by Danie Ware
His fingers were at his temples as if he was reeling with the onslaught of information, of comprehension.
“An’ if we hadn’t gone after Amal, Vahl wouldn’t be free, not here, not now. Christ on a bike, it’s like everything, every little fuckin’ thing, slots into everything else. Every choice we’ve made, every place we’ve been, has brought us here. The whole fuckin’ pattern has just made sense.” He was laughing, a sound completely unlike his usual sarcastic cackle. “Like I can see Eliza’s program – all of it, nodes and synapses, the lot. Fucking Matrix shit! Chrissakes! If I’d missed one connection, one decision, one moment…” his voice faded to awed, “…we’d not be here, like this, like now. Jesus. Like everything had to fit…!”
Roderick had lowered his scarf, and his face was like his old self, overwhelmed with feeling.
With more of his vision coming back to him, the thing the Ryll had shown him so long ago.
With the knowledge that he had, indeed, been right all along.
“By the Gods, Ecko…” He sounded like he was nearly in tears.
Ecko spoke straight to him, “Because the hole Maugrim made is a nothing, an absence, a giving up. It sucks all the life away. And the moss is the world trying to live, to grow.” Help me. “And that’s what you’ve been – we’ve been – lookin’ for, all this time. It’s what you saw; it’s what now lives where the Monument used to be. And it’s what we gotta face.”
He and the Bard spoke the word together as if they’d been brothers all along…
“Kazyen.”
* * *
There was a fissure at the heart of the Grasslands.
The ground was no longer even soil; there was no touch of life to show that anything had ever been here, not an insect, not a blade of grass. It was bare rock and ash, barren and broken. In places fused fragments of crystal caught the light like a cry.
Cracks spread outwards from the central fracture, jagged and widening. From them, unhealthy bands of light bled into the burning sunset sky. They reached almost to the edge of the river – only a precarious grey dam now kept the water flowing to Amos and to the sea. They reached out towards Roviarath, threatening her wharves and walls. They stretched as if they would shatter the world, and send the pieces spiralling into Kazyen.
Once, there had been centaurs here. Bweao. Esphen. Here, Feren had fallen. Here, Maugrim had awoken the Monument, and Amethea had found the Soul of Stone. Here, The Wanderer had crashed. Here, the Flux had been overloaded, and the world riven to her core.
Now, upon the edge of the fissure, there stood a richly dressed young woman. With her, an old man in a plain overshirt. They were alone, incongruous amidst the bleakness and the drifting grey smoke, two tiny figures at the heart of destruction.
Ink writhed about their flesh.
Selana Valiembor, last child of Fhaveon, brightness and colour and beauty.
Brother Mael.
Both stood lost in wonder, as though the wasteland that surrounded them was the finest discovery of their long existence.
And Kas Vahl Zaxaar laughed.
He laughed with Selana’s mouth, loud and long. He laughed to fill the emptiness, laughed as if he could bring the dying sun itself to worship at his feet. It had taken him returns beyond number to reach this moment, and its realisation was glorious.
He could be free!
Stood upon the edge of nothing, Vahl had little interest in the darkening grey below him or in the rising, bleeding light. He didn’t care for the spreading damage, for the world’s pain or how she suffered. The Gods’ toy could shatter into a thousand pieces, be lost to the Count of Time and never even remembered…
It was the power he wanted.
Whatever lay at the bottom of the crevasse, whatever was sucking the life from the grass, Vahl wanted it, wanted to touch and claim and use it. The battle behind him was irrelevant – had been effective enough in keeping Rhan occupied – this was his real victory.
Show me, he told the smoke, the drifting ash. Show me what you hold.
And his brother Tamh echoed him, Show me!
All through his long exile, living behind the eyes of Amal, Vahl had dreamed helpless, raged and longed and lusted and schemed. At the beginning, he’d dreamed of war – of flame and death, of razing Fhaveon to the ground, and Rhan with her. Amal had been a scholar, but their goals had been aligned and their symbiosis strong; Phylos, when he’d come from the Archipelago, had shared Vahl’s superiority, his hate, and his dreams of devastation.
Phylos had waited long for Vahl to come to him.
Yet the awakening of the Monument had altered Vahl’s dream – made it more urgent, made him hunger for its realisation. Afterwards, he’d no longer dreamed of lengthy and tiresome wars, he’d dreamed bigger – of shattering Fhaveon, of breaking Aeona and Rammouthe, of smashing the Gods’ toy and returning to Samiel with pieces of it in his hands, laughing at its annihilation…
Damn me, would you?
Ecko would have given Vahl strength beyond measure – but Ecko had no time he could take. Amal had tricked him – and had paid for it. Vahl had turned to Phylos after all, and they’d raged their hate together…
And they’d failed.
But there was another solution.
Selana Valiembor, last of the family his brother had sworn to protect – the irony was glorious. Rhan’s victory had been short-lived. The Grasslands were in ruins, Fhaveon had fallen, Saluvarith’s legacy was ended.
Vahl’s brothers were free – and their release would fill the sky with fire.
Elation rising in him like the hunger of the Sical, Vahl turned to his brother. He raised Selana’s arms to the last of the light, raised her chin to look up, to cry aloud at the burning sky. The sun was lingering at the peaks of the Kartiah, almost as if it refused to set on this, the Varchinde’s final day…
Standing there beside him, Brother Mael had moss growing in his human skin, in his eyes and ears. And the Kas, for all their might and rage and scheming, could do nothing to stop it.
They, too, had caught the blight.
28: VAHL
THE SOUL OF STONE
Half a day after they crossed the rank remnant of the Scar Lake, they finally came to the wasteland’s edge.
And there, they stopped.
They shouldered their packs and they let the horses go. Rhan carried Amethea, holding her to him like a wounded child. A complex guilt rose from his shoulders, but he spoke not a word.
The Monument – or the wound where it had been – lay somewhere ahead of them. To their right, the tiny flicker of rocklight was Roviarath’s Lighthouse Tower, a lone mote that glittered like a last hope. Everything else was ash, silent and cold.
It tasted like nothing.
If they sheltered their faces and peered through the grey, they could see ahead of them the last approaches, the heart of the Varchinde. But now, that heart was bare of all grass and growth and life – it was rock, scoured and empty. It was a sunset-red sky that glowed sullen on jagged mountaintops.
The Rhamiriae, the western forest, had gone.
Ecko remembered this place. He’d first met Triqueta here, and Redlock. He’d come this way with Tarvi, when there’d been sun, and green grass, and blue sky…
Chrissakes.
He fidgeted, oculars flicking modes. He wondered if he’d changed as much as the others – if his journey of self-discovery now neared fruition, or whatever the hell it was supposed to do.
Did I get it right, Eliza? Didja tick all your li’l boxes now?
Collator: Chances of success…
But the voices were in his head; hell, they’d always been in his head. There was no scorecard, no trophy, no marks outta ten; there was no flicking forward to read the final paragraph. There was only ash, for fucksake. There was only the four of them, damaged and struggling. There was only Kazyen.
He told Eliza, told himself: You jus’ bring it on – it can kiss my chameleon ass. Let’s do this thing.
Tempting her – daring her – he was the first to set foot on the cracked, bared stone.
And the ash fluttered upwards from under his boot.
The others followed him, and they moved onwards.
The going was treacherous; the ground was uneven, holed and harsh. It seemed to shift, shuddering like an earthquake. The drifting ash got in faces and mouths, making it hard to see, to breathe. As they moved, they stirred it into tiny whirls that made them cough and had their eyes streaming.
So here we are at last: Pits of Fire an’ Mountains of Ash. Well, kinda.
The ground shuddered again, and Ecko stumbled, his adrenaline lurching, erratic. The sky had lowered over them, gathering into a heavy darkness that blotted out the mountains and the bloody sunset, yet there was still light enough to see.
A pale light, sourceless, and bereft of all warmth.
Jesus. Ecko’s uneasy adrenaline faltered. He reached for a smart one-liner, came back with nothing…
Nothing.
Shit, I’m funny.
They continued, careful now, watching in every direction. The ash and the light seemed to haunt them, joyless and unchanging – it was almost as if the Count of Time himself had deserted the dying Varchinde.
Yeah, that sucker’s gone down the pub…
They slowed down even more. As they moved, their path grew more treacherous, and the shudders came more frequently, harder. Deep, pained rumbles accompanied them – ground or sky, it was impossible to tell.
Ecko began to feel peculiar.
Skin-crawlingly-belly-emptily peculiar, like he wanted to lay down and rest, and never get up again…
He realised he’d stopped.
Fallen to his knees.
Rhan’s bass rumble sounded softly. “Get up. You know what will happen if you don’t.”
“Tell me about it.” This was Kazyen, the world’s fear and foe. This inertia, this lassitude, this loss of energy and motivation and passion and life…
He had a flash – again, a memory of the woman on the bed, the one he’d burned. The one who hadn’t even tried to stop him.
Fight me, you fucking…!
“Can’t you sing, or something?” Ecko shot that one at the Bard. “All that power, an’ you dunno anything from Queen’s Greatest Hits?”
“Keep moving,” Roderick told him, flatly. “We approach the place of the Monument, the Soul of Stone.” His voice still carried a huge sense of suppressed eagerness. “We must understand this, or everything dies.”
“No shit, Sherlock.” Ecko turned back to the lifelessness that stretched away from them in every direction and as far as they could see…
Lay down, it said softly, lay down and rest. There’s no need to fight. Trust me, and I will look after you. You will be content…
Pulling closer together, they walked on.
The Count of Time had left them. After a while, they began to see cracks splitting the rock, the sources of the empty grey light. As the ground shook, so the cracks were spreading, their movement swift enough to be noticeable.
Roderick murmured, “‘Time the Flux begins to crack’.”
They were fracturing the Powerflux, the Varchinde entire, taking the last of the life of the plains.
The rock beneath them shook. Ecko stumbled and the Bard caught his elbow.
And so they came to the edge of the great fissure itself.
To the rise, the place where the Monument had been.
And Ecko had no words, no sarcasm, no dare…
Nothing.
The Monument had gone, the ditch, the bank. The centaurs, The Wanderer. There was only that final grassless slope, and then the great rocky gape like a mouth, open and hungry, sucking at the Grasslands’ life. Its cracks spread further with every shake of the ground.
“Careful.” Rhan’s warning was reflex, unnecessary.
Jesus Harry Christ in a bloody fucking bucket.
Here, at the very heart of his personal darkness, Ecko stopped. He struggled to find his breath, struggled to find his balls, for chrissakes – to man the fuck up and take that final step. To look over the edge and confront Kazyen, to see that final boss staring back at him.
Why bother? the voice said. You’ve come this far, only to fail. How can you face me when you don’t even know what I am? How can you wield the Powerflux entire, with only four of you? Rest now, and leave everything to me…
Ecko was a knot of fear and confusion, he couldn’t make himself move. As he hesitated, the Bard stepped past him, fell to his knees at the edge of the crevasse. He buried his hands in the ash, stretched his face to the sky. He’d sought his whole life for this, and Ecko could feel the shout building in him.
But beneath him, almost in defiance, the ground shook again, and he put out a hand to stop himself falling. The cracks groaned wider still, spreading the nothing further and further, out across the Varchinde.
It would shatter the world entire, send its pieces spiralling out into the void.
“Samiel.” From behind them, Rhan’s voice in plea or prayer. “Godsfather. How can you—?”
“The world was in your care, my estavah.” A new voice, precise as a fine blade. “I might even say this is your fault.”
Rhan swore, vicious and bitter.
Manifesting from devastation, two figures came into view on the far side of the fissure, each lit from below to grotesque parody. One was a young woman, pretty, and exquisitely dressed beneath her covering of ash. She stood slender, absurdly out of place, but her chin was proud, and her stance scornful.
Beside her was an old man, plainly dressed. His arms were folded and his face clouded with moss and shadow.
Serpents of ink curled though their skin.
“My Lord Selana,” Rhan said, his words laden with pain and anger. He still held Amethea. “Brother Mael.”
Ecko stared at the newcomers, oculars scanning.
This was the Lord of Fhaveon herself, Selana Valiembor, but she was no more a girl than Ecko was a winner of the Nobel fucking Peace Prize. Yeah, you don’t fool me. He’d been right up close to Kas Vahl Whosit, had a scar in his chest to prove it, and he knew the daemon all right, no matter who he was wearing.
Fucksake, he knew the daemon even without the manifest beastie that he now saw, fading hazy through the ash and darker than shadow. A mantled creature of twisted smoke, a figment that somehow withstood the breeze.
The Kas itself.
His oculars scanned, fascinated.
“Ah, my faithful Seneschal.” Selana’s voice was like Amal’s had been – layered with the tones and tensions of that other presence, that rising, oddly solid haze. “Your determination is impressive – though calling on Samiel is surely folly. You should be angry with him, brother. He’s hurt you as much as any of us, maybe more.” She spoke to Rhan, but looked at each of them in turn, face to face. Her smoke-shadow echoed her movements. “Look at you,” she said. “The world’s last warriors. How touching. You look like you’ve lost one already.”
Ecko grinned, savage. “Look, you fucked this up once before, an’ you’re gonna do it again. What the hell d’you think is gonna happen here? You’re gonna do – what? – tap the power source, an’ destroy the world? Burn the sky? Make out like some bad metal stageshow? You gonna sacrifice your evil zombie runegoats and rule the universe?”
He walked up to where the Bard still knelt, faced human and monster across the grey light of the fissure.
“This is big shit – bigger than you, daemon – an’ it’s gonna spank your smoky ass.”
On cue, the ground shook.
The girl didn’t move, but the shadow of the Kas leaned down, right over him, its head to one side and its eyes glittering flame-yellow. It studied him, curious.
He thought he saw teeth.
And what are you here to do, little man? Stop me? Just how do you plan to do that?
In spite of himself, Ecko shuddered at its closeness. He wondered if the thing could jump hosts, and his skin crawled. Bu
t it withdrew, and he breathed again.
“It’s all over,” Selana told him, “I no longer need you to gain my freedom.” She laughed and the Kas laughed with her, shadow rippling like Ecko’s lost stealth-cloak.
The ground shuddered again, cracks in the world.
And then, there in the ashes, Ecko could see more of them. Not humans, just drifting shades, the Kas without their mortal shells. They had come – all of them – from the war, and from Rammouthe.
Come to witness the end of the world.
Or to cause it.
“You can’t stop me.” The Lord of Fhaveon smiled at them. “Look at you, three squeaking fools surrounded by powers you neither wield nor understand. It ends here, all of it. I will be free.”
“You’re the fool, Vahl,” Rhan said. “What’s happening here will tear you to screaming pieces. You can’t ride this power—”
“I will be free!” The shadow flashed with flame and rage. “My name is Dael Vahl Sashar, and I am first made of the Gods’ creatures, and oldest of all.” Selana’s voice was a lash, savage as a whip-strike, stinging. The shadow with her thickened and rose, its eyes glimmering like the Sical’s had done, pure fire. “I watched this world’s creation, its crafting at Samiel’s hands. I watched the twins play with it, laughing as it rolled across their jewelled floor. And I watched it forgotten, abandoned, gathering dust and ash.” She spat the word. “The world is insignificant, a lost toy, no more. This…” she gestured at the fissure, “…is the only thing that matters now.” The shadow shot through with livid sparks, eager. “I am Kas no longer. I can take this power. Use it!”
Roderick said, his throat writhing, “Understand, Vahl: what lies here is hunger. This is the heart of the blight, the force that pulls the life from the Varchinde. And if you try to touch it…” he smiled faintly, “…your life, all you’ve known and all you remember… will be nothing.” His tones were woven with layers of strength and appeal; they made the ash stand still in the wind, made the last of the red light glitter scarlet in the ground’s crystals.
