The Tree of Story Read Free

stood as always on its terraced hillside. Not far from the main gate lay a long grassy plain used at times by the Errantry as a parade ground, or in the fall by folk who came from all over the Bourne for the harvest festival. To Rowen’s surprise this great field, known to everyone as the Course,was now dotted with dozens of patched, grey-green canvas tents, but this was no festival. The tents were gathered around an immense white-and-gold pavilion topped with a bright flag that snapped in the wind. A flag Rowen had never seen before, embroidered with the image of a rampant red bear.
    Many people could be seen moving about among the tents. Some were grooming horses, others polishing armour and sharpening weapons. Voices and the ringing of hammers could be heard through the still morning air.
    “Are they enemies?” Will asked in alarm.
    “No, they’re friendly, whoever they are,” Rowen said, knowing it was true even as she spoke. “They’ve travelled here to help defend Fable.”
    It was all happening too fast, she thought. Only a few days ago she had returned to Fable with her grandfather, Nicholas Pendrake, the Loremaster, after almost a year away. They hadn’t been home long before they were attacked by a thrall, a creature woven of words, which had been sent by Malabron, the Night King, to capture Rowen. Grandfather had fought with the creature and it had taken him, instead, to the Night King’s domain, the Shadow Realm. Desperate to find him, Rowen had gone with the shapeshifting cat Riddle into the Weaving, that strange dreamlike place that held the threads of every story that ever was or ever might be. There she’d met her grandmother, Maya, who had been lost in the Weaving years before.
    It turned out that all this time Grandmother had been changing the weave of the Realm in small, unseen ways. From within the Weaving she could even change the past, and so she had woven ancient prophecies and portents against the day that Malabron ever threatened the Bourne. This was why these tents and pavilions now dotted the Course. Those Storyfolk down there, whoever they were, had heeded theprophecy and answered the call. And this meant that the battle for Fable was at hand.
    “It’s really happening, just like Grandmother said it would,” Rowen breathed. “They are the first. There will be more.”
    Balor Gruff, the shaggy-headed wildman, lumbered up to Rowen and Will, with Brannon Yates, his fellow knight-errant.
    “Friends, you say?” Balor asked. “And more of them on their way?”
    Rowen nodded.
    “Many more,” she said. She could see them at the edges of her inward sight. Long snaking columns of armed men and women, soldiers and warriors, even ordinary folk from many lands, all marching along the Bourne’s narrow roads toward Fable.
    “They’ll be welcome,” the wildman said, folding his great hairy arms across his chest.
    “Will they be enough?” Will asked, eyeing Rowen. Will knew about her gift for seeing the threads of Story in things. He was hoping, she realized, that she could see into the future to tell whether the city would be saved. Her gift allowed her to see the past much more clearly than what lay ahead, but now one frightening thread of certainty touched her from what was to come: all the defenders, those already here and those on their way, would not hold back the enemy.
    But she couldn’t tell Will and Balor that.
    “I don’t know,” she said quickly. “I don’t know how it will end.”
    Will nodded and looked away. She saw that he’d guessed she wasn’t telling them everything, but he wasn’t going to pursue it. He knew as well as she did what was on its way to the Bourne.
    Only a few days ago Will had returned to the Realm from his own world because of a warning that Shade was indanger. With Balor and Finn Madoc of the Errantry he’d ridden north in search of the wolf. They had found him alive, but they’d been taken captive by the Stormriders, who ruled those barren