by Tim Lebbon
“Later,” Peer said again. “There’ll be plenty of time later.”
“It’s good to hear your confidence.”
“Penler, there’s somewhere beyond the Bonelands,” she said. “He didn’t tell me much. He wouldn’t. But it’s there.” She frowned, looking over Penler’s shoulder.
“And?” he asked.
“And he said something there sees us, and he hopes it will welcome us.”
Penler was silent for a few beats, glancing back and forth between Peer and Gorham. At last he said, “And you’re the ones who cannot entertain gods,” and then Penler turned to the crowds.
He stood with the grace of someone half his age. Peer knew that he commanded respect in Skulk, but she was also aware that most of those around them now had come down from the city. Their clothing gave them away, as did their smooth skins and the fact that they carried belongings with them. People in Skulk owned little.
This was the moment when they all had to cast differences aside and listen.
“Echo City is doomed!” Penler shouted.
“No shit!” a voice said from the street below. A man was crying, children were laughing and playing, and a hundred voices mumbled unheard replies to Penler’s pronouncement.
“Look behind you and see what ignorance and blind faith will bring,” he roared. “Fear and death with no hope for something more! What are the Marcellans doing to counter whatever this sudden threat might be?”
“I saw Blades raping a woman in the street!” a man yelled, and voices surged again, expressing disgust or offering other stories.
“That’s because they’re afraid. Fear breeds desperation, and from desperation comes such violence. They’re afraid because the Marcellans offer them nothing else. They’ll follow Hanharan because they’re told to, not because they choose to listen to him in their hearts.”
Peer shifted uncomfortably, but she knew what Penler was doing and respected the roots of his own beliefs. There was no way he could get the crowd on his side by expressing non-belief, and even if that could help, she knew he never would. He was an honest man who would not deny his own philosophies. And that bullish honesty was why they would follow him.
“And what are you listening to, old man?” someone called.
“I’m listening to someone I call my friend,” he said. He pressed both hands to his chest and looked out over the crowd.
“Who the fuck are you, anyway?”
“That’s Penler. You can trust him.”
“I don’t trust criminals!”
A roar rose, the crowd surged, fists flailed. Penler glanced down at Peer and she nodded at him, giving him whatever encouragement and support he needed. Someone I call my friend, he’d said, and she smiled at his shrewdness. He could never lie—one of his weaknesses, but also his greatest strength—but he could let the listeners interpret what he said in their own ways.
He held up his hands and the crowd calmed. He had them, she realized. They were willing to watch and listen while the city fell behind them, because this was the first time someone had really spoken to them. They’d all woken with whispers in their ears, but now they could see and hear the person offering them advice.
“I’m told there’s hope,” Penler said. “I’m told you came here at the behest of your own inner voices. And look around—I see no Marcellan costumes here, no Hanharan priest’s robes. That means we’re all special. That means we’ve all been given a way to escape. To escape that.” He pointed over their heads, over the top of Skulk’s tallest buildings at the monstrous column of smoke. As if at a signal from him, another tremor shook the ground, and moments later the sound rumbled in, shedding tiles from rooftops and knocking people to the ground.
“And we have to escape!” Penler cried. “There’s a way to defeat your fear. You have to trust in yourselves and trust in me.”
“But how do you know?” a woman shouted.
“I’ve always known,” he said. Then he stepped down from the parapet, crossed the wide head of the wall, and stood overlooking the desert with his back to the city.
Peer shivered. A chill went through her. The desert burned, dead and barren, and the thought of going out there terrified her. Gorham held her hand and pulled her forward. They shouldered past people until they were standing close behind Penler. And then Peer gasped as her friend started to descend a crumbling staircase leading down the wall’s outer face.
She panicked. Is this enough? Did he say enough? Will they think him mad? Will they turn their backs, on him as he’s turned his own on Echo City? She looked around the crowd and paused, seeing a face she recognized. It was a woman who’d picked stoneshrooms from the same rubble fields as Peer. The woman caught Peer’s eye … and smiled.
She believes, Peer thought.
“Come on,” she said, pulling Gorham after her. They stood on the wall and looked down at the desert below.
Penler was already halfway down. The treads cantilevered from the wall, rough and never used, and he was pressed back against the stonework to avoid their crumbling edges. But still he descended with confidence, never once pausing, never once looking back.
Hundreds of people leaned over the wall to witness his descent, and hundreds more stood farther back, waiting to see what would come of this.
Peer looked at the sands that had played no part in the city’s life other than to offer it a place of death. Gorham clasped her hand and kissed her softly on the cheek.
Peer went first.
He had found a form of forgiveness and a diluting of his guilt in the woman he had betrayed, and he would not betray her again. Though every scrap of flesh and blood and bone told him to turn back, he did not hesitate for a moment. Peer was already on the baked sand and walking out after Penler, and Gorham followed, feeling the change in texture beneath his shoes and biting down a sudden urge to vomit.
She did not look back at him, and there was intense trust in that. Likewise, Gorham did not look back at the city wall, and he trusted that the people would follow. It’ll take only a few, he thought, and then a few more. And then we’ll be committed to discovering whether those fly bites were worth the prick of pain they gave us all.
The sand was hot and hard, shifting slightly beneath him as he walked. Gorham looked at the bite marks across his hands and arms, but they were not changing. The sun felt hotter out here. It was late afternoon now, and soon dusk would be falling, and they would be out in the desert without anywhere to sleep, little to drink, and the city behind them would call and—
There was a noise behind him, the likes of which he had never heard before. It started low and far away, like a dog howling in the night, but it rose and grew louder—a howl that turned into a scream—and louder, and every hair on his arms and neck stood up, his balls tingled, and his legs grew weak. He paused but still did not look back, because he had denied himself the city forever.
The cry went on, louder than anything he’d ever thought possible, a shattering exhalation of rage and hunger, fear and triumph, and he was certain he saw cracks opening in the ground all around him as the land itself shook in sympathy, or shivered in fear.
As the cry faded, voices rose behind him. I won’t look back, he thought, I can’t look back, I’ll never look back.
But he could look sideways.
Running across the sand toward him, fleeing the city at an angle, came Alexia. She was carrying Rose on her back, and the Baker waved. It seemed such an odd, innocent gesture that Gorham waved back, as if greeting a friend’s daughter rather than the most powerful person the city had ever known.
“They’re coming,” Rose called as they grew closer. “They’re following! Don’t stop, Gorham. Don’t stop walking for anything.”
“What was that?” he asked, though he knew the answer.
“The Vex is risen.” Rose looked more haunted than anyone he had ever seen. There was such knowledge in her eyes, but he wanted none of it. “We’re the lucky ones,” she said. “The lucky few.”
The few walked on, and soon, from behind them, Gorham heard the many beginning to follow. There were footsteps and voices, shouting and crying, and even a few bursts of laughter. And as the sun dipped toward the Markoshi Desert’s western horizon, Echo City already felt very far away.
All through the night, they heard the sounds of destruction from behind them. Thunder rolled across the sands, and the city became a blazing pyre on the northern horizon. A breeze blew into their faces, drawn from the south by the conflagration, and at least that meant the stink of the burning city was kept at bay.
“What could cause such burning?” Gorham asked when they stopped to rest at last, and for a while none of them had an answer.
After a while Rose said, “After so long in the deep, climbing the Falls, perhaps heat is all the Vex seeks.”
“You really believe that’s all?” Peer asked, and Rose did not answer, settling down beside Alexia and closing her eyes.
But none of them slept. They huddled close for warmth, and all around them they heard the sounds of humanity uprooted—crying, sobbing, wild laughter, and groans of pain. When dawn came, the mournful tears began. Bodies lay here and there, causes of death uncertain. Peer could not even begin to entertain the fact that the desert had started to kill them.
They commenced their second day of walking with the city smoking far behind them. They were too far away to make out any detail, but the fires seemed to be dying down as morning passed into afternoon. The rising smoke grew lighter. And then the distant sound they had heard before leaving the city—pain, frustration, the scream of some mad thing shown only more madness in its future—accompanied them until dusk.
Peer had felt sick for a while, but that soon passed. Even Rose seemed stronger than before, though the little food Gorham had managed to grab from Penler’s house would not last them very long.
“People are dying,” Peer said, as they sat around a fire that night. Thousands more campfires burned around them, lighting up swaths of the Markoshi Desert—a place known for time immemorial as the Bonelands. They burned clothing, belongings, and wood gathered from the scattered remains of old wagons and other constructs that had made it this far in the past. Peer smelled cooking meat and tried not to imagine what it might be. Several groups of Garthans had accompanied them out, walking far apart from them.
They’d talked today about how many people they thought had walked, and estimates ranged from Gorham’s ten thousand to Penler’s two hundred thousand. None of them had any concept of such numbers or what that many people looked like. No one would ever know for sure.
“Fear,” Penler said. “Thirst. Hunger. Not everyone brought food and water with them.” There had already been fighting, and late that afternoon they’d seen a father stabbing a man to death after he tried to steal food from his children. Peer was glad to have her friends around her. Alexia still carried her sword, though she had discarded the tunic that identified her as an ex–Scarlet Blade.
“Illness,” Gorham said. “Maybe some are succumbing.”
“There will be many people who weren’t bitten,” Rose said, and Peer sat up straight, staring at the girl.
“I never even considered that,” she said. She felt guilty at finding hope in the deaths of so many, but, looking around the fire, she saw the same hope reflected in everyone.
“Time will tell,” Penler said. She’d told him everything during that first afternoon and evening, answering his questions and bringing in Gorham and Alexia when there were answers she did not know. When she told him what had happened to Rufus, he’d grown pale, and then Rose had revealed what she had seen through Nophel. A dark tide heading north, she had said.
Everything I wrote about the Dragarians … Penler had whispered, but he would say no more. Perhaps he was seeing justification in a lifetime of belief.
Or maybe he was wishing he’d gone with them.
He had been quiet ever since, rarely contributing to their discussions. Peer knew when he was brooding. She also knew that he would talk when he was ready.
No one tried to take charge. Some looked to Penler—those who had been at the wall and seen him venturing out onto the sands—but his silence drove them away.
The people from the doomed city walked, and fell, and died beneath the sun and the moon.
They were five days out from the city. It was behind them now, below the horizon, evidence of its ruin little more than a pale smudge in the sky. Peer tried clinging to hope, and Gorham clung to her, slowly losing his way. Out here in the Bonelands, the past felt like it belonged to someone else, and she told him she forgave him. Hugged him close. It helped, for a while.
Their food and water were finished.
People died around them. They were left where they fell, after whatever food and drink they still carried was taken. Whispers passed this way and that of cannibalism, rumors drifting like the breeze that still blew in their faces. The Garthans had gone, either dead or drifted in another direction, and so the alleged flesh-eating was much worse.
Some people turned to go back.
It was not the desert killing people—it was exhaustion, hunger, thirst, desperation, and hopelessness. Peer was confident that the young Baker’s chopping of Rufus’s blood, and the bloodflies, had worked. But perhaps even that would not be enough to save them.
The walkers had spread out, not drawn in as Peer had expected, and for as far as she could see behind and around them, the desert was speckled with refugees from Echo City. But before them was only sand. Something in all of them drove them on—Penler most of all. He was old and weak, suffering badly and still mostly silent, and Peer feared he was grasping on to one small fact to keep himself going: He had been the first into the Bonelands, and he would be the first to reach their destination.
Where they were going could not be discussed, because nobody knew for sure. Peer had told her companions what Rufus had said about the Heart and Mind, but that meant nothing to them. His words echoed for them all: I hope it will welcome you.
For now they were just walking.
Rose spoke little, but when she did, Peer took note. The girl would never have a child’s mind. “This is an adventure we’ve been waiting for forever,” she said. And, “She did her best … she gave us time.” And, “I’m sorry.”
That afternoon, they took on a little boy they found crying over the body of his father. And, that evening, the little boy died.
Rose cried. That was what astonished Peer more than anything. The Baker cried for one death, while the destruction of a city and countless people had left her merely contemplating the histories buried in her mind. It made her seem almost human.
Rose started to fade next day. They waited with her while the sun passed its zenith, because she could not walk anymore, and even Alexia was no longer strong enough to carry her.
“I’m the last Baker of Echo City,” she whispered to the heat, and when Peer tried to protest, the girl grasped her hand. “We’ve lasted too long already. After what we have done, do you think the Baker will be welcomed elsewhere?”
Peer remained silent, because she could not answer that honestly. So they stayed around her as others passed by, and no one else knew who the little dying girl was.
“Fading away,” Rose said softly as the sun touched the horizon. “Nothing lasts forever.” Gorham was kneeling beside her then, holding her hand. He seemed confused, but Peer held back because she sensed he needed space to be with the girl. He’d call her if he needed her.
And after Rose passed away, Peer was there for him.
Next morning, as they started to stagger across the desert for one more day, Penler was the first to speak.
“Last night I smelled something on the breeze,” he said.
“What something?” Alexia as
ked.
“I’m not sure, but not desert. And I feel something. Something …”
“What?”
“Reaching out. Sensing. Don’t you feel it too?” His eyes sparkled, but Peer had to shake her head.
“No,” she said, saddened by his confusion. But Penler always had been amazing, and it was a hope she would cling to.
“Then we’re getting somewhere?” Gorham asked.
“Maybe,” Penler said. “Perhaps somewhere we never should have been. Who knows what made this desert what it is? The Baker has made us able to cross it, but who or what made the Baker?”
“Does it matter?” Peer asked.
“I think so,” he said. “I think so very much.”
She thought about the Baker as they walked, and what a mystery she really was.
Their skin was burned and peeling. Their tongues were swollen. More people died. They stopped that night, but only a handful of small groups found material to light fires. They tried sucking moisture from their clothes, and Penler chewed at his shoe leather before laughing and lying down. By the time dawn touched the horizon, there were no more fires left.
That morning, many people chose not to walk anymore.
Penler led them, and the others followed. Alexia seemed the strongest of them all, and Peer drew strength from both the woman and the old man. She could never stop as long as they walked.
“Do you still feel it?” Peer asked.
“Yes,” Penler said.
Later, when she found enough strength for another question, she asked, “What do you think happened to Rufus?”
“You heard Rose,” Penler said. “Honored Darkness. As we walk south, he leads them north. They believe in it … and that will be their strength.”
“But what is it?”
“Perhaps it’s exactly what the Dragarians believe—a place that is timeless and forever. Or maybe it’s simply a place far to the north, where the sun never touches. Whatever, they have the strength of their … their faith … and …”
Penler went to his knees in the sand. It was almost a relief. Peer sat beside him and hugged his head to her chest. Gorham was behind her, his face split and bleeding from the relentless sun. And Alexia remained standing, and always would, as if to sit down was to give in for good.
