The Golden Specific (34 page)

Goldenrod put her arm around Sophia and pulled her close. “Can you talk to them, the fourwings?” Sophia asked. “Like you talk to Seneca?”

“I have already tried,” the Eerie said, looking up at them with a vexed expression. “But it is like speaking to a wall. They hear nothing. They say nothing. I've never encountered creatures like these.”

They had become alarmingly larger, and their cries erupted again, harsh and bitter. The horse and rider grew closer, too, until Sophia could see the rider's cape billowing and the horse's hooves disturbing the dust.

Suddenly, the fourwings were upon them. One, claws extended, swooped toward the inn. It was covered with gleaming, blue-black feathers. Its beak, slightly curved, shone like a polished scythe. Its great eyes were golden, with no iris at all. The roof crumpled like paper and fell inward beneath the enormous bird's impact, crushing the building where the travelers had just been sitting. Its flapping wings tore at the walls.

“Stay behind me,” Errol murmured. “It has not yet seen us.
They will go for the horses first and then us. We must kill both birds in quick succession. Wait for the other one.”

The second fourwing called out, whirling down to meet its companion. It had only three wings. Where the fourth would have been was a misshapen lump, dotted with scrawny feathers. The flesh beneath was white. As the second fourwing crashed into the inn, the pale horse drew near, skidding to a halt. The rider dismounted: a woman with a crossbow.

She quickly joined Errol and aimed at the fourwings.
“Ahora,”
she said.
“El roto es mío.”
She loosed the arrow from her crossbow just as Errol loosed his, and the fourwings both recoiled from the impact. They turned toward the four travelers, their golden eyes hard, their cries so loud Sophia covered her ears. The creatures rose up and scrabbled over the broken wall of the inn, advancing toward them.

“Otra vez,”
Errol said to the woman. Two more arrows struck the birds, and the one with three wings crumpled, an arrow lodged deep in its breast. The other lunged forward, its beak opening with a scream to reveal even white teeth and a long white tongue. The woman shot into its mouth as the beak plunged toward Errol. He drew his sword. Pressing it heavily into the bird's neck, he pinned it to the ground. It flapped and screamed brokenly, and then the wings folded and the golden eyes grew still and glazed.

Sophia found herself clutching Goldenrod's robe. Slowly she released the fabric. Errol's sword was coated with the fourwing's oily black blood. He cleaned it on the dry grass. “Are you all right?” Goldenrod asked.

“Fine,” he said. “Thanks to the unexpected aid,” he added to the woman with the crossbow.

“You speak English,” she said, her own accented but clear. Her green eyes looked them over.

“Yes,” he replied. “I am from the Closed Empire. My friends are from New Occident and the Eerie Sea. How is it you speak English? And how did you come to be here at this very moment?”

She tossed her braid over her shoulder and set down her crossbow. Her short frame, compact and strong, belied the fragility of her face and the expression of old grief in her eyes. “I learned English long ago from a dear friend. A man named Bruno. And I came here following the directions given to me on a piece of paper:
When you see seven wings, follow them to the gray pigeon.
You will meet the traveler without time.

“Which of you,” she asked, “is the traveler without time?”

 35 

White String, Blue String

“R
OSEM
ARY
,” S
OPHIA
BREATHED
.

“Yes,” the woman replied. “I am Rosemary. How do you know me?”

The words came out in a torrent. “I know you from a letter that Bruno sent to my parents. My parents—Minna and Bronson Tims. They met you. Do you remember? It was more than ten years ago. And I know of you from a map written by the sheriff of Murtea, Cabeza de Cabra. It tells of you, and what happened to Bruno.” Sophia paused. “And my parents.”

Rosemary took a step closer. “So you are the traveler without time.”

“I have no internal clock,” Sophia agreed. “I suppose it could be me. Who described it that way?”

Reaching into her cloak, Rosemary withdrew a scroll tied with white string. “The map given to me in Ausentinia.”

Although she had held Ausentinian maps while she was within the sheriff's memories, this was the first time she had seen one as herself. Sophia examined the heavy, gray-tinged paper. Unsteady lines in black ink described a mottled landscape divided by winding paths. She turned it over; the text was inscrutable. “I can't read Castilian,” she said.

“I will translate,” Rosemary said, taking it back.

“Soundless, we scream in the heart; silent, we wait in the shadows; speechless, we speak of the past. Find us at either end of eleven years.

“Taking the trail of uncertainty, accept the guide who arrives under the full moon. Travel with him into the meadow of friendship, and when the cart breaks, go to the goat's head. Your traveling companion is falsely accused. Speak then, and speak the truth, for both truth and falsehood lead to the steep ravine of loss.

“You will venture alone into the Valley of Vanishing Hope. As you leave the valley, you will encounter the Western Witches and a fork in the path. If the witches go free, you will be led into the Forest of Lingering Sadness, where you will spend many years before you find your way to the Caves of Fear, where Damnation dwells. Your mother's bones will lie forever
undiscovered, bleached by the sun until they crumble into dust.

“If the witches are sentenced, you will journey alone into the Mountains of Solitude, where you will wander for many years. When you see seven wings, follow them to the gray pigeon. You will meet the traveler without time. Give her the map to Ausentinia. She will lead you to your mother's bones, and you will place them on sacred ground so that they may rest in peace.”

Rosemary rolled the map carefully and tied the white string around it. “When I saw the two birds, I knew. I took the maps and followed them here.”

Sophia felt the thudding of her heart. “There is a map to Ausentinia?” she asked, hardly daring to believe it.

This time, Rosemary produced a scroll tied with blue string. “I have it,” she said. “This is the map they gave me so that I would someday give it to you.”

It was written in English. She glanced first at the cluster of images with curious names—“The Cave of Blindness” and “Bitter Desert”—before turning to the text on the back. She read it aloud:

“Hidden in plain sight, encircled without a circle, trapped without a trap. Find us at the end of the path you devise, for no others can.

“The hand that blooms must tell you of the old ones. A flock of golden birds will fly east, seeking pursuit, shining in the sun.

“The path divides, leading to the Steep Ridge of Dread or
the Low Dunes of Desire. The Low Dunes lead to Bitter Desert, where you find yourself descending into the Cave of Blindness. From there, you may or may not return.

“Along the Steep Ridge of Dread, the golden birds turn to black. The falconer and the warbler defend you. Do not believe what is said of darkness and shadows. It springs from fear, not truth.

“Beyond the Ridge lies the Labyrinth of Borrowed Remembering. To survive the labyrinth, you must trust your own senses. Emerging from the labyrinth, you have a choice. You defend the illusion or you do not. If the illusion dies, the path leads to Common Pond and, finally, to the Grove of Long Forgotten. Avoid the Grove at all costs. Trust your instincts, as well as your senses. Defend the illusion, taking the Path of the Chimera. Along it you may lose yourself, but you will find Ausentinia.

“When the wind rises, let the old one dwell in your memories, as you have dwelled in the memories of others. Give up the clock you never had. When the wind settles, you will find nothing has been lost.”

Sophia reread the paper before her. She looked back up at Rosemary. “How could someone know this? How could this all happen? Has yours come true?”

“It has. Every part of it. There were parts that I did not understand until they were happening, and there were parts that I did not see until they had already passed. But in every case what the map foretold has come true.”

“Then we will be pursued by the Golden Cross,” Errol said. “‘A flock of golden birds.' Not so difficult to predict,” he added dryly.

“There is something about these phrases,” Sophia said, frowning. “The hand that blooms. The falconer. Errol, these are the words my mother spoke to me in Seville. She said ‘the falconer and the hand that blooms will go with you.'”

“What of it?”

“The exact same words as on the map. You are clearly the falconer. And you,” she said to Goldenrod, “are the hand that blooms.”

Goldenrod spoke for the first time since Rosemary had introduced herself. “Yes, it seems I am.”

“What are the old ones?”

The Eerie looked west, her face troubled. “Yes, I understand,” she said. “I must tell you of the old ones. But I will tell you while we travel, for there are fifty soldiers of the Golden Cross on the road from Seville, and it does not seem impossible that they are looking for us.”

E
RROL
FOUND
THE
innkeeper huddled near an almond tree behind the shattered building. After setting her on the path north to her son's farm, he rejoined the others. The room where they had slept, fortunately, was not as damaged as the main room of the inn. Recovering their belongings, they prepared the horses and began riding east.

To Sophia's disgust, Rosemary insisted on taking the eyes of the fourwings. She stored two in her pack and placed two in her caravan, which she had unhitched and left by the road when the fourwings appeared. It surprised Sophia with its colorful beauty: flowers, vines, and birds were painted all over the caravan's walls, and over the door perched a golden swallow, wings spread as if about to take flight.

Rosemary hitched the caravan and they continued east. “This road is well-worn from centuries of travel, though it has not been in great use of late,” she said as they rode. “Between here and the perimeter are wells at two leagues and five leagues, but no other inns. There is a shepherd near the fifth league who sells me mutton. Other food we must carry with us.”

“And what about the perimeter?” Errol asked. “Won't the guard be there?”

“The guard are not so numerous that they encircle the entire Dark Age. They work in pairs, patrolling lengths of three leagues. I know many of them, and some are not unreasonable.”

“I am surprised you think so,” Errol said with notable disdain.

Rosemary flashed him a look. “It is a compromise, not a friendship. I have patrolled the perimeter myself for years, waiting for Bruno, and I have many times warned them of approaching fourwings, or the dark storms that drift from within the Age. They have done the same for me. Though our purposes are greatly different, where there is common assistance there can be toleration, or even mutual respect.”

“I do not suppose you could draw upon that mutual respect with the fifty riders?”

Rosemary shook her head tersely. “I know none of the Order from Seville.” She urged her horse onward and the caravan rolled forward.

Sophia rode with Goldenrod, sitting in front of her this time; she looked at the unbroken morning sky. “Will you tell us of the old ones now?”

“Yes. I said before to Errol and Sophia,” she explained for Rosemary's benefit, “that my people, the Elodeans, are interpreters. We can speak to all living beings. Most of them,” she qualified. “Even those that are not visible or recognizable as beings.”

“Like the plague,” Sophia put in.

“Yes, like the wanderers known here through the damage they cause as
lapena.
The old ones are such beings. They are mighty and they are ancient, as our name for them suggests. They have a knowledge of the world that you and I could not begin to fathom. Indeed, most of what they do is difficult to comprehend. Our understanding of them is partial, at best. It is through them—by speaking with them—that I know of things happening at a distance. I asked one for a weirwind when the Golden Cross approached us, and the weirwind appeared. They are powerful—tremendously powerful. Sometimes they do wonderful things with their powers. Sometimes they do terrible things.”

“What terrible things?” Sophia asked. “The weirwind?”

“Such as the disturbance known in New Occident as the Great Disruption.”

Sophia started. She whirled to look at Goldenrod with astonishment.
“The Great Disruption?”

“Certainly. It was caused by a conflict among the old ones.”

“But what are these ‘old ones'?” Errol cut in. “What do they look like? They sound like the pagan gods, and I am fairly certain those do not exist. Are they invisible, or do they take different shapes?”

“They are very much visible,” Goldenrod replied. “You see them all the time. Everywhere.”

“I do not,” Errol declared.

“But you do,” Goldenrod insisted. Sophia could hear the smile in her voice. “Perhaps it is more correct to say that you see them, but you do not truly see them. You see them without comprehending what they are. Among the Elodeans, we also call them ‘Climes.' In most places, such as New Occident and the Closed Empire, they are known as ‘Ages.'”