Danie Ware - Ecko Rising

“Jayr...” he said. His breathing was short, his weight hung limp. “We did it. The world... shows me... her fear. Like the Bard, I can see... !”

“You can’t see shit !” She shook him again, shouted in his face – but she may as well have tried to reach the fireblasted moons. Tears twisted her mouth, she had no idea what to do, no idea what’d happened –

Her hand slipped. In a slow, graceful motion, Ress tumbled backwards to the floor. Ancient paper scattered, puffed into dust.

Lain in its midst, he started to thrash, mouth working, hands clenched white into claws. A thin keening spilled from him. For a moment, he almost seemed to be trying to fight, trying with all the might of his scholar’s mind to banish some figment that assailed him.

Froth trickled from the corner of his mouth, his back arched and his heels drummed.

“Nnnnnn...!”

His poem was gone.

Jayr threw herself over him, legs over his thighs, hands on his wrists to prevent him hurting himself against the stone. His neck corded, his head turned from side to side as if he tried to avoid a kiss.

“Nnnn...!”

She screamed his name in his face, sobs uncontrolled.

For a moment, he tried – his frenzy paused and he seemed to struggle to focus, to look at her... Then he screamed like a chearl and his body spasmed, shuddered, and collapsed.

His eyes were open, staring up at the broken balconies, the cracked glass.

The dust.

Barely daring, she choked, “Ress?”

He blinked, his jaw moved.

“Ress?” She sat back, wiping tears.

He broke into sobs, hands clawing at his face, his hair.

“Not strong enough!” His nails left red lines in his skin. “Rain and wind and metal – a city of glass and stone and vast, soul emptiness...”

Jayr grabbed his wrists as through he were a child. “Ress!” She was terrified – had no idea what was happening to him, what creature had come out of the book to assault his mind...

“He sees... wakes, needs power and powerlessness. They’re all sleeping. There are needles in his arms.”

He tried to free his hands. When Jayr released him, he buried his scratched face in them and started to cry.

“Mother... I listen. I hear the grass !”

“Ress...” The word was despair, disbelief. “I don’t understand.”

Gods, it can’t be this simple – the Bard’s been right all along!

Had he? Had he found some terrible, ancient truth? Or, like Feren’s conspiracy, had his stupid brain just made something out of...

Something out of Nothing.

It was so ludicrous it almost made her laugh.

Through sobs, he said, “It’s all so beautiful.” He was staring up at the crumbling balconies, the filthy, broken skylight. At least he was calm. “Older than we are, layers of buildings for a thousand returns...”

What is? She wanted to ask him, What can you see?

But he fell quiet, laying on his back on the broken mosaic – a sacrifice to the forgotten knowledge of the library.

For a moment, Jayr stared at him, panic clamouring at her, crying for release.

But she had no time for that now.

She was going to go to the palace.

She was going to understand the figments that tormented her friend.

And if the Lord of Amos didn’t help, Jayr was going to pull her city down round her ears.

PART 4: TORNADO

22: VISION

THE PALACE OF LORD NIVROTAR, AMOS

It was approaching the birth of the sun in the grubby sprawl of the Amos city state. Mist seeped out of bleak walls, lay in wait on cobbled streets, lent the dark city a pale shroud of fear.

In places, patches of disease across her shadowed face, there were battered stretches of sagging buildings, their roofs rotting and their windows cracked. And among these buildings dwelled the city’s scavengers, the derelicts, the poorest of the poor. They swarmed like rodents after every scrap of food or information.

And then fought like bweao for what they found.

There was no council in Amos, no institute, no Fhaveon-trained military, no private forces of mercantile security. In Amos, there was only Nivrotar.

Her word was law, her whim death.

And now, she faced a madman.

* * *

Ress of the Banned lay broken, a twisted figure upon the cold stone floor of the Varchinde’s most ancient building. He didn’t see the great, vaulted ceiling, the elegant figures that turned stone faces towards the Lord’s seat, or the carved, black-winged aperios that stood silent watch. He didn’t see Jayr, crouched beside his pallet, anger etched into each white scar on her skin.

In stark contrast to the artists and poets, the philosophers and performers that waited upon Lord Nivrotar’s every breath, neither Banned member paid her any attention. Ress stared into nothing as though answers taunted him. Jayr stroked his sweating forehead, frustrated and helpless.

“Ress of the Banned.” Lord Nivrotar had cast aside her gown and now wore blackened mail of real metal, a sword at her hip upon a tooled-leather baldric. Her hair was loose waves, making her complexion white and her eyes as dark as bruises. “You are a fool. And yet...” She stood to descend the steps.

Jayr watched her, resentment smouldering. She chewed on a fingernail, spat out a fragment.

As the Lord moved, the court stood with a rustle of fabric. Several people offered her a hand, but she ignored them. She paused at the foot of the pallet to stare into Ress’s thin, white face.

“What do you see?”

“How the rhez can he tell you?” Jayr’s insolence caused a gasp, a susurration of muttering. “He’s loco.”

Nivrotar glanced around her courtiers, silencing them. Her gaze settled upon one elderly philosopher.

“Can you comprehend his visions?”

The philosopher bowed, cleared his throat. “He babbles, my Lord, cries aloud, speaks to things we can’t see. He has witnessed something that has overpowered his mind.”

Nivrotar dismissed him, turned to the apothecary.

“His health is damaged?”

“He’s Banned, my Lord, strong, even with his age.” A wary glance at Jayr. “His suffering is only in his imagination.”

With a faint chink of mail, the Lord of Amos sank to one knee beside Ress.

In unison, her court sank with her.

“What do you see?” Nivrotar watched Ress’s face with a fascination torn between pity and awe.

Ress’s eyes flicked back and forth, his mouth worked as if to speak. He sprang suddenly taut, and his eyes flashed, inhuman, with a terrifying discharge of colour and energy. Then he collapsed into despair and curled up like a baby.

Baffled and helpless, Jayr was fighting to control a choking knot of emotions – she wanted to sob, or scream, or hit something until it bled. She had no idea how to help him.

“You’re the scholar!” Her mouth shook and the next words were a sob. “Help him!”

The court rustled in shock.

Ress was pale, rocking slightly, back and forth. Words still fell from him like pebbles, but they shattered as they hit the floor and were broken before sense could be made of them.

“Bring him food,” Nivrotar said. “Now!” Echoes of her order rang from the pillars. In a flurry of feet, a door opened and banged shut.

Slowly, Ress turned his head to look at them, and Jayr almost screamed.

His eyes were unfocused, both pupils huge but one larger than the other, his irises dark as blood. Shadows moved beneath his skin.

He blinked several times before he said, “I saw the Ryll, the water. Roderick... all this time.” A line of spittle trailed from one corner of his mouth and lost itself in his beard. He leaned forwards to confide in her. “We should have listened.”