Ecko Endgame (46 page)

He thought he saw teeth.

And what are you here to do, little man? Stop me? Just how do you plan to do that?

In spite of himself, Ecko shuddered at its closeness. He wondered if the thing could jump hosts, and his skin crawled. But it withdrew, and he breathed again.

“It’s all over,” Selana told him, “I no longer need you to gain my freedom.” She laughed and the Kas laughed with her, shadow rippling like Ecko’s lost stealth-cloak.

The ground shuddered again, cracks in the world.

And then, there in the ashes, Ecko could see more of them. Not humans, just drifting shades, the Kas without their mortal shells. They had come – all of them – from the war, and from Rammouthe.

Come to witness the end of the world.

Or to cause it.

“You can’t stop me.” The Lord of Fhaveon smiled at them. “Look at you, three squeaking fools surrounded by powers you neither wield nor understand. It
ends
here, all of it. I
will
be free.”

“You’re the fool, Vahl,” Rhan said. “What’s happening here will tear you to screaming pieces. You can’t ride this power—”

“I will be
free
!” The shadow flashed with flame and rage. “My name is Dael Vahl Sashar, and I am first made of the Gods’ creatures, and oldest of all.” Selana’s voice was a lash, savage as a whip-strike, stinging. The shadow with her thickened and rose, its eyes glimmering like the Sical’s had done, pure fire. “I watched this world’s creation, its crafting at Samiel’s hands. I watched the twins play with it, laughing as it rolled across their jewelled floor. And I watched it forgotten, abandoned, gathering dust and
ash.
” She spat the word. “The world is insignificant, a lost toy, no more. This…” she gestured at the fissure, “…is the only thing that matters now.” The shadow shot through with livid sparks, eager. “I am Kas no longer. I can
take
this power. Use it!”

Roderick said, his throat writhing, “Understand, Vahl: what lies here is
hunger.
This is the heart of the blight, the force that pulls the life from the Varchinde. And if you try to
touch
it…” he smiled faintly, “…your life, all you’ve known and all you remember… will be
nothing.
” His tones were woven with layers of strength and appeal; they made the ash stand still in the wind, made the last of the red light glitter scarlet in the ground’s crystals.

Mael laid a hand on Selana’s shoulder, and spoke through the moss in his mouth. “Roderick. The Gods crafted us – made us first and favoured. Rhan knows this. We’ve strengths unrealised and potentials unknown. We’ve watched our prison walls for returns unnumbered. We’ve served our time. Should we not return home?” He turned his plea to Rhan. “You, my littlest brother, my estavah, you
understand
what it’s like to be trapped, sealed away from everything you love and understand. From your family. Please.” His mantled shadow flickered, paled and swelled. “We care not for anything that happens here – we no longer even wish you harm. Do as you please – heal the world if you can! We only want to go home.”

The word rippled back through the shadows of the others.

Home.

Selana raised her chin and her smile was cold as the rock at her feet.

Rhan said bitterly, “I almost believe you.”

“Believe us.” The girl came forwards, right to the fissure’s edge. “This is our final moment, little brother. And you can come
with
us, come home! Rhan, the world is gone, your mandate no longer matters. Unbend,
join
your family! You’re my brother, my defender and protector.” She smiled. “I’m the last child of House Valiembor and you owe me your loyalty, Seneschal.” The smile spread, all teeth, her face unholy with the light from below. She held out a hand to him and, even as she reached, the ash shook from her embroidered garments and the Kas behind her began to swell, untwisting, flashing through with deep blue flame.

E Rhan Khavaghakke.

As it did so, Ecko could see that its wings were broken – long-since torn from its shoulders.

Rhan stood with Amethea still in his arms, her body covered in moss, her eyes open and staring. He clung to her like some kind of talisman, but his brother consumed his gaze.

You owe me your loyalty, Seneschal.

He swayed, took a step forwards towards the fissure. Behind Selana, the others were moving, shadow upon shadow, each flickering with new strength and rising power. They reached for Rhan like a dark cloud rearing over him.

The sharp retorts of shattering rock filled the air.

But the Kas paid no heed. They were smoke, writhing, exalting, their broken wings reaching as wide as they could, their figment faces and arms outstretched. Ecko almost expected them to chant, but they were silent, only their shadows shifting.

You owe me your loyalty, Seneschal.

The rock cracked again.

E Rhan Khavaghakke. Join us, brother, we go to face Samiel Himself!

Rhan took another step. He was on the very edge of the fissure, a silhouette against the great rise of his brothers’ might and challenge.

The sunken sky began to rumble, thick and ominous. And there, at the horizon’s edge, the clouds were pulling down into a monster twister.

Like the wound in the world would suck down the sky.

Holy fucking shit.

Ecko was really scared now. They had to stop this – chrissakes, this was his gig, his world-champion shit, and he’d no fucking clue what to do. The Bard’s Powerflux bollocks was all very well – hell, he’d understood the theory – but how they were supposed to…

He realised he was snarling, “Chris
sakes…
!” but it was reflex – he didn’t even know why.

Roderick put his hood back, pulled free the scarf – if he could wield the very air, summon Vahl, or control him…

The Bard lifted his face to the rising wind, inhaled. His throat hummed.

He said, “We have to stop this. The more power they manifest, the more the hole will drink that power, and the wider the cracks will spread. They’re
feeding
it! We
must
stop this!”

Ecko almost screamed at him. “How? How do we—?”

Rhan moved, called out. “Vahl! Wait! I’ll come – I’ll come with you! Take me home, my brother, take me back to the skies! We’ll pull Samiel from his seat, together – we’ll cast him
down
!” His voice rose, was livid with light and power, crackling though the storm. “We’ll shatter his throne and we’ll tear him to
pieces
!”

The great Kas laughed, stretched out his hands.
Come!
Selana mimicked the motion like a puppet. The sky growled, lowering closer, lightning flashed jagged. The wind was clearing the ash and pulling at hair and garments, a taste of what would come. If this shit didn’t stop already, they were all gonna go straight the fuck down.

The Kas raised their arms, opened them to the heavens. “Then join me, little brother. We will be
free
!”

“How the hell do we do this?” Ecko’s shout went unheard as the ground cracked again, splintering and juddering. The twister was coming closer and the wind was harsh.

“Free!” Rhan cried with him.

“
Stop!
” Roderick’s voice was hard as a slap, clear as a scream. If he really was attuned to the air, then his words were loud as the sky and they carried the might of the storm. Their sheer force made Rhan halt at the fissure’s very edge, made the swelling Kas flicker and stare. “The power here has caught you, Dael Vahl Sashar. Has caught all of us. Understand it cares not for Kas or Dael, for good or evil, for order or chaos, for any such storybook definitions. What lies below us is an end of all things – a Kazyen, a
nothing.
It will suck your power from you regardless, and will spread its cracks until the very world shatters, spiralling out into nothing, into the void from which it came. And it will take all of us with it.” The Bard sank to one knee on the stone, ash drifting from the movement. “Vahl, I beg of you. This is not your way to freedom—”

“Enough!” Selana’s voice was a shriek, a final refusal.

Rhan shook, made no move.

The Kas rose again, but as they did so, the ground rocked hard enough to knock Mael from his feet. Ecko felt the shock, but didn’t know what it meant until the Bard spoke again.

“The cracks have reached the Great Cemothen River,” he said. “The Varchinde’s very lifeline drains away. Stop this, Vahl, I beg you. You cannot free yourself or Rhan with this power. This strength is an emptiness, all it will do is pull your existence from you. You dislike your prison – how will it be if you live an eternity in Nothing? In the void? In the grey that has no passion, in an emptiness bereft of all desire? All my life, Vahl, I have sought this world’s foe, and you are not it. What lies at your feet is as much your enemy and opposite as it is mine!”

Selana was screaming now, refusing to hear him. Her face was sliding, flesh and expression, down towards her chin as if the hole were literally sucking her skin from her body. The Kas behind her were flickering out, winking and vanishing as if they had been turned off. Mael was struggling to stand, and the edge of the fissure was close, so close.

“Please!” The Bard’s cry was pure storm – but the pull was affecting him too. His voice faltered even as he pleaded. “The harder you resist me, the harder I plead. And the more power is pulled from both of us! Vahl – we have to stop this!”

Something in the cry seemed to reach over the fissure.

Selana paused, lowered her arms. For an endless moment, she stared at the Bard with her face lit unholy and desperate as if searching for another answer – any other way out. At her feet, Brother Mael had his hands at his throat. He was gasping to get air into his moss-grown lungs, just as Amethea had done.

Then the ground shook again, and the sky roared, and the rising twister screamed fury.

Ecko watched Mael roll helpless, watched him grapple, cling for a second, and then he heard the cry as the old man fell down and down into whatever was below.

For just a second, everything was quiet.

Selana fell to her knees, her hands reaching – but whether it was the girl reaching for her friend, or the Kas for his brother, Ecko had no idea.

Roderick said, his voice faint now, “Please, Vahl… We can heal this – but you have to help us.”

Kneeling on the edge of the end of the world, Selana Valiembor, Kas Vahl Zaxaar, looked up, tears streaking her face.

Roderick said softly, like a chant, “You are the fire to Rhan’s light, the two of you more alike than either of you know. We need you. We need you both.”

The mantled Kas had faded now, shrunk back to within Selana’s skin.

The ground shook, creaking ominous, as though it really would detonate, and the pieces be gone in the void.

And Kas Vahl Zaxaar said, “Then show me. How can we stop this?”

It was a gesture that defied the Count of Time himself, that healed rifts in worlds. Rhan rested Amethea gently on the dead ground and held out a hand to his brother, his protégé, to the last surviving child of the Valiembor line. He helped Selana cross the fissure down which Mael had fallen, his last words lost to nothing.

And she gripped his hand and came to him, her finery billowing, embroidery and ash.

E Vahl…

As if it stood still to witness the brothers’ loss and unity, the sky had fallen silent. Now, though, the air rose again, cold and dark and shrieking, gathering itself to howl its final breaths before it, too, vanished down into the emptiness below. The twister was a pillar of grey that stretched from rock to sky, sucking at clouds, tearing the air into spirals. It flashed with suppressed power, and Ecko could feel answering shocks of adrenaline shooting through his skin. He could almost feel its mottle rippling with storm-colour.

He was fucking terrified, and he was okay admitting it, and he didn’t fucking
care
. Maybe he was even more scared than the first time Thera had taken him down to see Mom…

The sky circled and screamed down at him, tiny as he was.

Under him, the ground shook.

“Okay!” Pushed beyond his limits, he shouted back at the shrieking air. “Shazam! Abracadabra! Magius fucking Stryke! Let’s break out the plus-ten magickal-whosit-of-doom an’
do
this shit!”

An’ start the countdown sequence already, ’cause I reckon we got air for about sixty more seconds…

Despite the howling storm, though, the thought of Thera and Mom stayed in his head, spreading like enfolding arms and filling him with its darkness. It was rich and familiar, wrapping and secure. As it grew in his thoughts, it seemed to have a life of its own, seething in and out of itself, turning over and over. As clear as if she were there beside him, he could hear Mom’s soft tones, feel that towering, more-than-human presence. Her darkness was a part of him, had long ago sunk itself into his soul. It made him feel safe. If he opened his mouth, he could breathe it in, and out.

And in. And…

Her darkness.
His
darkness. Something he hadn’t damned-well
lost.

Oh, yeah…

And there, in the midst of the madness, Ecko started to grin – his wide black grin that he hadn’t worn in days without number. Hell, he was a lotta things – but he wasn’t fucking dumb. And he
understood
it now, how the pieces fit, and the neatness of them. Rhan really
was
the light and Vahl the fire – and he, Ecko, he
knew
the dark, knew how it moved, and knew the things that lived in it…

Adrenaline thrilled, warm this time, a rush.

We can so do this…

They were here, all of them, exactly where they should be – they were on the biggest fucking ride of all, the last one, and it felt like they were hanging, suspended over the fucking great
whooooosh!
below…

Waiting, breathless, for shit to go down.

His adrenaline rose higher, pounding, choking, elating.

He was gonna do this. Sir fuckin’ Boss, he was gonna
do
this! Save the world, already, defeat the blight, be the champion.