“Oh gods,” he groaned, “why didn’t you tell me? I would have gone.”
“There was no need. The Inning found out about it, and barged in. He interrupted the ceremony and Spaeth never finished.”
For once, an Inning had done the right thing. For all the wrong reasons, of course, but at least he had prevented a tragedy. But now he was missing. “Did someone take it out on him?” Harg asked.
“Spaeth,” said Tway significantly. “She was furious with him. The last anyone saw of them, she was leading him up the hill to the Whispering Stones. Later, they saw lights up on the hill. Everyone was too scared to interfere.”
Harg felt queasy with the thought of what that might mean. “She wouldn’t have—” He saw on Tway’s face that they were thinking the same thing. He whispered, “She took an Inning into one of the other circles?”
He staggered to his feet to find his clothes.
“Where are you going?” Tway said.
“I’ve got to find out what happened. For one thing, if that Inning doesn’t make it back, there’s going to be a hue and cry from here to Fluminos. For another . . .” He had to find out if Spaeth was all right. He didn’t say it, but Tway understood.
“Wait for me, I’m coming too,” she said.
Ten minutes later, they were walking together up the path to the Whispering Stones. Even from the base of the hill they could see that something had happened there, for the grass was flattened in a circle, as if a whirlwind had stood there. When they reached the top, a dark mood seemed still to hang about it, dimming the morning light, and there was a smell of charring. Harg could not bring himself to cross the invisible circle traced by the stones. He waited while Tway checked inside. Laying his hand on one of the stones, he found it was icy cold.
“The grass in there is all black,” Tway said when she came back out. “But there is no sign of anyone.”
Harg scanned the landscape, and his eyes fell on a gully on the north side of the hill. “Let’s check down there,” he said.
They found Spaeth sitting with her head bowed on her knees. Nearby lay what looked like a pile of clothes, with a telltale shock of blond hair sticking out. As Tway scrambled down the steep bank toward Spaeth, Harg headed for the Inning.
Nathaway’s face was the colour of a cadaver. Quelling his revulsion, Harg knelt and felt for a pulse behind the ear. The Inning’s skin was cold and stiff. For an instant, Harg thought he felt a flutter under his fingers, but it was only his own pulse, racing.
“Don’t be dead,” he whispered to the lifeless body, pressing his hands over the heart as if to warm it with his own body heat. He could feel nothing. Then he picked up a hand, chafing it between his own. “Come back,” he said; but it was useless. He let the Inning’s hand drop.
“Is he dead?” Spaeth was looking at them in a glazed torpor.
Instead of answering, Harg picked up the glasses lying broken on the ground next to the body, folded them, and put them in the Inning’s pocket. Then he stood up.
“What happened?” Tway said to Spaeth.
She looked as if it were taking all her strength to keep her head upright. Her voice was dull and lifeless. “I shot him off like an arrow into space. I thought he would fall to earth again two feet in front of me. He didn’t. It was as if he had been practising with mora for ten years, and had never learned the first thing about it.”
In silence, Tway and Harg looked at the lifeless Inning.
“I hated him.” Now Spaeth’s voice was thick with emotion. “He scoffed at me and at dhota. I wanted him to die in the wastes outside the world. I wanted the Mundua to feast on his liver. But in the end I couldn’t do it. Oh, what an idiot I was!”
What she had done was dangerous beyond description—not just to herself, but to all of them. Calling up the Mundua and Ashwin was an unthinkable act, because once in this circle there was no sure way of getting them out. If it had gotten out of control, the delicate balance on which all the circles rested could have been shattered. They were unspeakably lucky that only one person’s death had satisfied the forces of chaos.
But now . . . Harg sank to the grass, his hands over his face, overwhelmed with the repercussions this insane act would have.
“Harg?” Tway said.
“The Inning’s dead,” he said dully. “They’re going to want someone to blame. You know who that’s going to be.” His back, his ribs, his bruised face all ached with the knowledge of who it would be. But next time it wouldn’t be just a beating. They would have to make an example, provide a deterrent.
He turned to Tway. “I’ve got to get away from Yora.”
She looked horrified. “If you run, they’ll only suspect you the more.”
“If I stay, I’m a dead man.”
“What happened to your face?” Spaeth broke in. She had just focused on Harg for the first time, and she looked starved, spellbound at the sight. “You’re hurt. I’ve got to help you.” She started trying to undo the bandage on her arm.
“Stop that!” Harg ordered her. She paid no attention, but started tearing at the bandage with her teeth, so he caught her wrists and held them so she couldn’t harm herself. For a moment they faced each other, kneeling in the grass, and he saw the raw, uncontrolled longing in her eyes. Then she lunged forward and kissed him on the mouth.
“Harg, let go of her!” Tway ordered. “Stop touching her, she’s out of control.”
He drew back, the sensation of her lips on his still vivid, and let Tway come between them. “Don’t let her hurt herself,” he said.
Tway shook the Grey Girl by the shoulders and said sternly, “Spaeth, control yourself.”
Spaeth closed her eyes and grew absolutely still, sinking back on her heels in the grass. “I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice was strained with the effort it took to check her instincts.
Harg and Tway looked at each other. “What are we going to do with her?” Tway whispered.
Letting out a long breath, he said, “We can’t turn her over to Goth’s bandhotai again. She’ll never be safe with them; just look at her. We’ve got to get her off the island for a while.”
It looked like a thousand objections were crowding to Tway’s tongue, but she never uttered any of them. At last she nodded. “They’ll go berserk, but you’re right. Until this blows over.”
Down in the harbour, Harg knew, the Ripplewill waited to take on cargo for the return run to Thimish. “We can’t go back through the village,” he said. “I don’t want to run into those soldiers, and we can’t let the elders see Spaeth leave. Tway, you’ve got to take a message to Torr. Tell him I’ll join him, but he’ll have to pick me up at Lone Tree Point. You can tell him about the Inning and the soldiers, but don’t tell him about Spaeth yet.”
“Can you manage her without me?” Tway said, glancing at Spaeth dubiously; but the Grey Girl looked calm again—so calm exhaustion seemed to be overtaking her.
“I think so,” said Harg. “It’s the only choice. When you’re going through the village, stop at Goth’s and pick up some of her things. Give them to Torr, but don’t tell him what they are.” For an instant he thought about telling her to get someone to tip the Tornas off about where to find their Inning. It seemed like the decent thing to do; but he quickly dismissed it. As soon as they found Nathaway, the scapegoat hunt would start; they might not even let Ripplewill leave.
“All right,” Tway said, and rose to leave. Harg caught her hand.
“Tway. Thanks,” he said.
She paused for a moment, looking down at him with an expression too complicated for him to parse. Then she quickly leaned forward and kissed him, just as Spaeth had, on the lips. She left without a word. He watched her go, wondering if he had been missing something about Tway all these years.
After Tway left, Harg settled down to wait. Spaeth had fallen asleep on the
grass, and he didn’t want to rouse her right away, since it could take hours for Torr to make the rendezvous. Watching her sleep, he could see Goth in every line of her face. She had that same paradoxical blend of power and innocence. The ardency and recklessness that Goth hid so well were right on the surface for all to see. For the second time in two days he wished he had never seen her, and yet couldn’t take his eyes off her.
Three hours passed before the Ripplewill rounded the headland west of Lone Tree Point, edging forward on staysails. Harg and Spaeth were waiting on one of the sandstone ledges that angled down into the water from the mouths of the rocky caves on the point. He had roused her over an hour ago and walked her down to the shore half-asleep; but now she was beginning to wake. She saw the boat and glanced at him, then looked away, wincing at sight of his face.
“That bad, eh?” His lip and eye had begun to throb in earnest now; he could tell they were swollen.
“You’ll have a black eye,” she said, her back turned.
When the ketch came close enough, he whistled and waved. He saw a flash of sunlight on Torr’s spyglass, and then the boat’s anchor went down. The crew launched a small rowboat from the foredeck as efficiently as if they made clandestine pickups all the time.
Harg didn’t know the woman in the rowboat, and they exchanged only cursory words as he and Spaeth climbed in and started back across the choppy waves to the Ripplewill. As they approached, Harg saw two people standing at the gunwale watching them approach, Torr and—
“Tway!” he shouted. “Blood and ashes, what are you doing here?”
“Did you think I was going to let you two go off to Thimish alone?” she shouted back. “I can’t think of two people who need more looking after.”
“Torr! Why did you let her come?”
“Have you ever tried to stop her?” Torr replied. He was looking curiously at the second passenger in the rowboat, the one he didn’t yet know about. As they came alongside and the seawoman shipped the oars, Harg swung himself up onto the deck, then turned to grasp Spaeth’s hand and help her on. Torr said, “Wait a minute, Harg.” His voice was hard and suspicious. “You’re welcome, you know that. But her—” There was something almost superstitious in his look. “What is she, Yora’s dhotamar?”
“No,” Harg said, “and we mean to keep it that way.” He pulled at her wrist and she stepped lightly up on deck, facing Torr.
“What are you getting me into?” Torr said, his eyes flicking from Harg to Spaeth and back again. “I’m already skating against Inning law by taking you. If I help her escape, all of Yora will want to nail my hide to a tree.”
“Don’t worry, it’s me they’ll blame,” Harg said, a little bitterly.
In a low tone, Torr said, “Is she your bandhota?”
It was Spaeth who answered. “If he was, do you think I’d let him walk around looking like that?”
Torr was momentarily distracted by the sight of Harg’s face. “They really worked you over, didn’t they?”
“Not as much as they wanted to.”
The skipper turned back to Spaeth. “Listen, lass, I don’t know what this is about or why you’re following him . . .”
“You have to take me, captain,” she said with a quiet certainty. “There are larger things at stake here.”
There was a pause. Torr looked at Harg again, as if his premonitions now extended to them both.
“Torr,” hissed one of the crew. “We’ve been spotted.”
As the others turned to look, Harg shoved Spaeth down into the cockpit. “Into the cabin,” he hissed at her, and only then turned to look up. But it wasn’t one of the Yorans, as he had feared. Far away on the hillside by the Whispering Stones, four men in uniform had stopped to look down at the boat so suspiciously at anchor where there was nothing to anchor for. Someone must have told them where to search for the Inning. It would only be a matter of minutes before they found him.
“Torr, we’ve got to get out of here!” Harg said urgently.
“Ashes!” Torr swore. “By the root, Harg, I hope I don’t regret the day I met you. Cory, get the anchor. Galber, mainsail.” Tway had already grabbed the oars from the boatwoman, and Harg leaped to help raise the rowboat on deck. For a few minutes the ship was a silent flurry of work as the mizzen sail went up and the jib billowed out in the breeze. Soon Harg felt the boat heel to starboard and gather way under him. The choppy rhythm of the inshore waves yielded to the slow roll of the ocean.
And suddenly, he was on his way to a destination he had never intended to seek. As recently as last night he had felt that his future lay on Yora; but here he was, as sure as if some unseen force had interceded to propel him. It was almost a giddy feeling to think of surrendering to it, and letting it blow him forward, to surf on a great grey wave of history.
*
When Yora was just a low grey bump on the horizon, Spaeth came up on deck, feeling a little lightheaded from the strong odour of dreamweed in the hold. She stood looking back toward Yora. She had never seen it from this angle before. Never in her life had she been so far away from it. The thought made tears rise into her eyes. She was leaving the island that loved her, to go into a world where the land would not even know her name.
Exile seemed like an appropriate penance. She felt a biting regret about everything that had happened the previous day. There was nowhere her thoughts could turn without making her wince. Jory. Nathaway. Harg. Herself most of all. She had acted so badly, shame smothered her spirits. It was not a familiar feeling.
Tway poked her head out the companionway, and saw Spaeth. She held out a cloth bag. “I stopped by your cottage and picked up some things for you,” she said. “I didn’t know what you would want.”
Taking the bag, Spaeth said, “Thanks.” There was something hard and heavy in it, so she drew back the string and looked. Tway had put in Goth’s bowl and knife, the instruments of dhota. The sight made Spaeth feel like a stranger to herself. They were not hers; they could never be hers. When she looked up again, she felt with a bitter ache that she was leaving her childhood behind on Yora. Ahead lay only the life of a Grey Lady, sacrifice and duty.
Wanting to get away, she went to the windward rail and sat, looking out at the dark waves rushing toward them from the west. They looked like they were in a hurry to get somewhere, impatient with the boat in their way. One of them crested and bared white fangs at her, then gathered its muscles and leaped onto the deck beside her, sitting down and beginning to dry its fur with its tongue. Spaeth glanced around in dismay, but none of the others on deck appeared to notice the horned panther beside her.
“Well? Are you satisfied?” she said to Ridwit in a low voice.
“Not really,” said the cat.
“I gave you what you wanted. You asked for the Inning, and I brought him to you.”
“And then you changed your mind,” Ridwit said. “That was a very foolish thing to do.”
Bitterly, Spaeth said, “But you took him anyway.”
“No, I didn’t.” Her eyes glowed like amber lamps.
“You mean he’s not dead?”
“No.” Ridwit’s tail flicked with frustration. “He didn’t taste good.”
From the tail, Spaeth knew the god was lying. For some reason, the Mundua hadn’t been able to devour him. Spaeth felt a rush of relief. She hadn’t killed him, then. She brushed water off Ridwit’s back. Under the guard hairs, the cat was perfectly dry.
“It was more amusing to let him escape anyway,” Ridwit said. “We’ll eat him later, when he’s aged.” She was bluffing, as gods will do when thwarted. She went on, “I don’t know why you wanted to save him. They are hateful creatures.”
“He fought so hard to stay himself,” Spaeth said thoughtfully. “Harder than I would have been able.”
“That’s what makes them dangerous. They belie
ve more than anything that they are real. It’s closing off the doors into other possibilities. And you thought we were a threat.”
The panther looked away, sly and secretive once more. “Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. Everything worked out anyway.”
“What do you mean?” Spaeth asked suspiciously.
“We have better things to think of than you.” She bared her fangs. It looked almost like she was laughing. A pang of alarm passed through Spaeth.
“What has happened?”
“We have found an ally,” Ridwit drawled.
“A human ally? In this circle?”
“Yes.”
This was chilling news. It was precisely what the Grey People had been created to guard against—the danger that a human being, corrupted by pain and power, would consent to be a tool of the forces of disorder in their perpetual war for control of this circle. Time and again over the centuries, the greatest of the Lashnura had had to sacrifice their own lives to cure such flawed humans, and make them whole again.
“Why are you telling me?” Spaeth said.
Ridwit turned to look at her with a taunting grin. “Because there is nothing you can do about it. You Grey Folk are degenerate. Once you ruled this circle, now you are all slaves to your bandhotai. Your Heir of Gilgen is a prisoner and a fool. Soon, even you are going to find someone whose pain appeals to you, and then you’ll give in like all the rest. Now that we have an ally to do our work, we have nothing more to fear from you.”
“Who is it?”
Ridwit looked at her with disgust. “You must think I am as much of a fool as you.”
“Is it a man or a woman?” Spaeth said. “Adaina or Torna?”
Ridwit rose and laughed—a night-black, feral sound. “Find out yourself, if you care so much.” She crouched, muscles rippling beneath glossy fur, then sprang into the sea. The wave passed on under the hull and was gone.
Spaeth sat staring out across the water. The cold wind seemed to pierce through her clothes now. She needed to find someone to tell, someone who would know what to do. It was news that called for the intervention of greater powers than she.
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