Cloudfyre Falling - A dark fairy tale Read online



  CLOUDFYRE FALLING

  ~ a dark fairy tale ~

  Copyright © 2015 A.L.BROOKS

  No part of this publication may in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or any other means be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or be broadcast or transmitted without the prior permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.

  Cover design by

  SelfPubBookCovers.com/Daniela

  ______________________________________________________

  For Tom and Sharon

  Thanks for your patience

  ______________________________________

  COMING SOON

  By A. L. BROOKS

  EPHEMERYS

  STRANGEWORLD: DAWN OF SHADOWS

  Out Now:

  STRANGEWORLD: THE MORTIFERA

  A Cornish village. A mysterious doorway. A monster hell bent on killing all it encounters.

  Jake and Emily find themselves at the heart of an ancient mystery.

  Can they find a way to defeat the Charon and shut the doorway before it’s too late?

  THE SHAPESHIFTERS

  Arrabel Grean goes on the run from the Royal Lancers after she beheads the Hampton Baroness.

  But having fled to the Dread Forests she is found by the Bonekeepers.

  Will they hand her over to authorities? Or do they have something else in mind for her?

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Coming soon from A.L.Brooks

  VESHK

  GREAT FALL

  THE BEGINNING

  ENDWORLD

  DRENVEL’S BANE

  CHANDRY’S STEPPE

  GRIMAH

  AUTUMN

  SKYSIGHT

  THE GOAT’S HEAD

  UJIK-L78

  THE EROTICA

  MELAI OF THOONSK

  THE ABOMINATION

  THE RJOOND

  MOONSTONE

  IHETHA

  CLARAVILLE

  THE WITCH

  REVELATIONS

  VARSTAHK

  SKINKK

  HAITHARATH AND THE IMPREGNATOR

  DARK SKIES

  KING’S LAIR

  BLUD OF WRENBUGGUS

  THE MENACE AT APPLEFORD

  NORTHLANDS RAIL

  PUKAYA’S BRIDGE

  TALES OF CHIANAY

  SHADOW GUARD

  SANCTUARY

  THE SWARM

  THE WARDENS THREE

  FLIGHT OF THE BLACKBIRDS

  TREK TO DARK WOOD

  VANTASIA

  CAHSSI OF THE XOORD

  RECORD OF GHARTST

  SLÜV THE VANISHER

  RITH GARTHA

  SEA SCAR

  GESHA AND OOSHA

  BY THE CAT’S EYES

  THROUGH THE GATES

  VOL MOTHAAK

  THE EMPTY TOWER

  RISE OF HOR

  DARK ONE

  EARTHCHILD

  HOORSK

  DAWN OF REETH

  DUMIINS

  GREAT FALL 5473

  Want more Monsters?

  VESHK

  GREAT FALL 5472

  1

  GARGARON STONEHEART reached the end of the world with the corpses of his wife and daughter upon his shoulders. For a moment he stood near the edge of the Great Precipice, catching his breath, surveying the endless drop down into the hazy blue lands far, far below.

  As a boy he had stood in this very spot. Then, like now, he wondered what lay down there. Some of the more learned folk from his village had said that it were filled with ancient forests of the First Days that stretched back’n’more through time to the very birth of the universe. Others claimed the ancient cities of Men lay there. Deserted and silent.

  Whatever it were, his kind, the Giants of Hovel, knew that mysterious land simply as Endworld.

  He had been here to the Precipice only twice before in all his days. Once as a young lad to watch his dear father see off his grandwuns. He had relished that particular occasion, treating the journey as some grand boyhood adventure, too young to appreciate the purpose of their trip. (Although, having seen his father cry, he had reflected deeply on this matter during their homeward journey.) Second time he had been far more introspective. For, that second time had been to farewell his own mother and father, to send off their lifeless forms and watch them hefted away down into Endworld’s mysterious lands.

  His third and final time should have been his own send off, his children carrying out the ancient ceremony of summoning Vurah’s Wraiths and dousing he and his wife in liquid Helfire.

  He drew in a deep breath and tenderly hoisted the corpses of his beloved from his shoulders. Gently he lay them down amidst waving tussocks of feather grass. Now he sat. Wiping sweat from his brow. He pulled his legs to his chest and rest his chin upon his knees. And with sad eyes, he watched Veleyal, his dear, dear daughter… Never again would she breathe the sweet air of Cloudfyre. Never again would Gargaron’s world rejoice in her delicate laughter. Never again would she come to him, holding out her little arms wide to grasp his leg, to embrace him, to tell him she loved him, to kiss his face with her tiny lips, to feel safe in his presence. If it were at all possible, his heart sank deeper at these musings. He wiped a tear from his eye, surprised he still had any to shed.

  Now he gazed upon Yarniya, his wife. There she lay, her body void of life. Something that still perplexed him. For, when bonded by marriage, giants by vow are also bonded in death; should a spouse pass on, so then do their partner. But here Gargaron sat alive and breathing while his wife lay perished. Somehow he could not help thinking that somewhere, some god or goddess were playing upon him a cruel trick.

  2

  It were late afternoon when he looked up and studied the position of Gohor and Melus, Cloudfyre’s two suns. Melus, the more prominent of the two, glowed proud and strong and yellow and hot. Gohor, blue as ice, always the more distant of the two, seemed so much closer nowadays. The Oldwuns used to say days would end when Cloudfyre’s suns strayed too close and crashed into each other. But all Oldwuns were long gone so what did they know.

  Bugs chirruped and hummed in woody scrub. Gargaron found these sounds a comfort. Sounds of living things when he had encountered so much death and dying on his journey here. Occasionally a sluggish, meandering jhünd ant would crawl across his ankle; in days passed he would have swiped life from such an insect pest before it bit into him and buried its head into his skin and spat out its parasitic larvae. But it seemed oddly disinterested in him. And he felt the earyth had been tainted with enough death in recent days. Thus he let it be and he sat and watched it be on its way.

  A second jhünd ant he lifted from his knuckles and placed carefully in the dirt beneath a thorn bush. As he sat there watching it, he witnessed it turning around and around and around, as if some invisible cackling demon had it in invisible reins determined to run the creature to death through exhaustion and madness.

  Gargaron busied himself, gathering kindling. Then larger chunks of wood. He built a small pyramid of sticks then grabbed some dried tufts of feathergrass and stuffed these inside the bundle’s hollow. He took his vial of Helfire, unstoppered it, and poured a small steaming dollop onto a patch of the soft dried grass. The purplish liquid smoked for a time, before a tiny blue flame licked into life, curling up through the feathergrass like a small snakeling. It sprouted multiple heads and then, whump, the feathergrass ignited as one, sending high red flames about the taller sticks.

  An impressive fire were soon crackling and spitting and Gargaron laid thicker knobs of twisted roastwood on top. The roastwood gave off a sweet, musky aroma, a wonderful smell taking
him back to younger, simpler days, when, as a boy, he and his father would take provisions into the Forests of Chayosa and, by nights, sleep beside a warming roastwood camp fire and his father would teach him about the dust of the cosmos, the stars, moons, gods and goddesses of the Great Nothing; would teach him secrets of the forest, how to conjure honeywater from the Vell Flowers of Gargantua in a summer’s drought, how to stalk and hunt invisible ghost-wren for their sweet, succulent meat, and for their blood, believed to possess properties that could cause pleasant inebriation and warm the veins of your heart on a cold winter’s night.

  As Gohor and Melus sunk toward the distant horizon, as light began to fade from Cloudfyre, Gargaron allowed again his eyes to stray toward his wife and daughter. They lay covered in meadow moss, the tiny leaves transparent. He could see her face, that of his dear daughter Veleyal, her eyes shut. Five moon-stars old, now destined never to grow any older. She could have been merely in slumber and nothing more. And Yarniya, his beloved, cherished wife… She too looked as if nothing more than sweet, sweet sleep had come over her.

  A faint smile found its way to his face. Fond memories tickling him. Of tucking his dear girls into bed at night as giant moor hens howled up from the plains, calling on Vasher, Gorvhald, Veeo, Canooc, Leenurs, Noo Ka, and Syssa, the seven moons of Cloudfyre.

  He gazed up into vast dusky skies and saw Noo Ka, her pale blue pockmarked skin, beginning to glow through darkening heavens. Low on northern horizons, Syssa were rising, pale as daisies, and cratered. And above her hovered Gorvhald, its dark “eyes” watching night descend upon Cloudfyre. Others would peek out and show their faces before morning.

  Fireflies began to flash intermittently. Teasing another memory from him. He had sat with Veleyal, his daughter, one night sometime around her first moon-star, on the steps to their cottage in Hovel. At dusk, fireflies floated out from Summer Woods. And danced their wonderful fairy dance before Veleyal’s sparkling eyes. She had reached out her tiny hand and gargled as they lit upon her fingers and twinkled blue and green like tiny drifting stars. Gargaron had never felt so much joy as to watch her small unblemished face light up in sheer unbridled delight. And to hear her beautiful innocent laughter brought a tear of love to his eyes.

  He did not know it, but, sitting here this night alone on the Great Precipice, it would be the last night he would ever see these magical bugs. By sunrise all fireflies would be wiped from existence.

  3

  He strode to cliff edge. And stood with his eighteen toes poking out over its lip. He gazed down into an almost nothingness below. Down there, growing out from the cliff wall, hugging steadfast to the sheer rock and all its crevices and nooks with a mighty system of barbed roots, were the great Hands of Teyesha that so fascinated him as a boy. Tree-hands that dwarfed his entire giant’s body, limbs and all. Adorned with leaves and branches, and hanging with old vines. And waiting forever, palms upturned, for prey to stumble from precipice down into their hungry clutches.

  Beyond the Hands, that distant land so far below lay amidst a haze of faint blue and green. As he had done as a boy, Gargaron imagined he could see empty spires of forgotten temples, imagined he could see the silent, abandoned sprawl of endless cities.

  Endworld, he pondered. How easy might it be to just… step off… and follow my beloved down?

  Strange jitters fluttered up through his knees and belly at this thought. The mighty drop seemed to beckon him. Carefully he shuffled back from cliff’s edge, small pebbles falling over and tumbling away into that vast open space below. He let out a deep, slow breath.

  4

  Both suns were pushing into the horizon and Gargaron turned and set out to hunt down the squealing Mandragorus. He retraced his steps to sandy ground not far back from the precipice. He had watched his father wait for Mandragorus at Starbirth, when dust of cosmos began to twinkle at dusk, waiting quietly, patiently for the wailing root-men to wriggle up from sandy earyth to hunt the night grounds.

  And so he sat. Waiting. Patient. Above him, through the overhang of clawtrees waving gently in cool evening breezes, he watched Old Soor wink at him through vast, vast leagues of the Great Nothing. Southways he spied the Maidens of Zerrunos, a tight constellation of stars, that in the blackest of moonless nights would dance and glow in patterns of red and blue and gold. And directly northways hung the Cat’s Eyes, a pair of bright red stars that never averted their gaze from Cloudfyre.

  He brought his attention back to ground before him at sounds of stones and dirt stirring. The muted wailing of root-men beneath could be heard. When the first of them broke surface its cries screeched out through scrubby woodland and away over the lip of old Precipice, away and away like birds into twilight. He had heard strange myths that Mandragorus screams could turn some folk to stone. If that were true then Gargaron were glad that his own race seemed immune to such terrifying effects.

  He snatched this first root-man in his large fists. Its ugly little demon face glared at him as it squealed and kicked and fought, and rows of deadly fangs gnashed at the crisp air. Gargaron were careful not to let his exposed skin anywhere near that ferocious little maw. A peculiar venom resided there in its spittle, much sought after and milked by plain’s witches. Deadsleep, they called it. It could put even the great Giants to deep slumber for many a day. And would put most other races to death.

  He held the Mandragorus at arm’s length… and once more… he waited. As dusk progressed, more stars birthed across the Great Nothing. Jenadah danced with Lansador the lover’s dance that Gargaron had watched since he were a boy, two stars caught heavily in each other’s torturous gravity, endlessly, endlessly swirling, swirling, swirling about the other.

  More squeals now accompanied a new round of wriggling and shifting in the sand. Gargaron waited with his arm poised, and a second root-man broke surface and he grabbed it.

  5

  Back by his campfire Gargaron sat down and crossed his mighty legs as embers flurried up into coming dark. Gohor and Melus were but mere glow trails upon the hazy horizon now. And fireflies twinkled magically along the darkened edge of the Precipice. Endworld and its ghosts, far, far, far below, had been swallowed up by night.

  Gargaron held both root-men toward his crackling camp fire, as his father had done, as he had done for his parents, until their squeals faded. Now they sang, transfixed, enchanted by warmth and glow. Gargaron then searched heavens for Ranethor, great God of life, most prominent body in the nightscape of the Great Nothing.

  When he saw Ranethor’s stark globe rise upon the north-western horizon he began to pray. For forgiveness. For the souls of the root-men. Prayed that Endworld’s Wraiths would hear his summons.

  He waited… waited for a sign from Ranethor.

  Then it came: a yellow eye crossed its surface, from east to west, a planetoid in orbit around the blue gas giant, one that mysteriously could only be seen when loved ones were being prepared for their Becoming.

  Gargaron stood now, and held his captive root-men against the searing, licking flame. As their long, spindly root legs caught afire they sang, still under enchantment. Gargaron kissed their small earthy heads… and then he tread carefully to precipice’s edge and hurled them out into the abyssal darkness beyond.

  Their flames roared and flared angrily as they fell—their angelic song floating up to him—and fell and fell. Until, so far below him, their firelight gently faded out under blankets of inky night.

  6

  Gargaron sat beside his wife and daughter. He kissed them both. His wife first. Then his daughter, another tear drop rolling off his cheeks, which fell and splashed against her soft skin. As it did its many droplets underwent a swift metamorphosis as tears on Cloudfyre will do when love is both true and deeper than all of the oceans, sprouting wings and legs and arms and small angelic faces, and they all took flight, these tiny fairy creatures, flapping about Veleyal’s face, before alighting gently upon her forehead.

  Gargaron lay down between his beloved girls a
nd gazed up at the great cosmic void.

  Then he slept.

  THE BEGINNING

  1

  HE had been asleep on the grassy western banks of the grand Buccuyashuck River when the first shockwave passed over him. The large goggling eyes of his Nightface, the visage on the rear of his skull, watched this shockwave pass over. Trees shook and spat out leaves, loose stones and pebbles jiggled and jumped, ornithens took for blue skies only to plummet like stones back to ground as the wave pushed through them, smashing them against bluff and ridge that banded the eastern edge of the shallow Buccuyashuck canyon. Swarms of pigmy deer burst from shaded woodland and scattered in a hundred different directions, many succumbing to death in mid stride as if shot through their skulls by arrows.

  The Nightface lifted its one single appendage, a long finger like spike. And prodded Gargaron’s neck. Perhaps it were unnecessary action—the rumble, shake and groan that had besieged the ground beneath Gargaron, had already begun to stir him.

  He swished Nightface’s spiked finger aside, thinking at first it were some big suckyfly come to chew off his skin for its nest. When a second prod came Gargaron opened his eyes and looked around, shaking deep dreamy sleep from his mind. As he yawned and looked about he tapped into his Nightface’s most recent memories. Here he saw all that had just transpired. A shockwave rippling madly through the rocky ridge across river. Pigmy deer all bursting from breezy forest. Ornithens taking for clear skies but finding only death as they splat against stony ridge.

  He gazed across the Buccuyashuck river, wondering why the ornithens had been affected so. Presently he noticed menfish rising to surface. And giant lampreys wriggling sickly about the rocky banks.

  Naturally he reached for his fishing rake. Lampreys were a delicacy but menfish were an elusive catch. Hundreds were rising now to river’s surface. Of course, it were forbidden to eat them. They were said to be the children of the First Men, those who had inhabited these lands a thousand, thousand generations gone. It were said menfish knew the gift of speech. Alas, they conversed with none but their own but to hear them, the Oldwuns told, was to hear deep magic of ages lost, tales of epochs come and gone. But to catch one meant good luck, so long as it offered you a gift of the Wetworlds, the drowned realms that lay deep and down within Cloudfyre’s core.

  But here with rake in hand, Gargaron hesitated.

  Few menfish appeared to be moving. In fact all were afloat, and on their sides. Gills gasping for breath. Their skinny arms reaching out to merciless, unkind gods. Their mewling cries pitiful and sad. Gargaron could barely listen. And could only watch, as one by one… they died.

  He climbed to his feet, looking about with goggling eyes. What, by Thronir, is this horror before me? He watched more ornithens come hurtling down, thudding into rock and river; their necks, legs, and wings snapping on impact. Then clouds of suckyfly corpses began peppering his skin, dropping out of blue skies.

  Next came a thunderous roar. He looked about, his skin turning cold, wondering what it could be. Then he saw it. A tide of black water cascading madly down river. ‘Oh, to Old Wolven,’ Gargaron gasped, ‘what now?’

  Hot black water spread like oil, dead fish tumbling and thrown about in its clutches; flashes of their silver scales could be seen as wave fronts smashed and crashed and heaved against rock and bank.

  In a panic, Gargaron climbed rapidly for higher ground, leaping up rock just as frothing waves swept over the bank upon which he had only recently been asleep. From his new vantage, he observed the carcass of half a hundred beast and fowl, caught in this black tide, come rushing down the wild currents, unceremoniously tossed and thrown and battered against serrated rock. He saw limbs torn and broken, he watched bellies ripped open and intestines spewing into raging black surf.

  2

  When the second shockwave struck, the noise and impact upon the earyth was so terrifying and immense, Gargaron thought it was the sound of the Scarecrow Range tumbling down. Yet, those snowcapped mountains dominating the skyline northways’n’east appeared unshaken.

  Instead a deep, ominous grumbling noise could be heard rolling eastways in an almost sluggish movement, some juggernaut rumbling through the high woodland plateau toward him, shaking violently leaf, branch, trunk and rock.

  It were almost upon him when, frantic, he threw himself behind a wall of shielding stone. He braced himself as an odd sonic wave crawled across the region, passing through earyth and rock and tree and air, and through even Gargaron himself, through bones and flesh and organs, some powerful invisible force, causing him to shudder violently, dropping him to his knees, making him gurgle, spit and splutter.

  Then it went sweeping away, west to east, slowly across Buccuyashuck (surface water rippling and jiggling and frothing) before it moved up over rock shelf and away across the eastern stretches of Godrik’s Vale.

  From his knees, Gargaron had watched in an almost catatonic stupor. But now he were off, running in blind panic.

  3

  He charged through woodland, astounded by hundreds of corpses that suddenly and inexplicably littered the grassy forest floor. Foxes, angel-mites, sunflies, squirrels, Gurbs, deer, ornithens, pixies, ground sloths, fern weavers, rock dwellers, wood borers and grave dogs all. Sunlight slanted down in wonderful warming beams but all it did were illuminate the dead and dying all about him. All this sudden death made him think of nothing else but that of his wife and daughter.

  He reached the top of Cahsteks Ridge, charged through Hovel’s old stone gates, built two thousand years before during the days of the Soonsk, when the Xideyysa Gods rode down from the stars on stones afire, leaving the vast continent of Godrik’s Vale pockmarked with craters.

  Jagonard and Corinarv, village sentries, did not stand guard. Matter of fact, Gargaron saw them nowhere. Their absence alarmed him. Why should they find need to abandoned post? Except as he pressed forward he saw fresh puddles of blood, deep purple-black, cast across the worn cobbles leading to a pair of bodies.

  Here they lay. Jagonard and Corinarv. Slain and dumped upon rocks, while the spidergrass were already supping at their blood and intestines.

  Horrified, gasping for breath, Gargaron kept running.

  He came upon Hovel’s village square; the buildings here were arranged in a circular fashion around a central clump of stone megaliths where animal sacrifices were still strung up, rotting, slowly being eaten up by mulybugs and fire-ants, chewed at by growing green mounds of bonefungus.

  Carcasses littered Hovel’s cobbled streets. Those of his own people. Just this morning he had walked through here on his way down ridge to river. Vonagar had been heading out to the high plain beyond Buccuyashuck to hunt grass lizards with his falcon. Henendar and Melinaya, young lovers, had been rigging a wagon for journey to Waysville and Cidertown along Far Trail. Sellers had been hauling open their market stalls, Gorinth and Farbenay squabbling over positioning of olive jars and strings of pickled toad.

  As well, the Magers at Hovel’s Temple Of Vruinthia had been about their daily ritual of merging mind and body with tree and plant, to prey and meditate in order that they may further unlock the secrets of the natural realm. The great wooden form of Vruinthia, which from lore passed down from Great Dawn (being the time of the earliest days) spoke as being half tree, half giantess, still stood atop her temple.

  But here and now the Magers had somehow perished, sprawled about in death. Whatever secrets they may have gleaned from tree and shrub had obviously not been enough to forewarn them of the blight that had suddenly and inexplicably befallen them.

  Large Gorbulls, wagon haulers, lay dead and gashed open. And shire-horses were scattered lifelessly about their enclosures. Already the scavenging hoardogs from deep within Summer Woods were tearing moist bloody flesh from their bones. The stench of death were sharp and moist and meaty on the late morning air.

  4

  Gargaron raced through Hovel, raw screeching anxiety and fear tearing at his heart. All that filled his mind
were Veleyal, his precious, beautiful daughter. And Yarniya, his beloved, cherished wife.

  He tore down Meadowsvale Lane toward his stilted house where it were situated along the orange grove that backed onto the woodland. He raced up wooden stairs, burst through doors, praying he would find his sweethearts huddled in bedroom or cellar. But as he thumped from room to room he realised soon enough that his cottage were empty.

  ‘Veleyal!’ he called desperately, ‘Yarniya! Where be you?’

  He spotted then a note on the dining table and snatched it into his grasp:

  Picking Spotted Blues in Summer Woods,

  See you anon,

  Love, your dear Yarniya.

  5

  Gargaron fled cottage, charged down lane and exited rear of village over Hovel’s iron bridge that spanned Shadow Brook, and running, running he charged out into the airy woodland that fringed the top of Cahsteks Ridge. Usual ornithen song had fallen silent. Only the eerie howl of Hoardogs could be heard through the woods now. Squirrel carcasses lay spread across duff and leafy carpet. He arrived at Pliko’s Stream and tracked it to Jaden’s Point, a glade where he knew Yarniya liked to pick her Spotted Blue toadstools that stood as tall as Gorbulls.

  Though, as he charged toward it, his heart sunk as he realised he were too late. There before him, a pair of corpses were sprawled across dirt and stone. Hoardogs picking tentatively at their toes, as if they were uncertain of their deaths.

  Dread filled Gargaron. And he arrived roaring, the dogs scattering into undergrowth. He dropped to his knees, scooping his daughter into shaking arms that glistened with sweat… and her head lolled loosely, lifeless. ‘No!’ he cried. ‘Veleyal! Veleyal, please, come round now. Please, awaken, I beg of you!’

  But she heard him no longer; her eyes stared long, empty and dead into the high leafy canopy. He felt something pinching his leg. He looked around to find the fingers of his wife weakly touching him. Holding his daughter in one arm he scrambled to his wife’s side. ‘Yarniya,’ he cried desperately. ‘Yarniya? What did this?’

  She could no more speak than lift her head from the earyth. Could but barely whisper. ‘The Darkwing,’ she whispered, ‘it has awoken.’ And here the last vestiges of life drained from her. And that were the last she spoke.

  Around Gargaron, watching, cowering beneath thicket and shrub, the multi-limbed Hoardogs snickered and seethed, eager to feast on the newly dead. Gargaron, holding his daughter protectively, lunged at them in rage. Most scurried off but some of the older ones, the braver ones, and those more hungry, stayed put. These he pelted with stones. Great peppering handfuls of stones. Smacking many and drawing blood; one stone hit with such force it caved in skull and bone, brain squishing out of the hound like a bloom of summer roses. Wailing, its mates take off for the safety of denser woodland.

  Gargaron crumpled to sandy ground, crying. He dragged his wife close. Held both his beloved in his arms. Their night faces watched him in their detached way; not comprehending, not yet dead, only watching.

  He lay down his wife and daughter both, side by side, and looked about. He had an enchanted medicine back in village abode, Lyfen Essence, developed by Hovel’s druids, a potion that drank away advancing death from a living body. It were too late for that now. But there were one thing he could try.

  He reached for a cut of needle vines. He slashed several lengths to lie across the bodies of his girls. Then away he dashed into the woodland.

  6

  He ran toward Jo’ckujark Blind, a sheer rock wall that jutted straight up from forest floor. He scrambled along its base, keeping his eyes wide and open.

  Until… he saw one. A vannandal. A mysterious shelled critter, old-beyond-time, an enigma that had first come into existence as simple stone spat out by the lost volcanic mountains of Vahross. Tales told of hundreds of such rocks. Rocks that were collected by the ancient, decimated race of Vannandal Knights who had sculpted each stone into unique animal forms before enchanting them with the gift of life.

  He rushed to pluck the creature into his arms… but hesitated. Village myth had it that even the act of laying your finger upon a Vannandal could pull you into Dreamsleep. This were a state that you would awaken from only weeks later with your body partially rotted and your brain drained of all conscious and civilised thought, forcing you to walk the earyth for the remainder of your days a mindless ghoul.

  If Thronir deems it then a ghoul I shall be! Gargaron thought defiantly and he grabbed the critter from the weeds.

  As if in response, the vannandal’s small segmented body glowed a soft white iridescence. And a not too unpleasant tingle ran up Gargaron’s fingers. Were this the beginning of Dreamsleep? How long did it take to settle in?

  He did not hesitate to find out. May Thronir take me! He clasped the vannandal against his chest and dashed back to his wife and daughter.

  7

  The hoardogs had returned. Though they had been unable to find a way around the needle vines. Gargaron roared at them as he returned and again they turned and scattered.

  He swiped the needle vines aside and without waiting another moment he placed the vannandal critter across his daughter’s forehead. He crouched and leaned forward, pressing his own forehead against the creature; it had a reek like stony river water. Though Gargaron could not have cared if it smelled like rot. He had one hope here, and that was to return his daughter to life. Thus he wasted no further time, shutting his aching eyes.

  And concentrating his thoughts.

  Many times he had observed magers do this. Yet, the gift of mind-touch were not an act exclusive to those possessing magical competency. All Giants, to a lesser or greater extent, had the ability. He himself had harpooned the minds of many folk over the years, to learn secrets, to unearth falsehoods, to clarify motives. He had “jumped” into the minds of animals, to learn tricks to their hunting. But he had never used a vannandal to bridge his soul with another’s and attempt the transference of energies. For it were forbidden.

  There were naught but dark he saw at first. Yet soon, as if a doorway had come creaking open, he saw a faint light. He believed he could hear, faintly from beyond, Veleyal’s sweet laughter, her voice.

  And then it came as if a portal between he and his daughter had flung suddenly wide open. Instantly he felt it, pulsing energy, sucking at his life’s core, like dry sand to water, dragging it through the vannandal, pouring into his dear Veleyal.

  There were no pain here as he had anticipated. Nothing but a gradual dimming of light throughout his subconscious. As if sleep were coming on. He did not care. If it meant that she would sit up and look about and live again then he were willing to relinquish all his life’s energy.

  However, the pull on his soul began to ebb, the tug he felt in his chest eased.

  And after that, nothing.

  Veleyal’s body failed to awaken.

  ‘No,’ he cried. ‘No. Come back to me Veleyal. Come back now, I command it. Gods and goddesses take my life and gift it to you!’

  Again he put his head to the vannandal, concentrating his thoughts, desperate for it to work. He wept as he did. For there were no sensation of doorways opening this time. Naught but silence, as if he were reaching out into emptiness. ‘No, it cannot be,’ he sobbed. ‘Veleyal, hear me, please, my love, hear me!’

  But she did not.

  Grunting, anguished, Gargaron transferred the vannandal to the forehead of his wife, shutting his eyes, concentrating his thoughts, stepping from his own mind into hers, sucking the living energy from his soul and heart, forcing it, heaving it, through the vannandal critter into her, desperate to open a bridge of consciousness and energy with her. But he got nothing but blackness, as if there were but a void now where once there were soul. Weeping uncontrollably he again tried his daughter.

  But again… it were little use.

  He knew then… they were both but gone.

  He threw himself back and wailed. Trees shook. Stones in the ground shivered. Pebbles shudd
ered. Any ornithens left alive tore away into clear skies, and batlings shot from their caves in great dying clouds.

  ENDWORLD

  1

  HE sat with them on the edge of the Great Precipice. Veleyal seated on his left, her small hand in his. Yarniya, on his right.

  ‘What be out there, father?’ Veleyal asked.

  ‘Lands of wonder,’ he told her smiling. ‘Where our ancestors live out their days. You shall love it there.’

  ‘Will I see gran’poppy? Will I see gran’mama?’

  ‘Oh, yes, they shall be waiting for you. I expect your gran’mama will have a steaming hot sweetberry cake baked for your arrival. Topped with layers of lush, thick goat’s cream. How does that sound?’

  ‘Oh, wonderful. I cannot wait?’ Then she looked up at him. ‘Are you coming with us, dada?’

  He looked down at her and smiled sadly. ‘Maybe I’ll do just that.’ He touched her cheek gently with his great hand.

  Yarniya, sitting at his opposite hip, squeezed the fingers of his other hand. Gargaron looked around at her.

  ‘You have work here first,’ she told him softly.

  He frowned. ‘But I have nothing here now, my sweet.’

  ‘You have. More than you can know.’

  A cry came up from below the precipice and Gargaron turned his head…

  …and opened his eyes.

  2

  He lay there between the unmoving bodies of his beloved. Night stars twinkled still, yet the glow of dawn came from Melus as her fiery yellow crown began to work its way above the eastwun tree line. Westways, both sky and land, were still cast in the dark blue cape of wandering night, and much of Endworld’s silent realm still lay within the vast shadow of the precipice.

  Hearing another squeal, Gargaron sat up, rubbed his eyes, and looked about. Once again it came: a squeal from some creature, mighty and beastly, from beyond the Precipice itself. A sound both alien and familiar. A sound he had heard only twice before. He got to his feet and strode to cliff edge. Positioning himself carefully, he gazed down. He saw them, ascending. The Wraiths. Majestic angels of Endworld.

  They circled their way up, gracefully dodging the great tree-hands protruding from the endless cliff wall. From blurred, indistinct shapes, to beasts of immense size they grew as they rose toward him.

  As he had done as a boy, Gargaron stepped back, wary, cautious, almost frightened, as they reached his elevation. They swooped down and in a thunderous flurry of wings that kicked up grit and leaves and dying bugs, they lit upon the edge of the precipice, long talons holding purchase amidst rock and dirt. Waiting now, like gargoyles, like Monyyt sentries at the Gates of Forever.

  They were unlike any creature Gargaron had ever laid his eye upon. They stood taller than he, with limbs as spindly as sticks, and beaks as long as his arms. Horns protruded from the backs of their bald, round skulls, and bent forward not back. They were grey of leg and torso, black of claw, and red of neck and face and head. Their wings seemed a mix of batwing and feather. Numerous large red eyes watched him.

  Both Wraithbirds were perched there patiently, waiting to receive the newly dead and ferry them unto a new life.

  Gargaron composed himself, came forward slowly and positioned himself before them. Now he spoke. ‘Oh great Harons, hear me and see me, for I speak for the souls of Yarniya and Veleyal, my kin, my beloved. My dear neysahs have but strayed from me and I request your hand in helping them find my dear da and ma. May they walk the realms of Endworld with my forebears, happy, content, and safe from all harm, until I come down to them, and walk at their side, hand in hand, till the end of days.’

  He turned and crouched to place his forehead one last time upon that of his daughter, and then of his wife. ‘We shall meet again,’ he whispered to each of them. ‘In days beyond this one. I will find you. I promise. In the lands of End. We shall walk together once more.’

  He kissed each girl. On forehead and on mouth. And placed a Star Flower upon their lips.

  As the Wraiths watched him he took out his vial of liquid Helfire and let loose a single dollop upon the hearts of his dear Yarniya, and upon the hearts of his dearest Veleyal.

  He stepped back, and stepped back more, until he judged to be at a safe distance before kneeling in gritty sand and bowing his head.

  He heard first a crackle of flame. He listened to it spread, igniting first the moss that had kept his girls unspoilt, and now it kissed their clothes beneath before taking on their flesh.

  He looked up, tears in his eyes, watching each Wraithbird come crawling toward the burning figures, lifting each flaming bundle into their long bony arms. As they took flight, wild flames licked up their forelimbs. But as ever the birds proved immune to fire’s hunger, for blue flame remained on corpses alone and never ate at Haron flesh. And out they flapped over the Precipice before pushing back their wings, and away they soared, down and down and down into Endworld.

  Gargaron hurried to the edge and peered after the long fire trails rocketing away through morning sky.

  More tears came to his eyes. They spilled and splat heavily against rock and dirt. Into fairies they did not turn. Instead, they burst with small legs and skittered away as skybeetles and died beneath the sunlight warming the rock, shriveling away to flaky lumps of ash.

  Gargaron sat there long after his wife and daughter were gone, bereaved. Sobbing. Tears streamed down his face, soaking the collar of his shirt.

  Later, he sat eyeing the edge of the Precipice with dry, red eyes. Sat there thinking.

  He got up. He walked to the edge. He stood there gazing down into Endworld. After a while he held his arms out from his body. And felt a peculiar impulse to tip himself outwards, give himself over to gravity…

  He looked down. How far? he wondered. How long might it be…

  before…

  I hit…

  the ground…?

  ‘You have work here first,’ Yarniya had said to him in his dream. ‘More than you can know.’

  He felt alarmed as his weight shifted forward suddenly, the dizzying height beckoning him, pulling him seductively. Horrified, he wheeled his arms backward, a wild attempt to halt his momentum.

  Too late. His feet slipped, stones tumbled, and he gasped as his weight dragged him over the edge…

  3

  He twisted his enormous frame, shooting one hand around, and its nine fingers managed to snare the very edge of the cliff. For a second, as his body swung down, thumping heavily against the wall of the cliff, those huge fingers managed to arrest his momentum.

  ‘You have work here first. More than you can know.’

  Then his fingers lost grip… Dragging dust and dirt and stones as he scrabbled frantically, trying to reach up his free hand.

  His fingers lost traction.

  Out he tumbled into empty space…

  4

  He fell. Turning over and over and over…

  Lost to the void…

  Seeing dawn sky, then the endless lands of Endworld…

  sky…

  Endworld…

  sky…

  Endworld…

  sky…

  Then three hundred feet below, one of the Hands of Teyesha, it’s great leafy fingers, its vast leathery palm, caught him and stopped his momentum dead…

  5

  The heavy landing belched a tremendous gush of air from his lungs. Momentarily his huge body settled in amongst knobby knuckles and wrinkled fingers. All he could do were try to gather his breath.

  Yet, he began to sink through the thick digits, gravity clawing at him, his arms and hands desperately scrabbling for purchase. Rump first he went, then his head and shoulders, and there he dangled, upside down, his bulging eyes at nothing but Endworld far, far, far below with his feet snared in the Teyesha fingers.

  He reached up his arms and clawed at the gigantic hand that precariously and tenuously held him. But he were still slipping; branches, twigs, leaves snapping off in his fingers as he groped desp
erately for something to hold onto.

  ‘You have work here first. More than you can know.’

  He clasped at everything. Yet everything cracked and snapped in his grasp.

  But then… something wrapped itself about his leg. Snaring him. Holding him steadfast, suspended out over Endworld like a worm on a hook.

  He looked up, saw his chest, his belly, his legs stretched out above him… and one leg caught in the looped grip of a gargantuan tongue.

  It were here he saw the face. The one in the cliff wall below which the hand’s thick gnarled wrist sprouted, sour-eyed and hungry looking with a mighty maw of root-teeth waiting to crunch his bones.

  6

  The tongue drew him upwards, lifting him toward the enormous mouth, holding him there the way he had held the woodland frogs above his own gaping mouth as a boy. He knew what came next: he’d be chewed and crunched and swallowed.

  He decided he would rather fall and have Endworld rush up to meet him. So he wriggled and kicked. ‘Release me!’ he yelled. ‘Release me, damn you! Let me fall away to my kin!’

  But the fiend would not.

  He watched that godless face, its stinking mouth like a fetid pit, its godless, unblinking eyes. He wriggled and struggled in its grip.

  Its mighty hand reached up and took better hold of him. And he kicked at the enormous woody fingers. To no avail. He tried reaching for his sword belt. If he could withdraw his blade and inflict some painful wound, he might be able to engineer his release.

  But it were no use. His limbs were pinned to his sides. He were effectively a doll in the clutches of a child. He opened his mouth and sank teeth into the woody fingers. But with skin of bark and wood, how much discomfort, if any, did this Hand of Teyesha feel?

  None, judging by its reaction.

  The thing’s great mouth seemed to grow now; a cavern with foul hot breath. ‘Release me!’ Gargaron demanded of it. ‘Please!’ Yet he were so close now he could reach out and touch those fangs as tall as trees, as sharp as stakes. But try as he might, he were unable to free his arms.

  Gargaron heaved and squirmed one last time. But it was of no use. He would be eaten, swallowed and digested. A waste, he thought, a pitiful waste. I should have died with my girls.

  ‘Blast this!’ he growled.

  One ploy remained him though: once and when he were stuffed inside that gaping maw and those fangs closed around him like a cage, he would whip out his sword and drive it down deep into that fleshy tongue. And as soon as it roared with agony he would leap forth into open space and be done with it all.

  7

  Something unexpected happened…

  Another hand, one higher up the cliff wall, reached down and took hold of him. He knew then they were to fight over him; pull him apart in their hunger. But surprise of all surprises, the hand currently holding him, passed him gently and readily to the next.

  Oh, pass me to the one more starved!

  But no, the second hand passed him to a third hand, also higher up the wall, which in turn passed him to another even higher.

  A strange haunting murmur came from their mouths as they hoisted the giant all the way back up to Great Precipice’s edge. And from there Gargaron scrambled onto flat ground, collapsing and lying there panting. The haunting moans from the Mouths of Teyesha went on and on as he remained there, his eyes squeezed shut, relieved and perplexed, his breath coming in short, sharp bursts.

  8

  Slowly… he regained both his breath and composure. He lay there, staring up at the sky, shaken, deflated. He did not move.

  Eventually he sat up. He eyed the edge of the cliff. He breathed a sigh of relief. He couldn’t help notice then the spot where he had lain his girls. The shapes of their forms were still imprinted in the sand. It brought on a deep sense of loneliness that began to pervade his entire being, a feeling of utter isolation. It was as if he were only just now realising what had gone on. That he were actually on his own now, without his family, that his dear girls were both dead and gone. Never to return.

  Tears filled his eyes. He hung his head… and sobbed.

  Later, only later, did he dare creep forward to cliff edge and peer over. Teyesha song had long ceased. And their great woody hands were drooping. Why? he wondered. Are they too at the end of their long lives? Or are they simply in slumber?

  In numbed silence he sat there, unmoving, until the heat of Gohor and Melus felt it were blistering his skin. By then, as far as he could see, the Hands of Teyesha had all stiffened and cracked, and were slowly eroding away on the eerie, whining wind.

  He did not try to understand this. Their last act were to save him. And now, like so many other creatures he had witnessed since the first shockwaves hit, they were dead or dying.

  Eventually he found the strength to stand. And one last time he gazed down into Endworld. ‘Be safe my loves,’ he whispered, his lip quivering. ‘Enjoy gran’mama’s sweetberry cake. I shall find you very soon. I promise.’ Then he turned away from the Great Precipice, not knowing that he would never stand there again.

  DRENVEL’S BANE

  1

  IN Hovel, Gargaron stood at village centre, looking about. The Hoardogs had had their way in his absence. The clothing of his village folk had been clawed from them or bitten off, and many had been gnawed down to bone, the soft flesh of their faces eaten away. A ghastly, sickening sight to be sure. One which Gargaron could not stomach, and he would avert his gaze as often as he could.

  But the Hoardogs were now mysteriously absent. He had not known them to leave a carcass go uneaten. Bones and all would normally be seen to. Nothing wasted. Not a morsel. Have they had their fill? he wondered. Unlikely. So where are they then?

  In the market place he found himself righting jars of preserved bulging Condor eyes that had fallen. Stacks of lemon-melons. Crates of dried bull-shrimp. Wares that had tumbled and spilled across cobbles. Lonely whispering wind caressed him as he went about his work. After absently righting a number of items he halted and stood there looking about, wondering what he were doing.

  The dead lay all about you, Hovel lies effectively abandoned, and here you go tidying up as if everyone is simply off at the town hall attending a community meeting and after lunch everything will be back to normal.

  He strode onto the village square. Here he noticed now deceased Hoardogs. Littering the long grass along the village wall. T’would appear that what befell my family and folk, has finally befallen them. But there were no-one to turn to, no wise old soul to consult with about this mysterious turn of events.

  ‘You have work here first.’ Those peculiar words spoken from Yarniya’s mouth in his dream continued to eat at him. Yet, something more troubling outshone them. Something he had quite forgotten until this moment. Yarniya’s dying words: ‘The Darkwing has awoken.’

  Darkwing. Great birds from the Myths of Belenoth. Could it be true?

  He gazed up into the heavens.

  The Darkwing, it were said, would one day awaken from a thousand year slumber to wreak havoc upon the world. They would smother Cloudfyre in death and darkness. None would survive their wrath. They would cleanse all lands of life, particularly of those folk they deemed to have mistreated Cloudfyre, those who had raped her resources for greed, those who had diseased and poisoned her skies, rivers and oceans in the name of progress and profit.

  He pondered this as he began to collect the village dead; he were forbidden from delivering any of his folk to Endworld; such a sacred chore could only be carried out by members of immediate family; he were to burn those he could not send off the Great Precipice. As he went about this unenviable labour he pondered at length the feared Darkwing. If they were indeed to blame… then why had he not seen them? Why had they not flooded sky and field?

  And why had they not come for him?

  He arranged his fellow villagers in a row outside Hovel’s Vruinthia Temple. One row, then two, then three, four, and five… and more still: ten, eleven, thirteen… Fifteen
rows in total by the time he were done. Bodies of friends, acquaintances, flower sellers, fishermen, farriers, wagon menders, falconers, guardsmen, hunters.

  He knelt and whispered a prayer for them all under the gaze of the goddess Vruinthia. Then he ignited them all in liquid Helfire. And a mighty inferno blazed there in Hovel.

  2

  Flames licked and roared under midday’s warm breeze. Gargaron sat and awaited news. He had been waiting since before collecting up Hovel’s dead. Skyworms. He had not seen nor heard from them since he had dispatched three apiece to Darkfort, Autumn, Mount Destruction, and Horseshoe of the Downs—villages and towns of other Giant clans. The Skyworms had carried this message:

  Some mysterious event has devastated Hovel.

  All have perished. Giants, Yonderfolk, animal, all.

  Nothing has survived save me, Gargaron Stoneheart.

  Send word of your health and status.

  By now the Skyworms should have returned with tidings. Yet they had not. He found himself picking through Eromgar’s corner shop. Found himself stepping through the smithy of Aesorard’s & Son. Ultimately, he sat upon the wall across the street from Vruinthia’s Temple, waiting and watching his fellow giants burn under a mass of flames where a mighty smoke stack spewed forth and rose high into the sky where it then drifted eastways on the winds.

  He eyed old Vruinthia. There she stood in her lofty position on temple’s roof where she could survey with her cold wooden eyes the entire settlement of Hovel. There she stood in serene indifference to the death of all those who had loved and worshipped her. So much for our prayers for you to lead us all to salvation, Gargaron thought with disdain. And he found himself caring not for the parts of her temple that had succumbed to the shockwave and tumbled down, caring not for those parts of the temple roof that had cracked and caved in, those rents and fissures that now invited sunlight down into chambers that may not have seen sunlight for hundreds of years.

  Gargaron pondered what lay within. It were one of the few places in Hovel he had never set foot, for not being a mager it were a sacred place that ordinary, nonexalted beings were forbidden to enter.

  Primarily it were the boyhood stories that stimulated him. His father had told him tales of Hor the Cutter who had wielded the magic warhammer Drenvel’s Bane. Hor had lived much of his life with the witches of Hemlock Vale and together they had devised a secret weapon to take down Drenvel, a mythical beast purported to be impervious to sword and spear, ice and flame. They had succeeded in forging a warhammer from star fragments that had fallen to Cloudfyre in a shower of fire. And Hor had taken it to Drenvel and dispatched the beast from this plane. And at the end of his days, when Hor the Cutter had returned home to Hovel, he had gifted the warhammer to the magers and there it had rested for hundreds of years.

  While I wait for my Skyworms, might I see this mighty axe with my own eyes? Gargaron thought as he sat there. And as he stood and crossed the street, giving the funeral pyre a wide birth, he murmured as he cast his eye at the statue atop the temple, ‘May you forgive my trespass, old Vruinthia.’

  3

  The temple were full of large chambers stained in black soot from centuries of burnt incense, and here Gargaron found the nurseries of warped tree fiends he had heard of but never seen. They grew out of wall and floor, ornate twisting creatures, and it were here Gargaron discovered that many of the ceilings were constructed from green glass—a mistake then it had been to believe no sunlight ever entered this temple, for here were evidence of it.

  He stepped from chamber to chamber, a ringing silence descending every time he halted to look about. He came across worship rooms, where the root feet of Vruinthia had dug down through roof and walls where her toes curled into serpentine creatures that all bore her likeness. He found blood chambers, and toe dismemberment wards, and vats of sap, caught as it dripped from Vruinthia’s limbs. Flowers sprouted from web like branches that snaked up walls and over floors and it were a chamber with a wooden pedestal covered in similar flowers where Gargaron first saw it.

  Drenvel’s Bane.

  He stepped into the room and moved toward it, green light cast down through the glass ceiling; the flowers gave off such a heavenly odour. The legendary weapon were how it had been described. A handle and naught more. Though Gargaron had always preferred to believe (and had always pictured it as such) that the weapon lay there in its entirety. As it were depicted in paintings and tapestries and stone etchings: Hor the Cutter holding it aloft, the mighty hammer dripping with the blood of Drenvel.

  The greatest bounty of all hides inside our own village, his father had told him once. And be it the mightiest weapon to have ever been forged on Cloudfyre.

  It made Gargaron smile, for it looked not mighty and it looked not worthy of any bounty. But a leather bound handle it were, missing its head.

  He sighed, remembering his Skyworms and thought outside would be a better place to watch for their return than here. Thus he moved to leave and were almost out the door when he turned one last time and cast his eyes upon Drenvel’s Bane where it lay amidst flowers on its wooden plinth.

  To wield it would be to leave you unvanquished, his father had told him once.

  As Gargaron stood there gazing back at it he thought, In these uncertain times, were I to establish a way to use it, such a thing might come in for some use.

  4

  Autumn were closest to Hovel in terms of accessibility; Far Trail were a roadway flat and wide as any of those serving the capitols of Dunforth and Blakanz, and carved from ironstone, ideal for cart and great-hound. By flight of crow, Mt Destruction remained closest, yet its northern alpine trails were steep and winding and often times the journey there from Hovel took as much as three times the journey to Autumn. Horseshoe of the Downs and Darkfort were both also many days away: Horseshoe countless leagues southways and situated in the midst of the Luasha Riverlands, requiring a pole-boat to reach; and Darkfort, eastways, lay nestled amidst the barren pyramid hills where the Gates of Forever loomed ready to swallow all who stepped beyond them.

  It had been two turns of the clock since he had traipsed through Vruinthia’s sacred halls and as Gargaron sat there in Hovel’s quiet village garden (without the customary sounds of ornithen or bug), upon a bench that looked out across the village square, he realised he had mostly given up on seeing his Skyworms again. Thus he had turned to ideas of leaving, of striking out and seeking the answers he craved.

  Mayhaps I ought to make for Autumn, he thought to himself. The Skyworms perchance have been brought down by some easily explained occurrence, and in all likelihood Autumn goes on and about its merry business happily oblivious to all that has befallen Hovel. Perhaps Autumn’s Watchguard will have news of what has struck Hovel. And if not, then there be Skysight.

  5

  Carrying the hilt of Drenvel’s Bane, Gargaron returned to his cottage on a now desperately quiet Saden’s orange grove. Tears welled in his eyes as he mounted empty stairs and pushed through unlatched doors. At once its silence, its emptiness, proved unbearable. The life pulse had gone out of the place; there were a palpable feeling of emptiness in its stale, lifeless air. Like sticky humidity. He felt as if ghosts watched him from vacant corners.

  Without thought, he found himself moving to Veleyal’s bedroom door. He put his ear against it. Listening…

  Perhaps it had all been naught but a dream, him finding her and Yarniya dead inside Summer Woods, setting them afire, summoning up Vurah’s Wraithbirds, watching their twin fire-trails descend down into Endworld. Perhaps his dear daughter simply played within, or slept, perhaps all he had found in Summer Woods were mere doppelgangers.

  ‘Veleyal?’ he asked softly.

  Gently he pushed the door open, hoping… praying to see her there, lying abed reading, or drawing, singing sweetly to herself. But her bed were empty. Her jummy-bear and forest-fairy doll lying there forgotten, abandoned, side by side, vacant eyes staring at the ceiling. The sight of these eyes caused him
to grimace, as it brought on the raw memory of his daughter in his arms, lifeless, lolling… her dead eyes staring, staring, staring.

  He wiped tears from his cheeks. Stepped across to his daughter’s bed. He knelt as he had done a thousand times kissing his dear daughter to sleep at night. Only now there were no Veleyal to kiss, to hug, to tickle, to read to, to sing to. He hugged her bear and doll, lay his head upon her pillow. He breathed in. Closed his eyes. Smelling her. That mix of child sweat and a faint hint of juniper soap. His tears soaked into its soft fabric, swimming away in the forms of tiny water horses.

  He grasped her pillow to his face and suddenly wept uncontrollably. The sobs shook his chest. ‘Why?’ he whimpered. ‘Why am I still here and you have perished? Why?’

  You have work here first.

  ‘No!’ he yelled at the room, his eyes bleary with tears. ‘What work?! Tell me, damn you!’

  But it gave him no answer.

  He wiped his face. He lay down jummy-bear and forest-fairy doll. Again side by side.

  6

  Briefly he checked his own bedroom, ever hopeful, casting his gaze over the large empty bed, the sheets still ruffled from the lovemaking he and his wife had made the night before the shockwaves.

  He sighed. Yarniya were not there.

  From the store room he took a large bull-hide satchel and from the pantry he filled it with some basic provisions: cured meat, salted wrasse, dried figs, apples, pears, a loaf of rye bread. And some medicinal herbs and poultices and other remedies for any unwanted injury or illness. Lyfen Essence. And skin grafts that grew from the flesh rug living on the wall, several lengths of which he pulled off and attached to his belly. He also took a jar of the potentially dangerous Zombeez, little beasts ordinarily used solely by the town druids except they were often given to Hunters who were afforded special dispensations simply due to their line of work—availability of Zombeez in the field were most often crucial to survival. Gargaron’s kind were immune to zombiism. But other races were not so fortunate and history were littered with horror stories of dire outbreaks. Thus a Hunter were trained in their usage, and where and when to utilise them.

  Once he had packed, Gargaron went to fill his gourds; he considered Hovel’s village well, but, thinking of the blackness that had stricken Buccuyashuck River, he did not altogether trust the health of its water. Instead he drained water from the large ceramic rain tank at back of cottage. Once done he stood back and considered what he had packed thus far.

  He had traveled the route to Autumn many times over the years, mostly on drays hauled by gorbuls. Once or twice on horned horse. A journey to Autumn would normally tick off a full day’s travel, provided you possessed some manner of transport. Hound and cart could take you half that time. Yet, he feared that after what he had seen since the first shockwave, transport might be hard to come by. He feared his entire journey might thus be conducted entirely on foot. Therefore he would need to pack enough provisions for a three or four day hike. He reminded himself that if all were well in surrounding shires and vales, there were places to trade for food and wine on route, even transport. And he dearly hoped this remained the case… yet he could not help feeling pessimistic. Of all he had seen since the shockwaves four days gone, well, he had met no-one else, heard from no-one. It were as if the entire world had fallen silent.

  Alas, he packed provisions enough for a foot mounted expedition to Autumn.

  7

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

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

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

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

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

  He would never see his cottage again.