The Fathomless Fire

by Thomas Wharton

  In the dream he was just as she remembered him, his unruly dark hair that she’d always wanted to brush back from his face, his warm brown eyes. He had taken her hand, spoken to her as he led her out of the circle of faceless figures. What had he said?

  Now she was awake and he wasn’t there, and she wanted him to be, more than anything.

  She took a deep shuddering breath, drew her arms close around herself.

  “What’s wrong, Rowen?” her grandfather asked softly.

  “Nothing,” she said, not wanting to add to his worries. “I’m just cold.”

  It was a year ago now that Rowen and her grandfather had gone with Will on his journey to find a way home, with Finn Madoc of the Errantry, Shade the wolf, and Moth and Morrigan of the Fair Folk. They had travelled far, through lands Rowen had never known existed. They’d faced many dangers together and made new friends, like Freya Ragnarsdaughter of Skald, a young woman who had joined them on their journey and who Rowen was sure had fallen a little in love with Finn Madoc. She wondered if Freya and Finn would ever see each other again. Skald was so far from Fable.

  Rowen and Will had become good friends themselves. Perhaps more than friends. She remembered how Will had looked at her before he left, how fast her heart began to beat when she understood what she felt for him. She wondered where he was now and whether he was thinking about her this very moment, as she was about him. He’d said he would come back some day and find her. According to Grandfather, it was very rare for anyone to cross over from Will’s world to the Perilous Realm, but Will had done it once. Surely he could find the way again. If he still wanted to. Maybe he was glad to have escaped the terrors of her world and didn’t want to come back. Maybe now that he was with his family again, living his own life, he’d already begun to forget her.

  In her dream Will had taken her hand, said something to her. What was it?

  She couldn’t remember. All that was left of the dream was the burning, the metal mask coming away to reveal … nothing.

  Fighting a wave of dizziness she climbed out of bed, slipped on her cloak and opened the door a little way. She needed to breathe fresh air. Outside the snug the forest was still dark, but gazing up into the treetops she saw a faint pale light.

  A soft sigh of breath came from nearby. Briar, the horse that pulled their wagon, was stirring. The Fair Folk had given them Briar, and the sturdy, brightly painted wagon when they had parted a few days ago.

  “Morning’s almost here,” Pendrake said, rising to stand beside her. In one hand he held his waylight, a small lantern that pulsed softly with a faint blue light. Sputter, the tiny messenger wisp that lived in the lantern, was going to sleep, as he usually did in the daylight. He was nothing more than a tiny spark of light, but he could carry their messages many miles, or light their way in the darkest night.

  They hurried through a breakfast of porridge and tea, then packed up their things. Grandfather took his walking staff that was leaning against the wall and tapped it once on the floor, as he always did when they were about to set out.

  “If we make good time today,” he said, “we should be at the border of the Bourne by nightfall. From there it won’t be long before we’re home.”

  Home, Rowen thought as she followed him out of the snug door. Did she still have a home any more?

  The journey with Will had led to the revelation that Rowen was a descendant of the Stewards, the first weavers of Story in the dawn of the Realm. They had stood against Malabron, the Night King, in the long-ago war of the Great Unweaving, when the Realm was torn asunder and many stories were lost. Then they had vanished, though traces of their power still remained in the Realm. And in her. That she was in some way related to the ancient shapers of Story she still found difficult to believe, or speak of. The thought was too large, like a towering wave that threatened to sweep away everything she knew.

  But it was true. And it was why the Night King had sent his dread servant, the Angel, after Rowen, while she was travelling with Will. Because she had the power of the Stewards within her, the power to shape Story, though as yet she had barely begun learning how to use it. The Angel had caught her, too, and would have taken her a captive to Malabron if she hadn’t been rescued by Will and Moth the Shee archer. Moth had died destroying his ancient enemy, but he had freed his sister Morrigan from the curse that had turned her into a raven. Then the Tain Shee, the Fair Folk, had found them, and Rowen had felt safe for a while. And Will had found a way back home to his own world.

  After Will was gone, Rowen and her grandfather had stayed with the Fair Folk, making the long journey home with them in their travelling court. The Tain Shee were so skilled at concealment and silence that very few had ever seen their court, and most people knew them as the Shee n’ashoon, the Hidden Folk. Her grandfather’s hope was that by staying with the Shee, Rowen would be concealed from their common enemy until she was safely back home in Fable.

  Rowen had been glad to spend time in the company of the Fair Folk. Their plain, peaceful life, their tales and songs had cheered her after the terrible things she had been through. She had listened and learned much from them about the history and lore of the Realm. They spoke of the great tree on the hill where they had met with the Stewards at midsummer each year, a tree whose blossoms sent forth seeds of light. Each day with them had felt like many bright, untroubled days flowing together, as if within the court of the Shee there was a power to slow the passing of time.

  Rowen had most often sought out Morrigan, Moth’s sister. After the Angel was destroyed she had returned to her true shape as a young woman, but her grief for her brother was still etched in her pale face, and she went always in black, and rarely smiled. When the court set up camp in the evenings Rowen would find Morrigan, or Morrigan would find her, and they would walk together through the woods. Rowen would ask her about the long-ago days of her people, when the Shee were not wandering exiles but had lived in a beautiful city on the shore of the Western Sea. Morrigan seemed less sad and troubled when she spoke of those times, but it wasn’t long before the light would fade again from her eyes. Then she would leave Rowen and go away on her own.

  Then one night Morrigan had come to Rowen’s tent to tell her she was leaving. To Rowen’s astonishment she was wearing the white cloak that had belonged to the Angel. Rowen knew the cloak was a living thing called a shrowde, but she had thought it was destroyed along with the Angel during his battle with Moth.

  “Yes, the shrowde is still alive,” Morrigan had replied, to Rowen’s unasked question. “It is not evil in itself but was forced to serve the Angel. The shrowde has learned to trust me now. We will travel together.”

  “Why do you have to go?” Rowen had asked. “This is your home.”

  Morrigan shook her head.

  “This court was never my home,” she said with a bitter smile. “My home was lost ages ago. And then I was lost, too, for a long time, in the darkness. Too long. That darkness is inside me now and I’ve brought it among my people. I cannot stay.”

  “Where will you go?”

  Morrigan looked out of the tent door into the dark. Her eyes were lost, empty.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Aren’t you going to say goodbye to anyone?”

  “It’s better this way. Would you tell them, Rowen, that I have gone, and why I could not stay?”

  “I’ll tell them, yes. But Morrigan, will I see you again?”

  Morrigan looked at her with pain in her eyes.

  “For your sake I hope you will not,” she said.

  So Morrigan had left that night, and the Tain Shee missed her, and Rowen did, too. They travelled on, and not many days afterwards came to the shore of a small lake nestled among wooded hills, its surface as still and smooth as a mirror. That evening the Lady of the Shee summoned Rowen and her grandfather to walk with her along the lake shore. She told them they were not far from the edge of the Forest of Eldark, beyond which lay the country of the Bourne, Rowen’s home.


  “We must part now, my friends,” the Lady had said. “The Shee have been the Hidden Folk for a long time. Perhaps too long. That time is over now. All across the Realm stories are darkening, disappearing. We must reveal ourselves at last, and either defeat our enemy or perish. It is better that you are not with us when that day comes.”

  “Are you going to search for Morrigan?” Rowen had asked.

  “She is far from us now. It has been a long time.”

  “But she left only a few days ago,” Rowen said.

  “Days here in the Green Court pass slowly, though not as slowly as they once did. Even here the tapestry begins to fray. But for now, in the world outside, time still flows more swiftly than it does here. You have been with us longer than it may seem. You have grown much in that time, Rowen, and I think you are ready now for what awaits you.”

  The Lady turned and gazed out across the still waters of the lake.

  “There are few places left like this,” she said sadly, “where time stops altogether.”

  So Rowen and her grandfather left the Fair Folk, to finish the journey home on their own, and they found that it was as the Lady had said: as soon as the court had vanished, so did their power to slow time. Rowen felt within her flesh and bones the many days and nights that had passed, and the changes of season. It was summer again in the Realm, as it had been when they’d first set out with Will, which now seemed a very long time ago. Her own fourteenth birthday had gone by without her even knowing it. She and her grandfather had been travelling with the Fair Folk for a year.

  Maybe, she thought, enough time had gone by that they would be safe now, that the Night King had forgotten them. She hoped it was so, though she felt that hope as a small, fluttering flame that at any moment might be snuffed out.

  As dawn broke they loaded the wagon, hitched up Briar, and rode for several hours through woods that were damp and cheerless. It was late summer, the trees were green, but there was a heaviness in the air. A feeling of foreboding had been growing in Rowen all the way through the forest. She wondered if it was the dream, still lingering in her thoughts. She felt a great, painful longing for home, as if all the time that had really passed while she was with the Fair Folk had just now caught up with her. She hadn’t seen Edweth, their housekeeper, or any of her friends in the Errantry for so long. And Will. Where was he? Had he returned to the Realm while she was gone? If he had, and found she wasn’t in Fable, would he come looking for her?

  At midday they came out into a clearing. The sudden wind struck cold and sharp, bringing tears to Rowen’s eyes. The grass in this open space was dry and withered-looking, as if some blight had fallen here. Without warning Pendrake brought Briar to a halt, climbed quickly down from the wagon and gazed around the clearing. Rowen was about to ask him what he was doing when he suddenly set off at a fast clip towards a nearby hill. She followed, surprised at this unexpected burst of activity after he had been so weary and subdued all morning.

  Pendrake climbed the steep slope with Rowen at his heels. It was not a high hill and they soon reached the top. Rowen guessed that her grandfather wanted a view of the surrounding countryside, but instead he knelt and prodded the hilltop’s thatch of dry grass with the end of his staff.

  “No, it was here,” he murmured to himself. “I’m sure of it.”

  “What was here?” Rowen asked.

  “Do you remember,” Pendrake said, climbing stiffly to his feet, “when we were here in the forest with Will and he found that first knot-path?”

  Rowen nodded, smiling at the memory. On their journey Will had stumbled on one of the mysterious, hidden paths that could take you in a few moments to another far-off part of the Realm.

  “He came running back scared because he’d seen a giant,” she said, “only he wouldn’t call it a giant.”

  Pendrake gestured to the hill beneath them.

  “Here he is.”

  Rowen frowned.

  “Here who is?” Then she understood and looked down in alarm at her feet. They were standing right on top of…

  Rowen froze.

  “What happened to him?” she breathed, not daring to move.

  “I was hoping you could tell me,” Pendrake said.

  With a sinking heart, Rowen knew what he was asking of her. The power of the Stewards had given her a strange kind of second sight. Sometimes when she was close to people she would see, like pictures unfolding in her mind, the story that was their lives: she caught glimpses of their past, or she saw the choices that lay before them like so many paths through a forest, and sometimes she could tell which path was the right one for them to take. And if there had once been Story in a place, or in an object, even if all outward signs of it had vanished, she could sense it. Events that had happened long ago would appear to her, visions that only she could see but could do nothing to stop. Sometimes the visions were so vivid they seemed almost stronger than her own memories. More often they were dim or fleeting, hard to understand. Her grandfather had called this sense of Story a gift, but she didn’t see it that way.

  A gift was something you could refuse.

  Now she went still, calmed her breathing, and waited. Often the visions rose up unbidden, without any effort on her part. That’s how it had been the first time, on the journey with Will. She had seen dim, ghostlike shapes of people that no one else could see. It had terrified her, until her grandfather had revealed to her what the shapes really were: traces left by the past, by old stories that were no more. But not every vision was like that. Sometimes it took effort and time. She had to try. It was a strange kind of trying, though. She had to keep still and calm, letting her thoughts come and go without hanging on to any of them or letting them lead her elsewhere, as they so often did. Thoughts were tricky things. Once you had one, it was so easy to have another one, and another, and before you knew it, you were off somewhere else, imagining your next dinner or remembering something that happened years ago… To find the story hidden in things, she had to keep her own stories, the ones she was always spinning in her own head, from getting in the way. She had to let things be as they were, here and now, and the here-and-now, she had learned to her surprise, was a very difficult place to stay.

  But standing on the hill in the cold wind, she stayed with things as they were as well as she could, and the story came, and she saw what had once been the here-and-now.

  “He was in a great war, a long time ago,” she said, telling it to herself as much as to her grandfather as it unfolded before her. “He didn’t want to go, he wanted to be left alone, but in the end he went. He fought on the side of good, and there was a great and terrible battle which they only won because of him. So they gave him a reward. They gave him this meadow to live in. By himself, as he wished, for ever.”

  “Yes, that’s the tale he told me once,” Pendrake whispered. “Do you see anything else?”

  Rowen shook her head.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “It just … stops,” she said.

  Rowen took a deep breath and blinked back tears.

  “Are you all right?” Pendrake asked, placing a hand on her shoulder. She nodded. The sad and frightening stories were bad enough, but now she wondered if the happy ones were worse. That’s what the giant’s story had been here, in this clearing. Happy. There had been warm sunlight here then. Flowers and birdsong. She wished she could climb inside the giant’s peaceful, sleepy story, where bees buzzed among the blossoms and clouds drifted lazily across a perfect blue sky, and just stay there, leaving everything behind: the feeling of being hunted, the trial her grandfather had hinted she must soon face to become a loremaster, the not knowing how things were going to end.

  “It stops,” Pendrake murmured, gazing around the quiet clearing. “I wonder… He was usually napping whenever I visited him. He was getting very hill-like. Maybe this time he’s gone all the way.”

  “Gone where?”

  “Sometimes the story just goes out
of a place. The giant becomes a hill. The dragon becomes a river. It’s the way of things in this world. But…”

  He paused, and pursed his lips.

  “But you don’t think that’s it,” Rowen said.

  “Sometimes a story withers and dies before its time, like some of those we’ve seen, because another story is growing stronger.”

  “You mean Malabron’s?”

  Pendrake nodded.

  “Like an invading weed, choking the life out of other plants.”

  He leaned wearily on his staff, and Rowen thought again how much older and more tired he had seemed these last few weeks. As if whatever was happening to the Realm was also happening to him… She thrust the terrifying thought from her mind.

  “Will the giant come back?” she asked.

  “That could happen, yes, in the natural course of things. If stories are needed again they sometimes return from the Weaving, where they came from in the first place. But if one story grows too powerful, others will be swallowed up by it and forgotten.” He gazed around at the clearing spread out below them and pulled his cloak closer around him. “Let’s not linger here. We need to get back to Fable.”

  They walked slowly back down the hill to the wagon, Rowen pondering her grandfather’s frightening words.

  He had already taught her a little about the Weaving, the mysterious, hidden realm-within-the-Realm that was the source of all stories. As far as she’d been able to understand, the Weaving was something like the place you went to when you dreamed, that ghostly, ungraspable world where anything could happen. Everything possible and impossible, everything the Realm was made from, flowed out of the Weaving, like water bubbling from a hidden spring. When Rowen had seen the giant’s story as it had once been she was touching the Weaving, because the past was contained in it, and the future, as well as everything that might have been or never was.

  But a loremaster could do more than just catch these fleeting glimpses of the Weaving. One could tap into it, like drawing water from a well. What one drew out was a kind of power or living spirit that the Stewards had called innumith. Her grandfather called it the fathomless fire. The stuff of Story.