Mirror Of The Forgotten Gods

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Haven

Present day

Echoes in time

In early October, the wind rustled in Haven's hair. She travelled across the side of a large mountain ridge in the river city of Havenview. She'd been out on the hunt for elk, deer, and small game for three days, but the weather was turning and she'd need to return back to The View soon.

Out on the ridge overlooking the city the trees stretched like the extensive ocean to the west. She could see the blue water in the distance to the west and if she closed her eyes she could imagine the sand on her feet. She smelled the autumn wind and listened to the crumpling leaves under foot. The ridge she stood on sloped upwards almost vertically and from where she stood overlooking the city she had a 360 degree view below her of the surrounding woods. The river which ran through the city and turned its course behind the mountain she stood looking down from coursed with a fast current and then in some parts petered out becoming only a trickle with large barriers of rocks. The docks below, with small ships anchored to their sides, were empty as the Waterkin prepared for the winter.

Havenview was the final stop on the way to Valendrith, the capitol city of Althandria.

The Waterkin clans had long since called The View home. It held the largest ports before reaching Althandria and often bustled with commerce, both by ship, and by land.

Recently it had been quiet. There were rumblings of war—and the five years of peace seemed to be coming to an end.

Haven looked below at the city and watched the few merchants carts that entered through the draw bridge pulled by large brown draft horses. There seemed to be fewer and fewer travelers recently which did not bode well.

For thousands of years war between the Althandrians and the Vesperons had raged. They never truly had peace in the land as the Vesperon army always sought the Althandrian's resources. The Althandrian's capitol, Valendrith, had never been invaded but it had come close twenty years before. Much of the Althandrian's hillside towns and farms had been impacted by the thousand year war. It often felt to Haven like she had to pick a side, and there was a deep foreboding within her.

She felt her brows draw tight together at the thought and took a deep breath as she scanned the horizon. She released her breath slowly and then looked over at the silver and blue water to the west. It guided her eye as she took in the city below.

The thousand year war and the war coming was the same war that had been fought generations before it and would be fought generations after it. There were new Kings, or Queens if you were Vesperion, and sometimes they called it a new war or tried to give it a new purpose but it was all the same: money, greed, and power.

Haven knew the way it sounded before the war came. The quiet that befell the land as the lingering whispers drove themselves into the ears of the men and women in the tavern, or as they purchased meat or bread at the stalls, the whispers hushing the city. She would hear them say, "The Gods be on our side." But everyone claimed it, all of the wars before had been fought with the Gods on one or the others side. If it wasn't a mans war, it was a Gods war.

Haven pondered the thought as she looked towards the clouds. The rain wouldn't fall for another evening, but she should return to camp and prepare herself. Her brother would be looking for her if she didn't return to the View by dawn. Haven turned on her heel and began the sloping track up large boulders which paved the way to her camp.

She thought of the Thousand Year War. She hated everything about it. She felt the familiar tug in her stomach of hatred and anxiety. The war that had stolen her father from her, that broke her mother.