The Unfinished Land

Last Roundabout

THE LATER MORNING was only a little brighter than the night, but they pushed on through the pass until they came to a wider spot between the walls. Here, the wagon-rutted path circled a single jagged pillar. Widsith and Reynard and two of the warriors went around the pillar and came upon a perfectly smooth causeway through the last of the great rocks, paved evenly with hewn stone.

“Do we stop here and wait longer?” Kaiholo asked.

Yuchil and Nikolias again conferred. Nikolias shook his head adamantly, but the woman seemed to win their debate, so he returned to the others and said they had no choice. “We go where we have never gone before,” he explained. “Because we are not met, nor given signs. Next will be the outermost cities of the krater lands, where many Travelers are said to dwell and serve the Crafters. But all now is uncertain.”

The wagon wheels and the horse hooves were equally unsure on this smoothness, and more than once the wagon slid sideways and had to be corrected with careful management of reins and horses in harness.

The other Travelers were gloomy, contemplating what they might find ahead, and disliking going where they might not be at all welcome.

Finally, a far misty landscape became visible—a wide valley into which the pass debouched. A few miles away, another ridge, central to the valley, as thin and sharp as a knife blade, interrupted the lowering cloud. Reynard could almost make out more shapes this side of the ridge, rounded and tall and huge, but obscured by thick mist.

Calafi ran ahead a few dozen yards and then returned with her widest gap-toothed grin. “A city in the form of a grand seed!” she called. “Flowers and stalks make caged seeds! This is like those, but great.”

Yuchil clucked and got down from the wagon. Calafi danced forward, spinning, sashaying, and curtsying, as if introducing them all to unseen hosts. As well, she raised her hands into the air, fingers curling inward as if waiting to hold an apple.

On one side of the great blade of rock—also banded red and black—were what the girl had described as a great caged seed, and Reynard soon saw her description was apt. The structure hugged the near slope of the blade and rose almost as high as the ridge itself. It most resembled the late summer curled nest of a hedgerow wild carrot or cow parsley, with a protective outer basket of wood or stone, he could not tell which, though how stone could be worked so fine and delicate and yet remain strong, he had no notion. Within the up-curving frame of the basket, houses as big as manor estates were mounted on cross-works of beams, connected by stairs and ladders and held together in part by a thick tackle like the ropes of a great-masted ship. It all looked so absurdly fragile that a typical coastal winter storm might have toppled it and blown out its dwellings like thistledown.

Nikolias and Andalo guided the wagon across the last of the hewn road, onto another stretch of mud and broken cobbles, covered with puddles and now trackless. Reynard rode alongside Widsith.

Facing the mud, Calafi had stopped her skipping dance and now walked quietly beside the lead riders, making gestures with arm and fingers, as if trying to find a way to describe in a secret alphabet what they were seeing. She squinted up at Reynard.

Widsith rode with his eye on the valley, the blade-ridge, the curled structure emerging from the late morning shadow of the opposite side of the ridge.

In less than an hour, the wagon rolled into the shadow of the great basket, while the murky sun split its light along the ridge, falling on a stone and wood stockade that surrounded the city and the inmost fields.

“It is deserted,” Nikolias said from behind.

“Or worse,” Kaiholo added.

The fields were untended, overgrown, and the outer small hamlets of stone and mud-brick houses, within the stockade and spaced beyond it, were demolished and burned.

“No dead, no living,” Kern said.

Widsith rode along a dry gravel pathway that seemed to point toward the distant rising cloud.

“These gardens were once magnificent,” said Yuchil. “But now they are just sticks and dead soil.”

Reynard could not take his eyes away from the great ribbed and vaulted edifice. The ribs could have been crafted of either wood or stone—or wood made stone! Raised on the flats of Southwold, having known only shingle-stone and driftwood buildings, separated by narrow lanes and fields crossed by mazes of hedgerows, the thought of life in such a topsy-turvy structure was inconceivable. For one thing, the stairways had no rails! Monkeys might ascend and descend, or leap from rope to road, or from strut to beam to strut—but anyone else, it seemed, must live in constant fear.

Andalo and his warriors could hardly conceive that Travelers who once lived here, and tended these fields, might have given up without a fight. “There must have been a great battle between the Sister Queens’ armies and Travelers who served the Crafters, one side victorious, and th’other…”

“But why leave it empty?” Nikolias asked. “Those who were supposed to meet us claimed this was a rich land, full of rich peoples. How many remain? The Crafters who dwelt here are likely dead, and those who served them carried off in slavery.”

“How can that be?” Andalo asked, like a little boy told that a favorite legend was not true and never had been. “Are Crafters not immortals, protected and ruled by Queen Hel?”

“Maybe, like us, they have their age, and pass away,” Yuchil said. “If we could but see what the Pilgrim hath seen!”

“None of what I saw explaineth this,” Widsith said.

Yuchil drew up her cloak to ward off the wind that still followed them. “It groweth cold and dank. We must leave now!” She rose and patted down her dress and overrobe. But the men did not move.

“Not until day,” Nikolias insisted. “Who knows what mood ruleth spirits here?”

The others marked themselves and inclined their heads. Calafi climbed up onto the wagon, and Yuchil suddenly reached out and hugged her.

“How can Crafters die?” Yuchil cried. “They were our whole world!”

Reynard snuck away from the fires around the wagon, sticking to the shadows cast by broken trees and low rocks, as if he were himself an Eater.

Nikolias and his three warriors had joined Widsith and Kaiholo and Kern in passing around two great wicker-wrapped jugs of unwatered wine, hidden in the wagon along with everything else, and controlled by Yuchil… But the day had been so disheartening that Nikolias felt a little imbibing was in order, and Yuchil did not disagree.

They spoke very little.

But Reynard did not drink, and made his way quietly toward the outer fence.

The stockade had pillars of rounded boulders caulked with straw-mud and spaced with long lines of interwoven sticks and stalks not unlike the core of a field barricade in England, the sort meant to discourage bulls. The stockade had been broken through in several places, likely by soldiers. There were many marks of feet and hooves, but no sign of battle.

He stepped over a tangle of branches and through a gap and approached the rock foundation that rooted one great rib as it rose above the fields, above this part of the stony flats, to join with side arches that supported many floors, interconnected by thick rigging, ladders, and bridges, their lines and backstays hanging in sad tatters from curved masts, like a stricken ship rising out of a stony sea. He looked at the floor, paved with small pebbles, and saw a thick carpet of what might have once been leaves, now black with mold—as if the city had once been part of a great tree.

Reynard touched the base of the rib, and his hand found a long crack, then, around the circumference, another. The huge rib had been shivered several times along its lower length. How long would it hold? Had it always had such cracks, as sometimes showed in great masts?

He turned. The darkness was so deep it seemed bootless to venture farther. But then he caught a gleam behind him. The darkness was slowly being broken by what seemed at first to be fireflies, but which he soon made out as tiny flowers sprouting from vines that laced around the ropes and supports—flowers that glowed in the night. He approached one such vine and saw for a moment what he thought was a childer—

But it vanished.

The pale, dim light from the flowers showed him that just beyond a broken gate a narrow staircase lifted into the heights in a corkscrew, like an inside stair in a large ship. He could not see what waited at the top. Going higher might be invading the privacy of those Travelers who once served Crafters—and who survived being near them! What powers could those dead exert? What resentment, leading to what revenge? What magic had the Crafters passed to their servants? Not enough perhaps to keep them alive, or fend off the Sister Queens’ armies.

Still, he wondered if it would be the better part of valor to just stop here and return to the wagon and the fires, the wine and the bread…

But then he saw a candle glowing about a third of the way up the steps, a tall candle that had not been there before and seemed to have been placed to guide him—even when no hand could have set it there.

He crossed the threshold of the broken gate and slowly, carefully climbed the steps to the candle, hand on the curved railing. He stood looking down at the flame, burning steady and putting out a tendril of smoke. Then a slight breeze flickered the flame and played with his hair.

“Are you here somewhere, magician?” Reynard whispered.

Came no answer.

But this would be a good place to gather sticks, if not beef and sheep bones. That is, should a magician wish to assemble swevens or topplers or other helpers.

Bone-wives.

He turned at a scuff.

Widsith came up behind him, followed by Calafi.

“She told me you had gone into the city.” The Pilgrim did not seem angry. The tangle-haired girl favored Reynard with a guileless smile, then studied the flowers.

Now three more childers appeared and hovered around them—around the girl, actually. Their translucent faces smiled beatifically upon her. She held up her hands as if to caress them, but they all disappeared, again like soap bubbles.

“I saw a candle,” Reynard said, pointing. “I see one now.”

Both looked to where he pointed. “I see nothing,” Widsith said, and Calafi shook her head. “I always thought the magician far too old to travel. He hath for centuries been a fire burning low, and Eaters cannot replenish him. Do you sense his presence?”

Reynard shook his head. “But I saw another candle, far back, and now this one. Why show candles to me alone?”

The candle burned low in its holder, and the flame flickered as if about to go out.

They looked to the Pilgrim as if he might have an answer, having known the magician for so many years. “As guide for you,” Widsith said.

Calafi said, “Maybe he is dead.”

“Then how could he place candles?” Reynard asked.

Widsith did not seem to find the notion incredible. “His bone-wives, mayhaps. After death, he could make puppets to carry out his final wishes. Each puppet would last the length of a candle. Before the candle went out, the puppet would need to make another like itself… A jagged existence, but it hath a seeming of Troy. If he be dead.”

“But why show only me?” Reynard asked.

“Let us climb higher,” Calafi said. “The magician may have found something to show us all.”

They resumed their climb up the stairs and entered a twisting shaft of rising columns wound through with vines and the tiny pale flowers. The overall silence in the city was broken by distant snaps and cracks, and a continuous rustling, as of branches in a wind-tossed tree.

For a time, Reynard wondered if the cracked ribs would all split and sag at once, and the entire city would fall in on itself…

Then they came to a round arched doorway accessing a curved corridor, leading to many other round doors on both sides. In the middle of the corridor, a single childer floated, softly imbued with its own light, its own distant existence, paying them no attention. Then it seemed to startle, turned, regarded them with translucent eyes—and floated swiftly into a doorway.

“Do we go there?” Reynard asked.

The girl nodded. “Only look,” she said. “The city still doth contain many spirits. We do not touch or move anything!”

They passed into the next room, and saw it was wide and high-ceilinged but maintained the woven, rigged, and airy design of the rest of the city. The wicker floor was marred by signs of struggle—the marks of axes and sword blades, scraps of cloth, a robe tossed aside—but no blood, no bodies from any combatant or inhabitant.

Reynard was alarmed by this lack. “Where are they all, those who lived here?” he asked.

“Many have likely been taken as slaves,” Widsith said. “But how none who fell remain… I do not know.”

“Few fell, and many were taken,” said a voice behind them, and Nikolias passed through the round door to join them. He carried a lantern and lifted it to reveal the room’s deeper contents. “I have never been this far and seen so much. But I do know that the servants lived in their own kind of luxury, and perhaps valued life too much.”

There were panels, like unto those that appeared in Zodiako over the corridor leading to the hall, but much larger, covered with arts and conceptions half sculpture, half paint, with much gilding to show sun and day.

Nikolias shined the lantern light along the closest panel and said, “Observe a plan, or a dream, or a fancy. All are the same to the servants of Crafters. Here was a Crafter design, being sketched and considered by masters of all arts and artifice… But here, our own people provided the details.” His expression showed both sorrow and pride.

The panel revealed a great palace sitting on a precipice overlooking extraordinary snow-covered mountains that seemed to march back, rank upon rank, to a radiant dawn. Another panel, half as large, showed another kind of palace, a great gray thing—and Reynard saw that it was not a palace, as such, but a ship floating on the water, buildings rising high from its hull, overseeing several ranks and levels of what might have been cannon, but arranged three to an emplacement, and far larger and longer than any cannon they knew…

Calafi pointed to the sky over the palace. Very small, as if far away, a strange bird flew, its wings doubled, one above the other, supporting a long body tailed by a kind of box kite, not feathers. No feathers at all.

Most definitely not a drake, however.

A mechanical thing, flying.

“This was never delivered and executed,” Nikolias said, wiping his eyes. “This pictured a time, a place, a history! And now it may never be. The Sister Queens have killed it!”

A sharp noise came from the winding hall beyond the door. Nikolias looked around them warily. “We must leave,” he said. “We attract attention.”

“From whom?” Widsith asked with a rasp of anger, sweeping out his arms at the emptiness.

The chief of the Travelers led them out of the room, but stopped, looking back—and gestured for Widsith to join him. They were facing a strange figure in carnival garb, backed by shadow, barely paying them heed, even when Nikolias spoke to it. It moved one arm, and a stick fell from the sleeve, along with other scraps.

Beside this figure, half-hidden in the entrance to another room, was a small pile of more sticks.

“Troy was here,” Widsith said. “This was his work. Its time is coming to an end—the length of a candle.”

The robe the figure wore faded and turned to tatters, and the rest of its body collapsed into coal and dust. When its dissolution was finished, Widsith—but none of the others—approached the remnants.

“This puppet is spent,” he said. He nudged the small pile of sticks beside the crumbled mass, and picked up a bone, gray and dry. “But Troy may yet have a few tricks to play.”