by Tim Lebbon
Behind them, several miles out to sea, was an island.
She remembered one of those myths, then. Before she died, her grandmother used to whisper the story to her before putting her to bed, drawing vague violet shapes in the air with sparks and shadows. The Violet Dogs came ashore like a wave of disease, more than willing to spill their noxious living-dead blood because they knew it would do them no harm. They fought through the first lines of defenses thrown up by the tribes that lived on Noreela way back then… strange, small, weak people who did not yet know the land and had no inkling of the magic it could give them. The Violet Dogs ate the dead and living alike, strengthening their bridgehead, though in truth none was required, because they were already the masters of that place. The Sleeping Gods did not stir, the Nax were not yet known in their underground fledge seams, and other creatures of Noreela were not even whispers in a sleeping child’s ear. So the people were alone in their vain defense of the land.
But though she had often gone to sleep with such stories in her mind, Namior was a young witch, with a kindly heart and a soul filled with hope and confidence for the future. Even as a child she had known those tales for what they were—stories, passed from grandparent and parent to child and remembered down through the years. If the Violet Dogs had been so powerful, brutal and unbeatable, she reasoned, where were they now?
So she watched the masts bobbing closer to Noreela, as the strange island behind them was touched by dawn and painted green and lush with vegetation. And though she was fearful of something new, she could not help but feel a childlike optimism as well.
“I should get home!” she said. “Commune with the land, see what’s there.”
“We have to go,” Kel said.
“Go where?”
“Away from here.” He sounded different, and his face was drawn, eyes wide and fearful.
“Kel, just because we don’t know—”
“I do know, Namior.” He looked out to sea again and grabbed her arms, pulling her down as he jumped from the wall. “Just look what they’ve done already!” He pointed down toward the harbor, then closer at the bodies lined carefully across the Temple yard.
“Maybe they didn’t mean—”
“How can you even think otherwise?” He stepped back from her slightly, raising his voice, scaring her. This was a Kel she had never seen before. She was confused, but she thought herself better than this. Can we instantly fear them? Every bone in her body, every fiber of her that had ever communed with the land and shared a touch of its magic, said no.
“So let’s march down there and kill them as they come ashore,” she said.
“It’ll never be that easy.” Kel’s eyes narrowed, hands fisting at his sides. He looked across the river of devastation at Drakeman’s Hill, as though seeking his own home.
“Caution, yes,” Namior said. “I’ll agree to that. But this is something new, Kel. This could be a new tale in Noreela’s history, a whole new beginning!”
“Or an ending.” He looked at her so intently for a few beats that she thought he was going to strike out, and she flinched back against the wall. His eyes softened, and he took her in his embrace. “I’m not all you think I am.”
“I was just starting to realize that.”
He guided her away from the other people still atop the wall. He was looking around, guilty, suspicious, and she did not like this new Kel. Not one bit. He had always been a man with history, and that had excited her. Now, it suddenly scared her as well.
He spoke softly. “I used to be part of an organization called the Core. A secret group, only hundreds of us.” He sighed and looked away. “They’d kill me even for telling you. They’d kill you for knowing.”
“Kel?” She did not understand a word of this. Each utterance made him stranger to her.
“We tracked and killed Strangers from beyond Noreela. Spies. Intruders. We think they were planning an invasion, and it has been our duty for generations to—”
Namior pushed him away. “You’re a wood-carver.”
“Here, yes. But not beyond here. Even the duke doesn’t know about us. Before I came to Pavmouth Breaks, I’d been on a job in—”
“Kel!” she shouted, drawing the attention of several people hurrying from the Temple. News of the amazing new turn of events was spreading fast.
Kel held up his hands, but every effort he made to subdue her angered Namior more.
“I’m going home to the groundstone,” she said, softly. “If there’s any threat, magic will let us know.”
“Like it let your mother and great-grandmother know about the waves?”
She pressed her lips together and stared at him, never relinquishing eye contact for a beat. “I’d like you to come with me.” She saw her Kel, the man she loved—the gentle man who had come to Pavmouth Breaks and settled into a quiet, humble trade selling his extraordinary carvings. And she saw Kel Boon, that stranger who had come into her village, now a stranger once more. There was something in his eyes she had never seen before. Namior blinked once, slowly, reaching back and touching the wall rooted in the land, and felt the tingle of wider perception.
Kel’s eyes held fear, but the fear was mostly of himself.
“What have you done?” she asked softly.
“What?” He spoke sharply, glancing down at her hand where it still touched the wall. “You do that, to me?”
Namior moved forward and reached for him, but Kel stepped back, fear turning to anger. “Come with me, please,” she said.
“I’ll take you,” he said. “You come with me. I’ll get you out. We have to leave! We have no idea what’s happening, and I have to get away.”
“Why?”
“To tell the Core.” Kel glanced down at his feet as if that was a painful idea. He spoke again, a whisper this time, as though speaking only to himself. “They have to know.”
“You know where I’ll be,” Namior said. And she turned away from Kel Boon, left the Moon Temple grounds and ran along the streets toward her home. With every step she hoped to hear him coming after her, but she suspected that he was already going in the opposite direction, and probably hoping the same.
From the mouth of the path leading up to her home she could look out over the sea and watch the boats sailing ever closer. The mysterious island behind them was like an itch in her eye, so out of place and yet so obvious. Around her, other people stood and stared, some of them fearful, others fascinated.
She hoped she had made the right choice.
FROM THE MOMENT he had left the Core five years before, Kel had been trying to shake it from his bones, his guts, his heart. He had never succeeded. Even after what had happened with O’Peeria, he was Core through and through. Fleeing from the Core had been fleeing from himself, and it was not until he hit the western shores of Noreela that geography had forced him to stop. Inside, he had kept running, changing himself totally in the hope of erasing his old life and creating something new. The wood carving took a very particular and concentrated talent, and sometimes he went a whole afternoon without remembering the best ribs between which to slip a knife when stabbing a Stranger from behind, the feel of breath on his hand as he broke someone’s neck, or how to sleep at night knowing all the things he had done.
Sometimes, that was the hardest. Sleeping. As night fell and only the sea broke the silence, so the voices grew louder.
To begin with, he thought Namior would come after him. She was proud and strong and dedicated to her family, and she would persuade them to come along and flee with him. So he went slowly, passing the bodies in the Moon Temple gardens as he headed down toward the expanded river. Few people spared him a glance; whether they went down to the river, or back up into the village’s heights, most only had eyes for the sea and what it had brought in that morning.
But the more he remembered Namior’s eyes, the more he realized she had already silently vowed to stay. If only I could persuade her, he thought. If only I’d been more honest with her. But the
more time that had passed without his telling her about his history, the more difficult that prospect had become.
Perhaps there was still time. Up to his place on Drakeman’s Hill, get the stuff he needed, back down to Namior’s home …
Perhaps.
He jumped a wall and skidded down a steep garden of flowering fruits, releasing a wonderfully sweet aroma to the air. It was soon swept away by the breeze, replaced once again by the stink of mud and sea. He burst through a gate onto a path that had been chopped in half.
He skidded to a halt just in time. Another step and he would have tumbled headlong into the wet mud, probably sinking there, and slowly drowning.
Fucking idiot! O’Peeria’s voice said, and Kel grinned. He was hardly surprised that she chose now to come to the forefront of his memory.
To his right lay the stone bridge, middle span washed out and detritus piled high against its upstream side. In the dawn’s light, he saw the dark shapes of uprooted trees, and in their branches the pale fruit of dead, naked bodies. Past the bridge, beyond the ruined harbor, he could see the masts of the visitors’ boats bobbing closer. On the horizon, the island cast an unnatural shadow against the sky.
Kel looked across the river of water and mud at the slopes of Drakeman’s Hill. He had to get up there. He needed his weapon roll, hidden for so long beneath the floorboards in his rooms, and the other things he had hidden there as well. The magic things. He needed them most of all.
I could just go, he thought. If he ran fast enough, and far enough, maybe he could get beyond the Strangers’ reach before they landed. That’s what the Core had always called them: Strangers. No one had ever discovered their true name, and none of the Strangers, when interrogated, gave up such information. So “Stranger” was all-encompassing, and it also conveyed everything about them that needed to be said. They were not of Noreela.
Kel felt the press and pressure of responsibility. Noreela was alone, and almost everyone living there considered their vast island to be the whole world. He and a few others knew differently. And that shattering knowledge was the reason that one in four Core agents killed themselves before the age of forty.
Instead of suicide, he could run.
But if he ran now, giving no thought to direction or intention, then he would be doing Noreela a greater disservice than ever before. He was sure that if the Core had managed to track him down, they would have killed him without thought. Yet this event was far greater than just him.
Invasion, he thought, and it was terrifying. Strangers had only ever come in ones and twos, tracked and caught for interrogation by the Core, or killed if they could not be caught. And the majority of Core members considered such covert visits as reconnaissance for a full invasion.
A man ran past him along the path, heading away from the harbor. “They’re coming!” he shouted. “Ships! Things!”
Kel watched him go. And as he glanced back upriver, he saw three small boats crossing the fast-moving waters, their occupants pulling on a long rope that had been strung somehow from one side to the other.
He ran, careful to keep away from the ragged edge where the path had been undermined and scoured away by the flood. Clumps of seaweed and a few dead fish were scattered here and there, and piled on top of a tall garden wall he saw a mass of clawed things, snatching at the air as though they could see things he could not.
Namior pulled at him. He slowed, then ran on again.
When he drew level with the boats he waited, reaching down for the man and two women in the first boat, helping them climb from the soaking mud up onto the solid bank. They thanked him, distracted, and one of the women ran back toward the harbor. The man and other woman sank down onto the cobbles, the man crying and calling a name over and over again.
Kel jumped down into the boat and snatched up the thick punt clamped along its side. He could wait for the other two to finish pulling themselves across, but one was still only halfway, and the man seemed to be flagging. Or he could cast off from the rope, push his boat across the mud level with the punt, then paddle as hard as he could across the river. He’d be swept down toward the harbor, but if he paddled hard enough, he thought he could strike the opposite mud bank almost level with where he needed to climb.
The old Kel Boon—the Kel Boon of the Core—would have started hauling on the rope. And when he reached those coming the other way, he’d have battered them aside with the punt, leaving them to the mercy of the terrible currents.
“By all the Black!” he shouted, venting his rage where the river could carry it to the sea. He looked in that direction, and from that level he saw the masts just above the broken bridge, coming closer and closer with every beat he stood hesitating.
Kel pushed off, angling upriver as he shoved the small boat across the mud levels. It was hard work, his muscles immediately began to ache, and with every shove he felt Namior calling him back. He wished he’d tried harder to persuade her… but she was stronger than he’d ever given her credit for. Perhaps he could have knocked her out and carried her. But there was her family. Save her, let them die, and he would gain nothing.
And is this all gain? he thought, those familiar suspicions and fears of his own motives crashing in once more. He cursed again, swore that it was not. He loved Namior, and that was the reason he so wanted her to come with him. It was about her, not him.
“I’ll go back for her,” he said. But speaking those words aloud made it no more likely. He’d made his choice. The Core training had seen to that. Noreela came first, and five years after running from that ethos, casting it aside and trying to purge it from his mind and soul, he realized that he had never really changed.
The small boat slipped from the mud into the fast-flowing river fifty steps above the rope, and Kel hurriedly strapped the punt to its side and took up the oar. He knelt on the downstream side and started paddling, turning the nose of the boat upstream in an effort to lessen the drag. But already he was being swept quickly down toward the broken bridge. The flow was much faster than he’d anticipated, slapping the boat and splashing heavily inside, soaking him in an instant with thick, stinking water. Something struck the hull and drifted by, and Kel stared down into the smashed face of someone he might have known.
He paddled harder, gritting his teeth as he searched for strength that wasn’t there. The night and the waves had leeched it away. The boat spun beneath him, going sideways onto the water and starting to rock as the waves struck it. He paddled on, trying not to think about what would happen if the boat capsized.
“Fucking idiot!” someone shouted, and Kel grinned, because for a beat he thought O’Peeria was berating him from memory once more. But then he looked downstream and saw the boat he was heading toward, and the man and woman standing there holding the rope.
Kel plunged the oar into the water, trying to swing his boat around and avoid a collision, but the water was its own master that day. The oar either struck something just below the surface, or a current gave it a tug; Kel’s shoulder wrenched and he lost his grip, watching the oar swept away beneath the rope line.
He sat down and held on.
The boats struck, timber cracking and splitting, and Kel was thrown to his right. His own craft was turning, its bow buried in the static boat, stern being swung around by the fast-flowing water, and it would be only beats before it was plucked free and swept down toward the ruined bridge.
Closer to those masts, that island.
“Come on!” the woman said. She was reaching for him, leaning across where the boats had crunched together, while the man held on grimly to the rope line. Kel knew them by sight, but not their names. The woman ran a stall on the harbor selling fresh catches, and the man was a fisherman. “Come on!” she shouted. “Unless you want to be there when they arrive.” She looked past him toward the sea, and Kel was glad to see her fear. If there was fear, there would be caution as well.
Be afraid, Namior, he thought. And as he reached across and grabbed the woman’s hand,
hauling himself into their boat as his own tore free and was carried downriver, he remembered how fear on its own really held no power at all.
THEY EXIST IN the shadows. It has always been this way, and always will be, because the Core should not be. It is a leftover from a centuries-dead duke’s paranoia, and the irony is that the paranoia was justified. There are things from beyond Noreela. The Core—a tight organization with no identifiable leader, and one clear mandate—has decided that this should never be general knowledge.
Especially as the Strangers are far from friendly.
And as well as existing within shadows, they watch from them also, because Kel and O’Peeria are hunters and killers. Shadows are their friends. Darkness is their ally. So they wait, and the world goes on around them with no comprehension of the slaughter about to be wrought.
“Pelly and Rok should be here by now,” Kel whispers. He’s been sitting behind the remains of a tumbled statue for a while, and O’Peeria has become a vague presence to his left. His legs are stiff and aching, but he dares not move. He is a statue, until the time comes.
“Over there,” O’Peeria says. She does not move, point or nod, but Kel knows where she is indicating. They have worked together for a long time, and they have a language all of their own. He looks past the stone remains and across Monument Park. He cannot see them, but he senses their presence, hunkered down behind the statue of a forgotten Voyager like just another part of the night.
There are thirty statues and pedestals in the park, placed at random amongst trees, between small ponds and around gathering areas that, during the day, attract hundreds of speakers, prophets, Practitioners, witches and magic-weavers. Several of the figures have been toppled in some hazy past, evidence of shifting allegiances and fading histories. There are also a few empty pedestals upon which figures should have been built, but perhaps their subjects had been shamed or uncovered as charlatans. Now they were empty, famous futures waiting to be told.
“He’s here,” O’Peeria whispers.
Kel cannot see the Stranger yet, but he does not question O’Peeria’s pronouncement. She’s a Shantasi, and he has long learned to trust her.