In her professional career, Gilman is a historian specializing in 18th- and early 19th-century North American history, particularly frontier and Native history. Her nonfiction book Lewis and Clark: Across the Divide, published in 2003 by Smithsonian Books, was featured by the History Book Club and Book of the Month Club. She has been a guest lecturer at the Library of Congress, Harvard University, and Monticello, and has been interviewed on All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation, History Detectives, and the History Channel. Her history books have won the Missouri Governor’s Humanities Award, the Missouri Conference on History Best Book Award, the Northeastern Minnesota Book Award, and the Outstanding Academic Book of the Year award from Choice magazine.
Carolyn Ives Gilman is a native of Minnesota who now lives in St. Louis and works for the Missouri History Museum.
Ison of the Isles
Carolyn Ives Gilman
ChiZine Publications
1
The Windward Passage
When daylight filtered into the Ripplewill’s forward cabin, Spaeth stretched out her naked limbs in luxurious comfort. Beside her in the berth, Nathaway Talley was still asleep. A stripe of sunlight lay across his bare shoulder, as if the day were caressing him, as infatuated as she. Gazing at him as he slept, she loved everything about him: the bony angles of his body; the texture of his exotic, pale skin against hers; the way his untrimmed blond bangs fell in his eyes. She loved his smell, she loved his private parts for giving her so much entertainment. With that in mind, she bent down to kiss them awake.
He gave a startled little noise and reached out as if to make sure it was really her being so personal. She straddled him then, and watched as his nearsighted blue eyes focused on her with that look of complete surrender that only one other person had ever given her.
If Spaeth had been a person given to reflection, it might have troubled her that his devotion, while sincere, was not entirely voluntary. She was now the beneficiary of the slavish dhota-bond she had sought so hard to avoid herself. Why Goth had paired them she had no idea, but she accepted it as a gift to her—a strange gift for a man to give his beloved, but one she was quite cheerful to enjoy.
She leaned forward to tickle Nathaway with her hair. “I love having a bandhota,” she said. He didn’t answer, just reached up to hold her by the arms. A fleeting sadness crossed his face, as if waking brought back the memory of some loss. It reminded her vividly of Goth. Even the green pendant resting against his chest was Goth’s. It was as if the Grey Man had created a replica of himself to console her. But Nathaway was much younger and more vigorous. She scooted down to tickle him in a more provocative place.
“Again?” he said, as if astonished at her. But he was joking.
“What do you mean?” she said. “It’s been forever.”
“At least six hours.”
For three days now they had been unable to get enough of each other. The others on the boat were tolerantly amused, but a little agog at the intensity of their libido. Spaeth knew it would fade in time—with her first, since the bond was less lasting on the recipient than on the giver of dhota. She wanted to explore every crevice of him while it was strong.
This time he did it slowly, in time to the rhythmic rocking of the boat, so that it seemed as if she were washed in an ocean of liquid love. She rode the waves as he flowed into her, waking every nerve of her body, making her throb with need.
When they came out on deck, the others cast knowing glances in their direction. It made Spaeth feel cheerful and lucky, but Nathaway wouldn’t meet their eyes. She couldn’t imagine what his problem was; they all knew he couldn’t control himself.
The Ripplewill was bounding over the waves like a frisking pony, sending spray flying in rainbow sheets. Even the boat seemed to feel elation at being free of the city. Spaeth made her way to the foredeck, facing west. She was glad to be warmly wrapped in an old coat one of the crewmen had given her, for the northeast wind at her back was piercing.
Tornabay hung like a black haze in the back of Spaeth’s memory. She was not proud of the way she had acted there, but self-blame was not a strong part of her nature. In her own mind, she had been lured there by the treachery of the Mundua, then cast into a labyrinth of evils through which she had barely managed to find her way. If it had not been for Goth . . . She tried to drive from her mind what might have happened.
But now she was free. There was a clear sea before her, a strong wind behind, and the Isles all around. She breathed in the mora, like healing oxygen to her starved system. Here there was no suffering to tug at her desires, nothing to own her against her will. She almost felt as if she could drive the Ripplewill forward with the wind in her heart.
She took her hands from her pockets and looked at them. They were strong now, the skin a healthy shade of grey. The nails were pearly, purified by the cleansing power of dhota. She clenched them, thinking of Goth. She could still feel his healing touch. Right now, he would be suffering under the brunt of the disease he had taken from her body. He would have to endure that illness alone, with no one to treat him kindly. The ignorant Innings wouldn’t even know what ailed him.
Nathaway was making his way forward to join her. He walked stiff-legged, clutching every handhold he could find, constantly off-balance on the canting deck. He needed to relearn everything, she thought—even how to walk.
Soon he was standing precariously beside her. “Where are we?” he said.
Torr had taken them north from Embo to throw off pursuit, since everyone would expect them to go south. They had passed northwest up the strait between Esker and Fosk, called the Windward Passage. “It looks like we’re close to the Widewater,” she said. “That far island must be Bara. I don’t think we need to worry about any Inning boats catching up with us now.”
“Then where will we go?”
She frowned, not wanting to think about the future yet. She wanted to enjoy the day.
She stepped to the weather rail and stood looking down into the water. It was a deep green, shot with long sun-shafts. The shadow of her head scuffed across the waves, and the sunbeams all seemed to be radiating from it like a spiky crown. Down there, she thought, lay the realms of the Mundua.
Nathaway joined her. Now his shadow was crowned with light, too. “What do the Innings think lies below the sea?” she asked. “Just more sea?”
“No. The sea has a bottom.”
“And what is under the bottom?”
“Rock.”
“And under the rock?”
“There is nothing under the rock. That’s all the world is, just a ball of rock.”
How safe they must feel, she thought. Utterly in control. She looked up to where the thin blue shell of sky hid the realms of the Ashwin. Only the Isles lay in between the ancient antagonists. Her lovely land, saved from unbeing only by the precarious balance of power between the forces, and the balance of suffering and joy that was the peculiar gift of humankind.
Nathaway was still talking. “It’s a ball of rock revolving around the sun, you see. As it spins, it turns away from the sun, making day and night. It’s tilted on its axis, so the days and nights are longer or shorter depending on which side is tipped toward the sun. That’s what creates seasons.” He stopped, watching her. “You don’t believe me,” he said.
Spaeth shrugged. “It’s probably true in your land. Not here.”
“If it’s true, it has to be true everywhere.”
To her, every permutation of every truth was possible. The universe was a layer cake of truths, all coexisting.
“Maybe the world is a ball of rock,” she conceded. “But the lands of the Mundua still lie under the sea.”
“Both things can’t be true. They contradict each other.”
“So do hope and despair, but they both exist.”
“That’s not the same,” he said. �
��They are things of the mind.”
“So are rocks and seasons, in the long run,” Spaeth said.
The wind was blowing his hair into his eyes. He brushed it away; it was instantly back. “I can’t believe Goth didn’t teach you—”
“What? To think like an Inning?”
He frowned. “To use your reason. You have a good mind, Spaeth.”
“He probably thought it wouldn’t make me happy. It hasn’t made you happy.” He looked startled at this, but it was true. Ever since she had met him, she had felt an unfulfilled longing in him, as if the world had not quite lived up to his expectations. It was as if he thought the universe ought to behave by certain rules, and he was always disappointed when he found out it didn’t. Yet he never revised his expectations—instead, he tried to revise the world to conform to them. It would never occur to an islander to demand that the universe behave.
A wave made the deck of the Ripplewill lurch, and Nathaway was flung against her. She caught hold of him to keep him from toppling overside.
“We can’t become like you,” Spaeth said softly, her arms still strong around him. “We have to find our own way. With mora.”
“Magic?” he said sceptically, as if this solved nothing.
“Mora isn’t just magic. It’s the force that holds everything together. This land is thick with mora. Can’t you feel it? Look out there, how the sea is sparkling, winking at us like it knows a joke. That’s mora.”
He didn’t answer, just stood looking out at the sea, as if seeing it her way were a challenge to his personal boundaries. As if he couldn’t acknowledge the world’s personality without questioning his own.
Having an Inning for a lover was going to be hard work, she thought. And then she wondered: had Goth given him to her, or her to him?
*
At sunset they gathered in the cramped main cabin to settle on their route. Tway was uncharacteristically moody. Before anyone else had a chance to speak she said, “I think we should circle round and go back. We’ve left three friends stranded in Tornabay with a pack of vengeful Innings on their heels.”
Nathaway stirred restlessly, and she turned on him. “Well, it’s true.”
“If they’re in custody already, there is nothing we can do,” he said.
“We still have you to dicker with,” she said darkly, making Spaeth clutch his arm possessively.
Torr interrupted, “We don’t know the Innings have them, or even if they’re still in Tornabay. They could all be leagues away by now, heading for the South Chain, and we’d only get ourselves captured going back for them. Harg wouldn’t thank us for that. I say we should head to Harbourdown to rendezvous. That’s where they’ll go.”
Glancing at Spaeth, Nathaway said cautiously, “I’ve got another idea.”
They all looked at him, silent with surprise. He went on, “I’ve been asking myself what we could do that would be really effective. I think we should go to Fluminos.”
For a few moments there was silence. Then Tway said, “The Inning capital? What good would that do?”
“It might do a lot of good,” Nathaway said. “What’s happening here in the Forsaken Islands isn’t being controlled from Tornabay. The Navy obeys orders from Fluminos. That’s where the occupation is being planned, and where we need to go to stop it. You have to understand how our system works; it’s all in the laws and courts. What we need to do is bring suit in the High Court to challenge the occupation.”
Spaeth tried to imagine entering another city. The very thought made her mind revolt. No Lashnura was made for it. They were too vulnerable.
Tway was scowling suspiciously at the Inning. “Why are you thinking of ways to stop the occupation?” she asked.
For a moment Nathaway looked flustered. He suddenly discovered something interesting in his hands, to avoid meeting any of their eyes. “I . . . I’ve come to think it’s being handled wrong. We’re violating our own principles, subverting our own system. We need to pull back, not just for your sake, but for our own. Otherwise, nothing we do here will be really just.”
He was admitting he had been wrong. Feeling as doting as if she had created him, Spaeth squeezed his hand. “How many people live in Fluminos?” she asked softly.
“Tens of thousands,” he said. “Maybe hundreds, I don’t know.”
“And how many dhotamars do they have?”
“None.”
All those people with no one to love or cure them, lashing out in their pain. The very land would ache under them. No wonder they came here to escape. “I couldn’t go there,” she said faintly. “I couldn’t cure them all.”
He was looking at her anxiously. “No one would want you to. You might even like it, Spaeth. I would make sure you were treated well. You could meet my family. You would like my sister.”
“I would die,” she said.
There was a silence. They could hear the wind outside. Cory, the sailor on watch, was playing his tin whistle out on deck. It made a plaintive, reedy sound. Spaeth shook her head to clear it of thoughts. All of this talk was useless. Nathaway knew as well as she did where they had to go. “Anyway, we must go to Lashnish,” she said.
Tway and Torr had heard nothing of this, and they looked as if she were raving. “It’s a hundred years since Lashnish was capital of the Isles,” Tway said. “Why go there?”
“Because Goth told us to. I don’t know why.” She looked at Nathaway for corroboration. “He said to go to Lashnish, and find the Isonstone.” She looked around at the others. Their faces were lit at odd angles by the lantern that swayed from one of the beams, and the glow from the small cast-iron stove.
“He said that?” Tway asked intently. “To find the Isonstone?”
“Yes.”
“Why? What does it mean?” Nathaway interrupted.
There was a short silence. Then, in a low voice, Tway said, “When the Isles are in danger, and the balances need to be set right again, a great leader will arise. He or she must go to Lashnish and strike the Isonstone as a public pledge. If the candidate is fit, then the Heir of Gilgen will answer the summons before the next full moon. There, in sight of all, the Heir of Gilgen performs dhota-nur. The candidate’s body and mind are both stripped clean before the people he would lead, so that they can see his soul. An Ison must be freed of all pain, so that nothing controls him.”
“That’s barbarous,” Nathaway said.
“It is our custom,” Tway said, “and the only way there can be an Ison.” She turned to Spaeth, who shrank back before the stern look in her eyes. “If Goth told you to find the Isonstone, he must have intended to send you in his stead, knowing he could not answer the summons himself. He was passing on his power, and his responsibility as Heir of Gilgen.”
“To me?” Spaeth said, quaking.
“You are the closest thing he has to a daughter.”
Nathaway caught her hand and held it protectively.
She wanted to escape, to flee, even to Fluminos if that was what it took. What good had it done her to escape the traps of Tornabay, and the grim compulsion of the Black Mask, only to be forced into another sort of slavery? If what Tway said was true, then Spaeth was not free, as she had thought. Somewhere out there was the bandhota she would still be given to. The balances themselves would link her forever to the Ison they chose. Her freedom was like an autumn day, doomed by the imminence of winter. This might be the last choice she would ever make.
She looked at Nathaway, wanting him to take this duty away from her, and knowing he would do it if he could. But that was impossible; both of them were caught in a shadowy current they could not resist.
*
That night, Spaeth was wakened by the feeling that something was wrong with Nathaway. When she reached out for him, he wasn’t beside her in the berth. The boat was moving with a strange, arrhythm
ic pitching. She sat up, and in the light filtering under the door to the main cabin, dimly made out the glimmer of his pale body, hunched over a pail. He looked marvellously ill.
“It’s nothing,” he managed to say when she touched him. “Go back to sleep.”
But she couldn’t lie there with his seasickness permeating her consciousness, so she pulled on some clothes and left to get away. It made her impatient that such a trivial ailment in him could have such a hold on her.
The lantern in the main cabin was swinging at a crazy angle. Tway sat beside the stove, mending a sail. Spaeth went over to warm her hands; the cracks around the stove door gave off a dull yellow glow.
“Where are we?” Spaeth asked.
Tway bit off the end of a thread. “We came out of the lee of Fosk half an hour ago,” she said. “The wind’s been picking up since then. Torr says it’s going to be a regular nor’easter.”
Heavy footsteps sounded on the deck above, and the hatch was jerked open. A black roar of wind and spray came in as Torr lowered himself into the relative quiet of the hold.
“We need some help above,” he said. Tway rose at once, but Spaeth put a hand on her arm. “Let me go,” she said. “I need some fresh air.”
“Well, that we can give you,” Torr said.
When she emerged onto the open deck, a lashing of cold spray met her. She groped for a handhold in the wind; the canvas smock she had put on pressed against her like a sail. Slowly she made her way back along the lantern-lit deck to the cockpit, where Torr stood at the helm. His eyes were scanning the black sea warily. “We’re going to have to take a second reef in the mainsail if you can handle the tiller,” he said.
“This is a nasty storm,” she said. She meant it literally; it had a malicious mood.
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