Ecko Rising (46 page)

Nivrotar stared into his face. “I can reach Roderick, if I must. What do I tell him?” For a moment, the dark eyes of the Lord of Amos searched the crazed veteran’s face, his disfocused gaze. “Ress. A moment longer, stay with me. What do I tell him?”

“The world’s fear comes. It is manifest.” His voice was breaking now, his breathing becoming sobs. “She showed me
everything
!”

Jayr blinked, baffled and hurting.

Nivrotar said, “The world’s fear.” She sat back on her heels, considering. “I tried to protect you, Ress of the Banned. You have found the answer, but it has cost you your mind. Can you...” Her tone was gentle now, almost as if she were terrified to upset the delicate, desperate balance of his cling to sanity. One pale hand stroked his cheek. “Can you tell me... can you tell me what you can see?”

Her meaning was clear, though unspoken:
Without costing me mine?

“My Lord, the drug is still in his blood. His sight is clear, but his words –”

“Ress.” The Lord stroked his cheek again, her white fingers gentle. “What does the world fear?”

“Nothing! It’s outside the Count of Time; it’s Nothing!
Kazyen
!”

Jayr said, “What the rhez is – ?”

“The world’s fear! Tell him!” Ress’s mouth exploded in red and he fell back, silent, his eyes staring empty at the Amos night. He was still breathing – but his mind was gone.

Nivrotar stood up.

Her voice was like a death knell as she said, “Send a bretir to my... emissary... in Fhaveon. Whether we understand them or not, Ress’s words must reach the Bard.

“And we must pray that he understands.”

* * *

Out of the darkness, images fell like drops of rain. They were infrequent at first and they delighted him. He turned his face upwards, blinking to see. Then they were more numerous, a downpour covering and soaking him – until they became a cascade like a waterfall, an onslaught, battering him down.

He tried to run from them; ran until he felt his chest would burst. Perhaps he was trying to outrun the water, to save himself from the assault; perhaps his running was just another image and he was tiny and tumbling, drowning under the deluge.

Somewhere, the voice called his name again, far distant, begging him to listen. It was female, desperate. He was a child, it was his mother; he was a man, it was his wife – her tones were coloured with hope and terror.
Hear me, child. You must hear me. You are so close.
He tried, but the images were battering him, drowning him. They were coming too fast.

Desperate, he reached out to hold on to something. And he saw...

The Ilfe
,
destroyed. The Well of the World’s Memory – gone. A single fragment from the chaos that tumbled past him, one he clung to, a lifeline. With it came others – the broken Monument, the desolation of the Great Library, the chill white of the Theatre of Nine. All of these things, decaying, because the World could not remember. In the instant of this realisation, a vast time passed him, an aeon of understanding.

Child who sees, you must hear! Help me!

The voice was a cry of feminine grief, terrible enough to make him cringe. He raised his arms and tried to cry back to her, “How?”

But she did not answer him, and the waterfall had gone. He staggered at the sudden lack of pressure. Fell, panting, to the ground.

She had left him.

He opened his eyes.

* * *

Sealed in hopelessness, far below the surface of the great Lord City, Roderick stirred in a breathless, wordless panic.

His mind was tumbled by images and memories, splashing fragments of things he had once seen, the same images that had swirled at the back of his mind all of his life. They were bright, now, like sunlight on the water. He had to blink to see that the room around him was dark.

The Ryll. The water and the fear. The tumbling, nonsensical chaos of the world’s nightmare – this, he knew.

But the vision was not his.

Then who...?

He sat up, understanding flooding him like a chill.

It brought him more awake. He found that he was shivering, almost as though he had been in cold water. Pieces of the images still floated at the edges of his mind. They were strong – there was a cry of pain still in his ears and fear in every layer of the darkness around him.

What had he seen?

For a moment, he was still, didn’t move. As if more motion would disturb the last of the images, make them evaporate in the darkness, he sat poised – but they were fading even as he reached for them.

Was there flame – was there anger?

The shiver became a shudder, a tease across his skin. A certainty, though he still wasn’t sure what it was.

As a youth, the Guardians had welcomed him – the first of his kind to be born in the Ryll’s home city of Avesyr in a hundred generations, hailed as the hope of his people. There were few of them left, even then, scattered watchers of a myth forgotten, adhering only to their own history and a mandate more ancient than they had words to recall.

They had taught him many things – to watch the water and to comprehend the tumble of the images within. They had taught him to fight and to run, to understand letters and music, to craft a story to entrance an audience.

They had also taught him to think.

In the darkness about him, the dream fragments were thinning to nothing. They left only isolated images, echoes that made no sense – but one thing remained as clear as Tundran ice...

He
knew
that that vision had not been his.

Someone
else
had seen the same thing; someone
else
had witnessed the thoughts of Ryll, the world’s nightmare.

Someone else had seen the thing they’d called heresy, the blasphemy he had committed.

The thought brought him fully awake and he was on his feet in the darkness, thinking, thinking. He was still shivering, as through the cold had sunk into his bones. He needed Rhan, he needed Ecko, he needed The Wanderer, he needed...

He needed to understand what he’d seen. It was the closest he had come to the world’s nightmare, the closest in more returns than he could recall – and the feeling that time was closing in upon him was suddenly exhilarating and dreadful and powerful.

But whose vision was it?

He placed his hands against the cool of Fhaveon’s core-stone, and tried to remember.

I am a Guardian. I know how to do this.

...and he was standing upon a solitary rock tower. He was alone, utterly alone – as if he were the last mortal, or the first one...

...there were lines of energy woven within the grass, the power fluxing through them, soul to soul. This was natural: this was the way things should be...

...the magma lake that was the soul of fire; the vast, carved caverns that were ice; the hearts of the Kartian PriestLords that held the dark; the great sarsen monolith that had once been the OrSil, the soul of light. The Elemental Powerflux, awakening...

...but to what?

The Monument, reborn and alight with fire and blazing at the very sky...

And that blaze brought death.

His vision cleared, and Roderick knew – he knew where Ecko had gone.

He also knew something else, the thing that he had feared from the beginning.

Did I not tell him? Did I not try and explain?

Under the Bard’s skin, horror crawled like panic. The knowledge was absolute, but he was completely helpless to do anything about it – he barely realised that he was hammering the wall until pain curled his hands into claws.

Everything was connected – and Ecko had left without the full information.

I tried to tell you..!

Ecko was wrong. His impulsive, chaotic nature had taken him too soon, and without the right information.

And he might just make everything worse.

23: AMETHEA

                    
THE MONUMENT

They had incoming.

From the chamber that Ecko’d named the “lock-up”, the passageways had changed. As though the open caves were only the entrance hall, they’d become somehow more formal – tighter, twisted and narrow. A feeling of age and tension had grown here, it watched them pass, skulking behind the shoulder-to-shoulder stones that sternly walled them in. The air was breathlessly warm.

Redlock resisted the need to cough, dry mouthed, the urge to hunch his shoulders as though he were trespassing. He felt like this whole damned thing was so ancient it’d cave in at the touch of his boots.

Before him, Ecko was almost impossible to see – a figment that flickered from wall to wall, curve to corner to side passage, a grinning, black-eyed shade. He didn’t trust it, had no idea what it – he – was capable of. He could feel Tarvi’s nervousness, Triqueta’s rising sense of panic – worrying about other people slowed him down.

But Triq was strong: he knew her bravery and was glad to have her at his back.

The fading rocklight still showed char marks, faint dustings of scattered soot that lured them onwards. Hanging roots were scorched and shrivelled, smaller stones cracked clean through, or fallen in pieces to the floor. At points, there were old carvings in the walls, softened by time, their meanings long-lost.

The axeman had the peculiar certainty they were going in a circle.

Too many damned tavern-sagas.

Ecko’s eyes flashed as he turned. Instantly, the axeman was alert.

Ahead of them came the beat of heavy footsteps, swift and regular – distant, but quickly becoming louder. There was an almost-flicker of light.

Redlock whistled softly. The passageway was a long, narrow curve, silent stones walled them in.

Tarvi answered him, “Seems we’ve got a patrol.”

“Then we stop them,” he said. “We need to find a side turning. Whatever they are, they’re not catching us with our breeches down.”

“They’ll come at us single file,” Tarvi murmured. “If you can hold...”

“And if I can ambush the damned things, I won’t have to.” He gave her a brief grin, glad she was able to focus. “I don’t know what they taught you in Roviarath, but never be afraid to fight dirty.”

She chuckled wickedly, seemed to like his audacity.

He spared her an additional glance – she was cute, but the same age as his daughter – then noted Triqueta’s expression and set his face to grim certainty.

“Let’s go – we’ll have to move quick.”

With Ecko before them like a dark harbinger, they ran.

* * *

“You don’t need to do this, please...”

In the flicker of the brazier’s flame, she’d seen the image of the trade-road, the bustle of the little township. Dirty streets and wooden walls, traders and grifters, beggars and families – it was a swell of population on the water’s edge, as though the unrolling ribbon-town had been dammed by the shoreline. Carts moved, making ruts in the mud, chearl plodded, tails flicking, children ran underfoot, chasing and wide mouthed.

But their laughter was silent – she heard only the soft crackle of the fire.

Maugrim was behind her, his heat at her neck, his hand forcing her to watch.

And before her was a hollow, a broken basin – a twisted, jagged stump of stalactite like a cracked-off tooth. If he craned her head back, she could see its sibling, high above, also broken, as though a shattering hammer force had split the pillar asunder. Yet it yearned still – water and long returns of mouldering soil had renewed its growth, as if it writhed imperceptibly downwards, needing to be rejoined.

Now, flame-light teased it closer.

Maugrim’s voice, soft as a growl in her ear.

“You showed me the key, little priestess – how to unlock the secret. I would’ve given you everything I had, anything you asked for. I can change the world, thanks to you... and you repay me by bloody cowardice? By trying to run away – like some rebellious street kid?”

“Whatever you’ve awoken –”

“You’ve awoken.” She felt him grin, his breath warm. “We’ve awoken.” He stretched his hand past her and the firelights flashed on his white-metal rings. “Never forget, sweetheart, you started this with me.”

In the fire, wavering in the image, a tiny flame-angel with eyes white-hot. A Sical, he called it, an elemental, a creature of the Soul of Fire. It watched them, unblinking, the image of the township shimmering through its form as though through high-summer heat.

Hard against her back, Maugrim stretched his hand into the flame.

She expected his flesh to crisp and blacken, but he was unhurt, his rings glowing red and fierce blue heat playing at their edges. The Sical nuzzled him like a pet.

She heard it in her head.
Feed, I. Hun-ger.

“Do you see it?’ he asked her. “Watch.”

The creature grew, hot against her face. It seemed to draw strength from his touch – somehow it was both in the fire and in the air over the trading post. It was a miniature sun, blazing with eagerness and fury.

She said, “No, Goddess, no...”

You did this with me.

As though the creature phased between one place and another, it drew the flame about itself.

Feed, I. Hun-ger.

She saw in the fire. She saw it through the fire, as though through an elemental window. She saw it rain death upon the town.

In silence, she watched the detonation, the ripple of heat and impact, tumbling buildings like charred parchment, wood exploding into fierce life and the blaze within reaching the sky. She saw the pouring forth of black smoke, the panic and the running and the dying and the terror.

She saw the Sical kill, lazily and perfectly, just because it could.