“Help!” Nancwen shouted. “I need help restraining her, or she is going to kill herself and lose the foal!” But no one was near enough to hear and quickly respond to her cries for help.
Nancwen tried to calm the fear-stricken beast, but nothing that she could say seemed to pierce through to the frightened mind of the mare. Blood leaked down her hindquarters and her mouth began to froth as she worked herself into a dangerous and desperate four-legged storm.
As she fought to control the raging horse, Nancwen heard a lilting tune from outside the stall. She looked up and watched as her son sang to the beast, not words at first, but calm and whispered melodies. Nancwen had never heard these songs before, and yet with each haunting lift of his voice, the frightened mare began to calm in time to his music.
The boy walked up to the stall that confined the once-raging horse, and as he climbed the wooden gate, Nancwen could not help but stare in awe at the brave command that her little boy held over a beast ten times his size.
Cal began to stroke the mare’s neck, and soon she was held in a calm, albeit lathered trance. The help that Nancwen had called for finally arrived, and the groomsmen helped to deliver a healthy, young foal from the teeth of death.
Nancwen knew her boy was special; that old Poet had told her as much long ago. But here, seeing him like this, she felt a pride that she never knew was possible.
“Oh my boy, my brave, brave boy,” she cooed to him as she tucked young Cal into his bed later that silver evening. “The THREE who is SEVEN has given you a gift, that is plain enough to see. What now you must learn, son, is how to use it well.”
“Well, Momma?” the boy asked her. “Did I not do a good thing today?”
“Oh child, of course you did a good thing.” She smiled with proud and loving eyes at her son. “But it’s not just today … He will be expecting, you know … for you to always use that gift of yours to point the way to beauty.”
She tussled his blonde hair as she leaned over to kiss his forehead. “Who knows, my little Cal, you might one day use your gift to sing to the horse of a King!”
Cal continued to grow in the confidence of his gift, and subsequently he caught the eyes of the master groomsman. Soon he was given responsibility of his own there in the royal stable yard, and his parents could not have been more proud.
One day a message reached Gaereld and Nancwen in secret. Their dear exiled Poet friends begged and pleaded for them to come swiftly to their aid. Sensing the urgency of the matter, and knowing that Cal would be safe in Westriver completing his duties with the horses of the Citadel, Gaereld and Nancwen decided to ride beyond the safety of the wall to bring whatever help they might.
They kissed their boy goodbye, leaving him in the care of his uncle and aunt and in the company of his closest friend and cousin, Michael. They promised to return in three days’ time.
“Look for the light while we are gone, huh?” Gaereld told his son. “Maybe you and Michael will find it for us and end this whole grey sadness that has come over everyone.”
“Papa, don’t be silly,” Cal chuckled in response.
“I am not silly, boy!” he replied with a large, mischievous grin on his face. “We were never told when and where it would come to us! And there was never any words written that said it couldn’t be found by some boys from Westriver, neither.”
“Ok, Papa,” Cal said. “We’ll find it.”
“That’s my boy,” Nancwen cooed as she beamed with pride at the hopeful belief there in her young son’s heart. “And don’t you go letting anyone tell you otherwise … huh?”
“I won’t, Momma,” he said with a sweet kiss on her cheek.
Gaereld and Nancwen mounted their mule cart, setting off for the Western Gate with supplies in tow, in search of their friends beyond the wall.
“Sing to the horses for me, Cal!” his mother called as she looked back and waved to her yellow-haired boy.
“I will, Momma! I will!” Cal shouted as they faded off into the distance.
“We are surely blessed, my love,” Gaereld said to his tear-stained wife as she rested her head on his shoulder. “I think the THREE who is SEVEN has already shown us His new light.”
“Oh, has He now?” Nancwen asked playfully as she wiped her eyes.
“Indeed He has!” Gaereld replied, a proud smile lighting up his face. “My world has never been so bright as it is when I look at that boy. I swear to you, he shines brighter than any fire I’ve ever seen.”
Nancwen just nodded and smiled, her heart overflowing with a love that can only come from a source of deep gratitude.
The simple goodbyes made that day were the last words ever spoken between Cal and his parents. He never again saw their faces or heard their hopeful voices, for not a half-day’s ride beyond the Western Gate, Gaereld and Nancwen met their deaths at the hands of some unknown assailants.
It was nearly eight days before word reached Cal’s family of his parents’ deaths. They tried to break the news gently to the boy, offering somber words of mourning and pious liturgies of parting. Though Cal was young, he could sense that his aunt and uncle held Gaereld and Nancwen partially responsible for their own demise; though they cared deeply for them, they had never approved of their work with the Poets.
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
“Cal! 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.”
The Great Darkening (Epic of Haven Trilogy) Page 3