Tim Lebbon - Dusk

The voice that had spoken to her in here had faded away, leaving in its place a pause between breaths. She felt the weight of potential.

She drifted, afloat in her own mind, the flotsam and jetsam of her memories bobbing by to offer vague, unimaginable glimpses of a story she could never understand. Every time something came out of the darkness the agonies grew, as if revelation promised only pain. Revelation, and realization. Because hidden behind this blackness she sensed a profound knowledge awaiting rediscovery.

Wisdom and pain, learning and agony. I know that I must not know. But even the ability to create that thought hurt her to the core.

And then something was coming.

It was the presence back in her mind, invisible, silent, yet keen as the pain that informed her consciousness. It was huge. Massive in import and effect, terrifying in scope, because it came for her. It must have come for her, because there was nothing else here. Yet far from reducing the little she felt, it made her feel more there, more corporeal, and for the first time since she could remember, Alishia knew her name.

There is hope in Kang Kang, the presence portrayed, and Alishia had heard of that place.

Life rises from death, she understood, and she wondered where she factored between the two.

This is for you. She did not know what that meant. She had no inkling. Yet an instant later, Alishia felt whole again. Whole, and possessed of something extra. Something momentous.

She opened her eyes and said farewell to the Black.

“ALISHIA’S AWAKE!” HOPEsaid.

Rafe nodded. “The magic brought her back.” The boy was still sitting on the ground, staring up at the dark shapes bearing down on them. The sounds of fresh battle filled the air as the machines fell upon the new wave of Red Monks.

Hope touched the girl’s forehead as she stirred, wondering what was happening inside. She seemed much reduced, as if she had begun to shrink. “Hey!” she said, but the girl did not answer. Her eyes looked through Hope and saw something much more terrifying. “Why did it bring her back?” Hope said to Rafe, but he did not respond.

Hope let go of the girl and pressed her wrinkled hands to the ground, working her fingers below the surface. Kosar and Trey were shouting to each other, looking up at the shapes growing larger in the dusky sky, yet they had not noticed the change in things. Rafe had sat up, moved his hands from the soil where they had been making sparkling contact for the duration of the battle. And yet still the magic worked. Whatever link he had forged was now redundant, because magic was loose again amongst these machines, meting out memories of better times and clothing them in flesh, blood, stone and wood that had been their makeup all those years ago.

Hope pressed her hands in deeper, feeling for the change in herself, demanding it. Yet no change came. She whispered an old spell her mother’s mother had once used, but it dispersed in the air with her useless breath.

And then Alishia blinked again, slowly and heavily, and she stared at Hope. Her eyes were so full of knowledge that the witch fell back. She knows! the witch thought. She knows what I was doing! How could she know that, unless…?

Rafe was staring at the sky, as if welcoming the coming attack.

“Rafe,” Hope said, pleading, demanding, but though he turned to her his eyes offered nothing.

“They’re coming,” he said. “Cataclysm falls so soon. It’s out of my hands.”

There was a pause in the battle then, a moment so brief that Hope thought she might have imagined it between blinks. Swords must have been drawn back, waiting to fall again. Red Monks’ breaths were hauled in for the next exhalation of agony. Machine limbs paused between stretches, rusted joints poised to find themselves whole again, denuded metal bones reveling in the softness of new flesh. There was silence, an instant of peace, and when the cacophony began again everything had changed.

The ground around Hope, Alishia, Rafe, Kosar and Trey rumbled and rose, two dozen ribs the thickness of a man’s thigh piercing the sky from the ground, curving up and around, and even before the ribs met above and formed a protective cage they had changed from rusted red to silvery gray, catching and reflecting the first gleams of the death moon.

“We’re caged in!” Hope hissed.

“They’re caged out.”

And from above, the promise of death descending.

LUCIEN MALINI FLEDthat valley of death. Almost dead himself, he crawled up to the ridge and down the other side, rolling, leaving bloody marks on the ground behind him. It was lost. It was all lost, all hope, lost to the Mages and those machines awoken here. The land would know magic again and he would see its influence, and that enraged him. Pain was chewing him up now, driving his rage to new levels in failure. He rolled, stood, tripped and rolled again, knowing that all there was left to do was to take whatever petty revenge he could find. He would go to that Shantasi bitch’s body and hack it to small shreds, bathe in her blood and use it to replace his own. That image would keep him alive for the next few minutes, at least.

But when he reached the place where she had fallen her body was already being taken apart. He saw the last of it spread and melt away, red turning to gray. And as he fell to his knees and screamed he saw the trees and rocks and ground around him shift, move, melt down into a billion tiny parts. They merged with the disintegrated Shantasi and flowed away to the east.

Perhaps it was simply his vision failing him at the point of death. Or maybe it was something much more important than that; something for him to follow. And that thought alone gave him back a spark of life.

THE HAWKS FELLout of the sky. Kosar was amazed that they did not leave a trail of burning air behind them, such was their speed and ferocity. He heard the roar of their movement through the air, and maybe they were growling as well. He could see the shapes sitting astride their gnarled necks, and though Rafe had spoken their names Kosar could not believe what he was seeing.

The Mages? Here, now, already?

For so long they had been the stuff of legend and campfire tales, an evil three centuries old that, though horrendous, had faded slowly away. Time could not extinguish their wrongdoing, but it had smoothed the sharp edges, shedding the intricate details of their crimes and leaving only the wide-scale stories of magic gone bad and war, conflict and death across the length and breadth of Noreela. The results could still be seen and felt, but Kosar had never known a time when the land was untainted. He had seen many strange and horrible sights in his travels, but he had not consciously attributed them to the Mages. They simply were.

And now within seconds, the Mages were going to attack.

“What do we do?” he said. “What can we do?”

“They’ll never stop,” Trey whispered. “They’ll smash right through us!”

“They want Rafe alive; they’re not here to kill him.”

“It doesn’t look like that to me,” Kosar said.

He could see their faces now, and he was surprised at how human they looked. Fearsome, furious, but human.

Night filled the valley.

The machine caging the five humans began to vibrate, the sensation originating from belowground and shimmering up the tall ribs enclosing them.

When the hawks were only seconds away, slowing down, extending their clawed feet to grasp on to the huge machine, an explosion of light burst from the point where the ribs met and splashed up and out to meet them.

Kosar squinted against the sudden brightness, shielded his eyes and fell to the ground. There were screams from above them, perhaps hawk, perhaps human. When he looked again a few seconds later the sky was clear and the hawks were skimming the ground away from them, shedding specks of light like embers from a disturbed fire. More sparks erupted as their riders slashed and hacked at machine and Monk alike.