The Unfinished Land

The Last Krater City

ANDALO GRABBED UP Calafi and placed her on the saddle before him, then rode toward the Sister Queens’ tent, under the direction of Nikolias. Nikolias had supplied him with his own great sword, with a double-edged blade at the slightly curved tip—a saber ending in a scimitar. The girl kept murmuring what sounded like spells or chants, and her eyes had rolled back in her head, showing only whites. As he rode toward and then into the confusion, he did his best to keep her steady and swing his sword at the same time, cutting away easterners who were already in a panic.

And then he felt what Calafi must be experiencing. His eyes seemed to leap up and away from the horse, and to change their very nature—to change color and range, almost to see behind him, and it mattered not which way he turned his head—for these eyes were not in his head.

But like his own eyes, they were looking for enemies—and to clear a path away from the great flaming tent and head them northeast, toward what he saw from the sky, in a different sort of memory and with a different sort of judgment, was another great city beyond the horizon—perhaps twelve or thirteen miles off.

That city meant nothing to this insect judgment. It was important only that it might matter to the partner, the one who now rode behind its eyes and might make demands, which it would be the duty for the animal to anticipate and carry out.

The insect, even without Widsith’s judgment, seemed remarkably intelligent, even prescient, and together…

As Andalo’s horse stamped and reared through the fleeing crowd, a drake dropped among them, wings barely missing him and the horse’s head. Then the drake rose again, clutching a screaming soldier.

Another did the same. And another.

Andalo tried to remember all who had been given vials by Anutha. He had been. And Calafi. He felt the young girl squirm and try to flail—and knew that they were both guiding drakes. This distraction barely allowed him to hold on to the reins, and he wondered, with what little thought he had left to afford wonder, whether they might all be better off dismounted.

But he did not dismount. Somehow his drake enjoyed the thought of riding a horse—a novelty it had never known before: an animal that could not fly, ridden by another animal that could not fly!

Widsith had already seen what happened to men in the clutches of drakes, and turned away from the harried easterners to a distracted Reynard, who seemed barely aware of what was happening around him. The boy kept looking through the frantic soldiers, as if seeing with other eyes—and indeed perhaps he was. Widsith wondered why he was not being similarly distracted, aided—afflicted…

And then the Pilgrim saw his own drake hover and rise and swing around the great flames, and felt his own eyes exchanged for another’s, faster and higher, dropping, plowing with many limbs, pushing aside, clearing the way…

For Calybo!

Who wished them to go to the distant city, now visible through the eyes of their highest drakes—a city surrounded by the untended dead, for the Sister Queens had spent most of their army on trying to destroy the men and women devoted to their final Crafter, the final arbiter and creator of the world’s history until now.

Widsith stayed close to Reynard, as did Andalo and Calafi. Reynard could not see Calybo or Valdis, or any of the other Eaters he knew were here—could feel just yards away, shadows smoothed into other shadows, moving from corpse to corpse, but to what purpose, the boy had no idea, no insight from the memories that Valdis had willed to him in their brief exchange on that beach on the western shore.

They crossed a field of recent battle, hundreds of dead. Reynard saw the bodies from high, and smelled them as he stepped over them, feet catching all too often on tangled limbs.

Widsith focused away from his high, wheeling drake, and saw not just the Queens’ armor, but Spanish plate and crested helms—worn by old or middle-aged men, the last from the galleon, the last of the Spanish to die, perhaps, on this far side of the isle.

But no sign of Cardoza. Or any sign of the bone-wives of the King of Troy.

Reynard thought of the burning candles on their path to this place, and the bag of such candles carried by Gareth. His mind was filled with darting images, suppositions, possibilities—pieces of story not concluded, mixed with so many stories that had reached an end, and he knew not how or why.