Snow Pine said, “Fascination, hell. We need cover, fast. Otherwise we’ll be covered by lightning. Those strokes are all emanating from the mountains. But they’re reaching out every time. Toward us.”
Katta said, “It might be pertinent to note that I can see each of the bolts with exquisite clarity.”
“Now I’m scared,” Bone said.
Northwing said, “Snow Pine has the right idea. I’m cajoling the wind to blow us southwest, but if we want to be safe, we must descend.”
“I’d hoped to land in a city,” Haytham said mournfully, “a place with inns, baths, bazaars. Nevertheless I’ve begun the descent.”
“Actually,” the efrit Haboob began, “I’ve begun the descent. And you’re welcome—”
Lightning strokes lit the sky to the northwest. Thunder cracked a few seconds later.
A terrifying night commenced.
From sunset to midnight, Haytham and Northwing guided them away from the mad lightning as the others labored to steer them safely through the mountains. At last the bolts diminished and receded, and the ger was once again safe after a fashion, though a frigid wind whistled all around.
“I do not know where we are,” Haytham said.
“At least,” Katta said, “I perceive no evil.”
Northwing said, “With the lightning where it is, I think we’re still headed southwest. We may not need to land after all. Though it might be a good idea.”
“Not like this, my friend,” Haytham said. “Not in the dark.”
Gaunt looked down upon a moonlit sheen, broken by lines of waves. “I think we’re somewhere over water. We may have reached the archipelago of little islands in the middle of these lands. The Splintrevej. I doubt there’d be good places to land there. But past these is the biggest island, Svardmark. There they have nations, towns, farmland.”
“And lightning-wielders?” Bone said.
“Not that I’ve heard.”
They rested as they could, though whenever Gaunt shut her eyes she was startled out of sleep by a dream of falling. Bone squeezed her hand each time; still, it was all she could do simply to doze.
Dawn found them entering another region of mountains. Northwing had circles under bloodshot eyes. “We need to land,” Gaunt told them all by way of good morning. “Northwing can’t go on like this.”
“No,” Northwing muttered, “Northwing can’t. But there is no good place.”
“Then let go,” Katta said. “You’ve done much.”
“Those mountains look close . . .” Northwing murmured.
Gaunt tried to listen, but another voice tugged at her ears. Impossibly, it seemed to be coming from the wind outside. She leaned against the felt, straining to hear.
Mother . . .
“Gaunt? Persimmon?” Bone was beside her. “What’s wrong?”
“Do you not hear?”
“No.”
Mother . . . Mother . . .
“It’s Innocence, Imago. I hear him somehow. Perhaps the power he carries is letting him reach out to us. Innocence, it’s me! We’re looking for you. We’ll be there soon. Do you hear me?”
The only response was a blast of wind.
Northwing shouted, “They found us! Whoever attacked in Spydbanen, this is their wind. They’re going to slam us against those mountains.”
Gaunt yelled, “Haboob, we need altitude!”
“Descend, Haboob! Altitude, Haboob!” the efrit scoffed. “Mortals. You creatures simply don’t live long enough to justify all this changing of your minds—”
“Heat, O Haboob!” Haytham yelled. “In the All-One’s name, heat! We need lift!”
“Yes, O imperious, regal, resplendent—”
“Not enough!” Gaunt said.
“Do we throw things out?” Bone asked, checking that his loot from Amberhorn was still in his pockets.
“Yes!” Haytham said. “There are fiery equations that govern the behavior of balloons. At the moment, lightness equals survival. Toss everything that isn’t essential. Food! Weapons!”
“Thieves?” said Gaunt as she threw a crate of vegetables out the front of the ger.
“Poets?” Bone answered, tossing a huge soup kettle.
“Stop flirting, you two,” Snow Pine said. She threw a pot and pan, narrowly missing Bone’s head.
A bolt of blue lightning shattered the morning, turning the interior of the ger into an azure shadow play. Somehow the discharge of energy had the audacity to look cold. Ordinary daylight returned, but thunder rent the air and shook the balloon, and even the efrit twisted violently as the ger careened and the humans fell.
“The scroll—” Snow Pine called out.
“I have it,” Katta said.
“How?” she said, sounding amazed.
“I heard it rustling and rolling,” Katta said, returning it to her. “It is a lightweight thing, and I anticipated such a moment.”
“Thank you,” Snow Pine said.
“Not enough!” Haytham was saying. “Is there anything more to throw?”
“No . . .” Bone said.
Gaunt could almost see him thinking, I’ve lived a long life, and sometimes a man sacrifices himself that his family, his friends, might live. If these fiery equations need to be writ upon human flesh, let it be mine. Bone loved his own skin, but he loved her more. Gaunt looked around frantically for anything left to throw that wasn’t a human being. She refused to accept any such calculation; let them all be smashed against a mountain before they sacrificed each other. But self-sacrifice was just the kind of flamboyant gesture her husband might try . . . once.
Then, “Lightweight,” Snow Pine said, and spun the scroll in her hands. “Listen! Who needs to pilot this vessel?”
“I would raise my hand,” Haytham said, fingers flickering a discreet distance over the sigils of the brazier, “but I am otherwise occupied.”
There was a pause. “Should I spare breath, then,” Northwing asked, “declaring that my will is helping keep us among the living? When lack of that breath may bring disaster?”
The next eruption of lightning was not quite as close, but there were two of them. The ger rocked like a boat.
“I understand!” Gaunt said, laughing. “Why didn’t I see it? The scroll!”
“Yes!” said Snow Pine. “An army could vanish into it, and it would get no heavier. Some of us can disappear for a while, making the balloon rise. All right, then! Liron and I will go! If we don’t lift enough, more should follow!” Flint took Snow Pine’s hand, the one that held the scroll, and he vanished.
At the same moment lightning hit the canopy.
In the blazing concussion, the felt and bamboo that shielded Snow Pine from the elements was disintegrated. In the bloody light of sunset she fell through the gap, still clutching the scroll. Gaunt screamed and lunged after her.
She failed to catch her, and lost her own balance.
As she tumbled from the balloon, Gaunt saw Snow Pine vanish into the scroll, which fell near Gaunt’s own path of descent. Of course, she thought. And it’s my salvation too, if I can only reach it.
She tried twisting in the air, and her fingers inched closer as the mountain rock raced toward her.
Suddenly a blast of wind snatched the scroll away from her, whipping it like a stick caught by a hunting hound. It rushed away toward the northeast. Toward Spydbanen.
An icy slope rose up to meet her.
CHAPTER 5
HUGINN
“Tell me your name.”
A madman on a horse had appeared out of nowhere, leapt off, and proceeded to seize Innocence where he lay in his comfortable spot upon the windy grassland. Innocence had just wanted to rest for a little, while he gathered his strength. He was sure he would rise again soon. The terrible cold of his aimless stumble across the plain had ended, and now a warm, peaceful feeling had come over him. All would be well except for the crazy horseman, who kept asking—
“Tell me your name!”
“Innocence . . .�
��
“What?”
“Innocence . . . Gaunt . . .”
“Speak up! Tell me your name!”
The man was a balding, red-bearded, stout man in a heavy robe of blue wool. Innocence could tell he was balding because he’d removed his thick cap and was stuffing Innocence’s head into it.
“Innocence.” He felt he should be saying “Askelad” to preserve his anonymity, but it was hard to feel concern about anything, least of all his identity. He wished the boorish Kantening would leave him alone. Instead the man was wrapping a blanket around him. It was red, woven with pictures of horses.
“Drink this.” A flask was shoved against his nose. It smelled of brandy.
“I don’t . . . don’t feel like . . .”
“I don’t give a fart! Drink it!”
It tasted of brandy too. And maybe moss. He no longer felt so comfortable. Something was wrong, but he couldn’t articulate it.
“What’s your name?” The man was stuffing some kind of bread in his mouth. This time Innocence didn’t argue.
“Innocence.”
“You’re the best-named person I’ve ever met, Innocence. How the hell did you come to be out here, dressed for indoors? Never mind. Drink more.”
“Glg. I . . . I was escaping . . .”
“I smell a good story. Never mind. You’re going for a horse ride.”
The man was stronger than he looked. Innocence found himself flopped upon his stomach onto the man’s steed, which looked like a shaggy brown pony, so thick with fur Innocence wondered if it was part sheep. Innocence giggled. The horse whinnied.
“What’s funny?” the man demanded as he tied Innocence to the horse. “You think dying of exposure is funny?”
“No, sir . . .”
“You will live to be mocked, boy, I promise you that. I will change your name and send you back in time and put you in a saga. But you will be mocked, sure as they call me Huginn Sharpspear. What is your name?”
“Innocence.” The name Huginn Sharpspear was somehow familiar, but Innocence couldn’t place it.
“You’ll be a little less innocent now. Here we go.”
The ride was bumpy, and the conviction grew in Innocence that Huginn Sharpspear was deliberately seeking the roughest ground, trying to jar all the comfort out of Innocence. He complained, and Huginn responded that he was going slowly and carefully. The man was clearly a born liar.
Every so often, if Innocence grew quiet, Huginn stopped this unseemly haste and demanded yet again to know Innocence’s name, or the names of his parents, or his homeland, or his trade.
“Assistant tavernkeeper? The Pickled Rat?” Huginn laughed. “I know that place! They threw me out for singing too loud! Almost there, tavern boy, and then there’ll be more brandy for you.” Huginn made it sound like a threat.
Mooing, snorting, the smell of manure—they’d reached a farm. “Sturla’s Steading,” Huginn said as he unbound Innocence and hauled him off the horse. “Before Sturla, my father, came, it was nothing but difficult soil and a cold river. Now it’s difficult soil, a cold river, and a farm.” After verifying the lad could walk, albeit in a wobbly fashion, Huginn led him into a large house composed of stone, wood, and sod, carved from the side of a low, grassy hill. Windows with real glass gleamed from the thatch, and three chimneys peeked from the grass, spewing smoke. Huginn was bellowing orders and a number of men, women, and children rushed this way and that as Innocence was led into a long hall festooned with hanging fish and meats, with a hearth in its midst.
Huginn set him down near the hearth. A straw-haired woman with a strong physique, weathered face, and piercing blue eyes brought him broth. After he managed to get it down, the couple got Innocence to remove his wet clothes and put on new ones. Then came blankets and more broth, and sweet rye bread, and a bowl of something like thick, milky, soup but with honey on top. He still didn’t want to eat, but the woman kept fussing at him.
“Should we not put him in the bedroom?” she asked Huginn. “There’ll be a lot of commotion out here.”
“He needs commotion, Hekla. He’s gone soft in the head. If I didn’t know better I’d say he got carried off by the hidden folk. He wasn’t too far from the Moss-Stone. More likely somebody left him to die, part of a feud. I’ll get a story out of it, you watch.”
“Just so long as it doesn’t keep you from meeting the chieftains. Winter’s harsh this year. You’ll have trouble traveling.”
“Ah, fuss and fuss! Give me a few minutes with each and I’ll win them over.”
“It’s not a small matter, Huginn Sharpspear, asking them to support your patrons. You need to be on your way, to have support for the Spring Assembly. Otherwise your position will be weak come summer and the Althing—”
“Plans and plans! Man is the sword, but woman is the hand that swings it. All will be well, Hekla. My benefactors will see to it. But let’s speak no more of that. The boy’s reviving.”
It was true. Innocence felt stronger; indeed he felt aquiver from all the food. He tried to rise, but Hekla scolded him back down.
“I feel fine,” he protested.
“Sometimes people get wobbly after a spell like this,” Hekla said. “You stay put.” She asked Huginn’s favorite questions, and so he had to repeat many things about his origins. It was too late to take back “Innocence,” and he thought it best not to be too detailed about his experiences with the uldra. Nevertheless, he couldn’t think of a better explanation for how he’d gotten there. So in the end he said, “I don’t know what happened. I went to bed in Fiskegard and woke up here, near a huge boulder.”
“That settles it. The hidden folk got you. Stories say, sometimes they just grab a person and let him go, like cats toying with mice.”
“So I’m still in the Bladed Isles?”
“That’s an outlander name for Kantenjord, but yes. You’re in Oxiland.”
Innocence tried to remember what Freidar and Nan had said of that island. “Volcanoes. Plains. Wind. Farmers and ranchers. You came from the other islands so that no king or chieftain could rule over you. You have a council, the Althing, that makes decisions.”
“My,” Hekla said, “someone is book-learned. You might use this one when arguing the law, Huginn.”
“Book-learned maybe, but not clever. Not if he was out on the plains like that.”
“The uldra got him.”
“Indeed?” Huginn sounded skeptical, but he added, “You’ll have much to tell me, lad.”
“I don’t remember anything,” Innocence said.
“That sometimes happens too,” Hekla said.
“And sometimes,” Huginn said, “inconvenient people are left to die by unscrupulous people. If you remember anything, you should tell us. I am trained in the law and have won many cases. If you have enemies, they too must submit to the law.”
“Huginn Sharpspear!” Hekla said. “Can’t you see he needs rest, not your antics?” Huginn made a dismissive gesture and walked back toward the entrance. Innocence made to follow him, though he still felt weak.
“Rest, boy.” Hekla pushed him back down. Even though there were young people about (Innocence could sense them sneaking peeks at him when their chores brought them near) she did not seem particularly motherly. It was strange that Nan, with no children in her life, had been so gentle, while Hekla, with a whole band of them, seemed brusque and matter-of-fact. And yet. He owed Hekla, and especially Huginn, his life.
“Thank you,” he said, resigning himself to the prison of blankets. “I know I could have died.”
“Ah,” Hekla said, “then you are becoming less of an innocent, Innocence. We pride ourselves on strength in Oxiland, but only a fool goes out there underdressed.”
“Wait . . .” He hesitated, fearing a foolish question. “I know the name Huginn Sharpspear. Is he named after the author of the Elder and Younger Sagas?”
“Ha! That would amuse him. He is the author of the Elder and Younger Sagas.”
“
What? What is the year and day?”
She frowned. “It is the hundred and tenth year since the first Althing. The eleventh year since Princess Corinna of Soderland became queen in all but name. The year 1096 in the Eldshore calendar. The third day of Yulemonth. Why do you ask?”
“I’m relieved it’s 1096. But last I knew it was the thirteenth day of Frostmonth. Over half a month ago.”
“It’s said that time is twisted in the realms of the hidden folk. I think that’s what became of you, lad, though Huginn dislikes the idea.”
“There’s another thing. I thought I might have traveled back into history. I just assumed Huginn Sharpspear must be long dead.”
She smiled. “No, though he’d enjoy the notion. He is a born talker, that one. Talked me into many things as well. He can lead a farm, or a foamreaving band, but his great gift is arguing the law. And yet I think he’s his truest self when he makes tales. His greatest fame is based on the sagas he tells from these parts, stories from these, our family’s lands . . . Moss-Stone included. Yet he rejects anything with a hint of the otherworldly, always prefers the cold, human explanation.”
“I heard that!” Huginn bellowed from where he stood directing farmhands near the door. “I disagree, Hekla. Human explanations are hot and bloody, and rarely will supernatural beings improve on the drama to be found there.”
“Yet, you put your share of omens, magic swords, and monsters in your tales.”
“One must give the people what they want.” Huginn took his farm business outside.
Hekla shook her head. “A changeable, distractible man. He has always needed a woman to keep him from wandering off a cliff. Even at the brink of his great triumph.”
It made Innocence uncomfortable to be this stranger’s confidant. He tried to change the subject. “I thank you for your hospitality. I’ll travel as soon as I can.”
“Tomorrow, perhaps. You bear watching.” She sighed. “Men and boys and your foolishness. Never admitting weakness. Where will you go?”
“I need to return to Fiskegard.” But he doubted it as he said it. Originally he’d only planned to stay with Freidar and Nan until he’d mastered enough Kantentongue and earned enough coin to venture out on his own. He’d supposed he would seek out Deadfall and try to puzzle out his power.
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