“You were saying?”
Mael suppressed an urge to chuckle.
“That’s not fair!” Her protest was high-pitched and petulant.
Mostak shrugged. “Whether you stay on the beast or not, Thalla, I trained you. I know your styles and weaknesses and the chearl won’t make the slightest damned difference. I know I can kill you.”
Her sneer was almost audible.
But Mael didn’t wait to see them fight, to find out if Ythalla would dismount to duel her commander fairly, or if she was enough of a mean old mare to ride him - and then them - down. He understood what Mostak was doing, and he intended to take advantage of every moment he could give them.
They must reach the palace.
No matter what.
Somehow.
Hugging the wall, his heart thumping,
thumping
, he began to scurry. Selana was with him still, her feet sure, but her face streaked with filth and tears, her expression torn with grief. Poor child - to have regained a member of her family only to lose him just as swiftly - Mael could not begin to imagine her heartbreak and confusion. He slowed and took her elbow.
“We must be quick. Please, my Lord. We must get to the palace and get you up to that balcony. And you must call the city’s wrath upon Phylos; you must make your accusations, and lead your people.”
Somehow.
“You need to find your courage, child, your Valiembor heart, and you must do this. For your uncle, and for your father. For Rhan.”
“Yes.” The girl stumbled. A bretir had fallen in the road and was flapping helplessly, one wing burned or broken beneath it. It cheeped at them. There was a message ring about its clawed foot but Mael dared not stop, not for the message and not to put the thing out of its pain. He turned away from it, hurting, and they went on again. Hooves came past them, and were gone in the smoke.
They fought on.
The palace was just ahead of them - there was a surge of people about the huge front gate. They were looking up at the tiny red figure, the bloodstain that was Phylos, there on the balcony, his arms still open like a welcome, a benediction.
And then, like an arrowshaft shot clean out of the northern sky, they saw the light.
Leaning over Ecko, the man that had been the Bard said, “This ends here. Now.”
Ecko had no words. He was transfixed by the man’s presence, by the mess his throat had become, by the multiple layers of sound, by the seethe and ripple of power that made up his voice.
From somewhere behind him, he heard Karine’s more human tones. “What are you doing?” she said.
Her voice brought a slew of memories, the warm wooden glow of The Wanderer, the feeling of family, wrapped in belonging. He found himself staring at Roderick’s frozen gaze and suddenly - oh God - really
wanting
this to be over, wanting that hand to close his windpipe, wanting only to go the fuck home - and then catching up with that realisation.
Home.
Something in him was looking for
The Wanderer,
for chrissakes. Something in him missed it, needed it - its warmth and safety. Something wanted his little room under the eaves, the overstuffed cellars, his cache of kit...
No, I don’t care. I don’t
care!
Shit!
The Bard was right in his face. He smelled of metal and venom, savagery and cold determination.
“You little shit. You think you can sacrifice my whole world on your stubbornness and ego? How fucking dare you?” The word was deliberate, a jab of understanding. “I’ve been where you’ve been, lived through the same tortures, the same darkness, the same terrifying love. And you know what? I’m not impressed. Get the fuck over it. Quit whining. You’re going to help me, Ecko, or I’m going to stand here and throttle you myself.”
He let go, stood back, arms folded. Gone was the gentle, confused insight of the Loremaster, his eloquently tangled pleas. The gesture was an outright challenge -
Help me or die.
Ecko had nothing, no words, no sharp comeback. No fucking understanding. Was this just Eliza calling him out, once and for all, her last shot at making him knuckle under?
Get the fuck over it.
Or had The Wanderer really gone to London? And if it had, then was it
real
, was the life of the Varchinde really his to save? After everything?
Quit whining.
Above him, the sun shone in a clear and surreal blue sky. The gargoyles stared unseeing, bared their broken teeth.
But -
shit!
- he had so many questions! His thoughts tumbled one over another in a mass of incomprehension - he couldn’t find an end to untangle the knot. He’d gotten no clue how the man was here, where he’d been, what dark epiphany had struck him. And if Roderick had seen Mom, then where was The Wanderer, where was Lugan, where was the Bike Lodge, where was every fucking thing he understood?
What was real, for chrissakes, the inside or the outside?
If he died here, would he go home?
Turn back to page one.
Did he... did he even want to?
It was a tiny spark, buried deep. It glimmered somewhere alongside the sound of Pareus’s death, the feel of Triqueta’s friendship, the knowledge of the Bard’s absolute faith in him.
The warmth of The Wanderer.
Shit!
The bloodflow from his throat was beginning to slow -somehow ironic that a gift of Mom’s should now be saving his ass. He jerked his shoulders against the cuffs.
“Get these fucking clasps off of me, willya?” His rasp was low, halfway between lethal and absolutely bewildered.
“No.” The Bard held a hand to stop Amethea responding. “Not until you tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“Were you actually willing to do this, turn your back on us, Ecko? Let us die?
Help
us die? Because if you were, then you won’t get off this table.”
Somewhere, screaming taunted him, and it carried understanding - the Bard’s absolute faith had not changed. Roderick had been to Mom - yet he still believed utterly that Ecko was the hero that would save his world. And now he stood, cold and brutal, finally with the courage to make the single greatest gamble of his existence.
It wasn’t Ecko’s life he was betting.
It was the life of the Varchinde entire.
Were you actually willing to do this, turn your back on us, Ecko? To let us die?
Help
us die?
It was an epiphany, stark and shocking, and Ecko foundered. He felt like he’d walked in on himself - that there was no lead-in, no context any more, like all he could see was his own whinging and anger and self-pity.
If Roderick was really prepared to go this fucking far, then maybe the Varchinde was damned - monsters and daemons and blight. Maybe he
was
the only person that could save it.
But I don’t...
His protests ran down, out of batteries. The shadows of the gargoyles were shortening as though they were pulling back from him, denying any attachment or responsibility.
He struggled to find his cynicism, managed, “I can’t, I... I don’t even know my score.”
His response made Amal wheeze with laughter.
The alchemist had fallen against the inside of the parapet. He was fading: his age was manifest in his face now, cracking visibly through his lined skin. He cackled as they turned to him.
“Help you... do what... Master Bard?” The title was mocking, bitter. “You’re too late... for heroism. My friend... has gone... four hundred returns... waiting... and he’s left me...” His voice broke, he sounded like he was almost in tears. “Left me to die.”
Roderick took a pace, slammed a long black boot into the heavy wall by the man’s head. But the old alchemist didn’t flinch, he just wheezed another laugh.
“If you’re... trying to make Ecko... face the daemon... save the world” - the last words were a creaking sneer - “you’ve failed.” But he only made the Bard snort, a sound that rippled with new power, echoed merciless into the sky.
Roderick said, “The daemon is not Ecko’s enemy, never has been. Vahl will go to Fhaveon. To Rhan. Ecko must face another foe, far more deadly than Vahl has ever been. If he has the balls.”
“The blight...” Amal wheezed again, nodding, then he lifted a trembling, palsied hand. “Help me, Roderick of Avesyr... as one Loremaster... to another. My learning... can serve...”
But the Bard stepped back, clearly seeing straight through Amal’s thirst for time - through his tricks.
“I remember you, Amal. Now, I remember many things. Not everything - not yet - there’s still a final drop-key to fall before I can see the world’s memory clearly. But even so, I remember
enough.”
His voice was rich with pain and hope and scorn and fulfilment. “I know enough not to need you.”
Amal coughed, withdrew, hunched further over himself as his skin shrunk into his skull, cracked open to reveal bone and yellow teeth beneath.
He said, like a lost child, “Vahl promised me... I would live...”
“He lied.” With a gesture of utter disgust, the Bard rammed his boot heel, sudden and brutal, straight into the old man’s face.
And the alchemist crumpled, broken and almost bloodless, to the stone.
Roderick turned to Ecko.
“Right,” he said. “Do I let you up, Ecko, or do we all die?”
In the end, Ecko capitulated.
What else could he do?
* * *
The stone shuddered beneath them, and they ran.
As the walls splintered and cracked, so they gathered Ecko and their wits and they raced, scattered and panicked, for the long stairs down to the courtyard. Shadows shifted, the stone table cracked, and the grimacing gargoyles tilted and then slid free from their bases, falling at last.
Fleeing the shattering missiles, the flying shards, they chased madly down the tiny steps. They could feel the tower behind them shuddering, see dust trickling from the walls. The steps cracked as they ran, the rocks beneath them shook. Stones came loose and turned ankles. Behind them, parts of the parapet cracked completely and came free, and scree and rock fell down to the water far below.
Hit with a splash that sounded like horror.
Triqueta shouted, “To me!” and they paused by the empty pool, panting and wild-eyed, looking about them for an exit.
Ecko tried to ask about the tavern, but Roderick cut him short.
“She was never meant to go that far,” he said. “She didn’t come back.” His voice was layered with severity and an appalling, complex grief.
Ecko had no idea who he was, who he’d become - but he didn’t have time for that now. “Where are the others?”
Karine said, final and fatal, “There’s only me.”
Triqueta had not let go of her spear and her cracked and flaking hands were white upon its shaft.
Scanning the walls, the carvings and creeper, Ecko skidded as the stone cracked and then tilted, right under his feet. He was verging on panicked, now, his adrenals in a ball in his wounded throat. His cloak and webbing were gone, he’d no fucking clue where. He was thin and pale and exposed, bared to the sunlight, clad only in hastily borrowed breeches. His knees shook, his wrists hurt, the cut down his chest stung like a motherfucker. There was a pink, straight scar slicing down through his skin like he’d been marked for butchery practice.
Behind them, more of the parapet cracked and crumbled. Another gargoyle fell clear, slammed into the tower with a shattering impact that sent cracks of shadow through the long stairs.
Fear flickered from face to face.
“We’re not leaving without Redlock.” Triqueta’s tone was half-threat, half-statement.
“Chrissakes.” The crack under Ecko’s feet was growing wider. “You’re fucking kidding me.”
It was like the Bard’s choice in miniature,
help me or die
, like the tiny repeated pattern that made up the big one. It was all piling up against him now, pushing aside his fury and denial as if his whole fucking wall was just so much sand, as if he was finally coming to pieces like the keep around him. He’d done his fucking best, but the fight was fading - he’d tried to burn it all, and he’d
failed...
What was left?
The Bard said, “Ecko. Get us out of here.”
Help me or die.
Shit.
“There!” The crack under his feet widened yet further - he jumped sideways and pointed. One of the cell doorways was showing warmth and light. “Let’s go!”
Beside him, the dry pool suddenly splintered to a spider-web of cracks - as if something underneath it had given way. Fragments and corners began to fall into some huge hollow below.
Karine was bellowing, “Come on, come on! If Ecko can see, he’d better go at the front...”
But Ecko wasn’t waiting. He darted for the doorway, warily eyeing the lintel. He could see where the back corner of the cell had cracked down one wall. It was tight, but he pulled at the creeper, kicked at the bones, turned sideways and managed to cram himself into the gap. Getting through it just as if it was the stinking side-tunnels of the old London Underground.
Hell, if Rodders had seen Mom too, then he should feel right at fucking home.
Now, Ecko was beginning to grin - feel almost like himself again - then the crack suddenly opened out into clean air and light, and he found he was teetering on a high ledge over a carefully organised garden. Rows of flowers and plants, walls and pathways - the ornamental garden of some stately fucking home.
What the hell?
He was in shadow, the long grey shape of the keep was cast ahead of him. He clung to the edge of the vantage, scanning. Behind him, the others were a mass of shouts and chaos, he could hear them scrabbling and swearing.
“Watch your butts,” he shot back at them. “We gotta way out but there’s a drop. Who’s got sixty foot of rope?”
“What?” Karine, next in the gap, was having trouble fitting and didn’t get the joke.
Ecko turned back to the garden.
It was walled, open to the sky. At its far end he could see the walkway that joined the bailey to the edge of the cliff and the haunted forest. There were other routes, archways and more grounds, all of them beginning to crack like water-parched earth...