Read The Great Darkening (Epic of Haven Trilogy) for Free Online

‘Calarmindon’ whispered by a voice I do not know. That is when I woke up, and saw your frightened face.”
    “I was not frightened,” Michael protested with a look of bemused disbelief on his face. “And who calls you Calarmindon, anyways?”
    “Is that all you have to say? Who calls you Calarmindon?” Cal stepped away from Michael, disappointed. “What is wrong with you, brother?”
    “Perhaps you are ill,” Michael said in mock concern, reaching for Cal’s forehead as he feigned looking for a fever.
    Cal slapped his hand away in frustration. “I am not sick, nor am I making this up! There was a light out there, a violet light. A beautiful light.”
    “Let me guess, was Illium there too?” Michael continued to poke fun at Cal now that the threat of the master groomsman’s lashes was all but a distant memory.
    “What?” Cal said incredulously. “Michael, I am telling you truly!”
    “This dream sounds like all the rest!” Michael said emphatically. “You always have these … these fevers where you turn to a dreamy-eyed statue at the most inopportune times. Was it not just four days ago that you were dreaming of the day your father put you atop that old mule and taught you how to ride?” Michael recounted with annoyed sympathy. “You swore to me that it felt as real as the wind upon your skin!”
    Cal’s countenance began to fall just a little as his closest friend made plain the difficult truth of the matter.
    “And what, just two days before that there was the dream about Nasrin, the wild rose woman—”
    Cal interrupted him before he could go on any further. “That’s different and you know it!”
    “I know you believe it is different, brother,” Michael said, his voice softening. “But stories of magical purple lights and strange voices using your full birth name, well, they seem like just that—dreams.”
    Michael walked over to his frustrated and slightly wounded friend and placed his hands on Cal’s strong shoulders. “The only magic in this grey world is found in places like the rosy red lips of that Nasrin woman. And magic would be the only way any one of us would ever have a chance of having her become more than just a fanciful dream!” he said with laughter in his voice.
    Cal looked into the eyes of his friend and chose to laugh along with him, forcing aside the thoughts of his all-too-real vision and the hopes of ever convincing Michael that it was anything more than a dream. “Well, that part is true enough at least,” Cal said with a self-deprecating laugh. “Come on then … we have work to do.”
    As the two young men walked towards the stables to begin mucking out the stalls, Cal could not help but feel the lonely burden of the weight that the visions left him with. Though he laughed and worked alongside his friend, he could not shake the piercing screech echoing angrily in his thoughts.

Chapter Four

    S ince before Cal could remember, or rather since before he cared enough to notice, he and his family would make their way to the small chapel in the borough of Westriver every third silver evening and every seventh amber morning of every week. Westriver was named, not so creatively, after its location within the great walled city. The Kingdom of Haven was divided into three boroughs. Westriver was located to the west, Abondale was made up of the rich soil and the vast farmlands to the south, and Piney Creek was situated in the cold forestlands to the north.
    The boroughs surrounded the political and religious center of Haven, which was the grouping of buildings separated by the cold waters of the river Abonris. This Capital served as the royal homestead and housed the royal libraries, halls, and cathedrals. Within its high, jeweled walls, built to the east atop the highest elevation in all the Kingdom of Haven, sat the great Citadel. This glittering structure towered dominant above the rest of the Capital, breathtakingly illuminated by the flames of the great tree.
    The