Danie Ware - Ecko Rising

As a youth, Roderick had craved knowledge – and the staid rituals of the aged Guardians had bored him. He was restless: he wanted so much more than he was permitted to see.

And, in his adolescence and rebellion, he had done what mortal man was forbidden to do.

He had touched his human flesh to the waters of the Ryll.

In that moment, he had seen the mind of the Goddess, he had seen her fear, her ultimate nightmare, and it had burned a hole in his mind. He knew it was still there, but neither he, nor the world herself, could remember it.

Yet now, in that hole, there was light. There was a broken mirror, a cracked window. A reflection. There was a man, huddled on a floor with his hands wrapped around his head. He was screaming, thin and piteous and desperate.

Roderick knew who he was.

Ress.

The light flashed rainbow, sunshine through spray. And though the broken gaze of the madman, Roderick saw Rhan, pulled under by the raging of the eastern sea. He saw Ecko, fighting in firelight, and the Monument, shining with a ghastly nacre of stolen power. He saw a rising creature of flame and crystal. He saw the Great Fayre, abandoned and sweeping with flame. He saw Demisarr, falling, and he saw Larred Jade, fighting for the heart of the Varchinde.

And he saw the madman on the floor, writhing like a shattered thing, words forced from twisted lips. He was trying to communicate something imperative, trying to tell him...

Ress’s eyes opened. They were disfocused, one pupil larger than the other, but they sought Roderick’s own as if there was no distance, no time. For just a moment, across the Powerflux and the open grass of the Varchinde, there came a shock like a contact, a moment of absolute clarity.

The world’s fear comes!

Roderick stopped, staring at the image even as it faded.

You! You are the mirror that shows me!

But the image was gone, and the hole in his mind contained only the darkness.

He shook his head to clear the after-echoes. Around him, there was sweet, clear air.

He’d come to the end of the tunnels.

And there, ahead of him, was The Wanderer, warm and home and welcome. It stood in silhouette against the sunset, but the lights in its windows glowed – and they outlined the shapes of the soldiery that stood around it.

The world’s fear comes!

Ress of the Banned. Insane. Yet somehow in possession of the ultimate truth, the truth had the Bard had forgotten.

The world’s fear comes!

Kas Vahl Zaxaar was rising, certainly – the blood-red robes of the Merchant Master heralded a new dawn for the Varchinde. But that was not what Ress meant. In his warning cry, Roderick could hear something more.

Her fear – her real fear – was not Vahl Zaxaar.

It was something else.

And it was that something else that Roderick needed to know.

The man with the vision has no power – and the man with the power has no vision.

As the sun sank towards its death on the tips of the far-distant Kartiah, as the shadows grew long and golden across the Varchinde and the last of the daylight made Fhaveon shine like a gem...

...so Roderick the Bard went to reclaim The Wanderer.

* * *

It all happened so quickly.

As he came out into the sun, his bare feet itching on the weed-grown road, so the door of the tavern opened.

As if they had been waiting for him.

Merciless and soundless, a swift, capable shape emerged and broke the neck of the nearest soldier. The body slumped sideways, hit the wall, slid broken to the ground. Behind Sera’s chill efficiency, Karine took up a defensive stance. In her hand was the short wooden cosh that normally lived behind the bar, she was grinning like a hunting bwaeo.

The tan of soldiers never knew what hit them.

The Bard knew Sera’s history, but had never seen him fight – he was tight, controlled and utterly brutal, his precision was as sharp and cold as the finest weapon. Fhaveon-trained skirmishers, three of the soldiers moved towards him, each one wielding a short, one-handed spear and a small buckler, embossed with the device of the city.

But he was ready for them.

His expression calm, Sera moved to anticipate their strike. Rather than let himself be surrounded, he took the fight to the first one – grabbing his spear and pulling him off balance, then bringing his other fist straight into the man’s face. Swiftly reversing the spear, he turned on the second one, parried the first jab, then kicked the outside of the buckler, spinning it wide of the woman’s body. She gasped as the spear-point went clean through her belly.

The third one was older, wilier. With the buckler strap still over his knuckles, he had both hands on his spear shaft and danced backwards, keeping Sera at its point. Sera glanced up once, caught the eyes of Karine in the doorway, and advanced, forcing the man to retreat.

The slam of the cosh made the soldier’s eyes roll back and his knees fold.

For a moment, the doorman flickered a grim smile.

The other three had turned and come for the Bard, spreading into a loose line.

Sera took two running steps and launched his spear, javelinlike, at the sky.

It arced, spiralling lazily, terhnwood shaft glittering, then began to fall, gathering speed. It hit one of them clean in the back of the neck and flopped him forwards like a child’s doll. The other two glanced, hesitated.

Sera reached for another spear.

But the poignard was metal in Roderick’s hand and there was still blood at its hilt.

He’d killed one person already. He was stinking and tired and filthy and he itched.

He’d had about enough.

“What the rhez do you think you’re doing?”

His voice was a challenge in the still evening air. Birds lifted, cawing alarm. Barefoot and uncaring, he strode across the broken roadways to where the two members of the tan now looked at each other and backed up, wary. Behind them, Sera had picked up a second spear but he was waiting, watching.

With the sunlit might of the Lord city rising behind him, and The Wanderer’s lure in front, the Bard had a tangible authority – and he was at the outermost limits of his tolerance.

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.