Ecko Rising

by Danie Ware

  And it spread, flowed down his face and throat in a caress of anguish. Under his plating, his flayed body boiled as if he were being cooked alive.

  Hand over her mouth, denying tears of revulsion, she understood he was trying to scab and heal – and couldn’t. He was one, vast, conscious wound. Maugrim had replaced his skin with pure pain.

  There was a smile engraved on the plate that sealed his mouth.

  They keep dying.

  “Nononononono...” Her denial was unconscious, she was shaking, backing away. Every healer’s instinct she had told her to do one thing.

  A heavy, ringed hand landed on her shoulder.

  “No time for cold feet, love, he needs you – and soon.” The hand was warm, it steadied her. “I get the empathy thing, you feel his pain and you want to help. I’m telling you, you can. He’s a prototype, strong; a fusing of flesh and metal into the perfect warrior, the perfect conductor. Amethea.” She turned to stare at him as he used her name. “I believe in what I’m doing, I believe in you. Heal him. Complete the fusion. If you do, we can make the world a new and better place.”

  The world’s fine... isn’t she?

  The thought was tiny, lost under the potence of Maugrim’s passion and vision. What was one soul in pain against his belief? She ached to please him, to win his approval and earn his touch. Almost without realising, she yearned towards him and he smiled at her, igniting her blood in a flash of pure, physical hunger...

  He turned away.

  The young man’s eyes flicked open. Cool, grey. He couldn’t – or didn’t dare – move, but his gaze caught Amethea’s and his plea needed no words. Her heart convulsed in her chest, she swallowed tears. She couldn’t leave him like this... it was pure horror, way beyond Heal and Harm, beyond the ethics of the hospice that had raised her. Somewhere in her soul settled flakes of revulsion.

  But – !

  Maugrim pushed a dirty fingernail under one of the plates buried in the blistered, skinless mess of the young man’s face and tore it free. Blood welled in the hole, then ran down the myriad cracks to his jaw.

  Under the horrific metal smile, his upper lip tried to curl, tugging bloodily at his bared muscle. His look was pure insolence – skinned alive he may be, but he was still fighting.

  “This is crazed,” Amethea said softly. She was torn, she ached to help. Words tumbled from her. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t fix this. His skin can’t heal. You have to take them off. And... I don’t know how he’s even alive, blood loss, shock...” She heard herself sob. “How did you do this? It’s madness – how did you – ?”

  “I call it ‘magic’,” Maugrim said quietly. He held the tiny metal scale out to her but she shrank back. “A little psychology, a little craftsmanship, a little luck.” He chuckled, took her wrist, pressed the plate into the skin of her palm. “This world has forgotten many things, little priestess, but they can be found – the elements and the Powerflux can be awakened. And then they can be channelled and moulded; a new might wrought from power that’s vast and ancient and screaming for release.” His voice thrummed with heat. “And that power is mine, it was given to me. It lives in my skin, in my very heart.” She blinked at him, not really understanding but carried by the force of his belief. “Look, ’Thea, this one’s a fighter. Pain, loss, terror, defiance – they’re teaching him strength, perception. He should be dead, but I can channel the very Powerflux through his flesh, just as I can channel it through myself, through you – down here, the elements are alive.” For a moment, they were eyes on eyes, then Maugrim closed her fingers over the metal. “You’ll heal him, sweetheart. A fusion of flesh and metal – a new creature that will save your world, that will bring to light the lore you have left to rot. You know you have to!”

  Firelight. Scorching. Stone blackening. Her home was burning. But she was freed – from the sheltered life of the hospice and its rules and its ethics and its litanies and its moral restrictions. Her past crumbled. For the first time, she was free to make her own choice.

  Maugrim had freed her.

  The young man watched them, his grey eyes an overspill of plea, pain and defiance. She opened her hand and looked down at the metal.

  We can make this world a new and better place.

  As she surrendered, the young man slumped, almost imperceptibly, his moment of hope burned away. I’m sorry, she mouthed at him, helplessly, I’m sorry.

  Beside her, she felt Maugrim glow, expand. As the young man watched, he slid a hand round the back of her neck, pulled her to him and kissed her with a passion and skill that burned everything else away. Impossibly pliant, she wrapped herself around him, lost herself to his touch, his mouth, his hands.

  The grey eyes of Maugrim’s victim watched them as they tumbled to the bloodstained floor.

  7: MYTH

  VANKSRAAT

  Cold and silent, Ecko was crouched on the roof.

  About him, the night air was clear, sharp enough to cut his lungs like splinters of glass. The sky was starless black and the batshit moons were slowly sinking. Under him, the building was silent, still sleeping blissful and content. He’d been up here a while, curled against the chimney like a street cat, waiting.

  Below him, scuttlings of critter-warmth crossed the tavern’s backyard and vanished into the walls’ creeper and moon shadow. Occasionally, people scurried past along the cobbled street.

  They didn’t look up.

  Far away, hopefully to the east, he’d watched the growing sliver of light along the horizon – the hint of grey and pink and silver that heralded the rising sun. The night’s stillness had not calmed his thoughts nor offered him answers – and frankly, if this building was going to fucking teleport, then he was going to ride the damn thing all the way.

  Now, that time had almost come.

  The roof was slate, the chimney still faintly warm. As the sky paled above him and the very first light crept along the narrow, stone streets of Roviarath, his skin shifted softly as if to welcome the dawn.

  He sat up.

  His adrenaline was poised, beginning to shimmer with anticipation. He pitched his cynicism against it – surely there was no way this building was just gonna vanish.

  Come on then, I dare ya, I double dare ya –

  And then – whoosh – it all went horribly wrong.

  That first, soft light was suddenly slewing sideways, smudging abruptly out of focus – it was smearing across his vision into a sparkling grey blur –

  Shit!

  He barely had time for the thought. Suddenly, his adrenals were fired and he was clinging to the chimney stack, his heart pounding.

  What the hell...?

  The light convulsed, heaved. It knotted about itself; it swallowed its own tail and spiralled away down the plughole. There was a nanosecond of scrabbling, of wild-eyed panic, as the chimney and the roof were both gone and he was sucked helplessly back into...

  Nothing.

  No bricks under his fingers, no sky, no sunrise, no biting chill of air. He was not alone, nor afraid – he was just gone.

  He’d never been.

  Then there was ripping, like flesh; a thin, harsh scream. Falling, he tumbled through the tear. He was breathing, moving. He was Ecko.

  There was slate, scraping beneath his fingers, dawn light on his skin. Dimly, he became aware that the thin scream was his own.

  “Holy fucking mother of god...” He controlled his vocals with an effort. “What the...?”

  Incredible, impossible, it’d all happened way too fast – he was there and he was gone and he was back and now he was trembling, skidding down the roofside and clinging to the tiles like a half-dead rat. He reached for breath, shaking. Around him, the world spun gently, winding down – the building was still, the jump, transition, whatever, was over.

  The world slowed, sighed and stopped.

  So what the hell was that? A bad trip? Fucking hyperspace...?

  He skidded to a tangled halt by the guttering. He lay there for a m
oment, breathing hard and blinking as his sight and mind cleared. Around him, the air was pale and cool, a faint breeze tightened his chest and made him cough. He curled over the noise, smothering it. His hands at his mouth tasted of blood where they’d scraped on the roof tiles.

  ...Translocation? FTL travel?

  How the fuck did it just do that?

  He’d been half expecting to be free. To come out facing Lugan, or a cryo tank, or a nest of otaku wiring and Eliza in a lab coat. Maybe he’d find himself in one of Grey’s shit-holes – or in some other champion-needing world. Hey, howdja fancy Ecko as High King of Narnia? Part of him had even expected to not come out at all – but no, the quantum roller coaster had dumped him at the station and the sissy bar was rising on cue.

  Carefully, his heart rate slowing, Ecko raised his gaze to look round.

  The stone streets, the narrow buildings, the crepuscular light – all gone. Instead, the sky was high and clear and pale. Ahead of him, there was the metallic sheen of sunlight on water and on its far side, some sort of town, still misty with the early hour.

  Teleporting, for chrissakes. What next – magic fucking wands?

  Twinging with unease, he untangled himself from the mass of fabric, rubbed his bloodied palms on his thighs.

  This can’t be good...

  As his anti-daz filtered the brightness, he could see the tavern itself was intact – garden and sign and all – and that it was now on the grassy edge of a river. On the far bank there was a tessellation of roofs, rising to a tower that didn’t quite look like a church. The breeze flickered the many ends of his cloak, taunting him.

  The air was wild, somehow, sparkling like old-school fizzy pop. He’d never had a lungful like it.

  And there was movement. A harbour that wrapped the townside, larger that he might’ve expected, rowing boats out with the morning.

  Ecko untangled himself fully and sat up. His adrenaline had washed out of him, down towards the guttering, he found he was hunching his shoulders against the vastness of the sky. The ride had kicked him into high gear – towards hopes and fantasies that this really had all been only a joke...

  But this was the same roof, the same chimney, the same front yard.

  And something in him said: That’s it, then.

  The teleport had been his last gasp – he felt as though he’d lost his final grab at freedom. Watching the rising dawn, the shining water, he found the certainty closing over him, once and for all – this was it and he was drowning in it and he was stuck, and there was fuck all he could do.

  Oh, you bastards.

  As if in answer, a water-rat thing scampered across the front path and he bridled at the symbolism.

  You just wait.

  The rat critter turned sharply, long tail twitching, and vanished. Ecko shifted into the shadow on the other side of the chimney and spun his oculars to watch the town.

  Okay then, bring on the pointy-eared bastards with the bows...

  But the town was not some ethereal, crystalline dream, some screensaver vision, it was stone and wood and solid and functional. It was also absolutely miniscule – hell, he’d got no idea how big these things were supposed to be. With no high rise, it maybe held six thousand people, seven? It had no defensive wall, only the harbour, and the tower seemed to hold some mega version of the rocklight in his room. It was hardly gonna be a lighthouse for the water.

  To one side, following the direction of the river, the plains stretched away into the morning, a fantastical swath of colour under the sky. To the other, to the south and west, there was a slope of misted forest that rose into...

  Jesus.

  Rose into mountains.

  Even in the bright dawn light, they were harsh, dark headed and remote, high and jagged as though they cut into the very sky. They made him shiver with some odd sense of anticipation, though he’d no fucking clue why.

  He’d never seen mountains, not this close, and they towered over his presence and silenced his jittering brain. For a moment, he was lost for a sarcastic thought, and he stared with something approaching awe.

  Then his attention was pulled back by a shout that carried clear across the water.

  “The Wanderer! The Wanderer’s here!”

  One of the fisherboats had seen the tavern, manifest on the bank like some insomniac’s hallucination. In a moment, the rest had taken up the cry and the boats were being rowed hard back towards the town.

  Great. For today’s therapy-session role play, I get to be a barmaid.

  He was measuring his chances of staying the fuck on the roof when the skylight below him creaked open.

  “Ecko. Good morning – surprised to see you still here.” Hair loose and bare shouldered, the Bard glanced at their surroundings and grinned. “Well, this could be a great deal worse. Enjoy the trip?”

  “Yeah, like a laugh a minute.” Ecko’s cloak and skin had shifted with the colours of the dawn, but his eyes stayed black as pits. He indicated the riverside city. “Ain’t exactly Minas fucking Tirith is it?”

  “This is Vanksraat. We’ve come south-west, Roviarath is directly downriver.” Lifting the skylight further, Roderick peered over the roof’s edge. “Good place for us, there’ll be gossip and trade. We’ll have a busy day, I think.”

  “They’ve spotted us already.” Ecko returned to studying the town.

  “They do that.” The Bard grinned, his ridiculous goth hair rising loose in the breeze. “We’re a breath of life. We don’t only bring ale – we bring tales of the Varchinde, news of the terhnwood crop, trade-goods and information. In some ways, we bring the world.”

  Okay, not a barmaid, a mailman. Hell, maybe I get a hat.

  “There are also some questions I need to ask you – and something... well, maybe something you can help me with.”

  Ecko snorted. “You reckon I’m gonna stay?”

  “I’ve already said that’s your choice – though if you’re going to jump wagon, there may be better places. You’d like Xenok, or Padesh...”

  “Jump ship, you jump ship.”

  “Why would anyone jump off a ship?” Roderick had thrown the trapdoor all the way open and was now sitting on the lip checking out the view. “Come down. Tundran-blooded I may be, but I’m getting cold.”

  Ecko twitched his shoulders, discouraging the emptiness of the sky. Ignoring the Bard’s offered hand, he scrabbled down the roof. As he reached the skylight, though, something snatched his attention.

  The Bard was stripped to the waist. He was lean, a wire-work of steel muscle. What stopped Ecko was the ugly mess of white scar that tore into Roderick’s chest under his outstretched arm. It was a messy, patchy wound – it looked like he’d been half munched by a shoal of piranha.

  It was an ugly wound.

  It was a mortal wound.

  Suspicion paused him on the edge of jumping. He pointed.

  “What the fuck did that?”

  The scar was old, long healed – but its severity was as loud as a scream. Razor-wire teeth had shredded the Bard a new one the size of the fucking Grand Canyon. And it’d healed hollow – as though too little skin had been stretched to cover the damage. Busted ribs and half-eaten lungs were the least of its problems out here, where the fucking leech was the height of hot meditech –

  How had he – ?

  “Seeking lost lore, on a reconnaissance mission to Rammouthe.” Ruefully, Roderick looked north-east, ran his fingers over the scar. “I was running scout, and disturbed a knot of sleeping magharta. Not something I’d recommend.”

  “You oughta be dead.” Ecko studied the Bard’s pretty-boy face for signs of rotting. “You’re not, are you? You’re not gonna pull some fetid zombie undead bullshit?”

  “Fetid zombie undead bullshit?”

  “Oh for chrissakes. I mean: why the fucking hell’re you still breathing?”

  “I won’t get let off that easily?” Roderick grinned. “Once magharta start eating, they’re not easy things to stop.”

 
; “Don’t gimme the smart-ass remarks – if you got monster issues, I’m your fucking exterminator. Tell me where they’re at and it’ll all be over by dinnertime.”

  And I can get the hell outta here.

  “Only monster in here is in the kitchen, cooking breakfast.” Leaving Ecko to catch the skylight, the Bard jumped down onto the landing. “C’mon, let’s go give Kale a hand.” He glanced back up, gave a brief chuckle. “He might even let you start the fire.”

  * * *

  Downstairs, the front doors of the taproom were propped open and the sounds of water and birds were carried in on sweet, clean air. Karine was already there, counting a stack of pottery bottles on the bar top and making marks on the papers that Ecko had seen the previous night. Beside her was a slender, wide-eyed waif who looked no older than sixteen.

  Standing in the open doorway, arms folded and watching the river, stood a silent, self-possessed man who turned and nodded at them as they came in. His pale hair shone in the sunshine and, like Karine, he seemed far too young.

  There was a long scar across one of his ears.

  “Ecko.” His voice was clear and calm – it was the voice that Ecko had heard when he’d awoken. “Welcome to The Wanderer. I’m Sera – I didn’t see you last night as you had so much to take in. Though, this morning, I fear you may have rather more.” There was no trace of humour in his expression or voice. “The city is about to land on our doorstep.”

  City?

  Almost in spite of himself, Ecko craned to look past where the man stood, flicking his anti-daz against the sun’s shine on the river. There was a boat full of people already halfway across, figures at the bow pointing and talking.

  He groaned. “Jesus, do you people sleep?”

  Karine said, “Forty-one, forty-two, forty-three. We’re two short. Can we get a messenger to go back to the bazaar – I’ll need at least fifteen more of the spirits and all the ales they’ve got. And wine – we’re close enough to Padesh to make it the good stuff. Kale needs fresh veg, whatever the farms have brought in.”

  Roderick caught Ecko’s black gaze, and winked.