“Outlaws? Brigands?”
“We were lately on a mission from Corinna of Soderland,” Haytham said, and there was a great conviction in his voice that might have been born of love.
“I’ll give you food,” the woman said at last. “That’s all. Get gone quickly.”
“Thank you. Are Karvaks camped nearby?”
“No, but their balloons appear at any time. We’re like mice beneath hawks. Wait here.”
We left with stockfish, bread, and directions. Footsore but with full bellies, we reached a ridge above a frozen lake, iced over save where a waterfall thundered into its midst, keeping a gap open.
Gaunt did not pause to explain herself but played a sorrowful tune on her fiddle.
In time a voice called out from the waterfall. “Go away!” it gurgled. “Go to my cousins in Svardmark or Spydbanen! Oxiland sleeps!”
“I can’t go away.” Gaunt’s voice was nearly as sad an instrument as the fiddle, which she continued playing, slow and rich as a wide river. “My husband! My son! You must help me find them.”
“Madwoman! This land has slept since long before the dragon brothers came to rob us of our power. Forever they fight over us, over the shattered headlands of the Splintrevej. If you want struggle and woe, go to them!”
“I will not.”
“It is as it is, then. Bring on Fimbulwinter.”
The roar of the wind overwhelmed the voice of the waterfall. Then all was silence.
“What has happened?” I asked.
“It’s . . . frozen,” Gaunt said, dropping her fiddle in the snow. “No. The waterfall. The lake. As though the fossegrim had killed itself.” I heard the snow around her compress; she had knelt beside the fiddle. “Did it hate me so much?”
The three of us knelt beside her, as if gathering to protect a fire from the wind. “I’ve damaged my mind,” Gaunt said, “learning to fiddle in a way that will please them. And now they shut me out. Where can we go?”
“We must leave Oxiland,” Haytham said. “To find the Soderland resistance. Or perhaps . . .”
“To find shamans to help us,” Northwing said.
“What?” Gaunt sounded incredulous, but at least she was breaking free from the ice of despair.
“Haytham and I have been talking,” Northwing said. “Corinna told him of a people called the Vuos who dwell beyond troll country in Spydbanen.”
“They don’t like Kantenings,” Haytham said, “but they like trolls even less.” Northwing continued, “I’ve sensed powerful shamans that way. We need their help. But there’s no way to reach them without a boat,” Northwing said. “Or maybe a stolen balloon . . .”
Gaunt said, “There may be another way.” I heard her tracing something in the snow. “I don’t have the Chart of Tomorrows anymore, but I remember something. Here’s Oxiland, and here’s Spydbanen. The book described how the northern sea freezes over.” I heard her draw another line in the snow. “It was shown as extending to here, I think, in winter. It’s summer now. But with this Fimbulwinter lasting as long as it has, the ice is surely more extensive. Much of it will be fast ice, stuck to the land.”
“You are joking,” Haytham said, “if you are suggesting what I think you are suggesting.”
“What is she suggesting?” I asked. “I can’t see her map.”
“She wants us to walk to Spydbanen!” Northwing said. “Over the ice. I’m not unfamiliar with ice myself, Persimmon. There is open water here.”
“Frozen over,” Gaunt said.
“Yes, but it won’t all be stuck to the land. Somewhere out there will be great fissures where the pack ice detaches from the fast ice. It’s there we might find ourselves plunging into water too cold to survive.”
“It would be impossible without you,” Gaunt said. “But you can see through the eyes of the animals. You can be a fish, a whale, a bird, a bear. You can find the fractures, the ridges that will mark the ice boundary. You can find safe places to cross.”
“Bah,” Northwing said. “Insanity.”
“The alternative is for us to attack a Karvak position,” Gaunt said, “and steal a vessel of sea or air. And escape to tell the tale. Perhaps we can do it. We are formidable, we four. But I won’t hide as an outlaw in remotest Oxiland until winter kills me. Choose.”
There was no denying her.
After many days of hiking, foraging, and begging, we reached the northern edge of Oxiland at last, taking note of the increasing tempo of smoke eruptions from Surtfell. My companions could not see the volcano but frequently glimpsed its plumes.
“I cannot tell where the coastline actually lies,” Haytham said. It was a bright day, and glare afflicted my sighted companions. “Snow and ice seem to cover everything as far as the eye can see.”
“I cannot tell either,” I offered, smiling as I said it.
“I can,” Northwing said. “The ice is indeed very thick, however, and that which is fastened to the land extends many miles. It is madness to consider traversing it. And yet less mad than I thought.”
“Are you willing to try?” Gaunt asked.
As Northwing considered, there came a great conflagration far to the southeast.
“In the All-Now’s name . . .” gasped Haytham.
“What do you see?” I asked, struggling to hear and to keep to my feet as the ground shook beneath me.
“Not . . . possible . . .”
“Tell me!”
Gaunt said, “Dragons. The arkendrakes. Spydbanen. Svardmark. They are rising.”
Oxiland seemed quite tormented by the disaster as well. We heard Surtfell erupting.
Northwing shouted, “Trust me! Everyone! Onto the ice! Now!”
We hurried after her. For it seemed the only proper thing to do—to obey a snarling shaman when the world was coming to an end.
(Here ends the account of Katta, called the Mad.)
CHAPTER 39
GAMBIT
On a day that should have been high summer, a balloon named Guraab flew at an absurd altitude where cold hounded the passengers and the stars nearly ceased twinkling in their ink-black sky.
A-Girl-Is-A-Joy said, “I wish Haytham could have seen the success of your plan, Haboob.”
“I too,” said the smoky form of the efrit in the brazier, currently surrounded by many buckets of water. Sometimes lightning-tendrils flashed from efrit to pails. “Together we discovered this gas I can liberate from water—far more effective than hot air. I am tempted to name it in his honor, haythamine, perhaps. Or perhaps more aptly, in my own honor—haboobide. But Flint tells me natural philosophers have taken to using the Amberhornish tongue, so I suppose we’ll use his term meaning ‘water-creator’—hydrogen.”
“When you unleash the gas’s explosive qualities,” said Walking Stick beside Joy, “we will tell the world the name.” Her mentor moved as if performing morning exercises, but their purpose was to steer the balloon. For a time the Runewalker Peik had navigated, but as they closed on their target Haboob had lofted them into the highest reaches. Peik, afflicted by thin air, had returned to A Tumult of Trees on Peculiar Peaks.
“And then I will be free,” Haboob said, “as Haytham agreed.”
Joy breathed carefully, concentrating on her chi. She couldn’t see the land below, but she knew Haboob’s magical senses were focused upon the Great Chain. “I wish he could be here, Haboob. All our friends . . .”
And Innocence. There’d been no word of him since Bison had brought Steelfox, Malin, Yngvarr, and Alfhild to Svardmark, whence they’d come to Sky Margin. Even their uldra spies, who’d done so much to report the Karvaks’ plans, had no word.
Haboob made a sound much like the clearing of a throat. “We are directly over the rock formation, O passengers.”
“At last,” said Inga. The troll-changeling’s arm had regrown, her lungs were more than strong enough for the altitude, and with her friend Malin back she seemed ready for any challenge. Even her perplexing double Alfhild, carrying word of Inga
’s parentage, only spurred her on.
Haboob said, “Secure yourselves. We will descend. Silence now.”
They plunged through darkness. Joy’s hair flowed up and became a cloud around her. Her stomach wanted to depart her body, as an eerie whistling sound surrounded them.
At last Haboob’s eyes flashed, and their descent slowed.
She untied herself, crossed to Walking Stick, and touched the Scroll of Years.
Suddenly she seemed to drift above the daylit, spindly mountain of the monastery.
“It is time!” she shouted. “Let the noble champions of the archery competition come forth! Let all the resistance stand ready! This snowy day is Midsummer. In years to come, all who survive this battle will look forward to the day, and roll up their sleeves, and say, ‘Behold, the scars I earned on Midsummer’s Day, the day we broke the Fimbulwinter!’”
A roar went up from the mountain.
Joy’s senses returned to the darkened world. She put a finger to her lips, as one archer after another appeared beside Walking Stick, until the gondola was crowded with ten. Joy nodded to Haboob.
The efrit spread a smoky hand, and magical embers appeared in dozens of spots around the dark land beneath, hovering like fireflies.
The archers fired.
Karvak guards, awake or asleep, died in droves.
The Swanlings among the archers made the sign of their goddess, for the act of killing helpless men.
Whenever the efrit discerned a man had died, he snuffed that light. Wherever a man yet lived, the ember flickered. Not a single foe escaped.
Inga leapt over the side with rope and stake and secured Guraab to the battlefield.
Now Walking Stick leapt out, and there emerged from the scroll three members of royalty, Corinna, Alfhild, and Steelfox. Next came guards for Joy—Snow Pine, Liron Flint, and Yngvarr Thrall-Taker. Inga joined them. Then came seven Runewalkers, half of all available, among them Peik and their newest member, Malin.
Malin hugged Inga. “This may be The End,” she whispered.
“Don’t think like that,” Inga replied. “We will both make it. We’ll fill our book of stories and greet the summer.”
“Come on,” Peik hissed. “We’ve runes to walk.”
“Good luck,” Joy told the Runewalkers.
Walking Stick paced out the battle formation, sowing warriors like seeds with the scroll. He would be at the task for a long time. He had six thousand soldiers to guard the rocky promontory where it descended to the mainland of Svardmark.
Now Inga let out the balloon’s rope so the archers might rise to fifty feet. Haboob, fires dimmed, kept watch. As his hydrogen required no heating of the air (indeed, fire would be quite unwise) Guraab could stay hidden.
Joy turned away. Where the Great Chain wrapped around the promontory’s lip was a narrow spit called the Giant’s Tongue. She stepped onto that extrusion, an icy wind whistling around her. She could not begin until the army was in position.
She waited.
In the first hint of gray light, with the white tops of distant mountains illuminated but the world still dark, a wreath of fog and howling winds rose up to surround their position, though all within was clear.
Walking Stick stepped beside her. “As you see, the Runewalkers shield us. All is ready.”
Joy approached the nearest of the huge metal links.
She touched a rune, wunjo, which could mean “joy.” Why not?
Crimson energies leapt from the Chain, like a wildfire spreading across shapes of ice. A cold flame of blue rose in response. The cold was not just visible to her eyes; she could feel it within her skin, a slowing, freezing compulsion laid upon the Chain and the land.
Her power flowed down the links leading to the small island, still shrouded in darkness, that was the Chain’s midpoint. From there it rushed up the far side and touched Spydbanen.
And not just Spydbanen. The vast dragon whose body had been the beginning of that land stirred, just as beneath her a sleeping dragon trembled within Svardmark. There was a hint of a third dragon-presence, older, more deeply asleep, beneath the island in the strait.
Everywhere the red-orange fire of her power spread, the blue fire was there to resist it.
She realized now the challenge was less wrenching the Chain from the compulsion Innocence had laid upon it, and more not awakening the dragons. They must retain a spirit of Unbeing.
Her perceptions were everywhere around the straits. And now she knew Innocence was down on that island, stirring. He was not alone but in the company of Jewelwolf, the troll-jarl, and the magic carpet.
Her army awaited the counterattack bravely, filling the narrow space of the promontory. A thousand hand-to-hand fighters stood shoulder to shoulder and four lines deep. Five thousand archers, armed with yew longbows in the Swanisle style, stood behind these fighters and in wings to either side, the abyss at their backs.
Now the Karvaks came.
Their balloons arrived first, but the cold winds shaped by the Runewalkers repelled them.
Next came ships—but they were over a thousand feet below. The Three Wolves’ fleet, supplemented by the Gull-Jarl’s, would have to find a landing and send men up the paths.
Third came a small group of Karvak scouts from the garrison at Lysefoss. They were fast, but by the time they arrived the sun was well up, and Joy, struggling with the Chain, could see everything down in the strait. As the scouts’ horses reared, Walking Stick bid the archers wait. By now their position was known, but not necessarily the reach of the longbows. Best not to make the truth obvious.
The outnumbered Karvaks sped back to the garrison. More would be coming. Many more.
Now, near Joy, Princess Corinna ordered flags raised. This unleashed a hundred volunteers, berserkers all. They were to march downslope, guarding the sea approaches to the promontory and causing as much destruction as possible. Joy’s heart ached for these men, for most were heading out to die. Guarding the approach was only their secondary purpose. Their primary role was to convince the enemy that Joy’s force was an undisciplined rabble, as Walking Stick’s rumormongers had told the tale for months.
They meant to lure the enemy into a killing zone.
A wave of cold hit Joy’s mind. Innocence was fighting her actively now for the Chain.
She kindled her anger and flung it back at him.
Red-gold and silver-blue energies contended all along the links.
Joy. Stop this. The voice was bleak and tormented. Innocence.
She answered with a fresh blaze of power. There was a tremor underfoot.
Joy. This will wake the dragons.
She kept fighting. She was the fighting daughter of a fighting mother. She would never give in.
Joy, listen. I’m trying to help these people.
She felt a sob beginning inside her and willed it to become fire.
Who are you trying to help? she demanded. Jewelwolf? The beautiful conqueror? Or Skrymir? Poor misunderstood killer?
You don’t see them as I do. They took me in when I was lost, after nearly killing everyone at the island. No one is really a villain when you see them close up. Those two are broken inside. When Jewelwolf gets the victory she needs, she will change. When Skrymir is at last able to feel himself an independent being, he will stop being cruel. We need to help them reach their destinies. Then they will become better beings.
O, my friend Innocence! You are so well named! These entities loom so large in your sight you can see nothing else! You choose to ignore how they trample thousands of other beings—each one equally worthy of your concern! But because they lack power these victims don’t snare your imagination.
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 p
robably 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.
The Chart of Tomorrows Page 50