“The farm is up ahead, and I know which window to knock at. Be ready!”
I was ready, but at the first several knocks Haytham ignored us. At last I rapped with my staff. The window was simply a small opening with a thick shutter over it, which Haytham soon parted.
“Katta! Northwing!”
“What’s keeping you so distracted from your own rescue?” I said.
“Uh, designs for improvements to the balloons,” Haytham said.
“Love poetry for the princess,” declared Northwing. “Yes, I’ve been spying on you.”
“She is very striking,” Haytham protested.
“I have noticed,” Northwing said. “Hurry. This is our chance to escape.”
“Thank you for coming for me,” Haytham said, gathering his few belongings, mostly books. “Are you all right, Northwing? You seem ill.”
“It’s a great effort to bring the snows. We’re mostly trained to bring good weather.” As the shaman spoke, Katta helped Haytham climb out the window. Northwing added, “But there’s more. When I opened myself to the spirits, I sensed many more of my ilk in these isles.”
“Shamans?” Haytham asked.
“No, people who hate goat cheese. Of course I meant shamans! There are many, up in the north. I can’t tell who, but I can detect them by the eddies they leave. Never mind, let’s get to the balloon.”
There were two guards by the barn of Al-Saqr, and they were isolated from the rest of the farm by the quiet thickness of the snowfall. Their breathing, by contrast, was loud, and their sweat pungent. Haytham and Northwing tackled one, while I employed my staff to knock out the other. I proceeded to gag his companion. We dragged both inside. Luckily no one was working at the balloon or its gear. Haytham strode over to the brazier and said, “Haboob.”
The efrit billowed out of his vessel. “O mighty mariner of the air! Your sojourn on land has proven most dull for a poor, neglected efrit.”
“Never mind that,” Haytham said. “Are you fit to work?”
“Of course, O paragon of explorers—”
“Yes! Yes is a perfectly good word, short and sweet, that you could stand to learn.”
“Or,” sniffed the efrit, “perhaps I need a continued rest.”
“Speak as you wish,” sighed Haytham.
The barn, Northwing informed me, was designed for the escape of a balloon, with a heavy crank allowing the rooftop to part. I naturally took the job of opening the roof as the others piled in whatever equipment they could manage.
When the canvas was full, the others called to me—and not a minute too soon, for the soldiers of Soderland were now running toward the barn. I heard Prince Ragnar’s voice among them, crying, mystifyingly, “Do not harm the princess!” I leapt into the gondola, staff ready to repel the men, wildly whacking away weapons as we rose into the night. Sometimes a blade or arrow pierced the felt. I was peculiarly happy.
“You’re grinning,” said Northwing.
“I enjoy travel,” I said.
“So,” Haytham said, “now that we’ve irrevocably angered the royal family of Soderland, where shall we spread cheer next?”
“Well,” said a new voice, “you spoke of a companion with a Runemark. I think that sounds very interesting.”
Slipping out of a curtained-off area on the far side of the gondola, Princess Corinna yawned and stretched. “It’s a nice place to rest, but a terrible place to oversleep.”
I could not see her at all. And I began to believe there are some perils that are no less vexing for having nothing to do with evil.
(Here ends the second section of A Journey to Kantenjord.)
CHAPTER 16
STRAITS
Innocence didn’t know who would prevail if battle broke out between Steelfox’s band on the one hand and Jokull Loftsson’s enraged Kantenings on the other, but as he entered the church through the bell tower, avoiding the ropes connecting the Karvak balloons to the structure, he knew he had little time.
He shoved past acolytes and novitiates, priests and clerks. Dressed as he was, looking as he did, he inspired confusion but not alarm; nothing on the outside said Child of the Far East Here, Collaborating with Your Enemies.
Yet that was how they’d see him, if they knew his heart.
He made it all the way to the sanctuary before somebody recognized him.
“Innocence!” called Numi in surprise. The abbot’s assistant was standing amid a knot of some twenty robed men, the abbot included, guarding the doors. Perhaps five held in white-knuckled grips things that qualified as war weapons, axes or swords. A half-dozen more had daggers, and the remainder prepared for battle with garden tools and kitchen knives. “What are you doing here?”
“Numi,” Innocence said, getting his breath. “You need to let them in.”
“You,” said the abbot, who did not so much speak as intone. The black-robed elder swished up to Innocence. “I recognize you. You’re Huginn Sharpspear’s dog. What trickery is this?”
“No trickery.” Innocence did not know what to say, but it was clear he couldn’t simply open the doors. He followed through, with honesty. “There was an argument that got out of hand. People need time to calm down. Giving sanctuary can accomplish that. I swear they’ll put down their weapons.” He mostly believed it.
“They have already broken the peace,” said the abbot.
“Oxilanders broke it first,” Innocence said.
“Father Superior,” Numi said, “I vouch for Innocence here.”
“You are nearly as much a stranger to me as he is,” the abbot replied. “You want me to go against the uncrowned king?”
“Does he own you, then?” Innocence snapped.
It was the wrong thing to say. The abbot’s ears turned red as he bellowed for someone to tie Innocence up.
Nevertheless, although priests removed the ropes of their own robes and advanced, backed by men with axes, this was no group of warriors. Innocence realized he could outmaneuver them. He backed down the aisle of the sanctuary, trying to remain calm as a frantic pounding shook the door.
Halfway to the altar Innocence ducked left amid the pews. Some men rushed to follow, and others made to cut him off. None, however, expected him to invigorate his chi and jump onto the back of the nearest pew, leaping from there to the back of the next, and so on, taking the creaking wooden rows like stepping stones.
He jumped to the vestibule, and now there were but five people blocking his way.
In one motion he slid beneath their reach, slammed into the doors, and knocked the wooden bar aside.
His compatriots wasted no time dragging the doors ajar. He smiled.
Then it all went wrong.
“No!” cried Numi, interposing himself between Innocence and one of the armed churchmen, who sought to hack Innocence down. The cry turned into a horrifying shriek as an axe descended upon Numi’s head. Innocence’s smile disappeared beneath a spatter of blood and brains.
Innocence was too stunned to respond. He possessed battle reflexes, to be sure, drilled into him by Walking Stick’s endless exercises. But his training had focused on individual skill.
He’d never confronted the idea of bystanders being slain, nor of men accidentally cut down by their own side.
A friend had just died in front of him, or someone who might have become a friend. It made even less sense than Torfa’s death minutes earlier. In that moment, everything else unraveled. Karvak warriors rushed into the vestibule and with their swords cut down the axe-wielder, whose dying look was not one of defiance, nor fury, but confusion.
Other Kantenings, led by the abbot, tried to block the Karvak party, but Dolma and her warriors burst among them, striking with hands, feet, and daggers. Before Innocence knew it, the Kantenings were down, and Steelfox was lifting him to his feet. Blood was on her blade.
“I . . .” Innocence said. “No, no, I . . .”
She slapped him. “Return to yourself.” She stared with disgust at the blood her hand had carr
ied from his face. “Close those doors!” she commanded him and Huginn.
The professional liar did not object, nor hesitate. Innocence joined him, in a daze. Steelfox joined her people battling the men who’d previously chased Innocence, and clashes and screams echoed through the stone walls.
As the doors began groaning shut, Innocence saw a force of enraged and bellowing Kantenings charging up the hill. As they’d come directly from a banquet they were mostly unarmored, though the crowd bristled with spears, axes, swords, maces, daggers. Yet they were disorganized, frenzied, and Innocence could not think of them as fighting men. He saw instead a band of savages.
He did not think the doors would close in time.
Then death rained from the skies.
Archers shot from the safe vantage of the Karvak balloons overhead. Their speed and accuracy was such that the front of the Kantening mob fell in a heap. Confusion and shock took the remainder, who had not until now understood their peril.
The archers allowed them no time to reconsider. Even as the doors finally slammed shut, Innocence saw more Kantenings die.
Huginn returned the brace to the doors and tugged Innocence into the sanctuary. The battle there was already over. Some of Steelfox’s band had fallen; Dolma now had only two companions. Blood was everywhere.
Steelfox wiped her hand within a nearby stone font. Numi’s blood reddened the water.
Huginn coughed. “That is holy water. Great one.”
“Blood is unclean,” Steelfox said. “Its shedding offends Mother Earth and Father Sky.” She looked at Innocence. “You should clean yourself as well, dragon-marked one.”
“He does not understand your ways,” Dolma said. “He has had a shock. The boy who was slain by the axe-wielder, he was your friend, wasn’t he, Innocence? He saved you.”
“Why?” Innocence said, head swimming through a blood-dark sea.
“It is the way of Kantenings,” Huginn said. “Our anger boils over and scalds everyone in reach. Steelfox, it seems I may need rescue.”
“You will become my vassal, then?” Steelfox said.
“I will,” Huginn said, and Innocence did not even hear a pause.
“We can ascend to the balloons,” Steelfox said. “This is no fortress. And I dislike being trapped.”
“No,” Innocence said, not knowing what he’d say before he said it. “We can’t leave the dead like this.”
“That is honorable,” Steelfox said, “but do not your folk bury their dead? We have no time for that.”
“They are not my people! My people, my true people, would clean the bodies, dress them in somber colors, and take them to a suitable tomb, a stony place where outside it is bright, green, and moist.”
Huginn sighed. “There’s no such place here. But there’s a crypt.”
“Very well,” Steelfox said. “We’ll take our own dead with us. Meanwhile, Innocence and Huginn, carry the dead Kantenings to this crypt. Nine Smilodons and Red Mirror, assist them.”
The crypt was a wooden-walled structure that looked to be the remnant of an older church whose furnishings were carved, not sculpted. The place was eerie; Innocence thought he heard strange whispers and cries of seabirds, and the mark on his forehead tingled. The sensations seemed familiar. but he could not place them. He tried to ignore it all and focus on his task.
They brought the abbot last. As they set the man down, suddenly Innocence became dizzy.
It was as if he stood upon the Lardermen’s ship Raveneye again, as it rolled and pitched in the cold sea, though his eyes told him he was securely underground. Then his eyes told him stranger things. The chamber appeared to fill with mist, and the ceiling seemed to have vanished, revealing not the stone sanctuary above but a starry sky. The wall beyond the wooden altar had vanished as well, and a moonlit sea washed against the room’s edge.
Huginn made the sign of the Swan upon his chest. “Well, I’ll screw a shark,” he said.
Nine Smilodons said, “Whatever you just suggested, I beg you not do it in my presence.”
“Nevertheless,” his companion Red Mirror said, “this sight is full of wonder.”
By these words Innocence understood the others saw what he saw. At least he hadn’t gone insane. “It’s the Straits of Tid.”
Huginn looked at him sharply. “Boy, how do you know of such things?”
“A Chooser of the Slain told me,” Innocence said simply. He heard Huginn mutter curses as Innocence stepped forward and looked out at this bizarre ocean. He did not expect to see two other locations within the silvery, starlit sea. One was an old wooden church whose soaring, angled roof panels reminded him a little of towers of the distant East. Another was a great mountain, most of whose bulk lay out of sight.
That wooden church had, just like the room Innocence stood within, a missing wall. Meanwhile the mountain had a cavern opening that looked as though a slice had been hacked away with some unimaginably huge blade.
Through the first gap he beheld his mother. Through the second he saw A-Girl-Is-A-Joy.
At first those two noticed each other, but not him.
“Joy!” he heard his mother exclaim.
“Gaunt!” came the reply.
“What—what is this? Is it a dream?”
“I do not know! I must escape—”
At that moment it seemed to Innocence that Joy’s eyes found his, and she tried to speak, but suddenly a huge hand formed of stone reached out from deeper into the mountain and grabbed her.
Innocence had the sense of a gigantic presence, scowling and leering, with eyes like red flames, before the stone entity retreated and Joy disappeared with it.
Just behind him, Huginn gasped. “The troll-jarl.”
At last Innocence found his voice. “Joy!”
“Innocence!” came the voice of Persimmon Gaunt, for now she saw him. And even after the shock of seeing Joy taken away, Innocence wondered anew at Gaunt’s presence. “Mother?”
She made to speak, but her form grew transparent and vanished from sight.
Innocence half-expected to disappear as well, or at any rate for the Straits of Tid to vanish back into whatever dream-realm they’d emerged from. But for now they persisted. Perhaps if he stepped into those waters, he could swim to where his mother and his friend were now. . . .
“Boy, what are you doing?” Huginn demanded.
“People I love are out there.”
“Those are the Straits of Tid. They are the waters of time itself. What you’ve seen may just be echoes of the past or possible futures.”
“No. They are my friend and my mother, and we shared the present moment. I can sense it.”
“You’re mad, boy, and while I admire mad—”
There was a commotion on the stairway.
Steelfox emerged, with Dolma beside her, conducting a fighting retreat. This time the Kantenings they opposed were armored men with shields and swords, and there seemed no end to them. Jokull Loftsson was in the second rank. Nine Smilodons and Red Mirror rushed up to assist as Steelfox and Dolma entered the old chapel; Huginn held back. Innocence stood at the magical gateway.
“They ambushed us,” Dolma gasped.
Jokull said, “I knew of a secret passage . . . Swan preserve us, what is that?”
“My scribe has strange powers,” Huginn said. “He’s opened up the waters of time to claim the Karvaks. You can be rid of them! I never meant to betray you.” Huginn winked at Innocence.
“What?” Steelfox snarled, fending off a thrust.
“I believe you,” Jokull said. “Now that I’ve thought . . . I know you’re not responsible. Hand your men over, Steelfox, the ones who slew my wife. Then you may go peacefully!”
Nine Smilodons and Red Mirror spoke in the musical-sounding Karvak language, but Steelfox cut them off. In Kantentongue she said, “Do you people know nothing of honor? They’re my responsibility, and I will answer. And I answer this. Your wife’s death is a sorrow, but she brought it on herself. My men stay wit
h me. But you may have your Huginn. Such a wind-blown man is of no use to me.”
“Then,” Jokull said, “your companions will die, and you will be ransomed.”
Innocence felt his anger rising up. As at the hall, it could no longer be contained. “No!”
The chamber shook. He didn’t know how his power was doing this, but he didn’t need too. “No! To hell with you barbarians! Steelfox, Huginn lied—this gateway isn’t your doom. Follow me.” He stepped into the Straits of Tid.
It was like walking into snow, for though cold the surf felt more like viscous fluid than water, and it tingled. A moaning wind rose up.
Steelfox and her escort bolted toward him.
“Boy!” Huginn called. “Do you want to live among aliens?”
“I am an alien. A child of the East!”
The Karvak party stepped through. The scene behind them, the wooden chapel and the incredulous Kantenings, disappeared.
Now they bobbed upon a silvery sea, strange nebulae overhead like rainbow bridges.
“Well,” Steelfox said, “thank you. I think. Where to, child of the East?”
“To that mountain,” he said, giving one last look at the wooden church from which Persimmon Gaunt had peered. It faded even as he decided. “For we have someone to save, great Steelfox.”
CHAPTER 17
RUIN
Skiing compared favorably to riding an angry dragon. After Gaunt had buried herself in three snowdrifts, that was all she could say for it. The cold raised fresh aches in the spot where she’d hit a mountain rock that first day in Kantenjord.
“You are getting better,” Vuk said, helping her out of the third snowdrift.
“I am glad you’re preserving the honor of the family,” Bone said. He was still sporting a purple bruise on his cheek from an encounter with a tree branch.
“Should we not press on?” Alder said. Despite his wounded hands, he was keeping up well, and Muninn Crowbeard for his part was an experienced “skier.” There was a barely restrained glee about him that Gaunt would have found intolerable, were the bastard not so useful.
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