Neph led the way as they departed the cavern, and though shocked and confused, Gorham was glad for that. Their route led downward, and after a time of negotiating treacherous conditions, they reached a wide, flat area. Torchlight touched nothing in any direction, and he felt the frightening pressure of space.
"Next Echo," Nadielle said, and her voice sounded different.
"So what exactly happened back there?"
"Garthan trap. They don't like visitors. They breed those things from sand sprites and cave wasps."
"And Neph can speak to them?"
"Of course. I chopped him, and he's part Garthan."
Gorham tried to absorb what she'd told him, working it through, attempting to make out what it all meant without reaching the conclusions that clamored for attention. It was the most she'd ever suggested about the chopping processes she used, but it birthed more questions than answers.
"You used-" But she'd already turned away, and he knew her well enough to recognize the tension in her shoulders. Told me too much, he thought. Did she mean to? Perhaps. Or perhaps the deeper they came, the more she was reaching out.
This new Echo felt very different from those above. There were no buildings evident, for a start-strange, for an Echo of Marcellan Canton-but the darkness did not feel as empty as it once had. It was heavy and loaded, and it had Gorham looking over his shoulder as he followed Nadielle.
The ground was rough but even, vaguely soft underfoot, and each footstep crunched gently. He thought perhaps it was a layer of old dead plants, but the air smelled only of dust.
Nadielle led them unerringly onward, confident even though Gorham could not make out any landmarks. The mute and emotionless Caytlin followed the Baker like a shadow, and Neph was somewhere around them, flitting across their path occasionally without making a sound. He's part Garthan, Nadielle had said. Trying to imagine just how Nadielle chopped people in those womb vats made him shiver.
And if Neph was part Garthan, what were its other parts?
The shapes emerged quickly from the darkness-gray, motionless. Gorham's fear was held in check by Nadielle's confidence as she walked between them. They stood sentinel to the left and right, and Gorham recognized the forms of old statues. Around them the ground was more uneven but harder. We're in a park. He called Nadielle to a halt and went to one of the statues.
"We need to hurry," she said, standing by his side.
"A moment," he said, because he was trying to make out the statue's face. He held his torch higher, and the shadowy features jumped out at him. There was nothing unusual here-perhaps he'd been expecting something monstrous or unknown-but neither did he recognize the face from one of the many history books he'd read.
"Old city rulers before the Marcellans," Nadielle said. "This Echo might be from ten thousand years ago, when they used to have a park in every canton in honor of the rulers. As older ones died, they'd erect new statues to those who took their place."
"Sounds extravagant."
"Politicians have always liked attention. Nowadays they simply get it in differing ways."
Gorham looked around at the several other statues he could see, vaguer the farther away they were, and tried to imagine how many might be standing around them right now. They were perhaps the only surviving likenesses of many of these people, all part of the city's story and staring now into an eternal night.
"It really is the past down here," he said, as if that had struck him for the first time. The statues regarded him with nothing left to say.
The park seemed to go on forever. Gorham lost track of time, and when they heard the screaming man, they might have been walking for days.
The screams came from the distance just as Gorham became certain that he could hear something larger, and deeper. He'd been thinking that he could hear something for a while now, but Nadielle seemed unconcerned, and he hadn't wanted to mention it. If he ever stopped to listen, the noise did too, so he suspected it had something to do with walking through this Echo. Perhaps their footsteps reverberated through the dry ground, the land shaking in excitement at these first human visitors in an age. Or maybe whatever was making the sound stopped when he did and carried on to the rhythm of his pace. He opened his mouth to mention the noises to Nadielle, and then came the screams.
They were distant, their direction uncertain, and they sounded mad.
"Down," Nadielle said. Gorham knelt on the dry ground, and the Baker pushed Caytlin down and squatted by her head, protecting her.
"What the crap is that?" Gorham asked, but Nadielle did not turn around. The screams were coming from ahead of them. And they were drawing closer.
Just one person, he thought. The screams came in waves, pausing occasionally for an intake of breath, and as far as he could tell it was always the same voice.
Nadielle had drawn a knife from her belt, and in her other hand she nursed a round, flexible object. Gorham drew his short sword. It was keen and light, and he'd used it in anger only three times. He'd spent a lot of energy trying to forget those moments.
Something was running toward them. Their torches did not penetrate the darkness very far at all, but in the distance he could hear the steady thump thump of feet striking the soft ground, and he imagined lazy clouds of dust thrown up. As the thing ran, it continued to scream.
"Nadielle?"
"I don't know. Be ready."
"Where's Neph?" he asked, but the Baker did not have time to respond.
The shape that emerged from the darkness into shadows, then from shadows into light, was twisted and mutated, a bastardization of anything human, and the noise issuing from it was shattering. It slowed as it neared them and heaved itself up, growing even taller before it reared over Nadielle and Caytlin, twice their height and bristling with spiked weapons.
Nadielle lowered her knife and stood up, and then Gorham realized the truth.
Neph dropped the screaming man at Nadielle's feet. Dust coughed up around him, and shreds of ancient dried plants that had not seen sunlight for millennia drifted in lazy arcs. The impact drove the scream from him in a loud humph! and the sudden silence was shocking. He gasped in air. His face went from pale to white, and he writhed slightly as he tried to start his breathing again.
"Sprote Felder!" Nadielle gasped, and the man screamed again.
Gorham had to go close to the Baker to speak above the screams. "That's Sprote Felder?"
"Yes!" she shouted back. "I've met him a couple of times before, but… he's changed."
The man looked barely human. His clothes hung on a bony frame, his exposed arms so thin that Gorham could have encircled them with his thumb and index finger. His face was skeletal, eyes dim and sunken, and he was missing one shoe. There were remnants of finery about his clothes, but it seemed that he'd been soiling himself for some time. The stench was horrific.
He also had a broken leg. Gorham had missed it before, but now he saw the blood-soaked rip in his trousers and the glint of pale-white bone protruding.
Neph took several steps back, then turned to face the darkness.
Nadielle knelt beside the screaming man, and it took a while for Gorham to hear the soothing words. He could not make out what they meant, but the tone was obvious, and it became audible only when the explorer's screaming started to lessen. How can a man scream so much and for so long? Gorham thought, but then he saw the way that Sprote's head kept twisting to look at Neph. Each glance would ignite the screams again, and it took Nadielle some time to calm him into silence. She stroked his face and held his hand, and at her single sharp command, Neph disappeared once again into the darkness.
Sprote Felder twisted to look at Gorham, then pushed backward with his feet so that he was curled into Nadielle's grasp.
"Should I go as well?" Gorham asked, but Nadielle shook her head.
"You're going the wrong way," Sprote Felder said, and his voice was surprisingly calm. He was still shaking and grinding his teeth together, but Nadielle's hand on his face and arm across his chest seemed to have soothed him a little.
"Which way should we be going?" Gorham asked.
"Up!"
"We're going down to the Falls," he said. "There's something… I've been hearing something." Nadielle looked up at him at this, and she seemed pleased that he was hearing it as well.
"It'll be the end of everything," Felder said, his eyes growing wider in his ravaged face. They looked nowhere in particular but saw something terrible.
"You've been there?" Nadielle asked.