Free Dawn by Tim Lebbon Page B

from a chill breeze that had come in from the north, and it would also partially hide them from prying eyes. There was the risk that they would be seen by anyone or anything approaching from the south, but they needed warmth and something hot to eat. Trey had found some fat grubs beneath the moss on the rocks that formed this natural dip, and he pierced them and went about cooking them over the fire. Kosar wondered whether the witch had used chemicala to start the fire, but she showed him the flints in her hand. I have nothing left, she had said.
    Alishia lay on her side, pressed into the shelf of rock and covered with a blanket Hope still carried. The girl was very quiet. Her scalp was bleeding. She had fallen soon after leaving the machine and struck her head on a rock.
    Hope sat close, brushing hair away from the wound.
    Kosar told Trey and Hope of his experience with the mimics. Hope’s eyes were wide, her tattoos reflecting her interest.
    “And there was only one image of A’Meer?” she said.
    “Yes, only one.”
    “And she was cut up, dead?”
    “Yes.” Kosar stared into the fire, seeing a hundred strange dancing shapes within its flames. When he was a boy he had dreamed of living inside a fire, exploring the molten caves of wood and coal, but he had never considered what the heat would do to him. He sometimes wished he still possessed that childlike naiveté.
    “They went east?”
    Kosar nodded. “It was like having the land pulled from under me.”
    “I think today we can all feel like that,” Hope whispered. She looked down at Alishia and brushed the unconscious girl’s hair again, letting her finger trail through the drying blood. She raised her hand and tapped her finger against her lips, staring into the fire.
    What is she doing? Kosar thought. The witch licked her lips and glanced up at Kosar, and for a second her mistrust was obvious.
    “We need honesty now,” Kosar said. “More than anything we need to tell one another everything. Don’t you agree, Hope? If there is something that Alishia has, something she can do—”
    “Didn’t you run away?” Hope said.
    “I saw no reason to stay.”
    “And now you do?” She touched Alishia again, lifted a strand of her hair. “Now you want to help this girl, instead of leave her—and us—to whatever fate may befall us?”
    Kosar nodded. “The mimics came to me for a reason. That’s why I came back, Hope. And I came back to hear what you know of the mimics. You’re a witch. You pride yourself on such knowledge. I need to know why they showed me what they did, and what message they were trying to convey.”
    Hope gave a smile that lit her face. “I think the message is obvious. You’re to go to New Shanti to tell the Shantasi about Alishia. Trey and I are to take her south, to Kang Kang.”
    “And what’s in Kang Kang?”
    “You think I know?”
    “I’m sure you do.”
    Hope looked down at the fire again, and Kosar wondered just what she saw in there. I see the echoes of childhood adventure, scorched away by the heat of the real world. What does an old witch see in a campfire?
    “I can tell you only what I believe,” she said. “What I know for sure is so much less.”
    “I’m sure your beliefs are educated,” Trey said.
    “They are at that, fledger.”
    “So,” Kosar said. “The mimics. Kang Kang. New Shanti.”
    “All linked, and all coming together very quickly,” Hope said. She shifted and sat up, hugging her knees. She glanced down at Alishia, then back up at Trey and Kosar. Even now there was a scheming look in her eye, and Kosar looked away, unnerved.
    “How so?” Trey said.
    “The mimics—from what I know of them—can be everywhere,” she said. “They pop up here and there, but do they really move? I don’t know; nobody does. They’re as difficult to communicate with as the moons, or the Sleeping Gods. They’re part of Noreela, but no part that we’re used to. The mere fact that they’re intruding into our