Cloudwalkers Read online

  Cloudwalkers

  Mark Wayne McGinnis

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by MWM

  Copyright

  Prologue

  September 9th — In the Year of the Lord — 2490

  Dramarious MacLaren, already an old man, had just become wretchedly old come this midnight past, joining the ranks of five other centenarians currently living atop the cloudbank. Hunched and brittle, he felt the heavy weight of anguish press upon his tired shoulders, upon his very soul. Throngs of other Skylanders were gathered about, pressing and pushing against the rest of the crowd in their efforts to hear the CloudKing’s words.

  No better than a pack of hungry wolves, he mused, watching them.

  MacLaren craned his neck to better observe the Cloudwalker and his accompanied approach. He was close enough now to see the shackled man’s eyes, wide open and frantically darting about in a futile search for some way out of his dire situation. Clearly, the prisoner had not yet come to terms with what was already a forgone conclusion. Within mere moments, if that blowhard of a CloudKing would ever shut up—his useless explanation was already well known by everyone present—the man would be painfully prodded with a pointed rackstaff, forced to step forward and drop into the open abyss.

  The old man wondered, Will the entirety of his life pass before his eyes? Can that happen, in the short span of time it takes to fall five hundred feet—down-down-down—to that unyielding hard surface below?

  The frigid air continued to creep up the centenarian’s bare legs. Gazing downward, past his worn kilt, he noticed how purple and knobby his knees had become. For as old as he was, and the years he’d lived, why should he have to endure witnessing a sadistic ritual like this Fall From Grace? MacLaren unconsciously winced, observing the young Cloudwalker’s loosely bound feet approaching the dreadful patch of quickfall.

  Despite his internal complaints, MacLaren knew the horrid verdict now being enforced was nothing new. It was the way of the Skylander realm. Aye, and so it is for all those atop this cloudbank, whether right now, or during centuries long past. This Fall From Grace, the public execution about to occur, was a keen reminder not to break the law, though this poor bastard’s crime was not larceny or murder, but one more of indiscretion, an act of the heart. The young Cloudwalker was of good standing, of noble blood, but he’d fallen in love with someone not of this cloudbank realm and certainly not from among the nobility. No, but with one from the realm below: a Grounder. There was only one penalty for such an offense: death.

  As he waited for the doomed Cloudwalker to take that final step, either of his own accord or prodded ahead by the grim-faced Dorcha Poilea, MacLaren made a mental note to enter this day’s events into his worn journal. For nearly four hundred years life atop the cloudbank—and among the very tops of the magnificent, high-rise towers which pierced through it—had been religiously chronicled by scribes, such as himself. He suspected he had enough time left in his life for only a handful more of such entries, but that fact didn’t bother him.

  The young man’s time had come. The crowd’s loud chatter had grown still; only their collective murmurs prevailed. Next to MacLaren, two men spoke in hushed voices.

  “The laddie . . . will he scream?” asked one, his eyes intensely trained as he watched the final moments of the young Cloudwalker’s life.

  “Aye, I reckon. I surely would.”

  MacLaren closed his eyes in defiant refusal; he would not look at what was about to happen. The moments ticked by slowly. In a burst of combined exaltation, the crowd came alive—a strangely joyful ruckus considering the circumstances. MacLaren opened his eyes to see the young man was no longer standing at the precipice of the patch of quickfall. The crowd quieted in unison, heads tilted, and he too was listening.

  There was no distant sound, no desperate scream.

  Chapter 1

  August 5th — In the Year of the Lord 2620

  Standing atop the glistening cloudbank, a flock of pigeons flew overhead as the young man stretched, arching his back, which brought him up to his full six-foot-three stature. His build—narrow of hip, with broad muscular shoulders—was fairly typical of a Cloudwalker, but it was his blue eyes that usually attracted attention. Discerning and intelligent, yet also mischievous, his eyes held the power to intrigue, and just as easily unsettle, those who came into contact with him during the course of his cicerones duties.

  Conn panned the distant skyscape for signs of quickfall, the dangerous cloudbank patches that all too often claimed the lives of both Skylanders and visiting Grounders. While most Skylanders could not spot the subtle differences in the cloudbank that betrayed a patch of quickfall—its appearance was slightly lighter, more ethereal—Conn was a Cloudwalker, in possession of the Sight, and to his well-trained eyes, quickfall stood out like a silhouette in a beam of light. The cloudbank could support hundreds of pounds of weight, but even after a lifetime of navigating it, Conn knew he was always just one wrong step from hurtling hundreds of feet to a grisly death below.

  His breath suddenly caught at this latest invasion of dark thoughts. Death was often on his mind these days, and had been since the recent death of his friend and mentor, Professor Claremont Dob. If allowed to take hold, again, anguish would dominate his morning. Conn allowed himself a moment—one moment only—to mourn the brilliant old man, before shaking himself from his misery and returning his mind to his duties.

  Conn Brataich, of the Brataich Clan, couldn’t afford to be distracted. He was third in line to the throne behind his brother Michael and his sister Emma. But unlike his older siblings, succession held little interest for him. He’d seen firsthand what the pressure and responsibility of being the reigning CloudMaster had done to his father, whose ailing health worsened by the day.

  The ever-present winds buffeted his white, long-sleeved shirt. He swept wayward strands of black wavy hair out of his eyes and let out a patient breath as he waited for the winding, single file contingent of twelve Grounders to catch up. They lagged back, unsure of their footing—to them, clearly, this was a foreign, terrifying experience. He’d noticed the expressions on their pasty faces when they first started out, some two hours earlier. Expressions of equal parts awe and panic which
, Conn noted, hadn’t changed all that much since. Grounders weren’t used to sunlight, he reminded himself yet again. They lived far below, where the cloudbank—and the continuous fall of acid rain which came from it—forced them to live underground in tunnels like rats, or in buildings protected by coatings of rubber and Ragoon sap. What a miserable life, Conn thought.

  He smiled with the hope it would convey confidence, to let them know there was little to worry about here, some five hundred feet above street level.

  This was Conn’s favorite time of day, the mere moments when the bonnie sun appeared suspended upon the cloudbank, a fiery globe of molten gold resting comfortably on soft tufts of cotton. He glanced to his left where the closest building spire rose high through the ever-present sea of white. A hundred shimmering golden suns on a hundred glass panels reflected back at him.

  Twenty-six such skyscrapers, those few visible above the cloudbank, still remained after five centuries; no others had been erected since the Ruin. No, the ability to build more had been lost, along with so much else, and what remained was all there would ever be. When these finally fell, and fall they would one day, the era of the Cloudwalker would end. The thought saddened Conn. He loved this heavenly place—living within these Midtown Manhattan skylands—his home.

  “A breathtaking sight, aye?”

  Conn continued to stare off toward the distant horizon, then responded, “Aye, that it is, Toag.” Shhhick! He heard the tip of his friend’s rackstaff penetrate deep into the cloudbank. Glancing up, he found Toag casually resting his chin upon his staff’s broad paw, made from the central wood of an elder Ragoon tree and worn smooth by a hundred years of palm sweat and constant friction.

  Toag Munna stood as tall as Conn. His long black hair, which naturally clumped into rope-like locks, hung down to his shoulders. He pointed ahead. “Business must be picking up for Clan Baird . . .”

  Conn had spotted them too, three men just now coming around the sharply angled rise of the ancient building their clan called home. The Baird tartans they wore were a solid royal blue from this distance, but Conn knew their kilts were actually a plaid of several shades of blue, with thin intersecting lines of yellow and orange. Their own contingent of eight, no nine, darkly dressed Grounders came into view shortly after, in a snakelike line behind their cicerones.

  “. . . a good way to get someone killed. The stupid blowbag,” Toag added with distaste, making a clucking noise with his tongue as he watched the approaching flock. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he yelled out across the divide, “You there . . . Cloudwalker . . . mind your order!”

  Conn’s nod was barely perceptible. The proper formation for a line like this had a cicerones at the lead, another within the pack’s mid-section, and one at the very end, bringing up the rear. A flock needed to be closely watched. One wrong step—a lapse of attention by just one of the lemming-like Grounders—and they would disappear into the white bank. Five-point-six seconds. It was a number that had been drilled into Conn’s head, and the head of any Cloudwalker, in school. 5.6 seconds was the amount of time it would take an unlucky Grounder—or Skylander—who fell through the cloudbank to fall five hundred feet before hitting the ground with a hard thud and splatter somewhere on one of a thousand dreary streets below.

  The requisite training for a young Skylander to become a Cloudwalker was long and arduous. It took years, and only those individuals of noble blood, blessed with the Sight, would ever be accepted. To his knowledge and anyone else’s, the Sight only manifested itself in those who had strong Celtic heritage. After the Ruin, the land called Scotland was uninhabitable due to rising ocean waters that had turned it into little more than a frozen marshland. People fled to all corners of the world, and Conn’s own ancestors had joined thousands of others in immigrating to North America, where they found respite from the acid rains below the cloudbank by living in the high-rise skyscrapers that extended far above it. The fight to control those buildings was long and bloody, but when Clan Macbeth first took control of the Empire State Building, and their leader, Kenneth Macbeth, dared to be the first man to step out into the clouds, the world had changed yet again. Over the centuries, the Skylanders had worked hard to establish rules that would keep the Celtic bloodlines pure, but even still, those with enough Celtic blood to gain the Sight and become Cloudwalkers were scarce. Conn had always felt honored to be among the select few to represent the deep scarlet plaid of his own Brataich Clan.

  At the sound of approaching footfalls, Conn refocused his attention on his Grounder contingent.

  “I’ll watch the median span,” said Toag, looking back at the Grounders. “Step wisely, my friend.”

  “Step wisely, Toag.” Conn counted the heads of his flock, a nearly unconscious action on his part. Still twelve. Their attire was dark, and as bleak as the pallor of their skin. They blankly stared back at him like zombies. Hanging around each neck was a long, chain-linked necklace, with an oblong medallion attached. Made from polished Ragoon wood, each was stamped with a clan imprint and gave the Grounders the right to pass through the skylands.

  Conn gave a wave over his head and watched Toag and the other two cicerones give him a wave back. He then moved forward along the wide path, edged with the misty patches of quickfall that he could see quite clearly, knowing the lifeless souls that followed him could not. Without the Sight, they were literally walking blind atop the dense white cloud, one hundred percent reliant on their nearest Cloudwalker.

  It took ten minutes for the two groups to converge within the open expanse. Conn recognized the leading Cloudwalker as Fib Baird. Barrel chested, Fib was somewhere in his mid-forties. The man rarely spoke, and had mistrustful, constantly darting eyes. When they were three paces apart, Conn did as tradition dictated. The path they were on was solid enough to support substantial weight, and about eight feet wide. Conn moved aside in a symbol of respect for the elder Cloudwalker, raising his own rackstaff horizontally in front of the line behind him. It was a gesture to his flock to move back and let the others pass. He watched Toag, Will, and Maggie—his fellow Cloudwalkers—follow suit with their own rackstaffs. The line of twelve uneasily took a step off to the side.

  Fib gave an appreciative bow of his head and moved forward. Once parallel, the two Cloudwalkers gave quick taps on the paws of their rackstaffs.

  “Step wisely,” Fib said.

  “Step wisely,” Conn replied.

  One by one, Conn watched the procession of Grounders move past. Then his breath caught in his chest as he recognized the Grounder in front of him. At nearly seven feet tall and completely bald, with a sharply hooked nose, Terrence Lasher’s mere presence demanded attention. He walked with far more confidence than the other Grounders, and as he strode past Conn, Lasher’s dark eyes locked onto his. He radiated power and something else, thought Conn, unsettled. Something dark. He was refuted to be the most powerful of the Midtown Grounders; a high deacon in the religious order of Purgeforth, which was followed by virtually every Grounder in mid-town Manhattan.

  Grounders. Conn thought once again about the terrible plight of those who had survived the five centuries since the Ruin, living beneath the same cloudbank upon which he now stood. Life below the cloudbank was far different from the life that Conn knew. Acid rain fell continuously down onto Earth’s surface, and it was the same way around the world, as far as he knew. The Ruin had served as a catalyst for a series of devastating effects on the Earth, but Grounders had the worst of it. Forced to live underground, never to see the sun, most of them bitterly hated Skylanders for their privileged lives of relative luxury. Still, Skylanders and Grounders managed to share a relatively cordial co-existence, though resentment on both sides was natural and expected. But both societies depended on one another, so their symbiotic relationship had endured. Skylanders needed the food that the Grounders could grow in the depths below and the resources they scavenged from the dead world around them, and Grounders relied on the fresh water Skylanders collected from the hig
h natural clouds within the upper atmosphere.

  As the line continued to trudge past him, Conn kept his expression neutral. He held no malice toward any of them. Conn had been beneath the cloud a mere handful of times with old Dob, mostly for clandestine scientific experiments. Nothing, including the air, was safe down there. Bandits lurked everywhere. He thought about the families—surviving in subterranean caverns and ancient subway tunnels, sequestered away in their individual nooks and grottos. Some Grounders risked exposure, living in rotting buildings or exploring the city above them, hoping to find salvage to trade for extra provisions. He now watched as the tall bald man’s figure grew small in the distance.

  As the last of the line passed him, Conn resumed his own trek forward. In the far distance he could just make out the peaked building tops of Jersey City. Prior to the Ruin, the city had grown almost to the size of Manhattan, with many towering skyscrapers rising high there. Like Manhattan, Jersey City had been among the first in the world to react to the rising sea levels after the Ruin. Today, both cities were ringed by thick, tall rampart walls, made of a slippery, durable metal and generously coated in substances resistant to the acid rain. The huge walls were built along the banks of the now-swollen oceans, and there were smaller walls—still well over a hundred feet high—that were built within each city proper, sectioning them off into smaller, secluded quadrants. The walls had lasted five hundred years, but everyone knew the inner walls were a failsafe measure for the day—hopefully long into the future—when the outer walls finally were breached. The inner walls had originally provided for gated passageway, but the acid rains corroded the gateways until they became unusable. Grounders in both Manhattan and Jersey City became trapped in the inner cities where they lived, totally landlocked until Cloudwalkers in the skylands above agreed to guide them through paths in the cloudbank to other parts of the city. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it worked for now, Conn reasoned.

  These days, the Jersey City skylands were ruled by CloudMaster Gordon Folais, of the Folais Clan. The threat of war hung heavily on the Skylanders of both cities; Clan Brataich clashed often with Clan Folais, and the delicate flower of peace they begrudgingly nurtured between them—Conn’s own impending wedding to Lili Folais—was frail at best.