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

by JM Guillen

  I kept my distance. Frantically, I thought about my options. I couldn’t harm the creatures, not now. I could call for my horn, the next step in the dance of the Hunt, but I didn’t feel that would actually help.

  No sooner had I thought it, than I saw my horn. That was ever the way of things.

  It hung casually on the side of a tree. The ram’s horn had intricate, copper scrollwork all along the side.

  “No.” I was firm. “The hounds are glamour. They will be of little aid.”

  The horn said nothing in response. Still, it hung there, petulantly denying my denial.

  I saw it again not ten steps later, glistening in the dim light, lying on a stump.

  And again in the path so I almost stumbled over it.

  “You’re going to get me killed!” I swore at it as I leapt past.

  It was no use, of course. My horn was ever persistent, a dangerous tool that yearned for use.

  Not today, however. The second of my tools would be more useless than the first, I knew. What if I did call the hounds? The abomination would drink them as little more than sweet nectar. Then what? Would I lose the hounds for all time if they were devoured by the darkness?

  —was evil the likes of which cannot be understood. It was the sound of spiders, pouring forth from my mouth, as I screamed in the dark. It—

  “Please, no.” It was a litany, a prayer. I could not get caught in that tide of malice and darkness.

  Could not.

  Behind me, the darkness seethed through maddening shapes: now a darkened river of squirming insects, now a flock of carrion birds, now reaching, grasping tentacles.

  I’d stopped trying to shoot. No part of it was not all of it, and it simply swallowed my arrows, only to retake its dead into itself.

  I was nothing before it. I and my hounds would be little more than food.

  It screamed on the edge of my mind, stark and mad.

  Not food, Herald. No, not for the likes of you. Ever shall we dwell within you. You shall nevermore be alone, nevermore be cursed to wander.

  I saw it then, in my mind, even as I ran. I saw myself, with burning red eyes, a twisted, living shadow. No more would I bear the gold of autumn—I would be hamed with twilight. Shadows of darkling dreams would pour from me wherever I went, and I would never die, never fear, and never be alone. Wherever I went I would hear a thousand-thousand whispering, cackling, mad voices clawing at the inside of my mind—

  You will ever more hunt, Herald. The hunt will only end with the world bleeding at your feet.

  It took every shape and none: a plague of large, ravenous rats; twisting, writhing serpents.

  I could not stop and stare, fascinating though it was.

  No. The prey’s place was to flee.

  It didn’t matter; I knew death was upon me.

  The creature followed, relentless, unstoppable. I might make away, but then what? Never could I sleep nor take solace in anything. The darkness would stalk me, implacable.

  My choices were bleak. Eddie hadn’t given me near the tools I needed. My bow was all but useless. I could give way to the Hunt and take up my horn, but—

  No.

  I had one choice left.

  “Coyote, I may have misjudged.”

  I didn’t cry the words, screaming to the sky. No, I could not. I simply ran, panting out my call, hoping that even without his Name, he would hear me.

  “Illari. Coyatl. Old Man Coyote.” I glanced behind me, seeing that the writhing darkness had taken the shape of stinging flies, buzzing in a cacophony of madness. “Sinawava, everything you are, and Tell yourself to be, I need you. I need my boon.”

  Only the wind answered. The wind and the sound of my feet and the buzzing insanity.

  “Come now.” In my horror, panic edged into my voice. “You owe me. You owe me. You said it yourself. ‘Jes call,’ you said.”

  The darkness raged closer.

  I grew tired. My wounds from earlier began to pain me again.

  I couldn’t run forever.

  “I need you. You heartless bastard. You called me here. You made this happen.”

  Closer. Its ghostly hands reached for me—

  “I’M CALLING!” I shrieked. “PLEASE.”

  No, nothing.

  This was it then. The end. It had all been a trap.

  No. Not the end. There shall never be an end. We shall walk together, you and I.

  I was alone. Alone as I ever was.

  It was up to me.

  As it always was.

  I glanced ahead to the gray wood of an old, dead tree. As I had known it would be, my horn hung there.

  Perhaps. Perhaps the hounds could be enough. Could slow the writhing phantom that pursued me.

  I could run, could find an ally. I might be offering them to the darkness, but that was better than offering myself, better than offering the Herald. I must not become a harbinger of darkness dire.

  I only needed a nonce, slow it the slightest bit. Then, I could sound my horn. I reached for my quiver. Perhaps just a few shots, just enough to tarry its mad run—

  My fingers didn’t find my arrows. They found an arrow of the sun’s own fire.

  “You whore’s son.” I grinned. “I hate you.”

  I spun on my heel and nocked the arrow. My fingers flew like quicksilver.

  Yet not quick enough.

  Like a tide of filth and madness, the shaediin darkness crashed upon me.

  Not the end. A new beginning.

  The darkling dreams tore through me like a cyclone. A thousand-thousand crazed visions of a thousand-thousand mad worlds, all rotten to their very core. For an instant, I forgot everything I was or had been. Instead, I became a madman, a sorcerer, an alchemist who delved into that darkness. I was obsessed with hunting the gloaming dragons. I was a secret soldier, tasked with standing against the creatures from beyond the void.

  Numberless bent, twisted names.

  Pain. I felt where the bear had struck me, felt the gash on my chest. I felt the places in my head where she had attacked me, like white-hot barbs had been dragged through my mind.

  Then I saw the arrowhead, shining with the sun’s flame, and the phantasms fell away.

  Nothing could be false in its light.

  The Herald never sleeps again. He wanders the shadows of the world with a bow that shoots arrows of bitterness and illusion. His eyes burn with the unyielding, dark fire, and he is despair, one of the world’s sorrows—

  “No.” I felt surprisingly calm in the light of the arrow. “That’s not true.”

  I let the arrow fly.

  A thousand-thousand voices screamed in my head at once. My ears and nose bled from the force, from the horror of it. I was knocked backward to the ground, and the darkness crashed upon me. It sought to push its way into me, my ears, my eyes, my nose.

  I clawed at it, blind in its darkness.

  The creature burned like old, dry leaves and reeked of singed down.

  The fire crackled with the monster’s fury and spite. It ate away at the shadowed abomination, catching even on small wisps of it that tried to make flight. The shaediin darkness became a vulture, then a swarm of wasps, then bats. Its form didn’t matter. The sun’s fire leapt from darkness to darkness, burning the shadows even as they tried to escape.

  It screamed again, the horrors of a thousand-thousand darkling dreams tearing at me like tiny razors. The sound carried the force of a mighty river, battering me against the ground, hurling me against stone and tree.

  The sun’s fire still hungered. The shadows weakened. Flung against the ground again, I felt something in my shoulder crack.

  Not my end either, Herald.

  The voice tumbled with thunder and malice and hate, making my every memory quake with terror.

  Burn. A small, vicious smile cut its way across my face. Burn and be silent.

  The cold darkness hurled me into the air as if I were little more than a toy. Darkling shadows tried to squirm their way into my
mind, seeking any haven from the flame.

  Yet, even as my body was battered and bruised, I held the darkness away from my heart. My entire will bent toward keeping the writhing mass at bay. Finally, it hurled me, head first, against a large stone.

  Then a new darkness over swept me.

  Not the cold, hollow darkness of the creature, I succumbed to the blessed sweetness where the mind wandered when it could take no more.

  The creature could not touch me. I was alone.

  In that sweetness, I am certain I smiled.

  20

  Under the moon, who sang in the night sky, her silver fingers dancing through the treetops, I awoke with a start and sat up. Instantly I regretted it. Pain lanced through my shoulder like a barbed flame.

  “I’d go easy, if’n ’twere me.” His gravelly voice ricocheted through the shadows.

  My eyes narrowed as I peered around. I couldn’t see him in the darkness.

  “Is it—? Did it—?”

  “Gone, O Herald.” I could hear his grin, his smug satisfaction. “Not even ashes left.”

  I tried to push myself up, but the pain came instant and blinding. I sank back.

  He chuckled. “Yeh won’t be gettin’ up on yer own, boy. Yeh need rest. Yer hurt.”

  I stretched one leg, but it bent against the grain. Damn. The Old Man was right.

  I fell back, breath exploding into cool mist. The moonlight lay across my face.

  “I suppose it’s good you happened along then.” I gazed into the darkness, toward the voice. “Being as you are a man who claims to owe me.”

  “Hap’n’stance.” His word was the epitome of casual.

  “Of course.”

  He leaned forward. Now I could see the outline of his cragged face in the moonlight.

  “Like I said, boy, yer hurt. Thing yeh need most is rest, Tommy.” He grinned. I could see madness dancing in his eyes. “Sleep, Tommy Maple. Rest well and mend up.”

  That was a low blow. Telling and Naming against me while I lay here, again weak as a kitten. I felt slumber crash against me, like the inevitable tides.

  Damn it. I brought my glamour forth, but it was sluggish. Autumn’s gold had turned a sickly yellow.

  “I hate you.” I slurred the words, fighting to keep my eyes open and on him. “You really are—”

  I never finished telling him.

  Sleep hit me harder than the bear ever had.

  21

  It was after the fiercest battle of my life. The Romans had surged like a never-ending sea of men and swords, and they brought stories with them, strange, deceptive things. Hraefn and I had stood, and we had won.

  For now.

  Both exhausted, she lay with her head on my chest. It was good, however. Sweet. I could smell her musk on my face and hands as we dozed off.

  “No sleep. Not for my Herald.” She nibbled at my chin. “What makes you believe I’m sated?”

  I traced a finger along her soft curves. “I doubt any five men could sate you. You are ever-hungry, my Whisperwing.”

  She giggled. “It’s because I have to await you for so long. Three months of the year you are mine and then what? Cold. Ice.” She kissed me, her lips like roses. “It’s hardly fair.”

  I ran my fingers through her tresses, dark as night, and she snuggled back into me.

  It didn’t matter that I ever wandered.

  She was my home.

  22

  I stirred, squinting against the sun in my eyes.

  It was morning. I was in a bed. Resting on my chest was beautiful, dark hair and skin like the moon.

  I ran my fingers through sweet-lavender scented hair and tried to remember how I had gotten back to Molly’s.

  I couldn’t. The past blurred. The last thing I remembered was the not-bear and then a great shadow. After that was the Old Man…

  “You really are a bastard.” I finished saying what I had been thinking as he Named me.

  Molly stirred in her sleep and then blinked up toward me. A sleepy smile crossed her face.

  “Timothy!” She kissed my cheek. “I almost worried you weren’t going to wake up for me.”

  I stretched my legs out. No pain. I moved my shoulder and felt no barbed fire where it had broken. I thought on the words of Coyote’s Telling:

  “Rest well and mend up.”

  I had done exactly that.

  “How long have I been asleep?” I caressed her back, smiling at her happiness.

  “This would be the third morning. An old man brought you. He toted you like a sack of rocks.”

  That was interesting. How had Coyote known where I had been staying?

  “Did he say anything or just drop me on your stoop?”

  She nuzzled into my neck. “He had quite a bit to say, Timothy. He left you this.” She reached for her nightstand, for a folded piece of paper. She handed it to me.

  Coyote’s writing scrawled like a child’s. It was little more than random scratches. In the center of the paper, hardly legible, it read:

  One more boon.

  “Not even a thank you.” I mumbled wryly, as I set the paper back on her stand.

  “Where did you go? I woke up, and you were—”

  I shook my head. “Boring, dull story. You don’t want that one.”

  She grinned impishly. “You have a better one to offer?”

  I did.

  I told this story with my body and with hers. I told it well into the late morning and early afternoon, amidst whimpering and sweet cries.

  I told it with the desperation of a story that was coming to an end.

  23

  The western sky had turned sweetly golden when I awoke yet again. Molly and I had loved fiercely, but she was mortal and still aloft on dreams of midnight fires and September breezes. I slipped from her bed, and she scarcely murmured.

  Quietly, I slipped on the clothing I had taken from Eddie’s station. I moved with whispers and silence. The entire time, my aspen-gold eyes rested upon her, memorizing every curve, every sweet blush of her skin.

  It was time to go. The autumn wind called.

  I had to leave before she became trapped in my glamour, fey-touched and lost to the world of men.

  Yet leaving was never what I wanted to do.

  I stood over her, pushing her hair from her eyes. Everything about her was lovely. Not just beautiful, but lovely too.

  There were no far shores for Molly and me.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the folded maple leaf. It all but glowed with the secret light of my Name. Gently, I set my token on the pillow by her head.

  I could leave now. She would not hurt. She would not yearn or want. Whenever she held my token, her heart and body would remember what she could never know again.

  Our parting would never pain her. No, the parting was my pain to bear, not hers. My token would ever stay warm, and the smallest whisper of my glamour would keep her.

  It was all I had to give.

  I turned from Molly. Outside her room, I slowly closed her old, pine door, taking care to keep it silent. I kept my eyes on her as long as I could.

  This was not the first door I had closed.

  No, I had done it a thousand times before. A thousand thousand.

  24

  My next beginning found me along an old road, lost in the reds and the yellows of the wood. rain fell, the first cold rain of the season. My every step rippled autumn into the world.

  Mount Chase stood behind me, lost in the cascade of water.

  I walked along the road. My thick, down hunting jacket and indigo canvas pants were scorched and torn from a battle in a dismal, gray wood.

  I had no boots.

  The small red car came along soon. It was perfect, almost as if I had drawn it in a Telling.

  “God above, boy, get in!” said the man with gray-streaked hair.

  The woman unlocked the back door.

  I climbed in, shivering, with rivulets of September running from my hair.
<
br />   “Thank you.” I smiled. “I wasn’t looking forward to a long walk in the rain.”

  The man eyed me strangely.

  “There’s nothing around here for miles, son. How did you find your way this far out in the dark and cold?”

  I smiled to myself.

  That was once.

  ###

  Also by JM Guillen

  In a dangerous world of magic, sorcerous shadows scheme.

  Only two worshippers of the Goddess of Passion understand this hidden truth.

  * * *

  Keiri may appear to be nothing more than a voluptuous young woman, but renegade sorcerers know to fear the Handmaidens and their magics. Her Goddess grants her the power to drive men wild with desire, using the raw fury of their own passions against them.

  Once a man is touched by a Handmaiden, he is never the same.

  Now, however, ancient shadows loom over the city, and forbidden sorcery is being practiced in its hidden corners. Keiri's master, the enigmatic Sire Mattias, has discovered that young women are being taken against their will, for dark purposes unknown.

  It’s exactly the kind of atrocity that the young Handmaiden can't resist investigating.

  Soon though, even Keiri's passionate gifts are being put to the test. As she delves into the domain of Orin Devariis, one of the wealthiest and most depraved men in the city, his manse is mysteriously burned to ashes while she is within. Pale, unnatural assassins pursue Keiri on the streets.

  What are these strange, inhuman creatures who seem immune to her Goddess’ gifts? And what do they want with her?