Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (67 page)

It were impossible to know, but
Hawkmoth were eager to be on with their journey, for every moment
gone were a moment closer to another possible boom shake. Besides
there were other menaces to consider. ‘We must keep our senses
about us here,’ he warned his friends. ‘The Ghartst paintings, as
far as I could decipher, showed depictions of Star Angels, strange
beings that inhabit Vol Mothaak, who supposedly cling upside-down
to trees by tentacle legs, who bear the torso of a woman and an
elongated head with no face. They are the guardians of these woods
I fear and all trees come under their protection. Though our simple
presence here may be enough to agitate them. So, be
mindful.’

1

THE troupe struck out westways and
for a time none spoke. Their eyes and attention were on the
enticing world about them. For the woods were enchantingly
beautiful; trees themselves whose girth were so unbelievably wide
and so dizzyingly tall were almost godlike. As if this were a
garden, a sanctuary, where the gods of the cosmos came to rest at
the end of their days. An indescribable light cascaded down amidst
the canopy so high above them. A golden light that turned almost
green as it refracted through a million leaves. High up in the
leafy boughs there were almost a misty quality to the air. As if
clouds of pollen drifted. And constantly there came the fall of
leaves dropping like feathers to ground.

Every now and then away in the
woods, if there were a corridor through the trees to spot them,
there stood or huddled the forms, or the appearance, of giants. Not
Gargaron’s kind; Gargaron were a dwarf in this strange place, a
nymph, a minnow. These giants were colossal beasts, and towered far
above him. And they stood concealed in shadow. None but large apish
eyes watching them in silence.

‘
Do you see them?’ Gargaron asked
the others hushly.

‘
Aye,’ Locke promised, intrigued
by what he saw.

‘
What be they?’

‘
Dark Ones,’ Melai said, yet were
not certain.

‘
Press on,’ Hawkmoth urged,
determined to ignore them and the myriad other distractions this
land threw at them and they hurried onwards as quickly as they were
able. ‘They may be statue, they may be sentient being, they may be
the guardians of these woods, but press on, I implore.’

They pressed on. Into regions
where many trees had somehow assumed the appearance of great
standing cosmic angels. Hands and arms, sprouting with branches and
leaves, displayed as if in prayer or offering. There were the
feeling here of strolling through a gargantuan cathedral, somewhere
immense but sacred.

‘
Could
this
be what we spied?’
Melai asked. ‘Those towering shadows back there watching us.
Something like these?’

‘
I would like to think as much,’
Hawkmoth answered. ‘But somehow I feel these be different. Trees,
fashioned or grown to honour deities perhaps.’

2

The further they went the more
quiet the woodlands became. The chirping thrips stopped chirping.
The squealing cicadas stopped squealing. The only sounds seemed to
be the shifting and rustling of the troupe’s weaponry and
equipment, the muted sounds of their footfalls on the soft, leaf
riddled ground, the sounds of their breathing. There were no echo
in this woodland; when Locke whistled to test it, it fell from his
mouth a flat, muted sound.

There were also no breeze, yet the
air felt cool, and a fragrance wafted about as sweet as any floral
odour. The curious insects here that crawled lazily upon tree and
branch went about with a stillness and quietness that seemed
somehow unreal. And perhaps they were not real. In a living sense,
at least. For as the travelers past them by within close proximity
the insects did not appear organic, but somehow things formed from
a sort of copperish metal unknown to them.

3

They ate as they
travelled, picking at what small
provisions they had not stowed aboard ship,
never stopping for lunch as they had done at
other times during their travels. Gargaron’s stores were growing
low. They had spied nothing within this strange place to hunt, no
deer, no rabbit, no fox, and no eel nor fish in the few brooks or
streams they crossed. Hawkmoth had called this place enchanted but
Gargaron preferred to think of it as cursed. If it had ever
supported such animals (and somehow it felt as though it never had)
they had gone. Fled, or perished at the hand of the Ruin. Gargaron
had enough rations to last him another two, maybe three days. He
hoped that by then, the Death Bell they had come to visit had been
put to sleep, and the state of the world put to
rights.

4

It felt as though they had been
marching for many hours when Hawkmoth had an urge to check their
bearings. He removed his chronochine, studied it for a few moments
and were pleased to establish they were still more or less on a
westways heading. When he checked time of day however, he were
puzzled.

‘
What be the cause of your
consternation, sorcerer?’ Locke asked him.

He inhaled slowly
as he considered his reply. ‘Either my
chronochine
be dying a sickly
death, or unnatural forces are playing mischief with its internal
workings. It claims that twice, time around us has stopped. And on
three separate occasions, it tells me, time has begun running
backwards.’

Melai looked
about. ‘
Backwards?
’ she
asked.

‘
Aye.’

‘
How can that be?’

Hawkmoth laughed quietly. ‘I have
no answer.’

Locke
smiled.
‘Well then, naught can be done about it. We push
on and ride out whatever this place throws at us.’ He sounded like
someone eager to take it on, like someone keen to leap from the top
of a waterfall, hoping to dodge submerged stones when he
landed.

They pressed on after each had
satiated thirst from their gourds and rest their feet a short
while, gazing about their surroundings, listening to naught but
bone dead silence.

Though once more
Cahssi entered Gargaron’s mind. And once more he heard her as if
she stood before him.
You be the
earthchild. Soon the days will begin to run backwards. From you, a
new world will come. But you have work here
first.

5

For much of that day the suns
swung slowly across sky—if they were not visible to Gargaron and
companions on the ground, their glare were evident beyond the
canopy. Yet for long stretches it seemed the suns did not move at
all. And when Gargaron looked up at them late in the day, well, one
moment they were directly overhead and after he had blinked they
were suddenly and inexplicably hovering in the eastwun hemisphere.
‘Do you lot notice the position of Gohor and Melus?’

They had. And they had all stopped
to study the phenomenon.

‘
Has time once more reversed?’
Gargaron asked Hawkmoth who were again studying his
chronochine.

‘
Aye. Almost a full day this
time.’

‘
Be it a symptom of these woods,
this land?’ Gargaron asked. ‘Or a symptom of the gravitational
forces forecast by the Ghartst cave paintings?’

‘
I might suggest we shall not know
the answers until we are rid ourselves of this place,’ Hawkmoth
replied.

‘
Whatever the
case may be,’ Melai said, ‘
I
don
’t much like it.’

Locke made no comment. He appeared
untroubled, merely fascinated.

6

They moved on. Hawkmoth leading the way. Lock
and Melai next. Gargaron at rear.

Later, Melai and Locke were in
conversation about home and family; Hawkmoth and Gargaron were lost
to their own thoughts. For a little while the troupe proceeded as
such until Gargaron drew alongside Hawkmoth and said, ‘You mind if
I have a word?’

‘
What be on your mind,
giant?’

Gargaron took a while to answer.
He were at once trying to recall Cahssi’s strange words. He were
nervous to repeat them. ‘There is something I have not spoken about
since our leaving Dark Wood.’

‘
Oh, and what might that
be?’

‘
Cahssi spoke in
my thoughts,’ he told the sorcerer. ‘Just before she were swallowed
by Slüv the Vanisher. She said that when days began winding
backwards, a new world would come. That
I
might have something to do with
it.’

‘
Is that so?’ Hawkmoth said with a
distant look.

‘
Aye. She
claimed I were the earthchild
.’

Here Hawkmoth almost stumbled but
regained his footing and looked keenly into the giant’s eyes.
‘Earthchild?’

‘
Aye. Were she speaking nonsense
or have you heard such a phrase?’

For a while Hawkmoth did not speak. Instead he
walked on through the woodland, using his staff as a rambling
stick, tugging at his beard with his free hand.

‘
Have you heard this phrase?’
Gargaron questioned him. ‘Tell me.’

‘
I would not concern myself with
it.’

‘
Why, what does it
mean?’

‘
It means nothing.’

‘
No. I tell you something strange
is afoot,’ Gargaron insisted. ‘Unless I have merely imagined it, I
have had my wife come to me in my dreams and she has told me I have
work yet to do. That may not seem so strange in and of itself but
Grimah, when he left me, expressed the same words. And so too
Cahssi.’

Hawkmoth were silent.
Contemplative and silent.

‘
What be an earthchild, pray
tell?’

Hawkmoth sighed. ‘The earthchild
theory be naught but a witch’s tale told on harvest eve,’ he said.
‘A child from a distant star system comes to Cloudfyre to bless the
crops and suns and the rains. It is said that those who pray to the
earthchild will receive great yields and fertile lands. Thus it
feels as if the world has been born anew.’

Hawkmoth would not look the giant
in the eyes as he spoke this lie. For the fact that Cahssi had
mentioned this phrase were enough to concern him. For he now feared
he had misinterpreted entirely the paintings on the cave
wall.

1

LATE in the day Hawkmoth’s troupe
emerged from the woodland into a substantial clearing where there
sat a wide pond of silver water and upon a circular island in its
middle were an enormous stone foot.

All stopped to stare. For the foot
in turn were attached to a stone leg that climbed high above
Mothaak’s distant canopy. They stood craning their necks to take in
the structure’s full height.

‘
Be this it?’ Gargaron asked
hushly. ‘Our Empty Tower?’

‘
Aye,’ Hawkmoth said. ‘I feel it
be so.’

‘
As do I,’ Melai said, her voice
low.

2

It had been with growing
trepidation that they came to this point. The simple fact that they
had been advancing upon the very thing that were responsible for
dishing out so much death and sorrow across the Vale were lost on
none of them. So the feeling that they were heading toward a
sleeping juggernaut buzzed their nerves and heightened their senses
and stirred their feelings for vengeance.

‘
What sort of tower be this?’
Gargaron said with suspicion.

‘
I could not begin to say,’ came
Hawkmoth’s grave reply.

The top of the leg culminated
somewhere near the upper thigh. And clasped around its knee were
what looked to be a gigantic stone hand; its wrist and arm were
suspended out into sky where it ended in jagged crumbling mortar
somewhere before the elbow. The fingers of the hand were splayed
apart and between them there were vents, or windows, into the tower
itself—what lay within were but a mystery. Yet it were what hung at
the top of the tower that arrested their attention and stirred both
their curiosity and fears.

A monstrous garish face glared
down at them with crazed goggling eyes. Both eyes were askew, one
looking this way, the other that way. It hung there near the top of
the construction, the upper thigh of the tower stuffed through its
mouth and sticking out the back of its head. Subsequently its mouth
were stretched wide with lips drawn back, and its rows of fangs
could be seen biting into the stonework.

‘
What
be
that ghastly thing?’
Melai asked without taking her sight from it. ‘It watches us, I am
certain!’

‘
None but an idiot face,’ Hawkmoth
reassured her, reaching for something in his sidepack. ‘Mindless,
mute, stupid. Naught but stone and mortar and paint designed as
such to scare folk from this place I would guess.’

But Melai would swear its eyes
followed her, that they moved like the eyes of a shadow cat slyly
watching the progress of a tasty swamp rat. ‘Where sits this
infernal bell then?’