Cloudfyre Falling - A dark fairy tale

by A. L. Brooks

  ‘I made to corral as many of them as I could,’ Eve told him, as she busied herself unfolding a peculiar little contraption of wood. ‘Alas, many were already spooked before the storm hit and would not come. I saved what I could.’

  Those who had been spared the storm’s wrath chewed at grass amidst the trees. And birds played about, pecking at screepers that chirruped and screeched. The pixies though were nowhere to be spotted, in hiding or vanished.

  ‘I would say you did as good as you could given the circumstances,’ Gargaron told her. ‘Be my steed safe and well?’

  She pointed. ‘Aye, and currently enjoying some oats.’

  Gargaron saw stone stables, a building attached to the northwun wall of the cottage; no doubt where the good sorcerer Hawkmoth, had kept his own steed. There he spied Grimah through the open doors on a bed of straw with his two snouts deep in a trough.

  ‘I thank you for housing him. And us.’

  Eve simply nodded and kept on with whatever she were doing.

  ‘And for gathering our belongings.’

  She looked around at him. ‘Ye mean, thank ye for not helping myself to them.’

  He shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Giant, I am not in the business of relieving folk of their possessions. Even if they carry such famed relics as Drenvel’s Bane.’

  He nodded. ‘So, you recognise the weapon.’

  She laughed. ‘Of course. It were forged with the aid of my foremothers after all.’

  Gargaron pondered this. And a thought came to him for the first time. ‘I don’t suppose you happen to know its secrets?’

  She looked around at him with a frown. ‘Secrets?’

  ‘Aye, its secrets. For it be but a hilt with no hammer. Legend states that it be a magical item, that to wield it correctly is to bring its hammer-head into existence. Yet I am starting to think that someone has run off with its other half for all the use I can get out of it.’

  She looked at him squarely. ‘Ye know not how to wake it?’

  ‘Aye.’

  She laughed wickedly. ‘Oh, this be priceless. As soon as I saw it yesterday when ye arrived I took ye for some fearless warrior.’

  He sighed. ‘No, I be a simple hunter. Naught more. I took Drenvel’s Bane from a sacred temple in my village where it has been housed for many a year. If my village druids knew its secrets then they took them to their grave.’

  Eve searched him at length. And went back to her work. ‘I guess wielding this weapon may aid ye on ye quest.’

  ‘If I could wake it, yes. By its tales, it ought help its wielder win many a fight and fight off many a foe.’

  She gazed now distantly at the cobbles. ‘And help protect my dear husband.’ She peered up at him once more.

  ‘Yes. Provided I can learn its secrets.’

  ‘Well, I should think Skinkk’s blood be your key. My Mothers have long told stories of ancient weapons forged for mighty warriors. But as far as Drenvel’s Bane be concerned, Hor the Cutter signed a pact with the weapon, his blood mixed with that of a Skinkk, joined in battle while his fist gripped the hilt.’

  ‘You think this would help with any who wield it?’

  ‘Provided he were a giant.’

  Feeling a renewed sense of hope that he may have unlocked the weapon’s secret, he asked, ‘You would not happen to have any here would you? Skinkk’s blood. A witch and sorcerer living together must surely brag a collection of such things.’

  She laughed. ‘I’m afraid, giant, ye assume too much. We are not in the business of hunting Skinkks. Nor collecting parts from our animal cousins.’

  He sighed. ‘So, where might I source some Skinkk blood then?’

  ‘Why, from a Skinkk of course.’

  Gargaron nodded at the mild rebuke and meant to say more but thought it best now to shut up. He watched Eve go about her business. When she were done, the contraption she had been working on looked something like a bizarre wooden boy, barely standing more than the height of Gargaron’s knee. He possessed large, yet expressionless eyes and a small carved nose and small carved lips. He were gangly as a twig. And at first he did not even seem alive.

  ‘This be a Windracer,’ Eve told Gargaron, kneeling and holding the “boy” upright, steadying him on his little feet. She tipped a phial of orange liquid to a reservoir fashioned like a small scooped receptacle in the rear of the boy’s skull. A thin stream of liquid coursed around the reservoir that had been etched in a spiral pattern around the boy’s face and body. As the liquid ran down, slowly the boy seemed to breathe with life. ‘It shall carry our news to Hawkmoth.’

  7

  Melai, fresh and dressed from bathing, came out into the rear yard in time to see the Windracer boy standing, independent of Eve, looking about like a curious child, looking up at Gargaron, looking around at Eve, looking at Melai who stood no taller than he. Eve took his hand, and the boy looked at her as a child might a mother. Then she spoke to him, and in no tongue that Gargaron understood; yet it were one Melai had heard the trees of Thoonsk occasionally speak. A woodland language.

  Take this message to my dear Hawkmoth. Tell him survivors have at last found their way to our cottage; Gargaron Stoneheart of Hovel, and Melai Willowborne of Thoonsk. They will depart here shortly to trail him. Tell him that there has been a Vortex storm, that I stabled our beloved animals but that some have perished. Tell him that I love him. And that I wait here alone, for his return.

  Gargaron and Melai watched her. As she stopped speaking she kissed the boy on the cheek, and stood back. Here the wooden boy looked up at her once… then he turned and ran. Quick as the breeze. Heading westways, over the back of the hill and gone, out of sight in moments, running like a ghost, swift, effortless, blurred.

  ‘What a marvel that would be,’ Gargaron murmured to himself, ‘to run so quick.’

  Eve fetched Grimah from the dry interior of the stables. Though Grimah proved particularly stubborn. Either because he did not wish to be separated from his lovely oats, or he would not be drawn from the stable by one such as her.

  Gargaron took the reins and Grimah came forth tentatively, looking about, his ears back, weary, alert. Gargaron gently touched both his noses, soothing the beast. ‘Grimah, ease up now,’ he said softly. ‘Ease up. All be well.’

  ‘He be a beautiful creature,’ Eve said admiringly. ‘And has a healthy appetite. He made sure there were naught left of the apples I gave him for his supper.’

  Gargaron looked from his horse to witch. ‘I thank you again for your hospitality, Eve. You have been a light in all this darkness.’

  ‘And yee pair, lights in mine,’ she said, nodding both at him and Melai. ‘Ye company has been most welcome. And shall be again if ye choose to return this way after your mission.’

  ‘We will be glad to accept it,’ Melai told her warmly.

  Gargaron handed Melai her bow and quiver, then fixed scabbard across his back and sheathed his great sword. Once done, he hefted up his pack and strapped it to saddle, hoisted himself onto Grimah before reaching down in order to haul Melai to Grimah’s shoulders.

  Melai hesitated, turning instead to Eve. ‘Why do you stay here?’ she asked her. ‘Why not come with us?’

  Eve smiled sadly. ‘Lying over this hill, and the fields and pastures that immediately surround it, be a veil of sanctity, a powerful enchantment put in place many years gone by my Hawkmoth. He wished to create a home here that animals could retreat to and be safe from poachers, hunters, collectors, traffickers, smugglers. A place that sick or injured animals might come to, to either pass on in peace or to heal and find their strength away from predators.’

  She looked about at the torn down trees, where the carcasses of deer and goat and bird could be seen through wilting foliage and broken branch and the layer of damp discarded leaves that seemed to cover everything. ‘On the day of the first Boom shake, my Hawkmoth were away yonder visiting, Faeryth, a dear old elf who lived a solitary existence in a tree abode. Hawkmoth says when
the shake swept across the land Faeryth and his pets died instantly before his eyes. He raced home here fearing my safety but found me and the animals alive and unaffected. But on observing a number of goats perishing once they moved from the safety of this enchanted area to the outside, well, Hawkmoth warned that I may follow if I were to do the same. And as he carried out inspections of the nearby villages of Gollahnt and Somersut, he found all dead. Thus I remain here, kept alive I believe by his enchantment, while by all reports the Vale dies around me.

  ‘By mystery, magic, or fate, you pair, like my Hawkmoth, have proven immune to the curse ravaging our world. So here, for now I wait and hope ye be successful in turning this blight around.’ She placed her palm gently upon Melai’s cheek. ‘Go now. Travel swift and sure.’

  Gargaron reached down and helped Melai into saddle.

  ‘One more thing,’ came Eve’s voice. ‘To verify my Hawkmoth’s identity, and for him to verify yers, be sure to ask him this question: Should the storm winds fall upon Ostamare, and the rains not cease, where ought I to take shelter?’ His answer will be as follows…’

  VARSTAHK

  1

  HILLS rolled away for a number of miles, all stripped of their trees. They looked like chins of giants, rugged with the stubble of tree trunks snapped and broken and twisted and torn. Corpses of wild goat, deer, fox hounds, littered the sodden grasses.

  A lake, listed on Hawkmoth’s map as Hoakensdeep, could be seen far northways’n’east, its waters sparkling under morning sunlight. But directly westways’n’south lay a realm known as Varstahk, a mysterious country of which Gargaron had heard many a strange and fantastic tale. If Eve were to be believed, it were also the first major landmark Hawkmoth were to have flown over in his zeppelin.

  And thus Gargaron and Melai and their two-headed steed turned toward it.

  2

  By midday the hills had flattened out to sandy scrubland where tall rock spires stuck from earyth like the petrified tongues of buried gods, poking out into cloudy skies, licking the heavens. As they became more numerous, long eerie corridors ran down between each one where spindly trees grew out from them horizontally. It didn’t take long for Gargaron to notice these trees were actually on the move, slowly traversing the looming rock walls like the great starfish of Loovss over giant coral beds, worming roots shifting with imperceptible slowness, gobbling at moss whose green feathery hairs looked more like minute arms with tiny fingers and hands snatching at itsy-bitsy elf bugs that flew by.

  Between many of these rock spires, serving as both floor and pathway on these long winding corridors, were worn paving stones between which wilting blue-flowered weeds grew. Sunlight cast across rock face, bright and hot as wood fire. But Gargaron also noticed that the pavers were covered in a soft carpet of elf bugs. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands. Dead. Or writhing, dying.

  Gargaron recalled what Melai had gleaned from Eve, that the Dark Ones, or Harbingers, spread poison on the air and contaminated rivers and oceans. But this still confused him. If the atmosphere were somehow sullied with deathly toxins, then why had he, Melai or Grimah not yet succumbed? For, here under full daylight, in all its heartless morbidity, were once again its apparent process at work. Great killing and great dying. And if this alleged contamination did not topple the peculiar moss then moss would most likely starve through lack of elf bugs, and these trees that fed upon the moss would also in turn perish.

  They pushed on through this land of rocky scrub and tall rock sails. Great birds circled on thermals, giving Gargaron hope that, like he and Melai, some things seemed immune to the blight. A dark mass of swirling grey cloud clogged southern horizon. Tail of the vortex storm he guessed.

  As the rock fans began to dwindle, their pathway of paving stones seemed to widen. And there were glimpses every now and then, through trees ahead, and beyond bumps and boulders in the earyth, of some great remnant of civilisation.

  Soon scrubland ended abruptly where an ancient square moat lay bordered by a stone rampart. This moat had long lost its water, filled now with weeds, trees, shrubs. Beyond, lay the sprawling ancient empty city of Varstahk, ruined now for two thousand years.

  They crossed its moat via an ancient bridge of stone, littered with bones of long dead birdlings. But scattered there too were with the recent dead: lizards, scrub crabs, giant scorpions, fire spiders. They stepped down a row of wide stairs, to the flat of the city whose elevation seemed lay lower than the surrounding lands.

  They pushed out into this once thriving metropolis of Varstahk. It proved an eerie, unsettling place. Wind moaned through old battlements, and whined like spectres through towers that soared high and crumbling. At ground level, old temples, domed constructions of stone, grew with giant fig trees, and gritty winds swirled through their lonely deserted interiors, wailing, crying, groaning.

  Gargaron felt as if the eyes of a thousand ghosts were watching he and Melai. Although, he had to declare there were no sign of anyone squatting in this place, as if it were cursed, as if life (living or undead or otherwise) were not welcome here. As if it prevented anything taking a foothold.

  Towers blocked sunlight, thus casting much of the city in cold blue shadow. Towers stood brown, almost purple. Wind kept moaning, kept swirling, kept nibbling at Melai’s hair, tugging at Gargaron’s clothes, pulling at Grimah’s mane.

  ‘What be this place?’ Gargaron heard Melai ask.

  ‘This be the ancient city of Varstahk,’ he told her. ‘Giants lived here. Cahtu they were though. Undead armies that rolled north on their mighty Temblahs, crushing, killing, pillaging. Their empire spread out of Cahtahk, their birth lands. They constructed many cities like this across the Vale.’

  ‘Cahtu were not undead,’ he heard her say.

  He eyed her, surprised that she, sheltered within Thoonsk all her life, might have some perceived knowledge on this subject.

  ‘Legends tell us they had no heart,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Legends tell us no such thing,’ she said.

  ‘We have heard or read separate legends then. They were undead.’

  ‘They were not,’ she insisted. ‘I grew up hearing stories of elder days from Mother Thoonsk.’

  Gargaron sighed. ‘Undead or no, this were their home for a millennia. Now let us leave this silly argument at that.’

  3

  They pressed on in silence, the echo of Grimah’s hooves bouncing back at them, and bouncing back at them again. All else were silent save for that and wind. It howled high above them in the lonely heights of the empty, blue-sky space between towers. Gargaron gazed over his shoulder; so far away now the moat they’d crossed to enter this place, so far and almost vanished beyond their sight.

  They came upon what Gargaron claimed were a death pit, a cavernous square pit cut down into earyth. It were filled with stone spikes. ‘Folk and animals would be thrown in there to the amusement of the Cahtu,’ he informed Melai.

  ‘It were filled with acid,’ Melai corrected him. ‘Not spikes.’

  ‘No, acid were the bathing pits of the Cahtu.’

  ‘It were not.’

  He sighed. ‘Well, it matters not. What matters is getting across.’

  The pit swallowed the entire way forward for eighty feet. Its sides bordered by enormous towers, blocking any possible side route. With no bridge spanning the hole Gargaron and Melai were stuck.

  ‘We’ve no choice but to turn around and search for another avenue,’ Melai said with a heavy sigh.

  So they did. It took them hours searching. Encountering dead ends. And toppled ruins that blocked paved streets. Reluctantly they were forced indoors, inside the old dark ruins themselves. Here they were wary of bandits or other unsavoury beasts that may have taken up residence within. Which they found—though all dead were they. Tusked bears. Giant badgers. And a stench of rot carried heavy and rank through the darkened halls. At times the stench were so thick and cloying they could do naught but turn back or hurry Grimah forward choking and co
ughing. Other times the interiors were so lightless that Gargaron were forced to fire up his lantern. But corridors seemed to follow no logical path, and many came to abrupt ends at ancient bone laden altars where enormous glaring statues stood.

  They found doorways into courtyards or onto vast wind-blown fighting arenas. Weeds, ivy, trees grew direct from rock walls. They trailed corridors that bent backwards, or descended mighty stairways into dark dank dungeons that swirled with the rank stench of dead things.

  Finally, upon a terrace they stopped to take stock.

  ‘This place be an infernal labyrinth,’ Gargaron said irritated. ‘We may spend the rest of our days here.’

  Melai, seated upon Grimah’s shoulders, looked about. Above them naught but blue sky drifted with peaceful white cloud. Melus and Gohor were almost directly overhead. Around them the city sprawled out in all directions. They could no longer see rock-sail nor hill from which they’d descended to reach this city.

  To their right the slanting roof of a temple climbed to dizzying heights. Gargaron studied it closely. ‘If we were at a higher vantage,’ he said, ‘we might plot a way forward.’

  ‘Do not tell me you wish to scale it,’ Melai asked. ‘It be far too steep, you’ll gain no purchase.’

  ‘I may look like a lump but I might surprise you with my agility.’

  She wore a grave look.

  ‘Melai, tell me another way and I shall gladly take it.’

  She looked about, searching, searching, hoping some missed access way or path would become apparent.

  4