Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (29 page)

Eve smiled. ‘My dear Hawkmoth
possesses many a strange and fanciful ability, giant. I do not
profess to understand how they work. Except, as I said, he detected
many of ye out there, alone, wandering. But enough talk of this,’
she said. ‘Time slithers ever onwards, and I must speed ye both on
ye way.’

6

Gargaron and Melai took turns
soaking briefly in a mighty tub of fresh fire-heated water. And
once dressed, feeling clean and revitalised, Gargaron found Eve
beyond the rear of cottage with their belongings packed together on
the ground. He were relieved to see both his sword and Drenvel’s
Bane lying across his pack.

The world out here beyond the
confines of the cottage dripped with water, and the trees of the
hill had almost all been torn free from their perch. Most had been
flung away to distant places it seemed. Perhaps still twirling
inside the vortex. Others, and there seemed no end to them, were
scattered and thrown every which way, twisted and matted and
knotted and uprooted. The walking beast-trees that had threatened
Melai and Gargaron the day before, those not ripped free and
swallowed by storm, ambled about like lost souls. The hill were
also scattered with the corpses of deer and goat and
bird.

‘
I made to corral as many of them
as I could,’ Eve told him, as she busied herself unfolding a
peculiar little contraption of wood. ‘Alas, many were already
spooked before the storm hit and would not come. I saved what I
could.’

Those who had been spared the
storm’s wrath chewed at grass amidst the trees. And birds played
about, pecking at screepers that chirruped and screeched. The
pixies though were nowhere to be spotted, in hiding or
vanished.

‘
I would say you did as good as
you could given the circumstances,’ Gargaron told her. ‘Be my steed
safe and well?’

She pointed. ‘Aye, and currently enjoying some
oats.’

Gargaron saw stone stables, a
building attached to the northwun wall of the cottage; no doubt
where the good sorcerer Hawkmoth, had kept his own steed. There he
spied Grimah through the open doors on a bed of straw with his two
snouts deep in a trough.

‘
I thank you for housing him. And
us.’

Eve simply nodded and kept on with
whatever she were doing.

‘
And for gathering our
belongings.’

She looked around at him. ‘Ye mean, thank ye
for not helping myself to them.’

He shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’

‘
Giant, I am not in the business
of relieving folk of their possessions. Even if they carry such
famed relics as Drenvel’s Bane.’

He nodded. ‘So, you recognise the
weapon.’

She laughed. ‘Of course. It were
forged with the aid of my foremothers after all.’

Gargaron pondered this. And a
thought came to him for the first time. ‘I don’t suppose you happen
to know its secrets?’

She looked around at him with a frown.
‘Secrets?’

‘
Aye, its secrets. For it be but a
hilt with no hammer. Legend states that it be a magical item, that
to wield it correctly is to bring its hammer-head into existence.
Yet I am starting to think that someone has run off with its other
half for all the use I can get out of it.’

She looked at him squarely. ‘Ye know not how
to wake it?’

‘
Aye.’

She laughed wickedly. ‘Oh, this be
priceless. As soon as I saw it yesterday when ye arrived I took ye
for some fearless warrior.’

He sighed. ‘No, I be a simple
hunter. Naught more. I took Drenvel’s Bane from a sacred temple in
my village where it has been housed for many a year. If my village
druids knew its secrets then they took them to their
grave.’

Eve searched him at length. And
went back to her work. ‘I guess wielding this weapon may aid ye on
ye quest.’

‘
If I could wake it, yes. By its
tales, it ought help its wielder win many a fight and fight off
many a foe.’

She gazed now distantly at the
cobbles. ‘And help protect my dear husband.’ She peered up at him
once more.

‘
Yes. Provided I can learn its
secrets.’

‘
Well, I should think Skinkk’s
blood be your key. My Mothers have long told stories of ancient
weapons forged for mighty warriors. But as far as Drenvel’s Bane be
concerned, Hor the Cutter signed a pact with the weapon, his blood
mixed with that of a Skinkk, joined in battle while his fist
gripped the hilt.’

‘
You think this would help with
any who wield it?’

‘
Provided he were a
giant.’

Feeling a renewed sense of hope
that he may have unlocked the weapon’s secret, he asked, ‘You would
not happen to have any here would you? Skinkk’s blood. A witch and
sorcerer living together must surely brag a collection of such
things.’

She laughed. ‘I’m afraid, giant,
ye assume too much. We are not in the business of hunting Skinkks.
Nor collecting parts from our animal cousins.’

He sighed. ‘So, where might I
source some Skinkk blood then?’

‘
Why, from a Skinkk of
course.’

Gargaron nodded at the mild rebuke
and meant to say more but thought it best now to shut up. He
watched Eve go about her business. When she were done, the
contraption she had been working on looked something like a bizarre
wooden boy, barely standing more than the height of Gargaron’s
knee. He possessed large, yet expressionless eyes and a small
carved nose and small carved lips. He were gangly as a twig. And at
first he did not even seem alive.

‘
This be
a
Windracer
,’ Eve
told Gargaron, kneeling and holding the “boy” upright, steadying
him on his little feet. She tipped a phial of orange liquid to a
reservoir fashioned like a small scooped receptacle in the rear of
the boy’s skull. A thin stream of liquid coursed around the
reservoir that had been etched in a spiral pattern around the boy’s
face and body. As the liquid ran down, slowly the boy seemed to
breathe with life. ‘It shall carry our news to
Hawkmoth.’

7

Melai, fresh and dressed from
bathing, came out into the rear yard in time to see the Windracer
boy standing, independent of Eve, looking about like a curious
child, looking up at Gargaron, looking around at Eve, looking at
Melai who stood no taller than he. Eve took his hand, and the boy
looked at her as a child might a mother. Then she spoke to him, and
in no tongue that Gargaron understood; yet it were one Melai had
heard the trees of Thoonsk occasionally speak. A woodland
language.

Take this message to my dear
Hawkmoth. Tell him survivors have at last found their way to our
cottage; Gargaron Stoneheart of Hovel, and Melai Willowborne of
Thoonsk. They will depart here shortly to trail him. Tell him that
there has been a Vortex storm, that I stabled our beloved animals
but that some have perished. Tell him that I love him. And that I
wait here alone, for his return.

Gargaron and Melai watched her. As
she stopped speaking she kissed the boy on the cheek, and stood
back. Here the wooden boy looked up at her once… then he turned and
ran. Quick as the breeze. Heading westways, over the back of the
hill and gone, out of sight in moments, running like a ghost,
swift, effortless, blurred.

‘
What a marvel that would be,’
Gargaron murmured to himself, ‘to run so quick.’

Eve fetched Grimah from the dry
interior of the stables. Though Grimah proved particularly
stubborn. Either because he did not wish to be separated from his
lovely oats, or he would not be drawn from the stable by one such
as her.

Gargaron took the reins and Grimah
came forth tentatively, looking about, his ears back, weary, alert.
Gargaron gently touched both his noses, soothing the beast.
‘Grimah, ease up now,’ he said softly. ‘Ease up. All be
well.’

‘
He be a beautiful creature,’ Eve
said admiringly. ‘And has a healthy appetite. He made sure there
were naught left of the apples I gave him for his
supper.’

Gargaron looked from his horse to
witch. ‘I thank you again for your hospitality, Eve. You have been
a light in all this darkness.’

‘
And yee pair, lights in mine,’
she said, nodding both at him and Melai. ‘Ye company has been most
welcome. And shall be again if ye choose to return this way after
your mission.’

‘
We will be glad to accept it,’
Melai told her warmly.

Gargaron handed Melai her bow and
quiver, then fixed scabbard across his back and sheathed his great
sword. Once done, he hefted up his pack and strapped it to saddle,
hoisted himself onto Grimah before reaching down in order to haul
Melai to Grimah’s shoulders.

Melai hesitated, turning instead to Eve. ‘Why
do you stay here?’ she asked her. ‘Why not come with
us?’

Eve smiled sadly. ‘Lying over this
hill, and the fields and pastures that immediately surround it, be
a veil of sanctity, a powerful enchantment put in place many years
gone by my Hawkmoth. He wished to create a home here that animals
could retreat to and be safe from poachers, hunters, collectors,
traffickers, smugglers. A place that sick or injured animals might
come to, to either pass on in peace or to heal and find their
strength away from predators.’

She looked about at the torn down
trees, where the carcasses of deer and goat and bird could be seen
through wilting foliage and broken branch and the layer of damp
discarded leaves that seemed to cover everything. ‘On the day of
the first Boom shake, my Hawkmoth were away yonder visiting,
Faeryth, a dear old elf who lived a solitary existence in a tree
abode. Hawkmoth says when the shake swept across the land Faeryth
and his pets died instantly before his eyes. He raced home here
fearing my safety but found me and the animals alive and
unaffected. But on observing a number of goats perishing once they
moved from the safety of this enchanted area to the outside, well,
Hawkmoth warned that I may follow if I were to do the same. And as
he carried out inspections of the nearby villages of Gollahnt and
Somersut, he found all dead. Thus I remain here, kept alive I
believe by his enchantment, while by all reports the Vale dies
around me.

‘
By mystery, magic, or fate, you
pair, like my Hawkmoth, have proven immune to the curse ravaging
our world. So here, for now I wait and hope ye be successful in
turning this blight around.’ She placed her palm gently upon
Melai’s cheek. ‘Go now. Travel swift and sure.’

Gargaron reached down and helped
Melai into saddle.

‘
One more
thing,’ came Eve’s voice. ‘To verify my Hawkmoth’s identity, and
for him to verify yers, be sure to ask him this question:
Should the storm winds fall upon Ostamare, and
the rains not cease, where ought I to take
shelter?
’ His answer will be as
follows…’

1

HILLS rolled away for a number of
miles, all stripped of their trees. They looked like chins of
giants, rugged with the stubble of tree trunks snapped and broken
and twisted and torn. Corpses of wild goat, deer, fox hounds,
littered the sodden grasses.

A lake, listed on Hawkmoth’s map
as Hoakensdeep, could be seen far northways’n’east, its waters
sparkling under morning sunlight. But directly westways’n’south lay
a realm known as Varstahk, a mysterious country of which Gargaron
had heard many a strange and fantastic tale. If Eve were to be
believed, it were also the first major landmark Hawkmoth were to
have flown over in his zeppelin.

And thus Gargaron and Melai and
their two-headed steed turned toward it.

2

By midday the
hills had flattened out to sandy scrubland where tall rock spires
stuck from
earyth
like the petrified tongues of buried gods, poking out into
cloudy skies, licking the heavens. As they became more numerous,
long eerie corridors ran down between each one where spindly trees
grew out from them horizontally. It didn’t take long for Gargaron
to notice these trees were actually on the move, slowly traversing
the looming rock walls like the great starfish of Loovss over giant
coral beds, worming roots shifting with imperceptible slowness,
gobbling at moss whose green feathery hairs looked more like minute
arms with tiny fingers and hands snatching at itsy-bitsy elf bugs
that flew by.

Between many of these rock spires,
serving as both floor and pathway on these long winding corridors,
were worn paving stones between which wilting blue-flowered weeds
grew. Sunlight cast across rock face, bright and hot as wood fire.
But Gargaron also noticed that the pavers were covered in a soft
carpet of elf bugs. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands. Dead.
Or writhing, dying.

Gargaron recalled what Melai had
gleaned from Eve, that the Dark Ones, or Harbingers, spread poison
on the air and contaminated rivers and oceans. But this still
confused him. If the atmosphere were somehow sullied with deathly
toxins, then why had he, Melai or Grimah not yet succumbed? For,
here under full daylight, in all its heartless morbidity, were once
again its apparent process at work. Great killing and great dying.
And if this alleged contamination did not topple the peculiar moss
then moss would most likely starve through lack of elf bugs, and
these trees that fed upon the moss would also in turn
perish.