Danie Ware - Ecko Rising

“Fhaveon’s Council is not my concern.” Nivrotar’s voice was soft through her curtain of hair. “To involve myself would be a declaration of –”

“No. I need...” Ress clawed one thin hand about her shoulder, pulling her close almost as if to embrace her. He was shaking with the effort needed to remain focused. “Roderick... must... know... what I’ve seen. All of it. This...” He was panting, sweating. “This is... what he’s been looking for!” His voice rasped with the import of what he was trying to tell them. “The Bard... I hear him, see him. He must understand !”

Nivrotar stared into his face. “I can reach Roderick, if I must. What do I tell him?” For a moment, the dark eyes of the Lord of Amos searched the crazed veteran’s face, his disfocused gaze. “Ress. A moment longer, stay with me. What do I tell him?”

“The world’s fear comes. It is manifest.” His voice was breaking now, his breathing becoming sobs. “She showed me everything !”

Jayr blinked, baffled and hurting.

Nivrotar said, “The world’s fear.” She sat back on her heels, considering. “I tried to protect you, Ress of the Banned. You have found the answer, but it has cost you your mind. Can you...” Her tone was gentle now, almost as if she were terrified to upset the delicate, desperate balance of his cling to sanity. One pale hand stroked his cheek. “Can you tell me... can you tell me what you can see?”

Her meaning was clear, though unspoken: Without costing me mine?

“My Lord, the drug is still in his blood. His sight is clear, but his words –”

“Ress.” The Lord stroked his cheek again, her white fingers gentle. “What does the world fear?”

“Nothing! It’s outside the Count of Time; it’s Nothing! Kazyen !”

Jayr said, “What the rhez is – ?”

“The world’s fear! Tell him!” Ress’s mouth exploded in red and he fell back, silent, his eyes staring empty at the Amos night. He was still breathing – but his mind was gone.

Nivrotar stood up.

Her voice was like a death knell as she said, “Send a bretir to my... emissary... in Fhaveon. Whether we understand them or not, Ress’s words must reach the Bard.

“And we must pray that he understands.”

* * *

Out of the darkness, images fell like drops of rain. They were infrequent at first and they delighted him. He turned his face upwards, blinking to see. Then they were more numerous, a downpour covering and soaking him – until they became a cascade like a waterfall, an onslaught, battering him down.

He tried to run from them; ran until he felt his chest would burst. Perhaps he was trying to outrun the water, to save himself from the assault; perhaps his running was just another image and he was tiny and tumbling, drowning under the deluge.

Somewhere, the voice called his name again, far distant, begging him to listen. It was female, desperate. He was a child, it was his mother; he was a man, it was his wife – her tones were coloured with hope and terror. Hear me, child. You must hear me. You are so close. He tried, but the images were battering him, drowning him. They were coming too fast.

Desperate, he reached out to hold on to something. And he saw...

The Ilfe , destroyed. The Well of the World’s Memory – gone. A single fragment from the chaos that tumbled past him, one he clung to, a lifeline. With it came others – the broken Monument, the desolation of the Great Library, the chill white of the Theatre of Nine. All of these things, decaying, because the World could not remember. In the instant of this realisation, a vast time passed him, an aeon of understanding.

Child who sees, you must hear! Help me!

The voice was a cry of feminine grief, terrible enough to make him cringe. He raised his arms and tried to cry back to her, “How?”

But she did not answer him, and the waterfall had gone. He staggered at the sudden lack of pressure. Fell, panting, to the ground.

She had left him.

He opened his eyes.

* * *

Sealed in hopelessness, far below the surface of the great Lord City, Roderick stirred in a breathless, wordless panic.

His mind was tumbled by images and memories, splashing fragments of things he had once seen, the same images that had swirled at the back of his mind all of his life. They were bright, now, like sunlight on the water. He had to blink to see that the room around him was dark.

The Ryll. The water and the fear. The tumbling, nonsensical chaos of the world’s nightmare – this, he knew.

But the vision was not his.

Then who...?

He sat up, understanding flooding him like a chill.

It brought him more awake. He found that he was shivering, almost as though he had been in cold water. Pieces of the images still floated at the edges of his mind. They were strong – there was a cry of pain still in his ears and fear in every layer of the darkness around him.

What had he seen?

For a moment, he was still, didn’t move. As if more motion would disturb the last of the images, make them evaporate in the darkness, he sat poised – but they were fading even as he reached for them.

Was there flame – was there anger?

The shiver became a shudder, a tease across his skin. A certainty, though he still wasn’t sure what it was.

As a youth, the Guardians had welcomed him – the first of his kind to be born in the Ryll’s home city of Avesyr in a hundred generations, hailed as the hope of his people. There were few of them left, even then, scattered watchers of a myth forgotten, adhering only to their own history and a mandate more ancient than they had words to recall.

They had taught him many things – to watch the water and to comprehend the tumble of the images within. They had taught him to fight and to run, to understand letters and music, to craft a story to entrance an audience.

They had also taught him to think.

In the darkness about him, the dream fragments were thinning to nothing. They left only isolated images, echoes that made no sense – but one thing remained as clear as Tundran ice...

He knew that that vision had not been his.

Someone else had seen the same thing; someone else had witnessed the thoughts of Ryll, the world’s nightmare.

Someone else had seen the thing they’d called heresy, the blasphemy he had committed.

The thought brought him fully awake and he was on his feet in the darkness, thinking, thinking. He was still shivering, as through the cold had sunk into his bones. He needed Rhan, he needed Ecko, he needed The Wanderer, he needed...

He needed to understand what he’d seen. It was the closest he had come to the world’s nightmare, the closest in more returns than he could recall – and the feeling that time was closing in upon him was suddenly exhilarating and dreadful and powerful.

But whose vision was it?

He placed his hands against the cool of Fhaveon’s core-stone, and tried to remember.

I am a Guardian. I know how to do this.

...and he was standing upon a solitary rock tower. He was alone, utterly alone – as if he were the last mortal, or the first one...

...there were lines of energy woven within the grass, the power fluxing through them, soul to soul. This was natural: this was the way things should be...

...the magma lake that was the soul of fire; the vast, carved caverns that were ice; the hearts of the Kartian PriestLords that held the dark; the great sarsen monolith that had once been the OrSil, the soul of light. The Elemental Powerflux, awakening...

...but to what?