Page 2 of Cloudfyre Falling - A dark fairy tale

CHANDRY’S STEPPE

  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 dale 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 closer 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 the 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 mystery 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. No traffic on the road. Nothing.

  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 may too have 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 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 the day of the first shockwave. 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 the 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.

  ‘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 if he decided to head that way. 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.

  Anyhow, 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 at 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 ominous 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. The livestock may have been spooked and bolted. Indeed they may also have perished. But before he pressed on for Autumn, Gargaron 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.

  GRIMAH

  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 distant 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 the 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 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, Gargaron 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 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, moon and star 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 yet 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.

  Gargaron heard another sound. Growing. From the westwun. An alien sound… but one somehow familiar. A deep grumbling noise, as if Godrik’s Vale itself were shifting, waking, as if something beneath had cracked the continent’s crust, some terrifying monster from the dawn of creation in the process of heaving itself up through the earyth.

  Gargaron thought of his waking on t
he bank of old Buccuyashuck, he had heard the sound of some demon or dragon spreading out across the world toward him. A sound like rolling death, as if the very earyth on which he sat had been tearing apart and caving in, tumbling away into the Great Nothing’s depthless void.

  So, here it came again. That same demon.

  When it hit him, it gripped him and shook him hard until he feared his bones would liquefy, shaking his weapons from his grip. As he had experienced the first time, his limbs shook, his organs quivered, and it pushed his head about so violently it temporarily shook conscious thought from his mind.

  When it had swept through him, so deeply through him that he collapsed to his knees and then to his side, it went rolling away yonder.

  4

  Sunrise he lay there, grimacing. Rain swept the hills. He swatted away the Nightface claw digging at him, scratching at his face. ‘Leave me be,’ he grumbled at it. Though he could hear the pained squealing of a thousand creatures.

  He sat up. Looked about. Beyond the Brawny Twister, downhill, he saw them, mysterious dark shapes racing madly through the deluge. In the heavy downpour he could not fully discern their shape and form. But they were hulking things as great as he, and often they howled or barked, though too large were they to be hoardogs, and they skittered about not on four legs but on two.

  Before them, fled a mass of sheep and mule. And Gargaron watched as the dark fiends tore them all to bloody pieces. The squeals and cries of terror were a chilling sound to behold.

  Then Gargaron he watched, one of these dark beasts clambered up the sodden slopes of Eastbourne Hill toward him.

  Panic gripped him. He unsheathed his greatsword and scrambled behind the beech trees, ducking down behind another wet thicket of writhing brambles that squirmed up his arms, crouching as low as his giant’s bulk would allow.

  As he hid, the dark figure approached and stopped opposite the brambles. The torrents of rain were still too thick to permit Gargaron unhindered view of the creature’s anatomy but its face he could see, and he thought it a ghastly thing with four goggling white eyes too far apart and a huge slobbering mouth filled with fangs as long as stakes. Its skin were black as coal and seemed to reflect no light.

  Gargaron waited for its attack, gripping his greatsword in readiness. But it never came. The beast, whatever it were, tore off, hooting and snarling.

  A ploy to draw me out, Gargaron knew as he watched the figure scramble away, and so he resolved to sit there beneath the heavy shower, tense, alert, heart pounding, not daring to leave his position. Are these the feared Darkwing at last? he wondered, come to dish out their judgement upon me? Why are they not aflight then? Why are they screaming and racing about the earyth like mad rats? Why are they not darkening the skies in plague numbers?

  He crouched there pondering all this. Until he realised the squealing had fallen silent, and the peculiar beasts were gone.

  5

  Biting rain hammered Gargaron most of that morning. He sat nervous, watching the dead and dying sheep and mules. He kept expecting the dark critters to return. To draw him out. He refused to move from his spot.

  He ached. It were the first thing he’d known when his eyes had flickered open from sleep. Ached deep down in his bones. He blamed first the travel of the last few days, all the leg work, the walking. To Precipice and back, lugging wife and daughter. And then trudging to his current location, hefting heavy pack and great sword. Aye, it were not anything he weren’t unaccustomed to (he were a hunter after all, walking and shouldering heavy prey came with the job) but the stress of all he had seen and lost, the sheer anguish of it all, had put an exhaustion in him he could not fathom.

  Then he recalled the shockwave that had rolled over him during the night. How he had trembled and quaked so violently in its grip.

  Strange shockwaves, and now these dark things, he thought. What on Cloudfyre is happening?

  He were in no rush departing. “One who makes blind haste runs blindly to his doom,” his father would say often. Never more true than right now, Gargaron knew.

  Thus, although those howling shapes had moved off, he sat there cautious, patient. It be a trap, he kept reminding himself. To draw me into the open.

  So he remained there for hours at the fringe of the woods using the Brawny Twisters as cover, surveying the ongoing Steppe from safety of hill and copse.

  But half the morning came and went and there were no renewed sign of these strange dark things. Still, all the death he had witnessed since leaving Hovel gave him cause for much suspicion. Perhaps they are out there somewhere hidden. Hidden and waiting for me to emerge.

  He wished, not for the first time, that he knew how to wield Hor’s old hammer. He might feel a tad more at ease if he’d had the power of such a famed weapon at his disposal.

  ‘And yet, Drenvel’s Bane or no, I cannot stay here day and night,’ he reminded himself.

  Keeping an ear open, and eyes peeled, he packed up his camp and with greatsword in hand, made to finally strike out for Autumn. It would be his final leg before he reached possible salvation. He would have the eyes of his Nightface to aid his trek. He would remain vigilant, alert, and lash out at anything that came at him. But as he were about to depart, a wild snort came from somewhere behind him.

  He spun about, gripping his sword in both fists, and ducked down behind the Brawny Twister; its writhing arms squirming about his face, shoulders and legs. He peered between its wormy limbs and, alarmed, saw a shape in the rain across the opposite edge of the copse.

  Ha, he thought, I were wise to wait. Whatever those black demons are, they have lost their patience and come for me now!

  He remained poised where he stood, frozen in a defensive stance, legs ajar, one planted slightly forward of the other, thick fingers curled tight about the haft of his sword. He were alarmed that his Nightface had not alerted him to the beast sneaking up on him. Had it not recognised the creature as a menace? Had it not seen it?

  Whatever the case, there it stood, the monster, tall, black, unmoving. Watching him.

  6

  The figure remained unmoved. As if it waited for Gargaron to make first play.

  Ha, it knows nothing of my resolve. Indeed his father had observed in Gargaron at an early age such resolve. When out hunting gorse and fleim, his father had been impressed by Gargaron’s determination, steadfastness, doggedness, tenacity. Even as a young boy, Gargaron had possessed the ability to wait, with the stillness of a stone, watching, stalking a gorse or a fleim, or some other beast, for long stretches, with greater concentration to the task than his father had known in other boys of similar age.

  They were soon locked in stalemate it seemed, Gargaron and this demon thing. Gargaron dared not take his eye from it. And yet, he were conscious of the fact that this were perhaps another ploy, to distract Gargaron whilst another beast snuck up silently from behind him. Regardless of his Nightface’s recent failing, he put faith in it to inform him if and when something of that nature transpired.

  It were scantly lit beneath the copse; the rain had turned away at last but clotted, thunderous cloud clogged the sky and thus Gohor and Melus remained veiled. Gargaron dared not move, crouched where he were, clasping his sword in both fists. His eyes focused primarily on the shape that hung there in the morning gloom; still, impulses had his sight flicking left and right, on the lookout for any more of these hidden creatures.

  As it were, he would’ve had trouble seeing anything crouched in amongst the remainder of the copse but when he removed his eye from the creature it shifted quickly. As if it had been waiting for that exact moment. And when he looked back, it had gone.

  His hearts beat loud in his ears, his eyes darted to and fro, nervously scouring every shadow, every beech tree.

  Suddenly there it were, half the distance closer to him.

  He gasped.

  But then frowned. And blinked. And ultimately lowered his sword.

  7

  It were no more monster than he, it
seemed. It were but a giant’s horse. With two heads like those used by the Autumn Guard. Yet, that were not all. A rider hung from its saddle, caught by his leg, dangling there, his arms and fingers dragging through sodden grass, sodden hair covering his face.

  The horse snorted. Gargaron straightened to his full height. He looked around, still suspecting a trap. As such he did not yet sheath his sword. He kept it gripped in hand. Though he hoped the steed would not be spooked by it. If this were no trap, if this animal sought friendly company, then he did not wish it to bolt. It were, after all, the first living horse he had met since before this blight fell. And besides, there were someone in its saddle, someone who looked in need of help. And someone who potentially carried information about what had become of this part of the world. And crucially, may have knowledge of how it might be rectified.

  When the horse made no move toward him, Gargaron felt he had no choice but to sheathe his sword. Though he sent a clear mental message to his Nightface: Keep vigilant. This may be an ambush. Watch for anything approaching.

  He raised his hand to the twin-headed horse, gesturing that he were no threat. The horse whickered from both mouths, but did not retreat, nor turn away. All its ears flickered, listening, listening…

  Gargaron looked about, wondering if the steed had heard something. He saw nothing. Nor did his Nightface. He gazed back at the horse and tread slowly to it. ‘Be calm,’ he spoke to it softly, ‘be calm, I mean you no harm.’

  As he drew closer he reached out his fingers and gently touched the long smooth snout of the head closest him, patting it softly, murmuring to it the way his father had done to calm the wild stallions of Chayosa. The second head swung in his direction, and all four eyes focused on his for a while.

  ‘I mean you no harm,’ Gargaron told it softly. ‘Hear me now, I speak true.’

  The beast did not flinch at his touch, not even after he lifted his free hand to the other face. Indeed the majestic creature demonstrated signs that it accepted Gargaron, bowing its heads into his touch in almost a gesture of affection.

  Gargaron took this moment to place his forehead first against one long sodden snout held gently in his palms, and then the other. As he did the steed’s eyes closed softly. Gargaron projected a mental impression of friendship, of peace, and of good will.

  When he removed his head from the steed’s it lowered both its noses and nuzzled his neck.

  Its swift affection toward him surprised him. He had apples in his sack with which he supposed he might use on gaining its trust, though it seemed almost unnecessary now. Still, he removed two and offered them. As the steed sniffed the offerings and then took them, crunching them heartily and noisily in both its mouths, Gargaron stood there ruminating on what he had presently “seen” within the steed’s minds. Delving into the thoughts of animals were akin to deciphering an unlearned foreign language. And there were much hidden there in the minds of this majestic creature that he could not decipher. Yet what he had interpreted with some confidence were that this steed had indeed come from the Watchguard of Autumn. A destrier, it were, a warhorse. It had seen battle, and it would not flinch in a fight.

  Gargaron had also learned its name.

  ‘Grimah,’ Gargaron said and both heads of the steed swung about to look at him. ‘So, that be your name. Grimah.’ He rubbed its noses and it lowered its heads enjoying the attention.

  Still, Gargaron remained puzzled. If this were indeed a destrier of the Watchguard, be that Autumn’s or some other garrison, then it should have been suitably trained, which meant it should have displayed a healthy distrust of strangers.

  Were Gargaron to believe that the current circumstances had driven this steed to loneliness? That it had actively sought company?

  He tried not think too much about it. Besides, the fate of its rider tugged increasingly at his curiosity.

  Slowly, he reached out and took hold of the reigns. And found the steed Grimah willing to be lead back toward the bed of glowing coals where last night’s flames had roared.

  8

  Gargaron tethered the horse to a tree and untangled its rider, dragging him down upon the grass at fireside. This rider, although having mounted a giant’s horse, were not of the giants, Gargaron now discovered. The rider were tall and fair, with pale white skin. And it were not until Gargaron had smoothed the hair from his face did he realise two things: the rider were no male. It were a woman. And she were an elf, born and grown.

  Is this why my Nightface did not react with alarm? he wondered. It did not sense her as a threat?

  ‘Do you hear me?’ he asked her closely. ‘Come now, do you hear me, pray tell?’ He put his ear to her chest. There came back the slow tick of her heart. He took her hand and patted it, lightly slapping her cheek. He even took his gourd and poured water upon her face. ‘Come now, awaken.’

  Nothing roused her. He peeled back her eyelids, her soft green eyes blankly gazing up at him. He poked a firm twig at them, a trick he had watched his father perform on the Liilaal, beings who could trick you into thinking they were all but dead. The elven woman however did not flinch, did not react one bit.

  Gargaron turned to campfire, stoking its embers, dropping on dry kindling. When flames licked up about the crisp wood he heated some Lyfen Essence into a revitalising broth, something that ought chase off death and lift her from her unconsciousness. He lifted it to her lips. He crouched, gently held back her head, pushed her mouth open, tipped a few drops of the tincture upon her tongue. She did not need swallow it. The healing properties would be absorbed though her mouth. Gargaron had seen this brew work on many who had lost consciousness in battle, those who had been injured whilst hunting, those stricken with sickness, those who were suffering from the crushing effects of advancing death.

  He lay her back down. She breathed still but nothing more. He touched her forehead. The backs of her hands. She felt biting cold. He dragged her closer to fire’s edge, let its warmth reach out and drape her.

  Often the brew could take its time. So he waited.

  9

  He inspected the steed. Despite the death of nearly every creature he had come across since Hovel, this animal looked in fine health. It confirmed his suspicions. That he had come to the edge of the death zone. That beyond here the world went on as it always had; by now folk would surely be gossiping about the strange phenomenon that had stricken his part of Godrik’s Vale.

  He leafed through the saddle bags for any note as to the elf woman’s identity. Except for a handful of provisions, the bags were empty. So who were she? How had she come to be here riding this war horse? Perhaps she had been part of a ranging mission. Come to inspect the Steppe, dispatched by her leaders to search for survivors, to build a picture as to exactly what had happened, to ascertain what were going on in case the greater realm might be under similar threat.

  But by all appearances, whatever had stricken all living things had stricken her too.

  Yet… for some reason it had not effected the steed…

  The cloud mass began to clear, though it did not break up entirely; whilst Gohor and Melus remained concealed, their muted radiance managed to filter through somewhat and illuminate some patches of the Steppe. But as time drew on, the elf’s condition did not improve. Her breathing slowed. Gargaron listened to her heart again. She should have come round by now, lifted to consciousness by the brew of Lyfen Essence. Yet he feared her heart had slowed far too much.

  As a last resort he placed his forehead upon hers. Not something he were entirely comfortable doing. Many folk looked upon mind delving as a violation. And such an act could sometimes hinder and retard the delver. But perhaps this elf were now beyond offending or afflicting. Yet, if Gargaron learned through mind delving what ailed her, and if that knowledge in turn lead to her recovery, then she may prove forgiving.

  However, as he sent his thoughts out into her mind, he saw nothing but blackness. A sorry sign. For it meant her spirit were already leaving her body and did not wish
to return. He wondered if a Vannandal might help her at this point. If so, she were out of luck. He had not thought to pack one.

  10

  He watched her take her last breath three hours after she and her mount had found him. And as she passed on, grass sprouted up around her, flowers grew from her chest and face, and her entire body turned to stone.

  There were no obvious injury or wound to tell Gargaron what had killed her. Naught but a simple abrasion to the side of her head. And only blackness from her mind when he had searched her thoughts.

  Gargaron sat there and watched her where she lay now, forever entombed. He eyed her for a long while. He felt a sadness for her, a pity and a strange sense of emptiness. That she had come here and would not return alive to her kind and kin. He would notify the authorities in Autumn, of course. Her family would want to know what became of her. He would inform them of where she lay, he would tell them that if she had been part of a ranging mission then it had come to grief and that perhaps more members of her party had suffered the same fate.

  Gargaron packed up his camp. Kicked out his fire. Then stood regarding his new friend. ‘Well then,’ he said. ‘I’m for Autumn. Do you wish to accompany me?’ As if understanding, Grimah stepped to him and affectionately nibbled his cheek. ‘Should I take that as a yes?’

  He unhitched his bull-hide pack from his shoulder and tied it to the side of Grimah’s saddle. The steed did not object. Gargaron straightened the bridle and tightened its straps. Then he placed his boot in the stirrup, gripped the pommel and pulled himself into saddle.

  For some reason he half expected the horse to rear up and buck him off. But Grimah remained placid, content. Gargaron reached forward, patting him on the backs of both necks. Then with one last look at the elf tomb he pulled the great steed around and trotted down out of Eastbourne Hills.

  AUTUMN

  1

  STICKING to Far Trail, the upper heights of Skytower, distant though it were, soon came into view. Buoyed by the sight Gargaron rode on with haste through Toadstool farms, where toadstools stood taller than even he. Gigantic looming fungal plants they were with immense canopies of purple and green. He looked up as his destrier trotted beneath them, their undersides lined with bumpy blue ribs. Gargaron wondered if toad worms still lived inside them, wriggling their shining blue bellies around the moist dark beds of toadstool flesh. The folk of this region farmed the nectar produced by those fat stinking worms. The most powerful aphrodisiac called Elluur it were and it fetched grand prices in the cities of Seagarrd and Ingarra.

  He were half tempted to call out as he passed by farmsteads. To see if any folk still lived, to see who might respond. All farms hereabouts seemed far too quiet he felt. But he stayed his mouth for fear of alerting any of those peculiar Dark Ones, the sort of which he had spied howling about in morning’s deluge. Ultimately, the fate of these farmers lay about him in plain sight. Some lay stinking, gathering flies and grass crabs on their porches. Others lay in their fields, their lips and eyelids already pecked off and eaten.

  He knew then he had not yet freed himself entirely of this accursed death zone.

  2

  On Autumn’s outskirts, where the view of Skytower stood ever prominent, Far Trail curved north and away toward the distant frontier post of Cidertown. Here Gargaron took the branching regional road for Autumn. Yet his hopes that he might have finally reached the outer fringe of his death zone soon looked dashed. For even here he should have come across signs of commerce, of folk manning road side stalls, people in and out of cheap Inns and the seedy brothels. But the living had deserted the roadway. Only the dead populated it now. As they did, he discovered, all the way to the centre of Autumn. Menfolk, womenfolk, children of countless numbers of species. Big and small. Rich, poor. No distinction, no discrimination. All equal now in death, all perished, all decaying. Some only half eaten, some mostly eaten, some torn from their shawls and dresses and breeches by greeps, mankks, skorks and every other known crawling, wriggling, slithering scavenger and carrion muncher that dwelt in the sewers and drains and ditches on the outskirts of these larger towns.

  In some of the waterways he saw dead folk floating, black gutfish busy feasting upon them.

  The stench in the air barraged him, as if invisible ghosts thrust it upon him, determined to turn him away, this living encroacher trespassing upon their newly established land of dead. He fetched his lavender cloth from his pack, dabbed it in fresh lavender oil, and tied it around his nose and mouth. Instead of raw stench of dead now, he could smell raw stench of dead over-laced with sweet musk of lavender. He were not certain the compromise were worth the effort.

  Still, he pressed on, trying his best to ignore the reek. Perhaps beyond Autumn, there lies the edge to all this death. It were an optimistic forecast at best. But a new notion came to him: What say Autumn be its epicentre?

  This revelation made him pull Grimah to a halt. Did this make sense? he wondered. Nothing had survived in Hovel. And little else had survived anywhere else that he had seen except for this end of the Steppe. If Autumn proved its epicentre then would it not stand to reason to find everything here perished? This were not the case as Gargaron had witnessed. Swimming gutfish, crawling greeps, slithering mankks, scrambling skorks, all alive and by all appearances thriving.

  He had no explanation. None of it made sense.

  He cast his eyes across the settlement to the Skysight Tower that dominated the townscape where it loomed far into the heavens like a tall untouched pinnacle. He felt it watched him in return somehow, watched him with quiet suspicion, how he, the realm’s wandering survivor, standing there oh so conspicuous, still stood, still walked, while every other sentient soul rotted in the streets.

  If this death zone includes Autumn, he thought, then that tower may tell me what I need to know, and might allow me to see how far this blackness spreads, allow me to discover how far I need yet traverse to rid myself of this corruption, to find some soul with an explanation as to what has happened.

  3

  Autumn did prove deserted of the living. No matter where he tread or searched, naught but the dead lined its streets and the stench of decay were ripe and raw on the breeze. Yet there were things alive here that brought him no cause for celebration. Enormous violet flowers growing from the dead.

  Corpse Flowers, his kind knew them by name. And as he pressed on deeper into the township, their numbers grew, parts of the settlement looking more like forests of violet, with their towering stems soaring above many households and shops, leaves and flowers fluttering and swaying in the breeze.

  Gargaron had not seen such numbers of these creatures for many a year, not since the early days of his marriage to his sweetheart Yarniya. He recalled an occasion when he and his father had come across a bloodied battle field and there he had lain his eyes on hundreds of such plants. Hundreds that had taken root within the dead and were hungrily consuming them. He thought he would never have seen such a show of them again in his life. But here, throughout the silent streets of Autumn, there must’ve been thousands.

  Undeterred, he called out in front of the governor’s residence, and searched the hospital. He strolled through the community hall, then the university, hoping he might find survivors holed up against this blight. All the while he gave the flowers a wide berth. But searching the town for survivors made no difference. Autumn proved as dead and silent as Hovel.

  At last he stood outside the gates of Autumn’s Watchguard, hoping that at last here would be living folk, members of the Watchguard, surviving against the tide of death. The Watchguard fort were a vast walled complex, for here were the barracks and the primary centre of control of the realm’s mighty protectors. The complex also housed the base of Skysight Tower. Alas, Gargaron’s hopes were sunk for the gates were cast open—something that would not have been permitted had the Watchguard remained alive and at their post.

  He heeled his steed, cautiously pushing through gate and arch, and were met with the sig
ht of a hundred of his own kind, giants, scattered about in various poses of death and decay. Some sprawled across cobbles. Others dangling from rampart and wall. Some still at desks within offices and administration houses, bellies eaten open, innards dragged out and unceremoniously pulled across tiled floor like stuffing from a doll.

  And here amidst numerous Corpse Flowers, skorks and greeps hissed at his intrusion, black little devil bugs with beetle eyes and long slurping tongues. He had hoped for life here, sentient life, but alas all that seemed dashed.

  4

  He took his steed to base of tower. A spot upon which he had never stood. Indeed not being of the Watchguard, not possessing official clearance, he would not have been permitted here otherwise. And never would he have foreseen such a day when he could simply amble up to Watchguard Gate and simply stroll through unchallenged. Now here he stood, marveling at the craftsmanship of the tower, a true engineering wonder, gazing up and up and up… to where Skytower’s upper floors needled the clouds.

  He heeled his steed, circled the vast base of the tower; the clip-clop of Grimah’s great horse’s hooves echoing off the surrounding domed Watchguard buildings and its tall outer walls. Two arched gates, gates too left open and ajar, lead through fifty feet of base wall to an inner courtyard.

  He took Grimah through and stood there gazing up into tower’s tall, hollow interior. It were essentially a giant needle, he observed, hollow all the way to its tip, far out of sight above him; it ached his neck to crane back his head to look. He circled about looking for a way up.

  There were more Corpse Flowers here too, he observed, growing up from corpses scattered around the pavers.

  Gargaron considered the flowers.Then he pulled Grimah to a halt and promptly slid down from his steed. Before further business, he withdrew his great sword and strode about, unceremoniously hacking down every hideous violet flower where they had embedded themselves within the carcasses of his people. The flowers mewled horribly in protest as he did so, and spat out clouds of purple spore as they collapsed.

  Gargaron stumbled backwards, mindful not to inhale whilst the spore clouds passed away upon air and breeze. He did not understand enough of their kind to know whether or not this spore could lodge within the lungs of the living and germinate. Some old stories alleged that they could. That they could spread disease such as Crimp Pox, and Creeping Sickness and Wailing Wounds. Gargaron did not wish to find out.

  5

  The going were slow. Not because of the horse. The great beast proved eager enough. Indeed the steed actually seemed quite at ease, as if it had climbed this ramp before, for it showed no fear with the heights they gained as they ascended the tower. Nor did it seem to mind the terrible wind gusts that wailed through the open walls, biting and tearing at Gargaron’s cotton shirts and clawing at his hair, wind gusts that also caused the tower to sway.

  Gargaron found this structural movement more than a tad disconcerting.

  From a distance the Skysight Tower appeared a formidable piece of engineering, always imposing, magnificent, portraying the idea that nothing could shift it, move it, that it would stand until the last stars in the Great Nothing winked out. But here as Gargaron climbed it, the building felt suddenly imperfect, inadequate, compromised by his weight. And every time it moved he feared it was set to topple.

  Why, it holds a hundred Watchguard giants at once, he reminded himself. And their steeds.

  It did not seemed possible.

  Still, the higher they climbed, the more the tower seemed to sway. To make matters worse, both inner and outer walls had been constructed at regular intervals with gaping floor-to-ceiling arched openings to allow a through-hole for buffeting gales—there existed no railing to prevent one falling out of the tower if one slipped or tripped. And nothing to prevent one’s steed from charging out into open space if one’s steed suddenly found itself spooked.

  Gargaron had himself alternatively hauling Grimah left as one of these gaps came up on his right, or pulled his steed right as one emerged on his left. The steed however did its best to fight this pattern, pulling back as much as it could to the centre of the corridor as the floor (or skyramp as Gargaron had heard it named) wound up and up and up around the central well.

  Gargaron, did not share its ease. ‘I feel you have done this before,’ he said to the horse. ‘You must indeed be a steed of the Watchguard. Right then, I shall endevour to put my trust in you. Still, I have a proposal: you get me to the top and down again without falling out and the next load of apples we find I shall give you the king’s share.’

  And so on they went, guided by steed.

  6

  Gargaron tried his best not looking down. But mounted on Grimah, regardless of whether the horse were a trained mount of the Watchguard or not, eventually became too much. The skyramp would have been thirty or forty feet across, but from his vantage atop the horse it felt as though they were traversing naught but a narrow beam. Aye, Grimah seemed more than sure of himself upon that ramp, at those tall, tall reaches of the tower, but that dizzying height ate at Gargaron’s waning confidence. So, finally, feeling vulnerable, unsafe, rocking there side to side on that great mount, gripping the reins till his knuckles hurt, he dismounted and chose to climb the remaining reaches on foot.

  That felt somewhat safer. Slower aye, but safer. Though the winds seemed to buffet him with greater fervour now, as if angered by his decision to leave his mount, and they seemed to grow more and more frantic the higher he climbed. He hunched his shoulders and where he could he clasped the wall for support. And where the walls opened on either side, presenting him with giddy views on either side of the ground far, far below, he slowed to a crawl.

  He would not now ever believe those stories he had heard of seasoned Watchguard members racing each other to the top of this tower on backs of gallant twin-headed steeds. ‘Pure folly, if ever there were!’ Gargaron hissed under his breath. And every now and then, his horse, who strolled casually ahead, apparently unafraid, would stop and peer about and Gargaron could have sworn it looked amused.

  ‘Aye, if you could talk,’ he said, ‘you might be of a mind to let me know how silly I look. But laugh all you like. Just do not forget to ask yourself who shall be laughing more the harder once your eagerness takes you tumbling out over this treacherous edge?’

  Frustrated, Gargaron crawled on belly to tower’s inner edge and without meaning it he gazed down into the “well”. The diametre of this “well” had been a hundred feet at ground level, and were growing steadily narrower the higher they went. But it made no difference to the level of his fear. It were still a mighty drop. The Corpse Flowers he had slain what felt like hours earlier still lay there at ground level, but so far away did they appear that they looked no more than a smudge of violet against the ground. Of course, his intention here had been not to look down but to try and search upwards, to gauge how far he yet had to climb. From where he lay, flat on his belly, this were a much harder action to conduct, to crane his chin and neck upwards, to strain his eyes in search of the pinnacle. The effect made it feel as though he were suddenly leaning precariously out over the vast drop below him, that the demon force that hauled all things to ground would grip him and pull him from the ledge. How he had ever stood with his toes over the edge of the Great Precipice were beyond him.

  The Great Precipice did not sway beneath my feet, he told himself.

  Vertigo swam through him and his fingers clamped against the edge of the skyramp, fingernails bending backwards with strain and effort.

  Slowly he wriggled away from the edge, catching his breath. When he looked up he saw both faces of Grimah watching him.

  ‘Laugh but once,’ he told it, ‘and I shall throw you from this infernal place myself!’

  It did no laugh of course but Gargaron were certain it smiled.

  7

  It took Gargaron and steed another hour of slow, careful, plodding to reach the top. And it were with momentous relief that the skyramp finall
y came to end as the tower tapered to a point where a circular floor sat atop the well. Here the ramp culminated and Gargaron lead his steed onto the landing and tethered it to a hitching rail on a central column; here Grimah drank heavily from a trough filled with water.

  ‘Is that why you felt the need for haste?’ Gargaron said good naturedly, scratching it behind one set of ears and then the next. ‘To reach water?’

  He took his gourd from his belt and quenched his own thirst.

  From there he took a few moments to catch his breath and take in his surroundings. He knew he were not yet at tower’s roof. At least a level above him it remained, he judged. The platform on which he currently stood lay perhaps fifty feet across. There were no outer barrier, no wall nor rampart, nothing to prevent the hapless from tripping and falling out; just a series of eight columns supporting the higher deck. And a stairwell leading upwards.

  ‘Stay here,’ he ordered his horse. And wandered off toward the stairs.

  8

  Above he emerged onto another circular platform, the sky fine and high above him. Though it was difficult to do, he did his best to ignore the continued sensation of swaying. The winds, he found, helped distract him from that problem. They were chilly and bit at him and blustered his hair and ragged his clothing. At ground level such wind would not have concerned him. He may have declared it a mere breeze if someone had commented on it, but otherwise he would have paid it no mind. Up here, at what felt the top of the world, it seemed as though it worked at pushing him to the edge of the platform and over it if it could. He were pleased to observe that the edge of the platform had been constructed with a low rampart, that if the wind turned to gales and happened to heave him across the deck he would at least have somewhere to plant his boots and rally himself against its efforts.

  Unless his weight helped tip the structure…

  Enough thoughts like that! he told himself.

  He turned his attention to the Skysight. It consisted of a brass mast protruding from the centre of the platform, jutting straight up into the heavens for another three hundred feet or so. He had never used the Skysight, obviously, but had heard many times of its make-up and usage. Within the mast there were said to be a pipe of polished Lhulic, steel made from metals mined on sites out near Graveston, and hidden within this pipe lay an intricate conglomeration of mirrors and copper tubing which worked in conjunction with an enchanted Eye of Moonglass that could scour the Vale thousands of leagues in any direction. The contraption had been designed, engineered, constructed, and erected entirely by giant magers.

  The base of the mast were suspended on a steel basket whose struts ran down diagonally into the stonework of the platform. This left a space within the basket large enough to permit someone of Gargaron’s size, as it had been designed. For there, on a circular dais, sat a large metal seat. Above the seat, suspended from the base of the mast, were a sight-helmet with a flexible brass hose attached to a wide cup which enveloped the entire forward part of the helmet.

  Gargaron ducked beneath the basket’s support struts and fitted himself into the seat. He found it rather comfortable, leather bound and padded beneath. He reclined. He took hold of the helmet. He took a breath…

  And without further hesitation he pulled it down over his head.

  SKYSIGHT

  1

  FOR a long while it were dark. He saw nothing. He sat a few moments, waiting for something to happen.

  Soon… he saw light.

  Blurred, indistinct light.

  And then…a sensation of movement, of rushing toward something at tremendous speed and then halting abruptly, and instantaneously the blurred light coalesced into mountains so crisp and close before him he felt as though he truly hovered in the air before them.

  The effect were dizzying, nauseating. And so unsettling Gargaron went to remove his helmet. He gripped the mechanism encasing his head. But hesitated… For his giddiness were beginning to subside. And he began to feel something else.

  Awe.

  He felt bird-like, hovering there, staring at the mountains. He looked down. And saw ground far, far below him: rain swept fields and glacial valleys, and the meandering grey course of some cold trickling brook. Somehow he did not fear the height. He felt free, and were almost convinced that he could not possibly be seated in some chair at the top of Skysight Tower, that he must have fallen asleep in that chair and carried away on some dream.

  If he looked left and right he saw the mountain range sweeping away in both directions. He found he could turn fully about and view heather clad hills and a lake to what he guessed lay southways of him. He could hear the lonesome wind rolling out of the mountains. He could feel the biting chill of alpine air against his skin, in his hair, burrowing into his clothes; the smell of it proved crisp and fresh, he filled his lungs with it.

  At length he hovered there. Looking about. He soon realised, other than turning about, he had not moved from this position.

  He turned about again. The mountains swung back into view. He wondered distantly if he had somehow died. Perhaps the Tower had collapsed. Or maybe the Skysight had sapped up his soul and spat it out across the Vale. Now he were but a wandering spirit. No legs below him. No torso. No arms either side of him. He were but a simple consciousness, an entity of pure thought floating somewhere out over Godrik’s Vale’s vast reaches.

  If this is death, he thought, then I fear it not.

  The notion of his own possible death took his thoughts to the Great Precipice. A pang of sadness, of guilt and anger, hit him. He could not help but think of igniting his girls and watching them trail away with Vurah’s Wraithbirds…

  In moments the mountains were rushing from him, hurtling northways’n’west. Fast.

  Or, more likely, he were being dragged southways’n’east. A sea-sickness gripped him. The world about him degenerated into a murky blur.

  2

  He had a sense of turning. Not spinning, but turning, changing directions. Instead of facing northways, he were being reoriented, rotating to face eastways while still being pulled southways’n’east through cloudy skies and patches of rain.

  The blur before him soon grew brighter. But there came no refined detail, just a brighter blur, as of a bright light beyond a fog, as opposed to a weak light.

  If this is death then perhaps I am now on my way to the Afterworlds.

  But just as soon as it had begun, the sensation of movement instantly subsided and his belly stopped lurching.

  Again, as before, the light before him started to find shape and form until he realised he hovered high and higher above a vast, vast valley. Rimming this valley were something of an escarpment wall that dropped away to valley floor beyond sight.

  At first he were uncertain as to what he were looking at. Until he recognised particular creatures hanging from caves in the cliff face. Hands of Teyesha. Native to the Great Precipice. Though all dead they were, their huge vacant eyes gazing down into Endworld, their wrists both wrinkled and bloated, while rotting bodily fluids dripped out of them.

  It saddened Gargaron, although he had guessed their fate when he had left this place. And now, in some form or other he had returned. It both hurt and warmed his heart. For here he felt close to his girls. Here he knew, to find them, all he need do were step off the rocky lip… and tumble down and down and down…

  Considering the Lost Cities of men, he gazed into Endworld’s depths, and before he knew it, he were gliding down past Precipice’s Edge, gliding down and down…

  A ringing in his thoughts began to bring everything to blackness. A ringing that burrowed deeper and deeper into his mind the closer to Endworld he drew. Breathing grew difficult. And then he did not breathe at all. He felt he were holding his breath at the bottom of some deep black pond. He needed desperately to swim up for air.

  In his mind he clawed against the cliff face, grabbing anything that would gain him purchase. The ringing were now a wail through his skull. And still he could not breathe,
could not scream nor roar nor cry. Nothing. Just a simple, awful feeling of suffocation.

  If this is death then perhaps I am being delivered to Xahghis, Afterworld Goddess of eternal pain.

  The rotting Hands of Teyesha snagged against him, the fingers of rotting meat sliding over him, as if this time they did not wish to aid his rise back up the wall but to hinder it, to push him down.

  He not only felt them, he could smell them, the sweet rank odour of death and corruption. It filled his lungs with every inhalation, every intake of breath felt like sucking in hot gummy liquid that left a taste of bad, wormy fruit in the back of his mouth. He heard himself gasping, spluttering, gagging. He saw nothing in front of him but rancid flesh in the empty root-toothed faces as they slowly smothered him.

  He were beyond desperate now. He were frozen with sheer panic. Before his eyes, winged angels arose. Vurah’s Wraithbirds. Come to take his burning corpse…

  Then he remembered…

  Remembered where he were…

  …sitting atop Skysight Tower.

  It took mighty conscious effort but he saw himself reaching his hands to his head…

  …and wrenching off the helmet that engulfed him.

  3

  Away from chair and its dangling helmet, he lay upon cold platform sucking in fresh chilled wind, gazing up into blue nothing, his field of view broken only by the occasional drifting cloud. He pondered a memory. Something someone had told him once. He could not recall who. His father? Some old acquaintance? Something he had heard in some far off Inn on some holiday or hunting excursion?

  Those who sit beneath the Skysight are no common folk from the street. They are trained in its use.

  His ignorance (or his forgetfulness) had almost dashed him. He had presumed the Skysight to be nothing more than a spyglass. Aye, one that stood a hundred thousand times larger than those with which he were accustomed, but a spyglass all the same.

  His gaze strayed back to its mast. He did not presume to understand its mechanics any more than he had before he had joined with it. At least now though, he knew something of its effects, and from that he might deduce a little of how it may be operated, or “piloted”.

  He had seen mountains first. Somewhere to the north he guessed. He could not name which range they might have been. There were several spines that crossed Godrik’s Vale in that direction. And from his current vantage all were out of sight beyond haze and horizon. At a guess he might say he had seen the Firehound Range. Which, by steed, if you took Far Trail all the way to its end point, you would pass through within three or four days.

  Even that seemed incredible. That his sight had traveled so far.

  His next “destination” had been the Precipice overlooking Endworld. He had merely thought of his loved ones and somehow the Skysight had transported him there. He could not explain what had happened beyond that. Sensations of suffocation. The need to climb the Precipice and be away from Endworld. The hands of Teyesha clawing at him, smothering him. And the Wraithbirds beckoning him. Or had manning the Skysight altered his mentality somehow, had the sheer act of trying to operate such a device with an untrained mind simply been too much? That he had perhaps lost consciousness and in doing so, had begun to dream.

  Gazing up at the Skysight he felt it now gazed back at him, a teacher pondering a student after some humbling lesson. Some living entity left behind after the Watchguard had perished.

  This contraption could send one mad, Gargaron thought.

  Unless one disciplines the mind, a voice seemed to come back at him on the wind.

  He would thus take his time. Give the Skysight its due respect. His initial response after breaking his bond with Skysight were to flee it. And perhaps that were part of its maker’s intentions. If he had been up here on some idle flight of whimsy then he would gladly have licked his wounds and left. But his need to view other regional giant settlements (Darkfort, Mount Destruction, Horseshoe of the Downs) ate at him with such hunger that he would chance Skysight again—he simply needed to know if folk still existed in these places. He would this time however employ the patience of his honed hunter’s mind.

  And he would prevail or would be sent insane.

  4

  Once more, he sat beneath Skysight, helm and cup dragged over head and face.

  Before this second attempt though he sat and meditated. He were aware the day were wearing on, and Gohor and Melus beginning to wane. He had distantly considered the prospect of having to descend the tower after sun fall with naught but his lantern to guide him. One saving grace would be that, after the daylight hours, distance to ground would be obscured and lost mostly from sight and mind. Well… perhaps not entirely from mind. It would be there, he knew, in the form of darkness, a gaping, beckoning lightless reminder of what lay beyond the unwalled portions of skyramp. The prospect did not warm his heart. The lonely tower would be a hundredfold more lonelier at night he wagered, with naught but wind and dark for company. And that gaping void like a soundless siren; and the wind a whispering ghost, inviting him to stray closer to perilous edge, inviting him to search for possible lights of settlement and habitation out there in the lands about: Come closer, come closer, seek kin or friend out there in the night, I promise I will not reach up from below with cold bony claws and yank you from safety. I promise, I promise…

  There be also the prospect of those Dark Ones, he thought.

  He most certainly did not wish to encounter such beasts in the wee hours of night, especially during descent. Were they to scramble up tower they would make his difficult trek to its base all the more treacherous.

  But… for now he would not allow himself consider the coming dusk or the night hours crawling up behind it. If need be I shall spend the sunless hours atop this tower, sway or no sway. I have company besides, a steed I did not know a day or two ago, and therefore shall not be entirely alone. But I will not chance a descent until the dawn fires rise in the west.

  And so he focused his mind.

  5

  When he felt he were ready, he invested a few moments concentrating on Mount Destruction. The name did the place no justice he always felt. Of all giant settlements Mount Destruction were most picturesque. The folk there had taken trees for homes and pubs and shops; those colossal alpine boabs that grew along the mountains in mighty woodlands had, in the area of Mount Destruction at least, been tunneled and hollowed and filled with bed chambers and larders, kitchens and dining rooms, all fitted with windows and verandahs. Hundreds there were of these enormous abodes forming lush tree lined streets and lanes, and on winter days, smoke from warm fireplaces drifted out of chimney spouts that exited the boab trunks high up near their canopies. And the entire settlement, though spread out across a spacious vale, had a feeling of being compact and cosy.

  Mt Destruction’s animist cathedral were no exception. It bragged the oldest and grandest boab. A mighty tree whose base were spread out across as much ground as the entire village of Hovel. It stood at town centre and much of it had been hollowed to permit worshipers, its mighty snaking root systems forming natural arched doorways. And inside there were its tall sacrificial posts, and a peace Gargaron had rarely experienced in any other spiritual house that giants had ever shaped or constructed.

  Gargaron now visualised this cathedral, and so too its surrounding boab-tree abodes and pubs, and before he knew it there came that unmistakable sensation that he were moving. Rushing away from Autumn, eastways.

  Again he saw naught but a blur. But here, unlike earlier, he concentrated his mind on the light beyond the blur and slowly it refined.

  Soon he bore witness to the world sweeping away beneath him. Chandry’s Steppe came and went below as if he were but a house fly zooming over the surface of a table map. He were soon nearing Buccuyashuck River. And when he saw it he noticed its waters had reverted from rot black to clear, reflecting the blue of the sky. And here his mental visualisation of Mount Destruction waned and he found instead pictures of Hovel had
overrun them. Thus his velocity decreased and he found himself veering southways along the river.

  If our river has spat out its poison, he thought, then perhaps Hovel has done likewise. Mayhaps folk from Mt Destruction or Darkfort have come by to check on our welfare.

  6

  Hovel loomed. And in seconds Gargaron’s momentum ceased. Again came that awful feeling of his belly lurching into his throat. He fought it. Would not let it overwhelm him. This time it settled far more quickly than it had prior.

  Gargaron floated above his village. He gazed down, looking about, longing for folk on the streets, for shoppers at the market square, the sound of hammers at the blacksmiths, the squeal of bleeding, dying moorhens in the slaughter house. He desperately wanted to see Veleyal skipping down the cobbled street with her friends, and Yarniya calling for order where she sat aboard the rowdy council in the community hall.

  Sadly it were not to be. It were how he had left it. Empty. Silent. Abandoned. He would have taken hope even to sight Hoardogs sniffing about. Or carrion lizards. Or buzzing sucky flies.

  Still, he looked about in earnest, even lowering himself to ground level, floating about the streets as might some invisible wraith, looking for any sign that would suggest someone or something alive, that Hovel’s mysterious demise had been nothing but some wild nightmarish fantasy. Or perhaps there could be a trace of someone with aid or answers having visited Hovel in his absence. But no. It remained empty of life. Naught but carcass of ornithen, gorbull, horse, and the charred mound of ash and bone where he had set alight his fellow village folk days before.

  He could look no more. He felt betrayed by it somehow. That it were Hovel’s fault, that Hovel were in fact laughing at him mockingly. That there had been some mass secret, held by all but him.

  7

  As a floating consciousness, he drifted away from Hovel and Summer Woods and soon even the Buccuyashuck river canyon had vanished from view. Eastways’n’north there were mountains, the Scarecrow Range, and it filled his view now as he soared toward it, their jagged white peaks poking the heavens. Some claimed the Scarecrow were so tall and immense that during certain orbital phases, one could simply climb up and step off onto a passing moon. Amidst it somewhere, the city of Mt Destruction lay in a vast alpine valley, an ancient crater filled now with exotic plant and wildlife.

  The slopes rushed by beneath him like waves, slopes laden with bracken, heather and fern. He saw no living thing. Naught but carcasses of grass kraken (a species who had long ago left the seas) and mountain goat and colossal twin-headed rock serpents. And over the jagged crest of Lower Crow (where the towering rock spines had been carved out to represent the five Goddess’s of D’Ileron) he saw herds of downed mammoth, and decimated prides of sabre tooth, and families of shaggy alpine gorilla all wiped out.

  The mighty spires of Mt Destruction’s tree cathedral swam soon into view before him and within a moment or two his movement halted and there he floated above a city he had not visited in two summers. Northways’n’east the bulk of the mountain range loomed as a defiant block of grey and blue against Cloudfyre’s eastwun horizon, its towering snow laden peaks, flirting with realm of moon and sun.

  Of Mt Destruction itself, he could almost not bear to look. As he sunk beneath the leafy branches of boab trees, he found a city of giant corpses littering the streets in their thousands.

  If it were not for the eerie whisper of wind, the place would have had about it the silence of a tomb.

  Gargaron felt a need to depart immediately. But he did not. If he himself had survived this puzzling affliction then why not someone else? He forced himself to float amongst the streets, to roam the lanes, fixing his mind to find any survivors, hoping the Skysight would pick up on his intention and deliver him to his quarry.

  But… it did not happened. If any had survived here they had either vacated or had since perished.

  8

  With heavy heart he turned his thoughts now to Horseshoe of the Downs. Picturing Luasha: its river lands and its cascading falls. And in no time… Mt Destruction were swallowed up behind him as Skysight sent him southways. In no time Lower Crow came and went, and away went the mountain slopes cut with a hundred streams and brooks feeding the rivers of the lowlands.

  The flint coloured mountains gave way to verdant wetlands as Gargaron flew across them. He were at last beginning to relax with the mechanics of Skysight, he felt, some small part of him even marveling at how wonderful it were to observe his world in this fashion. With the freedom of an ornithen.

  Horseshoe Of The Downs lay on a vast stone shore at the base of the mighty Horseshoe Falls. The Falls, a league or two in height, cascaded down about the misty city from its northwun face in a horseshoe formation where a number of rivers and tributaries converged. The architects of Horseshoe had incorporated the northwun section of the falls into Horseshoe’s cathedral. A mighty flute atop the cathedral had been constructed around the falls, so that cascading water plummeted against a granite floor inside the cathedral’s main hall and from there water splashed and roared and swirled away into canals running down the inner flanks of the building, past the sacrificial posts, and out through a series of water-stairs situated either side the enormous main doors.

  The township itself lay spread out before the cathedral, countless small buildings built along a series of curved terraced rows, that all faced the holy building; it gave the impression of a congregation of smaller, lesser beings bowed down before some revered entity.

  Gargaron felt his heart sink as he approached the city. At first he drifted downwards and hovered there above the cathedral. He were sickened at the sight of bodies gushing over the falls and splatting hard against the granite floor, piling on top of each other like fish tipped from a fisherman’s net. The cathedral were fast filling with them. Logjams were building at its open arched doorways where arms, legs, heads, and torsos from any number of animals and people were being squished and mashed together.

  Sickened, Gargaron turned his attention on the city itself. Could anyone have survived here? he wondered. And if they had, why would they remain here? This were a charnel house now. A nightmare from which there were nothing to do but flee.

  He did not linger. He conducted his search methodically but quickly, sweeping the streets for any possible living remnant, and then, having found none, he sped with haste away from there, his thoughts reeling, haunted.

  9

  He felt sickened. Not this time from Skysight’s effects. The dead deserved better than to be flung off some waterfall, piling into each other, burying each other inside some cathedral. It had been a sickening sight. One that rattled him, angered him.

  Naught can be done for them, he told himself. Should you get to the bottom of this mystery, should you help right this part of Godrik’s Vale, you may return and give these folk the burial they deserve. For now though… you have work to do.

  He thought about this as the world rushed by beneath him, as he built in his mind thoughts of his next destination: Darkfort nestled amidst Forever of Bleakstone. Was this what Yarniya had meant then, in his dream? You have work here first. That he were tasked with finding the cause of this strange blight and putting it to rights?

  The idea seemed to give him a sense of purpose. And perhaps if it be some dark enchantment, then mayhaps it might be overturned, even reversed. There had been any number of such documented cases throughout history. Enchantments or curses, engineered by some warlock or witch or sorcerer, that had been countered or overridden, and thus damage and mischief caused by them put to rights where it could.

  The most well-known of these were the Fleshlust Curse contrived by the rogue witch Tanamii. She had kidnapped Mary of the White Cross, a young princess, daughter of the line of Drufaux Kings. Tanamii flayed some skin from the young princess’s arm, and boiled it up sewn into the belly of a leech toad. Once she had consumed it she took on the princess’s appearance, adopting also her memories.

  Tanamii, in the guis
e of Mary of the White Cross, returned to Seawatch castle, stumbling at the gates, feigning weakness and injury. When castle sentries saw her they rushed to her aid, carrying her to castle infirmary.

  When she recovered she took from a dark cavity in the side of her chest a vial of Fleshlust blood and force-fed it to her chamber maid.

  In a day Seawatch castle had overrun with flesh eating undead. Yet Tanamii’s ultimate ambition were to have her minions eat their way across Godrik’s Vale so that she might rule and plunder all. She got as far as capturing three neighbouring villages before combined enchantments by giant Magers and Sagetown sorcerers saw her minions revolt and turn against her, the Fleshlust dying with her.

  Perhaps if Gargaron could find the source of this blight, he might be able to overturn it as his kind and the sorcerers had once done to Tanamii.

  10

  Eastways he “flew”, the rivers vanishing behind him. With the Scarecrow Range at his back constantly bordering his northways view, the hills of Forever became slowly more prominent. The greenery of Luasha began to fade. Elevated land and rocky outcrops began to appear. Lush grass gave way to spiky straw coloured spinifex. And in the stretches between the spinifex, the earyth were characterised by the black dirt and rock of this region. Bleakstone.

  Below Gargaron, a cobbled road meandered. And countless bodies littered it all the way into Darkfort. After the other settlements, he had expected no less. But there had always been hope that the next city would prove the exception. Sadly, so far Darkfort were no different.

  Darkfort lay amongst a series of ancient hills that had been carved thousands of years gone into three dozen pyramids. They had eroded at the edges, and had sprouted bony white trees. But the carved ancient symbols whose meaning had been lost to knowledge when the Juuga, the pyramid builders, died out, still stood stark along the flanks of each structure.

  It were said this language were without record, without trace anywhere in all of Cloudfyre. Some with more wild imaginations claimed they were symbols of a lost alien race that what were written here were a secret message for starmen who might one day return. There were some who believed that the Juuga themselves were starmen, and that they had grown sick of Cloudfyre and they had upped and left and what were written there were but parting expletives.

  Darkfort’s cathedral were a pyramidal structure designed to reflect its immediate surrounds. The only difference being it stood taller and wider than the ones the Juuga had left. And at four hundred years, it were also considerably younger. Also, unlike its neighbours, it did not carry the same mysterious hieroglyphics. Instead it carried depictions of the sand goddess Skalla. And there she stood, carved from a monumental chunk of bleakstone atop the cathedral. So tall and stark were she that folk from Gargaron’s village claimed that on a clear Summer’s day, standing on the escarpment overlooking Hovel, one could spot her.

  Gargaron slowed and hovered there in the air above the settlement. He saw naught but corpses. These included pilgrims, by the looks, for he counted many several species of folk. Darkfort were known for its influx of travelers from realms near and far, from the Outlands, from the sky-cities of Freiyfall and Oppaarra, some even from across the raging seas, a journey made only by the foolhardy or the very brave. Makeshift camps were a common sight on the fringes of Darkfort. Some yurts still stood. Others had been torn away by wind and gale; these flapped and whipped against spinifex or snagged amidst bleakstone or spindle tree.

  The well-worn path, Pilgrim’s Way, meandered through the pyramid hills toward the Gates of Forever, a colossal stone gate guarded by dormant Monyyt sentries, etched with the same hieroglyphs that featured on the surrounding structures. Flower offerings and sacrificial corpses hung from pikes around it. Slaughtered squid giants, brought by coastal folk, hung from pegs upon the gate. Before this devastating blight, Gargaron had witnessed such sacrifices swarming with flies and carrion bats. But there were naught of the sort this day. The same went for every corpse his eyes found. And unlike Autumn, there were no corpse flowers here. As there had been none in Horseshoe or Mount Destruction.

  Be this a positive sign? he wondered. He were too perplexed, too jaded to distinguish.

  The Gates of Forever were currently closed. Its strange and unholy breech in the fabric of reality locked away. There, in days before this blight, brave souls―or senseless fools, depending on how you looked at it―would chance their fate and cross into other worlds. Sometimes returning. Sometimes not. Gargaron had once purchased a book said to have been sought from another plane of reality, pulled back into Cloudfyre through the portal. Strangeworld, it were called. An expensive heirloom but oh, how it spoke of strange wonders from a distant garden across the Great Nothing.

  11

  Here, Gargaron wondered what he should do next. While he had access to Skysight he thought it would be worthwhile to search much and more. The capitols, for example. Dunforth. Blakanz. And the northlands. Far beyond the mountains. Where Eilophi Swamp and the Deserts of Gahndor met the Jagged Sea. And the westwolds, where folk told tales of ancient lizards that still walked the land, gargantuan beasts that could gobble up a giant in a single bite. And Jade Deep, the Green Sea, a vast ocean of frozen wastes whose depths were unknown to anyone but the green ghost squid who lived to pull down all those who would sail upon her. There were cities in or upon her shores. Cities he had never seen. Never dreamt of seeing. And what of the realms across the waves? Continents and islands beyond count. How far would he need take the Skysight? How far had this blight spread?

  For a long while he hovered over Darkfort. Wondering. Wondering what next to do. How long would he need concentrate his thoughts? How long before exhaustion got the better of him and Skysight ate away his untrained mind?

  I must continue my search. I must. If I be sent insane then perhaps that shall be a sweet end to all this.

  So… he concentrated his mind.

  And started with the capitols…

  THE GOAT’S HEAD

  1

  BY the time Gargaron tumbled from Skysight’s pilot chair, star and moon gazed down upon him.

  Death, he thought. All there be, is death unbound.

  He lay there, on his back, arms at his sides. He felt as though he had swum across a wild river, one with raging and twisting torrents, one that had dunked him beneath its frothing rapids, one that had tried its best to ring the breath from him. Now he simply lay there… as if rendered mindless, drained of all feeling, yet unable to find sleep.

  His eyes gazed out at the Great Nothing. A strange name for it, he found himself thinking distantly, and not for the first time. For it were obviously filled with countless cosmic night fires. Such peace though, he thought. Such silence it is filled with. As silent as all the gods of Cloudfyre, it would seem.

  Death Unbound.

  Has this blight come from out there? Has it been visited upon us by one of those mysterious starmen?

  Another thought occurred to him then. Has this blight spread beyond Cloudfyre? He half expected to see the fires out there begin blinking out one by one, then two by two, and three by three and in ever increasing number until nothing but the endless, eternal void looked back.

  Then it would be called the Great Nothing.

  He felt now he were looking down rather than up. That the deck at his back were a ceiling upon which he were somehow suspended. That at any moment his body might peel from skytower and he would simply fall away into the universe. He felt like there were naught to stop his fall should that occur. The blue sky, the clouds, all had vanished with the setting of the suns. It seemed there were now clear passage down into the Great Nothing if he wanted it.

  He felt his eyes closing…

  He forced them open.

  And they shut again.

  At last his body peeled away… and he fell…

  2

  He recalled no dreams but a dream of bringing his daughter to life, her eyes snapping open. And then he remembered Yarniya sitting beside him re
marking on morning’s sunrise and Veleyal, alive and breathing, over by a low hedgerow of Brawny Twisters, gazing west, holding her plaited pigtails out of her face as the gentle wind tugged at them.

  You have work here yet.

  Curiously, he looked across at his wife as she spoke these words and he asked her this time, ‘What do you mean by this, my sweet?’

  She smiled as Veleyal called to them both. ‘Melus follows Gohor,’ their daughter called. ‘Come look. It is beautiful.’

  ‘Yarniya,’ he said as she rose and strolled to Veleyal’s side. ‘Yarniya, what do you mean, pray tell.’

  ‘Dada,’ Veleyal implored him, ‘come look. You must.’

  He walked to their sides and beheld a sight he had never imagined. The two suns occupied the same hemisphere. It had never been known. They were closer than he had ever seen them. Aye, it were beautiful, the colours they sent out across the haze and mist of morning were but a radiant rainbow, but alas it were also somehow frightening.

  He turned to his wife, this time to ask her if she thought it strange, the positioning of the suns, but she stood there no more. And Veleyal too had gone.

  Cassahndia, the mischievous Goddess of Dreams, were teasing him he knew now. The ruse though were like nails in his heart.

  3

  He were still atop Skysight. And as he had observed in his dream, sun fires of morning were lighting the heavens. And not only that but his great, two-headed steed, were standing there at down-ramp to lower deck, watching him curiously as if enquiring, Are we vacating this wretched spot yet or no?

  It took Gargaron time gathering himself that morning. He sat there at first staring at the etched portrait of he and Veleyal and Yarniya. He touched the fine grooves in the stone with his fingertips. Tear drops spilt from his eyes, splashing against the likenesses of his dear girls, teardrops that converted instantly to glowing wisps that flurried away on the breeze. He watched them go and it brought his gaze to the sunrise. Here he blinked as he peered out across the eastwun sky. The two suns did look awkwardly close, he thought. It looked wrong. He would have paid it more scrutiny yet he found his mind still distracted by all he had seen through Skysight.

  When he finally pulled himself to his weary feet, he did so with all the pain and feebleness of a giant a hundred years his senior. He strolled to the down-ramp. Without any word or enthusiasm he took the horse’s reins. He climbed up into the saddle and without care, he let the steed take him where it would.

  4

  It were with indifference that he descended Skytower. Deflated and without care. Unlike his ascent, he cared not for the sheer drop-offs. For all he had seen, Godrik’s Vale had fallen to this blight. All he had seen were death. Why then did he need live? If the steed stumbled and took them both out into freefall, then what did he care? Death would rush up to welcome him. And he would welcome it.

  5

  Morning’s shadows were still cast long and slim when he and steed reached ground and made their way from the Watchguard fort and out into the street. He took a breath and looked about as if he had just awoken, surprised somehow that he had actually reached ground safely.

  With the sunlight against his face Gargaron gazed up and up and up. The top of Skysight seemed impossibly far away, and impossibly small and impossibly fragile. The horse came to a standstill and it were a few moments before Gargaron realised they were no longer moving. He drew in a long breath and looked about. Empty streets abounded, overlapped by silence. Nothing stirred but for lonely breezes sifting through loose refuse tipping along the cobblestones. Corpse Flowers remained in abundance. Gargaron believed he could hear them murmuring to each other. An ugly sound, he thought, the sounds of death, of scheming, of conspiracy. An odour wafted on the cool, dry air, an odour of spoilt meat. Many bodies were bloated or bloating, causing limbs to defy gravity, poking out parallel to the roadway. It were a depressing sight. Gargaron would not allow his gaze to linger upon them. In the end, the presence of Corpse Flowers almost proved a godsend, for their black roots and violet petals did well enough to wrap and conceal the carcasses.

  Gargaron breathed in. And out. The air were laced with the foul reek of rot. Yet he were conscious of the sounds of his respiration. I am all that breathes.

  He felt at a loss about what to do, where to go. There seemed little point to anything.

  ‘I should have thrown myself down to Endworld when I had the chance,’ he murmured.

  You have work here first.

  ‘I hardly care,’ he heard himself reply.

  Something squeaked momentarily in the wind. He spied a swaying pub sign. The Goat’s Head. A wine sink he had visited once or twice in younger days. Its sign swung in gentle breeze, again squeaking, whining, before falling silent once more. It were like a voice in the dark. What else to do, but drown your grief, it seemed to say.

  Outside the Inn, Gargaron left Grimah unhitched. He pushed his way inside and found the steed trailing him. He cared not. The stench in there were foul with the reek of deceased patrons. Undeterred he pushed on to cellar.

  He found a number of kilderkins of strong Easthills Ale and grabbed a stoneware masskrug from the bar as he passed by, stepping around bodies, simultaneously hacking back Corpse Flowers, the way a farmer might scythe corn stalks. The horse followed him outside where the air were marginally fresher. Gargaron plonked himself at table in the beer garden. The horse stood nearby.

  Gargaron tapped the kil and filled his masskrug and closing his eyes, took a long, long draught. Emptying the mug in one, he let out a long satisfied breath. And burped. Loud. He opened his eyes and looked about in case his ill manners had irked anyone. Of course there were no-one about to irk. He filled his mug again and took another slug.

  Within three or four helpings the world already seemed far rosier. He gazed around the beer garden. A handful of dead patrons were scattered about. Some Giants, some Ghisshas from the Overhills, some Storkmen from yonder Foggdam. Their bodies lay in the grass. Or were still seated at table, variously slumped forward or slumped back. Each of them attached to a Corpse Flower.

  After his fifth drink Gargaron burped once more, stood, and, strolling about with masskrug in one hand, and greatsword in the other, he casually and carelessly, and mindlessly it must be said, executed each Flower with a single blow to their stem, minding the eruption of spores. When the air had cleared and the Corpse Flowers lay squirming, dying, he casually returned to his seat, sat down, took a guzzle, and gazed down the street with the satisfaction of someone having just yanked a great number of particularly stubborn weeds from their garden.

  Hunger eventually caused him to rummage through his pack to see what he might find. Hardened rye bread and salted wrasse. His tongue almost blistered at the thought of more of that river fish. He closed up his bag and looked about. And recalled a butcher nearby.

  6

  Soon he were back at table with a smoked cured breast of moorhen. He unwrapped it and employed his knife to cut off a hearty slab. Moorhen juice dribbled down his chin as he munched into moist smoky meat, washing it down with great draughts of ale. He found pears for his steed inside the Goat’s Head. And he even let is horse drink some ale; both its thick-lipped mouths slurping up the ale thirstily.

  This is how they saw out the morning. Drinking, eating. Until, after his third kilderkin, Gargaron slumped forward against the wooden table and slept.

  7

  He dreamt of an A7-VRIT zeppelin airship floating serenely over the street. He lay there upon the cobblestones gazing up at its ridged underside, thinking how graceful it looked, drifting silently on a current of soft breezes. He dreamt that airmen from Carpscoum or Rarean-On-Torr had launched reconnaissance missions into territories struck down by this blight. That they had come searching for survivors. It were almost out of his sight eastways before he thought he might do well to alert them to his presence. But his attempts to move, wave his arms, kick his legs, bellow out, were somewhat restricted it seemed, entwined in the blackes
t roots of a Corpse Flower.

  He lifted his head from the cobbles and gazed along his body. He found he were wrapped up, like spider prey in web; he could not even howl for help for the roots had coiled about his mouth and face and were slowly squeezing the air from him.

  8

  He awoke with a start, grunting, calling out. He sat up, disoriented, looking about, a dull ache besieging the innards of his skull. He saw first his steed standing there, looking around at him, as if to say Oh, so you are alive. As if it had been standing guard. Or eager to push off. He saw next the street in which he lay, cobbled and dusty, and buildings on either side as if they were creatures escaped from his dreams regarding him, and empty carts, and carcasses being slowly sucked dry by Corpse Flowers. He saw thirdly the Goat’s Head Inn. Or more correctly he caught sight of its pub sign squeaking in the wind.

  He breathed in and out calmly, his head thumping. He gazed into the immediate skies above Autumn. Cloud and blue sky prevailed, and, from different points, Gohor and Melus burned down at him. Alas, there were no airship. Just the one fading in his dream, and his futile hopes of rescue simmering in his mind.

  9

  A foul taste coated the insides of his mouth. The raw flavour of too much ale. A dry, bitter taste. He rubbed his eyes before hoisting himself to his rump and he sat there, yawning, shading his face from the suns.

  He craved water. He looked around for his bag. It were not on his person, nor, as far as he could see, were it lying anywhere in his vicinity. Unsteady he pushed himself to his feet, yawning again, his temples pounding. He sifted through his Nightface’s immediate memories but a Nightface were never less reliable than after a bout of its host’s heavy drinking—especially if its master had fallen asleep face-up and its own eyes privy to nothing but dusty cobblestones.

  Gargaron stumbled back into beer garden. Apparently the dead had no interest in worldly possessions for there his bag lay on the bench where he had left it, Hor the Cutter’s old hammer poking out the top, and the remainder of his provisions spilling forth. Gargaron fished out the gourd and drank… though two gulps later the vessel were dry.

  He held it curiously at arm’s length, scrutinising it for some time, as if the thing had betrayed him.

  Grimah in turn watched him.

  ‘Blast,’ Gargaron said irritably. He stared back at his horse, as if the beast might offer some solution. But the steed simply watched him indifferently.

  Eventually Gargaron considered Autumn’s water reservoir. ‘A mission then,’ Gargaron croaked, holding the gourd aloft victoriously. ‘To the town supply! For the sake of all the kingdom we shall fill our cannisters!’

  Both faces of the horse looked at him, ears flicking. Neither appeared amused.

  Gargaron dropped his arm, stared at his steed for a more positive, sympathetic response. He got none. Gargaron shrugged.

  ‘Come then,’ he said flatly as he picked up his pack and slung it over his shoulder. ‘Quest or no, we do require water.’

  UJIK-L78

  1

  THE centre of Autumn were much like other giant settlements. Its animist cathedral lay on the northern edge of a large rounded clearing where towering central posts hung with animal sacrifices and the cobbles around these posts stained a deep crimson by centuries of blood spillage. Stone gutters, five here in Autumn (the number varied from region to region), ran out several metres to where a shallow pond were situated. Of course, it currently lay empty of blood, though it too were well stained. The five Faces Of Autumn rested there; heads sculpted from blood stone, with mouths gaping wide, always thirsty, drinking down blood whenever it were offered. During ritual sacrifice the gutters gushed and the pool would brim and the Faces Of Autumn would take their fill and if the great spirits were appeased the eyes of each Face would come open and glow white.

  Today, as Gargaron passed by, animal remains (mostly bone and flaky skin) hung from the sacrificial posts and the pool lay empty and the Faces Of Autumn slept, their stone eyes shut. For all Gargaron knew they would now likely sleep forever.

  A network of aqueducts and pipes crisscrossed Autumn’s airspace; the town planners had come up with the novel and very modern method of supplying all abodes with running water. All pipes met at a confluence near the reservoir. The junction of each ceramic pipe were a sculpted form, a torso with a shapely leg, or a chest with an arm, or a head with its mouth gaped wide. And the entire network were fed from the reservoir.

  The reservoir were presided over by Watchguard. Or at least were, before this blight. It consisted of three colossal spiral shells that once belonged to the three feared Viper Squid that had terrorised the aqua-ships on Deepsound. Their squid shells had been collected from the Skeleton Coast a hundred years gone. The shells’ original inhabitants had long since been slaughtered and diced up and cooked. And the shells a gift to the old giant ruler, Meycheren IV. They were said to be of a magical property, that any water poured into them, no matter how brackish or rancid, would be made instantly fresh and clean and pure.

  Here the shells were perched on enormous granite plinths on the south’n’eastwun district of Autumn. Their enormous mouths yawned open at the heavens, beckoning rain; of course this were primarily how water came to be stored within them—filled up during a stormy downpour. At their spiral centre a large brass tap had long ago been installed and a large pipe ran down from each to the confluence of feeder pipes that served the city. An ingenious set up.

  2

  Gargaron pushed into the abandoned compound through the large iron gate. As he were filling his last gourd with water and allowing his horse a drink, he gazed idly into the street, lost in his thoughts. Wondering what he were to do next. He found he were lost for ideas. There were nowhere to go, it seemed, nothing to do. Ought he to stay here in Autumn, hoping by chance that someone might come along?

  It were while he was having this thought that he spied something odd.

  And it were so fleeting he wondered if he simply imagined it.

  A humanoid figure simply and casually strolled past the gate.

  Gargaron stopped what he were doing. Not believing what he had seen.

  He climbed down from the granite and strode out into the street.

  He looked about. There were no-one to be seen. The street lay empty.

  He would have sworn that someone had walked by.

  Perhaps he were so starved of conversation and suitable companionship that his mind were now conjuring phantoms. Unless the after effects of the three kilderkins of Easthills Ale he had poured down his throat were playing with him.

  And yet…

  His eyes narrowed as he spotted something. A shape. A swish of peculiar colour.

  The more he looked the more he realised that a figure were standing in the shade of a mash-smoke parlour. Poised by the wall, its body mysteriously taking on the characteristics of what it were stood up against: wood grain, metal window frames, glass that reflected the sunny street.

  A mirror man? he thought. Is that what it be? By Mahis, is it so?

  Gargaron were not sure what he ought to do. The thing did not move. It made Gargaron uneasy, cautious, wary.

  He approached slowly the parlour and then stopped. ‘I see you,’ he declared gently. ‘I see you there. Come out now. I mean you no harm.’

  It were its eyes that betrayed it. Blue like Helfire.

  ‘I am friend not foe,’ Gargaron offered genially. ‘Please, I’ll not hurt you. Come out from there. I wish to talk. I have been somewhat starved of company of late. Please. I promise you, I be a friend.’

  He could appreciate its reticence. It were said that mirror men were extremely shy by nature. Folk claimed they were the ancestors of the first peoples, the first men, and none too many were left in the world, and the ones that were, remained elusive, not wishing to be discovered for fear of being hunted and their skin harvested; their skin being said to be enchanted, that it could render its wearer invisible. Yet many folk proclaimed mirror men were n
aught but fantasies of over active imaginations.

  Gargaron himself may have believed as much if he had not, as a boy, witnessed a mirror man. His father had taken him to a place where they had chanced upon a nomadic tribe who kept one. They were seeking a buyer. They wanted to sell their mirror man. They held him captive within a cramped cage of bones. When Gargaron were shown him he could not see him at first, for the mirror man had taken on all the colours and patterns and textures of the cage about him. But amidst a peculiar blur of light Gargaron had seen its sapphire blue eyes. For years afterwards his father had berated himself for not having the asking price for the poor soul, for not bartering harder, for not having the means of taking that sad looking mirror man away from those wretched nomads and setting him free.

  Gargaron meant to take a step backwards to demonstrate he meant no harm, but to his surprise, the thing moved from its hiding place.

  3

  At first Gargaron felt heartened, even excited at the prospect of perhaps befriending this soul, of having someone at last to talk to. But as the being stepped into the sunshine, Gargaron grew wary and confused.

  The thing that came away from the wall looked not organic at all, but metallic. When it stepped out into sunlight parts of it gave off intermittent sparks, like embers teased by wind gusts. It approached Gargaron. And Gargaron took a step backwards, not out of courtesy this time, but out of caution.

  It were no mirror man, Gargaron knew now. This were, as far as he knew, one of the metal abominations built by a sorcerer known as Hawkmoth. Gargaron gripped the hilt of his greatsword and took another step back, and then another. ‘Come no closer,’ he warned.

  The thing stopped and cocked its head. ‘Oh?’ it said, its voice like someone talking through tin, as if some thin film of metal were vibrating. ‘Oh? But I a-ammm friend n-n-not foe. I’ll not hurt yooooo. Come out from there. Come out from there. Come out from… I wish to talk. I have been somewhat starved, starved, staaaarrved… of company. Please. I promise you, I am, I am, your friend. I mean you no harm. I mean you no harm. I mean you no harm. I mean you no haaaaaaarrrghhh…’

  Another flash of burning red sparks burst from its peculiar neck joints. Its head turned leftways, and kept turning, rotating entirely. Gargaron noticed four sets of strange glowing eyes as it went, spaced about its cranial band. He also noticed now it had lost one of its arms. Its head kept rotating, at the same rate, not speeding nor slowing. Gargaron saw a series of numbers engraved into one of its shoulder panels. In harsh block letters it read UJIK-L78 54XX. Were this its designation?

  When its head continued to turn without any sign of letting up, Gargaron withdrew his sword. Gargaron had heard too many troubling tales about these metal men than to feel undisturbed in its presence. He were well aware that in the past year one of them had lost its reasoning in the lake village of Froghopper. It had lain waste to the entire population with what folk claimed were searing beams of fire before incinerating its own metallic head and whatever served as its brain.

  Gargaron stood there watching this mekanik, as some called them. This Ujik. The two heads of Grimah watching it keenly. Gargaron were close now to striding forward and having the damn thing’s head off. He would not end up like those poor sods at Froghopper.

  Eventually, its metal skull stopped rotating. And it regarded Gargaron for a hefty length of time, before, again, it spoke. ‘I have come in search… I haaaaaave come in search of you,’ it said. ‘A quest q-q-quest set for me by Master Hawkmoth. A quest to fetch the giant he said, the g-giant that wand-wand, that wanders the Steppe, the giant who moves towaaaaaard Aaaautumn.’

  It watched Gargaron, its arm twitching.

  ‘There be no-no otheeeeerrrrrs… no giants left to be found aliiive. None but you… you… you… you… you… you… yooooooooou…’

  It stared at Gargaron. Its arm stopped twitching. It did not move. The lights in each of its eyes faded out.

  4

  Gargaron stood there regarding it, curious, fist clenched around the hilt of his greatsword. The mekanik remained still. Were this some ploy? Or were this thing unwell? Had it passed on—in whatever way a mechanical creature might indeed pass on? Gargaron felt a peculiar mix of emotions at this thought. This were the first entity to speak to him, the first words he had heard other than his own, in almost eight rotations of Melus. If he believed the tales to come out of Froghopper, this were certainly a creature to fear… But if the Froghopper killer had been naught but a rogue individual… well, what if, against everything Gargaron had heard or believed, these mekaniks were actually a peaceful entity? If so, here were one such anomaly potentially dying before Gargaron’s eyes. He pitied it all of a sudden. A selfish part of him wanted to prevent it dying, he craved friendship, company, conversation, if that came from something constructed out of enchanted metal and chemicals then what of it?

  He were about to step forward when the lights glowed again in the mekanik’s head and it straightened. ‘Behold, a com-communication fraaa from Master Haaaawkmoth.’ And when next it spoke, the voice that came forth were booming and deep, as if from the throat of a grizzled old man. ‘This message be for the ears of the giant I have spied traipsing across Chandry’s Steppe. We do not know each other, yet it seems circumstances might be set to change that. I have dispatched this droyd to track you down. I hope you forgive me if your intention were to remain alone for I appreciate that in this decimated world we now find ourselves that there may be certain benefits to roaming about it and taking what you want when it pleases you. I make a plea for your assistance as I believe I understand what has caused this Doom. I also believe I know how to overturn it. If you wish to aid me in a quest of great importance, allow this droyd to escort you to my humble abode and I shall divulge further details. Travel safe my friend.’

  With that, the mekanik, or droyd, as the voice had stated, strode purposefully away. Gargaron watched it momentarily, pondering what he had heard and what it were doing. It did not turn back to him but perhaps it viewed him from the blue eyes in the rear of its head.

  ‘Maaaastaer Haaaawkmooooth aaaaasks yoooou to follow meeeeeee. He lllllives away yondeeeeer upoooon Barrrrrrroww Hiill wheeeere the Dead Mannn watches aaaall, beyyyyond Thoonsk, Thoonsk, beyooon Thoonsk and the murrrr, Muuurdered Sea.’

  Gargaron frowned and looked around at his steed, as if for some sort of suggestion as to how to proceed here. But to his surprise, as if Grimah knew something he did not (or sensed something he could not), he were already moving, trailing the metal man.

  ‘Oh, well as long as you think this be a sound idea,’ Gargaron said to the horse. But he could not deny it, he himself were intrigued. Hawkmoth? And the claim, true or false as the case might be, that there were some knowledge of the blight and its method? And of its remedy. Well then, why not trail it? Besides, what else were he to do in this town?

  He had come to Autumn to seek answers and all he had found were death. He had used Skysight to locate the nearest inhabited and unaffected settlement, and strive for it. To uncover nothing but a dead world beyond had shaken him, perplexed him, flummoxed him. Beyond this he had no contingency.

  So, he trailed after the mekanik.

  5

  Apparently, when he had seen the A7-VRIT zeppelin airship floating over Autumn, he had not been dreaming after all. For there on city’s northwun fringe, ten strokes of the clock after leaving the vicinity of the mash-smoke parlour, there bobbed its mighty balloon, trussed to an enormous open-decked gondola which in turn had been anchored to earyth by no less than eight anchor chains, with claw-clamps gripping tree, shrub, footbridge, building, anything with a sure footing.

  ‘Th-thiiiiss way if you pl-please,’ the mekanik spoke, a sizzling burst of sparks erupting from its chest plate.

  There were a ramp already lowered at the back of the landing-boat and any concerns Gargaron may have had about the contraption not being of suitable size to accommodate he and his steed were quickly alleviated. Indeed, Gargaron, once
he had strode aboard, found that there were ample room to accommodate he and horse. Lounges thick with felt layered cushions lined its wooden decks. Soft rugs lay across the empty spaces between, roped down by cords strung through eyelets lest a mischievous breeze should suck them off-deck. A wooden liquor bar complete with twirling, twisting bottles of all manner of wine and spirit and liqueur were situated near the foredeck, just behind the pilot’s chair.

  Strange, questionable designs were carved and painted over along the wooden gunwale that ran around the landing-boat’s perimeter. If Gargaron had been here with his daughter he would have strongly advised her to avert her eyes. The detailed images depicted many a soul caught in acts of fornication, and the figure head at the front of the landing-boat showed off two lusty, multi-breasted Jayesque females twirled together in an embrace of love.

  This Gargaron now knew, were a decommissioned pleasure craft, where the rich, the affluent, the well-to-do, the decadent, had once paid high price to come and relax and indulge and titillate themselves. They would slurp exquisite Oranjjin wines, sip aged Uloricah brandy and single malt whiskey of Looth. They would nibble at reej eyeballs, pickled veekaan paws, liver of sea-cat, spiced minced plains-goat, and all the while enjoying sweet, alluring erotica as it played out before them: couples, threesomes, foursomes, entire orgies, those of differing sex, of same sex, of differing species, howling and hissing and snarling as they sucked and kissed and fingered and pulled and thrust at each other. Naught much had been taboo up there in the clouds as that grand old zeppelin had drifted about on Godrik Vale’s gentle airways.

  It had Gargaron thinking. He had quite forgotten the pleasures of the bedroom since the fall of the blight, since he had seen away his beloved wife. And yet the images here did nothing to stir him. Where once he may have delighted in them, here now, with his family decimated, and the world he had known now cradled in death, they meant nothing.

  6

  The mekanik took to the pilot’s chair situated before an operations console that included a series of spherical gas pods from where steel tubes snaked down into the floor and disappeared beneath the wooden decking. These reappeared through a rounded vent encircling the base of the central mast, a mast, Gargaron realised, resembled a wrist and forearm (albeit, ones far thicker and longer than his own). The “arm” jutted straight out of the deck perhaps one and half times his own height where a monstrous hand with a dozen fingers, each segmented by several knuckles, acted as a cage that housed the gas-balloon, each bony finger enveloping the balloon.

  The gas pipes that rose from the floor snaked up and around the arm, ultimately vanishing into holes bored through the “wrist”, and beyond that Gargaron could only guess where they ended: in fluted openings no doubt, at the base of the balloon’s interior where they breathed out whatever mix of gas that enabled the craft to lift from earyth and head for the skies.

  Gargaron observed the mekanik at work. How it twirled hand-cranks and adjusted brass leavers. In short time, the zeppelin awoke hissing and spluttering. Gas pods shuddered, pipes shook, there came the sound of whooping, rushing air and the sounds of the balloon creaking and expanding, taking on gas. The mekanik hauled another leaver connected to a pulley system which both simultaneously unclamped and wound in the anchors.

  Before both Gargaron and Grimah knew it the zeppelin had lifted gently from ground and rock.

  THE EROTICA

  1

  AUTUMN fell away beneath them: its streets filled with the dead and their silence, loose leaves of disassembled newspapers fluttering and tumbling along gutter and cobbled street, and distantly there came the mewling, somehow victorious sound of the Corpse Flowers, as if by sheer weight of numbers they had overwhelmed the giant and seen him off.

  Gargaron watched all of this drop away. He felt somehow like the sole survivor of a mighty catastrophe being airlifted to safe ground. The only part of Autumn still higher than he were the lonely upper reaches of Skysight tower. Again he could not help but feel that needle, that Skysight eye, were watching him.

  As they rose skyward the mekanik turned a hand crank positioned above a clear glass canister; sticky green grime and residue and condensation were smeared and beaded against its smooth interior. It were a quarter filled with some chartreuse coloured liquid. The mekanik tilted its head and studied it.

  A floor-mounted metal barrel were held in place before the console by large metallic clamps. A flexi-hose ran up from its base to a nozzle and tap which the mekanik now reached out and grasped. It shunted the nozzle into a valve at top of the glass canister, turned on the tap, and pumped a lever at top of barrel. Fresh green liquid gushed forth, filling the canister.

  Once done, the mekanik removed nozzle and hose, and again wound the hand crank situated above the glass canister. Green juice pumped from it through a pipe which split off into two: one running out to port, the other to starboard. Here beyond the gunwale, bolted to wooden seats were what Gargaron at first sight thought were more mekaniks; one a piece on either side of the craft, both facing outwards toward a stunted wing. They were not mekaniks, though, Gargaron realised. But merely fashioned as such from black steel. The pipes that ran out beyond the gunwales ended stuffed inside the mouths of their faceless steel skulls and once the green liquid chugged into them their long steel legs began to pump objects that looked at the same time to be both feet and pedals. These in turn spun a sprocket that rotated a larger sprocket that wound a set of wooden propellers.

  Once the legs began pumping, as the props began to spin in a blur, there came the soft whump of chopping propeller blades and the zeppelin now stopped simply drifting and took on a definite forward momentum. The mekanik hauled the steering rod, shifting rudder at zeppelin’s rear, and the craft turned and took on a more westways heading away from Autumn.

  2

  They flew over westwold farming communities, and out across glades of giant tree-fern. They covered several hundred miles even before Gohor and Melus were chasing each other toward distant horizon. Occasionally below, some town or village would drift by and Gargaron would study them eagerly through his spyglass, ever hopeful that survivors remained. But they proved always silent, where no living thing moved, and only the dead populated the streets, some of them lying there with their dead unseeing eyes, gazing up as the zeppelin thrummed by. Some settlements overrun by Corpse Flowers.

  ‘Should we not land?’ Gargaron urged the mekanik. ‘There may be others down there, as I were, seeking salvation.’

  Sparks gushed from the mekanik’s neck plates. ‘Th-theeeeerrr be none l-l-l-left, leeeeeeft. N-none at aaaaalll…’

  Hearing this squeezed Gargaron’s heart but still he felt he ought to search. After everything he had laid his eye upon, all the death and dying, he would not give over to the idea that all folk save he had perished. ‘No, I do not believe that,’ he said to the mekanik. ‘How do you possibly know?’

  ‘I have means of sensing the living. And I sense none in these settlements.’ The voice were unhindered again, as if once more it were Hawkmoth the sorcerer speaking.

  What has become of this world? Gargaron murmured to himself. Ranethor, Thronir, someone pray tell.

  3

  Occasionally Gargaron attempted to strike up conversations with the mekanik. Wanting to know if the sorcerer could hear him, if Hawkmoth had some means of communicating across great distances, hoping perhaps he might consult the sorcerer through the mekanik. But the answers were either perfunctory or garbled or they made little sense. ‘How far need we fly before we reach Hawkmoth?’ Gargaron asked with a sigh, resigning himself to the fact that he would receive no sensible, honest or sentient counsel nor any sort of companionship, fulfilling or otherwise, until he reached the sorcerer or some other such sod with a soul.

  ‘We muuuuust traverse beyonnnnd, beyond Thoonsk. Aaaand crossss the Muuurdered Seeea… Not untiiil M-Melus and Gohooor again hang directly over our h-heads shaaaaall we reeeach Barrow Hillll upon which the Dead Maaan sits and wa
tches aaaaall. There innn, innnn his cottage, Master Haaawkmoth resides.’

  Through night and half a day, Gargaron reckoned by this information. He resigned himself to the idea they would be nowhere near the good sorcerer in quick time. He decided then to settle in for a lengthy flight. As he turned away from the metal man the old man’s voice came again from the grill plate in mekanik’s neck: ‘Should you and your mount require sustenance, I have packed provisions. Please find all you require in the galley. Enjoy your flight. See you on the morrow, my friend.’

  ‘Sorcerer?’ Gargaron said at the mekanik. ‘Do you hear me?’

  Alas, there came no response.

  4

  He found smoked eel and pickled eggs and cured ham and crusty bread, he found fruits of apple, pear and grapes. For the steed there were oats but Gargaron let him have his fill of the apples, saying, ‘I did promise you the king’s share of apples, after all.’ There were even a selection of mash-smoke: Greenshroom, Striped Dream, Funnel Skrite, Pink-Duste.

  Although he had indulged in such in his younger years, he had abstained for much of his married life. But now he grabbed a poke and laid himself down on one of the felt lined lounges. He stuffed the cone on the floor mounted pipe, lit the weed with the available flint-flare, grabbed the hose and prod the sucker between his lips and drew back on the thick musky smoke. Grimah lay there, munching apples, its two faces regarding Gargaron curiously.

  Gargaron tipped the pipe at him. ‘To us,’ he said and sucked back more smoke.

  As Melus and Gohor began to drip down into the horizon, the night fires began to twinkle in Great Nothing and Gargaron’s thoughts slipped away for a little while as mash-smoke fairies danced along the gunwales.

  5

  Morning broke and Gargaron awoke to both an aching head and a troubling noise. He sat up, bleary eyed. His steed were awake he saw, standing, and looking concerned. Gargaron stood up, unsteady on foot, and saw the mekanik feverishly wheeling pulleys and hand cranks, he heard the hiss and gush of gas heaving into balloon, he felt the zeppelin climbing sharply. Indeed when he looked over the side he realised they were considerably higher from ground than they had been before he had bedded down for night.

  He strode forward and gazed westways. Before him the lay of land had changed. Thoonsk, he guessed, beautiful green water glades, were spread out before them now beneath a soft layer of dawn mist, curving across land from south to northways. But what caught his sight were not the pretty scene of morning sunbeams cast across the famed watery woodlands but the hideous wave rolling across the distant treetops, surging from northways’n’west to southways’n’east, on and onwards toward zeppelin.

  It were somehow beautiful, in its own frightening way. To see it from such a vantage. But there were no time to stand and admire it.

  Gargaron knew instantly what were coming their way: a shockwave like those he had twice experienced since that fateful morn on the banks of Buccuyashuck.

  ‘Are we safe from it up here?’ he asked the mekanik.

  Metal man replied not.

  ‘Are we safe here, I ask?’ Gargaron pressed.

  A coughing, grunting sound burped up from the chest of the metal man. ‘Th-theeeeeey haaave detonated… anoth-another Boom.’ Sparks spurt from the mekanik’s face grill as its metal fingers worked furiously at the rudder, turning zeppelin southways, all the while taking it ever higher from ground.

  ‘Boom?’ Gargaron asked. ‘Of who do you speak? What be this Boom?’

  But the mekanik had no time to reply. The invisible shockwave smashed into them at a terrifying rate.

  6

  The craft pitched, balloon and cage rolled over, spilling Gargaron, his steed and anything not tied down or secured to craft, wildly to port. Objects toppled out over the side, and with them, scrabbling futilely with his mighty hooves, went Grimah…

  Gargaron lunged desperately after him. But he were too late. Out his horse tumbled, whaling, squealing, smashing against the black steel propeller unit, rending it free, both horse and mechanical device out and over, and gone.

  Gargaron clung horrified to mast, but the shudder that gripped the craft shook him loose and he fell heavily away, smashing into portside bulwark. The air coughed from his lungs. Wincing, gasping, he looked about, not even certain how he were still on deck and not thrown after Grimah. The mekanik he saw were still strapped in its pilot’s seat, its head lolled sickly to one side, sparks and green flame spurting and spitting from its neck grill and its eyes madly flickering blue and yellow.

  Slowly the balloon began to right itself, elevating again, bringing the craft level but accompanying it came a splitting, cracking noise and Gargaron looked up in time to witness the mast itself rupturing, threatening to snap away from the gondola.

  He gripped the gunwale, eyeing the mast, willing it to hold. Only to hear the whinnying cries of his steed. He frowned. Were he hearing things? The whinnying came again.

  Gripping the deck he rolled carefully to his side and set his eye out over the edge.

  Somehow Grimah hung there by one of its necks, snared by its bridle that had miraculously knotted itself around one of the gunwale’s horn cleats.

  Gargaron felt a surge of relief that Grimah were uninjured, that it had not yet fallen to its death. But desperation pushed him now, and with a surge of blood he reached out over edge of ship and gripped the horse’s bridle.

  It took all of his strength to haul the horse back to craft’s side. But to drag steed, with all Grimah’s bulk and weight, back upon deck, he knew would take more strength than he could muster. Yet, Grimah surprised him, proving his worth as only a true steed trained in war and crisis could. With his own strength, with his own natural instincts of self-preservation, the great steed kicked out his forelegs and managed to hook them over gunwale, and aided by the giant, he managed to clamber back to relative safety.

  Once Grimah were back on deck, with the mast bent at an awkward angle, with the ship lolling, and rudder stuck, sending the zeppelin on a rotating course, Gargaron scrambled to the unmoving mekanik.

  He gripped it and shook it, minding the flames roaring from its neck. ‘Awaken, you godawful thing!’

  But it did not.

  In the far northwun direction, Gargaron now spotted the vast front of a second shockwave rolling out across Thoonsk’s lush canopy. It would be here in a matter of minutes. Gargaron either had to escape its claws by climbing further into sky, or land the zeppelin and ride out the shockwave at ground level. He already knew what would be best. Further elevation had made no difference trying to escape the first wave. He had to get this thing to ground.

  In all his life Gargaron had never ridden a zeppelin. Let alone flown one. Yet, he unbelted the mekanik and shoved it aside. It were still fizzing and aflame, its arm in spasms as it tumbled to the decking. Gargaron studied the flight console. It were a dizzying array of levers, cranks, pulleys, gas pods, dials.

  ‘Blast this!’ he growled, yanking on the leavers that he had observed the mekanik working, hoping desperately to purge gas from the balloon, hoping to halt the propeller mechanism still operating, hoping that something would give them safe yet rapid descent. But perhaps the first shockwave had damaged controls, or ruptured the hosing as green liquid now squirted wildly across the deck. And although escaping gas hissed and spat, the craft were not heading for ground. At least not as quick as Gargaron wished it. He saw no other choice now. He withdrew his great sword and yelled at his steed, ‘If you comprehend, horse, then hold something! Tight.’

  Grimah appeared to understand. Or else he were once more simply enacting self-preservation measures; he began shifting his two heads and around and around so that his reigns wound about the bollard upon which the mooring lines were secured. Wasting not another second, Gargaron ran and jumped at the balloon, slicing its side, dicing through the cage’s bony fingers. Instantly gas screeched from the puncture and instantly the craft began to spiral downward.

  7

  Ga
rgaron were tossed across decks, sliding toward aft, centrifugal force thrusting him outwards as the airship spun, his hands and arms flailing, desperate to catch hold of anything that would secure him to the falling airship.

  But here, the second shockwave hit.

  The mast splintered, the balloon shot back in the drag, marginally slowing the craft until the mast severed for good. Balloon and mast spun off out of sight and the airship plummeted like a stone.

  8

  Mostly, woodland and water cushioned their fall. But the impact into the treetops of Thoonsk tore the zeppelin apart and branches erupted, snapped and cracked and bits of the zeppelin flung away in a thousand directions. Gargaron, steed and mekanik were flung off into tree tops, smashing through foliage like cannon balls, ripping away branch and leaf until the tepid lagoons swallowed them up in mighty explosions of water and lilies and roots and sunkwood snags.

  The sounds of trees falling, of scattered branches clip-clopping down amidst bough and trunk and plummeting into water, the rain of a trillion leaves fluttering down through the woodland, the sound of the shockwave rolling away yonder, could all be heard for a little while… and then silence.

  MELAI OF THOONSK

  1

  SHE watched the peculiar skyship fall and disintegrate as it slammed spinning into treetops. She watched the strange beasts that tumbled from it: the two-headed horse of immense proportions, the metal man in a wash of green fire, and the Rjoond giant.

  The Rjoond splashed heavily amidst the water snails, narrowly missing their mighty spiraling shells, like the humps of slumbering river monsters, jutting above water’s surface. Snake orchid tendrils bent from bough and branch toward him, writhing blue stamens inside bright olive-purple flowers licking the air, tasting the new arrivals. Bug eyed swamp cats took to treetops as the skyship impacted and tore apart; there they perched, chittering excitedly amongst themselves, gazing down at the big, stupid Rjoond lying there in the reeds and lilies groaning. The headless Buccas climbed down from nests of bone root to inspect this Rjoond only to be startled by his loyal two-faced horse crashing through sodden undergrowth toward him, thus they scrambled back up to safety of the canopy.

  Melai Willowborne hid high up in bushy bough as the Rjoond pulled himself into a seated position. Water dripped down his face she saw, water weed and lilies clung to his head and chest. His two-headed steed stood protectively over him, looking about, sniffing the water, searching for signs of danger. She wondered how keen its senses were. If it might intuit her presence. She watched it closely. It had not yet looked her way… but she felt it were but a matter of time.

  She did not move as the giant rubbed the back of his neck, rubbed his elbow, and looked around, a grimace upon his face. She saw he and horse were both cut and grazed and bruised, strange purplish blood from Rjoond, red from the horse, dripping down and fanning out in Thoonsk’s clear water.

  Rjoond rolled his head from side to side, gazed up into the canopy to perhaps measure how far he had fallen. He then looked around as if searching for any part of his downed skyship.

  You will have a job, Melai thought. Your craft, all of its shattered pieces, sunk and swallowed, belong now to mother Thoonsk.

  If he were also searching for his metal man, then she alone could have told him: she had spied it break in two, one part shooting southways as the ship splintered into a thousand pieces, the other tumbling straight down, sunk into the cool depths of her lagoon. Even now, from her vantage, if she looked carefully she could spy its strange, blinking lights beneath the ripples, and the ungodly spurt of its green fire.

  She would offer up no such secrets to the Rjoond giant however. For she knew, with his warhorse and his armoured battle-droyd, that he had come here to slay her.

  ‘Kill me,’ she whispered to the still air, ‘oh Rjoond of Never. Kill me if you can. And ought you be quick and sure about it, if this be your plan. For, one of us shall die before the day is through. And it shan’t be I.’

  Her bow, Sera’s Child, were slung across her chest. And a quiver of magic tipped arrows strapped on her hip. For now she would content herself with observing this great oaf. Perhaps he would drown down a hidden sinkhole. Or his face eaten off by a flesh leech. Or at day’s end she would fill him with enough poison to topple a swamp mammoth. Whatever the case, at his moment of death she would present herself to him and let him understand that this were justice for the grief he had brought down upon her and her kin.

  2

  She watched him pull himself to his feet. He stumbled backward, obviously dizzy. She smiled as he fell rump first into the water. He reached for the nearest tree to drag his face from the water again, spitting, coughing. He spoke words to his horse, words she could not hear. The horse snorted, its nostrils vibrating vigorously, its ears back, both necks outstretched. She felt that it sensed her now. It looked about, this time into the tree tops. She remained oh so still, drawing on the colours and textures of bark and leaf, absorbing the scenery around her. It had not spied her but it knew something were watching.

  The Rjoond seemed to pick up on this, turning his stiffened neck to survey the area the horse appeared concerned with. Were I to move, she thought, you would see me, oafish Rjoond. Yet I shall not give you the pleasure.

  He stood for a while gazing into treetops. Eventually it must have wearied him for he trudged to what he thought were an island on which to free himself of lagoon’s waters, but it turned out to be the shell hump of a marine snail. He backed away from it lest it prove hostile. She frowned. Does he not know that his evil magic is killing it?

  He found higher ground on mounds of deadfall, pulling himself up out of the lagoon at last; though the mound sagged under his weight.

  Melai grinned too herself. If this oaf hopes to find dry ground, his hopes be dashed. Except for the old stone road built three hundred years ago by the invading Rjoond’s of Darkk 5, (those whose sieges had come to an abrupt end when wrath of Thoonsk rose up and drowned them in killer walls of relentless pounding water) there were no solid or high ground in this area of the water forest. Still, that roadway were some way off. And if that were the way he were planning to head then she, for her own amusement, would make certain he never reached it.

  3

  He sat upon the twisted, knotted deadfall heap for a lengthy period. Still gathering his senses, she assumed. He continued to appear dazed, disoriented, lost. It brought another smile to her soft green lips. And the fact that he were cut and slashed warmed her heart. So Rjoonds do bleed, she mused. And so shall you also die, Rjoond pig. By my hand.

  One particular gash on his upper arm wept profusely. He noticed it not for some time. Not until his steed nudged him and the Rjoond broke from whatever tormented thoughts ate at him and looked first at his horse before noticing purple blood dripping from his elbow, pooling amidst yellow lichen and flaky brown bark and red moss. It made her smile all the more, for blood would draw up the flesh worms that resided in rotting wood, waiting for some passing beast to screw themselves into. Blood, with any luck, would also draw out the spined basilisk from its den. That would be a decent show, she wagered. Rjoond giant versus Thoonsk’s mighty unvanquished basilisk. This day gets better with each passing moment.

  She watched him as he sat there looking about. She assumed he may have been searching for something to staunch his blood loss, or something that had perhaps recently been on his person, a medicinal kit maybe, or some other sort of belonging. But she were happy to see, in spite of his searching, that he went without the item of his desire.

  Still, it intrigued her, what he did next. He hefted up the hem of his leather jerkin, exposing belly and ribs. The muscle there were taut, no paunch. But below the line of his ribs there existed two or three rounded welts of raised flesh. From one of these he peeled away what looked to be a circular strip of skin. The Rjoond then placed this over his gaping wound and, grimacing, held it there in place for several moments.

  When he removed his hand, Melai notic
ed the flow of blood had ceased, and the wound looked healed over, as if the patch of grafted flesh had merged somehow into the surrounding skin. It were a most intriguing and curious sight to behold.

  After that she watched as he padded himself down. He checks for more wounds, she thought, wondering if and when the flesh worms would wriggle up and find him. He pulled something from a pocket. And as he held it in his lap, she watched as he studied it at length.

  It were too small or too distant for Melai to make out. A stone tablet, she guessed. And what were inscribed upon it she could not see. When he put it away he gazed away into canopy, his hand shading his eyes from the glare of the suns. Does he sense me here at last? Melai wondered.

  He pointed and spoke something to his horse. Melai heard him not. Except he pointed westways. Then he climbed down off the mound of deadfall and slowly, as if in acute pain, mounted up.

  4

  They pressed on through forest, the sound of his steed’s heavy splashing as it waded through crystal clear lagoon echoed loud, obtrusive, conspicuous. Melai spread her wings, leapt, and followed, gliding soundlessly from tree to tree. Every now and then the horse’s four ears flickered, troubled, wary, its two noses snorting, and it would halt against the wishes of its Rjoond master, and turn its noses in her direction. When it did she would press herself up against bark, or sink back into foliage, and her skin would take on the pigment of her surroundings.

  She heard the Rjoond speak for the first time here. She were not surprised to learn that his words were not that of her own tongue, but Valeyen. The language of the Greater Vale. A tongue she had mastered long ago, a tongue taught to her by Mother Thoonsk through her home tree; better to recognise and understand the language of the enemy to better defend against them.

  ‘What do you see?’ Rjoond asked his steed, following its gaze into the crown of the woods. ‘What be it, pray tell?’

  Of course the steed could no more answer him than it could fly, she saw. Except every so often, when the water were shallow, the Rjoond would dismount, face the horse and place his forehead against one of those of his steed. It seemed to belie everything she had heard about these Rjoond giants. Too delicate an act, it appeared, too intimate. Tales told of an oafish and warlike race. Clumsy and half witted. And bereft of emotion or feeling. Incapable of sentiment or warmth or delicate physical touch.

  She could only guess at what he were doing during these moments. Some sort of communion with his steed, by the looks of it. Tapping into the steed’s mind perhaps, hoping to learn why it keeps stopping and searching these treetops.

  They passed further mounds of deadfall and sunkwood snags, and blue lilies covering water’s surface. Enormous lily frogs, frogs that stood as high as the Rjoond’s knee, jumped and flopped about. Tadpoles as big as his fist swarmed about the steed’s legs, sucking at its skin.

  ‘Perhaps we have left the epicentre behind at last,’ she heard the Rjoond say elatedly to his mount. ‘Life goes on here. Thriving. Look.’

  Thriving? she thought. The frogs normally croak all day. Or grunt, grunt, grunt in the throes of courtship. None are engaged in such games, as you can clearly see. None make a peep these days. The tree cats might normally be hunting, clawing fish and forest squid from the depths of the lagoon. Instead the cats languish about the tree tops, panting, enduring the illness you have sent us. And in parts, I have observed the fish floating more than swimming, gulping desperately for air. The flesh worms should emerge to feed upon your flesh each time you take to another pile of deadfall, but they do not. The mighty basilisk should have by now vacated its den to seek you out, but where is it? Life here does not thrive, as you believe, Rjoond oaf, it is dying. Dying, I say! By your hand!

  5

  It were early afternoon when she reached a point where she had observed enough. She could watch no more of this fiend and his beast traipsing through her water-forest home. Normally mother Thoonsk would have sent killer waves through the woodland to crush intruders, but Melai feared mother Thoonsk were caught too in some untimely and tragic demise. So, Melai would set about bringing on the Rjoond’s death herself, the parasite, the disease that he were. She were undecided about the steed. Whether or not to allow it life over death. She would decide in time. Meanwhile, whether he sensed settlement or not, this Rjoond were beginning to stray too close to her village. And she would not have him discover it. For he would surely bring it down.

  She flew on ahead, calculating the route he and his mount would likely take, and perched herself in a bough directly above which Rjoond and steed might trek. She removed her bow and selected a Barb of Insanity from her macabre arrow collection. Filled with Black Moonlight, once lodged in Rjoond’s stinking flesh, once the misty black poison had entered his blood stream, he would lose his mind and begin a slow process of self-harm. Slicing off his fingers and toes. Cutting his face free. Incising a hole in his belly and dragging out the ropes of his guts. Before he bled to death he would try to saw off his legs, maybe an arm. Or dig his eyes out. But generally they did not get so far.

  For a while Rjoond and steed were lost from her sight. But not from her ears; their approach were noisy and conspicuous to the point of annoyance. Finally she spotted them amidst red and green foliage where sunbeams cut through in brilliant golden swathes and a thousand white moths burst up from rotting trunks leaning against a copse of trees forming a natural arch under which Rjoond and his steed came stomping heavy and loud, water frothing in their wake.

  ‘Meet death, dear Rjoond,’ she whispered to the air, and nocking now her Barb of Insanity, she drew back on the chord. ‘Meet it well and pray to meet it without pain, for, trust me, pain you most certainly shall feel. And for the sake of my dear sisters, I shall gladly watch.’

  She stared down arrow’s shaft, waiting… waiting… the big ugly head of the Rjoond in her sights. ‘For my sisters,’ she whispered and let her arrow loose.

  6

  Gargaron saw not the death dart fly toward his face. But he did feel the sudden jolts of pain rip through his ankle. As he reached down swiftly to tear off whatever swamp beast were assailing him, the arrow zipped pass his neck, missing him by naught but the breadth of a feather. He never saw it, never even heard nor felt it rush by as it speared itself silently into the water beyond.

  He tore off his boot. And set his eyes on some strange segmented creature coiled about his ankle. He had not noticed it climb up. Nor had his steed, for that matter, that much were obvious for his steed had given him no warning. Nor had his Nightface. He had not even felt the thing infiltrate his footwear. No doubt some ambush parasite, waterborne, quick striking, stealthy.

  Dizzy, Gargaron pulled his steed to a halt and hefted up his leg and rest it across the horse’s broad shoulders to get a closer look at the little monster. Its little toothy mouth had clenched onto his ankle.

  A lamprey of some kind, he wondered. For lampreys were common in the waterways around Hovel and possessed similar mouths.

  He lifted his arm and touched it with his fingers. Its shell were rigid and as coarse as rock. If this were indeed a lamprey then it were obviously of a different species, being black and rough, where the kind he knew were white and slimy.

  He closed his hand about the creature and attempted to simply tug it free. But its teeth dug deeper and a jarring pain shot through his foot. Grimacing he released his hold upon it. And saw blood. His own, a purplish rivulet streaming down his heel and dripping away onto horse’s sweating hide.

  He twisted his leg about, lowering his face to it to gain an overall picture of this little beast and the manner of its assault upon him. He watched its lips suck at his skin, small teeth grinding into his flesh. But he saw also that a bony tongue had penetrated his leg, had come through the other side, backwards facing barbs clamping it in place.

  Gargaron sighed—there would be no simple way of removing this thing. He studied the barbs. Perhaps he might snap them backwards and break them, and simply drag the creature and its godfo
rsaken tongue from him. He took one between thumb and forefinger and levered it backwards…

  He grimaced as it sliced layers of skin from his fingers. He sucked off the blood. He tried the same trick using leather cloth as padding. But that too were soon cut through.

  He withdrew his dirk. He wiggled its glistening black blade beneath the tip of the little beast’s bony tongue. When he tried snapping off the barbs, excruciating pain zapped up his leg and a second tongue suddenly and inexplicably shot from the creature’s mouth, driving through his ankle and thrusting out the other side in a little coughing explosion of blood and meat. The pain of the impact made him howl, even startling Grimah who bucked and knocked Gargaron from saddle.

  Gargaron splashed heavily into the lagoon, and under he went…

  7

  When the first arrow failed to meet its target, Melai nocked a second quickly; another, like the first, loaded with Dark Moonlight. She were determined to see this Rjoond bring on his own demise in the most gruesome and humiliating fashion. Yet, when she saw that a Soulsucka were assailing him, she stayed her hand, choosing instead to observe the show for a little while.

  She relaxed the bow chord and watched the Rjoond’s attempts at extricating the Sucka from his person. She watched as he roared in pain, spooking his mount. She watched him drop down into Mother Thoonsk’s cool embrace and she knew then this Rjoond of Never would fail to rise. That he would naught breathe again.

  Soulsuckas were Werms of the Deep, waterborne predators, no more at home than when submerged in the deep pools and underwater valleys of Thoonsk. Rjoond had not yet surfaced. And nor would he. For by now his Soulsucka would have shot out its dozen bony arms which would have clung to underwater deadfall and rock and submerged root, holding its prey down, preventing its subject from resurfacing. Right now the Rjoond would be doing his best to hold breath as he struggled frantically against his bonds. But it would be of little use. For as the Soulsucka drank the life essence from him, the Rjoond would in turn begin to lose will and strength of mind. Already the fight would be seeping from him, his desire to rid himself of his assailant waning. Soon he would drown and the Soulsucka would be done with him and he’d be eaten up by lagoon shrimp and snapper crabs.

  A bitter sweet end, Melai thought. For she had planned to bring on this oaf’s demise herself, or, at very least, desired him see her, allow him to know that his death were punishment for all the suffering and pain he had brought down upon Thoonsk and her daughters.

  Well, then, he dies, she thought petulantly. What care is it of mine? With his death I have my retribution, and the world is rid of one more murderous Rjoond!

  8

  Bubbles and ripples and swirls and splashes became of the water’s surface above the drowning Rjoond. She had watched these attacks before and knew this Rjoond were wild with panic. She wondered if the Soulsucka would release him once it had drunk its fill of his soul, whether or not she would see him rise to surface… Maybe there would be just enough time, a fading moment in the final stage of this Rjoond’s pitiful life, when he would look back at her with death already creeping through his eyes, and see her, distantly acknowledging her presence, and know his death were payment for all the death and dying he had visited upon this woodland.

  Just as she were pondering this, the lagoon’s surface above where the Rjoond had sunk, erupted suddenly in a tremendous flurry of water and the vile giant thrust upward, surfacing, gasping for air and scrambling frenziedly for a copse of weeping oaks whose great trunks hung low and horizontal over the lagoon.

  He dragged himself up into their fold, his weight causing them to sag, and their canopy shook wildly. She were disappointed, but glad that she might yet have her fun with him. Though she remained perplexed as to how he had managed to free himself from the Werm’s watery hold.

  It were still clung to his ankle she saw. Not dead as she had feared. And for many moments Rjoond sat there gathering his breath. Gasping. Gagging. Coughing. Water and snot and spittle burst from mouth and nose as he did so, dribbling down chin and neck and chest. It took him some while to calm himself, gather his senses. When he did he looked around wide of eye, searching for his steed. He caught sight of it some distance away, standing there gazing into the treetops.

  Melai realised she had at last been spotted. The steed had sensed her all along but had so far failed to pinpoint her. Now, even through her camouflage, he stared dead at her.

  Rjoond, obviously intrigued, followed his steed’s steely gaze. But he saw either nothing, or were suddenly distracted again by the little monster around his lower leg that his attention were not long on the subject of his horse’s interest. Quickly his mind and sight reverted to the thing driving pain through his ankle.

  Melai watched as he brought his foot to rest upon the great oak trunk, and watched as he gripped the body of the Soulsucka and stretched what he could of its strong, truncated body out across thick gnarled bark, positioning it like a lump of meat on a chopping board. Here he pinned it with his fist.

  9

  With his free hand, Gargaron moved to fetch his dirk from its sheath. But he realised that he no longer had it on his person—the last occasion he had seen it were before he had been tossed into the drink. No doubt it had sunk to lagoon’s sandy bottom.

  Undeterred he reached his free arm over his shoulder and extracted his mighty greatsword. Carefully he lined up his fearsome blade with the beast, and then drew back his arm in a tall arc…

  10

  Swift were the attempted execution, swift and sudden and true, hammering down his blade with all his considerable Rjoond strength.

  The surprised look on his face as his glistening blade bounced wildly off beast’s armoured hide were priceless. And by his grimace and grunt, Melai guessed the action had sent another lightning surge of pain through his leg and foot.

  He fell back, apparently exhausted, as if a great inebriation had suddenly engulfed him. He fell back against tree trunk and leaf, panting.

  11

  Gargaron had not anticipated the complete and utter debilitating pain that rocketed through him upon the strike of his sword on his attacker. It had brought on nausea and a deep pounding throb up his leg and through his groin and lower belly and up into his torso. And now, as if to compound all matters, he were losing his strength.

  Not for the first time since the downing of the airship did he wish his satchel were with him; he were sure if he could deploy a wee drop of liquid Helfire upon this little beast then the thing would burn and release its hold on him. But satchel and Helfire were gone and lost.

  As he lay there he felt something nudging him, nibbling at his forearm. When he looked he found Grimah trying to heft him out of bough and trunk. The horse looked concerned, as if he knew there were danger afoot, for he kept turning its gaze to the canopy, as if something out there were watching them.

  Gargaron looked, but again saw nothing… and found he did not care anyway. He suddenly wished to sleep… his exhaustion now causing him to lose consciousness. His thoughts began to drift. And the pain left him… and he almost forgot the critter clinging to his ankle.

  The horse gnawed on Gargaron’s arm. He shoved it aside. He knew not whose horse it were now anyway. Nor from where it had come, nor what it were doing there. He wished it would leave him be.

  And then as if his wish rang true the horse turned and dashed away through the swamp.

  Good, he thought, be off with you. He felt awfully sleepy and a long rest would do him some good. He stretched out along the trunk of the oak. And he gazed up into the tree tops where golden sunbeams slanted down, illuminating bug and birds as they darted to and fro.

  It were here that he saw her. The beautiful winged angel perched in the boughs above. Simply watching him. At first she had the colouration of the woodland about her, and thus particularly difficult to pick from her surroundings were she. But once she leapt from her perch and swooped toward him, hovering there with wings beating in a blur, he saw her
skin take on the colour of limes and her long hair the hew of lush summer grass. He realised then that she held a bow, with an arrow aimed directly at his face.

  He could barely keep his eyes open however. And wondered if she were not part of some beautiful waking dream.

  12

  Melai hovered there. It were just she and this giant now, her Grunt arrows having drawn his beast away. ‘Before you die, hear me, oafish Rjoond,’ she spoke to him, tip of arrow mere inches from his face. ‘You have brought a plague upon Mother Thoonsk and her daughters, and this shall not go unpunished. So hear me and heed me, this be why you die.’

  She drew back her bow string and waited for Rjoond to meet her eyes, for the very moment she felt he had understood. That moment would see her release the cord, and Rjoond would find an arrow lodged through his face and its nectar of insanity pumped directly into his brain. Then she would fly back to treetop and watch him self-destruct.

  Just as she made to fire the barb, there came the most infernal squeal. It echoed away through the woods and she saw the Soulsucka suddenly thrashing about Rjoond’s lower leg. The Rjoond stirred, lifting his heavy head in an attempt to sit up. With somewhat detached eyes, he watched the critter attached to his leg whipping back and forth, as though it were trying to grind his foot free with its teeth. He seemed however to feel no pain.

  Suddenly, inexplicably, the thing gave up its hold on him, slid from his ankle, plopped onto the wooden bough and fell still. Never to move again. Its bony white tongues lay across the bark like barbed spears. Its hidden limbs, those deployed when holding prey beneath water, now unfurled as its body relaxed in death.

  Witnessing this, Melai turned from surprise to fear.

  Screeching, she flew backwards, out of sword’s reach should this Rjoond try to strike her. ‘You!’ she scolded, raising her bow at him, aiming her arrow directly at his face. ‘How have you done this? What magic do you wield? What has Mother Thoonsk done to you?! Why do you murder her and her children?’

  Rjoond lay back down, resting his head on knobby bark, exhausted, not even certain the flying angle before him were real. ‘I-I do not understand,’ he said groggily, faintly, hoarsely. ‘Please, who… who are you…? Wh-what be this place? I have forgotten.’ He reached his arm to her; it waved and swayed, as if he struggled to keep it aloft.

  It were a ruse she knew, his feigning exhaustion. He had shrugged off the deep-water werm like it had been nothing more than a tired old crab. Now it lay dead, sprawled lifeless across tree trunk. What poison or magic did he wield? Other than her own folk, she had never known someone or something possess the ability to render lifeless a Soulsucka werm of the deep.

  ‘All of this,’ she spat viciously, ‘is your doing! How could you survive the bite of a Deviling Werm if not for the dark powers you have obviously brought here?!’

  He made to raise his head again. Though he could barely lift it from trunk of tree. Granted, by all appearances, the deep-water werm had not eaten up his mind or will, but its effects were obviously being felt now.

  ‘I… I do not know that of what you speak,’ he murmured. ‘H-honestly.’

  ‘Death!’ she screeched. ‘You deliver death. Everything be dying. You deliver naught but death!’

  He looked about groggily. His eyes opening and shutting. ‘No. No, n-n-not me. I b-bring no death.’

  ‘Liar. My forest be dying because of you and your murderous lot.’

  He lay there. His head against the trunk. When he spoke he sounded weak. ‘S-some blight be kill-killing all. No l-land have I crossed that re-remains untouched by it. It kills a-all before it with no discrimination. And none… none of it be my doing. My-my very own f-family has perished because of it. I am all… that survives.’

  ‘Murderer and a liar both,’ she screeched, and finally loosed her Barb of Insanity filled with its Dark Moonlight. Followed quickly by another, and another, and another in blurred, wild succession. The Rjoond had no time to react. But he barely looked surprised as the four arrows lodged fwick! fwick! fwick! fwick! deep into his face.

  As he rolled backwards she fired a final shot, a three pronged Spittle of Xonsüssa, straight into his chest. With that, tears streaming from her eyes, she flew for the tree tops and away.

  THE ABOMINATION

  1

  SHE could not watch the Rjoond die as she had intended. Did not wish, after all, to see him cutting himself up. Enough death she had witnessed in the last few days. Thus she flew and flew and flew, away and away. She did not wish to hear his howls of pain and grief when he flayed himself, when he hacked off his fingers and toes and face, when he chewed up and swallowed his own tongue, knifed out his eyes and sliced open his belly, when he lay there bleeding out. The Spittle of Xonsüssa would ensure his attack on himself would be frenzied, violent, brutal, and the pain multiplied a hundredfold.

  She flew home to Willowtree and perched high in the Temple Tree boughs where she could see above all of her world, all of Thoonsk, stretching away to horizon in every direction. And there she sat and prayed to Mother Thoonsk for forgiveness (for bleeding a foreign creature within the sanctity of the woodland), and for guidance. But no matter how much she tried to push them aide, the last words she’d heard from the Rjoond kept replaying in her thoughts: ‘Some blight be killing all. No land have I crossed that remains untouched by it. It kills all before it with no discrimination. And none of it be my doing. My very own family has perished because of it. I am all that survives.’

  ‘Lies,’ she insisted, weeping. ‘All lies.’

  They had come, when Moon of Trolls had hung full and stark above, when the Bluerock Pipits were still nesting and not yet flown south for the coming of the rains, a contingent of Rjoond from Autumn, seeking an audience with all leaders of the forest nymph clans. They had come with yet a further proposal for another road that would slice through Thoonsk, they had come with the promise of wealth, with plans, and “recompense”, to upgrade and modernise the various settlements within Thoonsk herself, to open up trade routes, and the possibility of exploration for rare minerals, profits split evenly with various ‘land owners’ within Thoonsk. In return the Rjoond would expect to be granted permission to cut their corridor directly through the water forests. This would of course come with it the matter of cutting a swathe through Mother Thoonsk’s ancient children, her oaks, her beeches, her bloodwoods, her rosewoods, her ghost gums, her elms, her paperbarks, her willows, her freshwater pandanus.

  What they failed to understand and comprehend were the fact that profits and money meant nothing to folk of Thoonsk. That roads meant nothing. That the suggestion of modernising were an insult to their way of life. Profits from minerals meant nothing to a people who drew all their sustenance and happiness from the very presence of the glades and forest woodlands. And to push down trees and cut a corridor of death through Mother Thoonsk would be like slicing off her own fingers and toes. And following communion and parley with wise Mother, the forest nymphs refused, and so refused second and third offers. No fourth or fifth offers were forthcoming. The Rjoonds instead resorted to bullying tactics: if the forest nymph clans suddenly ceased to exist, then of course there would be no vocal opposition to their scheme. And so a systematic genocide had begun. Yet Mother Thoonsk had thrown out the invaders with mighty walls of water and guerrilla attacks at every turn by her forest children.

  Yet, here a Rjoond had come again. And all that remained now to defend Mother Thoonsk… were Melai.

  ‘Yes,’ she told herself, wiping her eyes. ‘He lies. He is Rjoond. No honest word ever came from a Rjoond’s mouth, and no honest action ever came from their hand.’

  2

  She remained at top of Temple Tree until dusk, until the red of the suns spilt across the sky, as if the heavens had erupted in inferno. By now the Rjoond she had shot would surely be dead, lying somewhere in a mess of his own meat and guts and bone and blood. Finally she swooped down to her deserted village, her deserted home, where the corpses of her
sisters still lay upon the spirit stone, awaiting Thoonsk’s guardians to receive them.

  With heavy heart Melai hovered there a moment and watched them… then flew into her home tree, into its dark cosy bole, and as light faded from Cloudfyre, Melai’s limbs sprouted root and anchored deep into the wood until she were encased within the tree itself and she were naught but eyes looking out at the night world, and ears listening to the whispers and song of the woodland.

  Then she slept.

  3

  Both suns arose as per normal next morning. Yet, to Melai the surrounding forest were unusually quiet. She cowered within the bole of her tree, simply watching the water glades stretched out before her family village, sun twinkling off the still waters. The willow boughs stretched out over lagoon surface, their soft reflections gently riding the ripples. Giant lily pads covered the area immediately at the base of her tree. In days gone she would awaken to woodland fairies playing about them. Or wingless pixies riding the poisonous brown-pink swamp frogs, hunting tadpoles and guppies. Nests of the weaver birds, the great shadowy tree bound masses, were normally a raucous mass of trilling life this time of day. But not a single peep came from them. In the distance the gargantuan Monmoth trees, long the wonder of Melai’s folk, were normally teeming with clouds of swallows. They too sat undisturbed this morning. Quiet. Deserted.

  Since the day of the first shockwave, her forest she knew were dying, growing quieter, animals vanishing. She had received no word from the trees either; their voices had become soft, whispering, like someone on the cusp of sleep.

  I have slain the Rjoond yet all is not well, she thought to herself sadly. It grows more dire by the day.

  Her skinny limbs, having coupled with tree in the night, now retracted. She emerged from her nest and peered down at the spirit stone, the enormous slab of rock upon which her dear sisters still lay side by side in death.

  Traditionally Mother Thoonsk sent her woodland guardians within three rotations of Melus and Gohor to retrieve the bodies of deceased nymphs. While the water forests had been stricken with whatever curse the Rjoond had brought upon them, while bird and fish and frog were mysteriously dying, while numbers of Bucca and swamp cat and blue heron were diminishing, Melai had been preparing her sisters for their retrieval.

  She had removed their clothing and rinsed their bodies. She had smoothed over fresh sap from surrounding paperbark trees, thus preserving them. She had placed logs filled with smoldering mushroom, the musky clouds of wafting spoor keeping away hungry wanton pixies and corpse flies, and half-fish half-devil corpse eaters who rose up from the depths of lagoon and would attempt to drag away the deceased children of Mother Thoonsk.

  It had now been three rotations of Melus since her sisters had lost their lives and Mother Thoonsk’s guardians had still not come for them. This troubled Melai more and more. She did not wish to think what it could mean.

  She leapt from her bole and swooped down to the communal platform where she and her sisters once laughed and chatted and braided each other’s hair; it were a large naturally formed space amidst her home trees, where a dozen mighty branches from a number of willows had woven together to create a spacious terrace some fifty feet above lagoon’s surface. The area were flattened and smoothed almost to a gloss from centuries of use by Melai’s kind. And here she alighted, standing before a separate side-branch that acted as a vast nursery which grew with water moss and yellow horse-ear mushrooms, figs and fyre-plums, dandelfruit and crab apples, salt-leaf and sugar berries, lemon sage and flowers of bluegrape that bloomed from small vines sprouting from the bark. That and more.

  She ate, though her appetite were lacking. She bit fruit and fungus directly from their perch, not plucking them or picking them as she had heard folk from other regions were like to do, cut them and pick them and pack them up and ferry them off to markets to sell. That were a bizarre concept to her and her kind. She ate slowly, distracted, the state of Thoonsk continuing to trouble her. Why could she not hear swamp cats fighting and chasing one and other through the treetops? Why could she not hear the squawk of lagoon storks as they waded through water catching fish, or the distant croak of toads, or the buzz of cicadas, or the deep grunting sounds of faraway marine mammoth, or the treetop, spider-like scrambling of the headless, back-to-back Buccas?

  It were bad enough yesterday, she thought to herself, but give me yesterday over this.

  And then there were her sisters… Why have they not yet been collected?

  She began to wish that she had stayed to watch the Rjoond. She feared now that he had somehow survived her attempts at finishing him off, that she had angered him and thus in the sunless hours he had perpetrated some mighty deed of evil, let loose some vile magic, something that had spread like wildfire through Thoonsk, something that with a simple kiss of breath had killed everything else left alive, even the spirit of Mother Thoonsk herself, and that of her angels who took away the dead.

  ‘Why have I been spared?’ she asked herself softly. ‘Does he come for me now? Does he reserve a special little death for me?’

  She would not permit him, she decided. She would set out to find him. She would appeal to the trees for help, ask if they had seen him, to show her to his whereabouts, be he dead or alive. She needed to know.

  4

  Wooden forest golems. Five of them remained to her. Sentinels. Standing in shallow waters before her family settlement. She could bring them under her command as an attack force if need be.

  She flew down to them. And rubbed her finger tips, squeezing them, dabbing clear green sap that seeped forth from her skin against the bared wooden tongue of each golem. A moment or two later the vacant, woody eyes opened, lit with a strange green luminescence.

  ‘Doela-ta Riyyoondish, minun ajrurshen,’ she whispered. Find the Rjoond trespasser and killer. ‘Meestha ter lelunay uns throotler.’ Set forth with me to defeat him if he still lives. And the breath that left her mouth were tinged with wisps of silky vapour that drifted and wafted against each golem. It were a language they understood, a language spoken only in this realm, language of elder days, when nymphs bragged entire armies of these creatures. Not all nymphs spoke or understood this tongue. And in recent times those born with its knowledge had become all the more rare. But Melai had been one such born with its knowledge and its secrets.

  Each golem bore fins, a fish’s tail, crab limbs armed with mighty serrated pincers. They bore sharp teeth in a wide garish mouth, with carp lips and goggling toad’s eyes. On Melai’s command, each golem stirred and awoke, looking about as if they had been in slumber for many a year and did not recognise their surroundings. But one by one they submerged, and with naught but their eyes above water’s calm surface they swam away, the movement of their bodies almost serpentine through the lagoon.

  Melai took flight. And followed.

  5

  She had expected a fight. She had expected to come across a raging Rjoond bringing down Thoonsk in madness. All she found though were his remains. Guts, dark dried blood, and limbs hacked free. His torso she found nearby, lying across bough of an oak. It were mostly hollow, intestines and hearts dragged free, rib bones exposed like a cradle of pale fingers. His head were naught recognisable. His face were flayed completely off. And his skin were already turning colour. Rot-black it were. Rot-black and unrecognisable. She had heard of this Rjoond phenomenon. How their dark deeds turned their innards to decay long before they died, how it bubbled out of them on death and tainted their entire being before decay set in.

  His steed were nowhere to be seen but the Rjoond had suffered she knew. It were easy to see. She imagined she would be elated. Yet all she felt were a strange emptiness.

  The golems had surrounded the scene. Awaiting her instructions. Waiting to attack and kill whatever assailed her.

  ‘Yysia,’ she told them softly. ‘Yysia sensa isi.’ At ease. At ease, our target is terminated. ‘Jirru noothith. Jirru noothith.’ To home now. To home now.

  Out
of respect for more life lost, she spared the remains of the Rjoond some moments of silence, her head lowered where she were perched on the edge of the bough on which his torso lay. ‘Nahei,’ she whispered. I am sorry.

  She turned, spread her wings and leapt into the air.

  6

  Thoonsk’s guardians arrived at dawn four days after her dear sisters had mysteriously and simultaneously fallen from the ghost tree. Through the woodlands they came, tree creatures, tall, majestic, wading through deep water, their long bark-laden legs gliding effortlessly, gracefully, as they strode onward, their long bark-layered arms swinging majestically, long fingers of twig and leaf dragging through lagoon’s pristine surface, forming ripple trails in their wake.

  A deep thrumming hum came from their wooden mouths, reverberating up from the depths of their throats, heralding their arrival long before they were seen. The Lament of the Waiting Ones this song were known. Always sung during a Retrieval ceremony. Their red sappy eyes were serene, angelic. They strode forward in leafy robes of red and brown and gold, robes that drifted like spider silk on dawn’s cool breeze, robes that were webbed in veins like the leaves of trees.

  Melai lowered herself to her knees and bowed her head. It were not proper to stare at Thoonsk’s guardians. Yet Melai were required to look upon them but once. To respond to their words.

  ‘Viasha Thoonsisk, janua srarsarri,’ they spoke. Mother Thoonsk, takes back her children. ‘Viasha Thoonsisk, eeyoon srarsarri tumaya florinthah.’ Mother Thoonsk will give them rebirth, in the form of another and kind. ‘Chilla Melaiys basheeathi?’ Are these the blessings of Child Melai?

  Their voices came in unison it seemed. Yet so quiet did they sound, their voices were more like distant wind shaking the leaves of a faraway tree.

  Melai replied in similar voice. ‘Basheeathi na Melaiys tuhth.’ They are my blessings, aye.

  Tears fell from her eyes and down her face as the guardians gently, respectfully took each of her five sisters into their woody arms. Here they bowed to Melai, turned slowly and Melai watched them carry the last of her family and folk away. She wept as they went, her tears dripping gently into lagoon. She wept as the morning mists silently engulfed the guardians. And soon they were gone and she were left there truly alone for the first time in her life. Below her face she saw beneath water’s surface tiny blue water horses, creatures that had fallen moments earlier in the form of tears. They swam away into the depths of the lagoon and Melai sat there watching them go, wondering what to do next.

  7

  The suns had moved on. It were somewhere around midmorning. Melai were sat idly on the slab of spirit stone where her sisters had lain, gazing out across the silent expanse of Thoonsk. She could not help but wonder exactly where it were that guardians took woodland nymphs, feeling a need to understand, now more than ever, where it were that folk were taken to. It were forbidden to trail the guardians. All she knew were that woodland nymphs were carried to a prepared copse of trees, where they were placed and reborn into another of Mother’s creatures. Though it did not quell her loneliness, Melai took heart that when her time came, she would be carried off to the same group of trees and be reborn into whatever form her sisters had taken. And they would be awaiting her.

  Now though, she considered her options. She accepted that Thoonsk were dying. And hard as it were to admit, it had been dying even before she had encountered the unfortunate Rjoond. She began to question whether or not it were indeed the Rjoond who had delivered Thoonsk its curse or if something else were to blame. If she cast her mind back, strange things had been going on all across her water forest for the past dozen rotations of Melus and Gohor. When her sisters had perished she had been desperate for someone to blame. When she watched the Rjoond plummet from the heavens it seemed obvious that here were the cause. Yet still, his last words rang in her mind: ‘Some blight be killing all. No land have I crossed that remains untouched by it. It kills all before it with no discrimination. And none of it be my doing. My very own family has perished because of it. I am all that survives.’

  A desperate lie to win him some time and prevent her killing him? Or had he actually spoken with truth?

  So consumed by her thoughts were she that she failed to notice a shadow standing behind her. A presence. A shape. A thing. Some hulking thing with black, hungry eyes.

  And she came aware of it too late.

  8

  She turned and glimpsed the abomination covered in shaggy brown fur and bearing long ungainly ape arms. And its face were naught but a gaping mouth and gaping eyes.

  She gasped but the monster swiped her aside before she could move. Its ragged talons tore shreds out of her wing membrane, and the force punched her twisting and tumbling against tree trunk; down she splashed heavily into the lagoon.

  She surfaced, coughing up water. Grunting, the monster waded toward her. She struggled to free herself from the swamp, kicking, wriggling, and flapping her wings, but the water held her like a mantis in sap. The beast reached her and wound back its arm and this time Melai concentrated her will… and vanished.

  Her trick were only part successful. She flew from her position with the blinding velocity of a dart fly but careered into the creature’s arm and went flinging away into a mound of deadfall.

  She landed heavily, noisily but quickly she altered the pigment of her skin to blend in with her surroundings. The beast looked for her. At first it seemed it could not see her. But must’ve sensed her then for suddenly it rushed toward her, knotted strings of saliva swinging from its yawning, cavernous mouth.

  Desperate, Melai unslung her bow and fired off a quick volley of arrows armed with Bloodfyre, a chemical drawn from Thoonsk’s deep-water toads. The five arrows lodged into the monster’s gut and, igniting on contact with blood, five explosive concussions blew holes out of its belly. Yet the monster hardly broke stride. On it came unruffled and unhindered.

  Melai flapped her wings desperately, hoping to get herself airborne and into the safety of the tree tops. But her torn wing prevented her leaving the mound. She reached for another set of arrows. These armed with Veil Of Midnight; once loosed, they would fill the air with a blanketing cloud of inky spore—if she could not harm this beast then she would disorient it whilst she made her escape.

  But while she was drawing back her bow string, the monster lunged at her, grabbed her and tossed her off into another tree trunk. The upper bones in both her right arm and right wing snapped. She heard them splinter and crack, she felt a numb dislodgement of bone and she slid off oak trunk and down into the lagoon once more, unbearable pain surging through her.

  She flailed in the water, barely keeping her face above surface. She tried to swim but both her broken arm and wing dragged behind her, sending jolts of pain into her shoulder and down her spine. She gripped a nub of bark from the nearest tree to keep her chin above water. The monster came wading toward her with its soulless eyes and soulless face and huge hungry mouth open wide, yellowed, thick blunt teeth ready to chomp her head free.

  11

  She called for her golems. Then she watched the beast halt mid stride, as if distracted, as if some danger had alerted its attention.

  Had her golems heard her?

  Suddenly out of the forest, in a blur, like one of summer season’s flash storms, came yet another hulking creature, ramming the monster head-first in the chest.

  At first Melai could make out not what had assailed it, so fast and swift and sudden had been the attack, but as the monster were knocked to its side, as the creature that had thrust it over dashed off as quick as it might given the depth of the water, Melai saw it for the Rjoond’s hefty two-headed steed.

  Surely not! she thought. Though she had little time to debate it; the monster were righting itself from the water.

  And here the Rjoond appeared.

  Out he came, wading through waters with his sword held aloft, putting himself between her and the beast. He never gave her attacker any hint he were there, any
chance to defend itself: all in one movement he swung his blade around, once, slicing open its chest and belly, and then twice, removing its great ugly head.

  It were over in but a sunflare. Black blood spurted from the beast’s neck as its head flung away and splashed heavily into water. Rjoond backed up as the monster’s arms flailed wildly. Melai were shocked, for even without its head, the thing remained upon its feet, lumbering this way and that in mad fashion, turning around and around, growing more and more rapid, more and more feverish.

  ‘Submerge yourself!’ the Rjoond yelled at her.

  The monster spun and spun, its arms and razored talons swinging wildly, tearing chunks from oaks and willows, from paperbarks and wattles, shards and splinters as big as Melai rocketing away in all directions, the sound of its limbs whipping through air like wings of the great Dragons.

  The Rjoond dropped himself below the water line just as the monster erupted in a mass of spines and needles and barbs. Melai dove into the lagoon with not a moment to spare.

  From below the lagoon’s surface, Melai saw a hundred projectiles punch through the air where not a moment earlier she had clung one-handed to the oaken trunk. Then above, all fell silent.

  THE RJOOND

  1

  MELAI surfaced slowly, wondering where the Rjoond were. With water dripping down her face, she clung to the oak, watching him inspecting his handiwork, prodding the bulk of the monster’s remains with his sword. He looked over at her.

  ‘Be you hurt?’ he asked her.

  She would not answer.

  He raised an eyebrow, perhaps curious as to why she refused to speak. He returned to his inspection of the creature. Melai saw a number of lesions on the Rjoond’s arms and neck, and rips in his clothing; lesions and rips that had not been there when she’d put those arrows into his face the previous day. She wondered if some parts of the drug had caused him to attack himself after all.

  ‘I learned about the barbs of this species the hard way,’ he said as if he had sensed her thoughts, indicating the numerous wounds on his person. ‘I have naught seen its kind before but I have now encountered two in as many days. The first ended its life like this one. With, shall we say, certain anger management issues.’

  Melai thought of the mess of meat and guts and bone she had discovered the morning prior, the mess she had believed were the self-mutilated body of this Rjoond. It bore a striking resemblance to the blown-apart carcass before her.

  Gargaron turned to her again. ‘Now tell me, are you hurt?’

  She were. And in pain. But she would not show it. ‘No. Though why should you care if I were?’

  He washed the black blood from his sword before sheathing it. ‘Common courtesy,’ he told her. ‘And besides, since setting out from my home village of Hovel many days ago, you are but the only living, sentient being I have met. And since I have discovered naught but death and dying my entire way here your being alive both intrigues and heartens me. So forgive me if I ask after your welfare.’

  ‘You lie! You spread sickness and disease. I have witnessed it now with my own eyes, with the death of the Soulsucka.’

  He frowned. ‘Soulsucka?’ he pointed at the body of the slain monster. ‘That thing?’

  ‘No, the Devil Werm that were attached to your leg.’

  He nodded. ‘Oh. That little beast. I have no idea why it perished. I tried to assail it yet with all my strength I could not. It died not by my hand I assure you.’

  ‘Liar!’

  He sighed. ‘I come from Hovel, many leagues from here. And as I stated, I have witnessed nothing but death in all these long leagues of travel. I had to see away my departed wife and daughter. I had to set alight to the corpses of all my village folk. Yet, I have witnessed some things, dark scurrying beasts, that I suspect might have something to do with all this mess.’

  ‘I do not believe you.’ She turned her face away and grimaced, her broken limbs throbbing like mad. She were determined not to allow him see her pain. It would make her vulnerable. If she were able she would have had her bow trained on him in these moments. If the arrows of Dark Moonlight had not worked, if the Spittle of Xonsüssa had proven ineffective, then maybe something else were required. Spiderlily venom. Shard of Basiiss root. Or the rare Deadfist toxin. But she could not wield her bow. Not with her arm broken and the ringing pain. If he came at her she were powerless.

  No. Untrue. There are always my golems…

  ‘Nothing might I say that will change your mind?’ he asked.

  She gripped hold of a bunch of moss vine that were strung to the oak and began to work her way back to the spirit stone. ‘You are Rjoond. Your kind lie, cheat, steal, murder.’

  He frowned at her. ‘Rjoond? This is a term of which I am unfamiliar. Which tells me you have me confused with another race, surely. For I am of the Giants of Hovel, from the line of Giants of Neverwhere, and the giants I know…or at least knew, are kind by nature and we stick to our own boundaries and cause none but ourselves grief and angst. Let alone murder. Or thievery.’

  ‘Untrue! Your kind once tried taking Thoonsk from my ancestors.’

  He considered this. ‘Honestly? Well, if that be so then let me apologise on their behalf. Although, I must confess, this is part of history I have yet to learn.’

  There were silence amongst them for a time, broken only by the return of the two-headed horse, splashing and stomping through waters, snorting, flicking its ears. It drew up to the Rjoond and both its heads turned and regarded Melai as she pulled her way at last onto the dry slab of stone, holding her broken arm to her ribs, her broken wing hanging limply.

  ‘Anyhow, allow me to introduce myself. I am Gargaron. Gargaron Stoneheart. Giant, hunter, and resident of Hovel. This here be Grimah, a trusty steed I have found friendship with only in recent days. He is all I have now for, as I believed I explained, my family and all of my kind have mysteriously perished. Before I landed here I were on my way to find Hawkmoth, the great sorcerer, in hopes he might explain and possibly reverse the foul curse that has stricken our world.’

  She simply eyed him. And did not speak. He speaks of Haitharath the Old, she thought. Haitharath, friend of Thoonsk. Be he telling me falsehoods in order to gain my trust so that he might approach in feigned friendship and bludgeon me to pulp?

  ‘I have been starved of company for many a day,’ he told her, ‘I would very much like to make your acquaintance. But if you would prefer I leave you alone then I shall regretfully respect your wishes and be on my way.’

  Again she refused to speak.

  He regarded her for a moment or two… Waiting for her to say something. But she would not.

  ‘Very well,’ he said.

  2

  With a sigh he turned away and hitched his pack to the saddle of his horse. He placed boot in stirrup, took hold of his steed’s reigns and pulled himself onto his mount. With his great sword sheathed, and the dormant hilt of Hor’s warhammer packed in his pack, he gave Grimah’s shoulder a soft tap-tap and the huge horse began to move away.

  He would not look back he decided. He would not beg her to come with him though his heart longed for company, conversation and her potential friendship. He kept his shoulders high, his chest pushed out resolutely.

  Grimah had gone two dozen steps through the lagoon when he heard her voice.

  ‘Wait. Please.’

  Two simple little words. They flared warmth and hope in his heart.

  3

  He turned, not wanting to appear too hopeful, and waited to hear what she had to say. She stood now higher on the stone mass, beside one of the several trees that grew up around it.

  ‘You have a face in the back of your head?’

  Gargaron watched her, and laughed at such an unexpected question. ‘You have just noticed?’

  ‘Aye. What is it there for?’

  He pulled Grimah around and the great horse waded back toward her. ‘To spy on the night when I am asleep.’

  ‘Can I look upo
n it?’ she asked.

  He considered this, then turned his back to her. She studied it at length, intrigued. Its eyes watched her in silence, its spiked finger curled up beneath it. She had heard such tales about giant folk of legend who possessed two faces. But she did not imagine one face would be at front and the other at rear.

  Gargaron turned to eye her once more. ‘Not all giants have retained their Nightface. But they serve we hunters of Hovel well.’

  She gazed up at him. And for a moment they regarded each other.

  ‘Why did you save my life?’ she asked. ‘Just now. Against that monster. I thought you were here to kill me. Please tell, why save me?’

  He shook his head. And smiled. ‘I still do not know where you obtained this bizarre notion that I have come here from far across the lands to slay you and your kind. I were minding my own business, fishing. A break from my village duties as hunter. I had been dozing on river bank, dreaming… and not dreaming of reaping death and destruction on this beautiful part of Godrik’s Vale, I assure you. No, I were dreaming of my girls: my dear daughter and her sweet mother. Until a shockwave passed over and awoke me. As I opened my eyes, I saw fish dying, and ornithens plummeting from the skies. I saw raging torrents of blackness sweeping down river. When I hurried back to my village I found all were dead. All. None remained alive. Including my dear girls.’ He sighed. ‘After I saw their bodies to their forebears, I left Hovel to find answers. I found nothing but death from there to Autumn town. I do not know if you have heard of it, but I utilised the Skysight to try and find the nearest habitat, village, town, city, anywhere where the living might still exist. But I found naught. Naught anywhere. Naught at least that could hold a conversation and tell me of this dark phenomenon. Then I chanced upon a metal man with that flying contraption you must’ve heard, if not seen, drop from the clouds who told me that Hawkmoth the sorcerer had discovered me from afar and had invited me to meet with him, that he needed numbers to help fight this scourge.’ He shrugged. ‘That is where I were heading before this unscheduled detour.’

  4

  She watched him. Spoke nothing. And yet he saw something new in her eyes. Something that suggested she were now reconsidering her earlier beliefs. ‘What be your name?’ she asked.

  ‘As I have already announced, Gargaron Stoneheart. What be yours?’

  ‘Melai Willowborne of Willowgarde.’

  ‘Well, Melai Willowborne of Willowgarde, I am glad to make your acquaintance.’ He dipped his head respectfully. Then straightened and looked about. ‘Be this your home?’

  ‘All of Mother Thoonsk be my home,’ she answered. ‘But this be my home trees of Willowgarde.’

  He were struck by its idyllic setting. A circle of trees grown up around a vast slab of stone that jutted above the waterline like the roof of an enormous marine toadstool; part of it were shaped like the prow of a ship, jutting out into the waters of the lagoon. It hung with snake moss and around its edge where the water lapped, it were encrusted with fresh-water barnacles and clung with crabs that Gargaron could not say were alive or dead. One of the trees appeared to grow up through the middle of the slab of stone. But as Gargaron soon realised, it were simply growing upon stone’s surface with its roots gripping the rock as though they were but vast reaching fingers; roots that seemed to harbor a vast garden of flowering shrubs and toadstools and orchids. This tree stood the tallest of the group. Alas, it seemed to be one of the tallest trees Gargaron had yet witnessed in this water forest, so far above him were its canopy that it were lost to sky haze.

  But looking up he saw now several tens of feet above him, some branches of Melai’s “home trees” had accumulated around the central tree to form the base of what he could only describe as some sort of “tree house”. And above that, perhaps another twenty feet, the trunks of each tree were beset with some sort of growth. At least that is how it appeared at first sight. For each trunk were swollen with a bulbous mass. But he saw now that each growth were fixed with a large rounded hole, as if a doorway into the trees themselves. Were this where her kind slept? Were they dwellings?

  There were a wonderful sense of calm here, but perhaps the quietness belied its usual ambience; tree dwellers like birdlings had maybe fled or had died. Bugs chirruped but, if he did not know better, their calls sounded haphazard, tortured, almost sick. As if they were crying out a sweet lament, as if they knew death were creeping through the bark to get them. Gargaron could not help but think of his wife and daughter and his own village.

  5

  ‘Would you come closer?’ Melai Willowborne asked.

  He frowned. ‘Why? So that you may fill me with more of your arrows? I’ll admit, the final one you lodged in my face gave me a wonderful feeling of inebriation. Yet, the first lot actually hurt.’

  ‘I shall only fill you with arrows should you prove untrustworthy. So, until I test your story, no more arrows.’

  He hesitated but were intrigued. ‘My story? How do you intend to test it?’

  ‘If you will permit me, I would look into your mind.’

  He considered this. ‘Before I agree, would you name your method of mind bonding?’

  ‘Why does it matter?’

  ‘I would like to know one’s method before I allow one to probe my thoughts.’

  She did not reply. Simply waited for him to make his decision known.

  Gargaron dismounted and waded forward, his ankle still sore. Though he stood in the lagoon to his waist, and she perched high on the exposed rock, he still towered over her; a buffalo to a duckling.

  ‘You would need bend down,’ she advised. ‘I cannot reach you from here.’

  He crouched, the water rising up around his belly and chest and came face to face with her where she stood on the edge of this mighty stretch of rock. Up so close, she were, he realised, an exquisite looking creature. He had never seen the likes of her. Aye, on his travels and expeditions, he had witnessed forest sprites and river nymphs. Some had even called home the Summer Woods up behind Hovel when he were a boy. But this being were different. She sported, as far as he could tell, two sets of wings, like those of the Buccuyashuck dragonflies in the Spring that grew to the size of hoardogs. And a pair of skinny, bony arms and legs. Her fingers and toes, proportionate to her hands and feet, were long and ungainly looking. Like that of a Hovel Nightfrog. Her eyes were large and luscious. And alluring. She had small teeth, the same colour of her skin which were a soft creamy green. She had long hair that reminded him of healthy spring grass. She had small breasts tucked behind a green and brown shawl that were tied by a vine belt around her waist and which hung over small green thighs. She wore no shoes. Her toes had tiny green leaves where other beings would have nails or claws. She had an odour of flowers about her.

  ‘Do you have anyone left here?’ Gargaron asked.

  ‘No.’ Her voice brimmed with sadness.

  ‘Do you wish to stay here?’

  She did not know the answer to that.

  ‘If I agree to you delving into my mind, then might you accompany me on my quest to find this sorcerer?’

  She watched him closely, thinking deeply. ‘I will let you know soon enough.’

  He considered this answer. Eyeing her closely in turn. ‘Very well. Then I submit my mind to you.’

  6

  She swallowed deeply. And raised her arm and jabbed a small finger at his forehead. His body went stiff as stone, feeling as if some great worm had just thrust itself through his skull and into his brain.

  He saw a smooth pattern of images flow over his vision, like water in a stream swishing over smooth stones. Waking beside a river. Seeing death and destruction in his village. Finding his wife and daughter dead inside Summer Woods. Carrying their corpses to great precipice. Watching Wraithbirds carry them away.

  He saw himself burning his village folk, and fetching Drenvel’s Bane before leaving Hovel. He watched his trek to Autumn, accompanied by all that death and rot. He saw Dark Ones ripping sheep to shreds.
Watched himself meeting the two-headed horse, Grimah. Observed his adventure on Skysite tower. And of drinking himself to sleep in the Autumn tavern, the Goat’s Head. He saw the dead again, scattered amongst the streets. And Corpse Flowers beyond count. He saw the metal man and its airship. And of taking to the skies…

  When the small green being finally withdrew her hand a trickle of purple blood coursed down the bridge of Gargaron’s nose, down his cheek. He noticed her fingertip smeared in blood, and a small barb, like that of a rose thorn, retracting. He saw her shudder, as if what she had learned were too much to absorb.

  He watched her face. She watched his.

  7

  She needed the Temple Tree. She desired communion with Mother Thoonsk about what best to do. But she knew not how to get up there without the use of her wing. And with her broken arm it would be impossible to climb. Thus she sat there on the spirit stone, surrounded by her home trees, wondering what to do. She looked across at the giant and considered him a while; his steed waiting nearby patiently, nibbling at floating clumps of water-grass with both its mouths.

  ‘These Dark Ones I see in your memories?’ she eventually asked Gargaron. ‘What be they?’

  He shook his head. And considered his answer. ‘As yet I have had no genuine encounters with them other than brief moments where they have approached me, studied me, before retreating. I do not know who or what they are, nor from where they have come.’

  ‘Do you believe they have brought this death?’

  He sighed. ‘I can only speculate, of course. Perhaps they have. Or perhaps the breakdown of our land and its societies has brought them out into places they might not have ordinarily strayed. Perhaps the mayhem and death has simply displaced them from wherever their home territories be.’

  Melai thought of the monster this Gargaron had recently slain. She had naught seen its kind in Thoonsk before this day. Perhaps it too had been displaced, or lack of food and prey had drawn it from its own country, or perhaps whatever creature or beings that normally kept it at bay had perished and were no longer prominent enough to contain it. ‘But I have heard your fears, oh giant, and I have seen that you suspect them in the downfall of the realm.’

  ‘Aye, that is true. But perhaps I merely blame them for so far I have naught else to blame. Such as you blamed me for the dying in these woodlands.’

  She said nothing.

  He went on. ‘Still, they could not possibly be to blame for every death. For I have seen animals, birdlings, die without warning as if they have been struck down by an invisible wave of spears. So, this Hawkmoth be whom I seek for this Hawkmoth claims he knows the answers.’

  She continued to watch him. ‘Do you believe this?’

  He shrugged. ‘I have precious little else to believe at present. Though I must say it has given me some focus.’

  ‘What if there be no sorcerer?’ Melai put to him. ‘What if it be some ploy to drag out the last of the living to their deaths?’

  He had to admit, this were something he had not yet considered. And it surprised him that he had not. Were he thus walking straight into a potential trap? Had he been left so bereft of feeling, so distraught, that his judgement had become so clouded? Had he been so desperate for an answer to this blight that he were willing to dash after the first solution that fell at his feet?

  Do not torture yourself, a voice in his head spoke. You have had much on your plate.

  He sighed. ‘If it be some ploy then so be it. I would sooner fall trying, than to fall sitting staring at the earyth.’

  She eyed him closely, thoughtfully. In turn he eyed her. ‘Makes me wonder,’ he said, his eyes narrowed. ‘If this Hawkmoth be indeed seeking the living, then why has he not yet detected you?’

  She shrugged. ‘Who says he has not?’

  8

  The second metal man were sprawled and tangled in a hazel tree. Half of it blackened, charred, hinting at signs of damage by fire. Parts of the hazel tree were scorched, with branches entirely burnt of their foliage, and those leaves not charred to ash had turned copper brown from intense heat. Bits of painted skin flaked away from the metal man. Bits of tubing or wire either floated upon water’s surface, or were caught tangled amidst reeds and lilies.

  ‘It appeared three or four days gone,’ Melai told Gargaron from where she sat upon Grimah’s broad shoulders. ‘I refused to believe what it had to say. I had never seen its like before. I were highly suspicious of its presence given that it appeared mere hours after my dear sisters perished. Before it were engulfed in fire, it reported the sorcerer’s wishes. Not long after, I witnessed you fall from the sky. It were then I assumed it were all a lie, that you had come with another metal man, a Rjoond invasion force as we here in Thoonsk have long feared.’

  Gargaron studied the mekanik. Its presence seemed to suggest that Hawkmoth had somehow found survivors across the land where Gargaron himself had not. And by all signs, the sorcerer had dispatched his mekaniks far and wide to gather all those who had not perished.

  Melai wiped her eyes and gazed out through forest canopy to a patch of blue sky. ‘I were with my sisters when we felt the first shockwave. We were away in the woods, collecting Xhuerfruit. Have you heard of Xhuerfruit? It be a fruit fortified by bark as tough as hawk eggs, but if the fruit be ripe—and you know when it’s ripe for the bark turns blue and puts off such a sweet pungent odour—you crack them open while they are still attached to their branch and inside you’ll find the soft Xhuer pulp all wet and gooey, which you suckle and the small segments explode and pop on your tongue and there is the release of the most delicious nectar. It can make you dizzy and giggly as a drunkard.’ She wiped more tears. ‘Anyway, we heard it coming. A sound like howling storm wind. The trees here speak to one another, a language we begin to learn as babes, but don’t fully grasp until adulthood. We could hear them speaking of a great dark shadow pressing down. But we argued between ourselves as to exactly what they meant. They seemed to be speaking of a poison on the air. Since then, the trees have fallen silent. I hear them no longer.

  ‘When we returned to our home trees of Willowgarde, everyone… all my dear sisters… they…’ She wept. ‘They fell ill. I thought at first it were but exhaustion. For one by one, without warning, they fell to slumber. I could not awaken them. I screamed at them to wake up. When the second wave passed over, it, it st-stole their breath…’ She cried now. Heavily. She wanted to say more but could not. She cried into her hand, her injured arm cradled in her lap, her tears falling, becoming tiny sprites as they splashed against tree and bark.

  Gargaron placed his hand gently upon her back, his fingers almost eclipsing her entirely. To hear her cry reminded him of his dear Veleyal and tears escaped his own eyes. He found naught to say to her, naught that would help her. So he simply sat with her while she sobbed; he seated in water upon a mound of deadfall, she on sun drenched stone.

  Eventually she looked up at him, the green skin around her cheeks and eyes puffy and damp. ‘I will come with you,’ she said softly. ‘I will come to Haitharath the Old as we here in Thoonsk know this sorcerer. If only to learn what great scourge has killed my dear sisters. And hopefully find a way to avenge their deaths.’

  9

  Melai hid her pain. And kept her wing and arm close at her side. Aye, she had agreed to travel with this Rjoond but it did not mean she yet trusted him. She reminded herself that, although he had so far proved himself a friendly fellow, his folk were the enemy of her kind. She would thus remain on guard.

  They returned to Willowgarde where Melai spread upon the spirit stone an enormous Aahnyey leaf. From the garden growing amidst the roots of the Temple Tree that clung to the spirit stone, she uprooted a vast array of small plants and placed them on the leaf. Zantha, Loniyahd, Teatha, and Fraew. Jaynu Root, Blossom Cup, Jazeem Fruit. Yellowcap Mushoom. Dynoldi Pea. Gipp. Hyth. Meathe. Fynesa. Cortha. Some of them were rooted to round mossy stones, some to clumps of wood, some into the stinking carcass of dead swamp fish. Othe
rs sunk their roots directly into the Aahnyey leaf itself when placed there. Most of them drew moisture from the atmosphere and did not require regular watering. But all would sustain her and would continue to yield fruit and some she would milk for poisons for the arrows she fired.

  Before she were done she fetched one last item. A little clump of bark layered wood; small green leaves sprouted from it. It were a plant that housed some particularly nasty things. Her sisters would say, ‘On long journeys from Willowgarde, to ward against any lizards of the sky, we must always carry amongst us the monstrut.’

  Melai now folded up her Aahnyey leaf into a travel sling, and heard the Rjoond enquire about directions for a westways journey. She declared that she could point the way and also better steer him and steed around hidden drop-offs and plunge-holes if she were mounted again upon the horse.

  As this Rjoond, Gargaron, heeled his steed and pulled the great two-headed creature around, Melai took one last look at her home trees of Willowgarde. Within them she and her sisters had been born. They had been their home and mother, their playground and teacher. Now she were leaving them… For how long she could not know.

  A tear filled her eye. And from where she sat upon the horse’s huge shoulders she turned forward and did not look back.

  MOONSTONE

  1

  THERE were indeed deep plunge holes as Melai had warned. And she would berate Gargaron for not having wings, for not having the ability to fly. He told her she were quite welcome to fly on ahead if it would please her. But she stayed where she were, upon the shoulder of the steed.

  ‘How be your wing by the way?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s fine,’ she told him.

  The stretches of water became larger, deeper, in these, Thoonsk’s, westwun reaches. Trees grew sparse. Dead things floated. Fishes, turtles, water-lizards. And other beasts Gargaron had never laid his eye on. Oarfish. Critters he had only heard stories of. And things he did not at all recognise. Dark things with shining skin and arms ending in spiked claws, and mouths full of teeth, and gleaming, bulging black devil eyes. Gargaron felt a peculiar need to drive his steed around these strange clumps of dead creatures, fearing another attack by some alien critter such as that damned Soulsucka, but Melai would direct him irritably through them, steering Grimah away from treacherous plunge holes, and then scolding Gargaron for ignoring her.

  Every now and then Grimah would stray into deeper water that threatened to swamp both himself and riders, the water gushing high around his shoulders, soaking Gargaron to his hips, Melai’s grassy hair swirled serpentine across its rippling surface. The steed nickered nervously. Gargaron opted once or twice to dismount, for fear that under his weight, the horse might sink into muddy floor. The act left Melai frustrated, arguing that if he were to do that she would then need keep look-out for steed and Rjoond. ‘That be not ideal,’ she warned. ‘I have not enough eyes to guide you both around deathly drop-offs.’

  When Gargaron suggested she take flight and call down directions from above, for surely with a bird’s eye view she would see the way more clearly, she argued otherwise.

  ‘I can see the bottom of the lagoon far more clearly here, thank you.’

  This rebuke intrigued him.

  ‘What do you suffer?’ he asked finally. ‘What injury did that beast leave you with?’

  ‘None,’ she said hotly.

  He pulled the steed to a halt. Both she and Gargaron lurched forward, such were the abrupt cessation of momentum. ‘I know you hide it,’ he said gruffly. ‘Let us have it out so that we might lance the problem before it festers.’

  ‘Press on!’ she insisted. ‘I am uninjured!’ Her tone suggested this were the end of the matter and end of discussion.

  He hesitated. Through her mind bond with him, he had happened to see her personal thoughts and fears. He knew she had damaged wing and arm both. Yet, he would see how long she could keep a lid on her pain.

  2

  Gargaron ate lunch. Dried mushrooms, cured ham. He offered Melai some but she turned her nose up at his taste in food. Following a somewhat derogatory comment by her regarding his culinary preferences they sat there on a huge pile of deadfall and she ate nothing. And she spoke little. And she gazed at length into the woods, her thoughts far away. Gargaron would have preferred some conversation but reminded himself that she had only recently farewelled her kin. No easy task. Thus he respected her silence and her longing for solitude. And assumed her appetite would return in time.

  Grimah watched them both as if curious of their nature.

  After he had eaten, Gargaron shed his boot to inspect his ankle. Melai pretended not to look but she were intrigued to see the mighty tear put there by the Soulsucka were now effectively gone. Again she were surprised by this Rjoond’s ability to heal himself; and again she found herself rethinking her belief that his kind were all oafish and dim witted.

  3

  They pressed on after midday, when the two suns seemed to be swinging by each other. The swamp appeared to steam. The air were muggy and rank. Sweat gushed off Grimah and Gargaron both in small rivers. Dead pond skaters floated. In the trees Gargaron watched bizarre creatures Melai called Buccas. Another species Gargaron had never laid eye upon. So fascinating were they he near drove Grimah into a plunge hole. ‘Watch where you send us!’ Melai screeched at him.

  Gargaron pulled Grimah to an immediate halt. He saw where shallow sandy lagoon floor gave way to the dark maw of an abyss off to the steed’s right shoulder. He pulled Grimah back a few paces before returning his gaze into the trees. ‘What be those things?’ he asked. They were peculiar frog-skinned, spider-like creatures, and peculiar of shape. So peculiar of shape Gargaron were utterly awestruck. It were as if a pair of folk, with all sets of limbs intact, were fused together back to back. And not only that, they were headless, two necks per individual that ended in naught but stumps.

  ‘Buccas,’ Melai told him. ‘Magical creatures. Kind, inquisitive, not so evil as their appearance might suggest. Forest folk claimed they could never die, that they be immortal.’ Her gaze shifted to water’s surface where one or two of these strange creatures floated. Dead. ‘Though now it seems they too cannot withstand this infernal curse that grips Thoonsk.’

  ‘This curse grips all,’ Gargaron reminded her. ‘Both Thoonsk and beyond.’

  They pressed on, steering clear of the plunge hole.

  4

  The hours drew on and the day grew hotter; a stifling humidity hung about the woodland. It drew rivers of sweat from both Gargaron and steed; Gargaron’s clothes were well soaked. He cupped handfuls of lagoon water to douse his head. ‘How do you bear this?’ he asked Melai, water and sweat dripping off his lips.

  ‘Bear what?’

  ‘This unbearable heat.’

  ‘I thought it obvious,’ she snapped at him.

  If it were obvious then he did not know how.

  ‘The suns,’ she pointed out. ‘Have you not noticed? They are such as lovers these days. They fall toward one another. The heat were never like this. It be unbearable. Thoonsk be normally a cool, temperate place.’

  ‘Very well then. I shall take your word for it.’

  5

  They made long distance in good time. Until Gargaron noticed Melai grimacing. ‘Be you well?’ he asked her. Her injured wing were folded protectively beneath her arm. She did not answer. ‘Be you well, I say?’

  ‘Yes.’

  But she were not. The way she struggled to speak. The way she held her wing and arm. He noticed now also a peculiar odour. Some weedy reek. She were bleeding he saw. Yellow blood dripped from her elbow, running down his destrier’s sweating flank. He prayed it were simply her wound that were ailing her. Yet he could not push aside the idea that the doom that had killed all else were now killing Melai.

  6

  It were early afternoon when they entered a part of the woodland where water levels were the shallowest Gargaron had yet witnessed since his fall into this strange world of
Thoonsk. Here though trees of immense girth grew. And were peculiarly shaped, as of a wrist thrust from water and its palm upturned and fingers growing out and up as branches old and gnarled with bark the colour of soot. At their bases, knots of twisted root rose and fell over one another, and upon each tree there had been gouged patterns of ghastly faces where white sap beneath had oozed through and dried, and now, in the general wash of diffuse green hews of the surrounding forest, they glowed like that of moonlight.

  Gargaron wondered if the depictions of these tortured souls were meant to ward off intruders by some long lost forest race. If so then it did not work on he nor Melai nor Grimah for something else occupied their thoughts. Melai’s injury. And by the time Gargaron had placed Melai upon the ‘palm’ of one of these trees she were seething between her teeth. Trying to swallow her pain.

  She sat there, a hunched and pathetic looking creature if Gargaron had ever seen one.

  ‘Will you accept my help now?’ he enquired of her.

  She would not look at him. Though pain pinched her face.

  ‘You stubborn fool,’ he said. ‘You have seen inside my thoughts, you have seen I mean you no harm, and yet still you distrust me.’

  ‘Thoughts can be masked,’ she argued weakly, ‘thoughts can be falsified.’ Yet, she had touched his living blood, she knew blood manufactured no lies.

  ‘Falsified? Aye possibly, but not by the likes of me,’ Gargaron gently argued back. ‘I lack both knowledge and ability to orchestrate such tricks.’

  She said no more. Instead she turned over and lay down. Her ribs pushed against the pale green skin of her chest. She were terribly gaunt. She had not eaten nor drunk since he had met her. She were weak, he knew, and growing more so by the minute.

  ‘Cast off your stubbornness lest it contribute to your demise,’ Gargaron told her as he rounded the tree (he could move more freely here for the water level were barely to his knee) so that he might find a gap through bough and branch to speak to her, face to face.

  ‘Why should you care if I live or die?’ she asked him rasping.

  ‘Why should I not? I hunt and I kill for a living aye, but otherwise I find life precious. Now, even more so, now, with so much death, life seems imperative. So, tell me, Melai of Willowgarde, what ails you?’

  She winced. Yellow blood continued to drip from her. ‘I know not.’

  Gargaron thought of his Lyfen Essence. ‘I have medicine that chases away death.’

  She shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘You do not trust me?’

  ‘No. I need Greenwater moon.’

  Gargaron frowned. ‘I have never heard of it. What be it and where must I look to find it?’

  ‘It be medicine.’ She gave him a look as if she still thought him nothing but a big ignorant oaf. From where she lay, she looked about. And about. ‘A deep pond,’ she said. ‘A fathom down is where they come to rest when the moon beams of Great Keera hit the water’s surface and become instantly the stone of green-water.’

  Great Keera? Gargaron thought. There be no such moon. Were she losing her wits now as well as her strength? ‘You require this substance?’

  ‘I fear I have been poisoned by that unknown beast that assailed me,’ she said anxiously. ‘Its claws punctured me. Its poison remains unknown to me. I must need eat of the moon stones. They are a powerful remedy, Mother Thoonsk’s cure-all. I must eat of them before morning or else I fear I shall perish at sunrise.’

  Gargaron sighed heavily, looking about aimlessly; all he saw were thick woodland stretching away to all points of compass. ‘Let me find it for you then,’ he said. ‘Just tell me where to look.’

  7

  He found a pond like one she had described. It will appear as a natural well within the swamp, she had told him through grimace and groan. Surrounded by a circular bank covered in great tufts of wriggling worm-grass. The wells are vents the ancient water-horses once bored into earyth. These creatures are long wiped from history but their chimneys remain, flooded and submerged. Other things live in them now. Sometimes deadly. So be careful. The moon stones may be found a fathom from the surface, embedded in coral.

  Gargaron gazed down into the deep clear water. His steed stood nearby, surveying the woodland, as if searching for any strange critters that might be sneaking up behind them. But there were no-one and nothing about. Gargaron removed his pack. Shed his boots and jerkin and shirt. Standing at the edge of the well he considered what he had to do. Then he took a deep breath… and dove in.

  8

  It were remarkably clear. He could see a long way down as he descended. The walls were lit with some sort of phosphorescent algae that gave off a soft green luminescence. But there were also large spreading patches where algae had blinked out, as if all of it were slowly dying en masse. Strange fish swam lazily about, on their sides, or upside down. Tired or ill.

  A huge crustacean, a lobster all black and hard bony ridges, listed from some den in the wall of the well. Its body swayed in the wash of the current created by Gargaron as he swam by. Its eye-stalks did not see him. Its body, Gargaron realised, were limp with death.

  On a shelf almost a fathom down Gargaron suddenly saw something strange. A cluster of glowing stones. Only when he grabbed at one it felt more like a fleshy knob of some sort. A bulb. Were these the objects of which Melai had spoken? He did not know. But the air in his lungs were waning. His chest were beginning to ache. He could swim no further down. He plucked as many of the bulbs as he could and kicked for surface.

  9

  Back at the ‘palm’ tree, Gargaron presented the peculiar bulbs to Melai, his hand and fingers sandy and wet. ‘Tell me these be what you seek,’ he panted.

  She looked at the items he presented. ‘Aye. Th-this be them,’ she declared tiredly, again grimacing. ‘I-I were concerned y-you may… may not find them, that, that you would n-not recognise them.’

  She squished one weakly in her fingers and slurped up its alien milk; moonlight, if he believed her claims, turned into this strange liquid substance via the magic of the well. She swallowed it down, her eyes looking dreamy, turning smoky and blue, as if she were snared in some rare arresting ecstasy. Her head swung back, her eyes rolled upwards, her toes and fingers contracted.

  ‘Melai!’ Gargaron called, ‘Melai, hear me? Be you well? Be you well?’

  Had she mistaken the stone for something else? In his haste, had he fetched the wrong items? He gripped her with his huge hands, his grasp almost wrapping her entire body, and shook her as stiffly as he dared.

  ‘Melai! Melai, hear me! Please, do not perish. You must not.’

  But she would not move. He watched for her breathing. He saw the soft rise and fall of her chest and yet steeled himself for its eventual culmination, for it to grow softer and less apparent until it stopped forever. Like the elf girl who had inadvertently brought him Grimah.

  10

  The suns fell toward horizon. He watched them as he sat there beside Melai’s sleeping form. He found a natural platform in the bole of an enormous old oak, an area large enough to accommodate the bulk of his body. Then he built a fire out of reeds and branches from dried deadfall clumped high above the water mark.

  He listened out for bugs and swamp frogs and nightjars. He had heard tales of the various swamp realms of Godrik’s Vale. How at night you had to stuff feathergrass into your ears if you wanted to sleep, for the great cacophony of sound as the wild things kept up their mating and territorial calls would keep you from slumber and send you mad.

  Nevertheless, the silence unnerved him. He heard the occasional lazy splash in the surrounding water. Something gurgling as it floated to the surface of the swamp, as it gasped and gargled and drowned in the air. Heard the dispirited cries of dying bugs. Otherwise the swamp night were as silent as death.

  Except near dawn when he awoke, Gargaron heard howl and swoosh of huge swift bodies sweeping through the swamplands. He sat up and looked about.

  Dawn light hung pale in
the east. A veil of mist drifted through the woodlands. And moving there like spectres he saw them. Dark Ones. Swishing by like black wraiths.

  He lay low, his chin in water, gripping his great sword. Melai remained in whatever state the moonstones had put her in. And Grimah lay there on a trodden down bed of reeds and water brambles, eyes open, perhaps sensing danger and thus keeping quiet, unmoving but for his keen eyes.

  Are they coming for me now? Gargaron wondered. Surely they would not spare him a second time. In some ways he welcomed it. To leave this world of dying. And if so then he would somehow have his spirit make its way to Endworld without the help of the Wraithbirds. Somehow he would make it there and live out eternity with his wife and daughter.

  Yarniya’s words arose in him once more: ‘You have work here first. More than you can know.’

  Again, as before, inexplicably, the Dark Ones did not come for him. Nor did they for Melai nor Grimah. They swept onwards through swamp and tree. Pressing westways’n’north, tearing any other still living creature to pieces.

  IHETHA

  1

  MELAI awoke on sunrise, shivering, cowering from dawn’s light as it basked warmly against her soft green skin. She glared out into the forest where sunlight spiked through in long misty beams. She had heard birdlings the day before. But that morning the air were so dead and quiet.

  She washed her arm through the sun rays, flexing her fingers. She crawled fully under the wash of Melus. And sat upright. She hung her head, shut her eyes, and breathed deep. When she opened her eyes and looked up, her gaze fell upon Gargaron.

  She watched him for a while, curiously. ‘You did not abandon me.’ She appeared mystified by this. ‘You did not assail me, nor violate me, nor cook me for supper.’

  Gargaron frowned. Then laughed, wiping the rise of his cheek. ‘Cook you for supper? Take a look at yourself. I’m like to get more meat off a bare bone. If I were to eat anyone it would be Grimah.’

  His destrier, munching on watergrass, looked around at him. Perhaps at merely hearing his name, yet, perhaps also understanding Gargaron’s words. ‘Forgive me, Grimah, I do not mean it, of course. You have much meat on your bones but I have no taste for horse.’ He turned back to Melai. ‘So, how do you feel? I must say, it heartens me greatly that you look so well.’

  ‘I have not succumbed to poison or any other ailment, so, aye, I feel well.’ She flexed her wing. The torn membrane were healing. Yet the wing itself did not move with the same fluid grace that Gargaron had observed before the monster’s attack upon her. ‘My wing though be somewhat out of sorts. The bones have been strained. I shan’t be flying for a while. Though for how long I cannot tell.’ She grimaced as she folded her wing back behind her.

  ‘Well then, you shall have to ride with me then a little while longer it seems,’ Gargaron told her with a smile.

  She eyed his destrier. But managed a small smile of her own. It were the first time Gargaron had seen her do so and he realised how beautiful she were. ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘Seems I have little choice.’

  2

  They travelled all that morning. And by early afternoon they reached at last Thoonsk’s westways border. It were heralded by a vast curving line of sky faring monoliths, huge monstrous things festooned in red ivy whose leaves fluttered briskly in the unguarded wind and gave the impression that the mighty grey stones possessed a writhing skin. At their bases, where the earth were still soggy from the watery reaches of Mother Thoonsk the stones were thick with ragged socks of green moss. And it were here that Melai abruptly ordered Gargaron to halt his mount.

  The forest had thinned here. On these outer edges all that remained were ancient willows, their long, tired, sagging branches pushed gently to and fro in the breezes. The water around them were green but possessed a waxy, oily quality, and the floor beneath it were hard as if paved. And shallow too, swishing about Grimah’s hooves.

  Gargaron looked about, wondering why Melai had called for their procession to be halted, fearing she may have spotted some beast in the shadows stalking them. But when he looked down at her he saw that she were in fact looking wistfully back the way they had thus far traversed, before turning and eyeing the monoliths.

  ‘What be it?’ he asked her.

  ‘I just need a moment. Would you help me down?’

  ‘I think not. That there water looks poisoned.’

  ‘Aye,’ she said, ‘you guess well, for poisoned it be. To keep out such unsavoury intruders as Mother Thoonsk would wish not to permit. Though I am immune to Mother’s poisons.’

  Gargaron gazed down at the water lapping around his steed’s ankles. ‘And what of Grimah? Do we need concern ourselves with his feet corroding?’

  Melai leaned out and gazed down at Grimah’s lower legs. ‘I have no explanation. His legs ought to be burning.’ She gazed up at the monolith. ‘Perhaps Mother’s potency weakens with her demise.’ She sighed. ‘Would you lift me down, please?’

  Gargaron obliged and lifted her from saddle, lowering her to ground, mere yards from where great Thoonsk came to an end beyond its border of towering stones.

  3

  Gargaron watched Melai remove her bow from across her chest and lower herself to her knees. Thoonsk’s toxic green liquid lapped about her hips. She lowered her chin to her chest. Her hands and arms hung loose at her sides, her long froglike fingers dangling into the water. Her wings (as much as she could manage her injured one) were folded neatly across her back. And her eyes were shut. Gargaron thought he saw her lips were moving. Perhaps she were mouthing some prayer. Respectfully he refrained from further speech.

  Melai pushed her arms out, swishing water before her in a gentle wave which seemed to generate some peculiar forward momentum of its own, surging with uncanny and increasing force toward the nearest monolith which stood a dozen yards from Melai’s position.

  The wave crashed against the covering of moss where the oily water seemed to seep up into the vegetation, colours of green snaking up through the red ivy, spreading out like shard-sparks in a summer storm. Then it dissipated.

  When Gargaron next looked at Melai he saw with alarm that she were now leaned all the way forward, her face submerged in the water. Thinking she had slumped there involuntarily he went to leap from his horse, to drag her face back into air. But then…

  Her wings beat slowly. Even her injured one. And the tips of her long frog fingers danced in gentle synchronicity with the water ripples.

  Then she arose and stood scarecrow like before the monolith, her arms held out from the sides of her body. As Gargaron watched he saw a face form amidst the ivy, the face of some enormous being, feminine in appearance, and from her immense mouth there flickered a tongue of green vines, snaking out in a flash of movement, and licking Melai, whip-like, across the face.

  It were gone in but a sunflare and Melai sat again, this time as if from exhaustion… or perhaps elation. For she sat there, chin and nose turned skyward. And deeply she breathed of Thoonsk’s moist atmosphere. And upon her face she wore an expression of calm and resignation.

  Finally she spoke in her Mother’s tongue. ‘I have never vacated your cradle, Mother Thoonsk. I have lived my entire life within your fold. I am one of your children, and your children rarely find need to leave your paradise. Yet, now I request your permission to cross your boundary and depart here. Alas… you tell me you are dying.’

  She sobbed, staring up at the monolith, from where the face had appeared and faded. She did not wipe the tears from her cheeks. Instead she let them slide down her face and drip from her chin and they fell silently away without sound into the water. There they exploded, and the tiny droplets changed in an instant into a hundred tiny water nymphs that plunged deep into the liquid and swam away in a hundred different directions.

  ‘She has granted me leave,’ Melai said softly to Gargaron, ‘so that I may learn of what ails her and thus find a cure.’

  Gargaron responded with a measured, respectful tone. ‘Then we search
for the same thing. For what afflicts Thoonsk, afflicts the wider world.’

  4

  Melai stood beside the enormous boundary stone, gazing back into her homeland one last time—woodland nymph and monolith side by side together in solidarity, children of the water-forest both, staring back at their dying mother.

  ‘Ihetha,’ Melai whispered before she eventually turned her back on Thoonsk. For my love. ‘Ihetha thu’etha.’ For my love, I shall find your cure. And she turned and did not look back.

  CLARAVILLE

  1

  FOR them both, the way onward seemed strange at first.

  For Gargaron it were finally being away from the confines of Thoonsk that were strange, away from the endless walls of tree and bramble and towering lilies, the endless reaches of water. It were the feeling of being on firm, open country, where watery woodlands gave way to scrubby savannah, where he could look up and see the entire reach of sky with its white wispy clouds rather than a ceiling of leaves and branches and woody boughs.

  But this open, alien world, a place she had never seen, nor set foot, proved daunting, terrifying, overwhelming for Melai. The vast unending sky, so high above her head, so immense and unbroken, felt like an unbearable weight upon her. That it might come crashing down without the strength of her woodland home to hold it up. There were also the sensation that, without Mother Thoonsk to contain her, she might suddenly be yanked from the shoulders of Grimah and thrust out there into the clouds. With either thought, she had to keep taking deep breaths. And concentrate her gaze upon the ground; to look up were to turn her light headed and faint.

  Yet, staring at the alien ground also proved disconcerting. Where Melai had always known water, where below her she had been familiar with small waves of water serpents, or the bubbles of gupping fish, the ripples of swimming frogs, the splash of swamp turtles, the eddies left in the wakes of Buccas, here there were naught but rigid dry ground: stone and thistle, rock and shrub, boulder and grass, all without the comforting bowl of a lagoon to lie within. This were a world apart from what she knew. It frightened her. She knew no comfort here. How do folk beyond Thoonsk survive here? she wondered. With no trees to climb, no deep water in which to hide, to where do folk flee when there is danger? It confounded her.

  The reaction of her new friend she found curious too. He whistled, oh so jolly like, as if he had just been delivered the most cheerful news.

  ‘Should we not be wary of predators?’ she questioned him hushly, as though any word would call on some beast, or that they were being watched; she could not stop scouring the lands around them. There looked to be naught but scrubland as far as her eye could see; on their mount they of course towered above the scrubby bushes that grew out from bare sand and rock and weeds and wilting grass. But up there she felt so conspicuous and exposed.

  More than once she wondered how far Mother Thoonsk lay behind them, and could she, if she turned and looked, still see her? Would Thoonsk be there like a fretting mother awaiting her child’s return? Melai would not turn for fear that she would feel an overwhelming and crushing longing to flee back home. To see Thoonsk beckoning. Or to see she were no longer visible. Either one might frighten her and quash her resolve.

  2

  They stopped to take their bearings on a small hillock where a warm wind swept across the dry grasses, hissing at them as if it did not wish them intruding. The view overlooked the lands westways and gave a good view as well of the way they’d come. Melai took a deep breath and looked back. Thoonsk were vanished she saw. Her body tingled with dread. And for several moments she could not breathe.

  It were the way forward however that stole Gargaron’s curiosity. He had hoped that he might spy the realm of Hawkmoth. But from the base of the hill, a land of barren salt-washed sand and weed stretched off before them.

  They had reached the shore of what Gargaron knew once as the Claraville Sea, the great southwun inland ocean, the largest of all lakes of Cloudfyre. Though an ocean it were no more. The rivers that once fed it had long ago been rerouted for irrigation and thus her waters had dried up and the fishing villages that once thrived on her shores were abandoned. Now it were a desolate lonely place of salt and death.

  ‘What be this strange realm?’ Melai asked, a lonely wind lifting her hair.

  ‘What used to be the great sea of Claraville,’ Gargaron answered. He had never set eye upon it but in his travels his father had recounted many a tale about its sad demise. ‘It were brought to its knees by mismanagement. Greedy regional kings, landowners of the surrounding shores, stole her water source so that they might irrigate and maintain their lush gardens while the poor fisher folk lost their livelihood and starved.’

  Melai cast her gaze across the region before her. It were barren, dotted with islands and what she guessed were the hulls of ancient ships—vessels she’d only ever heard the trees of Thoonsk whisper tales about. But here were Thoonsk, she thought, if the Rjoond had ever had their way. Raped and ruined.

  ‘If I recall it correctly,’ Gargaron said, ‘the metal man I met in Autumn stated that Hawkmoth resides upon a place called Barren Hill, a spot conspicuous by some landmark known as the Dead Man. Barren Hill lies beyond Thoonsk and the Murdered Sea both. It be a safe bet that this were the sea it were referring to.’

  Thus they began their crossing.

  3

  Grimah stomped out across sand, and patches of crumbled and cracked salt crust that were dirty white but pinkish in places. Weeds that grew here were spindly and wilted and some shrubs lay entirely encrusted in salt. In the distance as they pressed on they spotted more wrecks of ancient lake trawlers, old wooden ships that leaned this way and that in their sandy, weed strewn graves. Much closer were the sun bleached and dormant skeletons of enormous lake monsters: snapping turtles; marine vipers; tusked water horse, some whose empty skulls dwarfed even that of Gargaron himself.

  There were also islands. Tall rounded toadstool humps of land that arose up out of the old lake bed. Some of these islands still possessed the remains of long deserted fishing settlements, crumbling shacks with rooves long eaten away by unbridled winds, and some, particularly where the bed of the lake proved far shallower, still bore crumbling wooden jetties jutting out across what would once have been waters teeming with fish and shrimp; nowadays they spanned naught but barren rock and sand and empty shells from long dead crab and cockle.

  It were upon one of these such islands that Gargaron and Melai set up night camp as the suns began to set.

  4

  Gargaron set a fire alight having gathered up kindling of salt crusted twigs and leaves, before laying on heavier, thicker chunks of deadfall. He did not mind that Melai sat back from the flickering, crackling flames. But as the flames took to the fuel and engulfed it he thought it odd that she looked so fearful.

  ‘What be your concern?’ he asked her as he sat down, pulling both his great sword and the hilt of Hor’s hammer close beside him. (If there were bandits about they would have nothing off him without a fight.) ‘The fire does not seek you.’

  ‘Fire be the mortal enemy of Mother Thoonsk,’ she told him, ‘thus it remains my enemy.’

  Gargaron shrugged. ‘Aye, but in a way it is everyone’s enemy. It bears no loyalty to any save, I hear, the devils. Yet, for eons, folk have learnt to control it, and bend it to their will.’

  ‘Still, I do not understand why you would invite such a soulless demon here.’

  He frowned. ‘Why, for warmth. And if I had hunted some beast for dinner then fire shall have cooked it. Also, it be a social mechanism, a means for folk around which to socialise.’

  She laughed. ‘Now I know you fib.’

  He smiled, more at her laughter. ‘I fib not. A central fire will bring folk together at night, or during winter months. Banquets, special ceremonies, rituals. All may be had around a fire.’

  ‘Strange customs then.’

  ‘You do not utilise fire, I gather,’ he said. ‘How then would you keep warm
during cold nights in your Thoonsk? And do you have no need to cook?’

  ‘Much warmth and social communion and spiritual sustenance comes from our joining with our willow home trees. And have you not observed? I eat no thing that is dead or has been slain. I eat only of living plants as Mother Thoonsk has offered.’

  5

  The moons lit the lake bed, and the lake bed seemed to glow in a dreamy kind of elf-light. The night proved cool but the fire kept their little space on the island warm long beyond the witching hour. Melai though refused its warmth. She slept away from it, beyond the huge hump that were Grimah. And had her back turned to the giant for she could not stand to look upon his Nightface whose large eyes seemed constantly to watch her.

  She slept fitfully and dreamless and the night to her were empty and silent. All her life she had slept within her home tree at Willowgarde. At night she would sprout root and reconnect with it, and until dawn, while she slumbered, she would hear the protective voice of it conversing with other trees, would hear their secrets passing back and forth across Thoonsk; she would also hear the owls and the howler bugs and the tooting frogs and the hunting turtles snapping and splashing. An entire cacophony of sound had filled her woodland during its wee hours. That first night away from Thoonsk, on that little island, she had never felt so alone, so exposed, so isolated, and when her limbs sprouted root they had nothing with which to connect. She wept alone under the moonlight while the giant and his steed slumbered without trouble.

  6

  The following day they came across first a stone fort situated on yet another island. It looked but the ruins of a castle, ancient and salt layered. And to pass by it closely were to see tortured remains of folk preserved by salt within.

  Later, at midday, when the warm wind off the lake bed threw sand grit and dead crystalline insects at them, they passed by an island situated to their north where Gargaron slowed his steed at the sight of a peculiar spectacle; one Melai had never set eye upon before. She watched Gargaron pull out his spy glass and put the object in view.

  To her it looked like a huge pile of skulls. She asked what it were.

  ‘A Creep Mound,’ he told her.

  ‘Creep Mound? I have naught heard of such things.’

  The absence of a ghost raven guarding the mound intrigued Gargaron. Though did not surprise him. It were most likely dead. ‘It be an object we would do well to steer clear of. For it marks the region of some terrible illness.’

  ‘Illness?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Could it be to blame for all the death we have seen?’

  Gargaron shrugged. ‘Anything be likely.’ It occurred to him then that the entire realm these days it seemed like a Creep Mound. The dead piled up daily around them.

  7

  An hour later they arrived at the remains of an old ocean trawler. They had spied it from a distance, and like the castle, it had remained a conspicuous lump on the horizon until, the closer they drew to it, it had taken on a more defined shape.

  Unlike the castle however it were not encrusted in salt. Suggesting that perhaps it had sailed these parts long after the castle had been abandoned.

  Gargaron pulled Grimah to a halt, studying the vessel where it lay bogged in the weedy sand, its starboard hull tilted groundward.

  ‘This ship be cursed,’ Melai murmured. ‘Do you not feel it? Why do you stop?’

  ‘There may be resources to pilfer.’

  A lively breeze whined at them through the ship’s wooden hull.

  ‘I would rather we press on and leave it to its ghosts.’

  Gargaron felt her consternation. And sensed something further. But not from Melai. An odour. Some smell wafting from the bowels of the ship. And when he saw a face watching them through one of the portholes he tightened his grip on his reins.

  It came out at them then. One first. Then another, and another. Three cursed and crusted folk, with little flesh left on their bones; clad only in tattered robes and leather boots. Their rancid briny stench wafted at Gargaron on the breeze, and Grimah whined and fought against the pull of the reins.

  ‘Take us from here!’ Melai screeched.

  Gargaron finally set Grimah into a gallop as the skeleton folk rushed at them, bones clicking, jaws chattering and snapping shut. One wielded a mace, the other two were equipped with swords.

  They chased Grimah most of that day. Whilst they were not fast across ground, they were persistent, and chased and chased, until one by one… they fell into the hard packed salt. And did not rise again.

  By late afternoon the distant horizon began to spike up with some far off line of mountains, snowcapped and jagged. But any notions that this dead-sea wilderness stretched all the way to their foothills were soon interrupted by a vast shore line forest, and soon Gargaron and Melai and Grimah had left the ghosts of Claraville behind them and were roaming through grassy green hills.

  THE WITCH

  1

  NEAR end of day they crested a rise and saw northways’n’east the land dipping down into a shallow vale, to what looked to be a running brook, and beyond that lay a tall tree covered hill poking into sky like the hump of some great sleeping beast.

  Gargaron pulled Grimah to a halt and both he and Melai stared wide-eyed at the scene before them. There were a cottage they saw upon that hill, nestled amidst the trees, and an enormous statue, (the Dead Man, Gargaron guessed) towering into the sky perched at hill’s flattened summit. But the most heartening and intriguing aspect were the wandering livestock: goat and deer. And the presence of birds flitting from tree to tree. And the sounds of bugs twittering, cheeping, whistling.

  Gargaron recalled the words of the mekanik. “We must traverse beyond Thoonsk, and cross the Murdered Sea… Not until Melus and Gohor again hang directly over our heads shall we reach Barrow Hill upon which the Dead Man sits and watches all. There, in his cottage, Master Hawkmoth resides.”

  So, we are here at last, Gargaron thought. ‘Do you see this?’ he asked. ‘Do you hear it, Melai?’

  ‘Aye,’ the wood’s nymph replied. ‘Does life flourish here?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Gargaron said. ‘We can only hope.’

  2

  Gargaron took Grimah down grassy slopes toward waters of the brook. Something of a canoe listed peacefully upon water’s surface, strands of black algae clinging to its sides like witch’s hair.

  Red crabs wandered the stony shore. But hundreds of them also lay face down, or belly up; some of them with legs still kicking pointlessly at the air. A murder of ravens skipped through the stones, pecking remorselessly at the dead. But they too had a number who had succumbed and lay, with their feather’s sodden, rotting at water’s edge, tugged at gently to and fro by the mild current.

  The sight were a dent in Gargaron’s hopes—perhaps this Hawkmoth had not found a way to counter the blight after all.

  He had a mind to shoo the ravens, to flip over the toppled crabs for their own salvation. But he knew better now. What had stricken the rest of his realm had begun to stricken these water dwellers. Pond skaters and frogs and fishes and salamanders all. None spared. All dying or dead. And as Gargaron and Melai drew closer, the stench of rot came to them, thick and pungent and cloying.

  Melai clapped a hand over her face, Gargaron coughed and spat. Grimah snorted nervously and for a time put in a fight, refusing to step near these fetid waters.

  Gargaron urged Grimah on with a gentle heel-jab to his ribs, and a determined ‘Yar!’ Grimah reared up on his hind legs, squealing. Melai screeched and her wings beat in a reflexive response.

  Gargaron made to push Grimah forward when at last he spied the object of his steed’s consternation. And it made Gargaron haul his mount to a standstill quick smart.

  A water hag watched them. She lay very still. Half submerged, her face and one shoulder free of the rippling brook. Her sodden hair hung in straggled clumps, her lips had withered, her brown teeth grew with green moss and yellow rot, her sunken eyes held a bl
eak opaqueness, yet appeared to glow with a faint magical green witch light. A hole in her neck, ragged flaps of skin doing almost nothing to hide it, swarmed with black beetles that nibbled at the lips of flesh and when she realised she had been spotted she appeared to grin.

  ‘Back up, I warn you,’ Melai commanded Gargaron, who had not moved since laying eye on the hag; he had rarely seen one such as she, and were fascinated. ‘Back up,’ Melai urged again.

  As Gargaron took heed the hag attempted to move.

  ‘She comes for us!’ Melai hissed.

  Though all the hag succeeded in doing were lolling over. As if whatever life left to her, were swiftly waning. She continued to watch them though, most of her face now claimed by the brook, her stringy hair caught on the flow, the beetles in her neck drowning. The witch light in her monstrous eyes fading like sunlight beyond a storm.

  Gargaron pulled Grimah back up grassy slopes. Steadied him. Settled him. ‘Be fine, Grimah,’ he spoke soothingly into his ear. ‘Be calm now.’

  3

  They traipsed across vale, tracking the course of the brook, hoping to find a fairer waypoint to traverse. They located one further down where the belly of the brook shallowed upon a bed of smooth stones.

  Crab dead littered the banks here too, and frog dead floated with naught but legs poking above water’s surface. Carrying Melai and Gargaron, Grimah hurried across—crab shell crunching beneath his gigantic hooves, rotting crab guts squishing out across the wet stones.

  Ahead of them now, deer and goat roamed, watching Melai and Gargaron and steed approach; and birds swooped and soared, and crickets and cicadas chirped and hissed in the grasses and shrubs. It were overwhelming to Gargaron’s senses, to have been caught in a vacuum without such sights and sounds of animal life for many days. He quickly forgot the dead crabs and frogs of the brook, and felt his eyes watering and were glad Melai sat in front of him so that she could not see the tears on his cheeks. He felt salvation were close at hand. He felt certain now this sorcerer really had uncovered the secrets of the doom.

  Still, hope turned to confusion at the sight of many a dead folk poised in a most peculiar fashion. ‘What be this?’ he wondered aloud, frowning. He had not noticed them from his previous vantage point on the adjacent hill. He had taken them for shrubs or stunted trees.

  ‘This be the work of the Dead Man,’ came Melai’s voice. ‘Do not look upon it.’

  Gargaron frowned. ‘Oh, and tell us what you know about it?’

  ‘I have learned many secrets from the trees of Willowgarde. The Dead Man sits, they say, on Haitharath’s hill. Rumours tell of folk matching its stare through sheer curiosity, and to their doom. For, sooner or later, folk who stare at him be not free to avert their eyes, and by some invisible force their eyeballs are sucked from their skulls. And dark roots grow from their legs and tether them to the earyth where death eventually visits them, an awful painful death perpetrated by the Dead Man as his arms reach out across the hill from where he sits and scratches out their innards.’

  The Dead Man statue towered into the sky where it stood at summit of hill. It were both impressive and ghastly, hunched and goggle-eyed, and although it were side-on from Gargaron’s and Melai’s point of view, its head and chin were turned in their direction and no matter where they roamed on that hill it seemed always side-on to Gargaron and Melai, and always it watched them.

  It were a true conscious effort for Gargaron to keep his eyes from it. Though he scoured the hill, taking in more than a hundred doomed folk dotted here and there, apparently rooted to earyth, torsos rent open and chest cavities emptied.

  It occurred to Gargaron that they had been deliberately left for intruders to look upon. As a warning. Keep Away. For why else would this sorcerer have left such an abhorrent spectacle on his doorstep.

  Gargaron heeled Grimah and winding amidst both dead folk and living livestock (that Dead Man always watching) they took themselves up hill.

  4

  The cottage on the plateau sat amidst trees that Melai claimed were enchanted. They possessed mouths. And clawed arms. And large red unblinking eyes like those of the narwhales Gargaron had seen as a lad, hauled in by the sail-luggers, barbed on fishermen’s harpoons upon the bleak cold seas of Yissoonensk.

  As Grimah approached, the mouths of these beast-trees opened, bark parting in creaking juddering movements. They began to wail. The birds took for the skies. The sounds of cheeping bugs died away. And deer and goat fled into the sparse hilltop woodland.

  Grimah halted and Gargaron dismounted, and standing where he were before the cottage, keeping his distance from the moaning trees, he called out above the din. ‘Sorcerer Hawkmoth? Do you hear me? I be Gargaron Stoneheart of Hovel and with me I have Melai Willowborne of Thoonsk. You sent your metal men with an invitation for us to join you. Hear me now, be you at home?’

  He cocked his head, listening for a reply, squinting, straining his ear as the trees howled about him. He were intrigued by the size of the cottage. He had never met Hawkmoth but had once or twice in his days come across sorcerers who were of a species of tall folk emanating from the realm of Corsares On Hunn. Perhaps Hawkmoth were one of such folk for this cottage, while not on a scale of Gargaron’s own in Hovel, were by the looks of it, large enough to permit even he comfortably.

  ‘Sorcerer Hawkmoth?’ Gargaron called again. ‘Do you hear me?’ He glanced around at Melai. He had not voiced it but a worry he’d had on their approach began to pick at him: what if this Hawkmoth had succumbed to the blight. For all Gargaron and Melai knew, the sorcerer lay dead and decaying inside this cottage (or elsewhere) and they were too late in learning what possible secrets he’d uncovered.

  Gargaron surveyed the beast-trees. Their wails had reduced to soft growls but a number of them had uprooted, were shuffling toward them on twisting, cloddy roots. Mouths with wooden fangs gaped at him. Red eyes glowered. Branches with curving spiked claws reached for him.

  ‘Sorcerer Hawkmoth?’ Gargaron called once more. ‘Do you hear me?’ He felt uncertain whether or not these creatures were game enough to attack. He and Melai were certainly outnumbered. He withdrew his sword and approached the cottage’s front door. Stooping to reach it, he rapped the knocker. As he did, numerous eyes that had, until then, been burrowed deep inside the door’s dark wrinkled woodwork, snapped open and glared at him, yellow and aglow; a peculiar mewling sound seemed now to rise from the door itself.

  How many enchantments must this sorcerer throw at us?! Gargaron thought irritably. Ignoring the eyes and the mewling, he reached again for the knocker but this time a black tongue darted from an unseen slit in the wood and curled about his arm, followed by another that whipped out and coiled tightly about his neck; both drew him with inexplicable force toward the door, pinning him there against it. A swarm of small flying critters then besieged him, arriving without warning in a cacophonous mass from some mystery origin. Gargaron initially thought them enormous hound-flies. Alas they turned out to be a swarm of squealing woodland pixies. Climbing through his hair and clothes, wriggling through his ears, pinching him, scratching him, digging their claws into his skin, cackling, keening, screaming.

  He heaved himself backwards from the door, the pair of tongues holding him finally releasing their grip. He ambled about, yanking pixies from his clothes and hair with his free hand, tossing them aside, swinging his sword through the air. Yet still they came, in immense clouds. Melai had unslung her bow, had nocked several arrows, but firing into the swarm would have seen Gargaron punctured. Thus she stayed her hand.

  Suddenly a booming voice erupted from the slate roof of the cottage above. ‘Away, all ye stinking critters! Away with ye now!’

  At once, as if in fear, the black pixies flew off in droves, taking for treetops where they alighted and gibbered and squealed and fought one another madly.

  Spitting pixie sweat from his lips, dabbing welts and scratches on his face and neck, Gargaron staggered back until the slate roof came into view
and there at roof’s edge, flat upon her belly, her head jutting out over the guttering, lay a strange woman.

  5

  She both smiled and glared at Gargaron and Melai and their mount. She had black hair and pointed chin and eyes that betrayed her somehow, as if she had much to hide. And while her face were pale as moonlight, she had black fingers that gripped roof edge with glistening black claws. She grinned as they gazed up at her, her shifty eyes darting back and forth between this giant, his nymph, and their horse. ‘I have been waiting for ye, I have.’

  From where Gargaron stood back near Grimah, he watched her; two or three pixies still knotted in his hair, buzzing and cursing and squirming about. Melai whispered, ‘We have been duped. This be some witch luring us to our deaths. There be no Haitharath here, I feel it. We need turn and flee.’

  To which the strange woman replied, ‘Witch? Ha! Don’t be so silly, little nymph of the forest! I am but the good sorcerer’s wife, I am.’

  Gargaron maintained his frown but bowed his head ever so lightly, holding his sword now at his side. ‘Well then, glad to make your acquaintance. I am Gargaron Stonehea―’

  ‘Yes, I heard ye names when ye bellowed it out, good giant,’ she said still grinning, still lying there at roof’s verge, although now she had her palms propped under her chin, resting there on her elbows, as if enjoying this byplay.

  ‘Right then,’ Gargaron said, ‘what be your name then prey tell?’

  ‘Eve,’ she said simply. ‘Short for Evehnyer Dawnraider. First and last of my kind.’

  Her eyes stayed on them, and she did not move and for a time no-one spoke. Then after some moments the woman left the roof. Her feet and legs rose behind her like a scorpion’s tail and curled out over her head. Then she lifted her torso up with her hands and pushed herself over lip of roof, feet-first.

  She landed like a spider, on all limbs, and for a moment from where she crouched she gazed up at them as a hound might. Then she scampered for the door.

  Gargaron backed up involuntarily, tightening his grip on his sword. Something be amiss here, his mind’s voice told him. Be wary.

  6

  At door of cottage the woman pulled herself to her feet and here Gargaron and Melai took in her full height. First impressions suggested she did not belong here. Though, while certainly a tallish woman, the cottage were obviously built for someone of even greater stature than herself, for barely at half the door’s height did she stand.

  She cast her guests a shadowy over-shoulder grin. ‘Why don’t ye both come in? I have ripe, crisp apples inside. And cheese. And fresh baked bread.’

  Gargaron realised the beast-trees were all retreated and fallen silent. Their eyes however, continued to watch the newcomers with great suspicion and mistrust.

  As for the pixies, they remained in treetops, like a colony of bats, squealing and chittering. And those left knotted in Gargaron’s hair, untangled themselves finally and one by one flew off.

  The woman, Eve as she had introduced herself, unlocked the door with an enormous metal key shaped in the fashion of a fish bone. She ushered them forward with her black hands and black claws. ‘Come,’ she said, smiling.

  Gargaron and Melai remained where they were. ‘I do not trust her,’ Melai whispered. ‘Nor do I,’ Gargaron told her. And to the woman he said, ‘I hope you do not think it rude when I ask, but where be this sorcerer Hawkmoth? It were he, after all, who summoned us here. Not you. And I would prefer to get this out of the way here and now before we follow you inside. We have had to overcome much to get here and I would like not to jeopardise all our hard work at this juncture. I am sure you understand.’

  ‘But of course.’ She grinned. ‘How remiss of me not to explain.’ She eyed him closely, her eyes narrowed. And she said nothing for a moment, as if brewing up some tale in her mind. ‘Hawkmoth Lifegiver… has but already departed. Yes. Almost… two days gone. He had no choice but to, ah, leave early, you see.’

  Creases formed in Gargaron’s brow.

  ‘Why, ye do not believe me, giant?’ she rasped, still grinning.

  ‘Forgive me,’ Gargaron said, ‘but the current state of things be none too conducive for swallowing tall tales.’

  ‘Tall tales?’ She cackled. ‘If there were one for tall tales then, why, surely it would be a giant.’

  He did not share her joke. He remained stone faced. ‘Where be the sorcerer Hawkmoth?’

  She eyed both he and Melai for several moments.

  ‘Where be the sorcerer?’ he demanded once more.

  Eventually she spoke, grinning. ‘Alright, allow me to confess. I have but nailed down his wrists and ankles and have splayed his innards. Alas, do not fret, he still lives, but remains none too mobile. And oh, perhaps none too talkative either since I have relieved him of his tongue. But I am sure he’ll listen to all ye have to say as I have kindly left his ears where they are.’

  Gargaron eyed her coldly, adjusting his grip on his sword. Melai were right, he thought. This be a witch. And she has lured us here to what end?

  This Eve cackled again. ‘I see now it be yee who speaks falsehoods, Giant. For ye swallow tall tales rather naturally, and I believe ye did tell me otherwise.’

  ‘What are you playing at?’ Gargaron demanded angrily; beside him Grimah had begun to grow unsettled, looking about, its neck raised, stepping hither and thither.

  Eve turned fully to face him. ‘Ye want Hawkmoth?’ She pushed the door open; its hinges squeaked and she beckoned Gargaron and Melai forward. ‘Well, inside cottage he be.’

  As if to confirm this, a distant grizzled old voice appeared to sound from within: ‘Send them in, Eve, and for Soor’s sake, bolt the door behind you.’

  The doorway lay dark and ominous.

  Gargaron frowned. ‘Hawkmoth?’ he called. ‘Be that you?’

  ‘Who else would it be, I ask?!’ came the reply. ‘Now, stop dillydallying and come on in. We have much to discuss.’

  Gargaron frowned. Something were not right here, something about that voice, something he could not pinpoint.

  ‘So, giant,’ said this Eve, ‘tell me. Do ye wish to come in, or would ye rather remain out here? It matters not to me but hurry and have your minds made up ’fore yonder storm blows this way. For soon we shall have a tempest roar down upon us that will suck ye up into its angry belly as effortlessly as it will ye little wood’s nymph, and I personally would prefer to be indoors when it strikes.’

  Both Gargaron and Melai, and even the two heads of Grimah, turned northways to where a dark broiling mass had blotched out entire sky.

  Melai gasped. ‘What by Mother Thoonsk be that?’

  Gargaron had not seen its like for some years but knew it as soon as he saw it. Its rumbling blue-grey cloud banks, the wild flashes of forked shard-light in its belly, its ghostly arms pulling it across world, the hateful demon face at its curved front. ‘A vortex storm,’ he said gravely.

  ‘Aye, an angry breed, for sure,’ Eve said. ‘Now hurry, for I do not wish to remain out much longer. Join me inside and away from its reach. Or… spend the night here beyond shelter with naught but its fury for company.’

  Gargaron looked again at the storm and saw the dark clouds so much closer now; Grimah snorted, his ears shifting back and forth, unsettled. Gargaron gazed at Melai. ‘I do not trust her,’ Melai told him again. ‘Why does the sorcerer not show himself?’

  ‘I have no answer,’ he admitted.

  ‘We saw a cave some miles back,’ Melai reminded him. ‘Perhaps we ought return to it, huddle there for night.’

  They could hear it now, the storm’s dull roar, and sounds of trees being torn from ground, growls of cracking thunder, screech of fierce gales. ‘Aye, if we left now we may just make it.’

  ‘Well?’ came Eve’s voice, a sinister tone underlying it.

  Gargaron spoke not. Instead he hauled himself up into Grimah’s saddle and made at once to gallop away. Yet, what he, his Nightface, Melai, even Grimah, all failed to detect
were the hulking entity standing at their backs. A tall white ghostly thing with hollow grey eyes and very few other features to its form. It opened its mouth, a vast cavernous mouth… and into it Gargaron and his companions were pulled.

  7

  Torrents of rain swept up the valley and roared against the cottage, inundating gutters, flooding garden and stables, gushing down into the vale. Day’s heat were smothered and fingers of cold snaked up hill on the back of squealing gales, chilling the air, creeping into cottage like a ghost’s breath.

  Shard-light crackled and thundered, illuminating the night in searing bursts while the storm front ate the hilltop woodland, bending trees, twisting them, uprooting many and more, plucking them into sky, roots and all, and off they went, end over end over end until the storm mass gobbled them up.

  For many hours Gargaron and Melai lay unconscious upon a rug spread across a paved floor. A presence floated above them. Eve. She hovered like a dark cloud, horizontal, gazing down at their faces. Her own face were split in two, down the middle from forehead to chin; a red proboscis had uncurled from her mouth and had snaked up inside the giant’s nose. She shut her eyes, she shivered in her delight as she drank of him. She savoured the connection with his mind.

  When she were done she retracted her proboscis and turned it upon the woodland nymph, forcing it up the nymph’s small nostril. And here Eve shut her eyes and fed again.

  Nearby, in the shadows, loomed the peculiar grey entity that had swallowed giant and nymph and horse. Watching… watching.

  8

  When Gargaron and Melai eventually awoke, the storm still screamed and roared, and they saw Eve standing near shutters peering out into night. Outside, trees crashed against the rigid stone cottage, shaking windows, rattling crockery. Some fell and smashed into tiled roof. Eve looked around and saw Gargaron and Melai and she grinned. ‘Come and watch,’ she urged them, shouting above the roar of storm. ‘Nature’s fury. Wondrous to behold.’

  Gargaron though could not move a fist. He felt somehow bound to floor. As if some witch’s spell of atrophy held him there. He groaned as he rolled over, trying to ascertain exactly where he were. When he tapped his Nightface it had nothing for him, as if it too had been influenced by some spell.

  Melai were none better. She opened her eyes but they shut on her. She moved her arms in attempts to hoist herself to some sort of seated position, hoping this may rouse her. But halfway to her objective, her senses failed her and she slumped back to floor.

  It were Gargaron who helped stir her, protectively pulling her to him as he might have dragged his daughter from a pack of Hoardogs, rubbing her limbs, stimulating blood flow, talking to her, urging her to stay awake. They slumped against cottage wall together, too weak to stand, watching Eve who crouched at shutters, gazing away into storm.

  9

  For a long while nothing changed. They sat, out of storm grip but assaulted nonetheless by the sounds of its rage and destruction. The cottage heaved and creaked and more than once Gargaron feared the roof were about to lift free and break apart and tumble off into sky.

  ‘What do you want from us?’ Gargaron heard himself asking. His voice were weak though and went unheard above howling gale and drumming rain. He looked about for his pack, for his sword and his hammer hilt, for Melai’s bow and quiver, but saw them nowhere.

  Eve eventually left her position by the shutters and both Gargaron and Melai believed they heard her say, ‘What say we enjoy some supper?’

  They watched her as she moved to a side room. And here, through the doorway, they saw her disrobe. She had a peculiarly shaped body, as if she had been constructed rather than grown. The tops of her arms didn’t quite meet at the shoulders; a short metal bar connected the two. The same could be said of the tops of her legs; a metal bar holding her legs to her hips. And there looked to be another that held her head to her chest. She possessed four breasts (a pair on her chest, the second pair below them) but below her sternum her stomach were open and she appeared within to be a mixture of wires and cogs and cords and clockwork.

  When she emerged from the room she were dressed in a light shawl despite the chill in the air. Her feet were bare. Yet the greatest change was in her face. Somehow now she looked, younger, attractive, not old and menacing. With fair skin and fair hair and youthful eyes. As if she had not only changed her clothes but had swapped out her face.

  She moved away to a kitchen and returned carrying a platter of apples, cheese and bread. She placed this on a large wooden table. Bursts of shard-light illuminated the shuttered windows. Wind howled. Eve approached Gargaron and Melai where they still had not moved, huddled together against cottage’s stone wall.

  She knelt before them, her knees against the floor and her hands placed upon her thighs. Here she regarded them, a motherly look upon her new face.

  When she spoke, she did not try to compete with the storm howl, yet somehow both Gargaron and Melai heard her clearly, as if she were but talking at their ear. ‘Allow me to firstly apologise,’ she said. ‘We did not get off to a great start. That were partly my fault. But truth is, ye did not trust me and I did not trust ye both either. Yet while ye slept, and forgive me but it were essential, I delved into ye minds. At least now I know ye be who ye say ye be.’

  Eve left them, disappearing into kitchen. She returned carrying in one hand a stone mug sloshing with some sort of steaming liquid, and in the other hand what looked to be a twisted, knotted shrub branch growing with pungent yellow moss. Again she knelt, offering mug to Gargaron, and moss to Melai.

  ‘What poison be this?’ Gargaron hissed.

  Eve smiled. ‘Portoluca Tea. And Leanavale Moss.’

  Melai eyed Eve closely, intently; she had watched her keenly stroll away to kitchen, had watched her return.

  ‘And laced with toxins, I take it,’ Gargaron grunted. ‘I’ll not have it.’

  ‘Nor will I,’ Melai said coldly.

  ‘Please yourselves. But I shall leave it here in case you change your minds.’

  Eve moved away, and Melai grasped the moment. She vanished, the trick her kind employed to evade attacks by predators alien to Thoonsk. One moment Melai were cradled in Gargaron’s arms, the next she were upon witch’s shoulder, jabbing her thorny green thumb into witch’s forehead before another word could be spoken.

  The witch fell prone instantly, mug and moss both dropping from her grip, the mug smashing against stone floor, hot tea splashing over Gargaron’s feet and legs. Eve’s eyes rolled upwards, she knew no sound, no sensation, and knelt there unmoving.

  REVELATIONS

  1

  THE vortex storm raged on. The sound beyond the abode were deafening, as if the womb of Xahghis, Afterworld Goddess of eternal pain, had ruptured and her spawn were spilling free. Every now and then some uprooted tree slammed against cottage walls. Every now and then some unfortunate beast were sucked up and dashed against the steel shutters across the windows, its death howls heard loud and terrifying. Rain flurried in, flying horizontal across the room. Shard-light kept blasting the heavens, thunder shook the ground.

  ‘She tells the truth,’ Melai said from where she sat against wall; green witch-blood dabbed on her thumb, and green witch-blood still seeping from the pockmark in Eve’s forehead, though slowly clotting.

  ‘She delved into our minds?’ Gargaron asked, looking about, wondering what the witch had done with Grimah.

  ‘Aye. I believe she lived out our entire lives through our memories. She be the wood’s witch, Renascentia, born again as Eve, First and Last. Haitharath’s loyal companion. And wife.’

  Gargaron frowned. ‘Wife?’ He looked across at Melai, questioningly. ‘Are you certain?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Honestly?’

  ‘I read her blood. Unlike minds, blood fabricates no lies. Why does it intrigue you so?’

  Gargaron shook his head, perplexed. ‘A sorcerer and a witch… mortal enemies. But married? My, what bizarre tale shall my ears be pri
vy to next?’

  ‘How about this? Eve were once killed. Haitharath returned her to life.’

  Gargaron frowned at Melai. ‘Killed? As in she were dead?’

  Melai frowned. ‘What other way could I be meaning?’

  He watched Melai keenly. ‘There be many forms of death, woods nymph. Like those skeleton folk we witnessed on Claraville. There be also ghouls. Zombeez. But she be none of these.’ He pondered this news further. ‘In what manner did her death occur?’

  ‘She were but a handful of years into her marriage with Haitharath when it happened. She were out one morning beyond some nearby hills collecting Strange Fruit; a fruit she dries and turns into a tea that enhances ones dreams. That morning she stumbled unawares upon a den of what her blood memory calls ghost wolves. Once they detected her, they set on her and tore her to shreds.’

  ‘She were torn to shreds?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘And the sorcerer brought her back to life?’

  ‘Such as I have learned.’

  How? Gargaron wondered. Reanimation were the domain of necromancers and nothing they kissed back to life could sit and hold a conversation; their best efforts returned naught but mindless, soulless ghouls. Gargaron watched Eve who lay there still, her eyes rolled up into her brow. This woman, this witch, if Melai were telling it true, had died… and returned to world of the living. By Thronir, could my Veleyal, my Yarniya, have been returned to life? It were suddenly a conundrum in his mind. He had delivered his girls to the Great Precipice at World’s End when for their salvation, for his own salvation, he could have brought them, had he just known, to this sorcerer.

  Melai went on with her report. ‘Haitharath left here two days past. He feared because he had received no word from survivors such as us, that his metal men had failed in their task. Thus he sets out in search of the witches of Vantasia, for he believes it be they who we have to thank for the blight, for they have cast a great curse upon Godrik’s Vale.’

  ‘The witches?’ Gargaron asked intrigued, turning his head and casting his eye upon Eve.

  ‘Aye. He believes the Harbingers, the Dark Ones as you call them, were spawned by witch’s demons, that they spread poison on the air and contaminate our rivers and oceans. He claims the shockwaves that rumble occasionally across the Vale are the result of witch’s Boom weapons.’

  ‘Never heard of such things.’

  ‘Neither have I.’

  Gargaron let out a long breath as he took this all in. He were still digesting the news about Eve’s reanimation, and now this revelation about the witches, this revelation about demon spawn and Harbingers and so-called Boom weapons. It were much to take on board. It pushed Eve’s death from his thoughts for a moment. Why would the witches set out to destroy the Vale? Why would they orchestrate such widespread killing? He knew of their centuries old conflict with the sorcerers. But rarely had it boiled over and affected so many others. He could not fathom it.

  2

  He stared long and hard at Eve, thinking that once she awoke he had a good many questions to put to her. ‘Be she well?’

  Melai took a while to reply.

  ‘Melai,’ Gargaron prompted.

  She sighed. ‘Her state has me baffled. She should have roused by now.’

  ‘Let us hope she does and soon,’ Gargaron said, ‘I have much I wish to ask her. Did you happen to discern what she has done with Grimah?’

  ‘I gather he has been stabled,’ Melai offered.

  Gargaron were relieved to hear it.

  ‘Along with as many deer, goat and bird as she were able to muster before the storm hit,’ Melai added.

  ‘And our belongings? Our weapons?’

  ‘Housed safely away to be returned to us on the morrow.’

  He pictured a witch in possession of Drenvel’s Bane; he did not wish to imagine the ramifications.

  3

  The vortex storm passed by morn. By then Melai had long been asleep, troubled and restless though it were. Gargaron had promised her he would stay awake, keep guard, make sure no harm came to them. But he too had fallen to slumber.

  Melai awoke first, and with a start; Gargaron’s Nightface watching her. As she rose she gazed about suspiciously and saw the witch were nowhere to be seen. She sat for a while, simply listening. For sounds of the witch. For anything. All were quiet.

  She found she could move now without hindrance. Gone were the leaden feeling in her limbs. She moved to the shutters and gazed out at the world, for the first time laying eye on the carnage leftover by the storm. Trees lay scattered down the slope of the vale. Sticks, branches, twisted twigs like broken bones. Leaves, thousands upon thousands upon thousands, a sodden carpet of green, brown, grey. And endless carcasses. Goat and deer, hare and fowl, innards torn free, ribs exposed, gathering slugs, and flies too as thick as Gargaron’s eyeballs. A mass of carcasses strewn down slope to brook. The raw, acrid smell of meat and guts and spit and scat and the cooling breath seeping from their lungs and the remains of tree and branch drip, drip dripping with water.

  Melai took herself from the view and saw Gargaron rolling over, waking, stretching.

  He opened his eyes and looked about. He could smell sizzling bacon. And frying eggs. And steaming tea. (Alien smells to Melai who thought they were but the stench from the dead and murdered beyond the abode, and it did nothing to water her mouth.) He saw Melai and sunlight streaming through the shutters and there were the wondrous sounds of bugs and birds from beyond the cottage walls.

  For a strange moment Gargaron thought he were but home again, on a midsummer morn after midsummer storm. Back in Hovel. With all the delightful animal sounds playing out of Summer Wood, the air cool and damp and carrying the odour of rain, and the delicious smells of breakfast wafting from the kitchen. For a moment he even thought he heard Yarniya singing, and Veleyal playing with her toys.

  Eve appeared then, carrying bowls of food to the large oak dining table. Porridge as first course, then eggs with bacon and sausage and black pudding followed. And fresh blended juice of orange, apple and fennel to wash it down.

  Gargaron felt wary about eating when Eve offered him a seat at the table. For one, he remained suspicious of her, and two, he felt uncomfortable eating while Melai went without.

  ‘Sit giant,’ Eve commanded, ‘your friend here will not leave this cottage hungry.’ She strode off outdoors, and like inquisitive children, Melai and Gargaron gathered at one of the rear windows (Melai perched upon the sill itself, and Gargaron stooping to see) and off went Eve to a large greenhouse and from there she steered a wheelbarrow filled with living plants, either housed in large ceramic pots, or their roots were wound about old logs or around the carcasses of what Gargaron thought looked like dead badgers, and returned to cottage.

  Melai remained quietly impressed that this Eve knew how to feed a forest nymph such as she.

  ‘Well, don’t just stand there,’ Eve said. ‘Fill ye bellies. Ye have a long day ahead of ye’selves, ye ought te know.’

  They sat; Melai dwarfed by the huge oak dining chairs and propped up by cushions; and Gargaron finding the oak chairs a bit of a squeeze for his large girth. Yet they both touched no food.

  ‘Eat,’ Eve implored impatiently. ‘It not be poisoned. If I’d wanted ye both dead I would have done it in the wee hours when I had ye both under me spell.’

  So… they ate… and in silence. Melai eating directly from the plants as she were accustomed. Standing in her large seat and biting off small red Fayngul bulbs that popped deliciously in her mouth. Tearing off chewy toad lichen. Slurping up then chomping down mouthfuls of soft, succulent Cravet pondweed. Melai asked between mouthfuls, ‘How have you sourced all of this, pray tell? It be wonderful. It be as Mother Thoonsk would have provided.’

  Eve had no more answer than this: ‘Meself and me dear Hawkmoth have both lived long and know much. We have communion with all manner of sentient soul. Even ye Mother Thoonsk. Although, we call her by another name. Nethusoonsk.’


  Melai frowned, curious. Mother Thoonsk indeed did bare that name, but as far as she were aware, it were known only to her children and it were forbidden to speak it to outsiders.

  ‘My dear Hawkmoth has had a long association with many entities of the world. Particularly those of nature and the natural world. Thus he has fostered an enduring friendship with the entity Thoonsk for almost a hundred years.’

  Aye, Melai thought, Haitharath indeed be friend of Mother. She ate the remainder of her breakfast in silence.

  4

  Beyond the windows, the suns were rising, red streaks of warm light poking through the bare vortex-blasted hillocks. Birds tweeted and twittered and darted about the now leafless trees.

  ‘Anyhow,’ Eve declared with that grin of hers, ‘a productive night, I declare.’ She still bore the young face that she had swapped into many hours before. ‘Little did we speak yet much did we learn of each other, I feel.’ She eyed them. ‘Do you both agree?’

  Gargaron sat, sipping hot tea, the searing brew warming his mouth and innards. Personally he had chosen not to delve into the mind of the witch for there were some folk his kind did not parley with in such a manner and witches were one of them. Witches were sly and cunning and had been known to feign certain states of being in order to trip up an unwary giant. Gargaron had heard many times the stories of the Seven of Morgane, the seven giants who had set out to put an end to the Morgane witches who had been killing and pillaging and spreading rot-sickness across the realm. When the witches were found they were said to be close to death, weakened and unconscious. It were said that some mysterious illness or foe had struck them down. In order to learn what, the seven giants joined minds with them not knowing it were a trap. Of the seven who set out to take down the witches, seven returned… with their minds corrupted. Returning as naught but Morgane thralls. Before they were ultimately clobbered to death by giant warriors, the seven had ransacked and destroyed a dozen towns and villages and slaughtered upwards of nine hundred innocent souls.

  So, Gargaron had stayed clear of the unconscious witch. Still, he pondered what Melai had gleaned from the connection she had made and thus he replied, ‘Aye, much have we learned.’

  Eve sat and joined them. Sipping tea. Eating eggs and spinach and crab meat. None spoke for a time. Then as if to make conversation Eve eyed Gargaron and said, ‘I must say, I have been intrigued by the visage on the rear of your skull, giant. It watched me most closely while you slept, I will say.’

  ‘As is its purpose,’ Gargaron said. His Nightface were often an endless topic of conversation for people who had spent little time in the company of giant folk. He found it most tedious. ‘Though, let me say, I am intrigued by your own visage. When we first met I would swear that you wore an entirely different face.’

  Eve’s eyes strayed to her eggs as she ate. ‘Aye. A fortunate result from a tragic happening.’ She did not elaborate.

  Yet Gargaron were keen to hear it. ‘Your death?’ he asked.

  She looked up at him once more. ‘Aye. My death.’

  Silence fell over the group.

  Eve smiled, feeling the discomfort of her guests. ‘I were attacked and torn asunder, you may have learned. My face were ruined. Yet my good husband found ways to restore my looks. And made it so that I can now choose my face.’

  Gargaron watched her closely for a time. After a while he said, ‘I have naught heard of a slain soul being brought back. Not to such an unsullied condition. Tell me, what strange magic might have returned to me my dear departed daughter?’

  Eve smiled, studying Gargaron for a few moments. ‘Ye have lost much, giant, I know. So too Melai of Willowgarde. We have all lost much. But how long has my dear Hawkmoth known his arcane secrets? Even he has not divulged that to me. It be something he keeps to himself. But I see the question in ye eyes, giant. Had those lost to ye been brought here upon their death, could they have been saved and regifted with life, brought back, as you put it, to such unsullied a condition? I cannot answer that. Only Hawkmoth may give ye an answer ye seek. As for myself, all I know is that I am here, reawoken after death. The method, to me, remains a mystery. So let us leave it at that.’

  Gargaron did not wish to leave it at that. But if Eve were fibbing about her knowledge as to the secrets of her reanimation then it were obvious she were not going to tell him. With a sigh Gargaron resigned himself to asking the sorcerer when and if he caught up with him.

  5

  Once breakfast were done Eve fetched a map from a side bench and lay it upon table top, spreading her hands out across its surface, flattening out its creases. A delicate fingernail traced a straight line above a meandering roadway heading westways. ‘Hawkmoth departed here two days gone, taking with him his war-steed Razor, and traveling upon his remaining zeppelin. This were his projected route. And this be his projected destination.’ She tapped a remote area of the map along its western fringe. ‘This be Vantasia inside Dark Wood, the witch realm. Travel here by zeppelin may take as much as a week. Except, if one were to become grounded, of course.’

  Gargaron smiled ruefully. ‘Aye, if he flies his zeppelin through one of the shockwaves that have been assailing us then his journey will be cut short, I assure you.’

  ‘Well then, travel by horseback will indeed take longer,’ Eve said. ‘Though Razor be as swift a horse as I have ever seen. Anyhow, I will shortly post Hawkmoth news of ye arrival. Once he receives word that ye set out to trail him, he will delay his push westways, put down his zeppelin and make camp to wait for ye to catch him up.’

  ‘Others have come before us?’ Melai asked. ‘Other survivors?’

  Eve shook her head in jerky movements. ‘Sadly, as yet, there have been none but yeselves. We remain hopeful that others be out there still forging their way here. Hawkmoth detected many of ye. And, as far as I learned, he managed to dispatch word or transport to ye all.’

  ‘Many of us?’ Gargaron asked intrigued. ‘What were his method, if I may ask? To trace us. I used the Skysight in Autumn Town yet found no-one alive anywhere.’

  Eve smiled. ‘My dear Hawkmoth possesses many a strange and fanciful ability, giant. I do not profess to understand how they work. Except, as I said, he detected many of ye out there, alone, wandering. But enough talk of this,’ she said. ‘Time slithers ever onwards, and I must speed ye both on ye way.’

  6

  Gargaron and Melai took turns soaking briefly in a mighty tub of fresh fire-heated water. And once dressed, feeling clean and revitalised, Gargaron found Eve beyond the rear of cottage with their belongings packed together on the ground. He were relieved to see both his sword and Drenvel’s Bane lying across his pack.

  Gargaron now took in his surroundings. The world out here beyond the confines of the cottage dripped with water, and the trees of the hill had almost all been torn free from their perch. Most had been flung away to distant places it seemed. Perhaps still twirling inside the vortex. Others, and there seemed no end to them, were scattered and thrown every which way, twisted and matted and knotted and uprooted. The walking beast-trees that had threatened Melai and Gargaron the day before, those not ripped free and swallowed by storm, ambled about like lost souls. The hill were also scattered with the corpses of deer and goat and bird.

  ‘I made to corral as many of them as I could,’ Eve told him, as she busied herself, unfolding a peculiar little contraption of wood. ‘Alas, many were already spooked before the storm hit and would not come. I saved what I could.’

  Those who had been spared the storm’s wrath chewed at grass amidst the trees. And birds played about, pecking at screepers that chirruped and screeched. The pixies though were nowhere to be spotted, in hiding or vanished.

  ‘I would say you did as good as you could given the circumstances,’ Gargaron told her. ‘Be my steed safe and well?’

  She pointed. ‘Aye, and currently enjoying some oats.’

  Gargaron saw stone stables, a building attached to the northwun wall of the cottage;
no doubt where the good sorcerer Hawkmoth, had kept his own steed. There he spied Grimah through the open doors on a bed of straw with his two snouts deep in a trough.

  ‘I thank you for housing him. And us.’

  Eve simply nodded and kept on with whatever she were doing.

  ‘And for gathering our belongings.’

  She looked around at him. ‘Ye mean, thank ye for not helping myself to them.’

  He shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Giant, I am not in the business of relieving folk of their possessions. Even if they carry such famed relics as Drenvel’s Bane.’

  He nodded. ‘So, you recognise the weapon?’

  She laughed. ‘Of course. It were forged with the aid of my foremothers after all.’

  Gargaron pondered this. ‘Your foremothers? Truly?’

  ‘Aye.’

  A thought came to Gargaron for the first time since arriving here. ‘I don’t suppose you happen to know its secrets?’

  She looked around at him with a frown. ‘Secrets?’

  ‘Aye, its secrets. For it be but a hilt without hammer. Legend states that it be a magical item, that to wield it correctly is to bring its hammer-head into existence. Yet I am starting to think that someone has run off with its other half for all the use I can get out of it.’

  She looked at him squarely. ‘Ye know not how to wake it?’

  ‘Aye.’

  She laughed wickedly. ‘Oh, this be priceless. As soon as I saw it yesterday when ye arrived I took ye for some fearless warrior.’

  He sighed. ‘No, I be a simple hunter. Naught more. I took Drenvel’s Bane from a sacred temple in my village where it has been housed for many a year. If my village druids knew its secrets then they took them to their grave.’

  Eve searched him at length. And went back to her work. ‘I guess wielding this weapon may aid ye on ye quest.’

  ‘If I could wake it, yes. By its tales, it ought help its wielder win many a fight and fight off many a foe.’

  She gazed now distantly at the cobbles. ‘And help protect my dear husband.’ She peered up at him once more.

  ‘Yes. Provided I can learn its secrets.’

  ‘Well, I should think Skinkk’s blood be your key. My Mothers have long told stories of ancient weapons forged for mighty warriors. But as far as Drenvel’s Bane be concerned, Hor the Cutter signed a pact with the weapon, his blood mixed with that of a Skinkk, joined in battle while his fist gripped the hilt.’

  ‘Skinkk’s blood? You think this would help with any who wield it?’

  ‘Provided he were a giant.’

  Feeling a renewed sense of hope that he may have unlocked the weapon’s secret, he asked, ‘You would not happen to have any here would you? Skinkk’s blood. A witch and sorcerer living together must surely brag a collection of such things.’

  She laughed. ‘I’m afraid, giant, ye assume too much. We are not in the business of hunting Skinkks. Nor collecting parts from our animal cousins.’

  He sighed. ‘So, where might I source some Skinkk blood then?’

  ‘Why, from a Skinkk of course.’

  Gargaron nodded at the mild rebuke and meant to say more but thought it best now to shut up. He watched Eve go about her business. When she were done, the contraption she had been working on looked something like a bizarre wooden boy, barely standing more than the height of Gargaron’s knee. He possessed large, yet expressionless eyes and a small carved nose and small carved lips. He were gangly as a twig. And at first he did not even seem alive.

  ‘This be a Windracer,’ Eve told Gargaron, kneeling and holding the “boy” upright, steadying him on his little feet. She tipped a phial of orange liquid to a reservoir fashioned like a small scooped receptacle in the rear of the boy’s skull. A thin stream of liquid coursed around the reservoir that had been etched in a spiral pattern around the boy’s face and body. As the liquid ran down, slowly the boy seemed to breathe with life. ‘It shall carry our news to Hawkmoth.’

  7

  Melai, fresh and dressed from bathing, came out into the rear yard in time to see the Windracer boy standing, independent of Eve, looking about like a curious child, looking up at Gargaron, looking around at Eve, looking at Melai who stood no taller than he. Eve took his hand, and the boy looked at her as a child might a mother. Then she spoke to him, and in no tongue that Gargaron understood; yet it were one Melai had heard the trees of Thoonsk occasionally speak. A woodland language.

  Take this message to my dear Hawkmoth. Tell him survivors have at last found their way to our cottage; Gargaron Stoneheart of Hovel, and Melai Willowborne of Thoonsk. They will depart here shortly to trail him. Tell him that there has been a Vortex storm, that I stabled our beloved animals but that some have perished. Tell him that I love him. And that I wait here alone, for his return.

  Gargaron and Melai watched her. As she stopped speaking she kissed the boy on the cheek, and stood back. Here the wooden boy looked up at her once… then he turned and ran. Quick as the breeze. Heading westways, over the back of the hill and gone, out of sight in moments, running like a ghost, swift, effortless, blurred.

  ‘What a marvel that would be,’ Gargaron murmured to himself, ‘to run so quick.’

  Eve fetched Grimah from the dry interior of the stables. Though Grimah proved particularly stubborn. Either because he did not wish to be separated from his lovely oats, or he would not be drawn from the stable by one such as her.

  Gargaron took the reins and Grimah came forth tentatively, looking about, his ears back, weary, alert. Gargaron gently touched both his snouts, soothing the beast. ‘Grimah, ease up now,’ he said softly. ‘Ease up. All be well.’

  ‘He be a beautiful creature,’ Eve said admiringly. ‘And has a healthy appetite. He made sure there were naught left of the apples I gave him for his supper.’

  Gargaron looked from his horse to witch. ‘I thank you again for your hospitality, Eve. You have been a light in all this darkness.’

  ‘And yee pair, lights in mine,’ she said, nodding both at him and Melai. ‘Ye company has been most welcome. And shall be again if ye choose to return this way after your mission.’

  ‘We will be glad to accept it,’ Melai told her warmly.

  Gargaron handed Melai her bow and quiver and her small sack of plant provisions, then fixed scabbard across his back and sheathed his great sword. Once done, he hefted up his pack and strapped it to saddle, hoisted himself onto Grimah before reaching down in order to haul Melai to Grimah’s shoulders.

  Melai hesitated, turning instead to Eve. ‘Why do you stay here?’ she asked her. ‘Why not come with us?’

  Eve smiled sadly. ‘Lying over this hill, and the fields and pastures that immediately surround it, be a veil of sanctity, a powerful enchantment put in place many years gone by my Hawkmoth. He wished to create a home here that animals could retreat to, a place they could be safe from poachers, hunters, collectors, traffickers, smugglers. A place that sick or injured animals might come to, to either pass on in peace or to heal and find their strength away from predators.’

  She looked about at the torn down trees, where the carcasses of deer and goat and bird could be seen through wilting foliage and broken branch and the layer of damp discarded leaves that seemed to cover everything. ‘On the day of the first Boom shake, my Hawkmoth were away yonder visiting, Faeryth, a dear old elf who lived a solitary existence in a tree abode. Hawkmoth says when the shake swept across the land Faeryth and his pets died instantly before his eyes. He raced home here fearing my safety but found me and the animals alive and unaffected. Yet, on observing a number of goats perishing once they moved from the safety of this enchanted area to the outside, well, Hawkmoth warned that I may follow if I were to do the same. And as he carried out inspections of the nearby villages of Gollahnt and Somersut, he found all dead. Thus I remain here, kept alive I believe by his enchantment, while by all reports the Vale dies around me.

  ‘By mystery, magic, or fate, you pair, like my Hawkmoth, have p
roven immune to the curse ravaging our world. So here, for now I wait and hope ye be successful in turning this blight around.’ She placed her palm gently upon Melai’s cheek. ‘Go now. Travel swift and sure.’

  Gargaron reached down and helped Melai into saddle.

  ‘One more thing,’ came Eve’s voice. ‘To verify my Hawkmoth’s identity, and for him to verify yers, be sure to ask him this question: Should the storm winds fall upon Ostamare, and the rains not cease, where ought I to take shelter?’ His answer will be as follows…’

  VARSTAHK

  1

  HILLS rolled away for a number of miles, all stripped of their trees. They looked like chins of giants, rugged with the stubble of tree trunks snapped and broken and twisted and torn. Corpses of wild goat, deer, fox hounds, littered the sodden grasses.

  A lake, listed on Hawkmoth’s map as Hoakensdeep, could be seen far northways’n’east, its waters sparkling under morning sunlight. But directly westways’n’south lay a realm known as Varstahk, a mysterious country of which Gargaron had heard many a strange and fantastic tale. If Eve were to be believed, it were also the first major landmark Hawkmoth were to have flown over in his zeppelin.

  And thus Gargaron and Melai and their two-headed steed turned toward it.

  2

  By midday the hills had flattened out to sandy scrubland where tall rock spires stuck from earyth like the petrified tongues of buried gods, poking out into cloudy skies, licking the heavens. As they became more numerous, long eerie corridors ran down between each one where spindly trees grew directly from their sheer surface. It didn’t take long for Gargaron to notice these trees were actually on the move, slowly traversing the looming rock walls like the great starfish of Loovss over giant coral beds, worming roots shifting with imperceptible slowness, gobbling at moss whose green feathery hairs looked more like minute arms with tiny fingers and hands snatching at itsy-bitsy elf bugs that flew by.

  Between many of these rock spires, serving as both floor and pathway on these long winding corridors, were worn paving stones between which wilting blue-flowered weeds grew. Gargaron couldn’t help but notice that the pavers were covered in a soft carpet of elf bugs. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands. Dead. Or writhing, dying.

  Gargaron recalled what Melai had gleaned from Eve, that the Dark Ones he had spied twice now (Harbingers as she had named them), spread poison on the air and contaminated the rivers and oceans. But this still confused him. If the atmosphere were somehow sullied with their deathly toxins, then why had he, Melai or Grimah not yet succumbed? For, here under full daylight, in all its heartless morbidity, were once again its apparent process at work. Great killing and great dying. And yet he, Melai, nor Grimah felt its bite.

  They pushed on through this land of rocky scrub and tall rock sails. Great birds circled on thermals, giving Gargaron hope that, like he and Melai, some things seemed immune to the blight. A dark mass of swirling grey cloud clogged southern horizon. Tail of the vortex storm he guessed.

  As the rock fans began to dwindle, their pathway of paving stones seemed to widen. And there were glimpses every now and then, through trees ahead, and beyond bumps and boulders in the earyth, of some great remnant of civilisation.

  Soon scrubland ended abruptly where an ancient square moat lay bordered by a stone rampart. This moat had long lost its water, filled now with weeds, trees, shrubs. Beyond, lay the sprawling ancient empty city of Varstahk, ruined now for two thousand years.

  They crossed its moat via an ancient bridge of stone, littered with bones of long dead birdlings. But scattered here too were with the recent dead: lizards, scrub crabs, giant scorpions, fire spiders. They stepped down a row of wide stairs, to the flat of the city whose elevation lay lower than the surrounding lands.

  They pushed out into this once thriving metropolis of Varstahk. It proved an eerie, unsettling place. Wind moaned through old battlements, and whined like spectres through towers that soared high and crumbling. At ground level, old temples, domed constructions of stone, grew with giant fig trees, and gritty winds swirled through their lonely deserted interiors, wailing, crying, groaning.

  Gargaron felt as if the eyes of a thousand ghosts were watching he and Melai. Although, he had to declare there were no sign of anyone squatting in this place, as if it were cursed, as if life (living or undead or otherwise) were not welcome here. As if it prevented anything taking a foothold.

  Towers blocked sunlight, thus casting much of the city in cold blue shadow. Towers stood brown, almost purple. Wind kept moaning, kept swirling, kept nibbling at Melai’s hair, tugging at Gargaron’s clothes, pulling at Grimah’s mane.

  ‘What be this place?’ Gargaron heard Melai ask.

  ‘This be the ancient city of Varstahk,’ he told her. ‘Giants lived here. Cahtu they were though. Undead armies that rolled north on their mighty Temblahs, crushing, killing, pillaging. Their empire spread out of Cahtahk, their birth lands. They constructed many cities like this across the Vale.’

  ‘Cahtu were not undead,’ he heard her say.

  He eyed her, surprised that she, sheltered within Thoonsk all her life, might have some perceived knowledge on this subject.

  ‘Legends tell us they had no heart,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Legends tell us no such thing,’ she said.

  ‘We have heard or read separate legends then. They were undead.’

  ‘They were not,’ she insisted. ‘I grew up hearing stories of elder days from Mother Thoonsk.’

  Gargaron sighed. ‘Undead or no, this were their home for a millennia. Now let us leave this silly argument at that.’

  3

  They pressed on in silence, the echo of Grimah’s hooves bouncing back at them, and bouncing back at them again. All else were silent save for that and wind. It howled high above them in the lonely heights of the empty, blue-sky space between towers. Gargaron gazed over his shoulder; so far away now the moat they’d crossed to enter this place, so far and almost vanished beyond their sight.

  They came upon what Gargaron claimed were a death pit, a cavernous square pit cut down into earyth. It were filled with stone spikes. ‘Folk and animals would be thrown in there to the amusement of the Cahtu,’ he informed Melai.

  ‘It were filled with acid,’ Melai corrected him. ‘Not spikes.’

  ‘No, acid were the bathing pits of the Cahtu.’

  ‘It were not.’

  He sighed. ‘Well, it matters not. What matters is getting across.’

  The pit swallowed the entire way forward for eighty feet. Its sides bordered by enormous towers, blocking any possible side route. With no bridge spanning the hole Gargaron and Melai were stuck.

  ‘We’ve no choice but to turn around and search for another avenue,’ Melai said with a heavy sigh.

  So they did. It took them hours searching. Encountering dead ends. And toppled ruins that blocked paved streets. Reluctantly they were forced indoors, inside the old dark ruins themselves. Here they were wary of bandits or other unsavoury beasts that may have taken up residence within. Which they found—though all dead were they. Tusked bears. Giant badgers. And a stench of rot carried heavy and rank through the darkened halls. At times the stench were so thick and cloying they could do naught but turn back or hurry Grimah forward, choking and coughing. Other times the interiors were so lightless that Gargaron were forced to fire up his lantern. But corridors seemed to follow no logical path, and many came to abrupt ends at ancient bone laden altars where enormous glaring statues stood.

  They found doorways into courtyards or onto vast wind-blown fighting arenas. Weeds, ivy, and trees grew direct from rock walls. They trailed corridors that bent backwards, or descended mighty stairways into dark dank dungeons that swirled with the rank stench of dead things.

  Finally, upon a terrace they stopped to take stock.

  ‘This place be an infernal labyrinth,’ Gargaron said irritated. ‘We may spend the rest of our days here.’

  Melai, seated upon Grimah’s s
houlders, looked about. Above them naught but blue sky drifted with peaceful white cloud. Melus and Gohor were almost directly overhead now, casting warm light where earlier there had been naught but shade. Around them the city sprawled out in all directions. They could no longer see rock-sail nor hill from which they’d descended to reach this place.

  To their right the slanting roof of a temple climbed to dizzying heights. Gargaron studied it closely. ‘If we were at a higher vantage,’ he said, ‘we might plot a way forward.’

  ‘Do not tell me you wish to scale it,’ Melai asked. ‘It be far too steep, you’ll gain no purchase.’

  ‘I may look like a lump but I might surprise you with my agility.’

  She wore a grave look.

  ‘Melai, tell me another way and I shall gladly take it.’

  She looked about, searching, searching, hoping some missed access way or path would become apparent.

  4

  Gargaron hung his pack on the pommel of Grimah’s saddle, then gripped the edge of the roof with his huge hands. He hoisted himself up, lifting one foot onto the roof before the other. He crawled up a dozen feet before the roof beneath him began to sag.

  He froze, Melai shouting, ‘It’s shifting beneath you.’

  It were not only shifting he realised. The ancient tiles were cracking, splintering. And there came suddenly a disturbing sound of something groaning below him, ancient beams protesting under his weight. The area around him began to sink. And he realised it almost too late. The roof were collapsing.

  He shuffled backwards just as a mighty slab dropped silently away into darkness, a shaft of sunlight following it down. He slid back to the terrace where Melai were watching wide-eyed from Grimah’s shoulders and it were several seconds before they heard a distant crash against the floor far, far below.

  ‘Hmm,’ Gargaron said reflectively, ‘that were… interesting.’ He glanced around at Melai. She almost laughed. ‘What?’ he said at the look on her face.

  ‘Interesting?’ she said. ‘Is that how you’d put it?’

  He shrugged, shaken, gazing up at high, sloping roof. ‘Maybe I ought to try another section. Where I trod were probably a weak spot.’

  Melai sighed. ‘No. Lift me up. I’ll climb. I be far lighter than you.’

  He frowned. ‘But your arm.’

  ‘I have another.’

  ‘And should you lose grip and slide down?’

  ‘I have three good wings, and one good arm, I shall manage.’

  He were surprised in that moment how fond he’d grown of her. Such a tiny little thing yet she carried such a mighty heart. In some ways she reminded him of his dear Veleyal.

  He hoisted her up. ‘See what you can see then. But if your arm grows sore―’

  ‘I shall manage,’ she said sternly.

  Their eyes met. He smiled. ‘Of course.’ He lifted her to roof and watched as she carefully made her way around the rent caused by Gargaron and on up steep slope of roof. She crawled with her feet and one arm, her bad arm tucked across her chest, her three healthy wings flapping to give her buoyancy.

  By the time she’d come to a stop she were but a mere speck of a thing way up near the apex of temple. She clung there, wind tugging at her, steadying herself before looking about.

  Gargaron watched her point at something but could not hear her words, just a muted, distant sound of her voice flurrying about on ragged wind gusts. He saw her point to several positions, talking all the while.

  Soon he watched her making her way carefully back down.

  ‘I heard nothing,’ he called out to her as she neared him. ‘What were you saying?’

  ‘I see a path,’ she claimed, ‘an avenue.’ She pointed. ‘Our way out. Come.’

  Gargaron hoisted her from roof’s edge to Grimah’s saddle and he lead steed down the worn stone stairs on Melai’s instructions. They reached another terrace which circled the temple, and down another flight of steps. This took them into what may once have been a garden filled with exotic flesh eating plants that legends promised the Cahtu were so fond of. Through these now barren gardens, Melai took them, claiming that if she had seen it correctly, their path would lead them to an avenue that would lead them through the final stretch of Varstahk.

  Sure enough, through an archway with downward poking spikes and guarded by a stone gargoyle with half its torso crumbled away, they strolled out upon a wide paved road that seemed to cut the city in two. Eastways, Melai claimed it lead to a central square, to stone spires the Cahtu once hung their war enemies from. And westways it lead to outer city gates. Gazing in this direction Gargaron could now see distant forests beyond city boundary, and, beyond that, rocky crags of limestone poking into sky.

  ‘You have done well,’ Gargaron said with a relieved and exhausted sigh. ‘You have done well indeed, dear Melai.’

  SKINKK

  1

  CLEAR passage out of Varstahk however proved not such an inevitability. Half a mile on, the avenue on which they walked, narrowed between a pair of temples outside which stood immense stone sentinels in the likeness of the Cahtu, standing tall and commanding, each with their dire arm reaching almost to earyth, while their remaining arm grasped a war hammer.

  Yet, what Gargaron and Melai saw lying there at their base stopped them in their tracks.

  Camouflaged against the stonework were a sleeping lizard. A lizard whose girth and bulk looked greater than that of Gargaron’s. Actually, the more Gargaron looked at it, the closer they got, the more he feared this lizard were three, perhaps as much as four times his own size.

  ‘A Skinkk,’ Gargaron murmured cautiously, Grimah snorting nervously. ‘A winged one, at that. We must be careful.’

  Melai frowned. ‘Skinkk?’ she said. ‘My kind call them dragons. And all are winged.’

  ‘Not where I am from,’ Gargaron informed her. ‘Skinkks skitter around afoot. Though that be irrelevant, for by whatever name they come, wing or no, they are cunning and deadly.’ He watched it carefully, hoping, lethal critter though it be, that it were succumbed to whatever poison or sickness had been killing all else.

  He took his spyglass from his belt and surveyed the beast. He could spot no sign of respiration. ‘It may be dead,’ he murmured. And the notion forced a distant thought into his mind: Drenvel’s Bane. Eve suggested Skinkk blood may bring it to life.

  2

  They waited there, watching it, considering their options. The city gates were tantalisingly close now. So close in fact that they could actually hear rustle of leaf and branch in woodland beyond. Though where the Skinkk slept, it blocked nearly the entire width of road: its long neck curled around toward the sloping wall of the southwun temple, its long spiked tail stretched toward the north. Its wings lay over its forelegs. If they proceeded, there would be little room for Grimah to sneak by without treading on it.

  Still, if it were dead… ‘What do you think?’ Gargaron asked. ‘Should we chance sneaking by it? It breathes not.’

  Melai were quiet. She wished to be nowhere near this dragon. Rjoonds were the enemy of nymphs, or so she had grown up to learn, but dragons were the destroyers of woodland realms like Thoonsk. Her willow trees had told tales of Gone Days when dragons had unleashed their fires upon Mother Thoonsk. How Mother Thoonsk’s children had blackened and bubbled under their thunderous firestorms. Horror tales she wished never to hear again. And did not wish to witness with her own eyes.

  ‘We must go nowhere near it,’ she said at last. ‘It feigns death.’

  Gargaron held the beast in his spyglass for a prolonged period. Its chest did not rise nor fall. It were still. ‘All signs point to it being deceased.’

  ‘It feigns death. I feel it. We turn around and find another way.’

  ‘Turn around?’ Gargaron would have laughed had he not been trying to maintain an air of quiet. ‘What route would you have us take, Melai? This city be a rabbit warren. We got ourselves lost simply reaching this point. We find ourselves lost again we might just
consign ourselves here till the end of our days.’

  She did not answer. But being in such close proximity to this dragon chilled her.

  Gargaron studied the beast’s scaly face. Spiked horns jutted from its head. Fangs ran down both sides of its great and hideous mouth. And all the while its lizard eyes stayed shut. Skinkks were cunning beasts, he knew. If this one had heard them approaching, if it were not ill and succumbing to this blight, then in all likelihood it were lying there feigning death as Melai warned. Waiting, hoping for them to attempt a pass before it jumped awake and breathed upon them an explosion of flame.

  Gargaron imagined if Melai’s wing were well enough, she might take flight and soar beyond it, distract it somehow, enough time for Gargaron to sneak up on it and strike it a deathblow with his great sword. Extracting blood as it lay dying would make for far easier and safer work if he wanted to collect some to test Hor’s little hammer. And once it were dead there would be easy passage out of that place. He looked down at her where she sat before him on Grimah’s shoulders. ‘However we do it, we must think of a way to press on. To turn and follow our tracks back out of Varstahk and then skirt this city will add an awful amount of time to our journey.’

  ‘And to press forward at this point may end our journey all too soon,’ she insisted.

  ‘Still, find a way forward, we must.’

  Ears on both Grimah’s heads were drawn back. He would not stand still, though Gargaron implored he remain so, and quiet, least his clopping hooves wake the beast.

  Gargaron noticed Melai sorting through her leaf sling, whose vine-like branches clung to her like wiry tentacles. He wondered if she had heard him. ‘Melai, do you heed me? We cannot remain here and we cannot turn about.’

  ‘By the Drowned Angels, shoosh!’ she hissed at him. ‘Do you not hear yourself? I’m surprised you don’t wake the dead with that booming voice of yours.’ She gave him a scolding glance, this tiny little mouse of a creature staring him down. She returned her attention to her satchel.

  Skinkk continued to lie there, dead by all reports. Cool desolate winds continued to moan through Varstahk’s vast network of ruins.

  At last Melai pulled something from her bag: the small clump of dark wood Gargaron had seen her pack into her sling back amongst her home trees in Thoonsk. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked her. He hoped miraculously that perhaps it were some mighty dragon horn; he had heard of such items, ones that could command dragons, bepsell them.

  ‘You insist our only way is forward,’ she said shortly. ‘So here be our solution.’ She held the object out to him. ‘This be a monstrut hoegeth. House of Monsters. It be a holding of elfstar wood. It keeps dormant what you might know as Charon’s Children.’

  3

  Gargaron breathed in heavily, taken aback. ‘Charon’s Imps?’ He looked down at her as if she were but a demon seated there. ‘Impossible.’

  ‘You have heard of such critters then?’

  Charon’s Imps were stuff of myth and legend. Stuff of horror tales. They were said to lie dormant in deep, lightless ocean trenches off the mysterious Senoogras Isles. How Melai had come by them were a complete mystery.

  Their origins lay beyond Cloudfyre. Nine thousand years ago, during dominion of the Skinkks who ruled over Cloudfyre in those times, the Droplets of Charon, segments of a moon that legend said once orbited Cloudfyre, had crashed down through the atmosphere. These were times before the Joo Joons and Mookijuks and Forest Nymphs; before Sorcerers, and Oldwuns, and Wraiths, and Cahtu walked Cloudfyre; days when kingdoms such as Vonyael, and Liliyahd, and Skygarden, were yet to rise and fall; when clans such as the Witches of Nooin, the Elves of Highlanding, and the great Wraiths of Nightfall were yet to fight out their legendary wars; when even the eventual riders of the Skinkks, the Xerbs (all who died out when the dynasty of the Skinkks collapsed), were still to climb up out of the snowy wastes of Tunddera and tame these great lizards of Cloudfyre.

  As the Droplets of Charon thundered into earyth they had exploded, leaving craters as large as hollowed hills. But from them climbed Charon’s so-called Imps. Devilish creatures riddled with exotic star diseases. It were during these days the giants waged fierce battles against the Skinkks for control over Cloudfyre’s vast stretches of land. And it were the giants who believed that the Skinkks, in order to wipe the giants from existence, had somehow engineered Charon’s Imps. For, tiny though Charon’s Imps were, their effects on giants were devastating. Their simple presence were enough to have a giant keel over in sickness, and prolonged exposure meant his death.

  Giants however were not all who feared the Imps. When it came to Charon’s little devils, it seemed the larger the creature, the greater he suffered. The giants had thus questioned the idea that Skinkks were to blame for the emergence of these little star devils. For Skinkks perished far more quickly at their hand, and in far greater number; brutal, horrible deaths, mutating into grotesque creatures before their thumping hearts exploded through their chests.

  Sitting there gazing down at Melai’s casket, Gargaron prayed that she jested, or else he were like to swipe the object from her grasp before another word were spoken. ‘Melai,’ he said clearly. ‘This be a very serious claim. Tell me it be not true.’

  She gazed up into his eyes. ‘I speak no jest. You say we need press forward, well this be a solution.’

  He swallowed. She had never seen him look so worried.

  ‘Have you not encountered them in your travels?’ Melai asked him. ‘Charon’s Children?’

  ‘I have gone out of my way to avoid the places they are known to dwell. Do you not know the effect they have on my kind?’

  She frowned. ‘No. I know only that these things, whatever they be, from wherever they come, keep dragons away from Mother Thoonsk.’

  Gargaron breathed out long and heavy. Staring down at her, considering the way forward, but also the way back if they took that path. He breathed out again. ‘Very well.’ He gazed out toward where the Skinkk were still in slumber. The Imps would make him sick but would certainly kill the Skinkk. It seemed blood extraction and passage through the remaining stretch of Varstahk might become a viable option if he permitted Melai the use of te Imps. ‘Very well,’ he said again.

  ‘So, shall I proceed?’ Melai asked.

  He wiped sweat from his brow. ‘Yes, but I must remove myself. Retreat some distance. Though…’

  ‘Though what?’

  ‘Should I retreat and leave you here, then I would, by my actions, be putting you in mortal peril.’

  She shook her head. ‘That beast will not dare stray near me whilst I wield these things.’

  He eyed her closely. ‘Are you certain?’

  ‘Yes. Now, lower me down.’

  ‘And what of these star imps? Do they not ail your kind?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. I shall be safe. Now lower me and go. Quickly.’

  He cast an eye at the great Skinkk hoping it were indeed dead. Then he nodded. ‘Aye, then. Very well. But I shall leave you with Grimah.’

  ‘A bad idea,’ she said shortly. ‘He may suffer. Now lower me down please, before this dragon wakes up at the sounds of our procrastination.’

  Gargaron did not like this, but knew he had little choice. Melai were wriggling impatiently from Grimah’s shoulders and so he took Melai’s arm, and while she gripped her ominous wood clump, he lowered her to the pavers at Grimah’s feet.

  ‘Release them and be quick about it then,’ Gargaron said as he pulled Grimah about. ‘And if that dragon be not dead as you so claim, and awaken before you are done then, have no fear, I shall be at your side quicker than a sunflare.’

  She nodded, as if to say, Thank you, and with that he wheeled his mount around and took himself back two hundred paces, where he adjudged he ought be well beyond the influence of the Imps. Here he brought Grimah to a halt within the relative cover of a narrow corridor between temples, a low arched roof protecting he and horse from any possible air attack should this Skin
kk awake unto anger.

  4

  Melai tread forward as far as she dared. She halted her advance no more than twenty paces from the sleeping dragon and placed her monstrut hoegeth upon ground and whispered a short incantation. Upon her breath, a greenish mist flowed gently from her mouth and covered the object like spore. Nothing happened. She looked up and searched the dragon for signs of its stirring.

  It remained unmoved, its eyes ever shut.

  Melai lowered her head and closed her own eyes and again spoke the incantation that ought to have rendered her monstrut hoegeth open. Again, greenish mist drifted from her lips, layering the casket. Several moments passed. Before she heard a sound. But not from the casket. She looked up. The dragon were watching her, one eye open.

  5

  Melai would have turned and flown… had her wooden casket not then split open, letting out intense dark light that erupted at first in black beams cutting into blue skies, beams that rolled and curled like fog on a dark night. Then out they wriggled, small beasts, black as obsidian, clambering like rampant, mindless beetles from a bucket.

  Instinctively, they seemed to know their purpose, for they veered directly toward the sleeping dragon, moving like dark ghosts beyond a storm, like blots of dye on damp papyrus, leaving wafting trails of saturated ink on the air.

  Gargaron were glad he had retreated. Glad Melai could not see him. For instantly, though he were some distance from the Imps, he felt his vision blur, felt his eyes water, felt as if someone had pushed a blade through his belly and were turning it about. His head might well have been submerged in turbulent waters, suddenly washed back and forth, back and forth, the way he felt. He lay low against Grimah’s shoulders for fear he might tumble off, and while he grimaced and groaned he fought intense pain and mounting confusion to keep one eye peeled in order to hold Melai under his surveillance.

  The Skinkk were likely already weakened and in the process of dying before they’d encountered it, yet Gargaron were astounded at how quickly and severely the star imps affected it. For the Skinkk snapped up like a snake, shuddering, rearing back its head, letting out a pained howl. It tried to heft itself to its feet. But it stumbled and roared and toppled drunkenly onto its ribs. It moved to right itself, only to flail about, its legs jutting in the air, flailing, while its wings lay weakly, sickly, out across the pavers.

  Melai backed up, stepping away from the floundering dragon. She would not turn her back on it lest its apparent torture be some trick, lest its claws whip out and slice her in two the moment she let it from her sight. Her star-bugs pressed toward it, mindless, soulless, both jerky and fluid in their movement, multiple shards of dark light shooting out from them, jabbing the dragon’s scaly hide, puncturing it, drawing blood.

  The Skinkk managed to roll over, its legs now pinned beneath its weight. Its wings flapped wildly, attempting to lift its body upward, to free its legs. At last it managed to do so, and then it were standing. And in what seemed an enormous effort, the Skinkk swung its head round, roaring, omitting a mighty burst of molten fire across the pavers, completely drowning the star-bugs.

  Gargaron’s skin turned cold; Melai were in its direct path. She were two sunflares away from being engulfed by an inferno and he were utterly powerless to stop it.

  Gargaron tried to heel Grimah into a gallop, but his weakened legs could do naught but merely nudge his horse’s flanks. He tried yelling out, for Melai to run, for she had not budged an inch, had made no effort to fly nor flee in any manner. Yet his voice were raspy. And could not be heard. And as he watched, the roaring inferno came at her… swallowing her whole.

  6

  ‘By Ranethor!’ Gargaron gasped. ‘Melai!’

  But it were too late. She were gone, vanished beneath the wash of flame, incinerated in but an instant.

  Pure rage drove the Skinkk from the ground. It leapt into the air, flapping madly. Below it, in the same wash of fire that had immolated Melai, the darklings burned like embers. Yet, they were far from dead. They watched the dragon head for skies, watching it coldly with their burning flame-red eyes…

  Gargaron thought the Skinkk were fleeing. But it swooped up, circled, and screamed back down in a terrifying arc. It were aiming not at the Imps now, but at him.

  Gargaron yanked Grimah back just as the great Skinkk soared over the arch. Here the beast released a torrent of liquid fire that bubbled the stone, melting it, droplets splatting the pavers, scorching it, pockmarking it. The searing heat raked across both Gargaron and horse, Grimah rearing up, squealing.

  Gargaron tumbled feet-over-head from his mount and slammed into ground shoulder-first, grunting, the impact shoving his chin into his chest, but his momentum also rolled him back onto his feet. He removed his shield from his back and unsheathed his great-sword as huge blocks of the archway tumbled down about him; he were peppered with crumbling stone and brick, mortar dust clouding the air.

  He coughed and wiped grit from his eyes and in the confusion lost sight of his attacker. He squinted into the dust cloud, his eyes scanning the space between the temples above him. He saw the Skinkk not and feeling exposed he attempted a dash further beneath his shelter.

  As he ran, Grimah scrambled before him, and he heard Skinkk’s roar; he twisted around and saw it diving for him. He took evasive action, leaping across the debris scattered all about him, shoving Grimah through a temple doorway into what he prayed would be safe confines. Gargaron then hoped to hurl himself through the doorway after his horse, but he were out of time. He had barely a moment to drop to his knee and heft his shield over his head.

  A wash of liquid fire squirted down around him as the Skinkk soared by above. Gargaron’s shield took full brunt, liquid fire fanning out as it hit the shield’s surface.

  The Skinkk reared away, flapping upward as the star-bugs now turned Gargaron’s way. Gargaron hefted himself to his feet, but tumbled to one knee. To make matters worse, the Skinkk swooped on him once more, flame squirting wildly. This time Gargaron threw himself at temple doorway, only to stumble in the debris about him and come up short.

  An excruciating blast of liquid fire rained across his back.

  He roared in agony. It felt as though he had been torn open, his skin ripped aside, a thousand nails hammered into his spine and flanks. The Skinkk, weakened itself, crashed into temple ruins, sending down another shower of stone and dirt, assaulting Gargaron.

  The star-bugs marched onward. And above, the Skinkk regained its momentum, flapping away as if it had done its worst and were now off somewhere to rest or die. That would have been Gargaron’s wish, that those advancing imps had forced it to finally turn tail. Yet, what he did not know was that he had yet to see the last of it. For again it turned, and again it swooped on him.

  Gargaron were spent, his back and Nightface were aflame; the roar of fire like thunder in his ears. Yet he clawed himself for temple doorway, any attempt to get himself clear of peril. Though the star bugs were sapping his strength faster than he could move.

  He collapsed finally into the crumbled stonework strewn about him. And lay there panting, flames spreading across him. His sight were going, clouding over. His consciousness ebbing away. Before it all went black, he saw two things: Grimah. His loyal mount charging from temple confines, biting into Gargaron’s forearms, and dragging the giant across stone and brick to safety. And something else. One that confounded him.

  Melai.

  7

  She stood beyond the cover of temple. Firing a rapid volley of arrows up into Skinkk’s scaled belly as it swooped toward them. She looked so tiny, so ineffectual, beneath that beast, like a sparrow beneath a mighty bullhorn hound. Her heroic efforts however did little to ward it off.

  She flew toward Gargaron. ‘Stand, giant!’ she yelled. ‘Get inside!’

  But Gargaron could no more stand now than stop the stars from burning. She turned and saw the star bugs creeping closer and closer. And over her right shoulder came the dragon.

  She only had a
sunflare to make up her mind about what she should do? Flee, vanish again? Or stay at giant’s side. Either way, this giant would perish. And that being the case, did she want this world alone without him? Her answer were no. Thus she braced herself for a wash of molten fire that would consume them both.

  What she were not expecting were the sudden shimmering blue iridescence that filled the air about her, a huge domed barrier of light suddenly hanging over the ruins surrounding Melai, the giant and Grimah. Some peculiar phenomenon that seemed to ward off the Skinkk. For the dragon flapped its wild wings, arresting its momentum, avoiding the light as if it meant instant death.

  Here the Skinkk flew upwards, wheeled away dizzily, crashing into the ruins, an eruption of stone and brick blowing out from the impact, and the great dragon disappeared beyond top of domed temple, sliding down the opposite side, out of sight and sound.

  8

  Melai, confused, looked about; the unconscious giant beside her still aflame. She straightened, and something caught her eye. A tall figure, robed and hooded, striding forward with long wooden staff in hand, moving through the blue barrier like a ghost through mist.

  He strode toward her and she struggled to arm her bow but a wave of his spare hand saw the bow fall heavy from her grip. As he reached her he swung his staff around and Melai saw at its tip two faces, one above the other. The upper one female and beautiful as an angel, the lower resembling the face of some tortured demon, fanged and goggle-eyed.

  Presently, the eyes of the angel were burning blue and her jaw stretched open and from her mouth there erupted suddenly a roaring gale that swept across both Melai and giant, blasting Gargaron’s flaming body and extinguishing all flame in but an instant.

  ‘Rehouse your imps!’ this newcomer commanded Melai sternly, his voice deep and resonating.

  Melai were struck dumb by his arrival. He prompted her a second time. ‘Are you hard of hearing, nymph? Rehouse your imps before they do us all an illness!’

  She fetched her bow and backed away in the direction of the star imps. As she did she eyed the newcomer crouch to inspect Gargaron. The giant lay there huffing, huffing, huffing, as if near to death. Melai watched the robed figure dig his long fingers into Gargaron’s bubbling flesh.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Melai demanded, arming her bow and aiming an arrow at the back of the stranger’s neck.

  ‘What does it look like?’ he grumbled. ‘I am trying to save your friend’s life. Now lower your weapon and see to your imps. I should not have to ask thrice.’

  Melai did not lower her bow. Yet she wondered something. Could this be Haitharath? Friend of Thoonsk and protector of animals and husband of Evehnyer Dawnraider the witch.

  The picture did not fit the one she carried in her mind; the images she had taken from her willow tree were of a sorcerer who stood shorter than this one, who had less a head of hair and not much of a beard. This one before her stood, she judged, as tall as Gargaron’s chest (were Gargaron to be standing), and it were difficult to tell hair from beard, such a mass of it there were. ‘Tell me something, if you will, before I let you tend to him,’ she said. ‘Should the storm winds fall upon Ostamare, and the rains not cease, where ought I to take shelter?’

  He glanced around at her, only a small part of his face to be seen hidden there beneath the edge of his hood. Melai awaited the answer that Eve had promised the real Haitharath would provide. Finally he gave it: ‘In your heart, dear nymph. In your heart.’

  She turned, satisfied, and hurried away to her star bugs.

  9

  Hawkmoth Lifegiver stood and raised his staff, running it back and forth slowly above Gargaron’s spine. ‘Tayketh uff yar bernss,’ he said commandingly. ‘Tayketh uff yar bernss, mee seey.’

  A squelching sound could be heard along the charred, blistered flesh of Gargaron’s back. Peculiar pink sprouts grew up out of the burnt mess.

  By the time Melai had returned (her star bugs once more contained) she saw Gargaron’s entire back were knotted in white roots and the pink sprouts now grew with blue trumpet flowers that gushed black soot onto the breeze. Nearby, Grimah stood, sniffing the air, and every now and then, with both mouths, he nibbled gently at the giant’s ankles, as if hoping to illicit some response.

  ‘Be you well?’ the newcomer spoke at Gargaron’s ear, as if it were not a query but a command, an incantation.

  Gargaron’s breathing, Melai saw now, had settled.

  The stranger again spoke at Gargaron’s ear. ‘Be. You. Well.’

  Gargaron’s eyes came open. And he lay there looking about. Blinking. Unsure of his whereabouts. He groaned, and croaked, ‘Wh-who are you?’

  ‘I be Hawkmoth Lifegiver,’ he replied with a warm smile. ‘And glad to meet you.’ He looked around at Melai. ‘To meet you all.’ He surveyed the two headed Grimah as if curious by its appearance, but making no comment other than a So be it expression with his eyes.

  Gargaron frowned and eyed the hooded figure at length. ‘Hawkmoth?’ he groaned.

  ‘Aye. And you have suffered much, thus I urge you to rest.’

  Gargaron looked about, as if only now recalling what had happened here. ‘Where, where be that infernal Skinkk?’

  ‘The Devil Horn?’ Hawkmoth asked. ‘I have warded it off.’

  ‘Warded it?’ Gargaron looked relieved. But then his eyes widened again. ‘The imps?’ And coughing, he arched his head to search his immediate surroundings and saw Melai, his watery eyes falling upon her as if she were a ghost. Deep furrows dug across his brow. ‘Melai?’ He reached out for her. ‘Is that you, pray tell?’

  She stepped through the rubble to his side and took his hand. ‘Aye, it be me.’

  He blinked at her, having trouble believing it. ‘But… but I saw you engulfed by flame. H-how is it you stand here?’

  ‘I managed to fly from its reach before it swallowed me,’ she told him. ‘A nymph’s vanishing tricks can be used for more than just catching someone unawares.’

  He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, watching her as a father might look upon a lost daughter. He reached up and pushed damp hair from her face with his long, thick fingers. Then he rest back against the stonework, grimacing in discomfort.

  ‘Right then,’ Hawkmoth said. ‘Rest here awhile. I must see to the Devil Horn. I fear it be not long for this plane and if it needs it I must help in its passing.’ He squeezed the giant’s shoulder. ‘I shall return when business is done.’

  10

  Gargaron though refused to sit and wait. He had not come this far to lose the sorcerer so quick. Besides, though he were injured and in pain, wee thoughts of Drenvel’s Bane niggled him. If I could but get some share of Skinkk’s blood…

  Against Melai’s protestations he struggled to his feet, using Grimah’s stirrups and then reins to help haul himself from rubble to saddle. He grimaced and groaned and the trumpet flowers embedded in his back, gushed with more soot.

  He were obviously not aware, Melai assumed, that his clothes were close to peeling from his frame. The rear portions of his jacket, the tops of his pants were burnt to flakes, held to him by virtue of the fact that they were melted into his flesh. But he would hear nothing from Melai, saying only that they must keep up with the good sorcerer. And he pulled her onto Grimah’s shoulders and they clip-clopped after Hawkmoth.

  11

  They passed into the bowels of the temple, by the doorway through which Gargaron had heaved Grimah during the Skinkk attack. Inside, dead bats and geckos littered the ancient paved floor. Great spiders swung, deceased, in ruined webs. Paintings of the Cahtu lined the walls with their tusks and bug faces, with their arachnid-eyes and dire-arms.

  Hawkmoth strode out before them. When he heard the clip-clopping of hooves on the floor he cast a glance over his shoulder and saw the nymph and the giant mounted upon that twin headed steed. ‘Giant, I believe I told you to rest,’ he said sternly as he pressed onwards through gloomy temple interior.

  Gargaron grimace
d. ‘Aye, you did,’ were about all he could manage. Though on his next breath he managed, ‘I ne-need its blood.’

  ‘Blood? From the Devil Horn? What on Cloudfyre for?’

  Gargaron grimaced. The world washed before his eyes. ‘Blood… pl-please, could you…’ He panted and his strength and awareness failed him.

  A tall arched doorway, sheathed in a band of golden sunlight, delivered the small group from temple into cloudy sunshine and onto a wide courtyard, where, crashed against the opposite ruins, slumped the Skinkk.

  It lay with its head resting against a crumbled wall. It eyed them as they approached. It attempted to struggle to its feet but its movements were clumsy now, exhausted. When it attempted to snort a wash of liquid fire nothing spat out but gobbets of molten droplets and acrid black fumes.

  Hawkmoth ushered Gargaron and Melai to stay back. Gargaron by then were slipping in and out of consciousness, slumped there against Grimah. The sorcerer went forward on his own, his hand up and his staff slung behind his back, non-threatening. ‘Be calm,’ he said hushed to this creature he had called a Devil Horn. ‘Be calm, oh great Rayen.’

  The Skinkk made no movement. Simply watched the sorcerer with its dying eyes.

  Hawkmoth made his way to Skinkk’s side and knelt before its great scaly and terrifying face. If the Skink, this Rayen, this Devil Horn, had feigned illness and injury, had feigned its waning ability simply to draw the sorcerer on and thus spew forth hell fire, then the sorcerer were in certain peril.

  But the Devil Horn lay there, panting, allowing Hawkmoth to reach out and gently place his palm and fingers across the great monster’s jaw. ‘Sleep easy now,’ the sorcerer told it gently. ‘Go now to your mighty ancestors who await you beyond the veil of life. You have lived a thousand years, one of the mightiest and most long lived, of your kind. Your gods hold a place for you now amongst the stars. Go now oh great Rayen, find them. Pass gently, peacefully, unto eternal dawn.’

  Tiredly the Skinkk eyed him. Panting. But its breath were slowing now.

  When it stopped, when its great jaw and belly finally fell still, the sorcerer stood and lowered his forehead gently against the forehead of the dragon. ‘Go now,’ he whispered almost sadly. ‘Spread your mighty wings and fly.’

  Melai believed she saw the sorcerer wipe a tear from his eye before he straightened and stepped backwards. The body of the great Skinkk moved one last time. Its scales rattled and hissed as its corpse appeared to contract inwards… A white shadow in the form of the Skinkk itself, lifted from the body, like a Skinkk chick dragging itself from its egg. It seemed to crouch there for a moment on the ribs of its departed body, looking about before leaping silently into the sky, circling once above the temple ruins, as if in acknowledgement of Hawkmoth, and then it swooped up and away into the heavens.

  Hawkmoth watched it go. Then with a sigh he turned to Gargaron and Melai. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘We must away from here.’

  HAITHARATH AND THE IMPREGNATOR

  1

  THEY followed Hawkmoth through the western gates of Varstahk and out into sandy woodlands. Here there were a narrow dirt trail and before they reached the sorcerer’s camp they’d passed numerous plunge-holes, some up to fifty paces across, with jagged volcanic rock cliffs that dropped away to bodies of undisturbed water as clear as crystal; around their edges, long green vines dangled, and thin trees grew from cracks in the rock. ‘Mind where you step,’ Hawkmoth warned.

  And that they did. Though the plunge-holes were such a beautiful feature of this landscape and not easy to ignore; even if Gargaron could but only glimpse them through his ongoing grimacing and swollen face. For Melai, they filled her with a sense of delight and nostalgia, for not since leaving Thoonsk had she come across a realm that evoked such wonderful, albeit painful, memories of her water-forest home.

  Hawkmoth lead them on. ‘Well then,’ he said after a while, glancing around at them, ‘as neither of you have yet spoken it, I take it your names be Gargaron Stoneheart and Melai Willowborne.’ He had pulled back his hood. They saw his face here for the first time. Bearded he were, dark but streaked in grey. He had kind, grandfatherly eyes, Gargaron would have thought, but they possessed a certain intensity when he looked at you. ‘You fit the descriptions well enough sent to me by my Eve at least. Although, hearing it from your own mouths may make me feel a little more at ease.’

  Melai were barely aware that in all the mayhem and distraction of the dragon attack, she had neglected to introduce herself. ‘Aye, I am Melai Willowborne of Thoonsk. And although you call yourself Hawkmoth, be you Haitharath? Friend of Mother Thoonsk?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Well then, glad to make your acquaintance. And let me offer my heartfelt thanks for coming to our timely aid.’

  ‘You are most welcome.’

  Gargaron went to speak when she were done but croaked and squinted. He swallowed hard and tried again. ‘And I… I…’ His voice faltered. He swallowed once more. ‘I be G-Gargaron Stoneheart of… of Hovel. Y-you sent for us, I b-believe.’

  ‘That I did,’ Hawkmoth told him. ‘I must thank you both for seeking me out. I will divulge details of my plans soon. And inform you what we face. I do not expect you to accompany me on my quest but that is a decision I shall leave you both to make. For now though, we make for my camp and I should see to your wounds oh giant.’

  They reached a clearing beside another of these deep plunge-holes where a vehicle both Melai and Gargaron recognised hung twisted and ruined against the rock wall. Gargaron eyed it with some curiosity. It were a zeppelin like the one he had flown upon from Autumn. And it seemed it had suffered similar fate. It were broken and twisted and snared on jagged rocks, the bulk of it hanging sideways down into the plunge-hole while its torn and deflated balloon listed far below upon water’s surface.

  ‘Seems flying be left to bats and birdlings and Skinkks,’ Gargaron muttered, looking about, wondering now what had become of the Skinkk.

  ‘And to woodland nymphs,’ Melai added.

  ‘Or else he who fashions a flying craft when he himself does not bare wings ought to be aground when his flying machine grows faulty,’ Hawkmoth stated.

  ‘And he who comes aground upon a plunge-hole,’ came a new voice, ‘ought to have a friend nearby to help pull him out.’

  Gargaron and Melai and the two heads of Grimah all turned and saw a strange being basking atop a boulder.

  He were a humanoid, of sorts, a crabman (as Gargaron knew them), with eight crab legs encrusted here and there in barnacles, and a humanoid torso growing up out of a crab body. He looked like a jovial fellow, Gargaron thought, the way he smiled warmly, and looked ever so comfortable and relaxed where he were perched there in golden sunshine.

  He slid from his spot and skittered over to introduce himself, walking sideways, much as a large land crab might. ‘My name be Sir Rishley Locke,’ he said, removing a twin-horned helmet to reveal a pair of gnarled and decorated horns growing from his skull beneath. ‘And the good sorcerer here has me to thank for hauling him and his horse up out of this here water cave.’

  ‘And “thank you” I believe I have said a dozen times by now,’ came Hawkmoth’s voice.

  ‘And a dozen times I have enjoyed hearing it,’ said this Sir Rishley Locke. ‘After all, coming across a great sorcerer and finding him in peril from which he were having considerable trouble escaping, why it were priceless I must say.’ He laughed, though not derisively, as someone boasting might have done. He laughed more as a close brother would, endearingly, warmly. ‘How long were you down there again? Two days?’

  ‘Naught more than a day,’ Hawkmoth attested. ‘And I dare say I would have engineered a way out eventually, with or without your help.’

  ‘But of course you would have,’ Locke the crabman, said throwing a look at the new folk. ‘Now, who have we here then?’

  Both Melai and Gargaron simply watched him, struck by his energy, his mirth, his warmth.

  ‘Well speak, one
of you,’ implored Locke with a hearty laugh. ‘Why, a giant silent as a butterfly! By the gods, such a thing has never seen the day has it?!’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Melai. ‘We have come through much.’

  ‘And lost all no doubt,’ this newcomer said with a mighty smile, slipping his helmet back onto his head, his horns slotting smoothly into his headgear. ‘Oh, we all share the same burden, I think. But we live. And that is what is important. For, if there were none left alive, there would be none to carry forward the memories of all those we have loved and lost.’

  ‘And none left alive to carry out vengeance for their falling,’ Melai said coldly.

  This Rishley Locke cocked his head and smiled. ‘Aye, have it how you will. So, tell me, what be your names and where be you from?’

  ‘They are those, amongst others, that I have been expecting,’ Hawkmoth answered him.

  So the introductions commenced, with handshakes and smiles and more than a share of winces and grimaces from Gargaron, almost falling as he dismounted. With pleasantries done, Hawkmoth said, ‘Right then, giant. Let us see how these Aporil Flutes have seen to your burns.’

  2

  The sorcerer rolled out a thick rug and ordered Gargaron to lay there belly down. Gargaron groaned painfully as he shifted to his knees. And groaned as he placed his hands out before him. Another groan escaped him as he collapsed heavily to rug. ‘B-be you certain th-that y-you extinguished my fl-flames, sorcerer?’ Gargaron enquired through gritted teeth. ‘I feel…’ He swallowed. ‘I f-feel the fire there still.’

  ‘The flames are long blown out, aye,’ Hawkmoth informed him. ‘Pain you now feel be a combination of your burns and the roots of these Aporil Flutes mending your flesh. You may not wish to hear this but parts of your back were liquefied by the time I found you.’

  Gargaron had not heard him. ‘Where be… where be the Skinkk,’ he asked, exhausted. ‘Did you, did…’ his voice trailed off.

  ‘The Skinkk can no longer harm us, dear giant,’ Hawkmoth informed him. ‘Though we have far more pressing matters to attend to. So lie still and save your strength.’

  Melai watched on, watching the dark soot belch from the purple trumpet flowers. Her eyes moved to Gargaron’s Nightface. A blackened and ruined thing it were now, its eyes dead and clouded over.

  Little did she understand of its purpose, but it were a part of him and she did not know how he would take news of its demise.

  Hawkmoth studied the scene. ‘Mmm,’ he would mutter, ‘Mmmm, yes, good, this is good.’ Though Melai, taking in the glistening craters of burnt flesh, wondered which part of it were good.

  Hawkmoth snipped away the intriguing Aporil shoots and at once their trumpet flowers shriveled. Embedded in the deep layers of Gargaron’s skin, their roots remained however. Hawkmoth took from a large sack a stone jar. He unstoppered it and fingered inside it to pull up a large slimy blue slug. He placed this upon Gargaron’s ruined flesh. It were followed by another and another and yet another. Seven of them in all by the end of it.

  ‘What, what have you there?’ Melai heard Gargaron say. ‘It feels such as ice.’

  ‘Indeed it ought to,’ Hawkmoth told him. ‘I have placed ice slugs upon your wounds. They shall take away heat and pain, and in turn eat of your dead flesh to stimulate and accelerate your body’s capacity for healing and tissue regeneration.’

  Melai saw the pain washing from Gargaron’s face almost instantly. His breathing relaxed, his body threw out its tension. ‘By Ranethor,’ Gargaron murmured, sighing heavily, ‘this be utter bliss.’

  ‘Aye, I thought you may like it,’ came Hawkmoth’s voice. ‘Oh, though I should warn you, they have been known to cause minor sedation.’

  When Melai looked down at Gargaron’s face it were evident he had already dropped off to sleep.

  3

  When he opened his eyes, Gargaron gazed out at a perfect blue sky, wondering why he could not detect the visual senses of his Nightface. He knew not where he were, nor how he had come to be here. There were no sounds of birdlings nor bugs. But he were aware of sounds of a gentle breeze playing through trees, the peaceful rustle of leaves. And that of a child’s voice.

  ‘Veleyal,’ he whispered. He lifted his head and looked about for his daughter.

  What he saw staring at him were the face of an enormous, banded serpent. Its mouth opened sideways rather than downwards, while three sets of eyes on either side of its skull goggled at him. Its forked blue tongue lapped in and out, tasting him.

  He thrust his arms at it, shoving it aside and rolling onto his haunches, clambering away.

  The serpent reared up in the position of a snake poised to strike. Gargaron reached for shield and sword but found he were unarmed. He scrambled backwards hoping his hands might chance upon some stick or rock with which to defend himself. Failing that, he prayed for a tree behind which he might retreat and use as a defensive barricade.

  Suddenly, filling his ears, came the booming sound of thumping hooves on earyth as Grimah charged into view, putting himself between giant and serpent. Some voice rang out. The serpent hissed. The voice called a second time, more forceful, and now the serpent lowered itself and turned away, its blue tongue still flicking in and out in rapid bursts.

  Gargaron saw the crabman now, whose name he could not recall. Beyond Grimah he stood ushering the serpent away. Grimah turned and lowered himself to his knees, nibbling Gargaron’s neck affectionately with his pair of mouths. Melai flew down from some high perch in the trees.

  ‘By Thoonsk,’ she said sounding relieved, as she landed before him, ‘at last you awaken.’

  Gargaron breathed heavy, still expecting an attack. ‘What by Thronir be that thing?’ he hissed, looking wide eyed at the serpent.

  ‘It be Zebra, my loyal steed,’ the crabman called out jovially, fixing and tightening the straps of saddle bags that hung down the sides of the serpent’s flanks. ‘She meant you no harm giant. She be merely curious.’

  Gargaron took in two or three deep breaths, blinking, looking about, still orientating himself. He felt something squeeze his arm and remembered Melai standing at his side. He looked at her.

  ‘All be well,’ she said to him, ‘all be well, you are safe.’

  He drew in a deep calming breath before shutting his eyes and kneading some feeling back into his brow with his large fingers. ‘How long have I been in slumber?’

  ‘The suns have set and have since risen,’ Melai told him. ‘We could not wake you. Haitharath hoped to have left by now but decided we could do naught but let you sleep.’

  ‘Besides,’ came the crabman’s voice again, laughing. ‘You are a heavy lump. Not even Hawkmoth has a spell to heft you atop your horse.’

  ‘Hawkmoth?’ Gargaron enquired as if most of his memory of yesterday had failed him. Suddenly the sorcerer in question approached, carrying both a stone bowl of fruit and sizzling crispy bacon and a steaming mug of tea.

  ‘Eat,’ the sorcerer told him, ‘drink. Win back some strength and when you can stand, come over to camp fire and I shall outline my plans as I have explained them to Melai Willowborne. You can both then decide if you wish to be part of them.’

  4

  Gargaron were on his feet before he had finished his tea. And looking about helped return to mind much of what had transpired the previous day. He saw the plunge-hole and took in the clearing Hawkmoth had set up camp within, he noted sandy woodland otherwise surrounding it, and if he looked east he could just spy the tall spires of Varstahk poking above the tree line.

  Glad I am to see the back of that place, he thought.

  His eyes settled upon an enormous blue-grey steed, nibbling chaff on the opposite edge of the camp. Gargaron thought it were a mirage at first, some illusion, so ethereal did the beast appear. This blue-grey horse looked even larger by first impressions than that of his Grimah.

  ‘That be Hawkmoth’s steed,’ Melai told him. ‘Razor be its name.’

  ‘A majestic looking animal
to be sure,’ Gargaron commented, wincing as he shifted his weight. ‘So how are my burns? I no longer feel them. I am either healed, or I am so disfigured and injured that my body has grown numb.’ He gazed down at his body noting he were in a fresh set of clothes which he last recalled had been folded and stashed neatly in his pack.

  ‘They are healed,’ she informed him. ‘You have Hawkmoth’s slugs to thank.’

  He stretched, reaching his arms high over his head, screwing up his face in the effort. ‘Well then, I will be sure to kiss each one as a show of my gratitude.’ He relaxed and yawned and blinked and Grimah, refusing to leave Gargaron’s side, nuzzled the giant affectionately.

  Melai smiled. ‘I shan’t miss witnessing a giant kiss a slug.’ She gazed up at him, her pale green skin almost aglow beneath the wash of gentle morning sunlight.

  Gargaron reached up and rubbed his steed’s long noses. ‘And I see I have been reclad.’

  ‘Aye.’ Melai pointed to a mess of charred and flaking cloth and material piled on the edge of their camp. ‘They were mostly burnt from you. We dressed you in your spares. I hope you do not mind but I insisted.’

  He shook his head and smiled. ‘I do not mind. Thank you. Where be my pack, by the way.’

  Melai pointed to a pile of their belongings. ‘All’s there. Nothing were burnt.’

  He moved over, Melai following on one side and Grimah on the other. He saw both his sword and hammer hilt lying there. Along with his shield that were scorched black. And a scabbard he did not recognise. Melai explained that it were the sorcerer’s. Given over to Gargaron’s use and possession. ‘Yours were burnt to cinders,’ she said. He crouched, untied his pack and began picking through his possessions. He were focused on naught else until he located the tablet portrait of his girls. He sighed, clenching it longingly, briefly studying it. Then he slotted it carefully back into his pack and heard Melai ask, ‘Be they your wife and daughter?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘May I look?’

  He were tentative at first. Not because he did not wish for her to see them but purely because he felt a slight guilt for Melai’s own loss, that he had at least some keepsake with which to remember his girls when Melai had none.

  He withdrew it again and passed it to her. She took it gratefully and cast her eyes over it for some moments, wrestling for viewing space as Grimah prod its enormous heads down for a peek. Gargaron nudged his faces gently aside and pointed to the etchings. ‘This be my ever loving wife, Yarniya. We knew each other as children, and were lovers when we came of age. And this be my Everlight, my heartbeat, my daughter Veleyal.’ He smiled sadly. ‘They were my world, my life.’

  ‘They’re both beautiful,’ Melai told him softly.

  He could do naught but nod. Anything else may have brought tears.

  She handed it back, thinking now of her sisters, longing for their company. Though her thoughts were not on them for long. As Gargaron placed his portrait carefully back in his pack Melai could not help but watch the charred rear portion of his skull. As he put his pack aside he saw her expression.

  He frowned. ‘Something troubles you.’

  ‘Gargaron… I… I need tell you.’ She did not know how to put it.

  ‘What be the matter?’ he enquired of her gently.

  ‘Your… your Nightface.’

  He drew in a deep breath and nodded. ‘I fear the worst. I no longer feel it there. It did not alert me to the serpent.’ He swallowed. ‘Be it burnt?’

  ‘Aye, severely. And has not healed.’ She reached up and grasped his hand. ‘I am sorry.’

  He smiled mournfully down at her. And tenderly placed his palm against the side of her head. As he would his daughter. He were touched by her concern. ‘Naught can be done about it. Though, many of my kind have lost their Nightface and gone on to live full lives.’ It saddened him, but it paled in comparison to the loss of his girls. And for this reason alone, emotion aside, he felt rather pragmatic about things. He let out a long breath and put his hand around Melai’s shoulder. ‘Come, let us see what this sorcerer has in store for us.’

  5

  ‘How fare you, giant?’ Hawkmoth enquired, sitting cross-legged on the ground smoking a pipe as Gargaron and Melai approached.

  Gargaron stretched his limbs, took in a deep breath. ‘Aye, better. Though a bit sore, I must confess.’

  ‘Good,’ the sorcerer replied. ‘If you feel pain then it means you live.’

  ‘I thank you again for coming to our aid,’ Gargaron said.

  ‘Not at all,’ Hawkmoth said and ushered Gargaron to a spot before the hearth of his campfire, though mostly the flames here were gone, replaced by naught but embers.

  Gargaron sat, following Melai and the crabman. There were an air that now with an extra two folk to his party, Hawkmoth were ready and eager to explain why he had summoned them all.

  ‘I am hoping more survivors, like yourselves, will find us and join us in the days to come,’ Hawkmoth said repacking his pipe. ‘But for now I fear you may be all who have bothered to answer my call. Or you are all who survive. So, before I set off on my quest, before you make a decision on whether or not you wish to follow me into the mouth of doom, then I ought tell you what I believe is going on and offer you some history that brings Godrik’s Vale, and perhaps even Cloudfyre, to this dire point.’ He lit his pipe with a stick pulled from the coals. ‘So, without further delay let us begin, shall we.’

  6

  ‘You may or may not have heard of the Battle of Rabbit Flat. Not many have. It remains buried under the sheer weight of Cloudfyre’s long history. And you’d be forgiven for overlooking it were you reading through the annals of Godrik Vale’s past days and happened to chance upon it. It were not a large stoush, casualties were few. But it were the catalyst for what I believe we now face.

  ‘A century before the events at Rabbit Flat, which itself now lies three centuries behind us, the sorcerers and witches, who have long been enemies, were allies. We discovered magic together, practiced it together, and intermarriage between our two sects were common. But somewhere along the way, and there are none now that live who remembers why, something came between us. My Order will tell you that it were the witches who perpetrated some heinous crime against the sorcerers. And the witches will say it were us who did them some great injustice. All I know for certain is that from somewhere, unrest spread and before we knew what were happening, we were at each other’s throats, they our sworn enemy, and we theirs.

  ‘Thus strife and turmoil between both our groups became the order of the day. And as the years drew on, attacks and skirmishes perpetrated by both sides escalated. But rarely did mighty battles play out; for the most part it were a protracted war perpetrated by guerrilla attacks. The sorcerers taking out a tribe of witches here, the witches eliminating a ranging party of sorcerers there. It were tit for tat, reprisals, pay backs. Until Rabbit Flat.

  ‘At the time, the head of my Order, Master Stormcrake, devised a secret mission to infiltrate Vantasia, the hidden witch city, and take off with witch Goddess, Mama Vekh. To execute this he set about creating a diversion. He sent battlemages down to the southern ranges to overrun Rabbit Flat, a town sympathetic to the witch cause, but also a town that were a key strategic location for the witches.

  ‘Master Stormcrake knew they would not accept this lying down and anticipated their offensive to recapture the settlement. Thus the witches organised a counter attack which saw battle wage for barely a day before it were retaken. Thus the siege of Rabbit Flat were over.

  ‘However, in that time, the sorcerers had slipped into Vantasia undetected, and run off with their prize. And that is when it all changed. With Mama Vekh in the hands of the sorcerers, the sorcerers had claimed themselves much political capital. Threatening to slay the Goddess the sorcerers handed the witches a list of demands. They were to immediately release all sorcerer prisoners and their sympathisers. They were to divulge all their magical secrets and lore. They were to divulge locat
ion of all secret bases and hideouts. And last of all, they were to be banished from Godrik’s Vale, never to return.

  ‘Well, as things have it, folk don’t much like being told what to do. And the witches, quite rightly I might add, threw all demands back into the faces of their enemy. And here they ordered the immediate return of Mama Vekh. And if she were not returned then their retaliation would be to “burn Cloudfyre from the skies”.’

  7

  It were here in the telling of his story that Hawkmoth sat back and took a long pull on his pipe. He gazed into the tree tops as he let pipe smoke fill his lungs. When he let it out, the fumes came in narrow streams that drifted away on the breeze like soft grey tendrils. He took a breath and again spoke. ‘The witches promised to create what they termed Boom Weapons. Bombs so powerful that a single one could level an entire mountain range and the shockwaves be felt far and wide. But that were not all. These bombs would also carry a dire curse, the Cropps, which would ensure that any sorcerer fortunate enough to escape the initial blast, would regardless, soon and in turn, be struck down with instantaneous death.’

  Gargaron could not help but think of the Creep Mounds he’d seen. The piles of skulls, victims of some foul disease.

  ‘That were not all,’ Hawkmoth went on. ‘The witches promised also to send out armies of foul beasts they called Harbiners to mop up any soul who had not perished under the force of the shockwaves, all those who proved immune to the Cropps.’

  ‘Harbingers?’ Gargaron said. ‘I have seen them.’

  ‘As have we,’ Hawkmoth replied. ‘Yes, the witches have indeed kept their promise to wipe out all sorcerers. Sadly though, their campaign cripples more than sorcerers alone. It has, and still is, killing the living of Godrik’s Vale in unprecedented numbers. And it must be stopped. So, here be my quest: I shall take back Mama Vekh from my old brethren and return her to her own kind. Only then, do I fear, shall the witches cease their detonation of these Boom weapons and call their Harbingers to heel. And only then can our world return to some semblance of peace.’

  Rishley Locke were tossing stones down into the plunge cave, perhaps having already heard this tale. (The plummet of his stones into water echoed up and about the steep rocky walls.) Hawkmoth were staring into the fire pit. Grimah nibbled at chaff alongside Razor. Zebra were submerged somewhere in the depths of the plunge hole. Melai looked from Locke to Gargaron then finally to sorcerer.

  Watching Hawkmoth, Gargaron were first to speak. ‘Where then be this Goddess, Mama… Mama…’

  ‘Mama Vekh.’

  ‘Where be she held prisoner?’

  ‘At a secret location,’ Hawkmoth informed him. ‘A place known as Sanctuary, a place that has lain hidden from the witches and much of the world for an age.’

  Gargaron looked keenly and with intrigue at the sorcerer. ‘What be this place?’ he asked as if he had heard something of its like before but could not place where he had heard it nor recall what it might be.

  ‘A fortress,’ Hawkmoth told him. ‘The mountain fortress of the sorcerers. A stronghold. Our home. Lying atop the Bonewrecker Ranges. And no easy place to reach.’

  Gargaron mulled this over. ‘And say we find our way there, how easy will it be to liberate this witch Goddess from Sanctuary?’

  ‘That depends on whether or not my brethren still inhabit it.’

  ‘And do they?’ Melai asked.

  Hawkmoth shrugged. ‘I have received no word from them for over a week now. Though that does not mean they have perished. It could just mean that their avenues for communication have been diminished. Or that they have gone to ground to avoid further witch attacks.’

  ‘So if this fortress remains fortified and defended,’ came Locke’s voice from where he sat at the edge of the plunge hole, ‘will your brethren be likely to give up this Mama Vekh?’

  Hawkmoth grinned. ‘Over time my brothers have grown rather arrogant and pig headed. Well, more so than ever they were. If that be possible.’ Here he retreated into his thoughts for a moment or two, smoking his pipe, again his eyes on the embers of the fire pit. ‘In my younger day, when Sanctuary were still my home, I made it my secret agenda to make peace with the witches. I saw no point in waging a never ceasing war with ever mounting casualties. My first step in reconciliation would be to return Mama Vekh to her kind. I brought one or two sympathisers to my cause but none were willing to go up against the might of the Order. Thus I were a lone voice. When I decided to go public with my idea I were laughed at and ridiculed by my senior Brothers. Undeterred I tried to rally support for returning Mama Vekh to her people, arguing that if we were to do such a thing, the witches would be more likely to desist in their guerrilla and terrorism tactics. “Sometimes, in order to turn tides, it be better to swallow your pride,” I told them, “and your arrogance and your sheer pig headedness.” But the leaders of my Order, a stuffy, pompous lot, would not relent and could not see that their actions were prolonging an already protracted conflict.’

  He looked up and across at Locke. ‘So, in answer to your question, crabman, if my brethren still reside within Sanctuary, if she be guarded still, then gathering Mama Vekh into our possession shall be no easy feat.’

  Gargaron nodded. ‘How far?’ he asked finally. ‘How far are we from this Sanctuary?’

  Hawkmoth glanced around at his downed and ruined zeppelin. ‘On foot? From our present location? Eight days. Give or take.’

  Gargaron felt slightly deflated. ‘Eight days may see the end of Cloudfyre.’

  ‘That it may,’ Hawkmoth admitted. ‘And eight days may see the end of the protection enchantment I placed around my hill and home. But we have little choice, my friend.’ He toked back on his pipe. As he exhaled, smoke drifted away on gentle breeze and he said, ‘Anyway, whatever the case, we ought push off as soon as we can. Provided you so choose to accept the mission and accompany me, of course. Yet, if I am to go on alone, then all’s well.’

  8

  Gargaron pondered this. And all that Hawkmoth had said. He pondered his own home, and his girls. He pondered his village dead and all the death, dying and destruction he had witnessed since that first shockwave had swept over him on the banks of Buccuyashuck. He pondered Melai and her Mother Thoonsk and the passing of her sisters. This were not solely Hawkmoth’s fight. This Ruin, as the sorcerer put it, were killing all without discrimination, and if he himself did not do his part to end it then the deaths of his wife and daughter would be for naught.

  “You have work here first,” the words of his wife rang in his mind.

  Gargaron looked from Melai to Hawkmoth. ‘Then I am with you.’

  Gargaron waited for Melai and Locke to give their own vows to this undertaking though he saw Melai smile. And guessed she and Locke must have offered similar pledges whilst he had been held in slumber.

  Hawkmoth gave a reserved look of gratitude. ‘And I shall be glad to have you along, giant. All of you.’ He knocked out the ash from his pipe, and nodding at Melai, and at Locke the crabman, he said, ‘And should more catch us up on our journey and choose to join our fight then we shall welcome their company in turn. Greater numbers will aid our cause. Now, what say we get riding from here without delay?’

  DARK SKIES

  1

  THE woodland and its plunge holes persisted for much of that morning, and the going were steady enough. They trotted their horses where they could, with that enormous serpent, Zebra, always slithering on ahead, Locke mounted in its saddle. Often they got up to galloping pace where the way forward were flat. Though at one stage before the woods ended the trees grew thick and the pace of Hawkmoth’s little troupe were slowed to a walk. Gargaron took this moment to pull Grimah alongside the mighty grey horse of Razor.

  ‘I must thank you,’ Gargaron said, ‘for rescuing me from that Skinkk. And for my subsequent care. Without you I would surely be dead.’

  Hawkmoth smiled kindly. ‘I have seen more than enough death lately, giant. Where I can, I try to sustain lif
e. Think nothing of it.’

  ‘Still, my gratitude goes out to you.’

  Hawkmoth nodded.

  ‘Oh, and also allow me thank you for the use of this scabbard.’ It were a snug fit across Gargaron’s broad shoulders but his greatsword hung nicely across his back.

  ‘Well, it be worthless to me now,’ Hawkmoth told him. ‘I still have my staff, aye, but my enchanted sword, Starfyr, were lost down in that depthless plunge hole. And no amount of searching by myself, Locke, or that serpent had it back. So, keep it. A gift from me to you.’

  Gargaron nodded. Though as they filed between the woodland trees there were still things on his mind. ‘Tell me, sorcerer. I don’t suppose you happened to tap a portion of that Skinkk’s blood before it passed on?’

  Hawkmoth glanced across at him. ‘Fortunately, giant, I am not in the process of exploiting my animal brothers. So, no I did not.’

  Gargaron had suspected as much.

  ‘May I ask why you seek such a substance?’

  Gargaron sighed. ‘No reason. It matters not, I guess.’

  Hawkmoth eyed him for a short while. As if he knew the answer. But said no more.

  2

  By midmorning they had left the woods behind them and came across a plain bordered southways by steep hills and bluffs. That soon changed to barren hilly terrain. As they pressed on, Gargaron searched for any sign of these Bonewrecker mountains northways, but lost were they beyond the horizon.

  Not long after, they passed through a deserted, somewhat miniature, settlement of tiny mud huts with grass rooves and mud-walled animal pens. A stink of rot hung here thick as soup. Livestock lay dead and scattered. Settlement’s inhabitants, small folk, smaller than Melai, lay dead also, and scattered. Another sad and pitiful sight, and it made Melai think of her sisters. She could not look. Tears welled in her eyes.

  No-one spoke as they continued on their way, their mood having turned somewhat. To help lighten things, Locke began regaling them with often humorous tales of his home village, Barnacle-On-Sea, a settlement hewn from rock and coral on the Vale’s southern Stromness Coast.

  ‘Of course, my full name be Sir Rishley Locke the Impregnator,’ he told them after a lively, and rather raunchy, story about his first love. ‘Oh, and incidentally, I hold the record amongst my people for most females impregnated in one night. No easy feat I assure you. Though such an accolade does not come without its ongoing responsibilities. My society be matriarchal, and any involvement with females by males must mean that a crab-lady’s pleasure and enjoyment be seen to first and foremost. Lest you wish to be banished from the clan. And should a male impregnate a female, well that male must, whether he likes it or not, until his dying day, remain loyal to that particular female and, if she so chooses, provide for her, or until such time as that particular female grows tired of him and kicks him out.’

  Gargaron could not help smile at the way this crabman spoke. His energy and his enthusiasm and his warm easy going spirit belied the dead and dying world about them. He wondered more than once if this crabman were in fact constantly drunk. ‘And what of your knightly title, sir?’ Gargaron enquired.

  ‘Oh aye, for my services to my people, and to the kindness with which I have treated my eighty three wives, I were knighted.’

  Hawkmoth almost choked at hearing this. Gargaron were simply struck dumb. When he found his voice he said, ‘Eighty three wives?’

  ‘Aye,’ Locke said proudly. ‘Eighty three. I can name them all if you’d like.’

  ‘No,’ Gargaron told him. ‘I believe you.’

  Hawkmoth were still contemplating the prospect of having to serve eighty three wives. He shook his head, incredulous but impressed. ‘I find both hands full with but one wife,’ he declared. ‘Let alone eighty three.’

  ‘So, do you sing to them?’ Gargaron asked, indicating the peculiar instrument strung across the crabman’s back.

  ‘Sing?’ Locke held a heavy frown. ‘I do not take your meaning, giant.’

  Gargaron pointed again to the instrument. ‘The lute upon your back. Be you some bard that keeps your wives and village entertained?’

  Locke laughed and glanced at Hawkmoth, as if to ask where did you find this imbecile? ‘Aye, if that is what you wish to believe, giant, a lute it be.’

  Melai, seated there upon Grimah’s shoulders, looked curious. ‘Someone tell me,’ she said, ‘What be a wife exactly?’

  3

  They pressed on throughout the day stopping briefly at a stream to dismount, stretch their legs, and collect water. Their horses drank. And splashed playfully together downstream. Zebra the serpent slithered into creek, swishing below the waterline where the way were deep enough, gobbling up mouthfuls of sickly frogs. Hawkmoth remained ashore, seated upon a large rounded boulder, supping on his pipe, showing no interest in immersing himself in the brook—content he were with keeping look-out for Harbingers. Though Melai, Locke and Gargaron did not hold back. Gargaron and Locke stripped off their shirts and raced each other into the deeper parts. Melai followed, content with kneeling in the shallows; though seated there it were the happiest she’d felt since Thoonsk.

  Locke removed his helmet, dunked it and drank from it. And tipped great gushes over his head. ‘Wondrous,’ he kept saying. ‘Simply wondrous.’

  Melai were intrigued by the pictographs etched on his two horns. They were beautiful in design. Though Gargaron when he eyed them thought they looked a tad childlike.

  ‘Locke, be it your custom to decorate your horns?’ Melai asked.

  He looked around at her from where he stood nearby upon a shallow bed of stones. Water dripped down his face. His torso were bare for the first time since Melai and Gargaron had met him; his jerkin and shirt piled on the bank. His skin were patterned in beautiful designs of ink.

  ‘Not exactly,’ he said, taking another healthy draft of river water. He swallowed and went on. ‘Be my custom if any. Which many of my fellow crab folk have mimicked. I let my children draw their pictures there and I were proud to display their efforts. And after they had all sadly perished I etched via looking-glass a unique piece by which to remember each one of them.’

  Gargaron listened to their exchange and quenched his own thirst. ‘They are exquisite,’ he said, ‘and a wonderful way to remember your family.’

  Locke looked away downriver, watching Grimah and Razor lazing about the shallows, lost to his mind for a moment. ‘Aye, I thought so too.’

  Midstream, Gargaron proceeded to fill his gourds. As he did he happened to catch his reflection in the water; for a moment his breath left him for he did not recognise the face that gazed back at him. ‘By Thronir,’ he murmured. Gone were much of the hair that had once framed his face, gone were much of his beard. Parts of his nose and ears were blackened. He reached around to the rear of his head. He swallowed when his fingertips contacted the area. Wet, tender, inflamed skin, skin that were blistered and hardened. The Nightface he had never seen with his own eyes but which he were familiar with by touch were no more; its eyes burnt and burst, leaving holes in his flesh. He sighed and for a few moments studied his visage in the water as it looked back at him. His girls would not recognise him, he thought. I would be a stranger to them if they were to see me right now.

  He straightened and concentrated his thoughts on the world around him. It were dead to bird and bug and to any other critter likely to utter sounds of life in daylight hours, but it were still a beautiful world. He bent and splashed water over his head. Many have lived without their Nightface, he reminded himself as water dripped off his chin and nose. He smiled despite himself. Many too have lived without their hair.

  He did not know it, but from the shallows, Melai watched him in silence.

  4

  By midafternoon the troupe traipsed through hilly ground where mighty rock profusions jutted hither and thither from the earyth, each and every one carved in the form of some ungodly sly-eyed face. Each of them towered above Gargaron astride his mount. Their mouths
were not only carved, but caves, and inside, bones and teeth lay wrapped up in bundles of dirty, flaking cloth.

  While most of their attention were on these strange stone formations, Gargaron noticed Hawkmoth peering off into sky. And it were not the first time that day he’d noticed Hawkmoth doing as such.

  While Melai and Locke inspected the insides of one of these “caves”, Gargaron pulled Grimah nearer Razor. ‘Do you search for the Bonewreckers?’ he asked of the sorcerer, following his gaze out into heavens that had grown more and more grey and dark and overcast as the day progressed.

  Hawkmoth answered several moments later. ‘Not entirely, my good giant. I do not expect to see the Range for at least a hundred miles yet. No, presently I am testing a theory.’

  ‘Oh? And what theory would that be?’

  Hawkmoth shifted his staff where it were suspended in its brace across his back. ‘Well… we have not experienced a boom-shock for some days now. And whilst I would dearly love to believe the witches have ceased their bombing, I suspect there be more to come. Thus, detecting a boom-shock before its arrival might be a way to forearm ourselves against its shuddering effects.’

  ‘And how might we know if one is imminent?’ Gargaron asked.

  ‘Well, that is what I am trying to ascertain. Our friend, Sir Locke, on his way from the Stromness Coast, claims he witnessed the sky fall yellow some minutes before the strike of such a boom-shock. Whether or not that were atmospheric conditions particular to his location at that time, I cannot tell. But it has intrigued me. So, for now, I keep my eyes peeled for any such development.’

  5

  They pressed on. What did become apparent later in the day were a dizzying structure that soared out of sight into the clouds. Gargaron at first took it to be a tower like that of Skysight. One, albeit, pushed on a dire angle. As if a simple shove would send it crashing to ground. He assumed it must have rocked over thanks to these “boom shocks”. But the sorcerer, when Melai asked what the structure might be, told them all it had been built as such, for it were a stardrive system. Of course, this explanation made little sense to any of them.

  ‘What be a stardrive exactly?’ Gargaron questioned.

  Hawkmoth seemed hesitant to answer. He were at first busy consulting some strange contraption on his wrist he called a chronochine; an intricate looking glass-faced gadget full of cogs and springs and bits and pieces that he claimed could tell the time of day and the phases of the moon. He claimed it were powered by sun and moonlight. Even darklight, whatever that were. Eventually he said, ‘History’s scrolls tell us the stardrive were originally built to send folk out into the Great Nothing.’

  They pushed on a wee bit further. Around them the landscape had begun to present unusual features. It were the bed of an ancient ocean, Hawkmoth told them. His Order used to conduct field trips here to scout for rare and unusual substances buried in substrata.

  Today there stood the remains of ancient tube worms jutting near and far from the earyth, high and looming and translucent. And enormous spiral shells from critters long perished and turned to dust, some now growing with small trees from their backs. There were bleached and cracked husks of giant colossal crustaceans. There were fossilised animals imprinted in rock, and eroding crusts of barnacles and chitin against vast beds of stone. Coral stacks rose up from the grasses, so tall were they that it were as if giants had built them. Some of these had evidently crashed down in days gone; perhaps some more recently under the shake of the witches weapons. Around these, loomed towering rock grottos growing with grass and shrubs that danced lightly in the wind. There were indeed much evidence of portions of these grottos having shaken loose and collapsed; any creature unfortunate enough to have been caught beneath them at the time would have had life instantly snuffed out.

  Still, the dominating feature, southways’n’west, were the stardrive tower. A mighty phallic structure poking far into sky from the western edge of a mountainous stone plateau that were raised up a hundred feet or more from the ancient ocean bed. And occupying most of the plateau, they saw now, were an old crumbling stone castle, a number of its guard towers still standing, and a number of them collapsed.

  ‘That there,’ Hawkmoth said pointing, ‘be the Lair of King Charles. Abandoned now for some two hundred years but it contains vaults where the royals once horded their considerable wealth. It be mostly told in myth and legend now but the stardrive, as stories go, were built on King Charles’ orders before specialised vessels were constructed to take him and his royal host to better worlds amongst the stars. There were a grand farewell, a mighty feast, then King Charles and his subjects, pets and family, all packed themselves into one of their star-vessels and left Cloudfyre, never to return.’

  The castle were entirely dwarfed by the leaning stardrive tower. And Hawkmoth went to say more… but then stopped. His eyes suddenly focused on the heavens.

  ‘What be the matter?’ Gargaron asked.

  ‘Well,’ Hawkmoth said, ‘you lot might tell me. Do you all see that?’

  Each of them looked, following his pointing finger, even Grimah’s two heads appeared to gaze out into the heavens. Razor too, his keen eyes searching the skyline. Locke’s serpent however merely flicked her blue tongue in and out, tasting the breeze.

  At first Gargaron saw nothing but grey skies and dark clouds. But when he heard Locke comment, ‘Aye, that be what I were talking about, sorcerer,’ he saw it… a peculiar phenomenon away in yonder clouds. Something of a ripple. Accompanied by an off-yellow hew. Like discoloured water seeping through paper. It were almost imperceptible. And Gargaron even had to ask, ‘Do you three see that? Some disturbance in the cloud mass? Is that what you mean, Hawkmoth?’

  ‘Aye,’ Hawkmoth replied gravely, and sounding at the same time intrigued.

  ‘What be it?’ Melai asked, concerned.

  ‘If Locke’s theory rings true then it be the front of yet another of these boom shocks.’ Hawkmoth said. ‘I expect the closer we get to the war front the stronger and more deadly these things shall become.’ He surveyed their immediate surroundings. Then looked back at the atmospheric disturbance. ‘We would do well to be away from here though. If that be another boom-wave then it be likely to shake these coral stacks down upon us.’

  ‘Where would you have in mind?’ Gargaron enquired, looking about with little hope of finding a suitable hiding place before the shockwaves rushed over them. Both Grimah and Razor were now snorting nervously. Both unsettled on their feet.

  Hawkmoth settled his eye upon King Charles’ distant fort. ‘Flat open ground would be ideal,’ he said. ‘Which we are currently without. But solid rock walls remain an option.’

  All eyes turned toward the castle. ‘You mean these vaults you mentioned?’ Locke asked.

  ‘Aye. I have not been this way in some two decades but by all accounts, there beneath the fort those vaults remain intact.’ He gazed back at the yellow discolouration growing nearer in the sky. ‘Anyhow, if we are all agreed then we ought proceed there with some haste.’

  KING’S LAIR

  1

  THE sounds of galloping hooves thundered across grass and rock and shale as Grimah and Razor beat a direct path for the plateau. Locke’s serpent, slithering swifter than both steeds, could not be heard other than her smooth belly swishing across land.

  ‘There were once a guarded stairway on the eastwun face,’ Hawkmoth called above the noise, and sure enough, as they neared the fort they saw what looked to be a narrow chasm cut into the vertical rock wall and inside, leading up to the fort, were steps that had been hewn from the rock. Guard towers looked down upon any who approached. But they went unmanned these days. And an iron portcullis that once barricaded the base of the steps had long been pulled down and discarded; it lay half buried in sand and shrubs.

  Locke pulled his serpent up the stairway, and the others followed: Gargaron and Melai mounted on Grimah, Hawkmoth and Razor last. They ascended the stairway at pace, the blue sky above them bloc
ked by a vast iron grate pockmarked with a hundred murder holes. At the top they charged through another ruined gatehouse and onto a weed strewn courtyard.

  Around the courtyard, the castle ruins stood, stone stables and long deserted kitchens and guard’s quarters. Higher levels would have contained food halls and bed chambers and war rooms. All now mostly crumbled and collapsed. In the weed strewn bailey a pair of half-domes rose out of the ground, each with a walled face fitted with a monstrous stone doorway.

  ‘The vaults we seek lie beyond those doors,’ Hawkmoth told them. ‘Gargaron, do you think you might prize them open.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Gargaron told him.

  With that the sorcerer lead Razor up the northwun tower.

  Gargaron dismounted and, with crabman assisting, set to work dragging the doors open. The doors shifted aside without protest. When they were done, Gargaron, Locke and Melai all beheld a darkened stairway leading down into blackness.

  ‘Haitharath,’ Melai called up to the sorcerer. ‘What do you see?’

  Hawkmoth employed an ancient eye-scope with a mint-glass lens and a moonfyre crystal. He ran it across the plains of grass that lay northways’n’west of their position. ‘I see the lands being torn asunder,’ he called back gravely. ‘The shockwave rolls sourly and surely toward us.’ He turned and trotted Razor back down the tower’s worn stone steps. ‘Come, let us get inside. We have little time.’

  2

  They passed through the thick stone doors and hauled their mounts down black stone steps, Grimah protesting at first, but perhaps took some confidence from Razor who strode down into the dark, head up, chest out proudly, green eyes gleaming in the lightless depths. Sconces hung on the walls but all were without lamps so for a time Razor’s gleaming eyes were their sole source of light. Except for the small lantern Gargaron had strapped to the side of Grimah. Locke were readying to release a handful of bespelled glowbugs that would hover above the band of travelers, giving off a warm yellow luminescence, lighting much of their way forward. But Hawkmoth saw him preparing these and called for him not to waste them.

  ‘I am simply trying to aid our passage,’ Locke said bemused.

  ‘I have another way,’ Hawkmoth mumurred.

  Corpses of vault raiders lay on the stairs, scattered about. The sweet stench of their decomposition were rank and thick, filling their nostrils like an acrid smoke. These were recent raiders, by the looks, whose lives had most obviously been curtailed since the initial rolling of the shockwaves. It seemed possible too, with every door ajar or torn free of its hinges, that Dark Ones had been here too and done their killing.

  Hawkmoth put up his hand, ushering for all to halt. As they did, he slid from his mount, got down on one knee and took his staff into grip.

  Here for the first time Gargaron witnessed the sorcerer wield this weapon. He had noticed its two faces, the angel and the demon, but had not yet had occasion to see them at work. ‘Lancsh,’ Hawkmoth spoke aloud. ‘Maykess dees deed wuns aryz frumiss deeth.’

  Gargaron saw the mouth of the staff’s demon face come open, watched its eyes turn from the colour of coal to burning red, and saw from its jaws a tongue flick forth, jabbing in rapid succession three of the corpses piled there on the paved floor.

  It were not immediately evident what Hawkmoth were trying to achieve. Gargaron wondered if he were paying his respects to the fallen. If so, why? They had little time to dillydally here.

  Soon however, Gargaron, Melai and Locke witnessed the rising of the nearest carcass. Or more correctly, the rising of some peculiar part of it. A vapour. An essence. Something. It rose out of the corpse, a spectral thing, glowing a soft, creamy, sulphurous witch light. It rose, standing there as if just risen from a coffin. It looked about, eyes blank and formless, like wells into an afterlife… And like the wrinkled, desiccated face of the corpse, this face were pale and ghastly.

  Melai, Gargaron, Locke watched on with some intrigue as a second and a third corpse “arose”. These ghosts floated there, illuminating a vast swathe of these black tunnels; for a hundred paces or more there were now light.

  Before the death of her sisters, before she had met Eve, Melai would have argued that the dead had the right to stay dead. But now moral conflict clouded her. She leapt from Grimah’s shoulders and flew back up the stairwell.

  Gargaron, surprised, watched her go, wondering what she were doing. He dropped from Grimah’s saddle and started after her. But it were Hawkmoth whose voice trailed her.

  ‘Dear Melai, she of the forest nymphs, forgive my actions, yet I use these arcane arts sparingly. And only at desperate times. We may not be alone down here. We must remember that. The Dark Ones, as the giant calls them, may be in hiding. Awaiting our arrival. The spectres I have made rise from their fallen shell, will not only comfortably light our way, but will also alert us to any Dark fiends waiting to ambush us. These are desperate times, my dear, none of us can afford to hold to our precious sensitivities, ideals, and ethics in this world beyond days.’

  Melai reached stone doors at top of stairwell, where she landed and hesitated. Out there a wicked wind kicked up dust and tossed the tips of weed and grass to and fro. Gargaron reached her. Knelt at her side. ‘Melai, what be the matter?’

  ‘I cannot watch,’ she said. ‘That the dead might be treated so flippantly.’

  ‘Aye, I share your concerns but we have no choice in the matter. If we were not here, Hawkmoth would still conduct this strange magic.’

  She remained silent, watching the world beyond.

  Gargaron sensed something else were afoot. ‘I feel something more concerns you.’

  She would not speak.

  ‘Melai.’

  She hung her head. Outside they could hear the roar of the shockwave rushing closer.

  ‘Melai, please. Let me in. We have little time. Tell me what fears you so.’

  She looked up into his eyes as he knelt there at her side. ‘I fear the unbounded sky,’ she said, ‘I fear the lands devoid of trees. I fear the realms where there be no water beneath my feet. Yet, what I fear most be the darkness of a place such as this.’

  He nodded, understanding now her concerns. ‘Aye, though for now it should be the sky we fear,’ he told her softly. ‘It hurls at us another of those shockwaves and we would do well to be down here away from its reach. If there be some menace in the dark awaiting us then we shall deal with it as we discover it. But I am here with you and I will let naught bring you to harm.’

  She turned and watched him. She smiled. ‘Why would you bother when I tried so hard to kill you on our first meeting?’

  ‘Life were precious before the blight,’ he told her. ‘Now even more so. Our destiny lies with death but I will not let him find us today. And not down here.’ Gently he took her hand. The growling sounds of the shockwave growing closer and closer. ‘Come now, Melai,’ he begged of her. ‘We have not much time. If you choose to part ways with the sorcerer then I shall come with you, but let us see out this coming shockwave first and in safety. Please, Melai.’

  She swallowed. She hung her chin. She stared at her little fingers. ‘I miss my sisters, Gargaron. I miss Thoonsk. And everything with which I were familiar. I do not pretend to understand this world beyond her.’

  ‘Aye,’ Gargaron said, ‘and I can only imagine what it must be like. But I too miss my home. And family. Forever had I known that simple but rewarding existence. But life is as much about change and challenge as anything. For better or for worse, nothing stays the same, not forever.’ He held out his hand. ‘Come now,’ he urged her gently.

  She looked up into his face. How far they had come since she had first watched him crashing down through Thoonsk’s canopy and wished him dead. She could not admit to entirely trusting this Rjoond, even now, but he had grown on her since their initial meeting. As she gazed into his eyes, she found she did not wish to leave him.

  She clasped his hand and they moved with urgency back down the stairwell to wher
e Hawkmoth and Locke had pushed on into a long, wide passage at base of stairs.

  3

  The corridor here widened to reveal what would once have been a subterranean settlement: hovels and “cottages” hewn from the stone, a market place, a house of governance, a necropolis beside an underground brook where black trees grew on sodden banks, leaves of white rustling in a soft breeze of damp air that carried with it the odour of wet rock, and the odour of wet moss, and the high thin stink of lime.

  Here the tall ceiling and the sheer walls appeared to glow softly of their own accord with a carpet of blue and white moss. And toadstools. And lichen. It gave off a soft light, as on a clear night when the moons shine stark and bright. There were also strange shelled critters. Some still clinging to walls. Others dead or dying. Bats the size of hoardogs hung from the high ceilings. But they did not move; did not stir nor twitter in ways a healthy, thriving bat colony might. Hawkmoth suspected death had come for them.

  Zebra flicked her tongue in and out, and Grimah and Razor sniffed at the air cautiously, the sounds of their hooves going clippity clop, clippity clop, clippity clop, echoing long down the vast cavern as they walked.

  There proved no sign of the royals of old. Nor did Gargaron expect to see any. The royals, as Hawkmoth had told them, had left these realms two centuries before. And it were only Hawkmoth who knew the strange dark rumours that still persisted, that told of a world below the ground, dark and wet and wormy where King Charles and his family had devolved into sightless, pale-skinned folk who haunted the underground.

  4

  The vaults were hewn from granite, inlaid with walls of iron four feet thick. The circular doors could be rolled in and out of place via an intricate lever system. The only fear were of being locked within should the coming shake compromise the integrity of the lever mechanism, preventing the door from opening once it had shut them in.

  The vaults were numerous. And each were enormous. Gargaron were surprised. He had wondered how they were all to fit inside one but now that he lay his eye upon them, one after the other, he marveled at their scope. They were also not quite empty. Many of the heavier, bulky items that raiders had not managed to thieve were still there: golden tables; mirrors lined with thousands of rare gems; a gold steed standing almost as large as Grimah. And in a world that were dying and dead, none of it now worth dust.

  It seemed pointless to Melai. She had heard tales of gold and greed but to horde such items for the sheer sake of hording were something she could not get her head around. ‘I would have used it to buy shelter and food for the sickly and less fortunate.’

  Hawkmoth smiled at her. ‘As would I, my dear. But there are many who do not think like you and I. Now, time to lock ourselves away.’

  They pushed into one of the vaults, chosen because of its lack of stored plunder, and wealth of space. Though as they shuffled in with their various mounts in tow, Melai remained hesitant. Gargaron looked around at her. ‘What if the entire place should collapse?’ Melai asked. ‘We shall be entombed.’

  ‘King Charles’ royal builders built their subterranean dwellings to account for natural groundshakes,’ Hawkmoth explained. ‘And it shall be many years yet before the last of these fortresses comes down I would wager.’

  Reluctantly Melai trailed her companions inside and Gargaron wound the wheel on the wall and the enormous stone door rolled slowly into place, sounding gritty, almost wet, on the stone as it went.

  Before long they were all shut in and with it swept Melai’s breath as she fought a wave of panic, her eyes squeezed shut, her tiny fingers digging into the calloused hands of Gargaron. He knelt beside her and held her close. And all the while, Hawkmoth’s wraiths hung there staring at them all with their hollow, godless eyes.

  5

  When the wave came they heard above ground, and somehow through the rock, a deep sonorous sound that were almost physical, even this far below surface, with an ocean of rock and stone to shield them. What it must do to the organs of the living should you be caught in its path this close to its epicenter, were something Gargaron did not wish to contemplate.

  The deep solid earyth around them groaned. And while the vault held tight, there came the sound of rock smashing into the floor beyond the vault door. Melai huddled up against Gargaron, his huge arm held protectively around her. She believed the huge cavern were collapsing around each vault. The prospect terrified her and she wished she had run from this place when she’d had the chance.

  For her sake, Gargaron tried to project an air of calm. Though within he felt pensive. He believed like Melai that the subterranean settlement were caving in. That it would leave them imprisoned. Though he reminded himself they had a sorcerer at their disposal—Hawkmoth would have some spell to free them, surely.

  He looked across at the sorcerer who sat there as if the ordeal were merely an academic problem he were thinking through, mentally ticking off each groan and roar, as if they’d been expected, as if he had calculated each one. Though his look of calm were nothing compared to that of Locke. Of them all, the crabman seemed most at ease. And sat there smiling, as if enjoying himself, his eyes trailing between the giant and the nymph, as if amused by their consternation.

  ‘Does this not concern you?’ Gargaron called out to him.

  ‘On the contrary,’ Locke called back with a grin, swilling whiskey from a small fogged-glass vessel, ‘I find it rather exciting. And amusing it must be said.’

  ‘I find nothing amusing in it,’ Melai snapped.

  ‘You would if you could see your faces.’ He smiled. ‘I’ve been to sea. Sailed the broiling Godless Ocean. Waves a hundred feet tall and whalefish chomping at the hull. So, this be nothing compared to those dark waters.’

  6

  The groan became a roar as the stone plateau beneath which they were sheltered protested, like a gortroll hunkered against a mighty wind, heaving with all its might to stand its ground. It went on for what felt like hours. Grimah and Razor snorted nervously, pushed together side by side, Razor’s eyes glowing green in the dim light. And Locke’s serpent were even more relaxed than her master, curled up and asleep she were. Hawkmoth’s three ungodly wraiths hovered there, their expressions never altering, demonstrating no fear, no angst, no happiness, no sadness. Nothing. They just seemed to stare and stare at the living.

  When the rumbling and the noise finished it happened quickly, with nothing but the booming sound rolling away like an ocean wave crashing and sweeping away to shore.

  Melai’s fingers were still dug into Gargaron’s skin, though he hardly noticed. Everyone looked about, waiting now for the second wave.

  It came, though not as wild or as booming as the first. Though it seemed to last longer. And when it were done Locke put away his whiskey and said, ‘Ah, nothing like a good groundshake to get the blood flowing.’

  Hawkmoth worked at the wheel. It would not budge until Gargaron took over and put his considerable strength into it. Once the vault door got rolling it became evident that part of the opposite wall had collapsed against it.

  Gargaron managed to heave some stones aside, making a path through which his companions could exit. Behind them the wraiths trailed.

  7

  Mounted again, Hawkmoth lead his small troupe through the subterranean settlement and Locke gazed wistfully at the treasure stashed in the vaults. ‘Oh, what that would have bought us had the world not gone to the rats.’ The troupe trudged back through tunnel and passage, up a hundred stairs, and through the large open doors where golden sunlight and fresh air met them. As they emerged, eyes squinting in the sun glare, they looked about, taking in their surroundings.