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CHAPTER 17

RUIN

Skiing compared favorably to riding an angry dragon. After Gaunt had buried herself in three snowdrifts, that was all she could say for it. The cold raised fresh aches in the spot where she’d hit a mountain rock that first day in Kantenjord.

“You are getting better,” Vuk said, helping her out of the third snowdrift.

“I am glad you’re preserving the honor of the family,” Bone said. He was still sporting a purple bruise on his cheek from an encounter with a tree branch.

“Should we not press on?” Alder said. Despite his wounded hands, he was keeping up well, and Muninn Crowbeard for his part was an experienced “skier.” There was a barely restrained glee about him that Gaunt would have found intolerable, were the bastard not so useful.

Muninn said, “We are deep enough into the forest that I think we can rest a short time.”

“What was that?” Bone asked, looking around. “It almost sounded like an ocean wave. . . .”

“I heard nothing,” Vuk answered. “But these woods are said to be haunted.”

“And cursed,” said Alder.

“And filled with wild beasts and monsters,” Muninn said.

“Haunted, cursed,
and
infested?” Gaunt said. “This forest is a social climber. It collects bad reputations like a petty noble collects titles.”

“Mock if you will,” Muninn said, “but the Morkskag is no place to be wandering at night.”

“Will our former masters share this opinion?” Bone asked.

“Very likely. But Skalagrim may press on in the name of vengeance.”

Gaunt said, “Ah, vengeance. So satisfying to think you can set fire to your enemy, till you remember you share a hall.”

“We are slaves,” Vuk said.

“Were slaves,” Bone said.

“Were slaves,” Vuk said, “and as such we share nothing with our masters. They showed us some minor consideration when we were property. But now we are outlaws, and we’ve stained their honor. If only to save their reputations they’ll slaughter us if they can.”

“If it’s returning you gentlemen to captivity or the unknown dangers of the woods,” Gaunt said. “I’ll choose the woods.”

Vuk said, “Indeed.”

“Nevertheless,” Bone said, “let’s veer away from that sound I heard. This way.”

They proceeded at a gentler pace amid the great trunks of what Muninn called the Morkskag. Bone looked this way and that, every hooting owl and settling snowdrift rousing him to grim alertness. Gaunt wanted to soothe him, help him leave his captivity behind in mind as well as body, but she knew he’d refuse comfort. And sooner or later the dangers he heard might be real.

She glanced at Muninn, who seemed rejuvenated by recent experience. Alder noticed it too. “You’ve angered a powerful chieftain’s son, Master Crowbeard, and left your home behind. I know why
I’m
smiling, but I have no idea why you are.”

“It’s a nice night,” Muninn said.

“In the Morkskag!”

“Death is coming for me no matter what else befalls. Fate waits for us all.”

“What of you, Persimmon Gaunt?” Alder said. “You’re from my own homeland, aren’t you? Do you believe in these Kantening notions of fate?”

Gaunt shrugged. “If you can’t know your own fate until the moment of your death, then I say fate is no matter. I choose to believe I choose.”

“So do we all,” Muninn said. “But fate isn’t just a road or a river. It’s a seed within us, growing into the tree of our lives. At last we hang upon it.”

“So cheery. Perhaps it’s
my
fate to believe I have free will. If so, I shall not defy it!”

“And you?” Alder asked. “Do you agree with your wife, Imago Bone?”

“What answer do you expect,” Bone asked, “when I walk beside her?”

She skied close enough to rib him. She was pleased with her balance, and it made her impish. “Your wife commands you to speak your mind. No harm will come of it.”

“This is surely a trap. Nevertheless. If you say my fate lies ahead, then I ask you, what is the height of fate’s walls, and how many guards does it have, and are any of them bribe-able? What traps lie within, what are the dispositions of its masters, and where does its treasure lie? Answer these questions and I can tell you whether or not I can overcome fate.”

“You are as mad as your wife,” Muninn said.

“I have a practical mind . . . wait.”

Vuk, who’d been walking ahead of them, returned with hand raised. “I hear something. A large something. A bear, perhaps.”

“I do not like bears,” Bone said.

“Nor I!” said Gaunt.

“Well, don’t look at me,” Alder said.

“Bears are not much to fear,” Muninn said, “if one walks in a large group. Even a big one will not want to tangle—”

A dark shape burst from the trees and tackled Muninn, who screamed. The beast was a huge brown bear. One eye flickered strangely with an eerie green radiance.

Gaunt let fly an arrow.

She hadn’t considered that she was still on skis. Her motion sent her sliding backward, and her shot arced high into the air.

Bone threw a dagger, stumbling. It struck true, but the bear seemed unconcerned. Vuk grabbed one of Muninn’s fallen “ski poles” and whacked at the bear, bellowing. Alder waved his hands and chanted something; a rumbling afflicted the ground, and now everyone’s footing was momentarily lost.

Yet Gaunt had no time to think on this, for in the next moment, as she struggled to remove her skis, a clear, sweet sound echoed through the woods.

It was the sound of a bell.

At the sound, the green radiance within the bear’s eye rippled as though it were moonlight in a windswept pond. The bear growled mournfully and leapt away, soon lost to sight.

The sound of the bell receded. The rumbling was gone too.

“You all right, Crowbeard?” Bone said.

“I . . . yes.” The Kantening seemed just as surprised at Bone’s concern as at his own survival.

“It was frightened off by that bell,” Gaunt said.

“There must be someone living up ahead,” Vuk said. “Let’s be cautious.”

“I suggest we remove our skis,” Gaunt said, having already done so. As Alder untied his, she asked him, “Care to explain your connection with that tremor?”

“Ah,” said Alder. “I was, for a time, a student of magic.”

“For a time?”

“I’m simply not very good at it. I’m third son of a wealthy family back home. At great expense I was apprenticed to a wizard. I didn’t want to enter the clergy, you see.”

“You seem to have learned a thing or two—”

“Yes, yes, everyone’s very interested in my magic, until they have to suffer through my miscastings. The wizard turned me out in frustration, and I . . . neglected to return home. Alas my wanderings put me in the path of a Kantening raid. I am beginning to think I’m unlucky. But that is surely premature.”

“You may be poor at magic, but I think you’re decent at dry wit.”

“We shall see.”

“Hush,” said Vuk. “We draw near a fortress.”

The gray preceding the dawn had crept stealthily through the trees, and mists swirled along the forest floor, but the outlines of the place came into view.

“No,” said Muninn with a wondering tone. “It’s a church.”

The old church rose out of the forest and mists like a ship nosing through the fog of a narrow strait. For a moment, as the solemn wooden structure came into focus, Gaunt thought she’d been transported back to the distant East, for there was something in its many-tiered construction that recalled pagodas. Nearby rose a ruined windmill, evidence of a larger, abandoned settlement.

They crept closer. Wooden dragons grinned from various corners, and likewise signs of the Swan. The bell that had frightened the bear hung yet over the door. Gaunt found her lost arrow in the snow just below.

“Ha!” she said, picking it up. “I thought I’d missed, but I hit better than I’d imagined. My shot rang the bell!”

“Well done,” Bone said.

“It’s strange . . .” Alder said. “Like no church I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s a stave church,” Muninn said. “The first Swan-churches built in these islands were stave churches, like this. For reasons no one remembers, they often got built in out-of-the-way places. Some of them still get used, but most have faded into the forests. Never knew this one was here.”

“I’ve heard it said,” Vuk mused, “the stave churches were built from ship planks, by foamreavers who gave up piracy.”

Inside, the church was musty but not moldy, with neat rows of pews facing an altar carved with swirling scenes of the Swan and life in these isles, runic inscriptions, and ribbonlike designs reminiscent of knotwork patterns from Swanisle. The far wall was likewise thick with such designs.

“It’s a place to get lost in just sitting down,” said Bone, and he set out to test the thought. They all took places on one pew or another.

“This place,” Muninn said. “It stirs strange feelings. . . . It makes me sorry to have betrayed you, Imago Bone. Thank you for helping me with the bear.”

“Why did you betray us, Muninn, truly? Was it because you thought me a nithing? Were you trying to get back at time itself, by punishing a, ah, younger man?”

“Or,” Gaunt said, “were you trying to prove you were a foamreaver still?”

“I . . .” Muninn shook his head. “There are too many reasons, and too few words. I am weary.”

“We all are,” Gaunt said. “I propose, gentlemen, we rest here for a time.”

And so they did, Gaunt and Bone leaning against each other, Muninn, Vuk, and Alder nodding nearby. Gaunt seemed to be the last awake, and she was amused by seeing them, outlaws all, dozing like parishioners during an uninspired homily.

Her own head nodded.

The light changed. Suddenly it was dark. She snapped her head up and stared.

The altar was still there, but the far wall was gone, and beyond was a rolling sea, silvery under stars and moon and blazing nebulae.

She extricated herself from Bone, who still slept, and passed the others, who likewise did not stir.

She stepped beyond the altar and peered out. Two other structures floated upon the spectral sea.

One was a church, though of stone not of wood. The other was too large to fully see, for it appeared to be the side of a mountain with a great cavern opening upon the waters. A girl stood at the cavern’s mouth, staring this way and that as though fearing something that pursued.

Their eyes met.

“Joy!”

“Gaunt!”

“What—what is this? Is it a dream?”

“I do not know! I must escape—”

A gigantic, gnarled, stony hand emerged from deeper within the mountain and snatched her away.

Gaunt would have cried out, but a voice from the other church shocked her into silence: “Joy!”

She whirled and saw a boy staring through a missing wall beside an altar, just as she did.

“Innocence!”

“Mother?”

“Gaunt?”

Bone’s hands were on her shoulders, and bright sunlight streamed through the windows of a stave church that once again had all its walls. The strange ocean, the mountain, the stone church—all were gone. “Gaunt? I couldn’t wake you. . . .”

“Bone? Bone, I . . . we have to find Innocence! And Joy . . .”

“I know . . .”

“No! It’s more than that. There’s danger.”

“I know.” He nodded to where their companions had taken defensive positions by door and windows. “Skalagrim is here.”

CHAPTER 18

SKRYMIR

The balloon of the Karvaks approached, and Joy’s hopes swelled as she recognized it as
Al-Saqr
. It had suffered somewhat and possessed wide patches of red cloth supplementing the blue that represented the Eternal Sky. But it still flew.

It was as though she’d wished for the perfect escape, and the universe had granted it.

Now she had to be worthy of it.

She whispered to her companions, “All right. Believe it or not there’s a chance we’ll be rescued.”

“But what is
that?
” Inga asked.

“It’s a flying craft,” Joy said. “In my own language it’s called a
qìqic
. In Roil, it’s a
balloon
. I can’t explain it all now. But there’s room for us if we can somehow get there.” She searched the terrain, nodded toward a high point. “There. I’ll leap and carry Malin.”

“Carry me?” said Malin.

“Yes. Inga, I’m counting on you to run like hell to catch up. From there my friends can get close.”

“Sounds like a risky plan,” Inga said.

“Better than what we had a few minutes ago.”

“We should do it,” Malin said.

“I may never learn the truth about myself,” Inga said, and sighed. “But you’re right. Trolldom isn’t all I’d hoped for.”

“You lot!” Wormeye called out. “What are you talking about?”

“Silence, you!” shouted Inga, imitating his tone. She ran.

Joy grabbed Malin. “Hang on.”

“Hang on,” Malin agreed. Joy envisioned energy flow flaring through the muscles of her legs. She leaped.

They landed and slid down a gravelly slope, just ahead of Inga. Now Joy leaped again, reaching the precarious summit of a rocky pinnacle.

Panting, muscles aching, Joy searched for the balloon. It was coming, but she might have leapt too soon. Pursuit was underway. Wormeye was repeating his maneuver of days before, when he’d hurled Claymore and Mossbeard.

The two hapless—but dangerous—trolls landed near Inga.

Inga spun and attacked, a furious grin on her face.

Claymore now had a new, stumpy arm to replace the one he’d lost and eaten. Inga rushed up, gave it a savage tug, and ripped it off. “Noooo!” cried the troll, as she battered him across the face and knocked him downslope.

Mossbeard grabbed her, raised her above his head.

It was a mistake. Inga Peersdatter had spent seventeen years trying to rein in her strength. Her look was one of glee.

Inga whipped her legs up and sent a series of hammering kicks against Mossbeard’s eyes. Stony though they were, they were still a vulnerable spot. He shrieked his outrage and dropped her.

Inga scrambled uphill as far as a head-sized boulder. She snatched this up and threw it against the blinded troll. It collided with his head, and he toppled, cursing, after Claymore.