Ecko Burning (42 page)

As Karine stared, hands resting on the wall of the tavern as if to draw comfort from the bricks, he stopped again, looking at something at his feet. When he crouched, his stance changed, his shoulders dropped, and he reached his hand out to touch something.

The gesture was absurdly gentle.

For a moment, he lowered his head, and something across his black-clad figure flickered like sorrow.

Without even knowing how she knew, Karine realised that he had found the cat.

A lump rose in her throat and she blinked.

Then he stood up, raised his gaze to the light.

And her heart froze solid in her chest.

* * *

He was no longer Roderick.

Not the Bard, not the Final Guardian, not the idealistic and slightly feckless witness of the world’s jumbled thoughts.

The name was ludicrous, comedic, inadequate. Everything he had ever been had been hooked out of him on barbs of pain, on the razor-sharp edges of an understanding that he had -willingly - traded his soul for. Down there in the darkness, in the deepest darkness of heart and mind, in a horror that he had no words to articulate, even now, he had found the very depths of his own insanity. He had found his beliefs, his ego, his memory and his understanding, and he had dragged the whole lot out into the bloody and painful open.

Dragged them screaming.

During the time he had been there, under Mom’s fingers and blades, she had been there for him and with him. She spoke words of comfort even as she carved out his skin, his throat, his vocal cords and his windpipe, even as she cut him right down to his spine.

And he had opened himself to it, let the pain and fear come, let her kiss him and tell him exactly what he would become, let her open his throat like a lover and coax from him silent screams of utter terror that no one would ever hear or care about.

This was what Ecko had lived through. Not only Ecko, but Thera, and who knew how many more? And he had submitted to it willingly, in order to understand, and to have the capacity to do one thing.

To
remember.

He knew now - he needed to
be
the world’s memory. He needed to live those memories, to be able to see and feel and touch them, he needed to hold them and be a part of them, and never let them go.

Down there, in the belly of the dark, as the layers of his skin had peeled back, he finally recognised what it was that he had seen in the water, so many returns ago, finally knew what the world truly feared - and how he could fight it.

The waterfall of the Ryll, where he had studied under the Guardians, had a sister, the Ilfe, the well of her memory. The Ilfe had been lost, and so the world’s memory had rotted with it, had mouldered and been forgotten. The soul of light had sunk beneath the waters of the eastern sea, and the Elementalists had faded. The Council in Fhaveon had laughed at the Powerflux, at Kas Vahl Zaxaar, at Rhan - they had taken notice only of themselves and terhnwood.

With his pain, he had bought the capacity to hold the world’s memory. To take it upon himself and to wield it.

But he had also bought something else.

A new power, a power that could shatter the Powerflux and bring down the very sky.

Once he had that memory, he could give it voice.

That was what Mom had given him, down there in the bowels of the dark.

She’d called it
Khamsin.

* * *

He held out a hand and said to her, “Come.”

Karine could find neither answer nor motion. She was flat against the old wall as though his very presence pushed her backward, as though the simple word he had spoken had enough force to flatten her into the bricks themselves.

She tried to say his name, but the question reached her lips and stopped, as if it were afraid.

He said to her, “Come.”

The word was a command, like nothing he had ever said before. His voice had changed, was firmer and stronger, almost metallic - it had complex layers of power, a thrum of presence that could bring down the very Kartiah. She shook her head, still unable to comprehend what he was even doing there. His eyes, the only part of him she could see between the hood and the scarf, were as cold as chipped stone.

She knew him - but she had no idea who he was.

He said to her, “Come.”

And this time, she couldn’t help herself. She went towards him as though called to her own ending, stood before him like some sort of crazed sacrifice. The devastation around them seemed somehow appropriate.

She found her voice, said, “What happened to the cat?”

It sounded ludicrous, when the building was dying.

He said, “She will stay and guard The Wanderer.” His voice was resolution, inevitability and courage, and a grief that went beyond anything she had ever heard or felt. “Take a moment and say your farewells. But be swift, the Count of Time is come for us.”

Karine caught a sob, couldn’t catch the second one and buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking. Her mind repeated, stupidly,
poor cat
, but there was so much more - this was the end, the final moments of The Wanderer, the tavern would fall and there was no way she could help or save it. This was wrong, all wrong. This man was not the tavern’s owner, not the sparkling-crazed passion of Roderick the prophet...

This was not happening.

But there was a closeness to the air like the sky in a storm, like a rise of thunderclouds, a swelling and heat that presaged a detonation.

“Why?” She wiped her face. The question could have been anything, everything, but he understood.

“She should not have come here.” His sorrow was vast. “In a moment, this will all be over.”

“But... Sera...”

“He stays. The balance is necessary.”

“What balance?”

Nothing was making sense. The building was shaking now, not just the stacks, but the floor, the ceiling, the wall behind her. As she turned and looked, the plaster ran with cracks from top to bottom and fragments began to fall like snow.

He said, “We go.”

He did not change his tone, place any emphasis on the words, but her feet moved as though he had pulled them. She found the strength to pause, say, “What happened to you?”

He looked at her with that same, silent flicker of sorrow. His faced was lined now, haggard, she could see, even under the hood. He looked like he’d been through a war.

He thought for a moment and then said, “I made a choice.”

“What choice?” The response was reflex, a whisper.

Carefully one of his long hands came up to the edge of the hood, the other to the scarf at his mouth. As he showed his face, Karine let out a wail.

She had no idea who he was.

Gone was his long blue-black hair, gone his sense of mischief, his humour. His eyes were cold, his head was shaven, there were cruel scars in his flesh. But his
throat...

Karine stepped back, tripped, fell. Without even realising it, she was pushing away from him on her hands and backside, sobbing still, scrabbling backwards to get away, to get
away...

His throat was alive. From the neck of his garment, to his chin, to his lower lip, was a thick mass of metal serpents, things that wove in and out of his flesh - as though his very vocal cords had attained a life of their own and been put on display. As he drew breath, they slid about one another, up to his ears, into his mouth; as he turned or moved or spoke, they shifted and writhed with him. They were his new voice made manifest, the coldness of his gaze, and they made her feel sick.

“Dear Gods...” she breathed.

He replaced the scarf and hood, said, “This is how it must be. We have a war to fight.”

As if in answer to the statement, the barrel beside her suddenly shattered, broken ribs and gushing liquid and a sharp shock of scent. It soaked her hands and clothing.

Pieces of the ceiling were starting to fall.

Momentarily, his eyes shattered - she could see a heave of pain and loss, a vast anguish she dared not even try to understand. Then it was gone, and the stone returned. He held his hand to her again, and this time she took it, stood up.

She was dripping with the Varchinde’s best malted spirits, the contents of the most precious barrel they had ever owned.

But it didn’t matter, not any more.

The tavern was dying around them, and they needed to go.

They came into the small harbour town as the clouds rose to swallow the sun and the sky thickened with evening.

The streets were silent, grey and empty, whirlwinds of debris scudded across the cobbled stone like figments. The rocklights in the doorways were streaked with old dirt, illumination blurred out into the road.

There was no sign that anyone still lived here.

Jayr suppressed the urge to shiver, turned to make sure Ress had properly fastened the front of his cloak. He was hunching along behind her, fixed only on his own horrors. He was tired and his mutters ghosted like shadows across the air.

Poor Ress. Since leaving Fhaveon, he’d been a man demented, determined and focused on the journey that lay ahead of them. Even on the edge of exhaustion, he became agitated if they stopped, twitched and muttered constantly. Now, his eyes flickered from doorway to doorway as if he expected the gloom to rise up and claw at them.

Frankly,
Jayr reckoned, looking round them,
it might just cursed-well do that.

Unease breathed cold across her skin, prickling chillflesh. She rubbed at her scarred arms, bit into a nail, spat out the shred. She was looking for a sheltered place to stop, somewhere to get Ress out of the scattering threat of the rain while she went to look for signs of life...

...or of anything else.

But this place was deader than an overworked slave. The paint on the closed shutters was peeling, faded with salt and light.

Ress said, quite clearly, “Kazyen. No time, no time, no time, no
time...
”

Jayr ignored him.

Facing the weary buildings, the harbour was cradled in two long, curving stone arms, one ending in a lighthouse, the other in some crumbling grey statue, now a rain-misted blur against the grey. The fishercraft sat high in the water, patiently waiting; a row of houseboats offered faded, painted signs and sprawlingly untended plants.

In Fhaveon, the old scribe had said they’d find passage here, a boatmaster or fishercraft prepared to take them where they needed to go.

But it looked pretty cursed unlikely from here.

Unable to help herself, Jayr looked out across the water, eastwards at the faintly dark stripe along the horizon. It had been there, shadowing them, all the way over the wooded hills that separated Teale from Fhaveon.

Ress followed her gaze and his agitation increased. He shook her shoulder, his mouth working round words of urgency and fear. “No time, no time, no time...”

“We’ll get there somehow, I promise,” Jayr told him. “If I have to row you all the damned way.”

“Kazyen,” Ress said, now sounding on the verge of tears. He looked round at the harbour, shook his head. Then he brightened, pointing. “Look! The crustaceans are safe!”

“What?”

He pointed again, his face lit with wonder, a child’s gentle smile. There, at the edge of the harbour’s wall, the hanging wicker-woven cages were door-loose and empty. Whatever beasties had been caught in there had long gone.

“Gods’ sakes.” Jayr was scanning the harbour, wondering if any of the boats would take them across the strait, if she could handle one without help. She knew less than nothing about water - currents and double-tides, something stupidly complicated about the moons. For a moment, fears clamoured at her, reaching with cold hands and trying to bring her down, but she stood, fists clenched and solid, until they subsided to resentful muttering and left her alone.

She was Jayr the -

Oh for Gods’ sakes, Syke and his nicknames. The Banned were long gone. They would never go home, she understood that now. She was Jayr the Damned, or Jayr the Damned Fool.

“One of us is howling loco, you know that?” She grabbed Ress’s elbow and pulled them both under the front of a building, out of the wet. “Didn’t the scribe say there was another fishing town, further north?”

“Must go. Now.” Ress yearned out over the harbour, out towards that ever-present shadow.
“Please!”

His mouth contorted as if he was trying not to cry.

Then, in the corner of her vision, movement caught Jayr’s eye.

What the rhez?

Up there, high above them on the wooded slopes overlooking the small town - there was something moving, shifting oddly in the half-light. There was some kind of empty stone theatre up there, rocklit against the darkening sky - but the motion was an uneasy seethe, and lower down.

Was there something in the
woods
?

Several times as they’d followed the roadway, Jayr had felt that they were being trailed, or watched - but she’d seen nothing. Even the pirates had packed their little pirate bags and gone home.

No, she wasn’t jumping at figments, there
was
something up there, something that roiled through the trees like...

Her heart lurched in her chest - a sudden spike of nervousness that sent her body thrumming, ready. She was tensed, staring.

“Ress,” she said carefully. “Can you see -?”

He ignored her, still staring out at the water. “Must. Go!”

“Ress...” Jayr pulled back into the shelter of the building’s doorway as the rain came in harder, slicing sideways across the harbourfront. Ress looked up at it, blinked, opened his mouth to catch it and then gave a sudden, odd laugh as his hair soaked through and darkened, plastering back from his face.

Jayr pulled him back out of the deluge, swearing. She was struggling to make out the hillside through the shining grey blur.

The figure that came round the front of the doorway to speak to her almost made her jump out of her skin.