1633880583 (F) Page 3

  Now, when I say warrior, you might imagine a fierce-eyed fellow with a spear and roundshield, helmet and byrnie. Or maybe in a more southern style, with plate armor and longsword and a shield like a kite, and if his gaze is fierce, his helmet conceals it. But you would have it wrong. This warrior has no armor, just a robe, and he bears no weapon, and his eyes are serene as tidepools. You laugh. You wouldn’t if you fought him. They say the heathen All-Father bade men always keep a weapon within reach, but this man is his own weapon. His body is as tough as wood and as flexible as grass. He knows hundreds of ways to strike, throw, jump, grapple, trip. He knows the vital breath that flows within each person, and the thirty-six key paralytic points. And he can use his own vital breath to leap walls and walk across treetops.

  Again you laugh! You wouldn’t if you trained with him. He was convinced that Innocence had a great power within him, and a destiny, and that only endless toil would make his fate a good one. As for A-Girl-Is-A-Joy, well, there are those who think women incapable of being warriors. Walking Stick wasn’t one of them. She might have been happier if he had been. Miles on miles of running upon the mountain, hours on hours of hard labor in the temple, and thousands on thousands of mock battles in the gardens. I’m not even going to repeat the lectures! For “the superior person speaks softly and acts boldly,” and “what is done needs no declaration, what is finished needs no protest, what is past needs no blame,” and “life spawns, the seasons pass and return, yet does Heaven say a word?” Perhaps you now have a sense of his speech; I will speak of it no more.

  Save for this, Innocence longed to escape his teacher. And the day came when he met the agent of his escape.

  In a desert city between East and West, a work was fashioned, perhaps as wondrous as the scroll. It was a magic carpet flowing with the colors of the sands and the mountains, with the image of a volcano at its heart. Like others of its kind, it was made to fly, though sometimes it did so badly. Unlike others, it was also made to snatch power away from those who possessed it. The wizard’s apprentice judged its purpose evil, and he stealthily changed its weaving, hoping to alter its fate. Thus the carpet became a divided thing, torn between good and evil. Perhaps that more than anything is why it sought the boy.

  The carpet was attuned to power and sought out Innocence within the scroll. It told him of many things, of the outside world, of monsters and wizards, of armies and kings—of power. And Innocence made a rash decision and left the scroll, flying away upon the carpet.

  How they explored! No boy roaming the countryside beside his dog could have been more eager than this lad wandering the Earthe with his magic carpet. The things they saw! The Moon Pit with its eerie shining minerals, remnants of the lost satellites of past ages. Splendid Amberhorn upon the Midnight Sea, a whole decadent civilization retired to a single city and countryside. Loomsberg with its waterwheels and alchemical engines. It was in the eccentric air of Loomsberg that the pair hit on the plan of exploring the moon—the silver moon, the last moon, place of mountains and gray plains and ice. Why go to the moon? Because forbidding as it was, it looked safer than the sun.

  And so they rose to that strange orb. They had no guarantee that the world’s air extended all the way to the moon, and for a time it seemed they could never reach it. For Innocence, shivering in the great cold of that pale-blue altitude, began to fall unconscious. The carpet made one last effort and found itself in a dark expanse. Fearing it had killed its companion, it tried to dive for the Earthe—but it found itself snared by an attractive force exerted by the silver sphere overhead.

  Together they crashed upon a frosty plain of gray dust. The moon, it turned out, had its own air, thin as that of a high mountain peak but enough to restore Innocence to himself. Yet they could not celebrate. The strange land beckoned, but there was little chance of the boy staying healthy in the cold and thin air. As peculiar pale creatures crept over the horizon, reminiscent of lobsters fashioned of white mushrooms, they tried to fly.

  It did not work.

  They were trapped upon the moon.

  Innocence had little time to act. He had to draw upon the strange power that lived within him, an innate ability to manipulate the vital breath of the land. But that power was tied to a single part of the Earthe. Did he dare try to tap the power of the moon? He had little choice.

  And the carpet helped him, for siphoning power was part of its purpose. Together they absorbed the strange magic of the moon.

  I . . . how to describe it? The moon is beloved of poets and thieves. And of lovers. And in that moment it seemed no accident that those on the edge of life revered the moon; for love, and a zest for life, flowed into Innocence.

  Also, power.

  They rose from the moon in a cloud of dust, strange fungus-things clawing and chittering in their wake. Their triumph was to be short-lived. Escaping the pull of the moon, they entered the region of darkness, and as the cold ravaged Innocence’s skin and the absence of atmosphere seared his lungs, light swirled within his vision and awareness ebbed.

  Once, he awoke with the knowledge that they fell at great speed toward the Earthe, and that the carpet was shielding Innocence from a great heat birthed by their plunge through the atmosphere. He caught a glimpse of jagged islands, their mountains goring the clouds, then a stormy sea. They hit; their flame was quenched. So was thought.

  How Innocence survived is a blurry matter. It seems he must have used the power to stay afloat and keep his body warm, but the events are as a dream. When the Lardermen found him, the carpet was nowhere to be seen.

  In pride Innocence had flown too close to the moon and was nearly destroyed. He was now a simple serving boy. So, if it’s fated, he will remain.

  In the silence that followed, the priestess took his hand and said, “This one’s practically given a confession, I’d better shrive him.” There was uneasy laughter at that, which even Nan and Freidar joined, and there was no help for it but to be led into the booth.

  “You are forgiven of course,” the priestess said as they sat, “but you have brought great danger on yourself, Innocence Gaunt.”

  Almost he ran. But there was truly nowhere to run upon Fiskegard. “How do you know me?” he asked. “And who are you?”

  “Weeks ago there was a boy of Fiskegard who overheard a young man on a sea-cliff yell to the wind, ‘I am innocent!’ He told his mother, who told another, and the chain of tellings eventually reached the ear of one who is paid to report unusual doings to us.”

  “Us?”

  Her gaze did not waver. “That needn’t concern you. Let’s say there are those who keep an eye out, for threats to peace.”

  “What sort of threats?”

  She smiled. There was something cold in it. “You start with two questions and stretch them like sailcloth into more. I’ll say what I’ll say. I am Eshe of the Fallen Swan, an itinerant priestess. I serve as other priestesses do, but I have a larger duty too. And I seek out interesting people who might serve the cause of peace.”

  “Like me?”

  “And your parents. I can reunite you, Innocence.”

  “If I wanted that, I wouldn’t be here.”

  “It does not sound as if you want to be here. And you have just informed a whole crowd of migrant fishermen what you are.”

  He looked over his shoulder. A couple of drinkers looked back at him through the haze.

  He returned his gaze to the priestess, uncertain what to make of her. “What am I, then . . . Eshe, is it? My mother spoke of a priestess named Eshe, though I don’t remember much.”

  “I remember your parents. Looking at you, I knew you at once for their son. You have your mother’s intellect, your father’s contrariness. But any gifts from them are dwarfed by the gift of Qiangguo’s Heavenwalls. You are power, Innocence. The kind of power that wizards and warlords will want to claim.”

  “And you want to claim me instead?”

  She raised a hand. “Hardly. I might want to employ you someday. But most of a
ll I want you and your parents somewhere safe. Where you won’t become the trigger for a war.”

  Innocence laughed. “You think very highly of me.”

  “I know the eye of a storm when I see it.”

  “I am my own man, priestess. Let me be.”

  “All right. For now. I will stay with the village priest and argue about the liturgical calendar to keep myself warm. But I will be back.”

  “Do what you want. You have no hold on me.” He hesitated. “My parents . . . they are both alive?”

  Eshe studied him as she rose. She nodded. “So my sources tell me.”

  “Are they looking for me?”

  “I suspect so. They are heading west, haphazardly, aboard a frequently crashing flying craft. It may be many months before they reach you.”

  “That is as it will be.” He spoke as a Kantening might, but as he rose, he bowed in the manner of Qiangguo, remembering how Walking Stick had taught him to respect his elders. Eshe surprised him by bowing likewise, with no self-consciousness, here in a room of the Outer World.

  As she exited the Rat, Eshe glanced at the sky and back into the room. “I think this may be a break in the weather,” she told them all.

  A number of men took her advice and returned to their homes or shacks. Before long the Rat was sufficiently emptied that Nan and Freidar made noises about closing up, and their ward was too occupied with plates and bowls, mugs and knives, to worry about Eshe of the Fallen Swan. Below the surface of his thoughts, however, memories shifted like horses that had fallen asleep beneath the snow.

  At some point Nan steered him to his straw-covered shelf by the stove. She covered him in a blanket. He tumbled into the deep sleep of cold nights.

  He dreamed he hovered over the jagged contours of Fiskegard, the island and the snowfall patchily illuminated by a cloud-veiled moon. He floated far above the sea, yet the sound of surf beat in his ears like slow thunder. Looking around he saw translucent waves glowing silver all around him, as though a second ghost-ocean had manifested far above the first. He could still see the ordinary world, but this spectral sea stretched wide all around. Its waves slammed into some unseen headland, scattering into starry droplets.

  “Aiya,” he swore. “What is this place?”

  He did not expect anyone to answer, but someone did.

  “You drift within the Straits of Tid.”

  He saw a ghostly beast like a dolphin with a horn such as unicorns were said to possess. The horn resembled an icicle and the body a patch of star-speckled darkness. Upon it rode a young woman in battle gear. She bore a spear and roundshield and wore a byrnie of gleaming steel. Her helmet was a round cap with a spectacle guard masking much of her face, though he saw her braided red hair and the icy blue of her eyes. She looked older than him, sixteen perhaps, though her voice had a hint of childish laughter in it that made him wonder.

  Dreaming—if such he was—made him bold. “That’s not very informative,” he said. “And if I ask you your name, will you say you are the Rider of Zot or the Guardian of Zed or the Slayer of Zeep?”

  “Tid means ‘time,’” she said. “You drift upon the edge of the Straits of Time, where its waters wash the rocks of the present. And I have taken the name Beinahruga, though you can call me Cairn.”

  “Charmed.”

  “And you?”

  “You may call me Askelad. Nan has told me of the Choosers of the Slain, who swoop down from divine Vindheim and carry off the spirits of the valiant dead. Though I thought that was just a story. Are you one of them?” He looked this way and that, as an uneasy thought came to him. “Am I dead?”

  Cairn laughed. The sound seemed to reverberate off the unseen headlands of present time. “Do you think yourself valiant, Askelad?”

  He laughed too. “The Sage Emperor has said that a superior man should avoid violence and heedlessness, that he be sincere, and that he be polite. Would a Chooser of the Slain pick such a one?”

  “You never know.”

  “So you are a Chooser?”

  “The All-Father has said that a rash tongue sings mischief, O Askelad, if that’s what you want to call yourself. I would like to keep my nature to myself for now. What you should know is that I have been waiting for you. You have the power to explore the Straits of Tid. There are certain sites in Kantenjord where the energies of the sleeping dragons distort space and time. Fractures in the fabric of reality, rent in the days when the arkendrakes fought one another. In those places it’s possible to send one’s dream-form into other realms. Or, with sufficient power, to go there bodily. The Pickled Rat is built upon one such site.”

  “Do Freidar and Nan know of this?”

  “They suspect. They know many things they haven’t told you of.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Learn—and beware!”

  She gestured with her spear, and it was as though a gale rose up. He was washed upon the waves through clouds and snow, then rain and sun, speeding across the seas.

  They seemed now to float above rugged day-lit straits, where two jutting headlands lofted above a small, barren island. A titanic metal chain wrapped around each promontory, linking them to the island in the straits’ midst, itself enmeshed in the links. Runes the size of horses glowed upon the links.

  “What is it?” Innocence asked.

  “Behold the Great Chain of Unbeing. Forged by the Vindir, great lords now thought of as gods, it drains the energies of the arkendrakes, keeping them docile, unable to resume their ancient conflict. A third length of the Chain plunges into unseen depths, sending excess power deep into the Earthe. The Chain has an intelligence of its own, and from time to time it claims a champion. This time it has chosen your friend, A-Girl-Is-A-Joy. She bears the mark of the Chain upon her hand.”

  Innocence looked across the seas, past an archipelago of thousands of craggy islands and skerries, out to the East.

  “You are thinking of another mighty construct,” said Cairn. “The Heavenwalls of Qiangguo. They too draw power from dragons. They too chose a champion—you.”

  “I have never understood why. I’m no son of Qiangguo. By accident I was raised as one, but the blood of that land doesn’t flow in my veins. I’m much closer to the folk of Kantenjord! And why did this Chain choose Joy? She is a daughter of Qiangguo! It makes no sense.”

  “You are right to wonder, Innocence. Humans have wrought these mighty works to empower themselves. But they did not anticipate that those tools would conspire with each other.”

  “Conspire? How? Why?”

  Cairn laughed and raised her spear.

  The sun vanished again, and reappeared, many times, throwing the ocean into light and casting it into darkness. And now land—green coast, misty forest, looming mountains, and forest again, and pale-green grass stretching forever.

  Below him lay an astonishing sight. At the southern edge of a great influx of the sea, upon the snow-covered grasses of the steppe, there stood thousands of tents and tens of thousands of men, nearly that number in horses, a hundred ships on wheels, and scores of balloons ready for flight.

  He drifted down toward the horde, and suddenly a falcon crossed his vision, the same that had stalked him weeks earlier. Somehow it picked out a single individual on the ground and dove toward her. He fell too, drawn along in the bird’s wake.

  He seemed to hover above the ground in the midst of armored nomads, as the bird alighted upon the wrist of a woman. She was a noble of the remote East, dark hair proudly worn high and shiny with a coating of animal fat; yet she was no ornamental figurehead. He took note of her muscular figure, even hidden as it was by a thickly draped, sky-blue robe. More than that, he took note of an imperiously eager look to her gaze.

  “Meat!” she called, and the language was none he knew, yet somehow within this dreamscape he understood her. “Meat for my falcon! And summon the khatun. Tell her I have interesting news.”

  Soon the bird was snapping down chunks of flesh, and out of the cr
owd came a similarly dressed woman, a little younger than the first, though her hair was piled and coiled more elaborately, and yellow makeup emphasized her brow. Her smile worried the unseen boy. “I am here, elder sister. I hope you are ready to define ‘interesting.’”

  “Qurca has returned. He’s found the one I sought.”

  The younger sister’s eyes narrowed. “You are sure?”

  “I’ve seen the image in my bird’s mind.”

  “Where is he?”

  I’m right here, he thought, but tried not to think it too loudly.

  “In the Bladed Isles,” the elder sister said.

  The younger sister nodded. “What the locals call Kantenjord. ‘The Edge-lands.’ I know it. I have allies and spies there. This is auspicious. The Great Khan’s council is even now debating how to apply a pincer campaign against the Eldshore. The northern route is clear. The southern prospects are murky. But thanks to you, sister, there is another way.” The younger sister gestured at the fleet of balloons. “Your inventions can carry a force across the waters. We can subdue the primitive island-dwellers and have a base for harrying the Eldshore from the west.”

  “Not my inventions. They are the work of Haytham ibn Zakwan—”

  “It is charming how you wish to credit outlanders. Yes, ibn Zakwan’s craft can carry a force to a new stronghold, and over the months of winter we can build up an army. The Westerners fear a winter campaign, as we do not. Yes. We can conquer the Bladed Isles by spring and assault the Eldshore in summer.”

  The elder smiled a trace. “You may be overconfident. And how does finding Innocence Gaunt suddenly make the Bladed Isles a good target?”

  “As I said, I have allies there.” The younger gestured toward two soldiers, who led forward her horse. “Not all of them human. One of them will know how to use the boy’s power to our advantage. And I have you. You have yet to regain the khan’s full confidence.”