Table of Contents
Title Page
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Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Epilogue
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Twilight of the Gods Sneak Peak
What Now?
About Travis
Copyright © February, 2016 by Travis Simmons
The Harbingers of Light Book Six:
The Call of Winter
Published by: Wyrding Ways Press
Cover Design by: Najla Qamber Designs
Formatting by: Wyrding Ways Press
Editing by: Wyrding Ways Press
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or in any means—by electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise—without prior written permission.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are either are the product of the authors imagination or are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual places, events, and people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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One Week Prior
Skeletal branches grabbed Amaranth as she stumbled through the Fey Forest. Fear pumped through her heart and the gray shift she wore tore in the cruel grips of the branches. With every beat of her heart, Amaranth could feel the plague consume more of her arm.
She afforded a glance at her right hand where the rat-like man had touched her moments before. But he’s a harbinger! Her mind raced. He shouldn’t have done that. Why would he have marked her? Harbingers didn’t convert people, they taught them. If they did convert them, why did he do it against her will?
A branch tugged at her blond hair, and Amaranth cried out. The force of her movement snapped the branch which clung to her curls, mingling with the leaves and bark that had already snagged in her hair while she ran. She didn’t know where she was going. The forest was dark and she never ventured this far into the Fey Forest—to do so was madness. Darklings were rampant here. They ruled the forest, everyone knew that. Even now she could feel their malaise slipping over her skin; their darkling promises whispering to her mind.
I have to get back to Haven! Amaranth told herself. She could see the dazzling lights of New Landanten not far to her left, winking in the darkness like a multitude of stars. She turned until she was facing the city, and ran. With safety so close, her flight was renewed, her waning energy forgotten. Through the woods, her feet drummed bare and numb against the frozen, snow covered ground. If only she could make it to New Landanten, then she’d be safe. She would go to Rowan, and tell her everything that had happened in the woods. She’d tell her how she went to bed in her home and woke in the forest with the man standing over her, the plague spreading across her palm.
Should I tell her it’s him? She wondered. Maybe that wasn’t the best course of action. Rowan wouldn’t believe her. No one would. She would leave it as a stranger having infected her. That’s what she would tell people. They wouldn’t believe that he had been the one who’d infected her.
Amaranth cried out when a branch scraped across her face. The dried bark flaked away, the rough branch leaving a trail of blood across her cheek. More branches caught her, and twined within the tears of her gray shift. She stumbled and spun. The ground seemed to shift beneath her, and Amaranth lost her footing, falling to the snowy depths of the forest floor. The side of her head glanced off a rock, and her vision swam.
Overhead, shadows spun and whorled like a great black vortex waiting to converge on her. A cloud of malaise coming to claim her as its own. The darkling voices were stronger when she looked at the cloud. They slipped over her mind like velvet along her breasts. She shivered, wanting nothing more than to give into the power of the plague spreading up her right arm, twining around her elbow.
Come to us, the voices whispered. In their cadence, she felt warmth; she felt care. Amaranth would never want for anything ever again. The shadow would provide, and she would be cared for.
A dog barked in the distance, and Amaranth broke her gaze from the shadow. She was so close to New Landanten, just a little farther. She struggled to her feet, staggering when her head swooned from the blow it had sustained. Amaranth shivered. But she was just at the line of trees. Not much farther, maybe a hundred yards, and she would be within the warmth of New Landanten. She’d be in safety.
“Ah, that’s where you went,” a soft voice said behind her.
Amaranth paused in the motion of crossing from the Fey Forest into the unbroken snow that separated her from the elven city.
It was a woman. Amaranth had been out here with a man, but this woman sounded like she knew her and had been looking for her. She wanted so much to trust the musical voice, but there was a mockery of kindness in it. The shadows answered to the voice, and Amaranth knew this wasn’t anyone she could trust.
Don’t show your fear, she told herself, closing her eyes to harden her resolve. She forced her eyes open and turned to see a dazzling woman behind her.
The woman had once been a dark elf. Her hair, once dark, was now frosted and silvery. Her skin, once gray, was webbed with frost and shimmered in the moonlight. Her eyes were dead and clouded with ice, her lips blue with an inviting half smile. The oddest thing about this elf was the horns that rested on her head.
Amaranth let her eyes linger on the beauty of the horns, like great wooden branches that stretched up from her head. The horns were hung with icicles.
The woman shifted the moon scepter in her hand, and Amaranth’s eyes were drawn down to the weapon. It was barely lit. Amaranth knew the mere shimmer in the moon scepter meant that it needed to be recharged. There was barely enough wyrd left in the weapon to cast a feeble light upon the elf.
“Oh, this?” the woman gestured to the scepter. “A gift from a friend. Not mine of course, that was stolen. Anyway, it’s you I’m worried about. I was worried that you would get away from me before you’d heard my offer,” the woman said.
“And what’s that?” Amaranth congratulated herself that her voice didn’t shiver when she spoke.
In a blur that Amaranth could barely make out, the elf struck. The scepter bit through her mid-section. Breath rushed from her lips at the force of the attack. Amaranth’s hands clasped the weapon as blood thrummed around the staff.
The weapon, which had been dark moments before, vibrated in her grips. Light flowed from her wound, shining silver along the length of the glass-like scepter. The end of the scepter, once just a spiraled ball, began to turn. As it turned, the ball opened like a flower. Nestled inside was a small crystal.
Amaranth fell to her knees, the scepter drawing from her all the strength that had remained within her; all of the flight that would have carried her to safety.
Footsteps sounded in the snow behind her.
“Ah, you found her,” a male said. He stepped from the shadows. A tall, thin man with brown hair and an angular face.
Amaranth opened her mouth to call out his name to the night, as if to tell the one thing that she could, to warn Haven with her dying breath that harbingers of darkness were among them, but she hadn’t the strength.
She crumpled to the side and
as the last bit of her life was siphoned from her body, the opened scepter flared with silver life.
The Ever After spread out like a cloud in all directions. The walls of the Kingdom, while hard, had a dreamy, blurred cast to them making them appear to be made of the very clouds on which the Kingdom stood, high above Eget Row. Looming in the void above the Kingdom, a white light shone, the light of the Waking Eye; yet the Waking Eye, Hafaress, wasn’t anywhere to be found in the Ever After.
Vilda leaned against the railing of her balcony, her eyes traveling the twisting turns and curves of the Rainbow Bridge that meandered through the void. She searched for her light, her brother, the Waking Eye in god-form, Hafaress.
“Where’ve they gone?” she wondered. She’d searched long and hard, all along Eget Row and the nine realms that it attached. No matter where she looked, there was no sign of Hafaress or the All Father.
“Who, Goddess?” the ballicrie asked. Vilda looked to the winged warrior, hovering in the cosmos above her. She was blond, her body curved like an hourglass. Her lips were full and pink, welcoming. Her eyes like sapphires reflecting the light of the Waking Eye above. Beneath her silver chest plate, she wore long white robes that shifted in the breeze her soft, white wings created. In her hand, she held a long sword that shown with the power of life and death. It shined blue in the white light of the Ever After. “Where did who go?”
“All of them,” Vilda said, motioning with a milky white hand out to the heavenly expanse beneath her. “The honorable dead. The All Father. Hafaress. Where did they go?”
For days Vilda had dined alone, perched on her throne, the light of the Sleeping Eye crowning her seat, resplendent in its silvery light. Beside her, Hafaress’ golden throne sat empty; the light of the golden disk that floated above it was cold, muted in a way that it was when Hafaress wasn’t sitting in his spot at the head of the hall. Before her the rows of tables, which normally hosted the honorable dead, were also empty. No food rested in the white dishes. No mead filled the stone mugs. No laughter and stories of bravery rose into the air.
“I think you know that, Goddess.”
Vilda could only nod at the angel of death. They were all gone, and the darklings were on the rise. For ages now, it seemed, the darkling tide was growing stronger and stronger. No one wanted to speak the reason for it, but they all knew why the darklings were gaining in power. The All Father had tried to make a being of pure good, one that could never be touched by the power of the darkling.
The All Father had created Boran, the god of peace, and in doing so he had gone against the law of the Void. No power, light or dark, should grow stronger than the other. In making the God of Peace, one that couldn’t be swayed by the shadow, the All Father had granted the darkling tide the right to spread and corrupt at will.
He’d tried to correct what he’d done. No one knew that, but Vilda did. Vilda could see many things that others couldn’t. In a waking dream, she’d seen the All Father ask Surt for the spear. She’d seen the All Father use the second God Slayer to destroy his most prized creation, Boran, God of Peace, whom all in the Ever After loved. But the damage had already been done. He couldn’t undo the wounds he’d caused to spread through the void. He couldn’t put the darkling tide behind the barrier that held it in check.
With a resolute nod, Vilda pushed away from the parapet and turned back to her room. Her bare feet kicked up swirls in the fog as she made her way into her chambers. She paid no mind to the cushions on the floor, where she’d passed many hours answering the prayers of her followers. Nor did she pay attention to the mirror that hung on her wall, black and silent. The door she used to travel from realm to realm, when she so chose; however, unlike her father and brother, Vilda didn’t deign to traverse the human realms. She was content knowing where she stood among the cosmic hierarchy.
The ballicrie trailed behind her, the blue light of her sword illuminating the shadowed walkway of the halls and the stairs. The pair made their way down through twisting corridors and through grand, empty halls until they came to rest in the great dining hall.
Vilda looked across the empty hall, filled only with tables and the mist that clung to the floor. She sat on the edge of her throne and when she did, the silver disk that hung behind her throne shimmered to life, adding its silvery light to that of the blue sword. Beside her, the disk of the sun was weak, choked out by her moon. It hadn’t always been that way. When Hafaress sat atop his throne, the sun shone bright. But he was gone, and so was the All Father.
“And I must follow,” Vilda said. “To dwell among the . . . humans.”
Trees and ferns stood around the marble atrium in such multitudes as to give the indoor room the look and feel of wilderness before the three years of winter had fallen upon Agaranth. The elves, both light and dark, crowded around the walls whispering amongst themselves. They rarely mingled, the dark elves and the light elves, but on occasion they could be seen in small clusters talking. It was rare to see them in such a large gathering, all awaiting some announcement from their chieftains.
High above the gathered elves, the glowing of their sun and moon scepters, and the shifting greenery, the stained-glass roof of the atrium stood wide open to the night sky. A multitude of stars winked down at them, as if bearing witness to what was about to transpire in the gathering hall.
A wizened elf strode to the front of the gray dais, which rested at the back of the atrium. While he was old, one could barely tell by the look of his face of the gentle spill of gray hair down his back. But when they looked into his eyes, every elf assembled could tell that he’d lived longer than most of the elves who’d gone before him.
Behind him, a pristine elf folded her hands. Her robe was dark, her black hair piled atop her head, and her silver skin nearly gray in the darkness of the atrium.
It was believed by many elves for some time now that Garth was going to conscribe himself to the light. The final farewell of elves, when they reached a certain wisdom, the power that created them and paved their path through life would flare up out of their scepter, and they would merge with it becoming part of the power which sustained all of the cosmos.
“Tonight I leave you,” he said to the assembled elves before him. A stir went through the gathering. Countless eyes strayed to and fro, from neighbor to neighbor and a wave of murmuring greeted his words. This was unheard of. No words were ever spoke. They were just as surprised that Garth was finally going into the light as they were that he didn’t just dissolve into the light of his broken scepter. The time just before dissolving into the light of their scepter was typically given to contemplation and reflection, but Garth was an old elf and had had many long years to contemplate and reflect.
Garth glanced up through the opened atrium ceiling to the full moon high above. Some thought light elves came from the sun while dark elves came from the moon, hence why they had sun scepters and moon scepters, but Garth had always felt like he was a child of the moon. It was to that celestial body he felt he would return in mere moments when he went into the light.
“I know there has been a lot of speculation about how things will be run once I leave,” Garth began, taking long moments to break his gaze from the moon. “But I must tell you all before I go that Charissa has my complete trust.” The dark elf standing behind him nodded her head, a smile ghosting across her otherwise emotionless face.
Garth let his eyes wander to each of the light elves gathered below. He took a moment to stare into each of their gaze, hoping that he could impress upon them that he was sincere, and that Charissa and he were friends. She wasn’t convincing him to go into the light as some speculated; she was only doing what she felt was best for him.
“I know it will be some time before another elf is chosen to fill my spot, but Charissa has assured me that she will make no motion, pass no law until another light elf is chosen.
“And now I’ve spoken more than any other elf who’s gone into the light before me. Know that my time here has been happy,
and my time in the light will be my reward.”
Garth lifted the sun scepter high above his head. The light of the moon gleamed along the length of shimmering staff. He brought it crashing down on the dais, and the crystalline scepter shattered on the stage. Little could break a scepter save the will of its bearer when they chose to enter the light. Now Garth was sure, and now the scepter scattered into a million dust-like shards.
The shards of the scepter hung in the air, as if their falling to the marble dais had been paused. The golden light that had once been contained within the scepter pulsed out of its confines in a small thunder of power, scattering the glittering shards of the scepter around Garth’s feet. The heavy light, almost liquid in its movement, lapped around Garth’s bare toes, the folds of his gray robe stirred in a wyrded breeze brought on by the power of the scepter.
Garth closed his eyes as the light pooled at his feet. Like mist it rose higher, taking his legs into its warm embrace. He could feel the light infuse his skin, pull at the edges of his awareness. He didn’t feel pain when his skin began to glow and then dissolve into the light. Instead, Garth felt as though he were being filled with the golden light of the sun. He was bathed in warmth, filled to the brim with happiness until his mortal shell could no longer hold inside what it was feeling and the sensation poured out of him and across the room.
Garth was no more. Where he had once stood now towered a beam of pure golden light. All the gathered elves couldn’t help but feel awed by the spectacle. Was it true that he had gone into the light? Was he really in the beyond now? Some elves speculated that when one went into the light they were destroyed by the scepters. More speculated that they were born of cosmic light and they were the only race that returned to it upon death.
Finally, the light of the scepter faded until all that remained was the haze of golden dust in the air that slowly drifted down to the platform. The crowd waited in hushed silence for the sound of the moon coming to collect him. They didn’t have to wait long. The chamber was filled with a silvery tinkling of song as the silver light of the moon bathed the chamber with its glow. The light rushed across the gathered elves in a sensation of cool moisture. When it alighted on the golden pile of dust that was Garth, the light swirled and gathered up the remains of the elf.
The Call of Winter (The Harbingers of Light Book 6) Page 1