Ecko Rising

What had happened?

If she tapped her toe, she could feel it – sort of. She flicked it, then banged it – the sensation was oddly nebulous, like her skin was half numb. Half numb – and gracefully smoothed rock.

If she traced her fingers up the front of her shinbone, she could see where stone crystallised into flesh, where her skin solidified, where the creeping calcification had paused. For a long time, she stared at it, touching it, horrified and morbidly fascinated.

Was it getting worse?

Gradually, she became more aware of herself. She was uncomfortable, damp between her thighs, stiff backed. When she explored her shoulders with her hands, she found she’d – literally – left the top layer of skin from her shoulder blades stuck to the floor. Part of the floor.

As though the growth had started, but...

Her fingers found fragments of ripped fabric. Her feet had been – were – bare, but her garments had covered her back. Somehow, they’d got in the way.

Of what?

With an effort, she swallowed a mouthful of horror and tried to sit up straighter.

Okay – that wasn’t so bad. Neither her feet nor her ankles would move, but she could reach the palette and drag it towards her. She could sit on it, easing the pressure on her tailbone and freeing herself of the shredded remains of the ludicrous frock he’d liked.

His hands, tearing it from her, oh dear Gods...

Shaking herself sternly free of the memory, of the rush that came with it, she tore a length of the fabric and tied it round her calf – marking the fusion point. Then she ran her hands over her shoulders to find out how badly she’d torn her skin.

Apothecary, heal yourself.

Who used to say that?

Her hands paused. Again, the sensation that she’d lost something. Closer this time – a bowshot, a sense of grief, a hand gone from hers. A creature, massive and masculine and wrong, screaming insanity in the plainland night.

Mighty stones, fallen and gleaming faintly iridescent, like grandfathers of rocklights.

She struggled to focus; a boy with a shock of orange –

Oh Goddess.

Feren.

Like the stone in her feet, her thoughts were suddenly solid, her memories as certain as pebbles in her hand.

She’d been riding from Vilsara in Xenok, taking her ’prentice to fetch taer from the Monument. They’d been attacked – horses with the bodies of men, beautiful, crazed. Monstrous. Feren had been shot...

He flew to the moon, sweetheart.

Killed?

There is need of a healer.

As through the creeping stone had driven Maugrim’s fire from her flesh and heart, given her gravity, she focused clearly for the first time. She didn’t know what had happened, but she’d felt consciousness under her – in her – skin. Vast, slow, beyond her ken or her comprehension... something had been awake.

It had driven Maugrim from her body.

And in the crucible it had provided, there was a hardening crystal of focus.

Alert now, determined, her first instinct was to break up the palette, find herself a chisel or lever – but she’d no idea what damage she’d do if she tried to separate her feet from the floor. Systematically, she tried to tense one calf muscle, the other. Move one ankle, the other. Wiggle her toes.

There had to be a way out of this.

She was tensed, watching the door, heart thumping now with adrenaline and purpose. She scanned the room for clothes and kit, almost wanting to pile them up so she’d know where they were. She needed to move. Needed to move now!

And gradually, as though it heard her plea, the calcification withdrew.

Elation fired her. It was slow, so slow, and it left a cold, numb emptiness in her flesh; an emptiness filled by screaming needles of returning sensation, by dripping, caustic blood. It hurt like the rhez, but the pain was cleansing, cleared her head, chased the last tails of lust from her body. She became impatient, hammered at her skin to make the transition faster – she had to be out of this before he came back!

Oddly, she found herself cold. As her legs were freed, she could stretch to reach her old garments – the shirt and overshirt she’d worn from Roviarath. They didn’t warm her, but their familiarity was comforting. Pressed to her face, they smelled of chearl and grass and woodsmoke. With them on, she knew who she was.

How many people had she refused to heal? Stood by and watched die in agony?

Without Maugrim’s heat haze, there was no way to soften, rationalise – or to forgive. Metal embedded in skin, each a vast, raw, open wound, unable even to plead for their own death. For one horrified moment, she wondered if she deserved everything that Maugrim had done to her.

Then she was angry. Angry for herself, for Feren, for the people who had died in pain unspeakable, for the ones yet to come. With her hands under her knees, she tugged at her feet until she felt they’d tear at the fusion point.

One way or another, she was going to pay him back for every wound he’d inflicted, every liberty he’d taken. For every touch!

The faster her blood flowed, it seemed, the faster the stone receded – after a few more moments, she found she could stand up, legs shaky but capable.

The needle sting reached her heels. It itched.

She leaned forwards, hands against the rock, tried to lift one foot, then the other. Come on, come on!

They still wouldn’t budge.

Her finger brushed a mark, carved in the stone.

A smile etched on the metal plate that covered his mouth.

No. She told herself. Stop it.

She’d noticed the marking before, but the shimmer of Maugrim’s flame had blurred her vision and she’d not seen anything clearly. Now, as the itch strayed over the soles of her feet and agonisingly into her toes, she crouched and leaned to reach the rocklight.

Held it up to the wall.

Light glittering from a carapace of scales.

The mark was old, shallow and faded – a spiral curve, elegant and ancient. It spoke wordless of the vast age and might that dwelled within these stones, these passageways. She traced the spiral with a fingertip, wondering what it meant – who had put it there.

What had she said to Feren? Maybe it once was some celebration, some ancient elemental temple; maybe the stones just observed the Count of Time. Maybe it was a memorial, or a tomb. I heard once that the hill we’re standing on is a passage grave, commemorating some lord or hero...

The realisation was so obvious: she was under the Monument. She was stood within forgotten stones, on the outermost edge of a site so ancient it was lost to lore, abandoned for thousands of returns.

Oh Goddess.

Two sharp, bright points of fear – one for herself, caught down here with no idea as to what really lay outside this dim, dry chamber. The other for Maugrim, for the might he’d touched...

...and for what he’d do with it.

Skin peeling, strip by strip, layer by layer. Metal in muscle, shuddering, jerking nerves.