Dawn (31 page)

But however much he tried, however hard, Trey could not fool himself. He would be dead long before he reached Kang Kang.

TREY WALKED ACROSS
the bare ground, craving grass and soil, bracken and heather beneath his feet. He was used to rock, but since coming topside he had realized that rock was merely the bone of the land. The living part of Noreela was what grew and lived upon it.

Where he was now, Noreela felt dead. The stone was cool and uncompromising beneath his feet. His blood splashed darkly across its surface, looking like holes in the moonlight.
At least there’s life there,
he thought. But it would not last for long.

He had no idea how far he had come. He was concentrating too much on placing one foot in front of the other to judge distance, and his only gauge of the passage of time was the need to urinate. He stood still to piss, and ignored the exhaustion that threatened to topple him. If he lay down to rest he was doubtful that he would ever rise again; the bare, dead skeleton of Noreela would suck the life from him and he would lie there forever.

He felt the weight of that unnatural cloud above him, swirling so slowly that its movement was barely noticeable. He glanced up only once, but the sight made him woozy, its weight tugging at him until he was ready to fall.
It may come down,
he thought.
It may all come down again.
But even that fear could not increase his speed.

Then something howled in the darkness. It seemed to come from a long way off at first, but after a pause another cry sounded from much closer. Trey fell to the ground and crawled into a depression in the rock, fearing that the creatures would smell his blood and tear him apart. He had no idea what animals would be wandering here. If Kosar were with him
…

But Kosar had left Alishia in Trey’s care, trusting him with the girl because he knew that Trey thought highly of her.

Trey closed his eyes and thought of Alishia’s beautiful face and the dark, closed mind he had seen on one of his fledge trips. She had been so much like Rafe; so much power hidden away. It was confusing that someone so powerful needed protecting, but it had been the same with Rafe, and he had seen the way that ended.

This won’t be the same!

A creature howled so close that Trey could almost feel the warmth of its breath. Another answered from the distance, and another, and he realized why he had not been able to place where the call came from: there were many of them, not just one. The howls started deep, rising in tone until they almost disappeared from his range of hearing. He could not tell whether they were in pain or on the hunt, harmful or harmless. Whatever they were, they sounded big.

Trey tried to hold his breath. The pain of his wounds was fresh and bright, still lighting corners of his mind but revealing nothing like the dream.

I’ve never heard the Nax,
he thought, and the idea that it was them out there made him gasp.

He caught his breath and held it again, terrified at the silence.

Something walked by. It was moving slowly, yet the footfalls were rapid, as though it had more than four feet. He opened his eyes and looked without moving his head, ready at any moment for a shadow to fall across him and cut the moonlight from view.
I can’t fight. I have no weapon. I’m wounded and bleeding and weak. It’s hopeless.

The creature paused and Trey heard the distinctive sound of something sniffing the air.

No hope since the Nax attacked.

A low growl, rumbling behind a closed mouth.

Something else controlled us with Rafe. So does something steer me even now?

The animal held its breath.

Whatever I do, it’s destined to be.

Trey gasped in another breath, sat up and shouted as loud as he could. Something whined briefly to his left and then dashed away, a huge shadow bounding from rock to rock, multiple limbs slapping down to accompany its squeals of terror. He shouted again, and in the distance he heard similar sounds of fear from the other fleeing creatures.

He screamed again, for himself this time, and with nothing to dampen the scream it echoed across the landscape, perhaps still traveling even when it had passed beyond his own hearing. He sat there panting, sucking in breath after breath to make up for his fear, and he liked to think that his scream would reach Hope, struggling with Alishia flung over her shoulder or leading the girl on foot. Perhaps his cry would make her wish she had remained behind to finish the job, instead of leaving him half dead. Or perhaps not. He thought of her eyes, her rambling, and decided that she was probably too mad to be afraid.

He stood again, easing himself to his feet and fighting the sudden nausea. He could not afford to lose any fluid or the meager contents of his stomach; Hope had left him with nothing, and if this stripped landscape extended much farther he would die from thirst.

Steady, his vision level, Trey started on his way once more.

HE WALKED FOR
a long time, still only counting one footstep after another. He reached a couple of hundred and started again, trying to forget how many times he had done so. He had come a long way. The mountains of Kang Kang loomed closer, approaching almost too fast, as though he were running rather than hobbling. They were taller than he had imagined, harsher, and their peaks glowed white in the moonlight.

Snow,
he thought. He had never seen it. But somehow he knew that snow from Kang Kang was snow never meant to be seen.

His wounds hurt abominably, and the fledge rage blurred the edges of his senses, lodged behind his vision and hiding just below his perception of hearing. It would be so easy to curl up and let the rage smother the physical pain of his wounds. After that would be madness, and after that death, either from blood loss or from his failing heart. Fledgers in the final throes of withdrawal could make an easy choice: accept death, or fight. Most fought.

But his mother had not sacrificed herself so that he could lie down here and die. Maybe she had seen a purpose in his eyes. Perhaps it had always been there, or maybe their flight up from the home-cavern had made her see him in a whole new way. She had slipped away and thrown herself into a deep crevasse, ensuring that she remained underground forever. She had not been sad when she died; he had traveled to her, and she had told him that this was what she wanted. She was slowing him down. Without her, he would stand a chance of reaching the rising and going topside.

She had been right. And now there was something else slowing him down; his wounds, and the rage. If only they would leave him so willingly.

PERHAPS A DAY
passed. Trey fought the urge to sit and rest, fearing that he would not be able to stand again. Many times he believed that he saw Hope and Alishia in the distance, but when he concentrated on the spot where he thought he’d seen movement, the shadows grew still once again.

They can’t be that far ahead,
he thought.
If Hope is carrying the girl, then she’ll be moving as slowly as me, and if Alishia is walking, she’ll be taking a child’s steps.

He saw a haze of shadows moving back and forth over the ground. At first he thought it was his failing vision, but when he stood still he could hear the soft whisper of their movement. They did not change direction to come toward him. They did not pause to stare. They drifted back and forth just above the ground, passing around and through one another without interruption, and Trey diverted around the place the shadows circled. He tried to see—leaned closer than he should, almost feeling a shadow touch his skin—but there was only a hole in the ground. Darkness made it impenetrable. By the time he had left the shadows behind, Trey was glad.

His wounds demanded attention. His bicep was split and still bleeding—movement ensured the wound remained open—and his chest was slashed to the bone. Sometimes he thought he could smell the beginnings of rot, but he put it down to his unwashed body and clothes, that slightly musty smell of age and decay. He hated to attribute it to the injuries. If the smell came from them, then his blood was turning poisonous, and he would be dead in hours.

My disc-sword has tasted Monk blood,
he thought, but he tried to shut that from his mind.

He had no water or food. When he pissed, he caught as much as he could in his good hand and drank it, cringing against the taste but aware that he could not lose the fluid. He had learned harsh lessons from miners who had been trapped for weeks after rockfalls.
Drink your own piss,
they said,
otherwise it’s a waste. And eat your own dead, because if it takes weeks to be dug out that’s all the food you’ll have. At least then they won’t have died in vain.

Kang Kang loomed closer and larger than ever. Sometimes Trey thought he could reach out and touch its mountains, and when he tried, his fingers grew cold, as though buried in the snow capping their upper reaches. Even having spent his life deep beneath the ground, still he knew of Kang Kang. A
wrong
place, someone had called it. Kosar? Hope? He could not recall, but he trusted their words. It felt wrong even now, miles distant and all but hidden by this unnatural dusk. There was something both alluring and repulsive about the mountains, a sense carried in the air and through the ground. He could not make out exactly where that feeling came from, but it confused his already weakened mind and toyed with his fledge-teased senses.

He bent over and almost vomited, shaking his head to rid it of the smells, the tastes, the sounds.

And then he smelled fledge.

He knelt on the rocky ground, and something compacted beneath his left knee. He looked down, trying not to lose his balance—he felt disoriented, unsure of up and down—and lifted his knee. Mud, wet and slick.

He looked up and sniffed again, smelling fledge and feeling his whole body crave its touch on his tongue, its taste in his mind. His joints ached with the rage.

Mud?

And there before him, several hundred steps away, the ground began to show the darker patches of covering once more. He was almost at the edge of the desert of rock.

“Thank the Black,” Trey whispered, and something close by responded with a hiss, and a touch of some vision on his mind.

He saw himself standing there alone and covered with blood, scared, abandoned, a fledger aboveground and as removed from his environment as he could ever be. And as he wondered how he could be seeing himself like this, the smell of fledge grew overpowering and he tipped forward. Before he struck the ground, something came between him and the rock.

Something hot.