Dawn by Tim Lebbon

He chose a bloom that had withered and died, and the smell that came from it was one of rot and surrender. He winced, turning to the next plant in line. This one was tall, its blooms few, and a couple of them still seemed to be drawing strength from the ancient stone in which it was buried. He pressed his face to a bloom, closed his eyes and breathed in.
    Hope… a voice whispered, but it was like no voice he had ever heard before. It was a breeze through the bare branches of a tree, the wash of foamy waters on the shores of Sordon Sound, the whispered exhalation of a lover passing seed and giving life. It was the language of the land.
    Panting, he breathed deeply of the bloom. He felt the pollen abrading the insides of his nostrils and the sting of rupturing blood vessels, and he tasted the blood that dripped over his top lip. But he did not hear that voice again. He moved to another bloom and inhaled its pollen, glancing back at A’Meer’s image, upright and dead, listening for the single word that had been breathed to him from the first intense vision.
    “Hope!” he cried, his mind buzzing from so much pollen. He walked toward A’Meer, swaying across the Temple roof and falling to his knees. “Hope? Is there still hope, poor dead A’Meer?” To see her like this was distressing, but to hear that word uttered at the moment of her death, to feel it, seemed to justify every Shantasi death. “Hope!” O’Gan screamed, and for a few seconds the bustle of the streets below the Temple died down, and he imagined pale faces looking up to see who dared shout this word.
    A’Meer began to grow indistinct and hazy and O’Gan reached out to save her. She was coming apart before him, fading as though she were a painting splashed with water. He moved forward quickly, and this time the image of the dead Shantasi did not drift away. His fingertips reached her and passed inside, pressing against her fragmenting chest and finding a subtle resistance that surrounded his hand, like a thousand flies alighting on his skin. He gasped and pulled back, and for a second a smear of A’Meer came with him, dropping from his arm and merging with the shifting shadow at his feet.
    The whisper came again, and the shadow filtered back over the edge of the Temple. O’Gan sat nursing his hand and repeating that word again and again, hoping the repetition would imbue it with some power, some truth.
    There was hope. He had not been wrong. Now he only had to spread this knowledge.

    WALKING DOWN THE steps from the Temple, O’Gan entered a world he no longer knew. He had been on the roof for almost two days, and in that time Hess had changed forever. It had once been a city of contemplation and consideration, a calm place where street markets sold food and drink to the many people lingering in the communal gardens, musing on the problems of life and death. Mystics had wandered the streets, eyes closed and hands folded as they considered the meaning of a vision from their last time on the Temple. Sometimes they would pause and begin to talk, using their Voice to gather an audience. Their words would have depth, their depths would give meaning, and a dozen people would move on possessed of more knowledge than before. The Mystics were the brain of Hess, the rest of the Shantasi living there its blood. The Mystic city troubled some; its atmosphere did not suit everyone. But of all the places O’Gan had been in New Shanti, Hess had always felt most like home.
    Now it was strange to him, and he was a stranger within it. Halfway down the Temple staircase he paused to look down into the streets. He could make out more detail than had been possible from the Temple roof, and he could see just how much Hess had changed. Not only the city itself, but the people. Panic had overtaken contemplation, fear had usurped thoughtfulness and the streets had grumbled with the last of Hess’ population of half a million fleeing. He had been watching from the Temple for