The Fathomless Fire (15 page)

“Can the rifts be sealed up again?” Finn asked. “Or is there a way to avoid them?”

Pendrake gazed into his teacup, then looked up at Finn.

“To both your questions I have no certain answer. I do know that the Realm
can
heal itself. It did so after the first war against Malabron, when the threads of the Weaving were torn asunder and many stories were broken and scattered. So maybe the rifts will repair themselves in time. But after the Great Unweaving, much of the Realm never returned to what it once was. Much was … warped beyond repair, or lost for ever. It may be the same now. As for avoiding the rifts, usually you don’t realize you’re inside one until it’s too late, like the storyshard in the bog. The best one can do is to be watchful and alert at all times.”

While the old man spoke, Will studied him. He was much the same as Will remembered him, keen-eyed and seemingly stern, but with a smile never far away. During the conversation he kept glancing at Rowen with a look of concern. Will knew about Rowen’s link to the Stewards, though he didn’t really understand what this meant for her. He guessed now that Pendrake’s look had something to do with that, and he wondered fearfully what lay ahead for Rowen. Her eyes met his, and he knew she was thinking much the same thoughts.

“Tomorrow I will search for the rift that trapped Balor,” Pendrake concluded. “I will try to seal it if I can. But mending a few holes in the Weaving won’t be enough to stop the Night King. We are likely to find more such dangers close to home, I’m afraid, unless the Tain Shee are victorious.”

No one spoke after this, as if they were afraid to air the fear they all felt. Then Finn rose from his chair and excused himself, saying he still had preparations to make for the journey. Will thought that he should go with Finn, back to Appleyard, but he wasn’t ready to leave Rowen just yet, so he said nothing. Then Finn glanced at him, and Will saw in the quick smile that crossed the young man’s face that Finn understood.

Pendrake stood and embraced Finn.

“Go carefully, my son,” the old man said to him. “And come back safely.”

Finn thanked the loremaster, then with a reminder to Will to be ready at dawn, he took his leave. After he’d gone, Pendrake turned to Will.

“There is much to think about, and to do,” he said. “I must speak with the Marshal yet this evening, before I finally get a long-awaited sleep in my own bed. But … there’s something I should have told you a long time ago, Will. I’ve been thinking about when you first came to the Realm. You thought you were meant to be the hero of the story you had stumbled into, and you didn’t want to be. You didn’t think of yourself as a hero. And when you found out that you weren’t the hero, that the story was really about Rowen, do you remember what happened then?”

Will shook his head, uncertain what the loremaster was getting at.

“The Angel took Rowen and you went after him, and helped Moth destroy him,” the loremaster said. “If you hadn’t been there, Rowen might not be here now. You acted as a hero would.”

Will shook his head.

“I didn’t think about what I was doing,” he said. “I just did what I had to.”

“Exactly. And I wanted to tell you how proud I am of you. No matter what happens, no matter what role each of us plays in the story we’re all part of now, that will never change.”

Will lowered his head, his heart too full to speak.

“Now, let’s you and I get to Appleyard before it gets any later,” Pendrake said, reaching for his staff.

“I’d like to go too, Grandfather,” Rowen said.

The old man frowned.

“I’d prefer it if you stayed here, Rowen. The toyshop is really the safest place for you to be.”

A spasm of anger crossed Rowen’s face for the briefest moment.

“You keep telling me that,” she said, “but you won’t say why.”

“I will explain everything when there’s time for it,” Pendrake said, then he sighed and tapped his staff once on the floor. “Very well, then. Get your cloak.”

While the loremaster went to speak with Lord Caliburn in his chambers, Will and Rowen climbed the hill above the Gathering House. The path of flat stones wound up through the groves of apple trees to a bare summit, where a beacon tower stood. Along the rim of the hill, facing towards the city, lay the sunken, moss-covered remains of what might have been a wall or the ancient foundation of a building.

The lighted windows and streetlamps of the city glimmered below them in the dusk. Further away, a few scattered lights from farmhouses shone, like the lights of ships on a dark sea. Beyond was a dim immensity. Will knew he and Rowen were in the well-defended city of Fable, in the heart of the Bourne, but he felt as if they were standing on an exposed rock before the whole vast, unknown Realm.

“So I guess I’ve caught up with you in age,” Rowen said.

Will nodded, though he was thinking that she had always seemed older than him, not in years but in other ways.

“And now you’re a legend,” she said with a smile. “The great—”

“Please don’t say it,” Will muttered, and they both laughed.

“It’s so strange,” Rowen said after a moment. “We’ve been apart for a year, but for both of us it was only a few days. Well, for you it was. For me it seemed that way.”

“It was a long few days for me,” Will said, and before he knew what he was doing he plunged on. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you, about where you were and what might be happening to you.”

He fell silent and looked away. Again he had not said everything he really wanted to. He would have to be someone else, someone with a gift for words, to do that. And what if he was just fooling himself that she thought of him as more than a friend? What if he told her how he really felt and she looked at him with pity, or even laughed at him? It was better this way, better that she didn’t know. Then he wouldn’t lose her.

“I thought about you, too,” Rowen said, after a long silence. “I was hoping you’d be here when I came back to Fable. If I’m going to be a loremaster, there’s something I have to do. Something I can only do here, and I’m … I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

He listened, frowning with concentration while she told him what she had learned about the Weaving, and how she would have to go there, wherever
there
was, as part of her training to become a loremaster. Will nodded, but didn’t say anything. He knew that she had her grandfather’s gift, but what that meant was mostly a mystery to him. He only knew she was going on a journey, too, though he didn’t understand where or how.

“Is this Weaving dangerous?” he finally asked.

“I don’t really know. Grandfather talks about it as if it is. But he won’t say much.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t go, then.”

To his surprise she turned suddenly and walked away from him. After a few steps she stopped.

“As if I have a choice,” she said bitterly. Then she sighed and turned to him again.

“On our journey home I had a frightening dream,” she said. “That was probably about the same time you came to the Realm.”

“What happened in the dream?”

“I was standing high up, in a place like this,” she said, looking out at the city below them, “and Fable was burning. And there were these silent figures all around, like knights in armour, but their helmets had no eye-slits, no visors. They were just blank masks.”

She hesitated, deciding she couldn’t tell him how one of the knights or whatever they were had knelt before her. That had terrified her more than anything.

“One of them took off its mask and there was nothing inside,” she went on. “I tried to run away but I couldn’t, and then you were there with me. You said something to me.”

“What did I say?”

“I don’t remember.”

“I know what I said to you.”

Rowen stared at him.

“You do?”

“I told you it was just a dream and not to worry.”

Rowen laughed, then grew serious again.

“I used to read Grandfather’s books and look at his maps and wish I could be part of all those stories out there. Now I wish things could just go back to the way they were. Or I could go back to the way I was: not knowing anything about the Night King, or the Stewards, or any of it. I thought Fable wasn’t really part of the world. I thought nothing would ever happen here.”

Rowen sat on the low moss-covered wall at the brow of the hill and after a moment Will sat down beside her. Just being here with her, close to her, filled him with happiness and fear and the desire to protect her. He wanted so much to keep her safe, even from her own destiny as a loremaster, which he feared might take her further from him than he could ever follow. Here on this windswept hilltop all the darkness and threat of the Realm seemed to be gathering around them and his heart went cold with dread and hopelessness. How could someone like him protect her from a whole world?

Rowen shivered, as if his fear had passed to her. Then she stirred against him and slid her arm through his. Their hands met and their fingers entwined. Will felt his heart begin to beat again, as if her touch had brought him back to life. He knew then that she felt for him what he did for her, and all he wanted from this moment on was never to be parted from her.

“I don’t want tomorrow to come,” Rowen said.

“Neither do I.”

He put his arm around her and drew her closer. He drank in her nearness, the scent of her hair. He would do anything for her. He would brave any danger.

“I don’t want to lose you,” he whispered. “Not after I just found you again.”

She took a deep, shaking breath. He felt the fire that was her life, how fragile it was against the cold and dark that surrounded them.

“We shouldn’t be saying goodbye already,” she said. “Why does it have to be that way?”

Will couldn’t answer. He looked into Rowen’s eyes and leaned towards her. She closed her eyes and raised her face to his. Their lips touched.

There was a rustle of leaves close by, and Rowen suddenly pulled away.

“Riddle…” she said warningly, gazing into the dark bushes near the wall. Something stirred there. Then the strange cat appeared out of the leafy shadows and padded slowly towards them, his eyes gleaming eerily in the dark.

“Didn’t think you could see us,” the cat said, and Will started at the voice. Riddle hadn’t spoken at all while they’d been at the toyshop.

“How long have you been here, Riddle?” Rowen asked.

The cat sat on his haunches and stared at them.

“We followed Rowen. Didn’t want to stay at the toyshop. Don’t like the small, loud one who cleans things all the time. She scowls at us.”

“Give Edweth time. She’ll come around.”

“How did you get past the sentries at Appleyard Gate?” Will asked. “They don’t let so much as a mouse through without permission.”

“We … changed shape,” Riddle murmured, looking away.

“Into what?” Rowen asked.

“Hrmm…”

“What shape did you take, Riddle?”

“The small, loud one,” the cat said, and gave a soft harrumph that sounded exactly like Edweth when she was about to give someone a piece of her mind.

“You’re not supposed to do that,” Rowen exclaimed, rising from her seat on the wall. “You said you would stay a cat while we were here. If Edweth ever found out you were walking around pretending to be her…”

“It was a good game. Everyone smiled at Riddle. They didn’t know.”

“It’s not a game.”

“Don’t tell the toymaker. Don’t get Riddle into trouble.”

“Then Riddle had better get back to the toyshop right now.”

“Can’t we stay here with you, Rowen? We like this place. Reminds us of our house in the forest.”

“Well, that’s nice for you, I suppose. Maybe you and I can come back here some other time. But now Will and I would like to be alone.”

“But if you’re here with each other, you won’t be alone.”

“Yes. That’s just what I mean. Just the two of us,
alone
.”

The cat’s eyes lit up and his mouth curved into an eerie feline smile.

“A riddle,” he breathed. “Wait. Let us think. Riddle will riddle out the answer.”

“Well, go and do your riddling out at the toyshop, or I’ll tell Grandfather what you’ve been up to.”

Riddle stared at them for another moment, then turned abruptly and slipped away into the shadows. Rowen sat back down on the wall and sighed.

“Riddle’s home was destroyed by the Angel,” she said, “and now he says he’s disappearing, a little at a time. We let him come with us, as long as he promised to stay in one shape. So far that hasn’t worked out very well.”

From below came the ringing of the curfew bell, calling knight-apprentices back to the Gathering House.

“It’s time, isn’t it?” Rowen said bleakly.

Will took her hand in both of his.

“Once you’re done with the Weaving,” he asked her, “will you be leaving Fable again?”

“Maybe,” Rowen said. “I think it depends on what happens while I’m here.”

They walked together down the path to the Gathering House. Pendrake stood near the front steps, silhouetted against the light from within.

Before they reached him, Will stopped.

“I don’t think I should leave you,” Will said, shaking his head slowly. “Maybe I should just let Finn and Balor go on their own, so I don’t slow them down…”

Rowen moved closer to him.

“Will, you have to go. It’s Shade.”

Will nodded, his heart torn.

“I know,” he said heavily.

“Don’t worry about me,” Rowen said. “I’ll be all right.”

She wouldn’t look at him when she said it, and Will knew she was trying to hide her own fears from him. If only there was some way he could know that she was safe while he was gone… Then he thought of the mirror shard. He took it from beneath his shirt, slipped the chain off his neck, and held the shard out to her in his palm.

“I want you to have this,” he said.

“The Lady gave you that,” Rowen said, her eyes wide. “I can’t take it from you.”

“I thought I needed it to find my way to the Realm, but I didn’t. It’s supposed to protect the wearer from harm. That’s what the Lord of the Shee said. Please, Rowen, just take it.”

She shook her head.

“I won’t,” she said.