by Tim Lebbon
“And there’s the river itself,” A’Meer said. “It’s wide and slow. We’ll need to cross it somewhere. We use a bridge, we’ll be seen. We use a ferry, we have to pay our way and the ferryman will see us.”
“We could swim it,” Kosar suggested.
A’Meer glanced behind them, looked across at Kosar and raised an eyebrow. “I could, even though I’m still weak. You could, even though you’re an old man.” He protested, and she smiled. “Hope I suspect is stronger than she looks, and Rafe I’m sure could make his way. Trey? Alishia? The horses?”
“We could go upstream. The river’s narrower there in the foothills, easier to cross.”
“And lose a day. Have you forgotten where this river leads?”
He frowned for a moment, and then shivered as if someone was staring at his back. He turned in his saddle and met Hope’s eyes, offered her a smile and faced front again before being disappointed. “Lake Denyah,” he said.
“The Monks’ Monastery is there.” A’Meer rode in silence for a couple of minutes, and Kosar could see her thinking. She frowned and her little nose creased at the bridge. He had kissed her there sometimes, when her face relaxed after sex. He surprised himself at his depth of mourning for older, gentler times.
“We have to assume that word has reached the Monastery,” she said. “If they’d known at the Monastery much before now there would have been hundreds of Monks against us in Pavisse, not just a few. But at least one would have ridden south as the others tried to keep on our trail. There’s a chance we’ve thrown them for now, but they saw me and they know where I’m from. They’ll know for sure where I’ll want to take Rafe.”
“The Monastery must be two hundred miles from Pavisse,” Kosar said. “There’s no way one of them could have made that journey yet.”
“They’re not people, Kosar. They’re obsessed. They’re powerful. And do you think we’d be traveling this slowly if we didn’t have to?”
Kosar glanced back again. Trey and Alishia had fallen behind, their horse struggling under the unconscious woman’s weight, snorting, blood misting the air around its nose.
“What are you two plotting?” Hope said, spurring her horse to catch up to them. Kosar wanted to believe that there was a hint of humor in her voice, but her face said otherwise. Her tattoos were sharp and defined, displaying her intense concentration.
“We’re plotting how to tumble you from your horse and bury you up to your neck in quicksand,” A’Meer said.
Hope stared at the Shantasi, raising her eyebrows. “You and which army?”
Kosar could not help uttering a bark of a laugh. The fact that Hope did not berate him could have been a sign that she was relaxing . . . or perhaps she disregarded him totally. “We’re debating how to cross the river,” he said. “There are several bridges and a ferry, but we’d rather not be seen.”
“Steal a boat.”
“It would need to be a big boat for all of us,” A’Meer said.
“Steal a ferry.”
“And the ferryman?”
Hope shrugged. Kosar did not like the look in her eyes.
“We’re no killers,” he said quietly. A’Meer and Hope both looked at him, perhaps both doubting their own thoughts. There was an uncomfortable pause, during which Kosar was silently pleading, Agree with me!
“That’s right,” A’Meer said. She did not sound convincing, nor convinced.
“You think the Monks will be coming upriver?”
“Almost certainly.”
They rode in silence for a while, the only sound the clump clump of horses’ hooves on the stony surface. They had been walking across dead ground for an hour now, a place where life had been sucked from the soil. There were no birds, no animals, nothing to eat or be eaten. Here and there, weathered white bones protruded from the hard soil, leathery skin draped across them in defeat. Kosar craved greenery, and he breathed a sigh of relief when they crested a small hill and saw a long, sweeping panorama of grassland and trees heading down to the distant River San.
They paused for a while partway down the hill, giving the horses a chance to drink from a gurgling spring, drinking from their own water bottles. Kosar’s throat was parched and scored by the dust of that dead place behind them, and he wondered if things would ever return to normal.
“There’s San,” he said, pointing into the distance. The village was a thin spread of buildings strung along the riverbank. From this far away it was little more than a smudge on the landscape, but he knew that there were quays in front of each building, small fishing boats tied to them, sprawled nets being repaired or untangled, the stench of fish permanently ingrained in the wood of the place. He had not spent any time there other than to eat and trade for some food, and that had been a long time ago, but he still remembered some of the people he had met. Hard people, their life filled and ruled by the fishing that kept them alive. Sometimes they would spend days traveling down the river, almost as far as Lake Denyah, and return home with nothing more than a few weedy slinks in their holds. Other times—rarer—they would haul in a full catch, and then the village would celebrate for a week. They lived day by day, bartering rather than selling their fish. They had seemed excited when he arrived, and pleased to see him go. Strangers had no place in San; they were just another mouth to feed.
“We need to go around,” A’Meer said. “We’ll go as far as those hillsides.” She shielded her eyes against the sun and pointed east. “We can work our way around behind the hills, down into the valley, find some way to cross the river and then head south.”
“Easy,” Hope said. “Piece of piss.”
“Easy,” Kosar agreed. Hope glanced at him and raised one eyebrow. Her tattoos twitched into something that could well have been the beginnings of a smile. “And then the River Cleur to cross,” he continued, “Cleur to bypass, then down to Mareton and into the Mol’Steria Desert, providing the Cataclysmic War hasn’t changed the landscape beyond all recognition. I’ve heard of places this far south where the air is frozen into glass.” They sat contemplating their journey, the horses splashed in the stream, he nodded. “Piece of piss.”
“We should get Trey to do his thing,” A’Meer said. “See if the way is clear.”
“Every second we sit here brings us closer to being caught,” Hope said. “We should move on, chance it. Even if he does look and see the plains between the rivers swarming with Monks, what choices do we have?”
“If that’s the case, we could always head east through the Widow’s Peaks,” Kosar said.
“And meet Ventgoria’s steam dragons? No thanks. I’ll take my chances with a handful of Red Monks any day.”
“How about a hundred?” A’Meer asked. She called Trey over, pointed out their route and nodded as he moved away and sat with his back against a rock. “He’ll see what he can see,” she said. “And we could all do with a rest. An hour to regain some strength. I’ll try to catch some meat, though we’ll have to eat it raw.”
“No we won’t,” Hope said. “You catch us something decent and I’ll make sure it’s cooked before the fledger comes out of his trance. No fire. No smoke to give us away. You haven’t tasted spiced sheebok until you’ve tasted mine.”
A’Meer smiled at the witch, clapped Kosar on the shoulder and plucked her bow and quiver from her horse’s saddle harness.
As Trey chewed on fledge and Hope sat with Rafe, Kosar stared down at San, the wide river running past the fishing village, and beyond. Way over the horizon lay the Mol’Steria Desert, and two hundred miles south of that was Kang Kang. Beyond that, places that few had ever seen and survived. Once past these rivers and little fishing villages, they truly were entering the wilds.
Air frozen into glass; ground stripped to its bedrock; places where the sky itself erupted into flame. He had heard many tales of how these lands were changing. He had never felt the need to see for himself.
SOMETHING WAS DIFFERENT. The fledge had become stale, perhaps, or maybe he had taken too
much in too short a time. He chewed and it was rough, gritty, not smooth and sweet as it broke across his tongue.
For a few seconds Trey panicked. Soon he would have no fledge left at all, and then his final link to his underground life would be gone. He would only have his memories, and those were ruled by his terrible flight from below, his mother’s final sacrifice and the fledge-fueled touch of a Nax as it awoke, raging. But then as he chewed he looked around him at the greenery of the landscape, the blue sky peering through the dispersing rain clouds, the glinting strip of the river in the distance, and the fledge found its way into his veins and his mind, ready to move him on.
He closed his eyes and slumped back against the rock. He did not need to sleep to travel with the fledge, but his body’s natural reaction was to slip into a gentle slumber. He did not dream—he was still aware of the sounds around him, the breeze stirring the fine hairs on his face and arms, the weight of the mountains in the east—but his mind was buoyed by the drug and given a freedom, released by the first touch of fledge on his heart.
Things were still different. His mind soared but it did not see, not properly. It perceived the outlines of things, mere impressions as if shapes had been pressed into the receptive clay of his awareness. He rose, and as he looked back down he saw the hillside laid out below him, but not in detail. He could sense the cool tumble of the stream somewhere to his right, and below him were the blots of his companions like living rocks mired in the ground.
He dipped down again and touched on Alishia’s mind, afraid of what he would find. As before, it was vast, and though he could not comprehend the scope of that mind, he could understand its emptiness. He drifted, passing through places where Alishia should have been. They were cold, and deep. He moved on toward the single light in the darkness, where he had touched on her consciousness back in the cave. As he drew near he heard her muttering. Yes, yes, there’s plenty to see, plenty to know, and yes, yes, I want to. He edged forward and touched on her mind. What? she said, startled. Who? Has it gone, has it gone for good?
Whatever harmed you has gone.
Harmed? Killed! It slaughtered me.
Who were you talking to?
Made me empty! Everything I was is in tatters.
Alishia, I’m here to help you. Trey edged himself forward, trying to sense just how much of the girl was left. This could have been madness, or an echo, or even the voice of her wraith, still connected to her dying body through disbelief and an unwillingness to let go.
There’s no help to be had, she whispered, and then Trey felt a heavy darkness pressing in from all sides. Alishia did not withdraw; the darkness grew. And it pushed him out.
He was sent away, spinning, rolling through the distorted planes of awareness that the fledge had opened up. He steadied himself and drifted past Kosar, past the witch with her scheming stew of thoughts. The closer he came to Rafe, the clearer the boy’s face became, until Trey’s mind reached out and touched on something beyond comprehension. So much space in there. So many places to hide.
Reeling, Trey guided his mind across the hillside and down toward the village in the distance. He was glad to be away from Alishia and Rafe—such strangeness hurt him—and he saw the gray-blue of sky and the green smudge of the grasslands, and little else. His mind was soft and blurred. Small rocky outcroppings were lost. Clouds became shadows. Here and there living things passed by beneath him, and he was angry that he could not discern them more clearly.
Solidness suddenly disappeared beneath him and the ground was moving, flowing, carrying a million mixed sensations. The river. Trey followed its course, his knowledge of what was below him hazy at best. He passed by places where the river was interrupted, still blank areas like solid shadows compared to the fluid shades of the running water. He tried a mental blink to clear his vision but it was not sight that was affected, nor his ability to project himself. Stale fledge, he thought. Growing staler. This might be the last time he journeyed like this.
And then? What would the witch and the others do with him? Would they cast him aside with poor, flailing Alishia, submit them to the mercy of whatever place they happened to be at the time?
Trey dropped down closer to the river, and then sound and taste changed as he plunged in. The water around him was filled with life, so much more than the dead air above, and for a few seconds he reveled in its multitude. Still he could not truly see, touch, query the alien minds around him. But he was there with them, and for a while that was enough.
Then he rose again and moved quickly along the course of the river. He traveled in the wake of centuries, riding the ripples of the river’s changes of position over time. It had worn rock here, deposited silt there, shaped the floodplain to its own design, twisting over the space of thousands of years like a giant snake shifting its way from the mountains to the distant sea. Histories lay buried in its silty bed—dipping in, Trey sensed the troubled wraiths of the crew of a sunken barge, already rotted to little more than memories but still haunting the place of their demise—and its banks held more recent stories in their embrace. A buried body here; the prow of a smashed boat there.
He moved on. His vision did not improve, his senses remained vague, but he found that with effort he could still identify what he was seeing and sensing. His own intelligence filled in the gaps.
And then the blood.
The river turned red. The color was a brash blow against the sepia view he had grown used to so quickly. He rose quickly from the bloody waters, trying to look away but fascinated by the wash of red traveling against the flow. He drew in his questing thoughts, afraid of being seen, trapped and pulled down . . . and then the red coalesced into individual parts, and each part was a boat. He drew closer, hiding behind a fold in the plane of reality, and tried to see more clearly.
Each boat was small, topped with a grimy sail, moving across the water like a giant spider, paddles splashing down and hauling them against the flow. They moved fast and the rowers did not tire. They were dressed in red from head to foot.
Trey pulled up and away, fleeing from the river lest he be seen or sensed. These things were powerful, awful and terrifying, but he was sure they could not see as far as him. If they could he would feel them . . . their senses crawling across his mind, engulfing it in their rage.
Mage shit, Trey thought as he shifted quickly back to his own body, Mage shit, we don’t want to meet them.
“BOATS, FILLED WITH Red Monks,” he said. Kosar and A’Meer frowned at him. Rafe sat a small distance away, watching him as he spoke, but saying and revealing nothing. His eyes—haunted and pained when they had first met—seemed to have settled into something stranger.
“How many boats?”
“Four or five,” Trey said. “Maybe twenty Monks in each. So inhuman. Men and women, but not all there. Like they’re stripped away to the bare bone, their souls . . . fractured. Flayed down to the basic. What are those things?”
“Things we don’t want to meet,” A’Meer said. “How far?”
Trey closed his eyes, trying to remember; not sure, but unwilling to reveal his uncertainty. They need me, he thought, and I need them to need me. “Not that close,” he said. “Misted by the distance. It’s difficult to judge; I’m not used to casting so far. Before a few days ago, I’d never been more than a couple of miles from home.”
“Never mind,” Kosar said. “At least—”
“Think,” A’Meer hissed. “Give us a best guess! We can’t leave it to chance. Kosar and I barely fought off just one of those red fucks. We meet up with a hundred of them, the first thing I do is fall on my own sword, I swear. We need to know, Trey. We need to know how much time we have.”
He blinked at the short warrior woman. Her black hair was tied back from her pale face, her eyes were beautiful. She wore her weapon harnesses and sheaths like a second skin. He was not sure who scared him the most: the Red Monks, or A’Meer.
“Far enough,” he said, looking past A’Meer and down at the river i
n the distance. “We’ve got time. They’re moving quickly, but against the flow of the river. We have the horses.”
A’Meer spun away. “We leave now.”
“The rabbit you caught,” Hope said. “I was about to spice it.”
“Do it on the move,” A’Meer said.
“Bad,” Trey said. “I smell something bad about to happen.”
“The river’s not what we think,” a voice said, and they all turned to Rafe. He had barely spoken since the night before, seemingly content to let them guide the way, steer him forward and take control. “It’s much more temperamental than you imagine. It’s just as likely that it will bring the Monks to us as we’re crossing.”
“Your magic tells you this?” Kosar asked.
Rafe looked at the big thief, and for a brief instant Trey saw something flash across the boy’s face that made him look very old. Then he looked out across the plains. “It’s not my magic, Kosar. And no, it doesn’t tell me, it shows me.” He closed his eyes, but they sprang open again. “Look. It shows us already.”
As Trey turned to see what Rafe had seen, he heard Hope gasp: “You’re doing that?”
“The land’s doing it to itself,” Rafe said. “It’s all mixed up, it’s balance is going awry, has been for decades. Air frozen to glass, Kosar? Sinkholes, Trey? The land is eating itself, and we arrived here at just the wrong time.” He shook his head and looked down into his open hands, as if expecting to find himself holding something. “Whatever’s in me, it might already be too late.”
INSIDE, RAFE WAS in turmoil. Like the river across the plains, he was battling against himself, feeling the old Rafe—confused, frightened, wanting nothing more than the peace to mourn his dead parents—trying to ignore the strangeness growing within. He could see it, sense it, taste its power and its need for him to nurture and understand. But he did not want it. He willed it away with every breath he took, but like his heartbeat it was always there in the background, whispering to him however hard he tried not to hear.
