The Fathomless Fire (7 page)

The man-thing eyed him up and down, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Will was stung, though he had no idea why he should feel that way.

“It’s an honour to meet you, Master Lightfoot,” the man-thing said, breaking into a toothy grin. Evidently he had decided to believe Will. “My name is Balor Gruff. Oh, yes, I’ve already told you that. Finn is a good friend of mine, too, though he’s not an apprentice any more. Earned his knighthood a while back. But more to the point, if you’re Will Lightfoot, then I believe my luck has changed for the better.”

Will didn’t know what to say to that.

“I was on patrol near Fable,” Balor Gruff said, “when this …
dust
came up out of nowhere. I kept walking, expecting it to lift eventually, but it didn’t. So then I … well, I don’t know what happened exactly. I couldn’t have fallen asleep. I never fall asleep on duty.”

“So we’re not far from Fable, then?”

“Well, I don’t believe so. But as to which way to go to get there, I may need some time to work it out.”

“You mean you’re lost.”

“Balor Gruff never gets lost,” the man-thing rumbled. “Never. I’ll find my way out of this place eventually, no fear of that. But now you’re here, Will Lightfoot, the pathfinder. There’s no reason we can’t work together, and maybe get home sooner.”

“The
what
?”

“Pardon?”

“You called me a…”

“Pathfinder. It’s what they call someone with your gift. You’re famous for it in Fable. Will Lightfoot, the great pathfinder, slayer of trolls, friend of wolf and raven.”

“Slayer of trolls? I never—”

“You’re a legend, lad. It’s all the knight-apprentices talk about these days.”

“How … how long have they been talking about me?”

“I don’t know. Ages. I first heard about you when Finn got back to Fable from his travels with you and the loremaster … must have been, let’s see, well nigh a year ago now.”

Will was relieved to hear that Finn had reached home safely, but Balor’s words also confirmed his fear: much more time had gone by for his friends than for him. Which meant that maybe the shadow’s warning was about something that had already happened, and he was too late.

“What’s the matter?” Balor asked.

“Have you seen Finn recently? Is he all right?”

“I saw him just before I left on patrol. He was fine. Why?”

Will took a deep breath. Here was some good news, at last.

“Do you know Master Pendrake?” he asked.

“I’ve met him a few times,” Balor said. “Kindly old fellow. Gave me a toy horse once when I was just an ogreling, I mean when …
hmph.
He and his granddaughter went with you on your journey, didn’t they?”

“They did. Do you know if they’re back in Fable?”

Balor shrugged.

“Couldn’t say, lad. Haven’t seen Pendrake in a long time, come to think of it.”

“I have to get to Fable,” Will said. “I think my friends might be in trouble.”

“Well let’s not waste any more time gabbing,” Balor said, then he frowned. “But, the thing is, I don’t recognize this … ground.”

He raised his head and sniffed.

“Nothing here even
smells
familiar.” He cleared his throat. “The fact is, I’m not … hmm … entirely sure where in the Realm we are.”

“We’re not in the Realm,” Will said.

“
What?
”

“At least I don’t think so. Not exactly.”

“Well then where in blazes are we?”

Will shook his head.

“I don’t know. But maybe … maybe I can get us out of here.”

He took hold of the mirror shard again, but didn’t look into it. He would worry about the strange things this Balor Gruff had been saying later, once he’d found his friends and made sure they were safe. His thoughts needed to be calm,
he
needed to be calm, and he wasn’t. Time was passing while he was lost here, and who knew what was happening to Rowen, and Shade…

He closed his eyes, took a slow, deep breath, settled himself. How had it worked for him the last time?

“Is that some kind of compass?” Balor Gruff asked in a hoarse whisper, eyeing the shard. Will shook his head, irritated at the interruption. But the question suddenly made something clear. So clear it was like a voice in his head, telling him what he needed to do.

Get out of your own way.

“No, it’s not a compass,” he said.

The secret wasn’t really in the shard, he realized now. It had worked for him the first time only when he’d stopped
trying
to make it work. Its power was to make clear what was already inside him, what he already knew. He just had to trust that. He had to get out of his own way.

Will slipped the shard back into his shirt, took a deep breath, and started walking.

“That’s it?” Balor Gruff said, following him. “You know where you’re going?”

Will didn’t answer. He walked on at a steady pace, and the dust seemed to gather more thickly around him as he walked, falling upon his skin and eyelashes, but he didn’t stop. He kept on, with Balor Gruff’s heavy footfalls just behind him.

“By the way,” the man-thing said as they walked, “I’m a wildman.”

“What?”

“You must’ve been wondering about that. Everyone does when they first meet me. I’m a wildman. That’s the generally accepted name for my folk. Though ignorant people sometimes mistake me for a woodwose or an…” He mumbled a word that Will didn’t catch.

“Pardon?”

“I said
ogre
,” Balor muttered between his teeth.

Will stared.

“I never thought you were—”

“I’m a
wildman
,” Balor said loudly, as if announcing it to anyone else who might be nearby. “Let’s be clear on that point. I was found by a band of knight-errants when I was a baby, sleeping in a bed of moss in the middle of a forest that’s a known haunt of wildmen,
not
of ogres. Lost or abandoned, nobody knows, but there I was.
Gruff
was the only sound I could make back then, so it stuck. The knights brought me to Fable and I was raised by the Errantry and they taught me to read and fight and ride. Wasn’t really keen on the reading, but I took to the fighting and riding like a pig to slops. And I learned the Errantry code, to defend the weak and not set oneself above others. And while ogres are usually near-sighted and hopelessly stupid, I happen to have eagle eyes, an uncanny nose, and a matchless sense of direction. And that’s why I’m the Errantry’s best tracker, so…”

He paused and cleared his throat. It occurred to Will that here was the Errantry’s best tracker, following someone else.

“And so,” Balor finished in a somewhat more subdued voice, “I’m a wildman.”

A few moments later Will slowed down, then stopped and stood still.

“What is it?” Balor whispered.

Will didn’t answer. He had no words for the strange sensation that had just passed through him. It wasn’t anything he could see, or smell, or feel in the air. It was more like a pull on his body, as if he had begun to walk downhill, even though the ground here was perfectly level. He had felt something like it once before. One summer when he was little, Will had visited the seashore with his family. He’d waded out a long way into the water, which came up only to his waist. Then suddenly he felt the sandy bottom drop away beneath his feet. He had come to the edge of the deep. The
ocean
. Terrified, he’d thrashed his way back to the safety of the shallows.

Now he had come to an edge like that. What lay beyond was
deeper
somehow than where he had just been walking, though not in a way that could be seen. There was no slope here, no sudden dropping away of the ground beneath his feet. He could simply
feel
a whole world tugging at him. He was on the edge of the Realm and its vast ocean of stories.

Instead of pulling back in fear, he plunged forward, walking more quickly than before.

“What is it?” Balor whispered again, hurrying to catch up.

“We’re almost there,” Will said.

Balor took a deep sniff of air. He nodded eagerly.

“Yes. I think you’re –
we’re
on the right track. We found it.”

They walked on more quickly now. The dust began to thin out, until they could see further ahead. There were shapes now … trees, bushes, mossy boulders swam up out of the yellow haze.

“There!” Balor cried.

They hurried forward and suddenly before them, on a hill at the far end of a wide green valley dotted with a patchwork of fields, was the city of Fable.

Will let out his breath. It felt as though he hadn’t since he started walking. He took in the city’s familiar walls of motley-coloured stone, the slender towers, the mysterious gleam of the city’s innumerable blue lamps shining in the dusk like stars. At the height of the city he could just make out the great cloudy plume of trees that surrounded Appleyard, the home of the Errantry, the company of knights whose duty was the defence of the Bourne.

“We’ve done it,” Balor exclaimed. Then he turned to Will and clapped a huge hand on his shoulder. “No, you did it, Will Lightfoot. You have my thanks, and my vow as a knight-errant that if there is ever any way I can be of service to you, I will.”

Will nodded. Rowen had wanted to become a knight of the Errantry, he remembered, like her mother. But after what she had learned about her ancestry and powers, it seemed unlikely she would be given the chance to fulfil that dream. At the thought of Rowen, Will felt a rush of eagerness. She might be here, in Fable, only moments away.

A short time later they were approaching the gates. So much was coming back to Will now, memories that seemed to have almost faded away, as if he’d been gone for years instead of a few weeks. Fable was home to a people known as Wayfarers, descendants of travellers from Will’s world, which people here called the Untold. A few Wayfarers had come to the Perilous Realm on purpose, but most, like Will, had found this world by accident. Of those, some had chosen to stay in the Realm, like Rowen’s father. He had met Rowen’s mother and had never gone back to the Untold. When Rowen was a small child her parents had died in a raid by Nightbane, vicious creatures from the dark side of Story who served Malabron. Rowen had grown up in the care of her grandfather, Nicholas Pendrake, the loremaster.

Balor raised a hand and shouted something that Will guessed was a password. A moment later the tall wooden doors braced with iron swung slowly open. Will glimpsed sentries just inside, and more on the parapet above the turreted gatehouse. He was surprised to see the gates guarded like this. When he came to Fable the first time, they were open for travellers and countryfolk to pass in and out, even at night. He knew from something Rowen had hinted at that the gate was watched or protected in some mysterious way, but whatever that protection was, clearly the people of Fable no longer thought it enough.

Two of the sentries approached the wildman with astonished looks on their faces.

“Balor Gruff?” the younger of the two said hesitantly.

“Gared Bamble,” the wildman replied. “What are you gaping at?”

“Nothing,” the sentry stammered. “I mean, you’ve been missing for three days, Balor. Nobody had any idea what had happened to you.”

“Three days,” the wildman echoed. He looked stunned for a moment, then gave Will an uneasy glance.

“Finn Madoc and some of the other knights are out looking for you right now,” the sentry said. “They’ve been searching everywhere.”

Balor glowered at the sentry. “If you’re trying to pull one over on me, Gared Bamble…”

“It’s the truth, Balor, I swear.”

“Well, I’d better report in at Appleyard,” Balor said grimly. “And this young lad is coming with me.”

“Who is he?” the older sentry asked.

“You’ve heard of Will Lightfoot, pathfinder, wolf-friend, vanquisher of Nightbane, haven’t you?”

“We’ve heard of him,” the older sentry said.

“Well here he is, in the flesh.”

The sentries exchanged a doubtful glance.

“I don’t know, Balor…” the younger one said. “We’ll have to get permission from Appleyard first. You know Captain Thorne’s new orders. No strangers allowed past the gate without his approval.”

“Well, I will go and get his approval,” Balor snapped. “And to save time I’ll take Will with me.”

They left the sentries staring after them and hastened up the long curve of the main street.

“Will you get in trouble for this?” Will asked.

“The captain of the guard – Captain Thorne – has been much more strict about these things lately,” Balor said, then he winked. “Don’t worry about me. I may be peeling potatoes for a while but it won’t be the first time. And not likely the last.”

The hour was late but even so, Will was surprised at how quiet and empty the streets were. The first time he’d come to Fable the city had been crowded and busy at night, with shops open selling food and drink, mostly to folk who had come to Fable from far away. Tonight he saw only a few people hurrying through the streets, and the occasional messenger wisp zinging overhead. And one other sight that was unfamiliar: sentries on almost every corner.

“Curfew,” Balor explained. “Another of Captain Thorne’s new orders. Strange folk have been seen in and around Fable lately. Storyfolk passing through on their way elsewhere, a lot more than usual. The whole Realm seems to be restless.”

When they neared the gates of Appleyard, Will stopped.

“The toyshop is this way,” he said, nodding towards the narrow lane. “I have to see if Rowen and her grandfather are at home.”

Balor sighed.

“According to the rules, which I do try to follow on occasion, I should take you to my superior officer. But I know you’re worried about your friends. Go on, then.”

“Thank you, Balor.”

“Ah, wait, one more thing.”

He drew a short sword from a scabbard on his belt and held it over Will’s head, then brought the flat of the blade down slowly on one of Will’s shoulders and then the other.

“Will Lightfoot,” the wildman boomed, “for thy valour and skill in the field, I do appoint thee a knight-apprentice of the Errantry.”

Will couldn’t help but laugh at Balor’s jest, despite his troubled thoughts.