The Tree of Story

by Thomas Wharton

  Thorne was pacing in Lord Caliburn’s chamber, his hands knotted together. He didn’t wait to listen to Balor’s report but muttered broken phrases about traitors in their midst and punishment for those who broke their oath to protect Fable.

  “Even Dame Oreande,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “The mayor, sir?”

  “I’ve had her taken into custody. Brax uncovered proof that she was one of the plotters. And if she—” He broke off suddenly and looked at the wildman as if noticing him for the first time. “You’re one of the few I can trust, Gruff. I cannot leave Appleyard now to meet with the commanders. No, the archmage requires my presence here to keep order in the city while he prepares his great stroke against the enemy. We must not—” He broke off once more, and wiped a shaking hand across his mouth.

  “Sir?”

  “We will commit no troops to the defence outside the walls. Master Brax has advised me on this and I agree with him. This Duke and the others … well, we must be on our guard. We don’t know what their true motives are. Balor, listen. I’m making you special constable of the watch. I’ve already signed the order. Keep your troopers on patrol in the streets and allow no one to leave the city. The Errantry’s duty is to the people of Fable.”

  “Sir, the enemy is almost here. There will be battle tomorrow, by all reckoning. Our allies need us to stand with them.”

  “No one leaves the city until I give the order,” Thorne repeated. “Is that clear?”

  “If I may speak freely, sir. The mage created all this fear and confusion in the first place. He’s been using us—using the Errantry—for his own ends. His only concern is protecting himself. He’s growing more powerful all the time and we can’t let him—”

  “You have your orders, Constable,” Thorne growled furiously, his lips trembling. “If you will not carry them out, you will be stripped of your rank and confined to your quarters. You are dismissed.”

  After he’d left the Marshal’s chamber, Balor paused on the steps of the Gathering House and looked back at the great doors. This had been his home for many years now, ever since childhood, when he was found by Errantry troopers and brought to live at Appleyard. How proud he had been to take the oath of a knight-errant.

  Then he hurried to Pluvius Lane, where he’d left the two apprentices to keep watch. They were still there, concealed in the shadows.

  “People are being marched in there, Balor,” they told him. “Those who break curfew or protest what’s happening are taken in there and they don’t come back out.”

  “Time to spread the word, lads,” Balor said. “We will have to act soon.”

  In the night’s cool quiet, above the creak of frogs from the nearby ponds and the crickets chirring in the long grass, a faint noise could be heard, a rumbling like distant thunder. The sky was clear, but in the middle of the third watch a vast cloud rose and hid the stars. It was the cloud of dust raised by the approaching enemy.

  In the first grey light before dawn a thick clot of darkness could be made out at the far end of the Course, where the northern road emerged from the hills beyond. As the light grew, the darkness resolved into a great mass of bodies. Shouts and calls and the clatter of weaponry drifted across the field.

  The Duke and his fellow commanders watched from a knoll at the other end of the Course, but no one from the Errantry had yet joined them. Then Balor came riding from the city alone. He dismounted before the Duke and saluted.

  “The acting marshal has sent me in his stead, my lord. He is … preoccupied with the threat of treason and cannot leave the city at present.”

  “It would seem the threat is worsening,” the Duke said.

  “It is, my lord. Captain Thorne has issued an order that while the Errantry is engaged in rooting out this insurrection, he will not commit troops to the defence outside the walls.”

  A shocked and angry murmur spread through the gathered commanders. The Duke raised a hand.

  “The captain is aware, is he not, of the enemy force that has just arrived on his doorstep?”

  “He is, my lord.”

  The Duke breathed deeply. He turned his gaze to the city for a moment, then back to his fellow commanders.

  “Very well,” he said. “We pledged to defend this city, and we will do so. Balor Gruff, I ask you to remain at my side for the time being. There may be news that you can take back to your acting marshal, should he be interested in hearing it.”

  Balor had a spyglass, an instrument unknown to many of the other leaders. The Duke borrowed it from him and peered through it. After a moment he gave a grunt of surprise and handed the spyglass back.

  “There are men in the Nightbane army,” he said.

  Balor looked where the Duke pointed. He saw a company of foot soldiers and another of horsemen, the metal of their pikes and spurs glittering with the morning dew. They looked like they could just as easily have joined the side of the defenders.

  The sun climbed in the sky and burned the mist away from the hollows and thickets around the city, but still the enemy did not advance. No horn sounded; no signal was given. Instead the besieging force slowly fanned out on either side of the road—as if the plan was to encircle the defenders—then came to a halt.

  “Why aren’t they attacking?” asked Balor.

  “They haven’t brought any siege engines,” one of the other commanders said. “There are no catapults, no battering rams.”

  “The fetch host will be their battering ram,” the Duke said. “That’s what they’re waiting for.”

  Soon an unnerving sound could be heard, a squealing that pierced the silence and swiftly grew louder. At last the most distant of the enemy ranks parted and a great, towering carriage came into view, square and windowless and made of some dull grey metal. The wheels were metal, as well. The carriage was pulled by four huge, unknown beasts in plate armour that covered most of the enormous bodies.

  The carriage stopped at the rear of the Nightbane army and again there was silence. Then a single rider on a black horse appeared. He sat stiffly upright, clutching his arms before him, like someone unused to riding, but still his mount came swift and sure up the Course to the far edge of the stream, where it halted. The rider’s face was bowed, and he carried no weapon that anyone could see, nor made any gesture of greeting or parley.

  “It must be a herald,” the Duke said. “We will meet with him.”

  The Duke had his horse brought and he rode down with Balor and two other commanders.

  When the four reached the stream, they saw why the rider sat so stiffly in his saddle. He was an older man with cropped white hair and a long sharp face, and he had been strapped to his mount because he was dead. His fine plate armour had been defaced with obscene taunts scrawled in blood, but the clasp of his torn cloak was the five-petaled flower of the Errantry.

  “Who is this?” the Duke asked, his face darkening with anger.

  “He was the garrison commander at Annen Bawn,” Balor said, swallowing hard. “Captain Bayard Kells.”

  As if in answer to its name a voice issued from the dead man’s mouth, though the mouth did not move. The commanders’ mounts snorted and stamped in fear.

  “Greetings to the Red Duke of Tintamarre and his allies,” the voice said. It seemed to rise from a deep pit.

  “Who are you?” the Duke demanded. “Who dares speak through the dead?”

  “I speak for the Viceroy of Malabron, who commands these legions. I am his voice.”

  “I’ve never heard of this viceroy,” the Duke said. “What is his name? What land is he from?”

  “He has no name, for he is many. The many that is the hand of the One. The Viceroy bids me say to the leaders of your alliance: this is not your city. It belongs to the true lord of this world and he will have it. If you lay down your arms now, you will be allowed to depart in peace for your own lands.”

  “Tell your viceroy we will not lay down our arms,” the Duke replied. “He is the one who must l
eave this field. He and all this rabble of invaders, before they are all destroyed.”

  They waited, but the voice did not speak again. The dead man’s empty eyes gazed at nothing. A fly landed on his forehead and began to walk across it.

  “We cannot leave your comrade to this indignity,” the Duke said to Balor. “His body should be taken back to Appleyard.”

  Balor nodded. He dismounted and was clambering down the stream’s newly steepened bank when the dead man’s horse reared up and galloped down the field the way it had come. The commanders watched as horse and lifeless rider were swallowed up by the Nightbane horde and vanished from sight.

  Balor climbed back up the bank and the four rode back to the knoll.

  “We were all offered the chance to leave here unharmed before the battle begins,” the Duke told the waiting assembly. “Even if our enemy honours his pledge, which is unlikely, it will only be a matter of time before this host appears at our own doorsteps. Even so, I present this viceroy’s offer as it was given, and I leave the choice to each of you to go now or stay and fight.”

  There was much stirring through the ring of commanders, but no one spoke and no one moved forward, until at last one figure made his way through the crowd to stand before the others. It was the dwarf, Mimling Hammersong.

  “I’ve been on quests and fought battles, likely nowhere near as many as the great lords among us, but I’ve learned one thing,” he said. “Those who fight, fight together. Those who run, run alone. I for one am not going to scuttle home and wait for the axe to fall.”

  20

  THEY HAD BECOME PREY.

  Finn crouched with Grath in the shelter of a huge tilted slab of rust-coloured rock. They had been walking for hours, until the walls of Adamant dropped away below the ridges and slag hills. They had skirted gaping cracks in the earth out of which scalding hot steam rose in hissing clouds. They had waded through pools of lead-coloured water and scrambled over heaps of shattered stone. The sun was high in the sky, though little of its light or heat penetrated through the smoky haze.

  And then something that lived in this lifeless waste had picked up their scent and was now following them, though they could not see it. Grath had become aware of it first. He’d halted, listened and sniffed the air, then turned in a circle and said, “We’re being stalked. Keep your blade ready.”

  Finn had not caught whatever sound or scent the mordog had picked up, but from time to time he thought he heard the soft clink of a stone being disturbed.

  Grath had not increased his pace, though, but kept on at the same steady gait, and Finn was grateful for that. It had been hours since his last taste of the gaal. The throbbing pain in his arm had returned, worse than ever. His eyes burned and his head swam. He noticed his legs had begun to tremble, too, and he wondered how much longer he would be able to keep going before his body simply gave out.

  Finally Grath had seemed to notice that he was in difficulty and called a halt. They had come to the foot of a huge tilted slab of stone. Finn dropped heavily to the ground. His face and clothing were drenched in sweat, and dark spots had begun to appear before his eyes. The mordog handed him a waterskin but remained standing himself to keep watch. Finn noticed there was no longer a pouch at the mordog’s belt.

  “You’re not taking the gaal?” he asked.

  The mordog glanced down at him with a crooked grin.

  “Kern asked me to surrender my share. Thought it would be a waste since I was certain to die out here,” he said, then studied Finn more carefully. “You’re feeling the lack.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “I’ve felt it every day since I joined your brother’s cause, but this is the worst.” He bared his teeth in a sour grin. “If they have any fever iron left at the fortress, I may be forced to kill someone for it.”

  They had already agreed they would stay together until they reached Corr’s fortress at the far end of the valley, where a small contingent of Stormriders remained. There they hoped to find some shelter and rest, and then decide what to do next. Finn’s goal was to carry on south out of the valley and come upon some place where he could bargain for a horse. If there was any chance he could make it even that far. Grath had yet to say what he planned to do beyond the fortress.

  “How much farther?” Finn asked. He still had not been able to glimpse the fortress on its height through all the smoke and steam.

  “Hours yet, by my reckoning. We won’t get there before nightfall at this rate.”

  Finn heard the annoyance in his voice. “You should carry on, then,” he said. “I’ll only slow you down.”

  The mordog laughed coldly.

  “What does it matter?” Grath said. “I’ve already broken the most important rule for getting across the valley alive.”

  “What’s that?”

  Grath eyed Finn’s sling.

  “Never come out here with a one-armed man.”

  To his surprise Finn found himself laughing, too.

  “I know what the doctor told you,” Grath went on. “That you’re little better than a walking corpse without the gaal. If I had any sense, I would go now and leave you here to be eaten by whatever’s been following us. I’m not going to do that, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if you die, then there’s just me out here, and wherever I go I’ll be hunted either by my own people or by those who hate my people, and they are many. Even my fellow Stormriders at the fortress will likely stick my head on a pike when they find out I’ve deserted. No, Finn Madoc, you and I are proof that the cunning ones and the mordog don’t have to be at each other’s throats until the world ends. Maybe we’re the only ones who believe that, but still, it’s in my best interest to keep you alive as long as I can.”

  Finn studied Grath’s face and then held out his hand, and the mordog helped him to his feet.

  “Let’s go,” Finn said.

  They struggled on, taking only brief rests, while the distant sun crawled down the sky, until they neared the edge of the largest and broadest chasm they had seen yet, at least fifty paces across. Its sheer sides dropped away into blackness and stretched away out of sight on either hand.

  “I’ve seen this hole in the ground from the skyships,” Grath said. “I thought we were east enough to avoid it, but this place can fool even the best trackers.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We go around it.”

  Finn nodded, hoping the mordog wasn’t also wrong about the direction he had chosen. He took another sip from the waterskin, which was growing alarmingly light in his hand, he noticed. Then he followed where Grath led.

  They were mostly climbing now, over a tumbled terrain of porous black rock that gave off heat as if it had been molten not long ago. Finn was soon gasping for breath. Grath seemed less affected by the heat and before long he was far ahead.

  Then the mordog stopped and gestured urgently to him. Finn pushed himself on and when he reached the place Grath stood, he saw that just a few paces ahead the chasm narrowed to a thin crevice and came to an end. They would be able to cross now, but an even greater obstacle still lay ahead.

  The far side of the chasm was higher than where they stood, and at this end it had grown to a sheer escarpment that they would have to scale if they wanted to proceed.

  Finn gazed up at the rock face rising above them and then looked into himself and felt the death there, worming its way toward his heart. He would not make it to the top of this wall. He would never see his friends in Fable again. He would not deliver the doctor’s journal to King Shakya.

  Yet he had no choice but to try.

  He stepped forward, except Grath’s arm shot out and barred his way.

  “Listen,” the mordog hissed.

  Finn froze. All he could hear was the chill wind that had blown at their backs all day.

  “What is it?” he whispered.

  The mordog didn’t reply. His head was raised and he was sniffing the air again. Finn gripped his s
word hilt with his good hand and waited, and it was not long before Grath nudged him and said softly, “There,” nodding toward the way they had come.

  There were three of them. Long, sleek things with skin the same reddish-black of the stones over which they were slinking. Finn studied them with a strangely calm interest, as if, like the doctor, he was observing creatures he had never seen before. He knew this wasn’t curiosity, though, only cold certainty about what would happen next.

  The hunters were something like wolves, he thought, but with a catlike roll to their shoulder muscles and a supple grace in their every footfall. They had horns, too, that curved down from the spined ridge of their foreheads. Their eyes were black in their blood-red faces. Eyes that gave away nothing.

  “Slar,” Grath muttered. “I thought there might be more than one.”

  Finn had never heard the name before, but in Grath’s voice he heard something worse than fear: resignation. The creatures had spaced themselves far apart and were moving slowly and cautiously, but it was clear all three were headed toward Finn and Grath. The creatures had chosen their moment well: the prey was trapped now, with a sheer wall at their backs.

  Grath had his crude cleaver already in hand, but he took a moment to survey the terrain at their feet. Then he sprang onto a nearby boulder with a roughly flat surface and pulled Finn up after him. He tossed his sack at his feet and Finn did the same with his pack.

  “Stay on my right,” Grath said. “They’ll have more trouble reaching us from that side.”

  Finn nodded and raised his sword. It occurred to him suddenly that he no longer felt any pain. His wounded arm had gone numb, and even his other hand, the one in which he held the sword, barely had the strength to grip the hilt. He had nothing left to fight with, but still he raised the sword and watched while the creatures climbed steadily and unhurriedly toward them. One of the three slar, the one that had come closest so far and seemed to be the leader, was larger than the other two. Finn guessed that this was a mother and her two offspring, but that thought did not bring him any comfort or hope. Obviously all three knew what they were doing and had hunted together like this many times before.