by Tim Lebbon
“But they fled northward, way past The Spine,” Kosar said. “It would take a couple of moons to travel that far.”
“As I said, Kosar, they have access to things. Trey, did you have to run across the land just now to report the Monk to us? No. Why would the Mages’ spies have to?”
“But what…?” Kosar said.
A’Meer sat up slowly, wincing as her bruised and battered body protested. “A shade,” she said. “They mastered controlling damaged shades during their reign. Who’s to say they don’t still have a certain influence?”
“But that’s magic,” Hope protested. “There is no magic!” She glanced at Rafe as she spoke, then looked away again.
“It doesn’t have to be magic. I received a message from you, remember?”
“That was a skull raven, that was just…”
“Communication,” A’Meer finished for her. “We don’t have to understand something for it to be possible. Don’t ascribe anything you don’t understand to magic.”
“But what of Alishia?” Trey asked. “What can we do for her?”
“I don’t know,” A’Meer said, shaking her head. “But we have to assume that the Mages will soon know what the thing in her head saw happen here. And as we all know, they’ll want what Rafe has for themselves.”
“Well, I don’t want it,” Rafe shouted. “They can have it, for all I care!”
“What about her?” Trey asked again. They were ignoring him. Dismissing her.
“It’s precious, Rafe!” Hope said.
“Who are you people?” Trey asked. Alishia trembled, mumbled something incoherent. “How are you going to help-”
“Who are you?” Hope asked. “A fledge miner who’s obviously never been topside before, and a strange woman who may have betrayed us to the Mages.”
“She didn’t betray us! It was what was inside her.”
“Maybe she’s always had it there,” Hope said. “She’s obviously not the person you thought she was.”
“She helped me!”
Hope looked down at Alishia where she lay prone on the cave floor. “Let her die.”
“You bitch!” Trey felt the drug still lifting him, trying to tear him away from this scene and carry him up and away, into freedom. But he fought that yearning, looked at Alishia, denying the shred of doubt that Hope’s words had planted in his mind.
“We don’t know who she is,” Hope said. “We don’t know who sent her, why, when, and what she’s going to do next. For that matter, we don’t know him, either!” She jabbed her finger at Trey and advanced toward him. He stepped back, frightened of the tattoos seemingly squirming on the witch’s face, bringing her skin alive.
“We have to leave, and soon,” A’Meer said tiredly. “We can talk about this when we’re away, but I’m in no state to take on another Monk.”
“And who are you?” Hope said, turning on the injured woman. “A Shantasi! And they’re about as trustworthy as my own turds! Who’s to say you aren’t here to steal what Rafe has for your slave-kin?”
“She fought a Red Monk so you could get away!” Kosar shouted.
“And beat it?” Hope threw her hands up. “Nobody beats a Red Monk! They let her win to deceive us. They’re probably closing in even now, ready to snuff out the only bit of hope this land has seen for centuries!” She stood at Rafe’s side with her back to him, arms spread, as if to ward off any attack from the others in the cave.
“No, Hope,” Rafe said. His voice was quiet, but it carried the authority of someone far older than he. “No fighting. No arguing. We don’t know one another, but we’re here for a reason.” He closed his eyes, breathed deeply and sighed, a long, heartrending exhalation. “You’re all here for me. And though I never wished it, there’s a part of me that asks that you protect me, as well as you can.”
RAFE HAD BEENlistening to the arguments: Hope’s paranoia, Trey’s concern for the fallen girl, Kosar the thief siding with the Shantasi warrior who had given them time to escape and almost died in the process.
I cured her, he thought. I touched her and drew out the poison from her blood, but through no physical process. The infected blood went nowhere. The poison simply stopped existing. I did that.
The rain pummeled down outside, and each impact was a whisper in his ears, more knowledge imparted and facts hacked down and burned; new, terrifying truths rising from the ashes. This simple cave, this depression in the land, was turning into a wonderful place in Rafe’s understanding. It was as if every crack in the wall, every raindrop, every blade of grass bending under a weight of water knew more than he had ever known. There was a power around him, buzzing to break out. It was terrifying but humbling; the power gave itself tentatively, holding back at every step, pleading with him, Be careful, be careful. He was terrified of its potential and awed by its intensity.
Now those people in the cave were looking at him, blinking in surprise at what he had said, each thinking themselves right in some small way. And in one way they were all right-magic was breathing again, and it was Rafe who gave it breath. But there was so much more they did not know.
“I’m weak,” Rafe said. “I’m eighteen next moon. And I’m a farm boy; I’ve no fighting experience. I’ve never had a fight other than with boys in the village. I’d have no idea how to defend myself against a Red Monk, intent on killing me for what’s started inside me.”
“And just what is that?” Kosar asked.
“Magic,” Rafe said. “Strong and powerful, but vulnerable as well. It’s inside me, gestating, and it relies on me to carry it. It’s readying it- and myself for what it will become.”
The cave was silent, its inhabitants awed. Even Alishia had stopped mumbling, as if she sensed the import of the moment.
“You cured me,” A’Meer said.
“I touched you and the magic bled into me. I just steered it. I think it was… an expression of good faith.”
“A bribe?” Hope asked.
“A gift,” Rafe replied. “It asks a lot, and in turn I ask a lot of you. Requests like that can’t exist without some reward.”
“So what do we all get?” Hope said. “What does the fledger get? What does the thief receive in payment for his allegiance?”
Rafe shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“It hasn’t told you yet?” Hope asked.
Rafe shrugged once again, saying nothing.
“What do I get?” Hope asked. “I’ve been waiting all my life, so what do I get?”
There was turmoil in Rafe’s mind, brief but violent, and the tang of the rain carried the warm scent of blood for less than a heartbeat. He closed his eyes but saw no less. “Hurt,” he said. “If you go against me, you get hurt.”
He could never have spoken those words… and yet he had. Those in the cave should have laughed at what he said, yet they did not.
He had convinced them. And the voices in his head sighed with contentment, and started to tell him more.
AS THEY LEFTthe cave Kosar knew that much had already changed. The rain pelted down and washed old dirt from his body, refreshing him, preparing him for the future. He opened his hands and held them palms-up, and although the wounds on his fingertips still stung, the pain was less than before. The torrent cleansed the dust and grit from his raw flesh, washing his past back into the ground. He hated foolish pride, but for the first time in years he had a purpose.
A’Meer sat on a horse, no longer tied into her saddle. She slumped in pain from her wounds, exhausted from the effects of the poison. But her eyes were bright now when she looked across at him, twinkling with excitement, and Kosar was thrilled that he and A’Meer were together. Somehow, any other situation would have seemed unthinkable. Perhaps this had always been their future.
Maybe they had been steered this way.
Kosar thrust that thought from his mind, stared it at the ground and let his horse trample it into the mud. He had no wish to imagine such a controlling influence over his life.
But A’Meer
’s eyes said otherwise. Even though it was still dark he could see the way she looked at him, the sense of meaning suddenly exuding from her like a strong smell. He had never considered A’Meer aimless-she was too strong, too intelligent for that-but compared to this moment, she had always been adrift, he realized. Injured as she was, weak and vulnerable, the strength of her new conviction was evident. She had found her true course.
It was a frightening sensation, this sense of belonging. It scared Kosar to the core. And yet he could not deny that it felt good.
As they packed, they had talked about which way they should head. North, eventually, lay the Cantrass Plains, The Spine, Long Marrakash. It was rumored across the land that the Duke was there now, not exactly in hiding but living beneath a cloud of apathy and neglect. His people did not want or need him anymore-Noreela was becoming too fractured, too feudal-but his reign was still recognized by some of those in the north. Kosar suggested that they should make contact with the Duke and beg the protection of his army. Better a thousand fighting men than a witch, a thief, a fledge miner, a dying woman and an injured Shantasi. Hope had agreed, though grudgingly. Rafe had remained silent. He watched them talk about his safety. It was as if he had placed himself in their hands, and now it was their duty to do their best by him.
Also to the north, A’Meer had said, were the Mages. Fled for three centuries, maybe dead, or perhaps weakened or driven mad by exile. Much of their army had gone with them but it would be long-dead by now, skeletons in armor. And yet A’Meer insisted that the Mages would try something. They were so close to it for so long, she had said. They couldn’t help but be affected by the twisted magic they wrought. If they’re alive, they’ll want nothing but revenge.
They all knew of the Duke’s army and what it had become. Remnants lay scattered across the land in the Militia, local police forces that seemed quite efficient in small numbers but which in places such as Pavisse or Noreela City became perpetrators of crime rather than guardians against it. Control was good, but uninhibited power bred greed.
So for now they had agreed to head south. Hundreds of miles due south was Kang Kang, a place Kosar had once traveled close by but which he had no desire to visit again. An unknown place, a land of legend, Kang Kang was the birthplace of tales to scare children and adults alike. Much was said of its mountains and valleys, and if even a half of it was true, it was somewhere to avoid.
But Kosar did not think that Kang Kang was their aim. A’Meer had not commented upon this yet, but he could sense something in her, a new urgency fighting through her pain and tiredness. She had stated her mission to him quite plainly back in Pavisse, and demonstrated it by taking on the Red Monk: she was here to protect Rafe. She would gladly die doing so, but he was sure that she favored an alternative. She wanted to take him home. She wanted to travel to New Shanti.
HOPE WALKED CLOSEto Rafe’s horse. Her place was beside him, and she would not leave. She had been the first to find him, see his potential, sense the burgeoning power within, and now she thought of herself as his guardian. He had grown, even in the few days since she had found him curled up in a doorway in Pavisse, but the need to protect him remained. And she intended to be alongside him until the end, whatever the end might bring.
She felt proud of herself and her lineage. For generations her family had been witches, and now here she was, trudging through this filthy night with the source of new magic on a horse beside her. He looked asleep, but Hope guessed he was merely composing his thoughts, staring at his hands where they held his horse’s reins, looking inward not outward. Trying to see and understand the strange new landscapes within.
What she would give to be in there with him. What she would do to have just one single look.
She glanced back at the fledge miner and the comatose woman. He was steering the horse, glancing back constantly to make sure she had not slipped sideways in the saddle. It was one of the horses Hope had traded for at the farm, and even in the cool wet night it foamed at the mouth, snorted, straggled behind. It would be dead soon. Perhaps the girl would too.
Hope could find no trust in her heart for someone she did not know. It came from a lifetime of witchcraft. There were those who still feared a witch, but there were many more who knew for sure that she was a sham. Witches of old practiced magic, curving it to their whims and letting it re-form again, molding it like so much clay. Since the Cataclysmic War, a witch was merely a shadow of her ancestors, a pretender, wallowing in past glories or hiding beneath the veneer of legend. To some, frightening in her very madness. To others, pitiful. Hope was a witch and a whore combined, with double the reason to be hated.
Hope had always been a woman on her own-ironic that she had shared her bed with so many men-and now more than ever she felt withdrawn and introverted, longing to hide from the strangers she had been thrown in with. She had never met a fledge miner topside who could be trusted. They always ended up craving their fresh drug, swindling and lying and cheating in the vain hope that they could procure some more without returning underground. They knew so little of the lands they sought to live in, their knowledge confined instead to the caves, the darkness that hid millennia of memories. This knowledge combined with their own peculiar myths-born of the constant darkness, the tremendous pressure of the world surrounding them-to make them unreliable at best, and willfully devious at worst.
And then there was Kosar, a branded thief. He seemed strange. Though not as old as her, he was experienced and well traveled, yet almost naive in the company of herself and A’Meer. It was as if he shunned the knowledge that he must have been witness to over his years of wandering the lands, excluding it for want of a simpler life. His fingers bled, he tore strips of cloth to cover them and he hadn’t once asked whether Hope knew of ways to cure him. There were means-Willmott’s Nemesis, administered correctly, would ease his pain and let the wounds heal and close at last-and although Hope had none with her, it would be relatively easy to find. But if he did not ask, she would not offer. She liked him the way he was. Because although thievery was no reason for her to mistrust him, his relationship with the Shantasi was.
Hope’s trust was least for this Shantasi woman who knew so much. The witch liked to believe that it was not jealousy, though there was a glimmer of that: Hope had found Rafe, yet it was A’Meer who had fought and almost died for him. And it was the warrior woman who also seemed to know more about the Mages and their ways than any of them. That did not surprise Hope, but deep inside, in the animal part of her brain where reason gave way to instinct, it angered her. It drew her closer than ever to Rafe, and if in her head there was a crude sense of ownership, then so be it.
She knew little of the Shantasi. Some claimed to know them, to have an understanding of their origins and history, but these were almost always proved wrong. Hope had heard many wild rumors, the stuff of storytime, so exaggerated and unbelievable so as to be dismissed without a second thought. Other tales were frightened whispers from men in her bed-traders, farmers, militia and mercenaries-who claimed to have learned the secrets of the Shantasi. One man she remembered well had come close to tears as he related his tale to her, his claim that he had traveled almost as far as New Shanti but then been turned back, hounded out by wraiths and spirits too violent, too real to be dead. The chase had supposedly lasted for days, and however fast or slow he had been running, the spirits had always been just behind him, lashing out, not letting him rest for a minute until he entered the Mol’Steria Desert. There the chase had ended, but he had kept on running. He had run so far, he said, that the bones in his toes had begun to crumble, and he lifted his feet to show her.
Hope had smiled benignly, nodded. She knew of potions and suggestions that would imply a sense of pursuit in someone with a weak mind. It was a tale she had heard before.
But then the man had paused, stared at her, seeing her disbelief. He turned onto his stomach and showed her the wounds on his back. They were cauterized slashes, furrows in the skin from shoulders to bu
ttocks, some deep, some barely a shading to the surface. The mark of the Shantasi spirits, he had said. He had remained lying there, and Hope had watched him sleep until daybreak.
A’Meer had too much Shantasi about her for Hope to trust her at all. She had appeared from nowhere, drawn to Rafe and his wakening gift, and without explanation she had sworn to protect him and guide him away from those who craved his destruction. Just because A’Meer and Hope both wanted Rafe protected did not mean that they were on the same side. Indeed, allegiances seemed fickle at best, there being so many aims and desires to be served. Perhaps she wanted the boy for her people. Slaves, many believed them to be, brought to Noreela thousands of years ago. Perhaps magic would serve their purposes of ultimate, long-desired revenge.
So Hope remained close to Rafe and his horse, patting the creature’s flank as if to communicate her friendliness. Soon, if things did not go to her liking, she might rely on this creature’s speed to help make their escape.
Tim Lebbon
Dusk
Chapter 21
JOSSUA ELMANTOZ WASan old man, and he had been waiting for a long, long time. So when the message came that the Nax requested an audience, confusion was his first reaction.
That was quickly replaced by fear.
BEFORE THE CATACLYSMICWar, the Monastery had belonged to the Mages. Now, walking slowly into its hidden depths, through shadows that had never seen daylight and into pits and caverns of permanent night, Jossua felt their influence once more.
He was the only Red Monk alive who had fought in the War. His first contact with the Mages and their armies had been not far from here, at the Battle of Lake Denyah, in the Year of the Black 1913. He had been a young man then, a novice pagan priest, driven by a fervent desire to see the Mages defeated and nature return back to its true state. Young, feisty, but afraid as well. Everyone in Noreela was frightened by then. The Mages had been dabbling in the unnatural manipulation of magic for several years, and news had been coming from their keep on Lake Denyah, more terrifying news each and every day, that their workings had transgressed boundaries never meant to be touched.