The Shadow of Malabron (39 page)

T
HEY 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 said 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.

“When we first met, Master Pendrake, I thought you were one of them,” Shade said. “I was not wrong.”

“You cannot stop it, Rowen. To me, the shapes in the ice tombs were hardly visible at all. Whatever gifts I have, I had to learn and develop over many long years of wandering, gathering threads of the Kantar before they were lost for ever. But for you … I feared what this journey might lead to, and so it has. The storyshard, your exposure to the werefire…”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Rowen demanded. Her eyes shimmered with tears.

Pendrake took her hands in his.

“When you were very young, your mother and father made me promise that if anything happened to them, I would keep you safe. I couldn’t save them, I failed at that, but I could at least try to keep my promise.”

He paused and took a deep breath.

“You must know, Rowen … their deaths were likely not by chance, though I told you otherwise and wished to believe it myself. The loremasters have been hunted by Malabron since the Broken Years and before. They carry the power of the Stewards, and in them, in you, is the last hope of the Realm. The only way to keep my promise was to keep you hidden. To hide the truth, even from you, until you were ready to hear it. Or until I had no choice. Forgive me.”

Rowen pulled her hands away from her grandfather’s. She stood motionless, gazing past them all. Tears slid down her cheeks.

“They died … because of me,” she said.

“No, child,” Pendrake said hoarsely. “This began long before any of us. Blame will solve nothing. What we must do is defend what they lived for, and died for.”

She didn’t seem to hear him. After a long time she stirred and looked round at Will and the others.

“I want to leave this place,” she said, and her voice sounded cold and lost.

Moth took first watch. Will lay down near Rowen, using Shade’s flank as a warm pillow. It was so dark he wasn’t sure for a moment whether he’d closed his eyes yet or not.

“Will?” Rowen whispered. She was an indistinct shape in the darkness.

“Yes?”

“I can still hear them. The storyfolk who took refuge here. I can hear them passing through the halls. Weeping. There’s a child crying for its mother. It won’t stop.”

He heard her troubled breathing in the dark.

“I’m so tired,” she said. “I want to sleep, but I can’t.”

Will struggled to think of something comforting to say. He remembered the fetch’s voice in his head, but he wasn’t going to tell Rowen about that.

“Tell me a story,” Rowen said. “Tell me about where you come from. About the Untold.”

“All right. What do you want to know?”

“Anything. Tell me about your life there.”

Haltingly, Will began. He talked about Jess, and his father. And then he told her about his mother, and how she had died.

“I’m sorry, Will,” Rowen said.

After a time he went on, and told her about his friends and the things they liked to do.

“What is a
video game
?” Rowen asked.

“Well, there’s this special box called a television. With a window that shows you pictures.”

“Like the movings you talked about.”

“
Movies
. Yes. But in a game you can be one of the characters. You can move him, like a puppet. You can make him do things in the game.”

“What things?”

“Well, like … fighting. Killing monsters, and shooting bad guys.”

“Like a story,” Rowen said. “I see. Like Jack the Giant-killer. Or Conn the Clever. You have to defeat the monsters to end the story. To win the game.”

“That’s right.”

“What happens if you don’t win?”

“You die.”

“Oh.”

“But you can come back to life and try again.”

He thought he should change the subject, so he told her about his other favourite pastime, football. When he ran out of things to say, Rowen was silent for a while.

“Why did you run away?” she said finally.

Will thought about that for a long moment.

“My dad got a new job, in another city,” he said at last. “He said it would be good for us. But I was mad at him, and I didn’t want to go.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t want to leave my friends. And my home. It’s where we lived when we were … all together.”

“I understand,” Rowen said. “You felt safe there.”

Will waited for her to ask him more questions, but she did not speak. Finally he heard in the dark the steady rhythm of her breathing. Despite his troubled thoughts he felt exhaustion pulling him into sleep.

What seemed like only moments later, Rowen was shaking him awake.

“We have to go,” she whispered.

“Already?” Will mumbled groggily.

Shade had raised an alarm. His keen ears had picked up a sound not made by water or stone. The others listened but could hear nothing.