifted, afloat in her own mind, the flotsam and jetsam of her memories bobbing by to offer vague, unimaginable glimpses of a story she could never understand. Every time something came out of the darkness the agonies grew, as if revelation promised only pain. Revelation, and realization. Because hidden behind this blackness she sensed a profound knowledge awaiting rediscovery.

Wisdom and pain, learning and agony. I know that I must not know. But even the ability to create that thought hurt her to the core.

And then something was coming.

It was the presence back in her mind, invisible, silent, yet keen as the pain that informed her consciousness. It was huge. Massive in import and effect, terrifying in scope, because it came for her. It must have come for her, because there was nothing else here. Yet far from reducing the little she felt, it made her feel more there, more corporeal, and for the first time since she could remember, Alishia knew her name.

There is hope in Kang Kang, the presence portrayed, and Alishia had heard of that place.

Life rises from death, she understood, and she wondered where she factored between the two.

This is for you. She did not know what that meant. She had no inkling. Yet an instant later, Alishia felt whole again. Whole, and possessed of something extra. Something momentous.

She opened her eyes and said farewell to the Black.

“ALISHIA’S AWAKE!” HOPEsaid.

Rafe nodded. “The magic brought her back.” The boy was still sitting on the ground, staring up at the dark shapes bearing down on them. The sounds of fresh battle filled the air as the machines fell upon the new wave of Red Monks.

Hope touched the girl’s forehead as she stirred, wondering what was happening inside. She seemed much reduced, as if she had begun to shrink. “Hey!” she said, but the girl did not answer. Her eyes looked through Hope and saw something much more terrifying. “Why did it bring her back?” Hope said to Rafe, but he did not respond.

Hope let go of the girl and pressed her wrinkled hands to the ground, working her fingers below the surface. Kosar and Trey were shouting to each other, looking up at the shapes growing larger in the dusky sky, yet they had not noticed the change in things. Rafe had sat up, moved his hands from the soil where they had been making sparkling contact for the duration of the battle. And yet still the magic worked. Whatever link he had forged was now redundant, because magic was loose again amongst these machines, meting out memories of better times and clothing them in flesh, blood, stone and wood that had been their makeup all those years ago.

Hope pressed her hands in deeper, feeling for the change in herself, demanding it. Yet no change came. She whispered an old spell her mother’s mother had once used, but it dispersed in the air with her useless breath.

And then Alishia blinked again, slowly and heavily, and she stared at Hope. Her eyes were so full of knowledge that the witch fell back. She knows! the witch thought. She knows what I was doing! How could she know that, unless…?

Rafe was staring at the sky, as if welcoming the coming attack.

“Rafe,” Hope said, pleading, demanding, but though he turned to her his eyes offered nothing.

“They’re coming,” he said. “Cataclysm falls so soon. It’s out of my hands.”

There was a pause in the battle then, a moment so brief that Hope thought she might have imagined it between blinks. Swords must have been drawn back, waiting to fall again. Red Monks’ breaths were hauled in for the next exhalation of agony. Machine limbs paused between stretches, rusted joints poised to find themselves whole again, denuded metal bones reveling in the softness of new flesh. There was silence, an instant of peace, and when the cacophony began again everything had changed.

The ground around Hope, Alishia, Rafe, Kosar and Trey rumbled and rose, two dozen ribs the thickness of a man’s thigh piercing the sky from the ground, curving up and around, and even before the ribs met above and formed a protective cage they had changed from rusted red to silvery gray, catching and reflecting the first gleams of the death moon.

“We’re caged in!” Hope hissed.

“They’re caged out.”

And from above, the promise of death descending.

LUCIEN MALINI FLEDthat valley of death. Almost dead himself, he crawled up to the ridge and down the other side, rolling, leaving bloody marks on the ground behind him. It was lost. It was all lost, all hope, lost to the Mages and those machines awoken here. The land would know magic again and he would see its influence, and that enraged him. Pain was chewing him up now, driving his rage to new levels in failure. He rolled, stood, tripped and rolled again, knowing that all there was left to do was to take whatever petty revenge he could find. He would go to that Shantasi bitch’s body and hack it to small shreds, bathe in her blood and use it to replace his own. That image would keep him alive for the next few minutes, at least.

But when he reached the place where she had fallen her body was already being taken apart. He saw the last of it spread and melt away, red turning to gray. And as he fell to his knees and screamed he saw the trees and rocks and ground around him shift, move, melt down into a billion tiny parts. They merged with the disintegrated Shantasi and flowed away to the east.

Perhaps it was simply his vision failing him at the point of death. Or maybe it was something much more important than that; something for him to follow. And that thought alone gave him back a spark of life.

THE HAWKS FELLout of the sky. Kosar was amazed that they did not leave a trail of burning air behind them, such was their speed and ferocity. He heard the roar of their movement through the air, and maybe they were growling as well. He could see the shapes sitting astride their gnarled necks, and though Rafe had spoken their names Kosar could not believe what he was seeing.

The Mages? Here, now, already?

For so long they had been the stuff of legend and campfire tales, an evil three centuries old that, though horrendous, had faded slowly away. Time could not extinguish their wrongdoing, but it had smoothed the sharp edges, shedding the intricate details of their crimes and leaving only the wide-scale stories of magic gone bad and war, conflict and death across the length and breadth of Noreela. The results could still be seen and felt, but Kosar had never known a time when the land was untainted. He had seen many strange and horrible sights in his travels, but he had not consciously attributed them to the Mages. They simply were.

And now within seconds, the Mages were going to attack.

“What do we do?” he said. “What can we do?”

“They’ll never stop,” Trey whispered. “They’ll smash right through us!”

“They want Rafe alive; they’re not here to kill him.”

“It doesn’t look like that to me,” Kosar said.

He could see their faces now, and he was surprised at how human they looked. Fearsome, furious, but human.

Night filled the valley.

The machine caging the five humans began to vibrate, the sensation originating from belowground and shimmering up the tall ribs enclosing them.

When the hawks were only seconds away, slowing down, extending their clawed feet to grasp on to the huge machine, an explosion of light burst from the point where the ribs met and splashed up and out to meet them.

Kosar squinted against the sudden brightness, shielded his eyes and fell to the ground. There were screams from above them, perhaps hawk, perhaps human. When he looked again a few seconds later the sky was clear and the hawks were skimming the ground away from them, shedding specks of light like embers from a disturbed fire. More sparks erupted as their riders slashed and hacked at machine and Monk alike.

“What was that?” Trey hissed.

“The machine protecting us,” Rafe said. “It can fight them, but I doubt it’ll hold them off forever. It’s a distraction. If they can satisfy themselves with fighting the Monks and the other machines in the valley-and they must be raging for blood after so long-then perhaps we can get away.”

“‘Perhaps’? Get away how?” Hope was on her feet, staring up at the huge ribs catching the moonlight.

Rafe smiled. “As I said, it’s out of my hands.”

Kosar and Trey stood beside Alishia and Rafe, still nursing their weapons but more distracted now by the vibrations in the ground beneath their feet, the shimmering of air between the ribs. Something was happening-something invisible and momentous-and the potential filling the air was palpable. Kosar tried to slow his breathing but fear sped it along. I’ve just seen the Mages, been within a spear’s throw of the demons of the land. And I’m still alive. For now.

“What was the light?” he said.

“Magic fending off the Mages, that’s all that need concern us,” Rafe said.

“Magic,” Alishia whispered.

“Is it still in you?” Kosar asked Rafe. “Are you still carrying it? Isn’t it free now? Isn’t this the moment magic comes back to the land?”

Rafe frowned, staring out through the cage at the struggling shadows beyond. “I think this is only happening here,” he said. “It’s taking a lot of effort.”

“So how long does it last?”

“I don’t know.”

“Long enough for us to get away?” Trey asked. He was kneeling beside Alishia now, touching her face and hands. “Otherwise, what’s the point? If magic protects us like this-reanimates the machines, defends us against the Monks… the Mages!… why would it not save us for good?”

“I don’t know,” Rafe said again. The ground shook once more, a vibration that sent a heavy, rumbling groan up into the air. It mingled with the sounds of battle.

The cage altered in the dark, and when Kosar looked closer he saw that the metallic ribs had turned back to bone.

“We’re going to fly,” Alishia said.

“What woke you?” Kosar asked. He suddenly did not trust her. He did not trust anyone, not now that A’Meer was likely dead and he was here amongst strangers again. Alishia looked at him and her eyes were both beautiful and terrifying. For a librarian, she’s seen so much, Kosar thought.

Seeing past the ribs, he could just make out details of the fight. The three dark shapes had seemingly shaken off the effects of the light and were now hovering above different parts of the valley, their riders slipping sideways in their saddles and entering into battle. Kosar could not tell what they fought-Monk or machine-but he knew that the Mages would find enemies in both. The previously simple battle had now turned into a three-way fight. That suited him fine. Let the Mages and Monks and machines battle it out, so long as they left them alone

…

Something, Kosar thought. Something is happening, now, beneath our feet. I can feel it. Like tumblers rolling beneath the ground, as if to change the shape of the land itself.

“Fly…” Alishia said again, dreamy and light.

A roar came in from the distance and a huge shape reared above the horizon, a hawk standing on its tentacles and grappling with something less recognizable. A fiery exhaust burst from the machine and scorched the ground, and the hawk rider lashed out with some unknown weapon, the weapon itself carrying fire, wrapping around the machine’s base and bringing it down with an earth-shaking crunch. The hawk screeched again, but this time in triumph.

Monks cried out, crumpled beneath hawk feet, slashed by the riders’ blades, crushed by machines.

The land swam in blood.

And then slowly, incredibly, the valley began to fall away.

“What in the name of the Black-?” Kosar hissed.

“It’s going,” Trey said, looking down. “It’s going, it’s falling, leaving us behind.”

“No,” Hope said. “We’re flying.”

“Flying…”

Lights flashed below them and to the side, accompanied by a roar as the ground tore itself apart, freeing the trapped machine. The light flared, lifting them up on a pillar of luminescence. Bursts of a more firelike exhaust streaked across the valley from the machine, enveloping hawks and Mages in writhing flame, sending them spinning away like burning stars. The hawks streamed around the valley, ricocheting from rocky outcroppings and solid machines, dripping fire across the ground and setting the blood-drenched cloaks of Monks aflame. Soon the valley was lit by fire, though the hawks and their riders seemed to shake it off, rising up again.

The battle continued. But now, dazzled by the new fire thrusting them aloft, Kosar and the others were all but blinded to its progress. They saw glimpses of the scattered fires, but the edges of the machine that lifted them up obscured any real view.

Kosar had sat down on the shaken ground. He held on to the thick grass below him, as if that would anchor him to the spot. He was terrified. Trey glanced at him and Kosar grimaced back, shrugged his shoulders. The strange, it seemed, had just become stranger.

“Where are we going?” Hope asked Rafe. She sounded so matter-of-fact, as if flying was something she did every day.

“Away,” Rafe said. He was staring at Alishia, and they both smiled. “Away. Safe. I’m so tired.” And he closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

“I wish I could do that,” Kosar said.

Hope grinned at him, her tattoos catching the death moon and turning her visage ghastly. “Scared, thief?”

“Aren’t you?”

Her smile remained. “Petrified. We’re flying, for Black’s sake!”

The machine seemed to be picking up speed. They felt the bursts and pulses of energy shed from its lower edges, and with each explosion they were pushed higher. Light simmered around the machine’s lower edges. And with each gush of motion the machine itself was changing. The ribs had thickened as some dull gray coating grew around them, pulled in from nothing. The spaces between the ribs began to glow with countless points of light. Kosar had once been caught in a storm of fireflies, but this was even brighter. Soon it was bright as daylight within the gray ribs, and then lighter still, so that Kosar had to squeeze his eyes closed. It lasted for only a few heartbeats. When the light faded and he looked again, there was only the vague background illumination left from the pulse down below. And he saw what the light had made. Between each rib, for the height of a tall man, a fleshy skin stretched across. Even now veins formed on its surface and within, flooding it with blood from nowhere, and magic was at work so close, so near, that if he so desired he could have reached out and touched it.

Their sense of velocity increased. Kosar looked around at the others-Hope, wide-eyed; Trey, hanging on to the ground for dear life; Alishia and Rafe, prone, the movements of their limbs perhaps due to the motion of the machine, perhaps not-and he knew that he had to look over the edge. He had never been scared of heights or the unknown, but what terrified him most now was just what he did know. He crawled to the skinlike edging between the ribs, knelt up and looked over.

Fires had erupted across the ground. Some of them were small, others seemed to have spread and a few of them still moved. They lit up most of the small valley and the dying things it contained. It was spotted with dead Monks. He could make out the larger machines in the firelight, most of them still now, limbs slumped down, one of them accepting punishment from a group of Monks without defending itself. Their purpose fulfilled, these machines were dead again.

There was no sign of the hawks.

The machine gushed another blast of light, blinding Kosar and sending him reeling back. The roar was immense and accompanied by another burst of speed, thrusting them up and up until, suddenly, the sun found them again. The heat felt good on his skin. To the west the horizon was a smudge of yellow. If they rose forever, perhaps the sun would never set.

No hawks, he thought. Of course not. They’d have no reason to continue the battle once we were away with Rafe.

“What do you see?” Hope asked.

Kosar looked over the side again. It was strange looking down into night from a position of daylight. He wondered how high they had come.

“Kosar?” Trey prompted.

“I think the fighting’s stopped,” he said. “The machines aren’t moving anymore. I can’t see the hawks.”

“They’re stalking us,” Hope said. “They have to be. It’s the boy they want. They’ll go back for the Monks later.”

“It’s Rafe they want,” Alishia said, “and they’ll get him.”

“Go back to sleep!” Hope said.

“Then where are they?” Trey asked. “Why don’t they just attack if they want him?”

“I don’t know,” Hope said.

“You pretend to.”

“But I don’t! I don’t know anything. It’s guesswork, all of it. The only one who knows is him and… and maybe her!” She pointed an accusatory finger at Rafe and Alishia. “And they’re not telling the likes of us.”

“So what happens now?” Kosar asked. “Do we just sit and let this thing take us wherever it likes?”

“What choice do we have?” Hope said. “We’ve never had a choice. We’ve been dragged along for days, never given any option, no free will. Everything that happens to us is fated. Maybe in an hour we’ll all be dead, or free, or somewhere we can’t possibly imagine.”

“That’s helpful,” Kosar said, but her words chilled him because they echoed what he had been thinking all along. No free will.

The witch stared at him, her tattoos writhing as she grimaced in annoyance. “It’s the only help I can give.”

“So we sit back,” Kosar said. “Enjoy the view.” He glanced down over the side again at the wide forests surrounding the burning valley. A’Meer was in there somewhere, dead, already graying into the land. He scanned the darkened treetops, wondered if he was looking right at her.

The machine rose higher and higher, light bursting occasionally from its underside. The air became cold, the sky above them darker, and soon night enveloped them once again. They could not outrace the sun, however powerful the magic that carried them.

They watched and listened for the hawks. They must still be there, Kosar thought. There’s no way that single attack from the machine could have finished the Mages, no way. Not after three centuries awaiting their chance to return. There must be more to them than that. “We should plan,” Kosar said quietly. “They’ll be coming. We should figure out how to fight them off.”

“Don’t be so stupid,” Hope said.

“And don’t be so fucking negative!” Kosar stood on the uneven clump of ground held inside a machine, glowering at the witch where she squatted next to the unconscious boy. “Why did you come along, why did you take it on yourself to protect him? When we first met he was yours and yours alone! Now you’re ready to sit back and let the Mages take him without a fight? I don’t believe that.”

“No, I’m not ready to do that at all,” Hope said. “I just admit that we don’t have a chance. It’s hopeless. How can we fight them? You have a sword, Trey has a disc-sword, I have a few false charms in my pockets that would barely hurt a street urchin, let alone one of them !”

“What do you know about them?”

“Enough to know we don’t stand a chance.”

“You know nothing,” Kosar said softly. “You know nothing because no one knows anything. They’ve been gone for so long that every story about them has been twisted and turned. They could just as easily be sad, pathetic, weak old things that will drop dead at the flick of a knife.”

“They got here quickly enough,” Trey said. “They have their spies that told them what was happening, and they’ve flown from wherever it is they fled to claim back what they think is theirs.”

Kosar looked between the two of them, shook his head and realized that there was no point in arguing. When none of them knew the truth, what was the purpose of further discussion? They could only discuss supposition.

“But we have to fight,” Kosar said, and his words sounded so weak that he sat down and said no more.

“Fight,” Alishia said. “Yes, fight.”

“What do you know?” Kosar asked her.

Alishia smiled and closed her eyes.

TREY CHEWED ONa chunk of fledge-his final thumb of the drug, stale now, bitter-tasting and rank-and he tried to let his mind float out and away.

In Alishia and Rafe he encountered two areas of utter darkness, and he was repelled. There was so much in there and nothing at all, and the sense of threat told him that either could be the case. So much could be things he was not meant to see, ideas that were never supposed to be dreamed; and nothing could only be the Black.

He edged out into space and soared, his flight weakened by the bad fledge, the balance of his mind dangerously uneven. But he was free for a time, and he could see, and if he moved out in concentric circles he may yet be of use to the others. His disc-sword had aided Kosar back there against the Monk, but he felt no sense of victory in meting out death, however repellent the thing he had killed. Rafe was a stranger and what the boy appeared to carry was stranger still, so try as he might Trey could find no real nobility in their cause. He supposed he was fighting for the good, but that was something of which none of them seemed to know. They ran and fought blind. Rafe seemed honest, but did that make what he carried decent as well? Or merely deceitful?

There was no way Trey could know for sure, so he had to follow his instincts. And besides, Alishia was still here, beautiful Alishia, awake now and more mysterious and closed off to him than ever. And she had saved his life.

He sought the hawks and the riders that drove them on.

The space around him was filled with myriad signs of life, all of them small and driven by instinct. Flies, birds, one or two presences larger and more obscure but none of them displayed any purpose in their travels. Basic minds drifted and floated on thermals, some asleep and others barely awake to the world around them. There was no real intelligence here, and they retreated from Trey’s questing mind like smoke before wind.

He spun farther out, down toward the ground, sensing the aching distress of many minds far below. He reached out a tentative thought and touched on them, recoiling quickly when he found what they were; Red Monks, dead and dying, their rage dispersing into the ether. Even as they died they were mourning the failure of their mission, because many of them died on their backs, looking up. Up at the dark skies above, up at the memory of the vanished machine that had carried Rafe away. And up toward where the hawks had flown in pursuit.

Trey drew back quickly to the machine, casting about, looking behind dark shadows and trying to bridge gaps where things were obscure to him. Perhaps the fledge had been even staler than he had thought, or maybe he was losing his ability to use it properly, his mind polluted by fear or something far more subtle. He hovered for a while at the periphery of his physical self, still aware of those two huge areas of darkness nearby, knowing who they were, hating their inscrutability. Rafe he could understand, but Alishia…?

And then he saw them. The hawks, their riders, storming down from above where they had been drifting in wait for the machine. He knew their rage and disgust, their power and rot, and as he slipped back into his own body just in time to scream he realized that there had never been any hope.

They were all going to die.

TREY SCREAMED, RAFEshouted out in his sleep and something struck the ribs of the machine.

Kosar was thrown to the ground, landing painfully on his wounded hand. The thing that had hit them-a hawk-cried out, shattering the relative quiet. The impact had split two of the ribs and torn the membrane between them, and blood sprayed black in the moonlight. The hawk cried out again, still pushing forward, and Kosar could see the shape standing on its back. Standing, and preparing to jump across its head into the confines of the machine.

Hope stood and threw something in the same movement. Her aim was unerringly true. It struck the hawk just above one fist-sized eye, and something dark and fast spread down across the white of its eyeball, turning it instantly black. The creature screamed, its cry one of pain now rather than rage, and started to thrash itself free of the broken ribs.

The machine squeezed. It seemed to be using its wound to its own advantage, holding the hawk in place, crushing, the raw ends of the snapped ribs piercing the animal’s skin and slipping inside.

The shape on its neck was a woman, heavily armed and armored, tall and strong and scarred, no doubt one of the Mages’ fighting Krotes. She sat down to avoid being thrown out into the open air, staring through the ribs at the people she had come here to kill.

Kosar stood, drew his sword and smiled. The Krote hissed. The thief felt so empowered by this that he took several steps forward until he was standing within reach of the hawk’s trapped head.

“Who the fuck are you?” the Krote said. Her eyes were a shining, pale blue, even in the weak moonlight.

“A friend of anyone you go against,” Kosar said, and he lashed out. His sword parted the flesh of the hawk’s head and he stepped back as the thing tore itself free and spun back into the night. The Krote watched him as she fell away, and though Kosar knew that this fight had just begun, the brief sense of victory was invigorating.

“Trey!” Kosar called. “We have to protect this breach!”

“Gave the bastard a blinding!” Hope said triumphantly.

“What was that?” Trey asked.

She smiled. “Poison ants.”

“Are you crawling with these things?” Kosar asked, partly in disgust but mostly in admiration.

Hope’s smile diminished. “That was the last.”

There were two more impacts on the machine’s construct, one directly above them where the ribs met, the other below, out of sight, down where the ground had torn itself away. Kosar and the others went sprawling again, and the sound of the vicious hawks baying for blood seemed to shut out the moonlight.

Kosar looked up. Silhouetted against the death moon a hawk was standing on the pinnacle of the curved ribs, hacking with its huge beak and crushing them with hooked claws. Blood and flesh spattered down, and then something harder as the ribs were quickly rent asunder. If only I had A’Meer’s bow and arrow, he thought. The attacker was way too high to reach with a sword, and they could do nothing but watch as it tore into the machine.

But the machine was preparing to fight back. Pale blue light glimmered across several of the ribs. Like electric dust-worms shimmering together, the streaks of light darted across the ribs’ surface until they met, several bright spots forming just above ground level, growing larger, brighter… and in their glow, Kosar could see the face of the thing staring down at them.

A Mage. It had to be a Mage. He had never before seen such madness, hate and bloodlust.

It opened its mouth and hissed. As if the sound were a signal, the machine launched its counterattack.

Balls of purple light burst up from the glowing ribs and converged on the Mage and hawk. As they flew their shape changed, from unformed fire to things with definite edges, purpose, design. They struck the hawk’s feet and chest and erupted into a scrabbling plague of scorpions. Simmering light still played around the lower ribs, and in their glow Kosar saw the scorpion’s stingers rising up and down, up and down, puncturing the thick hide of the hawk and pumping it full of venom. More of the creatures crawed quickly up and over the thing’s head, saving their venom for the Mage upon its back. And the Mage, wincing and cursing at first as the things struck, but then smiling, finally laughing, plucked them from its skin and clothing and bit off their poisoned barbs with relish.

More light poured out from the machine, the ground shaking with each eruption, and as it impacted the hawk’s hide it flowed and manifested into more stinging, biting things. The hawk shuddered and the Mage lashed out, sending bits of shattered bodies raining back down between the ribs.

Kosar brushed scorpion tails from his hair, spider legs from his face, and they melted into the dark. He felt helpless. The sword vibrated in his hand.

The Mage fell from the hawk’s body and jammed between two of the ribs. At first Kosar thought it was dead, poisoned by the things magically flung at it by the machine, or perhaps bled dry by the newly formed swarm of bats that harried its head. But then it stretched out its arms and started hacking at the ribs with heavy serrated swords, and Kosar knew that this thing was unstoppable.

It ignored the light exploding across its body, shunned the things biting and tearing and poisoning. It ignored everything but the person lying directly below it: Rafe.

“Trey!” Kosar shouted. “It’s coming through! Your disc-sword can reach it, cut it before its free!”

Trey nodded, looked up at the Mage, back at Kosar, fear and doubt in his eyes.

“Trey!”

And then the Mage was through. With a rending of metal on bone it ripped aside the ribs and fell to the ground inside the machine. Small creatures scurried from its body and flittered away into shreds of light and dark. Another purple pulse crashed into it, but the Mage grinned and it simply faded away.

As Kosar ran at the Mage, sword ready before him, Trey lashed out. His disc-sword caught the Mage across the shoulder and split leather and skin. It fell to its knees. Kosar struck with his sword and felt the grinding hold of bone as it entered the Mage’s chest. He twisted, leaned his weight on the sword to bury it deeper, and the Mage vented a shrill scream.

“Yes!” Trey shouted. He swung his disc-sword again and took off three of the Mage’s fingers. “Yes!”

“No!” Hope cried.

Kosar turned. She had thrown herself across Rafe’s body, and at fist the thief could not tell why. But then he saw the black shape thrashing in the disturbed ground, great pawlike hands lifting earth and muck and rock and throwing it aside, and the second Mage quickly emerged into the glow of the machine’s defenses.

It laughed. It had the voice of a beautiful, carefree woman, someone who had found the love of her life.

“Kosar!” Trey shouted, and Kosar turned into the first Mage’s fist. It had stood and thrust Trey aside, striking out at Kosar at the same time, and its fist cracked his cheekbone and toppled him easily to the ground. He dropped his sword.

“You’re not having him!” Hope screeched.

The female Mage snatched up the witch and threw her aside, bent down and scooped up Rafe. It ran at the wound in the machine’s side where the first hawk had struck, and as if finally realizing what was happening the machine let out an onslaught of writhing purple light. It slapped into the Mage and Rafe alike, sticking like mud to clothes, forming into blurry insects and birds, lizards and mammals-all of them biting and killing. The Mage screeched but kept on running.

Rafe remained silent.

“No,” Kosar said, because he knew that this would not happen. After everything, all they had been through, the power of new magic released to protect them from the Monks, A’Meer’s life sacrificed to afford them time, none of this could happen. “No!”

The Mage reached the broken ribs and launched itself out into the dark, open air, Rafe clasped to its chest. More light delved after them from the machine, and dozens of creatures fell, sputtering away into nothing like sparks from a campfire.

“Rafe!” Hope screamed.

Kosar sat up just as the male Mage ran past him. He kicked out but missed its ankles, and it sprinted on. It was waving its hands around its head, batting away a cloud of fluttering things formed of light that were sizzling and sparking across its skin. Screaming, it too jumped from the machine and out into darkness.

Behind Hope’s wails and Trey’s wretched shouts, Kosar listened for the Mages’ falling screams. But he heard nothing. The only sound now was the whimper of their own hopelessness, and the soft, dejected ticking of the heated machine cooling down around them.

LENORA RODE AIRcurrents far below the flying machine. Her hawk was mortally wounded, but she kept it alive with a combination of promises whispered into its ears and pain delivered through her buried sword. The promises were of more pain, not deliverance. The hawk was a creature of instincts, and pain would always be its driver.

Angel’s hawk had already tumbled past her, dead, after she had forced it to bury itself in the machine’s underbelly. The other hawk was still up there somewhere, though she could no longer see its shape around the machine. It was dark down here, and the coolness of the night air stroked the open wounds on Lenora’s body.

It did not take long for Angel to come to her.

Lenora saw the plummeting shape and edged her hawk beneath it, catching Angel and the boy she carried in two of its great webbed tentacles. Seconds later S’Hivez struck the hawk’s back just behind Lenora, sending the creature into its final, fatal dive.

But there was no despair, no fear, no sense that doom was upon them. Because Angel held the boy across her lap like a newborn child, stroking his forehead, waiting for his eyes to open and lifting his hair with one long fingernail as if deciding where to cut. When Rafe’s eyes did open, Angel drew a knife and sawed off the top of his head. She buried her tongue in the boy’s exposed brain.

Mother! a voice said in Lenora’s mind, and there was recognition in that shade at last.

And in the Mage’s ancient eyes, Lenora saw the knowledge that they had won.

Tim Lebbon

Dusk