The Fathomless Fire

by Thomas Wharton

  “Your party may stay the night,” he said without expression. “We have fodder and stabling for your horses.”

  “That won’t be required,” Finn said stiffly. “We’ll be riding further tonight.”

  The sentry nodded and stepped aside to let them pass. As eager as he was to find Shade, Will’s heart sank. They wouldn’t be stopping at the citadel. He was bone-weary and sore, and wondered how much longer he’d be able to stay in the saddle before he toppled over from exhaustion. But Finn said nothing to him or the others. He just spurred his horse and rode on ahead.

  As they followed him, Will glanced at Balor with a questioning look.

  “It’s about his brother, Corr,” the wildman said in a low voice. He glanced at Finn, who hadn’t slowed his pace and was now some distance ahead of them. Then he sighed and turned to Will.

  “I don’t know how much you’ve heard about Corr Madoc.”

  “Not much. Just what Finn told me.”

  “Even as a boy, Corr was strong, and skilled at fighting. It seemed he would be accepted into the Errantry as a matter of course, but it didn’t happen. He went to Appleyard to try out as an apprentice, but a few days later he was sent home. It turned out he’d nearly killed another boy on the practice grounds. Then, when he was old enough, he formed his own band of mounted fighters, and trained them himself, to protect the outlying farms and villages from Nightbane raids. He claimed the Errantry only cared about protecting Fable. He called himself the protector of the rest of the Bourne.”

  “His band did some good, that has to be admitted,” the doctor added, “but before long they were waylaying Errantry patrols and taking their weapons and horses. After that he was little better than an outlaw in the Bourne.”

  “True,” Balor said, “but none of the country folk would turn him in, because he brought them food and other supplies when they were needy. Then came the worst Nightbane raid of them all. The enemy attacked in such numbers, and so suddenly, that the Errantry was surprised and overwhelmed. And Corr’s band was too small to be everywhere they were needed.”

  “Was that the raid where Rowen’s mother and father were killed?” Will asked.

  “Yes, and many others, too. Mostly farmers in the borderlands, which Corr saw as proof that he was right: that the Errantry thought only of Fable. So he gathered his band with the intent of pursuing the raiders and hunting them down. A number of knights-errant who also wanted vengeance joined him. When Corr and his men rode out of the Bourne, they stopped here at Annen Bawn. They didn’t have enough horses to carry themselves and all the gear they needed for a long journey. So they broke into the pasture where the citadel’s horses were grazing, and made off with a few. There was a young man keeping watch on the herd that day. A knight-apprentice not much older than you. He rode after Corr, to stop him from taking the horses, and Corr struck him down.”

  Will stared in shock.

  “The young man died the next day. His name was Donal Caliburn.”

  “The Marshal’s son…” Will said, in a shocked whisper.

  Balor nodded.

  “His only son. It’s hard to say if Corr even knew who he was. When Finn joined the Errantry years later, the Marshal made him swear an oath that if Finn ever found his brother, he would bring him back to Fable to face judgement. Still, I don’t think Caliburn has ever fully trusted Finn. He’s always made things difficult for him. And so has Captain Thorne, for that matter. Lord Caliburn’s son was his apprentice.”

  “And that sentry just now…?”

  “Captain Thorne was garrison commander here when Corr killed the boy. They’ve never forgiven or forgotten at Annen Bawn.”

  Balor was about to say more, when Finn called to them.

  “We’ll camp there,” he said, pointing to a stand of tall pines not far off the road. They nudged their horses and followed him.

  They soon had a fire going and sat around it eating their – to Will – meagre dinner. The horses were tethered nearby, where there was a stream and lush grass for them to feed on. Will tucked into his dinner eagerly, remembering how hungry he had always felt on his first journey through the Realm. There had never seemed to be quite enough to eat then, and he assumed it would be the same now. The Errantry travelled light, carrying only what was absolutely necessary, and that included food.

  When he had all too quickly finished his meal, Will noticed that no one was speaking, not even Balor. The incident at Annen Bawn had apparently dampened everyone’s spirits. The doctor was writing in his journal and the wildman was picking his teeth with a sliver of wood. Will shivered and realized how cold it had become since night had fallen.

  “Get some rest,” Finn said. Will glanced at him. The young knight-errant had barely said a word since they made camp and Will had avoided speaking to him.

  “We’ll stay until the fire dies down,” Finn said quietly. “Then the moon should be well up and we’ll move on.”

  Will nodded. He laid out his bedroll and used his pack as a pillow. He lay down and closed his eyes, but his head was too full of thoughts for sleep. Shade was out here somewhere in this seemingly endless land, and Rowen was now far from him, too.

  Turning on to his side, he took his half of the mirror shard out of his pocket. Why had he broken it? What if he’d destroyed whatever power it might have? Then it wouldn’t do him or Rowen any good at all.

  He held the shard tightly in his hand and closed his eyes. Although he had doubted that he would get any sleep, he was startled to find himself, what seemed only moments later, being nudged awake by Doctor Alazar. A hazy half-moon glowed through clouds in the dark sky.

  “Rise and shine, Will,” the doctor said, in a kindly tone. “Such is life in the Errantry.”

  Will sat up groggily. He realized now he’d been more tired by the previous day’s ride than he’d admitted to himself. He’d fallen asleep deeply enough to have a dream, a strange dream in which he had been trying to catch up with someone who was walking ahead of him on a dark plain under the stars. He thought it was Rowen, but when he got closer the figure ahead of him turned, as if to wait for him, and he saw it was a man he didn’t recognize, an older man with long, braided grey hair. The man’s eyes were milky-white, unseeing. In the dream Will had been about to catch up with the man when the doctor woke him.

  He remembered how the Angel had appeared in his dreams, coming closer to him each time he’d dreamed of him. And it had turned out that these were more than just strange dreams: the Angel had been searching for him through Will’s own dreams, in order to find Rowen. But if this blind man was someone like that, not just a figment of his mind but someone walking in his dreams, Will wondered why he felt no sense of fear or danger.

  He packed away his bedroll and looked around blearily. The fire was down to smouldering embers. Finn and Balor were not there.

  “Balor finally convinced Finn to ride back to Annen Bawn, for news of the road ahead,” the doctor said, noticing Will’s wondering look. He handed Will a mug of steaming tea, which he took gladly. “They should be back soon. In the meantime, if it’s not a bother, I wanted to ask you about something that happened the last time you came to the Realm. On your journey home, you passed through the Bog of Mool, I understand, and met a strange being there…”

  Will nodded.

  “It’s hard to explain,” he began. “We stumbled into a storyshard, a fragment of story that made us repeat the same things, over and over, until we realized what was happening to us. Something like what happened to Balor. We might have been stuck there for ever, then Shade found a golem, a man made of clay, trapped in the shard with us.”

  “A golem,” the doctor echoed, his eyes gleaming with wonder behind his spectacles. “I’ve never encountered one of those.”

  “The golem was building this tower of stones that was sinking into the swamp. He could never finish it. Master Pendrake thought that if we stopped the golem from carrying out his task, it might free us all from his endless story. So he prised
this … thing out of the golem’s forehead, a sort of wax disc, I think. It was what made the golem come to life. There was a word on the disc that was the golem’s name, Ord. That didn’t work, though – the golem just stopped dead, and we started slowing down, as though we were going to stop moving for ever, too.”

  The doctor had taken out his leather-bound journal and was writing in it with the stub of a pencil.

  “Go on, please,” he said.

  “So then Finn put the stone from his brother Corr’s ring into the hole in the golem’s forehead, and it – he – took off, walking north. We followed him for a while, though we couldn’t keep up in the bog, and he disappeared. But we were free of the storyshard.”

  The doctor nodded, his eyes wide.

  “So Finn thought that the stone from his ring had given the golem a new task?”

  “To find the owner of the ring,” Will said. “So now Finn believes that means Corr must still be alive, and probably somewhere in the north.”

  “That’s why he has been asking for scouting missions in that direction. I wondered about that. But as far as I know, he’s heard nothing new about Corr. There are said to be strange things happening in the far north these days, though. Like great storms that bring lightning and thunder but no rain.”

  The doctor bent over his journal and went on writing.

  “Lightning,” Will said under his breath.

  The doctor looked up.

  “What’s that?”

  Will didn’t answer. He was remembering what Mimling had said about how Shade was injured. Lightning. He’d been burned by lightning thrown by someone or something from the sky. And again he remembered his mother’s stories of Lightfoot and his battle with the furious and cruel Captain Stormcloud.

  The Lightning Warriors swooped down in their flying ships, hurtling great stabbing bolts of white fire at him. Lightfoot ran and dodged and ducked, but finally one of the bolts struck him…

  He was considering whether to tell Alazar what he was thinking when Finn and Balor returned.

  “Did they have any news?” the doctor asked as they climbed from their horses.

  “Not much we haven’t already heard in Fable,” Finn replied. “Vague reports of trouble in the north. Storms. Folk fleeing Nightbane armed with weapons of gaal.”

  Will remembered hearing that word before. Gaal was a poisonous metal. Fever iron, some called it, deadly to the Fair Folk and with the power to drive anyone else who touched it into fury and madness. Moth the Shee warrior had a sword of gaal he’d carried with him. It was the only weapon that could destroy his enemy, the Angel, but it had also been slowly killing him.

  “Well, if we’re only going a short way north of the Wandering River, none of that will concern us,” Balor said.

  “Not for the moment,” Alazar said.

  The night sky began to pale with approaching dawn not long after they set off. That morning’s ride took them out of the Bourne and into the wilder country beyond. They followed the high road through rolling woodlands until, at the top of a windy rise, it forked into two narrower paths running east and west. To the west, not far away, stood a slender, many-turreted white castle on a hill, with the steeples and roofs of a city clustered at its foot. Further west rose the towers of another castle on a hill, surrounded by another city below it. Looking east, Will saw two, no, three more distant castles on hills.

  “The Little Kingdoms,” Balor said, with what sounded like affection in his voice.

  “We’ll head straight across country from here,” Finn said. “It may slow us down to leave the road, but it’s better to avoid the Kingdoms.”

  “That makes sense,” Balor said, but to Will he sounded disappointed.

  “Are they dangerous?” Will asked the wildman, as they left the road and descended the north side of the hill.

  “The Little Kingdoms?” Balor said. “Not really. It’s just that you can’t visit them without something happening. It’s where we send knight-apprentices on their first solitary quests. They’re guaranteed to have some kind of adventure, and it usually turns out all right. It’s a law or something, I think. There’s always supposed to be a happily-ever-after in the Little Kingdoms, and if there isn’t you can apparently lodge a complaint somewhere. Anyhow, if we’d had more time for your training, I would’ve sent you off to one of them.” He pointed to one of the nearer castles, with blue and silver pennants fluttering from its towers. “Probably that one. It has the stupidest ogres, but the prettiest damsels in distress.”

  Once they had left the road, the country grew hillier and more dense with trees and underbrush. For a while Finn took them beside a stream, until it lost itself in wet marshy ground, then he led the way up a rocky hillside and out into more open, drier ground, where they let the horses run at full speed. Will hung on, terrified, as Cutter raced across the hard turf, his hooves thundering, but soon he relaxed and began to enjoy the speed and the wind in his face.

  After a few miles the horses slowed and went along at an easier pace. They passed through woods again, then crossed a shallow stream, where they rested briefly and watered the horses. On the other side of the stream Finn led them in another all-out gallop. So went the ride, at faster and slower paces, through the morning and into the afternoon. A chill wind came up and the sky clouded over ominously, as if a rainstorm might be on the way, but they rode on. From time to time, Balor whistled melodies and sang verses from old ballads. His singing was more of an off-key bellowing and he kept forgetting the words, but the others couldn’t help being cheered by his high spirits.

  “This is where a knight-errant belongs,” he said to Will. “Out here in the big wide world, with no idea what you’re going to meet over the next hill.”

  As if to prove his point, Balor spurred his horse up the slope of the grassy hill they were climbing, and Will did the same with Cutter. Shade would love this, Will thought. In a few moments they had crested the hill and reined in their horses.

  Below them lay a long, deep hollow ringed by wooded ridges. The hollow was filled, or choked, Will thought, with a thick tangle of reeds and bracken. Bare black trunks of dead trees stuck out here and there like withered arms.

  “This wasn’t here before,” Finn said, rising in his saddle to gaze down into the hollow.

  “You’re right,” the doctor said. “There was a lake here, teeming with fish, and a village at the far end, with a watermill. A place called Edgewater.”

  “I came this way only weeks ago, and stopped at their inn for ale,” Balor said. “What could have happened?”

  “There were tall grasses and marsh reeds at one end of the lake, I remember,” the doctor said. “But things couldn’t have become this overgrown so quickly…”

  “It must be what the loremaster warned us of,” Finn said. “The land here is changing, like the forest near Molly’s Arm. I was going to take us through the hollow, but I think we should go around, along the eastern ridge. I don’t like the look of this place at all. Better if we avoid it all together.”

  “No,” Will said, and they all turned to look at him. “No, we need to ride through the hollow.”

  “Will?” Finn asked.

  “It’s a knot-path,” Will said, and he was certain of it as he spoke the words. The grassy hollow was a shortcut to another, faraway part of the Realm, like those he had stumbled across on his first journey.

  “I’ve heard rumour of such things,” Balor said in a sceptical tone. “Never been through one.”

  “I have,” Finn said. “Will, are you sure this path will take us closer to Shade?”

  Will closed his eyes and breathed deeply. It was almost as if he could see the sun blazing in a vault of cloudless blue sky, and hear the wind moving across miles and miles of tall, waving grasses.

  … and Lightfoot rode north on his pony Great Heart, and they crossed the silent empty prairie and came at last to the Hill of the Teeth …

  His mother’s story again. More of it had come back to him now.
Will remembered how her words had conjured so vividly for him that great sea of grass bowing and waving in the wind, the vast bowl of the sky dotted with white clouds, and in the distance, a row of sharp-pointed hills like fangs…

  He opened his eyes. The gloomy, weed-choked hollow lay before him, under a cloudy sky. But he was sure of what he had sensed, as if that vast sunlit land was somehow inside him. Somewhere beyond this hollow he would find Shade.

  “The great plain,” he said. “This path will take us there in a short time.”

  Balor shrugged and eyed the hollow darkly.

  “If there’s anything left of the lake under all that green, then the ground is probably boggy and treacherous,” he said. “We could waste hours floundering around in there.”

  Finn appeared to be weighing Balor’s words. Then he turned to Will again.

  “We’ll go through the hollow,” he said. “Will, you’ll lead us.”

  Will nodded. He nudged Cutter’s flank sharply with his heel.

  “Come on,” he said to the horse. “We’re going down there.”

  Cutter tossed his head a moment, as if objecting like Balor, but then he began slowly to descend. Finn and the others followed. In a few moments they had reached the bottom of the hill and were wading into the reeds, which came up to their horses’ shoulders.

  Cutter whinnied, though whether from fear or annoyance Will couldn’t tell. He stared forward into the wall of reeds, shielding his eyes from the sharp stalks that slid across his legs. There was no trail, as far as he could see. They had to force their way through, and the thick reeds bent before them unwillingly, as if trying to keep them out, then sprang up again once they’d passed. The ground was boggy, as Balor had predicted, and squelched under the horses’ hooves. The further they penetrated into the hollow, the taller the reeds grew, until they rose well over their horses’ heads and not even Balor could see the ridges on either side of the hollow any more.