Before, they had revealed themselves to Rafe, the carrier of the land’s new magic. But he was simply Kosar. He did not understand. He could not attribute intelligence to such small things. Hive organisms, Hope had called them, their whole effect the sum of their parts. They had shown him A’Meer, dead and bleeding, her mouth working at the air…
“Final words?” he said. “Final wish?” Or perhaps the mimics themselves had manipulated her image for their own ends.
The darkness seemed deeper than before, and more filled with unknown things. Kosar had never been too proud to admit fear, and he was scared now-more of the things he did not know than of the things he did. Rafe’s marking by magic and his subsequent loss must have affected the land far deeper than Kosar could have imagined. The mimics’ appearance, and the fact that they seemed to be offering help, was as disturbing as it was shocking. He had never even heard of their existence before a few days ago. Now they were trying to send him a message.
What else could be stirring across the land?
He stared into the distance, and suddenly the blank twilight offered him a revelation: the mimics had cause to deal with him! Rafe was dead and gone, and yet they still bothered with a cowardly thief fleeing something he did not understand.
Something hecould not understand.
They still had cause to appear to him!
He started running back the way he had come. He had been gone for an hour, maybe two, and he hoped that they were still there. Don’t be gone, he thought. We need to talk. In the name of the Black, we need to talk now more than ever before!
Stomach aching from his bout of vomiting, hand still giving him pain, Kosar ran once again, feeling the weight of Noreela falling heavier on his shoulders the closer he came to the fallen machine.
THE OTHERS WERE gone. The space between the shattered ribs was devoid of life, as though the machine had stood here for a thousand years and its insides had long since rotted away. Kosar stood panting, just outside the circumference of ribs, staring at the emptiness within.
Gone! He had come unerringly back, navigating through the twilight by instinct alone. It had only taken him half an hour at most, but in that time Hope, Trey and Alishia had left, abandoning this site of Kosar’s betrayal and heading south for Kang Kang. He looked in that direction and saw its peaks on the horizon, low and distant and yet menacing even from here.
“Mage shit!” Kosar thumped a rib with the heel of one hand and it crumbled, sending creamy shards to the ground. So strong before, now so weak; he was amazed that magic could change so much. He circled the machine, trailing his hand along the ribs and the hardened skin that still hung between some of them, thinking about the short time this thing had been aloft and what it had been trying to achieve. At first it had simply moved them away from the danger: the Monks, the fighting machines, the Mages and their Krote warrior. But after that, when the danger had seemingly passed, it had turned south and continued on that course, so definite in its direction that it must have been intentional. Rafe had said that he needed to go to Kang Kang, and Kosar had assumed it was so he could hide. But perhaps there was something else. Maybe he was missing the simple truth, too eager to let fear and confusion cloud his judgment.
Now Alishia wanted to go to Kang Kang as well.
Kosar hung his head and tried to catch his breath. He was no longer a young man, and lately he had been doing a lot of running. Running, and fighting-and every waking second spent with those Red Monks trying to kill them. At the time fear had driven him on, but now that he’d had time to pause and reflect, his muscles had stiffened, his legs turned to planks of useless wood. He closed his eyes and kneaded his thighs, hissing with the pain.
“Damn you, Hope. Damn you, Trey.”
“Damnyou, Kosar!”
A blade settled on Kosar’s right shoulder and pressed to the side of his neck. He felt the tension in the blade, wound and ready to spin. “Trey!”
“Why have you come back?”
“I need to talk to you and Hope. I saw something-”
“You didn’t want to talk earlier.”
Kosar pushed the disc-sword from his shoulder and turned. “I wasn’t ready then,” he said. Trey was staring at him, and the fledger’s face was yellow as the death moon. “What’s wrong, Trey?”
Trey smiled. Then he leaned forward, laughter buzzing through him rather than bursting out. He was too tired to laugh properly. He stood after a while and wiped moisture from his eyes. The smile was a grimace now, and his shaking had turned into a shiver he could barely control. “What’s wrong, Kosar, is that the Mages have won. I’m starting into the fledge rage, which may last for days or even longer, and I’m nowhere near any fledge mine that I know of. It could well kill me in the end. You ran, and we thought you were gone for good, saving your own skin and leaving us out here in the dark. Alishia walked for a while, but then she collapsed, shouting about burning books and truth turning to ash, and I haven’t been able to wake her since. Hope is with her now…and Hope has her own reasons for being here, so I don’t trust her for a moment. I can still hear my mother’s cry. I can still smell Sonda’s blood, spilled underground. I can feel the Nax in my mind. And you ask me what’s wrong?”
Kosar reached out, then dropped his hands again. Trey stepped forward and rested his head on the thief’s shoulder, weeping, his thin arms snaking around Kosar’s back and hugging him tight.
Kosar closed his eyes and felt the fledger’s anger and hate and fear flowing into him, soaking his shoulder with tears, feeding his flesh with heat, filling his mind with a bitter shame that he thought might never go away. It was almost as bad as being in those Gray Woods again, having those things feeding on his darkest secrets and dragging them up for contemplation. Almost as bad. But not quite. Because Trey was a friend, and even though Kosar had abandoned him, now he had returned. Kosar hugged Trey, and realized that strength such as this went both ways.
“Trey, I saw something out there,” he said. “Mimics showed me A’Meer as she was when she died, and there’s a reason for that. Therehas to be.”
Trey stepped back. “You’re looking for reasons?” he said. “A couple of hours ago you wouldn’t listen toany reason.”
“No, not back then,” Kosar said. “I admit that I went, and that I had no intention of returning. Everything feels so hopeless…I thought we should part, be on our own. I can’t explain it without…”
“Without telling the truth: you don’t care.”
“I do care, Trey!”
“Really?”
Kosar looked away from the sick fledger and turned south. “Where are Hope and Alishia?”
“That way, not far. Alishia is weak. Whatever’s happening to her is bleeding her strength.”
Kosar glanced at Trey. “Andyou look terrible.”
“I’ve never gone a day without fledge in my life. And being up here seems to make it all worse. I can’t understand how any fledge miners manage to stay topside.”
“A lot of them get sick,” Kosar said. “Is there no mine around here that you know of?”
“If there is, how would I know? My home is hundreds of miles from here.” Trey dropped to his knees, sighing as he touched the damp grass. “So, are you staying?”
“I’m not sure,” Kosar said. “We need to talk, all of us. Hope knows of the mimics, and I suspect she may have an idea of what just happened-and why.”
“Did she talk?”
“Who?”
“A’Meer?”
“No.” Kosar shook his head, remembering the way her mouth was opening and closing as blood gushed from her wounded neck. Final words? Last wish? He glanced up at the life moon still rising above the horizon. He thought he saw something pass briefly across its face, or perhaps it was a fleck of dust in his eye. “Let’s go find Hope and Alishia.”
THEY AGREED TO build a small fire and camp behind a fold in the land. It protected them from a chill breeze that had come in from the north, and it would also partially hide them from prying eyes. There was the risk that they would be seen by anyone or anything approaching from the south, but they needed warmth and something hot to eat. Trey had found some fat grubs beneath the moss on the rocks that formed this natural dip, and he pierced them and went about cooking them over the fire. Kosar wondered whether the witch had used chemicala to start the fire, but she showed him the flints in her hand. I have nothing left, she had said.