The Unfinished Land

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map: The Northernmost Isle of Tir Na Nog

  Epigraph

  Preface

  Broken Armada

  ¿Irlanda o Islandia?

  Valdis

  Cardoza Rising

  Blunters

  An Advancing Front

  The First Death

  Maggie Strong

  Faithful Wings

  A Hidden Boat, and Islands in the Mist

  Blunting, and Things Thereof

  The Scout’s Tale

  The Siege

  Of Childers and Bone-wives

  The King of Troy

  King of All Tricks

  Troy’s Camp

  Out of the Woods

  Maeve

  The Ravine

  Exodus

  The Melt

  A Drake Wing Cloak

  Under and Out

  Old Ice and Two Trods

  Separation

  Old Things Have Their Day

  A Quarry of Souls

  The Delay of an End

  First Night on the Cross-Trod

  Gifts Good and Bad

  The Road Before the Pass

  The Company of Drakes

  Two Journeys

  Plain of Jars

  The Pass

  The First City

  Last Roundabout

  A Return

  An Echo in the Glooming

  The Next Silence

  The First Krater

  Deep Granite

  The Dividing

  The Second Krater City

  The End of the Tir Na Nog

  A Dead Crafter, and How to See It

  The High Tent

  The Sister Queens

  The Last Krater City

  The Chafing Waste

  The Change

  The Crafter’s Lair

  The Line Passes

  England and No Home

  White Shadow

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Connect with HMH

  Copyright © 2021 by Greg Bear

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  hmhbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Bear, Greg, 1951– author.

  Title: The unfinished land / Greg Bear.

  Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021. | “A John Joseph Adams book.”

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020004939 (print) | LCCN 2020004940 (ebook) | ISBN 9781328589903 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781328592361 (ebook)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Historical fiction. | Fantasy fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3552.E157 U54 2021 (print) | LCC PS3552.E157 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020004939

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020004940

  Cover design and illustration by Jim Tierney

  Map by Carly Miller

  Author photograph © Astrid Anderson Bear

  v2.0121

  For Chloe and Allison:

  Brave Voyagers

  “To gain a fact is to lose a dream.” —OGMIOS

  “A legend is entitled to be beyond time and place.” —COCTEAU

  But not beyond words . . .

  * * *

  Far to the north, west of dream and east of knowledge, there lay a great ring of islands where life and time began, known to some as the Atlantides, and to others as Tir Na Nog. Still others remember them as the islands of Queen Hel, the most radiant but difficult of aspect, and name them the Fingers of Dis. But Hel hath not been seen for thousands of years . . .

  There is no history before these islands. Here, surrounded by a thick, constant mist, are the seven navels of thought and soul, where linger the origins and the shaping of all we know and love, and all we hate and fear—for the Earth and its sheltering sky, despite their seeming age, are deceptively young.

  Broken Armada

  * * *

  REYNARD SHOTWOOD, no longer a boy, not yet a man, had pushed the last of his dead shipmates overboard two days before. Rubbing crusted salt from his eyes, he tried to say another prayer for them and for himself, but his lips were broken and his tongue filled his mouth so he could not make the words.

  His uncle and the crew, English fishermen from the coastal town of Southwold, had been cut to pieces by grapeshot from a Spanish galleass. Except for one finger, missing its tip to the knuckle, Reynard had not been touched. But now, a week or more later, he was parched and starving.

  Unfamiliar currents carried him through a thick, night-gray fog that looped and writhed over the toppled mast and the shredded sails like a sky filled with maggots. He had spent long, numb hours watching the bloodless, broken bodies of his uncle, the uncle’s partner in the boat, and the partner’s son bump and bob against the timbers and upper step of the mast, caught in eddies that seemed to mimic the whorls in the fog, the bodies rolling now and then to show their faces—if they still had faces—and stare blankly, resentfully, as if he should help them climb back aboard and resume their duties.

  Yare, fast away! He could almost hear his uncle’s cry as their boat tried to flee the Spanish, but it was only a patting breeze and waves slopping through the scuppers. Now the bodies were gone, sunk or grabbed by sharks, those snapping dogs of the sea—but the fog still turned the sun into a cold moon and shaded the moon as dim and gray as death itself.

  The sloop-rigged hoy, once as hardworking a boat as ever harvested the sea, managed to stay afloat even with its larboard a mass of wrenched decking thrust through with broken timbers. The starboard, rising a few fingers above the dark, lapping water, likely held a bubble, but soon that would leak away and the wreck would sink and no one would ever know how long Reynard had been out here, alive, alone—but of course not afraid. Not now. The worst had happened, other than dying, and fishermen often died. Their names were carved into boards nailed on the walls of his family church—a good Protestant church. But dead all the same, and so many.

  And now many more.

  The great battle off the coast of Flanders had been long and fierce. Boats from Southwold had left their dozing harbor to serve the English fleet, at the command of Lord Walsyngham and the Queen, though the fishing season was but half done and many families might go hungry—but the desperate need of Elizabeth and of England against Philip’s devils overcame village sense.

  With the awful memory of the seaborne power the English ships had faced, it was easy for Reynard to imagine the Duke of Parma’s soldiers filling the streets of London with forests of muskets and half-pikes, crested steel helms thick and shiny as shingle on a beach—and row upon row of great bronze Spanish cannons rolling, flaming, and bucking, blowing up homes and churches, intent on punishing all who followed the faith of Henry and Elizabeth and not Mary of ill regard. Maybe there was no home to return to.

  Not the best sailor or apprentice, he had never wanted to go to sea, and yet had never found his place on land. His mother, a once-lovely woman who had withered early under the toll of being a fisherman’s widow, lamented her son’s pointless fascination with bushes and birds, ferrets and mice, snakes and turtles—more interested in studying the insides of fish than catching or making them ready for market. He could see her now, a sallow-faced, gray-haired figure, with a perpetual half-smile—though she was no idiot, and had taught him letters early on—pounding out washing or pa
cking oysters and lobsters into barrels, graced with slimy, odorous seaweed, for sale in any of the five larger towns nearby, or even in London after a night journey, to avoid the heat of the summer sun.

  Reynard was too numb for regrets, though he suspected that if he lived much longer, an unlikely prospect, he would have many. Could he regret not being more grateful for a home and a roof—though a leaky roof, thatch unchanged for years—or regret not being a better nephew, which he did not, not yet, and not much? Perhaps he could regret not having planned a way to keep the hoy clear of the galleass. His mind worked that way, regretting the undone and impossible, not the undone but doable. He preferred contemplating inventions and miracles, not plotting and planning actual work. He preferred reading to playing but had neither books nor companions, since his life was spent in service, mostly, to his uncle, with barely a day off in a month.

  In what was left of the hoy, Reynard had recovered a cask of salt cod and two butts of water. One butt had been holed, and the second, poorly coopered, had leaked dry. The hoy had been meant to convey stores to the Queen’s great ships, but the promised supplies had not arrived in Southwold by the time the boats put out to sea. There should have been more victuals for the English fleet, from the shore, from the Queen, before they engaged—so his uncle had complained. Only Reynard had lived long enough to suffer for it. His uncle was a hard man, a tough master, but fair enough and smart, and despite everything, Reynard had loved him as a grizzled, thick-browed, heavy-jawed, masculine mountain in his young life.

  Maybe now, pulling his feet from the water and going through these memories, he could find his regrets. But for the nonce, sharks were of more concern. Their low triangular fins popped up here and there, swishing, probing; they no doubt remembered they had found food around this wreck before. He did not want to further flavor the ocean with his toes.

  He rose on wobbly legs, feet wedged against the gunwale to see any change in the flat gray sea. No change. In the days since the battle, the fog had tempted with its promise of moisture. He had carefully gathered the remains of the spritsail and knuckled a dip in the canvas to catch fog and rain, but the fog did not condense or drip, and there had been no rain since the easterly winds and violent storms had broken up the Spanish fleet.

  Reynard stared at the barrel of salt cod. At his present level of thirst, the thick white flesh, hard as wood, was worse than useless, with no water but seawater in which to soak it. Salt from either could drive him mad.

  Having been fishing and delivering freight for only three years, Reynard had not yet had time to absorb all his uncle’s sea lore, but he suspected—he felt, in a strange way—that the currents which drove the wreck were carrying him north and west. For most of a day, he passed through a slightly brackish flow, probably out of the Baltic, where shoals of herring and mackerel, along with sturgeon and fat bream and plaice, drew out English boats to compete with the Basques, the Dutch, and the French. On their first fishing expedition, his uncle had dipped a ladle in that water and offered it to his lips, to let him taste it, to remember the flavor of its source and learn how to find his way by tongue as well as eye. Now the sea was colder and saltier. That did not seem to match any currents his uncle had taught him, not for this time of year, when the North Sea warmed. Perhaps the great battle, with its flashes and cries, its explosions and whistling shot, had frightened the sea into its own madness.

  By morning of what he was sure would be his last day, Reynard’s cracked skin was streaked with blood and salt, and a long gulp of seawater seemed a good, a necessary, option, if only to soften his lips and relieve his parched throat. Still, perhaps in honor of his dead uncle, he had so far resisted, knowing that he would shortly thereafter follow his shipmates to the bottom.

  Reynard’s head lolled. He tried to stay awake night after night and was now losing that struggle. Even as something powerful bumped his foot, he could not open his eyes, until abruptly he heard deep thumps and great splashes. He pulled his feet up tight against his butt and blinked until he saw, across the half-submerged deck, that a long, silvery-gray shark had pushed up to get at him and was stuck—unable to thrash free and back to the sea. Now it twisted and tossed its long scimitar tail, and gaped the most frightful open-jaw threats inches from his ankles and toes, its deep-sunk eyes intent on either dining or causing the ship to break apart. Reynard was already soaked, but rolled over the gunwale aft and grabbed for a splintered rudder bar. Without thought of the danger, so close was he already to death, he braced his feet against the broken planks, leaned out over the deck, wedged the bar under the shark’s heaving middle, then hunched along on his knees and fairly lifted the great fish, teeth and dead eyes and all, back into the sea.

  After crawling aft to the only dry patch that remained, he leaned back, felt his toes to make sure all remained, and continued his shivering and weary watch. The sea, gray and uniform beneath greenish-gray sky, resumed its boring mien.

  * * *

  Scrawny at the best of times, with a knife-cut shock of thick black hair, by looks and attitude Reynard favored his mother’s side of the family, who claimed descent from the ancient peoples who had built the great stone circles. “Stone folk,” his grandmother had called them, “and specially the men.”

  His mother had taught Reynard how to notch sticks or boards in ogham, or sign secretly on his arm with his fingers, called rankalva, which she explained had been taught to humans thousands of seasons before by great Ogmios. On occasion she dropped into a speech called Tinker’s Cant, a kind of bastard Irish sometimes heard on wagons offering to do light blacksmithing, knife-honing, and scythe-sharpening—gruffly spoken by dark, black-haired peoples, women wild, men quiet and shrewd, jacks of all trades traveling horse-and-sheep-pounded pathways across Britain. His grandmother had once belonged to those folks, and his mother still proudly boasted of her girlhood, and of how women survived and even prospered in that life.

  But Reynard had since his father’s death felt there would be no prosperity or fortune in fishing with his uncle. Worse, he dreaded the sea. His fear of water had brought out a cruel streak in his uncle, who did his best to shock it out of him, and nearly succeeded. Once he had tied a rope around Reynard and dragged him along behind the hoy for several miles. The fishermen had watched closely to make sure he was not drowning, and he did manage in a way to learn to swim. But what appeared to follow—acceptance and a better attitude—masked a bitter hatred, strangely not of his uncle, but of the source of all their livelihoods—the sea, that forced them into such a desperate existence. So desperately sad had he become for the brusque, brawny man who had been his father, as the years passed and his memory faded, and so anxious had he become for novelty and wider fields, and to get away from the water and the smell of fish, that at age twelve he had run away from the coast and walked west across fallow fields and over hedgerows and along farmers’ lanes until nightfall, surrounded by birdsong, light airs, and a boundless, floating sense of weary accomplishment.

  On that first moonless and starless night, hunger had replaced his floating ease and cold had set in, along with guilt. He had huddled within sight of quiet shade-wrapped cows in a long wicker enclosure, observed with envy the goings-on and passing candles of a farmer’s house, and finally snuck into the low, decrepit barn and wrapped himself in dirty, unturned hay, sour and wet, trying to sleep and not succeeding, until cock’s crow and a pale sunrise.

  There was nothing for it but to beg at the farmer’s door or return to the coast, back to Southwold, the boat, his uncle, and his mother. He decided against begging. On his way back, he encountered a half-drunken press gang reeling over the road near Aldeburgh, alternately singing and calling out, hoping to fill the Queen’s own ships of war. Reynard’s black hair helped him hide in the shadow of a hedgerow. “Sir Frauncis Drake’s ship,” a sailor cried in a voice sharp as a billhook, “built in this very town of Aldeburgh, demands thee!”

  Here was Reynard’s chance to flee a life of fishing and village
monotony! But as much as Reynard admired Drake (and what Englishman did not?), this would still be a life at sea and not for him. He did his best to stay silent as he observed through a screen of cow parsley, grass, and hawthorn six sailors and two soldiers, swaying saps and cudgels from their broad belts, and towing two skinny, sad-looking lads bearing badges of resistance—bruises on faces and arms, ropes binding their wrists. Reynard did not wish another and stupider set of masters.

  And yet now, three years later, here he was anyway, lost at sea like Oxenham’s men in his uncle’s tales. He had no idea what had happened to Drake’s ship in the engagement with the Armada, after the famed captain had captured a Spanish galleon and brought it to London to strip it of shot and gunpowder. Maybe Drake was dead or lost as well. Maybe he was alive and nearby, and soon they would meet, and the hero would rescue Reynard . . . What a tale that would be!

  He tried to bring up some spit, but there was none to be had. Dry, rough tongue scraping cheeks brought only blood.

  After the press gang had passed, Reynard had fallen asleep beneath the hedgerow, and then awakened to a strange black hand, streaked and lined with thorny white, reaching through the hawthorn to shake him. With a start, he had scrambled out of the thicket, brushing away leaves and twigs and dirt, and stood before a man who might have been older than he, or younger—hard to know, with his strange color and demeanor. Like an unholy spirit, the man had watched Reynard through eyes whose whites were black and whose pupils were a pale purple. Even in bright morning light, he appeared blacker than night, his skin blackest where touched by sun, yet brighter pale green-gray in the shadows. This bizarrely reversed fellow wore a ragged black and silver coat and breeches—and his hair hung elfin white streaked with green and blue.

  “Thou must reach the island,” the dark visitor had told him. “Get thee swift to sea and find thy way to where the Crafters scrub and moil. That will be thy true beginning.”