Ecko Rising (20 page)

The wound was huge, as though a javelin had been driven through the boy’s flesh, but harder than any mortal hand could wield it. Around it, the skin was white, torn, crusted with old blood and fabric threads. Its edges were a vicious red and deep bruising had spread down the front of his hipbone. He could see the end of a piece of swollen, blood-black wood, splintered as though it’d been poorly snapped. “Spitted”, Ress had said. It was too fat for an arrow, too narrow for a spear – and it had gone through the boy’s body like he was thinly stretched hide.

The boy’s courage and resilience bereft him of words.

Where had he come from?

The air rippled again, his almost-recollection made him shudder with imagined cold.

But the boy was stirring.

Ress moved to his side, voice and hands gentle. Triq came close, too, standing beside Roderick. She smelled of sun and spice and fresh sweat.

“In the desert,” she said softly, “life’s precious – to be celebrated. Saving that life’s more precious still.”

The apothecary flicked a glance at her, raised a curious eyebrow. But she’d turned away and the boy was awake, moving, trying to talk.

At the table, there were ragged cheers. Leather tankards thumped together as they raised a toast to Ress’s skill.

His shaking hands wrapped around the neck of a waterskin, the boy was speaking.

“I made it – I really did it!” His breathing was ragged. “I feel like I’m dreaming, I just walked and I walked and it wasn’t really me and I never thought –”

“Easy.” Ress said softly. “You’ve got a lot to tell... it can wait for a minute. You’re hurt, lost a lot of blood –”

“I did good though, didn’t I? I did it right?”

“You did...?” Triq almost pounced on him, but Ress understood.

“You... treated yourself...?”

“This is The Wanderer.” His expression softened, staring in amazement at the taproom round him. His gaze came to rest on the Bard. “Amethea... she said... she’d eat her saddle and ride home bareback... She...” His jaw shook as he fought back a surge of tears.

“Shhhh.” Roderick laid a hand carefully on his shoulder. “We’ll take care of you now.”

“Wait.” The boy caught his arm. “I have to tell you. You’re the Bard. Maybe you need to know this more than anybody.”

And then he told his story.

* * *

Like the cold, spiked spine of some vast and sleeping creature, the Kartiah Mountains curved a silent guard at the westernmost limit of the Grasslands. By tradition, they were the home of darkness, the element made manifest; sun and moons both sank to their daily deaths upon the bared stone peaks. Down their flanks, the last of the light was spilled like blood and there forests swelled and grew. In their bellies, metal lay quiescent, awaiting the tactile skill of the Kartian craftmasters.

From here came the first scattered springs of the Great Cemothen River, the plainlands’ central waterway that gathered its tributaries at Roviarath and then carved long leagues of meanders to the estuary and the dark sprawl of Amos.

Winding more or less beside it was the faint, ramshackle glimmer of the trade-road – and there on its outskirts, surrounded by the moonlit ripple of the shimmering grass, was the tiny, bright square of The Wanderer, a flicker of hope in the midst of the emptiness.

This was the Varchinde – the air was vast and wild and chill, and unseen creatures sang in anticipation of the birth of the sun. A soft, grey breeze shook the grasses, and stirred the dust.

Sheltered from the pre-dawn chill by shoulder-high stone walls, they’d gathered in the tavern’s rear courtyard: Roderick, Triqueta and Ress. The boy, Feren, was resting on a narrow, two-wheeled wagon. The Banned’s apothecary had done everything he could.

Everything would probably not be enough.

Bathed by the square of pale light from the kitchen window, Ress’s lined face held failure. He rubbed a hand absently through his beard.

Roderick was watching eastwards, the dark of the sky was lightening to a deep, rich blue that made the slightly ragged, creeper-crawling wall top as black as nightmare.

They didn’t have long.

In the Bard’s Tundran blood, his odd fear still prickled, a shimmer of alarm. And now it had form.

Monsters.

Like the nartuk, but bigger, far bigger, than he had ever imagined.

Beside him, Triqueta held the headstall of her little palomino mare. She was edgy, watching the pre-dawn with an echo of his nervousness. Picking up on her mistress’s mood, perhaps, the little horse threw her head up and down and stamped a splayed forehoof, the sound a heavy, dull thudding that seemed loud in the softening twilight.

Triq stroked her neck.

With them was the one remaining member of the die-hard, dawn patrol Banned. Jayr the Infamous was not one for the noisy crowds of a taproom – she was something of a loner, very young, ludicrously powerful, oddly awkward in company. She was also one of the finest open-handed fighters the Varchinde had ever seen. Her scalplock and meticulously, brutally carved scars were Kartian, her dark eyes those of a Grasslander and she had a powerful, Archipelagan physique. Both sets of knuckles were permanently scabbed over and her nails were bitten to the quick. Her big, bay gelding stood with his head down, snuffling at the cobblestones for errant greenery.

The remainder of the Banned had ridden – just about – for their campsite, mounts finding their way when riders could not. Syke, sharp-eyed and gleefully sleazy, would want to know what had happened. Jayr, unspeaking, had stayed.

Her hefty, cross-armed stance said
just in case.

Ress’s skill was considerable, but Feren’s body was tainted with harm – he had an infection that was eating him from the inside out. The boy had fought so hard and come so far; his only hope of succour lay in reaching the city’s hospice.

“The Count of Time creeps upon us,” Roderick said, eyeing the sky. “Perhaps more than you know. Good fortune ride with you, Ress of the Banned.” He had so much more he wanted to articulate: he wanted to wrest his feeling of unease into visibility, to show them the tremble of anticipation in his heart.

But now, of all times, his eloquence had failed him.

“We’re slow – days from city limits.” Ress was sat in the front of the wagon, the rein in his lap. The heavy, slope-shouldered chearl stood quiet in the traces. “And we’re as vulnerable as –”

“Ress,” the Bard said softly, his certainty apparently absolute, “you’ll make it.”

You have to. You have to tell –

“Do my best.” The apothecary took a breath, made an effort to smile. “Failure’s a part of success – don’t get to my age without learning that.”

Roderick clapped his arm, moved to the great wooden doors that held the open grass at bay. “You have both heart and courage. Not to mention an escort that kicks arse. When you reach Roviarath, take Feren’s tale to CityWarden Larred Jade and tell him everything –
everything
– that the boy has told us. The city needs to know – and they must surely seek the missing Xenotian girl, the teacher.” His tone had a thrum of urgency, it curled like creeper in his throat. For a moment, he left the doors alone, turning as if to conjure the image of Feren’s monster from the cold stone of the moonlit yard. “You’ll have to make him comprehend...” He stumbled, unable to wrest this odd and shapeless terror from his mouth.

“You believe this?” Ress sounded surprised. “Half man, half horse – alchemical experimentation? It’s loco.” Feren muttered, and Ress twisted to look back at him. “He was dehydrated, in pain, his mind conjured figments. He probably saw a Deep Patrol.”

“A Deep Patrol?” Roderick turned again to the wagon, door unopened. The fact that Ress had no time for Feren’s creatures had taken him completely aback. “Whatever his monsters may be, their existence is –”

“You’re jesting. Alchemy like that –”

“Hasn’t existed since the high days of Tusien – I know at least that much lore.” The Bard chuckled as if strangling the tension in his throat. “Such creations –”

“Are impossible. I’m an apothecary, I know the limits of flesh.”

“And hasn’t this boy just surpassed those limits?”

The question brought Ress up short. With a tight sigh, he managed, “Hardly the same thing.”

Triq looked up, the dying moonlight caught a glitter in the stones in her cheeks. “Larred Jade’s a practical man – we can’t go in there with half-brewed tales of saga-borne beasties.”

Ress snorted. “He’d throw away the key.”

Jayr frowned and tore at her fingernails with teeth. Agitated, the little palomino tapped her forehoof. Triq patted her shoulder. For a moment, tension spun the dust at their feet into scuttling whirlwinds.

“We should go,” Triq said finally, “before we land at the arse end of the Gods-Alone-Know-Where.”

“Sorry.” Ress shrugged at the Bard, picked up the rein. “This is real, it isn’t one of your stories.”

The words were a dismissal, a request to throw open the gateway and let them go – but Roderick didn’t move. There was urgency in him now – the monsters were real, they had to be, he
had
to make them understand.

“Everything’s a story to someone,” he said and before Ress could answer, he turned away from the doors completely and gestured at the wagon, at the restlessly sleeping boy. “And this one must have an audience. Whatever these things may be, their threat is most certainly real – alchemy, the creation of creatures like this – it’s no myth. Just because you can’t see it, Ress of the Banned, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”

Over the wall, the light was slowly paling, tiny wildflowers shook in the breeze. Almost trembling now, the Bard continued, “The Powerflux gives the world her seasons, her weather, her light and her darkness – you’re Banned, you live with these things in your blood. That this power has other manifestations is surely only sense?”

“This’d better not be your ‘Great Power that Ends the World’ speech.” Triq rolled her eyes, though tolerantly. “You can play Prophet Loco on your own time, sunshine. The poor kid’s half –”

“I’m not playing.” The edge in his voice was sharp. “I feel the truth of this, in my heart and in my skin. If these monsters exist, they’re an alchemical formula left over from the days of Tusien – something we’ve not been able to create in a thousand returns. I have a visitor, a champion come to me from outside, a traveller to whom our whole existence is a story –”

“You have a visitor? From another world?” Now Triq was smothering laughter. “Oh dear Gods. Been at the smoke-weed, have we?”

“You’re not helping your case,” Ress commented bleakly. “Or your credibility.” His expression was humourless. “My priority’s the kid. And no way am I taking tales of monsters into a CityWarden’s hearing without proof. You’re jesting.”

“No,” Roderick said softly. “I’m not.”

Tension rose like the edge of the sunrise. Feren cried out, wordless and laden with pain.

And then came the shock.

An edge of a memory, a cold point in Roderick’s heart, something that was there-and-gone, terrifying but utterly formless. He knew it, he
knew
it, and he had no idea why. It was an after-echo of a nightmare, chill and tantalising, shivering through his skin – and even as he was reaching to understand it, it had faded into the morning.

What...?!

His breath had congealed and he found he was shaking, his hands palsied with a desperate need to grab this thing, to see it and name it.

Fired by a rush of frustration, he said, “This is no story! How can I find words to frame this? Ecko is
here
; he brings darkness and fire and strength the likes of which I’ve never seen! He understands my tale, my vision, the world’s lost memory.” The words had a bitterness he could barely suppress. “I feel the Count of Time at my back. Call me madman if you will, insane prophet – whatever name you choose to give me –” he came forwards, the early light in his eyes “– but take this tale to Jade – tell him everything!”

“Tell him yourself!” Triqueta said.

“I must carry this to Fhaveon – to Rhan, and to the Council of Nine. To the Foundersson himself!”

“Gods,” Ress said, sharp as a punch in face. “They’ll lock you
up.”

The Bard’s plea tumbled into silence; it fell like a grey pebble in the pre-dawn light and rolled, disregarded, across the courtyard. For a moment, he wanted to rail with hopeless, helpless, timeless fury,
I am a Guardian of the Ryll, such instincts are my training and my strength. I can feel the truth of them in my blood and bone. How can I make you understand?

But he knew that such words meant nothing – that they would fall forlorn and spin forgotten across the stone of The Wanderer’s yard.

Triqueta stared at him for a moment, then turned away.

“Roderick, with respect.” Ress gave a short sigh. “Your sincerity is apparent – I’m trying to help you. You can’t just walk into the Council in Fhaveon with some injured kid’s loco rumour – ‘here be monsters’.”

“I have to. And equally, you must rouse CityWarden Jade,” Roderick said.

“This is crazed!” Ress spread his hands helplessly. “Feren’s badly hurt, his mind could have played any number of jests on him. Roderick, with respect, I don’t understand why you’re –”

“Then take it this way,” Roderick said. “Such alchemy is no
figment.
Tales of ancient Tusien say the city sired monstrosities – creatures of crossed flesh that dwelled in captivity for the amusement of all. Those creatures were crafted, not born. Where do you think our chearl first came from? Our bretir? Our –” his lips twisted “– nartuk? Who is to say that the Monument doesn’t hold Tusien’s memory; that somewhere this lore has not been preserved, uncovered? If you will not heed my fears, then heed my facts.”

“They’re
sagas
.” Ress’s words were like the snapping of a trap.

Roderick’s grin had an edge of mania. “There is truth in every tale.”

“Look, I’ve had enough of this.” Ress picked up the wagon’s traces. “You can’t attach half a man to half a horse. That’s the end of it. No amount of regurgitated legend is going to make me stand in front of Larred Jade and tell him otherwise. If –
when
– Feren wakes up –”