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He busied himself with this or that and skirted that corner; and perhaps he’d inherited some of his father’s stealth, for he appeared to avoid the priestess’s attention until nightfall. He whirled here and there on currents of ale, mead, brandy, aquavit, hovering at times in a vortex of talk:

They say there’s been more fires on the troll-mounts, up Spydbanen way—

They’ve talked down that rebellion in Soderland for now—

Hear tell of the Nine Wolves? Been killing folk beside the roads—

Princess Corinna and Prince Ragnar, they’ve got their work cut out for them—

The talk circled round and round like a raven waiting for something to die, and all the good gossip was in time rent and digested, with only the offal of old rumors and tired grudges to chew between sips. Yet snow and chill discouraged the clientele from tromping to their whistling shacks. Innocence was tired, but Freidar and Nan weren’t about to close shop. When he dared glance toward the priestess she beckoned him closer . . . but he was rescued by a fisherman who called for stories.

“Let’s hear marvel-tales, Askelad! Let’s hear eventyr!”

He pretended not to have noticed the priestess and leapt onto a table. Men laughed and cheered, and now a hush came upon the Pickled Rat as he began, “Hear now the tale of Impossible Paal.” He’d learned it from a pamphlet come lately out of Ostoland, called simply
Eventyr
, or fairy tales, compiled by two women combing the villages for stories. He’d loved them at once.

He told how lazy Paal tricked a king into thinking Paal’s kettle could boil by itself, leading the king to embarrassment; and how Paal tempted him into thinking Paal’s flute could restore the dead to life, leading the king to murder; and how Paal fooled him into thinking Paal had leapt off a cliff into an undersea paradise, leading the king to death—and Paal’s claiming all his lands. As the poor fishermen laughed at the pranking and slaughtering of the mighty, the priestess stood and walked closer to the table, and so he launched into another story, of how the North Wind scattered the flour a poor boy was carrying, and how the boy marched right up to the North Wind’s home to demand restitution. And so it went, as tale after tale, plucky ordinary folk got the better of the wise, the mighty, and the supernatural.

At last he ran out of such fare and, racking his brains, spun a chilling account of a man who raced an evil sea-spirit, a Draug, across the stormy ocean in a confrontation that could only end with shipwreck and death. He’d heard this story only once, and he embellished it by letting the man escape with the help of a merciful water-dragon.

“I’ve never heard it like that,” said a man doubtfully.

“I think I did hear it told that way,” the boy replied. “Once. In eastern parts.”

“Dragons don’t live in the sea,” another man objected.

“They can if they want to,” said the Swan priestess, drawing stares. “You’ve lived in places where that’s true, haven’t you, lad?”

“Tell us!” a fisherman said.

“Yeah, Askelad,” said another. “We never hear tell about yourself.”

There was general agreement, amid some knocking of mugs upon tables. Someone passed him an ale, which made self-confession more reasonable. Wiping foam from his lips, he began.

THE TALE OF THE BOY, THE SCROLL,
AND THE MAGIC CARPET

East of the sunrise, far beyond the Eldshore and the Wheelgreen and the Ruby Waste, there was a land of wisdom and grace, where sages fashioned works of wonder. One such was a scroll-painting of strange peaks, ones even more jagged and spindly than those of Fiskegard, wreathed in forest and wrapped in cloud.

Had the painting only been beautiful, it would have been enough. But it was also a thing of magic. Gaze upon the mountains, or clutch the scroll, and you might find yourself drawn into another world, where the timeless mountains speared an infinite sky. A great wizard-king made the scroll to be a haven, and it had yet another peculiar property. Time flowed differently within the scroll than within our world. The relationship was a fluid thing, but time inside the scroll always flowed faster, so that hours outside might be days inside.

Once a boy and a girl were abandoned within the scroll. Their parents did something foolish—bringing a male Western dragon to an island that was really a sleeping, female Eastern dragon. The dragons’ mutual desire destroyed that island with fire and earthquake, and the kids could only survive inside the scroll. The parents were supposed to come back. They never did.

I’ll translate the kids’ names as Innocence and A-Girl-Is-A-Joy. In some ways they were very different. The boy’s parents came from the West of the world, the girl’s from the East. He liked battling; she liked exploring. He was quick with the spoken word, she with the calligrapher’s brush. But after their parents disappeared, they were inseparable. Their only other companions were monkish sorts full of lofty thoughts. So they chased each other around the monastery and up and down the rainy mountain. They discovered and built up and destroyed enough kingdoms to fill Peersdatter and Jorgensdatter’s
Eventyr
. Such was childhood. Yet their orphanage in the mountains did not come free. There was among the monks a warrior who went by the name Walking Stick. He drilled the children endlessly.

Now, when I say warrior, you might imagine a fierce-eyed fellow with a spear and roundshield, helmet and byrnie. Or maybe in a more southern style, with plate armor and longsword and a shield like a kite, and if his gaze is fierce, his helmet conceals it. But you would have it wrong. This warrior has no armor, just a robe, and he bears no weapon, and his eyes are serene as tidepools. You laugh. You wouldn’t if you fought him. They say the heathen All-Father bade men always keep a weapon within reach, but this man is his own weapon. His body is as tough as wood and as flexible as grass. He knows hundreds of ways to strike, throw, jump, grapple, trip. He knows the vital breath that flows within each person, and the thirty-six key paralytic points. And he can use his own vital breath to leap walls and walk across treetops.

Again you laugh! You wouldn’t if you trained with him. He was convinced that Innocence had a great power within him, and a destiny, and that only endless toil would make his fate a good one. As for A-Girl-Is-A-Joy, well, there are those who think women incapable of being warriors. Walking Stick wasn’t one of them. She might have been happier if he had been. Miles on miles of running upon the mountain, hours on hours of hard labor in the temple, and thousands on thousands of mock battles in the gardens. I’m not even going to repeat the lectures! For “the superior person speaks softly and acts boldly,” and “what is done needs no declaration, what is finished needs no protest, what is past needs no blame,” and “life spawns, the seasons pass and return, yet does Heaven say a word?” Perhaps you now have a sense of his speech; I will speak of it no more.

Save for this, Innocence longed to escape his teacher. And the day came when he met the agent of his escape.

In a desert city between East and West, a work was fashioned, perhaps as wondrous as the scroll. It was a magic carpet flowing with the colors of the sands and the mountains, with the image of a volcano at its heart. Like others of its kind, it was made to fly, though sometimes it did so badly. Unlike others, it was also made to snatch power away from those who possessed it. The wizard’s apprentice judged its purpose evil, and he stealthily changed its weaving, hoping to alter its fate. Thus the carpet became a divided thing, torn between good and evil. Perhaps that more than anything is why it sought the boy.

The carpet was attuned to power and sought out Innocence within the scroll. It told him of many things, of the outside world, of monsters and wizards, of armies and kings—of power. And Innocence made a rash decision and left the scroll, flying away upon the carpet.

How they explored! No boy roaming the countryside beside his dog could have been more eager than this lad wandering the Earthe with his magic carpet. The things they saw! The Moon Pit with its eerie shining minerals, remnants of the lost satellites of past ages. Splendid Amberhorn upon the Midnight Sea, a whole decadent civilization retired to a single city and countryside. Loomsberg with its waterwheels and alchemical engines. It was in the eccentric air of Loomsberg that the pair hit on the plan of exploring the moon—the silver moon, the last moon, place of mountains and gray plains and ice. Why go to the moon? Because forbidding as it was, it looked safer than the sun.

And so they rose to that strange orb. They had no guarantee that the world’s air extended all the way to the moon, and for a time it seemed they could never reach it. For Innocence, shivering in the great cold of that pale-blue altitude, began to fall unconscious. The carpet made one last effort and found itself in a dark expanse. Fearing it had killed its companion, it tried to dive for the Earthe—but it found itself snared by an attractive force exerted by the silver sphere overhead.

Together they crashed upon a frosty plain of gray dust. The moon, it turned out, had its own air, thin as that of a high mountain peak but enough to restore Innocence to himself. Yet they could not celebrate. The strange land beckoned, but there was little chance of the boy staying healthy in the cold and thin air. As peculiar pale creatures crept over the horizon, reminiscent of lobsters fashioned of white mushrooms, they tried to fly.

It did not work.

They were trapped upon the moon.

Innocence had little time to act. He had to draw upon the strange power that lived within him, an innate ability to manipulate the vital breath of the land. But that power was tied to a single part of the Earthe. Did he dare try to tap the power of the moon? He had little choice.

And the carpet helped him, for siphoning power was part of its purpose. Together they absorbed the strange magic of the moon.

I . . . how to describe it? The moon is beloved of poets and thieves. And of lovers. And in that moment it seemed no accident that those on the edge of life revered the moon; for love, and a zest for life, flowed into Innocence.

Also, power.

They rose from the moon in a cloud of dust, strange fungus-things clawing and chittering in their wake. Their triumph was to be short-lived. Escaping the pull of the moon, they entered the region of darkness, and as the cold ravaged Innocence’s skin and the absence of atmosphere seared his lungs, light swirled within his vision and awareness ebbed.

Once, he awoke with the knowledge that they fell at great speed toward the Earthe, and that the carpet was shielding Innocence from a great heat birthed by their plunge through the atmosphere. He caught a glimpse of jagged islands, their mountains goring the clouds, then a stormy sea. They hit; their flame was quenched. So was thought.

How Innocence survived is a blurry matter. It seems he must have used the power to stay afloat and keep his body warm, but the events are as a dream. When the Lardermen found him, the carpet was nowhere to be seen.

In pride Innocence had flown too close to the moon and was nearly destroyed. He was now a simple serving boy. So, if it’s fated, he will remain.

In the silence that followed, the priestess took his hand and said, “This one’s practically given a confession, I’d better shrive him.” There was uneasy laughter at that, which even Nan and Freidar joined, and there was no help for it but to be led into the booth.

“You are forgiven of course,” the priestess said as they sat, “but you have brought great danger on yourself, Innocence Gaunt.”

Almost he ran. But there was truly nowhere to run upon Fiskegard. “How do you know me?” he asked. “And who are you?”

“Weeks ago there was a boy of Fiskegard who overheard a young man on a sea-cliff yell to the wind, ‘I am innocent!’ He told his mother, who told another, and the chain of tellings eventually reached the ear of one who is paid to report unusual doings to us.”

“Us?”

Her gaze did not waver. “That needn’t concern you. Let’s say there are those who keep an eye out, for threats to peace.”

“What sort of threats?”

She smiled. There was something cold in it. “You start with two questions and stretch them like sailcloth into more. I’ll say what I’ll say. I am Eshe of the Fallen Swan, an itinerant priestess. I serve as other priestesses do, but I have a larger duty too. And I seek out interesting people who might serve the cause of peace.”