Tim Lebbon - Dawn

The constant level of subdued light should have been a comfort to Trey, but he had never felt so disturbed. The fledge rage was strong in him now. When he walked with Alishia across his back, he thought of what fledge looked like, how it smelled and tasted, how it felt between blind hands down in the utter darkness of the mines. He was young and still learning, but older miners had told him how they could identify fledge from different seams through touch alone, how they could tell whether it was fresh or stale by the texture and moisture content and how they knew from the first touch on their tongues whether or not it was going to give them a good journey.

Trey so wished to travel with fledge, now that all he could do was walk. How he wanted to sit back and hover above his body, look down and see himself spread-eagled on the ground, launch his questing mind into the twilight to discover whole truths he had never even guessed at. He could dip down into Hope’s mind and see the volumes of danger of which Alishia had spoken. He could visit Alishia where she slept, troubled and in pain, and ask whether this was really the right thing to do. And he could move farther afield. Kang Kang lay ahead of them, and it pressed against him like a physical force, urging him to turn and flee the way he had come. It was an impassable wall of stone in a wide-open cave, immovable and daunting. He could explore.

With fledge he could do anything. He found himself sniffing for it with every breath he took.

Night, night, night. He looked at the witch and knew that she was turning mad. He looked at Alishia, twitching in her sleep and mumbling words he did not understand. And he looked at the sky, realizing for the first time ever how even he, a cave dweller, was influenced by the turns of the sun.

“SOMETHING UP AHEAD,” Hope said. “Something strange.”

“How do you know?”

“Can’t you feel it? The air’s different. There’s a constant breeze from the north, but it feels as though the ground’s moving instead of the air.” Hope looked ahead, toward the shadowy mountains of Kang Kang, and her tattoos squirmed like salted snakes.

Trey lowered Alishia to the ground, groaning as the tension in his shoulders gave way to pain. He kneaded at his cramping muscles and followed Hope’s gaze. The landscape ahead of them was a blank: no contours in the shadows, no hint of any features, no indication that there was anything there at all. Darkness lay thick across the ground. He sniffed for fledge, but found only a sterile odor, like the air in a cave after a flood. Cleaned. Purged. Empty.

“What is it?” he said.

“I don’t know.” The witch hefted his disc-sword and he reached for it. He closed his hand around the shaft and Hope looked at him, eyebrows raised. Then she smiled and let go. “Very well, fledger,” she said. She dipped her hand into a pocket and kept it there.

What does she have in there? Trey thought. He’d seen her ripping some plant and dropping it into her pocket. To feed something? Or to let the leaves dry?

Alishia rolled onto her back and her eyes snapped open, but when he knelt beside her Trey could see that she was still asleep. He waved a hand in front of her face, but her eyes did not flicker. He so wanted those eyes to turn to him and smile. But he had begun to fear that would never happen again.

“We should go on,” Hope said. “We’ll be in the foothills of Kang Kang before we know it. They’re closer.”

Trey had noticed that too. Though the repulsion he felt was still strong, the mountains had suddenly seemed to come close, pushing him away yet urging him in. He felt as though two forces were acting upon him, and he had no idea which one to obey. He stood and held his disc-sword in both hands, ready to spin the blade and take on anything that came at them from the dark.

“Hope,” he said, “we haven’t seen anyone. We’ve been walking for maybe two topside days, and we haven’t seen another living soul.”

“They’re out there,” the witch said. “Back in the small range of lead-rock hills we passed through, there was a band of rovers. They hid from us. Farther on-maybe half a day ago-we passed close to a village. They were lined against us, barricaded, ready to fight. I could smell the fear on them, and the stink of sheebok and land hogs rotting into the ground. They were farmers. Terrified. Scared of what we were and what we’d do if we found them. If only they knew our fear as well. There have been others too, hiding in shadows or lying low in the folds of the land. We’ve been keeping to the high places so we can see into the distance, looking for Kang Kang and keeping watch for threats. Most of the people around here are lying as low as they can.”

“I heard nothing,” Trey said. “I saw no one.”

“Neither did I. I smelled them.”

Trey thought of all the time he had spent trying to find the hint of fledge on the air.

“So what’s this?” he said quietly. “It’s like an open space of nothing. I see Kang Kang in the distance, but nothing in between.”

“Maybe thereis nothing,” Hope said.

“What do you mean?”

“The land’s been strange for so long now. Perhaps the Mages’ return has quickened the rot.”

“But there must be time,” Trey said. “We have to have time. This can’t be hopeless, can it?”

Hope shrugged and looked at the sleeping girl. “I don’t think Fate owes us anything,” she said. “We may make it to within five steps of our destination and then be killed in a rockfall. There’s nothing looking out for us, fledger. With Rafe, perhaps his magic watched over us, but not with this one. We’re more on our own than we’ve ever been. Can’t you feel that?”

Trey shivered, nodded, and his guts knotted with a sudden craving for fledge.

“We’ll go on,” Hope said. “We can’t stop here, not now. If you can carry her farther, we should go.”

Hope helped Trey lift Alishia onto his back, then she took his disc-sword and walked on ahead once more, marking their route, looking left and right, up and down, watching for danger or searching for something more. Alishia was heavy, but not as heavy as she had been. Her thighs were thinner, her face less well defined, and her stomach had become soft with adolescent fat. Still growing younger, Trey thought. She’s our limit. We go this way because of what she said, but we only have so long, because of her. If we get there too late…

He heard a thud and felt the ground shake. Hope paused and glanced around at him, then kept moving on. Trey followed. Another crash from somewhere in the near distance, like a giant footfall hitting the land, and again he felt the vibration through his feet.

“What is that?” he said.

Hope had paused again and was looking up at the sky. Trey followed her gaze and saw the shadows. At first he thought it was a huge storm cloud, and he would have welcomed a downpour of rain. It would be a novelty for him, and they were growing painfully short on water. But then he saw the shadows dropping out of the darkness-a mass that seemed to shun moonlight, swallowing it rather than reflecting-and he knew that this was not a rain of water.

The shadows spun groundward. They passed out of view, and seconds later came another series of thuds.

“Hope?” Trey called.

“This should be interesting,” she said.

“Hope, what is it?” But the witch had moved on again, running down through a narrow gulley and heading for a small hill that obscured the land ahead of them. Trey took a final look up, saw more shadows falling away from the mass of negative sky and followed.

“HERE,” HOPE SAID. “This is where we stop for now.”

Trey struggled up the small rise toward the witch. She was staring south. “What is it?”