Dusk: a dark fantasy novel (A Noreela novel)

by Tim Lebbon

He passed the mine and approached Pavisse, and as he neared other people—and, he hoped, safety—the effects of the night truly began to weigh him down.

  His parents' blood was a crisp across his face. His own, still dripping from the cut, had dried over it.

  Sometime during the night he had also soiled himself.

  Crying, trying to shout but far too tired to do so, mumbling about his dead village and inviting curious stares from the waking population of Pavisse, Rafe entered the town to find his uncle.

  3

  Alishia had never heard a dead man sing. She had read accounts of many wonders: shades calling from the depths of a bottomless cave in the mountains of Kang Kang; holes in the ground, swallowing rock and soil and anyone foolish enough to venture too close; a woman stumbling into a cloud of mimics and breathing them in, watching in terrified wonder as they fluttered from her mouth in the shape of a golden butterfly. She had read of skull ravens feasting on living cattle, two rivers flowing in different directions in the same valley, and a place where ancient machines had once gone to die. Indeed, for a librarian she had imagined a very colourful life, and dreamed of much that was wrong in the land. But Alishia had always thought that imagination was better than experience, because it was so pure.

  Still, she had never heard a dead man sing.

  He stood in one of the aisles far, far back in the library, a place barely frequented, rich with the dust of ages. Some of the books there were so old that Alishia did not know of anyone who could read them. This man had been browsing beyond her sight for hours. His song echoed mournfully in the still air. His voice was low and weak—what more could be expected of a dead man?—but filled with emotion. Alishia did not recognise the language, though that was not unusual in Noreela’s capital city. But she sensed something of what the song was about nonetheless, and heard the undertones of longing, the cadences of sorrow hidden in the folds and twists of his throaty warbles.

  When he had come to the desk hours before, Alishia stepped back in shock. He was the oldest man she had ever seen, certainly the most frail-looking, and she could not conceive how someone in such a state could still be alive. But alive he was, a breathing fossil, his organs barely contained within skin so thin it was almost translucent. He said a few words in a tongue Alishia had never heard before and then wandered off, shaking his head and mumbling quietly under his breath.

  Ever since then the singing, and the echoing sound of pages being turned. Alishia knew he was in the farthest, oldest corner of the library because she had looked everywhere else for him, using the arranging of shelves as an excuse to wander the tall aisles, brushing aside cobwebs and lifting dust that had slowly spread to fill the air with a haze of dead skin.

  What was a man so old looking for in books so ancient? These tomes were from a time before her grandfather’s grandfather’s father was born, and they were retained now only because if they were removed, it was likely that the building would collapse. They had almost fossilised into place, their leaves bound together with damp, stiff covers strengthening the racks of shelves they stood upon. Alishia had looked at some of them, but most were written in languages she had never seen. The diagrams and pictures told stories, and sometimes these were enough. There was enough strife and heartache contained within the books she could read. So she browsed these old tomes only occasionally, and every time she opened one she felt as though she was intruding into histories that should never be remembered.

  Sometimes, on those rare occasions when they were written in words she did know, Alishia found truths that she wished she had not.

  She felt at home here with her books. Some days she would be all alone, all day long. There were things in the world that demanded peoples’ time more than books—failing crops, fading health, a reversion to harsher times—and the people of Noreela City would often forego the luxury of leisure time to cater for the expanding flaws in their own lives. Many of these problems were self-inflicted, but there was also the seed of regression that had been planted in the land after the Cataclysmic War. As time went on, Noreela City and all its satellite communities were being drawn back from the level of civilisation they had reached almost three centuries before to an older, more savage time. People viewed rapes and murders in the street in broad daylight, and swords remained sheathed, as did the pangs of guilt. In many ways time had started again after the Mages, and instead of recognising this year as Year of the Black 2208, people regarded the War as the beginning of the current age instead. Even Alishia was not certain of the exact year; she had read books, used charts, referred to ancient texts, but somehow the Year of the Black had found itself overshadows by the Cataclysmic War.

  As far as Alishia was concerned, the old magic could stay dead and buried, whatever effect its absence was having on the land. Her own small, unimportant opinion was that civilisation advanced in waves and cycles, and they were on something of a downward path right now. Soon there would be a discovery that would draw enthusiasm and good will back into the people, infuse them with a new zest for life, and therefore more respect for it. Besides, Alishia saw magic every day. Her imagination was fed and nurtured every time she read a word, or a paragraph, reminding her of some years-old dream. The beautiful poems of Ro Sargossa brought to mind the dream of making love with two of the Duke’s champions; a treasury of foodstuffs made her think of the differing meals she had considered, their separate tastes, their curious blends of exotic spices and juices and herbs from faraway lands. Everything she read invoked a rush of dream memories, so an afternoon on her own in the library was like living parts of her life again, however unreal that life may seem. Sometimes she was made hungry by the scents of old, untested foods. Occasionally she was stirred by the recalled cradling of well-muscled arms, though in reality she had yet to be cradled. But every time, every day, she was glad to be alive.

  Let them talk about ruin and degradation and death. She would not let it happen to her.

  He was still singing. The old man had been here for several hours now, hidden away behind those ancient shelves, humming words which Alishia could not quite grasp from the cool air. She tried, leaning forward on her chair with her head to one side, but her heartbeat smothered the echoes. It was as if being alive prevented her true understanding of the old man’s song.

  So she tidied, catalogued, skimmed a few pages from a map book charting the progress of Noreela City’s ever-shifting river over the centuries, read a love poem by Ro Sargossa. But she could not ignore the singing, however hard she tried. Sometimes it felt as though it was inside her head; she could not hear it, but still it was there. Other times it came strong and loud, filling the library and sending many-legged things scuttling into the dark spaces beneath book towers.

  At last, she decided that she had to find him.

  Alishia rarely left her desk when there was no one to watch over it, but today was quieter than most. The old man was the only person she’d seen so far, and she guessed ten minutes away would do little harm. Besides, who would steal? Few in Noreela City had any inclination to even come in here and read a book, let alone await the opportunity to slink in and steal one when her back was turned. Sometimes she wondered whether there was any intellect left in a world where famine also starved the mind, and dust and fading gods ate away at the tenacity of the people.

  She slipped from behind her desk, crossed the uneven wooden floor scattered with comfortable reading chairs–moth-eaten and rotting through lack of use–and passed between two tall towers of books.

  She was in Geography. The books reached to the ceiling on both sides, those at the top hardly touched since the day she had started working here ten years ago. It was not that there was nothing of interest up there—Alishia suspected there were accounts of paths long since faded into time, trade routes discovered and discarded—it was simply that people seemed so lethargic that it was far easier to pluck a book from one of the lower shelves. There were six ladders scattered around, but three of these invariably leaned aga
inst the stacks of children’s books. These were soft and comfortable, cloth-covered pages, bendy and pliable for young hands to twist and young mouths to gnaw upon. When Alishia was not working, this was where Byran and Magella huddled away to screw and sleep and eat. Their thoughts rarely stretched any further.

  Her footsteps, naturally soft anyway, were completely muffled by the stocked shelves. She breathed in the must of their pages, the musk of decades of damp and heat and damp again. Mould painted great swathes across the spines, interrupted here and there where a book had been removed and replaced in a different place. History nestled around Alishia, slowly mouldering away just as the land was fading back into history. There was a certain poetic justice to that.

  She paused, swept her long hair back over her shoulders to free her ears. The singing was still there, though even more muffled now that she had entered the maze of books. That was another thing she loved about the library: whoever had built it had given no consideration to order, arrangement or the need for browsers to be able to find their way out in less than a day. It was more than a maze; it was a conundrum of words. It took her half an hour to find her way to him.

  Often when she ventured into the heart of the library she was sure she travelled a route she had never known before, a byway between alleys, ankle deep in paper dust and redolent with the musings of yesteryear. This time a path between stacks led her not only left and right, but up and down as well. There were places where the floor dipped and raised, but she had never seen steps. She glanced at the books to see what strange subject could be stored in such an ambiguous place: needlecraft. Ten thousand books on sewing, knitting, tapestry, darning, skin-melding, hair braiding and web-weaving.

  On she went. And turning a sudden corner, she found him. She stopped and backtracked slowly, not sure whether he had seen her. His song did not falter, his voice unwavering, his mouth moving in rhythm with his hands. He sat amid a pile of books, manuscripts, torn pages and shredded sheets. He was a lump of flesh at the heart of a mountain of paper, a weak and yet terrible-looking man picking through remnants of history. Obviously he had yet to find whatever he sought.

  He was in the far corner of the library building, perhaps above ground, maybe below. The ceiling was low here and adorned with mineral stalactites, water stains mottling the stacked books and promising little but rot within between their pages. This section, Alishia knew, was old magic. Hidden magic. Lost magic. Many people had forgotten about that, and so the area was only visited rarely. Those who did still study it often wished they did not.

  The man rustled his way through another sheaf of pages, discarding them at random. They fluttered down around him like dying butterflies. He spent very little time on each page, certainly not long enough to read even a tenth of what was written. He must, Alishia knew, have a very definite idea of what he sought.

  Lost magic.

  But why here? Seeking a truth about his childhood, or that of his parents? Trying to find the route to the missing history of his clan? Or simply curious?

  Dust. That was one of the curses of the library. Scraps of paper and the shed skin of those who had written or read the books over the centuries, all existing in an enclosed, still atmosphere. Alishia breathed in and felt the first tickling signs in her nose. At the same time she saw the old man pause in his search, his eyes widen, his hands grip tightly around the book in his lap. Alishia’s nose twitched and itched, pressure built behind her face, her eyes began to water with the strain of withholding the sneeze.

  The man stood. Torn papers fell from his lap, the book held out at arm’s length like a carrier of some horrible contagion.

  Alishia turned and ran. The sneeze exploded. She tried to keep it muffled behind her hands, she had turned several corners already, the book stacks should have absorbed the sound …

  … still, he may have heard.

  Alishia wondered why she even cared, but at the same time she knew: her instinct told her that the man brought danger. She hurried back through the maze of books and dust and age, turning corners, desperately relieved when she found a familiar row that lead back out to the open area around her desk. Once there she rooted around beneath her desk, closed her hand around the hilt of the old knife wedged in between two piles of books beneath the scored wooden top. And she gasped as the man walked around the corner.

  He was sweating. He must have been running to have arrived so quickly behind her, but what she found more worrying was that he tried to hide this fact. For a second she was undecided–stand with the knife, or let it go and face whatever threat he may pose?

  He decided for her. “Nothing,” he growled without even glancing at her, the language obviously alien to his lips. He walked past, so close that she could smell his sweat and fear. He was scared. She wondered whether she smelled the same to him.

  Alishia said nothing, even though she could plainly see the book slung under his arm like a recent kill. She watched with a mixture of relief and embarrassment as he paused at the door, picked his blood-red robe from a hook on the wall, shrugged it over his shoulders and left. As he exited into the sun he turned the hood up over his head.

  A Red Monk? Alishia thought. She had read passing reference to them in several books, but little was known about them other than they were mad. And deadly. But the man had gone, and Alishia breathed a sigh of relief and thought: Thank my heart. Thank my lucky heart.

  Alishia closed the library early that afternoon. The strange experience with the old book-thief had shaken her more than she cared to admit. Besides, nobody would notice, and if they did they would not say anything. And even if they did it would not matter.

  The entrance to the library was below the road, and as she climbed the worn stone staircase Noreela City revealed itself. Many years ago—centuries before her birth—she would have seen spires and arches and domes from the first step, but over the years since the Cataclysmic War they had crumbled into disrepair, or been pulled down when they became unsafe. Now, the first she saw of the surrounding buildings was as she mounted the fifth step and the Tumbling Window of the courthouse stared down at her. In her time she had seen many criminals—murderers; rapists; pseudo-magicians—pushed from this high window. Some of them died on impact. Others, the unlucky ones, clung to life for days, bleeding across the stones, untouched and unaided. The really unlucky ones were taken by dogs in the night.

  Great place to work, Alishia thought for the thousandth time. Opposite a slaughterhouse. Because that’s all it really was. She had once seen a man shoved from the Tumbling Window for stealing coins from a street trader to buy rotwine. His wife stood and watched as he fell, his knees popping, ankles breaking, ribs cracking inward and spearing his lungs. She squatted by his side as he gasped bloody bubbles into the heat of the noonday sun. Then she smiled and left him to die alone.

  These were bad days indeed, and Alishia knew how lucky she was to be the librarian, in charge of one of the least-visited buildings in the city, unknown by most, usually ignored even if someone did recognise her. Perhaps people believed she would have them arrested for talking in her hallowed hall of books.

  As she started down the street she realised how pleased she was to be out of the building. It was an alien feeling because she loved it in there, but today had been tainted by the activities of the weird old man, and she felt lighter of step and heart now that she was away. Even Noreela City—dark, dilapidated, and sad—was welcoming in its own strange way. Perhaps she really had escaped some awful danger. Whatever the reason she felt an unaccountable high, unhindered by the constraints of worry and stress.

  A woman passed by, trailing a snake of children behind her, all of them painfully thin and pocked with weeping sores. The woman was a barrel of a person, rolling along with great strides. He jowls almost touched her chest, which itself could have easily harboured a herd of tumblers beneath its mammoth overhang.

  “Spare some tellans,” the woman croaked, “we’ve not eaten for a week.”

  Alishi
a could see the truth of the statement in the children’s eyes, and the lie in the woman’s.

  “I’ll give the kids tellans,” she said, reaching into her backpack.

  “They’re my kids.”

  “All of them?”

  The woman refused to look away. No shame. “Some of them.”

  “I’ll give the kids tellans,” Alishia said again, and the woman nudged her aside with one fleshy elbow and continued on her way. As the line passed her by Alishia rustled in her bag. She gave the last child—a pale-faced, sad-eyed boy—a sprinkle of silver tellan piece. He smiled his thanks but it could not reach his eyes.

  Alishia stood in the shadow of an abandoned shop and watched the straggly line disappear around the corner. There were other people in the streets now, sleepwalking from buildings at the end of a day’s work, little to look forward to at home, even less in the bars where all the talk would be of failing crops and how the tumblers in the hills were taking more children and elderly each month. There would be arguments between those who believed it was due to the carnivorous plants being more confident, and those who blamed the Cataclysmic War. That old war, ended long before anyone alive now had been born, had replaced the gods as the ultimate scapegoat.

  Alishia believed both were true. One fed the other.

  Bad days indeed.

  Alishia slept above a stable on the outskirts of the city. It was cheap for two reasons: first, the stink of horses was rank and the noises unpleasant; second, the nearer the edge of Noreela City, the more dangerous a place could be. There were stories of Noreelans being dragged from their beds by mountain bandits, raped and eaten, only their head and feet remaining when they were discovered days later (the heads because they were full of impure thoughts; the feet because they had walked in shit). There were all manner of unpleasant stories abroad these days, but that did not necessarily make this one a lie. Alishia slept with a knife beneath her pillow.