The Unfinished Land Read online

  The tattooed man now focused his attention on Reynard. “Boy, some claim thou herald’st great change.”

  “I do not feel it,” Reynard said.

  “Guldreth so informed me—just an hour past,” Kaiholo said. “She hath abandoned drake hunting and the southern shore, and makes her way to a chamber in the high maze of the old fortress. Now all is muddle in the krater lands, and she prepareth to join her kind and escape.”

  “Escape where?” Widsith asked.

  Kaiholo shrugged. “She confideth not.”

  Kern looked back along the declivity, toward the hollow in the fall of ice. “Let us move on. Best be swift.”

  * * *

  The northern third of the Ravine had been overgrown centuries past by mats of vines like no growth Reynard had ever seen—strong enough to hold trees that had toppled from the steep sides. The trail they followed twisted among great columns of stone spaced like struts in broken wagon wheels. These held back crushing and groaning walls of melting ice that released pools and swirls of their own fog. They saw their way only by cold, scattered stars peeking through the mats. Kern, Reynard, and Widsith hewed close to Kaiholo. But they moved too swiftly in the darkness for the boy, and he stumbled often over roots and stones.

  By the time they reached the end of the path, the roof of vines had been ripped open by the fall of several of the largest trees, and now, eyes adapted to the starlit dark, they saw a high, wide wall of close-hewed and fitted stone—a wall that must have once been interrupted by hundreds of windows that were now, along the lower reaches, chocked by flat, ugly bricks, as if, for those inside this wall—this advanced face of an unlikely fortress—the gloom of the Ravine was still too bright. Narrow steps had been thrust into the wall, crumbling and cracking the stones. Anyone who dared to climb was protected only by a winding, crumbling balustrade of woven wicker, following the steps in their jagged, back-and-forth ascent like some prodigious basket-snake.

  Reynard kept close to Widsith, who followed as Kaiholo and then Kern began their climb. He paused and reached for what he thought were flowers growing around the wicker.

  “Do not touch,” Kern cautioned. “Many biting things here.” He opened one hand to show scars on a palm.

  Reynard withdrew his fingers. Small and brilliant red even in the shadow, the flowers resembled little sprouts of flame rising from circlets of blue petals. At the nearness of his fingers, they withdrew like anemones on a tidal beach and chirped like crickets, taunting him.

  “She collects Crafter refuse,” Kaiholo said, and showed scars on his own palm—unmarked by tattoos. “Fascinated by all things Crafter!”

  “Plans for creations never approved,” Kern added. “Undeveloped or forgotten schemes. Ephemera. Things that know not any way home, nor whether home awaiteth. She arrangeth them like a gardener, even here. As for those devilish, nipping flowers—they came here as seeds carried by strange clouds from the krater lands, falling in muddy rain.” Kaiholo looked up at the narrow holes in the thick canopy of vines. “Best avoid such rain, or you will be crusted like a reef.”

  After they had all passed, the flowers slowly reemerged and shivered.

  The first flights of steps took them, slowly and cautiously enough, to a wide indented cleft. From here, more steps forked like lightning ascended to a few open porticoes, which passed through roofless walls and led to more staircases halfway up this next prodigious, sealed-off facing.

  Even this high above the blocks of melting ice, the air burned and clogged Reynard’s nose with the pervasive odor of an unholy, devilish chill.

  Beyond the masonry walls, more steps now became apparent, climbing to a wide parapet just beneath a half-dome inset with a frieze of mosaics whose subjects Reynard could not discern from this vantage.

  “That is her door,” Kaiholo said, and lifted a snake-patterned brow at Widsith. “Hast thou been here?”

  “No,” Widsith answered.

  “Privileged as thou art,” the tattooed man murmured.

  Reynard wondered at the patience of these suitors, and how they felt about each other—or the high object of their devotion.

  “Still too dark,” Kern said, and wandered off to explore this level, his silhouette fading until he was no longer visible. Then he emerged from the far side and announced, “Someone hath provided.” In one hand, like an eagle clutching a bundle of twigs, he displayed four sticks with glassy knobs. Kaiholo and the others gratefully took one apiece. Kern then spun his stick in both hands until the knob gave off a dim gray glow. The others, and then Reynard, did likewise.

  In the powdery pools of illumination these sticks provided, little creatures scuttled away. Weirder still was an aura, no more than a hint, seen only when looking away, of a kind of dim firelight beyond the glow of the sticks, ascending high along this wall, with passing suggestions of huge shadows . . . All of which vanished as soon as he looked at them directly. He did not ask about these. He was not sure he wanted to know.

  They passed the wingless corpse of a drake, and their gray lights and presence caused commotion among hundreds of little feasting creatures. Reynard had never seen such as these. Some seemed formed of rare gems, and others resembled rodents made of plates of metal that took the shapes of muscles and fur and ears, with eyes like illuminated rubies. These flowed back to resume their consumption of the drake, though with irritated awareness of these new men.

  “After she harvested the wings, she had some large metal beast drag it here for her pets,” Kaiholo said. “Such treats do not last long. To complete her great cloak, she will need to gather permissions from whichever faction is victorious in the krater lands.”

  “Then it is a war,” Widsith said.

  “Will she take thee with her?” Kern asked Kaiholo, glancing at Widsith.

  “She doth not reveal our fate,” Kaiholo said. “Or dost thou mean the Pilgrim?”

  “Either,” Kern said. Reynard was still thinking over the phrase “great cloak,” presumably made of drake wings. A cloak for whom?

  “When dealing with a power just beneath the sky,” Kaiholo said, “I assume nothing, and advise ye likewise. What I do not give credence to is the tale that thou, Pilgrim, wast once taken by her as a lover!”

  Kern grumbled that he shared that disbelief.

  “Even so. She did not bring me here,” Widsith said.

  “Kept secrets?” Kaiholo asked.

  “As one of her station should,” Widsith said.

  The steps were solid enough, but also infested with more tiny crawling things, which managed to mostly escape their feet. Reynard felt an edgy investigation of the cut on his head and brushed something away with a moan of disgust.

  “Patience,” Kaiholo said. “We will soon be there.”

  “She maketh a cloak for herself?” Reynard asked, unable to hold back curiosity any longer.

  “Queen Hel, I presume,” Kaiholo said. “Only she could wear it. Ah, we are here.”

  They had reached the top of the steps and a broad portico that followed the curve of the upper wall. The passing shadows and hints of firelight were left behind, to his relief. Sunlight blocked by leafy boughs outshone their glowing sticks. At Kaiholo’s example, they left the sticks propped against a wall. Smells of cooking meat and perfume issued from the far reaches of the portico, which was lovely in a shaded way, like a residence in a castle built of dreams. Here the small scavengers had given way to knee-high, furry creatures shaped like jesters’ hats, with a pair of stalked eyes on their peaks, and four or more scurrying feet to support them.

  “These be not so threatening,” Kaiholo said, “but watch the hidden corners. This high lady hath peculiar things in her garden.”

  Nobody came to greet them. Kaiholo proceeded first. Kern had to stoop as the ceiling had dropped a couple of feet. Columns like the insides of broken shells, spiraled and pearly-pink, became more frequent. The far walls were covered by a mural more pattern than picture, as he had heard from his uncle were found in Mooris
h palaces, but in motion, steadily progressing through shades of gray and green. His uncle had also told him, one long night at sea, about those regular shapes, which he said held clues to navigating seas and crossing land—but that did not seem to be their purpose here.

  They paused cautiously between two columns. Beyond the columns, a cold fire flickered.

  Kaiholo looked over his shoulder. “Caution is wise when meeting those just beneath the sky,” he said. “Adore, worship—but do not fear. Even for those who have known favor, time passeth and moods change. Truth, Pilgrim?”

  “Truth,” Widsith replied. “What hearest thou about her mood toward me?”

  “Nothing. I find her hapless drakes. I am not her procurer.”

  “I have been in the Ravine off and on for years and seldom seen her,” Kern said.

  “Thou art a monster, and so thou art allowed to stay? ” Widsith asked. Kern asked in turn, with a wicked grin, what monstrous trait gave the Pilgrim access.

  Reynard reached out to touch a spiral’s rose-pink smoothness, very like broken seashells on the beaches of Southwold.

  “This place is cold,” Kern said. “But I see no ice. Ice everywhere but here!”

  Reynard looked up at a small scuffing sound. The others alerted as well.

  “She is here,” Kaiholo said. Now it was Widsith’s turn to suck in his breath. Reynard wondered why he was afraid. Had they not been lovers? Had he not pleased her?

  Was it possible to please such a being?

  He tried to clear his thoughts.

  Like sap streaming through ghostly vines, light slowly grew around them in vegetal tangles, weaving through a space beyond the first ring of columns. The cautious visitors observed, transfixed by both wonder and concern, while the veins of light filled in the spaces around them. Now they saw that they stood on one side of a low, wide chamber filled with rank after rank of disks, bigger than most shields, arranged upright like plates in a cupboard. The disks appeared to have thin edges almost as sharp as knives. All gleamed with their own inner light, and each was different from the other.

  “Hast thou seen these before?” Kern asked Kaiholo.

  “Only heard of them,” Kaiholo answered. “And thou, Pilgrim?”

  Widsith shook his head. “They are new to me.”

  “Shaded moons stolen from the darkest nights!” Kern said.

  “Quaint,” Kaiholo said, picking at his teeth with a patterned finger.

  They approached the first row of disks. Reynard tapped one. Each disk was hard and translucent, as wide as Reynard was tall. He touched the nearest disk’s rim. It did not cut, but made a bowed ringing sound at the roughness of his finger.

  “Do that the right way, it might bid thee enter!” Kern suggested.

  Reynard stooped to peer into the center of the first disk, and found shapes beneath the shining surface: shoals of fish swimming through dark curling weeds, all caught in a moment of stillness, and graced with more artistry than he had ever seen. Bolder than the others—so far—he stepped up to the next disk and bent to peer again. In this one he saw layer upon layer of strange, great trees, falling back in a thick blue fog, as if in some ancient morning, perhaps the morning of the world. Other shapes rose between the trees, and he realized that lizards the size of houses lurked in that fog, as well as bird-like creatures that perched on stone pillars and spread their wings like cormorants. But these were neither birds nor drakes, and each grinned with a mouth full of teeth no seabird had ever possessed.

  Reynard could not help himself. He turned and studied the disks in the next row. These revealed ebony depths filled with clouds of diamond-bright stars, like a clear, dry night sky. Behind that disk rose another, revealing islands floating in a void—not islands on a sea, but scattered in empty air and topped by great castles dotted with lights . . . impossible realms of impossible people!

  He frowned in frustration. These disks seemed important, more than just a collection—but a history, a library! There was not time enough to walk down the rows and do justice to them, to tally row after row, each disk as delicate and astounding as the first.

  He turned back to the disk that contained a forest. One of the lizards had moved! He was sure of it—moved closer, head angled as if to study him!

  “They are sorcerer’s mirrors!” Kern said. “Why doth she allow us to bear witness to such Crafter work?”

  Widsith seemed lost in reverie, gathering enough courage to stroke one disk, then stare in wonder at his fingers. “Finer than anything I saw in the east. ’Tis as if Pu himself had embedded Crafter thoughts in fine white clay, then fired it to wondrous porcelain.”

  A female voice spoke. “I am leaving soon. Come forward and say farewell before all here is gone.”

  A Drake Wing Cloak

  * * *

  WIDSITH STEPPED to one side and looked between the columns. Kern tried to see over the moon-disks, but bumped his head against the low roof.

  Beyond the ranks and rows, on the far side of the chamber, stood a female figure of middle size, dressed in a cloak patterned in thin silver, like the shining skeleton of a decayed leaf—or the framework of a drake’s wings.

  “She doth wear her wings!” Kaiholo said. “All is indeed tumbled and new.”

  At her gesture and invitation, they walked between the columns toward a dais on which were set several stools and a basic wooden throne. Reynard saw that this figure’s skin was like tarnished silver, and she looked upon them with the large, golden-brown eyes of a roe, flecked with gold like nuggets in a stream.

  She removed her cloak and set it aside on nothing visible, where it took on a limp but cared-for drape. She wore a long dress like the bell of a flower, also made of drake’s wings, and a vest that tightened at her waist but loosely wrapped her shoulders.

  She spoke again, in soft tones, using words Reynard did not understand. Kaiholo drew himself tall and full of dignity. He motioned Reynard forward. “She asketh for thee first,” he said. Widsith seemed to question this decision, this request, but when he tried to stand in front of Reynard, Kern stopped him and shook his head in warning.

  “Come, young Fox,” Guldreth now said. “I would have advice from thee, if thou art th’one who can deliver it to me. I believe thou hast met curious beings—yes?”

  The companions who had accompanied Reynard into this strange place seemed to fade both in memory and vision. The tarnished silver woman glided, her long bell-shaped gown rustling, leading him down the ranks of disks, hundreds of disks or more . . . the rows dividing like tree branches farther and farther back into her apartments, which seemed many, with doors and arches opening to yet longer hallways leading deeper and deeper into darkness, seeming to shrink until he was afraid he was already lost and would never find his way back.

  And wherever she went, there were the disks, each bearing an image of some impossible place, or creatures that did not exist, or faces of beings not entirely human, until he felt dizzy and filled with their dreams, their delusions.

  “I would myself speak to these figures!” Reynard said. “I would ask who you are, and why you have need of me.” Reynard’s eyes grew heavy-lidded, his look desperate.

  “The dead or the great answer through the living and the lesser, but only when they desire. You say you were taught by your grandmother. How long since her passage?”

  “I was a child,” Reynard said.

  “Then she doth not roam in shadows to seek her favorites, and none can summon her shade without knowing many secrets, many languages not bestowed on the living—even those just beneath the sky.”

  “She is here?” Until now, he had thought Guldreth was asking about his two visitors, the man with the white shadow—the man with the feathered hat.

  “A grand Traveler. I believe she hath protected thee for some time. Dost thou feel her, Fox?”

  “I do not feel or see her.”

  “No surprise,” Guldreth said. “And yet, thou’rt here, and this is the first time a grand Traveler
of her stature hath visited this fortress, dead or alive. I wonder if the dead can still convey a Traveler’s boon?”

  Reynard shook his head, ashamed at his ignorance, and of the fear that now froze him to his bones. Actually being in the presence of the dead was true necromancy, sure to condemn one to Hell—or the infernal regions, rather. “What boon is that?”

  “Words, Fox. Words new and words old, words that have shaped lands and peoples, and given power to formless ones who had none before. I would almost wish to be a Traveler, just to know such power!” She waved her silvery hand at the disks in this side hall, in the back chambers, all glowing faintly like moons behind clouds. “All these sketches the Crafters have made began with such words, words given to them by your kind—by Travelers. Travelers gave them purpose and power, and out of all that . . . we arise and struggle. Our lives begin, we work and do battle, and our lives end. The power of words!”

  Guldreth’s voice seemed regretful. He reacted to that instinctively, as if he were some sort of strange gentleman hoping to provide comfort or solace.

  “A phrase echoes in my thoughts,” Reynard said. “The words are not strange, but their meaning is.”

  “May I hear them?”

  “ ‘The first mother is the first word,’ ” he said.

  “Ah! You do know the secret of Hel’s islands,” Guldreth said. Her dark silvery smile was extraordinary, her lips like the petals of a blue rose, had he ever seen such—he had not—and the teeth behind them were small and perfect, their color between ivory and polished silver coin.

  “I know nothing! I have heard those words before, and now I believe, I think, I might hear my grandmother’s voice speaking them to me . . . yet she is silent!”

  “Powers such as your grandmother have ways of leaving messages. Since arriving, thou hast received the memories of an Eater, true?”