Seeds of Autumn

Echoes of the Past

  Seeds of Autumn

  By

  H. B. Lyne

  Published in 2014

  Copyright © H. B. Lyne 2015

  3

  H.B. Lyne asserts the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it to your favourite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Acknowledgements

  Chris, Agena, Arran, Phil and Andy, my friends and partners in creation.

  The rich mythologies of this diverse and wonderful world.

  My family, for their constant support and encouragement.

  Nathalia Suellen for her wonderful cover art.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  About the Author

  Connect with H. B. Lyne

  Preview of Ghosts of Winter

  Prologue

  The creature lumbered down the empty street. Tower blocks made of glass and steel loomed overhead, seeming to almost lean over and obscure the sky. He was vast, his body a mass of bricks, metal and glass. Tendrils of wire and cable flowed from him and rippled in his wake. It was difficult to tell his front from back, as elements of himself shifted around constantly, his body undulating and forever in flux. His innards were dirt, sand and soil, laced with small rivulets of water that directed the shifting plates of solid matter on his surface.

  He was more than just the physical elements of the city though, he was its nature, its history. His existence connected every part of life together, every being that called Caerton home was represented by the King-of-Glass-and-Steel. He was as ancient as the city itself, and had been evolving in line with Caerton ever since the first wooden caer was built upon the hill, overlooking the wide estuary.

  He felt the eyes of the goddess Artemis upon him and turned what passed for his face toward the cloudless, black sky, where the bright moon shone silver and clear. He was tired and he settled himself down right where he stood, just to rest a while in Her beautiful glow.

  He didn't sense the figures moving silently in from all around him. He dozed peacefully, unaware of the deathly silent swirling mass of fear, chaos and evil sweeping gradually lower from the sky, a slight tinge of silver light weaving through it.

  The figures had voices and they whispered a spell, the words chilling the air. As one they clapped their hands just once. And just like that, the King was gone.

  Chapter One

  14th September

  Caerton City Hall was vast. The rooms used for competitions and events were among the grandest in the building, due to the council's intense desire to impress. This room had a high ceiling, was lined with marble pillars and carpeted in rich, red fabric. Golden, spindle-legged chairs lined the room in rows and were filled with spectators.

  The nineteen year old defending Banshay champion prepared herself at the side of the impressive hall, holding her two ornate dha in their fine wooden scabbards. She stroked the varnished black wood, following the golden swirls as they licked their way up to each hilt. She ran her fingers through her short, dark hair, tussling the unruly mop.

  As people gathered in the room, Ariana felt appraising stares and heard whispers of her name. The attention didn't phase her, she was used to it. But she did spot one striking-looking man watching her from across the room. He was very tall, dressed in loose black linen trousers and a black vest that displayed his athletic frame and impressive body art across his broad shoulders. Strange patterns twisted and knotted across lean muscle and tanned skin. His hair was dark and framed his rugged face and dark eyes. He leaned against the wall near the door, his arms crossed loosely over his chest, watching her quite unashamedly, with a small smile that took all severity out of his features.

  'Ariana Yates,' one of the judges called. Ariana's focus snapped back to the competition, and she made her way to the mat. She briefly caught the eye of her mysterious admirer. She cocked her head at him in acknowledgement, and the room began to clap and cheer. She watched him uncross his arms to casually clap along, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips, and she felt butterflies in her stomach that had nothing to do with the forthcoming fight.

  Ariana looked around to greet her first opponent, a young Banshay novice who looked petrified. Ariana smiled, but it wasn’t a warm or reassuring one, it was the smile of a predator surveying her prey.

  A bell rang out and the gathered crowd fell quiet.

  Swords were not drawn, doing so was considered disrespectful to the Burmese tradition, so Ariana simply raised both swords in their scabbards. She paused for a long moment, watching the girl before her mimic the ceremonial movement, the girl's arms were shaking. Ariana grinned again and pounced forward with a cry, striking her opponent’s raised sword with one of her own.

  The competition didn’t last long. Ariana took on the other entrants one by one, never losing a match. As her arm was raised the winner, her head pounded with exhilaration and her body ached with adrenaline. The room swirled around her, and her dha grew heavy in her hands as she walked slowly to the nearby bench where her belongings waited for her.

  Sitting down, she reached into her bag for a bottle of water and drank deeply, hearing every gulp go down her throat and her pulse thumping in her ears.

  ‘Congratulations,’ a soft voice spoke nearby. Ariana’s senses slowly returned to normal and she looked up into the piercing, dark brown eyes staring down at her. The intense-looking man lowered himself to crouch before her and he smiled again. ‘I’m Rhys Blevins.'

  Ariana smiled back at him, her heart pounded hard in her chest and not just because of her victory. Rhys looked down at the trophy hanging from her hand and gave it careful consideration.

  'How many of those do you have?' he asked, his face serious.

  'Well, this is my third consecutive win at this tournament, and I have two other tournaments under my belt. So, five.' She was exceptionally proud of her accomplishments and was more than happy to tell people about them.

  Rhys nodded, looking impressed.

  'You were pretty phenomenal. It's rare that I see someone with such an impressive spirit on the mat.' He had the trace of an accent that suggested he wasn't born and raised in Caerton.

  'Thanks.'

  Her eyes roamed over his tattoos and she felt an unmistakable heat inside herself. She cleared her throat and pointed at a swirl that darted out from under the neck of his black vest towards his ear.

  'How many of those do you have?' she asked, deliberately echoing his question to her.

  Rhys ran his eyes across his right shoulder and his smile broadened.

  'Last count was sixteen. But only nine if you count the whole of this as one,' he answered, tapping the back of his neck where tongue-like shapes licked out on either side of his spine and disappeared under his vest. 'I got it done in stages, but it was always intended to be one complete work.'

  Ariana nodded, looking over the tattoos with admiration.

  'Are you competing?' Ariana asked him.

  'No, I teach and some of my students were competing today.'

  'Oh wow,' she replied. 'I teach too. At the Self-Defence Dojo in St. Mark's.'

  'Good to know,' Rhys said with a smile and nod.

  The room had almost emptied, and there was a slightly awkward pause.

  'Okay. Well, it was really good to meet you,' Ariana said briskly, picking up her
things.

  'You too. Bye Ariana,' he said softly, then turned and walked casually from the room, his hands in his pockets.

  Ariana watched him go, admiring the rear view. There was something so captivating about him, it made her uncomfortable and fascinated at the same time. The way he'd looked at her was both flattering and unnerving, and as Ariana left the hall she realised why. It was like she was a sumptuous meal and he hadn't eaten in a week. All the more unnerving was that she liked him looking at her that way.

  After the victorious tournament Ariana left the venue alone, and stepped out into the baking September heat. It was just after 5pm on a Friday, so the streets were full of people leaving work or going away for the weekend. She crossed the plaza that connected the city hall, a museum and several large offices, past a large, ornate fountain in the centre where some young teenagers had stripped off most of their school uniforms and were splashing each other amid loud laughter and playful screams.

  She took a turn down a bustling path between two tall buildings, and out into a major thoroughfare that was jammed with traffic and people. It was unbearably hot with the combined effect of the sun beating down on the concrete, all these people and the practically stationary cars chugging out hot smoke. As she walked, Ariana began to feel sick. Her stomach turned in knots and she grew hot and sweaty.

  She walked slowly up the steep hill to the bus station and joined a queue for her bus out to St. Mark's; an area with a questionable reputation in the north of the city, the place she called home.

  From her seat on the bus she stared up into the evening sky, which was still bright blue and hazy from the heat. It would be a clear night, but the people of Caerton would see few stars through the light-polluted haze, and the tiny slither of a crescent moon would be mostly obscured by that orange glow tonight. Ariana didn't usually know what phase the moon was in at any given moment, and as she thought about it she felt a wave of nausea roll over her suddenly. She clamped a hand over her mouth.

  She was relieved to step off the bus and into the warm evening air. She took deep breaths as she walked slowly home, trying to tune out the sound of barking dogs and the clatter of bins in a dirty alley nearby.

  She reached her home, a small flat on the middle floor of a converted three storey terraced house. She climbed the stairs wearily, unlocked her door and slipped inside. She kicked off her shoes, dropped her bag with her dha in it gently to the floor, and gave a satisfied sigh as she placed her new trophy carefully on the shelf in the living room with the others, then got ready for bed in an exhausted blur.

  The world was wrong. It passed much too quickly and she was too close to the ground. Everything smelled strange, everything smelled. She shouldn't be able to smell the rubbish down the alley she was running past, or the fear in the young woman hiding there from the pack of wild animals running by.

  Wait. The what? There were dogs either side of her, to her left ran a big dog with thick, long fur. To her right was a fox. Ariana shook her head and caught sight of her paws pounding on the black tarmac.

  Before the panic could completely drown her, there was something else, she looked up and saw the moon in the sky above, glinting down between quickly-moving clouds. It was a tiny slip of a crescent moon, barely lighting the sky and somehow she knew that it was waning, within a day or two it would be a dark, new moon.

  Her heart pounded in her chest and she skidded to a halt. Why was she running? Whose dogs were these?

  Ariana sat bolt upright in bed, her head and heart were hammering, and her light pyjamas clung to her sweating skin. It was dark, the room glowing faintly orange from the street light outside.

  She tried to steady her breathing and focus on what was real.

  Her eyes drifted to the window and through a gap in the curtains she caught sight of the moon above the building opposite, just visible to keen eyes through the orange glow in the sky. It looked exactly like it had in her dream and she shivered. The moon normally made her feel warm and loved, but she was unnerved by the dream. She forced it out of her mind, and tried to get back to sleep. She tossed and turned until the sky started to grow lighter. She finally drifted into a deep and fitful sleep, but she remembered no more alarming dreams.

  The flu that threatened her didn't materialise, and the next morning Ariana awoke feeling unsettled by the dream, but not ill. Within a week the dream had drifted from her memory, and life went on as normal through the balmy September.

  16th October

  It was just another Tuesday in the middle of October. The Indian summer was over and the streets of Caerton were constantly wet. Ariana had woken up feeling sluggish, she was over worked. Her boss, Ron had wanted to roll out her popular classes to a full after-school programme and she agreed. She hoped she wasn't getting ill and managed to force the fatigue aside to get through the day.

  St. Mark's Self Defence Dojo was a small studio above an abandoned electronics shop on the opposite side of St. Mark's to Ariana's flat. It had once been painted banana yellow, but the paint was faded and peeling now, revealing dull brown bricks beneath. The shop window was dusty, the sign over it was faded and worn and some of the large, plastic letters were cracked. Inside a few ancient items could be seen gathering dust on broken shelves, and paper notices pinned in the window were too faded to read. The first floor had windows all along one side overlooking the street. The dojo was accessible through a narrow door next to the shop window, with a slightly grubby swinging sign above it; the only indicator of the studio within.

  Ariana went into her early evening Judo class feeling utterly exhausted, and didn't relish the prospect of teaching a group of rowdy teenagers how to throw each other to the floor.

  Her students filed into the studio as she took great gulps from her water bottle. For once everyone assembled and got ready to start without her having to nag them, and she faced her class with a small glimmer of hope that it would be easier than she feared.

  As Ariana warmed up with her students and began issuing instructions her stomach seemed to settle a little, as if adrenaline itself were a soothing elixir.

  The feeling didn't last, however, and once the class was over and her students filed back out of the studio, Ariana felt a wave of dizziness overpower her and she slumped to the floor.

  She finally knew she would have to move when she heard Ron locking his office door, and reluctantly she stood up and gathered her things.

  She slipped out quietly and walked home slowly through the light rain.

  17th October

  When Ariana awoke the next morning she felt so tired she didn't think she could move. She desperately wanted more sleep but the morning was bright and she couldn't hide from the day. She felt worse than she had the previous morning, and when she tried to stand up a wave of dizziness and nausea hit her so hard that she fell back onto the bed.

  She lay there for a long time, just gearing herself up to trying to move again. When she did everything ached, but she managed to sit up and reach for her phone. She found the number for work and hit “call”.

  'Hi Ron. It's Ariana. I'm sorry about this but I'm really not feeling well at all. I think I have the flu coming on or something. Can you get my classes covered or cancelled today please?' She rubbed her head with her free hand and waited for his reply.

  'That's fine Ariana, love. I'm sorry to hear you're not well. Not like you, is it?'

  'No, it's not,' she sighed. 'I'll let you know how I'm doing tomorrow, hopefully it is just a 24 hour bug or something.'

  'Of course. You take however long you need and keep me posted. Hopefully we'll see you back soon. Take care.' Ron spoke slowly, trying to lower his volume for her benefit, she assumed, and she couldn't help smiling weakly. She thanked him and hung up the phone, gingerly lying back down in bed. She slowly drifted back into an uneasy sleep.

  When Ariana woke up again it was dark. With bleary eyes she grabbed her phone and checked the time. 11.15pm. She had slept all day and felt much more well rest
ed, but hungry. Really hungry.

  She moved carefully from the bed and stood still for a long moment. She swayed slightly, but once she found her balance she headed slowly for her little kitchenette and made herself a sandwich.

  She sat down to eat it and her eyes drifted to the window. It was a cloudless night, and she thought of the moon; there was no moon tonight and it was deeply unsettling that she knew that. The sky outside was a dull orange from the light pollution of the city, but the moon would still be visible the fuller it got, and it did usually cut through some of the haze to cast its pure white light on Caerton. But not tonight.

  As strange as Ariana found her awareness of the moon's phases, she felt at peace with herself. Thinking about the moon somehow filled her with a deep sense of warmth and contentment that she had never felt before.

  When she finished her sandwich she had a shower and got dressed. She knew her body clock was all messed up but there wasn't much she could do about it, so she decided to catch up on some reading, with the intention of trying to get some sleep in a few hours.

  As she sat on her sofa reading she realised how quiet the street outside was. Normally there would be sounds of people returning home from the nearby pub, or her neighbours opposite fighting, or cars going by. But there was nothing.

  She moved to her window and looked out, there was no movement, no sound but for the more distant noises of traffic on the main road. Then something caught her eye up the street and she pressed her face to the cold glass to get a better look.

  Two dogs were jogging across the road, both kind of wiry looking, with shaggy fur in need of a good brush down. They both looked tough, like they could take good care of themselves. She watched them mount the pavement on the opposite side of the street and continue in her direction. As they drew closer she saw that they weren't dogs at all, one was a fox and the other looked like a wolf.

  Her breath caught in her throat and a half-remembered dream suddenly flashed into her mind.

  A howl ripped through the air. As one, Ariana and the two canines in the street stopped suddenly and looked up over the houses opposite. Ariana often heard dogs howling around St. Mark's and didn't usually think anything of it, but there was something so urgent in this sound, cutting through the silence of the night.

  The two odd canines sprinted past Ariana's house, darted up an alley and out of sight. Ariana's heart was pounding and a shiver went up her spine. It was almost like she could understand the cry for help in that howl, and she was drawn towards it, she wanted to run out into the street, to find the dog and help, somehow.

  She paced in front of the window like a caged animal, looking out every so often, craning to see over the houses opposite, though there was no way she could from her first floor window. She felt frustrated and sick with worry.

  Movement down in the street caught her eye, in the alley she thought she saw one of the dogs, just hidden in shadow. It was looking up at her window, its yellow eyes right on her. She watched but the longer she stared at the spot the darker it seemed to be, and soon she began to doubt that she had seen anything.

  Looking at her phone, Ariana saw that it was nearly 1am.

  At that moment all of the street lights went out. Blackness fell like a cloak, and her pulse started racing. Something was very wrong.

  Another howl rent the air. Ariana stifled a small, frightened cry by pressing her hand to her lips. This howl wasn't a plea for help, it was a battle cry.

  She peered out of her window, straining her eyes in the darkness to see if she could make out anything.

  There was a strange shape moving quickly down the middle of the street, an inky black against the dull grey. Ariana squinted to try and see it more clearly, but it was too dark. It seemed like the shape didn't want to be seen, though how she sensed that she didn't know.

  Her eyes were drawn suddenly to quicker movement behind it, two dogs came running down the street and her eyes went back to the alley opposite, searching in the dark for those amber eyes.

  A huge beast bounded out of the alley, running like a gorilla on its hind legs but with powerful forearms pounding the ground too. It was difficult to make out more detail in the dark, but she knew that it was not a gorilla, it was a monster, and the sounds that ensued as the beast and the wild dogs flanked the inky black shape were terrifying.

  Ariana fought the urge to scream and struggled to breathe. Her eyes were fixed to the action in the street, no matter how much she wanted to tear them away. The dogs raced around the blackness and seemed to be ripping into it with their teeth. The beast tore at it with its huge claws.

  She watched in horror as the two dogs changed shape before her eyes, their bodies stretching and twisting into two more huge beasts just like the first. The action was hard to make out under the cover of night, but the sounds were terrifying. Shrieks issued from the black shadow, ripping and tearing sounds that sent chills right through her as Ariana stood, transfixed. Two of the savage beasts broke away and drove the blackness down the street, disappearing into the dark night.

  One figure remained outside her window, the beast shrank and stood on four paws in the middle of the road, just in time for the street lights to flicker back to life.

  The fox's piercing amber eyes turned upwards to look directly at her and Ariana leaped back from the window, clamping her hand hard over her mouth to swallow the terrified cry.

  18th October

  The next morning Ariana woke up confused. Her memories seemed unclear and she couldn't figure out what she had dreamed and what had been real, so she made a conscious effort to force the stranger memories firmly into the “dream” category.

  She still felt ill and took a second day off work. She slept more and slowly her appetite returned to normal. By the evening she felt more like herself and decided to return to work the next day.

  As the sun set over the city Ariana felt uneasy. Every time she looked towards the window she felt fear creeping up her spine, though as time passed, it became harder to understand why.