Грег Бир - The Unfinished Land

The youngest, Nem, short for Nehemiah, gaunt and careworn, stood beside Gareth, with his bushy red hair and outsized chest and shoulders. On the other side of Maggie, shifting on weary legs, was tall, flat-nosed Sondheim, his flaxen hair now tangled and greasy, and MacClain, hazel eyes still darting and sharp, hair still dark brown, but also dirty with travel and worse… and desperately unkempt.

Calafi kept close to Reynard, suspicious of these newcomers, until he introduced them and told her of their time blunting drakes. Then she smiled and stood up on her toes like a fine lady, holding out her hands and dancing around Maggie.

“We have been following Troy,” Maggie said, also slowly turning, arms out, looking down on the girl. Gareth opened his slung pouch with a wry grin, revealing to Calafi and then the rest dozens of yellow tallow candles. “The magician is dead, but lives on in bone-wives. They have guided us from the western shore to these cities. Have you seen them?”

“We have seen evidence he is not yet done with us,” Widsith said, and gave Maggie a great hug, which she winced to receive, but then smiled and patted his arm.

“I have not the benefit of Calybo’s ministrations,” she said. “Travel is hard for me. There have been no Eaters in Zodiako since you left, and none just beneath the sky. Maeve is gone… That you have heard? She passed before the final assault.”

Widsith’s eyes grew misty, and he nodded.

Another figure came out of the gate and approached them at a run, and Dana stood with them, holding Reynard’s hands in hers, and then Widsith’s. Kern stood aside, as did Valdis, but Calafi hugged them all.

“You know Nikolias,” the Pilgrim said. “He hath served Zodiako as guide and go-between many decades.”

“I am better acquainted with Yuchil,” Maggie said. “But it is a pleasure to meet the man who serveth her!”

Nikolias could not look away from the krater, or the thin mist that rose from its center and twined upward like a vine made of clouds. “What happened here? Have the armies of the Sister Queens killed them all?”

“No,” Maggie said. “There is worse news than that, we fear.”

“Let us build a fire,” Gareth said, “and cook the last of our food, even in this heat. Whatever our appetite, we have need of our strength, for we have cold tales to tell.”

GARETH SET A fire just big enough to heat their soup of dried fish and seaweed. He then took a candle out of his bag and carried the flame to its wick with a taper. Calafi squatted and stared steadily at the flame. It wavered as if breathed upon.

“Troy’s bone-wives have fared wide,” Maggie said, “and acted, like us, as scouts.”

“How many could he raise?” Reynard asked.

“As a dead man, many more than when he was alive,” Maggie said. “He had caches of bones and sticks across the island, around the chafing waste and near the krater cities. He sometimes sent his figures out to spy… and now those stores are all in motion.”

Nikolias crossed himself. Reynard had seen enough Traveler magic to wonder at the old man’s gesture, but decided that Troy’s wonders might have origins earlier even than Travelers’.

“Still, I take comfort in his aid and presence,” Widsith said.

“Oh, of a certes… he is not present, ” Maggie said. “He only work-eth his way like a man winding his clocks.”

“At any rate, we keep our promise to him,” Gareth said. The candles made a small rumble in his bag.

Maggie turned to where Valdis had settled, under a dark cloak, caring nothing for the heat. “I have heard Eaters could not share time with Troy,” she said. “Why not?”

“The magician made his vows with others,” Valdis said. “And Eaters have another role to play.”

“When will we see our drakes?” Calafi asked Dana sharply.

“Later,” Dana said. “The company of drakes intent on vengeance doth disturb and unsettle those still partnered.”

“How much later?” Calafi persisted. “I am a small thing, and need protection.”

“And who gave you that benison?” Sondheim asked.

“Anutha chose around the wagon and gave them to both Travelers and to us, and also to Kern,” Widsith said. “She seemed to know what she was doing.”

“But at least one Eater hath the benison,” Sondheim said darkly, “yet did not share time with her!”

Widsith intervened. “Ropes of destiny we cannot see rig this ship,” he said.

The sun rose along the edge of a tower and hung there, halfway up, as if it enjoyed this vantage and would never leave, and they sweated, all but Valdis, with the heat from the sun and from the ground below.

Maggie unfolded and lay on her side. Her face showed relief; she seemed to find the heat rising through the soil soothing for her aches, like the warm waters in Bath, perhaps—which Reynard had heard of but never experienced.

She continued. “The hard news is that the Crafters are not being killed by the Sister Queens’ armies. Rather, for many years now, they have been dying of their own kind of age. One by one, their time is ending, and all who serve them have been set free to find their own protection. And that makes the Sister Queens angry, for they hate the Crafters and their servants, but had hoped to kill monsters in their lair—and mostly they find only dead monsters, and weak and dismayed human beings.”

“Have the Sister Queens sent their wise ones to look upon the dead Crafters?” Nikolias wondered.

Nobody knew.

“All that can be said this day,” Dana said, “is that our time and purpose on this island must be coming to a close. And that seemeth to include the time of the Sister Queens.”

All looked to Valdis. “And what about thy people?” Maggie asked, rolling over and rising on her elbow.

“Eaters have no place to go,” she said. “Nothing lies beyond the islands. I seek mine end, whatever it may mean.”

AS THE DAY seemed to wind down so slowly, they sought shade in the shadow of a tower, and decided to avoid travel in the ground’s rising heat. Nikolias built Calafi a bed out of broken brush and dried leaves, above the warmth of the ground, and arranged his long coat as shade, and she lay on it, seeming to sleep at midday.

An end was coming, Reynard thought—he hoped.

In Aldeburgh and the small towns around Southwold, he had sought books and learning, had been spurned by the local, so-called teachers and wise men, but now could understand their disdain. Possibly it was not so much disdain as alarm, fear, as if a demon lad had knocked on their doors…

But he remembered the truth of all those encounters, even after he had met the man with the white shadow. And within him, there had been no fear, no wish to inspire fear. Were he dangerous, he had not yet been fused, nor the fuse lit.

Was the fuse burning now?

Was he living out the length of a candle?

The sun slowly descended beyond the clouds in the southwest, and the sky settled down as clear as he had ever seen it either in England, on the sea, or in Zodiako, free of both dust and cloud, blazing with stars and with something else he had heard of but rarely seen: great vague sheets of crackling light. Green and brown and pink ribbons rippled over the mountains and perhaps the entire north, illuminating the land around them bright as twilight, but coldly. Away and above this world, coldly, coldly.

Still, the heat in the ground remained, enough to raise a sweat, but Widsith and Nikolias and Kern approached and asked if Reynard still wished to see the krater. Suddenly, that seemed important to them all.