The Fathomless Fire (42 page)

Carry it with you, and I will carry you. The shard will seek out its other half.

The ground lurched under her feet and she gasped and flailed her arms, afraid she was about to fall. But somehow the flurrying snow held her and she did not fall. She felt herself held, buoyed up, and after a moment she was able to hold out her arms for Riddle, who sprang into them and nestled tightly against her. Then they were rising from the ground, lifted on a swirling cloud of snow.

Rest now
,
mortal child
, the dragon’s voice said.
You will need all of your strength for the task that lies ahead.

And in the midst of a white storm that howled in her ears as she rose into the sky, Rowen felt herself cradled, safe and warm.

M
OON, THE
D
REAMWALKER’S DAUGHTER
, was the first to see them coming.

After Hawk and the others had been taken, her father returned to his lodge. He had walked into the Dream Country. She sat and waited alone while he walked there, in the place where she could not go. When he came back at last, after a long time, he told her they would leave the camp now and go in search of the rest of their people.

“I have seen your brother,” he told her. “I have spoken to him. He knows he should not look for us here.”

She hadn’t wanted to leave in case Lightfoot and his friends brought Hawk back.

“He is with Lightfoot,” her father said. “We will go to our people and Lightfoot will find us there.”

She knew then for certain that this would happen. She knew that what her father saw in the Dream Country was as true as the earth under her feet.

So they had set out walking across the plain, and the sun had crossed the sky and gone down. Then they had rested for a while and when the sun returned they walked on. The sun climbed to the top of the sky and seemed to halt there. The dry grass hissed in the hot wind and once Moon saw a snake slither away under a stone. Nothing that lived wished to be out under the eye of the sun, but her father walked on and she followed. They had a little water in a skin and when it was gone her father led her through a narrow canyon of red rock, where they came upon a spring trickling into a small pool. It was so shallow she could see the colours of the smooth stones on the bottom. There was only enough for them to quench their thirst and refill the water skin.

That day they found Lightfoot’s horse and those of the men who had come with him. The horses did not shy away when her father approached them, and after he had spoken to them in their own language they had followed him. When the sun was low again in the west they had come to the rim of a wide valley, and there on the flats below were trees and the silver ribbon of a river and the white lodges of their people. They climbed down into the valley and walked into the circle of the lodges. The people came hurrying to greet them. They were home.

Then Moon had eaten well for the first time in days, and that evening she had been given a warm robe to sleep in, but she hadn’t slept. She’d stayed awake that night and before dawn she had climbed to the edge of the valley and stayed there, watching the northern sky, which was starry and cloudless.

That was why she was the first to hear the distant rumble of thunder and the first to see the great bird coming on the wind. All the dogs in camp barked wildly and the people came running out of their lodges with terrified faces as she ran to warn her father. He joined her outside and turned his face to the north and put his hand on her shoulder and she had known that this time there was nothing to fear.

It was Lightfoot returning, as her father had dreamed. He was returning her brother to his people, and with him the rain.

Will stood at the prow of the ship with Shade and Hawk, the Horse Folk boy, gazing in awe at the earth as it unrolled beneath them. The skiff was much smaller than the other skyship he’d been on, the one that had taken him to the fortress, and when the wind struck it, the little ship was buffeted and pitched about like a boat tumbling over rapids. Will hung on to the rail, knowing he should be exhausted by now but unable to rest, as Balor had urged him to. The wildman was hunched on a thwart in the middle of the ship, looking pale and unwell. He was not finding the ride in this smaller vessel to his liking. At the stern, Yates stood in his oilcloth cloak, his hand on the iron tiller of the ship. Some colour had returned to his face, and his eyes gleamed. Everything about him spoke of a man who was sailing from bondage into freedom.

Will didn’t fully understand how the skyship stayed aloft. He knew there was some kind of furnace set into the hull that contained
gaal
. When Yates wanted the ship to rise, he worked a foot-treadle beneath the tiller that fed into a bellows to make the
gaal
burn hotter. Another treadle cut off the air, to cool the
gaal
and make the ship descend. Eventually the fever iron would burn itself out, and then the ship would begin to fall out of the sky. Will hoped that would not be for a long time yet.

They had been sailing for hours through a day and a night, out of the ghostlands and across the empty windswept plains, leaving the marching army of faceless soldiers far behind. The moon had appeared, pale and metallic in a haze of cloud, and in its light the earth was silvered and dreamlike. And even then, when the wind died down and the ship’s motion had lulled Hawk into a fitful sleep, Will’s eyes refused to close. He stood with Shade at the ship’s prow, and it seemed to him that he was waiting for something to appear out of the dark, though he didn’t know what it was. He was also troubled about Shade, and glanced at the wolf often, almost certain he was not imagining the alarming change he found in his friend. It seemed to him that Shade had grown
larger
since they’d come to Corr Madoc’s fortress. His grey fur looked darker, too, and more bristled, as if he was tensed constantly against unseen threats. Will guessed that all of this had something to do with the
gaal
Shade had been given, but he said nothing about his concerns, hoping that as the fortress was left behind the changes in the wolf would fade.

Then day had come, and the sun flooded across the plains and revealed a different world. They passed over deep winding canyons of banded reddish rock, and wide, treeless uplands dotted with huge boulders, as if giants had smashed a mountain to bits and scattered the pieces. There was water, too, at least a little, as Will realized when he saw a few pools dotting the landscape and flashing like coins in the sun. Then Shade’s keen eyes had spotted a small herd of dark, shaggy-coated animals gathered in a narrow, shaded canyon.

“The wisent,” Hawk had cried, clinging to the rail and watching the animals until they were out of sight.

Buffalo
, Will thought to himself in awe.

“They’re not all gone,” the boy had said to Will, his eyes shining. “I will remember this place. I will bring the hunters here.”

From that point on he wouldn’t leave the ship’s prow but stayed there, tirelessly scanning the earth below.

Finally he gave a great shout and pointed.

“There!” he cried. “My people are there. Where Father told me they would be.”

A wide valley opened before them, with the wrinkled seam of a nearly-dry riverbed running through it. On the far bank of the riverbed, close to a grove of poplars, stood a ring of many gleaming white Horse Folk lodges. By easing off the treadle and working the rigging, Yates brought the ship lower and lower until it was hovering just above the ground, at the top of a gentle rise above the Horse Folk village.

Yates uncoiled a rope ladder from the side, and Will climbed down with Hawk.

“Lightfoot,” Hawk said, and he threw his arms around Will. Will hugged him back.

“They call me Lightfoot,” Will said, “but that’s you, Hawk. You ran all the way from your camp to find us and bring us back. That’s something I wouldn’t have been able to do. And now you can help your people. You can lead them to safety.”

“I am not Lightfoot,” Hawk said.

“You will need to be. Those warriors without faces are coming. If they keep on the way they’re going, Balor says they will pass through this valley. You and your people mustn’t stay here.”

The boy nodded, then turned away. Will watched him walk a short distance and then break into a run down the slope. Several figures came from the circle of lodges, walking quickly towards him. Among them Will saw Hawk’s sister, Moon, leading their father. With an ache in his heart he thought of Jess and Dad.

Then he saw the horses – Cutter and the others – on the edge of the Horse Folk herd. A young man had a rope halter around Cutter’s neck.

“Should we take the horses back to Fable with us?” Will called up to Yates.

“I advise against it,” Yates said. “Horses don’t do well on the flying ships, and I doubt that we have enough
gaal
left to reach the Bourne anyway. But don’t worry. The horses will be well looked after among these folk.”

Will turned back to see that Hawk had reached his father and his sister. And he took another look at Cutter.
Goodbye
, he said under his breath.

Will climbed back into the cloudship and rejoined Shade. The ship rose again and as it sailed out of the valley, Will looked back and saw a towering column of dark cloud coming from the north, dragging a long grey curtain of rain. With relief and gratitude he saw that the cloud would sweep across the valley, filling the dry river, and fall upon the camp of the Horse Folk.

Will thought of his mother then, and wondered what she would think of the ending he had found to Lightfoot’s story.

They travelled through the rest of that day until evening began to descend and the shadow of the sail stretched out like a wing across the plain. Then a wind rose from the west, and icy rain slashed across the ship’s deck. While they crouched in the stern, out of the wind, Will saw daylight between the planks and heard them rattling as the wind buffeted the hull.

“The skiff is breaking apart,” Yates said, when Will showed him what he had found. “I’ve seen this before, when we take the ships out onto the plains, far from the ghostlands. It may be that the magic the dwarves use in the crafting of these vessels loses its power over long distances. Whatever the reason, I can barely control her any more. She’s beginning to drift.”

“How close are we to the Bourne?” Will asked.

They looked over the side and studied the landscape. To the south, through the rain and the falling gloom, Will could just make out a dim line of hills. On one hilltop he could see the faint suggestion of towers and battlements.

“I think those are the outer hills of the Little Kingdoms,” Balor said, shaking the rain out of his eyes. “If so we’re not far now, less than two days’ march from Annen Bawn. If you can keep this flying bathtub up in the air a little longer, Yates, we should be able to land it right on their doorstep.”

But Yates was now struggling to steer the collapsing ship where he wanted it to go. They all watched in frustration as they were shoved and bullied eastwards by the wind, away from the hills, until at last they could no longer see the towers.

“If we drift much further in this direction,” Balor said, “we’ll be over the Screaming Wastes. We don’t want to touch down there, believe me.”

“Why not?” Will asked.

“Unpleasant things live there. Things that hunt at night and have lots of sharp teeth.”

Without thinking Will touched the hilt of the sword at his side. Corr had returned their weapons to them, but the grim look in Balor’s eyes told him they would be of little use.

“I should bring us down now, then,” Yates said. “While I still have some say in what kind of landing we make.”

As it turned out, there was little else he could do. The wind had grown stronger and began to tug at the sail so fiercely he could barely control it and was forced to furl it most of the way, which started the skiff on a sudden descent. The hull groaned and shuddered as they rode down through the churning air, and Will wondered whether at any moment the bottom would give way underneath them. The tiller had become useless, too, and as they dropped, they were nudged mile by mile further east by the wind. The land beneath them grew stony and barren. Jagged pinnacles of rock rushed all too closely beneath them.

“The Wastes,” Balor said with a scowl. “We were closer than I thought. The ship’s going to land right smack in the middle of them.”

“The
gaal
is burned out,” Yates cried. “We’re going to hit the ground hard. Hang on.”

The ship was dropping faster now, plunging through the air like a falling arrow. Will clung to Shade, who seemed best able to stay balanced against the pitch and roll of the deck. The wolf planted his feet firmly against the shuddering planks and lowered his head. Then he raised it again.

“Will Lightfoot,” he said, “you are glowing.”

Will glanced down at his breast pocket. There was a white light pulsing through the fabric. For an instant he had no idea what this could be, then he knew and pulled out the mirror shard. Peering into the glass he saw his own reflection as a vague shape, and behind it a small but bright star shining in the dark.