“Still no one,” Yuchil said, peering from the back of the wagon. “We should be on our way.”
“There is nowhere left to return to!” Widsith said, his voice breaking with both anger and sorrow.
“And no farther path here,” Nikolias said. “Move we must, even so, to deliver the boy. Pack it away.” The guards rolled up their sleeping blankets, kicked the fire marks around the dirt, and prepared horses and wagon to move on—though, as Widsith had said, there was no place for them to go.
“I would have saved Anutha,” Reynard said to Widsith. He felt the muscles on his back and neck twitch and looked up at the sky and the rolling gray clouds, searching for shadows, for of course anything could happen here. They were near a dead city, on the outskirts of a dead land.
“Listen to Valdis. Thou hast value, but no power, not yet,” Widsith said. “And none here knoweth why. Anutha died from a poison in her blood. She died honorably, and she delivered the boon of drakes. As Maeve and Maggie would have wished.” Widsith looked along the ridge, over the fallow fields. “Dost thou understand why the Eaters did not share?”
The Pilgrim’s question cut deep. “What do you know about me?” Reynard asked sharply, as if his words might shake loose something hidden between them.
“In time, maybe.”
Suddenly furious, Reynard turned away to hide the redness of his face. He had been told his visit had importance, but had never trusted such judgments, because he knew himself to be ignorant. The Spaniards, worst in his imagination, most skilled at war, had thrived neither in their sea battle nor on this island. And if this land had left its own people to rot under the shadows of a pair of unknown queens, after endless times under the rule of a Hellish goddess—what chance would he have?
The Next Silence
EAST ALONG THE great blade of rock, evening mist was clearing from the caged seed city.
Andalo and Sany spoke with Nikolias away from the wagon.
Widsith had avoided Reynard through the night, but now stood beside him and listened to the guards. “Half of the Sister Queens’ armies are most likely returning from their conquest of Zodiako and the southwestern shores, by sea and any available paths overland,” the Pilgrim said. “The Travelers will assume that all their ways back will be watched by the Queens’ pickets, ready to summon more troops than we can possibly defeat.”
“The Travelers wish to keep going east?”
“Nikolias’s only choice. Yuchil’s as well, given how many soldiers may surround this half of the island. We know not how many Travelers remain in these lands, if they no longer serve the Crafters. But there might be some.” Widsith studied the boy. “Nikolias may hope he can pass thee to the next group of servants, if they find any—and then, rewarded with food and water, turn about and head south or west.”
“Is there an escape that way?”
“None that I know,” Widsith said.
“The servants would trade me… to whom, for what advantage?”
Widsith shook his head.
Reynard drew himself up. “Calafi says it must be so.”
“That girl… I have not seen her like. I would ask Yuchil where she was found, but I wonder if any of them could answer.”
Nikolias approached and informed them they would try to roll their wagon a few miles along the blade of rock before nightfall. “Beyond, none knoweth what will be found.”
Andalo and Bela came to them next. “We have seen many footprints,” Andalo said. “Heading east—being herded by horsemen.”
“The servants of this city?” Widsith asked.
“Future slaves for the Queens,” Bela said darkly. “But they may not be able to feed or keep them all. We fear…”
He did not finish his fear. There was no need.
Calafi approached Reynard from behind, surprising him, and took his hand in hers. “I’ll be with thee, whatever they decide,” she whispered, looking up into his face.
Sophia brought the horses forward, and all mounted and followed the wagon. Calafi stayed close to Reynard and his horse. She never rode, always walked, but now she had ceased her dances and her spells, and her red tresses were knotted, for she refused the attentions of Yuchil and Sophia.
Seeing the mute swarms of birds had made the Travelers even more gloomy, as if the silent, wheeling flocks presaged their own doom, the end of their own worlds of language and meaning…
Their own silence.
Valdis, as always, seemed to find the comfort of shadow.
The garden lands, beyond the eastern end of the high, sharp ridge, became a jumble of uplifted plates of rock, punctuated by white hexagonal pillars, as if a great coat of varnish had been laid over the ground and broken by bones rising from below.
Yuchil raised her hand, and the wagon stopped. The guards dismounted and passed their horses’ reins to Calafi, then opened doors in the side of the wagon and scooped out hay in great fist-clumps, while the Travelers on foot arranged their blankets and laid out cloth bags of provisions.
“They will feed the horses one fine meal,” Widsith said. “What doth that wagon truly contain?”
“Whatever Yuchil needeth,” Kaiholo said. “And that which her children require. For a while!”
Reynard had wondered if perhaps the wagon’s stores were endless. How much magic did Travelers possess? If they commanded words, could they turn words into goods—into food and water?
The first word is the first mother. It is not her breast or larder. Words only guide and describe. They do not fulfill. Look to the silence of the birds! Their songs have never filled their stomachs.
Somehow, hearing that inner voice that still was not precisely his own, he felt ashamed of his hopes.
They moved higher up the rocky fields and into low clouds that made these places even more ghostly and unreal, not that any of it seemed real to Reynard.
“Where are the drakes?” Andalo asked Widsith. “I would have mine close!”
“That I do not know,” the Pilgrim said.
“Can we sense their wills, their direction?”
“Not yet,” Widsith said.
Kaiholo touched his jaw. “Perhaps they arrive only when we have true need.”
Kern studied the gray skies with a broad scowl. “If the southwestern coast is conquered, many drakes are either dead or without masters. And a drake without a master is a dangerous enemy. Who hath killed its master, it must kill before its season is done.”
Stars lit their way, but not many, and no moon, and still the wagon rolled on through the night, leaving the first krater city behind. And still they had not seen a krater, or crossed the boundary of the chafing whiteness.
But they could clearly see in the dirt and along the crusted rock the prints of many feet and hooves.
“I wonder they gave in without a fight,” Andalo said.
“Maybe they had hope of rescue,” Reynard said.
“From us?” Bela asked. “We were ever the lesser of Travelers. I wonder if perhaps they believed the island could not live on without them.”
Reynard was reminded of those inland farmers and lords in England, who did not believe in oceans and far lands, or the peril they might bring.
They paused in the dark and stumbled about to water the horses. Widsith found an old sailor’s rest. Sleep or rest of any sort seemed impossible to Reynard, who felt an inner pain he had never known before—a grief not just for lost family and friends, but for all those who might come after, for all who might arise in times of peace and prosperity—for he saw that such times might never come again, would never come again—and he was to blame!