Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (59 page)

The witch stood there, looking
ill, weak, withered, emaciated. Gargaron had heard the witches were
a tall breed, some as tall as his own kind. But this thing were
bent over and hunched, and she were all limb and bone. Her ashen
skin ran with a map of dark veins, her bulging eyes were a deep,
stone blue.

‘We have never pretended to
understand the ways of your kind, sorcerer Hawkmoth, nor that of
your agenda,’ she croaked weakly. ‘We appreciate the fact that you
have returned our dear Mother to us. I am glad to have lived
through all my long life to reach this day. But now we ask you to
leave so that we may die in peace.’

Hawkmoth frowned. ‘I do not
comprehend. Die? Has your boom curse affected you lot too? I
offered myself up to you for you to put a stop to your boom bombs.
How is this difficult to comprehend?’

The witch eyed him closely, and
it were her turn to frown. ‘What do you play at?’

‘Your boom weapons,’ Hawkmoth
said. ‘Don’t you hear my words? I offer my life for you to halt the
detonation of your bombs. I cannot paint it any clearer than that.
I shall not leave here until I have a deal!’

She kept frowning. ‘There are
no boom weapons. The world is in its death throes. You ought to
know this as well as any.’

‘I haven’t the time for games,’
Hawkmoth warned. ‘Take me or suffer our wrath.’

‘Do not threaten us,’ the hag
warned.

‘Why? If you will not hear me
you leave me no choice.’

It were Gargaron who stepped
forward here, his hand on the sorcerer’s shoulder, enough gentle
pressure to suggest the sorcerer should step back, calm down, let
someone else have a go at diplomacy.

Hawkmoth hesitated, though
retreated.

Gargaron knelt, his hand on his
heart. ‘Hear me please, oh witch. I am Gargaron Stoneheart of
Hovel. I am not your enemy nor have I ever been your enemy. But
hear me, I beg of you. I saw you up there, under shelter, with your
own kin. Sisters, perhaps. Daughters. Mothers. I do not presume to
know. But you are with your own kind, your own blood. I have none
left. No blood, no kind such as I. Nor does Melai. Nor Locke. Some
great blight has killed nearly all beyond these woods. We were
informed that those of your kind, and I am not saying it were you
nor those up there sheltering, but that witches are the cause of
it. I sense now however, you know another truth. Pray you tell us.
For the sake of my dearly departed wife and daughter.’

The witch hardly moved, but her
eyes did search him deeply he saw. And in the end she slumped
against a rock and weakly spoke. ‘Whatever treachery this is,
whatever rolls out across the world killing most and all, be not of
our doing. And these boom weapons, I do not know of which you
speak. If it be the shockwaves that bombard us periodically then it
be naught to do with us. We thought initially that it were these
sorcerers of Sanctuary, one final campaign to wipe us out. So with
all our remaining reserves we conducted a counter strike upon
Sanctuary. Only to find the place decimated and overrun with dark
entities unknown even to us. We were forced to retreat. My sisters
were beginning to succumb to some mysterious ailment. We assumed it
to be some sickness orchestrated by the sorcerers. And the
shockwaves kept coming, shaking our home, killing more.

‘Sadly, we are all that remain
of our kind now. All our mothers have perished. Maychild the Fair.
Hyndilla the Sleeper. Chianay Timethief. Pinnezelle Skywitch of
Bluefield. None of them with their mighty magic could withstand
this dark tide.’

Gargaron blinked as he heard
the names of these witches. ‘Chianay?’ he asked. ‘She who distorts
time?’

The hag gazed at him, wondering
how he had heard of one of the Revered Ones.

‘Aye, even she. All of them
perished. And it were not until we retreated here that we
discovered what be killing us all. For, now we know there is naught
to be done… but die.’

Gargaron, Melai, Locke, even
Hawkmoth now, all watched her keenly, fascinated, intrigued,
confused, waiting for her to go on, to tell them the secret of this
mystery.

‘What be it, pray tell?’
Gargaron asked. ‘What be the cause of this great dying?’

The witch coughed. Dark green
phlegm spluttered over her lips. ‘Return me to my kind, if you
will. And I shall tell you.’

Hawkmoth stepped forward here
and this time it were he warding Gargaron back with a gentle hand.
Gargaron, who had been about to take the witch into his grasp,
looked around at him.

‘Please,’ Hawkmoth said. ‘Let
me. My kind owe her and hers much. It be a small token, but it
should be I.’

Gargaron nodded and the witch
did not object. She even raised her hand to him. ‘Come then, enemy,
help me to my sisters.’

Hawkmoth crouched and shuffled
his arms beneath her bony frame and he hoisted her easily into his
grasp. Together they returned to the shelter, Gargaron, Melai and
Locke all following. The other witches were hunched around Mama
Vekh, as if their passing would be eased by her presence. Here
Hawkmoth lay down the witch.

‘What be your name?’ he asked
her.

‘Cahssi of the Xoord.’

‘And pray tell us, Cahssi, what
are we facing?’

‘
Mortatha
. The End
Times. Cloudfyre Falling.’

1

‘THESE are the ruins of cities
once belonging to men,’ Cahssi told him. ‘They stood before the
last Great Fall. Eons beyond eons lost to time and lore. And may
stand here again if those of the Void do not find it.’

Hawkmoth frowned. ‘Those of the
Void?’

‘The formless demons that
invade our lands.’

‘The Dark Ones,’ Gargaron
murmured.

‘Aye, whatever name you know
them, they have crawled from their barrows from where they have
lain for ten thousand years. They wreak havoc now throughout our
country, and perhaps by now have spread throughout all countries of
Cloudfyre. They spread poison on the air and contaminate our rivers
and oceans and they pummel the living and leave no trace of towns
and cities. Everything be in peril and none can halt their
march.’

‘Can they be stopped?’

‘
If there be a way, I know it
not.’ She watched them, saw the skepticism in the sorcerer’s eyes.
‘If you won’t believe me then cast your gaze across the paintings
in this cave and you will learn their story soon
enough.’

Hawkmoth looked up, surveying
the inside of the strange shelter. But could not see much in the
lightless parts. ‘What be it we face?’

This Cahssi breathed hoarsely.
But managed to speak. ‘I told you.
Mortatha
. Cloudfyre
Falling. As it is written on these walls.’

He frowned at her.
‘Mortatha?’

‘Aye. Recorded and foretold
here by the hands of those of Ghartst.’

‘Ghartst?’ Hawkmoth did not
comprehend. The tablets Skitecrow had spoken of were of Ghartst. He
blinked, perplexed.

He stood, hefted his staff
about and scratched it against the wall and Rashel’s eyes gave off
soft illuminating light.

Cave paintings became apparent.
Ancient beyond ancient. And Hawkmoth had an immediate sense of
tremendous age. Twenty thousand, forty thousand, perhaps as much as
fifty thousand years these dated.

And what they showed chilled
his veins like nothing had ever in his long life.

Dark Ones. Harbingers. Those of
the Void. Of many shapes, many sizes. Black, bright of eye. And
immense bell towers, of which he did not recognise. And death,
destruction, shockwaves. It were extremely detailed. Set out like a
story. Each one below the other, crude vertical columns of
pictographs accompanied by strange Ghartst language characters.

The others had crowded up
beside him.

‘What
be
this?’ Gargaron
asked.

Hawkmoth tugged at his long
beard thoughtfully. ‘How the ancients recorded their tales. There
are many such sights in the realm but none so old as this, I feel.
And ones I have seen are primarily concerned with hunting, with
moon worship, with burial of great clan leaders. Some go back two
thousand years. Some eight thousand. But none have I ever
encountered be of this age.’

‘Can you interpret it?’ Melai
enquired.

‘Some. Not all.’

‘What do you read here
then?’

And here Hawkmoth felt the need
to concentrate, lest he misinterpret things.

2

At first Hawkmoth found it hard
to comprehend exactly what he were seeing. There seemed to be
countless tales of mass dying, of shockwaves killing people. And of
mysterious virus wiping out entire populations. And folk not
knocked off by any of these forces were cut down by legions of Dark
Ones. In all so many different shapes and sizes did they come: ones
who rode the air, ones who walked the
earyth
, ones who swam
the oceans, ones as small as beetles. The idea seemed that they
cleansed, for whatever reason, Cloudfyre of all living things.

Melus and Gohor, the suns, were
also depicted. If Hawkmoth were reading it right, it seemed that
every ten thousand years Cloudfyre’s orbit kicked off a series of
strange catastrophic events. End times, when Cloudfyre’s orbit were
pulled violently from one sun’s keeping to the other.

Last of all, Hawkmoth learned
of the Death Bells. The single cause of the boom shocks. Again, if
he were interpreting all of this correctly, a ring of these Death
Bells, housed at the tops of mighty towers, circled the planet in a
north-south band. And their tolling, were primed and activated by
Cloudfyre’s orbital phase, namely the commencement of Cloudfyre’s
transition from one sun’s gravitational hold to the other.

Hawkmoth left the spherical
interior of this cave. He wanted fresh air, sunlight, some breeze
on his face. None of which he found outside.

3

Gargaron had been studying the
cave paintings, trying to glean some meaning from them. He had
deciphered some of it. But not all. ‘Hawkmoth?’ he said. ‘What does
this mean? Is there still some way here to aid our plight?’

‘Three of our kind left for the
closest of the Empty Towers, to bring it down,’ the witch informed
the sorcerer. ‘I believe they have failed. Or perished.’

‘What are you talking about?’
Melai asked, fluttering about the cave, studying the diagrams and
pictures. ‘What does it all mean?’

Locke sat patiently outside,
trusting that he would be informed of current developments in due
course.

‘Did you notice Cloudfyre?’
Cahssi called out to Hawkmoth, pointing up at the diagram on the
wall. ‘The closest Bell Tower lies north of here… oh so many
leagues away. Beyond the Grass Sea. That be where the boom shocks
emanate.’

Hawkmoth did not reply. And
would hear no more. He needed space, he needed silence, some place
to think.

Above these ruins a monstrous
outcrop of granite loomed like a colossal anvil stretched out above
the Dark Wood. Without saying anything he took his leave from his
companions and witches and walked off into the woodland. Melai went
to go after him, or have someone stop him, but Gargaron called her
back.

‘Let him go,’ he told her.

‘No. Why? Where is he
going?’

‘Time and space to think things
through, I suspect.’

Melai looked flustered. ‘But I
don’t understand. What is going on?’

Gargaron strolled back into the
cave with a sigh. ‘Let us go through this methodically,’ he said.
‘I believe I understand some of it, but cannot comprehend what it
yet means for us.’

‘It means we all die,’ the
witch said.

Gargaron ignored her and hers
all lying there huddled, unconscious, dying. And tried to make
sense of the cave paintings for himself.

4

Hawkmoth sat at length atop the
granite crag, overlooking the woodland and all the world beyond. He
did not much else but think of his wife Eve and their little home
together and all the animals they had on their property and all the
lives he had saved. It saddened him greatly that he may likely see
them no longer, that he had somehow failed them. That his time
taken to fetch Mama Vekh back to the witches had taken far too long
and had now been wasted.

He wondered if his Order had
known of these Death Bells prior to now. Considering Skitecrow’s
claims, maybe they had not. There had long been rumour of
mysterious towers, a ring of them at intervals of thousands of
miles, that circled Cloudfyre. But they were places none he knew
had ever visited. And were said to be impossible to reach; either
located in such places that left them difficult to access, or they
were imbued with unknown enchantments that could render you dead in
an instant, or they were believed sacred and better left alone.
Yet, it troubled him that he had lived such a long life on this
world and had never known of these Death Bells.

So, what now?
he asked
himself.

Well, there were naught left to
do but trek to the closest of these Death Bells, the one that sat
atop what Cahssi had named the Empty Tower. It were situated in a
perilous place of course, upon an island the cave wall called Vol
Mothaak, surrounded by the mysterious Grass Sea. Once there he
supposed they would set about dismantling it. The Ghartst diagram
appeared to indicate as much. And the final diagram, after the
destruction of the Death Bell, showed renewed life, renewed growth,
rebirth.

That were his last option now.
An almost insurmountable task. For, would the destruction of one
Death Bell be enough to end the shock and sound waves? Enough to
end the disease and dying? Enough to send the Dark Ones back to
their barrows? Maybe not for all of Cloudfyre. But perhaps it would
be enough at least for Godrik’s Vale. And that were all he could
hope for.