Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (3 page)

But here and now the Magers had
somehow perished, sprawled about in death. Whatever secrets they
may have gleaned from tree and shrub had obviously not been enough
to forewarn them of the blight that had suddenly and inexplicably
befallen them.

Large Gorbulls, wagon haulers, lay
dead and gashed open. And shire-horses were scattered lifelessly
about their enclosures. Already the scavenging hoardogs from deep
within Summer Woods were tearing moist bloody flesh from bone. The
stench of death were sharp and moist and meaty on the late morning
air.

4

Gargaron raced through Hovel, raw
screeching anxiety and fear tearing at his heart. All that filled
his mind were Veleyal, his precious, beautiful daughter. And
Yarniya, his beloved, cherished wife.

He tore down Meadowsvale Lane
toward his stilted house where it were situated along the orange
grove that backed onto the woodland. He raced up wooden stairs,
burst through doors praying he would find his sweethearts huddled
in bedroom or cellar. But he thumped from room to room only to find
his cottage empty.

‘
Veleyal!
’ he called desperately,
‘
Yarniya! Where be you?
’

He spotted then a note on the
dining table and snatched it into his grasp:

Picking Spotted Blues in Summer
Woods,

See you anon,

Love, your dear
Yarniya.

5

Gargaron fled cottage, charged
down lane and exited rear of village over Hovel’s iron bridge that
spanned Shadow Brook, and running, running he charged out into the
airy woodland, woodland that fringed the top of Cahsteks Ridge.
Usual ornithen song had fallen silent. Only the eerie howl of
Hoardogs could be heard through the woods now. Squirrel carcasses
lay spread across duff and leafy carpet. He arrived at Pliko’s
Stream and tracked it to Jaden’s Point, a glade where he knew
Yarniya liked to pick her Spotted Blue toadstools that stood as
tall as Gorbulls.

Though, as he
charged toward it, his heart sunk and he
realised
he were too late.
There before him, a pair of corpses sprawled across dirt and stone.
Hoardogs picked at their toes and would soon drag open their
bellies, and feast. Dread filled him.

He arrived
roaring, the dogs scattering into undergrowth. He dropped to his
knees, scooping his daughter into shaking arms glistening with
sweat… and her head lolled loosely, lifeless. ‘
No!
’ he cried. ‘
Veleyal! Veleyal, please, come round now. Please, awaken, I
beg of you!
’

But she heard him
no longer, and her eyes stared long, empty and dead into the high
leafy canopy. He felt something pinching his leg. He looked around
to find the fingers of his wife weakly touching him. Holding his
daughter in one arm he scrambled to his wife’
s side.
‘
Yarniya
,’
he cried desperately. ‘
Yarniya? What did
this?
’

She could no more
speak than lift her head from the
earyth
. Could but barely whisper.
‘
The
Darkwing
,’ she whispered,
‘
it has awoken
.’
And here the last vestiges of life fast drained from her. And that
were the last she spoke.

Around Gargaron, watching,
cowering beneath thicket and shrub, the multi-limbed Hoardogs
snickered and seethed, eager to feast on the newly dead. Gargaron,
holding his daughter protectively, lunged at them in rage. Most
scurried off but some of the older ones, the braver ones, and those
more hungry, stayed put. These he pelted with stones. Great
peppering handfuls of stones. Smacking many and drawing blood; one
stone hit with such force it caved in skull and bone, brain
squishing out of the hound like a bloom of summer roses. Only now,
wailing, did its mates take off for the safety of denser
woodland.

Gargaron crumpled to sandy ground,
crying. He dragged his wife close. Held both his beloved in his
arms. Their night faces watched him in their detached way; not
comprehending, not yet dead, only watching.

He lay down his wife and daughter
both, side by side, and looked about. He had an enchanted medicine
back in village abode, Lyfen Essence, developed by Hovel’s druids,
a potion that drank away advancing death from a living body. It
were too late for that now.

Yet there were but one more thing
he could try.

He reached for a cut of needle
vines. He slashed several lengths to lie across their bodies. Then
away he dashed into the woodland.

6

He ran toward Jo’ckujark Blind, a
sheer rock wall that jutted straight up from forest floor. He
scrambled along its base, keeping his eyes wide and
open.

Until… he saw one. A vannandal. A
mysterious shelled critter, old-beyond-time, an enigma that had
first come into existence as simple stone spat out by the lost
volcanic mountains of Vahross. Tales told of hundreds of such
rocks. Rocks that were collected by the ancient, decimated race of
Vannandal Knights who had sculpted each one into unique animal
forms before enchanting them with the gift of life.

He rushed to
pluck the creature into his arms… but hesitated. Village rumour had
it that even the act of laying your finger upon a Vannandal could
pull you into Dreamsleep. This were a state that you would awaken
from only weeks later with your body partially rotted and your
brain drained of all conscious and
civilised
thought, forcing you to
walk the
earyth
for the remainder of your days a mindless
ghoul.

If Thronir deems
it then a ghoul I will be!
Gargaron
thought defiantly and he grabbed the critter from the
weeds.

As if in
response, the
vannandal’s
small segmented body
glowed a soft white iridescence. And a not too unpleasant tingle
ran up Gargaron’s fingers. Were this the beginning of
Dreamseleep
? How long did it take to settle in?

He did not
hesitate to find out.
May Thronir take
me!
He clasped the vannandal against his
chest and dashed back to his wife and daughter.

7

The hoardogs had returned. Though
they had been unable to find a way around the needle vines.
Gargaron roared at them as he returned and again they turned and
scattered.

He swiped the needle vines aside
then without waiting another moment placed the vannandal critter
across his daughter’s forehead. He crouched and leaned forward,
pressing his own forehead against the creature; it had a reek like
stony river water. Though Gargaron could not have cared if it
smelled like rot. He wasted no further time, shutting his aching
eyes.

And concentrated his thoughts.

Many times he had observed magers
do this. Yet, the gift of mind-touch were not an act exclusive to
those possessing magical competency. All Giants, to a lesser or
greater extent, had the ability. He himself had harpooned the minds
of many folk over the years, to learn secrets, to unearth
falsehoods, to clarify motives. He had “jumped” into the minds of
animals, to learn tricks to their hunting. But he had never used a
vannandal to bridge his soul with another’s and attempt the
transference of energies. For it were forbidden.

There were naught but dark he saw
at first. Yet soon, as if a doorway had come creaking open, he saw
a faint light. He believed he could hear, faintly from beyond,
Veleyal’s sweet laughter, her voice.

And then it came as if a portal
between he and his daughter had flung suddenly wide open. Instantly
he felt it, pulsing energy, sucking at his life’s core, like dry
sand to water, dragging it through the vannandal, pouring into his
dear Veleyal.

There were no pain here as he had
anticipated. Nothing but a gradual dimming of light throughout his
subconscious. As if sleep were coming on. He did not care. If it
meant that she would sit up and look about and live again then he
were willing to relinquish all his life’s energy.

However, the pull on his soul
began to ebb, the tug he felt in his chest eased.

And after that,
nothing.

Veleyal’s body failed to
awaken.

‘
No
,’ he cried. ‘
No. Come back to me Veleyal. Com back now, I command it. Gods
and goddesses take my life and gift it to you!
’

Again he put his
head to the vannandal, concentrating his thoughts, desperate for it
to work. He wept as he did. For there were no sensation of doorways
opening this time. Naught but silence, as if he were reaching out
into emptiness. ‘
No, it cannot
be
,’ he sobbed. ‘
Veleyal, hear me, please, my love, hear
me!
’

But she did not.

Grunting, anguished, Gargaron
transferred the vannandal to the forehead of his wife, shutting his
eyes, concentrating his thoughts, stepping from his own mind into
hers, sucking the living energy from his soul and heart, forcing
it, heaving it, through the vannandal critter into her, desperate
to open a bridge of consciousness and energy with her. But he got
nothing but blackness, as if there were but a void now where once
there were soul. Weeping uncontrollably he again tried his
daughter.

But again… it were no
use.

He knew then… they were both but
gone.

He threw himself back and wailed.
Trees shook. Stones in the ground shivered. Pebbles shuddered. Any
ornithens left alive tore away into clear skies, and batlings shot
from their caves in great dying clouds.

1

HE sat with them on the edge of
the Great Precipice. Veleyal seated on his left, her small hand in
his. Yarniya, on his right.

‘
What be out there, father?’
Veleyal asked.

‘
Lands of wonder,’ he told her
smiling. ‘Where our ancestors live out their days. You shall love
it there.’

‘
Will I see gran’poppy? Will I see
gran’mama?’

‘
Oh, yes, they shall be waiting
for you. I expect your gran’mama will have a steaming hot
sweetberry cake baked for your arrival. Topped with layers of lush,
thick goat’s cream. How does that sound?’

‘
Oh, wonderful. I cannot wait?
’
Then she looked up at him. ‘Are you coming with us,
dada?’

He looked down at her and smiled
sadly. ‘Maybe I’ll do just that.’ He touched her cheek gently with
his great hand.

Yarniya, sitting at his opposite hip, squeezed
the fingers of his other hand. Gargaron looked around at
her.

‘
You have work here first,’ she
told him softly.

He frowned. ‘But I have nothing
here now, my sweet.’

‘
You have. More than you can
know.’

A cry came up from below the
precipice and Gargaron turned his head…

…
and opened his eyes.

2

He found himself lying there
between the silent, unmoving bodies of his beloved. Night stars
twinkled still, yet the glow of dawn came from Melus as her fiery
yellow crown began to work its way above the eastwun tree line.
Westways, both sky and land, were still cast in the dark blue cape
of wandering night, and much of Endworld’s silent lands still lay
within the vast shadow of the precipice.

Hearing another squeal, Gargaron
sat up, rubbed his eyes, and looked about. Again it came: a squeal
from some creature, mighty and beastly, from beyond the Precipice
itself. A sound both alien and familiar. A sound he had heard only
twice before. He got to his feet and strode to cliff edge.
Positioning himself carefully, he gazed down. Now he saw them,
ascending. The Wraiths. Majestic angels of Endworld.

They circled their way up,
gracefully dodging the great tree-hands protruding from the endless
cliff wall. From blurred, indistinct shapes, to beasts of immense
size they grew as they rose toward him.

As he had done as a boy, Gargaron
stepped back wary, cautious, almost frightened, as they reached his
elevation. They swooped down and in a thunderous flurry of wings
that kicked up grit and leaves and dying bugs, they lit upon the
edge of the precipice, long talons holding purchase amidst rock and
dirt. Waiting now, like gargoyles, like Monyt sentries at the Gates
of Forever.

They were unlike any creature
Gargaron had ever laid his eye upon. They stood taller than he,
with limbs as spindly as sticks, and beaks as long as his arms.
Horns protruded from the backs of their bald, round skulls, and
bent forward not back. They were grey of leg and torso, black of
claw, and red of neck and face and head. Their wings seemed a mix
of batwing and feather. Numerous large red eyes watched him. Each
Wraithbird perched there, patiently waiting to receive the newly
dead and ferry them unto a new life.