Dusk: a dark fantasy novel (A Noreela novel)

by Tim Lebbon

  Some of the children screamed. Two of them stood and ran away, their parents casting scolding glares Lufero’s way when they emerged from shops or food caves. A few of the braver children watched wide-eyed as Lufero’s bloody play drew to a close. The finger puppets lay down one by one as the ravenous Nax continued to whirl and slash at them like a tornado of disc-swords. And finally, a few quiet moments after the Nax had slunk away behind Lufero’s back, Petra emerged once again from behind the rock to survey what he had done.

  The children left, some of them clapping as they walked away. Trey stood back, watching Lufero. The old man seemed to be asleep, but then his thumb moved again slightly, Petra casting his gaze across the destruction he had unwittingly brought down upon his folk.

  “I always thought Petra should have died,” Trey said.

  Lufero looked up, startled. “He did,” the old man said. “Nothing escapes a fledge demon once it’s woken.”

  “We’ve not heard of one for years. Maybe they’ve gone. Maybe they’re used to us now and they’ve gone deeper, down into veins we’ll never mine. Down past the Beast.”

  “The Nax sleep,” Lufero said. “They don’t run. No, they’re still there. Hibernating in the fledge, dreaming whatever it is they dream for years and years on end. It’s just that mining’s such a slow process now. And if a band of miners working in the Pavisse range or the Widow’s Peaks ever did encounter one, you think we’d hear about it? Not any more. People don’t talk any more.”

  Trey dug into his rucksack and brought out a lump of bright yellow fledge. “Here,” he said. “It’s fresh.”

  Lufero smiled and accepted the drug. He closed his eyes and rolled it beneath his nose, and in his smile Trey saw a thousand precious memories.

  He walked on, left the main street and climbed a series of rock terraces and steps to his cave. His mother had lit a small fire at the entrance, and she was cooking a stew of cave rat and blind spider. A pinch of Trey’s fresh fledge would make it exquisite.

  After dinner he went to the back of the cave and slid into the dust bath. The dust was so fine and light that it slipped around his body like oil, its inherent warmth soothing Trey’s tired muscles. A little fire-light found its way back here, and Trey enjoyed watching it flit across the walls like lost insects. He imagined that it was performing its own play for him, and as he drifted away he made up stories to follow the dim light’s movements.

  His mouth was sweet and sensitive from the fist of fledge he had chewed as part of the meal. His mother had taken some too, and she had fallen asleep soon after. She was old now, and she rarely made any effort with the fledge. It must haunt her dreams, but there was nowhere specific she wanted it to take her. Trey pitied her sometimes, and other times he was jealous. His own life seemed so meaningful that he wondered what it would be like to not care any more.

  The fresh fledge was so much purer and more powerful than anything sold or used topside; it faded as it rose, and sunlight drove it stale. Some young fledgers did try to make it on the surface, offering to sell their talents to the highest bidder, but their sight would soon fade away. And as fledge lost its effect, so the fledgers’ talent to use it dwindled. It was as if the sun was so alien to them that it treated them the same as their drug, and they all became just another topsider waiting for death.

  Trey had never been tempted to the surface by false dreams of power or status. His home was the underground. And he loved his fledge fresh. It passed from his stomach straight into his bloodstream, thinned the blood and drove it faster, speeding his heart, finding his organs and massaging them with its benevolent touch. Plunging into his heart and out again, the drug surrounded the goodness in his blood and made itself a part of it, riding directly into Trey’s brain where, like something almost sentient, it settled itself onto and into everything that made Trey what he was. It played with his memories, aggravated his desires, stirred his emotions, and with a slight effort of control Trey reined in the power of his mind and rode it like a horse. Trey’s mind—young and energetic, yet old enough to know some of itself—was the perfect age to lord over the fledge’s influence. A fledge journey was more than memory and less than experience, a realm hanging somewhere between dream and recollection, knowledge and foresight. And because of that, it was precious.

  His mind floated. It remained with his body for a while, revelling in the intimate touch of the dust bath, imagining Sonda there with him, having her wrap her naked legs around him and clasp him secretly beneath the dust. Soon tiring of the pretence, Trey went in search of the true Sonda. His mind was lighter than memory and richer than fantasy as it drifted from his home-cave. It took effort—concentration, will, his physical self tensing and straining in the stone enclosure of the dust bath—but it brought results that were more than worth the effort. Out of the cave, into the space of the home-cave, Trey could look down and see the place that had always been his home. The main street was cut into the floor of the cavern, caves leading off from either side, a wide public area built up with decorated stalagmites which could be made to glow if just the right heat was applied. They used this area for their celebrations and rituals, weddings and funerals, and it was familiar to everyone as the Church. Either side of the main street were the dwellings, built around and into the five giant pillars that had been left in place to support the cavern roof. Higher up these great pillars were platforms and small caves, homes to the five mayors who took joint control of the home-cave. Trey soared and circled one of the pillars, glancing through the entrance at one of these homes. He could not probe inside, which meant that this mayor was shielding his dwelling from prying minds. He turned away and drifted towards the opposite side of the cave, taking long moments to do so. The cavern was huge. It took three thousand steps to traverse it, and even a mind wandering on fledge took time.

  He briefly touched on the mind of a blind spider that had its home in a crack in the cavern ceiling, a chilling, alien encounter that bore no words or explanation. For that instant his sense changed, his perception altered so radically that it denied translation, and back in his dust bath Trey cried out. He withdrew quickly, disturbed but equally thrilled by this surreal experience.

  Past another pillar, past the expanse of cave moss and fungi that gave food, dipping down to where the river rushed by way below the home-cave and carried its detritus and waste away, Trey drifted aimlessly by the many homes carved into the rock extremes of the cavern. A few of these caves were natural, but most had been excavated over the several generations since the Cataclysmic War. Many were ongoing efforts, expanding all the time as families grew and caves were passed down from father to son, mother to daughter. He dove into the misted spray that rose from the river below, trying to clear his memory of the spider mind, and back in the dust bath his body prickled with cold.

  Trey knew exactly where to find Sonda.

  Her family cave was dark, but that did not mean that she was absent. Her father was a miner and her mother worked in one of the food caves along the main street. Sonda herself was training to become a topside runner, the small group of mining folk who spent their lives travelling back and forth from the home-cave to the surface to trade fledge for essential supplies. Runners were those most likely to try to make their way topside, and few grew old in the caves. Sometimes Trey mourned Sonda’s leaving already.

  For a moment images blurred and fought in his mind. He drew back slightly, becoming more aware of his own body back in the dust bath, the sound of his mother’s snoring, and as he opened his eyes he saw the weak firelight still prancing across the rock ceiling. He could even taste fledge in his mouth, instead of the cavern’s fresh open air. Or perhaps it was guilt.

  He closed his eyes again and concentrated, moving himself back to Sonda’s cave, hearing her soft song from within, smelling the rich tang of the river sweeping past way below his feet. He remained there for a while, a strong consciousness cast across the space of the cavern, the tinge of guilt he felt at spying more than counter
acted by what he was beginning to feel for Sonda. This journey was innocent, the pure necessity of a burgeoning first love. He was not trying to see the future, he was not spying on the girl as she changed or bathed or slept. He hardly even probed inside the house.

  And then her singing stopped, and Trey knew that she was dreaming a fledge dream. If only she would ride the dream and came to meet him out here.

  He moved away and slipped down one of the many shafts that led to the river. Like the tunnel he travelled every day to the fledge face, this river held history and the future in its grasp. The miners buried their dead here, dropping them into the water and letting them ride the river forever. And they drew water from here as well, catching the future before it hurtled past and lost itself deep beneath the mountains. The future was upriver, the past downriver, and this one moment beneath Trey was the most important of all. The river was all noise, a mind-shattering roar which, broken down, could be saying anything. He cast his consciousness down, tempted to plunge in and see where the waters would take him. Many had done so, and some came back mad.

  Trey returned up the black shaft and burst out into the light of the cavern again, veering away and entering one of the old fledge tunnels. This shaft was not worked anymore, not because the fledge had all been mined, but because it had become too dangerous. It was here that Lufero the puppet master had lost his legs many years before, and others had lost more than that here more recently. Cave-ins, a flash flood and a plague of stingers had caused them to abandon this tunnel, leaving it to the dark and whatever eventually crawled in there, out of sight and mind.

  Trey liked to travel through here on occasion, his body safe at home while his imagination sought whatever had driven his elders away. He was not the only one; he occasionally brushed past other minds steering this way, but like them he kept to himself. It was not exactly forbidden, what they were doing. But it would be frowned upon by the mayors. This was not a safe place. It had been abandoned for a reason. Many reasons, in fact; most of them told, some of them still held onto by the old miners that had worked this seam. Secrets. Trey knew that the whole truth had never been told, and like most people his age, the mystery intrigued him.

  Like Petra in Lufero’s puppet play, Trey pushed on.

  The shaft was long, winding, and soon it dipped and ran deep. There were several vertical shafts in the floor where machines had once toiled, and newer steps and staircases carved into the tunnels by hand since the Cataclysmic War. Trey had once started down one of these pits, trying to push his consciousness deep, smelling and sensing his way down, way past the river level and into a darkness so thick that it seemed to have weight. He had gone too far, he’d known that even as he pushed, and his body had stiffened and cooled in his cave as his mind plummeted. That shaft had no bottom, and its depth had a gravity. The air held hints of strange things far below, and the turning point had been the touching of an alien mind on his. Only briefly, barely a kiss of consciousness, like something turning its head and its hair swinging out to touch his face.

  That had been enough. Trey had somehow hauled himself back, and he’d been sick for the three shifts following.

  So now he kept to the tunnels and the mine workings themselves, leaving the old shafts to whatever it was that haunted them. He had asked his mother whether the machines could have become ghosts, but she had scoffed and stormed away, cursing his foolishness.

  He travelled until he found the old fledge seam. Even after so long he could sense the toil of the miners that had carved their way this far. It was a wide seam, rich, and Trey guessed that it continued on and on beneath the mountains. Its surface smelled rancid after such a long exposure, but he pushed inside just a little and it was fresh and fruitful, good fledge, free of impurities. A pity that this seam had been left alone. A pity that stingers had come and scared them away, and cave-ins, and…

  What else? He pushed further, because there was something in there. Something denser than fledge. Trey stilled, his body tense and tight in the dust bath, his consciousness holding a moment five thousand steps away. He waited because it seemed the right thing to do, to hold back and make himself quiet and unseen, because something was about to happen. He had stumbled across a held breath.

  Trey felt his heartbeat rippling the surface of the dust bath. His mind was submerged in fledge, and borne of it. And he was suddenly very, very afraid.

  A heartbeat amongst his, deeper, slower, harder, trying to hide between his own but failing because he had been listening for it.

  A heartbeat … something alive in the fledge … alive but sleeping, hibernating, because his heart beat a hundred times before he heard another strange pulse.

  Nax?

  He tried to pull back. He wanted more than anything to wake in the bath, his mind his own, and to tell his mother about the fledge nightmare he’d had. But this was no nightmare, and Trey could not pull back. Because he had already brushed against this Nax’s mind, and his frantic thought of escape was merely a vain attempt to avoid what was coming.

  It came in quickly:

  Threat from above, safety being slaughtered, magic returned to shift the balance of things, death and war and change that would seep down even this far, through the cracks in river beds and past the roots of the oldest trees, down through the earth, the danger given an easy route via the holes gutted into the world by those who still plundered …

  And more, much more, none of it in words, all of it in hateful alien expressions of such contempt that Trey, physically ensconced in his dust bath as if that could possibly keep him safe, began to cry.

  Eventually he pulled free, or was let go. Flailing, horrified, venting psychic screams that echoed before him and gave many home-cave sleepers instant nightmares, Trey fled back to his own body. As he did so he sensed other minds waking through the earth, some near, some further away. Minds angry not at him, but at what the future promised.

  He flipped from the dust bath and hit the stone floor hard, bruising his limbs and shoulders, running through his cave naked, tripping over his sleeping mother and gashing his elbows open on the ground, giving premature blood to the land. He rose again and tore aside the leather curtain at the cave’s entrance.

  “They’re awake!” he screamed. “The Nax are awake!” He could see shadows of people moving to and fro in the main street, and he imagined the puppet master’s red-painted hand clenching and cutting, taking them all down.

  There was an outburst of screaming from all across the cavern. Other fledge dreamers were travelling too far this night.

  The first Nax came from the same tunnel Trey had fled in his fugue.

  The Nax were also know as fledge demons. No one had ever seen one and lived. Most had an idea of what they were—myths, stories, legends handed down from generation to generation, drawings in books, ancient cave paintings that smeared some of the rock walls of the home-cave Church—but as well as sometimes being exaggerated with time, the truth can also be diluted. Most people had no idea what they were about to face.

  Heads turned as the shadow burst from darkness into weak firelight. It flew across the cavern and landed at the base of one of the five giant pillars. And then it started to kill.

  Trey fell to his knees and screamed. His mother shouted in her sleep, sounding as if she was being choked. Other cries rose up across the cavern, high pitched and androgynous with terror. Because as well as the sight it presented its victims—wings spread, various limbs tipped with spinning bone-clawed appendages, openings that may have been mouths steaming and spitting gobs of flaming gas—the Nax gave them so much more. Its mind reached out as well, probing with alien fingers, seeming to touch everyone in the cavern. And it was like eating shit.

  Trey pressed his hands to his ears, screamed, shook his head, trying to drown out the feeling that he was being invaded, his senses turned in on themselves, twisted and forced and split apart. He saw the slaughter that had begun below, people spinning and coming apart as the Nax danced across the unev
en ground, limbs slapping at the air just as Lufero had shown in his play. Coughs of fire leapt from its mouths and wrapped around heads, stomachs, bounced along the ground until they found something to burn. People ran but few escaped; the Nax was too fast. It could run, it could fly, it could whip out its long tail and haul the escapees back into range of its killing limbs. They saw all this, but there were also images that could only have been seen through the Nax’s eyes. And with those images came outlandish glee. There was the smell, too, the burning of flesh and spilled blood as Trey’s friends died before him. He retched, and his stomach rumbled with hateful hunger. Screams of pain and terror drove him mad. He tried to cry out again but he seemed to roar instead, a fledge-filled scream of fury and pent-up hunger that was echoed around the cavern by a thousand other voices, each once unwilling and yet revelling in its new freedom. The Nax was sharing itself with its victims before it killed them. A creature of the drug, its casting of its own consciousness was part of its make up, a facet of the hunt.

  Trey fell back and crawled into the cave on his hands and knees. “We have to go!” he said to his mother.

  “We can’t leave,” she said, shaking her head, trying to shed the alien images. “We’ll fight, there are plenty of us, we’ll have to—”

  “Mother, I sensed it, I felt it waking. There were more than one. Something woke them. I think something’s happening topside, and it angered them and drew them out of hibernation. Mother, we have to leave! We’ll go topside, somehow. Whatever, we have to get out of the cavern.”

  “The mayors will know what to do,” Trey’s mother said with blind, humbling faith. But then she glanced over his shoulder, and he knew what she was seeing without turning around, because the image was shared between them all. A second Nax burst from another tunnel and powered straight into one of the pillar dwellings. Trey felt the walls and balconies of that place splintering, and he knew the weak flesh of the mayor was parting beneath the onslaught of the spinning and ripping limbs.