Dawn (40 page)

“You’re killing it,” Kosar said. The Monk did not reply.

Always conscious of the movement, smelling the heat of the creature above the more subtle aroma of desert spices, hearing its pain but never sensing it slowing down, Kosar drifted away.

THE MOL’STERIA DESERT
is part of our border,
A’Meer said. They were outside the Broken Arm tavern in Pavisse, sitting on its crumbling windowsill and drinking Old Bastard from battered metal tankards. Kosar remembered the day well. It had been hot and dry, and he and A’Meer had drunk all day and fucked all night. It was at the time when their lives could have changed drastically. If Kosar had not packed and left three weeks later without saying why, the future would have been a very different place.
We have Sordon Sound to the north,
A’Meer continued,
and Ventgoria and the Poison Forests past that. And the desert itself…it’s not the best of places, Kosar. It’s dangerous. Shantasi warriors have gone out there and never come back. The desert is a whole world, and the surface you see is only a small part of it.

So New Shanti is impregnable,
Kosar said. Back then he hadn’t known that A’Meer was a Shantasi warrior. He believed she had left of her own accord, and mixing with a Shantasi excited him. Many people did not like them. Few trusted them, and some called them whiters because of the paleness of their skin. Right then, he was beginning to believe that maybe he loved her.

She drank more ale. Her skin never darkened even in such intense sunlight. Her black hair was loose today, flowing down over shoulders that he would be biting and scratching later that night. This memory was a full, rich place, echoing with the future as well as that moment in time. She opened her mouth to speak, and for an instant she seemed to gape, echoing the mimic’s representation of her.

Not impregnable,
she said.
But safe.

Then why did you leave?

She smiled at him.
Where’s the fun in safe?
And he saw a wealth of experience and knowledge in her eyes that he knew he would never match.

ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER
place, another mug of ale. They sat on a quay beside the river in Pavisse, watching fishing boats bring in their meager catch and the fishermen haul them ashore. Some fish were dead and stinking already, while others were mutated. The fishermen carried small knives to kill those that were wrong, slicing them in two and throwing them back into the River Pav. They produced a slick of all that was foul with the land.

Look at that,
Kosar said. He was more than a little drunk. His fingers were hurting a lot that day, and sometimes alcohol dulled the pain. A’Meer could do that too. She had a special way of soothing his fingers, and later she would do it for him.
Just look at that! People eat stuff from that river. Can you believe it? Would you?

You eat sheebok meat, Kosar.

Yes, but the sheebok I see aren’t all twisted up like that.

Aren’t they? Many have three horns. There’s a herd in a farm north of Pavisse with four eyes each.

But their meat’s still fine.

Is it?

Kosar stared at her, and for a moment her wisdom annoyed him. She always seemed to know what was best. Perhaps he was
too
drunk.

Well, it’s all we have,
he said.

Yes. All we have. But maybe someday things will change.

Kosar spat into the river. A dead fish with beaks instead of eyes floated by.
Nothing will change,
he said.
Noreela is dying. There’s a cancer in its soul, and it’s dying.

Think positive, lover,
A’Meer said, and she leaned over and bled his anger with a kiss.
There’s always hope. You just have to watch for it, and grab it while you can.

HE DREAMED OF
A’Meer for a long time. Sometimes they were honest memories of what had happened and how things had been, other times they were tainted with his knowledge of everything that would come to pass. She spoke to him and smiled, groaned as she bent over a chair, offering herself to him, and she gave him her wisdom and hope whether he liked it or not. Usually he did not. But it stuck, mostly in places he did not recognize. And even though each successive dream became darker with the knowledge of her impending death at the hands of Lucien Malini, Kosar reveled in these memories. It was as though he had been given one final moment with her. He made it count.
I love you,
he thought many times over, and her eyes lit up throughout his memory to show him that for her, the same was true.

SOMETHING BROUGHT KOSAR
out of his deep sleep. He was watching A’Meer prepare a rabbit for cooking and then the rabbit grunted, loud and hard. He felt the dream recede and reality reassert itself around him, and another loud grunt forced his eyes open.

He was still lying atop of the creature, and it was running at full speed along the base of a low ravine. It dodged this way and that, passing around rocks tumbled from the ravine walls and leaping the long-dried streambed.

“Attack,” a voice whispered. Kosar sat up, turned around and saw the Monk pulling an arrow from his hip. He hissed as the barbed head came out.

“Who?” But he did not have to ask. Ahead and to the right, halfway up the ravine’s slope, A’Meer rose from behind a rock and fired an arrow at them.

Kosar was too astonished to duck. The arrow glanced from the animal’s bony forehead and tumbled into the night. He searched for A’Meer but she had already vanished. He saw a flash of movement farther along the ravine as something crossed from right to left. He squinted, saw another movement from the corner of his eye and turned left to see A’Meer stepping into view. She raised a crossbow and fired, and below him the creature jumped and grumbled in pain.

“A’Meer!” Kosar shouted, confused by his dream memories, but he knew that he was wrong. These Shantasi were not A’Meer. Something flashed across the ravine a few steps ahead of the galloping creature, waited until they were close and then leapt onto its back. Kosar hardly had time to perceive the movement before a male Shantasi stood astride him. The warrior held one arm out for support and raised a sword in his other.

“We’re here to see the Mystics!” Kosar shouted, but the Shantasi’s eyes did not change. He brought the sword down.

Sparks flew as Lucien blocked the blow with his own sword. The Monk shoved hard and the Shantasi tumbled from the creature, disappearing in a cloud of dust.

“We don’t have long!” Lucien said.

“We’re no enemy!” Kosar shouted.
Red Monk,
he thought.
They’ll see me with him and kill me without asking questions.
“Lucien, don’t fight back,” he said. He stood, holding on to his looped belt with one hand, knees bent as he braced himself on the running animal’s back.

Two crossbow bolts whizzed past his head from different directions. He saw movement on both sides of the ravine, but he could not focus.
Using their Pace,
he thought.
We don’t have a chance.

“We bring hope,” he shouted. “We need to see the Mystics! The Mages are here, but we have an advantage. Kill us and you’ll never know what that was.”

He saw something ahead, and for a moment it confused Kosar. Straight lines did not belong in this place. It was only a second before the creature ran into the taut rope that he realized what it was.

The animal’s legs were snapped from beneath it, and Kosar and Lucien flew from its back. For a second Kosar was flying, then the ground pulled him down and he tried to curl in his arms and legs, folding his head in his arms, wondering whether his broken body could take any more abuse before giving out entirely.

He did not even recall hitting the ground.

“WHO ARE YOU?”

Kosar opened his eyes and stared up into the face of a Shantasi warrior. She was bigger than A’Meer had been, her pale face divided with a diagonal scar that ran from the corner of her left eye and sliced her lips in two. Her dark hair was cropped short.

“Kosar,” he said.

“Thief?”

He nodded. She had seen his hands.

“Did you steal that Shantasi sword on your hip?”

“No, I was given it by a friend.”

“What friend?”

“A’Meer Pott. A Shantasi warrior.”

“And where is she now?”

“Dead.”

The Shantasi blinked. “You travel with a Red Monk.” There was more surprise than accusation in her voice, and Kosar thought,
Perhaps I stand a chance.

“He’s one of the last,” Kosar said. Talking hurt. He tried to move, figure out where else he was hurt, but the Shantasi leaned in and pressed the point of a sword into the hollow of his throat.

“Move and you die! Now…the Monk. We’re close to killing it, but my squad is intrigued.”

“Don’t kill him,” Kosar said. “He’s one of the last, and his meaning has changed.”

“Magic is back. Dark magic. What meaning does a Monk have left in this world?”