Dawn n-2

by Tim Lebbon

  He moved across the cavern floor, dodging heavy points of darkness that signified a Nax. He approached another mine working and felt a different pain possessing the rest of his body: the agony of wanting. The scorch of the fledge rage lit up his flesh and bone.

  Perhaps one of the Nax would save him? They were fledge demons after all, coated in the stuff, some even said they were made from fledge in its purest, most intense form. Perhaps one of the Nax…?

  He moved forward and the pain exploded in his mind.

  For an instant, the home-cave was illuminated. The Nax were not ignoring him at all. They were gathered around him, some less than an arm’s length away. They hung from the ceiling high above on threads of fledge, crawled on the walls of the cavern before him, slid up and down the wide column fifty steps to his left, allstaring at him, surrounding him as completely as the darkness that quickly returned.

  He opened his mouth to scream, but the Nax were the air.

  He ran toward the tunnel once again, certain that its dark mouth was the only place where the Nax had not gathered. Heading for topside brought the pain again, lighting his way and displaying in a flash the hundreds of Nax lining his route. They reached for him as the light blinked out-limbs, wings, flaming tongues-but none of them could touch him in the dark.

  He reached the mouth of the working and entered, running through the agony of his upper body.

  It’s the fledge rage, he thought, torturing me more than the wounds Hope gave me, tearing me up from the inside, giving me nightmares when I’m already in one.

  He ran through the mines, cringing away from the walls of Nax that each flash of pain revealed. It was as though they saw him only when the pain came, but by the time they reached for him he had willed it down again.

  The light became more rhythmic, the pain more regular, the claws of the Nax closer and closer to ripping into his dreaming flesh.

  He saw himself through their eyes, with their minds. He was nothing amazing at all.

  TREY OPENED HIS eyes. However terrible reality might be, he welcomed it.

  He was cold. The sky was stained the color of stale fledge by the death moon. The life moon seemed to be fighting a losing battle, and Trey stared at it in the hope that it would grow.

  His head thumped with fledge rage. A lump of it-a grain, fresh or stale, beneficial or fatal-would take the pain away. Fledge would carry him home, back to the place he should have never left. Sonda and his mother were dead down there in the ground, two miles below and hundreds of miles away from him, but at least he would have been dead with them had he found the courage to stay.

  His arm and chest were boiling hot, freezing cold. Blood still flowed freely across his body, passed between his arm and his side, tickled his armpit, seeped to the ground and dripped down onto the thing Hope had recently emerged from. Trey could feel himself open to the night. He raised his good arm and laid it across his chest, and he touched the meat of himself there, parts he should have never felt. He stank of his own blood.

  Hope killed me, he thought, and his mind recoiled. No!

  He remembered the look on her face as she lashed out with his disc-sword. He had killed stingers with that weapon in the caves, and it had tasted Red Monk blood at the battle in the machines’ graveyard. Now its steel was smeared with him, its handle spattered with his blood, and perhaps soon that would be the last of him.

  No! he thought again. Alishia…

  A terrible fear took him, a dreadful certainty. He moaned and rolled onto his right side. His left arm struck the ground, the slashed muscles denying him control. The flame of agony illuminated his night for a few seconds, but this time there were no Nax waiting for him. I dreamed them, he thought. They’re still my nightmare, even lying here like this. He lifted his head and looked around.

  He was lying where he had fallen, next to the hole in the ground from which Hope had emerged ranting and mad. Alishia had been lying close to him when Hope came up, asleep or unconscious, and he searched for her now. Perhaps Hope had gone mad and killed them both. Perhaps she had found her thing in the ground wanting, and now she was raving across Noreela seeking her own demise.

  But Alishia was not lying where he had left her.

  Trey rolled onto his back again and looked left, biting his lip against the pain. No Alishia.

  Had the witch killed the girl and tumbled her into the hole?

  He rolled again, shifting himself around to try to see into the ground, but there was still no sign of Alishia.

  I need to sit up.

  It took Trey a long time to raise himself into a sitting position. Each breath hurt, every movement was agony, and he was starting to feel faint as blood loss darkened the dusk. But once up he could look around, and he was now certain that Hope had taken Alishia with her.

  There’s no way I can give chase, he thought. He was sure that he was dying. The pain scoured his soul, seeking to pluck it from his body, and if that happened he would be just another lost wraith waiting for someone to chant him into the Black. There’s no way I can go after her. He looked south toward Kang Kang, those distant teeth set in the edge of Noreela. It had taken him an hour to sit up, and it would take him an age to go that far.

  He tried. He managed to stand, swayed, biting his lip until he tasted blood, trying to chase away the faintness and find the stance that suited him best. He reached across his body with his right hand and grabbed his left sleeve. He lifted, head back so that he could look at the sky, and brought his slashed arm up until it was pressed across his body just below his chest.

  He was crying. The tears carried a subtle taint of fledge and he licked them from his upper lip, knowing they would have no effect but welcoming their taste.

  If I don’t die from blood loss, the fledge rage will be waiting.

  He braced his left arm against his body, popped two buttons on his shirt and pushed his hand inside.

  Trey gasped and almost fell. He thought perhaps he could move like this. His legs shook and his thigh muscles felt as though they were ready to cramp, but he set one foot in front of the other, one at a time, avoiding shadowed areas that might hide a pit or a hole, and he took ten steps south.

  That’s how I can do it, he thought. One step at a time. Concentrate…There, one step closer to Alishia. And another…and another.

  But however much he tried, however hard, Trey could not fool himself. He would be dead long before he reached Kang Kang.

  TREY WALKED ACROSS the bare ground, craving grass and soil, bracken and heather beneath his feet. He was used to rock, but since coming topside he had realized that rock was merely the bone of the land. The living part of Noreela was what grew and lived upon it.

  Where he was now, Noreela felt dead. The stone was cool and uncompromising beneath his feet. His blood splashed darkly across its surface, looking like holes in the moonlight. At least there’s life there, he thought. But it would not last for long.

  He had no idea how far he had come. He was concentrating too much on placing one foot in front of the other to judge distance, and his only gauge of the passage of time was the need to urinate. He stood still to piss, and ignored the exhaustion that threatened to topple him. If he lay down to rest he was doubtful that he would ever rise again; the bare, dead skeleton of Noreela would suck the life from him and he would lie there forever.

  He felt the weight of that unnatural cloud above him, swirling so slowly that its movement was barely noticeable. He glanced up only once, but the sight made him woozy, its weight tugging at him until he was ready to fall. It may come down, he thought. It may all come down again. But even that fear could not increase his speed.

  Then something howled in the darkness. It seemed to come from a long way off at first, but after a pause another cry sounded from much closer. Trey fell to the ground and crawled into a depression in the rock, fearing that the creatures would smell his blood and tear him apart. He had no idea what animals would be wandering here. If Kosar were with him…

&n
bsp; But Kosar had left Alishia in Trey’s care, trusting him with the girl because he knew that Trey thought highly of her.

  Trey closed his eyes and thought of Alishia’s beautiful face and the dark, closed mind he had seen on one of his fledge trips. She had been so much like Rafe; so much power hidden away. It was confusing that someone so powerful needed protecting, but it had been the same with Rafe, and he had seen the way that ended.

  This won’t be the same!

  A creature howled so close that Trey could almost feel the warmth of its breath. Another answered from the distance, and another, and he realized why he had not been able to place where the call came from: there were many of them, not just one. The howls started deep, rising in tone until they almost disappeared from his range of hearing. He could not tell whether they were in pain or on the hunt, harmful or harmless. Whatever they were, they sounded big.

  Trey tried to hold his breath. The pain of his wounds was fresh and bright, still lighting corners of his mind but revealing nothing like the dream.

  I’ve never heard the Nax, he thought, and the idea that it was them out there made him gasp.

  He caught his breath and held it again, terrified at the silence.

  Something walked by. It was moving slowly, yet the footfalls were rapid, as though it had more than four feet. He opened his eyes and looked without moving his head, ready at any moment for a shadow to fall across him and cut the moonlight from view. I can’t fight. I have no weapon. I’m wounded and bleeding and weak. It’s hopeless.

  The creature paused and Trey heard the distinctive sound of something sniffing the air.

  No hope since the Nax attacked.

  A low growl, rumbling behind a closed mouth.

  Something else controlled us with Rafe. So does something steer me even now?

  The animal held its breath.

  Whatever I do, it’s destined to be.

  Trey gasped in another breath, sat up and shouted as loud as he could. Something whined briefly to his left and then dashed away, a huge shadow bounding from rock to rock, multiple limbs slapping down to accompany its squeals of terror. He shouted again, and in the distance he heard similar sounds of fear from the other fleeing creatures.

  He screamed again, for himself this time, and with nothing to dampen the scream it echoed across the landscape, perhaps still traveling even when it had passed beyond his own hearing. He sat there panting, sucking in breath after breath to make up for his fear, and he liked to think that his scream would reach Hope, struggling with Alishia flung over her shoulder or leading the girl on foot. Perhaps his cry would make her wish she had remained behind to finish the job, instead of leaving him half dead. Or perhaps not. He thought of her eyes, her rambling, and decided that she was probably too mad to be afraid.

  He stood again, easing himself to his feet and fighting the sudden nausea. He could not afford to lose any fluid or the meager contents of his stomach; Hope had left him with nothing, and if this stripped landscape extended much farther he would die from thirst.

  Steady, his vision level, Trey started on his way once more.

  HE WALKED FOR a long time, still only counting one footstep after another. He reached a couple of hundred and started again, trying to forget how many times he had done so. He had come a long way. The mountains of Kang Kang loomed closer, approaching almost too fast, as though he were running rather than hobbling. They were taller than he had imagined, harsher, and their peaks glowed white in the moonlight.

  Snow, he thought. He had never seen it. But somehow he knew that snow from Kang Kang was snow never meant to be seen.

  His wounds hurt abominably, and the fledge rage blurred the edges of his senses, lodged behind his vision and hiding just below his perception of hearing. It would be so easy to curl up and let the rage smother the physical pain of his wounds. After that would be madness, and after that death, either from blood loss or from his failing heart. Fledgers in the final throes of withdrawal could make an easy choice: accept death, or fight. Most fought.

  But his mother had not sacrificed herself so that he could lie down here and die. Maybe she had seen a purpose in his eyes. Perhaps it had always been there, or maybe their flight up from the home-cavern had made her see him in a whole new way. She had slipped away and thrown herself into a deep crevasse, ensuring that she remained underground forever. She had not been sad when she died; he had traveled to her, and she had told him that this was what she wanted. She was slowing him down. Without her, he would stand a chance of reaching the rising and going topside.

  She had been right. And now there was something else slowing him down; his wounds, and the rage. If only they would leave him so willingly.

  PERHAPS A DAY passed. Trey fought the urge to sit and rest, fearing that he would not be able to stand again. Many times he believed that he saw Hope and Alishia in the distance, but when he concentrated on the spot where he thought he’d seen movement, the shadows grew still once again.

  They can’t be that far ahead, he thought. If Hope is carrying the girl, then she’ll be moving as slowly as me, and if Alishia is walking, she’ll be taking a child’s steps.

  He saw a haze of shadows moving back and forth over the ground. At first he thought it was his failing vision, but when he stood still he could hear the soft whisper of their movement. They did not change direction to come toward him. They did not pause to stare. They drifted back and forth just above the ground, passing around and through one another without interruption, and Trey diverted around the place the shadows circled. He tried to see-leaned closer than he should, almost feeling a shadow touch his skin-but there was only a hole in the ground. Darkness made it impenetrable. By the time he had left the shadows behind, Trey was glad.

  His wounds demanded attention. His bicep was split and still bleeding-movement ensured the wound remained open-and his chest was slashed to the bone. Sometimes he thought he could smell the beginnings of rot, but he put it down to his unwashed body and clothes, that slightly musty smell of age and decay. He hated to attribute it to the injuries. If the smell came from them, then his blood was turning poisonous, and he would be dead in hours.

  My disc-sword has tasted Monk blood, he thought, but he tried to shut that from his mind.

  He had no water or food. When he pissed, he caught as much as he could in his good hand and drank it, cringing against the taste but aware that he could not lose the fluid. He had learned harsh lessons from miners who had been trapped for weeks after rockfalls. Drink your own piss, they said, otherwise it’s a waste. And eat your own dead, because if it takes weeks to be dug out that’s all the food you’ll have. At least then they won’t have died in vain.

  Kang Kang loomed closer and larger than ever. Sometimes Trey thought he could reach out and touch its mountains, and when he tried, his fingers grew cold, as though buried in the snow capping their upper reaches. Even having spent his life deep beneath the ground, still he knew of Kang Kang. Awrong place, someone had called it. Kosar? Hope? He could not recall, but he trusted their words. It felt wrong even now, miles distant and all but hidden by this unnatural dusk. There was something both alluring and repulsive about the mountains, a sense carried in the air and through the ground. He could not make out exactly where that feeling came from, but it confused his already weakened mind and toyed with his fledge-teased senses.

  He bent over and almost vomited, shaking his head to rid it of the smells, the tastes, the sounds.

  And then he smelled fledge.

  He knelt on the rocky ground, and something compacted beneath his left knee. He looked down, trying not to lose his balance-he felt disoriented, unsure of up and down-and lifted his knee. Mud, wet and slick.

  He looked up and sniffed again, smelling fledge and feeling his whole body crave its touch on his tongue, its taste in his mind. His joints ached with the rage.

  Mud?

  And there before him, several hundred steps away, the ground began to show the darker patches of covering once
more. He was almost at the edge of the desert of rock.

  “Thank the Black,” Trey whispered, and something close by responded with a hiss, and a touch of some vision on his mind.

  He saw himself standing there alone and covered with blood, scared, abandoned, a fledger aboveground and as removed from his environment as he could ever be. And as he wondered how he could be seeing himself like this, the smell of fledge grew overpowering and he tipped forward. Before he struck the ground, something came between him and the rock.

  Something hot.

  HE WAS BATHING in fledge. He was underground-in a dream or reality, he neither knew nor cared-and around him the drug was crumbling, giving itself to his touch, finding his wounds and soothing them, pricking his tongue with its tangy freshness, setting his blood and his brain afire and readying his mind for any journey he wished to take. It was the freshest fledge he had ever encountered, as though he had found it not only before it was touched or mined, but at the actual moment of its creation. There had been much speculation as to what fledge was and how it came into being: it was grown by the Nax, itwas the Nax, it was the fallout from Nax dreams. But the simple truth of the drug had often done away with such musings. It was like questioning the existence of air or the origins of water, questions both pointless and faithless. What mattered was that they were there.

  Trey welcomed in another mouthful, chewing the perfect grittiness into a paste, swilling it between his teeth and below his tongue and letting it slip down his throat. It set his flesh alight and took away much of the pain. Something else touched his mouth, briefly but definitely. He opened his eyes but there was nothing to see, so he closed his eyes again and welcomed some more of the crumbling fledge inside.

  He was moving, slipping through a seam of the drug as though he were a fledge demon, steered between rough stone walls and protruding rocks. The drug parted around him easier than it ever should have, coming apart before him and joining again behind. And it whispered all the time, giving him ideas and images that he would never have imagined himself.