The Unfinished Land

Old Things Have Their Day

THE LEDGE THAT abutted the ridge was ancient indeed, as was the ridge itself—one of the great vertebrae of the island that formed five spines, all of which were known to the geographers of the Travelers, so Kaiholo asserted—though he knew little about them himself. “I know the oceans and the way the island shapes weather out to sea,” he said primly. “Less the land. Kern must know the land.”

“I have been to the cross-trod, but not much around. These spines are ancient, however, and I have heard they are covered with trails. Those change year to year, as Crafter plans spill out and over.”

“Then what goes truly back to the beginning?” Reynard asked.

Kaiholo studied a muddy stretch. He rose and pointed to the distinct mark of a hoof. “Someone’s been by here, or at least a horse,” he said.

Reynard took a look. “It has been shod recently,” he said. “I think Widsith’s mark is on it. It is a Spanish horse.”

“Doing what, and doing what here?” Kaiholo asked. “Are the Spanish all over this island now?”

“Most are dead,” Reynard said. “There may be forty or fifty left.”

“Are the Travelers seeking them, too?” Kern asked.

“They could have Valdis and Widsith,” Kaiholo said. “It seems word hath spread about their value… And thine, fox-boy.”

Reynard looked uneasily along the ledge. “This taketh us inland, doth it not?”

“Once it did. Toward the crossing of the trods,” Kern said.

“And toward a Quarry of Souls,” Kaiholo said. The others looked at him. “Guldreth spake of it, and so hath Calybo.”

“I have never been there,” Kern said.

“What is that?” Reynard asked.

“It is where faces and manners are seen in old rocks by experienced Travelers,” Kern said. “They are quarried and made available to imprint childers, and those cast in Crafters’ designs.”

“If we move along this ledge, is that our next destination?” Reynard asked.

“Likely,” Kaiholo said.

“Would those of Annwyn want to go there?”

“Not to the Quarry,” Kaiholo said. “It is been dormant for centuries, played out, some say. And Travelers do not favor those who work for the Sister Queens, their servants or their allies. A contentious bone in a great skeleton of resentments.”

“Who would be willing to bargain for us?” Reynard asked, a dark thought forming. Could he trust Kaiholo, could he trust Kern? So far, all they had done was guide him to where those he knew sought his protection had vanished.

“Dost thou mean to ask, who would pay?” Kern said.

“Who would pay?”

“Opposition to the wishes of the Travelers doth demand a rare currency. Strategy and weapons, mayhaps.”

“Are the Sister Queens fighting the Crafters?” Reynard asked.

Kern and Kaiholo looked at each other. “Perhaps that is the way of it now,” Kaiholo said, “but I fear the results! We have long served those just beneath the sky, and the Sister Queens do not.”

They walked along, but found no more hoof prints or other spoor. The corkscrew trees and shrubs here were thin but grew fast, like weeds, as if they feared all might soon end.

“I asked what things stretch back to the beginning,” Reynard reminded them. “Or is it all remade and forgotten by the Crafters?”

“Well, Eaters, for one,” Kaiholo said. “They were not called that in the beginning times. They were simply part of all those just beneath the sky, children of Hel, most agree, and that means she was here in the beginning as well—probably before the beginning.”

“What about this isle?”

“Oh, aye, all the Tir Na Nog were here in those times, and likely Earth and most of what we see of the sky.”

“Crafters do not reshape the heavens?”

“Not that I have heard,” Kern said.

“But it is said people now study the sky with better tools,” Kaiholo said. “I would use those tools myself, and learn better the roads of the sea.”

Reynard had seen some of those tools in Aldeburgh, in shop windows, made of brass and iron and with crystal and glass parts. Their quality and glitter had fascinated him. “And us? Are we reshaped? I mean humans, and giants.”

“Nobody knoweth that,” Kaiholo said.

“But the Travelers were always here?”

Kaiholo hmmed again. “We found our place on the islands after the Crafters arrived, but likely we served our own kind before then. Spinning language and tales across land and sea. What would humans be without words?”

“Dumb,” Kern said.

“You are half human!” Reynard reminded him.

“True, and all my days I have struggled to favor my greater half, and keep my head straight.” He smiled at the boy. “Anakim and other sorts from old were as liable as humans to do stupid things. Which doth make their tales all the more interesting.”