by A. L. Brooks
Gargaron hung his pack on the pommel of Grimah’s saddle, then gripped the edge of the roof with his huge hands. He hoisted himself up, lifting one foot onto the roof before the other. He crawled up a dozen feet before the roof beneath him began to sag.
He froze, Melai shouting, ‘It’s shifting beneath you.’
It were not only shifting he realised. The ancient tiles were cracking, splintering. And there came suddenly a disturbing sound of something groaning below him, ancient beams protesting under his weight. The area around him began to sink. And he realised it almost too late. The roof were collapsing.
He shuffled backwards just as a mighty slab dropped silently away into darkness, a shaft of sunlight following it down. He slid back to the terrace where Melai were watching wide-eyed from Grimah’s shoulders and it were several seconds before they heard a distant crash at the floor far, far below.
‘Hmm,’ Gargaron said reflectively, ‘that were… interesting.’ He glanced around at Melai. She almost laughed. ‘What?’ he said at the look on her face.
‘Interesting?’ she said. ‘Is that how you’d put it?’
He shrugged, shaken, gazing up at high, sloping roof. ‘Maybe I ought to try another section. Where I trod were probably a weak spot.’
Melai sighed. ‘No. Lift me up. I’ll climb. I be far lighter than you.’
He frowned. ‘But your arm.’
‘I have another.’
‘And should you lose grip and slide down?’
‘I have three good wings, and one good arm, I shall manage.’
He were surprised in that moment how fond he’d grown of her. Such a tiny little thing yet she carried such a mighty heart. In some ways she reminded him of his dear Veleyal.
He hoisted her up. ‘See what you can see then. But if your arm grows sore―’
‘I shall manage,’ she said sternly.
Their eyes met. He smiled. ‘Of course.’ He lifted her to roof and watched as she carefully made her way around the rent caused by Gargaron and on up steep slope of roof. She crawled with her feet and one arm, her bad arm tucked across her chest, her three healthy wings flapping to give her buoyancy.
By the time she’d come to a stop she were but a mere speck of a thing way up near the apex of temple. She clung there, wind tugging at her, steadying herself before looking about.
Gargaron watched her point at something but could not hear her words, just a muted, distant sound of her voice flurrying about on ragged wind gusts. He saw her point to several positions, talking all the while.
Soon he watched her making her way carefully back down.
‘I heard nothing,’ he called out to her as she neared him. ‘What were you saying?’
‘I see a path,’ she claimed, ‘an avenue.’ She pointed. ‘Our way out. Come.’
Gargaron hoisted her from roof’s edge to Grimah’s saddle and he lead steed down the worn stone stairs on Melai’s instructions. They reached another terrace which circled the temple, and down another flight of steps. This took them into what may once have been a garden filled with exotic flesh eating plants that legends promised the Cahtu were so fond of. Through these now barren gardens, Melai took them, claiming that if she had seen correctly, their path would lead them to an avenue that would lead them through the final stretch of Varstahk.
Sure enough, through an archway with downward poking spikes and guarded by a stone gargoyle with half its torso crumbled away, they strolled out upon a wide paved road that seemed to cut the city in two. Eastways, Melai claimed it lead to a central square, to stone spires the Cahtu once hung their war enemies from. And westways it lead to outer city gates. Gazing in this direction Gargaron could now see distant forests beyond city boundary, and, beyond that, rocky crags of limestone poking into sky.
‘You have done well,’ Gargaron said with a relieved and exhausted sigh. ‘You have done well indeed, dear Melai.’
SKINKK
1
CLEAR passage out of Varstahk however proved not such an inevitability. Half a mile on, the avenue on which they walked, narrowed between a pair of temples outside which stood immense stone sentinels in the likeness of the Cahtu, standing tall and commanding, each with their dire arm reaching almost to earyth, while their remaining arm grasped a war hammer.
Yet, what Gargaron and Melai saw lying there at their base stopped them in their tracks.
Camouflaged against the stonework were a sleeping lizard. A lizard whose girth and bulk looked greater than that of Gargaron’s. Actually, the more Gargaron looked at it, the closer they got, the more he feared this lizard were three, perhaps as much as four times his own size.
‘A Skinkk,’ Gargaron murmured cautiously, Grimah snorting nervously. ‘A winged one, at that. We must be careful.’
Melai frowned. ‘Skinkk?’ she said. ‘My kind call them dragons. And all are winged.’
‘Not where I am from,’ Gargaron informed her. ‘Skinkks skitter around afoot. Though that be irrelevant, for by whatever name they come, wing or no, they are cunning and deadly.’ He watched it carefully, hoping, lethal critter though it be, that it were succumbed to whatever poison or sickness had been killing all else.
He took his spyglass from his belt and surveyed the beast. He could spot no sign of respiration. ‘It may be dead,’ he murmured. And the notion forced a thought into his mind: Eve suggested Skinkk blood may bring Drenvel’s Bane to life. I wonder…
2
They waited there, watching it, considering their options. The city gates were tantalisingly close. So close in fact that they could now hear rustle of leaf and branch in woodland beyond. Though where the Skinkk slept, it blocked nearly the entire width of road: its long neck curled around toward the sloping wall of the southwun temple, its long spiked tail toward the north. Its wings lay over its forelegs. If they proceeded, there would be little room for Grimah to sneak by without treading on it.
Still, if it were dead… ‘What do you think?’ Gargaron asked. ‘Should we chance sneaking by it? It breathes not.’
Melai were quiet. She wished to be nowhere near this dragon. Rjoonds were the enemy of nymphs, or so she had grown up to learn, but dragons were the destroyers of woodland realms like Thoonsk. Her willow trees had told tales of Gone Days when dragons had unleashed their fires upon Mother Thoonsk. How Mother Thoonsk’s children had blackened and bubbled under their thunderous firestorms. Horror tales she wished never to hear again. And did not wish to see with her own eyes.
‘We must go nowhere near it,’ she said at last. ‘It feigns death.’
Gargaron held the beast in his spyglass for a prolonged period. Its chest did not rise nor fall. It were still. ‘All signs point to it being deceased.’
‘It feigns death. I feel it. We turn around and find another way.’
‘Turn around?’ Gargaron would have laughed had he not been trying to maintain an air of quiet. ‘What route would you have us take, Melai? This city be a rabbit warren. We got ourselves lost simply reaching this point. We find ourselves lost again we might just consign ourselves here till the end of our days.’
She did not answer. But being in such close proximity to this dragon chilled her.
Gargaron studied the beast’s scaly face. Spiked horns jutted from its head. Fangs ran down both sides of its great and hideous mouth. And all the while its lizard eyes stayed shut. Skinkks were cunning beasts, he knew. If this one had heard them approaching then in all likelihood it were lying there feigning death as Melai warned. Waiting, hoping for them to attempt a pass before it jumped awake and breathed upon them an explosion of fire.
Gargaron imagined if Melai’s wing were well enough, she might take flight and soar beyond it, distract it somehow, enough time for Gargaron to sneak up on it and strike it a deathblow with his great sword. Extracting blood as it lay dying would make for far easier and safer work. And once it were dead there would be easy passage out of that place. He looked down at her where she sat before him on Grimah’s shoulders. ‘Howeve
r we do it, we must think of a way to press on. To turn and follow our tracks back out of Varstahk and then skirt this city will add an awful amount of time to our journey.’
‘And to press forward at this point may end our journey all too soon,’ she insisted.
‘Still, find a way forward, we must.’
Ears on both Grimah’s heads were drawn back. He would not stand still, though Gargaron implored he remain so, and quiet, least his clopping hooves wake the beast.
Gargaron noticed Melai sorting through her leaf sling, whose vine-like branches clung to her like wiry tentacles. He wondered if she had heard him. ‘Melai, do you heed me? We cannot remain here and we cannot turn about.’
‘By the Drowned Angels, shoosh!’ she hissed at him. ‘Do you not hear yourself? I’m surprised you don’t wake the dead with that booming voice of yours.’ She gave him a scolding glance, this tiny little mouse of a creature staring him down. She returned her attention to her satchel.
Skinkk continued to lie there, dead by all reports. Cool desolate winds continued to moan through Varstahk’s vast network of ruins.
At last Melai pulled something from her bag: the small clump of dark wood Gargaron had seen her pack into her sling back amongst her home trees in Thoonsk. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked her. He hoped miraculously that perhaps it were some mighty dragon horn; he had heard of such items, ones that could command dragons.
‘You insist our only way is forward,’ she said shortly. ‘So here be our solution.’ She held the object out to him. ‘This be a monstrut hoegeth. House of Monsters. It be a holding of elfstar wood. It keeps dormant what you might know as Charon’s Children.’
3
Gargaron breathed in heavily, taken aback. ‘Charon’s Imps?’ He looked down at her as if she were but a demon seated there. ‘Impossible.’
‘You have heard of such critters then?’
Charon’s Imps were stuff of myth and legend. Stuff of horror tales. They were said to lie dormant in deep, lightless ocean trenches off the mysterious Senoogras Isles. How Melai had come by them were a complete mystery.
Their origins lay beyond Cloudfyre. Nine thousand years ago, during dominion of the Skinkks who ruled over Cloudfyre in those times, the Droplets of Charon, segments of a moon legend states once orbited Cloudfyre, had crashed down through the atmosphere. These were times before the Joo Joons and Mookijuks and Forest Nymphs; before Sorcerers, and Oldwuns, and Wraiths, and Cahtu walked Cloudfyre; days when kingdoms such as Vonyael, and Liliyahd, and Skygarden, were yet to rise and fall; when clans such as the Witches of Nooin, the Elves of Highlanding, and the great Wraiths of Nightfall were yet to fight out their legendary wars; when even the eventual riders of the Skinkks, the Xerbs (all who died out when the dynasty of the Skinkks collapsed), were still to climb up out of the snowy wastes of Tunddera and tame these great lizards of Cloudfyre.
As the Droplets of Charon thundered into earyth they had exploded, leaving craters as large as hollowed hills. But from them climbed Charon’s so-called Imps. Devilish creatures riddled with exotic star diseases. It were during these days the giants waged fierce battles against the Skinkks for control over Cloudfyre’s vast stretches of land. And it were the giants who believed that the Skinkks, in order to wipe the giants from existence, had somehow engineered Charon’s Imps. For, tiny though Charon’s Imps were, their effects on giants were devastating. Their simple presence were enough to have a giant keel over in sickness, and prolonged exposure meant his death.
Giants however were not all who feared the Imps. When it came to Charon’s little devils, it seemed the larger the creature, the greater he suffered. The giants had thus questioned the idea that Skinkks were to blame for the emergence of these little star devils. For Skinkks perished far more quickly at their hand, and in far greater number; brutal, horrible deaths, mutating into grotesque creatures before their thumping hearts exploded through their chests.
Sitting there gazing down at Melai’s casket, Gargaron prayed that she jested, or else he were like to swipe the object from her grasp before another word were spoken. ‘Melai,’ he said clearly. ‘This be a very serious claim. Tell me it be not true.’
She gazed up into his eyes. ‘I speak no jest. You say we need press forward, well this be a solution.’
He swallowed. She had never seen him look so worried.
‘Have you not encountered them in your travels?’ Melai asked him.
‘I have gone out of my way to avoid the places they are known to dwell. Do you not know the effect they have on my kind?’
She frowned. ‘No. I know only that these things, whatever they be, from wherever they come, keep dragons away from Mother Thoonsk.’
Gargaron breathed out long and heavy. Staring down at her, considering the way forward, but also the way back if they took that path. He breathed out again. ‘Very well.’ He gazed out toward where the Skinkk were still in slumber. The Imps would make him sick but would certainly kill the Skinkk. It seemed blood extraction and passage through the remaining stretch of Varstahk might become a viable option after all. ‘Very well,’ he said again.
‘So, shall I proceed?’ Melai asked.
He wiped sweat from his brow. ‘Yes, but I must remove myself. Retreat some distance. Though…’
‘Though what?’
‘Should I retreat and leave you here, then I would, by my actions, be putting you in mortal peril.’
She shook her head. ‘That beast will not dare stray near me whilst I wield these things.’
He eyed her closely. ‘Are you certain?’
‘Yes. Now, lower me down.’
‘And what of these star imps? Do they not ail your kind?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I shall be safe. Now lower me and go. Quickly.’
He cast an eye at the great Skinkk hoping it were indeed dead. Then he nodded. ‘Aye, then. Very well. But I shall leave you with Grimah.’
‘A bad idea,’ she said shortly. ‘He may suffer. Now lower me down please, before this dragon wakes up at the sounds of our procrastination.’
Gargaron did not like this, but knew he had little choice. Though it were he who wished now to retreat and find another route. Or to ponder another option. But Melai were wriggling impatiently from Grimah’s shoulders and so he took Melai’s arm, and gripping her wood clump, he lowered her to the pavers at Grimah’s feet.
‘Release them and be quick about it then,’ Gargaron said as he pulled Grimah about. ‘And if that dragon be not dead as you so claim, and awaken before you are done then, have no fear, I shall be at your side quicker than a sunflare.’
She nodded, as if to say, Thank you, and with that he wheeled his mount around and took himself back two hundred paces, where he adjudged he ought be well beyond the influence of the Imps. Here he brought Grimah to a halt within the relative cover of a narrow corridor between temples, a low arched roof protecting he and horse from any possible air attack should this Skinkk awake unto anger.
4
Melai tread forward as far as she dared. She halted her advance no more than twenty paces from the sleeping dragon and placed her monstrut hoegeth upon ground and whispered a short incantation. Upon her breath, a greenish mist flowed gently from her mouth and covered the object like spore. Nothing happened. She looked up and searched the dragon for signs of its stirring. It remained unmoved, its eyes ever shut.
Melai lowered her head and closed her own eyes and again spoke the incantation that ought to have rendered her monstrut hoegeth open. Again, greenish mist drifted from her lips, layering the casket. Several moments passed. Before she heard a sound. But not from the casket. She looked up. The dragon were watching her, one eye open.
5
Melai would have turned and flown… had her wooden casket not then split open, letting out intense dark light that erupted at first in black beams cutting into blue skies, beams that rolled and curled like fog on a dark night. Then out they wriggled, small beasts, black as obsidian, clambering like ramp
ant, mindless beetles from a bucket. Instinctively though, it seemed they knew their purpose, for they veered directly toward the sleeping dragon, moving like dark ghosts beyond a storm, like blots of dye on damp papyrus, leaving wafting trails of saturated ink on the air.
Gargaron were glad he had retreated. Glad Melai could not see him. For instantly, though he were some distance from the Imps, he felt his vision blur, felt his eyes water, felt as if someone had pushed a blade through his belly and were turning it about. His head might well have been submerged in turbulent waters, suddenly washed back and forth, back and forth. He lay low against Grimah’s shoulders for fear he might tumble off, and while he grimaced and groaned he fought intense pain and mounting confusion to keep one eye peeled in order to hold Melai under his surveillance.
The Skinkk snapped up like a snake, shuddering, rearing its head back, letting out a pained howl. It tried to heft itself to its feet. But it stumbled and roared and toppled drunkenly onto its ribs. It moved to right itself, only to flail about, its legs jutting in the air, flailing, while its wings lay weakly, sickly, out across the pavers.
Gargaron were astounded at how quickly and severely the star imps affected the Skinkk. Though the Skinkk were likely weakened, already in the process of dying before they’d encountered it.
Melai backed up, stepping away from the floundering dragon. She would not turn her back on it lest its apparent torture be some trick, lest its claws whip out and slice her in two the moment she let it from her sight. Her star-bugs pressed toward it, mindless, soulless, both jerky and fluid in their movement, multiple shards of dark light shooting out from them, jabbing the dragon’s scaly hide, puncturing it, drawing blood.
The Skinkk managed to roll over, its legs now pinned beneath its weight. Its wings flapped wildly, attempting to lift its body upward, to free its legs. At last it managed to do so, and then it were standing. In what seemed an enormous effort, the Skinkk swung its head round, roaring, omitting a mighty burst of molten fire across the pavers, completely drowning the star-bugs.
