Tim Lebbon - Dawn

“You’ll not take from me what’s mine,” she said, again and again. Alishia’s breath was warm and musty and smelled of ash. “You’ll not take what’s mine!”

The witch found a narrow stone bridge crossing the ravine that she was beginning to fear ran the length of Kang Kang. She did not know whether the bridge was natural or made by someone or something, but she crossed anyway, glancing down into the depths only once. There’s no bottom to that, she thought, no ending. Only darkness growing darker. Her skin crawled, her hair stood on end, her tattoos squirmed at the corners of her mouth, providing runways for tears.

If she stumbled, she knew that she would fall forever.

She reached the other side and started climbing into the mountains without pause. Alishia had been right, she did not know where she was going. But this was Kang Kang, and the Womb of the Land was here, and the only way to find it was to search.

The slopes grew steeper and turned from grass and bracken to loose shale. The snow continued. Sometimes it burned when it touched her exposed skin, and she wondered where the waters that formed this snow had risen from. Within every shadow she sensed eyes watching, yet when she looked the eyes closed. At any moment she expected the ground to give a heave, shrugging her from the slopes of Kang Kang. Sometimes her feet seemed to barely touch the ground, and she wondered whether she was repulsing the land or vice versa. She was an alien in this alien world, utterly unwelcome. The whole place watched her, silent and surly. Planning her demise.

Not long now, she thought, a mantra that drove her on. All that Hope had been was slowly filtering away. She had memories, but they grew vague-and the farther she went, the more her early life seemed to consist only of the old, useless spells her mother had taught her, the routes and byways of genuine enchantments. The fake charms and false potions became the affectations of another woman, a sad old soul whom Hope had once known. Her life before finding the dead Sleeping God had been a held breath, and now she was close to gasping herself awake.

It’s all me…not long now…it’s all me.

“Guide us in,” Alishia muttered.

Hope nudged the girl with her shoulder, but she said no more.

The death moon lit an ancient path up the side of a mountain. Light snow defined its edges, melting on the path as though the ancient footsteps that formed it were still warm. Should be writing my own Book of Ways, Hope thought.

This place threw all of its hatred and distrust her way, making her flesh creep and her eyes water with every step she took. But over her shoulder lay the future. Hope had been inside a dead God, and she was mad enough to survive Kang Kang’s worst.

TREY WAS AWASH with fledge, but he could not travel. His mind jumped and jerked, bored within its own confines and eager to reach out and seek more, but each time he tried to leave, the Nax held him down. The first time it happened he had been so terrified that he lost all pretense at consciousness for some time. When he next came around and tried to travel once more, the Nax came in again. He slipped back into his mind and let them hold him there, but he did not pass out.

They dragged him through fledge seams deeper than any he had ever believed existed. He felt the weight of the world above him, mile upon mile of rock and cavern and water, fledge and earth and the bones of long-buried things. But the Nax had him, and though they exuded scorn, they seemed to have purpose. He could not guess what it was, and hoped he would never find out. Perhaps he would be dead by the time they reached their destination.

He tried talking to his mother. If he heard her reply, then he would know that life had truly left him.

But the Nax kept him awake, and he felt every pull and tug as they steered him through seams of the drug. His fledge rage was long since satiated, but still he opened his mouth now and then to exhale old drug and breathe in new. It still surprised him that he was breathing fledge instead of air, but he did not dwell upon it.

Alishia, thought Trey. I was looking after her. But she felt a whole world away. Perhaps while he had been held down here by the fledge demons, time had moved on many years aboveground. Maybe Alishia and Hope had reached the Womb of the Land and done what they needed to do, protected by Kosar and the Shantasi army riding behind him. Perhaps the Mages had been driven away and light been brought back to the land. Kosar would be wandering again, a thief, a hero, looking for the fledge miner he had left behind in Hope’s unstable care.

Or maybe Alishia had died before ever reaching the heart of Kang Kang, and the land was left to the Mages, and Trey was the last human.

He should cast out, travel through the rock and see what was happening. But the crawling discomfort of the Nax was ever-present at the edge of his mind.

They exploded from the fledge into open air, and Trey gasped aloud. The Nax had him by the arms and legs and he kicked and twisted, trying to get free. It was pitch black, yet he could sense the massive space around him, a hollow in the foundation of Noreela that dwarfed the home-cavern where he had spent his childhood. He coughed and heard no echoes. He shouted, vomiting a dry stream of fledge into open air. He did not hear it hit the ground. The Nax flew on, ignoring his struggles and shouts, and Trey calmed his mind and closed his eyes to the blackness.

Will you let me go down, if not up? he thought, and he cast his mind from his floating body.

This time the Nax did not interrupt.

Soon, he would find out why.

TREY FELL THROUGH the darkness, always aware of the position of his body way above. The Nax flew him across this great cavern, moving slowly, almost as if they wanted him to travel down and see where they were. They’re waiting for me, he thought. He guessed that they could hear him, see him, know him, but he had consumed so much fledge-the youngest, freshest drug he had ever experienced-that he barely cared. Let them, he thought. Let the monsters read me.

We are the Nax, their voice roared, and Trey went spinning through the cavern.

Even traveling on a fledge trip, it took him several minutes to reach the ground. He probed outward with his senses and saw, smelled and tasted more fledge, built up from the floor of the cavern into towering structures. This drug was different from any he had ever known. It was molded and worked, broken down and then re-formed with some other substance that gave it a thicker, rougher texture. And it was old, giving off a sickening stale miasma that almost drove Trey away.

But there was something else that urged him closer. Beyond the fact that it had been mined and then remade, past the obvious age of these structures, his own probing mind found others.

They did not notice him. They were mumbling, adrift and mad. None of them traveled farther than a few steps from this timeless fledge city, and as Trey dipped down between stale minarets, columns and towers, he knew why.

There were people trapped down here. They were buried in the fledge buildings, a leg protruding here, a face there. They were a race he did not know. High foreheads; dark skin; long, protruding jaws; wide eyes that had once surely been intelligent, though now they wore the dull taint of time in their blindness. The horrible fact of their longevity impressed itself upon Trey.

Is it this for me as well? he thought, rising quickly from the city and shutting his senses to it. Am I going to be imprisoned like these unknown people, trapped down here for centuries, so old that they must be from an age long forgotten?

The Nax holding his body drew him in, pulling him across space so quickly that he was left reeling within the confines of his own mind. They offered no explanation or comment, but moved on faster than ever.