Danie Ware - Ecko Rising

Penya was still laughing as he came after her, shambling faster now. Behind her, the great, blunt-featured statue stared out over the water.

Tekisarri. Saluvarith’s son, Rakanne’s father. The boy who found me when I was washed up and broken at the base of the cliff...

...Damn you, Phylos, I’ll tear out your spine for this!

And there they were, racing from either side of the cot, from its darkened doorway. There were over a dozen of them, dressed in the ramshackle woollens of fishermen but with the strong shoulders and raised chins that marked them instantly as military.

Mostak! You betray your brother? Your family?

The politics bothered him for only a moment. The scattering of guised soldiers spread into a loose line, armed with an unpleasant assortment of hooks, axes and gutting blades.

It started to rain harder. The shaft of sunlight was gone.

Penya shrieked, startled, skidded to a stop. “Oh my Gods!”

He snarled at her, “Get behind me!” Had she betrayed him? He’d no idea. The burning was too strong for reason, too powerful. But these bastards had made a mistake.

He was still on the wall – they couldn’t come at him all at once. At best, they’d be three at a time. His grin was breaking free now, cracking through his sallow-skinned guise. His bwaeo laugh was audible, thrown high into air by the chill sea wind.

Foundersson’s Champion. Master of Light. Then. Still. Always.

He challenged them straight. “Come on, then! Rip those hooks into my flesh, damn you! Put my balls on a spear and take them back to the Council!”

But Penya shrieked again, pointing wildly.

On the lighthouse balcony, two archers, shafts nocked and ready to loose. And behind him, the three toughs from the doorway were ranging themselves across the wall top, slouching and smirking. Their knives were dirty.

“Nice ambush.” His words were as sharp as a blade across the throat.

With a yell, they rushed him.

As he detonated, the rain sheeted across the harbour.

* * *

He came to with a start, his body jolting as though it had been in freefall. Somewhere in the back of his head, there were echoes of screaming.

Whose?

The air was deep cold, it stank of stone and salt and loss. And there was a pain in his back – a dull pain, a dark pain. A leftover ache like an embedded fragment of betrayal.

Penya.

He was hazy. Figments taunted the corners of his thoughts – flitting shadows he couldn’t quite see. His light was extinguished, exhausted; his connection to the Powerflux broken. He hurt, mind and body.

He was alone.

With an effort of will that nearly tore him flesh from bone, he got his hands under his shoulders and pushed his chin up.

He blinked, grinding his sight into focus.

Glory and exultation. Dazzling light refracting through pelting rain. Arrows sparking into ash before they reached him. Warriors falling, hands over their faces to shield their eyes. Laughter thrown into the sky as he knew they couldn’t touch him...

Dark stone walls, slick with green. A heavy wooden door cracked at the base and letting a chink of light point along the rock floor to the backs of his fingers.

...The tiny bite at his back, the spreading numbness. The shock; the denial. The fading, struggling, reaching. Rainbows cracking, scattered across the stone like broken crystal. Falling, falling away.

Then nothing – “Kazyen”.

He blinked for a moment, puzzled, figments still dancing, mocking him. Then he felt a shiver of fear as he realised...

...screaming...

...that wasn’t everything. Somewhere between that falling and the jolt that’d awoken him, there had been a nightmare. A body, thrown through a shutter; a woman, pounding his chest with furious fists.

What?

He shivered, a frisson through his skin. The figments taunted him, flickering just too far away to reach.

A white face. A last, startled expression as it plummeted into darkness. And then the screaming, all the way down.

The frisson became fear – real, tangible fear. The figments laughed more loudly and his skin crawled with sudden dread.

Dear Gods, Samiel, Father. What did I do ?

He needed to move.

Struggling to muster his concentration, he blinked at where he was – yes, sealed in Fhaveon’s rock-walled gaol, the oubliette beneath her perfect stone. With a flash of bitterly ironic clarity, he realised this was another thing he’d built.

And this one he couldn’t get out of.

He tried to stand, failed. His feet slipped on slick, cold weed; his skull boomed dully like the drums of the High Cathedral tower. His body felt like water, no cohesion. It took three attempts to even sit, elbows on his knees, head in his hands.

His face was scratched, four neat nail rakes down one cheek.

“Rhan, you cursed bastard, you filthy, faithless sehvrak !” Fury and helplessness. “You owe him your oath, your...”

For a moment, he’d caught a fragment of the nightmare and he froze, staring at it in horror. Valicia, Demisarr’s wife, her shoulders and breasts bared, her hand clawing at his cheek... the hate on her face... No... that was beyond crazed...

Then it was gone, and he was sitting there, hand pressed to drying scabs, to four bloodied weals of loathing.

Valicia? What happened?

Fear was congealing into truth – to be down here, he’d done a lot damned worse than a packet of illegal herbs.

He had to get out...

But he had built this one to be impregnable.

There was a voice outside his cell.

It echoed oddly from the rock, barking instructions in a harsh, merciless snap. It was too far away to hear clearly. Like a ribbon-town beggar, he dragged himself across the floor, placed an ear to a crack between the door planks.

Footsteps – hollow in the tunnel. A long, powerful stride, a billow of fabric, other feet scurrying to keep up.

He pulled back against the far corner of the weed-slick wall and sank into his hands, not needing to feign the despair.

The stern footsteps came close, closer. There was the fumble of a drop-key, the door creaked and the light opened fanlike across the stone. The shadow within it was unmistakeable.

“Rhan.” The word was pure victory, as hard as a fist.

Phylos.

“Merchant Master.” Rhan didn’t bother looking up. His sardonic bass was muted, almost a growl. He was bruised, he’d realised, bones cracked, he could feel them – somewhere, he’d been savagely beaten. “I’ll rip out your lungs and feed them to you.”

The merchant snorted, glowered at whatever had been scuttling behind him, and snapped the door shut. He crouched before Rhan in a crumple of fabric, took Rhan’s chin in a hand decorous with wrought terhnwood-fibre rings.

“How much do you remember,” he said softly, “my Lord Seneschal?”

Screaming. All the way down. Filthy and faithless.

“What did you do to Penya, you bastard?” He looked up, gaze burning from under his brows. He didn’t have enough energy to light a damned candle, but the anger – the anger was helping. He snarled in Phylos’s face, “What did you do ?”

Phylos laughed, a boom like an oarsmens’ drum.

“I knew where you’d go – you’re as guileless as a child. And I have her son.” His shoulders gave an amused half shrug. “People are easy to shift, with the right lever.”

Rhan surged into movement, a graceless half lurch.

“I’ll tear off your sk–”

Slam! He was back against the wall, ringed hand hard on his shoulder, Archipelagan strength behind it.