Ecko Rising (42 page)

Kinda freaked that’d found the treasure before they’d actually mashed the bad guy, Ecko picked up another can, shaking it to hear the sloshing of –

Tarvi screamed.

His boosting lurched – now, which was verging on annoying. It spluttered, coughed into life like an old engine, carried him to her side even as he wondered where the bad guy was at.

He couldn’t keep fucking doing this – his endocrine system wasn’t getting time to reboot for chrissakes. Was she
trying
to wear him out?

But she was backing out of a corner of the chamber, clinging to the rocklight as if to draw its warmth.

She said something, cleared her throat and said it again, “I know this man.” Redlock had stopped fooling. He stood by the chamber wall – by the soot marks that told where the beasties had blundered through. Stuffing a handful of washers in a pouch, Triq crouched by entrance to the broken crystal, the light glittering from the stone in her cheek.

Tarvi backed into Ecko, small, soft frame, hair –
again
– in his nose. He half expected her to turn round, bury her face in his shoulder – was wanting it and dreading it and working out how he could push her away – but she was staring, transfixed, at the source of the reek.

Ecko said softly, “Fuck.” He’d found where the death smell was coming from.

Three corpses, twisted and broken. He’d seen such things before.

But they were
metal.

A plated hide, an exquisitely fine insect carapace, covered each one – eyelids, fingertips, genitals. Like one of his Tech’s, Mom’s, more fucked up experiments...

...trusst me, Tamarlaine. I can make you the besst. Hold your faith in me, my little one, my child, my obssession and creation. You wissh ssuperpowerss? I can make your dreamss come true...

...they’d been enhanced, a botch-job that’d gone terrifyingly off the rails – and he
knew
how it felt to have your skin delicately peeled back, your flesh exposed, the naked and intimate secrets of muscle and fibre and joint, all bared to eyes unseen in the darkness. He knew the screaming and the savagery of the pain, knew the terror of being that utterly helpless and vulnerable. He knew the hope, the struggle to retain self and sanity as you were remade, transformed into something more than human...

He’d survived. Through trial by blood and terror and nightmare and painstaking reconstruction, he’d survived. He’d survived by sheer motherfucking will.

And he was unbreakable. Nothing could ever torture him like that again.

These fuckers hadn’t been so lucky.

He found he was shaking, nausea in his throat from too much adrenaline. Against him, Tarvi was steady and warm.

“Ecko?”

His hand was on her shoulder, a grip like steel, but she didn’t wince or pull away. Her hand went over his, pale skin against the mottle his Mom had given him.

An anchor.

He said, “Maugrim did this?”

“That one – there – he trained with me. I didn’t know him well, but –” her voice shook “– name of the Gods, what
happened
to him?”

Anger, fear, outrage, heat in his face indicating a rising need to throw up.

“Seems someone likes to play.” His rasp was like a broken saw, as rusted as the steel that was scattered across the floor. Steel that this bastard had been using to create some fucking superbeing. “And got it wrong.”

The rocklight shone from the tiny plates, each one crafted with an expert touch that even Ecko couldn’t match. Beneath them, the flesh was beginning to decompose, to swell, blackening, through the cracks. Their eyes were open, death masks twisted with the kind of exquisite agony he fucking understood.

He
understood.

There were marks on the stone where the cave-critters had come, but they’d turned away, empty bellied. The guy Tarvi knew had a plate across his mouth, carved with a ghastly impression of a smile.

Someone had not only done this, they’d enjoyed it. Found humour in it.

Ecko retched, controlled himself. His mouth tasted of bile. Jesus, looking at this, he was beginning to think it was Eliza who needed the fucking shrink already...

In the back of his mind, he heard his conversation with the Bard.

I’m s’posed to think this is real?

I’m supposed to think it’s not?

Kale, talking about pain. Pareus, burning to death...

Tarvi turned round, wrapped herself in his arms.

Looking over her shoulder, Ecko found his rage blazing uncontainable, his own pity and helplessness and snarling frustration mocking him
. Dance, Ecko, daaaaaaance!
To be that close to home – and then to face his own most terrible and most elating memory...

Eliza was taunting him, making him
feel.

And, even against his will and better judgement, he knew that those feelings were growing stronger.

21: CRAZED

                    
THE GREAT LIBRARY, AMOS

The air was thick and shadowed, soft with age and decay.

In the gloom, Jayr the Infamous shivered uneasily, absently rubbing her scarred arms. Chill breaths of draft exhaled rot and damp stone. Her boots sank in softness, a carpet of age across a broken floor. In places, curious creeper had forced itself through the wall and then died from the lack of light.

At one end of the long hallway, the Great Library had crumbled into collapse and pale sunlight slanted through the dust, touching delicate fingers to the rubble below. She could see the faded corners of books protruding, as if they still sought rescue.

She shuddered.

Over her, rising ringed balconies led up to a once-bright, real-glass dome, now dark with bird droppings and age. One pane was cracked, others missing, and the balcony edges beneath were fallen away with returns of invading weather. Their remnants covered the central mosaic in rubble and fragments of once-carved woodwork.

If she held up her rocklight, she could see only shadows. They hung in the dust between bookshelf and wall, balcony and branch and empty doorway, they lurked as though they were
waiting.

Jayr could take a Range Patrol champion to pieces in shorter time than it took to tell it. And this place was giving her the
creeps.

Ress sat cross-legged by a small scatter of books. He wore old pince-nez and he squinted at faded scribblings, words and pages that dissolved to nothing at his touch. Occasionally, he reached to scrawl something on a fresh page to his other side. He was frowning intently, rubbing his short beard and blinking in the poor light.

Jayr kicked out a clean place and sat by him, back to the wall, scarred shoulders crawling with tension. She reached to pick up a book – and the thing fell through her hands like sand.

Suppressing another shudder, she rubbed her palms on her breeches and picked up the next one.

“Careful.” Ress’s whisper was instinctive, the gloom swallowed it whole.

“Like one more dead thing’s going to matter.” Her callused fingers were covered in old webs, her lap was full of dust. She, too, was voice lowered, almost fearing what she’d disturb in this forgotten place. “This is loco. Five days on a downriver barge – why did I have to come? You know I should’ve –”

“Jayr.” The apothecary grinned briefly. “Change of focus won’t kill you.”

“What’re you even looking for?”

“Alchemy,” Ress told her. “Half man, half horse. Monsters. Where they came from, who made them. Why.” He crooked an eyebrow. “Seems the Bard isn’t so crazed after all.”

“We’re the crazed ones.” She was young, still prone to sulking. “Still don’t know why you need me.”

He chuckled, the sound oddly subdued.

“Your horse has got to heal. And you can read... feel... basic Kartian, which I can’t. I need your strength.” He glanced at her over the tops of the pince-nez. “This is Amos, and I could do worse for a bodyguard.”

“Against what?” She eyed the shadows. “Is there something else in – ?”

“Not in here, Jayr, out there.” He chuckled. “Any monsters in here are only in the books. Now, make yourself useful. Stuff on ancient, Tusienic discoveries – how they made bretir, and chearl. Whatever those things were, they came from the same –”

“They were no match for us, I’ll tell you that.” The memory of the fight made her grin, brief and tight. “I hope Triq’s okay.”

“You’re both infamous, Infamous.” He shoved his glasses higher up his nose. “Now work!”

Jayr grumbled, “Why’d you teach me to read Grasslander anyway – too many letters.” After a final, uneasy survey of the dimness and the filth, though, she looked at the book in her hands. It was called
Reasonless Phemonenæ
, the words embossed into a battered leather cover. Something long dead had nibbled the corners. Glancing at Ress, she was tempted to put it back.

Then a word caught her eye.

Listed as part of the contents was “Memory”.

On an obscure impulse, she let the pages fall open, and blew gently at an eternity of insect husk.

The writing had faded to deep blue, ink bled out into the page. She brought the rocklight close and began to read:

Thus it appeared to my eyes upon landing that the Strait has fooled us, and we had failed to disembark upon the much-beloved Substance of the Gods, yet had instead landed upon the cruel shores of a hostile world. The fabled and beauteous inhabitants of the
Ilfead-Syr
were illustrated in old murals taller yet than a man, and more graceful than the most elegant of women, powerful of mind and body and voice. They bore skin between their fingers and between
their toes, and they were able to see in the turbulent waters that surround the island.

We carried gifts to them – the strength of muara, the power of cauxe, the beauty of ghyz, and we carried the greetings of the mainland, not heard in a thousand returns of the spring.

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?

The chill could be heard in the silence, felt in the air, it leeched the warmth from our very feet. The weakest of the crew broke and ran for the water to lose the sense of nothingness in the turbulence of the waves.

How long we walked with the chill sinking into our bones, I do not now remember, but we found at last the island’s inhabitants, their beauty no fable and seen even in their deaths. Yet their faces were empty – their eyes held nothing but nothing, telling us that nothing had been their deaths.

Jayr paused and read that bit again. It didn’t make any more sense the second time.

How better can my poor language explain what we have seen? How long they have been dead I do not know, but even now, they are still whole, as if only asleep, and there are thousands of them here.

Aleché, God of Inspiration, grant me only that I may portray the depth of horror witnessed by our eyes. The farther we searched, the more dead we found, slumped in their homes, or curled against walls where they had simply fallen. All were made more terrible by their faces, faces that held, not despair, and yet not relief or release, and yet not even a sense of duty, guilt or fear. Their eyes reflected nothing, they held emptiness, lethargy, apathy, as though a
thriving and joyous population, the Guardians of the Ilfe, the Well of Memory, an entire race and culture, had died of simply giving up.

Jayr shivered and rubbed at the back of her neck where her hair was tickling. It was getting colder in here.

And the
Ilfe
was gone! Gone as if it had never been! How is the World to live without her memory? My horror complete, I turned to my crew, seeking their support and friendship, only to find myself alone in the glade of the Well. Alone on this island of the dead, on an island where this empty death would still be stalking.

My journey back to the ship has been as a nightmare to me. Fallen with the dead of the island are now the dead of my friends, their faces holding the same awful emptiness, even their weapons undrawn. What manner of enemy can cause such utter destruction? Why have I, and only I, been spared the fate of the crew?

So thus do I wait for this death to stalk me at last. I write what I have seen, and it shall be hidden in the hope that it will return to the mainland to be seen by other eyes than mine. All my horror and my grief do I pour into this text, and when it is gone, I feel that this death of nothing will come for me.

The fears of this island are founded in reality. Do not, I beg of you, ever return here. I pronounce this island as Ramm-Outhe – Accurséd of the Gods. We have lost the Ilfe. The World will die because she cannot remember.

Jayr put the book down and rubbed bone-deep cold from her arms and shoulders. Her scars crawled with tension.

“Ress...?”

“I said work!”

“Listen to this.” She read him the tale, watching him, saw his eyes widen and his shoulders shiver as hers had done. His jaw lax, he took off the glasses and his expression washed with perplexity, then rising disbelief. As she finished, he mouthed the word “
Ramm-Outhe
”, then said, “There’s a tale that the Bard visited Rammouthe on some sort of mission, and came back scragged. Everyone that went with him died. There’s a daemon, a beastie, meant to be incarcerated there?”

“And it cooked him, I take it?”

“He didn’t find a beastie, he got munched by the wildlife. The tale of the daemon goes back further than that though, I’m trying to remember how it goes...”