Tim Lebbon - Dusk

Lenora had no time for such religions. She had her gods, and they rode this dead beast before her. With the Mages here, there was neither room nor need for alternate beliefs. She was lucky, she knew; few people ever got to spend time with their deities of choice.

They flew on, heading northward for Conbarma and the landing site for the Krote army. The Mages let nothing distract them. Noreela lay spread out below them, waiting to be plundered and pillaged just as they had dreamed for three hundred years. Lenora could see larger towns now as they drew further north, splashes of illumination across the shadowed land, and here and there were twisting ribbons of light where people seemed to be heading into the towns from the surrounding countryside. She would have so loved to land down there, take on one of these cowardly groups and show them the true meaning of fear. Since the battle to take Conbarma the whole land had changed, and she craved the feel of her enemy’s blood on her skin once again, drying under the faded light which the Mages had summoned with their victory. But the hawk carried them onward, its dead tentacles trailing behind them, gas sacs still gushing at the air to keep them afloat, and Lenora knew that the Mages had a more encompassing revenge in mind.

There would be slaughter, and blood would be spilled. But first they had an army to welcome.

IT HAD BEENdusk when they left the machines’ graveyard behind, and when they sighted the Bay of Cantrassa below them, Lenora guessed that it should be dusk again. They had been gone for a full day, and she hoped that her warriors had prepared the harbour for the arrival of the Krote ships. They would be only days away, perhaps even now passing the northernmost reaches of the Spine ready for their crossing of the Bay of Cantrassa. Time was moving on. War was coming.

As S’Hivez guided the hawk down to follow the coastline to Conbarma, Lenora found herself eager to dismount. She craved some time away from her masters. She was tired, her skin was burned by the cold wind, and her mind felt assaulted by the power she had been sitting close to for so long. They had not danced, waved or shouted; they had not revelled in the newfound magic, other than cursing the sky into darkness. Yet they exuded a sickly strength that set Lenora’s teeth on edge and sent her tired mind into a spin. They were like holes punched in reality, so distinct and yet so wrong that even she, their servant and lieutenant, could barely endure their presence.

For a while, the voice of her daughter’s shade whispered in her mind. Lenora shook her head and Angel glanced back, the Mage’s eyes a piercing blue against the dark sky.

“Conbarma,” S’Hivez said, the word like glass against skin. He rarely spoke, and Lenora had forgotten his voice.

She edged sideways and looked down at the sea to their right. The Bay of Cantrassa reflected the moons, surging waves rippling across its surface picking up the death moon’s yellow and spreading it like a slick of rot. The life moon caught the very tops of the highest waves, as though trying to urge them higher. She leaned left, looked down at the land, and saw the seaport of Conbarma nestled in its own natural bay. She was glad that the fires of battle had been extinguished, though she could still smell the hint of cooked flesh on the breeze.

S’Hivez plunged his hands into the dead hawk’s neck and brought it down, curving into a glide that would take them into Conbarma from the sea. They passed just above the waves. The hawk’s trailing tentacles skimmed the water, throwing up lines of spray behind them, and by the time they reached the harbour there were several living hawks aloft, their Krote riders armed and ready to repel an attack.

Lenora managed a smile. How their moods would change when they saw what this thing brought in.

S’Hivez landed the hawk on the harbour’s edge. He extracted his hands from its dead flesh and flicked them at the air, sending fat and clotted blood to spatter the ground. Lenora wondered whether he saw the symbolism in this, but she guessed not. Angel had always been the one who loved the stories behind action or inaction. S’Hivez simply existed.

The hawk deflated beneath them, spreading across the ground like a hunk of melting fat, and immediately its stink grew worse. Lenora glanced at the boy lying between the Mages. His chest and stomach were open, as was his head, skull tipped back so that she could see the hollowness it contained. She wondered why Angel had brought him this far.

Lenora slipped from the hawk and had trouble finding her feet. Nobody came to help. She looked up, hands on knees, cringing as her legs tingled back to life, and then she realized why. The Krotes were not looking at her.

The Mages were kneeling side by side on the ground. Their hands were pressed to the dusty surface before them. S’Hivez seemed to be chanting, though it could have been the sound of the sea breaking rhythmically against the mole. Light began to dance between their fingers. Dust rose. Stones scurried away from their hands like startled insects.

Dozens of Krotes-those with whom she had flown from Dana’Man and fought for Conbarma little more than a day before-had gathered around, faces growing pale in the moonlight as they saw who had ridden in on this dead hawk. One or two glanced at Lenora and then away again, back to the Mages, fascination overpowering the fear that must surely be settling about them.

It’s good to be scared, Lenora thought. That was what Angel had told her. The Mages had always been a formidable presence, but now.. . now they were something so much more. There was something so dreadfully wrong about the exiled Shantasi and his ex-lover that Lenora found it difficult to look directly at them. It was as though light was repelled from their skin. She thought of the shapes she had seen in the vision, those two twisting wraiths aboard the bone boat on a lake of Noreela’s blood, but she shook her head and looked again.

The ground had started to glow beneath the Mages’ hands. The surface was stripped, dust and smaller rocks flitting away as if forced by a strong wind. They stung Lenora’s lower legs but there was nowhere she could go to avoid the rush. She dared not move. This was something she had to see, and she realized now what the Mages were doing: displaying their power to the Krotes assembled here. They could have landed and talked to their warriors, but a discussion of the magic they again possessed was nothing compared to a demonstration.

Lenora stepped back several paces. Her eyes widened, her heart skipped a few beats, and the many wounds on her exposed skin tingled with something approaching excitement. This is when we see, she thought. This is when they really show us what they can do. Already they’ve touched the sky. Now it’s the turn of the ground.

The Mages began to rise from their knees to their feet, hands maintaining contact with the ground as though stuck there, and then slowly they straightened their backs, lifting their hands and seemingly bringing part of the ground with them.

Light burned into the dusk, and each of the Mages’ hands was lifting a column of fluid stone. The ground vibrated as the Mages’ actions upset the balance of the land. Rock growled and crumbled, and strange rainbows were cast in the dust clogging the atmosphere. Angel laughed, and S’Hivez’s muttering became louder, the words revealing themselves as something much less complex than a spell. It’s all coming back, he said, again and again. His voice ground stone together, and then the two Mages turned to face each other and began to work their hands.

Lenora could feel the heat from the molten rock from where she stood, and she saw other Krotes stepping back as their skin stretched and reddened. The Mages began to mold it, twisting their hands here and there, moving their arms through impossible angles, pushing and pulling, prodding with stiffened fingers and picking with long nails, smoothing with palms and nudging with the heels of their hands. And between them something began to take shape. Sharp edges appeared from nowhere; curves hardened; a globe of rock rose up on thin stony stilts. Angel laughed again, and Lenora shivered.