The Great Darkening (Epic of Haven Trilogy) (33 page)

Cal smiled playfully. “It’s not the tavern we mind so much as we do the staff!”

Yasen let out a guffaw, and Keily punched Cal in the arm, then leaned up to kiss him on the cheek. She too had believed him to be lost for good and was genuinely pleased to see him here again. As she lingered next to Cal, she noticed Yasen watching her intently. “I am not so sure this cold air is doing that wounded eye of yours any favors out here, North Wolf,” she mock-scolded him.

“Well, my lady, if I am honest with you, I am not so sure that anything less than a miracle would do my wounded eye any favors. But I’m happy to leave the two of you alone, of course, if that’s what you’re after,” he said, unable to restrain a gruff intensity from his voice as he began to rise from his chair.

“Oh no you don’t!” she said, pressing him back down into his seat and bending close to him. She gingerly lifted his bandage to examine the wounded eye. “I may be a good cook, and I may have a knack for seeing through the rude exteriors of you northmen, but I am no miracle worker.”

She unwrapped his bandage and wiped away the green poultice as he grunted in irritation and discomfort. “Careful!” he said as he brushed her hand away and tried to stand.

“Enough, Yasen,” Keily said, her voice exchanging its usual playfulness for a concerned gentleness. “Let me take a look, please.” Using her fingers, she held his eyelid open to see what had become of the eye. “Can you see anything out of it?” she asked him.

“No, my lady, I cannot,” he confessed.

“Well, at least the milky white has faded a bit, and you won’t be as terrible to look at,” she said with a wink. “But I will see about sewing you a patch of sorts, and who knows … you might still get your miracle yet.”

Their conversation was interrupted with the sound of the woodcutter’s trumpet coming from just beyond the Northern Gate. “Hollis?” Cal asked him, excited at the prospect of seeing the chief again.

“It would seem so,” Yasen grumbled irritably. He pulled the bandage out of Keily’s hands and roughly tried to wrap his own eye as he addressed her. “You might want to see about something warm to feed them with, if it is not too much trouble.”

Keily scowled at him as she roughly took the haphazard bandage off his mangled face. “I will see what I have left over in there from tonight’s supper,” she told him. “But no amount of Citadel coin will be sufficient enough to employ my kitchenry at such an hour as this.” She began re-wrapping the eye again.

“But the men will be famished after the two days’ march!” Yasen replied, standing up before she could finish her bandaging. “Name your price, woman!”

Keily thought about it for just a moment and weighed the prospect of the late night’s work in light of her price. She stared at the North Wolf, regarding him with eyes that softened his ill temper.

“Come, my lady. Your price,” Yasen asked her again.

“Alright, but I will have my payment first if it is all the same with you,” she told him.

“And just what is this payment of yours?” Yasen asked nervously.

She gave him a playful grin, and then reached up on the tips of her toes and kissed him lingeringly on his scarred lips. When she finally drew away from him, he felt his confusion gone and his spirits much improved.

“Well … why didn’t you say so earlier, my lady? I would be glad to make that kind of payment at all hours of the day,” Yasen said, blushing under his bearded face.

Cal grinned at the two of them, giving Yasen a slap on the back. “Perhaps you two should take care of finding that food for our soon-arriving friends,” he said, waving them into the tavern. “I can wait here to greet them.”

“Sleep well, my friend, for it looks as though we will have a long ride ahead of us, come amber’s first light,” Yasen said as the two men embraced arms. Then Keily’s eye caught Yasen’s again, and he followed her inside.

“I would say the same to you!” Cal called back.

When Yasen and Keily both disappeared into the warm glow of the sleepy tavern, and Cal was confident that he was alone for a moment in the twilight of the silver flames, he rushed quickly to examine the cloak that he had so carefully hung on the wall next to him.

“Are you alright in there?” Cal asked.

Chapter Thirty-Six

T
he
next morning was alive with a flurry of activity as the second company of woodcutters arrived from the northernmost front of the retreating forest. The newest men were weary and hungry from their unexpected journey back to the walled city, but excitement overwhelmed their tired feet and aching backs as eagerness lit the air and woke their spirits. Soon after the flames of the great tree made their change from the evening silver to the brighter morning’s amber, the borough hummed and bustled with intentional life. Wagons were outfitted and horses were fed, and most of the newly arrived woodcutters bathed, for what could have been the first time in weeks, in preparation to meet their Priest King and his new governor.

In the chord of movement and busyness, a third note cut through the music of the morning. Wonder filled the hearts of the men as they reunited with the young groomsman they had thought was dead.

“Cal!” one of the woodcutters shouted. “Am I seeing some kind of witchery? How in the damnable dark are you standing here before us, lad?”

“We all thought that bear had swallowed you right up, son!” another exclaimed.

Amazement filled the men’s faces as merriment and curiosity laced their excited conversations. They embraced Cal and joked amongst each other, and the reunion was perceived by all as a sign of good things to come. They reasoned that no terrible or ill-fated journey could possibly begin with such joy.

While the men prepared their beards and outfitted their mounts for the next leg of the trek, Keily prepared her heart for the departure of Yasen. She had arisen before anyone else in the tavern so that she could fashion a patch for the wounded eye of the woodcutter who had won her heart.

Shameus walked into the back chamber of the tavern to find her sewing together straps of leather with fierce determination. “Oh my, Keily girl, what is it that you are working so intently on this morning? Huh?” Shameus knew the kind of pressure that love puts on the hearts of those who are faced with the possibility of losing it. “Is there anything I can do to ease your heart, my girl?” he asked her.

“No, Papa,” she kindly told him. “I wanted to mend his wound, but if I cannot succeed in that, then the least I can do is cover it for him.” She held up her labor of love to show her worried father her work.

“My girl … you have done well,” Shameus told her, giving her shoulder a loving squeeze as he saw the emotion welling up in her eyes. “And who knows, it may be this very covering that becomes his healing, huh?” he said, jostling her hair. “Come now, there are about two score of hungry woodcutters out there that are going to be wanting to break their fasts before they ride the day’s journey to the Capital.”

Keily nodded in agreement and placed the small leather eye-patch in the fold of her apron. She set out to make the morning’s bread and see the men off on the rest of their journey.

After the horses were fed and the bread was baked, the men gathered their supplies and filed out into the streets outside the tavern, awaiting the call to ride. Cal found a place on one of the large timber carts while Goran, Oskar, and the rest of the men mounted their steeds, and Yasen said his farewell to the beautiful tavern maid.

“I wish that it was not under these circumstances that you and I had found each other, my lady. For you are a good woman, and I am most certain that my heart and my wounded head will miss you often,” Yasen told her tenderly.

“I am not sorry, North Wolf,” she told him with a smile. “It may be that the longing there in that wounded head of yours will be the very force that brings your heart back to me.”

Yasen held her hands and drank in her simple beauty, a beauty that was, in some ways, far too extravagant for such a place as this. And yet at the very same time, it did not presume itself to be above the greying and gnarled residents that surrounded it. “If the THREE who is SEVEN wills it—and just maybe even if He doesn’t—I’ll come back for you. If I have to swing my blade through every piece of timber in this half-dark world to do so … I will, lass,” Yasen promised her.

“I know you will,” she told him through misty eyes. “My cooking has that kind of effect on northmen,” she teased, breaking the tension of goodbye with her coy smile.

“You’d best tell them first that I will kill them without even a second thought if they dare try to sneak even a taste of your
cooking
while I’m gone,” Yasen said playfully.

The awkward laughter of those who are not supposed to witness such a private moment rose and rumbled behind the lovers forced to say their goodbyes in the full view of the woodcutter company.

“Just kiss her and let’s be on our way, Yasen!” Oskar shouted from his horse.

Yasen, half embarrassed and half annoyed at his men’s impatience, turned and shot them a look that said he did not appreciate their irreverence, no matter how good-hearted it was.

“Come on now, your men are waiting,” Keily told him, straining to keep the jovial tone in her voice. “Here, I made you this. I know your mending is not … um … finished, but at least this way you won’t look so hideous when you meet the Priest King,” she told him with an exaggerated wink and slightly forced smile. She tied the patch around his head and covered his right eye. On the patch she had sewn a double-bladed axe, much like the one he wielded in the forests of the North, the one soon to be taken far across the Dark Sea.

“Here you go, love, now you look proper enough,” she said with a shaky timbre to her words as a lone tear trailed her cheek.

Yasen brushed her tear away and took one last, deep look into her shining eyes. “Thank you, my lady. I will wear it always, and think of you.” He bent down, took her in his arms, and kissed her deeply, lingering deliberately in defiance to the voiced impatience of his men.

The woodcutters went wild, laughing and cheering and asking for kisses of their own. Yasen said his final goodbye and mounted one of the horses that Hollis had sent down for him. With a wave of the hand and his heel to the horse’s flank, he led the woodcutters off towards the Capital of the great city.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

A
rmas
made his way through the white-stoned streets of the Capital, walking up the exquisitely landscaped roads that were designed to wind their way closer and closer to the great garden of the burning tree. Granite fountains and green-hedged archways transformed the pathways into something much more than mere walking trails; they were works of art, and the closer they wound to the garden of the burning tree, the more elaborately adorned and historically embellished they became. In generations past, the streets surrounding the Citadel buzzed with life, and light reflected its amber and silver hues in ten thousand little glinting places along the masterfully constructed architecture.

Today, however, the intensity of the evening’s silver light seemed robbed of its former glory, here in the waning of its power. Armas passed the libraries, cathedrals, and tragically empty estates of the former royal family, but his destination this evening was not one that was wrought by the hands of any man. No, his frustrated and wounded heart needed to be bathed in the beauty of something beyond the limited and selfish imaginations of mere mortals.

So he found his way, one step after the other, pulled up the path by a familiar gravity, feet drawn to the only true expression of a God that he knew. In the days before the great darkening, men and women alike used to make the journey up the mountain to bask in the light of the immortal flames. But in this greying generation, very few ever concerned themselves with reverence or wonder for the perishing presence of what they assumed was a dying deity.

It was true that Armas was sent to these gardens on assignment from the Citadel, but he gladly welcomed the chance to let the great tree shine its life-giving light into the darkened frustrations that hung about his thoughts. No sooner was he seated amidst the granite statues of Haven’s past kings than his quiet reverie was interrupted by the sound of footsteps on the sacred green of the garden. Armas rose from the stone outcropping he had been resting upon and made his way over to the garden’s other visitor.

“Lieutenant Armas, is that you?” asked the Arborist, who took a long and curious moment to study Armas, there in the light of the silver flames. “Why, you must pardon me, sir, for what I should have said was
Captain
Armas.”

“There is no pardon necessary, Engelmann, for I have been wearing the black braid for just a short while,” Armas said as he glanced offhandedly at the cords that had been pinned to the epaulets of his uniform.

“You were always one of the rare ones, Armas. Most men wear the cords of their office to prove to the rest of the undecorated world that they do indeed have some worth to them. You, however, have the tendency to do just the opposite,” Engelmann mused.

“And just what is this opposite that you speak of?” Armas asked, not sure if he wanted to hear the riddled answer that he was about to get.

“Well, is it not obvious to you?” Engelmann asked. “It is you, Armas, that brings the worth to the office that your braided uniform assigns you to.”

“Kind words are easy now, here at the moment before I ask a difficult task of you,” Armas said, doing his best to brush off the flattering attention.

“Kind words are easy when their subject is worthy of the kindness,” the old Arborist replied with a twinkle in his eye. “But before you tell me of this difficult task I shall have to undertake, you must tell me why it is that your heart seems so heavy.”

The captain eyed Engelmann with a calculated gaze, trying to determine how much he should reveal to the green-haired fellow with the discerning spirit. “It is nothing that some time and humility won’t heal,” he finally responded.

Engelmann eased himself onto the stone outcropping that Armas had been sitting on moments before, then gestured for the captain to sit down beside him. Armas stared at him for a moment, then acquiesced to his unspoken request.

“Now then,” said Engelmann, “you seem less than pleased with your promotion to captain, although most men in service to the Capital would be delighted over such an appointment.” The Arborist let his observation hang in the silence for a moment.

Armas took a breath. “I made a choice to protect a friend, and it cost me something that I very much wanted,” he said slowly. “Hollis, the chief of the woodcutters … I disobeyed a direct order to bring him in for an audience with the Priest King.”

“Oh?” Engelmann wondered aloud. “Is the Citadel in the habit of promoting those who defy commands now? I shall make it a point to remember this new policy of theirs.” His wise eyes had a mischievous yet easy way of disarming the good-hearted of their unnecessary anxieties.

“No, but I am not so sure this is a reward, Arborist.” Armas chuckled as he spoke. “Regardless, it was the right thing to do, for Hollis’ tales were too far-fetched and his imaginings too deluded. I knew he would end up in the dungeon holds if he were to come back to the city.”

Engelmann nodded. “A noble act, to be sure. But what of your promotion? What did this fealty to your friend cost you, if not your rank?”

“Ha,” scoffed Armas. “The title is a mere formality that means next to nothing. Officers of the Capital guard here in Haven will soon have only massive troubles to contend with.” He looked Engelmann in the eyes. “My loyalty to Hollis cost me my command of the contingent of guardsmen embarking on the journey across the Dark Sea.”

Engelmann considered his words before he spoke. “I see,” he said finally. “They are taking away your chance for glory and adventure, eh? All because you chose to honor your friend.”

“I disobeyed orders,” Armas replied. “I knew the risks. And so Tahd will go in my stead, and I shall remain behind and take Captain Seig’s place here, seeing to the defense of Haven.”

“That is no small task, to be sure,” Engelmann noted. “Though perhaps not the one you thought you were destined for, eh?”

Armas shrugged. “What’s done is done. And now I must return my attention to my current assignment, lest I fail to carry out orders once again.”

“Well, we can’t have that now, can we?” said Engelmann. “Very well, what is this difficult undertaking you ask of me? Or rather, do I perceive that the Citadel and our bright Priest King are the ones truly doing the asking?”

Armas looked to the silver flames that danced upon the two remaining branches of the burning tree, then turned his gaze back to the Arborist. “The Citadel commands you and your order to turn over the gilded first branches of the great tree to me.”

“Oh?” said Engelmann. “And just what are the plans that they have for these gilded relics?”

“My understanding is that they hope to evoke the favor of the THREE who is SEVEN by fastening the gilded branches as the figureheads for the Citadel’s great sailing vessels,” Armas explained to him.

Engelmann thought about what the captain had said as he stroked his mossy beard for a moment. Then, in his typical fashion, he riddled out a response dripping with his own unique wisdom. “Let me ask you a question, Captain. If the THREE who is SEVEN is deliberately removing His power from the great tree, why in the damnable darkness should we presume that He cares much at all for its charred remains?”

Without giving him much time to think about a response, let alone make one, Engelmann continued on. “You see, Armas, that is the problem indeed. All these fear-stricken men still believe that the power lies in the
trees
, whether it be this one here, or those across the Dark Sea,” he said, pointing off to the west. “What we should be more concerned about is seeking the
light
!” the Arborist exclaimed in a burst of revelatory laughter. “Ha, for it is there where His true power ultimately will be found!” he said, his knobby finger pointing long and crooked as he emphasized each of his words.

Armas thought on what Engelmann was saying for a moment before he spoke. “So … if the gilded branches are not talismans for the favor of the THREE who is SEVEN, as you suggest, then why does your brotherhood hold them in such high regard?”

“Not high regard, son. They are but a reminder—or at least, that is how I see them,” Engelmann told him. “Each day that I pass through the doors of the mother willow, I am again reminded of the apparent failure of my life’s work and calling,” he told him, fully aware of what his words implied. “But let me tell you, son, those golden sticks there … they are also a reminder for me to hope.”

“Hope?” Armas asked.

“Yes, Captain, hope,” the Arborist answered him. “For the enlightened power of the THREE who is SEVEN to show itself again, and that those who remember to seek it will not be disappointed in the end.”

“Those are strange things to hope for in these dark days, my friend. Perhaps your efforts should be to hope for the resolve and determination of the men of Haven to find timber aplenty on the Wreath. For though the idea of finding this new light sounds compelling, there does not seem to be any real proof that it exists at all.”

“But my boy, that is precisely why the hoping is both so costly and so painfully beautiful. For hope requires a surrender of your dependence on lesser things, and a trust in the
greatest
.”

Armas chewed on the words of the old teacher and tasted the true flavors of wisdom there. “Though I might not wholly disagree with you, Engelmann, the Chancellor has still asked that the gilded branches be brought to his chambers immediately,” Armas said. “I do not wish to cause any disappointment, lest he change his mind and retract the braids he so recently adorned me with.”

“Well, there is not much sense in going against the wishes of the Citadel, now is there?” Engelmann said playfully. “Even if their reasoning is completely void of any real truth. Come with me, then. I will give them to you.”

“You—what? You will surrender them to the Citadel just like that? Chaiphus seemed to be under the impression that you and your brothers would not be so inclined to part ways with the relics,” Armas said, a bit puzzled.

“Well, Ispen and Aspen have the same reasoning skills as our wise Priest King, don’t they?” Engelmann laughed out loud. “I am sure they would make a big fuss over their departure, but they are not here, and I am not concerned over them. What I am most concerned for,” he spoke slowly, doing his best to dramatically emphasize each individual word, “is the seeking and the finding of the light! So you see, the sooner Jhames’ ships can set sail, the closer we come to finding the fulfillment of the promise, Captain.” Engelmann concluded his argument with an exaggerated bow.

Armas stood there watching the curious, green-haired old man. He shook his head in amazement at the refreshing irreverence with which this Arborist conducted himself.

“Come now, Captain; come and retrieve the relics, and perhaps I can aid you in keeping the favor of the Citadel, huh?” Engelmann winked and then waved for him to follow.

“I don’t think I will be able to get them just yet,” Armas said apologetically. “I have yet another assignment to carry out before the silver light turns on the branches of the great tree.”

“Oh? Another assignment, you say?” Engelmann asked him.

“Well, yes. Do you remember the riot that happened just outside the Kings’ Gate, when the last branch fell?” Armas asked.

“I do indeed,” Engelmann replied. “That was the very same day I met my newest student, Michael.”

“Michael?” Armas asked.

“Yes, the groomsman who was driving the carriage that the maddened mob attacked,” Engelmann told him.

“Huh. Well, that very same Michael is my next assignment,” Armas said, intrigued at the strange coincidence.

“He is not in some sort of trouble, is he?” Engelmann asked.

“What? No, he is not in any trouble,” Armas replied. “In fact, he is about to get the very opportunity that I was hoping would be mine—an assignment to the new colony. The Citadel has named him their groomsman.”

Engelmann thought about it for a long minute. He scratched his moss-colored beard and ran his hands through his green-tinted hair for what seemed to Armas like an awkward eternity before he spoke again.

“I do not believe that Michael is meant to travel across the Dark Sea, any more than you were meant to,” Engelmann said unabashedly. “For I perceive a different sort of fate is woven for the two of you.” He considered Armas silently for another moment, peering into his eyes with a knowing and rather foreboding gaze. “But … orders are orders, aren’t they? Since you are here, well, you might as well drink your double fill from the same flagon! Huh?”

“I don’t understand,” Armas sighed, raising an eyebrow at the eccentric old fellow standing before him.

“Well, come then. I will show you what I mean, for your second assignment is most certainly in the near vicinity of your first assignment. Ha!” Engelmann laughed his wiry laugh, clearly amused at the plot unfolding in front of his old eyes.

The Arborist and the captain made their way deep into the sacred garden, closer and closer towards the burning tree. Because their eyes were focused on the iron door of the mother willow, they did not notice the purple-eyed Owele that was perched high in the remaining branches of the great tree, his white down camouflaged in the burning, silver flames.