Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (49 page)

‘
Snow beasts,’ Hawkmoth said
aloud. ‘Up in these reaches of the Bonewreckers, they form a
natural guard against any encroachers.’

‘
Snow beasts?’ Melai
asked.

‘
Aye. Monsters. Big shaggy brutes.
They amble about on all fours and you’d probably think them docile
to lay eye upon them. But they are quite adept on two legs, and can
run like a gale. Their specialty is devouring creatures far bigger
than themselves.’

The others looked about, searching
the fog banks now with a no small amount of disquiet. Gargaron
laughed without humour. ‘You did not think to warn of us these
creatures earlier, sorcerer?’

‘
Well, giant, I have had a lot on
my plate.’

‘
As have we all,’ Gargaron
reminded him.

Hawkmoth conceded with a dip of
his head. ‘Yes. Quite right. Though, it be the Bewitched we ought
be concerned about. More so than the Snow Beasts.’

‘
The Bewitched?’ Gargaron
asked.

‘
Aye, the Bewitched,’ came
Hawkmoth’s reply as if obvious.

‘
And what pray tell be the
Bewitched?’

‘
Witch puppets.
Dolls. They walk taller than me and possess not a soul amongst
their number. They are made of wood and metal and some peculiar
material known as
plasteec
, a material devised and
used only by the witches. They possess vacant eyes and without
flesh nor heart they feel no pain. They are fearsome creatures and
I have often seen them match the might of Snow
Beasts.’

Gargaron pulled Grimah to a halt.
He glanced around at Melai and Locke before turning his gaze upon
the sorcerer. ‘So we face potential dangers up here in these
Bonewreckers the likes of which far outnumber and outmuscle us,’ he
said. ‘I might have felt a tad better about these tidings had you
informed us before now.’

Hawkmoth looked scolded. ‘Oh,
perhaps I am not explaining myself. Snow Beasts are not our enemy,
giant. I were master of beasts during my time at Sanctuary. I
coexisted with them for close on a year. That were some time ago,
of course, but they are long lived and I’d wager the older ones
among their ranks, should they still live and be not perished like
almost all else, would recognise me and hold off an
attack.’

Gargaron searched the fog banks.
‘Well, let us hope upon that then, shall we.’

2

They pressed on and had been going
for several minutes when a wall of rock, shaped somewhat like an
enormous frozen wave, loomed up out of the mists before them.
Beyond it, like grey wraiths, mighty stone towers could be seen
amidst the shifting fog banks; towers unlike Gargaron, Locke, and
most certainly Melai, had ever laid eyes upon.

‘
We have arrived,’ Hawkmoth said,
pulling Razor to a halt. ‘I give you all, Sanctuary.’

It were not how Gargaron had
imagined. He had expected a blocky mountain fort constructed of
square stone bricks, with a large barricading wall, possibly even a
moat. He’d imagined guard towers soaring to dizzying heights and
numerous battlements packed with sorcerer folk ready to fight off
would be intruders.

What he saw
instead were beautiful bizarre, organic structures; structures more
like that of rounded, elongated, domed cacti, structures that
looked simply to have
grown
rather than put together by some builder’s hand.
And as tall as hills they were, soaring out into misty skies.
Gargaron counted seven or eight of them, none of them with a flat
edge. And there were no sign anywhere of sentries. No sign of
sorcerer folk.

‘
Why do we hesitate?’ Locke
asked.

‘
Before we proceed, we need open
the gate,’ Hawkmoth explained.

‘
Gate?’

Hawkmoth pointed at the wall with
his staff. ‘That be it, directly ahead of us.’

There were no gate there that any
of them could see. Naught but a rounded series of grooves gouged
out of the rock wall. ‘I see no such thing,’ Melai said.

‘
Oh, it be there, trust me,’
Hawkmoth said. ‘Though getting to it be the first trick.’ He
dismounted and told the others to wait where they were.

‘
Getting to it?’ Gargaron
asked.

‘
Aye,’ Hawkmoth said. ‘There be
the small matter of slipping by the Shadow Guard.’

Gargaron sighed. ‘Shadow Guard?
Let me guess. Another undeclared beastie out for our
blood.’

‘
Of a sort,’ Hawkmoth
admitted.

‘
Where be this Shadow Guard then?’
Locke asked, his hand on his blow-flute.

Hawkmoth dismounted. ‘Wait here,’
were all he would say.

3

The rock wall stretched away into
the fog in both directions. Where it vanished, Gargaron could only
guess. It were reasonable to assume that it enclosed the entire
complex. Hawkmoth walked toward it. But he halted his stride some
twenty yards from it. What lay before his feet now were a curious
covering of ice that looked much like a garden path trailing the
passage of the wall in both directions. It were a metallic hew. As
though it may not have been ice after all, but some sort of
metal.

‘
Sanctuary has been invaded but
once in over a thousand years,’ Hawkmoth declared. ‘The marauding
Hordes from the south stormed north during the summer solstice of
Grenxk Seven-Two. In the days before the Snow Beasts made the
Bonewreckers their home. Having stormed the crags they took
Sanctuary by surprise. Those sorcerers who did not escape were
captured and slaughtered. The lore and beliefs of my kind were
abhorrent to the southland marauders. But this place be the
spiritual home of Vhada, the great entity who sat by the fire to
pass on Her knowledge to Ravenblack, sorcerer and first of our
kind. It were he who retook Sanctuary. Once he had turned the
marauders to stone and tossed them from the clifftops he used his
divine powers to establish sentries that would never wane, never
sleep, never stray from their post. The Shadow Guard.’ Hawkmoth
pointed. ‘This trail you see here… be molt-metal. No outsider may
cross it. Not by foot, not by wing, not by invisibility, nor by any
enchantment.

‘
Now, here be my predicament.
There were a time when I could come and go from this place as I
pleased. But a long time banished I have been. I must test if my
standing as one of the Order still holds any sway.’

4

Beneath his cloak, Hawkmoth
gripped a small incendiary device. He hoped he would not need
deploy it. It were something he had developed in secret long ago, a
device meant for a day such as this, a day where he returned to
Sanctuary uninvited, where the Shadow Guard were likely to target
him as a traitor, an unwanted, an outsider. His device however
would not let them have their way. He would detonate this grasket
bomb the moment he suspected even a skerrick of animosity from his
former protectors, skewing their attack and leaving him free to
leap unscathed from danger.

At least, that were his
plan.

‘
So, best you all back up a tad,’
he said, staff in one hand, grasket bomb in the other. ‘Fifty feet
ought be safe.’

‘
Why?’

‘
These sentries, if they deem me
an intruder, they will carve me up. And you lot too if you are
within their reach. And trust me, at this moment you are all well
within piercing range.’

‘
Piercing range?’ Locke asked with
a curious smile.

‘
Aye. Shadow Guard steel cuts
through any armour, any enchantment. So I urge you, back
up.’

Gargaron and Locke obeyed, pulling
their steeds around, drawing Razor with them, taking up position
out of harm’s way, Melai seated still upon Grimah’s
shoulders.

Happy with their distance,
Hawkmoth took a breath and stepped onto the pathway.

5

The Shadow Guard rose up about
him.

Four of them. Sheer and smooth,
and glistening like polished steel. Taller than he they were, by
several feet. And there they loomed over him, like graveyard
specters, lumps of tall metal approximating the humanoid form,
faceless, without limbs, their heads bent down, regarding
him.

He did not kneel. He were their
master after all. Or at least he once were. He stood straight,
shoulders back, chest out, hoping to portray an air of confidence
and authority.

There were no words spoken. But
the verdict were quick. The sentries glided aside, as if simply
pushed by some wind. And seemed to form a guard through which
Hawkmoth could pass. And beyond him, the circular grooves cut into
Sanctuary’s tall curved perimetre, now spread wide like ripples on
a pond. Here the “gate” revealed the grounds of Sanctuary
beyond.

‘
Come
now
,’ Hawkmoth called to his companions.
‘
Quickly
.’

His companions hurried forward,
filing through the formation of Shadow Guard, the horse hooves
leaving behind short lasting imprints in the molt-metal.

Hawkmoth watched carefully, in
case the invitation were open to him only. Yet the Guard allowed
his friends to pass freely.

It were only once Hawkmoth’s party
were through the gate, that the sentries lowered back into their
peculiar realm, like spectres slipping effortlessly into calm
water, and were gone. The gate seemed to solidify and the view back
beyond the wall shut away.

1

SANCTUARY’S grounds looked
abandoned. Though there were definite signs of unrest; some attack
had most certainly taken place here. At ground level, sections of
the rounded organic towers had been blasted open, from outside in
it appeared. Frozen bodies lay scattered hither and thither in the
snow. Those of sorcerers, Hawkmoth observed, and of witches. And
there were the usual mark of witch mischief: decapitated sorcerer
heads prod on tall pikes.

The corpses of other creatures lay
here too, Gargaron noticed. Shaggy brutes of such immense
proportions they were equal in bulk and height to that of Grimah
and Razor. And they might have been camouflaged against the snow
had they not been betrayed by dark frozen pools of yellow
blood.

‘
Be these your Snow Beasts?’
Gargaron asked, pulling Grimah up to study one lying in the
snow.

‘
Sadly aye,’ Hawkmoth said gazing
down at it from his mount, wondering if he had once known this
particular individual.

It disturbed Hawkmoth, seeing the
deceased Snow Beasts and witnessing the general state of this
place. He’d had his detractors here but he’d also had friends,
Brothers, with whom he’d maintained a secret correspondence with
all these years of his banishment. It pained him to think they were
all likely deceased.

‘
Let us all keep a keen sight,’ he
said. ‘The witches have beaten us here. And I fear they have set
their Bewitched upon the place. They may still be present, hidden,
and watching.’

Gargaron had already withdrawn his great
sword. And Melai her bow, and Locke his blow-flute.

‘
Where be Mama Vekh then?’
Gargaron asked.

Hawkmoth drew in a large breath of
chilly mountain air and when he exhaled a huge flurry of vapour
fogged about his face. He pointed. ‘The Citadel at Sanctuary’s
centre. She were housed there. Granted she may since have been
moved but it ought be the first place we search.’

‘
Right then,’ Gargaron said. ‘Let
us find her, fetch her and be away from here.’

2

They pushed forward slowly, the
hooves of Razor and Grimah leaving deep prints in the snow, the
belly of Zebra forming neat swishes. Sanctuary remained quiet.
Eerie. And the mists persisted; they could see not one end of
Sanctuary from the other. And the air chilled Gargaron to the bone.
Why anyone would want to live out their days here he could not
fathom. There were also a hideous smell on the air, the faint whiff
of rot.

Soon however, there appeared from
the grey mists a large dome shaped building. And with it a new
image of Sanctuary as a whole formed in Gargaron’s mind. If it were
a clear day and he were suspended somehow directly above this
complex, it may have looked to him like an upturned hand with
fingers curled high into the air, and the citadel sitting somewhere
on its palm like an enormous domed growth.

Gargaron heeled Grimah and took
the lead, if only to hurry the others. ‘Be not brash,’ Hawkmoth
called.

‘
Aye,’ Gargaron replied, ‘I hear
you, but I also wish not to be snails. Snails get stepped on. Now
let us move with some purpose.’

3

The Citadel were bordered by a
snow laced garden bed from which grew thorny vines that had woven
their ropey branches over much of the outside surface. High
bevelled windows had begun to gather with drifts of snow. So had
many of the intertwining vines. A tall rounded opening in the
Citadel’s eastwun wall whirled with mist. Beyond, there were
relative darkness. And no interior detail to be glimpsed from
Gargaron’s vantage point.

Gargaron had planned to lead
Grimah straight in, but he halted now, sensing some corruption
inside. Melai, huddled there beneath cloak and shawl, gazed
silently forward as Hawkmoth drew Razor up on Grimah’s left flank,
and Locke, his serpent on Grimah’s right.