“Beware!” called Steelfox. “Qurca sees something.”
“More specifics, perhaps?” Bone drew a dagger.
“Difficult to say. A ship like this one, I think, but it lacks sails, and its construction is peculiar. It is built of many tiny, pale, jagged stones, I would say.”
There was whispering among the crew. Malin said, “Do the tiny jagged stones look like fingernails? Or toenails?”
Steelfox stared at her and simultaneously at something else. “Yes. They might. But aboard it . . .”
“Tell us,” Gaunt said.
“Aboard it is one who should be dead but isn’t. Captain Glint, do you see the ship?”
“I do,” Erik said. “And I hope it isn’t Naglfar, the ship that sails at world’s end.”
“I do not know what it is,” Steelfox said, “or what it portends. But I must go within shouting range, for the Grand Khan is on board.”
“What?” Gaunt said. “Jewelwolf’s husband is out there?”
“No, not Clifflion. The first Grand Khan. My father.”
“Just to clarify,” Bone said, “because I am sometimes slow-witted. Your father is dead, yes?”
“Yes. He should not be here in some far Western nightmare. His spirit should be in the skies above the Karvak Realm.”
Nine Smilodons surprised Gaunt by speaking. “Then so he is, Lady. This is some apparition meant to trick us.” He said more in the Karvak tongue, and she lowered her head.
But a voice called out across the waters from the ship, and Gaunt looked up to behold this Naglfar. It sailed silently nearby, a longship of similar dimensions to Bison but with only tattered remnants of sail. Its hull did indeed look like thousands of human fingernails all fused together. The agglomeration made her skin crawl.
“Yngvarr, come to me,” said the voice. “Let me repay you your kindness. . . .”
Yngvarr closed his eyes. “It is Kalim, my brother. The first man I ever slew.”
Now came a voice Gaunt did recognize, and it troubled her greatly.
“Erik,” said old Nan the Runewalker. “Erik, you must listen. . . .”
Erik covered his eyes with his hand. “No! Rowers! Onward!”
Malin cried out, “Nan! Then you are really dead?”
“We are,” answered a different voice from Naglfar. It was Ruvsa, the Rose of Larderland. “The ship has come for us, and we go to fight the Vindir, wherever they are. Will you join us?”
Both Erik and Yngvarr looked stricken.
“No!” shouted Taper Tom.
“No.” Malin sounded afraid, but she also sounded focused on matters more important than ships of the dead. “I go to stop the troll-jarl.”
“You’re going the wrong way,” came the voice of Briartop. “Silly girl.”
“I am going the right way, and I am not silly, and I am a woman, and you are not Briartop.”
Gaunt shouted, “Malin has the right of it! Think! Even if this nail-ship had the power to gather the dead, why would it gather our dead specifically? Why would it take a form exactly the dimensions of our ship? It may be Naglfar, but it’s our personal Naglfar, our nightmare. Something wants us scared.”
“You’re right, Gaunt!” said Bone. “Also, I don’t think dead men’s nails are really that reliable a construction material.”
“Clever, clever girl,” sighed a voice from the nail-ship. “You were always the brightest of my children.”
“Father,” Gaunt gasped. “You are dead?”
“As I said, clever. And the most spoiled and selfish. When the monsters of the wizard Spansworth tore your younger siblings apart, did you grow up? No, you spat in the face of everyone who did right by you—your mother and I, your elder sisters, and the bards. Until you took ship to become a harlot of Palmary.”
“Poet,” Gaunt said, but her voice shook.
A new speaker said, “You think you have a serpent’s tooth for a child, Basil of County Gaunt? Look at mine—arrogant, murderous, useless. He turned away from the honest path of a fisherman to become a thief.”
Bone twitched. “Fishermen drown, Mother.”
“And thieves hang. I never wanted such things for you, but when the sea took your brothers, you took to the road. Did you never wonder what happened to the rest of us, with one less able back?”
“I . . . I always meant to go back. But years passed, and then decades . . .”
“Listen to yourself. ‘Years passed.’ As if you were helpless before them. The truth is, you lived, day after day, each one deciding not to visit us. Until now, when we are all dead, O finest thief in the Spiral Sea.”
“At least he has a trade, Illudera Bone,” called out Basil of County Gaunt. “My daughter is just a pickpocket.”
“Poet!” shouted Gaunt.
“They shame us,” said the voice of Illudera.
“They compound their shame with each other,” answered that of Basil.
“You two,” Bone declared, though his hands were shaking, “are perfect for each other.”
“Yes,” Gaunt managed to say, “find comfort in each other. Do not mock the living. Especially the poets. You can ask Muninn Crowbeard about that.”
“We know all about Crowbeard,” said Basil. “How you mocked him into throwing his life away.”
“He sold me into slavery,” said Bone.
“At least you finally did some useful work,” said Illudera.
“Leave them alone!” Innocence raised his hands. “I’ve had enough of my elders telling everyone what to do! Let my parents live their lives. Go away!”
A crackle of unseen energy, and a path of displaced water roared from Leaping Bison to Naglfar, from the living to the dead. The nail-ship rocked, and as though a spell was broken Bison’s foamreavers rowed, putting distance between them. But the shadowy crew rowed as well, and the voice of Freidar called out, “Beware your power, Askelad! It will eat you alive! We think we wield power, but more often it wields us!”
And Nan echoed, “Erik, steer your ship away if you can, but once you’ve roamed the Straits of Tid, part of you will always be here. Listen, that is the source of us . . . the memory of each of us that resonates within time. . . .”
“Go!” said Innocence. “Away!” And with each word he sent more of his essence against Naglfar, rocking it with wind and wave.
Voices in the musical-sounding language of the Karvaks crossed the quicksilver sea between the ships, and Steelfox and Nine Smilodons looked at each other in anguish. Nine Smilodons rowed like a madman.
There followed voices in three languages Gaunt did not know, though perhaps she’d heard one of them in the marketplaces of the East. Katta and Northwing looked stricken. Yet there was a third mysterious language being called out, and there seemed no one left to be affected by it.
No, there was someone. Deadfall thrashed upon the wet floor of the boat.
“They will destroy us,” Deadfall said. “They will weaken our resolve and attack when we are at our most disoriented. Some of them will claim to want otherwise, but they will still attack.”
“How can you know this?” Innocence said.
“Lord Gaunt, it is my maker I heard, the evil sorcerer Olob. His shade understands the situation better than the others. They are summoned into being by the Straits of Tid themselves. For time resists alteration.”
“We’re not trying to alter time!” Bone said. “We’re just passing through.”
“Nevertheless. Our presence disturbs the forces here. We are confronted with our dead in response.”
Innocence looked out into the waters. “Cairn! Do you hear me? You helped me once. Do so again!”
And Gaunt saw a narwhal leap out of the waves, and on it was riding a battle-decked young woman of perhaps sixteen. She raised a polished steel spear, and braided red hair flowed beneath her helmet.
“Ship of nails!” she called out, and her voice was accented with the lilts of the desert lands between the Eldshore and Mirabad. “You have your full complement o
f dead! You cannot dishearten me. Back! Back into potentiality, and harry this longship no more!”
She threw the spear, and the hull of fingernails and toenails was weakened, for the material shredded at that spot. Naglfar took on water and slowed. The warrior looked over her shoulder at Bison. “Go! I cannot travel with you, for there are those among you who would cast a shadow upon me. But I will keep your shades from destroying you. Go!”
“Row!” commanded Erik, and the strange warrior receded behind them.
“A chooser—” Yngvarr said, “a chooser—of the—slain. We are—favored—”
As Naglfar receded behind them, the dead aboard took on the aspect of shadowy creatures with one blazing eye apiece. They had been Draugar all along.
Bison reached a vast rocky islet with a sea-cave fit for sailing into. Gaunt felt a sickening disorientation as she saw the tunnel fork into two paths, one of which led to the base of a gigantic stove. She preferred to look down the other tunnel, for all that it led somewhere strange. It was easier to look at a different world on her own scale than her own world writ large.
She saw a cavern lit by self-luminous crystals in the primary colors, mixing to form every hue. Golden grassland filled the cavern floor.
In Bison went, rowing right down a frothing river, rushing toward a silver castle that made Gaunt think of vast drinking vessels, and daggers, and loot. She looked up at a dim, misty sky, for the cavern was huge enough to form clouds.
“Is this the place you remember?” Bone asked Innocence.
When Innocence didn’t reply Gaunt touched her son’s shoulder, wondering if she was really allowed to make such gestures, yet. He stared at her hand but didn’t shake it off. “Are you all right?”
“I’m . . . all right. Truly all right. The troll-sight has faded.” It was true. There was no green gleam in Innocence’s eye. “Skrymir can’t see through my eyes or hear my speech. Tell me, what is our quest? This may not last.”
The other questers shared a look, and Gaunt nodded. It was Malin who said, “We are going to destroy Skrymir’s heart.”
“I sense where it is,” Deadfall said. “Or rather, I did. We will have to return to our world to find it.”
“All right,” Innocence said. “I’ll still help you. I like being free of Skrymir. I am my own master. Or I wish to be. . . .” He hung his head, shook it as if pushing through cobwebs.
“What is it?” Gaunt asked.
“Naglfar, if that’s what it truly was, was hard to see. In my troll-sight it was beautiful. But it made me sick. Freidar and Nan were kind to me. And Cairn . . .”
“Who is she?” Bone asked. “Gaunt’s met her too, but I do not understand what she is or what she wants.”
“She claims to serve the Vindir. I don’t know why she has an interest in me.” He hesitated. “She once posed the question, of what should you ask your future self.”
“We have more immediate questions,” Gaunt said. “Look.”
Riding up to them on smoky gray horses were a dozen warriors in translucent armor. They were what Gaunt’s own folk called “delven,” with translucent skin and organs beneath the armor. Ropes were thrown to Bison, and the riders’ leader called out, “Humans! Tie off these lines and be taken to the castle of Sølvlyss. Else you will fight us.”
“Go along with it,” Erik commanded.
The riders brought Bison to the castle, and waiting for them were two mismatched figures. One was a short, wizened gray-skinned man in a brown robe and a wide-brimmed straw hat, who said, “Welcome, foamreavers! I am Earl Morksol, and this is my daughter—”
“Inga!” called out Malin.
Earl Morksol frowned. “Alfhild. Her name is Alfhild.”
The second figure was the spitting image of Inga, if Inga had been shorter, slighter, less powerfully muscled. She wore a colorful bunad—a peasant dress—of red and blue.
“You are the girl who was taken,” Gaunt said, “when the changeling Inga was left behind.”
“Ah!” said the earl. “You know the troll-scion who was offered up, so I might claim a human as my daughter.”
Malin said, “But you are not trolls.”
“Indeed not! But we had a threefold arrangement with Skrymir Hollowheart. I gave him my daughter to be his foundling. She was before the age of Shaping, and so she took on troll-aspect. Her name is now Rubblewrack. Meanwhile Skrymir gave his daughter to the humans, and we took theirs.”
Malin said, “Inga . . . Inga is Skrymir’s daughter?”
“Yes,” said the earl. “I believe I said that. The important thing is that you are wrong. My daughter is Alfhild. Not Inga.”
“Hello, Alfhild,” said Malin. “I have a friend who would like to meet you.”
“You mean Innocence Gaunt?” snapped Alfhild. “He can’t have me. He spurned me once, and I do not forgive.”
“Ah,” said Innocence in obvious mock sadness. “Well, that is as it may be. Our errand was fruitless. May we be gone?”
“Hold on now,” said Morksol. “You’ve eaten of our food, lad. Maybe just a little, maybe not-quite-willingly. But enough to make you feel at home here, is it not? You should remain in my service, Innocence Gaunt, whether or not Alfhild wants you.”
Gaunt saw worry in Innocence’s eyes, and she gripped his arm. “None will keep him captive, Earl Morksol. Never again. I swear this.”
“His mother, are you?” Morksol said. “And his father beside him too, eh? The familial bond in humans is strong. Perhaps because you’re so short-lived. But you both feel great guilt for reasons unclear to me. Love and guilt! Two curses I am luckily spared. You swear to defend him?”
“We do,” Bone said. “We will never be lost to each other again, except by death or his own choice.”
Alfhild stared at them.
Morksol said, “So be it. But hear my rede. Your son will never feel fully at home, anywhere. The road will always call to him.”
“I am familiar with that feeling,” Bone said.
“You are a traveler, I see. Tell me your tales, then. We’ve heard much about the outside world since your son’s visit piqued our interest. We know he’s not the Runethane, for a Runemarked Queen has arisen.”
“Does she live?” Innocence asked, and Alfhild frowned at him.
“Last we heard, yes, though time is strange in your world,” said Morksol.
“We must find her,” Innocence said.
“We have our own task, lad,” Erik said.
“You need to be free of Skrymir,” Gaunt whispered in his ear. He nodded.
Alfhild said, “Father, if they are to pass, then a suitable man must be left here to be my plaything.” She searched the crew and pointed at Katta. “Perhaps that one.”
Katta bowed, but he said, “I think I would disappoint.”
Alfhild looked at Northwing. “You are interesting,” she said.
Northwing laughed. “I would disappoint in a very different way.”
“You people perplex me,” Alfhild said. Searching the crew, her gaze settled upon Erik Glint. “You are old, but you might do.”
“I am mourning a lost love,” Erik said.
“He means my late wife,” said Yngvarr.
“She did nothing to dishonor you,” said Erik, “nor did I. Our love lived only in the days before she met you.”
“Excuse me?” said Alfhild. “Why do you talk about this dead woman when I am here?”
Bone coughed. “Survival? Eh?”
Erik seemed to ignore him. “You do seem magnificent, Princess Alfhild. An exquisite beauty with a commanding mind.”
“Yes?” she said. “And?”
“And rather spoiled. But you might grow out of it. I have a proposal.”
“You are rather forward.”
“It is not, perhaps, what you expect. Travel with us. See the world we mere humans struggle and toil within. Judge me the best way you can, by my craft and my courage. And I will see how you fare. We might come to approve of each other. Either
way, we will have learned something.”
“The insolence!”
Erik shrugged. “If you are afraid . . .”
“I fear nothing. Father, I shall travel aboard this ship of fools for a time.”
“Daughter,” said Earl Morksol. “I knew a time like this would come, when you were tempted to leave our domain and see the world of your birth. But I did not wish it to be a time of war. There are ice-gems to be savored and circlets of stolen sunlight, garlands of smoke and brooches of ash. The Whispering Games have yet to commence, the Ceremony of Blazing Frost only a cycle distant. I beg you to defer suitors for a time, and stay.”
Alfhild blinked and lowered her head. “If I were uldra I would obey, Father. But I am human, and perhaps it is fitting I see my homeworld in a time of war.”
“Then go, and begone from my sight. I will welcome you when you are wiser. You will have no help in the going, however.”
Alfhild stepped aboard Bison, and Innocence pointed to the great rock around the far side of the moat, whence a stream emerged.
“We are rowing into that?” Erik asked.
“Into the portal I will make,” Innocence said, adding, “I hope” in a voice only Gaunt could hear.
Leaping Bison’s men threw off the lines and rowed past the stunned warriors on the shore, moving around the strange moat toward the mass of rock from which streamed the peculiar river. As they neared it, Earl Morksol appeared to take leave of his senses, or perhaps find them again. He screeched, “Stop them! Rescue Alfhild! Kill them all!”
Arrows were loosed, and men died from the elf-shot. Gaunt and Bone tried to shield Innocence with their bodies as he raised his arm and a bright light appeared in front of them, a swirling illumination with a ghostly, bleak plain lying at the center of it.
Bison plunged through.
CHAPTER 36
QUEENS
Joy’s company flew into the mountains of central Svardmark, seeking shelter and a means of defying Jewelwolf. Among the remote villages and forests they heard rumors that Princess Corinna fought on, aided by a mysterious Man in Black.
At first she doubted these stories, as they often included tales of a Runemarked Queen who battled Karvaks and walking corpses, who could destroy trolls with a kick, and who could fly. But Snow Pine pointed out to Joy, “There’s something to those stories. We may find Corinna and Walking Stick out there too.”
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