The Unfinished Land Read online

  King of All Tricks

  * * *

  NOW THEY HEARD MUSIC—flutes and tambourines, as if there were a troupe of players ahead.

  “We are close,” Widsith said. “He never sleepeth in the same hut for more than a few days. He hath been for years moving around this clearing like a dog finding his rest—so I suppose we just . . . Wait! There are Travelers.”

  Reynard looked deep into the woods, then down, and realized they were not far from an actual trail—which he had not seen before. The trail crossed their rude path perpendicularly, and they heard horses and people a few yards off, hidden by brush and leaves, but closing slowly.

  “The King’s tricks?” Reynard asked Widsith.

  The Pilgrim shook his head. “These make their own roads. Queen Hel empowered them long ago . . . and they have served her ways ever since.”

  Three sleek horses came into view, well-curried and fed, and on their backs rode two men and one woman, men dressed in wide-lapeled leather greatcoats over jerkins, with silver-buckled leather belts and wide, sun-shading hats. The woman wore a red cape, somewhat faded but still grand. Seeing they were being observed, the first riders doffed their hats and murmured to each other in a language that tugged at Reynard’s memory. Tinker’s Cant, or Rom, he was sure of it!

  “They are Roma!” he exclaimed. Widsith hushed him, but the women looked their way with disapproving frowns.

  More horses and riders followed, then a great, wide wagon, almost the size of his uncle’s hoy, on wheels as tall as a man, and pulled by a train of six great draft horses, twenty or more hands high, as proud as any horses the Spaniards had landed and much larger and stronger. Children peered from windows in the wagon. The trees that had closed around them were now politely spaced to each side of the road, bowing as if in deference.

  A train of almost twenty riders followed the great wagon, all caparisoned like festival players, smiling and laughing and chatting, and Reynard could hardly believe they were not in the presence of the King of Troy’s magic.

  When the procession had passed and could not be seen, and only faintly heard, the road closed again, the trees moaned and leaned and obscured, and all was as it had been before.

  Widsith relaxed a little, then urged Reynard on.

  “Do we see them by permission, or by accident?” the boy asked.

  Widsith squinted at the boy. “I wonder whether they came to get a look at thee, young fisherboy.”

  “What am I they would care?”

  “Indeed, what art thou?”

  They walked on another hundred yards, over difficult, thick roots and overgrown paths, when Widsith paused again and looked up and beyond Reynard’s shoulder, eyes growing wider. Reynard started to turn, but Widsith stopped him, hand on arm, and said, “Be still.”

  That was almost impossible.

  “More Rom?”

  Widsith grabbed his arm and dug in his fingers. Reynard felt his flesh creep, but pulled free, then swiveled to look at whatever was behind him—and saw a woman, a very tall woman, rising through the branches of one of the great spider trees. He looked up into her face, but she was not looking at him. With her intense blue eyes, like the eyes of twilight itself, she was focused on Widsith.

  “Thou art not Hel, old man!” Widsith said to the air around them, if not to the immense spectral woman, now leaning as if about to topple. “We are friends. Thou hast no need to frighten.”

  And then . . .

  The tall woman was gone. A rain of leaves and sticks fell from the air she had filled, along with a few thin bones, and Reynard smelled a burned, brothy odor, as of soup boiling too long in a kettle.

  A gray and red man, striped like a tiger, emerged from behind the tree where the woman had risen. He was naked but covered in fine, silky hair, the longest hanging from his crown and covering his face like a veil. Reynard was fascinated by the precise trim of the veil—red where it covered the mouth, which could not be seen.

  The edge of the veil puffed.

  “Who might this be?” the striped man asked. “The perilous boy himself?”

  Widsith watched the striped man closely, as if unsure what additional wonders he might perform or traps spring.

  “Once more, is he the dangerous boy?” the striped man asked. “That one who bringeth Spaniards and Travelers into my woods, and doth so afflict my dreams?”

  “He may be,” Widsith said. “But so have I, and thou dost know me.”

  “Truth! These woods are full of new dangers, and they follow thee, Pilgrim,” the striped man said. “Why hast thou brought them?”

  “I return to report to the Travelers, when they are ready, and found this boy along the way. I come for thine opinion on him, and to ask what thou hast done on this coast whilst I was gone.”

  “A cordiality, I suppose,” the striped man said. “And if this be the awkward boy, the one some say is of interest to Crafters, I would be introduced.”

  “By your proper name?”

  “My player name will suffice,” the striped man said, walking slowly before them, bare feet padding in the litter and kicking aside a couple of what might have been rib bones from a previous dinner.

  “Reynard, make the acquaintance—I believe, lest this be another of his illusions—of the King of Troy, fabled in song and legend.”

  “No need for flattery,” the striped man said. “I am beyond good reviews, unless they come from mine illusions, who know the art well. Greetings to thee, Sir Fox. And where is Ysengrim now, young beast—awaiteth he inland to join in more japery?”

  Reynard was not familiar with Ysengrim.

  “That is the wolf thou dost oppose in legend, young trickster,” the striped man explained, with a veiled glance at Widsith. “An unpleasant character.”

  “I am no trickster!” Reynard said, gritting his teeth. “I am a fisher­man, and wonder why you, sir, though famous, have no audience.”

  “A joust of tongues, is it?” the striped man asked after a moment’s pause. He sounded more than a little drunk. “It hath been many a year since any so challenged me. In honor of the occasion, I appear, for a time, as I am. Though the aches and chills of an aged frame are tiresome.”

  The striped man vanished, and a frail, elderly man in a long brown coat stood before them, hands out, palms up and wavering, as if beseeching coins. “ ’Tis a strange fisherboy who doth not admire wonders and signs. A dangerous boy to be sure.”

  “He is but a fraud,” Reynard said to Widsith, speaking more in anger than conviction. He had no idea how they had been fooled and was ashamed at being frightened.

  Widsith stepped lightly on Reynard’s left foot. “The King is neither fraud nor harmless,” he warned. “And I bring thee to appear before him, to acquaint and ask, witness and judge—not anger or insult.”

  The King of Troy, stooped and quaking like an aspen in a breeze, waved his ancient hand for them to follow, and said, “I venture that thou, Widsith, hadst a worse look till Guldreth sent her minister. Didst thou know this Pilgrim then, Young Fox?”

  “He was very old,” Reynard said as they fell in behind the magician and he led them on a straight path between the trees, though no path had been visible minutes before.

  “And now he is not,” the King said. “My wonders, gentlemen, do not involve Eaters. Eaters are not enchanted by my works, nor by me—though they borrow of my time, of course. They borrow time from most on this shore. But from me, they take little, as I am so old and my time is stretched so thin, like wine puddled in rain! Compared to Widsith, I am a lamb, and he is a wolf, fed by those who keep and value him.” He grinned, entirely un-lamb-like, at both of them. “Is that thy plan, too, young Fox?”

  Widsith raised his hand and swept the air around Reynard. “Is the boy followed?” he asked.

  The King of Troy paused on the path and held out his own hand to stop Widsith’s sweeps. “Do not so disturb his airs,” he said, perturbed. “Mine own thoughts are more fog than substance, nowadays.”
r />   “I asked, is the boy followed?”

  “No, his line is clean,” the King said, but then looked up at Widsith. “Wait. There is something . . . Something I do not credit!”

  “And what would that be?” Widsith asked him.

  “Hath this boy ever consorted with a Crafter, or something very close to a Crafter?”

  Widsith shook his head. “No, of course that would be impossible for a mortal. He hath been touched by an Eater, that is all. And I doubt the Eaters have contact with such, either.”

  “Well, there is a trace . . . Hast thou in mind odd presences? Visitations?”

  Widsith looked to Reynard.

  “No,” Reynard lied, not yet trusting either the Pilgrim or the King of Troy.

  Troy’s Camp

  * * *

  IN THE DARK of the woods, stray beams dropped pools of silvery light on what appeared to be nine or ten kitchen middens or, charitably, caches of firewood larded with the bones of cattle and horses and pigs—all but skulls—and draped rags, ornamented around the base with rusty iron pots, the slop and scrap of many a meal. Reynard remembered the spectral ladies that had taunted him in the wood, and how these dames had, in fade of sun, revealed inner workings of bone and stick, like marionettes wrapped in dream and strung with flesh and hair.

  “Is this your trick yard?” Reynard asked.

  “So some claim,” the King of Troy answered, and pointed them toward a lean-to within the ring of six wide-rooted and towering oaks. “Thou bring’st the boy for my denial, or my confirmation?”

  “I was not myself sure,” Widsith said. “It has been so very long since we have seen the like.”

  “By which thou mean’st, one who attracts the special attentions of Eaters? And like thee, mayhaps hath value to the Crafters? And this from a man who has never had an audience with one!”

  “No,” Widsith admitted.

  “Well, I will think on’t. Thine instincts may be good. What I must ask is, why have the Travelers not yet gathered this boy into their wagons and ferried him to the kraters? If he is their duty and treasure, more than you, they have always moved quick to take advantage. Or is there something I know not, that you do?”

  He stared accusingly at Widsith, then Reynard, and Reynard flushed at the suspicion that the magician knew he had lied.

  “My question for thee is, would he be of so much use to the Travelers that they would imperil this island by bringing him here, along with Spaniards—along with me?” Widsith asked.

  “Not the Travelers as such, but others, those just beneath the sky, who also serve Crafters. I can see a little into thy thoughts,” Troy said to the boy. “Thou hadst a woman who taught thee the languages of Ogmios?”

  Reynard nodded. Stone people.

  “But your line is clean,” the magician said. “Thou dost remember, but I cannot see. Well, whatever these truths add to, I would take the boy to those better able to appraise him, and I would do it soon. I am busy enough here, Pilgrim, and will venture no further opinion.”

  “I see thy labors, magician,” Widsith said. “Too many balls to juggle, doubtless, what with distracting the Spanish, or the Spanish arriving here at all, and now, with the village.”

  “I am perplex’d by this, and likely many others around thee,” the King said. “Was Cardoza aware of this island? If so, who told him, and who told that one? Thou seemest most immediate, Pilgrim. Didst thou?”

  Widsith made a bitter face. “Cardoza would not have been my choice for a leader of troops. No, I did not tell him.”

  “And yet he is here.” The King of Troy stared around at the trees, the leaf-covered ground, and blew out between pressed lips, a blatting appropriate for neither him nor the circumstance. “There are many layers on this island,” he said. “I see some, not all. If thou, fisher­boy, fox-boy, canst see deeper, down to the base, that would indeed make thee a treasure. Thou couldst control immense magicks, not look-see-wonders. What dost thou perceive beneath this seeming wood?” He waved his arms and performed a faltering, clumsy pirouette, then peered goggle-eyed at an astonished Reynard. “Well?”

  Widsith looked between them.

  “I know nothing of layers,” Reynard said. “God made the world and put us in it.”

  “Ah,” the King said. “Be that what thy grandmother taught thee?”

  “No,” Reynard said. “She did not speak of Bible matters.”

  “Didst thou know that by grace of the Crafters, and Hel, insects once ruled, that our world was an insect world?”

  Reynard, aghast, was too stunned to answer or play their game.

  The King waved his hand again around the woods. “And of course spiders and crabs and the like. What a fine mystery that is! We like it not that Hel might have for a time resembled a crab, or a grasshopper, and shared their thoughts and hungers. But she shared not our prejudices in any way. I would imagine that crabs, spiders, and insects were experts at ogham! So many pointed legs to align on a branch or trunk. And they were far smarter than we can now imagine, and larger as well. The drakes are but a remnant of that world. And beneath those insect masters, in the earliest layer ​—”

  A deep, loud voice grated from the trees beyond the lean-to. “Are we not engaged, old Troy?” the voice roughed and gargled. “Who are these that distract thee?”

  The King tried to usher them away from that copse. “Pilgrim, ’tis awkward for thee here. And more awkward for this boy, at the moment. I wish thy company and witness, but God’s truth, best ye be off to Maeve and serve her needs.”

  Widsith peered with an intense frown into the shadows behind the King’s rude shelter. “Why the toppling sweven, Troy, and why the red-and-white trim and fringe?” he asked.

  “Send them to the Inferno!” the voice called, followed by a coughing howl like a jungle cat. “Do it, and show me next the way!”

  Troy seemed bemused. “A stray spirit of Dante,” he said, “who once visited me when his poetry lagged and sputtered.”

  Widsith shifted between the King and Reynard, as if to protect the boy, but clearly he did not know what was out there, or why the King was warning them back.

  “As I say, a mere wisp of the past!” the old man said. “I have seen behind and around this boy, and confirmed him for thee, and thus performed my work for Zodiako,” the King insisted, eyes doing their bleary yellow best to carry his irritation. “Time now to serve other patrons, fulfill other contracts and duties.”

  “It is you behind the voice,” Reynard said, peering with a squint into the gloom beyond the lean-to. “I have seen it in country fairs. It hath a silly name, like a wind among cards.”

  “Mean you ventriloquist!” The King looked upon him with a sudden glowing smile, the growling voice forgotten. “A new word, soon minted. Thou know’st of fairs and those who work them? Tell me, what new tricks and plays? Have new mountebanks better puppets than I strutted before thee?”

  “No evagation,” Widsith cautioned. “It is I who wander in person, not our minds. To the task ​—”

  “The devil with ye!” the cat-growler said, then shrieked to a harpy’s pitch. Reynard ducked as something feathery swooped and puffed close to his scalp—something like an owl with the head of a lynx.

  The King leaned his head to one side, and again twisted his grin. “I teased the Spanish. They thought to do harm, and, whilst some insist mine arts are best applied to lost lovers and stray children, they have other uses, that thou know’st well.”

  “Thou it was didst lure the soldiers to where Eaters and drakes found them!” Widsith said.

  “Not me, entirely,” the King insisted, hands flagging like old leaves. “Spanish hopes for murder and treasure guided them to their own doom. I filled mine old pans and laid trails of nuggets and coin, defended them with affrighting hags and tottering castles, into open fields and rocky heights, and the brutes followed their own vicious nature.”

  Reynard had to be impressed by such a ruse, but then shivered at the calm he felt,
exposed to all this strangeness. He was not afraid of Widsith, a most changeable man—and he was not afraid of the King, who seemed decrepit . . . but he had been afraid of the toppling hag and the striped red and white man. And so . . .

  He had fallen for the King of Troy’s tricks, just like the Spaniards. Illusions worked for both the King and for Zodiako, it seemed. Did the tricks, the visions, work on or against the glassy-skinned Eaters? He thought not. Perhaps the Eaters were themselves illusions raised by greater sorcerers than the King. This Queen of Hell, for example, mistress of crabs and spiders, queen of devils, who had not yet been explained one way or another.

  “Go!” the King insisted, hands working like autumn flags to warn them back.

  “But I fear for thee, old friend,” Widsith said, with a hint of cruel jest, “and miss the tales we promise each time I leave and return!”

  “Soon enough,” the King said. “But for now, in the company thou keep’st, all is unsettled, and some will visit thee I do not wish to meet.”

  “When? Of what strain?” Widsith asked. “I have no fear of Eaters high or low ​—”

  “Nor doubtless will this boy,” the King said. “But others wander from the waste not seen here for many centuries. Giants and bogles and smaller, stranger wights, and ghosts in shrouds, and those who shape signs in the dark—some visible, some not.”

  “Attracted to the boy? Protecting him?” Widsith asked.

  “Doth he want protection?”

  “I saved and protected him,” Widsith said.

  “Perhaps he is their goal, their guide, and not thee and thy tales, Pilgrim. I’ll do my best to make them pass us by, but ye should go now!”

  Out of the Woods

  * * *

  IT IS STRANGE how I remember these woods and these trees,” Widsith said as they looked for the path back to Zodiako—a narrower and more winding version, Reynard guessed, of the road traveled by the wagon and its entourage. “Think’st Cardoza is still lost around here someplace, or hath he been found and put to better use? Is he even now spilling poison into the porches of the ears of eastern queens?”