The Fathomless Fire (13 page)

Will swallowed hard, holding back tears.

“You said he was dying…?”

“It looked that way to me, lad. He’d been badly burned, and he was feverish.” The dwarf’s eyes grew watery. “A terrible thing to see a fellow creature suffering so. And he was such a noble beast. He told me he was being hunted, and that I should get away from this place because those who were hunting him were close by. I asked him how he’d been burned, and he said he’d been struck by lightning, of all things.”

Will stood up.

“Where did you say this was? North of here? How long ago?”

“Wait, lad, wait. There’s more I have to tell you.”

Will sat back down. He gripped the edge of the table to keep his hands from shaking.

“I told him I would go for help,” the dwarf continued, “though I didn’t know where help might be found in that wilderness. He asked me then how far it was to the Bourne, and I told him my guess was a week or more and that I was on my way there. I said I would stay with him, help him along on the way to the Bourne, but he insisted I leave him. He asked me to get to Fable as quickly as I could and find someone named Finn Madoc of the Errantry.”

“I know Finn,” Will said. “He was with us on my journey home. Shade must have been on his way to Fable. He was trying to get help.”

“But then why wouldn’t the wolf have asked me to find
you
?”

Will considered this for a moment.

“Because I wasn’t here,” he said at last. “Shade knew that. He knew I’d gone home to … where I come from. Mimling, I have to go to Appleyard and tell the Errantry what’s happened. When you left Shade, was he…?”

“He was alive, lad, barely. But that was nine days ago. Who knows what may have happened since?”

“He’s still alive,” Will said. “He has to be. Will you come with me to Appleyard, Mimling? You can tell them where you saw Shade. They’ll know how to find the place.”

“But I was lost, lad. I’m not sure where in the Realm I was. Not long after I left the wolf I came to the ford of the Wandering River, and that’s when I got my bearings. So I can’t say for certain…”

“But if you just come with me, you can tell them what you told me and—”

The dwarf made an apologetic grimace.

“As soon as I got here, I went to the Errantry myself, to find this Madoc fellow and bring him the news. But he wasn’t there. And my leg was smarting from the climb to Appleyard, so I came here to see if a sip or two might ease the pain, and now…”

“Will you wait here, Mimling?” Will said. “I’ll go to Appleyard and bring someone back. Just don’t go anywhere, please.”

The dwarf snorted.

“No fear of that, lad. I’m well-rooted now.”

Will raced back up the winding streets, his thoughts whirling. Shade was badly hurt. He might be dying, if he wasn’t already dead. Will pushed away that thought. Shade was more than an ordinary wolf. He had been a friend of the Stewards long ago: they had brought him back from death and given him great strength and long life. If their power was still in him then maybe he could survive even this.
Burned by lightning.

Lightning. Suddenly Will heard his mother’s voice in his head, telling him one of her stories about the boy hero, Lightfoot.
There was the time he stood up to Captain Stormcloud and his Lightning Warriors…

Will shook his head. That was just a story his mother had made up. It couldn’t have anything to do with what had happened to Shade. He had only thought of that bedtime story because of the old books he’d found before leaving home.

Will quickened his pace, thinking now that he would seek out Balor. The wildman had said he would help him if he ever needed it. As he hurried up the street, rain began to fall, and the cobbles became slippery. Will fell once on the steep street, picked himself up and ran on. As he approached the gates of Appleyard, he saw a rider ahead of him, in a stained travel cloak with the hood up against the drizzle. Probably someone returning from a scouting patrol outside the city. On an impulse Will ran up to the rider, who had climbed from his mount and was handing the reins to a groom.

“Excuse me,” Will said to the cloaked rider. “I need to speak to someone in the Errantry. It’s very important.”

The rider turned and drew back his hood. It was Finn Madoc.

Late that night the Deep Dark Forest reached the top of the rise. A towering wall of trees loomed over Molly’s Arm, but there it stopped, just on the far side of the shaft of golden light. The young men who had been assigned to keep watch during the day after Pendrake’s departure reported back every quarter hour at the Mermaid, which had become a makeshift headquarters for all the planning and preparations under way in the village.

A few of the villagers had already packed up their carts and wagons and left town, not wanting to stay around to see if the loremaster’s barrier would hold. Most of the others were doing as Pendrake had advised: gathering their possessions and their livestock ready for sudden flight. A stubborn few, like old Seamus Gudgeon, were loudly determined to stay no matter what.

Kate, the innkeeper, had decided she was staying, too. She had run the Mermaid for years now by herself, ever since her dear husband George had departed for the farthest shore. She had helmed the inn through good times and bad. This was her home, her ark on the stormy sea of life, and besides, travellers coming to Fable from far countries would still need a warm mug and a berth. She would stay until the last moment, and even beyond, she thought. The Deep would have to scuttle and capsize her inn first.

It was very late, and her fellow planners had all left, as had her last few customers, the most loyal or the most in need of fortification before they set off on the road out of the village. Her servant Jib had gone home to help his old and ailing mother pack her bags. Kate was alone.

The door opened and someone came in.

“We’re closing up,” Kate said from behind the bar where she was putting away the mugs and glasses. There was no reply.

She turned and eyed the stranger suspiciously. He was wearing a floppy hat that shaded his face, a weather-stained cloak and gloves that looked too long for him, so that the fingers drooped like a scarecrow’s. She was all too familiar with shifty characters who stole clothes off people’s washing lines and skulked about, pretending to be decent folk so they could get a hand in the money drawer when you weren’t looking.

The stranger’s face was pale, almost bone-white. His skin was creased and somehow
stretched
-looking, as if he hadn’t grown inside it like everyone else but had been wrapped in it. His eyes, thin black slits, bothered her the most and she wasn’t sure why, until she realized that he never blinked. He stood at the doorway, making no move to take a seat.

“I said we’re closing up. By which I mean the taps are shut off and the mugs put away.” She paused, and shivered. “And there are no beds left,” she added. This wasn’t true – the rooms were all empty, but she knew at that moment she didn’t want this …
person
under the same roof with her for longer than it took her to send him on his way.

“Looking for someone,” said the stranger, in an oddly
buzzing
voice, as if he were mouthing the words through a piece of wax paper. “Looking for Rowen of Blue Hill…”

“I don’t know anyone by that name,” Kate said, slowly reaching a hand below the counter where she kept the stout oak stick handy in case of trouble.

“She was here,” said the stranger, without a trace of doubt in his voice.

“Well if she was, she’s not here now. So why don’t you move along.”

The stranger stared at her a long moment, and Kate had the distressing feeling that she was being studied as if she might be something good to eat. Then the stranger turned without a word and left. The moment he was gone, Kate hurried over from the bar and did something she hadn’t done since she and her dear George had first opened the Mermaid for business thirty years ago: she bolted the door.

“N
ORTH OF THE
W
ANDERING
R
IVER
?” Finn asked. “How far?”

They were sitting by the fire in the common room of the Golden Goose, which was even busier than it had been when Will left for Appleyard. The noisy crowd meant Mimling had had to repeat parts of his story to Finn several times.

“As I’ve already told you, I’m not sure how far. The land was … strange. And that was nine days ago now. Would’ve taken me even longer to get to Fable but I hitched a ride part of the way with a merchant caravan. The point is, by now the wolf…”

He broke off and darted a glance at Will from under his bushy brows.

“You say this was Horse Folk land?” Finn asked.

“I think so.”

“They don’t usually come this far south to hunt the wisent. That’s strange.”

Will was relieved that Finn was here, and glad to see him again. On their journey together he had come to admire the young man’s calm, decisive character: he usually said very little, but when it was time to act, he did so without hesitation. Will hoped he himself might learn to be like the young knight-errant some day.

“Strange indeed,” mused the dwarf. “Like everything else these days.”

To Will’s surprise Mimling chuckled, a sound like gravel being shaken in a bag. “It’s curious, though, isn’t it, when you think about it,” he said. “I mean, you have to wonder if this was meant to be. The three of us here now…”

“What do you mean?” Finn asked.

“Well, I’ve been puzzling it over…” He sighed, as if the effort of puzzling had exhausted him. “Why did my lady Rowen advise me to go on this last quest, I wonder?”

“She thought it would be good for you,” Will offered.

“I suppose she did,” the dwarf said, nodding. “But this time, it wasn’t about treasure or adventure. This time was different. I went all that way, and brought back nothing … nothing except words
you
needed to hear, young Master Lightfoot. I wonder now … maybe the purpose of it all … my purpose … was to bring you those words.”

He shook his head.

“Too much thinking, Hammersong,” he muttered to himself. “Not your strong point…”

His head drooped. Finn took the tankard that was just slipping out of the dwarf’s fingers and set it on the table.

“I’ve been north of the ford,” Finn said to Will. “I know that country. Only a four or five-day ride from here on swift horses…”

“If I can find a knot-path, we can get there even faster,” Will said.

To Will’s surprise, Finn didn’t say anything in response to this. He and Will stood and thanked Mimling, who suddenly sat up, looking alert and sober.

“When you see my lady Rowen again,” he rumbled, “tell her that Mimling Hammersong will repay all that he owes to her.”

“I will.”

“Even though you haven’t said so, I can tell you’re worried about her, Will. You fear for her. And I’m guessing that whatever’s threatening Rowen has something to do with everything else that’s going wrong with the Realm.”

Will nodded, surprised at how much the dwarf had understood.

“It’s true,” he said. “At least I think so. I need to find her.”

“You will, I have no doubt of it. And when you do, you tell her, Master Will, that Mimling Hammersong will not forget, and that if there’s a way he can help her, by the bones of the earth he will.”

Will and Finn left the inn and set off for Appleyard. With Finn at his side, Will’s spirits lifted and he felt a surge of hope that they would find Shade before it was too late. During their earlier journey together, Finn had seemed cold and aloof until Will got to know him better. He’d learned that Finn had once been a runaway, like him, and even a thief, living by his wits in the streets of Fable. When Finn was a boy, his older brother Corr had left Fable under a cloud. Will didn’t know the whole story, but he knew that Corr had taken fifty men with him, to hunt down Nightbane raiders who had attacked the Bourne, but neither Corr nor any of his men had ever returned. Finn confided in Will that he probably would have ended up like his brother, angry and rebellious, if he hadn’t met Pendrake. The loremaster had taken him in and shown him there was another path he might choose than the hopeless one he had started down. The Errantry had given Finn a new life. Other than his hope of finding Corr some day, nothing mattered to Finn more than fulfilling his oath as a knight-errant.

“How soon can we leave?” Will asked now.

Finn turned to him with a troubled look.

“Things have changed in the Realm, Will,” he said. “For the worse. The wild lands outside the Bourne have become even more dangerous than they were the last time you were here. I can take a swift horse and with luck find Shade where Mimling left him.”