The Unfinished Land

The Pass

WARRIORS, RIDERS, AND CALAFI followed the wagon down a road paved with wide flat stones, grooved by the passage of other wheels over long centuries, much like Roman roads in England. These grooves, however, came in several gauges, or widths between, showing that even larger wagons had passed many times before. The Traveler wagon rumbled smoothly along in its accepted gauge. And so they proceeded with very little water and no more food up a long rise to the narrow pass, and as it swiftly turned dark, clouds driven and chewed by high, cold winds flowed to wrap the peaks.

They paused again. Reynard’s gaze climbed the walls on both sides, and he saw odd little formations, irregular houses sporting rough entrances, like eyries or extrusions for the benefit of climbers—though not for humans.

Calafi also surveyed these high, empty dwellings. “Others come here to rest, and prepare,” she said, and her wrinkled nose told Reynard she was guessing.

Clearly unhappy, the warriors pulled their coat collars up to avoid the chill wind that now seemed to want to drive them back.

Dark filled the gap.

“We are tired,” Calafi said to Nikolias. “Can we make a fire?”

“I think a fire is needed, if this wind will let it burn,” Nikolias said. And so they gathered shrubs and sticks from between the rocks, which here were banded red and black, while the girl came forward with a thin stone she had found that had markings on it.

“Can somebody read this?” she asked, then held it up. The markings were spirals and wedges, and all who gathered around the wagon and the fire shook their heads but Valdis, who crooked her finger for the girl to approach and bent over to take the stone from her. She held it up as if she could see straight through it. “A spell to bind dreams,” the Eater said.

“What language?” Nikolias asked, but Valdis merely slipped down gracefully from her horse and replaced the stone in the dirt, where Calafi had found it, then walked up to the rocks, where she studied a crevice no one else had seen until now. With a long, studying glance at the others, she ventured into the side passage, leading the shadowy horse after her.

“I did not see that,” Widsith said, standing beside Nikolias.

“None here did,” Nikolias said, touching the rock face with outstretched hands. “And I neither see nor feel it now!”

Calafi made as if to follow Valdis, but also could not find any opening in the banded rock. She patted and danced a little, as if that would open the crevice again, but Yuchil spoke to her sharply and, dejected, she returned to the beginnings of the new camp.

For a time, nobody spoke, but all warmed themselves.

The wind was getting colder, whipping the flames.

“Perhaps she doth flee us, sensing our fate,” Nikolias said.

“Pfaah!” Yuchil exclaimed, then brought up more flat rocks to shield the flames. “I have known many an Eater more honorable than most men.”

“And women?” Nikolias asked, smiling, pitching in with Kaiholo to help.

Yuchil blew out her breath again. “If our way is blocked ahead—and who can say it is not?—then perhaps she seeketh another way.”

Kaiholo was skeptical. “No way out and no way in, I trow,” he muttered. Kern agreed.

“And we all were alert to such,” said Andalo as he nervously fingered the hilt of one sword.

Reynard nodded to him, and he responded merely by staring, then turned away. Bela and Sany seemed even more imperious. This irritated Reynard.

“We should have looked into a pot,” he said.

“Why so?” Widsith asked.

“To see a Crafter. If it is dead, what can it do to us?”

The warriors did not respond, but Nikolias blew his nose into a clean rag. “Push not nightmares, and save thy sleeping soul.”

“But have you ever looked?” Reynard asked.

“No, as I say, I have never been this far. But I heard once from a man who did climb a scaffold. He was ever after laughing mad, and could barely find his supper.”