Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale (71 page)

Gargaron ignored it and wound back
Hor’s great hammer once more and brought it against the final piece
of base not yet destroyed. The face above squealed. And with one
last lunge Gargaron swiped away the remainder of the tower’s base.
And for a moment the entire construction hovered there, supported
by absolutely nothing, the face cackling at him, suspended there
above him, its nose almost touching him, drool dripping from its
vast lips.

And then down it came…

12

It did not topple as Gargaron had
hoped. It did not simply fall one way or the other. It instead
dropped in on itself, the face collapsing first, plunging into him,
its huge mouth trying to swallow him. He heaved it aside with Hor’s
cutter but the impact pushed him into the pool and dragged the
hammer from his grip.

His anger left him immediately.
His pain returned, felt his skin beginning to singe. Felt it
burning. The black steel armour that seemed somehow part of the
hammer vanished. And down he sunk into the poisonous depths of
Mercuruan.

13

It were deep. There seemed no
bottom to it. Gargaron dropped like a stone in a well. He tried
kicking his legs, tried swimming against the pull of gravity but
blocks of the tower plummeted into the pond above and pelted him,
pushing him further into the murky depths.

He crashed against some ledge or
floor, he were not sure. Tons of stone piled on top of him. He were
trapped; snared like a fly in oil. His struggles began to weaken…
and then… he realised he no longer cared. All he knew had died. He
had brought down the tower, silenced the death bell. His loved ones
would stay dead but at least he had saved their beloved Vale. There
were naught for him anymore.

And decided it were time to let life
go.

He withdrew his
conscious mind into himself. Drew himself peacefully into a
meditative state. Prepared himself for his passing. He would now
never reach Endworld to be with his wife and daughter.
You have work here yet
,
his wife had said.
And now I have done it,
my sweet
.

His consciousness ebbed away. He
imagined Veleyal at his side. He imagined she were there, taking to
him, telling him that all were well, that she loved him. He felt
her tugging his arm. ‘Come,’ she seemed to say. ‘Come, let us go
now.’

She took his wrist. She began to
drag him from the tower stones that lay heaped on top of him. He
felt his consciousness return a little. He felt his dream
dissipating, felt Veleyal leave his mind.

Something still
had hold of his arm, something still hauling him from tower
rubble.
What be it?
he wondered distantly.
A
fish?
What damned fish could live down
here? And what watery beast dares drag me from my
passing?

He opened his one good eye, at
risk of burning it. Though if he were dying he would not need it
anymore.

He saw not a fish but arms of dark
light clamped around his limbs. And he were being hauled up through
stone and mortar and rubble that continued tumbling from
above.

14

He were yanked into open air,
drips of silver beading off his arms. He lay gasping on the bank.
He saw an enormous Dark One looming over him. It stood peering down
at him. As if wondering what to do with him. If it meant to do as
the other Dark Ones had not, that being taking Gargaron’s life,
well, Gargaron now had not the sense to care. He barely registered
the creature standing there. To him, reality were already a numbed
and distant, dream.

Yet one thing he saw broke his
spirit. The tower. It stood there full and unbroken, the face
leering at him, grinning.

He shut his eye against the sight of
it.

1

GARGARON’S consciousness ebbed and
flowed, there came periods of darkness followed by periods of
light. In these times, when his eye came open he were distantly
aware of being lifted from the woodland’s soft leafy floor, of
being cradled like a pup. Later, during a period where he felt more
alert, he saw the tops of the woodland gliding by, as if he were
being carried off somewhere.

Beyond that, there came a
prolonged period of dark. It might have been sweet oblivion had it
not been for the disharmonious dreams and nightmares. When his
senses aroused again he saw just the vast darkening sky above him.
And a sense of the suns lowering and the horizon filled with red
and yellow. And there were yet another colossal Dark One looming
above him. This one even bigger than the last, with far reaching
buffalo horns. Gargaron had again the sense of being carried,
transferred, as if from one colossal ox cart to another. He took
heart when he saw Melai lying there beside him, and Locke on the
other, and Hawkmoth being lifted in behind him.

He wanted to stir, yet naught save
an extreme exhaustion weighed him down. And again he fell away into
a depthless sleep.

2

When he awoke again there were
stars in the heavens, and the moons were out (although he could not
have named them) and there were no sign of the woodland, nothing
but the mighty shadow of the Dark One, its back to him, as if it
were at the helm of some enormous cart. Its horns were lit by
moonlight, and it seemed to hum cheerfully to itself. A sonorous
yet melodic tune, if not a little melancholy.

Gargaron had a sense that he were
surrounded by the Grass Sea, but he were not aboard a ship.
Gargaron wanted to rise, to survey his surroundings, but again his
mind did not permit it, and instead he succumbed once more to pain
and weakness and delirium.

When his eye opened, it were
sometime near dawn; but somehow he knew many nights and days had
passed. The sky were turning blue. He looked around. Before and
behind him he believed he saw a wooden road, suspended on stilts,
crossing the Grass Sea, vanishing into far distance in either
direction.

Then he were opening his eye once
again and the suns glared overhead. And he were being placed gently
upon dusty ground. With a sense of distant awe, like a child
observing a god, watched the horned Dark One.

Next he felt himself waking, the
Dark One had gone and Gargaron were alone.

3

Gargaron were unsure how many days
and nights had passed since their foray into Vol Mothaak. He sat up
slowly. His head thumped, his skin ached. He looked about. The
effort seemed to take all his strength. He felt he were pulling
himself up from death, as if all the dark beasts of the Afterworld
were holding him down. He were shocked to take in such
surroundings. Nothing but barren, endless desert in all directions.
Rock, stone and dust. No vegetation. No signs of habitation. No
signs of life.

None except for that of Hawkmoth
it seemed. And for long moments Gargaron simply stared at him,
unblinking, assuming the sorcerer were but some
apparition.

Hawkmoth were kneeling, his hands
on his knees, and his head bowed. His back were to Gargaron.
Gargaron looked around for the others. Perhaps Melai and Locke were
simply waiting somewhere for Gargaron to wake.

He saw them. Lying
together.

He pulled himself to his feet. And
ignoring Hawkmoth for the moment he plod slowly toward the nymph
and the crabman with a sense of misgiving. He had hoped Melai and
Locke were merely asleep. But he saw now they were not. They lay
there in ruins, both of them battered, pulverised, broken, dead.
Lifeless corpses, side by side.

Gargaron blinked as he looked down
at them. ‘I am sorry,’ he said softly. ‘I am so sorry.’

He stared at Melai at length
hoping her eyes might come open, hoping she would look up and see
him and smile. But she did not.

Hawkmoth stood beside him now. But
when the sorcerer spoke Gargaron did not recognise his voice. ‘It
be imperative we keep moving.’ The voice were scratched, weak,
croaky.

Gargaron peered at him. The glare
of the suns, both high in the sky, made it difficult to see him, to
get a full picture.

‘
Come, giant, let us be
off.’

Gargaron did not move. Not
immediately. He wanted Melai, to remain in her company. She had
become his daughter, his wife, his surrogate family. He could not
desert her.

Hawkmoth squeezed his shoulder.
‘Come now, giant.’ There were a pleading sound in that voice. ‘Come
now. There is naught you can do for her. She came to me in my sleep
and asked me to tell you goodbye. That she is safe, and pain can
reach her no longer.’

Gargaron bowed his head and wept.
The sorcerer squeezed his shoulder. ‘There now,’ Hawkmoth said
soothingly, ‘there now, giant. All comes to an end. One way or
another. Sad though it is. For that is the way of life.’

Unsteady, Gargaron stood, stepping
around to get the sun glare off his face. When he did, he could not
take his eye from the sorcerer. What he saw terrified him. The
sorcerer’s skin were wrinkled and turned a deep sickly tinge of
blue, as if rot were not too far off. His hair were blackened, as
if scorched. He were hunched. One of his arms were stiffened, as if
the entirely limb were stone. ‘Hawkmoth,’ he whispered, ‘what be
wrong with you?’

Hawkmoth drew in a deep breath.
But he offered that old disarming smile. ‘Nothing. I am dying but
that be all.’

‘
Dying?’ That squeezed Gargaron’s
heart. He had lost so much. He did not want to be left alone.
‘Dying?’

‘
Aye.’ He said it looking about,
as if this were it, no coming back from this condition, as if
taking in the barren beauty of this new land. ‘Oh, and I would
already be so had I not summoned my life’s reserves.’

‘
What do you mean?’

‘
As you saw with my old mentor
Skitecrow. A trick a sorcerer learns early on in his career. To put
away certain reserves in the event that death should visit him. The
idea be to use enough to stave off death. But I have had to call on
all of it just to be standing here talking to you. So once it be
used up, that is it, I’m afraid. I too will go the way of all
else.’

Gargaron looked horrified. ‘How
long have you got?’

The sorcerer smiled. ‘A day. Two
at the most. I hope. Perhaps naught but mere hours. Sometime at
least. So, let us press on.’ He turned and started off.

‘
What about Melai? Locke? We
cannot leave them.’

‘
And we cannot take them with us.’
Using his staff as a walking stick, the sorcerer hobbled
away.

4

Gargaron watched him. Then his
gaze returned to that of his deceased friends. He crouched and
tenderly ran his huge meaty fingers over Melai’s head; he were
barely aware that the skin on his knuckles were flaking and peeled,
that the skin and flesh of his hand and wrist were blistered and
weeping, that the sleeves of his shirt were shredded. But his
attention were entirely on Melai.

‘
I am deeply sorry.’ Tears stung
his eyes and cheeks, but he bowed his head and touched her giant’s
forehead to hers and then he sat there and whispered to her a small
prayer, all the while tears dripped from his face to hers. It
haunted him that his tears did not convert, become night fairies,
or skybeetles. It haunted him that all were dying, even the magic
of Cloudfyre.

Hawkmoth had stopped, were
waiting, using his staff as a crutch to keep him
upright.

‘
Gargaron,’ a voice said. ‘Be
well, my friend. I shall escort her back to Thoonsk and save you
the burden.’

Blinking, Gargaron looked up and
around. And through bleary eyes he saw a wraithlike vision of Sir
Rishley Locke, standing there with his customary smile. And behind
him, just beyond his shoulder, were Melai, a ghostly
apparition.

‘
Melai! Bu-but
you live!
’

Yet her small broken body still
lay at his knees.

‘
Melai?’

‘
You must walk on now,’ came her
voice, soft and distant. ‘You must follow Hawkmoth, my giant of
Hovel. For you have work here left to do.’

Confusion tore at his mind, as he
were not certain if that last sentence were spoken by her, or if it
had instead come from inside his mind.

He looked around at the sorcerer,
who were speaking it seemed: ‘… aye… you have work here left to
do.’

And when Gargaron turned for Melai
and Locke once more he saw them now distant, walking from him, away
through the desert sand and rock. He blinked and wiped his eyes but
when he looked again, their ghosts were no longer there… just the
endless wastes and swirling dust.

5

Gargaron trailed the limping
sorcerer. Once or twice he looked back. But all he saw for a little
while were the small broken bodies of Melai and Locke lying there
being bitten at by the gritty wind.

Eventually the
dust haze swallowed them and Gargaron saw them no longer. Yet those
words still whispered over and over in his mind:
You have work here left to do
.