Tim Lebbon - Dawn

“It’s the word everywhere!” The man lowered his eyes, uncomfortable at talking this way to a Mystic.

“There’s hope,” O’Gan said. “That’s another word-my word-and I want you to spread it. Will you do that for me?”

The man glanced up, frowning, looking over O’Gan’s shoulder at the tall, empty Temple. “Hope when all the Mystics flee with us?”

“Not all,” O’Gan said. He thought of Elder Garia dead by her own hand.

“Some are dead,” the man whispered, awed. “My brother saw them down by the coast, kneeling in the sand and drawing their swords and-”

“Mystics?”

“A dozen of them!”

“Your brother lied to you.”

The man’s eyes narrowed, but even in such a time he could not express anger at a Mystic.

I hope, O’Gan thought. I hope he lied. I’d have known if so many had died; I’d have felt it. Our collective mind would have screamed and railed against it…

And his mind when he breathed in the Janne pollen was a blank, devoid of life.

“He lied,” O’Gan said again, more to himself than the man.

“Forgive me,” the man said. He moved past O’Gan and hurried away.

There must be some of us left, O’Gan thought. An Elder Mystic, someone I can tell about the appearance of A’Meer. Someone who’ll know what that means, and what to do. Where to go.

A group of Shantasi warriors trotted past him heading north, going against the flow. Their long dark hair was tied, pale skin made paler by the poor light, and their extensive weaponry was worn so precisely that it made no sound.

“Good,” O’Gan said, and the last warrior in line turned to look at him. O’Gan saw terror in the woman’s eyes.

He walked on through the streets, looking for someone who could tell him what he had seen.

Tim Lebbon

Dawn

FLAGE WAS BORN over fifty years earlier, when he was twenty years old. When he died.

Only a privileged few can remember the moment of their birth. But perhaps such crushing exposure and agonizing animation is best left forgotten.

He retained a vivid memory of that birth and the moments that led to it. He was a rover, prowling the northern extremes of Kang Kang with his small rover band, always traveling east to west to make sure they kept Kang Kang to their left. Left was the evil side, right the good. If they turned around and headed east, Kang Kang would be to their right, and its neutral influence on their roving group would change without warning. Right would become wrong, and Flage had seen the results of rovers traveling in the opposite direction-the shattered wagons and the torn bodies, the strange sigils carved into murdered men’s chests and the insides of dead women’s thighs-and he had no wish to meet whatever had done that. Some said that Kang Kang was a mother with countless children, and each and every one of them served her without thought or question. They lived in the valleys of her flesh and the folds of her guts, and when called upon they emerged into the sunlight and made it their own. No one had ever seen these children of Kang Kang, so their appearance was conjecture and myth: the height of ten men, the girth of a horse, hands of stone and heads of bone, eyes lit by timeless fires from the roots of the mountains where dark things gathered around the meager light there was.

Every year, Flage heard fresh whispers of these demons, and each time their appearance was more terrifying than ever.

They had been roving and camping across the plains north of Kang Kang for a couple of years, gathering furbats from caves and canyons and milking them of their rhellim. Once every life moon, a group of rovers would travel north or west with the rhellim, trading with small farming communities or the larger villages around The Heights. They would return with food, drink and tellan coins, and news of the outside world that barely interested the rovers. Their lives were their own, and though they shared the landscape with others, that did not mean that there was any need to interact with greater Noreela. The land was dying, but they barely looked further than the next day.

When finally they reached the western extreme of Kang Kang there was an important choice to be made. They could turn north and head toward Lake Denyah and The Heights, perhaps adapting their trade on the way. Their chieftain had heard that there were still fodder being bred and eaten in the wild villages in and around The Heights, and he suggested that they could begin their own small business, breeding and selling these unfortunate beasts. They can rove with us, he said, eating the best meat and roots, drinking the best mountain water, then when their time comes they’ll command a good price.

Flage and others objected. They’re people, he said. They’re fodder, the chieftain responded, and the rovers entered an argument that lasted two days and caused several vicious knife fights. Flage had escaped the violence, but spent several days afterward nursing a wounded woman. Shurl had gone against one of the biggest men in the group, throwing herself on him when he had called her a fodder-fucker, and in a drunken rage he had pulled a knife and lashed out. Shurl escaped that first attack, but drawing her own knife had been a mistake: the fight was made, the other rovers drew back and within a few heartbeats Shurl was writhing on the ground with the man’s knife stuck in her right thigh.

Flage helped her back to her wagon. When he drew out the knife, she screamed and held him around the neck. The wound bled profusely, and he had to press a bandage to it, pushing hard while Shurl strapped it around her leg. He kept the pressure on the wound, and now and then when Shurl moved he felt the soft hair between her legs brushing the back of his hand. He could feel the heat of her. Glancing up he caught her looking at him. She smiled, and he reached for the canteen of rhellim hanging from the cross support of her wagon.

Three evenings later the chieftain called another meeting to discuss where to go next. He urged caution and peace, saying that he had dispensed with the idea of becoming fodder farmers. But when he mentioned another alternative, a hush fell across the several hundred rovers. These people were rarely silent. They enjoyed music and talk, they loved and slept and danced in the open, they shared the most intimate aspects of their lives with everyone else in the band, and to be in the presence of so many silent rovers was an experience Flage would never forget. It made him want to scream at the life moon where it hung low in the north. But Shurl was holding his hand. He glanced at her, and she was serious and scared. Her eyes were wide. She too could barely believe what the chieftain was suggesting.

They could turn slowly southward, he said, passing between the mountain range’s westernmost hills and the sea, and then eventually turn east once again, keeping Kang Kang to their left as ever. That would take them south of the mountain range, into regions where no one had traveled before. That very fact should have inspired a sense of adventure in the assembled rovers-their life was after all one of exploration and travel-but instead, a palpable sense of fear embraced them. The silence was broken only by something calling far away, a soulful hoot from the mountains to the south.

The Blurring, someone said.

The chieftain stood his ground. No one has ever been there, he said, not even the ancient Voyagers. It’s called The Blurring because nobody knows what’s there. There are no maps of the land south of Kang Kang…there may be a whole new world down there! Kang Kang may merely be the gateway to places we can’t begin to imagine!

Peoplehavetried this before, Flage said. He stood, shaking off Shurl’s grasping hand. Travelers have gone down there and never come back. I don’t want to know why.