Dusk: a dark fantasy novel (A Noreela novel)

by Tim Lebbon

  … should have put it back, never should have taken it …

  “Kosar, breathe, let it come, they’ll lose interest soon.”

  … meant so much but I never told her, and look what happened, look what happened to her!

  “Oh Mage shit,” A’Meer whispered, tortured by whatever guilty secrets plagued her own mind. Her grip on Kosar never let go.

  Forgot again, always forget, never found it in myself to remember just that one special day for my mother, always let it slip away and then fooled myself that look in her eyes was a calm acceptance when I apologised, not disappointment, not sadness …

  Kosar vomited, the sickness and rot of hidden memories and mistakes flooding his mind and purging his body. A’Meer still held him, groaning and cursing, fighting whatever foul thoughts had been dredged in her own mind. He heaved again and bent double, watching vomit speckle the pine needle carpet, a big beetle scurrying away with its back coated in his stomach juices. All his bad thoughts crowded in and buzzed him like moths to a flame, some of them battering against his skull and knocking themselves away, others remaining there to fly in again and again, reminding him of all those bad things.

  The whispering began to fade away at last. It did not vanish completely—it never would—but reduced in volume until it was a hush in his ears, and then a feeling deeper down, and then nothing, not disappearing, simply becoming too quite and deep for him to want to hear.

  “Why didn’t you warn me?” he said, spitting the foul taste from his mouth.

  “How could I?”

  Kosar looked up at A’Meer and saw that she had been suffering as well, face pale, eyes moist. He wondered what secret shame she had been facing only seconds ago; he did not wish to ask. He turned and looked in the direction the horses had taken. “The others?”

  “If the things in these woods get them too, I’m hoping that the horses will go on while they’re remembering.”

  “Bad things. All bad thing for you?”

  A’Meer nodded, looked away, turned and scanned the woods behind them.

  “Why? Why?”

  “Perhaps it’s how they feed,” she said. “There are plenty of strange things we know about—skull ravens, tumblers—and some, like the mimics, that are little more than myth. There must be many more that are still hidden to us. Especially since the Cataclysmic War. It’s not just the landscape that’s suffered since then, changed.”

  Kosar shook his head to rid himself of those rancid images and guilts. It only served to mix them up some more. “I can’t stand this,” he said, moaning and holding his head.

  “Kosar, they’re here!”

  A’Meer drew on her bow, let an arrow fly. Something screeched from between the trees, and Kosar saw a red flash behind some shrubs, twisting and wavering in the dappled forest light.

  “Come on,” A’Meer said. “We have to catch the others!” She ran past him, grabbing his elbow and spinning him so that he was facing the right way. “Now!”

  He followed her, imagining that he could leave those foul thoughts of his behind, stewing away into this weird forest floor along with his puddle of vomit.

  What manner of things …? he thought. And then the idea came that they would prey on the Monks as well … and that, maybe, they would slow them down.

  Hope was screaming. Not aloud, not through her mouth, because the slew of recollections was drowning any physical response. She was screaming inside.

  And still the whispers made themselves known.

  I slid the stiletto in too late, waited until he came, and maybe I enjoyed it? Maybe I wanted to feel him flooding into me, wanted to see the rapture in his face before his eyes sprang open at the pain, the realisation of what I’d done to him? I could have done it sooner, but he was pounding into me, hard, harder, and then when he grunted I raised my hand and slid the blade into his back, pushed hard, so hard that it cut from his chest and pricked my neck … and his eyes opened, and I had killed him, he knew that already, could feel it, the blood bursting inside and stilling his heart, and even as I met his gaze I felt sick with what I had done. Not his fault. He hadn’t made me do anything. I had invited him in. And in his final exhalation, that last grumbling breath from his slack mouth, there hid none of the truths I believed would be there …

  “Not me!” Hope hissed. “Not me! I didn’t do it, not on purpose, not me it was … everyone before me!” Ancestors, she thought. They made me do it. Those real witches who mocked me by passing down their name to my pitiful, fraudulent self.

  Her horse ran on, Rafe held her around the waist, and the opening up of the foulest corners of her mind continued.

  He was a bad man anyway, he deserved what those things did to him, I could never have unlocked the door and forgiven myself if he escaped…

  I like it, I like it, I can’t help that, I can’t help that they’re alive when I eat them…

  He’d have still paid me, still screwed me, even if he had known … it wasn’t my fault … by then nothing would have stopped him, not even the knowledge of what I had…

  Hope cried through eyes shut tight.

  Behind her, Rafe said nothing.

  He felt the things in the shadows probing him, finding his mind and then scampering away in alarm. They spun away between the trees, dug themselves back down beneath the leaves and needles where they slept for years on end. They were terrified. They had found him, but as those unknown things plunged their tendrils deep into his mind, they discovered something else entirely.

  The magic, new and fresh, yet with a history older than they could understand or accept.

  Their shock turned to terror when it unveiled itself to them. Its own history—its failings, its shame, its eternal guilt—was laid bare, just for an instant, but long enough to force the creatures away. Perhaps to drive them mad.

  Rafe did his best not to see.

  Trey rode hard, Alishia slumped between his arms. Mother! he thought, wretched and alone. Mother! Sonda! He pulled a handful of the final fledge crumbs from his pocket, and though they were white and stale he swallowed them quickly, whimpering as forgotten deeds were laid out for him to view afresh.

  “No!” he shouted, and the gone-off fledge plucked him from his mind and sent him hovering above the pounding horse. He looked down at himself, sitting upright and holding tightly onto Alishia, and he tried to lose himself in the void of her mind. If I get in there, he thought, they won’t be able to get at me. They’ll never reach the heart of me. If I can get in there …

  But inside, touching Alishia and listening to her screams of mental anguish—and then hearing what came next—he began to wish he had stayed put.

  I never lived, Alishia whimpered, never saw, never went out to experience! And here and now I’m dying, that thing as good as killed me, I would have known what was happening if I’d relished life rather than locked myself away, those books, gone to black and no more, only in my head. And they were only books! And now –

  Her voice paused, humbled by the sudden, massive presence that arrived in the tattered remnants of her mind. Trey shrank back. Alishia did not even know that he was there. And then she screamed, driving him spinning helplessly through the forest, past the Monks pursuing them, losing himself as the fight went on around them.

  Trey’s physical body slumped on the horse, the saddle slipping sideways again. His eyes turned up in his head. And then Alishia screamed out loud, a wretched wail that spooked their horse and made the whole forest hold its breath for an instant.

  Trey’s eyes sprang open. He vomited down Alishia’s back. And as the horse twisted and turned between the trees, he began to cry.

  A’Meer turned again, knelt down as Kosar ran past her, fired an arrow. A Monk screamed as the shaft found its mark. She moved too fast for Kosar to see, pacing from tree to tree, loosing arrows and flitting across the ground like a shadow.

  “Run hard!” A’Meer said. “Catch up. I’ll try to draw them off.”

  “No, I—“

/>   “Go!” She glared at him, then leaned forward and pushed him roughly away. “Just go, Kosar. If those mind-things got to Trey and Hope as well, they’ll need guiding. I’ll catch up with you. Life Moon be with you.” She slipped away between the trees, bent over. Her last few words had not sounded convincing.

  Head still reeling from the onslaught of hidden memory, Kosar did as A’Meer asked. He watched her for a few seconds more—running from tree to tree, pausing, firing an arrow, making an intentional noise as she stumbled over a protruding root and rolled through a tangle of old twigs and branches—and then he forced himself to turn away, hurrying as fast as he could after the two horses.

  Every movement now had the feeling of desperation. A’Meer’s departure gave Kosar the impression of a last-ditch attempt to give them more time, though for what none of them knew. Rafe’s imaginary destination, perhaps? The place where he could save them? For the first time ever, Kosar realised, they were actually submitting themselves to the safety and protection of this new magic brewing and hiding away inside the farm boy. It had revealed itself to them already, but unbidden, manifesting of its own volition rather than revealing itself at their request. Now they were going where Rafe said it urged him go, and with every step they took they went further into the unknown.

  He heard a scream from behind, high and filled with pain, and as it turned into an animal roar he knew it was a Monk. Another arrow found home, he thought with a smile, and then he frowned as he wondered just how many shafts A’Meer had left. Once she ran out she would resort to her crossbow, and then after that, the sword. By then she would be surrounded. And soon after that, she would be dead.

  He followed the trail left by the two horses. He wished their track were not quite so apparent. He would have been able to follow far subtler signs, but as it stood the Monks could not help but see the route they had taken. The forest carpet was churned up, twigs and branches broken, and here and there Kosar spotted smears of blood on the tips of thin branches, drips on the forest floor. Some of them were already attracting the ants.

  He ran hard. He had never felt so exhausted. His heart pounded at his chest, trying to grab his attention. A pain bit into his hip, bending him to the left, but he never let up. To pause now would be to deny the advantage A’Meer had given him by staying behind.

  More sounds came from somewhere behind him in the forest: a scream or a shout; something falling heavily, as if from an uppermost branch of the tallest tree; whisperings, urgent yet still secretive; and then the unmistakable sound of battle. Sword on sword. Shouts, grunts, screaming as sharp edged struck home.

  Kosar paused, drew his sword, and then ran on. A’Meer would not thank him if he returned to try to help. And really, what help could he offer?

  From ahead came the sudden sound of a horse rearing up. Someone screamed, though he could not tell whether the voice was male or female. And then the horses were running again, their hooves drumming on harder packed earth.

  Kosar hurried on, ducking beneath branches, skirting around a huge writhing ant mound that had been smashed in two by the fleeing horses. And then he emerged suddenly from the pine forest into a deciduous woodland—the trees more widely spaced, the ground harder, shrubs and tangles of fern growing here and there—and he saw what had startled the horses.

  All colour had gone. The trees, leaves and trunks, the ground, ferns and shrubs and thorny bushes on the forest floor, the vines hanging from and high branches … all colour leeched away, leaving the whole landscape a uniform, dull grey. Texture and dimension were picked out only by the fall of sunlight, the distinction of shadows. A bird flew from one high branch to another, calling in a weak, croaky voice, and its colour was the same.

  Kosar gasped, paused, fell to his knees on the forest floor. The leaves there, left over from the previous winter, had taken on this sickly hue. The ants that crawled over and under the leaves were like speckles of ash migrating across the ground. A beetle here, something larger there—a scorpion, perhaps, or some huge insect—all tinted with shades of grey. He closed his eyes, held out his hand and opened them again. His skin was browned, leathery from the sun, his nails black with filth, and the blood that continued to drip from his fingertips was a stark red against this nothingness.

  Kosar gasped a sigh of relief, stood and ran on. He felt like an invader here, unnatural and alien, whereas it was the place itself that was so wrong. There had been no fire. The leaves still seemed alive, and they even retained a healthy sheen viewed from certain angles, but something had stolen their colour. He kicked the leaves at his feet, wondering whether colour had been washed away into the ground, but only the compacted dark grey of the dried mud beneath revealed itself.

  The trail was harder to follow in here—the trees grew farther apart and there were no broken branches to show the way, no churned ground—but he could hear the horse now, so he followed his ears instead of his eyes.

  There were no longer hear any noises behind him. He was either too far away, or the fighting had finished. He could not bear to imagine what that could mean.

  At last he saw the horses ahead, swerving around a huge old tree, disappearing again behind foliage. He ran on, the sighting giving him extra strength for this final sprint. It took another hundred steps to catch up, during which the surrounding hardly changed at all: no colour; no sound; no hint of pursuit. When he was finally close enough to make himself heard, he stopped and spoke as loudly as he dared.

  “Trey!”

  Trey’s horse skidded and reared slightly, snorting foam from its mouth and nose, and Trey turned in his saddle.

  “Kosar! Where’s A’Meer?”

  “Fighting the Monks,” he gasped. “Make Hope stop, just for a moment”

  Trey nodded and rode on, trying to catch up with Hope and Rafe where they had moved ahead. Kosar looked around at the forest behind him before following at a trot.

  He found them waiting beside a fallen tree, the horses wide-eyed and snorting with panic and exhaustion. Hope looked pale and startled, her tattoos knotted around her eyes and mouth. Rafe’s expression was unreadable.

  “The Monks are in the woods,” Kosar said. “A’Meer is trying to draw them off. Rafe, where are we going. Is this it?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “But I don’t think it’s very far.”

  “What’s wrong with this place?” Hope asked. “What’s here?”

  “Another bit of the land gone bad,” Kosar said, kicking at the grey leaves at his feet. They crackled and span in the air, shedding grey dust like ash.

  “Not that,” Hope said. “Back there, in the pines … those whispers. Did you…?”

  “Yes,” Kosar said, catching her eye and then looking away. “A’Meer knew of them.”

  Trey made a noise—a laugh, a sob—but none of them said any more about what they had seen, felt or remembered.

  “We really need to get wherever we’re going, Rafe,” Kosar said. “I don’t know how long A’Meer can fool them or hold them back.” They all looked uncomfortable at A’Meer’s actions, as if it was already certain that she had sacrificed herself for them.

  “Not far,” Rafe said again.

  “Swap with me,” Trey said. He carefully dismounted, letting Alishia slump forward in the saddle until her head was resting against the horse’s mane. “She screamed back there,” he said. “They got to her too, even deep down where she is. That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe,” Kosar said. He mounted the horse, put his arms around Alishia and held the reins either side of her. He glanced down at the miner and smiled. “I’ll take care of her,” he said. Trey frowned, smiled, plucked his disc-sword from his back and looked to Rafe and Hope for direction.

  “That way,” Rafe pointed. “The woods stop very soon, and then we’ll see where we’re heading.”

  “And where is that?” Kosar snapped. He surprised even himself with the anger in his voice. He was becoming furious at being led, steered, pointed left and right as
if by a child playing with wooden toy machines, replaying their own versions of the Cataclysmic War. And though he was scared of what Rafe carried, he was angry also at being kept in the dark. “Where are you taking us, Rafe? Ask that thing inside you and--”

  Rafe frowned. “A graveyard,” he said.

  Filled with questions, none of them spoke.

  Hope led off, driving the horse slightly slower than before. Panic was still there for all of them, but it was more controlled now, more ordered.

  Kosar spurred his horse on, clasping the comatose girl between his arms. There was hardly any weight to her at all. He was surprised that she was not dead. He wondered what was going on inside her head, whether those whispering things had invaded as deep as her dreams, and he hoped that she was well.

  Trey ran alongside, his long legs eating up the ground.

  Ahead, Rafe rested his head against Hope’s back and seemed to sleep.

  Something was coming.

  Rafe felt smaller, slighter, and yet more significant than ever before. His whole body tingled, outside and in, and he felt the thing that lay deeper than his own mind expand to fill his soul, edges ripping and rippling, promising imminent release. He felt on the verge of a mental orgasm, a spewing of knowledge and magic and something new. He was sick and elated, terrified and enchanted, and the knowledge that something was ready to show itself drove his heart into a frenzy.

  Still mindless, still needing protection and guidance, the magic inside was ready to out.

  “It’s coming,” Rafe whispered, but in the tumult of the chase nobody heard. It did not matter. They would know soon enough. “It’s coming.”

  26

  The fleeting shape emerged 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.