The Herald of Autumn (Echoes of the Untold Age Book 1) (5 page)

By the time I found where the
creature had first attacked me, the mist turned to drizzle. In near total
darkness, lit only by the flashes of lightning, I cast about in the small
clearing for that particularly well-made fetish.

Here.

I reached for it, plucking the
leather from the muddy earth. It was so small. Ordinary. I turned the pouch
over in my hand, feeling the siren’s call of home and safety still spinning
forth from it. It hit me right behind my heart after feeling Jillian slip away
into sleep.

I had been fooling myself.

When I first found it, I wondered who
had crafted such a glam-filled trinket, a natural response. I was no longer
used to thinking of others of my kind. With no spider-filled corpse lumbering
in my steps, the truth became obvious. Only the Old Man could have crafted a
Dreaming such as this. As my kindred slept, no others as strong as he or I
would be anywhere near.

It was crafted just for me, designed
to strike the weakest point of my heart.

The Old Man had placed this strange
little talis out here for a reason. He must not want me to be in this part of
the wood.

I had to find him.

Judging by the cloud-covered sky, I
still had a few hours before the sun came up.

When the moon peeked through the mist
and damp, I noted my steps remained where I had scuffed the forest floor upon
entering the clearing. The rain hadn’t washed everything away yet, but it would
soon. I found where I had run between the trees and where the creature had
chased me. While we had fought, I had become turned around, but if I had kept
on in the same direction—

This way.

I sprinted through the chilly rain,
still feeling the forest shudder around me with gleanings of red-leaved autumn.
My breath came in ragged bursts of mist after ten minutes; after twenty, I
stopped in confusion.

Whatever the Old Man was protecting, it
wouldn’t be so far from his talis. I backtracked my steps slowly, peering in
every direction.

It was so cunningly hidden that I
almost missed it again.

Perhaps a hunting lodge from a
century ago, the building rotted where it sat, with the roof caved in at three
different places. The dilapidated porch sagged. The door hung askew on one
hinge, open.

But as I got closer, woven Dreamings
began murmuring. I crept toward the place, relaxing my eyes into the sight. If
something were here…

“Boy, do yeh not own any pants?”

I whirled at his voice, coming up
from behind me.

I hadn’t heard him, hadn’t even felt
him approach. He was simply upon me.

That was terrifying.

He chuckled. “’Course yeh don’t, I
know that. Yeh surprise me, ’tis all. I ’spected yeh to spend yer night coyin’
yer way into the bed of some sweet doe.” Old Man Coyote stopped while mirth
crept into his eyes, looking at my wet, naked form. He was trying not to laugh.
“Do I need killin’ that bad, son? Couldn’t take time to get some clothes like
proper folk?” Steel and ice shone in his grin.

“You beckoned me here, Old Man. You
used my Name, called it to the four gates of the world. I have right to anger.”
I paused.

He nodded at me thoughtfully.

“I did at that, Tommy. It was rude.
I’m shocked my own self. Would yeh accept my hospitality? Say, till sunup?”

I glanced wordlessly at the sky. He
could claim the sun hadn’t come up at all if it kept raining like this. Still,
hospitality meant something.

 “Your Oath then? No harm or intent
to harm?”

He looked at me, narrow-eyed. “I
may-could do. You don’t exactly look like much of a hard case, just now, all
wet and nekkid.”

I just glared at him, saying nothing.

Lightning flashed as he spoke.

“Fine then. Tommy Maple, to you I
Oath.” He sunk some of his secret power, his Telling, into the words. They rung
in my ears, echoed off the stones and trees. “Until the sun does rise, on
autumn’s first day, I oath not to hurt or harm, nor to lie to thee or thine.”
The last three words were sarcastic, phrased as the fey would. “Not lest yeh
come ’gainst me or intend me harm, or seek any manner of wickedness on me.”

Thunder punctuated his Oath.

I was certain that the rumbling sky
was a coincidence. Still, his words rang with power and ancient pacts. Since
our people had first met when the Norse crossed the sea, there had been Oaths
and promises. This was a long tradition with much honour and custom.

Of course, our wars had traditions
just as long. The First People and the Fey Kith ever found ourselves at odds.
The First Wars were terrifying things of dreams, glamours, and moon-spun
spells. Though steeped in blood and death, the mortals had created better
alliances with one another than we had.

“I accept.” I met his gaze, tracing
my own Telling into the words. “I accept your hospitality and honour it. I will
give all respect due from one who is a guest.”

He grinned. “Splendid, Tommy. Just
splendid.”

I knew then that he had me somehow,
by something said or unsaid. I went back over his words, looking for a double
meaning. He walked closer, toward the building. With the next bolt of
lightning, I saw an old musket under his long coat and rabbits slung over his
back. He walked past me and stepped up onto the rickety porch, pulling the door
shut. He mumbled something, then pulled the door again, swinging it the
opposite direction.

It swung oddly, somehow cantways to
the rest of the lodge, and opened on somewhere else entirely. From what I could
see, the interior of the lodge was richly decorated, hanging with trophies and
furs. A roaring fire cheerily blazed from within.

“After you.” He was all smiles now.

I hesitated.

With no way to know what he had
planned, it still wouldn’t do to show fear or misgiving. I smiled back as I
walked through the door, tossing the small talis to the side of his porch.

He stepped in, closing the door
behind us.

Thus I stood in the lair of the most
cunning creature I had ever known.

The dangers of the Old Man might
confuse the unknowing. Yet his power was terrifying. The Fey-kin had their own
tales of him, stories of horror gleaned from centuries of war with his people.
We had no weapons to fight against a force whose tales gripped our minds,
changing the very shape of the world through their Telling.

None of us were as skilled with
glamour as he.

All of us might do such things, true.
But the nature of the First People meant that Coyote, their shaman and elder,
could stand on the field with their warriors, washing us in his power. Our own
nobles and elders remained safely in the distant Twilight, as the first Fey-kin
explored these barbarous lands. He was a creature of legend—even to us.

Even more so was the thread of
madness and the hammers of truth that wound their way through his words.

Old Man Coyote’s name had been
whispered around campfires for many thousands of years. He was said to have
slain the Thunderbird when it preyed upon men, said to have taught man to make
a bow. When my people first came to these shores, the Old Man’s medicine had
blinded many of our eyes.

Yet he now appeared harmless.

I stood at his door for a moment,
taking in the spectacle of his lodge. Furs covered the wooden floor; hunting
trophies lined the walls. His fireplace was huge with three overstuffed chairs
in front of it. Sweet cedar smoke scented the room.

“Don’t gawk, boy. It’s cold out
there.” He brushed by me, shutting the door. He hung his coat and set his
musket in a corner before carrying the rabbits into the room.

 “Sit on yer dinner. I’ll be right
back.” He pointed at one of the chairs.

I glared for a moment but wet from
September rain, I walked over to his fire, basking in its warm, glorious shine.

The Old Man walked from the room,
down a short hall, and I heard muted voices. Someone else was here! I canted my
ears and heard the characteristic sweet murmurs of a couple. A quick jab of
jealousy stabbed at me.

Even the Old Man had a home.

He laughed softly, and I heard her
squeal. After a moment, he walked back into the room.

“I’ll be right along. Thought yeh
might want this.” He threw a blanket at me, glancing down at my uncovered form.
He grinned before leaving again.

I awoke naked every year and was
quite comfortable with myself. But I was a guest. I sat in the chair he had
indicated and pulled the thick wool over my lap. The fire crackled and popped
cheerily as I heard the two murmuring again. Presently, the Old Man returned,
handing me a steaming clay mug.

I sniffed, hot cider.

I watched his serious gray eyes, not
taking the cup.

He paused for a moment and then
sighed with exasperation.

“Come now. Yer a guest.”

I stared at him, still not moving.

“I will consider it rude.”

I took it this time but carefully and
specifically set it on the small table at my side.

My voice was quiet. “You know I won’t
owe you.” It was tradition. The Fey-kin never accepted food or drink from the
First People. It implied debt, and owing a debt was too close to owing a boon.

I would not, would never, owe him.

He shook his head, trying not to
laugh.

“Perhaps I did, son.” He turned
serious now. “But what I want to gab about is a bit larger than customs and
traditions.” He was abashed. “I was hoping yeh could trust me.”

I laughed, probably a mistake, but I
couldn’t help it. Our people had been at war for almost five centuries. Of all
his kind, he was renowned as the least trustworthy.

He sat and watched me, his face like
steel.

I waved my hands in front of myself,
trying to apologize. It was difficult, however, when I found his stern face
even funnier.

Finally I calmed.

We sat in the quiet for a moment,
with only the fire speaking.

He cleared his voice and tried again.

“I ’spose I have that comin’, at
least a touch of it anyway.”

“You do.”

“Let me go on a bit, though. I say I
had good reason to call yeh. If yeh don’t think so, I’ll let yeh meander off,
and I won’t come calling again. I won’t cry yer Name n’more.”

“That seems fair.” I narrowed my eyes
to him. “More fair than I would expect.”

“Things are changing, Tommy. Some
things faster than others. It’s not just a matter of the shifting of ages and
worlds.” He leaned closer, knotting his hands together. “Some things are new
and affect us all.” He glanced away and then back at me, furtively.

He was afraid. Old Man Coyote was
afraid.

I was not. “Of course things are
different. The Untold Age is coming.”

He shook his head at my words,
smiling ruefully.

“The People say it differently. We
call it The Next World. We have passed through many worlds before coming here.
We have the stories of the ones who came from the last world. It was a
difficult journey.” His eyes grew distant. “But those times are not these
times. Things are happening that we have no stories for.”

I didn’t know all the First People’s
history, so I didn’t understand.

“How are things different?” I reached
for the cider, forgetting myself for a moment. I stopped my hand.

He tried to hide a small, fierce
grin.

 “I can Tell yeh, and I believe I
should.” His eyes met mine. “The question is if yeh’ll hear me Tell it.”

My enemy, who could Tell entire
worlds into being, was asking me to sit and listen to him, to open my secret
heart before him. Here. In his lodge.

He was asking me to sit, powerless.

“I’m not interested in feeling you
shape the world, Coyote.” I gazed into the fire. “But this is your place. I
can’t exactly deny you and hold propriety as a guest.” Subtle reminder, that.

He huffed. “I have made all offers of
host, Tommy. I have no interest in sparring with yeh again.” Pause. “Besides.
If I wanted yeh dead, yeh would be. I had yeh before.”

“Easy to have someone you beckon,
someone who just awoke.”

He shrugged. “Nature holds to no rule
of honour, Tommy. The prey doesn’t get to cry foul just because it was taken
unawares.”

I simply looked at him. “And yet I
trust your honour. I sit in your lodge.”

For a long moment, we simply sat,
looking at one another.

Coyote sighed. “Time to draw, Tommy
Maple. Shall I Tell yeh the story of what I know or would yeh leave?”

He knew his answer. My nature was as
certain as his, and deep in our hearts, we were kin in a way. Glamour,
Medicine, it didn’t matter what you called the singing shadows that dwelt
within us; it amounted to the same thing. We were both creatures of flickering
imagination and woven dreams.

He knew I couldn’t resist his
offering of a story as well as I did.

“Do what you will, Old Man.” I tried
not to glower. “But hear me. If you try to spin your tale so it twists the
world, if I feel even the slightest bit threatened…” I let it trail off as I
grinned. “I wager I can call the Hunt before you Tell me down. I’ll also wager
that the Hunter can come even here, to your place.”

He didn’t have to know that the Hunt
was the last card in my deck.

He sat, still as stone. “I mean you
no harm, Tommy Maple.”

“Make certain there is none then,
meant or not. Our kind has fought till death for lesser things.”

He leaned back into his chair with a
nod, his fingers steepled. Silence pounded in the lodge, like a slow, lumbering
heartbeat.

Worlds gathered between us. Worlds
and not-worlds.

I must admit, I held my breath.

He somehow crafted silence into form.

The room felt heavier, the Old Man
more solid, more real.

After a long moment he spoke,
carefully and purposefully. “I’ll tell yeh a story about a moonless night, not
long ago nor far away. It’s only a piece of the story true, but Tommy, it’s yer
piece.” His eyes caught mine, held them. “It’s why I need yeh. It’s why yeh
aren’t dead.”

His voice remained quiet, but it
rumbled inside me, like distant thunder. No. I would know if he had cast
glamour upon me. Still—

“Things don’t just all fall apart at
once, yeh must know.” The fire danced, orange on gray eyes. “No, the world’s
done been unravelin’ for a long time, so long I couldn’t right say when it
started. Things weren’t good even before yer kind came here.”

Fascination crept across my skin like
hoarfrost.

He cast his words forth, peals from a
drum. They were spears, tearing at the heart of the world. First, his hands
started to move, then he stood, pacing around me. His story began with the
barest gossamer of thought, then slowly wefted together with whispers that
could never be spoken. Coyote was both an artisan and a man possessed.

I watched as the fire of his Telling
tore through him, gripped him, animated him.

It was a piece of the sun cascading
through his body and whipping forth from his tongue.

“The people had long been quarrelin’.
If only they’d held true, then they might’a stood tall when yer folke came from
across the sea.”

I could see the arguments and
betrayals reflected in the fires and hear the echoes in his words of mourning
and of loss. I knew that pain well.

May we meet on far shores…

He glanced at me with no anger, only
deep wracking loss.

“Since the Oaths between were struck,
an’ our people unstrung their bows, I been wanderin’. Only one question gripped
my heart, Tommy, but it burned. What was happening to the People? Where was the
power their songs once held?”

I saw him in my mind’s eye as if I
were there with him while the wind sang along the lonely mesa, then a secret
creek babbled its song.

He didn’t know what he was hunting…

“Couldn’t say just what I was
huntin’.” He stood now, walking over to the fire. He leaned one arm against the
mantle. “I only knew that things’re wrong. I felt it.” Yellow light streamed
across his face. “Twasn’t just the war, twasn’t just when the White Buffalo
left. The Medicine was withering.” His gaze pounded into me, like a bolt from
the sky.

“I wanted to know why.”

This was so much more than I
expected. His words felt fairly mundane, but the pain behind them tore at my
heart. I marveled, secretly wondering if I
could
call the Hunt if he
turned that terrible power, that weight, against me.

He believed that I could, however,
and perhaps that was enough. Enough for now.           

I sat, drifting, as Coyote told me of
his adventures across Turtle Island. Fascinated, I traveled with him to the
sun-soaked cities of Palenque and Tulu’um and sat in counsel with the ghosts
there. They honoured him, naming him
Coyotl,
and told him stories that
were once dead.

In the end, they knew little.

After, we cast our way north, finding
ourselves within the shadow of lost Tenochtitlan. There, we cast bones with the
shades of heroes almost forgotten and drank from a bounty of blood that had
been sacrificed centuries before. Every drop contained harrowed memories of a
people lost.

I saw their lives swim before me. I
watched as they lived, loved, and lost. I heard their tales of a strange
darkness growing in the wilds.

But no. They whispered of the darkness
but knew not its source.

Coyote debated with emaciated priests
who bore piercings of jade and fragrant wood. Borne on his Telling, we danced
with remnant memories of untouched women who had willingly sacrificed their
bodies and lives. We sparred with the jaguar-men and gave ourselves, body and
manhood, to the wild Ad’uun, women who spoke the future while in the grasp of
pleasure born from passion and blood.

All knew of the shadows on the
horizon, and all lived in fear.

I saw the entire thing painted inside
my mind. I smelled copal resin and tasted plants that gave visions. Through all
of it, I began to see a shadow creeping across his tale, the unifying thread
that his stories held in common. I grasped for it; however, the Old Man’s words
raged. Their river swept me along with no choice other than to be carried
forward.

Soon, he traveled even further north
into the empty lands once held by those he knew as the Lost Brothers. Only the
invading humans had come to use the word Anasazi, and Coyote skipped the name
entirely, even though I could still feel it, floating behind his tale.

“First place I found somethin’ I
could sink my teeth to.” He smiled, lost in the past. “Twas all shadows and
whispers till I came here.” He gave me an empty, wandering look. “But here I
found the storytellers of old. They had seen world upon world and knew secrets
long forgotten.”