Ecko Rising (35 page)

The grass harvest was a time of rural celebration. They gathered their crops and they paid their tithes to the cities, and their protection for the return was assured.

Finally, as the cycles rolled towards winter, the grass would wither and die completely. It would leave the vastness of the Varchinde naked under the cold sky.

Lifeless.

Then the predators would come; the desperate and the hungry and the foolish. The glory of the summer plainland would be lost in a world of struggle and death.

With the spring, the grass would grow once more, green shoots across the emptiness – and life would return to the Varchinde. It was the cycle of seasons, air and soil; it was the way things should be.

But something was blackening the tips of the grass, closing the bright eyes of the wildflowers.

The rain soaked Triq’s hair.

The grass was wrong, somehow. Its colour was wrong, it seemed infected, struggling – fighting a silent war against something she couldn’t see.

Redlock joined her. “I know,” he said softly. “I saw it in Vanksraat, like the very beginning of some sort of rot...”

“Do they know – Fhaveon, the CityWardens...?”

“Vanksraat sent a bretir to Fhaveon.” In the sunlight, he looked older, worn down with age and combat. “They don’t know what it is any more than we do.”

Somewhere under the soft kiss of the rain, she heard Feren screaming.

For a moment she sat there, feeling the water on her face, watching the tiny, black tinge of death...

...then she turned the horse away and went back to the road.

They had a job to do.

* * *

Suddenly Tarvi said, “Wait!”

With a clunky effort, Ecko reined his beast into a lurching half turn. He lifted the front of his cowl. His butt hurt like he’d received the biggest S&M spanking ever known to man.

“What?”

“I think we’re lost.” Her voice was full of fear and resignation. “Oh dear Gods...” She rode her beast close to him, her gaze searching the grass.

He flinched back from the closeness, couldn’t be this near to her, not any more.

They hadn’t mentioned it. It stalked through his head continually, a tumble of images and sensations that he couldn’t scrub from his memory. Contact and warmth and pleasure and reaffirmation and intensity. Her skin in the soft dawn light, the rain on the tent sides, her voice gasping his name, her hands pulling him to her, her body shaking with orgasm...

She made a grab for his rein and he let her take it – shied away from the touch of her skin on his own.

She scared him. He scared himself.

“Ecko? Can those black eyes see where we are?”

Pulling his cowl back down, he turned away, unable to bear it. With an effort, he slashed his black sneer back over his face, hid behind it.

He couldn’t tell her, couldn’t admit to himself, how good that had been.

Good enough to kick his adrenals sky-fucking-high as he’d let himself go, good enough to send him into fucking
orbit.

Good enough for him to lose control of his targeters, his flamethrower.

If the tanks had not already been emptied, he knew he would’ve burned her to death.

It was in the midst of that thought that his telescopics picked up on motion, slightly to the north. A stone ruin, alight with a nacre of its own; figures moving at its base.

One of them was familiar.

Seeing her, Ecko realised something about fractals that he’d forgotten...

That, whichever direction you chose, whatever ripples you generated, the fucking patterns repeated themselves.

And the implications of
that
were too scary to contemplate.

* * *

Across the vastness of the Grasslands, the sun was setting.

It glared red, light spilling from under heavy cloud to coat the Varchinde in blood. The rain had finally ceased – but the heavy, bulbous sky had a metallic light that foretold the rising storm.

The air was warm and close, sweat ran down Triq’s spine. Her mare was jittery: she could feel the elemental imbalance and she danced sideways, throwing her head and rolling her eyes. The wet grass swished at her chest. Redlock’s gelding was calm – but exhausted. He’d run a long road, his legs quivered and his head hung low.

But they were almost there.

The Monument.

After the speed of her ride, Triq was tired, sodden, filthy and thinking lusty thoughts about inn beds and clean sheets. There were times, she thought, that even the Banned had their limits.

In the distance, the first rumble of thunder – soft and menacing. The rain began again, a ceaseless beating of grey.

They rode on.

She was getting nervous now – as they approached the Monument just as Feren and Amethea had done, a halfcycle before. The air was tight and breathless. The monster, the half-horse stallion, was here somewhere.

Waiting.

Slowly, the mountains’ twilight swallowed them. Ahead, a nacreous, yellowish glow swelled upon the horizon. The thunder rumbled again, louder and closer – reddish light flashed behind the clouds. As the sun died on the spiked peaks of the Kartiah, she drew both blades, jumping at every swish in the grass.

“Triq.” Redlock reined his beast and pointed. “Look.”

Before them, the ground swelled upwards at last, lifting a jumble of massive, fallen stones to the swollen grey sky. In the gathering darkness, they gleamed like the mother of all rocklights, a powerful crepuscular glow, eerie and shivering Triq’s skin. Around them, the rain sparkled as it fell and the grass was all stark light and black shadow.

The surrounding bank was high and dark – lifeless.

She had never been this close. All Feren’s fears clamoured to be heard and she rode slowly upwards into that strange light, compelled and awed and silent.

The lightning sheeted again, blood red behind the glowering clouds.

Even fallen, the stones were immense. She’d no idea how they could’ve been brought here, built – allowed to crumble.

Forgotten.

Halting beside her, Redlock asked, “Can you feel it?”

“Feren said...” Triq was drowned out by thunder. She swallowed and tried again. “Feren said he heard it sing, said it was sad, deep and lonely.”

“Doesn’t sound lonely to me.” Redlock chuckled irreverently and his laughter made her smile. “You ask me? It sounds mighty pissed off.”

She was about to laugh with him when movement caught her eye: something big, running in the rain. Her heart hammered with certainty, but her voice was steady as she told him, “Talking of pissed off...”

There they were, three of them, huge and hair flying, highlighted into monstrousness by the Monument’s illumination. The thunder rumbled as they came in. They were fast –
fast
– racing hard up the far side of the rise.

Dear Gods, they were
huge.
Bigger than the scouts had been, far, far bigger.

Triq’s mare lifted her head, flared her nostrils and shook her mane, blowing rainwater. She was lifting her knees high, dancing on the spot like a Padeshian street girl. Triq let out her breath, let out the fear.

“They’re coming.”

“I see them.” Rock steady, Redlock slid to the ground, axes in hands glittering with cold assurance. “Distract it.”

She mustered a laugh. “You’re
loco.
” For a second, she stared at him, trying to make him meet her gaze – but he was watching the shapes, the light gleaming cold from their skin as they came closer. “Red–”

“Later,” he said. “We’ve got guests.”

In the moment between one heartbeat and the next, between the flash of lightning and the rumble of thunder, the stallion was there. He was huge, far heavier and broader than the scouts had been. His horse body was twice the mass of her little mare, his human torso massively muscled and sparkling with water.

He was beautiful.

And, Feren had been right, he was
terrifying.

His thick mane of hair was plastered to him, clinging to the lines of his chest and shoulders. His eyes were terrible, more than human and less than animal – he was utterly crazed and he
celebrated
it.

He screamed at her, his incisors too long, like a bweao’s. His claws rent the wet soil. Around him, the thunder crashed again.

Was this what Feren had seen?

Triq was aware that Redlock had moved, she didn’t look at him. Instead, she stood in her stirrups and screamed straight back at the monster – shrill and utterly insolent.

And the stallion laughed at her.

“Little lady,” he said. “Lady of the Banned. You who slew my scouts, my sons. Little creature thinks she can fight?”

Like his horse body, his human chest, his voice was perfect – powerful, sensual. It was deep, a throb she felt in her blood. It robbed her of words, and, for a moment, she was overpowered by his presence. Her mouth moved, but no sound emerged.

“And you, warrior, you smell like the other one. You seek to punish me? Little human – you’re creature-born, forced to live with whatever your sire and dam could spare you. I? Am so much more!”

In the rain, the two flanking shapes had flashed past, trapping them. Triq kept them in her awareness, but her attention was on the stallion.

She found her voice and shouted, “There was a girl, an apothecary. What did you do with her?”

“She was needed. To heal
flesh.
” The word was a hiss, spat between his predator’s teeth. “She belongs to us now.”

“What did you
do
with her?”

“We gave her a home. A family. Purpose. There will be none of this for you.”

The thing was crazed, the light reflected broken from its eyes.

Triq shrieked at it, “I don’t know what the rhez you are or why you were made – but you’re
wrong.
Half creature, life all twisted! The grass has no place for you!”

With a fluid motion, the great beast raised his longbow, nocked a flightless shaft like a spear, drew back the string.

“This place is
mine
! I was charged to come here; to guard the cathedral, the centre, the work that happens here. You, creature-born – your time is
done.
” The broadhead was pointed straight at Triqueta’s throat. “He knows you are coming.”

“He?”

The stallion laughed, the thunder crashing through his mockery, the sparkling rain soaking his mane to darkness and shadow.

“Enough,” he said. “You want to challenge me, little lady?”

He put the final pressure on the bowstring, released the shaft.

Triq threw herself sideways, hanging half out of her saddle. It skimmed past her so close the broadhead sliced a red line in the side of her neck. Her mare stood straight up, raindrops shattering on her forehooves – tiny against the almighty chest of the beast...

But the stallion stopped dead, staring at something behind her.

What the rhez?

She twisted in her saddle, blades gripped in her hands. The mare plunged back to the soil, ears flat back and hooves tamping.

There was something else out here?

Beside her, there was movement, down in the grass. Something dark, shadowed; something Triq couldn’t see.

Something that threw two broken halves of arrow shaft straight up into the monster’s face, daring it.

“Y’know, for a centaur, you’re a lousy fuckin’ shot.” The voice was harsh, oddly accented, a rasp that tore into her ears. “Whoever made you? Shoulda had better blueprints.” In the grass, in the rain, two red lights blinked up at Triqueta. “Hey,” the voice said. “Good to see ya. I think you lost some dice.”

What?

“Whatever the rhez you are.” Redlock’s voice. “Identify yourself.”

“We’re your three’n’fourpence,” it said. “Looks like we’re gonna dance.”

18: FOUNDERSDAUGHTER

                    
TEALE, FHAVEON

Penya Esamy laughed and salt wind tickled strands of her tied-back grey hair. Beside her scuttled a slender young man with pale skin, dark eyes and the slightly haunted look of one who sought her services a little too regularly.

But Rhan’s guise didn’t fool her and he knew it. She’d known him far too long.

The day was overcast, the sky fluffed layers of grey. To one side of them, scattered buildings rose in zigzags to forested hills above the town – to the other, trade-boats hunkered down in rows upon the water, covered in sun-faded fabric and awaiting summer rain. The great city of Fhaveon had no sea harbour – and this little town of Teale, further north and on a gentler coastline, was lifeline to both fisherfolk and incoming coastal trade.

Flanked by a tall lighthouse and a blurred, grey-sombre statue, the harbour mouth was currently quiet.

Down through long returns, Rhan had grown fond of Teale. He’d been instrumental in the town’s construction – generations ago, when Adward had been a young man, inheritor of his great-grandfather’s zeal and fire. High on the hillside, they’d built the Hollow Theatre together, the celebration of the trade cycle that had brought peace and communication to the Varchinde. It stood there, as Rhan remembered, like a promise – a promise that the Grasslands would thrive.

Thrive.
The dead lord’s image was as clear as the daylight. He’d aged into a bitter man, thin as a spear handle, and smiling like its thrust.
Samiel’s teeth, I’d like to take the old sod up there and show him what we’re becoming.

Teale was shabby now, more ribbon-town than trading post. A population once comfortable with a tithe of the incoming cargo had been suitably squeezed by Phylos’s tight fist. The theatre shone bright as the sun slanted through the clouds. On the waterfront, many businesses were shuttered and hard-eyed predators loitered in gaggles in their doorways.

Watching.

Rhan could feel their gazes as they passed, he didn’t look up. Beside him, Penya walked swiftly.

In the harbour, there were two of the great, square-sailed Archipelagan boats, their prow-sculpted maidens blank eyed and huge breasted above the wharf, smiling emptily at the rising town. These triremes would bring spiceweed, parchment and wrought-fibre gems – cargo then carried by cart and caravan south over the hills to Fhaveon herself, to the fiveday markets and the meticulous records of the Cartel.