Ecko Rising (47 page)

She covered her face with her hands.

“If you resist me again,” Maugrim said to her softly, drawing his hand from the flame. “It’ll dance on your burned remains.” He placed his hand on her arm and the heat of his rings made her scream.

* * *

Never be afraid to fight dirty.

Ahead of them, the flicker was rising to a red glow – a sullen gleam that swelled against the stone. An edge of pressure came before it, making sweat stand out on skin. The relentless pound of heavy stone feet grew louder, closer – soil trickled from the roof, from between the slabs in the wall.

Ecko pushed himself faster, his telescopics spinning to pick up the telltale light difference that would mean –

There!

A sliver of darkness, a straight flicker of highlight – a turning. He gave the others a flash of his LEDs and he ran, low and fast, his soft shoes light over sand-dry soil.

He heard them come after him. Approaching, Redlock gestured for him to get out of the way.

“Not this time.” Ecko grinned, black as a promise of death. In his hand was a small pottery container – a secret prize, something he’d liberated from Maugrim’s lock-up. He was bouncing it in his palm – and well aware he was
way
too eager to see what it did. “You wanna fight dirty? I say we fight fire –” in his other hand was Lugan’s lighter, now refilled “– with fire.”

“What the rhez is that?”

“Progress.”

Tarvi said, “Oh...” Her reaction brought warmth that had nothing to do with the incoming nasties.

Shut
up
! he told himself. The pottery impacted repeatedly against his fingers. In his other hand was the metal bite of home. He found them comforting, somehow bridging the gap between one reality and the other.

This is the Bike Lodge, mate...

The thumping stone feet came closer. A line of soil shivered down the wall.

“By the Gods...” Triqueta breathed softly, tailing into silence as the pounding was in their ears, in the rock about them. Past the square stones that limned the entranceway...

The creature was rock, a cloak and cowl of ancient, worn stone covering twisted, eroded grey muscle. It had hooves – solid like a horse’s and impacting hard on the floor. Its gait was heavy enough to judder the walls.

More soil trickled. Ecko bounced the ceramic globe in his hand.

But its face...

Blunted, empty features, worn down like a graveyard statue. Its expression was hollow despite the flame in its eyes – its cheeks were sunken in stone-shadow.

Behind it came another, a second, a third – each one twisted, damaged, wrong.

“How did he get so strong, so quickly?” Tarvi said softly. “He’s not –”

“How’d you know so much about this?” Triqueta’s comment was only half humorous.

Redlock had thrown a scowl over his shoulder but the beasties were single focus, lumbering onwards in the charred trail of their mates. As the last one passed the end of the passageway, Ecko sparked the lighter and leaned round the edge of the stone.

Oh, this was just too perfect.

His targeters crossed, plotted, described the arc. The big crack in the stone, the gap between roof and floor... yeah,
that
one...

The pottery sphere left his hand and sailed, slo-mo...

He watched it lodge in the crack.

And the world exploded.

* * *

In her dreams, Amethea had heard the death of the crystal. A distant echo, a faint, discordant jangle.

She awoke with an image flickering at the corner of her thoughts – a creature of darkness and shadow, eyes like black-on-black pits and laughing like insanity.

The harsh laugh and the jarring chime layered one upon another as she stirred into wakefulness and the choking tension of Maugrim’s heat.

Remembered where she was.

Before her, he had turned from the huge brazier, his hand half raised and his rings glittering fierce. However much she hated him, he drew her eyes like a campfire on a cold night.

“They’re early,” he said. His grin was tight and wary.

Who
...
?
Hope was a forgotten light: the rock of resentment in her soul was buried deep so the Sical would not find it – but she knew where it was.
Who’re early?

Around them, four naves in a vast, elemental cross, the ruin of the Great Cathedral was lit to a brilliant, orange anger by the brazier’s reconsecration. Behind the glowing, broken-topped walls, she could see hints of the cavern outside. Upon the walls, the half-seen shapes of the window frames flickered. And over it all, the vast arch of cavern roof glistened as though damp, and the lichens quested like open-mouthed sparks, lusting for the light.

In the brazier’s heart the Sical danced, bright-eyed and fervent. It was tiny, it wavered with no real form – but the
eagerness
that radiated from it was palpable.

She could see he didn’t trust it: he kept it trapped and hungry. Loosing it was easy – getting it back under control required strength.

Her voice carefully dull, she said, “Do you – we – have time?”

Maugrim laughed, his hand in the brazier and the Sical nuzzling him, pleading. Its eyes were sharp, glowing white-metal.

“They’ve got some stuff to be thinking about, sweetheart, a few distractions.” He glanced at her, his predator’s smile hot with hunger. “We’ve got time.” Smiling at her – Goddess
why
did he still smile at her like that? – he spun on his heel to gesture expansively at his silent congregation.

Amethea had tried to ignore them, the endless ranks of silent figures, hunched and misshapen, stretching back into the dark.

Waiting.

They made her want to curl close to the fire.

They were worn, pitted, irregular. They filled the gloom with threat, with twisted, broken muscles of grey stone. Some of the pedestals were already shattered, crumbling, but they waited for his call, for the freed fury of the Sical to rain fire from the skies.

It was as through the destruction of the township had been merely a gesture made for her, an illustration of his strength.

A test.

To take Roviarath, he needed power.

And Amethea knew that for power – he needed her.

* * *

Detonation.

Tearing force and staggering concussion. A splitting crack, a thunderous rumble of falling stone. A rattle of rocks, a hiss of soil, a cloud of dust. Coughing and confusion. The passageway around them shuddered.

Redlock and Triqueta were shouting. Tarvi was on the floor in a jumble, her mouth hanging open.

Ecko grinned like a fiend.

“Boom,” he said.

“What the rhez...?”

Leaving the axeman to his apoplexy, Ecko slipped through the settling debris, picked his way carefully over the pile – it groaned faintly, shifting and settling.

The passageway they’d come through was completely blocked.

Throwing the fucking thing had been a gamble – but the Bogeyman’s luck was with him and the rock had cracked clean through, split free from the wall. Over it, the entire ceiling had come down.

He could smell soil. From somewhere, there was cold air.

Beneath the fall, the four beasties were rubble, their shattered remnants scattered amid the heavy, broken slabs. Their light had gone out: their eyes only empty sockets in ancient, stone cadavers.

Rumbles echoed through the rocks, loose stones hissed in the distance.

Redlock was behind him, boot on the stone, axes in hands.

He said softly, “What did you do?”

“Hoisted that fucker Maugrim with his own petard.” Ecko was crouched, watching the debris – he was half convinced the remains of the beasts would move by themselves. “He wants to play blowing shit up? I wrote the fucking rulebook.”

The axeman gave a tight grin. “I don’t think he’s playing by any rules.”

Ecko cackled.

“Can we get out of here?” Triq sounded almost plaintive, she was watching the ceiling. “I don’t mean to piss on anyone’s campfire – but I’m betting the rest of this is coming down. Any time now.”

“There’s a draught.” Ecko gestured with a hand which was trying to turn the colours of the tumbling dust. At his ankles, the tips of his stealth-cloak were shifting, stirring imperceptibly. If he raised his palm, he could feel it: cool breath on his fingertips. “Can’t go wrong with a secret door – even when you hafta make your own.”

“That’s not a door.” Triqueta said. “That’s a hole. You’re not telling me you’re going to dig...?” She made a noise that was half scorn, half fear. “You’ll bring the whole damned Monument down on our heads!”

“We need to get off the marked route,” Redlock said. “Good thing there were only a few of those things – next time, we might not be so lucky. How many of that weapon have you got?”

“Not enough,” Ecko told him, patting his webbing. “Not enough.”

* * *

The boom was soft, but unmistakable. Somewhere above, the stone seemed to judder.

Maugrim stopped, tense and dead still. In a silence broken only by the crackle of the brazier, he listened.

Starve, I. Fuel, give. Now?

The Sical’s plaintive, coaxing hunger was hot on his face. He ignored it.

He
knew
what’d made that explosion. What he didn’t know was how Larred Jade’s idiot patrols had gotten here so fast – or had been smart enough to identify the contents of his stash.

What the hell else had they picked up?

He glanced at Amethea. She watched him, dull eyed and lank haired. She was sunk within herself, too afraid to flee, too meek to strike back – the Sical terrified her. The savagery of the passion that had first stirred the site had bled from her like hope.

He was – almost – sorry. She’d been key and lock and conduit, both heart and catalyst.

But, like Vice, her usefulness was done.

Under his boots lay a huge stone slab, circular, the broken stalagmite at its centre. It was carved in a spiral with a language long-lost – elemental images, pictograms, tiny lines twisting steadily inwards. Once, it had split into quadrants, sarcophagi – now, each one was fused into place by the long Count of Time.

When he called her name, she obeyed without question, eyes on the fire.

One last time.

* * *

Axes struck soil, scraped on hard, broken-edged rock.

Hands shovelled roughly, dirt packing under nails.

Redlock was digging, spitting dirt and shaking it out of his hair.

Triqueta, further back, watched the tunnel – the broken pile of rubble, the roof. Sweat ran down her temple and trickled round the edges of the opal in her cheek. Her jaw jumped with tension.

Tarvi picked up rocks, threw them aside as the axeman broke through the wall.

The draught grew colder. Blind, squiggling things quested eyeless in the sudden air, the wash of it was almost fresh.

There were chinks of light coming through the soil, angled beams like tiny searchlights spread as the wall came down.

Ecko, unable to rid himself of the conviction that the beasties would reassemble and rumble upright, looking for revenge, paced the edge of the rockfall, nimbly jumping the stones that Tarvi threw at his feet.

She winked at him and his belly tightened. He thought about something else.

So – you still watching, Eliza? Extra points for creativity? For the shortcut?

“I’m through,” Redlock said. He hooked another chunk of soil and ripped it down, roots hung pointless and pale. One more, and the hole was large enough for Ecko to get his shoulders through.

And large enough to flood the rockfall with light.

Yellow light, like nicotine, nacreous and familiar.

Tarvi said, “That looks –”

“No shit.” Ecko didn’t need to be told what it was. “I guess we’ve arrived. You lot stay the fuck put, willya? I’m gonna find the elevator.”

“The what?” Redlock was ruefully examining the axe-edge, reaching in a pouch for a whetstone.

“In the words of the prophet – we’re goin’ down.” Ecko’s skin writhed with the colour of the light. “The big bad guy’s always in the last place you look. So fuck that – we are
so
starting at the bottom.”

Without waiting for their confusion, he pushed through the soil, chill and soft, damp against his skin. He spat it from between his lips, felt the roots tail softly over his face.

He heard Tarvi whisper, “Careful!” felt her hand almost touch him as he scrabbled to make the hole larger.

He knew what the light was – had an idea of what he’d...

Holy fucking mother of god.

His anti-daz flick-flashed.

Halfway in the wall like he was Malice through the Looking Glass, he stopped to stare.

Behind him, the others were forgotten. Maugrim, his stone beasties and his pomegranate grenades, his bike and his washers, forgotten. The Wanderer, forgotten. Eliza, Lugan, the Bike Lodge, the Virtual Rorschach, forgotten.

The light made his skin blanch to jaundice. He blinked his black eyes and he didn’t care.

Pushing himself fully through the hole, he righted himself to stand, breathless, upon the edge of a void. A wide and plummeting shaft, a bottomless drop his telescopics could not penetrate: the very brink of nothing. In the walls, spasms of light flickered downwards, sparking electricity like faulty cables they deepened in hue as they were lost in the darkness.

It was a movie set, a tableau for an epic fight scene – impossible.

Before him, a wide balcony, ancient stone grown with pale creeper that snapped, dry, under his touch. The balcony ringed the wall – it threw jerky and random shadows. It didn’t quite surprise him that three other entranceways were blocked with old rockfall and the open-mouthed, light-seeking lichens.

The light shaft was carved into an almighty and continuous mural – prehistoric figures dancing or fucking in celebration or anguish, caressed by the current that ran through them. The creeper covered them, crawling with a dead lover’s hands – they danced away, the light making them restlessly carouse until they were lost, down, down in the dark.