Danie Ware - Ecko Rising

Teleporting, for chrissakes. What next – magic fucking wands?

Twinging with unease, he untangled himself from the mass of fabric, rubbed his bloodied palms on his thighs.

This can’t be good...

As his anti-daz filtered the brightness, he could see the tavern itself was intact – garden and sign and all – and that it was now on the grassy edge of a river. On the far bank there was a tessellation of roofs, rising to a tower that didn’t quite look like a church. The breeze flickered the many ends of his cloak, taunting him.

The air was wild, somehow, sparkling like old-school fizzy pop. He’d never had a lungful like it.

And there was movement. A harbour that wrapped the townside, larger that he might’ve expected, rowing boats out with the morning.

Ecko untangled himself fully and sat up. His adrenaline had washed out of him, down towards the guttering, he found he was hunching his shoulders against the vastness of the sky. The ride had kicked him into high gear – towards hopes and fantasies that this really had all been only a joke...

But this was the same roof, the same chimney, the same front yard.

And something in him said: That’s it, then.

The teleport had been his last gasp – he felt as though he’d lost his final grab at freedom. Watching the rising dawn, the shining water, he found the certainty closing over him, once and for all – this was it and he was drowning in it and he was stuck, and there was fuck all he could do.

Oh, you bastards.

As if in answer, a water-rat thing scampered across the front path and he bridled at the symbolism.

You just wait.

The rat critter turned sharply, long tail twitching, and vanished. Ecko shifted into the shadow on the other side of the chimney and spun his oculars to watch the town.

Okay then, bring on the pointy-eared bastards with the bows...

But the town was not some ethereal, crystalline dream, some screensaver vision, it was stone and wood and solid and functional. It was also absolutely miniscule – hell, he’d got no idea how big these things were supposed to be. With no high rise, it maybe held six thousand people, seven? It had no defensive wall, only the harbour, and the tower seemed to hold some mega version of the rocklight in his room. It was hardly gonna be a lighthouse for the water.

To one side, following the direction of the river, the plains stretched away into the morning, a fantastical swath of colour under the sky. To the other, to the south and west, there was a slope of misted forest that rose into...

Jesus.

Rose into mountains.

Even in the bright dawn light, they were harsh, dark headed and remote, high and jagged as though they cut into the very sky. They made him shiver with some odd sense of anticipation, though he’d no fucking clue why.

He’d never seen mountains, not this close, and they towered over his presence and silenced his jittering brain. For a moment, he was lost for a sarcastic thought, and he stared with something approaching awe.

Then his attention was pulled back by a shout that carried clear across the water.

“The Wanderer! The Wanderer’s here!”

One of the fisherboats had seen the tavern, manifest on the bank like some insomniac’s hallucination. In a moment, the rest had taken up the cry and the boats were being rowed hard back towards the town.

Great. For today’s therapy-session role play, I get to be a barmaid.

He was measuring his chances of staying the fuck on the roof when the skylight below him creaked open.

“Ecko. Good morning – surprised to see you still here.” Hair loose and bare shouldered, the Bard glanced at their surroundings and grinned. “Well, this could be a great deal worse. Enjoy the trip?”

“Yeah, like a laugh a minute.” Ecko’s cloak and skin had shifted with the colours of the dawn, but his eyes stayed black as pits. He indicated the riverside city. “Ain’t exactly Minas fucking Tirith is it?”

“This is Vanksraat. We’ve come south-west, Roviarath is directly downriver.” Lifting the skylight further, Roderick peered over the roof’s edge. “Good place for us, there’ll be gossip and trade. We’ll have a busy day, I think.”

“They’ve spotted us already.” Ecko returned to studying the town.

“They do that.” The Bard grinned, his ridiculous goth hair rising loose in the breeze. “We’re a breath of life. We don’t only bring ale – we bring tales of the Varchinde, news of the terhnwood crop, trade-goods and information. In some ways, we bring the world.”

Okay, not a barmaid, a mailman. Hell, maybe I get a hat.

“There are also some questions I need to ask you – and something... well, maybe something you can help me with.”

Ecko snorted. “You reckon I’m gonna stay?”

“I’ve already said that’s your choice – though if you’re going to jump wagon, there may be better places. You’d like Xenok, or Padesh...”

“Jump ship , you jump ship .”

“Why would anyone jump off a ship?” Roderick had thrown the trapdoor all the way open and was now sitting on the lip checking out the view. “Come down. Tundran-blooded I may be, but I’m getting cold.”

Ecko twitched his shoulders, discouraging the emptiness of the sky. Ignoring the Bard’s offered hand, he scrabbled down the roof. As he reached the skylight, though, something snatched his attention.

The Bard was stripped to the waist. He was lean, a wire-work of steel muscle. What stopped Ecko was the ugly mess of white scar that tore into Roderick’s chest under his outstretched arm. It was a messy, patchy wound – it looked like he’d been half munched by a shoal of piranha.

It was an ugly wound.

It was a mortal wound.

Suspicion paused him on the edge of jumping. He pointed.

“What the fuck did that?”

The scar was old, long healed – but its severity was as loud as a scream. Razor-wire teeth had shredded the Bard a new one the size of the fucking Grand Canyon. And it’d healed hollow – as though too little skin had been stretched to cover the damage. Busted ribs and half-eaten lungs were the least of its problems out here, where the fucking leech was the height of hot meditech –

How had he – ?

“Seeking lost lore, on a reconnaissance mission to Rammouthe.” Ruefully, Roderick looked north-east, ran his fingers over the scar. “I was running scout, and disturbed a knot of sleeping magharta. Not something I’d recommend.”

“You oughta be dead.” Ecko studied the Bard’s pretty-boy face for signs of rotting. “You’re not, are you? You’re not gonna pull some fetid zombie undead bullshit?”

“Fetid zombie undead bullshit?”

“Oh for chrissakes. I mean: why the fucking hell’re you still breathing?”

“I won’t get let off that easily?” Roderick grinned. “Once magharta start eating, they’re not easy things to stop.”

“Don’t gimme the smart-ass remarks – if you got monster issues, I’m your fucking exterminator. Tell me where they’re at and it’ll all be over by dinnertime.”

And I can get the hell outta here.

“Only monster in here is in the kitchen, cooking breakfast.” Leaving Ecko to catch the skylight, the Bard jumped down onto the landing. “C’mon, let’s go give Kale a hand.” He glanced back up, gave a brief chuckle. “He might even let you start the fire.”

* * *

Downstairs, the front doors of the taproom were propped open and the sounds of water and birds were carried in on sweet, clean air. Karine was already there, counting a stack of pottery bottles on the bar top and making marks on the papers that Ecko had seen the previous night. Beside her was a slender, wide-eyed waif who looked no older than sixteen.