“I believe that can be said of us as well,” Kern said. “Doth that make their Gods any less real?”
Widsith chuckled again. “No, nor any weaker,” he said.
“What of the Christian God?” Reynard asked, feeling more and more lost and discouraged.
“Which Christian God?” Widsith asked. “The God of Philip and the Pope, or the God of Elizabeth and Henry? Mother of God, Mary, or Son of Mary and God Himself, Jesus?”
Reynard had tears in his eyes from all he had experienced, afraid of what he might believe himself in a few more days.
Then he felt his heart grow cold, as if the Eaters’ snow had filled his chest.
The first word is the first mother.
That is your God now.
From the chamber above came a cacophony of crashing and shattering. Reynard looked up, startled.
Widsith shook his head sadly.
Kaiholo said, “Were I brave enough, I would have studied them longer.”
Under and Out
THEY WALKED ALONG the base of the fortress, looking for an entrance to the caverns beneath. “The air smells sick,” the tattooed man said, and spat.
Through sun scattered by high vines and trees, looking into what passed for morning here, the Ravine’s shaped ice walls were growing spiky. A sheet broke away from the far reaches of the fortress and collapsed with ponderous grace, grinding and crashing. The echoes ran south along the Ravine, and then returned in a rough staccato chorus.
Kaiholo said, “Soon the Ravine will flood, and that flood will carry the rotting bodies of creatures too afraid to leave. Let us not be among them.”
They came upon a high, dark entrance, half hidden by old masonry. Kaiholo entered the cavern. Kern and the rest followed—all but Reynard.
“Thou hast a stubborn face,” Widsith said in passing.
“I would understand what my use is to them, to any of you!” Reynard said.
“The boy doth grow a beard,” Kaiholo said cheerfully, as if none of what they had seen, or were experiencing, mattered. “Let us train up like mules—arm to shoulder, the giant at the rear!”
“Boy, go or stay,” Widsith said, exasperated. “Thou wilt learn more if thou goest, and if thou stayest, likely die.”
Reynard returned his piercing look, then took up behind Kern, until the giant stepped aside and let him and Widsith join the line as Kaiholo had suggested. Guided by the tattooed man, who spun his orb but seemed to already know these caverns well, they walked along in gray-lit murk for hundreds of yards, then saw a faint gleam ahead.
“More ice,” Kern said, pointing to the right-hand side of the cave. “It is still thick here.”
“And still alive with Eater power,” Widsith said.
“There is a brighter block ahead,” Kaiholo said.
The block was a pure, clear sheet of smoothed ice, veined in both snowy white and ethereal blue. Through a particularly thin and transparent spot, they made out a moving shadow—face rippling but clear enough. The face frowned and vanished.
The strangely beautiful shade who had leaned over Reynard suddenly reshaped in front of them. Though dressed in a shimmering, diamond-marked fabric, she did not seem to wear it with conviction.
“Guldreth hath loaned her a shift,” Kaiholo whispered to them.
“Drake wing?” Reynard asked.
“No,” Kaiholo said. “She is not that far above the mud.”
Valdis spoke in a voice soft as a passing breeze. “Guldreth doth command me. I am to deliver this human child to the proper Travelers, who will take him to the krater lands. We will meet them at the join of two great trods. She telleth me they expect him.”
Reynard could not keep his gaze off the Eater’s pale features, her sea-foam flesh and deep-set green eyes that flickered like lanterns in a huge black room. He could not decide whether she was terrifying or beautiful, but one thing he felt, beyond any doubt, was that she was neither young nor old.
“The cross-trod nearest to the northern end of the Ravine is already halfway to the krater lands,” Kern said.
“Thou hast been there?” Widsith asked.
“I have so ventured.”
Valdis’s whispery voice took on a deeper timbre. “The Ravine is draining. Our path will be crowded with spirits and frightened beasts. We must move quickly. Eater horses are fast, and do not always kill the humans they carry. The stables are just north of here.”
They walked in deep gloom for a time, Valdis leading the way. She did not need a spinning lamp.
The roof of the cavern rose to an echoing emptiness. Ancient stone pillars, dark purple lava bricks, and what looked like intricately figured ivory or bone, emerged from the gloom and defined a stable, a dim line of stalls in which Eater horses stood very still, eyes closed as if asleep. Valdis opened the gate and led them through. “I will choose a horse for each of you,” she said, and looked to Kern. “Even you. Once assigned, do not try to put a rope on your mount, or look it directly in the eye.”
Reynard counted all the animals he could see. The stable housed at least ten, sleek and fine of form, their coats like wet velvet, black or gray. Valdis spoke, and the animals opened their eyes and raised their heads. She then led them one by one out of their stalls. Not themselves Eaters, they nevertheless reacted to the humans with a proud disregard that persuaded Valdis to take each aside and whisper in its ear. At her words, they uttered high, piercing cries, not so much whinnies as like the sounds made by swifting owls and other hidden night creatures.
She matched the giant with a great draft horse, a mare, the largest Reynard had ever seen, bigger even than the ones that had drawn the great Traveler wagon back in the woods near Zodiako—but black as pitch and with amber eyes. “This is yours,” she said to Kern. “I hope you can control her.”
“I will try, O mistress,” Kern said, and stood by the mare’s flank.
“Move over there,” she instructed, and the giant guided the horse to just outside the gate.
Valdis now brought forward a horse with ornately marked haunches—a combination of branded scars and shaved hair. “This is for you,” she said to Reynard. Lacking stirrups, he could only haul himself up by holding on to a hank of mane and swinging his legs over, as he had done in his uncle’s shop, positioning horses to be shod. He sat up straight on the mare’s back, legs gripping her cold ribs, and wondered who had marked her—and when. Was she meant to survive magic, curses?
Valdis led a third horse to Kaiholo, a slender mare with a strong but nervous gait. She now pointed to Widsith, and he stepped up to the pale gray gelding she had chosen for him, the shade of an early dawn, with eyes the color of a sunrise cloud. “This was one of Guldreth’s prizes. She hath no need of it now.”
“Did these animals ever cross the chafing waste?” Widsith asked.
“They have,” Valdis answered.
“A boy in the village was kicked by one,” Widsith said in an undertone to Reynard. “He hath a bottle containing the dust, which doth sparkle and give visions.”
“Are we to go there?” Reynard asked.
“Mayhaps,” Widsith answered.