The Shadow of Malabron

by Thomas Wharton

  “When we first met, Master Pendrake, I thought you were one of them,” Shade said. “I was not wrong.”

  “You cannot stop it, Rowen. To me, the shapes in the ice tombs were hardly visible at all. Whatever gifts I have, I had to learn and develop over many long years of wandering, gathering threads of the Kantar before they were lost for ever. But for you … I feared what this journey might lead to, and so it has. The storyshard, your exposure to the werefire…”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Rowen demanded. Her eyes shimmered with tears.

  Pendrake took her hands in his.

  “When you were very young, your mother and father made me promise that if anything happened to them, I would keep you safe. I couldn’t save them, I failed at that, but I could at least try to keep my promise.”

  He paused and took a deep breath.

  “You must know, Rowen … their deaths were likely not by chance, though I told you otherwise and wished to believe it myself. The loremasters have been hunted by Malabron since the Broken Years and before. They carry the power of the Stewards, and in them, in you, is the last hope of the Realm. The only way to keep my promise was to keep you hidden. To hide the truth, even from you, until you were ready to hear it. Or until I had no choice. Forgive me.”

  Rowen pulled her hands away from her grandfather’s. She stood motionless, gazing past them all. Tears slid down her cheeks.

  “They died … because of me,” she said.

  “No, child,” Pendrake said hoarsely. “This began long before any of us. Blame will solve nothing. What we must do is defend what they lived for, and died for.”

  She didn’t seem to hear him. After a long time she stirred and looked round at Will and the others.

  “I want to leave this place,” she said, and her voice sounded cold and lost.

  Moth took first watch. Will lay down near Rowen, using Shade’s flank as a warm pillow. It was so dark he wasn’t sure for a moment whether he’d closed his eyes yet or not.

  “Will?” Rowen whispered. She was an indistinct shape in the darkness.

  “Yes?”

  “I can still hear them. The storyfolk who took refuge here. I can hear them passing through the halls. Weeping. There’s a child crying for its mother. It won’t stop.”

  He heard her troubled breathing in the dark.

  “I’m so tired,” she said. “I want to sleep, but I can’t.”

  Will struggled to think of something comforting to say. He remembered the fetch’s voice in his head, but he wasn’t going to tell Rowen about that.

  “Tell me a story,” Rowen said. “Tell me about where you come from. About the Untold.”

  “All right. What do you want to know?”

  “Anything. Tell me about your life there.”

  Haltingly, Will began. He talked about Jess, and his father. And then he told her about his mother, and how she had died.

  “I’m sorry, Will,” Rowen said.

  After a time he went on, and told her about his friends and the things they liked to do.

  “What is a video game?” Rowen asked.

  “Well, there’s this special box called a television. With a window that shows you pictures.”

  “Like the movings you talked about.”

  “Movies. Yes. But in a game you can be one of the characters. You can move him, like a puppet. You can make him do things in the game.”

  “What things?”

  “Well, like … fighting. Killing monsters, and shooting bad guys.”

  “Like a story,” Rowen said. “I see. Like Jack the Giant-killer. Or Conn the Clever. You have to defeat the monsters to end the story. To win the game.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What happens if you don’t win?”

  “You die.”

  “Oh.”

  “But you can come back to life and try again.”

  He thought he should change the subject, so he told her about his other favourite pastime, football. When he ran out of things to say, Rowen was silent for a while.

  “Why did you run away?” she said finally.

  Will thought about that for a long moment.

  “My dad got a new job, in another city,” he said at last. “He said it would be good for us. But I was mad at him, and I didn’t want to go.”

  “Why not?”

  “I didn’t want to leave my friends. And my home. It’s where we lived when we were … all together.”

  “I understand,” Rowen said. “You felt safe there.”

  Will waited for her to ask him more questions, but she did not speak. Finally he heard in the dark the steady rhythm of her breathing. Despite his troubled thoughts he felt exhaustion pulling him into sleep.

  What seemed like only moments later, Rowen was shaking him awake.

  “We have to go,” she whispered.

  “Already?” Will mumbled groggily.

  Shade had raised an alarm. His keen ears had picked up a sound not made by water or stone. The others listened but could hear nothing.

  “It’s the sound of many feet,” the wolf said. “Many feet shod in metal. Coming up the tunnel the way we came.”

  Morrigan flew back down the tunnel and returned to tell Moth that she could hear what Shade had heard, although she couldn’t see anything in the darkness. Whoever or whatever was approaching was moving very slowly, but without another word the companions left their shelter and carried on, Pendrake taking the lead with the waylight.

  For what seemed like hours they went on, stopping now and then to rest briefly. Shade did not hear the sounds again, but he paced like a caged animal whenever the company halted. The faint draught in the tunnel was blowing against them, so he could pick up no scent from the way they had come.

  Eventually Pendrake’s light began to dim again to a faint glow. He urged the others on.

  “The way out cannot be much further,” he said, and in the gloom his voice seemed to come from far away. “There is fresher air in the tunnel.”

  “I smell it, too,” Shade said. “But it means I can’t pick up the scent of what’s following us.”

  They went on quickly, and soon the tunnel began to plunge down at a much steeper angle than before. Sometimes there were steps carved in the floor and sometimes there was only a slope of smooth, wet rock, so that they had to cling to the walls to descend without slipping. The air grew colder. After some time the floor levelled out again, but the darkness was as absolute as ever. Will trod carefully, his eyes staring into the blackness ahead, his hands never leaving the rock wall beside him. At times he thought he heard faint whisperings and glimpsed brief flickers of light, but he couldn’t be sure that this wasn’t his mind playing tricks.

  Then the thought came to him that they might find the end of the tunnel sealed up, and he halted, seized by a fear that was close to panic.

  Rowen, coming up closely behind, bumped into him.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  “Nothing,” he said shakily, relieved by the sound of her voice. “It’s just this place.”

  “I know,” she said.

  Just then Shade gave a low growl, and Pendrake called for quiet. Everyone went still, and in the silence they all heard it at last, a faint but unmistakable sound of clinking metal, and the slow tread of feet.

  No word of encouragement was needed now, as the companions set off at a near-run. To Will’s relief he soon caught a faint glimmer of light on the walls, and was glad to discover everyone could see it, too. They came round a sharp bend and found themselves in a vaulted, echoing space, like the cavern of the pool but on a smaller scale. This chamber was lit from above not by a roof of ice but by slender embrasures in the stonework high above, letting in thin blades of cold blue light. The walls were ornamented with designs like those Will had seen on the stones of Aran Tir, and even the floor had intricate figures carved into it.

  Will and the others gathered under the light, as if drawn to it hungrily after the long darkness. They l
ooked up, blinking, and it quickly became clear to them that one more obstacle barred their way. A huge round stone, like a massive wheel, stood against the far wall, its lower rim sunk in a shallow depression in the floor. Small crystals or gemstones were set around its circumference. In the centre was the carved figure of a Shee woman, holding up her right hand as if to warn away any who approached.

  From the cold light that glowed dimly round the edges of the stone, the same as that from the window slits above, it was clear that beyond it lay an exit from the chamber and the caves.

  Moth was first to reach the stone wheel. He pushed it from one side, but it did not budge. Finn and Freya went to his side, and together they planted their feet, lowered their heads, and pushed again. Nothing happened.

  “We might have guessed,” Finn said, giving the stone a half-hearted kick. “The last to leave sealed the door behind them.”

  Will’s frightening thought had come true. He looked around frantically for another way out, thankful that at least there was some light in the chamber. If they had come to this dead end in the pitch dark, with the sound of marching feet behind them, he would probably be frozen with panic.

  “I don’t see how they could have closed off the exit from outside,” Pendrake said after briefly pondering in silence. “There must be some sort of mechanism here in the chamber that moves the stone.”

  At that they all fanned out to search except Freya, who took up watch at the tunnel entrance. There were many small grooves and crevices in the walls, but no matter how much Will and the others poked and prodded, not a sound was heard and the stone did not budge. Morrigan flew up to the high places that the others could not reach and tapped with her beak at various protrusions and hollows, but to no avail.

  Frustrated and growing more uneasy by the moment, Will found himself turning often to look at the figure carved in the stone. It seemed to be watching them with cold unconcern.

  Then he looked again at the figure’s hand, and slowly raised his own.

  With a shout he ran to the stone, reached up and pressed his fingers and palm against the Shee woman’s hand. To his disappointment, nothing happened.

  “I thought she might be the key,” Will said when Pendrake and the others approached. “I thought it wasn’t a warning but a farewell to anyone leaving.”

  “I think you are right about that, Will,” said Moth, joining him in front of the wheel, “but the hand is not the key, it is the lock.”

  The archer went up to the figure and just as Will had, he placed his hand on its hand. At first nothing happened, and then Rowen cried, “Look!” Will and Moth stood aside and saw that the crystals along the rim of the stone were now faintly glowing from within.

  “They’re wisps,” Rowen exclaimed.

  “They must have been left behind to wait for any Hidden Folk that might return,” Pendrake said. “Your touch woke them, Moth.”

  The crystals shrank to tiny points of brilliant light, and then, one by one, they sprang free of the stone wheel and flew bobbing and spinning like fireflies into the air. Soon a humming, pulsing host of wisps was circling above the heads of the company. Then one the wisps descended, circled round Moth several times, and alighted on the edge of the stone wheel.

  “They’re going to move it,” Rowen said in amazement. “That’s how the door was sealed.”

  “Whatever’s following us is almost here,” Freya said urgently. In his surprise about the wisps, Will had ignored the sound of their marching pursuers, which had grown louder. But a new sound brought him back to the stone wheel. It was moving ponderously, rolling over the rough, rock-littered floor of the chamber with a deep rumbling that reminded Will of the noises the dragon had made. The wisps pulsed brightly in many colours as the stone moved under their power, but as it rolled away from the opening, their glow was swiftly dimmed by the flood of sunlight that now poured into the chamber. Will had been in the gloom of the caves for so long that he had to shield his eyes against the glare before he could see anything.

  Beyond the opening a short passage ran slightly upwards to an archway filled with blue sky.

  Pendrake urged the others forward with a wave of his staff. They all ran through the swiftly widening space between the turning wheel and the edge of the opening, Will and Shade, Rowen, Pendrake, Freya, and Finn. Once they were in the passage, Will turned, sensing that Moth was no longer behind them.

  To his dismay he saw that the archer was still inside the chamber, his sword drawn. The stone was already rolling back into place. There was no sign of Morrigan.

  Will shouted the archer’s name and the others turned.

  “What are you doing?” Finn yelled at Moth. He ran to the stone and tried in vain to hold it back with his hands.

  “If it is Lotan coming up the tunnel, he will be able to open this door, too,” Moth shouted. “Go on, and don’t look back.”

  “Maybe we can jam the opening shut from out here,” Freya said, frantically searching the walls of the passage.

  “No time,” Moth said, and then he looked at Will. “Remember what I said. I will be there. No matter what.”

  He vanished from the opening and the stone sealed it up with a cold grating crunch.

  To provide, upon the accident of your disablement or death, against the failure of your mission and the subsequent danger to your party, you are authorized, by spoken command or by any instrument signed and written in your own hand, to name the person who shall take up the quest…

  — from the Charter of the Errantry

  NOTHING COULD BE DONE. The companions turned away numbly from the sealed door. Then, at Pendrake’s bidding, they hurried together to the end of the passage, through the archway and into the open air.

  To Will’s surprise the landscape that met his eyes was not mantled in snow and ice. A rocky slope, dotted with lichen-crusted boulders, descended steeply before them in rises and hollows. They had come far enough from the icefield that even a few hardy wildflowers were growing here and there in the crevices of the stones. Where the companions stood, above a dazzling carpet of clouds, the afternoon sun shone down brightly and the breeze carried a faint scent of green, growing things. Will turned and gazed up at the mountain behind them. A dark rock wall rose sheer to a forbidding brow of ice. For a moment Will thought he glimpsed the dragon far above, its wings outspread, but when he rubbed his eyes, dazzled by the glare outside the tunnel, he realized he was looking at a plume of snow streaming off a high ridge. They had left the home of Whitewing Stonegrinder far behind. The dragon would not leave it and come to their aid. They were on their own again, and now Moth was gone.

  “We’re on the high plateau above the Great Rampart,” Pendrake said. “Only a league or two north of the pass of the Needle, I would say.”

  “Then the hidden vale, and the wishing portal, can’t be far away,” said Finn. “The only question is, which way do we go from here?”

  “Straight down, if we’re not careful,” Freya said. She had descended the furthest from the archway, and when they joined her they saw that the slope fell away abruptly at her feet. A sheer cliff plummeted hundreds of feet to a deeply shadowed valley floor, where a river wound like a silver chain. Birds wheeled far below and wisps of cloud hung in the air. Beyond lay a wide land of woods and rolling hills that seemed to go on and on to the dusky rim of the world itself.

  “The Great Rampart,” Pendrake said. “Before us lie the Western Lands, the ancient homeland of the Shee.”

  “But no hidden vale, it seems,” Freya said.

  “Where’s Rowen?” Will said, suddenly aware that she was not with them. It didn’t take Shade long to pick up her trail.

  “This way,” the wolf called, nosing along the edge of the cliff to their left. Quickly the company followed him over a low rise. On the other side, a short distance ahead, the solid wall of the Rampart was cleft by a wedge-shaped gorge that gashed deep, like a wound, into the mountainside. Rowen stood on its brink. When she heard the others approach
ing she turned and waved them over. The rest of the company joined her at the rim of the gorge and gazed down.

  “I think I’ve found the vale,” she said simply.

  Directly below them, nestled between the gorge walls, lay a slender patch of green dotted with trees. Thin rivulets of water streaming down the rock on all sides fed a kind of moat that ran almost all the way round a grassy island then poured out in two thundering cataracts at the vale’s outer rim. The vale was a few hundred feet below the place where the companions stood, but still high above the base of the Rampart itself. Eagerly Will scanned it for a sign of anything that might be a gateway – the wishing portal that would take him home – but from this distance he could make out very little except the remains of stone walls, half buried in the grass. The walls were arranged in curves, like the paths of an ancient hedge maze. From above they could be seen to form a ring of concentric circles that might have been complete once, except for a jagged gap at the outer edge where it appeared that a part of the vale had broken off or crumbled away. Despite this marring of the design, from where Will stood it resembled a great emerald eye, gazing straight up into the heavens.

  “The Needle’s Eye,” Pendrake said with wonder in his voice. “I had always thought the pass was so named because it was narrow and difficult to cross. I never suspected what was hidden so close by.”

  “This would have been a perfect refuge, until it began to collapse,” Finn said. “The vale could not be seen from the foot of the Rampart, and few would dare climb the cliff.”

  “Such a fortress would have been worthy of the High Ones,” Freya said in awe. “I wonder what happened to it.”

  “Perhaps the werefire caused much of this destruction,” Pendrake said.

  “It did,” Rowen said, and they all turned to look at her. She was gazing down at the vale as if in a trance. “Not long ago. I see … the shadow of it. There was werefire, a lot of it. Like bolts of lightning shooting up. Then the rock split and fell away.”

  She turned to her grandfather with a bewildered expression.