Ecko Endgame (16 page)

Confused, Amethea fumbled, “Surely… there should be something there?”

The man shrugged, still smiling. “Stands to reason – they say there’s a God for every day of the halfcycle, so that one…”

“Yes, I remember that.” It had been in Vilsara’s early teachings, somewhere lost in the back of her mind. She looked at the faceless statues, then around the rest of the windows. “Then these are our Gods?” She counted them, trying to fit it together.

“So they say.” The man chuckled, a deep roll of humour. “But forgive me, my manners! It’s a strange dusk that brings people to the Cathedral’s doors, though they stand always open.”

“I’m Amethea, once of Xenok,” she said. “I trained with Vilsara—”

“Vilsara!” The round man chuckled louder, a sound so marvellously infectious that she found herself grinning back at him. “How’s the old girl doing?”

“She’s very well.” The response was guarded. She’d no idea who this man was, or why he had the right to ask the question.

“Good, good.” The man wiped his hands on his apron, winked. “Glad to hear it. Now – how can I help you?”

“I was looking for Gorinel, for the Father-Protector? I bear a message.”

For a moment, the man eyed her, then he began to laugh, a bass rumble from his round belly, a sound that lifted the building with a warmth all of its own.

“I suppose I look like the cleaner?”

More baffled than ever, she said, “I was looking for His Reverence. I can come back in the morning?”

Holding up a hand, he said, “Please, ‘Reverence’ isn’t something I’ve ever been any good at. I’m Gorinel – and you, lovely, look very lost. What can I do?”

* * *

Holy shit on a stick…

At Fhaveon’s most extreme northern limit, Ecko now watched, silent.

Below him, the sleeping thing was huge.

In fact, “huge” didn’t fucking cover it. This was the thing he’d seen from the plaza edge high above – and now, close up, it was colossal, like some long, dark monster that’d swallowed an old farmhouse and most of its grounds. It was patchy, dense in the centre and scattered about its edges; in some places it was rigidly structured, in others it sprawled undisciplined. Here and there among the darkness of its bulk there were flickers of flame, faint as if the whole thing was hiding.

It was way, way bigger than Ecko had been expecting.

Watching it, he was crouched upon the sloping roof of a deserted chapel, the building covered in fragments of stone and shell; in many places, the tiles had been ripped free, leaving scars like little mouths. It was a perfect vantage, its tower all sticks and bird shit.

Below him, Ecko heard the Bard catch his breath, and wondered if he could see that far… but the wondering didn’t last long.

The clouds peeled back like a picked scab, the white moon a cold eye, high above them. And the sleeping thing slowly took on its full form.

Ecko repeated like some loopy mantra,
Holy shit, holy shit, holy motherfucking shit…

He couldn’t wrap his brain round it.

Monsters that he’d seen from above flanked the thing, ragged musters of nightmare that slept scattered, or prowled its edges. There seemed to be no leaders, no ranks or orders; they wandered loose, guards or guides or both. His telos strained trying to focus on faces – hell, at least on numbers of legs – but it was too far and too dark.

He knew he should go down there, get a closer look. He was
wired
for this shit, for chrissakes.

But…

Further in, the sleeping thing was made up of tents, dark fabric almost invisible against ruined and overgrown walls. He’d not seen this from his previous vantage – some of them bore symbols, food or medicine; the smaller ones were racked in rows, suitably military and identical.
That
shit, at least, hadn’t changed.

His telos searched in systematic strips – found more.

The sleeping thing had kitchens, latrines. It had corrals, chearl and horses. It had occupied cages of smaller critters, piled high. It had wagons, though he’d no clue what they were carrying – some looked big enough to cart artillery and he didn’t like that shit one bit.

He had to get his ass down there and check them out, find out exactly what the bad guys had to throw at them – hell, some of it probably literally – but he was stuck to the spot like the broken bits of shell had penetrated his feet, nailing him down.

The thing stirred, restless and shifting. Lights flickered; sounds of shouts came across the night. Below Ecko, Roderick muttered something softly.

He continued to scan.

After a moment, he found what he reckoned was the command tent, pitched slap-bang in the middle of the ruined manse. It was a big square thing, decorated with some sort of repeated symbol, and with a pennon that hung limp from a spear. Minions surrounded the tent, cloaked shadows that guarded its flanks. They patrolled silent, stopping to speak, or to study the darkness around them. As the moonlight grew brighter, his telos sharpened and he could see them clearly: their back-bent legs, their bared, tattooed chests, the layers of thonging about their throats. Chrissakes, they looked like Tumnus the Faun all growed up and with a steroid problem – and they were armed to the fucking
teeth.

Whatever they were – were they called vialer? – they were the beasties in charge and they didn’t miss a trick.

Holy…

Transfixed now, Ecko couldn’t’ve looked away if a hole had torn though reality and shown him the Bike Lodge, acid-hazing just off of his right shoulder…

Down there, across the darkness and the glittering highlights of yellow and white, down there, in among the ruins and the overgrowth, the flickers of flame grew brighter. In among them was the muted glow of rocklights, and the whole damn thing was shifting now, like some stretching sewer monster, some spreading pool of oil.

Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy…

Ecko made an effort not to breathe the words aloud; he clung hard to the edge of the tower.
Jesus H Christ. I was right, Nivvy was right – the big baddie may’ve gone, but his whole fuckin’ army’s all still here.

An’… how the hell did it get this big?

Below him, the Bard was silent with anticipation or fear. Or perhaps he’d had his throat slit.

Down there was not the loose scatter of critters that Ecko had seen from the plaza. What he could see now was the entire force gathered, a manifest fucking host. It was every monster that’d ever crawled out of Amal’s twisted asshole – every centaur, every half-breed, every fucked-up crafting of human flesh that mimicked what Mom had done to his own.

So – what? Was I s’posed to call him “Dad”? Was that the point?

Yeah, Eliza, you’re funny.

Down there was every soldier who’d followed the bad guys’ flag, every damned critter that Kas Vahl Whosit could throw at the dying Varchinde.

But even that wasn’t the end of it.

Ecko continued to scan, strips of extreme moonlit close-up, as much detail as he could get.

And then he realised something that scared him right to the fucking core.

* * *

“Your Reverence,” Amethea said. She’d taken a step back and was lost for the proper etiquette. Faced by the Father-Protector, by the worldly representative of Samiel himself, her memory had baulked – it was refusing everything but her apothecarial code and lectures on herb-tending. Was she supposed to kiss the hem of his embroidered overshirt, his jewellery? He wore neither.

And then, somewhere under that confusion of awe and disbelief, more memories of Maugrim crowded close to surface, unwanted and unwelcome, rising and bobbing like waste. She could hear his words,
Get to you, love. The whiners, the needers, the hypochondriacs, the neurotics, the weak-willed and the desperate…

She was a healer. She was supposed to help people, be there for them – she’d been working in Amos, and had felt much better. Useful, needed. Now, with Maugrim haunting her, she realised what she’d come here to find – that feeling of fatalism, the answer she’d come seeking…

Not just purpose.

But
faith.

Oh, you’re jesting…

She almost laughed at herself – at her own ludicrous predictability. Standing there, surrounded by nameless and forgotten Gods, Amethea found she was shaking, trying to muster something like denial –
Don’t be ridiculous!

Faith.

She swallowed, bit the inside of her mouth; if he saw it, the old priest said nothing. Instead, he put down his pail and stretched his back with a pop and a grimace.

“Your Reverence indeed. I’m far too old to be doing this myself. I really should have minions or something.” He winked, wicked and infectious.

Unable to face his clean humour, she looked at her own hands, stained with worse things than soil, and searched for something to say.

But then she remembered what she had to hide behind, and said, “I bear a message for you.”

Above her, the empty window glimmered, mocking. Maugrim was loud now, striving to make himself heard. His words piled one upon another, all of them clamouring at her, laughing. But she couldn’t face them, couldn’t admit her own part in what had happened.

What had the Bard said?
Maugrim had power and passion – elemental focus that brought the Powerflux from somnolence and legend – but the love and courage were yours.

Bitterly, she fought the clamour down, but it was too late and the truth leered at her, its teeth bared and bloody.

The truth: that the hole in the world had been partially her fault.

Faith.

Purpose.

Or absolution?

Gorinel though, had followed her gaze to the window. He said, “I don’t know why that one’s empty. Like Xenok’s, our records are long-rotted, unreadable, but we still remember some Gods – Samiel, the moons.” His back clicked again and he winced. “In a world with no memory, they’ve become less than legend, more like comforters. It makes what we do… a social necessity, more practical than political, but I’m sure you know that.” He grinned, went to sit on the edge of his pail and then thought better of it, standing back up with another clunk. “Seeing the Gods is easy – if you wish for comfort, you can see them in the birth of the sun, in the beauty of the world, or in her pain. Moments of passion touch us all. But sustaining their presence, without knowing their names?” He looked at the windows. “That’s a different beast entirely.”

Sustaining.

Amethea felt herself reddening. He was answering the question she hadn’t asked and she heard him with her entire skin, her whole being. It frightened her like truth.

The fat man chuckled. “Ah, Amethea. How can we trust in Gods with no names? Deities we’ve forgotten? We learn to sustain ourselves, and to help others to do likewise. They,” he waved a work-callused hand, “won’t do it for us – they don’t grant our wishes, or absolve us of our misdeeds. They won’t manifest at our command. You’re an apothecary, you were taught this as a ’prentice. Falling to your knees and pleading for Samiel to save a life is one thing – but the dying man beside you needs you to stop his bleeding.” He raised an eyebrow; his smile was like soft fabric over old rock. “You are the one that saves his life. Your faith – and his – can be found in action.”

Action.

Amethea said, her voice faintly bitter, “The Gods help those who help themselves?”

“That’s about the size of it,” Gorinel said, shrugging. “I don’t have the Gods in my pockets, or in my windows, and I can’t parade them for you. But here, sit on my pail – and perhaps I can answer the question you’ve not asked me.”

* * *

Holy shit, holy shit, holy…

Ecko spun his telos to a wider focus, now watching the site as a whole. And as he did so, he realised something, something that had been bothering him in the empty streets of the lower city, that’d tickled tentacles at the back of his neck like some lurking Lovecraftian horror…

Almost one third of the army camp was made up of bedrolls scattered almost randomly across the cold ground. They had no tents, no kitchens – they were just huddled bundles of desperation and poverty and garbage that slept near the faint glimmers of the fires. Almost one whole third of Ythalla’s force was made up of the city’s homeless, the people who’d had nowhere else to go.

He stared.

That was why the streets were empty – Fhaveon’s population had abandoned her, and they’d come here. Pulled by Christ-alone-knew-fucking-what.
Cannon fodder
, Ecko had said mockingly to Rhan – but even then, there were too many of them. Why the hell would any force need this many untrained troops?

Holy shit…

For no reason he could name, his blood ran cold. Like he’d stuck his head under some fucking broken shower. He couldn’t get goosebumps, but he fought down the urge to rub them away anyhow.

Holy…

Below him, he could hear the Bard’s rubber-soled boots shifting on the pieces of shell.
Gawky fucker. Like he could see this far.

Carefully, mindful of the clumsy wool cloak, Ecko slipped into the hollow tower itself and through to its other side. He crouched low in the archway. Sticks and shit were everywhere, but just for a moment, his gargoyle grin was entirely deliberate.

And he was just that much closer.

He focused his telos again, watching the bedrolls, trying to work out what was freaking him out so much.

Come on, you fucking bitch, let’s see what you really got goin’ on…

Eliza, Ythalla.

Whatever.

As the clouds parted to reveal a piss-bright glimmer of yellow, so Ecko’s telos slowly explored the civilian encampment, length by length. He was trembling with impatience, with the effort of holding himself in place – he needed to go down there, to steal though the bedrolls themselves, to get a real feel for whatever the fuck was going on – but he was sans his decent kit and just didn’t dare risk it. And if the Bard came galumphing after him…

Yeah, that’s my excuse an’ I’m stickin’ to it. Sue me.