Dawn (50 page)

Two eyes on the side of her machine stared up at her, pleading, blinking, and she turned away.
Haunt me, will you, boy?
she thought.
Well, no need. I’m already haunted.

Ducianne rode alongside, grinning from ear to ear. “This is the life, eh, Lenora? This is the life we’ve always meant to live!”

“This is only their advance,” Lenora shouted. “The rest will be hiding past that fire to the south.”

“Shall we send the dead against them?”

Lenora looked back at the huge machines bringing up the rear, their cages alive with thousands of dead Noreelans. “Not yet,” she said. “There’ll be much more than this.”

“Do you think so? Do you think the Shantasi have more to throw at us?”

Lenora glanced left at where a huge shadow fought with a machine. The two seemed evenly matched. It was a dark, twisting thing that seemed to part and merge again with every movement. She turned to Ducianne and shrugged. “Whether they do or not, we’re adding to our army all the time.”

The shade was with them somewhere, flowing back and forth across the corpse-strewn battlefield. Lenora had already seen several dead stand and begin walking south.

“This is the life!” Ducianne shouted again, riding toward a small group of Shantasi.

Lenora drove south, keen to take the fight onward. She passed by several dead Krotes and many dead Shantasi, and it was already apparent who was winning this battle. It had started a few hundred heartbeats ago, and the end was in sight.

I see through you,
her daughter’s shade whispered.
I feel through you, and I hate what I feel.

“You don’t know
how
to feel,” Lenora said, but she regretted her words as soon as they were out.

You teach me everything you know.

“
I
feel.”

For the dead? For the dying?

“Enemy dead, enemy dying!” Lenora launched a hail of blades from her machine, cutting down two Shantasi and the big yellow wolf strung between them. The creature’s blood boiled in the air and sizzled as it struck the ground.

I want my mother,
the shade said.

“I am your mother.”

You’re so different from the mother you could have been…
Its voice faded, though no distance grew. Lenora felt it sitting in her mind, watching, feeling, and her scream could have been rage, or anguish.

THE BATTLE ENDED
quickly. The Shantasi First Army had been determined and vicious, and the Krote machines cut down dozens at a time. Near the end many Krotes dismounted and took on the remaining warriors themselves, enjoying the chance for true swordplay. Fights went on for some time, the Shantasi already filled with the knowledge that they were the final few left alive. Lenora respected their tenacity; none of them dropped their swords and submitted to their fate. They all fought hard and died hard, and one or two even defeated one Krote opponent before being taken down by the next.

By the time the last Shantasi was killed, the transport machines were harvesting the first of the new living dead and dropping them into their cages.

Lenora ordered a brief halt, wanting to take stock of the fight and see how badly her force had been damaged. Ducianne rode back and forth gathering reports, and Lenora slipped from her machine and knelt on the ground, eyes closed.

“Leave me alone,” she said to her daughter’s shade. “For a while, please leave me alone. There’s work to do here, and then I’ll come for you.” But the shade only retreated to brood silently deep within her mind.

“Mistress, we’ve lost thirty machines and fifty warriors. And all the flyers are gone.”

Lenora looked up to her friend. Ducianne was frowning through a crust of drying blood. She knew that something was wrong. “That’s not too bad,” Lenora said. “Gather everyone here. We push for Kang Kang in an hour.”

“Are you hurting, Lenora?”

Strange way to ask,
Lenora thought.
Hurting, not hurt.
She stood and shook her head, sheathing her sword and stretching. Her old joints clicked, several new wounds cooling as blood clotted them shut. “I’m old, Ducianne, you forget that. I’m not a youngster like you.”

Ducianne nodded and rode away. Lenora knew that her friend was not comfortable with Lenora’s unnatural age, how it could be or who had allowed it.

Lenora stretched again and turned to her machine. It watched her, and was that condemnation she saw in those blank eyes, or merely the reflection of her own? “Your night is far from over,” she said. She turned south and walked a few hundred steps in that direction, leaving the hustle of the Krotes behind and facing the true darkness of Kang Kang.
That’s no place to be,
she thought, and a shimmer of fear passed through her. She was surprised, and pleased. Fear showed that she was truly ready to face whatever they found once they entered that range of mountains.
No place at all.

Chapter 19

HOPE FOLLOWED ALISHIA,
following the path. Sometimes the girl tired and Hope carried her, slung across both arms or resting over a shoulder. Other times the girl seemed to be the strong one, forging barefoot through the thickening snow, climbing ever higher. The path guided them, and Alishia seemed happy to allow that. Whatever she had seen—wherever she had been—Hope had no choice but to let the girl’s trust carry them forward.

Many things in Kang Kang were strange, but the path wended its way between them. It was almost as though the path was outside Kang Kang, a tributary of normality carrying them through this place that should not be. They heard, saw and smelled things that defied explanation—the cries of children where there were none, great trees rooted in nothing, fruit stinking of blood hanging on those same trees’ branches—but the path was always there, true and straight. Even covered with snow it was still the obvious route.

Hope had to tear and tie up Alishia’s dress when it started to tangle in her feet. Her top as well, twisted tighter beneath the coat that could not be so easily adjusted. She became chubby around her stomach and cheeks, even though Hope had not seen her eat anything for some time. Her voice changed, but not the words. Alishia still spoke like an adult, and sometimes she repeated the things Hope had heard her muttering whilst asleep, the language of the land that she pretended not to understand.

She knows so much,
Hope thought.
I’m due what she knows. It’s coming to me, as I’ve always known it should.
She stared at the back of Alishia’s head as they walked higher into the mountains. Occasionally the girl turned and smiled at the witch, and Hope always smiled back. She could feel the tattoos flexing beneath her skin, the coolness of Kang Kang seeping up through her shoes and into her bones, the windchill penetrating her clothing in an attempt to freeze her old woman’s heart. But it had been frozen long before now, and her obsession kept her warm.

They walked across the sides of mountains, along ridges, down into valleys that held reservoirs of darkness and unknown things. Hope heard sounds from the darkness at either side of the path, growls, something chomping on something else, mournful tears. She ignored them, as did Alishia. That was Kang Kang trying to distract them from where they were going.

Then why is it also leading us?
Hope kicked at the snow covering the path, finding only pebbles and stones underneath that told her nothing. Alishia paused ahead, turned around and waited, urging Hope on with a quick wave of her small hand.

“Not far,” the girl said.

Hope’s breath froze in her chest. “We’re almost there?”

“Not far,” Alishia said again. She frowned and looked at her bare feet, her large coat flapping at her shoulders as wind blew down from heights they still could not see.

“Lead on,” the witch said. Alishia nodded and started walking again. She tilted her head to the side now and then, and at first Hope thought she was trying to prevent the ice-cold breeze from entering her ear. But then the girl paused at the summit of a long ridge, tilted her head and stared skyward.

“Not far at all,” she said.

Hope did not want to disturb her. Whatever she was following, whatever led her, Alishia seemed to trust.

WALKING ALONG ONE
ridge, Hope heard something high in the sky. It started as a whistling, thumping sound, like flying things slapping at the air with heavy wings. More buzzing things? She thought not. She searched for the source of the noise but saw nothing. It seemed to come from far away, but it was growing closer.
Got to hide!
she thought.
Got to
protect.

And then certainty struck her like a tumbler. “Alishia! It’s them…!”

Alishia paused and tilted her head. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she smiled.

The noise changed. Screeches underscored the thumping of wings, and then cries, and the sounds of impacts that echoed from Kang Kang’s solidity. They were still far away, but Hope sensed the change from controlled to alarmed. A splash of blue flame lit the sky briefly several miles to the southwest, spilling across the dusk like liquid fire, and for a heartbeat Hope saw many dark specks silhouetted against it. Chasing these specks were shadows that seemed even darker.

She felt the vibration of something striking the ground. More screams, more impacts, and a hundred heartbeats later the sounds faded across the hills. Hope blinked and exhaled her held breath, and it was as though nothing had even happened.

Alishia had already started walking again. Hope hurried to catch up. Whatever had flown flew no more.
Hawks?
she thought.
Machines?

WHEN THE PATH
began to fade away, Alishia feared that they were finished. Perhaps it had always been just another trick of Kang Kang, to lead them this far into the heart of the mountains and then leave them at the mercy of whatever might dwell here. She walked on anyway, determined to retain her confidence before the witch. Something rumbled higher up the mountainside, like a giant stomach contemplating food.

The snow began to clear.

A voice spoke in her mind, muttering words she did not know, and she gave those words to the air. The witch was glaring at her—she could feel her mad gaze simmering the air behind her—but Alishia carried on. Speaking the words was different from having them spoken to her, and Alishia hoped that soon she would understand.

She crested a ridge, looked down into a valley and knew exactly where those words came from.

“We’re here,” she whispered. She heard running footsteps behind her and the witch was at her side, kneeling in the thinning snow and looking down into the valley before them.

“Too soon,” Hope said. “Not where it should be!”

“Perhaps it moved…” A voice spoke once more in Alishia’s head, and this time she understood. “We can go down,” she said. “They’ll allow that, at least. But at the mouth of the Womb we have to stop and wait.”

Hope could barely talk. “Wait…for what?”

“The offerings.”

The witch was shaking her head, denying what she was seeing. But Alishia looked with a child’s eyes, and she could believe.

THE VALLEY WAS
bare of snow, green, lush with vibrant grasses and shrubs, spiked here and there with clumps of trees that grew two hundred steps high, their trunks forty steps around at the base.

“I can see,” Hope muttered. “And they’re not here.”

A breeze blew across the valley and rustled its grasses, sending a wave from one side to the other. At its base a stream flowed, heading south and disappearing into the darkness of a ravine at the far end. The stream’s source lay on the valley slope below them. A hole in the ground, hooded with a slab of rock and centered in a wide splash of bright blue flowers. Alishia had never seen those flowers, but she had read of the mythical birth-blooms that midwives had once carried as a sign of their profession.

“I can see,” the witch said again. “It’s done. It’s happened; we’ve won!” She grabbed up a fistful of wet soil, pressing her fingers together until it seeped from her hands, muttering under her breath and frowning when nothing happened.

“Are you so hungry for magic?” Alishia said.

“Yes!” The witch stood and thumped the disc-sword on the ground.

“Nothing is won,” Alishia said. “If only it could be so easy. So fair. But I don’t think anything will be easy or fair ever again.”

“But it’s
daylight
down there! I can see the colors of grass and flowers, and the trees, and the stream flowing into the distance…”

“And behind us?”

Hope glanced back into the darkness they had traveled through. The truth dawned. “It’s not really daylight.”

“Not really. Something from the Womb, perhaps. Or the Shades of the Land.”

Hope looked dejected, and angry. “And where are they, these Shades? Are they who you speak to when you slink off?”

Alishia shrugged and looked away, disturbed by Hope’s antagonism. “
Something
whispers to me,” she said.
From the library,
she thought, but she did not want to say that aloud. It was a special place, and she did not wish it tainted. “As for the Shades…I think we’ll see them soon.”

Alishia stepped from darkness into light, but it was not as comforting as she had hoped. There was no sun heating her skin, no blue sky above. This was not daylight, but simply an absence of night. The light rose from the grasses and flowers, the trees and ragged shrubs, simmering in the air and presenting the same blank sky as the twilight that had fallen across Noreela days ago. The sense of it silenced Alishia, and even Hope fell quiet as they walked down the steep slope toward the Womb of the Land.

When they arrived, Alishia sat down amongst the birth-blooms. They smelled gorgeous. She closed her eyes to rest.

When she opened them again the Shades of the Land made themselves known at last.

ALISHIA SEEMED TO
die. One moment she was there before Hope, sitting down in the long grass and flowers and sighing as she took the weight off her legs. Then she fell back to the ground with a grunt.

Hope dashed to her side, cradled the girl in her arms, shook her, breathing stale breath into her mouth in the hope that it would bring her back.

But the girl was still and limp, and when Hope pressed her head to Alishia’s chest she heard nothing inside.