“I agree,” Shade said with a nod. “Whitewing Stonegrinder said he had been woken by the ghool crawling around his home, and he was going to do something about that, but first he wanted to know what I was doing here. When I told him the story he called me brother and took his foot off me. I thanked him, and then he asked me if I had seen any of the First Ones in my travels. When I said I had not he was sad. He growled as though he was angry again, but I saw tears rolling down and freezing on his face.”
Shade related how he had told Whitewing Stonegrinder about his friends, that they were in danger from a host of the Nightbane. That had roused the dragon to his former fury. He roared and rumbled and lashed his tail, and the cave shook and spears of ice came crashing to the floor.
“Then he touched my wounds and they went cold and did not hurt any more,” Shade said.
“He did the same for Rowen,” Will said. “If it’s the same dragon.”
Whitewing Stonegrinder had led Shade through a series of tunnels under the ice to the rock of Aran Tir. He unblocked a passage up into the citadel and told the wolf to take it.
“I asked him if he would help my friends, and he got angry and said he was already doing that. I thought he might step on me again. I was very glad to get out of there.”
“There is no doubt you saved us, Shade,” said Moth. “From the Nightbane and the dragon both.”
They all echoed the archer’s words.
“But we’re still stranded here,” Finn said.
“Our enemies know where we are,” Pendrake said, “and if the Angel is with them, they’re not likely to abandon the siege. Somehow we must get down off the ice, and pretty quickly. Though how we’re going to go through the pass unnoticed and unchallenged is another question.”
“We do not have to go through the pass,” Shade said. “Whitewing Stonegrinder told me of another way, after he calmed down again. The Shee found it, he said, when they took refuge here. It is a cave that goes under the ice for many leagues, all the way to the other side of the mountains. He showed me where to find it. He keeps it walled up at this end so that no one can use it to reach the citadel, but he said he would open it for us.”
Freya gazed at the wolf in admiration.
“In Skald we sometimes heard the dragon’s roar in the wind, and none of us ever dared venture into this place. You have spoken to a serpent of the earth and returned to tell of it. Such a thing will make a great story for our sammings.”
She turned to see Moth studying her.
“That is fine mail you are wearing,” he said. “I was an armourer once, long ago.”
“Thank you,” Freya said, eyeing the archer curiously, and Will realized this was the first time they’d spoken to one another since they’d met below the glacier. And like Will when he first met Moth, Freya clearly didn’t know what to make of him. “My father taught me the craft.”
“Does Ragnar know you followed us, Freya?” Pendrake asked.
“I did not have time to tell him, Father Nicholas.”
The toymaker sighed.
“You should go home, my child, but it’s far too late for that. For better or worse, we must see this to its end together.”
As always, Shade was eager to move on, but it was agreed by the company that a short rest was needed. Rowen still looked pale, and Pendrake was leaning heavily on his staff. There was no wood to make a fire, but they found refuge in a sheltered corner of the forecourt. There the toymaker saw to the company’s injuries. The cut on Finn’s forehead was not deep, and already looked to be healing over. Finn broke an icicle from the overhang of the archway and held it to the wound.
With all that had happened, Will had forgotten about his own injury. He was startled to discover that the creech’s claw had cut an ugly gash under his ear. He hadn’t felt it at the time, but as the toymaker covered the wound with a sweet-smelling salve, everything they had been through caught up with him at last. He began to shake uncontrollably, and felt as if he might be sick.
Rowen sat next to him and put a hand on his arm.
“I never got a chance to thank you,” she said.
Will realized she was talking about the creech that had attacked her on the high stair.
“It wouldn’t have made much difference if Shade hadn’t been there,” he said.
To his surprise, she smiled and kissed him softly on the cheek. While he sat in startled wonder, she gazed around the vast courtyard, and a troubled look came into her eyes.
“Does this place seem … strange to you?” she asked him.
“What do you mean?”
She reached down and put a hand to the ground.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing. But it’s like the stone … knows we’re here.”
Will kept still for a moment, then shook his head.
“It just feels cold to me. The sooner we find somewhere warmer, the better.” He had no idea what Rowen was talking about, but after what had happened to her in Skald, he thought it better not to question her too much. Something was taking place within her that he could not understand.
Rowen looked up at her grandfather, who was applying salve to the cut on Finn’s forehead. She took a deep breath, and nodded.
“I suppose you’re right,” she said brightly, but her eyes betrayed her voice.
When they were all ready to go on, the wolf led them under the archway and up the wide, curving staircase. The abandoned fortress was filled with a heavy, brooding silence, broken only by the echo of their own footsteps and the distant moan of the wind in the towers above. It was colder here inside the citadel, Will thought, than it had been on the ice.
Soon they came to a broad landing where a sunbeam filled with swirling dust motes slanted down from an embrasure high on the wall. Three corridors branched off from here, one each to the right and left, and one straight ahead. Following the wolf, they took the left-hand passage, which Pendrake said had been sealed off by stones the last time he had been here. This corridor led, after a short distance, to a descending staircase that took them further and further from the light, until at last Will and his friends were feeling their way warily through a low-roofed tunnel in a gloomy twilight that grew thicker by the moment.
The toymaker brought out his lantern and on the company went, descending ever deeper. It was even colder here than in the citadel above, so that soon they had their cloaks wrapped tightly about them. The air was damp, and stuffy, and any sound they made seemed to be swallowed up instantly.
They walked on and came eventually to a widening of the tunnel, where the roof rose higher above them. Here the air was not quite so stifling, but the heavy, almost suffocating stillness persisted. From time to time Morrigan sped on ahead into the tunnel and then returned to alight on Moth’s shoulder. Each time she reported that there was nothing ahead but further darkness and silence.
After some time they heard the steady dripping of water, and saw rivulets of melt-water trickling down the walls. The rough stone floor beneath their feet became more uneven, and in places held small pools of water. At one point Pendrake halted and raised his lantern higher. By its light they saw that the stone roof over their heads was riven by a great fissure, and within the fissure a vein of ice gleamed. The light rippled and darted across its wet surface.
“We’re underneath the glacier now,” Pendrake said. “There are hundreds of feet of solid ice above our heads.”
They went on without speaking. The floor began to slope upwards. The trickles of melt-water increased and flowed together into a stream that ran down a kind of trough in the middle of the tunnel floor. After they had struggled uphill for some time, Will noticed that the ice above them was glowing with its own pale radiance. He nudged Rowen and they gazed in awe at the colours overhead, most often vivid shades of blue and green, but also violet, gold and burnished silver. As they walked, the colours constantly changed and blended and seemed to flow. Will told Rowen about the northern lights he had watched with his family on winter evenin
gs at home. She had never seen such a thing and had difficulty understanding what he meant.
A short time later they came out of the tunnel into a huge, vaulted cavern, roofed with ice supported by massive columns of stone. Along the walls carved staircases rose to higher galleries, from which other passageways branched off into blackness and stony silence.
Before them, filling most of the cavern, lay a wide pool, its surface rippled by the innumerable drops of water falling from above. The ever-changing light filtering through the ice played over the cavern so that it glowed and glittered like a palace of gemstones. The light also fell in many shafts on the pool, casting rippling reflections like ghostly dancers upon the walls.
Morrigan soared up high, circled the cavern and returned to report that there were many smaller chambers and halls branching off this one.
“This wasn’t a refuge,” said Finn, gazing up in wonder. “It was a city.”
“But they abandoned it,” Rowen added, and Will was alarmed to see how pale and strained her face looked.
“My people are not fond of enclosed places,” Moth said. “It’s clear that many lived here, but I would think that over the years more and more of them left to join the Green Court. Until these halls became so lonely that no one wished to stay.”
“Listen,” Pendrake said, raising his hand. They all went still and heard faint flute-like sounds ringing in the air, some low and some high, harmonizing with one another.
“Wind in the ice tunnels,” Moth said. “This was their music.”
A gallery ran round the pool on one side, and Will and his friends followed it until they came to the entrance of another tunnel. Reluctantly they left the music and light of the great chamber and plunged back into darkness.
In the darkness the Spirit awoke, and danced.
— Apocryphal first verse of the Kantar
THEY SOON CAME TO ANOTHER CHAMBER, smaller than the first, but lit in the same way from above by light filtering through the ice. Here they found recesses in the stone walls, deep alcoves filled with ice, and with something else. Rowen paused at one of the recesses, leant forward, then drew back with a sharp intake of breath.
“There’s someone in there,” she whispered. The rest of the company quickly gathered round. Within the ice stood a figure in scarred and dinted silver armour tarnished almost black, its arms folded across its chest and its hands gripping the hilt of a broken sword. A young man with long raven hair. His eyes were closed and his head rested slightly to one side, as though he was sleeping.
“Is he dead?” Rowen asked shakily.
“Yes, and has been for a very long time,” Moth said. He raised a hand to touch the glass-like surface of the ice tomb. “He was one of my people. The inscriptions on his armour are from the days before the Great Unweaving.”
They turned to inspect the nearby recesses and found other Shee in them as well, men and women. Each of them, like the first ice-entombed figure they had seen, could have been a sleeper who might waken at any moment.
“Let us pass on and disturb them no further,” Moth said.
They prepared to move on, but Will turned back to see that Rowen had slumped down beside one of the tombs. At his shout they all gathered round her. She looked up at them with fear in her eyes.
“Is it the wound, Rowen?” Pendrake asked as he helped her to her feet.
“Can’t you see them, Grandfather?” she breathed.
“The warriors in the ice? Yes. We’ve all seen them.”
“No, the others,” she said urgently. “Shadows, all around us.”
Pendrake studied her. There was a look of pain in his eyes Will had never seen before.
“You’re still feverish from the arrow,” the toymaker said to Rowen. “We should leave here, find a better place for you to rest.”
“No, that’s not it,” Rowen cried, pulling away from her grandfather. She reached a hand into empty air and then drew it back as if she had touched a flame.
“I can’t touch them,” she said. “They don’t see me.”
She walked slowly about the chamber, her hand still outstretched, like someone without sight. Will looked around and saw nothing but their own shadows cast on the floor by the icy light from above. He watched Rowen, saw her legs trembling. He came closer to her, ready to catch her if she fell. She did not seem to see him.
“They’re not really here,” she said at last. “Not now. They were here once, a long time ago. It’s as if they’re … echoes.”
“Is it the Shee?” Moth asked.
“And others,” Rowen answered, her eyes still following the movements of things unseen. “Many others. They sought safety here, with the Hidden Folk. Their stories had been destroyed. There was nowhere else for them to go.”
She covered her mouth in horror. It was a long time before she could speak again.
“Some faded and became fetches,” she went on. “Right before the eyes of their loved ones. There was so much sadness. So many stories died here.”
She bowed her head and choked back a sob. Pendrake put his arm round her.
“This place would give anyone strange thoughts,” Freya said. “The sooner we leave it, the better.”
Rowen looked up searchingly at the toymaker.
“There’s something else here, too. Something even older.”
“I know, Rowen,” Pendrake said softly. “Come, let’s find a place to rest. There’s more I have to tell you, but not here.”
They made their way from the burial chamber, and after a short march the passage swiftly narrowed, until Will could touch both walls by stretching out his hands. At one point they found the tunnel walls had partly collapsed and a massive slab of stone lay across their path. It proved impossible to climb over and so they were forced to take off their packs and push them along while crawling underneath. The space was so narrow Will felt the stone pressing on him from above, and he had to struggle against the fear that at any moment it would fall and crush him.
When he was through he turned to help Rowen. He took her arm and felt her shaking, as if with cold, though he knew that was not the reason. She seemed to be struggling simply to go on, and at times he had to guide her, as if she could not see.
Beyond the slab the passage remained narrow and stifling. After a while Pendrake’s waylight began to flicker and show signs that it might fail. With a few whispered words he coaxed the light into brightness, but it soon dimmed again, and then suddenly went out. In an instant they were enveloped in a darkness so total that Will had to suppress a cry of fear. He had not realized how completely his courage had depended on that one small source of illumination.
The toymaker’s voice spoke out of the darkness.
“Even Sputter must rest. We will have to wait…”
He broke off, as they all became aware of another faint source of light. It was coming, Will realized, from the gaal blade, which Moth had pulled part-way from its scabbard.
“It is night in the world outside,” Moth said in a strained whisper.
Will wasn’t sure how the archer knew the time of day, but he could feel the weariness in his bones that told him sleep was past due. To his relief a rest was agreed upon, and Shade’s keen eyes quickly found some shelter not far ahead. It was the entrance to a side chamber that had been partially blocked with rubble. The companions had to squeeze through a narrow opening, but once inside it was clear that a better refuge would not likely be found at short notice. Here they could fend off just about anything that might try to come at them.
Rowen ran her hand along the back wall of the chamber, then turned to her grandfather.
“It’s the Stewards, isn’t it?” she said. “They made all of this.”
Pendrake was resting on a flat ledge of stone jutting from the wall.
“Tell me what you feel,” he said quietly.
Rowen closed her eyes and kept her hand pressed to the wall.
“I can feel the Shee, and the others who were here with them,” she sai
d slowly. “But there’s something deeper. It’s moving, alive. Like a fish darting in a pond, just out of my reach. It’s like I can see it, not with my eyes but with…”
She broke off and opened her eyes.
“Something is awake, in the stone. It’s … familiar. Like a dream I had a long time ago but forgot until now. It’s older than the Shee. Much older. I could feel it in Whitewing Stonegrinder when he touched me. Is he a Steward?”
“He is filled with their power, that much I am sure of. The Stewards shaped these tunnels and chambers. The stone carries their thought, their spark. You can touch it even more deeply than I can. The presence of the Stewards will give you strength, and guide you when you join with it.”
“Join with it? How could I do that?”
Pendrake rose from his seat and placed a hand on Rowen’s shoulder.
“Because it is already in you. It is who you are.”
Rowen stared up at him.
“What are you talking about?” she blurted out. “The Stewards were not like us. They were not storyfolk or Wayfarers. My father was from Will’s world. And you, and Mother…”
“In ancient time a Steward fell in love with a woman of the storyfolk. For her sake he took mortal shape. I am their descendant, Rowen, as was my father, and his mother, and those who came before us.”
Rowen slowly shook her head.
“No, that can’t be…” she said, her voice falling to a whisper. “That’s not possible.”
“During the Broken Years,” Pendrake went on, “the truth of it was lost. The loremasters of old knew only that they had a powerful gift, but not where it came from. Some used the gift for evil, and became mighty storymages in the service of Malabron. When I was a child my grandmother went deep into the Weaving to find out the truth. She was almost lost, but she found her way back, and gave me as much of the history as she had been able to gather. She gave me my legacy. And now I pass it on to you. You, and I, and all loremasters who have come before us, are children of the First Ones.”
Rowen backed away from him, looking around with frightened eyes, as if for some way of escape.
The Shadow of Malabron Page 29