by Danie Ware
Days.
The thought caught her, cut under her guard like a blade. Her heart started to hammer again, her pulse to rise, her breath to ball hard in her throat. Her hand tightened on the carafe.
Did they have... days?
What would happen if The Wanderer fell? Would she ever go home?
Time and hopelessness stretched ahead of her like an empty road, redoubled her blood to a thumping panic, beating in her temples like a war-drum. She rested a hand on the stack closest to her, needing its support.
Days.
Somehow, she’d been expecting him any moment - every sound had made her glance up, waiting for the light to change, for the door to open. Fuller had come in and out, but his face had furrowed into a heavy frown. He’d taken her to see Sera, but her friend’s faltering life had only upset her more.
Days.
Something moved by her feet, startling her. She stumbled -then realised the cat had followed her down and was curling about her ankles, seeking friendship or food.
She put the carafe on a shelf and picked the little beast up, buried her nose in its fur.
“It’ll be all right, little one,” she told it. “It’ll be all right. I promise.”
But the creature stiffened suddenly, struggling to escape her grip. She tried to calm it, but was holding a writhing, spitting monstrosity. It scrabbled and clawed, flipped onto the ground and spat at the darkness, at something ahead of her in the stacks.
Then it stood, tight to the ground and growling, spiked tail lashing behind it in a way that reminded her forcibly of Kale.
Karine checked her belt, kicked herself for leaving her cosh behind the bar. She glanced quickly at the stack beside her for anything she could use as a weapon...
But it was not monsters that the creature had seen.
It was movement.
The little cat’s senses were blade-sharp. It took a moment for Karine to realise that the stack beside her was quivering, shuddering like a tree being hit with an axe. Her carafe teetered, rocked and fell, tumbling with impossible slowness to the floor. Then the whole thing was shaking and pottery was falling and breaking and the cat was scattering in a scrabble of hissing and claws. But it was not the stack that was moving, it was the floor under her feet, a queasy, shuddering motion that made the shelving and her belly both lurch together.
The cracks in the walls...
Somewhere ahead of her, the stacks - oh dear Gods - the stacks were falling.
With rising horror, she understood the noise now - the shuddering whump as each one fell, struck hard into the stack next to it. The scattering and shattering that was everything sliding and hitting the floor. Then it came again, the next whump as the following stack, in turn, toppled and hit its neighbour. The floor juddered as the noises grew faster and louder.
And closer.
The air shook. Ahead of her, the entire cellar was collapsing.
Karine wanted to howl in protest, at the mess, the loss, the chaos, deny that such a thing could happen - here of all places, after so long being cared for and loved - but she was standing solid on the spot as though moving would somehow make it all real.
No! This is my home, damn you! No!
Then her mind yowled at her, Idiot girl! Run!
Her scream tore her throat, though she could not hear herself over the noise. There were tears on her cheeks, she blinked them back as they stung her eyes. And then she was moving, turning on her heels and fleeing as the cat had done, the whump-whump-whump! getting even faster now as the stacks fell one into one another and the shattering of everything she loved grew closer. She stumbled, the horrific destruction seeming to follow her, to echo through the cellars as though the entire building was going to come down around her ears. The falling shelves were hounding her, the noises right there, up and behind her like some figment monster prowling through her waking dreams. She skidded around a corner, another, running like a Banned horse as the destruction was almost right over her, laughing at her, thundering at her heels...
She skidded momentarily, came out into a more open space, a dipped half-circle of stone floor and a flat, decorous wall with a single barrel set to one side. Reaching the wall, she turned, placed her back flat to the stonework.
Maybe, maybe, there was enough of a space...
And, as if the Count of Time itself had slowed, she watched the outermost of the stacks shudder as it was struck and then slowly, slowly tumble - boxes and carafes sliding free, falling to the floor and then smashing into shards as the whole thing came down.
She covered her ears and cringed.
It missed her, slammed to a thundering, billowing boom on the floor. She felt the air as it hit.
And then it was quiet.
For a moment, Karine didn’t dare move. Her heart was thundering, her ears screamed, a high-pitched whine she couldn’t shut away. Then, as she uncurled, she heard the aftermath of the devastation - the occasional shatter of something hitting the floor, the uneasy creaking of the piled shelving.
Standing upright, she stared, stunned by how close the tavern had come to killing her.
And by the chaotic jumble of its own loss of life.
From somewhere, she heard the cat, its little voice raised in a quavering cry.
She had no idea how to reach it.
Karine found she was biting the inside of her cheek, fighting tears. The poor little beast, she didn’t even know where it was. The Bard was gone, everyone was gone, her world was gone -and now this. The Wanderer had been her life, the one thing she understood and clung to. She’d fallen in love with this building from the very first time...
In the devastation, the vision was strong - fleeing that harsh man who’d wanted to break her down, own her on every level. Funny how one decision - to flee when and where she had - had brought her to The Wanderer, to Roderick, and to everything that had happened since.
The cat cried again. She wanted to call to it but she didn’t dare make a noise in case anything else came down.
She thought about Ecko and patterns. Just like the stacks falling, one into another, she thought about how one decision could change everything that happened from that point on. How would her life have been different if she hadn’t run round that corner on that day?
Then a flicker of movement caught the corner of her eye.
Yanked out of her thoughts, Karine put her back to the wall and stood still, heart trembling. The light was dim down here, old rocklights that had not seen the sun in returns. She scrabbled for one of them and held it high.
There was no clear way out - not unless she wanted to try clambering over the mess in front of her. Maybe, if she stayed close to the wall...?
Oh dear Gods...
She told herself it was the cat, though the little creature’s crying had stopped.
No, there was something out there.
Someone.
What?
Alarmed now, prickle-fleshed and wary, Karine pressed her back harder into the wall. She picked up a heavy piece of broken, sharp-ended pottery. Closed her hand round it like hope.
Who in the world would be down here in all of this?
Almost choked by fear, she stuck to the wall, breathless and trembling.
And then she saw it, a single figure in the devastation, a faint silhouette, shadowed in rocklight and dust. It was half-crouched, moving carefully, lithe and agile and dark, clothing indecipherable. As the figure moved closer, she could see that it was probably tall, taller than Fuller and too slender to be Lugan.
She knew who that was!
Heart and hope leapt, but she stayed motionless, still somehow unsure...
By the Gods. It had to be - didn’t it?
Oh please, please, let the Bard have come home!
But if this was the Bard, then his face was concealed and something about his movement was twisted, wrong - he moved like a man in pain, like a man who had been to the very edges of the Rhez and then climbed back to the light, daemons clawing at h
is back.
He moved like a man angry.
Karine slid along the wall, carefully easing away from the incoming figure. The Bard was a welcoming man - open, expansive of voice and gesture. This man was closed, his body defensive.
Yet, she stared, transfixed.
He was closer now - she could see that he was tanned, bare feet picking carefully over the wreckage, steadying himself on the ceiling with one long hand. Occasionally, he stopped, picked something up and looked at it with an air of - almost confusion - before putting it back down and continuing to move.
He leaned down and picked up a rocklight, glimmering its last.
It was the Bard!
But...
Karine gaped.
His habitual shirt had gone. In its place was a garment more like one of Lugan’s, long-sleeved and black. It had a hood that covered his hair, left his face in a hostility of shadow. Beneath it, some sort of scarf covered his nose and throat.
As Karine stared, hands resting on the wall of the tavern as if to draw comfort from the bricks, he stopped again, looking at something at his feet. When he crouched, his stance changed, his shoulders dropped, and he reached his hand out to touch something.
The gesture was absurdly gentle.
For a moment, he lowered his head, and something across his black-clad figure flickered like sorrow.
Without even knowing how she knew, Karine realised that he had found the cat.
A lump rose in her throat and she blinked.
Then he stood up, raised his gaze to the light.
And her heart froze solid in her chest.
* * *
He was no longer Roderick.
Not the Bard, not the Final Guardian, not the idealistic and slightly feckless witness of the world’s jumbled thoughts.
The name was ludicrous, comedic, inadequate. Everything he had ever been had been hooked out of him on barbs of pain, on the razor-sharp edges of an understanding that he had -willingly - traded his soul for. Down there in the darkness, in the deepest darkness of heart and mind, in a horror that he had no words to articulate, even now, he had found the very depths of his own insanity. He had found his beliefs, his ego, his memory and his understanding, and he had dragged the whole lot out into the bloody and painful open.
Dragged them screaming.
During the time he had been there, under Mom’s fingers and blades, she had been there for him and with him. She spoke words of comfort even as she carved out his skin, his throat, his vocal cords and his windpipe, even as she cut him right down to his spine.
And he had opened himself to it, let the pain and fear come, let her kiss him and tell him exactly what he would become, let her open his throat like a lover and coax from him silent screams of utter terror that no one would ever hear or care about.
This was what Ecko had lived through. Not only Ecko, but Thera, and who knew how many more? And he had submitted to it willingly, in order to understand, and to have the capacity to do one thing.
To remember.
He knew now - he needed to be the world’s memory. He needed to live those memories, to be able to see and feel and touch them, he needed to hold them and be a part of them, and never let them go.
Down there, in the belly of the dark, as the layers of his skin had peeled back, he finally recognised what it was that he had seen in the water, so many returns ago, finally knew what the world truly feared - and how he could fight it.
The waterfall of the Ryll, where he had studied under the Guardians, had a sister, the Ilfe, the well of her memory. The Ilfe had been lost, and so the world’s memory had rotted with it, had mouldered and been forgotten. The soul of light had sunk beneath the waters of the eastern sea, and the Elementalists had faded. The Council in Fhaveon had laughed at the Powerflux, at Kas Vahl Zaxaar, at Rhan - they had taken notice only of themselves and terhnwood.
With his pain, he had bought the capacity to hold the world’s memory. To take it upon himself and to wield it.
But he had also bought something else.
A new power, a power that could shatter the Powerflux and bring down the very sky.
Once he had that memory, he could give it voice.
That was what Mom had given him, down there in the bowels of the dark.
She’d called it Khamsin.
* * *
He held out a hand and said to her, “Come.”
Karine could find neither answer nor motion. She was flat against the old wall as though his very presence pushed her backward, as though the simple word he had spoken had enough force to flatten her into the bricks themselves.
She tried to say his name, but the question reached her lips and stopped, as if it were afraid.
He said to her, “Come.”
The word was a command, like nothing he had ever said before. His voice had changed, was firmer and stronger, almost metallic - it had complex layers of power, a thrum of presence that could bring down the very Kartiah. She shook her head, still unable to comprehend what he was even doing there. His eyes, the only part of him she could see between the hood and the scarf, were as cold as chipped stone.
She knew him - but she had no idea who he was.
He said to her, “Come.”
And this time, she couldn’t help herself. She went towards him as though called to her own ending, stood before him like some sort of crazed sacrifice. The devastation around them seemed somehow appropriate.
She found her voice, said, “What happened to the cat?”
It sounded ludicrous, when the building was dying.
He said, “She will stay and guard The Wanderer.” His voice was resolution, inevitability and courage, and a grief that went beyond anything she had ever heard or felt. “Take a moment and say your farewells. But be swift, the Count of Time is come for us.”
Karine caught a sob, couldn’t catch the second one and buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking. Her mind repeated, stupidly, poor cat, but there was so much more - this was the end, the final moments of The Wanderer, the tavern would fall and there was no way she could help or save it. This was wrong, all wrong. This man was not the tavern’s owner, not the sparkling-crazed passion of Roderick the prophet...
This was not happening.
But there was a closeness to the air like the sky in a storm, like a rise of thunderclouds, a swelling and heat that presaged a detonation.
“Why?” She wiped her face. The question could have been anything, everything, but he understood.
“She should not have come here.” His sorrow was vast. “In a moment, this will all be over.”
“But... Sera...”
“He stays. The balance is necessary.”
“What balance?”
Nothing was making sense. The building was shaking now, not just the stacks, but the floor, the ceiling, the wall behind her. As she turned and looked, the plaster ran with cracks from top to bottom and fragments began to fall like snow.
He said, “We go.”
He did not change his tone, place any emphasis on the words, but her feet moved as though he had pulled them. She found the strength to pause, say, “What happened to you?”
He looked at her with that same, silent flicker of sorrow. His faced was lined now, haggard, she could see, even under the hood. He looked like he’d been through a war.
He thought for a moment and then said, “I made a choice.”
“What choice?” The response was reflex, a whisper.
Carefully one of his long hands came up to the edge of the hood, the other to the scarf at his mouth. As he showed his face, Karine let out a wail.
She had no idea who he was.
Gone was his long blue-black hair, gone his sense of mischief, his humour. His eyes were cold, his head was shaven, there were cruel scars in his flesh. But his throat...
Karine stepped back, tripped, fell. Without even realising it, she was pushing away from him on her hands and backside, sobbing still, scrabbling backwards to g
et away, to get away...
His throat was alive. From the neck of his garment, to his chin, to his lower lip, was a thick mass of metal serpents, things that wove in and out of his flesh - as though his very vocal cords had attained a life of their own and been put on display. As he drew breath, they slid about one another, up to his ears, into his mouth; as he turned or moved or spoke, they shifted and writhed with him. They were his new voice made manifest, the coldness of his gaze, and they made her feel sick.
“Dear Gods...” she breathed.
He replaced the scarf and hood, said, “This is how it must be. We have a war to fight.”
As if in answer to the statement, the barrel beside her suddenly shattered, broken ribs and gushing liquid and a sharp shock of scent. It soaked her hands and clothing.
Pieces of the ceiling were starting to fall.
Momentarily, his eyes shattered - she could see a heave of pain and loss, a vast anguish she dared not even try to understand. Then it was gone, and the stone returned. He held his hand to her again, and this time she took it, stood up.
She was dripping with the Varchinde’s best malted spirits, the contents of the most precious barrel they had ever owned.
But it didn’t matter, not any more.
The tavern was dying around them, and they needed to go.
PART 4: DESTRUCTION
21: NO TIME TEALE; AVESYR
They came into the small harbour town as the clouds rose to swallow the sun and the sky thickened with evening.
The streets were silent, grey and empty, whirlwinds of debris scudded across the cobbled stone like figments. The rocklights in the doorways were streaked with old dirt, illumination blurred out into the road.
There was no sign that anyone still lived here.
Jayr suppressed the urge to shiver, turned to make sure Ress had properly fastened the front of his cloak. He was hunching along behind her, fixed only on his own horrors. He was tired and his mutters ghosted like shadows across the air.
Poor Ress. Since leaving Fhaveon, he’d been a man demented, determined and focused on the journey that lay ahead of them. Even on the edge of exhaustion, he became agitated if they stopped, twitched and muttered constantly. Now, his eyes flickered from doorway to doorway as if he expected the gloom to rise up and claw at them.
