Dusk by Tim Lebbon Read Free Book Online

could do. The militia fought him, but he killed them. He had arrows in him and bolts and everything, but still he walked and killed. I watched him from the hills when I escaped . . . I watched him die, I think . . . but then I was followed. I think he’s following me.”
    “A madman. There are many of them nowadays.”
    “But why kill Mother and Father? There’s no rhyme, no reason.”
    “People don’t need reasons,” Vance said. “They just need the urge.” He stared off into the corners of the room for a time, though Rafe was sure he was seeing much farther. “Royston,” he muttered, and shook his head.
    “How did I get here?” Rafe asked through their shared pain. “I don’t remember. I know I came down from the hills, there was something following me, but I don’t know how I found my way here.”
    Vance looked up. “There was someone following you, but it was no madman. He brought you here after you collapsed in the street.”
    “Who?”
    “Some thief.”
    Rafe shook his head, frowning.
    Vance grunted. “He knew where I was, somehow. Said he’d been here before. Said he’d been most places.” He hawked, and spat a huge gob of mucus onto the floor. “All the damn trouble there is in the world, and you get mixed up with a thief.”
    “I wasn’t mixed up—”
    “I know, I know. That’s not really what I meant.”
    Rafe watched his uncle move across the room and open a cupboard. He brought out a bottle and uncorked it, slurping noisily as he downed half of its contents in one swallow.
    “Aren’t you going to tell anyone?” Rafe asked.
    “Huh?” Vance’s eyes were glazing.
    “We have to tell someone.”
    “Who?”
    “I don’t know. I have to go back, bury Mother and Father, do something . . . do something for—”
    “They’d have been taken by now, by things. Night things. And Rafe, there’s no one to tell. I could ride five days to Noreela City, and if the wraiths or tumblers or bandits didn’t get me first, and if they even let me through the city gates, they’d ask me why I’d come. Then they’d laugh and send me away again. Trengborne is an unknown little village in a big bad world. Nobody would give a Mage shit about what’s happened.”
    “But everyone’s dead!”
    Vance stared, and Rafe felt himself shriveling beneath that gaze. It held knowledge of all manner of things, and most of them must surely be bad. “Two moons ago, so it’s said, a village two days to the east—two days nearer Noreela City, mind you—was swallowed up. Sucked into the ground by a sinkhole. Everything mixed and blended into a soup. A thousand people. And you know what they sent from the city? Nothing. No help, no militia, not even a Mourner.” He looked at the ceiling, took another swig from the bottle and belched. “Everyone dies. It’s just that these days, people are doing it more often.” He drained the bottle and smashed it into a corner. “Nobody cares anymore.”
    Vance found a fresh drink and virtually dismissed the terrified boy. In minutes he was drunk and dribbling, and a long hour later he was asleep.
    Grief threatened to overwhelm Rafe, but anger held it at bay, or at least kept it contained. Perhaps shock was still shielding him from the reality of the moment, deadening what had happened. He shed more tears, held his head in his hands and tried to remember all the good times.
                   
    LATER, RAFE LEFT the room and found his way out from the mazelike building. People were lying in hallways, asleep or dead. Rats rooted around and under them, crocodile beetles sought moist holes, and the slew of protection charms drawn on the walls in faded blood displayed a desperate, superstitious hope in a magic faded into myth. Rafe was not used to seeing such signs and they stirred something unknown within him, a memory that had never happened. He traced one sigil with his finger, and the dried, crusted blood scratched his skin.
    The stink of his uncle’s room