“You and Huginn seem to know many things,” he said. “Have you heard any rumors of strange flying things in the sky?”
Hekla looked at him sharply. “What have you heard about flying things?”
“Uh . . . I’ve heard of carpets that can fly through the sky.”
Hekla relaxed. “No, I’ve heard no such story. Oh, and Huginn isn’t my husband.”
“Oh?” Innocence was shocked. And he was feeling overly confided in, once again.
“He is an old philanderer. He has a wife, far across the island, who will not speak to him—and who could blame her, with all his cheating? She was long gone when I met him. I accept him for all his faults, for I am a fractured soul myself, too wild for any but a wild man. None of the children about here are mine, for I can bear none. But many of them are his.”
Innocence had no idea what to say to all this.
“You have seen very little of the world, have you?”
Hekla’s tone, part compassion, part pity, irritated him. He answered, “I have seen the Dragonstorm at the heart of the Ruby Waste. I have beheld the waterwheels of Loomsberg and the thousand towers of Palmary. I have glimpsed the glittering guts of the Moon Pit and haunted ruin of Annylum, abandoned in the Sandboil. I have circled the spires of Mirabad and the Vault of Heaven in Archaeopolis. I have seen what I have seen.”
Hekla inched back. “I do not know what to make of you. Except this. You must rest.”
She left him then, and his sleep had none of the seductive warmth of his near death, but it was sleep, and he accepted it without battle.
It was decided (not without acrimony) that at first light Huginn would proceed with Innocence to the homestead of one Jokull Loftsson, beside the sea. From there, Innocence could travel by boat to Smokecoast.
“There’s not much of a town at Smokecoast,” Huginn explained in the dark of the morning while Innocence gobbled breakfast. “There’s not much of a town anywhere in Oxiland. But there are many farms in that area, and a good anchorage. You might find a ship. Now, I’m obligated to visit Jokull for the Yule season. But it’s also a political meeting. You’ve said you know your letters?”
“Yes,” Innocence said, between bites of porridge. He also had bacon and the soupy, milky stuff he now knew to be a cheese, called skyr. He gathered this was a prosperous farm.
“Good. You can take notes, a task for which I’ll pay you. You can earn a bit more doing chores after the feasting. That should get you to Smokecoast, where there’ll be plenty of work for a strong back till a ship comes.”
“Thank you.”
The two set off before dawn, fording a river and riding north. Beyond the steading lay snow-dusted brown grass and dark mountains, and it occurred to Innocence this was a realm quite unlike his prior experiences. It did not seem whimsical, like the Peculiar Peaks, nor monumental like the Worldheart Mountains, nor hostile like the Desert of Sanguine Silence. Human habitation had barely scratched it, and where it did the results were not inspiring—like soaring Qushkent or splendid Amberhorn—but homey. Even Fiskegard had presented a soaring grace with its vaulting mountains. Regarding Oxiland was like becoming open to the void, like gazing up into the dark between the stars.
They rode the small shaggy horses of this land, and soon Innocence was envying their coats. For his part he wore a heavy cloak and thick-woven sweater that had made him perspire miserably indoors. Out here he was grateful for them. The wind whistled through the rocks of the plain in a voice that sounded lonely and grieved, and that hit his face like invisible stinging insects. He was glad of the oversized wool mittens Hekla had stuffed on him at the last minute. They made it harder to control the horse whose thick hair he envied, but he’d have trouble with frozen hands too.
Another thing he envied was Huginn’s horsemanship. He’d ridden nothing before but a magic carpet. It was not good practice for horses. The Oxilanders made riding seem easy enough, but his mount sensed a novice and amused herself by tormenting him. Early on, when they traversed a boulder-filled hollow to escape the wind, the horse rambled under an outcropping and knocked Innocence off.
“That was on purpose!” Innocence accused, brushing dust away.
Huginn laughed. “I should have supplied you with stirrups, such as the steppe nomads use.”
Curiosity overcame Innocence’s annoyance as he climbed back on. “You know of them?”
“Do you think us all country bumpkins?” Huginn teased as he led them once again through the tumble. “I was educated at the house of Jokull Loftsson, where we are headed now. There are men more wealthy, and more powerful, than he. But among the high, there is none more learned, and more respected. The uncrowned king of Oxiland we call him, and bear in mind, boy, how we prize our freedom. It takes much to win a title such as that.” He paused, as though seeing something far beyond the plain. “Much indeed.”
“We seem to be taking a very meandering route to this Loftsson.” Innocence was glad to escape the wind, but it did seem peculiar that they’d mostly avoided what passed for roads.
“Ah, for a lowly man this would be a long route, but for a man of station this is a shortcut. Can you untangle my riddle?”
Innocence felt fully occupied keeping warm and staying on a horse, but he forced himself to think. “You don’t want to be seen. Or at least, not identified. Then you’d have to stop and talk.”
“Yes. If we went as the crow flies to every farm between mine and Jokull’s, we’d be an extra day. To reach him by the feast of Saint Kringa, we would have to cut every visit short. All would be offended. This way, no one has anything of me at all, but no inkling that they should have. And no one is offended.”
“But we are exposed to a bitter gale,” Innocence couldn’t help but remark, “with no warm fires in between.”
“You call this a gale? It’s merely a stinningskaldi. I’ve seen a rok or three that would chill your blood! We won’t have one of those, Swan willing, but we may see an allhvasst before we’re done.”
“You are teasing me again, as with the horse.” Innocence adjusted himself, for he and the blanket had begun leaning like a tree scoured by a storm.
“Ha! Come along! We’ll teach you to ride yet, lad, and the fifty words for wind.”
They did stop at just one farmhouse, when the sky’s hue was a cold, deep azure. There a family of modest means offered them the remnants of their stew, and Huginn offered a fragment of a tale. Innocence sat with a girl about his age, dark-haired and short. At times she bore a frown like the shadow of trees upon a sunny path, and at others a grin like sunlight glinting on a newly snatched river stone.
He grew acutely aware of her and kept wondering, as Huginn spoke, if she was looking at him. He would often glance at her to check and was always disappointed, or perhaps relieved.
THE ARRIVAL OF THE VINDIR
Long ago, when the sun rose in the south and set in the north, there was a land beloved of Arthane Stormeye, chief of the gods who dwelled in the icy Surmount. In that land there were things we would recognize today: fjords and mountains, glaciers and moraines, rivers and grasslands. And too, there were people that we would recognize, people who struggled and fought and performed deeds worthy and dishonorable.
That age ended when the gods of Surmount warred with their cousins in the distant South—what is now a place beyond even the empires of the East. For their warring changed the course of the sun so that it rose and set in the places we expect today. The fair realm of Vindheim, crowned with ice, became a sun-scoured land, and in the tumult it was mostly drowned, so that only a few islands remained to mark Vindheim’s passing. The gods withered, and in time Arthane himself perished; yet before these events he had placed dreams in the mind of one man, Orm, who was his son by the mortal woman Bergljot. Arthane bade Orm build vessels and depart Vindheim with all his kin.
Thus when the sun’s course changed, and the seas were tormented, and the frozen lands became hot, Orm’s folk sailed. Some of their ships were lost, and
they mourned. But Orm had second sight, and steered them to a land that was once warm and was now cold, snow falling upon shriveling rainforest. The Vindir landed there and forged a peace with the inhabitants, who knew the ways of the land but not the ways of cold. Together the Vindir and these Solir worked together to make this land, Kantenjord, a good place. Over generations the greatest of Vindir and Solir, like Orm’s son Torden, or his wife Verden, came to be considered gods, and it is true that great champions rose among them, and others who came from across the Earthe, and some called by Orm’s Choosers of the Slain from other times and places—Yngvarr the Fiery, Torfa the Vengeful, Alder of the Earthquake, and many more.
For there came to Orm one day a strange traveler, who spoke with peculiar diction. He said he had maps revealing places in Kantenjord where the right person might travel through the years to reach other times. He called himself the Winterjarl, come from a time of endless snow and ice, the time of Fimbulwinter, the age of ultimate cold and the ending of days.
The Winterjarl sojourned with the Vindir and Solir and taught them much of future days. As more peoples migrated to Kantenjord, the stories of the Vindir and Solir and their deeds became legendary. Orm and Torden and their allies and kin in their time passed away; they were accounted as gods by those who came after. And it may be that by the Winterjarl’s teachings the wisdom and power of those folk can wing like ravens down the years to men of these days and in this manner aid their descendants.
There have been many dread winters between the Vindir’s time and ours, and it may be that the Fimbulwinter was one of these, and that the doom the Winterjarl foretold was of the old religion and its surrender to the light of the White Swan. Or it may be that this disaster is yet to come. Either way, let us look with respect upon the old ways, for they have things to teach us, even we Swanlings, blessed as they were not.
When Huginn was done, there were other stories told by the grownups, and at some point it was decreed that younger folk should get themselves to bed. The girl showed him his place on the far end of the hearth-room.
“What is your name?” he asked.
She smiled and looked away, as if guessing a great deal from the entrails of that one sentence. “I am Jaska Torsdatter. And you?”
“Innocence Gaunt.”
“A strange name.”
“I’ve not heard the name Jaska before either.”
“It’s a Vuos name.”
“Vuos? That is not a word I’ve heard before.”
“The First. My mother’s people were the first people of this land.”
“Like the Soli?”
“The Soli were latecomers, so my mother said before she died. The Vuos were here before any others.” She glanced down the hearth-room, but the adults were paying little notice. “They live in the farthest north of Spydbanen. My father met her foamreaving.”
She must have understood his look of horror, for she added, “It was a trading journey, not a raid. She was his first wife, before Oddny there. He has always said he was charmed by the reindeer herders and the beauty of their icy land.”
“Have you ever been there?”
“No. I don’t think I will ever go.”
“Why not?”
Jaska laughed a little. “Girls don’t travel! Except princesses.”
Innocence thought of Nan and Hekla. “That surely isn’t true. Why do you believe it?”
She studied him, as if seeing a serious edge in what she’d regarded as a joke. “I will travel, just a little. To Loftsson Farm, for the feast of Saint Kringa.”
“Maybe I will see you there.”
“You are a servant,” Jaska said, tone expressionless. “My family is not mighty like Jokull’s nor famed like Huginn’s. But my father has a voice in the Spring Assembly and in the Althing.”
“I don’t know what that means. I am . . . an orphan. But I have seen many wonders.” None more than you, he suddenly wanted to say, but he sensed the words would squeak out of him like the voice of a new-hatched chick.
“I must go,” Jaska said. “Good-night.”
“Good-night.”
He could not decide if it was a good night or not. He could not sleep. Something in him wanted to reach out and embrace all the embers of the fire.
He did not see Jaska in the morning. He and Huginn left in the earliest gray, for the latter hoped to reach their destination just before nightfall. Even in the gloom Huginn and the horses seemed to know their business, for all that Innocence felt himself lost.
“She is a serious one, that girl,” Huginn said.
“What?” Innocence’s mind seemed to return from a voyage over the sea.
“That Jaska, Tor’s daughter. It’s my opinion that a young man’s first love should not be a serious girl. Time enough for sobriety when you’re married.”
Innocence forgot all Walking Stick’s advice on addressing elders. “I did not ask your opinion.”
“Oh, ho!” Innocence expected Huginn to take offense, but the Kantening’s only further comment was a chuckle.
Strangely, Innocence’s thoughts turned not to Jaska but to A-Girl-Is-A-Joy, somewhere far away. If she remained within the enchanted scroll, she would be older now than he. Perhaps years older. Even if she’d stayed within his own timeframe, even if they met again, she would be very different. The thought stabbed at him, making him feel lonelier than any remembrance of his parents.
It was a land for loneliness, he thought. It was a warmer day than yesterday, and as the sun rose, the melting snow revealed a jumbled, rough coastal country. They crossed boulder-filled streams in sight of waterfalls, and a dark volcanic cone rose in the distance. He rubbed at his forehead now and then. It tingled. Something about it itched like an old memory.
When we reach this place, the words came out of cold blue, displacing thoughts of girls and loneliness, I will take the reins of my life.
CHAPTER 6
RUBBLEWRACK
A Tumult of Trees on Peculiar Peaks rushed through the stormy skies to an unknown fate in a desolate land. Everyone upon the mystic mountain knew this, and everyone knew that it would take some time to reach this doom, for time ran more swiftly within the scroll than without.
When Snow Pine and Flint appeared and told their tale, the elders of the mountain gathered everyone together.
“We are in a tight spot,” Walking Stick said. “It seems someone in Spydbanen wants our company. But the guardian of the scroll can help us.”
The self-portrait of the sage painter, often known as Meteor-Plum, spoke. It might have been the first time he’d addressed everyone in his care.
“I can resist,” he said. “But it will be a long struggle, and I may fail. If I succeed, our plunge to the ground may be violent. Be patient. Be prepared. I go now to my cave, to begin.”
A-Girl-Is-A-Joy crossed her arms, trying to remain calm, remembering.
Back when the scroll had lain upon the bottom of the ocean, endless rains had little by little threatened to drown the Peculiar Peaks. The overcast skies and continual drizzle had been companions of her childhood, and it was hard to remember the more benign skies of her first couple of years.
Suddenly everything had changed. The rain had ceased, replaced by crazy windstorms that blew the clouds overhead at ridiculous speeds. If that weren’t enough, later on came the great plunge, when everything in the mountains seemed much lighter. It took very little, in those days, to kick off into the air, drifting among the trees. That was great fun, until the moment when Joy had almost floated over the chasm between their peak and the next. Walking Stick had rescued her, but the momentary terror was nothing compared to the half-hour lecture he’d given her afterward.
It was in the midst of his harangue, surrounded by statues of monks in the hall who’d all looked far friendlier than Walking Stick, that Imago Bone had first entered the monastery with word of her mother.
She knew the thief as hardly any less legendary than Archer Yi, who shot nine of ten suns from the
skies, or the sorcerer Hsuan Chieh, master of miniature landscapes and the art of self-shrinking. Yet she recognized him from paintings made by the guardian of this place.
Walking Stick hardly seemed less surprised. “You.”
Bone bowed. “Hello, Walking Stick.” He looked to her. “Hello, A-Girl-Is-A-Joy.”
“You know me?” she said.
“Your mother’s often spoken about you.”
“My mother? Where is she?”
Bone waved an arm. “Outside. Far outside, I’m afraid. But there is at least a chance we’ll be found. I will explain everything I can for the price of a cup of tea.”
And so he had. He’d told of Gaunt and Bone’s adventures with Snow Pine, seeking the Silk Map as the price of finding the Scroll of Years, and how at last a chance companion had been the one to do the deed, for good or for ill.
“We eventually learned the flying carpet was intelligent,” Walking Stick said, nodding. “But we did not know it was a homicidal lunatic.”
“It has a complicated nature,” Bone said, “or so we guess. There may be hope for it yet. But I’m not an expert on weaving, magical or otherwise.”
The guardian of the scroll sighed. “It was I who let your son depart the scroll with the carpet. I did not know its nature. The boy said he wished to test the waters.”
“He what?”
“Many of this monastery did so from time to time,” Walking Stick said, “attempting to learn if our underwater position had changed. It was hazardous, for the depth of the water could damage a person’s body. Yet if the exposure was brief, the monks’ arts could restore the swimmer.”
“I could draw them back in before lasting harm was done,” the tattered man said. “But Innocence and the carpet broke my hold. I sensed great power in the carpet . . . but too late.”
Bone scowled. “You didn’t think it odd that a carpet had suddenly arrived in your little world?”
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