by Danie Ware
His voice resounded. “The man behind you can rip you into little pieces in less time than I can tell it. So I suggest that you pick up your weapons, and your comrades, and you get your backsides the rhez back into the city. And when you go, you tell the Merchant Master that Rhan may have fallen, but that I am still here. You tell Phylos that I know who he is, and I know what he’s done, and I know exactly what he’s sold his soul for.
“And you tell him there will be a reckoning!”
The two soldiers were retreating as the Bard strode forwards.
Behind them, there was a sudden scuffle in the tavern doorway and Karine rounded on something that the Bard couldn’t see. She had fury and courage, was swearing with vicious, high-pitched anger. As Sera turned for the tavern door, she sprang at something and was gone from sight.
The Bard raised his voice. “Go! Or help me Gods I’ll send that promise back with your heads!”
For a moment, he thought they’d say something, defy him, but they were backing away so fast they were almost stumbling and, when he twitched his hand and let the poignard catch the sunlight, they gathered their legs and their spears and they fled.
Roderick reached the doorway to see a body slumped across a broken table and Sera, with a doorman’s long practice, closing his fist in the collar of another and spanging his lolling head repeatedly off the wall.
Karine was stood with her hands on her hips, indignant and uninjured, chastising him about the mess. Silfe’s brown eyes peered wide from behind the bar.
Roderick the Bard was home.
* * *
“They will come for us,” Sera said. “We do not have long.”
There had been hugs and tears and questions and explanations – and there had been a cold and glorious moment with his head under the water pump in the back yard. Eight days had passed since the ill-fated Council meeting, eight days since Phylos had taken the Council.
Now, standing at the window with his hair still wet, looking at the sunset as it lit the plains to a huge, burning light, Roderick’s righteous fury was evaporating into a more rational fear.
They were outcasts, criminals.
Murderers.
Behind him, Sera was turfing their unwelcome guests out of the doorway and Karine was picking up a scatter of plates and leather mugs from the long tables. Silfe sat quiet, an odd, avian creature perched on her arm. It was a lean thing, hook beaked and featherless, its wingspan massive. Around one dew-clawed ankle, it had a terhnwood band that marked it as the property of the Lord Nivrotar.
Silfe stroked the bretir’s ugly head and it burbled at her. They were smart things and affectionate, like both nartuk and chearl, alchemically bred by long ago Tusienic scholars.
Alchemy. Old skills, like old lore, like old might and Elementalism – all of it, now awakening.
He understood now. In the rousing of the sleeping Monument, so the Powerflux itself stirred to life – and so other things stirred with it.
But the nartuk, the half-man, half-horse monsters, these had come before the Monument had risen. Somehow, somewhere, there was an alchemical scholar that was using ancient skills...
...was that scholar Vahl Zaxaar himself? Or was it something else?
The floor juddered again, sending prickles of unease down Roderick’s spine.
Sera said, “There are lights moving towards us. Their formation suggests the Council has called a considerable force. I suspect they will not be lenient.”
“You should leave,” Roderick said, turning from the window. “This is on my head alone –”
“Oi.” Karine’s reprimand was stern. “This is my home and I’m not calling last orders ’til they drag me out of here by my hair –”
This time, the floor shook harder, rattling the pottery in the wine racks. The rumble was longer, they felt it through their boots and in their hearts.
There was no mistaking what it meant.
The Bard lifted his head, the faintest whisper of humour flickered through his blood, chasing the darkness of his mood out into the last of the sun. “Silfe,” he said softly. “Send the bretir back to Amos with a message for Nivrotar. Tell her to keep Ress of the Banned safe and as well as she is able – I must see him.”
The floor was shivering now, the movement making the weapons on the walls rattle against beams and brickwork.
Roderick said, “Where’s Kale?”
Karine shrugged, almost apologetically. “We locked him in the privy. We sort of had to. I guess I’d better see if he’s calmed down yet.”
“I suspect,” the Bard said, “that he’s going to thank us. In the long run.” Both his grin and his agitation were growing now. He was on his feet, his fingertips on the warm wood of the table, his faith and hope rising and his breathing tight. “Do we not trust in the wisdom of The Wanderer to defend itself? It seems Phylos cannot have us – not yet.”
As if in agreement, the building shook harder, the floor lurching and making them grab for upright beams and table edges.
Silfe stumbled, but she reached the doorway and loosed the huge wings of the bretir past Sera and out into the last of the light. For a moment, it was a shadow, rising into the air, and then it turned south and faded from sight.
Bretir were enormously swift. For a long moment, Roderick watched where it had gone.
The world’s fear comes!
Sera said, “The force will not reach us in time. We are free. But we should not return here without an army.”
The Bard chuckled. “I’m not sure I can muster such a thing – but think of this. If Ecko was right, and all of this is just a pattern, endlessly repeating itself, then this building is what changes that pattern, what adds the thrill of the random to an otherwise predictable future. If there is a pattern, then we live on its outside. We are The Wanderer, and Rhan was right – they cannot touch us.”
Karine said, “What in the world are you talking about? You damned crazed prophet.”
“They are coming to try.” Sera’s hands were clenched in anticipation of a second fight. “If we are going to move –”
The tavern twisted, spun, and winked out of existence.
30: MEGALOMANIAC
FHAVEON, THE MONUMENT
Somehow, the location of The Wanderer wasn’t even a surprise.
Like some surreal and hastily erected film set, the tavern had plonked itself slap-bang in the Monument’s centre. The great, grey stones, now lightless, were tumbled about its outer walls. Its doors were open, its windows shining with warmth and light and welcome – it looked both wondrous and shallow, like a tourist attraction.
Seeing it, Ecko knew he was floundering, that this reality was twisting round him. After the glory of the Sical, its temptation and validation, after the superboosting of his adrenaline, he felt as if it was wrong – as if, should he just lean forwards and push, the whole damned lot would go over like some sun-cracked billboard, the grass and sky with it.
And he would be home.
So I won, already. Rescued the girl. Toasted the bad guy. Blew the shit outta the base. Can I go now?
In the foregarden, Roderick the Bard was standing with his hair wet and his arms folded across his chest. Something about him had changed, some touch of steel in his jaw, some cold light in his amethyst eyes.
“Ecko!” As they walked down the bank towards the building, he came to meet them, his expression lit with a fierce, flaring hope. For a moment, Ecko thought he was going to be embraced and backed the fuck up, hands spread wide. The sign creaked, predictably, over his head.
Way too surreal.
He blinked and had to make an effort to speak.
“Don’t even think it.”
But the Bard was laughing. He had spread his hands wide and he was laughing at the very sky, at the stones, the batshit moons. He laughed as though nothing could ever threaten him again.
He was a barking loony.
“And here we are,” Roderick said, “in the very Monument itself, rescued in the
nick of time. And here, we meet again, on the far side of tragedy, and with the world changed beyond recognition. I don’t know what wonder has occurred to bring us here, but I trust in The Wanderer and I’m glad we’re all safe. Come in, be welcome.” He nodded at the others, gave Triqueta a momentary, slightly confused second glance. “You’re weary, injured –”
“Nice timing,” Ecko said. Looking up at the windows, the roof where he’d sat as the tavern first moved, he couldn’t wrap his head round it. His head was too full of the Sical, of Maugrim, of home. He heard himself say, “How’s it going?”
“What’s the phrase you use? It’s all ‘gone to hell in a hardcart’.” The Bard was still laughing. He looked about them at the surrounding stones. One of them had actually tumbled through the garden wall, a visual distortion that was making Ecko’s sense of disorientation worse.
“Yet we’re fortunate, in many ways,” Roderick said, “We live, and we’re still free.”
“Free.” Ecko snorted. “That’ll be the day.”
“I’ve missed you too.”
“I’m touched.”
As the Bard gestured them inside, Ecko ducked through the door and his skin betrayed him. As if his outer self, at least, acknowledged the tavern’s existence, it was shifting, changing – splotching from the shadows of the Monument to the rich browns of the building’s greeting and comfort.
He found a table, crouched there at the room’s centre. Warily, he eyed the walls, the artefacts, the weapons, the shields. It looked fake, like it would scorch and burn through any second, like the whole thing would dissolve into smoking, charred holes.
“Well!” Karine was behind the bar, arms folded beneath her breasts and a look of mock disapproval on her face. “And what time do you call this?”
“Dinner time,” Ecko told her, reflexively. He managed a grin.
She tutted. “Get your feet off the table.”
The others were coming further into the building, looking around them as though they, too, could not believe they were here.
“We’re back,” Triqueta said. “We’re really back. We’ve walked the halls of the Rhez itself, but we’re here. For love of every God, someone get me an ale.”
“Make that two.” Chuckling, Redlock unslung his pack, dropped it, looked for a chair. He carefully felt the ruin of his nose. Then, with a deep, determined breath, he crunched it back into place, swore. Blinked water from his eyes.
Behind them, Amethea had fallen onto the bench under the window. She sat with her head in her hands, unmoving.
The very last of the sun blazed silver from her hair.
“Ecko, Triqueta,” Roderick said. “I cannot express how much your return means to me – to all of us.” Karine snorted, grinned. “I understand you have many tales and I am... more than eager to listen – but I fear you are weary beyond endurance. I will aim to be patient.” He glanced up as Kale emerged from the kitchen with a steaming leather jug and a handful of mugs. When the Bard turned back, his expression was all mischief. “If I can. There is so much I must tell you also. The world has changed around us. Radically so.”
“Changed?” The word was thrown like a stone. Amethea looked at him, her pale face in shadow, her navy eyes dark as the sky. “The Monument is fallen. The Powerflux is awake. Maugrim may be dead, but...” As Kale silently poured her a mug of herbal, she wrapped her hands around it as though it were the most precious thing in the world. “We’ve won a fight – but that’s all. This is only the beginning.”
“We’ve won more than you know,” Roderick said. “If Roviarath still stands, then, I think, at least half of the plan has failed.”
Amethea said, aghast, “Half?”
His smile was oddly ironic, “As you say, this is only the beginni–”
Without warning, the night was shattered by a distant bellow of thunder.
The taproom gaped and then scrabbled, going for weapons and windows, calling for answers. The noise was loud, the sudden roar of something gunned to pain and fury. It was abrupt, and harsh, and close. It dropped a note, another.
The mica in the windows shook.
“It’s the Sical,” Amethea said softly. Her herbal tankard slid through her fingers to bounce from the floor, liquid splashing a great, dark stain in the sawdust. Her face haunted, she’d turned to the window behind her. “We can’t let this happen, we can’t!”
Roderick mouthed, Sical, confused.
Triqueta had sprung to the bench by Amethea, in her hand a short, terhnwood blade she’d swiped from the wall. Her face was sharp, eager. Redlock rose to his feet with his brown eyes blazing. He drew his axes, then dissolved into coughing, blood staining the back of his hand.
But Ecko was grinning. “For chrissakes, that’s not the fucking Sical.”
Suddenly, the tavern was real, solid – snapped into focus by the incoming sound. Ecko was at the door, his heart pounding, pounding. There was a certain inevitable symmetry to this – the feeling, again, of the pattern repeating itself. This was right, somehow, it was the final realisation.
Faster than a thought, he grabbed the handles and threw both doors fully open.
“Sical, my ass!” he said.
The noise grew worse. In the rippling moonlight, on a dead straight heading, was a single, glaring, white eye – screaming towards them out of smoke-scented dark grass.
“What the rhez...?” Redlock stared like an idiot, then hands tightened round his axe shafts. “This time, you bastard. This time you’re not coming back.”
“Fuck me.” Ecko was almost laughing. “The ratfuck son of a bitch’s got a Thundergod!”
“You know that creature?” Redlock watched it closely.
“You’d better fucking believe it.” Ecko grinned at the oncoming cyclopean beast, the red lights in his eyes flashing. “Jesus Harry Christ,” he muttered to himself. “Don’t bad guys ever die when you kill ’em?” He moved to stand in the doorway, arms folded, his cloak hem billowing in the dawn breeze.
Sera came to stand beside him, his expression cold and calm.
Redlock, sniffing like a cokehead, was on his other shoulder.
Before them, the bike was closing at impossible speed, the sound ringing from the stones. Maugrim’s eager stance was challenging the tavern wall to a game of chicken.
Roderick had joined them, Triqueta. Karine’s hand closed around her cosh. Kale had retreated to the kitchen, his worn face tense. None of them moved.
As it screamed past the last fallen sarsen and into the garden, the bike turned sideways, fell and skidded to a halt, throwing out a wall of dirt and soil. The awful noise cut out, and Maugrim’s voice, shouting something, rang in Ecko’s ears. The greaser scrambled to his feet, didn’t bother to pick the bike up. It lay there like a corpse, rear wheel idly turning, tyre packed with the dirt of the Varchinde.
Maugrim stepped over it, grinning. His t-shirt and cut-down were soaked in blood and oil and sweat, there was a livid bruise around his throat.
“Hello there, Rick,” he said. “Good to see you.” He spread his hands, weaponless, surrendering. “It’s a fair cop, guv. You got me. I’m handing myself in.”
* * *
“So,” Ecko said, his voice a chainsaw rasp. “Look what the cat dragged in.”
They’d sat the smirking Maugrim at the table’s end, the rocklight glimmering on his dirt-stained skin. The faint scent of smoke lingered in the air.
Redlock watched him closely, as if the axeman was itching to finish what he’d started.
“The Ecko.” Maugrim was carefully casual, leaning back, half his face in shadow, his hair a halo of unholy illumination. “The one and only. Bit lost aren’t you? Last anyone heard, the Ecko had sold out and joined Lugan’s strike team – pitting themselves in a doomed war against the might of Pilgrim Products Inc. Guess you weren’t as tough as you thought.”
“You know Lugan?” Ecko said. “Oh chrissakes, who the hell’m I kidding? You’re my end-of-level nasty – of course you fucking kn
ow Lugan.”
“Everyone knows Lugan.” Maugrim grinned. “Where d’you think I got the bike?”
Round them, Karine was bustling, herbal and plates of food. Sera watched the door.
“Shame you didn’t bring him with you – he probably is as hard as he thinks he is.” He picked up the herbal, eyed it warily. “You, Ecko, you messed up. You died.”
Died?
Landed on the tarmac like a lump of...
“Yeah, right.” Ecko was tense, adrenals flickering. He was aware of Amethea’s bruised stare, Redlock’s pacing agitation. “I didn’t fucking die.” The ’bot, the screaming London weather, falling. “Eliza put me here to Save the World.”
Even as he said it, it sounded ridiculous.
“Eliza!” The name was a guffaw. “They’d waste that sort of expense on you? I’m in the profession, you might say. And I know your profile, Gabriel – you’re a screw-up, a screaming pyrophile, a madman. Untreatable.” He was still laughing. “And now a megalomaniac. Save the World, my left nut.”
I know your profile, Gabriel. Ecko found that he was crouched on his seat, trembling. Gabriel. He spat, “My profile?”
“Steady, my friend,” Roderick said quietly. “I know his trickeries of old – he baits you.”
Amethea’s voice was soft. “Don’t trust him.”
“Your profile.” Maugrim had lost his laughter, his voice was cold. “This isn’t some psychoprogram, you little freak, your own personal Virtual Rorschach.” The word was spat. “Who the hell would care about you that much?”
I am the pattern, the pattern spreads from me.
Megalomaniac.
His voice as clear as blind faith, Roderick said, “We do. He came here to help us.”
“I’m the one helping you, you bloody lunatic.” Maugrim was on his feet. “You know this, Rick – you explained it to me! You’re stagnant, no progress – your people have just let everything go, forgotten their lore and culture, forgotten it all. Like Pilgrim – it’s all apathy! Terhnwood and trade and tedium. Passionless. You know what I mean – we should tear it down, kick over the anthill. Progress has to happen or we’ll all fucking rot.”
