Queen of the Dark Things (14 page)

Colby nursed his headache with a shot of whiskey and a tall sweating glass of ice water, his fingers trembling, struggling to find the words. Few things ever shook him up. He'd just met, for the first time, most of them.

The bar was empty, morbidly silent. Gossamer was curled up in the corner behind the bar, lying atop a rubber floor mat ringed with holes, keeping quiet, trying to keep up.

Yashar leaned forward on the counter, peering across the bar, eyes narrow, concerned. “Which two actually spoke with you?” he asked, his tone as nervous as it was curious.

Colby sipped his whiskey, staring dead-eyed back over the bar, his red hair still slicked to the side of his face with last night's sweat. “The Holocaust Man and the Horse.”

“Holy . . .” Yashar picked up a glass and began to clean it with a fresh rag. He needed something to do with his hands. It made no difference that the glasses were already clean.

“Yeah.”

“Tell me the Horse did all the talking.”

“Some of it.”

“Because you know he can't lie.”

“I know.”

“What did they say?”

Colby took another sip, steadying himself. “Something's happened to five of the Seventy-two.”

“Happened?”

“They've gone missing.”

“And they've mistaken you for a private detective? What's that even mean?”

“I guess they imagine I'm somehow involved.”

Yashar shook his head. “Bullshit. You're either involved or you aren't. These aren't the kind of folks who get that sort of thing wrong. So which is it?”

“Which is what?”

“Are you involved or are they trying to involve you?”

“A little bit of both I suppose.”

“Colby, what aren't you telling me?”

“Australia. They said it had something to do with Australia.”

Yashar backed away from the bar, dispirited, beginning to understand. “That's not good. That means—”

“That could mean a lot of things.”

“No. That can mean only one thing.”

“I'm not going back to Australia,” said Colby.

“Of course you're not going to Australia. No one goes to Australia.”

“Now what is
that
even supposed to mean?”

“It means no one goes to Australia anymore. The whole continent's gone dark.”

“Gone dark? That's not possible. How does that even happen?”

Yashar hesitated, pursing his lips. Colby's chilly glare wore him down without much effort. “Anyone magical who goes in doesn't come back out. No one's heard anything for months.”

“Why is this the first I'm hearing of it?”

“Because no one wanted to tell you. I certainly didn't.”

“And I didn't know,” said Gossamer, peering up from behind the bar.

Colby snapped his fingers. “Is that what happened to the five? Were they . . . ?”

Yashar shook his head. “I don't know. No one said anything about the Seventy-two. But then, no one ever says anything about the Seventy-two unless they have to. If Orobas and Amy came to visit you—”

“Don't say their fucking names!”

“I know them, Colby. I've known them for a thousand years. I can call them by their names. You've got their attention. No use hiding from them now.”

“That's not how it's supposed to work. I didn't—”

“You didn't what?” asked Yashar. “Summon them?”

“Yeah.”

“No. You just brought the Wild Hunt across and offered it souls.”

“That . . . that's not . . .”

“That's not
how it's supposed to work
? Colby, that's exactly how it works. That's how it's always worked. Damnation is a hook with bait. It looks like a meal, but there are no free lunches. Not in Hell.”

“The Wild Hunt came to me. Threatened me. Demanded a favor of me.”

“And now you're going to be pissed at the demon for knocking on the door so you don't have to deal with the fact that you're the one who let him in?”

“Look outside. They're knocking again.”

“You can't help them. And you can't look into this. You have to let them clean up their own little mess. Let them stand outside all day and night if they have to.”

“That's the plan. But then—”

“Then what?”

“There's something Coyote said.”

Yashar's face went cold. He reached under the bar for a tall glass, unstoppered the best bottle of whiskey within reach, and filled it to the top. “Coyote? You didn't mention Coyote.”

“He was waiting for me when I woke up.”

Yashar took a big swig. “What did he say?”

“You're not really going to guzzle the good stuff like that, are you?”

“Colby—”

“Because that's really good stuff, and if you're just going to drink it like soda—”

“Colby—”

“You might as well be drinking the cheap stuff—”

“Damnit, Colby! Forget about the goddamned whiskey. What did he say?”

Colby paused for a moment, sipping his own whiskey. “He talked in riddles, mostly. Said he was looking out for me. Not to trust anyone. Then, by the end he told me that he hadn't really told me anything at all, and saying that would fuck with me later.”

“That's fucking with you now, isn't it?”

“It really is.”

“Because whatever Coyote tells you to do—”

“You should do the opposite. Unless he knows you know that. Then you can't so much as get out of bed without doing what he wants.”

Yashar finished the rest of his glass and began to pour another. “What the hell are we going to do?”

Colby looked up at Yashar, a hair confused. “We?”

Yashar nodded. “This is no small affair, Colby. This is the Seventy-two. But what scares me most isn't their involvement.”

“It isn't?”

“No. What scares me is that this isn't a problem they can deal with themselves. Something like this should be self-correcting.”

“Self-correcting?”

“It means . . . take you, for example.”

“ME?”

“Yeah, you. Limestone Kingdom. You did a pretty good job of peeing in their Wheaties. Really shook things up out there. Those guys totally hate you.”

“Thanks for the refresher course.”

“What do they do now that they want you gone?”

Colby shrugged, unsure where this was all going. “Get together, maybe. Come for me in the middle of the night.”

“Too risky. Good way to lose a lot of friends. No, someone like you, you just wait it out. One of three things is going to happen. One, maybe you get too big for your britches and run afoul of something you can't handle. Splat. Two, you mellow out, grow up a little, and work things out with the initially wronged parties. Peace reigns throughout the land. Or three, since the problem is mortal in nature—”

“They'll just wait for me to die,” said Colby.

“They'll just wait for you to die,” said Yashar, nodding. “So riddle me this: what could possibly be so powerful that the scariest hombres in all the land want no part of it, have no hope for peace with it, and don't think they can outlive it?”

“They said it was something that I killed. That some deaths take longer than others.”

Yashar nodded again. “You know who and what they're talking about, don't you?”

“I think so.”

“So who said what?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said the Horse didn't do all the talking. Which one of them said what?”

Colby hesitated, the fog of the last night's drinking rolling in over the memories, enveloping them, the crisp horror of etched-in shock becoming blurry shadows in a drifting haze. He remembered a man on fire, the way the flames flickered and shifted in the night. The way the embers fluttered on the breeze, delightful dancing little fragments of the damned. And he remembered a horse so black that it stood apart from the darkness. But the words, the words eluded him. “I don't . . . I can't quite remember. I remember the gist of what they said, but not who said it.”

“These two didn't happen upon you by accident. They were chosen to speak to you. They no doubt discussed exactly what to say before they ever showed up. These aren't just schemers, Colby. They are the greatest schemers. Seventy-two of the most cunning, underhanded backstabbers the world has ever known. They'd already thought well past this conversation and on to tomorrow before they ever stepped foot in that field. Of the sixty-seven they had, they chose Orobas and Amy. Why?”

“The Horse and the Holocaust Man. Please.”

“Fine. The Horse and the Holocaust Man. One can't lie. The other is still bitter he was tricked into thinking he might one day return to Heaven. Why these two? Why send them to do the talking? There are more powerful spirits. More persuasive spirits.”

“Because these are the two I might trust.”

Yashar nodded. “Which means?”

“I can't trust them at all.”

“Exactly.”

Colby finished his whiskey, but it did nothing to soothe the knot in his stomach. He held his glass to the light, rolling it around in his fingers, watching as the glare warped and twisted as it moved. “They're not going to let me out of this, are they? I'm already in it.”

Yashar's expression held hopeful aspirations of confidence, only to fall short, the confidence draining with the hope. “I suppose you are.”

“This time I've really done it. I've damned myself.”

Yashar shook his head. “Don't kid yourself, Colby. You damned yourself a long time ago.”

“Yashar, what the hell has she become that it's come to this?”

The two exchanged pained looks, the silence between them pregnant and brooding.

“Guys?” asked Gossamer. “What the hell happened in Australia?”

C
HAPTER
19

D
REAMTIME AND THE
L
AND OF
D
REAMS

A
N
EXCERPT
BY
D
R
. T
HADDEUS
R
AY
, P
H
.D.,
FROM
HIS
BOOK
D
REAMSPEAKING
, D
REAMWALKING
,
AND
D
REAMTIME
: T
HE
W
ORLD
ON
THE
O
THER
S
IDE
OF
D
OWN
U
NDER

W
estern arrogance puts the cradle of civilization squarely in Mesopotamia, the root of our writing, storytelling, and technological achievements stemming from thousands of years of culture emerging from that region. And yet while our core beliefs stem from the original tales passed down around the campfires of that region, our history covers only a surprisingly short amount of time.

The Aboriginal tribes of Australia, on the other hand, constructed no great monuments, contributed no technological achievements, and offered no contribution to our emergence into history. Instead, in place of that, they possess an oral tradition stretching back tens of thousands of years. While thousands of years of man rose and fell before telling their story in clay, the Aborigines share tales of 25,000-year-old volcanic eruptions and the flooding that took place after the melting of the Ice Age. In fact, they share entire tales that take place on land that now rests at the bottom of the sea.

This is a culture that did not push forward on the cutting edge of technology because it focused instead upon mastering the power of creation. No other culture in the history of man has so understood the nature of its own surroundings, a fact mostly due to their entire culture evolving around respecting, protecting, and mastering what they live upon.

To listen to the tales of the Aborigines is to hear histories older than any text, to hear of heroes who walked the earth before it last froze over. And their tales of creation seem closer to the truth that remains today than any other I've found. To the Aborigines, the world was not simply created, it was dreamed into being. Things became conscious and then consciously began altering their surroundings.

They call it Dreamtime.

Dreamtime is the idea that in the beginning there was a substance of raw creation that beings, or consciousness, evolved from. Every tribe tells a different tale of the creatures that emerged, but the mechanism that follows is always the same. Those beings then walked the earth, imagining, or in some cases singing, things into being. Plants, animals, monsters, places, rivers, people. All came from the Dreamtime. Then, after most of the raw creation was spent forging the world, the beings that made it passed on and left behind a world full of wonder. Thus ended Dreamtime.

To the Aborigines, all land is sacred, for it is a place not only dreamed into being by the ancients, but it is also where the heroes of old walked. They do not merely revere their heroes, they revere the places where those heroes performed their greatest deeds. They revere the places where those heroes were born. They believe the land itself is the most important part of creation, because the land is, itself, the record of all stories.

There are three principal ideas one must grasp in order to understand the basic tenets of Aboriginal mythology: their relationship with the land, their relationship with time, and their relationship with death. Once you have those down, the rest you can pick up fairly easily.

The land. Many Aboriginal men are given custody of a parcel of land, much in the same way boys in regions of Thailand are given baby elephants. They have one job: to watch over it. Now, these men do not own the land, as they believe no one can truly own land. They merely protect it. They memorize every contour, learn the location of every rock and tree. They know which trees and bushes bear fruit and which bear poison. They learn the way the rain falls, where the water collects, and what animals come to drink. They learn the holes where all the snakes live, the caves where animals take shelter. More important, they learn, in song, the history of every important thing to ever happen on that spot of land. These men learn which hero defeated which animal with what weapon on which spot. They learn where villages rose and fell. They learn where people fell in love. They learn all of this and they protect it because it will one day be their job to pass that knowledge on to someone else.