The Herald of Autumn (Echoes of the Untold Age Book 1) (10 page)

I cannot say how long I ran with fear
burning like fire in my veins.

My mind shuddered like a panicked
animal. Nothing existed beyond the world immediately in front of me, and I
fled. Mist swirled all about, obscuring tangled briars, bidding me to stumble.
Soon, I was completely turned around, lost in a labyrinth of mist and darkness.

The creature loomed everywhere I
turned.

More than the monstrosity chased me,
however. It somehow bent the world and my mind, as if sanity and reality melted
and bled when it strode near. This caused more visions. It never casting
glamour upon me, yet wherever it trod, insanity and madness followed along,
cloaking me in an aura of depravity and despair.

I knew when it got close. The
strange, mad whispers and the spectres at the corner of my mind announced its
approach.

I saw a man in the shadows, dignified
and learned. Yet he was no gentleman but a spider. His doors opened in every
corner of the world, and he could step to any place, leaving husks where
mortals had once slept.

I saw an old woman with hair in her
face. She crawled along the floor like a crab, muttering and whispering
numbers. She knew the day of everyone’s death.

I saw a capering, giggling boy in the
shadows, with extra joints in his fingers. They bent backward, serpentine. He
would tickle sleeping children until they bled, and then feast on the blood
with a long, forked tongue.

I saw a man in a plague-mask, working
strange alchemies lost to the world. He made potions that brought visions of
the truth through tears of blood.

This and more. Nothing sane, nothing
hale or whole.

The creature brought irrational
darkness.

The entire time I ran, I grabbed only
vague glimpses of my pursuer. It was gargantuan, whatever it was. It had
burning, hate-filled eyes and a toothy maw.

It towered above me, even when on all
fours. Behind me, I heard the forest give way as it crashed through tree and
thorn. Nothing, not nettle nor sharp bramble slowed its pursuit. The world
melted before it.

It was feckless.

Wait.

That was
exactly
how I had
thought of the creature I had fought before. That one had been far weaker,
weaker than even the raven, yet all of them—

Feckless hunger, no thought or
cunning. Simply relentless.

It would never stop.

I burst forward, all grace and speed.
The gray, dusty ground flew underneath my feet, but never did I stumble or
fall. I needed to get as far from the creature as I could, so that I could make
some kind of stand.

In some alleyways, there prowls a
gaunt man who always hungers. He has no eyes, in truth, although none who see
him ever remember that fact
—

I shook my head, fighting off the
relentless dreams that lusted, that craved.

I almost ran headlong into the stone
cliff. In that nonce of time, I had a choice: I could
turn and keep
going alongside the cliff face, keeping my speed and trying to put more
distance between us, or…

Instead, I decided to scramble up the
stone face.

Fleeing into the sunlight seemed like
the best idea. I noticed a small shelf, about twice my height along the cliff.
If I could get there, perhaps…

I had to leap the smallest bit to
gain purchase, but my naked toes helped. Working my way up the cliff, the sharp
stones sliced my hands. The blood shone starkly red against the grey stone,
casting into contrast the strange shadows on the cliff face.

Every shadow is a gateway into the
vast dead city. Dead? No. The light that shines across it from strange, unknown
stars makes it seem dead, but this is Dhire Lith, the city where death only
dreams. Here more people than ever lived madly scrawl lost sigils and glyphs to
write histories that never were.

A darkness dwells within them, a
darkness that clutches and grasps.

They write with flesh; they write
with blood; they write with the screams of the lost. The Liber Noctiis itself
was born here, an abortion of a book written with the mad cacophony of entire
worlds
—

No. No. No. No.

I pulled myself up to the shelf,
reached for a sling stone, cupped, turned, and pulled.

I stopped mid motion.

It had been a bear.

The largest bear I had ever seen, the
mother of all bears, embodying the primordial idea of what a bear was that
existed in the back of the mind. Its all-black fur was broken only by its
burning mouth and eyes. Tar-like blackness drooled from its lips, puddling in
shadows at the beast’s feet. Just the sight of the monstrosity brought terror.

I wilted before her.

She met my gaze, and I stared into an
infinity of red, dripping madness. Her eyes wept with the fury of scarlet
flame.

The creature roared.

The sound deafened, like great,
rumbling thunder in my mind.

Terror gripped me, and I dropped the
stone.

Eddie was right. A sling would never
lay this creature low.

I felt her reach for me with little
more than the nightmares of those fever-red eyes.

I thrust my hand into the leather
purse until I found one of the yellow bottles. As the thing stood on her hind
legs, I struggled with the nozzle on the cap and then sprayed the acrid liquid
downward, soaking most of her head.

She reared high. The bear stood
taller than the ledge where I perched. Before I could pull the matches from my
pocket, she swung, and a foreleg heavier than I was smashed into the side of my
face.

Black. Pain. Red.

I fell. My purse scattered.

This was my end, I was certain.

Tasting blood in my mouth, I couldn’t
think straight. Towering above me, the bear roared. It echoed to the end of the
world.

My bow. I need my bow. Oh, oh Hunter,
I need
—

She lurched at me, faster than I
would have thought possible. I could smell the rot and decay while she remained
several paces away. I watched, frozen, as the world wept wherever the
monstrosity trod.

Already, I heard that strange
in-breath, that hollow, drawing sound. If she got much closer, I knew she would
drink from my well, and I would fade, along with everything I ever was.

She struck me across the head again.

Knives of ice pierced my mind with
nightmares.

They pulled her skin from her while
she screamed. The gerudiin watched, as if
—

Red warmth exploded everywhere. Fire
scorched across my stomach.

I mumbled, my voice slurred, “What if
instead of Telling some dull, true story, I tell you a secret story, made of
every smile you had ever forgotten?”

I smiled. The human woman would hold
me. Soon, I could sleep.

That awful intake of breath signaled
my demise. That strange, hollow wind would carry away all my memory and glamour
and truth.

And Tommy. It would take Tommy. If
Tommy was gone, I couldn’t hurt anymore.

Then, underneath my outstretched
hand, I felt stout, strong wood. I felt sweetness and long, autumn afternoons.
My bow sang of the autumn:

The final harvest.

Hunts under violet skies.

Stuff-men and spook stories.

The howling of the pack.

Frost, that graceful dancer.

Leaves, red and golden
—

The pain washed away like road-dust
in the rain. The shadowed darkness in my mind fled before the golden light of a
setting sun.

I smiled. I grabbed the bow and
bolted to my feet.

The bear stood far too close. When
she roared again, I smelled her anguish and felt the emptiness of midnight.

“Come on then, cubling.” I smiled no
more.

She roared again, furious at being
denied.

I turned and again began to run.
Around me, I felt her casting spears of nightmare, of bent and twisted desire.
I leapt and bounded. Each and every nightmare vision fell aside. I leapt over
log and stream, past wending trails fraught with thorns as long as my hand.

And yet, she came.

Gingerly, I picked my way past sharp
stones and jumped over small gullies, deft as a hart.

Nothing slowed the creature. Not for
a nonce.

The landscape remained gray and
empty, a broken waste that had been drunk dry. I kept my eye open for a chance
to turn and fight, but the bear, all fury and fire, hovered ever just behind
me.

She ran faster than I did. Only my
constant wending and winding kept me in the lead.

Slowly, I began to edge ahead. First,
I took a sharp turn around an old, dead oak.

Then, I ran around a corner of the
cliff and hid in a cleft among the rocks.

The bear lumbered past me, all hunger
and furious rage.

As soon as she passed, I bolted from the
cleft, sprinting in the opposite direction.

I ran for all of three breaths before
I stopped. Like quicksilver, I drew from my quiver, ever on my back when I had
my bow.

In a breath span, I nocked my arrow
to the bow-string. The arrow practically hummed, waiting to fly.

The behemoth stopped, realizing she
had lost her quarry. She raised up and glanced around, sniffing the air before
turning back around on me.

The moment I saw the crimson hell of
her eyes, I felt her darkling dream:

Beneath all things there swims a
monstrous creature, which is behind every shadow of darkness in the world. None
may comprehend its mind, for foul, unknown abominations
—

“No.” I met her gaze, surrounding
myself with the ever-golden shimmer of autumn’s glow:

The brilliant sun shines its last
through autumn’s glorious colors. Tonight, the moon will rise, full and
brilliant, and the people will dance with the harvest. It will be a night of
stolen kisses and dire tales of the coming cold.

Yet, above all, it is unity; it is
family.

It is standing against the dark.

My glamour nipped and toyed with the
shaediin dark of the not-bear. Yet she was powerful and unbelievably strong.
But I was nimble, cunning, and quick.

The bear roared and began to charge
me again.

My arrows, slender and graceful, had
fletching from the wings of the maple seed and a tip from knapped obsidian.
They flew swift and silent, and where they passed, autumn’s wind followed.

Breathe.

I pulled and aimed.

I smiled a tiny knowing smile, rife
with secrets.

I let fly.

My arrow sang and flew true as the
hunting owl.

I struck the bear squarely in her
shoulder. The arrow sunk over a hand span into dark, matted fur.

It hit true.

If this were a natural creature, it
would be unable to move its foreleg and unable to rest any weight upon it.

This bear didn’t even notice.

No, the abomination was hunger and
inevitability. Her lumbering slowed, but she showed no pain, no weakness. Like
a wall of darkness and ravenous fire, she moved toward me, much quicker than I
anticipated.

My second shot flew, only half-aimed
as I lacked the time with the bear almost atop me. Still, even without striking
her head as I had intended, I hit the same foreleg a second time.

She started to crumble forward but
then roared again, sheer wrath and hunger in her empty, soulless eyes.

I nocked another arrow.

The bear stood, tall against the thin
glow of the sun, engulfing me entirely in her shadow. She roared again, the
sound echoing to the depths of the world. The creature lunged at me, swiping a massive
claw at my head.

In the rational, reasonable part of
my mind, I knew that she could kill me with a single blow.

I let fly.

That shot deserved a song.

My arrow, knowing its nature, flew
swift and true. I had been fated to make this shot for I was the only one who
could have.

The shaft buried in the abomination’s
left eye. Her head rocked back; her charge stopped when she crashed to the
ground.