Tales of the Fallen, Book Two

by Nescher Pyscher

Overview

Book Two in the best selling series, "Tales of the Fallen" by Nescher Pysher and published by A-Argus Better Book Publishers, LLC. Macabre, eerie story of master story teller and his fight to save humanity.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940032957836
Publisher:	A-Argus Better Book Publishers
Publication date:	12/11/2011
Series:	Tales of the Fallen , #2
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	302 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

Read an Excerpt

". . . onehundredfiftythreeonethousand. . .onehundredfiftyfouronethousand . . ."

****

Weaver suddenly stopped. He couldn't help it. He turned to look back, fighting himself for control, unable to prevent it. Something far stronger than he was—something older and more ancient than a mere mortal father's love for his son pulled at his mind and made him stop. If someone had held him down, he would likely have broken his own neck, trying to turn it to see.

The light increased. Weaver squinted his eyes against it. The light grew still more, becoming briefly unendurable, and then he saw it. Or rather, he experienced it: it was too large, too much, too real to see. His mind tried to make sense of it, tried to explain it to him, tried to break in into manageable information, and then it gave up. When he thought of it later, it was in fragments of impression; like a dream. Something rose like the sun or the wrath of an improbable god from StonesFallingFromSky's hut. It was shaped like a perfect arrow: an immensely long shaft, topped by a diamond wedge for head. It rose into the sky like an erupting volcano; a star falling from earth into the sky. It radiated the bluewhite light like a cosmos full of stars.

If filled the sky like an eclipse, spinning as it rose and flaring wings of incandescent flame. Weaver saw that the arrow analogy was complete; its tail become visible, and there were feathers, scales or hairs on it that mimicked an arrow's fletching.

The dragon twinkled and sparkled, like precious jewels under the light of a bright sun. It was bigger than anything Weaver had ever seen; bigger than the moon, bigger than the world, bigger than life. It was impossible. It defied the existence surrounding it, forced its way into the universe and made the universe conform to it. Reality, in the loose way that Weaver understood it, cut a dragonshaped hole, and the dragon rose into that hole: beautiful and contemptuous. It sparkled with all the colors that are, were, weren't and will never be.

The dragon bellowed a triumphant, lifeaffirming hunger at the sky. The noise was like a chorus of volcanoes roaring in harmonic sequence. The sound was savagely glorious.

"It's magnificent," Weaver breathed, his eyes wide and his mind splintering. He could not look away. He was unable to take his attention, bordering on worship, off the dragon. Love was surging through him in hot waves, erasing everything.

The dragon spun higher into the sky, searching; hunting. The mighty head turned toward them.

Weaver looked into the eyes of a dragon and felt himself being regarded in turn. Even from this distance, Weaver was close enough to see, in those brief, impressionfilledflashes, the enormous interlocking plates—My Scales. Aren't They Glorious?—as thick as he was around the dragon's face. He had time to register the glowing eyes, as big as moons, with a slit pupil like a knife's blade. He saw the enormous teeth; like an endless hedge in a mouth deeper than a sea.

"Little Man. I Could Snatch You Up Without Even Realizing I Had Something In My Mouth."

Then the fear came. It was insidious. Under the weight of it, the small animal that lived in Weaver's mind—the animal that cowered in the dark around the fire; that lived in caves—took over. It turned Weaver's body and pushed him into the shambled, boneless beginning of a run, a helpless keen pushing from his mouth.

Jack looked behind him, noticing Weaver was no longer sprinting beside him. He saw the dragon rushing toward them, Weaver trying to run from it like a squirrel under the shadow of a truck tire.

"Awwwwww, fuck," he muttered. He turned to run on but the dragon was already upon them . . .

. . . and blasting overhead, missing them by inches.

Weaver didn't have time to blink. The dragon had been above StonesFallingFromSky's hut, and then it was roaring toward them with that noise like the destruction of the world.

The air of its passage, so close to where they stood, knocked them over and sent them rolling several dozen manlengths away. Weaver heard a noise like the snapping of a god's spine.

"My Teeth And Scales, Snapping And Brushing Against Each Other," the lizard voice said, whispering it but crashing at the tender center of Weaver's mind.

The dragon rocketed into the sky, blaring its frustration at the near miss. A boom that shook the sky sounded after it passed over the two of them, knocking them flat once again.

Jack bounced up. Weaver took longer to recover. He smelled the stink of the dragon. It was like an ancient predator's longlivedin den, mixed with the smell of the foul odors that came from the lands of the skyrent: it was the poisoned smell of the place where the earthfire boils up into the sky.

The dragon was soaring and spinning above them. Weaver felt that strange fascination fall upon him again. He fought it, with more success this time. Something told him he was being ensorcelled, but he did not have the strength of will to fight it completely.

And then Jack hit him in the face, hard enough to break three of his teeth.

"You better get up and run, Weaver! It just hatched so it's still learning! We can get away, but only if we hurry! Move your shaggy ass!"

Jack's voice was panicked, and that did more than the blow did. Weaver, still gibbering, ran.

****

" . . . onehundredfiftyfiveonethousand. . . .onehundredfiftysixonethousand . . ."

****

The chase took them into the grey nothing lands surrounding StonesFallingFromSky's house. They did not have any sort of a destination to run to; they were running away from the dragon. It would boil out of the grey mists toward them, bellowing in its trumpetvoice, and knock the two of them rolling and spinning. It would snap its enormous jaws at them as it flew overhead.

"How the fucking hell am I supposed to outrun something that makes a fucking sonic boom when it flies by?" Jack shouted at the sky. "A little help would be most appreciated!"

Weaver knew only to run. They tried to make sudden direction changes that seemed to throw the dragon off. For all its power and beauty, it was still trying to learn how to fly.

Weaver ran under the impetus of his inner survival drive, not thinking of anything but the run.

"Just keep running, Weaver. Eventually it'll get tired of chasing us and go find something to eat someplace else. Just keep on running."

Weaver grunted in wordless reply.

****

". . . onehundredfiftyeightonethousand. . .onehundredfiftynineonethousand . . ."

****

After tenthousand years that may've only been a few hours, Jack stopped. It had been quite a while since the dragon had flown by. He rested his hands on his knees, panting in relief. He heard Weaver's feet running on into the grey, and sighed.

"That fucking kid's gonna be the death of me, yet," he muttered to himself, running after Weaver.

They had been running for several minutes before Jack finally caught up to him and managed to grab his shoulder.

"Stop, Weaver. Stop. It's okay. I think the dragon's gone."

Weaver keened in fear. He kept straining against Jack's hand, trying to run on, running in place.

"Weaver, stop! It's okay!"

Weaver shook his head violently and tried to pull Jack after him.

"Alright. Fuck you, then."

The last thing Weaver saw was a fist the size of a mallet, descending with a booming noise all its own, right between his eyes. The darkness swallowed him for a while.

****

". . . onehundredsixtyfiveonethousand. . .onehundredsixtysixonethousand . . ."

****

"You have failed, WeaverOfShadows. The People have come and they have consigned Moonlight to the fires and the flames. There is nothing left of him for you to save. Is that not a fine jest, WeaverofShadows? After everything you have endured, after all the promises and dark bargains made, slitting off pieces of your very soul, there is nothing for you to save!"

Weaver looked around him frantically. He sat in his furs near a guttering fire on the ice. The ghostfilled winds of night howled and blew around him. The stars wheeled and spun overhead, as they had done for many, many, many turns of the skywheel. But the stars were wrong. They did not form the familiar shapes of Otter and Beaver and Great Stone Whale. They were strange, those stars; alien. And they shone down with a sick, cold light that made Weaver's bones ache and tremble.

He shivered beneath his furs. Something scrabbled on the ice nearby.

"Do you hear me, WeaverOfShadows? I speak only that truth you have so long denied yourself."

As Weaver watched, something low to the ground, something with four legs, something as white and as evil as bones left unburied, skittered away into the further darkness.

"WeaverOfShadows. Brave hunter who fears nothing in the lands of the People. How your boasts irked me; how your love and pride in your son ruffled my fine, soft fur. I tell you the truth, Weaver, not since the People came to the land have I so wanted to see a hunter destroyed. When you defiled your palmscar in eager bargain to me, you disassociated yourself from all the people. Even if you somehow survive—for are you not the mightiest hunter of the People?—there is nothing for you to return to. Your people are cut off from you. 'We are the People. We are one.' So say the Shamans, do they not? And what of the one who cuts himself off; who defiles what is holy and flaunts the laws and traditions? What is the punishment for such a one as that?"

Snow Fox laughed. The sound shook the ice all around.

"Ahhh, Weaver. I almost hope you do survive. I hope you return from this place of death and dream, lurch home to your wife and find there what awaits you. When I ate that bit of common soul with your blood in front of the World Gate, it tasted like finest wine. I could have stopped then, content, but you gave me even more! You have been my special project for long and long, WeaverOfShadows. You have been marked by the one I serve, but you are mine first and foremost. I have so desired to have you in my teeth! How I have longed to crunch your strong heart, to eat your spirit, to drink your blood, to crush your bones in my jaws and rip the skin from you with my strong, sharp, cunning claws."

Weaver shivered.

"I have broken you, Weaver; brought you to this place of madness and death. And you lie here, unmourned, with all you have most loved taken from you. Is that not a fine jest, Weaver? Moonlight is dead and so are you, and neither of you will ever return, and you both belong to me for all eternity."

"No! No! That is not true! You lie, foul creature! Eater of carrion, swallower of death! You are a liar and the giver of lies! I will bring my son back! I will bring Moonlight back!"

He stood, his fists clenched, screaming into the freezing night around him. He could barely hear his voice over the ghostly whine and howling mutter of the wind.

"Do I? Perhaps. It is ever my place to be a trickster god, even in this benighted place at the end of all things. But tell me, Weaver: do you still fear nothing in the lands of the People?"

And the voice laughed. The noise rose into the night until the ice and sky echoed with it.

"And if I lie, what of our bargain, WeaverOfShadows? If I lie, where is Moonlight's carefully guarded corpse? Should it not be here?"

Weaver turned frantic eyes around the ice, searching for Moonlight's body, knowing deep inside what he would find while a voice intoned solemnly from the death of Weaver's father.

He had stood there, watching, holding the torch while Otter sang the words: "We are the People. We keep to the old ways. Without the ways, the People die. When one dies, all are less. Lay the torch, WeaverOfShadows, and let the spirit fly—"

The fires.

"No, no, no, no, no, no!" he said, keening in fear and desperation. He searched for Moonlight's body and could not find it.

His traitor mind boiled the memory of his desperate bargain up at him. He felt the dull, painless bite of his knife snipping his fingers away, one by one by one; the mighty sense of pain and loss as he sliced through the scar on his palm, and the light that had bled out of him.

"Yes. You do remember," the voice called.

Weaver heard something small squeal and die. He heard something patter on the ice. He heard something digging with claws and teeth.

"How many days has it been, WeaverOfShadows? How many days have you chased this mad quest into nothing? How many days have I sat here, watching them prepare the burial fires for the body of your son?"

"NoooooooOOOOOOOOO!"

The echo of his scream of denial chased him into wakefulness.

****

Weaver groaned, rolled over onto his side, and wished he could still weep.

He felt as if his spirit was trying to fly into tenmillion different pieces; to leave the central 'He,' and become one with the surrounding nothingness.

He wiped his face and looked over at Jack. Jack was lying on his back, his hands beneath his head. Without looking at Weaver, he said, "You alive? Relatively speaking?"

"Did you strike me?"

"Yep. Hit ya' right between the eyes. The sweet spot. See, you draw, like, an invisible 'X' from the outside of the eyes, up across the forehead. You hit somebody there juuuuuuuust right, they're gonna go down like a sack of dead fish. You could kill an aurochs like that, you hit it just right."

He paused, as he often did, and looked thoughtful. "Matter of fact, I have killed an aurochs—"

"That would explain why my brain feels like it is stuck to the back of my head, I suppose."

"Beats bein' dragonchow, homie," Jack said, and grinned at him.

Jack lit one of his burning tubes and rolled his head on his neck.

"I am grateful to you, Jack. Without your help, I would've succumbed to the dragon's magic."

"Yeah, well, be thankful it wasn't a full grown dragon, dude. Otherwise you'd've succumbed, I'd've succumbed, and the world would be a hell of a lot less interesting."

Weaver could still hear sharp claws digging away at frozen, bloody ice in the back of his mind. "What?" he asked, distractedly.

"I said, be glad it wasn't a fullgrown dragon."

"That was not a full grown dragon?"

Jack barked a mirthfilled laugh at the sky. "Not a full grown dragon? Not a full grown dragon? Weaver, that was a fucking hatchling. It's a baby! What have I been saying all this time?"

He looked at Weaver's stunned expression. Jack laughed for a very long time.

****

Looking over at Weaver, Jack exhaled a cloud f smoke that smelled vaguely of burning bone.

"Okay, dude. Now, I've got to leave you here. I've got to—"

"Leave me? Here? But Jack, if you leave me I'll—"

"Shut up, Weaver, and calm down. Chill. Okay? It's just for a little while. If I don't leave you, you won't come back. Capisce? You'll be stuck here, with nothing to come back to, and restoring Moonlight will be the very least of your problems."

Weaver looked around him at the gray nothing. The everpresent wisps hung in coagulating strands that moved independent of any breeze. They looked like grey, weightless, bones, or the constructions of ice one sometimes found on the glacier further north of the lands of the People. They were frightening, those wisps; more so as they had no substance, but followed them as they moved about.

Weaver, a proud hunter of the People, trained from birth to reject fear, shivered violently.

"Hey, nehgrow. You ain't skeered? I mean, big, tough dude like you, you aren't lookin' fer yer blankie, are ya'?"

Weaver stared at him, mystified. "What?"

Jack sighed. "Slang, dude. Get some. You're a little too monochromatic. What I said was, 'You aren't afraid, are you'?"

Weaver took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and looked Jack in the eye. "I am WeaveroftheShadows, hunter of the People. I fear nothing."

"Well, that's bullshit, but if it makes you feel better. Stay put, okay? Don't go getting into trouble."

"When will you be back?"

Jack grimaced. "Weaver, you startin' to sound like a needy bitch. I'll be back as soon as I can, dude. I got to get back to where the rest of you is and take care of some bidness. In the mean time, sharpen some arrows, take a nap, or do whatever it is you monkeys do to kill time."

WeaverOfShadows cocked his head.

Jack grinned; sharp and mad. "Just nod, Weaver."

Weaver nodded.

"Good!"

With that, Jack began to walk in a sky wise circle, pulling great clouds of smoke off the burning tube clamped in between his lips. He grew misty, insubstantial. By the third circuit, Jack had gone, leaving behind only the smell of his burning tube. It smelled exactly like heavily cooked meat and blood.

****

Jack reentered himself to find Due Dareaga fully absorbed with the corpse of WeaverOfShadows. Jack's mind had become a place of blaring light and pounding hunger. He entered that space and tried to shout down the awful count going on in his voice.

***

". . . onehundredsixtysevenonethousand. . .onehundredsixtyeightonethousand . . ."

***

Due Dareaga had drawn its mouth close to Weaver's mouth. Due Dareaga, blind, unseeing hunger was in the driver's seat, fully emerged, and in control of Jack's body. The part of him that was 'Jack' could do little more than watch and attempt to reason with a primal hunger.

It clamped Jack's hands harder on Weaver's corpse and threw a menacing snarl at the separate consciousness that was Jack.

"No!" Jack shouted at it, "No! Not this one!"

"MEAT," Due Dareaga said.

"No! Not meat! Not meat!" Jack shouted.

Due Dareaga stopped what it was doing and looked at Jack. But that awful count continued in their shared voice, shaking off the trees and rolling across the sky.

***

". . . onehundredsixtynineonethousand. . .onehundredseventyonethousand. . . ."

***

What's that? Three minutes? Something like that? How long can an ape brain live without oxygen? Four minutes? Five?' How long was he dead before I pulled his plug? How fucking long do I have here?

Due Dareaga sat over Weaver's corpse like a predator defending its prey. Jack knew he couldn't fight it. It would be pointless to try. He had something like a minute or so to do what was necessary to save Weaver's life, and Due Dareaga had full control of his body.

Jack heard something that he'd been listening for and it gave him an idea. It was scrabbling on the turf near them to gloat over what it thought was a victory. He swelled with anger.

Due Dareaga couldn't be fought, not by Jack. Due Dareaga couldn't be controlled, not by Jack. But Due Dareaga could easily be distracted and redirected; a new target given to it; one that deserved to be eaten.

Jack looked out of his eyes into the moving gorse and saw a flash of lowslung white. Due Dareaga looked with him.

"MEAT?" it asked.

Jack grinned. "Meat."

****

Weaver sat down in the grey nothing, trying not to look around him at the wisps. It would not be right to say that he was afraid. He was WeaverOfShadows. He feared nothing that lived.

But that was the problem, wasn't it? Nothing here was alive.

"Including you," a voice of oiled smoke whispered in his mind. Weaver clamped down on that with a hunter's discipline. He would not fear. Fear was for the weak. Was he not Weaver? Did he not face the great white bear armed only with javelin, knife and spear? Did he not climb the face of the glacier? Did he not spring from a line of ... a line forever broken hunters that stretched back to the time of the skyrent?

No. He would not fear grey wisps of nothing. He would sit and he would wait. And he would not fear.

Weaver tried to find a comfortable position on the ground beneath him. It was cold and slightly damp, like freshly turned grave dirt as though it had rained recently.

Weaver looked up into the sky. He could see nothing but endless grey wisps. This was a nothing, nowhere place. Rain had never fallen here. He ran his hand over the ground and smelled his palms. It smelled of metal.

"It is blood, oh WeaverofShadows. The blood, sweat, semen, urine and tears of tenmillion generations of souls," said Snow Fox.

Weaver jumped up and spun around, looking for it. He saw a white flash, slung low and close to the ground, moving into the grey. "Aiee, Snow Fox! I see you there, lurking in the grey!"

The white flash had disappeared into the hanging murk. Weaver could see nothing beyond a few feet. The murk gave off confusing shadows and moved in a wind that Weaver could not feel.

"Lurking, am I, Weaver?"

The voice came from behind him once again. Weaver turned around, trying to keep Snow Fox in front of him.

"Skulking and hiding, am I?"

This time the voice came from far off to his left.

"And what else would you be doing, oh, trickster? I know you for who you are! False one and eater of small bones!"

There was a high pitched series of yelps. Snow Fox laughed at him.

"Weaver! WeaverOfShadows! How you amuse me! How you provide infinite jest! Trickster, am I? False and eater of small bones? Very well. Let it be as you say."

Weaver spun around, still trying to track Snow Fox. The voice had come from behind him again, but above him as well.

"I come for your benefit! I come to save you much toil! Further striving on your part is useless. The People have come. The women have taken your son's body and dressed it for the Fires of Lamentation and Memory. Even now the charred and smoking bones of Moonlight lie upon the last ashes of the pyre built for him. The wood was collected for months, Weaver. Small pieces, here and there. The fires burned for three days, and the aurora danced the entire time. It was moving and beautiful. The People waited for you to return, to throw the torch, but you dallied overlong. And now, your striving is pointless."

It paused for just a second; a brief eye blink. When it resumed speaking, the voice was from behind Weaver yet again.

"And where is his father? Where is WeaverOfShadows? Where is the one who should sing Moonlight's soul into the lands beyond? Why, Weaver is nowhere. He is no place. His body lies, gently decomposing, beneath a tree that does not exist. Or perhaps he sleeps just this side of death on a glacier, waiting for one final cold to push him into the beyond. Whichever is true, glacier or tree that does not exist in the lands of the People—dead as they are in the river of time—his spirit wanders in the nothing. WeaverOfShadows, proud hunter of the People, is being chased by the phantoms in his own heart and mind. Moonlight will wander the lands of the People, an unmoored ghost. He will feel the keen knife of his father's betrayal forever and ever and ever."