Ecko Rising

by Danie Ware

  “You didn’t come for a last fix, then?”

  “I came to say goodbye, you daft old whytche.”

  “Now there’s a word you don’t hear any more.” Wheeling seabirds cried raucous laughter. “Facing the cold embrace of withdrawal, are we? I can make it easier for you, if that’d help.”

  The first splatters of rain began to hit his cheek.

  “For the Gods’ sakes, Pen, I know what I look like but comedown? The least of my problems.” The harbour wind was sharp, it blew the rain into his face. He lowered his voice to a rumble. “Elemental fires, roving monsters, and that’s only the beginning. You should... retire for a while. Things are about to get nasty.”

  “I can take care of myself. You taught me how, as I remember.” Penya eyed a scattering of bored local toughs, loitering in a chipped stone doorway. Litter blew round their feet. Their eyes raked her like broken-off blades, but her hand rested pointedly on the long knife at her belt and they shuffled back. She shot him a look round the side of her cheek. “You took a chance coming here.”

  “They’ll never notice me.” Rhan grinned, took a minute approximation of a bow. “Trick of the light.”

  She chuckled, threw him a brief smile. Next to her grey hair and assured walk, he was slight and twitchy, hollow eyed and sallow skinned – carefully unremarkable. If Phylos’s eyes were here, they’d pass straight over him.

  “Walk with me,” she said. “Round here, walls have bigger ears than you’d think.”

  The wind cut harsh as they turned from the waterfront and began to move out along the grey-stone harbour wall, blinking at rain and spray. Hands had built this, bare hands. Sweat and effort had carried these stones and piled them high from the water... Now, algae and shellfish grew in their cracks.

  The tide pulled at them, hissing.

  The elements awaken. Remembering Roderick’s passionate speech, the cut of the chill brought Rhan a shiver of insight. Ten generations of Fhaveon’s Lords, the might and vision of Saluvarith, now distilled down to Demisarr’s weakness. Demi was a good man, and a true-hearted one, but Phylos would rip out his belly, garnish it, and serve it up at a Cartel party.

  “It got away from me, Pen. I wasn’t paying enough damned attention and now I have to fix it. All of it. The Bard’s heart holds a fear that’s crazing him – and this time his madness is catching.” Anger flickered like light under his skin. “You’re the finest herbalist I know – and I need you to do something for me.” He looked back up at the hills that cupped the town, almost as if he expected to see flames spreading through the green. “Call it a suspicion, a feeling. I need to know if there’s anything wrong with the grass.”

  “The moons on two sticks.” Penya snorted. Below them, a boatman stood in the bottom of a small, local craft, picking spindly-legged crustaceans from a woven cage. He held them up, shook them, dropped the bigger ones into a basket, threw the smaller ones back into the harbour. “Y’know,” she said, pausing to watch, “some of those creatures are hundreds of returns old. Hundreds.” The boatman dropped another one. “They end their lives in that tar-stinky little boat – and we eat them.”

  Rhan stopped beside her, skin prickling, rain in his eyes. The clouds were sinking lower overhead. Hundreds. “Pen?”

  “Why are you here, Rhan? Really? She rounded on him, punched him to hide an odd note in her voice. “You’ve been arrested! I should throw you in the harbour!”

  “Maybe he’ll pick me up and put me in his basket. Penya –” now he turned her to look at him, searching her face “– what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.” With a flicker of more usual, impish humour, she took his jaw in her hands and kissed him on the mouth. “Come on, you – bet I can still beat you.” She broke into a run, turned to grin at him, jogging backwards with strands of her hair blowing. She was still slender, a woman he’d watched grow from a fearful girl, into a lover, into a friend. “Come on, you timeless bastard, see if you can keep up!”

  He chuckled, broke into a shambling run suited to his wasted appearance.

  She taunted him. “Come on!”

  He shambled faster.

  Under his roughly sandaled feet, the wall ran to a long, embracing curve, protecting the harbour and ending in its tall, stone guardian, a statue with features long since blunted by coastal weather. He stood faceless, twin to the lighthouse, sombre and dark, the other side of the harbour mouth.

  Defended by the guardian’s plinth was a square cot, built like the wall out of shaped and carried rocks. Once, boats not wishing or needing to moor in the harbour had done trade here.

  Now it was half tumbledown. No one had used it in returns.

  Her laughter was snatched by the wind, thrown in his face.

  Hundreds.

  And the realisation hit him like a clothyard shaft.

  Oh, Pen, you didn’t...

  The thought was sharp and sudden, hurting – but his certainty was absolute. Rhan lurched to a stop, his heart slowly crushing in a fist of pure, cold betrayal.

  Hundreds.

  “Pen?” It was a whisper, a plea of denial.

  “Come on!” She was still laughing at him, her hair now coming loose from its tail. He hadn’t really noticed how grey she’d gone – the death of her husband had hit her harder than she’d said. She was always so damned capable...

  “Penya?”

  Loss twined its way round denial, round helplessness and then round rising, righteous anger. Almost answering him, the sun broke momentarily through the clouds and lit the harbour to a brilliant blue sparkle, though the rain still scattered in his face. Shards of rainbow danced in the air.

  Hundreds.

  Warmth touched his skin. He raised his jaw, his determination.

  His rage.

  Friends were rare to an immortal, to be betrayed by one was beyond belief.

  Focus!

  He knew they were coming and he let the light flood him, find the core of his anger, his certainty, and fuse with it, fuel it. Bright illumination saturated his being, burned like sheet lightning beneath his skin. He opened his heart, his mind, his soul. Around him, the very Powerflux invaded his form, wove itself into his breath, his being, and he was more than flesh, more than mortal. He was pure bloody quintessence – and, by the Gods, he was angry.

  Rhan started to laugh; release, rising exultation. Defiance.

  Come on then, you bloody bastards. Ambush me, would you?

  With a massive effort of self-control, he contained the force, held the light beneath his skin and clung to his sunken-eyed image – but he wouldn’t keep it for long. The illusion was burning from a hole in its centre – as though the sunlight had hit it, focused through a real glass lens.

  His laugh sought utterance, gleeful and dangerous. It had been too, too long.

  Come on then, show yourselves. I’ll crush your skulls with my bare hands.

  He forced his body to move, closer to the wall’s end. He was still lurching, though it was no longer an act. Controlling his body was awkward – he wanted to blaze, to explode into the sky like a rising star.

  Penya was still laughing as he came after her, shambling faster now. Behind her, the great, blunt-featured statue stared out over the water.

  Tekisarri. Saluvarith’s son, Rakanne’s father. The boy who found me when I was washed up and broken at the base of the cliff...

  ...Damn you, Phylos, I’ll tear out your spine for this!

  And there they were, racing from either side of the cot, from its darkened doorway. There were over a dozen of them, dressed in the ramshackle woollens of fishermen but with the strong shoulders and raised chins that marked them instantly as military.

  Mostak! You betray your brother? Your family?

  The politics bothered him for only a moment. The scattering of guised soldiers spread into a loose line, armed with an unpleasant assortment of hooks, axes and gutting blades.

  It started to rain harder. The shaft of sunlight was gone.

  Penya
shrieked, startled, skidded to a stop. “Oh my Gods!”

  He snarled at her, “Get behind me!” Had she betrayed him? He’d no idea. The burning was too strong for reason, too powerful. But these bastards had made a mistake.

  He was still on the wall – they couldn’t come at him all at once. At best, they’d be three at a time. His grin was breaking free now, cracking through his sallow-skinned guise. His bwaeo laugh was audible, thrown high into air by the chill sea wind.

  Foundersson’s Champion. Master of Light. Then. Still. Always.

  He challenged them straight. “Come on, then! Rip those hooks into my flesh, damn you! Put my balls on a spear and take them back to the Council!”

  But Penya shrieked again, pointing wildly.

  On the lighthouse balcony, two archers, shafts nocked and ready to loose. And behind him, the three toughs from the doorway were ranging themselves across the wall top, slouching and smirking. Their knives were dirty.

  “Nice ambush.” His words were as sharp as a blade across the throat.

  With a yell, they rushed him.

  As he detonated, the rain sheeted across the harbour.

  * * *

  He came to with a start, his body jolting as though it had been in freefall. Somewhere in the back of his head, there were echoes of screaming.

  Whose?

  The air was deep cold, it stank of stone and salt and loss. And there was a pain in his back – a dull pain, a dark pain. A leftover ache like an embedded fragment of betrayal.

  Penya.

  He was hazy. Figments taunted the corners of his thoughts – flitting shadows he couldn’t quite see. His light was extinguished, exhausted; his connection to the Powerflux broken. He hurt, mind and body.

  He was alone.

  With an effort of will that nearly tore him flesh from bone, he got his hands under his shoulders and pushed his chin up.

  He blinked, grinding his sight into focus.

  Glory and exultation. Dazzling light refracting through pelting rain. Arrows sparking into ash before they reached him. Warriors falling, hands over their faces to shield their eyes. Laughter thrown into the sky as he knew they couldn’t touch him...

  Dark stone walls, slick with green. A heavy wooden door cracked at the base and letting a chink of light point along the rock floor to the backs of his fingers.

  ...The tiny bite at his back, the spreading numbness. The shock; the denial. The fading, struggling, reaching. Rainbows cracking, scattered across the stone like broken crystal. Falling, falling away.

  Then nothing – “Kazyen”.

  He blinked for a moment, puzzled, figments still dancing, mocking him. Then he felt a shiver of fear as he realised...

  ...screaming...

  ...that wasn’t everything. Somewhere between that falling and the jolt that’d awoken him, there had been a nightmare. A body, thrown through a shutter; a woman, pounding his chest with furious fists.

  What?

  He shivered, a frisson through his skin. The figments taunted him, flickering just too far away to reach.

  A white face. A last, startled expression as it plummeted into darkness. And then the screaming, all the way down.

  The frisson became fear – real, tangible fear. The figments laughed more loudly and his skin crawled with sudden dread.

  Dear Gods, Samiel, Father. What did I do?

  He needed to move.

  Struggling to muster his concentration, he blinked at where he was – yes, sealed in Fhaveon’s rock-walled gaol, the oubliette beneath her perfect stone. With a flash of bitterly ironic clarity, he realised this was another thing he’d built.

  And this one he couldn’t get out of.

  He tried to stand, failed. His feet slipped on slick, cold weed; his skull boomed dully like the drums of the High Cathedral tower. His body felt like water, no cohesion. It took three attempts to even sit, elbows on his knees, head in his hands.

  His face was scratched, four neat nail rakes down one cheek.

  “Rhan, you cursed bastard, you filthy, faithless sehvrak!” Fury and helplessness. “You owe him your oath, your...”

  For a moment, he’d caught a fragment of the nightmare and he froze, staring at it in horror. Valicia, Demisarr’s wife, her shoulders and breasts bared, her hand clawing at his cheek... the hate on her face... No... that was beyond crazed...

  Then it was gone, and he was sitting there, hand pressed to drying scabs, to four bloodied weals of loathing.

  Valicia? What happened?

  Fear was congealing into truth – to be down here, he’d done a lot damned worse than a packet of illegal herbs.

  He had to get out...

  But he had built this one to be impregnable.

  There was a voice outside his cell.

  It echoed oddly from the rock, barking instructions in a harsh, merciless snap. It was too far away to hear clearly. Like a ribbon-town beggar, he dragged himself across the floor, placed an ear to a crack between the door planks.

  Footsteps – hollow in the tunnel. A long, powerful stride, a billow of fabric, other feet scurrying to keep up.

  He pulled back against the far corner of the weed-slick wall and sank into his hands, not needing to feign the despair.

  The stern footsteps came close, closer. There was the fumble of a drop-key, the door creaked and the light opened fanlike across the stone. The shadow within it was unmistakeable.

  “Rhan.” The word was pure victory, as hard as a fist.

  Phylos.

  “Merchant Master.” Rhan didn’t bother looking up. His sardonic bass was muted, almost a growl. He was bruised, he’d realised, bones cracked, he could feel them – somewhere, he’d been savagely beaten. “I’ll rip out your lungs and feed them to you.”

  The merchant snorted, glowered at whatever had been scuttling behind him, and snapped the door shut. He crouched before Rhan in a crumple of fabric, took Rhan’s chin in a hand decorous with wrought terhnwood-fibre rings.

  “How much do you remember,” he said softly, “my Lord Seneschal?”

  Screaming. All the way down. Filthy and faithless.

  “What did you do to Penya, you bastard?” He looked up, gaze burning from under his brows. He didn’t have enough energy to light a damned candle, but the anger – the anger was helping. He snarled in Phylos’s face, “What did you do?”

  Phylos laughed, a boom like an oarsmens’ drum.

  “I knew where you’d go – you’re as guileless as a child. And I have her son.” His shoulders gave an amused half shrug. “People are easy to shift, with the right lever.”

  Rhan surged into movement, a graceless half lurch.

  “I’ll tear off your sk–”

  Slam! He was back against the wall, ringed hand hard on his shoulder, Archipelagan strength behind it.

  “You’re in no position to be making threats.” The Merchant Master radiated smug savagery: it danced in his voice, flickered across his face. “You’re finished, you bastard, you’ve hobbled this city long enough. Without you, Fhaveon ushers in a new age – an age where our terhnwood will rule everything we are, everything we want and need. I can wipe out the pirates once and for all –”

  “By burning the crops?” Pinned by his shoulder, Rhan turned his face into Phylos’s like an angry lover. “You stupid – !”

  “I didn’t burn anything, you herb-addled throwback. Believe me or not as you wish – I’m as... curious... about that as you must be.” He grinned like a hunting bweao. “Though I can turn it to my advantage.”

  “Oh?” Rhan dared him, taunting. “And how would that be?”

  “Love of the Gods!” Phylos spat a laugh straight back, though the pressure of his hand didn’t ease. The rock was cold, and it hurt. “You’ll be facing death for your crimes, Rhan. You may not have a future, but I’m not about to crouch here in the stink and tell you my plans.” Now, he eased the pressure, rested his hand on Rhan’s shoulder, mocking. “You’ll go to your trial, your execution and your grav
e knowing that you gave this city, her rulers, into my hands. And without you holding me back, I can build Fhaveon to a glory never seen.”

  “‘Trial, execution and grave’? You think you can execute me for a packet of illegal herb? Whatever your grand plan may be, Phylos, the Foundersson –”

  “The Foundersson is dead, you damned fool.” Phylos inhaled momentarily, as though the next sentence were one to savour. “You killed him.”

  What?

  The memory was stark, cold and shocking, suddenly ice-water clear.

  Screaming. All the way down.

  He whispered like a breath of pain, as though he’d been punched in the belly. “Dear Gods...!”

  “You’ll be facing trial for the murder of the Lord Foundersson Demisarr Valiembor and the subsequent –” another savour “– rape of his ladywife, Valicia.” Phylos’s expression was sharp, metal cold – as through it hid glee beyond measure. “The Lady has a high heart and much courage – she’ll bring a witness testimony that will end your life.”

  Hands. Beating at his chest. The body under him, spasming and furious – biting, fighting, struggling...

  The memory made him shudder in shock horror – like a spear had been driven through his body. Samiel! I couldn’t have done this!

  As if it was his last, strangled air, he said, “No...”

  But he knew it was true. Somehow, in that nightmare, he’d been in the bedchamber of the Foundersson. Had he been begging help, or sanctuary, or for the Lord to show courage against Phylos’s rising power? He had no idea. But he remembered...

  The struggling form of the man in his hands. “Rhan, what are you doing? Put me down, I’m not a babe any more!” Shutters shattering as the Lord went through them, the last clutch of his hand on the windowledge. Screaming. The long fall down into the gorge, into the night.

  What had he done?

  He was shaking, broken, hands quivering like an addict’s. His belly roiled as if he’d throw up. His mind could manage nothing but pointless, empty, looping denial. Nonononono...

  I held Demi as a tiny baby. Watched him grow. Swore my life to his defence. Stood with him as he married his wife...

  ...his wife! The white-flare release of an orgasm stolen.