Tim Lebbon - Dawn

“Kosar,” he said.

“Thief?”

He nodded. She had seen his hands.

“Did you steal that Shantasi sword on your hip?”

“No, I was given it by a friend.”

“What friend?”

“A’Meer Pott. A Shantasi warrior.”

“And where is she now?”

“Dead.”

The Shantasi blinked. “You travel with a Red Monk.” There was more surprise than accusation in her voice, and Kosar thought, Perhaps I stand a chance.

“He’s one of the last,” Kosar said. Talking hurt. He tried to move, figure out where else he was hurt, but the Shantasi leaned in and pressed the point of a sword into the hollow of his throat.

“Move and you die! Now…the Monk. We’re close to killing it, but my squad is intrigued.”

“Don’t kill him,” Kosar said. “He’s one of the last, and his meaning has changed.”

“Magic is back. Dark magic. What meaning does a Monk have left in this world?”

Kosar realized that as well as angry and committed, this Shantasi was scared. “To fight that dark magic,” he said. “To defeat the Mages. There’s another hope, another chance for the land. The Monk and I have come here to meet your Mystics, and ask for help.”

“You’re speaking riddles!” the Shantasi said. She shouted something to the soldiers around her, a few terse words in their staccato language. Then she leaned close and Kosar could smell her breath, a curious mix of spice and staleness that gave him a sudden flashback to A’Meer.

“I hear your knives knocking together,” he said. “A’Meer wore her weapons so that none of them ever touched.”

The Shantasi blinked again, processing what had happened and what Kosar had said. He saw the doubt in her eyes, and the reluctance to believe. We’re not killers, A’Meer had told him. We’re not a warrior race. It was thrust upon us.

“How is Lucien?” he asked.

“Lucien?”

“The Monk.”

The Shantasi glanced away, then back again. “Alive,” she said.

“Will you give me a chance?” he asked. “Please? A’Meer died for magic, and I swear that it’s not all over. The Mages have their magic, and I suspect their army is ashore and heading this way even now.”

“We know that,” the warrior said.

“Then you can help. I need to see a Mystic. To tell them. And they will know if I tell the truth, won’t they?”

“They have ways of knowing,” she said.

Kosar thought of the beetle in his throat and shivered.

“You’re hurt,” the Shantasi said. “I’ll carry you.”

“No, I-” Kosar went to stand but the warrior had already grabbed him beneath the arms. She knelt, lifted and stood with him slung over one shoulder.

Kosar groaned as his broken ribs ground together. “How far?” he asked.

“Not far.” The Shantasi issued orders to the rest of her squad. Kosar saw at least eight other warriors, and he wondered how he and Lucien had ever survived. They were trying to bring us down, he thought, not kill us. They were intrigued: a man and a Red Monk traveling together on the back of that desert beast. The creature was dead, a still shadow back along the ravine. If I’d been on my own…

“What’s your name?” Kosar asked.

“Nothing to you.” The Shantasi started walking. Each step jarred Kosar’s cracked ribs, and he was glad when unconsciousness took him away once again.

HE CAME TO when the Shantasi lowered him from her back and propped him against a rock. She was panting and sweating, but she still looked strong. He noticed that she now moved silently; she had retied some of her weaponry.

“Thanks for the lift,” Kosar said. He breathed in deeply, and the inside of his nose prickled with the warm aroma of desert spices. The smell gave him an unaccountable sense of well-being. He looked around. Behind him rose a steep, short hill, shifting here and there where Shantasi moved across its face. Lucien was thirty steps to his left, sitting with his head bowed and his hood pulled down. Three Shantasi stood around him, arrows strung, belts gleaming with weapons. He looked like a helpless old man. He seemed to sense Kosar watching because he glanced up. Kosar looked away.

Ahead of him, the desert. He could see the silhouette of a spice farm. Distance was difficult to judge in such light, but he guessed that it was at least several hundred steps away, a complex network of rods and ropes high above the desert. He could see the shadings of leaves and the webbing of stems and stalks, and he wondered whether the desert spice could survive this dearth of sunlight. A’Meer had once told him about a harvest, how the Shantasi climbed through the supports and across the rope rigging to gather leaves and seed pods, and he felt suddenly sad seeing this farm empty and abandoned.

“Are the farms still alive?” he asked.

The big Shantasi woman wiped a slick of sweat from her face. She followed his gaze, looked back at Kosar. “What do you care? Damned Noreelan, what do you give a fuck about us?”

“You’re as much a Noreelan as I.”

“Pah!” The warrior shook her head and turned away. “We make a new home for ourselves, and still it doesn’t last.”

“You’ve been here for so long,” he said. “You’re a part of the land.”

The Shantasi turned back to him, her anger lessened now. She spoke to him like a child; Kosar was not sure which he preferred. “Thief, none of us are part of the land.”

“So what now?” he asked. “I need to speak to someone. Can you take me to Hess? To the Mystic Temple? There’s something-”

“There’s hope,” a voice said. Older, lower than the warrior who had carried him here. The Shantasi performed a brief bow with her head and backed away, leaving room for a man to squat on the sand before Kosar.

“IS THAT WHAT you came to tell me, thief? That there’s hope? You ride across a desert of dying spice farms, under a twilit sky that hasn’t changed in days, accompanied by a Red Monk that has enough wounds to kill a dozen Shantasi…to tell me there’s hope?”

“The Monk is Lucien Malini. His being with me should show you that things have changed.”

The man nodded. “Things have changed, for sure. The Elder Mystics have killed themselves, the others have fled deep into New Shanti. Hess is a city of ghosts and memories, and dead things that still move. Yes, things have changed.” He bowed his head and fisted both hands together.

“I’m sorry,” Kosar said.

The Mystic glanced up and smiled. He looked embattled and desperate, but the smile touched his eyes. Kosar could not help returning the gesture, because A’Meer used to smile like that.

“I’m O’Gan Pentle,” the man said. “I think you’ve guessed that I’m a Mystic. A young one, comparatively.” He leaned forward. “Are you a spy for the Mages?”

“No,” Kosar said.

“Is there something in you?”

“No.”

“Then the hope you bring us…tell me. I have hope of my own, and I’d be interested to hear whether they’re of the same ilk.”

“I need a drink,” Kosar said. “And the Monk will need food and drink also.”

O’Gan glanced across at the Monk, frowning. “Monks are our enemies,” he said.

“Yes, they used to be.”

O’Gan stared at Kosar for a long time. The thief looked down at his bloodied fingertips, but still he felt the Mystic’s attention upon him. “Things have changed,” the Mystic whispered. “Bring some water and food,” he said, louder. “And feed the Monk.”

“Mystic?” The Shantasi warrior sounded amazed.

“Feed it. And give it water. Things have changed, O’Lam.”

The warrior nodded, gave the brief bow again and went to fetch food and drink.

“It was A’Meer,” Kosar said. He was still staring at his hands, remembering how the mimics had shown him his lover’s last moments. It was a painful memory, but one he felt he had to share now. It was almost like bringing her death home. “I’d left the others, I wasrunning away, when the mimics showed me A’Meer. And that made it clear to me. It solidified what the librarian said, what Hope claimed, and-”