The Unfinished Land Read online

  “And the Crafters—for that was what they would be called—heard the human words, and saw how those who spoke moved and conveyed, their voices carrying meaning as well as story . . .

  “And it was here that they conceived of a string of stories that would move and compel, and help shape form as well as motion. Humans came to call this ‘destiny,’ but also ‘history.’

  “Queen Hel watched the Crafters as they took apart some of these visitors and stared deep into their flesh, and there found other languages that defined lives and shapes, and which history would then change. And they saw the potential in that flesh, in those bodies.

  “For in the beginning was the word both of sound and flesh. And Hel was pleased, for she saw creation was underway at last, and change upon change would be our greatest story and worthy of many songs.”

  Calafi had listened to this with restless fidgets, but now she crawled over to Reynard and grasped his arm, the arm holding the cup, and sloshed it into the dirt. Then she ran her fingers along that arm, in bunches of two, then three, then one, then four.

  “Ogmios speaks through those who taught you when you were a child,” Yuchil said. “Calafi has felt the same fingers and many of the same messages.”

  The young girl looked upon him with wide and somber eyes. “Valdis felt them when she was mine age, I think,” she said. “And that is why she is here, even though she is an Eater, and not a high one, either. In this she knows more than Calybo or Guldreth or any of those just beneath the sky.”

  Then she got up and ran away. Yuchil watched her sadly.

  “I would wish both of ye child time,” she said. “But I fear neither will ever know such.”

  Nikolias followed the girl to a mossy gray rock-thrust wall along one side of the rough road and spoke to her in low tones. She in turn rolled her eyes up into her head and began to tremble, and Nikolias held her shoulders to steady her. After she collapsed in his arms and appeared to sleep, he brought her back to the wagon and put her in the charge of Sany and Bela. “For a time, she must be apart from Yuchil and Sophia,” he said, but did not explain.

  Nikolias came to Widsith and nodded at him, then at Reynard. “A message sings in this krater air that our girl hears and interprets. We are at some disadvantage here, but not yet defeated. Before we cross this boundary, we must stay and adjust . . . as we did before.”

  Reynard could sense no difference in the air they were breathing and wondered why they had to linger so long—hours extending into two days.

  After two nights, as he tried to sleep, he looked deep into his memories and thought he detected a kind of change in coloration, as if the tinting varnish of an old painting were being removed. Was that the effect they desired, taking these airs? But when morning came, all seemed much the same—as uncertain, strange, and of ill prospect as before.

  The young warriors entered the wagon with grim smiles and brought forth what they needed: a clutch of fine swords and three long yew bows very like those Reynard had seen in England, but also a composite horn bow Widsith said was found more often on the great plains of Asia. To Reynard’s wonder and a smile from Kern, they handed the giant a sword as long as he was tall.

  These new weapons were all blessed by Yuchil and Nikolias, then by Kaiholo—and Calafi ran through their ranks, making a sort of inspection and drawing smiles, to which she responded with a serious glower. Reynard thought of Yuchil’s judgment. Perhaps she was wrong.

  Kaiholo blew out his breath and settled into a far island prayer.

  The First Krater

  * * *

  ANDALO AND SANY rode ahead and around an old wall of bone-colored blocks. When they returned, their eyes were wide and voices subdued. “We have a few miles before we must abandon the wagon,” Andalo said. “And we need guidance.”

  “Why is that?” Nikolias asked.

  “There is indeed a krater ahead,” Andalo said, and Sany nodded.

  “Ah,” Nikolias said. “The Crafter the city served.”

  “But they kept it at a distance!” Sany said. “Do we proceed? Do we go to the edge and look in?”

  “Is it like the jars of dead Crafters . . . bringing on madness?” Andalo asked.

  Yuchil, Bela, Kaiholo, and Kern approached them, and Yuchil asked, “What did you hear, what did you see?”

  “There was a cloud over the land, casting a long shadow . . . but we heard nothing. A few hundred yards from the krater, beyond the last of the road, there is a cleft in the earth and jumbles of gold-flecked granite.”

  “A quarry of souls, likely,” Yuchil said.

  “Now depleted and no longer mined,” Kaiholo concluded.

  “The houses of those who served the miners, those are empty and in ruins,” Andalo said.

  “And still no bodies,” Sany said, looking askance. “But all along the way . . . footprints.”

  Yuchil said. “Where there are no servants, likely there is no living Crafter.”

  “But even dead Crafters bring on madness!” Andalo said.

  To which Sany ventured, “Mayhaps the Crafter is merely hiding! It could jump out at us . . .”

  “Crafters are not bogey spirits,” Kaiholo said. “They likely had a hand in your history and lineage, and even your reason for being. Respect them.”

  “Then what do we do?”

  “Observe that cloud,” Nikolias said. “I have heard of such. The breath of Crafters makes its own weather, which can last for many seasons.”

  Yuchil withdrew to the wagon and joined Calafi.

  Reynard looked to the path ahead. A tall candle burned in the middle of the rocky way. Widsith saw it as well, but none of the others.

  Deep Granite

  * * *

  THEY PAUSED AGAIN to consider how to divide their group. Soon the wagon would have to go back, since it could not go on—go back to whatever fate. Bela brought scraps of wood, and Sophia and Yuchil lit a small fire and again made tea.

  Valdis stood beside her black horse, away from the glow of the fire, silent as the land. Reynard could not see her face, she had found such deep shadow to cloak herself.

  Nikolias gathered them around this last fire, before they doused it and scattered the ashes. “Do not look beyond the path we follow,” he advised. “The servants of Crafters, when dead, persist. Their spirits cannot leave this island until all the Crafters are gone, and some say they are hungry for their freedom and might displace our own souls to get it—hiding in cover to fool Hel. But we have never experienced this. Even as Travelers, we know only what we have been told, meeting with those who serve—with never an explanation that satisfied.”

  Yuchil sniffed at this, as if it were possible she did not agree. But then, no doubt she would be riding the wagon back to wherever it must go, along with Sophia and the remaining children, all but Calafi seen so seldom. She afforded Reynard a sad glance, as if challenging his conscience on the importance so many seemed to bestow upon him.

  “I would gladly give all to be back where trods watch out for us and none serve Crafters,” Bela said.

  Then, at Nikolias’s instruction, Andalo and Sany and Sophia urged the horses to pull the wagon up a slight incline. From this last viable pathway, they could see the edge of the crusted, slicing lava that appeared to surround the krater.

  Widsith said, “I see the cold rock that once spread hot from mountains of fire, but no mountains from which it would pour. Agni Most Foul is many hundreds of miles from here.”

  Nikolias said, “Long ago the sky rained fire, and the chafing waste was the center of a vast upheaval, neither hot nor cold. Each of the seven islands felt such throes.”

  Another desolate and scattered village confirmed what Sany and Bela had found—emptiness and more silence. Reynard and the Pilgrim briefly explored a shallow cleft in which gold-flecked stone had once been quarried and split into sheets—all broken now. Whatever souls had been described by the patterns in these sheets were now lost.

  Widsith picked up a piece the size
of his hand, and held it up for Reynard’s inspection.

  “I see an eye,” Reynard said.

  “Half an eye,” Widsith said. “And no life in it.”

  They returned to the group and the wagon. Calafi resumed her place beside Reynard. Valdis also kept close, and her form seemed more defined, as if it was important for them all to know where she was and what she was doing. As if she was becoming more aware of a part she would soon play. She faced the direction the wagon was facing, perhaps studying their prospects.

  Reynard looked at her for a time, as if he would attract her own gaze—not sure why he wanted to or should.

  Calafi twirled her greasy hair in dirty fingers, and then grinned at him, looking remarkably like a young witch.

  * * *

  On the horizon rose a cold gray cloud, dropping silent flurries of snow on the land beneath.

  “The krater,” Yuchil said.

  “This is the nearest of twelve that ring the chafing waste,” Valdis said. “It is empty.”

  “We will make sure,” Nikolias said. “Who will accompany me? Sany, Andalo—you stay here.”

  Widsith, Reynard, Kern, and Kaiholo gathered beside him. Sophia stepped down from the wagon and handed Calafi her leather apron. “I’ll go with thee. For once, I would like to know what we have been doing here.”

  Yuchil reluctantly gave permission and handed her a short sword. Then she took the tethers of the horses and tied them, Eater and human mounts, to the back of the wagon. The wagon team stamped their hooves.

  Widsith and Nikolias walked in silence between the broken stone walls and decaying huts. Reynard kept close to Kern and Kaiholo. Sophia followed them. The edge of the krater was about a mile and a half away, and the air became so cold its slow churn seemed to burn their faces.

  Kaiholo and Kern simultaneously pointed to broken slabs of the same gold-flecked stone they had found fragments of in the first quarry.

  “More faces and eyes for more worlds,” Kern said. “Now forgotten. The master of this quarry shall never return.”

  Sophia was the first to spot, beyond the quarry, before they could peer into the krater’s depression, a disk very like the disks they had seen in Guldreth’s dwelling—the ones they had heard being destroyed. It lay wedged in the crust like a coin fallen from a purse.

  Kaiholo and Kern walked around it, followed by Sophia.

  “Is this one of their dreams?” she asked, holding out her sword as if the disk might be dangerous.

  “Very like,” Kaiholo said.

  “You have seen many, have you not?” Sophia asked him. “You were the high one’s consort.”

  “She had a number of consorts,” Kern said. “None of us knew all.”

  Kaiholo stepped closer, knelt, and peered into its depths. Kern stooped over and bent awkwardly to peer from the other side. “This way, it is dark and blank,” he said.

  “Faded or never filled,” Kaiholo said. “Is all here now dead and empty?”

  Nobody spoke. The answer was sadly obvious.

  They walked the last few dozen yards to the rim. The stony krater was about a thousand yards wide, and curved down, at its center, about a hundred feet. It seemed at first to have a smooth surface, but then Widsith pointed out shallow grooves or trackways drawn from its center and spreading in all directions, intersecting, fading and ending at the rim. At the outer extent of each track was a wide gray spot about the width of a disk. These spots, as if venting, pushed up ghostly pillars of cloud, flaking down snow—snow that did not stick, and never seemed to be there at all.

  Nikolias said, shaking his head, “Our fellows told us that they tended to Crafter needs from afar—and never looked into their homes on Earth, as we do now.”

  “What sort of beast would take comfort here, under storm or sun, no shade, no protection?” Sophia asked.

  Reynard followed the ghostly pillars rising up and up, until they spread out and seemed to form knots. Strange knots, tied in ways that drew his eyes in impossible directions. He covered his face with his hands, then slowly parted his fingers, like a child, and looked again, but saw only a final canopy of cloud and drifting shavings of something that might have been ash, or might still be snow . . . he could not tell.

  “No beast at all,” Nikolias said. “But one that could make its own worlds and forge its own protections . . . of which we see only marks.”

  “Where did it go?” Sophia asked.

  Nikolias said, “It could not leave here and live.”

  “How did they move a dead Crafter?” Reynard asked.

  Kern said, “I have heard of cloaking and many wagons, out to the plain of jars, a long journey for such a burden.”

  “Did your people have a hand in that?” Kaiholo asked.

  Kern shook his head; he did not know all.

  “How long hath it been dead?” Sophia asked, a better question, Reynard thought, though it guaranteed bad dreams later. All but Reynard and Widsith drew designs on their arms and across their chests, which Reynard had come to recognize as a three-barred cross—a symbol of Hel.

  Kaiholo looked through the columns of vapor and across the krater. “Some are watching,” he said.

  Nikolias looked and shook his head. “Thine eyes are better than mine.”

  “Maybe four or five,” Kaiholo said. “Now they are hiding, or gone.”

  The Dividing

  * * *

  AS YUCHIL and Calafi fed the horses, Nikolias and Andalo walked around the wagon, speaking in low tones. Nikolias approached Reynard and Widsith a few minutes later. “It is time for the wagon to leave. Soon dawn will light the way.”

  “Where will we go?” Sophia asked, with a sharp look at Reynard, to which he did not know how to respond. “There is no way back!” Yuchil came down from the wagon and joined Nikolias.

  “For now, we divide,” Nikolias said.

  Reynard looked at his feet and his worn shoes. He could not think of a reason why he had not run off and left them, rather than explore the city. They could all return if he simply ceased to exist. His insides felt as knotted as the cloud that rose from the krater.

  But now, he knew, there would be no fleeing. He could feel the tightening of his life, the reduction of his choices—the focus of his companions, those he had likened to his family in Southwold. When his uncle had called for him to board the hoy, he had not escaped. He could not flee now. All he could hope for was that soon he would know why he could never keep a family for long.

  “Calafi and I will go on. The rest of our family will stay. The wagon will return to the fields around the first city,” Nikolias said. “There should be water enough and wood to last until we rejoin. Yuchil has stores for a few days.” With a look of sorrow and concern, Yuchil ran her fingers along his arm. He smiled assurance and returned the gesture. Calafi looked up at them, silent and serious. “Andalo will protect them with his drake—when it arrives. And we will leave our horses. This land will be rough on horses.”

  Yuchil and Nikolias kissed and made their farewells as everybody else went about their preparations. Calafi stood away from all, but watching, small, her shoulders low, eyes big, like a frightened rabbit.

  Yuchil swung the wagon around. Sophia helped the team to maneuver and roll on. Bela and Sany took the reins of the riderless horses and urged them along with clicks of their tongues and light songs. The Eater horses screeched their night cries as they passed out of sight of Valdis.

  With fewer supplies, and no access to Yuchil’s magical stores, it was obvious their time was limited—that they must find, inside a day or two, those who might still exist to receive Reynard. They did not see the figures that Kaiholo had spotted earlier, nor anyone else—this land felt and sounded empty, and as they walked on, was plagued by drifts of salty dust that stung their eyes and made them sneeze.

  “Salt is creation,” Kaiholo said, folding a cloth over his mouth. His next words were muffled and accompanied by a sardonic squint. “All the seas are salt. We have salt i
n our blood. Why doth it have to creep into all our holes and sting?”

  Widsith and the giant also covered their faces with a cloth. The Pilgrim dug into his pocket and extended a kerchief to Reynard. All regarded the boy with barely concealed resentment. Their loyalties were being put to the test, and he did not know any more than they!

  Calafi danced around them, chanting her nonsense, looking more and more like a witch, and while small, not all that young. But she might have been distracting from their fear or anger.

  The reduced group followed Nikolias down the rugged trail. “We will avoid the krater,” he said.

  “Dig deep, fox-boy,” Widsith warned in a low tone, leaning close. “They need to be assured.”

  “I have nothing to give them!” Reynard cried. “Why did you find me, why did you save me?”

  “I saved you to save myself,” Widsith said, then fell back that the boy might simmer his anger alone.

  But Kaiholo, looking ashamed, took his place and walked beside him for a few minutes. “I do not question thee,” the Sea Traveler said. “I question this place, and all it asketh of us, and all it bringeth.”

  “Why did they not defend their city?” Reynard asked. “It was beautiful here!”

  “Signs of the island’s change might have overwhelmed.” Kaiholo shook his head forlornly. “What was left to them? A dead Crafter? What work was left to them, and what were they willing to die to defend? Perhaps they were waiting for us. Or you.”

  “Myself, who knoweth not my use, my quality or strength? I fear I have none!”

  “And yet, thou hast been judged by those who should know—Guldreth, for one.”

  Reynard gritted his teeth. There was nothing he could say—the Sea Traveler was trying to smooth the waves between them, but that magic was not natural for him.