“No we didn’t,” the woman said, but there was no anger in her voice, and no embarrassment at talking to a Mystic like this. “I can see a hundred dead even from where I lie. When their real army gets here…”
O’Gan looked at the shadowy humps scattered around them. “I can’t pretend you’re wrong,” he said, “but I can tell you that there’s meaning to all of this. There’s hope, and we’ll fight for it every second it still exists.”
“If it’s that important, why did the Elders run? Why didn’t they stay and fight? I saw them in the streets. I saw one of them dead by his own hand, and you expect me to believe there’s hope?”
O’Gan nodded, holding the woman’s gaze. She was strong, he realized, perhaps stronger than he. But equally, she saw no valor in sacrifice for an empty cause. “It’snot an empty cause,” he said quietly.
She glanced away again. “You saw those words in my mind.”
“I read them on your face.”
“So can you help us, Mystic?”
He hefted his sword. “I have this.” He nodded up at the spartlets. “We have those, and more. And perhaps the serpenthals will deign to help again.”
“Perhaps.”
He fell silent, the woman smiled and they heard thunder from the north.
O’GAN’S PLAN HAD been to hide behind the glare of the massive fire. It was a good plan, but it stole sight from the first Shantasi line. They heard the advancing army, but they could not see it. They felt the ground shaking beneath them, but as much as they squinted or shielded their eyes, they could not make out anything. The burning machine turned the dusk beyond the battlefield into midnight.
The noise grew quickly. A rumble in the distance to begin with, like the sound of a storm rolling into Hess across the waters of Sordon Sound. Lightning scratched the sky, arcing from one point on the ground to another. The rumble soon turned into a roar, and the ground thumped to its beat. It grew louder and louder, assaulting the Shantasi’s ears, vibrating through their chests, punching at them where they lay or knelt.
O’Gan gripped his sword tightly, eyes closed as he tried to judge distance. If their machines are small, then they’re almost upon us. If they are large, then perhaps they are still a mile away. He had no way of knowing. The flying machines had surprised them all, and now he feared they would be equally surprised by what came across the land.
“Flyers!” someone shouted in the distance. O’Gan glanced up and saw the illuminated bellies of several more flying things, spartlets darting in, fire glinting from metal, bluish explosions ripping spartlets apart, the huge shapes ducking and weaving and fighting their way groundward.
The roar grew louder still, and O’Gan laid his hand flat against the ground. Small stones spiked at his palm as they vibrated from the massive impacts. He closed his eyes. “They’re close,” he said.
“They’re here!” someone shouted.
O’Gan looked. Just beyond the influence of the firelight, the whole darkened horizon began to shift. More lightning sparkled from shadow to shadow, leaving bluish impressions on his eyes. Metal glinted, stone glowed pale and the Krote army rode in.
Several Shantasi charged the advancing army, firing arrows and flinging stars, whirling slideshocks around their heads and screaming defiance at the dark.
Suicide, O’Gan thought. He looked to the woman at his left. She smiled and stood, and he knew that he would follow.
Tim Lebbon
Dawn
Chapter 18
THE SHADES OF the Land will guide us in, Alishia thought, and at last she was beginning to understand. With understanding came a new level of hope. But there’s so much more to this. She lay there in the darkness, smelling Noreela burning above her. Sometimes she heard thunder as the Mage crashed through book stacks searching for her, and now and then the ground vibrated beneath her as it came close and went away again.
When smoke and fire started to invade the cave, she knew she had to leave. That made her sad. It felt safe down here, enclosed within the foundations of the land. Perhaps she had been lost for a while. But now the fire and heat of destruction were reaching her again, and she thought about how the flames had affected her in the woodland clearing.
The climb was daunting, but as she began she realized that she had little weight to lift. She found handholds in the stone wall, pushed herself up with her feet, and after a while spent breathing in smoke, her fingers closed around a splintered floorboard. Burning pages floated down around her. One landed on her head, but her hair did not catch on fire and she did not feel the heat.
The Shades of the Land will guide us in, she thought, but they will each need a sacrifice. Half-Life, Birth, Death… Finding her feet again, she leaned against a wall of books and listened for the thing hunting her. There was a rumble from her left, but she did not think that was caused by the Mage’s shade. Perhaps it was becoming more sly, fooling her with silence rather than seeking her through violence.
But she had felt its rage and its fear. She knew that it would not be able to remain silent for long.
ALISHIA DWELLED ON what the land had told her, and she wondered how any of this could ever come together. It had opened itself and allowed her to see so much, but in doing so it had displayed weaknesses that she had no wish to comprehend. A sacrifice, she thought, wondering what each Shade of the Land would consider a just payment to guide her inside the Womb, and why. And really, she knew, it was out of her hands. She was the delivery to be made. Whoever delivered her had far more on their shoulders than they could ever believe possible.
In the library, smelling past times being scorched from memory, she ran.
Thunder erupted behind her as a tower of books tumbled and she was almost buried, pages fluttering at her face and covers scoring her flesh. She sprawled to the ground and felt splinters enter her hands. The books pressed her down. One fell open before her and she read a few lines, but she did not wish to know.
Alishia clawed her way out from beneath the book pile, hearing and smelling some of the books erupting into flames behind her. She did not turn to see. The thing was closing on her, pushing its way through from the neighboring corridor where it had been hiding. It shattered the shelving, threw books before it, breathed on them and set them on fire. She did not look, could not afford to see. She was just a little girl. If she froze in fear then that would be the end.
Not just for me, she thought. Not only the end for me.
Another book fell before her, its pages blank and ready to be filled. And when this one burst into flames, she realized that even the future was quickly being eaten away.
With the land’s knowledge now brewing inside her, she had become much more than a librarian of the past. She had become the author of the future.
“I’m just a little girl,” she said, her vision blurring. She fell again and rolled onto her back, and she saw the thing closing down upon her, the great, consuming shadow that solidity denied and reality veered away from. The shade of a Mage, fearsome and furious. “I’m just a little girl!” Her tears cleared then, steamed away by fire, and something beat her across the face.
At first she thought it was gushes of flame, and she supposed she would burn here just like every other memory. Her head thrashed from left to right and her skin hurt, but her eyes still saw, unmelted in their sockets. The shade drew closer, a void in everything she could see and conceive. And even as she faded away and woke into the real world, she felt no triumph. She had escaped with knowledge intact. But she knew that the Mages’ ability to find her, and their determination to do so, would be stronger than ever before.
“WAKE!” HOPE SCREAMED. “Wake, wake, wake!” Each word was punctuated by a slap to Alishia’s face.
The girl could barely feel the impacts. She wondered why that was: the witch looked madder than ever, and she was not pulling her punches. Alishia tasted blood in her mouth, and another adult tooth fell out to leave a milk tooth in its place.