Ecko Burning

by Danie Ware

  He had to fucking ask.

  Absolutely on cue, the door at the corridor’s end slammed open to the sound of feet. Not releasing his grip, Ecko shot a glance.

  Double-took.

  The woman was like bad temper made manifest - she was almost Lugan’s size, powerfully muscled, with a shaven head and an awkward, aggressive attitude. As she came into the cloisters’ rocklights, Ecko saw that she was young - incongruously so -and that she was carven with elaborate, deliberate, heavy white scars. Kartian scars. She was a shout of contradiction, a full-on bona fide freak.

  She was also stampeding towards him at a fairly terrifying rate.

  “Get off him!” she bawled. “Get off him, you little shit, or I’ll break you like a stick!”

  Yeah, whatever.

  Ecko turned his back on her and twisted the struggling lunatic into a knot.

  “Come on, you fucker, come on.”

  But the old man was looking back at him through his filthy, splayed fingers, his pupils maniacal - all wrong, the wrong sizes, the wrong directions. He was twisted all sideways now, and still sniggering like a horror-story clown. He raked his other hand down his face, leaving four nail-weals of hurt, dragging the skin of his eyes and mouth into some batshit comedy mask.

  “Jesus shit. You are shot away.” With a wrench, Ecko finally secured his prize, turned back to check on the incoming woman.

  “Jayr,” the madman said, quite distinctly. “The world is going to change now. Fast. We have to go.”

  Ecko would have asked him what the hell he was talking about, but cowardice being the better part of discretion, he’d already fled.

  8: BROTHER

  THE TRADE-ROADS OF THE NORTHERN VARCHINDE

  The camp looked like a gale had torn through it, shredding its contents to grief and destruction.

  No matter that it was not a Range Patrol campsite - that it had been set up a way back from the road by smugglers who’d had no interest in Phylos tracking their cargo or whereabouts. No matter that it was now silent, seeming abandoned by the pirates that had built it.

  Those that had survived.

  The walker was long past concern for Phylos’s power, or for the irony of coincidental minutiae.

  His world had shrunk to the grey cloud that wrapped him.

  No matter that the site was devastated, or that it was scattered with bodies. No matter that the predator, human or animal, that had ripped through here may still be nearby.

  Whatever it was, it could not harm him - not for long.

  He was cursed, more than any creature living.

  He was immortal, was not permitted to die - there could never be so simple an end, not for him. He had failed, his people, his city, the Varchinde entire - he had failed utterly and in everything, and there was no way out. No release, no conclusion. No “enough”.

  Several times, he had tried to take his own life and failed - his injuries healed, his consciousness gasped anew and then limped slowly onwards through the grey.

  The metal fetter that Phylos had put upon him still cramped his wrist, and he was bereft.

  The fetter was a prison, a barrier.

  With it upon his skin, he was bereft of the Powerflux, the world’s shifting, cycling, elemental field. It was like being blinded, deafened, having his fingers burned away and his tongue cut out - with its cold touch upon him, he was without senses, trapped within his own skin. Without the ebb and flow of the world’s elements, surrounding and carrying him, his defeat and misery and weariness had multiplied, self-perpetuating and closing off his awareness of the world that surrounded him. His depressive inertia had sealed him within himself, hopeless.

  And so he’d walked, directionless and endless, because it was the only thing that kept the hollow at bay; a repetitive, unthinking action that brought him something resembling peace.

  It was the last barrier between himself and that dreadful lethargy, that depressive listlessness that sucks the will and the spirit and leaves just the grey, the empty soul, the “Nothing”, the very essence of Kazyen.

  He walked on.

  He did not notice the passing of the Count of Time, did not notice that the traffic on the trade-roads was lessening with every day and halfcycle; that widening swathes of rot marred the spectacular burning of the Varchinde’s autumnal colours. He did not notice or care in which direction he was heading; he did not respond as other travellers hailed him, or eyed him warily and moved to keep out of his way.

  He did not notice the rain or the wind, the wondrous skies of the dusk and dawn, the night movements of the moons over his head.

  The skies were forever denied him. He had been created to be a creature free, yet Samiel had held him out over the edge of paradise...

  And had let him go.

  From this time forth, you are “rhan”, homeless. You are charged with the care of the mortal world. If you fail me again, you will be nothing.

  Yet now, even that no longer mattered.

  Nothing.

  He walked like a blind man, oblivious.

  * * *

  Rhan Elensiel, once Seneschal of Fhaveon, First Voice of the Council of Nine, Foundersson’s Champion, was a broken thing. Four hundred returns he had stood beside the family Valiembor, mother and son, father and daughter, guarded and guided them and upheld the strength of the Lord city. Four hundred returns he had secured the grasslands against foes and strife and warfare, had watched the terhnwood grow, and the trade become the Varchinde’s lifeblood, buoying the comfort of all.

  Four hundred returns - until the plains were so secure that he had grown bored.

  Taken that comfort - and his own - for granted.

  Four hundred returns, and he had failed in his Gods-given duty - grown too lazy, too complacent, too downright smug to even notice the danger until it was upon him. Until the enemy was manifest - and by then it was too late.

  Phylos had taken control of Fhaveon. He had cast Rhan down, thrown him from the very walls. Rhan had murdered the Lord Foundersson, had forced his wife, Phylos claimed. Rhan had lost city, legacy and purpose to a man who would destroy the Varchinde entire.

  But what could he do? Why fight when he had already lost? There was no point.

  Grey. Kazyen.

  He walked not because he was looking for anything. He walked because there was nothing else to do.

  * * *

  What stopped him, he did not know - but he stumbled to an unsteady halt as if becoming aware of the world for the first time in cycles.

  He ached, in knees and in belly. There was no hurt, exactly, he wasn’t hungry - like the peculiar, nebulous pain of his selfinflicted injuries, such things were mortal danger signs that he understood only academically. But the endless walking had taken its toll on this bland and slender body. He was... he was tired.

  He also had no idea where he was.

  The air was bright and crisp and chill. The newborn sun was behind him, throwing his long shadow forwards over misted ground. His own gloom loomed ahead of him to touch this small abandoned camp, this mess of rubbish and fear and discarded mortality.

  In the east, the sky was dawn-pale, streaked with a blush of pink. Ahead of him, the glowering dark loomed low, making the mist seethe on the cold ground. A small cart lay shattered, one wheel struck from its axle; a livestock pen had fencing damaged and strewn wide. The scatters of bodies were overgrown with moss and rotting with rain; some were gnawed to the bone in places, or missing eyes where the inevitable aperios had spiralled down upon them.

  Somewhere, something in him envied them.

  But they were dead, beyond his pity, and their presence was not what had stopped him.

  He moved to look more closely.

  The camp had been set up round a single building - a slightly tumbledown, half-stone cot. Its turfed roof had fallen in on one side and it had no door.

  Where was he? The thought crystallised at last and it made him blink, bewildered. North, inland. Was this Foriath? Narvakh?

>   In spite of the dawn, there was no birdsong.

  Staring dazedly at the building as though it could offer him an answer, he became aware that it contained movement -there was something in there, something still alive. As the thing came into the light at the doorway, it took a moment for him to realise what he saw.

  A girl.

  Pale, slender, filthy, almost grown enough to be a woman. Her underdress was ragged and her face and hair were streaked with grime. Her arms were covered with scratches and dirt.

  When she saw him, she stared for a moment, then stumbled out of the building and started to cross the campsite, falling almost immediately.

  She shouted at him, tears streaks of clean through the grot.

  “No,” she cried. “No, you must go, you must go away...”

  But it was far too late, and he was right in the middle of them.

  The camp was already occupied.

  Three of them, tall and laughing and moving with a grace that baffled him, an impossible gait. Their shadows stretched long and wild over the grass.

  They knew he was there.

  As they turned, he saw their faces were masculine, striking; they were more than human, more than animal; crueller than both. Their hair was long and braided with fragments of bone and thread and colour; from their temples came horns, widespaced and curving like those of a mountain tsaka. Their skin was whorled with blue stains, decorous and elegant. They had a beauty to them, and a barbarism, that stirred something in the darkest corners of his heart.

  He knew them. Didn’t he?

  Somewhere, memory stirred, old ash and broken edges.

  The figures were moving swiftly now. Their eyes were a chaos of colour, no iris or pupil - windows of madness.

  Quickly one of the creatures was on the girl, towering over her on legs that bent at the knee, and then bent back again, all the wrong way. It was hugely tall, reaching for her with strong hands outstretched as if to pick her up, embrace her against his bare and painted chest.

  Her angry shriek tore across the morning and hard into Rhan’s awareness.

  It was a strike across his cheek, a sharp slap awake.

  Now, he shook himself, took in the scene at a glance - he was a way back from the trade-road, the northern route that led inland from Fhaveon and later branched to both Darash and Avesyr - that would account for the trees. The building was an old hospice-refuge, long abandoned. Its more recent inhabitants showed little concern for its disrepair.

  Instead, they closed about him and the girl.

  Rhan had lost his elemental attunement - the true life of the world was unknown to him, he could neither feel nor touch it.

  The girl pounded her fists on the bare chest of her attacker, trying to push him away. For a sliver of a moment, his own memory jarred him...

  Valicia, Demisarr’s wife. “Fighting.”

  ...and the recollection took him too long. The girl fell, shrieking, the weight of the creature on top of her.

  Rhan moved, but the other two had flanked him.

  Something about them stank of wrongness, of twisted, gnarled life. One of them had a symbol on his flawless chest, a sigil, something... They paused for a moment, eager, their sharp teeth bared with anticipation.

  Rhan had murdered the Lord Foundersson, raped his wife, lost his city - if these things tore him to pieces, perhaps Samiel would take pity on him and take him home...

  Love of the Gods, if these things tore him to pieces, perhaps he’d be fully damned after all. He could join the waiting ranks of his damned brother Kas Vahl Zaxaar, and awaken at the end of the Count of Time to wreak his vengeance upon the unready world...

  Even that had to be an improvement.

  The thought was a crux-point; a timeless second that was somewhere between defiance and despair, ascendance and damnation. Let them take me. I don’t -

  But the girl screamed again, furious, a sound that rent the brightening dawn sky.

  And he could not abandon her.

  One of the creatures went over backwards - a fist in its perfect face sent it sprawling, its furred legs kicking. With a back-slam of the same elbow, the second was down in the grass. It made a high, thin keening noise that shredded the air into painful strips.

  And Gods, the violence felt good.

  For the first time in cycles - How long has it been, how long? - he felt like himself. His skin was shivering with tension and vitality and he could feel fury stirring in his heart.

  Oh yes. I remember this.

  The girl was fighting hard, swearing like a wharfside trader - she’d gained her feet and a belt-blade and she was swift and vicious. The thing was right over her, grinning - it reeked of predator.

  Yet there was something about it...

  Something...

  As one of them recovered, reached its long hand for him, he realised that the wrong sensation was familiar, that it tied in with that ghost-memory, that figment at the back of his mind. Like the creatures themselves, he remembered it, knew it well. For a moment he almost had it - like the echo of a tune, a halfremembered dream - then it was gone again, evaporating in the morning light, and the creatures were rising from where he’d struck them down.

  As they came up from the misted ground, he stared at where the thought had been.

  What?

  The creatures were standing now, taller than he, and they had got between himself and the girl. One of them stood directly ahead, a broad shape against the lightening sky - its blue designs seemed to writhe in its skin, caress like strands of silk. Its gaze was pure insanity, yet its movement was precise as it reached to take Rhan’s face in one steam-warm, long-nailed hand. It bared sharp teeth in a grin; it was demented, and absurdly gentle.

  It stroked his skin like a lover.

  Rhan shuddered, raised an arm to throw it off him. Touching it held that same evasive, pervasive sense of wrong.

  But it was like...

  Like family...

  What?

  The Count of Time left him. The creature’s gaze, its odd caress, transfixed him. As it leaned forward, that grin close now, it was his brother, his lover, his father, his friend, his life’s loss. He could not pull away from it.

  Then something hit it from behind, something small and angry and very, very fast. The thing turned, and the compulsion was gone.

  She shrieked at him, “What are you doing? Don’t meet their gaze, they’ll suck you in!” And the girl was rounding on the creature with her little knife.

  She put out the thing’s mad eye.

  And Rhan realised the other two were still standing.

  He called to her, “What are they? Where did they come from?”

  “My family were taken by the grass, infected by something. I was hiding. Then these things came. They were... I don’t know... different...”

  Rhan eyed the moss-grown dead, but they made no movement.

  The things reached forwards, their eyes alive with chaos and steam, with lust and joy, as hot as the rhez. Rhan needed the Powerflux, needed the pulse of the world’s heartbeat, her blood flow, needed and wanted and craved the light, but they were everywhere and they were tall and ink and hair and bright eyes and bared teeth -

  The girl spun and slashed. He guessed that she was a smuggler herself, raised on the trade-road. Her blade cut at a creature’s face.

  And it keened, bled just like a man.

  Rhan grabbed one of them by a heavy shoulder, picked it up and threw it bodily into his fellow, sending them both tumbling. They were quick, though, picking themselves up and circling in with their faces eager and their great hands outstretched as if to claw chunks from him and the girl.

  He wondered what the rhez would happen if lunch just happened to be immortal - and decided he didn’t want to know.

  Or did he?

  Could he die here? Really?

  Rhan was rallying - but he was still a mess. He was confusion and hesitation and doubt. The creature that had been the champion of the Foundersson, the
greatest warrior in the Varchinde, could not focus, could barely fight a load of randomly wandering beasties.

  He was awash with fear.

  Not of them, of himself.

  And this time, his doubt was fatal.

  He heard her scream, again, one last time. He saw her go down under another of the creatures, its mouth kissing, biting, tearing her flesh. He saw the ink on the creature’s body thicken and grow stronger, saw the girl kick and scream.

  Again, that sense of familiarity. He knew what he was seeing, on some level, he knew...

  But her shriek, pain and fear and horror, overwhelmed both the lingering figment and his own self-pity. Whatever these things were, they were not mortal and human - they were merciless - and if they pulled in his life and they grew stronger, Gods alone knew where it would end.

  No, whatever they were, they had to go.

  Now.

  He may not have his attunement - but he still had his fists.

  * * *

  Rhan Elensiel stood alone, surrounded by debris and moss and the shredded remnants of the dead.

  Even fettered as he was, he could still fight like a...

  ...like a daemon. Like Kas Vahl damned Zaxaar himself.

  You hear me, my brother, my estavah? It had a hint of his more usual sardonic humour. Perhaps I’m not done yet.

  His elation was brief. He had his victory, he was here, and now, and living - but the girl who had fought so hard for him was dead, and now lay by the lichen-fleshed remains of her family.

  Her family. Something about the growth of the moss in their flesh was wrong, but he had no idea what it could be. His senses were truncated, blinding him, infuriating. What in Samiel’s holy name...

  He knelt by her, so small and broken, and stroked a filthy hand down her thin cheek.

  “What happened to you?” he asked her. “What happened to them?”

  An apology seemed facile - he had no words for her bravery. How long had she been hidden here, her family dead around her, waiting for what?

  Rescue?

  Poor child. His skin spasmed in pain.

  He looked around, at the ground, at the scattered tools -wondered if he should return her, return all of them, to the world. The trees were tall here, and the roots spread wide, perhaps there was no need even to dig.