The Great Darkening (Epic of Haven Trilogy) (18 page)

Chapter Twenty

C
al-ar-min-don.

A voice inside Cal’s mind screeched his name. Then again, and again, and yet again.
Calarmindon, Calarmindon, Calarmindon
! His mind was a swirling tumult of voices, a storm of words that was laced with fear and teeming with unknown power.

Moa, grazing lazily on the ferns of the forest floor, stood in stark contrast to the tempest raging inside of the still-frozen Cal.

The voices grew louder and louder in random intervals, but it was not just the volume of the words that brought so great an unsettling; rather, it was a reverberation of the soul that rose louder and louder, crescendoing until it shook him to his very core. His mind had neither the time nor the chance to begin to make sense of all that was happening both around him and to him.

The uproarious voices climaxed into an unexpected silence as scores of violet eyes stared hungrily at the unmoving man in the center of their circle.

Breaking the tension of the moment, a brown Owele, whose feathers looked as if they had been dipped in the whiteness of winter, flew out towards him from the encircling formation. He soared in complete silence; his wings pounded the air, stealthily propelling the large bird of prey to find purchase on Cal’s axe handle.

Be not afraid, Calarmindon,
he understood the Owele to say.
The time has come, and is coming still, when this world will need you to shine and light the way home.

I … I don’t know what that means
, Cal replied without a single noise coming from his frozen lips.
Please, please … don’t hurt me. I am not trying to be difficult, I just don’t understand
.

I cannot promise that you will not be hurt, for that is not the objective of our assignment nor the purpose of our Master
, the Owele screeched.
But I can help you see and follow the path that He hopes you will take.

Who is He?
Cal nervously asked, not completely sure if he wanted the answer to the question.

The Light in Haven before there was a tree
, answered a voice from the encircling Oweles.

The Light long after will He be
, called another.

Whisperer of Worlds,
and Keeper of Flame.

Lover of Aiénor, the Violet Hope, and Mender of Pain.

The responses continued in a forceful rhythm of tribute. Cal’s eyes flitted back and forth, following the volley of answers. The only parts of him that could still move were captivated by the fearsome cadence of the Oweles’ chanted verse.

Their voices grew louder with each answer.

Maker
.

Conqueror
.

True Strength of Haven.

Held in perfection.

The THREE who is SEVEN,
whispered the Owele perched on his axe handle. With the mentioning of that particular name, every Owele bowed his head low and extended his majestic and terrible wings in respectful homage.

Cal could not hold the gaze of this bird any longer; he lowered his eyes, giving his mind a moment to make sense of what the Oweles had revealed.

The THREE who is SEVEN? What could He possibly want from me?

Cal raised his desperate eyes again with his asked question, and the brown Owele met them with his own. There was no love to be found in the eyes of the bird, but there was no malice either; something more like pity or reverence, or perhaps a bit of both, lingered there. It almost seemed as though the great bird was both judging him and respecting him all at the same time, though Cal still could not understand why the Owele would want to do either.

The violet eyes held Cal’s in silent severity while the wings of the surrounding Oweles began to pound the air around him. The gusts beat against his frozen body like an enraged hurricane, bending the remaining trees in their fury. A mix of hair and leaves whipped around his face, helpless to resist such a show of force, and through the sounds of rushing wind Cal heard the Owele’s voice softly whisper.

Follow, Bright Fame
.

With that, an explosion of wings erupted around him as every Owele went airborne in the blink of an eye. The axe that had been frozen in his unmovable hands was ripped out of his grip in an unexpected, violent motion by the very Owele who had, just moments before, been perched upon it.

Two white Oweles relieved their brown companion of the woodcutter’s tool, and they quickly and silently flew west with the rest of the eyrie. Only Ruarc, the brown Owele, whose name meant “Storm Words
”
, remained perched high in the soldier pines of the retreating forest, keeping watch over Cal.

Movement returned to his frozen body as swiftly as it had left him just hours before. Cal flexed his fingers and then his hands over and over again, as if the repeated motion would help him to make sense of all that had just occurred.

He turned, finally, grievously, to the carnage surrounding him, taking in the full scope of the horror for the first time. There, littered on the forest floor, were the broken bodies of the fallen woodcutters and the opened, bloodied carcass of Filip, the horse of the North Wolf.

Overwhelmed by uncontrollable emotions, Cal wept aloud for his fallen comrades, for the senseless loss of his friend, and for the sacrifice of such a noble steed. He walked to the men, closing their lifeless eyes and whispering sad words over their bodies. He looked about for a spade of some sort, and was tempted to walk back to the edge of camp to find one, when he was stopped mid-motion by an unforgettable sight.

Moa, head low, looked to be mourning over the body of Yasen’s horse. Cal felt the weight of her sorrow deep inside his chest as he listened to her pained moans. He came to her, hands stroking her black mane, silently doing his best to sooth her pain.

“I am sorry, girl,” he said to Moa. “Let me see to his body, and we will grieve together.”

Moa shook her head, giving a snort of protest to emphasize her thoughts.

“We cannot disrespect his life by just discarding him in a bloody heap. I must, Moa,” he choked out. “I have to, girl, I have to do something for them.”

He heard the voice of the Owele inside his head again.

Follow, Calarmindon
.

Cal’s tear stained eyes scanned the silver lit treetops as he argued with the night. “What kind of man would I be? What kind of friend just … leaves?” he shouted at the bird. “I will not abandon them to be feasted upon by wolves and ravens!”

Let the dead bury the dead
.
Your task is life, and so you must be about the living.

He looked back at his fallen friends, a great conflict burning within him as he tried to drown out the beckoning voice of the Owele with the urgent task of seeing his friends properly respected.

The time is now, for things deep and dangerous are already in motion
. The Owele stressed his point, his words growing louder in Cal’s mind. The young groomsman rubbed his hands over his face in frustration.

Is there no escape from these haunting birds
? Cal thought.

“What if I choose to stay?” he yelled towards the shadowed tops of the trees. “I have a duty, here, with my fallen brothers! I have restitution still to make, and you … you would have me just leave?”

Cal looked to the broken and bloodied mess of ruined life there on the forest floor, staring in frustrated silence, willing the right answer to find him. Then, as if she heard his tumult of silent questions, Moa stepped close to his side. The large horse nudged him the way a mother would wake her sleeping child from a daydream.

Maybe it was her touch that released his mind from its offended dilemma, or perhaps it was the overwhelming sense of trust that she displayed for the violet-eyed birds. Whatever the reason for the choice, he determined that he should not, he
could not,
walk away from the prompting of the Oweles.

There is something deeper at work here, something I cannot ignore.

“Alright then, Moa,” he spoke softly. “I guess you and I are going to do this together.”

He climbed upon the back of the large, black Percheron and circled her around, giving himself one last chance to lament the loss of life and say goodbye to his woodcutting friends. When he knew the time had come, he gave Moa her head, sensing that her intuition would take them where they were meant to go.

They rode west, following the path the Oweles had taken and leaving behind their fallen comrades, the men of the North, and the unresolved penance of restitution.

Chapter Twenty-One

C
al
traveled westward along the foot of the Hilgari Mountains. Most of this land had been ravaged under the holy resolve of the woodcutter’s axe. Where once tall pines and stately oaks governed the foothills with their strong green reach, now only dying stumps stood, decaying markers of a life long forgotten.

The stumps of the retreating forest were a certain visual reminder that the end was near. In decades past, the woodcutters had removed the stumps in order to replant new forests to be harvested for timber; the whole of the forestland had been harvested, replanted and then harvested again. Three cycles of trees had been farmed since the great tree began to shed its branches, but now it had become plain enough to see that another desperate planting would be futile. By the time a new forest could mature enough to be of any use … the darkness would have long been upon them all.

Moa and Cal traveled the muddy timber cart trails, tracing in reverse the remains of a hungry fear on the bones of the ravaged landscape. The Hilgari rose high on their right, grey and rocky with brief reliefs of green shrubs and berry bushes peeking out from the crags. Without the forests to buffer the strength of the cold north winds, not many living things chose to call this stretch of foothills home any longer.

They made the hard, cold journey alone, relying more on their heightened instincts than actual direction. The large brambles of berry bushes and the half-empty skin of ale fueled the young groomsman along the lonely journey. The call of the Owele pulled them towards some unforeseen destination, its gravity somehow guiding their feet without so much as a glimpse of a feather or the sound of a screech.

It was much darker now than when Cal first made his journey north. The most recent felling of the branch had ushered in a deeper shadow over the pillaged landscape. Now that the light of the tree had dwindled so, Cal’s mind often returned fearfully to the sight of the evil green eyes of the shadow cats and the demon bear. He was painfully aware that he had no blade, no axe, and none save Moa to warn him of the unnatural evils that seemed to inhabit the shadows of this now-forsaken land. Still, he was following the bidding of some mythical, fearsome creature to a place he knew not of, in a land he had never traveled; those two facts alone had his nerves frayed to the point of exhaustion.

It happened that by the midpoint of their second day of traveling they reached the northernmost point of the road that led back to the great walled city. At the center of the interchange of wilderness and civilization stood the Northern Altar of the Priest.

“So this is what Shameus was speaking of,” Cal mumbled aloud.

He dismounted for a moment, taking in the grandeur of the edifice that the Priests had raised in an effort to appease the THREE who is SEVEN. He let his fingers linger over the inscribed markings and flint–inspired words; it was there that he found an imperfection in their workmanship. A crack had formed at the base of the altar and seemed to grow larger as it rose up through the body of stone.

His eyes climbed to the top of the altar, following the growing breakage higher and higher, when what he saw caused his heart to trip over his racing thoughts. There, at the pinnacle of the monument, the very axe Cal had held just two days before cleaved the capstone clear through, sending a shockwave of separation through the body of this holy relic.

“What is going on here, Moa?” Cal said out loud. “I pray that somehow this does not come back to haunt me. I think we best not linger here much longer, for I have one restitution still unresolved and I am certainly not looking to find another.”

Cal and Moa continued westward, pulled by something they could not explain, yet could not ever mistake. The terrain began to change before their eyes; what had been rolling, barren foothills gradually became treacherous marshlands. The deltas and the fingers of the great river Abonris fanned out into a web of marshes divided by swift moving water. Some of the wetlands were nothing more than trickles and creeks, but some still held the raging currents of the mighty river. At the largest of these fens, Cal and Moa could see a bridge off in the distance.

The bridge was nothing spectacular to look at, or at least not anymore. It had no adornments or unfurled standards waving from its towers like the Kings’ Bridge in the Capital, yet it was plain to see that it was constructed with great care and a keen eye. It was older than Cal would venture to guess, yet from his vantage point atop his large, black companion, it seemed strong. It looked as if it had weathered long the rise and flood of the mighty river, and could still ferry a score of mounted men safely across the wild, cold waters of the Abonris.

Cal had never heard of such bridges in the North, this far from the civilized architecture inside the walled city, but he had quickly come to learn that mysteries both terrible and beautiful could be found in abundance outside the walls of the familiar.

The two of them had just come over the bank of a small hill that led towards the entrance of the ancient passageway when a strange sound met their ears. Cal could not place what it was, but he urged Moa onward, intrigued to discover the origin of the high-pitched undulations of tone upon the wind. As they rounded the bend they came upon a most surprising sight; in the open of the clearing before them sat a young woman who was crying, weeping rather, collapsed on her knees.

With a click of Cal’s tongue, he and Moa rode towards this weeping young woman, quickly surveying the surrounding countryside for a sign of what could have moved her to such sorrow.

Moa stopped a few paces from the woman, whose face was still buried in her hands. Cal called out to her.

“Hello there, my lady, are you okay?” He put his hand on her shuddering shoulder. “I beg your pardon, but what seems to be the matter?”

She did not answer him, but continued sobbing.

“Please miss, tell me … tell me what I can do to help?” he gently said.

In wailing words she blurted out to him, “I am so sorry. I … I am so sorry, sir. Please, forgive me.”

“Forgive you, my lady? What could you possibly have done that would require my forgiveness?” Cal kneeled down to her level, his arm awkwardly caressing her back as he did his best to comfort her.

“Do you not know?” she cried out to him.

“Do I not know what?” Cal said with confusion coloring his tender words. “What I know is that we have just come across that hill right there,” he said as he pointed, “and we heard you in your distress, so we rode as hard and as fast as we could so that we might bring you aid.”

Her sobs grew louder now, and her body began to convulse in rhythm to her cries. “That is precisely why I must ask your forgiveness.”

Something unnerving began to eat at the back of Cal’s mind as she spoke. “My lady … I don’t understand what you mean?” Caution and puzzlement were evident in his tone as he searched her face for a hint of her meaning.

“You will.” She wailed even louder now, her sorrow filling the air like a heavy, low-lying fog. “You will!”

With that the crying young woman raised her gaze and lowered her hands, tears streaming down her beautiful, cream-colored face. She looked him straight in the eyes and spoke with a detached voice.

“I am sorry. She is here.”

Moa snorted in protest, stomping her fringed hooves on the grassy earth; something clearly did not sit well with her spirit.

The hairs on the back of Cal’s neck jolted to life at the sound of an old woman speaking behind him.

“Hail, Calarmindon, Bright Fame.” Her tone was mocking, and her voice felt greedy.

Cal whipped his head around to see just who this old woman was, but what he saw made his blood run cold. There was no one there. There was nothing, save the fog of despair that had rolled in on the tears of the crying woman.

“Welcome to my bridge,” the old woman’s voice said.

Cal turned desperately this way and that, unnerved all the more that he could not seem to find this woman who addressed him in such a way.

“Who … who are you? How do you know my name?” Cal asked as he rose to his feet.

It was at that moment that something became painfully obvious to him; the young woman, still on her knees, face still buried in her hands … was no longer crying.

A sinister laugh came from the direction of the young woman, and then that voice, the old woman’s hungry voice, came from her too. “I know all who dare to come through my little,” she raised her head up from her hands revealing a horror Cal could not have predicted, “kingdom.”

Cal blinked his eyes, trying to wrap his mind around the fact that the beautiful albeit weeping young woman had seemingly been replaced by a yellow-eyed monster of an old lady.

“What seems to have startled you, dear? Am I not what you were expecting to find? Am I not beautiful enough to warrant a gallant offer of help from the likes of you?” She laughed a mocking laugh. The woman shook violently, and then without so much as a word, the face of the sad, young woman returned back to her body.

“Help me, please! Help me!” she cried her desperate plea as she implored him with her beautiful eyes. “Help me, sir, I am trapped!”

“What can I do?” Cal called out to her. “Please tell me what to do!”

She shook again, and the witch’s face returned to the young woman’s body.

“Well now, I believe that I might know how you could help her,” said the witch. “You see, I know what causes her tears to flow. I know who she cries for.”

“What is it?” Cal barked. “What have you done to her, witch?”

“Oh, what have
I
done to her?” she said mockingly. “What have
I
done?” She narrowed her gaze, like a hungry snake before it strikes its prey, and then spoke in an accusatory tone. “I didn’t do….
anything
.”

The witch stood to her feet, hunching like a woman burdened too long by the weight of her own hatred and despair. Moa stomped and snorted protectively as the hag took a step towards Cal.

“She came to
me
.” The witch spoke matter-of-factly. “She came seeking
my
help. She wanted to chase after her lover, and of course she didn’t want to do the hard and dangerous work of finding her own way, so she chose to simply cross my bridge instead. Of course I was glad to give her permission to do so, once the matter of the toll had been paid.”

“This bridge is yours?” Cal asked. “How did you come to control such a bridge, with rights to demand tolls and cause such sorrow?”

“Well that is about me, now isn’t it? You asked how you could help her,” the witch replied. “Don’t confuse the two, Bright Fame. You see, I allow all who wish it a safe passage through my kingdom, albeit for a small price. There is no need to risk the swift water of the great river, or to travel the far lengths to lesser bridges than this one.” She walked close to him, doing her ugly best to sell her story.

Her gnarled finger ran the stubbled line of Cal’s jaw while she spoke. “You see, all I ask for in return for safe passage is but
one … little … thing
.” Her finger stopped over his chest.

She shook violently again, and the face of the young woman returned. “Help me! Help me, please!”

Then, as fast as she disappeared, the old witch resumed control of her body.

“What is it then?” Cal demanded. “If it’s timber you seek, I’ll have you know there are no trees left standing for leagues back the way I’ve come.”

The witch’s face twisted into a grimacing grin. “Oh, Calarmindon … timber is of no consequence to me. There are other ways of making fire.”

Cal didn’t even give himself the chance to ponder what great evils that statement could possibly imply.

“What I require is very small, and really shouldn’t be of much concern to you. I want your joy. Your joy is all! A small price to pay for swift travel over these rough waters,” the witch reasoned in an intoxicating, sing-song voice. She stared into him hard, this yellow-eyed witch who held the young woman’s body prisoner, and Cal could sense something more sinister beneath such an easy bargain.

But on the other hand, he had no gold or timber to pay a bridge toll with, and he could certainly feel the pull of the Owele leading him west beyond the bridge, across the strong water.

“It
would
make sense …” he thought to himself—or did he speak it aloud? “If I were to cross here, it would surely be an easier route to wherever the Oweles are leading me, and the price seems fair enough ... yes, fair enough indeed.” His foggy mind tried to remember a reason not to make the bargain, but under her bewitching influence, he couldn’t quite grasp it.

Absent-mindedly, Cal mounted Moa and urged her closer to the entrance of the bridge. The witch, smiling a hungry smile, reached a hand out to take hold of the horse’s reins, when a thought entered Cal’s mind.

“Wait a moment,” he said with quiet confusion. “The young woman, what about the young woman? You told me you would tell me how I might help her.”

“Oh, so I did!” The witch feigned surprise. “Did you not realize when you give me your joy, I will then return hers?”