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Lenora could feel heat from the molten rock, and she saw other Krotes stepping back as their skin stretched and reddened. The Mages began to mold it and, between them, something took shape. Sharp edges appeared from nowhere; curves hardened; a globe of rock rose up on thin stony stilts. Angel laughed again, and Lenora shivered.

The Mages backed away from each other, allowing the thing room to grow. More rock flowed from the ground, urged on by a simple gesture from S’Hivez, and they molded this around the form, thickening the trunk and lengthening the limbs. They added more, and then S’Hivez stepped back and lowered his hands.

He looks tired, Lenora thought. They have their magic, but they’re not used to using it. S’Hivez looked at her through the heat haze, and she saw the black pits of his eyes. He scowled. She looked away, skin crawling, scalp tightening as if the old wound there were about to reopen. A thought came, and she could do nothing to hold it back: He can hear me.

“Lenora!” Angel called. “A present for you, and it will be ready soon.” She pointed at the sea and a huge geyser rose, glinting silver and yellow from the moons’ contrasting light. Krotes scattered as the water fell into a wave, tumbling across the ground until it broke around the glowing sculpture.

The stone hissed as its framework was suddenly cooled. And as the steam died away, Angel appeared by Lenora’s side. She leaned in close, her breath hot. “It’s yours,” she whispered. “Your machine, your ride, and soon I’ll give it life.” She turned away and surveyed the assembled Krotes. “You’llall have one! Machines of war, for you to do what you’ve trained for: take Noreela. Soon the ships will be here, and your fellow Krotes will follow you east and south and west. I name every one of you here a captain, and Lenora is your mistress. You answer to her, and she will answer to us. And the rewards at the end of this war will be beyond imagining.” She turned back to Lenora. “I’m giving you my army,” she said. “Use it well. I know your intentions, Lenora. I know your aims.” She came close so that only Lenora could hear what she said. “I know what you hear and what speaks to you, but ignore that calling until you’ve fulfilled your purpose. You’re herefor me, andbecause of me.”

“Yes, Mistress,” Lenora whispered. Not long to wait, she thought. And she hoped that the shade of her dead child could hear the promise in those words.

“And now, life for your machine.” Angel walked to the fallen hawk with the dead boy still on its back. She laughed. “Oh, S’Hivez, evenyou must appreciate the symbolism of this!”

The Mage laid one hand on the hawk and the other on the dead farm boy’s arm. Beneath her hands, the flesh of both began to shimmer and ripple, and soon the stench of cooking meat once again permeated the air. She moved back slowly, melted flesh flowing like thick honey, then she swiveled and thrust her hands at the sculpture.

Flesh flew. Blood misted the air as if blown by a sudden gust of wind. Bones cracked and ruptured, impacting the rock, delving inside and crackling as they fused back together. The flesh of the boy and the hawk melded and filled the fighting machine, flooding hollows within its rocky construct, then building layer upon layer around its outside. Blood greased its joints. The dead hawk shrank as more of its flesh was scoured away. The boy’s corpse was no more.

Angel lowered her hands and stepped back. Lenora saw that she was panting slightly, her shoulders stooped a little too much, and she wondered again at how much this new magic was draining the Mages. But then Angel looked at her, and behind her smile Lenora saw a strength she had never witnessed before. Not just physical strength-Angel had always been strong-but a strength of purpose. There was no doubt in Angel, and no fear. She was unstoppable.

“Here it is,” Angel said. She pointed back at the machine. “And here you are.”

Lenora fell to her knees. She clasped her hands to her head and pressed, trying to squeeze out the thing she felt inside. She was intimately aware of the strange life that had just been created, and even as she felt Angel’s calming touch and heard her soothing words, she knew that this was something never meant to be.

Take care, Angel whispered in her mind, you’re strong, Lenora, and this is feeble and weak-a machine, a tool for you to command and use. It lives like an animal down a hole, not like you, not like a proud Krote come to conquer and claim. Its half-life is less than a hawk’s shit, but you are linked to it now by this touch. And Angel withdrew from her mind, leaving that link in place.

Lenora took a deep breath and opened her eyes. She was looking directly at the machine where it stood awaiting her touch. She sensed its unnatural shade drawing back in fear.

The machine moved.

The Krotes gathered across the harbor gasped. This is the first time they’ve seen magic, Lenora thought. She was the only one here, other than the Mages, who had been alive during the Cataclysmic War. These other Krotes were fifth- or sixth-generation descendants of those who had fled Noreela, tall or short, dark-skinned or light, the blood flowing in their veins merged with that of the many tribes they had found on Dana’Man and its satellite islands. They were fighters, warriors, true to the Mages and faithful in their pledges. But they had only ever heard of magic, never seen it. Nevertouched it.

Lenora looked around at her captains and saw their fear, and realized that this was a defining moment in the history of the land. Everything had changed when the Mages caught the boy, took his magic and stripped his soul, and now that change was about to envelop the whole of Noreela. What she did now would dictate her own part in that change, and what would follow.

Lenora walked forward, approaching what she perceived to be the front of this machine. As she drew closer she saw that it had the semblance of a face. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again, the machine was staring at her.

It had several eyes, placed at various points around its bulbous head. Two of them were looking at her. It was too dark to see their color, but she knew that they were not the eyes of a hawk. She lifted her chin and glared back.

The machine lowered itself, stone underside settling on the ground, and Lenora climbed onto its back. It stank of something more elemental than scorched flesh. It smelled, Lenora realized, of magic.

She sat astride the machine’s back and rested her hands on two bony protuberances on either side of its head. Stand, she thought, and the machine raised itself on several stone legs. It shivered beneath her, the vibrations traveling up her thighs and into her stomach. It gave a strange sexual quality to her fear, tingling her skin and causing her old wounds to ache as if craving the knife, the blade, the arrow once again. Walk, she thought, and the machine took its first hesitant steps. She could feel its inner workings throbbing beneath her: no heartbeat, but something that felt like a fire being stoked; no breathing, but gasps as gas was blown out and air sucked in. Turn, and the machine paused at the edge of the harbor, a step away from tumbling into the sea, and rotated to face her Krotes.

The Mages watched. Even S’Hivez seemed to be smiling.

Lenora sensed the power at work beneath her. This was not just a thing of stone and flesh and blood, it was also imbued with the Mages’ magic, awash with a deadly potential that she had yet to realize. The possibilities were thrilling. Fire, she thought, and a ball of flame formed from one of the machine’s mouths. She held it there, its roaring echoed by the gasps from the assembled warriors. Then she turned the machine and flung the fire far out to sea. It seemed to burn even as it sank, and for a few seconds the whole harbor’s surface was illuminated from beneath.

My gods, she thought, what have you created?

Lenora turned the machine and stood on its back, and from there she could see right across Conbarma’s waterfront. Every surviving Krote-almost fifty of them-and the Mages were watching her. She felt the power in that, and smiled.