Cloudfyre Falling - a dark fairy tale by A. L. Brooks Read Free Book Online

him,
dressed in battle armour. A thousand. An entire host. And the
carcasses of their wolven steeds. On close inspection there were no
blood, no hacked and dismembered limbs to this Orken army. Thus, no
sign of battle. And no discernable sign of enemy.
    What has done
this? he wondered. Be it some sickness?

    2
    He found Chandry’s Loss, a name
given to a high northern hill with a sheer treacherous drop-off
where songs claimed Chandry threw her girl lover, Mayesti, to her
death after Mayesti proclaimed love for the Witch Queen of
Waterdale. Here the elevated plateau looked out across world toward
Autumn. After hiking to the windswept summit, after catching his
breath and dropping his pack to waving grass and weed, Gargaron
cast his spyglass out across the Steppe and moors further afield.
Again he set eye upon nothing save dead upon dead upon dead for as
far as his sight would take him.
    He turned his
chin to clear sky. Beware the
Darkwing , a voice warned in his
mind.
    ‘ Where be they
then?’ he asked angrily, challengingly. ‘I have witnessed no such
thing since this entire thing began. Where be they if this is their
doing? Show yourselves? ’ he called out.

    3
    He continued on
his way. Trudging for hours along Far Trail’s iron roadway as it
cut through rocky grassland, finding nothing alive. Early afternoon
he took lunch on Tormun’s Hand, granite towers of rock that looked
for all the world like fingers and thumb of some submerged colossal
beast. As he sat atop a “ finger ”, his long legs dangling,
he again took out his spyglass and scanned the silent lands
around.
    Empty. Quiet. No movement but for
snaking winds that swept across grass and thistle. No sound but for
the eerie whine of gales through the Hand. No smell but the odour
of flower violets and decay.
    He thought long of his dear
Veleyal. He had brought her here once or twice. They had come
passed this way as recently as last spring as a matter of fact, on
family holiday to Bella’s Lakes north of Autumn.
    ‘ Dadda,’ Veleyal had said
excitedly twirling about on one foot, the hem of her dress fanning
outwards, ‘Do you think we might see the Great Turtles once we
reach the Lakes?’
    ‘ Aye, dear one, I think we
shall.’
    ‘ Yippeeeeeee! ’ she had squealed
ecstatically. She had put her little arms about him and held him
tight. Yarniya had sat beside him then, watching them proudly,
smiling, her face full of love for her Gargaron, for her dear
Veleyal.
    He feared Autumn too had fallen to
this strange blight. But some part of him did not yet wish to
believe it. He would find out in a day or two once he reached
there. Until such time, there were always hope, he supposed, that
Autumn had gone untouched.

    4
    He climbed down from Tormun’s
Hand. And stood in the middle of Far Trail. In either direction it
lay empty of all travelers. As it had all day. Such a sight had
never been known in Gargaron’s time, he wagered. A picture of
complete desertion, isolation. Ordinarily it were a well-traveled
and populated highway. Caravans carrying pilgrims to pay homage to
the Thirteen Realms where the most devoted would leave one of their
own limbs, as Ravencrow the Brave were said to have done, as
sacrifice to the Thirteen, in the hope they would be deemed a true
servant of the Thirteen and thus be granted an arcane limb told to
be imbued with the power to be able to reach into the Wraith World
and from it pluck riches. A highway teeming with merchants ferrying
water-glass, wristtyms, veel strahders; traders hauling spiced rum,
griffon blood, powdered snuff, and dream herbs from the Säphic
Isles. And travelers general, those off to the capitols to seek
greater fortune and those heading back to the provinces either
having made it rich, or struck it poor. And the shacks along the
way filled with whoregirls, oilboys, and their pimpeteers selling
every erotic delight in between. Now all gone, like driftwood on a
beach washed away on ebbing tides.
    It filled him