The Unfinished Land

Deep Granite

THEY PAUSED AGAIN to consider how to divide their group. Soon the wagon would have to go back, since it could not go on—go back to whatever fate. Bela brought scraps of wood, and Sophia and Yuchil lit a small fire and again made tea.

Valdis stood beside her black horse, away from the glow of the fire, silent as the land. Reynard could not see her face, she had found such deep shadow to cloak herself.

Nikolias gathered them around this last fire, before they doused it and scattered the ashes. “Do not look beyond the path we follow,” he advised. “The servants of Crafters, when dead, persist. Their spirits cannot leave this island until all the Crafters are gone, and some say they are hungry for their freedom and might displace our own souls to get it—hiding in cover to fool Hel. But we have never experienced this. Even as Travelers, we know only what we have been told, meeting with those who serve—with never an explanation that satisfied.”

Yuchil sniffed at this, as if it were possible she did not agree. But then, no doubt she would be riding the wagon back to wherever it must go, along with Sophia and the remaining children, all but Calafi seen so seldom. She afforded Reynard a sad glance, as if challenging his conscience on the importance so many seemed to bestow upon him.

“I would gladly give all to be back where trods watch out for us and none serve Crafters,” Bela said.

Then, at Nikolias’s instruction, Andalo and Sany and Sophia urged the horses to pull the wagon up a slight incline. From this last viable pathway, they could see the edge of the crusted, slicing lava that appeared to surround the krater.

Widsith said, “I see the cold rock that once spread hot from mountains of fire, but no mountains from which it would pour. Agni Most Foul is many hundreds of miles from here.”

Nikolias said, “Long ago the sky rained fire, and the chafing waste was the center of a vast upheaval, neither hot nor cold. Each of the seven islands felt such throes.”

Another desolate and scattered village confirmed what Sany and Bela had found—emptiness and more silence. Reynard and the Pilgrim briefly explored a shallow cleft in which gold-flecked stone had once been quarried and split into sheets—all broken now. Whatever souls had been described by the patterns in these sheets were now lost.

Widsith picked up a piece the size of his hand, and held it up for Reynard’s inspection.

“I see an eye,” Reynard said.

“Half an eye,” Widsith said. “And no life in it.”

They returned to the group and the wagon. Calafi resumed her place beside Reynard. Valdis also kept close, and her form seemed more defined, as if it was important for them all to know where she was and what she was doing. As if she was becoming more aware of a part she would soon play. She faced the direction the wagon was facing, perhaps studying their prospects.

Reynard looked at her for a time, as if he would attract her own gaze—not sure why he wanted to or should.

Calafi twirled her greasy hair in dirty fingers, and then grinned at him, looking remarkably like a young witch.

On the horizon rose a cold gray cloud, dropping silent flurries of snow on the land beneath.

“The krater,” Yuchil said.

“This is the nearest of twelve that ring the chafing waste,” Valdis said. “It is empty.”

“We will make sure,” Nikolias said. “Who will accompany me? Sany, Andalo—you stay here.”

Widsith, Reynard, Kern, and Kaiholo gathered beside him. Sophia stepped down from the wagon and handed Calafi her leather apron. “I’ll go with thee. For once, I would like to know what we have been doing here.”

Yuchil reluctantly gave permission and handed her a short sword. Then she took the tethers of the horses and tied them, Eater and human mounts, to the back of the wagon. The wagon team stamped their hooves.

Widsith and Nikolias walked in silence between the broken stone walls and decaying huts. Reynard kept close to Kern and Kaiholo. Sophia followed them. The edge of the krater was about a mile and a half away, and the air became so cold its slow churn seemed to burn their faces.

Kaiholo and Kern simultaneously pointed to broken slabs of the same gold-flecked stone they had found fragments of in the first quarry.

“More faces and eyes for more worlds,” Kern said. “Now forgotten. The master of this quarry shall never return.”

Sophia was the first to spot, beyond the quarry, before they could peer into the krater’s depression, a disk very like the disks they had seen in Guldreth’s dwelling—the ones they had heard being destroyed. It lay wedged in the crust like a coin fallen from a purse.

Kaiholo and Kern walked around it, followed by Sophia.

“Is this one of their dreams?” she asked, holding out her sword as if the disk might be dangerous.

“Very like,” Kaiholo said.

“You have seen many, have you not?” Sophia asked him. “You were the high one’s consort.”

“She had a number of consorts,” Kern said. “None of us knew all.”

Kaiholo stepped closer, knelt, and peered into its depths. Kern stooped over and bent awkwardly to peer from the other side. “This way, it is dark and blank,” he said.

“Faded or never filled,” Kaiholo said. “Is all here now dead and empty?”

Nobody spoke. The answer was sadly obvious.

They walked the last few dozen yards to the rim. The stony krater was about a thousand yards wide, and curved down, at its center, about a hundred feet. It seemed at first to have a smooth surface, but then Widsith pointed out shallow grooves or trackways drawn from its center and spreading in all directions, intersecting, fading and ending at the rim. At the outer extent of each track was a wide gray spot about the width of a disk. These spots, as if venting, pushed up ghostly pillars of cloud, flaking down snow—snow that did not stick, and never seemed to be there at all.

Nikolias said, shaking his head, “Our fellows told us that they tended to Crafter needs from afar—and never looked into their homes on Earth, as we do now.”

“What sort of beast would take comfort here, under storm or sun, no shade, no protection?” Sophia asked.

Reynard followed the ghostly pillars rising up and up, until they spread out and seemed to form knots. Strange knots, tied in ways that drew his eyes in impossible directions. He covered his face with his hands, then slowly parted his fingers, like a child, and looked again, but saw only a final canopy of cloud and drifting shavings of something that might have been ash, or might still be snow… he could not tell.

“No beast at all,” Nikolias said. “But one that could make its own worlds and forge its own protections… of which we see only marks.”

“Where did it go?” Sophia asked.

Nikolias said, “It could not leave here and live.”

“How did they move a dead Crafter?” Reynard asked.

Kern said, “I have heard of cloaking and many wagons, out to the plain of jars, a long journey for such a burden.”

“Did your people have a hand in that?” Kaiholo asked.

Kern shook his head; he did not know all.

“How long hath it been dead?” Sophia asked, a better question, Reynard thought, though it guaranteed bad dreams later. All but Reynard and Widsith drew designs on their arms and across their chests, which Reynard had come to recognize as a three-barred cross—a symbol of Hel.

Kaiholo looked through the columns of vapor and across the krater. “Some are watching,” he said.

Nikolias looked and shook his head. “Thine eyes are better than mine.”

“Maybe four or five,” Kaiholo said. “Now they are hiding, or gone.”