Falling in a Sea of Stars (Green Rider #8)

The Calling

T he spearhead tips of conifers pierced the pall of mist that draped Blackveil Forest. Moisture drip-drip-dripped from branch and needle and plunked onto the black moss that matted the ground. Stagnant air choked the understory and dampened sound, but the quiet was deceptive.

A sentience filled with malice stirred in Blackveil’s rotten heart.

All the forest and its creatures stilled.

They waited, wary and uneasy, though somewhere in the deepest murk, a serpent emerged from its burrow, scales lustrous in the muted light as it glided over tree roots and coiled around rocks.

It paused, head wavering and tongue flickering, before it struck and swallowed a spine-tailed rat whole.

Malevolence flowed through fetid streams, into every gully and thicket, and was sucked in by the roots of trees all the way to the canopy. It built like a flood straining against a dam until it could no longer be contained.

The force erupted with so furious a roar it flushed winged creatures from their roosts. Other beasts shrieked and howled and bolted in fear. The very ground shook and trees shattered and crashed to the forest floor.

Blackveil’s master, the sentience known as Mornhavon the Black, had awakened once again.

And settled with a sigh.

· · ·

Alessandros del Mornhavon, the heir to the emperor of the far distant Arcosian Empire, had led a conquest of territory held by the Sacor Clans more than a thousand years past to claim its resources, especially its abundant etherea, the natural magic of the world.

It had faded almost to extinction in his own lands due to overuse, especially in augmenting the strength of the military and enhancing the lives of the ruling elite.

When the empire stopped sending him ships of supplies and soldiers, and the messengers he dispatched to his father to plead for aid failed to return, it was clear he’d been abandoned and left an exile in an uncouth wilderness.

Incensed, he rejected the empire as he had been rejected and continued his conquest, declaring the lands Mornhavonia, of which he was master, emperor, and god.

Until his defeat by the Sacor Clans and their allies.

Wounded by a magical device of his own making and imprisoned behind the cursed wall, he had slept long centuries.

He’d awakened briefly almost three years previous, only to be wounded again by the descendent of he who had once been his closest friend but later proved a traitor: Hadriax el Fex , the galadheon, the betrayer.

The time had come for Mornhavon to right the many wrongs perpetrated against him.

· · ·

The forest tensed once more, but this time the outburst was tightly controlled and carried a calling, a calling sent out into the ether as fleet and sharp as an arrow. A call that sought the two who must rise and serve.

The call soared over the canopy of the forest northward. It flew relentlessly on, surmounting the broken section of the D’Yer Wall that imprisoned the malignant presence within Blackveil, and impaled the untainted earth upon which the season’s first snow had begun to fall.

But it did not stop there. Carried by branch and leaf, upon currents of the air, and deep within the soil, the call spread to the far reaches of Sacoridia.

Terrandon, Terrandon, Terrandon . . .

· · ·

In the deep woods of Wayman Province stood the remains of a crumbled keep on what had once been an open promontory fortified by ditches and walls, its lord long forgotten in the shadows of the past. Moss and leaf litter blanketed stones quarried at the time of Mornhavon’s defeat.

So motionless, so silent was it in the deep of the wood that snowflakes could be heard to alight with a feathery tap-tap on stone and bough.

Down from the ruins, in a dell, also forgotten, lay a mound, a rocky burial cairn surrounded by obelisks, their inscriptions weathered and obscured by green-gray lichen, though the horse form of Salvistar, harbinger of strife and battle, could be discerned, as well as symbols of warding.

A few of the monuments tilted at precarious angles, and one lay broken on the ground beneath a carpet of moss.

The cairn stood bare, but for a layering of dead pine needles and leaves. No life sprouted from it despite the fact it was nearly as old as the keep.

Terrandon, Terrandon, Terrandon . . . came the call.

It whispered through the trees, scattering birds and squirrels, and wove between the obelisks.

Spells of warding, which had been set into them at the end of the Long War, should have deterred the calling, but the spells had not been maintained and had grown weak.

The warding was not meant to keep people out, though the symbols scribed on the obelisks warned all to turn back, but to keep the one who slept beneath the cairn in, for it was a prison.

The calling sparked against the faint power of the warding spells that remained. They could not deter it, and it rushed across the clearing to the cairn. It oozed through cracks and crevices and into the burial chamber beneath.

Terrandon, Terrandon, Terrandon . . .

· · ·

The call also spread to the east coast of Sacoridia seeking a remote and bleak headland in Coutre Province.

There, another crown of obelisks stood against the sky atop a precipitous bluff.

In ancient times, men had hauled wave-tumbled boulders all the way up from the ocean shoreline to build a cairn in the center of the circle.

Like the one in Wayman, nothing grew within the circle, and even seabirds would not nest on the headland’s cliffs.

Here the calling forced itself between the wind-scoured obelisks, causing eruptions of searing power. The carved granite of the obelisks exploded and the ancient spells of warding died.

Lichant, Lichant, Lichant . . . came the calling, and it found its way into the earthen burial chamber.

The calling had come before, but it had been weaker and failed.

Now the entombed, Terrandon and Lichant, twitched on their funerary slabs in response to the call of their master.

Chains rattled, and manacles weakened by rust and age crumbled.

Wards and curses meant to imprison them forever, but neglected and diminished by age, failed.

Three years ago, the lords of the north and west had risen only to be defeated by Green Riders, but now, Terrandon of the south, and Lichant of the east, clawed their way out of their prisons to answer the summons, for they must serve.

Seek the betrayer, Mornhavon commanded. Seek the Galadheon and bring her to me.