Ecko Rising

“Pen?” It was a whisper, a plea of denial.

“Come on!” She was still laughing at him, her hair now coming loose from its tail. He hadn’t really noticed how grey she’d gone – the death of her husband had hit her harder than she’d said. She was always so damned capable...

“Penya?”

Loss twined its way round denial, round helplessness and then round rising, righteous anger. Almost answering him, the sun broke momentarily through the clouds and lit the harbour to a brilliant blue sparkle, though the rain still scattered in his face. Shards of rainbow danced in the air.

Hundreds.

Warmth touched his skin. He raised his jaw, his determination.

His rage.

Friends were rare to an immortal, to be betrayed by one was beyond belief.

Focus!

He knew they were coming and he let the light flood him, find the core of his anger, his certainty, and fuse with it, fuel it. Bright illumination saturated his being, burned like sheet lightning beneath his skin. He opened his heart, his mind, his soul. Around him, the very Powerflux invaded his form, wove itself into his breath, his being, and he was more than flesh, more than mortal. He was pure bloody quintessence – and, by the Gods, he was angry.

Rhan started to laugh; release, rising exultation. Defiance.

Come on then, you bloody bastards. Ambush me, would you?

With a massive effort of self-control, he contained the force, held the light beneath his skin and clung to his sunken-eyed image – but he wouldn’t keep it for long. The illusion was burning from a hole in its centre – as though the sunlight had hit it, focused through a real glass lens.

His laugh sought utterance, gleeful and dangerous. It had been too, too long.

Come on then, show yourselves. I’ll crush your skulls with my bare hands.

He forced his body to move, closer to the wall’s end. He was still lurching, though it was no longer an act. Controlling his body was awkward – he wanted to blaze, to explode into the sky like a rising star.

Penya was still laughing as he came after her, shambling faster now. Behind her, the great, blunt-featured statue stared out over the water.

Tekisarri. Saluvarith’s son, Rakanne’s father. The boy who found me when I was washed up and broken at the base of the cliff...

...Damn you, Phylos, I’ll tear out your spine for this!

And there they were, racing from either side of the cot, from its darkened doorway. There were over a dozen of them, dressed in the ramshackle woollens of fishermen but with the strong shoulders and raised chins that marked them instantly as military.

Mostak! You betray your brother? Your family?

The politics bothered him for only a moment. The scattering of guised soldiers spread into a loose line, armed with an unpleasant assortment of hooks, axes and gutting blades.

It started to rain harder. The shaft of sunlight was gone.

Penya shrieked, startled, skidded to a stop. “Oh my Gods!”

He snarled at her, “Get behind me!” Had she betrayed him? He’d no idea. The burning was too strong for reason, too powerful. But these bastards had made a mistake.

He was still on the wall – they couldn’t come at him all at once. At best, they’d be three at a time. His grin was breaking free now, cracking through his sallow-skinned guise. His bwaeo laugh was audible, thrown high into air by the chill sea wind.

Foundersson’s Champion. Master of Light. Then. Still. Always.

He challenged them straight. “Come on, then! Rip those hooks into my flesh, damn you! Put my balls on a spear and take them back to the Council!”

But Penya shrieked again, pointing wildly.

On the lighthouse balcony, two archers, shafts nocked and ready to loose. And behind him, the three toughs from the doorway were ranging themselves across the wall top, slouching and smirking. Their knives were dirty.

“Nice ambush.” His words were as sharp as a blade across the throat.

With a yell, they rushed him.

As he detonated, the rain sheeted across the harbour.

* * *

He came to with a start, his body jolting as though it had been in freefall. Somewhere in the back of his head, there were echoes of screaming.

Whose?

The air was deep cold, it stank of stone and salt and loss. And there was a pain in his back – a dull pain, a dark pain. A leftover ache like an embedded fragment of betrayal.

Penya.

He was hazy. Figments taunted the corners of his thoughts – flitting shadows he couldn’t quite see. His light was extinguished, exhausted; his connection to the Powerflux broken. He hurt, mind and body.

He was alone.

With an effort of will that nearly tore him flesh from bone, he got his hands under his shoulders and pushed his chin up.

He blinked, grinding his sight into focus.

Glory and exultation. Dazzling light refracting through pelting rain. Arrows sparking into ash before they reached him. Warriors falling, hands over their faces to shield their eyes. Laughter thrown into the sky as he knew they couldn’t touch him...

Dark stone walls, slick with green. A heavy wooden door cracked at the base and letting a chink of light point along the rock floor to the backs of his fingers.

...The tiny bite at his back, the spreading numbness. The shock; the denial. The fading, struggling, reaching. Rainbows cracking, scattered across the stone like broken crystal. Falling, falling away.

Then nothing – “Kazyen”.

He blinked for a moment, puzzled, figments still dancing, mocking him. Then he felt a shiver of fear as he realised...

...screaming...

...that wasn’t everything. Somewhere between that falling and the jolt that’d awoken him, there had been a nightmare. A body, thrown through a shutter; a woman, pounding his chest with furious fists.

What?

He shivered, a frisson through his skin. The figments taunted him, flickering just too far away to reach.

A white face. A last, startled expression as it plummeted into darkness. And then the screaming, all the way down.

The frisson became fear – real, tangible fear. The figments laughed more loudly and his skin crawled with sudden dread.

Dear Gods, Samiel, Father. What did I do?

He needed to move.

Struggling to muster his concentration, he blinked at where he was – yes, sealed in Fhaveon’s rock-walled gaol, the oubliette beneath her perfect stone. With a flash of bitterly ironic clarity, he realised this was another thing he’d built.

And this one he couldn’t get out of.

He tried to stand, failed. His feet slipped on slick, cold weed; his skull boomed dully like the drums of the High Cathedral tower. His body felt like water, no cohesion. It took three attempts to even sit, elbows on his knees, head in his hands.

His face was scratched, four neat nail rakes down one cheek.