But now she felt a connection. One was near who could all by himself make her travel by day. The feeling caused a diamond light to grow in her deepest thoughts that had until now known only shadow. On the southwestern shore beyond Zodiako she had ministered to him, connected with him…
And now it seemed arrangements were being made for them to meet again. Great change was vibrating up and down the Ravine.
She pushed up from the litter, slowly and deliberately brushed herself, emerged from her cubby, and climbed steps hand and foot up the rugged icy slope. The walls of the Ravine were lined with doors cut from stone, or shaped from ice and frozen mud… and out of these doors crept many Eaters, little more than shadows.
The shortest paths out of the Ravine lay along the slowly flowing river at its bottom. Often in the night Valdis had watched Eaters glide the length of that river, trailing ribbons of dim green light, dipping hands and kicking feet to raise frozen walls for their dwellings or sculpt strange shapes for amusement.
Some of the more ancient and ornate creations rose like bird wings to direct a northerly wind along the bottom, tuning its steady sigh into a ghostly dirge. These wind-song blades, on close inspection, revealed veins of blood and even, in their fogged depths, frozen bodies from Eater wars fought ages ago. Now Eaters rarely fought each other, as the Travelers and high ones they served mediated their darker and more violent tendencies. Valdis liked neither the bird-wing shapes nor their history. There was not much about being an Eater that she did like.
She had conveyed some of these truths to the boy while she ministered to him on the beach. Guldreth and Calybo had told her she could, that she should, so minister—but only to the boy. Would the boy understand, or would he be repulsed? She had touched such life in him, such warmth! And such a complexity, not quite the reverse of her own inner echoes, but more direct, more useful.
And still…
He had no time in him.
The Eaters that had left their houses formed processions that moved both south and north, along paths carved in rock and ice, up and down the Ravine. The last of the daylight was of no concern to them, apparently.
A number of beings seldom seen, leftovers from Crafter dreams only vaguely unleashed, were moving out ahead of the Eaters. The worm-like servants, however, had been left behind and peeked from many doors, dark eyes glinting like bubbles on a pond, crickling in alarm and waving their feelers. Those winged creatures who flew messages and warnings from the caverns beneath the northern fortresses made their escape just below the arched trees, buzzing and whirring, then wheeling north like an uncertain cloud of bats in the silvery light of the gathering evening.
She could feel the unity that radiated from all, and though none had struck a tocsin or conveyed instruction, she knew she must leave as well. If the Eaters departed, the Ravine would go back to its natural state, and the water locked up in the walls, the houses and sculptures, the historic wing-song graveyards, would melt. That flood would carry both the corpses of servants who could not fly, of those who would not leave, and the old sourness of Eater persuasion—a nasty vitriol.
Her appointed companions—Widsith and the young man, Reynard—were at the south end of the Ravine. She knew this much and little more.
She followed the trail that flanked the left side of the river and as she walked tried to utter a prayer to Odin, but the words would not form and her lips seemed to freeze. She had no such freedoms here.
On the boat, he could not pray, either.
He had no time.
Now her mouth felt dusty-dry.
She had not felt fear in hundreds of years. But now arrived the one thing that could even in her situation inspire fear.
Hope.
Valdis’s eyes were clear jade green, and by evenlight, it was difficult to know where her lids ended and eyes began. She turned those eyes on a large, dark figure that rose up behind her—then she stopped on the path and stood aside.
“Pardon, milady,” spoke a deep voice.
And a giant passed her by. It was Kern, who along with Kaiholo, and at times the Pilgrim himself, served Guldreth.
She followed his massive shadow.
The Melt
NIGHT WAS EARLY but also slow in its arrival. Reynard held up his hands and saw his skin was bluing, with little white spots.
Widsith murmured, “If there is no meeting before stars twinkle, we will leave.”
“Do you mean a meeting with Valdis? Why should she care?”
“Because of thee. I venture to guess, no more,” Widsith said. “I do not now cross oceans, but navigate a land of fable.” He worked his horse back and forth a few yards, then swung it around. The farmers and villagers had departed, leaving behind open baskets of offerings. “We seem to be here for nought,” he said. “But let us tarry for a moment of confession.”
Reynard stared in surprise at the Pilgrim. “What need I confess?”
“All who come to any of the seven isles, and hope to survive, must bring a gift, a bribe—a treasure. I bring stories of the outer world. Valdis, I assume, brought her young life, and forsook that to become an Eater. Even Cardoza, I suppose, based on what we have been told, brought some ability of use to the Sister Queens. But… boy, what bring’st thou?”
“Nothing of value,” Reynard answered. “I arrived, like you, in rags.”
“Nothing hidden, no sigil of stone or metal to charm the Sister Queens beyond the waste?”
“Nothing.”
Widsith turned away. “In a place like this, origin of all tales tall and wooly, and all lives small and pitiful… One too often expects treasure. Perhaps it is my time with the Spanish.”
Reynard had heard versions of that same question before, from his uncle or other fishermen chiding him about his value, his place in their world—and though they meant it to train and discipline, he himself still wondered. Feeling his face grow warm, and wishing to put some yards between him and Widsith, Reynard led his mount away and approached the trays and boxes, but knew better than to touch them.
Then he felt his neck prickle. The voice he now heard echoed from some deep cavern in his heart.
The first mother is the first word.
Bring’st thou the first word?
Followed immediately by the sound of rocks being disturbed.
He opened his eyes wide and stared beyond Widsith into the chasm, into the shadow of the broken trees, and saw someone quite large taking slow, steady steps up the scree.
He shivered, his fingers moving in an old story his grandmother had told about stone people and Picts.
Widsith held his horse as still as he could. Both horses were more than uneasy.
“Who is that?” Reynard asked, hand stroking his horse’s neck.
“That is Kern,” Widsith said. “He is formidable, but no danger to us.”
The shadow came up the scree until the creature, or the man, crested the rim of the Ravine. He was easily six cubits tall.