Tales of Noreela 04: The Island (40 page)

Kel shifted forward, but only to look more closely.

He had seen Namior delving into broken flesh to knit bones and splice veins, her fingers working with a stunning dexterity. The machine did the same, only much faster, and its flexible limbs could reach into places where fingers would not. Namior’s breath bubbled and spat for a beat, and a fine spray of blood came from her mouth as she uttered a soft cough. Then the machine rose above the wound, limbs flexing and twisting too fast to be seen, and Kel watched, amazed, as first her flesh, then her skin was bound back together.

The old woman gasped, swayed and had to lean on the bed to prevent herself from collapsing. Kel went to help, but he found that he did not want to touch her. Unreasonable, irrational, but she was still one of them.

“I’m fine,” she said, sensing his turmoil. She chuckled, and for a beat he saw her craze showing through.

“But I need to ask you—”

“My heart, my old heart… I need rest. When she wakes, you can talk to me together.”

“One question,” Kel said, and he realized that he was unconsciously blocking the doorway. Could she move him? If she had to, if he forced it, could she
fight
him? The blue box
was back in her hand, emitting puffs of steam and hissing quietly, and there was something strikingly eerie about it. Almost
lifelike
. And he decided that yes, she could fight him; but he also believed that she would not.

“One, then,” she nodded, exhausted.

“Is there a way to stop them?”

The old woman stared at him, still breathing heavily, her eye never wavering from his. “I think maybe some can be saved.”

“How?”

She waved her hand at him again, closing her eyes. “That’s two questions, and I need to think on them. Bring her down with you, when she’s awake, and by then I’ll have an answer.”

“Why didn’t you say anything—?”

“I was hoping against hope,” she said, the voice of a frightened little girl. “And my crazes weren’t feigned.”

A hundred more questions shuffled in Kel’s mind, but he stood aside to let her pass. “Thank you.”

“No need for thanks. She’s my great-granddaughter, and I love her as much as life itself.” The woman groaned and sighed as she walked slowly down the spiral staircase, careful not to tread on any squeaking floorboards in case she woke her granddaughter sleeping below.

Kel went to Namior’s bedroom window and moved the curtain aside. The ship was still moored in the harbor, though there was no longer a queue of people waiting to board. A few villagers continued digging for survivors. Kel closed his eyes and wished he could un-see the whole scene, but he could not.
There’s no one left alive under the mud
, he thought.
And even if there is …

It all felt so useless.

One thing the Core had never decided upon was how to fight the invaders, if and when they came. There were plans and ideas, theories and schemes, but all of them involved
magic, the one constant in the land that could always be relied upon.

But not there. Even if the Core arrived that night, the fight would be a short one.

He thought of the old woman downstairs, and what she had done, and the more he dwelled on it, the more confused he became.

KEL SAT FOR
a while in a wooden rocking chair beside Namior’s bed, desperate to do something but not knowing what he
could
do. As he’d come back into the valley from the stockade, he’d had vague thoughts of initiating some sort of resistance. He hoped his Core training would help him to move around the fishing village unseen, break into homes that might be locked and set traps in which they could capture and kill Komadians and their metal-clad Strangers. It had seemed like a hopeless plan even then, with no real end in sight other than eventual, inevitable capture, and now it seemed foolish to even consider.

At least he’d sent his message. Mygrette had planted the communicator he’d given her, and a message sent double would hopefully be heeded with twice the urgency.

He had no idea how long it would take for the first of the Core to arrive. But the more he thought about the near future, the more certain he became of his course of action.
I should be there to meet them. And yes, to warn them about how the language of the land has been stifled. And …

And there was the crystal he’d buried.

He realized he’d been rocking in the chair, his eyelids drooping, and the movement and soft creaking noise inspired a memory: Namior naked before him, turning her back and lowering herself down as he sat in the rocking chair; sinking onto him, lying back, and both of them letting the movement
do its work; her groaning, his hand over her mouth to hold in her cry.

Good times, yet even then he’d been concerned about things that had seemed so important at the time.

“I’ll save you, Namior,” he whispered, leaving the chair and sitting beside her on the bed. He waited there for a while, his tiredness closing in again, and he leaned back against the wall, Namior at his side.

IMAGES OF THOSE
he had killed haunted his light doze; the Stranger on the beach, the Komadian interrogator Lemual, Mell and whatever had taken her body. They were all trying to talk to him, but however hard he listened he could not hear their voices. He was troubled, because he was certain they had something important to say, but all he could hear was a heavy, steady breathing.

And then he thought of O’Peeria, his other love and another person he had always assumed the guilt for killing. She walked into his dream and swept the other faces aside in that rough, confident manner she’d had. He held his breath, hoping he would hear her when she spoke, but she had nothing to say. She just smiled.

Then she looked down, and when Kel opened his eyes and followed her gaze, he saw Namior. Her eyes were open and she was watching him. “Breathe,” she said softly, answering her own dream. “Breathe.”

O’Peeria was gone but Namior was there, and Kel slid from the bed so that he could kneel down and press his face to hers.

“Am I awake?” she asked, and he laughed because he was wondering the same thing. He kissed her and held her face, looking into her eyes and reveling in her smile.

“How do you feel?”

She was looking around the room as if it was a strange place. “Don’t remember getting back here.”

“What’s the last thing you
do
remember?”

“The boat. You, rowing. We passed a ship with no lights, then … nothing. I was dying.”

“You might have been. I was terrified that you were.”

She went to sit up, cringing against the pain that threatened to burst across her chest. Her shirt fell open and she looked down, gasping.

“Where… ?”

“Your great-grandmother healed you.”

“The magic’s back?”

“No.” Kel sat beside her on the bed, desperate to retain physical contact now that she was with him again. “She’s quite an incredible old woman, isn’t she?”

“She is,” Namior nodded. “But her craze?”

“There’s lots to tell,” Kel said. “And after that, there’s something we have to do.”

“Warn everyone!”

He shook his head sadly. “Too late for that. The Komadians are already gathering people and ferrying them out to the island. Some of them … some have even been sent back.”

“Who?”

Kel shook his head again.
I can’t tell her yet. Not Mell, not what I did …

“I’m hungry,” Namior said, seeing his discomfort. “And thirsty. But apart from that I feel… well.” She propped herself on one elbow, stretched, ran her other hand between her breasts. “Do I look well?”

Kel smiled and stared at her chest. “Don’t tempt me.”

NAMIOR’S GREAT-GRANDMOTHER WAS
waiting for them downstairs.

“I have to go out,” Kel said, catching the old woman’s eye. Namior objected, but he calmed her with a kiss and held her close. “Just for a beat. You and your great-grandmother talk. She’s got something to tell you. And when I come back, we’ve got plenty to plan.”

“I feel ready to go out there now!” Namior said. “Fight those bastards. Get back at them for Trakis and anyone else they’ve done that to. I’m ready, Kel!”

“Good,” he said, laughing softly. “We’ll get our chance.”

He glanced across at the old woman again, and she was trying to offer him a smile. But the prospect of the lie she had to admit, the old deception about to be revealed, turned her smile into something else.

“I won’t be long,” Kel said.

“Where are you going?” the old woman asked.

“To collect something I left behind.” He stepped outside and closed the door behind him before either woman could say anything else.

Kel stood motionless in the cool night breeze. He breathed in deep and let it out slowly, happy to be out of the dwelling and away from the pressures inside. There was so much history there, and the house was filled with such deceit, that he welcomed the honest darkness. He felt guilty for leaving Namior to discover those truths on her own, but it was a family matter. There was also a sliver of doubt and concern … but much as his strict training went against it, he trusted the old woman. Perhaps the five years since he’d left the Core had almost made him human again.

He remained in the house’s shadow for a few beats, listening, scanning the darkness, sniffing the air for anything strange. There were voices in the distance—one calling the name of a lost loved one, the other laughing—but he could hear no one nearby. Three rats ran along the narrow path, pausing to sniff at his feet before sauntering on their way. Kel was certain he was alone.

He moved cautiously but quickly, down to the main path
and west toward the sea. In places he could see between buildings and across to the harbor. He scanned quickly, looking for the metal-clad Strangers, but he saw none there. It seemed that they were still keeping to the shadows and extremes, and for a while that was a good thing. He hoped it meant that they had yet to reveal themselves to the village as a whole. While the Komadians could still transport residents to the island of their own free will, things would go slowly and peacefully. And while Kel hated the idea of people willingly going to their doom without a fight, it made time for the Core to arrive.

But they would soon find the bodies of those he had killed. Time was short.

As he moved, it felt as if the village had been divided into two areas: the harbor, where nothing untoward seemed to be happening; and elsewhere, in the dark, where Noreelans called for their missing loved ones, Strangers prowled and the village militia lay dead. He was in the most dangerous part.

Kel reached the last of the undamaged buildings and started clambering down over the fallen walls. When he reached the place where he’d buried the crystal, he paused for a few beats and looked around. The sea hushed onto the broken shore. Waves broke around the ruins. The boat he and Namior had arrived in was still there, beached on a shelf of stone. Something called in the night, a sea doon floating somewhere above the waves and seeking a mate, or prey. But no shadows moved where they should not. Kel was alone.

He started digging. The muck and debris he’d piled in on top of the crystal came out easily, and he was soon making his way back up the broken slope, a bulky shape beneath one arm. Though his jacket was still wrapped around the crystal, he could feel a vague warmth bleeding through, like the sad heat leaving a just-killed body. But he guessed that its warmth would go on and on.

What he carried in his hands could be priceless. Whatever happened here at Pavmouth Breaks, the crystal would help
the Core to understand so much more about the Komadians, their nature and intent. Whether or not they saved some or most of the village’s inhabitants—and Kel was determined to do his very best to help as many as he could—he knew that the crystal
had
to reach the Core. It would be taken away and hidden deep, where no one could find it. And the Core had its witches. They would learn its secrets, and the secrets of the thing trapped inside.

Several times Kel almost dropped the object, so sickened was he by what he carried. One of
them
. One of Noreela’s greatest enemies, and he was taking it back to the house of the woman he loved.

But in that house lived another of Noreela’s enemies, now, perhaps, its friend.

Back through the streets, Kel paused at every twist and turn of the path, afraid of what he would find around the next corner. There were more rats, and a couple of wild-looking dogs that had muzzles blackened with dried blood. They both growled at him, but he growled back, and they scampered off into the night.

Close to Namior’s home, a shadow came at him from the darkness.

“Kel Boon!”

Kel took several steps back and drew his sword.

“Kel Boon, it’s your Chief Eildan.” He gave the name grace and import, but his voice was tinged with fear.

“You’re alone?” Kel asked.

“Alone, yes. And you?”

Kel nodded.

“There are
things
in the village,” Eildan said. He still carried his harpoon, knuckles white where he gripped it hard. “From the sea, from the island, things come to kill. I saw my militia, many of them, dead in a hole upriver!”

“Pavmouth Breaks is in great danger,” Kel said, remembering the Chief welcoming Keera Kashoomie unquestioningly and with open arms. “They’re not what they tell us.”

“I don’t know where my wife has gone,” Eildan said, a sob belying his previous strength.

“They’re taking people to the island. And those who try to escape are corralled into stockades up on the plains.”

“Stockades?”

“Chief Eildan, we need to be ready to move,” Kel said. “Help is coming, but in the meantime we have to help ourselves. Fight when we have to, move when we can, and do our best to leave the village and get out of the valley.”

“Leave? Don’t be ridiculous!”

“Believe me, we’ve got no—”

“What have you got there?” The Chief had noticed the bundle beneath Kel’s arm, and he stepped closer to see. He was pale and terrified, and it looked as if he had not eaten or drunk anything since the waves.