Dusk

by Tim Lebbon

  He realized very quickly that A’Meer could use her Pace to leave him behind in the blink of an eye. Yet she stayed back with him. That shamed and pleased him in equal measures.

  They followed a rough path through the heather for as long as they could. Evidence of wheel ruts hid beneath new growth, and though that made the going underfoot hazardous it was still easier than running through knee-high bracken. The horses seemed to keep their footing easily, but more than once Kosar stumbled and fell, rolling as well as he could to control the impact. A’Meer stopped to help him up, then ran on without a word. Kosar’s first few steps after these tumbles were tentative and slow, ready for the burning pain of a broken ankle.

  What then? he thought. Leave me behind?

  He realized then just how desperate the situation was. He glanced back but the hills they had just left were hidden by a fold in the land, the progress of the Red Monks out of sight. They could be closing quickly, or falling behind. Or perhaps they had not even seen them. But that was a vain hope, and one that they could not allow.

  Trey shouted from up ahead. His saddle had slipped sideways and he clung on desperately to the horse’s mane, arms pressed around the unconscious girl as the land strove to pull them down. The horse stopped, reared, stamping its feet and flinging its head, doing its best to shake its two passengers free.

  Kosar put on a burst of speed but A’Meer reached them first. By the time he caught up she had calmed the horse, tightened the saddle, muttered something to Trey and sent them on their way.

  Hope and Rafe had not slowed down.

  “What did you tell him?” Kosar asked as he and A’Meer ran together once more.

  “I told him if he falls, we’ll leave him.”

  The rough path they had been following faded away into the ground, displaying no final destination, no reason at all for being. Brackens grew up around their knees, sometimes reaching their thighs, and progress on foot was hampered, fronds whipping at their legs and tangling around their ankles.

  The horses cantered on, their long legs finding no hindrance.

  “Hope is pulling ahead,” Kosar said.

  “Yes.” A’Meer’s bare lower legs were already whipped from the plants, long bubbled lines of blood marking where the skin had been scored. She seemed not to notice.

  “Perhaps we should call to her to slow down.”

  “Don’t think she would.” She cursed as something shifted beneath one of her feet—a rock, a plant, a surprised creature—and went sprawling, outstretched hands fending off the worst of the impact.

  Kosar stopped and went to her, holding her beneath the arms to help her up. Her elbows were bloodied and she had a cut above one eyebrow, blood dripping down across her pale skin.

  From behind came a cry. Too loud for a human, too mad for an animal, too filled with rage to be anything other than a Monk. Kosar looked back up the gentle slope they had just run down. There was no movement, save the twitching of bracken in the gentle breeze. The sun was behind him, throwing his shadow back the way they had come and he had a brief, crazy image of the Monks catching it, twisting it into their grasp and hauling him down, falling on him with swords drawn . . .

  “I see nothing,” he said.

  “They don’t call to each other without reason,” A’Meer said. “Come on. Hope and Rafe have gone.”

  Kosar looked ahead in panic. A few hundred steps away a wood began. He saw Trey’s horse swallowed by shadows beneath the trees, and then he and A’Meer were alone in the landscape . . . and yet not. Behind them was the very real presence of the Red Monks, a huge weight bearing down in the sunlight. Unseen as yet, but obvious as a shadow on the sun.

  The two ran on, raising their legs high with each step to try to clear the plants and prevent themselves from tripping.

  There was another cry closer behind them, this one not muted by any folds in the land, but Kosar did not turn to look.

  By the time they reached the woods, he was aware of the silence around them. The singing of birds, the rustle of creatures in the undergrowth, the breath of the breeze whispering its way across the land . . . it was only their sudden silences that made them obvious. The land held its breath as he and A’Meer passed from sunlight to shadow.

  The darkness felt no safer.

  There may be more moving in from the west, heading to cut us off, A’Meer had said. Perhaps they were here now, Monks hiding between trees and in hollows in the woodland floor, waiting to rise up in ambush as soon as they were all within their bloody red reach.

  No cries from ahead, no sound of a fight.

  There won’t be, Kosar thought. They’ll slaughter Rafe and Hope, Trey and Alishia without a sound. They’re not fighters. A’Meer is the only fighter here. Even I carry a sword only by default, not because I have much of an idea of how to use it.

  “It’s hopeless,” he muttered, and as if in response there came more cries from behind, three or four Monks breaking the silence with their unnatural screams as they pelted downhill toward the woods.

  “It’s all down to Rafe, now,” A’Meer said. “Maybe we should pull back, try to hold them off?”

  “What?” The idea terrified Kosar. The thought of entering into battle with the Monks here, between the trees, while the others rode on ahead was awful. Suddenly faced with the prospect of self-sacrifice, he knew just how much he wanted to live. A’Meer may have stated her purpose and aim, but he had never promised to die to save anyone.

  They ran between trees, jumping fallen boughs, skirting around rocky outcroppings, forging on almost blindly. To be cautious of what might may lie in wait ahead would only give the Monks time to catch up. They ran headlong into unknown dangers to escape the certain death on their tails.

  “Perhaps not,” A’Meer said. “Let’s see where Rafe is taking us first.”

  They splashed through a small stream, noticing the disturbed sediment where the horses had recently crossed. Pausing briefly, Kosar heard the sounds of the horses’ progress in the distance. He wanted to call out for them to slow down, but fear kept him silent.

  There were old paths in here, worn over time until tree roots showed through and nothing grew anymore. Kosar wondered who had passed this way before, recently or in forgotten history, and whether any of them had been as desperately frightened as he was now. They followed one such trail that led deeper into the woods and deeper into shadow. Other tributaries led off, twisting away between trees and behind banks of giant ferns and other, more dense undergrowth. Their destinations remained hidden, never to be known. Kosar had once liked to tread such routes, enjoying the discovery around each bend, relishing new experience. And he had forged his own paths across the land, steered himself to follow many mysteries and tales, and routes such as these had once been his life. Now he wished only for familiarity and safety.

  To his left, a narrow path faded away into shrubbery, plants touching across it now but the ground still worn down to the hard mud beneath. Rock was exposed, some of it sharpened by some crushing impact. Whose footfalls could have done that, Kosar wondered? Farther along, the remnants of an old fence had rotted into the ground but a gate stood firm, an intricate iron construct forming a decorative entry into nothing, because only more forest stood behind. It would have looked the same from both directions. To keep in or keep out?

  The trees grew suddenly denser as they entered an area of the woods given over to pine, and here the horses’ trail was easier to follow. A trail of fresh breakages—scars on trunks, snapped twigs and branches scattered across the ground—marked the route Hope and Trey had taken. The forest floor was churned up, fresh disturbances in the pine needles marked by the darker stains of dampness below, and the bewitching shifting as wood ants found themselves exposed to the light. They reminded Kosar of the mimics, so many parts to such a complex creature.

  “Here,” A’Meer said. “Take this!” She handed him a small wooden ball from her belt. “Don’t touch the wire, it’ll take your fingers off. Wrap it once a
round that tree there, knee height, and pull hard. It’ll hold fast.”

  She hurried off at a right angle to their path, turning and twisting between trees, hand trailing behind her as she let out a length of almost invisible wire. Kosar did as she had instructed, passing the wooden ball once around the tree and pulling. The wire attached to it—thin, sharp, deadly—bit into the bark with a soft hiss. The wooden ball looked like a knotted wound in the tree. When the wire had played out A’Meer secured her end and then signaled for them to continue.

  “They’ll smell our trail,” she said as they ran together once more. “The horses’ breath, the blood from our scrapes. They’ll be running fast. It won’t stop them, but it may slow down one or two.”

  “How many more tricks have you got?” Kosar asked.

  “Not many.”

  Another cry rose up behind them and the tree canopy came to life as birds took flight, fleeing in silent panic as if keen to keep their presence a secret.

  “If only we could fly,” A’Meer said.

  Kosar took the lead. Spiderwebs wrapped themselves across his face and tangled in his hair, and now and then he felt the harder impact as a spider came along for the ride. He wiped them frantically away, remembering the slayer spider that Hope had left in her rooms for the Monks. There was no telling what unknown species this wood might harbor. Trees reached for him too, small branches only becoming apparent as they drew lines of blood into his cheek or clawed for his eyes.

  Shadows moved to their left and right. Things following their progress, perhaps. Or maybe tricks of the light.

  “I don’t know where we are,” Kosar said. “I’ve never traveled these woods. I’ve been south of here to the borders of Kang Kang, but I never came this way. There’s no way of telling how far these woods continue.”

  “Far enough,” A’Meer said. “Long enough for us to have to face the Red Monks in here. The forest is many miles deep—I was here years ago, just after my training was finished and I went out of New Shanti—and there were things here even then. Now . . . more time has passed. The land has changed even more, and old maps no longer hold true. Maybe they’re all gone.”

  “What things?” Kosar asked. “Why didn’t you say?”

  “I never saw them properly, not even back then. And I can’t say they were a danger. But they gave me bad dreams.”

  As if on cue the two of them stopped running, squatted down, listened to the noises around them. From ahead they could hear the horses crashing onward, not far distant. Behind them, the way they had come, all was quiet; the forest silenced by their own passage, perhaps, or because of what followed.

  Something whispered.

  “What is that?” Kosar said, but A’Meer did not answer. She glanced at him and then looked away, eyes downcast as if ashamed of something terrible and secret. He reached out to touch her, fingers stretched, blood on his fingertips . . . and then he stopped.

  They gave me bad dreams, A’Meer had said.

  And the whispers made themselves known to Kosar.

  Never said sorry, never told Father why I did it, killed his sheebok, cut out its heart to take away to the woods with my friends, never admitted my guilt even though there was blood beneath my fingernails and the stink of death about me, rot in the creases of my skin, pain and guilt in my eyes when I woke up . . . afraid of him, frightened of his big hands and his angry shouts, but there was worse than Father’s rage, frightened of my friends, of the things they did in the woods, the things they did with that girl and that sheebok’s heart and those knives, those knives . . . frightened but compliant, watching them empty the heart over her breasts and cut her there, the blood mingling, watching from the trees, hard, young and hard . . . and when they came into her and she screamed they didn’t hear my own petty cries of pleasure and shame . . . but they knew I watched . . . they always knew I watched . . .

  “Fuck,” Kosar shouted. “Fuck!”

  A’Meer held him and whispered in his ear, trying to calm him. “It’s all right, don’t shout, let it come, accept it and let it come and it’ll flow away, it’ll hide again. Truth is only what you want to make it. They’ll leave you alone soon, Kosar . . .”

  Always regretted leaving him behind, that broken boy cowering in the pits of the Poison Forests, waiting to die . . . but his leg was broken, and I’d never really wanted him along anyway, just too afraid to say no, didn’t want to hurt his feelings . . . I’d saved his life after all, and he thought he owed me, wanted to repay me for saving him from those tumblers in the Widow’s Peaks . . . so he came along and I slipped and he fell too, and I never should have left him . . . said I was going for help, going to find someone to help me pull him out of there, but I knew he’d be dead by nightfall, no way a boy like that could fight off the poisonous things that live there, those birds those bats those spiders . . . left him to die, and not because I was scared and not because I couldn’t have gone back . . . simply because I didn’t want him with me anymore . . .

  It came again and again, the voice of his sickly conscience, the mad mutterings of guilt, the secret shadows of rejected experience admitting culpability for things he had long ago shut away, driven down, buried deep in denial, clothed in ambiguous memory and turned into tales once heard, not created himself.

  . . . should have put it back, never should have taken it . . .

  “Kosar, breathe, let it come, they’ll lose interest soon.”

  . . . meant so much but I never told her, and look what happened, look what happened to her!

  “Oh Mage shit,” A’Meer whispered, tortured by whatever guilty secrets plagued her own mind. Her grip on Kosar never eased.

  Forgot again, always forget, never found it in myself to remember just that one special day for my mother, always let it slip away and then fooled myself that look in her eyes was a calm acceptance when I apologized, not disappointment, not sadness . . .

  Kosar vomited, the sickness and rot of hidden memories and mistakes flooding his mind and purging his body. A’Meer still held him, groaning and cursing, fighting whatever foul thoughts had been dredged in her own mind. He heaved again and bent double, watching vomit speckle the pine-needle carpet, a big beetle scurrying away with its back coated in his stomach juices. All his bad thoughts crowded in and buzzed him like moths to a flame, some of them battering against his skull and knocking themselves away, others remaining there to fly in again and again, reminding him of all those bad things.

  The whispering began to fade away at last. It did not vanish completely—it never would—but reduced in volume until it was a hush in his ears, and then a feeling deeper down, and then nothing, not disappearing, simply becoming too quiet and deep for him to want to hear.

  “Why didn’t you warn me?” he said, spitting the foul taste from his mouth.

  “How could I?”

  Kosar looked up at A’Meer and saw that she had been suffering as well, face pale, eyes moist. He wondered what secret shame she had been facing only seconds ago; he did not wish to ask. He turned and looked in the direction the horses had taken. “The others?”

  “If the things in these woods get them too, I’m hoping that the horses will go on while they’re remembering.”

  “Bad things. All bad things for you?”

  A’Meer nodded, looked away, turned and scanned the woods behind them.

  “Why? Why?”

  “Perhaps it’s how they feed,” she said. “There are plenty of strange things we know about—skull ravens, tumblers—and some, like the mimics, that are little more than myth. There must be many more that are still hidden to us. Especially since the Cataclysmic War. It’s not just the landscape that’s suffered since then, changed.”

  Kosar shook his head to rid himself of those rancid images and guilts. It only served to mix them up some more. “I can’t stand this,” he said, moaning and holding his head.

  “Kosar, they’re here!”

  A’Meer drew on her bow, let an arrow fly. Something screeched from
between the trees, and Kosar saw a red flash behind some shrubs, twisting and wavering in the dappled forest light.

  “Come on,” A’Meer said. “We have to catch the others!” She ran past him, grabbing his elbow and spinning him so that he was facing the right way. “Now!”

  He followed her, imagining that he could leave those foul thoughts of his behind, stewing away into this weird forest floor along with his puddle of vomit.

  What manner of things . . . ? he thought. And then the idea came that they would prey on the Monks as well . . . and that, maybe, they would slow them down.

  HOPE WAS SCREAMING. Not aloud, not through her mouth, because the slew of recollections was drowning any physical response. She was screaming inside.

  And still the whispers made themselves known.

  I slid the stiletto in too late, waited until he came, and maybe I enjoyed it? Maybe I wanted to feel him flooding into me, wanted to see the rapture in his face before his eyes sprang open at the pain, the realization of what I’d done to him? I could have done it sooner, but he was pounding into me, hard, harder, and then when he grunted I raised my hand and slid the blade into his back, pushed hard, so hard that it cut from his chest and pricked my neck . . . and his eyes opened, and I had killed him, he knew that already, could feel it, the blood bursting inside and stilling his heart, and even as I met his gaze I felt sick with what I had done. Not his fault. He hadn’t made me do anything. I had invited him in. And in his final exhalation, that last grumbling breath from his slack mouth, there hid none of the truths I believed would be there . . .

  “Not me!” Hope hissed. “Not me! I didn’t do it, not on purpose—not me, it was . . . everyone before me!” Ancestors, she thought. They made me do it. Those real witches who mocked me by passing down their name to my pitiful, fraudulent self.

  Her horse ran on, Rafe held her around the waist, and the opening up of the foulest corners of her mind continued.

  He was a bad man anyway, he deserved what those things did to him, I could never have unlocked the door and forgiven myself if he escaped . . .