Ecko Rising (58 page)

The third one was older, wilier. With the buckler strap still over his knuckles, he had both hands on his spear shaft and danced backwards, keeping Sera at its point. Sera glanced up once, caught the eyes of Karine in the doorway, and advanced, forcing the man to retreat.

The slam of the cosh made the soldier’s eyes roll back and his knees fold.

For a moment, the doorman flickered a grim smile.

The other three had turned and come for the Bard, spreading into a loose line.

Sera took two running steps and launched his spear, javelinlike, at the sky.

It arced, spiralling lazily, terhnwood shaft glittering, then began to fall, gathering speed. It hit one of them clean in the back of the neck and flopped him forwards like a child’s doll. The other two glanced, hesitated.

Sera reached for another spear.

But the poignard was metal in Roderick’s hand and there was still blood at its hilt.

He’d killed one person already. He was stinking and tired and filthy and he
itched.

He’d had about enough.

“What the rhez do you think you’re doing?”

His voice was a challenge in the still evening air. Birds lifted, cawing alarm. Barefoot and uncaring, he strode across the broken roadways to where the two members of the tan now looked at each other and backed up, wary. Behind them, Sera had picked up a second spear but he was waiting, watching.

With the sunlit might of the Lord city rising behind him, and The Wanderer’s lure in front, the Bard had a tangible authority – and he was at the outermost limits of his tolerance.

His voice resounded. “The man behind you can rip you into little pieces in less time than I can tell it. So I suggest that you pick up your weapons, and your comrades, and you get your backsides the rhez back into the city. And when you go, you tell the Merchant Master that Rhan may have fallen, but that I am still here. You tell Phylos that I know who he is, and I know what he’s done, and I know
exactly
what he’s sold his soul for.

“And you tell him there will be a
reckoning
!”

The two soldiers were retreating as the Bard strode forwards.

Behind them, there was a sudden scuffle in the tavern doorway and Karine rounded on something that the Bard couldn’t see. She had fury and courage, was swearing with vicious, high-pitched anger. As Sera turned for the tavern door, she sprang at something and was gone from sight.

The Bard raised his voice. “Go! Or help me Gods I’ll send that promise back with your
heads
!”

For a moment, he thought they’d say something, defy him, but they were backing away so fast they were almost stumbling and, when he twitched his hand and let the poignard catch the sunlight, they gathered their legs and their spears and they fled.

Roderick reached the doorway to see a body slumped across a broken table and Sera, with a doorman’s long practice, closing his fist in the collar of another and spanging his lolling head repeatedly off the wall.

Karine was stood with her hands on her hips, indignant and uninjured, chastising him about the mess. Silfe’s brown eyes peered wide from behind the bar.

Roderick the Bard was home.

* * *

“They will come for us,” Sera said. “We do not have long.”

There had been hugs and tears and questions and explanations – and there had been a cold and glorious moment with his head under the water pump in the back yard. Eight days had passed since the ill-fated Council meeting, eight days since Phylos had taken the Council.

Now, standing at the window with his hair still wet, looking at the sunset as it lit the plains to a huge, burning light, Roderick’s righteous fury was evaporating into a more rational fear.

They were outcasts, criminals.

Murderers.

Behind him, Sera was turfing their unwelcome guests out of the doorway and Karine was picking up a scatter of plates and leather mugs from the long tables. Silfe sat quiet, an odd, avian creature perched on her arm. It was a lean thing, hook beaked and featherless, its wingspan massive. Around one dew-clawed ankle, it had a terhnwood band that marked it as the property of the Lord Nivrotar.

Silfe stroked the bretir’s ugly head and it burbled at her. They were smart things and affectionate, like both nartuk and chearl, alchemically bred by long ago Tusienic scholars.

Alchemy. Old skills, like old lore, like old might and Elementalism – all of it, now awakening.

He understood now. In the rousing of the sleeping Monument, so the Powerflux itself stirred to life – and so other things stirred with it.

But the nartuk, the half-man, half-horse monsters, these had come before the Monument had risen. Somehow, somewhere, there was an alchemical scholar that was using ancient skills...

...was that scholar Vahl Zaxaar himself? Or was it something else?

The floor juddered again, sending prickles of unease down Roderick’s spine.

Sera said, “There are lights moving towards us. Their formation suggests the Council has called a considerable force. I suspect they will not be lenient.”

“You should leave,” Roderick said, turning from the window. “This is on my head alone –”

“Oi.” Karine’s reprimand was stern. “This is my home and I’m not calling last orders ’til they drag me out of here by my hair –”

This time, the floor shook harder, rattling the pottery in the wine racks. The rumble was longer, they felt it through their boots and in their hearts.

There was no mistaking what it meant.

The Bard lifted his head, the faintest whisper of humour flickered through his blood, chasing the darkness of his mood out into the last of the sun. “Silfe,” he said softly. “Send the bretir back to Amos with a message for Nivrotar. Tell her to keep Ress of the Banned safe and as well as she is able – I must see him.”

The floor was shivering now, the movement making the weapons on the walls rattle against beams and brickwork.

Roderick said, “Where’s Kale?”

Karine shrugged, almost apologetically. “We locked him in the privy. We sort of had to. I guess I’d better see if he’s calmed down yet.”

“I suspect,” the Bard said, “that he’s going to thank us. In the long run.” Both his grin and his agitation were growing now. He was on his feet, his fingertips on the warm wood of the table, his faith and hope rising and his breathing tight. “Do we not trust in the wisdom of The Wanderer to defend itself? It seems Phylos cannot have us – not yet.”

As if in agreement, the building shook harder, the floor lurching and making them grab for upright beams and table edges.

Silfe stumbled, but she reached the doorway and loosed the huge wings of the bretir past Sera and out into the last of the light. For a moment, it was a shadow, rising into the air, and then it turned south and faded from sight.

Bretir were enormously swift. For a long moment, Roderick watched where it had gone.

The world’s fear comes!

Sera said, “The force will not reach us in time. We are free. But we should not return here without an army.”

The Bard chuckled. “I’m not sure I can muster such a thing – but think of this. If Ecko was right, and all of this is just a pattern, endlessly repeating itself, then this building is what changes that pattern, what adds the thrill of the random to an otherwise predictable future. If there is a pattern, then we live on its outside. We are The Wanderer, and Rhan was right – they cannot touch us.”

Karine said, “What in the world are you talking about? You damned crazed prophet.”

“They are coming to try.” Sera’s hands were clenched in anticipation of a second fight. “If we are going to move –”

The tavern twisted, spun, and winked out of existence.

30: MEGALOMANIAC

                    
FHAVEON, THE MONUMENT

Somehow, the location of The Wanderer wasn’t even a surprise.

Like some surreal and hastily erected film set, the tavern had plonked itself slap-bang in the Monument’s centre. The great, grey stones, now lightless, were tumbled about its outer walls. Its doors were open, its windows shining with warmth and light and welcome – it looked both wondrous and shallow, like a tourist attraction.

Seeing it, Ecko knew he was floundering, that this reality was twisting round him. After the glory of the Sical, its temptation and validation, after the superboosting of his adrenaline, he felt as if it was wrong – as if, should he just lean forwards and push, the whole damned lot would go over like some sun-cracked billboard, the grass and sky with it.

And he would be home.

So I won, already. Rescued the girl. Toasted the bad guy. Blew the shit outta the base. Can I go now?

In the foregarden, Roderick the Bard was standing with his hair wet and his arms folded across his chest. Something about him had changed, some touch of steel in his jaw, some cold light in his amethyst eyes.

“Ecko!” As they walked down the bank towards the building, he came to meet them, his expression lit with a fierce, flaring hope. For a moment, Ecko thought he was going to be embraced and backed the fuck up, hands spread wide. The sign creaked, predictably, over his head.

Way too surreal.

He blinked and had to make an effort to speak.

“Don’t even think it.”

But the Bard was laughing. He had spread his hands wide and he was laughing at the very sky, at the stones, the batshit moons. He laughed as though nothing could ever threaten him again.

He was a barking loony.

“And here we are,” Roderick said, “in the very Monument itself, rescued in the nick of time. And here, we meet again, on the far side of tragedy, and with the world changed beyond recognition. I don’t know what wonder has occurred to bring us here, but I trust in The Wanderer and I’m glad we’re all safe. Come in, be welcome.” He nodded at the others, gave Triqueta a momentary, slightly confused second glance. “You’re weary, injured –”

“Nice timing,” Ecko said. Looking up at the windows, the roof where he’d sat as the tavern first moved, he couldn’t wrap his head round it. His head was too full of the Sical, of Maugrim, of home. He heard himself say, “How’s it going?”

“What’s the phrase you use? It’s all ‘gone to hell in a hardcart’.” The Bard was still laughing. He looked about them at the surrounding stones. One of them had actually tumbled through the garden wall, a visual distortion that was making Ecko’s sense of disorientation worse.

“Yet we’re fortunate, in many ways,” Roderick said, “We live, and we’re still free.”

“Free.” Ecko snorted. “That’ll be the day.”

“I’ve missed you too.”

“I’m touched.”

As the Bard gestured them inside, Ecko ducked through the door and his skin betrayed him. As if his outer self, at least, acknowledged the tavern’s existence, it was shifting, changing – splotching from the shadows of the Monument to the rich browns of the building’s greeting and comfort.

He found a table, crouched there at the room’s centre. Warily, he eyed the walls, the artefacts, the weapons, the shields. It looked fake, like it would scorch and burn through any second, like the whole thing would dissolve into smoking, charred holes.

“Well!” Karine was behind the bar, arms folded beneath her breasts and a look of mock disapproval on her face. “And what time do you call this?”

“Dinner time,” Ecko told her, reflexively. He managed a grin.

She tutted. “Get your feet off the table.”

The others were coming further into the building, looking around them as though they, too, could not believe they were here.

“We’re back,” Triqueta said. “We’re really back. We’ve walked the halls of the Rhez itself, but we’re here. For love of every
God
, someone get me an ale.”

“Make that two.” Chuckling, Redlock unslung his pack, dropped it, looked for a chair. He carefully felt the ruin of his nose. Then, with a deep, determined breath, he crunched it back into place, swore. Blinked water from his eyes.

Behind them, Amethea had fallen onto the bench under the window. She sat with her head in her hands, unmoving.

The very last of the sun blazed silver from her hair.

“Ecko, Triqueta,” Roderick said. “I cannot express how much your return means to me – to all of us.” Karine snorted, grinned. “I understand you have many tales and I am... more than eager to listen – but I fear you are weary beyond endurance. I will aim to be patient.” He glanced up as Kale emerged from the kitchen with a steaming leather jug and a handful of mugs. When the Bard turned back, his expression was all mischief. “If I can. There is so much I must tell you also. The world has changed around us. Radically so.”

“Changed?” The word was thrown like a stone. Amethea looked at him, her pale face in shadow, her navy eyes dark as the sky. “The Monument is fallen. The Powerflux is awake. Maugrim may be dead, but...” As Kale silently poured her a mug of herbal, she wrapped her hands around it as though it were the most precious thing in the world. “We’ve won a fight – but that’s all. This is only the beginning.”

“We’ve won more than you know,” Roderick said. “If Roviarath still stands, then, I think, at least half of the plan has failed.”

Amethea said, aghast,
“Half?”

His smile was oddly ironic, “As you say, this is only the beginni–”

Without warning, the night was shattered by a distant bellow of thunder.

The taproom gaped and then scrabbled, going for weapons and windows, calling for answers. The noise was loud, the sudden roar of something gunned to pain and fury. It was abrupt, and harsh, and close. It dropped a note, another.

The mica in the windows shook.

“It’s the Sical,” Amethea said softly. Her herbal tankard slid through her fingers to bounce from the floor, liquid splashing a great, dark stain in the sawdust. Her face haunted, she’d turned to the window behind her. “We can’t let this happen, we can’t!”

Roderick mouthed,
Sical
, confused.

Triqueta had sprung to the bench by Amethea, in her hand a short, terhnwood blade she’d swiped from the wall. Her face was sharp, eager. Redlock rose to his feet with his brown eyes blazing. He drew his axes, then dissolved into coughing, blood staining the back of his hand.