The Tree of Story

by Thomas Wharton

  The road was as empty as it had been all day.

  “All right, then,” the young man said, more to himself than the listeners around him. “Let’s see where this story takes us.”

  1

  FABLE WAS STILL THERE.

  Rowen came out of the woods with Riddle, the cat, at her heels. She halted and took in the welcome sight of her city, as if she’d been away from it for years instead of just days. With all that had happened in those few days, she had feared she would return to find only smouldering ruins. But Fable was still there, though not everything was the way it had been when she left.

  Will Lightfoot joined her a moment later, with Shade, the wolf, beside him.

  To the south, across a wide, rolling valley, the little walled city stood as always on its terraced hillside. Not far from the main gate lay a long grassy plain used at times by the Errantry as a parade ground, or in the fall by folk who came from all over the Bourne for the harvest festival. To Rowen’s surprise this great field, known to everyone as the Course, was now dotted with dozens of patched, grey-green canvas tents, but this was no festival. The tents were gathered around an immense white-and-gold pavilion topped with a bright flag that snapped in the wind. A flag Rowen had never seen before, embroidered with the image of a rampant red bear.

  Many people could be seen moving about among the tents. Some were grooming horses, others polishing armour and sharpening weapons. Voices and the ringing of hammers could be heard through the still morning air.

  “Are they enemies?” Will asked in alarm.

  “No, they’re friendly, whoever they are,” Rowen said, knowing it was true even as she spoke. “They’ve travelled here to help defend Fable.”

  It was all happening too fast, she thought. Only a few days ago she had returned to Fable with her grandfather, Nicholas Pendrake, the Loremaster, after almost a year away. They hadn’t been home long before they were attacked by a thrall, a creature woven of words, which had been sent by Malabron, the Night King, to capture Rowen. Grandfather had fought with the creature and it had taken him, instead, to the Night King’s domain, the Shadow Realm. Desperate to find him, Rowen had gone with the shapeshifting cat Riddle into the Weaving, that strange dreamlike place that held the threads of every story that ever was or ever might be. There she’d met her grandmother, Maya, who had been lost in the Weaving years before.

  It turned out that all this time Grandmother had been changing the weave of the Realm in small, unseen ways. From within the Weaving she could even change the past, and so she had woven ancient prophecies and portents against the day that Malabron ever threatened the Bourne. This was why these tents and pavilions now dotted the Course. Those Storyfolk down there, whoever they were, had heeded the prophecy and answered the call. And this meant that the battle for Fable was at hand.

  “It’s really happening, just like Grandmother said it would,” Rowen breathed. “They are the first. There will be more.”

  Balor Gruff, the shaggy-headed wildman, lumbered up to Rowen and Will, with Brannon Yates, his fellow knight-errant.

  “Friends, you say?” Balor asked. “And more of them on their way?”

  Rowen nodded.

  “Many more,” she said. She could see them at the edges of her inward sight. Long snaking columns of armed men and women, soldiers and warriors, even ordinary folk from many lands, all marching along the Bourne’s narrow roads toward Fable.

  “They’ll be welcome,” the wildman said, folding his great hairy arms across his chest.

  “Will they be enough?” Will asked, eyeing Rowen. Will knew about her gift for seeing the threads of Story in things. He was hoping, she realized, that she could see into the future to tell whether the city would be saved. Her gift allowed her to see the past much more clearly than what lay ahead, but now one frightening thread of certainty touched her from what was to come: all the defenders, those already here and those on their way, would not hold back the enemy.

  But she couldn’t tell Will and Balor that.

  “I don’t know,” she said quickly. “I don’t know how it will end.”

  Will nodded and looked away. She saw that he’d guessed she wasn’t telling them everything, but he wasn’t going to pursue it. He knew as well as she did what was on its way to the Bourne.

  Only a few days ago Will had returned to the Realm from his own world because of a warning that Shade was in danger. With Balor and Finn Madoc of the Errantry he’d ridden north in search of the wolf. They had found him alive, but they’d been taken captive by the Stormriders, who ruled those barren lands from their flying ships. The leader of the Stormriders turned out to be Finn’s older brother, Corr, who had left the Bourne years before in rebellion against the Errantry and had never returned. Since then Corr Madoc—or the Sky Lord, as he was known—had been at war with an army of Malabron’s servants, the Nightbane, over a vast lode of gaal, the terrible fever iron that powered Corr’s skyships and gave his men berserk strength in battle. Not long after Will and his companions arrived at Corr’s fortress, the Nightbane unleashed a great host of fetches, mindless wraiths encased in spell-woven armour and obedient to Malabron’s will. To everyone’s surprise, the fetch host had marched past Corr’s fortress and headed south for the Bourne.

  Finn had stayed with his brother, but one of Corr’s men, Brannon Yates, had led Will, Balor and Shade south in a skyship powered by gaal. The ship had been about to crash when Rowen and Whitewing Stonegrinder, the ice dragon, found them and brought them to Rowen’s childhood home, the abandoned farm at Blue Hill. It was from the farm that they’d all set out before dawn this morning, leaving the ailing dragon behind to rest and recover his strength.

  They had returned to Fable to warn the Errantry about the fetch host. But Rowen had also come because only here could she find the way to where her grandfather had been taken.

  Her grip tightened on the staff she was carrying. It was her grandfather’s, left behind when the thrawl captured him. Now more than ever Fable needed its loremaster. She had to find him and bring him back.

  Balor’s booming voice shook Rowen out of her thoughts.

  “Well, let’s not stand here taking in the sights,” the wildman said. “You must be eager to get home again, Brannon.”

  “I doubt the Errantry will be as eager to see me,” Yates said quietly.

  “Think of your family, man,” Balor said. “You told me about your mother and your sister. They’ve been waiting all these years for word of you.”

  “I’ve thought about little else, Balor.”

  Yates had hardly spoken on the journey from Blue Hill and Rowen’s thoughts had been elsewhere, so she hadn’t paid him much attention. Now she regarded the man, startled by how pale his face was. Beads of sweat stood out on his brow and he was trying to hide the tremor in his hands by clasping them. It was the gaal, Will had told her. The craving for fever iron became a sickness that eventually killed Corr’s men or drove them mad. Yates had insisted he was free of his desire for the poisonous metal, but clearly the gaal’s ill effects still lingered.

  She looked at Shade then, waiting quietly at Will’s side, and her heart went out to the wolf. He had been poisoned by the gaal, too, when Corr’s men took him captive. Shade’s silver-grey coat was no longer sleek and shining but stood up in dark hackles. He was larger, as well, Rowen was sure, leaner and bonier, and his eyes, once bright and penetrating, had lost their gleam. The fever iron had caused these frightening changes and its effects didn’t appear to be wearing off. Worse, Rowen knew that if Shade went with them into the Shadow Realm, he would change beyond recognition into a creature of that nightmare world. The wolf would become a monster called the Devourer. There was no doubt of it. She had seen it with her story-sight, the gift she had of seeing how things once were or how they would be.

  Shade’s eyes met hers. The wolf, as always, seemed to know what she was thinking.

  Without further talk they started down the hillside and soon reached the road that s
kirted the Course on its way to the main gate of Fable. As they passed the camp of the foreign army, they could smell freshly baked loaves and frying food and were keenly reminded they hadn’t eaten for hours. Many curious looks were exchanged between them and the soldiers they passed, and in the end Balor couldn’t resist stopping to talk to one of them, a heavy-set, dark-skinned man almost as large and imposing as the wildman himself. He was sitting against a pile of bedrolls and other gear, plucking the strings of a scuffed and battered lute.

  “Where do you hail from, friend?” the wildman asked.

  “I might ask you the same question,” the man said in a thick, unfamiliar accent. He gave them all a coldly appraising look that included a suspicious scowl at Shade, then went back to playing his lute.

  “This is our home,” Balor said, clearly struggling to hold in his anger. “We’ve just returned from a long journey and it’s a bit surprising to find all of you camped on our doorstep.”

  “That it must be,” the man said, and his look softened. “Forgive me. We’ve been on a long and tiring journey, too. I am Jodo Flyte, captain of bowmen and troubadour. We’re soldiers of the Red Duke, whom some call Bearskin, from the many-towered city of Tintamarre. Perhaps you’ve heard of us.”

  “I’ve heard of the Red Duke of Tintamarre,” Balor exclaimed. “He’s said to be a great leader of men. But his city’s so far from here. No one I know has ever been there.”

  “It’s far enough, to be sure. We’ve been on the march for twenty-seven days. Only just arrived late last night and some of us are still waiting for our breakfast.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I’m Balor Gruff, knight-errant of Fable, and these are my friends. But tell me, what brings you here in such numbers? There must be well over four hundred in your party.”

  “Nearly five hundred,” Flyte said. “Not long after we set out we met a company of musketeers from the kingdom of Sarras, our neighbours to the east. They were marching to your country for the same reason we were. To join in the battle.”

  “What battle would that be?”

  “The one that’s coming, Balor Gruff. It seems peaceful enough here right now, I realize, but the things we saw on the road. Houses and crops burned, bodies in the ditches. Folk everywhere fleeing their farms and villages. A few of them joined us. Farmers, smiths, carpenters. They were ready to fight, though they had no weapons other than hayforks and hammers. Nightbane of every foul breed are on the move, massing in great numbers and heading for your peaceful little country, my friends, raiding and burning as they go. I couldn’t tell you why, but it will all be decided here—and soon.”

  Balor looked up at the walls of Fable and then at his friends. “So we’ve heard,” he said.

  “Our Duke met with your Marshal last night when we arrived,” Flyte went on. “Fortunately Lord Caliburn heeded the Duke’s warnings.”

  “Well, I’m grateful you’ve come,” Balor said, “but how did you learn all of this in time to make such a long march?”

  “It’s a strange tale,” Flyte said. “We have had peace in Tintamarre for many years, but our Duke was still troubled. He was growing old and preparing to pass the rule of our land to younger men, but lately in his dreams he’d seen a city besieged and in flames, its people crying out to him for help. Yet where he might find this city, and when the battle would be, he did not know. Then one night not long ago we were feasting in the great hall of the Duke’s castle when a bird flew in through one of the windows. A bloodcrow, it was. A bird of omen. It alighted on the table in front of the Duke, dropped something from its beak, then flew out another window before we had time to do more than marvel at what we had just seen. The crow had dropped a small, white, five-pointed flower. Nobody knew what to make of this. Then one of our oldest comrades, a veteran of many campaigns, spoke up. ‘That is the flower of the Errantry,’ he said. ‘I fought alongside knights of Fable when I was very young, at the battle of Hob’s Knock. They were good and valiant men.’

  “ ‘Then Fable is the city in my dream,’ the Duke announced. He ordered maps brought to him, and the way from Tintamarre to the Bourne was charted out. That night we all pledged ourselves to the defence of a city none of us had ever seen.”

  “A long and dangerous road to take on the strength of an old man’s dream,” Balor said.

  “We love our Duke,” Flyte said, his voice hoarse with emotion. “He came to Tintamarre many years ago from a land across the sea, where he had fought in what he believed would be the war to end all wars. He was wounded near to death and he found healing, but those who healed him foretold that there was yet one more great battle left for him to fight. And so he set off to find it. His wandering steps brought him to Tintamarre. In those days cruel robber barons had carved up our land for themselves, but the Duke gathered those of us who resisted and restored our hope. He made true knights of us and led us to victory. And that is why we have travelled all this way, Balor Gruff, on the strength of an old man’s dream.”

  “Well, I thank you for it,” Balor said. “Though you should know there’s a worse threat on its way than bands of Nightbane. But I can’t say any more until I’ve spoken to my own commander.”

  The crossbowman leaned back slowly on his bale of gear. “Well, then, I won’t keep you from delivering your message a moment longer. I hope we’ll meet again, Balor Gruff of the Errantry, when this is all over.”

  “So do I, Jodo Flyte. Perhaps if we both survive this, you will write a ballad about it and I will sing it.”

  “I look forward to that.”

  They left Flyte tuning his lute and kept on up the rising road to the gates. As they were about the cross the bridge over the stream that encircled the city, a voice hailed Rowen. She turned to see, hurrying toward her, a burly man with a shaggy red beard. She did not recognize him at first, but then she saw he wore the pleated leather armour of a Skalding and she remembered him.

  “You’re Freya’s friend,” the man said when he reached them. “I am Eymund Spearbreaker.”

  “I remember you,” Rowen said. “Is Freya with you?”

  Freya Ragnarsdaughter had never been far from Rowen’s thoughts on the journey from Blue Hill. Her father was an old friend of Rowen’s grandfather. Freya and a party of her fellow Skaldings had arrived in Fable some days ago, bringing a warning from Whitewing Stonegrinder of the battle ahead. The Skaldings had stayed on in Fable, vowing to help the Loremaster defend his home.

  Eymund glanced back at the walls of Fable with a scowl. “We were escorted out of the city under guard last night,” he said bitterly. “No one told us why, but we aren’t welcome in Fable anymore. Freya didn’t come with us. She never returned from Appleyard after she went there to ask that we be allowed to remain in the city. We’ve been waiting here for word of her ever since. The Errantry doesn’t seem to mind having us camped out here between them and their enemies, but no one will tell us anything about Freya. I was hoping, young miss, that you might know something.”

  Rowen recalled her last sight of Freya, when she’d been led away to be questioned by Captain Thorne. The captain was just being cautious, Rowen reasoned. He would have let Freya go as soon as it was obvious she was no threat. So why hadn’t she rejoined her people?

  Brax, she thought then. He’s done this. Because the Skaldings are friends of Grandfather.

  “The last time I saw Freya was at Appleyard yesterday evening,” Rowen said. “I don’t know anything more than that, but I’ll find out where she is if I can. And if there’s some reason she can’t join you, I’ll send word.”

  Eymund bowed stiffly.

  “You have my thanks,” he said. “We’re not leaving here until she returns to us. We were ready to help defend Fable when we first arrived, but now this is about Freya. If there’s to be a battle, we’ll do our part to keep your city standing, for her sake.”

  Before Rowen could answer, Yates stepped forward.

  “I don’t know where your friend is,” he said to Eymund, “but I�
�m here to fight for this city, too. My name is Brannon Yates. I would join your company, if you’ll have me.”

  “Brannon, what is this?” Balor exclaimed.

  Eymund regarded Yates warily. He seemed to be appraising the knight’s pale, hollow-eyed face and not much liking what he saw.

  “Isn’t this your home?” Eymund said at last. “Why would you stay out here with strangers?”

  “I no longer count myself a knight of the Errantry,” Yates said to Balor. “I have no right to enter this city in the company of one. I must earn that right. Then I can show my face at Appleyard and in my mother’s house.”

  “You don’t have to do this, Brannon,” Balor protested.

  “Join us if you wish,” Eymund said. “We won’t say no to another sword … if you can wield one.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Yates said, then he turned back to the wildman. “I realize you have a duty to inform the Errantry that I’m here, Balor. If they send someone to arrest me, so be it. But I ask you, say nothing to my mother and sister. Don’t let them find out I’m home until after the battle.”

  “I’ll leave that to you, Brannon,” Balor said, clapping a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “You’ll be seeing them yourself soon enough.”

  Yates nodded, but there was no conviction in his eyes. He turned away then with Eymund, and Balor and the others kept on up the road.

  They crossed the bridge over the stream and arrived at the gates, which they were not surprised to find shut and guarded. The number of sentries had been doubled and more were pacing the battlements above. One of the two sentries who stepped forward to bar their way was a grey-bearded older man who recognized the wildman.

  “You’re back, Balor,” he said with a startled look.

  “As you see,” Balor snapped. “I have much to tell the Marshal. And urgently, I might add. So if you don’t mind, Jasper Haws, we’ll be on our way.”