Tim Lebbon - Dawn

As they walked uphill they saw more of the vents. These were taller than the first, their bases thicker, the stream of substance pouring from their open necks wider. Hope kept as far away from the chimneys as possible, her breath so shallow that she became dizzy and disoriented. She waved the disc-sword around her head, shouting at phantoms, and she never let go of Alishia’s hand. If I let go she might blow away, she thought. She’s so small now, so shrunken. I can’t lose her. She’s my future.

The funnels venting from beneath Kang Kang-a gassy drug, poison, memories-became less frequent the higher they climbed. First line of defense, Hope thought, and she waited for the second to appear.

“What happened to your hand?” she asked. Alishia had gasped in pain whenever Hope grabbed harder to pull her on.

“I’m learning,” Alishia said. Or perhaps she said “burning.” Hope was unsure, and she thought that repeating the question might give Kang Kang another small victory.

THEY FOUND A ruin. It was a tower, upended and thrown back against a cliff of ragged stone. Its walls were cracked but still clung together, and its base sprouted into a tree of foundation; globes of footings, buds of ground piles. They defied gravity and threw a shambolic shadow against the cliff. Around the tower’s smashed head sat a jumble of giant rocks, as though the hillside had been impacted and shattered by something huge. One of the upside-down windows shone as the life moon reflected from some old thing inside.

“No one said it was always this way,” Hope said. She paused a few hundred steps from the ruin and stretched, hands on her hips and shoulders pulled back. Alishia stood by her side, breathing fast, swaying.

“This could be from before the Black,” Alishia said.

“Could be. Or it might have happened yesterday.” But Hope could smell the age of this place, and when the moons struck the tower, it reflected old light.

“I wonder who lived in there?”

Hope looked higher up the ravaged hillside, trying to see where the tower had tumbled from. But it all seemed wrong. It had not fallen here, it had been thrown.

“I wonder who died,” the witch said.

“We should go on.” Alishia aimed east to walk around the tower and the shattered ground before it. Hope watched her go and suddenly wondered what would happen if she did not follow. She could go up and into that tower, make a home in its upside-down world and spend the rest of her time exploring its inverted history. Perhaps she would find something of significance, perhaps not.

It’s of Kang Kang! she thought. Nothing good could have ever lived there. No calm hands laid those blocks, and no peaceful hand tore them down.

Hope closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, and as she exhaled she knew that there was something extra to the air of this place. Between blinks-when she thought her vision of the world was negated-she saw more than ever. Perhaps it was one of the legendary Children of Kang Kang, this giant shape stepping in and out of the fallen tower, in and out, as though unsure where it would find its final rest. Its outline was formed from a dozen bodies twisted together, arms waving and mouths gaping, eyes rolling and catching the reflection of an ancient death moon, as if the wraiths of whole families clung together for comfort.

Hope gasped and stepped back, keeping her eyes wide open. She hurried after Alishia, glancing at the uprooted tower as she went. When she eventually had to blink again, that shambling image was still there on the inside of her eyelid, weaker than before, fading with each successive blink, until those old wraiths were a memory once again.

SOMETIME LATER -Hope had no idea how long, because time here was skewed-they came to a wide crevasse in the land. It stretched along the skirt of the first of Kang Kang’s true mountains, a river of darkness. They would have to cross it to continue their journey. That, or walk east or west until the crack in the world ended. Hope thought that perhaps it would never end.

“It’s trying to stop us,” Hope said. She sank to her knees and dropped the disc-sword, pressing her hands to her face to make sure her tattoos had not entered into the betrayal. She felt them just below her skin, twisted into confusion and fear, and she could not deny them. “The whole of Kang Kang is after us.” She turned around and looked at Alishia where the girl stood behind her. Her eyes were hooded, their whites bloodshot and yellowed by the death moon. “Alishia?”

“We have to go on,” the girl said.

“Of course we do, but-”

“There’s no excuse not to go on,” she continued. “We have to get there, I have to get there, and a simple hole in the world can’t stop us.”

“I’ve been into one hole,” Hope said. She spat as far as she could, watching the spittle glint as it was carried into the ravine on the breeze.

“There’s more than shadows down there,” Alishia said, and her voice was suddenly filled with such fear that the hairs on the back of Hope’s neck bristled.

Alishia sank to her stomach behind Hope, pressing herself as flat to Kang Kang as she could. Hope followed her example. She tasted the grass of this place-bitter, as though its dew were blood-and smelled the ground, and she knew it was dying. Venting its memories. Giving them to the darkness as though it had no use of them anymore.

“What is it?” Hope whispered, and the question could have so many answers.

“Shade?” Alishia said. Hope turned around and looked at the girl, but she seemed to be unconscious again.

The witch looked ahead, wishing she had some chemicala to light the way. But she had used the last of her tricks in the machine, trying in vain to save Rafe.

She would not let them snatch magic from her again.

How can I stop them?

Kang Kang could do its worst, but she was attached to this girl as a mother to her unborn child.

What can I possibly do to protect us?

Whatever came up out of that ravine-and somethingwas coming, she was certain of that-she would fight it until her last spark of life guttered out.

Because I’ve got nothing else left. Noreela is dead, but the girl can give me magic for the final days of my life.

A hundred steps away a shape drifted up from the rent in the land, darker than the shadows around it and more animated. This blot of darkness had independent movement; it did not rely on clouds crossing moons. It twisted and writhed higher, and Hope averted her gaze.

Shade? Alishia had said.

Hope pressed her face into the ground and held her breath, eyes squeezed closed, skin creased, tattoos almost burning as they illustrated her terror like never before.

She attempted to lose her mind. Ironically, mad as she surely was, her mind stayed with her, muttering its fears and suspicions. Much as she tried to drift away-to think of nothing-the here and now grabbed hold of her and refused to let go. Time had its claws in her, and it was slowly dragging her toward the gaping maw of its mouth. And it had teeth. Alishia fading away was one of them; this shade, risen from the ground of Kang Kang, was another. It must surely be of the Mages, and if it saw her, discovered Alishia, then everything truly would be over.

Hope chewed at the grass, hoping that it might have some drug-like quality that would stifle her thoughts.

She heard Alishia’s breathing behind her, fast and irregular as though something pursued her in dreams.

The shade made no sound. It’s not of this world, Hope thought. Not even of Kang Kang. It’s from somewhere else.

She lay there, not daring to look up in case the movement attracted the shade, and waited for the end.

She waited for a long time. Perhaps she even drifted into an unsettled sleep, because for a while she was back in her rooms in Pavisse, fucking men and mixing herbs, telling fortunes and fulfilling deadly commissions. In all that sex for money, and poison for hate, there was an unbearable naivete that she so wished she could rediscover. She had been just another witch for so long, and finding that pathetic farm boy curled up in a doorway in the Hidden Districts had been the best of things, and the worst.