The Tree of Story

by Thomas Wharton

  The sergeant hesitated, then sent three of his men to knock on doors and spread the word. Balor went with them.

  When the dragons reached Fable, they did not descend but wheeled high over the city in wide, slow circles. Jodo Flyte’s bowmen stationed, near the walls, were kept from shooting at the dragons for fear that their falling arrows would strike people within the city. The musketeers of Sarras fired a volley and the sounds of their guns cracked sharply through the air, but the cloud of shot they loosed appeared to have no effect on the circling dragons.

  Then with a roar the motherworms opened their vast mouths and from them came what were seen to be small creatures of fire that moved with their own life and will. These lesser firedrakes fell on the wooded heights of Appleyard Hill, and on the roofs of houses in the town below, where they darted and leaped and burst into larger flame. Soon there were fires burning all over Fable, and still the motherworms circled and vomited their burning offspring onto the city. The Errantry’s fire brigade had already been prepared, and thanks to their swift action most of the fires near the walls were swiftly doused. But the people who had been called out of their homes were only just beginning to organize their own brigades when the motherworms attacked. A few fires deeper in the city continued to burn, and spread.

  Now the motherworms wheeled away from Fable and belched forth more of their offspring, and these fell, crackling and hissing, upon the army outside the walls. The blazing snakelike forms whipped and tore through the ranks, and men shrieked and dove out of their way. Some whose hair or garments caught on fire ran for the stream in the hope of putting out the flames, while others struck at the dragons with their swords and spears. When a spear point or blade struck one of the firedrakes, the creature burst apart with a spray of smaller flames that seemed still to move with life and purpose. Men who wore capes or tunics over their armour tore them off and used them to cover and then stamp out the flames.

  The musketeers fired another volley, this one directed at the motherworm that had descended the farthest. The thick hail of shot succeeded this time: it tore through one of the dragon’s wings. The monster let out an ear-splitting shriek and heeled, its torn wing crumpled into itself, then it plummeted through the air, keeping enough command of its fall to turn itself toward Fable at the last moment. It crashed onto the battlements not far from the gate, and a blazing cloud of its spawn exploded upward and fell upon the city.

  Then another cry of warning went up. As the dragons brought disorder and fear to the allies, the Nightbane had seized this chance and charged up the field without the warning of chants or drums. A great mass of them strode up the Course toward the stream. Soon they would be across it.

  The Duke’s herald blew a rallying call on his horn and the allies hurried to re-form their tattered lines. Those who had run to the stream to douse the flames and who could still stand raced back to join their comrades, but some were injured too badly and could only crawl up the bank and cry out for help. The front lines of the allied force, made up mostly of the Duke’s knights and King Shakya’s mounted warriors, marched to the stream bank and formed a wall bristling with swords and spears. A few men ventured out in the face of the advancing enemy and carried the burned and wounded men out of the stream bed. The Duke himself rode out from the knoll with King Shakya to take command of the two cavalry units waiting on either side of the valley.

  The vanguard of the Nightbane host was an armoured wedge of hulking creatures wearing hideous beast masks and carrying heavy iron clubs. They reached the stream, poured down the far bank like a black flood and began to cross. They were slowed down as a result, but their lines were not broken as the Duke had hoped. All too soon they were clambering up the near bank, their progress barely impeded by the stakes, and then the armies met.

  A great clamour of metal ringing on metal filled the air. The wall of the allies held, sending the front ranks of the Nightbane sprawling into the stream bed. More quickly took their place, trampling their own fallen comrades and charging up the bank. The pointed wedge of the assault had shattered, but now a broad, ragged wave of the enemy flooded across the stream.

  The Duke had reached his mounted knights concealed among the trees, and sat his horse at the head of the line. The enemy’s column stretched across the Course like a great worm. The moment had come to shear into the ranks and break them apart. The Duke’s herald brought him a long-handled silver mace, and he held it on high so that on the other side of the valley King Shakya could see its light winking from the shade of the trees like a star in the dusk. When that star swooped down, the charge would begin.

  Then a chill wind rose and the sky darkened. A churning mass of cloud was rising over the Course.

  The Duke did not bring the mace down.

  A cold mist began to creep over the fields and through the trees around the city. The Nightbane army faltered and its armoured beasts bellowed in agitation.

  The clash and roar of battle stilled.

  Without warning a howling wind rushed up the valley, carrying a billowing cloud of snow and shards of ice with it. The blizzard tore through the lines of the enemy, blinding them and obscuring them from view. There were shrieks and the clatter of weapons, and some Nightbane were thrown into the air or struck down by the force of the blast.

  The Nightbane charge was halted, and then the lines broke and the enemy stumbled and fled. The defenders would have charged after them, but the Duke appeared at the edge of the wood with his open hand held high, the sign to hold, and the officers in the front lines kept their men in check.

  The blizzard gathered itself into a whirling mass, like a tornado, and streamed up into the sky. It plowed into the circling motherworms and tore their bloated bodies to shreds. Fire burst out from their death throes and would have fallen as a terrible rain on the city, but the whirling snow extinguished the firedrakes as they fell.

  When the last of the motherworms had been destroyed, the white cloud began to descend, slowly now, like an ordinary snowfall, upon the burning roofs of the city. It became a mist and the remaining fires were dampened, and the people carrying buckets from the canal wiped their eyes, still streaming from the smoke, and cheered.

  Some of the snow flurried down onto the Course, and as it settled, a young woman appeared in its midst. Her long hair and her cloak were white with frost, and her face was a bloodless white tinged faintly with blue.

  Freya stared about her as if dazed, and then she turned to the long drift of snow behind her, already trickling away into the grass under the glare of the midday sun.

  She knelt and placed her hand upon the snow.

  “Rest now, Old One,” she whispered.

  Then she frowned. Her fingers had touched something that was not melting snow. Out of the dying dragon’s body she lifted a sword with a snow-white hilt and a blade of translucent blue.

  Whitewing Stonegrinder’s last gift to her.

  There was a shout, and she looked up to see her fellow Skaldings pushing through the ranks of the defenders. Eymund Spearbreaker led them, and with him came another man Freya had never seen before, wearing a faded and stained Errantry cloak. His face was lined and pale and his eyes sunken, as if he was or had been ill.

  Eymund strode up to Freya and clasped her in his arms.

  “How can this be?” he said when they’d drawn apart. “We thought you were in the city. We thought you were their prisoner.”

  “Eymund Spearbreaker,” she said, with no trace of feeling in her voice.

  “What happened to you, girl?” he asked her.

  Freya gazed across the field to the retreating Nightbane.

  “The dragon happened to me, Eymund. And he’s still here.”

  The Nightbane were massed again at the end of the valley. They did not launch another assault that day, but once it became clear that the strange storm was over, they brought up their own archers, who loosed clouds of arrows that descended in long hissing arcs among the defenders. Men took cover behind their shields
, but some were struck and wounded, and several killed.

  The volleys kept coming all that long afternoon. The allied lines were forced back, inch by inch, from the stream, but still the Nightbane did not take advance, and it became clear that the rain of arrows was only meant to thin out the ranks of the defenders.

  So began the siege of Fable. Neither army moved from its position, and both sides knew what they were waiting for: the fetch host.

  The sun went down, and great bonfires sprang up in the dark, and soon the defenders could hear the bellowing of animals being slaughtered to feed their enemies.

  Balor Gruff spent the day with the brigades, dousing fires and helping those whose houses had burned. In the evening the two young Errantry apprentices who had been watching Pluvius Lane found him washing his soot-blackened face at a fountain in one of the public squares.

  “You need to see this, Balor,” they told him. Their faces were white with fear.

  Exhausted as he was, the wildman followed them. As they neared the lane where the toyshop stood, it seemed to Balor that the streets had grown narrower, darker and more twisted than the last time he’d come this way, only a day before. And instead of the shopfronts and windows he remembered, the walls on either hand had become solid grey stone, their surface gnarled and whorled as if molten rock had flowed over the buildings and hardened in place.

  “It’s spreading,” Balor murmured. “He’s turning Fable into a maze.” He stopped and turned to the apprentices. “The people who lived here—did you see what happened to them?”

  “We didn’t see,” one of the apprentices said. “We heard screams. When we got here it was like this.”

  They kept on and reached what should have been the entrance to Pluvius Lane. There was no lane to be seen. Like the rest of the street the entrance was sealed over with blank stone. The only indication that there might be a way through the wall was a shallow depression in the rough shape of a door.

  “We’ll get battering rams,” Balor said. “We can break through this.”

  He touched a hand to the door-shaped depression, then immediately pulled it away. Something had moved within the stone.

  “What is that?”

  “We saw it, too,” the young man said. “And we heard—”

  He broke off with a gasp. The stone was moving again, bulging where Balor had touched it. For an instant they saw a face, its mouth wide in anguish. Then the face sank, as if into quicksand, and the wall was blank again. Balor took a step back. There were other shapes moving, as if just under the wall’s surface.

  “There are people in there, Balor,” the apprentice breathed.

  “We can’t break this down with our own folk inside,” the other apprentice said. “It’s not even a wall. It’s some kind of sorcery. There’s nothing we can do to stop it. Or him.”

  Balor stood in silence, glowering at the wall, his arms folded across his chest. Then he looked up into the sky, where the faint red glow of the enemy’s bonfires lit the evening clouds.

  “Maybe we can’t stop him,” Balor said. “But we can still be of use before this is over. Go spread the word. Everyone who’s with us is to gather at dawn in the square where you found me.”

  They heard a clatter behind them and turned. A small party of troopers, seven men in all, had surrounded them with pikes at the ready.

  “Balor Gruff,” said the leader, a young man with a sergeant’s insignia on his uniform. His name the wildman could not bring to mind. “You have been accused of inciting rebellion against the Errantry. You and the others will accompany us to Appleyard to answer these charges.”

  Balor’s hand twitched toward his sword hilt, then he glanced at the frightened faces of the two apprentices.

  “Surrender your weapons,” the sergeant said in a warning tone. “We have orders to use any force necessary.”

  The man’s name was Kenning, Balor recalled. But there was something strange about him. A coldness in his voice, and his eyes. Brax had been at work here, too.

  “You’ve been promoted, Hutch Kenning,” Balor said. “Congratulations.”

  “Surrender your weapons. Now.”

  Balor gestured to the wall. “Do you see this, Sergeant? It wasn’t here this morning. The man hiding behind this wall has taken over the Errantry for his own purposes. That’s who you’re working for now.”

  “I’m following the Marshal’s orders, not the mage’s,” Kenning said. “Now surrender your weapons if you wish these fools with you to live.”

  Dawn on the second day of the siege came with a cold, cheerless rain.

  The iron carriage still towered in the middle of the enemy host, but sometime during the night other wheeled conveyances had arrived or been brought into place. They were long wooden wagons, ten or more of them, and mounted on each was a long tube of iron.

  “Cannons,” the Duke said, for there were some among the defenders who had never seen such weapons before. “They’ve brought cannons.”

  Figures could be seen climbing up on the wagons and working with ropes and poles to set the great cannons in place, but there seemed to be no urgency in their movements. The rain fell, unrelenting and bleak, and the defenders waited, and then there was a puff of smoke from one of the cannons, followed by a boom that shook the ground. Some had never heard such a sound before and wondered what it meant.

  Then something came screaming over their heads and thudded into the wet earth between the tents of the allies and the walls of Fable.

  A shocked silence fell. They seemed to be holding their breath, every one of them.

  “Is that all?” King Shakya scoffed.

  “That was only a trial,” the Duke said.

  Soon after there came another puff of smoke, and a black ball hurtled out of the sky and struck the base of the wall several hundred paces from the gate. It was quickly followed by a shot from another of the cannons and then another. Each one hit the wall, and there was a crash and a shower of stone and dust.

  In a short while the walls were cracked and rent with gaping holes, and if the attackers reached them, they were sure to be easily breached. This time the defenders waited in vain for an unexpected deliverance from this new threat. But no breath of icy wind or whirl of snow arrived—only the dreary rain and the spinning spheres of black metal falling from the sky.

  “If Master Brax has indeed prepared something for our enemies,” the Duke observed, “this would be a fine time to reveal it.”

  The Duke sent swift riders with new orders to the commanders of the bowmen and musketeers. They advanced over the ridge, and when they were close enough to the enemy camp, they let loose, aiming at the figures who manned the immense cannons. They managed to drive them away from the wagons and the cannonfire ceased, but a mass of Nightbane broke from the main host and charged up the hillside, and the archers and musketeers were forced back.

  The cannonfire began once more.

  * * *

  The third day arrived with a chill wind that swept the rain clouds away, but the sun seemed pale and distant, shining through a veil of mist. The defenders could smell the new threat long before they could see it. When the wind shifted and blew from the north, they caught the scent of the dust that thousands of metal-shod feet had raised, and with it the smell of the ash and hot metal of the place where the armour had been forged and the fetches bound to it.

  The sentries who still manned the half-ruined walls of Fable looked out across the Course, and in the growing light they could see the glint of what resembled a great armoured snake advancing up the road. The Nightbane army parted to let it pass.

  The fetches had come.

  23

  WILL TOOK ROWEN IN his arms and lifted her. She was lighter than he would have imagined, as if there was almost nothing left to her.

  There was a mossy place between two great roots of the tree. He carried her there and gently set her down, folding her arms over her chest. Her hands were cold and her face deathly white and still. He put his ear cl
ose to her mouth, but he could not hear or feel her breathing. He couldn’t tell whether she was alive or dead. The three puncture marks on her neck from Dama’s talons had become swollen and livid, like blisters. There had been some venom in the harrower’s claws, he thought. Something that was killing her. Or had killed her already.

  Struggling against his tears, he took the golden thread out of his pocket. There was nothing more he could do for her now, even if she was still alive. And if the Loremaster had the thread, as Rowen had wanted him to, maybe he could use it to save Fable, and the Realm itself. Then he and the Loremaster could return here for her.

  He knew he could wait no longer if he was going to be of any help to anyone at all. He knelt beside Rowen one more time, and as his tears fell, he put his lips to her forehead.

  It was warm.

  Will pulled back and looked at Rowen’s face. He could see the movement of her eyes behind her closed lids. He took her hand. It was warm, too.

  She had not given in. Like Shade, she was still fighting. And that meant he had to stay with her. No matter what he had promised, his place was here. The Will he’d met in the mirror had told him not to leave her, no matter what. He had to keep her safe as long as he could.

  He closed her hand within both of his own and leaned close to her ear.

  “I don’t know if you can hear me, Rowen,” he said softly. “But I’m here, and I won’t leave you. You’re not alone. Keep fighting. I believe in you.”

  She did not stir.

  Time passed. Will had no idea how much time. He spoke Rowen’s name often, shook her shoulder gently. She did not wake.

  He waited with his head bowed and after a while he felt cool air on the back of his neck. A flutter of breeze stirred his hair. It was the first wind he’d felt since they’d come to the Shadow Realm.

  He looked up. Far above, the depthless grey roof of turning dust had been breached. A small opening, like a hole in a dome, showed him a patch of bright blue sky. The first time he had seen a colour other than grey in so long. It was like he was peering through a window into some other world.