The Shadow of Malabron (34 page)

He looked up at the blacksmith.

“We must leave your city now, my friend,” he said.

“We will protect you,” Harke said, “as you did us.”

Pendrake shook his head.

“This is something far worse than the nightcrawlers,” he said, and then he turned to Rowen. “You will stay here, Rowen. And this time there will be no argument.”

Rowen gaped at him with shock. Then her eyes blazed.

“No, Grandfather, you can’t—”

“I said there would be no argument. I see now how foolish it was to bring you with us. You weren’t ready for the Weaving yet, for all of this. And there is no time to teach you how to use your gift, not when we are hunted and on the run.”

“I made it this far,” she shot back.

“From here the road gets much harder, and you need to recover your strength. If this hope fails, there may be a longer road ahead for all of us. We will take Will to the Needle’s Eye and return as soon as we can.”

Will expected Rowen to continue to protest, but she went silent and did not say a word on the way back to the smithy. By now Morrigan had recovered enough to fly off in search of Moth. Will and the others hurriedly packed their belongings. The blacksmith’s family gathered in the courtyard to see them off. Ulla gave them all warmer fur cloaks for the mountains, and had made small needed repairs to their packs and other gear. Freya had sharpened their weapons.

Will thanked her and Ulla for all they had done. He was sorry to leave them. Despite all that had happened, Skald now seemed a safer place to him than the world beyond its walls.

Ulla leant close and kissed him on the forehead.

“Find your way home, child,” she said.

Harke said a gruff goodbye to everyone and saw them off at the gate of the smithy. Rowen had refused to leave her room, but at the last moment she appeared, came up to Will and gave him a quick hug.

“Goodbye, Will,” she whispered. “Good luck.”

Will swallowed hard.

“I don’t know where I’d be now if it wasn’t for you,” he said thickly. “Get home safely. Some day maybe I can come back. We can see each other again…”

Rowen nodded, her eyes filling with tears. She hugged Finn and Shade, and clung to her grandfather for a long time before turning away suddenly and running back to the house. Ulla followed her.

Freya led them through the quiet streets to the western wall of the city. Here there was no gate, only a short flight of steps that descended to a low, cramped tunnel, at the end of which was a door guarded by three armoured men. It was quickly unlocked and the companions passed through in single file, into another narrow tunnel and down another staircase, at the bottom of which they found their way blocked by a thick hedge with thorny, intertwining branches. Freya came down the stairs last. Reaching a hand in among the branches, she tugged at something unseen, and a part of the hedge swung outward like a door.

“Clever,” Finn said.

“The League was good for a few things,” Freya said.

The companions filed out into a shadowy thicket beyond the hedge. Freya walked with them a short way down a steep path lined with standing stones, to a swiftly running stream bordered by willows. The sun was rising already and a pale rosy light streamed through the trees and lit the city wall, like the flush on the face of someone who has been ill for a long time and is now recovering. Here Freya gave them some final directions for their road west, and then they said their farewells.

Freya wished them all good fortune on their journey, then she turned to Finn.

“The Errantry will be welcome here now,” she said with a shy smile.

“And your people will be welcome in Fable,” Finn said, with a blush that surprised Will. “Our cities need no longer be strangers.”

When she had gone, Pendrake gazed up into the treetops.

“Now all we have to do is find…” he began, but a gruff bark from Shade cut him off. Before anyone could speak a word, Moth stepped out of the shadows with Morrigan on his shoulder.

“You people make far too much noise,” said the archer with a shake of his head.

Moth listened attentively while they told the tale of all that had happened in Skald. He congratulated Will on his clever escape from the hogmen, which made Will grin with pleasure. Then Moth gave his own report.

“There has been no sign of Lotan himself,” he said. “But if the shrowde is here he cannot be far away. And I have overheard frightened talk from folk on the roads. Talk of people who were thought dead but have been seen walking.”

“Fetches,” Will whispered.

“They may be inhabiting the dead, or simply taking their shape,” Moth said. “This is not a good place for us to linger, even if the darkness in Skald is lifting. I found a cave not far from here, near where this stream flows out into the River Whitewing. We can rest there for a while before setting out again. There was another occupant, but Morrigan and I persuaded him to leave.”

“Who was it?” Will asked.

“It wasn’t really a
who
so much as a what,” Moth said. “It left in a hurry, having so many legs to run with. At any rate, we should assume our pursuers have found our trail again, and we must travel with stealth.”

Moth led them along the stream. They came out into a more open space where the snowy mountains rose up before them, lit by the morning sun and much closer than Will had imagined they were. The bank grew steeper and rockier as they went along, so that when they reached the cave they had to scramble up a slope of sand and shale to reach it. The cave was not warm, but it was dry and out of the wind that had risen as they walked.

Will listened as Pendrake, Moth and Finn discussed the road ahead, but said nothing. His thoughts were on the portal Strigon had spoken of. If four powerful mages couldn’t keep it open, what hope was there that he could?

A
FTER A FEW HOURS’ REST
, they set out, Pendrake taking the lead. He walked quickly and said very little. Will had the feeling his thoughts were as much on Rowen as they were on what lay ahead. Ever since he met the old man Will had been surprised at his nimbleness and energy. Now that they were travelling over rocky, rising ground, he was even more astonished at the pace Pendrake kept. Even Dad, who was many years younger than the toymaker, would have been huffing and puffing by now.

They followed the course of the Whitewing River westward, and the air quickly grew colder. The valley walls grew steeper, sweeping up from vast tree-blanketed slopes to cliffs of bare rock and ridges capped with snow. Each peak, Will discovered, had its own character. One in particular resembled the profile of a face gazing up at the sky. Will remembered the giant in the forest, and wondered if this was another such sleeper. He hoped very much that it wasn’t.

There was a narrow road of sorts beside the river, but for the most part the companions stayed away from it. With Shade’s keen nose and Morrigan’s eyes, they managed to avoid whatever Nightbane may have been prowling the region near Skald.

That afternoon they entered a narrower valley where two great slab-shaped peaks, like immense castle keeps, soared into the sky, one on either side of the river. Pendrake called them the Sentinels, and said that long ago there had been dwelling places high upon their flanks, where the Fair Folk kept watch on the pass during the great war against the Shadow Realm. As they passed beneath the towering cliffs, Pendrake spoke about the long-ago war against the Night King. His tale of the ancient battle fought here was so vivid that Will began to wonder if he had seen it with his own eyes.

Beyond the Sentinels the river widened to a shallow, slender lake. Throughout the afternoon they walked along the lake’s southern shore, which began as a rocky shingle that gave way to low dunes of sand like dull pewter, littered with twisted stumps and limbs of dry driftwood. A wind from the west streamed incessantly through the valley, riffling the surface of the water and forming whitecaps on the waves further out.

At the western end of the lake they made camp in the shelter of one of the dunes. They lit no fire, even though there was plenty of dry wood lying all around that looked like it would burst into a fine flame with little encouragement. The sun disappeared quickly behind the western ranges. The valley filled with shadows, and only the tops of the two sentinel peaks still glowed with a rosy light. Will was grateful for his fur cloak, which kept out the cutting wind.

The waning moon was dimmed by a thin veil of cloud, and shed a hazy light over the waters. As they sat together on the beach, listening to the waves lap, they saw tiny lights on the eastern shore, bobbing and flickering in the darkness. Moth watched intently for a moment and then guessed that they were probably Nightbane with torches.

“Are they following us?” Will asked. “Do they know we’re here?”

“I doubt it,” Pendrake said. “If they did, it’s unlikely they’d announce themselves like this with lights. My guess is they’re on the way back to their mountain lair from a raid somewhere in the foothills.”

“They are not afraid to use torches because they roam these lands unchallenged,” said Moth. “For too long they have had to fear nothing and no one.”

“I could change that for them,” Shade muttered.

Morrigan flapped off for a closer look, and vanished swiftly into the dark. The others all watched for a while as the lights moved slowly along the lake and then climbed the hills along the northern shore, where they grew less distinct, until finally they winked out completely. Not long after, Morrigan returned, bringing confirmation that the torch-bearers were indeed mordog, although there were other Nightbane with them.

“Creech, by the sound of it,” said Moth when he’d listened to all of Morrigan’s tale. “That is worrisome. These creatures seldom join forces, unless compelled by something they fear even more than they hate each other.”

“Should we look for better concealment?” Finn asked.

“I think we should stay here,” Pendrake said, “and keep watch through the night. The wind has shifted and is in our favour, for the moment, and we can count on Shade’s ears and Morrigan’s eyes.”

Shade lifted his muzzle to the wind, sniffed, and then sprang to his feet.

“There is a garm-wolf with them,” he growled, his voice so cold and threatening it made Will shiver. “Or more than one.”

“That’s what Hodge and Flitch said killed their brother,” Will said.

“I have met such beasts before,” said Moth. “They are large and very powerful. They fear nothing.”

“We should return to Skald,” said Finn bitterly. “This was folly. They’ll soon know we’re here, if they don’t already.”

“It’s too late to turn back,” Pendrake said. “But the mountains are a hindrance to our enemies, too. If it comes to it, we can find refuge on the heights.”

They spent the night huddled together on the dune, and Will’s attempt to fall asleep on the cold, hard ground did not go well. He kept thinking about Rowen left behind in Skald. He already missed her lively presence among them. Was she all right? And he wondered if he was getting any closer to Dad and Jess, or even further away? His thoughts went round and round the same track. When he finally slipped into sleep the sound of the wind on the water took shape in his dreams as something rushing towards him, a vast shadow with great grey wings beating like thunder. Several times he started awake, heart pounding. Each time he saw only the forms of his companions around him, and Finn’s black silhouette against the starlight on the water, unmoving as a statue. The knight-in-training’s calm stillness had always given Will some comfort, but now his feeling of dread was too great. The third time he awoke, he lay there restlessly for a while and then got up and sat down beside Finn. He wanted to speak, but he was afraid his voice would give away how frightened he was.

“Dawn’s not far off,” Finn said. “Sit and keep watch with me, if you like.”

“Is there any point?”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re coming for us. They’ll never stop coming. I’m … not like you. I’m not brave.”

Finn laughed softly.

“You think I’ve never been afraid of anything? You and I, Will, are more alike than you know.”

“I doubt it. You’ve been trained to stand your ground. To fight. All I want to do is run.”

“That was me, at your age. After my brother left. He never trained with the Errantry, though he could have been a great knight. He chose to stay and help my mother with the farm after my father died, rather than going to Appleyard. Then a horde of Nightbane raided the farmlands, and many people were killed before the Errantry drove the invaders away. After that my brother grew to hate the Errantry. He said that they only protected Fable and cared nothing for the rest of the Bourne. So he gathered a band of those who thought like him, and set out after the Nightbane, to make them pay for what they’d done. Before he left he gave me his ring, and told me never to trust the Errantry.”