Echo City by Tim Lebbon Read Free Book Online Page A

softly, then continued on his way.
    “I don’t think he likes you, Gorham,” Malia said.
    “I doubt he even knows what we’re saying.”
    The man led them from cavern to tunnel, cave to crevasse, and a while later they crossed a shifting rope bridge thatspanned a dry canal. The bed was speckled with white shapes, and Gorham thought perhaps they were skeletons. He did not pause to make out whether they were human. He had never been this way before.
    “How many routes are there to this damned place?” Malia said when she caught sight of the bones. Gorham did not answer, because he had been wondering the same thing.
    They passed through an old village. Most of the buildings were in ruins, but there were a couple that still bore their roofs, almost fully tiled and with chimneys intact. Behind one of the glassless windows, in a building that might have been a temple to forgotten gods, shone a pale light. Gorham thought for a moment that torches had been lit to mark their way, but then he realized that was a foolish idea. This man had been sent to guide them in. And Nadielle would do nothing so obvious.
    “Gorham,” Malia whispered.
    “I know.” At the sound of their voices the light flared slightly, then blinked out. The phantom went to hide.
    Beyond the ruined village they hit an ancient road, where wheel ruts cast thousands of years before were still visible. The man led them along the center of the road, and then without warning he turned right and ran into the dark.
    “Wait!” Malia called. Her voice did not echo at all, as if the pressing darkness dampened it.
    “Hey!” Gorham went to follow, but the man was already out of sight.
Slipped away into a crack in the ground
, he thought. He wondered how many of the Baker’s chopped were watching them.
    “So what the crap are we supposed to do now?” Malia said.
    Gorham looked around, turning slowly and following the light from his torch. “Nothing,” he said at last. “We’re almost there.”
    “I’ve never come this way before.”
    “Nor I. Like I said, she’s being very careful.”
    “Well, when she hears—”
    “Hush.”
    Malia fell silent, and Gorham closed his eyes briefly.
Yes, when she hears what we have to say
. But right now he was trying not to look that far ahead. In the dark, in the coolnessof forgotten times, he was simply looking forward to seeing Nadielle again.
    “You must be hungry,” a voice said. “Thirsty. This way. The Baker has a feast for you.”
    Gorham smiled, and five steps from them a chopped woman lit her torch. There were three of them in all, standing within striking distance of Gorham and Malia. Until that moment, none of them had been visible. They were naked, and their skin seemed to shift in and out of focus as the oil torches flickered. They each had a third arm protruding from between their breasts that ended in a wicked-looking serrated blade, and spines along their sides were raised and ready to spit. The Pseran triplets. Nadielle had told him about them—
Three of my best
, she had said,
three of my
most
perfect
—but this was the first time he had laid eyes on them. He knew now why the Baker was so proud. Beautiful, shapely, exquisite, intoxicating—and given cause, any one of them could kill him before he blinked.
    “What in the name of Hanharan …?” Malia whispered.
    “No,” Gorham said, “nothing to do with him at all.”
    The Pserans started walking, keeping far enough apart to avoid presenting a combined target, and Gorham and Malia followed.
       He had been to the Baker’s laboratory many times before this visit. Each time it had seemed slightly different—dimensions altered, design subtly shifted, the space it occupied flexed or folded—though the one constant was that it was filled with equipment that meant nothing to him. He knew some of what Nadielle did but never how she did it. That had always been the way of the Bakers, and the mystery was part of her allure.
    The final door closed