Ecko Rising (41 page)

“What do you see?” Redlock was right behind him.

“Dark. Little patches of heat that say ‘bad guys went this-a-way’. How come there’s no beasties, no traps, no door?”

“No one comes out here,” Tarvi said softly. “Why would they leave the trade-roads – they’ve got everything they want. They don’t care about a load of broken rocks; they care about the grass harvest and the terhnwood flow, whether they can trade for a luxury this halfcycle. There’s only the taer, and few remember that.”

“Some things,” Ecko commented, “just don’t fucking change.”

He flicked out his heatseeker.

And saw there was light.

It was so faint, he could almost have imagined it. It danced broken, refracted and reflected from something he couldn’t see – something below the level of the steadily descending floor. If he looked up, minute echoes played in the crack over his head, stalactites – or were they the other ones? – had an edge of glitter, like amethyst chandeliers in some trippy-hippie bedroom. There were lichens on the wall, opening like a myriad mouths, as though they hungered for the taste.

They were kinda creepy.

Whatever this was, it was no fucking dungeon – no set of mines. This was more like fantastical potholing – never mind sixty feet of rope and a grapple pistol, he needed a hard hat and a flashlight.

The illumination was just enough for his starlites. As the harsh rock walls around him became a soft wash of grey-green, he crouched low to the coarse, pebbled floor and crept downwards.

The creatures’ heat had left a trail of soot a blind cleaning ’bot could follow.

The others came after him, weapons in hand.

* * *

Slowly, the passageway began to open out.

Here, there were fragments of regular stonework in the natural stone walls, nonsensical oddments of order amid the rising rock ripples of an expanding cave. Ecko could hear the steady drip of water.

There was more space here. Above them, a crack in the ceiling had lifted and opened out into a wide and jagged layer of fangs, uneven and shining as the cracked light touched them.

The trail came from
there –
on the cave’s far side, a wide, dark mouth full of dancing glimmer. The burns led that way like an unwound ball of string. If the goblins were guarding anything, he’d guess that’d be the door.

The girls were whispering, their voices carrying up into tiers of teeth.

And the small cave answered them.

A shattered crystalline sound, atonal and dissonant. It oscillated in uneven waves, an irregular rebroadcast from stalactites and walls.

Ecko shuddered. Redlock turned, but they’d quietened instantly.

The four of them paused in silence.

Water dripped, faintly, maddeningly regular.

Gesturing for the others to stay put, Ecko was off. He made no sound; he left no trace. Following the beasties’ trail, he ducked under the arced maw of spikes and raced, swift as a darting insect, across the openness to slam his back against the far wall.

He looked into the entranceway.

A target-length before him, the ceiling lowered to twin fangs, joined floor to ceiling as if the jaws were lodged half shut. Between them were the recently shattered remains of a forced stone door – behind it a throat that swallowed the light.

Before this entranceway, like a towering guard, was the biggest fucking wind chime he’d ever seen. Suspended from the ceiling, it was taller than he was – hell, it was taller than Lugan – it was more than an artwork, more than some fucked-up chiming-crystal mobile... The rocklight at its centre was trapped to loose crazed rave-party shafts of brilliance across the entranceway, out across the cave and deep into the darkness of whatever lay beyond.

He flicked out his starlites and stared, stunned.

Ecko had never been one for nightclubs – even before Pilgrim had gotten a hold of them. Now, though, he stood as if he were the last fucker left on the dance floor – alone amid a spangled kaleidoscope of reds, blues, purples. Dark lights surrounded him, like a promise – or a threat. The thing lit the walls to a hundred shades of insane goth.

As he looked, he could see that it was damaged – it was half hanging, crystals split and darkened, smeared in soot.

An ancient light show, shattered by the heat of the sortie?

Experimentally, he let out the faintest, audible breath.

And it answered him, a struggling discord of warning.

Echo, Ecko. It was a security system, for chrissakes, guarding the doorway. If the cave out there condensed noise, it must’ve been placed in exactly the right position to go off like an aural claymore the second someone coughed...

Fuck knows how long it had hung here, singing gently to the
drip-drip-drip
of the water and waiting for something to set it off... Then the stone beasties had kicked the door down and thundered past it like Lugan’s old Harley.
Whumph
– exit one doorbell.

So – this “Maugrim” not only left a “bad guy this way” trail for the city authorities to follow... but he disabled his own defences?

He was either a prize asshole or he knew something they didn’t.

Maybe both.

Bollocks.

Telling himself he was only going to take a little look – who knows, maybe it had a switch? – he slipped over and past the broken remnants of the door.

* * *

Redlock was sweating.

The air was close and still. He was uneasy, dry mouthed, aware of the reek of dried blood and the itch of his now-stiffened garments. There was a stone in his boot.

Behind him, Tarvi twitched constantly, hands fidgeting with her neckline, her belt. He was perturbed by her inexperience, concerned about some explosive delayed reaction to the horrors she’d seen. Behind her, Triqueta twisted her ankle and cursed under her breath – she felt like rising tension. He trusted her combat instincts, her courage and reliability... but she didn’t like enclosed spaces and he knew the rock was pressing down on her chest and throat. She wasn’t one to scream – but she may well loose the Banned’s battle cry purely to defy her own fear.

As for the other one...

Trust me or don’t.

Redlock had been riding the trade-roads nearly twenty returns. He knew the Varchinde, its cities and markets, its trade and its predators. He trusted his instincts as much as his axes... and this whole damned thing stank like last week’s fish.

Despite Tarvi’s assurances, he trusted that... thing... about as much as he trusted his one-time wife.

Damned crusaders and damned kids – he worked alone for a
reason.

Whatever that “Ecko” thing was, when it turned, he’d be ready for it.

* * *

Past the busted door, Ecko slunk through a tight neck of stone and paused at the edge of a broad, flat-floored chamber. A scent teased his nostrils – something familiar – oh for chrissakes so familiar...

He stopped, breathed it in like a fragrance.

It was overwhelming, so good, so
missed
. A scent that breached walls, worlds and memories and brought his past into his forebrain with a crash.

This is the Bike Lodge, mate. We’ll find some work for ya, gotta pull your weight round
’
ere.

For a moment, he clung insanely to the hope that he was home. That he’d passed his fucking test, that she’d taken pity on him – that he’d stumbled through some fucking interdimensional
rift
– and he was there, waking up in his own sleeping bag. That it was all over; that tomorrow, the only thing that awaited him was a twist of solder and Lugan’s battered old arc welder...

The scent caught in his throat, it made his breathing ragged, like a sob.

Please...!

Between one shaft of crystal light and the next, he tumbled down the crack between realities – and the closeness was too much, he couldn’t bear it. He had no idea how much he’d missed it until it was shoved right in his face. His own denial shattered, standing in its fragments, he found himself almost in tears.

This hadn’t happened to him!

Tell me this whole thing’s a fucking dream, please! Grey plugged me in, didn’t he? And you’ve found me? You finally fucking found me! Tell me this bullshit ride is over!

The smell was engine oil. Rich and dark, filling his senses with images of a home he may never have left. He could smell metal, the faint tang of fuel. He inhaled it, filled his lungs and his soul with it. He could picture the Bike Lodge in his head, Lugan’s battered desk, the fridge for the endless beers, the frames and the tanks and the engines scattered across the floor...

...the rain, silver on black windows.

It was so real –
so real
– that if he held onto it hard enough everything else would be gone, a total-immersion game that was just playing on the headset in his hands. He could see it, that tiny screen – on it, distant now, grass and moons and air and cities of white and endless unrolling fucking roads...

He could drop it.

And he could stand on it. Feel it shatter. Gone.

But the maddened, broken searchlights of the crystal hanging were lurching through the chamber, passing over his skin and leaving tiny twists of colour in their wake.

In amongst the smells of his home, there was another scent, equally familiar, but not one that belonged in the ferrocrete walls of the Bike Lodge.

He could smell death – the sickly sweet stench of rotting flesh.

The real world cracked, crisped and was gone in a flash of flame, burned by the exiting critters, by the Monument’s fire. The fiction rose to swallow him, back into the caverns of the Varchinde plains.

There was no escape from his own head.

You fucking wuss. Get a grip. Deal with it.

He dried his oculars on a corner of his cloak. Took Lugan’s lighter out of a pouch and crushed it until his fingers
hurt.

And he was angry: sick of being taunted, of being jerked around while she laughed at him. Of being led by the fucking nose. Of understanding one minute – and being at a total fucking loss the next. Of hearing voices, of having dreams. Of Tarvi’s...

Don’t think about it!

He was walking into a trap – she’d laid out a trail he couldn’t help but follow... and everything he passed told him Maugrim was waiting for him. For them.

Yeah? Well bring it on.

Wherever she was, he made her a promise – a promise of what he’d fucking do to her when he got out of here.

“You hear me? ELI-ZAH!
You hear me?
”

And the crystal detonated.

* * *

“Shit!”

Triqueta was weapons on the floor, hands over her ears.

Around her, the cave exploded in a single, terrible scream. The sound was impossible, multilayered, discordant and crystalline. It smashed into her like shards of broken stone. It was the death shriek of a thousand thin, wild voices that slammed back from every rockface, lashed from every leering tooth.

Redlock’s boots spat dirt as he broke into a run.

Tarvi was after him, calling Ecko’s name.

Retrieving her bow – and relieved that Syke hadn’t seen that lapse – Triq moved more slowly, watching the cave around them.

The sound ended in a single, Gods-almighty smash.

Disharmonic echoes reverberated, jangling her teeth, but the scream had gone.

And the quiet was deafening.

Nothing moved. The crazed lights had died. The water drip-drip-dripped as though it hadn’t even noticed.

She heard Redlock call her, his voice a crack of precision through lingering layers of resonance. He didn’t sound like he was fighting.

He sounded...

The last of the crash flowed back from the walls and was gone, a dying wave of sound.

In it, she could hear Ecko laughing.

* * *

Ecko said, “You mother
fucker
.”

In her hands, Tarvi held the rocklight. It lit her face to ardour and wonder.

And it lit the chamber – rock walls more regular, a lower ceiling. This one looked like it’d been hewn, indiscriminately pickaxed out of the stone. In places, the semi-regular brickwork showed again – but that wasn’t what Ecko was looking at.

Around him, an oil-stained stone floor, rags and old papers, scatters of nuts and washers, fuel cans, spray cans, demijohns. The tarp in one corner covered the bike – he hadn’t yet gone that way. He was cackling like his mind had finally fucking snapped.

I broke your doorbell, Maugie. Come and get me why don’tcha?

Around him, the spiralling fairground lights had gone. Occasional, now-stilled refractions lit the walls, colours surreal. The smell was still there – the smell of home, the smell of death – but he was looking for something.

He unclamped his fingers. Lugan’s lighter was still in his hand.

Fuel.

Refilling his tanks would be ten kinds of fucking awkward – but if he’d just woken up every major cave-dwelling nasty from here to the doors of Hell, well, he kinda needed a weapon.

He searched.

Behind him, Redlock was picking up washers like they were the gold coins of some fucking dragonhorde... letting the steel tumble through his fingers, jingle as it hit the floor. His expression was wary. He kept one axe in his hand and one eye on the entranceway.

Tarvi held the light high and looked wider. She picked things up and stared at them as if they would hiss into steam and be gone. She moved gracefully, light on her feet and her hair...

Stop it.

Triqueta appeared in the doorway, patches of light on her skin, her mouth gaped round speechless shock. Chuckling, Redlock threw a handful of washers at her and she caught a couple, opened her hand to stare at them.

“White-metal? How...?”

“How much luxury d’you want?” He laughed at her. She stopped to pick up another handful, stared at them – then lunged to stuff them down the front of his shirt. While he swore, laughing, she ran for it, feet skidding on rusting metal. Grinning, he picked up a random gear and spun it at her like a discus. It didn’t fly very well.