Harvan placed his hands on his hips. “The dead echoes up ahead are drawn to live echoes. I expect them to be extra captivated by Cole, since he’s bright. We don’t need to treat them with courtesy. They are the shells of echoes. Their lifesparks moved on long ago. Our goal is avoidance.”
“What will they try to do to us?” Cole asked, unsure whether he wanted the answer.
“They want what we have,” Harvan said. “They want to feel alive again. Something about the Deadlands amplifies those desires. They came to the Deadlands because at some level they’re dissatisfied with their lifeless state. Some dead echoes can function normally for a long while. But if they avoid the channels for long enough, eventually they deteriorate and end up in places like this.”
“They’ll attack us,” Winston translated. “They’ll keep coming until we’re as dead as they are.”
“So we’ll be running,” Cole said.
Harvan winced. “Probably. But not at first. The echoes of the Deadlands seem drawn to motion. In previous visits, they mostly walked as long as I walked, and it seemed to curb their interest. Once I started running, they did too. We’ll see how long we can hold to a slower pace.” Harvan brandished his walking stick. “Once we speed up, don’t be shy about using that sword.”
Harvan started sprinting again. Cole ran at one side, Winston on the other.
“When do we walk?” Cole wondered.
“You’ll see,” Harvan replied.
As the depressing music up ahead gained dominance, the vegetation dwindled. The bare landscape became gnarled and craggy, dipping and rising haphazardly. Cole didn’t like how the contorted terrain limited his line of sight. Dead echoes could be lurking around the next rock pile or beyond the next incline.
Harvan slowed to a walk. “I hear some dead echoes. Not too many yet.”
The desolate surroundings looked empty to Cole. He could only hear the dismal music inherent to the landscape.
They advanced at a casual pace over dirt and stone. The uneven ground forced Cole to pay more attention to where he stepped than he had since arriving in the echolands. Harvan began turning a lot more sharply and frequently. Now that the dreary music fully enveloped them, Cole had to fight the urge to sit down.
“Are you guys tired?” Cole asked.
“It’s the music,” Harvan said. “The fatigue is in your mind, not your muscles. This music demands surrender. Resist.”
They weaved around stony projections and plodded across sandy stretches. Nothing grew here.
“Don’t be alarmed,” Harvan said. “Just follow my lead.”
Two men and a woman walked into view from off to one side. Cole was expecting the dead echoes to appear disheveled, like zombies, but these three looked normal.
“Excuse us!” the woman called, her voice a little too strident. “Could we have a word with you? I think we took a wrong turn.”
“Don’t answer,” Harvan muttered.
“Are you ignoring us?” one of the men called. “Are you turning your backs on us?”
“Keep walking,” Harvan said. “There are more coming. We don’t want a stampede.”
Others came into view from a different direction.
“You’re a cute one,” an older woman called, her eyes on Cole. “I bet the girls won’t leave you alone.”
Harvan increased his pace a little. Cole matched it. “Stay calm,” Harvan murmured.
They came around the side of a low ridge to find a mob of more than twenty people jostling toward them, men and women. They didn’t look dead. They weren’t decomposing, and their clothes were presentable. Cole found all eyes on him.
“There are more behind us,” Harvan said. “We’re accumulating a lot of admirers from many directions. More than I ever did alone. Maybe it’s having three of us together. Maybe it’s Cole’s brightness. They’re gathering fast. We don’t want to get surrounded.”
Up ahead Cole saw a gap in a steep wall of rock. The mob off to the side was picking up speed, not fully running yet, but trying to outpace one another.
“So much for walking,” Harvan said, breaking into a run. Cole stayed with him. Winston was a step or two behind.
The members of the mob started running as well, moving on a trajectory to cut off escape through the gap. Risking a look back, Cole saw more coming from directly behind.
It was now a footrace. As the gap neared, so did the fastest members of the mob. Harvan clobbered a man in the head with his walking stick, Cole slashed a woman’s outstretched arm, and then they were in the gap. Glancing back, Cole saw Wilson right behind him, and many people beyond him, running intently.
Emerging from the gap, Cole saw more scattered echoes ahead, all coming their way. Harvan weaved for a time, trying to keep the dead echoes from effectively converging. It took some artful maneuvering because the dead echoes approached from many directions.
Looking back, Cole saw the echoes behind them losing ground. They sprinted in bursts, but seemed to lack the determination to keep up a long chase. Some who had pursued them through the gap had already lost interest.
Harvan made it a priority to avoid groups, sometimes charging an individual echo to bash the person aside and create a new path. Cole ran hard and kept his sword ready.
There was never a break. At best, three or four echoes would remain in view. At worst, Cole saw more than a hundred. Survival would have been impossible without tireless legs.
Cole tried to shake his sense of desperation, but it was challenging. Time and again it looked like they might not make it around the next group.
Cole didn’t have to use his sword too often. When necessary, Harvan reliably toppled echoes with his walking stick.
The dead echoes routinely cried out. Some sounded desperate.
“Help! Don’t leave me! Come back!”
Others were strangely polite.
“A moment of your time? Excuse me? Just a moment, please?”
Some got angry.
“Don’t you run! Where are you going? Stop this instant! Do you hear me? Don’t you dare run!”
Cole did his best to block out the voices and also tried to ignore the melancholy music. The constant threat of attack kept him focused despite the interminable running. Cole felt like he had the football, and a couple of teammates to help block, but the field went on forever, and the other team had an endless supply of players.
An element of sameness pervaded the relentless chase. There were new rock formations to navigate, and new faces to evade, but the dynamics of the danger stayed fairly constant. They either had to run at top speed, using good angles to elude dead echoes, or else get gang-tackled.
Cole didn’t suffer physically. His muscles never burned. His lungs didn’t strain. But the constant threat of capture was mentally grueling. As the wild run dragged on, to help manage his frustration, Cole quit hoping for the chase to end. Better to grimly pretend there was no finish line. This was his life now.
Harvan did a superb job of avoiding critical threats like narrow places and large groups of dead echoes. Without his guidance, Cole doubted he would have lasted more than a few minutes. But Harvan had a knack for anticipating the positions of the dead echoes and reading the upcoming terrain. As long as Harvan, Cole, and Winston stayed at a full sprint on relatively open ground, the dead echoes lacked the endurance and the teamwork to entrap them.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Cole finally asked.
“We’re getting closer,” Harvan said. “It may get a bit worse before it gets better.”
Before long, not only did Harvan have to use his walking stick twice, but Cole hacked a pair of dead echoes with his sword. The echoes scrambled back up after getting slashed aside, but by the time they recovered, Cole, Harvan, and Winston were out of reach.
Near misses became more frequent. Cole regularly had to help Harvan with his sword. He found that striking the head worked best. Sometimes Winston threw punches.
“Good job, Cole,” Harvan said after a particularl
y fierce flurry of fighting. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m okay,” Cole said.
“I’m fine too,” Winston said. “Remember me? The guy taking on hordes of echoes without a weapon?”
“You could pick up a stick,” Harvan suggested.
“Unless we find a really good one, I’ll punch and weave,” Winston said.
“You’re both doing well,” Harvan said. “We’re almost there. The biggest mob yet lies ahead of us, hundreds strong, right between our current position and our destination. I’ve been avoiding high ground so we don’t get surrounded.” He pointed to a ridge up ahead. “But I think we need to break that rule. I’m hoping that if we go up that ridge, we’ll draw the big group toward us and we can try to go around.”
“Toward us,” Winston said. “I love it.”
“It should make them clump together more,” Harvan said. “Right now they’re too spread out. I don’t think we’d make it around them.”
“You can hear all that in the music?” Cole said.
“With surprising detail,” Harvan said. “I can sense the shape of the terrain too. It’s all there if you learn to read it.”
“He does have his uses,” Winston said.
They raced up a rocky slope. Cole used his free hand to help climb as it grew steeper. The higher they got, the farther Cole could see. The dead echoes in the area seemed to take renewed interest as Cole and his companions gained altitude. Many who had stopped chasing them purposefully began heading their way again.
“We’re drawing a crowd from behind,” Winston warned.
“We have to be quick or we’ll get trapped up here,” Harvan said.
Cole found it extra weird to rush up the steep slope without getting winded. With his normal body, just walking up this incline would have made him tired.
When they reached the flat top of the ridge, Harvan hurried with them to the far edge. Cole’s stomach dropped when he saw the multitude of dead echoes amassed up ahead. It looked like a sprawling crowd waiting for an outdoor rock concert. Beyond the throng Cole saw what had to be their destination—an oasis of tall fir trees and green grass.
“No,” Winston complained. “Seriously?”
The mass of echoes began to drift toward them. Some at the perimeter of the crowd were walking more quickly.
“We’ve got this,” Harvan said. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. “Hi, friends! We should talk!”
That did the trick. The crowd broke into a run, surging toward the ridge.
“Go,” Harvan said. “I’ll keep their attention here for a minute. Head around them to the trees. I’ll catch up.”
Winston patted Cole. “He means it.”
From behind them, on the other side of the ridge, echoes began to climb into view, most staring earnestly at Cole.
“They’re coming from behind,” Cole warned.
“I know,” Harvan said. “Run.”
Winston and Cole started scrambling down the side of the ridge. Though Cole could no longer see Harvan, he heard him shouting, “Come on, hurry up! I have so many questions for you! And so many answers!”
Cole concentrated on not falling. This side of the ridge was steeper than where they had climbed. Loose pebbles skittered underfoot.
Glancing back, Cole saw Harvan following them recklessly, taking huge leaps. His haste was necessary. Many dead echoes were right behind him. There would be no doubling back.
Cole and Winston reached a ledge above a drop taller than the high dive at the town pool back home. Maybe fifteen feet!
“Jump!” Harvan called. “No time.”
Winston sprang, landing in a wild tumble on the rocky incline below. Cole tried to leap but couldn’t. It felt like suicide!
“Jump!” Harvan insisted, closer now.
Cole had the Jumping Sword in his hand. What if it worked? He needed this. It had to.
He pointed the blade at a point farther down the slope and called, “Away.”
There was no tug from the sword. No hint of his power.
So he jumped.
The ground rushed up to him, and he flopped forward, rolling violently. The impact should have snapped half the bones in his body. Instead, it didn’t even hurt that much. He was shaken, but as he rose, he could feel that nothing was broken. Nor was he bleeding. Just kind of sore. He had dropped his sword. He retrieved it, and Harvan landed nearby.
“You’re tougher than you think,” Harvan said, rising. “Keep going.”
Cole picked up his pace, descending the ridge more rapidly now that he knew a fall wouldn’t hurt as it should. The dead echoes close behind added plenty of incentive.
“Don’t try that off a giant cliff,” Harvan said as the ground leveled out. “Echoes are more durable than physical bodies, but not indestructible. And they don’t heal.”
“What about soreness?” Cole asked. It was weird to be running for his life and not be gasping.
“Soreness will usually fade,” Harvan said. “Any actual damage won’t. Okay. Top speed.”
Cole dug deep and sprinted with everything he had. From their lower vantage, he couldn’t see the huge crowd of dead echoes blocking the way to the trees. But the memory was scary enough to make him push his limits.
The echoes behind them began to lose steam, but new echoes up ahead forced them to swerve quite a bit. When the big crowd came into view, Cole could appreciate the brilliance of Harvan’s plan. The echoes were grouped much tighter and had gone close enough to the ridge that Cole, Harvan, and Winston had a real chance to race around them.
But the horde of echoes was coming fast, voicing a tangle of shouts. Some of the faster outliers still had a chance to cut them off from the green oasis.
Cole could tell he was forcing Harvan to run slower than he otherwise would. With his shorter legs, Cole simply wasn’t going to outrun a healthy grown man.
“Are the trees safe?” Cole asked.
“Yes,” Harvan said. “Once we’re on the grass, they won’t follow.”
The greenery drew nearer, as did the dead echoes. A few of the fastest echoes managed to intercept them.
“One last brawl,” Harvan said, smashing an echo in the face.
Cole chopped an outstretched hand, then dodged a young woman who lunged at him. The evasion slowed him a bit, allowing an older man to dive and seize his ankle.
Cole went down. He tried to kick free, but the man held fast. Cole slashed the echo’s wrist, and he finally let go.
Cole looked up to see a flood of echoes descending on him, arms outstretched, faces crazed. Before he returned to his feet, he would be mobbed.
Then Harvan and Winston jumped in front of him. “Go!” Harvan roared, swinging his walking stick in huge, sweeping arcs. Winston lowered his shoulder and rammed an echo in the chest. The nearest echoes were driven back by the violence of the attack, causing those behind to stumble to a halt.
It was a momentary lull, a minor wave moving against the encroaching tide, but the pause let Cole return to his feet and sprint to the grass. The instant he passed from the dirt to the lawn, the music changed, the despairing strains of the Deadlands completely replaced by the refreshing refrain of grass and trees.
The difference was so abrupt that for a moment Cole felt disoriented, like he had awakened from a nightmare. Then he turned to look back.
Harvan fought off a couple more echoes and hauled Winston to his feet. As the dead echoes surged forward, Harvan and Winston bashed their way to the lawn, shaking off grasping hands, fighting for every step. With a final burst of effort, together they staggered onto the grass.
CHAPTER
24
PRESCIA
Relieved that Harvan and Winston had made it, Cole stepped forward, ready to defend them with the Jumping Sword, but the dead echoes acted like an invisible wall shielded the lawn. They pressed up right to where the grass began, but not a step farther.
“That was close,” Harvan said, leaning on his walking st
ick. “Let’s get away from the edge. No reason to tempt fate.”
The crowd of echoes milled about, yelling and complaining.
“Come back!”
“Don’t go there!”
“We need to talk!”
“You’re a very special boy!”
“It’s been so, so long!”
Cole hurried after Harvan, passing between fir trees, happy when the disgruntled echoes were screened from view. Before long they could no longer be heard, either.
“Thanks, guys,” Cole said wholeheartedly. “I was a goner.”
“I need a sword,” Winston murmured. “At least a stick.”
“Happy to help,” Harvan said. “You did great, Cole. It’s hard to believe you’re so young. You have the composure of a real professional.”
The compliment helped dispel some of the embarrassment Cole felt for getting tripped. “Are we safe now?” he asked.
“Until it comes time to leave,” Harvan said.
“I can’t wait,” Winston grumbled.
“Let’s hope our visit with Prescia will justify the trouble,” Harvan said. “It isn’t far now.”
By unspoken agreement, they walked. Cole basked in the gentler music, gratefully inhaling pine resin. Though he wasn’t physically tired, it was a luxury not to be running. Nobody was chasing him.
“This place is big,” Cole said after they had walked for a few more minutes.
“Not tiny,” Harvan said. “Not enormous. We’re almost there.”
Between a pair of tall fir trees, a low cottage came into view, the walls composed of long, pale slabs of stone. As they drew near, the front door opened and a tall woman stormed out, slender with angular features. “Traitor!” she cried vehemently. “How dare you!”
“There’s a good explanation,” Harvan replied.
“You promised!” she accused. “Can nobody be trusted? You swore!”
“Not a bound oath,” Harvan said.
“I tried!” she yelled, no longer drawing closer. Hands on her hips, she waited for Harvan to approach. “You wouldn’t let me!”
“I don’t like entanglements,” Harvan said. “Trust me. This is a good thing. Once you hear me out, you’ll be glad I brought them.”