Cradle of Darkness Read online

  Magthrum waited for the fury to subside, and then ordered his attendant, “I need a drink. Fetch me a flagon of ale.” His retainer scuttled off while the remainder of the Rockclave seated themselves back at the table and pretended nothing had occurred.

  “So, what’s this I hear about a new Cuscosian mine at Bagshot?” he said to Nalin.

  The stonegrabe smoothed his plaited beard and spread his hands on the table. “It is true, Fellchief. I overheard Etezora receive reports from her mining foreman. They extracted a bovicaur’s weight of cryonite this last month. They are using it to supply tool workshops in the capital.”

  “It is as I thought,” Magthrum said. “Their snivelling merchant renegotiated our deal on his last visit — downwards. I knew there was something he wasn’t telling me. We had no choice but to accept, as they know we have no other trading partners. Now I can see they are looking to exploit a resource that is our birthright to mine. I should have caved his skull in.” Thinking about it now, Magthrum reflected that, had this encounter occurred since the advent of the purple vapour, that is precisely what he would have done.

  As if reading his thoughts, Nalin said, “It will pay us to tread carefully, Fellchief. The Cuscosians grow in strength, and it would only take one diplomatic incident like that for them to exact swift retribution.”

  Magthrum accepted the advice. Nalin was not only an invaluable source of intelligence but also a trusted adviser. Since he had inveigled himself as head engineer in the Cuscosian Keep he had earned his weight in gold providing a steady trickle of confidential information. “Mmm, and they would no doubt cut off our trade altogether,” the Fellchief mused.

  His retainer returned with a hefty tankard of ale, and Magthrum seized it from him, downing half of it in one gulp. “So, you advise biding our time?”

  Nalin picked up his own drink and supped it warily. He looked around at the Rockclave, a conspiratorial look on his face. He needn’t have worried. They were engaged in games of Bakkadol or recounting inane stories and jokes. They were obviously happy to let their Fellchief’s anger subside at arm’s length. “Indeed I do,” Nalin said. “I know you are itching to hatch your cunning plot, but there are many pieces to put in place first. We will achieve more by subterfuge than outright confrontation.”

  “It is the Kaldoran way. This is why we must set the Dragonians and House of Cuscosa against each other if we are to achieve our aims.”

  Nalin tweaked an iron bead twisted into the warp of his red beard. The stonegrabe was clearly mustering the courage to say something. “You know, our late friend, Gorespike, may have planted a seed to provide a means to such unrest, despite his extreme impertinence of course.”

  Magthrum’s ridged forehead wrinkled. “I doubt whether anything that gob-vomit said or did would help us.”

  Nalin took the opportunity to swerve the subject away from Gorespike’s insult. “There is only one thing more precious to the Dragon Riders than their accursed woodcraft.”

  “The dragons themselves?”

  Nalin nodded. “What if their beasts were to suffer an illness? Something that set them back?”

  Magthrum shook his head. “Their wyrms are impregnable. We cannot bring them down, nor even get close to them. Those scaled creatures hate us.”

  “There might be a way. What if we dealt them a blow and pinned the blame firmly on the Cuscosians?”

  “I would hear more.”

  So Nalin elaborated on his plan while Magthrum nodded, his smile increasing all the more until he was laughing with glee at Nalin’s inventiveness.

  “We will put this plot into action next week,” Magthrum said. “I know just the place and occasion.”

  They toasted the plan, finishing the contents of their tankards. Magthrum ordered two more and invited Nalin to show him the prototype he had referred to upon arrival.

  The stonegrabe reached down and took what looked like a toy from his pack, placing it on the stone table.

  “What is this?” Magthrum said, brow knotted. “A child’s plaything?”

  “It started as that,” Nalin said. “But then I got thinking.”

  “That’s always a good sign when it comes to you.” Magthrum picked up the toy with both hands and inspected it more closely. It was a construction made of wood and iron, comprising a rugged fuselage complete with cockpit overlooking a rotating cutting disc. This rested on an undercarriage mobilised by a series of six bogies housed inside surrounding tracks. “Is it a design for my new chariot? I could do with something more fitting to my station.”

  “Not so,” Nalin said, a mischievous wink in his eye. “Look.” He grasped the model and pushed it forward. Metal joints articulated and gears meshed, enabling a fluid motion. He then gripped a handle between forefinger and thumb, turning it in minute circles. As he did so, the disc rotated.

  Nalin’s demonstration had drawn the attention of the inquisitive Rockclave. They gathered around in rapt attention. “Hah,” Magthrum declared. “It looks like a rock-mole before it burrows into the earth.”

  “Exactly,” Nalin said. “Now imagine this one hundred times larger, with the proportionate increase in power.”

  “A fanciful idea,” Magthrum said, “but I can imagine it excavating a tunnel taller than a fabled Cyclopes.”

  Nalin scanned the surrounding stonegrabes, pausing for effect. “What if I said I could construct such a machine?”

  Magthrum slapped Nalin on the back. “Nalin, my friend, you have been smoking too much of your jarva-leaf. But I admire your imagination.”

  Nalin stared intently at his Fellchief. “I do not jest, Magthrum. A full-size working prototype already exists in my hidden workshop.”

  5

  While the laughing moon bleeds

  Wobas hesitated before knocking on the weathered door. He could hear movement and voices inside. Two people, his daughter, her tinkling laughter like a summer rain, and another, walking the floorboards.

  It had been so long since the sound of Milissandia Moonwatcher’s laughter had graced his ears. She was always a joyful child; up to the day he finally abandoned the home he and his wife had built together. Now, hearing this precious sound again, he almost turned away. Surely, he thought, this is a memory to treasure, something to hold on to during the lonely nights of my existence. But the mission drove him on. There were higher objectives at stake here.

  His swarthy hand rapped three times on the wood bringing the conversation inside abruptly to a stop. He braced himself as someone drew up on the other side of the wood. The door had long since given up its ability to open easily, but after a couple of tugs a man with bovine eyes loitering under a mono brow met Wobas’s without a trace of recognition.

  “What do you want?” the muscled man said, accentuating his insolence with a wide yawn. He was barely clothed; his only garment being a hemp loincloth.

  “I wish to speak to my daughter,” Wobas replied, his expression neutral despite the raging in his breast.

  Bull-face turned and shouted over his shoulder. “There’s an old dodderer here reckons he’s your father.”

  Wobas heard a groan and then muttered words. He could tell that his presence wasn’t welcome.

  After listening, the man looked back at him and stepped to one side without a word.

  Wobas entered, placing his gnarlwood staff against a cupboard and let his eyes accustom themselves to the gloom. He lived an austere existence himself, but had retained a certain self-respect regarding his environment. His daughter’s one-room cottage however was little more than a midden. Dirty pots, most of them chipped or cracked, lay abandoned in a grimy sink. The floor was littered with a mixture of clothes, household utensils and indeterminate knick-knacks. He stepped as carefully as he could, but his foot still crushed two items on his journey into the depths of the abode.

  “Over here,” a disembodied voice said, all trace of humour gone.

  He stepped through a crudely fashioned archway to find Milissandia still in bed, a
hastily donned shift over her top. He didn’t need to speculate on how she had spent that morning. She swung her naked legs over the side of the cot and he observed the twisted tapestry of an extensive skink-oil tattoo snaking up the calf and thigh.

  She rose and lit a bunch of incense sticks with a tinder box, still saying nothing. When the trail of smoke reached Wobas’s nostrils, he identified the rich sandalwood fragrance as the opening invocation for a warding spell.

  Is this how she sees me — an evil spirit to be exorcised from her home?

  He was her father, and it was his responsibility to make the first overture as politely as possible. “I apologise for my unannounced visit,” he said.

  “Make it quick,” she replied. “I have much to attend to this morning.”

  “I noticed,” he said, not able to help himself.

  Bull-face was clanking around in the kitchen area preparing a morning brew. Wobas had little doubt about his chances of being offered refreshment. He cast his eyes around for somewhere to sit, thinking it would make him appear less domineering, but couldn’t spy a surface uncovered by clutter.

  She stood with arms folded, eyes glaring at him, waiting. He cleared his throat and formulated the words. “I traversed in the Dreamworld last night.”

  Milissandia blew air through pursed lips. “So, nothing changes there.”

  “No, no. Let me explain,” he said, holding up his hand. “This time it was different. I met the Spirit Guide — at last.”

  Although she didn’t express surprise, her eyes widened then narrowed again. “You’re deluded, father of mine. Even if this were true, why should it concern me?”

  Wobas turned to view the skyline through the rotting window frame behind. “Have you noticed the heavens this morning?

  “I’ve hardly even risen from bed — as you can see.”

  “Look,” he said, making his way back into the main atrium. Milissandia rolled her eyes and traipsed toward the window, squinting at the relative glare. She prefers her blessed moonlight, he perceived.

  “What am I looking for?” she said, petulantly.

  “Do you not see the hue of the sky?”

  “I suppose it to be little more violet than usual.”

  “A little — ” he bit his lip. “This is a sign, an omen above to herald the start of the cycle.”

  “I imagine you think it so.”

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t perceive what befell the land last night.” His voice was raised, and he told himself to calm down. But it was hard, so hard. He knew she was playing with him, point-scoring in the only way she knew how.

  Bull-face stepped up, handing her a steaming earthenware cup, then retreated into the kitchen. Gods, I wish he’d put some clothes on, Wobas thought.

  Milissandia sighed. “All right. I was abroad last night and, yes, I witnessed the change. But unlike you, I don’t attach the same importance to it. There are some events that have magical significance, and others that simply mark a change in the alignment of heavenly bodies. You would know this if you weren’t wrapped up so much in prophecies and demented hallucinations.”

  “Hallucinations? You know that the Dreamworld is real. How can you deny it?”

  She smiled, not with warmth, but more the suggestion of a smirk. “I make use of altered states of consciousness but, as always Father, you read too much into these things.”

  This was going nowhere fast. He took a deep breath and tried another tack. “You know I have sought many sols for an audience with the Spirit Guide.”

  “How can I forget? You sacrificed your wife and daughter’s affections for this ‘noble quest.’

  Wobas swallowed. It was true; he obsessed about his mission, his destiny. He had been fixated with a desire to obtain the knowledge his race thirsted for, secrets that would release the Cyclopes from the curse that afflicted them — amongst other things. Such a commitment required sacrifice. Why couldn’t Carys and Milissandia understand that? “Will you at least hear what it said to me?”

  His daughter glanced at the moon-clock on the wall. “I’ll give you another three minutes, then you must leave. There’s only so much time I can devote to your ramblings. I thought you’d realised that sols ago.”

  The seer knew she would hold to this promise and wasted no more time. He recounted the audience he’d been granted, the words of the eagle-headed beast, and the evil scar spewing forth its purple emission. There was a moment when her expression shifted, a look he’d seen last on her thirteenth birthday when the gift had been bestowed on his moon-child, a lambent flickering in her eyes. But it subsided as soon as it began.

  “So you must understand it is imperative we make amends,” he concluded, “despite all that separates us. These omens are larger than our rift.”

  Milissandia folded her arms again, eyes turning steel. “And here was I thinking you desired to heal the wounds of the past, to recognise the folly of what you did. But nothing changes. You still chase your phantasms, looking for what? Meaning in your bleak existence?” She balled her delicate hands into fists. “You had the best reason to live — your family. But you cast us off. Why is it not enough that we should be reconciled for its own sake?”

  Wobas realised his mistake too late. “But of course I want this on its own merits. I — ”

  “Don’t lie to yourself. Now go. Pursue your Dreamworld, but I will have no part of this madness.”

  “Milissandia, don’t — ”

  “Go!”

  Bull-face appeared at her shoulder. “You should leave, old man. You have said enough.”

  Wobas might have tried to stare him down if he was younger, but the shaman was spent. He grasped his staff and moved towards the door. He took one hopeful look back, saw the expressions on Milissandia and her paramour’s faces, and passed out of his daughter’s life.

  Milissandia watched her father’s shuffling form retreat towards the mountain. Despite her harsh words, the emotions that battled within left her desolate, mournful even. He is but a shadow of who he once was, she thought. A man who has sacrificed everything for a dream made of straw.

  She brushed moisture from her cheek and convinced herself this was the pronouncement she would adhere to. But as her father became a pinprick on the horizon, she looked upward again. The skyscape seemed to her a lurid indigo, as if shades of malignancy hung over the Imperious Crescent. One part of her insisted this was a projection of her emotion onto the landscape, but another — the part that had emerged breathless from her trance last night — argued differently. She hoped to forget her vivid dream, consign it to a shelf of experience labelled nightmare. But she had been unable to, and her father’s unexpected appearance served to underscore her disquiet.

  He had not mentioned it, but she now mouthed the words — Black Hallows.

  6

  Seven sewn and seven split

  Tayem tapped her fingers on the arm of the royal throne. Its hard, ironwood seat dug into her behind, and for one more suited to spending life on her feet it was a discomfort that only served to aggravate her irritation. There was little conversation amongst the six Fyreclave members present, and that which occurred was conducted in hushed whispers. She tried not to be annoyed with Mahren for taking her time; after all her sister had a duty to the dragons, and Tayem had called the Fyreclave at short notice after an eventful night. Still, the girl was a dreamer with a tendency to drag her heels when it came to official matters, and she had to get a grip. Riding the air currents wasn’t the only priority of a Dragon Rider, after all.

  There was something else acting as fuel for the ire she harboured in her breast. Her father had called it the Hallows Light, but the purple vapour she had inhaled, even absorbed last night, could not be described in those illuminate terms. Cistre had observed it, and she sensed others were aware of what transpired, barely masking their disquiet at the event. But to her, it represented the key to free her people. As yet she hadn’t fathomed how it would help, she only knew that something now resided wit
hin, energising her mind and body. Something had to explain the remains of the yarra tree she’d hacked to pieces during her practice earlier, the uncanny accuracy with which she’d loosed her arrows at the target. If the Hallows had blessed her with this strength, these abilities — perhaps others could benefit.

  No, this is for you, a voice seemed to say in her mind. It wasn’t quite alien, more a fog of intuition, a wraith of dead matter, fallen in the rain, bound in the wind. She shook her head. There was something she didn’t like about the voice.

  “You look tired, my Queen,” Cistre said. “The night’s events exacted a toll on you. Please rest after this meeting.”

  Tayem looked at her faithful bodyguard. She meant well by her words, but they only annoyed her further. “We’ll see,” was all she said. Any more would abash Cistre unnecessarily.

  “Your Majesty,” an aged courtier, Disconsolin, spoke up. “Might I suggest we adjourn this meeting until your sister returns?”

  “Or, we could simply proceed without her,” added Merdreth, his wife. They rarely contributed anything constructive, and their presence in the Fyreclave owed more to privilege than merit.

  “There are decisions to be made,” Tayem replied. “They require full quorum.” Her tone was typically imperious, but it was also tinged with an uncharacteristic venom, caustic even for her. It brought the room to silence however, and Tayem told herself she’d give Mahren five more minutes only. The Hallows murmurings rose within once more, and she sought to find a worthy target for her fury.

  Etezora.

  How could such a friendship have been dashed on the rocks so suddenly, so completely, and so irrevocably?

  The Festival of Shaptari meant ‘bringing’. A time purportedly to bring the peoples of the Crescent together, to celebrate unity, forge links and cool any rivalry with fresh treaties and trade of goods. Varchal’s axis tilt did not permit a changing of seasons. In truth, the peoples would not understand such a concept, but the Festival of Shaptari was the closest one could imagine to a celebration of harvest and fruitfulness.