Ecko Burning (51 page)

Rhan said nothing. His light paled against the sky. But Vahl was not done.

“Look at you. Indolent, selfish, bored. The world rotted because of you, stagnated because of you. I bring change, brother, new life. Progress.” He was close now, all smirking and warmth. “Am I the daemon, Rhan?” His smile was pure venom. “Or are you?”

Am I the daemon?

Rhan stood, surrounded by ruin, awash with memories he had not dared touch, not down through all the long returns of his exile.
How she felt? How she tasted?
In the streets there were echoes of noises, tails of fighting, the steady boom still came from the palace gate, but here, there was silence.

Samiel set you up, you fool, and then he damned you for it.

Rhan let go of the light, the pulse and power of the Flux. He paled until he was his normal self, recognisably the Seneschal, though weary and faltering under the weight of his brother’s truth.

He said, “When did you give up your soul, Phylos? I hope the trade was a good one.”

Vahl laughed, the noise ringing in the morning light. “Is that all you have left?”

“No. It’s not.” Rhan looked up, shook his head. “I’ve missed you, my brother, my estavah, soul of my soul. But whatever truths you reveal, you’ve forgotten something.” His voice became stronger, regaining its usual sardonic boom. “Calarinde is the Goddess of Love, or so they say. I may have served four hundred returns for her touch, but you know what?” One hand lashed out, closed on Phylos’s throat. “It was
worth
it.”

And he squeezed.

“Now, Dael Vahl Sashar. You’re out of options. You can’t own me, and there’s nothing else here strong enough to hold you.” His hand tightened. “I call you damned, brother. Once, and for all time. Go home, go back to the Rhez, and leave my city, and my people, and my family,
alone.”

Phylos gagged, hands clawing at the arm that held him, but it might as well have been carven stone.

“And as for you, Phylos, killing you gives me more pleasure than I can describe. And if that makes me the daemon, then so be it.” His grin broadened, his hand crushed harder and the man’s eyes bulged, his jaw worked as he strove for air. “Ah, the times I could have done this across the Council’s table! You and your smugness and your damned games.” His hand crushed harder. “No trickery, no Elementalism. You’ll die by my bare hands.”

Phylos shook, scrabbled with hopeless grip. He fought for one last moment, his face blackening almost as if the tattoos were spreading through his skin. Then he gagged, pissed himself, and slumped.

Rhan threw him down, discarded like garbage.

But over him, an odd haze, like shadow in the morning sun, was something else entirely.

* * *

Selana Valiembor, Lord of Fhaveon, came out onto the palace balcony to see her city in devastation. Death and pain filled the streets, smoke drifted across the sky. Buildings were in ruin, walls torn down, trees ripped up by their roots. The sunken half-circle of the theatre had formed a rallying point for the remains of the soldiery. The GreatHeart Rakanne still stared out over the water, still oblivious to the threat that had crept in under her guard.

Selana stood silent, looking out at her city. She could see that the market was no more, a scattered ruin of ash and char, fragments of livelihoods discarded and forgotten. There were figures wandering the remains, confused - as if looking for some shred of their crafting, some reason, some hope.

Below her, there was fighting at the palace gate - the rattle and boom of the great doors had stopped, it seemed the guard commander had mounted a sortie. She could see them now, a woman armed and armoured, and the sight gave her a fierce rush of joy. She wanted to run down there and embrace her, crying at her courage.

It was Valicia, her mother.

To her other side, the great mosaic was shattered, its fantastical design now torn up and scattered, melted and blasted. Rhan still stood at its centre, though his light was faded. Phylos lay dead, his body twisted and stained.

Selana felt a moment of relief, a sudden need to cry.

Then she saw the thing that faced him, the shadow, standing over Phylos like a predator. It was oddly nebulous, as if crafted of smoke or somehow had no flesh of its own.

Something about it made her skin crawl.

It was like nothing she’d ever seen: it was old, stooped, shrivelled somehow, with a vast sense of power and eagerness that she could feel, even from here. It was emaciated, its smoky body wasted. There were long scars at its back as if it had once had wings, but they had been cut or torn away. Its skin was thin and cracked in places and it could not stand fully upright. It flinched and flickered at the light of the sun.

As yet, as she looked at it, something in her heart was moved to a vast pity.

And it looked back at her, eyes burning blue like the heart of the fire.

She shivered, pinned and staring, held to the spot.

And slowly, she felt its smoke filter gently into her thoughts.

* * *

Vahl was a broken thing.

No longer the beauty and strength of the Gods’ most favoured form of life, no longer hale with might and presence - no longer even flesh. He was shattered, crouched and cracked and sneering. He wavered in the sea air.

Rhan had waited four hundred returns for this - and now he found he couldn’t lift his hand. Phylos was dead, the city was safe... his brother was broken.

Vahl. Kas or Dael, he was estavah, closer than any creature had ever been, would ever be.

Up on the balcony, Selana was standing like the carven statues of her family, staring down at them.

He watched his brother for a moment, beyond victory and beyond heartbreak.

And then he took a breath, and blew the creature away.

In her high tower, wrapped in chill and shadow, Nivrotar of Amos stood silent as death.

The wide stone bowl before her was layered over with fine ice, smooth and absolutely clear. Reflected in it was a young girl, blonde and pretty, her head bowed. Beside her stood a man injured, his arm folded in cloth and a long scar torn down his cheek. At her other side was an older woman, her face similar in features but tired.

They did not speak.

They did not need to.

Upon a pallet before them lay an elderly man, grey-faced and motionless. His eyes were closed, but his chest still fluttered -barely. His lips were parted as if hoping to draw some life from the still air.

Nivrotar knew the inside of the Fhaveon hospice well enough; knew Selana and Mostak and Valicia, the last faces of House Valiembor. She had watched Phylos’s final moments, the return of Rhan and the fall of Vahl Zaxaar - and she watched now, observed the ongoing life of the Varchinde as she always had, always would.

Selana said, “Funny isn’t it - he’s not a warrior, not a champion, he’s not anything really” - there was a weight of sadness in her tone - “he’s just an old man.”

“We owe our lives to Brother Mael,” Mostak said quietly, “all of us.”

Selana nodded. “We owe him the city.” She turned as the door behind her opened, said like a flare of hope, “Can you save him?”

Rhan was drawn and ashen, as grey as the man on the pallet. He looked weary, as though his returns had loaded his shoulders with cares he had no way to lessen or voice.

“Honestly, my Lord?” he said, “I don’t know. But if there’s attunement and light left in me, Gods willing, then I’ll give it everything I’ve got.”

Selana nodded and stood back, letting him approach the pallet.

Nivrotar was old. Perhaps as old as Amos herself, she honestly couldn’t remember. She could feel the Powerflux in her aged bones, in her Tundran blood. She could feel the spreading seethe and webwork of elemental strength that wrapped the world, flowed in the seasons and the growth and death of the grass. As Rhan opened his focus, accessed that web for himself, she could feel him like a node, a bright flare of immortal awareness.

She could feel just how terrifyingly powerful he really was -and how close he had come to losing.

Yet he knelt beside the old man like a supplicant, one hand on his thin chest, his weak, limping heart. He lowered his head, inhaled. Then he blew, a single long breath that was almost visibly warm, a gift of life.

Heal and Harm, the oldest elemental rule - none could learn one without learning the other.

Slowly, the old man’s chest ceased its desperate fluttering, the colour returned to his face. A second breath, and he was relaxing, his heart rate steadying. A third, and he was asleep.

Rhan sat back on his heels, his hands shaking and his skin like aged parchment. His face was sunken and his expression exhausted.

“Sometimes,” he said, his voice a low rumble, “the greatest heroes are not visible - they’re not immortal guardians, not lords or warriors. Sometimes the greatest hero is an old man who lost his best friend and wanted to do the right thing.”

The last word caught in his throat, and he swallowed. “I’m shamed by his courage.”

“We all are.” Mostak’s tone was gruff.

“You know,” Rhan said, looking back round at them, “I did not harm your brother, nor you, Lady.”

Valicia lifted her chin. “I know that now,” she said. “Or you’d be having a very close encounter with a very sharp knife. Mostak - in the hospice -”

“Phylos tried to kill me.” The commander gave a brief, eloquent shrug. “Warrior I may be, but I’m not that damned stupid.”

Rhan made no attempt to stand. “Then my service is yours, as it has always been.” His voice broke, with exhaustion and grief. “If you still want it.”

There was a moment of silence, more compassion than consideration.

Then Selana said, “Yes, my Lord Seneschal, I do. On the presumption that Brother Mael is appointed Merchant Master and the Council of Nine reformed. After all,” she gave an impish grin, “you wouldn’t want me to be a tyrant, would you?”

“And,” Mostak said bleakly, “no more narcotics.”

“You have not only my service, Commander, but my word and my focus.” A faint, wary smile flickered over Rhan’s face. “Somehow, I feel my brother may lurk closer than we realise.”

* * *

In the gathering gloom of the tower, Nivrotar pulled her attention away from Rhan and his family. She touched the edge of the wide stone dish, moved the focus of the ice within until she could see the shattered streets of the Lord city, the death and debris, the drifting smoke. The hospice doors were open, but there were too many injured for the building to hold and the gardens were filled with the hurt and dying, some of them tended by friends, others crying out and alone.

Yet they were the lucky ones.

All through the streets, in buildings broken and charred, there were others who had not been able to move. Some had simply lain down and died, others called out for help. Opportunists roamed the emptiness: a slit throat or broken skull was an easy end to the pain.

In some places huddles of people had gathered, bristlingwary and waiting with sharp eyes until the streets were clear. In others, there were lone icons of bafflement, staring at a dead monster, an old building, the end of their livelihoods. Soldiers, too, were loose in the mess, but making no more sense of what had happened than anyone else.

Nivrotar felt an odd tug at the edge of her awareness.

For a moment, she didn’t know what it was - thought perhaps she’d heard something in the palace itself. But no, the tug had come from the ice before her and she moved the bowl again, shifting its focus, looking for the origin.

South - from Fhaveon to Amos herself, following the coast. South again, past her own city down into the pathless figments of the Gleam Wood and Aeona, the midden city that lurked like a shadow, the outermost edge of the grasslands.

On the clifftop, damaged but alive, were Triqueta and Amethea, leaning on each other for support. Ecko, his colour-shifting cloak missing and his head bowed. He was clad in trews and a shirt, both too big for him. At wrist and neckline, his skintones flickered with the fabric’s colours

And there - beyond worlds, beyond hope - Roderick was with them. He walked silent, stark and brutal, hard-edged, his Tundran blood seeming frozen in his veins. Carrying no concern for the weariness of the others, he blazed with an odd, new strength, something quintessentially elemental yet unfamiliar -something almost forced, somehow tainted.

His attunement felt... artificial.

As she looked at him, he turned as if he could feel her gaze.

She withdrew, nudging the focus of the stone so that he was only the tiniest glimmer of power.

What had happened to him?

Walking behind him, almost as if she was being pulled in his wake, was Karine of The Wanderer, warily exhausted, slumpshouldered and drooping. There was no sign of Redlock, nor of the remainder of the tavern’s staff.

Nivrotar felt a flicker stir her heart - somewhere, deep in the ice, a spark still glowed. What had happened to the Bard was critical - and she lacked the lore to comprehend his transformation.

Roderick turned back and kept walking.

The clifftop itself was empty, the buildings fallen, the castle keep at the water’s edge a ruin. Nivrotar had known about Aeona, about Amal, of course she had - many of her own failures had found their way through the trackless nacre of the Gleam Wood. She had known about Sarkhyn, about the peculiar alchemical substances her old friend had hoarded.

A faint smile touched her lips as she wondered if Ecko had found the weapon he sought.

It was all patterns, Nivrotar had always known this. Everything was a pattern: each tiny event, each meeting, each decision, changed everything about a person’s future, about the futures of the people and places they touched. And each new series of events spread out, linking one to another and unfolding into vast illustrations, huge pictures whose eventual complexity even she could not see.

Nivrotar had taken a wager on the unfolding of this particular picture that, if sent into the Gleam Wood, Ecko would find Aeona, and would be strong enough to withstand Amal’s coercions. A wager that he would survive, and come back.