Dawn n-2

by Tim Lebbon

  “I can’t lie.”

  “Then there’s still a chance,” the Monk said. “Where is Alishia?”

  Still a chance?

  “Going…to…Kang Kang…”

  The Monk turned and walked away, its shadow dancing behind it. It sheathed its sword and threw Kosar’s aside.

  It sees something of magic as a chance?

  The Monk disappeared beyond one of the huge fires. Kosar felt the insect rip itself away from his spine and claw from the wound in his neck, saw it tumble down his chest and land in the dust. It was on its back, legs flailing at the night, and a hundred thin white tendrils swirled around it, licking at the air as if trying to find nerves once more.

  With all the strength he could muster, Kosar lifted his foot and brought it down onto the struggling beetle.

  He came back to himself in time to feel life fading away. The Monk left me to die, he thought. At last…at last…

  BUT DEATH IS no easy escape, and the pain of life brought him around once more.

  Kosar had no idea how much time had passed. The great fires had burned down somewhat, so it must have been several hours, but the moons still hung in the sky, it was still twilight…and the Monk was still there. It sat at a distance, close to one of the fading fires, its cloak hugged tight around it and its hood lifted back over its head. It had its back to Kosar. It seemed to be asleep.

  He was still tied against the broken machine. His chest was tight and sore, and he stood on shaky legs to ease the pressure on his shoulders.

  I should be dead, Kosar thought. He swallowed, wincing at the pain that slight movement brought. He turned his head left to right and felt something on his throat, something in him, and for a second panic rose again. But he could still see the remains of the crushed insect on the ground beside his foot. It had burst when he crushed it, spilling a puddle of his blood merged with its own.

  Something ran past him. He held his breath and did his best to keep still, tracking the shadow as it darted low across the ground. It was a sand rat, large as a small sheebok, scaly tail waving at the air as it buried its long snout into one of the dead Breakers.

  Kosar looked at the Monk, but the demon seemed unconcerned.

  The sand rat pulled back and took something from the body. It hurried back past Kosar, glancing at him as it ran by with the Breaker’s heart in its mouth.

  Kosar slumped against the machine and cried out at the bindings chafing his wrists. They had rubbed the skin raw, drawing more blood and tightening each time he moved against them.

  “You!” Kosar called. The Monk lifted its head, staring into the fire as if believing the call had come from there. “Haven’t you killed me yet?”

  The Monk stood slowly. Kosar noticed several arrows and bolts on the ground by its side, evidently picked from its body while it had been sitting beside the fire. Its red robe bore many darker patches. Their rage keeps them going, he thought. Perhaps now they know they’ve lost, they’ll just die away. But the Monk shrugged its robe higher onto its shoulders and pulled its hood lower over its face, and when it started out for Kosar it was with purpose.

  I told it about Alishia, he thought in despair.

  The demon walked past the bodies of several Breakers, paying them no attention. Its feet kicked through sandy soil darkened with blood. When it came to within a dozen steps of Kosar it paused, raised its hands and lowered its hood slowly, as if uncertain of its actions. It looked above Kosar at the machine. It looked down at the puddle of blood at his feet. It looked anywhere but at his face.

  “I haven’t killed you,” it said. “I saved your life. Clasped the wound shut. Stopped the bleeding.” Its voice was rough and low, and Kosar saw the terrible scars on its face and neck for the first time. “I am Lucien Malini,” it said.

  Kosar was taken aback. Was he still unconscious? Was he dreaming? He swung his hand forward and imagined a sword cleaving this monster’s head in two-revenge for sweet A’Meer-but his arms remained tied to the machine.

  “You have a name?” he asked.

  “Everything has a name. Even the Mages.”

  “Then why tell me? You killed the woman in those woods, didn’t you? Before the machines’ graveyard?”

  “Yes. We fought and I killed her. And then later…when I went back…I saw her…”

  “If you let me down from here, I’ll kill you.”

  The Monk raised its eyebrows, forehead creasing into a scarred frown.

  “Do you believe I’m telling the truth?” Kosar asked. “Don’t need your filthy truth beetle for that, do you? I’ll wipe the name from your lips and stamp it into the bloody dust. Then I’ll cut you open and sit close by, so I can watch the sand rats eat you slowly. You’ll end up as sand rat shit.”

  “The woman ended as more,” Lucien Malini said.

  “What do you mean?” Kosar could not help the question, though he did not want to engage in this demon’s banter. But it said there’s still a chance.

  “She went,” the Monk said. “I returned to her and she went. Disappeared. Before my eyes.”

  “You returned to her?”

  “I had seen defeat, and I sought revenge on her corpse.”

  Kosar closed his eyes and the world swayed around him. He had no wish to imagine what the Monk’s revenge would have been, yet the images forced themselves upon him, crowded out in moments by the mimic’s presentation of A’Meer’s final breaths. A whispered word, or a gasp for air?

  When the world steadied and Kosar opened his eyes again, the Monk had come close.

  “Leave me alone, demon!” Kosar whispered.

  The Monk reached out and touched his throat. Its fingers were rough and a flame of pain circled Kosar’s neck. Something shifted there and his head was jerked to one side, pulled by a subtle movement from the Monk’s hand.

  “Leave me!”

  “If I leave, you may bleed to death.”

  “Then let me bleed to death. Or are you toying with me? Maybe you’re taking your revenge on my body because A’Meer denied you that?”

  The Monk stood back and stared at Kosar, as though looking for truth in its victim’s face. “I don’t want you to die,” it said.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I put clasps in your throat. Sand rat teeth hold your wound together. I want you to live.”

  Kosar tried to turn away but felt the obstructions in his neck. They pulled at him, stretching skin and holding the sides of his wounds together. There was no fresh blood running down his chest. And the Monk asked no more questions.

  “Why?” Kosar asked.

  “You spoke my words in your sleep,” the Monk said. “When I sat by the fire, taking arrows from my body, I heard you repeating my words. As if you could not believe them.”

  Kosar spat at the Monk. He was weak and his mouth was dry, and the bloody spittle landed on the ground between them. “Your kind don’t believe in hope.”

  The Monk came forward again. Kosar kicked out but the demon simply slapped his leg aside. It seemed unconcerned at his struggles. Kosar saw it close up; deep, black eyes, the fresh wounds and older scars, the ragged teeth in its mouth, nose split in some fight. Surely there could be no hope in a thing like this?

  “You’ll sleep,” the demon said. “I’ll have time to think. And when you wake, we will talk some more.”

  It pressed something into Kosar’s mouth, a sweet plant mulched and mixed with something more meaty. Try as he did, Kosar could not keep from swallowing. And once he’d swallowed the first speck he opened his mouth and welcomed some more. It took him away, soothed his pain, made A’Meer fade for a time into a shadow of a memory rather than a raw, bloody loss. As he felt the Monk loosening his wrist ties, Kosar stared into the failing fire and saw sunlight once again.

  WHEN HE FOUND the Elder Mystic sitting alone in a square on the outskirts of Hess, O’Gan thought he had discovered an ally.

  He stood at the edge of the square, hidden from view in the shadow of a giant we
llburr tree. He liked the feel of the tree’s bark against his shoulder. It had been here for several thousand years, weathering storms and reveling in sunlight, sucking water from the ground that seeped in from the inland sea of Sordon Sound. It had grown up alone in a wild landscape, witness to histories that O’Gan could not imagine and would barely believe. When its seeds fell they were carried away by the Elder Mystics and planted far afield, taking all the history of the tree with them to give to the fledgling plants that might sprout several centuries from now. Sometimes, those carrying them were given visions when their palms were pricked by the seeds’ spiky skins. And sometimes those visions gave stories that were told on the Temple, bizarre tales of histories that did not belong to the Shantasi. This land had been a stranger to them when they arrived many centuries before, and there were those who believed it was a stranger to them still.

  He leaned his head against the skin of the tree and closed his eyes. His mind was still affected by the Janne pollen, blood still trickled from his nose and he sensed a comforting warmth somewhere within the tree’s ancient trunk. It was the certainty that a greater mind than his was pondering events. He sighed, and an echo from centuries before bled through the bark and made him open his eyes.

  The Elder Mystic was sitting on the edge of a stone water fountain. The water seemed black in the weak light. It rose in three single sheets, parting as it reached its zenith and then splashing back down. The splashes sounded like nothing at all.

  The Elder trailed one hand in the water, swirling it back and forth like a paddle. She remained where she was. Even with her eyes closed, O’Gan was certain that she traveled nowhere.

  Her other hand held the hilt of the knife buried in her stomach.

  “Elder!” O’Gan said. He stepped from the shadow of the wellburr tree and crossed the small square to the fountain. They were alone. The square was on the western outskirt of Hess, its air heavy with scents from the Mol’Steria Desert farther west.

  The Mystic raised her head and turned to look at O’Gan. She seemed surprised to see anyone here. She was very old, her pale skin wrinkled into leathery folds, her black hair streaked with silver as though it caught light from the life moon.

  “O’Gan Pentle,” she said. “I heard you were still at the Temple.”

  “I was. I saw something. I came down, and everyone was fleeing or…or dead.” He looked at the knife in the Elder’s stomach. Her hand was clasped firmly around the hilt.

  “Death is the only escape,” the Elder said.

  “Elder Darshall, I don’t understand.”

  The Elder shook her head, winced, and her hand made irregular patterns in the water as she shivered with pain. “I did this,” she said, looking down at the knife. “But I lack the courage to finish it. I pull the knife up, empty my guts, twist it and pierce my heart, and I’m beyond their reach. Forever free, lost to the Black, and all the Elders’ wraiths will combine to chant one another down. No way the Mages can reach us in the Black. No way they’ddare. ”

  “We can fight,” O’Gan said.

  Elder Darshall shook her head. Her hand went back to drawing shapes in the water. “There is no hope.”

  O’Gan sat before her on the edge of the fountain. The stone was colder than usual, its heat long since sucked away by the twilight. “Isaw hope,” he said. “On the Temple, hope came to me and showed itself!”

  The Elder looked up, and O’Gan was shocked to see a smile on her face. “You young Mystics,” she said. “You’re always so filled with optimism. You don’t appreciate how much the past steers the present. Every breath you take pushes your body in a certain direction; through choice, and experience, and the way that breath informs your heart and mind. The things it plants there. The things it takes away. And likewise, every event of the past makes the present what it is.”

  “I don’t understand.” O’Gan looked at the knife, the Elder’s hand, her leaking blood. He wondered at her uncertainty. Was it simply pain causing her to hold back, or fear of the Black? Or was it something else? “You can’t deny hope at a time like this.”

  “I know what hope brings!” the Elder hissed. She leaned forward at O’Gan as if to bite him, and crying out when the movement shifted the knife in her gut. She moved back and looked down again, and sat there motionless for a while, concentrating on the knife.

  If she does it now, she truly knows no hope, O’Gan thought.

  Elder Darshall looked up at him and smiled. “You’ve been sniffing the Janne, even now.”

  “If you’re seeing inside me, then you know I speak the truth.”

  “You’re thinking about madness, that’s all,” Elder Darshall whispered. “You’ve seen phantoms in the dark. Things…perhaps sent by the Mages to finish us off. Who knows what’s out there now? Who can understand?” Her eyes drifted past O’Gan and became fearful, darting here and there as though following a bat’s flight.

  “I heard of Elders killing themselves,” he said. “I saw Elder Garia, dead by her own hand.”

  The Elder Mystic nodded. “Garia always was a braver soul than me. And she always understood the truth.”

  “What truth? None of us know the truth. It’s the thing we always seek!”

  Elder Darshall’s stare was loaded with the wisdom of her years. O’Gan forgot about the knife and blood, and her hand stirring the waters of the fountain. For a moment the whole world was in her eyes. “The truth that we Elders kept for ourselves,” she said. “The truth of the Mages, and what they did to us. And what they will do again.” She started to cry. Her tears shocked O’Gan because they were born of sorrow, not pain.

  “Elder…let me help you.” He reached forward to touch the knife but the Mystic pulled back, hissing and almost slipping into the fountain.

  “Don’t touch me! O’Gan, don’t touch me. Freedom of will is everyone’s right, and I have mine even now. You have yours also, though I think this darkness is driving you mad. But I’ll tell you. I’ll help you to decide your course of action.”

  “I’m going to fight!”

  “No. You’re going to kill yourself and join your ancestors in the Black. And I’ll tell you why.

  “O’Gan, even the Mystics have a beginning. Before the Cataclysmic War the Shantasi examined and explored magic through their minds. We viewed magic as a philosophy rather than a tool, a way of life rather than a way to make life our own. And then S’Hivez went too far. He was banished, and he and Angel met and fell in love and the rest is known to everyone, but only in detail to a few. And nobody knows everything that happened during the Cataclysmic War. It was a short war but it was fought right across Noreela. Its main battles were along the path of destruction from Lake Denyah and the Mages’ Monastery, north across Noreela to The Spine. But there were other battles, and many of them have faded from consciousness because most were won by the Mages. History is written by the victors and survivors. But sometimes history becomes a part of the land.”

  Elder Darshall’s head nodded forward and her hand paused in the waters.

  “Elder?” O’Gan asked, fearful that she had bled to death.

  “I’m thinking,” she said. “Remembering. Memories can hurt, you know that, O’Gan? They can physically hurt. I can still feel the agony from the first time I was pricked by a wellburr seed.” She sighed.

  “After the Cataclysmic War, history faded into itself. Time began again. Noreela picked itself up and dusted itself off, and much of it remained where the War had left it: on its knees, bereft of hope, societies shattered and its people growing apathetic and resigned. Magic was gone. Machines lay dead across the land, many of them taking their decayed cargo of people with them. The bones of the dead mingled with the cores of the machines, and history soon became something of dreams more than reality.

  “You know the stories, O’Gan…

  “It took over a hundred years for the new Mystics to arise in Hess. I was one of them. I was one of the first. I was born after the War, and my path led me here, my parents h
erding sheebok from village to village. Hess was a ruin then-from the War, and a battle that few talk about anymore-but there were some who wished the Mystics to rise again. They could see beyond the next bellyful of food and mouthful of water. They could see beyond the absence of the old magic. They were few, and they refused to be slaves to history as our people were slaves so long ago.

  “So they took us children from our parents with the promise of wonders, nurtured us and planted Janne seeds that had been harvested from plants destroyed during the Cataclysmic War. And soon, when the first of the new Mystics were barely in their teens, the Janne urged us to look to the wellburr trees for answers to old questions: What had happened to the Mystics during the War? Why were they never seen or heard from again?

  “So we went to the trees, gathered their falling seeds…and they bit us.” The Elder trailed off.

  “Elder?”

  Darshall grunted, nodded. Her hand still gripped the knife. O’Gan could feel the tension there, as though every heartbeat urged the Elder Mystic to finish what she had begun.

  Tell me first, he thought. Tell me why the Elders refuse to see any hope.

  Darshall nodded again, and continued. “The pain was beyond compare. We were Mystics without magic. You’ve heard of the witches that still work in the land, mainly in the north? Witches with no magic…false magicians, using potions and chemicala to dupe the ignorant or fool themselves. We were similar, except that our minds were lessened by magic’s loss. Those Mystics who came before us had magic to dwell upon, while we only had its absence. So instead of examining what magic meant we spent our time looking for signs of what itcould mean. We searched for clues to its reappearance, signs in the stars, the way water ran downhill, the shape of a sand dune after a storm in the Mol’Steria Desert. We sat on the Temple and talked long days into longer nights, many of us secretly harboring jealousy for those Mystics that existed before the Cataclysmic War. We wanted their minds, their thoughts, their lives. We wanted to be able to immerse ourselves in the magic they had access to, view it from inside and out. We wanted our days and nights to be filled with magic, not its ghost.