The Great Darkening (Epic of Haven Trilogy) (4 page)

Cal had never known a loss like this before. Grief-stricken and overwhelmed by little-boy emotions, he ran to the only other place he had ever felt at home.

That night he wept with unbridled anguish while he slept in the stall of the once-frightened mare. The unwarranted kindness that he had once shown her in the moment of her greatest distress she returned with unparalleled affection to the orphaned boy who lay asleep on her bed of straw.

Though Cal’s aunt and uncle raised him with sincere love, they did not carry hope in their hearts as his parents once had. It was easier for them to believe the Priests, to think that fates and fortunes could be controlled by disciplined minds and righteous determination.

Cal and Michael became brothers in the fourteen years that they grew up together, though brothers of two completely different faiths. They prayed to the same God, but it was Cal and Cal only that clung to hope and lived with the belief that a new light would truly come for the world of Aiénor.

Perhaps his parents’ convictions and teachings molded Cal to believe so strongly in this light, or perhaps he felt a stirring in his own heart that gave him cause to hope for it. Whatever the case, he knew the only true way for the pain he carried in his heart to be mended would be to know that his parents’ death was for a cause that was worth the sacrifice.

Calarmindon, “Bright Fame”, sought answers to the questions so deeply written on his heart, perhaps with more conviction and intensity than anyone else in the kingdom, save the Arborists. These keepers of the tree spent day and night scouring the libraries of ancient magic in their hallowed hall under the tree, pouring over the forgotten tomes in search of an answer, or at least a clue, as to where this new light could be found. Their prayers were the desperate kind, begging the THREE who is SEVEN for time enough to find the light, and timber enough to see it by.

Time and timber were all that was really on the minds of the citizens of Haven. The people breathed their sighs, exhaling the winds of relief each silver evening that the woodcutters entered the city square in their ox-drawn carts filled with fresh-cut pine and oak. Then, almost with their very next breath, they inhaled panic as the sounds of the hooves of the scouting horses clamored on the streets, signaling the empty-handed and unlit return from the western shore.

Many wondered just how long the forest would hold out, but they dared not ponder that thought for too long, or they might find the truth that they didn’t want to see.

And so it was, day in and day out, from the light of amber morning to the glow of silver sleep—time and timber, timber and time, the rhythm of a nation whose light was dying.

Chapter Three

“C
al!
Cal, what’s with you? Wake up, Cal … snap out of it!”

Cal stood atop the outer wall of the city. His dark brown eyes focused on the distant horizon and his breathing was shallow and hurried. For what seemed like hours, but had really been just minutes, Michael had been trying to wake Cal from this disturbing hold.

As Cal stood there, the look on his handsome, clean-shaven face betrayed the severity of his hypnotic state. His strong, broad-shouldered frame was frozen in place; not so much as a hair on his blonde head moved in the breeze. The tall groomsman looked as if he had been chiseled out of the very wall he stood upon, though beneath the surface of his statuesque frame, his thoughts swelled with a troubled energy as his heart pumped wild in the hold of some unknown magic.

This wasn’t the first time that Michael had found Cal like this. For the last couple years while they had been training in the stables, Michael would come across his friend and know that something unnatural had a hold on him. Each time, after the trance passed, Cal would wake, aware that he had been someplace else. Though he went to these places in his own mind, he was a little embarrassed that he could not say where he was or why, in fact, he went there.

Michael would slap him on his shoulder or pat his face and say, “We’ve got work to do, brother, let’s get to it. These horses won’t saddle themselves.”

Cal would say in a slow yet sincere plea, “Please don’t tell the master groomsman that I faded out. He’ll send me to the woodcutters for sure.”

Then Michael would throw him a saddle or toss him an apple and say with a laugh, “You just keep lifting the heavy stuff and I will have no reason to talk to anyone.”

The two of them had almost established a routine for these visions of Cal’s, a give and take of banter and levity amongst the heavier realities of such strange trances.

This time though, there on top of the city wall, Cal seemed … different.

Michael tried again. “Cal, come on. You’re starting to worry me, brother.”

He and Cal had been sent by the groomsman to receive the daily stable order, which told them just how many horses they would need to prepare for the scouting party. The sergeant at arms was not the most patient of men, and certainly would not have been pleased to take the time for one of Cal’s episodes. Fearing what kind of lashing they were in for, being that both of the apprentices were already well behind schedule, Michael’s anxiety level began to rise to the point of panic.

“Come on, you have to wake up now!” Michael screamed as he violently shook his friend, “CAL!!!”

Almost at the same instant Michael’s voice rose in a desperate plea, a piercing screech echoed in the air. Michael looked through the fog of the early morning and saw the unusually massive wingspan of a large bird of prey circling overhead. As he listened to the shriek of the bird upon the wind, he felt his spine tingle with the electric current of something
deep
.

Cal roused at the screech and looked to his friend like a man who just woke from the hard sleep of a slumber caused by the drinking of too much ale. “What? Oh, sorry … how long was I out?” Cal spoke in a drowsy yet apologetic voice.

Just then, a short, grey-haired corporal approached, sporting a pudgy midsection that looked a bit out of place for a guardsman of the Citadel. He was dressed in the weathered and frayed uniform of the city guard, and he huffed his labored way towards them with the most displeased of expressions.

“What in the name of the THREE who is SEVEN are you two horse maids doing out here? I have been waiting for you no-good stable-dwellers for the better part of an hour, and I had to leave behind a perfectly good breakfast that is now sure to be as cold as my mother’s grave!” growled the corporal. He leaned in close to Cal’s face. “You better have good reason for taking your sweet time.”

“Yes sir, sorry sir, you see I, well … I mean we …” stumbled Michael.

“Never you mind, there is no time for that now!” he interrupted. “I need twelve horses made ready on the double. Bring them to the Western Gate.” The corporal turned to walk away, then paused and called back over his shoulder to the two young men. “These outliers have been extra feisty as of late, making all sorts of trouble, and I, for one, am not going to test their angered resolve by waiting for them to rouse and disrupt a perfectly unlovely day for me.”

“Yes sir,” they called after him, and they ran towards the stable as fast as their shaky legs could take them.

“What in the world was that all about?” Michael demanded.

“Did you see that? Tell me you saw that too!”

“All I saw was our two scrawny tails narrowly escaping the groomsman’s lashes.”

“No, horse face … did you see the light? Tell me you saw that light,” Cal said as they jogged past the mill that stood as a neighbor to the armory of Westriver.

“What light? Are you talking about the tree?” Michael heaved with irritation as they rounded the alley and stopped at the entrance to the stable.

“What? No, I’m not talking about the damned tree … tell me you saw that purple light beyond the wall,” said Cal. “Tell me you heard that voice.”

“I didn’t see any purple light, and I certainly didn’t hear any voice, but I do see our backs thoroughly lashed if we don’t get these twelve horses saddled and readied within the hour.”

Cal and Michael knew their assignment, though repetitive, was of the utmost importance to the Citadel. Each day a sortie of light cavalry left the safety of the walled city, riding westward towards the shoreline. This scouting mission had become part of Haven’s religion; they sought the King knowing they would never find him. They risked life and limb on a suicide mission for the slimmest of possibilities that the King may return; and yet they could not bear to part from their empty assignment.

Seventy-three years had passed since King Illium and his brave ten set sail from the Bright Harbor in the Bay of Eurwen in search of the light aboard the great ship
Wilderness
. Ten branches had since fallen from the great tree, one every seven years. Now, in the face of so much passing time and so little remaining life, only three branches remained on its dying frame.

In these last days, with the felling of so many of the sacred branches, the world of Aiénor had lost both her brilliance and her hospitality to the ruthlessness of a land dominated by fear. Those that lived beyond the laws and protection of the city walls, the outliers, became more violent and more desperate with the death of each branch, their need for survival outweighing any sense of justice or goodwill. It was not uncommon for the cavalry to return from their daily scouting missions with fewer men than when they rode out.

And yet the scouts rode to the west, holding to their time-honored tradition, comforted in their ritual while knowing it was less and less likely that they would ever light the signal beacon of the Herald Tower.

The ram’s horn shaped Herald Tower stood one hundred and seventy hands high, with a winding staircase and shale exterior. At the base of the watchtower was a small keep, with a modest stable and a fresh-water well. Weathered palisade walls provided a moderate form of security, but the saltwater and long years had rotted away the prime of their strength.

The tower was constructed upon the departure of King Illium, at the order and the command of his ever-waiting wife, Evande
.
For the first year of his absence, she lived and mourned his leaving there in the small keep of the tower.

After the felling of two more of the sacred branches, and at the sorrow she carried with her at both the dying of her kingdom and the disappearance of her King, she could no longer contain her grief. She returned to the Herald Tower and, under the weight of despair, she threw herself from the top of the tower into the cold waters of the Dark Sea below. For seventy years, this outpost of Illium’s queen has been a memorial to her people’s fears. It remains an unlit beacon of a dying hope and a temple of sorts to the cavalry scouts of the Citadel.

Cal and Michael worked as fast as their fingers would allow in the awkward silence of the moment. They were too busy bridling and saddling the horses for the daily scouting party to have the time to talk about what had just happened on the wall. As Cal was cinching the last saddle to a dun-colored mare named Dreamer, Lieutenant Marcum entered the stable yard.

He surveyed the horses, running his gloved hands through their manes and pulling tightly on the saddle fastenings.

“Good work, lads, these will do just right for today’s ride. These magnificent beasts might just be the very messengers who carry the good news of new light.”

The lieutenant spoke to Cal and Michael with a detachment to his words. It was as if his lips were making the sounds, but his heart was clear on the other side of the city.

“Give them water, then have them brought out to the Western Gate.”

“Yes sir, um … thank you, sir,” the young groomsmen said in unison.

Marcum nodded an indifferent nod to the two young men, one that said without needing to utter a word that he
wished
this ride would make a difference in the grand scheme of things, only he could not find the energy to actually believe it.

When the lieutenant left, Cal looked Michael squarely in the eyes with a grave seriousness that Michael had not known Cal to use very often. Cal began to recount in detail what he saw on the wall.

“I swear to you I saw it, I swear on the dying tree itself. I saw it! There was this light, a purple light glowing out from the base of the Hilgari Mountains,” Cal said while pointing northwestward towards the ominous range of mountains there in the distance.

“It started off faint, I mean barely a flicker of light … but it was beautiful, like no other light I’ve seen before.” He spoke excitedly. “Then, the light began to get stronger and brighter, so much so that the surrounding rocks started to glow! I felt like I was being pulled towards it, like any moment I would fall off the wall and be sucked into the side of the mountain. Then I heard my name. I heard ‘Calarmindon’ whispered by a voice I do not know. That is when I woke up, and saw your frightened face.”

“I was not frightened,” Michael protested with a look of bemused disbelief on his face. “And who calls you Calarmindon, anyways?”

“Is that all you have to say? Who calls you Calarmindon?” Cal stepped away from Michael, disappointed. “What is wrong with you, brother?”

“Perhaps you are ill,” Michael said in mock concern, reaching for Cal’s forehead as he feigned looking for a fever.

Cal slapped his hand away in frustration. “I am not sick, nor am I making this up! There was a light out there, a violet light. A beautiful light.”

“Let me guess, was Illium there too?” Michael continued to poke fun at Cal now that the threat of the master groomsman’s lashes was all but a distant memory.

“What?” Cal said incredulously. “Michael, I am telling you truly!”

“This dream sounds like all the rest!” Michael said emphatically. “You always have these … these fevers where you turn to a dreamy-eyed statue at the most inopportune times. Was it not just four days ago that you were dreaming of the day your father put you atop that old mule and taught you how to ride?” Michael recounted with annoyed sympathy. “You swore to me that it felt as real as the wind upon your skin!”

Cal’s countenance began to fall just a little as his closest friend made plain the difficult truth of the matter.

“And what, just two days before that there was the dream about Nasrin, the wild rose woman—”

Cal interrupted him before he could go on any further. “That’s different and you know it!”

“I know
you
believe it is different, brother,” Michael said, his voice softening. “But stories of magical purple lights and strange voices using your full birth name, well, they seem like just that—dreams.”

Michael walked over to his frustrated and slightly wounded friend and placed his hands on Cal’s strong shoulders. “The only magic in this grey world is found in places like the rosy red lips of that Nasrin woman. And magic would be the only way any one of us would ever have a chance of having her become more than just a fanciful dream!” he said with laughter in his voice.

Cal looked into the eyes of his friend and chose to laugh along with him, forcing aside the thoughts of his all-too-real vision and the hopes of ever convincing Michael that it was anything more than a dream. “Well, that part is true enough at least,” Cal said with a self-deprecating laugh. “Come on then … we have work to do.”

As the two young men walked towards the stables to begin mucking out the stalls, Cal could not help but feel the lonely burden of the weight that the visions left him with. Though he laughed and worked alongside his friend, he could not shake the piercing screech echoing angrily in his thoughts.