The Herald of Autumn (Echoes of the Untold Age Book 1) (9 page)

Later, with my heart again stalwart,
I found myself wending through the ever-thickening wood. I could still feel the
creature, knew by the sheer sense of wrongness that it lurked somewhere near.
Yet I had no direction. I only faintly noted the long darkness of the shadows
or caught the sweet smell of rot on the wind. Twice, I believed that I had
found the right track, only to have the wind shift and realize that I was
moving away from the creature I sought.

Finally, I gave in. I reached into my
stuffed pockets and pulled out one of the maple seeds.

“I’m hunting the cold shadow in the
wood.” I fixed my gaze on the seed, settling it on my open palm. “Show me.” I
gently blew upon the seed.

At the touch of my breath, it soared
aloft.

It flew sharply to my left, both
against the breeze and against the direction I had blown it. The seed, caught
upon some wind all its own, sailed straight through the air, over a small rise.

Resolutely, I followed in that
direction.

Soon, it was obvious that I drew
closer.

The shadows of the wood became
disconcertingly darker. They lived, shimmying and darkening strangely. As I
watched, they wafted from side to side, as if blown by some non-existent
breeze.

But they by no means blew in the
wind. Not at all.

They reached hungrily as if they
could grasp me, wrap themselves around me, drag me away to some dark den that
had never seen light, and feast on all that I was. Behind my mind, I could
imagine it, as if some dim part of myself could perceive a hungry darkness,
hiding just beyond sight.

The shadows remained black as pitch,
as if it were full night instead of early morn.

I stepped away from them, trying to
keep a rein on my pounding heart. Slowly, I crept forward, my eyes wide and my
hands trembling.

As I edged forward, root, bramble and
thorn pulled at me, leaving scratches on my skin and tears in my clothing. It
might seem accidental, mere happenstance, to any mortal-born, but I could hear
the strange whispers among the shadows, where normally I would hear only
welcome. Malice twisted its way into the soul of each leaf and branch. They
were animated by empty, endless hunger.

I strained for every breath.

I spun on every sound.

Every breeze carried the hot, fetid
breath of a great predator, stalking me from within every shadow.

Of course, no wood could truly grudge
against me. As the Herald of Autumn, I went as I pleased. Yet here, the world
did not hearken to my golden call. No birds of prey ghosted my passing, and no
wolf stalked behind.

No, the further I went, the less the
forest rippled with autumn at my passing. This place knew neither autumn nor
spring. It had become never dying but always dead. Color and light and life had
bled from this land.

I was being stalked. I felt it by bow
and horn, by Hunter, hound, and hawk.

I wished I had taken the Old Man’s
boons or had him Oath he would come along. Cut off from my kind, I had never
felt more alone.

I faced death with no ally at my
side. In the past, Hraefn, or perhaps Black Horn Jack would have stood at my
side. But those days were not these days.

I was alone.

In a small clearing, I marveled at
the empty hopelessness of the land.

This was much more than the simple
death of winter or the death that comes with fire or plague. It wasn’t drought
of water, for the ground held only a light powder of dust. Instead, the world
turned hollow. Every trace of life had been drunk from every last blade of
grass.

Even the wind mourned.

As I stepped forward, I cast my eyes
all about, turning ’round in an effort to locate the nothing that stalked me.
More than the death of the wood, here, everything fell silent
.
Nothing
moved, as if the spark at the center of all life had been devoured.

Yet I was still being hunted.

I crept forward, my eyes darting
among the skeletal tree branches. Soon, they knitted so closely together that I
could not see the sky, but still, I saw no watcher. I simply felt the gaze like
filth dragged across my skin.

Reaching into my leather purse, I
grabbed the sling-shooter and one of the stones. I knew its Name even as I
touched it. It was the one two boys had thrown while playing so long ago.

I nocked the shooter, creeping
forward. My breath caught tight in my chest, but still I edged onward. Soon the
clearing drew in at the sides leaving just a narrow passage through the briars.

Then, from silence, sound.

The hoarse cry called ahead of me in
the trees. It was distant, little more than an echo. When compared to the
silence, however, it roared like thunder in the night.

I smiled. It was her. I knew it in my
bones.

Hraefn.

I peered forward, expecting to see
one of my oldest and dearest friends, preening her black feathers or combing
her black tresses, somewhere in the trees.

No. She wasn’t there.

I strode forward eagerly. Hraefn and
I had stood fast in darkness greater than this. We had stood together when Rome
had crashed upon our people like a wave of swords. We had stood together as
champions against the spirits of the Ban-sidhe.

But no.

“Hraefn?” When had it become so
misty?

Carefully, I peered around. I heard
the call again from up ahead. Cautiously, I slipped forward, ever looking for
my friend with her laughing, wild eyes.

Hraefn. Hreafn Whisperwing. Hreafn
Twice-cunning.

Hraefn of Mist and Shadow.

“No hiding, petulant brat. Come
forth!” I couldn’t hide my smile.

It would be good, having someone
familiar here, someone who would stand at my back. Yet I felt more than that.
Of course, I missed her. I missed the way she smiled, and I missed the way she
smelled in the night.

The cries fell silent, and my smile
slowly eroded from my face as I crept through the mist. Chill ran goose-flesh
up my arms as I heard her voice, one last time, like a distant, warbling echo.

Something was wrong.

Placing the stone back into the
sling, I edged forward. Something was harrying my mind, tugging and worrying at
me.

Why had I thought Hraefn would be
here? What—?

Bait. The noise had been bait. I spun
’round, desperately darting my gaze into the sharp darkness of the trees.

“I know you’re here!” I called into
the cold wood, my voice a tremor. I held the sling in front of me, ready to
loose the stone at the slightest motion within the trees.

The darkness mocked me. It toyed with
me. It waited in the depths with teeth from another age.

“Come then! Why not?” I spun another
time. I could feel its weighty gaze full of finality.

Then, I saw it. I stopped, cold fear
like ice in my chest.

Ancient, bleeding eyes met my gaze.
For long moments, we simply stared at one another.

It was not Hraefn. It was not my
oldest and dearest friend.

The huge raven in the trees had
twisted into a dirge of blackness and night. Its eyes burned with that hollow,
ochre-red of the creature I had fought in the streets. As it opened its mouth
to loudly caw again, I saw the madness, the empty darkness seeping from its
eyes and mouth, dripping to the ground.

Like night given form, it was
horrifying.

With its third scream, it took
flight, all warped claws and razored beak and shadowed wing.

Without thought or plan, I dropped to
a knee and pulled back my shooter. For the second time in its long existence,
the stone was given flight. I could feel its cry of joy as it took to the air.

The raven swerved to the side, and
the stone sailed off into the shadows.

The not-raven screeched. The sound
was like broken glass in my ears. I spun toward the sound, and—

It was gone.

I panted, my breath visible in the
all-too chilled air. I turned twice, thinking I saw those maddening, hellish
eyes, but no.

Nothing.

I could still feel it, however. Like
a thorn behind my heart, I sensed a broken place within the melody of the
world. Whispers, strange and lost, seeped from the dark places between the tree
branches.

“Tommy…”
It was familiar, every voice I had
ever known.
“Nothing, Tommy. Nothing is what we thought you were.”

No. That was the raven.

Strange images flashed in my dreaming
mind. I reeled, seeing what wasn’t there.

It was a raven, and it was a woman as
well.

I blinked, trying to understand.

She lay in wait in the deep holt of
the wood, lay in wait for the children there. Her hunger was nigh insatiable.
More were coming, but she grew too impatient.

Their eyes were a sweetness. She
pulled them out, with fingers that weren’t, while they screamed.

Then the raven lunged again.

Still stunned by the strangeness of
the whispering and the odd images, I rolled aside as its talons slashed at me,
inches from my eyes. I swung the sling wildly and felt myself connect with a
wing. The raven squawked loudly and flapped over to a low-lying branch.

“Autumn.” The thing croaked. Drawn
out, the word was bent as if one could torment a word. The bird canted its head
at me, its hateful eyes burning.

I am back in Old Man Coyote’s lodge.
He sits across from me, looking into the fire.

“Can’t quite do much o’ nothin’,
Tommy.” His eyes have been stitched shut.

For the first time, I wonder why he
looks like a cowboy, a white man.

“No.” I shook my head, meeting the
bird’s gaze.

It found Molly. After I left its
corpse, the spiders found her. They crawled into her, into her mouth and nose
and ears. They dug into her sweetness and ate. They devoured her until there
was only darkness left
—

“No!” I drew a second stone, even as
I stood, trembling. With a smooth motion born of the hunt, I spun. I cupped it,
drew, and let fly again.

The stone sang. It had never flown
but always had it wanted to. As the seasons drifted by, it yearned.

And now, it flew.

The stone tore through the darkness
and strange glamour. It struck the raven squarely in the side of the head. The
not-raven fell from its branch.

In my dreaming mind, I could hear the
screaming. In the real world, there was only silence.

I ran over to it, wishing that I had
found myself some boots after all. I wanted to stomp it. I wanted every bone in
its body broken, those cruel eyes smashed.

The stone had caved in the creatures
head. Buzzing around the caved-in skull were hundreds of small, stinking flies,
weaving as if they did not understand what had happened. They were like filthy,
rotten smoke, oozing from the corpse into the air.

“No. Not this time.” I scrabbled in
my bag of Eddie’s treasures and found one of the bright yellow bottles. Popping
the top, I doused the corpse with the sharp-smelling liquid, spraying all
around it. Once the bottle was halfway empty, I pulled out one of the wooden
matches Eddie had given me.

I could almost hear his words:

“Shadows are burned by fire.”

Purifying orange flame danced and
leapt among the darkened trees. It consumed the tiny flies. In the dreaming
world behind my mind, they screamed as they burned.

Their death felt strangely
satisfying.

“Well told, Eddie.” I smirked,
putting the matches in my pocket.

While caught in the grips of my
Telling, the mortal’s dreaming mind had understood something that not even
Coyote had grasped: the Old Man had held the sun’s fire but never used it.

Secrets like that were rare to come
by.

This darkness could burn.

I smiled. “Who needs your boons, Old
Man?”

Only the silence of the wood
answered.

Reaching into my pack, I grasped my
third stone and fit it to the cup.

Sling ready, I crept along the path.

The narrow path shrank to little more
than a twisted tunnel through bramble and briar. Grim sunlight bleakly pushed
its way through the tangles, shafts of light that did little to illuminate the
darkness. These spots of light grew fewer as I went on. Eventually, the dark
and mist darkened so that I could scarcely see my hand in front of my face.

I shivered with the cold, not the
cold of winter, but the cold of the grave. The frosty mist writhed along the
ground. The world underfoot grew weary, exhausted, taking its final, wheezing
gasp.

Among the withered underbrush, I
reached the end of all things. Every step I took, I took carefully, testing my
weight before trusting the ground.

I cast about, paranoid that more of
the creatures grew close. Though I didn’t feel the eyes as I had before, these
cold shadows could take any form, could infect any creature. If the not-raven
were any indication, these shadows did not need a man at all. The abominations
could be anything from a serpent to a wolf.

Caution labored my every step, my
every muscle tensed.

I felt it before I saw it.

A slumbering weight drug me down,
like a world-weariness in my shoulders. It wasn’t truly harder to walk, merely
harder to want to walk. Exhausted to the bone, the ever-present cold drank my
warmth from me. As I trudged forward, a curious hopelessness stretched from my heart
to my mind, like a cobweb of ice and sorrow.

I stopped, blinking. What—?

Similar to Coyote’s Dreaming of
homesickness, this sudden weight seemed sourceless. I hadn’t noticed the
feelings at first; I simply kept putting one foot in front of the other, pushing
my way through mist and shadow so thick that they had weight.

But this was wrong, was somehow—

Its growl rumbled like thunder, like
the tumbling of stones beneath the world. I saw eyes, fiery red with hunger and
rage, before I saw anything else.

It was tall, whatever it was. All I
could see were those gleaming hunter’s eyes, shining in the mist. For an
eternal moment, I lost myself in them. For the first time in my
thousand-thousand days, I truly knew what it was to be the hunted. I had never
understood helplessness before this.

I was a fox, and the sun dipped
toward slumber. I heard the blaring horn, felt the hounds draw closer. My heart
pounded with terror.

I was a little boy, facing the
darkest depths of night. I could hear the hoarse breathing of the creatures in
the shadows, could see their gleaming teeth.

When the darkness snarled, I felt hot
wetness run down my leg.

It roared then, a primeval,
terrifying sound. It jolted me from the strange visions.

I tried to pull myself from its
hunter’s gaze.

It had me. In the moment I had seen
the visions, it had snared me. The shadowed abomination lumbered closer,
certain of its kill.

On instinct, I pulled and shot.

The stone sailed through the air,
flying as it had always known it was meant to do.

It was perfect.

It struck squarely between those
hell-red eyes, and the creature staggered. Not truly hurt but startled.

No way a simple stone would fell yon
abomination, but it bought me a moment, a precious second.

If I hadn’t owned that single nonce,
I would have been dead.

Never in life had I run so quickly.

Its roar jolted like sky-fire through
my body.

Suddenly, I saw. Drifting along, lost
in that miasma of strange hopelessness, I had been blind. Now, I saw the bones
of the creature’s victims. Now, I smelled the rot, so stark and foul that I
wanted to stop and retch.

By the Hunter, how had I missed the
creature’s sign? How had my mind been so ensnared?

With my heart pounding like a bird’s
wings, I ran. My foot slipped on a crumbling bone, but then I was off.

I was not the hunter. I was the prey.

Behind me the creature roared like a
storm at night. The entire world trembled in fear. In the recesses of my heart,
a tiny spark of innocence died at the sound.

I did not bother with direction, with
my back trail. The ground beneath my feet blurred with scattered bones, broken
trees, and dusty earth as I fled, graceful and quick as a hart.

Like thunder, like crushing
inevitability, the monstrosity followed.