Грег Бир - The Unfinished Land

“He is but a fraud,” Reynard said to Widsith, speaking more in anger than conviction. He had no idea how they had been fooled and was ashamed at being frightened.

Widsith stepped lightly on Reynard’s left foot. “The King is neither fraud nor harmless,” he warned. “And I bring thee to appear before him, to acquaint and ask, witness and judge—not anger or insult.”

The King of Troy, stooped and quaking like an aspen in a breeze, waved his ancient hand for them to follow, and said, “I venture that thou, Widsith, hadst a worse look till Guldreth sent her minister. Didst thou know this Pilgrim then, Young Fox?”

“He was very old,” Reynard said as they fell in behind the magician and he led them on a straight path between the trees, though no path had been visible minutes before.

“And now he is not,” the King said. “My wonders, gentlemen, do not involve Eaters. Eaters are not enchanted by my works, nor by me—though they borrow of my time, of course. They borrow time from most on this shore. But from me, they take little, as I am so old and my time is stretched so thin, like wine puddled in rain! Compared to Widsith, I am a lamb, and he is a wolf, fed by those who keep and value him.” He grinned, entirely un-lamb-like, at both of them. “Is that thy plan, too, young Fox?”

Widsith raised his hand and swept the air around Reynard. “Is the boy followed?” he asked.

The King of Troy paused on the path and held out his own hand to stop Widsith’s sweeps. “Do not so disturb his airs,” he said, perturbed. “Mine own thoughts are more fog than substance, nowadays.”

“I asked, is the boy followed?”

“No, his line is clean,” the King said, but then looked up at Widsith. “Wait. There is something… Something I do not credit!”

“And what would that be?” Widsith asked him.

“Hath this boy ever consorted with a Crafter, or something very close to a Crafter?”

Widsith shook his head. “No, of course that would be impossible for a mortal. He hath been touched by an Eater, that is all. And I doubt the Eaters have contact with such, either.”

“Well, there is a trace… Hast thou in mind odd presences? Visitations?”

Widsith looked to Reynard.

“No,” Reynard lied, not yet trusting either the Pilgrim or the King of Troy.

IN THE DARK of the woods, stray beams dropped pools of silvery light on what appeared to be nine or ten kitchen middens or, charitably, caches of firewood larded with the bones of cattle and horses and pigs—all but skulls—and draped rags, ornamented around the base with rusty iron pots, the slop and scrap of many a meal. Reynard remembered the spectral ladies that had taunted him in the wood, and how these dames had, in fade of sun, revealed inner workings of bone and stick, like marionettes wrapped in dream and strung with flesh and hair.

“Is this your trick yard?” Reynard asked.

“So some claim,” the King of Troy answered, and pointed them toward a lean-to within the ring of six wide-rooted and towering oaks. “Thou bring’st the boy for my denial, or my confirmation?”

“I was not myself sure,” Widsith said. “It has been so very long since we have seen the like.”

“By which thou mean’st, one who attracts the special attentions of Eaters? And like thee, mayhaps hath value to the Crafters? And this from a man who has never had an audience with one!”

“No,” Widsith admitted.

“Well, I will think on’t. Thine instincts may be good. What I must ask is, why have the Travelers not yet gathered this boy into their wagons and ferried him to the kraters? If he is their duty and treasure, more than you, they have always moved quick to take advantage. Or is there something I know not, that you do?”

He stared accusingly at Widsith, then Reynard, and Reynard flushed at the suspicion that the magician knew he had lied.

“My question for thee is, would he be of so much use to the Travelers that they would imperil this island by bringing him here, along with Spaniards—along with me?” Widsith asked.

“Not the Travelers as such, but others, those just beneath the sky, who also serve Crafters. I can see a little into thy thoughts,” Troy said to the boy. “Thou hadst a woman who taught thee the languages of Ogmios?”

Reynard nodded. Stone people.

“But your line is clean,” the magician said. “Thou dost remember, but I cannot see. Well, whatever these truths add to, I would take the boy to those better able to appraise him, and I would do it soon. I am busy enough here, Pilgrim, and will venture no further opinion.”

“I see thy labors, magician,” Widsith said. “Too many balls to juggle, doubtless, what with distracting the Spanish, or the Spanish arriving here at all, and now, with the village.”

“I am perplex’d by this, and likely many others around thee,” the King said. “Was Cardoza aware of this island? If so, who told him, and who told that one? Thou seemest most immediate, Pilgrim. Didst thou?”

Widsith made a bitter face. “Cardoza would not have been my choice for a leader of troops. No, I did not tell him.”

“And yet he is here.” The King of Troy stared around at the trees, the leaf-covered ground, and blew out between pressed lips, a blatting appropriate for neither him nor the circumstance. “There are many layers on this island,” he said. “I see some, not all. If thou, fisher­boy, fox-boy, canst see deeper, down to the base, that would indeed make thee a treasure. Thou couldst control immense magicks, not look-see-wonders. What dost thou perceive beneath this seeming wood?” He waved his arms and performed a faltering, clumsy pirouette, then peered goggle-eyed at an astonished Reynard. “Well?”

Widsith looked between them.

“I know nothing of layers,” Reynard said. “God made the world and put us in it.”

“Ah,” the King said. “Be that what thy grandmother taught thee?”

“No,” Reynard said. “She did not speak of Bible matters.”

“Didst thou know that by grace of the Crafters, and Hel, insects once ruled, that our world was an insect world?”

Reynard, aghast, was too stunned to answer or play their game.

The King waved his hand again around the woods. “And of course spiders and crabs and the like. What a fine mystery that is! We like it not that Hel might have for a time resembled a crab, or a grasshopper, and shared their thoughts and hungers. But she shared not our prejudices in any way. I would imagine that crabs, spiders, and insects were experts at ogham! So many pointed legs to align on a branch or trunk. And they were far smarter than we can now imagine, and larger as well. The drakes are but a remnant of that world. And beneath those insect masters, in the earliest layer—”

A deep, loud voice grated from the trees beyond the lean-to. “Are we not engaged, old Troy?” the voice roughed and gargled. “Who are these that distract thee?”

The King tried to usher them away from that copse. “Pilgrim, ’tis awkward for thee here. And more awkward for this boy, at the moment. I wish thy company and witness, but God’s truth, best ye be off to Maeve and serve her needs.”

Widsith peered with an intense frown into the shadows behind the King’s rude shelter. “Why the toppling sweven, Troy, and why the red-and-white trim and fringe?” he asked.

“Send them to the Inferno!” the voice called, followed by a coughing howl like a jungle cat. “Do it, and show me next the way!”

Troy seemed bemused. “A stray spirit of Dante,” he said, “who once visited me when his poetry lagged and sputtered.”