by Tim Lebbon
“That’s a fucking abomination,” Ducianne said as she walked alongside Lenora.
“It’s the Mages’,” Lenora snapped. “And it’s magic.”
“So they truly have it? They really did get it back for themselves?”
“Of course. It was easy.” Lenora thought back to the fight with the Monks and machines, the attack on the huge flying machine that had tried to protect the boy, the ferocity of his protectors’ defense. “Easy.”
LATER, LENORA AND Ducianne sat alone in one of Conbarma’s taverns, drinking rotwine and listening to the shade making machines. Some of the braver, less exhausted Krotes from Ducianne’s ship had seen the machines of war around Conbarma, and shunning rest they had approached the shade to be equipped with their own. Lenora had watched the first construct melded and merged from the pits, then she dragged Ducianne away from the spectacle. There was talking to be done, and planning, and it felt good having a friend with her once again. Though Noreela had always been their aim, still she felt a thousand miles from home.
They could hear the gasps of amazement from outside, the sound of flesh being ripped from the pit and magical fire melding it with stone and metal, and then the unnatural footfalls as the machines took their first, confident steps. The sounds from the Krotes changed slowly from astonishment to triumph as each of them was given their own weapon of war: flying, crawling, running, stepping, crushing and spitting-all of them knew that they were being granted more power than they had ever possessed before.
Walls fell, and explosions of noxious gas parted the air. The Krotes were already in training.
Lenora sat with her back to the window and Ducianne kept glancing over her shoulder. Her eyes reflected the fiery truth of what was happening outside.
“It feels strange,” Ducianne said. “Good, but…”
“Unnatural?” Lenora asked. She shrugged. “We’ve been used to doing everything for ourselves. We mine and refine and cast metal to make swords, raid the islands south of Dana’Man for timber to make our arrows, clear the ground of snow and ice, dig the soil, plants crops, watch them mostly freeze and rot in the ground. Life is harsh for every Krote. Has been ever since we left this land three hundred years ago.”
“You were there,” Ducianne said. “What does it feel like coming back?”
Lenora stirred her rotwine with one finger. “It feels like revenge.”
“But those things out there,” Ducianne said, and again she could not finish her sentence.
“Very soon, they’ll feel right,” Lenora said. “I never rode a machine during the Cataclysmic War, but I saw them, and I knew them. And these are so muchmore! Back then they were tools, but now they have more than a spark of life. I know for sure once the Krotes ride them into battle they’ll feel as comfortable with them as with one another. They’ll be an extension of your arm. Or in your case, your foot.”
Ducianne lifted the stump of her right foot and thudded it down on the table. “If magic could grow this back for me, then I’d be impressed!”
“I’m sure it could,” Lenora said. “But when you have your machine, you won’t need it anymore.”
Ducianne drained her cup of rotwine and poured more. “I look forward to it.”
“There’s plenty of time. Let’s sit and talk, let your Krotes get theirs first. We’ve got some planning to do.”
“And a war to fight!” Ducianne said, grinning. “I can still hardly believe we’re here. No fucking snow demons stalking the perimeter, no icicles hanging from my nose. There was a time on the way here when the ice floes disappeared. I can’t remember passing the last one: one moment they were there, the next time I looked there was only open sea. That’s what brought it home to me the most, Lenora. The change in the sea.”
“And the sky growing dark.”
Ducianne’s grin faltered. “That too. It scared a lot of us, but we knew what it had to be. It was a victory. It shouldn’t have made us feel like that.”
“A lot of what happens over the next few days will affect us in different ways,” Lenora said.
Ducianne nodded. “So where have they gone?” she asked quietly, as though the Mages were listening from the shadows in the unlit fireplace.
Lenora shrugged. “I have no idea. They raised themselves a huge flying machine and took off. They left me in charge of the army and told me to take Noreela.”
“A minor responsibility, then.” Ducianne covered her smile with another draft of rotwine.
“Something I never expected,” Lenora said. “I thought after all this time that they’d want to lead the army themselves. They have so much anger inside, so much hate.” She looked around the deserted tavern and closed her eyes. I have to stop talking about them like this, she thought. They’ll know. They’ll see.
“And so do we,” Ducianne said. “This is the reason we’ve lived our lives, all of us. This is the finest day ever!” She drained her rotwine and threw the mug at the bar. It shattered against the wall and spilled its dregs like a splash of dark blood. “First blood to the Krotes!” she shouted.
“First blood,” Lenora said.
“So, tell me about the battle to take this place. I saw an old church earlier, looked like there’d been a bastard of a siege there. Defenders? Villagers? Tell me, Lenora.”
Lenora smiled and thought back to their landing at Conbarma. But then she looked forward, and something sighed deep down in her mind. “Let’s talk of the future, not the past. There are battles to come that will make this one look like a fart in a storm. And now that you’re here, it’s time to organize. The Mages made each of my Krotes a captain, but you’re to be my lieutenant, Ducianne.”
“So what are you giving me?” the short woman said. Her voice was low, filled with anticipation.
Lenora stood and walked slowly to the bar. She smiled. She could feel Ducianne simmering behind her.
“Damn it all to Black, Lenora!”
Lenora laughed and turned around, holding another bottle of rotwine. “I’m giving you Long Marrakash,” she said.
Ducianne gasped. “The Duke?”
“The Duke, and whatever armies remain around him. Find them and destroy them. Bring me his head, Ducianne. Kill the Duke of this shitting land, and stick his head on the front of your machine.”
“My machine…”
Lenora nodded. “I think it’s your turn.”
THEY WALKED TO the pits together. Lenora left her machine squatting outside the tavern, venting hazy gas from several stumpy horns. She felt its eyes follow her as she walked to the harbor with Ducianne.
The limping Krote lieutenant went forward until she was within twenty steps of the shade. It spun and flexed in the air, existing within its own set of laws. One moment it looked like a giant heart, bare and beating to the rhythm of the land; the next it was a glass ball, its insides bottomless, outside opaque and mysterious. As Ducianne paused before it, the shade was barely there at all.
“So show me,” Ducianne said.
The shade sunk into the ground and rose again in the flesh pit. It brought with it a stew of living stuff: blood and brains, bone and skin, flesh and cartilage, rising as though forced upward by a slow explosion of gas from the stinking mass of dead-but-living flesh. The shade was a space between this stuff, filled only by shadow.
Ducianne took only one step back. Most Krotes withdrew several steps, and some had fallen to their knees, but Ducianne was brave. Lenora could see her old friend’s shoulders shaking and her bad foot tapping at the ground in a reflex motion, but the lieutenant remained facing forward.
It knows she’s my lieutenant, Lenora thought. It’s making her something special.
Stone and flesh, soil and bone, fire and water mixed and twisted and flexed together, and a dozen heartbeats later the shade shrank down and drew back, leaving the new machine as an offering to the Krote. Ducianne was staring at it, her foot still tapping the ground, when the shade joined them. She slumped, but did not go to her knees. Her hands stole t
o the two short swords at her belt and touched the hilts, taking comfort from the contact. She turned around and searched for Lenora. Her face visibly relaxed when she caught sight of her friend.
Lenora nodded at Ducianne’s new mount.
The machine was huge. Four thick, stumpy legs, a wide body with a dozen arms, each of them tipped with curls of sharpened bone that seemed to echo the Krote’s hairstyle. The thick flesh of its back was protected from below by a congealed slab of stone, melted and re-formed to provide a heavy shield. Its arms were bone and flesh, stone and fire. It gushed hot air from openings in its upper body. As Ducianne approached, the machine lowered itself, its stone stomach scraping against the dock, and one of its long arms came down and bent to form a step.
Ducianne climbed its arm and sat upon its back, smiling when she realized that it had been shaped precisely for her. She looked at Lenora and the smile widened.
The machine stood.
Ducianne sat there for some time, running her hands over the strange construct’s bony and stony carapace, finding glimmering metal levers and handles set into its back. Closing her eyes, she thought her first command.
The machine reared on its hind legs and then jumped, leaping a hundred steps and landing lightly on the roof of the tavern.
Lenora watched in amazement. She saw her own construct turn slightly as though watching Ducianne’s, then the lieutenant issued her second order and the machine jumped back down to the harbor. It strode quickly toward Lenora, halting a step away so that she could hear its insides grinding and clicking together, smell the heat that could have been its breath.
“I like it,” Ducianne said.
“I’m glad,” Lenora said. “And now, Lieutenant, there are some battle plans to discuss.”
AFTER THE PLANNING and talking, the excitement and anticipation, Lenora walked to the end of the mole. She passed the ship that had come in earlier that day and knew that it would never be sailing again. The shade had already stripped most of its metals, and it groaned as the sea’s swell nudged it against the harbor wall. Bracings were failing, and struts were popping out without their metal straps to hold them in place.
The fire and flesh pits were denuded. The shade had made almost two hundred machines since the ship docked.
At the end of the mole, Lenora sat down and looked out to sea. There was nothing but darkness out there, but just over the horizon more ships were coming this way, bringing with them thousands of Krotes. The idea chilled Lenora, but it made her proud as well. The thought of revenge-the Mages’ and her own-had often been the only idea that kept her going through those long, dark years on Dana’Man.
She was old. Sometimes she forgot that. She was old, and she would have been dead centuries before were it not for Angel and her strange touch. I have a touch of magic in me even now, she thought, keeping me alive, driving away the effects of these wounds, time, age. Angel made me live for her, and even when magic went away I was still alive. So it’s in me, and it always has been. She did not know how right or wrong she was, but the concept gave her comfort.
She ran her hand over her bald head, feeling ridged scar tissue of wounds that should have killed her. Her shoulder and neck were equally damaged, and sometimes when she heard the sea, these wounds ached at the memory of their creation. But not here, not now. Now she felt fit like never before.
And that voice was there more than ever. An echo here, a random word there, holding no meaning yet still making sense. There’s plenty of time, Lenora kept thinking, trying to quieten the shade of her murdered daughter. But sometimes that voice almost became frantic, and Lenora was beginning to wonder just how much time she really had.
Tim Lebbon
Dawn
Chapter 6
THEY HAD PARTED company with Kosar half a day before, and already Trey believed that they would not reach Kang Kang alive. The mountain peaks seemed no closer, still evident as ragged shadows on the horizon. The landscape had flattened into one vast plain, with few places to shelter from the chill breeze that seemed to constantly blow from the north. And Alishia had spent more time asleep than awake.
Trey had carried the librarian most of the way. At first the feeling of her flesh against his had pleased him: he could sense the warmth of her through their clothing, enjoying its immediacy. He carried her on his back, her head resting on one shoulder and legs slung over his arms by his side. He could feel her breasts pressing against him, though they were smaller than he had imagined, and the touch of her thighs under her rucked-up dress was both a shock and a pleasure. Sometimes he had been certain that she was awake; a twitch of her limbs, or a flick of her hair against his face. But the farther they went, the more Trey came to believe that Alishia was merely dreaming. When she did wake, she asked to be put down, hugging herself to the ground like a newborn sheebok.
Adult though she appeared, Trey found her incredibly light, as though she were being hollowed from the inside.
Worse, the fledge rage was upon him. It had been almost two topside days since he’d had his last crumb of the drug, and the effects of its withdrawal were beginning to tell. His mind wandered of its own accord, drifting to the past or into the hazy future as though determined to travel on its own, without the drug to guide it. He had sore feet and heavy hands, and his joints ground as though rock dust had been poured into them. He had seen the effects of fledge withdrawal several times underground, and it was never pleasant. In the world of the fledge miners, it had been used as a punishment. Whenever they stopped, he would search through his shoulder bag six or seven times, looking for crumbs of the drug that he may have missed. He knew that shreds that small would have turned completely stale by now, and would likely do him more harm than good, but the need was upon him. If he put the mouth of the bag around his face he could breathe in and smell fledge, and even the memory started to take him away. Never far, though. There was always the terrible here and now to draw him back.
At least the withdrawal served to divert his attention from the pain of carrying Alishia.
Hope knew what was happening to him. She never mentioned it outright, but her look spoke volumes. He would find the witch staring at him when he reined his mind in from vague wanderings, her gaze switching back and forth between Trey and the girl on his back. When she realized he had seen her, she would look away, but he did not like her expression. Her tattoos did not help. Trey did not understand them. He resolved to ask her, but the time never seemed right.
Hope was carrying his disc-sword. He had been unsure about that to begin with, but the practicalities of carrying the sleeping girl as well as his weapon had soon proven impossible. The witch hefted it over her shoulder as though she had carried one her whole life. It made her appear more dangerous than ever.
“We just don’t seem to be any closer,” Trey said. He paused, lowered Alishia to the ground, then slumped down beside her.
Hope walked on a few steps before sitting. “Kang Kang is always misleading,” she said. “Maybe it doesn’t want us there.”
“It’s a mountain range,” Trey said.
“It’s much more than that.” Hope plucked something from her deep pockets and started to chew. She offered some to Trey, but he shook his head. One taste of her dried meat had already put him off it for life. When he’d asked where it came from she had smiled and turned away. For all he knew it was the flesh of a child.
“I don’t know how much farther I can carry her,” he said. “She’s lighter all the time, but she feels heavier with every step.”
“If you weren’t craving that fucking drug you’d be stronger.”
“I can’t help it,” he said, hating his appealing tone.
“Fledgers are all the same, useless without their fledge.”
“Hope…” But Trey trailed off. There was no arguing with the witch. She had never liked or trusted him, and her brief talk about them being on the same side now seemed ages ago.
“I’m going to look around,” Hope said. She stood
and walked away, staring at the ground and kicking at the grass as she went.
“She’s not safe.”
“What?” At first Trey thought he was hearing things. Perhaps desperation for fledge was putting false echoes in his mind, talking to him from the shadows of his need. He turned left and right, listening for a voice but hearing none, then he saw that Alishia’s eyes were open. They were glazed and creamy like ruptured eggs. Open, but vacant.
She was still asleep.
“She’s not safe,” Alishia said again. Her jaw moved strangely, stiff and mechanical.
“Alishia?” Trey leaned in closer and waved his hand in front of her eyes. She did not blink, but her eyelids drooped slowly shut. A tear ran down one cheek.
“Her book speaks volumes of danger,” Alishia murmured. Her mouth kept moving but soon the words became distorted, and the sound drifted away to a mumble, and then to nothing.
Trey moved closer to the librarian and held her hand. It was cool, like the hand of a doll. His mother used to make dolls for children in the home-cave, heads carved from light snowstone, bodies woven with reeds brought down from topside. She had painted the faces herself, and Trey had always been amazed by the life she could bring to those things-eyes filled with light, simple smiles that gave away so much. It was as if his mother saw real potential in every doll. They all attracted their own name and personality purely through the expressions she gave them, and different children preferred different dolls. But that had been years before, back when his mother could still work with her hands.
Alishia’s expression was less lifelike than any doll Trey had ever seen.
He leaned over her and turned his face, feeling her stale breath tickle his cheek. It was cool and shallow. He touched her skin, turned her head, smoothed the wrinkle between her eyes, touched his finger to her lips and felt their dryness. Her cheeks were filling out, nose flattening, and she seemed to be turning into someone else.
Growing younger, Trey thought. How can that be? He lifted the front of her dress and let go, and it settled down onto her slight frame. When he first met her on the slopes of the Widow’s Peaks, she had filled that dress. He’d thought she was a young girl at first-the way she spoke, the things she said-but when he’d become used to the sun, he had seen that was not the case. Now she was turning into that girl he had first imagined.
