Danie Ware - Ecko Rising

Jayr shivered, tried again. “Ress? Don’t you know me?” Her voice caught on pleading with him. “Ress? Please... Say that you know me, you know who I am!”

But his face crumpled. “Mother, I hear you. How can I help?”

With a short exhalation of annoyance, Lord Nivrotar unfolded to her feet.

Jayr’s mood changed like the twitch of a curtain – seeing the Lord’s movement as dismissal, her grief caught light and burned. As Nivrotar turned away, Jayr pounced.

“What did we find? What was in that book?”

Nivrotar tapped pale fingers upon the hilt of her sword.

“My Lord.”

Jayr crossed her arms over her chest. She was unused to facing anyone at her own height – but the Lord was slender, fragile by comparison. Jayr tensed powerful muscles beneath scar-carved skin.

“Answer the damned question.”

The court cringed.

Nivrotar’s tapping fingers gained speed. She gave a short sigh, but Jayr spoke across her.

“He did find something? Didn’t he? Did find something you’ve missed? What’re you going to do, torture it out of him? Torture it out of me ?”

“If I deem it necessary.” Nivrotar measured Jayr with eyes as deep and dark as an underground lake. “Find me the healer Jemara”

“Yes, Lord.” A messenger scuttled.

Ress said, “The world screams.”

With a soft, metal chinking, the Lord knelt beside the mad ex-scholar, her court echoing her movements.

Her hands touched his face, gently wiping the spittle from the sides of his mouth.

“I fear for you,” she said gently. “If you have somehow shared Roderick’s vision, if you have tried to see the world’s nightmare... You are not a Guardian, have no way to encompass what you have witnessed. I fear it has riven your mind.”

He smiled blankly at her.

“Yes,” he said. Then he clamped his hands over his ears and began to rock back and forth relentlessly, repeating, “He knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows... !”

“Who knows?”

“He saw, the only true vision.” He stopped, shouted in her face. “But he cannot remember !”

Helplessly, the Lord returned to her feet, hands knotted at her sides. Jayr didn’t move as she spoke to the apothecary. “Take him into your care. Jemara will sit with him at all times and scribe everything he says.”

“Yes, Lord.”

“Each morning, you’ll bring those writings to me.”

“Yes, Lord.”

“And you.” She turned to Jayr. “You were appointed his bodyguard and so you remain, you will stay by his side. When his pain makes sense to you, you will tell me.”

“I’m not leaving him.” She glowered at the servitors as they picked Ress’s pallet up. “Anything happens to him, anything , Syke’ll be down here. And he can make a right mess when he tries.”

“I do not doubt it,” Nivrotar said wryly. “Now go – I have work that must be done.”

As they carried Ress from the audience hall, he cried again, “You must hear me!”

Jayr was silent as she followed him out.

* * *

Jayr had fallen asleep in her chair when Ress’s screaming woke her, shattering the night’s stillness into sharp-edged fragments of sound. He sat upright, suddenly as a shock, hands wrapped over his head.

Wordless, inarticulate, expressions of fear, grief, anger – she didn’t know. They ripped through the small chamber with a soul-deep pain that made her flesh crawl.

She tried to soothe him, but the noise wore on her thinning patience and soon she was shaking his shoulder, shouting, “Ress! Ress ! Ress, for the Gods’ sakes !”

But he didn’t hear her. He was next to her, and he was in another world.

“RESS!”

With no warning, he was silent, hugging his body in anguish, his face contorted.

Rocking back and forth, he began to mutter, “No, no, no, no-no-no...”

Jayr clenched her fists in an effort to stay calm.

“Ress, please... ”

She was reaching the end of her tolerance. She’d been all night with minimal sleep, unwilling to leave his side. Nivrotar’s entourage of alchemists, philosophers, healers and apothecaries were all damned useless. Any idiot could tell that Ress was loco, but they couldn’t do horseshit about it. And the longer he was trapped, the worse his torment became.

Singing calmed him. When he heard a voice, high and sweet or deep and powerful, he would strain with every fibre of his being to listen; then collapse as if it was not what he wanted. After that, he would shriek, or sob, or talk frenziedly earnest gibberish. Once, he’d howled for mercy from the tortures of an unseen hand.

And she’d watched it all, helpless, unable to face the enemy Ress fought – just like she’d been unable to face Feren’s infection. If she’d been able to touch it, she would’ve torn it apart.

Ress had dissolved into terrible sobbing, a pitiful sound. If he could have seen himself, he would have perished from humiliation. The loss of his mind had one sole blessing – he didn’t know what had happened to him. Trying to muster serenity, Jayr laid his head on her shoulder. He was unaware of her presence.

“Shhhh.” Her voice was gentle. “Trust me, I won’t leave you.”

Slowly, his weeping softened. And it was quiet.

Outside, far below, the wide waters of the Great Cemothen River crawled past to the sea and the vast, dark sprawl of Amos slept on uncaring. Trapped in the height of Nivrotar’s dark castle like some feeble damned maiden, Jayr had found herself hating the city for surrounding her, for its smells and moods, and most of all for its ability to swallow suffering.

Just like the Kartiah.

Her past was too close; it haunted her.

Where was Syke? Where was Triqueta?

What had been in that fireblasted poem? “ Time the Substance of the Gods...”

“Please,” she muttered, “give his madness to me. If he has great vision, then let him go.”

But the Gods, as ever, were not listening.

A knock at the door made her start.

“Yes?”

It swung open to reveal Nivrotar herself, the healer Jemara hovering uncertainly behind her.

Jayr stood upright.

“What?”

“I dislike his screaming.” Nivrotar swept into the room. She was wrapped in a cloak the colour of dried blood. As the plump, cheery-faced Jemara hesitated awkwardly, the Lord stopped by Ress’s bed. “We must take control.”

“Control?” Jayr said.

“Jemara.” Nivrotar gestured for the woman to speak.

“It goes like this,” Jemara said, shrugging round shoulders. “There’s a way I can unlock his mind – but it’s dangerous. Some people ply these substances for recreation, some believe that their visions bring them great truth. Others –”

“Jem,” Nivrotar said warningly.

Jumping nervously, the healer said, “There are various narcotics, hallucinogenics...” she tailed off, watching Jayr’s expression.

Jayr snapped, “He’s not touching your – !”

“Think about it,” Nivrotar said. “If he can open his mind, we may understand him.”

“The problem is,” Jemara said, “that Ress has strength and experience – we’ll need more than a little. Eoritu’s euphoric – it can be addictive, and it could make him worse. Once it’s in his body, we’ll have to lead his visions where we want them to go. Do you understand what I’m asking?”

Jayr looked down at where Ress lay. He slept peaceably now, his face lined and sunken.

“Will it hurt him?”

Jemara shook her head.

Nivrotar said, “Not his physical health.”

Where was Syke? Where was anyone that could take the weight of this decision from her shoulders? Ress, what did they do to you?