The Unfinished Land Read online

  “They know wrinkles,” Kern said. “Ask the Sea Traveler how he flattens waves.”

  Kaiholo blew out his nose, offering neither answer nor argument, and pointed the way. Kern touched Reynard’s shoulder and pointed to the tattooed man’s horse. They were not riding, they were leading, but all three horses were now energized by the presence of something they were first to sense.

  “Likely the other horses,” Kern said. “And maybe their riders.”

  Old Things Have Their Day

  * * *

  THE LEDGE THAT abutted the ridge was ancient indeed, as was the ridge itself—one of the great vertebrae of the island that formed five spines, all of which were known to the geographers of the Travelers, so Kaiholo asserted—though he knew little about them himself. “I know the oceans and the way the island shapes weather out to sea,” he said primly. “Less the land. Kern must know the land.”

  “I have been to the cross-trod, but not much around. These spines are ancient, however, and I have heard they are covered with trails. Those change year to year, as Crafter plans spill out and over.”

  “Then what goes truly back to the beginning?” Reynard asked.

  Kaiholo studied a muddy stretch. He rose and pointed to the distinct mark of a hoof. “Someone’s been by here, or at least a horse,” he said.

  Reynard took a look. “It has been shod recently,” he said. “I think Widsith’s mark is on it. It is a Spanish horse.”

  “Doing what, and doing what here?” Kaiholo asked. “Are the Spanish all over this island now?”

  “Most are dead,” Reynard said. “There may be forty or fifty left.”

  “Are the Travelers seeking them, too?” Kern asked.

  “They could have Valdis and Widsith,” Kaiholo said. “It seems word hath spread about their value . . . And thine, fox-boy.”

  Reynard looked uneasily along the ledge. “This taketh us inland, doth it not?”

  “Once it did. Toward the crossing of the trods,” Kern said.

  “And toward a Quarry of Souls,” Kaiholo said. The others looked at him. “Guldreth spake of it, and so hath Calybo.”

  “I have never been there,” Kern said.

  “What is that?” Reynard asked.

  “It is where faces and manners are seen in old rocks by experienced Travelers,” Kern said. “They are quarried and made available to imprint childers, and those cast in Crafters’ designs.”

  “If we move along this ledge, is that our next destination?” Reynard asked.

  “Likely,” Kaiholo said.

  “Would those of Annwyn want to go there?”

  “Not to the Quarry,” Kaiholo said. “It is been dormant for centuries, played out, some say. And Travelers do not favor those who work for the Sister Queens, their servants or their allies. A contentious bone in a great skeleton of resentments.”

  “Who would be willing to bargain for us?” Reynard asked, a dark thought forming. Could he trust Kaiholo, could he trust Kern? So far, all they had done was guide him to where those he knew sought his protection had vanished.

  “Dost thou mean to ask, who would pay?” Kern said.

  “Who would pay?”

  “Opposition to the wishes of the Travelers doth demand a rare currency. Strategy and weapons, mayhaps.”

  “Are the Sister Queens fighting the Crafters?” Reynard asked.

  Kern and Kaiholo looked at each other. “Perhaps that is the way of it now,” Kaiholo said, “but I fear the results! We have long served those just beneath the sky, and the Sister Queens do not.”

  They walked along, but found no more hoof prints or other spoor. The corkscrew trees and shrubs here were thin but grew fast, like weeds, as if they feared all might soon end.

  “I asked what things stretch back to the beginning,” Reynard reminded them. “Or is it all remade and forgotten by the Crafters?”

  “Well, Eaters, for one,” Kaiholo said. “They were not called that in the beginning times. They were simply part of all those just beneath the sky, children of Hel, most agree, and that means she was here in the beginning as well—probably before the beginning.”

  “What about this isle?”

  “Oh, aye, all the Tir Na Nog were here in those times, and likely Earth and most of what we see of the sky.”

  “Crafters do not reshape the heavens?”

  “Not that I have heard,” Kern said.

  “But it is said people now study the sky with better tools,” Kaiholo said. “I would use those tools myself, and learn better the roads of the sea.”

  Reynard had seen some of those tools in Aldeburgh, in shop windows, made of brass and iron and with crystal and glass parts. Their quality and glitter had fascinated him. “And us? Are we reshaped? I mean humans, and giants.”

  “Nobody knoweth that,” Kaiholo said.

  “But the Travelers were always here?”

  Kaiholo hmmed again. “We found our place on the islands after the Crafters arrived, but likely we served our own kind before then. Spinning language and tales across land and sea. What would humans be without words?”

  “Dumb,” Kern said.

  “You are half human!” Reynard reminded him.

  “True, and all my days I have struggled to favor my greater half, and keep my head straight.” He smiled at the boy. “Anakim and other sorts from old were as liable as humans to do stupid things. Which doth make their tales all the more interesting.”

  A Quarry of Souls

  * * *

  THE LEDGE GOT wider and the growths on it even thinner until the weeds and tendrils of creeper vanished entirely and left clumped dirt and bare rock, scraped and revealed as if by a giant harrow.

  The horses were still interested in something ahead, and eager to move on, but Reynard could not hear or see anything that encouraged him.

  “We are on the edge of the quarry,” Kaiholo said. Kern nodded agreement. “Could be nothing more.”

  “What sort of stone?” Reynard asked.

  “Old,” the giant said, “even for the Tir Na Nog,” and they let the horses walk faster.

  In an hour they found the greater ridge had curved and cupped a long valley, within which churned thick white mists like steam in a cauldron. The ledge had offered up a strangely clear and smooth road into this valley.

  “This must have once been an important trod,” Kern said. Kaiholo kept his silence as the ledge road led them deeper into the cauldron and through the mists. Soon they saw rockfaces with clear signs of having been worked—flat faces edged around by chisel marks from where great sheets had been split away. Shards of stone littered the base of each face. The grayish depressions where soaked wooden wedges had swollen and split the blocks and sheets were obvious even to Reynard, who had once visited a limestone quarry with his uncle. He had been twelve when his uncle had been called to repair sledges and replace oxen traces.

  Kaiholo and Kern seemed too quiet.

  “It is just stone,” Reynard said.

  Kern looked away. “Mayhap we were all of us found here,” he murmured. “On that, I seek no final answer.”

  Kaiholo pulled up beside Reynard. “There is a slab ahead that showeth polish. It might have been worked but spoiled before delivery.” They rode along the road until the slab rose above them, a span of golden-brown granite shot through with strange, sky-colored crystals—the top of the slab towering thirty feet above the road, its width at least fifty feet.

  “Who would have carried this?” Reynard asked. “No wagon, and no team of oxen!”

  Kern said, “I have heard that some of my people used to work these quarries. Given giants, they would need no oxen.”

  “Could they carry a monster block like this?” Reynard asked. Kaiholo also seemed curious about Kern’s answer.

  “Perhaps,” the giant said.

  “How could any human woman have survived such a romance?” Kaiholo asked dubiously.

  Kern grinned and shrugged, and they moved on.

  Near the s
outhern end of the quarry, they found stacks of finely cut sheets, some raised up on wooden pallets and shelves. The edges of the slabs and sheets had worn to pebbles and sand in most cases, but Reynard walked before the smooth surface, strangely drawn to the patterns in the stone—to the whorls and brown and gold ribbons that drew out the rock’s long-solid currents.

  “Once this lay on the bed of a great sea,” Kaiholo said. “Or so we were told by high ones many years ago.”

  Kern countered, “The story I heard was that one of Queen Hel’s servants spent idle hours drawing in a river of rich golden mud, and then tossed flame over the river, boiled it away, and baked the stone hard.”

  Kaiholo laughed. “I wonder which story is most marvelous?”

  Reynard touched the stone and ran the tip of his finger around a whorl. “It is so like a fine lady’s eye,” he said. “I see an eye here, a face there . . . and a strange creature over there!”

  “Any creatures we know?” Kaiholo asked, and again blew out his nose. “Let us leave this place. I do not enjoy ignorance in troubled times.”

  “Is this a krater?” Reynard asked as he climbed back up behind Kern.

  “Not as such,” Kaiholo said. “But I have never seen a real krater.”

  “Do only Land Travelers cross the island entire?”

  “So many questions!” Kaiholo said in pique.

  “And so few answers!” Reynard responded in equal irritation.

  “Get this boy to his destination before he doth gut us with curiosity,” Kern said.

  “But we have to find Valdis and Widsith!” Reynard said.

  “Perhaps they will meet us at the trod.” Kaiholo did not sound convinced.

  “If the trods still be there,” Kern said.

  This prospect made Reynard miserable, as if he was losing yet another family. And that in turn showed him how lost he had become, that he would regard any of these beings as familiar and worthy of trust—even Widsith!

  They took the smooth path out of the quarry and found rugged, boulder-strewn grassland beyond. The lands here seemed to share little nature with England or the other places Reynard had seen or heard of. Features were scattered like sketches on an old artist’s table. He had seen one such artist working on designs for a small parish church in Aldeburgh, his table messy with charcoal, chalk, and sheets of buffed skin from old psalters—what he had called palimpsests. “I use them over and over again,” he had said, “for the parish cannot afford any more!” He had lifted his gnarled and bony hands to Reynard’s clear-eyed gaze and chuckled toothlessly. “Soon I’ll join those old skins and be myself scrubbed clean! I await a better artist to sketch me anew.”

  Reynard pulled himself out of his reverie to see a large candle burning in the middle of their path. Such a sight by itself meant nothing to him—any strange sight might point only to a nicety of Crafter story. But this candle he knew, by its steady golden glow, belonged to the King of Troy. Neither Kaiholo nor Kern noticed it, and he decided against alerting them, for reasons he could not explain even to himself.

  The Eater horses glanced at it in passing, and then turned their heads to look at him with their black and amber eyes, as if accusing.

  They all walked on.

  The Delay of an End

  * * *

  AT DUSK, Kaiholo found them cover under a decaying, mildewy canopy of branches and leaves. Green moss draped like old lace between three wide trunks—two dead oaks and a kind of maple showing only a few broad green leaves.

  For some time now, Reynard had observed the growth overlying the leaf litter like a great carpet—a dark red fuzziness unlike any he had seen in England. He pushed his foot into the softness, finding it more alive and springy than he had expected, given the sad aspect of the trees. Furthermore, when the dusk light was right, he could see wide whorls and other patterns in the moss, and now these were outlined by a slanting shaft of sun and sparkling rubies of rain.

  He wondered how long it would be until evidence arrived of the King of Troy’s activities . . . Bones and sticks wrapped in ghostly illusion. Strangely, he was looking forward to something changing—something that might bring back Widsith and Valdis. He wondered if the King of Troy knew where they were, and perhaps had helped them after the flood from the Ravine.

  Kern towered over him. On the other side, leaning against a moldy gray trunk, the Sea Traveler sighed. He patted the trunk. “These trees look to make a station on the ancient trod. They have sheltered Land Travelers for thousands of years. The ones we are waiting for could sense and find us here.”

  Kern squinted up and out at the dead branches. “Live ones, I hope,” he grumbled.

  Reynard now paid attention to another aspect of the woods they had seen since leaving the quarry, and in fact since they had survived the flood from the Ravine—silence. No animals called, nothing flew or buzzed. Other than a dry rustling, nothing here seemed interested in making itself known.

  He could feel a pressure, what seemed like a breeze blowing, but between the wide trunks of the trees, likely it was no movement of air but a draft that passed through flesh and bone like water through a net and caught only thoughts, spirits—soul. That strange waft made him feel like he was dying. He had felt that way on the hoy for days before being rescued.

  The path spread ahead of them, winding dirt and leaves, wide enough for two horses and no more.

  “Is this still a trod, then?” Reynard asked.

  “Not to my knowing,” Kaiholo said. “But it may be all we will be allowed to see, until our whole company arrives.”

  Then horns blew. The horns seemed to carry their sound on the same breezes that tugged at Reynard’s spirits, and made him feel like he was about to throw up.

  “Land Travelers,” Kern said.

  “No!” Kaiholo said. “Much more. Hide!”

  They did their best to obscure their presence, and even the horses stepped back into the shadows of the three trees. From the southwest came another chill breeze. They saw three figures walking along the ancient trod. First came the scout Anutha, shuffling along as if half asleep, her leather garments torn, and face bruised and swollen. She clutched an arm to her chest in a leather sling. Behind her followed Widsith, and Reynard stifled an urge to cry out for him . . . and then came Valdis, at which his heart seemed to freeze in his chest.

  For she was followed by a figure Reynard had seen only once before—

  Not much larger than any man, and dark upon dark, with the same mirror-glints in his eyes as Valdis, but an invisible aura of tremendous power and time, and a manner of weary boredom . . .

  The Afrique, Calybo. The high Eater who had restored Widsith on the beach walked close behind the Pilgrim, looking not just bored but wary, as if this entire situation threatened all he valued, not that he had a soul to value anything but his duty, and perhaps not even that, now.

  Kern rose. “I will greet them,” the giant said. “Nobody else break cover.”

  He walked through the gathering shadows of dusk to the edge of the trod and waited there until the four had come close enough to hail.

  At his call, Calybo moved to the front of their line, saying nothing but inspecting the giant as if he might be a tiger. Then the Afrique bowed his head and allowed Anutha to step closer. She looked up and widened her eyes, as if waking from a bad dream.

  “Art thou alone?” she asked, her voice hoarse.

  Kern did not answer this, but said, “Where have ye all been?”

  The high Eater looked directly at the sheltering triplet of trees as if they covered nothing and concealed no one and said, “Valdis, be these the ones Guldreth assigned to thy care?”

  Valdis, herself little more than another shadow in the dusk, answered, “All are here. The others fear you.”

  “Well they should,” Calybo said. “For I am angry. I have been called back from the coast and have lost any hope of escape.”

  Widsith said, “Fox-boy! Come forward.”

  Kern waved his arm, c
alling on Reynard to break cover like a fawn and join the group. Anutha’s face was a mess of clotted blood, bruises, one eye swollen half shut. Though her step was uneven and her color poor, she still had a presence that belied any evidence of defeat; she still fought, this time against the pain of her injuries.

  “Who treated ye so?” Kaiholo asked. “We saw scourers . . . All dead.”

  Anutha touched her bleeding cheek as if to close it up again and said, “The same roving bands that killed most of our scouts and many blunters. Calybo caught and reduced them before they could kill us. He found us in what was left of the village and took us around the Ravine, over the high ledge, and through the dying woods. Long have I feared meeting him . . . but now he hath saved so many!”

  “What happened in Zodiako?” Reynard asked, again feeling that winter wind in his chest.

  “The Spaniard,” Anutha said. “He found another army, or it found him. The army of Annwyn and the Sister Queens. All left in the town fought, and I saw many die. The rest have been gathered up by scourers and taken on great rafts out to sea, possibly to the eastern shore.”

  “There is no shame in facing disaster and living,” Kaiholo said.

  “We fled Zodiako,” Anutha continued, “over the ridge, along the ledge, and past what was left of the Ravine.”

  “What about the drakes?” Reynard asked.

  “Many dead, the rest . . . I know not. Dana seems to have escaped and taken her blunters with her.” She held up her pack and removed a heavy, clinking sack. “Maggie gave me these before we last saw each other. She said they were from the last of this year’s nymphs.” She reached into the sack and removed a small glass vial, stoppered and waxed. Reaching in again, she withdrew a second. “She did not believe any in the village would be left to fight, and I had the best chance of escape.” Anutha made a face that betrayed her sorrow and self-recrimination. “The King of Troy came out of his woods and joined the fray with all his powers, dozens of his tricks that deluded, chivvied, and fought well . . . but they could do little to defeat the armies of the Sister Queens. I did not see what became of him.”