The Shadow of Malabron

by Thomas Wharton

  Beauty.

  Riches.

  Love.

  Death.

  Will dropped the last of these other slips and looked around. He had no idea which way to turn. Every direction looked the same: uninviting. Suddenly he was angry with the librarian, the slip and himself. By going off on this stupid book hunt he had just landed himself in more trouble than he was in before. It didn’t seem to matter what he did, nothing could make things worse now.

  At random he chose one of the aisles and headed down it.

  The pavement of ancient books here was uneven and in places heaved up like cracked stone. Will was cheered only by a faint cool draught which gave him hope that he would soon reach a way out. He clung to that hope and kept on, until the light of his lantern had dimmed to a feeble red glow that scarcely lit more than the hand that carried it. The scraps of paper that lay underfoot were yellowed and brittle, crackling under his tread like dry leaves.

  He stopped, sensing more than seeing that there was an edge before him. Here the floor of books dropped steeply into a truly inky blackness. Will looked up and saw what appeared to be faint twinkling stars. He wondered if he had found the way out, but could it be night already outside? And if he was still in the Library, what had happened to the roof?

  He took another step, craning his neck to peer down, and felt the floor sag and shift beneath him. He scrambled backwards but it was too late. The ancient volumes under his feet had begun to collapse and he was pulled helplessly down with them.

  Dropping the lantern he clutched the edge of one huge book and hung on as it slid and tumbled in a roaring avalanche of paper and binding, then finally flipped over and sent him flying through the air.

  He landed in a mass of books and paper scraps like a huge pile of dead leaves. A cloud of dust settled all around him, and he went into a spasm of coughing. When it had passed, he looked up and saw nothing but darkness everywhere, lit faintly by some dull grey gleam that seemed to come from nowhere. He saw the lantern near by. Somehow it had landed upright and was still lit. As Will reached for it, he heard a loud cough.

  He went very still. There was no sound other than the faint whistle of the wind, the scratch and skitter of paper, and his own breathing.

  The fear that he had managed to fend off by keeping moving now threatened to become panic.

  “Is anyone there?” he shouted.

  The echo of his shout faded away, and then a voice that seemed to come from very close by said, “Yes.”

  The flesh on Will’s neck rose in goose bumps. He turned wildly, but could see nothing in any direction.

  “Who’s there?” he said.

  “I am,” the voice said. It was a voice unlike any he had heard before. It was made, he thought, of many sounds: water trickling over stones, leaves stirring in the wind, the rustle of animals through the grass. It was somehow a comforting voice, like all the sounds of the sunlit world beyond this tomb of books.

  “Who are you?”

  There was a brief silence, and then the voice spoke again, hesitantly this time, as though surprised at its own words. “Who am I…?”

  “Where are you?” Will said. “I can’t see you.”

  Immediately he wished he had not said this. He stood up with the lantern raised, trying to still the trembling in his hand, and then heard the pad of soft, slow footfalls. He turned to the sound, and out of the shadows, as if taking shape from them, came a large silver-grey wolf.

  Will’s first impulse was to run, but before he could move the wolf spoke.

  “I was told to wait,” the wolf said, as if to himself. “I was supposed to wait for … someone.”

  Will could not move. The creature stopped a few paces from Will and looked at him searchingly with large yellow-gold eyes. He was larger than Will thought wolves were supposed to be. His head reached the height of Will’s chest.

  The wolf lifted his snout and sniffed the air.

  “I’ll … um … let you wait then,” Will finally gasped, taking a step back. “I’ll just go, and you can wait.”

  “Things are not the same,” the wolf said, and growled. He turned in a circle and then looked at Will again, his eyes reflecting the red light of the lantern. “The world was not this way when I went to sleep. I don’t know this place. I don’t know you.”

  “I’m not actually, you know, from here,” Will stammered. “I’m … I’m lost.”

  “Lost,” the wolf echoed, and its ears perked up.

  “I’m sorry I woke you. It was an accident. Really. I didn’t mean to come here.”

  “Lost,” the wolf repeated, and it made a huffing sound that might have been a laugh. “I was supposed to wait, and someone would come. Yes. Someone who was lost.”

  “It must be someone else,” Will said, still backing away. “If I see anybody on the way out I’ll tell them where to find you.”

  The wolf arched his back and shook himself, just like a dog waking from a long, satisfying nap. Then he sniffed the air again, and gazed into the absolute night that surrounded them. Will saw with a shiver that the wolf’s large, gleaming eyes were definitely those of a hunting animal.

  “I have waited, and someone has come,” the wolf finally said, and his gaze fell upon Will again and stayed. “Now I must do as I was bidden.”

  Rowen was very worried. Will had been gone for hours.

  When he first left she had explored the shelves in the catalogue room, and had taken down a few interestinglooking volumes to skim through. She distracted herself for a good while with the misadventures of Sir Peridor the Extremely Unlucky, and with the imagined history of the unreachable city of Arzareth, which no one has ever actually visited, and then she read about the curious architecture of the palace of Bazeen-Barathrum, where the furniture roamed in herds, and if you wanted a bed or a chair you had to hunt for it with a net and rope. Eventually she grew tired of browsing, but Will was still not back. Then there was a long time during which she paced around the circular room, and went some distance into each of the corridors that led from it, hoping to catch sight of Will.

  Finally, when there could be little doubt that something had gone wrong, she sat at one of the tables and debated what to do. The right thing was to go and find her grandfather, but she was not looking forward to what he would say.

  Twice already Nymm, the assistant librarian, had come nosing into the catalogue room as if for the express purpose of checking up on her. The second time, when he found her still alone, he had nodded his head and grinned, clearly pleased to find that his expectations had been confirmed.

  “Easy,” he smirked, and strolled away.

  Now he came in a third time, and her grandfather was with him. Rowen stifled a cry of relief and stood up to await the stern lecture that was sure to come.

  “No sign of the slip, either,” Nymm was saying to the toymaker, as he hurried to keep up with the old man’s long stride. “That is most unusual. I will to have to notify the head librarian. He is not going to be pleased.”

  Pendrake came up to Rowen and looked at her without speaking.

  “I’m sorry, Grandfather,” she said, lowering her eyes. “It’s my fault. I brought him here.”

  “You wanted to help, Rowen,” Pendrake said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “That wasn’t wrong.”

  “Will you be searching for him yourselves, then,” Nymm asked sweetly, “or would you prefer that we do it for you?”

  “Neither, I think,” Pendrake said, and he gestured across the room to one of the branching corridors. Rowen turned to where he was pointing and to her great relief saw Will walking towards them out of the shadows. An instant later she saw the large silver-grey wolf that came trotting after him into the light, and the glad shout that she had been about to utter turned into a gasp. All over the room, heads rose from books, and an even more complete silence fell.

  The wolf seemed unconcerned about all the eyes turned to him, as if his presence here was an everyday occurrence.

  Wil
l himself was a sight: his clothes were covered in dust and grime and there were bits of paper and strands of cobweb in his hair.

  “What happened?” Rowen said, stepping forward, and then she halted and watched the wolf, who had stopped and was now standing calmly at Will’s side. “Where did you…”

  She faltered. The wolf’s startling eyes fixed on her, then roamed about the room.

  “This cave is strange to me,” the animal said in his mesmerizing voice. “The smell is not right.”

  By now some of the other Library patrons had jumped out of their chairs and backed away to the far edges of the room. Nymm had taken refuge behind Pendrake. As the toymaker approached Will, the wolf perked up its ears and gave a yip. It bounded forward, then skidded to a stop and blinked at the old man in apparent confusion.

  “I thought you were…” the wolf began to say, but did not finish.

  The toymaker studied the strange creature intently. He took off his spectacles, rubbed them on his sleeve and put them back on.

  “What in all the Realms…” he said softly.

  He turned his gaze on Will.

  “It was my idea to come here,” Will said. “I couldn’t just stay in the toyshop and do nothing.”

  Pendrake raised a hand.

  “We will discuss it later,” he said sternly, and then to Will’s relief, he looked at the wolf again and laughed softly. “This is a surprise. Or perhaps not.”

  Nymm now inched his way out cautiously from behind the toymaker.

  “Where did this … animal come from?” he said, wrinkling his nose.

  “I found him,” Will said. “Well, he found me. Then he found the way out.”

  “But where in the Library did this happen? I’ve never heard of such a…”

  “I … don’t know,” Will said, handing Nymm the slip, which feebly flapped a wing. “He’s been here a long time. Longer than the books, maybe.”

  “And you intend to just take it?”

  “I’m not taking him,” Will said. “He’s coming with me.”

  The wolf padded slowly up to the assistant librarian, sniffed, and wrinkled its nose. Nymm clutched the toymaker’s sleeve and stared wide-eyed at the creature.

  “But you can’t… This is…” the librarian sputtered, his eyes blinking rapidly. “Every item removed from the Library has to be properly checked out. We have to find out if it … he has even been catalogued.”

  “You may inform the head librarian,” Pendrake said to Nymm, “that I will discuss the matter with him later.”

  Nymm’s bloodless face actually reddened. He turned on his heel and fled the room.

  “And now we must hurry,” Pendrake said, turning to Will and Rowen again. “Will has been summoned by the Marshal.”

  Will and Rowen exchanged glances.

  “We cannot stay here,” the toymaker said to the wolf. “Where will you go?”

  “I must go with the one who found me,” the wolf said, and then his voice softened, as if he was mimicking the words of another: “The one who is lost will be a seeker of the gateless gate. Stay with him until it is found.”

  “The gateless gate?”

  “That is what I was bidden. To stay with the seeker of the gateless gate.”

  To Will’s surprise, the toymaker nodded.

  “Very well then,” Pendrake said. “You’re welcome to come with us. But tell me, do you have a name?”

  The wolf lowered his shaggy head as if to ponder this difficult question, and then he lifted his yellow-gold eyes to the old man.

  “Shade. That was it. The name I was given is Shade.”

  These are the rules. Learn them so that when the time comes you will not need them.

  — The Book of Errantry

  AS THEY MADE THEIR WAY through the streets to the house, Will told Rowen and the toymaker how he and the wolf had encountered one another.

  “I went looking for a book and found him instead,” he said when he had finished his story. He watched Shade, who had trotted on ahead as soon as they left the Library and was sniffing the air eagerly.

  “But what is he, Grandfather?” Rowen said. “Where did the wolf come from?”

  “I have my hunches, child, but no answers.”

  Many of those who passed by stopped in their tracks and stared uneasily at the alarmingly large creature padding along the paving stones, but none of them shouted or ran.

  When a messenger wisp zinged overhead, the wolf grunted.

  “I remember that one,” he said, a trace of annoyance in his voice. “That one was always going too fast. Always hurrying, even in the days before the Storyeater came.”

  “You know that wisp?” Rowen asked.

  “Wisp?” the wolf said, as if he’d never heard the word before. “Yes, I know that one. He was with the First Ones.” He halted suddenly and raised his head.

  “The First Ones,” he said. “Have you seen them? Are they…”

  “They are not here, Shade,” Pendrake said quietly. “The First Ones no longer walk among us. They have not done so for a very long time.”

  The wolf paced beside them in silence. After some time he spoke, and his voice was low and husky.

  “My friend said it would be that way. He said we would not see each other again.”

  Edweth did not betray the slightest surprise when they arrived at the house with Shade. She merely gave the wolf her usual stern, appraising look, and then returned to her kitchen, where dinner was underway. Will cleaned himself up and then sat down with the others to a quick meal of stew and bread. He was famished and tucked into his food eagerly. Then he looked up and saw the wolf, who sat calmly watching him from the kitchen doorway.

  “I wonder if he’s hungry,” Rowen said. “I wonder if he even eats at all.”

  Edweth regarded the wolf with her hands on her hips.

  “Now that’s the strangest thing I’ve seen in a good while,” she said. “Something four-legged that doesn’t hang about the table begging. Maybe that’s why he looks a little underfed. You can offer him something, Master Will.”

  Will took a chunk of bone from Edweth’s chopping board and carried it over to Shade. The wolf cautiously sniffed the offering, then gazed up at Edweth.

  “If the fare is not to your liking…” the housekeeper began.

  “You are kind,” Shade said. “Thank you.”

  He took the bone in his jaws and gnawed at it energetically.

  “That answers your question, Rowen,” Pendrake said. “Though I would guess it has been a long time since he has needed to eat anything.”

  “But how did he get into the Library?” Rowen asked.

  Will darted an apprehensive look at Shade. He felt uncomfortable talking about the wolf as if he were an ordinary animal that could not understand what they were saying. But Shade was busy with his treat and paid them no attention.

  “He was a Companion of the Stewards,” Pendrake said. “Or as he calls them, the First Ones. He is one of the Speaking Creatures, birds and beasts with the power of speech and understanding. There aren’t many left, at least in this part of the Realm. His story, whatever it is, must be one of the oldest in the Kantar. He was here before the rise of Malabron and the destruction of Eleel. The Broken Years after the Great Unweaving are unknown to him. As for his being in the Library, I am as puzzled as you are.”

  “What is this gateless gate he was talking about?” Will asked. “Is it some way out of here?”

  “I have no answers about that either, Will. A few scattered verses in the Kantar speak of such a thing, but in riddles. It is said that there were once gateways, called farholds, made by the Stewards. They were wishing portals. You could use them to transport yourself to any place inside or out of the Realm, just by wishing to go there. It is also said they were all broken or sealed in the time of the Great Unweaving.”

  “Maybe the Hidden Folk know about these gates,” Rowen said eagerly. “People say the Lady of the Green Court knows all the secret paths in the
Perilous Realm. She could help Will get home.”

  “That she could. But no one can find the Green Court unless the Lady wishes it so. Except perhaps you, Will.”

  Will wanted to ask the toymaker what he meant, but something told him he would not like the answer.

  Dusk was falling as Will set out for the home of the Errantry with Pendrake and Shade. Rowen had pleaded to come along but Pendrake would not let her.

  “You’ve done enough for one day,” he said drily. Rowen looked about to protest, but she crossed her arms and said nothing.

  There were few people in the street at this hour. Sooner than Will wished it they came to the ivy-covered wall of Appleyard. One of the larger doors was open, and as they approached a file of four riders on horseback came out through the gateway. There were three men and one woman, all wearing long grey coats.

  Inside the enclosure there were more people in long coats hurrying to and fro across a wide lawn criss-crossed by narrow stone paths. A horn sounded somewhere near by, and then another. A second group of riders came trotting in through another gateway.

  The lawn was dotted with apple trees and sloped gently up towards a building unlike any Will had ever seen. It was more than a house, and not quite a castle. Its peaked roofs, slender turrets and many arched doorways looked as if they had not been built but had grown from the earth. And in fact four great trees grew right up against the corners, so that it was hard to tell where their massive white trunks ended and the stone began.

  “The Gathering House,” Pendrake said. “Home of the Errantry.”

  They followed one of the paths, which took them past a fountain where several men and women were gathered, talking in quiet, serious tones. Some of them nodded to Pendrake as he went by. Further in the distance Will caught sight of a fenced circular enclosure where a young woman was riding a dappled brown and white horse. Mount and rider were trotting in tight circles round the enclosure, watched by a man with a long stick who pointed out the way they should go. From somewhere unseen came a ringing sound that Will guessed must be a hammer striking metal. He wondered if swords or armour were being made, and if all this activity meant the Errantry was preparing for a possible invasion by the fetches. He doubted that swords would be of much use against them.