The Shadow of Malabron (42 page)

“Get away from her!” he shouted, and without another thought he rushed forward. The figure straightened and looked towards him, its face still unseen within the shadows of the hood. Then its arm swept out like a whip and knocked Will aside. He struck the ground hard and rolled to the edge of the outcrop, just managing to clutch at the rock before he went over. As he crawled back onto the pinnacle, he felt an ice-cold shadow fall over him.

“Will Lightfoot,” an all-too familiar voice said, chilling him to the heart. “This is where the story ends.”

W
ILL CHOKED BACK A CRY
as Rowen began to vanish into the folds and shadows of the shrowde.

“What are you doing to her?” he shouted. “Leave her alone!”

The Angel turned to him, the face within the ragged hood still concealed, as if by shadows of its own weaving.

“You and your companions have surprised me, Will Lightfoot,” the Angel said. “Even dragons take your side. But in the end you played your role, as my master foresaw.”

He raised his hand and there was a loud crack like thunder. The rock beneath the farhold shuddered and then collapsed. The opening within the snow now hovered in space, out of Will’s reach. As he watched in despair, the snow began to obscure the gateway again. It was shrinking, narrowing like curtains slowly falling together.

“One more doorway sealed for ever,” the Angel intoned, as if he was presiding at some dark ceremony. “The memory of the Stewards fades. Their story becomes legend, rumour, lies, and finally, nothing at all. A meaningless word drifting on the wind.”

“Let Rowen go,” Will said desperately. “It was me you wanted.”

The hood turned again in his direction, and a chilling sound came from it, a sound like stone scraping over stone, that Will realized was laughter.

“I
was
looking for you, Will Lightfoot,” the Angel said, “but only because I knew that you could lead me to
her
. She is the new thread in the weave that my master seeks. You thought you were the hero of this tale. But you were only a means to an end. Your part is finished. That should please you.”

As he spoke Rowen vanished into the shrowde.

“You don’t have to do this,” Will shouted, and then a sudden understanding shot through him. “You want to be free from
him
, too.”

As soon as he said it, he knew it was true. He had heard it in the Angel’s voice. For a long moment Lotan did not speak or move. The grey shadows within the hood of the shrowde seemed to churn like stormclouds.

“You do not yet understand,” Lotan finally said, and once more his voice was cold and lifeless. “Look upon me. I am the Angel of Despair. This is
my
part to play. It could not have been otherwise.”

With that the shrowde billowed into the air, and before Will could think or act, the Angel had soared over the edge of the outcrop and was gone.

Will scrambled to his feet. There was a stabbing pain in his chest where the shrowde had struck him.

Shade still lay unmoving near by. The farhold was a thin gap, swiftly closing. Will stood helplessly before it, and then, as in the forest when he found the knot-path, the feeling came over him that there was something only he could do. The story he had tried to deny had gathered itself round him in this moment and now everything depended upon what he chose. Rowen was the last hope of the Realm, Pendrake had said. This was her story. She had to survive.

There was no more time to think. He ran for the edge of the outcrop and jumped towards the farhold.

“Take me to Rowen,” he shouted.

The wind shrieked in his ears. He was falling, plummeting into a roaring, snowy abyss. He screamed and shut his eyes in terror. The next thing he knew there was a violent lurch, as though he had come to a sudden stop.

Will opened his eyes. He could see nothing but a swirling of whiteness and grey shadows. His body seemed to be floating in empty space. He struggled to gain some kind of hold or solid ground, then felt something constrict round him like the cold sliding grip of a python.

He was inside the shrowde. But it was more than a cloak for the Angel, he realized. The thing was somehow larger or deeper than it seemed from the outside. Something with a mind and will. He felt that if it wished, it could pull him down into a bottomless white nothingness from which he would never return. Rowen must be in here somewhere, too, he thought with a surge of fear. And the Angel, but Will could not see or feel him, and for that small mercy he was grateful.

The shrowde shifted and flowed around him, and for one terrifying moment its folds parted, and Will glimpsed the bone-white claws of the Angel, scuttling over cracks in the rock like horrible eyeless spiders.

The Angel was climbing head first down the sheer way of the Rampart.

Will thought of his knife. It had been made to cut creatures no ordinary blade could harm, Finn had told him. Slowly he brought his hand down to his side, but even as he did so he faltered, remembering that Rowen was in the shrowde with him. If he started slashing blindly, he could hurt her. Or the shrowde might let them go, and they would fall. But he had no choice. Without the knife he and Rowen had no chance at all.

His fingers never made it to the hilt. As though it sensed what he was about to do, the shrowde tightened its grip. His hand was immobilized as if it had been encased in concrete, and then the shrowde began to squeeze. Pain shot up Will’s arm and he gasped.

There was a rush of wind, and Will felt a dizzying sense of weightlessness. He had a final glimpse of the cliff wall soaring above them and then all was whiteness again.

Without warning Will was thrown roughly from the shrowde, out onto the ground. He was in a clearing ringed by dark trees. Rowen lay near him, still and pale. For a terrible moment he thought she was dead, then he saw the faint rise and fall of her breathing. The Angel stood over both of them, but his attention was not on Will or Rowen. He turned this way and that, his hooded head raised to the air, as if he had caught a sound or scent that troubled him but could not find the source. Finally the hood turned in Will’s direction and Lotan’s voice came from the shadows within.

“Since you’ve chosen to join your friend on her final journey, you can earn your passage,” he said. “
Knot-paths
. You found one before and almost escaped me. Now you will find another. One that will take us far from here.”

“I won’t help you,” Will managed to whisper.

“I can still call off the fetches and perhaps save the lives of your friends on the Rampart.
If
they still live. Or I can let the fetches finish their work.”

Will clenched his fists, struggling for words of defiance, for some weapon to hurl at his enemy. Then he hung his head and choked back a sob. He had failed. He was lost. Everything his friends had gone through for him had been in vain.

“No,” he said, defeated. “I’ll do it. I’ll find a path.”

He rose shakily to his feet and gazed slowly around. The Angel moved closer to him. As he had in the forest of Eldark, Will tried simply to be aware of all that was happening around him, not trying to shut it out or see beyond it. He breathed deeply as he had before, but his thoughts would not settle. The presence of the Angel was like an unending scream in his mind. His thoughts kept returning to his friends, to ways that he might still escape, even though he knew it was hopeless. He remembered the trick he had played on the Marrowbone brothers. There was no chance anything like that would work on the Angel.

He thought of his knife, and glanced down. It was still on his hip, in its sheath. The Angel had not taken it from him. But if he hadn’t, it must be that he didn’t see it, or Will, as any threat. The thought only deepened Will’s despair. Then something touched his memory, like a tiny glimmer of light.

What was it Finn had said during sword practice at Appleyard?
In combat you always have two weapons. Yours and your opponent’s…

The only weapon the Angel had used against him so far was … fear. But was the Angel himself afraid of anything?

“It’s no use,” Will said at last. “I can’t see anything.”

“It is because you still hope,” the Angel said. “Do not distract yourself with such vain thoughts. You and the girl are already characters in the story where hope dies.”

Will took a deep breath and tensed himself. He had the knife, and his own hands. It would not be enough, but there was nothing else. He looked at Rowen, who still had not stirred. Maybe he could buy her a few moments. One more small chance. As he reached for the blade, he heard a new note on the wind, a swift beat of wings. He looked up just as a black shape swooped down out of the trees and soared over his head with a piercing shriek. Will whirled in time to see ragged black wings and talons before the shadow shot skyward again and vanished.

Morrigan
. Will’s heart leapt.

He turned away from the Angel and there on the far side of the clearing was Moth. He was silhouetted by the light of the setting sun, but there was no doubt it was the archer.

For a long moment neither he nor the Angel moved or made a sound. Will longed to run towards Moth, but the silence itself seemed to keep him rooted where he was, so that all he could do was watch what was about to unfold.

At last the Angel stepped forward. He slowly drew back his ragged white hood, and Will cried out. The face before him was a hideous semblance of the one he had seen in his dream. Lotan’s hair was white, as before, but the face was a livid mask of raw flesh. The eyes were black holes, the mouth a wound.

“Nightwanderer,” the Angel said. “After so long. I knew this boy had a Shee with him whom I looked forward to killing, but I did not know it would be you. And that is your sister, of course. I remember her well. The frantic beating of her heart, as I held her in my hand. Once she had wanted nothing more than to be by my side. Then she only thought to flee. I let her, because I knew that in the end it would make no difference. One by one, the Shee would fall. This day had to come.”

Moth said nothing. From the dragon-bone sheath he slowly drew the sword of
gaal
and held it before him. The Angel shuddered and took a step back.

“I have your freedom in my hand, Lotan,” Moth said, untying his cloak and letting it fall. “We both knew this day would come.”

“There is no freedom here or in my master’s domain,” Lotan hissed, and the mask of his face contorted with rage. “You will learn that now, as I learned it long ago. Have you never understood?”

His voice dropped to a rasping whisper.

“I cared only to help my people. I was ready to give my life for them. And so I stood against him, and I stared into the abyss at the end of all stories, and it swallowed me whole. As it will swallow you, and you will know that your story already belongs to my master, to shape, to end, as he wishes. And then you will think no more about freedom.”

From the folds of his cloak he drew forth a blood-red sword. As he moved slowly towards Moth, a slanted bar of sunlight fell across him, and for an instant his face twisted with pain.

The shrowde protects him
, Will thought, remembering what Moth had told him.
It hides him from the light
.

“You made this sword for me, so long ago,” the Angel said. “It has lost none of its power. While you have become a pale shadow of what you once were.”

“But you have not changed, Lotan,” Moth said. “You are still an emptiness wrapped in a cloak of lies.”

The Angel snarled and launched himself through the air.

Moth braced to meet him and their blades clashed. What followed was so furious and quick, Will could barely follow the moves of the two opponents. The swords crashed and rang in the clearing like flashes of lightning. Back and forth the combatants thrust and parried and in the red light of sunset it seemed that fire ran along their blades. Then Moth came on with a flurry of blows that put Lotan on the defensive and forced him backwards. His arm faltered and the blade of
gaal
swept down and knocked his sword from his hand.

The Angel staggered and would have fallen, but in the next instant one ragged shred of his cloak shot out with the sound of a whip and wrapped itself like a tentacle round Moth’s sword-arm.

The archer struggled to free himself but the shrowde pulled him off balance and the sword slipped from his grasp. Another tendril of the cloak caught the blade as it fell and flung it away into the shadows. Then, faster than Will could see, the Angel’s sword was somehow back in his hand. With a scream he stabbed at Moth and his red blade found its mark.

Will’s heart went cold.

Moth sank slowly to his knees. The Angel pulled his blade free and stood over the archer.

“Now you see, Nightwanderer,” Lotan said almost gently. “This is how all stories end. Die knowing you failed everyone you pledged to save.”

He raised his blade for a final stroke but it did not fall. He had forgotten Will, who had crept close with his knife drawn. As Will sprang forward Lotan heard him and easily dodged his knife. But it was not meant for him: instead Will plunged the blade through the folds of his white cloak and into the ground.