Ecko Burning

by Danie Ware

  Holy fucking shit on a stick.

  His voice was mechanical.

  Amethea paled, but didn’t move.

  Ecko gaped, utterly fucking dumbfounded by the masked figure that now stood over him, his shadow harsher than the fang-toothed gargoyles that blocked out the sun.

  Roderick.

  The name was ludicrous.

  What the fuck did you do?

  He scrabbled to sit up, failed. His heatseeker was in overdrive - looking for flaws, excuses, anything to allow him denial. The man had a throat that seethed with warmth and colour and harm; a skull that offered twin cold plates, one down either side. And the work didn’t stop there - the heat fluctuations followed across his collarbones and shoulders, down into his chest. They retreated too far under his skin for Ecko to work out what they were, but...

  Holy fucking shit.

  There was only one person who’d do work like that.

  “You went to Mom.” It was a whisper, laden with implication. “You went to Mom. Jesus fucking Harry Christ - why?”

  His mind staggered sideways like a backstreet drunk.

  “And - how?”

  But the Bard didn’t answer. Instead, one gloved hand gripped the bloodied mess that was Ecko’s throat, thumb and fingers, ready for throttling. The other took the scarf from his face.

  Pressure squeezing, threat and promise, he said, “This is over. No more drama, no more games. You tell me again, Ecko, how my world isn’t real. How it doesn’t matter. How you can play as you choose and damn everything to perish. Tell me again how you’re the only thing of importance.”

  Tell me again, Ecko, how my world isn’t real.

  He couldn’t process it, couldn’t begin to wrap his brain round what all this meant. The Wanderer had been in London - in London, for chrissakes! - a figment of Ecko’s program, a piece of his fucking imagination, had existed outside. He wanted to reverse away like Amal had done, wanted to escape the thought, what it meant. Wanted to shriek denial of the man’s presence, of what Mom had done to him. He clanked against the restraints, struggled against the man’s grip, panicked - he was looking for the exit, the hole in reality, the shimmering-gate-through-time, the whatever-the-fuck-it-was, but there was nothing there.

  What the fuck?

  He spluttered, still twisting against the metal clasps and unable to gather his shattered wits. “You... but... shit! You died! What the fuck happened to you? How...?”

  The man’s face was thin, now, pale and hard. His amethyst eyes were like chips of gemstone, cold. There was no mercy in his expression, none of the humour and empathy that Roderick had offered to those around him - there was only the hand across Ecko’s throat.

  Whatever Mom had done to him, it had reft him of his sanity, his humanity. It had fractured his soul - just as it had fractured Ecko’s before him.

  What was the word they used? Estavah, closer than brother.

  But brother or not, this time, Ecko feared that he really did face his own death.

  That not only had the program failed, but that it would take him with it.

  23: RAGE FHAVEON

  The shouting began.

  Trapped in the darkness and the rich, sweet scents of the herbery, the young Lord Foundersdaughter and the old scribe listened to the rise of fury in Fhaveon.

  Selana was sobbing, Mael could hear her gulp and sniffle. He didn’t blame her for a minute, poor child had been through the rhez, but he restrained the urge to pat her awkwardly on her shoulder.

  She was afraid, and out of her depth, and the release was good. Frankly, he could have sniffled a bit himself.

  Get up, you fool. But there was no time for fear - he could hear Saravin as clearly as if the big warrior was beside him, hulking and hairy, there in the dark. Get up and get on with it!

  Sometimes, Mael figured, you have to do these things -simply because there’s no one else left.

  He got up.

  Selana shifted, responding to his movement, but he said nothing. Instead, he stood still in the darkness, fighting down his rising panic to listen, turning his head and feeling the air, trying to orient himself. They’d done this as ’prentices - more returns ago than he cared to count - drawn lots and then arranged to get locked in so they could access certain protected substances. And if Mael hadn’t lost his damned mind completely...

  He remembered. That tiny filter of light coming from a chink in the stone - it was barely more than a figment, but it gave him direction.

  That way.

  He picked his way across the floor, counting steps, his hands stretched in front of him like a sleepwalker’s. Eight paces, kicking with his toes as he went, and he found the wall. Two sideways, and there was the old scar in the stonework. Three handspans down...

  ...and that was the axis point.

  He couldn’t remember who had found this - a stone idiosyncrasy that lurked here unremembered and unseen. The loose piece of wall weighed more than Mael could shift - more than Saravin could have shifted for that matter - but had been crafted with such skill that a touch in the right place and it swung outwards like a door into the very back of the hospice garden.

  When it swung closed the fit would be almost flawless.

  The spreading arc of light touched Selana as she turned, eyes wide and face streaked and sparkling.

  “You moved the wall?” she said.

  Mael allowed himself a chuckle. “Tekissari built the hospice, my Lord. Thank your forefathers, and my misspent youth, and let’s get out of here. And quietly!”

  Scrubbing at her face, Selana scrabbled to her feet. As she did so, the rush of angry noise came again, startling both of them - it was a rising crescendo of outrage, a tide of wrath on its way to crash against the walls of the higher city.

  They could hear hooves, shouted orders, the clatter of weapons. From somewhere, a single voice - Phylos possibly -fought for control. The tone was strident, demanding discipline and obedience.

  Dear Gods.

  A blossom of very real fear grew in Mael’s heart. For all their bravery, they were an old man and a young girl, facing streets now probably streaked with the angry, the righteous and the violent. How they were supposed to win through this...

  Stop moaning, you old fool, and move!

  The scents of the herbery brought flickers of his youth, memories of ’prentice antics and personal rebellion.

  Just who are you calling old, you galumphing great oaf? Call yourself a warrior?

  Mael felt a sudden rush of pure nostalgic wickedness, allowed himself a grin. Feeling younger than he’d done in returns, he said, “Come on!” His heart thumping, he caught the girl’s sleeve and they ran together through the tiny and overgrown end of the garden, stingers biting at them as they went. Then they rounded into the gardens proper, neat rows of planted flowers, dancing statues that spat water in perfect arcs.

  Mael ducked them into a side-arch, said, “We have to stop this, my Lord...” He drew a breath. “We’ve got to go out there.”

  “Out there?” Selana gawked at him. “You’re crazed!”

  From somewhere there was a taint of smoke, cries, flecks of ash.

  Mael swallowed, aware that he must be pale as a corpse.

  “You gave a brave speech earlier, Selana.” He used her name deliberately, a confrontation. “I’m hoping you meant it. We’re going to get your uncle and we’re going to open the doors to the hospice. And then, we’re going to get you into the palace.”

  She drew a deep breath, said, “Okay. Okay. I suppose... we can go round to the back door. Into the kitchen.”

  Mael nodded. Good girl. “Then we’re going up to that balcony to stop Phylos.”

  Somehow.

  He didn’t need to add it to the end of the statement.

  * * *

  It had started in the tithehalls and the marketplaces with the seizures and demands, with the casual brutality of the soldiery. With the overturning of stalls, and the breaking and burning of stock. With small knots
of outrage, and a gradual rising of voices that would take no more.

  It had started in the lower streets of the city, with those who’d heard the words of Fletcher Wyll, with those whose companions had been dragged away to face the wrath of the Justicar. With the Lord city’s roadways being patrolled by things inhuman, beasts of hoof and horn with the bodies of men, and skin woven with spirals of seething ink. With the kicking down of doors and the accusations that followed; with neighbours dragged, bleeding, from their hearths and families. It had started as the people of the city realised their homes were not safe and that their anger was greater than their fear.

  It had started the moment a victim had hit back.

  It might have been a stone, a thrown pottery carafe, an explosion of shards; it might have been a knife between the ribs, a flash of flame, or a rocklight raised in anger and brought down shattering-hard. Whatever that first spark, it caught to sudden light and the blaze that spread from it was pure rage.

  Under her perfect skin, Fhaveon had been simmering with it.

  Rage at the blight, at the people’s helplessness, at the soldiers’ brutality. Rage from traders and craftsmen denied their livelihoods, from warriors who could express themselves no other way. Rage from brewers and bookkeepers who had seen their tallies tumble and had taken a rope across the back for it.

  Now, that rage had an outlet. Fhaveon’s people swarmed the streets, the squares, resentment and righteousness giving them strength and determination. They gripped tight whatever weapons they had - staves, belt-blades and woodsman’s axes -and as they moved onwards so they became more, so their shout was heard further, and so their might and number increased.

  They raided the hoarded stockpiles, tearing down the guards from their duty and wresting away their weapons. They took everything they could and then torched what remained. They burned out of indignation, teaching the city a lesson, firing stores rather than letting Fhaveon’s rulers keep them - and then they watched defiant as the sparks and smoke rose into the autumn sky.

  Their roar became a scream - revolt and outrage.

  But then, the city answered them.

  And her walls came to life.

  * * *

  The grey stone of the main hospice was sealed. Its apothecaries and herbalists rushed from corridor to corridor as though the building was listing this way and that, and they had to hold it upright lest it fall. Scurrying in, secure under its shelter, Mael stopped at a line of pegs and threw a cloak at the Foundersdaughter, then they ran down the colonnade, just another pair of figures racing in the panic.

  One corner, two, and they found themselves back at Mostak’s door.

  In the room was a figure, leaning over him.

  Mael paused, but Selana shoved past, grabbing the figure’s arm.

  “Wait!” she cried.

  Startled, the apothecary - the same man they’d spoken to earlier - turned to say something, and then his expression and his shoulders sagged with relief.

  “My Lord, you’re all right, thank the Gods! The city’s going crazed. Phylos told me... but I couldn’t, I...”

  “You’re a brave man,” she told him.

  As she spoke, Mael heard the crack in her voice - he realised that Mostak’s hand, callused and thin, was reached out to her. Choking, the Lord of the City fell to her knees in a billow of stolen fabric.

  The commander struggled to sit up. He was pale, but the sheen to his skin had gone and his eyes were clear. Whatever orders Phylos had given the apothecary, the man had apparently found his own courage.

  Mostak laid his thin hand on Selana’s shining hair, looked up at Mael.

  “It’s all right,” he said. His voice was weak but steady, a soldier’s determination. “It’s all right. I know all of it. Now, help me stand. It’s starting, out there - and we need to get to the palace.”

  * * *

  The first one came from the city’s lowest streets, tearing itself bodily from the stone. It had been a creature of lost Swathe, perhaps, or a crafting of the Founder’s forgotten masons -now it was a blunt thing, misshapen and clumsy, its mouth stretched in dismay and its strength shattering buildings. The crush of people in the roadway paused before it, those at the front pulling back as their anger was suddenly leaking down the insides of their thighs.

  Further back, the rage continued and the press tried to surge forwards - there were cries and seethings and fallings, there was a mass of trampling and feet. As the stone thing rose, stinking of age and rank air, stinking like rotted breath, like the inside of a dead cavern, so the front of the crowd broke and tried to flee through alleyways and over gardens - but those behind had no warning and could not move for the press that was pushing them forwards.

  The creature hit the mob head-on like a fist, hammering, shattering bodies, crushing flesh into the roadway, broken and screaming. It picked bodies up and slammed them down into the stone, it roared at them in bafflement and pain.

  People screamed, horror crystallising and anger forgotten. All they wanted was to get away.

  But from the alleyways came the vialer, the creatures of hoof and horn, with weapons raised and eyes of chaos. They hit broadside and slashed and tore their way through the people. They laughed like a rising storm, exalting in blood and pain. They pulled people to the ground and disembowelled them or kicked them to death. They tore clothes from skin and skin from bone and they wrapped themselves in all of it, laughing in gore and glory.

  At the back of the crowd, the press was still pushing, shouting, making demands - though there were the lucky ones, the wary ones, who’d peeled away from the sides. These fled outward into the streets - some crying in terror, others looking for friends and retribution.

  At the centre, though, there was a core that stood unbroken. A core that had seen enough of Fhaveon’s brutality and that feared neither creature of dust and history, nor the madness of the vialer. There were hands that gripped weapons and eyes that hardened.

  And there was a resolution that would not be broken.

  * * *

  In the upper tiers of the city, in the central market, another resistance was gathering.

  This was not a haphazard mob, rampaging loose through the streets, this stood solid, answering to the cry of a single voice. She was Mistress Cirel Alaxien, a senior member of the Harvester’s Cartel and hers was a strident shout across the thunder of the people’s anger - she was rallying point and focus, and she was crafting that anger into a weapon that would hit back. The city, she said, had betrayed them, and the city, she said, would be made to pay.

  When the cavalry came in a thunder, a shaking of ground and a rising of dust against the pale blue of the autumn sky, it was Cirel’s voice that held the people steady. She turned them, she commanded them, and she hurled them back at the incoming horses.

  And then the madness really began.

  In the market, the people had torn down the last of the stalls, had armed themselves with wooden stakes as long as spears and hacked to crude points at one end. As the horses came closer, sweat and dust and hooves and muscle, the very city seeming to shake beneath their weight, so the stakes were braced hard against the ground. They were not dug in, the flags would not allow it, but they were enough.

  As the last command was given and the horses went from canter to full gallop, so the first rank of the mob peeled away to the sides - revealing the death-spikes aimed at the charge. Unable to stop on the smoothness of the stone, the horses hit the spikes chest-first. Many of the spikes were not braced hard enough and simply skidded - many, but not all.

  The air was suddenly filled with screaming, terrible and high-pitched and rending the sky from top to bottom. Some of the horses fell, rolling; others went up on their hind legs, cracked forehooves kicking. A horse who still had the stake embedded in his chest turned, the whites of his eyes blazing, his teeth bared, pulling his rein out of the hands of his rider. Blood frothed in his mouth, on his chest, scattered across the faces of those before him. Another hors
e had taken a long scratch - a tear in her hide. With her rider bent hard over her neck she came through the barricade and hammered straight into the heart of the waiting people, kicking and plunging and biting, her rider striking out with blade and fury.

  Smoke billowed from the torched remnants of the stalls. Some riders fell, went for weapons, were cut down as they tried to stand. Others stayed in their saddles, fighting for control or rallying their mounts to rage into the heart of the mob. The tan commander called for them to muster, to fall back in on his location, but around him horses were rolling, tack and armour clattering. Some among the mob were close enough to attack the fallen animals, and as the horses tried to stand they were injured and hacked down, slipping in their own flooding gore, skidding and panicking until they finally fell. Others in the mob, those with more wit or courage, mounted the beasts themselves and rode them back at the attacking cavalry, mount to mount, kicking and fighting.

  Chaos screamed like the fallen horses. Ash and smoke were blinding. Terhnwood weapons clattered, shattered, shards spiralling, shining in sudden breaks of sun.

  On foot, the people were bewildered, surrounded. The smells of rich blood and horseshit and fear all meshed one with another, heady and confusing. In some, adrenaline raged and they fought their way through to the attacking soldiers, needing to vent their anger and helplessness. Others, overwhelmed, tried to cower or flee and were cut down where they stood by those riders who had penetrated deep into the mass of the mob.

  The last of the stalls were burning, the flames hot on skin and rising into the clear air. And now, in among the attacking forces, came new things, creatures with the forms of horses and the upper bodies of men and women, creatures heavier than the cavalry mounts with huge claws that rent any flesh they found. The people screamed and thrashed, ran this way and that, but the monsters were everywhere and they were pure destruction, tearing the world asunder.

  In the midst of it all, Cirel slipped quietly away. Her task was done and she was less than a shadow, sliding back the way she had come - sliding back to the side of the Cartel itself and back to where Phylos was laughing.