Reynard thought of the food his mother might be preparing right now: haddock and pease, buttered bread, wheat gruel. His mouth watered. As he and Manuel combed the other horses, and then Cardoza’s splendid and nervous mount, a pair of grumetes brought them bowls with moldy rice and a few chunks of dried fish, and with this feast, they made do, wetting it down with sour and watered wine and an unexpected swig of island rum.
That at least was familiar and welcome.
“We arrive at lands none such as they have seen, on a ring of islands far north, very far north,” Manuel murmured to himself. He lay beside a sleeping mastiff, then closed his eyes. The dog sighed but did not growl. “And those were not eagles.”
A deepening dusk followed swiftly, without stars or moon. The soldiers tried to replenish their scattered fires, but wood from the forest spat and hissed as if wanting to speak, and burned with much smoke and little heat. In the gloom, soldiers and sailors held each other like young monkeys clinging to a stick in a river, group by staring group, as the great maestro carried his sputtering torch around the camp and muttered prayers to the Virgin, but also oaths, promising all he had, all the ships he had ever sailed, the riches of Philip himself were they allowed to again see the sun and survive these hours of black nothing.
Reynard crept off a few paces from the tent that covered the horses. The freedom and trust showed him were illusory—nobody in their right mind would attempt to flee through this enveloping night. He curled up on the sand, away from the forest and the fires, where the sailors and soldiers would not bother him, and somehow managed to sleep, if only for a few minutes.
Not quite dreaming, but with his thoughts fluid and unsure, he felt thin, cool fingers with sharp nails play about his face, his cheeks, brushing and then trying to comb his hair. A face seemed to flow into view, just a blur he saw through lids almost shut: thin and faintly aglow, like a candle behind a block of ice. Deep in the face’s black eyes appeared sharp glints, like flints struck in a cave. Reynard rolled his head and saw pale figures glide between the sailors and soldiers, murmuring like waves on the beach—using words he almost understood.
After soft-raking his skin with sharp nails, like cat’s claws, another strong hand grasped his chin and swung his head around. A second face swam out of the darkness, this one female. She used the same strange-familiar language to tell him something, as if out of concern for his well-being, and then backed and flitted off like a moth. If only he could remember enough of his grandmother’s speech to understand!
After that, sleep came heavy, as if to blot out all he had seen.
Valdis
VALDIS HAD LEFT the Eaters’ Ravine and stabled her horse in Zodiako, the southwestern shore’s only human town. She had moved through the darkness with the pacted Eaters, down to the wide scimitar of beach, and there they had found sleeping Spaniards and done what was necessary to remain Eaters, not so different from what these men themselves did to stay alive—steal time from animals, a long chain of thievery back to when Hel was young and the Crafters first shaped their brutal tales.
In appearance Valdis still kept a semblance of the adolescent girl she had once been, five centuries ago, but no longer flesh so much as sea foam or soft crystal, shot through with a greenish inner light.
She walked between the sailors and soldiers, looking for her assignment. When possible, she kept to shadows and took on their darkness. Tonight she was not here to sup, but merely to identify and confirm, as instructed by Calybo, the Afrique, eldest and greatest of the Eaters’ island clan. Calybo in turn followed the orders of one of the island’s Vanir, those just beneath the sky: Guldreth. Valdis’s parents had long ago told stories about Aesir and Vanir and their wars, but none of that seemed to matter here, and she had never heard of Aesir on this isle. Whose orders Guldreth followed was never made clear by any who had met her, so Valdis suspected that at the top of the island’s command was Hel. Nobody she knew had ever seen Hel, no matter how old they were or claimed to be.
While ten of the island’s clan wandered the beach, glittering figures of fairy glass and foam, supping of the gross, dark Spanish, young and old, the men in armor and boys in rags writhed and groaned as if suffering from bad dreams, as no doubt they were. Having one’s life stolen was never pleasant.
Then Valdis found the one she was assigned to. The boy lay on a small patch of disturbed sand, filthy, his hands grasping as if trying to catch hold of ropes, but not caught entire in the spell laid on the camp. As she leaned over him, he looked up through heavy-lidded eyes and seemed almost to see her. Those eyes rolled in fear.
So young!
Gliding closer, then kneeling to peer into his face, she felt such a surge of confusion and hope that her entire body seemed caught in a flash of lightning. He was scrawny and not particularly handsome and smelled of sweat and horses and salt water. He must have come from far out at sea, far beyond the gyre. Normally, such would be prime fare for Eaters. But not this one. He had reddish hair. She had been told by Calybo to look for it.
The sense of smell given to Valdis and her kind was extraordinary. They could smell backwards and forwards, and connect what they smelled to what others over centuries had smelled. This boy smelled alive, of course, growing out before him rich lengths of time like a plant making sap. He had a very long and busy life ahead of him, and she would not take that away, nor even borrow of it.
As for the life behind him…
Nothing! He had memories, but no time, and this caused her more wonder and confusion. She pulled back from the boy, not at all sure of her power to keep him still.
A few yards away, Calybo ministered to an old man, making strange noises. Valdis recognized the old man despite his wizened face and shriveled form. He was Widsith, a lover to Guldreth; husband to villager Maeve; and friend to Maggie, healer and leader of the blunters who managed the drakes along the shore. He had been gone for over forty years and had aged accordingly, so Calybo was doing what centuries past he had agreed to do for this one man: replenish the returned Pilgrim with what he needed to remain useful to Travelers and Crafters—health, denser bones and teeth, younger flesh, and time enough to report and inform the island, and prepare to go out again.
It was ever Widsith’s task to explore the outer world and make his own estimation of how the plots and plans of the Crafters had changed things. For it was important to all on the island, including the Eaters, to know just what the Crafters were doing, as much as anyone could.
Without yet taking even a small taste of this boy’s history, it was obvious he was different from any other human on the island, and for that she was glad. Looking at his face, Valdis remembered some of what she had lost by being saved by the Eaters. She imagined herself and this boy sitting in a cabin on the side of a mountain and talking while snow swirled outside. He would tend a fire and smile at her. She would draw forth a blanket and welcome him to her warmth.
Except that she was no longer warm.
And this vision would never come true.
She leaned in, touched her lips to his forehead, then kissed him lightly on his own lips and neck. All she could manage with such brief contact was to grab a second or two, an impression from whence he came—but even that little was difficult. Calybo had said, recruiting Valdis in the Ravine, that if she found the right boy, his memories would be jagged and incomplete, his emotions electric—perhaps dangerous to an Eater.