Ecko Burning (29 page)

Varriera’s hand connected with the side of the axeman’s neck. The hit was soft, but it sent him reeling, red pain exploding through his head and shoulders.

“Please,” Varriera said. “Aeona has much to show you. If you will only let us.”

But Redlock spat blood and got up, the red rage rising in his heart.

* * *

Astride the pack chearl right in the centre of the madness, Triqueta was surrounded by creatures - the huge throng of them now layering with nightmare, climbing one upon another. She had no idea how many there were. Her fear cried from her throat like defiance.
Come on then! Damn you! Come on!

They closed about her, warm and helpless, pleading.

Triq shuddered.

Then one of them, sudden and swift, broke from the rest of the throng and came towards her. Its motion was hideous, wrong. Its head was cocked to one side and its expression eager, its body
cracked
as it moved. For a moment, she tried to see who -
what
- it had been, but the thought that it might have been human once made her swallow bile, and her fear was still yammering at her.

I can still...

It reached up to assail her on chearl-back. It had no hands: its arms ended in running sores, in weeping wounds that were open to the night sky. She hesitated - she couldn’t help it - and then, furious at herself, she was turning the chearl’s head to meet it, cursing the fact that the damned lumpish thing under her wouldn’t move, wouldn’t dance and fight like her little mare, cursing her own body for not moving as fast as she needed...

...but, by the rhez, she was fast enough.

She sat down hard on the pack-animal’s back. With her heels tight at the chearl’s sides, she found her grin. Pinned it to her face.

You bet I can.

The thing was within blade-reach, arms coming up for her, still oddly blurred in the sweating air. For the oddest moment, she had the feeling that the thing was something else entirely, that it wasn’t really there, that the whole thing was only in her head, some figment, some nightmare...

Then it spat pieces of curse between its teeth, as if it were trying to speak.

And it was the release she needed. With the high, ululating war cry of the Banned, Triqueta sent the heavy chearl to slam it to the ground.

* * *

Apparently, this twisted creature was about to hand Redlock his arse.

And that really wasn’t funny.

In another instant, he heard the movement of the chearl, heard Triq’s high, insolent howl.

He heard his own blood-soaked cough.

Then another softly dancing blow connected with the side of his head, sent a slam of heat through his skull, and set him spinning, mind and body, as if he’d been struck by a cursed hammer. Sparks danced in his vision, his ears rang and his thoughts clanged back and forth.

Varriera was wavering now, its form unsteady.

It said, “Redlock. Please. Don’t do this.”

How did he know...?

But the axeman’s head clamoured too much for him to fully formulate the thought. He was seeing double, the ruins, the steps, the sky, everything was swimming in his vision.

As Redlock struggled to focus, Varriera moved like steam, flowed forwards. The creature was compelling; the light seemed to focus in its eyes. It had no weapon, made no attempt at bravado. As he shook his head to clear the clangour, another absurdly gentle blow connected the heel of Varriera’s palm to the centre of the axeman’s chest and he just caved beneath the force of it, reeling and coughing and burning and hurting.

The axeman caught his heel on a root and sprawled on his back, wondering what the rhez was going on.

* * *

Eck... Oh...

Ecko was ablaze with fury and fear, an adrenaline like he’d never known. As the morass closed in about him, stretching hands to stroke his skin, he broke them in ones and twos and fives, his muscles screaming with the speed that was blazing through them. He wasn’t even looking where the blows were going; the flash of target and the movement of limb were like the greatest fucking dance he’d ever done.

Daaaaaance...

Was this the dance you meant, huh, was it?

In that blaze, his anger at Eliza was finally venting, smashing into the faces and the mouths and mangled bodies of the things that were all about him, rising in a fury like he’d never known - like his very skin would catch fire as he would blaze like the Sical, blaze like Pareus, blaze like the dream of Tarvi...

Oh no you fucking don’t..!

But there were too many. For every one he put down, there were another two, another three. There were no gaps, no exits. They were all around him, pulling him down to the mud, pulling at his cloak and his skin and his arms and his shoulders. Hard as he tried they were all upon him, layers of them, and their pressure was increasing until it was suffocating - until his vision was blackening and his targets were firing more slowly, until the blaze of adrenaline in his system was running down.

Until he had no more remaining and he was falling, falling under the weight of their need for him.

* * *

Triqueta’s chearl was having none of it.

Ignoring the commands of thighs and heels, the beast planted its bulk solidly and refused to move.

What?

The twisted thing’s arm reached closer. Triq slashed at it, shuddered, leaned back. She was swearing, horrified, terrified. They were all around her now, their eyes gleaming, their faces an odd blur of darkness and heat and shimmering steam. Closer, closer. The smell of the wounds on the arms of the one closest to her was making her gag; she wanted nothing more than to punch her way out through the side, through the top, and tear screaming down towards the water.

But she couldn’t leave Amethea. She could hear the teacher behind her, the horror in her voice an echo of Triqueta’s own. Triq fought the obstinate chearl, thighs tight, trying to make it into the horse it... into the horse it had once been? Behind her, she could hear the thrub of hooves, a cry. Amethea was shouting something.

“Creature created. Creature created! Triq, it won’t fight! You won’t make it fight!”

Oh, by the rhez...

At the Monument, Amethea’s chearl had recognised the centaur - Triq knew the story. The chearl had known the stallion for what he was, and they’d refused to face him. And now her mount recognised these - whatever the rhez they were.

Creature created.

The horse it had once been.

Understanding hit her like a cursed terhnwood shaft - her chearl and this accursed twisted thing, they were brothers, estavah, created by the same craft... Somewhere along the line, the chearl too were alchemically made and they wouldn’t fight their own.

Horseshit! Now’s not a time to find this out!

The things closed down upon her and her two little knives; they were freaks and horrors, flesh tithed to nightmare. Amethea was no warrior and Triqueta had no idea what had happened to Redlock.

I can still...

She saw Ecko fall, heard herself howl.

And the dark tide closed in upon her.

* * *

Redlock’s head was spinning, his vision was blurred and his chest tight. The air around him was close, suffocating, and he found himself reeling, straining to breathe and trying to make sense of what he saw.

Before him, Varriera was height and hunger and flawless combat - as the creature moved, so repeated afterimages seemed to burn in the air. Its strikes were slow, impossibly slow, but they were still too fast for Redlock to react, and yet another blow caught his face and sent him sideways, pain exploding in sparks and lightning.

Somewhere in his head, the practical part of him said,
This can’t be happening.

The sky was bright and the ground was ruined and nothing here made any cursed sense.

Why had they come? How had they...?

But there was only that smile. Only the graceful movement of Varriera’s impossible hands as another strike sent the grass and sky tumbling one over another.

* * *

Amethea pulled her belt-knife free, waved it in the face of the nearest thing that came at her. It stuck - or she thought it did - but it seemed to go straight through the flesh of the creature and emerge unscathed, seemed to strike only smoke and air. In front of her Triqueta sat astride the chearl, kicking and spitting and slashing, but the things were too many, and as fast as she repelled them, they came back at her, a silent wave.

Maugrim had shown Amethea the darkest corners of her soul and she was determined that she was going to learn from that vision.

Then there was a scream, furious and outraged, and Triqueta was pulled from the saddle, fighting savagely all the way down. The blur of creatures seemed to close over her, even as she spat fury.

By the Goddess...

Something in Amethea didn’t quite believe this; didn’t believe that they could come so far only to fail, only to fall here at the edge of the world in a fight that made no sense. She didn’t even know what these things were...

Creature created.

As the things closed in about Triqueta, Amethea was remembering. Remembering the Monument, the stallion, the death of her friend. She wouldn’t let this happen - not again.

Then the boil of heat and motion around Triqueta ceased abruptly and the things turned their thin, skeletal faces, their outstretched arms, the open mouths, towards her.

The tide was poised, about to close over them all, and there was nothing they could do about it.

* * *

Redlock’s world was askew, a blur of confusion and pain.

Everything was sluing sideways, sliding like liquid and light, nothing made sense any more, and he could not even see the sea. Had there been a building here, had there been a town that he had been fighting in and for?

Varriera’s last touch was as soft as a kiss, a hand across his eyes that closed them completely.

They did not open again.

* * *

Amethea heard a shriek - it took her a moment to realise that the noise had come from her own throat. She threw herself at the things around her, slashing and screaming as Triqueta had done - but it did her no more good.

They were all around her, hands upon her, soft and warm as a lover’s embrace, pulling her down with a wave of twisted flesh, a wave that she struggled to reach the crest of... And then she failed, falling beneath them as if they could somehow fold round her and made her secure.

The last thing she heard was a voice.

“They’ve come. Take them down to the CityWarden.”

Rhan arrived at the city of Foriath to streets that were seething with frustration.

Without quite knowing how, he found himself in the middle of it, carried forwards by a tide of outrage. The city’s people were loose on her streets, pushing and shouting and all around him. They’d left homes and halls and were bunched and loud; the roads eddied with their fury. Their outrage rose like steam, and their voices carried across the morning, strident and righteous.

The slender, grey-haired man that had once been Rhan of Fhaveon caught himself, and stopped short at the end of a roadway. He leaned on a wall to catch his thoughts, and wondered what the rhez he had stumbled into.

This was not the Foriath he knew.

It was barely mid-morning, an overcast day and with a chill wind cutting across the dying Varchinde grass. There was no fiveday market due, no festivity or celebration. Rhan had been intent only on resting in the city, gathering his energy and then seeking a route north to Avesyr.

This, though, this was angry, and its implications frightened him, made him pull back tight against the wall to let the crowd pass, his thoughts all tumbling questions.

How had the unrest come here? How had it reached here ahead of him?

Foriath was a peaceful place, well fed and content. She stood with her sisters, Narvakh and The Hayne, the Triangle Cities that grew, reared and traded much of the Varchinde’s ale and luxury food. These cities were populous, their manors and farms spread widely and lush with life and good soil. Their tithehalls and bazaars were numerous and busy, yet piracy was much less common here than in the cities of the coast.

Unrest was for the political hotbed of Fhaveon - not this place of round bellies and hearth fires.

But, in this time of monsters and looming threats, who could say how far such things would reach?

Rhan’s grey mood had not left him completely, shreds of it clouded the edges of his mind, ready to close in if he lost his sense of purpose, even for a moment.
Why bother?
It taunted him, cold and mocking as the fetter on his wrist.
You’ll only fail. Why even try?

Many times on his way here it had made him stumble, hesitate. Rhan had lost his city, his attunement and his confidence, and now...

Samiel’s
teeth.

Foriath should have welcomed, her halls should blaze with rocklight and flame, her streets of stone and wood should be full of comfort. The Swathe River ran through her heart like a lifeline, crossed by several bridges. In many places the buildings ran right up to the water’s edge, mooring points and small harbours lying at their feet.

In the wake of the crying crowd, though, the streets were empty. Rhan saw with shock that the once-mighty river was now home to corpses, white and swollen under the heavy grey sky.

The blight in the grass was closing, even here - and its harbingers were out.

As he moved forwards again, following the noise, horror teased his shoulders, jabbed at him and laughed.

He did not need to walk far.

He came to a stop at the head of a short flight of grey steps, an old, carven creature standing guard at his shoulder, one claw raised as if to beg silence. Down in front of him was an open square, a cross-section of roadways, now teeming with people, and jammed with indignation. They were packed hard, shouting, shoving, faces flushed and mouths open and red. In places, there was chanting that caught for a moment and then fragmented, drifting away to be picked up by others, a new set of voices, demands punching hard into the air.