Ecko Rising (44 page)

“Have you been at Syke’s pipe?”

He started chewing his lip again.

“An entire
race
just fell down and died. Of emptiness. Good Gods...”

Jayr flopped back into her spot on the floor, baffled. Without thinking, she crumpled Ress’s notes into a pouch. His eyes were distant, he was paying no attention to anything but his thoughts.

“They died of giving up.”

The energy faded out of him as he realised the scale of what he’d uncovered. He sat down, touched the fragmented puzzle with awed fingers.

“Can apathy be sentient? Perceptive? Jayr, this is too big to comprehend.”

“Then stop,” Jayr muttered, half in answer, half to herself. “Can we please get the rhez out of here? I need the sun.”

Ress’s gaze focused on her and he stared, bemused, blinking.

With a sudden chill, she realised how empty he looked.

Empty.

“Ress?”

Inexplicable fear dumped tension through blood and muscle. She jumped up, frost icing across her back. That was enough – she was taking Ress out of this fireblasted building. Like, now.

“But I’m not afraid,” he said, smiling at her. “I find this... fascinating.” The way he said the word made her reach for his arm, drag him to his feet.

Fascinating.

“That’s it,” she declared, “we’re going to find ale. And a bar fight. And you some company. The cheaper the better.”

He was a dead weight, slumped in her grip, his gaze fixed on nothing.

“I was reading something...” He leaned down and she let him go. He stumbled to his hands and knees, began to gather the broken papers to him, pieces dissolving into ashes even as he touched them. He seemed to have no awareness of what he was doing. “I need them...”

“Ress...” Jayr reached for his arms, held him easily. “Don’t...”

He started to laugh, high-pitched and humourless. His gaze bifurcated, then focused on her again – but with an effort.

“Jayr. What are you...?” He struggled against her grip but wasn’t strong enough to break free. Beneath them, the puzzle scattered. “What’s happening to me? I can’t see, I can’t think... oh, Gods, my
head...
!”

He fell forwards against her shoulder, shaking. The last time Jayr’d seen someone like this, Taure had overdone the pipeweed and seen figments in the grass for days. She wondered if he was going to throw up and leaned him back to sit on his heels. She held up his chin, searched his face for sanity.

But his head lolled. His glasses fell from his nose, shattering as they hit the floor. Pieces of precious glass mingled with the pieces of the poem he’d been reading.

Fascinating.

“Ress?” Not knowing how to help, she shook his shoulders, shook him harder. He shuddered violently, and slumped forwards. She caught him like a child, a dead weight against her body.

“Ress!”

Then his head came back up. He looked up at her, his neck at a crazed angle. His eyes were blank and he stared straight through her, straight through the rotting cavern of the library, through the shadows and the slanting sun. He was transfixed by something eternal, something she had no way to see.

He was white to the lips, his pupils huge.

And he was frightening her.

“RESS!” Right in his face.

“I
understand
...” he said, fervently. He clawed at her garments. She brushed his hands away, fighting to control the shudder. “I see the water, but her thoughts are transitory.” He knelt up, but his gaze seared a line across her skin. He was leagues away, ardent and crazed. “The grass cries out to be heard. Do you hear the
stone
?”

Stone?

Jayr watched him, horrified, found a sob catching in her throat.

“What the rhez is the matter? What stone?” She stood up, heaved him upright, her boot shattering the last of the puzzle as she did so – she barely even noticed. “Ress, please...
Ress
!”

For a moment, it seemed he looked at her. His face was lit with a wondrous smile, vacant and ecstatic.

“Jayr...” he said. His breathing was short, his weight hung limp. “We did it. The world... shows me... her fear. Like the Bard, I can
see...
!”

“You can’t see
shit
!” She shook him again, shouted in his face – but she may as well have tried to reach the fireblasted moons. Tears twisted her mouth, she had no idea what to do, no idea what’d happened –

Her hand slipped. In a slow, graceful motion, Ress tumbled backwards to the floor. Ancient paper scattered, puffed into dust.

Lain in its midst, he started to thrash, mouth working, hands clenched white into claws. A thin keening spilled from him. For a moment, he almost seemed to be trying to fight, trying with all the might of his scholar’s mind to banish some figment that assailed him.

Froth trickled from the corner of his mouth, his back arched and his heels drummed.

“Nnnnnn...!”

His poem was gone.

Jayr threw herself over him, legs over his thighs, hands on his wrists to prevent him hurting himself against the stone. His neck corded, his head turned from side to side as if he tried to avoid a kiss.

“Nnnn...!”

She screamed his name in his face, sobs uncontrolled.

For a moment, he tried – his frenzy paused and he seemed to struggle to focus, to look at her... Then he screamed like a chearl and his body spasmed, shuddered, and collapsed.

His eyes were open, staring up at the broken balconies, the cracked glass.

The dust.

Barely daring, she choked, “Ress?”

He blinked, his jaw moved.

“Ress?” She sat back, wiping tears.

He broke into sobs, hands clawing at his face, his hair.

“Not strong enough!” His nails left red lines in his skin. “Rain and wind and metal – a city of glass and stone and vast, soul emptiness...”

Jayr grabbed his wrists as through he were a child. “Ress!” She was terrified – had no idea what was happening to him, what creature had come out of the book to assault his mind...

“He sees... wakes, needs power and powerlessness. They’re all sleeping. There are needles in his arms.”

He tried to free his hands. When Jayr released him, he buried his scratched face in them and started to cry.

“Mother... I listen. I hear the
grass
!”

“Ress...” The word was despair, disbelief. “I don’t understand.”

Gods, it can’t be this simple – the Bard’s been right all along!

Had he? Had he found some terrible, ancient truth? Or, like Feren’s conspiracy, had his stupid brain just made something out of...

Something out of Nothing.

It was so ludicrous it almost made her laugh.

Through sobs, he said, “It’s all so beautiful.” He was staring up at the crumbling balconies, the filthy, broken skylight. At least he was calm. “Older than we are, layers of buildings for a thousand returns...”

What is?
She wanted to ask him,
What can you see?

But he fell quiet, laying on his back on the broken mosaic – a sacrifice to the forgotten knowledge of the library.

For a moment, Jayr stared at him, panic clamouring at her, crying for release.

But she had no time for that now.

She was going to go to the palace.

She was going to understand the figments that tormented her friend.

And if the Lord of Amos didn’t help, Jayr was going to pull her city down round her ears.

PART 4:
_TORNADO

22: VISION

                    
THE PALACE OF LORD NIVROTAR, AMOS

It was approaching the birth of the sun in the grubby sprawl of the Amos city state. Mist seeped out of bleak walls, lay in wait on cobbled streets, lent the dark city a pale shroud of fear.

In places, patches of disease across her shadowed face, there were battered stretches of sagging buildings, their roofs rotting and their windows cracked. And among these buildings dwelled the city’s scavengers, the derelicts, the poorest of the poor. They swarmed like rodents after every scrap of food or information.

And then fought like bweao for what they found.

There was no council in Amos, no institute, no Fhaveon-trained military, no private forces of mercantile security. In Amos, there was only Nivrotar.

Her word was law, her whim death.

And now, she faced a madman.

* * *

Ress of the Banned lay broken, a twisted figure upon the cold stone floor of the Varchinde’s most ancient building. He didn’t see the great, vaulted ceiling, the elegant figures that turned stone faces towards the Lord’s seat, or the carved, black-winged aperios that stood silent watch. He didn’t see Jayr, crouched beside his pallet, anger etched into each white scar on her skin.

In stark contrast to the artists and poets, the philosophers and performers that waited upon Lord Nivrotar’s every breath, neither Banned member paid her any attention. Ress stared into nothing as though answers taunted him. Jayr stroked his sweating forehead, frustrated and helpless.

“Ress of the Banned.” Lord Nivrotar had cast aside her gown and now wore blackened mail of real metal, a sword at her hip upon a tooled-leather baldric. Her hair was loose waves, making her complexion white and her eyes as dark as bruises. “You are a fool. And yet...” She stood to descend the steps.

Jayr watched her, resentment smouldering. She chewed on a fingernail, spat out a fragment.

As the Lord moved, the court stood with a rustle of fabric. Several people offered her a hand, but she ignored them. She paused at the foot of the pallet to stare into Ress’s thin, white face.

“What do you see?”

“How the rhez can he tell you?” Jayr’s insolence caused a gasp, a susurration of muttering. “He’s loco.”

Nivrotar glanced around her courtiers, silencing them. Her gaze settled upon one elderly philosopher.

“Can you comprehend his visions?”

The philosopher bowed, cleared his throat. “He babbles, my Lord, cries aloud, speaks to things we can’t see. He has witnessed something that has overpowered his mind.”

Nivrotar dismissed him, turned to the apothecary.

“His health is damaged?”

“He’s Banned, my Lord, strong, even with his age.” A wary glance at Jayr. “His suffering is only in his imagination.”

With a faint chink of mail, the Lord of Amos sank to one knee beside Ress.

In unison, her court sank with her.

“What do you see?” Nivrotar watched Ress’s face with a fascination torn between pity and awe.

Ress’s eyes flicked back and forth, his mouth worked as if to speak. He sprang suddenly taut, and his eyes flashed, inhuman, with a terrifying discharge of colour and energy. Then he collapsed into despair and curled up like a baby.

Baffled and helpless, Jayr was fighting to control a choking knot of emotions – she wanted to sob, or scream, or hit something until it bled. She had no idea how to help him.

“You’re the scholar!” Her mouth shook and the next words were a sob. “Help him!”

The court rustled in shock.

Ress was pale, rocking slightly, back and forth. Words still fell from him like pebbles, but they shattered as they hit the floor and were broken before sense could be made of them.

“Bring him food,” Nivrotar said. “Now!” Echoes of her order rang from the pillars. In a flurry of feet, a door opened and banged shut.

Slowly, Ress turned his head to look at them, and Jayr almost screamed.

His eyes were unfocused, both pupils huge but one larger than the other, his irises dark as blood. Shadows moved beneath his skin.

He blinked several times before he said, “I saw the Ryll, the water. Roderick... all this time.” A line of spittle trailed from one corner of his mouth and lost itself in his beard. He leaned forwards to confide in her. “We should have listened.”

Jayr shivered, tried again. “Ress? Don’t you know me?” Her voice caught on pleading with him. “Ress? Please... Say that you know me, you know who I am!”

But his face crumpled. “Mother, I hear you. How can I help?”

With a short exhalation of annoyance, Lord Nivrotar unfolded to her feet.

Jayr’s mood changed like the twitch of a curtain – seeing the Lord’s movement as dismissal, her grief caught light and burned. As Nivrotar turned away, Jayr pounced.

“What did we find? What was in that book?”

Nivrotar tapped pale fingers upon the hilt of her sword.

“My Lord.”

Jayr crossed her arms over her chest. She was unused to facing anyone at her own height – but the Lord was slender, fragile by comparison. Jayr tensed powerful muscles beneath scar-carved skin.

“Answer the damned question.”

The court cringed.

Nivrotar’s tapping fingers gained speed. She gave a short sigh, but Jayr spoke across her.

“He did find something? Didn’t he? Did find something you’ve missed? What’re you going to do, torture it out of him? Torture it out of
me
?”

“If I deem it necessary.” Nivrotar measured Jayr with eyes as deep and dark as an underground lake. “Find me the healer Jemara”

“Yes, Lord.” A messenger scuttled.

Ress said, “The world screams.”

With a soft, metal chinking, the Lord knelt beside the mad ex-scholar, her court echoing her movements.

Her hands touched his face, gently wiping the spittle from the sides of his mouth.

“I fear for you,” she said gently. “If you have somehow shared Roderick’s vision, if you have tried to see the world’s nightmare... You are not a Guardian, have no way to encompass what you have witnessed. I fear it has riven your mind.”

He smiled blankly at her.

“Yes,” he said. Then he clamped his hands over his ears and began to rock back and forth relentlessly, repeating, “He knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, he
knows...
!”

“Who knows?”

“He saw, the only true vision.” He stopped, shouted in her face. “But he cannot
remember
!”

Helplessly, the Lord returned to her feet, hands knotted at her sides. Jayr didn’t move as she spoke to the apothecary. “Take him into your care. Jemara will sit with him at all times and scribe everything he says.”