Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (7 page)

‘
Did they come
to visit us?’ he asked his father eagerly, his eyes sparkling in
the starlight as his mind projected Dreamfyre onto the night sky
above, sailing to
earyth
before a flowing tail of fire.

‘
Aye, I think they did,’ his
father told him, wonderment too in his eyes. ‘Sadly though, there
are many who preach they came to invade Cloudfyre. But I prefer to
believe they came to extend their hand in friendship.’

Gargaron stood there, his water
gourd tipped to his mouth. He drank. And drank again. Then wiped
his chin. He surveyed the darkening land before him, Far Trail in
either direction wound off into dusk, vanishing from sight as if it
too had died and had chosen to quietly trail away into the faded
realms beyond where the living could tread. He pulled a map from
his bag. And studied it a while.

As he guessed, being here, he were
not far from Baal. Baal, Giant, crab farmer and horse wrangler. A
little way north were all. Noo Ka and her sister moon of Syssa had
barely begun to rise, and they would be high above his head by the
time he were anywhere near Baal’s farm. But he would relish their
luminous company as he trekked through field and plain on a small
detour that may or may not yield a steed to help speed up his
journey.

Anyway, what pressing matters do I
need attend? Why, none. I have nowhere to be in haste. All previous
appointments have been cancelled. For all intents and purposes,
time has stopped. So, why not, a detour?

As Gargaron set off, he reached
out and ran his fingertips along one of Dreamfyre’s metallic ribs.
It were like touching perma-ice; the sheer cold more akin to a
sensation of burning. He cast an eye across his fingers. And ran
his thumbs across them. The iciness had transferred instantly from
Dreamfyre’s freezing metal. His fingers icy cold to the touch and
his skin frosted over.

He had heard this
rumour. That Dreamfyre harboured the bitter frost-cold of the Great
Nothing, that it had brought with it the Yternal Chill that would
ultimately consume all matter in the universe, and that its pilots
had meant to start with Cloudfyre.
But
what of the curse?
he wondered. To touch
the ancient vessel, according to beliefs of peoples all across the
continent of Godrik’s Vale, were to bring one ill
luck.

Gargaron
scoffed.
What now is ill luck?
he thought defiantly,
in
a world that has gone to the Hoardogs, what is meant by ‘ill luck’,
I ask? Death? To die? Why, death would be a release from all
this!

He spat into the grass and folded his map
away.

7

The moons lit his way as the suns
took their fires home for night. His moon shadow cast three ways
about him, as Noo Ka and Syssa rose from beyond horizon, and behind
him came Vasher. Vasher with its own moon, a mere spot in the sky
folks called Rattik. Vasher and Rattik, master and servant. The
master a pale cold blue, the servant a tiny jewel of red. Later,
beyond the Witching hour, Gargaron’s shadow would be briefly four
as Gorvhald spun giddily up from western horizon. As it were, the
land around him remained pleasantly well lit. He could see for mile
upon mile, Chandry’s Steppe seemed merely gripped in early
twilight. He felt the urge to stop and build a fire, to lie down
and warm himself, to stare up into star and moon and imagine he
were a boy again, to pretend he were safe and protected at his
father’s side, that nothing were wrong in the world, that all would
be well as long as his father smiled and promised him
so.

Thinking of his father brought his
mind back to Drenvel’s Bane. How his father would love to have seen
it, he thought. As Gargaron marched on he drew the famed hilt from
his sack. It were not too difficult to study the thing beneath the
moonlight. And indeed the moonlight seemed to bring out features he
had not spotted earlier. Though it were banded tightly in leather
there seemed to be an inner radiance about it. A certain glow that
seemed to cast itself through the strands of hide. But if he picked
at the leather and scraped it aside with his nail the glow would
fade to reveal naught but cold metal beneath.

He held it aloft, as though he
were Hor the Cutter. It were said those who knew the weapon’s
secrets could illicit the hammer into being. And these were
secretes he knew not. So for now, he slashed it through the night
air, back and forth, a boy again, imagining he were the mighty Hor
come to save the world.

8

It were beyond the Witching hour
when Gargaron found Baal the Giant seated in a chair in his
cottage. Sadly, Baal had run out of things to say. His jaw had been
torn away. Someone had taken it and stabbed him in the chest with
it. Baal did nothing but gaze quietly at the ceiling now while bugs
and worms and clucking roach-hens and grass-fish worked ravenously
at an ever gaping hole in his belly, this grotesque writhing horde
consuming him from the inside out.

Sickened,
Gargaron turned away and stood there catching his breath. He
surveyed the remainder of the farm. A barn stood across the way
under milky moonlight, its windows dark and foreboding, watching
him like large gloomy eyes. Gargaron could see the stables within.
Minding the slithering grass-fish as they “
swam
” through weed and dirt
pulled on by the sticky scent of decay, he left Baal in his cottage
and moved over for a closer look.

There were no sound but the breeze
tinkering some loose scrap of tin in the night. Certainly no sound
of murmuring horses. But he needed to check all the same. They may
have been spooked and bolted. Indeed they may also have perished.
But before he pressed on for Autumn he needed to see with his own
eyes that they were not simply asleep within.

Grass-snakes and crabs acted like
some portent as he neared the stables. Their numbers swelling as
Gargaron drew closer. The harsh sounds of their hissing were like
fingernails on slate. The floor of the stables writhed with them.
There were just enough moonlight cast through upper stable windows
to show him empty ribs and exposed skull bone and horse carcasses
being devoured. A wet, musky odour of blood, intestines, manure,
wafted on the night breeze. He winced as it flirted with his
nostrils. He turned away, gripping his belly.

1

GARGARON stopped for night in the
rocky hills of Eastbourne. On the horizon, under misty moonlight,
he believed he could see the distant heights of Skysight tower; a
dark, thin, indistinct shadow against the starlight. He watched
long and hard for the telltale pulsing lights that heralded the
tower’s top floors. But the only lights her saw were the star fires
in the Great Nothing.

He built a camp fire beside a
rambling meat-eating plant his kind called a Brawny Twister. These
plants were known to capture prey in their squirming, thorny arms,
and their ugly little mouths on their ugly bulbous faces would suck
and gnaw and chew all flesh and entrails from carcasses; discarded
bones would pile up in middens about their twisty roots. Gargaron
had learned long ago that his kind were immune to a Twister’s toxic
thorns. As a wee one he had played with these plants, using them to
snare goat-hares or woods rabbits, as his father had taught him.
But his father had also taught him that to camp beside a Twister
meant a restful night’s sleep. For most beasts were wary of
Twisters and keen to keep their distance.

As Gargaron lay there, both his
sword and the hilt of Drenvel’s Bane held to his side, he gazed out
at Great Nothing’s vast expanse and watched Jenadah and Lansador
engaged in their endless lover’s dance. Watched the great red ball
of twinkling light that were Old Soor. And the twin Cat’s Eyes
stars. He rolled his head to the side and saw the Maidens of
Zerrunos where they roamed the southern skies.

As his camp fire softly crackled
and fizzed, he listened to chirpers and screepers in the dark.
Their night calls brought him some comfort, reminding him of nights
lying beside his wife in his cottage on the edge of Summer Woods,
hearing the soothing call of the night bugs, and the soft purr of
moor hens. He had witnessed so much death in the past few days. But
maybe all were not yet lost. He were alive. As were these bugs that
sang from night’s shadows. As were those grass-fish and crabs and
roach-hens he had seen consuming Baal and his steeds. As were the
Brawny Twister. And the star fires still burned in the Great
Nothing as they had done so for time ever onward. Unchanged.
Unchanging. Eternal. That, amongst all else, brought him
comfort.

Once, while
camping on the fringe of Chayosa, his father had pointed out the
Silent Dragon, a comet riding the heavens with its tail flame-blue
and its head a mighty glowing yellow mass in the shape of a
snarling dragon skull. ‘
Old
Soor
’s Dragon, some call it,’ his father
had told him. ‘The Llügotha Scrolls tell us it visits us but once
every hundred and seventy two moon-stars. Once it spins about our
suns and bids us farewell it will again fly off into the cold
reaches of Nothing’s embrace, lost from all eye and sight. I shan’t
be around on its return. But you shall Gargaron, my son. Not many a
soul gets to see it twice in a lifetime. But it is said, that to
set your eye upon it a second time is to receive a gift of great
wisdom.’ His father had smiled then. ‘Of course, this wisdom comes
not from some strange magic wielded by the Dragon itself, but
purely from the privilege of living to great age. Aye, you shall
see it again, my boy. And perhaps you shall lie here with your own
son and impart to him the tales of Old Soor and Dreamfyre and the
Maidens of the southwun sky.’

Up in the trees, moonlight lit the
threads of a colossal spider web. Its maker and owner presiding
over a bulging catch wrapped up in a silken bundle. Some
unfortunate Hoardog, Gargaron could see; half the dog’s face hung
loose from one side. But crucially the spider lived. Not only
lived, but it suckled juices from its prey.

Perhaps I have
come at last to the outer edge of this catastrophe,
he thought,
perhaps I
have been wandering a death zone and soon I shall be free of it.
The signs are there. I see them. This spider in its web before me.
The grass-fish. The crabs. The chirp of the night bugs. Things
living, not perished. I see them now, by Thronir. Take me from this
place and deliver me to Autumn and into sanity and explanation and
reason.

2

That night he dreamt of Baal. He
dreamt of tearing out Baal’s jaw and driving it into his chest. He
dreamt of running. Running alone along Far Trail, his leather boots
pounding the course iron surface. Behind him, receding into the
distance, a cart rest full of innocent folk he had just robbed and
slain, buried beneath Creep skulls and bones, a ghost raven pecking
at their flesh. He ran from it crying… and something chased him. A
great darkness. A darkness that ate away the world as it rumbled
ever closer to him. A wave of black water, a wave higher than
mountains, one that tumbled against clouds… In its smooth, curved
front, tumbled the wailing dead of all Cloudfyre. His Nightface
watched them in its cold detached way. When the roadway ended
abruptly Gargaron tumbled out over the edge of a cliff so high and
immense there seemed no end to it. Yet as he fell, below him he saw
the hazy realm of Endworld, and behind him, falling away into the
sky, the Great Precipice. Here though, there were no Hands of
Teyesha; all were shriveled and rotting. With nothing to catch him
he plummeted… a trail of blue fire streaking out behind him. When
he reached ground there were but his daughter Veleyal before him.
He picked himself from the ground and knelt before her, taking her
hand and there were no warmth to her, just a coldness of unliving
flesh. But he took her fingers and by pure force of will he pushed
his life’s energy into her body, his life for hers. And as he
watched… her eyes came open…

3

He awoke to a spike jabbing him
urgently in the back of the neck.

His Nightface had spotted
something.

Gargaron opened his eyes and took
hold of both sword and Drenvel’s Bane. He rolled over, groggy with
sleep, and sat up―there were no daylight as he had expected, the
moon and stars still hung in the skies―but a shockwave were
sweeping the realm like a tempest. Quick, unforgiving, violent. It
bent tree and shrub, it shook leaves loose, kicking them into the
air, it pushed the grasses and rolled loose rocks, as if some
almighty explosive blast had just occurred. A sound like rasping
wind accompanied it, and it hit Gargaron, knocking him over as he
sat there. Then it rolled eastways, an invisible wave front
crashing across hills and away across Gandry’s Steppe.

Then the world fell quiet. Dead
quiet. Not a breath of breeze. Not a peep from a screeper or
chirper. No sound of night birds, no distant howl of dog or
moorhen. Just a ringing silence in Gargaron’s ears.

Blinking his eyes, he climbed to
his feet and looked about. The position of the moons told him it
were late. Noo Ka and Syssa had snuck away while he had slumbered.
Vasher were sinking. Gorvhald were overhead now, still spinning,
always spinning. Veeo and Canooc were rising, close together, never
apart, the Lost Children some called them, looking for home. Most
of the stars too had moved on. Old Soor tilting toward Cloudfyre’s
lip, the Lovers trailing it, the Cat’s Eyes low in the northwun
sky, and the Maidens glowing more prominently in the south. The
glow of Gohor and Melus could not yet be seen on the horizon; they
were three or four hours off, Gargaron guessed. Other than the
sound of the shockwave still rolling away into the distance, the
Steppe had not changed it seemed.