Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (5 page)

He pondered this as he began to
collect the village dead; he were forbidden from delivering any of
his folk to Endworld; such a sacred chore could only be carried out
by members of immediate family; he were to burn those he could not
send off the Great Precipice. As he went about his unenviable
labour he pondered at length the feared Darkwing. If they were
indeed to blame… then why had he not seen them? Why had they not
flooded sky and field?

And why had they not come for
him?

He arranged his fellow villagers
in a row outside Hovel’s Vruinthia Temple. One row, then two, then
three, four, and five… and more still: ten, eleven, thirteen…
Fifteen rows in total by the time he were done. Bodies of friends,
acquaintances, flower sellers, fishermen, farriers, wagon menders,
falconers, guardsmen, hunters.

He knelt and whispered a prayer
for them all under the gaze of the goddess Vruinthia. Then he
ignited them all in liquid Helfire. And a mighty inferno blazed
there in Hovel.

2

Flames licked and roared under
midday’s warm breeze. Gargaron sat and awaited news. He had been
waiting since before collecting up Hovel’s dead. Skyworms. He had
not seen nor heard from them since he had dispatched three apiece
to Darkfort, Autumn, Mount Destruction, and Horseshoe of the
Downs—villages and towns of other Giant clans. The Skyworms had
carried this message:

Some mysterious event has
devastated Hovel.

All have perished. Giants,
Yonderfolk, animal, all.

Nothing has survived save me,
Gargaron Stoneheart.

Send word of your health and
status.

By now the Skyworms should have
returned with tidings. Yet they had not. He found himself picking
through Eromgar’s corner shop. Found himself stepping through the
smithy of Aesorard’s & Son. Ultimately, he sat upon the wall
across the street from Vruinthia’s Temple, watching his fellow
giants burn under a mass of flames where a mighty smoke stack
spewed forth and rose high into the sky where it then drifted
eastways on the winds.

He eyed old
Vruinthia. There she stood in her lofty position on temple’s roof
where she could survey with her cold wooden eyes the entire
settlement of Hovel. There she stood in serene indifference to the
death of all those who had loved and worshipped her.
So much for our prayers for you to lead us all to
salvation
, Gargaron thought with disdain.
And he found himself caring not for the parts of her temple that
had succumbed to the shockwave and tumbled down, caring not for
those parts of the temple roof that had cracked and caved in, those
rents and fissures that now invited sunlight down into chambers
that may not have seen light for hundreds of
years.

Gargaron pondered what lay within.
It were one of the few places in Hovel he had never set foot, for
not being a mager it were a sacred place that ordinary, nonexalted
beings were forbidden to enter.

Primarily it were the boyhood
stories that stimulated him. His father had told him tales of Hor
the Cutter who had wielded the magic warhammer
Drenvel’s
Bane
. Hor had lived much of his life with the witches of
Hemlock Vale and together they had devised a secret weapon to take
down Drenvel, a mythical beast purported to be impervious to sword
and spear, ice and flame. They had succeeded in forging a warhammer
from star fragments that had fallen to Cloudfyre in a shower of
fire. And Hor had taken it to Drenvel and dispatched the beast from
this plane. And at the end of his days, when Hor the Cutter had
returned home to Hovel, he had gifted the warhammer to the magers
and there it had rested for hundreds of years.

While I wait for
my Skyworms, might I see it with my own eyes?
Gargaron thought as he sat there. And as he stood and crossed
the street, giving the funeral pyre a wide birth, he murmured as he
cast his eye at the statue atop the temple, ‘May you forgive my
trespass, old Vruinthia.’

3

The temple were full of large
chambers stained in black soot from centuries of burnt incense, and
here Gargaron found the nurseries of warped tree fiends he had
heard of but never seen. They grew out of wall and floor, ornate
twisting creatures, and it were here Gargaron discovered that many
of the ceilings were constructed from green glass; a mistake then
it had been to believe no sunlight ever entered this temple, for
here were evidence of it.

He stepped from chamber to
chamber, a ringing silence descending every time he halted to look
about. He came across worship rooms, where the root feet of
Vruinthia had dug down through roof and walls where her toes curled
into serpentine creatures that all bore her likeness. He found
blood chambers, and toe dismemberment wards, and vats of sap,
caught as it dripped from Vruinthia’s limbs. Flowers sprouted from
web like branches that snaked up walls and over floors and it were
a chamber with a wooden pedestal covered in similar flowers where
Gargaron first saw it.

Drenvel’s
Bane
.

He stepped into the room and moved
toward it, green light cast down through the glass ceiling; the
flowers gave off such a heavenly odour. The legendary weapon were
how it had been described. A handle and naught more. Though
Gargaron had always preferred to believe (and had always pictured
it as such) that the weapon lay there in its entirety. As it were
depicted in paintings and tapestries and stone etchings: Hor the
Cutter holding it aloft, the mighty hammer dripping with the blood
of Drenvel.

The greatest
bounty of all hides inside our own village
, his father had told him once.
And
be it the mightiest weapon to have ever been forged on
Cloudfyre.

It made him smile, for it looked
not mighty and it looked not worthy of any bounty. But a leather
bound handle it were, missing its head.

He sighed, remembering his
Skyworms and thought outside would be a better place to watch for
their return than here. Thus he moved to leave and were almost out
the door when he turned one last time and cast his eyes on
Drenvel’s Bane where it lay amidst flowers on its wooden
plinth.

To wield it would
be to leave you unvanquished
, his father
had told him once.

As Gargaron stood
there gazing back at it he thought,
In
these uncertain times, were I to establish a way to use it,
such a thing might come in for some
use
.

4

Autumn were closest to Hovel in
terms of accessibility; Far Trail were a roadway flat and wide as
any of those serving the capitols of Dunforth and Blakanz, and
carved from ironstone, ideal for cart and great-hound. By flight of
crow, Mt Destruction remained closest, yet its northern alpine
trails were steep and winding and often times the journey there
from Hovel took as much as three times the journey to Autumn.
Horseshoe of the Downs and Darkfort were both also many days away:
Horseshoe countless leagues southways and situated in the midst of
Luasha Riverlands requiring a pole-boat to reach; and Darkfort,
eastways, lay nestled amidst the barren pyramid hills where the
Gates of Forever loomed ready to swallow all who stepped beyond
them.

It had been two turns of the clock
since he had traipsed through Vruinthia’s sacred halls and as
Gargaron sat there in Hovel’s quiet village garden (without the
customary sounds of ornithen or bug), upon a bench that looked out
across the village square, he realised he had mostly given up on
seeing his Skyworms again. Thus he had turned to ideas of leaving,
of striking out and seeking the answers he craved.

Mayhaps I ought
to make for Autumn
, he thought to
himself.
The Skyworms perchance have been
brought down by some easily explained occurrence, and in all
likelihood Autumn goes on and about its merry business happily
oblivious to all that has befallen Hovel. Perhaps Autumn’s
Watchguard will have news of what has struck Hovel. And if not,
then there be Skysight.

5

Carrying the hilt of Drenvel’s
Bane, Gargaron returned to his cottage on a now desperately quiet
Saden’s orange grove. Tears welled in his eyes as he mounted empty
stairs and pushed through unlatched doors. At once its silence, its
emptiness, proved unbearable. The life pulse had gone out of the
place; there were a palpable feeling of emptiness in its stale,
lifeless air. Like sticky humidity. He felt as if ghosts watched
him from vacant corners.

Without thought, he found himself
moving to Veleyal’s bedroom door. He put his ear against it.
Listening…

Perhaps it had all been naught but
a dream, him finding her and Yarniya dead inside Summer Woods,
setting them afire, summoning up Vurah’s Wraithbirds, watching
their twin fire-trails descend down into Endworld. Perhaps his dear
daughter simply played within, or slept, perhaps all he had found
in Summer Woods were mere doppelgangers.

‘
Veleyal?’ he asked
softly.

Gently he pushed the door open,
hoping… praying to see her there, lying abed reading, or drawing,
singing sweetly to herself. But her bed were empty. Her jummy-bear
and forest-fairy doll lying there forgotten, abandoned, side by
side, vacant eyes staring at the ceiling. The sight of these eyes
caused him to grimace, as it brought on the raw memory of his
daughter in his arms, lifeless, lolling… her dead eyes staring,
staring, staring.

He wiped tears from his cheeks.
Stepped across to his daughter’s bed. He knelt as he had done a
thousand times kissing his dear daughter to sleep at night. Only
now there were no Veleyal to kiss, to hug, to tickle, to read to,
to sing to. He hugged her bear and doll, lay his head upon her
pillow. He breathed in. Closed his eyes. Smelling her. That mix of
child sweat and a faint hint of juniper soap. His tears soaked into
its soft fabric, swimming away in the forms of tiny water
horses.

He grasped her pillow to his face
and suddenly wept uncontrollably. The sobs shook his chest. ‘Why?’
he whimpered. ‘Why am I still here and you have perished?
Why?’

You have work here
first.

‘
No!
’ he yelled at the room, his eyes
bleary with tears. ‘
What work?! Tell me,
damn you!
’

But it gave him no
answer.

He wiped his face. Took the
pillow. In its place he lay down jummy-bear and forest-fairy doll.
Again side by side.

6

Briefly he checked his own
bedroom, ever hopeful, casting his gaze over the large empty bed,
the sheets still ruffled from the lovemaking he and his wife had
made the night before the shockwaves.

Yarniya were not there.

From the store
room he took a large bull-hide satchel and from the pantry he
filled it with some basic provisions: cured meat, salted wrasse,
dried figs, apples, pears, a loaf of rye bread. And some medicinal
herbs and poultices and other remedies for any unwanted injury or
illness. Lyfen Essence. And skin grafts that grew from the flesh
rug living on the wall, several lengths of which he pulled off and
attached to his belly. And the potentially dangerous
Zombeez,
little beasts ordinarily used
solely by the town druids except they were often given to Hunters
who were afforded special dispensations simply due to their line of
work
—
availability
of Zombeez in the field were most often crucial to survival.
Gargaron’s kind were immune to zombiism. But other races were not
so fortunate and history were littered with horror stories of dire
outbreaks. Thus a Hunter were trained in their usage, and where and
when to utilise them.

Once he had
packed, Gargaron went to fill
his gourds;
he considered Hovel’s village well, but, thinking of the blackness
that had stricken Buccuyashuck River, he did not altogether trust
the health of its water. Instead he drained water from the large
ceramic tank at back of cottage. Once done he stood back and
considered what he had packed thus far.

He had traveled
the route to Autumn many times over the years, mostly on drays
hauled by gorbuls. Once or twice on horned horse. A journey to
Autumn would normally tick off a full day’s travel, provided you
possessed some manner of transport. Hound and cart could take you
half that time. Yet, he feared that after what he had seen since
the first shockwave, transport might be hard to come by. He feared
his entire journey might thus be conducted entirely on foot.
Therefore he would need to pack enough provisions for a three or
four day hike. He reminded himself that if all were well in
surrounding shires and vales, there
were
places to trade for food and
wine on route. And he dearly hoped this remained the case… yet he
could not help feeling pessimistic. Of all he had seen since the
shockwaves four days gone, well, he had met no-one else, heard from
no-one. It were as if the entire world had fallen
silent.

Alas, he packed provisions enough
for a foot mounted expedition to Autumn.