Tim Lebbon - Dawn

A’Meer began to grow indistinct and hazy and O’Gan reached out to save her. She was coming apart before him, fading as though she were a painting splashed with water. He moved forward quickly, and this time the image of the dead Shantasi did not drift away. His fingertips reached her and passed inside, pressing against her fragmenting chest and finding a subtle resistance that surrounded his hand, like a thousand flies alighting on his skin. He gasped and pulled back, and for a second a smear of A’Meer came with him, dropping from his arm and merging with the shifting shadow at his feet.

The whisper came again, and the shadow filtered back over the edge of the Temple. O’Gan sat nursing his hand and repeating that word again and again, hoping the repetition would imbue it with some power, some truth.

There was hope. He had not been wrong. Now he only had to spread this knowledge.

WALKING DOWN THE steps from the Temple, O’Gan entered a world he no longer knew. He had been on the roof for almost two days, and in that time Hess had changed forever. It had once been a city of contemplation and consideration, a calm place where street markets sold food and drink to the many people lingering in the communal gardens, musing on the problems of life and death. Mystics had wandered the streets, eyes closed and hands folded as they considered the meaning of a vision from their last time on the Temple. Sometimes they would pause and begin to talk, using their Voice to gather an audience. Their words would have depth, their depths would give meaning, and a dozen people would move on possessed of more knowledge than before. The Mystics were the brain of Hess, the rest of the Shantasi living there its blood. The Mystic city troubled some; its atmosphere did not suit everyone. But of all the places O’Gan had been in New Shanti, Hess had always felt most like home.

Now it was strange to him, and he was a stranger within it. Halfway down the Temple staircase he paused to look down into the streets. He could make out more detail than had been possible from the Temple roof, and he could see just how much Hess had changed. Not only the city itself, but the people. Panic had overtaken contemplation, fear had usurped thoughtfulness and the streets had grumbled with the last of Hess’ population of half a million fleeing. He had been watching from the Temple for some time, but this close he could make out individual expressions and hear muttered curses rather than apologies when people walked into one another. One family pulled a large cart behind them, their belongings piled high, and they shouted at people to move out of the way, tugging the cart through a street barely wide enough to contain it. The father kicked a market stall aside, pushing it against the wall and stomping on spilled fruit so that the cart would not be slowed. The mother argued with the fruit seller, while two children sat wide-eyed in the back of the cart, surrounded by what their parents believed were their whole lives. Lamps still hung outside most buildings in an attempt to drive away the night, and the flames gave the children’s eyes a haunted look.

Many Mystics had joined in the flight. He still could not understand. “There’s hope,” he said, but he wondered how he could make them believe.

At the foot of the Temple, stepping down onto the ground for the first time in two days, O’Gan realized that the land itself had changed. It felt different beneath his feet, as though ages had come and gone. It was strange to him now, the rock beneath him unknown, the sand between his toes unfamiliar.

“Mystic,” a voice said. “Mystic!”

“O’Gan Pentle,” he said, already turning to confront the voice. A woman faced him, the hood drawn over her head barely hiding the bruising around her mouth, the dried blood beneath her nose. “What happened?”

“Mystic Pentle, I can’t leave the city,” she said. “It’s my home. My children’s home. Always here, always been here, and now this, this darkness that brings such madness…” She was barely coherent. Her eyes were jumping in their sockets, as though not wishing to focus on anything.

“What happened to you?” O’Gan asked.

“My husband wanted to leave. Said it wasn’t safe here. Took the children. I went after him but they’re lost to me now…I fell, and the crowds walked on me.”

“No one helped you up?”

The woman nodded. “An Elder Mystic. Then she left me bleeding and crying.” She suddenly seemed to find focus, eyes locking on O’Gan’s, pleading and desperate. “What’s happening? Where is everyone going?”

“They want safety, that’s all,” O’Gan said. “Your husband did what he thought was best. Your children…” But O’Gan could not finish. Mystics did not have children, and he could never hope to understand.

The woman looked up at him, tears slipping down her cheeks and reflecting flickering light from a nearby lantern. “I know he’s right,” she said. “That’s the worst. I know he’s right, and still I can’t leave.” She held her face in her hands and started crying, real tears that rose from deep within and shuddered her shoulders.

“There’s still hope,” O’Gan said, touching her face. The tears were hot, and neither his words nor touch seemed to help.

He moved past the woman and approached the door to the Temple’s huge inner hall. It was ajar. A sliver of darkness peered out-no light, no evidence of candles or lanterns burning within. He tried to drive away the bitter disappointment. Coming down, he had started to believe there would be Mystics gathered here, ready to plan the defense of Hess. Now it seemed that he had been wrong, and that the Elder Mystic had been right. Fleeing the city was the only plan they had.

He shoved the heavy wooden door with his foot. The hinges squealed, weak light filtered in and what O’Gan saw shocked him to the core. It was Elder Garia, a woman five decades older than O’Gan with whom he had often spent time on the Temple. She had enjoyed his company, and she had been close with several other Mystics, her natural disposition one of companionship and friendship.

But Elder Garia had spent her last moments on Noreela alone.

She was splayed on the tiled floor just inside the door, as if at the last moment she had changed her mind and sought help. In her right hand was the knife that had opened her wrists; in her left, a clutch of Janne blossom, stolen from the roof, rotten and rank and bleeding black sap between stiff fingers.

“Oh no,” O’Gan said. He closed his eyes, but that did little to hide the image. He thought of the other corpse he had just seen-the image of A’Meer-and the word she had given him in her silent plea: Hope. However that vision had been brought to him, whatever that shadow had been, he had to believe it was true. If not, then Mystic Garia’s fate was perhaps the wisest choice she had ever made.

O’Gan fled the Temple. The crying woman had crumpled to the ground, and he knew that he should help her, offer guidance through her confusion. But if he helped her, there would be another, and another, and eventually he would be drawn into hopelessness. He could help one, or he could help one million.

He closed his eyes and moved on. He often walked this way through the streets, continuing his inner dialogue as he moved, but now his dialogue was confused and the streets were unforgiving. He bumped into a man after a dozen steps. “You’re going north, Mystic,” the man said.

“And which way should I be going?”

“South, away from those damn Mages and whatever they’ve brought to Noreela!”

“I don’t think they brought anything,” O’Gan said. “I think they came and found it here.”

“Either way, magic’s theirs now,” the man said.

“Who told you that?”