Tim Lebbon - Dusk

“What was that?” Trey hissed.

“The machine protecting us,” Rafe said. “It can fight them, but I doubt it’ll hold them off forever. It’s a distraction. If they can satisfy themselves with fighting the Monks and the other machines in the valley-and they must be raging for blood after so long-then perhaps we can get away.”

“‘Perhaps’? Get away how?” Hope was on her feet, staring up at the huge ribs catching the moonlight.

Rafe smiled. “As I said, it’s out of my hands.”

Kosar and Trey stood beside Alishia and Rafe, still nursing their weapons but more distracted now by the vibrations in the ground beneath their feet, the shimmering of air between the ribs. Something was happening-something invisible and momentous-and the potential filling the air was palpable. Kosar tried to slow his breathing but fear sped it along. I’ve just seen the Mages, been within a spear’s throw of the demons of the land. And I’m still alive. For now.

“What was the light?” he said.

“Magic fending off the Mages, that’s all that need concern us,” Rafe said.

“Magic,” Alishia whispered.

“Is it still in you?” Kosar asked Rafe. “Are you still carrying it? Isn’t it free now? Isn’t this the moment magic comes back to the land?”

Rafe frowned, staring out through the cage at the struggling shadows beyond. “I think this is only happening here,” he said. “It’s taking a lot of effort.”

“So how long does it last?”

“I don’t know.”

“Long enough for us to get away?” Trey asked. He was kneeling beside Alishia now, touching her face and hands. “Otherwise, what’s the point? If magic protects us like this-reanimates the machines, defends us against the Monks… the Mages!… why would it not save us for good?”

“I don’t know,” Rafe said again. The ground shook once more, a vibration that sent a heavy, rumbling groan up into the air. It mingled with the sounds of battle.

The cage altered in the dark, and when Kosar looked closer he saw that the metallic ribs had turned back to bone.

“We’re going to fly,” Alishia said.

“What woke you?” Kosar asked. He suddenly did not trust her. He did not trust anyone, not now that A’Meer was likely dead and he was here amongst strangers again. Alishia looked at him and her eyes were both beautiful and terrifying. For a librarian, she’s seen so much, Kosar thought.

Seeing past the ribs, he could just make out details of the fight. The three dark shapes had seemingly shaken off the effects of the light and were now hovering above different parts of the valley, their riders slipping sideways in their saddles and entering into battle. Kosar could not tell what they fought-Monk or machine-but he knew that the Mages would find enemies in both. The previously simple battle had now turned into a three-way fight. That suited him fine. Let the Mages and Monks and machines battle it out, so long as they left them alone

…

Something, Kosar thought. Something is happening, now, beneath our feet. I can feel it. Like tumblers rolling beneath the ground, as if to change the shape of the land itself.

“Fly…” Alishia said again, dreamy and light.

A roar came in from the distance and a huge shape reared above the horizon, a hawk standing on its tentacles and grappling with something less recognizable. A fiery exhaust burst from the machine and scorched the ground, and the hawk rider lashed out with some unknown weapon, the weapon itself carrying fire, wrapping around the machine’s base and bringing it down with an earth-shaking crunch. The hawk screeched again, but this time in triumph.

Monks cried out, crumpled beneath hawk feet, slashed by the riders’ blades, crushed by machines.

The land swam in blood.

And then slowly, incredibly, the valley began to fall away.

“What in the name of the Black-?” Kosar hissed.

“It’s going,” Trey said, looking down. “It’s going, it’s falling, leaving us behind.”

“No,” Hope said. “We’re flying.”

“Flying…”

Lights flashed below them and to the side, accompanied by a roar as the ground tore itself apart, freeing the trapped machine. The light flared, lifting them up on a pillar of luminescence. Bursts of a more firelike exhaust streaked across the valley from the machine, enveloping hawks and Mages in writhing flame, sending them spinning away like burning stars. The hawks streamed around the valley, ricocheting from rocky outcroppings and solid machines, dripping fire across the ground and setting the blood-drenched cloaks of Monks aflame. Soon the valley was lit by fire, though the hawks and their riders seemed to shake it off, rising up again.

The battle continued. But now, dazzled by the new fire thrusting them aloft, Kosar and the others were all but blinded to its progress. They saw glimpses of the scattered fires, but the edges of the machine that lifted them up obscured any real view.

Kosar had sat down on the shaken ground. He held on to the thick grass below him, as if that would anchor him to the spot. He was terrified. Trey glanced at him and Kosar grimaced back, shrugged his shoulders. The strange, it seemed, had just become stranger.

“Where are we going?” Hope asked Rafe. She sounded so matter-of-fact, as if flying was something she did every day.

“Away,” Rafe said. He was staring at Alishia, and they both smiled. “Away. Safe. I’m so tired.” And he closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

“I wish I could do that,” Kosar said.

Hope grinned at him, her tattoos catching the death moon and turning her visage ghastly. “Scared, thief?”

“Aren’t you?”

Her smile remained. “Petrified. We’re flying, for Black’s sake!”

The machine seemed to be picking up speed. They felt the bursts and pulses of energy shed from its lower edges, and with each explosion they were pushed higher. Light simmered around the machine’s lower edges. And with each gush of motion the machine itself was changing. The ribs had thickened as some dull gray coating grew around them, pulled in from nothing. The spaces between the ribs began to glow with countless points of light. Kosar had once been caught in a storm of fireflies, but this was even brighter. Soon it was bright as daylight within the gray ribs, and then lighter still, so that Kosar had to squeeze his eyes closed. It lasted for only a few heartbeats. When the light faded and he looked again, there was only the vague background illumination left from the pulse down below. And he saw what the light had made. Between each rib, for the height of a tall man, a fleshy skin stretched across. Even now veins formed on its surface and within, flooding it with blood from nowhere, and magic was at work so close, so near, that if he so desired he could have reached out and touched it.

Their sense of velocity increased. Kosar looked around at the others-Hope, wide-eyed; Trey, hanging on to the ground for dear life; Alishia and Rafe, prone, the movements of their limbs perhaps due to the motion of the machine, perhaps not-and he knew that he had to look over the edge. He had never been scared of heights or the unknown, but what terrified him most now was just what he did know. He crawled to the skinlike edging between the ribs, knelt up and looked over.

Fires had erupted across the ground. Some of them were small, others seemed to have spread and a few of them still moved. They lit up most of the small valley and the dying things it contained. It was spotted with dead Monks. He could make out the larger machines in the firelight, most of them still now, limbs slumped down, one of them accepting punishment from a group of Monks without defending itself. Their purpose fulfilled, these machines were dead again.