The Shadow of Malabron (43 page)

The shrowde shuddered and writhed like a blazing white fire. But it had been caught by the tip of Will’s blade and as Lotan leapt aside, the shrowde was torn away from him.

The Angel stood uncloaked.

Without the shrowde he was a gaunt form of rotting flesh and chain mail that had fused into one hideous mass of corruption. The thing that had once been a man raised its arm against the light of the setting sun, its face twisted with such absolute hatred that Will felt his courage wither as though it had been blasted by a fire. He let go of his knife and fell backwards.

The shrowde tore free of Will’s blade, rose from the grass and flowed like a deadly fog over its master.

“You … will suffer …
agonies
for this,” Lotan snarled. He advanced towards Will with his sword raised.

There was a rush of wings, and from behind the Angel Morrigan swooped into the clearing, the
gaal
sword clutched in her talons. As she passed over her brother she let the blade fall. With a terrible cry Moth lurched to his feet, caught the sword as it fell and lunged.

Lotan whirled to face this new threat but he was too late. With a sound like the hiss of hot metal plunged into icy water, the blade of
gaal
passed through him.

To Will it seemed as if the world held its breath.

Moth let go of the sword, stumbled away from his enemy, and fell to the earth. Lotan made no sound, but his flesh began to peel and blacken, like paper caught in a fire. He staggered forward, clutching at the blade that transfixed him, but he could not grasp it: already he was crumbling into shreds and pieces, his lifeless flesh cracking and falling away. After groping blindly about him, he gave up struggling at last. His arms fell to his sides. His face turned to Will and there was no hatred in it now. A pale light flared in the dead sockets of the eyes and then died. The breath fled in a long sigh.

The Angel sank upon his own collapsing form like a pyre of dying coals.

The shrowde itself churned and seethed like boiling water, then tore free of Lotan’s remains. It writhed in the air and then caught on the bare limb of a tree, where it went limp and stirred faintly in the wind.

Flecks of ash whirled like funereal snowflakes. In another moment there was nothing left where Lotan had been but the
gaal
sword, lying on the grass amid a scattering of mirror shards. While Will gazed in stunned silence, the blade itself crumbled swiftly into dust.

Will crawled to where Rowen lay, and she groaned, and stirred. She was still alive. Will bent close to her, heard the sound of her breathing. Then he rose and staggered over to Moth. The archer was lying with his head against a mossy stone. He was trembling and his breath came in wrenching gasps.

Will knelt beside him, tears streaming down his face.

“Moth,” he said, touching the archer’s cold hand. “I’ll find Master Pendrake. He’ll be able to help…”

Moth’s eyes seemed to be searching for Will in shadows, and then they fixed on him. The archer smiled.

“We are both going home, Will.”

He shut his eyes and uttered a gasp of pain, his body wracked with tremors. When he opened his eyes again he looked past Will and tried to rise.

“Is she here?” he asked. For an instant Will’s mind was blank, and then he thought of Morrigan. He searched for her, but by now the sun had set and the clearing was falling into deep shadow. There was no sign of the raven up in the trees, and then his eye was caught by a dark shape huddled in the grass near by. It was too large to be Morrigan, he thought, even though it seemed to be covered in black feathers. And then understanding dawned, and Will remembered the story of the Angel’s spell. He rose, went over to the huddled form, and knelt.

“Morrigan?”

The figure stirred and lifted its head. It was a young woman with long black hair, her face as thin and dusky as Moth’s. Her eyes burned and gazed past or through Will as if she could not see him. She was wrapped in a ragged cloak of black feathers and although beads of sweat were running down her face, she was shivering with cold.

She’s dying too
, Will thought.
She carried the
gaal
sword without the sheath
.

He spoke her name again, as softly as he could, and at last she seemed to recognize him, and smiled. Then fear came into her eyes and she looked wildly around the glade.

“He’s here,” Will said. He helped Morrigan rise and walk to her brother. She knelt beside him, and touched his forehead, and the tears slid down her face. Moth’s eyes opened and he saw her. He raised a hand to stroke her hair. Then a shudder ran through him and his hand dropped to his side. His breath came out in a long sigh, and his eyes grew fixed and unseeing.

Morrigan lifted her brother’s hand to her face and tears fell upon it. She laid her head on his chest and wept.

“I’ll find the others,” Will stammered, choking back tears. “I’ll get help.”

He looked at Rowen once more, then turned away and ran into the forest, calling the names of the toymaker and Finn. He called and called until his voice cracked and gave out, and then he ran on silently, the tears blinding him so that he crashed into low branches and stumbled over roots. He ran on and on into the night, knowing that he was running from his own fear and grief, and that he was lost in an unknown land and he would never get home.

At last, in the utter blackness, he tripped and fell. When he picked himself up, his head spinning, he heard soft voices and saw dim, drifting lights all around him. He shook his head and his sight cleared. The lights became a ring of tall, pale figures, slowly advancing towards him through the trees.

Will’s only thought was that the fetches had found him again. He had run as far as he could, and it was not far enough. There was no place the Lord of Story could not reach. His last hope, his last strength slipped away. Shadows clouded his vision and he fell headlong into darkness.

T
HERE WAS A GOLDEN LIGHT
upon his eyelids, and the sound of birds singing.

Will opened his eyes. Above him he saw what looked like wide sheets of patched green cloth, held up by poles of peeled white wood. In the centre of all this was a circle of blue sky. He was in some kind of tent with an open roof.

He had been running from something… He was lost.

There had to be more, but the memories lay just beyond his reach.

Will sat up, wincing at the stiffness in his arms and legs. Near the pallet of thick quilts he was lying on sat a woman in a faded blue robe, tending a small fire. The odd thought came to him that she was neither young nor old, and in fact she seemed somehow difficult to see clearly. All he knew for certain was that he had never seen her before.

When he moved the woman looked up and smiled.

“Awake at last,” she said. “Your friends will be glad.” She poured a clear liquid from a jug on a small table, and brought it to him. He took the cup and looked into it, caught a faint bitter scent. Someone had given him a drink like this, not long ago…

What he had been trying to remember returned to him like the cold bite of a blade.

“Where is Moth?” he asked.

The woman shook her head.

“He is gone,” she said, and there was sadness in her voice. “His hurt was deep and could not be healed. Drink. It will help you regain your strength.”

Will took a sip of the liquid and then shook his head and fought back tears. He did not know where he was, but the woman was kind, and by the sound of her voice alone he knew she was not his enemy. From the look of her robe and the worn tent, he must have been found by a band of homeless, exiled folk, like those they had met on their way to Skald.

Then another terrible memory came to him.

“Your other companions are well and whole,” the woman said, as if she had read his thoughts. “Two of them are here with you.”

Will looked up through his tears. The woman gestured to the far side of the tent and Will saw Shade there, curled up on a thick bed of straw, and beside him, on a pallet like his own, lay Rowen.

“Are they…“

“They are sleeping,” the woman said, and joy and relief flooded through Will. “The Companion was badly hurt, but he will mend. And the other one, the one who won’t listen to reason, is finally getting some rest. She was wounded, too, but still she insisted on staying awake at your side all through the night and most of this day. That is how long you have been asleep. You suffered great harm, more than you know, and you needed healing. It’s fortunate that you found us when you did.”

“Master Pendrake, Finn, and Freya,” Will said. “Where are they?”

“Not far away, I believe. Do you wish to see them?”

Will nodded eagerly. He pulled off his blankets and now noticed that his clothes were fresh and spotlessly clean. He looked up at the woman.

“Last night in the forest…” he began as he climbed from the pallet. “I thought you were—” He broke off, unable to name the horrors that seemed, in the light of day, like a fading nightmare. Then another thought occurred to him.

“The Angel,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Is he really dead?”

“The one given that name died a long time ago,” the woman said. “But his spirit at last knows rest. You are safe from his master, at least for a time. Go. I will watch over your friends.”

Will walked across the rush-strewn floor of the tent to the opening, where he stopped abruptly, struck by a sudden realization. This woman seemed to know the whole story of what had happened to them. She had called Shade the Companion, and she knew who the Angel was. Had the loremaster told her everything…? Before he could turn back to her with these new questions, he spotted Pendrake, Finn and Freya through the open flap of the tent, standing together in conversation with a tall, silver-haired man in a long grey cloak. Will slipped eagerly outside.

The tent, he saw now, was pitched on a wide grassy lawn, in the midst of a forest of young, slender trees with bright leaves. His friends turned at his call. Finn’s arm was bound in a sling, and the old man had a cut down the side of his face, but they greeted Will with embraces and laughter. In the toymaker’s eyes Will saw both sadness and joy mingled.

“You should have been back at home by now,” Freya said, regarding him with a wide smile. “And so should I.”

The tall man in grey bowed to Will, then left them and strode away through the trees.

“Welcome back, Will,” Pendrake said. “I know you hoped to be safely home by now, but if it wasn’t for you, Rowen might not be with us.”

“It was Moth who saved us both,” Will said. “And these people, whoever they are. If they hadn’t been near by…”

Through the trees Will caught a glimpse of other tents, and other figures in grey and green moving about, tending fires or leading horses.

“We’ve all been invited to the evening meal,” Pendrake said. “There we will say a final farewell to Moth.”

“I don’t know how he found me,” Will said. “Or how he got out of the caves…”

“Moth joined us at the stone and helped us defeat the fetches,” said Freya. “He told us what had happened.”

“Lotan came up the tunnel with the fetches,” Finn said. “He wove a spell of darkness that swept over the wisps and doused their sparks. Then he fled, taking his dead army down through another tunnel that led to the hidden vale. Moth followed, and when we had dealt with the fetches, he went on to find you.”

“I wonder how he got down the Rampart,” Finn mused.

“I suspect,” Pendrake said, stroking his beard, “that over the years he learned something of flight from his sister.”

“Is Morrigan here?” Will asked, startled. He had thought she was dead, too.

“She came close to death from the touch of the
gaal
blade. But she was brought back by the arts that healed you, too, Will. She is resting now, in another of the tents, with her friends and kin beside her.”

“Her kin…” Will said slowly. “You mean there are other Hidden Folk here?”

He looked around eagerly, until Pendrake’s soft laughter brought his gaze back to his friends. They were smiling at him.

“Who do you think met you in the forest last night?” Freya said, grinning. “And brought us to you?”

“And just invited us all to dinner,” Pendrake added.

Like a ray of sunlight through clouds the truth broke upon Will.

“But their tents and clothing…” he began. “They’re just like us.”

“Or we are just like them,” the old man said, and laughed. “When we’re at our best. I believe we see them as they wish to be seen. That is one way they remain hidden from their enemies. And from those who’ve slept too long and need to clear the cobwebs out of their heads.”

“But why are they here?” Will asked. “How did they find us?”

“Did they?” Pendrake replied. “Maybe you found them. But perhaps the Lady can enlighten us on that point at dinner.”