Dawn (39 page)

Lenora knew that she was being foolish. As she ran here and there, ducking sword swipes, making another corpse with her own blade, she knew that she should have forged through this park on her machine, let it do the killing while she thought on ahead. But the absence of that voice in her mind was disturbing her. She would have welcomed the absence were it not for the little girl she saw reflected in windows and ponds.
At least here there’s nowhere to see her,
she thought, but she was wrong. As she grappled with one man, jamming a knife into his back as he hugged her tight, she saw the girl’s face in his eyes.

The shade passed through the park and bodies rose to continue the killing. Wives gasped their relief at seeing husbands stand, then screamed as they fell together. Children ran toward shambling parents, mothers smothered daughters and the dead soon outnumbered the living.

Lenora stood by her machine, certain that she would see a little girl’s form emerge from between the trees. She would hear her first—there were more leaves dead on the ground than remained on the branches—but the sounds of destruction were drawing nearer every second. The skies to the north were alight, and sparks and burning embers were drifting down all across the park. Lenora could hear the fire’s roar even from this distance.

South,
she thought.
I should go south out of the city, find the plains again where there is nowhere for her to stare from.
But there were always the eyes of dying men and women, and the sheened surface of her sword. Lenora knew that the girl was beyond her control.
I said soon,
she thought.
I said I’d find you and avenge you soon.

Is this living?
that voice said again, at last.
Is this what I missed?

BEYOND THE PARK
Lenora saw a girl darting from door to door, shadow to shadow. She urged her machine after the child, had it pick her up and deposit her on its back.

“Are you her?” Lenora asked. The girl was screaming, her dark skin livid with sweat, eyes wide with terror. “You’re not her.” Lenora threw the girl aside without even bothering to kill her.

SHE WAS STICKY
with blood. It coated her from head to foot, settling on old wounds and seeming to burn its way in. New wounds added their immediacy to her pains: the arrow through her arm, crossbow bolt in her ankle, a cut to the side of her neck and a stab wound in her back, deep and painful and in need of attention.
You’re immortal!
Ducianne had once said to her, many years before.
You’re the one who came from Noreela with the Mages. Immortal, just like them.
On occasion Lenora wondered just how true this could be—Angel had touched her on that ship and brought her back from the brink of death, after all. But many times since then she had felt mortality closing in, and she often thought that the older she grew, the more difficult her death would be. Such an unnaturally long life must come with a price.

Maybe this is it,
she thought.
Maybe on Noreela I’ll be haunted into death by the shade of my unborn child.
She craved revenge on the people of Robenna more than ever, but as she fought her way through Noreela City she began to wonder whether vengeance could change anything.

The south of the city was more heavily populated than the north. People had fled down here during the fighting, or perhaps some of them had received word of what was to come. Riders from the north, maybe. Or maybe they simply expected the worst when the sun failed to rise.

Lenora lost her mind in a haze of killing. Fires erupted across her vision. Krotes rode by on their machines, red with reflected flames and blood. Some of them decorated machines with the heads of their victims, and one or two bore a dozen heads that still spat, rolled eyes, lolled tongues. The Mages’ shade was everywhere in Noreela City tonight.

The militia were mostly wiped out in the north, but some remained in the south, barricading themselves in thick-walled buildings with hundreds of Noreelans, thinking that perhaps the invaders would pass them by for easier prey. But they did not understand the Krotes. Machines punched holes in walls and pumped in fire, and the interiors of many structures turned into firestorms, windows and walls imploding as the conflagrations raged.

The living dead walked here too. Sometimes they seemed aimless, but when they found a Noreelan they went mad, scratching and tearing with their hands, kicking, crushing, slicing if they carried a weapon. Lenora wondered what drove them, and she thought perhaps it was jealousy. It would suit Angel’s humor to use magic to raise the dead to be jealous of the living.

The Krotes gave them a wide berth and let them continue on their way.

NOREELA CITY HAD
many hidden places. Not only did streets and alleys cross and confuse themselves with courtyards and squares, but steps and tunnels led below buildings, entering those unknown areas beneath foundations where walls far older than the city still stood and the languages written on the walls were long forgotten. There were caves and catacombs even deeper, home to dropouts and the dregs of society: fodder, fledge miners driven mad with the fledge rage, Bajuman and criminals. These stretched the length and breadth of Noreela City and perhaps farther, with entrances hidden in the basements of taverns, houses and tumbled temples to ancient gods. Many knew of these places, but few talked about them openly. Some said that there were creatures guarding the entrances, monstrous hybrids of wolf and snake that could move through narrow spaces, yet take off a man’s head with one bite.

When the Krotes found these entrances, they closed them forever. But not before guiding a few of the reanimated dead inside first.

WHEN LENORA FOUND
herself at the city’s southern gates there were hundreds of Krotes already out on the plain, resting under the light of the moons. Their machines steamed and clicked where they cooled in the long grass. She passed through the remains of the gates and welcomed the sudden cool breeze flowing in from the west. The smoke was stinging her eyes and the constant stench of blood was making her queasy. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, and when she opened them again there was a little girl watching her from a hundred steps away.

The girl stood still. She was wearing a white dress stained with a spray of blood across one shoulder. She stared, her hands fisted at her sides, her blond hair hanging in loose braids at either side of her face. From this distance Lenora could not see her eyes, but there was no smile. There was
nothing.
The girl stared as though she could not even see the burning city. “That’s not you,” Lenora whispered.

She rode on, lowered her machine to the ground and dismounted. She closed her eyes.
Not you,
she thought.
You’re not here.
When she looked again the little girl was still there, and still not the thing haunting Lenora.

The old warrior looked around. To her left a Krote sat beside his machine, rubbing his hands with a scrap of cloth. He was breathing so hard that she heard it above the burning city. However hard he rubbed, the blood remained. Farther away, two more Krotes were standing before each other, not talking. One looked down at his feet, one stared up into the strange sky, both of them lost for anything to say.

Breaking through these stunned silences were the victorious calls and cheers of other warriors. Some rode across the fields on their blooded machines, others dismounted and shared stories of the slaughter. But it was the silent Krotes that troubled Lenora the most because she knew that, like her, they were looking inward.

A sudden queasiness hit her, bending her double as her stomach clenched and vomit exploded from her mouth. She spat, vomited some more, wiping away the mess and feeling it burning on her skin. There was blood in there, and perhaps some of it was her own.

And then something else arrived.

They’re here!
Lenora thought. And as she stood and wiped her mouth, the death moon was obscured as the Mages flew in.

Chapter 14

THE MOL’STERIA DESERT
began surprisingly quickly: one moment there was more grass and heather beneath their feet than sand; the next, the only plants they saw ahead were occasional sproutings, like hairs growing from boils on an old man’s face. The Red Monk walked ahead, stomping through sand and hardly seeming to notice the change.

But Kosar did notice. He had been smelling hints of the Shantasi spice farms for several hours now, and it seemed that walking on sand opened the desert to his senses. Heat hushed over him, still radiating from the deep sands even though the sun had been gone for more days than he could count. The sound of their footsteps was dampened, and the Monk looked like a red wraith floating ahead of him. Moonlight turned the ground gray. Kosar had never been to the desert, and the sense of danger was palpable. It was a place of unknown things that hid from sight behind the dunes or buried beneath the surface. Any of these things could be dangerous.
All
of them could be, and Kosar walked with one hand resting on the hilt of his sword.
Not that I could do much,
he thought.
If something like that sand demon rose against us, it would be down to the Monk to protect me.
He was tired, exhaustion wearing down on him and weakening his legs. He thought he had at least one cracked rib, a heavily bruised nose and cheekbone and a stab wound in his back that refused to stop bleeding. He chewed more of the paste Lucien had made for him, but the pain was tenacious. It found its way through the drugs.

The sand produced a strange heat. He could feel the warmth rising up from the ground and touching the sweat on his skin, turning him cold. But he could also feel the intense chill of the clear dark sky, threatening to suck heat from his body and leave him cold and dead. It would not take long for his corpse to be covered by the shifting sands. He wondered how many other luckless travelers lay dead beneath his feet, and he started watching the ground before him for protruding bones or mummified skin.

They walked from loose sand to hard, a compacted surface that was cracked from lack of moisture. Thin, spiky plants grew from these cracks, their pale roots exploring across the surface of the ground as well as below. In some of these roots Kosar spotted the skeletons of small rodents, wrapped tight. He wondered whether there were larger versions of these plants out there somewhere.

Lucien Malini kept a steady pace that Kosar knew he would not be able to maintain forever. He was thirsty and hungry, weak and tired, and he had no wish to die in the desert. A’Meer may have once walked these sands, and he did not want to melt away beneath her memory.

The Monk stopped. There was something to its left—a large, bulky shadow that seemed to be moving slightly, tipping from left to right. Kosar closed his eyes and opened them again, making sure it was not simply his heartbeat shuddering his vision with every thump.

Lucien turned and stared back at him.

Perhaps this is it,
Kosar thought.
A sand demon ten times bigger than the last, and the Monk knows it’s all over.

“You don’t look like you can walk much farther,” Lucien said. He spoke quietly but his voice carried, unhindered by echoes.

Kosar shook his head, panting.

The Monk motioned him forward and pointed at the shadow with his sword. “We have transport,” he said.

Kosar walked to the Monk.
This thing killed A’Meer,
he thought. He needed to remind himself of that from time to time.

Standing beside Lucien, he looked at the shape that sat a dozen steps from them. It was large, low to the ground, dark gray and still shifting from left to right. There were protuberances on both sides that appeared to be legs, and it seemed that its head was beneath the sand.

“What is it?” Kosar asked.

“I’m not sure of its name,” Lucien said, “but I know it can get us where we need to go faster than walking. Especially with you like that.” One nod at Kosar encompassed the thief ’s entire range of injuries and weaknesses.

“You made me like this,” Kosar said.

“No, I saved you. The Breakers would have killed you in the end.”

“So you killed their children as well?”

Lucien stared at him, his Monk’s eyes dark pits in the scarred ruin of his face. “Breaker children are dangerous too,” he said. “Just one of them would have bettered you in a fight.”

Kosar looked at the large creature burrowing before them. It looked heavy—its back and sides were armored with scales or thick hide—and he could not imagine it moving quickly.

“You stay here,” Lucien said. “I need to find something. This thing on its own can’t move us, but given the right persuasion it will be fast and safe.”

Kosar waved one hand at the Monk without looking, urging him away. Then he sat on the sand and stretched his aching legs before him, pulling back his feet and toes to try to work out the stiffness in his ankles. His face ached, his back was hot and his ribs spiked a sliver of pain through him each time he drew a breath. His heart was hammering with anger.
Stop!
it said.
Stop right now!

“Can’t stop,” Kosar whispered. “There’s nothing left to stop for.” He glanced after the Monk disappearing into the gloom and then back at the large gray thing, its head still beneath the sand. “I wish I could bury myself away,” he said.

The thing grumbled and groaned. Several feet shifted position and it dragged its head a few steps through the sand.

Kosar lay back. The ground gave a comfortable warmth, and that seemed to ease some of his aches. He stared up at the sky and wondered where everything had gone: no stars, no sun, just the death moon almost directly above and the life moon a smear to the left of his vision. Though his back was warm he could feel the coldness up there, sucking the heat from Noreela like the air taking warmth from a corpse. This land was dead already; there were simply those who refused to believe that.

Don’t
believe it,
A’Meer said. Kosar frowned and opened his eyes. He had drifted off without noticing, finding sleep a strange reflection of being awake. He closed his eyes again and let his breathing slow down, and the memory of A’Meer was there, reading his inner thoughts in her own voice. Kosar was pleased, because he saw that below all the bitterness and anger and exhaustion, he still believed there was a chance.

He slept, meeting A’Meer in his memories, and when he smiled at her the pain in his broken cheek woke him again.

WHEN KOSAR SAT
up, the Monk was kneeling beside the desert creature. Lucien kept one fisted hand pressed against his chest, and with the other he was trying to prize the creature’s head up out of the sand. “Some help?” he asked, and Kosar hauled himself to his feet.

“What are you trying to do?”

“Feed it these.” Lucien opened his hand briefly to show Kosar several squirming shapes, each the size of his thumb.

“Why?”

The Monk sighed. “Help me raise it and feed it, then I’ll have time to tell you while they start acting.”

“You’re poisoning it? Killing it? Or seeking the truth like you bled it from me?”

“Do you think this thing will know anything useful? We need a ride. Now help me, or prepare for a fifty-mile walk across the desert.”

Kosar leaned across the creature’s stretched neck and grabbed hold of the bony collar around the base of its head. Its skin was hard and smooth, abraded by decades of sand and possessing a dull shine. He had to curl his fingers beneath the collar to maintain a grip. Then he pulled. Lucien did the same, and slowly the creature’s head rose out of the sand.

Its big eyes opened and blinked lazily. It looked left at Kosar, forward at Lucien, then it slumped to the ground and rested its scaly head on the sand.

“It looks about as lively as I feel,” Kosar said. “You think this thing will carry us across the desert?”

Lucien opened his hand before the creature’s face, displaying the squirming grubs. “Pace beetles,” he said. “It will carry us. Go and sit down, use your belt and straps to prepare a harness. You’ll need something to hang on to.”

Kosar moved away from the creature, still doubtful. Its legs were short and stumpy and it seemed to want to bury its head beneath the sand again. He wondered what it had been eating down there, but had no wish to find out.

He heard the wet snick of the creature’s mouth opening, then the stony sound of its teeth crunching down on the beetles. He sat down and touched his belt, then shook his head.

Pace beetles,
the Monk had called them.

And then Kosar remembered the Pace that A’Meer had possessed, and how she had never been able to tell him about it. She had called it a secret.

“You know Shantasi secrets?” Kosar called to the Monk.

Lucien looked up, surprised. “Some,” he said. “It seems you do too.”

“Some,” Kosar said. He touched his belt buckle and started to unthread it from his trousers. He had to untie the sword scabbard from it first.
Keeping that
very
close to me,
he thought.

“Monks read a lot,” Lucien said.

“So have you been everywhere?”

Lucien fed another beetle to the prone animal. “Not me. But other Monks have, and they come back and write down what they know, and others learn. We all know the same things.”

“Kang Kang?” Kosar said.

Lucien nodded.

“The Blurring?”

Lucien glanced up at him, dark eyes giving nothing away. “Monks have gone there.”

“And?”

“They never returned.”

“I’ve heard that things are undone there,” Kosar said. The Monk did not answer, so Kosar finished extracting his belt and retying his scabbard to his trousers. The belt was thick leather, decades old and tougher and stronger than the day he stole it from a shop on the Western Shores. He fashioned a tight loop at one end which he could hang on to, and the other he left free, ready to fix it somehow to the creature’s neck collar.

“Almost ready,” Lucien said. “Come and tie your belt to its neck.”

Kosar did so, wedging the belt tight into the creature’s bony collar so that the looped end was free for him to hold. “What about you?” he asked the Monk.

“I’ll be making my own handhold. It’ll need a reason to run.”

MINUTES LATER THE
gray sand creature was pounding across the desert. Kosar hung on to its back, bent low so that he could hold the belt with one hand and its neck collar with the other. He gritted his teeth and squinted, trying to avoid breathing in the clouds of sand thrown up by the thing’s six feet. Its legs had lengthened from its body, long and slender now instead of short and squat, and it ran with an almost graceful gait, hardly rocking at all. Kosar found the rhythm very quickly, leaning left and right to match the creature’s slight sway and yaw. And below and ahead of him, its mouth opened again in a low rumble of agony.

It’ll need a reason to run,
Lucien had said, and behind Kosar the Monk was providing the reason. He sat facing the creature’s rear, his short sword buried to the hilt in the animal’s lower back. There was his handhold.

“Left,” the Monk called, and Kosar tugged slightly on the belt, urging the animal to the left. It seemed just as confident on the soft sands of high dunes as it did on compacted ground. Its long legs ended in wide, flat feet, and they prevented it from sinking, lifting it high and fast up the sides of dunes. On harder, flatter areas its wide feet slapped down and threw it onward. Double-jointed knees dampened the major impacts, giving Kosar and the Monk a soft ride, and soon the rhythms became soporific. Kosar found his eyes closing, head nodding.

Time passed them by, and the creature did not flag. It grumbled now and then, groaned as Lucien twisted his sword or Kosar edged it a fraction to the left or right, but whatever the Pace beetles had given it did not fade away. Kosar noticed spatters of moisture on his face and thought it had begun to rain, but when he looked closer he could see that the animal was foaming at the mouth. He wiped a gob of spittle from his cheek; it was pink with blood. The animal moaned some more, its call starting to sound desperate.