by Tim Lebbon
Jossua was an academic, studying at his local university in Long Marrakash with a view to making the journey to Noreela City and completing his education there, prior to taking up his priesthood. The dealings of politics had rarely bothered him, their machinations crude and encumbered by emotion compared to the pureness of magic. For it was magic that Jossua had studied. Its powers, its sources, its meaning and use, the philosophy surrounding it, its effects on society and the way the land was run. And especially, its confluence with the land. Because just as air and sunlight were taken for granted, so then was magic. It was as much a part of life as breathing.
The Mages made it go wrong. They abused it. Whatever dark arts they were practicing in their keep were great and terrible, too powerful and awful to be ignored. They turned magic from good to bad; from aiding everyday life, to raising the dead; from keeping the balance, to tipping the natural world onto its side. They sought to control the magic of the land for themselves, and all evidence suggested that they had succeeded. The shock waves were felt right across the land: rivers turned poisonous; volcanoes erupted; earthquakes roared from the depths of Kang Kang, sending things from there fleeing into the wider land. The magic that had once been a part of life quickly became a means of death, and the Duke sent an army to question the Mages’ acts.
That had been the start of the Cataclysmic War. Nobody ever discovered what had happened to that first army-there were no survivors to tell the tale, no eyewitnesses to flee Lake Denyah and spread the word-but like a stone thrown into a pond, the first battle and defeat had repercussions throughout Noreela. Magic was twisted even more awry. Great machines turned on their users, plunged into ravines, drowned in lakes or turned turtle and crushed their passengers. Tumblers seemed to sense the imbalance and go mad, slaughtering thousands on the slopes of mountains and in foothills across Noreela. In towns and cities machines went haywire, killing or being killed. The sensitive interactions between humanity and nature were upset. Magic changed almost overnight, and the rot set in.
The reaction of most of the population was one of astonishment and bewilderment. It was as if they had woken one morning to find the sky turned green, or their legs transformed into tree trunks. A law of nature they had lived by for the entirety of recorded history had suddenly been transgressed. Their lives would never be the same again.
Back then, easy communication across Noreela was a fact of life. Machines would carry words and meaning from Long Marrakash to Noreela City in a matter of minutes, delivering it without echo or skewed meaning to the ear of those for whom it was intended. Even after magic changed, this ability persisted; much of the fall was gradual, not sudden, marked by many catastrophic events that caught the imagination. News had traveled fast-the Mages in the west, experimenting, corrupting, powerful, trying to make a part of nature their very own-and the reaction was immediate. A people’s army had formed out of the frightened masses, and they had marched on the Mages’ keep with the remnants of the Duke’s forces.
Jossua had no hesitation in volunteering. His parents and fiancee had traveled to Noreela City with him and cried him away to battle. His fiancee had hugged him and placed something in the palm of his hand, then walked away along the dock. She had not turned to look back, not once. Jossua kept his fist closed until their transport boat started swimming in long, powerful strokes down the river toward Lake Denyah. The sun rose behind them, lighting the boat’s wake into flame-tipped ripples. The silver birch trees on either side of the river were aflame as well, holding and reflecting the red dawn, glittering with the fires of life. It could have been metal in his hand-it had felt cold at first, although now the heat of his blood had warmed it-or perhaps it was some other token, of what he did not know. Closing his eyes, Jossua opened his hand over the side of the boat. He was sure he heard a tiny splash as the gift fell into the river.
On the cruise down from San they heard news of defeat after defeat. The Duke’s second army had reached the Mages’ keep and laid siege, but even their powerful war machines were no match for the Mages’ altered powers. They did not want to believe. Jossua’s traveling companions were shopkeepers and teachers, farmers and moneylenders, men and women of title, thrilled with the chance of adventure at first, but frightened now, regretting their hasty decision as weapons were placed in their hands. Maybe the tales were distorted in the telling, they said. But several hours before they reached Lake Denyah, just before dawn of the following day, they could see the glow in the sky as the land burned.
Even now, after so many years to dwell on those events, Jossua could only recall fragments of the weeks following that river cruise. He could remember the beauty of the surroundings as they moved from the river into the inland sea that was Lake Denyah: the hills on either side clothed in purple, pink and red heathers; the sun behind them, its heat warming his neck as if reaching out a pleading hand; the waters themselves, churned by the passing of so many boats of war and yet never upset for long. He could remember the faces of those around him, people he had come to know quickly as fear brought them together. Back then they had seemed determined to win, but upon reflection he knew that their expressions had been of uniform resignation. They could all see the glow of conflict and destruction ahead. Perhaps with the promise of death so close, determination and acceptance were the same animal.
Once they landed and launched into battle, his memory became even more vague. Weeks of his life were all but missing, trampled down into the bloody mud, consumed by the monstrous things the Mages had made and driven at the offending army. A few stark memories had imprinted themselves deep, like dreams still so fresh that he sometimes wondered whether he had survived through that hell only the day before, not three centuries ago.
He remembered his first steps on the shores of Lake Denyah. Jumping from the boat, his feet sank into the mud and he froze there, unable to move. Water lapped at his ankles and people fell all around him, their outlines spiky with arrows as if already scratched from reality. The smell of dead fish was rich in the air, their silvery shapes piled several deep along the beach, gills frozen open as if trying to scream. Farther up the shore, banked against the dawn sun, huge war machines disgorged thousands of arrows and sharpened discs. They were ugly things, not graceful and smooth like machines had once been. Their extremes were distorted with gushing tumors, their metal limbs rusted, stony protrusions cracked as if from a century of frost. But they were dreadfully powerful. The magic powering these hideous machines must have been driven mad, and now it had been offered an outlet to vent that madness.
He heard the hiss of arrows and discs cutting through the air, the thudding as they impacted flesh, the harder thunks as skulls were pierced and spines severed. Ahead of him, one of his friends was pinned to the air by a dozen arrows. When the woman turned slowly and stared at Jossua where he was stuck in the mud, another slew of arrows hit her from behind and tore her apart. He had remembered and forgotten her features a thousand times since then, as if recollection could do the same as a clutch of arrows.
Then there was the sea of wounded gathered in a small valley away from the main fight. There were thousands there, dozens expiring each minute. The Mages’ unnatural machines and Krote soldiers used an unidentified poison, and even when the injured could be brought out, they were simply laid down to die. No food, no water, no comfort; that was all spared for those not yet doomed. Jossua made several trips with wounded people on his back. They screamed when they died. Their hands clawed at the air for help that would never come. Over the days that valley became a landscape of frozen, stiffened corpses; no flies or carrion, a still tableau of corrupted flesh and poison still effective in death.
He saw a dead dog. Someone must have brought their pet with them and lost it as soon as the hellish fighting began. It was a mongrel, clean and cared for. There was no sign of injury on its body, and its face was not contorted with the pain of a poisoned death. It hunkered beneath a tree, huddled between exposed roots, cold, stiff. There was a calmnes
s to the scene, an oasis in the storm of battle. He wondered what had killed it. He never found out.
And then a memory of the Mages and a thousand Krotes bursting from their keep. Unnatural light exploded in pockets across the battlefield, spitting fiery balls that consumed flesh and metal alike. Their monstrous war machines shook the blood-soaked battlefield as if it were a blanket laid across the earth, sending the people’s army tumbling and leaving them defenseless against the Krotes’ tainted swords and spears. A brief roar of victory had gone up at the sight of the Mages leaving their fortress, but it quickly died as the Krotes went about their work. Strange things roamed the battlefield: machines with a screaming bloodlust all their own; shadows that may have been wraiths; fiery balls of magic, bright and yet somehow unclean. And the death dealt that day was as diverse as the lives it took away. The Mages themselves… Jossua saw them sat astride flying things that shit fireballs and pissed poison across the besieging hordes… He saw them…
Much later, he rode a machine into battle. The people had regrouped and magic itself had somehow fought back, offering a final limited burst of pure power and denying the Mages’ control one last time. The tide had turned and Jossua was a warrior now, the memory of his former life smothered by weeks of battle and rage. The machine marched on giant flaming legs, graceful and deadly, and he and his squadron harried at the fleeing Mage army’s flanks. Men fell beneath his ride’s molten feet, their charred corpses sometimes carried along for several miles and providing a cushioned footfall for its rapid sprint. Jossua howled. He felt his face burning with the fury, and even people from his own side moved to let him through. He was a berserker; invincible, unbeatable. When he killed a Krote he drank his or her blood. And he fed well.
His final, abiding memory of that long time of war and death was sitting on the shores of the island in The Spine that would become known as Mages’ Bane. His machine lay dead and already rotting behind him, its purpose fulfilled. Magic had withdrawn itself earlier that day, and hundreds had instantly fallen on their swords, sighing as they died. The sense of hopelessness and catastrophe was enormous, and everything suddenly seemed very different. It felt as though any purpose in existence had suddenly gone. A flower he found growing on the beach was rotten, the sun was weak and oily on his skin, a bird drifted down into the sea and did not resurface. The sense of victory and hope he had felt at finally driving the Mages away was brief, because their defeat brought Noreela no victory. All it brought was the sudden absence of magic, and the sense that all good things had come to an end.
Around him, sprouting from the sand like sapling trees and bobbing gently in the waves, were ten thousand torn bodies. Noreelans and Krotes were equalled in death. Here and there were survivors, all of them as silent as he. They stood amongst the monuments of the dead. And in the distance, still visible as a haze on the horizon, the Mages’ burning ships showed their tails as they fled Noreela forever.
So long ago. So many moons, and here he was, still alive. Still waiting. His purpose as fresh as ever, his rage as inflammatory as it had been all those years before.
Jossua Elmantoz passed deeper into the Monastery, the former Mages’ keep, wondering what he would find when he next viewed daylight.
THINGS IN THEbasements, one of the younger Monks had said. Forms shifting, shadows moving the wrong way, the smell of turned earth and scorched rock. And then something new.
Jossua was an old man. He barely had the strength to leave his rooms anymore, let alone travel down through the huge Monastery. Too many steps, too many uneven tunnels, known and unknown. And yet, this he could not ignore. A Nax was too dangerous to disregard.
He went on his own. He could have used help, he was not afraid to admit that, but he was the Elder. There were responsibilities to uphold. And the younger Monks had not been able to hide their relief when he instructed them to remain behind.
Prepare, he had said. Soon you will go out into the land. Your task is at hand. Your lives are about to find meaning.
He had already passed through the real basements and entered the long, declining tunnel that led deeper into the bedrock. His torch flared brightly, lighting the way and striving to blind him at the same time. The ground was uneven here, and he had to walk slowly to keep from falling. This was harder than negotiating the staircases in the Monastery. At least they had been even, if difficult. Here a ridge of stone could surprise him into a fall, an unseen hollow could twist his ankle and break his old man’s bones. If he hurt himself down here, he could not imagine the Monks venturing this deep to find him. His torch would burn down, burying him in darkness. The cold would kill him.
He had never been this deep. He paused and moved the torch around, taking in his surroundings. Water dripped from the tunnel walls, ran from several deep cracks in the stone and gurgled away down the tunnel, contained in ditches formed on either side of the path. Black moss grew around the cracks from which the water issued. Small silver shapes darted across the walls, nibbling at the moss, moving away, encountering one another and touching antennae. The light did not bother them because they were blind. Perhaps they could sting. Jossua left them to their feast.
His limbs were aching and his heart fluttered weakly in his chest, sending spasms of pain into his arms and shoulders. He paused and stood within the circle of light from his torch. Beyond that the darkness was total; it could hide anything. If there were eyes out there watching him, they closed when he looked their way, so as not to reflect the flames.
The walls here were almost totally smooth, but for the cracks where time had shifted them and stresses had forced them open. This was no natural cave, and yet it did not carry the tool marks that would be so evident had it been manually dug. Machines had made this place, Jossua knew. Perhaps those of the Mages-the thought of them walking this corridor, taking up the same space as he, made him feel sick-or perhaps they had been formed many generations ago, for whatever original reason the keep had been built. There were no true records of when or why the place had been constructed, nor by whom, although over the decades the Monks had discovered several distinct layers in the structure. The deeper they went, the older the period of the building’s birth, until the basement held its origins in the dim mists of prehistory. A place of worship some said, although to which god or demon they could not say. A retreat, others claimed, a castle and keep wherein safety could be found from outside aggressors. The Mages had thought that to be the case and yet even they, with all their twisted power, had been driven out.
Nobody knew why, how or by whom. Jossua had his suspicions.
Soon, he thought. I’ll see it soon.
The incline of the tunnel floor suddenly steepened, and Jossua tried to hold on to the wall. Water ran by beside his feet, echoing down into the dark before him. He passed a place where water spewed from the tunnel wall, shoved through by the pressure of Lake Denyah itself, and visions of flooding came to him.
Something moved farther along the tunnel. He felt the breath of displaced air caress him, and with it came a smell. Rich and fresh, the stench of a living thing down in this darkened, dead place.
No animals down here, he thought. Nothing to eat. Nothing to hunt. That must be the Nax.
The shadows suddenly closed in. The reach of the torchlight lessened, the deep darkness drew near, and he glanced up at the flame in confusion. It was burning as brightly as ever. Breath caught in his throat as the air around him constricted, threatening to crush him. He thrust the torch forward, defying the night and willing it back, but a section of the dark reached out and closed around the flame.
It squeezed, and the flame changed color… yellow… white
… blue. And then it snuffed out into nothing.
Jossua gasped. A memory of the torch remained in his eyes for a few moments, casting a ghost of itself wherever he turned his head. He closed his eyes and the ghost was still there, so he opened them again. The echo faded away. He could hear only his breath, smell the old fear on himself, the mus
tiness of his great age clashing with the fresh tang of the thing down here with him.
And then something touched his face.
Monk, a voice scoffed. It was androgynous, and the only echo it gave was inside his head.
Jossua could not reply straightaway, such was his shock. That voice had sounded slick and alien, filled with hatred even he could barely fathom. “I’m the Elder,” Jossua said. His whisper sounded so loud down here in the dark.
Elder, Monk… magic-hater.
“Not hater. Protector.”
Protect by destroying. The voice was filled with disdain.
“Better than welcoming it back so that the Mages can take it again.”
Truly? We wonder.
A million fears flooded Jossua’s mind, but he could speak none of them. He had no idea what the Nax wanted. He blinked at the dark.
Your time is near, Elder.
Jossua did not feel surprised. The Nax was here for a reason, after all, though that reason remained obscure. “Where is it?” he said.
Near the Widow’s Peaks. Its taint has awoken us there.
“Did you drive the Mages away from the keep? Was it you?”
No answer.
“Show yourself.”
You have no reason to see us.
“Why do you come here?”
We know your reason for being. We have no wish for magic to return.
“Neither do we.” Jossua shivered as a waft of cool air broke against his sweaty skin. The Nax was moving along the tunnel. “How does it reveal itself? Where is the magic?”
In a male human. Deeper than his soul. Barely a part of him, but growing.