Dusk: a dark fantasy novel (A Noreela novel)

by Tim Lebbon

  So long ago. So many moons, and here he was, still alive. Still waiting. His purpose as fresh as ever, his rage as inflammatory as it had been all those years before.

  Jossua Elmantoz passed deeper into the Monastery, the former Mages’ keep, wondering what he would find when he next viewed daylight.

  Things in the basements, one of the younger Monks had said. Forms shifting, shadows moving the wrong way, the smell of turned earth and scorched rock. And then something new.

  Jossua was an old man. He barely had the strength to leave his rooms anymore, let alone travel down through the huge Monastery. Too many steps, too many uneven tunnels, known and unknown. And yet, this he could not ignore. A Nax was too dangerous to disregard.

  He went on his own. He could have used help, he was not afraid to admit that, but he was the Elder. There were responsibilities to uphold. And the younger Monks had not been able to hide their relief when he instructed them to remain behind.

  Prepare, he had said. Soon you will go out into the land. Your task is at hand. Your lives are about to find meaning.

  He had already passed through the real basements and entered the long, declining tunnel that led deeper into the bedrock. His torch flared brightly, lighting the way and striving to blind him at the same time. The ground was uneven here, and he had to walk slowly to keep from falling. This was harder than negotiating the staircases in the Monastery. At least they had been even, if difficult. Here a ridge of stone could surprise him into a fall, an unseen hollow could twist his ankle and break his old man’s bones. If he hurt himself down here, he could not imagine the Monks venturing this deep to find him. His torch would burn down, burying him in darkness. The cold would kill him.

  He had never been this deep. He paused and moved the torch around, taking in his surroundings. Water dripped from the tunnel walls, ran from several deep cracks in the stone and gurgled away down the tunnel, contained in ditches formed on either side of the path. Black moss grew around the cracks from which the water issued. Small silver shapes darted across the walls, nibbling at the moss, moving away, encountering each other and touching antennae. The light did not bother them because they were blind. Perhaps they could sting. Jossua left them to their feast.

  His limbs were aching and his heart fluttered weakly in his chest, sending spasms of pain into his arms and shoulders. He paused and stood within the circle of light from his torch. Beyond that the darkness was total; it could hide anything. If there were eyes out there watching him, they closed when he looked their way, so as not to reflect the flames.

  The walls here were almost totally smooth, but for the cracks where time had shifted them and stresses had forced them open. This was no natural cave, and yet it did not carry the tool marks that would be so evident had it been manually dug. Machines had made this place, Jossua knew. Perhaps those of the Mages—the thought of them walking this corridor, taking up the same space as he, made him feel sick—or perhaps they had been formed many generations ago, for whatever original reason the keep had been built. There were no true records of when or why the place had been constructed, nor by whom, although over the decades the Monks had discovered several distinct layers in the structure. The deeper they went, the older the period of the building’s birth, until the basement held its origins in the dim mists of pre-history. A place of worship some said, although to which god or demon they could not say. A retreat, others claimed, a castle and keep wherein safety could be found from outside aggressors. The Mages had thought that to be the case and yet even they, with all their twisted power, had been driven out.

  Nobody knew why, how or by whom. Jossua had his suspicions.

  Soon, he thought. I’ll see it soon.

  The incline of the tunnel floor suddenly steepened, and Jossua tried to hold on to the wall. Water ran by beside his feet, echoing down into the dark before him. He passed a place where water spewed from the tunnel wall, shoved through by the pressure of Lake Denyah itself, and visions of flooding came to him.

  Something moved further along the tunnel. He felt the breath of displaced air caress him, and with it came a smell. Rich and fresh, the stench of a living thing down in this darkened, dead place.

  No animals down here, he thought. Nothing to eat. Nothing to hunt. That must be the Nax.

  The shadows suddenly closed in. The reach of the torchlight lessened, the deep darkness drew near, and he glanced up at the flame in confusion. It was burning as brightly as ever. Breath caught in his throat as the air around him constricted, threatening to crush him. He thrust the torch forward, defying the night and willing it back, but a section of the dark reached out and closed around the flame.

  It squeezed, and the flame changed colour … yellow … white … blue. And then it snuffed out into nothing.

  Jossua gasped. A memory of the torch remained in his eyes for a few moments, casting a ghost of itself wherever he turned his head. He closed his eyes and the ghost was still there, so he opened them again. The echo faded away. He could hear only his breath, smell the old fear on himself, the mustiness of his great age clashing with the fresh tang of the thing down here with him.

  And then something touched his face.

  Monk, a voice scoffed. It was androgynous, and the only echo it gave was inside his head.

  Jossua could not reply straight away, such was his shock. That voice had sounded slick and alien, filled with hatred even he could barely fathom. “I’m the Elder,” Jossua said. His whisper sounded so loud down here in the dark.

  Elder, Monk … magic-hater.

  “Not hater. Protector.”

  Protect by destroying. The voice was filled with disdain.

  “Better than welcome it back so that the Mages can take it again.”

  Truly? We wonder.

  A million fears flooded Jossua’s mind, but he could speak none of them. He had no idea what the Nax wanted. He blinked at the dark.

  Your time is near, Elder.

  Jossua did not feel surprised. The Nax was here for a reason, after all, though that reason remained obscure. “Where is it?” he said.

  Near the Widow’s Peaks. Its taint has awoken us there.

  “Did you drive the Mages away from the keep? Was it you?”

  No answer.

  “Show yourself.”

  You have no reason to see us.

  “Why do you come here?”

  We know your reason for being. We have no wish for magic to return.

  “Neither do we.” Jossua shivered as a waft of cool air broke against his sweaty skin. The Nax was moving along the tunnel. “How does it reveal itself? Where is the magic?”

  In a male human. Deeper than his soul. Barely a part of him, but growing.

  “How do you know all this?”

  No answer. Jossua tried to touch the darkness, but his outstretched hand felt too exposed and he drew it in. The dark was suddenly filled with potential; a drawn breath before a shout, a hanging blade before a cut. He gasped and fell to the ground, tried to curl into a ball. His old bones ached.

  We are the Nax, the thing said, and this time its voice came from outside Jossua’s mind. It echoed in the rock of the tunnel wall, vibrating the ground beneath him, shook the air, bursting farther along the tunnel in a thunderclap of sound. Jossua cried out but his voice was lost in the cacophony, swallowed by the echo of the Nax’s final, violent utterance.

  His torch burst alight and Jossua screamed again, able to hear himself this time. The darkness pulled away. He tried to stand, but his legs were weak. From way down the tunnel—deeper than he had been and further than he would ever go—there came the sound of rock being crushed, pulverised, scorched. Heat blasted back at him, stealing breath from his lungs … and then coolness rushed in once more.

  Eventually Jossua found the strength to stand. He had nothing to fear; the Nax wanted him alive. And yet he, a man over three centuries old, felt humbled and lessened by this experience. It was as if this brief exchange had held up a mirror to his old foo
lishness, the belief he had maintained for decades that somehow he was important.

  “My time is near,” Jossua whispered, and sibilant echoes came back at him from the tunnel walls. They contained humour that had not been evident in his own words.

  He turned and began to retrace his steps. His time was near. There was much to be done. He had a brief but powerful recollection of standing on the beach on Mages’ Bane, staring northward, knowing that even though the battle was over his own long war had only just begun.

  As he travelled back along the tunnel, climbing slowly toward the Monastery high above his head, he noticed that water had ceased spewing from rock walls and running past him into the depths. It was as if something had sucked the place dry.

  He had lost track of time. When he found his way back into the Monastery’s basements, Jossua was confused that there was no daylight bleeding down from above. He began to panic. Darkness, he thought, there’s only darkness. Maybe they were already too late.

  “The dark,” he gasped past a tongue swollen by dehydration.

  “It’s night time, Elder Jossua,” a voice said, and Jossua felt water dripping onto his tongue. It stung at first, but then the coolness trickled into his throat and he sighed and slumped back to the ground. He was held up, given water, touched softly by hands sworn only to kill.

  “How long?” he croaked.

  “Elder?”

  “How long was I gone?”

  “A day,” a voice said. “We thought …”

  Jossua smiled and shook his head. “Oh no, they wouldn’t have let me die,” he said. “They need us to find and destroy the magic back in the land.”

  “Magic!”

  Jossua glanced at the Monk that had spoken, her face dancing in torchlight. The flames fluttered in a steady breeze coming up from below, and Jossua wondered how much of each waft was the breath of a Nax. “You’re surprised, Gathana?” he said. “You’re shocked that magic should live again? It’s nature after all—life itself—and life is tenacious.” In each Monk’s eyes, Jossua could make out two emotions: fear and excitement. Their concern for him had vanished already, but he did not mind. They were not meant to be here forever, listening to him, following his words, looking after him as he grew older and older, less able to dress himself, forgetful, wont to piss the bed on occasion …

  They were killers.

  “Help me up,” he said. “And call the Council. You’ll all be leaving soon.”

  In the kitchens meals were left half-cooked, slowly cooling and drying, solidifying in pans that would never be washed. Monks were roused from their beds, donning red cloaks over dirty underclothes. Others were interrupted at half-finished board games. The pieces would forever be at war, victory several moves and an infinity away. In the courtyards and gardens, dogs and wolves remained shackled. They would die on the ends of their chains, starving, fading to bones and then dust. Beyond these gardens lay the vegetable fields, fruit trees and livestock pens. All would be rotten come winter: potatoes in the ground; fruit on the vine; chickens and sheebok melting back into the land. Books were left open, infrequent conversations hung unfinished, a bathtub steamed away to nothing. Quickly, efficiently, and with a mounting air of expectation, the Monks converged on the Council chamber at the pinnacle of the Monastery. As the sun rose in the east, its early red light casting a pink glow on the life moon still faint in the sky, the chamber was filled with over three hundred Red Monks. As Fate would have it, one for every year of their wait. They sat in the tiered seating, their presence a bloody red smear across the ancient rock of the citadel.

  Jossua Elmantoz was carried up through the portal in the floor of the chamber and onto the central dais. Gathana stood nearby and offered her arm, but Jossua waved her away and stood on his own. He looked around at the assembled Monks, not knowing one from another. He fumbled with his sword, resting his palm on its hilt. His own hood, raised like those of all the men and women watching him, hid the strain on his face. But they would respect that. They all knew the Elder, knew why he was the one to be the nearest they had to a leader. He had fought in the Cataclysmic War, and he had seen the Mages.

  “Our time has come,” he said.

  Nobody spoke. Nobody moved. By then, deep inside, most of them had already guessed.

  “Magic is back in the land,” Jossua continued. “The Nax have communed with me, and they know where it is, how it is. That is all they told me, so I must assume they know no more.” He paused for a breath, still exhausted from his day beneath ground. “At present it has a carrier, a male. I don’t know his name. He’s somewhere in the foothills of the Widow’s Peaks.

  “We have to assume that the Mages have heard of this recurrence. They have their spies, and if their greed is as strong as ever, they will be coming. An advance army, perhaps, borne by hawks or other flying things, but the bulk of their force will surely travel by sea. Nobody knows how far north they fled, so none can tell how soon they will arrive on Noreela. But their threat is secondary. Our time is now. The Mages seek the magic, and without it they are no more than worn out sorcerers with tricks up their sleeves and false-bottomed boxes. We must find it first. And once found, it has to be destroyed, sent back, purged from the world once more. Humanity was not ready the last time, and since then nothing has improved. It does not belong here.”

  Jossua pulled down his hood so that he could stare out at the assembled Monks, frankly and honestly. They met his gaze. “Three centuries ago, I stood on the far northern shores of Noreela and watched the Mages flee, and then I felt magic abandon the land. I felt what that abandonment did to Noreela … like halting food for a pregnant woman. She withers and dies, and the potential within her withers and dies also. I was covered with the gore of the Mages’ Krote warriors, my belly filled with their blood, and even before their burning ships had crested the horizon I swore to myself, never again. I was already a changed man. The fury had done that, the hate, and I was a Red Monk in all but name. Whether it stays away or comes back, they’ll never have it again, I swore. We have had false alarms—there have been signs, hints, and we have killed when we deemed it necessary or appropriate—but this is different. This is real. Whatever their reasons for telling us, the Nax have no need to lie or deceive.”

  He raised his hand and, with three swipes, divided the assembled throng into three equal parts. “You, head straight to the Widow’s Peaks and commence your search. You, upriver to San, guard the waterway and wait for the carrier to cross. You, take the boats across Lake Denyah, then head for the Mol’Steria Desert. Wait there, but look both ways: north, for the carrier of magic; south, for the Shantasi. I suspect they have heard as well, or will soon, and they too will be keen to claim their prize.”

  He raised his head, drew his sword and set its tip between his feet. With his palms on the hilt he leaned forward, sighing as he took some of the weight from his feet. “This place has served us well,” he said, “but it’s time for history to move on. If any of you have any questions … your heart is not true.”

  At that, the three hundred Monks stood and began to file out, quickly and quietly.

  “Elder!” one of them shouted. “Elder Elmantoz!”

  A Monk staggered into the chamber, collapsed to his knees, fell forward onto his face. Jossua hefted his sword and stepped forward, placing its point into the hood of this Monk, lifting slowly to reveal the man beneath.

  Flushed red, filled with the rage, the man was breathing blood. His cloak was muddied and torn, his right hand missed two fingers, his face was cut and gaping from chin to temple, his shoulder shattered, a sliver of pink bone protruding through a tear in the cloak. “Elder Elmantoz …” he whispered, the strength leaving him. “Magic,” he said. “I’ve seen magic.”

  “Who are you?” Jossua demanded. The Monks that had left filtered back in, informed of this sudden arrival by Jossua’s raised voice. This man was a Monk, yes, but Jossua had never seen him before. That meant that he came from one of the outlying clans. And
now here he was, on this very day, talking of magic.

  “Lucien Malini,” the Monk said. “I have news of magic! A boy, Rafe Baburn, he carries it somehow. The trail ran cold, but we picked it up again, chased hard… he had a Shantasi with him, a warrior … and a witch, and a thief.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Fleeing north from Pavisse. Others are in pursuit, I came to warn you, Elder. I came for reinforcements.”

  “When was this?”

  Lucien frowned, tried to stand but fell when his broken shoulder gave out. “Two days?” he said. “Three? My horse died. I ran. I was attacked by bandits, spent time fighting them off, had to …”

  “Lead your reinforcements back,” Jossua said. “There are a hundred Monks here that will come with you.”

  Lucien looked up at the Elder Monk, panting.

  “That is,” Jossua said, “unless you’d like to stay for a few days. A nice hot bath, a meal …”

  Lucien did not smile, but he stood and drew his sword. The rust of dried blood marked the blade. “Not while this is still hungry,” he said.

  “Then it will be sated,” Jossua said. “Rafe Baburn!” he called. “You seek Rafe Baburn!”

  The Monks left, Lucien Malini with them, and soon Jossua was alone. He waited there for a while, climbed the tiered seating so that he could see from the high windows, watched the Monks spread slowly out across the landscape as if the Monastery were bleeding. Then he slid his sword into its scabbard, walked from the chamber and started down long flights of stairs to the ground level.

  He sat on a stone fountain to regain his breath. As he examined the ancient, broken Book of Ways taken from the library in Noreela City, a new purpose rose in him, invigorating his muscles, grasping his heart and driving his blood thick and fast, giving him back the blood-red rage he had not felt for far too long. While his Monks would seek out and destroy the new magic, Jossua had charged himself with an even greater purpose.

  He would not remain here alone. He wondered whom this place would serve in the future, but wondering was not his cause, speculation had no place in his thoughts. With memories of the Cataclysmic War rushing blood-red through his mind, and the song of ages falling from his withered lips, Jossua Elmantoz left the Monastery and headed south for Kang Kang, seeking the womb of the land.