The Great Darkening (Epic of Haven Trilogy) (24 page)

Later that day in the amber light of the dying tree, high atop the walls of the Capital gate, the heralds blew their bright trumpets as Seig, captain of the Capital guard, knelt before the Priest King. His head was anointed in the custom of the old princes of Haven, with oil pressed from juniper and rosemary, colored purple by the flowers of the long-vanished jacaranda trees.

The throngs of people gathered on the Kings’ Bridge were held silent by the palpable gravity of the events unfolding there before them. The Priest King addressed his people. “Citizens of Haven, before us lies a dangerous and a holy crusade. The fate of our bright city is threatened by the fading of the great tree and by the ravenous hunger of this merciless darkness. So we have chosen to set sail, to seek a new light and bring it home.”

The people cheered with nervous excitement. Jhames raised his three fingers high, silencing the voice of the crowd so as to continue with the pomp of this ceremony.

“Moved by the winds of this world and in the will of the THREE who is SEVEN, many brave and able men have heeded the call and have taken upon themselves this most illuminated of assignments. Yet one question has remained; who will lead them to the light? Who will guide their axes and point their resolve? Who will govern this colony with a flint-like determination?”

The crowd was silent, ripe for something to believe in, desperate for someone to put their hope in.

A deep and proud voice answered as clearly and confidently as the herald trumpets. “I will, Your Brightness. I will not only seek the light, but with the help of the THREE who is SEVEN, I will find it!”

The Priest King looked out over the people, scanning the crowd from high upon the wall. He spoke with practiced formality. “You have knelt here as a captain, as a soldier, as a leader … but you will arise as something much more.”

The Chancellor handed the Priest King a long, burning scepter, and Jhames moved to stand directly before the kneeling captain.

“In the name of the THREE who is SEVEN!” He touched one shoulder and then the next with burning scepter as he spoke the ancient words of commissioning. “May your light and your leadership spark a new hope for all of Haven. Arise Lord Seig, Governor of the colonies, captain of the guard, seeker of the light!”

With that, Seig rose to his feet and the crowd cheered and shouted his name. “Lord Seig! Lord Seig! Lord Seig!”

The Priest King took a step back and let the new governor be received by the people of Haven. Chancellor Chaiphus leaned over and whispered in the ear of the Priest King.

“It would seem that you have your champion of the people.”

Jhames responded. “And it would seem, Chancellor, that we will have their loyalty as well.”

“So it does, Your Brightness. So it does,” Chaiphus said.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

C
al
continued to make great progress in restoring the library. Most of the heavy debris that had blocked the entranceway had been removed, thanks largely in part to Elder John’s old mule, Ransom, and his stubborn resolve. Roughly half of the toppled shelves had been repaired and stood upright once again. Headless statues had been returned to their feet, and scrolls and tomes were slowly being catalogued and put back in their rightful places.

The wooden shelves of the great library had once been adorned with elaborate carvings that depicted the subject matter of the works each shelf was meant to contain. The ornate displays of images ranged from grand ships and sea monsters to wheat fields and livestock, and a myriad of everything in between.

A once-breathtaking engraving of a life-like herd of majestic horses wrapped one of the largest wooden shelves from top to bottom. Unfortunately, this piece of master craftsmanship seemed to bear the brunt of the weight from the collapsed columns. Cal had to take extra care to salvage what he could of the carvings, for the shelf itself was beyond repair.

“This one must have held all the secrets and histories of the equine,” he excitedly told Meledae, who had begged to join him in his efforts when she heard he was excavating a whole section of horse documents.

“Look here!” He held up a large, leather tome, with binding that was in obvious need of repair. “The lineage of Sigrid, Queen of the horses,” he read
.

“Fascinating.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Sigrid, the ‘Fair Victory’. She was the mother of all the royal horses. Some say that her line is yet unbroken and her propensity for victory is still running strong through her offspring’s blood.” Meledae cradled the unraveling book in her hands, eyes wide with wonder at what she beheld.

“Perhaps …” she paused, not even sure she dared to say what it was that she hoped for. “Perhaps we might yet find a sire or two that we could trace to her bloodline? May I … may I take this with me?” she asked sheepishly.

“I am just a guest here! I have no authority to deny any of these buried treasures to anyone,” Cal said warmly. “But I say go, explore, and share with us what you find! Huh?”

She smiled like a child given the privilege to play with something fragile, which seemed odd to Cal, being that she was almost four times his senior. He chuckled to himself and shook his head, continuing about his task of recovering and reordering the library.

As much of the day passed, Cal managed to clear out a small, traversable path to the farthest wall of the library. The light was dim in the back of the room, for the violet illumination of the Kalein colony was rather faded in the absence of his Poet friends. He lit a small lamp and began to examine the items that lay in a crumpled heap against the back wall to see if they might reveal any hidden treasures buried there. The light of his lamp danced and reflected off the gold and silver lettering of some of the more elaborate volumes, sending ten thousand little, bright flickerings through the dust-thickened air.

As Cal peered through the haze, a glinting piece of metal caught his eye. Upon further inspection and to his great surprise, he discovered that it belonged to a suit of armor that was still in remarkable shape. This ancient relic of war had astonishingly been preserved, shielded from the carnage of the collapse by a pair of shelves with ships and large fish engraved upon their broken frames.

“Is this the armor of Terriah
?”
Cal whispered into the dark. He picked up the form that held the pieces of armor and saw that the breastplate shone brightly in the light of his glowing lamp, still in its bronzed glory, with just the slightest hints of patina around the edges.

It was obvious that this piece of craftsmanship was once given the utmost care before it came to its resting place in this vault of Terriah’s history. The breastplate was fashioned and scalloped with scores of small bronze feathers at its base. As the piece grew, so did the size and the scale of the protective plumage. The chest guard extended up and over the shoulders of its would-be soldier, offering strong and beautiful protection in the form of two great and terrible bronze wings. On the waist of the display was a belt of metal-clad leather, meant to guard both groin and thigh from the dangers of battle. The helm, hidden under a pile of dusty books and broken shelves, was a single piece of hardened bronze with holes for the eyes that curled to a point at the farthest ends. The nose brace looked like a terrible beak, and at the peaked crown of the feather-engraved helm stood two horned points.

Cal held the helm in his hands, turning it over and over again, marveling at the incredible craftsmanship. He imagined the kind of terrible warrior that must have donned this beautiful work of art in the bloody carnage of the battlefield. He placed the bird helm atop the now upright form and continued searching in the wreckage for more pieces like this, hoping that maybe he would discover a sword or a shield, perhaps even a long spear to complement this armor.

As he continued his dangerous work in the dusty darkness, the light of his lamp fell upon yet another curious, bronze glimmer. Whatever it was that shone from amidst the rubble seemed to be far out of reach, but Cal was determined to complete the newly discovered suit of feathered armor.

As he began to move towards the bronzed artifact, he took a moment to survey the potential risk that hung overhead and sat piled unsteadily all about him. One of the large, stone columns that had once supported the ceiling of the great library was now fallen and in a rather precarious looking position. Though it appeared to have found a somewhat stable state for the last few years following the initial collapse, Cal could see that interfering with it could very well end up undoing all his efforts by causing another collapse.

Determining to be cautious of the column, he began to move more and more rubble out from around its far side. He made his way closer to the object he sought, and as his excitement grew he was still aware, but rather disrespectful, of the danger that his actions could cause. Some large boulders blocked his way between the broken shelf with the ship carvings and the wall of the room, so he chose to edge his way in between the shelf and the ruined column.

CRACK!

The splintering sound reverberated through the chamber as the whole collapsed mess of the ship-carved shelf shifted angrily at Cal’s curious meddling. He froze, his heart pounding nervously as he waited to see if the wreckage would move even more. After a few silent moments had passed and no other sounds or shifting had occurred, he decided to risk it yet again. He resumed neatly stacking more and more of the ruins on the other side of the column.

He went about this task for what seemed like an eternity. Cal hauled and organized, excavated and retrieved, until he got within a hands-breadth of the bronze reflection. To his dismay, he discovered that it was not the sword or shield he was hoping to find; rather it looked as if it were a picture, or a symbol of sorts, painted onto another one of the engraved bookshelves.

This shelf was firmly affixed to the back wall of the library, so Cal could only see part of the glittering bronze peeking out from behind the books that still rested upon its shelves. He climbed up over one of the fallen statues and onto the fish-carved bookshelf to see about getting a better glimpse of what exactly could be so important that it warranted this lavish adornment of gleaming bronze.

Now that he was finally in a position to see the shelf head on, the potential danger of his precarious position became all the more apparent. Cal stretched and leaned his hands against the upright shelf structure, attempting to avoid contact with the enormous, fallen, stone column. The dust was thickest back here, heavy with powdered stone and failing mountain, so breathing became more of a chore. Cal did his best to take breaths through the top of his shirt in order to keep from choking on the inhospitable air. He reached out one of his hands, balancing his full weight on the other, and wiped away the dirt that distorted the bronze image. What he saw made his heart stop cold.

There, staring straight into his soul, was the very same Owele that had defeated the demon bear in the retreating forest. The likeness was unmistakable. The overlaid carving was not much bigger than the size of a man’s hands, but the image was as terrible and as lifelike as the Owele himself. The implications of what this meant—
this
symbol, here on the back of a wooden shelf in the rear of a dilapidated old library—were almost too much for Cal to fully make sense of.

His hand nervously reached out and touched the bronze Owele, and he traced the lines of his fierce face with the filthy tips of his calloused fingers. The bookshelf that he had been standing on groaned and creaked underneath his additional weight, and, without warning or notice, its slight shifting sent another heart-stopping reverberation throughout the whole library. The rumbled warning shook the core of Cal’s terrified body. Dust began to pour down out of the uneven cracks above his head as small chunks of stone started to fall and crash all around him.

Cal heard voices from the corridor outside the library.

“Cal? Cal, are you alright? You better get out of there, son!”

Clivesis’ voice shouted from the other side. “Cal, you damnable fool! You best move at once before you become a permanent fixture in this ancient mess!”

More rumbling, then more shaking, more crashing stones and falling dust.

“I,” Cal coughed and choked his words out, “I don’t think I can make it out—AHH!”

Cal was interrupted as the unexpected weight of a falling stone slammed onto the back of one of his legs, sending him sprawling face first into the Owele shelf.

“Cal! Cal! Talk to us, lad!” the Miller screamed over the noise.

With that, a violent shake emanated from the ceiling of the chamber as the large, fallen column that had been resting precariously upon the collapsed shelves and statues crashed mercilessly to the ground. In its wake, wood splintered and stone cracked, giant portions of rock shifted overhead, and the groans of the aged mountain echoed ominously. Massive pieces of earth displaced the stone ceiling, forcing it to collapse near the back wall of the great library of Terriah.

Finally the falling and shifting fell silent. Terrible clouds of dust hung thick in the air.

The Poet brothers and sisters screamed helplessly for their young friend.

“Cal!”

Halfway across the mountain palace, Moa reared up in a sorrowful show of anger and worry over her two-legged companion. Her voice sent a haunting chill throughout all of Kalein, and the violet light of the Poet colony dimmed in the wake of the collapse.