Neph appeared soundlessly before them. One beat there was only darkness, and the next there was Neph, large and sharp and covered with droplets of condensation.
"Near," it said, and its voice was like grit scraped underfoot.
Nadielle called a halt and they paused by the tumbled remains of an old roadside temple. Gorham could not tell which god or gods this place had been built to honor, and when he ventured through one of the ruptures caused by fallen walls, the insides consisted only of detritus from the roof and a few shreds of dried timber. There was no decoration and no signs of religious paraphernalia. Just as he turned to leave, a shadow moved.
He held his breath, then glanced back out to where Nadielle stood drinking from a water skin. Caytlin was close to her, as ever, and farther out at the limits of the lamplight crouched Neph, facing the darkness as if daring it.
The shadow moved again, and Gorham backed up against a cold stone wall.
A man emerged from a pile of rubble and shattered roofing tiles. He slipped through them rather than between them, the solid mass having no impact on his body. Phantom, Gorham thought, and the hairs on the back of his neck bristled. The man wore a simple robe tied around the waist, hood lowered, his bald head scarred across one side. Through his head and body, Gorham could see the far wall, but the splash of masonry seen through the phantom was different. More solid, more ordered, painted a subtle yellow and speckled here and there with small carved animals-offerings from long-dead worshippers to a god long forgotten.
He gasped, and the phantom paused.
They're just Echoes, he thought, repeating everything he had ever heard about these flashes from the past. But this phantom turned and looked at him. Its eyes were blank and unfocused, and Gorham thought the old dead man was looking through rather than at him, just as Gorham was looking through him. Does he see me as a ghost a thousand years ago? he wondered, and then the phantom left the temple through an arched doorway filled with the remains of the fallen stone lintel.
Gorham filled his lungs, aware only now that he had been holding his breath, and darted back outside.
"Did you-" he began, but he could already see that the phantom had vanished. Nadielle stood almost directly outside the ruined doorway. She raised one eyebrow.
"They probably won't hurt you," she said.
"I know that." Gorham tried to calm his breathing, hoping that the weak lamplight did not shine from the sheen of sweat he felt on his face and neck. For a beat he thought he felt Caytlin looking at him, but when he glanced her way she was staring at the Baker once again. If she'd had the ghost of a smile on her face, perhaps she would have spooked him less.
"We're very near the wall into Marcellan Canton," Nadielle said. "Of course, it's not guarded down here, not by Scarlet Blades, at least. But there are…" She smiled.
"There are what?"
"The history of this canton is a stormy one. The wall's roots are often the focal point for some of the many soldiers who've died in service to the Marcellans."
"You said they won't hurt us," he said.
"No, they won't. But they sometimes like to try. Just stay close, and we'll be through soon enough. Then we go deeper."
I'm not sure I should have agreed to this, Gorham thought, but he had no desire to show his nervousness. He hated it when Nadielle offered him that smile, like a teacher humoring a small child. The only time she smiled without condescension was in her bed after they had made love, when she liked him to stroke her stomach and she twisted his hair in her fingers, and she talked about the past as if it could save them all.
There were architects a thousand years ago who built with bone, and they made such wonders. A thousand years earlier, philosophers from Mino Mont wrote a series of books that are long lost but that supposedly placed us in a world much easier to understand and much less cruel. And three thousand years before that, the musicians of what would become Dragar's Canton could beguile with a note and possess with a word. Their compositions were as close to magic as anything the city has ever seen.
But even that would not last for long. Those times never stretched, because the Baker always had something to do, places to go, monstrosities to tend in her vats. And perhaps she feared she had told him too much.
His lovemaking with Peer had been purer and more honest, though his memory of it was still shaded by the full, terrible three years that had passed. He remembered her laughing cruelly as she'd walked away from him, the dismissive wave over her shoulder. She had not even looked around at him, however grave their situation. If only he could believe that it was because she could not face saying goodbye again.
He followed Nadielle and Caytlin, content for now to bring up the rear. He caught glimpses of Neph ahead of them-a shadow within shadows-and in the distance the darkness soon started to coalesce into something more solid. He wondered who had observed the Marcellan wall from this angle so long ago and whether they'd viewed its inhabitants with as much disdain as he did. The Watchers had a long but disorganized history, and until relatively recently they'd consisted of casual gatherings of like-minded people eager to shed the superstitions of the past. It was a painful irony that organizing had almost been their downfall. So he cast himself back, becoming a traveler venturing to Marcellan for some unspecified business, and the folly of its rulers, then as now, sat like a vague threat before him.
The wall emerged out of the darkness, catching some of their lamplight across its sheer surface. Before it lay the remains of many ruined dwellings, much of the timber used in construction dried and crumbled away to almost nothing. Among these places were a few stone-built constructs that had withstood the time better. But even these displayed areas of damage. As they passed, Gorham could not help thinking that some of the damage was intentional.
"There," Nadielle said. She'd paused to wait for him and, as he drew level, he saw the glimmer of phantom lights along the wall. In perhaps a dozen places from left to right, the weak blue lights clung like algae to the ancient stone, shadowed from within recesses in the wall's height and nestled at its base in several places.
"They weren't there a while ago," Gorham said.
"The phantoms here keep watch."
"But they're Echoes."
"Yes, but they'll be more… noticeable than some phantoms you might have seen before. I believe the deeper we go, and the older the Echoes, the more time the phantoms have had to become used to their continued existence."
"I don't understand," he said, his skin crawling at the memory of that phantom priest staring through him.
"I don't think we're meant to. I think they're just Echoes living in Echoes, but we choose to build upon the past instead of destroying it. Maybe it's inevitable that the Echoes of past lives will survive as well." Nadielle led them toward the wall, and Gorham could see Neph ahead of them, scouting its base. He paused at an opening-an old gateway with the remains of several flagpoles protruding from the stone facade above-and a vague phantom light glowed in the deep, dark route to the other side. Nadielle headed for Neph, with Caytlin her usual several paces behind. Gorham had no choice but to follow. It was that or stay out here on his own.
Neph had gone by the time they reached the gate, venturing into the Marcellan Canton of old. He'd left the phantoms behind. They were more blurred than others, yet their lights burned brighter and they interacted more with the subterranean travelers. They never actually touched him-Gorham wasn't sure he could have taken that without going mad-but they came close, faces manifesting from the glare, eyes searching, mouths opening in silent exhortations to stop, show their papers, where were they going, what was their business. And in the stark, ancient distance, he heard the whisper of metal on leather as they drew their weapons. He concentrated on Nadielle's back to guide him through; she walked without pause and without allowing herself to be distracted. She's so strong, Gorham thought.
The wall was thick down here, perhaps fifty paces wide, and it took an eternity to reach the other side. When they did, the first of this deep Echo of Marcellan Canton was revealed to them. And it was a ruin.
"What…?" Gorham whispered, his question reverberating around the small square.
"War," Nadielle said. "Don't they say the history books are written by the winners?"
Gorham could not speak. These buildings had not fallen victim to the wearing effects of time but had been deliberately destroyed. Signs of ancient fires were still visible here and there, black soot stained across the pale gray stonework. Charred timbers poked broken ribs at the dark sky. And, close above the ruins, far lower than he'd been expecting, he could see the exposed underbelly of the Echo above this one.
"How deep?" he asked. "Two Echoes down?"
"More," Nadielle said. "As I said, there's no real judging of distance and time when you're down here."
"But a war between whom? How long ago?"
"I can tell you what little I know," she said softly, "but we need to keep walking. There's a place not far from here where we go deeper, and I want to reach it before…"
"Before?"
Nadielle gave him that annoying smile again-the one that said: You're only a child compared to me, what I am, what I know. And for a moment that shocked him with its intensity, Gorham thought of roughing that smile from her face.
"Let's just go," she said. "Neph will scout ahead and keep us safe." She turned her back on Gorham and started to walk. If he wanted to hear what she knew, he would have to keep up.
"There's no record of who fought this war, or why, anywhere for public consumption in Echo City," Nadielle began. "I suspect there might be writings buried deep in old Hanharan vaults or perhaps personal accounts handed down through the ages from Marcellan elders to their children. But what happened here is a whisper among shadows. Some of those phantoms we just passed might have been here when the fires came and went. Some probably died here. But even I couldn't ask them."
"Couldn't, or wouldn't want to?" Gorham asked, and Nadielle did not answer.
"All I know is what I read in my mother's books, and some of it she… passed down to me." Nadielle tapped her temple but looked only ahead, as if reassuring herself of something. "The Bakers might be the only line keeping some of the truth alive."
"But people come down here," Gorham protested.
"Not as many as you'd think. How deep do you travel into the Echoes?"
"Only to you," he admitted.
"And only because you have a reason to travel down. There aren't many who choose to venture into the Echoes. Criminals, perhaps, but they have only their own well-being at heart. Some explorers, yes. A few. But most who wish to explore history do so through their books. Actually visiting it-that's an experience any sane person would want to avoid."