The Fathomless Fire

by Thomas Wharton

  No one spoke for a while. Then Pendrake rose and put his hand on Freya’s.

  “It was brave of you to come all this way, my dear,” he said quietly. “If I could, I’d return with you to Skald and speak with Stonegrinder myself. But that’s not possible now.”

  “I know, Father Nicholas. You’re needed here.”

  “Yes, and something tells me, Freya, you’re not planning to go home straight away either. Thorne was right about one thing: you didn’t really need an armed band to deliver this message.”

  Freya took a deep breath. She seemed to be preparing for the loremaster’s objections.

  “It’s true,” she said. “We mean to stay as long as we’re needed.”

  Pendrake sighed heavily.

  “You should be with your family at such a time, Freya.”

  “We Skaldings owe you our freedom, Father Nicholas. If Fable is in danger we’re here to stand with you, whatever comes.”

  Rowen could see that her grandfather was not pleased, but the look on Freya’s face was so determined that he refrained from speaking his mind.

  Now that she had brought the dragon’s message, Freya was eager to return to her companions. Rowen saw her to the door. When she returned to the library, she found Pendrake donning his cloak.

  “Grandfather?” Rowen said.

  “I must speak to the Marshal about Freya’s news,” Pendrake said distractedly. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Why would the dragon say what he did to Freya? What would I need him for?”

  Pendrake turned to her, and to her alarm she saw that his face looked much older, as if weighed down with a great sorrow.

  “Rowen, if anything happens,” he began haltingly, “if anything happens and I’m not with you…”

  “Grandfather?”

  “If I’m not with you any more, find Will. Stay close to him.”

  Rowen had never heard her grandfather speak like this before, with such sadness and urgency at the same time. She searched his face fearfully.

  “What do you mean, if you’re not with me any more? What are you saying?”

  Pendrake placed a hand on her shoulder.

  “I am so proud of you, Rowen,” he said, and she felt tears sting her eyes. After all he had said to her lately about her gifts and the threat to the Bourne, of all the grim news and shadowy rumours they’d heard, somehow the way he was talking now frightened her more than anything.

  “How can I…” she began, choking back her fear, “What if Will is miles away?”

  “You’ll find a way,” Pendrake said. “I know you will.”

  He took up his staff and hurried from the toyshop, and Rowen sat down heavily in the chair he had just left. After a few moments Riddle slunk in cautiously and curled up at her feet. She reached down to scratch him absently behind the ears, hardly aware of what she was doing. Then she had a sudden thought, and took out the mirror shard again. She looked at the reflection of her face, saw the fear in her own eyes. Was everyone going to leave her? She clutched the mirror shard tightly until she felt it cut into her palm.

  “Nothing’s going to happen,” she said under her breath. “Nothing.”

  In the main square of Fable, a figure stood alone and still amid the hurrying traffic of a busy day. The figure was dressed in the cloak and hood of a knight-errant, and so it was a familiar sight to most, and for that reason no one paid it much attention.

  Getting inside the city had been difficult. The thrawl had been turned away at the gates, and so had to resort to a different method of entry. At night, outside the walls, it had unravelled itself, emptied itself of all the living things it had ingested to give its shape solidity, movement and speech. Then as a ragged veil of the finest gossamer it had let the night breeze catch it and lift it over the walls and into the sleeping city.

  From there it had been a matter of regaining its shape. That had not been so difficult. There were many bodies here that would do. It had found one quickly and taken it with hardly a struggle. No one had heard the young man wail his own name as it was torn from him, along with all his memories and his flesh. Gared Bamble.

  Once the thrawl had regained a form in which it could move, it had traced the thread of the prey to this place, the city square. She had been here, Rowen of Blue Hill. Then her thread had vanished again somehow, but the thrawl still felt her presence in the traces she had left among the threads of all these other mortal creatures. Her trail wound away through these busy streets and then … there was only rain. But she was here, somewhere.

  The thrawl stirred and began to move. It could spin its own invisible threads, too, and it would walk through this unsuspecting city and let threads unravel from itself, threads that would find other threads, those that belonged to anyone the girl knew.

  Earth said to Sun, Let me lie here and sleep a while, but do not forget to wake me. But Sun saw how beautiful Earth was as she slept, and he wished only to gaze at her loveliness, so he did not wake her. And Earth slept on, and her dreams became the grass and the stones and the animals.

  – Legends of the Horse Folk

  WILL HACKED AT THE WALL of reeds in front of him until he could no longer lift his arm. He dropped to his knees in the wet earth, panting and struggling to hold back tears. He had led his friends into this place and it had swallowed them alive. He couldn’t reach them, and if he stayed here any longer, he was sure to be swallowed up too. No one would ever find out what had happened to him or his companions. And Shade, if he wasn’t already dead, might be dying even now. He would never see the wolf again, or his family, or Rowen.

  He couldn’t give in.

  Will jabbed his sword into the ground and used it to push himself up off his knees. With a gasp of effort he lifted his blade over his head.

  He paused. He could hear a thrashing sound, faint but growing louder, as if something large was coming straight towards him. With his sword held before him he took a step back.

  There was a terrible roar that froze Will’s blood, then Balor burst through the green wall, his face contorted and nearly purple with furious effort as he tugged his terrified horse along after him. The wildman’s mane of dark hair was matted down with sweat and he was dragging thick braids of reeds twined around his arms and legs that he must have torn out by the roots to free himself.

  “We told you to keep going,” he bellowed at Will.

  “I’ve found the way out,” Will said. “It’s not far.”

  “The way out?”

  Finn and the doctor appeared in Balor’s wake with their horses. Both of them were frantically hacking at reeds that were clutching at their arms and legs.

  “It took my sword,” the doctor said numbly when he saw Will, “right out of my hand.”

  “Let’s get out of here while we still can,” Finn said, gasping for breath. There was a hissing and rustling and they all looked back the way they had come, to see that the reeds were already gathering and closing in, sealing up the wide swathe that Balor had made. They hurried on as quickly as they could, following Will along what remained of his own narrower trail.

  A few moments later they had brushed aside the last of the reeds and stumbled out into bright sunlight, blinking and shielding their eyes.

  They were standing at the bottom of a kind of grassy hollow, under a cloudless sky of brilliant blue. Cutter stood nearby, calmly munching the grass. He raised his head when they appeared and gave a whinny of greeting. Stunned and speechless, they all looked back. The wall of reeds stood over them, motionless and silent, looking as though it had never been disturbed by their passage. No one spoke while they plucked the last remaining stalks and tendrils off themselves and the horses.

  “So that was a knot-path,” Alazar said shakily, straightening his spectacles. “Tell me, Will, are they always so welcoming to travellers?”

  “I didn’t know that would happen,” he muttered as he took Cutter’s reins. “I’m sorry.”

  “No one’s blaming you, Will,” Fi
nn said. “The knot-paths must be changing along with everything else in the Realm. Darkening and becoming treacherous, as Master Pendrake told us. We escaped unharmed, that’s all that matters. Now let’s find out where we’ve come to.”

  Wearily they mounted their horses again and climbed the gentle slope to the rim of the bowl. Once they’d reached the crest, before them stretched a vast treeless land covered in yellow grass, rippling and whispering in the wind.

  “The Great Plain,” Finn said. “You did it, Will.”

  The wind had an icy bite that stung Will’s eyes to tears. Other than the grass in the wind, nothing moved under the blazing eye of the sun. A solitary bird, perhaps a hawk, hung in the sky as if it, too, was not moving.

  “There’s just one problem,” the doctor said. “Balor, do you recognize this place?”

  The wildman turned this way and that in his saddle. His brow knotted and he frowned.

  “Are we lost?” Will asked.

  “We’re on the Great Plain, that much I’m sure of, and we still know which way is north,” Finn said, squinting up at the sun. “But other than that…”

  “I can just make out a faint line of hills, or maybe mountains,” Balor said with a grimace of effort, shading his eyes. Will followed his gaze but couldn’t see what he was looking at.

  “Since that way is north, those could be the Sand Hills,” Alazar said.

  “Too far to say for sure,” Balor muttered, shaking his head.

  “Well, clearly we can’t go back the way we came,” Alazar said. “So now what?”

  “You were certain about this path, Will,” Finn said. “Let’s assume those are the Sand Hills. If we head towards them, we should come to the Wandering River eventually. From there we can get our bearings.”

  Will nodded. He looked ahead at the empty vastness before them and hoped that he had been right, that Shade was out here somewhere, not far away.

  They rode hard across the plain into the evening, and to Will’s surprise it was not the flat immensity he had expected. The land rose to bare knolls and plunged into hollows, and after a while he felt as if they were riding the immense waves of a grassy ocean. The line of hills Balor had seen grew steadily on the horizon, until Will could see them clearly in the slanting light of sunset. They were round with bare grassy flanks and stony summits. From the top of the furthest and highest of the hills, four jagged spurs of rock jutted into the sky

  “Those are not the Sand Hills,” Balor said decisively, with a quick sideways glance at Will. “I don’t recognize them.”

  Finn turned in his saddle and gazed long in every direction.

  “Neither do I,” he said at last. “I don’t know where we are.”

  “I do,” Will said.

  They all turned and stared at him.

  “I’ve been here before,” Will said, shifting uneasily in his saddle. “Sort of. When I was little, my mother used to tell me stories about a boy hero. On one of his adventures he came to a place like this. The Hill of the Teeth.”

  They were still staring at him.

  “You’re saying we’re in this story your mother told you?” Balor said.

  “I don’t know,” Will said. “If the Realm is the world of Story, then couldn’t it be possible? But there’s something else, something more important. Mimling said Shade had been burned by lightning, and in the story, Captain Stormcloud sent his Lightning Warriors to battle the hero. I don’t know if it means anything, but I’ve been thinking about that story ever since I first heard what happened to Shade.”

  He broke off, suddenly aware that what he was saying sounded far-fetched even to him. He glanced up at the hills. The sky to the north of them was dark with bruise-coloured clouds.

  “There didn’t happen to be a talking wolf in this story your mother told you,” Balor said. “A wolf rescued by a small band of brave and incredibly handsome knights?”

  “No,” Will said. “Nothing like that.”

  “Well, it must just be a coincidence,” Balor huffed. “We shouldn’t have come here in the first place. Now what do we do?”

  Finn cleared his throat.

  “It will be dark soon and we need to find shelter,” he said. “It looks as if a rainstorm is coming this way. There’s clearly more you need to tell us, Will.”

  After a short ride they came to the edge of a narrow stony gully. A scattering of stunted willows and spiny bushes grew at the bottom. There had probably been a stream here once, but the floor of the gully was dry now, except for a few shallow pools fringed with sparse grass. They dismounted, led the horses down a slope of crumbling rock and found a place to camp out of the wind, under a thicket of willows. Will hurriedly gathered enough sticks to make a small fire and they ate a quick meal. From time to time they heard a rumble of far-off thunder. The stars were soon blotted out by thick clouds, and though no rain fell, they all felt a heaviness in the air.

  “So, Will,” Balor said when they’d finished eating. “Why don’t you tell us this tale about the boy hero. After all, if we are in it now, we should find out what might be in store for us.”

  Will took a deep breath. He wasn’t sure he’d ever told a story to anyone other than Jess, but he had to try. Not only for the others, but for himself, too, so he could sort out whether or not he was right about what he suspected. He looked up for a moment, gathering his thoughts. Through a brief gap in the clouds he saw a few faint stars. To his own surprise it was not his mother’s story that came to mind, it was the sight of his father on the back porch with the light behind him. A lump rose in his throat.

  “There was this boy,” he began quickly, “called Lightfoot.”

  “A good name for a hero,” Balor said.

  “He had a pony called Great Heart, and they rode everywhere together, having adventures. Once, Lightfoot came to the great ocean of grass, but it was dry and dying because there was no rain. Captain Stormcloud had it all bottled in his mountain at the end of the world. So Lightfoot set out to steal back the rain. On the way he came to a village of the plains people, who lived in lodges made of animal skins and hunted buffalo, and an old man—”

  “What is buffalo?” Balor asked.

  “Well, they’re sort of like cattle, but with thick shaggy coats and bigger heads. A long time ago they lived in great herds on the plains. So Lightfoot came to the village and an old man—”

  “Ah, I know what you mean,” Balor exclaimed. “The wisent, we call them. You’re right, there are a lot of them. You can stand in one place and watch the same herd passing for days. But go on, please.”

  Will nodded, for the first time experiencing the storyteller’s annoyance at being interrupted by those who had asked for a tale in the first place.

  “An old man told Lightfoot how to find Stormcloud’s fortress,” Will went on. “If he rode north he would come to the Hill of the Teeth. And beyond the hill were the barren lands. That’s where he would find the—”

  “This Lightfoot, was he a knight-errant?” Balor asked.

  “Well, in a way, I suppose. He was the one who always solved the problem or fought the monsters or whatever had to be done.”

  “Then I can see where you got your name, Will,” Balor said with a grin. “Though I have to say I’ve never come across this place in all my travels. I’ve never heard of this Captain Stormcloud.”

  “Anyway,” Will continued, determined to get through his story now that he’d started, “the old man said there would be many perils on the road through the barren lands. And if Captain Stormcloud discovered that Lightfoot had set foot in his domain, he would send his terrible Lightning Warriors to kill him. So Lightfoot—”

  “This is getting better and better,” Balor said. “These Lightning Warriors sound like a friendly lot.”

  Will bit his lip to keep from telling the wildman to shut up. He glanced at the doctor, who was stifling a smile.

  “So Lightfoot saddled Great Heart and set out for the barren lands. He had many adventures along the way.�
�� Will paused, taking a deep breath. “Many adventures. It took a long time to tell the story and I don’t remember all of it. Lightfoot met a grizzly bear at one point, who carried him on his back and fought for him against a stone giant.”

  “Grizzly bear?” Balor asked.

  “A large brown bear, with a hump on its back. Very powerful, and bad-tempered.”

  “I believe I’ve seen one of those, in the Shining Mountains,” the doctor said eagerly. “Magnificent creatures.”

  “Quiet, ’Zar,” Balor said. “Let Will get on with his story.”

  The doctor sighed and rolled his eyes.

  “Why don’t you tell us what happened when the boy came to Captain Stormcloud’s fortress,” Finn said, with a pointed glance at the wildman.

  Will was about to continue when a flash of lightning seared the darkness. A crack of thunder followed swiftly after. They all looked up, but from where they sat at the bottom of the gully they could see nothing but the dark sky overhead.

  “Lightfoot rode into the barren lands—” Will began, then something made him pause. He looked up again at the rim of the gully, and a moment later another flash of lightning illuminated the night. This time, he saw a shape above them. A small figure crouching at the top of the bank.

  The others had seen it, too. They leapt to their feet. Balor drew his sword, but Finn held up a hand, and he lowered it. Finn plucked a stick out of the fire and held it over his head.

  “We won’t harm you,” he said.

  A moment later, a boy stepped into the light from Finn’s makeshift torch. He looked to be a year or two younger than Will. He was naked to the waist, his upper body and face painted with yellow and ochre streaks. He took a couple of steps down the side of the bank then halted suddenly, holding out a wooden spear in front of him. Will could see the spearpoint trembling.

  “Who are you?” Finn said.

  The boy opened his mouth to speak, then his eyes rolled back in his head. Before anyone could reach him, the boy’s knees buckled and he tumbled down the bank and lay still at their feet.