The Fathomless Fire (11 page)

“Don’t believe everything you hear,” Will said, blushing and annoyed at himself for it.

“But the other apprentices say you—”

“Ferrets live in holes, don’t they?” Will said angrily, stepping around the girl. “Look for a hole.”

Lord Caliburn stood leaning over his desk, a large map unrolled before him. Someone else was with him, on the other side of the desk, so that his back was to Will. There was a feeling in the room, Will thought, as if a thunderstorm had just passed through. He knew that the Marshal and this other man had been arguing.

Will cleared his throat to announce his presence. The other man turned. He was middle-aged, very tall and broad-shouldered, almost as large as Balor Gruff. His face was craggy and weather-beaten, his eyes cold and piercing under thick black brows. It was a memorable face, but Will didn’t recognize him.

“Will Lightfoot,” the Marshal said. “Welcome back to Fable.” His voice was as clipped and emotionless as Will remembered it, but the man had changed in some way, he thought. The look in his eyes was one of weariness, or perhaps even pain.

“Thank you, sir,” Will replied.

“This is Captain Thorne,” the Marshal said, introducing the man who stood at the desk.

This was the captain of the guard who had given the new orders about strangers in Fable, Will remembered. Thorne nodded curtly to Will.

“We owe you our thanks,” the Marshal said stiffly. “If not for you, our best tracker might never have made it home. I’ve sent scouts to find out where this dust cloud has drifted to, but it seems to have vanished. Which is good, but still, I don’t like mysteries. You don’t have any thoughts to offer, do you?”

“It wasn’t a dust cloud,” Will said. “It was a
place.
Or no place. I don’t know how to describe it. All I know is, we weren’t in the Realm. I don’t know where we were.”

“Balor Gruff tells me you’ve returned to the Realm to look for your friends. So this time your coming here wasn’t an accident.”

“That’s right.”

“I’d like to hear the whole tale of why and how you returned, if you don’t mind.”

Before he began his story Will glanced at the captain. Thorne was studying him with a cold, suspicious look that flustered him, then made him angry. Quickly, he told of his meeting with the shadow and the warnings it had given, then how he had set out to return to the Realm and encountered Balor. Caliburn listened without making any comment. When Will was finished, the Marshal and Thorne exchanged a quick glance.

“But your friends aren’t here,” Caliburn said. “Even Finn is still away, searching for Balor Gruff. So what are your plans?”

“I was hoping someone in Fable could tell me where the loremaster might be, but I doubt that anyone knows. The same with Shade. So I’m going to find them myself, somehow. After all, people are calling me—”

He broke off, not wanting to bring up the fact that he was being hailed as a returning hero. But Captain Thorne nodded eagerly, as if he’d been waiting for this very subject.

“The Marshal and I have heard the rumours,” he said in a low, hoarse voice, “or perhaps they’re better called legends – being told about you in Fable. About your journey with the loremaster and the others. They say you’re a hero.”

“People have got the story wrong,” Will said hotly. “I wasn’t a …
hero
. We only made it through because of Master Pendrake, and Moth, and Finn Madoc.”

At the mention of Finn’s name, the Marshal’s face seemed to darken a moment.

“I am glad to hear that a member of the Errantry did his duty,” he said. “I would expect no less of him. And I am sorry about the archer of the Tain Shee. I know that he was a valiant warrior.”

“But now they’re saying that the great pathfinder, Will Lightfoot, has returned to us in our hour of need,” the captain said, with what seemed to be a trace of a sneer in his voice.

“I don’t know anything about that,” Will said. “I just came to find my friends. To help them, if I can.”

“Well, one thing is certain, this
is
an hour of need,” the Marshal said grimly. “Storyfolk are flocking to the Bourne, fleeing war and disaster, and bringing alarming tidings of the world beyond our borders. Storylands all over the Realm, it seems, are vanishing. Drying up. Crumbling away. And as the stories die, Nightbane have been on the move in great numbers. Burning and destroying what remains.”

Will remembered what the Lady of the Tain Shee had told him and the others before he returned home. She had warned that they had only a brief time of peace before the enemy’s forces would rise like a tide across the Realm. While he had been gone, it was clear that the time of peace had passed.

“But why are Storyfolk coming
here
, to Fable?” he asked.

“That’s a question best left for the loremaster,” the Marshal said. “I only hope he returns soon. What concerns me is the safety of the Bourne.”

“That is my concern, too, sir,” Thorne said. “And although I’m not pleased about the way this boy was recruited without proper approval, this does seem an opportunity to—”

“
Recruited
?” Will broke in.

Thorne frowned.

“Balor appointed you his knight-apprentice,” the captain said. “Do you mean to say you didn’t know? He didn’t even tell you?”

“He did,” Will said, his thoughts whirling, “but … I thought he was joking.”

A faint flicker of a smile passed across the Marshal’s face.

“It isn’t always easy to tell with Balor Gruff. But in this case he was serious. No matter how impulsively it was done, he made you his apprentice.”

“In which case,” Captain Thorne said, “you’re now a member of the Errantry, Will Lightfoot. With all of the duties and obligations that entails.”

“But I didn’t ask Balor to do it,” Will protested. “I can’t join the Errantry. That’s not why I came back. I’m not staying in Fable.”

“So you’re planning to search for your friends?” the Marshal asked.

“I am.”

“On your own?” Thorne said. “Tell me, where will you go? Which direction? What if the loremaster and his granddaughter, or the wolf, are hundreds of miles away?”

Will clenched his fists and said nothing. The captain’s questions had gone right to the heart of his own fears. It had been one thing to set out into the unknown with companions like Shade and the loremaster, but to do so by himself was reckless and dangerous, and he knew it. He remembered that the Angel had tracked down Rowen only because he had been able to invade Will’s dreams and seek for her that way. Will had been a danger to Rowen without knowing it. If he charged off now on his own and got captured by Malabron’s servants, they might turn his gift to their own use. He could endanger his friends again. But what choice did he have? He couldn’t just stay here and do nothing.

Lord Caliburn sighed, and Will looked up to see concern and even sadness in his eyes.

“I must ask you to reconsider your plans, Will,” he said. “To go alone into the wilds, especially now, would be folly. You would be placing
yourself
in great danger, without any certainty of helping your friends. You must understand that.”

“I do, but I can’t just wait here,” Will said desperately. “I have to get a warning to the loremaster, and to Shade, if there’s any way. I need to know they’re all right.”

“You can be ordered not to leave Fable,” Thorne said. “An order that the guards at the gate will see is obeyed. After all, you’re a knight-apprentice of the Errantry now, and are bound by our rules.”

“Will cannot be held accountable to Balor’s rash act,” the Marshal said, with an angry wave of his hand. “He didn’t truly give his consent.”

“The boy’s apprenticeship is binding if you order it so, Lord.”

There followed a strained silence in which the two men glared at one another without a word. Now Will understood what they had been arguing about. The Marshal was on his side, but against his leaving, while Captain Thorne wanted to keep him here as a knight-apprentice.

“You have valuable knowledge and experience that none of our recruits have,” the captain went on, addressing Will now. “The way I see it, you could be of the most help to your friends right here in Fable, by training with the Errantry and learning to develop your gift—”

“I once made the same argument,” Lord Caliburn broke in. “It was wrong of me then, and it would be wrong now. You may leave Fable if you wish, Will, even though I would prefer you remained here for your own sake and my peace of mind. I ask only one thing of you. Stay in Fable just one more day. After what happened to Balor, there’s no telling what other threats or traps might be lurking close by. Give my scouts time to return with their reports, which should be the day after tomorrow. Will you at least stay here until then?”

Will pursed his lips. He was about to refuse, but something in the Marshal’s voice or manner reminded him of his own father. With a pang he remembered his last sight of his dad, standing on the back steps under the porch light.

He took a deep breath.

“I’ll stay,” he said with a nod, though his heart was sinking. “One more day.”

As Will came out onto the steps of the Gathering House, downcast and uncertain what to do with himself, a voice hailed him.

He looked up. Running across the lawn towards him was the girl who’d lost her ferret.

“It’s Mairi,” she said shyly when she reached him, brushing back her wind-tangled hair. “I found Dart, just where you said he’d be.”

“What do you mean? I didn’t tell you where to look.”

“Yes, you did. You said to look in a hole and I did and there he was,” the girl gushed, beaming. “In an old rat hole in the wall behind my bed. I don’t know how he fitted into it but he was in there all right, just like you said.”

“Well, that’s great—”

“I got him to come out with another piece of roast beef. He’s back in his cage now and the prefect never found out. Thank you.”

She was standing very close, her big brown eyes gazing up at him with admiration. She was a pretty girl, he realized, and he felt suddenly uncomfortable.

“You’re welcome,” he said.

“I can’t wait to tell everyone about what you did. You really are the pathfinder.”

“I hope so,” Will said under his breath, and walked quickly away.

Will returned to the toyshop to tell Edweth what had happened, and that he was leaving the day after tomorrow, no matter what. She tried with various arguments to convince him not to go at all, but he wouldn’t let himself be budged by her entreaties.

He spent the rest of the day wandering through Fable in a fruitless quest for clues as to where Rowen and her grandfather might be. He found some more of Rowen’s friends, but none of them knew anything that could help him. Late in the afternoon he returned dejectedly to the toyshop, and with Edweth’s permission, searched through Pendrake’s workshop on the top floor.

The room was not as cluttered as he remembered it, and he suspected that Edweth had been unable to resist tidying up a little while the Master was gone. There were no papers or maps on Pendrake’s desk, and the many books piled and stacked around the room told him nothing. He lingered in the workshop for a while, though, remembering the first time he had come here, and how confused and terrified he’d been when the loremaster told him he was in a story now and he would have to find his own way out of it.

In the evening Will visited the Golden Goose, the inn on the bridge over the stream that ran in a stone canal through the city. Fable folk mingled here in the evenings with travellers from far-flung lands of the Realm, to hear and tell stories. There was a chance, he thought, that one of the inn’s guests might have met Pendrake and Rowen, or perhaps Shade, on their travels.

When he slipped into the crowded, noisy common room, Will was glad to see that no one seemed to recognize him. It wasn’t surprising, since most of the folk gathered here this evening weren’t from the Bourne, let alone from Fable. They were Storyfolk from far-off lands, and many of them looked it. There were people here of every shape and size, and some whose strange and even alarming features made him wonder whether the word
people
applied to them.

Will found a seat in one corner and listened while a succession of Storyfolk spun tales of their adventures, stories that were sometimes so wondrous or terrible that he had a hard time believing everything he heard, even after all that he himself had seen and done on his own journey. And too many of the tales, he thought with dismay, were about dark and wicked things encroaching on lands that had long been peaceful and safe. He listened carefully to every story, however, and even asked a few of the tellers afterwards if they had met a toymaker and his granddaughter, or a talking wolf, on their travels. He tried to be as unspecific as he could about who the loremaster and Rowen were, while still providing details that might jog someone’s memory, because he wasn’t sure it was wise to reveal too much about them to these strangers. But no one had seen any of his friends.

Will returned to the toyshop late that night, restless and heartsick, wondering why the shadow had urged him to return, had told him he was
needed
, when he wasn’t accomplishing anything.

Before sunrise the next day, Will hurried back to Appleyard to find out if the scouts had reported in. He was climbing the steps of the Gathering House when a huge hand fell on his shoulder. He turned to see Balor beaming down at him.

“There you are,” the wildman boomed. “I thought I’d already lost my new apprentice. That would have been rather embarrassing.”

“I’m not your apprentice,” Will said, trying to hide his annoyance. Balor’s face fell.

“Well, yes, I imagine you’re angry about that…” he muttered, looking away. “Sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Will said. “The Marshal says what you did isn’t binding. I can leave Fable if I want to. And that’s what I’m going to do.”

“Well, I suppose you must,” Balor said with a shrug. “It’s just that if you
were
my apprentice, we could probably get permission to take a short ride out of Fable, just the two of us, for a few days, to teach you some of the basic scouting skills, and who knows, maybe along the way we can do a little searching for the loremaster and your wolf friend.”