Free Ecko Endgame by Danie Ware

this?”
    And then the smell hit him like a fist, and the memory with it. It was so sudden, so real, that it robbed him of breath. He trembled and his face flushed – Saravin, the market, the woman in the ale tent. It seemed to come from another Count of Time, and yet the memory was as precise as if he’d drawn it.
    Rhan shook the cane, pulling at his attention. The thing was caked in moss, in moss that was already dying. It had grown in the cracks, furred the outer edges, but it was brown, flaking into the dust even as Rhan spun the thing like a staff and threw it back on the pile. It rolled down the edge and struck the stone floor, rattling as it settled.
    Outside, the injured guard swore.
    Mael went cold. His heart laboured in his chest, scaring him. His previous, nebulous nervousness had been replaced by a sharp tang of real fear…
    I know this smell.
    North of here… Foriath.
    But the guard commander’s voice came sharply through the doorway. “Whatever you’re doing, make it quick.”
    “We’re coming now,” Rhan called. Then to Mael, “We need to secure this store. We need the Cartel down here, Merchant Master, get this counted and moved. More guards, porters, whatever you’ll need. Take it to the Priest Gorinel, the Cathedral, and the catacombs. It should be safe enough—”
    “Wait,
wait
,” Mael muttered almost to himself, trying to catch up with his thoughts. “We can’t just—”
    “We don’t have a choice,” Rhan said. “We’ll take what there is and sort through it.” He touched Mael’s arm. Caught off-guard, Mael snatched the limb back like he’d been stung. “We still have a long way to go, and we need everything we can find. Now, let’s move.”
    They stepped out of the store, blinking in the rising morning light. The street was quiet, and the mist had thinned, slipping back down towards the water. The injured guard stood back from his fellows, ruefully holding a folded piece of tunic to his face. His skin was reddening, already swelling with infection, and one of the claws had rasped dangerously close to an eye.
    “Ghar,” Rhan said. “Let me see it.”
    “My Lord.” The guard lowered the fabric, lifted his chin.
    Coming close, Rhan placed a hand on the man’s sweating face, looked at him with a peculiar, familiar intensity.
    An intensity that Mael knew only too well.
    Like being lit up from the inside out.
    He
knew
how that felt. Mael was not a believer in Gods, but the Count of Time had come for him, his heart had been squeezed in that long, chill hand. He’d known it was over, and it had been all right.
    He was an old man, he missed his friend, and he’d done enough.
    Lit up from the inside out.
    Rhan’s inhuman touch had healed him – but had left no part of him secret. It was the light of a truth unwilling, of a whole life revealed in an instant. It had driven that chill hand from him, brought him from death, back to Fhaveon… but what else had it done?
    Ghar was shaking, flushed. The wounds in his face were gone – red scars in his tanned skin. He was spluttering, trying to voice incomprehension, thanks, disbelief, but Rhan said only, “Your tan bade you guard the perimeter.”
    With a fist-on-chest salute, the soldier obeyed the order.
    Mael shuddered. “You can do that with a touch.” The question was painfully curious, like tonguing a sore tooth. “Why can you not just—?”
    “Not just what?” Rhan snapped back at him, sounding oddly stung. “Cure the blight? Make it go away? Wave my hand and just… conjure it all better?” He snorted, bitterly humorous. “Samiel’s balls, Mael, you think I haven’t tried?” He made a noise of frustration and disgust. “I wish I could! But I can’t even understand it – it’s too big, somehow, too much. I can’t see its origins or its edges. Even the fragments – it’s like they’re a part of something else, something huge.” He shook his head. “I’ve touched only its outside, and by the Gods, it