Danie Ware - Ecko Rising

A cursed hard man to fool.

The truth clamped like a hand over her mouth, she couldn’t move, couldn’t think of a thing to say. The accuracy of his shot had knocked the passion straight out of her and now she was gasping, casting about her for anything with which to hit him back. “The scouts attacked us on the way, Syke doesn’t...”

But Jade was nodding, smiling to himself.

She tried again, almost childish. “We’re twice the fighters you are!” But she realised even as she said them that the words had been a mistake.

“Yes,” he said, “you are. I make no effort to deny it.”

Feren’s thin scream made Triq shudder, she gave a half-panicked glance to see that both the city apothecary and Ress were now fighting to staunch the bloodflow from the boy’s hip. A tide of thick scarlet soaked cloths and skin, flecked faces with dots like fragments of horror.

She could smell the blood. The wind still keened and rain scattered against the window, as if it sought entry.

The boy was going to die.

One last try. “Please Larred! Don’t let them do this to anyone else!”

Jade faltered, faced by the same view, the same blood tide. He raised a hand. Upon his little finger, the wrought terhnwood-fibre ring of the City caught the rocklight and glittered. He said, “Do you really think that I’d do nothing?”

What? “I don’t understand...”

“I’m a soulless mercantile bastard, Triqueta. I won’t spare the forces of my city to chase down a figment. But what will I do?”

“It’s not a figment...!”

Ress’s voice said, “We’re losing him.” There was an edge of fury in his tone, and Triqueta wondered, slightly stupidly, if the city apothecary had cut an artery or something.

Jade said, “No one else needs to suffer like that. Tell me, Triq, what am I going to do?”

Soulless mercantile bastard.

I’m a merchant, not a warrior and not a fireblasted gambler.

Roviarath is everything to me – I’m the heart of the Varchinde.

What will I do?

The realisation congealed and dripped like the rainwater from her hood, like the blood from Feren’s wound.

“You’re going to hire me – us – to scout for you.”

“You, yes. I trust your passion. But your scarred companion lacks a Banned-trained mount and Ress, forgive me, is no warrior.”

Triqueta said, “Hey, I’m no coward, but I’m not riding out alone.”

“You won’t have to.” Larred was grinning like a Varchinde predator. “Ah, Triq – have you not realised the one thing that tips the scales here, the thing your monster hasn’t bargained for?”

What?

Her bafflement must have shown, because Larred was starting to laugh. “If you could pick any one mercenary warrior, in the entire Varchinde, to hunt this beast of yours down... who would it be?”

She blinked, baffled.

Feren was fading now, his arms lolling from the pallet, his expression slackening lax. Blood soaked the pallet under him, the apothecary’s hands to the wrists. Ress was fighting, still fighting, for his patient’s life.

But the boy’s face...

His crazed orange hair, his growth of beard.

Oh, by the fireblasted Gods...

For a moment, an older face, harder and battle scarred, overlaid her view of the boy’s dying expression. Her blood sang his name, even as the memories flooded through her mind and body, sparking to a thrum between her thighs.

Feren gasped, an inhalation of hope.

Triqueta said softly, “Redlock.”

Ress was sweating, shaking his head in denial – he’d carried the boy to safety, just for him to lose his battle in the clean, cool air of the hospice.

Hope.

Jade watched the boy’s final moments, and his expression was troubled. “Faral ton Gattana, Redlock. Arguably the only warrior in the entire Varchinde who’s cursed hard enough to face this thing. Not to mention avenging the death of his kin.”

Triq said, again, “Redlock.”

“He’s here – came into the city yesterday morning. You might want to go have a word.” Jade grinned. “Scout for me, Triqueta – tell me what I’m facing. Give me time to gather the harvest and expect reinforcements from Fhaveon. And then I’ll call muster.”

Damned canny bastard.

Ress swore again, his voice catching as though on the verge of tears. The apothecary was slicked with gore across his chest, his chin.

Feren gasped, his hands fluttered as if he heard his cousin’s name and reached out to grab it. His last word was “please...” before the Count of Time came and took him away.

And the air in the hospice was still.

15: THE COUNCIL

FHAVEON

Roderick sat silent. His hands twitched in his lap like reluctant strangers.

At his right shoulder, a pincer-faced military escort. Below him, the descending white tiers of the Theatre of Nine. At their base, a long carved table, flanked by eight cloaked figures, four down either side. The ninth figure, at the table’s head, was the direct descendant of Saluvarith the Founder, Demisarr Valiembor himself, Lord of Fhaveon and Master of the Varchinde.

The Council had convened, and the Bard’s presence was requested.

Demanded.

Below Roderick, the nine figures were hooded, their faces concealed. Above them, haloing both the table and the tiers of seats, the wall was carved into a great stone mural – the tale of Fhaveon’s construction, and of her battles for survival.

The Theatre of Nine was astonishingly beautiful.

Once before, he had come here – some forty returns ago when he had faced the Lord Foundersson Nikhamos with a plea to take a tan of soldiers to Rammouthe Island, to search for answers there.

But his search had failed, his escort had been savagely slain, he himself had survived the magharta only because of Rhan’s immortal, elemental friendship. The Bard did not feel welcome here. The rocklights were cold, the quartz fragments dull. Eyeless sockets no longer reflected the glory of the city’s completion – they held the deaths of the soldiers who’d died to protect him.

Died screaming.

Standing in here made those screams seem suddenly very recent.

His hands knotted at the echoes. Beside him, his escort twitched. No, whatever beauty may lay outside the white amphitheatre of the Council; in here the Grasslands’ blood flowed cold. This was not a room of celebration, it was a room of business – its sanctity tinged with fear.

Aside from the Bard and his escort, the rings of tiered seats were empty.

Roderick’s nervousness was rising, he willed his hands to stillness. From Ecko to monsters to unexplained fires to the stone creature that had fallen from the wall – there were too many fears, too many implications, now lurking behind his presence here. They were overwhelming. However cold it may be, the theatre was where the decisions of the Varchinde were made, and he had one chance, one voice, one hope of making himself understood...

They’ll lock you up!

Was he crazed? Really? Down through all the long returns of his search, there were times when he had asked himself if the world’s fear had been only a nightmare, if the thing that he ever sought was only in his mind.

Maybe Ecko was right, and none of this was real.

Maybe they had to fight anyway.

There were monsters out there, and the wall of the city had come to life. A part of the past had crumbled to dust at The Wanderer’s very doors. And though Ecko was missing, the Bard would not give up his hope.

To doubt – to doubt now – would indeed be madness.

Pressure flickering through his skin, he sat quiet.