Tales of Noreela 04: The Island Page 9

  At the same time as relief washed over him, confusion and suspicion settled within him, and would not let go.

  “Welcome to Noreela,” he said. Keera Kashoomie glanced over her shoulder, and as Vek pushed past her and came for Kel, he was sure he saw the beginnings of a smile.

  WHAT SORT OF fuckery was that?” Vek shouted.

  “Just wanted to make sure they were like us.”

  “Well, they are, but now I have to wonder if they like us.”

  “Do you really care?” Kel asked. Vek stared at him, went to say something and shook his head.

  Vek had shut Kel into a building at the foot of Drakeman’s Hill, an old shop whose front had been ripped off by the tidal waves. There at the back, cut into the cliff, was the storeroom, already cleared of anything salvageable by the owners. A good cell. Difficult to escape. Feeling wretched and confused and filled with doubt, it suited Kel just fine.

  “So how long do I stay here?” Kel asked.

  Vek sighed and sat down. He’d come in without a weapon drawn, and for a second Kel had considered overpowering him and escaping. He knew he could. Break Vek’s neck, steal his weapons, climb Drakeman’s Hill to retrieve what he needed from his rooms, then past the farms and the hanging fruit vines and out into Noreela …

  But something kept him there. Perhaps it was a result of exposing the visitor’s neck and back and seeing nothing, but he thought not. He thought it was really all to do with O’Peeria. He’d failed her, and by escaping he would be failing Namior as well, fleeing when Pavmouth Breaks needed him most. Because even though Keera Kashoomie had no proboscises or gills, Kel still could not trust her. He knew far more of the world than most people in the little fishing village, and he owed them all so much.

  “They’re in with Chief Eildan now,” Vek said. “When she came ashore, the woman was crying. She could hardly believe what had happened. Saw my weapons, started talking nonstop about how they’d help us rebuild, how they owed us, how they would suffer until our suffering was over.”

  “You think the suffering will ever be over?” Kel said. “I’ve seen at least twenty bodies myself. Do you really think Pavmouth Breaks will ever recover from this?”

  Vek started to cry. It shocked Kel so much that, for a beat, he could not move or speak. He thought of going to comfort the big soldier, but he knew that would not be welcome. So he sat back and waited for Vek to speak.

  “It hasn’t hit me,” Vek said at last. “All that’s happened, it feels like a dream. I’ll wake up in a minute. Too much rotwine last night, maybe. Too much stale fledge.” Kel knew that many militia took fledge, procured through their contacts beyond the villages they patrolled. The drug was dangerous; mined from beneath the Widow’s Peaks and transported across Noreela, its farseeing properties changed to nightmare the farther it traveled and the staler it became.

  “We need to stay strong,” Kel said. “There are plenty of people who’ll need help today.”

  Vek looked at him sharply. “You’re right.” He stood and moved to the locked door. “You’ll not do anything like that again?”

  “I won’t,” Kel said, and he thought, Not just yet.

  Vek produced a key from his pocket. “Keeping you locked up,” he muttered. “Madness.” He unlocked the door, swung it open, and stepped out into the ruin of the shop. Kel saw the soldier’s shoulders rise and fall in a sigh, and beyond him he saw part of the ruined village.

  Vek turned around. “Don’t make me regret this,” he said.

  Kel went to the militiaman and slapped him on the shoulder. They looked together, and having emerged from inside, the enormity of what had happened seemed to hit them both afresh. Without another word Kel started making his way across the harbor, and back toward the damaged bridge that would take him to Namior.

  Chapter Three

  interference

  NAMIOR’S GREAT-GRANDMOTHER was crying again. She sat close to the groundstone, but she had not touched it since dawn. She picked repeatedly at the eyelid of her good eye, as if to shift a speck of dirt, and rubbed at her good ear.

  It’s doom come! she had told them earlier. A skip in the magic, an interference.

  “Please, Grandmother, you’ll hurt yourself,” Namior’s mother said.

  The old woman plucked at her reddening eye, swiped at her ear, and mumbled something beneath her breath. She had never descended so quickly and completely into one of her crazes.

  Namior sighed and sat back against the wall, hugging her knees and watching the same conversations swing around the room; alighting differently, expressed from alternate angles, but still always the same.

  The people they had taken in had left, some to find their relatives and friends, others to make their way down to the harbor. One of them said he wanted to witness the moment that Noreela changed forever.

  Namior stood, and her mother glanced at her with concern. “I’m only going outside to see,” Namior said. “Down to the path. That’s all.”

  Her mother nodded, her shoulders dropping. “But please, stay close. There are many who will need our help today.”

  Then why in the Black are we sitting around doing nothing? Namior wanted to say, but she smiled and nodded.

  As she closed the door behind her and breathed in the heady scents of ocean and morning, she felt a weight lift from her shoulders. Her home was becoming clogged with bad feeling, and there was a miasma of fear from her great-grandmother that kept her constantly on edge.

  She thought back to the last time she had touched the groundstone. Interference, the old woman had called it. Her hand had felt numb, and when she closed her eyes she traveled no farther than the inside of her own head.

  She breathed in deeply. She never had been one for scrying. A gentle touch was the gift she took to magic, and her mother had always said she would be the village’s healer one day. She still had much to learn, though, and sometimes she felt an incredible urge to leave and travel out into Noreela. There were so many places she had heard about and wished to visit. Noreela City, with its tall buildings, wide-open parks, street vendors, food, clothing and other goods imported from across the land, and the mix of cultures and people that made it a distillation of all Noreela. Long Marrakash, that ancient city awash with history that had once been Noreela’s capital, and which was home to the museum of the ancient Voyagers from over three millennia before. Sordon Sound, the inland sea named after the First Voyager, Sordon Perlenni, filled with strange fish and bubble creatures, and skimming fraks, which patrolled the deeper waters and attacked any craft that ventured too close. New Shanti, the fantastical home of the Shantasi, rich in ceremony and tradition and, so some said, the purest race on Noreela—and the most familiar with the language of the land. The islands of The Spine, the wide-open plains of Cantrassa with their wild horses and wilder tribes, Kang Kang and its mysterious, dangerous environs …

  So many places, and a thousand more besides. Noreela was a whole world waiting for her to explore. Pavmouth Breaks was but a spot in that world, and she already knew it so well.

  She walked down the narrow alley and emerged onto the main path, looking out to sea at the island that had appeared during the storm.

  Perhaps it’s that, she thought. Maybe this is the most amazing thing that has ever happened, and it’s exposed the wanderlust in me. She walked a little way until she could see down into the harbor. The visitors’ boat was still docked at the mole, and out to sea were the other vessels, bobbing at anchor as if eager to sail closer. There were craft of many sizes and designs, and looking out to the island she wondered at the wealth of life it might sustain. Word had already reached them that the visitors were much like Noreelans, and in a way that had disappointed her.

  But Kel’s words came back to her as well. We tracked and killed Strangers from beyond Noreela. What had he been talking about? Had the waves shaken him so much that his mind had become unhitched? She thought not…but Kel was a wood-carver, that was all. Wasn’t he?

  She
could not help doubting that. And she couldn’t help hating him a little for planting that doubt.

  A group of people came along the path, three of them struggling to carry a fourth. “Namior Feeron!” a woman said. “My boy, my boy!”

  Namior tried to shake selfish thoughts from her mind, but they merely sank deeper.

  As the group reached her, she took stock. The woman was a seed grower from around the headland, and the boy was Nerthan, her son. She knew the other people, but they were remote from what she was about to do. She blinked slowly and tried to feel the surge within her, the healing sense that she could usually summon at will. It was there, but weak. Shocked, she thought, I’m still in shock. But her great-grandmother’s fears remained with her.

  Interference.

  The woman urged her helpers to put the boy down on the stone path. Nerthan moaned, which was a good sign, at least. Namior moved closer, the helpers backing away quietly, and knelt by the boy’s side.

  “He was coming down the stairs to tell me,” she said, “because he’d heard the wave, or knew, or something, and then it hit and the top floor of the house… it’s gone. And water poured down the staircase and washed him down to me, but his arm … his chest …” She started crying, and Namior tried to shut out the sound. It would do her no good to listen to the woman’s grief, and neither would it help to hear the mother’s opinions on what was wrong. Namior, for the moment, was on her own with the boy.

  “Give me some space,” she said. She sensed someone urging the mother to move away, and a few beats later Namior lowered her head and leaned in close.

  “Nerthan,” she said, “I’m going to touch you.” He barely acknowledged her. His eyes were almost shut, and through the slight gaps she saw only white. His face was bruised and battered, a tooth had been knocked out, and a flap of skin had been clumsily sewn back into place across his cheek. She would leave that, because she knew there was worse to find. At least he’d have an impressive scar to show if he grew any older.

  Namior closed her eyes and laid her hands flat against the path, each fingertip sensing independently as she flexed and moved her fingers minutely. She felt grit beneath one finger, moss beneath another, the slick surface of a cobble beneath one more. She silently began to chant the words she always used. Her great-grandmother had passed them down the family line, and she said that they came from a hundred years before her, and though everyone who used them tried to improve or adjust, the original words worked best. It was something about their age, Namior believed, or perhaps a familiarity between the land and the chant. Sometimes she thought the magic was more aware of them than they were of it. That scared her, but thrilled her as well. She’d heard stories of fledge demons haunting those drug seams deep underground, and sometimes she imagined magic to be something similar. It would listen as she chanted to it, expel its powers, cast them upward through rock and into flesh and bone.

  Namior opened her eyes again and ran her hands gently across the boy’s body. She started at his head, working her way slowly downward. Her touch was so light that he seemed not to notice. When her right hand passed across his left arm there was a throb of heat in her mind, and as her left hand touched his shirt another warm burst. She continued down, feeling smaller flushes here and there, and then came back up to the arm and chest. She concentrated on the chest first, using both hands, moving them around just above his shirt. He moaned; she frowned. The heat was there, but she could not quite place it, nor see the shades of red and pink in her mind’s eye that would usually tell her what was wrong. And she had to know that to be able to put it right.

  “Interference,” she muttered, and when Nerthan’s mother spoke she ignored her and tore the boy’s shirt open. His chest was already dark and swollen with bruising, and the right side was scraped raw by whatever had struck him.

  Namior placed her hands directly on the boy’s skin. It was hot from the pooling blood, but when she closed her eyes and pressed she sensed a different heat. Nerthan cried out. Namior felt hands on her shoulders, but only for a beat. She was glad the others had pulled the boy’s mother away. The wound was serious.

  She sensed his ribs cracked and bent inward. One of them pressed across his heart, the sharp end having just missed piercing the muscle. Blood flowed where it should not, bone fragments blazed almost white in her mind’s eye, and she felt the wall of potential building behind her ready to burst out. This was when it hurt the most, and this was the part she most enjoyed.

  Now, she was with the land.

  Namior took in a deep breath and tried to expand the burning zones in her mind. The boy’s broken bones and torn flesh blurred in her vision, merging with her own hands, and she heard a gasp from those assembled around her. It never failed to amaze.

  She opened her eyes. Her hands were in the boy’s chest, fingers delving left and right as she sought broken ends, but where she pierced his skin there was no blood, only a soft light like fire. She kicked off one of her shoes and pressed her bare toes to the ground, keen to maintain contact.

  “Nerthan,” Namior muttered, and the boy’s eyes fluttered open. He looked up at her, unable to talk or cry through the pain, but she had to warn him. “I have to hurt you to make you well.”

  He blinked once in acknowledgment, then clasped his eyes shut.

  Namior tried, but something changed. A pulse passed through her and she felt the strength leaving her muscles, her flesh growing cool. She frowned and concentrated harder. Everything felt so far away! If she lost it, if her communication with the land was severed, she would be simply a woman with her hands buried in a dead boy’s chest.

  She screamed out loud, driving her mind and the magic closer together. The land spoke to her again and she grabbed those silent words with relief, bending to her task.

  She had to be quick.

  Namior fixed bones and stitched flesh, joined veins and tied nerves, and as she slowly lifted her hands out of the boy’s body, the damage became less and less.

  He cried out, and his mother was kneeling beside him, thrusting a large splinter of wood into his mouth so that he did not bite through his tongue.

  The heat in Namior’s mind lessened and shrank. The world twisted and flexed around her. She drew her hands out slowly, and by the time she parted contact with the boy’s skin, the warm areas had faded back to a constant background hum. He cried some more, but she knew the pain would soon be gone. Even the bruises had faded to little more than a shade darker than his skin.

  “His arm!” the mother said, and for a beat Namior wanted to reach out and slap her across the face. Did you see what I just did? she tried to say, but the words were only in her mind. Did you see me save his life?

  She lost magic, and magic lost her. Interference.

  When she slipped sideways, she was grateful to feel hands ease her fall.

  NAMIOR WAS LIGHT-HEADED, but she did not pass out. She sat against the wall, feeling dampness chilling through her clothes, and watched Nerthan’s mother.

  “Set the arm,” Namior said. “Splints. Come and see me again later.”

  “Thank you,” the woman said, and she smiled her apology at Namior. Not everyone was a witch, and not everyone could access magic so deeply and effectively. Sometimes, so much was taken for granted.

  “I just feel so tired,” Namior said. “Last night …” She trailed off, and Nerthan was staring at her. Did he feel the interference? she wondered.

  “Everything feels different,” he said. The boy was only ten years old.

  As he stood and his mother helped him walk away, Namior climbed to her feet and leaned against the wall. She looked down at the ruined harbor, the few people milling around down there, the mysterious boats and the large ship shifting with the swell. One boat was moored at the mole, and several stationary shapes stood guard. “Yes. Everything feels different.”

  “Namior?”

  She closed her eyes and sighed, feeling the rush of relief at hearing that voice again. Anger welled, but so
did the tears. “Forget something?” she asked.

  “No.”

  She looked out to sea, curious as to whether the unknown island had changed with Kel close by. More threatening? Not so mystifying? But his presence altered nothing of what had happened, at least on the surface. As to what she thought about what had occurred…that would take some time to decide.

  “So do they look just like us?” she asked.

  “Yes.” He stood behind her but did not dare touch her, not yet. She quite liked the shred of power that gave her.

  “Are they your ‘Strangers’?” He did not answer, and she knew it was time to turn around. “Kel, tell me you’re just a wood-carver.”

  “I am a wood-carver.”

  “But tell me that’s all you are!”

  He looked tired, filthy and shocked by what had happened. Perhaps it had taken that long to settle on him, and his attempt to flee had been the result. “I can’t tell you that,” he said.

  “Trakis?” she asked. “Mell?”

  He shook his head. “I haven’t seen them.”

  She suddenly wanted to hold him. Her mother was her bedrock, but Kel was the anchor she had found to hold her to that place. As she grew older and her training advanced, the wanderlust was turning into a passion, and it was only Kel’s insistence that the village was the best place for them that kept her there. But there was a distance between them now, a lie—or a secret, which really amounted to the same thing—that felt as real to her as the magic pulsing through the land. She could almost see it, and for a second she was afraid to close her eyes, terrified that she would sense the heat of a fatal wound in their closeness. But she was a healer, not an em-path. Old Mygrette was the one for that. Mygrette was good at everything.