The Unfinished Land

The Melt

NIGHT WAS EARLY but also slow in its arrival. Reynard held up his hands and saw his skin was bluing, with little white spots.

Widsith murmured, “If there is no meeting before stars twinkle, we will leave.”

“Do you mean a meeting with Valdis? Why should she care?”

“Because of thee. I venture to guess, no more,” Widsith said. “I do not now cross oceans, but navigate a land of fable.” He worked his horse back and forth a few yards, then swung it around. The farmers and villagers had departed, leaving behind open baskets of offerings. “We seem to be here for nought,” he said. “But let us tarry for a moment of confession.”

Reynard stared in surprise at the Pilgrim. “What need I confess?”

“All who come to any of the seven isles, and hope to survive, must bring a gift, a bribe—a treasure. I bring stories of the outer world. Valdis, I assume, brought her young life, and forsook that to become an Eater. Even Cardoza, I suppose, based on what we have been told, brought some ability of use to the Sister Queens. But… boy, what bring’st thou?”

“Nothing of value,” Reynard answered. “I arrived, like you, in rags.”

“Nothing hidden, no sigil of stone or metal to charm the Sister Queens beyond the waste?”

“Nothing.”

Widsith turned away. “In a place like this, origin of all tales tall and wooly, and all lives small and pitiful… One too often expects treasure. Perhaps it is my time with the Spanish.”

Reynard had heard versions of that same question before, from his uncle or other fishermen chiding him about his value, his place in their world—and though they meant it to train and discipline, he himself still wondered. Feeling his face grow warm, and wishing to put some yards between him and Widsith, Reynard led his mount away and approached the trays and boxes, but knew better than to touch them.

Then he felt his neck prickle. The voice he now heard echoed from some deep cavern in his heart.

The first mother is the first word.

Bring’st thou the first word?

Followed immediately by the sound of rocks being disturbed.

He opened his eyes wide and stared beyond Widsith into the chasm, into the shadow of the broken trees, and saw someone quite large taking slow, steady steps up the scree.

He shivered, his fingers moving in an old story his grandmother had told about stone people and Picts.

Widsith held his horse as still as he could. Both horses were more than uneasy.

“Who is that?” Reynard asked, hand stroking his horse’s neck.

“That is Kern,” Widsith said. “He is formidable, but no danger to us.”

The shadow came up the scree until the creature, or the man, crested the rim of the Ravine. He was easily six cubits tall.

“Thou hast survived another round of Crafter muggery,” Kern called to Widsith in a voice deep and wide. “Welcome, Pilgrim. I hear thou’lt make a request. Calybo told me thou’rt unhappy about something, though he refilled thy years at great discomfort.”

“Yes, sire. I have a request. Though I have told this boy ’tis unlikely granted.”

“Is it about Maeve?”

“Aye.”

“A very popular lady. Thou hast often taken wives. Why dost thou feel so strongly for this one? Surely she is not the most beautiful, although, I hear, likely the most faithful.”

“Before I left, we had not a single wedded year, and now she is in her last hours.”

Kern’s chuckle was like a distant storm. “Thy situation, thine and hers, would be very romantic, would it not? The sort of tale Crafters enjoy spinning. And in the end, we on this isle live and work, like the rest of this unfinished land, for Crafters. To whom dost thou carry the request?”

Widsith bowed his head. “As thou say’st. I bring news from the finished lands. That is mine only coin. Travelers are meeting us soon, and once I deliver this boy to them, and tell my stories, I can leave and resume my journeys, as is meet.”

“The boy? His opinion?”

Reynard said, “I have no home, here or anywhere. I have a mother in England, but no father, and no power, no money, nothing but…”

He was about to say a word, an etymon, but that was not exactly true, either.

“And would your mother miss you?” Kern asked.

“She would.” But Reynard could not remember her face! Somehow, recovering memories from Valdis had erased other things, things so familiar, but now gone. Had they ever been there at all?

Was there even a Southwold he could return to?

Kern said, “I have had no mother for many years, and my father…” The giant stood for a moment like a rough-hewn statue, then turned and said, “Bring the boy. Calybo, as it happens, is here to lead away his chosen Eaters. And so is Guldreth, albeit she will also soon make ready to leave.”

“Where are they now?” Widsith asked.

“Kaiholo knows. Should it please Guldreth, he will likely meet us before the old bird cavern.” Kern looked back at Reynard. “Knowest thou my breed?”

“Anakim, I trow,” Reynard said without thinking.

Kern did not take it amiss. “Some called us that. People of the lower North called us Hiisi, and those became devils. Others called us Cyclopes. But I have two eyes.” He winked at Reynard. “I have not seen mine ancestors since I was a babe. My mother was Anakim but loved a mighty man, I hear, but mine aunts killed him before I was born. Guldreth took us in, she so enjoyed my mother’s tales.” The giant looked back down the Ravine and said, “Other than my mother, I never knew an Anakim could stand humans. Pilgrim, thine affection for Maeve is the least of Guldreth’s worries this season. Crafters themselves are in peril. Mayhaps they are dying. I know not which, but they grow weaker and less in control.”

“No!” Widsith cried out, as if this defied all reason.

“I understand thy distress. They are the reason we have gathered here, all of us. But the Travelers tell me those who still live take great pains to bury their departed fellows. And I can attest that there is a plain of open jars that few of the Travelers dare approach… Shaitan’s ovens, some call them, baking infernal loaves!”

“You have been there?” Reynard asked, squinting.

“I have, on Guldreth’s missions. And so has Kaiholo. The island’s interior is at a rolling boil. Other than Eaters, many flee who once served both Guldreth and the Crafters, claiming to be in danger. On the other side of the isle, the Sister Queens have summoned outside help with the coming war. It is said thou hast supplied some of that, Pilgrim.”

Widsith shook his head and patted his horse’s neck. “That was not mine intention. It is all upturned and rooted wrong.”

“Indeed. For the nonce, the stock of humans at Zodiako is too small to matter—but their drakes may be of use. Some of the larger ones, at least. Come,” the giant urged, and descended the scree. “If I do not cause a fall, ’twill hold for ye.”

“And our horses?”

“Leave them,” the giant said. “Traveler and Eater horses are the only ones that will travel in the krater lands.”

They dismounted and sent their horses back to Zodiako with firm pats on their withers. Widsith seemed most unhappy with this change of plans. “Follow close,” he told Reynard. “Move not from me whatever thy temptation or wonder. I sense Eaters and others will flee this way, and all along our path.”

“That be true,” Kern said over his shoulder. “And we shall not even see most of them.”

They followed the giant and gingerly descended the scree into the depths of the Ravine. The chill penetrated Reynard’s clothes and skin down to his very bones, where it either tingled or burned, he could not tell which. Not all things that work and move on their own, he thought, live by warmth and the sun. Down here, the Eaters and others seemed to thrive in the night and cold. The ice that climbed in sheets on both sides looked like frozen moonlight. He wondered how long he and Widsith could last in such a clime.

The clouds above the arch of trees parted now. Moonlight cast the broken rocks of the scree in stark black and gray. Reynard looked up, but briefly, fearful of stumbling and falling, for the rocks had shifted again and the path was no longer smooth. Despite his size, Kern seemed to drift over the roughness like a hovering spirit, but Widsith had no such grace.

The heaves of hoarfrost now clumped into knife-edged sheets of foggy ice, growing more and more transparent as they wound down along the rocky trail—and embedded in them were contorted figures, bodies, dozens and dozens in the hundred yards they traversed. Neither Kern nor Widsith commented on them, and Reynard had no urge to look into their faces, when they were visible.

They passed beyond the ice sheets. Two trails rose on either side of a slow, narrow river. Widsith said in wonder, “I have never been this far.” He stared at the giant’s broad, receding back. “I am told we should seek out Valdis.”

“I passed her on my way to find you,” Kern said. The giant was making faster progress than they, and neither Widsith nor Reynard wanted to be left behind, so they took more chances and stumbled and fell more often, gaining cuts on their elbows and hands, and once, Reynard tumbled headlong, until he felt as if sharp rocks had scalped him. Widsith examined him quickly, said he was fine, but blood dripped down his forehead and into his eyes, and he could barely see what little there was to see.

As Widsith helped him along and used his sleeve to wipe back the blood, Reynard resolved yet again he would do everything he could to flee this awful, evil island, even had he no home to return to.

“No leaving now, Fox,” Kern called back, as if he could hear Reynard’s thoughts, feel his anger. “You would lose the path. This Ravine is no longer the home of the Eaters—it is now but a deep scar in the island, clogged with old ice and dead castles—a fracture shared by desperate spirits.”

“What will they do?” Reynard asked, his voice shaking.

“Go into exile,” Kern said, answering his last question. “Lost races dwindled to a few… Tenebria, some call them. Bad omens. Bad dreams.”

Widsith watched Reynard closely, to judge whether his courage might fail him. They were walking along a narrow trail, carved partly from ice, partly from stone, above the river and the upraised frozen blades that seemed to interrupt and shape the constant breeze from the north. The river seemed to be moaning. Reynard thought he saw shadows and shapes, and sometimes felt a kind of breath on his cheeks, but the others did not react, so he tried to ignore them.

“And what do you hope to do here?” Reynard asked.

“Pass through quickly, find Valdis, find Kaiholo, speak one last time with Guldreth before she leaveth—at her request, to see you, boy—and take Eater mounts from the caverns below the fortress,” Kern said, looking warily side to side. “Then ride to find the trod and the Travelers we need.”

The high doors in the walls were growing fewer, the walls wider, and the river had lost its upraised blades. The arched trees overhead were thicker, but had fallen in several places.

“We are in the lair of creatures that bring food and water for Eaters—more than humans can supply, and more suited to Eater tastes. Servants of a sort,” Kern said. “I wonder they have not already departed, with their masters!”

“Are they dangerous?” Reynard asked.

“No,” Kern said, “but they do not like disturbance.”

What little Reynard could see of their surroundings through blood-dimmed eyes was a half-circle of ice-rimed pillars, and draped between them, what looked like inverted tents or cocoons. For a moment, Reynard wondered if this was a rookery for drake nymphs, but out of the pendant hammocks peered pale, dusty faces with tightly slitted eyes and open beaks, like recent fledglings. Each was the size of a small dog, and a few poked gray, knobby wing-shins above their beds.

Reynard looked with suspicion on the draped sacks and their inhabitants. “What sort of birds are these?” he asked.

“Not birds,” Kern said.

Widsith said with a lip-curl of distaste, “Nor are they bats.”

“Do they bite?”

“No,” Widsith said.

“Yes,” Kern said.

Reynard’s scalp was still dripping blood. Kern raised his hand, then ventured off a ways and returned clutching a handful of moss, which he applied to Reynard’s wound. “Hold that, young human,” the giant instructed. “We need to clean you before your audience.”

They heard a squeaking cry. A small, squat, bird-faced gray figure, having flapped down from its sling, stumped on folded wings toward them, gripping between shoulder and head a leather bucket sloshing with water, which it offered to Kern with a gnarly whistle. Then the creature swept up a three-fingered foot and demonstrated what the giant was to do with the bucket. Kern took it and before Reynard could react, upended it over him. The water stung like lye soap, and he feared it would put out his eyes, but instead it sluiced his scalp and cleared his vision, and between the moss and the liquid, his bleeding finally stopped.

Widsith took him by one elbow, and they walked on, passing between the pillars into a wide space flanked by ragged glacial walls. The mottled, marbly whiteness rose hundreds of feet on either side to dark stony scarps fringed with dense-packed lines of forest, many of the trees having toppled. Reynard lifted the moss from his scalp and looked up.

“Kaiholo!” he cried.

The tattooed man emerged from deep shadow and tipped a salute. “The high one demands our presence,” he said. “Well, some of us. After this day, I’ll be of no use to her. As for the Pilgrim—I cannot speak for his welcome. Follow me.” He led them on and around the fallen trees.

“Are Crafters gods or humans?” Reynard asked, curiosity pushing through propriety, considering where they were. “Of this world, or makers of tools?”

“I was told by a drunken Traveler, in a tavern long ago,” Kaiholo said, “that they be human neither in shape nor demeanor, but possess some powers found in gods. Before his fellows gathered him, he explained that long ago, at the invitation of Queen Hel, Crafters traveled from afar… But from whence, he did not know. Nor did the others.”

“Not gods, and not the Queen of Hell’s children!” Reynard exclaimed, angry at the possibility he was being teased.

“He is deluded on Hel and conflates,” Widsith said to Kern.

“Make no such mistake when you meet the Travelers,” Kern said. “They know the truth. Crafters assume their own mantles, and press the krater cities around the waste to serve their eccentric needs, and for these circumstances, and these failings, we on this and six other islands, I think, all live.”

The tattooed man now focused his attention on Reynard. “Boy, some claim thou herald’st great change.”

“I do not feel it,” Reynard said.

“Guldreth so informed me—just an hour past,” Kaiholo said. “She hath abandoned drake hunting and the southern shore, and makes her way to a chamber in the high maze of the old fortress. Now all is muddle in the krater lands, and she prepareth to join her kind and escape.”

“Escape where?” Widsith asked.

Kaiholo shrugged. “She confideth not.”

Kern looked back along the declivity, toward the hollow in the fall of ice. “Let us move on. Best be swift.”

The northern third of the Ravine had been overgrown centuries past by mats of vines like no growth Reynard had ever seen—strong enough to hold trees that had toppled from the steep sides. The trail they followed twisted among great columns of stone spaced like struts in broken wagon wheels. These held back crushing and groaning walls of melting ice that released pools and swirls of their own fog. They saw their way only by cold, scattered stars peeking through the mats. Kern, Reynard, and Widsith hewed close to Kaiholo. But they moved too swiftly in the darkness for the boy, and he stumbled often over roots and stones.

By the time they reached the end of the path, the roof of vines had been ripped open by the fall of several of the largest trees, and now, eyes adapted to the starlit dark, they saw a high, wide wall of close-hewed and fitted stone—a wall that must have once been interrupted by hundreds of windows that were now, along the lower reaches, chocked by flat, ugly bricks, as if, for those inside this wall—this advanced face of an unlikely fortress—the gloom of the Ravine was still too bright. Narrow steps had been thrust into the wall, crumbling and cracking the stones. Anyone who dared to climb was protected only by a winding, crumbling balustrade of woven wicker, following the steps in their jagged, back-and-forth ascent like some prodigious basket-snake.

Reynard kept close to Widsith, who followed as Kaiholo and then Kern began their climb. He paused and reached for what he thought were flowers growing around the wicker.

“Do not touch,” Kern cautioned. “Many biting things here.” He opened one hand to show scars on a palm.

Reynard withdrew his fingers. Small and brilliant red even in the shadow, the flowers resembled little sprouts of flame rising from circlets of blue petals. At the nearness of his fingers, they withdrew like anemones on a tidal beach and chirped like crickets, taunting him.

“She collects Crafter refuse,” Kaiholo said, and showed scars on his own palm—unmarked by tattoos. “Fascinated by all things Crafter!”

“Plans for creations never approved,” Kern added. “Undeveloped or forgotten schemes. Ephemera. Things that know not any way home, nor whether home awaiteth. She arrangeth them like a gardener, even here. As for those devilish, nipping flowers—they came here as seeds carried by strange clouds from the krater lands, falling in muddy rain.” Kaiholo looked up at the narrow holes in the thick canopy of vines. “Best avoid such rain, or you will be crusted like a reef.”

After they had all passed, the flowers slowly reemerged and shivered.

The first flights of steps took them, slowly and cautiously enough, to a wide indented cleft. From here, more steps forked like lightning ascended to a few open porticoes, which passed through roofless walls and led to more staircases halfway up this next prodigious, sealed-off facing.

Even this high above the blocks of melting ice, the air burned and clogged Reynard’s nose with the pervasive odor of an unholy, devilish chill.

Beyond the masonry walls, more steps now became apparent, climbing to a wide parapet just beneath a half-dome inset with a frieze of mosaics whose subjects Reynard could not discern from this vantage.

“That is her door,” Kaiholo said, and lifted a snake-patterned brow at Widsith. “Hast thou been here?”

“No,” Widsith answered.

“Privileged as thou art,” the tattooed man murmured.

Reynard wondered at the patience of these suitors, and how they felt about each other—or the high object of their devotion.

“Still too dark,” Kern said, and wandered off to explore this level, his silhouette fading until he was no longer visible. Then he emerged from the far side and announced, “Someone hath provided.” In one hand, like an eagle clutching a bundle of twigs, he displayed four sticks with glassy knobs. Kaiholo and the others gratefully took one apiece. Kern then spun his stick in both hands until the knob gave off a dim gray glow. The others, and then Reynard, did likewise.

In the powdery pools of illumination these sticks provided, little creatures scuttled away. Weirder still was an aura, no more than a hint, seen only when looking away, of a kind of dim firelight beyond the glow of the sticks, ascending high along this wall, with passing suggestions of huge shadows… All of which vanished as soon as he looked at them directly. He did not ask about these. He was not sure he wanted to know.

They passed the wingless corpse of a drake, and their gray lights and presence caused commotion among hundreds of little feasting creatures. Reynard had never seen such as these. Some seemed formed of rare gems, and others resembled rodents made of plates of metal that took the shapes of muscles and fur and ears, with eyes like illuminated rubies. These flowed back to resume their consumption of the drake, though with irritated awareness of these new men.

“After she harvested the wings, she had some large metal beast drag it here for her pets,” Kaiholo said. “Such treats do not last long. To complete her great cloak, she will need to gather permissions from whichever faction is victorious in the krater lands.”

“Then it is a war,” Widsith said.

“Will she take thee with her?” Kern asked Kaiholo, glancing at Widsith.

“She doth not reveal our fate,” Kaiholo said. “Or dost thou mean the Pilgrim?”

“Either,” Kern said. Reynard was still thinking over the phrase “great cloak,” presumably made of drake wings. A cloak for whom?

“When dealing with a power just beneath the sky,” Kaiholo said, “I assume nothing, and advise ye likewise. What I do not give credence to is the tale that thou, Pilgrim, wast once taken by her as a lover!”

Kern grumbled that he shared that disbelief.

“Even so. She did not bring me here,” Widsith said.

“Kept secrets?” Kaiholo asked.

“As one of her station should,” Widsith said.

The steps were solid enough, but also infested with more tiny crawling things, which managed to mostly escape their feet. Reynard felt an edgy investigation of the cut on his head and brushed something away with a moan of disgust.

“Patience,” Kaiholo said. “We will soon be there.”

“She maketh a cloak for herself?” Reynard asked, unable to hold back curiosity any longer.

“Queen Hel, I presume,” Kaiholo said. “Only she could wear it. Ah, we are here.”

They had reached the top of the steps and a broad portico that followed the curve of the upper wall. The passing shadows and hints of firelight were left behind, to his relief. Sunlight blocked by leafy boughs outshone their glowing sticks. At Kaiholo’s example, they left the sticks propped against a wall. Smells of cooking meat and perfume issued from the far reaches of the portico, which was lovely in a shaded way, like a residence in a castle built of dreams. Here the small scavengers had given way to knee-high, furry creatures shaped like jesters’ hats, with a pair of stalked eyes on their peaks, and four or more scurrying feet to support them.

“These be not so threatening,” Kaiholo said, “but watch the hidden corners. This high lady hath peculiar things in her garden.”

Nobody came to greet them. Kaiholo proceeded first. Kern had to stoop as the ceiling had dropped a couple of feet. Columns like the insides of broken shells, spiraled and pearly-pink, became more frequent. The far walls were covered by a mural more pattern than picture, as he had heard from his uncle were found in Moorish palaces, but in motion, steadily progressing through shades of gray and green. His uncle had also told him, one long night at sea, about those regular shapes, which he said held clues to navigating seas and crossing land—but that did not seem to be their purpose here.

They paused cautiously between two columns. Beyond the columns, a cold fire flickered.

Kaiholo looked over his shoulder. “Caution is wise when meeting those just beneath the sky,” he said. “Adore, worship—but do not fear. Even for those who have known favor, time passeth and moods change. Truth, Pilgrim?”

“Truth,” Widsith replied. “What hearest thou about her mood toward me?”

“Nothing. I find her hapless drakes. I am not her procurer.”

“I have been in the Ravine off and on for years and seldom seen her,” Kern said.

“Thou art a monster, and so thou art allowed to stay? ” Widsith asked. Kern asked in turn, with a wicked grin, what monstrous trait gave the Pilgrim access.

Reynard reached out to touch a spiral’s rose-pink smoothness, very like broken seashells on the beaches of Southwold.

“This place is cold,” Kern said. “But I see no ice. Ice everywhere but here!”

Reynard looked up at a small scuffing sound. The others alerted as well.

“She is here,” Kaiholo said. Now it was Widsith’s turn to suck in his breath. Reynard wondered why he was afraid. Had they not been lovers? Had he not pleased her?

Was it possible to please such a being?

He tried to clear his thoughts.

Like sap streaming through ghostly vines, light slowly grew around them in vegetal tangles, weaving through a space beyond the first ring of columns. The cautious visitors observed, transfixed by both wonder and concern, while the veins of light filled in the spaces around them. Now they saw that they stood on one side of a low, wide chamber filled with rank after rank of disks, bigger than most shields, arranged upright like plates in a cupboard. The disks appeared to have thin edges almost as sharp as knives. All gleamed with their own inner light, and each was different from the other.

“Hast thou seen these before?” Kern asked Kaiholo.

“Only heard of them,” Kaiholo answered. “And thou, Pilgrim?”

Widsith shook his head. “They are new to me.”

“Shaded moons stolen from the darkest nights!” Kern said.

“Quaint,” Kaiholo said, picking at his teeth with a patterned finger.

They approached the first row of disks. Reynard tapped one. Each disk was hard and translucent, as wide as Reynard was tall. He touched the nearest disk’s rim. It did not cut, but made a bowed ringing sound at the roughness of his finger.

“Do that the right way, it might bid thee enter!” Kern suggested.

Reynard stooped to peer into the center of the first disk, and found shapes beneath the shining surface: shoals of fish swimming through dark curling weeds, all caught in a moment of stillness, and graced with more artistry than he had ever seen. Bolder than the others—so far—he stepped up to the next disk and bent to peer again. In this one he saw layer upon layer of strange, great trees, falling back in a thick blue fog, as if in some ancient morning, perhaps the morning of the world. Other shapes rose between the trees, and he realized that lizards the size of houses lurked in that fog, as well as bird-like creatures that perched on stone pillars and spread their wings like cormorants. But these were neither birds nor drakes, and each grinned with a mouth full of teeth no seabird had ever possessed.

Reynard could not help himself. He turned and studied the disks in the next row. These revealed ebony depths filled with clouds of diamond-bright stars, like a clear, dry night sky. Behind that disk rose another, revealing islands floating in a void—not islands on a sea, but scattered in empty air and topped by great castles dotted with lights… impossible realms of impossible people!

He frowned in frustration. These disks seemed important, more than just a collection—but a history, a library! There was not time enough to walk down the rows and do justice to them, to tally row after row, each disk as delicate and astounding as the first.

He turned back to the disk that contained a forest. One of the lizards had moved! He was sure of it—moved closer, head angled as if to study him!

“They are sorcerer’s mirrors!” Kern said. “Why doth she allow us to bear witness to such Crafter work?”

Widsith seemed lost in reverie, gathering enough courage to stroke one disk, then stare in wonder at his fingers. “Finer than anything I saw in the east. ’Tis as if Pu himself had embedded Crafter thoughts in fine white clay, then fired it to wondrous porcelain.”

A female voice spoke. “I am leaving soon. Come forward and say farewell before all here is gone.”