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

From the Book

The spear
burst through the back of the dead man’s head. The lightning born of Telling
and ancient storms burned its way through the shadowed monster. Its keening
howl rose into a rending scream as I bore down on the spear, twisting through
the back of the dead man’s skull.

Then,
silence.

The twisted
creature faded from the shadows behind my mind. The dead man’s eyes twitched. I
stepped back with a start, my heart pounding.

But I’d
thought...

He had been
dead.

I tried to
wrest the spear free. On the third yank, the spear pulled loose, and the man’s
head sank back.

Spiders born
of nightmare erupted from the fatal wound as well as the corpse’s mouth, nose,
and eyes. Tiny, twisted things, malformed and broken, swarmed over him. They
had made the eyes twitch. The things gnawed their way through his flesh,
pouring out onto the ground.

I stood,
horrified, transfixed.

This thing
had not been a fetch; it was nothing born of my kind.

This story
regards the adventures and trials of
Tommy Maple, a young man who is far more than he seems. It is a story of a
shadowed world, a world where the glamours and hidden mysteries of the
World-That-Was are fading away.

Tommy and his
kin live in the Untold Age. 

This is the
first of its series, itself one of many strands in
The Paean of Sundered
Dreams
, a multi-genre, universe-spanning array of tales with Lovecraftian themes.
Some of the strands of this work are technothrillers, some dark fantasy, and
some Lovecraftian steampunk, but they share the same horrific universe. They
weft and weave together, each 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.

The Herald of Autumn

Book One in the Echoes of the Untold Age

JM Guillen

Irrational Worlds

Maine,
United States

Earth

I have one thousand beginnings.

No. That’s not right.

Nigh a thousand thousand, each
stranger than the last.

This one began with me naked on my
back against the cool earth.

The last traces of a dying summer
floated on the wind in wisps of summer grass, of laughter, and of dappled
shade. It was the perfume of warm twilight and nights sleeping under the
singing moon.

Soon the turbulence of my awakening
would pass. For now the world remained blurry. Still tired, I felt as if I
should not be awake yet. I tried pushing myself up but felt weak.

The sun had not yet set.

That was important for some reason,
but I couldn’t focus. My mind was shadows, was fog. I blearily peered around
the clearing, trying to figure out why I felt so strangely. Something was
wrong, like a note sung out of tune.

Then, he spoke.
“Tommy Maple.”

My heart pounded in my chest. I
hadn’t seen him; I hadn’t even known he was there. My Name burned like a star
in my mind. His speaking it had rung a great bell at the center of all things.
It was thunder under my skin. Panic tolled behind my mind.

“Well. Here yeh are.” The voice
resounded, ringing from everywhere at once. His voice, like the sun’s hammer,
was brilliant and burning and stark. It sounded smug, laughing the laughter of
someone who has already won, who knows the answers to questions I had never
even thought of.

Who? How did he—? I tried to look,
but heavy as stone, my head hardly lolled in the grass. My red hair hung in my
face, dazzling in the slanted light.

The voice continued. “The thing to
remember is, I found yeh. Yer lying there, weak as a puppy. I found yeh, and I
have yeh here.” He laughed again.

I finally managed to face him but
could only make out a blurred shape. I tried to speak but only croaked through
the cotton and sand that seemed to fill my mouth.

“So, later, when yeh’re playin’ the
part of a young buck, all wild and free, rearin’ to hunt what ails the world,
yeh just remember. Remember that I found yeh, just like this. I did it once,
and I can do it again.” He leaned in.

I could see him now, barely make out
his stone-weathered face in the light of the dying sun.

Oh. Oh no.

Terror tore through me as soon as I
realized who he was. Frantically, I reached around myself. Where was my bow? I
felt only bare earth and tufts of grass.

No. I couldn’t risk drawing my bow.
Not yet. I took a breath and focused upon the Old Man’s face.

He wore his long, gray hair pulled
back in a simple queue. It matched the salt-and pepper of his beard. His face
looked as if it had seen the years dance by hundreds of times. He was strong
and powerfully built.

His eyes gleamed and flickered,
utterly mad.

How had he gained my Name?

He held me like a hawk held a rabbit.
My heart sought to burst from my chest. My fingers grasped at the ground again,
seeking my bow though I didn’t know if I could lay him low, even if it did come
to my hand.

Danger be damned. I would not lay
here, helpless and afraid.

“We won’t be havin’ none of that.”
His boot found my hand, and I gasped. He didn’t crush or grind, but held firm.

Almost instinctively, I began to
gather glamour about myself. It was all I had that might hold his strength at
bay. It was the glory of autumn. Changing leaves, frost on pumpkins, apples
ripe in an orange afternoon, the full moon on a chill night, and the distant
howling of wolves: they all answered me.

I felt his grip on my Name shudder
the smallest bit. For the briefest of moments, my breath came with September
frost.

He grinned, gritting his teeth. “Not
jes’ now, O Herald.” He winked. “The settin’ sun still shines. Summer hangs on
yet.”

I tried pulling away, but he stepped
from my hand to my naked chest, a leather boot against my fair skin.

“Yeh got stones, Tommy. That’s fer
sure. I was like yeh once, young, pulling on my traces.” He grinned at me.
“Care to hear about it?” No one could Tell like the Old Man. A story from him
could be the end of me. His words could unravel the world.

I shook my head, weak as a puppy.
“No.” My voice was a rasping whisper.

He laughed. “I’ll wager not. Still,
looks like I’m the one who’s dealin’. I reckon yeh’ll have my story whether yeh
want it or not.”

I struggled to move, but he leaned
onto the boot, holding me fast.

Power, unseen yet more real than the
dying sun or the ground beneath me, gathered around us, whispering lost songs.
When he began, his voice edged with night, the power in his words beat against
me, merciless and sharp.

“
Once, the people lived in
darkness and cold, deep in the shadow of the first mountain. All knew that the
creator had a great fire far away in the sky. The creator kept the fire because
he believed that if man held it, he would learn all the hidden secrets of the
world.
”

The same power slumbered within me
but sleepily turned its head toward the story in fascination at his ancient,
fierce glam. His voice crashed like thunder through an endless sea. My secret
heart opened to his words, and my glamour fed into his strength like the wind
feeds a fire.

Terror stabbed like a spear in my
chest.

He was stealing my strength, taking
it and weaving it into a Telling that, no doubt, would only make him stronger.
His words gouged as water shaping stone. He could kill me. He could steal every
bit of glamour I possessed.

I had to stop him, yet for all my
effort, I merely writhed on the ground.

The power surrounding us eagerly gave
in to his story, taking the form that the old trickster gave it.

“
So man called upon all the
animals, asking for help to get some of the creator’s fire. Deer said he could
grasp heaven’s flame as he was swift. He ran as fast as he could yet never got
to the sky.
” He winked at me. “
Blue-jay said he could fly and pull down
wisps of the sun. However, when it blackened an edge of his beautiful plumage,
he turned back
.”

His words shifted like shadows in
mist. More than a mere tale of his strength, after gaining the power of his
thousand-thousand Tellings, this story was palpable.

It had been told until it was true.

They told it around a fire; they told
it in winter; they told it in the silence of night.

Yet even as I watched him shape the
world, I could do nothing.

“
Finally, I went to the people. I
knew I could trick my way into the heavens to steal a piece of the sun.
” He
grinned fiercely. “
I shadowed and stalked my way there, wending my way
through the seven gates. I passed every guardian, beguiled my way through every
door. Eventually, I stood at the creator’s hearth, where the sun burned
.”

I took a deep breath, turning my head
from him. On the horizon, the sun had not set.

It did not matter.

I had to steal his story. If I
didn’t, he would draw every shine of glamour I had and leave me weak and
mewling, completely in his power. I did not fight against his story—could not
deny or disbelieve. No. The Old Man was too strong for that. Instead, I threw
my glamour into his story, pushing it forward. I affirmed what he said, lent
truth to the shadows he wove.

I drew everything I was:

Ten-thousand manic
Hunts through the sleeping wood.

Cutting nights lit
only by howling wolves.

Wind that warns, wind
that beckons.

Frost biting life
away, bit by bit.

Wind ridden by ghosts.

Autumn’s Troth.

Summer must always give way.

His grip on my Name slackened as
frost returned to my breath.

“YES!”
I growled as fierce as I could make
it.

He glared at me, those ancient, mad
eyes wide with surprise.

Now, to make his story mine.

“
You slipped to the hearth of the
creator—cunning thief that you are—and you stole your way to the brilliant,
blazing sun.
” My words drew the glamour from his Telling, like the shifting
of tides.

He reeled a bit as I drew his
Telling. “
Yes. Yes, I...
” He shook his head, slightly dazed.

Danger laced my Tellings too, for I
was no mere sprite of the maple tree. I was the Herald of Autumn.

The power, drifting around us like a
rabid ocean, shuddered. Now that fascination slowly entrapped him.

I had just the barest thread of it,
just the smallest bit. Slowly, I tried weaving my own glamour from his words.

“
But then, you bit it off. Just
the smallest piece.
” I grinned at him. “
When you did, oh, how it burned!
”
I saw it clearly in my mind. The fire, brighter than summer’s shine, burned in
the Old Man’s mouth, and somewhere in the distance, I heard him scream with the
pain of it.

I pushed up to a sitting position.

“
You screamed and wailed as it
burned away part of your tongue! At the creator’s hearth you found no water, no
relief. The sun’s fire scorched and ate and burned. Like old, bent wood, you
were little more than tinder, fodder to feed the flames.
”

I saw in my mind not his cunning nor
his cleverness, but his folly. Asunder in his foolishness for seeking the fire
of the sun, this was the story that mattered. I told of his smallness, his
weakness.

He shook his head, faintly, denying
my story. He had not expected I could perform a Telling of my own.

My strength beat against his. Perhaps
it was possible. Maybe I could…

Yet, maybe I couldn’t. The sun still
shone on the horizon. Summer’s green grass wafted in the wind…

No. Focus. I mustered my strength,
steeling my voice.

“
That’s where you get your broken
tongue, Old Man! You dared to hold the sun’s fire in your mouth! It bent you,
twisted you. That’s why you ever speak in riddles and lies! That is why you
cannot be trusted. The sun’s fire burned you and left a mad, decrepit monster!
”
My words landed like hammers, pounding the power that sang around us into him.
I pushed myself to a crouch, gazing squarely into him. My eyes sang with the
power of the Hunt.

I glanced around for my bow.

He shuddered as the strength he had
summoned thundered into him, wrenching its way into the filaments of sanity he
had left. The power of our sparring tore through him.

The story changed what he was.
Reality bent, reflected, changed.

No, it was what he always had been.

Then his scowl pierced me. The
madness, once a shadow in his eyes, raged as a storm. Each breath blustered
with seething insanity from somewhere deep within him.

The power buckled and boiled around
us.

He grasped the thunderstorm, wielding
it with little more than his triumphant grin.

I had believed, for just a shining
moment, that I had him unawares. That perhaps, just perhaps, I could sever the
last shard of his mind. I had hoped that I would walk away from this alive.

I was a fool.

Then, Old Man Coyote, shaman of the
first people, spoke.

“
Yes. I held the fire of the Great
Spirit
.” He laughed now, a twisted, mocking thing. With that tug on the
glamour that seethed and boiled between us, my weavings fell to broken threads.

He was magnificent.

“
Its power drove me mad. By its
light, I saw things none were meant to know.
” His eyes met mine. “
I saw
future and past, laughing and dancing in every instant. I saw infinite
histories, written in blood and pain.
”

I remembered who he was. I remembered
everything he had done. How could I have possibly hoped to wield glamour
against him? He, who had stood against the Valkyries when they came to this
virgin land? My struggle against his Telling was futile.

“
Its wrath changed everything I
was, Tommy. It was the secret heat at the center of all things; it was the
passion between man and woman; it was the first Medicine
.” He almost
whispered as his eyes drifted far away.
“
Mine. Mine.
”

The Telling slipped away from me,
sand through my fingers. Too soon. My strength had failed me. I tried pushing
myself to my feet, but of course I couldn’t. I stumbled backward.

The sun refused to set. Its light
wrapped like shackles in my mind.

He stared into me, eyes empty. When
he spoke again, it was a whisper, but the whole world listened.