by Danie Ware
The woman was still speaking, but her words were a part of the picture – she was describing the disease and it was the pencil that was piercing the illusion, that was greying the colours from the dream.
Not wanting the colours to go, not without him understanding them, he said, “Wait. Wait!”
“Scared you, have I?” she said. “Big chap like you?”
The grey was gone, the pencil vanished. He was back in the firelight, back in the winter cold. He was shivering, there in the starless dark.
He blinked, focused on the woman’s scarred face. Not even sure where the impulse had come from, he said, “Where’s The Wanderer? It came from ’ere – didn’t it? The Bard…?”
He spoke the tavern’s name and the breakthrough was like an epiphany. Suddenly he knew where he was going, what he needed to do. Everything fell into place, it all made fucking sense. It was symmetrical – all of this had started with the tavern, its manifestation in London. The Bard had known, Mom had known – she had given him the red light for a reason. The one thing he trusted. When reality returned, and if Collator wasn’t fucked—
Oh of course.
Collator’s viral infection was all part of the same hallucination. There was nothing the matter with the AI – there never had been – it was all the same damn trip.
Vision Quest.
Whatever the hell it was.
The mention of The Wanderer had made the injured goons sit up. They glanced at one another. The scarred woman was grinning like a loon.
“The Bard warned us,” she said. “Returns ago he saw this, and no one listened. He spent his life… looking for answers, insight. Whatever happens, dreams mean everything. The Kartians know that – they see more in the darkness than we’ve ever done in the light. The Bard knows it: he saw it in the water. And I know it, that’s why I burned the village. Our passions and visions are what we are. We break down barriers, we see magick, we experience pure illumination. Without it, we’re nothing.”
Nothing.
Lugan was still motionless, stunned by the sheer force of his understanding. Memories of youthful antics, racing through warehouses while colours writhed glorious in broken windows; the pile of grey cells that rose round him, holding those who’d just… given up…
We see magick.
Nothing.
He was here for a reason. He had to find the end of this vision.
Find Ecko.
He found the little red light, held it in his hand.
And when the woman offered him a small pottery cup, he tilted it to his lips without question.
And he fell back into the vision, and went to find answers.
PART 4: FADE TO GREY
27: KAZYEN
THE DEAD VARCHINDE
Grey air, pre-dawn cold.
The world was fogged and bleary, drifting with snow. The wind stirred sluggishly, as if it, too, thought it was too bastard early.
Ecko sat in his saddle, his shoulders hunched against chill and inevitability. He was tired, but gladly so. Wrapped in layers of cloak and a luxury of recollection, in the warmth of her that still lingered on his skin. Around him, Rhan, Roderick and Amethea sat silent, like ghosts.
The horses’ tack clattered as the animals shifted.
Only two people had come out to see them leave. Nivrotar, upright and cold, wreathed in the slowly breathing fog. Beside her, Triqueta, smaller but strong and poignantly vital, a touch of sunshine in the gloom. She bore the blade-on-pennon brassard of the Fhaveon Tan Commander.
Ecko was trying not to stare at her, trying not to etch her every movement into his memory like a blade carving cuts into his skin.
She met his gaze, offered him a wicked flicker of smile, a look that could have meant anything – everything – and then she drew herself up and composed her expression, a warrior to her fingertips.
“Fare you all well,” Nivrotar said softly, words all but swallowed by the fog. “Fare you all very well. My heart rides with you. You are the world’s last warriors and I trust that you carry her life in your hands. I am proud of you all, more than I can say.” She came forwards, laid a white hand on Amethea’s knee, but the doc was a forlorn and staring huddle and she gave no reaction. “I realise there are only the four of you, but we are all but out of supplies, and you will have to prevail, if we are to survive. Trust in me, and in each other, and I believe you will be strong enough. Understanding will come, before the end.”
“You, my Lord Seneschal,” Nivrotar said, looking up at Rhan. “Guard and guide these people, hold fast to their protection. Find your brother, and never forget how close to you he really is. And remember, humility is the hardest lesson of all.”
Rhan’s response was a rumble. “My Lord.”
Her gaze moved to the Bard, swathed in his blood-red cloak. “And you, prophet and seer, you that has the world’s memories inked in your skin, remember this: everything you have ever learned now gathers in upon you like a storm. Now, Master Bard, now you earn your title. You must return, to bear your long tale to the generations of the future. The world must not forget again.”
“Yes, my Lord.”
“And you, Ecko…”
He tried to come back with something cutting and jaunty about hackneyed final speeches and who the hell was she anyway, but sex and fog had smeared his wits and he had a big fat zilcho.
“…when you come to the last, I will be there with you. Remember that. By my hands was The Wanderer built and the Great Library defended.” Her gaze swept them all, lingered longest on Amethea. “I will be there with you all.”
She stepped back, leaving Triq standing alone, the commander’s white-streaked yellow hair a sodden glimmer and the stones in her cheeks running with moisture like tears. Ecko knew he had to move, say something, but there were no words, nothing his clumsy ass could rescue from the moment.
“We muster at Amos,” Triqueta said. “A detachment will be sent to Fhaveon within the halfcycle. Some of the populace must still survive. Meet me there.”
“Yes, Commander.” Rhan saluted her with a fist against his chest.
“Take care of Amethea,” she said, “with everything you have. Bring her back.”
“Yes, Commander.”
She took a breath, then, “Ecko…”
He thrummed at the sound of his name. He teetered, waiting for her to say the last words that he could carry with him, some final touch that he would never lose – yeah, an’ now who’s bein’ hackneyed? – and then he cursed himself for being sixteen years old.
But she said only, “When all this is over, is it you who fades out of existence?” Her final smile was oddly sad. “Or is it us?”
Or is it us?
It was the only goodbye he was going to get. And as the four of them turned and rode out across the cobbles, hoofbeats muffled by the seething fog, he found himself thinking far too many layers into what she’d said.
* * *
They rode though the winter morning, the pale sun thinning the fog to wisps and ribbons. The air grew colder and sharper, biting to the bone.
Before long, Ecko was absolutely bastard freezing. His ass ached and his fingers were stiffened into numb, curled claws. Beside him, Amethea sat in her saddle like a sack – she made no move to communicate, or to look to either side. When her cloak fell open, she didn’t bother to close it. Memories of what had happened to Ghar flickered at the corners of Ecko’s thoughts, and he wondered how the hell she was managing to hold on.
Ahead of them, Rhan and the Bard rode knee to knee, talking in low voices. He wondered what they were saying. The Bard’s sense of massive expectation came off him in waves, like some vast and jagged percussion. When he looked back, he had a Cheshire Cat grin that was as wide as his ears.
Hell, yeah. We’re all mad here.
Rhan was thoughtful, more serious. He rode with his blade in his hand and his gaze half-outward, watching the dead horizons as the fog slunk away.
But there was nothing out there. N
o frozen bandit or lingering monster. Even the bweao-whatever-the-hell-it-was had given the fuck up and gone home for cocoa with marshmallows.
Muttering, Ecko shut out the cold and lost himself in the previous night – the opal stones in her collarbones, the necessary savagery of her release – but her last words flicked at him, insistent and annoying.
Or is it us?
If he won this – beat the final bad guy, yadda yadda – what would happen to these people? Fucksake, his friends?
What would happen to them when Eliza turned them off?
He tangled himself round the question, muddled with memories of breathlessness and body heat. He lost himself so far into it that the thud beside him took him completely by surprise.
“Ecko!” Rhan’s bark brought him to his senses.
“Shit!”
Amethea had fallen from her horse. She was choking, her body striving for air. As his oculars flashed, he could see that her fight was almost over: she looked like Ghar had done. The moss had closed her mouth, her eyes, her ears – she looked almost half-rotted. He had no idea what to do, but hey, he was off his horse and down on his knees beside her.
The other two had ridden too far ahead. They were turning fast, but they wouldn’t get to her in time. What the fuck was he supposed to do?
Rhan’s bass bellow: “She needs to breathe!”
Thinking shit, shit, shit, Ecko put one hand on the back of the doc’s neck, tilted her head, and, grimacing, began to pull green shit out of her mouth. It trailed back into her like some invading jellyfish, tendrils of gunk that stretched down her throat and into her lungs and chest and heart and veins. Pulling at it, fucking strings of it, he shuddered. She was retching as he pulled it free, her face unresponsive, but her body reacting, craving the air.
Fuck fuck fuck fuckety fuck!
The ground was icy cold. Ecko had green shit all tangled round his fingers, slimy and stringy. He shook his hand, trying to get it off. There was more of it in her nose, her ears. He peeled it from her eyes like scabs. He could almost hear her muttering, Help me, help me, but the voice was somehow not hers – it was fuller and older.
It sounded like Ghar.
It sounded like Mom.
And that shit, he must be imagining.
Not nearly enough sleep.
“Breathe into her mouth.” The legs of Rhan’s heavy, hairy-hoofed horse, then Rhan himself, boots hitting hard on the dead ground.
“CPR?” It was almost a squawk. “Are you shittin’ me?”
But he knew this, fuck knows how – he tilted her head back further, held her nose and breathed into her mouth.
As he exhaled, he remembered Pareus, burning to death, the woman on the bed in Grey’s base, the flames he’d had for so long and then lost. His breath was something that took life, not gave it. The images were overlaid by Triqueta, the insistent heat of her mouth on his—
Chrissakes. He shoved all of it aside.
Amethea tasted of frog. He turned, spat, swore, wondered which one of them was the fucking prince. Then he inhaled, gave her another breath.
He got a mouthful of green shit and sat back on his heels, spitting, wiping his lips – but she was breathing, her eyes were open.
He’d just – well hot shit on a chrome shovel – had he seriously just saved her life?
“Well done.” The Bard’s voice sounded from behind him. A gloved hand passed him down a waterskin and he took a swig, washed out his mouth.
Yeah. Stick that in your fuckin’ pipe, Eliza!
But Amethea wasn’t coughing, or sitting up. She was breathing, but she lay motionless, her eyes staring empty. Her pale hair was spread about her like a nebula, and her palms were oddly flat against the soil – what was left of it. The lichens in her flesh were still there. And something about the way she lay—
“Ecko,” Rhan said, “stand up.” His voice was tight as wire.
Ecko’s nerves skittered, like bird claws on a roof. He lurched to his feet, soil caking his trews.
“What?”
Rhan’s blade was bared in his hand. He pointed the tip at the only thing that broke the flat horizon.
“What’s that?”
Cold wind scuttled the debris in tiny tornadoes. A hoof thumped restless.
For a moment, Ecko didn’t register – Rhan was pointing at a wagon – two – laying a distance away and on their sides. One of the wheels had fallen from an axle. As his telos focused, though, seeking the skulking nasty, he realised he could see something else. Between the traces, there were the hummocks of fallen beasties, half-slumped, their outlines blurred. Just as if they’d…
…as if they’d melted into the ground.
His skin went absolutely cold.
What the fuck?
He scanned further, found more shapes, smaller and widely strewn. One had a fallen pack beside it, its contents scattered and crumbling.
“What is it?” Rhan asked, again.
He didn’t reply, barely heard the question. The closest shape, the smallest, had stains of dead lichen. Like the moss that grew on Amethea. Moss that had struggled for life, and then died.
Help me.
He stood stock-still, rigid with shock. Then he blinked back into focus and stared at the green stuff he’d pulled from Amethea’s body. Some of it was still on his fingers. He resisted the urge to shudder, and brush it off him like a spider.
Help me.
A thought caught him, like a hook in the edge of his mind – something she’d said, as they’d sat on the wall at Tusien… Like I’m nothing.
And the word was there, again, echoing massive as all of the lifeless grey plain.
Nothing.
Nothing, like the dead ground. Nothing, like the emptiness in Amethea’s eyes. Nothing, like the creatures that had lain down in their traces and just… given up. Nothing, like—
Boom.
Holy motherfucking shit.
And he wanted to fucking kick himself. He wanted to rage at Eliza, at Lugan, at the Bard.
I don’t believe this!
“Like you’re nothing.” The words were a whisper, like a question. He knelt down beside her, stroked her hair from her face. He felt her skin with his fingertips. He was making a huge effort to hold himself back, to not bury his face in his hands or turn round and scream at the others, Don’t you see?!
“Ecko…” Rhan said, again. His voice was dangerous. “What—?”
“It was a travellin’ family, maybe two,” Ecko said. His tone was flat, blunt, holding the roar in check. “They lay down, and they quit.”
Rhan and the Bard exchanged a glance.
“They quit,” Ecko said, again. He rounded on them, coming back to his feet in a rush. “Amethea – in the hospice – she quit. She’d fought so hard and she fucking quit.” He spat the word at Rhan, remembered seeing him stood in the doorway. “That’s how you catch the blight – and that’s why you can’t cure it. It’s not a disease, it’s a… a parasite. It invades you when you give up.”
“Foriath,” Rhan said. His tone was deep and soft, thunderous. “The woman Mael saw in the market. And Ghar—”
“An’ it’s in the terhnwood, like the blade in the tavern in Amos.” Ecko rubbed the green shit between thumb and forefinger, trying to order his scrambling thoughts. “It’s been everywhere. Sneakin’ in at the edges.”
Help me.
Older and deeper, not Mom’s voice, but…
“Look, Maugrim made a kablooey, right?” he said, spelling it out as much to himself as to the others. “A great big fuckin’ sinkhole that’s suckin’ the life outta the grass. Two elements, Higgs boson, we got ourselves a mini singularity.” He gave a brief grin. “Well, okay, maybe not quite. But that’s why the grass died from the edges – it’s like a… an event horizon, like water goin’ down a plug.”
The other two were staring at him. Rhan had sheathed his blade and picked up Amethea. He held her in his arms, tight against his chest like a father holds a sleeping child
. His face was etched in horror, in disbelief.
Or was it denial?
“So,” Ecko said, “our sink isn’t jus’ drainin’ the grass. It’s drainin’ people, critters. Terhnwood. Every-fuckin’-thing.”
Roderick said, “But the moss grows. It grows through people, as it has through Amethea. You said yourself: it’s a parasite. It isn’t a nothing, it wants to live.”
It wants to live.
Help me.
Well fuck him for a brain-dead sonofabitch.
He remembered standing looking down at the fallen woodland, the double vision – the life and the death. In one place, every last breath of life sucked from the soil; in the other, the man dying on the ground, killed by something trying to cling to its existence.
Help me.
Grass trying to grow on the slumped body of a dead child.
A child that had melted into the soil.
“An’ that’s it,” he said, like the light finally coming on. “That’s the final step, the last piece of the puzzle.” He wanted to shout at the winter clouds. He wanted to rage at Eliza, Oh, you bitch, you motherfucking bitch! He wanted to laugh, cry, scream. “You fucking smartass bastard,” this at the Bard, “this is it. This is what you’ve been looking for.” He was grinning, now, black as an assassin’s blade.
The Bard said softly, “The world’s fear, the thing she had forgotten…”
“Jeez, this is all like some fuckin’ huge jigsaw, some goddamn fuckin’… I dunno… fractal realisation. Like – kapow! – an’ everything feeds into everything else. If that kid hadn’t’ve died, right at the beginning, Triq would never’ve gone to Roviarath, they wouldn’t’ve been here to fight – an’ we would’ve lost. If I hadn’t’ve run from the tavern, I wouldn’t’ve met her, we’d never’ve gone after Maugrim, stopped his forces, found Amethea. Soul of Stone, rise of the blight, you know the rest. It’s all some huge fucking pattern. It all fits.”
