by S. E. Grove
The city of Ausentinia lay at its heart, the copper roofs winking in the bright sun. The steep hillsides were ribboned with narrow trails. Hurrying along the descent, Cabeza de Cabra soon arrived at the low stone wall of the entrance.
The people he passed on the streets nodded politely. Cabeza de Cabra touched his forehead in return, taking in the buildings made of a tidy red brick and shingled with black wood or hammered copper. The houses had window boxes filled with flowers, and Cabeza de Cabra heard the deep, rolling sound of some stringed instrument from one open window and the splash of running water from another. He reached a street lined with stores, most with copper globes hung above the signs: map stores.
The one nearest him had a broad, many-paned window, and a middle-aged woman was cleaning it pane by square pane with a look of concentration. Seeing him, the woman stopped what she was doing, studied him, and then indicated that he should enter. Cabeza de Cabra opened the door, setting off a tiny bell. A round silver table in the center of the room held a standing globe. The innumerable little drawers that lined the walls had glass fronts, so that the rolled papers in each were visible.
“Good morning, Alvar,” the woman said. She wore a brightly colored apron, and her plump face was slightly pink.
“Good morning,” Cabeza de Cabra replied with some surprise. “How do you know my name?”
“It is one of the things we know, those of us with maps to give,” she said with a little wave of the hand. “You might say that my map shows you visiting me this fine morning in April.”
“I see.”
“But you are here not about my map. You are here to find your own.”
“Yes, I—I have lost something. Something very dear to me.” Cabeza de Cabra cleared his throat. “Something I cannot live without.”
“I understand,” the woman said gently. “It was the plague cleric who made you lose your faith, was it not?”
Cabeza de Cabra was again surprised. He took a deep breath and regarded the floor for a long while. “Yes,” he finally said.
“I have the map that you require.” She walked along the wall of drawers, standing on tiptoe to peek into one, bending slightly to peer at another. “Ah, here it is.” She opened one halfway down and drew out a scroll of paper tied with white string and what looked like a rolled-up piece of fabric tied with blue string. “This,” she said, handing him the paper, “is your map. It may be a long and difficult path, but it will guide you.”
“Thank you,” Cabeza de Cabra said.
“And you may have heard that we do not accept coin or currency?” At his nod, she gave him the roll of cloth. “This is the payment you will make some time in the future, as your own map describes.”
“What is it?”
“I believe it is a map that is yet to be written.” She smiled. “You will write it someday.”
Cabeza de Cabra shook his head. “Very well, though all of this is beyond my comprehension. If I still believed in the teachings of the clerics, I would call it witchcraft.”
“What a good thing you don’t, then—at the moment.”
“I suppose so.” He touched his forehead. “Thank you.” He turned to leave the shop, pausing a moment on the street to watch the woman return to her task at the window. Then he walked on, passing the way he had come, until he found himself once again at the stone wall bordering the city. Reaching into his shirt, he withdrew the scroll of paper and opened it. On one side, a map labeled “A Map for the Faithless” showed a long route through strange lands—the Broad Plains of Privation, the Glaciers of Discontent, the Eerie Sea. Drawn in a faint, unsteady hand with black ink, the peculiar landscapes bloomed across the heavy paper like haphazard stains. On the reverse were written the following directions:
Beaten on the edge of a threat; broken by the sound of loathing; destroyed by the dearth of mercy. I am no more than a whisper at the edge of the world, and you may never find me.
You will travel for almost a year through the Desert of Bitter Disillusion, finding no relief in the pious waters offered you. When you see the three faces, your more arduous journey begins. Two of the faces will be empty. The third face, which binds the other two, will have twelve hours. Follow the three faces wherever they lead you, across the many Ages, for your search lies with them. You will traverse the Broad Plains of Privation and find passage across the Glaciers of Discontent. As the glaciers give way to the Mountains of Dawning Hope, you will find yourself entering the fifth Age of your journey. There, you will pass into the Limitless Plains of Learning, and find meaning where there was none before. When you see the first snowfall on the Eerie Sea, you will be ready.
Let the three faces go on alone. Put down roots in the Forest of Belief, and make the map as the Eerie teach you. Let the gold you have saved serve a new purpose. Let the story it tells restore you. Let the map it makes shield you from the summer sun. A wanderer you have long eluded will join you, and bring you death. There, in that place, and after these travels, you may find what you seek.
—1892, June 30: 8-Hour 37—
AS THE SHERIFF contemplated the Ausentinian map, Sophia drew herself partially out of the memories to study it more slowly. Three faces? Twelve hours? The face with twelve hours could be a watch or a clock, but she had no idea about the two others. Perhaps three clocks, but only one with a face? The portion of the directions that stood out to her clearly involved the Eerie Sea. She did not understand the prophetic riddles any more than she understood the man whose memories she shared, but it was clear from what she knew about his future that this map had somehow led him all the way to another Age—to the Indian Territories, and then to the Eerie Sea. Surely the map that he was meant to make with the Eerie was the very one she now was reading.
It was marvelous, and beyond comprehension, but the map from Ausentinia had drawn a tidy circle: sending Cabeza de Cabra from Ausentinia to the Indian Territories, prompting him to write a map, and guiding Sophia through that map back to Ausentinia itself. “Incredible,” she whispered.
She lifted her finger from the cloth, dimly aware of movement in the room. Goldenrod stood in the doorway of the farmhouse, her expression troubled. “Errol,” she said.
The falconer opened his eyes. “What is it?”
“There are four more riders coming this way.” She paused. “But these are not pursuing us. They bring captives.”
Errol rose to his feet. He did not ask how she knew. “Plague victims. They take them to a site of quarantine along this road.”
“We must help them,” she said simply.
After a moment he replied. “Very well.”
Sophia rolled the beaded map and stowed it hastily into her satchel. “What can I do?” she asked.
“You can stay in that corner,” Errol said, “until this is over.”
“If you would,” Goldenrod told him, “wait to loose your arrows until the horsemen flee.”
“Flee what?” Errol asked, readying his quiver at the window.
“The dust from the road.”
He gave her a look. “I think it more likely they will run from their captives than the dusty road.”
“If you loose arrows from the farmhouse, they will come toward it.”
“Lamentably, I cannot loose arrows from anywhere else while I am in the farmhouse.” He stood by the window holding his bow.
A faint crease of exasperation furrowed Goldenrod’s brow. Then she went to the other window that looked out over the road and stood still, waiting. She watched Errol rather than the road.
Sophia crouched in the corner, hugging her knees. How she wished that Theo was with them! He would be making her laugh, making it seem that the approaching danger was a thing he had planned because he thought it would be funny. But without him there, nothing funny came to mind.
When she heard the slow shuffling of horses and people, she leaned to peer out t
hrough Goldenrod’s window. Four horsemen with gleaming masks and white cloaks rode past, just as the Eerie had said. They wore heavy golden crosses strung on chains. Behind them were ten, twelve, perhaps more people of various ages tied together at their waists and strung, as if on a leash, to one of the horse’s halters. The people stared at nothing, listlessly, vacantly. One of them suddenly sat down, and around her the rest followed suit. The rider whose horse held the leash yanked. He rode onward, dragging the prisoners.
“Good God,” Errol muttered.
“Wait,” Goldenrod whispered urgently.
Errol loosed an arrow, striking the horseman’s shoulder. The other three riders turned, momentarily confused, and in a moment looked as one to the farmhouse. Errol loosed another arrow, striking a second rider, and as his horse veered, dust began to rise behind them. The cluster of captives was lost in a yellow cloud. As the last two riders advanced toward the farmhouse, the cloud became a funnel. Sophia’s eyes opened wide. It was a weirwind, narrow and tall as the spire of a church. The rider closest to it turned in his saddle. His horse skidded as the rider faced the weirwind. The next moment it swallowed them, and they disappeared into the edifice of wind and dust as if entering another world. The other rider turned to look behind him, and when he saw the weirwind he whirled, digging in his heels. “Brujos!” he shouted.
He galloped toward the farmhouse, sword raised. Errol ran to meet him. Sophia crouched in the corner and listened as metal met metal. “So eager to meet death,” Goldenrod commented. She watched for some minutes. The sound of clanging metal stopped.
Sophia dared to look through the window and saw Errol standing with his sword drawn. The man lay strewn before him, immobile. The weirwind was gone.
Errol turned back toward the farmhouse, sheathing his sword. “How did you do that? Where did that windstorm come from?” he demanded as he entered.
Goldenrod ignored his questions. “We must see to the captives,” she said, edging past him through the doorway.
Errol shook his head, but he followed without protest. Pack and satchel in hand, Sophia hurried after them.
The string of prisoners sat, heedless of the heat and dust, by the side of the road. Some were sprawled, however their bonds allowed, flat upon the ground. “You mean to douse them with Faierie powder?” Errol asked, coming up beside Goldenrod.
“Will you cut their bonds, Errol? They will panic if they return to their senses and find themselves bound.”
Errol went among the prisoners, cutting the ropes that held them to each other. Most were women. Two were aging, white-haired men. Three were children, and one of these was only just old enough to walk alone. Errol carefully cut the ropes around their waists until all were free, and then he stepped back. “Wait a moment, now,” he said to Goldenrod. “I have no need of another dose.”
“These wanderers are cannier than the ones I know,” Goldenrod said, more to herself than to them. “I wonder where they come from.” She raised her bare hands in front of her, palms up, and they filled with yellow blooms. Errol and Sophia watched as she tossed them before her, the petals expanding like a cloud that then sank, slowly, onto the oblivious sufferers. Several of them coughed. Some began to speak, as if waking from a long slumber, and one of the children started crying. “They will be fine now.”
“Where will they go?” Sophia asked worriedly.
Errol was looking to the west. “They will go back to Seville. We must go on without them. And quickly.”
“The other rider?” Goldenrod asked.
“Yes. Who called us witches. It will not be long before he returns with reinforcements. We will have to leave, despite the sun and the risk. Come along, miting,” he said to Sophia. “Do not worry about them,” he added, indicating the recovering, disoriented plague victims. “We have greater worries.”
Goldenrod looked at him attentively. “Is this Order of the Golden Cross so powerful? Can we not simply avoid them?”
Errol laughed. “They cannot be avoided. They have informers everywhere, and more clerics than you can imagine. Now they suspect Sophia of carrying the plague and us of practicing witchcraft.” He frowned. “You do not like it when I accuse you of being a Faierie. Well, then. I wonder how you will like it when they accuse you of being a witch.”
31
Wanderers
—1892, June 30: 17-Hour 20—
It is not known whether the Eerie come from a far future Age or a far past Age. What is known is that they first appeared on the Pacific coast. They traveled west into the Indian Territories in pursuit of the Erie, whom they thought might be their kin. It is unknown to Erie and Eerie alike whether they share a bloodline, but the Eerie settled near their possible relations.
—From Shadrack Elli’s History of New Occident
“WHAT IS A miting?” Sophia asked Errol as they rode east. She sat behind Goldenrod, her arms wrapped around the Eerie’s waist. Errol had captured the horses of the two fallen riders, and Goldenrod had been able to calm them. They moved twice as fast toward Granada now, the horses kicking up dust as they went.
“It is a little mite,” Errol said, smiling from under his gray hood.
“What is a mite?”
“It is like a tick. A little insect that bites you and gets under your skin and is impossible to pull out.”
Sophia was momentarily too indignant to reply. “You think I am like a bloodsucking insect.”
Errol laughed, a soft, low sound. “I say it with admiration. You hold on—a tough little thing with a tough little shell.”
“Oh,” she said, somewhat appeased. “I’m not that little.”
“No, you are not. But you are the smallest of our company and possibly the sturdiest, so I reserve the right to call you ‘miting.’”
“But I am not the sturdiest either.”
Errol considered. “It is not that you are the sturdiest altogether, but you are resilient in your kindheartedness. I have seen it more than once now. You worry for others when the peril is to yourself.” He smiled at her. “It is as foolish as it is honorable.”
Sophia did not know what to say to this. “At your age,” Errol continued, “I would not have worried so for the plight of others. And you, Faierie?” His voice changed. There was a note of respect that had not been there before. “Were you so driven to rescue the helpless when you were younger?”
Sophia could not see Goldenrod’s face, but she imagined the Eerie looking calmly ahead, untroubled. “It is our custom to offer aid to anyone we encounter, if we are able to provide it. We are all this way—it is not my particular quality.”
• • •
SOPHIA EXPLAINED TO Goldenrod, as she had to Errol, why she had come to the Papal States, what had happened aboard the Verity, and what waited for her at the Nihilismian depository in Granada. Goldenrod did not say that the journey seemed long for a diary, and she did not question the wisdom of leaving the port of Seville when aid was forthcoming.
For most of the long day, Errol and Goldenrod listened for the signs they anticipated of the Golden Cross. But the hours passed quietly. By dusk, Sophia had fallen asleep against the Eerie’s back. She woke to the sound of Errol’s bow twanging in the stillness. Before her on the horse, Goldenrod sat more alertly. “What were those?”
“Phantoms,” Errol replied quietly.
Sophia shifted to look, but she saw only Errol, retrieving his two arrows, and a sign. LA PALOMA GRIS, the sign read, over a cracked painting of a pigeon. She felt a pang of sharp regret that she had missed seeing Minna.
“What do you mean, ‘phantoms’?” Goldenrod asked.
“Just that.”
“But they spoke.”
“Nothing of substance,” Errol replied tersely. “They will return again tomorrow at dusk if you wish to exchange words with them, though I doubt you will find it a useful conversation.” He lifted Soph
ia down from the horse. “I know the innkeeper here at the Gray Pigeon. She will hide us if the Order arrives.”
The innkeeper greeted Errol with a toothless smile and a warm embrace. There were no other travelers, and after bringing them a jug of water, a pot of stew, a plate of almonds and olives, and a wide loaf of bread, she hung up her apron and retreated to her own rooms.
They rested in a common room hung with hammocks—evidence of days long gone in which the Papal States still traded with the United Indies. As Errol and Goldenrod settled in, Sophia took the beaded map from her satchel. “Goldenrod?” Sophia peeked through the weave of her hammock to see if the Eerie was awake.
“Yes?”
“How did you do it? The flowers in your hands. Can all the Eerie heal that way?”
Goldenrod’s brown hair was spread out across the hammock, and her green skirts spilled over its edges. She had removed her white headscarf and dropped it to the floor. Her soft-soled leather shoes, with long laces like her gloves, lay beside it, and her small green feet were propped on the hammock’s webbing. She shifted so that she was sitting upright and looked across at Sophia. Errol, his arms crossed over his chest where he hung in his own hammock, was listening attentively as well.
“We call ourselves not Eerie,” she began, “but the Elodea—Elodeans. I believe we are called ‘Eerie’ by people in New Occident because we live near the Eerie Sea. They confuse us with the Erielhonan, the true Erie, who were long ago dispersed by war. It is a habit I have observed in New Occident—the misnaming of people and places based on fragmentary knowledge. We are from the far west, from the ocean. In a better world, our knowledge would not be secret. But we have learned from long experience that many people use this knowledge for ill.