Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (38 page)

Melai’s fingers were still dug
into Gargaron’s skin, though he hardly noticed. Everyone looked
about, waiting now for the second wave.

It came, though not as wild or as
booming as the first. Though it seemed to last longer. And when it
were done Locke put away his whiskey and said, ‘Ah, nothing like a
good groundshake to get the blood flowing.’

Hawkmoth worked at the wheel. It
would not budge until Gargaron took over and put his considerable
strength into it. Once the vault door got rolling it became evident
that part of the opposite wall had collapsed against it.

Gargaron managed to heave some
stones aside, making a path through which his companions could
exit. Behind them the wraiths trailed.

7

Mounted again, Hawkmoth lead his
small troupe through the subterranean settlement and Locke gazed
wistfully at the treasure stashed in the vaults. ‘Oh, what that
would have bought us had the world not gone to the rats.’ The
troupe trudged back through tunnel and passage, up a hundred
stairs, and through the large open doors where golden sunlight and
fresh air met them. As they emerged, eyes squinting in the sun
glare, they looked about, taking in their surroundings.

Part of the stone fortress had
fallen, leaving a spectacular path of wreckage and ruin down
plateau’s side. Trees had come down. A guard tower had smashed
against the iron grate that spanned the stone stair case, the only
way on and off this place. But most surprisingly, at least to
Gargaron, were the stardrive tower. There it still stood, westways
from his vantage point, on its awkward angle, eerily defiant, like
the arm of some long dead demon pushing out into the atmosphere
hoping to tug the moons from their orbit.

Hawkmoth stood before the three
wraiths; they had trailed his every step and they hovered there now
as if awaiting some command. He bowed his head and Melai heard him
something to them, some strange incantation. Within moments, as
Cjayen dragon’s spirit at Varstahk had done, the wraiths lifted
away into the sky. Up and up she watched them, away and away into
the heavens until they were gone.

Once they were out of sight,
Hawkmoth mounted Razor and pulled him round, heading for the
stairway. ‘Come,’ he called to the others. ‘Let us leave this
place.’

1

THAT night the sky hung in a
strange twilight. Melus and Gohor did not set; not entirely. And no
moon rose but Vasher; though pale it were and low in the sky it
hung, as if timid to rise further. Old Soor and the Cat’s Eyes
never appeared. Hawkmoth, Gargaron, Melai, nor Locke, none of them
had ever known such a phenomenon and it chilled them. Though you
would not have known it with Locke. He seemed more fascinated than
unsettled. ‘I have lived long and seen much,’ he said in the
awestruck tone of someone watching perhaps the birth of a child,
‘but this is a first, I must say.’ He turned and looked at the
others. ‘I feel privileged to witness this. It may never come again
that at these latitudes night be as light as dawn.’

‘
Our world lists like a dying
fish,’ Melai answered him. ‘Why would you feel
privileged?’

‘
There be beauty in all things,’
Locke said. ‘Sometimes the things that terrify us most are
themselves the most stunning to things to behold.’

‘
Our world is being murdered. I
see no beauty in that.’

‘
So, we differ. Even in this,
there is beauty.’ Locke slept soundly that night. Helmet off. Belly
up, snoring against the hide of his sleeping serpent. But he were
alone in slumber. For the others slept fitfully, if at all,
consumed by what this strange night could mean.

‘
I offer but one explanation,’
Hawkmoth declared late into the wee hours. Above, the moons of
Vasher and Leenurs could barely be seen. And only the brightest of
stars made themselves known. ‘And not a very informed explanation,
I’m afraid.’

Gargaron and Melai, seated on
opposite sides of crackling camp fire, waited for him to speak.
They had made camp on the edge of a ridge. Around them were spread
a sparse upland scrub. On horizon were snowcapped peaks, which gave
them some hope, for there at last were the Bonewreckers, and the
troupe had taken some heart that they were now in sight. Yet, like
all nights since the coming of the Ruin (as Hawkmoth had termed
it), there were no chirruping bugs, no night hour ornithens nor
soaring batlings, no nocturnal critters scampering around unseen in
underbrush. Naught but their stinking bones and carcasses lying in
dirt or snared amidst branch and leaf and knotted in
weeds.

Down ridge were a wooded valley,
steam rising, forming a layer of mist across the canopy. Earlier in
the evening, Melai had longed stared at it. To her it were Thoonsk,
within reach, within grasp. Her sisters could have been down there
awaiting her. To Gargaron it were Summer Woods, and he imagined he
could hear his dear Veleyal calling for him to come and
play.

‘
These boom-weapons have shaken
Cloudfyre’s orbit,’ Hawkmoth finally told them. ‘Have you noticed
our suns? These days Gohor be almost the size of Melus. Our world
has been knocked off kilter. There be no other explanation.’ He
sucked on his pipe, smoke lifting away into cool “night” air. ‘Thus
it makes our mission all the more urgent. The sooner we pull up
this witch assault on our world, the sooner we can begin to put
things to rights.’

2

Later, Melai lay down beneath
nearby trees, closing her eyes, her limbs sprouting roots that
joined with stem and branch, hoping for some sort of bond with this
scrubland. To hear its whispers, as she would have in her home
trees back in Willowgarde. Hawkmoth sat by ridge’s edge, facing
west where mists rose up from woodland below like arms of ghosts.
His eyes were shut, his pipe out and placed by his staff and the
remainder of his belongings near where Razor lay in slumber beside
the two-headed Grimah.

Gargaron were not tired. He could
not sleep while Melus and Gohor lingered there at horizon’s lip.
The sky were streaked in red and yellow. As though it were sunrise…
or sunset. He pondered an alien notion that perhaps Melus and Gohor
would never rise, nor set again. That Cloudfyre’s orbit were now so
corrupted that it would forever remain this way.

He looked across
at Locke. There he slept soundly, a grin upon his face.
A strange fellow to read
, Gargaron thought. He tried to put himself in the crabman’s
shoes for a moment. What would
he
say about the suns failing to rise or set forever
more?
Something stupidly
optimistic
, Gargaron decided. Perhaps
something such as:
At least we be not
caught in eternal dark, nor stuck sweltering in eternal midday
heat
.

Which, Gargaron conceded, would have been a
fair point.

Despite everything, it put a smile
on Gargaron’s face. If he were not mistaken he were beginning to
like that funny little fellow. And he could not place
why.

He cast his gaze once more at the
distant Bonewrecker range. There they lingered, distant and
indistinct, ghostly peaks so tall they appeared to scrape Great
Nothing’s dark belly. Hawkmoth had spoken of the urgency to see
this mission through. Which meant first reaching this fortress,
Sanctuary, high in those mountains. But how far to go and how long
were it to take? Good sorcerer Hawkmoth suggested it might be yet
another seven days on foot from this current position.

Gargaron spread
out his worn vellum map, one his father had left to him. It had
been passed down, father to son, for generations, and often added
to by its successive owners. It were a map showing off vast regions
of Cloudfyre, detailing rich hunting grounds and migration patterns
and pinpointing locations of newly discovered species. It were
crisscrossed in detailed trade routes, highways, backwater trails,
byways. It showed locations of cities, towns, villages,
settlements. It showed canals and railcourses. It showed ironways
and bridges and aqueducts. Gargaron were intrigued to find also
that the fort beneath which he and his new friends had sheltered
away from the boom-shock were depicted, and even named. Though not
quite as Hawkmoth had called it.
King’s
Lair
, it were written here. And there were
naught to denote its stardrive tower.
Perhaps I shall add it to map when all this business be
over
, he thought.

It were here also, with eyes
scanning for possible hidden secrets of this current region, that
Gargaron discovered something else. Something intriguing. Something
that may just hasten their push into the mountains.

3

Melus and Gohor began their rise
sometime near where Gargaron adjudged natural dawn would have
played out. By then Locke were still in blissful slumber. As were
Zebra, lying there like a faithful hound, head tilted to one side,
tongue lolled out. And Melai looked for all the world as if she had
finally nodded off. Grimah and Razor were away nibbling grass.
Hawkmoth though, still sat in his meditative state, unmoved now for
hours.

Gargaron, in this
silent dawn, got about quietly, collecting an armful of sticks and
twigs and placing them upon the embers of their fire. It smoked
profusely for a while before,
whump
, flames billowed and engulfed
the pile. He sat back, staring into the hypnotic
flames…

As fatigue tugged at him, he
noticed Hawkmoth were roused from his meditation, gazing peacefully
over the woodland below, and smoothing an oil cloth over his long
two-faced staff.

Gargaron let him have some moments
to himself but eventually he strolled over and sat beside him. For
a while they both contemplated the world beyond. And Hawkmoth went
on with his polishing.

‘
An intriguing weapon,’ Gargaron
remarked after a while.

Hawkmoth looked across at him,
with the air of someone still waking. He past the staff toward
Gargaron who took it tentatively, holding the faces at arm’s
length.

‘
Rashel be the angel,’ Hawkmoth
told him. ‘Lancsh, the demon.’

The mouths of both were currently
closed. And their eyes as dark as the blackwood they were carved
from.

‘
An angel and a demon coexisting,’
Gargaron said. ‘Even if they be mere depictions… well, don’t you
sorcerers believe this a hex. Bad luck.’

Hawkmoth tilted his head in
thought. ‘Aye. Unless you be me.’ He smiled. ‘I have adopted such
an item as a charm. Especially since this one came into my
possession a gift. Thus, the angel Rashel and the demon Lancsh be a
harmonious pairing if ever there were one.’

‘
A gift?’

‘
Aye, from my dear wife. Eve
relieved it from a sorcerer who tried to have her killed. Some
Brother whose name I have long forgotten. What he were doing with
such an item remains a mystery. But, in his case, the hex proved
his doom.’ Hawkmoth wore something of a smile of irony. ‘Eve had
him, ah, dispatched.’ As he sat there he packed his
pipe.

Still gripping Hawkmoth’s staff,
Gargaron watched the sorcerer work. ‘Speaking of Eve, I have not
yet said, she were a most caring and hospitable soul. She made us
feel very welcome when we arrived at your little house on the
hill.’

Hawkmoth simply nodded, and a look
of yearning filled his eyes. ‘Aye, she be a most amazing woman. I
miss her much.’

Gargaron gazed across at him
thoughtfully. ‘You love her deeply.’

Hawkmoth lit his
pipe and took a long toke. ‘Aye,’ he said giving a look to the
giant that seemed to say
Why would I
not
? Exhaled smoke lingered about his
face.

‘
As I did my wife,’ Gargaron said.
‘But she were a giant such as I. And not my sworn enemy. As a
sorcerer be to a witch. How, pray tell, would such a union ever
come about? If you do not mind me asking, of course.’

For a time Hawkmoth simply smoked,
lost in yesteryear, reliving memories from days long gone, a look
of deep nostalgia watering his eyes. ‘I were sent out on a mission
to eliminate a party of witches who had been ambushing sorcerers of
the Order. Being a young sorcerer at the time I had secretly made
up my mind that I wanted to get to know a witch. Especially since
my idea to mend our bridges with the witches were ridiculed by my
Brothers.’ He sucked back smoke, held it in his lungs then blew it
out. ‘A strange thing to be told all my sorcerer’s life that
witches were my sworn enemy, that I were to kill them on sight,
when I had never met one. I felt a need to understand them. To
discover for myself why they were so reviled, why we hated them
so.

‘
When we found them there were a
brief battle. But we outnumbered them and those who were not slain
were dragged back to Sanctuary and tortured for their secrets. Yet,
I held a secret of my own. Eve. Or Renascentia, as she were known
then. She had been amongst those we had ambushed, and she were a
striking beauty. She had caught my eye instantly. This were
perplexing to me as I had always been told that witches were
brutish, ugly creatures, riddled with sores and holding a foul
stench. But she belied all that. At first I thought it were an
enchantment of beauty. But she, as I were then, were young and she
certainly had no need for such enchantments, for naturally
beautiful she were.