Ecko Endgame (15 page)

He said again, “Must… get up… walk…”

Jayr glanced at the fallen Penya, took a step forwards to defend her.

“Who’s out there?” Her voice had echoes of her Kartian training – it reeked of challenge.

Could a sound smell? To Ress, it smelled like eagerness.

Then something said, “Go? Ah, young one, this is Rammouthe. There is no egress from here.”

And Nothing is more powerful…

Ress pressed his back to the stone behind him, cutting his own shape from the ghost-light. The voice seethed with smoke and shadow. He couldn’t see the speaker, but there were footsteps, weary and dragging, sliding hard across the pebbles.

The presence felt… like age and hunger, like patience beyond the Count of Time, like power. Like
eagerness.

Jayr said, “Hold. You move again, I’ll take your damned head off.” Whatever it was, her courage was as absolute as his certainty.

“Will you now?” A different voice, from another angle, received a series of supporting chuckles. “And how will one
young
as you,” the word was pure appetite, “manage that?”

They were surrounded.

Ress found he was trembling, somewhere between exaltation and need.
Must… get up… walk…
They had to move onwards, and yet the memories were there, telling him what now stood in their way.

The word Kas meant
fallen.

Into the darkness, Ress said, “You’re prisoners. Fallen in ruins.
Caught
.”

Jayr was a silent blaze of question:
What are you doing?

“The Gods punished us twice.” The words were a sneer. Ress couldn’t see the speaker, though the presence was like smoke on his face. More voices joined the litany, a chorus of ridicule echoing from the rock.

“We fell for pride, but were trapped for warfare. Have you come to free us, old man?”

“Tease us? Tempt us with the light?”

“Poor madman, thinking he can speak to us.”

“Maybe he brings a message? A call to arms?”

“He’s too late for that.”

“Are you our scout, mortal, here to lead us at last to the sky? To a final victory? To freedom?”

“We’ll carry you to a new glory, little man, the Varchinde will be ours by midwinter.”

“By midwinter!”

The words rebounded, whispers upon whispers, crowding the dark space and pushing under his skin like burrowing insects. Whatever else the waiting Kas had lost, their fear was still smothering, choking.
Are you our scout, mortal?

Jayr took a step forward, scree sliding. “I’m Jayr the Infamous – and I know where you are and I can take you to pieces. Back up, and leave us alone.”

They were playing with her. “Ah, such energy!”

“Such
youth
!”

“Give us your time.”

“We hunger, we’ve waited so
long
.”

“We must have time, time to revel in the new destruction.”

“And then we’ll take all the time we need.”

Laughter came from the walls like steam, like the touch of thin hands.

Beside where Penya lay, a single gleam of yellow moonlight had fought its way down to the floor. It was weak, but it touched the fallen woman with a hint of forgotten promise – far above, the sky was still there. Ress lifted his face to feel the wind, but the space about him was sullen, and the air was still.

In the gloom, a shadow moved. Shapes shifted beside it. Ress looked back at the darkness.

And recoiled.

The Kas that came towards him was not the monster he’d been expecting – not some vast saga-beast of wings and flame. It was aged, tired, gaunt-faced, crack-skinned and thin. Its muscles were wasted, and hung from its withered frame like old rope. Its hair was a smoulder, a wreath of smoke that moved about its face, and its eyes burned cold with starvation.

Behind it, he could see the vast stone ruin that was the citadel – the thing the Bard had come seeking, and had failed to find.

Ress spewed words, as if he were flailing. “No time! No time! Must…
walk…
”

But the creature curled its lip. “Do you defy us then, little man? Do you pity our condemnation? Our damnation? Vahl promised us, and we will be free.” It came forwards until it could lean over him, overpowering, face to face, eyes of hunger and madness. “We are strong, now. You should envy us!”

“Envy?” The creature’s body was so parchment-thin Ress could’ve reached out and crushed it, even with his old and scratched hands. “We must walk, we must!”

Behind it, others were moving. They came close, began to spread out. Jayr stood like a tower. Penya lay like death.

And the Kas
hungered.

Unassailable, Jayr snorted at them. “I’m not afraid of you. Whatever you are. Get any closer, you’ll lose an eye.”

“Ah, little warrior.” The creature leaning over Ress crouched down and touched Penya where she lay, its smile merciless. “You can’t threaten what you don’t understand.” Around it, they closed in tighter, their hunger smothering all light. “We need the time – we’re almost free!”

“The time comes again.”

“Every desire sated – we’ve been promised!”

Ress watched as Penya shrivelled, aged, and was dust.

He shuddered in horror, wrapped his hands over his mouth.

Then there was another creature somehow behind them. Its bone-thin hands closed on his shoulders. Hands were reaching for Jayr too, greedy and clawing – the creatures were everywhere, draining the strength right out of their skin.

No time.

Ress felt his bones shrivel, felt his skin dry and crack, felt his hair thin and wisp away.

And the creature’s voice was soft, sensual, on the creasing skin of his face. “Our time comes at last, little man. Samiel no longer cares, the Gods have forgotten us. No more exile, no more starvation. We will be free.

“And then we will rage across the sky.”

The streets of the Lord city fell downwards into desolation.

In many places the roadways stood empty, bereft of life and hope, torn to devastation by the stone creatures that had ripped from the walls, and by the fighting that had come in the wake of Phylos’s rise to power. Garbage blew though empty marketplaces; the fountains stood silent, their water fouled, the crystal trees dark, their branches broken.

At the city’s outermost limits, Death was looting the corpses.

Uncaring of his surroundings, the figure of Death was smaller than you might have expected, and lacking the traditional cadaver beneath his black wool cloak. He had no scythe – instead, he bore a single terhnwood blade that glistened at its edge.

It seemed though, the Grim Reaper’s luck had upped and done a runner.

“Chrissakes, the vultures’ve been through here. These guys’re picked cleaner than a Saturday night pisshead.”

“Then perhaps we should leave?”

Death had a companion. A tall man, austere, clad head to foot in peculiar black garb with a hood over his head and his face covered. His voice held an odd thrum of subdued power, like the strings of an instrument.

The smaller figure cackled. “Yeah, right. Like we don’t know what’s waitin’ for us – we’ve seen it already.” He moved onto the next fallen corpse, this one a woman, her throat slit and gaping and crusted, her skin bloated and pale.

“We need numbers, deployment.” The thrum grew louder, a hint of annoyance. “You can line your pouches another time.”

“Sure as fuck can’t line ’em out here.” The woman’s belt was empty: anything she’d been carrying had long gone. Besides, something had been eating her and she was starting to really stink. “Okay, okay, we’re outta here – though I gotta question before we go.” Under the cowl, Death’s eyes and teeth were black as nightmare. “If I’m Death, now, then which one’re you? You ain’t exactly Famine and you sure as shit ain’t War – reckon you’re Pestilence’s little brother, Annoying Personal Itch.”

The cloaked figure turned back to the empty roadway, his grin unholy. “Okay, let’s get this over with.”

Carefully, they moved onwards though the lower streets of the broken city.

Down here, the roads were dark. There were no rocklights remaining, and the moons didn’t penetrate the rough patchwork of roofs. Leaving the Bard at ground level, Ecko went carefully up the side of a building and began to run the rooftops, his cloak moving with him, though sodden with rainwater and heavier than the one he’d lost.

Heavier, his mottled ass – the damn thing was clumsy as a drunken teen, but it wasn’t like he’d gotten a choice.

Up here, the moons made his progress awkward – their cross-hatching meant that no side of a roof was completely in shadow – but hell, this shit was like being at home. There were chimneys to crouch beside, flat roofs to race along, sloping tiles to make him slip, narrow gaps over alleyways that must be leapt. There were occasional flashes of native wildlife; crumbling walls that powdered under his feet; unexpected washing lines, now empty, that nearly took his head clean off like some cartoon piano wire…

But he saw the second one –
thank fuck!
– and ran low and fast, keeping one eye on the faint blur of ground-level warmth that was the Bard.

Bastard had insulated clothing. He was difficult to see – and Ecko knew full well he was getting a kick out of it.

Shithead.

Hell, since when had Ecko ever had to do a stealth run in fucking
company
for chrissakes?

Frankly, he was more than tempted to piss off and leave the Bard behind – insulated clothing or no – but he remembered about his freedom of choice and all that “friends” shit and he held himself back, skittering low across another roof.

As he came to its far side, he found an empty plaza and a now-abandoned barricade, a place where some sorta showdown must’ve taken place. Scanning, Ecko had a peculiar frisson, realised something that was needling him…

When they’d come through Fhaveon, the battle-torn streets of the city had been scattered with people. Less than he’d expected, true, but they’d been there like he could tick the boxes – the homeless, bereft, lost, injured, aggressive… A population dispossessed and looking for answers, food and opportunity.

Now, the streets were empty; there was almost no one left.

He had a nasty fucking feeling the stuff he’d told Rhan was truer than he’d realised.

* * *

Amethea stood upon the dusty remnant of an elaborate mosaic, craning her neck to see the wonders that arched over her.

Behind her, great double doors stood open, letting in the breathing winter cold. Debris was scattered under a huge doorway, carven into an elaborate and abstract design. Ahead of her, the rising building was exquisite, wrought with detail – it had might to reave her of both words and motion. She was here bearing messages, but she’d stopped as if she had no courage to go further.

Her breath rose in a soft grey coil, her soul escaping for a closer look.

This was the Great Cathedral of Fhaveon, Samiel’s heart upon the world, his eyes and love. Once, as a lowly ’prentice, she’d dreamed of coming here.

Now, she came as it was dying.

The thought made her shiver, rubbing her arms. Despite the echoing beauty, the place felt empty, cold with more than the wind from outside. And she had the oddest sensation of fatality – as if she was also here looking for something.

Answers? Direction? The manifest presence of the Gods?

Her own faith had been shredded by Maugrim – she remembered each word like a cut:
You’re no saint, little priestess. In your heart you’re just like I am…

She snorted, striving to drive the memory back, but the open doorway seemed to pull both thought and sound inward and swallow them whole – so she followed, out into the great building ahead of her.

A blaze of stained windows and a huge dome of decorated roof – all the colours and dances of the Gods.

Forgiveness?

In the Great Cathedral of Fhaveon, the mosaic floor was worn into grooves, the damage of generations. About the angled walls, silent statues stood faceless. Rising over them, the huge coloured glass of the windows scattered the sunset light like gemstones, tumbling over the floor.

Ten walls, ten angles, ten statues, ten windows. Ten equal sides like the days of the halfcycle, and all of them rising into a single rocklight that hung at the dome’s apex, a pattern carved into its surface like Kartian scarring. It splashed walls and floor with a soft mottle.

Absolution?

She rubbed her cricked shoulders with a rueful hand. If there had been seats for the faithful, they’d long gone now, weapons or firewood. The central dais was unoccupied, bereft of promise or leadership. Dust drifted from where she’d walked. The statue nearest to her seemed to be nothing but voluminous cloak; above it, the tenth window – or the first one – was blank. This was the window that faced north, and it glittered in myriad shades of yellow and grey.

For no reason, her chillflesh prickled again.

Saint and Goddess, stop it!

She could still hear the after-echoes of the dying city – yet the Cathedral seemed to stand above it all, silent and uncaring. She found herself almost angry – this building, this wonder, this heart of Fhaveon, this presence of Samiel, this – whatever it was supposed to be! – had its gaze on the Gods as if the people were no longer its problem. If Amethea ever went home to her teacher Vilsara in Xenok, she could tell the tale of the Great Cathedral, oh yes, standing remote at the time of crisis, lifeless and deserted by all…

Well, maybe not quite.

“Good evening. Would you mind shutting the doors? It’s freezing in here.”

Amethea blinked at the rotund, grinning man as if she’d been caught doing something terrible.

“Sorry… ah… yes of course.” She shut the double doors with a boom, turned back to explain, “I was admiring the window.”

“Course you were.” The man wore breeches and tunic and dirty apron, and he carried a brush and an old wooden pail. He was sweating and round-bellied; he had a great barrel of a chest and hands as large and dirty as shovels. “Personally, I think it could do with a bit more colour. As north windows go, it’s rather drab, don’t you think?”