Ecko Endgame (34 page)

“I
know
,” Triq said.

Then something else occurred to her. “He… had a wife.” Triqueta looked round her, as if the woman would manifest out of the cold. “A daughter – she’d be grown now. They—”

“If we get out of this,” Amethea said, “we’ll find them. Take them his axes, or something.”

“We should move.” Mostak’s voice was chill, wary. “I’ve no wish to stay in the open. Gather what you can, and we’ll return to the hilltop. And you, Master Apothecary, you’re needed.”

“Yes, Commander.” Amethea nodded, her face bleak. As they turned to look up the hill, she said, “Nothing, in my whole life, could’ve prepared me for this. They came after us at Fhaveon, down into the tunnels. And I ran here. The only survivor, as far as I know. I crossed the plains alone. And now, I try…” She looked at her hands as if they were strangers, swallowed hard. “I try and save as many as I can.”

Triqueta took her friend’s hand in her own.

As they went back up the hill, she didn’t let go.

Jayr the Infamous stirred, cold.

Her body was heavy, weak as water. She could barely raise her head. Her arms and legs felt like dead stone. She struggled to focus, but had no sense of how much time had passed.

What the rhez happened to me?

She opened her eyes to darkness as deep as the tunnels of the Kartiah. She couldn’t see herself, let alone look to check on Ress. She listened for a moment, then made herself move, careful and silent.

The floor beneath her was smooth stone. There was stone to either side of her, and there was a faint breeze on her face, indicating a very large space somewhere ahead.

She’d no idea why she was still alive.

She remembered, pieces with jagged edges. Rammouthe Island. The tsaka with their mad, curved horns. Landslide and falling. The creatures who had said:
Our time comes at last… Samiel can no longer hold us. No more exile, no more starvation. We will be free.

As she came more awake, she wondered why they’d not restrained her.

Maybe they’d just not cared.

Jayr had no memory of her life before the Kartiah, no understanding of why, as a small child, she’d been traded away. The dark was all she’d known, and she could navigate it, by the damned Gods, like a Grassdweller could walk down a trade-road.

She touched a hand to the wall. The stone was distinctive, not the hard edges of the Kartiah, nor the softer, sandier stone of the plains. It was flawlessly smooth, but had no feel of being worked. And there was potency to it, a luxurious, moving chill that she had no way to name.

It felt like it was breathing.

Shuddering, she ranged further forward.

She found Ress, his faint warmth slumped by one wall. He was conscious, his breathing shallow and too fast. As she bent over him, he latched a hand into the front of her vest and pulled her down so he could whisper in her ear, “No time. No
time.
”

“Never mind that now.” She put her hands under his arms, lifted and steadied him. He felt light, shrivelled. When she went to let him go, he staggered and coughed, then he lurched to one side and almost pulled them both over. She caught him, and he felt like a bundle of sticks.

She thought of Penya, of dust and ashes.

And that was when Jayr realised…

They were going to die here. The Kas hadn’t bothered to kill or restrain them, because they were caught – they’d been left alive in mockery, blundering blind like lost and squeaking esphen. Even if they found their destination, even if they were able to return above ground, they would never go home. They would never leave this place; never see Syke or Triqueta or their Banned family again.

Suddenly, the darkness felt very hard, and very real.

Jayr clenched her fists. In that moment, she understood this wasn’t a game any more, a jest, an insubordination. They were going to die here, sooner or later. And there would be no long ditch, no Banned fire, no songs to celebrate their lives…

She would never see the light again.

Ress said, almost as if he’d heard her, “We… must walk.”

And she answered him, “I know.”

* * *

Slowly, painfully slowly, they wound through a vast and sprawling maze, a mighty ruin of the breathing stone. The air was always in their faces, and it smelled like something waiting.

But Jayr knew the darkness, and Ress’s focus never failed. After a time, the walls faded away. Jayr’s senses tingled to a rising whisper of power.

Not the Kas.

Something else.

Something
bigger.

As they crept forwards, the air began to grow cold, a shiver that was tangible on her skin, a thrum like a slow pulse. She paused, held a hand for Ress to stop.

“Something’s here,” she said, her voice low. Ress twitched and muttered. “Something… I don’t know. There’s something in the air. It’s like it’s watching us, like…” She was no damned poet – whatever it was, she had no words to describe it.

After several breaths, Ress said, “Must… walk.”

“I know that.” The tickle made Jayr want to sneeze. It was like a heartbeat, or the rhythm of a song.

“The Gods. Made Rammouthe. From their flesh,” Ress said, his voice breathy, barely a whisper. Jayr had to strain to hear him.

She shivered, said, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

He fidgeted. “This is the Ilfead-Syr. The Well of the World’s Memory. It was made
first
, made from Godsflesh. Made for the children. It’s a toy.” He started to laugh, then gagged and fell silent.

Jayr’s senses were being overcome by the soft rhythm. It was lulling, deceptively sweet.

Godsflesh. Made for the children. A toy.

This time, she said, “We must walk.”

“But they forgot about it,” he told her. “There’s nothing down here.”

A chill raised the flesh across Jayr’s shoulders.

Nothing down here.

“Ress…”

He grabbed her, his hand like a claw. The grip was tight, almost painful. He was panting now, as if he was struggling for focus, or to remember something.

“The Library,” he said. He shook her to make sure she was paying attention. “‘Time when Substance of the Gods.’ Do you remember the Library? The words grew. The words I read. They grew in my head. Like a plant, like an infection. They brought us here. So we can
remember.
”

She remembered. Remembered the light draining out of Ress’s eyes, remembered Nivrotar telling them to leave the books alone…

They grew in my head.

“Ress,” she said. “You’re scaring me.”

He let her go. For a moment, she thought he’d folded, doubled over with age or pain, but as she turned to him, he spoke again.

“We’re close,” he said. “The stone here… it warps under the weight of the memories. The walls move, writhe. Or we do. Like the Ryll, like the Bard touching the water… the Ilfe is too much for mortal man to bear. It means everything’s
twisting.
”

Twisting.

“Ress…” Her tone was a warning.

His hand touched her skin, traced the line of one of her scars. “Trust me. I know. Can
feel.
We’re almost there.”

Two isolated fragments of human vulnerability lost in Rammouthe’s seething soul.

They kept walking.

They went onwards through a vast passing of the Count of Time. They moved in silence. Several times Jayr was convinced they’d retraced their steps, or turned back on themselves – but something drew Ress like a lure. He shambled onwards, a man obsessed.

He grew weary, and fell often. She caught his elbow – painfully thin – and helped him. He leaned more and more on her strength.

Eventually, he stopped.

“Jayr,” he said. “We’ve come… we’re here.”

“We’re
where
, for Gods’ sakes?”

“Jayr…!” His voice was crystallised horror. “It’s a tomb, all unsealed.” He was really shaking now. “A cavern, goes on forever. The walls just…”

The fear in his voice was making her chest tighten.

“What the rhez are you talking about?”

“You read it, Jayr.” His hand clutched at her, desperate. “You read the book from the Library. Tell me you remember?”

Dread crawling all over her skin, Jayr suddenly feared she knew exactly what he was talking about.

The words were as clear as the day she had read them.

How could we have believed that the Substance of the Gods, the
Ilfead-Syr,
the home of the Well of the World’s Memory, could be so utterly chilling to the souls of such as we?

It was coming back to her now, faster as her memory began to pick up the thread.

We found at last the island’s inhabitants… their faces were empty – their eyes held nothing but nothing, telling us that nothing had been their deaths…

“Jayr.” He was still whispering. “The
floor
!” He shrank back against her. “By the Gods…!”

“It’s all right,” she said. “I’ve got you.”

But Ress was trembling. “Their
eyes
!”

All were made more terrible by their faces, faces that held not despair, and yet not relief or release… their eyes reflected nothing…

Do not, I beg of you, ever return here.

And, as Ress spoke again, his voice melded with the memory, as though the words had all been his. He said, “This is the Ilfead-Syr, the home of the World’s Memory. And its Guardians… they’re all still here.” His voice was soft with dismay. “They go on, into the darkness, into the endless Count of Time. Their eyes are all open.”

Slowly, Jayr became aware that there was light, glimmering in the stone floor. It was faint, but it was enough for her to see.

Around her was a vast underground chamber. It had no walls, and the polished-smooth floor stretched away in every direction, limitless.

Power pulsed softly beneath its surface.

Ress stood a half-pace ahead of her.

And he was
older
– stooped and frail, in the last days of his life. His scalp was wispy and his arms and legs shrivelled and bent. For a moment, Jayr blinked at him – and then she realised what she could see.

Penya. Triqueta.

His time sucked like sustenance.

By the rhez.

Was she, too, older? Did that explain the odd weakness when she’d awoken? The Kas were jesting with them, teasing them like prey – perhaps they would come back.

But Ress was pointing, now, out across the emptiness.

All round them, the shimmering floor was covered in bodies, shadows against the light. Men and women, children, farmers, peasants, merchants. They were unusual in appearance, long-limbed and graceful. Their skins were weathered and their garments preserved.

Yet they were grey, as if drained of all passion.

As Jayr looked further and further outwards, the sleepers were numberless – death without end. Most chilling of all, their eyes were still open. They stared upwards blindly, and their expressions were empty, forgotten and forsaken. Expressions of nothing, eyes like windows into the void.

All were made terrible by their faces…

These sleepers hadn’t died; this was no daemon-possessed charnel house, no citadel. This was something beyond. And in each face a terrible truth could be witnessed.

We have lost the Ilfe. The World will die because she cannot remember.

Jayr was tumbling with fears, with words, with a need to put them together – to somehow make everything fit. She could recall the texts they’d found in the Library. She found herself looking at the remains of Ress’s overshirt, at the ink that had stained his skin.

Now, she was truly afraid. A vast, bottomless fear, a fear that came with a realisation…

“The Library,” she said. Her tone shook. “The Guardians of the Ilfe. Is this what you came looking for?”

“Yes. The words brought me. I came to remember,” Ress said. His thin arm pointed, but the cavern was too dark for her to see that far. “We must walk.”

His voice had the same determination that she’d heard as they’d left the Palace in Amos – the pure focus of a man who was going to complete his task and not be prevented.

Directed by his pointing finger, they picked their way across the floor.

The light was weak and intermittent.

As they moved through the huge tomb, the space became impossible, stretching back into the darkness as though it had no end. It was bigger than Rammouthe, bigger than the world herself.

Memories came at her out of the emptiness, fragments with sharp edges. She remembered the Amos Library, the look in Ress’s eyes as the words had taken his mind. She remembered the Banned and Syke, how they’d welcomed her without rancour or judgement. She remembered the Kartiah, the savage darkness of her pit-fighting past.

Then, earlier still. An image lost – so distant she’d no idea if it was even hers. A mountain city, a mining community, trading openly and in peace with the Kartian priestlords. There had been a hall, and a scarred Kartian trader. Jayr had been very small, her hand held by a young woman. Then there was metal, and the Kartian had taken her arm and pulled her away. The woman had dropped to her knees, given her one last hug, then turned away. She’d been crying.

And there had been a man there. Arrogant and massive of build, Archipelagan. He’d been wearing blood-red like he was soaked in it. He’d pulled the woman to her feet and comforted her, though his face was like stone.

Whoever he was, he faded into the cavern’s shimmer. He left Jayr hurting, and she didn’t know why.

And then, there came another memory. No, not a memory, this was different. It was a figure, a man, and he seemed a part of the cavern itself. He wore an odd white garment, tarnished to grey – an unfamiliar overshirt that reached his knees. His hair was long and black. There were ink marks at the skin of his throat, his pushed-up sleeves revealed scars at his elbows, like open mouths. And he was looking out at the sleepers as though they held a beauty only he could comprehend.

He said, “It’s beautiful. It’s everything I need. I can bring peace to the suffering, end poverty, end wars. No one will ever want for anything again.”