Грег Бир - The Unfinished Land

They had again turned left, and now came to a divided chamber where one side was stacked high with granite slabs, and the other with disks upright on racks, like dishes set out to dry. The bone-wife gestured for them to move forward. Childers flowed from the slabs, until the chamber was uniformly brilliant, as if bathed in bright sun, and they could hear distant voices, perhaps singing, perhaps just expressing marvel.

“Do not look into the disks,” the bone-wife whispered. “We are too close to where they were made. And you are already in the only creation you need.”

She walked ahead, the hem of her robe swishing back and forth, and Reynard saw what might have been an ankle peeping out from that hem—but it was only the knob of a stick. She stopped them once more, then guided them around another corner, left again—Reynard had lost track of how many times they turned. They were caught up in the flowing currents of childers, all headed into the turn, gently making their own sounds, but then the four heard another sound from within a deeper chamber—a sound like rushing water in a great cavern.

The bone-wife pointed to Valdis, Calafi, Calybo, and Reynard. “You will go on, those who have their own roles to play,” she said. “And once you go, I’ll perform my last act of magic, then collapse, and the King of Troy will find his peace. He bids you now farewell.”

Valdis and Calafi took hands and walked into the next passage. Calybo held out his hand for Reynard. The Eater’s eyes grew into distant caverns, showing a single star—

Calafi tugged Valdis after her and offered him her other hand, insisting, grasping, squeezing.

And Reynard was not afraid.

He took Calybo’s hand.

He had a sense of what might happen next.

And so did the strange girl.

“ ’Twill be fun!” she said.

They now strung out in a line, hand to hand, and entered the biggest chamber yet—topped by a great darkness, an ill-defined space filled with swirling lights that illuminated nothing in this world and cast no glow on the center of the krater, the center of the bowl that served up history…

And madness.

Reynard saw the Crafter. It had no eyes, yet he was sure it saw all. It possessed no limbs, yet spun away great ropes of gray mist that rose high into the tower—mist made of childers, Reynard thought, but could not be sure of anything. He looked up beyond the ropes of mist… and saw a brilliant green star framed by the opening at the top of the tower.

“We have stored up all our time waiting for you,” Calybo said. “Valdis, touch the young one. Young mistress, touch Reynard.”

“I have him,” Calafi said.

Now Calybo raised his head like a wolf, and howled forth that dreadful sound Reynard had heard on the beach when the great Eater, just beneath the stars, had renewed the Pilgrim after his long voyage.

The Crafter now spilled out of the krater and flowed around them like a huge wave crashing, then changing to a great forest growing all at once, and the Crafter surrounded Calybo, absorbed him within greater shadow, Reynard thought he saw, and the little girl again served as a conduit for this chain.

He felt his insides fill with stars.

Green stars.

In the greater darkness, his head and heart brimmed with horror and exaltation. He did not see what became of Calafi, or of Valdis, or of Calybo. It seemed he was about to receive a gift—a very dangerous gift, on top of all the other dangerous gifts piped or funneled into him through that chain of hands.

For an instant, he saw a wide black face, a woman’s face, mostly, with eyes the color of a full moon, and quite beautiful, but far more terrifying in her way than the Crafter. That face, for that instant, rose above them all—and he felt and heard Calybo’s voice die, and saw him turn into gray ash—empty of all, depleted.

One just beneath the sky, now made stuff for mud.

This was the only time Reynard ever saw that great dark face with moonlight eyes, and for that he was glad, and glad that he had seen so little of her.

The krater and all beneath the tower was empty, and the stone walls of the maze had collapsed, leaving only marks where they had been.

After a moment of utter, tingling shock, accompanied by a whirlwind of voices, he realized what he had been tasked with—his part in the last play—and what he would spend many lifetimes doing. Lifetimes passed through to him by the Eaters, with their fragmented memories, their knowledge in jumbled confusion, but at times…

Still affecting. Still guiding.

Which was the way Queen Hel had designed them, and the duty she had assigned to them. She must have known all along, if time meant anything to such. But her design, her circumstance, gave Reynard no more choice than being a fisherboy—less, actually.

He pushed up from the smooth, cold stone, and smelled the last humidity of a great storm. The Crafter was covered with a broad shroud, a single figure spreading and drawing it down so that nothing of the frightful corpse of the ancient being could be seen. This was the final task of the magician’s bone-wife. And when it was done, she collapsed into sticks and ash and dust, and never again was such a candle seen, here or anywhere else in the world, or a sorcerer as great as Troy.

Reynard walked away from the center, to find his way back, straight out to the arch this time. He looked into the disk, looked up and around the disk, and saw gray storm and falling rain beyond, but through the disk itself—a ray of sun.

Calafi stood behind him and gripped his hand with hers.

“Let us go see,” she said.

And she led him through.

Once again, he had to stoop to pass.

And on the other side…

“Back to the beginning!” Calafi called.

Nikolias and Widsith waited outside the archway, and all the others, but the disk stayed dark, and nobody came forth.

“Where are the Eaters?” Andalo asked.

“Silence!” Nikolias admonished. “They have done what they were made to do.”

“And what is that?” Bela asked.

“If we see the boy again…”

“I do not think we will,” Widsith said.

“Nor do I,” Kern said. “I feel very strange!”

“Thou art very strange!” Kaiholo said, and patted the giant’s lower arm with false assurance, for he felt very strange as well.

“We are finished on this island,” Nikolias said. “All the Isles of the Blessed are finished, and will become other.

“With this boy, in all his charge, a new age now begins.”

Widsith saw through the old Traveler and all his companions. Then he held up his own hand and saw through that as well.

He saw grass and a lovely country.

THE ISLAND looked completely different. The sun spread itself over green rolling hills, dotted with sheep and small stone houses and fences, and the fall weather was chill, but there was not yet snow in the air, so he and Calafi hiked over the hills, following the sun until they had to rest.

They found clean hay in a loft in a vale that smelled of the sea. “It is that way, I think,” Reynard said, but Calafi could hardly stand and they were too tired to finish the journey this day, so they hid in the barn and piled hay over themselves to try to keep warm.

“No childers anywhere!” the girl said, then clung to him and instantly fell asleep.

As exhausted as he was, he could not sleep yet. He seemed to be taking count of all the ways he had changed since he passed through the disk—but could not, nor could he remember what had happened in the great maze, or who had led him there and what they had given him.