There were wraiths of people who had been alive long ago, but Flage was not interested in their stories. Here was important, and now was the time. And here and now Flage knew that something was wrong.
It was not fear, but a sense that the tumbler’s existence was about to change. Deep at its core, the root mind was troubled.
It had been into Kang Kang and beyond, existing south of that place for many years, when the call came for it to head north. Flage felt the call arrive, and it hurt. It struck the tumbler like a psychic scream. Its mind quivered and shook, and Flage and the others were flung outward by the force of the tumbler’s shock. All around him came murmuring and singing, the wraiths chanting themselves back down to peace.
When the mind finally settled, and the tumbler passed between an endless mountain and a bottomless ravine, its wraiths combined to form the question. And when the tumbler answered they fell silent for a while, existing and thinking more as individuals than they had for many years. Something has changed, the mind had said. It has grown dark, and there’s danger again.
The wraiths echoed those words: Something has changed…
Still the fear was held away, but there was something in the tumbler’s answer that set the wraiths on edge.
Flage probed outside and knew only darkness.
The tumbler moved north into Kang Kang.
LENORA SAT ALONE on a cliff east of Conbarma, watching for the first Krote ship. Looking down and west she could make out the town along the coast. The Krotes down there were preparing for the arrival of the main force, clearing buildings and making sure the harbor was not blocked by sunken ships or dead hawks. They were using their machines, and Lenora was delighted at how quickly the warriors had adapted. She had seen machines before, during the Cataclysmic War, but the rest of the Krotes had only stories to go by. Trained though they were-bred to fight and loyal to the Mages and their cause-they had never seen anything quite like this. True, there were the snow demons on Dana’Man, the foxlions that grew far larger in cold climates, and a century earlier the Krotes had fought a brief, bloody war with an army of creatures that rose out of the seas north of Dana’Man on icy chariots. But the machines were different because they represented the very thing that the Krotes had spent their whole life waiting for: magic. And while snow demons and creatures from the deep were living things that could be beheaded with a slideshock or stabbed with a sword, magic was unknown to them.
The machines had given the Krotes purpose. They cleaned and talked to them. In truth, it was magic that made and maintained them, but the Krotes had all developed attachments which Lenora did nothing to discourage. If fear was still present-and Lenora suspected that it was, however brave a face the Krotes wore-then it was a healthy fear. It made them stronger.
For the last two nights, Lenora had dreamed of the whole Krote army riding south on such machines.
Her own ride stood beside her, silent and motionless. Its eyes stared at her unblinking, and its limbs were tucked in to its sides. It would rise to her command the instant she touched it, and that gave her an awesome sense of power. What blood those limbs would taste! What slaughter those eyes would see!
And yet…the Mages had gone. That troubled her, even though they had left her as mistress of their entire army. She was humbled by their trust. The responsibility was immense, and if she conducted herself well and succeeded in her charge-taking Noreela, and destroying any resistance without mercy-then she would quite possibly be as powerful as the Mages themselves. If she was lax in her duties and the rout became bogged down in a costly war, then the sole responsibility would lie with her. There would be no pleading, no begging for mercy, no appealing to the Mages’ more understanding side. They would kill her, and over three centuries of exile they’d had plenty of time to invent some terrible ways to kill. Lenora knew that her survival was in the balance for the foreseeable future. She had nothing to fear from Noreela, but the Mages terrified her.
They had left her without a hint of magic. Instead they had left an aborted shade, imbued with a touch of their magic, and it was down there now at the harbor, sitting between the fire and flesh pits and waiting for the first of the Krote ships to arrive.
Lenora had never seen a shade, and she found this one terrifying. Not only because of what it was but what it had. The Mages trusted it more than her.
She was not jealous; she was too loyal to the Mages for that. But she was unsettled.
She sighed and looked north. The twilight gave the sea a whole new texture, skimming the heads of waves with reflected light from the moons and hiding the troughs in shadows deeper than ever before. She had sent Krotes north on hawks to keep watch for the first of the ships, telling them to instruct the captains to light lanterns so that Conbarma would see them coming in. She had sent hawks instead of a flying machine because she did not wish to startle the incoming Krotes. Best that they catch their first glimpse of magic on land.
The sea was a soporific whisper against the foot of the cliffs, and Lenora had caught herself nodding off several times. Each time her eyes closed she saw daylight, and when she opened them she heard the echo of a dream voice.
When she saw the first hint of light on the horizon her old heart skipped a beat. So soon! she thought. She stood, climbed aboard her machine and ordered it to stand. The added height gave her a better viewpoint, and she could definitely make out a splash of light far out on the ocean, blinking on and off as the sea swelled and dipped.
“Back to Conbarma,” she said, and the machine began the journey down. Already it felt natural beneath her, though its speed unsettled her so close to the cliff. The ride back to Conbarma was fast, and she passed the perimeter guards with a nod.
“First ship’s coming in,” she said. The guards sat up, and their machines twitched beneath them. “I’ll send relief after it arrives. There’ll be plenty for you to see.”
“Yes, Mistress.”Mistress. It would take her a while to get used to that.
At the harbor the shade was still sitting between the two pits, but the flesh pit seemed to be glowing.
“There’s a ship coming in,” she told one of her captains. “What’s been happening down here?”
The captain rode his machine-a tall, spidery construct-to her side. He sat higher than her, and he seemed almost embarrassed looking down. “That…thing plucked some animals from the sea,” he said. “They came up like a living wave, splashed across the harbor, and it gathered them into the flesh pit.”
“Gathered them how?”
“It pushed with its shadows.”
Lenora nodded. “Good. It knows the ship’s coming and it’s preparing.”
The captain stared out to sea, obviously pleased to have something else to draw his attention.
THE SHIP SLOWED as it approached the harbor, the great paddle wheels on either side almost still, turned by the vessel’s momentum rather than the efforts of the Krotes belowdecks. Sails were dropped and tied. Lanterns hung from masts, forming flaming eyes on the carved figurehead: the snarling likeness of a snow demon. I’ll never see one of those things again, Lenora thought.
The ship bumped against the harbor. Lines were thrown and secured, and the gangway was eased across the gap and fixed into place. The Krotes on the ship crowded along the gunwale, their faces a uniform yellow in the reflected light from so many lanterns. Some of them cheered, but most merely stood there, staring at the warriors on the harbor then looking around the town itself.
A few saw the pits and thing that stood between them, and Lenora saw their eyes widen.
“Welcome to Noreela!” she shouted. “Where’s your captain?”
“Here.” A shape hobbled from the shadows beneath the forecastle and stood at the head of the boarding ramp. Short and thin, her pure white hair was bound in two plaits that hung to her thighs. The end of each plait shone with a sliver of sharpened metal.