Beyond the Northern Gate of Haven, the outlying lands were almost completely brown. If there were once trees in this part of the country, they had been among the very first to fall. With no shade or protection from the rather unpredictable and severe weather, and no forests for boars and deer to make their home in, most of the outlying villagers fled south many years ago, leaving behind the decaying remains of forgotten house and hearth.
The road was stone, paved with pride by those who once sought to make the walled city the envy of the whole of the world in the days before the branches fell. The carefully laid stones ran long and far beyond the gates until they reached the edge of the ravaged forest at the base of the rocky heights of the Hilgari.
After more than a half-day’s ride, the stone road ended abruptly in a sea of stumps as far as the eye could see. These were the grave markers of a once-green land. It was here that the road turned to dirt, marked by the well-worn paths of the oxcarts that brought timber to the city.
“This must be the end of civilization,” Cal said to his mare. “Looks like it’s mud and earth for us now, huh?”
Dreamer snorted in reply to his words, and Cal gave her the click of his tongue and the tap of his boots. Soon enough they continued their journey without the luxury of paved roads.
The light was much dimmer out beyond the safety of the walls. However, at any position along the road, one could turn southward and still see the diminishing flames of the burning tree glittering against the black granite walls of Mount Aureole.
Cal and Dreamer went deeper into the once great forest in search of the stone altar that Shameus had directed them towards. They had come only a short distance into the rocky, stump-laden hill land when they came across a small creek. Cal decided they deserved to stop and rest a while.
He led Dreamer to the creek and then looked for a place to relax for a moment. He lay upon the brown grass and did his best to stretch his road-weary back. His eyes, heavy from the restless night before and fatigued from the early rising and the long road traveled, closed without so much as a protest. Unwelcome and unwisely, sleep came fast upon him.
The very same eyes, however, were jolted open like lightening bolts when their accompanying ears were filled with the blood-chilling howl of a wolf.
Cal scrambled to his feet, angry with himself for falling asleep, trying to take account of his surroundings. “No wolves yet,” he mumbled, “so at least we have time to make it out of here before they come looking to make us their supper.” His words were meant for Dreamer, who served as a dependable ear for his intermittent mutterings, but as he spoke he realized that she was not where he had left her.
He searched the horizon frantically, his eyes darting through the sea of stumps in an effort to find his only companion. Panic crept into his already anxious mind, for she was not by the stream and he dared not think of what kind of journey this would become if he were forced to trudge through the unforgiving territory with nothing more than his own two weary feet.
His mind raced and his heart pounded until his eyes found exactly what they had been searching for.
There, almost out of sight, down by the riverbank, Dreamer was grazing on some of the last remaining bits of green along the dwindling creek beds. Cal rose, brushing off the dust and dirt, and set off in her direction to retrieve his horse so that they might resume their journey.
The closer he got to Dreamer, though, the stranger the scene became; it seemed that she was not grazing on grass or riverweed, but rather she was chewing on the tops of carrots. This, indeed, would be a welcome meal for any a horse, but Cal had brought with him no carrots at all.
Just then, at almost the same moment Cal came to the conclusion that the carrots did not just so happen to be found growing alongside this stream, he heard a demanding voice call out from behind him.
“You there! If you want to come out of this with all that nice, warm, red blood still inside your scrawny bag of bones, you will halt this instant!”
Cal began to spin around and find out just who it was that was behind him, but as he felt the point of a blade pricking at the back of his neck, he froze where he was.
“That little creek right there has done made us some pretty rich men, it has!” said another voice with a mix of excitement and pride in his tone.
“Indeed she has,” the first voice agreed. “This is the part where you give us your valuables, and that there mare of yours, and we let you leave with your life.”
“But you have me mistaken for someone else,” protested Cal. “I don’t have much that’s worth anything, and that horse is not even mine, it’s the property of the Citadel.”
The poking sensation in the back of Cal’s neck deepened, and the first voice said, “Why don’t you just let us be the judge of that?”
Cal felt the stranger’s hands reach into his pockets and fumble around in his cloak, looking for purses or hidden treasures or anything of value. Then, in one swift, violent motion, two hands twisted him around so he was now face-to-face with his blade-wielding assailants. A man around twenty years Cal’s senior, with a greying beard and an oddly styled, rusted helm grabbed his wrists and examined his hands for rings or signs of nobility.
“I have already told you that I have nothing worth your having!” Cal pleaded.
“That’s what they all say,” said the second man as he made his way over to retrieve Dreamer, who was innocently munching on the carrots.
“I … I am on my way north, assigned to the woodcutters. What treasures do wise men bring on the roads to the cutter camps? What worth do they have in parts such as these?” Cal retorted.
“Riches enough to grant me a swifter mount than my own,” said the grey-bearded bandit with clever assuredness in his voice. While Cal pleaded with the thief, the second man led Dreamer by the reins back towards the highwayman and his protesting victim.
“Surrender your gold, your jewels, your sword and steed, and we shall let you live,” said grey-beard as he raised his sword towards Cal once more.
“I have already told you—” Cal began to speak with exasperation, but was abruptly cut off by the screech of an Owele that echoed upon the wind. Just as before, Cal froze, his movements suspended by the hold of the Owele.
The would-be robbers looked at Cal in dumbfounded amazement as he stood there, still as stone. Before they knew what was happening, a large Owele dove directly at the face of the horse.
Dreamer, remembering the last instance of bird and talon, reared up on her hind legs with a horrified scream. She kicked loose from the grasp of the second man and bolted northward, running as fast as her frightened hooves would take her.
Almost as quickly as the Owele came, it disappeared, releasing Cal from its all-too-familiar trance and clearly unsettling the thieves in the process.
“What in hell was that?” yelled grey-beard as he looked skyward in defiant outrage.
His cohort just shrugged a useless shrug, content to not be blamed for the horse’s escape.
“Argh!” the first man grunted to himself. “Curses, curses, curses.” He spat, pacing back and forth while debating his next move. “What else do you have to make this up to me, boy?” he asked finally, disgust dripping from his words.
“As I have told you twice, sir … all I have is an assignment for which I will now be doubly late, and I owe my deepest thanks to you and your cowardly companion for having lost my only means of arriving to it.” Cal answered with an equal amount of disgust.
“Sharp words from one who forgets he has no blade,” the man reminded Cal as he pressed the very point of his sword against Cal’s breastbone.
A peculiar look came over the thief’s face, for as his blade rested upon Cal’s chest, there was no grimace of pain or recoiling of body, and he felt no softness of flesh against the tip of his sword. He spoke curiously, “Just what do we have here that guards the neck of this brash and unlucky wayfarer?”
With a twist of his wrist, grey-beard hooked the leather thong
that held the leaf-shaped flint Michael had given to Cal as a gift for his journey. His perturbed look softened a bit, for he now saw that not all was lost in the coming of the Owele.
“It seems that you, boy, are not as truthful as you claim to be.” He took the flint in his hand and yanked it hard, popping the thong off from around Cal’s neck in an angered act of bullying force. “Though I might not be able to ride faster and further as I had once hoped when I … I mean, we,” his companion nodded in agreement, “first planned on acquiring that now-vanished horse of yours, it seems that at least we will be a bit warmer tonight.”
With that the two men mounted their tired, old nags and galloped away, leaving Cal in the middle of the sea of stumps, horse-less, flint-less and without any supplies to aid him in his journey.
Cal surveyed his surroundings; his countenance was a bit stunned from all that had just unfolded in the last few moments and the swiftness with which it had all occurred. As he pushed away the bleak thoughts of hopelessness, violent ones began to take their place, flooding his mind with anger at the cursed Oweles. “It’s your fault that I am even in this mess in the first place!” he screamed into the empty, grey sky. “And now this! Now I have to walk the whole way! I don’t even know where I’m going!” His words were born of extreme frustration, colored with the toxic hues of defeat. All he could do now was walk alone and ponder what he would do if he could ever get his hands around one of their feathered Owele necks.
As he attempted to soothe the pain of the loss with thoughts of revenge, the sounds of the treeless forest began to eerily play out melodies that hinted of all the other dangers awaiting him if he did not make it to the cutter camp soon. So, without his companion and without his supplies, Cal put one foot in front of the other and began to make his way into the cold North on his own.
Chapter Ten
The cooler weather of the northern territory began to cut through the thin fabrics that Cal had worn for this journey, but it was not the chilly bite of the north air that had turned Cal’s blood cold. No, weather cannot possibly have the same kind of effect on a man. That kind of cold comes from one place and one place alone. Fear.
Cal had been walking for what must have been close to half a day when, by the faded silver light of evening, he reached a deserted forest village. Since before the great walled city of Haven was constructed, people had made refuges and homes, small villages and holds, all throughout the forestlands at the base of the Hilgari. The ground was fertile, the trees were strong, and the mountains provided a buffer from the harsh winds of the great North.
It was a chilling sight to behold as Cal walked into a village that once teemed with life but was now utterly void of it. The small houses, the granaries, the mill, and even the sheep pens stood completely still in their abandonment. Aside from the strong gusts of wind and the creaking of aged and forgotten clapboards, this long-abandoned settlement stood eerily silent and still.
Cal couldn’t help but wonder what could have caused such total desertion. People who had worked their whole lives to carve out a living here in the forestlands, generations of families who had lived and died in these homes, were all simply gone.
Surely they wouldn’t have up and left this place just because the tree is dying, he thought to himself.
Cal stood alone amidst the lonely stone structures that made up the vacated village. He looked all around, scanning from one horizon to the next. He could not detect even a single sign of life, save the weeds that were reclaiming the gardens and the ivy that climbed the walls.
The forest was gone. Dead stumps encircled the village like grave markers while the cold wind, no longer buffered by the trees, howled in between the buildings.
There is an inescapable fear that often seems to accompany the revelation that one is the only living thing in sight. Cal did his best to shake off the foreboding disquiet, but he couldn’t keep himself from wondering whether or not there was a more sinister reason than just the absence of trees and the fading of light to cause all of this. He had always favored hope, believed in the return of the King and the finding of a new light, but this stark encounter with the harsh reality of the North pulled the unfamiliar strings of doubt and dread in his uneasy heart.
It had been too long since Cal had rested, not since that fateful nap by the stream, and he was in need of shelter and sleep and something warm to fill his belly and renew his strength. He wore nothing but the thin fabrics on his back, so he reluctantly began to inspect the abandoned houses in search of food and supplies. At the very least, perhaps he could find a safe spot to close his eyes for a while.
The first couple of houses seemed picked clean, for no jars of food or barrels of ale were in sight. Not even a scraping’s worth of wheat flour or dried fish could be found in any of the cupboards. The small sheep pen looked as if it hadn’t been home to livestock for months, and Cal began to grow worried that food and supplies were not going to be so easy to come by.
He made a careful exploration of the abandoned village, searching through each empty house as he came upon them, but as he rounded the side of the next house, a twinge of foreboding shot up his spine.
Up until now, all he could hear was the voice of the wind and the eerie, silent still of this dead place. But here, close to the center of the abandoned village, he realized that there was a humming, a minor note in this quiet chord, a constant vibrating drone that seemed to be emanating from somewhere within the granary.
Cal quickly looked to see if, in fact, he was still alone in the village, all the more determined to stay vigilant and not to be taken unawares for a second time. When he was certain that there were no thieves lurking in the shadows or highwaymen ready to assail him, he turned to focus his attention on the strange sound coming from the middle of the village.
Cal’s heart pulsated with a rhythm that felt a lot like fear, and his feet moved in slow motion, one hesitant foot in front of the other. The closer he came to the old, abandoned granary, the more distinct the sound became. The wind howled and the clapboard homes creaked against their stone hearths as the unnerving sound of the unnatural, low-pitched humming grew louder with each cautious step he took.
At first he thought it could have just been the sound of the wind moving the tattered sails of the village mill, but this sound was constant and growing and did not sound much like a wind-whipped canvas.
Cal’s hand grabbed the rough wooden handle at the door of the buzzing granary. He took a nervous breath, steeling himself for whatever mysteries or monsters might be waiting for him just beyond this dilapidated barrier, then slowly he pulled the door open.
Inch by creaking inch the door eased outward and the sound of the humming grew. Then, as if lightning had struck, the door burst fully open and an angry black cloud rushed out the granary door, sending him reeling in both fear and disgust. Cal screamed as the mysterious cloud engulfed him in rhythmic fury. He opened his mouth in protest, but it began to fill with the vile, disgusting source of all the buzzing commotion.
“Damnable flies!” he yelled and then spat in disgust.
He fell on his back and swatted at his face, trying to avoid becoming the next meal of this black horde. The flies buzzed angrily, swirling around his head in a mad storm. A few of the beastly ones bit and stung at the neck of the young groomsman, causing red, angry welts to surface on his tanned skin before he was able to smack them away.
When the black cloud of wretched flies had finally dispersed and his breathing resumed, Cal surveyed the damage and spat a few more times to rid his mouth of the putrid taste. When a few nervous moments had passed, his heartbeat slowed back down to a normal speed, and so he rose tentatively to his feet and began to dust himself off.
He could no longer see or hear any signs or sounds of the buzzing swarm. When he determined he was safe, or at least safe enough, he turned his attention to the dark interior of the village’s granary. Six black arrows fletched with raven’s feathers stuck out of a pair of rotting corpses
that Cal could only guess were once residents of this village. The bodies were large, most likely men. By the looks of what was left of them, they must have been in the granary for quite some time. The stench was overwhelming, and Cal couldn’t help but wretch, losing what little food he had left from the tavern.
Shameus was right. There are evil things that once only happened in the shadows, now done out in the open.
Pity came over him, and even though he knew neither this village nor its lost residents, he determined that something must be done for them. Cal had always been taught that life was a gift from the THREE who is SEVEN; this senseless butchery seemed a blasphemous, wasteful defilement of that gift.
The weariness from the long day of traveling on foot combined with the emotional toll of losing Dreamer and finding the rotting villagers had taken Cal to the brink of exhaustion. And yet, it is quite remarkable what can happen to one’s tired will when something moves one’s heart. At this moment, in the abandoned village, staring at the remains of these arrow-pierced men, it was both the need for justice and a vengeful compassion that gave him a fresh wind of renewed strength.
“Disregarded souls cannot just go unattended to,” he said defiantly to the darkness.
And so Cal braved the stench and felt his way through the stale, putrid air of the dark granary until he came across a spade large enough for him to dig into the cold, hard earth. For what seemed to him like an eternity, and despite his empty stomach and fatigue, Cal labored and dug as he worked to make a hole big enough to bury the two men.
Although his mission of righting this brash injustice prodded him onward, the task was enough to make Cal’s skin crawl. Apart from the smell, he knew that he would eventually have to touch the two corpses, and he wasn’t sure his stomach or his nerves could handle the feel of rotting flesh in his hands.
The Great Darkening (Epic of Haven Trilogy) Page 8