Invardii Series Boxset

by Warwick Gibson

  The devastation had begun among the trees at the seaward end of the tree island, but then the whirling funnel had veered out and followed the Kapuas river, until halfway up the docks the vortex had cut back into the trees again. It carried on, at an angle, through the upper corner of Shellport.

  The community house had been spared, and Hudnee and his family were quickly moved there, along with other casualties as rescue parties widened their search. Though the rescuers searched thoroughly for her, there was no sign of Menona.

  The long sleeping platform inside the community house was being used as a recovery centre by Habna and a woman she was training in her medicine ways. Once Hudnee saw his family had been treated and settled, he drifted into a fitful sleep beside them. He was exhausted, but he was also charged with adrenaline from his desperate scramble to reach the others, and it was difficult to sleep.

  It didn’t help that the dream he had forgotten in the recent urgency of events, the strange, half-conscious, oddly lucid dream, kept returning to him. Then a light touch on his shoulder brought Hudnee wide awake.

  “You been a-twitchin’ and a-turnin’ since you lay down,” said Habna quietly. “Now everyone is treated, as best I know how, I thought you might like something to help you sleep.”

  “No, no. I’m not sleepy,” said Hudnee, motioning away the bowl of greenish liquid she held out to him.

  The two of them talked about the cut on Kanuk’s face for a while, and then he asked about Menona. It turned out she had not yet been found. Menon was still out in a dooplehuel, following the Kapuas out to sea and searching for his wife in the gathering darkness.

  Then Hudnee thought about the dream again. Medicine women did dream quests didn’t they? She should know about strange dreams like the one that had visited him.

  He looked at her, at the lines of age and experience on her face, and sensed the underlying calmness that comes from someone at peace with themselves.

  Habna watched him with a small, encouraging smile. She could see him making up his mind. He was going to tell her something that was troubling him. He was going to trust her with it, and that was a good start.

  “I had a dream,” he said at last, “but it seemed so real, and I couldn’t move my body, and there was a mountain, except it wasn’t a mountain, because there couldn’t be anything that high in Hud, and then . . .”

  Habna held up a hand, stopping the flow of words.

  “Let’s start at the beginning, shall we, and take our time. The details can be more important than the big things in a dream, and I want to ask you some questions as you go along. I find that people only remember what their mind thinks is important, but there are many other messages in a dream as well.”

  Hudnee made an effort to calm himself down, and then he told her all about his dream. At least, as much of it as he could remember. She asked him questions when something stirred her curiosity, and that helped more of the dream to come back.

  Then he told her how strange it had seemed, as if all his memories of it had an impersonal quality, as if he were hearing a tale told about someone else. She seemed to think that was very important.

  “What do you think it means?” he asked cautiously, wondering if it meant he was going mad, or it was a punishment from the gods for something he didn’t remember doing.

  Habna looked at him. She sighed. The things that truly motivated people came from deep inside, much deeper within themselves than they normally wanted to go. Sometimes they went so deep that the person went through a ‘gate’ between the inner and outer worlds, and that created a disturbance of energies in the physical world.

  It was always hard to explain this, especially to someone as practical, and focused on solving problems, as Hudnee. She wasn’t going to be able to lead up to her answer gradually. Hudnee had no previous knowledge to hang this off. He was going to have to wrestle with an entirely new way of looking at things.

  “I think it’s a race memory,” she stated bluntly. It had been a long day and it was turning into a tiring night, and she didn’t have time to gently enlarge the definition of what ‘reality’ was in Hudnee’s mind. She would have to trust him to keep up with her explanation.

  “A what?” said Hudnee in surprise, sitting up until a sudden dizziness forced him to lie back down again. “We have a race memory?”

  He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the pain ease and giving him a chance to think about her words. Then he came back with a slightly different question.

  “There are no men in metal plates in the history of Hud, at least that I’m aware of, and there are no people with such a pale face, with or without red markings, in any of the known lands. How can it be a race memory?”

  She wasn’t sure about this next bit herself, but he had asked, so she would give him her best answer.

  “I didn’t say it was your race memory,” she said gently.

  Hudnee’s eyes opened very wide indeed, and he went to sit up again until he remembered how much it had hurt him to try doing that last time.

  “And it doesn’t mean the people you saw in your dream wear metal armour today. The dream was about images. The enormous hill you saw, the metal plates, the long dagger, the act of falling into the mist below. And these are images that have been taken out of race memory, someone’s race memory, to send you a message.

  Hudnee was now well and truly lost. He thought for a moment of just giving up on what the dream might mean. Maybe it was enough that Habna seemed to understand it, but he knew he would come back to his dream, like an animal with a carcass hidden in the scrub. Daneesa had commented on the stubbornness in his make-up often enough.

  CHAPTER 11

  ________________

  “Er, I guess,” said Hudnee, trying to get his mental bearings. He laid his head back on the bundle of rags that supported it. What had Habna been going on about? Something about a race memory, whatever that was. And why was he suddenly seeing them in his dreams?

  “What makes you think there could be another race of people on Hud, a race of people with a pale brown skin. Surely we would have discovered them by now?”

  Habna tried to be patient with him, but she was already very tired.

  “Where did the clouds and the rains of the last two quadroons of days come from, Hudnee?” she asked.

  When he thought about it, he realised it had been only half that time, four of the ten-day prayer and service cycles of the Descendants, since they’d left their home village to try their luck with the Sea People.

  “Er, the Descendants say it is the God of the Prophet testing us,” he answered hesitantly.

  “Do you believe what the Descendants tell you?”

  He looked uncomfortable. “No, no. Not really. I worked for them, but I didn’t attend their ceremonies unless I had to.”

  Or rather I used to work for them, he thought. How everything had been turned upside down. He turned his mind back to what she was saying.

  “Does this mean there are no gods?” he said at last.

  “No, it doesn’t mean that,” she answered. “But I think it’s wisest to see the Godhead as being in here,” she said, and tapped his head, followed by his heart.

  “And sometimes, when it’s really important, and we need an answer badly enough, it’s out there,” she said, and waved a hand vaguely at the universe in general.

  Before Hudnee could get sidetracked into some sort of spiritual speculation, she brought him back to the point.

  “So,” she said slowly, labouring the words, “where did the clouds and the rains come from?”

  He started to say something, but then closed his mouth.

  “The Descendants said before this all began that there are other planets out there, and one of them lost its moon,” said Habna, encouraging him to think about it.

  Hudnee nodded slowly. “I remember that. I saw stars in the sky back then too, in the daytime, which was so strange,” he added.

  “So what does that mean, Hudnee?” she prompted a
gain.

  He didn’t have the ghost of an ides to offer her. Habna grew impatient.

  “It means men and women like us, travelling in ships between the planets, in the same way we sail around Hud and travel to the islands,” she said abruptly. Hudnee stared blankly.

  “People with greater power and skills than we can imagine,” she continued, “and some of them, one race different to the others perhaps, did something to our planet. Something that caused the clouds and the rain, and the devastation here on Hud. The same things that caused the wind funnels we’ve been getting here at Shellport.”

  She thought about his dream for a moment, and how she would tie this information in to it.

  “You saw the face of one of the peoples that travel between the stars, and if your dream is any indication, I think that particular race of people is here to help us.”

  She decided that was a good end point. She stood stiffly, and stretched, and prepared to leave. “Get some sleep,” she urged, and walked away down the long community hall.

  “You mean there’s more than one race that travels between the stars?” Hudnee called quietly after her, not wanting to wake the injured people who were now sleeping around him.

  When she continued on her way, without answering, he lay back and looked up at the pole and hide roof. His mind was struggling to grasp what she had said. It wasn’t until much later that he dropped off into a fitful sleep.

  In the days that followed, the question of whether Shellport should admit refugees from the inland areas of Hud, including Hudnee and his family, became more pressing. There had been empty houses in the village after some of the villagers had sailed south, looking for some part of Hud that had not been affected by the change in climate. But the wind funnel had now destroyed too many houses, and too many dooplehuel, for the people that remained.

  There was nowhere to house the newcomers now, some fifteen in number, without some of the Shellport families doubling up. There were also not enough watercraft to fish the fertile offshore banks and feed the village. That meant there was a mountain of work ahead for everybody, felling some of the sea forest trees and working them into planks, so the builders could repair houses and make more dooplehuel.

  These were the issues uppermost in every mind as the village gathered in the community house four days later. It was going to be a tumultuous meeting.

  “I will na have ma children starve for some useless mainlander wa can na fish or mend lines!” declared a stout villager with a bushy beard. He was sitting on a bench against the far wall of the community house. There was a lanky youth beside him, and three small children fidgeting and poking each other at his feet.

  “You all know it’s our way to save those in need,” said Grisanton, rising to his feet. “Are we going to abandon our sailors’ tradition because it is now ‘inconvenient’?”

  It was a mark of the respect the old builder commanded that the villagers did not immediately launch into another round of heated argument.

  Grisanton continued. “We saved this man, and his father, from a shipwreck when he was a lad,” he said, pointing to Hudnee. “So our fathers risked their lives for him back then. Would you have the legacy of their courage and goodness thrown away today?”

  “He can take his chances at Spitsbergen!” shouted a voice from the back, referring to an island ringed with cliffs on the edge of the swamps south of Shellport.

  “There’s na to eat there, same as everware else!” snapped a formidable woman sitting close to Hudnee. Those who supported the refugee cause had tended to sit close by. Menon sat on Hudnee’s left, a grim apparition who spoke little these days. Despite his vigilance scouring the coast, the chances of finding Menona alive had dwindled to nothing. Hudnee felt for the man. Menon had already done so much for him and his family.

  However, the desperation of those who were facing the starvation of their families began to carry the day. Even the calm voice of Habna, telling them they could get by on half rations while new boats were built, and there was room for one refugee in each of the larger houses, did no more than stem the tide for a while.

  Hudnee looked at Daneesa. She was pale, and still quite weak, from her ordeal. Habna had bound her ribs tightly, to help the broken ones heal, so she was only able to take small breaths. Daneesa began to look more and more dismayed as it looked like all their efforts to reach the Sea People had been in vain. The look on her face tore at Hudnee’s heart.

  His mind was working overtime. Ever since the day he’d spent with Grisanton and his building team, he had been wondering how the villagers might build their houses in a more permanent material. The trouble was there was no stone around Shellport to work with, and he had no experience of working with foundations that would be under water anyway.

  But he needed a plan, something to convince these people that the village had a future to look forward to. He needed a way of building that would convince them they didn’t have to conserve resources and turn away extra mouths. Then he remembered something from his youth, from the way they built in stone on the islands to the west. What was it now?

  Then it was time for the meeting to vote on the future of the refugees. If Hudnee was going to have his say, it had to be now. He stood up and planted his feet firmly before the assembly. He was noticeably broader and stronger than most of those present.

  “I have an idea,” he said, “and I want you to give me the time to explain it to you.”

  There was some grumbling from the assembly of villagers. For many of them the meeting had gone on for too long already. They wanted to vote, and get back to the mountain of work they needed to do around Shellport. Grisanton and Habna stood, in support of Hudnee, and the grumbling died away. After a while they sat down again, but their presence had only bought Hudnee a little more time.

  “Some of you know I was a builder when I lived among the mainlanders,” he said. “I built in stone, and I built big. There’s no problem in stone I haven’t encountered and overcome.”

  There was a respectful silence, but they stirred restlessly – what did this have to do with Shellport?

  “You can build in stone here!” he declared, and looked around, challenging them to disagree with him. There was a muted roar of comments, and a few jeers. Hudnee stamped his foot hard on the wooden floor, and silence slowly returned.

  “In the islands they burn a certain type of rock to a white powder,” he said, “and they build walls out of it by adding gravel and water. It’s a permanent building material, and it lasts many generations.

  “How long does a wooden house last here? Grisanton tells me you only get one generation of children out of a house before much of it has rotted through and needs replacing. If you build with a permanent material, you won’t have so much of your workforce tied up building new houses.”

  This made them think.

  “We don’t have any white rock here,” called out a voice. “That’s the problem, we don’t have any rocks along the coast here at all.”

  “But you do!” said Hudnee triumphantly. “You have banks of shells, and if you burn shells, you can do the same thing with the white powder that’s left.”

  There was an excited buzz from the assembly.

  “But we’ve na got gravel to mix wi it,” called out the stout villager who had not wanted the refugees to take food away from his children.

  “You can use unburnt shells for that,” replied Hudnee, “though it is a softer material. You can also bring some sort of gravel from Spitsbergen, if you make a bigger sea craft to haul it with.”

  There was a thoughtful silence.

  Now to tie it all up. Hudnee knew he almost had them. It was similar in a way to the inspirational talks he used to give his workers when he was building pilars for the Descendants. Above all, people needed to feel useful, and they needed to believe in something.

  “Use the planks from the houses that have been damaged to make more dooplehuel, and to make boxes to hold the foundations of the new buildin
gs. That will be much quicker than felling more sea forest trees and working them into planks. When the number of dooplehuel is back to normal, there will be plenty of food from fishing, hunting and collecting shellfish.”

  That went down well. They were warming to the idea.

  “Where will we live in the meantime?” called out a woman whose family had survived the spinning tubes but had their house destroyed.

  “In the community house,” said Hudnee, “or with your neighbours if there’s room.”

  He looked around at his audience. The refugees were the ones nodding most vigorously in support of Hudnee’s plan. For them the community house was far preferable to being abandoned down the coast on an island.

  The refugees were a motley crew. Mostly young men, and a few tough-looking women, who had made it down the rivers and been picked up by the Sea People. Only one family had made it, apart from Hudnee’s, and they had lost two of their four children in the process.

  But they were all survivors, and they would know how to work hard. Hudnee was sure he could fashion a credible working gang out of this rough material, even if they were not the burly labourers he would normally have on his building sites.

  “Hear me out!” he called over the growing hubbub. “The refugees will work for me. I will teach them how to build in stone, and they will work from dawn to dusk to build you new houses. Houses that will never need replacing!”

  He surveyed the villagers with a commanding gaze, and the noise died away.

  “You can cut your losses and live in a smaller village with a hard life as you try to rebuild what you had, or you can expand your workforce and build something new and better. What will it be – backward or forward!” he boomed, and sat down.