Dusk: a dark fantasy novel (A Noreela novel)

by Tim Lebbon

  He sought the hawks and the riders that drove them on.

  The space around him was filled with myriad signs of life, all of them small and driven by instinct. Flies, birds, one or two presences larger and more obscure, but none of them displayed any purpose in their travels. Basic minds drifted and floated on thermals, some asleep and others barely awake to the world around them. There was no real intelligence here, and they retreated from Trey’s questing mind like smoke before wind.

  He spun further out, down towards the ground, sensing the aching distress of many minds far below. He reached out a tentative thought and touched on them, recoiling quickly when he found what they were; Red Monks, dead and dying, their rage dispersing into the ether. Even as they died they were mourning the failure of their mission, because many of them died on their backs, looking up. Up at the dark skies above, up at the memory of the vanished machine that had carried Rafe away. And up toward where the hawks had flown in pursuit.

  Trey drew back quickly to the machine, casting about, looking behind dark shadows and trying to bridge gaps where things were obscure to him. Perhaps the fledge had been even staler than he had thought, or maybe he was losing his ability to use it properly, his mind polluted by fear or something far more subtle. He hovered for a while at the periphery of his physical self, still aware of those two huge areas of darkness nearby, knowing who they were, hating their inscrutability. Rafe he could understand, but Alishia …?

  And then he saw them. The hawks, their riders, storming down from above where they had been drifting in wait for the machine. He knew their rage and disgust, their power and rot, and as he slipped back into his own body just in time to scream he realised that there had never been any hope.

  They were all going to die.

  Trey screamed, Rafe shouted out in his sleep, and something struck the ribs of the machine.

  Kosar was thrown to the ground, landing painfully on his wounded hand. The thing that had hit them—a hawk—cried out, shattering the relative quiet. The impact had split two of the ribs and torn the membrane between them, and blood sprayed black in the moonlight. The hawk cried out again, still pushing forward, and Kosar could see the shape standing on its back. Standing, and preparing to jump across its head into the confines of the machine.

  Hope stood and threw something in the same movement. Her aim was unerringly true. It struck the hawk just above one fist-sized eye, and something dark and fast spread down across the white of its eyeball, turning it instantly black. The creature screamed, its cry one of pain now rather than rage, and started to thrash itself free of the broken ribs.

  The machine squeezed. It seemed to be using its wound to its own advantage, holding the hawk in place, crushing, the raw ends of the snapped ribs piercing the animal’s skin and slipping inside.

  The shape on its neck was a woman, heavily armed and armoured, tall and strong and heavily scarred, no doubt one of the Mages’ fighting Krotes. She sat down to avoid being thrown out into the open air, staring through the ribs at the people she had come here to kill.

  Kosar stood, drew his sword and smiled. The Krote hissed. The thief felt so empowered by this that he took several steps forward until he was standing within reach of the hawk’s trapped head.

  “Who the fuck are you?” the Krote said. Her eyes were a shining, pale blue, even in the weak moonlight.

  “A friend of anyone you go against,” Kosar said, and he lashed out. His sword parted the flesh of the hawk’s head and he stepped back as the thing tore itself free and spun back into the night. The Krote watched him as she fell away, and though Kosar knew that this fight had just begun, the brief sense of victory was invigorating.

  “Trey!” Kosar called. “We have to protect this breach!”

  “Gave the bastard a blinding!” Hope said triumphantly.

  “What was that?” Trey asked.

  She smiled. “Poison ants.”

  “Are you crawling with these things?” Kosar asked, partly in disgust but mostly in admiration.

  Hope’s smile diminished. “That was the last.”

  There were two more impacts on the machine’s construct, one directly above them where the ribs met, the other below, out of sight, down where the ground had torn itself away. Kosar and the others went sprawling again, and the sound of the vicious hawks baying for blood seemed to shut out the moonlight.

  Kosar looked up. Silhouetted against the death moon a hawk was standing on the pinnacle of the curved ribs, hacking with its huge beak and crushing them with hooked claws. Blood and flesh spattered down, and then something harder as the ribs were quickly rent asunder. If only I had A’Meer’s bow and arrow, he thought. The attacker was way too high to reach with a sword, and they could do nothing but watch as it tore into the machine.

  But the machine was preparing to fight back. Pale blue light glimmered across several of the ribs. Like electric dust-worms shimmering together, the streaks of light darted across the ribs’ surface until they met, several bright spots forming just above ground level, growing larger, brighter … and in their glow, Kosar could see the face of the thing staring down at them.

  A Mage. It had to be a Mage. He had never before seen such madness, hate and bloodlust.

  It opened its mouth and hissed. As if the sound was a signal, the machine launched its counter-attack.

  Balls of purple light burst up from the glowing ribs and converged on the Mage and hawk. As they flew their shape changed, from unformed fire to things with definite edges, purpose, design. They struck the hawk’s feet and chest and erupted into a scrabbling plague of scorpions. Simmering light still played around the lower ribs, and in their glow Kosar saw the scorpion’s stingers rising up and down, up and down, puncturing the thick hide of the hawk and pumping it full of venom. More of the creatures crawling quickly up and over the thing’s head, saving their venom for the Mage upon its back. And the Mage, wincing and cursing at first as the things struck, but then smiling, finally laughing, plucking them from its skin and clothing and biting off their poisoned barbs with relish.

  More light poured out from the machine, the ground shaking with each eruption, and as it impacted the hawk’s hide it flowed and manifested into more stinging, biting things. The hawk shuddered and the Mage lashed out, sending bits of shattered bodies raining back down between the ribs.

  Kosar brushed scorpion tails from his hair, spider legs from his face, and they melted into the dark. He felt helpless. The sword vibrated in his hand.

  The Mage fell from the hawk’s body and jammed between two of the ribs. At first Kosar thought it was dead, poisoned by the things magically flung at it by the machine, or perhaps bled dry by the newly-formed swarm of bats that harried its head. But then it stretched out its arms and started hacking at the ribs with heavy serrated swords, and Kosar knew that this thing was unstoppable.

  It ignored the light exploding across its body, shunned the things biting and tearing and poisoning. It ignored everything but the person lying on the ground directly below it: Rafe.

  “Trey!” Kosar shouted. “It’s coming through! Your disc sword can reach it, cut it before its free!”

  Trey nodded, looked up at the Mage, back at Kosar, fear and doubt in his eyes.

  “Trey!”

  And then the Mage was through. With a rending of metal on bone it ripped aside the ribs and fell to the ground inside the machine. Small creatures scurried from its body and flittered away into shreds of light and dark. Another purple pulse crashed into it, but the Mage grinned and it simply faded away.

  As Kosar ran at the Mage, sword ready before him, Trey lashed out. His disc sword caught the Mage across the shoulder and split leather and skin. It fell to its knees. Kosar struck with his sword and felt the grinding hold of bone as it entered the Mage’s chest. He twisted, leant his weight on the sword to bury it deeper, and the Mage vented a shrill scream.

  “Yes!” Trey shouted. He swung his disc sword again and took off three of the Mage’s fingers. “Yes!�
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  “No!” Hope cried.

  Kosar turned. She had thrown herself across Rafe’s body, and at first the thief could not tell why. But then he saw the black shape thrashing in the disturbed ground, great paw-like hands lifting earth and muck and rock and throwing it aside, and the second Mage quickly emerged into the glow of the machine’s defences.

  It laughed. It had the voice of a beautiful, carefree woman, someone who had found the love of her life.

  “Kosar!” Trey shouted, and Kosar turned into the first Mage’s fist. It had stood and thrust Trey aside, striking out at Kosar at the same time, and its fist cracked his cheekbone and toppled him easily to the ground. He dropped his sword.

  “You’re not having him!” Hope screeched.

  The female Mage snatched up the witch and threw her aside, bent down, and scooped Rafe up. It ran at the wound in the machine’s side where the first hawk had struck, and as if finally realising what was happening the machine let out an onslaught of writhing purple light. It slapped into the Mage and Rafe alike, sticking like mud to clothes, forming into blurry insects and birds, lizards and mammals—all of them biting and killing. The Mage screeched but kept on running.

  Rafe remained silent.

  “No,” Kosar said, because he knew that this would not happen. After everything, all they had been through, the power of new magic released to protect them from the Monks, A’Meer’s life sacrificed to afford them time, none of this could happen. “No!”

  The Mage reached the broken ribs and launched itself out into the dark, open air, Rafe clasped to its chest. More light delved after them from the machine, and dozens of creatures fell, sputtering away into nothing like sparks from a camp fire.

  “Rafe!” Hope screamed.

  Kosar sat up just as the male Mage ran past him. He kicked out but missed its ankles, and it sprinted on. It was waving its hands around its head, batting away a cloud of fluttering things formed of light that were sizzling and sparking across its skin. Screaming, it too jumped from the machine and out into darkness.

  Behind Hope’s wails and Trey’s wretched shouts, Kosar listened for the Mages’ falling screams. But he heard nothing. The only sound now was the whimper of their own hopelessness, and the soft, dejected ticking of the heated machine cooling down around them.

  Lenora rode air currents far below the flying machine. Her hawk was mortally wounded, but she kept it alive with a combination of promises whispered into its ears, and pain delivered through her buried sword. The promises were of more pain, not deliverance. The hawk was a creature of instincts, and pain would always be its driver.

  Angel’s hawk had already tumbled past her dead after she had forced it to bury itself in the machine’s underbelly. The other hawk was still up there somewhere, though she could no longer see its shape around the machine. It was dark down here, and the coolness of the night air stroked the open wounds on Lenora’s body.

  It did not take long for Angel to come to her.

  Lenora saw the plummeting shape and edged her hawk beneath it, catching Angel and the boy she carried in two of its great webbed tentacles. Seconds later S’Hivez struck the hawk’s back just behind Lenora, sending the creature into its final, fatal dive.

  But there was no despair, no fear, no sense that doom was upon them. Because Angel held the boy across her lap like a newborn child, stroking his forehead, waiting for his eyes to open, and lifting his hair with one long fingernail as if deciding where to cut. When Rafe’s eyes did open, Angel drew a knife and sawed off the top of his head. She buried her tongue in the boy’s exposed brain.

  Mother! a voice said in Lenora’s mind, and there was recognition in that shade at last.

  And in the Mage’s ancient eyes, Lenora saw the knowledge that they had won.

  27

  They drifted through the night. A sliver of the life moon and the glorious death moon shone down on the battered machine, both mocking. Stars speckled the sky and added their luminescence. The machine hummed quietly beneath them, shivering occasionally as if damaged or cold. They headed south. Perhaps there was purpose, but more likely it was simply drifting, an aimlessness brought on by sudden, unexpected, impossible defeat.

  The Mages had Rafe. The Mages had magic.

  Kosar lay back with his eyes closed, thinking of that first day when the Monk had ridden into their village. Back then he had had no idea of the greater workings of things, and even now he understood so little. Everything they thought they knew was supposition, any decisions they had made based upon uncertain thoughts and Rafe’s occasional, mostly unhelpful ideas. Really, he wondered how any of them had ever believed that they stood a chance at all.

  A’Meer had been confident and passionate about her cause. Poor, dead A’Meer. Kosar had loved her—he’d always known that really—but it was strange how it took her death to reveal within him the true strength of that love. There was a hole inside, a blackness darker than this night, and it had little to do with Rafe’s capture.

  “What now?” he said quietly. Neither Trey nor Hope answered him. Alishia had fallen back to sleep, though colour had bled back into her cheeks now, and in the darkness she seemed to smile. They had checked her over after the attack. She was growing physically smaller, younger, regressing into some sort of unnatural childhood, though none of them questioned how far this would go. Just more strangeness to live with. And in truth, only Trey really cared.

  More time passed, and the machine bore them ever-southward. They would reach Kang Kang soon, Kosar knew, but that did not concern him. He had been there before, and it would be no more dangerous than anywhere else now that the Mages had returned.

  Myth, legend, stories to tell children by the camp light, old tales carved onto story-walls in the bigger towns and cities … and terrifying though the stories were they were always safely harboured in history, cosseted away, buried as surely as the million that had died in that Cataclysmic War so long ago.

  Myths were not supposed to return. Legends were never meant to come back to life.

  Hope cried quietly in the night, her tears forming strange shapes on her tattoos, but Kosar felt in no mood to comfort her.

  Trey sat next to Alishia, staring down at her but seeing something else entirely. Kosar could sense the pain and loss in the miner’s yellowed eyes.

  Kosar stood slowly and walked to the edge of the machine, stretching up to look over the membrane between ribs, wondering whether anything had already begun down below.

  The land was lost. The Mages had the fledgling magic in their hands, and whatever they did to Rafe to gain control of it—and that did bear thinking about, not at all—it surely would not take long. Perhaps down was up already, and black was white, and life could easily swap places with death. With three centuries to plot their return, the Mages must surely know how revenge would be most effectively wrought.

  “What now?” Kosar said again.

  “Now Noreela ends,” Trey said. “Everything that happened no longer matters. I almost envy my family and friends, dead down there from the Nax. At least they died at home. And here I am, a miner, flying towards my death high above the surface I should have never seen.”

  “This can’t be it,” Kosar said, but he knew the childlike naïveté of his words. “Hopeless,” he muttered.

  “There’s something about her,” Hope said.

  Kosar turned and saw the witch standing above Alishia. Her face was stern, moulded by sorrow and anger. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean apart from the obvious, the fact that she’s a girl instead of a woman now. However impossible that is, there’s something else. She’s not as ill as she was. She’s looking better. Less asleep. And for a while down there ... just for a while … she was awake.”

  “Meaning what?” Trey asked. He leaned in close in across Alishia as if to protect her from the witch.

  Hope stepped back. “We’re going somewhere,” she said. “Have neither of you thought of what’s happening here? The machine is st
ill flying. Magic is still guiding us. Thief, you saw the machines in the valley falling still as soon as we left, their use ended. This flying machine … magic must know that it still has its use.”

  “I don’t care,” Trey said. “We couldn’t keep the boy from the Mages, and the four of us will never get him back. That’s for certain.”

  Hope looked at Kosar and smiled, shrugged. The expression did not sit well on her face and he turned away, perturbed. Was that hope he had seen there? Greed? Rage? He could not tell. Her tattoos had hidden her true feelings, as always, and she was as much an enigma to him now as ever.

  “No matter,” Hope said. “Time will tell. We’ll be in Kang Kang soon.”

  Their conversation ended there, and each of them withdrew into their own thoughts. Kosar sat back against a rib and nursed his wounded hand and bleeding fingers. He licked the blood from his fingertips, bearing the brief pain before the soothing sensation overcame them, just for a time. A’Meer had been able to soothe that pain. Sweet, mysterious A’Meer.

  He drifted to sleep reliving images from the past, but time treated them differently. He fought the Monk in the village instead of hiding away. He refused to help A’Meer and fled north to the Cantrass Plains. Rafe drowned crossing the San, their journey ended by the wretched faults in nature, not by those that had caused those faults in the first place. And each dream fed into the next with the same sense of incompletion.

  When Kosar woke up it was still dark. He saw Trey and Hope standing at the far edge of the machine, staring out through the tattered hole in the ribs.

  “How long have I been asleep?” he said. “Feels like hours.”

  “It was,” Trey said. “Ten, eleven hours.”

  “It should be dawn.” Kosar looked out through the ribs and saw the dark ridges of Kang Kang to the south, their pinnacles biting at the moonlit sky. Then east, out towards New Shanti where the sun was not.