Tim Lebbon: Echo city

"Does it matter?" Peer asked.

"I think so," he said. "I think so very much."

She thought about the Baker as they walked, and what a mystery she really was.

Their skin was burned and peeling. Their tongues were swollen. More people died. They stopped that night, but only a handful of small groups found material to light fires. They tried sucking moisture from their clothes, and Penler chewed at his shoe leather before laughing and lying down. By the time dawn touched the horizon, there were no more fires left.

That morning, many people chose not to walk anymore.

Penler led them, and the others followed. Alexia seemed the strongest of them all, and Peer drew strength from both the woman and the old man. She could never stop as long as they walked.

"Do you still feel it?" Peer asked.

"Yes," Penler said.

Later, when she found enough strength for another question, she asked, "What do you think happened to Rufus?"

"You heard Rose," Penler said. "Honored Darkness. As we walk south, he leads them north. They believe in it… and that will be their strength."

"But what is it?"

"Perhaps it's exactly what the Dragarians believe-a place that is timeless and forever. Or maybe it's simply a place far to the north, where the sun never touches. Whatever, they have the strength of their… their faith… and…"

Penler went to his knees in the sand. It was almost a relief. Peer sat beside him and hugged his head to her chest. Gorham was behind her, his face split and bleeding from the relentless sun. And Alexia remained standing, and always would, as if to sit down was to give in for good.

Peer looked at the people around them, and most of them were stopping as well. He didn't want it, but they've been following him all along. There were thousands of them, still determined, fading, and dying, because Penler had told them there was hope.

Peer tried to ask Gorham what the Baker had done to them all, but she found that her throat was too dry to speak, her tongue too swollen. She rested her cheek on top of Penler's head, and Gorham sat beside her. It was too hot and painful to touch, but his hand in hers was all that mattered.

Virtually blinded by the heat, unable to speak, she squeezed his hand to show that she could love him. He squeezed back. And that made it easy to close her eyes.

In their dreams, a voice said, The Heart and Mind has seen you, and you are welcome. And later, perhaps only hours before they would have died, shadows fell across them.