Tales of Noreela 04: The Island (10 page)

There’s a terrible splitting, ripping sound. Flesh tears, blood spatters the ground, bones snap and rupture, and a dark, thrashing shape emerges from the dead Stranger’s cleft back. The long, thin limbs on either side go tense, then erupt in one final gush of bluish flame. It’s not directed or contained, but it floats down like ash.

Sparks touch O’Peeria, and she screams.

That catches the wild wraith’s attention.

“No,” Kel says, and he raises his crossbow. But he has not primed it, and he cannot find his bolt quiver. By the time he’s thought about drawing a throwing knife and trying to finish O’Peeria with that, the wraith has flowed down like thick water to puddle around its dead owner’s corpse. It covers O’Peeria in something like a flowing shadow, but Kel can still hear her screams, and he hears the sounds as the wraith penetrates her body through every opening, expanding, tearing the last cry from her with one final surge.

The Stranger’s body is melting beneath the drift of ash.

The youngsters are shouting and swearing and cursing, but he can no longer hear their words.

Pelly is crying as she grabs him beneath the arms and pulls him back between pedestals.

A Stranger’s wraith exists for a few beats, if that, before being drawn down to wherever it is they go. If they run fast enough, perhaps …

But it is not coming for them, and he will never know why. It goes for the innocent, unknowing youngsters whose presence he has drawn to its attention. By the time Kel finds the courage to close his eyes, and the wraith is fading away at last, the eight lie torn apart across the ground.

THE MAN AND
woman were holding tightly to the rope stretched across the river. But the impact had damaged their craft, and it was listing as water battered the damaged hull, one cracked board flexing and letting in water.

Kel stood in the unsteady boat and ducked beneath the rope, leaning on it from the other side. He did not look at the fisherman or the seafood vendor. He looked down the river, past the ruined bridge and harbor, out to where the masts came ever closer.

“Pull!” the man said.

Kel glanced at him. “I have to get to Drakeman’s Hill.”

“What? We’ve just come from that side. We’re going across, away from the harbor and mole. Away from whatever comes.”

“Scared?” Kel said, and the man saw something in his eyes that made him look away.

“Please help us pull,” the woman said. She was kind, and afraid.

“No,” Kel said. “I have to get over there, there’s something I need in my rooms, then I have to get away. I have to—”

The man kicked out at him. Kel had not seen or sensed the strike coming. He bent over the rope to protect his stomach, and when the fisherman kicked again his knee caught Kel beneath the jaw.

His vision swam for a few beats, and he heard the woman berating her husband.

“S-sorry,” the man said, reaching out to touch Kel’s shoulder.

Kel knocked his hand aside and punched him in the face. The man fell back, Kel released the rope, and the woman instinctively came toward her husband.

The current caught the boat and dragged it down toward the bridge. They bobbed sideways down the river. The broken bridge was a couple of hundred steps away, and the boat would fetch up against the piles of debris driven against its uprights. From there, perhaps Kel could climb and make his way through the destroyed harbor, find a path up onto Drakeman’s Hill…but the masts were very close. He could see a few militia gathering at the harbor, and a group of residents not frightened enough to flee, and he wanted to shout out loud that they should go, run, because everything was about to change.

He realized that when the mysterious ships docked, he would be there to see who, or what, they carried.

WHEN THE SMALL
boat was driven against the huge pile of flotsam stacked against the broken stone bridge, Kel was faced with a choice.

The woman and her fisherman husband helped each other climb up, over shattered and uprooted trees, the remnants of smashed buildings and the dead things crushed in between. There were bodies in the detritus, both animal and human, and Kel caught flashes of pink and paleness. Some of them had hair, others fur, and some had broken shells and huge, serrated pincers. After that, he tried not to look too carefully.

When the couple reached the bridge parapet, they fell over onto the road, stood and turned right immediately. They could have gone left, negotiating their way across the wreckage
jammed in the fallen arch, then along to the ruined harbor. They could have stood with friends and fellow residents of Pavmouth Breaks, waiting to welcome in whatever manned those boats. They could have joined in with the amazed conversation and excited pointing at the vessels, the island, the storm clouds still boiling away out to sea. But they chose escape.

Kel decided almost as quickly as they. Namior was to his right, but duty to his left. Duty to himself, and the Core he had abandoned, and the memory of friends he had seen die. And O’Peeria. He owed her everything, and the most he could do since he had fumbled his escape was to see what arrived.

He dropped onto the surface of the bridge nearest the harbor. From a distance it had looked ruined only in its shattered center span, but close up there was a lot more damage visible. The parapet was cracked and crazed, and the paving was missing great swathes of cobbles. Elsewhere on the harbor he could see that mud made up most of the surface, but where he stood the gushing waters had swept the bridge clean.

He looked out to sea. Past the battered mole, the craft coming in from the island were drawing very close. There were maybe thirty vessels, ranging from small sailing boats to a ship with three masts that looked set to dwarf the harbor, should it come in that close. Some of the smaller boats were driven by oars as well as sails, rising and falling with perfect synchronicity. They flew flags of many colors. The sails were a mixture of white, cream and blue, with one or two tattered spreads of dark green canvas here and there. They did not sail aggressively. They were grouped close together, not spread out like an attacking force would be. Kel could see no signs of weapons. He made out a few people here and there on the larger vessels, but there seemed to be no urgency to their movements.

He had never witnessed an invasion from the sea. No one had, ever, other than those ancient Noreelans who had watched the mythical Violet Dogs stream ashore.
Not far from
here
, Kel thought.
A hundred miles north, that’s where they lay claim to having suffered the Violet Dog invasion. Not so very far away …

He walked carefully along to the harbor. Soon, he would be one of the crowd. He looked longingly up at Drakeman’s Hill, but between him and the hill were dozens of buildings smashed down into alleys and roads, bodies floating in mud, and things washed in from the sea.

Most of those things were dead, but he saw movement here and there that he did his best to avoid. He’d spent five years living in a fishing village; he knew there were dangers out there. He had already seen the scarlet splashes of exploded sea anemones, some of them poisonous, and he feared that larger things could stalk the ruins.

The first of the boats, a small vessel, was swinging its bow so that it could edge against the seaward side of the mole. A few militia had gone as far as they could, stopping only where the first major wound in that huge construction prevented them from advancing any farther. They hung on to bows and crossbows. Swords and other weapons were slung haphazardly and hurriedly about their bodies. They did not look very intimidating. A dozen more militia waited where the mole reached the harborfront, and they had arranged a pile of debris before themselves as a rough barricade. But it would hardly stop a determined child, and from their stunned expressions, Kel knew that such defenses were symbolic at best. If there was to be a fight, it would not last long.

Two machines sat amidst the crowd of people on the harbor. One of them seemed motionless, but the other floated on thin tendrils of loosely hinged metal, each one lightly touching the ground. Kel could not see its Practitioner, but it seemed to have an air of readiness about it. He’d heard of machines being used in combat, though he had never witnessed it. He wondered what that one—which looked as though it had previously been used to load and unload heavy fishing baskets from trawlers—could do, were it called upon to act.

He drew level with the first of the people and went on, passing through the crowd so that he stood close to where the mole connected to the harbor. The machine stood before him, and a short, old woman was crouched beside it.

“What can it do?” he asked.

The woman glanced back at him and he saw fear in her eyes. “Maybe not enough,” she said.

“Hold back!” one of the militia said angrily. “We can’t assume
anything
. Hold back, Mygrette, or you’ll be the cause of something unforgivable.”

“Jus’ being cautious,” Mygrette said. Kel knew her—an old witch who lived up on the cliffs just beyond the village limits. She put more value in machines and the mechanics of magic, rather than the mind games played by Namior and her family. Kel was not sure which he trusted less.

“They see you and that machine ready to attack and—”

“If they’re peaceful, they’ll not be looking for a fight,” Kel said. The man turned on him.

“And what do you know, wood-carver? You’re not even one of us!”

“So we fight amongst ourselves because you don’t want to fight them?” a short woman asked. She smiled at Kel, but he could see the anxiety there.

The whole crowd thrummed with a nervous energy. So much potential, so much history ready to change or be made. Kel still felt the urge to run, but the time for escape had passed. The best he could do was to find out more.

They all heard the thump as the boat struck the stone mole. Ropes were flung up from the vessel, and two of the waiting militia caught them and tied them on. Three others held back, arrows strung, glancing back at the crowd, then down at the boat.

Kel stretched, but he could see no more. The mole curved out around the harbor, and the visitors were still hidden from sight.

The watchers mumbled and whispered. Mygrette touched
the machine and hummed something Kel could not hear. He took a few steps forward.

They saw the first person climb one of the tied-on ropes and stand on the mole. It was a tall, thin woman with dark skin and pale gray hair, wearing dark slacks and a leather tunic. A knife was visible on her belt, but Kel saw no other weapons. She could have been a Noreelan.

She stood on her own, smiled at the several militia spaced around her, then looked past them at the ruined village. The smile dropped from her face. She looked north first, across the swollen river and past the broken bridge to the side of the village where Namior lived. Then her gaze swept slowly south, across Drakeman’s Hill, down to the harbor, finally resting on the people assembled there.

Kel felt her looking directly at him and he stared back. He wondered if everyone gathered felt the same.

The woman’s face crumpled for a beat, and Kel was certain he saw the glitter of tears. Then she gathered her composure and took two steps forward, bowing her head briefly at the militia and talking to them in subdued tones. Above the swell of the sea and the roar of the river, no one on the harbor could hear what she had to say. One of the militia turned and looked at the ruins of the harbor, but his expression offered no clue as to their discussion. The woman raised her arms once, slowly, but Kel could not tell whether there was any special significance to the gesture.

Then one of the militia broke away and trotted back along the mole, taking the arrow from his bow and slipping it back into the quiver slung at his hip. His companions were helping several other visitors up from the boat, and they stood in a small group around the tall woman. They all looked human. But then, Kel knew, so did the Strangers he had killed. Clothed, at least.

As the militiaman drew closer, so the questions began.
Who are they… what do they want… where do they come from… where’s the island… what… when… how …

The militiaman—whom Kel knew as Vek, a strong and capable soldier for such a small village—raised his hands and said nothing. When the clamor died down he made a point of scanning the crowd slowly, trying to catch everyone’s eye. When his gaze slipped past Kel, Kel tried to read something in his eyes.
Is he scared? Is he excited?
But Vek betrayed nothing.

“Where is Chief Councilor Eildan?”

Kel looked around with everyone else, sharing the surprise that the head of the village did not seem to be present.

“Here!” a voice called. Eildan emerged from the wreckage of a building, shoving past the slumped, dripping remnants of a thatched roof. In one hand he clasped a large fishing harpoon, and he looked different from the way Kel had ever seen him.
Ready for a fight
, Kel thought, and his admiration for Eildan rose. He knew from village gossip that the Chief Councilor had been in the militia in Long Marrakash thirty years before, and there were rumors that he’d fought in some border skirmishes with the several independent states huddled in the mountains north of that once-great city. He certainly carried the scars of war, but he was always humble, quiet and secretive about his past. Here
is my concern
, he would say, banging a table or stamping a foot, marking the ground he did his best to control.

“Chief, the visitors request an audience with you,” Vek said.

“Visitors from where?” Eildan said. He looked past the assembled Noreelans, past Vek, and out to where the unknown people stood on the ruined mole.

“The tall woman’s name is Keera Kashoomie. She’s an emissary. She says she has much to explain, but first of all she wants to offer her apologies.”

Eildan looked back into the ruined building from which he had emerged. “There’s a dead child in there,” he said. “She looks perfect, her skin untouched, but her lungs are full of water, and her head… is soft… from where something hit her. She’s a daughter of my village. Perhaps her parents
are dead, too. Perhaps …” He swept his hand slowly before him, as though offering the people something in his palm. “Perhaps they’re here.” He rested the tip of his harpoon on the layer of mud coating the harborside, letting it sink in slowly. “I’m afraid,” he said quietly. He spoke with great dignity and honesty, expressing what most other people felt.