by Tim Lebbon
He looked up at the sky. The death moon hung full and heavy, and the life moon skimmed the horizon. Their combined light gave the land a dim illumination, bright enough for Kosar to examine his wounded fingers. They were still bleeding. He used to welcome the pain because it told him that he was still alive. Now the rest of his body hurt more.
“She’s asleep again,” Trey said.
Kosar jumped. He had not heard the fledge miner approach. “Good.”
“You’re being unfair to her.”
“She’s talking Mage shit, Trey. We’re beaten. Just look around; you can see that. You may be used to darkness, but we live in daylight up here, and we welcome it.”
Trey sat beside him, and Kosar welcomed the companionship. “Last time I traveled with fledge, Alishia exuded the same blankness as Rafe. There was something in her that pushed me away.”
“The same as Rafe?” Kosar asked, trying not to sound interested.
“The same. The two of them shared a lot without any of us knowing, of that I’m certain.”
“None of us know anything,” Kosar said, “other than the fact that the Mages are back. There’ll be a second Cataclysmic War, and this time Noreela will lose. They could be gone in ten days, leaving nothing behind but the bodies of every dead Noreelan.”
“Is that what you believe?” Trey said.
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t give in so quickly, Kosar. There are the Shantasi! They’ll put up a fight, won’t they?”
“Against magic that can turn day to dusk?”
Trey was silent for a few moments, staring up at the sky as if to discern the truth in its darkness. “Well, I trust the girl,” he said. He rose to walk back to the lifeless machine, but Kosar stood and stopped him.
“If you trust her, tell her to show us something. Rafe brought that boat up out of the river; he cured A’Meer. Tell Alishia to show us something, and maybe I’ll believe as well.”
“It’s not like that,” Trey said. “She’s not like Rafe. She told me he was never born.” He shrugged Kosar’s hand from his shoulder and walked away.
Never born, Kosar thought. He did not understand. He wished A’Meer were here, someone he could truly talk to. He sat down again, but this time he looked south toward the mountains. He had been as far as Kang Kang’s foothills once, and he’d vowed never to go there again.
“Am I being a coward?” he whispered. “Can I be so wrong?” But the night remained silent, offering no easy answer.
RAFE WAS NEVER born, Hope thought. This girl was. And yet she says she’s growing younger. She watched the sleeping girl until Trey rose and went after the thief. Then she shuffled closer. She lay down so that she could feel the girl’s heat through her own clothes, and whispered in her ear, “What are you?”
Alishia did not answer, and gave no sign of having heard.
“What are you carrying?”
Still no response. Hope looked after Trey and Kosar, shadows against the darkness. They had their backs to her. The big thief had never trusted her, but she supposed he now believed there was no reason to keep up his guard.
The witch laid her hand on Alishia’s forehead. The girl was hot, and a slight shiver passed through her body. Hope closed her eyes and bade magic enter her, but there was nothing, no sense of power or promise or worth. She took her hand away and cursed.
But she’s growing younger, Hope’s inner voice chimed in, and she nodded. The big thief didn’t care, the fledge miner didn’t understand and Hope was the only one ready to deal with what this could really mean. I’ll take her wherever she wants to go, she thought, because there’s something of the boy in her. Because Rafe was never born. He was the offspring of the Womb of the Land in Kang Kang, just as the old prophecy passed down to her from her mother and grandmother had predicted. And now Alishia wanted to go there, and maybe it was the Womb she sought.
“I’ll take you,” she whispered in the sleeping girl’s ear. “With or without the fledger and the thief, I’ll take you into Kang Kang.”
Hope lay down beside the girl once again and breathed in some of her stale breath, hoping that Alishia’s exhalations would talk to her. But there was nothing.
TREY PAUSED AT the edge of the grounded machine and looked in at Alishia and Hope lying together. He was still unsure of the witch. She had seemed as concerned as any of them about Rafe’s well-being, but there were signs that she had her own interests at heart as well. He had passed her by several times on his fledge trips, never confident enough to touch on her mind but more than aware of the stew of emotions residing there. Hope was unsure of herself, confused, and her mind was in such conflict that its effects spilled into the air around her. Trey had sensed her confusion, and it worried him.
Now, with Rafe gone and Alishia looking like their final hope, the witch seemed to have found a cause once again. There she was, curled up before Alishia, eyes closed but mind still undoubtedly running away with itself. Trey wondered how he and Kosar figured in her daydreams.
The witch’s face flexed, her tattoos merging to cloud her skin.
“Are you asleep?” Trey whispered. Hope did not move, but that meant nothing. He stepped between two of the thick ribs and quietly hefted his disc-sword, slinging it onto his back. He had tried wiping Monks’ blood from the blade, but it had stained. The luster had gone from the metal, probably for good, and he hoped that he never had to face another Red Monk. Perhaps next time the blade would be less effective.
He knelt beside Alishia and touched her forehead. He moved her toward him slightly, away from the witch, holding her head up off the ground so that she did not scrape her face. She was warm. Her skin was slick with sweat. He put his ear to her mouth until he could feel the subtle caress of her breath, but she was silent in her sleep. Whatever was going on inside her head remained there, enigmatic as ever.
“Just tell us everything,” Trey whispered. “You need Kosar’s trust, and you can get that by showing him what you mean. You need Hope’s loyalty, and perhaps you’ll get that in the same way.” He glanced at the witch, and in the twilight her face seemed darker than normal. He moved his hand beneath her nose and felt for her breath, afraid for a moment that she had simply given up on life.
The witch opened her eyes and stared at Trey.
“Throttle me in my sleep, will you?”
Trey snatched his hand back. “Of course not. I was checking that you were all right.”
Hope’s face relaxed and she looked at Alishia. “Of course you were,” she said. “And I’m fine. I was trying to sleep, but my dreams won’t let me.”
“What do you dream of?”
“Kang Kang,” Hope said.
“What of it?” Trey looked past Hope, beyond the fallen machine at the dark peaks on the horizon.
“Alishia says that’s our aim, so I’m going to take her.”
“So am I,” Trey said, committing himself.
“It’s a long walk,” the witch said, sitting up. “And a dangerous one. Kang Kang’s nothing like the rest of Noreela.”
Trey tried to read the witch’s strange smile, but it barely touched her eyes. It was as if those tattoos swirling across her cheeks and dipping into her mouth had tightened, drawing her cheeks up into a grotesque parody of a grin.
“Trey?”
He looked at her, startled by her unaccustomed use of his name.
“We’re on the same side. We may have different ideas of what’s happening, and differing reasons for being where we are today, but we’re both here for Alishia and whatever she carries, and we’re both against the Mages. Anyone in Noreela must be against them, sane or otherwise. There’s no alternative. Do you understand?”
Trey nodded, not sure that he did. Was Hope trying to form an alliance with him, or simply confuse him more?
“I’m pleased you want to come to Kang Kang,” she said. “We can help each other. As for Kosar…I think he’s lost to us.”
Trey looked at the shadow of the thief. May
be, he thought. Or maybe he’ll do things his own way as well.
“We need to go soon,” the witch said.
“We should wait until she’s awake. And I want to try Kosar one more time.”
“The thief ’s doubt and mistrust will cause us trouble,” Hope said.
“He’s the one who brought us this far.”
She raised her eyebrows but did not respond.
She thinks it’s her, Trey thought. She thinks she’sthe leader of this pathetic little gang.
Trey went back to Kosar, and all the way he knew what the answer would be. The big man barely glanced up. Even as Trey stated their aim and said they would be moving soon, Kosar only looked at the horizon and nodded. “I’ll not be going with you.”
“Where will you go?”
“Some corner of Noreela where I can be forgotten.”
Trey wanted to say more. He so wished he could think of something stirring and affecting that would make Kosar rethink his decision and join their continuing journey south-something about trust and loyalty, and pursuing any scrap of hope that might still exist. But he followed Kosar’s gaze and saw the landscape swathed in unnatural twilight, and he knew that it would not take long for the plants and animals to die.
“I don’t think such a corner exists,” he said. Then he turned away from the thief and walked back to Alishia and Hope.
WHEN KOSAR STOOD and looked back, the others were mere shadows. He could see Trey standing within the fake protection of the dead machine’s ribs, and on the ground at his feet Hope and Alishia seemed to be huddled together. There was an implication of ownership in Hope’s pose that he did not like. She had been the same with Rafe. We’ll have to watch her, A’Meer had whispered to him one night, and yet in that final, useless fight, Hope had been as strong as any of them.
He guessed that she missed Rafe more than anyone as well. With him had gone her lifetime of dreams and desires. It was no surprise that she was willing to hang on to any fragment of hope that remained, however false.
Is Alishia really something special? Kosar wondered, and he realized that, yes, she probably was. She was certainly no longer a normal girl, if she ever had been. But he no longer cared. A’Meer was dead, and day was night. Useless, he thought. He turned away from Trey, Hope and Alishia and looked east.
He wanted to be on his way. Hope put him on edge, Alishia disturbed him and Trey was somewhere he was never meant to be. The fledger had used the last of his fledge a couple of days before, and already he was showing signs of withdrawal. It was difficult to tell in this weak light, but his skin seemed to be growing a paler yellow, the whites of his eyes clouding with burst blood vessels.
Kosar craved his own company once again, and the idea of wandering Noreela seemed the only thing to do. He would explore, as he had done so long ago. He would find the corner of Noreela that Trey said would not exist, and perhaps he could live out his life there, hidden away from the glare of the Mages’ influence.
And if they burn the land? A’Meer asked in his mind. Send out armies, kill everything, spread disease?
Kosar shook his head. She had always been so practical. “Leave me alone,” he said. “I’ll mourn you well enough, but don’t start talking back at me, A’Meer.”
It’s you doing the talking, just using my voice.
“And is that the voice of reason?”
Maybe.
He shook his head again and touched the sword at his side. “Fuck.”
A large bird passed overhead-a moor hawk, perhaps-and Kosar watched it drift away in the night. It had flown northeast. With no real idea of where he wanted to go, he decided to follow.
A’MEER’S VOICE REMAINED silent as Kosar took his first steps away. He expected guilt to crush him, regret to pick at his limbs and turn him around, but his steps felt fine, his legs surprisingly strong. Perhaps the last few days had welcomed him back into the life of a traveler once again.
He waited for the shout that would bring him to a halt, but none came. He did not look back. If he turned and saw Trey watching him leave he would have to return, try to explain once again why this was all so hopeless now that Rafe had gone and dusk had fallen. Kosar was a good man, and even though he was finding the going easy, he guessed that guilt was only a step or two behind. He had no wish to let it catch up.
The moor hawk had disappeared into the night but he heard it calling-a doleful, lonely cry. Kosar wondered who or what else could hear it. Trey undoubtedly, and Hope and Alishia if they were awake. But perhaps there were others out there, camping down under the oppressive weight of the night, and the sound of the moor hawk would surely make them feel more isolated and alone than ever. He wondered whether the Red Monks had followed the flying machine on foot, even though their purpose was gone. Perhaps any surviving Monks would be roaming the land, madder than ever before.
He walked on, and in time he was far enough away so that he would not hear Trey even if the fledge miner did call after him. There was scant comfort in this, but beneath that was a sense of betrayal that Kosar did his best to smother. The time would come for that, he knew. Perhaps when he was witnessing the Mages’ armies burning villages and towns, raining down destruction from their hawks, riding monstrous new creations across the landscape…Perhaps then he would truly taste his own bitter betrayal of the only people he could call friends. Or maybe it would take the imminence of death to bring home his true treachery. Perhaps he would be dying beneath the leather boot of a Krote, staring up along the length of a bloodied spear, before he would truly appreciate how unfair he had been.
I led them here, he thought, and he hated the idea of that. Kosar had always been a loner, not a leader. But Rafe’s damned magic had steered and coerced them down the center of Noreela, dangling free will and then snatching it away at every opportunity. They had been driven here like a horse guided by its rider, except that their rider had been acting through the mind of an innocent boy.
Now you’re talking Mage shit, A’Meer’s voice said. You led them, and you know it.
“My words, your voice?” he whispered. The night offered no answer. “Damn, A’Meer, I miss you so much.”
Kosar thought about where he could go, and as he began to examine the possibilities, each idea brought buried memories back to life-times and events he had not thought about in years. The experience was strangely comforting, and he enjoyed living these moments again. They were a distraction from the present.
If he carried on in this direction, he would soon come to the Mol’Steria Desert. North of that were the Mol’Steria Mountains and then Sordon Sound, the great inland sea that bordered New Shanti. He had never been as far as the desert, but A’Meer had often told him about it, sitting in the Broken Arm nursing a mug of rotwine as she relayed tales of sand demons and flaming trees, roads of glass and the huge, lumbering grinders that spent their unknowable lives turning rock into sand. It had all sounded so enchanting to him, the seasoned traveler, and he had promised A’Meer that he would go there one day. He’d seen an excitement in her deep, dark eyes as she talked about this place so close to her homeland. And though she denied it, he had always believed that she harbored a secret desire to go home. At the time, he had put her unwillingness to return down to some family problem, or an underlying wanderlust that she had yet to quench. Since then, he had discovered the truth.
Kosar paused and looked ahead. The dusk hid much of the land and turned the rest a pale silver, light from the moons splashing in seemingly isolated patches. There were rolling hills and hidden valleys, a landscape of shadows and shaded peaks, home to anything from a man to a herd of tumblers. The Mages’ army could be hiding within five thousand steps of where he was, and he’d have no idea until he stumbled upon it. And with that thought came the very reason he should not head for New Shanti: the Shantasi were the only people likely to raise a serious defense against the Mages, and New Shanti would become a battleground.
Kosar glanced behind him but saw no signs of pursuit.
/>
If he went due east, he would walk into New Shanti across the plains, arriving eventually at Hess, the Shantasi Mystic city. Even before he knew that she was a warrior, A’Meer had told him about her youth spent out on those plains, patrolling the approaches to New Shanti along with others of her age. It was a rite of passage, ten thousand young Shantasi at any one time complementing the Shantasi army that made the plain its home. It was their most vulnerable point, and much of the year she had spent there had been in training for possible attack from the rest of Noreela. Kosar had scoffed at such an idea, but A’Meer had been grim-faced and serious. “Do you have any idea of where the Shantasi come from?” she had asked. Kosar had shaken his head, still trying to maintain his smile but failing beneath A’Meer’s glare. “Slavery,” she had said, and his image of the thousands of Shantasi children camped across that plain suddenly changed. Freedom was a luxury with a price. The Shantasi paid for freedom with their childhood.
Later, A’Meer’s revelation of her true nature-as a Shantasi warrior sworn to find and protect fledgling magic-had altered Kosar’s perception of her people even more. Now he imagined them as a fiercely independent race, lost and yet making their home here, on Noreela, and willing to give so much for the ground they had. A’Meer, he supposed, had scared him.
So that way lay New Shanti, and plains swarming with Shantasi youths willing to prove themselves adults. Their chance would come soon, Kosar knew. The Mages would be forming their armies and preparing to march. War was the only certainty in Noreela’s future.
Kosar turned away, a sickness punching at his gut. It was shame and self-loathing, but it was also a delayed reaction to what had happened. Fear, biting deep. Guilt, sinking teeth into his insides. He knew that it would never let go. He could walk forever and pass through Kang Kang, into The Blurring that many said lay beyond, and perhaps he would even reach a southern coast that no one had ever seen…but guilt would still be there, turning in his gut like a constant sword. A’Meer had died protecting what she thought was right, and now he was running away to save his own skin.
