The Fathomless Fire (19 page)

The Lightning Warriors swooped down in their flying ships, hurtling great stabbing bolts of white fire at him. Lightfoot ran and dodged and ducked, but finally one of the bolts struck him…

He was considering whether to tell Alazar what he was thinking when Finn and Balor returned.

“Did they have any news?” the doctor asked as they climbed from their horses.

“Not much we haven’t already heard in Fable,” Finn replied. “Vague reports of trouble in the north. Storms. Folk fleeing Nightbane armed with weapons of
gaal
.”

Will remembered hearing that word before.
Gaal
was a poisonous metal. Fever iron, some called it, deadly to the Fair Folk and with the power to drive anyone else who touched it into fury and madness. Moth the Shee warrior had a sword of
gaal
he’d carried with him. It was the only weapon that could destroy his enemy, the Angel, but it had also been slowly killing him.

“Well, if we’re only going a short way north of the Wandering River, none of that will concern us,” Balor said.

“Not for the moment,” Alazar said.

The night sky began to pale with approaching dawn not long after they set off. That morning’s ride took them out of the Bourne and into the wilder country beyond. They followed the high road through rolling woodlands until, at the top of a windy rise, it forked into two narrower paths running east and west. To the west, not far away, stood a slender, many-turreted white castle on a hill, with the steeples and roofs of a city clustered at its foot. Further west rose the towers of another castle on a hill, surrounded by another city below it. Looking east, Will saw two, no, three more distant castles on hills.

“The Little Kingdoms,” Balor said, with what sounded like affection in his voice.

“We’ll head straight across country from here,” Finn said. “It may slow us down to leave the road, but it’s better to avoid the Kingdoms.”

“That makes sense,” Balor said, but to Will he sounded disappointed.

“Are they dangerous?” Will asked the wildman, as they left the road and descended the north side of the hill.

“The Little Kingdoms?” Balor said. “Not really. It’s just that you can’t visit them without
something
happening. It’s where we send knight-apprentices on their first solitary quests. They’re guaranteed to have some kind of adventure, and it usually turns out all right. It’s a law or something, I think. There’s always supposed to be a happily-ever-after in the Little Kingdoms, and if there isn’t you can apparently lodge a complaint somewhere. Anyhow, if we’d had more time for your training, I would’ve sent you off to one of them.” He pointed to one of the nearer castles, with blue and silver pennants fluttering from its towers. “Probably that one. It has the stupidest ogres, but the prettiest damsels in distress.”

Once they had left the road, the country grew hillier and more dense with trees and underbrush. For a while Finn took them beside a stream, until it lost itself in wet marshy ground, then he led the way up a rocky hillside and out into more open, drier ground, where they let the horses run at full speed. Will hung on, terrified, as Cutter raced across the hard turf, his hooves thundering, but soon he relaxed and began to enjoy the speed and the wind in his face.

After a few miles the horses slowed and went along at an easier pace. They passed through woods again, then crossed a shallow stream, where they rested briefly and watered the horses. On the other side of the stream Finn led them in another all-out gallop. So went the ride, at faster and slower paces, through the morning and into the afternoon. A chill wind came up and the sky clouded over ominously, as if a rainstorm might be on the way, but they rode on. From time to time, Balor whistled melodies and sang verses from old ballads. His singing was more of an off-key bellowing and he kept forgetting the words, but the others couldn’t help being cheered by his high spirits.

“This is where a knight-errant belongs,” he said to Will. “Out here in the big wide world, with no idea what you’re going to meet over the next hill.”

As if to prove his point, Balor spurred his horse up the slope of the grassy hill they were climbing, and Will did the same with Cutter.
Shade would love this
, Will thought. In a few moments they had crested the hill and reined in their horses.

Below them lay a long, deep hollow ringed by wooded ridges. The hollow was filled, or
choked
, Will thought, with a thick tangle of reeds and bracken. Bare black trunks of dead trees stuck out here and there like withered arms.

“This wasn’t here before,” Finn said, rising in his saddle to gaze down into the hollow.

“You’re right,” the doctor said. “There was a lake here, teeming with fish, and a village at the far end, with a watermill. A place called Edgewater.”

“I came this way only weeks ago, and stopped at their inn for ale,” Balor said. “What could have happened?”

“There were tall grasses and marsh reeds at one end of the lake, I remember,” the doctor said. “But things couldn’t have become this overgrown so quickly…”

“It must be what the loremaster warned us of,” Finn said. “The land here is changing, like the forest near Molly’s Arm. I was going to take us through the hollow, but I think we should go around, along the eastern ridge. I don’t like the look of this place at all. Better if we avoid it all together.”

“No,” Will said, and they all turned to look at him. “No, we need to ride through the hollow.”

“Will?” Finn asked.

“It’s a knot-path,” Will said, and he was certain of it as he spoke the words. The grassy hollow was a shortcut to another, faraway part of the Realm, like those he had stumbled across on his first journey.

“I’ve heard rumour of such things,” Balor said in a sceptical tone. “Never been through one.”

“I have,” Finn said. “Will, are you sure this path will take us closer to Shade?”

Will closed his eyes and breathed deeply. It was almost as if he could see the sun blazing in a vault of cloudless blue sky, and hear the wind moving across miles and miles of tall, waving grasses.

… and Lightfoot rode north on his pony Great Heart, and they crossed the silent empty prairie and came at last to the Hill of the Teeth …

His mother’s story again. More of it had come back to him now. Will remembered how her words had conjured so vividly for him that great sea of grass bowing and waving in the wind, the vast bowl of the sky dotted with white clouds, and in the distance, a row of sharp-pointed hills like fangs…

He opened his eyes. The gloomy, weed-choked hollow lay before him, under a cloudy sky. But he was sure of what he had sensed, as if that vast sunlit land was somehow inside him. Somewhere beyond this hollow he would find Shade.

“The great plain,” he said. “This path will take us there in a short time.”

Balor shrugged and eyed the hollow darkly.

“If there’s anything left of the lake under all that green, then the ground is probably boggy and treacherous,” he said. “We could waste hours floundering around in there.”

Finn appeared to be weighing Balor’s words. Then he turned to Will again.

“We’ll go through the hollow,” he said. “Will, you’ll lead us.”

Will nodded. He nudged Cutter’s flank sharply with his heel.

“Come on,” he said to the horse. “We’re going down there.”

Cutter tossed his head a moment, as if objecting like Balor, but then he began slowly to descend. Finn and the others followed. In a few moments they had reached the bottom of the hill and were wading into the reeds, which came up to their horses’ shoulders.

Cutter whinnied, though whether from fear or annoyance Will couldn’t tell. He stared forward into the wall of reeds, shielding his eyes from the sharp stalks that slid across his legs. There was no trail, as far as he could see. They had to force their way through, and the thick reeds bent before them unwillingly, as if trying to keep them out, then sprang up again once they’d passed. The ground was boggy, as Balor had predicted, and squelched under the horses’ hooves. The further they penetrated into the hollow, the taller the reeds grew, until they rose well over their horses’ heads and not even Balor could see the ridges on either side of the hollow any more.

Near him was a tangle of reeds that had twined and twisted around each other, and in their clutches was a wooden chair. The stalks had grown through the spindles that formed the back and had wrapped themselves around its legs. It looked as if the reeds had caught the chair in a living green cage.

“Odd,” Balor said.

They kept on, and a short distance ahead they came across a barrel tangled in reeds much like the chair had been. There were stalks growing through the barrel’s loose slats, as if it was slowly being taken apart. And near the barrel they also found the reed-snarled remains of a small boat.

“If this is what’s left of Edgewater,” Balor said, “what happened to the people?”

“We can only hope they escaped,” Finn said. “Strange that there was no word of this at Annen Bawn, though.”

Balor gave Will a dubious glance.

“Maybe they didn’t escape,” he said.

Will lowered his head and urged Cutter forward.

Now they pressed on as quickly as they could, but the further they went, the more thick and tangled the reeds became. Finally they were forced to dismount and lead the horses while hacking through the stalks with their swords. It was hard work, and often they had to stop to catch their breath. Despite his weariness, Will pushed on, hacking with one arm and leading Cutter by the reins with the other. He hadn’t been wrong about this place being a knot-path, he was still sure of that, despite Balor’s doubts. And he was not going to let anything, especially not a lot of tall grass, keep him from reaching Shade.

He cut and slashed with the sword and shouldered his way forward until the sweat was running into his eyes and blinding him. He shook his head angrily and kept on, and finally he felt the reeds thinning out, resisting him less. He paused to wipe his eyes and then, to his excitement, he glimpsed the flicker of bright daylight. He was almost there. Cutter realized it too. The horse gave a whinny and plunged forward. Now he was the one tugging Will along.

“That’s it,” Will encouraged him. “You can get us out of here faster than I can.”

He turned his head to call back to the others about what he’d found. To his shock, there was nothing behind him but a wall of reeds. His companions had vanished.

“Finn!” he shouted. “Balor!”

“Will!” came Balor’s reply, but his voice sounded distant. Will wondered how he could possibly have gone so far ahead of the others so quickly.

“Will,” Balor shouted again. “Don’t turn back. Keep going!”

There was a desperate warning in his voice that filled Will with dread. Something had happened. But Cutter was tugging at the reins, pulling him to the end of the path.

Will dropped the reins.

“Go,” he said to the horse. Cutter tossed his head and lunged away towards the light.

Will turned and struggled back the way he had come. He shouted his friends’ names, heard their voices calling him from what seemed like even further away, warning him to stay away. He pushed on, back along the slashed trail he had made, surprised to see that it was almost gone already, as if the cut stalks had healed themselves or new ones had grown in their place. Very soon all traces of the trail ended and he was surrounded again by a high wall of reeds. He raised his sword to cut a way through, but he was exhausted now, his arm burning and weak, and his blade seemed almost to glance off the thickly massed stalks.

“Finn!” he shouted. “I can’t get through!”

There was no reply. Will went still and listened. He heard only the hiss of the wind in the reeds.

T
HE BELL IN THE PALACE
clock tower was tolling midnight. She ran in her ragged dress through the streets of the sleeping town, her bare feet cold on the stones. In her hand she clutched a glass slipper. Every so often she would stop to catch her breath and glance back furtively at the palace on the hill, its many windows still brightly lit despite the late hour. Even from here, faint sounds of music and revelry were carried to her on the still night air. How she longed to go back there, to step into that bright, happy world again. But she had been warned. The brief, wonderful dream she’d been granted would suddenly vanish on the stroke of midnight. It wasn’t meant to last.

“Nothing here lasts very long,” she said to herself, then wondered why she had said it.

Someone had spoken those words to her, not long ago, though she couldn’t remember who or why.

As the last ringing tones of the final stroke of midnight died away, she held up her hand. There was no glass slipper in her palm any more, only a worn and dirty cloth shoe. She wondered if the same thing had happened to the other slipper, the one that had come off as she’d fled down the steps of the palace in her hurry to escape.