Грег Бир - The Unfinished Land

“I do,” he answered.

Nikolias gathered them and asked Kern to fetch the blunters who seemed brave or foolhardy enough to do this.

A few minutes later, warily watching the sheets of light rippling like the curtains in God’s window, Gareth and Dana and Maggie joined them on a path that led from the tower where they had done some exploration, down to the krater, which none had yet seen and Maggie said, shaking her head, that she did not wish to see.

“But I will not let my charges and companions do something and refuse it myself.”

“There is someone else out there,” Kaiholo said, staring out over the rise that defined the nearest rim of the krater. Reynard and the others saw nothing even in the brightness of the aurorae and dusting of stars.

“In the krater?” Maggie asked him, and looked to Gareth and Sondheim.

“Something just over the edge. A man, I think—an old man. He popped up and looked at us, then dropped and vanished. Perhaps he is one of Troy’s.”

“I’ll go look,” Widsith said, rising and walking toward the rim. Reynard noticed the Pilgrim was hunching his shoulders. He got up to follow, but Valdis took hold of his hand, her grip cold and peppery—as if sparking. He had not realized she was within reach of him.

“Let the Pilgrim explore,” she said. “You will have other tasks.”

“Do you fear the Crafters?” Reynard asked, angry at being restrained.

“I do not fear Crafters,” she said, “but I do fear that no Crafters remain.”

Kaiholo looked at them both, then went after Widsith.

Widsith quickly regretted his boldness, and regretted it none the less when Kaiholo moved up beside him. They walked in step through the ruined buildings and the strange gardens that surrounded the krater. The half-burned shrubs and patches of flowers rustled under the high, cold twilight of the sky.

“What knowest thou of these gardens?” Kaiholo asked.

“We saw garden ruins around the first city,” Widsith said.

“And how do you know every city and every krater hath a garden?” Kaiholo asked.

“Guldreth so told me,” Widsith said.

“Very well,” Kaiholo said.

“She told you as well?”

The tattooed man afforded Widsith a single nod.

“In her intimacy?”

“Later,” Kaiholo said. “She favored me even more than Kern.”

“She favored Kern?”

“So Kern telleth the tale,” Kaiholo said.

“Well, I was gone a long time,” Widsith said, as if that explained anything.

“Not to her reckoning,” Kaiholo said.

The rising twists of cloud caught and bent the starlight beyond, and aurorae played with them both in strange and even beautiful ways. Beneath it all, and around the two men walking, the remains of the gardens tried to struggle back to their glory, shoving forth flowers without color, without real life, but perhaps hoping to return to a scented and brilliant past, reflecting, Kaiholo said, the creation in the krater.

“What was it like to live in these cities?” Widsith asked. “Did the wind blow the waste’s dust and salt all the time? How could they breathe?”

“Perhaps the gardens protected them,” Kaiholo said.

“Art thou sure thou sawest a man?”

“Yes,” Kaiholo said.

“What sort of man would survive the Sister Queens’ armies? Could Troy still be alive?”

“If Maggie says not, I doubt it,” Kaiholo said. “Perhaps this time, thou’lt report directly to a Crafter, Pilgrim.”

Reynard stuck to the curving path between walls of fading shrubs, riddling what seemed to be a maze—but one that was ever-changing. The sky over the path was shaded by arching brambles covered with small, wilting gray flowers. He looked up through the brambles at the stars and aurorae, screwing up his face as if about to scream—when a shadow took shape beside him and a hand again touched his arm.

“You should protect yourself,” Valdis said.

“I need to see what is in the krater. How can I be important if I am blind and ignorant?”

“Often enough here, ignorance is life,” Valdis said.

The brambles rose taller still, the maze leading off right and left along more shaded paths, sprouting more flowers—which smelled sickly sweet.

“Why are these plants moving and changing?” Reynard asked.

“Because they still have something to protect.”

“The giant and I speak of your time with the boy,” Kaiholo said. “We have many things to puzzle. How came it you found him in the wide waters, in time to save him?”

“Luck and fate,” Widsith said.

“And such an important lad,” Kaiholo said. “You delivered someone to Maeve and Maggie that allowed Zodiako to die proud and certain of a place in this island’s history. A great twist in any story, no?”

Widsith did not like this pitch. “His importance hath never been clear to me.”

“Thou liest,” Kaiholo said. “But look now to the krater. Will we find the man we seek, a dead monster—or a live monster?”

They slowly took those few steps and stood on the rim. Under the glowing curtains they could clearly make out the lines and serpentine patterns they had seen in the previous krater.

“Slugs leave trails across rocks,” Kaiholo murmured. “What do gods leave?”

Widsith pointed to a dark and rumpled mound in the center of the krater, the cloud ascending from this like steam from a bowl.

At the same moment, far above the cap of the clouds, a great blue and red banner grew with a crackling sizzle that made Widsith’s teeth hurt.

“The boy should be here, rather than us,” Kaiholo said.

“Quiet,” Widsith said. “Listen.”

A voice whose words they could not understand came from behind the shape—a gruff and aged voice, hoarse and weak.

“Not Troy, and certainly not a bone-wife,” Widsith murmured.

“Where be you from?” the voice called out.

“The southwest and Zodiako,” Widsith called back. “Who art thou?”

“Once a fellow of some import,” the voice replied. “Shall I show myself, or are you a danger and heavily armed?”

“Two swords,” Widsith said. “Both sheathed.”

A figure appeared from behind the rumpled mass, perhaps a hundred yards away, and walked unsteadily toward them. “Have you any food? Drink? Strong drink?”

Widsith held aloft his pouch, which contained some small pieces of stale bread. Kaiholo raised his water sack.

“That is all?” the man asked as he drew near.

“That is all,” Widsith said.

“I know you!” the man said to the Pilgrim. “I have worked on your journeys. You are Manuel, no? Yet not so old!”

“Restored, but once Manuel,” Widsith said. “Now I am called—”

“Widsith! Of course you would revive upon each return—that was the tale the Crafters launched generations ago. You are one who bringeth word of our labors!”

“Whose labors?” Kaiholo asked.

“Mine own, and many who once lived here! And the Crafters, of course. And be this the Sea Traveler Kaiholo, favored by those just beneath the sky? Where is the boy?” The old man halted four paces off. He wore shreds of what might have once been a grand gown, still belted by a golden cord and a great jeweled buckle. Across his shoulders rested two shining silver epaulets connected by more golden cord. His face was thin and bony, his cheeks wrinkled and sunken, and his neck seemed barely able to hold up his great bald head. His fingers, playing about the buckle but also rising to the epaulets, as if indicating his rank, were thin as bone themselves. “Know you the King of Troy? Our island’s magician of that name?”

“We knew him,” Widsith said.

“One of his sweven was here,” the thin, decorated man said. “It warned us the boy would be coming, and would need protection until his next stop.”