The Shadow of Malabron

by Thomas Wharton

  “Hurry…” Pendrake gasped. “Try another…”

  Rowen plucked urgently at the objects in Pendrake’s palm, but her sluggish, clumsy attempt sent most of them falling to the ground. They seemed to take a long time getting there.

  Rowen gave a choked cry.

  “I can’t move my legs,” she gasped.

  Finn struggled forward, holding out the green ring he wore on his right hand. He reached up and pressed it to the hole in the golem’s forehead. An instant later came a flash of emerald light from the ring, and the clay giant shuddered from head to foot. There was a cracking sound and Finn stumbled away from the golem. The ring’s band was still round his finger, but the stone was lodged in the golem’s forehead and glowed with a dull green fire.

  In the next moment everything seemed to speed up. The toymaker suddenly lurched forward. Finn caught him before he fell.

  “What did you…” he said to Finn, who was watching the golem with wide eyes.

  “My brother’s emerald. He gave it to me before he left home. His memory was all I had left in my mind just now. I was trying to hold on to it, and then I thought of the ring.”

  The huge lump of stone fell from the golem’s hands and hit the ground with a wet thud. The clay giant began walking again, but this time much faster than before.

  Will and the others watched him, stunned, and then began to follow. Will breathed deeply, aware that the weariness in his body and fog in his mind were already beginning to vanish. He felt as though he had just woken up from a deep, dreamless slumber that had gone on for years. And even the bog itself seemed to come to a kind of life. The mist thinned, swept by a warmer breeze, and patches of blue appeared in the sky.

  “Where’s he going?” Rowen asked, watching the golem trudge on.

  “Ord seems to know, which will have to be enough for us,” Pendrake said.

  As they drew closer to the tower they wondered if the golem would stop, but he passed by the lonely pile of stones without so much as a glance. And as Will and the others followed, they saw to their relief that the tower was sinking visibly. They heard the creaking and groaning of the stones as they shifted and slid.

  “There must have been a kingdom here long ago,” Pendrake said, “before this land became a bog. For all we know, the tower is only the tallest turret of an entire castle sunk in the earth for hundreds of years.”

  The golem’s pace began to quicken, and although Shade seemed able to keep pace with him, the others were still weary from their time in the storyshard and lagged behind. Finally Pendrake called a halt. They gathered together and watched as the golem trudged on without them. Only Finn kept on after the creature, until he sank to his knees in the mire and came plodding slowly back.

  “I do not think you will get your green stone back,” Shade said to him. The young man shook his head wearily, but there was a light in his eyes Will had not seen before.

  “It was not mine,” he said. “And I wasn’t trying to get it back. Where else would the golem go but to find the one who used to wear the ring? A foolish hope, I suppose.”

  Already the golem had dwindled to a grey blur. Pendrake put a hand on Finn’s shoulder.

  “You may meet Ord again some day.”

  When they looked again the golem had vanished.

  Every storyteller has a bag of tricks.

  — The Kantar

  THEY TRUDGED ON, and when the tower did not reappear, they felt certain they had escaped, especially when they found themselves in a region of the bog with more trees. Spindly spruce and pines stood in greater numbers here, and even some tall birch grew between the pools. Patches of warm sunlight dappled the earth, and the air smelled fresh and raw.

  In the evening they took shelter from the biting wind in a clump of straggly pines. Tattered clouds sped across the sky, hiding and revealing the stars. Shade nosed some fleshy roots from the soil and Finn lit a fire long enough to cook a thin but warming broth.

  The moon rose out of a mass of cloud on the horizon. Pale silver light flooded the bog. Pendrake gazed up at the bright silver orb and made a sound of surprise.

  “What is it?” Rowen asked.

  “The moon is at its full,” Pendrake said. “We were trapped in the storyshard for at least two days.”

  “That’s not possible,” said Finn. “It was only a few hours, at most.”

  “Not even that long,” Rowen added.

  “If we hadn’t escaped,” Pendrake said, “for us it would have become eternity, and no time at all. But perhaps we can be thankful. By disappearing for so long we may have thrown off our pursuer.”

  After a while Will sat down beside Rowen.

  “I guess I shouldn’t ask you again if you’re all right.”

  Rowen smirked.

  “Funny,” she said. “I’m fine now, I think. What happened in the shard, I thought I’d never felt anything like that before. Then I remembered how I’d listen to the stories at the Golden Goose, and sometimes I would know what was going to be told, before the storyteller said a word. I could tell what storyfolk should do, even if they didn’t know themselves. In the shard I knew we had stumbled into some kind of story, a story that was wrong somehow, even before Grandfather knew. I don’t understand how I knew that. He’s the loremaster, not me.”

  Will remembered the troubling feeling he’d had, when the loremaster first told him about Malabron and the Stewards, that the old man was keeping something back. But he felt now that he shouldn’t admit this to Rowen, and suddenly he knew why. Pendrake was keeping something not from him but from Rowen.

  “Your grandfather’s told you a lot of stories,” he suggested half-heartedly. “Maybe you’re just learning to see things the way he does.”

  “I suppose so,” Rowen said doubtfully. “I wondered if some day I would. But I don’t feel as if I learned this. It just … took hold of me.”

  “That’s like what happens to me, with the knot-paths. I’m from the Untold, and so was your father. Maybe that’s why things are different for us. You should ask your grandfather about it.”

  They both looked across the fire at Pendrake, who was sewing a button back onto his coat.

  “I know I should,” Rowen said. “But I’m afraid to.”

  The next morning the companions carried on and soon came to an area of the bog that was less flat and featureless. The land rose to bald hummocks and dropped into gullies, down which water ran in swift streams. The mist thinned long enough to give them a glimpse of blue hills to the west, and beyond them the peaks of high mountains tipped with snow. The air smelled fresher, too, less heavy with the rankness of the bog. Pendrake announced that they must be near the edge of the bog at last.

  He was as dismayed as the others when they crested a hill late that afternoon and saw a vast lake lying before them, gleaming a dull red in the setting sun. The air was colder here, too, as the west wind drove a chill off the water.

  “This lake was not here when I came this way last,” the toymaker said. “We will have to go round. How far, I cannot say. Let’s go down to the shore. I want to see how deep the water is.”

  This was not news that anyone wanted to hear, but there was no choice, so they hoisted their packs and headed downhill. At the bottom they plunged into a field of tall reeds that swayed and whispered in the wind. They pushed through the damp reeds which soon rose over Will’s head, scaring up a few shorebirds along the way. Suddenly they came out into a clearing. A wall of hissing reeds ringed them on all sides, except for a narrow gap that led down a kind of tunnel to the lake. They could hear the lap of waves on the shore. The wind stung Will’s eyes and brought tears.

  The setting sun blazed a moment through the clouds in the west, then sank below the black wall of the mountains and suddenly winked out.

  Will lowered his head and started forward, but was halted by an urgent whisper from Pendrake.

  “Listen.”

  There was a rustling from near by. A flock of birds rose into the air with
shrill cries and a clamour of flapping wings.

  “We didn’t cause that,” Finn said.

  Will felt a chill slide down his neck like cold water, a chill that he knew had nothing to do with the wind off the lake. A low, whistling moan whispered through the rushes. Before anyone had a chance to speak or move, three figures rose before them as if out of the ground.

  They were tall, and pale as moonlight. Their faces were cold as stone but beautiful, like faces on the ancient tombs of kings and queens. Two were men, and the third, the one closest to them, was a woman with long flowing hair.

  “Fetches,” Rowen cried. “They found us.”

  “Keep quiet,” Pendrake whispered. “They’ll be drawn to our voices.”

  As he spoke they heard another eerie moan from behind them. They turned. At the top of the hill they had just come down, there hovered two more fetches, like smoke taking shape from black shadows. These had also assumed the form of tall, kingly figures, though like the others they carried no weapons other than the fear that went before them like a creeping fog.

  The companions moved to face outwards in a tight ring. Shade began to snarl and pace round them in a circle.

  “I’ve fought these shadowshapes before,” he said. “Teeth and claws are no use against them.”

  “Neither are swords,” Pendrake said. “And do not look them in the eye, whatever you do.”

  The fetches on the hill descended swiftly and vanished into the encircling reeds, while the other three stood motionless, blocking the path to the water. Despite the toymaker’s warning, Will could not tear his eyes away from the fetch that had taken a woman’s shape. She was gazing at him, he was startled to see, with what looked like recognition, and even sadness. And though she did not open her mouth to speak, Will heard a voice speaking softly inside his head.

  Do not be afraid, the voice said gently. You had need of us, and we have come.

  “Who are you?” he answered, and his own voice seemed to come not from his mouth, but from his thoughts.

  You know the answer already. Come with us and find what you seek.

  At once a new hope leapt into Will’s heart. The Hidden Folk. The toymaker had said they were masters of concealment and illusion. Maybe this was how they eluded their enemies, by taking these ghostly shapes.

  “Everyone stay together,” Pendrake said, and at the sound of his voice Will felt his mind lurch free, as though he had been drifting towards sleep and had been jolted awake. He turned to the toymaker, who bowed his head briefly and then looked up with a grim face. Pendrake began to sweep the staff slowly through the air over his head, while chanting over and over in a soft voice that grew louder:

  “End and beginning

  woven together

  as day and night,

  in the fathomless fire

  ever changing,

  ceasing never,

  let the shadows

  bring forth light.”

  As Will watched in awe, faint streaks of luminescence, like thin streams of fog, began to form in the wake of the toymaker’s staff. It seemed as if by stirring the air he had spun light from the gloom itself. The streaks grew larger and brighter, and began slowly to descend, moving in a ring about Will and his friends like rippling bands of the northern lights.

  The two fetches approaching from the hill came out of the reeds into the clearing and suddenly halted. They seemed confused, or distracted, moving towards the swirling streamers of light, then back again.

  For a moment Will could see the swaying reeds through the fetches’ wavering forms. But as the lights began to fade they took on shape again, and continued to advance, though more slowly than before.

  “They’re still closing in,” Finn muttered. “What can we do?”

  “I will try to draw off the three,” Pendrake said. “That should give you a chance to get Will and Rowen to the lake. These creatures usually avoid water. That may be our only defence. Shade, go with them.”

  “I will, Master Pendrake.”

  “When I give the word,” the toymaker said, “run for the lake and do not look back.”

  The companions turned again to the three fetches that stood between them and the pathway to the lake. The toymaker clutched his staff with both hands and began to speak in a strange language, his eyes closed and his voice strained as though he were drawing the words up like water from a deep well. Once again Will found himself looking into the eyes of the woman.

  Who is she? he wondered, and an answer came to him.

  The Lady of the Green Court.

  The woman held out her arms. Her eyes were filled with sorrow, and love. She smiled. The urge to flee faded in Will. And then a soft, soothing voice spoke in his thoughts.

  You have come so far, Will. You have tried so hard.

  He had. She knew what he had been through. She understood.

  “I’m … lost,” he said. “I don’t know what to do.”

  She nodded and stepped closer.

  You’ve been led astray. But at last we’ve found you.

  He was so tired. She understood everything. She would keep him safe. With her beside him there would be…

  No more running, her gentle voice promised him. No more fear.

  “I shouldn’t listen to you,” he said, struggling to think, to remember something urgent that was slipping away from him.

  You don’t have to listen to anyone any more. You don’t have to do what others tell you to do.

  She was telling him the truth. She knew everything. How did he really know that anything the old man had said was true? Just like this father, Pendrake had dragged him on a pointless journey to nowhere. But he didn’t have to listen any more. He didn’t have to be lost and afraid.

  Will lowered his knife and took a step forward. Now he could see her as she really was. There was no longer any doubt. She was standing at the sink in the kitchen at home. He could smell baking. Sunlight was streaming in through the window. As he came towards her she turned and wiped her hands on her apron and smiled at him.

  Home at last, she said. I was wondering where you had got to.

  She opened her arms and Will walked towards her. As he moved he heard Rowen cry his name, but her voice seemed to come from very far away. Dimly he was aware that she was warning him of danger, but it no longer mattered. He had found his way to the end of the story.

  As his hand touched hers, he felt his body go cold, as if he had plunged into icy water. Everything around him grew dark, except for a pale, pulsing light that hovered just beyond his reach. She had vanished, and he stumbled forward, desperate to find her again. The light moved further away as he approached it. He felt no fear. He felt nothing at all, only the need to follow the light.

  He heard a shout then, and felt something pulling him backwards, away from where she had been. Slowly he turned, trying to shrug off whatever was holding him back. A face swam towards him out of the dark. It was Rowen’s, he thought, but she was someone he had known long ago, and only for a little while. Why was she here now, what did she want of him? Will, come on, she was shouting, fight them. Her voice was distant and muffled, as if it was reaching him from underwater.

  He saw that she had her knife drawn and was holding it out in front of her, warding off something he couldn’t see. Vaguely he knew what she was telling him, he knew he should listen to her, but he couldn’t remember why it mattered.

  Then Pendrake was there in front of him. He gave a great shout and raised his staff over his head. Dazzling silver light bloomed in the air.

  Will put his hands over his eyes. The light was hurting him, bringing back pain and fear. Bringing everything back that he wanted to forget. He cried out in anguish.

  When he opened his eyes he saw that Pendrake had vanished and she stood before him again. But she was further away now, and somehow changed. She was still beautiful, but her smile was colder, her eyes watchful. Will’s thoughts cleared, and he understood that his friends were trying to save him. He knew that she
was not who he wanted her to be. But he no longer cared. She was his only hope.

  As he struggled forward, desperate to reach her, there was a shrill screech from above. Will halted. The woman appeared to hear it too. Her eyes widened and her pale form wavered. There was a rush of beating wings and through the woman a ragged black shape suddenly burst, as if through a veil of fog. It shot past Will, coming so close to him that he had to duck his head. It was gone in an instant, but he had glimpsed sleek black wings and a bright eye.

  Morrigan.

  The woman’s form, shredded like smoke in a gust of wind, began to close round the hole that had been torn in it. Will watched in horror as the warmth and recognition faded from her eyes, replaced with a cold, murderous fire. Her form coiled in upon itself and in the next instant it billowed out again, growing in size and changing shape once more. The slender hands elongated into bony claws. Black, bat-like wings plumed from the woman’s arching back. Her lovely face contorted into a white mask of fury.

  Will stumbled back as the fetch rose over him. Then he heard a shout and saw Moth near by, his bow drawn, an arrow notched and ready. An instant later, just as the fetch lunged at Will, the archer let fly. With a hiss the shaft sped from the bow and struck.

  The fetch thrashed and shuddered, clutching at the arrow in its breast. It began to shudder and twist, and then lose colour and form. For an instant the arrow hung as if suspended in nothing but a wisp of fog. Then, with a sound halfway between a shriek and a sigh like a dying breath, the fetch vanished. The arrow dropped harmlessly to the ground.

  Will felt himself come awake with a shock, as if cold water had been thrown over him. His heart seemed to begin beating again. It throbbed in his chest like a wound. He stifled a cry of fear and loss, and stared wildly around.

  Rowen was at his side, with Finn and Shade. Pendrake stood near by. And there was Moth, with Morrigan circling above him.