by A. L. Brooks
3
On flat ground once more, the group gathered themselves. And took a quick inventory of all they had managed not to lose during the attack on Sanctuary. At their backs, the mighty stem of rock were covered in ancient rock paintings; primitive folk telling stories of death and life, towering monsters, and peculiar lights in the skies. And here Hawkmoth warned his friends that here now were the outer fringes of the realm of witches. ‘We must remain vigilant, alert. For we are sure to encounter strange enchantments ahead. Our food may rot, our water may turn to vinegar. And we must keep our eyes and ears open, for witching trolls patrol these lands.
‘Trolls?’ Locke asked. ‘Wandering about in broad daylight?’
‘The mountain trolls of the Dunhland Range are no fan of the suns,’ Hawkmoth told him, ‘and will stay in their caves till dusk. The coastal trolls of the Skull Coast only emerged from their barnacle encrusted grottos in the dead of night.’
‘Aye,’ Locke agreed, ‘and are mighty delicious, I can attest.’
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Gargaron replied.
‘But hear me,’ Hawkmoth said, ‘the hill trolls of Gwimpen bear no fear of the suns and those of them beguiled and bespelled by the witchfolk thus roam about in large numbers. If the Ruin has thus far spared them, then they will prove deadly. For they possess a strange immunity to magic and other enchanted weapons. I shall personally task you with reigniting you warhammer, giant, if we happen to chance upon any of their number. And hope they do not prove so immune to its kiss.’
Gargaron looked puzzled. ‘Warhammer?’
‘Aye. Don’t you recall? You battered those Bewitched with little mercy.’
Gargaron stared at the rock at his feet, doing his best to recall the events of their battle. ‘I… I barely have any recollection of our fight… I recall… I recall naught but rage.’
Hawkmoth considered this with a frown and then a curt nod. ‘Rage? Interesting. Well then, perhaps that be Hor’s secret.’ He clapped Gargaron on the back. ‘Might be we can work on that theory.’
As they got walking, Gargaron took a huge draft from his gourd, contemplating Drenvel’s Bane. Snippets of memory returned to him, how he had sprayed Sanctuary with Bewitched, knocking great masses of them flying with but a single blow. The thoughts brought some sense of satisfaction, even excitement, though tempered with a feeling of misgiving and unease—to wield so much power were near frightening. If such rage could not be controlled, if he turned wild with it and could not be stopped, he did not wish to consider it.
4
The blue sun of Melus had tracked halfway across the sky before they spied their first band of trolls. But Hawkmoth and his group did not expect to find them in such a state: there were seven of them and all of them were hanging dead by their necks from enormous gibbets tilted in the earyth.
Gargaron supposed the prodigious weight of each troll had pulled the gibbets into their lean. But as they neared them, Gargaron judged that they had been pushed that way, all leaning in an eastways direction, as if shoved by a great force or gale.
The sight confused them. ‘What be this?’ Gargaron asked Hawkmoth.
Hawkmoth had no answer except to say that it were most likely the result of a local dispute. ‘Fort Blackstone lies somewhere north of here. Overlooking the valley of Conntt. King Rawsthorn presided over the lands to the north. I know he has suffered troll raids for many a year. Perhaps he finally grew sick of them and hung them here to send a message to the troll clans of the hills. Or to the witches themselves.’
‘So the trolls were hung,’ Melai said, ‘before the Ruin came to the Vale?’
‘Such is my guess,’ Hawkmoth said, gazing now toward the lands to their west. ‘And by the looks of it, the Boom shocks have almost had the gibbets to ground.’
5
They pressed on. And on. Across boggy moors and marsh land, where a million dead bugs littered waterways, where wicker trees were shaped like bowed skeletal people. Where creatures rotted and bubbled and gave off foul green gas. It made the trudging slow and tiresome.
Hawkmoth took a reading from his chronochine and found an entire day had passed and that again night had not returned.
‘Aye. So we have spent yet another night without moon or stars?’ Gargaron said.
‘Aye.’
‘Could these Booms weapons realistically corrupt Cloudfyre’s orbit in such a way?’ Gargaron asked.
‘They must,’ answered Hawkmoth. ‘What other explanation could there be?’
They trudge along a dried river bed and came to a grassy bank where coracles were moored amidst dank reeds and beyond here the land hardened and they soon approached an abandoned settlement. Here there were trees whose trunks were arched over so far that their crowns were almost at rest upon the earyth. Yet it were in these crowns, crowns shaped as bowls, that small cottages were suspended. A short flight of wooden stairs lead up to each one.
Gargaron briefly entertained the idea of stopping here for a short while, enough to build a fire, dry out his boots and warm his toes. He were thinking sadly of the fate of Grimah when he felt droplets of water splashing up from his boots against his forearms and neck and chin. He quickly decided he would rather drier land on which to rest. Somewhere not so sodden and boggy. Yet he noticed the water dripped from the ground itself. Upwards. As if gravity were reversed. He stopped and looked about. The others had stopped too. Each of them enthralled by this peculiar occurrence.
In no time at all it were raining. Though this rain fell upwards and out into the sky. A pall of grey held the settlement as the deluge grew heavy. And a strange silence came with it. Not the usual sound of heavy torrents splatting into mud, or house or grass. But an almost unsettling quiet as this ungodly upwards rain shot quietly out into grey clouds.
It were a genuine novelty at first. It were cold and the wetness unpleasant but such a thing none of them had ever seen nor heard of. It pushed thoughts of Grimah’s fate from Gargaron’s mind. ‘What be this wondrous phenomenon?’ Locke asked Hawkmoth, smiling. ‘Is this some wondrous enchantment?’
Hawkmoth simply shrugged. ‘I could not tell you,’ he said with an almost awestruck, boyish smile. ‘There are some things even I have no knowledge of.’
6
They continued westways, the rain kept up, and the wetter and more sodden they grew. And faster the novelty wore off. Especially when they realised the rain showed no signs of waning. Gargaron at least knew why the houses back in that village had been constructed in the manner they had: the “bowls” in which they sat acted somewhat like inverted umbrellas, shielding each abode from this peculiar phenomenon.
‘I say, Hawkmoth,’ Gargaron said, ‘Do you have no enchantment that might counter this?’
‘I have a spell that would evaporate the water, yes,’ he said. ‘But it involves summoning an inferno.’
‘I think I’ve had enough of your infernos,’ Melai told him.
Gargaron shrugged. ‘Though if this goes on much longer, I might prefer one.’
‘Am I the only one who be enjoying this weather?’ Locke asked with a smile.
They soon met tall grasses that swished against them, and in places, without Razor nor Grimah present to boost their height, both Hawkmoth and Gargaron faced the uncustomary circumstance of having the grass loom high above their heads. But in patches where the grasses grew not so tall, or where they had been trampled flat by some unknown beast, they admired to their northways the sight of a number of colossal butterflies with brilliant red wings and glistening black bodies; a group of them appeared to be suckling on the juices of dead things hidden in the grasses.
To see something living aside from themselves after so long stopped Hawkmoth’s group for a short while. And so engrossed in the sight that none of them realised the upwards deluge had finally petered out.
‘What be those?’ Locke wondered aloud. ‘I have never before seen such wondrous creatures.’
‘Dead Skarlets, be their name,�
� Hawkmoth told him. ‘And we would do well to keep our distance. They are both poisonous and deadly. They exude a corrosive gas when threatened, and if you stray too close, they will thrust their proboscis through you and fire off a high-powered jet of gas into your innards that will blow you apart, inside out.’
‘I don’t much fancy such a death today,’ Gargaron said.
7
They pressed on but were forced into small detours here and there from their westways path to avoid running into these majestic butterflies that seemed numerous in number here. Hawkmoth speculated that they were likely in league with the witches, which is why their numbers had been sustained. At one stage they happened by accident to pass in close proximity to a Dead Skarlet hidden in amidst the tall grass. It were suckling on the juices of a two-headed grass serpent. Zebra’s forked tongue flicked in and out rapidly here, as if sensing the demise of one similar to her own kind.
As they pushed onwards they began to see signs of other insects, drawn from the undergrowth by their traipsing; no bug as big as the Dead Skarlets but beetles the size of Gargaron’s head. Many had already perished; their corpses lay upturned, legs knotted inwards, unmoving, dead. Colossal sized dragonflies lay drowned in pockets of marsh water, being nibbled at by a small species of water horse Gargaron had never before laid his eyes upon. Some dragonflies still flitted about but mostly these seemed to crash into the grass, untangle themselves, take off, fly away, sometimes upside-down before ditching sickly into the grass again.
Toward the end of their time crossing this grassy expanse Hawkmoth’s small fellowship watched a flock of black ibis swoop down to peck at dying beetles. These ibis stood almost as tall as Gargaron and watched with beady black eyes the group pass by. Melai in particular kept her distance, or stayed close to Gargaron, for she surely would have proven a tasty morsel to them. Still, observing them gave her some food for thought. ‘Maybe there be hope for us yet,’ she said aloud after they had left the tall wicked looking birds behind. ‘With all this presence of life, maybe all is not lost.’
‘It tells me we are closing in on the borders of the witch realm,’ Hawkmoth told her. ‘It tells me these witches are indeed the cause for all the outside death and doom. While they keep their own creatures alive, like the enchantment I set upon the hill around my humble abode, they have committed all else to die.’
‘How certain are you that if we return this, this thing of theirs,’ Gargaron said, glancing at the bundle strapped to the flank of Locke’s serpent, ‘that it will bring an end to hostilities.’
Hawkmoth drew in a deep breath. ‘Reasonably certain.’ He looked across at the giant. ‘Or else I would not be here.’
‘And should these witches prove difficult,’ Locke said, ‘did you find means with which to coerce them in your Lord Brother’s chambers?’
Hawkmoth did not reply for several moments. When he did he said this: ‘Aye, I have what I need with me.’
VANTASIA
1
THE forest were an ancient and enchanted place, that much Melai sensed. As they moved amongst it, she felt its ghosts going back thousands of years. The oaks were thick and gnarled and twisted and covered in moss of yellow and green. The ground were damp and grassy underfoot and the smell were wet and muddy, thick with the odours of slow rotting wood, of hidden beetles and slugs. And the sky were not visible above, such were Dark Wood’s deep canopy. The going were dim and murky and in any direction they could see barely more than two dozen feet.
At first they stumbled over root and knotted shrub. But then it were as if the woods sensed the presence of Mama Vekh and thus a path looked as if to open out before them. Old, twisted roots seemed to pull up and curl aside, shrubs seemed to move, until a bending, curving path through fallen brown leaves appeared before the group of travelers.
Locke, leading the way Zebra, pulled the procession to a halt. Gargaron and Hawkmoth stood alongside the serpent. Melai, who had been in flight, swooped down and landed upon Gargaron’s shoulder.
‘I have never seen a woods move,’ Locke commented.
‘The witches know of our coming now,’ Hawkmoth said confidently, watching the Dark Wood slowly part.
‘But do they welcome us?’ Gargaron asked. ‘Or do they steer us to our doom?’
A good point, Hawkmoth knew. Without his insect scouts to fly forth and survey the paths ahead he were unable to ascertain whether or not he and his troupe were being lead into danger.
‘Either way,’ Locke said, with a grin, ‘it should make for an exciting trek forward.’
2
As they trailed the strange winding pathways that opened up in front of them Hawkmoth came aware of stick-men, tree critters, hidden in the woods. They were tall beings, spindly, red of eye, green of tongue, witch spies meant to go unseen, camouflaged against the general woodland and difficult to glimpse. Neither Gargaron nor Locke commented on them, so Hawkmoth surmised they had not seen them. Though he knew Melai must have for the strange looks she delivered him, questioning looks, as if asking silently what they were.
Later Hawkmoth realised none were actually alive. A revelation that disturbed him. He had assumed that Dark Wood and its many varied minions and entities had been spared the wrath of the witch’s boom weapons. But here death, like all the lands beyond, had reached out its ungodly hand.
3
They were upon Vantasia before they realised it. The oaks and elms thinned and here before the group, were peculiar wicker abodes, constructed from the strange dark wicker wood growing in this area. The wood had not been cut from its mother plant but instead, pulled and fashioned from the long thin living branches, hundreds, thousands of strands, like trussed hair, formed and fashioned into dwellings. Branches of ancient oaks created a ceiling above, and somehow there were beauty to the organic formation of this village. And a peculiar brownish light from the heavily filtered sunlight beyond, illuminated the area.
The place were also strangely empty.
Nonetheless, Gargaron had drawn his sword, suspicious of the silence. ‘Where be they?’
Hawkmoth gripped his staff, as if sensing an attack.
‘Hawkmoth?’ Gargaron said. ‘Where be these witches? Be this a trap?’
‘I cannot tell. Perhaps due to war, the settlement has been abandoned.’
‘Or perhaps the witches lie hidden in wait,’ Melai suggested, her bow ready to fire at the first sign of provocation.
They waited. Naught happened.
Hawkmoth began to weave his way slowly through the settlement, staff held at the ready. At darkened doorways into the wicker huts he prod his staff, pulses of intense, searing violet light, flashing from Rashel’s eyes. If it were intended to flush witches from within it did not work. Still, Hawkmoth would move to the next hut and repeat his actions. And so on…
As they spread out and moved through Vantasia, Gargaron were reminded a little of home. Here, the village were like Hovel, in the sense that everything encircled a central structure. Where Hovel bore sacrificial megaliths, here in Vantasia the central structure were a large wicker dwelling, a building double in size and height to the dwellings surrounding it.
It were here, before this larger abode that Hawkmoth took up stance. ‘To the leaders of Vantasia,’ he called out, his voice like a bomb in that silence, ‘I am Hawkmoth Lifegiver, banished sorcerer of Sanctuary. Hear me, I implore. We come in peace. We return to you Mama Vekh in hopes that we may finally put an end to this ridiculous war started by my Brothers. If needs be, then I give myself over to you, where you may hold me for a hundred years as my foolish brothers held Mama Vekh. If needs be, I offer up my life to end this conflict, to put an end to your boom weapons. Too many have died and are dying. Far too many. Hear me now, please, I implore you.’
His voice echoed off into the gloomy woodland. Gargaron and Melai and Locke looked around, anticipating now either an attack by the witches or some acceptance of Hawkmoth’s offer.
Nothing happened.
�
��What do we do now?’ Melai heard herself asking, gazing about the settlement.
‘So, Vantasia lies abandoned,’ Hawkmoth said, looking about. ‘Though in Sanctuary my Brothers spoke of a fabled place where witches retreat to in times of war. Dorubudur. A temple. Some place so old it predates all of our civilisations. Somewhere hidden away within Dark Wood.’
‘Lead on then, sorcerer,’ ordered Locke, ‘if you know where this place be.’
Hawkmoth smiled. ‘Oh, I know not where it be, my good shore dweller. But I believe I know how we may find it.’ He took another item from his robe pocket, what looked to be a stick and knelt. ‘Fayn uss diss rannawayss weetchus.’ He then snapped it over his knee. From it there drifted a ghostly blue mist that hugged the dark leafy earyth, swirling softly, highlighting it seemed old footprints. But then it appeared to take on the form of a small being. Some sort of hare that ambled on its hind legs. It sniffed the air, looked about then ran from the settlement. ‘Ah, here we go,’ Hawkmoth said, ‘come on,’ and after it he and his companions promptly trailed.
CAHSSI OF THE XOORD
1
THE blue hare lead them on a meandering path for hours. And as they traipsed on and on Gargaron wished for Grimah, such were the pace of the thing. Melai flew effortlessly and kept looking back where Gargaron had begun to lag behind. Hawkmoth were not far abreast of him. Locke, astride his serpent and well ahead of the others would call out continuously, ‘What’s keeping you pair?’ And they would hear his laughter ring out through the wood.
‘I shall ring your neck when I catch you!’ Gargaron yelled.
‘Oh well, there you are then,’ Locke called back to him, ‘some incentive to quicken your pace!’
All banter ceased however when the thick set oaks and beeches and elms began to thin all of a sudden late that day and a mighty clearing opened out. Like Vantasia, this place too cowered beneath a ceiling of far reaching tree branch. But here were a place made of stone, not wicker, a place of stone blocks and crumbling mortar, where twisting strangler trees had grown up from amidst peculiar ruins, their roots curling in and out of ancient stonework.