Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (18 page)

A bitter sweet
end
, Melai thought. For she had planned to
bring on this oaf’s demise herself, or, at very least, desired him
see her, allow him to know that his death were punishment for all
the suffering and pain he had brought down upon Thoonsk and her
daughters.

Well, then, he
dies,
she thought petulantly.
What care is it of mine? With his death I have my
retribution, and the world is rid of one more murderous
Rjoond!

8

Bubbles and ripples and swirls and
splashes became of the water’s surface above the drowning Rjoond.
She had watched these attacks before and knew this Rjoond were wild
with panic. She wondered if the Soulsucka would release him once it
had drunk its fill of his soul, whether or not she would see him
rise to surface… Maybe there would be just enough time, a fading
moment in the final stage of this Rjoond’s pitiful life, when he
would look back at her with death already creeping through his
eyes, and see her, distantly acknowledge her presence, and know his
death were payment for all the death and dying he had visited upon
this woodland.

Just as she were pondering this,
the lagoon’s surface above where the Rjoond had sunk, erupted
suddenly in a tremendous flurry of water and the vile giant thrust
upward, surfacing, gasping for air and scrambling frenziedly for a
copse of weeping oaks whose great trunks hung low and horizontal
over the lagoon.

He dragged himself up into their
fold, his weight causing them to sag, and their canopy shook
wildly. She were disappointed, but glad that she might yet have her
fun with him. Though she remained perplexed as to how he had
managed to free himself from the Werm’s watery hold.

It were still clung to his ankle
she saw. Not dead as she had feared. And for many moments Rjoond
sat there gathering his breath. Gasping. Gagging. Coughing. Water
and snot and spittle burst from mouth and nose as he did so,
dribbling down chin and neck and chest. It took him some while to
calm himself, gather his senses. When he did he looked around wide
of eye, searching for his steed. He caught sight of it some
distance away, standing there gazing into the treetops.

Melai realised she had at last
been spotted. The steed had sensed her all along but had so far
failed to pinpoint her. Now, even through her camouflage, he stared
dead at her.

Rjoond, obviously intrigued,
followed his steed’s steely gaze. But he saw either nothing, or
were suddenly distracted again by the little monster around his
lower leg that his attention were not long on the subject of his
horse’s interest. Quickly his mind and sight reverted to the thing
driving pain through his ankle.

Melai watched as he brought his
foot to rest on the great oak trunk, and watched as he gripped the
body of the Soulsucka and stretched what he could of its strong,
truncated body out across thick gnarled bark, positioning it like a
lump of meat on a chopping board, and he pinned it there with his
fist.

9

With his free hand Gargaron moved
to fetch his dirk from its sheath. But find it he did not possess
it; the last occasion he had seen it were before he had been tossed
into the drink. No doubt it had sunk to lagoon’s leafy, sandy
bottom.

Undeterred he reached his free arm
over his shoulder and extracted his mighty greatsword. Carefully he
lined up his fearsome blade with the beast, and then drew back his
arm in a tall arc…

10

Swift were the attempted
execution, swift and sudden and true, hammering down his blade with
all his considerable Rjoond strength.

The surprised look on his face as
his glistening blade bounced wildly off beast’s armoured hide were
priceless. And by his grimace and grunt, Melai guessed the action
had sent another lightning surge of pain through his leg and
foot.

He fell back, apparently
exhausted, as if a great inebriation had suddenly engulfed him. He
fell back against tree trunk and leaf, panting.

11

Gargaron had not anticipated the
complete and utter debilitating pain that rocketed through him upon
the strike of his sword on his attacker. It had brought on nausea
and a deep pounding throb up his leg and through his groin and
lower belly and up into his torso. And now, as if to compound all
matters, he were losing his strength.

Not for the first time since the
downing of the airship did he wish his satchel were with him; he
were sure if he could deploy a wee drop of liquid Helfire upon this
little beast then the thing would burn and release its hold on him.
But satchel and Helfire were gone and lost.

As he lay there he felt something
nudging him, nibbling at his forearm. When he looked he found
Grimah trying to heft him out of bough and trunk. The horse looked
concerned, as if he knew there were danger afoot, for he kept
turning its gaze to the canopy, as if something out there were
watching them.

Gargaron looked, but again saw
nothing… and found he did not care anyway. He suddenly wished to
sleep… his exhaustion now causing him to lose consciousness. His
thoughts began to drift. And the pain left him… and he almost
forgot the critter clinging to his ankle.

The horse gnawed on his arm. He
shoved it aside. He knew not whose horse it were now anyway. Nor
from where it had come, nor what it were doing there. He wished it
would leave him be.

And then as if his wish rang true
the horse turned and dashed away through the swamp.

Good
, he thought,
be off with you
. He felt
awfully sleepy and a long rest would do him some good. He stretched
out along the trunk of the oak. And he gazed up into the tree tops
where golden sunbeams slanted down, illuminating bug and birds as
they darted to and fro.

It were here that he saw her. The
beautiful winged angel perched in the boughs above. Simply watching
him. At first she had the colouration of the woodland about her,
and thus particularly difficult to pick from her surroundings were
she. But once she leapt from her perch and swooped toward him,
hovering there with wings beating in a blur, he saw her skin take
on the colour of limes and her long hair the hew of lush summer
grass. He realised then that she held a bow, with an arrow aimed
directly at his face.

He could barely keep his eyes open
however. And wondered if she were not part of some beautiful waking
dream.

12

Melai hovered there. It were just
she and this giant now, her Grunt arrows having drawn his beast
away. ‘Before you die, hear me, oafish Rjoond,’ she spoke to him,
tip of arrow mere inches from his face. ‘You have brought a plague
upon mother Thoonsk and her daughters, and this shall not go
unpunished. So hear me and heed me, this be why you
die.’

She drew back her bow string and
waited for Rjoond to meet her eyes, for the very moment she felt he
had understood. That moment would see her release the cord, and
Rjoond would find an arrow lodged through his face and its nectar
of insanity pumped directly into his brain. Then she would fly back
to treetop and watch him self-destruct.

Just as she made to fire the barb,
there came the most infernal squeal. It echoed away through the
woods and she saw the Soulsucka suddenly thrashing about Rjoond’s
lower leg. The Rjoond stirred, lifting his heavy head in an attempt
to sit up. With somewhat detached eyes, he watched the critter
attached to his leg whipping back and forth, as though it were
trying to grind his foot free with its teeth. He seemed however to
feel no pain.

Suddenly, inexplicably, the thing
gave up its hold on him, slid from his ankle, plopped onto the
wooden bough and fell still. Never to move again. Its bony white
tongues lay across the bark like barbed spears. Its hidden limbs,
those deployed when holding prey beneath water, now unfurled as its
body relaxed in death.

Witnessing this, Melai turned from
surprise to fear.

Screeching, she
flew backwards, out of sword’s reach should this Rjoond try to
strike her. ‘
You!
’ she scolded, raising her bow at him, aiming her arrow
directly at his face. ‘
How have you done
this? What magic do you wield? What has Mother Thoonsk done to
you?! Why do you murder her and her children?
’

Rjoond lay back down, resting his
head on knobby bark, exhausted, not even certain the flying angle
before him were real. ‘I-I do not understand,’ he said groggily,
faintly, hoarsely. ‘Please, who… who are you…? Wh-what be this
place? I have forgotten.’ He reached his arm to her; it waved and
swayed, as if he struggled to keep it aloft.

It were a ruse she knew, his
feigning exhaustion. He had shrugged off the deep-water werm like
it had been nothing more than a tired old crab. Now it lay dead,
sprawled lifeless across tree trunk. What poison or magic did he
wield? Other than her own folk, she had never known someone or
something possess the ability to render lifeless a Soulsucka werm
of the deep.

‘
All of
this
,’ she spat viciously,
‘
is your doing! How could you survive the
bite of a Deviling Werm if not for the dark powers you have
obviously brought here?!
’

He made to raise his head again.
Though he could barely lift it from trunk of tree. Granted, by all
appearances, the deep-water werm had not eaten up his mind or will,
but its effects were obviously being felt.

‘
I… I do not know that of what you
speak,’ he murmured. ‘H-honestly.’

‘
Death!
’ she screeched.
‘
You deliver death. Everything be dying.
You deliver naught but death!
’

He looked about groggily. His eyes
opening and shutting. ‘No. No, n-n-not me. I b-bring no
death.’

‘
Liar. My forest be dying because
of you and your murderous lot.’

He lay there. His head against the
trunk. When he spoke he sounded weak. ‘S-some blight be
kill-killing all. No l-land have I crossed that re-remains
untouched by it. It kills a-all before it with no discrimination.
And none… none of it be my doing. My-my very own f-family has
perished because of it. I am all… that survives.’

‘
Murderer and a
liar both,’ she screeched, and finally loosed her Barb of Insanity
filled with its Dark Moonlight. Followed quickly by another, and
another, and another in blurred, wild succession. The Rjoond had no
time to react. But he barely looked surprised as the four arrows
lodged
fwick! fwick! fwick!
fwick!
deep into his
face.

As he rolled backwards she fired a
final shot, a three pronged Spittle of Xonsüssa, straight into his
chest. With that, tears streaming from her eyes, she flew for the
tree tops and away.

1

SHE could not watch the Rjoond die
as she had intended. Did not wish, after all, to see him cutting
himself up. Enough death she had witnessed in the last few days.
Thus she flew and flew and flew, away and away. She did not wish to
hear his howls of pain and grief when he flayed himself, when he
hacked off his fingers and toes and face, when he chewed up and
swallowed his own tongue, knifed out his eyes and sliced open his
belly, when he lay there bleeding out. The Spittle of Xonsüssa
would ensure his attack on himself would be frenzied, violent,
brutal, and the pain multiplied a hundredfold.

She flew home to
Willowtree and perched high in the Temple Tree boughs where she
could see above all other trees, all of her world, all of Thoonsk,
stretching away to horizon in every direction. And there she sat
and prayed to Mother Thoonsk for forgiveness (for bleeding a
foreign creature within the sanctity of the woodland), and for
guidance. But no matter how much she tried to push them aide, the
last words she’d heard from the Rjoond kept replaying in her
thoughts: ‘
Some blight be killing all. No
land have I crossed that remains untouched by it. It kills all
before it with no discrimination. And none of it be my doing. My
very own family has perished because of it. I am all that
survives
.’

‘
Lies,’ she insisted, weeping.
‘All lies.’

They had come, when Moon of Trolls
had hung full and stark above, when the Bluerock Pipits were still
nesting and not yet flown south for the coming of the rains, a
contingent of Rjoond from Autumn, seeking an audience with all
leaders of the forest nymph clans. They had come with yet a further
proposal for another road that would slice through Thoonsk, they
had come with the promise of wealth, with plans, and “recompense”,
to upgrade and modernise the various settlements within Thoonsk
herself, to open up trade routes, and the possibility of
exploration for rare minerals, profits split evenly with various
‘land owners’ within Thoonsk. In return the Rjoond would expect to
be granted permission to cut their corridor directly through the
water forests. This would of course come with it the matter of
cutting a swathe through Mother Thoonsk’s ancient children, her
oaks, her beeches, her bloodwoods, her rosewoods, her ghost gums,
her elms, her paperbarks, her willows, her freshwater
pandanus.