by A. L. Brooks
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, he 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 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 too, 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. 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, and 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 either. 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 the 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 Skysight, 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 him. 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 his 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 sa
t 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 Buccuyashuck River 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 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 died.
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.
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 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. For the tumbling river water came down heavy with rolling, blackened carcasses. He watched in dismay and horror as they spilled endlessly over the top of the falls, dropping lifeless down into the city.
Gargaron 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. Gargaron saw the cathedral were fast filling up 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 back 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.
9
He felt ill. And 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 guise 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.
<
br /> 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 long 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 littering 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.