Trey squatted, twisted and wrenched at the disc-sword handle until the blade screeched free. The Monk howled and thrashed on the ground, its sword lashing out, and Kosar cursed and staggered back, bleeding hand splayed out before him like a wounded spider.
“Kosar?” Trey said.
“I’m all right. Just watch it!”
Trey lunged with his disc-sword again and again, but the Monk’s mad thrashing seemed to throw off every parry and thrust. The thing stood and advanced, coming straight for Trey. Its lower jaw was hanging by a few red threads, teeth glistening with blood, and the hissing sound must have been its best attempts at a scream. The miner stood his ground and worked his disc-sword, sending the blade at its tip spinning, catching the last of the daylight on its bloodied rim. The Monk aimed a clumsy strike with its sword, which Trey deflected and countered. Another wound opened through its torn robes. He struck again, aiming high for the Monk’s throat and face, but the disc-sword glanced from its bony forehead and took only skin.
Trey looked around, making sure that Hope, Alishia and Rafe were safe, then turned back to see the Monk’s sword swinging at his face.
Kosar screamed and deflected the blow, stepping once again between Trey and the demon. He kicked the Monk and sent it sprawling.
Trey stepped forward to slice at the fallen enemy, but Kosar held him back. “No,” the thief panted. “No need.”
The Monk went to stand but the ground beneath it lifted, an area three steps on edge rising straight up and then folding inward as the wakened machine found its purpose. The Monk was enveloped by green-veined rock, and this strange new machine crushed in and down like a flower in reverse. The Monk’s death was quick and horrific. It took only a few seconds for the machine to retreat belowground once again, leaving little more than a disturbed patch of sod to mark its place.
“Took its time,” Trey gasped.
“I suppose they think we should be doing some of the work,” Kosar said. He smiled at Trey, then winced and looked at his wounded hand. Blood glistened blackly in the dusky light, though Trey could not tell how bad the wound was. He did not want to ask.
“What’s that?” Hope suddenly screamed. “What’s that?” The fear in the old witch’s voice was shocking. Even above the continuing sounds of battle, and the screams of new waves of Monks forging into the valley, her voice held power. Trey had never heard anyone sounding so terrified. His first reaction was to look at Hope, and she was pointing straight up at where the death moon was even now manifesting from the gloom.
Trey saw the shapes high in the sky. They were still within the sun’s influence, but it did little to illuminate them. They were shadows against the dark blue background. And they were growing. Trey looked around at the dozens of battling machines-newly enfleshed arms spinning Monks through the air, great metal fists pounding them into the ground, spinning blades rending them in two, a hundred more of the bloody demons dodging between the magical constructs and coming closer, closer-and he wondered why he felt the true threat coming from elsewhere.
“Hawks?” Kosar said.
“Not this low,” Hope said. “Not this low! They live and die high up out of sight. The pressure’s too much for them down here. They’re not of the land. Unless…”
“Unless what?” Trey demanded.
The witch did not take her eyes from the shapes growing larger above them. “Unless something’s steering them.”
“The Mages,” a voice said. Trey looked down at Rafe where he lay at Hope’s feet. “The Mages are here.” He slowly hauled his hands from the ground, scraping moist earth from between his fingers, and sat up to face his companions. His face was pale and drawn, as if the arrival of dusk had brought defeat upon him.
Trey hated the expression on the boy’s face. It matched the fear he had heard in Hope’s voice. “What do we do?” Trey asked.
Rafe did not reply. Does he know? Trey wondered. Can this farm boy really get us out of here? And he began to wonder.
FIRST THERE WASnothing but pain and shredding, nothing touching the senses but an agony much deeper, searing her wounded soul and burning the exposed endings of her psychic nerves with a cruel conflagration. There was no consciousness of outside, beyond, only of the dark here and now.
I am in pain. I am under siege. And I am not whole.
The thoughts seemed alien, and she tried to pull away from them like an animal from fire. But they were not of a single point, they were the point, and they could not be escaped. Her mind quietened and she could accept that, because to think was to hurt. She had no wish to think these things. They made her feel less than she should have been, and although she had no memory of exactly what that was, she knew that she was much reduced.
The voice that had spoken to her in here had faded away, leaving in its place a pause between breaths. She felt the weight of potential.
She drifted, afloat in her own mind, the flotsam and jetsam of her memories bobbing by to offer vague, unimaginable glimpses of a story she could never understand. Every time something came out of the darkness the agonies grew, as if revelation promised only pain. Revelation, and realization. Because hidden behind this blackness she sensed a profound knowledge awaiting rediscovery.
Wisdom and pain, learning and agony. I know that I must not know. But even the ability to create that thought hurt her to the core.
And then something was coming.
It was the presence back in her mind, invisible, silent, yet keen as the pain that informed her consciousness. It was huge. Massive in import and effect, terrifying in scope, because it came for her. It must have come for her, because there was nothing else here. Yet far from reducing the little she felt, it made her feel more there, more corporeal, and for the first time since she could remember, Alishia knew her name.
There is hope in Kang Kang, the presence portrayed, and Alishia had heard of that place.
Life rises from death, she understood, and she wondered where she factored between the two.
This is for you. She did not know what that meant. She had no inkling. Yet an instant later, Alishia felt whole again. Whole, and possessed of something extra. Something momentous.
She opened her eyes and said farewell to the Black.
“ALISHIA’S AWAKE!” HOPEsaid.
Rafe nodded. “The magic brought her back.” The boy was still sitting on the ground, staring up at the dark shapes bearing down on them. The sounds of fresh battle filled the air as the machines fell upon the new wave of Red Monks.
Hope touched the girl’s forehead as she stirred, wondering what was happening inside. She seemed much reduced, as if she had begun to shrink. “Hey!” she said, but the girl did not answer. Her eyes looked through Hope and saw something much more terrifying. “Why did it bring her back?” Hope said to Rafe, but he did not respond.
Hope let go of the girl and pressed her wrinkled hands to the ground, working her fingers below the surface. Kosar and Trey were shouting to each other, looking up at the shapes growing larger in the dusky sky, yet they had not noticed the change in things. Rafe had sat up, moved his hands from the soil where they had been making sparkling contact for the duration of the battle. And yet still the magic worked. Whatever link he had forged was now redundant, because magic was loose again amongst these machines, meting out memories of better times and clothing them in flesh, blood, stone and wood that had been their makeup all those years ago.
Hope pressed her hands in deeper, feeling for the change in herself, demanding it. Yet no change came. She whispered an old spell her mother’s mother had once used, but it dispersed in the air with her useless breath.
And then Alishia blinked again, slowly and heavily, and she stared at Hope. Her eyes were so full of knowledge that the witch fell back. She knows! the witch thought. She knows what I was doing! How could she know that, unless…?
Rafe was staring at the sky, as if welcoming the coming attack.