1633880583 (F)

by Chris Willrich

  Red Mirror pointed at another spot, where his reflection was of a gangly youth who could have been Red Mirror’s younger brother. “That is I,” said the warrior, “when I was Innocence Gaunt’s age.”

  Innocence looked at the stone, and in place of himself there was a baby being jiggled by a red-haired woman. He looked down at his feet, and instead of his own reflection he beheld a white-bearded old man.

  “I see myself,” Steelfox said, “on the day I bonded with the egg of my falcon.” Innocence saw a girl shaking in terror beside an egg. The flesh-and-blood Steelfox beside him noted him staring. He looked away. She said, “It is the way of my people not to record what is shameful, but it seems this stone remembers.”

  Dolma was studiously shutting her eyes. “This little island,” she said, “seems not to access any particular time or space. Perhaps it is made of time and space.”

  “I wonder what becomes of us if we die here,” Steelfox said. “At any rate, Innocence Gaunt, let’s be off to your mountain.”

  It swiftly became clear swimming was something they were all rather bad at. If the mountain had been farther away, they might have drowned and discovered the answer to Steelfox’s question. As it was, Steelfox and Dolma helped Innocence sputter onto the rocky slope to which they clung, gasping.

  “I think—” Innocence began.

  Something stung his ankle, grabbed his leg, and dragged him into the water.

  He splashed and grabbed the shore. Nine Smilodons gripped his arm. Innocence looked over his shoulder at a nightmare.

  A blurred sailboat rode on the moonlit waters. It looked to have been chopped in half lengthwise, yet it stayed impossibly upright. Even its mast and sail were split in two. The lone occupant stood whole, albeit monstrous. It was a shadowed shape covered with seaweed, carrying a spear in one hand, with a single blazing red eye in the dark mass of its head.

  The hand without a spear held a rope, attached to a grappling hook now stuck to Innocence’s foot.

  “Draug!” Innocence cried, recognizing a description from stories.

  Steelfox waded into the water, a risky business as the mountainous shore plunged sharply. She swung her sword and cut the line. Nine Smilodons dragged Innocence onto the slope and freed him from the grapple.

  The Draug hissed. “Go back to your grasslands,” it said in a voice like a spatter of surf. “These isles cannot be tamed.”

  “Whatever you are,” Steelfox called out, “you are a corruption, and we are coming to cleanse you.”

  “We are eternal guardians of wyrd. Is it your fate to die?”

  “I am a princess of the great Karvak nation. And this boy is under my protection!”

  The Draug hissed again and raised its spear. But now the falcon Qurca screeched out of the sky and clawed the target of its red eye. It wept blood resembling molten metal. The Draug howled in fury, and its throw went wild.

  “To me, Qurca!” Steelfox called, and she pointed her companions around the side of the mountain.

  As she returned, Innocence said, “You were amazing.”

  “Don’t waste breath. Where is that doorway of yours, Innocence?”

  “It—it was right here!” He limped along a cliff, hands searching the stone, but there was not so much as a seam to show a tunnel had been there.

  “Your time will run out!” called the Draug, for its half-ship still glided along the waters.

  Steelfox said, “Keep searching. I will swim out to confront it.”

  “No, you can’t,” Innocence said, surprised how frightened he was for the princess of the steppes. “They are like embodiments of fate. No encounter with them goes well.”

  “Is that from experience or stories?”

  “Stories,” he admitted.

  “My father was told stories. That he was unimportant, weak, of inferior blood, fit to be subordinate only—and for a time a slave! He never believed those stories, and one day he became the mightiest man in the world. I will fight this Draug.”

  Her words stirred something deep and angry in Innocence.

  “No,” he said, turning to face the blazing eye. “I will.”

  He raised his hand, and the mark on his forehead pulsed with pain. “Draug! I am Innocence Gaunt, chosen of the Heavenwalls of Qiangguo—a mightier civilization than you’ve ever dreamed! I bring the light of the East. Begone, horror of the West!”

  Like a blast of wind, chi flowed from his hand. The waters split before the onslaught, and the boat buckled, groaned, and snapped along its width. Twice-rent, it sank into the waves.

  The Draug bellowed its rage and fell into the Straits of Tid.

  Innocence remembered his sensations when tearing the fabric of reality in Sølvlyss. Light flared in a huge circle upon the stone, and the stone within that spot faded away.

  They tumbled into the tunnel.

  When they regained their wits, the Straits of Tid were gone.

  “You speak of amazing?” Steelfox exclaimed.

  Innocence, shivering, no longer felt the power of the Heavenwalls. He swayed at the opening, beholding an alpine valley rimmed with ice and stone. Within its white-covered meadows were scores of farmhouses and a scattering of great halls. Beside them were thousands of the round tents of the Karvaks.

  “What?” he said.

  “We are back,” Dolma said, her voice full of relief. “This is the valley of Jotuncrown, realm of the human vassals of the Spydbanen trolls, and the mustering place of the Karvaks. We are in the Trollberg.”

  “What?” he said again.

  “Thank you for saving us,” Nine Smilodons said, patting him on the shoulder.

  A voice boomed in the tunnel, and a vast face appeared on its other end, a stern visage of stone and crystal. “Lady Steelfox! I am pleased to see you, though I am surprised to find you entering by the back door!”

  “I had help, Skrymir!” Steelfox called back.

  “I . . . see! Oho! The chosen of the Heavenwalls! You have delivered him!”

  “He has delivered me, Skrymir. I am in his debt. He is under my protection.”

  “Of course!” the huge voice chuckled. “I will not challenge your authority!”

  The great troll named Skrymir, whom Innocence instinctively feared, raised a vast hand, opened it.

  “I have one here who is under your protection as well, and one who helped the other land-touched one escape. What shall I do with them, do you think?”

  Within the hand stirred what Innocence took to be a young woman of Kantenjord and a hunter (man or woman, he wasn’t sure) of the distant East. The Kantening was maimed, with the stump of a severed arm wrapped in rough bandages.

  Steelfox gasped. “Northwing!”

  The troll said, “I did not at first know the shaman was your servant. I think you should keep closer watch on your people! For another man of yours, one Haytham, helped the Runethane escape me.”

  The Easterner, the one who must be Northwing, said weakly, “Liege. You must understand . . .”

  “We will speak later, Northwing!” Steelfox said. “You overreach, Skrymir! My sister will know of this!”

  “All in good time,” said Skrymir. “It is you and yours who’ve endangered our alliance. But fear not, I’m in a thoughtful mood. Rather as if the heart’s been ripped out of me. You can make good by taking this Northwing back under your own wing . . . and by minding the chosen of the Heavenwalls.”

  “And what of the girl there?”

  “This one? She is of troll blood. Years ago we dealt with the uldra of Svardmark, to place her among the humans. Part of a peace arrangement. We are welcoming her back to the fold, in our own way.”

  The young woman began saying something, over and over. It started inaudibly but slowly grew clear. “Kill you . . . kill you . . .”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” said the troll, “and a pony too. Now—”

  “Now it ends,” came a new voice.

  A black-garbed human figure leapt into view and landed upon the great hand. Be
fore Skrymir could react, the stranger grabbed both of the wounded people, one in each arm. With strength hard to believe in one so old, he leapt deep into the tunnel, all his actions scoffing at gravity.

  But it was not really a stranger, and as soon as Innocence recognized him, it was no longer hard to believe. “Walking Stick!”

  Walking Stick paused in shock.

  Innocence Gaunt had waited years to do something that could truly surprise his mentor. Now that the moment had come, it was not quite as satisfying as he’d imagined. “Shifu,” Innocence said. “I am under the Karvaks’ protection. Join us!”

  “What?” Walking Stick stared at Innocence, Steelfox, Dolma, the soldiers. “I come looking for Joy, and I find you? With Karvaks?”

  “Oh, yes!” Skrymir bellowed. “Do join our party!”

  But Walking Stick had sized up the opposition and did another unexpected thing. He swung a scroll into the air and with a flourish jabbed it at four spots around himself. The first two times he pointed, a warrior monk materialized in that spot. The third time it was a woman of Qiangguo who greatly resembled A-Girl-Is-A-Joy. She brandished a sword and said, “Who do I hurt?” The fourth arrival was a tall, light-brown man with a sword of his own, who said brightly, “I think there will be many options!”

  “Toys!” chortled Skrymir, and grabbed.

  In his grip one of the monks burst like an overripe melon.

  “No!” Walking Stick said.

  “Enough!” Northwing said, and from the open end of the tunnel, eagles with glowing green eyes winged forth to peck at Skrymir’s eyes.

  Skrymir slapped again and again, and red marked the tunnel walls. “No—these—are my—spies!”

  “Northwing!” Steelfox commanded. “Your place is by my side! I invoke the pact between your people and mine!”

  The shaman stood stiffly and walked to Steelfox’s side.

  “No!” said the Kantening woman. “How can you do this? I thought you were our friend!”

  “I have old loyalties, Inga,” said Northwing. “Just as you have yours.”

  “Traitor!” Inga rushed to attack.

  Steelfox and Dolma got in her way, but Inga had appalling strength. She slapped the sword from Steelfox’s grasp, backhanded the shocked Karvak princess into the stone wall, and kicked Dolma so hard the one-eared woman doubled over.

  Red Mirror advanced. “Cease at once, or—”

  She did not even let him finish. She punched.

  Her strength proved what Skrymir had said about troll blood. His head left his body. Head and body tumbled out the tunnel opening, plunging thousands of feet to Jotuncrown below.

  “Stop!” Innocence said. “They’re my friends!”

  “No,” Walking Stick said. His group had advanced to Innocence’s side. “They are Karvaks.”

  “They have honor. Unlike the Kantenings.”

  “Humans are a mix of good and bad.”

  “I think,” Innocence said, anger bringing his power to life, “you may not understand which is which.”

  “Enough!” Northwing said. “Innocence Gaunt. Choose. You take my meaning?”

  The mountain air made Innocence feel dizzy, giddy. Power crackled unseen within his hands. “I do. Leave us, Walking Stick, all of you. What will be will be.”

  “What are you saying, lad?” the tall man said. “Don’t you realize, we could take you to your parents?”

  “Innocence!” said the woman of Qiangguo. “I’m Snow Pine, Joy’s mother. She will want to see you. Steelfox, what are you doing? What do you want with Innocence?”

  Steelfox groaned her way to her feet. She put her hand on Innocence’s shoulder. “He will help with the war.”

  “War?”

  “Go.”

  “What will I tell your parents?” Walking Stick asked Innocence.

  “Tell them to live happily,” Innocence said, “far from Kantenjord. I have work to do here.”

  “The hell with you!” Inga said.

  “Come,” Walking Stick said. He tapped Inga with the scroll, and she disappeared, as did Walking Stick’s other companions.

  “I will not block you,” Steelfox said, stepping aside.

  “Stop him!” bellowed Skrymir, who was now finished with the green-eyed eagles. The stone hand shot forth. But Walking Stick leapt into the void. Unlike Red Mirror, Innocence thought, he would somehow land on his feet.

  CHAPTER 20

  WOLVES

  “They are just waiting,” said Alder. “Why are they just waiting?”

  Bone wanted to reassure the Swanislander, but as he peered through the crack between the stave church’s intricately carved doors, he wanted reassurance himself. The gigantic Skalagrim the Bloody, their former master, stood at the edge of the clearing. He was dressed for war, bearing a shield and axe, chain armor and helmet. This seemed like gilding the lily, since Skalagrim looked more than capable of slaughter with his bare hands.

  Worse, he’d brought friends of similar armament and girth.

  “We have the defensible spot,” Bone said cheerily. At least, he hoped he sounded cheery. “They must consider their approach.”

  “Five of them?” Gaunt asked.

  “Even two would be enough,” Crowbeard said. “I know these men by reputation.”

  “They’re five of Nine Wolves, then?” Vuk asked. “Which ones?”

  “Well . . . the Wolves are accounted to be Skalagrim the Bloody, with whom we’re all acquainted, and Rafnar Dragon-Axe, whose weapon I see gleaming in the sun, and Yngvarr Thrall-Taker, who seems to have other plans this fine morning . . . Ottmar Bloodslake, Arnuf Pyre-Maker, and Kolli the Cackling are three Spydbanen chieftains, and I think they remain in the north. . . . That leaves the Oxilanders—Arngrimur Townflayer, Muggur Barrow-Friend, and Einar Bringer of Wailing. Pretty sure we’ve got the Oxilanders with us today.”

  “How often do they all get together?” Bone asked. “The card games alone must be worthy of song.”

  “To my knowledge they have never gathered all at once but sometimes visit each other in dreams. They are not united in purpose, only in fury. They are often at odds. Each has long dreamed of becoming the Runemarked King.”

  “They may be disappointed in that,” Gaunt said. “Let us disappoint them in other ways.”

  “How?” Crowbeard said. “Look at us! One good warrior among us, Vuk, and he ill-equipped. One palsied foamreaver. One maimed wizard’s apprentice. Two thieves. Against five of the most powerful fighters in the isles.”

  “Five against five!” Bone said brightly. “Even odds.”

  “Our doom has come,” Alder muttered.

  “Speak not of doom,” Bone said, “think always of odds. The odds could be better, but this is the only hand we’ve got.”

  “Eh?” said Vuk.

  “All right, how about this. We’re in a game of hnefatafl, and we’re the king. Think of the glory if we win.”

  “I will play,” said Vuk with a smile. “We will make them come to us.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Gaunt said. “You and Crowbeard—I suggest you guard the front door while Bone barricades the back. I will ascend to the balcony and see if I can get a good arrow-shot on somebody. Alder, find heavy objects to drop on heads, then join me. When you’re at it, wrack your brains for any magic that might help us.”

  “I keep telling you,” Alder said, “I wasn’t much of a magician even with my pinkies. My spells tend to go awry.”

  “Keep asking yourself, Is this worse than death?” Bone said. “I find that question clarifying.”

  “Bone will join us on the balcony soon,” Gaunt said.

  “So it’s just Vuk and me,” Crowbeard said, “to stand against five?”

  “When battle is joined inside,” Gaunt said, “I will descend and join the fray.”

  “You will?” Bone said.

  “I have Crypttongue,” Gaunt said.

  They were about their work. Bone had a bit of luck: in searching for things to block the
back door, he found an old sword in an alcove (perhaps Kantenings stashed swords before services, along with cloaks.) He gave it to Vuk, who grinned.

  Bone shoved loose pews against the back door, smacked his hands to clear the dust, and ascended the balcony. Gaunt had found a gap where a window had once been.

  “It is strange,” she said, “how long they’re waiting.”

  “They’re trying to inspire fear.”

  “Well, I’m afraid,” she said. “But there is more to us than they imagine.”

  Alder joined them. “I know what I should do. My main area of study is called the Logic of Lithospheres—”

  Gaunt said, “Is that related to the weather-manipulation art? The Algebra of Atmospheres?”

  “Yes, but this affects soil and rock. It’s less practiced because it’s harder to control. But I can make the ground shake violently. If they’re determined to stand in one spot like that . . .”

  “Oh, please demonstrate,” Gaunt said, preparing to shoot.

  Alder murmured to himself, raising his maimed hands.

  Bone’s eyes widened as he saw a wave appear in the snowy ground, rushing upon the Wolves. They were all knocked over, snarling and cursing. Gaunt began firing arrows, concentrating on the nearest one, who, judging by the symbol on his weapon, was Rafnar Dragon-Axe.

  At the same time, the stave church shook.

  “That wasn’t planned!” Alder said.

  The light outside changed. Instead of dawn, it appeared to be sunset. Their surroundings changed as well; the stave church suddenly appeared new, with stained-glass windows and polished wood.

  “What on Earthe?” Bone said.

  “Time,” Gaunt said. “We are beside the Straits of Tid, and Alder’s magic must have set something off.”

  “Certainly!” Alder said. “Blame me! That’s what I’m here for.”

  “Calm yourself,” Gaunt said. “This may yet work to our advantage. There may be a path of escape. Vuk! Crowbeard! Do you happen to see a dimensional portal behind the altar?”