Cradle of Darkness Page 3

  This morning found him in a lighter mood. He chose not to stare at himself overly long and confined himself to washing from the basin of water he’d drawn from a spring outside his ramshackle log dwelling. It was a matter of pride that he look his best for the Queen, and she had made it clear he should attend at the rise of Sol-Ar.

  He swivelled his muddy eyes to the heavens and nodded his head. Heavily moving masses of cloud continually passed before Sol-Ar’s face. It was an unprecedented skyscape, tinged with a violet hue that seemed to emanate from Sol’s twin.

  “Tuh-Ma sees you, Darkenfall,” he said. He spoke to the spirits often, sometimes believing they spoke back, but he could never be sure. God-speak was the poetry of whispers after all, not something you could directly testify to. Not without inviting ridicule. “Tuh-Ma thanks you for empowering our Queen last night, and he asks that he play a part in her designs.”

  A tolling bell broke his meditations, and he viewed the tower from which the dull clanging emanated, a judgemental minaret jutting from the incubus-purple of the Cuscosian Castle. It was a signal, telling him he was already late. Etezora was not pleased, or perhaps she was impatient. The reason was immaterial — he would be scolded whatever the source of her frustrations.

  “Yes, yes. Tuh-Ma comes,” he muttered, the normal sibilance of his words distorted into a raspberry-like sound from his disobedient lips.

  He shambled away from the shadowy hollow he called home and scaled the stone steps that led to the Castle proper. The Hallows-rain had stopped falling an hour earlier, but dampness still glazed the rock surface creating slippery footholds for a standard tread. Tuh-Ma’s bare feet could hardly be termed humanoid. They could adhere to glass if required as they possessed minute hooks on the pads, a characteristic causing others to speculate that his mother might have been a gecko. Tuh-Mah never spoke of his true lineage. As a squat but overtly muscular blue-skin he was reviled by most, even his own kin. For him to elaborate on where he came from was only to invite further mocking.

  The steps terminated in a courtyard. A single guard stood next to the entranceway on the opposite side. As Tuh-Ma approached, the man curled his lip in distaste. He was a new recruit, and should have been better drilled by the Captain.

  “What is your business, troll?” he said, lowering his spear and pointing the tip at Tuh-Mah’s chest.

  The blue-skin looked at the weapon and slowly extended one finger to feel the point. “Weapon is sharp, fecalspawn. But is it as sharp as your wits?”

  “I don’t know what you are saying, but I like not your tone.”

  “Then maybe this makes it clear.” With one swift motion, Tuh-Ma snatched the briar elm haft from the guard’s grip, spun the spear over and brought the storm-iron tip up to his throat.

  The guard simply looked at the blue-skin with incredulity, his mouth moving but words failing to come.

  “Now get out of Tuh-Ma’s way or I’ll cut off your robang,” Tuh-Ma said.

  The man stepped aside obediently, and Tuh-Ma lumbered past without a backward glance.

  He found Etezora in her antechamber, dressed in journeying apparel and pacing the floor. Tuh-Ma took a few furtive seconds to regard her lithe form. Even in these drab clothes she carried herself like one possessing royal blood in her veins. She is beautiful, he thought for the thousandth time, taking in her high cheekbones and upwardly tipped nose. Others thought her skin to be deathly pale, but he likened it to the finest porcelain. This morning, however, there was something else about her demeanour, an infusion of something both diabolical and mesmerising.

  “What are you staring at?” she said, noticing him. “I hate it when you skulk in the shadows.”

  “But, my Queen,” he replied, “skulking is one of the things Tuh-Ma does best.”

  “Never mind,” she said. “We must away and remove that problem you created last night.”

  “Tuh-Ma will be glad to make good his mistake,” he replied. “No need to dirty your royal hands with this simple act.”

  Etezora smiled, full lips exposing a mercurial impression. “I would see the fruits of my baptism,” she said, “first hand.”

  “Tuh-Ma not understand, my Queen.”

  “You observed the Black Hallows emerge, did you not? How the power entered my body?”

  “Why, yes.” Tuh-Ma’s mind clicked like an abacus trying to calculate a sum that incessantly evaded him.

  “Then I need to assess its extent. I feel the power of the Hallows, and it promises much. But will it deliver what I seek?”

  “Ah — Tuh-Ma see,” he said as the gear wheels of his brain finally clicked into place. “So, you wish to carry out the deed?”

  Etezora nodded. “You say you know where this interloper dwells?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he likely to be there?”

  “If not, Tuh-Ma can trace him.”

  The smile returned to Etezora’s face. “Then we should hurry. I cannot remain under the gaze of the sun for long.”

  “Man lives on outskirts of Hallows Creek, about two periarchs hence.”

  “Then we will run. Well … ” she hesitated, regarding Tuh-Ma’s hunched frame, “at least, I will. Your movement could not be described exactly thus.”

  “Tuh-Ma rumbles!” He said with glee.

  “Rumbling and skulking,” Etezora laughed. “I’m not sure the two can be accomplished at once.”

  Tuh-Ma wasn’t certain if the Queen mocked him, or offered one of her rare compliments. Either way, he didn’t mind. That he would spend the next two hours with her was enough.

  “Well?” she said. “What are we waiting for? Lead the way.”

  Tuh-Ma offered a salute and lolloped from the antechamber. They left by the West Gate, an unpretentious portal, and one that would attract little attention. Hallow’s Creek lay in a clearing surrounded by thick woodland, and the unlikely pair of Cuscosians progressed along the winding trail at a rapid pace. Tuh-Ma’s keen hearing picked out the sounds of the township long before it came into view.

  “We should go in woods,” he said, pausing on the muddy trail for a second. “Someone might see us coming.”

  Etezora frowned. “If we must, but I hope the thorns do not snag me over-much.”

  “Tuh-Ma clear our way,” the blue-skin replied, his manner apologetic.

  “Very well — but quietly, Tuh-Ma.”

  The blue-skin bowed his bulky head and paced into the undergrowth.

  He was true to his word, and ripped up any briars that snared their passage, snapping off intervening branches and creepers too. This left a swathe of destruction, but he had no fear of anyone discovering their pathway. By the time they had done their work, his crude woodland highway would be a moot point.

  The shade grew lighter as they approached the man’s house, although scar birch leaves still provided some concealment as they surveyed the cottage before them.

  “There is no smoke from the chimney,” Etezora said, “I doubt if anyone is home. If he has any sense, he will have run for the border already.”

  “Tuh-Ma not think man knew he was followed.” The blue-skin said.

  “You told me he escaped. To evade your persistence and speed, he must have known.”

  Tuh-Ma looked sheepish. “Tuh-Ma did not … did not pursue for long,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “A gnarl-root caught my foot before I had run even half a periarch.”

  “You are a clumsy krut,”

  “Tuh-Ma sorry, my Queen.”

  “Enough. Your blunder has presented me with this opportunity — if he still resides in that house. What is his name?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Etezora’s cool gaze answered him.

  “Rawkin is his name,” Tuh-Ma continued. “Man well known in Hallows Creek.”

  “What led him to spy on us?”

  Tuh-Ma furrowed his brow, thinking. “He is nosy grosbeak. Likes to know everything that’s going on.”

 
“Then perhaps we should question him. Others might know what he saw.”

  Tuh-Ma nodded then cocked his head. “I hear footfalls behind the cottage.”

  “Then let us close in on the quarry,” Etezora replied.

  They sprinted across the sward of grass separating them from the housestead, and edged around the corner of its rough-hewn walls.

  Rawkin had his back to them, sifting through a small, rickety shed, looking for unspecified items to stash in a bulging backpack.

  “Looks like he’s preparing to go on a journey,” Etezora whispered in Tuh-Mah’s elephantine ear. He could not deny her closeness thrilled him, but resolved to concentrate on the task at hand.

  “We should act now,” he replied.

  In answer, Etezora emerged from the shadow of the building. Rawkin must have heard her because he spun round, surprise turning to shock as he recognised the unwelcome guests. He cast his eyes around for an escape route or some unlikely means of salvation.

  Etezora stopped, placing her hands on her hips. “Rawkin, isn’t it?”

  The greasy-haired man nodded.

  Etezora glanced at Tuh-Ma, who had hauled his intimidating bulk up next to her. “Is this the interfering peasant who watched what transpired last night?”

  Tuh-Ma smiled. He knew it exposed his misshapen teeth but he couldn’t help himself. “It is, my Queen.”

  “Inquisitiveness can be a boon to the common man,” she said, turning back to Rawkin. “Sadly, in your case, it is an irritation.”

  “I did not mean to spy,” Rawkin said, taking a step backwards.

  “Of course you didn’t,” the Cuscosian Queen replied. “I’m sure you just happened upon the site of our most sacred and forbidden temple. What I need to know is, did you tell others what you saw?”

  “I told no one, because I did not see anything,” he said, a nervous smile playing across his face. “Or, if I did, I have forgotten. I do not remember well these days.” He winked conspiratorially.

  “Is that why you are hastily packing to leave?”

  Rawkin looked at his backpack as if it had placed itself in his hand without his awareness or permission. “I am simply preparing for my weekly visit to Milhaven. I have a cart load of logs to deliver.”

  “There was no cart at the front of your …” Etezora looked disdainfully at Rawkin’s abode, “… hovel.”

  Rawkin swallowed, his eyes blinking rapidly.

  “Are you sure you did not speak to anyone about last night?” Etezora stepped closer, backing Rawkin against the shed wall.

  “No,” he said, “I told you before.”

  “He lies,” Tuh-Mah said.

  “I know,” Etezora said, “but I forgive him. After all, everyone lies. It shouldn’t surprise us.”

  Tuh-Ma felt a charge in the air, causing his hair-quills to stand on end. He looked at the Queen and marvelled at the motes of energy that now floated around her frame. He also noted that her eyes had turned blacker than darkwood. She reached out her hand into the air and clenched it into a fist.

  Rawkin’s eyes bulged while a gurgle escaped from his constricted throat. Tuh-Ma wondered later whether what he saw next actually happened, or if he just imagined it. Rawkin’s body rose slowly up the side of the shed, propelled by an invisible force, his legs flailing beneath him as the strangulated sounds increased from his throat.

  “I have a degree of patience, and a modicum of mercy at my disposal,” Etezora said, “but they tend to run fast, like sand through an open hand. So answer me, peasant, and perhaps you will convince me to spare your life.”

  Rawkin choked, and then managed to utter, “You would?”

  “Of course,” Etezora said, “and I’m true to my word.”

  “Then … I will tell … you,” he said. The man’s face was now turning dark red.

  Etezora’s concentration relaxed and Rawkin dropped to the ground. After clearing his throat he looked up into Etezora’s determined face. “I spoke to my friend, Brethis.”

  “Brethis?” Tuh-Ma said. “Who is this man?”

  “The blacksmith’s son.”

  “What did you tell him?” Etezora interjected.

  Rawkin hesitated, but with a crackle of Hallows energy, Etezora’s invisible grip tightened on his throat again.

  “No, no more,” Rawkin spluttered, his voice but a croak.

  She released him again then hissed, “My patience wears thin.”

  “I … I said that I saw a great evil rise from the pit and enter your body. I did not understand what happened, but I was sorely afraid. That’s why I ran.”

  “You did not tell anyone else?”

  “No, I swear.”

  Etezora nodded. “I believe you.” She stood up straight and signalled to Tuh-Ma. The troll understood his Queen’s unspoken command and leant over the ragged doll of a man.

  “Make it quick,” Etezora said.

  He reached down, grabbing the man’s head in both hands. He looked into his eyes, saw the abject terror there and smiled. “Tuh-Ma crush,” he said with glee. He applied his brute force and felt the skull crack in his grip. A straw-coloured fluid issued from Rawkin’s ears and one eyeball popped from its socket. Still Tuh-Ma continued to squeeze until his fingers broke through Rawkin’s temples and sank into the brain tissue beneath. In his final seconds, Rawkin issued a rattle of death from his lungs and went limp in Tuh-Ma’s hands.

  The blue-skin wished he might have lasted a few seconds longer, but recognised the man’s spirit passing and wiped his gore-soaked hands on the grass.

  He joined Etezora at the front of the house, and they made their way back into the undergrowth. A dismal drizzle had begun to fall, loading the air with dampness.

  The blue-skin chuckled as he walked side by side with his Queen. “Tuh-Ma worried you would let Rawkin live,” he said after a while.

  Etezora blessed him with one of her cruel smiles. “It’s like I said before,” she replied, “everybody lies.”

  4

  Rumblings from beneath

  It was a mistake that Magthrum had ignored often enough, but this day saw an end to his patience. The occasion was Nalin’s return to the Rockclave, and the stonegrabe was not empty-handed. He had come with sackfuls of jarva-leaf, a prototype model and, best of all — information. But whether it was a loss of patience or an outflowing of the malefic energy he had inhaled from the Hallows, Magthrum could not contain his anger when Gorespike overstepped the mark.

  The exchange within the Rockclave had begun amiably enough. “This leaf is easily the finest you have harvested,” he had said to Nalin. The Kaldoran chief puffed on the long-stemmed pipe, inhaling russet smoke deep into his lungs. He’d expected the usual headiness that accompanied this first draw, but nearly fell off his stool when something like a finger prodded his brain and sent his nerve endings frizzling with intoxication. When he later reflected on the scene that ensued, he concluded that Nalin’s narcotic might have been responsible for tipping him over the edge.

  “I confess, Fellchief, that the soil has been especially fruitful this last month,” Nalin said. “It is as if something has entered the very earth. I swear that the jarva bushes have grown at least three spans in this time.”

  Nalin was prone to exaggeration, but given recent events Magthrum was less inclined to dismiss the stonegrabe’s observation. “Why, this leaf could stone a dragon,” Magthrum said. “Indeed, it could drop the cursed beast from the sky.”

  Most of the Rockclave had confined themselves to sycophantic laughter at their Fellchief’s jest, but Gorespike had let his mouth run off.

  “Hah,” the underling said, “mayhap that was the excuse given by the wyrm that crushed your late wife!” Gorespike had continued laughing long after silence descended on the Rockclave’s cavern, sending the temperature down an extra couple of degrees.

  “What was that you said?” Magthrum growled.

  The penny had still not dropped for Gorespike. “Why, it explains how the beast was so c
lumsy as to … well … you know … do what it did.” It was only then that the hapless stonegrabe had stuttered, looking around him at faces grave and pitying. “I did not think …”

  Magthrum’s face turned from red to purple, the eyes smouldering beneath brows ridged high to match the hackles rising like a fury within. “You would make jest of Hetherin’s demise?”

  “I meant nothing by it,” Gorespike said, edging away from the table, “I just thought — ”

  “You thought to humiliate me further by your insinuations?”

  “I apologise, Fellchief,” Gorespike uttered too late, his fellow stonegrabes moving further away from him, creating a circle of contempt. Magthrum sprang up, his body swaying from the jarva still coursing through his veins, elevating him beyond usual heights of anger. He launched himself at the turnip-headed stonegrabe with a speed defying his girth and weight, slamming his frame into the flinty pillar behind.

  A gurgling grunt issued from Gorespike, silenced abruptly when Magthrum brought his war-axe down in an arc, cleaving Gorespike’s skull. Such was its force that his head fell into two parts, spliced unevenly and peeling aside like an overripe fruit.

  Magthrum released the stonegrabe’s body that had, up to this point, been held in the vice-grip of his left hand. It slumped to the floor, blood guttering down from Gorespike’s disfigured head to pool on the granite floor. The Fellchief’s chest heaved with exertion and rage, fuelled by Hallows energy. He could not forget his wife’s untimely end when a Dragon Rider’s steed had dumped itself on her dumpy form as she washed clothes next to Lake Dorthun. The Dragon-Lord had not even been aware of the mishap. Her beast had simply taken its fill of water then flown off into the blue, leaving a pulped body on the shoreline.

  The awkward silence was finally broken by an embarrassed tittering from Pitchbass, a wrinkly stonegrabe. “Another clean-up job for you, Ropetail,” he said, nudging a friend next to him.