1633880583 (F) (72 page)

“Of course,” said the future Bone. “I must be challenged by the powers who accompanied me in the old days. Angels of death, hear me. I am but a shade of a reflection of a dream. I will change nothing of substance.”

“We know not what you are, spirit,” said the dark one, “but you cannot take his life. That is given to me.”

“He means, to me,” said the fiery one. “But I sense you mean no harm.”

“I assure you,” Bone of the future said, “I would never harm him. Would you leave us?”

“Since I concede you intend no harm,” the grim death said, “very well.”

“I will kill him later,” said the bright death, and faded along with his counterpart.

Bone shook his head and knelt beside Bone.

“Thief. Wake up.”

Without warning the younger Bone somersaulted to a crouching defensive position, knife drawn. The older Bone envied the younger man’s reflexes. It hadn’t been so many years, had it? He was road-worn. His younger self had paler, smoother skin and darker hair. No moustache either; he’d forgotten that.

The younger Bone also seemed more focused, and desperate. Perhaps, under all the swagger, even sad. Curious. He hadn’t remembered it that way.

As he assessed his younger self, his younger self likewise assessed him. At last the younger Bone sheathed his dagger and crossed his arms.

“Bloody hell!” said the younger man. “Time travel!”

“Yes,” said his elder, nearly laughing. “Sorry.”

“I’ve heard of it but never experienced it.”

“I have,” said the older one. “You’re right to want to run.”

It didn’t seem possible that the younger Bone’s eyes could widen more, but it happened. “So you remember this meeting?”

The older Bone shivered. Did he? The memory was tentative, dreamlike. Perhaps it was something the mind-assassin Hackwroth had taken from him in Qiangguo, only now coming back to life? Or was history subtly changing around them?

“Perhaps I do.”

The younger man scratched his chin. “Then you’re genuinely me, and history is inviolate.”

“I hope not. A terrible event is coming I’m trying to prevent. It will destroy quite a lot of things. Possibly everything.”

“Bloody hell! I’m listening.”

“Good. But you may forget. This whole experience is dreamlike. In fact I’m counting on that.”

“How so?”

“I think you will lose the memory of this,” the older Bone said. “Because I feel certain now I did. But I’m hoping the sense of it will return when you need it. Listen. Your son may appear to you one day. Perhaps aboard a flying machine . . .”

The younger Bone shook his head. “Son? I was not sufficiently careful, was I?”

“He does not exist yet, for you. He . . . he needs your love. And his mother’s.”

“Such cryptic instructions. And yet somehow so alarming.”

“Deep down, Bone, you need to understand . . . even if a day comes when the boy seems dangerous, you are his father, and he needs love. He will need your mercy and your help, even if he seems to be sliding into evil. Promise me you will help him.”

“Love. Mercy. Evil. I change considerably in the future, don’t I?”

“I had not considered it before now. But you may be right.”

“If it were anyone else, self, I would reject what you say. But very well. I promise. Whether or not I remember, the promise has been spoken.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s a small enough gesture, I suppose, phantasm of the future. Safe journey to you . . . unless you care to tell me the trap details and guard rotations of the Tower of the Four Faces, or the secret call signs of the Lords of Cups, Wands, Coins, and Pentacles . . . ?”

“I recall planning that caper, but none of the details. Frustrating, no?” Indeed, as he spoke, Bone felt his senses blurring.

“Alas!” The younger man laughed, his voice dimmer. “But at least you haven’t materialized just to toss me a dagger, a parcel, and a mission, monstrous enemies at your heels.”

“Give me time.”

“Heh. Well, if we are done, specter of tomorrow . . . are you all right? You seem to be turning transparent.”

“More experienced time travelers than I,” Bone said, the words sounding distant to his own ears, “have said that speaking to people in the past can be disruptive to one’s substance. Farewell.”

“Farewell then! I need my sleep to be ready for the job and for an assignation with a lovely poet tonight, which the job will fund.”

“It is that night?”

The younger Bone’s eyes widened. “My son . . . is she . . . ?”

He shouldn’t have said it, but the older Bone said, “She is a good one, thief. Better than we will ever deserve. Farewell.”

He ran to the narwhal and climbed, feeling that he was becoming threadbare as he moved. Reaching Drømlanse solidified him, and the past blurred around him.

Now he should find Gaunt. Give her the same message and hope it did some good.

They seemed to be swimming above the Straits of Tid again, and still the fiery conflagration appeared on the horizon. “Can you find my wife, mighty one?”

Again a blurring, nights and days flickering past.

Now they were in a cold sea not at all unreasonable for narwhals. Icebergs drifted about them, and an icepack lay ahead.

“She is there?” Bone asked.

The narwhal did not answer, but another voice did. “It doesn’t matter, son,” said a rasping voice.

Ahead of them drifted a half-ship of the Draug.

But no Draug was aboard, just a man Bone recognized. “Father,” Bone said.

“What you said to your younger self, it’s the truth,” said Effigy Bone. “You do not deserve that woman out there. What you deserve is oblivion. The people of Qiangguo are right to venerate the old, and parents most of all. You’ve begun feeling it yourself, haven’t you? The pain of a son who wants nothing to do with you. How I felt it! You abandoned the family calling, for what? For a dream of travel? One that swiftly became the fact of thieving?”

“I have done many bad things in my life,” Bone said. “The time you speak of . . . I am not proud of it. But the life of a fisherman would have killed me.”

“Ha! Coward!”

“Killed me,” Bone repeated. “Maybe drowned like my brothers. But even had I lived to your old age, I would have been dead inside. Here in this clear air, I see many things. I might have found another path. I might have found my way to a life of travel that was not a life of theft. I might even have stayed with you a year or two, to see you and Mother better settled. But I was not strong enough to contend with you. I had only the strength to escape.”

“Weakling!”

“Your son! What did that ever mean to you? Another pair of hands! Another body to fish, and mend, and perhaps to avenge! Proof of your virility! Legacy!”

“Of course you would mock legacy.”

“I understand it! Here on the Straits of Tid I know I’m but a bubble on the river of time, waiting to burst. I want my son to live after me and think well of me. But not at the cost of his own happiness. It all ends, Father, for all of us, so let’s try like hell to be kind to one another in the meantime. I cannot be a better son to you. But I can be a father to my son.”

When he looked up the half-boat drifted by itself. Bone stared at it a long time.

“Take me to Gaunt,” he bade the narwhal.

They dove underwater, and ice rushed by overhead, and suddenly they burst through a gap in the sea’s blue ceiling and slid over white ice beneath a gray sky.

Before him he saw Persimmon Gaunt, and Mad Katta, and Northwing, and Haytham ibn Zakwan. They were trudging across the ice, bundled up and roped together. Northwing saw him first, spearing Bone with that disconcerting gaze, yet Bone was glad for it now.

He waved.

Northwing swore. “Katta, you see that?”

Katta said, “A little specificity, while it can trick us into disregarding the Absolute, is sometimes desirable—”

“Imago bloody Bone! Right in front of us! There!”

“What?” Haytham said.

“Oh no,” Gaunt said. “Does that mean he’s dead?”

Bone smirked and shook his head.

“No, he’s saying he’s too annoying to be dead,” Northwing said.

Bone glared at the shaman.

“I see him!” Gaunt said. “Imago!”

“Strange,” Katta said, “I do not.”

“Well, good,” Haytham said. “I was feeling a bit left out.”

“But then,” Katta mused, “he only skirted evil. I tended to exaggerate my perception of him in order to keep him more honest.”

Bone folded his arms and glared now at Katta.

“Imago, can you hear us?” Gaunt said. “Are you sending a message?”

“I’m here,” Bone said.

“He’s talking,” Northwing said, “but I can’t hear him. Bone, get closer to Gaunt. You and she have a connection.”

Bone dismounted the spectral narwhal and joined Gaunt. He tried to embrace her but couldn’t. He wondered why he was so much more insubstantial here than elsewhere. Then he looked south and saw the many volcanoes in the distance.

“Gaunt,” he said. “Persimmon.”

“I hear you!” she said. “I see you. I’m so glad you’re alive!” She squinted. “Are you on the Straits of Tid?”

“That’s it! My dream form is there. My body is healing on Eshe’s ship. I, uh . . .”

“Spit it out.”

“I agreed to serve Kpalamaa, for her help.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

“She may consider it a package deal.”

“We make these decisions together, Bone.”

“You were not exactly in reach.”

“Well, I’m here now.”

Northwing said, “Thank you, both of you, for reminding me why I have never tried to marry! Take note of the southern fires and say what matters!”

“Gaunt,” Bone said, “we have to prevent . . . that.”

“You are traveling in time . . . Swan’s blood, Bone, you said you’re on a ship, but that . . .”

“Spit it out . . .”

“Maybe you are dead, Imago, in this moment, and are speaking with me from the past.”

“You have a talent for stating uncomfortable things.”

“You love it,” she said but did not smile. “Can you take me with you?”

“I don’t think so. Can you reach the straits?”

“We’re not on land anymore. We are hoping there are shamans of the Vuos people out here. Northwing senses they survived. Maybe they know how to reach the straits.”

“Listen,” he began.

He woke in the cabin of
Anansi
, the Draugmaw’s storm still raging outside.

“No!” he yelled at Eshe, who gripped his arm. “No! I was talking . . . talking to Gaunt. . . .” His memories were a jumble. He knew they’d been on the ice together. He knew they’d talked about time. Everything specific was lost. The rest of his journey, too, was only a blurry set of impressions.

“I am sorry, Bone,” Eshe said, “but something has happened you need to know.”

“Volcanoes?”

“What? No. Jewelwolf is here.”

CHAPTER 41

TOMORROW

They trudged for many days over the ice, terrified by roaring winds, booming volcanoes, and the crackling of the ice. All the while Gaunt dwelled on Bone’s last words to her.

Listen. The past can be changed. But the changes that endure belong to the mind only. Memories. Insights. Perceptions. You can plant seeds that will bloom in the present. Find Innocence. Tell him you love him. Tell him love and peace are what truly matter, not power, not control. And that the piling up of power does not lead to freedom, but to chains. But most of all, that you love him.

“We are near,” Northwing said, interrupting her thoughts. “Reindeer. I’d know the sound anywhere.”

Soon the animals snorted close, pulling two sleds that resembled at first glance a pair of giant shoes. In the sledges were people garbed in colorful leather and cloth, easily seen against the white. Some wore circlets of metal shaped into complex patterns. They bore curved daggers and beaded belts. They also had bows. These they did not aim at the travelers but kept in easy reach.

Gaunt raised open hands. “Hello!” she called. “Do you speak Kantentongue?”

The oldest man said, “Some of us do. Greetings. What brings you out this way?”

Gaunt, at a loss for words, gestured toward the volcanoes of the south.

“Ah,” said the man. “It’s the same for us. We wondered if any more southerners survived.”

“Southerners?” Northwing asked.

“Everyone south of the Country of the First. You with your wars and your unhealthy magics.”

“Do you have any idea who you’re talking to?
I
am a shaman of the taiga of the continent.”

“Interesting, as that’s where the community is going. Climb aboard, if you would.”