Tim Lebbon - Echo city

"Doesn't seem like it."

"Don't be a child, Gorham," she said, and they did not speak again for some time.

Soon after the meal, they moved on and started heading down. Gorham caught the hint of moisture in the air, and as they descended through a series of narrow tunnels and crumbling stairways and emerged into the next Echo, he heard a steady, distant roar. It was a frightening sound, but it masked the mysterious noises that had been growing ever louder all around them-the sound of the rising thing.

What the fuck are we doing down here? he wondered more than once, but Nadielle's determination drew him on.

The roar was water, the tributary of the dead River Tharin that plummeted through the Echoes beneath Marcellan Canton and eventually, it was said, vented into the Echo City Falls. Though possessing such a grand name, the Falls was a hidden thing, buried deep where the roots of the city bound it to the land and where old history made way for even older. As recently as a hundred years ago, there were those who believed that the Echoes went on forever-buried histories and past times that not only should be forgotten but that could never truly be accessed. People went down into the Echoes then as now, but some in the city-followers of Hanharan, mostly, their religion tied inextricably to the city's lifeline-had believed that all they found were caves. Gases down there, they claimed, made people imagine streets and buildings, buried parks and the ruins of older times. And while explorers tried and failed to find them, the Echoes stretched back, and down, forever.

But Gorham liked to think that he lived in more enlightened times. There were still isolated pockets of believers who clung to outdated, more extreme dogmas, but now even the Order of Hanharan and their Marcellan politicians acknowledged that their new city was built upon the old, and the older, and so on. And this acknowledgment could never come without the understanding that there was a point, somewhere deep in the past, where the original city must lie.

This was the reason that deep exploring was strictly forbidden. Hanharan's birthplace would be way down there, if he had ever existed. But what anyone would have been able to tell from a ruined, rotting, crumbled wreck thousands of years old, he had no idea.

"That's the Falls," Nadielle said, and Gorham was unreasonably pleased to see a light in her eyes. He could not tell exactly what it meant, but it took away her expression of lifelessness.

"At least it masks the other noises," Gorham said.

Nadielle glanced aside, then back at him. "We have to go all the way down," she said. "And the easiest way to descend through the Echoes here will be through the holes and tunnels the Falls themselves have forged over time."

Gorham nodded. He knew that. He'd studied the old books, and he knew the alleged geography of the Falls as well as anyone.

"You know what we'll see, don't you?"

He nodded again. "The dead."

"The dead. And then the Chasm." For a second she seemed vulnerable and scared again, and Gorham grabbed on to it. "We'll help each other," he said.

"I know we will." And Nadielle smiled. "But, Gorham-I'm not aware of anyone who's ever gone that deep and survived."

"Then why must we?"

"You know why. I have to know what's coming."

"So you can destroy it?"

She shrugged, such a hopeless gesture. "Just so that I know."

"Why don't you tell me?"

"I will. When I know."

"And Caytlin…" He trailed off. The chopped woman was going to die, Nadielle had said, and Gorham suspected it would be soon.

"Come on," Nadielle said. "It'll get louder. And you're right-at least it masks that other sound."

But as they ventured through this Echo toward the Falls that punched through them all, Gorham found that was not the case at all. The roar of water was thunderous, but the noises from below were insidious. The Falls sounded brutal and hard, but the thumps and whispers were defiant, secretive. Monstrous.

Closer to the Falls, the air was filled with a fine, foul-smelling moisture. The flames on their torches sputtered and flickered. Their clothes became damp. Exertion made Gorham sweat, but it was cool, and before long he was wishing for thicker clothing. I'm breathing from the Tharin, he thought, and took shallow, slow breaths.

They went down, still not within sight of the Falls themselves. Neph led the way, and Gorham thought about that a lot. He'd seen the chopped birthed from the womb vat in the Baker's laboratory, and so whatever knowledge it carried must have been implanted while it was… what? Growing? Brewing? Forming? Nadielle told Gorham little, and he did not have a scientific brain that could surmise. So had Neph's knowledge of where they now were come from the Garthan it was part chopped from, as Nadielle had suggested?

Or did it come from her?

Deeper they went, time blurred, and at some point they must have passed the deepest Echo and entered the bedrock of the city itself. Gorham did not notice the point where this occurred. They were descending through a chaos of fissures and crevasses, past walls smoothed when the Tharin's water had flowed before finding an easier route down. But there were no more phantoms, and he felt the weight of the world all around him. He paused to touch the rock, and it shook with the power of the Falls. Shining his torch around, he tried to make out marks or structures that might have been man-made, but there was nothing. For some reason, he found that even more unbelievable than the receding Echoes of the past through which they had been descending.

I'm standing in a place that existed before the city itself, he thought, and he felt alone and lost. Nadielle glanced back at him, up the steep slope of a cavern floor, and Gorham pressed his hand harder against the rock. It gave nothing back.

He went on, following Nadielle and Caytlin, Neph's torch casting spiked shadows back toward him, and everywhere he desperately sought signs of humanity. He had never felt so connected with the city as now, when he was way below its very earliest part. But he saw nothing. And with the sound of the Falls thundering in his head so that he could not even hear himself shout, and the feel of them strong enough to shake the foundations of his world, he knew that the only people who came down here were the dead.

Shadows danced against the walls, giving the impression of movement all around. Even when Gorham held his torch still, he saw things flickering in tunnel mouths and holes, as if the ground were a living thing following his progress. All the while, Neph led and Caytlin followed-Nadielle's strange children obeying her every command, spoken or unspoken.

And at last they emerged onto a wide, wet ledge, beyond which was nothing but the Echo City Falls.

It plunged before them, a wall of water that seemed to suck in their torchlight and amplify it as a glow from within. The noise was almost unbearable, but the sight was astonishing, and Gorham could not tear his eyes away. He wiped water from his face and smelled its foulness, but that ceased to concern him. His stomach lurched when drops touched his tongue, but he pressed his hand against his gut and stared at the water. Its violence was incredible, its beauty mesmerizing, and Gorham thought: All this is from beyond the city. This water had traveled over the Bonelands from places where no one had ever been, crossed the city, separated from the river's main flow, and found its way down through Echo City's past until it vented here-flowing no more, only falling.

Nadielle shouted something into his ear, but the Falls stole her voice.

Then he saw the first body flit by. It was a blur, but its waving limbs were unmistakable. He'd known he would see them, and he'd been preparing himself, but it still came as something of a shock. Someone's mother, someone's son, he thought, and somewhere far above, a funeral wake was now taking place, as people stared into an unseen distance and remembered the sight of their loved one plunging into the lifeless river.