Liar's Island: A Novel (7 page)

Hrym was capable of lifting Rodrick to great heights, by conjuring stairs of ice or lifting him on a rising pillar of the same, but it wasn't the most comfortable mode of travel, and was rather conspicuous besides. The Conservatory would be an interesting place to see, and if it really were crawling with spies, there might be things inside worth stealing … not state secrets, of course, because Rodrick knew better than to dabble in politics, but spies often had marvelous weapons, and you could always find a buyer for those.

“And the other islands?” They were closer, now, and Grand Sarret did indeed present a sheer face of rock with little to indicate any life at all atop its heights. The island to its south was smaller and, if anything, looked even less inviting.

Tapasi shivered and pointed to the southern island. “Kaina Katakka. For a long time that island was a sort of … refuge … for the original inhabitants of Jalmeray, those who did not wish to live under the rule of the maharajah.” She glanced at him sidelong. “You remember what I've told you about the history of Jalmeray?”

He shrugged. “The broad outlines, anyway. The Vudrani came, and ruled for a long time. Then they left, and the Arclords moved in and took over. Then the Vudrani came back, and kicked the Arclords out, and you've all been here ever since.”

“Simplistic, but not wrong,” Tapasi allowed. “Incomplete, though. The great maharajah did not simply settle on this island. He traveled from the Impossible Kingdoms in the east to the shores of the continent Garund, to the city of Quantium. This was some four thousand years ago, and the maharajah brought with him a fleet of one hundred and one ships. The Vudrani were all but unknown in the Inner Sea then, and the maharajah became friendly with the great wizard-king Nex, ruler of the country that still bears his name, though he has long since departed this world. As a gesture of friendship, Nex granted the maharajah dominion over Jalmeray, and his people made it their own, erecting temples and monuments, and calling djinn and efreet and other creatures to help shape the island's environment more to their liking.”

Gesture of friendship, Rodrick thought. Ha! You didn't give a visiting noble dominion over part of your territory out of
friendship
. He wondered what Nex had gotten out of the arrangement. Ah, well, who cared? Ancient history. “And then the maharajah left?”

Tapasi shrugged. “He was only ever just visiting. The maharajah had a great and searching intellect and a vast curiosity about the world. He sailed home with his people eventually, and the wizard Nex left his own throne, vanishing from this world, and chaos reigned in his absence. The Arclords ruled in Nex's name for a time—they are descended from Nex's own household servants, or claim to be—until a shift in power saw them exiled. They took up residence on Jalmeray, because it is close enough to Nex to influence matters there, but far enough away to be easily defended from their enemies on the mainland.”

“Ah, so they scuttled off to this island, and then the Vudrani came back and kicked them out. Golems and homunculi against elementals. You told me that much.”

She nodded. “Nex did not give Jalmeray to the maharajah as a
loan
—it was a gift, and gifts are forever. Those who returned to Jalmeray were descendants of Khiben-Sald, and they had a rightful claim. The
only
claim. Imagine if you returned to your ancestral home and found it full of vile squatters who claimed they
owned
the place, merely because they'd resided there without being rooted out for some time? You would ask them politely to leave, and if they did not…” She shrugged. “You would resort to the sword. Or, in our case, summon storms to wreck their fleet and elementals to drive them away.”

“You drove the wizards into the
sea
?”

“Not all of them. We're not savages. We left them a single ship. They were happy to leave, by then. Those who could cram themselves aboard.”

“But they've resented you a bit ever since. Hmm. I suppose I can see why they attacked us after we left Absalom.”

“Relations are strained to this day, yes.” She shook herself. They were passing between Grand Sarret and Kaina Katakka now, and she gestured toward the latter. “Of course, in the arguments between the Arclords and the maharajah, the natives of the island always suffered, whether they took sides or tried to stand apart.”

Rodrick nodded, keeping his face expressionless. “Of course Jalmeray didn't actually belong to its natives, because they didn't have a great wizard-king or a maharajah to say so. They just lived here.”

Tapasi noticed the dig, but didn't argue, just shrugged, her mouth downturned in sadness. “They were simple people, I'm told, who fished and hunted and lived largely in peace, until we arrived. They fought against us, but what use are fishing nets and spears against the power of Nex and the maharajah? Those who were unwilling to join our society when we took over were graciously allowed by the maharajah to relocate to Kaina Katakka, where we left them alone. The maharajah liked having them there, I understand.”

“Of course. A sort of human zoo.” The island looked to be mostly barren rock, dotted with what might have been ruined buildings, or just unusually shaped heaps of stone. “It looks very inviting.”

“It was lush, once, I understand. When the Arclords came to take over Jalmeray, they did not leave the natives in peace. They killed them all, scouring the island with magic and leaving it in ruins. A haunted place, now, used only by those smugglers brave enough to ply their filthy trade despite the ghosts.”

Aha. Smugglers. That was useful information. You never knew when you might need to escape a place quietly, and smugglers would often move people as well as stolen goods, if the price was right.

As they left those islands behind, another appeared to the north. “That's Veedesha, you said?” The more he knew about this place, the better he'd be able to turn things to his own advantage.

“Yes. It was once a great port, and honestly is a better natural deep-water port than Niswan, but the thakur chose to make Niswan the center of power, and Veedesha was all but abandoned. There are still ruins of the great buildings, but they are infested by beasts or used as the lairs of bandits or worshipers of some of the … less sociable gods. Few go there now—all the treasures were long since moved to safety, or else looted.”

“That's it for islands, then? Apart from the Conservatory, I can't say I feel even a passing desire to visit any of them.”

“No,” Tapasi said. “There is one other island large enough to merit mention. Gho Vella, off the northwestern coast, on the far side of the island. It is an accursed place.”

“In what way?”

“Do you know of lepers?”

Rodrick nodded. “Ah. Yes. A terrible contagious disease, so those who have it go off to live by themselves, among others of their kind. Gho Vella is a leper colony?”

“In a manner of speaking. There are great magics on Jalmeray, and great sorcerers and wizards and mystics, many of them pushing the boundaries of what magic can do. Sometimes there are … mishaps. I knew a woman once who was working with elementals, and she became cursed by a permanent cloud, pouring rain on her endlessly, and shooting jagged lightning at anyone who came too close. She was not well liked, and either no one could cure her, or no one cared to, so she had no choice but to go into exile. I heard of another man who laughed at a wizard, for what reason who can say, and the wizard cursed him so that he vomits up tiny venomous frogs whenever he tries to speak. There are other such poor souls, who cannot live in normal society, and many might choose death as their only release, but instead the philosophers known as the Curse Shepherds see them safely to Gho Vella, where they can live among the other outcasts in whatever peace they can find.”

Rodrick shivered. He thought about Hrym, and the demonic taint that made him flash red and lash out sometimes. Was Hrym cursed, now, as he'd half-joked, half-threatened with that fool Kelso? Would Hrym have to be put away someday, if his condition worsened, on an island where he couldn't harm anyone? Rodrick hated to think of it, though with a sufficiently full bed of gold, the sword himself might not mind much. “So I should watch my manners, then, if I don't want to find myself spitting up newts.”

“You are an invited guest of the thakur! None would dare harm you.” She paused. “Unless the thakur brought you here to
do
you harm, and even then, it would be the harm he specified, and no other. You truly have no idea why you were summoned?”

“None at all. I'm curious to find out.”

“And you will, soon. You can see Niswan, now.”

Rodrick shaded his eyes, peered out, and grunted despite himself. He'd seen Absalom, and Almas, and other great cities, but nothing like Niswan before. The land itself seemed harsh, rocky and wave-battered, but that land was embellished lavishly, like a spiked gauntlet decorated with jewels. The harbor was large and crowded with ships of all sizes, but they looked like bath toys against the city rising beyond, the mouth of a vast wide river cutting through the cliffs. Gleaming pagodas in silver and gold and bronze rose in tiers upon tiers, silk banners streaming from their heights, and the streets between the towers were deep red stone, dark as blood in places, glittering like rubies in others. Spires rose here and there, impossibly high and delicate, and there were squares dominated by statues, some of the stonework immense enough that Rodrick could make out details of their shapes even from this distance, depicting figures with many arms and sometimes the heads of fanciful beasts. Things flew among the high spires—wizards? djinn?—under their own power, or on wings made of light, or floating on what looked for all the world like carpets. Rodrick had seen magic before—indeed, he spent his days in the company of a wondrous relic of a bygone age—but never used so openly, so profligately. Niswan had spellcasters the way the Coins had pickpockets.

The sound of cracking wood somewhere below their feet suddenly interrupted his sense of wonder.

Rodrick and the priest stared at one another, wide-eyed. “Was that … the
hull
?” she asked.

7

City of Pagodas

The crew shouted, though not as loudly as their captain, and Tapasi leaned over the railing to look for damage.

“What happened?” Rodrick said. “Did we hit a rock?”

She shook her head. “There are no rocks in the harbor. The elementals cleared them all centuries ago.” She leaned out even farther and pointed. “Look there, cracks in the hull!” Several nearby sailors heard her and clustered around the rail to look.

Rodrick reluctantly leaned over himself, and saw two dozen cracks, most thin but several as big as a fingerwidth, long and jagged, showing blackness. The cracks were above the waterline … but there could be more below that he couldn't see. As he watched, some of the cracks widened, the wood groaning. If the boat wasn't taking on water already, it would be soon. Something about the cracks was strange, though. They didn't quite look right—

Oh. For one thing, the wood was splintered
outward
, as if some force had struck the hull from within.

And for another, the cracks were radiating out from the spot where Rodrick's cabin was. That was bad for a big reason and a little reason. He shouted the little reason—“My gold could fall into the sea!”—and then raced belowdecks, shoving past the crew who got in the way and thudding down the tilted ladder, tearing open the door to his cabin. The cracks grew wider as he watched, and some indeed extended below the waterline. There was enough seepage to provide a steady trickle of seawater into the room, and he splashed through growing puddles as he entered.

Bits of the first mate's shattered shrine were floating in the water, as if it had been struck with a hammer and then scattered by a wind, but Hrym was still resting on the chest atop the gold coins. The blankets on the bed were shredded, like they'd been attacked by a flurry of knives. Or struck by a blast of icicles.

That was the big reason. Hrym must have had another of his fits, his episodes, his
bad turns
, and this time, his icy eruption had struck the hull hard enough to splinter the wood. If Rodrick didn't move quickly, this fit could end with this ship on the bottom of the harbor.

He rushed to the sword's side. “Hrym, what happened?” He picked up the weapon, alarmed at the threads of flashing red in the blade, but the color vanished a moment after his hand touched the hilt.

“Wha?” Hrym's voice was vague, distant. “I was—was I—what's going on?”

“There are cracks in the boat,” Rodrick said. “Well, they're cracks
now
. I'm pretty sure they'll be holes soon. I don't want to be on a boat full of holes, Hrym.”

“Oh,” Hrym said. “Let's fix them, then.”

Rodrick pointed the sword toward the cracks, and a wave of cold swirled out from the crystalline blade. The sea water on the floor froze first, and the ice crept up the water toward the cracks, sealing them by freezing the very water they were letting in. Ribbons and streamers of ice crawled across the network of cracks until they were all sealed with patches of shimmering magical ice. It was pretty, in a way. Not that Rodrick expected the captain to think so.

The wall groaned, the sudden cold making some of the wood contract, but the ice held, less prone to cracking than the nonmagical variety. The broken bits of the shrine and the book of Vudrani fairy tales he'd been reading were all partially encased in ice on the floor, but at least they weren't on the bottom of the sea. Rodrick wondered how narrowly they'd averted disaster—how soon those cracks would have become holes, and those drips torrents—and was glad he didn't know more about the breaking point of ship hulls. Sometimes ignorance was a balm to the troubled mind.