The Fathomless Fire

by Thomas Wharton

  He had shown her something of what a loremaster could do with this power. He could kindle a fire in damp wood, and mend torn clothing just by running his fingers over the tear. Once when they were caught in a sudden storm he kept the rain from falling on them, even though it went on falling everywhere else.

  “You start with what’s already in front of you,” he’d explained to her when she asked how he could do these things. “You take what is, and you … nudge it a little, with what might be.” These were useful little tricks, he’d added when he taught her to do them, but some day she would accomplish far greater things. It was said the loremasters of old could perform wonders like walking on air, or moving mountains, or stepping through the Weaving into other worlds.

  “But that’s not what really matters,” he’d cautioned her. “What matters is what you learn about yourself. About what you can be. And that’s something I can’t teach you.”

  After they had parted from the Fair Folk, he would no longer let her practise the so-called tricks he’d taught her. There was a very good reason: every such drawing upon the Weaving, no matter how slight, was like a tug on one of the countless interwoven threads of Story that bound the realm together. And Malabron in his realm of shadow, like a spider lurking in its web, could sense the movements of these threads. They already knew that he was aware of them and probably also had some idea of where they had come from. The Bourne had always been a quiet, unimportant place, and often Rowen had wished she lived somewhere more exciting, more in the middle of things. But now, as they climbed onto the wagon and set off again for home, she found herself wishing that the Bourne could go on being a quiet, unimportant place for ever, even though she knew with dread in her heart that those days were over.

  I started out as Nothing and then I became a Something, yet I must be more than a Something because plainly I am a part of Everything. But I cannot be Everything because then Nothing would be left out.

  – The Enigmatist’s Handbook

  LATE THAT AFTERNOON they stopped to rest by the side of a narrow, stony stream. Pendrake looked around approvingly and said that they were very close to the western border of the Bourne. Rowen was glad to hear it. In a few days they would be home.

  “Should we send Sputter with a message to Edweth?”

  “I think we should wait,” her grandfather said. “We don’t know what we may find when we return.”

  Rowen’s brighter mood dimmed as she considered what her grandfather’s words implied. He would only be this cautious if he was afraid that the wisp’s message to the housekeeper might be intercepted by someone hostile to them. That meant he was no longer certain that even the toyshop was safe.

  Gloomily she sat down near Briar, who was munching contentedly on the lush grass at the edge of the stream. Pendrake sat quietly for a while, too, then he reached into the tall grass in front of him and lifted out a short stick of dry wood. He turned it over in his hands, studying it. When he had looked the stick all over several times, he began to whittle it with his pocket knife. Rowen had seen him do this often on their travels. He was always picking up odds and ends with which to make toys, even though he hadn’t made any for a long time now.

  “How did you become a toymaker, Grandfather?” Rowen asked him.

  “I was always carving as a boy,” he said with the flicker of a smile. “It was my favourite pastime back then. But I left that all behind when I began my training as a loremaster. I wandered far and wide, seeking knowledge, seeking understanding, and I forgot about carving, forgot about making toys. Then I met your grandmother, and I knew that my wandering days were over.”

  Rowen knew little about Maya, her grandmother. She had been a loremaster too, from a land far to the east, a place Rowen had never been. And she had been a weaver, like Morrigan of the Tain Shee. She had woven many of the tapestries that hung in the toyshop, including the one in Rowen’s room that depicted her own mother and father. Rowen did not remember her. All she knew was that her grandmother had somehow gone into the Weaving and had never come back.

  “We were on our way home to Fable after a long journey,” Pendrake went on, “and one night we took lodgings at an inn. That night Maya told me the baby was coming, so I fetched a midwife, and she sent me down to the common room to wait. I don’t mind telling you, the thought of becoming a father was terrifying to me. What trade could I live by, to feed my family? The few coins I got from telling stories were hardly enough for the two of us, and now we were going to be three. Well, there was a travelling minstrel in the common room that night. He sang an old song from your grandmother’s homeland, about a weaver woman who weaves a tiger on her loom with such skill that the tiger comes to life, so then she has to weave a jungle for the tiger to live in, and before long, the woman has woven a whole world. While I waited and worried about the future, I took a scrap from the woodpile by the fire and I carved a tiger. That night your mother, Gildred, was born, and I knew what trade I could live by.”

  He held up the stick he’d been whittling.

  “Not sure what this one will be yet,” her grandfather said, appraising his handiwork.

  Rowen smiled. She was about to ask him a question about her grandmother when she saw that the look in his eyes had changed. She had seen this before and she knew that he had sensed something out of the ordinary. Slowly, so as not to appear suspicious, she glanced around. There was nothing but what she had seen for days now as they passed through the great forest: trees, flickering sunlight, leafy shadows.

  Pendrake noticed her glance. He nodded slowly.

  “Someone or something is watching us,” he said in an undertone. “Keep on your guard.”

  They climbed back onto the seat of the wagon, and Briar reluctantly started across the shallow stream. The pots and pans hanging from the wagon’s boards made their usual tinny clatter, but to Rowen the noise now sounded ten times as loud. On the other side the path began to climb a densely wooded rise, and Briar plodded along even more slowly. At the top of the rise the path went around a huge mossy boulder that leaned out over the trail.

  On the other side of the boulder Briar stopped abruptly. She snorted and pawed the ground with her hoof.

  In the path before them stood a large grey wolf.

  “Shade!” cried Rowen. Before Pendrake could stop her, she jumped from the wagon. She ran a few steps towards the wolf, then halted. The eyes. There was something wrong with the wolf’s eyes. They were large and luminous, like the eyes of an owl. These were not a wolf’s eyes.

  Rowen backed away. This was not Shade, the wolf that had been Will’s companion and protector during their journey together. She was not even certain this creature really was a wolf.

  “You’re a long way from home,” Pendrake said to the wolf in a calm, quiet voice. He had climbed from the wagon and was standing beside Rowen.

  “Don’t come any closer,” the wolf snarled in a voice like rough stones scraping together. “I’ll eat you.”

  “There’s no need for that kind of talk,” the old man said. “We both know you won’t do anything of the sort. I just want to know why you’ve been following us.”

  Grandfather’s met this creature before, Rowen thought to herself. Then, as she watched in astonishment, something happened to the wolf that was even more strange. It turned and bounded away, but as it ran its shaggy wolfish shape seemed to waver, as if one was seeing it through a haze of rippling heat. Rowen kept her eyes on it, but in the next moment there was no wolf, only a patch of dappled green shadows. She blinked, startled, with an eerie feeling that the wolf had never been there at all, as if the creature had only been a trick of the light. But that couldn’t be…

  They waited, but when the wolf did not reappear, they climbed back onto the seat of the wagon. It took a few words of encouragement to get Briar moving again.

  “Did you see the eyes?” Pendrake asked Rowen.

  “Yes.”

  “We’ve seen those eyes before.”

  At that, Rowe
n remembered. On their way through the Forest of Eldark with Will they had been waylaid by a strange, mad being who could change his shape. He had lured them to a maze-like grove from which not even Shade could find the way out. The being had wanted them to solve a riddle, and when Pendrake gave the right answer, he had grudgingly let them go. Her grandfather said that some called him the Woodwraith. He was a creature of Story without a story.

  “His grove is a long way from here, though,” Pendrake mused. “I wonder what brought him out of it.”

  No more riddles, whispered a voice so close that it made them both start. Briar huffed nervously and tossed her head. Pendrake pulled up on the reins. He climbed down from the wagon and Rowen joined him.

  “Where are you?” Pendrake shouted, looking this way and that. “Show yourself.”

  No more riddles, the eerie, whispery voice repeated. Someone’s house is gone. No more house. No more riddles.

  There was a stirring of shadows and leaves around them. Rowen glanced from place to place. Every time her eyes fell on something that looked like a shape, a creature, something, it was suddenly not there, as if her very act of seeing had made it vanish.

  “Has something happened to the place where you lived?” Pendrake asked. Rowen remembered that the creature called his strange bare grove in the forest his house.

  The one who is not, said the voice. He happened. The one who was following you. It’s your fault. You brought that one. To our house.

  “He means the Angel,” Rowen said. She felt a cold chill at the memory of Malabron’s terrible servant, who had almost succeeded in taking her away to the Shadow Realm.

  “The one who is not, he came to your house?” Pendrake asked.

  You asked someone to play the riddle game with that one, but that one would not play. He tore down someone’s house. He broke everything. Everything broken. Then he found … he found…

  “What did he find?”

  USssss! the voice hissed, becoming a shriek like wind rising to a gale.

  “What did he do to you?” Rowen asked when the piercing noise had faded again to silence.

  There was no answer.

  “Show yourself to us, please,” Pendrake said. “Let’s talk face to face.”

  Whose face? We have every face. No face. Any face.

  “Well, choose one. We want to see you.”

  The wind rose to a roar. Leaves skittered and whirled around the wagon. The dappled shadows that Rowen had seen darting among the branches seemed to gather in one place in the midst of the spinning whirl of leaves. Then a huge brown bear stood there, teetering on its short hind legs. Like the wolf, it had large yellow eyes that glimmered as if the shifting light and shadow of the forest was within them as well as without.

  Briar whinnied and backed away, rocking the wagon. Rowen caught her reins and held tight.

  “We could hurt you,” the bear said in a low, rumbling voice that seemed to rise up from the earth itself. “Punish you for bringing the one who is not.”

  “You could do that,” Pendrake said, “but I don’t think you would. It’s not who you are.”

  The bear gave a deep, menacing growl. Then it dropped onto all fours as if defeated. It swung its head from side to side and let out a low, mournful bleat.

  Then it was not there.

  Who you are, came the Woodwraith’s voice from all around them, echoing Pendrake’s words.

  Who. You. Are.

  “Maybe you can find a new home,” Rowen called, peering into the shadows. “Is there anywhere else you could go?”

  Going, the voice moaned. We’re going away. A little at a time. Every day, a little more nothing. That should be funny. What is more of nothing? But it isn’t funny. Where there was something, every day, harder to be anything. Soon there will be no one at all. Then we will never find out who we really are.

  “We’re sorry that the Angel – the one who is not – hurt you,” Rowen said. “We didn’t mean for that to happen.”

  They waited. There was no reply.

  “Maybe we can help you,” Rowen said. “Find you a new place to live. Couldn’t we, Grandfather?”

  “I really don’t know, Rowen,” Pendrake said, with what she thought was a trace of annoyance in his voice. “We can’t linger here in the forest, and if the Woodwraith—”

  That is not our name, the voice hissed. That is a name others gave to us because they could not tell us what we were.

  “Well, what is your name?” Rowen snapped, refusing to be intimidated. “Are we supposed to call you someone?”

  Riddle, the voice said after a brief silence. Call us Riddle.

  “You could come with us, Riddle,” Rowen said, and she saw Pendrake frown. He was clearly not happy with the suggestion, and she wondered why. They could help this poor creature. They owed it to him. And more than that, she saw now. She could sense the threads of Story weaving into place around her, and she knew that bringing Riddle with them was something that had to be.

  “We’re going to a city called Fable,” she went on, determined. “Do you know what that is?”

  There was no answer.

  “A city is a place with many people,” Pendrake said. “People everywhere, day and night. And many things that would be strange to you. There are no woods to hide in. And you have lived alone in this forest for a very long time.”

  Suddenly there before them stood the wolf.

  “Someone … Riddle would be with you,” it said. “Riddle would stay close to you. Like the wolf did with the boy. We could be like that. Always with you. Then maybe we would not disappear.”

  Riddle’s voice was so tight with fear that Rowen felt fear clutch at her, too. She remembered how lost and frightened she had been when the story-visions first began happening to her. Everything she had known and hoped for, her dream of becoming a knight of the Errantry like her mother, had been swept away. But now she thought that with a creature like Riddle beside her, as Shade had been with Will, she might not feel quite so lost and alone.

  “Could he come with us, Grandfather?” she asked, trying to hide the tremor in her voice.

  Pendrake sighed.

  “I don’t know how much time we’ll have in Fable,” he said. “We may have to leave quickly and travel fast.”

  Now Rowen thought she understood his reluctance to have the Woodwraith come with them. If Rowen was still being hunted, they might only be bringing this creature with them into further danger. But that had to be better than leaving him here, alone and terrified. And she had seen. For an instant. Whatever path she was on, Riddle was meant to be with her.

  “Besides,” Pendrake added before Rowen could speak up, “people in Fable were not very pleased when we had Shade walking around in the streets.”

  “Others would not … like us?” the wolf asked.

  “Some would be afraid. These days Bournefolk are less tolerant of the unfamiliar.”

  “You can take any shape you want, can’t you, Riddle?” Rowen asked.

  “This is what we do,” the voice said eagerly. “Any shape. Anything.”

  The wolf was suddenly not there. In a tree limb above the place where it had been standing, a tawny mountain lion was hunkered back on its hind legs as if ready to pounce on them. Rowen stepped back in spite of herself, uncertain for a moment whether this was still Riddle. Then she noticed the lion’s luminous, owl-like eyes.

  “I’m not sure that would solve the problem,” Pendrake said.

  “How about something like that but smaller,” Rowen suggested.

  An instant later, a smaller cat crouched where the mountain lion had been. It had a tawny striped coat, long white whiskers and large furry paws. The same eerie, shining eyes gazed at them from its face, but on this animal they did not seem so alarmingly strange.

  “A wildcat,” Pendrake said.

  “This one is the best in the forest at hiding,” the cat said, in a soft, silvery voice that made Rowen think of moonlight. “When he doesn’t want to be seen
, he is not seen.”

  “This could work,” Rowen said, nodding approvingly. “People will think you’re our pet cat. Maybe.”

  “But you must promise to stay in that shape,” Pendrake said, “at least when other people are around. And no talking unless we’re alone. No sudden vanishing would be a good idea, too, come to think of it. I can’t say for certain, but it might be that staying in one shape, and staying here, with us I mean, may help keep you from disappearing for good.”

  “We promise,” the cat said solemnly. “Riddle will stay, like this. Close to the girl. No going away. The grey-bearded one makes the rules for us, too.”

  “My name is Pendrake. This is my granddaughter, Rowen.”

  “Pendrake. And Rowen.”

  “And Riddle,” Pendrake said. “And now we must be off. We still have a long way to travel before we reach home.”

  With amazing speed the cat bounded down the trunk of the tree and came to a halt in front of them. Rowen and her grandfather climbed back onto the wagon’s front seat. After a long hesitation, during which Rowen wondered if Riddle might just disappear again, the cat sprang onto the seat and slipped into the space between them. Alarmed by his sudden movements, Rowen almost pushed Riddle away, but stopped herself in time.

  Pendrake flicked the reins and Briar started forward. Rowen glanced warily out of the corner of her eye at Riddle. He sat gazing straight ahead, without moving, like a statue. He was such a strange, unpredictable creature, she thought, but she had done the right thing. He would just take a lot of getting used to.

  It wasn’t long before the trees began to thin out and Rowen caught flickering glimpses of meadows and fields beyond the leafy woods, flooded with the hazy, golden light of a late summer afternoon. The Bourne.

  As they left the forest, Riddle’s eyes were wider than Rowen had yet seen them. He sat perfectly still, gazing at this strange new world, but she could feel his excitement. She should have been excited, too. They would be in Fable soon. She would see Edweth and her friends. Maybe even Will, if he came back to the Realm as he said he would. Then she remembered that even Fable was perhaps not safe any more. She felt her small, dim hope flicker within her, as if at any moment it might go out.