1633880583 (F) (31 page)

The numbers, which are also the stories, add up. So far they add up to One Hundred and Eleven. They are always with me. They are my friends. Even the sad ones.

But this story, the one I’m telling you now, doesn’t have a number. After all the stories are collected for the book, this one will go at the end. And if the book ever changes, with new stories added, this story will still move to the end.

That’s the other reason this story is called “The End.”

When Malin had finished, the blue bonfires outside had dimmed and turned an almost sunlike yellow.

“It’s late,” Inga said. “Or early, really. Troll sleep time is our daytime, but you’ll have to adjust. I’ll tell you that other story sometime. You’d better get your rest, because we’re heading into the deep tunnels tomorrow.”

“Deep tunnels?”

“We’re walking from here, Brokewing Island, to Spydbanen,” Malin said, “underwater.”

The journey from Brokewing Island to Spydbanen took a full day, or so A-Girl-Is-A-Joy was assured. It was hard to estimate how far they traveled. The trolls made them walk for a time but eventually grew impatient with Joy and Malin’s exhaustion, and carried them through the dark. (Inga seemed tireless.) The ancient uldra passage had long since lost whatever illumination its makers had given it, except in a few places where dim crystals revealed intricate bas-reliefs telling of krakens and whales and castles made of shells, in such fascinating detail that Joy wondered if the uldra had somehow perceived these features through the rock and were thus sculpting from life.

Yet for most of the journey, the only illumination came from troll-eyes. At times the silence was cut by unnerving sounds—weird keening cries echoing through layers of stone, rumbles of distant realignments of the seafloor and, once, terrifyingly, the trickle of leaking water.

“Fear not,” said Wormeye, laughing at the human, the changeling, and the supposed changeling. “Lower-ranked trolls are prepared to plug up any leaks with their thumbs and then leave the thumbs behind. Isn’t that right, Claymore?”

“Shut up, dread lord,” came Claymore’s voice. “I only just regrew this arm.”

“Just in time, sounds like,” Wormeye said with a chuckle.

“Even if the tunnel fills up with water,” Rubblewrack said, “it will only slow us down, for we need breathe no air. If these two are really changelings, they may be able to survive. The third of course . . . well, let her try her tricks on the ocean.”

Joy did not let herself be goaded. Whatever the truth of the leaking sound, they left it behind, and it bothered them no more. An hour later, however, came a thunderous noise as a section of tunnel behind them collapsed.

Please don’t have been following us, Mother
, Joy thought.

At last they emerged onto the surface in the crimson interval just after sunset. A cold wind blew across a region of broken hills, looking as if it might have been painted by an artist who regarded horizontal surfaces as unworthy subjects. Joy, Inga, and Malin helped each other avoid sliding their way down the rubbly ground into icy streambeds. The sea, such a looming invisible presence when they’d traversed the tunnel, was remote. Overhead reared mountains that made Joy’s beloved Peculiar Peaks seem like gentle havens. Gray-black stone seemed to bleed as its snowcaps reflected the setting sun. The trolls had no difficulty in this terrain, and they whooped with delight to see the great mountains that were their kind’s stronghold.

During a particularly chilling peal of laughter, Joy whispered to her companions, “Are you certain you don’t want to try to run?”

“Can we outrun them?” Inga said.

“I see what you mean,” Joy said, looking doubtfully at the broken gray terrain, pocked with prickly little trees. “But soon we may want to escape even more trolls, from inside a mountain. . . .”

“Sphere,” said Malin.

“What?” said Joy and Inga.

“There is a sphere,” Malin said, “in the sky. Coming this way. No, not exactly a sphere. Very close in shape, however. Do you have any idea what it is?”

“An Orb Dragon?” Inga said doubtfully.

Joy’s eyes widened. “I know exactly what that is. Friends Peersdatter and Jorgensdatter, I am about to give you a new adventure story.”

CHAPTER 15

A JOURNEY TO KANTENJORD, CONTINUED

(
as penned by Katta, called the Mad
)

While I hesitate to append anything to the fine calligraphy of my companion Haytham ibn Zakwan, his current preoccupation compels me to act in his stead. Indeed, I feel a duty to write for him, as he made it possible for me to write with any clarity at all.

Among Haytham’s inventions is a thing he calls, I think, a
lail-qalam
or, more in the manner of northwesterly scholars, a
noctograph
. It is a box with a constrained writing window, within which are held two sheets of paper, one of the ordinary sort, the other suffused with a special ink concoction. By writing in the window with a stylus, the special paper transfers its ink neatly to the ordinary one. Haytham claims he invented the thing to enable journal entries on night journeys. I mostly believe him; it would be unlike him to invent anything solely for a friend. However, it is quite useful to me, as it allows me to make more legible notes than ever before. With its help I commence the longest account I’ve ever written.

In the literature of the Plateau of Geam, where I long studied, such a work would have three aspects: the “outer version,” concerned with external action; the “inner version,” describing the author’s meditative state and other spiritual pursuits; and the “secret version,” wherein the author confides one’s deepest visions and miraculous experiences. Given that this account will likely never reach Geam, and may not even escape this balloon, I shall forgo the inner and secret versions, though I will comment on my mental state, and certain events may strike the reader as miraculous.

The shaman Northwing and I were loath to abandon Haytham with his head wound, but the soldiers of Soderland gave us little choice. Northwing is a powerful individual but was spent from the exertion of bringing us across the sea and surviving the troll-sent storm. I was in better shape, but my gifts are mainly in the monster-slaying line, and while the forces of Soderland were certainly intimidating, they were hardly monstrous. Thus we consented to be guests at the Fortress in Svanstad.

I cannot say the stay was unpleasant. The Fortress’s exterior of orange stone may seem imposing at first, but closer up the traveler will encounter many more windows than would be prudent for a castle of war, far too many wide entrances to be truly secure. The Fortress is more a statement of power than an expression of it.

The knowledgeable reader will now wonder how I, who am blind, can have perceived all these matters. I absorb more than one might assume. I am of course alert to descriptions given by my companions, but also, even in the absence of my gift for perceiving evil (of which, much more later) I make great use of my ears, nose, and skin in considering my surroundings. It is not so much that these senses have become stronger, as that all our senses, yours, mine, and those of the dog barking down your street, are far more powerful than we can ever master. Each of your glances absorbs more information than you can truly make sense of, and thus your mind prunes the forest of perception like a brutal gardener. So, too, your ears take in an avalanche of noise, out of which your mind plucks a few rocks. It is for this reason that the Undetermined, founder of my faith, bade us to still our minds and let the perceptions wash over us, so we might better understand how thought and perception lead us into confusion.

When disease took my sight in my long-ago youth, I mourned. I might have taken up, like Northwing, the path of a taiga shaman, for I was already apprenticed as such. But in the absence of sight I could not make sense of the teachings. I know now that I might have found other means of interpreting the spirit world, but I would have had to invent all my own tricks, and at the time both I and my teacher thought this impossible. I withdrew into solitude for many days.

But though I abandoned the world, the world did not abandon me. The chirping of birds, the cool pressure of falling snow, the musk of reindeer, the taste of woodsmoke in my people’s tents—these things teased me back to life. I emerged from the cave of my mind a new person. The old me was gone; blind Deadfall, the new name I chose, stood in his place. Yet I was not dead, not fallen. My mind was learning to take more from my other senses, to help build a notion of my surroundings. I paid close attention to tone of voice, stride, scent of sweat in understanding others. I discerned the locations of objects from echoes, the direction of the sun from fine gradations of warmth upon my body. The process of mastering my surroundings can be slower than yours, who have sight. But I sometimes think I am less often fooled.

“It’s impressive,” Northwing said as we passed through the gates of the Fortress, “if you like that kind of thing. We are riding through a gate from the town proper into a courtyard.”

“Yes, a stone courtyard, fenced by flat-faced buildings at least three stories high. There are many windows and doors, and a large number of soldiers awaiting us.”

“Now you’re just showing off,” Northwing said. “Though you’re right.” The shaman hesitated. “Unless the place is saturated with evil . . .”

“No, I’ve seen no evil here. I am just acquainted with stone and sound.”

“All right, well, the uniforms are blue and the walls are orange. So there.”

“Thank you, Northwing.”

“Don’t mention it. Ah, here I think are our hosts. A man and a woman, or so I assume, both approaching middle age, bearing a family resemblance. They are not uniformed and wear garish outfits studded with pieces of meaningless metal.”

“You and I wear pieces of metal,” I reminded the shaman.

“Mine are not meaningless but bear the images of spirit animals. Yours do too, but of course they are meaningless in your case, since you abandoned the call of the shaman.”

I am always grateful to Northwing for providing me many opportunities to enlarge my tolerance and patience. “They are meaningful to me as tokens of my past.”

“How many years has it been since you left our people?”

“You were not even born.”

“Are you older even than Imago Bone?”

“When I was a boy, there were still three moons in the sky. But that is another story. Let’s attend to this one.”

“You do the talking. You’re nicer. And I’m reaching out to the local animals. I love big buildings. Always full of rats . . .”

I cannot deny that I am more sociable than Northwing. It is a trait I learned early, for a man who would explore the world blind must make friends swiftly. As the horses came to a stop I bowed in the saddle, waiting for our hosts to speak.

“Welcome,” came a woman’s voice, strong and somewhat amused, “to the Fortress of Svanstad. I am Princess Corinna, and this is Prince Ragnar. Please pardon the involuntary nature of your arrival. These are troubled times, and it is not every day that a flying craft crashes upon our soil. Is it suitable that we speak in Kantentongue?”

I have rendered her words as well as I can reconstruct them, though in truth I was still struggling with the language at the time. I am quick to learn languages, a skill of long practice, but I had never traveled this far. I answered, “I can speak it. I think I am better able to speak it than my companion.” This was not meant as a slight of Northwing, though it was the simple truth. Rather, it might provide cover in the future. “I am Katta, a wandering monk, and this is Northwing, a shaman of the taiga.”

“Come inside and be refreshed. We have much to discuss.”

“May I first inquire what will happen to our friend?”

Prince Ragnar, beside her, spoke. His voice conveyed deep irritation, as though we had interrupted something he considered much more important. “He is going to rest at a farm near your craft. You will see him soon enough. Come.”

So, we were prisoners, but comfortable, politely treated prisoners. I have experienced worse things. As Northwing, communing with her rats, declined to tell me anything, I tapped with my staff as we entered the Fortress, gaining a sense of stone floors and oak walls. There was a slight tinkle of crystal chandeliers overhead and a hum of metal armor on either side.