by Danie Ware
Lugan was lost.
Lugan had sold him the fuck out.
Lugan was in deep shit when Ecko got outta here.
He shook his fingers and the last flakes of ash drifted to the floor.
The woman said, “What did you do to my table?” It was the same voice that Ecko had heard earlier.
“Karine.” The Bard stood up. “Meet Ecko. All things considered, he’s adjusting remarkably swiftly. Perhaps, when you have a moment...?” Roderick left the question unfinished but the young woman seemed to know what he meant.
“When do I ever get a moment?” She put the tray down on the arm of the couch, then straightened up to treat Ecko to a broad wink. “I run this building, and don’t let him tell you otherwise.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Roderick said, eyeing the rafters.
The tray contained some sort of pottery bowl that steamed with a surprisingly rich, meaty scent, and a hunk of something that looked like real bread, grainy and rough. Ecko had an odd urge to pick the bread up, break it, understand its texture. His belly growled, distressingly human.
Karine chuckled. “Don’t worry, you can eat it safely, we’re not going to try and poison you or anything.” She treated Roderick to an arched brow. “Though you are going to have to haggle for the table. And when you’ve picked up the bits, you can turf out the big room under the roof. You know the one. It’s got all your souvenirs in it.”
The Bard grinned at the gibe.
She harrumphed at him, then said, “There’s also more news... But that can wait for now.”
Roderick shot her a look. Her responding gesture was tiny, but Ecko’s targeters tracked it like prey. He picked up a second piece of paper from the desk, and turned it between his fingers.
Karine said, “I’ll come back in a bit, make sure you’re settling in okay, let you meet the others. In the meantime, don’t let this one talk your ears off. He’s a good man, but he is a bit crazed.”
With a twitch of her hips, she was gone, hooking a foot to pull the door shut after her.
After a moment’s quiet, Ecko said, the words biting, “‘Crazed’ huh? Maybe you’re the one in therapy.”
The Bard picked up a piece of the table, then threw himself down on the couch.
“I was given this building because I believe in a certain future – a vision, I suppose. And when I found you, I brought you in here because I believe that you’re a part of that vision. That future.” He held Ecko’s black eyes for a moment. “I’ve seen you before.”
...A path or a puzzle, something he had to solve or piece together...
A chill of inevitability skittered down Ecko’s spine, then a flare of anger like panic, like the closing of a trap.
“Fantastic. So – what? You gotta prophecy that says I kick the ass of the God of Evil? A Major McNasty that’s about to wake up? How ’bout a World-Shaking War?” His sarcasm was vicious. “Where do I start?”
With a wry chuckle the Bard replied, “Sadly, it’s not that simple. There is no ‘prophecy’ – I wish there was. There is no ‘God of Evil’ – no ‘Major Nasty’ – not really one that does house calls. And the last World-Shaking War was a very long time ago.” He stood up, shot a rueful glance at the remains of the table and then shrugged. “If it’d been that easy, this would already be over.”
“What would be already be over?”
“That,” he said, “is what I’ve spent my life finding out.”
“Jesus shit.” Ecko stared. His stomach grumbled again. He ignored it. “You dunno, do you? Loremaster, my ass.”
Roderick said, “I know enough to know how much I don’t know – and with every return, it becomes clearer. Look, like this...” With a dextrous flick of his fingers, he was holding a flash of metal. “Is this familiar?”
Ecko’s targeters flashed, he was away from the desk in an eye blink. He snatched it from Roderick’s hand. His flicker of inevitability – helplessness, almost claustrophobia – rose to a thunder. A wash of returning nausea made him breathe, breathe.
He looked down at what he’d grabbed.
It was a lighter – heavy, square, chrome plated and, so far, the only piece of metal he’d seen. On one side was engraved the Harley logo. On the other...
On the other, it said: Alexander David Eastermann.
“This is Lugan’s.” He gripped the lighter harder, as if it were the only solid thing in existence. “He lost it, like...”
Like yesterday.
For a moment, the complete insanity of the situation screamed at him – he wanted to push the walls down, like a film set, tear the scene from top to bottom as if it were only fabric, reveal the Bike Lodge that lurked just behind it... didn’t it?
Didn’t it?
But the Bard was still speaking, as if nothing strange had happened.
“The Wanderer finds many things,” he said. “Just like it found you. It’s a portent, I think. And it’s white-metal, muara, extremely rare and of a quality I’ve never seen. Its value is considerable.”
With a sense of absolute surreality, Ecko chinked the lighter open and flicked the wheel. It sparked and died.
“Outta gas.” Somehow that wasn’t the point.
The point was that it was here. Like a swat round the head, Eliza had clearly marked the opening point of the pattern. She’d given him the “Go” signal: “Ecko Start Here”. Amid the tension that still thumped in his throat, the thought was fantastic enough to be ludicrous.
“So you’re tellin’ me the adventure starts in the tavern. Cute. I’ll give Collator 86.24 per cent there’ll be giant flying lizards by the end of the week.”
He glanced at the Bard. “Fuck!”
In a flash of frustration, Ecko threw the lighter viciously across the room. He was manipulated, betrayed, powerless, caught like a fucking street urchin. Somewhere, Eliza sat watching this on some huge fractal flatscreen – maybe she was behind the Bard’s violet eyes, maybe she’d be behind the eyes of everyone he passed. Somewhere, Collator calculated odds, mapping, generating, predicting. Every movement Ecko made, every decision, every word he spoke – hell, maybe every thought in his head – was going to ripple outwards to affect the world around him – and those ripples would be broadcasting his behaviour. They’d be analysed, interpreted, judged.
Ever get the feeling you’re being watched?
He wanted to rail against his fate, show that damn psycho-the-rapist bitch who was boss – but she had him by the grey matter and there was no way out of his own head. Bitterly, his mind spat at him: Will you stay with the tavern? Turn to page 102. Will you flee? Turn to page 94.
Or will you torch the place and watch it fucking burn?
The blazing temptation just to destroy everything... because he could. That’d fucking show her. Hell, what did it matter if he trashed cities – none of it was real. Keep your fucking breadcrumbs; I’ll do this my way.
The answering thought was so flawlessly enmeshed, he wondered if it was even his own: Turn back to page 1.
Would they really loop him, endlessly, if he didn’t succeed? Or would they just – Jesus – would they just turn him off...? Could they really do that?
For a moment, his intellect battled his emotional, knee-jerk instinct. Then, slowly, like it was the hardest thing he had ever done in his life, Ecko walked across the rug and picked up the lighter.
He felt dirtied – like he’d taken the first psychological step to sympathising with his torturer, like he’d already let them beat him.
But he was conceding the battle, not the war. He would so pay them back.
Roderick stood silent amid the shattered remnants of his table. Vocal enhancements or not, he made no attempt to push Ecko’s decision one way or the other.
If Eliza was behind his eyes and had witnessed Ecko’s acquiescence, the Bard did not show it. Yet strangely, his wordless comprehension was almost harder to bear. He held out his hand for the lighter and, with a flash of his more usual cynicism, Ecko brandished it
like a dare.
He threw the words. “Only ’til I find the way outta here.”
Remarkably, Roderick managed to say, “Of course,” without sounding remotely smug.
PART 2: RIPPLES
4: THE MONUMENT
THE CENTRAL VARCHINDE
Across the vastness of the Grasslands, the sun was setting.
The low rays were warm on the riders’ backs, around them, the open Varchinde glowed in celebration of a summer’s day done. Soft brown shadows grew from the hooves of the creatures they rode.
Their progress had been steady – they would make the Monument on time.
Around them, insects were beginning to sing. Ears chilled from endless wind, Amethea spat out the stalk she’d been chewing and reined her beast to a patient halt.
“Thea?” In the final stages of his ’prenticeship, Feren stopped beside his tutor.
“Just stretching.” She lifted her pale braid of hair away from her neck. Under her, her heavy, slope-shouldered chearl leaned his ugly head down to snort among the grasses. Tiny flecks of life scattered. “Long day.”
“Aye.” He looked behind them, maybe at Roviarath’s distant Lighthouse Tower, the safe city world he’d left – maybe at the great shadow of the Kartiah Mountains growing over the empty plain – Amethea couldn’t tell. “And off the trade-roads.”
“Nervous?” She smiled.
He shrugged. “Just tales.” Running his hands through his shock of orange hair, he shook the dust out of it. “My cousin Redlock used to scare us kids when we were knee-biters. How the Kartiah are haunted and some such... Got any more water?”
“Told you not to guzzle all yours.” Leaning over in the high-backed saddle, Amethea passed him her waterskin. “You said yourself, we’re off the trade-roads, no one comes out here – even assuming we’re lucky with the taer, it’ll be late tomorrow before we get back to the river and any hint of civilisation.”
Feren took a careful swallow of lukewarm water and gave her a cheeky, sunburned grin. “You wouldn’t fail me. Not after everything.”
He had a point.
Taer was dusk blooming, found in only three places across the Grasslands and sought for a pollen that knit bones like hide glue. Crossing the open plainland herself was a huge undertaking – taking her ’prentice on his final test was as much an assessment for her as it was for him. “Go with caution,” Vilsara had said, “and return with wisdom.”
All very well for Vilsara, far to the north-west in Xenok’s hospice... Amethea and Feren were two days out of the Great Fayre at Roviarath, nearly a full day from any kind of safety. The vast emptiness of the open plainland was powerful, unknown, dangerous. Only the Deep Patrols came off the trade-roads – and they were an odd lot, somehow changed by the desolation.
“...Days since we’ve seen a decent tavern.” Feren was muttering under his breath. He suddenly interrupted himself with a pleased grin. “Unless The Wanderer comes out here.”
“The Wanderer?” Amethea chuckled. “Wasn’t it in Xenok? You think it’s following us?”
“I wish it was.” Feren’s grin broadened.
The teacher shook her head.
“We see it out here, I’ll eat my saddle and ride home bareback.”
“Really? Now, who told me the Gods had a sense of humour...?”
“You want me to finalise your ’prenticeship?” Checking about her, Amethea swung one leg over the chearl’s spike-maned neck and slid, with a groan, to the ground. The grasses reached past her knees and she leaned forwards to pound stiff thighs with her fists, making dust and pollen fly. Her chearl turned and blew noisily on her breeches. Absently, she scratched his great head.
“Are they? Haunted, I mean?” Feren was back to watching the distant mountains.
“You are nervous.” Amethea, too, turned westwards – the setting sun, the rising shadow. “It’s superstition, that’s all – that and your cousin pulling your strings. The Kartiah are just mountains – people live there.”
“People.” Feren’s scepticism was typical Grasslander wariness. “They’re slavers.”
“They’re craftsmen, Feren, metalworkers, part of the trade cycle. ‘People.’” Her voice held an edge. “Neither the Kartiah nor the Monument are saga-borne myths.”
Feren, too, slid from his saddle. “So why don’t they know what it was for? Or what destroyed it?”
“The Monument?” The chearl was slope-backed and carried her panniers on his withers. Amethea reached into one of them for a handful of dried fruit. “You want to know if all that hairy-scary ‘Souls of the Elements’ stuff has its feet in the truth? Only the Gods know that. It was probably just destroyed by the Count of Time.”
“No one knows.” He accepted a piece of fruit.
“No one cares,” Amethea told him. “Vilsara says we used to keep records, once – going back to Xenok’s builders. But they’re rotted, almost mush. Gods know what the real tale was.”
“So... the mountains could be haunted – we’ve just forgotten?”
Laughing, she threw fruit at him.
“‘Haunted’! You’ve been listening to those idiots in the market. Come on, if the shadow’s bothering you that much we’ll stay ahead of it... that way the mountains’ twisted spirit can’t get us and turn us into something icky.” Swearing under her breath at stiffened muscles, she swung herself back into her saddle, settled against the back. “Besides, if we don’t catch the taer right the pollen’ll be all gone.”
“Aye.” Feren returned her waterskin and mounted the broad back of his chearl.
Soon, the two creatures were tirelessly running, broad hooves thrubbing on the baked soil, grasses dancing about their thick, muscled legs. They were heavier than horses, not as swift, but stronger over distance and steadier of nerve. Tales told that their ancestors had been crafted by some kind of alchemy; in the high days of Tusien, they rumoured, such crafting had been familiar. Amethea had sometimes wondered if those records were among the mouldering piles in Xenok’s hospice.
Now, though, chearl were bred normally, and so common that people had long since forgotten the tale of their origin.
Before them, their shadows lengthened; behind them, a greater shadow rose. As the sun sighed into the mountains, the creatures ran tireless, smooth gaited and placid in obedience. They had come a long way – following the ribbon-towns and trade-roads from the sprawled city of Xenok to the forested Irahlau, along the edges of the Rhamiriae to the huge Fayre at Roviarath. Following the growing swell of the Great Cemothen River, they had at last turned across the open plain – off the safety of the road to a place now known only to Deep Patrol beer-tales and reckless, almost-senior apothecaries.
Apothecaries like Amethea, wondering what in the world she thought she was doing, bringing her ’prentice this far from home.
She stole a sideways glance at Feren as the light faded. He was sitting upright, refusing to rest against the high back of the saddle – a position that strained his legs, as his feet were forwards in their stirrups. He was young, his soft beard new and a shade lighter than his shock of hair. Feren was freckled and a little wild-eyed. He’d given the chearl its head and his hand strayed often to the javelins slung down the side of his saddle. His cousin Redlock was famous – perhaps infamous – across half the world, a man of fearsome reputation who had abandoned his land, lady and daughter to become a warrior without peer. Was Feren a fighter? As a distant yammering made the ’prentice jump, Amethea chuckled. Feren was hardly warrior material, but road-pirates stayed where the pickings were rich – and the chearl were big enough to deter most predators.
Like the bretir, the wide-winged flyers of messages, and the couriers’ companionable, guardian nartuk, now extinct, the chearl had been crafted with flawless efficiency.
If the tales were even true.
Slowly, the twilight caught them, rose around them. Above them, the moons were in perfect halves, they lit the plains to a vast, eerie emptiness where the ghosts of the Kartiah
gibbered under every thought. The air grew chill and the grasses swished as the chearl ran on.
“Feren.” Amethea reined her beast and pointed. “There.”
He paused beside her. For a moment, they both stared in silence.
Before them, the ground swelled into a low hill. Against the deepening blue of the sky, the massive, tumbled stones glimmered faintly with their own light, giving the Monument a peculiar, skin-crawling glow. Amethea could make out the heavy, black ridge of the surrounding bank – soil upon which no grass grew.
Compelled to an awed silence, they rode slowly upwards.
Surrounding the bank, a huge, empty ditch held only darkness. No creatures lived here. Yet the fallen stones themselves still towered over bank, beasts and riders and commanded breathlessness and wonder.
His voice barely a whisper, Feren said, “It sings.”
“Yes.” In the faint glimmer, Amethea could see that the massive, fallen sarsens were lichen-free. Faintly, they hummed in the deepening dusk. Her skin shivered.
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” Oddly, the hum held a sense of patience – as though the whole Monument had simply settled to rest. “Maybe it once was some celebration, some ancient elemental temple; maybe the stones just observed the Count of Time. Maybe it was a memorial, or a tomb. I heard once that the hill we’re standing on is a great passage grave, commemorating some lord or hero.” Catching Feren’s expression, she smiled and made an effort to speak normally. “Maybe it’s all rubbish. Come on, you, we’re losing the light.”
“Aye...” He didn’t move.
“Feren.”
“Coming.”
She turned her chearl, listening for him to follow.
Still, he didn’t move.
“Feren?”
“Thea.” His tone was flat, ice-cold. “Wait.”
“What?” She twisted in her saddle.
“Horsemen, coming this way.” His hand rested on the knife hilt. “They bear no light.”
