Dusk: a dark fantasy novel (A Noreela novel)

by Tim Lebbon

  Every doorway could hide Baburn. Every alley, darkened as they were with wet clothes strung high up between buildings, could be the place where this could end. Maybe the boy had not even found his uncle and was hiding in the streets, sheltering in an empty house or trying to find work at the small docks. In a town of tens of thousands, finding him would not be an easy task, however aware or unaware he may be of his burgeoning powers. Time was not on the Red Monks’ side, and Lucien knew this only too well. He would not sleep. He would not stop looking or questioning, and if needs must he would move past questioning, start using some more direct methods of interrogation. Someone here knew of Vance Baburn.

  He paused in front of another tavern, rested his hand on the hilt of his sword and went inside.

  In the end, Vance Baburn came to Lucien.

  “I’ve been looking for you!” a voice hissed behind the Monk.

  Lucien had strayed from the main streets and found an area of holding pens for sheebok, goats and a couple of chained and spiked tumblers. The cages were heavy and thick, and he wondered just what else they had been designed to hold. The air stank of stale shit. There were a few people milling around—feeding the animals, clearing out stalls, nervously teasing the tumblers—but not many. Lucien had asked his question and was about to leave when he felt the point of a knife in his back, heard the whisper in his ear.

  “You’re not hard to find, you know. Dressed like you are. Like blood-coloured shit.”

  “I’m looking for you, too,” Lucien said. The knife was pressed harder into his back and he felt the skin part, the cool metal sliding half a finger-length into his flesh. It did not hurt straight away, but it stirred his blood. He felt his face flushing with rage, the sword twitching at his belt, and yet he did not turn around. He knew that he could use this movement to his advantage; he simply had to reign in his fury for a few heartbeats more.

  “Where’s the boy?” the voice hissed

  “I don’t know, I’m looking for him myself.”

  “What have you done to him? Killed him like you killed my brother and his wife? Butcher! What possible reason—”

  “That was one of my brethren,” Lucien said, “and he did it—”

  “I don’t care for your reasons! If you’re in with that murderer, I should kill you right here.”

  “You can try,” Lucien said, and there was a pause. They stood there like that for a long moment, Vance Baburn holding the knife piercing the Red Monk, Lucien facing away from the man he sought, trying to control his rage, telling himself again and again that he needed this man alive, needed to question him, find out where the boy had gone. After a sufficient pause he made his move. “Or we can go to your home,” he said, “and talk about this sensibly.”

  “I won’t talk sense with a madman,” Vance hissed.

  “We’re not all mad. Some of us are more obsessed than others. Like mad old Carfallo who found your nephew’s village.”

  “He didn’t find it, he slaughtered it.”

  “He killed some there, I admit, and for that I offer no apologies. But not all of them. A few militia, and some men who attacked him. Rafe—your nephew—escaped before Carfallo could kill him.”

  “You admit you want to kill him? Why? And what makes you think I can’t push harder now, cut those words right out of your putrid body?”

  “He’s a danger to everything!” Lucian said, trying to rein in his anger.

  “He’s just a farm boy, what danger could that be? And he said the whole village was dead.”

  “A young farm boy’s exaggeration. I’ll not lie to you, Vance Baburn, I do seek to kill him. But I can make it easier on you, and your nephew. And easier on the people of Pavisse. Because we know he’s here somewhere, and I’m not the only Monk searching these streets.”

  “Then we’ll slaughter you all! I’ll start with you right now, and the militia will clean up the rest of you like rats’ bodies rotting in the streets!”

  “Militia like those I just saw being tattooed by Cantrass Angels?”

  “They’re not all like that,” Vance said, but the desperation in his voice was obvious. He pushed a little more. The knife sank deeper, and Lucien tensed, slipping the sword from his belt. The moment hung like that, ready to go either way. Lucien’s instinctive rage could take full control, flushing him with the bloodlust and madness, spinning him around and slicing this man in two. Then he would slaughter those who watched; he sensed them hiding, terrified and fascinated. Or the men would part and go to Vance’s home, and maybe Lucien would find what he sought.

  “You can’t kill me like that,” Lucien said quietly, leaning back so that the knife penetrated even deeper. He heard Vance gasp as thick red blood gushed over his hand. “See? Nothing.”

  Vance stepped back, withdrawing the knife.

  Lucien spun around, his sword in his hand, and faced the man. He was looking around, seeking help or an escape route.

  “Don’t make me run you down,” the Monk said. “Where do you live? Is it far?”

  Lucien knew that he had the upper hand. His heart was stuttering as it tried to keep pace with the rage coursing through his body, the madness that discarded pain like so much sweat. His face was flushed, the sword ready in his hand. Not long, he thought. Not long and you can sate this bloodlust. This one first—slowly, painfully, punishment for his presumption—and then the boy. He’ll sing his last on the point of my sword, and if any magic words escape him when he’s dying, I’ll stamp them down into the dust and shit on them.

  “Your house,” Lucien urged. “We can talk there.”

  Vance nodded, glanced around uncertainly once more and then slipped his knife into his belt, resigned. He turned and led the way.

  As soon as they were through the door the Red Monk attacked Vance, kicking him to the floor, scattering empty wine bottles and smashing a wooden table into splinters. The big man tried hard to stand and protect himself, but Lucien’s rage was up, his legs spasming with the kicks, stamping on one knee until it popped and crunched beneath his boot. The man screamed and the Monk jumped on his face, kicking down until teeth broke into his tongue and cheeks, blood gushing into his throat and bursting out in a shower as he coughed. The attack went on. When Vance tried to sit, Lucien kicked him in the hips and the base of his back, cracking vertebrae. Vance screamed, and this time the Red Monk let him.

  “Where is Rafe?” Lucien hissed, holding the ruined man by his beard and lifting him so high that they were face to face.

  Vance could not speak. He shook his head instead, grimacing as something ground in his neck like shattered glass.

  “Where?” Lucien shouted again. The sight of blood spattered across his red robe, sprayed across his hands, kicked into weird shapes on the wooden floor by the man’s thrashing legs … he wanted more. Every bloody splash took him closer to finding the boy.

  Vance shook his head and Lucien let him drop. He hit the floor and writhed there, groaning, eyes half-closed, broken fingers splayed across his chest as he tried to hold his crushed ribs. He could not speak. That did not matter. Lucien knew he had to be quick.

  He reached inside his robe and plucked a small box from a pocket, shaking it slightly to wake the thing inside. He heard the chitinous rattle of docked wings, the hiss as the insect tried in vain to fly out of the darkness that imprisoned it.

  “You will tell me the truth,” Lucien said. He dropped the insect onto the wounded man’s chest, and used the tip of his sword to slash a finger-long entry hole in Vance’s neck. The creature scuttled across blood-soaked clothing and the man’s broken fingers. It smelled the copious blood, but the leakage from the fresh wound was different. Here the creature found what it desired most; thick, rich arterial blood whose flow would soon cease.

  It burrowed inside. Skin and flesh parted, tearing around the cut Lucien had already made, and soon the lump that marked the creature’s presence disappeared as it drove deeper, attaching itself to the man’s spine with barbed claws, spreading its
wing stumps so that other, finer limbs could extrude from its body. They delved through flesh and found what they sought.

  Vance’s throat began to rattle, his voice box agitated by the creature. “I’m going to die,” he whispered hoarsely.

  Lucien smiled, and nodded. “How true,” he said. “Now … where is Rafe?”

  “Don’t know.” The hiss was strange, inhuman, a caress of chitin on bone.

  “Has he been here?”

  “Yes.”

  “When did he leave?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Has he come back?”

  “No.”

  “Where is he in the town?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Does he know anyone else in the town?”

  “I …” The hiss blurred, as if confusion had set in.

  “Does anyone else here know him?”

  “A thief.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “How do you know he’s a thief?” Lucien smiled at the man below him, because Vance’s eyes were open again now. He was fighting, that was obvious, doing his utmost to keep silent. His eyes were filled with untempered hate. It did not frighten the Monk.

  “Saw his hands, he has a thief’s marks, he brought the boy to me, he … he …”

  “So Rafe fled when he knew you wouldn’t help him. He must have realised you were useless. I’m going to find the boy and kill him.”

  “No!”

  Lucien stood and turned away from the dying man. The blood was running slower now, pooling on the floor and dripping down between boards, finding its way to the earth. With no sign of Rafe—not really any nearer at all—still he had someone else to look for. A thief. In a place like this, there would be hundreds.

  “Kill you,” Vance hissed. “Going to …”

  Lucien turned around, but the man was already on his knees, knife in his unbroken hand, arm swinging around. He buried the blade in Lucien’s stomach, slicing through, twisting it as the Red Monk stepped back, gasping. The men parted, Vance’s eyes already drooping shut from blood loss.

  “Untrue,” Lucien said. And then he let his rage burst out.

  12

  Kosar and A’Meer talked long into the evening. Their closeness had returned, along with a sense of attraction and comfort that set them fully at ease. There were a few jokes, some flirting, some outright innuendos from A’Meer, but mostly the talk was serious. And mostly it concerned magic.

  A’Meer had once fought a Red Monk. When Kosar started his story she mentioned it straight away, trying to appear casual but knowing the reaction her revelation would invoke. Kosar, already drunk on Old Bastard and rotwine, leaned back in his chair and raised his eyebrows, waiting for A’Meer to continue. She had told him many stories during their time together, but never had she mentioned the Monks.

  “I was travelling down through the stilted villages of Ventgoria. Everything is built high off the ground there, on wooden platforms set on the thick trunks of Bole trees. They try to make sure the villages—they call them villages, but usually there are no more than a couple of hundred people living in any one place—are built as far away from the steam vents as they can. The stilts keep them up away from the marshes and the gas floods that happen there sometimes, but really they’re frightened of the steam vents as well. They emerge here and there sometimes, unexpected, as if they shift underground and break out wherever they desire. Some of the villagers believe the vents are caused by giant steam dragons, living beneath the ground and burrowing their way through the loamy soil. And each time they need to take a breath, they vent their steam out through the ground. Who am I to doubt their beliefs?”

  “Everything amazes you, doesn’t it?” Kosar said fondly.

  “I’m descended from the Shantasi. We’re more receptive to wonder than you fucking Noreelan wasters.”

  “I’ll drink to that.” Kosar drained glass of rotwine and wondered whether he would wake up the next morning.

  “I’d gone quite a way down through the marshes, doing a bit of hunting here and there, when I met him. He was riding a horse, but it seemed to know where to go without him having to guide it. I was on foot, so I stepped to the side of the trail when I saw him in the distance and started a fire. It’s something of a tradition in Ventgoria that when you meet a traveller going in the opposite direction, you take food and a drink together. Not many people have cause to travel right across that place—there’s not much there, especially for those who have no sense of wonder. So I was plucking a marsh goose I’d shot down a couple of hours before, gutting it, stuffing it with a handful of tumblespit I’d been drying in my rucksack. I had a bottle of wine, too, from the village I’d just left. Kosar, you won’t believe the wine those Ventgorians can brew! Their grapes grow in the open on string racks, no earth, only the sun to give them sustenance and long, loving care of the roots by the growers. Believe me, it’s something to kill for.”

  “Naturally, you bought it,” Kosar slurred.

  A’Meer glanced up. “I traded.” She looked back down at the table and continued, her glass of rotwine long forgotten. Her small hand traced the outline of somebody’s carved name, and Kosar wondered if she had known them. “When he came nearer,” she continued, “I’d already skewered the goose and it was spitting fat onto the fire. It smelled delicious. I knew of the Red Monks, of course. I’d been made to know their purpose. But this was the first one I’d ever met.”

  “Made to know how?” Kosar asked.

  “I’ll get to that, Kosar. Let me talk. You told me yourself what you think this all means—how relevant this boy Rafe could be, how his appearance might change everything—so now I have something to break to you. And this is my way. By telling you about the first time I met a Red Monk.

  “So, on came the Monk. He had his hood up, as they always do, and he seemed to be asleep. Hands on his thighs, his head dipped, the horse’s reins knotted on its back. The horse looked as though it had walked a long, long way. It sounded unshod, it was foaming at the mouth, and I could see its ribs rippling the skin with every step it took. My mouth was watering, but suddenly I wasn’t hungry. Because I knew what was to come.”

  She paused and Kosar stared wide-eyed, suddenly sober. A’Meer was revealing so much to him in so few words, telling him that there was something much more to her than met the eye. More than he had ever known before. They had been lovers for a few moons, and although they had talked incessantly, never had anything she revealed held as much import as this. The whole truth remained to be told, but already Kosar knew that things had changed.

  A’Meer glanced up and for a few seconds Kosar was petrified. Her eyes … there was so much more pain there than he had ever thought possible. Pain, and secrecy. He could see that this revelation was hurting her. “What happened?” he asked.

  “He came level with me, dismounted, drew his sword and we began to fight.”

  Kosar was stunned. The first image that came to him was the Red Monk in Trengborne, marching through the village taking hits from arrows and crossbow bolts, every impact seeming to make him stronger, each splash of his blood on the ground empowering him more. And then he imagined A’Meer fighting one of those same creatures.

  It took him a few dazed seconds to comprehend that she had won.

  “I’m a warrior, Kosar,” she said. “I grew up in New Shanti, as I told you, but not in New Drymouth. And my parents weren’t fisher folk. When I was a girl they took me to Hess, the Shantasi mystic city. And there I learned a lot of things. A lot. Some of which I need to tell you now, most of which I can never tell you. However much I like you, Kosar—and believe me when I tell you I’ve never liked anyone more—my life and what I am has to remain my own.”

  Kosar stared at her white face framed by the beautiful black hair, those dark eyes that seemed to swallow even the reflection from oil lamps, giving out nothing. The raucous laughter in The Broken Arm seemed to fade away, little more than an echo, as
if they had the place to themselves. He looked around and nobody was watching. In such a public place, he was about to learn secrets.

  “What happened?” he asked again. He simply wanted to know, not discuss. Not yet.

  “We fought for a long time. You’ve told me a little of what you saw in Trengborne, so you know the tenacity of these things. A Shantasi trained in the art of combat has few of the defences a Red Monk has, because we’re not mad. In fact a Shantasi fights with pure logic, knowledge transposing instinct, certainty voiding chance. A Monk has madness as its ally. And true madness has twisted them into something other than human, something more like a machine. There’s a bitter irony in that fact, but it’s true. They suffer a cut, they feel no pain. They lose a limb, and balance becomes a product of their madness, just as strength comes to those enraged. Stick a sword into a Monk’s gut and its muscles clench in rage, holding it, dragging it deeper in to bring its adversary closer. Slash an artery and insanity clots it, drives a fist of lunacy into the wound and stems the flow of blood.”

  “You sound like you speak from experience.”

  A’Meer nodded grimly. “I was armed with full Shantasi warrior weaponry at the time, as I was on all of my travels.”

  “You never said …”

  “I told you where I went, what I saw, who I met. I never mentioned what I was wearing at the time.”

  Kosar nodded, waved his hand, as if the slight deception was unimportant. And isn’t it? he thought. I thought my story would surprise her, but she’s spun the table.

  “I had to use it all,” she said. “We went with swords to begin with—a Monk’s sword is as mad as the Monk. It’s made of a metal that reacts with blood, craves it, whines as its being sated. Spooked the fuck out of me. We fought for an hour, and I put in some good hits. It’s strange, but a Monk is actually a very poor swordsman. They’re untrained, and madness doesn’t aid coordination. But madness is also their greatest weapon. The cuts and slashes did nothing to it, and when I eventually ducked, feinted, rolled and stuck my sword in its gut … as I said just now, it pulled me in. I didn’t want to let go, I couldn’t pull it out, and the sword was sinking deeper, the Monk’s flushed red face staring at me, those eyes … so determined to finish me, and so confident that for a few heartbeats I thought that I could never win. But then I let go and rolled back, and took up a slideshock. I slipped it onto my forearm as the Monk was pulling my sword from its gut, and I took my first swing bent almost double. The wire caught it under the chin and the slide hit my wrist. It should have taken its head off, but it was spinning, wrapping the wire around its neck and drawing me in again. I lost another weapon; the wire had slashed its throat and buried itself deep. It bled a lot, but that didn’t seem to didn’t bother it. It came at me again and I fell, kicking it up and over my body and onto the cooking goose. The fire didn’t get a good hold because its cloak was so soaked with its own blood.”