Ecko Rising (12 page)

She found she was looking at him, feeling the warmth of his sympathy and watching his expression. As he reached again to brush the tears and blood and dirt from her face, she allowed him to touch her – and his heat shot through her flesh.

She caught her breath.

“That’s more like it,” he said softly. His smile deepened, showed the tips of his teeth.

“Who are you?” The question was quiet, her attention was all in his eyes.

“Maugrim,” he said. “I’ve had other names – but that one... suits me.” His hand stroked the side of her throat. “Welcome to the world’s new beginning.”

There is need of a healer.

For a moment, she held the strangest feeling that something had gone amiss. The plains, the Monument, a hand slipping from hers...

But she couldn’t remember. Maugrim’s hand was in her bloodied hair, his eyes like embers. He closed his fingers about the strands and pulled her head back – abrupt, not quite painful. She found herself breathing hard, his fire lighting her blood, a sudden, hot sensation of
want...

“All you have to do,” he said, “is help me.”

She heard herself answer him, “I’ll help you. What can I do?”

The predatory smile broke through his beard like a blade.

* * *

Amethea dreamed.

She dreamed of heat. And lust. And passion. And power.

When she awoke, her vision was so full of flame she had to squint to realise the small, stone chamber was dim, the rocklight faltering.

The palette beside her empty.

She was still wet, sweetly aching from the repeated impact of his body on hers, skin and sheets were soaked in sweat.

The thought of him brought a lightning shiver of adrenaline, a rush of excitement, exultation that was new.

She sat up, his smile on her face – and there was no headache. Raising her fingertip to the wound in her eyebrow, she was unsurprised to find it gone – a scar like a sear in its place.

Heal and Harm, little lady, the oldest rule.

She had been going somewhere – had lost something, was looking for something? A faint sense of disquiet tickled her cheek like a moth... then –
flash
– was gone.

Whatever it was had been cleansed, inside and out. For the moment, her wants were assuaged, she needed only to brush work-roughened fingers over smooth sheets and recall the blaze of Maugrim’s need.

He had gone; he remained. She could smell him on her skin. Her head was full of him.

Disdaining to wrap her slender nakedness, she stood up.

About her, the chamber was even smaller than she’d thought, perhaps five paces in each direction. If she raised her arm, she could touch the ceiling. The walls and floor were all flat stone, wide regular shapes set in soil, smaller shapes packed in corners. In places, there were carved patterns, but the markings were unclear in the faltering light. That she was underground was evident – but where?

The air was hot and still. This was not the vast rock networks of the Kartiah Mountains, nor the open stone quarries of Belegandyne or Darash. She laid a hand against the wall, feeling the blood-warmth. The room was too small, yet there was a vastness around it that lost her; it felt...

In spite of the heat, shivers prickled her skin. A sudden, hollow rush sucked the memories of Maugrim from her and left her standing, minute and utterly alone, a fragmentary mote against the all-might of the stone arrayed about her.

It felt like a tomb, ancient, vast and infinite. It felt like a church. It felt as though Maugrim’s mesmeric presence were too tiny to be noticed.

It felt as though it was
waiting.

With a shudder as deep as her soul, she pulled away from the stonework, picked up the sheet and cloaked herself in it. She was chilled through, inexplicably miniscule and terrified.

She
had
been looking for something – !

“You’re awake, love.” The wall was rolling closed behind him. “I’ve got you some water and some clean kit.”

In his presence, the chamber was warm, her fears ashes. The sheet tumbled to the floor and she welcomed him with open arms and lips.

He kissed her briefly, squeezing a buttock, and pushed her back.

“You need to wash and dress, sweetheart, and quickly. And you need to listen.”

“Of course.” She took the jug, the garments he had chosen for her and hoped she could please him. The embers in his eyes stroked her naked skin, leaving the warm touch of trailing fingertips.

He turned away.

“You’re a healer, little lady, herbalist, apothecary and teacher. And Xenotian – meaning you’ve worked your sweet arse off for those qualifications, and you’re tougher than you look.” He turned back with that predatory smile, taking the sting from the comment. Then he said, “Answer me something, love. Does it ever get to you?”

“Get to me?” The phrase was unfamiliar. She took a cloth from the jug and tried to unclot the bloodstreaks from her hair. Chill water ran down her hot skin, evaporating before it stained the floor. The air thickened.

Maugrim raised one hand and his metal rings flashed in the rocklight – one was the fanged skull of some mystery creature, one a grey-black stone that gleamed oddly metallic.

“Get to you, love.” His expression twisted, though the casual tone of his voice didn’t change. “The whiners, the needers, the hypochondriacs, the neurotics, the weak-willed and the desperate. ‘I’m depressed, I’m lonely, I’m fat, I’ve got to stop smoking – but I’m too bloody feeble to do it myself.’ They don’t try, they don’t learn. They wallow in self-pity. They come to you so you’ll take it away – but they don’t really want to give it up. Because it’s all the meaning they have.” His smile deepened, a rush of warmth made her gasp. “C’mon love – you have them here too. It’s not wrong to resent them.”

Resent – !

In the heart of the heat, a flare of shock and shame – then all lost to wonder. She found herself laughing like release; she wanted to kiss him.

“Yes, yes, sometimes.” How had he understood? The darkest corner of her healer’s soul – illuminated by his firelight and it was all right, it was all
right.
“When your life is others... sometimes you do just want to say to them –”

“Get a fucking grip!” He took her shoulders, enthused at her. “You’re no saint, little priestess. In your heart, you’re just like I am. Don’t you look at them and just... wish...”

The sentence tailed into a silence laden with suggestion. He smiled, kissed her, withdrew. She wanted to reach to him, to –
oh Gods
– tell him the secret place he’d just touched, but his gaze had gone. It was on the chamber, stroking the faint marks on the walls.

“So many years as other people’s confidence,” he said softly, “their crutch. And then I became obsolete, outmoded by a prescription. Now, here...” When he turned back, his smile was a welcoming campfire on a chill night. “Here, little priestess, I can do
magic.
Miracles. I can make this world anew!”

She watched him. He was compelling, exotic, his words alien. Transfixed, her response was a whisper, almost as if she feared what he’d say. “If you’re such a healer, why do you need me?”

“Finish dressing, and quick.” He grinned, predatory and savage as a Varchinde bweao, and his gaze flicked to her eyebrow. “I need you because I can’t heal flesh, sweetheart. And they keep
dying
.”

* * *

Dying.

Against Maugrim’s ardour, she couldn’t focus the thought.

As her last garment was laced, he caught her upper arm in a grip like red-hot metal and propelled her from the chamber. Fragments of rocklight threw random shadows over stone walls. When she stumbled over her skirts, he gripped her harder, marching her through a tight, twisted underground maze. In places, he had to stoop, hunching his heavy shoulders against the stone; she was small enough to walk upright – just – but stubbed her toes repeatedly on an uneven floor.

Dying.

“Stop, Maugrim, stop. Wait...”

He pushed forwards, took a corner, a side passage, another. His hold on her arm was merciless.

“Where are we going? Who – ?”
Who keeps dying?

“No time for explanations, love. I needed a healer – need you to do something for me.”

“Do what?” She tried to halt, tried to tug her arm out of his grip. “What do you – ?”

He spun her against his strength, kissed her with a compelling brutality, then drew back to smile at her.

“You’ll do what you’re told, sweetheart.”

Her body surged in response – she couldn’t help it. When she kissed him back, curling against him in silent need, he loosened his grip, stroked her chin with the back of his knuckles. His rings were hot.

“Trust me,” he said softly. He was fervent, alight with belief. “Your culture’s stagnating, love, no challenge, no growth, no progress – and I know what that can do. I can change it, fix it. But you have to let me
finish
!”

“Finish what?”

He leaned his weight against the stone beside them and it swung inwards. Amethea felt a rush of air cooling her skin but not cold enough to be fresh. Beyond the door, she sensed, lay a large, dark chamber – a cavernous belly of potential.

A crystal-cold voice, oddly atonal, said, “Maugrim. You have brought an apothecary.”

“I can’t see shit.”

“I shall give you light.”

Amethea listened, but the chamber was silent. A moment later, white rocklight flooded the passageway.

She blinked, holding an arm to shield her eyes.

He thrust her through the doorway. Unable to see, she caught her foot in the hem of her skirt and tripped, fell hands-down to the floor.

He was over her, his strange, black boots surrounded by...

Metal. Tiny, round shapes of white-metal, a swath of them across a flat, stone floor. Instinctively, she realised this room was not part of the passageways – it was newer, larger, colder. As she blinked dazzle spots from her vision, she reached for one of the discs – flat, with a hole through the centre. It was one of dozens, hundreds, casually discarded across soil and stone.

Riches to make her head reel.

As if she had blundered through some saga and found his treasure hoard.

Maugrim leaned down, caught her arm and hauled her to her feet.

“This is for you, little priestess,” he said, gently. “As much wealth as the world has ever seen – as long as you help me.”

She looked up from the disc in her hand.

In the centre of the chamber stood a young man, rigid and silent. His back was to the door and the light reflected oddly from his skin. Scattered haphazardly about him were other, much larger, shapes of metal, utterly nonsensical. They were stained and dirty, some of them had powdery brown rot growing across their edges. The dark, liquid splotches had spread onto the floor, where she could see discarded cloths, oddly shaped tools, unfamiliar liquid containers. At the room’s far wall, one long, low shape was covered by a waxed calico sheet.

There was no sign of the owner of the voice.

The chamber smelled strange. Blood, metal – and a tongue-tang of something she didn’t recognise, something that tasted...
wrong.

When Maugrim touched her shoulder, she lifted the hem of her skirts and picked her way across the floor.

The young man didn’t move.

As she came closer, she slowed, stopped, stared.

He had no skin, no hair. Rather than flesh, he was a sculpture of carefully shaped metal plates. Over his skull, across his face, down the strong lines of his body, he wore an exquisitely detailed carapace, intricate and beautiful, metal fused to him as if he were a saga golem.

The work was not the same as the metal on the floor. It was Kartian – crafted with only the extraordinary detail that the mountains’ artisans could create. Raised and trained in all but absolute darkness, they had a sense of touch no Grasslander could match.

“He can’t hurt you, love.” Maugrim’s reassurance let her step closer.

Closer still.

Then she stopped, horror crawling across her skin.

Under the plates, his skinless muscle was raw, red flesh blistering, bubbling through the cracks. She could see searing torment in every line of his being, feel a silent scream that came from his twisted stance, his fast, shallow breath. His eyes – eyelids plated like everywhere else – were closed, but behind them, he twitched visions of agony.

His lips were sealed with a large, single plate. The skinned muscle of his face was torn where he’d tried to scream.

Oh, Goddess...

Black scabs split like lava, never healing, leaking trickles of red and yellow suffering. There was a caked pool around his feet. Even as she watched, a fresh swell of blisters erupted, rippling across one cheekbone. They oozed, swelled, burst, subsided. The plates shifted. She heard him whimper between lips that would never move again.

And it spread, flowed down his face and throat in a caress of anguish. Under his plating, his flayed body boiled as if he were being cooked alive.

Hand over her mouth, denying tears of revulsion, she understood he was trying to scab and heal – and couldn’t. He was one, vast, conscious wound. Maugrim had replaced his skin with pure pain.

There was a smile engraved on the plate that sealed his mouth.

They keep dying.

“Nononononono...” Her denial was unconscious, she was shaking, backing away. Every healer’s instinct she had told her to do one thing.

A heavy, ringed hand landed on her shoulder.

“No time for cold feet, love, he needs you – and soon.” The hand was warm, it steadied her. “I get the empathy thing, you feel his pain and you want to help. I’m telling you, you can. He’s a prototype, strong; a fusing of flesh and metal into the perfect warrior, the perfect conductor. Amethea.” She turned to stare at him as he used her name. “I believe in what I’m doing, I believe in you. Heal him. Complete the fusion. If you do, we can make the world a new and better place.”

The world’s fine... isn’t she?