The Fathomless Fire

by Thomas Wharton

  At last, late in the afternoon, the Marshal gave his consent for the search party to leave the following morning. When Finn brought the news, Will seethed with anger. It was a whole day wasted.

  “It’s as if Lord Caliburn doesn’t want us going on this mission,” he said.

  “He doesn’t want anyone leaving the city needlessly,” Finn said. “For him, a knight’s overriding duty is to protect Fable. That’s what started all the trouble between him and Corr—”

  He broke off suddenly, as if he’d said more than he meant to.

  “Listen, Will,” he said, “why don’t you go to the stables and find a horse for the morning. The head groom’s name is Arden. Tell her I sent you. She’ll help you pick out a good, reliable mount.”

  Will wanted to ask Finn about his brother, but with a nod he silently agreed. He crossed the grounds to the stables, and after some searching and making inquiries, found Arden the head groom, a cheerful-looking older woman. She walked up and down the stalls with him, musing out loud about several of the horses. She seemed to have worked out straight away that Will was no rider.

  “I wish I could give you Briar,” she said. “She’s a horse of the Hidden Folk, I’m told. I don’t know about that, but she’s a fine animal sure enough. Just brought to Fable today, from a very long journey, and I’d say she’s earned a rest.”

  Will looked over the railing at the dappled grey and white horse calmly munching hay. She lifted her head a moment, giving Will no more than a passing glance, as if she, like Arden, had immediately sized up his riding experience.

  “She’s been on the road for months, and none the worse for it, by the look of things,” Arden went on. “That doesn’t surprise me, since it was the toymaker she was with. He cares for animals, you can tell. And they trust him.”

  “The toymaker?” Will said, his heart beginning to beat faster. “You mean Master Pendrake?”

  “Of course. He and his granddaughter got home just a while ago. Why do you ask?”

  He ran.

  He made it to the corner of Pluvius Lane more quickly than he ever had before, but there he was forced to slow down, to catch his breath, but also because the street was busy with people going about their business. As he pushed through the crowd, ignoring the angry glances levelled at him, he caught sight of a red cloak on someone hurrying past him up the road to Appleyard. He stopped, and the person in the red cloak stopped too.

  Rowen.

  They pushed through the crowd towards each other. It was her, though he could scarcely believe it. She was beaming at the sight of him, calling his name, but he could barely hear her above the noise of the bustling street. She had grown taller, he saw right away, and something else had changed about her, though he couldn’t say what it was. They met and for a moment he stood stunned at the sight of her, until she spoke.

  “Will. You’re here. You’re really here.”

  They embraced. Will held her tightly. She was safe in his arms.

  “I didn’t know you’d come back—” he began.

  “Edweth told me you were at Appleyard—” she said at the same time. They laughed and stepped apart.

  “You first,” Will said.

  “Grandfather and I got home just now. Edweth said you’d arrived in Fable a few days ago. She said you were leaving to look for Shade. I was hoping you hadn’t left yet.”

  “We leave in the morning.”

  Neither of them spoke for a long moment: they were still looking at each other as if not quite believing they were together again. For Will it had been less than a month since he’d seen her, but for Rowen, he remembered, a whole year had gone by. He saw the girl he’d known, in her eager smile and her bright, animated eyes, but he saw a young woman, too: she was taller, less wiry and more sure of herself in the way she moved. He felt suddenly as if she had left him behind.

  He realized he was staring, and looked down.

  At Rowen’s feet was a cat. A cat with large yellow eyes that were fixed on him with an unsettling directness. It was as if this strange animal knew who he was.

  “That’s Riddle,” Rowen said. “He used to live in the Forest of Eldark.”

  “Riddle,” Will repeated, then he remembered where he had seen those odd eyes before.

  “You mean, that’s…?”

  “Yes. I’ll explain later. Edweth told us about the warning the shadow gave you, that brought you back. She said that Shade…”

  Will told her Mimling’s story. When he came to the part about Shade being burned by lightning, Rowen put her hand over her mouth.

  “Who would do such a thing?” she breathed, tears sliding down her face. “Find him, Will, please find him. We can’t let him die out there somewhere, alone…”

  “I’m going to find him,” Will said.

  Rowen wiped her eyes and tried to smile.

  “I’ve missed you, Will,” she said. “I hoped so much you would come back.”

  “I had to. I … had to make sure you were all right.”

  He knew what he really wanted to tell her, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak the words. For all he knew, she thought of him only as a good friend. If he told her his true feelings he might drive her away and lose her friendship. He couldn’t bear that thought.

  “I’m fine,” Rowen said. “Just tired. But happy to be back home.”

  Will wanted to believe her, but he could see in her eyes that everything was not well.

  A short time later they were sitting in the ground-floor library at the toyshop, a cosy, book-lined room with comfortable chairs and a fireplace, and Will was telling the story of his return to Master Pendrake, who was listening eagerly to all he had to say. Edweth had come in and out several times already, beaming and fussing over them, asking them repeatedly if they wanted anything to eat and bringing Rowen blankets in case she was cold. Every time the housekeeper came in or went out she glanced suspiciously at Riddle. The cat sat on the hearth rug, stretched out like a sphinx and watching all of this intently with his eerie eyes.

  Finn was with them, too: he had heard the news of the loremaster’s return and had come from Appleyard not long after Will. There was much to talk about. The loremaster wanted to hear from Will about the shadow of things to come, and everything that had happened to him on his way back to Fable.

  “The shadow must’ve been telling the truth,” Will finished, “because of what’s happened to Shade.”

  Pendrake’s keen grey eyes became distant a moment.

  “I’ve encountered these shadows of things to come,” he said. “It would be a very rare thing, if not impossible, for one of them to lie. In fact, I think they’re incapable of it.”

  “Where do they come from?” Will asked.

  “I’ve wondered that myself, but all I can tell you is that they simply turn up when they’re needed. In any case, the warning did bring you here, and with luck you’ll be able to help Shade. What’s most unusual is that the shadow crossed over into your world, Will. The Untold. I’ve never heard of such a thing happening before.”

  “What do you think that means?” Will asked.

  “I’m not sure, but clearly you’re needed here, Will, in what’s going to happen.”

  “And what is that?” Finn asked.

  The loremaster’s gaze fixed each of them in turn.

  “It seems the shadow told Will that a friend is in danger, but the truth is, we all are,” he finally said. “And we have been for a long time, as the Fair Folk have always known and as the Lady warned us. Only now the danger is much closer to home.”

  The loremaster had his own troubling story to tell, about the Deep Dark Forest drawing closer to Molly’s Arm.

  “And there’s that strange dust that trapped Balor,” Finn added when Pendrake had finished his tale. “No one in the Errantry has encountered such a thing before.”

  “No one who escaped to tell about it, at any rate,” Pendrake said.

  “What do you think it was?” Will asked.

&
nbsp; “Do you remember the Bog of Mool?” Pendrake asked Will. “The fragment of story we stumbled into there?”

  “Of course,” Will said. “The storyshard. We kept repeating the same things over and over.”

  “And we almost didn’t make it out, until we found the golem,” Rowen added.

  “Balor was trapped by something much like that, I suspect,” Pendrake said. “An un-place, a hole in the fabric of the Realm where nothing happens, where one forgets oneself and falls into a slumber like death. The Night King’s rise is changing the Realm, tearing rifts in the Weaving that holds it all together. The stronger Malabron grows, the more of these rifts and storyshards there will be.”

  “Can the rifts be sealed up again?” Finn asked. “Or is there a way to avoid them?”

  Pendrake gazed into his teacup, then looked up at Finn.

  “To both your questions I have no certain answer. I do know that the Realm can heal itself. It did so after the first war against Malabron, when the threads of the Weaving were torn asunder and many stories were broken and scattered. So maybe the rifts will repair themselves in time. But after the Great Unweaving, much of the Realm never returned to what it once was. Much was … warped beyond repair, or lost for ever. It may be the same now. As for avoiding the rifts, usually you don’t realize you’re inside one until it’s too late, like the storyshard in the bog. The best one can do is to be watchful and alert at all times.”

  While the old man spoke, Will studied him. He was much the same as Will remembered him, keen-eyed and seemingly stern, but with a smile never far away. During the conversation he kept glancing at Rowen with a look of concern. Will knew about Rowen’s link to the Stewards, though he didn’t really understand what this meant for her. He guessed now that Pendrake’s look had something to do with that, and he wondered fearfully what lay ahead for Rowen. Her eyes met his, and he knew she was thinking much the same thoughts.

  “Tomorrow I will search for the rift that trapped Balor,” Pendrake concluded. “I will try to seal it if I can. But mending a few holes in the Weaving won’t be enough to stop the Night King. We are likely to find more such dangers close to home, I’m afraid, unless the Tain Shee are victorious.”

  No one spoke after this, as if they were afraid to air the fear they all felt. Then Finn rose from his chair and excused himself, saying he still had preparations to make for the journey. Will thought that he should go with Finn, back to Appleyard, but he wasn’t ready to leave Rowen just yet, so he said nothing. Then Finn glanced at him, and Will saw in the quick smile that crossed the young man’s face that Finn understood.

  Pendrake stood and embraced Finn.

  “Go carefully, my son,” the old man said to him. “And come back safely.”

  Finn thanked the loremaster, then with a reminder to Will to be ready at dawn, he took his leave. After he’d gone, Pendrake turned to Will.

  “There is much to think about, and to do,” he said. “I must speak with the Marshal yet this evening, before I finally get a long-awaited sleep in my own bed. But … there’s something I should have told you a long time ago, Will. I’ve been thinking about when you first came to the Realm. You thought you were meant to be the hero of the story you had stumbled into, and you didn’t want to be. You didn’t think of yourself as a hero. And when you found out that you weren’t the hero, that the story was really about Rowen, do you remember what happened then?”

  Will shook his head, uncertain what the loremaster was getting at.

  “The Angel took Rowen and you went after him, and helped Moth destroy him,” the loremaster said. “If you hadn’t been there, Rowen might not be here now. You acted as a hero would.”

  Will shook his head.

  “I didn’t think about what I was doing,” he said. “I just did what I had to.”

  “Exactly. And I wanted to tell you how proud I am of you. No matter what happens, no matter what role each of us plays in the story we’re all part of now, that will never change.”

  Will lowered his head, his heart too full to speak.

  “Now, let’s you and I get to Appleyard before it gets any later,” Pendrake said, reaching for his staff.

  “I’d like to go too, Grandfather,” Rowen said.

  The old man frowned.

  “I’d prefer it if you stayed here, Rowen. The toyshop is really the safest place for you to be.”

  A spasm of anger crossed Rowen’s face for the briefest moment.

  “You keep telling me that,” she said, “but you won’t say why.”

  “I will explain everything when there’s time for it,” Pendrake said, then he sighed and tapped his staff once on the floor. “Very well, then. Get your cloak.”

  While the loremaster went to speak with Lord Caliburn in his chambers, Will and Rowen climbed the hill above the Gathering House. The path of flat stones wound up through the groves of apple trees to a bare summit, where a beacon tower stood. Along the rim of the hill, facing towards the city, lay the sunken, moss-covered remains of what might have been a wall or the ancient foundation of a building.

  The lighted windows and streetlamps of the city glimmered below them in the dusk. Further away, a few scattered lights from farmhouses shone, like the lights of ships on a dark sea. Beyond was a dim immensity. Will knew he and Rowen were in the well-defended city of Fable, in the heart of the Bourne, but he felt as if they were standing on an exposed rock before the whole vast, unknown Realm.

  “So I guess I’ve caught up with you in age,” Rowen said.

  Will nodded, though he was thinking that she had always seemed older than him, not in years but in other ways.

  “And now you’re a legend,” she said with a smile. “The great—”

  “Please don’t say it,” Will muttered, and they both laughed.

  “It’s so strange,” Rowen said after a moment. “We’ve been apart for a year, but for both of us it was only a few days. Well, for you it was. For me it seemed that way.”

  “It was a long few days for me,” Will said, and before he knew what he was doing he plunged on. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you, about where you were and what might be happening to you.”

  He fell silent and looked away. Again he had not said everything he really wanted to. He would have to be someone else, someone with a gift for words, to do that. And what if he was just fooling himself that she thought of him as more than a friend? What if he told her how he really felt and she looked at him with pity, or even laughed at him? It was better this way, better that she didn’t know. Then he wouldn’t lose her.

  “I thought about you, too,” Rowen said, after a long silence. “I was hoping you’d be here when I came back to Fable. If I’m going to be a loremaster, there’s something I have to do. Something I can only do here, and I’m … I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  He listened, frowning with concentration while she told him what she had learned about the Weaving, and how she would have to go there, wherever there was, as part of her training to become a loremaster. Will nodded, but didn’t say anything. He knew that she had her grandfather’s gift, but what that meant was mostly a mystery to him. He only knew she was going on a journey, too, though he didn’t understand where or how.

  “Is this Weaving dangerous?” he finally asked.

  “I don’t really know. Grandfather talks about it as if it is. But he won’t say much.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t go, then.”

  To his surprise she turned suddenly and walked away from him. After a few steps she stopped.

  “As if I have a choice,” she said bitterly. Then she sighed and turned to him again.

  “On our journey home I had a frightening dream,” she said. “That was probably about the same time you came to the Realm.”

  “What happened in the dream?”

  “I was standing high up, in a place like this,” she said, looking out at the city below them, “and Fable was burning. And there were these silent figures all around, like kn
ights in armour, but their helmets had no eye-slits, no visors. They were just blank masks.”

  She hesitated, deciding she couldn’t tell him how one of the knights or whatever they were had knelt before her. That had terrified her more than anything.

  “One of them took off its mask and there was nothing inside,” she went on. “I tried to run away but I couldn’t, and then you were there with me. You said something to me.”

  “What did I say?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “I know what I said to you.”

  Rowen stared at him.

  “You do?”

  “I told you it was just a dream and not to worry.”

  Rowen laughed, then grew serious again.

  “I used to read Grandfather’s books and look at his maps and wish I could be part of all those stories out there. Now I wish things could just go back to the way they were. Or I could go back to the way I was: not knowing anything about the Night King, or the Stewards, or any of it. I thought Fable wasn’t really part of the world. I thought nothing would ever happen here.”

  Rowen sat on the low moss-covered wall at the brow of the hill and after a moment Will sat down beside her. Just being here with her, close to her, filled him with happiness and fear and the desire to protect her. He wanted so much to keep her safe, even from her own destiny as a loremaster, which he feared might take her further from him than he could ever follow. Here on this windswept hilltop all the darkness and threat of the Realm seemed to be gathering around them and his heart went cold with dread and hopelessness. How could someone like him protect her from a whole world?

  Rowen shivered, as if his fear had passed to her. Then she stirred against him and slid her arm through his. Their hands met and their fingers entwined. Will felt his heart begin to beat again, as if her touch had brought him back to life. He knew then that she felt for him what he did for her, and all he wanted from this moment on was never to be parted from her.