Tales of Noreela 04: The Island

by Tim Lebbon

  “Where is she going?” Namior asked.

  “To help,” Kel said.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. But I suspect we’ll find out soon.”

  Namior sank down next to the groundstone and reached out, touching the cool surface, feeling and sensing nothing at all.

  “She saved my life,” she whispered.

  “Namior, wake your mother. We need to leave. I have to meet the Core before they come in, and—”

  “And that thing?” She looked at the crystal and wondered who it was and what history it possessed. Did it carry the memories of lost loved ones? Had it spent so many centuries mourning those it knew might be dead? Never pity your enemy, Kel had said, and search though she did, she could feel no pity inside her for the trapped thing.

  “I’ll hand it to the Core,” he said. “They have witches.”

  “I’m a witch.”

  Kel looked at her, and his silence asked, Would you like to touch it, know it?

  Namior stood and stroked the groundstone one last time. I’ll be back, she thought. When all this is over I’ll be back, and I’ll talk with magic again. She held back more tears but felt empty inside. “What do I tell my mother?” she said, looking up at the ceiling.

  “The truth.”

  Namior met Kel’s gaze. “You need to go to her now.”

  “I won’t be long. Wake your mother, prepare her. We’ll try to get out of the valley, head for the stockade I left earlier, with luck the Komadians won’t have noticed what happened there yet. And if they haven’t, that should give us a clear path up onto the plains.”

  “And if they have found out?”

  “Then we go another way.”

  Namior watched him leave and close the door. She climbed the staircase and stood for a while at the top, absorbing the changed feel of the house. It was uneven, upset, and the realization hit her with a thump that she would never see her great-grandmother again.

  “Yes, I love you,” she whispered to the still air, too late. And then she went to wake her mother.

  NAMIOR’S GREAT-GRANDMOTHER WAS waiting for him in the shadow of the house. For a beat he feared her, but when he drew close he saw that she was only the little old lady he had known. The craze had faded, yes; but the fear in her eye remained.

  “I must get to Komadia,” she said. “Help me find a way. And tell me where on its coastline you saw the crystal field.”

  “You can help from there?”

  “Perhaps I can limit the loss.”

  “Then I’ll come with you. I know a way, and I can—”

  “No.” The woman’s voice sounded different—stronger—and Kel caught his breath.

  “But you’ll never make it there alone.”

  “Perhaps, but you can’t be risked. After this, you might be the most important person in Noreela.” Her voice softened, and when she reached out for his face, he let her touch him. “And for my sweet Namior, you already are.”

  He told her about the beached boat, and where they had come across the crystal field, and when the woman turned to leave Kel reached out and held her shoulder. He could not remember ever touching her before. Beneath the clothing, he felt her bones.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  She began to cry. Real, wrenching tears that shook her shoulders and stuck in her throat. She looked past Kel at the house, up at the window of her granddaughter’s room, then higher at Namior’s window.

  I need to know, Kel thought, but she was crying so hard that she could barely speak. She shrugged off his hand and left, walking into the shadows until the only evidence of her ever having been there were her echoing sobs.

  Kel thought to go after her. But then the door behind him opened, and Namior’s pale face appeared. He went to her and held her close.

  “Mother doesn’t believe me,” she said. “And she’s not leaving.”

  NAMIOR’S MOTHER SIMPLY shook her head at Kel, which had been her first reaction when Namior had told her the story. “The Core? I’ve heard of it. Its purpose is a myth. They’re murderers and drug dealers, not protectors of Noreela. And you, Kel, a soldier? Carrying those weapons doesn’t make you one. As for my grandmother being someone from…beyond Noreela? None of it makes sense, and none of it is true.”

  “If you had magic—” Kel began, but Namior’s mother snapped in quickly.

  “But we don’t, do we?”

  “And why do you think that is?”

  “Kel?” Namior asked.

  He sighed. “We have a little time.”

  What is she doing? What did she tell Kel out there? But it was not the time to ask. Namior raised her chin, indicating that he should go back outside. He sighed and did so, pulling the door to behind him but not closing it completely.

  She turned to her mother again, desperate, frustrated and fearing for her more and more. “You have to believe me,” she said. “You have to believe Kel. Look at that.” She pointed to the crystal, unveiled on the floor between them. “Does that look like anything Noreelan?”

  “He’s poisoned your mind,” her mother said. She looked down at the crystal. “So you’ve been out to the island and stolen something that might be precious to them …”

  “They almost killed me, Mother! Yet look at me now.”

  Her mother looked away, and Namior felt like reaching out and shaking sense into her. Was she really so scared? Did she know more than she could possibly imagine admitting to?

  “I’m leaving with Kel,” Namior said. “I’m helping him.” If she had expected a panicked response, she saw none. “Don’t you care? Can’t you even consider that I’m telling the truth? I saw that thing he killed on the beach, I saw people, things, on the island that were so far from human… And I saw what they did to Trakis!”

  “And you were wounded, and Grandmother cured you without the use of magic.” Her mother looked at the door through which Kel had passed with true loathing in her eyes. “What drugs?” she asked. “How did he do it?”

  “Great-grandmother’s magic healed me! Their magic! And now she’s gone, and you don’t want to know where, or why?”

  “In her craze, she wanders,” Namior’s mother said, “and now you’re leaving with a killer.”

  “So you do believe he killed something. Good. Believe the bad stuff about him, but not the fact that he’s trying to save—”

  “I’ll always welcome you back, Namior.”

  “Mother. You’re so afraid. But we’re doing our best.” Namior could see that her mother was not being unreasonable, or cruel. She was simply acting on the things she believed to be true, and denying all the terrible possibilities that she could not bear to believe. Perhaps the truth was that without magic she was lost.

  She collected the crystal in Kel’s jacket, and at the door she glanced back at the woman she had woken to tell something terrible. Perhaps she thought she was still having nightmares.

  “Take care,” her mother said.

  “You too. And when the fighting starts, hide as well as you can.” Namior turned away, opened the door and went outside without looking back.

  I might never see her again.

  “Namior—” Kel said, but she cut him off.

  “I’m coming with you. Whether she believes or not, I’m helping her by helping you.” She handed him the crystal, and whispered, “I can’t carry that.”

  “Follow me,” he said. “Try to copy my footsteps, stop when I stop, run when I run. Be my shadow.”

  “Kel …”

  He touched her face with his free hand and stared into her eyes. “Your great-grandmother is returning to her people. And somehow, she’s doing her best for us.”

  She nodded, wanting to know more but also dreading that knowledge.

  Kel set off, hugging the wrapped crystal under one arm and bearing his short sword in the other hand. Namior followed, amazed at how silently her love could move, as if he were a wraith himself.

  The suspicion and doubt in
her mother’s eyes had been painful. And the devastating fact that she doubted her own daughter’s observations and opinions, blaming them instead on drugs used by Kel Boon to lead her astray, enraged her. After all the years of being trained as a witch—listen to the land, heed your heart, love your family and help them when help is needed, look beyond what is known and be willing to accept the unknown—her mother could display ignorance as profound as her knowledge of magic. Namior could understand her desire not to believe, but her mother’s shunning of all evidence shocked her.

  Perhaps it was all too much. Namior had learned the facts slowly, exploring and identifying most of them herself or in Kel’s company, seeing things when there was no magic to see for her. To be sat down and told every bad thing that was happening … perhaps she would have had trouble believing as well.

  So all that was left to her was to love her mother and help her now that help was needed.

  The village streets were dark and seemed deserted, and the fresh air felt good on Namior’s face. She breathed in deeply, enjoying the exertion, and try as she might, she could feel no pain in her chest from the wound.

  Kel knew the exact route he wanted to take, and he moved without hesitation. Left, right, over walls, between buildings, and she tried to follow with the same confidence.

  They climbed the river valley, passing darkened homes and buildings, and they did not meet one person. Either everyone was inside, hiding away from threats known or suspected, or they were somewhere else. Kel had told Namior of the stockade he’d broken down. She did not like to think of others locked away like that, but the farther they went, the more likely she thought it to be. The village had never felt so empty.

  He had also told her about the villagers boarding the ship.

  The buildings became less frequent, the hillside steepened, and paths became slippery from the moisture in the air. Kel paused more often, listening to the darkness. Namior listened with him, but she heard nothing to set her on edge.

  She wanted to ask more about her great-grandmother, but she could not break the silence.

  A woman crossed the path ahead of them. She seemed to float rather than walk, and she was naked, her skin silvered by moonlight. There were several fine, featherlike tendrils drooping from her stomach and hips, stroking the ground behind her and leaving clear raindrop sparks, and she was beautiful.

  When she turned and looked at Kel, Namior saw that her eyes were the color of the life moon.

  Kel froze, and Namior dropped to her knees. The strange woman whispered a song that seemed to originate inside Namior’s mind, stroking the recesses of her memory, planting fantastical new images as if they were old. Namior opened her mouth to join in the song, but then behind the woman a more familiar shadow rose.

  “Back!” Kel said. He dropped the bundled crystal and darted forward, pointing at the woman, shouting “Back!” again as though talking to her, not Namior, and she knew what he was doing.

  She dropped to the damp ground and rolled up against a cold stone wall. The shadows concealed her.

  The woman faded away into the darkness, like a candle snuffed out. Beyond where she had been stood a Stranger.

  Kel lashed out with his sword, but the metal man snatched the weapon from his hand, snapped it in half, and threw it into the night. It clattered down out of sight. Another armored soldier emerged from farther along the path, leveling its projectile weapon at Kel.

  A punch in the chest, the coolness of air touching insides, the dreadful sense of weight as something shattered bone and tore flesh—

  Given clarity of memory, Namior wanted to shout out. Then she glanced at where the crystal had rolled, and because she could not see it she thought it was still wrapped, still hidden. If it had fallen from the coat, death-moonlight would have found it by then, reflecting its dreadful colors.

  Kel would not wish her caught; shouting could not aid him.

  He struggled briefly with the first Stranger, but the element of surprise had already won the battle for the invaders. The first one held Kel’s arms away from his body, while the second smacked him several times across the back of the head. He fell limply to the ground. The first soldier kicked him hard in the ribs, and when he did not react they settled down beside him and started drawing and disposing of his weapons.

  Namior remained motionless, trying to breathe slowly and evenly, though her heart pummeled at her chest. Already been shot once, she thought, and she had to hold in a crazy laugh. She watched the Strangers rooting through Kel’s clothing and pockets, casting aside every weapon they found with little concern about where it came to rest.

  A knife slid across the stone path and struck her right forearm. She closed her eyes and remained motionless. Though the temptation to pick it up was strong, she was terrified that she would scrape it against the ground. When they’ve gone, she thought. Though what good it will do me …

  The Strangers hissed and whistled. Perhaps they were communicating, or maybe just straining as they picked up Kel between them and dragged him along the path.

  “Oh, Kel,” she whispered, watching until she could see him no more. Then she grabbed the knife, eased herself upright, and prepared to follow.

  But for what? There was no way she could fight the things. She’d be killed or caught, and Kel had taken the fight forward to them in an effort to protect her.

  She took a couple of tentative steps, paused, then remembered the crystal. It took a few beats to locate it, but when she picked it up it was still wrapped against the darkness, still warm through the coat. She grimaced with distaste.

  I have to take this to the Core. That was Kel’s main aim, and… She cursed quietly and stomped at the ground. She was just a witch without magic! Whatever her great-grandmother would do to try to give them time, it needed positive action from her as well.

  Desperate, feeling hopelessly entangled in events, and perhaps strangled by them, Namior slipped through an open gate into a porl-root garden and sat against the wall. The crystal gave her some warmth, and though she did not like the feel of it, she was too cold to push it away.

  She closed her eyes and rested her head back against the wall. Her heart wanted to take her back home and wait there until the Core arrived and made things better. But she knew that would be turning her back on what was happening. And though her mother seemed content to do that, she was not. Not after what she and Kel had done, and seen.

  And not after her great-grandmother.

  So she had to move on. Escape from Pavmouth Breaks, resist the temptation to go after her love, and wait for the Core. She would hand over the crystal and tell them everything she knew. And then she would be their guide back into Pavmouth Breaks.

  NAMIOR RARELY LEFT the village. To climb out of the river valley, to stare across the plains above to distant horizons, lit the flame of adventure in her heart. With her training as a witch muting that flame, it was painful for her to light it too often.

  Kel’s reluctance to explore had been a knife in her heart ever since she had known him. I’ve done my traveling, he would say, and though now she could understand some of his reasoning, that still hurt her. Maybe he was Core, maybe he had seen much of Noreela before fleeing and settling there, but she would have loved for him to have taken her wishes to heart.

  So she walked and climbed on her own. Every footstep hurt her more than the last; she was leaving behind her family and her love. And every step took her farther into darkness, and increased the distance between her and everything she had ever known.

  So here, at last, was adventure. And she was terrified. But deep down, she was also more excited than she had ever been. Maybe it was because she had been wounded and unconscious, removed from the world for a while, but she was able to place a strange distance between her and the danger she was facing. Even after seeing Kel struck down and dragged away, she went on with the conviction that it would not happen to her.

  Perhaps because it already had.

  She rubbed at her c
hest as she walked, feeling no better or worse. Her great-grandmother had truly healed her, and Namior would have given anything to be able to talk with her again. The old woman she had known all her life had changed completely, and Namior had not had the chance to discuss or explore any of that change with her. It would be a regret forever.

  She’s doing her best for us, Kel had said. Namior had no wish to dwell upon what that meant.

  She continued along the valley, following the river and deliberately walking away from the direction in which the two Strangers had dragged Kel. I won’t be harmed, she thought. I won’t be caught or stopped, because I’ve already been shot and come through the other side. Such false conviction was foolish and could be dangerous, but it gave her courage, and she did her best to smother doubt.

  She passed the ruin of an old stone house, a haunted place beside the river that local myth suggested had been built over a thousand years before by a Dagenstine monk. As a child she had often come there with friends, and they had dared each other to sneak within the fallen walls and try to guess the monk’s name. It was said that whoever guessed his real name would resurrect him from the otherworldly un-death that the Dagenstines had believed in. Much as they had tried, none of them had succeeded. We all needed something to be scared of back then, she thought. Now that something to fear has finally arrived, I wish I could go back to whispering names against old stone walls. She passed the ruin with a nostalgic glance, and threw a few names at its walls: Trakis, Mell, Kel Boon. Nothing stirred, and its ancient builder remained absent.

  Soon after the ruin she passed beneath Helio Bridge, moving slowly and glancing up often, wary of Strangers watching from above. The crossing a hundred steps above her appeared deserted. Though its central stone support bore impact scars where it grew from an island in the middle of the river, the damage appeared minimal. Perhaps the Komadians had used the crossing to move from one tower’s location to the other, passing upriver from the village so that no one could witness their activities. She paused in the bridge’s shadow, listening, sniffing the air. But she sensed that she was completely alone.