At the mouth of the cave Hope scuttled away, as though afraid of this naked yellow man. Alishia glared at her, then sat beside Trey, resting her hand on his chest once more.
“I should have died days ago,” he whispered without opening his eyes. “This wound runs deep, touches the heart of me. And then theytook me deep. The Nax saved me for this, but even so much fledge can’t hold me back forever.”
“What do you mean?” Alishia was crying now, because sheknew what Trey meant, and she was about to lose her newest, greatest friend. There was no sign of movement in the cave mouth, but an awareness grew in there, as though it were an eye suddenly opening to the world.
Something came closer.
“I hope I can help,” Trey said. “There’s so much more to Noreela, Alishia. I saw times from before time! The Nax showed me, and I don’t know why.”
“Because memories are important,” she said, thinking of the library and the burning pages falling around her like dying butterflies.
“Even though they can’t last?”
“Especially then.”
Trey closed his eyes and smiled. “I remember you,” he said. Alishia felt one final flutter in his chest, and then his heart was still.
“Trey,” she whispered, to speak his name one more time. This moment was how she wanted to remember him: brave and wise. And this final page of his life was new and fresh, untouched by the scourge of the Mages.
She cried. Her tears fell on his yellow skin and washed nothing away.
“He’s dead?” Hope said. She stood behind Alishia, her shape casting no shadow across the prone fledger.
“Yes,” Alishia said.
Hope started to say something but turned away, and Alishia sensed her retreating across the hillside.
The librarian sat with the dead miner for some time, never taking her hand from his chest. She did not feel him cooling. She sensed no change. The only difference was that his chest was still, not rising and falling, and the smell of fledge began to grow stale without his breath to renew it.
An hour after Trey died, the Womb of the Land changed. The Death Shade came, making the cave mouth darker than ever with its presence. It rose from the depths, becoming denser with every moment that passed, and Alishia remained with Trey instead of moving away. She feared it, but she was the reason it had come.
There was increased movement in the small valley. The grass began waving with no sign of a breeze, and several trees that dotted the hillsides flexed their branches as if stretching after a long sleep. Alishia saw Hope crouch down in fear as a cloud of green leaves sailed past her head, several of them becoming entangled in her wild hair. The witch thrashed at the leaves, cursing and screaming.
“Come and take him,” Alishia said. The cave suddenly seemed closer than it had before. Or perhaps it had grown.
There was no great unveiling, no giant Shade emerging. Trey simply rose a handbreadth from the ground and flowed toward the opening into the land. His hands and feet dipped to brush through the waving grasses, but Alishia had the sense that the Shade was taking him with caution and love. He passed into the cave. The Death Shade swallowed him, and Alishia’s final image of Trey was his pale yellow skin obscured from sight forever.
“Back below where you belong,” she said. Then she stood and walked away, her bones aching, heart fit to break.
Tim Lebbon
Dawn
Chapter 20
I HAD NO WISH to ever be close to you again, Flage said. He had risen from the depths of the tumbler, and Jossua Elmantoz had sensed him coming. Jossua was blind and deaf and dumb, but this new sense of unbeing gave him greater sight than ever before. Much that he saw was loneliness. As the first Red Monk, he was used to that, but it had never quite felt like this. This was a solitude of the soul that he could barely stand, a sense of abandonment by not only other people and beings, but the land itself. He felt so far removed from everything he had believed in that he struggled to keep hold of his own mind. He imagined his life as a book and he kept reading it, again and again, so many times that he lost count. Every time it finished he started again, realizing that the true end was yet to be written.
I’m dead, but not finished, he kept thinking, and then Flage rose up.
Not dead, Flage said. Not like me. Your wraith and your shade are still together.
I don’t understand…
And were you meant to? Monk! All you understand is murder and death.
You know so little, Flage. What were you? A farmer?
A rover.
I’ve killed rovers.
I’m sure you have, Flage said. He moved away, his voice growing faint, and Jossua called out to him.
I’m so alone!
Flage laughed. We’d have you, if the tumbler mind asked. But it doesn’t ask. It doesn’t really want you, either.
Why?
There are reasons. I don’t understand them, but I know them. Enough to tell you that you won’t be here for very much longer. We’re almost somewhere.
Where?
Somewhere. Now leave me be, Monk. I hope you’re cold out here. I hope you’re lonely. Flage left, still talking as his voice faded to nothing. I hope you find all the pain you’ve given…
Jossua sensed the vastness of unknown space surrounding him, and he could still feel the impact of his broken body on the ground as the tumbler rolled onward. But he was alone once more.
Almost somewhere, he thought. But nothing came to tell him where.
KOSAR AND LUCIEN had joined a small group of Shantasi on a wide, flat rock. Most of them remained standing, still clasping their weapons, looking north at the strange battle out on the plains. Several more huge explosions had lit the scene. Most were true fire, but a couple of them gushed cool blue flame at the sky, like a fountain of ice rising from broken machines. The battle was a mile distant, but the fires provided enough light to make out individual combatants, both machine and tumbler.
A few minutes ago, one of the machines had disappeared within a swirling, twisting shadow, and Kosar had heard several of the Shantasi saySerpenthal. “The one you killed must have been a baby,” he said to Lucien. He was sure the Monk’s complexion paled.
They continued watching, but though many fires marked the demise of machines, still there was a growing awareness that the rolling forms of the tumblers were becoming fewer. They’re all fighting, one Shantasi said. They’re dying, another answered. Kosar guessed that both were correct. The tumblers were fighting and dying, and although every second gained would help Alishia and the others, the Krotes would be on them very soon.
“What else can Noreela throw at them?” Lucien asked.
“What do you mean?”
“The tumblers. The serpenthals. What else? The land seems to be helping itself.”
Kosar nodded, watching another giant flower of fire rise from the darkened landscape. Another machine dies, he thought, but the idea brought little comfort. “When we were traveling with Rafe, the magic helped us.”
“At the machines’ graveyard.”
“Then, and before. Alishia isn’t the same, but perhaps that help will be there again when we need it most.”
“You’re relying on that?” the Monk said.
Kosar shook his head, not looking at Lucien. “We can’t rely on anything but our willingness to fight.” He looked around at the Shantasi warriors, their commanders organizing them into smaller platoons and spreading across the hillsides in readiness. A hundred Shantasi started down toward the plain, ready to spring an ambush on the first machines that approached. “Going to their deaths,” he said, “and we don’t even know what’s happening in Kang Kang. We’re fighting for a sliver of hope, and we’ll die for it.”
“Better that than die for nothing.”
Yes, Kosar thought. A’Meer died under your sword for what you’re ready to fight for now.
“Something’s coming,” a Shantasi said. It was O’Lam, the big woman who had first tried to shoot Kosar and Lucien from the desert beast.
“Machines?” Kosar asked.
“Don’t think so. Mage shit, this dusk is so fucking annoying.”