Ecko Burning (11 page)

He’d been cornered by the very sensations he’d had Mom peel from his body, tear from his mind. By emotions he’d denied, buried, surrendered, rejected, so many years before...

And the Lord Nivrotar didn’t give two shits about his personal fucking drama.

He couldn’t say yes, wouldn’t say no, had no idea which way he would fall. Both sides yawned at him, a tumble into a decision he could never undo.

In an effort to cling to the edge, to buy time, space, rescue, he said, “Christ, all your speechifyin’, you even
remind
me of the fuckin’ Bard. What’re you anyway, his mom?”

He was poised for her comeback -
wanting
her to spring for him, needing the outlet. His adrenals were kicked - ready for anger, violence, the call for palace guards to pike-spit him and stick his head on a bridge somewhere... and he was utterly thrown when she laughed aloud, her humour ringing from the stone vaults of the ceiling.

“His
mother?”

Ecko stared, baffled. His adrenaline leaked out of him like piss down his leg.

Her glowering darkness gone, she bore a smile on her face that was almost girlish.

“I’m Tundran-born, Ecko, though not of his blood.” Her laughter brought light and life to her pale skin, sunshine on snow. “Like Roderick, I seek lore and preserve what parts of my culture I may.”

Damn the woman and her fucking mood-swings, she was like running on rubble - he’d no clue where she’d trip him. He was shaky now, he’d so been anticipating the confrontation, the revelation, the Epic Truth That Would Make Him Change His Mind... Hell, she’d make a great case-study supporting the use of Doctor Slater Grey’s little magic tablets.

“What the hell is so funny?”

“You are - I should keep you here, my Dark Jester.” Her eyes flashed with what might’ve been mischief. “Tundran culture made an error, Ecko, many returns ago. We’re long-lived, but a slowly diminishing people - fewer children in every generation, and fewer of those surviving. We cling. Perchance that’s why Roderick hoards his knowledge with such obsession.”

“An’ I thought he was jus’ getting out of doin’ the real work.”

“Don’t be naïve.” The Lord’s smile vanished, sunshine behind a cloud. “I
know
how long he waited for hope, clung to his faith alone - and I know how much your arrival meant to him.” Her passion was rising, there were shades of deep colour in her cheeks. Her voice was layered with frost and terror and need. “If we’ve lost him, Ecko, really lost him...”

Lost him, really lost him.

“You’re doomed, I get it already.” His rasp hacked into her chill, shattered it. “But I don’t do guilt trips. If he’s that fuckin’ critical, you find him yourself. Send your
spies.
Find Rhan. Find the Pevensie kids and crown them all king. You can’t
make
me...”

For a moment her expression darkened, eyes like thunderclouds, like the threat of snow. Then her face set into an icy, humourless smile.

“You will walk away?”

Yes. No.

Fuck!

“Try an’ stop me.” The words were reflex. His targeters twitched, adrenals shivered: he was ready to dart for the stone stairs to the courtyard above - or to crush her white throat with a foot if she came for him.

But the cold held her where she was. She said only, “I am the Lord of Amos, and if I say so, you will obey me in word and deed and thought. Yet I would rather you made that choice for yourself. Listen to me, Ecko, and realise: by just standing with me, my enemies are yours. In the friendship of the Bard, you have secured your own death. In the thwarting of Maugrim and ensuring the survival of Roviarath you have angered foes far more dangerous than simply Phylos the Merchant Master. And those enemies will not forgive you - from them, you cannot choose to walk. They will follow you, hunt you and catch you - and your defiance will mean nothing. We are together - we have enemies wherever we look and we must face the unravelling of our culture as well as fight to preserve it. You stand with me Ecko, not because I choose it and not because you do - but because everything else that stands, stands against us.” She rested her cold hand on his cheek, the colour of her skin seeping into his own. “I will not prevent you from walking. But if you do, I will not help you when they find you.”

“If they kill me,” Ecko said, his voice as soft as rust, “you, Phylos, the grass, all of this, ceases to exist.”

“And what in the world,” her smile was gentle, dangerous, “makes you think they’ll just kill you? There are more unpleasant ways to teach people obedience.”

That one had him thinking for a very long time.

Resisting the urge to blow on her chilled hands, Amethea watched the old crafthouse.

Down beside her in a tangle of overgrown garden, Triqueta was motionless, one blade drawn and the beginnings of a smile flickering at the corner of her mouth. It was cold, the sky was bright and clear, but Triq’s desert skin looked warmed from the core of her soul. Her breath plumed in the crisp air.

Triq watched the sprawl of the house for a moment longer, then shook her head, the stones in her cheeks glittering.

The building was deserted.

Before them, mist and creeper clung to the cracked flagstones. It was barely the birth of the sun and the air was still cold, the night’s chill lingering. They were a way from the city’s heart, here; it was quiet, and an old wall separated them from the outer streets. Amethea watched every direction at once, starting with every stirring of a leaf.

The quiet was disconcerting, but Triqueta didn’t seem to care.

Amethea suppressed a shiver.

The crafthouse was a long, low shadow, and it clearly hadn’t been used in returns. It was half tumbledown, its empty windows Kartian-dark, hiding nameless fears. Once, this place would have been a craftmaster’s home and workplace - one of the single most important buildings in the city. There would have been a workshop here, and pure liquid terhnwood resin of the highest quality, brought straight from the plantation, braids of treated, dried fibres. The craftmaster would have had his moulds and ovens here, and from his skill would have come the finest weapons and ornamentation that the city could offer in trade - sigil-marked items that would travel from trader to merchant, merchant to bazaar, bazaar back to trader, all across the Varchinde.

And in return, he would have been one of the most privileged citizens of the city.

Now, there was nothing. Only his long cellars, empty and lined in stone.

Saint and Goddess, like I haven’t had enough of stone rooms!
Amethea thought, and the faint breeze sighed again; enough to stir the mist and scuttle the fallen leaves like insects about her boots. The cold was stiffening her knees.

Frankly, she’d rather be fighting to prevent poor demented Ress from clawing his own eyes out than here, flexing her stiff fingers and trying to stop herself from throwing up from sheer nervousness. She’d run scout for Vilsara in Xenok many times, but this?

This was not the same beast at all. They were following the craftmark on the blade they’d been given in the tavern - the whole thing was creeping her skin, and frankly, she wanted to be back behind the safety of the high palace wall.

Any wall. Any wall but this one.

But the old crafthouse was silent, its shutters closed and sagging, its heavy wooden door sealed.

Figments of white mist gibbered laughter in her head.

Stop that!

She swallowed, found her mouth was too dry and smothered a sudden cough, a plume of pale breath rising like steam. As she did so, Triq moved as though released, swift and almost soundless, easing quickly and carefully across the weed-edged flags.

Triq had drawn her second blade, held them both folded back along her wrists. Amethea drew her own little belt-blade and watched her friend’s progress.

Any moment now,
she thought,
the attack, the ambush, the monster...

Nothing happened.

The weeds writhed silent and the white mist eddied into spectres, pale shadows of emptiness.

Triq threw a glance at her. Grinned.

This is crazed.

Amethea did not want to go into this place, did not want to know why half the roof had fallen in, why the creeper had grown through everything like a disease. She was no warrior; faced by the centaurs, then by Maugrim, she’d not been able to save Feren’s life or her own sanity...

Stop that! Think about what you’re doing!

Triq had taken cover beside a sculpted guard-creature, a rearing beast of stone and teeth, ever watchful and ever blind. She paused for a moment, then beckoned with a sharp movement of her shoulder. Amethea gathered her courage and crept forwards. As she moved across the courtyard, she mouthed a silent, pointless prayer.

Lot of good that’ll do me.

But there was nothing, no motion, other than the mist; no sound, other than her heart in her throat, her blood in her ears.

Birds on the river, greeting the newborn sun.

As she caught up to where Triq was crouching, the Banned woman gave her a wink, then gestured for her to stay put. Triq checked the open flagstones again, then made a swift and quiet race for the huge, carven stone doorway.

Above Amethea, the guard-creature snarled at nothing, poised in his roar until the end of the Count of Time.

Amethea waited. Carefully, Triq extended a hand to the heavy door.

The crash as it fell into the hallway made them both jump. Triq dropped to a crouch, both blades ready.

But the seething mist settled, and the creature above Amethea didn’t creak into motion and sink its stone claws into her shoulder.

Not that I’d expected it to. No. Not at all.

The stones in Triq’s cheek flashed again as she took a moment to look up and round. Then she carefully, carefully, crept into the waiting maw.

But still, nothing. The crafthouse was peaceful, and the pale early morning light tumbled softly through the broken roof.

Amethea dismissed her fear, and went after her friend.

The building stood empty, bereft of life.

There should be a pirate nest under here or the scattered homeless of the city’s outskirts lurking in the cellars. There should be the crumbled fragments of the craftmaster’s works - tight containers split, and the resin slowly solidifying as it contacted the air. There should be the cut stalks of the plant, rotting now with the past returns. There should be old tally-books, no longer needed - and equally old bookkeepers to go with them.

There should be...

Stop it!

The monsters lived in her mind, her memory. They danced at the corners of her vision, tempted out of the darkness by her lack of sleep. They were
not
here, they couldn’t be. This was Amos and her threats were solid and real and “normal”. Getting her throat slit by a local pirate was a good deal more likely than encountering stone and darkness and fire and blight and her own blood spiralling across the floor -

Name of the Goddess.
Stop
that!

Shaking herself, Amethea struggled to focus, to banish the lurkers that skittered, jeering, through the soft shadows.

They are not in here! Look for yourself!

Ahead of her, the hallway was long and low and empty; the pretty, patterned mosaic on the floor was broken in many places. The walls were stone; ranks of pillars held up curves of vaulted roof, and shadows pooled about them, grey under the morning. There were more guard-creatures here, smaller versions of the beastie outside, but they showed no inclination to move.

An old, carved water fountain was long dry - even the lichens had perished.

The stone creatures in Maugrim’s wall. They could be here...

Okay, she was annoying herself with this stuff now.

Vilsara, Amethea’s childhood teacher, was a solidly practical woman - perhaps that was why Amethea hadn’t returned to Xenok. Vilsara wouldn’t have understood; would never have tolerated -

“Sst!” Triq snagged her attention back to the cold draughts of the hallway. Under the tumbledown end of the roof, the back of the hall led out to a pillared promenade, now shattered and almost inaccessible. On one of the sidewalls was a balcony that may once have been a place for archers.

There was nothing else. The place was absolutely empty. Triq looked round and shrugged. Then she sighed, straightened her shoulders and slipped along the left-hand wall.

Amethea stifled a groan.

They scouted the hall quickly as the light slowly swelled above them, one crouched and watching, while the other sought information, insight, anything. Outside, the city stirred to mundane morning life; inside, the corpses of vermin had long since rotted to stone-stain and pale bone.

Slowly, Amethea’s terror waned into a faint sense of irritation.

There was nothing here. Not a dusty grain, not a stinking vagrant, not a gang of kids or a lost pirate. Not an empty sack, still bearing the mark of its farmland. Even the scavengers were desiccated remnants. Whatever had caused this one crafthouse to be abandoned, it was long gone.

Or at least she hoped.

They reached the hall’s far end, where the open promenade was mostly buried beneath shattered stone, where the wall had crumbled and the shutters had failed in their last desperate cling to the stonework. The guard-creatures had fallen here, too. Derelict in their duty, they were no more than powder and final, determined fragments.

Broken bits of faces that still looked up at them, caught in their snarl.

Triq picked her way across the jumble like a dancer, lightfooted and graceful. Amethea did her best to follow, but the occasional creak of the pile made her shudder. Several times, as she stepped from stone to stone to jutting timber strut, the mass moved under her like some giant and sleeping beast.

After a few moments, Triq hissed and again twitched her shoulder in the motion that meant “come here”. Amethea’s thumping heart nearly broke out through the front of her chest. Monsters, she’d known all alo-!