The Shadow of Malabron

by Thomas Wharton

  Slipping on a dressing gown, she went to the chest at the end of her bed and opened it. Underneath a stack of blankets lay a pile of old books. This was the one place Edweth never looked. As long as Rowen kept everything neatly tucked away in the chest, there was no reason for the housekeeper to go rooting around in it. And that meant this was the one place in her room she could hide something.

  She shoved the books aside and laid bare a bed-sheet wrapped round something long and bulky. Lifting it from the chest she set the sheet down on her bed and unwrapped it. Inside lay a sword. Its silver hilt was inscribed with the seal of the Errantry, a five-petalled white flower within a circle.

  Rowen took the sword in both hands and held it in front of her. The blade gleamed in the morning light.

  She had found it in the uppermost attic of the house, in a locked trunk, the key to which had cost her many days of searching. The sword was her mother’s, there was no doubt of that. Her grandfather had hidden it away from her, but Rowen had found it. She was meant to find it. And with it she would do great things.

  A cry came from down the corridor, in the direction of Will’s room. Hurriedly Rowen tucked away the sword, and went out onto the landing. At Will’s door she stopped and listened.

  A bird was singing somewhere. There was warm sunlight on his eyelids. But he was still cold and shivering. What had happened to his blankets? He groped for the covers, eyes still closed, wondering what Dad was making for breakfast. Jess would probably be up soon and tugging on his pyjama sleeve, wanting him to watch cartoons with her.

  Then he remembered.

  Will opened his eyes. He was lying, curled up, at the end of his bed. Groggily he raised his head. The blankets were in a heap on the floor.

  He was in his room in the toymaker’s house. He had been dreaming about the clearing with the cloven tree, and the strange white-haired man, but this was no dream. He was really here, in the Perilous Realm. The mirrors in the woods and the fetches, meeting Rowen and Moth…

  It had all really happened.

  “The city of Fable,” he said out loud, as if he still wouldn’t believe until he heard himself say it. “In a land called the Bourne.”

  The memory of what the toymaker had said last night returned, and a cold dread settled in his stomach. He was trapped in a story. A dangerous one. With things in it he couldn’t even understand. And why him? He was sure the old man hadn’t told him everything, but he knew he didn’t want to hear any more. It was time to do something, anything, to get out of here, if he could.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Will? Are you all right?”

  The girl’s voice. Rowen.

  “I’m fine,” he called out. “Just a dream.”

  “Well, I’ll be downstairs then. I’ll ask Edweth to make us something.”

  Will climbed groggily from the bed. His old clothes were hanging in the wardrobe. He dressed and went down to the kitchen, where he found Rowen and Edweth. For a moment he considered telling them about his disturbing dream, but decided against it. The housekeeper had just made breakfast, and Will’s stomach growled hungrily as he surveyed the food spread out on the table. There was fresh bread with jam and honey, eggs and ham and sausage, and berries in cream.

  As Will tucked in, Rowen told him that her grandfather had already gone out.

  “And he made it very clear,” Edweth said, “that the two of you are to stay here in the house until he comes back.”

  After breakfast Rowen suggested they go up to her grandfather’s workshop and look at his maps. Will already knew he would not find his own country shown on a chart here, but he had to do something other than sit and wait. From a cabinet she brought out and unrolled a large parchment map of the Bourne and the surrounding storylands, as she called them. Will was dismayed to see that while the Bourne itself was filled in with rivers and roads and place names, the regions beyond its borders were mostly white space. How was he supposed to get home with a map that faded away at the edges?

  Rowen told him that near by, to the east and south of the Bourne, there were friendly lands and kingdoms, but for the most part the north and west were sparsely, and sometimes dangerously, populated. Once there had been many flourishing storylands here, but most of them had been broken or devoured by the Night King. These lands were known as Wildernesse, and people from the Bourne avoided travelling through them if they could.

  “Grandfather has travelled all over the Realm, gathering tales, and helping storyfolk,” Rowen said. “He says that in Wildernesse you can’t put much trust in a map. You’re likely to find things very different from what you expect.”

  Will sighed.

  “Is this the best map you’ve got?” he asked.

  “The Great Library has lots of maps,” Rowen said. “And books, too, of course. They say there’s a book there for everyone in the Realm.”

  “So there might be a book there for me. A book that could show me the way home.”

  “Well, maybe, but…”

  “I’ve got to go there,” Will said.

  Rowen pursed her lips.

  “You heard what Edweth said.”

  “I’m not going to sit here and do nothing.”

  “If Grandfather finds out…”

  “You don’t listen to him,” Will said. “Why should I?”

  Rowen sighed. She went to the door and listened for a moment. Then she turned to Will.

  “We’ll have to get past Edweth,” she said. “That won’t be easy. Come on.”

  When they reached the steps of the Great Library, Will saw that it was an even larger building than it had seemed to him the night before. Unlike most of the structures he had seen so far in Fable, its black, pitted walls were not made of many blocks of hewn stone, but rather seemed carved of one single great mass of rock. Wide steps led up to the entrance, and on either side of them, at the top, stood a stone statue, in the shape of a strange creature the likes of which Will had never seen. Like a gryphon it had a lion’s body, an eagle’s head, and wings, but the wings were oddly shaped. As Will reached the top of the staircase he was able to see that they were not wings at all, but rather the ragged-edged pages of a book that was spread open upon the creature’s back.

  Will and Rowen passed without speaking through the wide doors of the Library entrance and into a long hall, lit by tall narrow lamps in deep alcoves. On both sides of the central aisle down which they walked stood large desks at which men and women sat, scratching busily with quill pens or sorting through stacks of books.

  “The assistant librarians,” Rowen whispered. “A cranky bunch. Worse than Edweth. Try not to make a noise.”

  Rowen and Will walked quietly and quickly past the people at the desks, none of whom gave them the merest glance. At the far end of the hall, in the centre of a semicircular space from which several corridors branched off, was the tallest desk of all, a massive pulpit of carved oak. From where Will and Rowen stood, only the shiny top of a bald head and the end of a furiously fluttering quill feather could be seen. Rowen cleared her throat.

  “Excuse me,” she said.

  The feather stopped fluttering. The bald head stirred slightly, and a voice mumbled something unintelligible.

  “Excuse me,” Rowen said again.

  There was another grunt, and then the entire head rose into view. It belonged to a very old man with a long, thin face, a large beak of a nose, and a straggly white beard sprouting from his chin. His hands reached over and clutched the edge of the desk, and Will saw that all the nails were trimmed short, save one on the index finger of the right hand that poked out, yellow and curved, like a single claw. The old man glowered down at them in silence.

  “We need help, please,” Rowen said, her voice raised slightly above a whisper.

  “Speak up,” the old man said, cocking his head to one side.

  “We need help with something important,” Rowen said more loudly, and her voice echoed in the long hall. The scratching of quills stopped. M
ost of the assistant librarians had raised their heads and were staring at Will and Rowen.

  The old man tapped the desk with his one long nail.

  “Consult the catalogues,” he said dismissively, in a voice like gravel crunched underfoot.

  “I don’t think it would help us,” Rowen said, and she gestured to Will. “We’re looking for something for him. And he’s not…”

  The old man frowned and peered down at Will. Now all the assistant librarians were staring openly in his direction.

  “He’s not what?” the old man said, not taking his iron gaze off Will.

  “We’re looking for a book for him,” Rowen said, her voice trailing off weakly. “To help him get home.”

  “What makes him think there is such a book here?”

  “She told me there was,” Will blurted out, pointing at Rowen. She opened her mouth, shut it again and shot Will a look of annoyance. The old man stared coldly at both of them, his yellow talon now tapping the side of his head.

  “I suppose you’re a new recruit from Appleyard?” he said to Will with a grimace.

  Will shook his head.

  “I thought you looked a little too puny for an apprentice,” the old man said, and pointed his talon like an accusation at the nearest assistant librarian.

  “Nymm,” he said. A small sour-faced man with inkstained fingers popped up from his desk like a Jack-in-the-box and hurried over.

  “Someone looking for his book,” the old man said, a thin trickle of amusement leaking into his voice.

  The assistant librarian bowed slightly and, without another word, led Will and Rowen down the furthest corridor on their left. At the far end of its long curve they came out into a large circular room. It was lit by hanging glass globes that contained what looked like messenger wisps, glowing dimly.

  In the room were more books than Will had ever seen. Far more than his old school library, or even the big public library where Mum used to take him and Jess before she became ill.

  Tall cases of books ran round the perimeter, and two other, higher galleries of shelves rose above to a domed glass ceiling. In addition to all the books lining the shelves on three floors, stacks and heaps and ziggurats of books sat everywhere, even piled on top of the large desk that stood in the middle of the room. Here and there people were sitting at tables, absorbed in their reading, or copying from texts and making notes. Between the shelves on the main floor stood tall cabinets with many drawers, and now and then one of the drawers would slide open noiselessly, and something that resembled a large white butterfly would dart out and flutter over to one of the tables, where it would settle, either on the table top, or on a book, or on the arm of a reader. When one of the butterflies passed close to Will, he saw that it was in fact a piece of paper folded down the middle to form what looked like a pair of wings.

  “You may as well start here, in the catalogue room,” Nymm said. He went over to one of the desks, took a quill pen out of its stand, and handed it to Will.

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” Will muttered, and the librarian rolled his eyes.

  “Never been in a library before, likely,” he said. “Well, what is it you want your book to do for you?”

  “Get me home.”

  “Well, then, when one of the catalogue slips comes to you, write your request on it, and then follow the slip. A simple matter, for most.”

  “It’s that easy?”

  “I did not say easy,” Nymm snapped. “I said simple, and I meant the second definition of the word, as found in the Eleventh Compendium of the Languages of the Realm, volume seventy-three. Simple in the sense of straightforward. If the slip can find your book, it will. If it can’t, I suggest you try elsewhere.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find,” Will muttered.

  Grudgingly the librarian handed him a lantern.

  “You’ll need this. And remember: the Library is very old and very large, and parts of it haven’t been visited by anyone, not even us librarians, for a long time. If you get lost, or if you encounter … things, fold the slip the other way, and it will return here. If you lose track of the slip, well, someone will come looking for you. Eventually.”

  He turned to go, then frowned at Rowen.

  “Oh, and one more thing. You must go alone. No chance of it working otherwise. It confuses the slips if someone else comes along, which you would know were you a regular patron of this Library.”

  With that he rolled his eyes once more and strode back out the way he had led them. Will turned to Rowen, who shrugged.

  “I suppose I’d better wait here then,” she said, and moved away to examine the books on the nearest shelf.

  Will pulled out a chair and sat down at the table, pushing aside a stack of books to make some room in front of him. Two other people were sitting at the far end of the long table, but had their heads bent over books and paid him no attention. He didn’t have long to wait. After a few moments he heard a soft flutter in the air, and a slip landed gently on the back of his hand, its paper wings stirring slightly as it settled on its chosen perch. Carefully Will took the slip by one corner and set it onto the table, where its wings spread open and it lay flat and motionless, like an ordinary scrap of paper.

  Will lifted the quill pen and set the nib to the paper, expecting the slip to move. It did not stir. Tentatively he scratched a line. Nothing appeared.

  “You need ink,” Rowen said.

  Will frowned and dipped the pen in the black bottle at his elbow. He held it poised over the slip, and then hesitated.

  “Have you ever done this?” he whispered to Rowen.

  Without turning to look at him, she whispered back, “No. I use the catalogues. What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know what to write.”

  “Just ask for what you want, like he said. Simple, remember?”

  Will grimaced and set the nib to the paper again. He thought for a moment, wrote the word home, then plonked the pen back into its stand.

  An instant later the slip’s wings began to rise again, and then to beat rapidly, like the wings of a hummingbird. It fluttered up from the table, sped across the room, and hovered at the arched entrance to one of the dim branching corridors. Will jumped up, grabbed the lantern, and with one quick backwards look at Rowen, he followed.

  It is an old city, and thus it is many cities, the oldest of which may not have had a name, or even have been inhabited by beings that walk on two legs.

  — Wodden’s History of Fable, Preface

  AFTER A LONG TIME HE KNEW that he was lost. And worse, he was pretty sure the slip was, too.

  He had followed the fluttering scrap of paper through halls and rooms and corridors of bookshelves, up and down stairs and along winding passageways, until he began to wonder whether there was any end to the Library at all. Every now and then he had passed someone browsing the shelves, or trudging along with an armload of books, or sitting at a desk under one of the dim light globes, poring over some huge, ancient tome. Most of these solitary souls looked as dusty and faded as the books, as though they themselves had not left the Library in years. Will paid them little heed, since most of his attention stayed focused on the slip, which flew along purposefully without slackening its speed, as if it did not care whether Will was keeping up or not. As he followed, from time to time Will heard strange noises, soft shufflings and mutterings from the shadowy recesses around him. Once from a narrow aisle a dim figure in grey rags approached him, silently mouthing words. Its feet were chained to two immense books, and worse, the feet and the books were suspended a foot above the floor. Will fled from the spectre, shouting at the slip to wait for him. He felt foolish talking to a piece of paper, but it was better than having no companion at all in such a place.

  When the slip had finally begun to slow down, its wings beating less urgently, Will assumed that this meant they were nearing their goal, and he followed with a burst of new energy. Even when the slip had slowed to a stationary hove
r, and then turned a slow circle and began to fly back the way they had come, Will was not too concerned. This could simply mean that the slip was honing in on its precise destination. But after many minutes of this turning and darting down other aisles and coming back and trying another direction, Will’s confidence in the slip’s powers began to falter. Especially when he realized that he hadn’t seen another living soul for some time, and the light globes were becoming dimmer and spaced further apart.

  With growing unease he followed the slip through a maze of aisles that went on and on, until at last they came to a place where there was no light at all apart from the weak illumination of the lantern. Crooked aisles like tunnels ran off in all directions between shelves that rose to great heights until they were lost in darkness. Scraps of paper littered the floor, which was paved with narrow stones that Will realized with shock were actually the spines of books.

  He was not only in the Library, he was walking on it.

  Here the slip gave in at last. Its wings ceased beating and it spiralled helplessly down towards Will. He lifted his hand and let the slip drop into his palm. If it hadn’t been a piece of paper, he would have sworn the slip was exhausted beyond endurance and trembling with fatigue, or even fear. One thing was clear: the search was over, and they hadn’t found his book. The Library could not help him.

  “Let’s go back now,” he said, and folded the tiny piece of paper the other way, as the librarian had told him to. The slip stirred feebly, then lay still.

  “Come on,” Will said more loudly, and heard his voice echo through the endless corridors. “Just do what you’re supposed to.”

  He folded the slip the other way, and back again but it did not move.

  Will swallowed hard. What chance was there he could retrace his steps back through the Library on his own?

  He lowered his gaze and noticed for the first time that the papers scattered over the floor like fallen snow were slips like the one that had led him here. He tucked his own slip into a pocket and stooped to pick up one of the others. On it someone had written: The Infinite Book, Abridged Edition. He let it drop and picked up another: The New Revised Almanack of True Prophecy. Both pieces of paper were dry and yellowed, looking as though they had lain here for many years. He tried folding this slip the other way, but nothing happened. He picked up several others and tried them too. In most cases the seeker, like him, seemed to have no particular book in mind.