The Unfinished Land Read online

  The shortest paths out of the Ravine lay along the slowly flowing river at its bottom. Often in the night Valdis had watched Eaters glide the length of that river, trailing ribbons of dim green light, dipping hands and kicking feet to raise frozen walls for their dwellings or sculpt strange shapes for amusement.

  Some of the more ancient and ornate creations rose like bird wings to direct a northerly wind along the bottom, tuning its steady sigh into a ghostly dirge. These wind-song blades, on close inspection, revealed veins of blood and even, in their fogged depths, frozen bodies from Eater wars fought ages ago. Now Eaters rarely fought each other, as the Travelers and high ones they served mediated their darker and more violent tendencies. Valdis liked neither the bird-wing shapes nor their history. There was not much about being an Eater that she did like.

  She had conveyed some of these truths to the boy while she ministered to him on the beach. Guldreth and Calybo had told her she could, that she should, so minister—but only to the boy. Would the boy understand, or would he be repulsed? She had touched such life in him, such warmth! And such a complexity, not quite the reverse of her own inner echoes, but more direct, more useful.

  And still . . .

  He had no time in him.

  The Eaters that had left their houses formed processions that moved both south and north, along paths carved in rock and ice, up and down the Ravine. The last of the daylight was of no concern to them, apparently.

  A number of beings seldom seen, leftovers from Crafter dreams only vaguely unleashed, were moving out ahead of the Eaters. The worm-like servants, however, had been left behind and peeked from many doors, dark eyes glinting like bubbles on a pond, crickling in alarm and waving their feelers. Those winged creatures who flew messages and warnings from the caverns beneath the northern fortresses made their escape just below the arched trees, buzzing and whirring, then wheeling north like an uncertain cloud of bats in the silvery light of the gathering evening.

  She could feel the unity that radiated from all, and though none had struck a tocsin or conveyed instruction, she knew she must leave as well. If the Eaters departed, the Ravine would go back to its natural state, and the water locked up in the walls, the houses and sculptures, the historic wing-song graveyards, would melt. That flood would carry both the corpses of servants who could not fly, of those who would not leave, and the old sourness of Eater persuasion—a nasty vitriol.

  Her appointed companions—Widsith and the young man, Reynard—were at the south end of the Ravine. She knew this much and little more.

  She followed the trail that flanked the left side of the river and as she walked tried to utter a prayer to Odin, but the words would not form and her lips seemed to freeze. She had no such freedoms here.

  On the boat, he could not pray, either.

  He had no time.

  Now her mouth felt dusty-dry.

  She had not felt fear in hundreds of years. But now arrived the one thing that could even in her situation inspire fear.

  Hope.

  Valdis’s eyes were clear jade green, and by evenlight, it was difficult to know where her lids ended and eyes began. She turned those eyes on a large, dark figure that rose up behind her—then she stopped on the path and stood aside.

  “Pardon, milady,” spoke a deep voice.

  And a giant passed her by. It was Kern, who along with Kaiholo, and at times the Pilgrim himself, served Guldreth.

  She followed his massive shadow.

  The Melt

  * * *

  NIGHT WAS EARLY but also slow in its arrival. Reynard held up his hands and saw his skin was bluing, with little white spots.

  Widsith murmured, “If there is no meeting before stars twinkle, we will leave.”

  “Do you mean a meeting with Valdis? Why should she care?”

  “Because of thee. I venture to guess, no more,” Widsith said. “I do not now cross oceans, but navigate a land of fable.” He worked his horse back and forth a few yards, then swung it around. The farmers and villagers had departed, leaving behind open baskets of offerings. “We seem to be here for nought,” he said. “But let us tarry for a moment of confession.”

  Reynard stared in surprise at the Pilgrim. “What need I confess?”

  “All who come to any of the seven isles, and hope to survive, must bring a gift, a bribe—a treasure. I bring stories of the outer world. Valdis, I assume, brought her young life, and forsook that to become an Eater. Even Cardoza, I suppose, based on what we have been told, brought some ability of use to the Sister Queens. But . . . boy, what bring’st thou?”

  “Nothing of value,” Reynard answered. “I arrived, like you, in rags.”

  “Nothing hidden, no sigil of stone or metal to charm the Sister Queens beyond the waste?”

  “Nothing.”

  Widsith turned away. “In a place like this, origin of all tales tall and wooly, and all lives small and pitiful . . . One too often expects treasure. Perhaps it is my time with the Spanish.”

  Reynard had heard versions of that same question before, from his uncle or other fishermen chiding him about his value, his place in their world—and though they meant it to train and discipline, he himself still wondered. Feeling his face grow warm, and wishing to put some yards between him and Widsith, Reynard led his mount away and approached the trays and boxes, but knew better than to touch them.

  Then he felt his neck prickle. The voice he now heard echoed from some deep cavern in his heart.

  The first mother is the first word.

  Bring’st thou the first word?

  Followed immediately by the sound of rocks being disturbed.

  He opened his eyes wide and stared beyond Widsith into the chasm, into the shadow of the broken trees, and saw someone quite large taking slow, steady steps up the scree.

  He shivered, his fingers moving in an old story his grandmother had told about stone people and Picts.

  Widsith held his horse as still as he could. Both horses were more than uneasy.

  “Who is that?” Reynard asked, hand stroking his horse’s neck.

  “That is Kern,” Widsith said. “He is formidable, but no danger to us.”

  The shadow came up the scree until the creature, or the man, crested the rim of the Ravine. He was easily six cubits tall.

  “Thou hast survived another round of Crafter muggery,” Kern called to Widsith in a voice deep and wide. “Welcome, Pilgrim. I hear thou’lt make a request. Calybo told me thou’rt unhappy about something, though he refilled thy years at great discomfort.”

  “Yes, sire. I have a request. Though I have told this boy ’tis unlikely granted.”

  “Is it about Maeve?”

  “Aye.”

  “A very popular lady. Thou hast often taken wives. Why dost thou feel so strongly for this one? Surely she is not the most beautiful, although, I hear, likely the most faithful.”

  “Before I left, we had not a single wedded year, and now she is in her last hours.”

  Kern’s chuckle was like a distant storm. “Thy situation, thine and hers, would be very romantic, would it not? The sort of tale Crafters enjoy spinning. And in the end, we on this isle live and work, like the rest of this unfinished land, for Crafters. To whom dost thou carry the request?”

  Widsith bowed his head. “As thou say’st. I bring news from the finished lands. That is mine only coin. Travelers are meeting us soon, and once I deliver this boy to them, and tell my stories, I can leave and resume my journeys, as is meet.”

  “The boy? His opinion?”

  Reynard said, “I have no home, here or anywhere. I have a mother in England, but no father, and no power, no money, nothing but . . .”

  He was about to say a word, an etymon, but that was not exactly true, either.

  “And would your mother miss you?” Kern asked.

  “She would.” But Reynard could not remember her face! Somehow, recovering memories from Valdis had erased other things, things so familiar, but now gone. Had they ever
been there at all?

  Was there even a Southwold he could return to?

  Kern said, “I have had no mother for many years, and my father . . .” The giant stood for a moment like a rough-hewn statue, then turned and said, “Bring the boy. Calybo, as it happens, is here to lead away his chosen Eaters. And so is Guldreth, albeit she will also soon make ready to leave.”

  “Where are they now?” Widsith asked.

  “Kaiholo knows. Should it please Guldreth, he will likely meet us before the old bird cavern.” Kern looked back at Reynard. “Knowest thou my breed?”

  “Anakim, I trow,” Reynard said without thinking.

  Kern did not take it amiss. “Some called us that. People of the lower North called us Hiisi, and those became devils. Others called us Cyclopes. But I have two eyes.” He winked at Reynard. “I have not seen mine ancestors since I was a babe. My mother was Anakim but loved a mighty man, I hear, but mine aunts killed him before I was born. Guldreth took us in, she so enjoyed my mother’s tales.” The giant looked back down the Ravine and said, “Other than my mother, I never knew an Anakim could stand humans. Pilgrim, thine affection for Maeve is the least of Guldreth’s worries this season. Crafters themselves are in peril. Mayhaps they are dying. I know not which, but they grow weaker and less in control.”

  “No!” Widsith cried out, as if this defied all reason.

  “I understand thy distress. They are the reason we have gathered here, all of us. But the Travelers tell me those who still live take great pains to bury their departed fellows. And I can attest that there is a plain of open jars that few of the Travelers dare approach . . . Shaitan’s ovens, some call them, baking infernal loaves!”

  “You have been there?” Reynard asked, squinting.

  “I have, on Guldreth’s missions. And so has Kaiholo. The island’s interior is at a rolling boil. Other than Eaters, many flee who once served both Guldreth and the Crafters, claiming to be in danger. On the other side of the isle, the Sister Queens have summoned outside help with the coming war. It is said thou hast supplied some of that, Pilgrim.”

  Widsith shook his head and patted his horse’s neck. “That was not mine intention. It is all upturned and rooted wrong.”

  “Indeed. For the nonce, the stock of humans at Zodiako is too small to matter—but their drakes may be of use. Some of the larger ones, at least. Come,” the giant urged, and descended the scree. “If I do not cause a fall, ’twill hold for ye.”

  “And our horses?”

  “Leave them,” the giant said. “Traveler and Eater horses are the only ones that will travel in the krater lands.”

  They dismounted and sent their horses back to Zodiako with firm pats on their withers. Widsith seemed most unhappy with this change of plans. “Follow close,” he told Reynard. “Move not from me whatever thy temptation or wonder. I sense Eaters and others will flee this way, and all along our path.”

  “That be true,” Kern said over his shoulder. “And we shall not even see most of them.”

  They followed the giant and gingerly descended the scree into the depths of the Ravine. The chill penetrated Reynard’s clothes and skin down to his very bones, where it either tingled or burned, he could not tell which. Not all things that work and move on their own, he thought, live by warmth and the sun. Down here, the Eaters and others seemed to thrive in the night and cold. The ice that climbed in sheets on both sides looked like frozen moonlight. He wondered how long he and Widsith could last in such a clime.

  The clouds above the arch of trees parted now. Moonlight cast the broken rocks of the scree in stark black and gray. Reynard looked up, but briefly, fearful of stumbling and falling, for the rocks had shifted again and the path was no longer smooth. Despite his size, Kern seemed to drift over the roughness like a hovering spirit, but Widsith had no such grace.

  The heaves of hoarfrost now clumped into knife-edged sheets of foggy ice, growing more and more transparent as they wound down along the rocky trail—and embedded in them were contorted figures, bodies, dozens and dozens in the hundred yards they traversed. Neither Kern nor Widsith commented on them, and Reynard had no urge to look into their faces, when they were visible.

  They passed beyond the ice sheets. Two trails rose on either side of a slow, narrow river. Widsith said in wonder, “I have never been this far.” He stared at the giant’s broad, receding back. “I am told we should seek out Valdis.”

  “I passed her on my way to find you,” Kern said. The giant was making faster progress than they, and neither Widsith nor Reynard wanted to be left behind, so they took more chances and stumbled and fell more often, gaining cuts on their elbows and hands, and once, Reynard tumbled headlong, until he felt as if sharp rocks had scalped him. Widsith examined him quickly, said he was fine, but blood dripped down his forehead and into his eyes, and he could barely see what little there was to see.

  As Widsith helped him along and used his sleeve to wipe back the blood, Reynard resolved yet again he would do everything he could to flee this awful, evil island, even had he no home to return to.

  “No leaving now, Fox,” Kern called back, as if he could hear Reynard’s thoughts, feel his anger. “You would lose the path. This Ravine is no longer the home of the Eaters—it is now but a deep scar in the island, clogged with old ice and dead castles—a fracture shared by desperate spirits.”

  “What will they do?” Reynard asked, his voice shaking.

  “Go into exile,” Kern said, answering his last question. “Lost races dwindled to a few . . . Tenebria, some call them. Bad omens. Bad dreams.”

  Widsith watched Reynard closely, to judge whether his courage might fail him. They were walking along a narrow trail, carved partly from ice, partly from stone, above the river and the upraised frozen blades that seemed to interrupt and shape the constant breeze from the north. The river seemed to be moaning. Reynard thought he saw shadows and shapes, and sometimes felt a kind of breath on his cheeks, but the others did not react, so he tried to ignore them.

  “And what do you hope to do here?” Reynard asked.

  “Pass through quickly, find Valdis, find Kaiholo, speak one last time with Guldreth before she leaveth—at her request, to see you, boy—and take Eater mounts from the caverns below the fortress,” Kern said, looking warily side to side. “Then ride to find the trod and the Travelers we need.”

  The high doors in the walls were growing fewer, the walls wider, and the river had lost its upraised blades. The arched trees overhead were thicker, but had fallen in several places.

  “We are in the lair of creatures that bring food and water for Eaters—more than humans can supply, and more suited to Eater tastes. Servants of a sort,” Kern said. “I wonder they have not already departed, with their masters!”

  “Are they dangerous?” Reynard asked.

  “No,” Kern said, “but they do not like disturbance.”

  What little Reynard could see of their surroundings through blood-dimmed eyes was a half-circle of ice-rimed pillars, and draped between them, what looked like inverted tents or cocoons. For a moment, Reynard wondered if this was a rookery for drake nymphs, but out of the pendant hammocks peered pale, dusty faces with tightly slitted eyes and open beaks, like recent fledglings. Each was the size of a small dog, and a few poked gray, knobby wing-shins above their beds.

  Reynard looked with suspicion on the draped sacks and their inhabitants. “What sort of birds are these?” he asked.

  “Not birds,” Kern said.

  Widsith said with a lip-curl of distaste, “Nor are they bats.”

  “Do they bite?”

  “No,” Widsith said.

  “Yes,” Kern said.

  Reynard’s scalp was still dripping blood. Kern raised his hand, then ventured off a ways and returned clutching a handful of moss, which he applied to Reynard’s wound. “Hold that, young human,” the giant instructed. “We need to clean you before your audience.”

  They heard a squeaking cry. A small, squat, bird-face
d gray figure, having flapped down from its sling, stumped on folded wings toward them, gripping between shoulder and head a leather bucket sloshing with water, which it offered to Kern with a gnarly whistle. Then the creature swept up a three-fingered foot and demonstrated what the giant was to do with the bucket. Kern took it and before Reynard could react, upended it over him. The water stung like lye soap, and he feared it would put out his eyes, but instead it sluiced his scalp and cleared his vision, and between the moss and the liquid, his bleeding finally stopped.

  Widsith took him by one elbow, and they walked on, passing between the pillars into a wide space flanked by ragged glacial walls. The mottled, marbly whiteness rose hundreds of feet on either side to dark stony scarps fringed with dense-packed lines of forest, many of the trees having toppled. Reynard lifted the moss from his scalp and looked up.

  “Kaiholo!” he cried.

  The tattooed man emerged from deep shadow and tipped a salute. “The high one demands our presence,” he said. “Well, some of us. After this day, I’ll be of no use to her. As for the Pilgrim—I cannot speak for his welcome. Follow me.” He led them on and around the fallen trees.

  “Are Crafters gods or humans?” Reynard asked, curiosity pushing through propriety, considering where they were. “Of this world, or makers of tools?”

  “I was told by a drunken Traveler, in a tavern long ago,” Kaiholo said, “that they be human neither in shape nor demeanor, but possess some powers found in gods. Before his fellows gathered him, he explained that long ago, at the invitation of Queen Hel, Crafters traveled from afar . . . But from whence, he did not know. Nor did the others.”

  “Not gods, and not the Queen of Hell’s children!” Reynard exclaimed, angry at the possibility he was being teased.

  “He is deluded on Hel and conflates,” Widsith said to Kern.

  “Make no such mistake when you meet the Travelers,” Kern said. “They know the truth. Crafters assume their own mantles, and press the krater cities around the waste to serve their eccentric needs, and for these circumstances, and these failings, we on this and six other islands, I think, all live.”