Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (28 page)

Melai went on with her report.
‘Haitharath left here two days past. He feared because he had
received no word from survivors such as us, that his metal men had
failed in their task. Thus he sets out in search of the witches of
Vantasia, for he believes it be they who we have to thank for the
blight, for they have cast a great curse upon Godrik’s
Vale.’

‘
The witches?’ Gargaron asked
intrigued, turning his head and casting his eye upon
Eve.

‘
Aye. He believes the Harbingers,
the Dark Ones as you call them, were spawned by witch’s demons,
that they spread poison on the air and contaminate our rivers and
oceans. He claims the shockwaves that rumble occasionally across
the Vale are the result of witch’s Boom weapons.’

‘
Never heard of such
things.’

‘
Neither have I.’

Gargaron let out a long breath as
he took this all in. He were still digesting the news about Eve’s
reanimation, and now this revelation about the witches, this
revelation about demon spawn and Harbingers and so-called Boom
weapons. It were much to take on board. It pushed Eve’s death from
his thoughts for a moment. Why would the witches set out to destroy
the Vale? Why would they orchestrate such widespread killing? He
knew of their centuries old conflict with the sorcerers. But rarely
had it boiled over and affected so many others. He could not fathom
it.

2

He stared long and hard at Eve,
thinking that once she awoke he had a good many questions to put to
her. ‘Be she well?’

Melai took a while to
reply.

‘
Melai,’ Gargaron
prompted.

She sighed. ‘Her state has me
baffled. She should have roused by now.’

‘
Let us hope she does and soon,’
Gargaron said, ‘I have much I wish to ask her. Did you happen to
discern what she has done with Grimah?’

‘
I gather he has been stabled,’
Melai offered.

Gargaron were relieved to hear
it.

‘
Along with as many deer, goat and
bird as she were able to muster before the storm hit,’ Melai
added.

‘
And our belongings? Our
weapons?’

‘
Housed safely away to be returned
to us on the morrow.’

He pictured a witch in possession
of Drenvel’s Bane; he did not wish to imagine the
ramifications.

3

The vortex storm passed by morn.
By then Melai had long been asleep, troubled and restless though it
were. Gargaron had promised her he would stay awake, keep guard,
make sure no harm came to them. But he too had fallen to
slumber.

Melai awoke first, and with a
start; Gargaron’s Nightface watching her. As she rose she gazed
about suspiciously and saw the witch were nowhere to be seen. She
sat there a while, simply listening. For sounds of the witch. For
anything. All were quiet.

She found she could move now
without hindrance. Gone were the leaden feeling in her limbs. She
moved to the shutters and gazed out at the world, for the first
time laying eye on the carnage leftover by the storm. Trees lay
scattered down the slope of the vale. Sticks, branches, twisted
twigs like broken bones. Leaves, thousands upon thousands upon
thousands, a sodden carpet of green, brown, grey. And endless
carcasses. Goat and deer, hare and fowl, innards torn free, ribs
exposed, gathering slugs, and flies as thick as Gargaron’s
eyeballs. A mass of carcasses strewn down slope to brook. The raw,
acrid smell of meat and guts and spit and scat and the cooling
breath seeping from their lungs and the remains of tree and branch
drip, drip dripping with water.

Melai took herself from the view
and saw Gargaron rolling over, rousing, stretching.

He opened his eyes and looked
about. He could smell sizzling bacon. And frying eggs. And steaming
tea. (Alien smells to Melai who thought they were but the stench
from the dead and murdered beyond the abode, and it did nothing to
water her mouth.) He saw Melai and sunlight streaming through the
shutters and there were the wondrous sounds of bugs and birds from
beyond the cottage walls.

For a strange moment Gargaron
thought he were but home again, on a midsummer morn after midsummer
storm. Back in Hovel. With all the delightful animal sounds playing
out of Summer Wood and delicious smells of breakfast from the
kitchen. For a moment he even thought he heard Yarniya singing, and
Veleyal playing with her toys.

Eve appeared then, carrying bowls
of food to the large oak dining table. Porridge as first course,
then eggs with bacon and sausage and black pudding followed. And
fresh blended juice of orange, apple and fennel to wash it
down.

Gargaron felt wary about eating
when Eve offered him a seat at the table. For one, he remained
suspicious of her, and two, he felt uncomfortable eating while
Melai went without.

‘
Sit giant,’ Eve commanded, ‘your
friend here will not leave this cottage hungry.’ She strode off
outdoors, and like inquisitive children, Melai and Gargaron
gathered at one of the rear windows (Melai perched upon the sill
itself, and Gargaron stooping to see) and off went Eve to a large
greenhouse and from there she steered a wheelbarrow filled with
living plants, either housed in large ceramic pots, or their roots
were wound about old logs or around the carcasses of what Gargaron
thought looked like badgers, and returned to cottage.

Melai remained quietly impressed
that this Eve knew how to feed a forest nymph such as
she.

‘
Well, don’t just stand there,’
Eve said. ‘Fill ye bellies. Ye have a long day ahead of ye’selves,
ye ought te know.’

They sat; Melai dwarfed by the
huge oak dining chairs and propped up by cushions; and Gargaron
finding the oak chairs a bit of a squeeze for his large girth. Yet
they both touched no food.

‘
Eat
,’ Eve implored impatiently. ‘It
not be poisoned. If I’d wanted ye both dead I would have done it in
the wee hours when I had ye both under me spell.’

So… they ate… and in silence.
Melai eating directly from the plants as she were accustomed.
Standing in her large seat and biting off small red Fayngul bulbs
that popped deliciously in her mouth. Tearing off chewy toad
lichen. Slurping up then chomping down mouthfuls of soft, succulent
Cravet pondweed. Melai asked between mouthfuls, ‘How have you
sourced all of this, pray tell? It be wonderful. It be as Mother
Thoonsk would have provided.’

Eve had no more
answer than this: ‘Meself and me dear Hawkmoth have both lived long
and know much. We have communion with all manner of sentient soul.
Even ye Mother Thoonsk. Although, we call her by another
name.
Nethusoonsk
.’

Melai frowned, curious. Mother
Thoonsk indeed did bare that name, but as far as she were aware, it
were known only to her children and it were forbidden to speak it
to outsiders.

‘
My dear Hawkmoth has had a long
association with many entities of the world. Particularly those of
nature and the natural world. Thus he has fostered an enduring
friendship with the entity Thoonsk for almost a hundred
years.’

Aye
, Melai thought,
Haitharath indeed be friend of
Mother
. She ate the remainder of her
breakfast in silence.

4

Beyond the windows, the suns were
rising, red streaks of warm light poking through the bare
vortex-blasted hillocks. Birds tweeted and twittered and darted
about the now leafless trees.

‘
Anyhow,’ Eve declared with that
grin of hers, ‘a productive night, I declare.’ She still bore the
young face that she had swapped into many hours before. ‘Little did
we speak yet much did we learn of each other, I feel.’ She eyed
them. ‘Do you both agree?’

Gargaron sat, sipping hot tea, the
searing brew warming his mouth and innards. Personally he had
chosen not to delve into the mind of the witch for there were some
folk his kind did not parley with in such a manner and witches were
one of them. Witches were sly and cunning and had been known to
feign certain states of being in order to trip up an unwary giant.
Gargaron had heard many times the stories of the Seven of Morgane,
the seven giants who had set out to put an end to the Morgane
witches who had been killing and pillaging and spreading
rot-sickness across the realm. When the witches were found they
were said to be close to death, weakened and unconscious. It were
said that some mysterious illness or foe had struck them down. In
order to learn what, the seven giants joined minds with them not
knowing it were a trap. Of the seven who set out to take down the
witches, seven returned… with their minds corrupted. Returning as
naught but Morgane thralls. Before they were ultimately clobbered
to death by giant warriors, the seven had ransacked and destroyed a
dozen towns and villages and slaughtered upwards of nine hundred
innocent souls.

So, Gargaron had
stayed clear of the unconscious witch. Still, he pondered what
Melai had gleaned from the connection she had made and thus he
replied, ‘Aye, much
have
we learned.’

Eve sat and joined them. Sipping
tea. Eating eggs and spinach and crab meat. None spoke for a time.
Then as if to make conversation Eve eyed Gargaron and said, ‘I must
say, I have been intrigued by the visage on the rear of your skull,
giant. It watched me most closely while you slept, I will
say.’

‘
As is its
purpose,’ Gargaron said. His Nightface were often an endless topic
of conversation for people who had spent little time in the company
of giant folk. He found it most tedious. ‘Though, let me say, I am
intrigued by your own visage. When we first met I would swear that
you
wore
an
entirely different face.’

Eve’s eyes strayed to her eggs as
she ate. ‘Aye. A fortunate result from a tragic happening.’ She did
not elaborate.

Yet Gargaron were keen to hear it. ‘Your
death?’ he asked.

She looked up at him once more. ‘Aye. My
death.’

Silence fell over the group.

Eve smiled, feeling the discomfort
of her guests. ‘I were attacked and torn asunder, you may have
learned. My face were ruined. Yet my good husband found ways to
restore my looks. And made it so that I can now choose my
face.’

Gargaron watched her closely for a
time. After a while he said, ‘I have naught heard of a slain soul
being brought back. Not to such an unsullied condition. Tell me,
what strange magic might have returned to me my dear departed
daughter?’

Eve smiled, studying Gargaron for
a few moments. ‘Ye have lost much, giant, I know. So too Melai of
Willowgarde. We have all lost much. But how long has my dear
Hawkmoth known his arcane secrets? Even he has not divulged that to
me. It be something he keeps to himself. But I see the question in
ye eyes, giant. Had those lost to ye been brought here upon their
death, could they have been saved and regifted with life, brought
back, as you put it, to such unsullied a condition? I cannot answer
that. Only Hawkmoth may give ye an answer ye seek. As for myself,
all I know is that I am here, reawoken after death. The method, to
me, remains a mystery. So let us leave it at that.’

Gargaron did not wish to leave it
at that. But if Eve were fibbing about her knowledge as to the
secrets of her reanimation then it were obvious she were not going
to tell him. With a sigh Gargaron resigned himself to asking the
sorcerer when he caught up with him.

5

Once breakfast were done Eve
fetched a map from a side bench and lay it upon table top,
spreading her hands out across its surface, flattening out its
creases. A delicate fingernail traced a straight line above a
meandering roadway heading westways. ‘Hawkmoth departed here two
days gone, taking with him his war-steed Razor, and traveling upon
his remaining zeppelin. This were his projected route. And this be
his projected destination.’ She tapped a remote area of the map
along its western fringe. ‘This be Vantasia inside Dark Wood, the
witch realm. Travel here by zeppelin may take as much a week.
Except, if one were to become grounded, of course.’

Gargaron smiled
ruefully. ‘Aye, if he flies his zeppelin through one of the
shockwaves that have been assailing us then his journey
will
be cut short, I
assure you.’

‘
Well then, travel by horseback
will indeed take longer,’ Eve said. ‘Though Razor be as swift a
horse as I have ever seen. Anyhow, I will shortly post Hawkmoth
news of ye arrival. Once he receives word that ye set out to trail
him, he will delay his push westwards, put down his zeppelin and
make camp to wait for ye to catch him up.’

‘
Others have come before us?’
Melai asked. ‘Other survivors?’

Eve shook her head in jerky
movements. ‘Sadly, as yet, there have been none but yeselves. We
remain hopeful that others be out there still forging their way
here. Hawkmoth detected many of ye. And, as far as I learned, he
managed to dispatch word or transport to ye all.’

‘
What were his method, if I may
ask?’ Gargaron asked intrigued. ‘To trace us. I used the Skysight
in Autumn Town yet found no-one alive anywhere.’