by Danie Ware
He needed to understand what he’d seen. It was the closest he had come to the world’s nightmare, the closest in more returns than he could recall – and the feeling that time was closing in upon him was suddenly exhilarating and dreadful and powerful.
But whose vision was it?
He placed his hands against the cool of Fhaveon’s core-stone, and tried to remember.
I am a Guardian. I know how to do this.
...and he was standing upon a solitary rock tower. He was alone, utterly alone – as if he were the last mortal, or the first one...
...there were lines of energy woven within the grass, the power fluxing through them, soul to soul. This was natural: this was the way things should be...
...the magma lake that was the soul of fire; the vast, carved caverns that were ice; the hearts of the Kartian PriestLords that held the dark; the great sarsen monolith that had once been the OrSil, the soul of light. The Elemental Powerflux, awakening...
...but to what?
The Monument, reborn and alight with fire and blazing at the very sky...
And that blaze brought death.
His vision cleared, and Roderick knew – he knew where Ecko had gone.
He also knew something else, the thing that he had feared from the beginning.
Did I not tell him? Did I not try and explain?
Under the Bard’s skin, horror crawled like panic. The knowledge was absolute, but he was completely helpless to do anything about it – he barely realised that he was hammering the wall until pain curled his hands into claws.
Everything was connected – and Ecko had left without the full information.
I tried to tell you..!
Ecko was wrong. His impulsive, chaotic nature had taken him too soon, and without the right information.
And he might just make everything worse.
23: AMETHEA
THE MONUMENT
They had incoming.
From the chamber that Ecko’d named the “lock-up”, the passageways had changed. As though the open caves were only the entrance hall, they’d become somehow more formal – tighter, twisted and narrow. A feeling of age and tension had grown here, it watched them pass, skulking behind the shoulder-to-shoulder stones that sternly walled them in. The air was breathlessly warm.
Redlock resisted the need to cough, dry mouthed, the urge to hunch his shoulders as though he were trespassing. He felt like this whole damned thing was so ancient it’d cave in at the touch of his boots.
Before him, Ecko was almost impossible to see – a figment that flickered from wall to wall, curve to corner to side passage, a grinning, black-eyed shade. He didn’t trust it, had no idea what it – he – was capable of. He could feel Tarvi’s nervousness, Triqueta’s rising sense of panic – worrying about other people slowed him down.
But Triq was strong: he knew her bravery and was glad to have her at his back.
The fading rocklight still showed char marks, faint dustings of scattered soot that lured them onwards. Hanging roots were scorched and shrivelled, smaller stones cracked clean through, or fallen in pieces to the floor. At points, there were old carvings in the walls, softened by time, their meanings long-lost.
The axeman had the peculiar certainty they were going in a circle.
Too many damned tavern-sagas.
Ecko’s eyes flashed as he turned. Instantly, the axeman was alert.
Ahead of them came the beat of heavy footsteps, swift and regular – distant, but quickly becoming louder. There was an almost-flicker of light.
Redlock whistled softly. The passageway was a long, narrow curve, silent stones walled them in.
Tarvi answered him, “Seems we’ve got a patrol.”
“Then we stop them,” he said. “We need to find a side turning. Whatever they are, they’re not catching us with our breeches down.”
“They’ll come at us single file,” Tarvi murmured. “If you can hold...”
“And if I can ambush the damned things, I won’t have to.” He gave her a brief grin, glad she was able to focus. “I don’t know what they taught you in Roviarath, but never be afraid to fight dirty.”
She chuckled wickedly, seemed to like his audacity.
He spared her an additional glance – she was cute, but the same age as his daughter – then noted Triqueta’s expression and set his face to grim certainty.
“Let’s go – we’ll have to move quick.”
With Ecko before them like a dark harbinger, they ran.
* * *
“You don’t need to do this, please...”
In the flicker of the brazier’s flame, she’d seen the image of the trade-road, the bustle of the little township. Dirty streets and wooden walls, traders and grifters, beggars and families – it was a swell of population on the water’s edge, as though the unrolling ribbon-town had been dammed by the shoreline. Carts moved, making ruts in the mud, chearl plodded, tails flicking, children ran underfoot, chasing and wide mouthed.
But their laughter was silent – she heard only the soft crackle of the fire.
Maugrim was behind her, his heat at her neck, his hand forcing her to watch.
And before her was a hollow, a broken basin – a twisted, jagged stump of stalactite like a cracked-off tooth. If he craned her head back, she could see its sibling, high above, also broken, as though a shattering hammer force had split the pillar asunder. Yet it yearned still – water and long returns of mouldering soil had renewed its growth, as if it writhed imperceptibly downwards, needing to be rejoined.
Now, flame-light teased it closer.
Maugrim’s voice, soft as a growl in her ear.
“You showed me the key, little priestess – how to unlock the secret. I would’ve given you everything I had, anything you asked for. I can change the world, thanks to you... and you repay me by bloody cowardice? By trying to run away – like some rebellious street kid?”
“Whatever you’ve awoken –”
“You’ve awoken.” She felt him grin, his breath warm. “We’ve awoken.” He stretched his hand past her and the firelights flashed on his white-metal rings. “Never forget, sweetheart, you started this with me.”
In the fire, wavering in the image, a tiny flame-angel with eyes white-hot. A Sical, he called it, an elemental, a creature of the Soul of Fire. It watched them, unblinking, the image of the township shimmering through its form as though through high-summer heat.
Hard against her back, Maugrim stretched his hand into the flame.
She expected his flesh to crisp and blacken, but he was unhurt, his rings glowing red and fierce blue heat playing at their edges. The Sical nuzzled him like a pet.
She heard it in her head. Feed, I. Hun-ger.
“Do you see it?’ he asked her. “Watch.”
The creature grew, hot against her face. It seemed to draw strength from his touch – somehow it was both in the fire and in the air over the trading post. It was a miniature sun, blazing with eagerness and fury.
She said, “No, Goddess, no...”
You did this with me.
As though the creature phased between one place and another, it drew the flame about itself.
Feed, I. Hun-ger.
She saw in the fire. She saw it through the fire, as though through an elemental window. She saw it rain death upon the town.
In silence, she watched the detonation, the ripple of heat and impact, tumbling buildings like charred parchment, wood exploding into fierce life and the blaze within reaching the sky. She saw the pouring forth of black smoke, the panic and the running and the dying and the terror.
She saw the Sical kill, lazily and perfectly, just because it could.
She covered her face with her hands.
“If you resist me again,” Maugrim said to her softly, drawing his hand from the flame. “It’ll dance on your burned remains.” He placed his hand on her arm and the heat of his rings made her scream.
* * *
Never be afraid to fight dirty.
> Ahead of them, the flicker was rising to a red glow – a sullen gleam that swelled against the stone. An edge of pressure came before it, making sweat stand out on skin. The relentless pound of heavy stone feet grew louder, closer – soil trickled from the roof, from between the slabs in the wall.
Ecko pushed himself faster, his telescopics spinning to pick up the telltale light difference that would mean –
There!
A sliver of darkness, a straight flicker of highlight – a turning. He gave the others a flash of his LEDs and he ran, low and fast, his soft shoes light over sand-dry soil.
He heard them come after him. Approaching, Redlock gestured for him to get out of the way.
“Not this time.” Ecko grinned, black as a promise of death. In his hand was a small pottery container – a secret prize, something he’d liberated from Maugrim’s lock-up. He was bouncing it in his palm – and well aware he was way too eager to see what it did. “You wanna fight dirty? I say we fight fire –” in his other hand was Lugan’s lighter, now refilled “– with fire.”
“What the rhez is that?”
“Progress.”
Tarvi said, “Oh...” Her reaction brought warmth that had nothing to do with the incoming nasties.
Shut up! he told himself. The pottery impacted repeatedly against his fingers. In his other hand was the metal bite of home. He found them comforting, somehow bridging the gap between one reality and the other.
This is the Bike Lodge, mate...
The thumping stone feet came closer. A line of soil shivered down the wall.
“By the Gods...” Triqueta breathed softly, tailing into silence as the pounding was in their ears, in the rock about them. Past the square stones that limned the entranceway...
The creature was rock, a cloak and cowl of ancient, worn stone covering twisted, eroded grey muscle. It had hooves – solid like a horse’s and impacting hard on the floor. Its gait was heavy enough to judder the walls.
More soil trickled. Ecko bounced the ceramic globe in his hand.
But its face...
Blunted, empty features, worn down like a graveyard statue. Its expression was hollow despite the flame in its eyes – its cheeks were sunken in stone-shadow.
Behind it came another, a second, a third – each one twisted, damaged, wrong.
“How did he get so strong, so quickly?” Tarvi said softly. “He’s not –”
“How’d you know so much about this?” Triqueta’s comment was only half humorous.
Redlock had thrown a scowl over his shoulder but the beasties were single focus, lumbering onwards in the charred trail of their mates. As the last one passed the end of the passageway, Ecko sparked the lighter and leaned round the edge of the stone.
Oh, this was just too perfect.
His targeters crossed, plotted, described the arc. The big crack in the stone, the gap between roof and floor... yeah, that one...
The pottery sphere left his hand and sailed, slo-mo...
He watched it lodge in the crack.
And the world exploded.
* * *
In her dreams, Amethea had heard the death of the crystal. A distant echo, a faint, discordant jangle.
She awoke with an image flickering at the corner of her thoughts – a creature of darkness and shadow, eyes like black-on-black pits and laughing like insanity.
The harsh laugh and the jarring chime layered one upon another as she stirred into wakefulness and the choking tension of Maugrim’s heat.
Remembered where she was.
Before her, he had turned from the huge brazier, his hand half raised and his rings glittering fierce. However much she hated him, he drew her eyes like a campfire on a cold night.
“They’re early,” he said. His grin was tight and wary.
Who...? Hope was a forgotten light: the rock of resentment in her soul was buried deep so the Sical would not find it – but she knew where it was. Who’re early?
Around them, four naves in a vast, elemental cross, the ruin of the Great Cathedral was lit to a brilliant, orange anger by the brazier’s reconsecration. Behind the glowing, broken-topped walls, she could see hints of the cavern outside. Upon the walls, the half-seen shapes of the window frames flickered. And over it all, the vast arch of cavern roof glistened as though damp, and the lichens quested like open-mouthed sparks, lusting for the light.
In the brazier’s heart the Sical danced, bright-eyed and fervent. It was tiny, it wavered with no real form – but the eagerness that radiated from it was palpable.
She could see he didn’t trust it: he kept it trapped and hungry. Loosing it was easy – getting it back under control required strength.
Her voice carefully dull, she said, “Do you – we – have time?”
Maugrim laughed, his hand in the brazier and the Sical nuzzling him, pleading. Its eyes were sharp, glowing white-metal.
“They’ve got some stuff to be thinking about, sweetheart, a few distractions.” He glanced at her, his predator’s smile hot with hunger. “We’ve got time.” Smiling at her – Goddess why did he still smile at her like that? – he spun on his heel to gesture expansively at his silent congregation.
Amethea had tried to ignore them, the endless ranks of silent figures, hunched and misshapen, stretching back into the dark.
Waiting.
They made her want to curl close to the fire.
They were worn, pitted, irregular. They filled the gloom with threat, with twisted, broken muscles of grey stone. Some of the pedestals were already shattered, crumbling, but they waited for his call, for the freed fury of the Sical to rain fire from the skies.
It was as through the destruction of the township had been merely a gesture made for her, an illustration of his strength.
A test.
To take Roviarath, he needed power.
And Amethea knew that for power – he needed her.
* * *
Detonation.
Tearing force and staggering concussion. A splitting crack, a thunderous rumble of falling stone. A rattle of rocks, a hiss of soil, a cloud of dust. Coughing and confusion. The passageway around them shuddered.
Redlock and Triqueta were shouting. Tarvi was on the floor in a jumble, her mouth hanging open.
Ecko grinned like a fiend.
“Boom,” he said.
“What the rhez...?”
Leaving the axeman to his apoplexy, Ecko slipped through the settling debris, picked his way carefully over the pile – it groaned faintly, shifting and settling.
The passageway they’d come through was completely blocked.
Throwing the fucking thing had been a gamble – but the Bogeyman’s luck was with him and the rock had cracked clean through, split free from the wall. Over it, the entire ceiling had come down.
He could smell soil. From somewhere, there was cold air.
Beneath the fall, the four beasties were rubble, their shattered remnants scattered amid the heavy, broken slabs. Their light had gone out: their eyes only empty sockets in ancient, stone cadavers.
Rumbles echoed through the rocks, loose stones hissed in the distance.
Redlock was behind him, boot on the stone, axes in hands.
He said softly, “What did you do?”
“Hoisted that fucker Maugrim with his own petard.” Ecko was crouched, watching the debris – he was half convinced the remains of the beasts would move by themselves. “He wants to play blowing shit up? I wrote the fucking rulebook.”
The axeman gave a tight grin. “I don’t think he’s playing by any rules.”
Ecko cackled.
“Can we get out of here?” Triq sounded almost plaintive, she was watching the ceiling. “I don’t mean to piss on anyone’s campfire – but I’m betting the rest of this is coming down. Any time now.”
“There’s a draught.” Ecko gestured with a hand which was trying to turn the colours of the tumbling dust. At his ankles, the tips of his stealth-cloak were shifting, stirring imp
erceptibly. If he raised his palm, he could feel it: cool breath on his fingertips. “Can’t go wrong with a secret door – even when you hafta make your own.”
“That’s not a door.” Triqueta said. “That’s a hole. You’re not telling me you’re going to dig...?” She made a noise that was half scorn, half fear. “You’ll bring the whole damned Monument down on our heads!”
“We need to get off the marked route,” Redlock said. “Good thing there were only a few of those things – next time, we might not be so lucky. How many of that weapon have you got?”
“Not enough,” Ecko told him, patting his webbing. “Not enough.”
* * *
The boom was soft, but unmistakable. Somewhere above, the stone seemed to judder.
Maugrim stopped, tense and dead still. In a silence broken only by the crackle of the brazier, he listened.
Starve, I. Fuel, give. Now?
The Sical’s plaintive, coaxing hunger was hot on his face. He ignored it.
He knew what’d made that explosion. What he didn’t know was how Larred Jade’s idiot patrols had gotten here so fast – or had been smart enough to identify the contents of his stash.
What the hell else had they picked up?
He glanced at Amethea. She watched him, dull eyed and lank haired. She was sunk within herself, too afraid to flee, too meek to strike back – the Sical terrified her. The savagery of the passion that had first stirred the site had bled from her like hope.
He was – almost – sorry. She’d been key and lock and conduit, both heart and catalyst.
But, like Vice, her usefulness was done.
Under his boots lay a huge stone slab, circular, the broken stalagmite at its centre. It was carved in a spiral with a language long-lost – elemental images, pictograms, tiny lines twisting steadily inwards. Once, it had split into quadrants, sarcophagi – now, each one was fused into place by the long Count of Time.
When he called her name, she obeyed without question, eyes on the fire.
One last time.
* * *
Axes struck soil, scraped on hard, broken-edged rock.
