“You burned down my library,” she said.
The Monk looked up and grinned. His teeth were black. His eyes were black. And there was no Monk there at all, only a void where something should have been-a shapeless hole that flexed and twisted in a confusion of movement.
Found! Alishia tried to turn but her body would not obey. Leave me alone, she thought, adding as much weight and menace as she could, hoping that the seed of magic she carried would aid her in avoiding this thing. But she felt weak and feeble, and she could do nothing as the first tendrils of something wholly alien kissed her mind.
She dropped to her knees and the shade vanished. It had barely touched her, its impact on her senses so slight that she wondered whether she had truly seen it at all. But looking around, realizing how this place now felt, she knew that whatever had been in here with her was now gone.
It saw something, she thought. It felt something. It knows.
She so wanted to go on searching, because there was more yet to be found. She reached out and grabbed a burning book, watching the flames caress the skin of her hand without harming her, and when she opened the tome it gave her a line that she had to obey.
Everything has changed. The witch needs to know.
ALISHIA WAS STILL unconscious behind Hope, eyes shifting as she dreamed. The witch looked around, hardly breathing, watching for shadows that should not move. The ravine was a line of darkness before her, but now nothing rose above it. Whatever had been there-a shade, a thing of Kang Kang, a trick of the eye-had gone.
“We have to move on,” Hope muttered. She leaned over Alishia, whispering into the unconscious girl’s ear, “We have to move on!” Alishia twitched but did not open her eyes. Hope nudged her, slapped her, started shaking the girl, seeing her face scraped against the ground but not caring.
Alishia woke then, eyes opening wide and head rising to look around. “Is it gone?” she asked.
“I think so.”
The girl sat up slowly, touching her face where a stone had scratched it. She looked at the blood on her fingertips. “We’ve been seen,” she said.
Hope gasped. “How can you be sure?”
“I can’t,” Alishia said, “notsure. Notpositive. ” She gazed past Hope as though searching the darkness for some errant memory.
“So why say it? To scare me? To frighten me into taking you back to Trey?”
“Whereis Trey?” Alishia asked, suddenly vulnerable and sad. It was strange to hear an adult voice coming from a body growing so young, and in that voice so much hidden wisdom.
“I told you, he’s gone. Back underground.”
“No, he wouldn’t.”
“He did! And if you want to reach the Womb of the Land you have to stick withme.” Hope stood and stared down at the girl, trying to read her eyes in the poor light.
“What are you doing, Hope?”
“I’m taking you. I’mhelping you.”
Alishia shook her head. “You’re doing only what Kang Kang allows.”
Hope could feel the hatred pumping from the land, strong and repulsive. It made her skin crawl, cooled sweat on her brow, thumped pain into her heels. The ravine pulsed before them, as though darkness was the rushing blood of the land. She listened, but heard no sound of movement from in there. For a few heartbeats her visions swam; spots on her eyes, or giants stalking them in the distance.
“Nothing here is as it seems,” Hope said.
Alishia stood, holding on to Hope’s arm for support until she could stand on her own. They went east, hoping to find a way across the black ravine in that direction. The witch moved several steps ahead. She listened to Alishia following her, and after a while their footsteps fell in time with each other. If Hope had not known better she would have believed that she was alone.
Tim Lebbon
Dawn
Chapter 13
WITH NOREELA UNDER attack in so many ways and so many places, one scene appeared serene. It was a haunted serenity, because the endless dusk seemed to suit this place. Darkness had always been comfortable here: dark histories, dark times. Water lapped at the lakeshore a few hundred steps from the building. Usually there were larger waves, but even the waters seemed to have been muted by the stealing of the light. Boats nudged against their moorings as the lake lifted and fell in a gentle, hypnotic rhythm, like the slowing heartbeat of Noreela. Bracken lay slumped to the ground in the darkness, its greenery fading into the soil with the rest of the land’s color. A few birds flitted here and there, but they did not sing. Something splashed, causing a line of ripples to spread from where the mystery creature had decided not to emerge. The darkness, perhaps, had changed its mind.
The building was huge, imposing. But no longer empty.
Beside the building sat a gigantic machine. Its wings were spread across the ground to either side, and several trees that had been uprooted by its landing lay splintered beneath its many feet. Its body swelled and shrank, swelled and shrank, and a mist hung around its various exhausts. Noses, perhaps, or mouths. One wing twitched and stripped the bark from one side of a living tree.
The machine was waiting. Its fleshy parts shivered, its metallic elements shone in the moonlight, its wings of wood and water and skin flexed and shifted, unable to find stillness.
Moonlight slid from the walls of the building and left it in darkness. There were windows, but they were pitch black. There were doors, but they remained closed. A gate in the building’s front facade had been blasted from its hinges and scattered in a thousand charred pieces. Some of them still burned. There was no breeze to disturb the smoke, and perhaps it rose forever.
Inside the entrance hall, something had conjured chaos. A huge timber staircase had been smashed to pieces, and some of the debris still smoldered along with the remains of the gate. Stone walls had been scored as if by giant nails. Tiles had erupted from the floor and been flung against walls, shattering and leaving parts of themselves embedded in the stone or timber. Beneath the tiles and their ancient bedding lay the rock of the land itself, and even this had not escaped the fury of destruction.
The Monastery had stood for a long time, and it would stand for a long time more. But its inside had been burned by unimaginable power. Something had passed through here, eradicating all evidence of the Monastery’s most recent inhabitants: the Red Monks. Robes were shredded, tables and chairs burned, food stores turned to rot, dormitories corrupted with feces and flame, kitchens stomped down as if by giant feet, and scars of the chaos marked every wall, floor and ceiling of the ancient building.
The Mages, in their wrath, could have easily destroyed the building itself. Their magic was rich and new and still being explored, and already they had powers that they had never before experienced. Maybe they could have tumbled walls and brought ceilings crushing down, but this had once been their home, before they were driven out and hounded from the land. The filthy Red Monks had taken it for their own, and perhaps the Mages could have touched the very heart of the Monastery and changed it completely, setting a seed of destruction to melt its stone skeleton, turning it into a lake of unstoppable fire that would spread over time; a year to reach Lake Denyah, five more to turn its waters to steam.
But they had come here for a reason, and their reason lay deep. Past the steps and basements, deep down where tunnels had been dug by unknown things eons ago, that was where their true destruction would be wrought.
And that was where they would have their first real taste of revenge.
“CAN WE KILL fledge demons?” Angel said. “Oh, I think we can!”
The Mages stood at the junction of several tunnels, clothed in fire. Blue flames licked from their mouths, their crotches, their ears and eyes, and as Angel spoke, her words singed the air. The phrase became a distinct ball of fire, bouncing along the tunnels and disappearing into their depths.