The Echoes of Those Before (The Saga of Those Before Book 1)

The village gathered again, but this time in celebration. Banners flew in brightly colored streams. Children danced around brightly clothed harvest poles and those freshly minted as adults got their first real tastes of wine and ale. Each in turn offended Iam's palate, but the sweetly sour fermented fruit ciders soon had his head spinning. He drifted along the paths of shadow and quiet in the crowd, feeling more apart than ever as the celebrations escalated on every side.

Iam saw boys and girls, now women and men, dancing together in flurries of sweaty movement. The little white Fox knew that many of the young couples would never make it home on this unseasonably warm night. Tomorrow they would approach their families with clasped hands. Before the first snowfall, they would be married.

Across the fields, across the fires, across the heads of the multitude of the Fox Folk Iam saw the orange-gold fur of Vika as she laughed and spoke with family and friends. The thought of waiting for her made the years ahead seem an infinity of prison. On the other side of the gathering, Maverus entertained a rapt audience of children with his clownish antics. He had still not come back to Iam since the training with the candle. The loss of him had deepened the hole inside the orphan's chest.

Everywhere there were parents who wished him well, but they were not his. Everywhere siblings congratulated him, but they were not his. Someone else's little ones pulled pranks on him. He drank someone else's cider, ate someone else's food, and no one complained because he was alone in the world and everyone knew it.

Basking near a fire, staring meaningfully into the sky, stood the elder. Iam longed to go and sit even in his stern presence, but he was ministering to all the newly made adults, leaving in their ears words of wisdom. Iam left his mug on a table at the very edge of the crowd and snuck off to bed.

In the comfort of his own home, he felt the empty spaces all around him. He lit a candle, and wandered in the halls, from room to room as if exploring for the first time. Pantries, cellar, garderobe, hall, his bed room, kitchen, living room… Eventually he stood in front of a long unused door. Steeling himself with the dregs of hard cider and long simmering hurt, he turned the knob and let the door open. In the candlelight, even the little movement of the door liberated motes of dust to flutter into the air and float there like forgotten dreams.

It was plain and nondescript for the most part, unremarkable but for the thick layer of dust covering it all. Tears stung his eyes as moonlight streamed in through the window and painted everything silver. It splashed in silent waves over the bed in the center of the room, a bed that had always seemed impossibly tall, then impossibly wide. It was a bed meant for the master of the house and his wife. It had sat empty for the last eight years.

Iam entered the room, bare feet tracing patterns in the dust. He reached out a timid hand, heart sinking into his feet as it came in contact with the wood of the frame. He crawled onto the dusty, musty blankets and curled into a ball at the center as he used to do as a very young child. He did it between them to fight off nightmares and to bask in their love. Then, he used to do it hoping his parents would come back someday from wherever they had disappeared to. Now, he wept and shook and slept because he accepted that, wherever they had gone, they were never coming back.

That was how he missed the most important announcement of his life, of all their lives. It would set in motion a thousand stories and damn or save the lives of all the Folk. It would change Iam, Maverus, and Vika forever. Yet the white Fox did not know it yet, for the nightmares of the last few months that had merely danced around him finally landed firmly behind his eyes.

Captured in sleep as if it were a giant fist, he saw the world and he saw a stain that chittered and skittered. It was growing and coming. It was close, so close, drawn by magick and fire and blood. It was coming so close.

Now it was here. The danger crawled over him, around him, and injected him with fire that seared his nerves and caused his limbs to blossom with agony. His sleep was not rest, it was torture, and the things hunting him leapt at him from every shadow. He tossed. He sweated. He screamed.

Then the pounding at his door woke him.

He was awake in an instant, and slid from his parents' bed to the floor. The dream disintegrated in an instant, but he was still soaked and shivering with sheer terror. The pounding came again and he rousted himself from the floor. He staggered through the home, furniture acting as debris to choke his way as he reached the front door and threw it open.

“Iam!” Vika began, “you are missing the Choo- Almighty Ancestors, are you dead?”

And though asked half in jest, her eyes sparkled with real concern. Iam could only gawp in return, for one night had reduced him to a twisted, wretched wreck, but it had flowered her into a beautiful garden. She smelled of spices and flowers, her new dress was heartily built and dyed in the colors of blazing autumn. Around her belt she had pouches that leaked the sharp tang of medicines. Around her neck hung the hammer forged silver pendant of a woodwitch, sun over a tree rising from a round stone.

“She took you, then?” He said, rubbing his eyes and trying to rid himself of the dregs of dreaming and of the damnable cider.

Vika smiled and nodded. “I started this morning, but of course we had to break today for... Iam! Oh, Iam!” and it was then she remembered herself. She reached out to grasp Iam by the shoulders, but withdrew from his soggy fur and wiped her hands on her sides. “Did you not stay last night? Did you not see the sky?”

Iam shook his head, even this simple thing causing undue pain to shoot through his head and down his spine.

Vika gave him a look reserved normally for Maverus. “The moons are aligning. Everyone is gathering. The Choosing is tonight.”

Iam blinked. “Tonight?”

“Now, in fact. The sun is going down.”

Iam had to look. The truth of it was plain: he had slept the night and day again, caught in the grip of such suffering. And then the full meaning hit him. “Maverus!”

Vika stopped him from rushing out right then, careful not to touch his sweat soaked fur. “Iam, you are in no fit state. We have a little time. Wash. Dress yourself. I will get you some tea to put you right.”

Iam would have objected, but his weariness crashed into him again, and he wondered if he was caught by a fever, explaining the horrible dreams.

He blandly let Vika lead him to the rain barrel and let him alone. He dumped bucket after bucket of icy water over his head. It was like knives on his skin, but it brought a kind of peace that he found impossible to define. He set sloppy clothes out on a bench to dry and grabbed another set of freezing cold homespun trousers drying on the line outside. He slipped on a shirt and hobbled inside, feeling nearly normal. Vika was tossing the dregs from his mother's tea strainer into the cold fire and passing him the icy tea. At least he thought it was tea.

As he lifted it to his lips, the bitter taste slapped him in the face, he started to lower it, but Vika pushed up on the base of the mug, forcing it to tilt the contents into his mouth and down his throat. Only once it was empty could he breathe.

“Blah!” he gagged, “What was that?!”

Vika primly set the mug down and was strapping a few of her belt pouches closed. “Something to bring down your fever and keep you calm. Now, you already look a thousand times better. Let's go.”

“You just started apprenticing today. Are you allowed to administer yet?”

Vika sniffed darkly. “Don't be a baby. Now hurry.”

Iam's head was spinning as they traveled the dirt paths from his home, down into the base of the valley. The stars were already peeking from the black tapestry of the sky, and the forest already had the velvety depth of night. The stars were timid, however, for the three moons stood full and bright. They drowned out the song of twinkling on either side. The base of the valley was alive with fire for the second night in a row.

The evening was strangely alive to Iam, distorted somehow even as his head began to clear as they made the wide circle around the applicants. For the entire population of the five villages, over three thousand souls, it seemed a pitifully small group; Barely two dozen. Most had packs, some had protective gear like Maverus. Many had knives, or old short swords, or even axes. Maverus seemed to be the only one who thought to bring a bow and quiver of arrows. A few stood utterly without preparation, and looked nervous now that they understood their folly. Yulian, naked without Makar next to him, looked half prepared with a heavy pack over his shoulder. The applicants stood just beyond the steaming swampy rock house of the elder. He stood on his roof, hands raised to the heavens. His sleeves fell to the sides, revealing an ornate onyx candle stand, and a raw beeswax candle. The Fox Folk fell silent.

The elder paraded down a ramp made from tilted stone to the front of his home. There he sat the stand on a round pillar of rock, and then the thick three wicked candle upon it. He concentrated for a moment and within his stillness, Iam could feel him create furious motion. He waved a hand, and the three wicks of the thick pillar sprang to life. He had made fire from nothing, and while it was a simple trick, it was one rife with power. Even just the merest touch of it focused Iam's mind and took away some more of the haze of medication. Iam could feel the potential thrumming through the crowd, and something, something else.

Iam looked through the crowd to Maverus, who was watching the elder for any clue as to what was coming next. His body was tense. He was forgetting to breathe.

The elder spoke, “Today one leaves us to become a guardian. We wish all those who make this journey every bit of luck and safety. Some will not return.” And he motioned to the candle. “The flame is born of your destination. It is your guide and if you can speak to it, it will tell you where to go.”

And with no further explanation, he hobbled away from the column table and pillar, and into the crowd surrounding the applicants. For minutes, you could hear every heartbeat and drawn breath. Iam closed his eyes and reached out with his will, felt the candle and its link to a hive many miles distant. He felt the flame drink the wax, and become part of the hive for a brief instant.

Then, one applicant sprung to his feet and ran to the candle. He sliced off a disk from the top, lifting the three burning wicks from the pillar. The wax parted easily, and the wicks beneath lit instantly once the disk was removed. He made motions over the flames, saw where they leaned, and ran off in the direction of the temple. Within moments, a dozen more copied him, including Yulian, but many found the wicks would go out if they moved too fast and had to stop and relight the fiery compasses. One approached the candle and touched it with his mind, creating a flared map in the same way Vika had made the butterfly. He could sustain it for only seconds before it faded and he ran off, desperately holding every detail in his mind. Another took a sliver of wax, pressed it in her hands into an arrow, and pointed it into random directions before nodding and racing after the others. Many copied her. Finally there was only Maverus.

The dark furred Fox was prepared, he trembled at the gate to be off as fast as his feet would take him, but he just stared at the candle with the kind of fear reserved for predators and violent storms. He reached out a hand, stopped, reached out, withdrew. Finally he drew his knife and went to cut a disk of his own. Iam shook his head, suppressing all but the barest squeak.

Maverus' ears perked up and drew his eyes out into the crowd, to the rigid form of Vika in her autumn colors, and then to his small, pale friend. Iam's eyes were wide, his breathing shallow, and his right hands unconsciously clenching into a fist over and over.

Maverus lowered his knife. He stared at the three burning wicks. He both remembered and put aside the humiliating game they had played back at Iam's home. He felt the flames with his will, perhaps for the first time really felt them, and began to understand.

Mav reached out one hand and went to grasp the flames as if collecting coins from a bowl. He winced and yelped, the crowd blanching at his actions, but the young Fox drew back his hand, and cupped it to the sky. The flame danced there. He giggled, then laughed, closing his fist and concentrating the fire into his hand. It leaked through slits between his fingers like the limbs of light belonging to a star. He waved it around, seeing that the longest limb always pointed out in the same direction. With a cry of victory he started after the group that was gaining ground on him every moment.

Abruptly, he skidded to a stop, returned to his friends at the edge of the crowd. He hugged Vika, and then Iam. He quirked one of his indomitable smirks and then he was gone, whooping and running, clenched fist leading the way. Everyone watched him go. One of Maverus' little brothers wailed and his mother picked him up, tears of worry on her face. Nobody looked excited, or exultant, only worried for loved ones. Even Olin was there, stoic and strong for whoever had the honor to be the bearer of loss next.

The elder had regained the top of his stone home, his arms spread to the sky, “It is done. Go to thine homes and prepare to receive those who fail with kindness and understanding. Be prepared to accept the victor with thanks and praise.”

Just like that the crowd began to disperse, but Iam could see the elder turning, uncertainly. It was as if his flicking tongue were tasting the air for an alien thing. Reaching out, Iam could feel it too, a wrongness. It was horrible, and terrible. It reminded him of a dream. Nobody else seemed to notice, and the feeling was blasted into confetti when Vika took Iam in her arms and hugged him fiercely.

“That's that, then. He will either make it back, or he will not.”

Iam looked at the ground between them, eyes weighted by guilt. “He and I trained together. I should have gone with him.”

Vika touched his cheek, making his heart flutter. “Dear Iam, this was his dream, not yours. You have no more need of the guardian's sword than Mav has of the elder's library.”

Iam looked to her and smiled, grateful beyond words for her absolution. He turned and looked out into the darkness after the applicants. There were many miles to cover, out of the valley and up into the mountains to the forbidden cities of Those That Came Before. Vika kissed him on the cheek and melted back into the crowd, looking for her mother and father.

Iam smiled after her and began to trudge into the shadows, back to his empty home. He left the crowd behind and moved up into the hills. He turned after a few minutes, still able to pick out the elder on his roof, turning this way and that, almost in a panic. Iam felt himself go cold.

That was when the first scream split the air like an axe.