Ecko snarled at her. “Fuck the geography lesson. What the
hell
did we just find?”
“And where’s Redlock?” Triqueta asked.
“Scouting.” Amethea shook the tail, turned it round to look at its other side. “He went up the lookout tower to see as far as the coast.”
Triq snorted. “He can see in the dark now?”
Amethea shrugged. “He’d never admit it, but I think this place gives him the creeps.” The tail twitched again, shuddered. “Can’t imagine why.”
Something in her voice brought the darkness to all of them - brought the awareness of the void of untrodden woodland, the ruins forgotten even to legend. Whatever really was out here, they were intruders, unknown and tiny against its time and history. Unconsciously, the three of them pulled together, peering outwards at the odd white light of the wood.
Ecko was starting to shiver - anger and adrenaline and come-down. The injury on his face was beginning to hurt. He wondered, stupidly, if he needed antivenin, if the bite - lash? - was gonna mess with his bloodstream, if his face was gonna swell up like the fucking Elephant Man...
Then his oculars caught it.
Not the end, not the hentai-flick nightmare this tail-thing had for a head, but the mark on its skin, like a miniature brand - a mark that was familiar.
Eck... Oh...
For a moment he stared at it, his adrenaline still shuddering, making his belly knot with tension. Then he said, “Gimme that.” His targeters flashed and he grabbed it from Amethea, lifting it to see.
It writhed like a live thing. He had to look twice to be sure he’d gotten it right.
Eck... Oh...
But there was no fucking mistake about it - the thing bore the same craftmark as the terhnwood blade that had taken them to Sarkhyn’s lab.
* * *
Redlock lay flat on the rock at the top of the lookout tower.
The rain had soaked into his garments, chilled his skin, plastered his hair to his face, but none of it mattered - not even the precious etched metal of his axeheads, now resting still against cold stone.
He lay in a silent jumble of disbelief, staring at the edge of the woodland and at the glitter of the eastern sea.
And at what lay between.
Over him, the clouds were thinning and the moons reached fingers of light through the gaps - prying apart the grey to look down at the rocky shoreline below. Their light glimmered on the seethe and rush of the water, on the spray that flew from the rocks.
And on the citadel that was standing there.
At the very edge of the world.
He hadn’t seen it at first, but now he could look almost nowhere else - it was compelling, impossible, a wide, low shadow upon the glitter of the water. It was angled walls and shaped stone creatures, the last forgotten sentinel of the Varchinde plain.
And, even in the moonlight, he could see it was not a ruin.
He had no idea what it could be - some dream, some figment - some echo of his manor lord past come back to haunt him. Even as the axeman was telling himself not to be so cursed stupid, he was staring at it in disbelief, almost expecting it to thin and fade, to spread out upon the dark water and be gone.
But he was awake, and cold, and sober. And the cursed thing was still right there - the plains’ last outpost, the forgotten city.
Forgotten, his right buttock. If it wasn’t a ruin, then someone -
something
- was damned well living in it.
Swarming backwards on his belly, covering himself in muck, he found that his hands were on his axes, sliding with unexplained sweat. His knuckles were white and he wanted to cough.
To cough and cough and
cough
until the dust in his chest all cleared.
Until that cursed shadow-citadel was no longer there.
Or until its Lord damned well showed itself.
He paused where he was, body wracking with silent spasm. One hand went over his mouth, smothering any chance of noise. When the spasm receded, he glanced back at the water, at the building that loomed there, walls black against the shine.
It was hard to see in only the moonlight, but there seemed to be some sort of gatehouse, crenellations elaborate, at the mouth of the river - a building like nothing else he’d ever seen. And behind it a walkway? Or steps? They were almost impossible to make out.
For a moment, he was tempted to slide down the seaward side of the upthrust rock - to go out into the open, closer, and to see what in the name of every cursed God they’d found out here... But then something else caught his attention.
Movement.
They were below him, right below him, skirting the edge of the lookout tower - they’d closed almost about his feet without him realising. The moonlight was fading now, the clouds closing back over their prey, but he could see them, creeping between the ruins and heading for his camp.
Shit.
As silent as he could, he pushed himself back to his feet and slipped down the far side of the rock, boots scraping on the slippery stone, looking for a foothold. He tore his overtunic on the stone, but made it down without mishap. He eased around the edge of the rock to see what awaited him, here in the cold nacre of the Gleam Wood.
And then the white moon surged through the cloud cover, just for a moment, and he realised what he was looking at.
These were not villagers, not brimstone-hoarding pirates.
These were something else.
Redlock swallowed bile, smothered another cough.
Name of the Gods!
Here, in among the ruins of the buildings, there were the ruins of
flesh.
These people were emaciated, thin to the point of starvation. Their garments were torn and their skin sun-darkened and cracking with dryness and salt. He could see now that their bodies were wrong - they had eyes in the wrong places, mouths in cheeks or shoulders, arms that ended in raw and bleeding wounds. Some were streaked with fluid; others had wound lengths of the flowering grasses about their heads or throats. A few bore weapons, clumsy and worn.
The axeman shuddered. The dark was pressing down upon him. He wanted to cough, but didn’t dare move, or make a sound.
“Lost, are we?”
Starting, he spun.
Standing beside him, half-hidden by moon-shadow, was a cloaked figure, a cowl covering its hair. It was tall, impossibly so, and what Redlock could see of its face was strong and tanned and smiling.
But that was not what made him stare.
The thing’s eyes had no pupil, no iris, they were a chaos of writhing colour. And its stance was odd, wrong: beneath the cloak hem it had hooves, wide and cracked like those of a road-running chearl.
The sight made the axeman’s gorge rise; his flesh crawl. His cough rose again, and he controlled the urge to put a hand over his mouth.
The creature watched him, smiling, almost as though it could trace his reactions - as though it enjoyed them.
“I’m Varriera,” it said, “once of Amos, now denizen of Aeona. The Lord Nivrotar would be proud, don’t you think?”
Redlock controlled an urge to grab this thing by the neck of its cloak.
Instead, he replied, “What do you mean?”
Varriera - whatever the rhez it was - came closer, and that faint, ironic smile deepened into a chuckle.
“You’re familiar with the market tales that tell you, you shouldn’t leave the path? Aeona is the place you shouldn’t find.” Its face was still smiling. Its hands were decorated in old ink, leather wristbands. “We’re a quiet community here, axeman. Few reach us, fewer still manage to leave. Certainly, no one leaves” - its smile spread, showing teeth - “unchanged.”
Unchanged.
The word seemed to echo the twisted people, the overgrown ruins. As if the creature felt Redlock’s shiver, it came closer still, laid a muscled hand on the axeman’s shoulder - a gesture that seemed half-assessment, half-caress.
It said softly, “We should offer you our hospitality.”
Redlock fought down the urge to punch this thing in the face, again and again and again, until those crazed eyes were not looking at him any more, were not watching his mouth, the pulse beat in his throat.
He said, “Take your hand off me, or lose it.”
But Varriera met his gaze.
“Aeona is old, axeman, a place crafted to be forgotten.” The creature’s voice was rich and deep, almost Kartian. “Do you not know the darker edges of history? A scatter of these were built when Tusien fell, built to hold those who’d raised arms against the good of the Varchinde. Few now survive - and all have passed out of mortal ken.” Its smile curved. “Including this one.”
The word was a hard caress, like a hand about the throat. Redlock was pinned, unable to move.
“To the north,” Varriera continued, “Fhaveon simply imprisons her unwanted - most of them.” Its smile flickered. “To the west, there are those CityWardens who load them into caravans and send them to the fighting pits of the Kartiah. Here, we stand within the reach of Amos, of Annondor and Oraneith, of Padesh and Idrak. We have our manor and our Warden, axeman, and we, too, have our trade-cycle.”
Redlock said, words like crushed horror, “You tithe flesh.”
“Flesh is the tithe I take.” Varriera smiled. “My return trade is one of learning.”
Redlock tried to shake his head, clear his thoughts; tried to reach through the dark and the glitter and the clever words to piece all of this together.
“What is this place? What are
you?”
“Ah, axeman. I’m as human as you are.” The creature held up its hands, the ink upon its fingers. “I came here to find healing, new life...”
“And them? What did they find?” The axeman lunged a hand for the front of Varriera’s cloak, said, “I don’t know what this game is, but I’ve had enough.”
In response, Varriera’s curving smile was as soft as a pillow over the face.
* * *
They came out of the darkness, the ruins of the people that had lived here.
Ecko was moving, his hands and feet a blur.
Amethea fell back, her hands to her mouth. The wreckage that came for them was beyond anything she could ever have dreamed.
Triqueta, too, moved back, towards their poor chearl. She was feeling that familiar rise of panic in her gut; feeling her throat surge with that distinctive, welcome mix of elation and alarm.
She swallowed the deeper, darker flicker of fear.
Come on then. I can still do this.
I can still -
She was on the back of the chearl in a moment, holding it fast between her knees.
I’ll take the lot of you, you see if I can’t!
All about them, the throng were silent. They closed in softly, like ash, like blankets, reaching with hands and wounds and creeper and a desperate, choking yearning. A need that seemed pleading, almost childlike. They made her flesh crawl, the stones in her cheeks itch. For just a moment, she was a tight ball of absolute novice-terror - she missed her youth and her confidence, she missed her little mare. The chearl under her was big, too placid, too unfamiliar, too stupid -
I can’t do this any more, I can’t!
And then she shook herself, held the panic at bay, the animal with her thighs. She flicked her blades in dazzling wheels through her fingers, terhnwood gleaming, though the show was as much for her as it was for them.
“Come on then!” Triqueta was upright in the stirrups. “Let’s see what you can do!”
They closed in tighter, a blur of horrors, one upon another in a way that made her stomach churn. Something about them
steamed
in the grey air.
* * *
Ecko had finally realised what had been frightening him.
As the misshapen throng closed in, a gentle pressure, the hand of a loved one over nose and mouth, stopping you breathing, watching you die - as the mangled things came inwards, he understood.
They were
family.
Like the human-faced snake-tailed monster that had spoken his name - these things were like
him:
they were changed flesh, experimental, warp and twist and reach and gouge and open wound and mangled face. They were like Mom’s creations.
Like her failures.
Had Mom ever had failures? Chrissakes, he’d never thought about it like that.
But the realisation was enough - with a snarl and a surge that raged denial of his own choices, his own life, he took the first one down with a circling foot, stepped over it, kicked the second - an older woman with a face like his mom, his real mom - and dropped her into the filth. The third was barely more than a kid, he fell back with his arm and shoulder broken, wounds gushing yellow fluid that shone unholy in the moonlight.
Ecko’s targeters flashed - here and here! - showed him the weak points and the easy targets, and they were all moving so fucking slow it was like taking candy from...
In the midst of his own screaming horror, there were children, half his height, bowed under the weight of broken backs and extra limbs. There were half-creatures, things that were halfman; things that he recognised from his childhood, from the stories he’d heard as a kid.
And they closed like a noose, uncaring of how many of their number they lost, wanting only to reach out their hands and touch him as if he were some kind of saviour, some kind of hope.
He could hear them saying to him...
Eck... Oh...
* * *
And then there was something like the snapping of the Count of Time - everything was suddenly in motion.
Varriera, still smiling, cuffed the axeman across the face. The gesture was slow, elegant, yet absurdly painful; the strike detonated in his jaw. With a curse, Redlock fell back, his vision sparking stars.
What the rhez? He was Redlock, love of the Gods, he wasn’t having this...!
His axes were out and in his hands, hard and familiar, metal glittering in the white light, but the creature’s arm came out and sideways in a blow that seemed slow, an arc of fluid motion across the glittering dark. Redlock tried to move, but there was an inevitability to the strike that made him feel like he was drifting, somehow, or moving through mud.