by A. L. Brooks
‘Why do we hesitate?’ Locke asked.
‘Before we proceed, we need open the gate,’ Hawkmoth explained.
‘Gate?’
Hawkmoth pointed at the wall with his staff. ‘That be it, directly ahead of us.’
There were no gate there that any of them could see. Naught but a rounded series of grooves gouged out of the rock wall. ‘I see no such thing,’ Melai said.
‘Oh, it be there, trust me,’ Hawkmoth said. ‘Though getting to it be the first trick.’ He dismounted and told the others to wait where they were.
‘Getting to it?’ Gargaron asked.
‘Aye,’ Hawkmoth said. ‘There be the small matter of slipping by the Shadow Guard.’
Gargaron sighed. ‘Shadow Guard? Let me guess. Another undeclared beastie out for our blood.’
‘Of a sort,’ Hawkmoth admitted.
‘Where be this Shadow Guard then?’ Locke asked, his hand on his blow-flute.
Hawkmoth dismounted. ‘Wait here,’ were all he would say.
3
The rock wall stretched away into the fog in both directions. Where it vanished, Gargaron could only guess. It were reasonable to assume that it enclosed the entire complex. Hawkmoth walked toward it. But he halted his stride some twenty yards from it. What lay before his feet now were a curious covering of ice that looked much like a garden path trailing the passage of the wall in both directions. It were a metallic hew. As though it may not have been ice after all, but some sort of metal.
‘Sanctuary has been invaded but once in over a thousand years,’ Hawkmoth declared. ‘The marauding Hordes from the south stormed north during the summer solstice of Grenxk Seven-Two. In the days before the Snow Beasts made the Bonewreckers their home. Having stormed the crags they took Sanctuary by surprise. Those sorcerers who did not escape were captured and slaughtered. The lore and beliefs of my kind were abhorrent to the southland marauders. But this place be the spiritual home of Vhada, the great entity who sat by the fire to pass on Her knowledge to Ravenblack, sorcerer and first of our kind. It were he who retook Sanctuary. Once he had turned the marauders to stone and tossed them from the clifftops he used his divine powers to establish sentries that would never wane, never sleep, never stray from their post. The Shadow Guard.’ Hawkmoth pointed. ‘This trail you see here… be molt-metal. No outsider may cross it. Not by foot, not by wing, not by invisibility, nor by any enchantment.
‘Now, here be my predicament. There were a time when I could come and go from this place as I pleased. But a long time banished I have been. I must test if my standing as one of the Order still holds any sway.’
4
Beneath his cloak, Hawkmoth gripped a small incendiary device. He hoped he would not need deploy it. It were something he had developed in secret long ago, a device meant for a day such as this, a day where he returned to Sanctuary uninvited, where the Shadow Guard were likely to target him as a traitor, an unwanted, an outsider. His device however would not let them have their way. He would detonate this grasket bomb the moment he suspected even a skerrick of animosity from his former protectors, skewing their attack and leaving him free to leap unscathed from danger.
At least, that were his plan.
‘So, best you all back up a tad,’ he said, staff in one hand, grasket bomb in the other. ‘Fifty feet ought be safe.’
‘Why?’
‘These sentries, if they deem me an intruder, they will carve me up. And you lot too if you are within their reach. And trust me, at this moment you are all well within piercing range.’
‘Piercing range?’ Locke asked with a curious smile.
‘Aye. Shadow Guard steel cuts through any armour, any enchantment. So I urge you, back up.’
Gargaron and Locke obeyed, pulling their steeds around, drawing Razor with them, taking up position out of harm’s way, Melai seated still upon Grimah’s shoulders.
Happy with their distance, Hawkmoth took a breath and stepped onto the pathway.
5
The Shadow Guard rose up about him.
Four of them. Sheer and smooth, and glistening like polished steel. Taller than he they were, by several feet. And there they loomed over him, like graveyard specters, lumps of tall metal approximating the humanoid form, faceless, without limbs, their heads bent down, regarding him.
He did not kneel. He were their master after all. Or at least he once were. He stood straight, shoulders back, chest out, hoping to portray an air of confidence and authority.
There were no words spoken. But the verdict were quick. The sentries glided aside, as if simply pushed by some wind. And seemed to form a guard through which Hawkmoth could pass. And beyond him, the circular grooves cut into Sanctuary’s tall curved perimetre, now spread wide like ripples on a pond. Here the “gate” revealed the grounds of Sanctuary beyond.
‘Come now,’ Hawkmoth called to his companions. ‘Quickly.’
His companions hurried forward, filing through the formation of Shadow Guard, the horse hooves leaving behind short lasting imprints in the molt-metal.
Hawkmoth watched carefully, in case the invitation were open to him only. Yet the Guard allowed his friends to pass freely.
It were only once Hawkmoth’s party were through the gate, that the sentries lowered back into their peculiar realm, like spectres slipping effortlessly into calm water, and were gone. The gate seemed to solidify and the view back beyond the wall shut away.
SANCTUARY
1
SANCTUARY’S grounds looked abandoned. Though there were definite signs of unrest; some attack had most certainly taken place here. At ground level, sections of the rounded organic towers had been blasted open, from outside in it appeared. Frozen bodies lay scattered hither and thither in the snow. Those of sorcerers, Hawkmoth observed, and of witches. And there were the usual mark of witch mischief: decapitated sorcerer heads prod on tall pikes.
The corpses of other creatures lay here too, Gargaron noticed. Shaggy brutes of such immense proportions they were equal in bulk and height to that of Grimah and Razor. And they might have been camouflaged against the snow had they not been betrayed by dark frozen pools of yellow blood.
‘Be these your Snow Beasts?’ Gargaron asked, pulling Grimah up to study one lying in the snow.
‘Sadly aye,’ Hawkmoth said gazing down at it from his mount, wondering if he had once known this particular individual.
It disturbed Hawkmoth, seeing the deceased Snow Beasts and witnessing the general state of this place. He’d had his detractors here but he’d also had friends, Brothers, with whom he’d maintained a secret correspondence with all these years of his banishment. It pained him to think they were all likely deceased.
‘Let us all keep a keen sight,’ he said. ‘The witches have beaten us here. And I fear they have set their Bewitched upon the place. They may still be present, hidden, and watching.’
Gargaron had already withdrawn his great sword. And Melai her bow, and Locke his blow-flute.
‘Where be Mama Vekh then?’ Gargaron asked.
Hawkmoth drew in a large breath of chilly mountain air and when he exhaled a huge flurry of vapour fogged about his face. He pointed. ‘The Citadel at Sanctuary’s centre. She were housed there. Granted she may since have been moved but it ought be the first place we search.’
‘Right then,’ Gargaron said. ‘Let us find her, fetch her and be away from here.’
2
They pushed forward slowly, the hooves of Razor and Grimah leaving deep prints in the snow, the belly of Zebra forming neat swishes. Sanctuary remained quiet. Eerie. And the mists persisted; they could see not one end of Sanctuary from the other. And the air chilled Gargaron to the bone. Why anyone would want to live out their days here he could not fathom. There were also a hideous smell on the air, the faint whiff of rot.
Soon however, there appeared from the grey mists a large dome shaped building. And with it a new image of Sanctuary as a whole formed in Gargaron’s mind. If it were a clear day a
nd he were suspended somehow directly above this complex, it may have looked to him like an upturned hand with fingers curled high into the air, and the citadel sitting somewhere on its palm like an enormous domed growth.
Gargaron heeled Grimah and took the lead, if only to hurry the others. ‘Be not brash,’ Hawkmoth called.
‘Aye,’ Gargaron replied, ‘I hear you, but I also wish not to be snails. Snails get stepped on. Now let us move with some purpose.’
3
The Citadel were bordered by a snow laced garden bed from which grew thorny vines that had woven their ropey branches over much of the outside surface. High bevelled windows had begun to gather with drifts of snow. So had many of the intertwining vines. A tall rounded opening in the Citadel’s eastwun wall whirled with mist. Beyond, there were relative darkness. And no interior detail to be glimpsed from Gargaron’s vantage point.
Gargaron had planned to lead Grimah straight in, but he halted now, sensing some corruption inside. Melai, huddled there beneath cloak and shawl, gazed silently forward as Hawkmoth drew Razor up on Grimah’s left flank, and Locke, his serpent on Grimah’s right.
None spoke for a time. Not until Melai asked, ‘Sorcerer, do you sense witches within?’
Hawkmoth answered, ‘I do.’
Again silence. Gargaron readjusted his grip on his great sword. Hawkmoth pulled his stone casket from his side-pack.
The silence were broken suddenly by Locke who yelled, ‘Hey! Slimy toad lovers! Come out and face us!’
Melai and Hawkmoth both started, and Gargaron winced. They all looked around at the crabman seated there upon his serpent; even Grimah’s two heads regarded the crabman with a look of unease.
A moment later Locke noticed them. ‘What? Too insulting?’
‘Might be best to keep your voice to yourself for the time being,’ Hawkmoth advised.
Locke shrugged.
Hawkmoth released his little insect spies and off they flew to do their spying.
Much time went by. And they did not return.
‘Something be amiss here,’ Hawkmoth said. ‘Something has incapacitated them.’
‘Right then,’ Locke spoke up, hefting his blow-flute into his hand. ‘So something indeed awaits us within.’
Melai shrugged off her shawl and leapt for the air.
‘Melai,’ Gargaron asked, ‘what be on your mind?’
She hovered there, her beating wings a blur, falling snow flurrying about them. She pointed. ‘Those there windows. I might fly up and peer in. See what I can see.’ Before anyone could object she were off, circling upwards, flying toward Citadel’s domed roof.
They all watched her rise away from them; Hawkmoth taking his staff into hand as she went, as if he expected Melai’s excursion to stimulate some attack from within. But as Melai lit upon the roof none came.
They watched as she knelt there, her small hands against the rim of one window, She gazed in, her small green nose against the glass pane, her wings beating slowly, keeping her buoyant.
When she were satisfied she flew back to them, landing upon Grimah. ‘There be folk inside. But none alive.’
Gargaron looked across at Hawkmoth. ‘What detains your flies then?’
Hawkmoth were ruminating on this. ‘One thing comes to mind. The air within may have been poisoned. This be Citadel’s final defence against invaders.’
‘Poisoned air?’ Gargaron queried. ‘Another aspect of this place you did not warm us of.’ He were beginning to think the sorcerer had suffered more than stoneskin after saving Razor from death. He had lost parts of his mind.
‘It has been many a year since I were here, giant. Forgive me if some aspects of it slip my thoughts.’ Hawkmoth aimed his staff up at the high Citadel windows; from Rashel’s mouth came a narrow beam of searing blue light. First assaulting one window before the next.
Gargaron waited for both to shatter in an explosion of glass. Yet, no such thing transpired. Each pane instead seemed to melt. And with a tug on each light beam, like a fisherman pulling trout, Hawkmoth hauled the warped slabs of glass from their housing. He lifted them quietly into the beds of snow beside the building. There they lay, melted lumps of glass slag.
Hawkmoth nudged Razor forward and as Citadel’s large rounded opening loomed he aimed his staff into the darkened interior. He spoke a short incantation, and without warning a cyclonic gale roared from the mouth of Lancsh. Moments later, from Citadel’s roof, twin blasts of air squealed out into the cloudy atmosphere, gushing away with tremendous ferocity any and all toxic gases.
Hawkmoth waited some moments before he waved his companions on. With some trepidation (or anticipation, on Locke’s part) they pushed forward.
4
The Citadel’s interior were spacious. A vast rounded hall lay at its centre with a covered walkway running around its rim. Tall columns stood, sporting curling glass lanterns. None were currently lit. Illumination came from the diffuse grey light pushing in through the window recesses in the citadel’s roof. And through these fresh snow fell. Spaced around the edge of the walkway were chambers shaped like enormous hollowed eggs (as if creatures of great size had once hatched from them).
As Melai had reported, the place were scattered with the dead. Witches and sorcerers both, fallen in battle along with their animal companions and protectors: wolves of the sorcerers, harpies of the witches. No signs yet of the Bewitched, Hawkmoth saw, if at all they had been here.
Hawkmoth took Razor to Citadel’s centre. Here there stood a high statue. He pulled Razor to a standstill and bowed his head. He pressed his fingers into his forehead and then made a gesture with the same fingers, as if offering his mind to it.
‘Who be the beauty then?’ Locke asked, indicating the statue.
Hawkmoth briefly explained. ‘The entity, Vhada.’ Her mighty wings were outstretched, and the world of Cloudfyre held within her palm. The figure beside her were a depiction of Ravenblack, Hawkmoth told them. Bearded and cloaked and stern of face, holding aloft his Wolven staff, with Thorn, great wolf of the stars, depicted there at staff’s tip in the form of a mighty, roaring head with fangs as long as sabers.
If they had been here on a more casual visit, Gargaron may have questioned why the sorcerer order, a male bastion founded by this Ravenblack, had been essentially given birth to by a female entity. (And if Hawkmoth cared to tell him, Gargaron may have been surprised to learn that the witches called the same entity their founding mother, though to them her name were Vudha.)
Beyond the statue something lay on the floor that did not seem to fit with the rest of the Citadels’ aesthetic. An object Gargaron took for an enormous clouded slab of glass.
Hawkmoth and his companions approached it now.
Gargaron noticed that it were surrounded by yet another circle of metallic Shadow Guard. Each of them stood as still as stone. Though something seemed amiss. A number of them were splintered, shredded, knocked over at awkward angles like old nails. And parts of them had been blown out across the stone floor.
Hawkmoth told his companions to stay back. Yet, as he dismounted Razor and stepped forward with his staff gripped in both fists, none of the Shadow Guard moved. It were as though whatever enchantment had given them life in days before this one, had been lifted.
Cautiously, Gargaron, Melai and Locke dismounted and trailed Hawkmoth.
They reached the glass block, its edges smooth and rounded. Hawkmoth could see her now. Within the mighty glass ampoule in which she had been interred for nigh on two hundred years were the daughter of Vudha herself: Mama Vekh.
5
Hawkmoth knelt to inspect her. Gargaron, Melai, Locke all crowded around.
‘Here lies witch goddess, Mama Vekh,’ Hawkmoth said, bowing his head. Though he wasted little time on ceremony and set himself to work extracting her from her prison. He prod his staff upon the glass slab and he murmured, ‘Riliss Ma Veekus frumss dees conteensmahnt.’
The outer portion of the giant ampoule remained a solid mas
s while inside it turned to liquid. Before the others had time to understand what were happening, the wet, wrinkled body of Mama Vekh were suddenly birthed from one end of the giant ampoule. Out onto the floor she splashed.
Gargaron and Melai took a step backwards. Locke though took a step forwards, his crab feet covered in birth slime. Hawkmoth knelt to receive her, his robes spread upon the floor around him, soaking up the rank water. He took her and lay her against his forearm.
‘By Thronir,’ Gargaron murmured. ‘Such a pitiful looking thing I have never seen.’
‘Does she live?’ Locke asked eagerly, kneeling too.
‘I do not know,’ Hawkmoth said. ‘The Ampoule of Tarr be meant to sustain her. Yet…’
Her tiny wrinkled body lay there against his arm. She were no bigger than Melai, though she looked smaller for her muscles had wasted. She did not move. Her face were pale and her lips wrinkled and her eyes half open.
‘She does not breathe,’ Locke reported.
‘Aye,’ Hawkmoth said. ‘That much we can see ourselves.’
Water and slime spilled from her mouth, dribbled down her neck. Gargaron reached forward and touched her forehead. He shut his eyes. When he removed his palm it were wet. He shook his head. ‘She has not lived for many a year, I feel.’
Hawkmoth tugged thoughtfully at his beard.
‘Were she alive when your lot kidnapped her?’ Melai asked the sorcerer.
Hawkmoth turned to eye the nymph for a moment, pondering the sound of accusation in her voice. ‘Aye.’
‘Do the witches know she has perished?’
He sighed. ‘If they have caused this mess here then I say they have.’ He looked about. ‘Although it puzzles me. Why did they not retrieve her?’
None had answer for him. Nor had he answer for himself. Perhaps his Brothers had made a pitched battle here and driven the witches off before such an act could take place. Perhaps surviving sorcerers had taken the fight back to Vantasia and were yet to return here either victorious or to lick their wounds in defeat.
