Upon waking, the screaming still stinging her throat, she had already begun to deconstruct and analyze the fear.
As a child she had nightmares when she was ill. She could never explain them to herself, let alone to others, although thinking about them still disturbed her even now. There had been a sense of space so huge that it belittled her and her existence, made her less than a gasp in a storm. She stood on a hill and the space closed in around her. Nothingness itself took on a weight and a pressure, grinding her down even though she was nothing, taking her away from the center of things so that she regarded herself as meaningless, an insignificant pollutant in the purity of void. As she grew older she tried to ally this space, this endless, pressing void, with the experience she lacked. A whole world sat around her and she had seen nothing of it. But however much she suspected this, in truth she knew that it was not the case. Her knowledge may be secondhand, but that was no reason for her to fear the world.
The thing that had reached out in her fledge dream provoked the same sense of fear as those sickening childhood dreams, but now it was much more real. Because even now, awake, Alishia was terrified.
Something beyond her experience had intruded into her sleep. She was horribly certain that had she not screamed herself awake, it would have come closer, until it finally touched her for real.
Trey sat huddled on the horse, shielding his face from the fading daylight as if he could make his own cave, take himself back belowground. Alishia heard him crying from time to time, but after her first couple of attempts to comfort him she decided to leave him be. She had read that the best way to temper grief was by letting it run its course.
If he had noticed that a small amount of his fledge was missing, he said nothing. Neither did he mention her screams as she had come awake. Maybe he thought she always slept with nightmares.
Alishia held her horse’s reins and led it down out of the foothills. She glanced back from time to time and saw shadows hiding on the slopes, huddled beneath rocky overhangs or sitting comfortably in cave entrances. But the setting sun was keeping them at bay, bathing the hillsides in its rich golden light, blurring the mountains’ sharpness as it struck a cloud bank far to the west and turned slowly pink. She walked faster, conscious that night was coming and keen to find somewhere suitable to camp on the plains below.
Noreela City was out of sight now, hidden behind the hips of the first mountain, even its glow no longer marking its location as dusk settled comfortably across the land. For the first time in her life she could look around and not see something of the city. She did not miss its excesses, cruelties, corruption, carelessness, murders, the screams at night or the cries in the day as another dose of skewed justice was meted out. And yet she did miss the city itself. It had always been her home, however distasteful it had become. Memories both good and bad stood out sharply as she increased the distance between herself and the city.
Intruding into her recollections, shadows crept around her.
She dwelled a little on the library she had been charged with keeping and maintaining. There had been little added to it during her time there, save for the occasional traveler leaving roughly copied tomes for her to catalog and lose amidst the ancient stacks. A whole building filled with more knowledge than one person could ever hope to attain. That place had been wondrous, and its loss hit her more keenly now that she had left the city than when it had burned down. Even then the evidence of it had remained, carbonized stacks of old paper and dead knowledge leaning drunkenly in the smoke, soaked to mulch with water and awaiting their final demise. Now it was only memory. But at least it was a memory true to her, something she had experienced firsthand, reveled in, smelled and touched and tasted, the library air redolent of a million different stories.
Alishia thought of the broken book the old man had carried out, and as she approached a huge boulder light was stolen from beneath it, and a shadow watched her pass. She steered the horse to one side and slipped the knife from her thigh, feeling foolish with the petty weight of metal in her hand. The shadow remained in place, and if it had eyes they did not blink. She glanced back a few times, and as it receded behind her the rock seemed to merge with the shadow, being swallowed or swallowing the darkness itself. It remained in place, brooding, threatening to expand and follow her down.
The hillside was flattening out slowly onto the plains, punctured here and there by deep holes, old surface workings or perhaps the homes of some unknown creatures long since vanished. Each hole offered a new shadow to seep beneath the ferns, spreading dark fingers where light no longer fell.
Alishia glanced up at Trey. He was still in some sort of fugue, sitting up now but with his eyes closed, lolling in the saddle as if he would fall off at any moment. He had never ridden a horse, he had said, but his long legs made it easy for him to grip its sides and remain in the saddle. She wished he would talk to her. She felt even more alone than she had upon leaving the city.
She thought of the old man who she was sure had burned down her library, and the shadows closed in again. There had been something about him, a niggling memory deep in her mind, but she could not dig down to it. His manner, his age, his language, his attire… they all stirred a memory of something she had read, something she knew. Her eyes drooped and she strolled along the aisles of the library in memory, running her fingers along book spines and recognizing every one, the names and titles and obscure publishing houses all known to her. She pulled out one book entitled The Quest for Retribution, a hate-filled tome that had been written soon after the Cataclysmic War. It called for an expedition northward to ensure that the Mages were properly accounted for, tied down, killed. It had been popular in its day, but it was one of a slew of reactionary literature that had flooded Noreela at the exact time that it needed optimism, not vengeance. Yet that had been a rich time in the literature of the land, and the sudden slurring of conventions and ideals, edging even the most creative and intellectual of writers to more radical outlooks, had been the start of the fall. People should have seen it, Alishia had always thought. They should have noticed that society was in a decline by the way the arts strove to refocus direction, diverting away from the more philosophical and cerebral explorations to those ruled more by animal instinct: conflict; survival; vengeance.
Alishia stumbled on a rock and went to her knees, calling out in surprise. She looked around quickly, startled and shocked. The sun had fallen and darkness had come out of the ground, closing in all around her, giving shadows more depth and potential than ever. Something was watching her from out there; she could feel its attention upon her. A thought floated away, leaving only the stale taste of itself behind. Something about the library, and the Mages, and anger. She shook her head, wondering whether she was suffering from a fledge hangover.
“You fell,” Trey said from his mount.
“You’re awake!” Alishia was embarrassed at the delight in her voice, but relief soon smothered the embarrassment. It was dark, there was something out there in the night, and now she was no longer alone.
“I have been for a while. I’ve been thinking. I’ve lost so much, and I really don’t know what to do now.”
“We have to find a place to camp,” Alishia said. “It’s too dark to keep moving, there are holes and crevasses to trip us. And besides, I need to light a fire. There’s something stalking me.” Not stalking us, Alishia thought. Me. It was a strange way to state her fear, but it seemed entirely apt.
“What is it?” Trey asked. His eyes were wide open now that the sun had gone down, and Alishia saw him stare in wonder at clouds silvered and smudged by starlight.