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

by JM Guillen

  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.

  19

  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.

  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 o
ut 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.