The Unfinished Land Read online

  “Yes. Some of them.”

  “Valdis?”

  “Yes.”

  “She obeys, then. She was appointed by me, through the Afrique, to tend to thee as well as he doth attend the Pilgrim—or better. Not to give more time, but key memories—or a key to memories!—to shape thy purpose. Remember now, when did thy grandmother teach thee?”

  Reynard stumbled back through his earliest memories and came across feelings of warmth and calm, of deep reddish light and pushing and kicking against a yielding barrier . . . living in warm darkness, hearing his grandmother’s voice in comfort and ease, but distant, as if from far away, along with a softly beating drum and pulsing pressure.

  He looked up and around at the residence and the room behind Guldreth, at the rows of disks, as if they contained those very memories—but then his eyes were drawn back to the silvery face.

  Reynard had caught only a glimpse, through eyes not yet opened, of where he had been when his grandmother had told her tales.

  “I was in my mother’s womb,” he said.

  “Ah!” Guldreth said with a flush of delight, as if seeing a marvel fulfilled. Reynard could not imagine her polished skin could take on such an inner glow. “And so it is still thine. I see her appear on thy face, like a fine mask!”

  “Now that I hear those tales again, how do I find them in an infant’s memory, all grown over by later life?”

  “Are they, now? Thou hast done well enough so far,” Guldreth said. “Thou art here.”

  “Not by my own doing,” Reynard said.

  “All will be found, if being found is what thy grandmother’s messages need and want. So tell me. Did she foresee that thou wouldst meet a man with a white shadow? A man who doth make roads hither and yon through widths and lengths we neither see nor feel?”

  Again, a shock. She saw through his skin, down to his every moment! “I do not remember any such warning, though I do remember such a man.”

  “Ah, ’tis hard to ask a babe to carry gems to his future self! But if thou knowest such a man, then he must have tasked thee even beyond thy grandmother’s whispers. And that is treasure I would spend elsewhere, were I you.

  “Soon I depart and will not return. I carry mine one work with me—the great old Queen’s cloak, of which what I wear is merely a test, a pattern—and will instruct my servants to shatter these toys and baubles, which Crafters have discarded and which no longer move me, and if humans found them, would vex them to madness. But I am still strangely sad to do so. What thinkest thou of these ancient dreams? Go thou back and walk among them. See more. Some are quite beautiful—and some not even I can comprehend. But thy fellows wait to lead thee on.”

  She glided off and led him back between disks from which he averted his eyes, already overfull with creations that had never been born or finished, through halls and doors and arches to the low-ceilinged courtyard. Her gown draped and flowing behind her like the plumes of a peacock. At her commanding gesture, he followed a step behind, avoiding the gown, afraid it might shift like a ghost and catch up his feet, so silvery and elusive it seemed.

  Guldreth paused before a disk that had been pushed aside from a row. She said, “This one is a puzzle and favorite.” The pale plate was covered in blue flowers, of no sort he recognized. Some of the flowers had captured insects in a kind of cage of their petals, and as he looked closer, he saw that the insects were playing a game very like chess, while waiting, he assumed, for their inevitable doom.

  “Noble patience and courage!” Guldreth said, turning around to another disk. “And now, this one . . . I have studied this one over and over, and wonder what thou thinkest?”

  This plate, like many of the others, was twilight dark and showed gaunt men and women walking in endless lines around a fortress that spread over many hills, with walls that rose to touch a gossamer curtain in the sky. In the upper part of the disk, the curtain had parted to show something indistinct peering through, not a face, nothing he could understand, but watching, and not through eyes, of which it possessed none.

  “I have never seen a Crafter,” Guldreth said. “That may be the most they have revealed of themselves to any between earth and sky.”

  “Be they more powerful than you, milady?” Reynard asked.

  “No. More creative, however. None hath seen their like since Hel lured them here. If she did lure them here. Few of my kind are in agreement on that.”

  Reynard removed himself from between the rows and stood near her, vexed enough himself by floating lands and lizards the size of houses—and faceless ones the very demigods could not decide upon.

  Guldreth returned to her dais and gathered her train around it. “Valdis will take ye to meet the Travelers. I am told by Calybo that they will escort ye to the krater lands, and beyond—to the eastern shores, if needs be. To the extent that Travelers are warriors, they will protect . . . but I would rely on your fellows first.”

  “Must I meet Crafters?”

  Guldreth laughed a bell-like laugh. “I would not wish it on anyone, Fox. But for thee, it must be. The young Eater Valdis—and believe me, boy, she hath still a sort of youth—will guide all of ye through the troubles, and not just Kaiholo, handsome as he is, nor Widsith with all his wiles and secrets.”

  She held up her hands and seemed to shield her face against the glow of the disks.

  “I see thee, Pilgrim, back there in the shadows! My heart doth leap to know of thy return. I hope thou hast made peace with thy wife, and regret that thou shalt fail in finding her more years. Together, Fox, all these fine human creatures and the half-human Anakim—blessings upon the woman who gave him birth!—will escort thee to where thy message, thy grandmother’s words, will be even more welcome. Even more important. But there is no going back to Zodiako, young man. Tell them that path is no longer open, that the Ravine is dangerous, and thou shouldst leave by the caves beneath this fortress. Valdis can bring ye horses.” She looked up as if listening to music. “Is it not lovely? But here, for all those just beneath the sky, our time comes to an end.”

  Embarrassed, Reynard looked away from Guldreth’s gold-flecked eyes and gleaming face, away from her robe of drake’s wings, afraid of what he had heard, of all he had forgotten and must remember again to be of any use to this extraordinary being. Widsith and Kern stood back beyond the disks, between two of the shell pillars, and Kaiholo between them. Kern was so stooped over he might as well have been on his knees. Their faces showed dismay, and Reynard wondered why . . .

  But then he turned back.

  Guldreth was gone.

  Lost to knowing what to do next, Reynard crossed the open space under the lowering roof to rejoin them.

  “How could one love a creature like that?” Kern asked.

  Widsith sighed. “Practice and patience and a quiet tongue.”

  “And how could Maeve put up with such a rival?”

  “The same,” Widsith said. “And we had not long together to find the challenge in it. We did not hear all she said to thee, Fox. Canst thou recall and tell us now?”

  “I carry a message from my grandmother,” Reynard said. “And Guldreth saith the Ravine is no longer open to us. It is too dangerous.”

  Kaiholo nodded. “The northern caves will lead us out to where we can meet Travelers.”

  “Did Guldreth hear thy message or find it in thine eyes?” Kern asked.

  “I do not know all of it myself,” Reynard said. “She said you—I mean, Valdis—must deliver me to Travelers who will escort us to the Crafters in the krater lands. She told me to trust the young Eater.”

  Widsith said, “Hardly young to thee, boy!”

  Reynard set his face in a stubborn mask. “Yes. That one.”

  “Thou sound’st most eager to see her again, Fox,” Kaiholo said.

  “She shared memories.”

  “But is she still here?” Widsith asked. “Be there any Eaters left in the Ravine?”

  “I passed her as I came to meet ye,” Kern said.


  “Did she speak?” Widsith asked.

  Kern shook his head. “The rest of the Eaters have departed. I searched.”

  Kaiholo confirmed this.

  “Calybo may lead them off the island,” Widsith said. “We will learn soon enough. Come, boy.” He put his arm around Reynard’s shoulders and urged him away from the court where Guldreth had kept her collections.

  As they descended the steps under that great half dome, Kern first and Kaiholo last, with Reynard and Widsith between, the giant asked the Pilgrim, “On thy long voyages out in the finished lands, didst thou ever find God?”

  Widsith chuckled. “I would think a giant would know God the better for rising closer to His house.”

  “I have never reached just beneath the sky,” Kern said. “Too much of the human in me. Didst thou?”

  “I met many who knew Him well,” Widsith said. “Spanish sailors. Wives in Manchu land and in the Philippines and the islands called Malayo. I spake with those who knew God as Allah, and as pagan golden idols such as Jagrenat, which is carried on a great wagon of wood and iron, pulled by a hundred men on many wheels that crush and deliver his worshippers like beetles direct to a pagan heaven. Those who call God Allah lust after the gems and wealth given to Jagrenat, but have so far failed to secure them. I knew those who look much as you, Kaiholo, and sail great canoes across the wide Pacific. They worship severe, frowning wooden statues raised in forests of their kind, like markers in a graveyard. And I know this well—that all the Gods they worship have been shaped and planted by Crafters, to make the world more interesting.”

  “I believe that can be said of us as well,” Kern said. “Doth that make their Gods any less real?”

  Widsith chuckled again. “No, nor any weaker,” he said.

  “What of the Christian God?” Reynard asked, feeling more and more lost and discouraged.

  “Which Christian God?” Widsith asked. “The God of Philip and the Pope, or the God of Elizabeth and Henry? Mother of God, Mary, or Son of Mary and God Himself, Jesus?”

  Reynard had tears in his eyes from all he had experienced, afraid of what he might believe himself in a few more days.

  Then he felt his heart grow cold, as if the Eaters’ snow had filled his chest.

  The first word is the first mother.

  That is your God now.

  From the chamber above came a cacophony of crashing and shattering. Reynard looked up, startled.

  Widsith shook his head sadly.

  Kaiholo said, “Were I brave enough, I would have studied them longer.”

  Under and Out

  * * *

  THEY WALKED ALONG the base of the fortress, looking for an entrance to the caverns beneath. “The air smells sick,” the tattooed man said, and spat.

  Through sun scattered by high vines and trees, looking into what passed for morning here, the Ravine’s shaped ice walls were growing spiky. A sheet broke away from the far reaches of the fortress and collapsed with ponderous grace, grinding and crashing. The echoes ran south along the Ravine, and then returned in a rough staccato chorus.

  Kaiholo said, “Soon the Ravine will flood, and that flood will carry the rotting bodies of creatures too afraid to leave. Let us not be among them.”

  They came upon a high, dark entrance, half hidden by old masonry. Kaiholo entered the cavern. Kern and the rest followed—all but Reynard.

  “Thou hast a stubborn face,” Widsith said in passing.

  “I would understand what my use is to them, to any of you!” Reynard said.

  “The boy doth grow a beard,” Kaiholo said cheerfully, as if none of what they had seen, or were experiencing, mattered. “Let us train up like mules—arm to shoulder, the giant at the rear!”

  “Boy, go or stay,” Widsith said, exasperated. “Thou wilt learn more if thou goest, and if thou stayest, likely die.”

  Reynard returned his piercing look, then took up behind Kern, until the giant stepped aside and let him and Widsith join the line as Kaiholo had suggested. Guided by the tattooed man, who spun his orb but seemed to already know these caverns well, they walked along in gray-lit murk for hundreds of yards, then saw a faint gleam ahead.

  “More ice,” Kern said, pointing to the right-hand side of the cave. “It is still thick here.”

  “And still alive with Eater power,” Widsith said.

  “There is a brighter block ahead,” Kaiholo said.

  The block was a pure, clear sheet of smoothed ice, veined in both snowy white and ethereal blue. Through a particularly thin and transparent spot, they made out a moving shadow—face rippling but clear enough. The face frowned and vanished.

  The strangely beautiful shade who had leaned over Reynard suddenly reshaped in front of them. Though dressed in a shimmering, diamond-marked fabric, she did not seem to wear it with conviction.

  “Guldreth hath loaned her a shift,” Kaiholo whispered to them.

  “Drake wing?” Reynard asked.

  “No,” Kaiholo said. “She is not that far above the mud.”

  Valdis spoke in a voice soft as a passing breeze. “Guldreth doth command me. I am to deliver this human child to the proper Travelers, who will take him to the krater lands. We will meet them at the join of two great trods. She telleth me they expect him.”

  Reynard could not keep his gaze off the Eater’s pale features, her sea-foam flesh and deep-set green eyes that flickered like lanterns in a huge black room. He could not decide whether she was terrifying or beautiful, but one thing he felt, beyond any doubt, was that she was neither young nor old.

  “The cross-trod nearest to the northern end of the Ravine is already halfway to the krater lands,” Kern said.

  “Thou hast been there?” Widsith asked.

  “I have so ventured.”

  Valdis’s whispery voice took on a deeper timbre. “The Ravine is draining. Our path will be crowded with spirits and frightened beasts. We must move quickly. Eater horses are fast, and do not always kill the humans they carry. The stables are just north of here.”

  They walked in deep gloom for a time, Valdis leading the way. She did not need a spinning lamp.

  The roof of the cavern rose to an echoing emptiness. Ancient stone pillars, dark purple lava bricks, and what looked like intricately figured ivory or bone, emerged from the gloom and defined a stable, a dim line of stalls in which Eater horses stood very still, eyes closed as if asleep. Valdis opened the gate and led them through. “I will choose a horse for each of you,” she said, and looked to Kern. “Even you. Once assigned, do not try to put a rope on your mount, or look it directly in the eye.”

  Reynard counted all the animals he could see. The stable housed at least ten, sleek and fine of form, their coats like wet velvet, black or gray. Valdis spoke, and the animals opened their eyes and raised their heads. She then led them one by one out of their stalls. Not themselves Eaters, they nevertheless reacted to the humans with a proud disregard that persuaded Valdis to take each aside and whisper in its ear. At her words, they uttered high, piercing cries, not so much whinnies as like the sounds made by swifting owls and other hidden night creatures.

  She matched the giant with a great draft horse, a mare, the largest Reynard had ever seen, bigger even than the ones that had drawn the great Traveler wagon back in the woods near Zodiako—but black as pitch and with amber eyes. “This is yours,” she said to Kern. “I hope you can control her.”

  “I will try, O mistress,” Kern said, and stood by the mare’s flank.

  “Move over there,” she instructed, and the giant guided the horse to just outside the gate.

  Valdis now brought forward a horse with ornately marked haunches—a combination of branded scars and shaved hair. “This is for you,” she said to Reynard. Lacking stirrups, he could only haul himself up by holding on to a hank of mane and swinging his legs over, as he had done in his uncle’s shop, positioning horses to be shod. He sat up straight on the mare’s back, legs gripping her cold ribs, and wondered who had mar
ked her—and when. Was she meant to survive magic, curses?

  Valdis led a third horse to Kaiholo, a slender mare with a strong but nervous gait. She now pointed to Widsith, and he stepped up to the pale gray gelding she had chosen for him, the shade of an early dawn, with eyes the color of a sunrise cloud. “This was one of Guldreth’s prizes. She hath no need of it now.”

  “Did these animals ever cross the chafing waste?” Widsith asked.

  “They have,” Valdis answered.

  “A boy in the village was kicked by one,” Widsith said in an undertone to Reynard. “He hath a bottle containing the dust, which doth sparkle and give visions.”

  “Are we to go there?” Reynard asked.

  “Mayhaps,” Widsith answered.

  With all but her mounted, Valdis walked back into the stable to bring forth her animal, a stallion black as the walls of the cave. His eyes were black as well. He was difficult to see at all. Valdis mounted him as if taking flight. She then issued a thin whistle, high and sharp as a needle, and the remaining horses kicked and reared, and then ran out of the stable and toward the northern exit.

  “They run as if ​—” Kaiholo began, but cut himself short when they heard a great rushing sound and hundreds of bat-like animals flew over them on stubby wings, brushing the cavern’s roof—ignoring the riders below, but making great haste to leave.

  Kaiholo grimaced. “Little time. Let us move! Unlikely we ever return.” Valdis now whistled softly, and all the horses paced north with fluid grace.

  Reynard looked back at Valdis, but turned away when she seemed to notice. Despite his fear, he felt a strong curiosity about what she knew of him, and he of her, and how she—if she was a female, still—would travel in daylight, beside humans. And he was curious about her story, if she had one, if she remembered—and perhaps it was best that she did not.

  The glow that Reynard had thought might be daylight was deceptive. They passed into a narrower cavern hung with many creatures that themselves supplied the light. The running horses had long since passed, leaving prints in the sandy floor.