The Fathomless Fire

by Thomas Wharton

  “But how did you know about us?” Rowen asked. “How did you know that Fable was in danger?”

  When I healed your wound, a memory awoke in me. Long ago it was foretold that I would leave my eternal home to protect a city of mortal folk I had never heard of. I would forsake the ice for one such as you, a mortal child whose fate and that of all the world were bound together.

  “Grandmother’s message,” Rowen murmured. “It came to you, too.”

  I am here to do your bidding, granddaughter of the keeper of stories, with what strength remains to me. Speak, and command me.

  Rowen hesitated. Her first impulse was to ask Stonegrinder if he would drive Ammon Brax from the toyshop. Still shaken by the dragon’s presence, she had no doubt that even in his weakened state such a task would be a trifling matter for him. But it was that sense, the awe she felt for this ancient, powerful being, that kept her from asking such a thing. Dealing with Brax would have to be her own concern. There was something else, something only the dragon could help her with.

  “I need to find someone,” she said, her mind made up. “My friend, Will Lightfoot, of the Untold. You met him when we came to the ice, when you saved us from the Nightbane.”

  I remember him.

  “He’s far away. I don’t know where, but I need to find him quickly.”

  You have something with you that can help you find him. Something of the Fair Folk. And I can bring you to where he is.

  Rowen took out the mirror shard. She looked into it, saw her own face.

  “Is it true?” she said. “How do I use it?”

  Carry it with you, and I will carry you. The shard will seek out its other half.

  The ground lurched under her feet and she gasped and flailed her arms, afraid she was about to fall. But somehow the flurrying snow held her and she did not fall. She felt herself held, buoyed up, and after a moment she was able to hold out her arms for Riddle, who sprang into them and nestled tightly against her. Then they were rising from the ground, lifted on a swirling cloud of snow.

  Rest now, mortal child, the dragon’s voice said. You will need all of your strength for the task that lies ahead.

  And in the midst of a white storm that howled in her ears as she rose into the sky, Rowen felt herself cradled, safe and warm.

  … without stitch or seam

  in the space of a breath

  one tale becomes another…

  – The Kantar

  MOON, THE DREAMWALKER’S DAUGHTER, was the first to see them coming.

  After Hawk and the others had been taken, her father returned to his lodge. He had walked into the Dream Country. She sat and waited alone while he walked there, in the place where she could not go. When he came back at last, after a long time, he told her they would leave the camp now and go in search of the rest of their people.

  “I have seen your brother,” he told her. “I have spoken to him. He knows he should not look for us here.”

  She hadn’t wanted to leave in case Lightfoot and his friends brought Hawk back.

  “He is with Lightfoot,” her father said. “We will go to our people and Lightfoot will find us there.”

  She knew then for certain that this would happen. She knew that what her father saw in the Dream Country was as true as the earth under her feet.

  So they had set out walking across the plain, and the sun had crossed the sky and gone down. Then they had rested for a while and when the sun returned they walked on. The sun climbed to the top of the sky and seemed to halt there. The dry grass hissed in the hot wind and once Moon saw a snake slither away under a stone. Nothing that lived wished to be out under the eye of the sun, but her father walked on and she followed. They had a little water in a skin and when it was gone her father led her through a narrow canyon of red rock, where they came upon a spring trickling into a small pool. It was so shallow she could see the colours of the smooth stones on the bottom. There was only enough for them to quench their thirst and refill the water skin.

  That day they found Lightfoot’s horse and those of the men who had come with him. The horses did not shy away when her father approached them, and after he had spoken to them in their own language they had followed him. When the sun was low again in the west they had come to the rim of a wide valley, and there on the flats below were trees and the silver ribbon of a river and the white lodges of their people. They climbed down into the valley and walked into the circle of the lodges. The people came hurrying to greet them. They were home.

  Then Moon had eaten well for the first time in days, and that evening she had been given a warm robe to sleep in, but she hadn’t slept. She’d stayed awake that night and before dawn she had climbed to the edge of the valley and stayed there, watching the northern sky, which was starry and cloudless.

  That was why she was the first to hear the distant rumble of thunder and the first to see the great bird coming on the wind. All the dogs in camp barked wildly and the people came running out of their lodges with terrified faces as she ran to warn her father. He joined her outside and turned his face to the north and put his hand on her shoulder and she had known that this time there was nothing to fear.

  It was Lightfoot returning, as her father had dreamed. He was returning her brother to his people, and with him the rain.

  Will stood at the prow of the ship with Shade and Hawk, the Horse Folk boy, gazing in awe at the earth as it unrolled beneath them. The skiff was much smaller than the other skyship he’d been on, the one that had taken him to the fortress, and when the wind struck it, the little ship was buffeted and pitched about like a boat tumbling over rapids. Will hung on to the rail, knowing he should be exhausted by now but unable to rest, as Balor had urged him to. The wildman was hunched on a thwart in the middle of the ship, looking pale and unwell. He was not finding the ride in this smaller vessel to his liking. At the stern, Yates stood in his oilcloth cloak, his hand on the iron tiller of the ship. Some colour had returned to his face, and his eyes gleamed. Everything about him spoke of a man who was sailing from bondage into freedom.

  Will didn’t fully understand how the skyship stayed aloft. He knew there was some kind of furnace set into the hull that contained gaal. When Yates wanted the ship to rise, he worked a foot-treadle beneath the tiller that fed into a bellows to make the gaal burn hotter. Another treadle cut off the air, to cool the gaal and make the ship descend. Eventually the fever iron would burn itself out, and then the ship would begin to fall out of the sky. Will hoped that would not be for a long time yet.

  They had been sailing for hours through a day and a night, out of the ghostlands and across the empty windswept plains, leaving the marching army of faceless soldiers far behind. The moon had appeared, pale and metallic in a haze of cloud, and in its light the earth was silvered and dreamlike. And even then, when the wind died down and the ship’s motion had lulled Hawk into a fitful sleep, Will’s eyes refused to close. He stood with Shade at the ship’s prow, and it seemed to him that he was waiting for something to appear out of the dark, though he didn’t know what it was. He was also troubled about Shade, and glanced at the wolf often, almost certain he was not imagining the alarming change he found in his friend. It seemed to him that Shade had grown larger since they’d come to Corr Madoc’s fortress. His grey fur looked darker, too, and more bristled, as if he was tensed constantly against unseen threats. Will guessed that all of this had something to do with the gaal Shade had been given, but he said nothing about his concerns, hoping that as the fortress was left behind the changes in the wolf would fade.

  Then day had come, and the sun flooded across the plains and revealed a different world. They passed over deep winding canyons of banded reddish rock, and wide, treeless uplands dotted with huge boulders, as if giants had smashed a mountain to bits and scattered the pieces. There was water, too, at least a little, as Will realized when he saw a few pools dotting the landscape and flashing like coins in the sun. Then Shade’s keen eyes had spotted a small herd of dark, shagg
y-coated animals gathered in a narrow, shaded canyon.

  “The wisent,” Hawk had cried, clinging to the rail and watching the animals until they were out of sight.

  Buffalo, Will thought to himself in awe.

  “They’re not all gone,” the boy had said to Will, his eyes shining. “I will remember this place. I will bring the hunters here.”

  From that point on he wouldn’t leave the ship’s prow but stayed there, tirelessly scanning the earth below.

  Finally he gave a great shout and pointed.

  “There!” he cried. “My people are there. Where Father told me they would be.”

  A wide valley opened before them, with the wrinkled seam of a nearly-dry riverbed running through it. On the far bank of the riverbed, close to a grove of poplars, stood a ring of many gleaming white Horse Folk lodges. By easing off the treadle and working the rigging, Yates brought the ship lower and lower until it was hovering just above the ground, at the top of a gentle rise above the Horse Folk village.

  Yates uncoiled a rope ladder from the side, and Will climbed down with Hawk.

  “Lightfoot,” Hawk said, and he threw his arms around Will. Will hugged him back.

  “They call me Lightfoot,” Will said, “but that’s you, Hawk. You ran all the way from your camp to find us and bring us back. That’s something I wouldn’t have been able to do. And now you can help your people. You can lead them to safety.”

  “I am not Lightfoot,” Hawk said.

  “You will need to be. Those warriors without faces are coming. If they keep on the way they’re going, Balor says they will pass through this valley. You and your people mustn’t stay here.”

  The boy nodded, then turned away. Will watched him walk a short distance and then break into a run down the slope. Several figures came from the circle of lodges, walking quickly towards him. Among them Will saw Hawk’s sister, Moon, leading their father. With an ache in his heart he thought of Jess and Dad.

  Then he saw the horses – Cutter and the others – on the edge of the Horse Folk herd. A young man had a rope halter around Cutter’s neck.

  “Should we take the horses back to Fable with us?” Will called up to Yates.

  “I advise against it,” Yates said. “Horses don’t do well on the flying ships, and I doubt that we have enough gaal left to reach the Bourne anyway. But don’t worry. The horses will be well looked after among these folk.”

  Will turned back to see that Hawk had reached his father and his sister. And he took another look at Cutter. Goodbye, he said under his breath.

  Will climbed back into the cloudship and rejoined Shade. The ship rose again and as it sailed out of the valley, Will looked back and saw a towering column of dark cloud coming from the north, dragging a long grey curtain of rain. With relief and gratitude he saw that the cloud would sweep across the valley, filling the dry river, and fall upon the camp of the Horse Folk.

  Will thought of his mother then, and wondered what she would think of the ending he had found to Lightfoot’s story.

  They travelled through the rest of that day until evening began to descend and the shadow of the sail stretched out like a wing across the plain. Then a wind rose from the west, and icy rain slashed across the ship’s deck. While they crouched in the stern, out of the wind, Will saw daylight between the planks and heard them rattling as the wind buffeted the hull.

  “The skiff is breaking apart,” Yates said, when Will showed him what he had found. “I’ve seen this before, when we take the ships out onto the plains, far from the ghostlands. It may be that the magic the dwarves use in the crafting of these vessels loses its power over long distances. Whatever the reason, I can barely control her any more. She’s beginning to drift.”

  “How close are we to the Bourne?” Will asked.

  They looked over the side and studied the landscape. To the south, through the rain and the falling gloom, Will could just make out a dim line of hills. On one hilltop he could see the faint suggestion of towers and battlements.

  “I think those are the outer hills of the Little Kingdoms,” Balor said, shaking the rain out of his eyes. “If so we’re not far now, less than two days’ march from Annen Bawn. If you can keep this flying bathtub up in the air a little longer, Yates, we should be able to land it right on their doorstep.”

  But Yates was now struggling to steer the collapsing ship where he wanted it to go. They all watched in frustration as they were shoved and bullied eastwards by the wind, away from the hills, until at last they could no longer see the towers.

  “If we drift much further in this direction,” Balor said, “we’ll be over the Screaming Wastes. We don’t want to touch down there, believe me.”

  “Why not?” Will asked.

  “Unpleasant things live there. Things that hunt at night and have lots of sharp teeth.”

  Without thinking Will touched the hilt of the sword at his side. Corr had returned their weapons to them, but the grim look in Balor’s eyes told him they would be of little use.

  “I should bring us down now, then,” Yates said. “While I still have some say in what kind of landing we make.”

  As it turned out, there was little else he could do. The wind had grown stronger and began to tug at the sail so fiercely he could barely control it and was forced to furl it most of the way, which started the skiff on a sudden descent. The hull groaned and shuddered as they rode down through the churning air, and Will wondered whether at any moment the bottom would give way underneath them. The tiller had become useless, too, and as they dropped, they were nudged mile by mile further east by the wind. The land beneath them grew stony and barren. Jagged pinnacles of rock rushed all too closely beneath them.

  “The Wastes,” Balor said with a scowl. “We were closer than I thought. The ship’s going to land right smack in the middle of them.”

  “The gaal is burned out,” Yates cried. “We’re going to hit the ground hard. Hang on.”

  The ship was dropping faster now, plunging through the air like a falling arrow. Will clung to Shade, who seemed best able to stay balanced against the pitch and roll of the deck. The wolf planted his feet firmly against the shuddering planks and lowered his head. Then he raised it again.

  “Will Lightfoot,” he said, “you are glowing.”

  Will glanced down at his breast pocket. There was a white light pulsing through the fabric. For an instant he had no idea what this could be, then he knew and pulled out the mirror shard. Peering into the glass he saw his own reflection as a vague shape, and behind it a small but bright star shining in the dark.

  “What is it, Will Lightfoot?” Shade asked.

  Will didn’t answer. He turned and searched for the star in the clouded night sky. He found it at once, a glimmering pinpoint in the darkness, the only star to be seen. He watched as it grew brighter and larger, and then suddenly it was gone. The dark had filled with whirling flakes of snow, like a moving, flurrying wall of white.

  Then Will noticed that the ship had stopped shuddering. All was so still and quiet amid the swirling, streaming snow that he couldn’t tell if they were still falling through the air or had already landed. And the wind had dropped from a shriek to a whisper.

  Will climbed to his feet, the planks creaking softly under him, and Balor and Yates did likewise.

  “What is this now?” the wildman groaned.

  “I think,” Will said, gripping the mirror shard tightly, “it’s a rescue.”

  He looked towards the bow of the skiff. Out of the streaming white wall a small figure in a red cloak appeared, stepped down lightly onto the deck, and pulled back the cloak’s hood. It was Rowen.

  Will hurried to her. They took each other’s hands. Rowen’s face was so pale and careworn that he was startled and frightened, but her eyes lit up with happiness as she looked into his.

  “I found you,” she said.

  Blue Hill, the real Blue Hill, was a day’s walk north-east of the Bourne. The little thatched cottage was half buried
in tall grass. Mice ran in and out of the cracks in the walls. Even so, Rowen couldn’t help hoping her grandmother would suddenly appear to greet them.

  Whitewing Stonegrinder had set the skiff down in the unmown meadow at the edge of the woods, his strength almost exhausted, and they all climbed out and took what shelter they could find in the cold, dusty cottage. Then the dragon, or the snowstorm, as he appeared to be, had flown to the top of the hill and settled there, a blanket of shining white against the stars. Stonegrinder spoke once more, and this time not only Rowen but all of them heard his voice like a deep drumming within them. The dragon told them that he must sleep for a time, but he would wake again when he was needed.

  The fireplace was cleared of the straw and earth that had filled it over the years, and soon a fire was burning and they were huddled around it, warming themselves and sipping the medicinal tea brewed from the herb the doctor had given Balor. Only as the drink warmed him and calmed his racing thoughts did Will finally realize how powerfully the gaal had been affecting him. He felt his exhaustion now, but it was a true feeling, his body’s own wisdom telling him it was time to rest and restore himself. He felt a great weariness, and sadness. While they were still in the skiff Rowen had told Will what had happened to her grandfather, and now he sat and looked into the fire with a heavy heart.

  A friend will fall, the shadow of things to come had told him. What had the old man been if not one of Will’s best and most trusted friends? Now that he was gone Will understood how much his hope and courage relied on knowing the loremaster was there, and believing he always would be.

  Will sensed that Rowen had more to tell him but she was holding back in the presence of Yates and the wildman, neither of whom she knew. For his part Yates said very little. He seemed stunned by the strangeness of their rescue, or by the fact that he was back in his own country again after so long. Whatever the reason, he soon left the fire and stood by the door, looking out with bright, watchful eyes. It was clear he could hardly wait to set off again, to find whatever friends and family had been waiting and hoping all these years for his return.