The Shadow of Malabron (9 page)

It’s just a dream
, he whispered feverishly.
I have to wake up
.

Rowen did not fall sleep for a long time. When she finally did, she dreamed of Will. She saw him riding the machine he called a motorcycle, and in her dream it was a bulky contraption of clanking metal parts and giant wooden wheels, with tall pipes rising from it that sent up hissing jets of steam. And then she was seated on the machine behind him, hanging on desperately as they sped through the streets of Fable.

“Where are we going?” she asked him over the roar and hiss of the machine.

“I have no idea,” he shouted back, a wild grin on his face.

The streets of the city had become steep, twisting canyons. They plunged down them at a terrible speed, shuddering over the cobblestones. The shrieking wind stung Rowen’s eyes to tears. Her hair whipped in her face. The motorcycle’s pipes screamed and bits and pieces of it began to fly off.

Below them, the street ended in a blank wall of stone.

Will turned to her.

“We’re going to crash now,” he said calmly.

“Can’t you do anything?” she shouted. “Can’t you stop it?”

“Not me,” he said with a shrug. “I don’t have any control over it at all.”

Rowen put her hands over her face and peered out between her fingers. Just before they smashed headlong into the wall, she woke up.

Sunlight was streaming through her window. She thought of Will. What was going to happen to him? And what was going to happen to Fable? Why were so many storyfolk coming here these days?

Slipping on a dressing gown, she went to the chest at the end of her bed and opened it. Underneath a stack of blankets lay a pile of old books. This was the one place Edweth never looked. As long as Rowen kept everything neatly tucked away in the chest, there was no reason for the housekeeper to go rooting around in it. And that meant this was the one place in her room she could hide something.

She shoved the books aside and laid bare a bed-sheet wrapped round something long and bulky. Lifting it from the chest she set the sheet down on her bed and unwrapped it. Inside lay a sword. Its silver hilt was inscribed with the seal of the Errantry, a five-petalled white flower within a circle.

Rowen took the sword in both hands and held it in front of her. The blade gleamed in the morning light.

She had found it in the uppermost attic of the house, in a locked trunk, the key to which had cost her many days of searching. The sword was her mother’s, there was no doubt of that. Her grandfather had hidden it away from her, but Rowen had found it. She was meant to find it. And with it she would do great things.

A cry came from down the corridor, in the direction of Will’s room. Hurriedly Rowen tucked away the sword, and went out onto the landing. At Will’s door she stopped and listened.

A bird was singing somewhere. There was warm sunlight on his eyelids. But he was still cold and shivering. What had happened to his blankets? He groped for the covers, eyes still closed, wondering what Dad was making for breakfast. Jess would probably be up soon and tugging on his pyjama sleeve, wanting him to watch cartoons with her.

Then he remembered.

Will opened his eyes. He was lying, curled up, at the end of his bed. Groggily he raised his head. The blankets were in a heap on the floor.

He was in his room in the toymaker’s house. He had been dreaming about the clearing with the cloven tree, and the strange white-haired man, but
this
was no dream. He was really here, in the Perilous Realm. The mirrors in the woods and the fetches, meeting Rowen and Moth…

It had all really happened.

“The city of Fable,” he said out loud, as if he still wouldn’t believe until he heard himself say it. “In a land called the Bourne.”

The memory of what the toymaker had said last night returned, and a cold dread settled in his stomach. He was trapped in a story. A dangerous one. With things in it he couldn’t even understand. And why him? He was sure the old man hadn’t told him everything, but he knew he didn’t want to hear any more. It was time to do something, anything, to get out of here, if he could.

There was a knock at the door.

“Will? Are you all right?”

The girl’s voice. Rowen.

“I’m fine,” he called out. “Just a dream.”

“Well, I’ll be downstairs then. I’ll ask Edweth to make us something.”

Will climbed groggily from the bed. His old clothes were hanging in the wardrobe. He dressed and went down to the kitchen, where he found Rowen and Edweth. For a moment he considered telling them about his disturbing dream, but decided against it. The housekeeper had just made breakfast, and Will’s stomach growled hungrily as he surveyed the food spread out on the table. There was fresh bread with jam and honey, eggs and ham and sausage, and berries in cream.

As Will tucked in, Rowen told him that her grandfather had already gone out.

“And he made it very clear,” Edweth said, “that the two of you are to stay here in the house until he comes back.”

After breakfast Rowen suggested they go up to her grandfather’s workshop and look at his maps. Will already knew he would not find his own country shown on a chart here, but he had to do something other than sit and wait. From a cabinet she brought out and unrolled a large parchment map of the Bourne and the surrounding storylands, as she called them. Will was dismayed to see that while the Bourne itself was filled in with rivers and roads and place names, the regions beyond its borders were mostly white space. How was he supposed to get home with a map that faded away at the edges?

Rowen told him that near by, to the east and south of the Bourne, there were friendly lands and kingdoms, but for the most part the north and west were sparsely, and sometimes dangerously, populated. Once there had been many flourishing storylands here, but most of them had been broken or devoured by the Night King. These lands were known as Wildernesse, and people from the Bourne avoided travelling through them if they could.

“Grandfather has travelled all over the Realm, gathering tales, and helping storyfolk,” Rowen said. “He says that in Wildernesse you can’t put much trust in a map. You’re likely to find things very different from what you expect.”

Will sighed.

“Is this the best map you’ve got?” he asked.

“The Great Library has lots of maps,” Rowen said. “And books, too, of course. They say there’s a book there for everyone in the Realm.”

“So there might be a book there for me. A book that could show me the way home.”

“Well, maybe, but…”

“I’ve got to go there,” Will said.

Rowen pursed her lips.

“You heard what Edweth said.”

“I’m not going to sit here and do nothing.”

“If Grandfather finds out…”

“
You
don’t listen to him,” Will said. “Why should I?”

Rowen sighed. She went to the door and listened for a moment. Then she turned to Will.

“We’ll have to get past Edweth,” she said. “That won’t be easy. Come on.”

When they reached the steps of the Great Library, Will saw that it was an even larger building than it had seemed to him the night before. Unlike most of the structures he had seen so far in Fable, its black, pitted walls were not made of many blocks of hewn stone, but rather seemed carved of one single great mass of rock. Wide steps led up to the entrance, and on either side of them, at the top, stood a stone statue, in the shape of a strange creature the likes of which Will had never seen. Like a gryphon it had a lion’s body, an eagle’s head, and wings, but the wings were oddly shaped. As Will reached the top of the staircase he was able to see that they were not wings at all, but rather the ragged-edged pages of a book that was spread open upon the creature’s back.

Will and Rowen passed without speaking through the wide doors of the Library entrance and into a long hall, lit by tall narrow lamps in deep alcoves. On both sides of the central aisle down which they walked stood large desks at which men and women sat, scratching busily with quill pens or sorting through stacks of books.

“The assistant librarians,” Rowen whispered. “A cranky bunch. Worse than Edweth. Try not to make a noise.”

Rowen and Will walked quietly and quickly past the people at the desks, none of whom gave them the merest glance. At the far end of the hall, in the centre of a semicircular space from which several corridors branched off, was the tallest desk of all, a massive pulpit of carved oak. From where Will and Rowen stood, only the shiny top of a bald head and the end of a furiously fluttering quill feather could be seen. Rowen cleared her throat.

“Excuse me,” she said.

The feather stopped fluttering. The bald head stirred slightly, and a voice mumbled something unintelligible.

“Excuse me,” Rowen said again.

There was another grunt, and then the entire head rose into view. It belonged to a very old man with a long, thin face, a large beak of a nose, and a straggly white beard sprouting from his chin. His hands reached over and clutched the edge of the desk, and Will saw that all the nails were trimmed short, save one on the index finger of the right hand that poked out, yellow and curved, like a single claw. The old man glowered down at them in silence.

“We need help, please,” Rowen said, her voice raised slightly above a whisper.

“Speak up,” the old man said, cocking his head to one side.

“We need help with something important,” Rowen said more loudly, and her voice echoed in the long hall. The scratching of quills stopped. Most of the assistant librarians had raised their heads and were staring at Will and Rowen.

The old man tapped the desk with his one long nail.

“Consult the catalogues,” he said dismissively, in a voice like gravel crunched underfoot.

“I don’t think it would help us,” Rowen said, and she gestured to Will. “We’re looking for something for
him
. And he’s not…”

The old man frowned and peered down at Will. Now all the assistant librarians were staring openly in his direction.

“He’s not
what
?” the old man said, not taking his iron gaze off Will.

“We’re looking for a book for him,” Rowen said, her voice trailing off weakly. “To help him get home.”

“What makes him think there is such a book here?”

“She told me there was,” Will blurted out, pointing at Rowen. She opened her mouth, shut it again and shot Will a look of annoyance. The old man stared coldly at both of them, his yellow talon now tapping the side of his head.

“I suppose you’re a new recruit from Appleyard?” he said to Will with a grimace.

Will shook his head.

“I thought you looked a little too puny for an apprentice,” the old man said, and pointed his talon like an accusation at the nearest assistant librarian.

“Nymm,” he said. A small sour-faced man with inkstained fingers popped up from his desk like a Jack-in-the-box and hurried over.

“Someone looking for
his
book,” the old man said, a thin trickle of amusement leaking into his voice.

The assistant librarian bowed slightly and, without another word, led Will and Rowen down the furthest corridor on their left. At the far end of its long curve they came out into a large circular room. It was lit by hanging glass globes that contained what looked like messenger wisps, glowing dimly.

In the room were more books than Will had ever seen. Far more than his old school library, or even the big public library where Mum used to take him and Jess before she became ill.

Tall cases of books ran round the perimeter, and two other, higher galleries of shelves rose above to a domed glass ceiling. In addition to all the books lining the shelves on three floors, stacks and heaps and ziggurats of books sat everywhere, even piled on top of the large desk that stood in the middle of the room. Here and there people were sitting at tables, absorbed in their reading, or copying from texts and making notes. Between the shelves on the main floor stood tall cabinets with many drawers, and now and then one of the drawers would slide open noiselessly, and something that resembled a large white butterfly would dart out and flutter over to one of the tables, where it would settle, either on the table top, or on a book, or on the arm of a reader. When one of the butterflies passed close to Will, he saw that it was in fact a piece of paper folded down the middle to form what looked like a pair of wings.

“You may as well start here, in the catalogue room,” Nymm said. He went over to one of the desks, took a quill pen out of its stand, and handed it to Will.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” Will muttered, and the librarian rolled his eyes.

“Never been in a library before, likely,” he said. “Well, what is it you want your book to do for you?”

“Get me home.”

“Well, then, when one of the catalogue slips comes to you, write your request on it, and then follow the slip. A simple matter, for most.”

“It’s that easy?”

“I did not say
easy
,” Nymm snapped. “I said
simple
, and I meant the second definition of the word, as found in the
Eleventh Compendium of the Languages of the Realm, volume seventy-three
.
Simple
in the sense of
straightforward
. If the slip can find your book, it will. If it can’t, I suggest you try elsewhere.”

“That’s what I’m trying to find,” Will muttered.

Grudgingly the librarian handed him a lantern.

“You’ll need this. And remember: the Library is very old and very large, and parts of it haven’t been visited by anyone, not even us librarians, for a long time. If you get lost, or if you encounter … things, fold the slip the other way, and it will return here. If you lose track of the slip, well, someone will come looking for you. Eventually.”

He turned to go, then frowned at Rowen.

“Oh, and one more thing. You must go alone. No chance of it working otherwise. It confuses the slips if someone else comes along, which you would know were you a regular patron of this Library.”

With that he rolled his eyes once more and strode back out the way he had led them. Will turned to Rowen, who shrugged.