Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (30 page)

They pushed on through this land
of rocky scrub and tall rock sails. Great birds circled on
thermals, giving Gargaron hope that, like he and Melai, some things
seemed immune to the blight. A dark mass of swirling grey cloud
clogged southern horizon. Tail of the vortex storm he
guessed.

As the rock fans
began to dwindle, their pathway of paving stones seemed to widen.
And there were glimpses every now and then, through trees ahead,
and beyond bumps and boulders in the
earyth
, of some great remnant of
civilisation.

Soon scrubland ended abruptly
where an ancient square moat lay bordered by a stone rampart. This
moat had long lost its water, filled now with weeds, trees, shrubs.
Beyond, lay the sprawling ancient empty city of Varstahk, ruined
now for two thousand years.

They crossed its moat via an
ancient bridge of stone, littered with bones of long dead
birdlings. But scattered there too were with the recent dead:
lizards, scrub crabs, giant scorpions, fire spiders. They stepped
down a row of wide stairs, to the flat of the city whose elevation
seemed lay lower than the surrounding lands.

They pushed out into this once
thriving metropolis of Varstahk. It proved an eerie, unsettling
place. Wind moaned through old battlements, and whined like
spectres through towers that soared high and crumbling. At ground
level, old temples, domed constructions of stone, grew with giant
fig trees, and gritty winds swirled through their lonely deserted
interiors, wailing, crying, groaning.

Gargaron felt as if the eyes of a
thousand ghosts were watching he and Melai. Although, he had to
declare there were no sign of anyone squatting in this place, as if
it were cursed, as if life (living or undead or otherwise) were not
welcome here. As if it prevented anything taking a
foothold.

Towers blocked sunlight, thus
casting much of the city in cold blue shadow. Towers stood brown,
almost purple. Wind kept moaning, kept swirling, kept nibbling at
Melai’s hair, tugging at Gargaron’s clothes, pulling at Grimah’s
mane.

‘
What be this place?’ Gargaron
heard Melai ask.

‘
This be the
ancient city of Varstahk,’ he told her. ‘Giants lived here.
Cahtu
they were though.
Undead armies that rolled north on their mighty Temblahs, crushing,
killing, pillaging. Their empire spread out of Cahtahk, their birth
lands. They constructed many cities like this across the
Vale.’

‘
Cahtu were not undead,’ he heard
her say.

He eyed her, surprised that she,
sheltered within Thoonsk all her life, might have some perceived
knowledge on this subject.

‘
Legends tell us they had no
heart,’ he pointed out.

‘
Legends tell us no such thing,’
she said.

‘
We have heard or read separate
legends then. They were undead.’

‘
They were not,’ she insisted. ‘I
grew up hearing stories of elder days from Mother
Thoonsk.’

Gargaron sighed.
‘Undead or no,
this were their home for a millennia. Now let us leave this silly
argument at that.’

3

They pressed on in silence, the
echo of Grimah’s hooves bouncing back at them, and bouncing back at
them again. All else were silent save for that and wind. It howled
high above them in the lonely heights of the empty, blue-sky space
between towers. Gargaron gazed over his shoulder; so far away now
the moat they’d crossed to enter this place, so far and almost
vanished beyond their sight.

They came upon
what Gargaron claimed were a death pit, a cavernous square pit cut
down into
earyth
.
It were filled with stone spikes. ‘Folk and animals would be thrown
in there to the amusement of the Cahtu,’ he informed
Melai.

‘
It were filled with acid,’ Melai
corrected him. ‘Not spikes.’

‘
No, acid were the bathing pits of
the Cahtu.’

‘
It were not.’

He sighed. ‘Well, it matters not.
What matters is getting across.’

The pit swallowed the entire way
forward for eighty feet. Its sides bordered by enormous towers,
blocking any possible side route. With no bridge spanning the hole
Gargaron and Melai were stuck.

‘
We’ve no choice but to turn
around and search for another avenue,’ Melai said with a heavy
sigh.

So they did. It took them hours
searching. Encountering dead ends. And toppled ruins that blocked
paved streets. Reluctantly they were forced indoors, inside the old
dark ruins themselves. Here they were wary of bandits or other
unsavoury beasts that may have taken up residence within. Which
they found—though all dead were they. Tusked bears. Giant badgers.
And a stench of rot carried heavy and rank through the darkened
halls. At times the stench were so thick and cloying they could do
naught but turn back or hurry Grimah forward choking and coughing.
Other times the interiors were so lightless that Gargaron were
forced to fire up his lantern. But corridors seemed to follow no
logical path, and many came to abrupt ends at ancient bone laden
altars where enormous glaring statues stood.

They found doorways into
courtyards or onto vast wind-blown fighting arenas. Weeds, ivy,
trees grew direct from rock walls. They trailed corridors that bent
backwards, or descended mighty stairways into dark dank dungeons
that swirled with the rank stench of dead things.

Finally, upon a terrace they
stopped to take stock.

‘
This place be an infernal
labyrinth,’ Gargaron said irritated. ‘We may spend the rest of our
days here.’

Melai, seated upon Grimah’s
shoulders, looked about. Above them naught but blue sky drifted
with peaceful white cloud. Melus and Gohor were almost directly
overhead. Around them the city sprawled out in all directions. They
could no longer see rock-sail nor hill from which they’d descended
to reach this city.

To their right the slanting roof
of a temple climbed to dizzying heights. Gargaron studied it
closely. ‘If we were at a higher vantage,’ he said, ‘we might plot
a way forward.’

‘
Do not tell me you wish to scale
it,’ Melai asked. ‘It be far too steep, you’ll gain no
purchase.’

‘
I may look like a lump but I
might surprise you with my agility.’

She wore a grave look.

‘
Melai, tell me another way and I
shall gladly take it.’

She looked about, searching,
searching, hoping some missed access way or path would become
apparent.

4

Gargaron hung his pack on the
pommel of Grimah’s saddle, then gripped the edge of the roof with
his huge hands. He hoisted himself up, lifting one foot onto the
roof before the other. He crawled up a dozen feet before the roof
beneath him began to sag.

He froze, Melai
shouting, ‘
It’s shifting beneath
you
.’

It were not only shifting he
realised. The ancient tiles were cracking, splintering. And there
came suddenly a disturbing sound of something groaning below him,
ancient beams protesting under his weight. The area around him
began to sink. And he realised it almost too late. The roof were
collapsing.

He shuffled backwards just as a
mighty slab dropped silently away into darkness, a shaft of
sunlight following it down. He slid back to the terrace where Melai
were watching wide-eyed from Grimah’s shoulders and it were several
seconds before they heard a distant crash at the floor far, far
below.

‘
Hmm,’ Gargaron said reflectively,
‘that were… interesting.’ He glanced around at Melai. She almost
laughed. ‘What?’ he said at the look on her face.

‘
Interesting?
’ she said. ‘Is that how
you’d put it?’

He shrugged, shaken, gazing up at
high, sloping roof. ‘Maybe I ought to try another section. Where I
trod were probably a weak spot.’

Melai sighed. ‘No. Lift me up.
I’ll climb. I be far lighter than you.’

He frowned. ‘But your
arm.’

‘
I have another.’

‘
And should you lose grip and
slide down?’

‘
I have three good wings, and one
good arm, I shall manage.’

He were surprised in that moment
how fond he’d grown of her. Such a tiny little thing yet she
carried such a mighty heart. In some ways she reminded him of his
dear Veleyal.

He hoisted her up. ‘See what you
can see then. But if your arm grows sore―’

‘
I shall manage,’ she said
sternly.

Their eyes met. He smiled. ‘Of
course.’ He lifted her to roof and watched as she carefully made
her way around the rent caused by Gargaron and on up steep slope of
roof. She crawled with her feet and one arm, her bad arm tucked
across her chest, her three healthy wings flapping to give her
buoyancy.

By the time she’d come to a stop
she were but a mere speck of a thing way up near the apex of
temple. She clung there, wind tugging at her, steadying herself
before looking about.

Gargaron watched her point at
something but could not hear her words, just a muted, distant sound
of her voice flurrying about on ragged wind gusts. He saw her point
to several positions, talking all the while.

Soon he watched her making her way
carefully back down.

‘
I heard nothing,’ he called out
to her as she neared him. ‘What were you saying?’

‘
I see a path,’ she claimed, ‘an
avenue.’ She pointed. ‘Our way out. Come.’

Gargaron hoisted her from roof’s
edge to Grimah’s saddle and he lead steed down the worn stone
stairs on Melai’s instructions. They reached another terrace which
circled the temple, and down another flight of steps. This took
them into what may once have been a garden filled with exotic flesh
eating plants that legends promised the Cahtu were so fond of.
Through these now barren gardens, Melai took them, claiming that if
she had seen correctly, their path would lead them to an avenue
that would lead them through the final stretch of
Varstahk.

Sure enough, through an archway
with downward poking spikes and guarded by a stone gargoyle with
half its torso crumbled away, they strolled out upon a wide paved
road that seemed to cut the city in two. Eastways, Melai claimed it
lead to a central square, to stone spires the Cahtu once hung their
war enemies from. And westways it lead to outer city gates. Gazing
in this direction Gargaron could now see distant forests beyond
city boundary, and, beyond that, rocky crags of limestone poking
into sky.

‘
You have done well,’ Gargaron
said with a relieved and exhausted sigh. ‘You have done well
indeed, dear Melai.’

1

CLEAR passage out
of Varstahk however proved not such an inevitability. Half a mile
on, the avenue on which they walked, narrowed between a pair of
temples outside which stood immense stone sentinels in the likeness
of the Cahtu, standing tall and commanding, each with their dire
arm reaching almost to
earyth
, while their remaining arm
grasped a war hammer.

Yet, what Gargaron and Melai saw
lying there at their base stopped them in their tracks.

Camouflaged against the stonework
were a sleeping lizard. A lizard whose girth and bulk looked
greater than that of Gargaron’s. Actually, the more Gargaron looked
at it, the closer they got, the more he feared this lizard were
three, perhaps as much as four times his own size.

‘
A Skinkk,’ Gargaron murmured
cautiously, Grimah snorting nervously. ‘A winged one, at that. We
must be careful.’

Melai frowned.
‘Skinkk?’ she said. ‘My kind call them dragons. And
all
are
winged.’

‘
Not where I am
from,’
Gargaron informed
her.
‘Skinkks skitter around afoot. Though
that be irrelevant, for by whatever name they come, wing or no,
they are cunning and deadly.’ He watched it carefully, hoping,
lethal critter though it be, that it were succumbed to whatever
poison or sickness had been killing all else.

He took his
spyglass from his belt and surveyed the beast. He could spot no
sign of respiration. ‘It may be dead,’ he murmured. And the notion
forced a thought into his mind:
Eve
suggested Skinkk blood may bring Drenvel’s Bane to life. I
wonder…

2

They waited there, watching it,
considering their options. The city gates were tantalisingly close.
So close in fact that they could now hear rustle of leaf and branch
in woodland beyond. Though where the Skinkk slept, it blocked
nearly the entire width of road: its long neck curled around toward
the sloping wall of the southwun temple, its long spiked tail
toward the north. Its wings lay over its forelegs. If they
proceeded, there would be little room for Grimah to sneak by
without treading on it.

Still, if it were dead… ‘What do
you think?’ Gargaron asked. ‘Should we chance sneaking by it? It
breathes not.’