Грег Бир - The Unfinished Land

EAST ALONG THE great blade of rock, evening mist was clearing from the caged seed city.

Andalo and Sany spoke with Nikolias away from the wagon.

Widsith had avoided Reynard through the night, but now stood beside him and listened to the guards. “Half of the Sister Queens’ armies are most likely returning from their conquest of Zodiako and the southwestern shores, by sea and any available paths overland,” the Pilgrim said. “The Travelers will assume that all their ways back will be watched by the Queens’ pickets, ready to summon more troops than we can possibly defeat.”

“The Travelers wish to keep going east?”

“Nikolias’s only choice. Yuchil’s as well, given how many soldiers may surround this half of the island. We know not how many Travelers remain in these lands, if they no longer serve the Crafters. But there might be some.” Widsith studied the boy. “Nikolias may hope he can pass thee to the next group of servants, if they find any—and then, rewarded with food and water, turn about and head south or west.”

“Is there an escape that way?”

“None that I know,” Widsith said.

“The servants would trade me… to whom, for what advantage?”

Widsith shook his head.

Reynard drew himself up. “Calafi says it must be so.”

“That girl… I have not seen her like. I would ask Yuchil where she was found, but I wonder if any of them could answer.”

Nikolias approached and informed them they would try to roll their wagon a few miles along the blade of rock before nightfall. “Beyond, none knoweth what will be found.”

Andalo and Bela came to them next. “We have seen many footprints,” Andalo said. “Heading east—being herded by horsemen.”

“The servants of this city?” Widsith asked.

“Future slaves for the Queens,” Bela said darkly. “But they may not be able to feed or keep them all. We fear…”

He did not finish his fear. There was no need.

Calafi approached Reynard from behind, surprising him, and took his hand in hers. “I’ll be with thee, whatever they decide,” she whispered, looking up into his face.

Sophia brought the horses forward, and all mounted and followed the wagon. Calafi stayed close to Reynard and his horse. She never rode, always walked, but now she had ceased her dances and her spells, and her red tresses were knotted, for she refused the attentions of Yuchil and Sophia.

Seeing the mute swarms of birds had made the Travelers even more gloomy, as if the silent, wheeling flocks presaged their own doom, the end of their own worlds of language and meaning…

Their own silence.

Valdis, as always, seemed to find the comfort of shadow.

The garden lands, beyond the eastern end of the high, sharp ridge, became a jumble of uplifted plates of rock, punctuated by white hexagonal pillars, as if a great coat of varnish had been laid over the ground and broken by bones rising from below.

Yuchil raised her hand, and the wagon stopped. The guards dismounted and passed their horses’ reins to Calafi, then opened doors in the side of the wagon and scooped out hay in great fist-clumps, while the Travelers on foot arranged their blankets and laid out cloth bags of provisions.

“They will feed the horses one fine meal,” Widsith said. “What doth that wagon truly contain?”

“Whatever Yuchil needeth,” Kaiholo said. “And that which her children require. For a while!”

Reynard had wondered if perhaps the wagon’s stores were endless. How much magic did Travelers possess? If they commanded words, could they turn words into goods—into food and water?

The first word is the first mother. It is not her breast or larder. Words only guide and describe. They do not fulfill. Look to the silence of the birds! Their songs have never filled their stomachs.

Somehow, hearing that inner voice that still was not precisely his own, he felt ashamed of his hopes.

They moved higher up the rocky fields and into low clouds that made these places even more ghostly and unreal, not that any of it seemed real to Reynard.

“Where are the drakes?” Andalo asked Widsith. “I would have mine close!”

“That I do not know,” the Pilgrim said.

“Can we sense their wills, their direction?”

“Not yet,” Widsith said.

Kaiholo touched his jaw. “Perhaps they arrive only when we have true need.”

Kern studied the gray skies with a broad scowl. “If the southwestern coast is conquered, many drakes are either dead or without masters. And a drake without a master is a dangerous enemy. Who hath killed its master, it must kill before its season is done.”

Stars lit their way, but not many, and no moon, and still the wagon rolled on through the night, leaving the first krater city behind. And still they had not seen a krater, or crossed the boundary of the chafing whiteness.

But they could clearly see in the dirt and along the crusted rock the prints of many feet and hooves.

“I wonder they gave in without a fight,” Andalo said.

“Maybe they had hope of rescue,” Reynard said.

“From us?” Bela asked. “We were ever the lesser of Travelers. I wonder if perhaps they believed the island could not live on without them.”

Reynard was reminded of those inland farmers and lords in England, who did not believe in oceans and far lands, or the peril they might bring.

They paused in the dark and stumbled about to water the horses. Widsith found an old sailor’s rest. Sleep or rest of any sort seemed impossible to Reynard, who felt an inner pain he had never known before—a grief not just for lost family and friends, but for all those who might come after, for all who might arise in times of peace and prosperity—for he saw that such times might never come again, would never come again—and he was to blame!

He rolled over in his blanket, now dusty and itchy and miserable, and saw that Kaiholo and many of the Travelers were already up and about before the muted sunrise, off to brew tea and make thin soup. Reynard closed his eyes and squeezed them tight, as if to see into the greater darkness behind them—and when he looked again, there was Yuchil, holding out a cup of tea. Widsith had not yet stirred. Reynard sat up, took the cup, and sipped slowly, while she carried over a silken pillow and laid it beside him. She sat with a ladylike sigh.

“Thou still knowest not why thou art here,” she said. “Whilst brave enough in battle, it be not thy calling to fight and kill.”

“No,” he said. “That my family hath never required of me.”

“And yet thine uncle took thee out to sea,” she said.

“To carry food to our ships. We are none of us warriors.”

“Nor, except in extremes, are my people,” Yuchil said. She shook her head. “Some carry swords, and will defend us, but they are not true warriors. They cannot be true warriors unless they are willing to begin wars, and they are not. But do not tell our young men I said that.”

Reynard nodded. “I have been told I come from a long line of tinkers and wanderers,” he said, hoping for better or at least clearer judgment than that from the King of Troy. “Can you tell if that is true?”

“Oh, there are many in England descended from the Rom and other Travelers. The Travelers have, after all, spread far and wide, and proven themselves as essential to kings and queens as any warriors. Not only do they bring the languages that tell the stories kings and queens love to hear, of themselves and others like them, greater still… But those languages convey power and strategy. Before the Travelers reached any of the lands we know, any of the lands that Crafters controlled and shaped, there was only base instinct and forgetting. Now… there is change and suffering and war. Which is better, think’st thou?”