Never mind. You can’t win. But we can both lose, if the dragons wake. That will mean death to us. And to everyone else. Your mother. My father.
What?
Imago Bone is here, on the island. Jewelwolf brought him upon Deadfall. She threatened war with Kpalamaa if the mariners didn’t give him up. My mother is probably as dead as your father, Joy. So you see, we are in the same longship today. Do you not care?
Where before she’d fed raw anger into the Chain, now something changed. It was not a burst of fury but a sudden clarity of purpose.
Through her power, she sensed the main Karvak force from Lysefoss on its way. She perceived the little figures of Innocence, Bone, Jewelwolf, Deadfall down on the craggy island. She could indeed have a degree of pity for them all.
But she did not just see Bone down there; she saw bones. Bones of people lost at sea. Bones of people slain in combat. Bones of people who’d simply had mishaps in this treacherous landscape.
There was a past, and a future, and yes, in the present it all hinged on her and Innocence. And yet in a way it wasn’t about them at all.
I care. Oh, my friend, I care. But I care about many other things too. I wish you were on my side, Innocence. I need you, in the time of my greatest fight. But you have chosen what is glittering and mighty over what is plain and loving. I am so sad for us, and for you. But I will fight on, for all the other people I love, and for the land that chose me. If the Kantenings survive I will urge them to abandon slavery and cruelty. If they do not survive they will join the bones of their ancestors, as is the fate of all flesh. But either way, they will not be enslaved, not by each other, certainly not by you.
There had been a hint of passion in him, but now the cold was back. His voice was nearly a monotone. You cannot understand. They were right. You are too bound by Qiangguo’s ideas of honor. I play the game of life at a higher level.
Shut up and fight.
Her renewed conviction coiled down the Chain as weaving fire. She pushed Innocence’s line of silver-blue back to the central island and beyond. She sensed his surprise. He gathered strength and shoved back.
But she realized something: she was better at this. Against an equally powerful foe she’d have won. But he also hadn’t been lying about her chances. The Heavenwalls gave him greater strength. He didn’t need her skill.
Qiangguo’s bastion of mystical power slowly ground down Kantenjord’s.
But she wasn’t done yet.
“A-Girl-Is-A-Joy,” came a voice, and then another: “Joy!”
She kept struggling with Innocence but allowed her attention to return to her body. Beside her stood Snow Pine, Flint, Steelfox, Corinna, Alfhild, Yngvarr, Inga—even Malin, resting after her Runewalking. So many personalities, so many energies.
“I’m here,” she said.
“What can we do, Joy?” her mother said.
“Is there . . . a way to distract them? Down on that island . . .”
Steelfox said, “The winds will foil arrows or rockets. If we send our balloon, my people’s balloons will swarm it.”
“What of the balloon’s explosive gases?” Alfhild asked.
Joy said, “Walking Stick . . . wanted to hold that in reserve . . .”
“Everything depends on the Chain,” Corinna said.
“She’s right,” Snow Pine said. “If Flint and I get aboard that thing, we can just lower it into the straits until Haboob’s ready to light.”
“Yes,” Flint said, “and we jump into the water at the last second. All should go swimmingly.”
“Take me with you,” said Yngvarr. “You may need a warrior.”
“Flint and I are warriors,” Snow Pine objected.
“But you’re most welcome to come,” Flint added quickly.
Joy said, “Mother . . . too risky . . .”
“No,” Snow Pine said, “everything now is too risky, my brave girl. I am here to help you.”
Corinna said, “I have the authority to release that balloon, and so I will. But Malin should go also. You need a Runewalker.”
“No,” said Malin. “I will find Peik. He is better rested.”
“Very well,” said Corinna.
Joy knew there was no stopping Snow Pine when she was set upon a goal. “Mother . . .” Joy said. “Be careful.”
Snow Pine put her hand upon Joy’s head. “You make me proud.” She, Flint, and Yngvarr were gone without another word.
Joy hoped their mission would help, but she still needed a distraction now. “Is there anything else? Give me something else. . . .”
Steelfox held up a burnt, reddened hand. “While you’ve been talking, I’ve tested the energies of the Chain. . . .”
“Because she’s a lunatic,” Inga put in.
“. . . And they cause intense pain. I don’t think anyone is going to climb down it.”
Joy said, “I didn’t . . . ask anyone to!”
“I’m not just anyone,” Inga mused. “I can handle a lot of hurt. And I can carry one person.”
“I’ll come with you,” Malin said, returning from her search for Peik. “I can do something.”
“You’ll get killed,” Inga said.
“You’ll get killed,” Malin replied.
“It has to be me,” said Steelfox. “In all modesty, I am the best archer in five thousand miles. And you’ve been muttering, Joy. I heard you say my sister’s name. She’s down there, is she not? We have business.”
Corinna said, “Steelfox is right. But the risks are great.”
Inga and Steelfox looked at each other and nodded.
Malin walked away. Joy hurt for her.
“Go,” Joy said to Inga and Steelfox, adding, “Imago Bone is down there too. Try not to shoot him. He may be of help.”
They looked surprised but nodded again. Inga crouched, and Steelfox climbed her strong shoulders.
“Joy,” Steelfox said. “What of Innocence? What is your word? Does he live or die?”
The world seemed to spin. Duty to the past . . . at odds with duty to the present and future.
“If you can take him in the arm or leg,” Joy said, “do it. That should break his concentration. But one way or the other . . . you have to put an arrow in him.”
“It will be done.”
Now the troll-changeling stepped onto the links of the Chain. Inga grimaced, saluted her companions, and began the long descent to the island.
It was a mad plan. But everything was mad.
Joy’s focus now was the point of contact between her energies and Innocence’s. She had to keep that conflagration ahead of Inga and Steelfox.
It all seemed to take hours.
A shout arose from her army. Her enhanced senses couldn’t help but flit to that location. The berserkers had led the enemy en masse onto the promontory, where maneuvering was tight and the Karvak horsemen lost much of their agility.
Before the Karvak shortbows were in effective range, five thousand Swanisle-style longbows let loose. The screams of men and horses ripped through the misty heights.
The Karvaks rode on, determined to reply. Their precise shots felled many a Kantening. They shot twice before switching to spears and closing on the Kantening lines.
But in the last moments before contact the Karvak commander grew unsure. For he saw that the Kantenings had planted thousands of wooden stakes into the ground here, in the place where the stone of the promontory gave way to the inland soil, ground now soft and pliant from the Runewalkers’ mist and rain.
The commander gave a sudden order to turn.
It was a worse mistake than the charge would have been. The horsemen had little room to maneuver, and worse, the less-disciplined Spydbanen and Gullvik foot troops, eager for battle and glory, were close on their hooves. Some Karvaks broke free by trampling their allies. Others were stuck in confusion and mud.
The Karvak-led force was twenty-five-thousand strong, and its vanguard of a thousand horsemen were from the best fighting force on Earthe. But th
ey were mired in a killing zone.
In the midst of the battle, the exiled lord of Laksfjord, Jon Haraldson, screamed for vengeance for his father and led a manic charge. The Gull-Jarl, burning with the desire to avenge his son Skalagrim the Bloody, met him head-on.
The two gutted each other and fell to the red mud, but now the men of Gullvik and Spydbanen faltered in the soggy ground. With a roar the Free Kantenings began slaying every warrior they could find.
I should not enjoy this slaughter, she thought. She was no Kantening. She was a civilized person. But her heart raced. She poured her excitement into the struggle with Innocence and pushed his influence back halfway to the Spydbanen heights.
Then all at once, when her mother’s balloon emerged into sunlight, and Inga and Steelfox were two hundred feet above the water, Innocence’s power slammed into hers with desperate force.
He knew Joy’s companions were coming for him.
He kept nothing in reserve, pushing her back, back to the island and beyond. Steelfox and Inga saw it. Inga descended as fast as she dared, and Steelfox aimed at extreme range.
Answering arrows from the island’s Karvaks flashed toward the two women, but at least the nimbus of energy where Joy’s and Innocence’s power intersected threw these off course.
Impossibly, one of Steelfox’s arrows found Innocence—just as the nimbus hit Inga.
Inga and Steelfox fell toward the sea, but Innocence’s power faded.
Joy’s fiery energies claimed all the Chain. Light blazed through the strait. With a ferocious shout she strangled the supernatural winter.
It was cold there on the Chained Strait, but summer had come at last. She had won. Not the war, just a crucial battle. Yet she had won.
But she did not know if Innocence lived. And her friends would surely die. She had to—
A jabbing pain wracked her.
She looked down, stunned, at the two bloody wounds in her side. Her vision blurred.
She looked up and saw Corinna and Alfhild beside her, their faces stony, their daggers red.
“What,” Joy gasped, falling to her knees, “what?”
“It is not personal,” Alfhild said. The mask of womanhood had slipped and an inhuman uldra soul looked out, cold and disdainful. “You have served your purpose. We must not be ruled by someone alien to these shores.”
Corinna by contrast was shaking, but her voice was firm. “I cannot accept you as queen of my homeland. You, an outsider. You can never be one of us! My folk are impressionable and already imitating your ways, learning your language, asking about Walking Stick’s philosophy. Inevitably your culture will overwhelm ours. We’ll forget our traditions, our language, our very souls. Did my brother, my father, my grandfather die for that? It is nothing personal, A-Girl-Is-A-Joy. This is how it must be.”
Joy tried to respond but only coughed out blood.
Then Malin Jorgensdatter was at her side, drawing the sword that lay forgotten on Joy’s back.
“This is how it must be!” Malin screamed.
“Little halfwit,” Alfhild said, stepping forward. “You cannot possibly fight me. I am the image of your only friend in the world, the closest thing Inga has to a sister. If you kill me, she will hate you.”
“Hate you!” Malin answered, and struck.
Their struggle took them away from Joy, but Malin had given her the time she needed to respond.
Her only hope was to draw upon the power of the Chain, and as Corinna advanced, bloody dagger shaking in the royal hand, Joy threw herself onto the Chain itself.
I die, Great Chain of Unbeing, she thought. Betrayed by the very people I came to help. Save me—
Joy?
Innocence?
He was still connected to the power. She’d thought he was defeated, struck down even as she was. But as her strength failed her she heard a shout of incoherent rage fill the air of the strait. It held the fury of a boy on the verge of manhood and the despair of a lost child.
As the dagger came down, the power echoed by that shout rushed up the Chain.
Everything was flame. Then all was blackness.
CHAPTER 40
YESTERDAY
Bone awoke in the sunlit infirmary of the vessel Anansi. He knew this because he recognized, though he did not understand, the language of the sailors hereabouts, because the fine construction of the ship spoke for itself, and because Eshe of the Fallen Swan was leaning over him.
“You were ranting in your sleep,” she said, “about a woman of ice and a boy on fire.”
“We failed at the island of the heart,” Bone managed to say, trying to sort out his dreams. Or were they premonitions? “Or succeeded. They seem like the same thing. Where are my wife and son?”
“I don’t know. We found your longship and its seven crew. Between us we recovered five more—yourself, Princess Steelfox, Yngvarr Thrall-Taker, Malin Jorgensdatter, and a peculiar young woman named Alfhild.”
“That’s all?” He racked his memory. “Innocence’s power got away from him. He ran. The island fell apart. I remember Malin and Alfhild dangling from a cliff. Steelfox, Yngvarr, and I tried to haul them up. Then another tremor. We all fell.”
When he’d looked back up at the clifftop, he’d seen Northwing surrounded by a glow, and within that glow were Katta and Gaunt. Gaunt was calling his name. Then smoke covered everything. “I lost consciousness at some point. Eshe, you must not give up searching.”
“We have not given up. But you should be prepared for the worst. You five are lucky. Haytham ibn Zakwan had a balloon in the vicinity, searching for you. We did not see your flare, days ago, but he had.”
“Ha . . . I’m glad to know he’s still around.”
Eshe frowned. “He is among the missing now.”
“Tell me.”
“After finding you, Haytham searched for more survivors. His craft was small, and too many people would overload it. You were unconscious at the time. He never returned.”
“And Innocence?”
“He and the carpet Deadfall were never seen.”
Bone made a fist. “Hours ago I had a family.”
Eshe hesitated. “We are restoring Bison. It can transport survivors to the Five Fjords, which are relatively safe.”
“How goes the war?”
“Rumors fill the isles of a Runemarked Queen who commands a rebellious army. In many a town this symbol is carved into trees and buildings, stone and snow.”
Eshe held up a bark fragment that had a character in the language of Qiangguo. It was hard to decipher, because the renderer clearly did not know his or her strokes.
“Does that say ‘happiness’?” Bone asked.
“It could. But the Kantenings are calling it ‘joy.’”
“Do you mean to send me to the Runemarked Queen?”
“I think your companions will go, though Steelfox wavers.”
“Not my problem, in any case. If we can’t find Gaunt, I have to look for Innocence.”
“Imago Bone, you are not going anywhere. You have a deep arrow wound, scratches, a blow to the head, a broken ankle, and superficial burns. The captain has agreed you may stay aboard Anansi to heal.”
Bone sat up. “I’ll be the judge of . . . ooph.” He lay down.
“You see?”
“I beg you, keep looking for Gaunt.”
“We will. For now. Now rest. You’re no use to anyone if you fidget there, tormenting yourself.”
“It’s time, and its changes, that torment me. Time . . .” He looked through the portal at a dark wall of storm cloud, silver curtain of rain underneath. “The Chart of Tomorrows. The Kantening tome Gaunt and I carried from the East. It was aboard Bison. Was it found?”
Eshe smiled. “We are studying it even now.”
He smiled back. “I keep making the mistake of thinking you’re altruists.”
“We are altruists. Altruism is motive, not method. Would you like to see the book?”
They brought him his and Gaunt’s
belongings from the ship. He noticed the fiddle wasn’t there. He hoped she still had it, somewhere.
He studied the Chart until his strength gave out, puzzling out the runes, frowning briefly over passages in the languages of Mirabad and places farther east, scrutinizing maps, squinting at sea serpents, giant lobsters, wrecked ships, toothsome dragons, and sometimes useful information too. At last he nodded off.
A boom of thunder jarred him awake. The pitching of the ship didn’t help matters. The Draugmaw must be near.
Hands shaking, he found Gaunt’s wax tablet and stylus. It was she who’d encouraged him to record dreams to better understand himself. He looked at what she’d last written, something she hadn’t had the opportunity to transfer to paper. It might be the final word he had from her.
With one wing, O Swan, you show me the Painter’s canvas, and an ache rises within my chest, to paint likewise with words, to celebrate sea, stars, family. Yet with the other wing you show me the sick, the suffering, the enslaved. It seems that to follow the calling of one wing I must turn away from the other. For there are not enough hours in the day, nor enough of Gaunt, to follow both. How can this be, O Swan?
She hadn’t spoken aloud of these feelings. He stared at the words, unable to move.
Write quickly, he seemed to hear her say. Don’t lose it. . . .
He tore wax from the corners and patted it over Gaunt’s words, hoping they could be preserved if he wrote gently over them.
Dreamed I was dying, he wrote.
The tablet lacked space for his whole tale. But with a few words and many murmurings, he recited a story into his memory.
THE CHOOSER OF THE SLAIN
Dreamed I was dying (he wrote).
And drowned within a sea like smoke (he murmured.) Red light faded, and blue and white light washed over me. I thought of the many years of my life, and they seemed short. A flicker. A blood drop in the ocean. What had I really learned?
Someone pulled me from the waters.
I saw her red hair and thought for a moment she was Gaunt. She was too young, though. “Who are you?”
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