Ecko Burning (20 page)

Stepping past him in some bizarre act of symmetry, Lugan’s boots hit the floor of “The Wanderer” with a one-two thump. Oculars spinning, targeting, analysing, he surveyed its warm, wooden interior, took a deep, smokeless breath.

As his eyes adjusted, he saw properly the girl on the floor, the back of her skull shattered, her eyes and mouth still open in shock. He’d seen such things before, but this one... She was a slender little thing, maybe sixteen, and there was a tiny piece of pale-pink ribbon tied round one wrist. He wondered where she’d come from...

How he would ever fucking apologise.

Shit.

Swallowing hard now, he ran a callused hand through his beard.

“Awright,” he said. Then to Fuller,
Go Furball.
He dropped his dog-end and stood on it, leaving an ash stain on the floor. “Look, mate. I don’t know who you are, where the fuck you came from, or whether I’m just havin’ the biggest motherfuckin’ trip of my life. But that shit?” He nodded at the girl. “Ain’t funny. An’ I’ll fix what I can.”

The goth turned, nodded. “Karine,” he said to the woman, “leave Sera with me - please find Kale.”

* * *

Walking the building cellars to roof was not a short task, but its conclusion was gradually clear - the cook was missing.

Karine had found his last moments - deep gouge marks in the kitchen doorframe, repeated and desperate as if he’d been scrabbling, trying to hold on. The door itself was open, but it showed only the small garden at the rear of the building, now flooded with more of the harsh white light.

The kitchen floor was covered in splinters.

Looking at the marks of the struggle, remembering the awful, fading howl, the Bard felt his heart shrinking. He’d no idea if Kale was loose in Ecko’s great grey London, or if he’d simply fallen and was lost somewhere outside the Count of Time.

He had lost one member of his team today and almost lost a second.

And enough was enough.

When the Bard returned to the taproom, he found Lugan behind the bar, eyeing some of the barrels with curiosity. Sera had gone; a sheet covered Silfe.

Without looking round, Lugan said, “Your bloke’s in prep for surgery. There ain’t no one else in ’ere - I could’ve told you that much.”

“How do you know?” Roderick said.

Something in his voice made Lugan turn to look at him with an odd expression in his eyes.

“Info, mate. Communication. It’s everywhere, all the time.” He flashed a grin, teeth stained and yellow. “You just ’ave to know how to get it.”

For a moment, the weight of the comment missed him. Roderick said, “Then Kale -”

“’E’s not ’ere. You should’ve asked.”

And then the Bard realised the sheer enormity of what Lugan had just said. His system shot through with adrenaline, as powerful as anything of Ecko’s. His stomach roiled.

He touched the thought like an injury, tentative:
It’s everywhere. All the time. You just have to know...

He found he was shaking. He couldn’t speak. He was staring down at the stained sheet that covered Silfe, at the shape of her body under the fabric, at the hard shadows cast by the light.

Ecko had told him and he’d not understood the might of it, the sheer scope of the power they wielded...

Communication. Everywhere. All the time.

By the Ryll! This... He had spent his
life
looking for this. For lore. For answers. For a way to
understand.

Everywhere. All the time.

For -

Cutting his tumble of wonder dead, Karine said, “Then do you know where he is? We’ve got to find him. Kale’s” - her voice turned plaintive - “Kale’s dangerous.”

“Dangerous ’ow?” Lugan chuckled. “’E gonna jab someone with a big sword?”

“Don’t jest,” Karine told him. “Kale’d tear you to bits.” Lugan’s chuckle gained a hint of guffaw.

Roderick shook himself; his mind was still reeling but the thought of Kale loose in the city was critical, immediate.

He said, “We need to find him. Before any harm comes to him - or anyone else. Karine, you should stay with The Wanderer, with Sera, with Silfe...” His voice held the name, just for a moment. “I need to find Kale. Lugan, I think that you and your lore should come with me.”

Lugan blinked, shrugged huge shoulders. “Any second now,” he said conversationally, “everything’s going to slide the fuck sideways. There’s gonna be a seething multi-colour of Mathmos-lamp background and I’ll be rollin’ one more before bed...”

“We must find Kale,” Roderick said. “And you - your communication, your information - you need to help. You need to find him before he causes trouble that cannot be undone, before I lose anyone else. Before your Pilgrim finds something it will not understand.” His expression said,
Please.

Something hit home. Lugan looked at him sharply, chewed his lip for a moment, then seemed to reconsider.

“Awright,” he said at last. “You wanna do this? Let me take you by the ’and an’ lead you through the streets of London. Someone’s mind is gonna get a fuckin’ change.”

* * *

“Bollocks.”

Lugan spat the dog-end from the corner of his mouth and said, very softly, “Walk with me, quick and quiet. Keep your eyes off the sky. And don’t say a fuckin’ word.”

I don’t understand...

His hand on Roderick’s elbow was cold stone, as uncompromising as his attitude, as the jut of his bearded jaw. Already spinning from the sight, the sounds, the smells, the strangeness, the great city’s assault on his senses, the Bard did as he was told. What choice did he have?

This was London. Ecko’s home. It clamoured and it stank and it overpowered his senses. It grew around him - upwards and inwards, it grew into the sky like some vast glass-and-metal canker. It was too big, too much. It bewildered him and he could only cling to his confusion and hope to survive.

“We gotta lose this bitch,” Lugan said. “Stay close.”

On the other side of the roadway, there was some sort of disturbance, flashing lights and guards with arms outstretched; strips of fluttering fabric sealing off a part of the road. Over it, flying things hovered. People drifted past, showing little curiosity - between their movements, the Bard thought he saw a man slumped, dark blood spreading from his fallen body.

Fear flooded his mouth. He only the saw the man briefly, but he knew who it was...

Kale?

“Move!” He only realised he’d stopped when he felt a tug on his sleeve. He stumbled in Lugan’s wake like a blind man.

Kale?

It was too much to take in, unreal. Silfe had gone, and now Kale. Out here, impossible, in the road, stone and winding streets. Claustrophobia. Coughing. Pulling on his sleeve. Something following them. And then, suddenly, they came out from between the crowded, crazed buildings and there was a river. Wide and slow and filthy, but a river nonetheless.

His thoughts reeling, the Bard tried to stop.

Please do not run on the Millennium Bridge.

But the faceless, pointless monotone seemed to speak at him alone; it surrounded him, closed him in, preyed upon his ears. He couldn’t think through the noise. It shut his throat and filled his mind with -

“Dammit, move!”

Spray can make the surface slippery. Please do not run...

Propelled by the man’s huge, stained hand, Roderick blundered, still in shock. He was crazed, tensed, choking, a tumbling mote at the centre of colossal impossibility. How...?

Even if he asked the questions, the answers would make no sense. And why could he not breathe?

Spray can make the surface slippery...

Lugan didn’t let him slow down. Their boots rang in rhythm on the slender metal span. The people before them jostled them blankly, uncaring, unspeaking. They bore themselves like the weight of the sky pressed them down. They muttered emptily, lost to Kazyen, as Lugan elbowed them out of the way.

“It’s following us from the accident we passed. We stay in the crowd, it can’t touch us. We need to lose this fucker. Like now.”

The accident we passed...
His thoughts reeled.
How does it know who we are?

He couldn’t grasp it, it was as strange as the sky, the water, the air, the colourless, blank-eyed populace. As strange as the bridge beneath their feet.

Metal. In the midst of his reeling bafflement, a question. How can there be this much metal?

He tripped. Lugan pushed him urgently on. The blonde man glanced back repeatedly, blue lights flickering like fire-sparks at the corner of his eyes.

So familiar!

But the Bard stumbled blindly, hanging tightly to his self-control while the world spun round him, questions unanswered. The water was brown, strewn with garbage, and it stank. The city’s air was dense, choking-close, the cloud so low he could almost have touched it. Even here, it was smothering, too hot, thick and grey, somehow unhealthy; it tasted wrong. It ached in his lungs and he struggled to keep up, to draw breath. To comprehend.

Lugan muttered tightly, “Quit daydreamin’ and shift your arse.” He gave a wicked, half-threatening aside. “Unless you wanna swim?”

The water below them seemed devoid of life - only the boats that ripped up its surface, the desperate that combed its grey-pebbled beaches. For a fleeting moment, he wondered what they sought.

But Lugan was still pushing, tension in every line and movement.

And the grip on his arm did not slacken.

At the bridge’s end, they passed a bright stall selling roasting foodstuffs, the smell rich, almost too sweet. His stomach turned, throat still full of nausea and tension.

Lugan shot at him, “If you’re gonna puke, make it fast - an’ make sure it’s in the water.”

Behind them, coming across the bridge, there was a flash of blue. Brilliant, azure blue. A cloak hem, the billow of a long skirt...?

The Bard lurched into motion once more. The colour faded into the grey and was gone.

“Keep your ’ead down and as many people between you an’ it as you can. Fucks up the pheromone trace. “Shit!”

As they left the metal bridge behind them, a barrier lay across their path - a thoroughfare of some sort, noisy, acrid and black. At its edge, the people had packed into an obedient block, controlled to docility by an incomprehensible system of lights and markings.

One of the blue-lit air vehicles - “drones” - buzzed them like an outsized insect and was gone.

Such chaos; such rigid order! It was all he could do not to claw at his own throat, tear open his windpipe in an effort to find clean air, space.
I have to breathe!

But Lugan didn’t stop. He jostled his way to the front, agitated, eyes on the light that commanded thought and movement.

“It’s a ‘sniffer’ - hi-tech tracker. Can pick up your pheromones at ten metres, body-’eat signature at five and the spit from your breath at two. Short version? That thing gets up close and personal, it’s gonna know all my secrets. Everything I got on record.” He gave a brief grin, but it faded just as quickly. “But why the fuck is it followin’ us?”

Communication. Everywhere. All the time.

The Bard’s thoughts rolled like stones, sending ripples through his tension - his need for information was so strong it hurt. Sera’s life, Kale’s death, the life of the tavern itself -

The flicker of azure was closer.

“Don’t stand gawping!” Lugan thumped his shoulder. “Drone gets a zap of your eyeballs, you’re bagged.” Insanely, the big blonde man was grinning, tight and whetted through his beard. “C’mon, you fucker, change.”

On a small tower by the roadside, lights flicked colour. Obediently, the crowd surged into the road.

Lugan and the Bard were carried at the front of the wave.

The azure flash was at the back.

They had more room now, and they moved more quickly, dodging the incoming people and staying ahead of the swell.

Buildings rose ahead of him, carven stone, impossible glass. Unseen in the bustle, sudden steps tripped him to a stumble. The crowd shifted and muttered, but they parted for Lugan like the tall grass of the Varchinde.

The grass Roderick had left dying behind him.

“St Paul’s,” Lugan said. “Take a left - an’ let’s move it.”

With still no idea where they were going, Roderick tumbled helplessly in his wake.

“She’s still with us,” Lugan said. “Bitch is right up my fuckin’ arse.”

Then, ahead of them, a high cathedral, a stern rise of scrubbed-clean stone that stood domed and pale against the grim and overheated sky. Upon it, weathered statues stared blindly outwards, uncaring of the sea of people below.

It was old, and beautiful - and it was soul-empty.

Kazyen.

As they pushed around its huge stone flank, he saw that the massive double doors were sealed closed against the tide of the lost. Instead, bright banners hung from tall stone pillars, vulgar and out of place. They bore the emblem of a man crouched under a heavy pack and were emblazoned, “Be Valiant. Be a Pilgrim”.

Pilgrim.

Lugan was using his height and mass to carve through the crowd like an axe. The splash of azure was still behind them; here, there, somewhere, and closing.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,
fuck!”
Lugan muttered. “What does it take?”

The monotone spoke over him, unctuous and smooth.
Welcome to St Paul’s Cathedral. Please do not touch or deface Cathedral property. Cathedral attendants are on hand to ensure your visit is pleasant and trouble free. Welcome to St Paul’s Cathedral...

“Fuller, I need Collator!” A moment later, Lugan said, again, “
Fuck!
”

Just as Roderick wondered who he was talking to, he half turned and spilled swift words as if trying to explain.

“Collator’s down, Fuller can’t get drone coverage - ’e’s in the system, but ’e can’t do it alone. City security’s like a coked-up pro, it’s all over ’im.” Another glance, another surge of speed. “No net, we’re on our own.”

The words were baffling, but the name - “Collator”. It was the world-builder, the thing that Ecko had said was controlling how his reality unfolded.