Beyong the Gap

'What's that supposed to mean?' Hamnet asked. Ulric Skakki's shrug was a small masterpiece of its kind. However much Hamnet fumed, he didn't ask the other man to explain himself again. He knew too well what Ulric had to mean. Darkness crouched at the center of his soul. It had for years. He feared it always would.

He'd never been a cheery, outgoing man. He never would be; he didn't need sardonic Ulric to remind him of that. But what his former wife did to his spirit was like a wound that wouldn't heal. The spiritual pus that leaked from it infected his whole spirit.

'I know what you need,' Ulric said.

Hamnet Thyssen scowled at him. 'I need you to shut up and go away,' he growled.

'You need to fall in love.' Ulric went on as if he hadn't spoken. The adventurer's grin was bright, charming, and altogether infuriating.

'I really need you to shut up and go away.' Hamnet Thyssen’s laugh came harsh as a raven's croak. 'You damned fool, what are the odds?' He tried to imagine himself in love again. Imagining himself wringing Ulric Skakki's neck was much easier.

Ulric laughed again, too, a light, airy sound that made Count Hamnet wonder how such different things could have the same name. 'You won't do it if you don't go looking for somebody, that's for sure,' he said.

'And if I do go looking for somebody, what'll she do?' Hamnet demanded. 'Betray me the same way Gudrid did, that's what.'

'Well, maybe you—' Ulric Skakki broke off, not from fear but from a certain self-protective caution. 'You have murder in your eye, your Grace. Perhaps you should put it back in your pocket or wherever you usually keep it.'

'You were going to say, 'Maybe you had it coming,' weren't you?' Hamnet said thickly. 'Why shouldn't I kill you for that, you son of a whore?'

'Because it may be true even if you don't like it?' Ulric sounded as light and carefree as usual, but his hand hovered near his swordhilt.

Hamnet Thyssen's hand dropped to his. 'You lie,' he said. 'I didn't do anything to deserve having horns put on me.'

'No one ever does,' Ulric Skakki said. 'No one ever does, if you listen to him tell it. Or her—plenty of women sing the same sad song. 'No, I didn't do anything.' But people get horns put on them every day of the week, every week of the month, every month of the year. Meaning no offense, your Grace, but maybe doing nothing was your problem.'

'What nonsense are you spewing now?' Hamnet said.

Ulric sighed. 'I might have known you'd see it that way. By God, I did know you'd see it that way. Sometimes you have to try, whether you think it'll do any good or not.' He turned away—but he kept an eye on Hamnet Thyssen even so.

'Doing nothing,' Hamnet muttered in disgust. As if that meant anything! Gudrid played Eyvind Torfinn for a fool, too. Did that mean he was doing nothing, too? Count Hamnet glanced over toward Eyvind. At the moment, he was trimming his nails with a clasp knife, and making heavy going of it—the years had lengthened his sight, so he had to work at arm's length.

With what kind of man would Gudrid be happy? Count Hamnet couldn't imagine. By all the signs, Gudrid couldn't, either. Hamnet glared at Ulric Skakki. He thought he had all the answers, did he? Well, he wasn't half as clever as he thought he was.

Was he?

North and west, north and west. Hamnet Thyssen hadn't realized there was so much land beyond the Glacier. He'd thought the ground on the far side of the ice would be an afterthought, an appendage to the real world, the world he was familiar with. After all, the Raumsdalian Empire, the Bizogot steppe, and the lands to the south of those that Sigvat II ruled added up to a vast sweep of terrain. Why would anyone—or even God—need more of the world than that?

It all seemed perfectly logical. It probably was—but how much did logic have to do with truth? Not as much, plainly, as Hamnet would have wished.

'Do you have any idea where the Golden Shrine is?' he asked Eyvind Torfinn when they camped one evening, waving a hand as if to say it might be anywhere.

'I don't believe it's on the other side of the world,' Earl Eyvind answered. 'Past that, I'm afraid I can't begin to tell you.'

'How do you know it's not on the far side of the world?' Hamnet asked.

'Because once upon a time—God only knows how long ago—we went there, and we remembered,' Eyvind said. 'I don't think we could have got to the Temple if it were so far away from the lands we know.'

Count Hamnet grunted. 'Well, I suppose that makes sense,' he said, and then, surprising himself, 'What does Gudrid say about the journey?'

'I think she wishes she never came.' Eyvind Torfinn took the question in stride. 'I told her back in Nidaros she would feel this way.' He shrugged. 'No one ever listens to advice, so the best advice I can give is not to give any.'

'If I take it, I prove I listened,' Hamnet said. 'But if I advise anyone else to take it.. .'

Eyvind Torfinn looked at him, blinked, and started to laugh. He tried to stop, but seemed to have some trouble. 'Oh, dear,' he said, and laughed some more. 'Oh, dear.' Finally, with a fit of coughing, he made the laughter break off. 'Well, well. I never expected to come up with such a neat paradox. I should be proud of myself.'

Liv walked up to the two of them. 'Why did the old man have a fit?' she asked Hamnet Thyssen.

That made Earl Eyvind cough some more, if not so comfortably. 'I'm not as old as all that,' he told the Bizogot shaman in her language.

She was somewhere in her late twenties—so Hamnet guessed, anyway. To her, Earl Eyvind probably was as old as all that. To her, I'm getting on toward being an antique myself, Hamnet thought uncomfortably, though he wasn't far past forty. The idea annoyed him more than it had any business doing. Then Liv bowed to Eyvind Torfinn. 'I cry your pardon,' she said. 'I meant no insult, and I forgot you knew the Bizogot tongue so very well.'

'You thought you could talk behind my back in front of me,' the Raumsdalian noble said, an indulgent note in his voice. 'Well, I forgive you—and I think I just made another paradox.' The key word came out in Raumsdalian; the nomads didn't have the idea.

'Another what?' Liv asked, frowning.

'A paradox is something that says two things at the same time when they both can't be true at once,' Eyvind Torfinn answered. Count Hamnet eyed him in admiration, knowing he couldn't have defined the word so well in the Bizogot tongue.

But the shaman's frown deepened. 'Show me what you mean,' she said.

'All right, by God, I will,' Eyvind Torfinn said. 'I have heard Bizogots say Raumsdalians lie all the time. You will have heard this, too, I'm sure.'

'I do not believe it,' Liv said politely.

'You are kind. You are gracious. But suppose it is true. Can you do that?' Eyvind waited till Liv nodded. Then he smiled. 'All Raumsdalians tell lies all the time. Always. Right?' Liv nodded again. Eyvind jabbed a thumb at his own chest. 'I am a Raumsdalian. I say I am a liar. But when I say I am a liar, am I telling the truth?'

'Yes,' Liv said, and then, at once, 'I mean, no.' She paused a little longer. 'I mean, yes.' Her blue eyes started to cross. 'It's maddening! It's mad!' she exclaimed. 'It goes round and round, like a musk ox with the staggers. Where does it stop?'

'Good question,' Hamnet said. His eyes were starting to cross, too.

'It stops wherever you want it to stop,' Eyvind Torfinn said. 'Or else it doesn't stop at all. That's what a paradox is.'

'What do you use it for?' Liv asked.

Earl Eyvind's smile got wider. 'Why, for whatever you want.'

'For confusing people,' Hamnet Thyssen said.