Ecko Rising (50 page)

The Bard is gone. Rhan is defeated.

He feeds me.

He could see movement behind her, a shape rising to its feet, drawing a wicked, serrated blade. He didn’t look at it – he kept his eyes on Tarvi’s.

“What the hell’re you talking about? Who feeds you?”

“You don’t know.” She seemed to find this hilarious, her laugh was full throated, bouncing back from the walls. “All those tales, and he missed telling you the one that actually mattered. Delicious.”

Delicious.

Ecko snorted. “He kinda didn’t have time. Did you blow up the village? How the hell did you do that?”

“You’re sweet,” she said. “But not too bright – that wasn’t me. I think that was just... target practice.” Her smile was needle-sharp. “The magharta – yes, I arranged the deaths of my patrol. It made you easier to control. Killing the centaur – I’m Kas, in my own way, both damned and powerful. I can take advantage of quintessential force.”

“So take advantage of this, already. You gotta capacitor right here. Why don’tcha just blow us up?”

“There’s enough force here to tear the both of you into pieces.” She came closer still, ran a hand down each of their cheeks. Her touch was lightning, fire: impossible promise and pleasure. “But your lives are far more valuable – your time feeds me, belongs to me.”

Behind her in the darkness, Triqueta was on her feet. She was older, leaner, grimmer, her expression lined with severity and an absolute lack of mercy.

“I don’t think so.” Her abrupt gesture was hard, final.

Tarvi shrieked as the serrated blade slammed into her back. For a moment, her hand reached to Ecko, for his time, for his help, he didn’t know. Her dark eyes begged him,
Please
, she said,
help me
. A hundred images tumbled through his thoughts.
I love you.

Triq said, “You betrayed your tan – your family.” With a wrench, she yanked the blade free, watched as Tarvi crumpled. “You’re not betraying mine.”

Ecko watched her slump, his arms folded and his chin raised. His expression was flat, his oculars dry.

Please...

His foot connected hard with the side of her skull.

“Bitch.”

She didn’t move again.

25: TWICE FALLEN

                    
FHAVEON

They came for Rhan at last: the soldier Mostak and the old priest Gorinel.

Neither of them spoke, and they didn’t meet his gaze.

Rhan was numb, broken, listing somewhere between hopelessness and denial. He made no effort to resist them, nor to plead for understanding as they blindfolded him and bound his wrists. The bonds were crafted of fabric and smelling of camphor, but they held him as if they were Kartian metal.

Their shame was bond enough.

Wearily, the old priest raised his spread hand to Rhan’s chest and touched him with each finger in turn, pressing them home like marks – a gesture unseen in Fhaveon in hundreds of returns.

An odd and momentary thought:
Who had been the last person that the city had put to death?

Rhan couldn’t remember, and obscurely, this bothered him.

Gorinel’s voice was a soft, barrel-chested rumble, almost regretful. “By your might, Samiel; by your mercy, Cedetine; by your justice, Dyarmenethe; by your wisdom, Cemothen; by your love, Calarinde...”

Rhan quelled a surge of misery – like the bonds, like the ritual itself, the names of the Gods were so long-unused that the church had no knowledge even of their meaning, of the identities they tried to invoke. For an instant, he allowed himself to plead to them, silently, to the very heavens themselves,
This cannot be!

But the priest continued as if the Gods had not heard him. Gorinel pressed the palm of his hand against Rhan’s chest, as if marking him with a brand.

“This man, Rhan of Fhaveon, has been found guilty of treason and regicide. He is sentenced to be outcast from the city...”

Under the darkness of his despair, Rhan remembered,
You have been found guilty of the crimes of pride and ambition, Elensiel. Your opinions are of no concern to me. You will Fall.

“...that he may lay down his sin with his mortal body, and enter the Halls of the Gods...”

Did you not realise the cost of your temptation? You are Dæl, Star-born, you and your siblings are the most favoured form of life we created. We gave you all, and yet you desire to elevate yourself more. You know the laws, our halls are ever barred to you.

“...untainted by his actions...”

Do not fail in the duties we have charged you with, Elensiel. If you do, the mortal world will seem as sweet as my daughter’s embrace compared to the fate that will befall you.

“...By the rule of Heal and Harm, we take life that life may be spared. In the name of the Gods...”

From this time forth, you are “rhan”, homeless. You are charged with the care of the mortal world. If you fail me again, you will be nothing.

“...let justice be done.”

Let justice be done.

Mostak, commander of the soldiery, responded to the old priest’s final words, just as Dyarmenethe, brother of Samiel, had done, over four hundred returns before.

“Justice will be done.”

And, just as the hands of Samiel and his brother had held Rhan out over chaos and let him fall, so now did these hands lead him out to face a fall from another height – to once again plummet into the cold waters of the eastern sea.

The fall would be less far, but this time, there was no Tekisarri to pull him free, and to give him purpose and new life.

He was condemned.

...
You will be nothing.

For now, though, he had a moment – a fragment of time to cry his denial, to prove his own innocence or Phylos’s guilt, to free himself and release the stranglehold that the Merchant Master closed about the city. A single opportunity to wrest back control and to uncover whatever real plans Phylos harboured. If he failed, and if his brother Kas Vahl Zaxaar ever returned, then the daemon would tear the Varchinde to screaming pieces.

My poor people.
The thought was a thread of light in the darkness.
What will happen to you?

And they marched him, stumbling in silent darkness through stone corridors, a solemn tramp of feet echoing from the walls.

* * *

The hands brought Rhan to the scene of his final ruin, and they gave him a push.

Blind, he stumbled through twin doors, heavy and cold. A rising roar of sound hit him like a tide. He knew where he was – in many ways, this room was more familiar to him than his own skin.

This was what Tekisarri had given him; this was what the Gods had charged him to care for. His life had been spent in this room.

As other hands took the blindfold from him, though, he almost quailed.

In four hundred returns of his guardianship, he had never seen this many people in the Theatre of Nine.

The implications were sickening, but he could not find the thoughts to articulate them – he was overwhelmed by shouting, by the rising tiers of faces, by the mouths contorted in hate and loathing.

By the expressions of righteous fury.

He found himself lurching forwards. Unable to put his hands out to steady himself, he was almost on his knees.

For the first time in returns without measure, the great, cold theatre had life. It raged with energy, with anger and pride, with the burning-loyal soul of the Lord city. As Rhan’s eyes traced upwards across the people, perhaps looking for an end, looking for a face of hope, a single expression of support – Scythe? Penya? Dear Gods, Roderick? – he could see that there were soldiers, spear bearing and silent, standing in the alcoves in the half circle of the back wall.

Over them, the carved story of Fhaveon’s founding glittered, mocking, and he looked away.

At the table, eight of the Nine were gathered – the pale-faced Selana now in her father’s chair, upright and tiny amid the chaos. Her Council were unchanged, only Rhan’s seat was empty, his own carven likeness, ever plummeting, now seemed in outright scorn.

He took a pace towards it, purely out of reflex. It had been his seat for four hundred returns and he could not...

He had failed.

Failed Samiel, failed Tekisarri, failed the family Valiembor, failed his damned brother.

Will you miss me, Vahl, if I’m not here to fight?

But Vahl Zaxaar, it seemed, did not hear him.

Phylos rose to his feet in a billow of blood-fabric.

“There he is!”

Reaction spread from him like shock. The sea of shouting faces reddened with fervour, mouths wide, eyes flashing. A chant began at the back of the crowd.
“Rhan! Rhan! Rhan!”
Fists punched the air in unison.

For a moment, the shouts counterpointed the ghost memory of Demisarr’s final shriek, the feel of his wife’s lithe and furious body...

I did not do this!

His unheard cry was desperate with incomprehension.

Valicia herself stood like a wall, her arms folded and her expression stone. She had the courage to meet his gaze and face him down, and he knew that she would cast him from the city’s heights herself, if she could.

Then there were soldiers beside him. Hands on his arms propelled him forwards.

As he came fully into the bottom of the theatre, the crowds’ frenzy redoubled, shrieking and chanting. They were a mob, savage. The missiles started – fruit, spit, stones. There were faces he knew, lovers and friends, and they were jeering hatred.

They believed.

He lifted his chin in challenge and defiance – not to the people, but to his own despair.

I could not have done this!

A fruit pit struck his chest. He flinched. Another struck his shoulder, his ear. He almost lost his footing, but forced himself to stand. Briefly, he remembered the terrible plummet of his Fall through chaos, and wondered if it really could have been any worse than this.

Rack up the tankards, my brother. Perhaps I will be joining you after all.

One figure surged out of the teeming people, his shouting lost in the crowds’ roar, but his intention clear as he tried to hurl himself down onto the theatre’s floor. A jolt like lightning jarred through Rhan’s body as he saw the loathing on the young man’s face. He stopped, transfixed, tried to meet the man’s gaze, defend himself, deny this insane accusation.

He said, “Scythe...!”

But Scythe was caught by a soldier’s hand on his shoulder, efficient and ruthless. A moment later, the soldier had snatched the young man up and carted him away.

The crowd jeered and wailed.

Phylos held up his hands for silence.

Slowly, the tides of movement stilled. A child cried at the back and was hushed by a gentle murmur.

“This is Fhaveon,” Phylos said, “the might of the Varchinde. Built by Saluvarith, ruled by the First Lord Foundersson Tekisarri and by his sons and daughters for four hundred returns. We are the Grasslands’ Lord and guardian, the people of the plains look to us for hope, faith and terhnwood.

“And we cannot let them down.”

The crowd was quiet now, watching the Merchant Master as if transfixed. Rhan could feel that the room was growing oddly warm.

Sweating.

He shifted, oddly uneasy.

What?

“There is a legend, people of Fhaveon,” Phylos told them, “one we have all heard in the markets and bazaars. A tale that this city was built to face a daemon, that Saluvarith brought the white stone of the Archipelago here to the Varchinde and that he constructed a fortress, a great wall upon the water. He built a city of might to ensure that this daemon would never return.

“And the tale goes on. It tells that he was sent a champion, an immortal warrior to stand upon the city’s wall and watch always for her foe.

“We ask ourselves, people of Fhaveon, if this legend is true.”

The people were silent. The tale of Fhaveon’s construction was well known, but few treated it as anything more than a tavern-saga. In this world of trade and terhnwood, the word “daemon” had a ring of the ludicrous.

Phylos was smiling like a benefactor. Rhan was watching him now, unsure where this gambit was going.

The air was growing warmer.

The Merchant Master was still talking. “Fhaveon has stood proud for four hundred returns, unthreatened for lifetime after lifetime. And we have seen no
daemon.
” The word was scornful, with a tinge of threat.

Somewhere in Rhan’s heart, a worm of fear was burrowing, beginning to curl. The air was making his breath catch in his throat.

Don’t do this. Whatever you’re going to do, don’t do this...

The people were beginning to mutter, shifting in their seats. The Merchant’s smile spread to a grin full of teeth.

“My people, we stand at the edge of new beginning – of a time when we can finish the work that Adward began, when our very command of the terhnwood cycle can take control of the Varchinde entire. And I say to you – that the daemon is no
legend.
”

What? The air was close, humid. Under the brilliance of the white rocklights, people’s skin was beginning to glisten.

Phylos held his hands higher. “Wait! Heed me and I will explain! I say to you that this ‘daemon’ is propaganda! It is a story perpetuated by this –” he indicated Rhan and the susurration of the crowd grew louder “– this
man
–” the word was spat “– so he can soak up our comforts and our time and our wealth and our work and do
nothing.
”

The accusation was close enough to the truth to leave Rhan breathless. Something in him said,
No, it wasn’t like that, I’ve always...
But it was there, like a fibre-pin jabbing in his skin. If he had been fulfilling his mandate, he would have seen this coming, returns ago.

Phylos did not stop. “He is a lodestone and a drain upon us, a figure of indolence and luxury. Who can know what takes place under the roofs of his home? I say, that if there is a daemon, it is the daemon
sloth
, it is the daemon
idleness
, it is the daemon that keeps us from our crafthalls and tithehalls and farmlands and markets! This – creature – has believed that he is above the laws of this city! He has traded in substances we abhor, he has corrupted our youth, he has –” and here he paused, arms raised completely and blazing with red fabric and rising heat “– murdered the loved Lord of this city and taken his wife by force –”