The Mages’ warriors lost something as day dawned. Whether it was a true sense of purpose or the confidence of victory, their fighting became less effective. Conversely, the Shantasi had gained so much more. These were the inhabitants of New Shanti that had refused to flee. These were the warriors and farmers, the poets and carpenters who had taken up arms against the aggressor, instead of following their Elder Mystics’ lead and accepting defeat. It was confidence that fueled them now, and perhaps a hint of pride in knowing what they had already achieved. Both gave them strength and grace.
In between attacks, the Shantasi glanced skyward and smiled. The warm sun-free of Kang Kang now, and rising confidently above Noreela once more-smiled back.
There were no more serpenthals to aid their fight. The surviving tumblers had also disappeared from the battle, rumbling east and west along the mountain range. Many remained on the plains, the smoke of their pyres forming a dirty brown cloud that drifted slowly to the east.
It quickly became apparent to the Krote army that this was not their hour. Some of them turned and fled back to the north. Others dropped their weapons and stepped forward to surrender, a sense of weary relief on their faces. They were cut down by the Shantasi. This was not a battle where mercy held much meaning.
Kosar fought on. And hours later, as the sun peaked and scorched any remaining shadows of dusk from the land, he felt an urgent calling from the south. Alishia, he thought. Trey. Hope. He had been away from his friends for too long. He needed to know whether any of them were still alive.
HOPE WAS WHISPERING to the ground.
The words she used were old, and to many in Noreela they would have no meaning. But she came from a long line of witches, both true and false, and a witch could never forget the language of the land.
She spoke to the soil, stroked the grass, glanced up at the sky yet again to see where the darkness was being eaten away by the sun. She buried her fingers in the soft ground and touched the roots of the grass. She felt things down there caressing her fingertips, cold and old.
Her tattoos widened across her face as her mouth fell open, and suddenly she knew.
She rubbed her hands together and pooled magic in her palms. She laughed, sniffed her fingertips and smelled way past the soil, down to the depths of magic and what it could do, what itwould do. And she realized just how blinkered the Mages had always been.
When she stood, she knew that they would be close. The female Mage was tall and thin and beautiful, but such beauty remained far from her eyes. The male was still ruined from the fire. In the sudden daylight, his scorched black wounds were grotesque, but his eyes were bright and undamaged, glittering orange as though still filled with the fire that should have killed him.
“Hello,” Hope said. She laughed again, and it felt good.
“I know you,” the male Mage growled.
“I don’t think so,” Hope said. “I’ve fucked a lot of people in my time, and I’m sure I’d have remembered someone as ugly as you.” She was completely unafraid, even though she knew that this would end in her death. Her life might stop here, but it was complete, fulfilled, and she felt the true blood of her ancestors coursing through her veins for the first time. I could heal his burns, she thought. I could see her future, I could cast myself from the here and now, pass through the land and arrive wherever I wished. I could do all that and so many other things, but the first is something I owe. And I owe so much to so many.
“You mock us?” Angel asked.
“Mockery is no answer to evil,” Hope said.
Angel spat. “Isee you! You’ve got evil hiding in you, just as surely as you have those markings on your face. Shall I pull them? Rip them out to see what they drag from your depths?”
“I can live with my own wrongdoings,” Hope said. “But don’t you see what else I have?”
“You’re a witch,” S’Hivez said.
Hope nodded.
“A witch,” Angel said. “How cute.”
“You’ve lost,” Hope said.
Angel frowned and S’Hivez glanced at the sky.
“A brief setback,” Angel said.
“No,” Hope said, shaking her head. “You’velost. And you never even knew how to win. You ply your bastardized magic, but true magic is the language of the land. You never knew how to listen to it. And you willnever speak it.”
“And you, a sad old witch with no magic, can say this?”
“Oh I have magic,” Hope said quietly, and she muttered words from ancient memory.
The ground below the Mages split open. They shouted in surprise as they fell, trying to cast some dark spell at Hope that fizzled to nothing. Angel coughed a blue fireball that sputtered out beneath the strengthening sun. S’Hivez threw a shock wave that parted around the witch and killed trees, flattened grass. Hope muttered a backward phrase and the shock wave reversed, slamming into S’Hivez, knocking him back, and behind her trees came back to life and grass stood up.
Hope felt the limitless power of the land thrumming inside. Her heart thundered in her chest, blood pumped so fast that her eyes and ears began bleeding again, but the pains were all good. They were good, because they meant that she was doing something right.
When the hole was deep enough to cover the Mages, Hope reversed her words, and the stone sides began to close in.
Angel rose, levitating from the hole, but Hope smiled and the Mage fell back down. S’Hivez screamed, and deep below his feet a cave opened up, rock crumbling and soil pouring in.
Hope frowned and spoke faster.
The stone sides of the hole were crushing Angel now, but S’Hivez, much of his frame stripped of flesh, scurried down into the cavern beneath his feet. His last look he spared for Angel. Hope could not see his eyes, did not catch what passed between them, but as the female Mage started screaming, S’Hivez slipped away.
She felt the Nax return to the valley before she saw them. She cringed, their senses existing for a few heartbeats in her mind. And then two of them whipped past her and darted into the crack, passing Angel and disappearing after S’Hivez.
Angel screamed. For a moment Hope considered mercy. The ground was closing in slowly on the Mage, pressing her face against rock, gripping her torso and legs and head, and the scream was one of true agony. But there were only three more words left to say.
Hope looked to the sky and spoke to the new daylight.
Angel’s screams were cut off as the sides of the hole met. A weak blue light sizzled across the ground and faded away. With one final crack, the top of Angel’s skull popped up, and a flow of brain matter sparkled in the sun as it pattered down across the grass.
Hope closed her eyes and the noises came to an end.
“Lost him,” she said. “After all that, I lost him.” But with the Nax on his trail, the escaped Mage would not survive for long.
A while later she lost so much more, as she knew she must. The magic leeched away, leaving her an old false witch once again, but this time she was no longer sad. Alishia had planted the seed of magic and it had lent itself to Hope, just for a while.
Someday soon, the seed would bloom.
Tim Lebbon
Dawn
Chapter 23
THE KROTE MACHINES had already started to die.
Most of the surviving Shantasi went north, pursuing the fleeing enemy and preparing to meet the future waves of Krote warriors that must surely come. There would be more fighting, for this war was far from over, but at least now it would be on equal terms.
Fifty warriors went east, back to New Shanti, where they would arrive victorious, ready to gather and lead the full might of New Shanti’s army north to aid the rest of the land. There would be issues to resolve, and blame to be meted out. But the politics would wait until after the Krotes were once again driven from Noreela.