Reynard could not help himself. He turned and studied the disks in the next row. These revealed ebony depths filled with clouds of diamond-bright stars, like a clear, dry night sky. Behind that disk rose another, revealing islands floating in a void—not islands on a sea, but scattered in empty air and topped by great castles dotted with lights… impossible realms of impossible people!
He frowned in frustration. These disks seemed important, more than just a collection—but a history, a library! There was not time enough to walk down the rows and do justice to them, to tally row after row, each disk as delicate and astounding as the first.
He turned back to the disk that contained a forest. One of the lizards had moved! He was sure of it—moved closer, head angled as if to study him!
“They are sorcerer’s mirrors!” Kern said. “Why doth she allow us to bear witness to such Crafter work?”
Widsith seemed lost in reverie, gathering enough courage to stroke one disk, then stare in wonder at his fingers. “Finer than anything I saw in the east. ’Tis as if Pu himself had embedded Crafter thoughts in fine white clay, then fired it to wondrous porcelain.”
A female voice spoke. “I am leaving soon. Come forward and say farewell before all here is gone.”
A Drake Wing Cloak
WIDSITH STEPPED to one side and looked between the columns. Kern tried to see over the moon-disks, but bumped his head against the low roof.
Beyond the ranks and rows, on the far side of the chamber, stood a female figure of middle size, dressed in a cloak patterned in thin silver, like the shining skeleton of a decayed leaf—or the framework of a drake’s wings.
“She doth wear her wings!” Kaiholo said. “All is indeed tumbled and new.”
At her gesture and invitation, they walked between the columns toward a dais on which were set several stools and a basic wooden throne. Reynard saw that this figure’s skin was like tarnished silver, and she looked upon them with the large, golden-brown eyes of a roe, flecked with gold like nuggets in a stream.
She removed her cloak and set it aside on nothing visible, where it took on a limp but cared-for drape. She wore a long dress like the bell of a flower, also made of drake’s wings, and a vest that tightened at her waist but loosely wrapped her shoulders.
She spoke again, in soft tones, using words Reynard did not understand. Kaiholo drew himself tall and full of dignity. He motioned Reynard forward. “She asketh for thee first,” he said. Widsith seemed to question this decision, this request, but when he tried to stand in front of Reynard, Kern stopped him and shook his head in warning.
“Come, young Fox,” Guldreth now said. “I would have advice from thee, if thou art th’one who can deliver it to me. I believe thou hast met curious beings—yes?”
The companions who had accompanied Reynard into this strange place seemed to fade both in memory and vision. The tarnished silver woman glided, her long bell-shaped gown rustling, leading him down the ranks of disks, hundreds of disks or more… the rows dividing like tree branches farther and farther back into her apartments, which seemed many, with doors and arches opening to yet longer hallways leading deeper and deeper into darkness, seeming to shrink until he was afraid he was already lost and would never find his way back.
And wherever she went, there were the disks, each bearing an image of some impossible place, or creatures that did not exist, or faces of beings not entirely human, until he felt dizzy and filled with their dreams, their delusions.
“I would myself speak to these figures!” Reynard said. “I would ask who you are, and why you have need of me.” Reynard’s eyes grew heavy-lidded, his look desperate.
“The dead or the great answer through the living and the lesser, but only when they desire. You say you were taught by your grandmother. How long since her passage?”
“I was a child,” Reynard said.
“Then she doth not roam in shadows to seek her favorites, and none can summon her shade without knowing many secrets, many languages not bestowed on the living—even those just beneath the sky.”
“She is here?” Until now, he had thought Guldreth was asking about his two visitors, the man with the white shadow—the man with the feathered hat.
“A grand Traveler. I believe she hath protected thee for some time. Dost thou feel her, Fox?”
“I do not feel or see her.”
“No surprise,” Guldreth said. “And yet, thou’rt here, and this is the first time a grand Traveler of her stature hath visited this fortress, dead or alive. I wonder if the dead can still convey a Traveler’s boon?”
Reynard shook his head, ashamed at his ignorance, and of the fear that now froze him to his bones. Actually being in the presence of the dead was true necromancy, sure to condemn one to Hell—or the infernal regions, rather. “What boon is that?”
“Words, Fox. Words new and words old, words that have shaped lands and peoples, and given power to formless ones who had none before. I would almost wish to be a Traveler, just to know such power!” She waved her silvery hand at the disks in this side hall, in the back chambers, all glowing faintly like moons behind clouds. “All these sketches the Crafters have made began with such words, words given to them by your kind—by Travelers. Travelers gave them purpose and power, and out of all that… we arise and struggle. Our lives begin, we work and do battle, and our lives end. The power of words!”
Guldreth’s voice seemed regretful. He reacted to that instinctively, as if he were some sort of strange gentleman hoping to provide comfort or solace.
“A phrase echoes in my thoughts,” Reynard said. “The words are not strange, but their meaning is.”
“May I hear them?”
“ ‘The first mother is the first word,’ ” he said.
“Ah! You do know the secret of Hel’s islands,” Guldreth said. Her dark silvery smile was extraordinary, her lips like the petals of a blue rose, had he ever seen such—he had not—and the teeth behind them were small and perfect, their color between ivory and polished silver coin.
“I know nothing! I have heard those words before, and now I believe, I think, I might hear my grandmother’s voice speaking them to me… yet she is silent!”
“Powers such as your grandmother have ways of leaving messages. Since arriving, thou hast received the memories of an Eater, true?”
“Yes. Some of them.”
“Valdis?”
“Yes.”
“She obeys, then. She was appointed by me, through the Afrique, to tend to thee as well as he doth attend the Pilgrim—or better. Not to give more time, but key memories—or a key to memories!—to shape thy purpose. Remember now, when did thy grandmother teach thee?”
Reynard stumbled back through his earliest memories and came across feelings of warmth and calm, of deep reddish light and pushing and kicking against a yielding barrier… living in warm darkness, hearing his grandmother’s voice in comfort and ease, but distant, as if from far away, along with a softly beating drum and pulsing pressure.
He looked up and around at the residence and the room behind Guldreth, at the rows of disks, as if they contained those very memories—but then his eyes were drawn back to the silvery face.
Reynard had caught only a glimpse, through eyes not yet opened, of where he had been when his grandmother had told her tales.
“I was in my mother’s womb,” he said.
“Ah!” Guldreth said with a flush of delight, as if seeing a marvel fulfilled. Reynard could not imagine her polished skin could take on such an inner glow. “And so it is still thine. I see her appear on thy face, like a fine mask!”