He looked at her, startled by her unaccustomed use of his name.
“We’re on the same side. We may have different ideas of what’s happening, and differing reasons for being where we are today, but we’re both here for Alishia and whatever she carries, and we’re both against the Mages. Anyone in Noreela must be against them, sane or otherwise. There’s no alternative. Do you understand?”
Trey nodded, not sure that he did. Was Hope trying to form an alliance with him, or simply confuse him more?
“I’m pleased you want to come to Kang Kang,” she said. “We can help each other. As for Kosar…I think he’s lost to us.”
Trey looked at the shadow of the thief. Maybe, he thought. Or maybe he’ll do things his own way as well.
“We need to go soon,” the witch said.
“We should wait until she’s awake. And I want to try Kosar one more time.”
“The thief ’s doubt and mistrust will cause us trouble,” Hope said.
“He’s the one who brought us this far.”
She raised her eyebrows but did not respond.
She thinks it’s her, Trey thought. She thinks she’sthe leader of this pathetic little gang.
Trey went back to Kosar, and all the way he knew what the answer would be. The big man barely glanced up. Even as Trey stated their aim and said they would be moving soon, Kosar only looked at the horizon and nodded. “I’ll not be going with you.”
“Where will you go?”
“Some corner of Noreela where I can be forgotten.”
Trey wanted to say more. He so wished he could think of something stirring and affecting that would make Kosar rethink his decision and join their continuing journey south-something about trust and loyalty, and pursuing any scrap of hope that might still exist. But he followed Kosar’s gaze and saw the landscape swathed in unnatural twilight, and he knew that it would not take long for the plants and animals to die.
“I don’t think such a corner exists,” he said. Then he turned away from the thief and walked back to Alishia and Hope.
WHEN KOSAR STOOD and looked back, the others were mere shadows. He could see Trey standing within the fake protection of the dead machine’s ribs, and on the ground at his feet Hope and Alishia seemed to be huddled together. There was an implication of ownership in Hope’s pose that he did not like. She had been the same with Rafe. We’ll have to watch her, A’Meer had whispered to him one night, and yet in that final, useless fight, Hope had been as strong as any of them.
He guessed that she missed Rafe more than anyone as well. With him had gone her lifetime of dreams and desires. It was no surprise that she was willing to hang on to any fragment of hope that remained, however false.
Is Alishia really something special? Kosar wondered, and he realized that, yes, she probably was. She was certainly no longer a normal girl, if she ever had been. But he no longer cared. A’Meer was dead, and day was night. Useless, he thought. He turned away from Trey, Hope and Alishia and looked east.
He wanted to be on his way. Hope put him on edge, Alishia disturbed him and Trey was somewhere he was never meant to be. The fledger had used the last of his fledge a couple of days before, and already he was showing signs of withdrawal. It was difficult to tell in this weak light, but his skin seemed to be growing a paler yellow, the whites of his eyes clouding with burst blood vessels.
Kosar craved his own company once again, and the idea of wandering Noreela seemed the only thing to do. He would explore, as he had done so long ago. He would find the corner of Noreela that Trey said would not exist, and perhaps he could live out his life there, hidden away from the glare of the Mages’ influence.
And if they burn the land? A’Meer asked in his mind. Send out armies, kill everything, spread disease?
Kosar shook his head. She had always been so practical. “Leave me alone,” he said. “I’ll mourn you well enough, but don’t start talking back at me, A’Meer.”
It’s you doing the talking, just using my voice.
“And is that the voice of reason?”
Maybe.
He shook his head again and touched the sword at his side. “Fuck.”
A large bird passed overhead-a moor hawk, perhaps-and Kosar watched it drift away in the night. It had flown northeast. With no real idea of where he wanted to go, he decided to follow.
A’MEER’S VOICE REMAINED silent as Kosar took his first steps away. He expected guilt to crush him, regret to pick at his limbs and turn him around, but his steps felt fine, his legs surprisingly strong. Perhaps the last few days had welcomed him back into the life of a traveler once again.
He waited for the shout that would bring him to a halt, but none came. He did not look back. If he turned and saw Trey watching him leave he would have to return, try to explain once again why this was all so hopeless now that Rafe had gone and dusk had fallen. Kosar was a good man, and even though he was finding the going easy, he guessed that guilt was only a step or two behind. He had no wish to let it catch up.
The moor hawk had disappeared into the night but he heard it calling-a doleful, lonely cry. Kosar wondered who or what else could hear it. Trey undoubtedly, and Hope and Alishia if they were awake. But perhaps there were others out there, camping down under the oppressive weight of the night, and the sound of the moor hawk would surely make them feel more isolated and alone than ever. He wondered whether the Red Monks had followed the flying machine on foot, even though their purpose was gone. Perhaps any surviving Monks would be roaming the land, madder than ever before.
He walked on, and in time he was far enough away so that he would not hear Trey even if the fledge miner did call after him. There was scant comfort in this, but beneath that was a sense of betrayal that Kosar did his best to smother. The time would come for that, he knew. Perhaps when he was witnessing the Mages’ armies burning villages and towns, raining down destruction from their hawks, riding monstrous new creations across the landscape…Perhaps then he would truly taste his own bitter betrayal of the only people he could call friends. Or maybe it would take the imminence of death to bring home his true treachery. Perhaps he would be dying beneath the leather boot of a Krote, staring up along the length of a bloodied spear, before he would truly appreciate how unfair he had been.
I led them here, he thought, and he hated the idea of that. Kosar had always been a loner, not a leader. But Rafe’s damned magic had steered and coerced them down the center of Noreela, dangling free will and then snatching it away at every opportunity. They had been driven here like a horse guided by its rider, except that their rider had been acting through the mind of an innocent boy.
Now you’re talking Mage shit, A’Meer’s voice said. You led them, and you know it.
“My words, your voice?” he whispered. The night offered no answer. “Damn, A’Meer, I miss you so much.”
Kosar thought about where he could go, and as he began to examine the possibilities, each idea brought buried memories back to life-times and events he had not thought about in years. The experience was strangely comforting, and he enjoyed living these moments again. They were a distraction from the present.
If he carried on in this direction, he would soon come to the Mol’Steria Desert. North of that were the Mol’Steria Mountains and then Sordon Sound, the great inland sea that bordered New Shanti. He had never been as far as the desert, but A’Meer had often told him about it, sitting in the Broken Arm nursing a mug of rotwine as she relayed tales of sand demons and flaming trees, roads of glass and the huge, lumbering grinders that spent their unknowable lives turning rock into sand. It had all sounded so enchanting to him, the seasoned traveler, and he had promised A’Meer that he would go there one day. He’d seen an excitement in her deep, dark eyes as she talked about this place so close to her homeland. And though she denied it, he had always believed that she harbored a secret desire to go home. At the time, he had put her unwillingness to return down to some family problem, or an underlying wanderlust that she had yet to quench. Since then, he had discovered the truth.