The Chart of Tomorrows

by Chris Willrich

  Innocence calmed his breathing, trying to raise the chi within him, unlock the powers given him by the Heavenwalls and the Great Chain.

  Gaunt was loosing arrows now, and one beast had two sticking from its hide, to no apparent effect.

  Strength awoke within him. As the combatants were of different species, he tried to push chi into the humans, enliven them, make them ferocious.

  The Kantenings and Karvaks responded with unnerving eagerness. Some of them even frothed. They stabbed and hacked and leapt forward with no regard for their own lives. Mad Katta seemed better able to keep his wits about him. He backed away as the battle surged and his allies’ swings grew wilder.

  The sabercat targeted by Gaunt toppled, and she switched to another. Beside her Northwing concentrated and murmured, and all of the animals grew more sluggish. Soon more cats were falling. With unexpected speed, all the animals lay orange and red upon black-and-white sand.

  Some of the enlivened Kantenings would not cease battle. Yngvarr, deranged, fell upon Taper Tom and split his son’s head apart with an axe.

  “No!” Innocence wailed. He dimmed the energies of the warriors. The battle ended, men at last slumping with their injuries.

  Bison hissed into the sea.

  They had lost eleven crew, including Tom. Face stony, Yngvarr gave to the waters the wreckage of his son.

  “Just like Numi,” Innocence murmured. “My fault.”

  His parents told him that was nonsense, but they could not comprehend his power. Only Joy could have understood.

  They hadn’t all boarded when Steelfox called out, “Karvaks!” and a force of five arbans, fifty of her people, reared upon the rise. Methodically, the Karvaks fired arrows at everyone but Steelfox and Innocence.

  Erik Glint fell first, an arrow in his eye. He lay at the prow, dead instantly.

  Nine Smilodons glared at a shaft protruding from his right arm. He snapped it and began rowing. Mad Katta took a shot in the back and nearly toppled from the craft, but Northwing caught him.

  Bone stared at an arrow shaft in his stomach and stumbled into the bilge. Innocence heard his father saying, “Shoot them, Gaunt . . . don’t waste the poison . . . Innocence, help me. . . .”

  Yngvarr commanded oarsmen with a dread voice. Those who couldn’t row held up shields to protect the rowers. Innocence helped Bone point a peculiar black baton. “Got this from Eshe . . . no, use that end . . . point that end at the Karvaks . . . and pull this thing, here. . . .” Innocence moved the metal lever, and the device delivered a kick that stung his hands. A rocket like the fireworks of Qiangguo shot upward past the Karvaks, briefly distracting their archer.

  Deadfall was in the air, flying past the archers, slapping at their hands. Some dropped their bows.

  Persimmon Gaunt dropped hers as well. She joined Innocence in tending to Bone’s injury.

  “Just a flesh wound,” he said. “Perhaps a few more important things . . . but mostly flesh . . .”

  “Shut up, Bone. Innocence, help hold him still. This arrow is coming out.”

  “Why must he help me hold still?” Bone complained. “I’ve had wounds befo—yeargh.”

  “There,” Gaunt said, tossing the arrow overboard. She looked up, and Innocence followed her gaze. Deadfall was rushing back onto the ship, sometimes leaping skyward to slap arrows from the sky. The dark shore had receded, and Bison’s survivors were rowing as swiftly as possible.

  Survivors—they had lost eight more crew to the archers, including the captain. Bison now carried eighteen human beings, a bird, and a magic carpet. The ship was meant for a crew of forty.

  They had no mast or sail. Everything was now muscle. Bone insisted he was fine, and Gaunt’s expression did not agree. But she protected him sternly, so Innocence felt free to row. He ached with the work, and with the draining effect of enlivening the foamreavers’ chi, he was facing exhaustion. But he couldn’t let others work themselves to death while his strength remained.

  At any rate, the exertion took his mind off the dead.

  At last Deadfall said, “Tie a line to me and secure me to the figurehead. I can tow the ship. Not at any great speed, but it will allow the rowers to rest. I will head in the direction that seems best.”

  “Thank you, creature,” Yngvarr said.

  “You are welcome, entity,” said Deadfall.

  “Before, you were reluctant to reveal your powers,” Gaunt said.

  “I think there is no question of avoiding detection,” Deadfall said.

  Steelfox said, “I would expect my people to send balloons now, there being no possibility of surprising us. Or Oxilander allies with ships. Yet I see no pursuit.”

  “You sound worried,” Gaunt said.

  “I am. They may have something worse in mind.”

  “Worse,” Northwing said. “Ha. That would be something to see. I have rested as much as I dare. If no weather control is desired, I shall deal with the spirits to speed the healing of our wounded. Me first, of course.”

  “Of course,” Bone said.

  “You and Katta are next on the list. You were both hit badly.”

  “I can maintain myself for a time,” Katta said. “Others may be healed first.”

  “Such brave nonsense ill-becomes you, monk. You are badly wounded. I’d prefer to have a proper gathering, with drums, an awestruck village, the whole performance. But your good wishes, crew, are welcome.”

  “I could send chi into their bodies,” Innocence said. “It might help.”

  “Like it helped us?” Yngvarr said. “I sensed the power entering us, and for a moment I had visions of fiery dragons dancing in the air with similar creatures, misty and green. Then the rage came, and I saw a vision of Orm One-Eye and his golden hall, and fire danced before it. I have never walked the path of the berserker, one who enters a battle-trance, but you brought it on.”

  “Yes,” Innocence said. “Tom’s death . . . that is my burden, not yours. I didn’t expect that effect. Maybe it is most potent for warriors . . . but the act was mine. My mentor taught me to address my mistakes. I’m sorry.”

  Yngvarr frowned. “Yes. I mourn Tom, as I mourn Brambletop. And Ruvsa. But the battle-fury is in me, boy, no matter what you did. Just as the foamreaving and slaving was my doing, before the demon ever had me.”

  Deadfall pulled them through the night. It seemed tireless, but in the morning, as they woke to the surges of the open sea on their left and rugged black cliffs to their right, Deadfall returned to the broken Bison and did not speak.

  So they rowed and sometimes sang songs of people long dead, and when at noon they saw a rare stand of tall trees, they went ashore and chopped until they had a new mast. It was badly done, but it was done. With a spare sail they were moving at speed again. Innocence called upon his power, for Northwing was still silently imploring the spirits to help the wounded. A wind puffed the sail.

  Alfhild was staring at him. She had been doing that more since Erik, her would-be paramour, had died. “You are a wizard.”

  “I’m nothing of the kind. . . .”

  “You are modest.”

  “I’m not that either. I have power. I’ve learned from a wise civilization. I’ve come through great danger. But I’m not a wizard. The powers I have are a gift from nature, or else from the Heavenwalls or the Great Chain of Unbeing.”

  “I do not understand anything about this world. I followed a man into this place, and now his body feeds the fish.”

  “I do not understand this world either, Alfhild. I grew up in a different realm, as did you. Perhaps it is only in sheltered places that life makes sense.”

  His mother spoke up. “What you’ve seen, Alfhild, is a land at war. Once I might have believed that war was an adventure. It is not. It is the end of adventures. It shortens lives that might have gone on to see wonders.”

  Imago Bone groaned.

  “He is getting worse, isn’t he?” Innocence said.

  “He may,” Gaunt said.

 
; Innocence thought about losing the father he’d so long avoided. Perhaps his mother too. He could not feel it as anything but a weight.

  He tried to push Bison harder. They must find Skrymir’s heart.

  Days passed, and they followed a bleak coast where no farms stood. There were no good landings here, and rivers fell in surging waterfalls. To the south was a permanent storm bank, and Yngvarr informed them this was the Draugmaw.

  The morning came when Deadfall refused to give up its dragging of the ship, for it said, “We are close.”

  An island loomed out of the gloom, right beside the storm clouds and churning sea of the Draugmaw, close at hand to Oxiland’s coast.

  The island bore a vague resemblance to a giant’s foot a mile lengthwise, petrified and snapped off above the ankle. Snow covered its steep slopes except upon the sheer ridges between the shore and the jagged top. They came around to the north side, where the hypothetical giant’s toes jabbed toward another grim island nearer to Oxiland. Ice linked them. Innocence had the impression one could walk between these islands upon the frozen sea, and then to a third, and on to Oxiland.

  They landed Bison where the little toe might be, splintering ice as they pulled the longship onto the pebbly strand. Ahead, halfway up the island’s treacherous slope, was a cave.

  “Nice spot,” Gaunt said. “A cold beauty to it. Suitable for witch’s cauldrons, shipwrecks, last battles.”

  “You’ll bring bad luck,” Yngvarr said, “with talk like that.”

  “Not Gaunt,” Bone murmured. “Thinking about doom makes her lucky. And me by association.”

  “You’re staying with Bison,” Gaunt said.

  “You’re thinking about doom again,” Bone said, departing the longship, all stubborn purpose. “It’s my lucky day.”

  There was no stopping him. The ten questers left the surviving crew of seven foamreavers to guard the ship, for the sailors had suffered much. Booted feet crunched snow, Bone looked out at the dark-blue sea and its whitestreaked waves. “Anyone spy anything on the horizon?”

  “Nothing new,” Gaunt snapped. Others grunted agreement. “Should there be?”

  “That firework-weapon was a gift from Eshe, a signal. Should have just shot it straight into the air. I was hoping she’d come sailing up to save us.”

  “She has her own priorities.”

  “True. I’ve always fancied we are among those priorities.”

  “You maybe. Me, I think she tolerates. She finds you appealing.”

  “Well, that appeals to my vanity. But she’d knife me in my sleep if it served Kpalamaa.”

  “But she’d feel very badly about it.”

  “I’d like to think so.”

  “Well, you’re mine, Bone. If anyone gets to kill you in your sleep it’s me.”

  “I think that was in our vows somewhere.”

  Innocence did not wholly understand his parents’ banter, and he wasn’t sure he liked it. The mix of love and aggression troubled him. But there was more passion in that love than for many a more tranquil couple.

  They reached the slope and ascended a narrow path two-by-two. Yngvarr led the way, and his former enemy Katta insisted on staying near him. Next came Nine Smilodons and Steelfox. Afterward came Bone, leaning on Gaunt. Innocence followed, and Northwing leaned on him. Last were Malin and Alfhild, a strange pair united by Malin’s absent friend—and Alfhild’s doppelganger—Inga. An even stranger pair shared the skies, the peregrine falcon and the flying carpet, doing their best to stay out of each other’s way.

  Deadfall focused on leading the way to the cave, swooping forward, looping up, beckoning with a corner. Thus it was Qurca who saw the danger.

  “Something approaches from the summit!” Steelfox said. “Like ravens, but larger. They have rocky extrusions for beaks and claws, and their eyes glow green.”

  “Troll-crows,” said Malin, not looking at them. “Unique to Oxiland. Each great land has its flavor of troll. Spydbanen’s are mighty and vicious. Svardmark’s are shy and comical. Oxiland’s are few but brood endlessly upon their hatred of men, and of the passage of time.”

  “There are six,” Steelfox said, readying her bow. Nine Smilodons, Yngvarr, and Gaunt did likewise. Katta removed from his robes a disc-shaped cake. Northwing, leaning against Innocence, eyes shut, murmured in a language Innocence did not know. Innocence tried to prepare his mind for an exertion of chi.

  The troll-crows swooped down with a screech like the torture of metal. They were as patches of darkness cut early from the oncoming night. Innocence found them weirdly beautiful, like dark angels. His heart pounded.

  Four arrows shot from the path, and all found their marks. The trollcrows shrieked like a clash of shields, black feathers falling with the snow. Yet none perished.

  The six swooped and clawed.

  Nine Smilodons took a risk as they strafed him, dropping his bow, drawing his sword, and slashing. He decapitated one of the creatures, taking many cuts as he did so.

  The head rolled down the slope, shrieking outrage. The body plunged into the sea.

  Katta threw a cake, and the holy pastry sliced off a wing; a second troll-crow crashed into the snow, flapping spasmodically.

  Yngvarr took a nasty cut to the shoulder and threw his axe. It buried itself in the skull of a third troll-crow. That one spiraled madly into the cold ocean.

  Bone stumbled, for a wing had slapped him. Gaunt shot at the attacker as it passed. It spat and cursed, quivering, though it did not fall. Gaunt bent over her husband, but he gasped, “Fine, fine, never better . . .”

  Alfhild had also been wounded. She clutched her shoulder, staring at her own red blood welling between her fingers. Malin tried to help her. “Unhand me,” said the uldra princess.

  “Malin,” said Northwing. “Do those stories tell you if these things are mostly troll? Or mostly animal?”

  “It is a mix,” Malin said.

  “Let’s see,” Northwing said.

  Innocence didn’t know what the shaman was doing, but lack of knowledge had never stopped him before. He envisioned the power of the Heavenwalls coiling within him like a braid of fire and air.

  Three troll-crows remained able to fight, though all had arrows sticking from their bodies. They swooped to the heights and grabbed large rocks to drop upon their enemies. As they returned, the archers loosed more arrows, but the troll-crows kept coming.

  Deadfall flashed out of the sky and grappled one. Together they careened over the peak.

  The remaining two dropped their stones. Nine Smilodons was unlucky and went down in a heap, as did Malin. Alfhild stared at the fallen Kantening woman, whose red blood matched her own. But Innocence had no time for Alfhild’s perplexity. With the power of the Heavenwalls swirling within him, he reached out for the energies of the Great Chain.

  Beside him Northwing smiled.

  One of the troll-crows shrieked as its aspect rippled, like something beheld beneath heaving water. It twisted and split. Briefly there hung in the air two entities, a crow and a humanoid of gnarled rock, blinking with green eyes. In the next moment the crow winged away, to all appearances an ordinary animal. The humanoid fell to the island’s rock, shattering.

  That left one. Innocence meant to finish it.

  He combined the forces of the Heavenwalls with that of the Chain.

  It was a mistake. While the Heavenwalls’ energies were a balance of passions, the yang of the fiery dragons and the yin of the watery ones, the Chain’s forces were entirely yang—and not a youthful yang but a power ancient and uncompromising.

  The two powers fought within his body and threatened to tear him apart.

  He collapsed. Snow steamed around him.

  When the energies were purged, Innocence blinked at the setting sun. His mother helped him up. “What happened to you?” she said.

  He shook his head; he could not explain. “How are we?”

  Gaunt lowered her gaze. “We won. But Nine Smilodons will not share the victory. Nor
have we seen Deadfall.”

  Steelfox bent over the shape of her servant, her body shaking.

  Others had fresh wounds, though all were able to walk. Bone was looking particularly ragged, however.

  “Perhaps,” Gaunt said, “you should stay. You could build a cairn for Nine Smilodons.”

  Steelfox stood. “It is not necessary,” she said, and her voice was cold. “Exposure to scavengers is our tradition.”

  “I am sorry,” Gaunt said, “for forgetting your customs, and for your loss.”

  “So much death,” Alfhild murmured, staring at a livid cut on her arm.

  “He was a brave fighter,” Yngvarr said.

  “Take his sword,” Steelfox said, “for you have lost your axe. He would want that. He was the best of warriors. All courage, no bluster. He was my last connection to home.”

  Northwing said, “I remain your friend, Lady.”

  “And I,” Innocence said impulsively.

  “Your loyalty went to Steelfox the princess,” said the Karvak. “She is dead.”

  Innocence could not bear it. He bowed before her. “I am friend, then, to the one who stands in her place.”

  “And I,” said Northwing. “You may break our bond, but events remain. The world remembers. As do I.”

  Katta knelt beside Nine Smilodons. “If you like, Lady, I can conduct a full sky burial, in the manner of Geam.”

  “It is impractical,” Steelfox said with a sigh. “And he was a practical man.”

  They soon had to go single-file, and they fell into their own reveries. Innocence wondered what it meant that he gripped two incompatible powers. Gaunt and Bone’s looks of concern were a burden he didn’t want.

  They reached the cave. Up close it was like a narrowed eye-hole sliced into the stony slope. The tunnel plunged down with a slope almost the mirror image of the one they’d ascended.

  “Let us be about this,” Innocence said. “I want to be free.”

  Abruptly Bone laughed.

  “What is it?” Gaunt said.

  “This is yet another occasion when it never occurred to me to bring a torch. I am slipping.”

  “Don’t, love. It’s a long way down.”