Tim Lebbon - Dusk

The shades of old machines-the grays of stone, blackened fire-stained limbs, the dark orange of rusting things-were complemented by the brave greenery of the plants trying to hide them from sight. Giant red poppies speckled the solidified hide of one machine like recent wounds. Yet the dead could never be truly hidden. They were too many, too large, and now a permanent part of the landscape.

“They came here to die,” Hope said.

“They’re machines, ” Kosar said. “They must have been brought here. It’s a rubbish yard, not a graveyard. They’re machines, they were brought here… they can’t have come on their own.”

“Why not?” Trey asked. “It was ancient magic that made them, not people. Can we say what they could and couldn’t do?”

“They came here to die,” Hope said again. “Lost, knowing the Cataclysmic War was its end, magic brought them here to die.”

“However they got here,” Kosar said, “why has Rafe brought us here?”

“Maybe we can hide,” Trey said. “That huge one down there, it must have a whole network inside, plenty of places to crawl into and hide.”

“He said magic was going to make us believe,” Hope said. “There’s something else here, not just a hiding place. And the Monks would never give in. It may take them days, but they’d find us.”

“He also said that he might take us away,” Kosar said.

Hope turned in her saddle and nudged Rafe, almost smiling at how she was treating the carrier of new magic. “Wake up!” she said. “Rafe

… farm boy… wake up!” He was not asleep. His breath was too fast for that, his eyes half-open, his hands clasped tight in his lap, so tight that a dribble of blood ran from his fist.

“We should get below the skyline,” Kosar said.

“Down there?” Trey asked.

“It’s where Rafe brought us,” Hope said. “And as you said, we can hide away in there while we’re waiting for… whatever.”

“But…” the miner began.

“It’s either down there, or back toward the forest,” Kosar said.

Hope glanced past the thief at the gray canopy. Farther back in the forest the gray changed to green, but from here the colorless blight looked huge, stretching as far as she could see from left to right, humps of gray trees retreating back into the woods. “A’Meer must be in there,” she muttered, wondering what might be occurring beneath those trees right now.

“She’ll find us,” Kosar said.

Hope looked at him and saw that he knew his lie.

They urged the horses down toward the graveyard of dead machines. Behind her Rafe mumbled something, but Hope could not make out the words. She nudged back sharply to try to wake him, but he merely held tighter and became looser, head lolling against her back, hands reaching around her waist.

Soon, she thought. He’ll show us soon. Soon we’ll know just what it is he has, and it’ll be our choice to have faith in it or not. She looked out over the scattering of dead machines, relics from the last age of magic.

I want it so much, I’ve always had faith.

AS KOSAR LEDhis horse past the first skeletal machine, he thought he heard something move. He paused, turned in the saddle, met Hope’s questioning gaze. Perhaps it had been Trey working his way ahead of them, stopping here and there to look into hollowed metallic guts, lift rusted blades, step over something long since sunken into the ground. The miner kept his disc-sword resting over one shoulder ready to swing, though at what Kosar could not guess. The Monks were behind them, fighting A’Meer in the woods. Here, for now, there were only old dead things to keep them company.

The urge to go back and help A’Meer was almost overwhelming. The cold way she had looked at him when she told him to go had been a mask. She had known that she was committing suicide, and that any acknowledgment that this was their final moment together would have changed her mind. She could have said good-bye, but that would have taken a second too long. She could have smiled and given thanks for their good times, but that would have been a breath too far. She had known that within hours or minutes of turning her back on Kosar, she would be no more. That certainty had left no room for sentimentality.

He could help. He could draw one or two of the Monks away from her, perhaps lose them in the woods, hide while they passed him by, double back and do the same again. There were huge old trees in there, trunks hollowed by rot; deep, dark banks of bushes; high ferns. A thousand hiding places, and other areas where he could lay false trails, snapping branches and then working back. Striving together he and A’Meer could confuse the Monks, and in that confusion perhaps find their escape.

It was a crazy idea, and he knew it. If he went back to the woods he would die with A’Meer. She was trained, her early years dedicated to preparing her for this one purpose. He was only a thief. Three minutes against a Red Monk and he would be dead. And knowledge of his death was the last thing he would want to accompany A’Meer into the Black.

“These are all different,” Trey said. “Inside and out, they’re all different. This one, here… I can see right inside, and it has dried veins or bones strung like strings across the spaces.” He ran to another machine, chopped at the overgrowing ferns and mosses with his disc-sword, smoothed his hand over its surface. “This one: there’s no opening, no way to see inside. Who knows what’s in there?” Moving on, chopping again, hauling on a bundle of thorny branches to expose what looked like a giant set of ribs. “This one, we can all see inside. We can all see those fossilized things.”

“Organs,” Kosar said. “They look like the insides of a living thing, grown hard.”

Trey reached in between the stony ribs with his disc-sword, touched one of the hardened things held in place by dozens of solidified stanchions, thick as his thumb. It exploded in a shower of grit and dust, the long rattling sounds indicating that there was much more of this machine buried deep down.

“I still can’t believe they came here on their own,” Kosar said.

“You’ve heard of the tumblers’ graveyards, haven’t you?” Hope asked. “They’re scattered around in the mountains, dozens all across Noreela. They’re guarded by other tumblers, but there are those that have got through to see for themselves. Thousands of tumblers… they go there to die, mummified in the heat, rotting in the rain, petrified in the cold.” She looked around at the partially hidden history they were now intruding upon. “Once, we thought that tumblers were only animals.”

“They’re not?” Trey asked.

“They’re not,” Kosar said, but he had no wish to continue the discussion. Trey turned away again, exploring, fascinated by this place.

“Is he doing anything?” Kosar asked, halting his horse so that Hope and Rafe could draw level.

The witch half turned in her saddle, reached around and supported Rafe with one arm. “Still asleep,” she said. “Or maybe unconscious. And… he’s hot. Mage shit, he’s burning up!”

“Let’s get him down,” Kosar said.

“But-”

“Hope, there’s no way we can hide in here. They’ll find us. And there’s nothing to fight with, if and when they… break through.” The thought of what “breaking through” meant for A’Meer did not bear dwelling upon.

“And now are you believing? Are you finding enough faith to put your well-being in his hands?”

Kosar shrugged. Rafe’s eyes were flickering, red from whatever fever had sprung up. He was nothing special to look at, yet everything was special about him. “It’s the last thing left to have faith in,” Kosar said.

A scream of agony came from over the hill in the direction of the woods, loud and anguished and rising in pitch.