Tim Lebbon - Dawn

TREY FELT A change in the Nax carrying him south. They had passed through fledge seams and caverns, plunged into underground rivers and melted through a lake of ancient ice, emerging unscathed on the other side. All the while the Nax had been there at the edges of his mind, awful and playful, taunting and superior. And then they became silent and serious, and he realized that they were carrying him toward something even more inconceivable.

Where are we going? he thought, hoping that they would answer. Can I take myself? Will you let me go when we arrive? He knew that they heard his thoughts-they were in his mind, cool and sharp-but there was no response. They had not spoken to him for what could have been hours, or years.

The fledge around him changed. It was a graded change, but he felt it straightaway. He had become used to being flooded with the drug, abrading his skin on the outside and soothing his muscles and mind inside. But this new fledge was sharp and cruel, pricking at his skin like a thousand sword points and forcing into his mouth as the Nax dragged him through, filling his stomach. He coughed through the drug and could not breathe, but he had not been breathing for some time now. How could he? He was buried underground.

What is this? he thought. Images started to play across his mind. They were too rapid to catch. These visions were not his own, and he could not understand their source: he was not casting his mind because the Nax would not let him. No single image stood out, because of their speed-it was as if they played on the insides of his eyelids as he blinked-but they presented a picture of things unknown, and terrible.

Kang Kang, a voice said, and the Nax had spoken to him again.

Kang Kang! Perhaps Hope and Alishia are here even now? Maybe they’re waiting for me…though what can I do for them?

Trey did not dwell on what he might have become. The Nax dragged him through the fledge foundations of the world, and he did not breathe, yet he could think and reason like the old Trey. I am Trey, he thought. I can’t be anything else.

The fledge in Kang Kang was different. It flooded into and through him and gave him those countless images from the minds of others. The Nax disliked it, but he did not understand how he could perceive their discomfort. They were not talking in his mind, nor were their nebulous bodies actually touching his. Perhaps their uneasiness was his also.

What have I become? Trey thought once again, and they moved him on.

Sometime later, feeling the weight of the world above him lessening and the kiss of cold air against his fledge-scoured skin, Trey heard the voice of the Nax in his mind one last time.

You are there.

IN THE DISTANCE, Kosar heard the sounds of war. Fires lit the horizon, explosion of blue light boosting the glare, and a steady rumble of destruction rolled across the landscape. It reached the foothills where he waited with the Shantasi army and echoed into Kang Kang.

“They can’t last for very long,” Lucien Malini said.

“They’ll fight hard.” Kosar did not like the Red Monk at his side; did not like him speaking words so plain; did not feel comfortable knowing that their causes had converged. But the Monk seemed to have become attached, staying at Kosar’s side to protect or be protected. Kosar was hardly surprised; he had seen the way the Shantasi looked at Lucien. They’re right to hate him, he thought. And I have a right to hate him also. He glanced sideways at the Monk, surprised that he felt nothing.

The two thousand Shantasi had reached the foothills of Kang Kang just as the first sounds of battle came in from the north. Their desert creatures were all but exhausted by then, many of them dying from the huge doses of Pace beetles they had been given. The Shantasi continued on foot. Kosar and Lucien’s creature had survived, coaxed on by whispers from the Monk and Kosar’s force of will. I can’t run, he had thought, I can’t walk. I can barely crawl.

They had spread themselves out across the foothills, moving east and west to take up positions. There was no telling exactly where the Krotes would attack. But their advancing army would be seen by the Shantasi scouts hiding on the plains, and they would be warned, and by the time the Krotes reached Kang Kang, the Shantasi would be regrouped and waiting for them.

“What do we have that can fight that?” Kosar asked. A mushroom of flame and smoke rose above the horizon, spreading slowly and pushing the darkness back toward the moons. It glimmered with blue light at its furthest extreme, like controlled lightning. At this distance it was smaller than the fingernail on his thumb, but it must have been huge to be visible from so far away.

“Very little,” Lucien said. “Nothing. But the aim never was to win.”

“No,” Kosar said. “No victory today.” He thought of O’Gan Pentle and the two thousand other Shantasi they had left behind, fighting and dying in those flames. Every flash of light he saw brought death, and he wondered which rumbling explosion heralded O’Gan’s passing. He liked the Shantasi Mystic, and mourned the fact that it was war that had brought them together. “War,” he said, as though amazed that the word could be spoken. The Red Monk did not answer.

And yet Kosar also remembered what O’Gan had said to him, and the harvesting of weapons from the desert. If you live through this, thief, you’ll be able to tell your children you saw the Shantasi at war. It’s not something you or they will forget. Perhaps the Shantasi had more at their disposal than anyone had yet seen. If so, they would have a chance to reveal it soon.

The explosions on the horizon made the darkness here even more extreme. It had begun to snow, adding to their misery, and Kosar’s wounds were aching from the cold. Whatever drugs O’Gan had administered were wearing off. Perhaps when their effect had vanished altogether O’Gan would be dead, and Kosar would be receiving more wounds. His hand was stiff where a Monk had slashed it back in the machines’ graveyard, his cheek and ribs were sore and the stab wounds in his back felt as though the blades were present there again, parting mending flesh and skin. There was a warmth at the heart of him-the dregs of O’Gan’s drugs-but his extremities were cold, and soon they would be colder still.

Snow landed on his hand where it was clasped around the sword’s hilt. It did not melt. He brought it to his mouth and breathed out, licking up the resulting water and tasting the filth of his skin. “I don’t want to die,” he said, and the feeling behind the words surprised him. It was as if someone else had spoken.

Lucien looked at him, scarred face shaded by his raised hood. “Death is not the end,” he said.

Kosar snorted. “You can’t know that!”

“I’ve killed enough to know.”

“The Black? I’m sure you’ve never chanted anyone down. You kill and leave wraiths to haunt their place of death. Torture them. That’s not the end I want.”

“If the Mages win, Noreela will be no place to live for anyone or anything.”

Kosar shook his head, not wishing to talk with the Monk about such things. He and A’Meer could have conversed at length, and he would have enjoyed it. It would have made him feelbetter. “Leave me alone,” he said. “Don’t talk to me.”

“I’ll protect you as well as I can,” Lucien said.

“You? Why?”

“Because I don’t believe your part in this is fully played out.”

Kosar flipped Lucien’s hood back from his face so that he could see his eyes. They were dark and watery, reflecting flames. “Don’t you pretend with me,” Kosar said. “Not with me. Not after what you’ve done and who you’ve killed.” He lifted his sword and pressed its tip against the Monk’s throat, leaning forward so that his weight rested against the handle. One shove would break skin and send metal into flesh. He closed his eyes and imagined doing just that, but he knew it would not be the end. The Monk was strong.