The Tree of Story (44 page)

Dirge came to a sudden halt, turning his head this way and that, his nostrils flaring, and then he roared and came on again, straight for Will.

He never reached him.

There was a burst of darkness, as if the pillar of dust had been torn open and night had come flooding in, and then Will saw that the darkness was a thing, a moving shape, vast and black, with jaws that opened and snapped shut, trapping the harrower between sharp fangs before he could take another step. A great dark head rose, shook Gibbet ferociously and then threw the harrower’s limp, mangled body across the hollow.

It was Shade. Will knew it for certain, even though this monstrous thing with burning red eyes, the breath roaring from him like broiling air from a forge, looked nothing like the wolf he knew.

This was the Devourer.

Will cried Shade’s name but his voice was lost amid the beast’s thunderous growls and the shrieking and howling of the harrowers. Some were already fleeing out of the hollow, but many had turned to meet this threat. They were lunging and slashing at him now and he was turning, snapping at some and swatting others away with his great paws. Those harrowers that could leap or had wings had attached themselves to his heaving sides and were sinking their fangs into him and tearing at him with their claws.

Will watched in helpless horror as the savage battle raged before him. Even Morrigan seemed awestruck and unable to move. And then Will noticed that as Shade fought, as he clawed and bit and tore at his enemies, he was moving farther from the tree and from Will. He was doing it purposefully, Will understood with a surge of hope, trying to lead the harrowers away from their prey.

He was about to speak, to tell Morrigan that Shade was giving them a chance to get Rowen away from here, when a leathery arm slid around his neck and held him fast.

“Call off the beast, boy,” a cold voice hissed in his ear. Dama’s voice.

He struggled and felt a sharpness, like the tip of a knife, press against his throat. He knew without having to see it that it was the winged woman’s talon. One of those that had poisoned Rowen.

There was a blur of white and Morrigan was in front of him, the shrowde rippling into agitated ribbons all around her.

“Let him go,” Morrigan said in a low, threatening voice.

“Stay away, witch of the Shee,” Dama snarled, “or the boy dies.”

And then the talon was gone from his neck and Dama’s arm had loosened its grip. Will didn’t know the reason, but he took this chance to escape and struggled out of her grasp. He whirled to face her in case she attacked again, but she was not looking at him. She was staring in wide-eyed horror at the bower.

Rowen stood there.

She had awoken at last.

24

S
HE DIDN
’
T SEEM TO
know him at first, and then recognition came into her eyes.

“Will,” she said.

“Rowen?” Of all the wonders and terrors he had seen in the last few days, Rowen standing before him again was the most wonderful and yet somehow also the most terrifying. Something had changed in her. Something he didn’t understand.

Her face was still frighteningly pale and glistened with sweat, but her eyes were wide open and clear. She looked at Morrigan, and then her gaze shifted to Dama.

“You will no longer harm them,” she said.

“You broke your word,” the harrower growled as she backed away. “You promised to call off the Devourer and submit to the One.”

“I’m not the wolf’s master,” Rowen said. “I never was. I made that bargain so you would let Grandfather go free.”

“We killed the old man!” Dama shrieked. “We tore him to pieces!”

“No, you didn’t,” Rowen said calmly. “I see him. He’s on his way home. He escaped you. The power I put into the staff helped him.”

“You’ve still lost,” Dama said. “If you see that far, you know your city is about to fall. He will return only to shadows and death.”

Her wings rose and it seemed she would escape before anyone could reach her, but she did not ascend. Instead she stared down at her feet.

“What is this?” she gasped. “What are you doing to me?”

Will saw to his amazement that she was sinking slowly into the earth, or that the earth was somehow pulling her down. The grass was at her ankles now and rising. She reached down, her legs shaking, and desperately tore at the green blades, but still she sank.

Dama began to scream. She thrashed and threw out her arms, but the grass was above her knees now and all she could do was beat her wings helplessly.

Rowen stepped closer to the harrower. Dama grasped at her with a snarl but she stayed just out of reach.

“The One will come,” Dama hissed. “The One will find you and torment you forever for this.”

“Listen to me,” Rowen said, sinking into a crouch beside her. “I’m sorry to cause you pain, but I can’t let you harm anyone else. I’m going to tell you now what will happen to you. You’ll return to the place you came from. The place everything comes from. It’s called the Weaving. It’s where we give back what we’ve been given.”

Dama was up to her waist now and sinking faster. Her wings were caught next. They shivered but were held fast as terrified sobs wracked her body.

“No, no, no,” she cried, clawing at the earth. “Let me live. I will serve you. I will worship you.”

“You’ll come back from the Weaving,” Rowen went on. “Everyone does, in new bodies that have been woven for them. Nothing ever really ends. I know that now. You’ll come back, but you won’t have to be what you were. You won’t have to serve this nightmare anymore. We all have a choice, every one of us. You can choose another way to be.”

Dama had gone silent. The grass swallowed up her outstretched arms, and as it reached her neck and then her mouth, her eyes still burned into Rowen’s, though with fear, hate or hope Will could not tell.

In another moment the green earth had closed over her head and she was gone.

Will stared in shock and wonder at the place where the harrower had been. Then from behind him he heard a sigh like a great rush of wind.

“Will,” Morrigan said, and he turned and saw the giant form of the wolf lying at the edge of the hollow, his mighty sides heaving, his dark fur matted and glistening with blood. The torn and mangled bodies of harrowers lay all around him, but there were none still standing.

Will cried his friend’s name. The wolf stirred and slowly raised his head.

“Shade?” Will said again, this time as a question. The wolf’s eyes still burned with a red fire and his jaws hung open, with gobbets of blood and slaver hanging from them. Then he struggled to his feet, but instead of coming closer he began to limp away, the ground shuddering again with each of his great footfalls.

“Shade!” Will cried. “Don’t go! You’ve saved us. Let us help you.”

The wolf didn’t seem to hear. Without looking back, he climbed the slope and vanished into the wreckage of the green wall.

“Let him go, Will,” Rowen said, sitting up. “There is almost nothing left in him of the Shade we knew.”

“But what will happen to him?”

Rowen didn’t answer. She stood slowly, ignoring Will’s attempt to help her.

“How long?” she asked. “How long was I asleep?”

“Three days,” Morrigan said.

“Three days,” Rowen echoed. She gazed around. “I’m so thirsty.”

Will gave her the water bottle he had filled at the pool on the second day. She took a few sips. Morrigan was watching her, too, and Will saw that the Shee woman also wasn’t sure what to think of what had just happened, or of the strange way Rowen was acting.

“What of the Night King, Rowen?” the Shee woman asked. “The harrowers may have been killed or driven away, but he will come for us, that is certain.”

Rowen shot Morrigan a strange look, as if unsure whom she was speaking of. She was about to answer, it appeared, when she glanced away as though she’d heard a sound. Will and Morrigan went still, and then they heard it, too: a low hum, the same sound Will had heard on the second night of his vigil under the tree.

“What is that?” he asked.

“I heard it as well, when I was searching for you,” Morrigan said. “Whatever it is, it is coming this way. We must leave here.”

But Rowen showed no sign of concern. She stood calmly and waited, and so they stayed beside her.

The humming grew louder, rising to a heavy drone that reverberated in their ears. Then it was a roaring, almost a shrieking, that seemed to arrive from every direction at once.

The gaps in the green wall darkened even further, but with a trembling, crawling agitation, as if filled with countless tiny flecks of ash churning over and over through the air. Then Will remembered Rowen’s vision of the defeat of the Fair Folk, how they had been swallowed up in a cloud of tiny black creatures, and he knew that same cloud had come for them. A living darkness that churned and boiled in the hedge’s gaps but came no farther into the Silence.

Will braced himself for what might happen next, but Rowen appeared unafraid. She stepped forward and raised a hand.

“You will come no farther,” she said. “I rule here now. You know this to be true. You cannot harm me without harming yourselves.”

Dread shot through Will at Rowen’s words. What had happened to her while she slept? Fear clutched at him that she was not the Rowen he knew anymore, that she had become a creature of the Shadow Realm, and he recalled the terrified words of the other Will he’d met in the Weaving:
She’s found me …

The cloud of darkness shivered violently like a single creature, and many voices issued from it now, all speaking as one, with a sound that was both a whisper and a roar of rage.

You are nothing. You will be devoured and forgotten
.

“That will not happen,” Rowen said, and then she turned to Will.

“Do you still have Grandmother’s thread?”

He nodded. He was about to take the ball from his pocket and hand it to her, but he hesitated. What if the golden thread was all she needed to become another Malabron? What if his
older self had made the same mistake, and this is what led to him running and hiding for years until he was trapped at the ending of all the stories?

“Will?” Rowen said, and for the first time since she’d woken up, a look of concern crossed her face. “Give me the thread. It’s all right.”

He had to trust her. She had ended Dama and she could have destroyed him and Morrigan, too, if she’d wanted to. No, this was still Rowen.

He held out the ball of thread. She took it and set it in her palm, touching it softly with a finger, as if reassuring herself that it was really there. Then she held it up toward the seething darkness at the hollow’s edge.

“I could destroy you with this,” Rowen said in a loud voice. “So listen to me now. You creatures of the Shadow Realm, you’ve hidden the truth from yourselves for so long, but you’ve always known it, deep in your hearts. Lotan, the Angel, knew. He looked into the emptiness every time he came here, and he knew. He was afraid, and he served the lie and let it rule him, as you all did. For all the harm you’ve done in the name of this lie, I
should
destroy you.”

You must not do this
, the many voices roared.
Spare us and we will bow before you. We will serve you
.

“No one is going to bow to anyone anymore,” Rowen said. “I’m opening a door for you. A door for everyone. I’m going to set you free. I’m going to set us all free.”

“Rowen, what are you thinking?” Morrigan said in a low voice. “These are beings who have never known anything but hunting and killing the innocent. You cannot let them loose on the other realms. If you have the power to end them, do it.”

“This story was their prison, Morrigan. Ours, too. No creature should ever have to live like that, inside a lie.”

“If you free them,” Will cried, “Malabron will be free, too. He’ll take over everything.”

“He can’t, Will. Don’t you see? The truth has been right in front of us all this time: there is no Night King. There is no Malabron.”

“What are you talking about?” Will said. “He came after me. After you. I saw his eyes in the mirror shard. He sent those armies to the Bourne—”