“Deadfall serves you, then? Not Jewelwolf? Or Skrymir?”
There was a moaning of the wind as he said the second name.
As if summoned by the sound, the humming, disconcerting voice of the carpet rose from the ground near Bone. It said, “Lord Gaunt understands what it is to be torn between good and evil, to seek a path that surpasses both. Once again I serve him, he who will be Emperor.”
“I will no longer hide from what I am,” Innocence said. “In my hands I have the strength to unite the world. To end all wars.”
“Do Jewelwolf and . . . the troll-king . . . know of your exalted plans?”
“Of course not. They each think they’re in control. But Jewelwolf is mortal, and holds no fear for me. And in the disaster on the island of the heart, I was freed from Skrymir’s influence. At heart they’re both broken, and they need me to take charge.”
Bone said. “Innocence. Son. Let me say what I’d say. I forgive you for what happened at the island. I would forgive you even if your mother had died. You never chose to be shackled to some bizarre power. We never wanted that for you. Do me a favor and open that pack on my left?” Innocence did so. “Now, unwrap that cloth there, the purple one.”
Innocence revealed a strange contraption of rusted brass. “What is this?” the boy said. “Is it some magical weapon?”
“No. It’s the Antilektron Mechanism, and no one’s really sure what it is. We’re only sure that it isn’t magic, and that it’s meant to calculate numbers. Perhaps it aided in navigation, or in crop planting, or in party scheduling. It’s anyone’s guess. What we do know is, in a past age, sages were able to construct such things without benefit of magic. There are many wonders possible in the world, Innocence, that have nothing to do with dread dooms or higher powers.”
Innocence set the mechanism on the stony ground. “I don’t understand why you’re telling me this, Father.”
“So many people believe you’ve been given a blessing. But I know not every inheritance is welcome. To be footsore and free can be a finer thing than to have your toes massaged in a bejeweled palace. You speak of power, and you think you’re being strong. But what I hear is a lost boy, grasping at what looks like gold but is really straw. Leave it, son. Enough of this nonsense of empire. We are together, and we have a magic carpet. Let’s fly!”
Deadfall said, “You presume much.”
“Be silent, Deadfall,” said Innocence. “You too, father. I realize now I don’t know you. You’re a mediocrity.”
Innocence stepped away, pacing before the Great Chain.
“You know I’m right,” Bone said to Deadfall. “Your whole existence has been a struggle against confinement, compulsion.”
“All the more reason to ally with power. Speaking of which.”
The ground shook in heavy pulses. On a sudden impulse, Bone tucked the Antilektron Mechanism under his pallet. It was treasure, after all.
“You,” said the troll-jarl. “I know not whether to squash you or thank you. You helped destroy my heart, a deed I could never nerve myself to do. I never knew if such an act would destroy me or free me. It seems it is the latter! I have come to embrace the hollowness of my being. I have peeled away the onion of myself and found a great nothingness at its heart. Where is myself? The emptiness!”
“I suggest,” Bone said, “your true self lies in that noxious stuff that sprays from the onion and stings the eyes.”
“Do I make you cry, thief?” Skrymir laughed. “I see the world for the hollow lie it is. My one regret is that my new clarity has robbed me of my power of illusion. All that is left is to amuse myself with the pain of more ignorant beings.”
“I am certainly ignorant, and in pain. I see there is a small gap still, in your substance?” For Bone had seen the sky through Skrymir’s chest.
With a rumbling of grinding stone, Skrymir patted the spot. “It is much smaller than before,” the troll-jarl said, “but it persists. Curious. I suppose I must have a reminder of my empty nature.”
“Are you not still an extension of the dragon that underlies Spydbanen?”
“My new perspective will soon free me of that ground. I will hang within the void.”
“What if something filled that gap?”
“My heart?” Skrymir chuckled. “My emptiness would consume anything that presumed to claim my center. Even the carpet beside you would perish, now.”
“I was not offering,” Deadfall said.
“Too bad,” Skrymir said. “It’s tempting to pay you back for leading them to the heart.”
“What do you want, Skrymir?” Bone said.
“I want only to see your face when I do this.” Skrymir raised his foot, and Bone could not summon the strength to roll away.
The foot came down and crushed Bone’s pack. Skrymir caught an armloop in a little toe and flung the pack into the waters of the strait.
“There,” said the troll-jarl. “Enough of this nonsense of the Chart of Tomorrows. Whatever the Winterjarl is, or that Chooser of the Slain I’ve sensed nosing about, they won’t stop me.”
“There was no need to do that. I can’t hurt you.”
“Perhaps it just amused me. Rubblewrack! Attend!”
Now a troll-woman like a congealed avalanche stepped up to Bone’s left. “What is your bidding, O great one?”
“First I bid that you improve your sarcasm. It does not cut me at all. Second, keep an eye on this thief, this dabbler in strange doings, this Bone. I don’t like having him here. Guard him.”
“He is spent and wounded. I smell his death close by. Perhaps twice over.”
“Guard him, Rubblewrack.”
“I also smell the coming of two other girls. The human who thinks she’s an uldra. The troll who thinks she’s a human. They are out there.”
Skrymir looked pained. “You are always imagining that you smell them. Serve me, Rubblewrack. Guard Imago Bone.”
“The sun is coming to this place, the sun that evaporates soul from troll, and leaves them piles of stone.”
Skrymir swatted Rubblewrack. Bits of stone fell upon Bone, and a cloud of dust.
“I will do worse to your soul, uldra-changeling! You have the guise of trolls, but you are of otherfolk nature and can abide the sun. Why else would I have adopted you?”
“Out of love?”
“Aha! You have obeyed my earlier command. Your sarcasm is improving. I leave you now, for I must yet be careful of the sun. I will wait beneath the waves.”
As Skrymir rumbled off, Rubblewrack crouched and became indistinguishable from a pile of boulders. Bone knew what a mouse feels like, helpless between the cat’s claws. The light improved, and Innocence did not return, but the Karvak guards did, keeping a discreet distance from the new boulders. Deadfall said, “Jewelwolf comes.”
“Lovely,” said Bone.
“Why thank you,” said the Karvak khatun. She was riding a steppe horse with one eye blazing green. Huginn Sharpspear walked beside her, and with him two young Oxilanders, Rolf and Kollr, Bone presumed. “I trust your accommodations are pleasant, thief?”
“A fine seaside vacation, khatun! Ah, Huginn! How is the treachery business?”
“I will never cease to be amazed,” Huginn said. “No matter how low my critics—thieves, murderers, scum of the land—they still presume to judge me for looking after my own interests. I am no worse than you. Just perhaps more honest, quicker to reach conclusions. After all, thousands of my countrymen are now under the Karvak yoke and yielding to the inevitable. Are they traitors too? They came to the same decision as I and showed as much loyalty to their homelands.”
“They didn’t open the gates of Svanstad.”
“Enough,” said Jewelwolf. “What matters, thief, is that those gates were opened, those people were yoked, and Kantenjord is all but in Karvak hands. Your allies from Kpalamaa have sailed off. Your friends are dead or scattered or trapped in the mountains. And yet you may live, first as a hostage, then as a servant.”
> “I do have a few skills. Would the khan take me on, then?”
“Ha!” said Huginn, with a triumphant laugh.
“My husband!” laughed Jewelwolf. “Clifflion is irrelevant. Let him gobble up a few countries back at the continent. In time I will return in glory. He can have the title of Grand Khan; I have the true power.” She dismounted and unsheathed the two swords she carried, the gray saber Crypttongue with its jewel-studded pommel and the straight black sword Schismglass.
The blade points hovered for a moment near Bone’s throat.
He forced himself to smile. “Ah, I could be your servant? Remember? Highly skilled? Bargain price?”
“Jewelwolf,” Huginn said. “Your point, or points, are made.”
Jewelwolf sheathed the swords. “You may have an opportunity as a clown, thief. Just as Huginn has.” She walked off to speak to Innocence. The horse cast Bone a speculative look, as though considering just how much effort it would be to crush the thief’s skull. Nonchalantly, it followed its mistress.
Huginn lingered to say, “When you are ready to drop the superior airs, friend thief, I can advise you on serving the Karvaks.”
“Well, she did say there are openings as a clown. You’re just the person I’d consult.”
Huginn shook his head and followed Jewelwolf.
Though the light improved, Bone’s feelings darkened. Jewelwolf wasn’t wrong. Battered as he was, he was fit only to be a hostage.
He recalled his long-dead mentor Master Sidewinder. Do not be tricked into thinking that rest and contemplation are a waste of time. It is often while apparently doing nothing that something becomes clear. Very well. He rested.
After a time he heard distant shouts in the direction of Svardmark. Those cliffs had a peculiar look, for a strange foggy weather clung to that side, but the rest of the strait was entering sunlight. And . . . was that a balloon rising from those mists? It seemed of different design than the Karvak type, smaller of gondola. . . .
There was a rumbling beside him. The boulders shook.
“What is the matter, Rubblewrack?” Bone said. He let intuition guide him. “Could your changeling sisters be out there?”
“Silence, human.”
“That’s it, isn’t it? They are out there. Perhaps Karvaks or foamreavers have captured them. What would you say to them if you could?”
“I would say nothing. I would crush them. They disturb my thoughts, simply by existing.”
“It is cruel of them,” Bone goaded. “Taking up space like that. Mocking you with life and breath.”
“Yes! You understand. Some would say that they’re innocent, for they have done nothing overt to harm me.”
“Nonsense. It is what you feel that matters. There is no such thing as objective innocence or harm! If a man a thousand miles away from me lives a happy existence, and I suffer, and I choose to feel that his happiness mocks me, why surely he is at fault. Who can gainsay my sovereign feelings?”
“Yes! You are wise, thief!”
“Why, thank you.”
“If only I could go look for them.”
“Skrymir is not here, is he? Who is he, frightened of the sun as he is, to bind you here? I am no threat, and here are these soldiers, and Deadfall too will guard me, no?”
“I suppose so,” said the carpet.
Rubblewrack rose. “Thank you. You are the only one who understands.”
“Don’t let anyone hold you back!” Bone said. “The hell with the rest of the world.”
“You would make a good troll,” said Rubblewrack and lumbered off.
“I have the feeling I may have started an avalanche,” Bone muttered.
Deadfall said, “Why did you do this thing?”
“Where stasis does not serve, perhaps motion will.”
Jewelwolf ran up to them. “Where did that troll-thing go?”
“Into the water, it would seem,” Bone said.
“Did she say where she was going?”
“She smelled the blood of a human. And a troll, maybe.”
“I do not like this. Deadfall, if he so much as twitches, strangle him.”
“As that would prevent him from further speech,” Deadfall said, “I am willing—”
“Joy!”
The voice that silenced them was Innocence’s.
As he shouted, the Great Chain shone with a cold blue illumination. . . .
Except in the Svardmark heights, where a fiery power was moving down the Chain toward them.
Jewelwolf took in the whole scene, the fog, the anomalous balloon, the Chain.
“I have been a fool,” the khatun said. “I thought they would play the turtle, not the wolf.” She drew the two magic blades and cursed anew.
Schismglass was changing. The tip of it was now a reflective violet, as though shadows were peeling away, revealing a tinted mirror. “It prefers another hand,” Jewelwolf said, “that I will have to hack off. This will be a day of blood.”
She moved to Innocence’s side.
Bone dared not move, for he’d seen Deadfall’s homicidal inclinations at first hand. He did notice a pair of tiny figures, one on the shoulders of the other, walking down the Chain. He couldn’t tell who they were, but if he could trade Deadfall for a hat, he’d tip it at them.
He shut his eyes. What now, Master Sidewinder?
And it seemed that somebody answered, then. But it was not Master Sidewinder’s voice.
It was a hoarse echo of his son’s.
We have come a long way together, it said. We are both broken things. But it is possible that nothing in this world is truly whole. I have said before that I wanted to grasp power. I was a fool. What I truly want to grasp is life, and I now understand that is not necessarily the same thing. There are people up on the Chain who are about to die. People whom my prior, power-grasping self is about to kill. People who in another life could have been my friends. Make that other life possible, O companion. You, ambiguous champion, mix of good and evil—do a good deed today. Save them.
“How?” Bone gasped. “How can I—”
Deadfall leapt upon him. It surrounded Bone, and he knew his life would be crushed. He saw Gaunt’s face and ached with the feeling he’d missed ten thousand chances to caress it.
And yet he was not smothered. Instead the rolled-up carpet, levitating with Bone inside it, whacked one Karvak soldier and then the other. He heard them whoof as they fell over.
Now Deadfall rushed into the sky, opening up a little to allow Bone air.
“You must let me know,” said the carpet, “if you are strong enough to clutch me. Babying you like this makes me less agile, and I have more people to catch.”
“Not yet . . . you overheard him? And you chose to help?”
“Fool. It was you who overheard. He wasn’t talking to you. It is I who must prove myself today.”
In one moment Innocence exulted in his power. In the next moment an arrow struck him in the shoulder. Pain and outrage exploded through his mind. He lost control of the Chain.
Huginn Sharpspear crouched beside him. “Hold still, boy. I know a little about arrows. . . .”
“Leave it in!” Innocence said. “No time for healing.”
“Keep him there, Huginn,” said Jewelwolf, and her face glowed with the light of the Chain. “This is the moment. The Runethane commands the Chain. The chosen wielder of one of the swords is nearing. And my sister approaches. I may not have another chance.”
“Chance for what?”
Jewelwolf only laughed as she raised the swords. Innocence desperately tried to rise.
The Chain flared with light once more, and the energies of the Runethane faded.
“What?” Jewelwolf said. “No . . . I need the power. . . .”
But Innocence saw it all. His sense of his old friend still persisted, and he winced as he perceived two figures stabbing A-Girl-Is-A-Joy. And he heard her voice calling for help.
“Joy,” he gasped, and everything, his hopes for power
, his defiant scheming, collapsed like a melting ice cave. In its place was rage. The Kantening barbarian and her accomplice had dared betray a daughter of the greatest civilization on Earthe . . . and his friend.
He would destroy them all. He would blast the Svardmark highlands apart.
He lurched up, shoved Huginn aside, and toppled over the nearest link of the Chain.
Power blazed forth, and it was not the yin that he expressed this time, not the disciplined cold of his supernatural winter, but the yang aspect of the Heavenwalls, tapping the energies of fiery dragons, rushing up the Chain.
“No!” said Jewelwolf. “Not now!”
He ignored her. But there came another voice he could not dismiss.
Innocence, came the voice of Persimmon Gaunt. Son. There is so much I wish to say to you, and I may not have another chance. But it must all boil down to one word. Love. I love you, my beautiful child. I am so sorry your father and I were away for so long. Do not hate us, and the world, for that. You are in a moment when hate can wreck everything that is. I know it is the hardest thing I can ask of you, but I ask you to act in love. You have too much power to indulge hate now. Remember the boy you were. Remember what still could be.
For an instant he was no longer Lord Gaunt hurling power at hated savages who’d felled the Runethane but Innocence Gaunt leaping about a boulder garden with A-Girl-Is-A-Joy, whacking sticks with her, ferocity giving way to anguish whenever one or the other thought they’d truly given a bruise or poked an eye.
Joy.
I’m . . . here . . . I’m alive . . . help!
He checked his power as it sped.
He did not destroy the far side of the Chain. In his mind’s eye he saw another reality, where the promontory exploded, killing Joy and her would-be slayers, making him the slayer. He even imagined he saw more, a great earthquake ravaging Svardmark and Spydbanen.
But that was not this life. In this life, his mind reached Joy’s. I can’t strike them without hurting you! I’m sorry!
Despite the helplessness, time seemed to crawl in his vision. He saw Corinna’s dagger taking forever to fall, as he beheld it in Joy’s sight.
She answered him, I’m sorry too. But I am glad you care.
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