The Great Darkening (Epic of Haven Trilogy)

by R. G. Triplett

  If you choose not to lose the light that’s in you,

  You can see, you can be, you can do most anything—

  and you’ll get to.”

  The sound of the river Abonris and his mother’s song kept Cal and Dreamer company on the lonely trek northward. The light of the tree continued to fade with each league that the two of them progressed, but something inside of Cal, at least for the moment, seemed bright enough to light their way safely.

  As Cal came within sight of the gate on the northernmost part of Piney Creek, he began to feel the weariness of the road, for they had been traveling for the better part of the day. It was now deep evening, and the amber light of the great tree had long since faded into its softer silver color.

  The sounds of life and laughter were still lingering upon the night air of Piney Creek, so Cal let his eyes search the lit windows of the humble stone houses for a sign of hospitality. He spied a tavern straight ahead; its lights were still burning brightly and the sounds of life still echoed from its walls. He encouraged Dreamer onward, ready for a small respite and a hot meal before their journey continued.

  As they approached the tavern, another thought crossed his mind. I should probably ask someone who actually knows these parts where it is exactly that the main cutter camp is currently situated.

  He focused his gaze on the tavern ahead and spoke aloud to Dreamer. “These woodcutters move their camp quite often, always chasing the trees like they are hunting them. The last thing I want is to get ourselves lost out there in the dark middle of nowhere … or worse.”

  The wounded horse snorted in agreement.

  For now, he hoped that his answers lay somewhere where he could rest his tired bones and fill his empty belly with something warm and tasty. “What do you think, girl? This place looks as good as any, right?”

  He dismounted Dreamer and hitched her to the post outside the tavern, taking a moment to give her an apple and a kind word of thanks for her dutiful progress throughout the day.

  The “Gnarly Knob” was as accurate a description as a place like this could possibly have. The tavern seemed altogether twisted and maybe a bit crooked too, though the weatherworn patrons lent credence to the name along with its rugged décor. The floors were a patchwork of long-aged clapboards, while the tables were made out of twisted old tree stumps; most of the patrons who sat at the bar and dined at the twisted stumps were the kind of folk who could make a life in the places most others wouldn’t dare to try.

  Cal took a seat at the half-full bar as the tavern owner, a curly-haired man on the downward side of middle age, limped his way over in a manner that suggested both the kindness of his hospitality and the amiable nature of his disposition.

  “The name is Shameus,” he said as he gave the traveler a quick once-over. “The boys and I can see that you are not from these parts … and since we don’t get many people who happen to be on holiday this way, I am quite obliged to ask what kind of business you are up to here in the dark North?”

  “Well sir, my name is Cal, and to be honest, I am in the business of finding a good, hot meal to fill my belly, and maybe a warm bed to make rest in. I’ve been riding all day and most of the night, and I fear I have quite a bit more riding to do before I reach the cutter camp,” Cal said matter-of-factly.

  “Cutter camp!” Shameus blurted out. “What would a soft-handed young man like yourself want with a cutter camp? You do know what goes on in those brutal places, don’t you?” he asked as he poured Cal a pint from behind the bar.

  “I’ve seen good men, well-meaning lads, heed the call of the Priests, taking their flints and axes in pursuit of the greater good. What comes back is a much colder sort … and not just because it’s chilly up near the Hilgari.”

  He slammed the pint onto the counter, sloshing its contents as he leaned closer to Cal’s face and spoke earnestly. “Something inside them—the warm parts I guess you would call them—they must get left behind like the dying stumps of those trees that they fell.”

  A barmaid, not much younger than Cal, came towards Shameus carrying a hot loaf of bread and bowl of something steaming.

  “Thanks, love,” Shameus said to the girl. “That there is my Keily, and this here is her boar stew ... and aye, it is a good one at that. She makes it with heaping chunks of fresh boar—well, mostly fresh—with onions and mushrooms found in the stump lands. Her mother died years ago, and you better thank the THREE who is SEVEN that she did, because that woman’s cooking would have put you in the grave long before the darkness or those Priests in the cutter camps ever did.”

  The bar erupted with laughter, and a few of the older patrons laughed with a knowing that told Cal he must be quite a bit luckier than those who frequented the Gnarly Knob a few years back.

  Keily gave the bowl and the bread to her father, pausing to take in the sight of the handsome young stranger who sat as a guest in her family’s tavern. She gave him a smile that hinted of a bit more than mere hospitality, and then she bid him to enjoy his supper.

  Cal’s eyes couldn’t help but follow the beautiful brown-haired girl as she left the dining hall and made her way back into the kitchen. Her beauty was remarkable, and rather out of place here in an old tavern in the cold and greying North. Cal welcomed her bright presence almost as much as he did her cooking.

  “Aye, she was an awful woman … and an even worse cook!” Some patrons at a table near the back of the tavern shouted out in agreement with the old tavern owner.

  “But for some reason, I still loved her,” Shameus told him, bringing his attention back to their conversation. “My Keily is all I have left of her now. The best part is, I don’t have to drink up all the profits to stand working alongside this one,” he chuckled as he pointed towards the kitchen.

  “It’s good,” Cal said after his first steaming mouthful of stew. “Truly your daughter knows her way around a boar and a kitchen.”

  “She had her whole life to practice living with that boar behind the counter!” an old man bellowed out, pointing playfully at Shameus. The tavern erupted once again with the sound of laugher, and Cal’s spirits, at least for the moment, felt a bit more at ease.

  When he was nearly finished with his supper, Cal called to Shameus and asked if he could rent a stall to board Dreamer for the night.

  “Oh sure, we have stables aplenty … though I can’t say much for their condition at the present,” Shameus said as he puffed away on his long-handled pipe. “Like I said before, we don’t get many visitors in these parts since the light started fading on us, not to mention that all the strange disappearances around here have earned the North an unfriendly reputation. Besides, most all of our horses find themselves one way or another in the service of the woodcutters.”

  Cal nodded slowly at Shameus, taking in the meaning of his cautionary words.

  “But sure, you can house your horse here,” Shameus said with accommodating ease. “I’ll have one of the lads show you around, and we might even be able to scare you up some alfalfa or a few oats.”

  “Strange disappearances?” Cal asked with concern, not willing to let the comment pass. “You … you mean horses?”

  “Oh sure … horses, dogs, a few nagging wives.” He jabbed Cal in the ribs, clearly doing his best to break some of the tension. “Though,” he said with a touch of sadness in his voice, “some of the lads and lassies and a few of my friends too have gotten themselves lost out there in the darkness beyond the wall. There are even tales of some of the woodcutters never making their way back to camp. To be right truthful … it has the whole lot of this town a bit spooked.”

  Shameus took a long tug on his pipe. The mood of the tavern, or at least of those within earshot of the storyteller, seemed to mirror the temperature outside: cold.

  Cal spoke up, “Well, does anyone know what is causing this? The disappearances, I mean?”

  “I heard it’s the forest witches, angry at us for destroying their homes, so they’re using their witchery and turni
ng people into saplings,” a toothless old man blurted out.

  “No, you old fool!” said another old man who had been partaking of the tavern’s ale a bit too long. “It’s all these hungry wolves and nasty shadow cats! We have done hunted out the forestlands and then we turned and hunted the forest itself! What else do you suppose they eat?”

  “It’s the law of nature,” said another proudly.

  “If you just stay skinny, mean and bony enough … you’ll be the last one standing!” blurted the first old man.

  Once again, the tavern erupted in laughter, and flagons of ale and mead clinked and clanked against their brother vessels. Speculation turned drunken debate continued from the wisest to the thirstiest in the Gnarly Knob. As Cal sat amidst the noise, his thoughts turned a bit darker and his laughter more nervous.

  Keily broke up the wives tales and forest lore with an unexpected motherly announcement. “Now don’t you go filling this one’s mind with all that nonsense … why you all are nothing but a bunch of crooked old pine trees with more squirrel nuts than sap in those heads of yours. He is a paying customer, and is off to do a deed that I don’t see any of you lining up to perform!”

  The men hooted back at her as she scolded them.

  “You’d better not be scaring him off before he gets started … he will have plenty of time to be scared once he gets out there.” She winked at her father and the old patrons howled again in response.

  She bent over and whispered in Cal’s ear, “Come on, you; let’s go get that horse of yours and I’ll show you to the stables myself.”

  “Thanks for nothing,” Cal nervously teased back. He got up from the bar and bid his farewells to the old men. He stopped to pay Shameus for the meal and the bed and to offer his gratitude.

  Shameus leaned in to take the money, and then grasping Cal’s arm, he spoke without jest and with a haunted look in his eye. “If you see, or feel, or even sense that something, anything, is not as it should be … it probably isn’t, lad. There are things far more frightening than cats, wolves, and witches that roam the northern territories. So you keep a sharp wit about you, and an even sharper axe.”

  “Thank you. I … I will,” said Cal.

  “Word is,” Shameus told him, “that the woodcutters are moving east. Once you pass under the great wall, the road will take you north, through the abandoned villages and the ruins of what once was the mighty forest at the base of the Hilgari Mountains.”

  He turned and pointed with his long-handled pipe in the direction of the mountains. “You will see a stone altar there that is as tall as two grown men, engraved with the writings of the Priests and their sacred flints. Once you have reached the altar, follow the fens of Abonris eastward along the felled forest. There should be a steady stream of oxcarts and wagon tracks to guide you from there to the cutter camp in the east.”

  Shameus looked at him with guarded consideration, for he had given these directions countless times, yet seldom heard of the arrival of the travelers he had guided. “Farewell, young Cal,” he said.

  With that, Cal followed Keily out of the tavern to where Dreamer was hitched. She led him to the old abandoned stables at the rear of the Gnarly Knob and its adjacent inn.

  “You must not let them scare you too badly,” Keily said with a soft wisdom to her words. “Although it is a dangerous assignment that you have … you will only make it more dangerous and dark if you allow yourself to add fear on top of it all.”

  Keily opened the stable door and led him in as she continued her warning.

  “Just stay close to those who know what they are doing and you will be just fine. Hollis is their leader; some call him their chief, but I call him uncle. He is a hard man, but a good man. Tell him that you are the friend of his ‘little splinter’. That’s what he used to call me when I was but a wee little girl.”

  Cal looked at her quizzically.

  “He says that I have a way of getting under his skin,” she laughed, “although I think he means that affectionately.”

  “Your uncle seems like a very...” Cal thought about the word for a moment, “perceptive woodcutter.” He gave her a wry grin.

  “Oh he is, don’t you worry!” Playful indignation colored her words. “You just tell him what I told you, and maybe he will help you keep from disappearing like the others.”

  Keily showed Cal around the stable and brought in the least moldy bits of hay that she could find. She showed him where the pump and well were and offered to show him to his room, but Cal decided to bunk next to Dreamer in the old stable. He was a little unnerved to leave his horse out here by herself in this strange land of disappearing horses—and if he were altogether honest with himself, he was a little nervous to be inside alone all night with just his thoughts to drive him mad.

  “Suit yourself,” she said, “but my father has a strict habit of not returning money once it has made its home in his pocket!”

  “Then perhaps in return for my coin and the now-empty room, you could help me start a fire to keep me and Dreamer warm.”

  Keily agreed, and she brought a rusted brazier and some kindling to make fire enough to keep them from freezing. In the spirit of hospitality she also brought a jug of ale and a loaf of bread for them to break their fast after they had made their rest.

  “And with that I will bid you good night,” she said as she handed over the last of the provisions. Smiling a most kind and sincere smile she said. “Be safe, Cal. I will say a prayer for you. Maybe one day our paths will cross again.”

  The earnestness in her eyes caused Cal’s cheeks to flush, and he nodded his goodbye quietly. She leaned in close, kissed him on his burning cheeks, and laughed a girlish giggle, leaving him and Dreamer to make their rest.

  When she left their stall, Cal laid the horse blanket on the stall floor and made his bed next to his friend, though sleep did not come easily to him.

  Chapter Nine

  That night, as Cal and Dreamer slept in the sparse bed of hay in the old stable of the Gnarly Knob near the border of Piney Creek, an Owele flew inside, undetected. He perched himself high in the rafters of the old building, silently watching the two sleeping travelers. Cal’s rest turned instantly troubled as he was visited by the haunting Owele dream all over again. As before, the Oweles were closing in on him, tightening the circle around him with half-eaten serpents in their clutches.

  Like the other times when the Oweles came to his dreams, Cal fought against his paralyzed limbs with desperate force, hoping against hope that he could wake his sleeping legs and flee. If one would have happened upon the stable that night and witnessed the restless slumber of Cal and Dreamer, it would have seemed as if they were mad. Their moaning and twitching made it appear that a fever of deadly fire had caught ablaze in their minds.

  It is doubtful, however, that one would have noticed the violet-colored eyes peering down from the aged and splintered rafters, and even more doubtful that one would have guessed those eyes to be the cause of such a fever.

  Cal screamed in his dream, “What do you want with me? If you want to eat me, then go ahead and eat me already! What is it that you are after?”

  Calarmindon. It is you that we are after.

  Cal woke with a jolt. Though it was cold in the darkening North, he was wet with sweat and his heart was racing within his chest.

  As Cal tried to shake the effects of the terrible nightmare, he heard a sound that made his blood run cold. The notes of dreaded disaster that had haunted all of Haven these last seventy-three years pierced through the cold night air like a harbinger of doom. Cal heard the fearsome music ringing on the winds from the south, bellowed out from the golden trumpets whose very notes carried with them a palpable sense of terror. The Priests had ordered the three enormous trumpets to be fashioned not long after the branches began to fall and the first shadows darkened the Kingdom of Haven.

  With each fallen branch, the Priests would blow the three trumpets seven times. The horns, housed in the highest turret of
the great Citadel, would blast loud and long. It is said that, within the walled city of the Kingdom of Haven, not a note from the famed trumpets could go unheard.

  And so it was that yet another branch fell, and the strength of the once-eternal flames of the dying tree shrank back in grim retreat.

  The sound of the trumpets, though always distressing, was decidedly more fear-inducing on this particular occasion. Citizens of the border town awoke in a panic, and cries were heard in dark harmony all across the land. The branches had been dying at the rate of one every seven years, or so the Priests had recorded. This darkening … was four years too early.

  “It’s not possible,” Cal whispered into the darkness of the stable as the sound of the terrible horns finally ceased. “What could it mean?”

  He let the uneasy question hang heavy in the air for a moment before he made up his mind. “I’ll tell you what it means,” he told Dreamer, “It means there is going to be high demand for backs at the cutter camp, and I for one would rather get on our way in time enough for us to still be able to see how to get there.”

  With that, Cal and Dreamer got to their feet to make ready for the journey. Dreamer drank deep from the trough while Cal drank his ale and ate half the loaf of bread that Keily had brought him the night before.

  With saddle in place, they made their way down the center of town towards the northernmost gate, which Cal knew to be the last sign of civilized safety. The night watchmen did not spend much time in questioning Cal, for with all the panic that came from the sounding of the Priests’ horns, all hands were focused on quelling any uprising that may occur.

  There was a finality to the booming sound of the iron portcullis of the Northern Gate locking shut behind him. It was not that he thought he would never pass through the iron gates again. Yet he knew somehow he would never, could never, be the same person to pass back through them.

  Or maybe it was that he knew Haven would not be the same.

  This thought, surprisingly enough, made it easier for Cal to put haste to his journey. There was an air of purpose and expectancy about this assignment, however dreaded it might be.