The Tree of Story

by Thomas Wharton

  “I’ll have Will with me,” Rowen said. “He’s the only one who can help me find the Fair Folk. He’s the Pathfinder. That’s what Grandfather called him. We’ll be all right, Riddle.”

  She turned and hurried along the front hall. They all followed her into the kitchen, where she proceeded to fill a small pack with bread, cheese and whatever else she could find in the cupboards.

  “No telling how long we’ll be gone,” she said.

  “Remember what Balor said about Brax moving swiftly?” Will asked. “If he’s got powerful friends at the Errantry, they might help him try to force Riddle out of the toyshop.”

  Rowen had finished gathering supplies and slung the filled pack over her shoulder. Her mind was made up and she was clearly impatient to be going.

  “We can’t do anything about that now,” she said shortly. “Just keep everyone out, Riddle. No matter who they are. No matter what it takes.”

  “I will do what I can,” Riddle said. “But I do not kill. Now that I remember what I am, I will not take the life of any being.”

  “I know that,” Rowen said quickly, her face flushing as though she saw Riddle’s words as a rebuke. “But remember when you lived in the forest how you tricked people with voices? You made them lose their way and then played your riddle games with them. Can you still do that?”

  “I can still do that,” Riddle said, and now it was his turn to sound stung, as if such foolishness was beneath him.

  Rowen was heading for the doorway and then stopped.

  “If anything goes wrong,” she said to Riddle, “if you have to leave here, will you be able to find us?”

  “I am a creature of the fire. I can go anywhere it goes. But I have never been beyond the black river. I do not know what would happen if I crossed into the Shadow Realm.”

  “Well, if you can’t find us or you’re not able to join us, then return to Grandmother, Riddle. Stay with her, please.”

  “I will.”

  It looked to Will as if Rowen was about to throw herself into the tiger’s arms. But instead she nodded hastily and hurried from the room.

  Will and Shade followed her down the hall and up the winding stairs. They climbed to the top floor, where they found the Loremaster’s workshop door wide open. Clearly Brax had moved things around: many of the heaped and piled books had been placed in smaller, neater stacks, each with a scrap of paper sticking from its pages. Will guessed these were Brax’s notes to himself about what each book contained.

  “He’s been cleaning up,” Rowen said, then she smiled bitterly. “Grandfather won’t be happy to see that when he gets back.”

  She paused a moment, then picked up a small lantern from the desk. Will remembered that she had carried a lantern like this when he’d first met her, in the Wood outside Fable. It was a called a waylight and it enabled the one who carried it to find hidden refuges called snugs. Rowen opened the little glass-paned door of the waylight and looked inside.

  “He’s gone,” she said, glancing around the room anxiously. “What did Brax do with him?”

  Will realized she meant the wisp, Sputter, who lived in the waylight and could be sent to deliver messages. Rowen set down the lantern and looked around the room.

  “Sputter,” she called. “If you’re here, it’s all right. You can come out now.”

  They heard a faint crackling sound that made Will think of the sparklers put on birthday cakes. The sound issued from behind them, from an old clock hanging on the wall above the Loremaster’s desk, a clock shaped like an owl. The hands on the clock face in the owl’s belly were spinning wildly and the crackling sound was getting louder.

  “Sputter, are you in there?” Rowen said, leaning close to the clock.

  Without warning the clock face sprang open. A tiny ball of fuzzy blue light shot out and bobbed above Rowen’s head.

  “Sputter!” Rowen cried. She held out her hand and the wisp descended into her palm, trembling and buzzing like an insect. “I’m so happy you’re all right, Sputter. It’s good he didn’t catch you. But I have to go now. I can’t stay. So I want you to leave here and find Edweth at Appleyard. When she sees you, she’ll know I sent you and know I’m all right. Go on now.”

  The wisp buzzed more loudly in Rowen’s palm but stayed put there.

  “Don’t be afraid,” Rowen said softly. “You’ll be safe with Edweth.”

  “I think he wants to stay with you,” Will said.

  “I wish I could take you with me, but where I’m going is worse than staying here.”

  The wisp’s pulsing light flared brightly, casting a pale blue glow over Rowen’s features. The tiny creature had no eyes, no face, but there was no doubt it was agitated and frightened. Rowen pulled in a deep breath.

  “Come with us, then,” she said. “There’s no time to argue about it.”

  She held her hand up toward the open waylight. The wisp bobbed up and down a moment and then sped inside the lantern, where its light dimmed to a paler blue glow. Rowen shut the little door, then lifted the waylight by its wire handle and set it atop the Loremaster’s staff. Will thought it would slip off as soon as Rowen moved the staff, but to his surprise the lantern stayed in place. He peered closer and saw that the lantern’s handle was now embedded in the wood.

  “How did you do that?” he asked.

  “Do what?”

  Will pointed to the lantern. Rowen looked up.

  “Oh,” she said, and frowned. “I didn’t—it just happened. I didn’t even think about it.”

  She tugged at the wire. It was stuck solidly in the wood of the staff.

  “That’s just how it needed to be,” she said, and gave the staff a gentle shake. The lantern clinked against the wood.

  “Is he going to be all right up there?” Will asked. He thought the wisp would be shaken about as Rowen walked with the staff.

  “As long as he’s in the lantern he’s fine,” she said. “He’s used to being carried on long walks.”

  Rowen took a final searching look around the workshop, as if reluctant to leave it. She paused in front of a tapestry beside the doorway. It was tall and narrow, hanging nearly from the ceiling to the floor, and on it was an image of a towering tree, its branches spreading to great clouds of green leaves dotted with glittering points of silver like stars.

  “Grandmother wove this for Grandfather,” Rowen said wistfully. “Before she went into the Weaving.”

  “I know this tree,” Shade said. “It is the tree that stood on the hill where we met at midsummer, in the time before the Storyeater, the one you call Malabron. We met there with the Tain Shee and the First Ones.”

  “The First Ones?” Will asked.

  “The Stewards,” Rowen said. “The oldest of all living beings in the Realm, Grandfather says. They spun the very first stories out of the Weaving. They created the tree, too. From a distance, Morrigan of the Shee told me, it looked like a great green cloud. At midsummer the white blossoms would open and scatter seeds throughout the Realm. The seeds were living things, as well. Some carried dreams and tales from the Stewards and returned with news from distant places.”

  “The messenger wisps,” Will said. “So Sputter was one of them? I never knew that’s where he came from.”

  “But then the tree was destroyed, wasn’t it, Shade?” Rowen asked. “That’s what Grandfather told me.”

  “Yes, in the war with the Storyeater,” the wolf said. “Along with many other things that were good and beautiful.”

  No one spoke for a while. Will’s thoughts were heavy. He knew something he needed to share with Rowen, but so far he hadn’t been able to tell her. Before he’d been reunited with her he’d met a man of the Horsefolk, who lived in hide tents on the plains. The man was a Dreamwalker, a seer, and he had seen Rowen in his visions. He knew she would be going to the Shadow Realm long before it happened, but he’d said nothing about her search for the Loremaster. According to the Dreamwalker, Rowen had another task before her, a much greater one th
at would change the fate of everyone in the Realm.

  Will glanced at Rowen and then away again, not wanting her to see the look on his face. How could he tell her about what he knew, when all she wanted was to find her grandfather and bring him home? It would be too heavy a burden for her, he thought. And she might not believe him anyhow. He couldn’t even tell her what this greater task was. He hadn’t really understood the Dreamwalker’s words.

  “Well, then,” Rowen said heavily. “Let’s go.”

  They left the workshop and hurried down the hall to the rough-hewn door of the raincabinet.

  Will hung back with Shade while Rowen stepped forward and opened the door.

  Before them was a tiny room, with the same broom, mop and bucket Rowen had seen in it the last time she’d been here. Shade stuck his nose tentatively into the doorway and sniffed.

  “It looks undisturbed,” Rowen said.

  She leaned in and tapped her grandfather’s staff against the back wall. From the little room came a smell of damp and a faint scent of soap, and Will remembered when he’d first come to the toyshop. He’d already been confused and frightened by this strange world he found himself in, then he’d opened this odd door and to his terror found pouring rain and an echoing darkness inside. Now it was only an ordinary broom closet and he wondered if he had imagined what he had seen here before or if Rowen had somehow brought them to the wrong door.

  “How did you get through it before?” Will asked.

  “I didn’t,” Rowen said. “I mean, whenever I opened the door myself, there was only the broom closet. But when I came here with Grandfather the other day, the closet was gone and there was just the rain. That’s what I thought we’d see this time.”

  “What do you think’s happened?”

  Rowen frowned.

  “The closet is only a disguise, to keep people from seeing what’s really here. It’s made of the same thing as Riddle. Grandfather calls it the fathomless fire. But we know this room’s not really here, so we should be able to see through it.”

  “Then why can’t we?”

  “I think it’s my fault,” Rowen said slowly, her brow knitting. “When I left here the last time, all I could think of was that I needed to keep Brax from finding the Weaving. So I told the broom closet before I left and—”

  “You told it?” Will broke in, not sure he had heard right. “Told it what?”

  “No, I mean I told it like a story. I wove it, out of the fathomless fire. It was the same with the staff and the lantern just now.”

  Will frowned. “I don’t understand. If it’s not some magic spell, then …”

  “Grandfather always said to me, ‘Magic and story—they’re really the same thing.’ They’re the fathomless fire. It’s in everything. Or everything’s made of it. Some stories are very strong and they hold together longer than others.” She placed a hand against the back wall and pushed. “I suppose I made this one too well.”

  “So what do we do?”

  Rowen stepped back and bit her lip. Will could see her knuckles whitening as she gripped the staff.

  “We don’t have time for this,” she said, her voice low and strained. All at once she lifted the staff and with its bottom end struck the back wall of the closet.

  To Will’s astonishment the stone shattered and with a rushing sound the countless tiny bits became a glittering falling curtain of water. As he watched, spellbound, the other walls swiftly melted into shimmering cascades.

  Rowen stood back. “There,” she said.

  “You made this rain, Rowen of Blue Hill?” Shade asked.

  “It was always here,” Rowen said. “That’s what Grandfather told me. I just helped a little.”

  Will leaned forward and craned his neck to look up. There was no ceiling anymore. He saw only bright droplets falling out of blackness and heard a far-off rumble of thunder. When he’d first seen this impossible sight, he had wanted to ask Master Pendrake where the mysterious doorway led, but he hadn’t dared then. Now he was going to find out what lay beyond the rain, and the thought troubled him. Rowen had already told him a little about this strange place called the Weaving. She’d said it was something like the world of one’s dreams, where things were always changing into other things. It was a tricky, shifting place you could get lost in very easily and never find the way out again. Rowen’s grandmother had gone into the Weaving years ago and had stayed so long she was no longer able to get back.

  Raising his voice against the rushing din, Will said, “You’re sure we can find the Fair Folk in there?”

  “Grandfather told me that the loremasters of old could step through the Weaving to other places,” Rowen said. “To distant lands or even other worlds. I know it’s true because I followed the thread of the thing that took Grandfather, the thrawl, and it brought me to the edge of the Shadow Realm.” She drew a deep breath. “I came to the black river that Riddle spoke about, and I waded across. I was nearly there, Will. In his realm. The water was so cold. I could feel the life leaving my body. I think if I’d gone all the way across, I would’ve become a fetch. But Riddle saved me. He pulled me back in time.”

  “Riddle must’ve known what would happen to you.”

  “He is the fathomless fire, Will. It’s like he’s … the opposite of whatever a fetch is. He knew I couldn’t go that way to find Grandfather. But if I could reach the Shadow Realm through the Weaving, then maybe it can also lead us to wherever the Fair Folk are. They’re the only ones who would know another way, a hidden way into the Shadow Realm. That’s what I’m hoping, anyhow.”

  “So the Weaving is like one of those knot-paths that take you from one place to another in the Realm?”

  “I suppose so, only it’s more like every path is there, on the other side of this door. So there must be one that leads to the Fair Folk. There must be. We just need to find it. When I give the word, follow me through and stay close. The rain will be over in a moment and then we’ll be in the Weaving. Just stay close to me, no matter what.”

  “Wait—what if Brax gets past Riddle?” Will asked. “If he comes up here and sees this rain, he’s sure to find the Weaving.”

  “I’ll put the broom closet back in place,” Rowen said. “When we’ve gone into the Weaving, the closet is all that anyone will see.”

  “You know that for sure?”

  Rowen didn’t answer. She was staring into the rain, her whole body tensed and ready.

  “Now,” she said, and without another word she darted forward into the cabinet. The rain closed over her and she disappeared. Will and Shade shared a glance, then they followed.

  3

  THE ENEMY BROKE THROUGH the outer wall of Corr Madoc’s fortress just before dawn.

  All night the catapults of the Nightbane had launched smoking black stones at the walls. Stones that burst into flame when they struck and shook the fortress from its turrets to its foundations. The defenders had struggled to shore up the wall with timbers in the places where it seemed weakest and most likely to give, but they could not work fast enough in the face of the unending barrage. At last, with an avalanche of broken stone, one large section of wall caved inward. When the dust cleared, the Nightbane that had been gathering on the slope below the fortress came charging up to the gap.

  Finn Madoc was at the breach with his brother’s Stormriders. They’d had just enough warning of the wall’s collapse that they’d had time to gather and form a wall of their own, with their long shields overlapping one another. There was no keep to fall back to. The shattered wall opened directly onto one of the lower passageways of the fortress and had to be defended at all costs.

  The Nightbane in their hundreds poured through the breach, howling and brandishing their weapons. They broke upon the shields of the Stormriders like a dark wave.

  Finn was in the midst of the Stormriders. Behind him he could hear the growls and yips of Corr’s vicious hunting wolves, which had been brought up to join the defence. Finn had no shield of his own, so he’
d stayed back from the front ranks. The coat of mail and helmet he was wearing he’d taken from a Stormrider killed earlier in the siege. He had his own sword, though, his Errantry blade, and it was at the ready for the moment the defence faltered and the enemy broke through the tight-knit phalanx of the shields.

  He didn’t have to wait long. The gap in the wall was wide and the Nightbane kept arriving, more than Finn had ever seen. They massed up against the shield wall, hammering and beating at it with their weapons, roaring and shrieking. Through the press of bodies Finn caught glimpses of contorted faces: mordog, creech, awgren and other creatures he had no name for. Finn braced his feet as well as he could on the stone floor of the chamber. He pressed up against the back of the Stormrider in front of him and felt the man behind him pressing against his own back. Like one enormous armoured body, the tightly ranked Stormriders shuddered as the enemy strained and battered against the shields. Soon men began to shift their footing, and some slipped and stumbled and had to scramble to their feet. The defence was being slowly, inexorably, pushed back and sheared apart.

  At last spearpoints and blades found gaps in the wall of shields and stabbed home. Men fell, screaming. The gaps widened even further. More Nightbane pressed in, hacking and slashing.

  Then all at once the wall collapsed. The Nightbane surged.

  Like caged beasts unleashed, Finn and the other Stormriders that had collected behind the phalanx charged forward with a roar and met the enemy.

  There was no time now for fear. No time to think of anything other than what had to be done. The screams and clatter of metal faded in Finn’s ears and his attention was trained only on what came at him. He parried and dodged and hacked, and as each opponent went down before him, another took its place. Dimly he was aware that men fell around him, and were carried off. The wolves fought savagely, but before long they were all killed.

  The Nightbane kept coming.

  At last Finn’s sweaty grip on his sword hilt slipped. He lunged to keep it from sliding out of his grasp, and as he did so, something landed hard on his helmet and felled him to the earth. He struggled to rise, his ears ringing, and through the blood obscuring his vision he saw a mordog in spiked armour, raising its mace for another blow. Then someone appeared between him and the mordog and he saw it fall.