Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (62 page)

There were a nervous moment
when his hand slipped and he were but suspended there from gunwale
with naught but his fingers preventing his fall. And with it a most
disconcerting feeling as his legs dangled freely into the surface
of the grass, and an unsettling sensation, whether he were simply
imagining it or not, of the grass curling up about his boots,
beckoning him, tugging him downwards. Hawkmoth grabbed his loose
arm, Locke too, and together they managed to get the giant
aboard.

Gargaron had broken out in
quite a sweat by the time he stood there on deck, gazing overboard,
down at the waving, hissing grass. Sighing, he straightened and
looked around at the others. It had been a close call. None wanted
to admit it. Except Melai regarded Gargaron with a look that said,
‘
You have to be more careful than that
.’

6

The carrack drifted away from
the jetty with no deliberate heading; the binnacle compass swung
around and pointed northways while the boat were veering east. That
were until Gargaron and Hawkmoth managed to work out a way to raise
mainsail. It seemed no easy task even for them who claimed to have
sailing knowledge behind them. Gargaron had to stop and laugh. ‘By
Thronir, we have come so far only to be halted by this simple
task.’

‘We are but weary from our
travels,’ Hawkmoth offered as explanation for their apparent
ineptitude.

‘Of course,’ Gargaron said
laughing again. ‘I’m glad that is all the matter be. Though, if we
cannot operate one simple sail, how is it we hope to cross this sea
at all?’

Hawkmoth gave a wry smile,
gazing thoughtfully up at the mainmast.

Locke, although not from a
sailing community himself, claimed to have some rudimentary
understanding of roping and the like and it were he who brought on
the solution.

Once their sail were hoisted,
it caught the wind, billowed and the carrack shunted forward,
catching its crew off balance. Gargaron rushed to the wheel to
bring the vessel around before it careered off into shore.

The boat tilted as the giant
steered its prow north to wide open seas and it were here he
realised he had no clear idea where this Empty Tower lay. ‘Where be
this place exactly?’ he called out to Hawkmoth who had wandered off
to the foredeck, surveying the way ahead of them.

Hawkmoth took a moment or two
to answer. ‘Well, I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I have
absolutely no idea. I have only the Ghartst cave paintings to go
on. They suggest a large island lies north of here. How far I
cannot say. How many days? Who can tell? For now we would do well
to simply follow the compass on a northways heading toward the
distant horizon. In the meantime I shall consult my maps to see if
anything of this ocean be marked upon them. We shall require a
spotter though. I have not witnessed them myself but there have
long been tales of troughs opening up on this sea and swallowing
ships whole.’

Melai turned and looked around
at Gargaron before turning her eye on the sorcerer. ‘Troughs?’ she
asked. ‘What do you mean, troughs?’

‘Great dark trenches that
appear in the grass without warning,’ Hawkmoth answered matter of
factly. ‘They regularly take unsuspecting ships down into the grave
of this sea. Fortunately they are relatively easy to spot during
the day. So we should not fear.’

‘You did not think to warn of
this before we took to this boat?’ Gargaron asked with a
questioning look.

‘It has only just come to
mind,’ Hawkmoth said.

‘And what about night?’ Melai
enquired. ‘If this voyage should take us through the dark hours,
how might we spot one of these troughs once the suns fall?’

Hawkmoth nodded, as if
considering this. ‘Well, I have a trick or two to light our way of
course. Let us worry about that when we come to it, shall we?’

Gargaron sighed. Boom shakes
and now troughs. Were nothing ever simple?

1

IT were Melai who volunteered
to take to the crow’s nest. Just as well for she were the only one
able to climb the mast and fit up there. Except for perhaps Locke.
And instead of the prospect frightening her she found the position
exhilarating. She remembered her first days away from Thoonsk, how
the vast, open and unbreached sky terrified her—that fear of
falling
upwards
with nothing to contain her had been almost
too much to bear. But now here she were, perched in a small housing
at top of ship, with nothing above her but the entire unending sky.
It should’ve terrified her. But instead she breathed deep the air,
enjoying the warmth of the sun on her green skin.

From there she could watch the
patterns of the wind move across the grass ocean. Long lines of
waves rippled across the surface… ones that altered direction as
quick as the wind. The patterns were beautiful, she thought,
mesmerising. For as far as she could see, she watched them,
entranced.

Some fifty feet below her,
Gargaron bore similar thoughts. He marvelled how quiet it were out
here. The sound of the breezes on the grass, the occasional whip
and tug of the sail, the subdued creak and groan of the ship and
its ropes. He turned and eyed the small port from where they had
launched. Rith Gartha were already a distant sight behind them, the
jetty almost indistinguishable from the shore line. The lighthouse,
the most prominent feature, were almost lost to the haze. And all
around them this strange, shifting, waving, ocean of grass; grass
the colour of old dried peas. Yet every now and then there emerged
a break in the colour with a bloom of red atop the grass. At first
Gargaron thought these were blooms of flowers. But up close they
looked more like meaty snags of tendrils, curling and writhing. An
irrational fear warned him that they might detach, wriggle up the
hull of their carrack and make lunch out of its crew.

‘I believe, they be the staple
food of the giant turtle,’ Hawkmoth said, leaning over the side of
the craft to watch one such writhing bloom go by. ‘And a delicacy
of those who fish these waters.’

2

On went their voyage all that
long day. And sight of land were long swallowed up beyond horizon.
From time to time Gargaron searched the sky. He kept a keen eye
open for any discoloration that might indicate a coming shockwave.
But it were Gohor and Melus he pondered. While he could not look
upon the two suns directly, it did not prevent him from pondering
their course. He could not help recalling the cave paintings. Were
it true they tussled for possession of Cloudfyre? It were
unsettling to consider such a notion. Frightening. And could the
orbit of Cloudfyre have brought on the Ruin? Triggered the boom
shocks? Awakened the Dark Ones?

He engaged Hawkmoth in
conversation on the topic. And it were Melai who asked what the
paintings had told them. ‘I have no knowledge of this thing you
call celestial mechanics,’ she said to Hawkmoth.

So Hawkmoth explained it to
her, that the moons swung about Cloudfyre, and that Cloudfyre
circled Melus; Cloudfyre and her eighteen sister planets. And that
the cave paintings had suggested that Gohor were wanting to wrestle
Cloudfyre from the grasp of Melus.

‘But why?’ she asked.

Hawkmoth shrugged. ‘If it be
so, I could not tell you.’

‘You do not believe this be
what the cave paintings depicted?’

‘It seemed as such,’ he said.
‘But they were ancient and their original meaning might well have
been lost to all but their creators.’

Gargaron prayed that were the
case.

3

The afternoon drew on and they
began to see the surfacing of several turtles in the distance. This
caused some measureable excitement.

It were Melai who spotted the
first.
And
the second. Calling them out, pointing; the first
several hundred feet off the starboard bow, and the second,
considerably closer, off port. They were a marvel to watch, these
ocean giants, surfacing, even floating for a few moments, as if
watching the passing ship.

‘They ought not bother us,’
Hawkmoth called. ‘They be weary of those who hunt them, and, I
would think, know this boat to be a threat.’

Thus far, Hawkmoth’s prediction
proved true. The creatures would simply surface and ultimately swim
away into the depths of the grass, showing no more interest in the
ship, much to Locke’s disappointment for he longed to view them at
close quarters. Once or twice Gargaron turned the ship in their
direction. But the turtles sunk into the depths before the ship
strayed near.

Aside from turtle spotting,
Hawkmoth maintained a diligent survey upon of the sky for possible
Boom shakes, and also upon the “waters” that abounded the carrack.
He were pleased that so far, he had spied no perilous troughs.

It were at dusk however that
the first danger struck.

4

It had been mid-afternoon when
Melai had spotted the first scar. At first she thought it were a
cloud shadow cast long and narrow across the grass surface. But
aside from dark thunderheads amassing in the eastwun skies there
were no clouds to be seen.

Melai alerted her crew.
Hawkmoth strode eagerly to starboard bow, gazing keenly out across
the rolling grass waves. The scar were difficult to spot from his
vantage. He deployed his spyglass and brought it into view, a great
gaping trench in the grass. It were as if the clawing fingers of
two opposing winds had pulled aside a pair of enormous walls of
grass, raked them aside like a barber combing a part in someone’s
hair; the “part” in this instance being depthless and dark.

Locke were at the helm by this
stage, happy to assume role of captain for a short while. Hawkmoth
called for him to adjust their heading slightly. ‘Track north-north
east for a while,’ he called to Locke, ‘open up some ground between
ourselves and that anomaly.’ And up to Melai in the crow’s nest he
called, ‘Keep us abreast of its movements.’

She frowned. ‘Is it likely to
move?’ she called back.

Hawkmoth were not entirely
certain. Nearly all he knew of this Grass Sea were from text books.
He’d had no extended firsthand experience of this place. ‘I’ve
heard some say these scars can shift as swiftly as the wind.’

As their ship rose and fell on
the gentle swells, Gargaron could see the dark gash three or four
hundred feet off their starboard bow. His eyes shifted to the
waving, whispering grass below their hull. No matter how many times
he stared at it, he thought how dense it looked, like close packed
brush bristles, and it seemed impossible for a vessel as large as
this to sink down amidst its long waving stems. ‘How deep are we
here would you say?’ he asked Hawkmoth.

‘Your guess is as good as mine,
good giant,’ Hawkmoth replied, not removing his spyglass. ‘But I’ve
heard it told that at its deepest, the Grass Sea may be as much as
several hundred fathoms.’

That idea unsettled Gargaron.
Grass so tall and deep. There would be no sunlight down there.
Perhaps little air to breath. No room to move.

They watched the scar as it
suddenly swept southwards like a blade and vanished on the horizon
behind them.

It were relief to see it go its
own way.

They saw their next at
sundown.

5

The suns were low in the sky,
setting behind clouds and haze and the atmosphere was turning pink,
orange, red. By then Locke had somehow managed to climb his way to
crow’s nest; his serpent coiled about the mast’s base, gazing up at
him, tongue flickering.

Locke had been enjoying the
solitude, the fresh winds tingling the horns on his head, when,
close to nodding off, he detected a dark shape appear to their
north.

He sat up, watching it keenly,
whipping out Gargaron’s spyglass (which admittedly were a tad large
for him) and scoured the way ahead. It were only a few hundred feet
from them and he saw it clearly, a chasm cut down in the surface of
the grass. A strange but awesome thing to behold.

‘Hawkmoth,’ he called out. ‘I
see another of your scars. Dead ahead of us. Five hundred feet,
angling out to the north-west. I’d recommend a directional change
to the north-east.’

Gargaron and Melai had both
been snoozing on the foredeck, watching the distant stars begin to
twinkle into existence out there in the late afternoon sky that
were still blue but slowly darkening, and watching what looked to
be the moons of Syssa and Noo Ka, begin their. Hearing Locke’s call
they rose and hurried to forward bow.

‘Aye, take us north-east,’
Gargaron called to Hawkmoth, pointing out a projected heading.

But that proved almost their
undoing.

The wind had picked up in the
last little while, and the Grass Sea were beginning to kick up with
some chop. The carrack had become harder to control, but eventually
it took the heading that Hawkmoth had asked of it as he spun the
wheel to port side. There were a momentary slackening of the sail
as it swung round, before the wind billowed up into it and thrust
the vessel off on a north-eastern tack.

But as Locke watched, he
noticed with dawning concern the scar moving, the Grass Sea
parting, and the great chasm spearing rapidly in their direction.
‘
Oh sorcerer, the scar is on the move
,’ he yelled. ‘
On
course to intercept us! Ten sunflares!
’

‘Mooring ropes,’ Hawkmoth
called. ‘Tether yourselves!’

There were but one course of
action to take now. If they continued on their current course they
would meet the fast moving trench and spill down into eternal dark.
If Hawkmoth spun them on a south-westerly course, a similar fate
might befall them. All he could do were spin the craft back on a
sharp north-easterly direction with the hope that the scar would
slice right by them. He had heard that these scars moved like
arrows, in straight lines. He had to hope that would ring true.