Ecko Endgame (3 page)

“Whoah!” Triqueta put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Start at the beginning. I have to see who?”

Amethea blinked water. Rain ran down her face like tears; her garments were soaked through, bloodstains blossoming into sodden flowers of pink. She gestured back at the tent. “I can’t… You have to come and see her for yourself.”

“See
who
?” Alarmed now, Triq’s heart was thumping, echoing anxious like the distant, thunderous rumble. “Thea. Make sense.”

The teacher shook her head. “Look, Taegh’ll take the horse.” She nodded at a sodden, tow-haired lad, his own shirt spattered with the Gods-alone-knew-what. “I’ve… Gods, I didn’t know what else… I’ve had to put her right at the back of the tent ’til I can work out what to do with her.” Amethea was striving not to cry, but whether from panic or horror or pure exhaustion, Triq couldn’t tell. “We have to get her to the Palace. To the Bard. He was her
friend
, he has to see what happened to her—”

“Amethea.” Triqueta put the other hand on the other shoulder. “What the rhez are you talking about?”

“Come on. You have to see.”

* * *

Amos was a city that would never be the same again.

The two women splashed through the mud, then ducked under the swollen awning.

And Triqueta stopped dead, her hands covering her face.

Dear Gods.

The tent was closeness and reek, layers of blood and rot and shit and panic, of herbs and horror and hope. Over their heads, the rain faded to a steady drumming, claustrophobic and ominous; under their boots, the mud was covered in old matting that was mouldering in the wet, stamped into mulch.

And the
people…

Triqueta didn’t deal well with illness – like her hard-jesting Banned family, she faced incapacity with a bravado that picked despair up by the throat and shook it, daring it to do its worst.

This clustered mess of hurt, this helplessness – it scared her to the core of her soul.

By the rhez.

Closest to her, almost under her feet, was a young man, a soldier by the look of him – pale-haired and pale-skinned, his face contorted round a harm she couldn’t bear to witness, but couldn’t tear herself away from. As she watched him, he bunched, folding in on himself, knees to his chest, and began to shudder, spasms racking his body. Triq looked for help, for someone to come to him, but Amethea shook her head.

She turned away. Drew Triqueta with her.

Something in that movement was fatal, final – whatever was the matter with him, there was nothing she could do.

And she knew it.

For no reason, Triqueta saw the dying Feren, Redlock’s kinsman slain by the centaurs. It seemed like a lifetime ago, when the Varchinde still blazed with both hope and summer, when she and Ress had ridden from the Bard’s fears in The Wanderer to Maugrim’s swelling power at the centre of the plains. The boy’s memory was shadowed like a figment, deep in the skin of the soldier’s face.

The thunder sounded again, laughing at her.

Helpless, she followed Amethea’s tug, picking her way carefully to one of the tent’s long, rounded ends. As they came though the crush to a makeshift curtain, Amethea paused and glanced back.

“I hope you skipped breakfast.”

“Skipped…?”

The question died as the curtain came back and Triqueta saw who – what – Amethea had found.

No.

The denial was inevitable, reflexive. Triqueta found herself backing away. The thing in the tent was shrivelled and shrunken, lined and cracked; its face was a hollow, and it was curled in upon itself as if it had tried to carry the entire Count of Time upon its thin shoulders.

It –
she
– was dead.

Dead of vast age, of returns beyond number.

Unspeaking, tense with a nauseous roil of memory and horror, Triqueta stared, her hands to her mouth and her mind roaring wordless. Refusal knotted in her belly, rose in her throat, burned hot at the backs of her eyes. She couldn’t pull her gaze away; the woman’s face was a mapwork of life’s experience, now stilled.

Skipped breakfast.

It took a moment for Triqueta to realise – she knew who this was.

Had been.

Dear Gods.

As the full understanding hit her, she was on her knees in the mulch, swallowing hard, burning her throat with bile. Shocked tears were hot on her skin. She knew exactly what she was seeing – knew it, by the rhez, knew it intimately. She wanted to shake herself, to wake up, to cry denial, to realise that this was one of Aeona’s damned figments, something from the Gleam Wood, some nightmare they’d found or brought with them…

It had to be. Didn’t it.

Didn’t it?

But when she blinked, the aged thing was still there.

Triq swallowed again, acid and horror. Her heart was already pounding from the storm, from the hovels outside – now it shuddered like the unsettled sky. Her throat afire, she said stupidly, “No… This is some jest, some coincidence. It can’t…”

“I wish to every God it was.” Amethea’s voice caught and she staggered, caught herself on Triqueta’s shoulder. She didn’t let go, and Triq put a hand over her friend’s, both of them transfixed by the rotten thing that lay on the pallet.

Then Amethea rallied, stood up straight.

“Triq,” she said, “I really need your help. I know this is hard for you, but I need to understand what’s happened to her, what’s…” Amethea gestured helplessly, seeking words. “It’s like what happened to you. With Tarvi. Like her time was… just… sucked away.”

“No.” Triqueta was shaking. “No.” When Amethea didn’t respond, Triq glanced sideways at her friend. “It can’t be, it
can’t
be. I killed that damned daemon bitch Tarvi myself. And Vahl Zaxaar—”

“Was defeated,” Amethea said. “He went raging to Fhaveon and Rhan threw him down, Nivrotar told us.” Her eyes met her friend’s. “But, Triq, think. If that’s true, then who did this?
What
did this?” Her eyes shone with the horror of it. She blinked moisture, took a long and shaking breath. “And to Karine?”

Karine.

Capable, outspoken, no-nonsense Karine. The heart of The Wanderer, the Bard’s ward and word and organisation…

Triqueta stared at the shrivelled thing.

Karine.

If the Bard himself had been The Wanderer’s motivation, the tavern’s soul and purpose, then Karine had been its fire, its sheer efficiency. Her vibrancy had been palpable; she’d been a constant whirl of energy, equally good-humoured, annoying and relentless. To see her like this, her returns literally sucked from her skin…

Triqueta’s throat burned; figments of other memories taunted her.

Tarvi’s kiss. Glorious. A moment of absolute passion, incredible. And a cost beyond words, beyond comprehension.

But Tarvi was gone: she’d killed that damned bitch-thing herself. What else was there that could do this, could drain the very Count of Time from the flesh of a friend? Vahl Zaxaar? The – what were they called? – the “vialer”? More of Aeona’s flesh-crafted creations?

For the tiniest moment, Triqueta wondered if they should suspect the Bard himself – the change in him was chilling. Since the loss of The Wanderer and his return from Ecko’s world, he was a lean, savage shadow and nothing like the man he had been.

The whole damn world’s gone loco. Really this time…

She swallowed again, trying to rid herself of memory, of clamouring fear, of the awful, awful burning in her throat.

Karine.

The tent side strained against the harsh wind. Water dripped from the bottom edge and seeped under their feet.

“Triqueta.” Amethea gripped her shoulders, looked into her face. The girl’s blue eyes were as dark as the storm-ridden sky, and then it was all there in the air between them. Not only Karine and the Bard and the lost Wanderer, but Tarvi’s kiss, Maugrim’s flame, the figments at Aeona, Redlock’s monstrous transformation – everything they’d seen and shared, everything they’d lived through and fought for and been helpless to prevent. The summer had left them, the autumn had faded; the winter had come and the grass had died. The vast and empty plainland stood barren, scoured to the bone.

Everything that’d brought them this far had gone, or changed beyond the telling of it.

Distantly, the thunder grumbled again – some creature defeated, and waiting.

“You know what this is,” Amethea said softly. She shook her friend gently. “You do, don’t you? You know.” Her face was grey as parchment; there were shadows under her eyes. “You’ve
felt
this.”

“No, I haven’t, this is crazed, this is
loco.
” Triqueta broke her friend’s grip, almost snapped it at her. “Look at her, Thea, look! How could I know? How could anyone? How could anyone understand… that? Karine…” Her voice cracked. “Dammit, Karine doesn’t hold some secret, any more than… any more than Redlock did…” Then she lost it, and she was really crying, coughing as she spoke, tears mingling with the rain on her face. “Thea.” She spoke through sobs, almost unintelligible. “This is all crazed. I can’t do this any more, I can’t do this, it’s too much. I want…”

I want all this to never have happened. I want the summer, I want The Wanderer. I want the plains to be free and the figments and the horrors all gone. I want to ride, and laugh, and know that we have a future ahead of us…

I want my damned youth back!

The last thought caught and tripped her, made her look back at the shrunken thing.

Youth, by the rhez.

At least I’m still here. Still fighting.

Still
able
to fight.

Amethea put her bloodied arms around her friend’s shoulders and they held each other for a moment. But the teacher did not bow her head, did not flinch or cry.

Her voice tinged with stone, she said, “We’ll see this through to the end. For Karine. For Feren. For Redlock. For The Wanderer and all of her people, for Roderick’s vision. For Ecko. For our damned
selves.
”

On the other side of the curtain, a voice cried out; there were echoes of panic. The rain, slackening now, pattered on the top of the tent.

After a moment, Triqueta stood, rubbing her hands over her face. She nodded, understanding settling on her like ash.

Amethea said, “We’ll take this to Nivrotar. And you’ll have to tell her, Triq, tell her everything. What it felt like, if you could’ve stopped it…”

Don’t you think I would have?

Triq’s face must have changed because Amethea flushed, her cheekbones bright against her pale skin.

She said, “We need to understand. Tarvi said she was Kas, like Vahl Zaxaar, and that they needed time to live. Whatever did this, we need to know. Because I don’t think this is over.”

His voice soft with fear, the apothecary said, “My Lord, I don’t know if I should wake her.”

Rhan Elensiel, Seneschal of Fhaveon, stood silent, his arms crossed and his expression sombre. They were high above the city’s chaos here, and the shutters were closed against the struggling below, against the two moons bright over the water.

The apothecary was shivering, though the air was not cold. Chillflesh prickled his arms and he rubbed at them almost absently, his attention compelled by the young woman who lay sweating in the midst of the great and tangled bed.

Selana Valiembor, last child of the House of Saluvarith. Lord Foundersdaughter of Fhaveon, ruler of the dying Varchinde – a tiny figure now curled below the great wooden headboard carven by her forebears. Her body twitched as if with some unseen plague, her eyes flickered beneath closed lids. Every few moments, a shudder went through her as if she fought some figment they could not see, strove to awaken herself from a nightmare beyond words.

Rhan watched over her as he always had, always would. Fhaveon was his home, his charge, his purpose. Without it…

The apothecary rubbed at his forearms, ventured, “My Lord?”

But the words rolled from the Seneschal like the chill, unheeded.

The old bed taunted Rhan with memories not his own, with crimes he’d not committed. Standing in this room, those shadows still flickered at the edge of his awareness, misdeeds unspeakable.

Misdeeds with which Phylos had taunted him: the murder of the Foundersson, this haunted child’s father. The rape of his wife.

Screaming. All the way down.

“My Lord?” the apothecary tried again.

Belatedly, Rhan realised he’d been asked a question.

“Wake her?” He looked up, stared at the apothecary for a moment. This was the man who’d found the bravery to defy Phylos’s bid for power and to spare the life of Mostak, military commander. He was now here, his slender body shuddering even as his Lord’s did likewise.

“Yes, my Lord. Should we wake her? From whatever figments torment her sleeping?”

The young man’s confusion was as tangled as the sheets, as loud as a shout in the night’s cool. He wasn’t asking for guidance, he was asking for Rhan to take responsibility for the decision.

Rhan recollected himself; shook away the loitering fears. He laid one white hand on the man’s shoulder, said gently, “I don’t think I know your name.”

“I’m Kallye, my Lord.” The apothecary gave a wary, weary chuckle. “I was with Tan Commander Mostak, if you remember, when—”

“I haven’t forgotten.” Rhan flickered a smile, gave the man a tight momentary clasp. “You’re owed a debt the city will respect and repay, given time. I trust your judgement, but wakening someone in nightmare is— Samiel’s
teeth
!”

Cutting him cold, Selana had sat upright and cried out, wordless and shattering-loud. Her eyes were wide open, staring, lit to uncanny intensity by a shutter-stripe of moonslight that fell across her face. She was breathing shallow and fast, her chest and shoulders shaking under her pale shift.

Kallye fell back, hands to his mouth. Rhan moved forwards, almost expecting her to speak, to utter some profound and obscure truth, some wondrous vision… but she only stared, her eyes crazed in that strip of light.