1633880583 (F) (68 page)

“You’re welcome. The All-One sees fit to send lava against our ice as well. I think I can walk, with help. Shall we reach the farther shore?”

“That’s what we were doing,” Northwing said, “when you interrupted us.”

“Why can’t you be more like Katta? Katta is polite. Katta appreciates rescuers.”

“Katta’s tradition involves harmonious interaction with the universe. My tradition involves haranguing the universe to make it do what we want. Get moving.”

“The universe would be wise to obey,” Haytham groaned. “Thank you for the assistance, Persimmon.”

“Slow and steady,” Gaunt said.

At last we reached the next island, where we took shelter in a sea-cave. Months of Fimbulwinter had frozen much of the surrounding seawater, so we were in no danger from the tide. We slept, exhausted, all but Haytham, who did his best to peer into the mass of smoke and lava that marked where we’d come from.

Haytham explained he’d been on a mission to Fiskegard when he saw a strange flare on the horizon. Tracking it as best he could, he encountered the ship
Anansi
, and together they had tried to locate
Bison
. Bad weather had thwarted them until the explosion of the island of Skrymir’s heart.

“So you found Bone?” Gaunt asked Haytham, her voice desperate. “But not Innocence?”

“I saw Innocence draped over the carpet Deadfall. I do not think he spotted me as they rose, and then smoke covered everything. It’s likely your son lived. Your husband . . . I do not know.
Anansi
might have found him and the others. But I can’t be sure. He was insistent that I find you.” He sighed. “I succeeded in that much.”

“Stupid,” Northwing said. “You are too much the gambler, inventor.”

There was much talk after that, of war and treachery. Reader, if you survived these days, you know something of the conduct of the war of Karvaks and Kantenings, so I will not dwell upon it here. At last human weariness overpowered human contrariness, and sleep came.

The ship from Kpalamaa did not find us, but neither did any hostile Kantenings nor airborne Karvaks. We were quite alone.

“Where to?” I asked briskly, over our morning fire.

Haytham said, “I suggest we take our chances trying to reach Oxiland.”

Northwing said, “Oxiland is occupied by Jewelwolf’s forces. The Karvaks have many ingenious methods of killing traitors.”

“Kantenings may deal with us, if we are careful,” I said.

“I am going for a walk,” Gaunt said.

When she’d left us, I said, “I worry for her. She has a strong spirit, but she’s suffered a great deal.”

“We’ve all suffered,” Haytham said. “She will recover.”

“Everyone breaks eventually,” Northwing said.

A strange, haunting melody hummed through the air from the direction of the beach.

“What on Earthe is that?” Haytham asked.

“A fiddle,” I said. “A local instrument. She kept it, even when she left most of her gear aboard
Bison
.”

“It is heartbreaking,” Haytham said.

It was, but it also made me remember. As I fell into a reverie and then sleep, listening to the sound of the fiddle, I resolved to watch for waterfalls.

Days passed. Through snow and rough terrain we trudged. We crossed to another island over the ice, and with one more passage we reached Oxiland.

My companions spoke of a monumental bleakness about the snow-covered coast. I myself could attest to the endless moaning chorus of the wind and the odd rumbling from the great volcanic mountain Surtfell. No food presented itself, so Northwing trapped the minds of rabbits and birds, and we had a sparse supper, Northwing begging the patience of the animals’ spirits for such an unsporting hunt.

“If they are dead,” Gaunt snapped, “why must you apologize to them?”

“You think a rabbit is a rabbit,” Northwing said. “But I think a rabbit is a part of the Rabbit, the essence of that shape in the world. And Rabbit itself is a part of the Blood-power that lies behind all beasts. And Blood-power is itself a part of the world-birthing spirit. So it is wise to acknowledge your food, if you ever want more.”

“I don’t understand,” Gaunt muttered, her teeth tearing into rabbit flesh.

“You are a southerner,” Northwing said patiently, “just as these men are. No matter.”

We went inland, seeking farms. When we found one, the proprietress had a harsh voice. “I’ve already given you my tribute and my men. What more do you want?”

“We are not with the Karvaks, goodwife,” said Haytham, because with Gaunt in her melancholy he was the closest we had to a diplomat. “We are renegades.”

“Outlaws? Brigands?”

“We were lately on a mission from Corinna of Soderland,” Haytham said, and there was a great conviction in his voice that might have been born of love.

“I’ll give you food,” the woman said at last. “That’s all. Get gone quickly.”

“Thank you. Are Karvaks camped nearby?”

“No, but their balloons appear at any time. We’re like mice beneath hawks. Wait here.”

We left with stockfish, bread, and directions. Footsore but with full bellies, we reached a ridge above a frozen lake, iced over save where a waterfall thundered into its midst, keeping a gap open.

Gaunt did not pause to explain herself but played a sorrowful tune on her fiddle.

In time a voice called out from the waterfall. “Go away!” it gurgled. “Go to my cousins in Svardmark or Spydbanen! Oxiland sleeps!”

“I can’t go away.” Gaunt’s voice was nearly as sad an instrument as the fiddle, which she continued playing, slow and rich as a wide river. “My husband! My son! You must help me find them.”

“Madwoman! This land has slept since long before the dragon brothers came to rob us of our power. Forever they fight over us, over the shattered headlands of the Splintrevej. If you want struggle and woe, go to them!”

“I will not.”

“It is as it is, then. Bring on Fimbulwinter.”

The roar of the wind overwhelmed the voice of the waterfall. Then all was silence.

“What has happened?” I asked.

“It’s . . . frozen,” Gaunt said, dropping her fiddle in the snow. “No. The waterfall. The lake. As though the fossegrim had killed itself.” I heard the snow around her compress; she had knelt beside the fiddle. “Did it hate me so much?”

The three of us knelt beside her, as if gathering to protect a fire from the wind. “I’ve damaged my mind,” Gaunt said, “learning to fiddle in a way that will please them. And now they shut me out. Where can we go?”

“We must leave Oxiland,” Haytham said. “To find the Soderland resistance. Or perhaps . . .”

“To find shamans to help us,” Northwing said.

“What?” Gaunt sounded incredulous, but at least she was breaking free from the ice of despair.

“Haytham and I have been talking,” Northwing said. “Corinna told him of a people called the Vuos who dwell beyond troll country in Spydbanen.”

“They don’t like Kantenings,” Haytham said, “but they like trolls even less.” Northwing continued, “I’ve sensed powerful shamans that way. We need their help. But there’s no way to reach them without a boat,” Northwing said. “Or maybe a stolen balloon . . .”

Gaunt said, “There may be another way.” I heard her tracing something in the snow. “I don’t have the
Chart of Tomorrows
anymore, but I remember something. Here’s Oxiland, and here’s Spydbanen. The book described how the northern sea freezes over.” I heard her draw another line in the snow. “It was shown as extending to here, I think, in winter. It’s summer now. But with this Fimbulwinter lasting as long as it has, the ice is surely more extensive. Much of it will be fast ice, stuck to the land.”

“You are joking,” Haytham said, “if you are suggesting what I think you are suggesting.”

“What is she suggesting?” I asked. “I can’t see her map.”

“She wants us to walk to Spydbanen!” Northwing said. “Over the ice. I’m not unfamiliar with ice myself, Persimmon. There is open water here.”

“Frozen over,” Gaunt said.

“Yes, but it won’t all be stuck to the land. Somewhere out there will be great fissures where the pack ice detaches from the fast ice. It’s there we might find ourselves plunging into water too cold to survive.”

“It would be impossible without you,” Gaunt said. “But you can see through the eyes of the animals. You can be a fish, a whale, a bird, a bear. You can find the fractures, the ridges that will mark the ice boundary. You can find safe places to cross.”

“Bah,” Northwing said. “Insanity.”

“The alternative is for us to attack a Karvak position,” Gaunt said, “and steal a vessel of sea or air. And escape to tell the tale. Perhaps we can do it. We are formidable, we four. But I won’t hide as an outlaw in remotest Oxiland until winter kills me. Choose.”

There was no denying her.

After many days of hiking, foraging, and begging, we reached the northern edge of Oxiland at last, taking note of the increasing tempo of smoke eruptions from Surtfell. My companions could not see the volcano but frequently glimpsed its plumes.

“I cannot tell where the coastline actually lies,” Haytham said. It was a bright day, and glare afflicted my sighted companions. “Snow and ice seem to cover everything as far as the eye can see.”

“I cannot tell either,” I offered, smiling as I said it.

“I can,” Northwing said. “The ice is indeed very thick, however, and that which is fastened to the land extends many miles. It is madness to consider traversing it. And yet less mad than I thought.”

“Are you willing to try?” Gaunt asked.

As Northwing considered, there came a great conflagration far to the southeast.

“In the All-Now’s name . . .” gasped Haytham.

“What do you see?” I asked, struggling to hear and to keep to my feet as the ground shook beneath me.

“Not . . . possible . . .”

“Tell me!”

Gaunt said, “Dragons. The arkendrakes. Spydbanen. Svardmark. They are rising.”

Oxiland seemed quite tormented by the disaster as well. We heard Surtfell erupting.

Northwing shouted, “Trust me! Everyone! Onto the ice! Now!”

We hurried after her. For it seemed the only proper thing to do—to obey a snarling shaman when the world was coming to an end.

(Here ends the account of Katta, called the Mad.)

CHAPTER 39

GAMBIT

On a day that should have been high summer, a balloon named
Guraab
flew at an absurd altitude where cold hounded the passengers and the stars nearly ceased twinkling in their ink-black sky.

A-Girl-Is-A-Joy said, “I wish Haytham could have seen the success of your plan, Haboob.”

“I too,” said the smoky form of the efrit in the brazier, currently surrounded by many buckets of water. Sometimes lightning-tendrils flashed from efrit to pails. “Together we discovered this gas I can liberate from water—far more effective than hot air. I am tempted to name it in his honor,
haythamine
, perhaps. Or perhaps more aptly, in my own honor—
haboobide
. But Flint tells me natural philosophers have taken to using the Amberhornish tongue, so I suppose we’ll use his term meaning ‘water-creator’—
hydrogen
.”

“When you unleash the gas’s explosive qualities,” said Walking Stick beside Joy, “we will tell the world the name.” Her mentor moved as if performing morning exercises, but their purpose was to steer the balloon. For a time the Runewalker Peik had navigated, but as they closed on their target Haboob had lofted them into the highest reaches. Peik, afflicted by thin air, had returned to
A Tumult of Trees on Peculiar Peaks
.

“And then I will be free,” Haboob said, “as Haytham agreed.”

Joy breathed carefully, concentrating on her chi. She couldn’t see the land below, but she knew Haboob’s magical senses were focused upon the Great Chain. “I wish he could be here, Haboob. All our friends . . .”

And Innocence. There’d been no word of him since
Bison
had brought Steelfox, Malin, Yngvarr, and Alfhild to Svardmark, whence they’d come to Sky Margin. Even their uldra spies, who’d done so much to report the Karvaks’ plans, had no word.

Haboob made a sound much like the clearing of a throat. “We are directly over the rock formation, O passengers.”