Ecko Burning (16 page)

Somewhere, something in him envied them.

But they were dead, beyond his pity, and their presence was not what had stopped him.

He moved to look more closely.

The camp had been set up round a single building - a slightly tumbledown, half-stone cot. Its turfed roof had fallen in on one side and it had no door.

Where was he?
The thought crystallised at last and it made him blink, bewildered.
North, inland. Was this Foriath? Narvakh?

In spite of the dawn, there was no birdsong.

Staring dazedly at the building as though it could offer him an answer, he became aware that it contained movement -there was something in there, something still alive. As the thing came into the light at the doorway, it took a moment for him to realise what he saw.

A girl.

Pale, slender, filthy, almost grown enough to be a woman. Her underdress was ragged and her face and hair were streaked with grime. Her arms were covered with scratches and dirt.

When she saw him, she stared for a moment, then stumbled out of the building and started to cross the campsite, falling almost immediately.

She shouted at him, tears streaks of clean through the grot.

“No,” she cried. “No, you must go, you must go
away...”

But it was far too late, and he was right in the middle of them.

The camp was already occupied.

Three of them, tall and laughing and moving with a grace that baffled him, an impossible gait. Their shadows stretched long and wild over the grass.

They knew he was there.

As they turned, he saw their faces were masculine, striking; they were more than human, more than animal; crueller than both. Their hair was long and braided with fragments of bone and thread and colour; from their temples came horns, widespaced and curving like those of a mountain tsaka. Their skin was whorled with blue stains, decorous and elegant. They had a beauty to them, and a barbarism, that stirred something in the darkest corners of his heart.

He knew them. Didn’t he?

Somewhere, memory stirred, old ash and broken edges.

The figures were moving swiftly now. Their eyes were a chaos of colour, no iris or pupil - windows of madness.

Quickly one of the creatures was on the girl, towering over her on legs that bent at the knee, and then bent back again, all the wrong way. It was hugely tall, reaching for her with strong hands outstretched as if to pick her up, embrace her against his bare and painted chest.

Her angry shriek tore across the morning and hard into Rhan’s awareness.

It was a strike across his cheek, a sharp slap awake.

Now, he shook himself, took in the scene at a glance - he was a way back from the trade-road, the northern route that led inland from Fhaveon and later branched to both Darash and Avesyr - that would account for the trees. The building was an old hospice-refuge, long abandoned. Its more recent inhabitants showed little concern for its disrepair.

Instead, they closed about him and the girl.

Rhan had lost his elemental attunement - the true life of the world was unknown to him, he could neither feel nor touch it.

The girl pounded her fists on the bare chest of her attacker, trying to push him away. For a sliver of a moment, his own memory jarred him...

Valicia, Demisarr’s wife. “Fighting.”

...and the recollection took him too long. The girl fell, shrieking, the weight of the creature on top of her.

Rhan moved, but the other two had flanked him.

Something about them stank of wrongness, of twisted, gnarled life. One of them had a symbol on his flawless chest, a sigil, something... They paused for a moment, eager, their sharp teeth bared with anticipation.

Rhan had murdered the Lord Foundersson, raped his wife, lost his city - if these things tore him to pieces, perhaps Samiel would take pity on him and take him home...

Love of the Gods, if these things tore him to pieces, perhaps he’d be fully damned after all. He could join the waiting ranks of his damned brother Kas Vahl Zaxaar, and awaken at the end of the Count of Time to wreak his vengeance upon the unready world...

Even that had to be an improvement.

The thought was a crux-point; a timeless second that was somewhere between defiance and despair, ascendance and damnation.
Let them take me. I don’t -

But the girl screamed again, furious, a sound that rent the brightening dawn sky.

And he could not abandon her.

One of the creatures went over backwards - a fist in its perfect face sent it sprawling, its furred legs kicking. With a back-slam of the same elbow, the second was down in the grass. It made a high, thin keening noise that shredded the air into painful strips.

And Gods, the violence felt
good.

For the first time in cycles -
How long has it been, how long?
- he felt like himself. His skin was shivering with tension and vitality and he could feel fury stirring in his heart.

Oh yes. I remember this.

The girl was fighting hard, swearing like a wharfside trader - she’d gained her feet and a belt-blade and she was swift and vicious. The thing was right over her, grinning - it reeked of predator.

Yet there was something about it...

Something...

As one of them recovered, reached its long hand for him, he realised that the
wrong
sensation was familiar, that it tied in with that ghost-memory, that figment at the back of his mind. Like the creatures themselves, he
remembered
it, knew it well. For a moment he almost had it - like the echo of a tune, a halfremembered dream - then it was gone again, evaporating in the morning light, and the creatures were rising from where he’d struck them down.

As they came up from the misted ground, he stared at where the thought had been.

What?

The creatures were standing now, taller than he, and they had got between himself and the girl. One of them stood directly ahead, a broad shape against the lightening sky - its blue designs seemed to writhe in its skin, caress like strands of silk. Its gaze was pure insanity, yet its movement was precise as it reached to take Rhan’s face in one steam-warm, long-nailed hand. It bared sharp teeth in a grin; it was demented, and absurdly gentle.

It stroked his skin like a lover.

Rhan shuddered, raised an arm to throw it off him. Touching it held that same evasive, pervasive sense of
wrong.

But it was like...

Like family...

What?

The Count of Time left him. The creature’s gaze, its odd caress, transfixed him. As it leaned forward, that grin close now, it was his brother, his lover, his father, his friend, his life’s loss. He could not pull away from it.

Then something hit it from behind, something small and angry and very, very fast. The thing turned, and the compulsion was gone.

She shrieked at him, “What are you
doing?
Don’t meet their gaze, they’ll suck you in!” And the girl was rounding on the creature with her little knife.

She put out the thing’s mad eye.

And Rhan realised the other two were still standing.

He called to her, “What are they? Where did they come from?”

“My family were taken by the grass, infected by something. I was hiding. Then these things came. They were... I don’t know... different...”

Rhan eyed the moss-grown dead, but they made no movement.

The things reached forwards, their eyes alive with chaos and steam, with lust and joy, as hot as the rhez. Rhan needed the Powerflux, needed the pulse of the world’s heartbeat, her blood flow, needed and wanted and craved the light, but they were everywhere and they were tall and ink and hair and bright eyes and bared teeth -

The girl spun and slashed. He guessed that she was a smuggler herself, raised on the trade-road. Her blade cut at a creature’s face.

And it keened, bled just like a man.

Rhan grabbed one of them by a heavy shoulder, picked it up and threw it bodily into his fellow, sending them both tumbling. They were quick, though, picking themselves up and circling in with their faces eager and their great hands outstretched as if to claw chunks from him and the girl.

He wondered what the rhez would happen if lunch just happened to be immortal - and decided he didn’t want to know.

Or did he?

Could he die here? Really?

Rhan was rallying - but he was still a mess. He was confusion and hesitation and doubt. The creature that had been the champion of the Foundersson, the greatest warrior in the Varchinde, could not focus, could barely fight a load of randomly wandering beasties.

He was awash with fear.

Not of them, of himself.

And this time, his doubt was fatal.

He heard her scream, again, one last time. He saw her go down under another of the creatures, its mouth kissing, biting, tearing her flesh. He saw the ink on the creature’s body thicken and grow stronger, saw the girl kick and scream.

Again, that sense of familiarity. He knew what he was seeing, on some level, he
knew...

But her shriek, pain and fear and horror, overwhelmed both the lingering figment and his own self-pity. Whatever these things were, they were not mortal and human - they were merciless - and if they pulled in his life and they grew stronger, Gods alone knew where it would end.

No, whatever they were, they had to go.

Now.

He may not have his attunement - but he still had his fists.

* * *

Rhan Elensiel stood alone, surrounded by debris and moss and the shredded remnants of the dead.

Even fettered as he was, he could still fight like a...

...like a daemon. Like Kas Vahl damned Zaxaar himself.

You hear me, my brother, my estavah?
It had a hint of his more usual sardonic humour.
Perhaps I’m not done yet.

His elation was brief. He had his victory, he was here, and now, and living - but the girl who had fought so hard for him was dead, and now lay by the lichen-fleshed remains of her family.

Her family.
Something about the growth of the moss in their flesh was wrong, but he had no idea what it could be. His senses were truncated, blinding him, infuriating. What in Samiel’s holy name...

He knelt by her, so small and broken, and stroked a filthy hand down her thin cheek.

“What happened to you?” he asked her. “What happened to them?”

An apology seemed facile - he had no words for her bravery. How long had she been hidden here, her family dead around her, waiting for what?

Rescue?

Poor child
. His skin spasmed in pain.

He looked around, at the ground, at the scattered tools -wondered if he should return her, return all of them, to the world. The trees were tall here, and the roots spread wide, perhaps there was no need even to dig.

The world would care for her own, take them home.

And me?
Rhan wondered.
Where do I go now?

The girl was smiling, oddly peaceful - he was glad for her, but she had no answer to give him.

Where do I go now?

Rhan stayed kneeling, almost as if waiting for direction to come to him.

He should return to Fhaveon and face Phylos. He should trace the unnatural steam-heat in the Merchant Master’s aspect all the way back to his fallen brother. He should rise up, raise a war-banner, muster the force to regain his city...

But the girl lay there, answerless and unmoving, her family around her. And the creatures lay there too, their dead flesh steaming like a shimmer in the clear air...

Steam...

Oh dear Goddess.

With a hot, sick rush that almost made him tumble sideways, he made the connection.

He was on his feet in an instant, staring down at them, feeling elation and terror and
kicking
himself...

How could he have missed the link? How could he have missed it!

That
was why he knew them!

He’d seen such creations before, of course he had. Hundreds of returns before, these were creatures created to assault the white walls of Fhaveon, creatures designed for warfare. They had been crafted long ago, crafted by the hands of Kas Vahl Zaxaar himself. Crafted from...

Crafted from
flesh.

Vahl was Rhan’s brother, closer than any mortal creature could ever be; anything he’d touched carried the richness and glory and taint of his presence.

And Rhan could
feel
it, metal fetter or no.

Vahl’s presence had ridden Phylos like a cloak, a shadow. But if he was really
awake...
?

Samiel’s teeth!

Rhan was trembling, pacing. The understanding was like a drop-key in a lock, a perfect and flawless fit - he had no doubt that his conclusion was true. But it led to only more questions.

These were vialer, he remembered them now. He’d thrown enough of them down. They were foot troops, fought in knots or from chariots, dispensable, and they’d once raged in their hundreds. But why were they here, now? Why had they come out after the girl, her moss-rotted family?

Vahl, you old bastard. What are you doing?

The girl stared still; her eyes open to the sky. There were aperios over the trees, attracted to the reek of death - it would take them a moment to spiral down. Their appetites were ghoulish, but he did not fear them - they, too, had a task to perform.

Rhan turned to pace again, the grass under his boots now soaked in gore.

He remembered Roderick, remembered the old stone guardian that had fallen from the walls of Fhaveon - a fragment of lost Tusienic alchemy, seeking absolution and answer.

Have you not felt it, Master of Elemental Light?

He had scorned it then, concerned only with Fhaveon and her petty politics, concerned only with returning to his hedonistic life. But now this had all raged out of control. He had seen Vahl’s shadow, but had thought that he had time to rally, to reconsider and to counterattack before -