The Unfinished Land

Plain of Jars

WITH THE TRAVELERS VIGILANT—all of them serving watch, including Calafi—and the wagon at the center of their camp, another peculiar dawn arrived, and Reynard was able to see the new terrain by what passed for daylight. He could make little sense of what he saw, but it still seemed gloomy enough to dry his tongue and make it cling to the breakfast of dried fish and porridge seasoned with red pepper powder. Widsith ate as if he had eaten such foods before, or even spicier fare. And likely he had. Reynard had not.

The girl brought a leather bag with water and they sipped from it, no more. Widsith pulled it down when Reynard tried to quench the heat of the breakfast.

“There is little water here,” Nikolias explained, taking his quick turn at the bag and handing it to the young warriors. “And none more until we cross the pass.”

Valdis did not drink from the bag, but squatted by her horse, eyes shut as if asleep—or lost in an Eater’s strange reverie.

“This is the outskirts of the plain of jars,” Nikolias said, “forbidden to all but Crafter servants, and still they do not arrive.”

“Yet none doth challenge or forbid!” Widsith said.

“We must deliver,” Yuchil said grimly.

Widsith gave Nikolias a look almost of resentment, but mostly of fear, and Reynard knew that none of them had ever been this far into the center of the island, or beyond. Silent, questions neither asked nor answered, they surveyed the prospects ahead.

“The horses are brave for us,” Widsith said to Reynard as the wagon rolled on. Valdis passed them. Her form was like a wraith of smoke, but where the light struck her, she glinted, she gleamed. And her eyes in particular seemed to change color, more umber than jade.

Nikolias said, “We have to make way through this place before nightfall. Not even Travelers are free to pass here at all times.”

A flat, arid paleness stretched many miles to the distant peaks and did indeed contain row after row of great black jars, many hundreds of them stretching off to the flank of the dark ridge of rock, one of the radiant mountain ranges that divided the island’s center and embraced the waste. Each jar was surrounded by a rough wooden scaffold that rose to the rim and seemed to afford access to any who would dare climb. Reynard did not think he would be one such.

“Beyond lies the first of the krater cities,” Nikolias said. “Right on the edge of the widest part of the chafing waste. Perhaps the servants will be there to greet us.”

“I doubt it,” Yuchil said, and climbed back into the wagon. Trailed by the warriors, flanked by Kern and Kaiholo, they rolled on toward the next great ridge of rock. Nobody spoke much, and Reynard remounted his horse and watched Valdis do likewise, but with a translucent lack of energy that made her seem more and more like a ghost.

Calafi approached Nikolias. “Valdis doth not like it here,” she whispered.

“We were told to bring at least one Eater,” Nikolias said. “I do not think any of us like it here!”

“Then how rude of them not to meet us!” Calafi said.

“Are Crafters truly buried out there?” Reynard asked Widsith, also whispering.

“So I have been told,” Widsith said.

The road passed through the field of huge jars, on to the ridge beyond. Reynard looked to his right and then his left, trying and failing, mostly, to avert his eyes, not to stare directly at the ancient tombs. The tallest jar, he guessed, rose fifteen yards and spanned the same distance. What would need such a tomb, and why open to the sky? Did they miss the stars? How many were already filled, how many still empty?

They halted as the pass yawned before them, between two rugged walls of gray stone. Nikolias walked up to Widsith and stroked his horse’s muzzle. “Still no one to greet us.”

Yuchil leaned out from behind the curtain that covered the entrance to the wagon. “Are any of the innermost servants still alive?” she asked.

Nikolias made a gruff snort.

The wagon and party soon were lost on the other side of the dusk, right up against night. Reynard wondered how long they had before death or dawn, or worse than one, and never the other.