Tim Lebbon: Dawn

Hope felt the limitless power of the land thrumming inside. Her heart thundered in her chest, blood pumped so fast that her eyes and ears began bleeding again, but the pains were all good. They were good, because they meant that she was doing something right.

When the hole was deep enough to cover the Mages, Hope reversed her words, and the stone sides began to close in.

Angel rose, levitating from the hole, but Hope smiled and the Mage fell back down. S’Hivez screamed, and deep below his feet a cave opened up, rock crumbling and soil pouring in.

Hope frowned and spoke faster.

The stone sides of the hole were crushing Angel now, but S’Hivez, much of his frame stripped of flesh, scurried down into the cavern beneath his feet. His last look he spared for Angel. Hope could not see his eyes, did not catch what passed between them, but as the female Mage started screaming, S’Hivez slipped away.

She felt the Nax return to the valley before she saw them. She cringed, their senses existing for a few heartbeats in her mind. And then two of them whipped past her and darted into the crack, passing Angel and disappearing after S’Hivez.

Angel screamed. For a moment Hope considered mercy. The ground was closing in slowly on the Mage, pressing her face against rock, gripping her torso and legs and head, and the scream was one of true agony. But there were only three more words left to say.

Hope looked to the sky and spoke to the new daylight.

Angel’s screams were cut off as the sides of the hole met. A weak blue light sizzled across the ground and faded away. With one final crack, the top of Angel’s skull popped up, and a flow of brain matter sparkled in the sun as it pattered down across the grass.

Hope closed her eyes and the noises came to an end.

“Lost him,” she said. “After all that, I lost him.” But with the Nax on his trail, the escaped Mage would not survive for long.

A while later she lost so much more, as she knew she must. The magic leeched away, leaving her an old false witch once again, but this time she was no longer sad. Alishia had planted the seed of magic and it had lent itself to Hope, just for a while.

Someday soon, the seed would bloom.

Tim Lebbon

Dawn

THE KROTE MACHINES had already started to die.

Most of the surviving Shantasi went north, pursuing the fleeing enemy and preparing to meet the future waves of Krote warriors that must surely come. There would be more fighting, for this war was far from over, but at least now it would be on equal terms.

Fifty warriors went east, back to New Shanti, where they would arrive victorious, ready to gather and lead the full might of New Shanti’s army north to aid the rest of the land. There would be issues to resolve, and blame to be meted out. But the politics would wait until after the Krotes were once again driven from Noreela.

Kosar persuaded a Shantasi captain to lend him twenty warriors to take into Kang Kang. None of them were keen to go, but they were buoyed by the sun’s reemergence, and many of them had seen Kosar with O’Gan Pentle. The thief had taken on something of a mystical quality himself.

THEY TRAVELED FOR a day and a night, camping deep inside Kang Kang and lying awake, listening to noises that none of them knew and imagining creatures that no one had ever seen. The next morning, tired and drained, one of them almost put an arrow into Hope when she wandered into their camp.

KOSAR AND HOPE sat away from the Shantasi, cooking a rabbit over an open fire and drinking water.

“It’s not so bad,” Hope said, nodding up at the mountains. The peaks were smeared with snow, the lower slopes wet with rain. The sun had risen again that morning. Kosar would never take the dawn for granted.

“The tumblers helped us fight the Krotes too,” Kosar said. Hope had relayed her story in one long talk, staring into the flames, stroking and sniffing her fingertips. Kosar had touched his own fingers-brands sore from the fighting-and listened.

“Did you see the Nax?” Hope asked, eyes wide.

Kosar shook his head. “That doesn’t mean they weren’t there. It was confused. And when dawn came, it got more confusing still.”

“How so?”

“Some Krotes fought on, some didn’t.” He thought of the scarred female warrior riding away, saying that her fight was moving on.

They ate the rabbit in companionable silence, both so loaded with questions that neither really knew where to begin. At last, the beast little more than bones in their hands, Kosar asked the question.

“Where will you go?”

He saw how the witch had changed. Her tattoos were still there, forbidding and angry, but a darkness had lifted from her eyes. For the first time ever, her name seemed to suit. “Back through Kang Kang,” she said. “I’ll avoid the Womb of the Land, though I doubt I’d even find it again. And then, into The Blurring.”

“But there’s nothing there,” Kosar said.

“How do you know?”

“Well…”

“It’s called The Blurring because it’s never been mapped,” Hope said. “And if the male Mage does manage to evade or defeat the Nax, that’s where he’ll go.”

“What makes you think that?”

“His ex-lover is dead, his magic weakened, and when whatever Alishia planted is birthed, it’ll be driven away completely. If I need to, I’ll be able to fight him on equal terms. He has nothing left to live for, but somehow I don’t think an old monster like that will lie down and die. So, my guess is that he’ll go south. Away from everything.”

“Toward nothing.”

“Maybe. But if he survives the Nax, I’ll follow.”

“Why?”

“Magicchose me, Kosar! Just for an instant, but itchose me. And now I owe…so much.” Hope licked meat juice from her fingers. “Besides, who knows what’s there? I heard rumors that a mad Sleeping God is awake down there. And other stories, all of them fantastic. So much to see and discover. And I don’t think Noreela’s for me. I did things…I hurt people…” She did not finish, and Kosar did not wish to pursue that route.

“You?” Hope asked. “Where are you going?”

Kosar raised his eyebrows and smiled at the witch. “In all honesty, I hadn’t even thought about it.”This is when she asks me to go with her, he thought. But the witch stared back into the flames, a strange look on her face.

“Well…” she said.

“Well what?”

“Kosar, while you’re thinking about where to go, I can do something for you. You’ll maybe hate me for this. I wouldn’t blame you if you did, but I can do this now, and I want to, and I insist you let me.”

“What the Mage shit are you talking about, Hope?”

“Give me your hands.”

“Why?”

“Those brands. I can cure them. If you’ll let me.”

Kosar looked down at his bleeding fingertips, made more raw since dusk fell. He had a dozen other wounds on his body, but now these seemed to hurt the most. “How long have you known you could do this?” he asked.

Hope looked away. “Quite some time.”

“Oh.” He fisted his hands, but remembered the change he had seen on her face. And it was no longer the time for hate. “Here,” he said, and he showed her his fingers.

LATER, HOPE WRAPPED his brands with strips of cloth torn from her already ragged dress. The Wilmott’s Nemesis root was burned and powdered, and she told him to keep the wrappings on for two days. “False magic,” she said, smiling at him.

“Not for much longer.”

Hope wrapped the last finger. “It’ll stay sore for a while,” she said, “but the bleeding should stop soon, and they’ll have a chance to heal. Try not to aggravate the wounds. No wars for a while.”