by Tim Lebbon
Is one of them still alive?
He tried to bring his hands beneath his chest to heave himself up, but his arms belonged to someone else. Listening, hearing only rain and the echoes of thunder, he pushed with his legs and hands, finally rolling over onto his back. He winced in pain, squinting against the rain battering at his face.
Kel’s breath stuttered, and he gasped. It felt as if someone else had been breathing with him. “O’Peeria,” he whispered. She had been there, visible, taunting, then urging him to fight the Strangers. If it hadn’t been for her …
He turned and looked up toward the dark tower, and twenty steps away he made out the second Stranger, armor melted down into a hissing slick. Still cooling. Only just dead. I can’t have been out for long.
Kel had heard his dead love many times before, berating or scolding him in her own harsh style, and every word had been bestowed to her voice by him. He knew that, but it comforted him still. She’d been chanted down by one of the Core mourners soon after the fiasco in Noreela City, but he still liked to think that a part of her was with him always. And it was guilt that fueled that desire. If O’Peeria was still with him, then she did not blame him for her death, as others had. As he had.
But that was the first time he had ever seen her.
Groaning, Kel managed to sit up. His limbs were feeling like his own again. He touched the mess of his face, and felt a soft, sticky lump on his forehead, the swelling half the size of his fist and painful to the touch. Rainwater seemed to soothe the wound, and at least it did not bleed down his face and blind him. He took in several deep breaths, then tried to stand.
Lightning flashed and thunder cracked, and somewhere in the haze above him, an explosion shook the air. Kel looked up, biting his lip as wooziness swayed the ground. The top of the tower spat blue sparks and smoke, and a hail of shards was falling with the rain. Beats later he heard them landing at the tower’s base, rattling onto the ground amongst the heavy raindrops.
“I hope it hurts,” he whispered, not quite sure whom it could hurt, nor how.
Blue sparks. They had been similar to the lights dancing around that small box controlled by Namior’s great-grandmother as she healed the injured woman.
Keera Kashoomie, surprised and running away, leaving him—her prisoner, her source of information—to the mercy of the Strangers.
The old woman, walking in the direction of the rowboat, crying, heading home.
“She did something,” Kel muttered. The lightning did not sound, look or smell natural, and if the view across the valley had been clear, he was sure he’d have seen it arcing from the other towers as well. “The crazed old woman did something.”
Kel knew then that he must leave. He had to find his way beyond the Komadians’ influence and meet up with Namior.
He touched his forehead again, cringing at the rush of pain. The wound was soft. His skull might be fractured. Perhaps, when they reached a place where Noreela still spoke through the land, she would be able to heal him.
ONE MOMENT THERE was silence, but for the storm; the next, chaos. Mallor pushed Namior to one side, and the terrible violence began.
She huddled in a doorway, not recognizing whose house it was, trying the handle and finding the door locked, feeling ridiculously exposed, while the three Core melted away. Namior was mere witness to the carnage, not a contributor, but nothing could make her close her eyes.
She thought there were three Strangers; she could see two behind a walled herb garden thirty steps along the path, and a third was firing from the window of a house on her side. Their weapons coughed, and chunks of masonry and cobbles exploded from all around Namior and the Core. Lines of steam marked the projectile’s routes through the air, quickly washed down and absorbed by the ever-increasing downpour.
Mallor lay in the gutter on his side, a few steps ahead, while Pelly and U’Nam had disappeared behind the wall across the path. As Mallor fired his crossbow, Pelly leapt up to fling throwing stars, but U’Nam remained out of sight. Namior thought she must be working her way forward, but then the Shantasi slipped over the wall and streaked up the narrow street, faster than Namior had ever seen anyone moving. Above the sound of thunder and the roar of the Strangers’ weapons, Namior heard the protesting squeal of metal against metal. Someone screamed—a screech that rose higher and higher before being cut off—and then the Shantasi flitted back along the path and shouted at them to get down.
Mallor glanced back at Namior, eyes wide, but she nodded; she had seen a Stranger die before.
She curled into a ball, trying to huddle deeper into the shallow doorway. Harsh blue light flashed, reflecting from countless raindrops and splashing across the slick cobbles. Something spat and crackled, sharp sounds in the fluid cadences of the storm, and as the final explosion came, it was matched with a crash of thunder and a flash of lightning. Then the screaming of a Stranger’s wraith, delving this way and that through the downpour without disturbing the falling patterns of raindrops.
Namior glanced across the path, seeing the Stranger’s demise cast in rainbows through the rain. U’Nam was looking over the top of the wall and she caught Namior’s eye, touching her throat and offering a small smile.
The wall beside U’Nam’s face erupted in a shower of sparks, steam and stone shards. The Shantasi fell back, hand to her face, and disappeared behind the wall.
Mallor dashed across the path, firing the crossbow on his left arm and flinging a throwing knife with his right. The Strangers’ shooting subsided for a beat, then the angry coughs of their guns began again.
The cobble a hand’s width from Namior’s right foot shattered. She felt stone pieces impact her lower legs, then another projectile hit the stone jamb behind her, dusting her head and hands with splinters and dust. She shoved hard against the door, cursing whoever had left it locked.
A shout. Someone else screamed. Namior looked up and saw U’Nam streaking up the path again, and this time Pelly was following her, moving slower but with a snakelike grace.
Mallor sat against the wall across the path, legs stretched out before him, right hand pressed across his mouth as if to hold back a belch. He was staring across at Namior, and his throat was torn open.
Another projectile struck the side of his head, shattering his skull and knocking him onto his left side. One more hit his thigh, kicking his leg out and turning him on the wet cobbles.
“Mallor!” Namior said, appalled at what she had seen. His hand was still somehow pressed to his mouth. Blood and fluids leaked from his head. The rain washed them into the runnels between cobbles, channeling them down the path toward her home.
“Down!” Pelly yelled, and Namior responded without thinking. She pressed herself back against the door as a hail of projectiles slammed into the wall and jambs around her, peppering her with stone fragments that sliced her face and hands.
More shooting, more shouting, breaking glass, then pouring rain reflected the portentous flash of a second Stranger’s imminent demise.
U’Nam dashed back down the path for the second time, slower than before, Pelly draped over one shoulder. The Shantasi threw the woman over the wall and followed, stepping in a wash of Mallor’s blood without looking down.
Lightning thrashed across Pavmouth Breaks, splitting the sky in two, its roar thudding at the land. And in its brief, terrible illumination, Namior saw it touch the pinnacle of a tower just visible above the valley ridge.
From nearer came a familiar explosion, and the dead Stranger’s wraith tore along the path in a death frenzy.
Namior had never felt so exposed and so terrified.
The wraith howled and screeched, dreadful and pitiful. Its voice seemed to be drawing closer. The storm cried out again, and even through eyes squeezed shut and with her arms clasped across her head, the lightning impressed itself through Namior’s eyelids. Thunder rumbled, thumping at her through her knees, feet and elbows where she squatted, echoing from the doorway, across the path and from one side of
the valley to the other. Everyone in Pavmouth Breaks would be hearing the sound, and Namior tried to imagine how many other people were huddled in fear.
Great-grandmother, did you do this? she thought. Mother, can you hear this also?
As the sound faded away, so too, it seemed, had the wraith.
Namior looked up, and there was no sign of the Stranger’s tortured spirit. She saw movement to her right, and Pelly and U’Nam peered over the wall. U’Nam held up a finger: One left.
This time, the Stranger came to them. It ran down the path, stealth impossible with its heavy metal feet, and paused a dozen steps from Namior. It glanced at Mallor’s corpse, then swung the steaming barrel of its weapon toward Namior’s head.
Namior elbowed the door beside her. “Let me in!” She glanced across at the wall, but neither Core member appeared above it to tackle the Stranger. Are they using this chance to get away? Let it kill me, escape while it does… ?
Thunder rolled, the Stranger leaned forward slightly, then something whipped through the night and wrapped around its neck. A shadow rose behind it and pulled it back, and the weapon discharged into the sky.
U’Nam stood atop the wall along the street, tugging hard on the slideshock tangled around the Stranger’s throat. Sharp though it was, it could not cut metal. The Stranger dropped its weapon and thrashed, waving its hands, leaning forward and pulling U’Nam from the wall.
She hit the ground face-first, then rolled sideways, rose to her knees and pulled again.
Pelly slid over the wall and crouched down, waiting for her moment.
“Bastard!” Namior shouted. The Stranger paused in its struggles and turned her way, and Pelly struck. Again, the squeal of metal against metal as she slid a blade into the soldier’s throat.
Namior ran across the path and climbed the wall close to Mallor’s corpse. Dropping down into the narrow garden on the other side, she looked up the slight incline and saw the two Core do the same. U’Nam even threw her a cautious smile as they listened to the Stranger’s agonized death.
When the only sound was the cry of the storm once again, U’Nam crawled down to Namior and asked if she was injured.
Namior shook her head. “Mallor.”
“He was a soldier,” U’Nam said. “We have to get out. There could be plenty more of those things.”
“My mother—”
“We have to get out!” the Shantasi said. “Come with us, or stay behind and search for your mother. Your choice. But we’re leaving.”
Namior nodded, but before going with them she picked up Mallor’s short sword.
U’NAM TOOK THE lead, Namior next, with Pelly bringing up the rear. They moved quickly, using the storm for cover. U’Nam frequently dashed ahead of them, disappearing into the gloom faster than Namior could believe. Each time she returned, she looked more worn. Nothing ahead, she would say, before leading them off again. Namior could see that the Shantasi’s exertions were draining her energy, but they were also ensuring them a safe route out of Pavmouth Breaks.
The storm was the worst Namior had ever seen. Water poured along the streets and paths, gushing down between buildings from the valley slopes, falling from roofs in great sheets, surging around their ankles as they walked ever upward. The wind urged them on, roaring in from the sea and funneling between those buildings still standing. Behind the downpour, Namior could hear whistles, roars and groans as the wind twisted around and through the ruins farther down the valley. Lightning thrashed overhead, jagged lines of power scarring the sky in the same place, again and again.
Tower to tower, Namior thought, and she wondered just what that meant.
They met a small group of residents trying to make their way along the valley, less than a dozen in total, and at their head Namior found her mother. They hugged and wept, and the two Core told them they had to hurry. Namior wanted to wait, to talk, ask how her mother had escaped.
“Who are they?” her mother asked, nodding at U’Nam and Pelly.
“Friends,” Namior said. “There are more coming. They’re going to help.”
“Have you seen those things at the harbor? And that thing growing out of the water there?”
Namior nodded. She expected more questions, and perhaps some resistance, but her mother hugged her again, hard. There would be plenty of time for talking later.
They moved along the valley path, then up the slopes away from the village. Namior feared that every step they took would be their last.
Her hair stood on end. The air was charged, filled with potential, and sparks played around their feet where they splashed through the water. Lightning flashed almost continuously, and with every flash came the sound of impact. The ground shook, sending mad ripples and waves through the flowing rainwater. Going back to the sea, Namior thought. She stuck out her tongue and tasted the rain once more, and Komadia sat many miles behind her like a warm, rotten thing.
When they reached the higher slopes they saw the forbidding tower to the north, lightning dancing around its head, and as if called up by the sight, three Strangers appeared on the plain. They seemed confused and disoriented, but when they saw the Noreelans, they charged.
Namior went forward to be with U’Nam and Pelly, but the Shantasi grabbed her arm, reaching inside her own jacket and producing one of the dead Stranger’s projectile weapons.
“No!” U’Nam said. “We’ll hold them here, you go on. You know where to meet the others.”
Pelly fired the weapon she had picked up, and fifty steps away one of the Strangers grunted in surprise and fell. “Down!” Pelly shouted, waving at the confused people.
U’Nam and Namior dropped to the ground, and the others followed. “I want to help!” Namior said.
“And this is the best way,” U’Nam said. “We didn’t find out quite what we’d hoped… numbers, strength. But if we don’t make it back, you can tell them enough. And you have to lead these people out.”
The dead Stranger erupted into flames, its demise imitated by a sheet of lightning far overhead. Namior heard her mother and the others whisper and moan when the sound of the wraith came, and she nodded and squeezed U’Nam’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry about Mallor.”
U’Nam grinned, and it was the first time Namior had seen such an expression on the Shantasi’s face. “This is the Core’s meaning!” she said. Then she turned and crawled for cover.
Namior went to her mother, hunched down, listening to the coughs of the Strangers’ weapons firing both ways. “We have to go!” she said, but her mother did not need telling. The two of them stood together, and the few survivors of Pavmouth Breaks followed.
The clouds were so thick above them that it was almost as dark as night, but the lightning lit their way.
Namior’s skin crawled.
Something was going to happen.
Chapter Fourteen
the weight of words
THERE WERE NO more Strangers.
They had traveled beyond the Komadians’ influence, but not the storm’s. Namior led the way, aiming for where they had left the other two Core men behind before heading into Pavmouth Breaks not so long ago. Her mother walked by her side. Neither of them spoke. Namior felt the weight of words between them, strung like a line ready to break, but it was not the time. At last, she was starting to believe that there would be a later.
The wind was not so terrible up there, sweeping across the high plains with no valley to funnel or concentrate its force. The rain still drove against their backs, but they could not be wetter than they already were, and the tough fisherfolk were used to discomfort. Lightning flashed, but the thunder came later than before. Pavmouth Breaks was the center of the storm. They had left that place behind.
When shapes emerged from the gloom of rain, Namior feared the worst, and she ran forward brandishing Mallor’s sword. She was met with a harsh curse from Mygrette, then the two witches laughed and hugged. There were at least thirty others with the old witch, and she said she had been
gathering escapees to her, hoping that with enough people they could go back into the village to rescue more.
The two groups of survivors became one, and Mygrette joined Namior and her mother in the lead.
“What’s happening back down there?” Mygrette asked, having to shout against the storm.
“They’re taking everyone!” Namior called.
“This storm isn’t right. It’s not natural.” Mygrette grabbed her arm, eyes blazing. “I’ve listened to the land, and it’s good to do so again. But it’s terrified.”
“Magic is afraid?” Namior asked, and the idea chilled her. She wanted to stop there and then, plunge her ground rod into the soil and join herself with the land.
“No, no …” Mygrette shook her head. “Wrong word. It’s like Pavmouth Breaks isn’t part of Noreela anymore. It’s a blank, somewhere magic won’t touch or acknowledge. As if not seeing it will make it go away.”
Namior frowned, looking down as she walked. They splashed through mud. Lightning flashed again, reflecting itself around her feet. Then the thunder rolled in, a long, rumbling roar that went on and on.
“Namior!” her mother called. “Something…!”
Namior turned around. They all turned, because the storm had increased in ferocity even more. A sheet of lightning hung in the gloomy sky behind them, held aloft by the two towers they could see and those they could not, smothering Pavmouth Breaks, cracking and thrashing like the multiple legs of a deep-ocean scortopus. A series of explosions shook the ground, sending massive shock waves that splashed puddles and shook showers of drops from tall plants.
“The sky is breaking,” Mygrette said.
Namior shook her head, because that was impossible.
And then the sky broke.
NAMIOR FELL WITH her mother close beside her, and they both took comfort from the contact.
The sky lit up, too bright to look at, too hot to touch. A wave of heat blasted at them through the heavy rains, a visible ripple originating above the village and sweeping outward, turning rain to steam and banishing the dusky darkness before it. Namior brought her arms up to cover her face, squinting her eyes shut against the brightness and holding her breath in anticipation.