The Fade by Chris Wooding

Author:Chris Wooding [Wooding, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, General, Epic, Fantasy fiction
ISBN: 9780575082984
Publisher: Gollancz
Published: 2008-11-22T21:35:37+00:00

14

The cave mouth opens a short way up a barren mountainside. At the foot of the mountain is a great flat stretch of scarred yellow-brown rock, which terminates suddenly at the edge of a sheer cliff. Beyond it is a sunken basin, bordered on all sides by steep escarpments and distant peaks.

Mist hangs thick in the basin, broken by the caps of colossal fungi. Mycora. The Caracassa mansions are built into the roots of one of these, many thousandspans underground. They emerge from the drifting vapour like humped islands, or tower above it, swollen discs spreading outward from their massive stems. The jagged tips of sandstone pillars are dimly visible down there, hazy shadows in the whiteness.

And above it all, the sky. The terrible sky.

The horizon is dominated by the colossal presence of Beyl, the mother-planet, looming before us as we burst from the cave and begin to slide and scramble down the mountainside. She’s a vast orb of black and purple and green, banded with darkly glowing clouds of poison, flickering with storms the size of continents. She dwarfs our little moon, so massive that she snuffs out the risen sun. The last vestiges of the sun’s light are dwindling as her enormous bulk slides across it.

Halflight. The false night brought on when the mother-planet eclipses one or both of our suns. But it won’t last long: further along the horizon, the sky is brightening, heralding the arrival of another sun. A second dawn is coming, and if we’re not under cover by then, we’ll not live to see another.

I can’t think straight. My mind is a mess of conflicting fears and instincts, foremost of which is the sheer wrongness of being outside. The idea that there is nothing above me, an endless emptiness, forever … I feel like I might just float into the sky and disappear. My body is seizing up with fear. It senses the day, lurking in sullen abeyance. It knows how slender the window of night is. It knows what will happen if the sun catches us in the open.

Escape. It’s all there is. It’s all I can allow myself to consider. If I think about anything more than skidding down this treacherous mountain slope, I’ll fall apart. My body is burning with exhaustion: our short rest has done little to redress the rigours of our flight from Farakza. The Gurta are behind us, promising death as surely as the suns. Only Feyn can deliver me. This is his world. I have to believe in him.

We reach the bottom of the slope as the Gurta emerge from the cave. They have the altitude to put us within the range of their bows, and though the distance should make it an impossible shot, I’ve faced enough Gurta archers to know that impossible doesn’t apply.

‘Feyn! Don’t run straight! Zigzag!’ I shout at him. He’s a little way ahead of me, having taken the lead on the way down. He’s heading for the mist basin, the only feature of the landscape within reach of a sprint.

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