Dawn, page 29
She haunts me and me alone, Lenora thought, but the idea had the voice she had given her daughter.
She killed a small group of fodder protected only by an old woman. “Why?” the woman asked, desperate rather than afraid. “Because you deserve it,” Lenora said. She saw a shadow moving from the corner of her eye, a fire deflected by something that should not be, and she left the old woman alive.
Entering a large park at the center of Noreela City, Lenora found many people seeking shelter there. They were huddled beneath trees or behind bushes, listening to the destruction and gasping as a building collapsed, rocking the ground and sending balls of fire sparkling into the air. Lenora rode in quietly, keeping to shadows and listening to their voices. She found no strength here at all, no wisdom or bravery, only fear and hopelessness. They had already given up.
She passed through a collection of statue pedestals. There were fifteen in total, though none of them retained the statue they had been built to bear. The most that remained were two legs from the knees down, clad in worn stone sandals. Any writing that had once been there had been erased by time and neglect. Whomever these statues honored—heroes or artists, writers or explorers—history had long since forgotten.
Lenora told the machine to crush the pedestals, and the noise caused a stir of activity across the park.
“You’re all cowards!” Lenora roared. She jumped from the machine and ordered it to remain where it was. Strung an arrow in her bow. Felt the weight of weapons on her belt, stars and knives and slideshock still ready to take their fill of this night. “You hide here like cowards, so expect to die like that too.”
“Please don’t hurt us!” a woman said from the darkness. Lenora sent an arrow after the voice and heard a gasp of pain. A body hit the ground, a man screamed in grief and anger, and the fight began.
Lenora knew that she was being foolish. As she ran here and there, ducking sword swipes, making another corpse with her own blade, she knew that she should have forged through this park on her machine, let it do the killing while she thought on ahead. But the absence of that voice in her mind was disturbing her. She would have welcomed the absence were it not for the little girl she saw reflected in windows and ponds. At least here there’s nowhere to see her, she thought, but she was wrong. As she grappled with one man, jamming a knife into his back as he hugged her tight, she saw the girl’s face in his eyes.
The shade passed through the park and bodies rose to continue the killing. Wives gasped their relief at seeing husbands stand, then screamed as they fell together. Children ran toward shambling parents, mothers smothered daughters and the dead soon outnumbered the living.
Lenora stood by her machine, certain that she would see a little girl’s form emerge from between the trees. She would hear her first—there were more leaves dead on the ground than remained on the branches—but the sounds of destruction were drawing nearer every second. The skies to the north were alight, and sparks and burning embers were drifting down all across the park. Lenora could hear the fire’s roar even from this distance.
South, she thought. I should go south out of the city, find the plains again where there is nowhere for her to stare from. But there were always the eyes of dying men and women, and the sheened surface of her sword. Lenora knew that the girl was beyond her control. I said soon, she thought. I said I’d find you and avenge you soon.
Is this living? that voice said again, at last. Is this what I missed?
BEYOND THE PARK Lenora saw a girl darting from door to door, shadow to shadow. She urged her machine after the child, had it pick her up and deposit her on its back.
“Are you her?” Lenora asked. The girl was screaming, her dark skin livid with sweat, eyes wide with terror. “You’re not her.” Lenora threw the girl aside without even bothering to kill her.
SHE WAS STICKY with blood. It coated her from head to foot, settling on old wounds and seeming to burn its way in. New wounds added their immediacy to her pains: the arrow through her arm, crossbow bolt in her ankle, a cut to the side of her neck and a stab wound in her back, deep and painful and in need of attention. You’re immortal! Ducianne had once said to her, many years before. You’re the one who came from Noreela with the Mages. Immortal, just like them. On occasion Lenora wondered just how true this could be—Angel had touched her on that ship and brought her back from the brink of death, after all. But many times since then she had felt mortality closing in, and she often thought that the older she grew, the more difficult her death would be. Such an unnaturally long life must come with a price.
Maybe this is it, she thought. Maybe on Noreela I’ll be haunted into death by the shade of my unborn child. She craved revenge on the people of Robenna more than ever, but as she fought her way through Noreela City she began to wonder whether vengeance could change anything.
The south of the city was more heavily populated than the north. People had fled down here during the fighting, or perhaps some of them had received word of what was to come. Riders from the north, maybe. Or maybe they simply expected the worst when the sun failed to rise.
Lenora lost her mind in a haze of killing. Fires erupted across her vision. Krotes rode by on their machines, red with reflected flames and blood. Some of them decorated machines with the heads of their victims, and one or two bore a dozen heads that still spat, rolled eyes, lolled tongues. The Mages’ shade was everywhere in Noreela City tonight.
The militia were mostly wiped out in the north, but some remained in the south, barricading themselves in thick-walled buildings with hundreds of Noreelans, thinking that perhaps the invaders would pass them by for easier prey. But they did not understand the Krotes. Machines punched holes in walls and pumped in fire, and the interiors of many structures turned into firestorms, windows and walls imploding as the conflagrations raged.
The living dead walked here too. Sometimes they seemed aimless, but when they found a Noreelan they went mad, scratching and tearing with their hands, kicking, crushing, slicing if they carried a weapon. Lenora wondered what drove them, and she thought perhaps it was jealousy. It would suit Angel’s humor to use magic to raise the dead to be jealous of the living.
The Krotes gave them a wide berth and let them continue on their way.
NOREELA CITY HAD many hidden places. Not only did streets and alleys cross and confuse themselves with courtyards and squares, but steps and tunnels led below buildings, entering those unknown areas beneath foundations where walls far older than the city still stood and the languages written on the walls were long forgotten. There were caves and catacombs even deeper, home to dropouts and the dregs of society: fodder, fledge miners driven mad with the fledge rage, Bajuman and criminals. These stretched the length and breadth of Noreela City and perhaps farther, with entrances hidden in the basements of taverns, houses and tumbled temples to ancient gods. Many knew of these places, but few talked about them openly. Some said that there were creatures guarding the entrances, monstrous hybrids of wolf and snake that could move through narrow spaces, yet take off a man’s head with one bite.
When the Krotes found these entrances, they closed them forever. But not before guiding a few of the reanimated dead inside first.
WHEN LENORA FOUND herself at the city’s southern gates there were hundreds of Krotes already out on the plain, resting under the light of the moons. Their machines steamed and clicked where they cooled in the long grass. She passed through the remains of the gates and welcomed the sudden cool breeze flowing in from the west. The smoke was stinging her eyes and the constant stench of blood was making her queasy. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, and when she opened them again there was a little girl watching her from a hundred steps away.
The girl stood still. She was wearing a white dress stained with a spray of blood across one shoulder. She stared, her hands fisted at her sides, her blond hair hanging in loose braids at either side of her face. From this distance Lenora could not see her eyes, but there was no smile. There was nothing. The girl stared as though she could not even see the burning city. “That’s not you,” Lenora whispered.
She rode on, lowered her machine to the ground and dismounted. She closed her eyes. Not you, she thought. You’re not here. When she looked again the little girl was still there, and still not the thing haunting Lenora.
The old warrior looked around. To her left a Krote sat beside his machine, rubbing his hands with a scrap of cloth. He was breathing so hard that she heard it above the burning city. However hard he rubbed, the blood remained. Farther away, two more Krotes were standing before each other, not talking. One looked down at his feet, one stared up into the strange sky, both of them lost for anything to say.
Breaking through these stunned silences were the victorious calls and cheers of other warriors. Some rode across the fields on their blooded machines, others dismounted and shared stories of the slaughter. But it was the silent Krotes that troubled Lenora the most because she knew that, like her, they were looking inward.
A sudden queasiness hit her, bending her double as her stomach clenched and vomit exploded from her mouth. She spat, vomited some more, wiping away the mess and feeling it burning on her skin. There was blood in there, and perhaps some of it was her own.
And then something else arrived.
They’re here! Lenora thought. And as she stood and wiped her mouth, the death moon was obscured as the Mages flew in.
Chapter 14
THE MOL’STERIA DESERT began surprisingly quickly: one moment there was more grass and heather beneath their feet than sand; the next, the only plants they saw ahead were occasional sproutings, like hairs growing from boils on an old man’s face. The Red Monk walked ahead, stomping through sand and hardly seeming to notice the change.
But Kosar did notice. He had been smelling hints of the Shantasi spice farms for several hours now, and it seemed that walking on sand opened the desert to his senses. Heat hushed over him, still radiating from the deep sands even though the sun had been gone for more days than he could count. The sound of their footsteps was dampened, and the Monk looked like a red wraith floating ahead of him. Moonlight turned the ground gray. Kosar had never been to the desert, and the sense of danger was palpable. It was a place of unknown things that hid from sight behind the dunes or buried beneath the surface. Any of these things could be dangerous. All of them could be, and Kosar walked with one hand resting on the hilt of his sword. Not that I could do much, he thought. If something like that sand demon rose against us, it would be down to the Monk to protect me. He was tired, exhaustion wearing down on him and weakening his legs. He thought he had at least one cracked rib, a heavily bruised nose and cheekbone and a stab wound in his back that refused to stop bleeding. He chewed more of the paste Lucien had made for him, but the pain was tenacious. It found its way through the drugs.
The sand produced a strange heat. He could feel the warmth rising up from the ground and touching the sweat on his skin, turning him cold. But he could also feel the intense chill of the clear dark sky, threatening to suck heat from his body and leave him cold and dead. It would not take long for his corpse to be covered by the shifting sands. He wondered how many other luckless travelers lay dead beneath his feet, and he started watching the ground before him for protruding bones or mummified skin.
They walked from loose sand to hard, a compacted surface that was cracked from lack of moisture. Thin, spiky plants grew from these cracks, their pale roots exploring across the surface of the ground as well as below. In some of these roots Kosar spotted the skeletons of small rodents, wrapped tight. He wondered whether there were larger versions of these plants out there somewhere.
Lucien Malini kept a steady pace that Kosar knew he would not be able to maintain forever. He was thirsty and hungry, weak and tired, and he had no wish to die in the desert. A’Meer may have once walked these sands, and he did not want to melt away beneath her memory.
The Monk stopped. There was something to its left—a large, bulky shadow that seemed to be moving slightly, tipping from left to right. Kosar closed his eyes and opened them again, making sure it was not simply his heartbeat shuddering his vision with every thump.
Lucien turned and stared back at him.
Perhaps this is it, Kosar thought. A sand demon ten times bigger than the last, and the Monk knows it’s all over.
“You don’t look like you can walk much farther,” Lucien said. He spoke quietly but his voice carried, unhindered by echoes.
Kosar shook his head, panting.
The Monk motioned him forward and pointed at the shadow with his sword. “We have transport,” he said.
Kosar walked to the Monk. This thing killed A’Meer, he thought. He needed to remind himself of that from time to time.
Standing beside Lucien, he looked at the shape that sat a dozen steps from them. It was large, low to the ground, dark gray and still shifting from left to right. There were protuberances on both sides that appeared to be legs, and it seemed that its head was beneath the sand.
“What is it?” Kosar asked.
“I’m not sure of its name,” Lucien said, “but I know it can get us where we need to go faster than walking. Especially with you like that.” One nod at Kosar encompassed the thief ’s entire range of injuries and weaknesses.
“You made me like this,” Kosar said.
“No, I saved you. The Breakers would have killed you in the end.”
“So you killed their children as well?”
Lucien stared at him, his Monk’s eyes dark pits in the scarred ruin of his face. “Breaker children are dangerous too,” he said. “Just one of them would have bettered you in a fight.”
Kosar looked at the large creature burrowing before them. It looked heavy—its back and sides were armored with scales or thick hide—and he could not imagine it moving quickly.
“You stay here,” Lucien said. “I need to find something. This thing on its own can’t move us, but given the right persuasion it will be fast and safe.”
Kosar waved one hand at the Monk without looking, urging him away. Then he sat on the sand and stretched his aching legs before him, pulling back his feet and toes to try to work out the stiffness in his ankles. His face ached, his back was hot and his ribs spiked a sliver of pain through him each time he drew a breath. His heart was hammering with anger. Stop! it said. Stop right now!
“Can’t stop,” Kosar whispered. “There’s nothing left to stop for.” He glanced after the Monk disappearing into the gloom and then back at the large gray thing, its head still beneath the sand. “I wish I could bury myself away,” he said.
The thing grumbled and groaned. Several feet shifted position and it dragged its head a few steps through the sand.
Kosar lay back. The ground gave a comfortable warmth, and that seemed to ease some of his aches. He stared up at the sky and wondered where everything had gone: no stars, no sun, just the death moon almost directly above and the life moon a smear to the left of his vision. Though his back was warm he could feel the coldness up there, sucking the heat from Noreela like the air taking warmth from a corpse. This land was dead already; there were simply those who refused to believe that.
Don’t believe it, A’Meer said. Kosar frowned and opened his eyes. He had drifted off without noticing, finding sleep a strange reflection of being awake. He closed his eyes again and let his breathing slow down, and the memory of A’Meer was there, reading his inner thoughts in her own voice. Kosar was pleased, because he saw that below all the bitterness and anger and exhaustion, he still believed there was a chance.
He slept, meeting A’Meer in his memories, and when he smiled at her the pain in his broken cheek woke him again.
WHEN KOSAR SAT up, the Monk was kneeling beside the desert creature. Lucien kept one fisted hand pressed against his chest, and with the other he was trying to prize the creature’s head up out of the sand. “Some help?” he asked, and Kosar hauled himself to his feet.
“What are you trying to do?”
“Feed it these.” Lucien opened his hand briefly to show Kosar several squirming shapes, each the size of his thumb.
“Why?”
The Monk sighed. “Help me raise it and feed it, then I’ll have time to tell you while they start acting.”
“You’re poisoning it? Killing it? Or seeking the truth like you bled it from me?”
“Do you think this thing will know anything useful? We need a ride. Now help me, or prepare for a fifty-mile walk across the desert.”
Kosar leaned across the creature’s stretched neck and grabbed hold of the bony collar around the base of its head. Its skin was hard and smooth, abraded by decades of sand and possessing a dull shine. He had to curl his fingers beneath the collar to maintain a grip. Then he pulled. Lucien did the same, and slowly the creature’s head rose out of the sand.
Its big eyes opened and blinked lazily. It looked left at Kosar, forward at Lucien, then it slumped to the ground and rested its scaly head on the sand.
“It looks about as lively as I feel,” Kosar said. “You think this thing will carry us across the desert?”
Lucien opened his hand before the creature’s face, displaying the squirming grubs. “Pace beetles,” he said. “It will carry us. Go and sit down, use your belt and straps to prepare a harness. You’ll need something to hang on to.”
