Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (6 page)

7

He slotted Drenvel’s hilt in his
pack then secured his greatsword and belt. A sword given him by his
father, passed down from the early days of his grandwuns. It were
unremarkable, had not been blooded in any war or battle like
Drenvel’s Bane, did not possess some grand knightly name. But it
had served him loyally against bandits and cutthroats over the
years and many and more Hoardogs.

He equipped himself also with his
hunter’s dirk; a nifty little blade, good at close quarters if a
fight drew too near for comfort, but it had also proved itself
handy in skinning and gutting beasts, and slicing meat. Oh, and
more than useful for cutting apples.

He stood one last moment in
cottage’s cold empty quiet. Looking about. Memories tugged at his
heart. No more would this little abode ring out with sounds of his
daughter singing or laughing, or his wife humming, no more would he
know the odours of crispy fried moorhen or succulent roast
Farthington lamb drifting deliciously upon the air as he cooked for
his small family, no more would he sit and watch his girls in
slumber and think of how happy and complete they had made his
life.

A small portrait etched in stone
sat on the mantel over the fireplace. An image frozen in time. It
depicted himself with his dear girls. They had all sat for the
portrait etching not four months ago. It seemed inconceivable that
he were all that remained of that small family unit. He fetched it
and held it before him, tears trickling from his eyes. He wiped his
face and jammed it in his pocket and with heavy heart.

He stood by the front door,
casting his eyes one last time across the cottage’s interior. He
sighed and left, and strolled away down Saden’s orange
grove.

He would never see his cottage
again.

1

HE took the Canning Road north
where it trailed the snaking course of Buccuyashuck River. But
eventually both trail and river parted ways. And it were something
Gargaron felt quietly pleased with. He’d had quite enough of the
river’s black waters floating with a thousand dead things. And the
river banks covered in upturned crabs. And the overhanging trees
dangling with the lifeless forms of bats and ornithens. The sheer
sight of it all filled him with building dread and foreboding. For
it seemed this scourge lay far more widespread than he’d initially
thought.

Still, for a time, leaving
Buccuyashuck behind and striking out along Far Trail helped pushed
it all from his mind and he began to feel marginally relieved. Gone
now were the primary reminder of what had befallen Hovel. And
before him lay Chandry’s Steppe, a vast sweeping tract of land that
disappeared off into far distant horizons.

Chandry’s
remained predominantly savannah, but dotted here and there were
crab farms. When he were a wee lad, when the crab farmers had not
yet moved in and claimed patches of this once unspoilt wilderness
for themselves, Gargaron had thought Chandry’s Steppe the most
exotic place in all the world. A place where a boy could play and
explore without fear of being attacked and swallowed up by some
nasty meat-eater. For predators with a taste for boy-giants rarely
set foot upon the Steppe. Folk knew not why. Though some claimed it
were the grass-eating Maymas that kept predators at bay. Tall,
horned creatures, with short thick necks and piercing tusks, the
Maymas, if threatened, worked in vast numbers to see off potential
foe. Often with devastating ferocity. While Gargaron had never
witnessed this he
had
watched the Gooya plains trolls chase would-be killers away.
By nature, Gooya trolls were a docile lot. So long as they did not
deem you a threat. You could sit amongst them as you might sit
amongst lambs if you did not threaten them. Gooyas though were
quick to anger if provoked. And none too many beasts were a match
for a coordinated pack of Gooyas on the offensive. Thus Chandry’s
to Gargaron had always been a land without danger. A peaceful place
where fowl and beast thrived.

Giant Moorhens roamed
the
Steppe, even nowadays,
Gargaron knew. And Goliath Prairie Dogs would rise from their
burrows and stand at their doorways to sniff the grassy air to pick
up scents of food or potential mates. And were he to have strayed
there at night (which were more not than often these days) he would
have observed fan flowers sway in dusk’s failing light before
curling up and humming dreamily at the rise of stars. And at
midnight, when the moons of Vasher and Syssa and Leenurs were full,
the pixies and fairies would come out to dance and fly about on
night’s balmy breezes. The fireflies would light the hushed
witching skies in a dazzling array of silent pulsing, twinkling
light. At dawn, the pale, smoky wraiths of folk long departed would
emerge from misty
earyth
and could be seen holding parley with one
another. As a boy this were the furthest place on Godrik’s Vale he
had been. And the most magical.

Yet, as he began
his trek across Chandry’s toward the yonder town of Autumn he
noticed almost immediately the sense of complete desertion and the
pervading, crushing silence. No sounds of ornithen, no sounds of
squeaking prairie dogs, no shrill calls of plains hawks. As he
walked he looked for them. But there were no sign of anything left
living. Naught save great clouds of buzzing green flies, acting
almost as beacons for the
mortid
dead that lay bloated and rotting in flattened
grass.

The
mortid
consisted
primarily of hawks and ornithen both. But not all. Some were
prairie dogs, some moorhens, some blind serpents, some the docile
Gooya, some the Maymas. All were sprawled through field and meadow,
across hill and flat. No matter how far Gargaron went, no matter
where he cast his gaze, something of the dead filled his vision. At
one stage he crested a rise in the roadway and abruptly he brought
his stride to a halt. Spread out before him were what he took to be
the aftermath of war. An entire battlefield of
dead.

Orken soldiers they looked to him,
dressed in battle armour. A thousand. An entire host. And the
carcasses of their wolven steeds. On close inspection there were no
blood, no hacked and dismembered limbs to this Orken army. Thus, no
sign of battle. And no discernable sign of enemy.

What has done
this?
he wondered.
Be it some sickness?

2

He found Chandry’s Loss, a name
given to a high northern hill with a sheer treacherous drop-off
where songs claimed Chandry threw her girl lover, Mayesti, to her
death after Mayesti proclaimed love for the Witch Queen of
Waterdale. Here the elevated plateau looked out across world toward
Autumn. After hiking to the windswept summit, after catching his
breath and dropping his pack to waving grass and weed, Gargaron
cast his spyglass out across the Steppe and moors further afield.
Again he set eye upon nothing save dead upon dead upon dead for as
far as his sight would take him.

He turned his
chin to clear sky.
Beware the
Darkwing
, a voice warned in his
mind.

‘
Where be they
then?’ he asked angrily, challengingly. ‘I have witnessed no such
thing since this entire thing began. Where be they if this is their
doing?
Show yourselves?
’ he called out.

3

He continued on
his way. Trudging for hours along Far Trail’s iron roadway as it
cut through rocky grassland, finding nothing alive. Early afternoon
he took lunch on Tormun’s Hand, granite towers of rock that looked
for all the world like fingers and thumb of some submerged colossal
beast. As he sat atop a “
finger
”, his long legs dangling,
he again took out his spyglass and scanned the silent lands
around.

Empty. Quiet. No movement but for
snaking winds that swept across grass and thistle. No sound but for
the eerie whine of gales through the Hand. No smell but the odour
of flower violets and decay.

He thought long of his dear
Veleyal. He had brought her here once or twice. They had come
passed this way as recently as last spring as a matter of fact, on
family holiday to Bella’s Lakes north of Autumn.

‘
Dadda,’ Veleyal had said
excitedly twirling about on one foot, the hem of her dress fanning
outwards, ‘Do you think we might see the Great Turtles once we
reach the Lakes?’

‘
Aye, dear one, I think we
shall.’

‘
Yippeeeeeee!
’ she had squealed
ecstatically. She had put her little arms about him and held him
tight. Yarniya had sat beside him then, watching them proudly,
smiling, her face full of love for her Gargaron, for her dear
Veleyal.

He feared Autumn too had fallen to
this strange blight. But some part of him did not yet wish to
believe it. He would find out in a day or two once he reached
there. Until such time, there were always hope, he supposed, that
Autumn had gone untouched.

4

He climbed down from Tormun’s
Hand. And stood in the middle of Far Trail. In either direction it
lay empty of all travelers. As it had all day. Such a sight had
never been known in Gargaron’s time, he wagered. A picture of
complete desertion, isolation. Ordinarily it were a well-traveled
and populated highway. Caravans carrying pilgrims to pay homage to
the Thirteen Realms where the most devoted would leave one of their
own limbs, as Ravencrow the Brave were said to have done, as
sacrifice to the Thirteen, in the hope they would be deemed a true
servant of the Thirteen and thus be granted an arcane limb told to
be imbued with the power to be able to reach into the Wraith World
and from it pluck riches. A highway teeming with merchants ferrying
water-glass, wristtyms, veel strahders; traders hauling spiced rum,
griffon blood, powdered snuff, and dream herbs from the Säphic
Isles. And travelers general, those off to the capitols to seek
greater fortune and those heading back to the provinces either
having made it rich, or struck it poor. And the shacks along the
way filled with whoregirls, oilboys, and their pimpeteers selling
every erotic delight in between. Now all gone, like driftwood on a
beach washed away on ebbing tides.

It filled him with an almost
physical sense of loneliness. And for a while he sat there upon the
road, weeping, gazing down at the stone etching of he and his
family.

5

He pressed on. The afternoon grew
hot. He came upon a small caravan of folk. Paronagers, they were.
Not elven, not giant, not orken. Paronagers from the Dark Sea. All
dead of course. Their bodies ravaged by beasts, their clothes torn,
their possessions ransacked. They were still seated inside their
caravan. Their horse steeds dead, eyes bulging, bellies bloated,
lying across roadway.

He stood for a while watching
them…

Then something else caught his
eye.

It were a little way off the road,
a peculiar spectacle that made him stop and stare for a little
while, intrigued, a quiet dread rising inside him. He fetched out
his spyglass from his bull-hide pack and brought the spectacle into
view. It were what he feared. A Creep Mound.

He fetched his
lavender cloth and held it over nose and mouth and out toward the
Mound he walked. He dared not stray too close for such Mounds
heralded a region struck down with Cripp, or Mrunk, or Xayku, or
some other such deadly virus that could wipe out vast numbers of
folk with frightening speed. And he made certain he remained up
wind of it. It were a larger Mound than he might ordinarily see.
Skulls piled high upon cracked
earyth
. And on it there perched a
ghost raven, black of body and wing, grey of neck and head. It
turned its beak and watched him… but did not desert its
perch.

Such ornithens seen upon a Creep
Mound told Gargaron that the skulls had come from victims of a
virulent germ, those who had died hideously and had then been
thrown to the Dead Worms so that their diseased flesh would be
stripped to bone.

Could this
sickness have spread across the land from here to Hovel?
Gargaron wondered. Had some uncontained outbreak
beaten news of its spreading to his village, had it swept the land
and killed all before a warning could be made
public?

If
so
, he thought,
then why have I survived it?

One thing about
it gave him heart: the sight of the bird. Such signs of life had
been rare since his departing Hovel.
A
sign of life were a sign of hope
, he told
himself. And as he stood there gazing back at it he heard the words
again of his wife: ‘
You have work here
first.
’

Gargaron retreated to the roadway
and before he moved on he lowered his head. He spoke to the dead a
prayer, to the great Spirit Ranethor, praying that their souls had
found their way to the worlds beyond, and if they had not, then to
speed up their passage.

6

By nightfall he
had made it as far as Rillsland, a spot on Chandry’s Steppe where
the remains of an ancient craft of unknown material and origin had
long ago fallen from the stars. Here it still lay, half swallowed
by stony
earyth
,
a tree as old as the hills growing from its twisted unspoilt metal,
roots snaking about it like worms. Dreamfyre the craft had been
named. And Gargaron had heard its stories all his life. He would
lie next to his father at night by fireside and gaze up at Great
Nothing’s dizzying array of cosmic bodies and be spellbound by his
father’s tales of mighty beings who lived out there, ones who had
constructed great star-boats to carry them across vast interstellar
void.