Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (60 page)

Still, by the time it took to
carry out such a task, the enchantment around his home might have
fully diminished, and by the time he returned home he would find
his dear Eve perished, if she had not already, and all beasts
currently sheltering there dead and rotting.

Do I send myself on one last
errand then?
he wondered.
Or do I fetch myself home and die
peacefully at Eve’s side?

He sat there and closed his
eyes and concentrated his breathing, taking in the sweet, warm air,
the sunshine warming his skin.

5

When Gargaron found him,
Hawkmoth were dispatching his last communiqué to his wife. Gargaron
stood back a moment, sensing some sadness from the sorcerer, and
watched as Hawkmoth sent his Windracer, that strange wooden boy, on
its way.

Hawkmoth watched it run from
there, leap the edge of the outcrop and drop down into Dark Wood,
vanished from sight. ‘Right then,’ he said softly. And when he
turned to leave he found Gargaron there.

‘Be you well?’ Gargaron asked
gently.

They regarded each other for a
moment before the sorcerer hefted up his satchel and his staff and
walked by the giant. Hawkmoth nodded. ‘Aye. I needed time to think,
that is all.’ He stopped and turned to savour the scenery one last
time. ‘A lovely view from here don’t you think? You would not think
anything were wrong with the world.’

Gargaron nodded. ‘No, you would
not.’ For some moments both of them stood in silence, surveying the
vast vista.

‘I saw my Eve in my daydreams,’
Hawkmoth said softly. ‘The curse of this Doom chips slowly away at
the boundary of the enchantment I placed around my hill and home.
Soon it shall be gone and my dear Eve exposed and everything I
sought to harbour from this curse will die.’

Gargaron eyed him, sorry the
sorcerer were facing this predicament so far from his wife. He
himself could not fathom what the sorcerer were feeling.

‘Even her Grey Huntress will
fail to protect her I fear.’

Gargaron looked puzzled. ‘Grey
Huntress?’

Hawkmoth took a moment to
answer, and when he did it were with the air of someone distant in
thought. ‘A wraith. Her guardian. One that can swallow foes and
render them unconscious or dead.’

Gargaron thought back to the
day he and Melai had arrived at sorcerer’s cottage on Dead Man’s
hill. Something had been standing there, behind them. Something his
Nightface had detected far too late. Something that had swallowed
them, captured them. He remembered this only now.

‘She summoned it to her service
after I revived her,’ Hawkmoth said. ‘To keep her from harm while I
were away. But I fear it has not the power to protect her from this
Doom.’ He sighed. ‘If I left now for home, would I make it back
before she dies?’ He smiled sadly and shook his head. ‘I cannot
even but hold her. And with all my learned skills I stand here
inept and useless.’

Gargaron stepped to his side.
‘I would not begrudge you if you turned back. If I knew my wife and
daughter remained in Hovel alive yet were facing certain death,
then… I do not know how I would feel. But I guess I would want to
be with them.’

Hawkmoth smiled ever so
slightly. ‘Still, without Razor, without my zeppelin, I would not
make it. My best chance is to press on to this Tower. If we find
success in bringing it down then it be the best chance for my
Eve.’

‘Aye, and if not, we die
trying.’

Hawkmoth gave a wan smile.
‘Aye. We die trying.’ He regarded the giant for a moment. ‘I am
sorry that Chianay Timethief be dead. I know you had hoped one day
to call on her powers. To return to you your girls.’

Gargaron said nothing, simply
drew in a deep breath. ‘Were too much to hope for, I feel.’

‘And yet hope be all we have
left.’ He clapped the giant on his shoulder. ‘Come now, friend,’ he
said. ‘We have one last mission before us.’

6

When they reached the round
cave again Hawkmoth saw that the witches had perished. All save for
Cahssi. She had draped her kin in the skins of her foremothers,
from face to foot, and had emptied their bellies, withdrawing their
innards and lying them, still attached, around their torsos. She
had also sliced the corners of their mouths to their ears, and
removed their tongues, lying these beside their necks. Their
mouths, seen faintly beneath the layer of thin transparent skin,
gaped wide, large enough now to permit someone’s fist. Hawkmoth had
heard of this ritual but one he had never witnessed. They believed
the spirits of their ancestors would come to take these bodies, but
in order to carry them away, they must be able to fit inside each
one in order to lift them.

Cahssi’s hands were blood
stained up to her scrawny forearms, and had painted some of it on
her forehead, one stripe for each death it seemed for she had seven
stripes in all. She gazed up at the sorcerer. ‘I do not understand
it. Why are some of us dying so, when some like yourself remain so
vibrant and alive?’

‘I have no answer for you,’ he
said sorrowful. ‘But we must leave now.’ He pulled his eyes up from
her eviscerated kin. ‘If I read these walls correctly then it tells
me we have one last chance of stopping this blight.’ He looked
around at Melai, at Locke, hoping all would hear what he had to
say. ‘But the land where this Death Bell be situated be sadly far,
far away. It will take us some traveling to reach it. Shall we
remain alive long enough is something I cannot tell. But if you, my
companions, wish to join me on one last quest, then we ought leave
without further delay.’

Cahssi watched them from where
she sat upon the rocks. ‘You have returned Mama Vekh to us. For
that I am grateful. So… let me assist you now.’

She went to stand but wobbled,
and threatened to fall until Gargaron took her arm. She looked up
at him. She squeezed his hand before she allowed him take her
weight. There were a sensation of unease, even a stinging feeling,
as she did it. But she looked deep into his eyes. He thought she
meant to say something but whatever it were she held it to herself.
‘You needn’t take weeks,’ she said. ‘I will show you a quicker
way.’

1

THE Vanisher were situated in
what seemed the deepest part of the Dark Wood, an area where the
trees possessed bizarre twisted trunks that cork-screwed from the
rock and leaf matter and heavy black-purple soil, bending upwards
this way and that. The crowns of these peculiar trees seemed
intertwined and intricately woven together, as though this place
were impenetrable from the air. (Indeed Hawkmoth had heard of such
places governed by witches, where you could fall upon the roof of a
forest and not fall through, instead snared within its thorny
netting, you would be subsequently penetrated by tendrils with tiny
mouths that would slowly suck the juices from your body.) Hawkmoth
looked up once or twice. The canopy permitted such small amounts of
sunlight but here and there he were certain he glimpsed the bony
remains of creatures sucked dry, silhouetted against the sky.

The land dipped away into a
vast bowl and the ground became soggy and marshy. There were bugs
here still living, flitting about the faces of Hawkmoth, Gargaron,
Melai and Locke, though they seemed to leave the witch be, though
it were evident they were dying, flying in mindless circular
motions, spiralling down into the boggy ground where millions of
their kind had already come to rest; the ground here seemed to be
alive, writhing, wriggling, buzzing with dying insects great and
small.

Hawkmoth frowned, looking
about. Though a diffused yellow light hung about the canopy, it
were as if permanent night had descended upon this realm. And there
were a strange sensation that the woodland were attempting to bury
them. The trees grew taller and more dense. The ground dipped
further. Until in the end Hawkmoth and his fellowship could but
faintly see the canopy, so high and so far it hung above them.

2

Hawkmoth brought Rashel’s eyes
to glow, and Gargaron his lantern, and together they lit a vast
swathe of this cheerless forest. Even so, the place were still
sapped of colour. Trees, leaves, any rambling brambles were all
dark and black. Aside from the light of Hawkmoth’s staff, of
Gargaron’s lantern, what little light there were seemed to come
from bioluminescent plants; lichen, or toadstools. Even some bark.
But a subdued, dark yellow light it were, nothing so bright and
cheerful.

‘Where do you take us?’
Hawkmoth asked the witch, suspicious that this were some intricate
ploy to get rid of him and his company.

Cahssi had weakened markedly,
almost too weak now even to speak. She pointed with a limp,
emaciated arm.
Forward
, it seemed to say,
unto
darkness
.

It made Hawkmoth and Melai
nervous. Locke, astride his serpent, still nursed a splitting
headache thanks to Gargaron’s war juice, feeling like he’d polished
off an entire hogshead of strong Coral Coast Ale. Yet he relished
the subdued light. And the coolness of the woodland.

Gargaron however, surged
forward where the others seemed reluctant, his boots pushing down
in the mud and bog.

‘Careful,’ Melai warned him
hushly.

‘All be well,’ he reassured
her, looking from her to Hawkmoth. ‘All be well. I see her
thoughts. She speaks true. We face no trap. Trust me.’

It is not you I
question
, Hawkmoth thought.

3

Finally when it seemed all
light had been sucked from the woods, Cahssi of The Xoord rose from
her semi-conscious state and looked about. She coughed weakly.
‘Slow now,’ she rasped. ‘She Who Eats All, be close.’

She Who Eats All?
Hawkmoth thought.
An ambush for certain
.

But he were surprised to hear
Gargaron’s voice. ‘Easy, good sorcerer. There be no ambush. She
speaks true.’

And it were here that Hawkmoth
frowned as a monstrous shape could be glimpsed some distance ahead
in the gloom.

The others saw it too now. And
the party halted.

‘Be that the one of whom you
speak?’ Gargaron asked Cahssi.

‘Aye, Slüv the Vanisher. Your
passage to the Grass Sea.’

4

A monstrous demon toad, or a
stunted, warted salamander. Gargaron could tell not. It were
difficult to discern in the dark. But puffy it were, that much were
clear, with fat bulbous limbs, a flabby neck, and its vast lumpy
spine nudged the underside of the high canopy. Its enormous, gaping
mouth hung ajar, with eyes half open. And there were a cloying
stink to it like a million things rotting.

Gargaron were not alone in
wondering how this thing might possibly carry them to a point
thousands of leagues away.

Hawkmoth did not speak aloud
his impressions. But Gargaron detected his words like whispers on a
breeze: ‘
A foul demon if ever I saw one!
’

‘Take me to her,’ Cahssi asked
of Gargaron.

Gargaron tread forward slowly,
this immense creature seeming to grow ever larger the closer he
drew to it. How long it had sat here slumped in this stinking
swamp, Gargaron could not guess, but it were evident the monster
could move no longer, such were its crippling weight and bulk.
Still, if Gargaron had not felt some sense of safety being in the
company of Cahssi, he would have feared its tongue. The toads he’d
known (though nowhere near as big) were adept at attacking with
such sticky wet appendages, could suffocate, even strangle with
them, could draw prey into their gaping mouths at the speed of a
lightning strike.

Still, Gargaron pressed
forward, until Cahssi asked to be put on her feet. He did as
requested, as if handling a frail doll, lightly, gingerly,
carefully. She stood, swaying; he held her upright for a few
moments so that she might gain her strength and balance.

For a while she simply watched
Gargaron. She held out her hand to him. He took it out of courtesy.
And as he did he heard her voice in his thoughts once again.
We
are all children of Vhuda. My time on this world is up. But I
give what remains of my life to Slüv, for a life force she must
consume before she will send folk across distances. So hear me. I
would not have helped you and your friends had you not been the
earthchild.

Gargaron blinked at her,
confused.

Aye,
she said, as if he
had protested,
You be the earthchild. Soon the days will begin
to run backwards. And from you, a new world will come. But you have
work here first.

Her words shook him. But before
he could ask what she meant she turned to face the mountainous
toad. She spoke a harsh hissing, gulping language at it. As she did
she snatched a blade from what looked to be a sheath at her hip
fashioned from hair, a blade that looked much like a beetle wing
carved into the form of a short scimitar with an ebony-black hilt.
She jabbed it at the top of her leg, puncturing her skin; bubbling,
yellow blood, spat from her, and dripped into the marsh where the
muddy water steamed and fizzed.

The toad, Slüv the Vanisher,
She Who Eats All
, opened its vast mouth and burped out a
hideous croak that seemed to shake the woodland around it. Its
tongue shot forth, tasting Cahssi’s foul blood.

‘It is begun,’ Cahssi said,
falling to her knees. ‘She will take me now, and she will deliver
you to Rith Gartha, the shores of the Grass Sea.’

Gargaron and his companions
frowned.

‘Take down this blight if you
can,’ Cahssi said to them.

And an instant later Slüv’s
tongue flicked out once more… and took the witch into its
throat.

Melai gasped, thinking
something had gone wrong, that she and her friends would be
swallowed now into this repulsive creature.