Ecko Endgame Read Online Free Page B

of his wife.
    Screaming. All the way down.
    “My Lord?” the apothecary tried again.
    Belatedly, Rhan realised he’d been asked a question.
    “Wake her?” He looked up, stared at the apothecary for a moment. This was the man who’d found the bravery to defy Phylos’s bid for power and to spare the life of Mostak, military commander. He was now here, his slender body shuddering even as his Lord’s did likewise.
    “Yes, my Lord. Should we wake her? From whatever figments torment her sleeping?”
    The young man’s confusion was as tangled as the sheets, as loud as a shout in the night’s cool. He wasn’t asking for guidance, he was asking for Rhan to take responsibility for the decision.
    Rhan recollected himself; shook away the loitering fears. He laid one white hand on the man’s shoulder, said gently, “I don’t think I know your name.”
    “I’m Kallye, my Lord.” The apothecary gave a wary, weary chuckle. “I was with Tan Commander Mostak, if you remember, when—”
    “I haven’t forgotten.” Rhan flickered a smile, gave the man a tight momentary clasp. “You’re owed a debt the city will respect and repay, given time. I trust your judgement, but wakening someone in nightmare is— Samiel’s
teeth
!”
    Cutting him cold, Selana had sat upright and cried out, wordless and shattering-loud. Her eyes were wide open, staring, lit to uncanny intensity by a shutter-stripe of moonslight that fell across her face. She was breathing shallow and fast, her chest and shoulders shaking under her pale shift.
    Kallye fell back, hands to his mouth. Rhan moved forwards, almost expecting her to speak, to utter some profound and obscure truth, some wondrous vision… but she only stared, her eyes crazed in that strip of light.
    For a moment, she sat absolutely still – then she fell back to the huge bed as if she’d been hit in the face.
    Her eyes closed. She shuddered, and was still.
    Shivering, Kallye muttered, “Dear Gods.”
    Rhan suppressed a shiver of his own. Selana’s gaze seemed burned into the air; two points of light seared into both of them, horror and flesh. Under her, the bed was crouched and angered, this vast beast that had embraced Lords for generations and now glowered round the last of them, protective or aggressive or both…
    By the Gods! Enough!
    Rhan drew a breath, shook himself free from whimsy and sat on the bed’s edge as if daring it. Carefully, he laid one hand on Selana’s fine, pale throat, feeling the flutter of life within. Kallye hovered, anxious and fidgeting, while Rhan watched the shadows that moved in the girl’s face, the back-and-forth flicker of her now-closed eyes.
    He wondered what she could see.
    And he wondered if he knew perfectly damned well.
    Fool me once, my brother. But fool me twice?
    Laughter sounded in his ears, his mind. Her eyes were open, staring at the bed’s fabric canopy with that same crazed intensity, that same appalling sear. Vahl himself was there in her gaze, was blazing—
    Her eyes were closed.
    Rhan shuddered, looked again. Her eyes were closed.
    Lord Foundersdaughter Selana Valiembor slept like a little child, like she once had in her bassinet, her parents standing over her and glowing with love.
    But Rhan stared at her as if those eyes held worlds unspoken, horrors checked only by vein-pale lids.
    Are you in there, Vahl? Coiled? Waiting?
    Rhan had won the fight for the city. Blazing white wrath, he’d torn his brother Kas Vahl Zaxaar asunder, rent Phylos’s flesh and his creatures of alchemy and stone. Long, long returns of plotting and patience and power, and all of it had been over in a brief, savage burn of glory. Phylos, for all his Archipelagan arrogance and ambition, had been broken beyond redemption or help – Rhan had few fears that the scheming Merchant Master would manifest in figment and market-tale undeath.
    But Vahl…
    That was another matter entirely. Four hundred returns, and Rhan could not believe that his brother would give