The Fathomless Fire (10 page)

“It’s even higher now than when I first left the Mermaid,” the old man moaned.

“It
is
rising,” someone wailed. “What’ll we do?”

“Powers preserve us,” somebody else cried. “We’ll be inundated.”

Rowen felt a ripple of panic pass through the crowd. Some looked fearfully at Riddle as if they thought he might be the cause of this latest eruption of the unknown and terrifying into their quiet lives. The cat was aware of the glances directed at him and he burrowed himself even further into the shelter of Rowen’s arms.

“What does it mean, Nicholas?” Kate breathed, clutching at Pendrake’s sleeve.

“You know this forest as the Deep,” he said. “It’s also the Dark. That’s what’s rising now.”

There was a brief silence as the assembled villagers took in what the loremaster had said.

“Then this is the end,” someone wailed. “Our homes, our farms … everything will be lost.”

A clamour of distress rose. Pendrake turned to Rowen, his face grim.

“We have to help them,” he said to her, then he sighed. “This is going to give the threads a good tug.”

He raised his hands for quiet, but no one paid him any notice. They were too busy panicking, Rowen realized. Then Kate stepped out of the crowd and stood beside Pendrake.

“Stop your jabbering and pay attention!” the innkeeper roared. “Nicholas can help us!”

The clamour subsided, and most of those who had already begun hurrying back to the village returned.

“Thank you, Kate,” Pendrake said.

He turned to face the forest, then took the last few steps that brought him to the very brink of the ridge. The night wind caught his long grey hair and tossed it about. He really did look, Rowen thought, like someone standing at the edge of the sea. Then he gripped his staff in both hands and lifted it slowly into the air.

“Is that a magic staff?” asked a young boy, his eyes wide. Pendrake turned and smiled at him. “It’s a stick,” he said.

Rowen’s heart lightened to see the gleam of amusement in her grandfather’s eyes. She thought he looked more like his old self than he had in days.

Pendrake turned his attention back to the staff, which he lifted higher.

“This must be a beautiful spot on a sunny day,” he murmured, as if speaking to himself.

“It is,” Kate said, glancing at Rowen with a puzzled expression. “A lovely spot entirely.”

“I can imagine,” Pendrake said.

To Rowen’s surprise her grandfather began to prod the staff at the empty air, as if there was something in the darkness itself he was searching for, or trying to dislodge.

“There it is,” he said at last.

With that he swept the staff in a long arc over his head, and the darkness opened.

That was how it looked to Rowen. The darkness opened like a seam and a shaft of bright golden light poured through. It was if the night air was the roof of a tent and her grandfather had torn through it to let in a sliver of day. The top of the ridge was bathed in brilliant sunshine.

There were gasps from the crowd, and one terrified shriek followed by a chorus of shushing. Riddle moaned in fear. The opening her grandfather had made continued to widen on its own, and in moments it stretched across the entire length of the ridge. Rowen couldn’t take her eyes off that unaccountable brightness in the midst of the dark. Then someone shouted, “
Look at the trees!
”, and she turned her gaze downwards and blinked in surprise.

The trees had fallen back. She stared, certain the forest’s edge was now further from the top of the ridge than it had been when she’d looked at it only moments ago. The light was falling upon the leaves and trunks of the outermost trees and the forest, she thought, looked peaceful and almost inviting.

Pendrake lowered his staff. He turned to face the awestruck villagers.

“There,” he said to Kate, who had backed away with a stunned look in her eyes. “That should hold it for a while. You’ve gained a little time, but still you need to be ready to leave Molly’s Arm at a moment’s notice. The forest will rise again, make no mistake about it. We can only hope the true cause of this threat can be dealt with before your village is lost.”

After assigning three young men to keep a watch on the trees, Pendrake turned away from his handiwork and sought out Rowen. He gave her a wink and took her arm, and they walked back down the hill to the village. She thought of what he had said earlier, that each time they reached into the Weaving they tugged upon the threads of Story.

“What about the Night King?” she asked. “Haven’t we just … told him where we are?”

“It had to be done,” Pendrake said heavily. “That’s part of being a loremaster, too.”

Kate came up alongside them.

“I’m sorry for doubting you, Nicholas,” she said with a contrite expression. “I can’t think what would have become of us if you hadn’t been here tonight. Of course you’re still welcome to stay at the Mermaid. No charge. You and your granddaughter, and even the cat, or whatever it is.”

“Thank you, Kate,” Pendrake said. “But we’ll be carrying on to Fable tonight. After what’s happened here, there is clearly no longer any time to lose.”

Rowen glanced back up the hill. Some of the crowd had followed them back down into the village, but many were still gathered on the ridge, gazing up at the light. It was like a beacon, she thought with a shiver of dread, a beacon that would be seen from a long way off.

Many miles from the village of Molly’s Arm, something awoke.

In a desolate marsh near the edge of the Bourne stood a solitary dead tree, its bare, blackened limbs reaching like claws to the sky. Among the tangled branches countless generations of spiders had woven so many webs that the tree seemed to be draped in tattered veils. Among these webs was one that hadn’t been woven by any spider, at least not the kind that crawled on eight legs and caught flies for its meals. Anyone who passed this way (though few ever did) and stopped to marvel at this strange tree might have noticed that this particular web was much larger than any of the others, and made of much thinner, nearly invisible thread, almost as if it wasn’t there at all. When the wind blew through the branches, all the other webs stirred and trembled, except this one. It had not been made for catching the usual sort of prey, either, for whenever a fly or a beetle on the wing strayed into its threads the insect would pass right through, unharmed.

This web was only one of many like it that had been strung throughout this part of the Realm, in out-of-the-way places like the marsh. They had been spun and linked together with invisible threads like secret tripwires, to catch one thing only: a presence.

At the same moment that Pendrake stood on the ridge above the forest and cut a hole in the darkness, the threads of this particular web quivered for the first time.

The prey had returned.

The web’s trembling threads did not bring a spider scuttling out of its lair to investigate the catch. Instead, the web began to quiver more strongly. Slow ripples and undulations crossed its surface, then ridges and hollows appeared, stretching and warping the web as if it was a gossamer-thin cocoon with something inside trying to tear its way out. But there was no inside to the cocoon: there was only the web, shaping itself around nothing to create a something. After a while the shapes of limbs could be made out, straining and reaching, then something that might have been a head appeared, slowly turning from side to side as if seeking an elusive sight or sound.

At last the web that was now a web-
thing
tore itself free from the branches. The human-like shape fell to the wet, slimy earth and lay still. After a while it stirred, climbed slowly to its feet, and began shuffling forward through the marsh.

The thing had no eyes. It felt its way as a spider feels the tremors of a fly’s struggle through the strands of its web. It sensed the drawing of power from the Weaving and it moved now towards the prey that had used that power, as though towards a long-awaited meal.

The web-thing was still whitish-grey and almost transparent, but as it walked it grew more solid and opaque, and its human-like features became more distinct. It passed through a cloud of mosquitoes and a slit opened in the head, widening to a gaping maw. There was a sound of indrawn breath and the insects were sucked helplessly inside. The mouth swiftly ravelled shut. Not long afterwards it opened again and a thin, high-pitched whine came out. It was like the whine of a cloud of mosquitoes, if mosquitoes ever tried to form words.
Aaaiiiii … aaammmm
…
ooooo… nnnnnng…
the web-thing whined over and over. Eventually the whine fell in pitch, deepening and growing louder, until it resembled something more like a human voice.
iiiiiii… aammm…

The web-thing was practising speech. It would need speech later on, when it came to the places where humans dwelt. It would have to pass for one of them, at least until it found the prey.

iiiiii amm looookinnng … for rowennnnnn…

The thing made of spider’s web had no mind of its own. It was not alive, unless one thinks of words as having life. It was a being spun from words, a walking, breathing spell known as a thrawl.
Rowen
was one of the words that the thrawl had been woven from. Another word was
find.
And another word was the thrawl’s own secret name, given to it by the lord of the Shadow Realm. It would speak that name only when it had found the one it sought. Then the spell would be unleashed, and the prey would be caught at last.

W
ILL SLEPT IN HIS OLD ROOM
at the toyshop that night, and early the next morning, after a quick breakfast with Edweth, he hurried to Appleyard. The Errantry had a network of scouts and riders all over the Bourne and in other lands, too, and his hope was that someone might have brought back news of the loremaster or Shade. As he climbed the rising stone path to the Gathering House, however, he found the same curious and hopeful looks directed at him from passing members of the Errantry as he’d had the night before.

He was nearing the steps of the Gathering House, a huge structure flanked on all sides by great trees with spreading branches, when a tall boy about his own age called his name and rushed over to him.

“It’s really you,” the boy said breathlessly. “They said you were back. I’m Peter, a friend of Rowen’s.”

Will remembered him now. He’d met Peter when Rowen had shown him around Appleyard not long after he’d first arrived in Fable.

“I was actually on my way to Master Pendrake’s shop to find you,” Peter said. “You saved me the trouble.”

“Find me?”

“It’s the Marshal. He wants to speak to you.”

Will nodded. He had known this would be coming. Last night Balor Gruff had no doubt reported directly to Lord Caliburn, the Marshal of the Errantry, who found out about everything going on in Fable, sooner or later. Will had met him before, and found him to be cold and unfriendly. He had wanted Will to stay in Fable rather than search for a way home, not because he feared for Will’s safety, it seemed, but because he had hoped Will’s gift for finding what was lost and hidden could be put to use in defence of the Bourne. Will didn’t relish the thought of seeing him again.

“Thanks,” Will said glumly. He started to move away.

“Will?” Peter said.

“Yes?”

“I’m glad you came back. We all are.”

Will nodded again, too flustered to reply. He hurried on and climbed the steps to the Gathering House, giving his name to the guards at the door, then made his way through the busy corridors, keeping his head down in the hope of not attracting any attention. But as he passed the hall that led to the dormitories, a girl appeared out of nowhere and stood in his path. She was small and round-faced, and breathing heavily as if she’d just been running.

“Are you Will Lightfoot?” she asked in a near-whisper.

“Yes.”

“You find lost things, don’t you?” she said, her brown eyes fixed solemnly on him.

Will sighed.

“Listen, I don’t know what you’ve heard about me but—”

“My name’s Mairi,” the girl said quickly. “My ferret, his name’s Dart, he got out of his cage this morning when I was feeding him a piece of roast beef I’d saved from last night’s supper. I’ve looked everywhere but—”

“Look, I’m sorry,” Will interrupted. “There’s nothing I can do.”

“But if the prefect finds him before I do he’ll take him away,” the girl pleaded more urgently now. “We’re not supposed to have pets in the dormitory. Please, you’re the only one who can help me. You find what’s lost. You saved Balor Gruff. You’re a hero.”