The Fathomless Fire (23 page)

“Go ahead, Freya,” said one of the Skaldings, a burly older man.

“Are you sure, Eymund?”

“Your companions will be fine for the moment,” Pendrake said, and the man nodded.

Reluctantly, Freya gave in. She went with Rowen and the loremaster up the winding streets of Fable, gazing in wonder at everything she saw. When a messenger wisp streaked past she ducked her head, then laughed. A pair of knights-errant on horseback rode by and Freya followed them with her eyes.

“Is Finn Madoc in Fable?” she asked, her normally apple-bright complexion reddening even more. Rowen felt herself blushing a little in sympathy.

“He’s gone north with Will,” Rowen said. “We’re hoping they’ll be home soon.”

Quickly Rowen told Freya Mimling’s story about Shade, and how Will and Finn had set out to find him and bring him back to Fable.

“May they all return safely,” Freya said. The blush had faded from her face, leaving her pale and weary-looking, as if the long journey from Skald had finally caught up with her.

Rowen remembered the samming, the dance of celebration in Skald, after the werefire had been put out by her grandfather, and all the foul creatures that had infested the city, the Marrowbone brothers and many others, were on the run. As they danced together in the samming, Freya and Finn had eyes only for each other. After Will had found his way home, Finn had escorted Freya back to Skald so she would not be alone on the long road. They must have become close on that journey. But once Freya returned to Skald to help her people, Finn had come back to Fable to resume his duties. The two of them probably hadn’t seen each other since.

Like Will and I
, she thought bitterly.
Something always keeps us apart.

Back at the toyshop Edweth welcomed them and prepared a meal. They sat together at the table in the library, and at last Freya told her tale.

“Skald is getting back on its feet, Father Nicholas, thanks to you. The nightcrawlers have almost all been rooted out, and many of those who left are beginning to return. Farmers are sowing crops again and there is trade at our market.”

“That is very welcome news. And how is your family?”

“Father has been better since he’s stopped trying to save all of Skald single-handedly,” Freya said with a smile. “Thorri is growing and already talking about coming to Fable some day to join the Errantry.”

Pendrake laughed.

“I’m glad to hear it. But I doubt that’s everything you came all this way to tell us.”

“It isn’t,” Freya said, and her smile faded.

“What has happened?”

“Earlier this year,” she began, “we had the warmest, loveliest spring that Skald had seen in a very long time. There was plenty of sunshine, and rain when it was needed, and the harvest promised to be bountiful. Then came a strange day in midsummer, when a cold fog poured down out of the mountains and hung over the city. Frost grew thick on everything. People gathered in the streets, afraid some new terror was about to be visited on us. Their memories of the werefire were still fresh.

“But nothing happened. The fog lasted all day and into the night. Then, around midnight, a sound woke me. It was hail pattering against the shutters.
Hail
, Father Nicholas, at midsummer. I went outside, and the courtyard of the smithy was covered in a blanket of icy slush. It was as cold as the coldest, darkest night of winter. The air was thick with falling snow. Then I heard a voice. Or it was more as if I felt it, like the way you feel a pounding drum in your bones. It called me by name and I knew it was the dragon. The dragon that lives in the ice. It was Whitewing Stonegrinder.”

With a shiver, Rowen remembered the name. On the journey with Will, they had fled the Angel by climbing up onto a glacier high in the mountains. Nightbane had pursued and almost captured them, until the dragon awoke and came forth from his caverns within the ice and routed the enemy. In the battle Rowen had been wounded by a Nightbane arrow, and Whitewing Stonegrinder had healed her with a touch of his icy claw.

“The dragon left the glacier?” Rowen asked. “I thought he would never do that.”

Freya nodded.

“I know. I didn’t believe it at first, either, but there was no mistaking the voice. His words seemed to come from all around me, though I couldn’t see him. And I remembered every word. Every word, as if they had been burned onto my skin with frost. ‘Freya Ragnarsdaughter,’ he said. ‘You came to my home and so I come to yours.’

“‘What do you want with me, Old One?’ I asked. I don’t know why I called him that. It seemed right.”

“It was right, Freya,” Pendrake said. “That is a term of respect for an ancient power of the earth like Stonegrinder. The long memory of your people was working in you, I’d say.”

“I don’t know about that, but the dragon didn’t seem to mind. ‘I have tidings for the keeper of stories, in Fable,’ he said. I knew he meant you, Father Nicholas.

“‘Why have you come to me?’ I asked him. There was something in his voice, a hollowness, as if he had been stricken by some malady or was in great pain. I was suddenly afraid for him. But what could harm such a being?

“‘My strength is not what it was,’ he said. ‘If I go much further from my home, I will not be able to return. You must be my voice, Freya Ragnarsdaughter. Go to the keeper of stories and tell him what he must know.’

“I said I would do as he asked, and then he told me…”

She broke off, and looked at Rowen, who was alarmed at what she saw in Freya’s eyes. Dread, even despair.

“Told you what, Freya?”

Freya bit her lip, then turned to Pendrake.

“He said that a great darkness was sweeping through the Realm, Father Nicholas. As though the lights of the world were going out, one by one. That is why his strength was failing. He could feel it in himself. The ice of his home was melting more quickly than he had ever known. Servants of the Storyeater, as he calls the Night King, were marching through his domain in great numbers now, defying him. He doesn’t have much time left before his guard on the mountains fails. Then he told me … he told me the darkness was coming here, to the Bourne.”

They all fell silent at these words.

“Coming here?” Rowen finally asked.

“From every direction, he said, creatures who serve the Storyeater are already coming this way. Fable is the place where all will be decided, he told me.”

“Then the Night King…” Rowen whispered. “He knows. He knows about the Weaving, about the doorway…”

“We don’t know that for certain,” Pendrake said. “Did the dragon say anything else, Freya?”

“He said that he would return to the ice for now and when he left it again it would be for the last time. Then he asked me to bring you a message, Rowen.”

Rowen’s startled gaze went back and forth between her grandfather and Freya.

“Me?” she said. “He must have meant Grandfather.”

Freya shook her head emphatically.

“‘Tell the granddaughter of the keeper of stories that when she has need of me I will come to Fable.’ Those were his words. Then he said that snow would be the sign of his coming. That when you saw snow falling, Rowen, you should climb to the highest ground and he would be there.”

“But what would a dragon want with me?” Rowen asked breathlessly.

“You were the only one of us whom Stonegrinder touched, remember,” Pendrake said. “When he healed your arrow wound.”

“I thought of that, too,” Freya said.

“An ancient being like Stonegrinder has powers of vision and understanding we can barely imagine,” Pendrake said. “I doubt that questioning his message will lead to any answers. You’ll just have to wait, Rowen, for snow to fall.”

No one spoke for a while. Then Pendrake rose and put his hand on Freya’s.

“It was brave of you to come all this way, my dear,” he said quietly. “If I could, I’d return with you to Skald and speak with Stonegrinder myself. But that’s not possible now.”

“I know, Father Nicholas. You’re needed here.”

“Yes, and something tells me, Freya, you’re not planning to go home straight away either. Thorne was right about one thing: you didn’t really need an armed band to deliver this message.”

Freya took a deep breath. She seemed to be preparing for the loremaster’s objections.

“It’s true,” she said. “We mean to stay as long as we’re needed.”

Pendrake sighed heavily.

“You should be with your family at such a time, Freya.”

“We Skaldings owe you our freedom, Father Nicholas. If Fable is in danger we’re here to stand with you, whatever comes.”

Rowen could see that her grandfather was not pleased, but the look on Freya’s face was so determined that he refrained from speaking his mind.

Now that she had brought the dragon’s message, Freya was eager to return to her companions. Rowen saw her to the door. When she returned to the library, she found Pendrake donning his cloak.

“Grandfather?” Rowen said.

“I must speak to the Marshal about Freya’s news,” Pendrake said distractedly. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Why would the dragon say what he did to Freya? What would I need him for?”

Pendrake turned to her, and to her alarm she saw that his face looked much older, as if weighed down with a great sorrow.

“Rowen, if anything happens,” he began haltingly, “if anything happens and I’m not with you…”

“Grandfather?”

“If I’m not with you any more, find Will. Stay close to him.”

Rowen had never heard her grandfather speak like this before, with such sadness and urgency at the same time. She searched his face fearfully.

“What do you mean, if you’re not with me any more? What are you saying?”

Pendrake placed a hand on her shoulder.

“I am so proud of you, Rowen,” he said, and she felt tears sting her eyes. After all he had said to her lately about her gifts and the threat to the Bourne, of all the grim news and shadowy rumours they’d heard, somehow the way he was talking now frightened her more than anything.

“How can I…” she began, choking back her fear, “What if Will is miles away?”

“You’ll find a way,” Pendrake said. “I know you will.”

He took up his staff and hurried from the toyshop, and Rowen sat down heavily in the chair he had just left. After a few moments Riddle slunk in cautiously and curled up at her feet. She reached down to scratch him absently behind the ears, hardly aware of what she was doing. Then she had a sudden thought, and took out the mirror shard again. She looked at the reflection of her face, saw the fear in her own eyes. Was everyone going to leave her? She clutched the mirror shard tightly until she felt it cut into her palm.

“Nothing’s going to happen,” she said under her breath. “Nothing.”

In the main square of Fable, a figure stood alone and still amid the hurrying traffic of a busy day. The figure was dressed in the cloak and hood of a knight-errant, and so it was a familiar sight to most, and for that reason no one paid it much attention.

Getting inside the city had been difficult. The thrawl had been turned away at the gates, and so had to resort to a different method of entry. At night, outside the walls, it had unravelled itself, emptied itself of all the living things it had ingested to give its shape solidity, movement and speech. Then as a ragged veil of the finest gossamer it had let the night breeze catch it and lift it over the walls and into the sleeping city.

From there it had been a matter of regaining its shape. That had not been so difficult. There were many bodies here that would do. It had found one quickly and taken it with hardly a struggle. No one had heard the young man wail his own name as it was torn from him, along with all his memories and his flesh.
Gared Bamble
.

Once the thrawl had regained a form in which it could move, it had traced the thread of the prey to this place, the city square. She had been here, Rowen of Blue Hill. Then her thread had vanished again somehow, but the thrawl still
felt
her presence in the traces she had left among the threads of all these other mortal creatures. Her trail wound away through these busy streets and then … there was only rain. But she was here, somewhere.

The thrawl stirred and began to move. It could spin its own invisible threads, too, and it would walk through this unsuspecting city and let threads unravel from itself, threads that would find other threads, those that belonged to anyone the girl knew.

W
ILL HACKED AT THE WALL
of reeds in front of him until he could no longer lift his arm. He dropped to his knees in the wet earth, panting and struggling to hold back tears. He had led his friends into this place and it had swallowed them alive. He couldn’t reach them, and if he stayed here any longer, he was sure to be swallowed up too. No one would ever find out what had happened to him or his companions. And Shade, if he wasn’t already dead, might be dying even now. He would never see the wolf again, or his family, or Rowen.