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, arrhythmic 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.
Torr shrugged. “It’s a treacherous part of the Widewater, here.”
“How far are we from the end of Esker?”
Torr gestured into the blackness. “You tell me.”
As the skipper went forward, leaving her alone in the cockpit, Spaeth wondered if they had just escaped the firesnakes of Embo to fall prey to the horned panther. It was Ridwit who ruled the storms, or so the stories said. Would an old friendship have any weight against the wrath of a betrayed god? Spaeth clutched the tiller hard.
Keeping the boat on course proved to be hard work, for the waves and wind were tugging hard. One moment Spaeth would brace herself against the cockpit wall and push with all her strength to keep the tiller straight; the next, the trickster waves would loosen their grip or fling the rudder the opposite way. In the dim lantern light she could see that Torr and the sailors had made their way forward to where the mainsail strained, the boom nearly skid
ding in the foam to the lee of the leaning boat. Torr waved back at Spaeth. She heaved the tiller over, and the Ripplewill veered into the wind. As soon as the sail began to flap loose, Cory lowered the halyard; Torr strained to pull in the swollen, slippery main sheet and bring the boom back over the boat. The sail cracked like a whip in the wind.
It should have been a routine task; they had all done it a thousand times. But just as Galber was leaning out to catch hold of the sail, Spaeth felt the impact of an invisible wave against the hull, and the tiller was wrenched from her hands. The mainsail puffed out with wind; the boom swung violently to starboard, knocking Galber sprawling on the narrow deck. The Ripplewill rolled madly and Galber slipped to the edge. Torr lunged after him, one hand still on the main sheet. Then a wave broke clear over the bow and came rushing aft, a furious river of foam. It picked up Torr and Galber like sticks of driftwood and threw them against the low gunwale rail. Spaeth cried out, expecting to see them washed over into the churning sea the next moment. Then a sheet of spray doused the mid-ship lantern and plunged the scene into darkness.
There was nothing she could do. She could not leave the tiller; Ripplewill’s nose had to be kept into the shifting wind. Cursing, she leaned into her task. A gust threw back her canvas hood. Alert for its mood and strategy, she realized the wind’s treachery with the sail had been no accident. Something out there had found them.
A solid shape lurched into the light of the cockpit lantern. It was Torr, supporting Galber. He lowered the seaman onto the floor of the cockpit, looped a rope around his waist, and secured it to a cleat. He turned briefly to Spaeth, thumping her on the back and roaring, “You’re doing well,” then disappeared forward again.
She realized at once that Galber was badly hurt. At first he smiled back bravely at her, as if to say the sea would have to try harder to get him. But gradually the colour left his face. His lips turned grey, and he began to tremble.
Spaeth’s instincts were screaming. She fought to keep her thoughts from bending toward him, attracted by the magnetism of his pain. Grimly she gripped the tiller; if she took her hand from it, she would put all their lives in jeopardy. Concentrate on the wind, she repeated. Keep the bow into the wind. Don’t look at him. Don’t think about him.
Her self-control was frayed to a thread when Cory appeared, coming aft. He called, “Bear off to larboard, as close to the wind as you can!”
“Cory!” she screamed. Hearing the agony in her voice, he came closer. “Galber’s hurt.”
Cory glanced at Galber. “Hold on, I’ll get help,” he said, then disappeared again.
Spaeth nearly screamed in frustration. Galber was fading now, chilled and in shock. Vividly she could feel his mind still fluttering with life, his pain like a sweet bath she could drown in.
Someone was taking the tiller from her hand. She lunged toward Galber, blind now to all but his need.
Tway pulled her back. “We’ve got to get him below!” she said.
Yes. Spaeth summoned a vestige of control. Galber groaned as Cory and Tway helped him up. It sent a stab of aching pity through her. “It’s his shoulder! Be careful of it,” she said. They manoeuvred him precariously forward to the main hatch, down the ladder, and at last onto the berth by the stove.
Instantly Spaeth was at his side. “Get me a knife!” she ordered.
Tway’s hand on her arm was firm. “Spaeth, no!” she said. “You can’t give him dhota.”
She was right, of course. Spaeth swallowed back a wild, wordless cry of frustration. If she cured him, she would be bound to him forever, imprisoned in a blissful cage of love. His injury had all the marks of a scheme to turn her from her goal, to divert her so she would never reach Lashnish. She had to be cruel now, and leave him to his suffering. She backed away, the compulsion sharp and piercing in her.
Nathaway was bending over Galber. “You say it’s his shoulder?” he asked.
“Yes, the right side,” Spaeth said.
“Get me a knife,” he said.
They all stared at him, motionless. “To cut away his shirt, damn it!” he said.
Cory handed him a knife. Spaeth groaned at sight of it.
“Get her out of here,” Nathaway said sharply. “I can take care of this.”
Tway pushed her up the companion ladder, out into the wind.
The slap of cold against her face was calming. With Tway behind, she made her way aft to the cockpit, where Torr stood at the helm. He eyed them curiously. Gradually, as the sharpness of Galber’s suffering faded, Spaeth began to realize how close she had come to giving in. And then there could have been no Ison for the Isles.
That had been the purpose, of course. Spaeth stared out into the blackness where the Mundua dwelt. They had thought she was their tool, but now she had slipped in their hands, and was threatening to cut them.
Spaeth looked at Tway through the rain. “They are trying to stop me,” she said.
Tway bent close, frowning. “Who?”
“The Mundua. They don’t want me to reach Lashnish.”
“Then why hurt Galber?”
“To lure me into giving dhota. They’re cruel, Tway; they don’t care who they hurt, or how badly. You’re all in danger.”
Ripplewill had steadied under Torr’s hand. She was not so far heeled over now, and met the waves head on instead of floundering at their mercy. But the wind was still building, and in the dim light of the stern lantern Spaeth could see whitecaps peppering the sea. Between the patches of foam and spindrift the black water had an ominous, polished look, like metal.
When Cory returned from the cabin, he brought a flask of hot nog to warm them all. But there was chilling news. “The Inning says Galber’s got a broken collarbone,” he said.
“Then we’ve all got to pitch in,” Torr said, his voice as flat as his understatement.
Cory had brought rope for lifelines. Each of them tied a length around their waist and made the other end fast to a cleat with about ten feet of slack to allow them to move about. Then they settled down to wait.
The cold water seeped into their boots, and the taste of salt crusted the insides of their mouths. In the lulls of wind Spaeth could hear Torr talking softly to his boat. “That’s it, Ripplewill, into the wave; no, don’t jerk that way; it’ll swamp you for sure. That’s it—stop heeling—there. Brave girl!”
Spaeth rose to stand beside the skipper, hugging herself for warmth. “Can’t we turn south and search for a harbour?”
Torr reached under his rain gear and took out a gold Inning watch. He held it in the binnacle to keep the rain off. “An hour past midnight,” he said. “I expect we can.”
Some spray hit Spaeth’s body like a handful of pebbles flung hard. She would feel bruised in the morning, she thought. It seemed eons away.
Cory spoke up. “I think we should stop fighting the storm.”
“What do you mean?” Spaeth said.
“Take down the sails and lie ahull. There’s nothing downwind of us now but the Widewater, unless we’re blown all the way across to the Outer Chain. Open sea’s our safest course. We can just hold tight till the Panther’s tired herself out.”
He didn’t know Ridwit. Spaeth felt a gnawing unease at thought of surrendering, letting the wind blow them far from the sheltering isles, where humanity’s only anchor lay, into the open wastes. But Torr finally said, “You’re right. An island coast is more danger to us now than the sea.”
So that decided it. Again Spaeth took the tiller, and the others went forward to strike the mainsail, with Tway taking Galber’s place. In order to maintain some control over the craft, Torr had them set a close-reefed mizzen and a tiny forestaysail. Even with these small rags of sail, the Ripplewill picked up an alarming speed as she began to run before the wind.
The waves grew with every mile they made into the Widewat
er. The sea was no longer the familiar plain of day; they had entered a rugged, unknown countryside. Climbing each wave, the Ripplewill would slow down; but when she crested the hill of water and the wind caught her, she plunged forward with sickening impetuosity, down the gaping valley, the entire hull shivering with speed. Torr struggled to steer diagonally down the slopes to prevent the boat’s speed from burying the bow in the next wave. The crew all peered into the night, keeping watch for rogue waves that might catch the boat abeam and flip her over sideways. Once, they shot up over a crest with more than usual speed; when the wave fell out from underneath, Ripplewill plummeted through air before striking the surface again with a jolt that made the bulkheads groan.
“If we’re not leaking now,” Torr said through his teeth, “then this little lady is built better than I knew.” Cory went below to check.
To Spaeth, the entire world seemed animate with anger. A cold anger this time, not the flaming rage of Embo. She could feel it in the black, muscled hills of water around her, in the wind that whipped the spume from their crests. The Ripplewill seemed tiny as a chip of wood.
She looked at Torr standing at the helm, his eyebrows bristling with droplets. “Torr, have you ridden out a storm like this before?”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “We can make it, as long as we only have wind and sea to outwit.”
“What else is there?”
For a while he didn’t answer. At last he said, “Pariah storms, my uncle used to call them. When the chains on the Mundua and Ashwin start slipping, the winds that blow can make the circles themselves flap like a rotten sail. He always said it was such a storm that ended Alta, long ago, when the wind tore a great rip in reality. He thought a pariah storm would end the Isles, some day. Gloomy fellow, he was.”
Like a trickle of chill water down her back, the thought came to Spaeth: Goth’s hand was slipping. It had been for months. Something had gone terribly wrong.
Ison of the Isles Page 2