by Danie Ware
Triqueta muttered, “You call that progress?”
“Of course I do!” Maugrim jabbed a ringed finger at her. “This is a fantasy, right? Sword’n’saucery, good’n’evil, law’n’chaos – Ecko, you know this shit as well as I do. And fantasy worlds have to have the Bad Guy, the Necromancer, the Lord of Dark – why? Because without him – or her – paradise’d be pointless. Unchallenged, unremarked. How can you get achievement with no struggle, satisfaction with no effort? How do you value anything when it’s just handed to you?”
How can you value anything...?
Ecko was caught. His own beliefs, distorted, slung back at him like a handful of toxic mud.
“This ends now.” Redlock muttered darkly. The axeman, at least, was clear of purpose. “All of it.”
“It’ll never end, warrior. While your terhnwood grows, while your trade cycles, you’ll disappear so far up your own arseholes you’ll lose sight of everything else. In the end, you’ll whine about the small shit because it’s all you’ll have left.”
Roderick said, “Wait a minute – wait. You said, ‘While your terhnwood grows...’ What’s going to happen to it? Phylos...?” His voice faded into horror, anticipation and realisation. “What is Phylos going to do?”
Maugrim laughed, threw his head back and guffawed at the ceiling. “You’re not as bloody green as you’re cabbage-looking, are you, Rick?”
“By the Gods.” The Bard was out of his seat. “I’ll carve the damned answer out of your skin if I have to! What is Phylos going to do?”
Maugrim stretched, grinned like a challenge.
But Ecko was no longer paying attention. In Maugrim’s zeal, he’d heard The Boss’s philosophy, Lugan’s battle against Pilgrim, the death of the woman he’d burned on the shit-hole bed.
Take away the big shit – it’ll be all you’ve got left.
As Maugrim faced the Bard, Ecko’s breathing was tightening, his boosting half kicked. He was poised on the precipice of its speed, its certainty... He wanted to embrace it, it would surge beyond doubt, beyond conscience... but he dared not let it go. The Sical’s might may scream in his veins, but its master was here – here, from his own world, from his own head.
This isn’t some psychoprogram, you little freak, your personal Virtual Rorschach.
What if... Chrissakes! His own doubts, his flickers of emotion and compassion. What if this was real? He couldn’t wrap his brain round the possibility. What if there was no program – what if... Panic was closing his throat. The walls of the tavern were dark, closed-in. There were weapons everywhere he looked.
“We’ve got every right to carve your answer from you.” Amethea’s voice was clear, cold. “You’ve committed torture, rape, murder, corruption – you’ve rained fire from the sky, set your creatures on Roviarath and that – thing – would’ve torn the Varchinde asunder.” She was as calm as still water. “I’ll wield the damned blade myself.”
“Little priestess, Amethea.” His voice was almost affectionate. “Your crimes are as bad as mine – and you know it.”
“No more, Maugrim.” She stood up. “No more head games, no more trickery, no more coercion. No more blood. Feren was my friend, my responsibility, his courage puts all of us to shame. I’ll pay whatever dues I have to – but you must answer for everything you’ve done. And not just to me.”
“Nice speech,” Maugrim told her. He stretched further back in his chair, grinning. He fumbled for something in the pocket of his cut-down.
Amethea stared at him, daring him to speak again. He twisted a smile at her.
“Feren’s memory isn’t lost.” Redlock leaned in and said softly, “You say you’ve walked the very Halls of the Rhez. Can you torture him, healer? In vengeance? In cold blood?”
“I’ve never taken a life,” Amethea said. “The stallion asked me...” She broke off. “I’ve never taken a life.”
Road hardened, blood covered, the axeman said, “Keep it that way.”
Roderick silently clapped his shoulder.
“The stallion was loco, anyhow,” Triqueta said, nudging her elbow. “Didn’t last too long.”
Maugrim chuckled. “Poor creature, my heart breaks for it.” He was wrapping something in his hand. “Losing a pet can be heartbreaking... though you can always go down the store for another one. The herd goes on, little lady. It was my gift – not my creation. Wouldn’t fit through the tunnels, y’know?”
He stretched further still, blazing with confidence, arms behind his head.
“You still haven’t told us where they came from.” Triq eyed Maugrim’s lazy pose with contempt. “Sitting there all damned smug – we’ve got you by your short and curlies, sunshine, and you’re going to spill it. All of it. Or I’m going to show you what a woman can really do.”
Maugrim’s gaze ambled all over Triq’s lithe body. He smirked.
“No offence, sweetheart – you’re a bit long in the tooth for me.”
She spluttered. “You – !”
“Don’t bother,” Amethea told her. “He’s just prodding you, making you react. I think he finds it amusing.”
“Well, I’m going to find him amusing in a minute.” Triq crossed her arms, glared. “Who made the monsters?”
Roderick said, “What is Phylos planning?”
Maugrim laughed outright at them.
Lost by the whirl of interrogation round him, Ecko was only half listening to the exchange. His mind was stumbling, reaching, reeling, questioning, spinning like a centrifuge round one word: real.
It couldn’t be, it couldn’t be – like a true believer who’d lost his faith, he was searching for meaning in a sudden vacuum, the vacuum in which Eliza and her program had lived. He was responsible for his own choices, had been all along: he wasn’t being manipulated or tricked, wasn’t following a pattern...
But –
This had so been done to him! He’d jumped, out into the freezing wind from Grey’s rooftop, out into Eliza’s program and the fight against the corruption of his mind.
Or had he jumped into the certainty of his own death?
He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. The explanations were the same, inside and outside reflections of one another. This was fucking insane!
Pain in his fingertips told him he had Lugan’s lighter in his hand. This is the Bike Lodge, mate...
Was he dreaming? Was he dead? Was he plugged into a shit-hole console after all? Up until now, he’d been playing some elaborate game – suddenly, he was dealing with the enormity of the impossible.
Real.
Maugrim was speaking again, his voice soft, insidious.
“You people, you’re all suffering – and I was told how to help you.”
He sat forward, and there was a chain in his hand, a flickering multicoloured light that danced back and forth.
“You should trust me, place your faith in me. I listen, I heed your pain and I heal.”
The chain swung gently.
“You misunderstand, don’t you? Yes, you know you do. The fire touches you – all of you. You, warrior, hate drives you, it burns in you and it’s made you strong. You, Amethea, you crave love, the love of the family you never had – and you’ll take that love, no matter how it’s offered. You, lady of the Banned, you’re all about desire – instant gratification, flesh, comfort, wealth. Karine, Sera, you’re outcasts that seek only family. And you, Bard with no memory, you poor deluded fool. You have such might – and you won’t use it; such strength – and you have no idea what it is. You’re a creature of fear, hiding behind the hoarding of knowledge so you don’t have to act. Rhan is gone – your greatest ally. You’ll never know how you failed him.”
Back and forth, enticing, compelling.
“There is love and forgiveness in Vahl’s heart – he’ll welcome you, all of you, and you can be free from the pain. You can belong.
“All you have to do is trust me.”
Triqueta said, voice low, “We trust you. What can we do?”
> “And Ecko, Tam, lost and alone, striving for understanding. Lugan carries loyalty like a flag, he’d never abandon you, you know that. This has to be real, what else makes sense? Ecko, little daemon, Vahl Zaxaar knows you above all, he has a special place for you – you’re the darkness in which his fire burns brightest. It’s a place that’ll make all things make sense.
“Just trust me. I know you, all of you. And I can make you whole.”
Flickering, dancing light. Forgiveness and warmth radiated back from the walls as though Maugrim had tapped into the tavern’s lenslike focus, its welcome and sense of home. They stretched their hands to it, needing it like a warm bed on a cold night.
The table was still, captivated. Maugrim could do anything he wanted with them.
Except Kale.
In the freeze-frame, in the centre of the tableau, the cook came out of his seat, hands on the table. His voice was a concentrated husk of withheld fury as he said, “And what about me?” His grin was widening as though his mouth were full of knives. “What welcome do you have for me?”
The swing of the light paused.
Kale’s hands clenched on the tabletop. With a splintering of wood, there were claws embedded in its surface, dragging savage chunks out of its solidity. He was trembling, crouching, hair rippling across his skin – slowly, so slowly.
Maugrim stared. “You...” he said. “You’re new here. I don’t know you...”
“You will.”
And the beast was over the table in a scatter of mugs, a scrabble of talons, a bubbling snarl of pure hate. Burning, asymmetrical green eyes fixed on the light; claws ripped it from Maugrim’s gasp. Startled, the Elementalist held his hands up to shield his face and his chair went over backwards, crashing to the floor. In a moment, the beast pounced after him, lashing tail, dripping teeth, slavering death.
Roderick shouted, “Kale, no!”
Around him, the others were shaking themselves to consciousness, questions, shock. What had he done to them?
Sera bellowed, “Redlock! He fears white-metal!”
Snarling and struggling came from under the table. Maugrim was swearing.
“Get your bloody animal off me!”
“Don’t hurt him!” Karine cried. “Not if you can help it!”
In the midst of the commotion, Ecko hadn’t moved.
Redlock skidded round the table’s end, grabbed the beast by the scruff and dragged it back from worrying at Maugrim’s bloodied throat. As it growled and thrashed, tail sending scattered mugs in all directions, he held one axe right under its nose.
“Kale. I don’t want to hurt you. Back off.”
The beast turned to him and snarled.
“Back off!” He thumped its nose with the back of the axe. It slashed randomly at him, rear claws raking the floor. “Now!”
“Kale.” The Bard’s voice was steady, strong. “You have never hurt a guest. Please – not even this one. His blood is not worth your soul.”
“Now!”
With a shudder that seemed to wrench flesh from bone, the beast was gone.
And Kale the cook was falling back, blood across his mouth and chin, pushing the axe from his face. His was white, shaking violently.
“I’m okay, I’m okay.” He wiped his face, looked at his hands, grimaced. “Sorry about that... I guess he annoyed me...”
“No shit.” Redlock hadn’t put the axe away. “You calm now?”
“Yes, I...” Still wiping, spitting, he scrambled backwards from where Maugrim lay, blood soaking his chest. “Yes. Yes.” He started to scratch like a man infected.
Karine was by him. “It’s all right, it’s all right. It’s over.”
“It is indeed.” In an unconscious parody, Roderick placed one foot on Maugrim’s chest. He said bleakly, “Tell me about Phylos.”
Ecko muttered, “This isn’t real. It can’t be.”
Maugrim spat blood, blood stained his teeth and ran from his throat in rivulets, soaking the sawdust, staining the floor.
Roderick’s voice was cold steel. “Tell me, Ralph, or I shall throw you in the midden and leave you to die.”
“You pick a fine time to find your balls, Rick.” Maugrim laughed bloody bubbles.
Ecko said, “This isn’t fucking real.”
The Bard’s voice slashed back from the walls. “Tell me about Phylos!”
“I don’t know, guv. And I wouldn’t tell you if I did.”
“Enough head games. Tell me!”
Head games.
The phrase crystallised Ecko’s fury like the shine of the Sical itself.
Head games.
The final trick: the final test.
Profile.
This fucker was Eliza made manifest: Maugrim was his in-situ shrink. Rummaging around in Ecko’s head, building lock-ups like familiarity, loosing fire-beasties that touched him to the very soul... playing hypno-the-rapist with a fucking hexidecimal pocket watch...
Head games. All of it. Fucking head games.
In the echoes of Roderick’s anger, Ecko felt the relief of the fiction closing back in about him – and this time, he took refuge in it. He needed it and it made sense to him.
He’d started in a teleporting tavern, for chrissakes. He’d gone down a dungeon and splatted a Big McNasty. He was a bit short on the treasure front, but he had saved the girl. Of course it was a fucking program – it had to be – who the hell did this asshole think he was kidding?
Yeah, I got this now.
He rounded on Maugrim, on the Bard. “All right, fuckwit, that’s it. You’ve seen my profile? You so know I don’t like having people fuck with my head.” He stood to his full height, looked down at the still-defiant Maugrim with his head cocked sideways, his teeth bared. “Nice try with the pocket watch routine.”
Around him, the others were tense, watching him.
“You know what? I am insane. I’m a pyrophile and a madman and a fucking megalomaniac. And Eliza designed a whole Virtual Rorschach just for me. And you? Are just a figment of her code, of my imagination. And you know what that means?
Maugrim was laughing at him.
“You came back to fuck us up – hand us over. You filthy bag of shit.”
Ecko jumped at him, adrenals kicking, faster than the taproom could react. He was on the floor, his hands were wrapped in the front of Maugrim’s cut down, the smooth slide of long-oiled denim under his fingers.
“That means I don’t have a conscience.” His grin was unholy. “It means I can do anything the fuck I want to you. It means I can peel off your skin an inch at a time – you wanna know what that feels like? It means I can cover you in burns, let them heal, and then burn you all over again. It means I can melt your flesh into a blistered puddle on the floor. It means –”
“Ecko.” The Bard’s eyebrows were almost comical. “Please.”
“It means you’re fucked. That’s what it means.” His grin was jaunty. “Now, I think the man had a question?”
Maugrim was trying to back away from Ecko’s grip. His defiance was fading, there was fear growing in his gaze, his expression.
He said, “You wouldn’t dare. I’m not afraid of you!”
“That,” Roderick commented, “may be a mistake.”
Maugrim squirmed, tried to get away from the Bard’s foot, Ecko’s fists. He was shouting now, shouting up at the ring of faces that surrounded him.
“I’m telling you nothing! Nothing, you hear me! I was told that the world was mine – that I could save it, that all I had to do –”
His speech cut suddenly dead. He gagged, his eyes bulging, his hands flailing. His body jacked, his feet hammered the floor, drumming a tattoo that could only mean one thing.
Ecko said, “Well, shit.”
He sat back. The Bard moved his foot.
On the floor of the tavern, Maugrim was frothing like a rabies victim, foaming at his mouth, blood leaking from his ears. His eyes were filled with darkness, his body jerking manically from side to side. A
final, thin scream came from his throat.
Ecko stood up, wiped his hands on his cloak.
Karine said, pointedly, “The mop’s in the kitchen.”
And Roderick swore with more viciousness than Ecko had ever heard.
* * *
In the faint, pale glimmer of the pre-dawn, a tail of smoke rose from The Wanderer’s chimney.
And a corpse, foam flecked and bloodied, lay on a fallen stone altar.
From their collective refuge on the henge’s bank, they could see the glow of The Wanderer and, beside it, the rock upon which Maugrim had been laid. Watching him to ensure that he didn’t jump back to life, or rise as a beastie, or anything else, Ecko was mentally totalling his points on the sanity scoreboard – wondering what Collator would have to say for itself.
Success of scenario: 53.78%. Could do better.
But hell, he was still Ecko. Whatever Eliza had wanted to do to his personality, his code of ethics, whatever-the-fuck her brief had been... he’d beaten it. He was himself, unchanged.
Wasn’t he?
For a moment, he saw Pareus, burning. He saw the warm windows of The Wanderer, and the light of the love of its staff. Redlock’s courage and Triqueta’s vibrant life. Kale’s pain and his fight for his soul.
I’m s’posed to think this shit is real?
I’m supposed to think it’s not?
It means I don’t have a conscience. It means I can do anything I want...
In the moonlight, he could see Amethea’s face, beside him on the bank. He had no idea what she’d been through, but she too, had bravery he couldn’t even find words for.
And somewhere in the back of his head he knew that they had touched him. All of them.
No matter how he tried to deny it.
He wondered if that meant that Eliza was winning.
Then a tremor in the ground made him start.
He shifted, glanced at Redlock beside him on the bank. The axeman was frowning, scrabbling to his feet, flicking weapons into hands – looking for the threat. Amethea stared round her, wild-eyed.
Triqueta said, “There! Oh my Gods!”
Below them, as Maugrim’s seeping blood finally touched the soil, the stones of the Monument were shifting, settling. On his feet now, Ecko spun his telescopics. He could see the ground was slipping, concave, crumbling... Slowly, the great, grey stones were sinking, like flooded barges drowning in the soil.