Echo City

by Tim Lebbon

  His lovemaking with Peer had been purer and more honest, though his memory of it was still shaded by the full, terrible three years that had passed. He remembered her laughing cruelly as she’d walked away from him, the dismissive wave over her shoulder. She had not even looked around at him, however grave their situation. If only he could believe that it was because she could not face saying goodbye again.

  He followed Nadielle and Caytlin, content for now to bring up the rear. He caught glimpses of Neph ahead of them—a shadow within shadows—and in the distance the darkness soon started to coalesce into something more solid. He wondered who had observed the Marcellan wall from this angle so long ago and whether they’d viewed its inhabitants with as much disdain as he did. The Watchers had a long but disorganized history, and until relatively recently they’d consisted of casual gatherings of like-minded people eager to shed the superstitions of the past. It was a painful irony that organizing had almost been their downfall. So he cast himself back, becoming a traveler venturing to Marcellan for some unspecified business, and the folly of its rulers, then as now, sat like a vague threat before him.

  The wall emerged out of the darkness, catching some of their lamplight across its sheer surface. Before it lay the remains of many ruined dwellings, much of the timber used in construction dried and crumbled away to almost nothing. Among these places were a few stone-built constructs that had withstood the time better. But even these displayed areas of damage. As they passed, Gorham could not help thinking that some of the damage was intentional.

  “There,” Nadielle said. She’d paused to wait for him and, as he drew level, he saw the glimmer of phantom lights along the wall. In perhaps a dozen places from left to right, the weak blue lights clung like algae to the ancient stone, shadowed from within recesses in the wall’s height and nestled at its base in several places.

  “They weren’t there a while ago,” Gorham said.

  “The phantoms here keep watch.”

  “But they’re Echoes.”

  “Yes, but they’ll be more … noticeable than some phantoms you might have seen before. I believe the deeper we go, and the older the Echoes, the more time the phantoms have had to become used to their continued existence.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said, his skin crawling at the memory of that phantom priest staring through him.

  “I don’t think we’re meant to. I think they’re just Echoes living in Echoes, but we choose to build upon the past instead of destroying it. Maybe it’s inevitable that the Echoes of past lives will survive as well.” Nadielle led them toward the wall, and Gorham could see Neph ahead of them, scouting its base. He paused at an opening—an old gateway with the remains of several flagpoles protruding from the stone façade above—and a vague phantom light glowed in the deep, dark route to the other side. Nadielle headed for Neph, with Caytlin her usual several paces behind. Gorham had no choice but to follow. It was that or stay out here on his own.

  Neph had gone by the time they reached the gate, venturing into the Marcellan Canton of old. He’d left the phantoms behind. They were more blurred than others, yet their lights burned brighter and they interacted more with the subterranean travelers. They never actually touched him—Gorham wasn’t sure he could have taken that without going mad—but they came close, faces manifesting from the glare, eyes searching, mouths opening in silent exhortations to stop, show their papers, where were they going, what was their business. And in the stark, ancient distance, he heard the whisper of metal on leather as they drew their weapons. He concentrated on Nadielle’s back to guide him through; she walked without pause and without allowing herself to be distracted. She’s so strong, Gorham thought.

  The wall was thick down here, perhaps fifty paces wide, and it took an eternity to reach the other side. When they did, the first of this deep Echo of Marcellan Canton was revealed to them. And it was a ruin.

  “What …?” Gorham whispered, his question reverberating around the small square.

  “War,” Nadielle said. “Don’t they say the history books are written by the winners?”

  Gorham could not speak. These buildings had not fallen victim to the wearing effects of time but had been deliberately destroyed. Signs of ancient fires were still visible here and there, black soot stained across the pale gray stonework. Charred timbers poked broken ribs at the dark sky. And, close above the ruins, far lower than he’d been expecting, he could see the exposed underbelly of the Echo above this one.

  “How deep?” he asked. “Two Echoes down?”

  “More,” Nadielle said. “As I said, there’s no real judging of distance and time when you’re down here.”

  “But a war between whom? How long ago?”

  “I can tell you what little I know,” she said softly, “but we need to keep walking. There’s a place not far from here where we go deeper, and I want to reach it before …”

  “Before?”

  Nadielle gave him that annoying smile again—the one that said: You’re only a child compared to me, what I am, what I know. And for a moment that shocked him with its intensity, Gorham thought of roughing that smile from her face.

  “Let’s just go,” she said. “Neph will scout ahead and keep us safe.” She turned her back on Gorham and started to walk. If he wanted to hear what she knew, he would have to keep up.

  “There’s no record of who fought this war, or why, anywhere for public consumption in Echo City,” Nadielle began. “I suspect there might be writings buried deep in old Hanharan vaults or perhaps personal accounts handed down through the ages from Marcellan elders to their children. But what happened here is a whisper among shadows. Some of those phantoms we just passed might have been here when the fires came and went. Some probably died here. But even I couldn’t ask them.”

  “Couldn’t, or wouldn’t want to?” Gorham asked, and Nadielle did not answer.

  “All I know is what I read in my mother’s books, and some of it she … passed down to me.” Nadielle tapped her temple but looked only ahead, as if reassuring herself of something. “The Bakers might be the only line keeping some of the truth alive.”

  “But people come down here,” Gorham protested.

  “Not as many as you’d think. How deep do you travel into the Echoes?”

  “Only to you,” he admitted.

  “And only because you have a reason to travel down. There aren’t many who choose to venture into the Echoes. Criminals, perhaps, but they have only their own well-being at heart. Some explorers, yes. A few. But most who wish to explore history do so through their books. Actually visiting it—that’s an experience any sane person would want to avoid.”

  Gorham had never thought of himself as any less than sane; he supposed his fear of being down there testified to that.

  “So what happened?” he asked. They were walking between the ruined buildings now, following the route of what had once been a wide street. Ash, rubble, and other detritus littered the way, and protruding here and there above the mess Gorham made out the pale shapes of bones. The torchlight made them shift. He didn’t look too closely or for too long.

  “Have you ever heard of the Thanulians?”

  “No.”

  “It’s said they were watching long before the Watchers—an organized group who didn’t believe any of the Hanharan teachings and who were waiting for the doom of Echo City. Their beliefs are shady and, much as I’ve looked, I’ve not been able to discover much about their outlook, their thoughts for the future, or what they intended doing should the end arrive. But one thing is clear: They claimed to have proof that Hanharan was not the city’s firstborn but was a visitor from elsewhere.”

  “Proof?” Gorham asked, a thrill going through him. He’d always believed that Hanharan was a myth, but his conviction was founded only on what he thought of as his own good sense. The Hanharan story was wild and complex—a man born from a desert stone, shaping spit and sand to build, molding a wife from dusk’s final rays, and founding the wh
ole city. Gorham had always had trouble understanding how intelligent people could believe such stories, accept that one man had seeded and settled their whole world.

  “Don’t get excited. Whatever proof there may have been is long gone now.”

  “Destroyed in the war?”

  “More like a massacre. The Marcellans at the time were mainly confined to the Hanharan priesthood—the city was a democracy then, and two main political parties juggled power back and forth as the years went by. But the Marcellans must have grown strong. There was a rout, the Thanulians were slaughtered, and all traces of their history were wiped away. Over time, with nothing written down, their existence faded.”

  “Left down here in the Echoes,” Gorham said. Looking at the burned remains of ancient buildings, he could almost smell the fires. “They killed all of them? Every single one?”

  “This is where the story gets interesting,” Nadielle said. “Shall we stop for a drink?”

  “No,” Gorham said. He had never been anywhere like this. The surroundings felt so dead, but there was no stillness here at all. Things moved, and though any movement seemed to be just beyond the edge of perception, his senses were alight with evidence of activity. His skin was cooled by breaths of moving air, he heard shifting sand or dust, and he could smell something damp and old moving around.

  Nadielle nodded, without offering him her smug smile. It appeared that even she was spooked. Gorham glanced back at Caytlin—still following, blank-faced and unresponsive.

  “The Thanulians were peaceful. They wouldn’t put their hands on a weapon, even when attacked. Perhaps they saw their slaughter as the beginning of the end, so to them death was inevitable. But the Hanharans and their soldiers still didn’t get them all.”

  It took a moment for Gorham to recognize the importance of what Nadielle had said. He stopped, and that secretive movement around him stopped as well. Almost as if it’s following.

  “There are descendants?” he asked.

  “The Garthans.”

  The Garthans! Living down here for so long, feared by some, almost mythical to others …

  “Of course!” he said. “I’ve never even wondered where they came from. I just assumed they’d always been down here, as we’ve always been up there.”

  “They were chased out of Echo City and fled below,” Nadielle said. “No one knows much about them anymore. Some speak to them—my mother conversed with them at times, though I can’t make any sense of what she wrote about them in her journals. And I have limited contact with them, when the need arises.”

  “They don’t try to eat you?”

  “You’ve heard that too.”

  “Just a rumor.”

  “No rumor. There are those who trade human flesh for the Garthans’ slash drug, which they refine from cave moss.”

  Gorham looked around at the ruined district they were still traveling through, trying to imagine the terror, the pain, as the Hanharan forces worked house by house, room by room. Piled against one burned-out building was what he thought at first was the tangled remains of a fallen tree. But it might also have been the twisted, broken remnants of a whole family, killed and piled together so that their flesh would rot and their bones would degrade down here in the dark. He looked away and started to walk on, because he didn’t want to know for sure.

  Nadielle stayed beside him, and her enthusiasm for sharing this story was refreshing. Usually she held knowledge to her chest, perhaps whispering random facts about her own strange experiments into his ear as sweat cooled between their naked bodies.

  “And then the Marcellans took control of the city?”

  “Perhaps their domination of the order of Hanharan was the beginning, and this massacre showed their strength.”

  “I’ve never seen a Garthan,” Gorham said, suddenly feeling an affinity with those strange subterranean dwellers.

  “You probably will,” Nadielle said. “If they choose to reveal themselves, that is. They’re very secretive.”

  “That surprises you?”

  She smiled sadly, shook her head, and Gorham reached out for her hand. Nadielle held on for some time. The contact made him feel safe. And then later, after they’d walked into an ancient district of that deep Marcellan Echo untouched by fire and violence, she turned to him and pressed him into the wall of a house.

  “Nadielle?”

  She was shaking. She dropped her torch, reached around his hips, and pulled him close to her.

  “Nadielle?” he asked again, but she did not reply with words. She used her hands, pressing up over his chest, down his sides, delving between them. She used her mouth, kissing him with a passion he had never felt from her before.

  Peer, he thought, but his lost love seemed a world away. He watched Caytlin over the Baker’s shoulder, but the chopped woman simply sat and stared off to one side. I can’t, he thought. Not with her here.

  But Nadielle’s hands and mouth were insistent, and he soon found that he could.

  “What was that?” he gasped. She leaned heavily against him, one leg still curved around his hip. Her breath was fast and shallow, and he thought he heard faint sobs. She’d pressed her face into his neck. He felt her teeth against his skin.

  “It’s been too long,” she whispered at last. “I’m so alone, Gorham.”

  “No.” He didn’t like this Nadielle. Nadielle was strong and confident, not needy and sad. He was the sad one. He needed her, not the other way around.

  “Yes! I spend my time making people that aren’t people. I live down here, and sunlight—it’s rare for me. You’re my …” She trailed off, and Gorham held his breath, waiting for what she would say next. Though he did not like her this way, he was still hard inside her; Nadielle’s confession kept him there.

  “You’re my sunlight,” she said. “And everything’s starting to feel so dark.” She fell quiet then, and soon after she pulled away and rearranged her clothing, not meeting his eyes. Gorham remained standing against the wall, feeling warm from what had happened, what had been said.

  Caytlin stared with her expressionless eyes, untouched.

  I’m the needy one, Gorham thought again. He went to Nadielle, and she relaxed into his embrace with a sigh of relief. Neither spoke, and they stood that way for a while until the time was right to move on.

  Just keep watch, Dane had said. That had been a message, as overt as any Marcellan could ever utter, even in the confines of his own rooms. He’d sent it with a stern look, and Nophel recognized the dreadful trust that had been placed in him. If he went to the authorities with the claim that one of the ruling Marcellan Council members was not a completely devout Hanharan, the resulting investigation would be long and damaging. It would be his word against Dane’s—a deformed monster, who had attempted to betray his own mother, against a member of the greatest family the city had ever known. But once set in, the rot would be very difficult to expunge.

  Nophel was starting to believe that he’d found a friend in Dane Marcellan. An ally. Even a fellow Watcher, though Nophel kept his beliefs to himself. And though a Watcher followed no gods, Nophel had always been a firm believer in Fate.

  I have a sister, he thought. He paused again, leaning into the side of the circular stairwell and taking a deep breath. The news was almost too much. His mother—the bitch whore Baker who had abandoned him like a dog shunning a runt puppy—had chopped a child, and now that child had become the new Baker. He could barely conceive of such a thing, but Dane had assured him it was true. Time is short, he’d said, but once you have handed her the message, stay with her. She will spare the time to explain what happened to you, and why. The suspicion that Dane had not told him everything was rich, of course, because Dane was a politician. But Nophel could think of no reason why Dane should have lied about his having a sibling.

  He pushed off and continued down the stairwell. He had far to go before he reached the first of Dane’s contacts. The Marcellan had handed him a coded map, containing six places where Nop
hel might make contact with people who would be able to point him toward the Baker’s rooms. And, after the map, came the vial containing the White Water.

  “What is there between you and this new Baker?” Nophel had asked.

  “A distant trust. An old understanding.”

  “Tell me.”

  “No, Nophel. I trust you as my messenger, but your mind is still corrupted with vengeful thoughts of your mother.”

  “But she’s dead!”

  “Yes, and I made the mistake of telling you that it wasn’t your betrayal that led to that. Maybe you’re angry. Unfulfilled. I need this message delivered, but I also need to trust that you won’t harm her.”

  “Why would I harm my sister?”

  Dane had stared toward him for a while, his eyes wavering slightly across the shadowy space that Nophel filled.

  “Just go,” the Marcellan had said. And he’d held out the sealed message tube for Nophel to take.

  Descending from Hanharan Heights and making his way west, Nophel thought many times about breaking the tube and reading the message. But if the Marcellan had been in contact with this new Baker for so long, doubtless the message would be in a code or form known only to the two of them. Break the tube and he would shatter the trust Dane had placed in him.

  He moved through the streets like a breeze or a whisper, turning heads here and there but never attracting real attention. He watched for more Unseen, but there were none. Perhaps they all congregated to the north.

  North. What he had seen chilled Nophel like nothing ever before. The Dragarians streaming out of their canton, the way they had moved, and flown, and crawled … If it weren’t for the Scopes, he would never have seen, and whatever fate was about to befall Echo City would have settled quietly upon him in his sleep.

  Perhaps that would have been for the best. He’d always been plagued by the fact that he had no belief in anything but eventual doom. And he did not trust that a method to leave the city would ever be found, even if there were still those searching for one. Had he been the worshipping kind—had he a god—he would have prayed that the end did not arrive in his lifetime.