Tim Lebbon: Dusk

“I wasn’t mixed up-”

“I know, I know. That’s not really what I meant.”

Rafe watched his uncle move across the room and open a cupboard. He brought out a bottle and uncorked it, slurping noisily as he downed half of its contents in one swallow.

“Aren’t you going to tell anyone?” Rafe asked.

“Huh?” Vance’s eyes were glazing.

“We have to tell someone.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. I have to go back, bury Mother and Father, do something… do something for-”

“They’d have been taken by now, by things. Night things. And Rafe, there’s no one to tell. I could ride five days to Noreela City, and if the wraiths or tumblers or bandits didn’t get me first, and if they even let me through the city gates, they’d ask me why I’d come. Then they’d laugh and send me away again. Trengborne is an unknown little village in a big bad world. Nobody would give a Mage shit about what’s happened.”

“But everyone’s dead!”

Vance stared, and Rafe felt himself shriveling beneath that gaze. It held knowledge of all manner of things, and most of them must surely be bad. “Two moons ago, so it’s said, a village two days to the east-two days nearer Noreela City, mind you-was swallowed up. Sucked into the ground by a sinkhole. Everything mixed and blended into a soup. A thousand people. And you know what they sent from the city? Nothing. No help, no militia, not even a Mourner.” He looked at the ceiling, took another swig from the bottle and belched. “Everyone dies. It’s just that these days, people are doing it more often.” He drained the bottle and smashed it into a corner. “Nobody cares anymore.”

Vance found a fresh drink and virtually dismissed the terrified boy. In minutes he was drunk and dribbling, and a long hour later he was asleep.

Grief threatened to overwhelm Rafe, but anger held it at bay, or at least kept it contained. Perhaps shock was still shielding him from the reality of the moment, deadening what had happened. He shed more tears, held his head in his hands and tried to remember all the good times.

LATER, RAFE LEFTthe room and found his way out from the mazelike building. People were lying in hallways, asleep or dead. Rats rooted around and under them, crocodile beetles sought moist holes, and the slew of protection charms drawn on the walls in faded blood displayed a desperate, superstitious hope in a magic faded into myth. Rafe was not used to seeing such signs and they stirred something unknown within him, a memory that had never happened. He traced one sigil with his finger, and the dried, crusted blood scratched his skin.

The stink of his uncle’s room seemed to have percolated throughout the whole building. Either that, or every room stank.

Rafe wondered who the thief could be. There was Kosar, the worker in Trengborne, but they had never even spoken to each other. And surely he would have been killed along with everyone else.

He found his way out of the building. Weak sunlight greeted him and, though they were frightening and strange, he introduced himself to the afternoon streets of Pavisse.

HE HAD HEARDmuch about the town. Some of it was hearsay, rumor passed through the young community of Trengborne and propagated by their desires of what the big town could offer. Some was from his parents, usually accompanied by warnings never to go there. It was a useless place, they had said, marked only by crime and badness, in dire need of rescue. Rescue from what, they had never expanded upon, and neither had they explained their stern words of caution.

Rafe felt as if he was betraying his parents by even wandering the streets, but venting his grief in the presence of his drunken, frightening uncle felt worse. And it was such a strange and shocking place that curiosity got the better of him. Somewhere, perhaps that vague idea of help still existed… but it was a nebulous concept now, as distant as he felt.

Pavisse was a mining town first and foremost, and most of its inhabitants had something to do with working the ground. Groups of miners strode along the street, proudly wearing the unavoidable badges of their trade. Coal miners had leathery black skin and broad shoulders. They also bore scars and injuries from the many accidents and cave-ins underground: missing limbs; empty eye sockets; faces cleansed of anything approaching joy. Those who dug fledge had eyes yellowed from their constant proximity to the drug, and bald scalps, a side-effect of its use. They were tall and thin, willowy men and women who twisted and turned their way through the many fledge arteries that networked the underground. They stared at something far away-memories of better lives, perhaps-and to Rafe they looked like ghosts seeking somewhere to lie down in peace.

The miners had something else that set them apart, and it did not take long for Rafe to realize what it was. Three fledgers shoved him aside, walked on without giving him a second glance, and he knew then what he was seeing: total disregard for anyone other than fellow miners. Not just ignorance or aloofness; they could have been a different species.

Before long, Rafe became completely overawed by what he was seeing. In Trengborne, a simple farming village where the folks worked to live, and lived simply, there was little out of the ordinary. Rafe had seen a raid by tumblers when he was very young-he remembered them congregating around a fallen child, playing with him, toying with their prey before one of them rolled forward and pierced him with its barbs-and sometimes, in dreams, he thought he remembered a wraith. But other than that, nothing extreme. Here, the sights saturated his senses very quickly. Rafe’s simple perception of things was soon drowned out by the excesses of Pavisse.

A man was lying in the road being kicked by three coal miners, their boots impacting with his head and stomach and groin, and yet all who passed averted their eyes. The victim looked like fodder-dregs of an ancient race once bred for food in Long Marrakash-and although Rafe had never before seen one of these sad creatures, he hid his fascination and walked on. Elsewhere, a naked woman sat in a rocking chair in a doorway with her legs wide open, beckoning men to sample her wares. One fledger stopped, did his business there and then, paid her and walked away. The woman put on her stock alluring smile once more, scanning the street, eyes glazed with bad wine and skin grayed by years of rhellim use. The display was horrific and sickening, and Rafe thought of the many rumors he’d heard from the young men in Trengborne. Naked women in the streets, they had said. It had sounded dreamlike. In reality, it was a nightmare.

He passed through a narrow byway and emerged into a huge square bounded on all sides by buildings four stories tall, all of them seemingly overflowing with people waving long scraps of colored cloth. They were relatively silent, although the strange sounds of grunting, feet scraping on stone and heavy breathing seemed to give a secretive whisper to the crowd. Every now and then the impact of wood upon stone or something softer inspired a groan. Rafe stood back for some time, unable to see past the knot of people standing before him. He stared up at the windows and balconies, trying to make out from their expressions what these people were watching. On a few faces he saw vague disinterest; on a few others, outright fascination; but generally they seemed excited and enraged at the same time. He’d seen similar expressions on the faces of the rhellim-fueled whores back in Trengborne, desperate for business but sometimes, when the militia were away, ignored and looked down upon.

He pushed his way through the crowd.

They had a tumbler in there. It was a big one, obviously well fed in this gladiatorial ring. The wooden pen had walls twice the height of a fledger, curved inward at the top, spiked with barbed metal prongs to prevent the tumbler from rolling out. Rafe had once heard that they reacted to sound, zoning in on playing children or couples courting in the long mountain grass. That explained the silent spectators.