by Tim Lebbon
No travel, he thought, no fledge. But with the moons finally revealed again, Trey could do nothing to prevent night from flooding in.
THE WEIGHT OF what she saw pulled Hope down. The hollow in the rock was filled with something gray, textured, curved. The dip was perhaps thirty steps across, and a few steps below ground level the gray surface began, like a smooth, frozen lake that had lain there forever. It gave off a faint glow. It had been uncovered now, given to the moonlight. Given toher.
That’s what I saw move, Hope thought as she tipped forward, flexing up toward the sky, hauled back down by the power of the Sleeping God within. As she fell, she was not afraid. Air rushed past her face and smoothed her hair. She kept hold of the disc-sword, though she realized how pathetic and petty it would seem to the God. Whatever this thing may be-a distillation of all the stories told, or something else entirely-a sliver of metal was nothing compared to its magnificence.
As she struck the gray surface, Hope did not even close her eyes. I’ll be breaking in, entering its sleep. I’ll be wakingit!
The curved skin was thin, like a spider’s nest left for years in a forgotten corner. Hope went straight through with little more than a rustle, wondering how it had escaped the forces stripping the ground all around. But then, the power of a Sleeping God was unknowable.
She struck something hard, gasped as the wind was knocked from her, and for a few moments she lay there, keeping a tight grip on the shaft of the disc-sword. It connected her to the world she had just left behind. It was real. It had been wetted with Noreelan rain and scorched by Noreelan sun; it had tasted blood and soaked up the fledger’s sweat as he wielded it in battle. It held hints of fledge within its folded metal grain. She could not smell or taste anything, and the feel of the disc-sword was the only thing holding her in the world.
Moonlight touched strange surfaces for the first time in…how long? Hope had no idea. The life moon bled silver across the floor she had landed upon-too soft for rock, too hard for bone-and the death moon gave the air a yellowish tinge. Darkness seemed unwilling to seep away; it held on for a while, melting back like black ice under the weak touch of the moons. She breathed in deeply and smelled old air. It was not musty or stale, but it had been waiting to be breathed for a long time. It was weak in her lungs, and dark spots invaded her vision.
Hope raised herself onto her hands and knees, still clasping the disc-sword. Its blade scraped across the floor, like nails on a pane of smooth glass. She winced and wondered how far that sound would carry.
The witch looked up. She was a few steps below the strange skin she had broken through. The hole was ragged and wide, flaps of the gray surface swinging back and forth where they were still connected to their surroundings.
She was in some sort of tunnel, leading off to the left and right. It vanished into darkness in both directions, but she had the impression that it curved downward as well. The floor had the texture of old leather, and the ceiling above her was jagged with strange stalactites. She reached out and touched the wall beside her. It was damp, soft as soapstone, slick to the touch.
“A nest,” she said. “Somewhere to sleep. Somewhere safe and sound.” The impact of what she was seeing, and where she was, suddenly hit her. She gasped and found it difficult to breathe. Every lungful I take in, a Sleeping God has breathed out!
She wondered where it was. Was she within touching distance? Was it asleep even now behind these walls, beneath this floor? Everything that had happened since she met Rafe Baburn cowering in a shop doorway seemed so meaningless and irrelevant. The people she had encountered, the miles she had traveled, the Red Monks and the Mages-all of them were so far away that even their memory felt stale and faded. The Sleeping Gods were the paused hearts of Noreela, and she wanted to make them beat again.
They would rise up, spread hope, light the skies and crush the Mages like a puddle of shit beneath a sheebok’s hoof.
“It’s all here!” she said, and there were no echoes from the strange cave walls. Perhaps the Sleeping God was swallowing her words to discover how true she was. See everything, she thought. She was not ashamed. Everything she had done in her life-the good, the bad, the terrible-had been to seek out magic, to find the old lifeblood of Noreela in order to bring it back.
For you, a voice whispered. You did it all for yourself! She wanted to kill that voice until she realized it was her own.
Hope stood and moved off along the cave.
Moonlight seemed to stick to her. She carried it on her skin and clothes, and even when she could no longer see the rent in the ceiling, still the surfaces around her reflected silver and yellow. Life and death moons combined, as they always should, and she was pleased that the Sleeping God favored neither.
“Wake up,” she whispered. “We need you now…Ineed you. You can rescue magic. Magic! Hear me? Rise up!”
The only sound was the whisper of her dress on the floor. She paused and listened for any sign of the God, a heartbeat, a breath. But the heartbeats would be days apart, and the breaths would be allied to the rhythms of the land.
The rhythms are all fucked right now, her own voice whispered in her head, and she did her best to ignore it.
The old witch moved farther along the corridor. The light remained at a low level, though there was no evident source. She sniffed, and smelled nothing alive. But nothing dead, either. Only age.
Something brushed at her face and she waved her hand before her. She heard the spiderweb splitting and felt it against her palm, strong and thick. She held her breath and waited for the heavy impact of the creature on her face, but none came. In her pocket she held the sleeping gravemaker spider, ready to use it if the need arose. The web seemed old. It was thick with dust, and rattled with the bones of unknown creatures.
The tunnel curved sharply downward and Hope followed, disc-sword in one hand, the other cupping the gravemaker spider. Yet she perceived no real threat. This was simply another moment in time, not a pause before chaos. She stepped carefully down the sloping cave, aware of the distance she was putting behind her.
I’ll never get back up here, she thought, but she hoped that she would not have to. Once the God was awoken…
Hope had always looked away from herself, out into the world, seeking truths and lies that would help her. She was aware of herself at the center of things, but her attention was forever focused elsewhere. Now every moment was rich and relevant, each breath the most important she had ever taken. She was living for the present once again, and each heartbeat took her closer to the Sleeping God.
Wake, she thought, but nothing answered her call.
The floor leveled and Hope found herself in a large chamber. The walls exuded a subtle luminescence, as though set with fire-stones, but when she reached out and touched the surface to her left, it was cold. She pressed her hand to the wall, and the pale light shone through and showed her bones, and her veins crissing and crossing like a map of Noreela itself.
She pulled her hand away and heard a crackling behind her. She spun around, lifting the disc-sword and setting its blade spinning. Something brushed her face and at first she thought it was another web. But as she wiped dust from her eyes and moved back, she saw that the whole chamber before her was patterned with thin, delicate stems. Like the veins in my hand, she thought. They went from floor to ceiling, ceiling to walls, and some even stretched right across the chamber, twenty steps long. She reached out and touched one of the stems, and it crumbled into dust. She smelled her hand; there was hardly any scent at all. The dust was nothing more than gritty air in her nose.
At the other end of the chamber she could see an opening, and its shadows suggested that it led farther down. Deeper, she thought. It’s sleeping deeper, probably right at the bottom. Maybe thousands of years ago this place was a defense against invaders.
She tried to avoid as many of the petrified stems as she could, but still they broke around and across her, spreading their dust to settle quickly in the still air. O
nce through the chamber, she turned and looked at what she had done. There was a clear path across the cavern. Easy to follow, she thought. Hope brushed dust from her hair and entered the opening in the wall.
THE TUNNEL OPENED up into smaller caverns, narrowed, twisting and turning this way and that, but always heading down. She wondered how far it went. The Sleeping Gods had been gone for longer than anyone knew; it could be a whole new world down here.
Search though she did, she could discern no signs at all that she had been noticed. There were no held breaths, no rumbles of movement from far away, no sudden vibrations as something huge rolled awake or sat up. If the God had awoken, it was remaining quiet.
It’ll be hungry, she thought. She shook her head to clear the idea but it was there, implanted in her brain.
The ground went from leathery and hard to soft and moist, and she slipped and landed hard on her rump. She rolled, going with the lay of the land where it had suddenly shifted, trying to grab something but finding nowhere to hold on. She touched a ridge in the ground and it flattened; her fingers slid across a raised knot and it snapped off, turning to dust. She was sliding toward a long, low crack in the tunnel wall, one that looked small until she reached it and passed inside. The subtly glowing walls faded to black, and she discovered true darkness for the first time in her life. She was still slipping, holding the disc-sword close to her chest to prevent it from being snapped away, and she let out an involuntary screech. There were no echoes. She barely even heard herself.
And then she was out, falling into a cavern where the walls glowed brighter than before, the floor was covered with a bluish haze, and at its center a mass sat atop a raised platform like a statue on its pedestal.
As she struck the foot of the wall and rolled into the haze, she thought, That’s it?
But then her mind was no longer her own, and she thought no more.
Tim Lebbon
Dawn
Chapter 8
“WHY HAVEN’T YOU killed me?” Kosar asked.
“I will.” The Monk was kneeling several steps away, concentrating on something on the ground. He shielded the object of his fascination from Kosar. The thief did not like that.
“I killed you,” Kosar mumbled. His vision swayed as his head lolled on his shoulders. Stay awake. Stay awake!
“I fell. I survived.” The Red Monk’s voice was like gravel being poured into a grave. Kosar guessed it did not have much cause to talk.
“Last Monk I killed was a woman.”
The demon ignored him. Its shoulders flexed, and it moved its body to the side, as though to shed some moonlight on whatever it was doing. Kosar strained against his bonds, trying to see past the robed figure. But the knots were tight, he was woozy, and seeing would do him no good.
Whatever the Red Monk had planned, Kosar would be helpless.
He closed his eyes and rested his chin on his chest, trying to control the waves of faintness. Pain had spread through his head and neck; muscles ached, bones ground together. But Kosar knew that none of this mattered. He was going to die, and for some reason the Monk was taking its time.
I know you, it had said.
Kosar was almost certain that this demon had killed A’Meer.
His sword lay beside the Monk, still stained with Breakers’ blood. Kosar wondered, after all the killing it had done, whether it could ever feel right in his hand again. If only he had the chance to find out.
“Kill me quickly,” Kosar said. He bit his lip and looked up, the pain bringing him back from the edge of unconsciousness. He would look death in the face.
The Monk breathed heavily, coughing now and then, spitting blood that bubbled on the ground as if it were sap from the Poison Forests. It seemed unconcerned at the several crossbow bolts buried in its body.
“You sadistic fucking piece of Mage shit,” Kosar spat. “Did you kill her the same way?”
The Monk paused, raised its head and turned to look at Kosar. Its face was not as red as it had been, though its eyes still reflected darkness. It turned back to its work.
Kosar struggled against the torn clothing the Monk had used to tie him to the broken machine. The cloth was still wet with blood. The Monk had stripped it from the Breakers it had slaughtered.
His head thumped, his chest and sides hurt and Kosar struggled every step of the way as unconsciousness took him somewhere less painful.
“BRING IT TO life,” the Monk said.
“What?” Kosar surfaced, pulling back from the Monk standing before him.
The Monk clanged the machine with his sword. “Give it life. Wake it. Use it against me.”
Kosar’s head slumped back against the machine. He closed his eyes, fighting dizziness and pain. “Not right now,” he said. “Maybe later.”
“You can’t,” the demon said.
“I will. As soon as you turn your back.”
The Red Monk sat down again, shifting soil and sand and rocks with the swords.
Now, Kosar thought, knowing it would do no good. Now come to life and kill the Mage-shitting thing. Come alive now, now! He shook his head and suddenly felt clear, strong and aware. “So what are you looking for, you piece of Mage shit? You’ve lost, failed. Magic is back, and the Mages have it, and it’s the fault of you and yours. So what are you looking for in the bloody dust?”
The Monk rose, turned and stepped toward Kosar. It held something in the palm of its hand, a squirming insect that seemed to hate the weak moonlight. “The truth,” it said.
“What’s that?”
The Monk ignored his question.
Kosar aimed a kick at the demon’s hand, but it moved aside and came in close, too close to kick again. He could smell it now, sickly sweet rot and body odor, the stench of something that never cleans itself, takes no care.
“Fuck off,” Kosar said.
“I need to know,” the Monk said. In one quick movement it brought a knife from beneath its robe and thrust it into Kosar’s neck.
Kosar went stiff with shock. He could feel the knife in him, an alien object that felt much larger than it actually was, and even after the Monk withdrew the blade it felt as though it were still there, turning in his flesh with every breath he took. He gasped.
And then the pain kicked in. It overrode every other ache in Kosar’s body. His bleeding nose was forgotten, the injury to his hand from the fight in the machines’ graveyard, the stab wounds to his shoulders…
The Monk watched for a second, eyes flicking down to the wound then back to Kosar’s face. Then it dropped the insect onto Kosar’s neck.
He felt it. Even through the intense agony he felt the intimate contact of its tiny legs crawling up his neck, against the flow of blood, against the pain. It reached the wound and invaded his body. It was much worse than the knife, because this thing was alive. It delved and probed, passing into the rent the Monk had made and tearing its way deeper. And Kosar found himself silently begging dead A’Meer to come and take him from this terrible agony and carry him into the Black.
Then the insect stopped moving, and everything changed.
Kosar felt it growing within him. It was as though he were shrinking and the insect expanding. He was moving away from the world, sinking somewhere darker, and yet the suffering was still there. This was not unconsciousness; this was him being driven down and forced back. He fought, but there was very little fight left in him. His throat began to rattle. His mouth opened and he growled, as if attempting to speak a language he had never known.
“Why do you have those wounds on your fingertips?”
Fuck you, Kosar thought. “I’m a thief,” he said. He could not help himself. He tried to bite his tongue to prevent himself from speaking more, but the thing inside him would not allow it.
The Monk smiled. “Good.” It retreated a few steps and sat down, groaning as it did so. It plucked a bolt from its neck and threw it aside. Blood ran from the wound, but only a dribble. It cricked its neck and lowered its hood, revealing the bald
scarlet scalp. The huge bonfires cast flickering shadows on its head.
Kosar strained at his bindings, but he could no longer feel his arms. They belonged somewhere else. The thing inside him was huge, larger than him, bursting out and becoming the center of everything he knew and believed. It had swallowed him, and when the Monk began asking its questions, the insect regurgitated the answers from Kosar’s stiffened mouth.
“Who are you?”
“Kosar.”
“Where are you from?”
“Trengborne.”
“The village where the boy came from?”
“Yes.” The insect squeezed, white fire consumed Kosar’s bones. “He wasn’tfrom there, but helived there.”
The Monk regarded him for a while, stroking the side of its nose with the tip of Kosar’s sword. “The boy had magic?”
“Yes.”
“He used it?”
“It used him.”
The Monk nodded, musing on this. “Where is he now?”
“The Mages took him.” Kosar did not have to fight against the truth in this case; hewanted to tell it. “They took him, stole the magic, and they have it now.”
The Monk looked away, simmering.
Kosar bit his lip. Fresh blood flowed into his mouth but the pain was immaterial. It lifted him nowhere, purged nothing from his body except for more blood. He looked to the sky to see why it was darkening, then at the fires, and he realized that his vision was fading. About time, he thought.
“Where were you going?” the Monk said.
“To…to…” He fought, but the insect crushed him down. “To Hess.”
“Why?”
“To tell the Mystics about Alishia.”
“Alishia? Who is she?”
“She has something…” Kosar closed his eyes and raged against the thing controlling him. He thought of A’Meer and her determination, her pride, and he thought about how Rafe had changed in the space of a few days. But his mouth opened, his throat flexed and he could not swallow the words. “…something of magic within her.”
The Monk stood and came forward, holding the sword out before it. “You cannot lie to me.”
