The Fathomless Fire (18 page)

He seemed about to say more, then he paused and peered up into the blue.

“What is it?” Rowen asked. She followed his gaze, and stifled a gasp.

The sky was falling.

The bright blue dome was cracking, breaking away in large and small fragments, like bits of eggshell, which whirled and fell through the darkening air. And behind the blue was the starless black of night. The earth beneath her began to tremble and when she looked down she saw small round stones rising everywhere among the grass, like goose bumps on skin.

“What’s happening to…” she began, but when she looked again at where he had been, her grandfather was gone.

A shadow fell over the bright meadow, like an eclipse of the sun. Rowen felt the air chill, as if she had just stepped into cold water. Everywhere bits of blue sky were plummeting to the earth, and as they neared it their colour faded to a dark grey and they thickened, taking on solidity and depth. They were becoming slabs of stone, and as they reached the earth they began to pile up on one another, making walls that rose higher and higher. Then the walls grew windows and doors, and streetlamps sprang up one after another beside these sudden buildings like swiftly growing ferns. Rowen looked down and saw that the meadow had been paved over with cobblestones.

She was alone on a deserted street, with the glass slipper in her hand. From somewhere far off a bell began to toll. And then she was running, though she didn’t know why, or from what.

W
ILL AND HIS COMPANIONS
rode hard that first day, north from Fable along the high road that wound up through wooded hills. They passed through several villages, but Finn only let them stop once briefly, for a quick noonday meal and to water the horses. Cutter was a steady and reliable mount, as Arden the groom had said, and during the ride Will lost any illusions he might have entertained about who was really in charge. He had quickly given up trying to control the horse’s movements and had merely hung on while Cutter followed Finn’s horse. As long as they found Shade in time, it didn’t matter to him how poor a figure he cut in the saddle.

At dusk on the second day of their ride they reached the citadel of Annen Bawn, the Errantry outpost on the northern border of the Bourne. The rocky valley they had been riding through for the last hour narrowed suddenly, and sheer cliffs rose on either side. A narrow, stony stream rushed through the middle of the valley, beside the road. Up ahead, Will saw what at first he took to be a natural arch of stone that crossed from one side of the valley to the other. As they approached, he saw that the arch was in fact a constructed thing, made of huge blocks of hewn stone. This was Annen Bawn itself, he realized. He could see lights in windows and on high ramparts. Below, on the level of the road, a wall ran from one base of the arch to the other, leaving a gateway that the road went through. A portcullis hung above, that could be lowered to seal off the gateway when needed. There were winches and stacked timbers on either side, which suggested to Will that the wall and the portcullis were new additions to the citadel’s defences and had probably just been finished.

As they approached Annen Bawn a horn blew somewhere above them, and a cloaked sentry stepped out of the roadside shadows with a lantern and ordered them to halt. Finn handed him the letter of commission from Lord Caliburn. The sentry, an older man with a scarred face, took it and read it by the light of his lantern. When he was finished, he looked up at Finn. His eyes seemed to have gone cold.

“Your party may stay the night,” he said without expression. “We have fodder and stabling for your horses.”

“That won’t be required,” Finn said stiffly. “We’ll be riding further tonight.”

The sentry nodded and stepped aside to let them pass. As eager as he was to find Shade, Will’s heart sank. They wouldn’t be stopping at the citadel. He was bone-weary and sore, and wondered how much longer he’d be able to stay in the saddle before he toppled over from exhaustion. But Finn said nothing to him or the others. He just spurred his horse and rode on ahead.

As they followed him, Will glanced at Balor with a questioning look.

“It’s about his brother, Corr,” the wildman said in a low voice. He glanced at Finn, who hadn’t slowed his pace and was now some distance ahead of them. Then he sighed and turned to Will.

“I don’t know how much you’ve heard about Corr Madoc.”

“Not much. Just what Finn told me.”

“Even as a boy, Corr was strong, and skilled at fighting. It seemed he would be accepted into the Errantry as a matter of course, but it didn’t happen. He went to Appleyard to try out as an apprentice, but a few days later he was sent home. It turned out he’d nearly killed another boy on the practice grounds. Then, when he was old enough, he formed his own band of mounted fighters, and trained them himself, to protect the outlying farms and villages from Nightbane raids. He claimed the Errantry only cared about protecting Fable. He called himself the protector of the rest of the Bourne.”

“His band did some good, that has to be admitted,” the doctor added, “but before long they were waylaying Errantry patrols and taking their weapons and horses. After that he was little better than an outlaw in the Bourne.”

“True,” Balor said, “but none of the country folk would turn him in, because he brought them food and other supplies when they were needy. Then came the worst Nightbane raid of them all. The enemy attacked in such numbers, and so suddenly, that the Errantry was surprised and overwhelmed. And Corr’s band was too small to be everywhere they were needed.”

“Was that the raid where Rowen’s mother and father were killed?” Will asked.

“Yes, and many others, too. Mostly farmers in the borderlands, which Corr saw as proof that he was right: that the Errantry thought only of Fable. So he gathered his band with the intent of pursuing the raiders and hunting them down. A number of knights-errant who also wanted vengeance joined him. When Corr and his men rode out of the Bourne, they stopped here at Annen Bawn. They didn’t have enough horses to carry themselves and all the gear they needed for a long journey. So they broke into the pasture where the citadel’s horses were grazing, and made off with a few. There was a young man keeping watch on the herd that day. A knight-apprentice not much older than you. He rode after Corr, to stop him from taking the horses, and Corr struck him down.”

Will stared in shock.

“The young man died the next day. His name was Donal Caliburn.”

“The Marshal’s son…” Will said, in a shocked whisper.

Balor nodded.

“His only son. It’s hard to say if Corr even knew who he was. When Finn joined the Errantry years later, the Marshal made him swear an oath that if Finn ever found his brother, he would bring him back to Fable to face judgement. Still, I don’t think Caliburn has ever fully trusted Finn. He’s always made things difficult for him. And so has Captain Thorne, for that matter. Lord Caliburn’s son was his apprentice.”

“And that sentry just now…?”

“Captain Thorne was garrison commander here when Corr killed the boy. They’ve never forgiven or forgotten at Annen Bawn.”

Balor was about to say more, when Finn called to them.

“We’ll camp there,” he said, pointing to a stand of tall pines not far off the road. They nudged their horses and followed him.

They soon had a fire going and sat around it eating their – to Will – meagre dinner. The horses were tethered nearby, where there was a stream and lush grass for them to feed on. Will tucked into his dinner eagerly, remembering how hungry he had always felt on his first journey through the Realm. There had never seemed to be quite enough to eat then, and he assumed it would be the same now. The Errantry travelled light, carrying only what was absolutely necessary, and that included food.

When he had all too quickly finished his meal, Will noticed that no one was speaking, not even Balor. The incident at Annen Bawn had apparently dampened everyone’s spirits. The doctor was writing in his journal and the wildman was picking his teeth with a sliver of wood. Will shivered and realized how cold it had become since night had fallen.

“Get some rest,” Finn said. Will glanced at him. The young knight-errant had barely said a word since they made camp and Will had avoided speaking to him.

“We’ll stay until the fire dies down,” Finn said quietly. “Then the moon should be well up and we’ll move on.”

Will nodded. He laid out his bedroll and used his pack as a pillow. He lay down and closed his eyes, but his head was too full of thoughts for sleep. Shade was out here somewhere in this seemingly endless land, and Rowen was now far from him, too.

Turning on to his side, he took his half of the mirror shard out of his pocket. Why had he broken it? What if he’d destroyed whatever power it might have? Then it wouldn’t do him or Rowen any good at all.

He held the shard tightly in his hand and closed his eyes. Although he had doubted that he would get any sleep, he was startled to find himself, what seemed only moments later, being nudged awake by Doctor Alazar. A hazy half-moon glowed through clouds in the dark sky.

“Rise and shine, Will,” the doctor said, in a kindly tone. “Such is life in the Errantry.”

Will sat up groggily. He realized now he’d been more tired by the previous day’s ride than he’d admitted to himself. He’d fallen asleep deeply enough to have a dream, a strange dream in which he had been trying to catch up with someone who was walking ahead of him on a dark plain under the stars. He thought it was Rowen, but when he got closer the figure ahead of him turned, as if to wait for him, and he saw it was a man he didn’t recognize, an older man with long, braided grey hair. The man’s eyes were milky-white, unseeing. In the dream Will had been about to catch up with the man when the doctor woke him.

He remembered how the Angel had appeared in his dreams, coming closer to him each time he’d dreamed of him. And it had turned out that these were more than just strange dreams: the Angel had been searching for him through Will’s own dreams, in order to find Rowen. But if this blind man was someone like that, not just a figment of his mind but someone walking in his dreams, Will wondered why he felt no sense of fear or danger.

He packed away his bedroll and looked around blearily. The fire was down to smouldering embers. Finn and Balor were not there.

“Balor finally convinced Finn to ride back to Annen Bawn, for news of the road ahead,” the doctor said, noticing Will’s wondering look. He handed Will a mug of steaming tea, which he took gladly. “They should be back soon. In the meantime, if it’s not a bother, I wanted to ask you about something that happened the last time you came to the Realm. On your journey home, you passed through the Bog of Mool, I understand, and met a strange being there…”

Will nodded.

“It’s hard to explain,” he began. “We stumbled into a storyshard, a fragment of story that made us repeat the same things, over and over, until we realized what was happening to us. Something like what happened to Balor. We might have been stuck there for ever, then Shade found a golem, a man made of clay, trapped in the shard with us.”

“A golem,” the doctor echoed, his eyes gleaming with wonder behind his spectacles. “I’ve never encountered one of those.”

“The golem was building this tower of stones that was sinking into the swamp. He could never finish it. Master Pendrake thought that if we stopped the golem from carrying out his task, it might free us all from his endless story. So he prised this … thing out of the golem’s forehead, a sort of wax disc, I think. It was what made the golem come to life. There was a word on the disc that was the golem’s name, Ord. That didn’t work, though – the golem just stopped dead, and we started slowing down, as though we were going to stop moving for ever, too.”

The doctor had taken out his leather-bound journal and was writing in it with the stub of a pencil.

“Go on, please,” he said.

“So then Finn put the stone from his brother Corr’s ring into the hole in the golem’s forehead, and it – he – took off, walking north. We followed him for a while, though we couldn’t keep up in the bog, and he disappeared. But we were free of the storyshard.”

The doctor nodded, his eyes wide.

“So Finn thought that the stone from his ring had given the golem a new task?”

“To find the owner of the ring,” Will said. “So now Finn believes that means Corr must still be alive, and probably somewhere in the north.”

“That’s why he has been asking for scouting missions in that direction. I wondered about that. But as far as I know, he’s heard nothing new about Corr. There are said to be strange things happening in the far north these days, though. Like great storms that bring lightning and thunder but no rain.”

The doctor bent over his journal and went on writing.

“Lightning,” Will said under his breath.

The doctor looked up.

“What’s that?”

Will didn’t answer. He was remembering what Mimling had said about how Shade was injured. Lightning. He’d been burned by lightning thrown by someone or something from the sky. And again he remembered his mother’s stories of Lightfoot and his battle with the furious and cruel Captain Stormcloud.