Tales of Noreela 04: The Island Read online

  Praise for the Novels of Tim Lebbon

  “Tim Lebbon displays the sort of cool irony and uncanny mood-making that drive the best Twilight Zone stories.”

  —New York Times Book Review

  “Tim Lebbon is a master of fantasy and horror, and his visions make for disturbing and compelling reading.”

  —Douglas Clegg

  “Tim Lebbon is an immense talent and he’s become a new favourite. He has a style and approach unique to the genre.”

  —Joe R. Lansdale

  “A firm and confident style, with elements of early Clive Barker.”—Phil Rickman “Tim Lebbon is an apocalyptic visionary—a prophet of blood and fear.”

  —Mark Chadbourn

  “One of the most powerful new voices to come along in the genre … Lebbon’s work is infused with the contemporary realism of Stephen King and the lyricism of Ray Bradbury.”

  —Fangoria

  “Beautifully written and mysterious… a real winner!”

  —Richard Laymon

  “Lebbon will reward the careful reader with insights as well as gooseflesh.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Lebbon is among the most inventive and original contemporary writers of the dark fantastic.”

  —Ramsey Campbell

  “Lebbon is quite simply the most exciting new name in horror for years.”

  —SFX

  “Tim Lebbon is one of the most exciting and original talents on the horror scene.”

  —Graham Joyce

  DUSK

  Winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel, 2006

  “Lebbon has a way of throwing staggering images at you which you almost have to pause and think about before you can fully grasp. This is fantasy for grown-ups—and the ending made my jaw drop. This is an excellent book, and I would not say that unless I meant it.”

  —Paul Kearney

  “Dusk is a deliciously dark and daring fantasy novel, proof of a startling imagination at work. Lebbon’s writing is a twisted spiral of cunning, compassion, and cruelty.”

  —Christopher Golden

  “An exquisitely written, unique world is revealed in this novel, a world inhabited by flesh-and-blood people rendered with often brutal honesty and clarity of vision. It’s rare indeed to witness the conventions of fantasy so thoroughly grabbed by the throat and shaken awake the way Tim Lebbon has done with Dusk. Even more enticing, this first novel in the series concludes with a jaw-dropping finale, and for what it’s worth, such a reaction from me is not a common occurrence.”

  —Steven Erikson

  “A gripping and visceral dark fantasy of five fugitives in flight from terrifying pursuers through a decaying world brutalized by the Cataclysmic War. In Dusk, Tim Lebbon has etched a powerful new version/telling of the traditional magical quest whose tortured twists and turns will (alternately) disturb and electrify its readers.”

  —Sarah Ash

  “Dusk is dark, twisted, and visceral, with a very shocking sting in the tail—the perfect jolt for anyone jaded by the creaking shelves of cuddly, rent-an-elf fantasy. Tim Lebbon is an important new voice in the fantasy field. Bring on the night!”

  —Mark Chadbourn

  “Tim Lebbon writes with a pen dipped in the dark stuff of nightmare. The world he creates is eerie, brutal, and complex, and the story abounds with action and menace.”

  —K. J. Bishop

  “Totally original. I’ve never read anything like it…. New wonders at every turn … One might subtitle it ‘A Riveting Work of Staggering Imagination.’”

  —F. Paul Wilson

  “A compelling, if harrowing, read. I was hooked straightaway. It is dark, nasty, and visceral and yet a real page-turner…. I found shades of Cook and Erikson here in the book’s violence, Miéville in its contemporary weirdness, and perhaps most strongly Paul Kearney here, in that combination of horror, decay, and squalor, though Lebbon is clearly his own voice. His proficiency as a writer means that in the end the style of the story wins through to create a book which is imaginative and memorable, and if you can handle it, definitely worth reading.”

  —sffworld.com

  “Well-drawn characters and a literate way with the grisly distinguish this first of a new fantasy series from Stoker winner Lebbon…. Many of the well-handled action scenes are from the bad guys’ point of view, an unusual perspective that helps round out the author’s fantasy world. The climactic battle, a variation on the classic raising of the dead, offers an ambiguous outcome that presumably will be resolved in the sequel.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Dark, gripping swords-and-sorcery noir… Lebbon’s medieval world is well-developed…. The bleak tone and setting, which includes drugs and whores aplenty, counterpoint with dark effectiveness those fantasies that focus on highborn royalty and knights in shining armor. If any armor shines here, it’s because it’s covered in blood. A promising departure for horror novelist Lebbon.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Bram Stoker Award–winning Lebbon begins a new series with a coming-of-age tale featuring a sharp-witted, youthful hero and a group of unlikely allies that includes a thief, a warrior, and a witch. Engaging storytelling and a solid backstory make this a good choice for most fantasy collections.”

  —Library Journal

  “Lebbon is an author so skilled he definitely belongs on auto-buy…. His prose is alternately poetic and flesh-slicingly real. His characters always strike a nerve and have the sort of heft that makes you feel as if you might have met them or the real people they were based upon—even if they were not in fact based on real people. And finally, for me the killer, Lebbon’s novels offer places you can go back and visit…. [Dusk] will cut deeply, without remorse.”

  —Agony Column

  “Incredibly good … a masterful job… Dusk is a great read and another reason for me to point to Tim Lebbon as one of the most talented authors working today. Though it may be billed as a fantasy book, the trappings that come along with that label are all but naught here, and a world is created that I know I want to hear more from as soon as possible.”

  —The Horror Channel

  “A riveting adult fantasy.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  “The exhilarating story line paints a dark, gloomy Poe-like atmosphere throughout, especially when the adversaries take center stage. The key characters, in particular the teen and his champions, are unique individuals that make their realm seem even more nightmarishly real. Tim Lebbon paints the darkest Dusk that will have readers keeping the lights on until dawn breaks.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  “I’ve come to admire Lebbon’s masterful blend of beauty with the horrific…. This stunningly visualized fantasy is beautiful, gripping, and delivers an unexpected emotional blow at the end … [a] wondrous and frightening tale of magic’s demise and the impenetrable human spirit.”

  —Talebones

  DAWN

  “A terrific horror fantasy… The story line is action-packed and filled with the usual creative war gadgetry that keeps Tim Lebbon tales fresh…. A superior tale.”

  —SFRevu.com

  “This sequel to Dusk again demonstrates Bram Stoker Award winner Lebbon’s consummate talent for viscerally visual fantasy [with] strong and unusual characters and a plot of epic proportions.”

  —Library Journal

  “The relentless imagination and evocative prose that made Dusk such a thrilling read are still in evidence…. Lebbon has shaken up high fantasy with his duology, and it was a pleasure to read.”

  —SFSite.com

  FALLEN

  “Stoker winner Lebbon successfully combines quest adventure and horror
in this gripping and disturbing tale…. Lebbon creates vivid and convincing major and minor characters, places and creatures, blending wonder and nightmare in this dark and memorable novel.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “The joy of reading one of Tim Lebbon’s Noreela tales is discovering what new surprises the author has conjured up.…The ending is just mind-blowing… shocking, tragic, and haunting…. Fallen is just another outstanding addition to the Noreela mythos, and every time I visit this terrifying yet fascinating world, the harder it becomes to tear myself away.”

  —FantasyBookCritic.blogspot

  ALSO BY TIM LEBBON

  NOVELS

  Bar None

  Fallen

  Dawn

  Dusk

  Hellboy: Unnatural Selection

  Mesmer

  The Nature of Balance

  Hush (with Gavin Williams)

  Face

  Until She Sleeps

  Desolation

  Berserk

  30 Days of Night

  Mind the Gap (with Christopher Golden)

  The Map of Moments (with Christopher Golden)

  The Everlasting

  NOVELLAS

  White

  Naming of Parts

  Changing of Faces

  Exorcising Angels (with Simon Clark)

  Dead Man’s Hand

  Pieces of Hate

  A Whisper of Southern Lights

  The Reach of Children

  COLLECTIONS

  Faith in the Flesh

  As the Sun Goes Down

  White and Other Tales of Ruin

  Fears Unnamed

  Last Exit for the Lost

  After the War

  For Tracey, with love.

  Now you’ve got to read it.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks once again to Anne Groell and the whole Bantam team, and to Howard Morhaim for continuing wisdom.

  Chapter One

  drink out the storm

  KEL BOON DID not like magic. He knew all the arguments—it’s natural as breathing; Noreela gifted it to us; it’s the language of the land—but it was something he did not understand. And in his time serving the Core, things he did not understand had usually ended up terrifying him, at the very least. At the other extreme, they had tried to kill him. So he used magic, as much as anyone in Noreela used it, happily leaving its manipulation to the Practitioners. But he did not like it.

  Strange, then, that his best friend and lover was a witch.

  Kel looked at his latest carving, sitting back and stretching the ache from his muscles. He’d been working on the piece for two moons, picking a moment here and there between commissions, or spending more time working on it when paid projects were sparse. He made a scant living selling his carvings; he could afford to eat, drink and keep a roof over his head. His craft would never make him rich, but he was fine with that. Rich meant visible.

  Lately, he’d had plenty of time to work on this, his own very private sculpture. When it was ready, he’d give it to his love, Namior Feeron. It would be his gift to her on the day he proposed marriage.

  It was good. Namior’s love of the cliff hawks that lived and hunted along the coast had meant that Kel’s choice of what to carve for her was easy, and the hawks’ own particular grace, charm and mystery made the task a pleasing one. He had completed the basic form and was now working on the detail, trying to capture the bird’s light elegance in the weight of wood. He’d chosen a hunk of wood from a young wellburr tree’s higher branches; light and solid, beautifully grained, still rich in natural oils. His climb to cut the branch had been an adventure in itself, and Namior had asked how he’d gained such bruises and grazes on his legs and stomach. He told her he’d been involved in a drunken scuffle at the Blue Ray Tavern. You fool, she’d said, already starting to kiss the bruises better.

  Kel brushed wood dust from the hawk’s eyes, grunting in satisfaction. A good afternoon’s work. He stood and began tidying his worktable. A blanket went over the carving, just in case Namior called on him unexpectedly, and he oiled and sharpened each of the chisels, blades and files he’d been using. Then he wrapped them in greasecloth, rolled them together into their leather pouch and tucked them beneath the table. The wood shards he swept by hand into a bucket and threw onto the unlit fire. When burned, the wellburr wood would freshen his rooms and fill the air with an exotic, spicy smell.

  He looked once again at the unfinished carving, given ghostly shape by the blanket. He imagined the blanket moving, the sculpture screaming like an attacking hawk, venting violence through every pore. Closing his eyes, he breathed deeply and listened to the first gust of wind outside.

  Something whistled behind him, and for a moment he thought it was the breeze finding its way beneath the door. But the thick curtains over his windows and door were still, the candles around the walls flickering only slightly, and he knew what was making the noise.

  Namior called it a voice carrier. It was a machine. She’d insisted on him taking it, rebuffing his objections, because he lived at the top of Drakeman’s Hill, and she was sometimes too busy to climb all the way up there to see him.

  Another breath of wind rattled the front door in its frame, and candlelight shivered in sympathy.

  The machine whistled again.

  “I’m coming,” Kel muttered, but he smiled. It would be good to hear Namior’s voice, and he hoped they could arrange to meet that evening.

  Kel crossed the room to a curtained alcove in the corner, and behind the curtain sat the voice carrier. It glowed softly, emitting the whistle from tiny holes in its chalky shell, and it had risen a hand’s width from the shelf, floating in the air as though Namior’s intention made it lighter.

  He reached out and touched the small machine, cringing at the slight warmth that bled through its exterior. It almost felt alive. As his fingertips made contact the whistling stopped, and he heard the expectant silence he was used to.

  “Namior,” he said. She was cruel; she always waited for him to speak first.

  “Kel the woodchopper.” Her voice came clear and sharp, almost as if she were in the room with him. From instinct he glanced around, just to make sure. And as usual, he was alone.

  “How are those mad old witches you insist on living with?” he asked.

  “Listening.”

  Kel was silent for a moment, eyes half-closing as he considered exactly what he’d said.

  “I’m fooling,” Namior said.

  “Wait until I see you,” he whispered.

  Namior laughed. “You and which army, exactly? But Kel, my mother and great-grandmother sense a storm coming, and they think—”

  “It’s uncanny, how they can sense a storm just by listening to the wind and seeing storm clouds boiling overhead.” He stepped sideways and pulled a curtain to one side, looking out over the rooftops of the village below. “And observing the white-crests out to sea.”

  “A real storm, Kel!” Namior said. “A surger. High tide, big waves, heavy rain, like nothing you’ve ever seen since you’ve been here. Trakis and Mell want to go to the Dog’s Eyes, drink out the storm and defy nature. Will you come?”

  “I’m a sculptor and a tortured artist. Do you really think I want to use bad weather as an excuse to drink?” He always felt it strange talking to a glowing, floating machine, so as usual he had his eyes closed as he spoke to Namior this way. And that helped him picture what she said next.

  “Of course. Followed by my taking you to my rooms and examining your greatest sculpture.”

  Kel smiled. “It needs oiling.”

  “I’m up to the task, I think.”

  Kel opened his eyes and looked around his rooms. The curtains at the door and windows were shifting now, candles dancing in excitement, and the wind and rain beat at the walls. “Sounds like the world’s ending out there,” he said.

  “Well, you will live at the top of Drakeman’s Hill.”

  Kel glanced back
at the hawk he was carving for Namior, and once again tried to imagine her face when he revealed it to her at last. “You’re welcome to live with me up here.”

  Namior was silent for long enough for it to become uncomfortable. Training, Kel thought. Mother, great-grandmother… a whole family of witches.

  “See you at the Dog’s?” he said at last.

  “I look forward to it,” Namior said, and the machine stopped glowing and settled back down.

  Kel closed the curtain on the voice carrier and stepped back, smiling. She might be good at avoiding certain questions, but Namior was also adept at saying exactly what she meant. I look forward to it, she had said. Five words that drove away the cold and made Kel feel warm all over.