Tim Lebbon - Dawn

Soon they were buried in another fledge seam, traveling quickly away from that huge cavern, and Trey was glad.

South, he thought. We’re going south. I wonder if my whole future now is belowground.

No future, the Nax rumbled a while later. But Trey did not know to whom or what they referred.

THE KROTE ARMY rode south. Noreela City was a hundred miles behind them, still gushing smoke at the sky, still echoing to the sounds of the dead searching for those left alive. Lenora had started following her own shadow, cast forward by the blazing city. Now her shadow was a vague thing once again, thrown left and right by the moons. Most of the time she was not aware of it at all. And that haunting shade was still with her.

She stared forward, still shocked at the arrival of the Mages, their appearance and the news they had brought.

THEIR MACHINE HAD landed heavily, spilling Angel to the ground. She rolled and ran, coming at Lenora as though meaning to run straight through her. S’Hivez remained on the machine’s back. He was slumped down as though asleep.

What have I done? Lenora thought, panicked. She could feel the heat of Noreela City’s demise on her back, yet Angel looked grim and fierce and…frightened?

“Mistress,” Lenora said, kneeling and bowing her head.

“Get up!” Angel spat.

Lenora obeyed. Still she kept her head down, because she did not wish to see such rage in the Mage’s eyes.

“Look at me,” Angel said, her voice gentler. Lenora looked. Angel glanced over the Krote’s shoulder at Noreela City, its stone walls glowing with fearsome heat. “You’ve done well,” the Mage said, but Lenora could see in her eyes that there were matters more pressing than praise.

“Thank you, Mistress. What of the south?”

“The south?” Angel said, raising her eyebrows. “You think we’ve been to the south?”

“You flew in from that way,” Lenora said. She could not meet Angel’s eyes for more than a heartbeat without looking away.

“We went to the Monastery,” Angel said. “There was something we had to do there.”

“The Nax?” Lenora said.

“The Nax. But they’re long gone. The basements and deeper caves are empty. But we met something else there. A shade spy came to us, and it gave news we thought never to hear.”

“And this news…” Lenora started, pausing when Angel glared at her. “The Shantasi?”

“Pah! Weakling slaves who think themselves warriors. Why would I fear those whiter freaks? No, Lenora.” She moved close and spoke into Lenora’s ear. “Magic. There’s still magic free, and it conspires against us.”

“You have the magic,” Lenora said, confused. “I saw you take it from the boy with my own eyes.”

Angel glanced at Lenora’s machine, parts of its flesh and bone risen from the corpse of the farm boy. “So you did,” she said. “But a shade has found another. A girl, going into Kang Kang with a mad witch as her companion.”

“No one else?”

“Just two of them.”

“Then what threat-?”

Angel reached out and grabbed Lenora’s shoulder. Old wounds and new came alight, pain burning into Lenora’s body and skull, and Angel pressed her to her knees. Lenora tried not to scream. She closed her eyes and welcomed the pain as a friend rather than an enemy. It would be over soon and she would not remember exactly how it felt. Pain was a thing of the moment.

Angel brought her face close to Lenora’s and waited until the Krote opened her eyes before she spoke. “What threat? Consider what threat we are to Noreela.”

“We’redestroying Noreela!”

“Yes, and I can taste its blood on your breath. But if a magic beyond our control returns to the land, the blade will be turned. The threat will be on us. It’ll be the War again. And as you well know, Lenora, we didn’t fare well the first time.”

“But wewould win now, Mistress.” Lenora stared into Angel’s eyes, past the agony of her shoulder and her fear of the Mage. Behind false beauty wrought by magic she saw the embittered old Mage this woman really was, mad with the need for revenge, insane with its hunger. And in those eyes, she saw the reflection of herself.

Angel eased her grip until her hand was merely resting on Lenora’s shoulder. “You’re a good soldier,” she said. “And a friend, Lenora. Does that shock you?”

Lenora shook her head. “No, Mistress.”

“Good. Then do this friend a favor. Drive south to Kang Kang. Take the whole army with you. Ignore everything between here and there. Don’t be tempted by the towns, the trains of fleeing people, the farming villages. Take only what you need to eat, drink and rearm, and go for the eastern reach of Kang Kang. A mad witch and a girl, that’s all you seek of Noreela right now.”

“Shall I bring them to you?”

“Kill them. And with the girl, make sure her head is crushed into the ground. Feed her brains to your machine. Leavenothing. ”

“Mistress,” Lenora said, bowing her head slightly.

Angel touched Lenora’s chin and raised her face. “I suppose you want to know where S’Hivez and I will be while all this is going on?”

“No, Mistress, I’d never question-”

“I can’t tell you,” Angel said. “But we’ll meet again soon.”

“Kang Kang is a long way, perhaps five hundred miles. How long do we have?”

“Perhaps days, perhaps…heartbeats.” Angel looked up at the darkened sky, as though expecting the sun to shine through at any moment.

“I will not fail you, Mistress.”

“Thank you, Lenora. I’m leaving you something. It will build you more machines, to carry a different army.” Angel left and Lenora watched her go, thrilled and relieved.

The Mage leapt onto her machine with unnatural grace. She leaned forward and whispered something to S’Hivez, but the male Mage barely moved. He’s somewhere else, Lenora thought. As the machine lifted off, something slipped from a rent in its gut and moved toward the city walls. Another shade crushed a hole in reality. Lenora tried not to see.

Angel spared not a glance for the burning city.

“As though she’s seen it all before,” Lenora said. And she had. The Mages had been dreaming of this every night for three hundred years.

IN THE DISTANCE Lenora saw the lights from a caravan of wagons. They snaked across the foothills of the Widow’s Peaks, heading south from Noreela City. As they closed in, the lights blinked out, and Lenora could see hundreds of tiny shadows fleeing the wagons and dispersing across the hillside. More helpless victims to slaughter, but she could not let anything distract her. Angel had been very specific in her orders. And in a way, Lenora was glad. She had seen a killing frenzy in some of her Krotes that she could no longer find in herself, and it had disturbed her. Perhaps because of that voice that spoke to her, that child, and the innocence she had begun to hear behind its words.

The massed army of Krotes thundered on. Their machines ran or crawled or flew, and in their midst, giant new constructs-formed by the shade the Mages had left behind-rolled on wheels of stone cast from the ruins of Noreela City. They carried great cages and bowls, hollow globes and flattened shelves of rock, and packed into these machines were thousands of Noreelan dead. Limbs waved feebly, mouths opened and closed and drooled black blood. Heads turned to see where they were going and to search for their uncertain futures.

What of their wraiths? Lenora thought yet again, but she did not dwell on that. Wherever they were, they would be in pain.

The machines tore down dying trees and crushed them to splinters. They churned the soil, ploughing under failing crops and exposing the guts of the land to the dusk. A heavy frost glittered, reflecting moonlight and marking their way. They moved quickly, and when they saw a large town burning in the distance they diverted slightly and told the Krotes there of their new aim. These several warriors boarded their flying machines and took off, heading south toward Kang Kang.