The creature was alight now, blazing, its lust and wonder burning like a plainswide fire.
Yes! Now! You must do this now!
But Amal was still fighting, still thinking. He had to have time - not stolen time, but the time to take back control of this crazed tableau, both internal and external.
He moved back, stood at Ecko’s head, a blade across his throat, and said, “Either of you as much as breathe, he dies.”
And you,
he said to the creature
, will gain no time or strength from his blood-letting. So be silent!
The creature raged at him, furious. It understood, in that gesture, that it had not fooled or led him, that he had absolutely no intention of letting it loose, that he prized his lore above all things.
And so the last pitch and sway of their long bargain began.
Triqueta paused, the spear held steady in cracked hands.
Amethea said, “Horseshit. We’ll take our chances. He’s tougher than you realise - and you’re going to kill him anyway. Or you’ll try to.”
Triqueta chuckled. “If you don’t want to be impaled like an eager bride, step
away.”
But Ecko was shouting at them. “Chrissakes, are you two fucking deaf? I don’t want a fucking
rescue.
You hear me?”
“By the rhez, Ecko, do you have to make everything as difficult as possible?” Without moving the spear-point, Triqueta fumed her exasperation. “We’re your friends, we came here because we love you, because we won’t abandon you” - her expression shadowed for a moment - “because we don’t walk out on family. You’re a part of us, Ecko, we’ve been through the rhez together, and come out the other side. This...
man,”
she pointed with the spear though Ecko couldn’t see, “this man made the centaurs, he made the mwenar you burned in the alchemist’s hall. He’s Maugrim’s
master,
for the Gods’ sakes! Which side are you even
on
?”
“Side?” Ecko snorted, twisted again against the table. “Good and Evil, whatever, yadda yadda - you people are so fucking naïve. We’re not the good guys - we caused the blight. And I’m not jumping through any more ‘good boy’ hoops. I am what I am: misfit, casualty, creature created, creature of chaos. I don’t know names any more and I don’t care. What I do know is that I’m
done
sucking Eliza’s cock. And if that means the world burns - then let it burn. I’m Ecko - and I’m gonna do whatever it takes to stay that way.” He turned, shouted up and past the gargoyles above him. “This program? Has
failed.”
Karine had been having nightmares.
White light, rage and flame, passion so powerful it had woken her, sweating and shaking, and she’d left her chamber to pace the silent and empty floors of The Wanderer.
To feel the warmth of the building fading even as she needed it.
The Wanderer was hurting. Cracks ran through its walls, spreading with each day, each rumble of vehicle. Its captivity was impossible - she could feel its hurt grow steadily worse. Roderick and Lugan were gone, the Bard was with Ecko’s “Mom”, the commander gone after Ecko himself. She’d lost little Silfe, Kale had died on the streets of the city, and Sera was fading fast.
Karine wanted wine, a means to lessen her haunting horrors. She knew it wasn’t a solution, but she was drinking it anyway - and with the taste in her mouth and the carafe in her hand, she paced, her fingers brushing the scars of the silent tabletops.
The bar itself was broken, her neat rows of stock shattered and left where they’d fallen. The windows were askew, they no longer fitted. Looking at it all, she found it hard to breathe.
The harsh white lights flickered as the huge, overhead rumble came again. The tavern shook with the racket. Trails of dust fell from the rafters, more pottery smashed.
The sound cut like shards - like everything she loved and knew was coming to pieces. With another slug of red, she took herself away from the damage, fled down into the cellars, anything to get away from the emptiness and fear and harm that lurked above.
She felt like her nightmare was real, like Kas Vahl Zaxaar himself was rising in her heart.
Walking, like wine, helped to clear her agitation.
The cellars were warm, their familiarity settling. It felt safe down here, shielding her from the layers of impossibility over her head. Slowly, a sense of ease began to creep through her muscles, unknotting her chest and throat. Her heart began to slow.
Everything would be all right - the Bard had never let her down, he’d always been there. He was her friend, her protector, her eccentric uncle and she
knew
he would find a way to fix this.
If he would only come home.
She should find something to do, maybe, take her mind from her own uselessness. A stocktake could take days - she had no idea how long it had been since she’d done the job properly...
Days.
The thought caught her, cut under her guard like a blade. Her heart started to hammer again, her pulse to rise, her breath to ball hard in her throat. Her hand tightened on the carafe.
Did they have...
days
?
What would happen if The Wanderer fell? Would she ever go home?
Time and hopelessness stretched ahead of her like an empty road, redoubled her blood to a thumping panic, beating in her temples like a war-drum. She rested a hand on the stack closest to her, needing its support.
Days.
Somehow, she’d been expecting him any moment - every sound had made her glance up, waiting for the light to change, for the door to open. Fuller had come in and out, but his face had furrowed into a heavy frown. He’d taken her to see Sera, but her friend’s faltering life had only upset her more.
Days.
Something moved by her feet, startling her. She stumbled -then realised the cat had followed her down and was curling about her ankles, seeking friendship or food.
She put the carafe on a shelf and picked the little beast up, buried her nose in its fur.
“It’ll be all right, little one,” she told it. “It’ll be all right. I promise.”
But the creature stiffened suddenly, struggling to escape her grip. She tried to calm it, but was holding a writhing, spitting monstrosity. It scrabbled and clawed, flipped onto the ground and spat at the darkness, at something ahead of her in the stacks.
Then it stood, tight to the ground and growling, spiked tail lashing behind it in a way that reminded her forcibly of Kale.
Karine checked her belt, kicked herself for leaving her cosh behind the bar. She glanced quickly at the stack beside her for anything she could use as a weapon...
But it was not monsters that the creature had seen.
It was movement.
The little cat’s senses were blade-sharp. It took a moment for Karine to realise that the stack beside her was quivering, shuddering like a tree being hit with an axe. Her carafe teetered, rocked and fell, tumbling with impossible slowness to the floor. Then the whole thing was shaking and pottery was falling and breaking and the cat was scattering in a scrabble of hissing and claws. But it was not the stack that was moving, it was the floor under her feet, a queasy, shuddering motion that made the shelving and her belly both lurch together.
The cracks in the walls...
Somewhere ahead of her, the stacks -
oh dear Gods
- the stacks were
falling.
With rising horror, she understood the noise now - the shuddering
whump
as each one fell, struck hard into the stack next to it. The scattering and shattering that was everything sliding and hitting the floor. Then it came again, the next
whump
as the following stack, in turn, toppled and hit its neighbour. The floor juddered as the noises grew faster and louder.
And closer.
The air shook. Ahead of her, the entire cellar was collapsing.
Karine wanted to howl in protest, at the mess, the loss, the chaos, deny that such a thing could happen - here of all places, after so long being cared for and loved - but she was standing solid on the spot as though moving would somehow make it all real.
No! This is my
home,
damn you! No!
Then her mind yowled at her,
Idiot girl! Run!
Her scream tore her throat, though she could not hear herself over the noise. There were tears on her cheeks, she blinked them back as they stung her eyes. And then she was moving, turning on her heels and fleeing as the cat had done, the
whump-whump-whump!
getting even faster now as the stacks fell one into one another and the shattering of everything she loved grew closer. She stumbled, the horrific destruction seeming to follow her, to echo through the cellars as though the entire building was going to come down around her ears. The falling shelves were hounding her, the noises right there, up and behind her like some figment monster prowling through her waking dreams. She skidded around a corner, another, running like a Banned horse as the destruction was almost right over her, laughing at her, thundering at her heels...
She skidded momentarily, came out into a more open space, a dipped half-circle of stone floor and a flat, decorous wall with a single barrel set to one side. Reaching the wall, she turned, placed her back flat to the stonework.
Maybe, maybe, there was enough of a space...
And, as if the Count of Time itself had slowed, she watched the outermost of the stacks shudder as it was struck and then slowly, slowly tumble - boxes and carafes sliding free, falling to the floor and then smashing into shards as the whole thing came down.
She covered her ears and cringed.
It missed her, slammed to a thundering, billowing boom on the floor. She felt the air as it hit.
And then it was quiet.
For a moment, Karine didn’t dare move. Her heart was thundering, her ears screamed, a high-pitched whine she couldn’t shut away. Then, as she uncurled, she heard the aftermath of the devastation - the occasional shatter of something hitting the floor, the uneasy creaking of the piled shelving.
Standing upright, she stared, stunned by how close the tavern had come to killing her.
And by the chaotic jumble of its own loss of life.
From somewhere, she heard the cat, its little voice raised in a quavering cry.
She had no idea how to reach it.
Karine found she was biting the inside of her cheek, fighting tears. The poor little beast, she didn’t even know where it was. The Bard was gone, everyone was gone, her
world
was gone -and now this. The Wanderer had been her life, the one thing she understood and clung to. She’d fallen in love with this building from the very first time...
In the devastation, the vision was strong - fleeing that harsh man who’d wanted to break her down, own her on every level. Funny how one decision - to flee when and where she had - had brought her to The Wanderer, to Roderick, and to everything that had happened since.
The cat cried again. She wanted to call to it but she didn’t dare make a noise in case anything else came down.
She thought about Ecko and patterns. Just like the stacks falling, one into another, she thought about how one decision could change everything that happened from that point on. How would her life have been different if she hadn’t run round that corner on that day?
Then a flicker of movement caught the corner of her eye.
Yanked out of her thoughts, Karine put her back to the wall and stood still, heart trembling. The light was dim down here, old rocklights that had not seen the sun in returns. She scrabbled for one of them and held it high.
There was no clear way out - not unless she wanted to try clambering over the mess in front of her. Maybe, if she stayed close to the wall...?
Oh dear Gods...
She told herself it was the cat, though the little creature’s crying had stopped.
No, there
was
something out there.
Some
one.
What?
Alarmed now, prickle-fleshed and wary, Karine pressed her back harder into the wall. She picked up a heavy piece of broken, sharp-ended pottery. Closed her hand round it like hope.
Who in the world would be down here in all of this?
Almost choked by fear, she stuck to the wall, breathless and trembling.
And then she saw it, a single figure in the devastation, a faint silhouette, shadowed in rocklight and dust. It was half-crouched, moving carefully, lithe and agile and dark, clothing indecipherable. As the figure moved closer, she could see that it was probably tall, taller than Fuller and too slender to be Lugan.
She knew who that was!
Heart and hope leapt, but she stayed motionless, still somehow unsure...
By the Gods. It had to be - didn’t it?
Oh please, please, let the Bard have come home!
But if this was the Bard, then his face was concealed and something about his movement was twisted, wrong - he moved like a man in pain, like a man who had been to the very edges of the Rhez and then climbed back to the light, daemons clawing at his back.
He moved like a man
angry.
Karine slid along the wall, carefully easing away from the incoming figure. The Bard was a welcoming man - open, expansive of voice and gesture. This man was closed, his body defensive.
Yet, she stared, transfixed.
He was closer now - she could see that he was tanned, bare feet picking carefully over the wreckage, steadying himself on the ceiling with one long hand. Occasionally, he stopped, picked something up and looked at it with an air of - almost confusion - before putting it back down and continuing to move.
He leaned down and picked up a rocklight, glimmering its last.
It
was
the Bard!
But...
Karine gaped.
His habitual shirt had gone. In its place was a garment more like one of Lugan’s, long-sleeved and black. It had a hood that covered his hair, left his face in a hostility of shadow. Beneath it, some sort of scarf covered his nose and throat.