by Tim Lebbon
This was the reason that deep exploring was strictly forbidden. Hanharan’s birthplace would be way down there, if he had ever existed. But what anyone would have been able to tell from a ruined, rotting, crumbled wreck thousands of years old, he had no idea.
“That’s the Falls,” Nadielle said, and Gorham was unreasonably pleased to see a light in her eyes. He could not tell exactly what it meant, but it took away her expression of lifelessness.
“At least it masks the other noises,” Gorham said.
Nadielle glanced aside, then back at him. “We have to go all the way down,” she said. “And the easiest way to descend through the Echoes here will be through the holes and tunnels the Falls themselves have forged over time.”
Gorham nodded. He knew that. He’d studied the old books, and he knew the alleged geography of the Falls as well as anyone.
“You know what we’ll see, don’t you?”
He nodded again. “The dead.”
“The dead. And then the Chasm.” For a second she seemed vulnerable and scared again, and Gorham grabbed on to it. “We’ll help each other,” he said.
“I know we will.” And Nadielle smiled. “But, Gorham—I’m not aware of anyone who’s ever gone that deep and survived.”
“Then why must we?”
“You know why. I have to know what’s coming.”
“So you can destroy it?”
She shrugged, such a hopeless gesture. “Just so that I know.”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“I will. When I know.”
“And Caytlin …” He trailed off. The chopped woman was going to die, Nadielle had said, and Gorham suspected it would be soon.
“Come on,” Nadielle said. “It’ll get louder. And you’re right—at least it masks that other sound.”
But as they ventured through this Echo toward the Falls that punched through them all, Gorham found that was not the case at all. The roar of water was thunderous, but the noises from below were insidious. The Falls sounded brutal and hard, but the thumps and whispers were defiant, secretive. Monstrous.
Closer to the Falls, the air was filled with a fine, foul-smelling moisture. The flames on their torches sputtered and flickered. Their clothes became damp. Exertion made Gorham sweat, but it was cool, and before long he was wishing for thicker clothing. I’m breathing from the Tharin, he thought, and took shallow, slow breaths.
They went down, still not within sight of the Falls themselves. Neph led the way, and Gorham thought about that a lot. He’d seen the chopped birthed from the womb vat in the Baker’s laboratory, and so whatever knowledge it carried must have been implanted while it was … what? Growing? Brewing? Forming? Nadielle told Gorham little, and he did not have a scientific brain that could surmise. So had Neph’s knowledge of where they now were come from the Garthan it was part chopped from, as Nadielle had suggested?
Or did it come from her?
Deeper they went, time blurred, and at some point they must have passed the deepest Echo and entered the bedrock of the city itself. Gorham did not notice the point where this occurred. They were descending through a chaos of fissures and crevasses, past walls smoothed when the Tharin’s water had flowed before finding an easier route down. But there were no more phantoms, and he felt the weight of the world all around him. He paused to touch the rock, and it shook with the power of the Falls. Shining his torch around, he tried to make out marks or structures that might have been man-made, but there was nothing. For some reason, he found that even more unbelievable than the receding Echoes of the past through which they had been descending.
I’m standing in a place that existed before the city itself, he thought, and he felt alone and lost. Nadielle glanced back at him, up the steep slope of a cavern floor, and Gorham pressed his hand harder against the rock. It gave nothing back.
He went on, following Nadielle and Caytlin, Neph’s torch casting spiked shadows back toward him, and everywhere he desperately sought signs of humanity. He had never felt so connected with the city as now, when he was way below its very earliest part. But he saw nothing. And with the sound of the Falls thundering in his head so that he could not even hear himself shout, and the feel of them strong enough to shake the foundations of his world, he knew that the only people who came down here were the dead.
Shadows danced against the walls, giving the impression of movement all around. Even when Gorham held his torch still, he saw things flickering in tunnel mouths and holes, as if the ground were a living thing following his progress. All the while, Neph led and Caytlin followed—Nadielle’s strange children obeying her every command, spoken or unspoken.
And at last they emerged onto a wide, wet ledge, beyond which was nothing but the Echo City Falls.
It plunged before them, a wall of water that seemed to suck in their torchlight and amplify it as a glow from within. The noise was almost unbearable, but the sight was astonishing, and Gorham could not tear his eyes away. He wiped water from his face and smelled its foulness, but that ceased to concern him. His stomach lurched when drops touched his tongue, but he pressed his hand against his gut and stared at the water. Its violence was incredible, its beauty mesmerizing, and Gorham thought: All this is from beyond the city. This water had traveled over the Bonelands from places where no one had ever been, crossed the city, separated from the river’s main flow, and found its way down through Echo City’s past until it vented here—flowing no more, only falling.
Nadielle shouted something into his ear, but the Falls stole her voice.
Then he saw the first body flit by. It was a blur, but its waving limbs were unmistakable. He’d known he would see them, and he’d been preparing himself, but it still came as something of a shock. Someone’s mother, someone’s son, he thought, and somewhere far above, a funeral wake was now taking place, as people stared into an unseen distance and remembered the sight of their loved one plunging into the lifeless river.
Nadielle held his arm and pulled, and Gorham realized with horror that he’d been edging closer to the Falls. The ledge dropped off maybe twenty paces from where he stood, and he felt a burning tension in his knees and shins, urging him forward. She shouted in his ear again, but he shook his head, touched his ear, and shrugged.
The Baker pointed back at Caytlin. The woman was farther back in the tunnel they had emerged from, leaning against the wall with a torch dangling from her right hand. Her face was as unresponsive as ever, but her eyes seemed more expressive. Either that or the violent waters were reflected there.
Nadielle tapped Gorham’s chest, pointed to his eyes, then gestured to herself and Caytlin. Watch us. Gorham nodded.
Back in the shadows of the tunnel, Neph stood guard. Against what? Gorham thought, but it was nothing he wished to dwell upon.
Nadielle guided Caytlin out from the narrow tunnel mouth and onto the ledge. The woman still had eyes only for the Baker, but there was a hesitancy about her now, and perhaps a slight tension against Nadielle’s hand.
A sick feeling hit Gorham. This is where she dies, he thought, and he glanced back at the Falls. Another shadow fell past—another dead person plummeting down forever. Members of his own family had come this way. He closed his eyes and thought of his father, wished he could see him again. Was he still falling, as the legends suggested? Or had he found some unknown, unknowable fate somewhere far below?
Something nudged him, hard. Nadielle. She glared at him and frowned. This is important. Gorham held up his hands and nodded sharply. He knew that very well. His whole world was above them.
She eased Caytlin down to her knees and knelt before her. Then she took a long, thin knife from a sheath on her belt and stabbed Caytlin in the left forearm.
Gorham held his breath. The woman barely flinched, but she did close her eyes as Nadielle jabbed her several more times with the knife, leaving a trail of small puncture holes from wrist to elbow. Trickles of blood flowed from some of the holes, curling around her arm and then dripping to
the ledge. When the drips hit the rock, they seemed to disappear, merging with the wetness already there.
Nadielle pulled up her left sleeve, glanced over her shoulder at Gorham, and then started jabbing at her own inner arm. She pricked six times in quick succession, leaving a line of wounds mimicking Caytlin’s. Placing the knife on the ledge beside her, she squeezed a couple of the wounds as if to encourage the blood to flow.
Gorham knew that this was her talent, the Baker’s work, but it still took everything he had not to try to stop her.
When her blood was dribbling from the wounds, she smeared her finger across the one closest to her wrist, then touched the corresponding wound on Caytlin’s arm. She repeated this for the other five cuts. Then she rolled up the sleeve on her right arm.
Gorham stepped forward and slipped a hand beneath her armpit. He pulled, lifting her from her kneeling position, and noticed Caytlin’s eyes flick open to stare at him. He shouted at Nadielle, voice lost to the roar of the dead river falls, but the sensation of venting his fear felt good. Her blood dripped onto his hand, warm and intimate.
She held the knife up in front of his face, shaking her head.
Gorham let go and stepped back. He bumped into Neph, and the chopped warrior’s hands clasped around his biceps, squeezing hard. He struggled, but the grip was firm. And all he could do was watch as Nadielle repeated the process on Caytlin’s right arm and then her own.
As Gorham wondered what would happen next, Neph released him. Gorham was relieved, but the last thing he expected was for Nadielle to drape two enclosed torches around Caytlin’s shoulders, march her toward the Falls, and then shove her from the ledge. The water grabbed the chopped woman and snatched her away, faster than a blink, so fast that he wondered whether she’d ever been there at all.
Shadows fell with her. The dead welcoming her in.
Nadielle backed away, dropped to her knees, and fell sideways. If Neph had not been instantly by her side, she would have cracked her head against the rock. Gorham went to her and saw her eyes roll up in her head, and a terrible understanding began to dawn.
The world fell away above her because her mother was gone. But though she could no longer see her, Mother was still present in her mind, flowing through her body, and there was a warmth inside that meant this was closer than they had ever been before.
To begin with, the Falls smothered her senses. The water’s roar was everything; the taste on her tongue was rotten and foul; it scoured her skin, it smelled of dead things, and all she could see was the dirty brown liquid. Battering her within its embrace, the water flipped the torches around her head, but their sheltered flames were tenacious. They flickered and wavered but never quite went out. And that was important. It was essential. Because she had been sent down here to see.
Surprisingly quickly, the thunder began to lessen. This startled her a little—more so than the incessant roar—because she didn’t know what it meant. A sensation of floating changed into one of falling, and the waters around her started to part like torn curtains. Spreading out, she thought, and beyond the tears in the water she could see only blankness.
(That’s the Chasm. She’s fallen so far already. Caytlin has fallen into the Chasm and she’s following the Falls down, and soon I’ll be able to hear—)
She found that if she placed her arms and legs in just the right position, she could fall in a controlled manner. She reined in the torches and their brave flames and started aiming them about her. The Falls, darkness, and, through the veils of water, she saw a shadow matching her fall.
(A body, someone who died up in the city recently, and I hope it doesn’t drift closer, and I hope if it does, Caytlin looks away … looks down, because what I need to see is still down there.)
She shifted again and looked down. She was suspended now, descending at the same rate as the water and therefore appearing not to fall at all. It was a strange sensation, sick and exhilarating, and it brought a brief flash of something she could barely recognize. Not fear, because Mother was still with her, and she could never fear anything with Mother there. Not even nervousness.
Regret?
She blinked that away and aimed the torches down, enjoying the fall, ignoring the stink and taste of this water and the knowledge that there was a corpse falling very close to her. There was a long moment of peace and comfort, disturbed only by the intimation of a shadow drifting closer and then away again. She knew about death, as any living thing did.
Time passed. She fell.
(Look down again, Caytlin, always down …)
She directed her attention downward again, frowning for a moment because it was becoming difficult to tell which way was down, or up, or sideways. And then she saw—
(What is that, what is that, oh, by all the fucking gods, what is that?)
—a place far below, where the falling water struck something and splashed outward, an interruption to the flow, and as she fell closer and the torches had more effect she saw—
(Corpses—it’s so large and wide that it’s covered with all the fallen bodies, and there’s a darker opening there, something)
—something opening up. True fear hit her for the first time then, and she screamed for her mother—an unintelligible sound that was the first and last noise she ever made. But until the last, she remembered her reason for being, her duty to her mother, and although it was still a long way to fall, because the thing was so huge, she held both torches before her so that they could illuminate the—
(Teeth.)
Nadielle was screaming, Neph hauled her back into the tunnel, and Gorham tried to grab her kicking feet to help carry her, but she was screaming, screaming, her expression made more grotesque because the sound was completely lost to the Falls. Her arms were bleeding again. And in her eyes, a black terror that even Gorham’s torch could never hope to touch.
What if it doesn’t work? What if I’m like this forever, and the White Water is no cure at all? Nophel had been waiting for someone to see him and draw back, startled at his sudden appearance or fearful of his countenance. He could look down and see himself, but he was used to that now, his mind accustomed to his invisibility. Walking unseen, he so wanted to be a part of the world again. If it meant fear or disgust when people saw his blood-red eye and diseased face, so be it. He’d lived like that forever, and it was proof of his history.
He found the only address on Dane’s coded map—an upper-class whorehouse close to the Marcellan Canton’s walls. It displayed the scarlet wound sign on its name board, indicating that it served the Scarlet Blades, which Nophel knew meant that few others would use the place. He stood outside for a while, checking the map again to make sure he’d read it correctly. Invisible, he still felt a flush of embarrassment as he crossed the road and approached the front entrance.
“You’re no Blade,” the woman at the door said.
“What?”
She came closer, down the stone steps to his level, and even then she was a hand taller. “You. You’re no Blade. Unless they kicked you out because of that.” She pointed at his face, and Nophel felt the familiar, liberating flush of anger at what he was.
“You can see me,” he said, smiling.
“My girls will suck a chickpig through a straw,” the woman said, without an ounce of sexuality in her voice.
“But you can see me!”
“You’d have to pay extra if you want me to watch. For you, a lot extra.”
It had been a long time since he’d been out into the city like this. If he ever had cause to leave Hanharan Heights, he usually wore a heavy robe with a wide, deep hood, and people seemed to understand that a person so clothed desired to remain hidden away. Perhaps some attributed the style to one of the lesser, more obscure cults, but that did not concern Nophel. Hiding away fueled his anger, which in turn held shame at bay. Just show yourself, he’d once thought, but he was unable to do so.
“I need to see Fat Andrea,” Nophel said.
The woman—he thought
perhaps she had been a Scarlet Blade once, and wondered what had happened to her—stepped aside, waved him in, and chuckled to herself as she closed the door behind him.
The corridor was poorly lit and strung with decorative flags from several chords of the Blade army. It opened into a large room where several women lounged, drinking wine and smoking slash from a communal pipe on the central table. They perked up a little at his arrival, posing and preening in their minimal clothes even though their faces remained impassive. Then they really saw him, and some winced.
“Fat Andrea?” he asked. A lithe, strong-looking woman stood and approached. She wore layers of fine material wound tight across her curves, and her red hair shone in the weak lamplight.
“What’s your pleasure?”
“You’re Fat Andrea?”
“What’s in a name?” She shrugged, and she was avoiding his face—looking over his shoulder, at his throat, blinking slowly and alluringly so that she did not have to see his deformities.
“Where can we go?” Nophel asked. The woman turned and beckoned him after her, and already he perceived a relaxation in her pose. Perhaps she already knows why I’m here, he thought. Am I really that obvious? She led him through a warming steam curtain and into another corridor, this one curved and confusing. At its end she opened a door and welcomed him inside, standing back so that he could pass. Still she averted her eyes. The room was small—bed, chair, a bath in the corner, shelves adorned with all manner of oils and soaps. It stank of old sex.
“Dane Marcellan sent—” he began, but Fat Andrea cut him off.
“I was hoping. So?”
“Six wisps play their mepple strokes.” He remembered it from the map, and speaking it aloud made it sound no less foolish.
The woman relaxed, sighed, and sat down on the bed. She held her head in her hands for a beat, then rubbed her face and looked up at him again. She had changed. She looked older, more weathered, and he knew he was seeing Fat Andrea for the first time.