Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (26 page)

Crab dead littered the banks here
too, and frog dead floated with naught but legs poking above
water’s surface. Carrying Melai and Gargaron, Grimah hurried
across—crab shell crunching beneath his gigantic hooves, rotting
crab guts squishing out across the wet stones.

Ahead of them now, deer and goat
roamed, watching Melai and Gargaron and steed approach; and birds
swooped and soared, and crickets and cicadas chirped and hissed in
the grasses and shrubs. It were overwhelming to Gargaron’s senses,
to have been caught in a vacuum without such sights and sounds of
animal life for many days. He quickly forgot the dead crabs and
frogs of the brook, and felt his eyes watering and were glad Melai
sat in front of him so that she could not see the tears on his
cheeks. He felt salvation were close at hand. He felt certain this
sorcerer had uncovered the secrets of the doom.

Still, hope turned to confusion at
the sight of many a dead folk poised in a most peculiar fashion.
‘What be this?’ he wondered aloud, frowning. He had not noticed
them from his previous vantage point on the adjacent hill. He had
taken them for shrubs or stunted trees.

‘
This be the work of the Dead
Man,’ came Melai’s voice. ‘Do not look upon it.’

Gargaron frowned. ‘Oh, and tell us what you
know about it?’

‘
I have learned
many secrets from the trees of Willowgarde. The Dead Man sits, they
say, on Haitharath’s hill. Rumours tell of folk matching its stare
through sheer curiosity, and to their doom. For, sooner or later,
folk who stare at him be not free to avert their eyes, and by some
invisible force their eyeballs are sucked from their skulls. And
dark roots grow from their legs and tether them to the
earyth
where death
eventually visits them, an awful painful death perpetrated by the
Dead Man as his arms reach out across the hill from where he sits
and scratches out their innards.’

The Dead Man statue towered into
the sky where it stood at summit of hill. It were both impressive
and ghastly, hunched and goggle-eyed, and although it were side-on
from Gargaron’s and Melai’s point of view, its head and chin were
turned in their direction and no matter where they roamed on that
hill it seemed always side-on to Gargaron and Melai, and always it
watched them.

It were a true
conscious effort for Gargaron to keep his eyes from it. Though he
scoured the hill, taking in more than a hundred doomed folk dotted
here and there, apparently rooted to
earyth
, torsos rent open and chest
cavities emptied.

It occurred to
Gargaron that they had been deliberately left for intruders to look
upon. As a warning.
Keep
Away
. For why else would this sorcerer
have left such an abhorrent spectacle on his
doorstep.

Gargaron heeled Grimah and winding
amidst both dead folk and living livestock (that Dead Man always
watching) they took themselves up hill.

4

The cottage on the plateau sat
amidst trees that Melai claimed were enchanted. They possessed
mouths. And clawed arms. And large red unblinking eyes like those
of the narwhales Gargaron had seen as a lad, hauled in by the
sail-luggers, barbed on fishermen’s harpoons upon the bleak cold
seas of Yissoonensk.

As Grimah approached, the mouths
of these beast-trees opened, bark parting in creaking juddering
movements. They began to wail. The birds took for the skies. The
sounds of cheeping bugs died away. And deer and goat fled into the
sparse hilltop woodland.

Grimah halted and Gargaron
dismounted, and standing where he were before the cottage, keeping
his distance from the moaning trees, he called out above the din.
‘Sorcerer Hawkmoth? Do you hear me? I be Gargaron Stoneheart of
Hovel and with me I have Melai Willowborne of Thoonsk. You sent
your metal men with an invitation for us to join you. Hear me now,
be you at home?’

He cocked his head, listening for
a reply, squinting, straining his ear as the trees howled about
him. He were intrigued by the size of the cottage. He had never met
Hawkmoth but had once or twice in his days come across sorcerers
who were of a species of tall folk emanating from the realm of
Corsares On Hunn. Perhaps Hawkmoth were one of such folk for this
cottage, while not on a scale of Gargaron’s own in Hovel, were by
the looks of it, large enough to permit even he
comfortably.

‘
Sorcerer
Hawkmoth?
’ Gargaron called again.
‘
Do you hear me?
’
He glanced around at Melai. He had not voiced it but a worry he’d
had on their approach began to pick at him: what if this Hawkmoth
had succumbed to the blight. For all Gargaron and Melai knew, the
sorcerer lay dead and decaying inside this cottage (or elsewhere)
and they were too late in learning what possible secrets he’d
uncovered.

Gargaron surveyed the beast-trees.
Their wails had reduced to soft growls but a number of them had
uprooted, were shuffling toward them on twisting, cloddy roots.
Mouths with wooden fangs gaped at him. Red eyes glowered. Branches
with curving spiked claws reached for him.

‘
Sorcerer
Hawkmoth?
’ Gargaron called once more.
‘
Do you hear me?
’
He felt uncertain whether or not these creatures were game enough
to attack. He and Melai were certainly outnumbered. But he withdrew
his sword all the same. And approached the cottage’s front door.
Stooping he rapped the knocker. As he did, numerous eyes that had,
until then, been burrowed deep inside the door’s dark wrinkled
woodwork, snapped open and glared at him, yellow and aglow; a
peculiar mewling sound seemed now to rise from the door
itself.

How many
enchantments must this sorcerer throw at us?!
Gargaron thought irritably. Ignoring the eyes and the
mewling, he reached again for the knocker but this time a black
tongue darted from an unseen slit in the wood and curled about his
arm, followed by another that whipped out and coiled tightly about
his neck; both drew him with inexplicable force toward the door,
pinning him there against it. A swarm of small flying critters then
besieged him, arriving without warning in a cacophonous mass from
some mystery origin. Gargaron initially thought them enormous
hound-flies. Alas they turned out to be a swarm of squealing
woodland pixies. Climbing through his hair and clothes, wriggling
through his ears, pinching him, scratching him, digging their claws
into his skin, cackling, keening, screaming.

He heaved himself backwards from
the door, the pair of tongues holding him finally releasing their
grip. He ambled about, yanking pixies from his clothes and hair
with his free hand, tossing them aside, swinging his sword through
the air. Yet still they came, in immense clouds. Melai had unslung
her bow, had nocked several arrows, but firing into the swarm would
have seen Gargaron punctured. Thus she stayed her hand.

Suddenly a
booming voice erupted from the slate roof of the cottage above.
‘
Away, all ye stinking critters! Away with
ye now!
’

At once, as if in fear, the black
pixies flew off in droves, taking for treetops where they alighted
and gibbered and squealed and fought one another madly.

Spitting pixie sweat from his
lips, dabbing welts and scratches on his face and neck, Gargaron
staggered back until the slate roof came into view and there at
roof’s edge, flat upon her belly, her head jutting out over the
guttering, lay a strange woman.

5

She both smiled and glared at
Gargaron and Melai and their mount. She had black hair and pointed
chin and eyes that betrayed her somehow, as if she had much to
hide. And while her face were pale as moonlight, she had black
fingers that gripped roof edge with glistening black claws. She
grinned as they gazed up at her, her shifty eyes darting back and
forth between this giant, his nymph, and their horse. ‘I have been
waiting for ye, I have.’

From where Gargaron stood back
near Grimah, he watched her; two or three pixies still knotted in
his hair, buzzing and cursing and squirming about. Melai whispered,
‘We have been duped. This be some witch luring us to our deaths.
There be no Haitharath here, I feel it. We need turn and
flee.’

To which the strange woman
replied, ‘Witch? Ha! Don’t be so silly, little nymph of the forest!
I am but the good sorcerer’s wife, I am.’

Gargaron maintained his frown but
bowed his head ever so lightly, holding his sword now at his side.
‘Well then, glad to make your acquaintance. I am Gargaron
Stonehea―’

‘
Yes, I heard ye names when ye
bellowed it out, good giant,’ she said still grinning, still lying
there at roof’s verge, although now she had her palms propped under
her chin, resting there on her elbows, as if enjoying this
byplay.

‘
Right then,’ Gargaron said, ‘what
be your name then prey tell?’

‘
Eve,’ she said
simply. ‘Short for
Evehnyer
Dawnraider
. First and last of my
kind.’

Her eyes stayed on them, and she
did not move and for a time no-one spoke. After some moments of
this the woman left the roof. Her feet and legs rose behind her
like a scorpion’s tail and curled out over her head. Then she
lifted her torso up with her hands and pushed herself over lip of
roof, feet-first.

She landed like a spider, on all
limbs, and for a moment from where she crouched she gazed up at
them as a hound might. Then she scampered for the door.

Gargaron backed
up involuntarily, tightening his grip on his sword.
Something be amiss here
,
his mind’s voice told him.

6

At door of cottage the woman
pulled herself to her feet and here Gargaron and Melai took in her
full height. First impressions suggested she did not belong here.
Though, while certainly a tallish woman, the cottage were obviously
built for someone of even greater stature than herself, for barely
at half the door’s height did she stand.

She cast her guests a shadowy
over-shoulder grin. ‘Why don’t ye both come in? I have ripe, crisp
apples inside. And cheese. And fresh baked bread.’

Gargaron realised the beast-trees
were all retreated and fallen silent. Their eyes however, continued
to watch the newcomers with great suspicion and
mistrust.

As for the pixies, they remained
in treetops, like a colony of bats, squealing and chittering. And
those left knotted in Gargaron’s hair, untangled themselves finally
and one by one flew off.

The woman, Eve as she had
introduced herself, unlocked the door with an enormous metal key
shaped in the fashion of a fish bone. She ushered them forward with
her black hands and black claws. ‘Come,’ she said,
smiling.

Gargaron and Melai remained where
they were. ‘I do not trust her,’ Melai whispered. ‘Nor do I,’
Gargaron told her. And to the woman he said, ‘I hope you do not
think it rude when I ask, but where be this sorcerer Hawkmoth? It
were he, after all, who summoned us here. Not you. And I would
prefer to get this out of the way here and now before we follow you
inside. We have had to overcome much to get here and I would like
not to jeopardise all our hard work at this juncture. I am sure you
understand.’

‘
But of course.’ She grinned. ‘How
remiss of me not to explain.’ She eyed him closely, her eyes
narrowed. And she said nothing for a moment, as if brewing up some
tale in her mind. ‘Hawkmoth Lifegiver… has but already departed.
Yes. Almost… two days gone. He had no choice but to, ah, leave
early, you see.’

Creases formed in Gargaron’s brow.

‘
Why, ye do not believe me,
giant?’ she rasped, still grinning.

‘
Forgive me,’ Gargaron said, ‘but
the current state of things be none too conducive for swallowing
tall tales.’

‘
Tall tales?’
She cackled. ‘If there were one for
tall
tales then surely it would be a
giant.’

He did not share her joke. He
remained stone faced. ‘Where be the sorcerer Hawkmoth?’

She eyed both he and Melai for
several moments.

‘
Where be the sorcerer?’ he
demanded.

Eventually she spoke, grinning.
‘Alright, allow me to confess. I have but nailed down his wrists
and ankles and have splayed his innards. Alas, do not fret, he
still lives, but remains none too mobile. And oh, perhaps none too
talkative either since I have relieved him of his tongue. But I am
sure he’ll listen to all ye have to say as I have kindly left his
ears where they are.’

Gargaron eyed her
coldly, adjusting his grip on his sword.
Melai were right
, he thought.
This be a witch. And she has lured us here to
what end?

This Eve cackled
again. ‘I see now it be
yee
who speaks falsehoods, Giant. For ye swallow tall
tales rather naturally, and I believe ye did tell me
otherwise.’

‘
What are you
playing at?
’ Gargaron demanded angrily;
beside him Grimah had begun to grow unsettled, looking about, its
neck raised, stepping hither and thither.