The Herald of Autumn (Echoes of the Untold Age Book 1) Read online

  “You return to us.” She wiped my brow. “We worried for you, Illarri. We thought you might pass beyond.”

  “I did the only thing a man should do when he’s back from the dead and next to a pretty girl.”

  Her lips felt cool, not cold. She trembled against me, but while I was daring, I did not push or force. Then, her arms wrapped around me. She pushed herself against me, nubile, her skin flushed. She—

  “Let’s leave off that bit, O Herald.” His grin turned mocking. “I wager yeh understand jes’ fine.”

  The dancing folke had watched as Coyote-Illari had sought them, casting prayers into the sky and beseeching them to share their wisdom with him. Yet they could not.

  “We are the spirits of the last world, Illari. Our place is not upon your soil. We could not have come to you, no matter how we wished it. This is why we brought you to us.”

  “Their lodge wasn’t exactly like any other place yeh’d seen, Tommy. It’s not quite in the world.” He smirked. “But, as yeh can see, it doesn’t lack for comfort.”

  My eyes grew wide. “This? This is the lodge of the dancing folke?”

  He shrugged, the image of nonchalance. “Not exactly. The river doesn’t belong to a man, but he may understand how it is used. This place, that place, they are the same, in a way. The dancing folk have endless numbers of doors, and once I understood the knack of it, I did as well.”

  I thought about the way he had opened the door into his lodge, how the door itself turned somehow sideways to the world.

  Coyote truly was a man of secrets.

  “They feasted me for three days and three nights. We drank a musty beer-brew that was fermented berries and reindeer piss. It was awful.”

  I knew he wasn’t lying. Siberian shamans drank urine from reindeer as well. The animals ate plants, which gave visions, and passed the gift to the wonderworkers who were bold enough to taste it.

  On the third night, after I had spoken with remnants of the world before, the youngest of the dancing folke came to me. She was as beautiful as any of them, and naked as night, but she wasn’t here for play.

  “Illari.” I could see the wonder in her, the innocence. “Would you have me show you what you are seeking?”

  I didn’t exactly feel ready. I was full-stomached and half drunk on berries and reindeer water. But there was no denying what I was there to do. Every crossroads on my journey had pointed me this way.

  “I am.” I looked her in the eye—

  “I looked her square in the face, Tommy.” Coyote visibly paled, just a touch, as if the mere memory were haunting. “I told I her was as ready as I would ever be.”

  “But what do you say?” I could feel terror capering at the edge of her and knew the answer before she spoke. It was the first time I ever saw fear in any of the dancing folke.

  “No, Illari. No one is ready for what comes.”

  10

  “Now, like I said, their lodge—”

  Their lodge was doors within doors within doors. The dancing woman— Ses’kia— led me through many of them, opening into times and places of wondrous mysteries. I do not have words for all the strange things I saw. The final door led out of a small building, in the middle of a tiny town, lost in the vast cold nowhere.

  “Quiet.” She held me hand, pulling me forward.

  “What are we looking for?” I was still a touch drunk, befuddled and confused from the journey.

  “Nothing.” Her eyes grew sad. “We are looking for blighted nothingness, darkness that walks.”

  At her words, I couldn’t help but think of the not-fetch. In the middle of Coyote’s Telling, my thought added to it, swirling the not-fetch into his tale, for the briefest of moments.

  …broken, hollow, and mad.

  It screamed. The sound was rage and fire and rusted blood. Its fingers ended in talons from another age. Its arms, slender gangles, each had two elbows.

  Its empty eyes wept blood and bile.

  “Yes.” His ancient, wise eyes locked onto mine. “You ken it now. You see where it all goes.”

  “There are more of them?” Then, immediately after, “What are they?”

  He held up a single finger. “You will know all that I know, Tommy. Sit on yer dinner and listen.”

  We wound our way through the shadows of the small town, avoiding being seen. I could feel the wrongness, taste it on the wind. The people wandering about didn’t seem to realize they were dying. The blight had sunken deep inside them with strong roots, slowly driving them mad.

  “What’s wrong with them?” I should have whispered but did not. “Can’t they feel? Don’t they know?”

  “The blight takes root behind the poetry in their hearts.” Her voice despaired. “The very part of them that could find the wrongness of it all is silenced first. From there, they rot from within.”

  The darkness tainted most of the townspeople. It manifested in a thousand tiny cruelties. Discomforts flared into anger, and love gave way to selfishness.

  The darkness fed upon their glamour.

  “As yeh must know, these creatures feed upon a person’s Medicine. Everywhere I looked, I saw the people slowly dyin’. We walked among the town until all were abed, until the town was empty.” He gave me a dark look. “That’s when we saw it. Saw her.”

  Rail thin, she looked like nothing but skin stretched over dry bones. Her hair was withered, falling out in clumps. Her arms reached for me, awkward and spindly, and her eyes bled madness and despair.

  I feared as she roared at me. It was exactly as it had been at Jillian’s tree. She sensed me, somehow. She hungered for my Medicine. She felt me, even as the dancer-woman and I watched from hiding.

  She skittered toward me like an insect, moving in strange jerks and twitches. In moments, she was on us, tearing at me with those strange claws.

  “I wasn’t afraid enough, Tommy. That was my problem. But why should I have been? I, who stood on the front lines as yer kind arrived from across the sea. I, who fought the Thunderbird with nothing more than trickery and words.” He paused to evaluate my reaction. “Why should I have been afraid?”

  “I wasn’t afraid either.” My voice sounded hollow. “I thought it posed little enough danger; I was so much quicker than it was.”

  “There’s nothing more dangerous to our kind, Herald.” His grey eyes peered through me. “We are what they consume.”

  I was there, in the cold street, with Ses’kia. The creature lunged toward us, as if it had somehow scented us on the wind. I tried to push the dancer behind me, even as she was trying to drag me away.

  “You cannot, Illari. She is too strong.” She begged with tears in her eyes.

  I would not listen. I was a fool.

  I brought forth my spear, constructed of stories and songs. I called to my armor, woven of little more than secrets and whispered words. With the kind of bravery held by children and the mad, I strode forward to meet the woman.

  (To meet the Wendigo)

  “The Wendigo.” I was stunned, feeling the word hidden behind Coyote’s story. “Is that what they are? Wendigo?”

  He shook his head. “Thought so m’self for a time. They fit the mold well enough. Wendigo is a ravenous spirit, a cannibal. At the time, I thought to myself that ‘ravenous’ was a perfect description for the half-starved creature.” He watched the dancing fire. “Hungry it was, but Wendigo it was not.” He drew a long breath. “Ses’kia’s folk called them ‘Shaediin.’”

  Her strength was incredible. Everything I threw against her, she drank into herself. The shine of my spear darkened whenever I struck her. My armor rotted where she grasped at me with talons of darkness and cold.

  The pain outshone anything I could have imagined.

  She was the emptiness, the rot that was at the core of every man, woman, and child in the town.

  “Illari!” Ses’kia’s voice pleaded. “You cannot defeat her. Not here and now!”

  I was stubborn, however. Though my attacks fell to
naught against her, I defended against her strikes. We sparred our way around the town, with her empty, hollow cries boring into the shadows of my mind.

  She toyed with me like the Jaguar with her prey. Soon, her cries began driving into my mind, splinter after splinter of pain and madness. I could feel the nothingness that she was begin to take root. The very sound of her wail grasped inside me with cold fingers and tore at my heart.

  The fire in my spear dimmed even more.

  “Illari!” Ses’kia panicked.

  So did I.

  A strange, hollow, sucking noise tumbled from her gaping mouth, I fought to pull away from her. I could not, as if I were somehow held.

  She drank, and horror washed over me.

  I felt myself diminish. She drank from me stories of old, taking memory, Medicine, and secrets only I knew. She ripped them from my mind and heart, and they screamed like living things as she took them. They sank claws into me, clinging as she pulled, as if they could hold fast onto me and not be taken.

  I cannot even give name to the things I forgot.

  I staggered, awed by the strength of her pull, by the draw of the hollow emptiness within her. I felt fear. I felt fear the likes of which I had never known.

  I had no doubt. This woman-thing could kill me. Could gorge on everything I was and be hungry for more.

  “Illari!” Ses’kia hefted my spear in her hand though I hadn’t even known I had dropped it. She swung with all she had and struck the side of the ravenous woman’s head.

  Her soundless screams clawed through my mind. They echoed through all of the worlds that were and ever could be.

  She was hurt. Hurt, but nowhere near slain.

  I knew the sound wasn’t real; it was something from the dreaming-lands, not quite true. Her mouth actually gasped, an inhale made all the more horrifying by its quiet wheeze.

  We had a moment then. The creature reeled from the strike. She wasn’t dead, not by a long stride. I had no doubt now that, whatever I hurled at her, she would take into herself. She drank Medicine and could easily devour Ses’kia and me both.

  A long moment passed where the Old Man fell silent. The fire’s orange light danced deep within his grey eyes. When he turned back to me, he only had two words to say, words woven with shame and fear that cut like the winter wind.

  “We ran.”

  11

  We sat then, for long moments, before I spoke.

  “It wasn’t foolish or cowardly.” I watched the fire. “Mine almost had me more than once. If I hadn’t found a friend, I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

  His grin turned rueful. “Yet sit yeh do, so I’ll wager yeh put yours down.”

  I slowly nodded. I wasn’t trying to brag.

  He chuckled. “What came after? Was it a cloud of biting flies? Mayhap scores a’ maggots pouring from the wound?”

  “Spiders.” I gave him a questioning look. “Like water, they flowed from it.”

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

  “A fetch.” I bit my lip in frustration. “That’s what I thought it was. Changeling-kin.”

  He shook his head. “No. True night is what they are, night and cold beyond cold. You killed the shell, but the darkness remains. Shaediin is the best word I’ve found, for it’s not from any of the old tales.”

  I nodded. “They’re new.”

  He gave me a sideways grin. “You did better than I, O Herald. I ran the first time.”

  I shrugged. “I had help.”

  His lips curled back into a smile as he looked into the fire. “It’s more than that, Tommy. Yeh know it as well as I. Huntin’ is yer nature. It’s what yeh do.” He took a long draw of his cider. “That’s why I called yeh here. I needed someone else to see what I seen, someone who might be able to do more than I.”

  I mistrusted his wording. “I doubt I could do more than you, Old Man.”

  “My nature is secrets and glamour, Tommy. My strengths are illusions, smoke, and lies.” His laugh turned bitter. “These ’bominations drink me. Like syrup.” He paused. “You, on the other hand, could call the Great Hunt.”

  Fear clenched my heart. I gazed into the fire.

  “I could.” Uncertainty wound its way through my voice. “I don’t know what would happen, Coyote. The Hunter is greater than I. Once he comes, I cannot control the chase.” I turned to him. “The Hunt is beyond anyone’s will, even mine.”

  “I don’ claim to know all the tricks of the Hunter, Tommy. But I know enough. Once yeh call ’im, I think his path will be clear.” Coyote rested back into his seat.

  His certainty bothered me. There was more. Something I did not know. “Why?” I leaned forward, my aspen-eyes hard. “Why do you presume to know what the Hunter would do, Old Man?”

  He let out a long sigh. “Because, Tommy, I’m not expectin’ him to hunt one of the wraiths. I wouldn’t cry your Name for somethin’ so small.” He grinned, fiercely.

  “Tell me.”

  A long pause. “I know where they’re comin’ from. I know what’s spawnin’ the things.”

  My eyes must have been the size of dinner plates. “Something spawns them?”

  “Everything comes from somewhere, Tommy. The story of me tracking the thing is long and long, but I can make it easy.” He sipped his cider. “It’s here, in these woods. It seethes with darkness and cold. It births the things in a cave, north a’ here. They pour from it like serpents. Dozens and dozens of the empty shadows. I seen it.”

  I gaped at him, stunned.

  I had defeated one of the hollow creatures but only just. Coyote had fled from one because it was too strong.

  Whatever birthed them must be truly monstrous.

  He nodded when he saw the look on my face. “Choice is simple, Tommy. Kill it or don’t. If’n yeh don’t, then it’ll just birth more of ’em.” He shrugged. “If’n yeh hunt it alone, I can’t say yeh’ll come back.”

  “I scarcely killed the one shadow. Whatever births them must be…” My voice trailed off as I looked at him.

  This was hopeless.

  He sipped his cider. “But if’n yeh call the Hunter, I think he’ll seek it. If’n he don’t, it’ll still be fine. The beast is a hungry one.” He gave me a look. “It’ll seek to find the Hunter.”

  I sat back, speechless.

  He knew me. He had known before he even called.

  The hunt was my nature. In the end, I had little choice.

  “Yeh think that yer Untold Age is somethin’ that’s comin’.” He took another sip, and the firelight danced across his face. “I’m tellin’ yeh, it’s here.” He leaned toward me, his eyes like steel.

  “It’s here, and these things are the spirits of the end.”

  My hand trembling, I grasped my mug. I sipped at Coyote’s cider, my thoughts a storm.

  Firelight flickered warmth across my face.

  May we meet on far shores.

  12

  Time drifted, and we sat in silence. The firelight wove shadows across our faces, and I gazed into the dancing flames. Inwardly, I hoped to see some omen, some path that did not end in death.

  I should have known better.

  Autumn had its own special kind of horror, a sense of certain darkness that grew with every setting sun. The inevitability of darkness and night stalked in its wake.

  If one were to listen on a moonless night, one might hear the truth, the whispering murmurs of death in the autumn sky. The sun still casted warmth, but slowly, the leaves dropped. Birds fled for warmer lands, and animals began to dig deep, seeking warmth and sleep. There, they dreamed until the world bloomed again.

  In winter, death came. The world slept in quiet, peace. In the autumn, however, one can literally feel the horror of summer’s warmth, its life, slipping away.

  Once, even the hu
man-born knew the secret turnings of the world. Long before my kind began to wane, the mortal kith protected themselves from the oncoming darkness with story and song, spell and steel. Even today, lost and confused in their towers of glass, part of them remembered this fear. Out there, in the vast beyond, a cold darkness stalked them with a hunger that could never be sated.

  It was no coincidence that harvest festivals often made for frightening affairs with straw men and stories of ghosts and woe. Hallow’s tales tended dark for a good reason. As the days shortened, death stalked the world. Its chill grasp touched everything in nature, and slowly, the world itself fell to winter’s grasp.

  This was my nature as the Herald of the world’s dying.

  Of course Coyote well knew all of this. He knew I had seen more than my share of dark mysteries. I always found the twisted things that lived in the cracks between places. Wherever I went strange things lurked at the edges, unseen by men. Often, these things fled me. Sometimes, they sought me. Either way, the ending was always the same.

  It always came down to the hunt.

  The hunt formed the crucible between life and death, a sacred holy passion. In that moment, when the hunt came upon me, there was no right nor any wrong. There was simply death, and I danced with it like a lover in joy and terror, exhilaration and horror.

  Hunting was primal.

  If my passions exceeded my control, I would inadvertently call the Hunter and a Great Hunt. This, of course, was just as Coyote wished. Coyote well knew my nature. He’d beckoned me here for a Great Hunt.

  “So, later, when yeh’re playin’ the part of a young buck, all wild and free, rearin’ to hunt what ails the world…”

  Not that the Old Man was alone in his knowledge. My own kind also well knew my nature. For all of my thousand-thousand awakenings, they bore my adventures with some chagrin or even a touch of disdain.