Tim Lebbon - Dawn

The land shook beneath them, and Noreelans shivered in their hiding places. But for now the aim of the army had changed. The invasion was over, and the battle for magic had begun.

Tim Lebbon

Dawn

THE SHANTASI WERE harvesting, though not spice. The spice farms were dying, but the warriors were out on the desert sands anyway, digging instead of climbing, ignoring the intricate webbings and shriveling plants in favor of excavating things from below.

“More Pace beetles?” Kosar asked.

“I expect so.” Lucien was nursing his wounds, chewing the remaining plants from his robe pockets and packing the resultant paste in the holes in his arm, shoulders and body. He felt weak and wretched. He should be dead. Yet here he was, surrounded by Shantasi, and he had no idea what would come next. Perhaps he would go with them to fight the Mages and their Krote army. The idea of that thrilled him, driving his blood faster and inspiring a heat in his skin which Kosar must surely feel where he sat a few steps away.

On the other hand, the Shantasi could simply kill him. He had fight left in him, but he was not sure that he would resist. The more Shantasi he took with him, the fewer there would be to fight the Krotes, and the more chance there was of Alishia being caught and killed. He hoped the Shantasi reasoned as he did and allowed him to fight.

They had let Kosar come and sit next to him after the thief had finished talking with the Mystic. With the Shantasi going about their preparations, it felt as though he and Kosar were set apart. Lucien sighed and pressed more paste into an arrow wound above his left elbow. He flexed his arm and felt the damage to the joint, but his blood had hardened there, fixed the fracture and turned fluid again to lubricate the movement.

A Shantasi returned from the sands and dropped a leather bag against a rock thirty steps away. He muttered something to O’Gan Pentle, who was sitting on the rock, glanced at Lucien and Kosar then went back out onto the sands. O’Gan continued watching the harvest.

They had sent a dozen Shantasi east immediately after O’Gan had made his decision. Their army was spread across the desert between here and Hess, and they were to initiate a chain reaction of orders all the way back to the Mystic City. O’Gan expected the bulk of the army to be with them within half a day, and then he said they would head southwest toward Kang Kang.

“I see no horses,” Lucien said. “No transport. That desert creature we rode on was fast, but will there be enough to carry four thousand Shantasi?”

“O’Gan said they would move quickly enough,” Kosar said. He had drawn his sword and touched the blade to his fingertips, smearing blood across the metal and leaving it to dry to a crust.

“I could heal those,” Lucien said.

Kosar looked at him. “You told me that before.”

“I meant it.”

Kosar touched the sword again and watched a bubble of blood run down to the handle. “I like myself as I am,” the thief said.

“The offer remains open.”

“The offer isclosed!” Kosar stood and walked away, sheathing his sword and approaching the Mystic.

I killed his love, Lucien thought, trying to remember that fight in the woods around the machines’ graveyard. The rage had been fully upon him then, and he could not recall much of the Shantasi other than her ferocity. He’d had an idea that she had fought Red Monks before, and the fact that she was still alive to take him on had inspired an element of respect for her. But respect was weakness, and Lucien had triumphed. And from that moment on, his and Kosar’s paths had been destined to cross.

He finished dressing his wounds, rested his arms on crossed legs and stared out across the desert.

THE BIG THIEF approached, walking awkwardly and holding his arm across his ribs. Behind him the Red Monk sat staring into the desert, hood hiding his grotesquely scarred face.

O’Gan feared the journey and fight to come. They had their means to reach Kang Kang, and they had their weapons and training, but everything else O’Gan was hoping for to help them in the battle…well, they might no longer be available. These were desert things that craved the sun.

“What are you gathering?” Kosar the thief asked.

“What do you think?” O’Gan recognized a naive intelligence in the man’s eyes; they held experience, but his manner also displayed an ignorance of many things. Someone out for his own gain, not interested in information and learning. Before all this, at least. Now, seeing the wounds he bore and the hatred he still harbored for the Monk with whom he had ridden across the desert, O’Gan knew that Kosar was much changed. He wondered whether the thief even realized that he was a new man.

“Pace beetles,” Kosar said. “Just another drug.” He sounded disappointed.

“A’Meer didn’t tell you everything,” O’Gan said. “It’s no drug. The beetles live a different time from our own. It’s…complicated.”

Kosar raised his eyebrows. “I may not understand, but I’m ready to believe.”

O’Gan nodded and smiled. “They age a hundred years in their lifetime, yet they exist in our world for only a few months. Things arefaster for them. By eating them, we borrow their time.”

Kosar nodded, frowning. “And age faster in the process. We killed the thing we rode in on.”

O’Gan nodded. “We can’t use it too much. It hurts.”

“Have you just told me a Shantasi secret?” the thief asked.

O’Gan stood, jumped from the rock and landed softly beside Kosar. He rested his hand on the man’s shoulder and squeezed slightly, and he was pleased when Kosar smiled. He’s glad I believe him, the Mystic thought. Glad I’m ready to help. He sacrificed so much to get here.

“I think,” O’Gan said, nodding toward the Red Monk, “that our secret is already out.”

“He said he read lots of books in the Monastery,” Kosar said. “I think he was fooling with me.”

“The whole history of the land is written in books, somewhere,” O’Gan said. “Most of them will never be found, most have never been read. But they’ve all been written.”

“Who’s writing this one?”

“You, thief. Me. All of us.”

Kosar nodded. “And to talk of the end?”

“The land is full of seers and prophets, visionaries and those who purport to know the future. But every next breath is the future. Every blink of your eyes marks your progress from one moment to the next, and you never know what you’re going to see when they next open.”

Kosar blinked. “You,” he said. “The desert. The dying spice farms. I knew they’d be there.”

“Youtrusted them to be there. But you never know for sure.” O’Gan picked up a handful of sand and let it slip between his fingers, holding out his other hand beneath to catch it. Some grains he caught, others fell back to the ground. “You trust this sand to fall, but one day it may rise.”

“I saw a river flowing uphill,” Kosar said. “It turned and wiped out a whole village.”

O’Gan nodded, dropped the remaining sand. “Between one blink and the next, the world will change.”

Kosar sighed and sat down. He held his head in his hands, elbows resting on his knees, and groaned as his soft rocking motion aggravated his broken ribs. “I’m just a Mage-shitting thief! I don’t need to be here. I don’t deserve it.”

“Does he?” O’Gan said, nodding at Lucien.

Kosar did not even look. “He calls himself a human.”

O’Gan blinked several times in surprise, and each time he looked again, the Monk was still there. “Has he seen what we saw?”

“The mimics? I’m not sure. I don’t care.”

“Without him, would you be sitting here now?”