Dusk n-1

by Tim Lebbon

  Here was their target. Here was magic. And it was mere seconds from their grasp.

  TREY HAD FOUGHTfledge blights, vampire bats and cave snakes. Several years ago his cave had battled a plague of the snakes, vicious serpents whose normally pleasing song had been turned shrill and threatening by some weird disease. They had made away with three babies before the men had time to band together and hunt them into the tunnels. Normally creatures such as these would easily elude capture, easing into holes and cracks that could never be penetrated by the fledge miners, however supple evolution had made them. But these creatures had not only grown mad with their illness, but large as well. It gave them a hunger that could not be allayed, and their incessant eating-each other, cave creatures, the babies they had caught-made them large and ungainly. The hunt had been short and brutal. The fat snakes had come apart under the onslaught of the miners’ disc-swords, spilling things onto the cave floor that did not bear closer examination.

  That had been a killing, not a fight. The snakes had not fought back. And they had not screamed in ear-shattering rage as they came at him.

  The Red Monk had been severely lacerated by its encounters with some of the reanimated machines. Its right arm was all but severed, hanging on by threads of gristle and shredded robe. Blood spewed from wounds in its chest and stomach, and Trey knew that this thing should be dead. Its wounds were fatal, surely, and yet it charged like a fledge blight in full ferocity, its voice louder, its rage more obvious, its blooded sword raised high in its left hand. Trey was too stunned to act.

  Kosar’s sword saved his life. The thief stepped between them and lashed out, stumbled as the Monk fell at his feet, stepped in quickly, stabbed down and jumped back again. It screeched and writhed and Trey, instantly shamed by his inaction, swung his disc-sword. It caught the Monk beneath the chin and whipped up its head, burying itself in the jawbone and holding fast.

  The Monk opened its mouth, but the scream was choked with blood. It turned to look at Trey. The movement forced the jammed disc-sword handle down toward the ground, and though the pain must have been immense the Monk cast its rage-red gaze upon him, marking him in case it had a future.

  “Back!” Kosar hissed. He lunged in and stabbed at the floored Monk again, his sword finding and parting flesh.

  Trey squatted, twisted and wrenched at the disc-sword handle until the blade screeched free. The Monk howled and thrashed on the ground, its sword lashing out, and Kosar cursed and staggered back, bleeding hand splayed out before him like a wounded spider.

  “Kosar?” Trey said.

  “I’m all right. Just watch it!”

  Trey lunged with his disc-sword again and again, but the Monk’s mad thrashing seemed to throw off every parry and thrust. The thing stood and advanced, coming straight for Trey. Its lower jaw was hanging by a few red threads, teeth glistening with blood, and the hissing sound must have been its best attempts at a scream. The miner stood his ground and worked his disc-sword, sending the blade at its tip spinning, catching the last of the daylight on its bloodied rim. The Monk aimed a clumsy strike with its sword, which Trey deflected and countered. Another wound opened through its torn robes. He struck again, aiming high for the Monk’s throat and face, but the disc-sword glanced from its bony forehead and took only skin.

  Trey looked around, making sure that Hope, Alishia and Rafe were safe, then turned back to see the Monk’s sword swinging at his face.

  Kosar screamed and deflected the blow, stepping once again between Trey and the demon. He kicked the Monk and sent it sprawling.

  Trey stepped forward to slice at the fallen enemy, but Kosar held him back. “No,” the thief panted. “No need.”

  The Monk went to stand but the ground beneath it lifted, an area three steps on edge rising straight up and then folding inward as the wakened machine found its purpose. The Monk was enveloped by green-veined rock, and this strange new machine crushed in and down like a flower in reverse. The Monk’s death was quick and horrific. It took only a few seconds for the machine to retreat belowground once again, leaving little more than a disturbed patch of sod to mark its place.

  “Took its time,” Trey gasped.

  “I suppose they think we should be doing some of the work,” Kosar said. He smiled at Trey, then winced and looked at his wounded hand. Blood glistened blackly in the dusky light, though Trey could not tell how bad the wound was. He did not want to ask.

  “What’s that?” Hope suddenly screamed. “What’s that?” The fear in the old witch’s voice was shocking. Even above the continuing sounds of battle, and the screams of new waves of Monks forging into the valley, her voice held power. Trey had never heard anyone sounding so terrified. His first reaction was to look at Hope, and she was pointing straight up at where the death moon was even now manifesting from the gloom.

  Trey saw the shapes high in the sky. They were still within the sun’s influence, but it did little to illuminate them. They were shadows against the dark blue background. And they were growing. Trey looked around at the dozens of battling machines-newly enfleshed arms spinning Monks through the air, great metal fists pounding them into the ground, spinning blades rending them in two, a hundred more of the bloody demons dodging between the magical constructs and coming closer, closer-and he wondered why he felt the true threat coming from elsewhere.

  “Hawks?” Kosar said.

  “Not this low,” Hope said. “Not this low! They live and die high up out of sight. The pressure’s too much for them down here. They’re not of the land. Unless…”

  “Unless what?” Trey demanded.

  The witch did not take her eyes from the shapes growing larger above them. “Unless something’s steering them.”

  “The Mages,” a voice said. Trey looked down at Rafe where he lay at Hope’s feet. “The Mages are here.” He slowly hauled his hands from the ground, scraping moist earth from between his fingers, and sat up to face his companions. His face was pale and drawn, as if the arrival of dusk had brought defeat upon him.

  Trey hated the expression on the boy’s face. It matched the fear he had heard in Hope’s voice. “What do we do?” Trey asked.

  Rafe did not reply. Does he know? Trey wondered. Can this farm boy really get us out of here? And he began to wonder.

  FIRST THERE WASnothing but pain and shredding, nothing touching the senses but an agony much deeper, searing her wounded soul and burning the exposed endings of her psychic nerves with a cruel conflagration. There was no consciousness of outside, beyond, only of the dark here and now.

  I am in pain. I am under siege. And I am not whole.

  The thoughts seemed alien, and she tried to pull away from them like an animal from fire. But they were not of a single point, they were the point, and they could not be escaped. Her mind quietened and she could accept that, because to think was to hurt. She had no wish to think these things. They made her feel less than she should have been, and although she had no memory of exactly what that was, she knew that she was much reduced.

  The voice that had spoken to her in here had faded away, leaving in its place a pause between breaths. She felt the weight of potential.

  She drifted, afloat in her own mind, the flotsam and jetsam of her memories bobbing by to offer vague, unimaginable glimpses of a story she could never understand. Every time something came out of the darkness the agonies grew, as if revelation promised only pain. Revelation, and realization. Because hidden behind this blackness she sensed a profound knowledge awaiting rediscovery.

  Wisdom and pain, learning and agony. I know that I must not know. But even the ability to create that thought hurt her to the core.

  And then something was coming.

  It was the presence back in her mind, invisible, silent, yet keen as the pain that informed her consciousness. It was huge. Massive in import and effect, terrifying in scope, because it came for her. It must have come for her, because there was nothing else here. Yet far from reducing the little she felt, it made her feel mor
e there, more corporeal, and for the first time since she could remember, Alishia knew her name.

  There is hope in Kang Kang, the presence portrayed, and Alishia had heard of that place.

  Life rises from death, she understood, and she wondered where she factored between the two.

  This is for you. She did not know what that meant. She had no inkling. Yet an instant later, Alishia felt whole again. Whole, and possessed of something extra. Something momentous.

  She opened her eyes and said farewell to the Black.

  “ALISHIA’S AWAKE!” HOPEsaid.

  Rafe nodded. “The magic brought her back.” The boy was still sitting on the ground, staring up at the dark shapes bearing down on them. The sounds of fresh battle filled the air as the machines fell upon the new wave of Red Monks.

  Hope touched the girl’s forehead as she stirred, wondering what was happening inside. She seemed much reduced, as if she had begun to shrink. “Hey!” she said, but the girl did not answer. Her eyes looked through Hope and saw something much more terrifying. “Why did it bring her back?” Hope said to Rafe, but he did not respond.

  Hope let go of the girl and pressed her wrinkled hands to the ground, working her fingers below the surface. Kosar and Trey were shouting to each other, looking up at the shapes growing larger in the dusky sky, yet they had not noticed the change in things. Rafe had sat up, moved his hands from the soil where they had been making sparkling contact for the duration of the battle. And yet still the magic worked. Whatever link he had forged was now redundant, because magic was loose again amongst these machines, meting out memories of better times and clothing them in flesh, blood, stone and wood that had been their makeup all those years ago.

  Hope pressed her hands in deeper, feeling for the change in herself, demanding it. Yet no change came. She whispered an old spell her mother’s mother had once used, but it dispersed in the air with her useless breath.

  And then Alishia blinked again, slowly and heavily, and she stared at Hope. Her eyes were so full of knowledge that the witch fell back. She knows! the witch thought. She knows what I was doing! How could she know that, unless…?

  Rafe was staring at the sky, as if welcoming the coming attack.

  “Rafe,” Hope said, pleading, demanding, but though he turned to her his eyes offered nothing.

  “They’re coming,” he said. “Cataclysm falls so soon. It’s out of my hands.”

  There was a pause in the battle then, a moment so brief that Hope thought she might have imagined it between blinks. Swords must have been drawn back, waiting to fall again. Red Monks’ breaths were hauled in for the next exhalation of agony. Machine limbs paused between stretches, rusted joints poised to find themselves whole again, denuded metal bones reveling in the softness of new flesh. There was silence, an instant of peace, and when the cacophony began again everything had changed.

  The ground around Hope, Alishia, Rafe, Kosar and Trey rumbled and rose, two dozen ribs the thickness of a man’s thigh piercing the sky from the ground, curving up and around, and even before the ribs met above and formed a protective cage they had changed from rusted red to silvery gray, catching and reflecting the first gleams of the death moon.

  “We’re caged in!” Hope hissed.

  “They’re caged out.”

  And from above, the promise of death descending.

  LUCIEN MALINI FLEDthat valley of death. Almost dead himself, he crawled up to the ridge and down the other side, rolling, leaving bloody marks on the ground behind him. It was lost. It was all lost, all hope, lost to the Mages and those machines awoken here. The land would know magic again and he would see its influence, and that enraged him. Pain was chewing him up now, driving his rage to new levels in failure. He rolled, stood, tripped and rolled again, knowing that all there was left to do was to take whatever petty revenge he could find. He would go to that Shantasi bitch’s body and hack it to small shreds, bathe in her blood and use it to replace his own. That image would keep him alive for the next few minutes, at least.

  But when he reached the place where she had fallen her body was already being taken apart. He saw the last of it spread and melt away, red turning to gray. And as he fell to his knees and screamed he saw the trees and rocks and ground around him shift, move, melt down into a billion tiny parts. They merged with the disintegrated Shantasi and flowed away to the east.

  Perhaps it was simply his vision failing him at the point of death. Or maybe it was something much more important than that; something for him to follow. And that thought alone gave him back a spark of life.

  THE HAWKS FELLout of the sky. Kosar was amazed that they did not leave a trail of burning air behind them, such was their speed and ferocity. He heard the roar of their movement through the air, and maybe they were growling as well. He could see the shapes sitting astride their gnarled necks, and though Rafe had spoken their names Kosar could not believe what he was seeing.

  The Mages? Here, now, already?

  For so long they had been the stuff of legend and campfire tales, an evil three centuries old that, though horrendous, had faded slowly away. Time could not extinguish their wrongdoing, but it had smoothed the sharp edges, shedding the intricate details of their crimes and leaving only the wide-scale stories of magic gone bad and war, conflict and death across the length and breadth of Noreela. The results could still be seen and felt, but Kosar had never known a time when the land was untainted. He had seen many strange and horrible sights in his travels, but he had not consciously attributed them to the Mages. They simply were.

  And now within seconds, the Mages were going to attack.

  “What do we do?” he said. “What can we do?”

  “They’ll never stop,” Trey whispered. “They’ll smash right through us!”

  “They want Rafe alive; they’re not here to kill him.”

  “It doesn’t look like that to me,” Kosar said.

  He could see their faces now, and he was surprised at how human they looked. Fearsome, furious, but human.

  Night filled the valley.

  The machine caging the five humans began to vibrate, the sensation originating from belowground and shimmering up the tall ribs enclosing them.

  When the hawks were only seconds away, slowing down, extending their clawed feet to grasp on to the huge machine, an explosion of light burst from the point where the ribs met and splashed up and out to meet them.

  Kosar squinted against the sudden brightness, shielded his eyes and fell to the ground. There were screams from above them, perhaps hawk, perhaps human. When he looked again a few seconds later the sky was clear and the hawks were skimming the ground away from them, shedding specks of light like embers from a disturbed fire. More sparks erupted as their riders slashed and hacked at machine and Monk alike.

  “What was that?” Trey hissed.

  “The machine protecting us,” Rafe said. “It can fight them, but I doubt it’ll hold them off forever. It’s a distraction. If they can satisfy themselves with fighting the Monks and the other machines in the valley-and they must be raging for blood after so long-then perhaps we can get away.”

  “‘Perhaps’? Get away how?” Hope was on her feet, staring up at the huge ribs catching the moonlight.

  Rafe smiled. “As I said, it’s out of my hands.”

  Kosar and Trey stood beside Alishia and Rafe, still nursing their weapons but more distracted now by the vibrations in the ground beneath their feet, the shimmering of air between the ribs. Something was happening-something invisible and momentous-and the potential filling the air was palpable. Kosar tried to slow his breathing but fear sped it along. I’ve just seen the Mages, been within a spear’s throw of the demons of the land. And I’m still alive. For now.

  “What was the light?” he said.

  “Magic fending off the Mages, that’s all that need concern us,” Rafe said.

  “Magic,” Alishia whispered.

  “Is it still in you?” Kosar asked Rafe. “Are you still carryi
ng it? Isn’t it free now? Isn’t this the moment magic comes back to the land?”

  Rafe frowned, staring out through the cage at the struggling shadows beyond. “I think this is only happening here,” he said. “It’s taking a lot of effort.”

  “So how long does it last?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Long enough for us to get away?” Trey asked. He was kneeling beside Alishia now, touching her face and hands. “Otherwise, what’s the point? If magic protects us like this-reanimates the machines, defends us against the Monks… the Mages!… why would it not save us for good?”

  “I don’t know,” Rafe said again. The ground shook once more, a vibration that sent a heavy, rumbling groan up into the air. It mingled with the sounds of battle.

  The cage altered in the dark, and when Kosar looked closer he saw that the metallic ribs had turned back to bone.

  “We’re going to fly,” Alishia said.

  “What woke you?” Kosar asked. He suddenly did not trust her. He did not trust anyone, not now that A’Meer was likely dead and he was here amongst strangers again. Alishia looked at him and her eyes were both beautiful and terrifying. For a librarian, she’s seen so much, Kosar thought.

  Seeing past the ribs, he could just make out details of the fight. The three dark shapes had seemingly shaken off the effects of the light and were now hovering above different parts of the valley, their riders slipping sideways in their saddles and entering into battle. Kosar could not tell what they fought-Monk or machine-but he knew that the Mages would find enemies in both. The previously simple battle had now turned into a three-way fight. That suited him fine. Let the Mages and Monks and machines battle it out, so long as they left them alone

  …

  Something, Kosar thought. Something is happening, now, beneath our feet. I can feel it. Like tumblers rolling beneath the ground, as if to change the shape of the land itself.

  “Fly…” Alishia said again, dreamy and light.

  A roar came in from the distance and a huge shape reared above the horizon, a hawk standing on its tentacles and grappling with something less recognizable. A fiery exhaust burst from the machine and scorched the ground, and the hawk rider lashed out with some unknown weapon, the weapon itself carrying fire, wrapping around the machine’s base and bringing it down with an earth-shaking crunch. The hawk screeched again, but this time in triumph.