Ison of the Isles (3 page)

The wave had eyes, Spaeth was sure of it. “What do you want?” she screamed at it.

The
Ripplewill
rose on the wave’s flank, and the giant lumbered on underneath. The wind hissed in Spaeth’s ears; she could almost hear words. “You coward!” she shouted. “Does it make you feel big to hurt a few humans who can’t even fight you?”

The moon plunged under again, and the world turned black. Spaeth sensed rather than saw the sinuous black shape dashing across the waves beside the boat, keeping even.

“You have grown very keen, my little ally,” the wind snarled in her ear.

“I’ve learned to see through you, traitor! All you’ve ever done is trick me. You warned me that someone was in alliance with you, and all the time it was me!”

“It was funny, wasn’t it?” Ridwit said. “It would have been even more funny if you had killed the Heir of Gilgen.”

Spaeth’s rage was black as the night. It
was
the night. Its power dwarfed her, mighty enough to shatter worlds. “See?” Ridwit hissed. “You are still better off with me.”

“No!” Spaeth cried. She had to resist this time. She had to struggle—for what? For powerlessness? To become a mite raging at the mountains?

She felt her own mouth stretching open as Ridwit laughed.
I must pull free
, Spaeth thought in panic.
I must become who I am
.

“Together, we have the power,” Ridwit said. “Let’s smash this little boat.”

It would crunch in her hand, its puny planks disintegrate to kindling. And all the heartbeats aboard would grow cold and die. The thought wrenched Spaeth’s mind off its course.

“Leave us alone!” she screamed. “These humans never did you any harm!”

The water laughed coldly against the hull. “What a weakling they make you. You are just like all the other Grey People: a doting fool for them. You will never have control while you let them enslave you. Give them up.”

Spaeth thought of Galber, bearing his pain because she couldn’t; of Tway’s loyalty, Torr’s trustworthiness. And Nathaway, who loved her with such abandon.

Tears filled her eyes as she felt the power drain away, leaving her helpless. She was on her knees now, still clutching the rail, a river of water washing around her legs.

Our only power is pity
, she felt Goth say. Spaeth had never felt more helpless. There was cruel laughter on the wind.

“Do you really think you can be the Heir of Gilgen now?” Ridwit said. “After you allied yourself with me? You proved yourself unfit.”

“Leave me alone!” Spaeth’s voice was drowned in the wind.

Step by step she made her way aft, to join the others huddled there. When she came close, Tway reached out to help her down into the cockpit, and put a warm arm around her.

“Torr! Larboard beam!” Cory shouted. The skipper glanced around and threw his weight against the tiller to bring the boat about. Spaeth turned to see the looming shape of a huge wave bearing down on them.

Torr’s manoeuvre came too late. The wave lifted the
Ripplewill
up; a breaker arched above like a gaping mouth edged with teeth of spray. Torr’s mouth formed the words, “Hold tight!” and the wave broke. A furious force of water buried them all. Spaeth had grasped a line, and now the deluge tore at her body, knocking the air out of her, pulling until her grip began to slip. All her will was in her hands, forcing them to keep clenched to safety. There was no up or down any more, no air, nothing but the elemental force of water.

Then there was a surface again, a place where water ended and air began. Spaeth gasped in. The wave was receding before them. Torr and Tway had been knocked to the other side of the cockpit, and Cory was nowhere to be seen.

Tway lunged for the tiller; Spaeth crawled through a wash of water to the spot where Cory’s liferope was fastened. It was taut; she heaved, but couldn’t budge it. “Torr, here!” she shouted. He came to her side, a dripping bear of a man. With slow, powerful movements he began to pull the rope in. Cory’s head bobbed above the water a little way to starboard. Hand over hand, against the force of the waves, Torr hauled his crewman in.

When Cory was near enough, Torr cleated the line and leaned over the gunwale to give him a hand. Their fingers almost touched; then the boat lifted up on a wave, carrying them apart. Spaeth could tell Cory was weakening from being dragged behind the boat in the wintry water. Again Torr leaned overside. This time the boat tilted into the sea, and the two men’s hands clasped. With a heave of superhuman strength Torr hefted Cory up and over the gunwale. Cory collapsed, gasping and dripping, on the floor of the cockpit.

Nathaway appeared out of the night. “What happened?” he shouted.

“Wave knocked her over,” Torr roared. “I mean over flat. The mast was in the sea. But she righted herself, by the horns! She came up again like a top. My little beauty!” He seemed about to throw himself down and kiss the deck. Instead he thumped Tway on the shoulder till her clothing squished. “It’s that keel of Yoran lead!”

“We Yorans usually know which way is up,” Tway said.

Torr turned to the Inning. “How is the hold?”

“Wet,” Nathaway said.

“You two get down there and help him,” Torr said to Cory and Spaeth. Cory tried to protest that he was fit, but Spaeth could tell he was bruised and bone-chilled. “That’s an order, Cory,” Torr said ominously.

The hold was a dark and swimming chaos. Everything that had not been fastened down had been pitched to the floor, and now floated in a foot of sloshing water. All lights had been extinguished, and the tinder was drenched or lost. Somewhere in the darkness, Galber was groaning in pain.

“Where’s the pump, Cory?” Spaeth demanded to distract herself from the sound of Galber’s voice.

“Over here.” They groped their way aft and set to work, dragging the pump into the centre of the cabin and running a hose out the hatchway. Then each of them took one side of the seesaw pump handle. It remained to be seen whether they could pump faster than the water was leaking in.

Survival became a matter of grim persistence. It was forcing burning muscles to bend yet again and again, until Spaeth lost all track of time and all memory of anything but the fragile shell of wood that kept out the hostile sea.

She was still working in a stupor when Nathaway put his hand on her arm and said, “I’ll handle it now. You rest.” Spaeth realized with surprise that she could see his face; and what was more, she could see the hold around her—no longer aswim in water, but cluttered by jetsam as if left by a receding tide.

When she emerged onto the open deck, the morning was dawning dull over a pewter sea. The
Ripplewill
still scudded west before an angry gale. When lifted high on the back of a wave, Spaeth could see miles of grey combers surrounding them under a lowering sky. But the light rushed to her head like a strong liquor. They had survived the night. Not by magic, not by power—by sheer stubborn unwillingness to let each other die.

Torr was still at the helm. His face wore an absorbed expression as he scanned the sea, attuned to every nuance of water and wind. From time to time the bow would disappear in a wall of foam, but it always rose again. They could no longer doubt their boat; every movement she made was like part of their own bodies.

The wind shifted north during the day, and turned cold. All their efforts at starting the stove again proved futile. Everything in the boat was drenched, and all they could do was bear the chill and hope for land and shelter ahead.

It was a worn and weary crew that finally raised a cheer when Torr sighted a line of hills on the western horizon. They gathered in the cockpit, peering ahead as the coast rose before them. “It has to be some island of the Outer Chain,” Torr said. “We’ve been blown clear across the Widewater.”

The shore was a line of jagged, rocky cliffs, their tops swathed in waterlogged clouds. The sea churned at their bases, spray leaping high against black rock. Even at a distance the booming of the breakers sounded.

They turned south along the coast. At last they spied the roofs of some stone cottages dotting the hill beyond a headland that surely hid a sheltering bay. The cheering sight of smoke rose from chimneys into the rain-soaked sky.

“I am going to sit down in the first fire I see,” Tway declared. “I think you could turn me on a spit for an hour, and I’d scarcely thaw.”

“I think I’ll have to peel these clothes off like an orange rind,” Cory said.

Torr said, “Well, I’m going to sleep for two days, and nothing on earth is going to wake me.”

They were skirting the headland before they saw what lay in the harbour. Torr jerked the tiller round, making the
Ripplewill
heel sharply in confusion. There, behind the arm of land, rose the tall masts and square rigging of a frigate guarding the bay.

Nathaway looked deadly weary. “The rest of you might slip past an inspection, but they’ll notice me,” he said. “If they’re suspicious, they might detain us. There could easily be a warrant out for my arrest.”

Spaeth looked at Torr, then slowly shook her head.

“It’s a far piece back to Lashnish,” Torr said. But he pushed the tiller over and sent the
Ripplewill
shooting out to sea again. “Let’s raise the mainsail, Cory,” he said. “If we’re going to defy the Panther, we might as well do it like we mean it.” He patted the
Ripplewill
’s transom. “Hold tight a little while longer, darling. You can’t rest yet.”

There were already two closely written pages on the desk, in which he had poured out his feelings of betrayal at his sister for having published his previous letters without permission, and a vivid account of the trouble it had gotten him into. Now he had reached the part of the letter where he had to explain where he was and how he had gotten here. He sat staring at the page with the ink drying on his pen, unable to think of any justification that would reconcile his family to what he had done.

He had, in fact, developed a reasoned legal argument for his actions. In it, he had been a victim of unlawful detention by the military authority, and his escape from Inning custody was purely an assertion of his rights against unjust coercion. His flight in no way implied collaboration with enemies of the state. He could almost believe it himself.

But Rachel was a more exacting judge, and would instantly throw out his arguments. His task was complicated by the fact that he had to leave out large portions of the story. He could include his meeting with Goth, but not the pivotal fact that he had participated in a curing ceremony to restore Spaeth to health. He could say how he and Spaeth had escaped the palace, but not what they had seen along the way. He could not suggest how deeply he had become submerged in the strange, sacrificial world of the Lashnura, or his growing respect for their ethics. He would have to weave a carefully detached and factual story. And yet, the facts would never explain why he had abandoned his duty, deserted his country, and disobeyed all legal authority, in order to follow Spaeth into exile. There was no way to portray those actions as anything other than rash and immature at best, treasonous at worst.

No way but one, the portion of the truth he knew Rachel would accept. Suddenly coming to a decision, he wrote fast:

I can’t explain this, Rachel, except to say that I love her and found it impossible to abandon her, even though it meant forsaking my home and duty to my country. Please try to understand, I’ve never felt anything like this before. She is all I can think of, day and night—not my obligations, not my family, not my home, nothing but her. I am perfectly confident I will feel this way forever—the thought of not feeling this way is just impossible to contemplate. She has completely transformed me. I know what I have given up to be with her—I think of it every day—but there is simply no other choice I could have made.

My greatest fear now is that she will become entangled in this rebellion, not through her own choice, but because of her heritage. Already some of our shipmates regard her as an Heir of Gilgen, as Goth was before her. The Heir of Gilgen, you must know, is obliged to play an important ritual role in the creation of an Ison to lead the Isles. If there is a demand placed on her to anoint such a leader, then she will become his ritual bride through the ceremony of dhota-nur. I cannot think of the possibility without the utmost dread, for if it should happen, I would surely lose her—and that means I would lose everything. I can’t think about it; I have to drive it from my mind. After all, it may not happen.

Oh Rachel, what is to become of us? It seems unlikely that we will be allowed to live in peace, with our countries at war. On the one side, the rebels’ success is bound up in her decisions. On the other, there will be repercussions for my actions, when Corbin wins—as, of course, he will. We can only live for the moment, hoping the day of reckoning will be postponed, but knowing it must come—to which of us first, we don’t know. It makes the time we have together painfully sweet, like a poison that must kill us, but which gives us intense happiness in the meantime.

Why could this war not be settled peaceably?

*

On the next day, the mountainous outline of Roah appeared on the horizon before them. Its black, steep-shouldered shores rose abruptly from the sea, crowned with pine and cloaked with mist and endless rain.

There was a sentinel frigate anchored at the entry to Roslip Firth, but as the
Ripplewill
approached, it made no move to interfere, and so they passed on into the narrow inlet that pierced deep into the heart of Roah. Anyone who did not know it would scarcely have imagined that a city lay at its end. Steep, forested slopes loomed high on either side. Streaks of white interrupted the black cliff faces where streams rushed down through gorges, and through the breaks they could glimpse layer after layer of hill disappearing into the mist, herringboned with pine. Torn shreds of cloud snagged on the jagged tree-tips. Far above, gulls hung almost motionless in the wind, wings spread.

The channel jagged right, then left. As they were rounding the final turn, the westering sun came out from the clouds behind them, illuminating the scene ahead. Here, the gorge widened out into a broad, deep bay. Above it, on a west-facing slope of the mountain, rose Lashnish: tier upon pink marble tier, luminous against the dark pine slopes. From its face a thousand windows gazed westward, gleaming in the sun like eyes filled with tears. It looked tranquil and old, absorbed with memories and regrets. The travellers lined the forward rail, gazing at it, thinking there could be no more beautiful city in the world.

“The Sleeping City they call it,” Torr said.

“Why is that?” Nathaway asked.

“It wakes only once every century or so, when an Ison arises to lead the Isles.”

A grand, white marble quay outlined the waterfront, curving round to form two breakwaters that projected into the bay like open arms, with towering lamps on either end. At the base of the curve, opposite a broad street that led uphill, a set of wide ceremonial steps descended under a towering arch into the water.

Another ship of Tiarch’s fleet was moored in the quiet bay, its reflection unrippled beneath it. Even though there was no sign of curious customs inspectors here, Torr was cautiously reluctant to bring the
Ripplewill
in to that graceful marble pier, so they cast anchor in the harbour, and made the jolly boat ready to ferry passengers ashore.

“Should we look for lodgings?” Tway asked, looking to Spaeth and Nathaway.

Neither of them answered at first. At last Nathaway said, “‘Find the Isonstone,’ that’s all Goth said.”

“All right, then. You find the Isonstone, I’ll find lodgings.”

It proved to be no difficult task. The first person they asked, a Torna shopkeeper, gave them directions to the Isonstone. “It’s up in the Old Town, in the Pavilion cloister,” he said, as if it were a question he was used to answering. “Follow the Stonepath uphill; it’ll take you right there. You’d better hurry; they close the gates at sunset.”

The Stonepath proved to be the central spine-street of the city that led straight uphill from the harbour, lined on either side with imposing buildings. As Nathaway and Spaeth mounted the hill, the harbour sounds and smells fell away behind them, and the spires of the ancient city rose all around. The mood grew peaceful and quiet, as if suspended in time.

The ancient Altan architecture was better preserved here than in any place Nathaway had ever seen. It had an airy quality, complex with pillared porticoes and lofty arches, made of white marble with grey veins. There were whole blocks of Altan buildings that looked like they had once been ceremonial halls, or administrative centres; but their tall doors were closed now, and no guards stood at their gates. Their windows looked dusty and unused.

As they passed a side street, Spaeth clutched Nathaway’s arm. “Nat, look!” she said.

A tall, silver-haired man was leaving a building with a dog on a leash. He looked perfectly unremarkable as he stopped to chat with a woman leaning out a window across the way. “What is it?” Nathaway asked.

“They’re Grey Folk, both of them,” Spaeth said. “They can live in the open here, as if they were free people.”

The farther they climbed, the more grey faces they saw. Spaeth stared at them, entranced and hopeful, but she herself drew few answering stares. Nathaway was another matter. He was aware of eyes following him with puzzled frowns, and suspicious glances from passers-by. It made him feel as if they had passed one of those invisible boundaries that exist in cities, into a protected enclave where he was an intruder.

The Stonepath came to an end in a broad, deserted square. Facing them was a tall building of white marble, friezed with ancient Altan symbols. To Nathaway’s eyes it looked like a court, or a college building. The main entrance was between tall, fluted pillars where the copper gates still stood open on the square. Hand in hand, Nathaway and Spaeth walked forward. No one was there to challenge them.

Inside the gateway was an open lawn planted with trees and shrubs, and lined on all four sides with a covered walkway set back behind airy arches. The little enclosed park was very quiet, and had a contemplative air, far removed from the world and its concerns.

At the very centre of the lawn was a marble plinth, and on it stood an ordinary boulder of granite. As they approached, Nathaway saw that its face was pocked where it had been battered in the past by blows from a sledgehammer that stood cradled in a wrought iron stand next to the stone. Some of the spalls were so worn by rain and time that they were just dips in the stone surface. But there was a fresher scar on the left side.

“Perhaps that is Ison Orin’s,” Spaeth said in a low voice. It seemed irreverent to talk loudly, here.

“How long ago was that?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Sixty-two years,” a voice answered. They turned around to find an elderly Grey Man watching them from under the shadow of one of the arches. He was dressed in an ancient, traditional style: a long tabard and leggings, with a short mantle around his shoulders. It reminded Nathaway of the legal robes worn by advocates in court. The man came forward, studying them curiously. He had a short fringe of white hair around his bald head, and was carrying a book.

“Is this the Isonstone?” Nathaway asked.

“Indeed it is,” the Grey Man said. He turned to look at it. “Those scars on the stone go back six centuries. They all stood here, the leaders willing to forfeit their self-will for the sake of the Isles. And out in that square is where the Heirs of Gilgen bled to erase all harm from those leaders’ hearts.”

They regarded it in silence for a while.

“I’m surprised it’s not guarded,” Nathaway said. “Aren’t you afraid someone might seize it? Considering its importance.”

The Grey Man frowned piercingly at Nathaway. “There are safeguards you cannot see. Still, I thank you for the warning.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“We don’t get many Inning visitors,” the Grey Man observed.

“Really? I should have thought . . . Is it all right? No one told me—”

“Don’t worry, it’s perfectly all right, if your intentions are good. I am just curious what brings you here.”

Nathaway looked to Spaeth, but she seemed shy to answer, so he said, “We were told to come here, by her . . . father, Goth.”

“They call him Goran now,” she said faintly. “Goran, son of Listor.”

There was a short silence. Then the Grey Man said slowly, “Goran is your father?”

Spaeth hesitated. “Not really. He created me.”

The man absorbed this a moment, then turned sharp eyes on Nathaway. “And you?”

“I’m . . .” he groped for some explanation of who he was that had any relevance here. “I’m her bandhota,” he finally said.

There was a long pause. “I can tell you have a story,” the Grey Man said at last. “My name is Auster. Could I offer you some hospitality? A cup of tea, perhaps?”

They readily accepted this invitation. Auster led them across the cloister to a doorway under one of the arches. Inside the building, the quiet, sparsely furnished corridor reminded Nathaway even more strongly of a college. They walked by a group of young Lashnurai dressed like Auster, whose conversation fell silent as they passed.

“What is this place?” Nathaway asked.

“This is the Pavilion,” Auster said. “We have a little community here.”

“Are you scholars?”

Auster seemed pleased at the description. “Why yes, I suppose you could say that. We are healers, historians, guardians of the stone. We strive to keep our ancient traditions alive.”

Nathaway felt as if he had stumbled on a priceless discovery. A seat of ancient learning, here in this secretive city, utterly unknown to the outside world. Perhaps no other Inning had seen this place. Certainly, no other Inning had had the key to it that he did, coming as bandhota to the Heir of Gilgen. He felt elated, awed at his good fortune.

They passed a door standing ajar, through which Nathaway glimpsed bound volumes on shelves, and another where racks of seedlings stood under a window. A third room, lined with cabinets full of tiny drawers, had a medicinal scale on a marble counter that looked like it came from an apothecary shop in Fluminos.

He was burning with questions by the time Auster led them up a staircase and paused before a tall, closed door. The Grey Man knocked on it, listening for some response; then he signalled them to wait. “I want to introduce you to someone,” he explained, then disappeared inside.

When they were alone in the hall, Nathaway turned to Spaeth. “This place—this institution—did you know it was here?”

She shook her head. “Goth never mentioned it.”

“I wish I could spend a month here,” Nathaway said. “It’s utterly undiscovered. I could write a treatise.”

Before long the door cracked open again and Auster gestured them inside. They stepped into an office whose walls were crowded with artworks—botanical sketches, complex astronomical diagrams, coloured maps—whose antiquity made Nathaway’s throat go dry. A tall, austere woman rose from a table spread with ledger books. Her face was strong-featured, with sharp, intelligent eyes, and her coarse grey hair was pulled back in an untidy bun. She looked around sixty.

Auster said, “Allow me to introduce you to Agave, the namenda of our community. I’m sorry, what’s your name, my dear?”

“Spaeth,” she said. “Spaeth Dobrin.”

Agave was studying her face with a fierce intensity. She held out her hands, and after a slight hesitation, Spaeth reached out to clasp them. The older woman’s eyes fell for a moment to Spaeth’s arm, where the false scar from the attempt to cure Jory made it look as if she had given dhota. “You say you are Goran’s daughter?” she said.