The Fathomless Fire (30 page)

“The most important thing is to keep you safe,” Brax went on. “And then you and I can work together to solve this. I know we can.”

“The Master always said the toyshop was the safest place in Fable,” Edweth said, studying the mage with a suspicious look.

“Is that so?” the mage asked casually, as if the housekeeper’s comment barely interested him. “I wonder why. But I’m sure the captain knows best.”

“The Master has his reasons,” Edweth said. “There’s something about the toyshop that—”

She broke off and looked guiltily at Rowen.

Rowen took a deep breath and stood.

“I will come to Appleyard,” she said to Brax. “But I need to gather my things.”

It was weak, she knew, but it was all she’d had time to come up with. Her eyes locked with the mage’s for a long moment. She could see he was calculating whether he had the power yet to force her to his will. Finally he nodded and looked away.

“Of course,” he said obligingly. “I’ll wait for you here while you get ready.”

“Could you please,” she said, trying to still the tremble in her voice, “return to Appleyard now and tell the captain I’m on my way?”

“I really should accompany you,” the mage protested in a tone of quiet reason. “For your safety. I don’t mind waiting while you prepare.”

“Freya’s here,” Rowen said. “She’ll bring me to Appleyard. And I … I need to say goodbye. I need a moment by myself. This is the only home I’ve ever known.”

The mage looked to be about to protest, and she wondered if she had overdone it. Anger and suspicion flickered across Brax’s sharp features. Then he inclined his head.

“Very well,” he said. “I will return soon.”

The mage made them all a slight bow, turned on his heel and strode from the room. As soon as he was out of the toyshop door, Rowen rushed to lock it behind him.

“Don’t let him back in, Edweth,” she said. “No matter what.”

“If only I hadn’t said anything,” the housekeeper said, shaking her head angrily. “Now he suspects we’re hiding something.”

“He already suspected that,” Rowen said. “The only reason he came to Fable in the first place was to find Grandfather’s secrets. But he mustn’t learn anything. He mustn’t find out about the raincabinet. We have to keep him out of here.”

“What about the Marshal?” Edweth said. “He wants you in Appleyard, too.”

“I’m not going,” Rowen said. “I have to stay at the toyshop. It’s what Grandfather would want me to do.”

“I thought the mage wanted to help,” Freya said with a scowl. “I shouldn’t have brought him here.”

“He would have showed up soon enough anyway,” Rowen said bitterly. Then she had another thought. “Freya, what did the Marshal say about you leaving Fable?”

“He was busy and wouldn’t see me. But Captain Thorne still wants us out of the city by evening,” she said numbly. “Rowen, you should come with us. What if another of those creatures comes looking for you? Now they know where you are.”

“I think that is best,” Edweth agreed. “And I’ll come with you. For all we know, more of those horrors may be on their way here right now. And I know some folk in other parts of the Bourne who can be trusted. They’ll help us, and keep quiet about it. We’ll find somewhere you can be safe…”

“For how long, Edweth?” Rowen cried. “I’ll be hunted wherever I go, and anyone who hides me will be in danger. Here I’ve got the only chance of finding out what happened to Grandfather.”

“You mean…” Edweth began, her eyes filling with fear. “You’re thinking of going back
there
. Oh, Rowen, no.
No
.”

“Grandfather told me that everyone has a thread in the Weaving. The thread of their own story. Maybe I can find his thread. Maybe I can reach him before he’s taken into the Shadow Realm.”

Freya pursed her lips, nodding to herself as if she had made up her mind about something.

“I’ll stay here with Edweth,” she said to Rowen. “I’ll make sure Brax doesn’t get through that door.”

“But your friends, Freya,” Rowen protested. “You should be with them. Captain Thorne won’t do anything to me, but he could have you locked up if you stay.”

“Father Nicholas risked everything for my people,” Freya said quietly. “And now at last there’s something I can do to repay him. I don’t understand where it is you’re going, Rowen, to search for your grandfather, but at least I can stand guard here while you’re gone.”

Rowen nodded.

“Thank you,” she said. She took up her grandfather’s staff and headed for the corridor.

Edweth gaped at her.

“Now?” she said. “Already?”

Rowen halted in the doorway.

“It can’t wait,” she said. “Brax will return, and he might bring some of Thorne’s men with him, to make sure he gets his way this time. If he tries to force his way in, tell him I ran away. Tell him … tell him I took Grandfather’s book of secrets and ran off with it.”

“Book of secrets? What are you talking about?”

“There isn’t a book of secrets, Edweth. But tell him that. Maybe it’ll throw him off the trail.”

She hurried along the corridor to the stairs. Edweth and Freya followed her, and Riddle came padding after. At the bottom of the stairs, Rowen stopped once more. She saw Riddle and a faint flicker of hope rose in her.

“You’re coming with me,” she said to the cat.

“That is what Riddle told the toymaker he would do.”

Rowen hugged Freya, then Edweth. The housekeeper held her tightly as if she would never let go.

“I will come back,” Rowen said. “I promise.”

“Be safe, child,” Edweth whispered.

Rowen dashed up the stairs with Riddle close behind. Reaching the top floor, she hurried to the door of the raincabinet, paused a moment, then opened it. She looked into the rainy darkness, and her grandfather’s words came back to her. What he’d said to her after Freya had brought them the dragon’s warning…

If I’m not with you any more, find Will. Stay close to him.

“Are we going in there at last?” Riddle asked.

“Yes, we are. If you really did come from the Weaving, maybe you can help me find my way.”

But her thoughts were still with Will. How she wished he was here with her. He must be miles away by now, she thought, and Shade needed him, too, even more than she did. She couldn’t do what her grandfather had asked. She couldn’t set out to look for Will now. It was too late for that. She was alone, and there was only one path left to her. A path through the Weaving that she was certain would lead her to the Shadow Realm.

W
ILL WOKE UP WITH A CRY
. All around him was darkness and the creaking of wooden timbers. He felt a hand on his shoulder. Doctor Alazar was crouching beside him.

“It’s all right, Will.”

“Where are we?” Will asked groggily. He was lying on a rough blanket in a small room. The wind was shrieking outside. A candle lantern with a smoky glass cover gave off a dim yellow glow, by which he could see that the walls and the floor of the room were made of wooden planks crossed with thicker beams. The whole room seemed to shudder with the force of the wind’s blows and Will even felt the floor beneath him heave. He caught the faint acrid smell of something like burning tar.

“The Sky Folk have taken us prisoner. We’re aboard one of their ships.”

“Ships…?” Will echoed, bewildered. Then another fear seized him. “Where’s Shade? Did he get away?”

“I don’t know. He may have. I hope so.”

Will took a deep breath. If Shade had at least escaped the Sky Folk, not everything would be lost.

“And Finn and Balor…?”

“They aren’t here. But I saw them catch Balor in one of their nets. And there was a second ship. They may be on it.”

Will clapped a hand to his belt. His sword was gone, of course. He squinted in the gloom and saw someone lying on another blanket nearby.

“Hawk,” Will said. “Is he hurt?”

“He’s asleep. I finally got him to rest. He’s exhausted.”

“They took him, too?”

“But not his father or sister. The Sky Folk left them alone.”

“The Dreamwalker said they wouldn’t take the young. Why did they take Hawk?”

“The Dreamwalker was wrong, it would seem,” the doctor said. “These people must be losing their war if they’re looking for children to fight for them.”

A door suddenly opened in the dark wall before them. Will saw a narrow flight of wooden steps and a figure blocking the light, solid and broad-shouldered, the lower half of his face masked like the Sky Folk that had attacked the Horse Folk camp. The figure pulled down its mask, and for one glad moment Will thought it was Balor. Then he saw that this silhouetted face was not that of the wildman.

Mordog
.

Will cried out and shrank back. The mordog’s beastlike face bore livid scars. He remembered the mordog that had pursued him in the mountains the first time he came to the Realm. They were brutes, killers…

“He won’t hurt us, Will,” the doctor said.

“The boy is awake, good,” said the mordog in a throaty rasp. Will gaped in surprise. He had thought these creatures were incapable of speech. The mordog thrust a small clay bowl into Alazar’s hands.

“Give him some broth,” the mordog said, and turned to climb the steps, shutting the door behind him. When he was gone, the doctor set the bowl down on the floor.

“Don’t eat or drink anything they give you,” he said to Will. “There’s something in it. I don’t know what. I had some of this broth earlier and it made my thinking foggy. It might be the same poison that Shade said was in the wolves, and Yates.”

Will looked around the room. The timbers of the walls rattled as the wind buffeted them.

“You said we were on a ship,” he said. “How can that be? We were in the middle of the plains…”

“Can you get up?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll show you. We’re not locked in here.”

“Why not?”

“You’ll see in a moment.”

Will rose unsteadily to his feet. Together he and the doctor left the room and climbed the steps, which led out onto the long, narrow deck of a ship. Will shielded his eyes from the sudden painful light. A huge white sail towered above him into the sky, bellied out in the wind and straining against its rigging. The mordog who had brought the broth was near the hatch they had just come out of. He stood at least a head in height over the doctor, and held a thick stave tipped with an iron sphere. One of those lightning staves, Will thought. He remembered what it had done to him in the camp and he shivered. Over his mail, glittering with water droplets, the mordog wore a long dark grey cloak of some slick, oily-looking cloth.

Will gazed across the deck. The wind shrieked and the air was wet with a fine streaming mist that beaded on his face and eyelashes. He could see nothing on either side of the ship’s low bulwarks but churning billows of cloud. Where was the river or sea they were sailing across? Several figures were moving about the deck, some climbing the weblike rigging of the sails. Others were hurrying along, carrying ropes with grappling hooks on the ends. All of them wore the same dark, slick cloaks as the mordog. Some of the ship’s crew were human, Will noted with surprise, but not all. Will glimpsed another mordog, and several others who were strange to him, and who he guessed were Storyfolk of one kind or another.

At the far end of the ship, a large metal cylinder protruded from the deck. Dark smoke was streaming from its upper end, and Will realized the cylinder must be venting some kind of furnace or boiler below the deck. That must be where the smell of burning tar was coming from.

The light brightened suddenly, and Will saw that the clouds around them were thinning. Patches of blue sky appeared here and there.

“Where are they taking us?” Will said, bewildered. “And how did we get out on water?”

“We’re not on water,” the doctor said, beckoning him to the rail. Will stepped up beside him and looked over. Below them plunged the curving hull of the ship. And far beneath the ship, hundreds of feet below, was the earth. A few small clouds drifted past in the gulf between. Will pulled back dizzily at the sight.

They were sailing through the sky.

After a moment he looked down again. They were passing over a grey, lifeless landscape of broken and tumbled rock, riven in many places with dark chasms from which steam was rising, and pitted with pools of what looked like bubbling mud. A sulphurous reek rose to Will’s nostrils and stung his eyes. Far ahead in the distance, in the direction that Will guessed to be north, the lifeless plain vanished into a wall of dark cloud.

“These people call themselves Stormriders,” Alazar said. “Not Sky Folk. But I’m guessing these are the barren lands from your story, Will. Or the ghostlands, as the Dreamwalker called them.”

“Stormriders,” Will echoed, and he thought again of Captain Stormcloud and his Lightning Warriors.

He watched the shadow of the ship ripple over the stones far below. It would be nearly impossible to travel over such broken, treacherous terrain on foot. And there was no way off this ship unless you jumped over the side.