Isles of the Forsaken (11 page)

He stared out the window of the ship’s cabin that was his home until something adequate could be constructed ashore. The view was always different, since the ship rode at a single anchor and so swung according to the prevailing wind. At the moment it showed the western view, where the sea was a steel-grey expanse and a storm front advanced across it from the southwest, trailing skirts of rain. The sea made him uneasy; it was so uncontrollable, so oblivious of all humans and their concerns. He would be glad to be ashore again, away from its infernal rocking motion—although the urgency of his desire to move had abated a bit since the cockroach situation on the ship had, quite inexplicably, improved.

Turning to his letter again, he wrote:

Before coming here, I was led to believe that the Lashnura were kept in a state of bondage, obliged to perform their blood ritual for whoever commanded them; but the reality is somewhat different. The Lashnura claim to feel motivated by an altruistic ethic of self-sacrifice. They really believe their blood can cure, but consider it a joyful gift to their fellow man, a service they perform willingly, even at considerable cost to themselves. I cannot help but feel that putting an end to this practice, as we must, will eliminate something noble from the world, an expression of mercy and humanity.

I hope you will forgive my writing at such length about the Yorans. To tell the truth, I find them more interesting than I expected. The Torna we shall need, but the Adaina and Lashnura should be the objects of our compassion and care.

*

At the moment Nathaway was signing his letter, Harg was on his way to Goth’s cottage to keep his promise to Strobe. He suspected that his arrival might end the Grey Man’s absence.

He felt apprehensive about seeing Goth after all these years, but it was something he had to do, or feel incomplete. So much of what he had accomplished in the Inning world had been an effort to prove something to Goth—stupidly at first, and with greater wisdom as the years progressed. He needed Goth to see him now, and acknowledge the change.

It was an unsettled day; the weather couldn’t make up its mind what mood it wanted to be in. Outside Goth’s house the trees were whispering to each other in the gusty wind. When Harg came into the yard he stopped. It looked like someone had just been here. There was a shiny new axe in the chopping block and a pile of wood waiting to be split. The tomato vines in the garden were staked up, and some chickens pecked in the dirt. Clearly, Goth had returned.

The door was closed. The sunlight beating on it brought out the texture of the unpainted wood. He touched it, and it swung open. There was no one inside. He stepped in with the familiar feeling that he was entering a sanctum. Then he saw the rumpled bed and suddenly remembered Goth’s girl, the sex toy. Of course, she must be the one splitting the wood and caring for the chickens. She was the one whose breakfast dishes were still on the table.

He crossed to the fireplace and looked on the mantelpiece. Yes, it was still where he had seen Goth place it seven years ago. He picked it up: a small, round stone. It was the soulstone he had asked Goth to keep for him before he went away. If he had died far from Yora, this was where his soul would have come to be at home. He remembered how terrified he had been that Goth would say no.

Fingering the stone, Harg thought how unlike him it looked: wave-washed and grey. More like Goth himself. Harg wondered why he had picked this stone. Then he noticed that its surface was darkened from being handled. Someone had held it often enough for hand oils to soak in and polish it. With a pang, Harg thought:
He held the damned stone more often than he ever held me.

He closed his eyes. In the utter silence he could almost feel Goth’s hands closing over his own, over the stone.

The back door banged, snapping him out of his reverie. Blown in on a gust of wind, her silver hair in disarray, a young Lashnura woman stood before him, as surprised to find him there as he was to see her.

“Who are you?” she said.

Everything he had thought since hearing of her changed in an instant. This was no mere sex toy, no work of lust or need. She was an exquisite creation, born of mad inspiration. It looked like Goth had poured all the love and longing of a lifetime into her. If she had been a statue, she would have been a master work; but she was real, a glimpse of what happiness would look like if it breathed and walked.

And she was Goth’s.

Why had he even looked at her? Why had he found out there were such possibilities in the world? Men like him were not allowed perfect beings; they just spent their lives watching and wanting.

She was studying him with a direct, unwavering gaze, completely unafraid, as if he were the most fascinating thing she had ever seen. “Who are you?” she said again.

He had to clear his throat before he could speak. “My name’s Harg Ismol. Sorry, I—”

“
You’re
Harg?” she said in astonishment.

“Has he spoken of me?” There was no need to say who; it was like Goth was in the room.

“All the time. Everyone does.” She took a hesitant step forward, then stopped. “You have a very strong mora,” she said. “I can feel it from here, like a furnace. I think if I touched you, I would get burned.” She came forward another step, drawn by the tantalizing prospect of pain, as all Lashnurai were. Carefully, she reached out to touch him on the neck, near the pulse point. “You’ve been hurt,” she said, just a whisper. Her eyes clouded like a tarnished sea on a moody day. “They told me about Jory, but not about you.”

He took her hand and, simply because he couldn’t resist, brought it to his lips. They were watching each other so closely the gesture felt more intimate than it was.

“Would you like to have sex with me?” she asked.

He was struck by the innocence of the question. It was like a child asking him to play. “Yes,” he said, “very much. But there would be hell to pay if I did.”

“Why?” she asked.

“He really has taught you nothing, has he?”

“Yes, he has,” she said, more in Goth’s defence than her own.

She was completely guileless, defenceless, without any survival instincts. Goth had created this exquisite innocent, then gone off and left her to make her own way. Just as he had done to another child long ago.

“Bastard,” Harg said under his breath. “He did it again.”

“Did what?” she asked.

He pressed her hand between his. The bones felt light as a bird’s. “Listen—what’s your name?”

“Spaeth.”

“Spaeth. If you ever need something, or get in trouble, come to me. I’ll help you, I promise.”

“What kind of trouble?” she said with a slight frown.

“Any kind.”

“Well, then, you can strike Agath dumb for me,” she said lightly.

He frowned. “What’s Agath after you about?”

“She wants me to cure Jory.”

She said it as if it were a joke, but he knew better. “No!” he said forcefully. The thought revolted him. Jory’s damage was such that it could kill or cripple any dhotamar who took it on, especially an inexperienced one. Harg could not bear to see her maimed, even for Jory.

“You must not go near Jory,” he said seriously. “Especially don’t touch him. It doesn’t matter what Agath says, or anyone. Promise me.”

Her smile told him how presumptuous his demands seemed. “Jory lives here now. I live here. I can’t not go near him.”

“Well then, don’t let them lure you into—”

“I’m not giving dhota for him,” she said positively.

“Good,” he said.

“I want to choose, not be coerced.”

“Good.”

He wanted to touch her face, and was just reaching out when a suspicious voice behind him said, “What are you doing here?”

He whirled around, stepping away from Spaeth as guiltily as if he had been doing more than just holding her hand.

Mother Tish the herbwoman stood in the doorway, frowning at him.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Then get on with your business, if you have any,” she said, standing aside for him to leave. “And stay away from Spaeth.”

Her vehemence made him defensive. “I’ll cause her no harm,” he said.

Mother Tish came into the cottage to take Spaeth by the arm, and draw her away from him protectively. “She’s ours, not yours.”

He saw then what was going on. The girl was their next dhotamar, and already they were crowding around to possess her. “You pack of parasites,” he said to Tish. “You’ve bled Goth till he had to run from you, and now you’re starting in on her. Can’t you solve your own problems?”

“What would you know about it?” Tish snapped. “You’re not his bandhota.”

It was true; he was on the outside. There was something about their faces, this private clique of Goth’s dependents. A strange blood-kinship. They protected Goth, revered him, loved him, and drank him dry.

“Get out!” Tish ordered. But instead of letting him leave, she said, “He could cure you of your hard heart if you gave him the chance. If you didn’t love your anger so. The Ashwin alone know why he loves you.”

That was their secret grudge. They thought Harg was their rival for Goth’s love. “At least he’s got a choice whether to love me,” Harg fired back.

He left then, feeling shaken. When he came to a downed tree beside the pathway, he sat on its trunk, bending forward and pressing his knuckles into his forehead. Seven years away, and he was still right back in the middle of everything divisive and bitter about Yorabay. He had thought the Harg who had left all those years ago was dead and gone, but he still existed in the minds of Yorans, and they were constantly calling him back into being. It made Harg feel like a stranger in his own skin, to have their expectations controlling him. But perhaps the competent, respected Captain Harg of the Native Navy was really the creation of other people as well, and could be dismantled by others without his consent.

Now he thought back to his days in the navy with a paradoxical longing. He had had only one goal then: to survive in spite of everything they could do to him. There had been a purity about that struggle that had stripped layers of unnecessary complexity from life. He took the soulstone from his pocket, where he had put it. It felt small and hard as a lump in the throat. Once, death had lain in the palm of his hand, cold and hard, and he had learned to grasp it. Now, he needed to learn to do the same with life.

*

That night, a new wind blew over Yora. It was a wind with a tang of faraway lands and a chill of changing times. It stirred in the tiny, crowded cottages of Yorabay, straining to burst into wider spaces, to sweep across the waters to other shores.

Just after noon, the storm that had been threatening swept in from the southwest, sending the fishing boats scurrying to port. Late in the afternoon someone spotted a trader’s vessel riding the dark seas west of Yorabay, trying to beat south into harbour. A little group gathered on the rain-swept quay, watching. Everyone had an opinion about what the sea was up to. Old man Gimp thought it was angry because the Innings were trying to tame it with their breakwater. Bonn held that the storm was more mischievous than malicious. Others smelled something melancholy in the air. They all agreed that Goth would have known what the trouble was. The Lashnurai, after all, knew the sea personally.

It turned out that the sea was just bluffing. The ketch made it safely into the cove. The Yorans on the dock cheered, for now they saw it was the
Ripplewill
, a familiar cargo boat out of Thimish.
Ripplewill
and her skipper, Torr, were legendary on Yora, and not just because Torr would carry any cargo, regardless of legality. Twenty years earlier, he had been fishing the outer banks of Spole when his nets had brought up a mirror that showed not the reflection of whoever looked into it, but a woman’s face so beautiful that every one of Torr’s crew pined for it, and longed to jump into the sea to find her. They tried to bring the mirror ashore, but it tarnished quickly in the air, and when it was polished up again, would show nothing at all.

Knowing this story, everyone thought it significant that Torr had never married, unless you counted
Ripplewill
.

Strobe invited the skipper to his home. As they trudged together up the wet dock, Torr never stopped talking for a moment. “By the horns! I told those empty-headed commissaries that the sea was testy today, and their damned mining machines were as likely to see the bottom of the Pont Sea as Yorabay’s cove. But would they listen? Ha! There was a schedule to meet, and all the powers forbid a schedule should wait upon the weather. So it was up to old Torr to brave the worst the Panther could do, or lose his contract for shirking!”

Since he had brought groceries and dry goods for the Yorans as well as the mining machines, no one criticized him for his rashness.

Several of the men from the dock joined them to hear the news. When they all crowded into Strobe’s warm cottage, they found Harg lounging by the hearth, drinking Tway’s home-brewed beer and staring moodily into the fire. After a scurry to provide Torr with dry clothes and a warm drink, Tway installed him next to the fireplace, where he warmed his backside appreciatively. Rain drummed on the roof.

“Is there good news out of Thimish?” Bonn asked the guest with irony. It was an old Yoran proverb,
Good news never came out of Thimish
.

The trader shook his head. “The news is bad. Scarce a ship has stirred from Harbourdown all month because of the godforsaken customs regulations. No one knows what’s going on. All they know is we can’t be allowed to make a living without doing more tricks for the Innings than a trained dog.”

The Yorans exchanged looks. Harbourdown’s “traders” had been poor neighbours for a century. Twenty years ago the rest of the South Chain, fed up with piracy, had banded together to clean the brigands out of Thimish. Their success had been dearly bought and short-lived. Now the Innings were trying to succeed where the islanders had failed.

“It’s hard to imagine a customs office on Thimish,” Gill observed mildly.

“That’s what we all said,” Torr replied. “We didn’t think they could be serious. Then a shipful of Tiarch’s militia came and planted themselves in the old abandoned fortress above the town, and said they’d blow up any boat that tried to enter or leave the harbour without permission. They’ve got the guns and the idiocy to do it. Now we hear there’s three more ships on the way to make us all toe their line. Then you’ll find out what it’s like.”