Tim Lebbon: Echo city

"What could cause such burning?" Gorham asked when they stopped to rest at last, and for a while none of them had an answer.

After a while Rose said, "After so long in the deep, climbing the Falls, perhaps heat is all the Vex seeks."

"You really believe that's all?" Peer asked, and Rose did not answer, settling down beside Alexia and closing her eyes.

But none of them slept. They huddled close for warmth, and all around them they heard the sounds of humanity uprooted-crying, sobbing, wild laughter, and groans of pain. When dawn came, the mournful tears began. Bodies lay here and there, causes of death uncertain. Peer could not even begin to entertain the fact that the desert had started to kill them.

They commenced their second day of walking with the city smoking far behind them. They were too far away to make out any detail, but the fires seemed to be dying down as morning passed into afternoon. The rising smoke grew lighter. And then the distant sound they had heard before leaving the city-pain, frustration, the scream of some mad thing shown only more madness in its future-accompanied them until dusk.

Peer had felt sick for a while, but that soon passed. Even Rose seemed stronger than before, though the little food Gorham had managed to grab from Penler's house would not last them very long.

"People are dying," Peer said, as they sat around a fire that night. Thousands more campfires burned around them, lighting up swaths of the Markoshi Desert-a place known for time immemorial as the Bonelands. They burned clothing, belongings, and wood gathered from the scattered remains of old wagons and other constructs that had made it this far in the past. Peer smelled cooking meat and tried not to imagine what it might be. Several groups of Garthans had accompanied them out, walking far apart from them.

They'd talked today about how many people they thought had walked, and estimates ranged from Gorham's ten thousand to Penler's two hundred thousand. None of them had any concept of such numbers or what that many people looked like. No one would ever know for sure.

"Fear," Penler said. "Thirst. Hunger. Not everyone brought food and water with them." There had already been fighting, and late that afternoon they'd seen a father stabbing a man to death after he tried to steal food from his children. Peer was glad to have her friends around her. Alexia still carried her sword, though she had discarded the tunic that identified her as an ex-Scarlet Blade.

"Illness," Gorham said. "Maybe some are succumbing."

"There will be many people who weren't bitten," Rose said, and Peer sat up straight, staring at the girl.

"I never even considered that," she said. She felt guilty at finding hope in the deaths of so many, but, looking around the fire, she saw the same hope reflected in everyone.

"Time will tell," Penler said. She'd told him everything during that first afternoon and evening, answering his questions and bringing in Gorham and Alexia when there were answers she did not know. When she told him what had happened to Rufus, he'd grown pale, and then Rose had revealed what she had seen through Nophel. A dark tide heading north, she had said.

Everything I wrote about the Dragarians… Penler had whispered, but he would say no more. Perhaps he was seeing justification in a lifetime of belief.

Or maybe he was wishing he'd gone with them.

He had been quiet ever since, rarely contributing to their discussions. Peer knew when he was brooding. She also knew that he would talk when he was ready.

No one tried to take charge. Some looked to Penler-those who had been at the wall and seen him venturing out onto the sands-but his silence drove them away.

The people from the doomed city walked, and fell, and died beneath the sun and the moon.

They were five days out from the city. It was behind them now, below the horizon, evidence of its ruin little more than a pale smudge in the sky. Peer tried clinging to hope, and Gorham clung to her, slowly losing his way. Out here in the Bonelands, the past felt like it belonged to someone else, and she told him she forgave him. Hugged him close. It helped, for a while.

Their food and water were finished.

People died around them. They were left where they fell, after whatever food and drink they still carried was taken. Whispers passed this way and that of cannibalism, rumors drifting like the breeze that still blew in their faces. The Garthans had gone, either dead or drifted in another direction, and so the alleged flesh-eating was much worse.

Some people turned to go back.

It was not the desert killing people-it was exhaustion, hunger, thirst, desperation, and hopelessness. Peer was confident that the young Baker's chopping of Rufus's blood, and the bloodflies, had worked. But perhaps even that would not be enough to save them.

The walkers had spread out, not drawn in as Peer had expected, and for as far as she could see behind and around them, the desert was speckled with refugees from Echo City. But before them was only sand. Something in all of them drove them on-Penler most of all. He was old and weak, suffering badly and still mostly silent, and Peer feared he was grasping on to one small fact to keep himself going: He had been the first into the Bonelands, and he would be the first to reach their destination.

Where they were going could not be discussed, because nobody knew for sure. Peer had told her companions what Rufus had said about the Heart and Mind, but that meant nothing to them. His words echoed for them all: I hope it will welcome you.

For now they were just walking.

Rose spoke little, but when she did, Peer took note. The girl would never have a child's mind. "This is an adventure we've been waiting for forever," she said. And, "She did her best… she gave us time." And, "I'm sorry."

That afternoon, they took on a little boy they found crying over the body of his father. And, that evening, the little boy died.

Rose cried. That was what astonished Peer more than anything. The Baker cried for one death, while the destruction of a city and countless people had left her merely contemplating the histories buried in her mind. It made her seem almost human.

Rose started to fade next day. They waited with her while the sun passed its zenith, because she could not walk anymore, and even Alexia was no longer strong enough to carry her.

"I'm the last Baker of Echo City," she whispered to the heat, and when Peer tried to protest, the girl grasped her hand. "We've lasted too long already. After what we have done, do you think the Baker will be welcomed elsewhere?"

Peer remained silent, because she could not answer that honestly. So they stayed around her as others passed by, and no one else knew who the little dying girl was.

"Fading away," Rose said softly as the sun touched the horizon. "Nothing lasts forever." Gorham was kneeling beside her then, holding her hand. He seemed confused, but Peer held back because she sensed he needed space to be with the girl. He'd call her if he needed her.

And after Rose passed away, Peer was there for him.

Next morning, as they started to stagger across the desert for one more day, Penler was the first to speak.

"Last night I smelled something on the breeze," he said.

"What something?" Alexia asked.

"I'm not sure, but not desert. And I feel something. Something…"

"What?"

"Reaching out. Sensing. Don't you feel it too?" His eyes sparkled, but Peer had to shake her head.

"No," she said, saddened by his confusion. But Penler always had been amazing, and it was a hope she would cling to.

"Then we're getting somewhere?" Gorham asked.

"Maybe," Penler said. "Perhaps somewhere we never should have been. Who knows what made this desert what it is? The Baker has made us able to cross it, but who or what made the Baker?"