Ecko Rising (26 page)

He drained the wine, grimaced, looked for another.

But was halted by a quiet, smart and familiar rap at the door.

By the Gods! At this time of the morning?

“My Lord.” Scythe was tall, slim, young, despicably efficient, and smart enough to keep his judgements to himself. He also entered rooms without waiting to be asked. “I have no wish to... wake you,” he said, “but there is something you should know.”

Something in his voice chased the faintest flicker of tension between Rhan’s shoulders. He put bucket and goblet down, straightened up, creaked again.

“What’s the problem?”

Scythe, pointedly ignoring the tangle of bodies at his feet, held something up to the light.

“There has been another attack, my Lord, another fire.”

The shock spread like opening wings – like the first breath of wind that warned of a storm to come. Something in the Powerflux; something that tinged the very edge of his elemental awareness...

“Scythe?” His voice was low, soft. “Where?”

Mutters stirred at his feet.

“From the farmlands north of Ikira, my Lord. The outermost edge of the terhnwood crop.”

The terhnwood crop.

For a moment, he said nothing. Scythe’s expression was absolutely blank.

“How long? Was anything found?”

“Evening yesterday, my Lord, and nothing has been found. The farmer sent her runner straight here.”

Less than two days.

Implications rose out of the smoky morning, gibbering fears and threats. Plains fires in the summer were a known hazard, but there had been several of them reported, one after another, and something about them was striking him to his heart. A problem with the terhnwood crop, at this time of the return, would be beyond disastrous. If the harvest was in any way threatened...

Fhaveon, more than any other city in the Varchinde, was dependent upon her farmlands – not only for the tithe of food that fed her in return for her protection, but for the growth of the terhnwood that perpetuated the cycle of the Grasslands’ trade. Fhaveon’s crop was twice that of Amos and four times that of the southern city of Annondor – put simply, she was the Grasslands’ single biggest supplier. Without terhnwood, the political and social circulation of the Varchinde would be undone – and the disaster would spread.

But beneath this, there was a greater and more fundamental fear.

Am I tested, Samiel? Is this where I must fight for real?

Somewhere deep in Rhan’s immortal soul, there came a flicker of white flame, a fare of long, long forgotten anticipation. He rubbed a hand over his face, flexed his back.

“Scythe. I need runners.”

“Already done, my Lord.” He blinked cold eyes briefly in the rising sun. “The Council is convened at your command. You should also know the Bard is here. The rumours are all though the city.”

“Roderick?” The flicker became a grin. “Bastard has impeccable timing. Get him too.” He studied Scythe’s expression, thinking. “Actually, never mind. I’ll get him myself.”

The Seneschal breathed his hangover out into the morning, could almost see it lifted away from him, dissipating like the smoke from his lungs.

“Damned mad prophet – he needs to be here for this one.”

* * *

It was over in a moment, a flash of heart-lurch and disbelief, an extending hand, a cry, a jump of the floor and a crazed tumble through the substance of the world...

Ecko had gone.

Scathing and oblivious, Ecko had turned his black-toothed sneer on everything the Bard had tried to tell him. He’d fled into the grey light of the pre-dawn chill and the tavern was moving as if glad to be rid of him. Reality twisted around Roderick, picked him up and tore him to pieces and spun him to somewhere new.

Ecko had gone.

Yet even as the world changed, so the Bard was on his feet, shouting, crying denial, riding the movement of the building like a Banned acrobat – but as the sickness and the darkness slowly spiralled to a stop, he staggered and caught himself on the edge of a table...

The taproom was empty, new light was chinking through the shutters.

Ecko had gone.

Instinctively, irrationally, Roderick was on the doorstep anyway, needing to find him, to call him back, to explain.
Don’t do this! You don’t understand!
Yet with the loss of one miracle had come the manifestation of another.

He stumbled into the crisp, sea-scented air of the tavern’s foregarden, the old sign creaking above his head, and he found that his pointless cry had caught in a throat choked by another realisation entirely.

With no warning, there were tears in his eyes – a glitter of hope.

Before him rose Fhaveon, the Lord City of Saluvarith the Founder, the home of Rhan and the might of the Varchinde.

Ecko had gone – but Roderick was
here.

He could not know if the tavern had heard him, responded to his desperation, but he was here, and Rhan would have answers – he would have direction and insight. The Council would help him. Please the Gods, he would no longer be carrying the burden of his vision alone. The alchemy of Tusien was manifest – it had been seen and witnessed. Now, at last –
at last
– the city could not deny him, the Lord Foundersson would rally his forces and offer his help.

He had to.

Didn’t he?

Ress’s warning haunted him:
“They’ll lock you up.”

Sometimes, the weight of his forgotten vision was too much to bear alone.

Above him, the birds cried mournful in the morning air. Fhaveon was a cliffside city – she stood against the paling shine of the sky, the sun behind her shoulder and the rising tessellation of her streets and buildings all in soft shadow, shining with strings of lanterns and rocklights. Unlike almost every other coastal habitation, Fhaveon’s face was turned away from the water – she looked inland and the streets climbed in glistening zigzags all the way to the silhouetted shapes of the cathedral and Foundersson’s palace, high above. In the grey dawn, the city was alive with light – she had roadways and gardens of fantastical beauty, carven pillars and tumbling waterways and stone art and crystal-leaved trees that reflected the rocklights to a dancing gleam.

She was a jewel, built by the Founder Saluvarith from a vision of his own – she ruled the Grasslands with a detailed knowledge of trade and terhnwood, a merciless intelligence and the only real military might that the plains could muster.

The Bard wished that Ecko could see her – wished that he could have found one thing to make him realise that he needed to care...

I’m s’posed to think this shit is real?

I’m supposed to think it’s not?

How could Ecko care, if he didn’t believe in any of them?

For a moment, Roderick cursed his own stupidly – he closed his eyes against a complex rise of hope and dread and bitter irony. The Gods, as Rhan had told him many times, enjoyed their games of spite and childishness.

And without Ecko, without any kind of physical evidence, rallying the Council was going to be that much harder.

They’ll lock you...

His fear rose again and he swallowed it, opening his eyes to look more closely around him.

As if this would help him judge how much of a task he really faced.

The Wanderer had manifest at the very outside of Fhaveon’s skirting, in one of the many peculiarly empty patches that decorated her hem.

Many returns before, when Adward the Consolidator had brought the Varchinde’s trade under the city’s leadership, so the culture of the Grasslands had undergone a subtle shift. As the craftsmanship, transport and dealing of terhnwood itself had become the Grasslands’ lifeblood, so many of the population had become perpetually mobile.

From this beginning had grown the ribbon-towns and caravanserai that lined the trade-roads – from this beginning also had come the founding of Roviarath as a formal city, rather than as the huge and ever-swelling sprawl of the Fayre. The old saying went – if Fhaveon was the Grasslands’ head, then Roviarath was its heart.

With the swelling, mobile population of the trade-roads, the static population in the cities had lessened. In Fhaveon, the people had drifted almost instinctively towards her hubs – the harbours at the coast and riverside and the inner marketplaces. Out here, at the city’s very limits, there were wide, rugged patches that had simply been abandoned. The buildings were not ruined – the homes and garrisons and outposts and tithehalls were built of the same perfectly pale, striated stone. Even here, they’d been constructed far too well to be tumbledown.

Yet, over returns of abandonment, the city’s gardens had spread and the Varchinde had crept inwards, taking back its own. In many places the buildings were overgrown – the grass could be seen through the windows, growing up inside the very walls. Many creatures lived here: birds nested in rooftops and scavengers prowled the weed-grown streets.

Out there, The Wanderer was oddly isolated, a spark of life in a city deserted. The emptiness was eerie, beautiful and sad, a no-man’s-land caught between the vast, coloured shimmer of the northern plains on one side, and the rising, rocky promontory that was the city herself, her strength uplifted to the sky.

But the morning was cool and quiet, edged in shadow and soft green.

Behind him, he could hear wakening voices, the creaking of floors. As if it had absolutely no regard for the momentous events of the previous night, the momentous events to come, the tavern began anew with each dawn – and there was work that needed to be done.

A flurry of birds rose suddenly, crying as if they were laughing at him. There was movement in the emptiness, but he did not see it clearly – sometimes, people did live down here, out of reach of the city’s hands and fists.

The Bard stood in the tavern’s foregarden, watching as the birds circled, then settled.

Whatever had disturbed them had gone.

Though he couldn’t see it from here, he knew that Fhaveon was deceptive – an elegant face upon a body of stone. Her northern side, facing the Swathe River, was a slash of gorge, almost as though the hand of Samiel himself had cut the world, his wife, to her heart. Here, there were the wide wharves of inland harbour, loading terhnwood and salt, unloading stone from the Khohan Mountains, wood from Darash, food and ale from the Triangle Cities – Foriath, Narvakh and The Hayne.

There were bridges at the head of the gorge and a scatter of buildings that stretched down its far side, leading towards Ikira and Teale, and the city’s outposts and tithed farmlands.

The final side of the city, facing the water, was the great Break Wall that ran sheer and mighty all the way down to the sea.

From the plains Fhaveon may look soft and wealthy, but Saluvarith had built her as a fortress – as a fortress against the water. The city had been made to stand and face her foe – and that foe was not the gentle grass that now crept softly over her hemline.

So many things, forgotten.

Rammouthe Island, barely a league across the strait, was beautiful – a haven for creatures and birds, for rare grasses and trees that grew colossal and unhindered. The city had been built to defend against a foe long forgotten; her people cared no more.

Only Rhan, defender and champion of the city and of the plainland entire – he, too, awaited the foe that the Council no longer acknowledged.

Above the Bard’s head, a single bird hovered, watching the life below.

Roderick sighed, stretched, and went back to the building.

“There you are, you bastard.” Rhan’s sardonic bass was unmistakeable. In the warm, dusty dimness he seemed almost to carry his own light. “I hope you’re awake, because we’ve got a sod of a problem.”

* * *

“Samiel’s teeth.” Sat at the bar, an empty goblet in front of him, Rhan turned an arched white eyebrow on the Bard. “Guardian of the Ryll, you can’t find your arse with a signpost. I’ve got a real crisis on my hands, here – what in the name of Vahl Zaxaar’s bloodied batwings are you prattling about?”

“I’m not jesting.” To Rhan’s eyes, Roderick looked like he’d spent the night wrestling for his masculine virtue and losing. “This is all –”

“It’s all a game. I’ve been telling you that for returns.” Rhan clapped the Bard’s shoulder, his grin affectionate. Roderick was half crazed, but his heart was true and his insight considerable. And for a mortal, he’d lived a sod of a long time – probably why he was slightly unhinged. “And find me the cellen, will you, I don’t know what this stuff is but I’m pretty sure it’s been drunk once already.”

For a moment, Roderick blinked at him, his gaze fragmenting with frustration. “By the Gods, Rhan, have you heard as much as a word? Everything is in motion, the Count of Time gathers pace. Can’t you
feel
– ?”

“Enough drama, you’ll strain something.” The Seneschal’s voice gentled, but he gestured with the goblet. “This ‘Ecko’ character of yours –”

“He’s loose, uncontrolled. Perhaps he went after the girl.”

“He wouldn’t be the first one to make that mistake.”

“Or after the Banned.”

“They’ll carry his bollocks as a battle standard.” The Seneschal thought about this for a moment, then he flickered a frown. “Let me get this straight. Your Ryll-born vision is telling you – what? This missing girl, this injured kid, these monsters, what in Samiel’s name do they have to do with fires in the terhnwood crop?”

Roderick met his gaze, said faintly acidly, “Have you not felt it, Master of Elemental Light?”

“That wasn’t the question.”

Roderick’s smile was bleak, weary. “The boy’s tale – the creatures he described – they have sent ripples through my being as though I should know what they are. As though I should
remember.
This is alchemy of legend, it has not been seen since Tusienic times. The rumours are scattered but they grow – I have to bring this to the Council –”

“Sadly, Ress was right about that much – you can’t take ‘legends’ to the Council, they’ll laugh you out of the hall.” Rhan’s perpetually wry, slightly self-deprecating tone took the sting from the comment. “Again.” He grinned. “Look. We’ve got a problem that’s actually going to make them sit up – unexplained fires are real, tangible threats.” He grinned. “Trust me. I’ll make them hear you.”