Ecko Endgame

by Danie Ware

  No, Rhan thought, you probably didn’t have enough.

  Above him, the sun was setting. It stretched the shadows of the walls long down the hillside. But that light – there – that wasn’t the sun.

  That was the one he could feel.

  The smoulder was distinctive – it rose and it hungered, pulling energy and life from round it, from flux and from flesh. The Kas were building it, fanning its flames, flattering it, offering it the time it needed…

  “No!”

  He found he was shouting, incoherent and livid. He could hear them still, laughing at him, calling to him, E Rhan…

  Fuel for the Kas, fuel for the monster, fuel for this Sical, the rising life of the Gods-almighty fire elemental that was going to burn Tusien and everything in it to the ground.

  There was no way he could face this thing.

  It ended here.

  All of it.

  Ash and hopelessness.

  His soul raged, deep in his chest. He wanted to shout at them, cry denial and helpless fury, but there was nothing he could do. He didn’t have the strength. Vahl had played him well, and he was beyond shattered – and with all of his brothers behind it…

  He wondered if maybe, just maybe, Samiel would take him home after all.

  But the Sical was still growing. As high as the sky, clouds now massing around it. The ground under it parched and cracked. He felt it swell and flicker. He could feel the time, the lives that were thinning and faltering, though he could do nothing to stop them. He saw them in flux-flashes – terrified, crying, burning, watching each other stumble and fail. He could hear their voices calling for help, and family.

  And then, suddenly, his anger was ablaze like the Sical itself.

  He entered the command tent, calling to Mostak, words falling over themselves.

  “You’ll need a strike force – the best vets you’ve got. Older warriors, all of them. They’d better be good, or this is over.”

  But Mostak was signalling the drummers, shouting warnings, shouting for water, for the reserve to reach and hold the old well. He had his own tactics for the fire-beast.

  Rhan could hear them laughing at him. E Rhan Khavaghakke. You can stop us, all you need is time. You have kine all about you, why do you not use them? Feed, little brother. Sacrifice the few to save the many. Is that not what your “strike force” already is? Feed…

  “No!”

  He threw himself open, yet again, to the surge of the Powerflux. To the sunken Soul of Light ever-lost below the eastern horizon. Like throwing himself in the Ryll, this was a last moment, a gesture of the end.

  If he had but one spark of energy left, just enough to find his focus…

  He could hear them mocking him. Ah, the endless melodrama, little brother. Throwing yourself off the edge of this, and into the pit of that – you don’t lose well, do you? Laughter bubbled, like molten rock. Your forfeiture is almost complete. Join us, at last. All you need is time…

  And then, he could hear the liquid and crystal voice of the Sical, crackling from one horizon to the other…

  Hunger, I.

  * * *

  Triqueta knew what it was – knew as it rose against the winter sky. It was huge, far, far bigger than the one Maugrim had called. This damned thing grew to the size of Tusien’s walls, and still higher. She could feel the heat on her face, blistering. Under her, her mustang snorted and plunged, fighting to flee. Skilled though she was, she was struggling to hold him – and she wasn’t the only one.

  In the shieldwall, the warriors had paused to stare, to shout questions – but the incoming force paid the thing no mind. They kept hammering, demented.

  The heat grew worse, searing. Triq raised an arm to shield her eyes and the horse backed up, resisting the pressure of her knees and barging hard into the animals behind him. He was sweating, frothing at the mouth.

  Another animal lashed a bite at him and a moment later, the assembled cavalry was chaos, the horses barging and kicking. The shieldwall was crumbling in spite of itself and still the Sical was growing.

  Orders were shouted, ignored. Drums sounded. Archers shot, but the shafts flashed to ashes and kindling. Triqueta saw the catapults being loaded with buckets of water but knew even before they threw that they’d do no good.

  And still, the heat rose.

  * * *

  Ecko stared at the thing in the sky. All he could see was the flame-beast from Maugrim’s cathedral, only this one was as high as the zenith, as wide as the horizon.

  Hunger, I.

  Need, I.

  The words and the heat made his head spin.

  Tell me. Tell me how to burn it down.

  It was the option Amal had offered him, the route out, the way home. It was the chance he’d longed for, to fuck Eliza once and for all, to trash the program and protest his freedom, his will and his independence. It was Vahl, it was Maugrim. It was Tarvi. It was lust and flame and—

  He blinked, and tore himself away, after-echoes of light leaving coloured flares in his vision. The heat was making him remember something, something about the cathedral, about Maugrim, about…?

  About what they’d done last time.

  * * *

  E Rhan Khavaghakke!

  The call was distant now, unreal. But the Powerflux was close and alive, its energy flaring and powerful, right under his skin. No Elementalist could wield more than one element – to open your mind and heart to more than one was suicide, it would char you to a smoking ruin.

  But Rhan would have taken all of them and more, if he could.

  To focus his attunement, he needed energy – and it came from his fury at himself, at all the mistakes he’d made, and everything he’d been, and lost, and lain down. It was his fury at his brothers, at their cruelty and their games. It was his grief, manifested as pure white anger. It was the Bard’s music, and Calarinde’s touch from the previous evening, giving him the spark he needed to catch light. And it all blazed together, crystallising into something like the purest focus he’d ever known, into an absolute vision of the Powerflux itself.

  He could see it!

  It was everywhere, in everything!

  In the sky and in the sun and the shadows; in the ruins and the dead ground and the hillside. It was a crackling mesh of spark and pulse and flame. He could see the elemental souls, the Flux’s anchor points – the Taes volcanoes that housed the Soul of Fire, the white crystal cave in the Khavan Circle, the home of the Soul of Ice. He could feel the pure darkness at the heart of the Kartian culture, that same darkness that lived in Ecko’s black eyes. And he could see the glitter of the water where the Soul of Light had once been cursed.

  And he could see something else.

  The Monument, a vision or a recollection. The stone below it, like strength; the sky above, like inspiration. And the Flux was there too, flowing element to element across the world.

  The force of all things.

  Power crackled in his skin. He could feel it now as if he were a node himself and able to throw all of that Gods-might wherever he wished.

  Now, my brothers. His laugh was as wide as the sky. Face me now.

  But they had no fear of his attunement, his light. It was flawed, always had been – Vahl had cursed the Soul of Light and he would never reach it.

  Their might would remain unchallenged.

  And then… Rhan saw something else.

  Something soulless and savage, governed by chaos and passion. It was pure dark, but it was not Kartian, it was something smaller, and closer. It, too, could see the Sical, and it knew no fear.

  In a flash like a heartbeat, Rhan realised he saw Ecko – tiny in silhouette against the might of the monster. His rasping shout was pure defiance, and he was throwing something at the fire.

  Two things.

  Two sealed pottery cases.

  Rhan had an instant of utter disbelief: What?

  Two shapes arced into the flame, momentarily silhouetted. Then two detonations rocked the elem
ental, one after another. They made it flare and scream, begin to eat itself from the inside out.

  Fire alchemy!

  They hurt it, they made it flicker. And then they started it burning even brighter – almost burning through. The whole sky flashed with fire, the horizon blazed glorious.

  Startled, the focus of the Kas faltered, just for the tiniest moment…

  And in that moment, that space suddenly bought, Rhan could see it. There, eastwards across the darkening sea, sunken beneath the waves, never to be found again…

  Somewhere, he heard Vahl breathe smoke. “No…!”

  But Ecko’s sheer wit had given him the opening he needed. And they were too late.

  He stretched out his hand, across Flux and sea and sky, across land and winter. He could see it now, the single, vast rocklight that was the eastern point of the Powerflux. He could hold it and bring it to the surface. He could touch it, make a new sun with it, change the Powerflux for the rest of the Count of Time.

  The OrSil, the lost Soul of Light.

  His.

  24: SOUL OF LIGHT

  TUSIEN

  From the top of Tusien’s corner tower, the Bard saw everything. He saw Ecko dart forwards, a slight, swift shadow. He saw the two missiles describe perfect arcs into the flame of the Sical. He saw the elemental rock backwards as they detonated. And he saw Rhan’s resulting surge of power, his perfect attunement to the surfacing of the Soul of Light.

  More than that: he felt it.

  It was a blaze of pure and livid outrage. It surpassed all prior limits, all knowledge. It seared across the hillside, dazzling the fighting warriors to stumbling blindness. Nothing stood in its path – not the defenders of Tusien, not the deranged and slavering army that faced them, not even the Kas.

  It took the Sical clean in the chest, igniting it with a white fire that burned brighter than its own, and consumed it completely. The elemental gave a huge cry, a flattening roar of noise that scaled upwards into a shriek.

  Burn I!

  And the horizon detonated into a thousand fiery shards.

  Blinded, his ears ringing, the Bard found himself on his knees. He was laughing, deranged and disbelieving. He dragged his hands down his face, struggling to breathe.

  I can see! I can…!

  In the whack of light he had seen something – a flash, an insight – some aspect of his vision from the Ryll. It had been brief, explosive, but so strong he could touch it: a snatched sight of the Powerflux, of how the elements flowed across the world—

  In a surge of furious exasperation, he slammed a fist into the stonework, splitting his knuckles, scattering scarlet. He was so close! He wanted to cry out, tear at the sky with frustration and power, demand the world give up its secrets, held away from him so long.

  But he flexed his hand and grimaced, looked out over the wall.

  Below him, the hillside was a crater, scorched and smoking soil, superheated stone. Burned bodies lay twisted, human and monster and animal, all of them seared black. The detonation had blistered everything, and burned the ground to char.

  Ash drifted like snow.

  Below, people were picking themselves up. Running, shouting, scattered and scared. And right down at the very bottom of the hill, the tents of the Kas still contained pockets of sporadic fighting.

  Did we win?

  The thought was unreal, it made him fall onto his backside. He leaned against the stone behind him, held up his split knuckles.

  He started laughing, stopped himself.

  But winning was fallacy: the war was not, had never been, what the world feared. He had known that from the beginning. Whatever field they may have taken today—

  There was ink in his skin.

  What?

  In a sudden trembling panic, he turned his arms, peering at them. His first thought – that the Kas had somehow invaded his soul – he shoved aside, almost by instinct alone. These were not the marks from Amal’s flesh, these were faint, faded, blurred by water and time. Grappling for understanding, he unzipped his London leather and pulled apart the front of his hoodie and shirt.

  The words flowed across him like serpents.

  Time, one said. Flux.

  Caught, he forgot to breathe, searched further as if checking himself for lice. No time, no time. In other places, he could see the symbols of the elements, running one into another, and an image of a face with pitch-black eyes.

  His heart lurched, thumping in his chest and temples. He knew these words – he knew them! It was like a drop-key fitting home, a dream suddenly realised.

  He could remember…

  Uncaring of the cold, he shed his garments and bared his chillfleshed skin. He was shivering, but he didn’t care. He teetered upon the edge of a moment he had sought his whole Gods-damned life…

  Roderick had been barely thirty returns when they’d welcomed him to the Ryll – little more than a youth in Tundran terms. Young as he’d been, they’d lauded him, afforded him every accolade, and he’d lost his head to it. Their attention had made him giddy. When they’d explained their rules to him, he hadn’t cared – they were aging greyhairs and he was the hope of his generation, first Guardian born in Avesyr, and so on… he’d heard it so many times. He’d thought himself better than their observation and patience. And one night, he’d held out a hand to the water.

  Touched his fingers to the falling and forbidden cold.

  Now, the memory of that sensation was extraordinarily clear: the vastness of it, utterly drowning him. He remembered the shocking, tumbling onslaught of images, too fast, too big, too many – the thoughts of the world were not meant for mortal minds. He’d tried to catch a flicker like he’d catch the fall’s rainbow spray, but it had all just swamped him, pummelling him down into the darkness.

  Leaving him unconscious at the water’s edge.

  In the morning, the Guardians had found him. Their fury had been stern and silent; they’d shut him in his room without food or answers. His right arm had been numb to the shoulder, the skin of his fingers burned like he’d shoved them in a fire.

  A halfcycle later, they’d exiled him from his home.

  But what he’d seen…!

  He’d seen the world’s nightmare, her nameless fear that had governed his every waking thought from that point onwards.

  But he’d seen something else, something that was a part of that fear.

  Time.

  Time the Flux.

  Time the Flux begins to crack.

  He’d seen the Powerflux – almighty webwork, warp and weft through world and sky; seen it as it touched and governed all things. He’d seen Rhan, the loss of the OrSil, and Ecko, the darkness of his eyes and soul. And Amethea…

  Shivering with cold and need and tension and wonder, he struggled to piece it together. He was tight with urgency, with a clamouring disbelief. In the back of his mind, he could hear a voice – This is not about ‘good’ and ‘evil’, about Rhan and Vahl, and their endless war. This is about the end of all life, all existence, all passion… and he could see a figure, the exact same writing in his aged and shrivelled skin.

  Ress.

  Roderick remembered him from The Wanderer, from the night Triqueta had found the injured Feren. He remembered the man as practical, dismissing the Bard’s talk of monsters, his forgotten visions.

  In The Wanderer, Roderick had pleaded with him: Ecko is here. He brings darkness and fire and strength the likes of which I have never seen! He understands my tale, my vision, the world’s lost memory—

  And then, with a sudden shock of realisation that nearly made him shout, he made the connection.

  The Bard was mortal – he could not encompass the thoughts of the Goddess. In his small and limited way, he’d been struggling to see and remember the parts because the full picture was too big.

  But Ress’s mind had been blown wide by information. The words he’d seen – they’d changed him, made him crazed. And they’d given him the same damned vision, or something th
at overlapped it.

  The Bard was on his feet, now, elated, excited, afraid. He paced; the wind was ice-cold on his bare skin, but he refused to don his clothes.

  He could see!

  He could see Ress standing on the edge of an oxbow pool of water, stagnant and overgrown. In its centre, there was an old stone statue.

  And he knew what it was, just as if the world had shown him.

  The water, the stagnant water, was the World’s lost Memory.

  Ress had found the Ilfe.

  And he was giving it to the Bard.

  So he could remember.

  Roderick was still, stunned. Breathless. Prickling with adrenaline. With vision and insight.

  The Ilfe – hidden deep under Rammouthe Island, concealed from mortal and immortal alike. No one had been able to get close, because the Kas had been down there, hidden and broken and waiting—

  His mind jumping, Roderick understood the ink in their skin. All unknowing, the Kas had been waiting at its side, and it had marked them. Like it had marked Ress, and was now marking him.

  Deep below the city of London, Roderick had asked Mom for understanding, for information and comprehension. Now, every horror he’d lived through was worth it – his mind had the speed, and the capacity, and the memory, to finally encompass the thoughts of the Goddess herself.

  It would take him time to unravel the imagery completely, but he saw one thing clearly – something the world had forgotten, long, long ago.

  The full truth about the Powerflux.

  * * *

  The sun had gone, spilling its last bloody light across the plain. On the hilltop, Tusien’s walls stood cold and black in the moonlight, while among the scattered destruction of the enemy camp, the rising dark hid lingering horrors.

  In the chaos that had followed the lightning strike and the fall of the Sical, Triqueta had commanded her combined forces on clean-up detail. Her cavalry had ridden to the base of the hill, scattered what remained of the army of the Kas, offered the survivors the chance for surrender.

  But what they’d found had been wreckage – the remnants of warriors, now aged and crazed, eyes and minds burned out with the Sical’s glory and demise. Many of them could no longer speak, they’d slain their animals and turned on each other. Belly unsettled, Triqueta had rounded the last of them up and placed them under watch while she secured the campsite itself.