The Herald of Autumn (Echoes of the Untold Age Book 1) (11 page)

With no thought, I leapt to the side,
away from where her bulk struck the earth.

Now she did roar in pain, both
thunderous and bleak. She thrashed her head to the side, as if she believed my
arrow to be something she could shake off. But I could well see how deeply the
shaft was sunk. These were the bear’s last moments. Already, her thrashing
weakened. Already, her head slumped to the ground.

When she turned toward me, one eye
still shone with that fierce, hellish fire.

Then, it went dark.

“Downed!” I struck my bow toward the
sky and spat the word, fiercely, with both victory and spite. “Downed well and
fair! And here, the Old Man thought I would need call the Hunter for you.” I
grinned manically, trying not to giggle. I had worried, had truly thought the
bear might end me so a new Herald would have to rise.

Then, I saw the flesh around the
creature’s maw. It rippled and shuddered grotesquely. Black shadows dripped
from the mouth and the wounded eye, only to pool upon the ground. The shadows
twisted and writhed, forming into strange, crawling horrors. They were like
centipedes, only they were as long as my arm. The creatures chewed and ate
their way from the bears head, forming a writhing mass of them on the ground.

I fought not to retch.

Panic rose as I realized I had no
fuel to burn these as I had the flies. Although—

The gas. The bear’s head still
dripped with liquid flame.

Trembling, I fumbled in my pocket to
find the matches. I lit one as quickly as I could and tossed it at the bear.

The match went out in the air.

I struck another, and this time my
throw was true. The wetness sputtered with blue flame, and the dark, tar-like
shadows screeched and pulled away from the burning fur.

It wasn’t enough, not enough by far.

The serpentine creatures sensed me,
knew what I was doing. For every one burned by the flame, four chewed their way
from the monstrosity’s ears or nose, onyx shadows slathered with gore and
mucus. The ones on the ground scuttled toward me. Their long, strange feelers
on their heads reached for me as if they could smell the glamour of autumn
wrapped around me.

The darkling dreams boiled off them,
hanging in the air like the scent of madness.

Strange demons, which pull out their
own tongues so that they may never accidentally insult their dark god. They
crawl on the walls like insects and eat the lost people that they find. They
—

—
simply appear to be a human
child, a girl. But she collects fingers, which she keeps under her bed, far
from the prying eyes of men. One day, her mother was cleaning her room
—

—
and he found himself tied to a
pole on the outskirts of town. They had stripped his skin in strange symbols
all across his chest. By night, the Trogiin would come, come and hold his mouth
open. They would push themselves inside him
—

I drew my bow and, in one fluid
movement, shot the closest horror, pinning it to the earth. It squealed and
thrashed, but then its mass melted away into shadows, shadows that drifted and
coalesced into the other squirming shaediin-creatures.

I stepped back, my eyes wide. The
creatures simply poured from the bear’s carcass, hundreds of them. Their
bodies, most as long as I was tall, sported hundreds of spindly, seeking legs.
They had strange feelers on their heads, and they reached about with them. They
had wicked pincers on their faces that they slowly opened and closed as if
speaking some silent, forgotten language I could not comprehend.

Coyote’s words haunted me then:

“That’s the reality of the thing,
right there, Tommy. Not Wendigo nor a hungry ghost. The darkness that burns
cold pours from them when dead, but reforms later, in another poor creature.
It’s never whatever you thought it was.”

They were moving toward me, eager,
hungry.

Feckless. Insatiable.

Inevitable.

Hopeless.

Panic, raw and burning, made my feet
fly.

Every hundred steps or so, I would
stop and turn. Cold, I would aim and let an arrow fly.

The result was always the same.

The creatures I struck would scream
and then dissipate into the others.

Whenever they got too close, the
darkling dreams would haunt me with twisted faces and bleeding eyes. They
unleashed whispers that made no sense and songs that sought to drive me mad.
Danger laced those dreams even more than the bear’s claws.

I kept my distance. Frantically, I
thought about my options. I couldn’t harm the creatures, not now. I could call
for my horn, the next step in the dance of the Hunt, but I didn’t feel that
would actually help.

No sooner had I thought it, than I
saw my horn. That was ever the way of things.

It hung casually on the side of a
tree. The ram’s horn had intricate, copper scrollwork all along the side.

“No.” I was firm. “The hounds are
glamour. They will be of little aid.”

The horn said nothing in response.
Still, it hung there, petulantly denying my denial.

I saw it again not ten steps later,
glistening in the dim light, lying on a stump.

And again in the path so I almost
stumbled over it.

“You’re going to get me killed!” I
swore at it as I leapt past.

It was no use, of course. My horn was
ever persistent, a dangerous tool that yearned for use.

Not today, however. The second of my
tools would be more useless than the first, I knew. What if I did call the
hounds? The abomination would drink them as little more than sweet nectar. Then
what? Would I lose the hounds for all time if they were devoured by the
darkness?

—
was evil the likes of which
cannot be understood. It was the sound of spiders, pouring forth from my mouth,
as I screamed in the dark. It
—

“Please, no.” It was a litany, a
prayer. I could not get caught in that tide of malice and darkness.

Could not.

Behind me, the darkness seethed
through maddening shapes: now a darkened river of squirming insects, now a
flock of carrion birds, now reaching, grasping tentacles.

I’d stopped trying to shoot. No part
of it was not all of it, and it simply swallowed my arrows, only to retake its
dead into itself.

I was nothing before it. I and my
hounds would be little more than food.

It screamed on the edge of my mind,
stark and mad.

Not food, Herald. No, not for the
likes of you. Ever shall we dwell within you. You shall nevermore be alone,
nevermore be cursed to wander.

I saw it then, in my mind, even as I
ran. I saw myself, with burning red eyes, a twisted, living shadow. No more
would I bear the gold of autumn—I would be hamed with twilight. Shadows of
darkling dreams would pour from me wherever I went, and I would never die,
never fear, and never be alone. Wherever I went I would hear a thousand-thousand
whispering, cackling, mad voices clawing at the inside of my mind—

You will ever more hunt, Herald. The
hunt will only end with the world bleeding at your feet.

It took every shape and none: a
plague of large, ravenous rats; twisting, writhing serpents.

I could not stop and stare,
fascinating though it was.

No. The prey’s place was to flee.

It didn’t matter; I knew death was
upon me.

The creature followed, relentless,
unstoppable. I might make away, but then what? Never could I sleep nor take solace
in anything. The darkness would stalk me, implacable.

My choices were bleak. Eddie hadn’t
given me near the tools I needed. My bow was all but useless. I could
give
way to the Hunt and take up my horn, but—

No.

I had one choice left.

“Coyote, I may have misjudged.”

I didn’t cry the words, screaming to
the sky. No, I could not. I simply ran, panting out my call, hoping that even
without his Name, he would hear me.

“Illari. Coyatl. Old Man Coyote.” I
glanced behind me, seeing that the writhing darkness had taken the shape of
stinging flies, buzzing in a cacophony of madness. “Sinawava, everything you
are, and Tell yourself to be, I need you. I need my boon.”

Only the wind answered. The wind and
the sound of my feet and the buzzing insanity.

“Come now.” In my horror, panic edged
into my voice. “You owe me. You
owe
me. You said it yourself. ‘Jes
call,’ you said.”

The darkness raged closer.

I grew tired. My wounds from earlier
began to pain me again.

I couldn’t run forever.

“I need you. You heartless bastard.
You
called me here.
You
made this happen.”

Closer. Its ghostly hands reached for
me—

“I’M CALLING!” I shrieked. “PLEASE.”

No, nothing.

This was it then. The end. It had all
been a trap.

No. Not the end. There shall never be
an end. We shall walk together, you and I.

I was alone. Alone as I ever was.

It was up to me.

As it always was.

I glanced ahead to the gray wood of
an old, dead tree. As I had known it would be, my horn hung there.

Perhaps. Perhaps the hounds could be
enough. Could slow the writhing phantom that pursued me.

I could run, could find an ally. I
might be offering them to the darkness, but that was better than offering
myself, better than offering the Herald. I must not become a harbinger of
darkness dire.

I only needed a nonce, slow it the
slightest bit. Then, I could sound my horn. I reached for my quiver. Perhaps
just a few shots, just enough to tarry its mad run—

My fingers didn’t find my arrows.
They found an arrow of the sun’s own fire.

“You whore’s son.” I grinned. “I hate
you.”

I spun on my heel and nocked the
arrow. My fingers flew like quicksilver.

Yet not quick enough.

Like a tide of filth and madness, the
shaediin darkness crashed upon me.

Not the end. A new beginning.

The darkling dreams tore through me
like a cyclone. A thousand-thousand crazed visions of a thousand-thousand mad
worlds, all rotten to their very core. For an instant, I forgot everything I
was or had been. Instead, I became a madman, a sorcerer, an alchemist who
delved into that darkness. I was obsessed with hunting the gloaming dragons. I
was a secret soldier, tasked with standing against the creatures from beyond
the void.

Numberless bent, twisted names.

Pain. I felt where the bear had
struck me, felt the gash on my chest. I felt the places in my head where she
had attacked me, like white-hot barbs had been dragged through my mind.

Then I saw the arrowhead, shining
with the sun’s flame, and the phantasms fell away.

Nothing could be false in its light.

The Herald never sleeps again. He
wanders the shadows of the world with a bow that shoots arrows of bitterness
and illusion. His eyes burn with the unyielding, dark fire, and he is despair,
one of the world’s sorrows
—

“No.” I felt surprisingly calm in the
light of the arrow. “That’s not true.”

I let the arrow fly.

A thousand-thousand voices screamed
in my head at once. My ears and nose bled from the force, from the horror of
it. I was knocked backward to the ground, and the darkness crashed upon me. It
sought to push its way into me, my ears, my eyes, my nose.

I clawed at it, blind in its
darkness.

The creature burned like old, dry
leaves and reeked of singed down.

The fire crackled with the monster’s
fury and spite. It ate away at the shadowed abomination, catching even on small
wisps of it that tried to make flight. The shaediin darkness became a vulture,
then a swarm of wasps, then bats. Its form didn’t matter. The sun’s fire leapt
from darkness to darkness, burning the shadows even as they tried to escape.

It screamed again, the horrors of a
thousand-thousand darkling dreams tearing at me like tiny razors. The sound
carried the force of a mighty river, battering me against the ground, hurling
me against stone and tree.

The sun’s fire still hungered. The
shadows weakened. Flung against the ground again, I felt something in my
shoulder crack.