Echo City

by Tim Lebbon

  Several of them flapped their opaque wings and rose. One darted at Neph’s head, and the warrior leaned back and sliced it in two with its right hand. Two more went at Neph’s groin, and it turned sideways and emitted spines from its hip. The things fell dead. Neph waved its arms several times, kicked out, and the remains of those that had dared attack fell among their cousins.

  The carpet of creatures around Neph grew still and respectful.

  Nadielle breathed in Gorham’s ear, startling him. “Don’t … move.”

  Neph was motionless again, torchlight glinting from the wet patches across its bladed arms. One of the attackers was spiked on Neph’s left foot, writhing slowly as it bled to death. The warrior started hooting again, and this time the call was higher and more varied. Almost like a language, Gorham thought, and his skin prickled. The remaining things rose as one, the gentle flapping of many wings barely a breath through the cavern. Then they flew directly at the pocked walls, and Gorham gasped as every one of them disappeared.

  Neph stood motionless for a while, then gently lowered its arm and turned to face them.

  “What were they?” Gorham whispered.

  “You can talk normally now,” Nadielle said. She stood and brushed herself down, and Caytlin followed.

  Gorham stayed down for a moment, eyeing the dark holes nervously. He aimed his light at some of them, but the only movement he saw was caused by the light. Whatever they were, they’d gone deep.

  “We should move on,” he heard Nadielle saying to Neph. “Some rebelled, which means others will follow.”

  “Nadielle?” Gorham asked.

  “While we’re walking.”

  Neph led the way as they departed the cavern, and though shocked and confused, Gorham was glad for that. Their route led downward, and after a time of negotiating treacherous conditions, they reached a wide, flat area. Torchlight touched nothing in any direction, and he felt the frightening pressure of space.

  “Next Echo,” Nadielle said, and her voice sounded different.

  “So what exactly happened back there?”

  “Garthan trap. They don’t like visitors. They breed those things from sand sprites and cave wasps.”

  “And Neph can speak to them?”

  “Of course. I chopped him, and he’s part Garthan.”

  Gorham tried to absorb what she’d told him, working it through, attempting to make out what it all meant without reaching the conclusions that clamored for attention. It was the most she’d ever suggested about the chopping processes she used, but it birthed more questions than answers.

  “You used—” But she’d already turned away, and he knew her well enough to recognize the tension in her shoulders. Told me too much, he thought. Did she mean to? Perhaps. Or perhaps the deeper they came, the more she was reaching out.

  This new Echo felt very different from those above. There were no buildings evident, for a start—strange, for an Echo of Marcellan Canton—but the darkness did not feel as empty as it once had. It was heavy and loaded, and it had Gorham looking over his shoulder as he followed Nadielle.

  The ground was rough but even, vaguely soft underfoot, and each footstep crunched gently. He thought perhaps it was a layer of old dead plants, but the air smelled only of dust.

  Nadielle led them unerringly onward, confident even though Gorham could not make out any landmarks. The mute and emotionless Caytlin followed the Baker like a shadow, and Neph was somewhere around them, flitting across their path occasionally without making a sound. He’s part Garthan, Nadielle had said. Trying to imagine just how Nadielle chopped people in those womb vats made him shiver.

  And if Neph was part Garthan, what were its other parts?

  The shapes emerged quickly from the darkness—gray, motionless. Gorham’s fear was held in check by Nadielle’s confidence as she walked between them. They stood sentinel to the left and right, and Gorham recognized the forms of old statues. Around them the ground was more uneven but harder. We’re in a park. He called Nadielle to a halt and went to one of the statues.

  “We need to hurry,” she said, standing by his side.

  “A moment,” he said, because he was trying to make out the statue’s face. He held his torch higher, and the shadowy features jumped out at him. There was nothing unusual here—perhaps he’d been expecting something monstrous or unknown—but neither did he recognize the face from one of the many history books he’d read.

  “Old city rulers before the Marcellans,” Nadielle said. “This Echo might be from ten thousand years ago, when they used to have a park in every canton in honor of the rulers. As older ones died, they’d erect new statues to those who took their place.”

  “Sounds extravagant.”

  “Politicians have always liked attention. Nowadays they simply get it in differing ways.”

  Gorham looked around at the several other statues he could see, vaguer the farther away they were, and tried to imagine how many might be standing around them right now. They were perhaps the only surviving likenesses of many of these people, all part of the city’s story and staring now into an eternal night.

  “It really is the past down here,” he said, as if that had struck him for the first time. The statues regarded him with nothing left to say.

  The park seemed to go on forever. Gorham lost track of time, and when they heard the screaming man, they might have been walking for days.

  The screams came from the distance just as Gorham became certain that he could hear something larger, and deeper. He’d been thinking that he could hear something for a while now, but Nadielle seemed unconcerned, and he hadn’t wanted to mention it. If he ever stopped to listen, the noise did too, so he suspected it had something to do with walking through this Echo. Perhaps their footsteps reverberated through the dry ground, the land shaking in excitement at these first human visitors in an age. Or maybe whatever was making the sound stopped when he did and carried on to the rhythm of his pace. He opened his mouth to mention the noises to Nadielle, and then came the screams.

  They were distant, their direction uncertain, and they sounded mad.

  “Down,” Nadielle said. Gorham knelt on the dry ground, and the Baker pushed Caytlin down and squatted by her head, protecting her.

  “What the crap is that?” Gorham asked, but Nadielle did not turn around. The screams were coming from ahead of them. And they were drawing closer.

  Just one person, he thought. The screams came in waves, pausing occasionally for an intake of breath, and as far as he could tell it was always the same voice.

  Nadielle had drawn a knife from her belt, and in her other hand she nursed a round, flexible object. Gorham drew his short sword. It was keen and light, and he’d used it in anger only three times. He’d spent a lot of energy trying to forget those moments.

  Something was running toward them. Their torches did not penetrate the darkness very far at all, but in the distance he could hear the steady thump thump of feet striking the soft ground, and he imagined lazy clouds of dust thrown up. As the thing ran, it continued to scream.

  “Nadielle?”

  “I don’t know. Be ready.”

  “Where’s Neph?” he asked, but the Baker did not have time to respond.

  The shape that emerged from the darkness into shadows, then from shadows into light, was twisted and mutated, a bastardization of anything human, and the noise issuing from it was shattering. It slowed as it neared them and heaved itself up, growing even taller before it reared over Nadielle and Caytlin, twice their height and bristling with spiked weapons.

  Nadielle lowered her knife and stood up, and then Gorham realized the truth.

  Neph dropped the screaming man at Nadielle’s feet. Dust coughed up around him, and shreds of ancient dried plants that had not seen sunlight for millennia drifted in lazy arcs. The impact drove the scream from him in a loud humph! and the sudden silence was shocking. He gasped in air. His face went from pale to white, and he writhed slightly as he tried to start his brea
thing again.

  “Sprote Felder!” Nadielle gasped, and the man screamed again.

  Gorham had to go close to the Baker to speak above the screams. “That’s Sprote Felder?”

  “Yes!” she shouted back. “I’ve met him a couple of times before, but … he’s changed.”

  The man looked barely human. His clothes hung on a bony frame, his exposed arms so thin that Gorham could have encircled them with his thumb and index finger. His face was skeletal, eyes dim and sunken, and he was missing one shoe. There were remnants of finery about his clothes, but it seemed that he’d been soiling himself for some time. The stench was horrific.

  He also had a broken leg. Gorham had missed it before, but now he saw the blood-soaked rip in his trousers and the glint of pale-white bone protruding.

  Neph took several steps back, then turned to face the darkness.

  Nadielle knelt beside the screaming man, and it took a while for Gorham to hear the soothing words. He could not make out what they meant, but the tone was obvious, and it became audible only when the explorer’s screaming started to lessen. How can a man scream so much and for so long? Gorham thought, but then he saw the way that Sprote’s head kept twisting to look at Neph. Each glance would ignite the screams again, and it took Nadielle some time to calm him into silence. She stroked his face and held his hand, and at her single sharp command, Neph disappeared once again into the darkness.

  Sprote Felder twisted to look at Gorham, then pushed backward with his feet so that he was curled into Nadielle’s grasp.

  “Should I go as well?” Gorham asked, but Nadielle shook her head.

  “You’re going the wrong way,” Sprote Felder said, and his voice was surprisingly calm. He was still shaking and grinding his teeth together, but Nadielle’s hand on his face and arm across his chest seemed to have soothed him a little.

  “Which way should we be going?” Gorham asked.

  “Up!”

  “We’re going down to the Falls,” he said. “There’s something … I’ve been hearing something.” Nadielle looked up at him at this, and she seemed pleased that he was hearing it as well.

  “It’ll be the end of everything,” Felder said, his eyes growing wider in his ravaged face. They looked nowhere in particular but saw something terrible.

  “You’ve been there?” Nadielle asked.

  “Not that deep. But deep enough.”

  “We found a Garthan trap but no Garthans.”

  “Some are still here,” he said, “but most have fled. Out toward the city limits.”

  “Aboveground?” Gorham asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “You say some are still here?” Nadielle asked.

  “The old ones. The sick.”

  “Did they do this to you?” Nadielle asked gently.

  Sprote shook his head, reaching around with his hand and touching her arm. The more contact he felt, the more he seemed comforted. “I fell,” he said. “I was fleeing and I fell.”

  “Fleeing what?” Gorham asked.

  “The Falls. What is rising.” He shivered again, closing his eyes and trying to stop his teeth from chattering together. “You know,” he said quietly, words meant for Nadielle. His hair seemed to stand on end and Nadielle held him tight, rocking him slightly while she looked at Gorham. He could not read her eyes. They seemed empty, as if she were waiting for him to say something to fill them.

  “What?” he asked. But Nadielle shook her head.

  “Every Echo is singing with its voice,” Sprote said quietly. “You only need to know how to listen. Hear … can you hear? Low, like heavy footsteps over gravel. Can you hear?”

  “I hear it,” Gorham said, and Sprote fixed him with his gaze.

  “That’s the end coming for all of us, boy.”

  Gorham turned away and looked at Neph, a shadow standing against the darkness.

  “Go on with him,” Nadielle said. “Take Caytlin.”

  Gorham turned around, confused. Go on with Sprote? But then he saw that Nadielle was looking at Neph, and the wounded man in her arms looked smaller and weaker than ever. She’d put her knife back into her belt but had not fastened the clasp.

  “How will you catch us?”

  “I’ll know where you are.”

  “How?”

  “Really, Gorham, now is not the time.”

  Sprote Felder was looking at him. There was madness in those eyes but also a heavy knowledge that seemed to give the surrounding darkness weight. We should listen to what he says, Gorham thought, but then Nadielle frowned at him, nodded toward Neph, and Caytlin stood and came to Gorham’s side. Her eyes were big and wide and empty. He’d rather stare into Sprote’s madness.

  “I won’t be long,” Nadielle said, her voice softening.

  Gorham took one last look at the famed Echoes explorer, his broken leg, his drained face and mournful eyes, and then he turned away. They left one torch with Nadielle and took the other two themselves, but Gorham did not look back. Neph led the way—the chopped seemed to know where they were going, and he did not once hesitate—and Caytlin followed, never seeming to move quickly but always there behind him.

  Without Nadielle, Gorham was colder and more afraid than ever. She’d called him her sun, and now he wondered what she was to him. He was unsettled that she was not walking beside him. He was nervous that he could not see her, acknowledge her control over what they were doing down here. But Nadielle was an absence, whereas Peer was still a warm, heavy influence inside. Time was running out for him to gain her forgiveness.

  Later, when Nadielle caught up with them, she did not catch Gorham’s eye.

  “Did he say anything else?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “No!” she said, aghast, but still she would not look at him. “No. I took him somewhere safe and told him we’d get him on the way back.”

  “He said you knew what was coming. You.”

  “He’s mad, Gorham. And you’re the Watcher. Don’t you know?” She looked at him then, and the hard, derisory Baker had returned.

  Gorham could only follow her. He stared at her back as they walked—the way her hips moved, the long, clipped hair hanging between her shoulder blades. He definitely preferred her in need of comfort.

  The noises continued and grew. Faraway sounds, echoing through the Echoes, heavy and hard, and they carried about them a shattering sense of distance. The darkness became more oppressive than ever, now that it was no longer filled with nothing. Sometimes, the air itself seemed to shake in fear.

  Gorham was fascinated with every breath he took. There were no living plants down here to make clean air, and yet it smelled and tasted as good as any he’d breathed up in the city. There were hints of age to it and sometimes a grittiness caused by their kicking up dust. But it seemed like good air, and it gave him strength. He wondered where it came from. It was something else that he would ask Nadielle, given time.

  The huge park ended eventually, and they entered a built-up area. By his estimate they must be very close to the heart of this Marcellan Canton Echo, and yet the buildings were humble and small, not the gaudy sky-scratching spires and towers he was used to seeing. Nadielle pointed out several structures that bore signs of recent use, and in one place they found dozens of skins spread and pinned on timber frames to dry.

  “Human,” Nadielle said softly, and she told Gorham that they were passing through a Garthan settlement. He tried not to think about what they’d seen and who they might have been. The settlement seemed deserted. Gorham wondered what they knew that he and Nadielle did not.

  Later, Nadielle called a halt and Neph built them a fire. The Baker produced some rolled bread from her backpack and started to warm it, and the smell of herbed butter wafted around them. Neph stood guard somewhere unseen. Caytlin sat. Gorham felt totally excluded, and when he tried talking with Nadielle, she shut him out.

  “I thought you needed me,” he said.

  “I do
.”

  “Doesn’t seem like it.”

  “Don’t be a child, Gorham,” she said, and they did not speak again for some time.

  Soon after the meal, they moved on and started heading down. Gorham caught the hint of moisture in the air, and as they descended through a series of narrow tunnels and crumbling stairways and emerged into the next Echo, he heard a steady, distant roar. It was a frightening sound, but it masked the mysterious noises that had been growing ever louder all around them—the sound of the rising thing.

  What the fuck are we doing down here? he wondered more than once, but Nadielle’s determination drew him on.

  The roar was water, the tributary of the dead River Tharin that plummeted through the Echoes beneath Marcellan Canton and eventually, it was said, vented into the Echo City Falls. Though possessing such a grand name, the Falls was a hidden thing, buried deep where the roots of the city bound it to the land and where old history made way for even older. As recently as a hundred years ago, there were those who believed that the Echoes went on forever—buried histories and past times that not only should be forgotten but that could never truly be accessed. People went down into the Echoes then as now, but some in the city—followers of Hanharan, mostly, their religion tied inextricably to the city’s lifeline—had believed that all they found were caves. Gases down there, they claimed, made people imagine streets and buildings, buried parks and the ruins of older times. And while explorers tried and failed to find them, the Echoes stretched back, and down, forever.

  But Gorham liked to think that he lived in more enlightened times. There were still isolated pockets of believers who clung to outdated, more extreme dogmas, but now even the Order of Hanharan and their Marcellan politicians acknowledged that their new city was built upon the old, and the older, and so on. And this acknowledgment could never come without the understanding that there was a point, somewhere deep in the past, where the original city must lie.