“The south?” Angel said, raising her eyebrows. “You think we’ve been to the south?”
“You flew in from that way,” Lenora said. She could not meet Angel’s eyes for more than a heartbeat without looking away.
“We went to the Monastery,” Angel said. “There was something we had to do there.”
“The Nax?” Lenora said.
“The Nax. But they’re long gone. The basements and deeper caves are empty. But we met something else there. A shade spy came to us, and it gave news we thought never to hear.”
“And this news…” Lenora started, pausing when Angel glared at her. “The Shantasi?”
“Pah! Weakling slaves who think themselves warriors. Why would I fear those whiter freaks? No, Lenora.” She moved close and spoke into Lenora’s ear. “Magic. There’s still magic free, and it conspires against us.”
“You have the magic,” Lenora said, confused. “I saw you take it from the boy with my own eyes.”
Angel glanced at Lenora’s machine, parts of its flesh and bone risen from the corpse of the farm boy. “So you did,” she said. “But a shade has found another. A girl, going into Kang Kang with a mad witch as her companion.”
“No one else?”
“Just two of them.”
“Then what threat-?”
Angel reached out and grabbed Lenora’s shoulder. Old wounds and new came alight, pain burning into Lenora’s body and skull, and Angel pressed her to her knees. Lenora tried not to scream. She closed her eyes and welcomed the pain as a friend rather than an enemy. It would be over soon and she would not remember exactly how it felt. Pain was a thing of the moment.
Angel brought her face close to Lenora’s and waited until the Krote opened her eyes before she spoke. “What threat? Consider what threat we are to Noreela.”
“We’redestroying Noreela!”
“Yes, and I can taste its blood on your breath. But if a magic beyond our control returns to the land, the blade will be turned. The threat will be on us. It’ll be the War again. And as you well know, Lenora, we didn’t fare well the first time.”
“But wewould win now, Mistress.” Lenora stared into Angel’s eyes, past the agony of her shoulder and her fear of the Mage. Behind false beauty wrought by magic she saw the embittered old Mage this woman really was, mad with the need for revenge, insane with its hunger. And in those eyes, she saw the reflection of herself.
Angel eased her grip until her hand was merely resting on Lenora’s shoulder. “You’re a good soldier,” she said. “And a friend, Lenora. Does that shock you?”
Lenora shook her head. “No, Mistress.”
“Good. Then do this friend a favor. Drive south to Kang Kang. Take the whole army with you. Ignore everything between here and there. Don’t be tempted by the towns, the trains of fleeing people, the farming villages. Take only what you need to eat, drink and rearm, and go for the eastern reach of Kang Kang. A mad witch and a girl, that’s all you seek of Noreela right now.”
“Shall I bring them to you?”
“Kill them. And with the girl, make sure her head is crushed into the ground. Feed her brains to your machine. Leavenothing. ”
“Mistress,” Lenora said, bowing her head slightly.
Angel touched Lenora’s chin and raised her face. “I suppose you want to know where S’Hivez and I will be while all this is going on?”
“No, Mistress, I’d never question-”
“I can’t tell you,” Angel said. “But we’ll meet again soon.”
“Kang Kang is a long way, perhaps five hundred miles. How long do we have?”
“Perhaps days, perhaps…heartbeats.” Angel looked up at the darkened sky, as though expecting the sun to shine through at any moment.
“I will not fail you, Mistress.”
“Thank you, Lenora. I’m leaving you something. It will build you more machines, to carry a different army.” Angel left and Lenora watched her go, thrilled and relieved.
The Mage leapt onto her machine with unnatural grace. She leaned forward and whispered something to S’Hivez, but the male Mage barely moved. He’s somewhere else, Lenora thought. As the machine lifted off, something slipped from a rent in its gut and moved toward the city walls. Another shade crushed a hole in reality. Lenora tried not to see.
Angel spared not a glance for the burning city.
“As though she’s seen it all before,” Lenora said. And she had. The Mages had been dreaming of this every night for three hundred years.
IN THE DISTANCE Lenora saw the lights from a caravan of wagons. They snaked across the foothills of the Widow’s Peaks, heading south from Noreela City. As they closed in, the lights blinked out, and Lenora could see hundreds of tiny shadows fleeing the wagons and dispersing across the hillside. More helpless victims to slaughter, but she could not let anything distract her. Angel had been very specific in her orders. And in a way, Lenora was glad. She had seen a killing frenzy in some of her Krotes that she could no longer find in herself, and it had disturbed her. Perhaps because of that voice that spoke to her, that child, and the innocence she had begun to hear behind its words.
The massed army of Krotes thundered on. Their machines ran or crawled or flew, and in their midst, giant new constructs-formed by the shade the Mages had left behind-rolled on wheels of stone cast from the ruins of Noreela City. They carried great cages and bowls, hollow globes and flattened shelves of rock, and packed into these machines were thousands of Noreelan dead. Limbs waved feebly, mouths opened and closed and drooled black blood. Heads turned to see where they were going and to search for their uncertain futures.
What of their wraiths? Lenora thought yet again, but she did not dwell on that. Wherever they were, they would be in pain.
The machines tore down dying trees and crushed them to splinters. They churned the soil, ploughing under failing crops and exposing the guts of the land to the dusk. A heavy frost glittered, reflecting moonlight and marking their way. They moved quickly, and when they saw a large town burning in the distance they diverted slightly and told the Krotes there of their new aim. These several warriors boarded their flying machines and took off, heading south toward Kang Kang.
The land shook beneath them, and Noreelans shivered in their hiding places. But for now the aim of the army had changed. The invasion was over, and the battle for magic had begun.
Tim Lebbon
Dawn
Chapter 16
THE SHANTASI WERE harvesting, though not spice. The spice farms were dying, but the warriors were out on the desert sands anyway, digging instead of climbing, ignoring the intricate webbings and shriveling plants in favor of excavating things from below.
“More Pace beetles?” Kosar asked.
“I expect so.” Lucien was nursing his wounds, chewing the remaining plants from his robe pockets and packing the resultant paste in the holes in his arm, shoulders and body. He felt weak and wretched. He should be dead. Yet here he was, surrounded by Shantasi, and he had no idea what would come next. Perhaps he would go with them to fight the Mages and their Krote army. The idea of that thrilled him, driving his blood faster and inspiring a heat in his skin which Kosar must surely feel where he sat a few steps away.
On the other hand, the Shantasi could simply kill him. He had fight left in him, but he was not sure that he would resist. The more Shantasi he took with him, the fewer there would be to fight the Krotes, and the more chance there was of Alishia being caught and killed. He hoped the Shantasi reasoned as he did and allowed him to fight.
They had let Kosar come and sit next to him after the thief had finished talking with the Mystic. With the Shantasi going about their preparations, it felt as though he and Kosar were set apart. Lucien sighed and pressed more paste into an arrow wound above his left elbow. He flexed his arm and felt the damage to the joint, but his blood had hardened there, fixed the fracture and turned fluid again to lubricate the movement.
A Shantasi returned from the sands and dropped a leather bag against a rock thirty steps away. He muttered something to O’Gan Pentle, who was sitting on the rock, glanced at Lucien and Kosar then went back out onto the sands. O’Gan continued watching the harvest.