The Tree of Story

by Thomas Wharton

  In that instant Freya understood what she was seeing. These were the threads of all their stories. Of friend and foe, of everyone who had been drawn here into the madness of war. The vision lasted only a moment. The golden light faded and the threads vanished. But Freya knew that everyone on the battlefield had shared her vision. They had seen what she had: that their many stories had been woven into one, an ancient tale that held them spellbound. They were as much its puppets as were these mindless fetches. But they had seen a new path that was open to them now. A way to freedom.

  But would they take it? In the next instant the world was plunged again into noise and chaos. There were shouts and screams and the clash of arms all around her.…

  The vision lasted only a moment, and then the golden light dimmed and vanished. The threads were nowhere to be seen, but Freya was certain they were still there, still everywhere, and that somehow, because she knew this, nothing would ever be the same.

  Then Freya looked up and saw that the armoured fetches had turned about. They were marching now toward the Nightbane host, which was retreating in stunned disorder.

  Freya looked down at the ice sword in her hand. It was melting now, the water trickling over her arm and spilling onto the earth. The dragon’s heart was leaving her.

  It was as if every last shred of her strength was gone, too. She dropped to the ground. The last thing she saw was the fetch host surrounding the Nightbane like a swiftly closing ring of dark metal.

  26

  PENDRAKE STEPPED FROM THE raincabinet and halted, leaning on his staff to catch his breath.

  He was back in his own house. And yet it was no longer his own.

  He struggled to collect his thoughts, to remember how he’d gotten here. The harrowers had taken him from the hollow, from Rowen. They’d brought him swiftly over the bleak miles of the Shadow Realm, and then he found himself alone in a bare, rocky place under a clouded sky. Whether he was back in his own realm or not he had no idea. He’d wandered then, for three days and nights, drinking from the thin rivulets of water that trickled down from the rocks. Within the staff he felt a faint power that sustained him, and guessed that Rowen had somehow placed it there.

  And then there was a path under his feet. Just a faint track in the dirt, but he understood that it was meant for him, and that Rowen had done this as well. And so he followed the path and time had fallen away, and then he was here, in the toyshop. He had been gone only a few days but it seemed a lifetime.

  He faltered then at the thought of his granddaughter left behind in that terrible place. He would return. He would find her, and Will and Morrigan. But he knew Rowen had remained behind to give him this chance to end what should never have begun.

  At the far end of the hallway was where his own workshop had stood, but there was no workshop anymore. The stone walls came to an end at a gaping hole ringed with green fire.

  He walked softly down the corridor, peering in each doorway and finding the rooms vacant and the walls blackened, as if they had been emptied by a great burning. He reached the hole in the wall and passed through it into what remained of his workshop, a jagged semicircle of stone floor, a few of his books scattered on it, his worktable chair fallen on its side, needles of glass lying everywhere. Beyond the edge of the broken floor there was nothing to be seen but a boiling churn of werefire, rising into hideous, grotesque shapes and faces that darted toward him then fell away again and were replaced by others just as ghastly.

  Beyond the edge, a huge stone chair hung in space, anchored there by no visible means. In the chair sat Ammon Brax. He wore long robes of gleaming white, like a sage of ancient time. The green fire played about his long dark hair and his shoulders.

  “The real Nicholas Pendrake has found his way home,” Brax said.

  “Someone else found the way for me,” Pendrake said sadly.

  “Where is your clever granddaughter, Nicholas? And her friends?”

  “Someplace no one should ever have to go. I will be returning there when I have finished what must be done here. Fable is not yours to rule, Ammon.”

  “This city needs me,” Brax said. “The Realm needs me. My power sustains us all now. If I fall, everything falls.”

  “The threat to Fable is no more. I know you can sense that as well as I can. It is time to use what power we have to heal and restore, not to destroy or take what isn’t ours. Just let it go, Ammon. Before it consumes you. Let the fire return to where it belongs.”

  “Like you, old man? You hid the power away, refused to share it with anyone. You hoarded it here all this time, and what good did it bring you? Think of what you could have accomplished … Now it’s up to me to do what you would not dare. Those armies waiting out there for another chance to hack and maim and kill will be mine. I will command, where you hid and let others fight for you. I will lead my host to the gates of his realm, and he will kneel and set his crown at my feet.” He raised a trembling hand. “All I have to do is reach out this hand and it will be mine.”

  “Then do it, Ammon,” Pendrake said. “Use the fire to take those armies for yourself. Take them and crush anyone who dares oppose you.”

  Brax faltered. He gazed at his hand, at the pale flames rippling over it, then at the Loremaster.

  “Why are you hesitating, Ammon?” Pendrake said softly. “You have the power now. All the power you ever hoped for. Stretch out your hand and finish what you’ve begun.”

  A spasm of fear mingled with rage flickered across Brax’s face.

  “You know what will happen, don’t you?” Pendrake said. “The werefire takes from the one who wields it. If you do harm with it, it harms you. It’s already taking your mind, and before long it will take everything that you are.”

  “All I wanted was to serve you and learn from you,” Brax said, his voice hoarse with reproach and pain. “You could have invited me into your confidence, old man. You could have shared what you knew. If you had trusted me, warned me about the fire, showed me patiently how to tame it, I could have followed in your footsteps. But you turned your back on me. You left me with nothing.” He rose from the chair and stood in empty space, the werefire blazing over his head like a poisonous halo. “Everything I’ve ever gained I had to tear from someone else’s grasp, including this. You did this to me.”

  “I failed you, Ammon, and I am sorry for that,” Pendrake said, putting out a hand. “But now you know the truth of the fire, and that is the beginning of wisdom. It’s not too late—for either of us. There is another way. Let me help you find it.”

  The mage stood motionless with his arms at his sides. Then slowly he began to descend, as if he were walking down an invisible flight of steps. And now Pendrake could see the faint ribbons of flame under the mage’s feet, shaping themselves into ghostly steps and bearing him as he descended.

  “Help me, Master Nicholas,” he said in a hollow voice. “I … cannot control it anymore. Don’t let it take me.”

  When he was only a few steps above Pendrake, the mage’s fear-stricken face suddenly changed. A cold gleam came into his eyes as they flicked to something behind the Loremaster.

  Pendrake caught the movement and turned, but too late. A huge dark shape sprang from the shadows and struck him violently to the ground. The staff clattered to the stones.

  Flitch stood over the Loremaster, his rotting fangs bared like a beast’s. He seemed to have grown even larger and more malevolent, as if the fire had gone on changing him along with everything else in the toyshop.

  Hodge had followed his brother. He stood apart from him, his hands knotted together. He looked sick and afraid.

  Pendrake raised his head and struggled to rise. Flitch’s booted foot pushed him back down onto the floor.

  “You can do this for yourself, Ammon,” Pendrake said, his words coming slowly and heavily. “You can kill me with a thought, can’t you? You have the power, after all. You don’t need any help.”

  The hogmen glanced up at the mage in surprise, as if the same
notion was only now occurring to them.

  “Use the fire, Ammon,” Pendrake said. “Show the Marrowbone brothers that you still command it. They won’t fear you otherwise.”

  Flitch and Hodge kept their eyes on the mage.

  “Kill him,” Brax said.

  Flitch clutched Pendrake’s cloak in his huge fist and began to drag him toward the edge of the stone lip and the werefire below. Sputter darted in front of him and bobbed in the hogman’s huge face like an insect. Flitch swatted at him with a curse and kept on. He was about to throw Pendrake over when Hodge put a hand on his shoulder.

  “I won’t let you do this, brother,” Hodge said. His voice was shaking, but his eyes held his brother’s and did not flinch. “I won’t let you hurt the old man.”

  “You simpering idiot,” Flitch snarled. “Let go of me.”

  “No, Flitch, I won’t. You’ve been telling me what to do all along. And it always turns bad. You never listen. The girl showed me we don’t have to kill and hate. We could go back to the way things were before all of this.”

  “And you believed her,” Flitch sneered. “Your stupidity has finally reached its pinnacle. I tell you what, I think I’ll kill you next, brother, and make you into a travelling case or a throw rug. Then maybe you’ll finally be of some use to someone.”

  “Let him go, Flitch,” Hodge said warningly.

  Flitch turned with a snarl and heaved Pendrake toward the edge, but at the last moment Hodge caught the Loremaster and pulled him away.

  “Kill him!” Brax roared.

  Flitch ignored the mage and threw himself at his brother. They grappled with each other at the edge of the drop, jaws snapping and claws tearing. Flitch had grown under the power of the werefire, but Hodge had always been the larger and heavier of the two brothers, and his greater bulk won out now. One of his immense hands caught Flitch by the neck, and slowly, grunting and growling, he bore him to the edge of the lip. As his boots slid backward on the stone, Flitch struggled to speak, but Hodge’s grip choked off his voice, and all he could bring out were weak gasps of terror.

  With one last mighty heave, Hodge drove Flitch over the edge and followed after. They fell in each other’s clutches and the werefire swallowed them.

  Pendrake crawled away from the edge. His head was bleeding and his limbs shook as he groped for his staff. But Brax was there now and he laid his hand on the staff and lifted it away from Pendrake’s reach.

  “Well, Ammon,” he said. “It looks like you’ll have to finish me yourself after all.”

  The green fire was in the mage’s eyes now. He gazed at the staff in his hand. Then he gave a cry of rage, and the fire flared from the staff and struck Pendrake, throwing him back violently into the corridor. But even as the Loremaster fell, the fire roared back along the staff and enveloped Brax himself.

  As Pendrake lifted his head and watched, the mage was engulfed in raging flames that took up his cry of terror with many voices screaming in agony and madness. He staggered back and the staff slipped from his hands and fell into the abyss. He clawed at himself now, frantic to push or tear the flames from his face and his arms. But now the fire was shooting out of his mouth and eyes.

  And then there was only the fire, and in it many faces and shapes writhing and struggling as if for command. The roar of voices rose to a wail and then died away. The fire dimmed and sank. A few last scraps of it fluttered on the stones and then went out.

  The stone chair fell with an echoing crash. The walls shook and great cracks appeared in the stone.

  Pendrake climbed unsteadily to his feet. He looked over the edge and saw the fire subsiding, bleeding away into the dark corners of what remained of the toyshop below.

  He turned and gazed at the remains of his workshop. Stooping with a groan of effort, he righted his chair and sat down heavily.

  “I just need to rest a moment, Rowen,” he murmured between laboured breaths. “Just a moment. Then I’ll come and find you, I promise. I’ll bring you home.”

  When the fetch host had turned against it, the Nightbane army had been thrown into upheaval. A surging sea of metal-clad figures flowed around the viceroy’s great iron carriage, trampling one another in their haste to escape the wall of metal they had suddenly found closing around them, and causing the beasts who drew the carriage to panic and run mad. The carriage was battered and rocked off balance until it crashed onto its side. Nightbane continued to mill and thrash against the barrier of the fetches, but as it became clear that the fetches were not going to attack, but merely contain them, the remnant of the invading army lowered their weapons and stayed where they were.

  Then a single arrow whizzed out from among the Nightbane; it arced through the smoke-filled sky and landed near the vanguard of the allied forces. There appeared to be a paper tied around the shaft. An Errantry trooper ran out, snatched up the arrow and brought it back to the allied commanders.

  It wasn’t long before word spread that the invading army was asking for a truce and a laying down of arms.

  But no one was rejoicing yet. There was a reek of blood and a stench of burning in the air. Ash floated down like grey snow. Stunned by the same vision Freya had seen, and by the unexpected victory that had followed, the defenders were slow to stir. Then the allied army began to come apart again as fighters from different lands found their countrymen and began the work of tending to their wounded and carrying away their dead. The dwarven folk of Stonesthrow Mine marched in a slow procession up the field, weeping as they carried the bodies of Mimling Hammersong and two of his brothers from the stream, where they had fallen in the first assault of the fetches.

  While all of this was going on a strange rumour spread among the troops who had come with Balor from Fable. The boy Will Lightfoot had been seen on the hill at the edge of the battlefield. The boy everyone called the Pathfinder, who had come from the Untold to destroy the Night King and save them all.

  “He travelled to a dark land to bring back some great magic,” exclaimed a trooper with utter certainty. “It was he who turned those fetches, not the mage, there’s no doubt of it.”

  A girl was with the Pathfinder, some said, a girl with red hair whom few recognized. But the rumour came to Balor as well, and when he heard it, he halted what he was doing and wiped tears from his eyes.

  “You did it, lad,” he murmured. “You kept her safe and brought her home.”

  Amid the wreckage of the skyship stood the golem, as still and unmoving as stone. Around him men were slowly gathering from various places on the field, their armour covered in dust and blood. Some were wounded and being helped by their companions. There were mordog among them; they glanced warily at the soldiers of the allied forces who were now approaching. When the Errantry troopers among them caught sight of the mordog, they drew their swords or gripped their spears and staves in readiness.

  Balor shouldered his way through the crowd.

  “Lower your weapons,” he said quietly.

  Most obeyed him but not all.

  Last to join the Stormriders were Finn and Corr Madoc. Corr gazed at the faces around him. He had his sword in his hand as well but tossed it to the ground and stood waiting. Finn, helped along by Grath, still wore the battered, cracked gaal armour. His sword arm was in a sling and he looked barely able to stand.

  “Finn Madoc,” Balor said as he approached. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

  Finn’s eyes met the wildman’s. He appeared to be struggling to speak, and then his knees buckled and Grath lowered him to the earth.

  “What’s happened to him?” Balor cried.

  “Are there any healers here?” Corr asked. “My brother doesn’t have long.”

  “What about Doctor Alazar?” Balor asked. “Isn’t he with you?”

  “The doctor is dead,” Corr said.

  Balor stared.

  “Dead? Alazar? No, that can’t be.” His face darkened. “Sky Lord, if you had anything to do with this—”

  “I did, wildm
an,” Corr said. “The doctor died because of me. And I am sorry for it.”

  The rage left Balor’s face as suddenly as it had appeared. His shoulders sank.

  “Alazar,” he muttered, his eyes welling with tears. “Not you.”

  The crowd parted again and Freya appeared. She was still carrying the ice blade, but there was much less of it now, so that it was more a long slender knife than a sword. Everyone stared as she approached Finn and knelt beside him.

  “Finn,” she said. “Do you remember me?”

  He glanced up, blinking, then his eyes widened.

  “Freya,” he said. “How can you be here?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I can help you. Take the blade.”

  Finn could no longer move his swollen arm. Freya had to place the sword in his hand. Slowly his stiffened fingers closed around the hilt. He looked at Freya with a puzzled expression, and then he gasped. His eyes filled with wonder.

  “The pain is gone,” he said.

  The sword was melting away more quickly now, but where its substance was going no one could say. They saw no water dripping onto the grass, but swiftly and steadily the ice diminished until it was nothing but a gleaming sliver in Finn’s palm. Then even this last tiny splinter seemed to sink into his flesh and was gone.

  Finn tore away the sling and stretched out his arm.

  “There’s feeling again in my fingers,” he said. “Freya, what was that? What did you give me?”

  She placed her hand on his. Her hand was no longer cold and the warm light had come back into her eyes.

  “That was the last of the dragon,” she said. “The last of Whitewing Stonegrinder.”

  The troopers and knights of the Errantry had slowly gathered around the Stormriders. On Balor’s command weapons had been lowered, but still no one spoke. The only sound was the wind snapping banners and tugging at cloaks.