Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (72 page)

It brought his wife’s face to his
mind. And the smiling face of his daughter. Dust stuck to the tears
on his cheeks and chin. He felt delirious, feverish, he had no idea
where he were, where he were going. The sorcerer hobbled on and on
through the swirling desert sands, unspeaking, his thoughts to
himself.

Gargaron felt parched. ‘Hawkmoth,’
he tried to say but naught save a raspy sound spilt off his lips.
He tried to wet them, licking them with a dried tongue. They felt
rough and split, felt as if chunks had sloughed off.

‘
Hawkmoth, please, where do we
seek?’

‘
I am not certain,’ came his
reply, as his form faded amidst the howling sands.

His sudden
vanishing alarmed Gargaron. ‘
Hawkmoth?! I
cannot see you! Where be you! Tell me!
’ He
stumbled, fell, his fleshy arms catching his fall.
‘
Hawkmoth?!
’

He felt his strength failing him.
He felt the pain in his body elevate. He did not know it, but there
were parts of his body where his bones were exposed. Beneath his
arms the flesh had burnt away to expose his ribs. The rear part of
one leg had had its meat burnt off, the bones below his knee were
open to the elements, and now brown with grit, and the skin and
muscle around it black with decay. His hair were all but singed
away. Mostly he were numbed by it all, mostly his consciousness
washed in and out of some bizarre dream world.

He were not sure now if Hawkmoth
had ever been leading him. Perhaps the sorcerer’s body too had been
somewhere near that of Melai’s and Locke’s. Perhaps Gargaron had
merely been trailing some aimless wraith.

He picked himself up, determined
to press on. He told himself that if Hawkmoth were there, the
sorcerer would not leave him.

6

The sand flurries howled and
raged. And came in waves of varying intensity. And every now and
then they would dull enough for Gargaron to gather a clearer
picture of the way ahead. He saw more desert and naught else… and
yet he saw him, the wandering figure of Hawkmoth getting further
and further ahead.

‘
Hawkmoth!
’ he tried to call with his
dry, rasping voice. ‘
Hawkmoth, do you hear
me? Wait!
’

But on went the sorcerer and on
came the swirling sands, concealing him again from Gargaron’s
view.

In his mind
Gargaron began to hear a song his dear daughter used to sing.
‘
Oh, on the sweet fields of Sorollayn, I
see the maids, oh, on the sweet fields of barley, comes my
sweetheart.
’ He heard himself singing it.
Dust and grit peppered his tongue. He spat out what he could. But
he sang and hummed and closed his eyes against the storm and
pressed forward, mindless, wandering, wandering, one step and
another step and another in front of the other.

‘
You have work here yet,’ came the
voices of something above him. ‘You have work here yet.’

He stopped and peeled open his
eyes so slightly, and squinting, he gazed into the heavens. It were
a maelstrom of dust and dirt and nothing more. But here he spied
Hawkmoth again before him. He had almost stumbled into
him.

Hawkmoth were poised there, pointing to some
point that Gargaron could not see.

‘
What be it?’ Gargaron asked him,
trying to be heard above the winds. ‘What be it, tell
me?’

‘
Can’t you see it? Just over
there. Go forward now, time is almost done. I know now that you did
not come to help me stop the war with the witches. It were I who
were meant to help you. It is why the Dark Ones left us alone. That
we helped you, to a lesser or greater extent, to get you to this
point. Go now. Your guardian angel be there to take you the rest of
the way.’

‘
Guardian angel?’

‘
Cahssi were
right. You be the earthchild. I read the paintings on the cave wall
wrongly. I thought they were instructions on destroying the death
bell. I thought destroying the Empty Tower would give life back to
our world.
But I know now that all must
die. For only then will life once more flourish. When the
earthchild grants it so.’

Gargaron blinked at him. ‘I do not
understand.’

‘
The earthchild
theory tells of a starman who came to Cloudfyre from a distant
world called
Earth
and brought life here. And so that one’s spirit lives on, to
bring life to where life has been extinguished…
You will give us a world renewed, giant. Of grass and trees
and fresh, clear skies. And of laughter of people living out their
lives. And of the joyous sound of children and animals, large and
small, getting about their days.’

Gargaron looked but could see nothing for the
storm.

‘
Life be an enigma,’ Hawkmoth
said, his voice growing weaker. ‘Fleeting. It be but smoke on the
breeze. And those who come after us would do well to be mindful of
this fact. Lamps glow and lamps go out. Such is the way of things
on a lonely world floating amidst a cold universe. And we who float
upon it are all there be. Travel safe my friend.’ And with that he
moved no more, standing there, his body solidifying, his eyes
turning dark blue and then to black. His skin became stone. His arm
still pointing, his other arm clasping his staff out from his side.
And no sooner had he become rock, than he began to
erode.

Gargaron stumbled back, watching it
happen.

‘
Hawkmoth? What
be the matter? Hawkmoth, can you hear me?!
’

But Hawkmoth Lifegiver spoke no
more.

Gargaron could only watch as the
sorcerer’s form slowly lost detail, like a river stone rubbed
smooth over a vast passage of time.

7

Gargaron knew he were dreaming.
For as Hawkmoth eroded away, he gazed toward the spot where the
sorcerer had been pointing, and what stood there made no
sense.

A horse. With two heads.

Gargaron watched the mirage,
waiting for it to slide away, to fall apart under the howling grit.
He looked back at the sorcerer. But Hawkmoth were quickly
featureless. Naught but a shape approximating his original form. A
round lump of a head, no face, rounded shoulders, no clothes, a
narrowing torso, arms and legs withering away to thin cords, his
hands gone, his arms ending in rounded nubs, his staff now but dust
on the air. And yet part of Hawkmoth’s arm, what had become of it,
were still pointing.

In the distance, the two-headed
horse still stood there. As if waiting for him.

Gargaron regarded it at length,
waiting for it to vanish. But vanish it did not. Compelled now, he
took his tired legs and trudged toward it, hunched against the
biting gusts. Dream or not he would see himself to this apparition,
if only to reach out and touch it, to prove it were not
real.

Once or twice he looked back at
what used to be Hawkmoth, but there were little left of the
sorcerer now save a spire of sand-stone, growing ever thinner and
less defined. But more and more Gargaron were drawn on by the sight
of the horse, for the nearer he pushed to it, the more substantial
grew. Intrigued, he willed himself forward, curiosity feeding his
determination. His consciousness faded to grey here and there, and
each time his senses returned he stood, hunched for a moment or two
regaining his bearings. Yet always the horse stood there, waiting.
Until finally Gargaron reached it, and the horse were right there,
close enough to touch.

‘
Grimah
,’ he croaked.
‘
Grimah? Be it you, my
friend?
’

The horse nuzzled him with its two
noses and made a soft noise at his ear as if to confirm his
identity. He kept nuzzling him, as if encouraging him to climb upon
his back. Distantly Gargaron got the notion, but it seemed an
insurmountable task. He felt so heavy, so tired, so burdened. But
somehow, aided by the horse’s strength, he managed to drag himself
upon into saddle. There he slumped forward panting, clinging to
Grimah’s mane so that he would not slide off and tumble back into
the dirt. He did not like his chances of getting back to his feet
if that happened, let alone climbing back again onto the
steed.

Soon he were aware of movement, of
the horse carrying him away. And once more Gargaron
slept…

1

GARGARON had no awareness of the
passage of time. While he slept, Grimah carried him diligently
across this desolate part of Godrik’s Vale. While he slept,
Cloudfyre underwent its final transformation before its Fall. Dark
Ones and Harbingers and Juggernauts, billions upon billions of
them, spread out across the world, setting alight the forests,
hammering down all signs of habitation and civilisation, reducing
all of it to rubble and dust. They took to the oceans annihilating
the last of the sea-dwellers and their cities. They took to the
skies, dealing death and destruction and cleansing wherever it were
needed. The destruction and annihilation went on and on until
Cloudfyre began to rumble and shake, until Cloudfyre called back
her children and thus the Dark Ones, the Harbingers, the
Juggernauts, returned to Cloudfyre’s deep womb where they would
again sleep soundly for ten thousand years before their next
emergence.

When Gargaron awoke he were first
taken by the searing blue skies. Were he floating? It certainly
felt as such. The sky were all about him. Above and below. And yet,
yet he felt solid ground beneath his bare feet. He looked down and
saw his blistered toes and his reflection. He barely recognised
himself. His hair were mostly gone, as if burnt free. He had lost
considerable weight. His clothes were shredded. His limbs hung with
chunks of flesh. And in parts, his bones were exposed.

But here were his reflection
nonetheless.

He looked up and around. Grimah
were nowhere to be seen, making him think that the horse really had
been some dream of delirium. And yet, the imprint of horse’s hooves
in the crystalline white earth lead off into the endless distance.
Other than that, here were a featureless landscape, utterly white
save the reflection of the vast blue sky and the wispy white clouds
upon it, reflected perfectly, like a mirror.

It were absolutely beautiful in
its isolation, in its silence. Gargaron turned slowly about. There
were a clarity to his mind that he had not known since before his
foray into Vol Mothaak. A lucidity. But the sudden memory of the
tower stung him. Locke and Melai. And Hawkmoth. All of them dead. A
lump filled his throat. Guilt and sadness for friends lost. And for
a while he could not shed the memory of dear Melai. He had promised
to take her back to Thoonsk. He sighed heavily. ‘I am sorry, Melai.
I pray you forgive me where ever you be.’

He were alone. That thought were
like a crushing weight. And there were some sense, some deep part
of him, an intuition, that told him he were but the last thing
alive. Not only on Godrik’s Vale, but on all of Cloudfyre. That the
laughter, the voices, the cries, the tweets, the howls of
Cloudfyre’s millions upon millions of living things had been
silenced. And he were all that remained.

He completed one full rotation,
his eyes scanning the horizon in all directions for any tiny
landmark that he might strive for. For there seemed no feature to
this landscape but its endless floor of white and the blue sky and
clouds reflected upon it.

Yet, he saw something. Indeed it
almost startled him. A tiny ethereal being standing there twenty
yards from him.

2

Its sudden, unexpected presence
made him jump. He grunted, alarmed, his hand moving instinctively
for his sword or hammer, both of which he seemed to have lost. He
did not move. He simply stood gazing back at this tiny little
being.

It did naught but stand and watch
him in return. A sad expression were on its face. Like that of a
child who has lost its mother.

It be some
ghost
,
Gargaron
decided. By appearances it were not a substantial being. He could
see through its form the reflected clouds off the white salt flats,
could see through its head the blue sky. It were much like those
watery mirages seen at a distance on steaming hot
afternoons.

Gargaron felt thirst beginning to
bite him. He realised he were not only without his weapons but were
without his rucksack. But a gourd he found tied to his belt. It
were not his own he realised as he unclipped it. He recognised it
as Hawkmoth’s. He frowned. Had the sorcerer given over his precious
water to him? Gargaron felt its weight. It had a heaviness about
it. Full.

He unstoppered it and brought it
to his cracked lips. As cool water sluiced over his tongue and he
drank, he had to fight all his will not to up end the entire
contents down his throat. But it were evident he were a long, long
way from fresh water on this strange land. What he had must be
rationed.

He took two or three hearty gulps
then forced himself to stopper the vessel. He clipped the gourd
back to his belt. And once again his eyes went to the tiny being
standing there. Gargaron blinked at it. Then considered his gourd.
He took it from his belt and offered it. ‘Forgive me. I have quite
forgotten my manners. Be you thirsty?’