“Just where are you, librarian?” she said. She was suddenly afraid of this young girl. As Alishia regressed into childhood and whatever may come before, so she seemed to be taking on more of magic.
Alishia spoke the language of the land, and they were words that Noreelan air had not heard in their full glory for three hundred years.
HOPE FOUND A bush of berries, and even though some of them seemed to possess the features of small faces, still she picked and ate them. They burst in her mouth, releasing a sweet, warm fluid into her throat. They could be anything, Hope thought, staring close at a berry the size of her thumbnail. Poison fruit, chrysalis waiting to open…anything. She nudged one and every other berry on the tree swung in sympathy. She picked more and filled her pockets for later. Kang Kang just makes them look like that to put me off, she thought. She popped a few more into her mouth and crunched them between her teeth, feeling for movement that should not be there but finding none. She worked her shoulder to get Alishia into a more comfortable position and started off again.
Hope headed into a valley where darkness seemed to lap at the edges. Moonlight did not find its way down here. She kept the disc-sword at the ready, squinting in the poor light to ensure she did not stray from the path. Even here it was still evident, and when she strayed she found that it was very clear which was path and which was not. Whilst on the path the noises she heard were subdued, the grumbling of Kang Kang talking in its sleep. But when she left the path and felt rough, virgin ground beneath the snow, the grumbling turned into a roar, and an avalanche of rocks came at her from hidden heights. She huddled down to protect Alishia with her own body, but when she looked up again the tumbling rocks had stilled, or vanished. The noise of their displeasure dissipated into the night, and she moved on.
The route fell and rose again, finding the easiest way through the valley, up to the ridge and over into the next valley. The mountains weighed down on either side, but snow was coming in harder now, obscuring whatever the moonlight might betray of their mysterious heights.
Time passed without measure. Hope melted snow in her hands to drink. The water tasted of something she could not quite place. She tried to drip some past Alishia’s lips, but the girl’s mouth pursed tight. Sometimes she sat on the path and cuddled the girl to her, crying and feeling tears freezing on her cheeks. She shared her warmth but received little in return: a sigh here, a whisper there. Occasionally Alishia would start talking again, those strange words unheard for so long, but their meaning was still inexplicable.
She thought of the Mages perched atop their monstrous machine, heading south, deeper into Kang Kang. Not them at all, she tried to convince herself. They’d have seen us. They’d have killed us. Not them at all. An image from Kang Kang? Another one of its tricks? But not them…
Perhaps she traveled for a day, or two days, or longer. The mountains grew higher around her and Kang Kang pressed in, threatening her with a thousand deaths that it seemed unable to deliver. “Is this you?” Hope would ask, but the girl never answered. “Is thisyou?” she asked what was inside the girl. But magic, as ever, was silent.
SOMETHING CAME AGAINST them from the sky. It began as a heavy drone in the distance, turning quickly into a loud buzzing sound that seemed to confront them from all sides. Hope looked around in a panic, brandishing the disc-sword. The shadows appeared from the east, flitting in across the ground and casting themselves large with light from the death moon. Their wings blurred the air like heat haze. Snow was stirred up behind them, swirling in complex patterns. Alishia mumbled something and a strong wind blew up, originating somewhere far behind and below them and roaring up the valley. The flying things came closer, and Hope could make out their long legs and heavy stings, their wings, their heads dotted with a dozen eyes and trailing hair like an old man’s beard. The wind rushed past Hope and Alishia, passing by within a few steps of where they stood without disturbing a hair on their heads. It struck the flying things, swept them into the mountainside, cleared the ground of snow. The buzzing stopped, and the wind died away as quickly as it had come.
Hope saw the broken bodies spilling steam. Some of them twitched, but none of them remained a threat. She turned and left quickly, thinking of magic, asking the question of Alishia yet again and receiving the same silence as response.
She wondered how the Mages had extracted the fledgling magic from Rafe, and briefly considered whether it would work for her.
And eventually she began to despair of ever finding the Womb of the Land. It was on the southern side of Kang Kang, she knew that…but how reliable could even that information be? It was a fact she had known forever but which she could not recall hearing or reading. How did she know? Was it part of the knowledge passed on from her mother, another witch who had never known magic? She consulted the Book of Ways several more times, but its pages on Kang Kang remained blank and useless.
Her mind turned inward, obsessed with finding magic for herself and fulfilling her vapid life, and she continued following the path. We’re being protected, she thought. We’re being led. The Shades of the Land will guide us in.
Tim Lebbon
Dawn
Chapter 17
THE REMAINS OF the Shantasi army-those who had listened to O’Gan Pentle’s rallying cry rather than fleeing east-now traveled southwest toward the foothills of Kang Kang, and war.
They moved quickly, many of them using their Pace and others riding beasts of the desert after feeding them Pace beetles. They maintained almost complete silence save for thehushing of thousands of feet. Here and there came the occasional clink of metals knocking together, but mostly the warriors had packed their armory perfectly, wrapping and tying and strapping it so that no weapon touched another. Those that did make a noise were probably the untrained Shantasi, the two thousand civilians who had remained with the intention of fighting rather than fleeing.
The desert was a sea of dashing shapes and glinting metals. The life moon reflected from thousands of pale faces, and the death moon caught freshly sharpened blades and the tips of arrows and bolts. A desert beast died here and there, ridden to the end of its time by the determined Shantasi, and amongst the great swathe of footprints they left in the sand were the occasional humps of dead creatures. The Shantasi that dismounted would use their own Pace and run, or perhaps head off at angles from the army and catch fresh beasts.
The smell of Pace beetles seemed to permeate the air around the army, and Kosar realized that it was the breath of the Shantasi. He did not recognize the aroma-A’Meer had never smelled like this-and he could only assume that they had eaten fresh beetles to provide them with the boost they needed to travel so far.
Kosar rode the same species of desert beast he and the Monk had ridden in on. Lucien sat behind him, bent low over the creature’s back. Kosar was not sure whether or not he was asleep, and he had no interest in finding out.
Two Shantasi warriors-a man and a woman-held leather lines tied around the animal’s neck shield to guide it onward.
Kosar was as amazed now as he had been five hours ago when they departed. It had taken an incredibly short time for the army to amass, and soon the desert between his resting place and the failing swathes of desert spice was filled with Shantasi, resting after their run from Hess or helping with the gathering of Pace beetles and other things. Even then they had been quiet, their subdued talking amounting to a background murmur that fought the slight breeze for greater volume.
“These are all warriors?” he had asked.