The Fathomless Fire (6 page)

Briar whinnied and backed away, rocking the wagon. Rowen caught her reins and held tight.

“We could hurt you,” the bear said in a low, rumbling voice that seemed to rise up from the earth itself. “Punish you for bringing the one who is not.”

“You could do that,” Pendrake said, “but I don’t think you would. It’s not who you are.”

The bear gave a deep, menacing growl. Then it dropped onto all fours as if defeated. It swung its head from side to side and let out a low, mournful bleat.

Then it was not there.

Who you are
, came the Woodwraith’s voice from all around them, echoing Pendrake’s words.

Who. You. Are
.

“Maybe you can find a new home,” Rowen called, peering into the shadows. “Is there anywhere else you could go?”

Going
, the voice moaned.
We’re going away. A little at a time. Every day, a little more nothing. That should be funny. What is more of nothing? But it isn’t funny. Where there was something, every day, harder to be anything. Soon there will be no one at all. Then we will never find out who we really are.

“We’re sorry that the Angel – the one who is not – hurt you,” Rowen said. “We didn’t mean for that to happen.”

They waited. There was no reply.

“Maybe we can help you,” Rowen said. “Find you a new place to live. Couldn’t we, Grandfather?”

“I really don’t know, Rowen,” Pendrake said, with what she thought was a trace of annoyance in his voice. “We can’t linger here in the forest, and if the Woodwraith—”

That is not our name
, the voice hissed
. That is a name others gave to us because they could not tell us what we were.

“Well, what is your name?” Rowen snapped, refusing to be intimidated. “Are we supposed to call you
someone
?”

Riddle
, the voice said after a brief silence.
Call us Riddle
.

“You could come with us, Riddle,” Rowen said, and she saw Pendrake frown. He was clearly not happy with the suggestion, and she wondered why. They could help this poor creature. They owed it to him. And more than that, she saw now. She could sense the threads of Story weaving into place around her, and she knew that bringing Riddle with them was something that had to be.

“We’re going to a city called Fable,” she went on, determined. “Do you know what that is?”

There was no answer.

“A city is a place with many people,” Pendrake said. “People everywhere, day and night. And many things that would be strange to you. There are no woods to hide in. And you have lived alone in this forest for a very long time.”

Suddenly there before them stood the wolf.

“Someone … Riddle would be with
you
,” it said. “Riddle would stay close to you. Like the wolf did with the boy. We could be like that. Always with you. Then maybe we would not disappear.”

Riddle’s voice was so tight with fear that Rowen felt fear clutch at her, too. She remembered how lost and frightened she had been when the story-visions first began happening to her. Everything she had known and hoped for, her dream of becoming a knight of the Errantry like her mother, had been swept away. But now she thought that with a creature like Riddle beside her, as Shade had been with Will, she might not feel quite so lost and alone.

“Could he come with us, Grandfather?” she asked, trying to hide the tremor in her voice.

Pendrake sighed.

“I don’t know how much time we’ll have in Fable,” he said. “We may have to leave quickly and travel fast.”

Now Rowen thought she understood his reluctance to have the Woodwraith come with them. If Rowen was still being hunted, they might only be bringing this creature with them into further danger. But that had to be better than leaving him here, alone and terrified. And she had
seen
. For an instant. Whatever path she was on, Riddle was meant to be with her.

“Besides,” Pendrake added before Rowen could speak up, “people in Fable were not very pleased when we had Shade walking around in the streets.”

“Others would not … like us?” the wolf asked.

“Some would be afraid. These days Bournefolk are less tolerant of the unfamiliar.”

“You can take any shape you want, can’t you, Riddle?” Rowen asked.

“This is what we do,” the voice said eagerly. “Any shape. Anything.”

The wolf was suddenly not there. In a tree limb above the place where it had been standing, a tawny mountain lion was hunkered back on its hind legs as if ready to pounce on them. Rowen stepped back in spite of herself, uncertain for a moment whether this was still Riddle. Then she noticed the lion’s luminous, owl-like eyes.

“I’m not sure that would solve the problem,” Pendrake said.

“How about something like that but smaller,” Rowen suggested.

An instant later, a smaller cat crouched where the mountain lion had been. It had a tawny striped coat, long white whiskers and large furry paws. The same eerie, shining eyes gazed at them from its face, but on this animal they did not seem so alarmingly strange.

“A wildcat,” Pendrake said.

“This one is the best in the forest at hiding,” the cat said, in a soft, silvery voice that made Rowen think of moonlight. “When he doesn’t want to be seen, he is not seen.”

“This could work,” Rowen said, nodding approvingly. “People will think you’re our pet cat. Maybe.”

“But you must promise to stay in that shape,” Pendrake said, “at least when other people are around. And no talking unless we’re alone. No sudden vanishing would be a good idea, too, come to think of it. I can’t say for certain, but it might be that staying in one shape, and staying
here
, with us I mean, may help keep you from disappearing for good.”

“We promise,” the cat said solemnly. “Riddle will stay, like this. Close to the girl. No going away. The grey-bearded one makes the rules for us, too.”

“My name is Pendrake. This is my granddaughter, Rowen.”

“Pendrake. And Rowen.”

“And Riddle,” Pendrake said. “And now we must be off. We still have a long way to travel before we reach home.”

With amazing speed the cat bounded down the trunk of the tree and came to a halt in front of them. Rowen and her grandfather climbed back onto the wagon’s front seat. After a long hesitation, during which Rowen wondered if Riddle might just disappear again, the cat sprang onto the seat and slipped into the space between them. Alarmed by his sudden movements, Rowen almost pushed Riddle away, but stopped herself in time.

Pendrake flicked the reins and Briar started forward. Rowen glanced warily out of the corner of her eye at Riddle. He sat gazing straight ahead, without moving, like a statue. He was such a strange, unpredictable creature, she thought, but she had done the right thing. He would just take a lot of getting used to.

It wasn’t long before the trees began to thin out and Rowen caught flickering glimpses of meadows and fields beyond the leafy woods, flooded with the hazy, golden light of a late summer afternoon. The Bourne.

As they left the forest, Riddle’s eyes were wider than Rowen had yet seen them. He sat perfectly still, gazing at this strange new world, but she could feel his excitement. She should have been excited, too. They would be in Fable soon. She would see Edweth and her friends. Maybe even Will, if he came back to the Realm as he said he would. Then she remembered that even Fable was perhaps not safe any more. She felt her small, dim hope flicker within her, as if at any moment it might go out.

T
HERE WERE NO MORE TREES
.

After he had walked a long time the woods had come to an end, and Will had found himself on an open stretch of bare, cracked earth. A few large stones were scattered here and there, but the world beyond this patch of barren ground had vanished in a pale grey haze. The air was bone-dry and cold.

The haze was dust, Will realized. He could feel it in his eyes as he walked, and tasted it on his tongue: it had a faintly bitter, metallic tang.

Will turned in a slow circle. Night was coming on, he was already tired from his long walk through the woods, and he didn’t know where he was. If he was really on the right path to the Realm, he thought he should have known for sure by now. The first time he had come to the Realm he’d been lost and confused, but he had known one thing for certain: the world had changed. Or he had changed worlds. This time he felt only that he was lost.

He walked for a while, but the dust did not clear. Another of the large stones loomed up out of the haze. Will sat down on it to rest a moment. It might be better to turn back and set out again in the morning, he told himself. But he wondered with a pang of fear whether he could even find his way home through this haze.

A friend will fall
. No, he couldn’t turn back.

Almost without thinking he slipped his hand down the collar of his shirt and pulled out a silver chain that hung around his neck. On the chain was a small triangular piece of mirrored glass. He clutched it tightly in his closed fist.

Before he left the Realm the last time, the Lady of the Shee had given him a shard of the ancient Mirror Samaya, which had been shattered in the war against the Night King. The shard had helped Will find his way home. When he’d looked into it he was startled to see his own reflection disappear, but then suddenly he
knew
what he had to do. Maybe that’s what the shadow had been trying to tell him.
The same way you left.
Maybe he could use the shard the other way, too. To get back to the Realm.

Will opened his palm and looked into the shard. There was his face, reflected in the mirror. He stared into the glass, trying to summon the same certainty he’d felt the first time, but this time his face remained, looking back at him with a frown.

The stone moved under him.

Will jumped up with a shout. The stone was not a stone. It was a man. No, larger than a man. Someone or something huge, climbing to its feet and sloughing off the thick dust that had covered it so that Will had mistaken it for a stone.

Will backed away. The huge figure shook itself all over so that great clouds of dust billowed off it, and Will saw what he had been sitting on.

A creature shaped like a man, but there the resemblance ended. Under a mane of dark, shaggy hair was an ugly, beastlike face that brought to mind a cross between a lion and an ill-tempered pug dog.

Will stumbled backwards and fell.

“Wait,” the man-thing said. “Who are…?”

The man-thing’s voice was so low and booming, the sound of it thrummed in Will’s chest like the rumble of a kettledrum. Then he remembered the words of the shadow:
A stone will speak.

Will picked himself up and was about to run for his life, but the man-thing’s stillness made him hesitate.

“I don’t know…” the man-thing said haltingly, “…where I am.”

There was such fear and confusion in his voice that Will paused, then took a step closer.

“I don’t know either,” he said.

“My name…” the man-thing said. “My name is … Balor Gruff. That’s it. Yes.”

His eyes wandered about the dim landscape, then fixed on Will.

“I don’t know how I got here,” he said, shaking his head as if to clear it of the dust that surrounded them. “And I don’t know who you are.”

There was no threat in the man-thing’s voice, Will realized. And the first part of the shadow’s message, it seemed, had come to pass. But did the first part have anything to do with the friend who would fall? Would whatever he did now make any difference? Will thought quickly and decided to trust his instincts about the man-thing.

“I’m Will. Will Lightfoot,” he said. “You were asleep on the ground. The dust had covered you and I thought you were a stone, so I sat down on you. I’m sorry about that, really.”

The man-thing’s brow furrowed. Then to Will’s astonishment he shook himself all over once more, like a great shaggy bear waking from its winter slumber.

“What happened to me?” he roared. “I was on night patrol in the Wood and then all of a sudden here I am, which is I don’t know where, and here you are, and … what did you say your name was?”

“Will Lightfoot. I’m on my way to—”

He broke off, having glimpsed the pin on the man-thing’s cloak: a small white five-petalled flower that he recognized. Finn Madoc, he remembered, had a similar flower on his cloak.

“You’re from the Errantry,” Will said eagerly.

“I am,” the man-thing said, in a tone of certainty. “Yes, I am. And what’s it to you?”

“I know Finn Madoc, the knight-apprentice. He’s my friend. I was trying to find my way to Fable and then—”

“Wait, wait,” the man-thing broke in, “did you say your name was Will Lightfoot?”

“Yes.”

“You’re
the
Will Lightfoot?”