Something appeared back at the entrance tunnel, a dark shape that drove back the strange light emanating from the walls. “Soon,” Alishia said, and the Birth Shade withdrew. It was ready for its offering, and she was ready to make it.
At the lowest point of the cave there were hollows in the ground. They were shapes she recognized. Some had been used, their glossy texture turned rough, veined trace works in their sides gone to dust. I wonder which one was Rafe’s, she thought. Others were fresh and clean, dips in the land filled with promise.
She chose one of these, sat close by and brushed her fingers through her hair. It came out in clumps. She tried to stand again but her legs would not hold her, so she crawled those last few steps and settled herself into the hollow.
She was not surprised to find that it fit her perfectly.
THE LIBRARY THIS time was whole and undamaged, but it was also characterless, and every book spine was blank. There was a reading area, and all the furniture was new and untouched. The leather chairs were fresh and unworn, the unmarked table carved from wellburr wood. No books sat on the table waiting to be read.
There was nothing with Alishia in the library: no rampaging shade, no man, no fire eating away at every moment in history. There was only her. She had the very real sense that she was waiting here for something to happen. And while she was waiting, she might as well read.
She left the reading area and entered the towers of books. She was only a baby, yet her mind was full, and in this dream her child’s legs would carry her anywhere.
She walked for some time before gathering the courage to take down a book. She climbed a shelf to reach it; the spines were all the same, the blank books uniform, but she knew that this particular tome was the one she needed.
Hugging the book against her chest she walked back to the reading area. Here and there shadows were appearing on book spines. They were not yet whole words, but their potential was deafening.
She hauled herself up into the reading chair. It was far too large for her, but still she managed to lay the book on her stubby legs, open the cover and stare at the first blank page.
Alishia closed her eyes and something left her forever.
When she looked again, the page was no longer blank. She began to read of a new moment in time.
The land begins to heal…
THEY WOULD BE on her and she would be dead.
Hope kept her eyes closed, hands by her sides, suddenly willing to accept death with dignity. She would not fight. It had been a long time in coming, and in her final moments she had helped.
If I look, I’ll see that thing coming at me. Angry. Enraged. Ready to exact weak revenge by spilling this false witch’s blood.
She heard a roar, the sound of something hard striking something soft, and in the screams from the Mages she made out the dregs of words. They formed little sense. The Mages were mad, but unlike her their madness was deep and irredeemable.
At last, Hope could keep her eyes closed no longer, and when she looked, the Mages were battering at the entrance to the Womb of the Land. The Shades had returned, three of them this time, growing from the cave mouth like giant trees. They seemed to shrug off the abuse of the Mage’s magical weaponry. They absorbed fireballs, deflected shock waves from the male Mage, opened shadowy arms to collect hatred and fury and closed them again, swallowing everything meant to do them harm. Each Shade was huge and unchanging now, as though they had recently been fed. And Hope could not help but pick up on the optimism being exuded from these shadows of nothing.
Nothing can touch them, she thought. The Mages, with all their dark magic and three centuries of hate, they can’t touchthem!
The male Mage turned and stared directly at Hope. His eyes were blazing red coals, narrowed to slits. His mouth opened and displayed long teeth, made longer because his gums had been burned away. He growled, and it rumbled from the earth and into Hope’s bones like an earthquake.
She closed her eyes again. And now he’ll turn on me. Something warm touched her face and scalp, and for a second she thought that he was at her, hot breath caressing her as he decided how best to kill. But then she realized that the heat felt good, and familiar, and the one word echoing in her mind as she opened her eyes again wasAlishia!
KOSAR PARRIED THE Krote’s first sword swipe, ducked below the second, and then the land began to bleed.
“Alishia!” Kosar shouted. He looked to the east, and the foothills of Kang Kang were silhouetted against an orange and red sky, their slopes and peaks cut in stark relief against the lightening sky, and the glow was spreading up and out like a growing bruise, seeping through the Mages’ dusk from the ground up. Smudged lines of sunlight stretched across the landscape, reached at the sky, probed behind the mountains.
And then, like a giant birthed anew from the fading land, the curved head of the sun started to rise.
Cheers rose across the hillside, and the noise of battle lessened as warriors-Shantasi and Krote alike-paused to take in the incredible sight.
Kosar glanced at the female Krote. She was watching as well, and the amazement on her face slowly melted into what could only be relief. The fresh sun stroked across her scarred scalp and bloodied shoulder, and her few remaining teeth glittered as she smiled.
Kosar looked to the east again. He felt the fledgling heat of the sun on his skin, and it was like dipping into a warm bath. Wisps of fine cloud scratched the sky red. It was the most beautiful thing Kosar had ever seen.
“You’ve lost,” he said. “Your filthy Mages are dead, and you’ve fuckinglost!”
“So magic me away,” the Krote said. But Kosar could see the strange look in her eyes-part confusion, part relief-and when he raised his sword again she merely glanced at it before turning away.
A hundred mimic soldiers melted back into the ground. The surface flowed northward, down the slopes of the battlefield and out onto the long plains that led toward whatever was left of Noreela. Kosar mourned their passing, but he realized that their purpose was fulfilled. What happened to the few hundred remaining Shantasi, and their Krote enemies, was of no concern to the mimics.
“Going home?” Kosar shouted after his enemy. “Fleeing again?”
The Krote turned and stared at him, and Kosar began to regret his words. “I have more things left to do,” she said. She gazed around the field of battle, the piles of bodies, the shambling dead and weary living, the Krotes and machines, the Shantasi cheering here, regrouping there, all of it now lit by the sun rising triumphant. “Do what you will. My time is moving on.” She mounted her machine and sent it a command.
Kosar screamed at the Krote, “I made you fall!” She glanced at him again, dismissive, then rode away. He threw A’Meer’s sword. Its bloodied blade glowed red in the sunlight as it spun at the Krote woman’s head. It hit her neck and bounced off, rattling from the back of the machine and dropping beneath its stone legs. She did not even turn around. The machine stomped on the sword and moved on.
As the Krote and her machine seemed to shimmer away down the hillside, Kosar realized that he was crying.
KOSAR PICKED UP his sword, amazed to find it undamaged even by that monster’s weight. Unlike Lucien. He felt little at the death of the Monk; no sadness, and certainly no delight. Lucien had killed A’Meer, but her murderer had been a Red Monk, not a man. Perhaps sometime in the future Kosar would have time to dwell upon what that meant.
He went to war again. With sunlight flooding the hillside-its heat and rays fresh and energizing-the fight became that much easier. The Shantasi used the confusion of dawn to regroup and change tactics, forming into four large circles, fighting their way up the slope. There were more pallid wolves to send against the Krotes, and a dozen young grinders were attached to machines confused by the dawn. They chewed and melted their way through stone and metal alike, eating out the hearts of these unnatural constructs.