The Herald of Autumn (Echoes of the Untold Age Book 1) (12 page)
Read The Herald of Autumn (Echoes of the Untold Age Book 1) Online
Authors: JM Guillen
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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?
All too quickly,
Keiri realizes that she’s in far over her head, dealing with the resurgence of
sorceries lost for a thousand years. As she plumbs to the depths of a dungeon
of horrors, Keiri realizes that she underestimated how deep depravity goes...
By the time she learns the truth, it may be far too
late.
A Myriad of Worlds...
This tale
regards the adventures of Keiri Sul-Rydia, a woman devoted to the goddess of
unfettered passions. It is a story of a fantastical, magic rich world, with a
dark and horrific history.
This story is a
part of the overarching series of series,
The Paean of Sundered Dreams
, a
multi-genre, universe-spanning array of tales with Lovecraftian themes. Some of
the strands of this work are science fiction, some fantasy, and some steampunk,
but they share the same horrific universe. They weft and weave together,
leaving breadcrumbs of clues for the next story.
Each tale echoes
a beating heart of darkness, cackling quietly in the shadows of existence.
If you are the
kind of reader who cannot rest until every secret is found, for whom genre is
unimportant, and who will travel a wide and vast multiverse to learn things man
was not meant to know…
Welcome, wayward
wanderer.
This was written for you.
Series in The Paean of
Sundered Dreams
Do you like
free
stories
? Are you interested in the horrors that lurk behind Michael
Bishop's world?
Peek into our
Irrational strangeness before you buy it! Included here is over a thousand
pages of our uncanny tales, all hinting at the darkness between realms.
Download your
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now!
The
Dossiers of Asset 108
:
Echoes
of the Untold Age
:
Judicar’s
Oath
:
Regarding
Oaths and the Whispering Flame
A
Canticle of Fire and Shadow
:
Legacy
of the Archons
:
Fall
of the Wormwood Star
:
The
Wormwood Event
A
Sojourn Into Twilight
:
