Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (33 page)

Hawkmoth strode out before them.
When he heard the clip-clopping of hooves on the floor he cast a
glance over his shoulder and saw the nymph and the giant mounted
upon that twin headed steed. ‘Giant, I believe I told you to rest,’
he said sternly as he pressed onwards through gloomy temple
interior.

Gargaron grimaced. ‘Aye, you did,’
were about all he could manage. Though on his next breath he
managed, ‘I ne-need its blood.’

‘
Blood? From the Devil Horn? What
on Cloudfyre for?’

Gargaron grimaced. The world
washed before his eyes. ‘Blood… pl-please, could you…’ He panted
and his strength and awareness failed him.

A tall arched doorway, sheathed in
a band of golden sunlight, delivered the small group from temple
into cloudy sunshine and onto a wide courtyard, where, crashed
against the opposite ruins, slumped the Skinkk.

It lay with its head resting
against a crumbled wall. It eyed them as they approached. It
attempted to struggle to its feet but its movements were clumsy
now, exhausted. When it attempted to snort a wash of liquid fire
nothing spat out but gobbets of molten droplets and acrid black
fumes.

Hawkmoth ushered Gargaron and
Melai to stay back. Gargaron by then were slipping in and out of
consciousness, slumped there against Grimah. The sorcerer went
forward on his own, his hand up and his staff slung behind his
back, non-threatening. ‘Be calm,’ he said hushed to this creature
he had called a Devil Horn. ‘Be calm, oh great Cjayen.’

The Skinkk made no movement.
Simply watched the sorcerer with its dying eyes.

Hawkmoth made his way to Skinkk’s
side and knelt before its great scaly and terrifying face. If the
Skink, this Cjayen, this Devil Horn, had feigned illness and
injury, had feigned its waning ability simply to draw the sorcerer
on and thus spew forth hell fire, then the sorcerer were in certain
peril.

But the Devil Horn lay here,
panting, allowing Hawkmoth to reach out and gently place his palm
and fingers across the great monster’s jaw. ‘Sleep easy now,’ the
sorcerer told it gently. ‘Go now to your mighty ancestors who await
you beyond the veil of life. You have lived a thousand years, one
of the mightiest and most long lived, of your kind. Your gods hold
a place for you now amongst the stars. Go now oh great Cjayen, find
them. Pass gently, peacefully, unto eternal dawn.’

Tiredly the Skinkk eyed him.
Panting. But its breath were slowing now.

When it stopped, when its great
jaw and belly finally fell still, the sorcerer stood and lowered
his forehead gently against the forehead of the dragon. ‘Go now,’
he whispered almost sadly. ‘Spread your mighty wings and
fly.’

Melai believed she saw the
sorcerer wipe a tear from his eye before he straightened and
stepped backwards. The body of the great Skinkk moved one last
time. Its scales rattled and hissed as its corpse appeared to
contract inwards… A white shadow in the form of the Skinkk itself,
lifted from the body, like a Skinkk chick dragging itself from its
egg. It seemed to crouch there for a moment on the ribs of its
departed body, looking about before leaping silently into the sky,
circling once above the temple ruins, as if in acknowledgement of
Hawkmoth, and then it swooped up and away into the
heavens.

Hawkmoth watched it go. With a
sigh he turned to Gargaron and Melai. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘We must
away from here.’

1

THEY followed Hawkmoth through the
western gates of Varstahk and out into sandy woodlands. There were
a narrow dirt trail and before they reached the sorcerer’s camp
they’d passed numerous plunge-holes, some up to fifty paces across,
with jagged volcanic rock cliffs that dropped away to bodies of
undisturbed water as clear as crystal; around their edges, long
green vines dangled, and thin trees grew from cracks in the rock.
‘Mind where you step,’ Hawkmoth warned.

And that they did. Though the
plunge-holes were such a beautiful feature of this landscape and
not easy to ignore; even if Gargaron could but only glimpse them
through his ongoing grimacing and swollen face. For Melai, they
filled her with a sense of delight and nostalgia, for not since
leaving Thoonsk had she come across a realm that evoked such
wonderful, albeit painful, memories of her water-forest
home.

Hawkmoth lead them on. ‘Well
then,’ he said after a while, glancing around at them, ‘as neither
of you have yet spoken it, I take it your names be Gargaron
Stoneheart and Melai Willowborne.’ He had pulled back his hood.
They saw his face here for the first time. Bearded he were, dark
but streaked in grey. He had kind grandfatherly eyes, Gargaron
would have thought, but they possessed a certain intensity when he
looked at you. ‘You fit the descriptions well enough sent to me by
my Eve at least. Although, hearing it from your own mouths may make
me feel a little more at ease.’

Melai were barely aware that in
all the mayhem and distraction of the dragon attack, she had
neglected to introduce herself. ‘As you wish. I am Melai
Willowborne of Thoonsk. And although you call yourself Hawkmoth, be
you Haitharath? Friend of Mother Thoonsk?’

‘
Aye, I am.’

‘
Well then, glad to make your
acquaintance. And let me offer my heartfelt thanks for coming to
our timely aid.’

‘
You are most welcome.’

Gargaron went to speak when she
were done but croaked and squinted. He swallowed hard and tried
again. ‘And I… I…’ His voice faltered. He swallowed once more. ‘I
be G-Gargaron Stoneheart of… of Hovel. Y-you sent for us, I
b-believe.’

‘
That I did,’ Hawkmoth told him.
‘I must thank you both for seeking me out. I will divulge details
of my plans soon. And inform you what we face. I do not expect you
to accompany me on my quest but that is a decision I shall leave
you both to make. For now though, we make for my camp and I shall
see to your wounds oh giant.’

They reached a clearing beside
another of these deep plunge-holes where a vehicle both Melai and
Gargaron recognised hung twisted and ruined against the rock wall.
Gargaron eyed it with some curiosity. It were a zeppelin like the
one he had flown upon from Autumn. And it seemed it had suffered
similar fate. It were broken and twisted and snared on jagged
rocks, the bulk of it hanging sideways down into the plunge-hole
while its torn and deflated balloon listed far below upon water’s
surface.

‘
Seems flying be left to bats and
birdlings and Skinkks,’ Gargaron muttered, looking about, wondering
now what had become of the Skinkk.

‘
And to woodland nymphs,’ Melai
added.

‘
Or else he who fashions a flying
craft when he himself does not bare wings ought to be aground when
his flying machine grows faulty,’ Hawkmoth stated.

‘
And he who comes aground upon a
plunge-hole,’ came a new voice, ‘ought to have a friend nearby to
help pull him out.’

Gargaron and Melai and the two
heads of Grimah all turned and saw a strange being basking atop a
boulder.

He were a humanoid, of sorts, a
crabman (as Gargaron knew them), with eight crab legs encrusted
here and there in barnacles, and a humanoid torso growing up out of
a crab body. He looked like a jovial fellow, Gargaron thought, the
way he smiled warmly, and looked ever so comfortable and relaxed
where he were perched there in golden sunshine.

He slid from his
spot and skittered over to introduce himself, walking sideways,
much as a large land crab might. ‘My name be Sir Rishley Locke,’ he
said, removing a twin-horned helmet to reveal a pair of gnarled and
decorated horns growing from his skull beneath. ‘And the good
sorcerer here has
me
to thank for hauling him and his horse up out of this here
water cave.’

‘
And
“
thank you
” I
believe I have said a dozen times by now,’ came Hawkmoth’s
voice.

‘
And a dozen times I have enjoyed
hearing it,’ said this Sir Rishley Locke. ‘After all, coming across
a great sorcerer and finding him in peril from which he were having
considerable trouble escaping, why it were priceless I must say.’
He laughed, though not derisively, as someone boasting might have.
He laughed more as a close brother would, endearingly, warmly. ‘How
long were you down there again? Two days?’

‘
Naught more than a day,’ Hawkmoth
attested. ‘And I dare say I would have engineered a way out
eventually, with or without your help.’

‘
But of course you would have,’
Locke the crabman, said throwing a look at the new folk. ‘Now, who
have we here then?’

Both Melai and Gargaron simply
watched him, struck by his energy, his mirth, his
warmth.

‘
Well
speak, one of you,’ implored
Locke with a hearty laugh. ‘Why, a giant silent as a butterfly! By
the gods, such a thing has never seen the day has
it?!’

‘
Sorry,’ said Melai. ‘We have come
through much.’

‘
And lost all no
doubt,’ this newcomer said with a mighty smile, slipping his helmet
back on his head, his horns slotting smoothly into his headgear.
‘Oh, we all share the same burden, I think.
But we live.
And that
is what is important. For, if there were none left alive, there
would be none to carry forward the memories of all those we have
loved and lost.’

‘
And none left alive to carry out
vengeance for their falling,’ Melai said coldly.

This Rishley Locke cocked his head
and smiled. ‘Aye, have it how you will. So, tell me, what be your
names and where be you from?’

‘
They are those, amongst others,
that I have been expecting,’ Hawkmoth answered him.

So the introductions commenced,
with handshakes and smiles and more than a share of winces and
grimaces from Gargaron, almost falling as he dismounted. With
pleasantries done, Hawkmoth said, ‘Right then, giant. Let us see
how these Aporil Flutes have seen to your burns.’

2

The sorcerer rolled out a thick
rug and ordered Gargaron to lay there belly down. Gargaron groaned
painfully as he shifted to his knees. And groaned as he placed his
hands out before him. Another groan escaped him as he collapsed
heavily to rug. ‘B-be you certain th-that y-you extinguished my
fl-flames, sorcerer?’ Gargaron enquired through gritted teeth. ‘I
feel…’ He swallowed. ‘I f-feel the fire there still.’

‘
The flames are long blown out,
aye,’ Hawkmoth informed him. ‘Pain you now feel be a combination of
your burns and the roots of these Aporil Flutes mending your flesh.
You may not wish to hear this but parts of your back had been
liquefied by the time I found you.’

Gargaron had not heard him. ‘Where
be… where be the Skinkk,’ he asked, exhausted. ‘Did you, did…’ his
voice trailed off.

‘
The Skinkk can no longer harm us,
dear giant,’ Hawkmoth informed him. ‘Though we have far more
pressing matters to attend to. So lie still and save your
strength.’

Melai watched on, watching the
dark soot belch from the purple trumpet flowers. Her eyes moved to
Gargaron’s Nightface. A blackened and ruined thing it were now, its
eyes dead and clouded over. Her heart. Little did she understand of
its purpose, but it were a part of him and she did not know how he
would take news of its demise.

Hawkmoth studied the scene. ‘Mmm,’
he would mutter, ‘Mmmm, yes, good, this is good.’ Though Melai,
taking in the glistening craters of burnt flesh, wondered which
part of it were good.

Hawkmoth snipped away the
intriguing Aporil shoots and at once their trumpet flowers
shriveled. Embedded in the deep layers of Gargaron’s skin, their
roots remained however. Hawkmoth took from a large sack a stone
jar. He unstoppered it and fingered inside it to pull up a large
slimy blue slug. He placed this upon Gargaron’s ruined flesh. It
were followed by another and another and yet another. Seven of them
in all by the end of it.

‘
What, what have you there?’ Melai
heard Gargaron say. ‘It feels such as ice.’

‘
Indeed it ought to,’ Hawkmoth
told him. ‘I have placed ice slugs upon your wounds. They shall
take away heat and pain, and in turn eat of your dead flesh to
stimulate and accelerate your body’s capacity for healing and
tissue regeneration.’

Melai saw the pain washing from
Gargaron’s face almost instantly. His breathing relaxed, his body
threw out its tension. ‘By Ranethor,’ Gargaron murmured, sighing
heavily, ‘this be utter bliss.’

‘
Aye, I thought
you may like it,’ came Hawkmoth’s voice. ‘Oh, though I should warn
you, they
have
been known to cause minor sedation.’

When Melai looked down at
Gargaron’s face it were evident he had dropped off to
sleep.

3

When he opened his eyes, Gargaron
gazed out at a perfect blue sky, wondering why he could not detect
the visual senses of his Nightface. He knew not where he were, nor
how he had come to be here. There were no sounds of birdlings nor
bugs. But he were aware of sounds of gentle breeze playing through
trees, the peaceful rustle of leaves. And that of a child’s
voice.