Tim Lebbon - Dusk

They soon left behind the noise, the slaughter, the fighting and screaming. And within five hundred paces, gone too were the dregs of the Naxes’ psychic emanations, swallowed into the rock and fledge seams that had been their home for so long, miners and Nax both. Whether they would ever coexist here again… that was a concern for the future.

Right now, Trey had to get them topside. He wondered what awaited them up there, and just why the Nax had risen in such a fury.

TWO THOUSAND STEPSinto the new working, Trey and his mother paused for a rest. Trey had listened to her labored breathing, her grunts and groans as the landscape of the tunnel floor surprised her, twisting ankles, jarring her old bones. She tried to keep the pain to herself. He had passed this way thousands of times now and he knew the tunnel, how to navigate in the dark, the heavy sense of the tunnel walls repelling him and showing him the way. It was best they traveled as fast as him, not as slow as his mother.

He had sheathed the disc-sword and succeeded in slinging it around his shoulders. In this enclosed space he would sense danger long before it reached them.

They sat and took a drink from the leather gourd in Trey’s shoulder bag. There was very little water, he had not refilled it since his shift.

“How far?” his mother asked at last. Trey had been dreading that. He had known that this question would come, and he had felt the silence between them thickening with its weight.

Trey reached out and touched his mother’s face, not conveying anything in particular, just touching.

“Maybe two days,” he said.

“Two days,” she echoed. “I’m exhausted already.”

Trey sighed and sat back against the tunnel wall. They would reach the old fledge seam soon, and then they would have to start working their way through that hollowness, that place once filled with fledge that had been mined by machines generations ago, taken topside by machines, transported across Noreela by machines. Try as he might, Trey could never imagine what these things had looked like working and moving. Although he’d seen images of them in books and on wall depictions back in the Church, they imparted nothing of what they had looked like alive.

“Did I ever tell you how they time the days topside?” his mother asked.

Trey smiled to himself in the dark.

“By the movement of the sun and moons. The sun rises and falls, that’s the day. The moons appear and disappear, that’s the night. The moons are sent away when the sun rises again. Two halves of each day are so different up there, one so bright and warm, the other so dark. And short? They’re so short!”

“Three days to one of ours,” Trey said. She had told him many times.

“Yes. Everything is over so quickly topside. You just get used to the heat of the sun on your face, and then it’s time to sleep, and then suddenly it’s time to rise again.”

Trey had never been up. He’d never felt the urge. He was terrified.

“We should go,” he said. “The old seam starts just along here. We can walk for some of it, Mother, but I think we’ll be doing some crawling too.” He did not repeat what he had suggested earlier-that they would simply hide in the caves-and neither did his mother. They had both known that there was no returning to the cavern, not for a long, long time. Trey felt tears threatening, at his mother’s bravery and his own fears, but he held them back. He did not want her to sense him crying. He needed to be brave.

They started into the old, mined fledge seam. At first it was little different from the tunnel they had just traveled, other than the floor being more uneven and the walls unsmoothed; the machines had never been afraid of sharp edges. Trey went first, uttering the little grumbles and clicks that echoed back and gave him an idea of the topography of the seam ahead. His mother followed on behind, one hand holding on to the loose belt on Trey’s jacket, the other held out to her side for balance. They made good progress. There was no hint of pursuit, and the sense of danger seemed to recede as they left the cavern farther behind.

If I knew to come this way, Trey thought, others will as well. So why no sound? Why no signs that no one has come this way already, or are behind us working their way through?

They moved on. The seam dipped and turned, and for the next thousand steps their route snaked through the rock of the world as if in an effort to throw off pursuers. Trey’s miner senses led the way unerringly, and his mother followed, sighing, grunting, breathing heavily but never once complaining or asking him to stop.

Once or twice Trey mused that they really could linger here. But then he remembered that brief touch with the mind of the hibernating Nax-the fury, the rage, the hunger-and he knew that they had to go on. They may be out of immediate danger, but the Nax were unlikely to be sated with only one cavern. There were mines throughout the Widow’s Peaks, and probably long, arduous routes between them, untraveled and impassable to humans but known to the creatures who truly owned this underworld.

And so they moved on, resting now and then, licking mineral-rich moisture from the walls. And every step they took frightened Trey more.

They were leaving behind danger, but they were also moving away from the only life he had ever known. The people in the home-cave were his people, the pale fires and the moss pots and the stingers and the blind spiders and the cave rats and the mayors, the Church and the constant, comforting distant roar of the underground river… all his, all part of the memories that made his life. He always worked hard at the fledge face, but once back in the cavern he was contented, happy in the knowledge that he did his bit for their underground community. Sometimes there were thoughts of going topside, but it was curiosity more than desire. He was interested in why people would choose to live up there when there was obviously so much more to living down here. Certainly there were dangers in the dark-stingers took one or two people each year, and cave-ins, though infrequent, were often deadly. But he had heard about the inimical inhabitants of topside as well: the tumblers that roamed the surface of the hills, sweeping up children and unwary travelers; the bandits on the plains; raids along the coastal towns by savages from the sea. And fighting in the towns, a malaise in the villages. People topside, it was said, had no care anymore.

Trey felt comfortable history staring at his back and mourning his leaving. Before him, with every step he took into the darkness, lay his future.

THEY ENCOUNTERED Anest of stingers. There were only a few and they were small, no bigger than a man’s fist. And because they surprised the creatures, Trey was able to unsheathe his disc-sword and slice most of them down before they even had a chance to attack. The surviving stinger came clicking at them, aiming for Trey’s mother, but Trey kicked out at where he felt the thing passing through the air, knocked it into the stone wall and struck it down with the disc-sword. Sparks flashed, and in their brief light he saw the creature dying in a splash of its own blood.

They moved on. Trey was pleased that he had seen them through this danger, but it only went to remind him that there would be more challenges ahead. And not all of them would be stingers.

TIME TURNED THEIRescape into a long, painful haul instead of a panicked flight. They were both still conscious of the danger behind them, but the effort of navigating the seam occupied most of their thoughts. They had already made their way through one narrow passage-at least three hundred steps long-in which Trey’s mother had almost ground to a halt, too exhausted to pull herself through. He had tied his belt beneath her arms, hauling her after him like a mule pulling a fledge-laden cart.