by Tim Lebbon
“I don’t see how this can go on,” Lucien said.
“What do you mean? Noreela is helping us! The serpenthals, and the tumblers, and now the mimics. What do you mean?”
“Look,” Lucien said. He pointed across the hillside with his bloodied sword.
The ground was covered with the dead and dying. Machines stalked here and there, dishing out more death and, occasionally, finding it themselves. Several machines stood dead in a circle, the result of some unknown attack, but their Krote riders had escaped their fate and were now fighting the Shantasi on foot. The clang of swords, the spark of metal meeting metal, drifted across the hill. And from one extreme of the battlefield to the other, the dead were rising again.
“Mimics,” Kosar said, but he knew immediately that he was wrong. These were the dead readying to bear arms against their Shantasi kin. Among them, oozing like a slippery memory, a stain on the hillside.
“That’s a shade,” Lucien said. “The Mages have given it something, and for every Shantasi killed we have a new enemy.”
“That’s unreal,” Kosar said. “That’sunfair!”
Lucien laughed. It was a strange sound, so unexpected and unusual on this field of death and undeath. The Monk actually bent over and held his stomach, his burnt back exposed to the air and glistening in the moonlight where the cauterized flesh had started breaking down. “We’re all going to die,” he said. “And you…thinkthat’s unfair?”
Kosar was angry at first, but then he smiled.
Neither of them heard the machine rush them from out of a haze of smoke. It stomped Lucien to the ground, pressed down on his throat with one heavy stone leg, and on its back the fearsome Krote stood and smiled. “Glad to see you think war is so amusing,” she said. “You could almost be one of us.” She touched the machine’s back and it balanced all its weight on one leg, crushing Lucien’s chest and neck, parting his head from his body, squeezing out his final breath in a haze of blood and spit.
THAT FELT GOOD, Lenora thought. Red Monk fighting with the Shantasi! she sent to her machine, and it ground its foot some more, turning its stone heel until it met mud wetted with blood.
“You’re no Shantasi,” Lenora said, looking at the man cowering before her. She frowned. Something about his features, his hair, the smell of him…“I know you,” she said.
“Last time I saw you, I made you fall,” the man said. “I’m Kosar. And you’ve just killed another friend of mine.”
“You were friends with a Monk?”
Kosar glanced down at the mess beneath the machine’s legs, up again at Lenora. “He was against you. That makes him my friend.”
Lenora slid from the machine’s back and landed astride the Monk’s remains. She drew a sword and thrust it down into his chest-these Monks were tenacious, and she wanted to take no chances-and then stood and faced the defiant man. She felt those eyes behind her, watching. “Do you recognize my machine? See any familiar features?”
Kosar did not glance away from her face. “It’s a monster,” he said. “As are you.”
Lenora shrugged, and she bled. She had gathered several more wounds to wear alongside those from so long ago, and even her old scars were aching again, singing with the memory of their creation. “You were traveling with monsters,” she said. “That witch, with betrayal in her eyes. That boy, carrying something awful. That girl…” She frowned, but tried not to show her doubt.
“Rafe had magic. It would have beengood for the land.” Kosar spat on his sword. “And why thefuck am I even talking with you?” He darted at her, sword swinging up toward her stomach.
Lenora sidestepped and cracked him on the temple with her sword handle. He groaned and fell, fingers splayed in the bloody muck around the dead Monk.
Kosar stood and turned on her, and in his eyes Lenora saw pride, and determination, and a confidence that belied his situation. She had seen the tumblers and fought one off. She had ridden through the gray haze rising from the ground, and it came apart before her machine. The swirling sand demons were still fighting the Krote’s rear guard back on the plain, and ahead of them lay Kang Kang and the girl with her brains crushed into the dirt. But for a moment, this man unsettled her more than anything she had yet seen of Noreela. For a moment, he made her feel mortal.
“What surprises do you have left?” Lenora said. Come with me, the voice of her daughter whispered, and Lenora closed her eyes for an instant, trying to put the voice back down.
Kosar laughed. He saw that she had a weakness. Lenora tried to grin, but a pang of pain in her womb turned it into a grimace.
“Are you hurting?” he asked.
Lenora had been asked that recently, by Ducianne. And as she went at Kosar she realized that, yes, she was hurting. Soon, perhaps, she would find out why.
HOPE COULD NOT move. To her left, Alishia had disappeared in the grasp of the tumbler, rolling downhill and into the smoke that was drifting across the valley from the ruined machine. The female Mage, reclothed in flesh and rage, had gone in pursuit of the tumblers. Her screams still echoed around the valley. Before Hope, the male Mage was fighting the Nax. And Hope was trapped between them all, apart from the action, unable to do anything but watch.
Though grotesquely burnt, the Mage still possessed enormous strength. The Nax circled him like wisps of red smoke, gushing fiery breaths, lashing out with bladed appendages and spiked wings, bounding from the ground and trying to confuse him with their rapid twists and turns. But the Mage fended off every attack, his own limbs moving faster than Hope could see. The fight was vicious and brutal, every move a death strike, every counter a desperate defense.
Hope felt useless. In this clash of monsters she was nothing, a human smear on a battlefield the likes of which Noreela had never seen before. The Cataclysmic War had been humans against the Mages and their Krotes. No tumblers, no Nax. Just the humans, as though the land had been content to leave them to clear up their own mess.
Something had changed this time, and Hope was glad.
She looked around the valley, trying to spot the tumbler that had carried Alishia away. She was desperate to believe that the tumblers had come to help, but it was still a stretch of the imagination that she found difficult to make. This was Kang Kang. Bad things happened here, and perhaps this was fate’s final cruel twist in their wretched story: so close to saving the land, then whipped away by a tumbler and never seen again.
But the Mageswanther dead, Hope thought. So why run after her when she’s in the grip of a tumbler? No escape from them. Never. She saw hints of movement between drifting smoke across the valley, and she tried to project its path, looking at a clear spread of hillside and waiting for something to arrive.
She saw them; two tumblers, one with a flash of gray cloth that must have been Alishia’s dress, and the Mage running after them faster than was possible, her feet leaving smoking wounds in the hillside. She must have dealt with another tumbler, Hope thought.
The Nax emitted a horrendous roar, filling the valley with a voice that killed grass and shriveled leaves. They went at the male Mage again, converging from different angles and driving into him. He flexed his chest as they came, as though filling his lungs for a scream to counter their own. But what came from his mouth, eyes and ears was far more than a scream. Hope saw it the instant before she ducked below the trunk once again, a shock wave of solid air that expanded out from the Mage’s head and drove everything before it.
Hope covered her ears and opened her mouth. The shock wave struck the fallen tree, shattering what little remained, sweeping up a cloud of dead insects and wood fragments and adding them to the wave of debris. She glanced up in time to see a flash of red pass directly above her. Its limbs trailed, and it seeped smoke and fire as it went. It landed fifty steps away and rolled in the disturbed soil, burrowing, disappearing below the surface even as the male Mage’s defiant laughter followed the terrible shock wave he had unleashed.
Hope groaned, but barely heard. Her hands were w
et with blood from her ears, and something clicked in her chest as she breathed. I’ll die here if I don’t move, she thought, but the only way to move was to stand. The Mage would see her. And old as she was, bitter and mad, she realized that she most definitely did not want to die.
She rolled to her side and peered around the end of the broken log. The Mage was standing to the side of the cave mouth, arms still held wide, head back, mouth open as though sucking in the scent of victory. His body was ruined from the fire, but Hope had never seen anyone appear so strong.
From down the slope Hope heard the female Mage scream again.
The two remaining tumblers rolled uphill into the blazing remains of the flying machine. They jumped and bounced, landing in areas free of fire and machine pieces. The lead tumbler still carried Alishia pinned to its side. Her arms waved, and one leg bent and straightened with each revolution. From this distance she still seemed whole.
The tumblers passed the wreckage, and Hope realized their intention.
They were aiming directly at the cave.
The female Mage appeared from out of the smoke. She screamed and raged, coughing out another burst of blue fire. The tumbler to the rear intercepted the fire before it could strike Alishia, spinning in a circle as the flame melted its way inside. Hope heard distant screams, and she knew they did not come from the Mage.
The final tumbler, Alishia spiked to its side, rolled quickly toward the Womb of the Land.
“S’Hivez!” the female Mage screamed, still running but realizing now that she would not reach Alishia in time.
Hope stood. “Here I am, you piece of shit!”
S’Hivez spun around to look at Hope.
The tumbler flitted behind him, carrying Alishia with it. It entered the darkness of the cave.
Hope closed her eyes.
JOSSUA ELMANTOZ KNEW that the tumbler now carried someone else. Someonealive. But he could no more communicate with them than he could with Flage.
He could sense the tremendous sense of potential present there. He could smell the stink of magic, and there was nothing he could do to purge it from this world.
If he were alive, Jossua could have fought. If he were dead, perhaps he would have attacked from the inside, because the wraith of a Red Monk would be as tenacious as the soul of one still alive. But he was neither. This first Red Monk, one who had seen the Mages from Noreela’s shores three centuries before, refused to give up on life and would not accept death.
When the tumbler went from light to darkness once more, Jossua felt himself plucked away by something more bewildering than anything he had ever encountered. In that thing he found a shadow of acceptance, and a respect for his obsession. Its strange voices chanted him somewhere wholly new.
Tim Lebbon
Dawn
Chapter 22
WE’RE THERE, FLAGE SAID. Now you can open your eyes.
I’m not sure I’m able, Alishia said. Everything’s spinning. Everything’s changing.
It’s due to change some more. We’ve been let inside, and I think you need to see.
Alishia opened her eyes to darkness. She could feel herself being transported in uncertain steps down toward a warmth, and a light. She could sense this light but not yet see it. She tried to lift her hand to rub her eyes, but could not move. Her whole body pained her, and she felt things stabbing into her leg, her shoulder, her hip. These things flexed with every movement, and she bit her lip to prevent herself from crying out.
Can you see? the amazed voice of Flage said. Can you see the light?
“Yes,” Alishia replied, and her voice echoed.
Good, Flage said, and he faded away.
Alishia now could see the stone ceiling of the cave passing by above her. The light increased with each jarring movement, and soon she could make out cracks in the rock, spiderwebs, pale green moss spotting here and there. Where’s that light coming from? she thought. And why is it so warm? She sniffed for a fire, but the only smell was one of old dampness.
She felt the roughness of the tumbler beneath her. It stopped and rolled gently to the side, and as her feet touched the ground the sharp things invading her body withdrew quickly. She cried out and fell on all fours, hair framing her face and hiding the surroundings from view. For a while she was glad. She stared at the stone floor and saw ancient human footprints, a thousand or a million years old, marking a route in the dust that led up and out.
Where am I?
No one and nothing answered. The sleeves of her dress swamped her hands and she felt cold and exposed in the huge garment. She looked down at herself and saw how small she had become.
What am I to do?
Still no answer. She looked up at the great tumbler that had brought her here, and crushed into its side were the remains of a Red Monk. Its hood was wrapped around the shattered remnants of the skull. All flesh had long since been scoured away, and her shock was only slight.
She sat back and turned her head, ready to take in everything else. The Womb of the Land!
Here was potential. Here was a library of blank books yet to be written. Here was the future awaiting discovery, and in her there was the future’s seed ready to plant.
Alishia blinked slowly, trying to digest what she was seeing.
The cave was quite large, and perfectly spherical. She sat in an opening at its edge, and the walls rose around her in a flawless curve. It was warm, though there was no sign of fire. The air was damp, the walls slick with moisture, and as she moved her hand across the ground she felt the warmth of it.
“I’m Alishia,” she said. Her voice came back to her, one name echoing into a confusion of noise that could have contained every word ever spoken. She said something else, something personal to her, and the resultant sound was the same. Whatever idea she gave birth to in here held the potential to grow into anything.
She stood slowly, uncertainly, and she was amazed at how light she was. How old could she be? Eight? Six? Younger? She put her hands to her face, pleased at the familiarity of the touch. “I’m still myself,” she muttered, and the echoes said she could have been anyone.
Alishia stepped from the tunnel entrance onto the slope of the sphere. Moving down toward the lowest point of the cave, she glanced back, surprised to see that the tumbler had withdrawn. She had not heard it leave. There’s so much more to them, she thought, but that idea probably applied to much of Noreela. “So much more to everything,” Alishia said, and this time her words carried no echo, their meaning clear.
As she walked slowly down the slope she felt herself changing, regressing faster than ever. The dress slipped from her shoulders and she left it behind, though she was not cold. This place was welcoming and safe. It was a place of comfort.
Something appeared back at the entrance tunnel, a dark shape that drove back the strange light emanating from the walls. “Soon,” Alishia said, and the Birth Shade withdrew. It was ready for its offering, and she was ready to make it.
At the lowest point of the cave there were hollows in the ground. They were shapes she recognized. Some had been used, their glossy texture turned rough, veined trace works in their sides gone to dust. I wonder which one was Rafe’s, she thought. Others were fresh and clean, dips in the land filled with promise.
She chose one of these, sat close by and brushed her fingers through her hair. It came out in clumps. She tried to stand again but her legs would not hold her, so she crawled those last few steps and settled herself into the hollow.
She was not surprised to find that it fit her perfectly.
THE LIBRARY THIS time was whole and undamaged, but it was also characterless, and every book spine was blank. There was a reading area, and all the furniture was new and untouched. The leather chairs were fresh and unworn, the unmarked table carved from wellburr wood. No books sat on the table waiting to be read.
There was nothing with Alishia in the library: no rampaging shade, no man, no fire eating away at every moment in history. There was only her. Sh
e had the very real sense that she was waiting here for something to happen. And while she was waiting, she might as well read.
She left the reading area and entered the towers of books. She was only a baby, yet her mind was full, and in this dream her child’s legs would carry her anywhere.
She walked for some time before gathering the courage to take down a book. She climbed a shelf to reach it; the spines were all the same, the blank books uniform, but she knew that this particular tome was the one she needed.
Hugging the book against her chest she walked back to the reading area. Here and there shadows were appearing on book spines. They were not yet whole words, but their potential was deafening.
She hauled herself up into the reading chair. It was far too large for her, but still she managed to lay the book on her stubby legs, open the cover and stare at the first blank page.
Alishia closed her eyes and something left her forever.
When she looked again, the page was no longer blank. She began to read of a new moment in time.
The land begins to heal…
THEY WOULD BE on her and she would be dead.
Hope kept her eyes closed, hands by her sides, suddenly willing to accept death with dignity. She would not fight. It had been a long time in coming, and in her final moments she had helped.
If I look, I’ll see that thing coming at me. Angry. Enraged. Ready to exact weak revenge by spilling this false witch’s blood.
She heard a roar, the sound of something hard striking something soft, and in the screams from the Mages she made out the dregs of words. They formed little sense. The Mages were mad, but unlike her their madness was deep and irredeemable.
At last, Hope could keep her eyes closed no longer, and when she looked, the Mages were battering at the entrance to the Womb of the Land. The Shades had returned, three of them this time, growing from the cave mouth like giant trees. They seemed to shrug off the abuse of the Mage’s magical weaponry. They absorbed fireballs, deflected shock waves from the male Mage, opened shadowy arms to collect hatred and fury and closed them again, swallowing everything meant to do them harm. Each Shade was huge and unchanging now, as though they had recently been fed. And Hope could not help but pick up on the optimism being exuded from these shadows of nothing.