by Tim Lebbon
“Please don’t say that,” he pleaded. “Not after what we’ve seen. I’m not sure what I can do.” And that was the painful truth. He still had the two communicators in his pocket, but to use them was impossible when the land no longer spoke and could not listen.
Namior’s mother glanced up, and her eyes bore a heavy sadness rather than hatred. She opened her mouth to say something, hesitated, then returned to her operation. The knife twisted and flicked, and something slicked from the hole in Kel’s love’s chest. She gasped and groaned, and more wine was poured around the wound.
Her mother picked the object up, rubbed it against one of the blankets around her shoulders and held it to the light. Her eyes went wide, her mouth hung open, and she asked, “Just what have you seen?” It was a small crystal, the size of Kel’s thumbnail, and it caught candlelight and threw a sickly rainbow around the room.
Namior’s great-grandmother screamed. She rolled into the groundstone and flinched away again, as if afraid it would burn. Her hands covered her eyes, and her almost toothless mouth was twisted into a pained grimace.
“Grandmother?”
The old woman sat up. She stared at the crystal, its splash of light emphasizing the redness around her remaining good eye. When the crystal swayed, its reflection caught her across the throat. “I only hoped …” she said wretchedly, but whatever she hoped for was never spoken. Instead, she stood unsteadily and came to them, shedding blankets like veils of madness. When she reached them she wore only her loose dress.
She took the crystal from her granddaughter’s hand, holding on to it as gently as a dream. Then she looked at Kel. “Core?”
“What?” he gasped, astounded. What could that simple word mean coming from this madwoman’s mouth? Was she ex-Core herself? One of their old witches, fled?
“Here.” She gave the crystal to Kel. “Maybe you can use their magic against them.”
“Grandmother, I don’t understand why—”
“Hush, girl.” The old woman never shifted her eyes from Kel Boon. And even beneath the mask of startling change, Kel could make out madness still simmering. “There must be people you need to contact.”
“But—”
Then the old woman sat beside Namior and started crying. It was not a slip back into her craze, but her demeanor promised that she had nothing more to say. At least, not right away.
“The Komadians are our enemies,” Kel said to Namior’s mother. “I promise, I’m doing what I can.” He looked down at Namior, wanting to kiss her, whisper into her ear, but content that she was with those who loved her, and if she could survive anywhere it was there. “Tell her I love her. And I’ll come back for you all.” Sparing one last confused glance at the mysterious old woman, he went for the door.
It was still raining outside, and he held out his hand to let the water wash the last of Namior’s blood from the crystal. Then he dropped it in his pocket, checked his weapons, and headed into the night.
HE HAD TWO communicators left, and he could not risk trying one again until he was beyond the village. He had to travel past the Komadians’ influence, outside Pavmouth Breaks and across the plains.
He made his way down to the river first, moving slowly, always cautious of what was around the next corner. He moved from shadow to shadow like a wraith, footsteps silent and hands always ready to pluck a knife from his belt, every sense playing a part in examining his surroundings. Core training ran deep.
Close to the river he paused in the shadow of a ruined house, settling on a pile of rubble and hiding from the moons. Work still continued across in the harbor, with rescue teams now digging farther inland along the course of the river. Lights hovered in the air above their heads; Komadian technology. Puffs of steam erupted here and there, and every time he heard one Kel was reminded of the hard coughing of the Strangers’ mysterious weapons.
He saw Noreelans digging with Komadians, and the trust the visitors were abusing made him feel sick. While some dug for missing villagers, other Komadians were building the strange black tower above the village.
And where there was one tower, perhaps there were more.
Trakis’s screams of agony came to him again. Do they want us all? Is that the fate for everyone in Pavmouth Breaks? He had certainly seen plenty of the large crystals, and if every one contained one of those trapped things …
Perhaps this was just a bridgehead. Capture the village, use its inhabitants to restore their dead to life again, then move inland. Farmsteads, villages, bands of rovers traveling across the landscape. And then the cities: Noreela City? Long Marrakash? New Shanti?
Though Kel was desperate to know more, he already knew enough. To travel across the bridge would be foolish. Perhaps the visitors on Noreelan soil really did not know about his and Namior’s trespass, but risking capture was the last thing he should be doing. His priority was to leave the village and contact the Core. He was important.
He was Pavmouth Breaks’ only hope.
Kel turned his back on the harbor and started inland. The footpaths and one narrow street followed the river valley, rising steadily and disappearing at the last of the houses, almost a mile in from the sea. There, he would have to go overland, either following the course of the River Pav or climbing out from the steepening valley and moving across the plains. Somewhere on his route, he would find the place the Komadians considered the village boundary. What he would discover there, he did not know, but he could hazard a guess: a Stranger, clad in metal and told to kill anyone trying to leave.
There would be more conflict before he could attempt to contact the Core.
The rain eased off as quickly as it had begun, and walking away from the harbor, Kel heard someone else calling the name of a missing loved one. He could not make out the name, nor whence it came, but it gave the night a melancholy air, like low music played at a child’s funeral. The voice went on for some time. It died away eventually, fading in volume rather than ceasing altogether. Kel knew that the caller would remain unfulfilled.
And if they did meet their missing loved ones in the dark streets, they could be someone or something else.
At one of the path’s junctions he followed the course of the river and, walking down from the house-huddled hillside, he found a dead militiawoman. He paused twenty steps away, squatting and lifting his small crossbow from his belt. He primed it with a soft click, then looked around, hoping that his night vision would be effective enough to see anything hiding away in the shadows. The life moon did its best to illuminate the scene, and the death moon was peering over the head of Drakeman’s Hill. But darkness still lay heavy in the valley.
Nothing moved. A mist of rain came down again, drifting across the scene like shifting wraiths.
The militiawoman was slumped against a wall where two paths joined. There were rats on her stomach, chest and splayed legs, and several more gnawing at her throat. Rain was beaded on her sword’s blade where it lay several steps from her hand.
Kel moved forward. The rats heard him and scattered into the night. He paused and waited for the attack, but it did not come. He moved closer, taking a deep breath in preparation for what he was about to see.
It was Luceel. He’d drunk with her at the Dog’s Eyes, and now her throat was open to the bone. Her head was tilted back to one side, her eyes collecting rain, and he could see her spine.
“Are you all gone?” he whispered. He thought of the rest of the village militia, Vek and the others, lying dead across Pavmouth Breaks. What had happened? Had the Komadians taken control, under cover of darkness and the falling rain? There were still people digging down at the harbor, searching for bodies more than survivors, but was that all a show?
He knew that he should chant Luceel’s wraith down into the Black, but last time he had tried such a thing it had been O’Peeria—a painful time, with guilt haunting his every breath. And truly, he did not have the heart.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, “but you’ll find your way there even
tually.” He closed her eyes and covered her head with her jacket, hoping it would keep the rats from her face.
Then he moved on, more cautious than ever, and aware that the dangers in the darkness were more real than he had feared.
AND IN THE darkness, O’Peeria is his guiding light. He follows her through the gaps between buildings, the crawlways beneath floors, the gaps under and around foundations. She knows all the spaces outside what and where people know, and she sometimes asks why he doesn’t, as if it’s the duty of a Core member to understand the shadows and echoes of a world, as well as the world itself. But then, she always has been more committed than he.
The Stranger they seek entered the underground several days before, and the Core is sweeping in from the outskirts of Noreela City toward its center. O’Peeria seems confident that they will have their kill soon. Kel is not so sure.
“There are a million places to hide,” he says.
“So what? Places like this, the hunter has the advantage over the hunted. This fucking Stranger is trying to hide, he has to be lucky and stay unseen all the time. We only have to be lucky once.”
“Do you really love this?” Kel asks. The question has been bothering him for some time, because his own thoughts about being Core are becoming more and more confused. He feels that the Core as a whole is doing good, but he is doing bad. They kill the enemy, and that’s what they’re trained to do, that’s his whole reason for being. But somewhere deep down, something is starting to feel wrong.
“Fuck me, no!” she says. “I hate it. I’d much rather be back in New Shanti, hunting sand deer in the desert or fishing from the coral spines outside New Drymouth.” They’re following a forgotten underground canal, and she pauses by its side, pale face illuminated by the light ball at her shoulder. She has always been more comfortable and confident than Kel when it comes to using magic.
“Then why do it?”
She shrugs, as if the answer is obvious, then smiles sadly, realizing it is not. “Because I know I’m good at it,” she says. “And I’m hoping that’ll help it end soon.”
“After this one?” Kel asks. “Or the next? You really think it’ll ever end?”
“Yes,” she says. And she surprises him by touching his cheek, a brief show of affection that he is becoming unused to. There is sex and groaning and licking, but there is so rarely any real love. “One day they’ll make their move, and soon after that it’ll be over.”
“But who—?”
“Who’ll win?” She shrugs again, and her eyes turn hard. “The less they know, the more likely it’ll be us.”
“Then the more Strangers we kill, the better.”
“Right. Ready?”
“Yes,” Kel says, but he knows his eyes say “no.”
They travel deeper, and come across the site of the kill beats after the Stranger’s wraith has flailed down into nothing. Three other Core are there, and they talk briefly before melting away again into the underside of Noreela City.
That night, after several bottles of rotwine, there is sex and groaning and licking. It is only when O’Peeria is asleep that Kel tells her he loves her.
HE WAS THINKING of Namior when they caught him. He had told her that he loved her many times, and every time he meant it more. He hoped that when Namior awoke, her mother relayed his message.
It was a woman he recognized. He did not know her name, but she ran a shop down at the harbor selling the day’s catches for the fishing families of Pavmouth Breaks. She emerged from a doorway thirty paces ahead of him and approached, and to begin with he crouched down and held his crossbow at the ready. When he saw her smile, he stood and smiled back.
“Not a nice night,” he said, and then he saw the strangeness in her eyes. She did not recognize him at all.
“It really doesn’t hurt,” she said. “And you won’t remember, or forget anything.”
As he lifted the crossbow again, something flashed beside him and struck it from his hand. He turned to face a Stranger in metal armor, projectile weapon pointing at his face. Perhaps the one that had killed Luceel.
The Stranger spoke, and the metal mask made its voice androgynous. It was a language that Kel had never heard.
The woman nodded, her smile gone, but her eyes still glittering.
The Stranger grabbed Kel’s arm, squeezing so hard that he cried out in pain. It started dragging him along the path, so fast that he had to run to regain his feet and keep pace with it. He looked over his shoulder at the woman, but she had already turned her back on him, and she soon disappeared once again into shadow.
He could reach for a knife and try to find the weak spot in this Stranger’s neck armor… but it would rip his arm off in a beat. Whether it knew who he was and what he had done, or thought him just another catch, Luceel’s body was testament to the fact that they were not averse to killing.
Kel began to panic, weighing what he must do against the chances of success. He could let himself be led away, and every step he took would lessen the final chance he had of communicating with the Core. Or he could fight and risk death, seeking that small chance at escape.
O’Peeria told him to fight. Namior urged him to go calmly and await a better chance.
But the decision was taken from him. In the beat when he decided to reach for his knife, another Stranger appeared from behind a pile of smashed trees and fractured buildings washed up onto the hillside. It grabbed his free arm and held on just as tightly.
Kel cried out again. And the Strangers exchanged something that could only have been a laugh.
Chapter Ten
transition
THEY PASSED THE last of the buildings and started uphill, out of the river valley and toward the plains above. The Strangers were dragging him in the exact direction Kel wanted to go, and every step increased his dread.
If their intention had been to kill him, they would have done so already.
He walked quickly between them. Their grips on his arms loosened a little, but they were still tight enough to hurt. Neither Stranger spoke, and though he considered saying something, their inhuman metal masks encouraged only silence.
The landscape was lit by weak moonlight, and their route up the hillside was treacherous. I could fall, Kel thought, and roll, and take them with me, and hope the weight of their suits increases their impact. But that was desperation more than a plan, and he put the idea to the back of his mind. Upriver slightly was Helio Bridge, a hundred steps high and four hundred long, spanning the river and the narrowing valley from side to side. If I can slip from their grip …
But he had been lucky fighting one of the things, once; he doubted that the same luck would hold with two of them. They would catch him and throw him from the bridge.
Up, out of the valley, and he wondered whether they were beyond the scope of the magical interference. For the first time, he wished he was more welcoming and in tune with the language of the land, because perhaps then he could sense it well enough to know. And if it did speak back to him up there, he’d struggle free and plant a communicator before they killed him. But there was no whisper of magic, and such sacrifice would be pointless unless he was certain.
He thought of Namior and pleaded to the Black that she still be alive.
The Strangers hauled him up a steep bank, and as they neared the top Kel saw a glow from somewhere beyond.
“No fighting,” the Stranger to his left said, his voice heavily accented. “Do what’s told you. You’re a good one. Strong. Don’t make us kill you.” They reached the top of the bank.
The first thing Kel saw was another one of the black towers, identical to the one being built above Drakeman’s Hill and those he and Namior had seen on the island. It was fifty steps high and tapering, curving inward toward the village below and behind them. A machine crawled across its flat upper surface, slowly making it taller. It seemed to swallow moonlight, giving off nothing but a dull blackness.
At the foot of the tower lay the source of the glow. Se
veral light balls floated above a flat area, giving faint illumination to the people gathered there and the fence that kept them contained. To the left of the compound, a long, low building seemed to squat like a huge beetle ready to leap, several legs on either side propping it upright. A Komadian entered the building, and Kel had the distinct impression it was a machine acting as a temporary shelter.
The people in the compound were from Pavmouth Breaks. He knew some of them by name, recognized others. They sat huddled together on the heathers and grass, sharing blankets and warmth. Some slept. Others simply stared past the fence that imprisoned them.
“What are you doing?” Kel muttered, but the Strangers nudged him on without responding.
They headed down a slight slope toward the compound, and every step of the way Kel knew he could not go in there. Once trapped, his options were drastically reduced, and the two communicators seemed to gather weight in his pocket. He looked left and right, but the Strangers were keeping close, and they’d see it the beat he made a break. They’d shoot him down. And dead, he’d be no use to anyone.
As they neared the fence, Kel saw that the heavy chains strung between uprights were of uneven construction, and there were small, boxy machines at irregular intervals along their runs. The chains extruded from their surfaces, and weak light glimmered around their sharp edges. The machines themselves were keeping the people trapped.
“In,” one of the Strangers said. A section of chain before Kel dipped, just low enough for him to step over. He felt expectant eyes upon him.
“No,” he said.
One of the Strangers leveled his projectile weapon, the other pulled a sword.
Kel drew a short knife from his belt. The Stranger stopped, and its shoulders started to shake. Then it laughed.
“In!” it said. It charged at Kel, knocked the knife aside with its metal forearm and lifted him, dropping him over the lowered chain and onto the ground.
By the time he’d sat up, the chain was raised again. He stared across it at the two Strangers, but they were already walking away. One headed back toward the village, the other walked along the fence to the low building beyond. He wanted to shout at them. Wanted to call one back and try, just try to find that weak spot, desperate to feel the warm flow of blood across his hand and arm once more.
