Ecko Endgame (43 page)

Nothing.

By emptiness, as far as he could see.

Fuller, mate, if you can hear me, I wanna wake the fuck up right now…

The incredible vista he’d seen was an illusion, a lure. This was the worst bastard trip of his entire life.

Fuller…?

But Fuller couldn’t hear him. Collator couldn’t find him.

He was still tripping, and he had no control.

No way out.

Oh no you don’t. This ain’t gonna scare me…

One hand closed over the little red light, the only thing he trusted. The other gripped the end of his beam, as if he needed to swing it at something, to smash and to
smash
, to break his way through and out the other side, to let it all go in violence…

Yeah, bring on the zombies!

But the mountains’ swelling foothills were carpeted only in twisted stumps as far as he could see.

Somewhere he remembered the Bard, his reaction to Mom – his craving for information.

And the price he’d paid to get it.

Standing on the rise, like some last surviving icon of humanity, Lugan looked in the direction the gang had gone. They’d probably stopped not far away.

And whether they’d turn into Cthulhu or not, he was going to get some fucking answers.

* * *

They didn’t turn into Cthulhu, or anything else.

Lugan made no attempt to sneak up on them – like he could – instead he walked in there as if he owned the joint. The tethered beasties snorted at his bootsteps, and the gang was on its feet as he reached their circle of firelight.

He addressed the woman with the scars, the only one who remained sitting, pointing his wooden beam straight at her.

“Ade Eastermann, pleased t’meetcha. And you’re gonna tell me where the ’ell I am.”

They surrounded him, hands on clubs and cudgels with the ease of people who knew how to use them. No blades, no firearms. Fuller or no Fuller, Lugan wasn’t going to have too much trouble guessing their chosen profession.

They sneered at him.

“What we got here, then?”

“Where the rhez did you spring from?”

“Put the tree down, sunshine.”

There were five of them, all men of various builds, none of them as big as he was. They were dressed like old school homeless, layers and grot – no bright colours, no tech, no jewellery.

Lugan ignored them. Some sort of roots were roasting round the edges of the fire, and his hunger was suddenly thunderstorm-loud.

He swallowed.

“You’re a bit out of your way,” the scarred woman said from the far side of the little circle of light. She wasn’t young, her face was lined and square, her long hair dirty and greying. Her features flickered unholy in the rising heat. She made no attempt to stand up.

“Local, are you?” she said.

Her cronies muttered, speculation and rumour. A couple of them were edging round behind him, and Lugan shifted, keeping an eye on them.

“Came over the mountains,” he said.

The mutters became open mirth. The woman raised an eyebrow and grinned at him, baring teeth that were stained, chewing-baccy brown. She was gauging his jacket, his battered, oil-stained jeans.

“Oddest leathers I’ve ever seen,” she said. “You Banned?”

“From several places.”

The men shifted. Lugan went to take a step back, to keep all of them in sight, but a cudgel in his back stopped him. Weapons smacked into palms with that timeless gesture of gleeful threat.

“I said put down the tree,” the bloke beside him said.

“You mean this?” With little effort, Lugan cracked the heavy beam straight under the man’s chin, lifting him two inches off his feet and stretching him backwards in the dirt. The man the other side of him raised his club. Lugan slammed the opposite elbow into his face, breaking his jaw and sitting him down hard.

The others surged, cursing.

The scarred woman said, “Wait!”

They stopped.

“Stay where you are.” She was on her feet now, assessing Lugan more carefully. She said, “You came across the mountains?” This time, it was a question, and it held no mockery.

“Yeah,” Lugan said. “Walked all the way. And you’re gonna tell me what the fuck I just walked into. What is this? Rural dystopia? There ain’t no such beast.”

“No one lives in the Kuanne.” She nodded at the mountain pass. “They say the Kartians cursed it, that everyone died and that the mountains’ shadow was twisted. And then we forgot, like we
forgot
everything else.” Her stained grin spread, and he wondered if she really did have tobacco. “You want to know how I know?”

“Not really,” Lugan told her. He searched his dog-end pocket, snatched his hand back.

“Where d’you think I got these scars?” She came closer, prowled round the edge of the fire, some aged hag pronouncing hoodoo-voodoo. He had no fucking clue what she was talking about.

“Tell me why everything’s dead,” he said. “Why you torched a dead village. Tell me what’s east of here – down out the mountains.”

“We like the Kartians,” the woman said. Now, she was close enough for him to smell the liquor on her breath. “We bring them… what they need. Terhnwood, leather, food. And sometimes, other things. People who’re lost, or missing their families. Children who’ve got no one left to care for them. Those who’re unwanted, or unloved. The priestlords like their…
help.
” The last word was accompanied by a nod at the remaining cronies.

Oh for fuck’s sake.

Lugan dropped the first one with a fist in the face, spun on one boot heel and brought the beam smack into the ribs of the second, cracking wood and bone with the force of the blow. The third one, smaller and faster, hung back, grinning with a mouthful of gaps – one pace forward and a boot in the bollocks dropped him like stone.

Everything went quiet.

Lugan rounded on the woman with the cracked beam still in his hand.

“Well?” he said.

“Impressive,” she said. She made him sound like a custom chop.

“I ain’t goin’ to ask you twice.” His boot came down on the neck of one of the goons.

The action made her laugh, thin and nasty. “Maybe you really have come across the mountains,” she said. She turned to gesture eastwards, at the open darkness, at the cold. “Down there is the Varchinde, the open plain – goes all the way to Amos on the coast. And it’s
finished.
” The word was a brown spit, hissing, into the fire. “All of it. Dying. Dead. Even our trade’s dried up: the Kartians’ve closed their doors. Well,” she eyed him up and down, “almost.”

Lugan lifted the beam, placed it under the woman’s chin, made her look up at him.

“Why’d you burn the village?”

She grinned, grot seething between her teeth. “Can’t be too careful. You know how it is.”

Lugan lifted his boot and the fallen goon scuttled away, joining the huddle of others at the fireside. They looked up at him, sullen with hatred.

The woman pushed the beam away, stepped inside its arc. “You ever seen the blight?” she said. “It grows through your skin, like moss. It pulls you down into the ground, eats you alive. Not just people. Animals, plants, everything living. It chokes you, and it lives off you – sucks the life right out of you. And then when you’re empty, it dies. And the worst thing? It’s not the infection, Ade Eastermann of the Banned. It’s the loss of hope. The emptiness. The worthlessness.” She gestured at the darkness. “The
nothing
.”

Nothing.

Lugan went cold.

The word was a frisson, like a spark-plug jumping.

Nothing.

He stared at the woman, watched as firelight made the scars on her face shift and dance. Caught, his voice was a husk. “What d’you mean?”

“That farm,” she said. “They gave up. The blight came, and they didn’t fight any more. They just… let themselves rot. Their livestock lay down and died in the fields, right where it was. The people sat in the chairs and just didn’t get up again. Stopped caring, stopped fighting. Let the moss grow through them. They had no more passion, no more anger, no more love. No more use for life.”

Her voice continued, some archaic priestess in the firelight, but Lugan was staring at her, staring through her, staring at the darkness that rose behind. And he could see – as if his trip was thinning, and the grey pencil lines were returning – something beyond the black. He stood at the bottom of a rise of cells, looking up at bars across boxes, boxes where people were kept.
Stopped caring, stopped fighting.
They were
in
there, quiescent, content with a bed and a fridge. A console. People who lay unmoving, their eyes open; people who’d just…
stopped.

The woman was still speaking, but her words were a part of the picture – she was describing the disease and it was the pencil that was piercing the illusion, that was greying the colours from the dream.

Not wanting the colours to go, not without him understanding them, he said, “Wait. Wait!”

“Scared you, have I?” she said. “Big chap like you?”

The grey was gone, the pencil vanished. He was back in the firelight, back in the winter cold. He was shivering, there in the starless dark.

He blinked, focused on the woman’s scarred face. Not even sure where the impulse had come from, he said, “Where’s The Wanderer? It came from ’ere – didn’t it? The Bard…?”

He spoke the tavern’s name and the breakthrough was like an epiphany. Suddenly he knew where he was going, what he needed to do. Everything fell into place, it all made fucking
sense.
It was symmetrical – all of this had started with the tavern, its manifestation in London. The Bard had known, Mom had known – she had given him the red light for a reason.
The one thing he trusted.
When reality returned, and if Collator wasn’t fucked—

Oh of
course
.

Collator’s viral infection was all part of the same hallucination. There was
nothing
the matter with the AI – there never had been – it was all the same damn trip.

Vision Quest.

Whatever the hell it was.

The mention of The Wanderer had made the injured goons sit up. They glanced at one another. The scarred woman was grinning like a loon.

“The Bard warned us,” she said. “Returns ago he saw this, and no one listened. He spent his life… looking for answers, insight. Whatever happens, dreams mean everything. The Kartians know that – they see more in the darkness than we’ve ever done in the light. The Bard knows it: he saw it in the water. And I know it, that’s why I burned the village. Our passions and visions are what we are. We break down barriers, we see magick, we experience pure illumination. Without it, we’re nothing.”

Nothing.

Lugan was still motionless, stunned by the sheer force of his understanding. Memories of youthful antics, racing through warehouses while colours writhed glorious in broken windows; the pile of grey cells that rose round him, holding those who’d just… given up…

We see magick.

Nothing.

He was here for a reason. He had to find the end of this vision.

Find Ecko.

He found the little red light, held it in his hand.

And when the woman offered him a small pottery cup, he tilted it to his lips without question.

And he fell back into the vision, and went to find answers.

Grey air, pre-dawn cold.

The world was fogged and bleary, drifting with snow. The wind stirred sluggishly, as if it, too, thought it was too bastard early.

Ecko sat in his saddle, his shoulders hunched against chill and inevitability. He was tired, but gladly so. Wrapped in layers of cloak and a luxury of recollection, in the warmth of her that still lingered on his skin. Around him, Rhan, Roderick and Amethea sat silent, like ghosts.

The horses’ tack clattered as the animals shifted.

Only two people had come out to see them leave. Nivrotar, upright and cold, wreathed in the slowly breathing fog. Beside her, Triqueta, smaller but strong and poignantly vital, a touch of sunshine in the gloom. She bore the blade-on-pennon brassard of the Fhaveon Tan Commander.

Ecko was trying not to stare at her, trying not to etch her every movement into his memory like a blade carving cuts into his skin.

She met his gaze, offered him a wicked flicker of smile, a look that could have meant anything – everything – and then she drew herself up and composed her expression, a warrior to her fingertips.

“Fare you all well,” Nivrotar said softly, words all but swallowed by the fog. “Fare you all very well. My heart rides with you. You are the world’s last warriors and I trust that you carry her life in your hands. I am proud of you all, more than I can say.” She came forwards, laid a white hand on Amethea’s knee, but the doc was a forlorn and staring huddle and she gave no reaction. “I realise there are only the four of you, but we are all but out of supplies, and you will have to prevail, if we are to survive. Trust in me, and in each other, and I believe you will be strong enough. Understanding will come, before the end.”

“You, my Lord Seneschal,” Nivrotar said, looking up at Rhan. “Guard and guide these people, hold fast to their protection. Find your brother, and never forget how close to you he really is. And remember, humility is the hardest lesson of all.”

Rhan’s response was a rumble. “My Lord.”

Her gaze moved to the Bard, swathed in his blood-red cloak. “And you, prophet and seer, you that has the world’s memories inked in your skin, remember this: everything you have ever learned now gathers in upon you like a storm. Now, Master Bard,
now
you earn your title. You must return, to bear your long tale to the generations of the future. The world must not forget again.”

“Yes, my Lord.”

“And you, Ecko…”

He tried to come back with something cutting and jaunty about hackneyed final speeches and who the hell was she anyway, but sex and fog had smeared his wits and he had a big fat zilcho.

“…when you come to the last, I will be there with you. Remember that. By my hands was The Wanderer built and the Great Library defended.” Her gaze swept them all, lingered longest on Amethea. “I will be there with you all.”