Tales of Noreela 04: The Island

by Tim Lebbon

  “What’s that?” Namior asked, pointing to the smooth box in the woman’s hand. “Do you control them with that? What’s the steam for? How can they still work without touching the land?”

  The woman laughed, but it was a restrained sound. “It’s as much as we can do,” she said, “but it’s nowhere near enough.”

  “Where are you from?” Namior asked. She looked over the woman’s shoulder at the island, and back again.

  “The island,” the woman said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  The visitor shook her head, smiling softly. “We’ll do our best to change that,” she said, “but that must come from our emissary, Keera Kashoomie. This has… happened before. Trying to explain to individual people simply lets rumors loose, and the details get changed in the telling.”

  “It’s a terrible thing that’s happened here,” the man controlling the crawling machine said. He looked down at the controller in his hands, then up again at Namior. He almost seemed to be crying. “But you have to believe this: we mean no harm. We’re cursed, and—”

  “The emissary,” the woman cut in, glancing at the man. “She has been talking with your village Chief. I’m sure by now they’ll have decided how best to address everyone.”

  Namior looked upriver to where the landscape of the village had changed so terribly. “You mean us no harm,” she said.

  Seeing the shamefaced way the men and woman averted their eyes, it was something she could believe.

  SHE WATCHED THEM working for a while. It soon became clear that the visitors possessed the intentions and ideas, and the machines were simply the tools they were using. It was much like the use of Noreelan machines, except that the constructs had every single movement controlled directly through the devices in the visitors’ hands. If one of the controllers’ fingers slipped, the machine would skip sideways or turn the wrong way. The machines also looked very different; they were made of metal, with no stone, wood or flesh-and-blood parts visible at all. Their joints were fine, their surfaces smooth. Namior guessed that they were metal through and through.

  The steam they issued was odorless, colorless and tasteless. She had no idea how it was heated. For the moment, she simply watched.

  They lifted and moved aside debris from against the bridge, and the crawler slid more metal planks out across the gap, pulling them together and fixing them with dabs of molten metal from its longest limb. Their controllers were calm, silent and concentrated, and though aware of Namior’s presence, none became talkative.

  Soon she started to wonder what would be occurring closer to the harbor. She bade farewell, and the man and woman who had talked to her both nodded formally and returned to working on the bridge. Already they were chiseling and shaping stones plucked from the riverbed by the floating machines, placing them atop the new metallic supports and forming a repaired surface where the bridge had been washed away. How permanent it would be Namior did not know, but it would bring the two sides of the village together once again. And in the aftermath of the worst calamity ever to befall Pavmouth Breaks, that was important.

  As she walked from the bridge and onto the harbor side, she paused for a beat. The harbor had become a completely different place. Most of the buildings were gone, and those that remained in some form were all but unrecognizable. A layer of dirt and silt coated everything. People worked everywhere, digging and lifting and crying, and close to the sea was an area of cleared ground where the bodies were being placed. One of the village’s more strident worshippers of the Sleeping Gods sat beside them, and Namior could see his lips moving as he tried to chant their wraiths down into the Black. But he was no Mourner. Pale and weak, he looked close to collapse. So where are your Gods? she thought, perhaps unfairly. It was said that the Sleeping Gods would return at the hour of Noreela’s greatest need, but they had yet to come.

  The visitors were everywhere. Small groups of them worked here and there, guiding their strange steam-venting machines to lift, drag and dig. The survivors from Pavmouth Breaks were searching just as hard, but now two groups worked together. The shock was great, Namior knew, and trust would be hard-earned.

  Out along the mole, visitors worked at the smashed stonework, readying it for more of their boats to dock.

  She looked for Kel, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  “Namior!”

  “Mell!” She ran to her friend as she emerged from between two tumbled buildings, and as they hugged, Namior could feel the tears burning her eyes. They streamed down her face, and she slumped into Mell’s strong embrace, taking selfish comfort in the knowledge that her friend was still alive. She smelled of sweat and the sea.

  “Trakis?” she asked. “Tell me he’s safe, tell me you and he—” But she pulled back and saw the terrible truth in Mell’s face.

  Her gaze was drawn back to the pile of bodies.

  “Not there, Namior,” Mell said softly. “I don’t know where he is. But not there. Kel?”

  “Down here somewhere, thank the Black. Your parents?”

  Mell nodded over her shoulder. “I took them up to one of the farms. They’d found their way up onto the foot of Drakeman’s Hill, somehow, and I wanted them away from here. Those boats, that island. Didn’t like the look of them.”

  “And now?” Namior asked. She stood on her own again, and only then could she see the need for comfort in Mell’s eyes as well.

  Mell looked around at the visitors and their machines. “Now I’m not so sure.”

  “How did you and Trakis get split up?”

  “Just before the second big wave hit. We managed to get across the smashed bridge, climbing over the trees and debris already jammed against it from upriver. The river was wild. Mud, trees, bodies, animals, and there were lots of things washed up from the sea back then, both living and dead. I’m sure I saw the Fiddleback.”

  “The trawler?”

  Mell nodded. “I know, it went down ten years ago. But it came in on the surge and went out again. Battered and broken, and it could do with a dash of paint, but …” She smiled weakly, shaking her head. “Anyway, we heard the second wave coming in. I thought we were dead, but Trakis insisted we run. We waded through mud, swam through pools of water where there used to be buildings, and we reached the Rettaro Fish Market.”

  “The basement?”

  “It was flooded, but Trakis pulled me down. Next thing I knew the metal door was shut and I was down there, breathing in an air pocket, and it sounded like the whole world was ending above me. It went on forever. The impact was so heavy that there were waves in the basement, and there were a thousand fish down there with me, dead and living. The stink of it, the feel of the place… But the door held. And when I calmed down enough so that I could think straight again, and I managed to get back across to the door, I couldn’t find Trakis anywhere.”

  “He didn’t get in with you?”

  “I thought he did.” Mell looked past Namior and out to sea, staring at the island. She was frowning. “I thought I’d seen him drop in, turn and fight with the door clasps. But now, I think not. Maybe he couldn’t pull the door shut from the inside, there was lots of mud and …”

  Namior held her friend, and this time she was the one comforting and stroking hair as tears came from someone else.

  “It was quick,” Namior said. “Think that, at least.”

  “But he’s gone… swept away… What of his wraith?”

  “We’ll find him. We’ll chant him down together.”

  “I don’t know how to do it.”

  Neither do I, Namior almost said, but Mell did not need to hear that just then.

  As she hugged her friend and looked around for any sign of Kel, she saw a group of people emerging from the razed buildings around the altered base of Drakeman’s Hill. Several militia accompanied them, and there were at least as many visitors, armed with long swords strapped to their legs. In their midst she saw Chief Eildan and a tall, striking woman walking by his side.

 
; “Something’s happening,” Namior said. “Maybe now’s the time for answers.”

  Mell wiped her eyes and looked. “I hope so. And I hope the answers are good ones. Though if they’re not, there’s really not much we can do about it.”

  Namior knew that Mell was right. The visitors were digging and rescuing, searching and helping, using their machines to rebuild essential structures like the bridge and mole. But they were present in numbers that could effectively subdue whatever remained of the Pavmouth Breaks militia, if the need arose. And the full capability of their strange steam machines was far from clear.

  She wondered where Kel had gone. She was certain that he’d want to hear this.

  EILDAN USED A whalebone horn to call attention. He and his entourage stood on the harborside, twenty steps along from where the dead were laid out beneath the scorching afternoon sun. The Chief was standing on the back of a machine, its stubby legs extended to give him its full height. He still held his harpoon, its blunt end resting on one of the machine’s wooden shoulders. It sat motionless beneath him, metallic components streaked with mud, fleshy parts shimmering wet.

  For a while the digging had stopped, machines rested, and people gathered around. Namior noticed the visitors listening as well, though they kept a respectful distance. Or they’re keeping us hemmed in, Kel would probably say. She looked for him again but saw no sign, then the Chief began to speak.

  “People of Pavmouth Breaks. The sun is out and blazing hot. The sea breeze is cool, but not too cold. I’m told that the cliff hawks have left their nests and gone out to sea, so the fish shoals are many today, and close to the surface. But our village …” He looked down and rubbed at his eyes with his free hand. Even from thirty steps away, Namior saw his other hand tightening on the harpoon shaft. His knuckles grew very white. “Pavmouth Breaks has suffered a disaster the likes of which it has never felt.” He looked up again, seeming stronger now that he was into the grim subject at hand. “We dig. We shift the fallen buildings, save the living, recover the dead. The language of the land helps us, as always and evermore, and our machines work while we tire. And they will keep working so long as there’s a Practitioner to guide them. Our healers heal, our Mourner chants the wraiths of those lost down into the welcoming Black. We move on. Because Pavmouth Breaks is a family. And though today we have lost some of our family members, they would want us to continue.”

  Namior looked around to see who else was there. She knew many of them by name, and most of the others she knew by sight. And though many shed tears, it was the missing ones who broke her heart.

  “The machines stagger,” a voice muttered. “Magic holds back.” It was Mygrette, and Namior did not like the look of the old witch. She was tired, covered with mud and streaks of blood, and she seemed somehow lessened. Her machine sat beside her, motionless and cool. Interference, Namior wanted to say to her, but it felt like something secret. She started making her way through the crowd, but then Eildan continued, and she paused to listen.

  “This is Keera Kashoomie, of the island Komadia,” Chief Eildan said. “She has her own story to tell, and her own words of comfort to offer.” A murmur rose through the crowd then, anger and confusion vying for the tone, but Eildan slammed his harpoon shaft on the machine’s back. “Before she speaks, I’ll say this, and I ask you to hear me: Keera is an emissary from Komadia. Her grief over what has happened is deep, her sorrow consuming. And as you can already see from what is happening around you, her desire to aid us in any way possible is plain to see.”

  “But those machines!” someone shouted. “Not normal. Not natural!”

  “They dug me out!” someone else called, a voice Namior did not recognize, and for a few beats other voices rose, a verbal contest of accusations and exhortations.

  “Calm!” Eildan shouted. “Calm, now!” The voices faded, and the surge of the sea was the only sound awaiting Eildan’s next words. “I know suspicion,” he said. “And I know caution. I’ve told Emissary Kashoomie that we have the right to both. She agrees. But let me also say this: I am your Chief because I am a good judge of character. I am your Chief because I have seen much beyond this village. You all granted your trust in my wisdom. And I trust Keera Kashoomie.”

  He held out his hand as though to invite her up onto the machine with him. She smiled, took his hand and stepped up, apparently confident in standing on something that must seem strange to her.

  “Emissary Kashoomie,” he said. And Chief Eildan jumped down to the silt-covered ground, leaving the attention of his people on the visitor.

  KEL BOON STOOD hidden away in the remains of the Blue Ray Tavern. Two walls still stood at one corner junction, almost as high as his head, and he leaned there and watched what was happening beyond. To his right there was a hollow in the muck and debris where a body had been found and recovered. A sad place now, a dead place. He’d drunk in there many times, but listen though he did, there were no echoes of happiness and laughter to be found.

  He’d arrived here just as Chief Eildan emerged with his militia and the visitors. After what had happened earlier, Kel decided to stay hidden away, able to see and not be seen, hear and not be noticed. The feel of his weapons was comforting, but doubt pricked at him again. There were so many people waiting to hear what the emissary had to say, and so many visitors helping in the rescue, that the villagers’ weight of suspicion seemed to have been lessened by a combined aim.

  He could see Namior and Mell, and the sight of them settled his heart. Trakis’s absence bit at him. But the time for discovering what had happened to his friend was not now.

  Now, it was time to hear the visitors’ story.

  Chapter Five

  broken spine

  A TALL WOMAN, made taller by the machine she stood upon, Keera Kashoomie wore sadness like a cliff hawk wore the wind. She looked over the heads of the assembled Noreelans at the destruction that surrounded them. She gazed northward first, past the broken bridge and across the river, then turned slowly until she was staring at the washed-out foot of Drakeman’s Hill. She might have been crying, or perhaps it was the sun casting curious shadows across her eyes. From where he watched Kel could not be sure. What he was sure about was the weight of expectation that held the crowd—perhaps three hundred people in total—in rapt silence.

  “This has happened before,” she said, “and we can never be more sorry than the last time. If you’ll allow me to tell you about ourselves, and why we’re here, and how it happened, I hope you’ll then accept our offer of continued help and support. This is a dreadful day for Pavmouth Breaks, and a sad day for Komadia, and we Komadians are so sorry for what has happened. But before I say anything else, I want to tell you one thing. I want you to be sure of it. This was not our fault. There was no intention in this.”

  “An accident?” someone called, scoffing.

  Keera blinked, then shook her head. “No accident,” she said. “No act of the land, no slip in the balance of things. But not our fault.”

  “Then whose fault was it?” the same voice called. The speaker was keeping himself hidden, perhaps looking at the ground so that he could not be singled out.

  “We no longer know. The past for Komadia is a hazy place at best. There are scholars among us who attempt to transcribe our history, from stories passed down through families, parchments discovered in abandoned dwellings in the deepest parts of our island, and vague memories from our oldest people. But history does not like Komadia. Once recorded, it seems to change. We are never at peace, and who or whatever cursed us so long ago seemed to desire that. None of us are ever at peace.”

  She brushed both hands back through her hair, the sun casting a halo around her head. Kel gasped; she was beautiful. He’d never let himself see that before, even when he was cutting the shirt from her back in his search for a Stranger’s proboscises. He sighed angrily. He could not let himself be distracted by that beauty. Was she using it now? Fanning her hair to bewitch the men in the crowd, and some of the wom
en, too? But after running them through her hair she cracked her fingers, an unbecoming gesture, then looked around again.

  “From the best of our knowledge, our island’s origins lie beyond the farthest extremes of what you now know as The Spine. We were once the last island in that chain, before endless seas stretching west, north and east. We were the northernmost tip of Noreela, and there’s a place on our island now, on the coast, that we call The Outlook, which used to be the most northerly tip of land in our world. It has the ruins of a lookout post, and on those ancient walls are paintings of deserted, lifeless seascapes. It’s a much-studied place because it hints at our origins. But even the wisest amongst us knows little. There is writing there that cannot be read, and images of things that cannot be understood.”

  “Land’s End is the last island,” someone said. Kel stretched to see who was speaking, but the crowd made single voices anonymous. That was good. It meant that people could speak their minds.

  “It is now,” Keera said, “and it has been for much of history. Sixty years ago, we were situated to the south of that place for a time. Thankfully, it was all but deserted then, as now, I suspect. The ripples of our arrival spread out and touched land, but there was no one there to see.”

  “Ripples?” someone shouted. Other voices rose, angry and disbelieving, but Kel also saw a few people looking around quietly, perhaps embarrassed or uneasy in their belief of the woman’s outlandish tale.

  Chief Eildan raised his hands and slammed the harpoon down onto the harbor stone. “We will let Emissary Kashoomie speak!” he roared, and the crowd shuffled their feet, voices lowering and mumbling in apology or acceptance. “There will be time for questions later if our visitor will entertain them?” He turned to Keera, who smiled and nodded her assent.

  Eildan stepped back again, and Keera Kashoomie waited until the agitated audience settled.