Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (39 page)

‘
The day of our ambush, she
feigned death in order to escape our wrath. But I detected it. I
did not tell my fellows. I bespelled Eve with an enchantment of
paralysis and hid her from wolven predators. As my fellow brothers
marched our captives back to Sanctuary I posted myself as sentry to
our captured outpost. Here I returned to Eve and fetched her to a
place in the hills. There I removed the spell. In effect I held her
captive but as we got to know each other I learned that she were a
likeminded soul, as curious about my kind as I were about hers.
After initially distrusting each other we ended up forming a strong
bond. Thus our friendship began.

‘
I attempted to hide my
relationship with her from my superiors and managed to do so for a
number of years. But eventually I were found out. I were spending
more and more time away from Sanctuary and my superiors grew
suspicious and had me followed. When it were discovered that I had
been running away to Eve I were incarcerated and eventually put on
trial. I were then brought before a court, tried for treason and
banished from the Order.’

4

Hawkmoth sat pondering those days.
Lost deep in his thoughts. It were a touching story of love,
Gargaron thought, a tad more dramatic than how he himself had met
his own wife whom he had known and been friends since his boyhood.
He had been keen on asking Hawkmoth about Eve’s death and
subsequent rebirth yet did not know how to bring it up. Yet as he
sat there he were surprised to hear Hawkmoth suddenly recount
it.

‘
It were they who had her killed,’
Hawkmoth said. ‘Once banished I made my mind up never to have
anything to do with them. Thus I did not trouble my old Order. Yet
they found it unconscionable that I should choose to live and love
a ‘dirt hag’ as they called them. There were those who could not
get passed this. Thus they organised ghost wolves to see to her,
for it seemed they did not have the guts to face me.

‘
Caught unawares, she proved no
match for such creatures. She were ambushed and hopelessly
outnumbered. I were alerted by the sparrows and finches with which
she had communion, who flew to my abode and imparted what they had
witnessed. I rode out on Razor and found the ghost wolves about to
feast upon her. In my fury I dispatched each of them and hurried
back to cottage with the remains of my beloved bundled up in a
bloodied blanket.

‘
I spread her
out in my alchemy parlour, all her varied pieces. I had no idea
what to do, only I knew I could not let her go. Being away from
Sanctuary had given me the freedom to study far more varied
branches of magic than I would have been permitted had I stayed
there. Necromancy, magic of Darkness, magic of
Earyth
, magic of Xuub, Meschener’s
Laws. But it were temporal magic I turned to. Though a cursed
branch of magic it remains. For to use it means to slowly render
yourself lifeless. Until the day of Eve’s death, I had merely
dabbled in it. But that day I did not care for the ramifications. I
dragged Eve from a time pocket just before she had left our
cottage.

‘
There were one problem. I had not
perfected the art of temporal lore. Thus what I dragged through,
though living, were mere splintered pieces of her. I’d had some
experience of reanimating dead newts and lizards, connecting parts
together. With Eve though it were far more difficult. While I had
pulled most of her through the temporal pocket, her innards
remained lost. I built her again as best as I could. I kept her
alive in stasis and built a clockwork arrangement to fit inside her
ruined torso to keep her functional.’

Hawkmoth sat back and smoked his
pipe. He stared longingly out across the woodland, the suns rising
further now. (Gargaron still expected tweeting birds to greet the
morning but there were naught but that unnatural
silence.)

‘
It took us both time to get used
to what I had done. And I questioned myself much that first year. I
had saved my Eve yes, but what abomination had I given
myself?’

‘
Abomination?’ Gargaron asked him.
‘Ghouls be abominations. Undead be abominations. The Eve I met be
none of those.’

Hawkmoth smiled, and nodded, happy
in the giant’s generous appraisal. ‘Aye, you are right. Her mind
were not interrupted nor corrupted. Though physically she be more
mechanical than flesh. There be no heartbeat in her chest.’ He
shook his head. ‘Does that make her living or dead? I do not know.
But she be my Eve and I love her as much as ever I did.’

5

They sat in silence. Hawkmoth lost
in his thoughts, Gargaron lost to his own. Gargaron wondered now if
his curiosity had been sated. Had his questions on reanimation been
answered? Could his girls have been saved by this sorcerer? If they
had been returned to him as part-mechanical beings, without a
heartbeat, then, as difficult as it were to admit it, he supposed
he preferred their current fate.

‘
Did you see to your old Brothers
for what they did? Seek retribution?’

Hawkmoth smiled and shook his
head. ‘Such destructive cycles must be curtailed, giant, before
they end in a tail spin one can naught pull oneself from. Though so
often pride and ego blind one to the idea of such a notion.’ He
smiled. ‘Besides, I believe my bringing Eve back to life in the
manner I did would have enraged them sufficiently. That be
satisfying enough in itself.’

Gargaron nodded but he were again
pondering his girls. He gazed at length at the sorcerer.
‘Hawkmoth,’ he said at last, ‘had you been there on the day my dear
girls died… could… could you have brought them back?’

Hawkmoth eyed Gargaron briefly
from the corner of his eyes. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘At personal cost to
myself, but I may have had them back, yes.’

Gargaron swallowed hearing this, and hung his
head.

‘
Though it may have been for
naught,’ Hawkmoth went on. ‘For I am certain they would have again
succumbed to this blight regardless of my intervention.’

Gargaron nodded. His heart were
filled with a heavy sadness.

‘
I am sorry,’ Hawkmoth said. ‘For
your loss. Truly.’

6

Gargaron stared into the dirt, lost again to
his thoughts. For a time he were back in Summer Wood kneeling over
the bodies of his wife and daughter. Picturing their lifeless,
unmoving faces. Forever that picture would remain in his mind he
knew. He swallowed, collecting himself before any tears spilt from
his eyes.

Eventually he realised he still held
Hawkmoth’s staff. He handed it back. ‘A fine weapon,’ he
commented.

‘
Aye, it be,’ Hawkmoth said,
taking it from the giant, ‘and has served me well. As I suspect
your great sword has served you.’ He dipped his staff toward the
giant’s sword.

Gargaron nodded. ‘In defense of myself and my
friends, aye. Though I am no soldier and cannot say I have blooded
it in war.’

‘
No soldier?’ Hawkmoth asked,
sounding surprised. Here he indicated Gargaron’s pack. ‘That there
be Drenvel’s Bane. Hor the Cutter’s little baby. I recognised it on
yesterday’s ride. Who would carry such an item if not a
soldier?’

Gargaron studied the hilt of the
legendary hammer poking from the top of his pack. ‘A simple hunter
who borrowed it from his village temple, be who.’ He had
contemplated throwing it out into the woods during the night. For a
burden to him it seemed now and nothing more. ‘But I am of a mind
to leave it behind for all the use it has been.’

At this Hawkmoth frowned. ‘Oh? And why would
you entertain such a notion?’

‘
I cannot wield it. Simple as
that.’ He shrugged as though that were the end of it. ‘Your Eve
suggested Skinkk’s blood may wake it, though I have about given up
finding any.’

Hawkmoth now understood. ‘Ah,
which is why you made a request for such a substance when I found
you.’

‘
Indeed.’

Hawkmoth ruminated on this before
rummaging through his pack, eventually producing a stone bottle.
‘Well then, here may be your answer.’

‘
What be that?’

‘
Skinkk’s blood, I
believe.’

It were Gargaron’s turn to frown.
‘You told me you were not in the business of exploiting your animal
friends.’

Hawkmoth smiled. ‘I am not. But I
happened to chance upon this item on my travels. Skinkk’s blood be
a rare and valuable commodity, I could not simply leave it behind
now could I.’

Gargaron sat where he were, Melai and Locke
slowly stirring. ‘Would you permit me use some then?’

‘
Why not? You have Drenvel’s Bane.
Such a weapon may grant us the upper hand should we come face to
face with either my Brethren or the witches. T’would be folly not
to try and utilise its power, I would think.’

Gargaron fetched the bottle from
the sorcerer, turning it over in his hand. It were blown from a
black glass, and both ends were tapered and rounded, resembling
teats or nipples. There were no evidence of a lid, or stopper,
nothing to simply pop open to access the liquid within. It were
completely sealed. Gargaron imagined he would have to smash it upon
a rock to get at the blood. An etched inscription on its flank
read:

BLUD OFFEN THEMS
DRUGENS

–
Soossed byus
himself Wrenbuggus The Great
.

‘
Blood of dragons,’ Hawkmoth
translated.

‘
How certain are you that it be
genuine?’

‘
Why, it state
there it were sourced by Wrenbug the Great himself. Preeminent
Skinkk specialist,
and
it be contained in one of Wrenbug’s signature vessels.
And
protected by one of
Wrenbug’s signature enchantments. If you wish, I could have the
enchantment lifted and the vessel opened.’

Gargaron eyed the sorcerer. ‘Aye, lift it
please, if you will.’

‘
Right then. Let us put your
legendary weapon through its paces, shall we.’

7

Hawkmoth took
back Wrenbug’s dark glass vessel and placed it upon the ground.
Here he knelt, his hands spread out above the bottle. He whispered
something, his eyes shut. His hands began to shake, and soon shook
so furiously that they appeared nothing more than a blur while
Hawkmoth himself remained so still and becalmed. The strange bottle
appeared at first to be melting at both ends while its base
flattened slowly against the lay of the
earyth
, as of a puddle of water will
pool within troughs or scoops, so that at either end the bottle had
“melted” outwards and fashioned shallow scoops into which droplets
of blood now splashed as it seeped slowly from each tapered
nipple.

Hawkmoth’s hands steadied at last
and he sat back. ‘There,’ he said as if he had just arisen from
some deep and refreshing night dream. ‘Your Skinkk blood as you
require it.’

Gargaron took Drenvel’s Bane from
his pack and stepped up to Wrenbug’s vessel. He lowered himself to
one knee. There were an odour wafting from it like acid. Gargaron
were reticent to touch it. ‘What… what should I do?’

‘
You do not know the legend?’
Hawkmoth asked.

‘
No. Only that Hor alone could
command this hammer. Though your Eve suggested I would have to mix
my blood with that of a Skinkk before I might bring it under my
service.’

‘
Aye, her Mothers of Long Ago
helped forge this weapon. So she ought know. Though in my own
studies of legendary items I have read that you must cut your
fighting hand, drip Skinkk blood upon the wound and then grip the
hammer’s hilt. Hopefully we may see this mighty warhammer herald
this new morning.’

Gargaron did not delay. He placed
the hammer hilt upon the ground and took his greatsword from its
scabbard. Then with a single deft chopping motion, opened up a
shallow gash in his palm. With blood pooling in the bowl of his
hand, he put away his sword and lifted Wrenbug’s bottle and tipped
Skinkk blood onto his wound.

Grimacing as the alien blood
reacted with his own. Bubbling and burning, issuing a dark vapour.
He ignored the stench, the discomfort, and holding his palm upright
he fetched with his spare hand Drenvel’s Bane from the ground
beside him and placed it upon the waiting pool of blood. His
fingers closed around the width of the hilt, gripping it with
fervour, both Skinkk blood and that of his own running down the
hilt’s length in worming, circular streams.

Hawkmoth had climbed to his feet,
and had backed up slightly, ushering Locke and Melai to do the
same.

‘
What goes on here, pray tell?’
Locke asked the sorcerer.

Hawkmoth, one hand gripping his
staff, said, ‘Well, we are attempting to awaken a relic. One that
has been in slumber for a good number of generations. And, ah, best
you stand back. This could get wild.’

Grimah were standing, watching
keenly, pensively. Razor watched on with his searching green eyes.
And Zebra were still asleep, belly up and tongue dangling forth
like a sleeping dog.

Gargaron got to his feet and gazed
at both his hand and hammer. Then up at the sorcerer as if Hawkmoth
might know what were meant to happen. For, so far, there were
nothing. Not even a tingle in his fingers.