At the end, with the ground around it stripped to the bedrock and air still condensing in an endless spiral from above, the hole whistled itself into oblivion. It was a hiss of gushing air that Trey recognized from the mines-sometimes breezes would come from and go to nowhere, sources and destinations both mysteries-and it gave him a shiver to realize that these things may be the cause. The hole’s final breath could even now be exploring the underworld, fingering through passageways and caverns untrodden by humanity, blowing dust against things ancient, unknown and unknowable, passing by sleeping or waking Nax, eventually even reaching the stiff body of his dead mother and querying her demise.
“Are we going to see?” he said eventually.
“No. It’s too uncertain. We’ll skirt around it.” Alishia’s initial excitement seemed to have faded to a mild interest, tempered by her realization of how dangerous this thing could be.
“It’ll be dark soon.”
She nodded. “We need to camp as far away from here as we can. Maybe it hasn’t quite finished.”
They headed south to pass by the swallow hole, finding evidence of its presence as they moved farther away: uprooted trees; shredded shrubs; areas of stripped ground where the bedrock peered through. Two hours later, with the sun setting ahead of them and the life moon a waning silver against its more sinister sister, they spied a fire in the distance.
“Someone else on the plains?” Trey asked nervously. Alishia was the only topsider he had met and strange as she was, at least she had grown familiar. And besides, he owed her for saving his life. But to face others?
“Yes,” she said. “People. We should go to them. They’ll have food and water, and I’m sure they’d trade some for a crumb of your fledge.”
“How can we be sure that they’re friendly?”
Alishia was silent for a long while, staring across the darkening plains at the winking light. “We can’t be sure,” she said. “But there’s a part of me that craves company right now. That swallow hole
… I’ve read about them, but actually seeing something like that, something that is proof of the land changing, winding down and giving out on us… I want to be with other people. I need to talk. And besides, they may know a lot more than we do.”
“About what?”
“Magic.” So saying, Alishia strode off, heading for the fire, shrugging her backpack higher.
Trey held back. Alishia’s comments about the swallow hole and what it meant had made him think of the Nax mind he had touched on so briefly and terribly. Something had been wrong in there, an understanding that things were amiss and that it had to wake to take action.
And now Alishia was talking of magic.
He could only follow, but the nervousness that had informed Trey’s thoughts since Alishia had found him on the hillside pressed in stronger than ever. Given a target, it flowered into something greater.
He shrugged off his shoulder bag, grabbed a thumb of fledge and began to chew as he followed Alishia toward the light.
Tim Lebbon
Dusk
Chapter 17
THEY STOPPED RUNNINGseveral miles beyond Pavisse. The fear was still with Rafe-the image of that demon coming at him, spitting blood, empty eye sockets seeing far more than they should, smelling the taint of something that even Rafe was still barely admitting to-but his body was failing. He could not run forever, however terrified he was. His legs were cramping, he had a stitch in his side that almost bent him double and Hope the witch had finally stopped trying to drag him. Now even she was struggling.
“There,” she said, pointing. At the foot of a gentle slope sat a huddle of buildings, smoke rising lazily from a fire before being caught and blown away by the northerly breeze. “We’ll get some horses.”
“A farm won’t just give us horses,” Rafe gasped. He was bent over, hands on his knees, legs shaking and threatening to spill him to the ground. For the hundredth time he looked behind them, fearing a flash of red in the distance.
“I’ll buy them,” she said. “Farm folk are always open to secrets.”
The farm was small, suffering as much as any from poor yield by the land. Its outbuildings were in disrepair, one of them leaning over so much that its timber columns had snapped, little more than habit preventing it from tumbling to the ground. There were several other open sheds and barns, all of them bleached by the sun and none of them full. Produce must be rare, such were the denuded stocks. From inside one of the smaller buildings came screeches and screams, rats fighting over some unfortunate victim. The farmhouse itself, a long, low, single-story affair, was adorned with animal heads in varying states of decomposition. Most of them were old, little more than bare skulls hanging on to shreds of leathery skin. But one or two were relatively new, blood dried but still evident in trails down the wall, eyes glassy where they had not been pecked out by birds. It was an old practice, displaying the heads of slaughtered predators, but it showed that life on this farm was not easy. There were at least forty heads nailed to the wall beneath the eaves: giant rats; the slab-shaped head of a ground snake; a sabre-toothed dog, its teeth painted bright red; and other creatures, some of which Rafe did not even recognize.
A herd of cows lumbered around a field nearby, chewing at grass that would eventually poison them, udders hanging slack and dry. One of them was mothering a calf, but it was a weak, diseased-looking thing, its red coat faded almost to white from lack of sustenance. A few sheebok wandered across the farmyard, lapping water from a small pond. They bleated and butted one another with shorn horns.
The farm wolf watched them walk in across the fields, eyes glittering and pelt rich and full. Some were eating well, at least. It remained stationary until Rafe and Hope passed the first of the outbuildings, and then it let out a short, loud bark.
From their left came the sound of something heavy stamping and shifting in an enclosed barn. Hope glanced at Rafe and nodded. “Horses,” she said.
Rafe felt strangely at home. Trengborne had been a whole farming community, a hundred times larger than this place and far more advanced, and yet the smells and sights and sounds were the same: sheebok dung; a rack of tools in the farmyard; the background grunts and grumble of farm animals eating and drinking and sleeping. On closer inspection he saw that the sheebok all had eye-rot, and he wanted to find a redspit plant to shred and put in their water. But he guessed that the farmer knew his work, however bad a state his herds were in. Rafe’s interference would not be appreciated.
Rafe heard a harsh whisper from out of sight. Running footsteps echoed behind one of the buildings. From behind the house more frantic whispers, the metallic sound of weapons clinking together, a hissed curse.
“Stand still, boy,” Hope said when they reached the center of the yard. The wolf stood by the door to the farmhouse, watching them, bushy tail high. “They’ll likely challenge us, but let me do the talking.”
“But I’m a farmer, I’ll know-”
“You’re from a village, not a farm like this. These people will be used to fighting off bandits and tumblers, not sitting around nursing furbats.”
Rafe felt slighted but he did as Hope said, standing still, arms held out from his sides to show that he was hiding no weapons.
The call came from their left.
“Who are you? What do you want?” The woman stepped out from behind the farmhouse, and as she strode into the yard the wolf stepped along by her side.
“My name’s Hope, and I want to buy two horses from you. This here is Rafe.”
“You’re a witch.” The woman had stopped a few paces from them, staring mostly at Hope and the tattoos illustrating her skin.
“Yes, a witch. I’ve got some trades I’d like to offer, if you’ve a mind.”