by A. L. Brooks
‘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. ‘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 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 which 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 (a solid rock stairway between dark stone walls that were roofed in a vast iron grate complete 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.’ With that the sorcerer lead Razor up the northwun tower.
Gargaron dismounted and, with negligible help from the crabman, set to work dragging the doors open. When they were done, they 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 strange glass lens and a glass 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.
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 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. ‘Lanx,’ 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 paying his respects to the fallen. If so, why had he not performed this act upon every slain corpse they’d chanced upon since Varstahk?
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. I fear being entombed.’
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 Thoonsk, Gargaron. 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. And as each day passed she had grown more fond of him. 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 where 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 befo
re. And it were only Hawkmoth who knew those 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.’