Tales of Noreela 04: The Island

by Tim Lebbon

  After Helio Bridge, the valley walls closed in and made the going much more difficult. The timeworn path disappeared. The time had come to climb up onto the plains above, so she started up the valley slope without pause. It was much steeper there than farther down toward the sea, but she hoped that the farther inland she came, the less chance she would have of bumping into a Stranger. But Namior had no real idea how safe she was or how far into Noreela the Komadians had penetrated. All she could do was to act on instinct.

  The climb was difficult, but she went at it with gusto. Carrying the crystal made it more treacherous—both the object’s weight and the fact that it kept her left arm out of action. But she leaned forward into the slope, pushed with her feet, and here and there grabbed on to thick grasses or small shrubs with her right hand, steadying herself and pulling when she could. The rain made the going slippery and slick, and several times she almost lost her footing. Her heart jumped, her knees hit dirt and she held on hard. But she never fell.

  Halfway up the steep hillside, she reached a flattened area, home to a small shrine to the life moon. It was an old structure—a low, round surface whose sharp edges had been dulled by time, its upper surface pitted with the actions of rain and frost. Namior sat on it, mindless of the water soaking through her trousers and undergarments, and tried to catch her breath.

  There was something above the hillside on the opposite side of the valley. It was a blankness rather than a presence, a space in the night blanking out clouds and stars, a part of the rainswept darkness that was missing. She frowned and tried to concentrate, looking to either side to allow her night vision a better view.

  It rose above the valley wall, leaning down toward Pavmouth Breaks, and Namior thought of the huge dark sculptures they had seen on Komadia. Perhaps it was the darkness, and the loss of perspective, but this empty space looked much larger.

  Something sparkled atop the dark shape. Namior rubbed rain from her eyes and stared, but she did not see the movement again. It had looked like the sort of spark that sometimes formed around a ship’s mast during a storm. Or perhaps it had been the moonslight glinting off something metallic.

  “They’re building even more,” she muttered. Kel had told of a construction on the plains above her, with the stockade at its base. Now there was another one across the valley from her, and also the one that they had seen in its early stages above the top of Drakeman’s Hill.

  Whatever the influence of the things, she was close to passing beyond it.

  This must be how they’ve been interfering with the language of the land. That excited her, and she touched the outline of the ground rod in her pocket, thrilled by the idea that she might be able to commune with magic again soon.

  Still tired, muscles aching and cramping, she ignored the discomfort and set off once more.

  As she reached the top of the steep hill, and the slope shallowed as it turned from hillside to high plain, she was grabbed from behind.

  She did not even have time to scream. A cold metal hand clamped across her mouth, and as she lifted her hands to try to pull it away, she dropped the crystal. It rolled away from her, shedding Kel’s jacket and reflecting the sliver of life moon visible between clouds. Rain splashed from its surface, giving the impression that it moved of its own accord.

  Namior kicked back, wincing as her heel struck metal. It’s one of them! Failure consumed her, so shattering that all she could think to do was to fight. She kicked again, twisted, struggled, trying to worm her way loose of this Stranger’s slick metal armor. It held her tight, then lifted her from the ground and took a step toward the dropped crystal.

  The metal man paused. Even her kicking and struggling did not stir the Stranger, and it grew utterly motionless. It’s looking at the crystal.

  The Stranger dropped her, pushing her forward so that she almost toppled, still grasping her wrist. She was about to shout mindless, useless abuse at the thing when she felt the cold prick of something piercing the skin of her forearm. She drew in a sharp breath and bit her lip against the pain.

  The Stranger released her. It looked down at its hand, where several long, very thin spines were withdrawing back into its knuckles.

  Namior went for her short knife, but she held the handle without drawing it, knowing it would do no good.

  And waiting. Because something strange was happening.

  The Stranger looked at her, its immovable face soulless and mindless. It bowed its head slightly, glanced once again at the dropped crystal, then walked past her and disappeared into the darkness, heading back toward Pavmouth Breaks.

  Namior stood there for several beats, confused, scared, and expecting the darkness to erupt in violence at any moment. But she was alone once more. The rain was so heavy, and the night so deep, that the Stranger’s brief attack already seemed like a dream.

  There were several small puncture wounds on the tender flesh of her underarm, and rain diluted the blood still seeping from them. I have Komadian blood in my veins, she had told Kel, and much as he’d tried to dissuade her from that idea—or perhaps he had thought it impossible—it had saved her life.

  She scooped up the crystal, wrapped it once again in Kel’s jacket and started running.

  NAMIOR WAS SOMEWHERE unknown. She had been that far out several times before, the plains of heather and bracken higher above sea level than any of Pavmouth Breaks, but never in the dark, never in a rainstorm, and never with such dangers in the shadows.

  But if she stalked every shadow, it would take her forever. If she stopped to assess each fold in the land, she would still be there come morning, and by then the Stranger might have spoken to other Komadians, and her strange nature would be known. So she threw caution to the darkness and assumed that she was alone.

  She thought of her mother, hiding away from the truth in their family home, and of her great-grandmother, and whatever sacrifice she had made to give them time. And Kel? Caught, dragged away… dead?

  But thinking on that could not help her. It was the Core that must possess her attention just then. An invisible army, an unknown group, existing for centuries amongst Noreela’s communities, converging on Pavmouth Breaks to enter into a battle they had been training for forever.

  And the only thing that stood between them and defeat, was Namior Feeron.

  SHE WENT ACROSS the plains, farther than she had ever traveled. The wilds closed in around her. Everything felt different up there. And even when she plunged her ground rod into the soil, and felt the welcoming waves and whirls of magic extending into her mind, Namior’s dread increased. She was away from Pavmouth Breaks—away from Komadian influence—and in a place where she had never been.

  The darkness was complete. Thickening clouds hid the moons, and heavy rain blurred the air. Shadows became mysterious rather than threatening, and though she should have felt a sense of freedom and release, what she actually felt was alone.

  The crystal exuded warmth, wrapped in the jacket like a newborn.

  She headed east, needing to go farther inland before deciding which direction to take … and with that thought came the realization that she was lost. Kel had not hinted at where and when he expected to meet the Core, had not mentioned how soon they could be there, but he had seemed confident of the fact that he could leave Pavmouth Breaks and be able to find them. Perhaps he’d had something else in his pockets, some other Core magic that would guide them in. But Namior had been following him blindly, and with him gone, she was blinder still.

  Taking shelter from the rain beneath an overhanging rock, she paused to urinate, then drank some water from a depression in the rock’s upper surface. Beneath its shadow again, her clothes wet but her body slowly warming her, she slid the ground rod in and touched its tip with one finger.

  Noreela spoke to her, and it was wonderful. She had never missed anything so much. The language of the land whispered of things near and far, and Namior had only to dip into that flow of expression to find hints of what she sought. Ten miles
ahead it was no longer raining, the cloud front falling back toward the sea. Five miles farther, a giant hawk breathed its last into the soil upset by its landing, pressures slowly crushing its body. It was said that the huge creatures were born, lived and died above the clouds and out of sight, melting away on the winds up there, their gaseous bodies going to dust, and to find one on the ground was a rare occurrence. Any other time Namior would have run to it, eager to examine its bulk; instead she only noted its location in case she had a chance to visit in the future.

  Of course I’ll have a chance, she thought. When all this is over and Kel has come back to me …

  She turned her senses back toward the sea, and there was a blank spot in her mind. She groaned slightly, frowning, eyes squeezing shut and turning left and right, as if to dislodge a smudge in her line of sight. But the blankness could not be dislodged, however much life and death it might shield.

  Can’t they feel this? Can’t anyone looking this way through magic sense this, realize that something is wrong? She turned away and cast her awareness inland once again. The ebb and flow of magic calmed her, its implied taste, smell and touch a gentle caress upon her traumatized mind.

  She listened for others riding the waves of magic nearby, but there were none. She tried to sense the whisper of the land where it powered machines, but the landscape around her felt deserted.

  Namior withdrew the ground rod and cleaned it on the hem of her jacket. She was still soaked through, but warmer than before, and the thought of going back out into the rain depressed her. But sitting there could achieve nothing.

  Tying the arms of Kel’s jacket in a sling, carrying the crystal and eschewing its potential warmth, she went back out into the night and the rain.

  The problem of how she would find any Core members in such darkness preyed on her mind. She tried to imagine how Kel had been thinking, which way he would have gone, what he would have done… but she was distant from him. So she walked on, worried that she would pass the Core by. And even more worried that they were not coming at all.

  Maybe they had not even heard.

  After several more pauses, and as the rain stopped and dawn began to draw a fine mist from the landscape before her, her worries were put to rest.

  The Core found her.

  Chapter Thirteen

  slaves

  KEL’S HEAD THROBBED. It felt as if the metal bastard was still hitting him, and each heartbeat was another blow. He tried not to groan, and he dragged his feet, letting the two Komadian soldiers drag him up the hillside using their own energy. They clicked and whistled at each other, but he could not tell whether the sounds constituted language. The Strangers he had tracked and killed with the Core were not like them; far from stupid, they were able to fit into Noreelan society almost seamlessly until magic found them out. But these metal-clad Strangers were different. Born from slime, they’ll return to it, Lemual had said dismissively.

  Kel tried to remain limp, pretending he could not hear, or smell the slightly acidic odor emanating from them as they climbed.

  And then it clicked, the truth pulsing in between throbs of pain: the armored Strangers were born of slime, out of the stinking pond he and Namior had seen on the island. Other Strangers—the one that had killed O’Peeria, the many sent to infiltrate Noreela down through the centuries—were slime-born as well, except that their primitive souls had been replaced by cursed Komadians from crystal prisons.

  The realization did little for him. His shins were skinned on one ledge of rock, and he bit his bottom lip to prevent himself crying out. At one point, one of the Strangers tried to rush on ahead, still holding his arm and twisting it in the shoulder socket until Kel was sure he was going to scream. But the other soldier hissed something, and they returned to their original pace.

  They climbed in the same direction he’d climbed earlier, but once out of the valley they turned left, heading back along the ridge toward the high cliffs half a mile north of Pavmouth Breaks. He’d been up there a few times, rooting through the sparse forests in his search for hardwood to carve and shape, eschewing driftwood washed up along the beaches because forest wood gave him more of a link to the land. It was a wild place, and more than once he’d seen evidence of people from outside Pavmouth Breaks having camped there. Not now, he thought. Anyone camped here now will be killed or taken by them.

  The ground around their feet changed from heathers to bracken, bramble and small ghostly flowers, glowing even though the moons were hidden by rain clouds. Sparkle drops. They flowered once each year for several short days, their natural luminosity attracting insects to pollinate them, before the blooms faded and their seedpods burst to the air. Kel wondered how different Noreela would be when the new pods erupted.

  The Strangers walked through the flowers, crushing them underfoot.

  They dropped him to the ground. Kel turned his head slightly to the right as he fell, but the landing was quite soft. He kept his eyes closed. Rain splashed onto his face, surprisingly comforting, and he allowed his mouth to slip open so that some of the moisture touched his tongue. He was thirsty, and with that realization came a writhing hunger.

  Heavy footsteps receded, and Kel risked opening his eyes.

  Among the trees, a hundred steps from him, a giant structure rose into the darkness, deep black against the imperfect night. Around its base were the stacked shadows of felled trees, the flesh of their cut trunks pale. Turning his eyes instead of his head, Kel could not see the tower’s summit. There was no sound of a machine working anywhere nearby.

  Finished, he thought. And so high! And the others aren’t far behind. Whatever they’re planning, and whatever these things are for, it’ll happen soon.

  He saw one of the Strangers pass between the trees and disappear around the corner of the structure’s base. The other was out of sight, but he could not hear footsteps. Perhaps it was motionless behind him, keeping watch five steps away. Maybe it knew he was awake.

  Kel closed his eyes. The Core had trained him how to project his senses, concentrating on each one in turn in an effort to exaggerate the whole. He listened hard, breathing through his open mouth, but all he could hear were raindrops dropping on last year’s fallen leaves. He inhaled slowly and deeply, smelling only damp soil and the clear tang of rain, the alien sourness absent. He risked touching the tip of his tongue to the air, but he tasted nothing he did not know. His sense of touch was dominated by the throbbing, pulsing pain from the bruises on the backs of his head and neck. He tried to blot it out, but even his extremities were possessed by its warm glow.

  He scanned as far as he could without moving his head, and he saw nothing new.

  I could get up, he thought. I’ve killed those things before. I’d have a chance, at least, and—

  As if reading his thoughts, the Stranger standing directly behind him stood astride his body and touched his temple with the barrel of its projectile weapon. The metal felt oddly warm against Kel’s skin. Primed with steam and ready to fire.

  Kel shifted to show that he was awake and aware of the soldier’s presence. Then he sat up, slowly. His head swam and he kept both hands on the wet ground, supporting himself. The Stranger backed away a little, still pointing the weapon at his face. My reputation steps before me, Kel thought, and he even managed a smile.

  “Kel Boon,” a voice said, “smiling at secret thoughts.” A Stranger and a Komadian were walking through the trees from the direction of the structure. The Komadian’s footfalls were almost silent, clothes dark against the night.

  “Keera Kashoomie,” Kel said, maintaining his smile.

  “I knew you must be Core from the moment we landed,” she said. “You held a knife to my throat and checked my neck for gills.”

  “Perhaps I should have made you some with my blade.”

  The tall woman stopped a few steps from Kel and smiled down, cool and in control. “And perhaps I should have had you killed that first day.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

/>   Keera shrugged. “Easier if the populace is compliant. But we win, either way. We always win.”

  “One of your friends told me that only recently.”

  “Lemual,” she whispered, the smile dropping from her face. “I wasn’t certain it was you.” There was only hatred in Keera Kashoomie’s eyes. That shocked Kel, and behind it he perceived a truth he knew he would grow to regret.

  “Oh,” he said. “You and Lemual.”

  Keera nodded at the Stranger by her side, and he stepped forward.

  Kel barely had time to raise one arm in front of his face before the Stranger’s metal-gloved hand struck. He fell back, feeling blood gushing from his nose, eyes watering, the pain and shock spreading through his head.

  “Where is the crystal you took?” Keera asked.

  “Why?” Kel said, wincing through the red mist. He could not see; pain had robbed his sight. “Another potential lover of yours in there?”

  A pause, during which Kel imaged the woman nodding again, and then the Stranger behind him kicked him in the back. Kel cried out and fell sideways, one arm twisting around so he could press his hand against his back. It was a natural response, but it did nothing to ease the pain.

  Keera Kashoomie came and squatted beside him. If he’d still had his weapons, he thought he could have killed her before one of the Strangers killed him. Even without them there was a chance he could rip out her throat, plunge his fingers into her eye sockets or break her neck, but the odds were not so great, and right then he did not relish the risk.

  “Well then, let’s try this one. Where is the woman who accompanied you to Komadia?”

  “Dead. One of your slime-things shot her with its steam weapon, and she died when we returned.” He held Keera’s gaze, remembering the sight of Namior being shot to strengthen the lie.

  “The crystal?”

  “Hidden. I know where. I can find it for you.” They cared deeply for their trapped people. Lemual had displayed that, and Keera also made it clear. Kel could use it to his advantage, but to do that, he had to stop trying to antagonize the woman. She reminds me of O’Peeria, he thought with a shock. Gorgeous, strong, cold.