Dusk: a dark fantasy novel (A Noreela novel)

by Tim Lebbon

  Alishia had started carrying her knife in a sheath on her thigh, hidden by her dress. That single act of insecurity and fear had in itself persuaded her that her time in the city was at an end.

  Besides, she was alone. Her parents had passed away when she was a teenager, leaving her a pile of books and living memories, but little else. These memories had kept her going while she made new ones of her own, and eventually she had found employ with the library. She had few friends, and certainly no one close. She had never been beyond the city walls, and only rarely even ventured outside her own district. Alishia lived in her head, exploring the realms of fantasy revealed by the books she read, the accounts of things near and far that were sometimes truth, sometimes fiction, and more often one disguised as the other. Her own private world was a rich one, yet she had hardly seen the real world at all.

  There was little for her to leave behind and even less to take. She bought a horse and saddle, spending a sizeable proportion of her savings, and stabled it with Erv the night before she left. It would carry her and her few clothes and books out of the city and into the unknown.

  Alishia did not sleep that night. She lay awake and listened to the sounds of the night-time city—the laughter, the whispering, the shouting, screams and calling, dogs barking in shadowy alleys, the grunting of fights, the smashing of glass, the rumble of carts and lethargic clatter of clumsily-shod horses passing by—and she felt less a part of it than ever. Somewhere deep inside she had something that this place eschewed: hope. Not purely for herself, but a wider belief that things could get better. And that set her aside from many of the inhabitants of Noreela City. They seemed content to exist in a world running down, where fields yielded less each year and murder grew more common, where the Tumbling Window was busier month by month with executions for more petty crimes, where children died in the streets because parents would no longer give them a home. If there were others like her who wished for good rather than accepted bad, they were a silent minority.

  The following morning when she left, Erv tried to give her a kiss. Nervous, she allowed him to brush her cheek with his lips. He blushed and muttered an inept apology.

  “Goodbye, Erv,” Alishia said. She felt ridiculously grateful, and surprised. She had grown to fear the boy and the potential violence she had sensed in him, yet now he seemed more pathetic than dangerous. She wondered whether her suspicions had been a product of her underlying mistrust of Noreela City.

  “Where you going, Ally?”

  “I don’t know yet.” Erv did not respond. Alishia and he stood facing each other for a few awkward moments, and then he made a cradle with his hands so that she could mount her horse. Her ride was well watered and groomed, and the saddle had been polished, the harnesses tightened and shined where brass fittings clanked together. Alishia smiled at Erv as she settled herself atop the horse. It was years since she had last ridden, and already it was uncomfortable.

  “Take care, Erv,” she said, and she kneed the horse from the cobbled courtyard.

  She had expected to feel sad as she left the city, but she did not. Instead she was instilled with a vivid excitement, a tingling belief that she was leaving behind all that was stale and familiar and unpleasant, and that past the plains surrounding the city were fresh experiences to be had. She knew that the rot had spread right across Noreela, but quitting Noreela City felt like ridding herself of the most concentrated source of failing, a heavy, black influence that would drag her down in the end. Perhaps she had survived because she had never truly lived there; in her mind, in her books, she was an inhabitant of Noreela as a whole, not just a city.

  Bored militia watched her ride out through the main gates. They were more interested in who came in, not who left. And therein lay one of the Duke’s greatest failings, Alishia often thought. He should be gathering good people to him, not letting them leave. Giving them a chance. Allowing hope and enthusiasm to root. Instead, in people like Alishia, it was being diluted across the land.

  She had never been this far out, and it felt wonderful. Ahead of her, twenty miles distant, were the lower slopes of the Widow’s Peaks, their heads obscured by distance and wispy clouds, the veiled faces of true mourners. There were at least three distinct fledge mines in there, as well as scattered villages nestled between mountains like children in loving mothers’ arms. The sky above the mountains seemed larger and wilder than here above the city, its clouds richer, the colours deeper and more luxuriant. There were huge hawks above those mountains, so high up that they could never be seen, living out their lives on the wing and floating on air currents even when they were dead, drying out, going to dust and painting summer sunsets red. She had read about the hawks, though few people in the city believed in them anymore. She had read about so much: the breakers who roamed the land dismantling ancient machines, still hoping to find dregs of old magic hidden in sumps or forgotten veins; the Violet Dogs, a race of walking dead that had supposedly invaded Noreela before any true records began, leaving their mark in forgotten caves and lost temples to the night; the Sleeping Gods, powerful beings that had taken to hibernation millennia ago and whom magic, should it ever return, was supposedly destined to wake. She had read about all of these wonder and myths and terrors, and now she had a chance to find some of them out for herself.

  She had no idea where she was going, or what she would do when she arrived. But for the first time in as long as she could remember, Alishia felt alive.

  That first night she camped out on the plains.

  The Widow’s Peaks were farther away than she had thought, and the route from the gates of Noreela City more circuitous and problematic than she had imagined. She had passed through several small hamlets populated by a mixture of farm folk and those that had obviously fled the city for shady reasons. The first settlement she passed through was quiet, a few faces peering from behind half-closed doors. At the second she was stopped and forced down from her horse, questioned by a pair of bogus militia, hassled until she gave them a tellan each to let her go. She had feared that this would become a road tax, a way of stealing without any true threat, and that she, a woman traveller on her own, would fall victim every time. But at the next collection of dilapidated homes peopled by a few dishevelled occupants, she surprised herself.

  The first man pulled her down from the horse. The second started to rifle through the bags hanging from her mount’s saddle hooks, but by that time Alishia already had her knife drawn and pressed into the helper’s throat.

  What in Kang Kang am I doing?

  “Hey now, lady, no harm done!” the second man said, backing away from the horse, hands outstretched. Alishia was disgusted but thrilled at the power she felt. He was genuinely scared. The other man slipped away from her and ran around the back of an old log and mud dwelling, closely followed by his mate. Alishia leapt onto her horse and galloped inexpertly away, afraid that she would tumble from the saddle, equally terrified that a crossbow bolt would find the back of her neck at any second.

  A few minutes later she slowed the horse to a trot, invigorated with success. Later still, she decided that the men had not really been afraid of her. They were afraid of the type of people who usually travelled these roads; those that were used to actually using knives once they were drawn.

  Alishia was far more cautious after that, leaving the rough road to skirt around the hamlets, even though it slowed her progress. She comforted herself with the thought that a journey with no end cannot be delayed. This was all a part of what she had set out to do. She had read about the dangers of travel in this degenerating world, and now she was living with them.

  She set up camp way off the road, sheltered from the cool northerly breeze by a shelf of rock that marked where a river had flowed before real time began. There were several small fire pots in her saddle bags and she set these around the camp, lighting them to ward off any predators that may be roaming the dusky landscape. There were bandits in the mountains, and sometimes they came down this far to s
lip into Noreela City via sewers and tunnels. If they passed her way, there was nothing to stop them having their fun with her as a prelude to their incursion. And there were skull ravens that buzzed the plains at night, looking for weak cattle or lonely travellers. She could fight them off well enough if she was awake when they arrived, but not if she slept. Not if they could nudge her sleep into unconsciousness before pecking their way through her temple and into her skull.

  And tumblers. Even they came down onto the plains on occasion. The fact that there had been no sightings for a long time was of little comfort.

  So Alishia sat behind the rocks and cooked a jug of sheebok and herb stew she had brought with her. Her dinner spat and sizzled, covering any noises from further away. Her horse stood quietly nearby, tied loosely to a lightning tree growing from the sparse earth between the rocks. She thought of her little room above the stables; of Erv panting in dark shadows as he watched her shadow dance on the ceiling as she undressed; of the old man in red who had burned down the library and changed her life, intentionally or not. And although she was afraid, she was also glad. The knife strapped against her thigh had helped her once already today. There were dangers out here, yes, but probably no more than she would find spending her life day to day in Noreela City, risking the wrath of the increasingly lawless population and belligerent militia. Even though she had never been out here, she knew of the dangers. She had read about them.

  Eventually, Alishia slept.

  She found the stranger just before noon of the next day. She left the plains behind, heading up into the foothills of the Widow’s Peaks and wondering just where to go next. Fifty miles west was Pavisse, the old mining town that was known to be a haunt for criminals and undesirables. East lay the steam plains of Ventgoria. These were usually passable with care if the traveller kept to the marked routes, but Alishia had heard of markers being moved—although it was never clear who was to gain from leading travellers into steam pits—and the steam vents themselves were becoming more and more unpredictable. She had read a book not a dozen moons ago, a travelogue published on cheap paper with a print run of less than a hundred, which told of ventings the size of the largest buildings in Noreela City, great explosions of toxic steam from deep within the land as if it was sighing at the way things were going.

  So Alishia had chosen the Widow’s Peaks themselves, and upon making that decision she had almost been overcome with a sudden, delicious realisation: she was an explorer! She had always wanted to see a fledge mine. Perhaps if she was daring enough, she would even try some of the freshly harvested drug.

  Still, finding a fledge miner dying out in the open air was not the introduction to mining she had expected.

  She saw him from a distance, a pale yellow form slumped on a hillside. She paused, looking around for danger, aware that trickery like this was a bandit’s favoured lure. The landscape was quiet but for the lonesome cry of a bird of prey, circling high overhead as it called to some distant mate. Birds hopped from rock to rock on her left, seemingly undisturbed. A group of sheebok grazed farther up the hillside, too far away to see her but near enough to the body to be startled away should it stir. She kept her eyes on the sheebok and birds, and edged the horse slowly forward.

  Twenty steps from the fledger, she knew that this was no trick. His pale yellow skin was stretched from the sun, displaying how strange daylight was to him. Even unconscious he had one arm resting across his face, shielding his eyes. Yellow eyes, thought Alishia, yellowed from the drug. I can’t wait to see them.

  She dismounted and knelt beside the miner. He was tall and thin, like all fledgers, and he still wore the sheebok leathers that kept him warm beneath ground. Alishia slowly peeled the clothes away from his body. He was soaked with sweat and he stank, but she finished removing the coat so that his underclothes could dry in the sun. A strange circular weapon lay unsheathed nearby, the blade smeared with dried blood. Alishia froze, looking around, trying to make out whether there had been a struggle here, but there were no signs. So she closed her eyes and tried to picture where she was, recalling the maps of the region she had pored over many times before. The nearest fledge mine was only a couple of miles from here, deeper into the mountains. The fledger stank of the drug, his sweat a curious mixture of sour odour and sweet fledge. She dabbed her fingers to her tongue, tasting the salt of his sweat and the undertones of something more taboo.

  He was battered and bruised, his neck bleeding from several deep scratches, his nose caked with dried blood, hands, fingers and fingernails black with gore, apparently not his own. She glanced again at the strange sword. Whoever or whatever he had stood against had come off worse.

  “Hey,” she said, not expecting an answer. The fledger did not stir.

  Alishia returned to her horse and pulled a water gourd from the saddlebag. She would need to find a stream to replenish it soon, but for now there was enough to give the fledger a drink and take some herself. He seemed in a bad way. She was no nurse, but at least she could bathe and clean his wounds. As she knelt down next to the wounded man, he grabbed her wrists.

  “They’re out!” he hissed. “They’re awake!”

  Alishia started, but his grip prevented her from backing away. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut, teeth bared, pain clear on his face and evident in his voice. He let go of her at last and started moaning.

  “It’s all right,” she said, leaning forward again, tipping a splash of water into her palm. She had read many books about the fledge mines and those that mined them, and she had great respect for the way they had continued following the Cataclysmic War, machineless. In the dark, miles down, they used touch as well as sound to communicate.

  She dripped water into his mouth, shaded his eyes, touched his forehead and cheek and the underside of his nose as she tried to calm him down. With each utterance she would gently stroke the skin of his face. She knew the method, not the language, and for all she knew she could be abusing the memory of his ancestors whilst trying to soothe him. But eventually it seemed to work, and the suffering man did not object when she draped one of her spare dresses across his face to shield the sun.

  “The sun’s very high, it’s midday,” she said. “I know your eyes will be sensitive. Keep that there. I need to clean your wounds. I’ll keep talking as I move around so you know where I am. You’re safe, though, fledger. Whatever you were fleeing, it’s gone now.”

  “They’ll never be gone,” he said, but Alishia did not reply. Serious discussion would be for later. Right now she simply needed to keep him awake.

  While she worked, pulling back his shirt and bathing the cuts and scrapes across his skin, trying to ease the sunburn where his flesh lay exposed and reddened, she talked about things she knew. She started with fledge mining and how it had changed through history. Sometimes he snorted, other times he seemed entranced. She moved onto other things, random facts hauled from her memory, until the legend of the Violet Dogs seemed to grab his interest. There were songs, she said, although she could not sing. Ro Sargossa had written poems about the myth, but she could never do them justice.

  “Where were they from?” the fledger asked.

  “Beyond Noreela.”

  “What’s beyond Noreela?”

  “Sea. More sea. Whirlpools. Ice. Islands, some say, even big islands, with wild people and savage animals living on them. We’re the centre of things, and beyond Noreela is the rough edge. That’s where the two Mages and their army fled to after the Cataclysmic War.”

  “Something’s happening up here,” the miner said, wincing as Alishia caught a flap of loose skin over one deep cut.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Something bad, something threatening. The Nax know it. They’re awake! They killed Sonda, they took the whole cavern. They’re awake and angry!”

  “You’re safe now,” she said, distracted. She glance at his bloodied sword again. “Is that what you killed with your weapon?”

  The fledger laughed and it was a
sickly sound, like someone gargling with vomit. “The Nax! With a disc-sword? You have no idea, topsider.”

  They remained silent for a while, Alishia tending his wounds and the miner letting out the occasional grunt or grateful sigh.

  “I’m Trey,” he said at last. “Trey Barossa. This is my first time topside. My mother died in there. So did everyone else.”

  “I’m Alishia. I’m sorry about your mother.”

  “I have to tell someone, have to reach someone who can help.”

  “Like who? The Duke? No one’s seen him for years.”

  Trey frowned. “I don’t know,” he said. “Are there militia? Authorities who should know, those who protect Noreela?” He opened his eyes slightly, and Alishia saw the tears. They were not only from the pain of the sunlight hitting his yellowed eyes for the first time.

  “You have very beautiful eyes,” she said, unable to help herself.

  “I’m sorry,” Trey said, shaking his head. “I didn’t realise you were a little girl.”

  “I’m not! I just—”

  “Sorry,” the miner said again, sitting up, holding his head in his hands and letting tears darken the ground between his knees. “But is there no one we can go to? There are hundreds of dead people down there, and the Nax will spread beneath the mountains. We have to tell the other mines. There are thousands of people living beneath these mountains alone. You know there’s a whole world down there, Alishia. The Nax can destroy it. We’ve known that forever, but forever they’ve kept quiet. Now they’ve been woken.”