Earth,
for chrissakes.
The word made him snort.
Then the ledge underneath him lurched and he jumped, pressing his back against the stone. He clung harder, feeling a sudden sense of déjà-vu.
Earth. Hell, maybe if I let fucking go I’ll hit the sidewalk at Blackfriars Bridge, after all...
Yeah, right.
There was an almighty shatter of falling masonry. A sudden crack ran through the wall and out into the garden. He heard Karine shouting.
In a flurry, Ecko scrambled down the side of the keep. He leapt for a bush, ducked, let his skin shift to the colour of leaf and shadow.
And then he realised that the garden had a watcher, a last guardian.
A centaur.
At first, he couldn’t see it clearly - it was in the sun on the far side of the keep’s shadow, pacing the length of a bright-flowered garden. It was different to the other creatures he’d seen: it seemed somehow unbalanced, almost crude by comparison to the elegance and power of the beasties he’d seen previously. Its gait was uneven, peculiar, and it seemed oddly unfinished, scarred somehow, as though...
As it came closer, crossing into the shadow with its huge claws raking at the stones, Ecko’s telescopics got a clear fix. He realised what he was looking at.
And his mind said,
Holy fucking shit.
The others were dropping down the wall now. There were curses as the stone shook under them; the crack was getting worse. The entire sodding keep was going to crumble to rubble and they needed to move. Like now. They needed to get the fuck out of these gardens and off this peninsula before they all took swimming classes.
Triqueta came to join him, skidding into a crouch behind the bush, her spear clutched in her hand.
She said, “Just one?” She was grinning. “C’mon, Ecko, we’ve fought bigger beasties than that...” Then she tailed into silence, as she, too, realised what she was looking at.
Her mouth opened as if she would say something, but no sound emerged.
Ecko watched her, the congealing horror in her expression. He felt his heart shrink in his chest, his throat close. He put a hand on her arm.
“Triq...” He had no fucking clue what to say to her.
“No. Take this.” She stood up, shoved the spear into his hand. “I’m going out there.”
“Chrissakes, don’t. You -”
“Shut up!” She rounded on him, voice breaking. “Roderick was right - this is all your fault! We should have stayed with Syke, stayed in Roviarath. This has been loco - all for nothing. Nothing! What have we gained from coming here?”
Her yellow gaze was too much, and he looked at his hands, colours shifting.
Something behind them rumbled and the ground shook.
The others were behind him now, scattered and unsure. As Ecko looked back up, the shadow of the keep shifted and changed. The rumble became a roar and stonework fell, harsh and splitting. From somewhere came a long, rumbling crash as masonry hit the ground. There was a splash, another, the heavy slosh of water.
Chrissakes. We gotta move.
But Triqueta was walking out to meet the monster.
Amethea came to a halt by Ecko. She stared, shocked, horrified. Then swallowed, muttered, “You can’t let her go out there...”
But Ecko shook his head. He was shaking, sickness or reaction or adrenaline, he didn’t even know.
Triqueta walked to the creature.
And the creature came to meet her, like something out of a particularly twisted soap opera.
It was chearl-bodied, bulky in comparison to the monsters he’d seen before. Its torso was of normal, human size, powerfully muscled and heavily scarred, but the two had been joined poorly - the thing looked like it had been jammed together by an impatient child with plastic cement.
But even that was not what made Ecko stare, what made Amethea catch her voice in a sob and bury her face in his shoulder. He patted her, stupidly, his brain reeling.
He knew who this was.
The creature’s bitter, confused expression was so human. His hair and hands were the same ones that they’d known through their long journeys together. He still had his axes. But the look in his eyes...
The keep shuddered again and the ledge behind them crashed, making Ecko start and his adrenals jackhammer an insane, impossible tattoo.
Karine was on her feet, shouting, “We have to go, we have to go!” but the Bard, too, had come to stand by Ecko and Amethea.
He said, his voice as dark as the falling shadow ahead of them, “We should know how he feels.”
Triqueta reached the monster. It towered over her - she extended her hand to it.
Ecko heard her speak to it, even through the sounds of destruction that surrounded them.
She said, “Redlock?”
* * *
Her mind wouldn’t take it in. He was there, he was warm and flesh and his face was the same, his heavy shoulders, the scattering of grey-threaded red hair down the centre of his chest, the heavy scar given to him by Maugrim’s chain.
She said, “Redlock?”
She extended a hand, but couldn’t bring herself to actually touch him. It would make him real, and he couldn’t be, he
couldn’t
be. This was another figment, like her sire, like the boots of the Banned.
But the keep behind her was falling in upon itself; the gardens beneath her were cracking to the core. The beast raked a claw in the stones and shook itself as though trying to speak. Its - his - face contorted as if he had forgotten what the words were, or how to make them.
She said, her voice a whisper, “Redlock, please. It’s me.”
But if he understood her, he didn’t show it. He exhaled, shook his hair in a gesture that was so frighteningly chearl she backed away, her heart trembling. She had no idea how much of the man was still there, how much of the creature was not only a part of his flesh, but a part of his mind.
Then he focused on her. He blinked and stepped sideways, head thrown and knees high as if he were spooked.
He stopped, made a sound, frowned, made another. With an effort, he managed something that might almost have been her name.
She said again, as if she voiced some kind of terrible truth, “Redlock...”
Then there came a heavy, terrifying rumble from behind her, a massive male cry that seemed to echo clear into the sky. The voice was the Bard’s and it said,
“Run!”
The ground shook at the sound.
Triqueta turned and saw the entire front wall of the keep coming down. Heart hammering now, she turned back, just for a moment thinking that the creature would rescue her like this was some kind of saga, that he would pick her up and race away across the gardens and there would be some kind of...
Some kind of
what
?
But the creature looked at the falling wall. He blinked, puzzled, edged backwards, scraping the stones under his claws. As Triqueta held her hand out again, she realised that she’d missed the chance to touch him, to reach him, to tell him that it would be okay.
He was backing away, eyes wild, hands resting on axes as they always had. His claws left long scars in the stones.
Then Ecko hit her in the back like a trade-road bandit. “Shift your ass, willya?”
On the ground before her, the shadow of the wall was moving. Even as she watched it, the whole of the front of the tower slid free, crashed with a roar into the courtyard. Stones came over the wall like missiles, like a wave of thrown rock and Ecko ran, holding her wrist and dragging her with him.
They raced for the cross walk, for the haunted forest.
As they reached the courtyard, the wall cracked asunder, splitting from top to bottom, so she turned one last time to look into the crumbling garden.
The centaur was standing there like a carven statue, watching them go.
* * *
When they were clear, they stopped on the clifftop, wind and sky and flowers. The sun was sinking towards the distant Kartiah and the sea shone like polished metal. The keep, whatever it was, had fallen and a cloud of smoke hung like a pall in the clear air.
Triqueta tore a handful of bright summer colour up by the roots, threw it at Ecko sobbing, caught somewhere between fury and grief. But Ecko couldn’t face her and he turned away, looking out over the gleaming water.
Roderick was right - this is all your fault! This has been loco - all for nothing. Nothing! What have we gained from coming here?
The Bard stood beside him like an accusation, silent and cold.
“All right.” Ecko said. “I’m on side. So what the hell do we do now?”
It came to him, as he had always known it would.
And Phylos was on his knees, his hands at his throat. He was gagging for bare life, struggling to understand, to handle this huge thing, this presence, this colossal whack of pure might that had just ravaged him body and soul. It screamed in his mind, brought blood to his heart and eyes and mouth, rang a clangour of hot laughter in his ears.
It said, mocking, a seething voice like ash and steam,
You wanted me, Phylos?
In that moment, Phylos understood a single truth - that any bargain he had made with this creature was a fallacy, that it had no time for him, it wanted only its own victory - and that if it ruled Fhaveon, it might be in his flesh, but he would not be sharing it.
Kas Vahl Zaxaar had come.
Phylos came to his feet, wrenching at the neck of his robe, tearing it open across his chest. He could see the darkness writhing beneath his skin; see an eruption of inks that seared like branding, burning designs into his very flesh. He could smell himself crisping, burning from the inside out.
But he was Valiembor-blooded. He was Phylokaris, son of Salukaris, of the line of Saluvarith; he was nephew to the Founder himself. And pure-blooded, not some cursed halfbreed - his elite Archipelagan race was untainted. He was born better than these foolish Grasslanders, better than the weak and wasted remnant that Valiembor had become.
That Rhan had made them.
Rhan.
Vahl heard the thought, and his teeming wrath paused. The daemon eased its raging and its striving for control.
Rhan.
For that moment, they meshed perfectly - they had a mutual enemy and they were of one mind, and one purpose.
Rhan.
Vahl knew he was coming...
...and he knew that Phylos had already beaten him once.
* * *
It was a pinpoint, bright and white and rainbow, too many colours to see, impossibly brilliant and getting bigger by the moment. Across the city, people pointed, turned, their anger forgotten. It was approaching with incredible swiftness.
And it was aimed straight at the heart of Fhaveon herself.
It grew larger, became brighter than the sky, searing out of the north. Everything stopped.
The air, the wind, the water. The city, her seething streets and bloodied riots, her chaos and creatures, her soldiers and dissenters. Mael and Selana. The tan commander Ythalla, still mounted; the cornered Mostak, fighting to hold his life and his ground.
On the balcony, Phylos could see it clearly - he knew exactly what it was and he welcomed it. He stood with his arms still outstretched as though he were pulling that streaking light straight into his heart, some long-lost brother, some sibling blazing back from the dead.
And within him, Vahl was laughing with a blood-eagerness that tainted them both.
Rhan.
Brother, estavah, soul of my soul. Welcome!
The Merchant Master stood trembling, his body all but alight. Mortal and immortal, they waited together, a suprahuman pulsebeat of anticipation. Vahl had waited in hiding for four hundred returns, and his victory was upon him. Phylos had schemed and manipulated, destroyed the Council and the city, left the last child of the Founder alone and afraid.
His, whenever he chose to take her.
The light was blinding, almost upon them. It was screaming for the city like some avenging comet, like the last star of the night sky come to reclaim the day.
On the ground, the people shrieked and scattered.
“There is no need to fear!” With a roar that shook the very walls, Phylos rent his robe from neck to hem, showing the ink and spirals and darkness that writhed within his flesh. “The city stands strong!” Without even realising how or why, he -they - threw themselves upwards and into the incoming blaze.
Rhan.
As he hit, dazzled and tumbling, robbed of breath and sight, Phylos thought he was screaming, but had no idea if the noise was even his own. The air burned around him, in him. The impact was more than his mortal mind could tolerate - but Phylos was long-lived, noble-blooded, Archipelagan, and Kas Vahl Zaxaar was with him, riding the detonation and holding him against it. The two creatures met - light and fire, too similar, and for a single crazed instant, they were almost one, united as brothers down through all the long returns of the world’s existence. Blasted by the detonation, Phylos could barely tell which one was alight in his soul and which one blazed about him, wrath incarnate.
But the pain was glorious, like the adrenaline that wins you a race despite bones broken, that brings through exhaustion to the elation of the mountaintop. For a moment, they spun, through and over and under, in and around each other like a tornado. Then Phylos was falling, suddenly cut loose and ragged. There was a flash of an awful loss, a bereavement - the loss of the bright halls of the heavens, vanishing above him -and then with a jar like coming suddenly out of a dream, he was crashed down and reeling, breathless, stumbling, across the broken remnant of the city’s mosaic.
The fall should have killed him, but he had landed on his feet.
The sensations were fading, even as he wondered what had happened. But Vahl was there, had held him to life, had brought him through the impossibility - the daemon was still with him.
You are Phylos. Hold to your faith and trust me.
Phylos looked at the tiny, shattered tiles. Blinked for a moment. Looked up.