Tales of Noreela 04: The Island (14 page)

“The wind’s still blowing,” she said, “and the storm’s still here.”

Kel looked up at the clearing sky, the stringy clouds, the seagulls and salt birds gliding on the subtle sea breeze.

“Not up there,” Mygrette said, and her tone added,
Fool!
“In there!” She pointed to the foot of Drakeman’s Hill where Eildan, his council and the visitors were obviously holding their talks. “Out there!” She thumbed over her shoulder at the ships waiting patiently out to sea. “And here.” She stamped on the ground and looked down, and her machine gave a pained, creaking sound. “The language of the land is confused today.” Mygrette stroked the machine’s shell and gave it her strange commands. It probed the mud again, and Kel had never seen a machine that looked so unwell.

“The storm did that?” he asked.

“The continuing storm.” She glanced at him, then looked
down at her feet again. “Like I said… ain’t over yet. Plenty more to come.”

“Maybe,” Kel said.

“Huh!” The witch turned and walked to the edge of the harbor. The machine sighed to a halt, and Kel followed her. She stared down at the filthy water swelling against the ancient stone, filled with broken parts of Pavmouth Breaks, human, animal and otherwise. “You think like me; otherwise, why did you come talk to me?”

“I’m cautious, that’s all.”

“Cautious, eh? Wood-carver?”

Kel smiled.
She knows more
. On his travels with the Core he’d heard of witches who had learned how to supplement the innocent gift of magic with a combination of herbs, exotic minerals and animals extracts, giving themselves mysterious, sometimes unique abilities that they shared with no one else. He’d heard of them, but he’d never met one, not until he’d come to the quiet fishing village. Most there thought her mad, because they looked with eyes that had seen little else. But Kel had witnessed more than most Noreelans ever would in a lifetime.

“It’s good to know not everyone will just accept this,” he said.

“Right!” Mygrette laughed, surprisingly light and infectious. “Good that not everyone’s blind, eh?” She laughed again, and turned back to her machine.

The Core often called their continuing mission the Blind War.
Does she know so much more?
Kel thought. He resisted the temptation to turn and watch the witch walk away. But he knew that, if things went bad, he had at least one ally.

He started walking along the mole. He had not intended doing so, but it seemed the right way to go, taking his suspicions to the visitors. He watched his footing. There was immense damage there, with huge stone blocks cracked, crazed or missing altogether after the great waves’ impacts. The visitors’ boat had moored just before one large section of
mole that had been washed away completely. There were two members of the militia there, and one of them came toward Kel.

“Hello, Kel,” the militia member said. Luceel was a regular at the Dog’s Eyes, usually accompanying the militia captain Vek. Kel knew she and Vek were good friends, but nothing more, and he was glad it was she out there and not someone he didn’t know.

The second militia member stood back, hand on his sword.
I could take that and stick it up through Luceel’s chin before either of them could blink
, Kel thought. He frowned, trying to shake the image. He did not like the way his past was surfacing, swimming up from the depths in which he had, for a while, believed it had drowned.

“Quite a night,” Kel said, glancing past Luceel at the boat.

“Not good.”

“Are your people well?”

She nodded. “Up on the farm at the top of Drakeman’s Hill. I saw Mell climbing the Hill on my way down this morning.”

“Mell!” Kel felt a rush of relief, so fresh and wonderful as it washed away his concerns for a beat. “By the Black, I was sure that second wave got her. It
should
have.”

“Dog’s Eyes regulars,” Luceel said with a smile. “Hard to kill.”

“Trakis was with her?”

Luceel frowned and shook her head.

“Well, I’m glad you’re okay too. So …” Kel nodded past her at the boat. She seemed to stiffen a little, as though suddenly remembering her job.

“I’ve been told not to let anyone close,” she said.

“Why?”

Luceel blinked but said nothing.

“Can’t I see?”

“It’s just a boat, Kel.”

“Really?”

She frowned. “Of course. They’re just like us.”

“Their island appeared in our coastal waters and caused tidal waves that wiped out half our village. And you think they’re just like us?”

“Kel, they’re devastated. Really. One of the women with the emissary told me, this happens to them once a generation, sometimes longer, sometimes more frequently. She said they live under a curse from before history. Usually the island comes to rest somewhere far out to sea, or close to uninhabited coastline. They can barely speak, they’re so traumatized and shocked by what’s happened, and what it’s done to us. And they’re going to help.”

“Help how?”

“Help us rebuild.”

Kel looked back along the mole to the harbor, the Noreelans digging there and the terrible ruin that much of the village had become. “You really think they can help us any more than we can help ourselves?”

“I really think so, yes.”

“Already under their spell, eh, Luceel?” He smiled at her but without humor, and she did not return the smile. “So, can’t I have a look?”

Luceel sighed and stepped aside. “Like I said, Kel, it’s just a boat.”

He walked past her, eyeing the militiaman. He knew the man’s face, but not his name. He looked down at the hand on his sword, back up, and grinned.

The militiaman glanced away, and his sword hand went up to pick his nose.

Glad to see I’ve still got it
, Kel thought.

As Luceel had said, it was just a boat. The sail had been folded and the boom tied straight, and it was secured to the mole fore and aft. The mooring posts had been ripped out, but the militia had tied ropes thrown by the visitors onto the ripped remains of two metal ladders on the mole’s seaward face. The vessel was old, battered and obviously well used.
The deck had several areas where new boards had been nailed in, the cabin that stood toward the stern was sun-bleached and pocked, and the ropes scattered across the deck were ragged and worn. There were two hatches leading below, both of them closed but not obviously locked, at least on the outside.

Kel was not all that familiar with boats. True, he lived in a fishing village, but he had never taken a keen interest in seafaring. He often talked to the fisherfolk who frequented the village’s several taverns, and he had befriended many, but he was more likely to listen to their tall tales than ask questions. And all fisherfolk had good tales to tell. There were giant sea lizards and pirates of renown, missed catches and surreal sea monsters, humanesque rock dwellers singing their songs to lure boats to destruction, wraith ships crewed by the ancestors of those now living in Pavmouth Breaks, and occasional stories of loves lost to the waves and found again. So he tried to view the visitors’ craft with an innocent’s eye, rather than the gaze of someone who saw boats every day but had no interest in them. He was looking for things that seemed wrong, or perhaps things not there at all.

He walked along the mole for the length of the boat, then back again. He was aware of Luceel and the militiaman watching him, but when he glanced up it was Mygrette he saw, casually touching her machine as it probed for survivors, yet her attention was fixed on Kel.

It was a sailing boat, sail now tied. It was obviously used for fishing, as it had a few nets folded in a wooden box toward the bow, long ropes trailing from them and wrapped around a rope drum. The cabin’s windows were of rough glass, and he guessed that any image viewed through them would be badly blurred and deformed.
They offer us a gift of wonderful technologies
, he thought,
and they can’t cast glass?

It was a working craft, not one built for leisure and pleasure, like some vessels he had seen when he spent a difficult few moons in Long Marrakash ten years before. There, some
people virtually lived on the river, spending their free time afloat and only coming ashore to work. They harnessed river rays and used them to tow their craft, competing to see who could go fastest. Kel could not imagine this boat ever building up much speed.

He strolled back and forth a few more times, then headed back toward the harbor.

“Keep your trust precious,” he muttered to Luceel as he passed her by. She did not respond. He hoped that was because she was considering what he had said.

Mygrette was waiting for him, as he knew she would be. She still stood by her machine, but her gaze called him over, and she began to question in lowered tones.

As he started lifting splintered roof timbers from the silted guts of the fish market, he told her what he had seen, trying to make clear things he had not seen as well.

“Just a boat,” he said, lifting a chunk of masonry and seeing the dreadful paleness of a hand beneath. He sighed, caught someone’s eye and stepped back for them to see as well.

“Just a boat?” Mygrette said. “Huh!”

The rescuers talked in low tones, working to uncover the body. Kel stepped back. He had started shaking, unexpected and frightening, and he had to fight the urge to run. Back to Namior, back to her home with her mother and great-grandmother, and away from death for a while.

“And what was this boat’s name?” Mygrette asked.

Kel frowned, hugging himself to bring the shaking under control.

“Every boat has a name,” the witch said, leaning in close so that no one else could hear.

He recalled walking back and forth, looking at the boat’s hull, the cabin, the squared stern and pointed bow. He shook his head. “It has no name.”

Mygrette stared at him, then turned away and went back to her machine. She touched its smooth back, and it grabbed a tumbled timber-framed wall in its delicate limbs and lifted,
something inside creaking with the effort. Then it froze, and it took several touches from Mygrette before it would move again.

Beneath the wall, a corpse with sea worms squirming in hollowed eye sockets.

“Mother!”
someone screamed, loud enough to wake the dead.

Kel looked up at Drakeman’s Hill, misted with the smoke of a fire lit to defy the sea. It was time for him to climb.

AS KEL MADE
his way to the base of Drakeman’s Hill, he was amazed that anyone had survived at all. But he saw two people being dragged out of flooded cellars. They had survived the destruction of their homes, falling masonry and roofs, the scouring power of the waves, drowning, the deluge of mud and the cold of the night. The look on a young boy’s face as he saw the sun lit a fire inside Kel’s chest, and he turned away as his eyes watered.
Noreela can be so strong!
he thought, and felt a sense of proud responsibility that had been missing for so long.

When he had fled the Core, it had taken him a long time to come to terms with that desertion. Such dereliction of duty did not sit well with him. But once gone, he could not go back, and he had slowly come to believe that he had done the right thing. He’d been involved in a botched mission that had caused two Core and eight civilian deaths, and after that he could surely never be as sharp, prepared and brutal as was sometimes required.

But things were changing.

As he neared the foot of Drakeman’s Hill, he saw in more detail where the waves had undermined the ground. A great wedge of land had gone, taking many buildings and paths with it and leaving behind a bare earth cliff between twenty and thirty steps high. In several places in the new cliff were unearthed
hollows, each the size of a person and speckled with the glint of crystals. Perhaps they had been precious once, but not now. Not when their exposure came at such a cost.

Against the cliff, people had already built a rough pile of rocky debris and strung a rope ladder. It was busy, with survivors being helped up the ladder and rescuers taking turns to come down. Those coming down bore waterskins and food parcels, medical supplies, and tools to aid in the rescue-shovels, hammers and nails for shoring, lanterns. It was not until he’d been watching the ladder for a while, waiting in queue to climb up, that Kel noticed how many people also descended armed.

He felt a swell of confidence, a flush of pride.
Yes, Noreela
can
be strong
.

Glancing back at the harbor, he saw the masts of visitors’ boats waving in the swell once again as they turned and sailed in toward Pavmouth Breaks. Walking out along the mole, visible even from a distance, he saw Chief Eildan still carrying his heavy harpoon and Keera Kashoomie walking tall be side him.

The talking was over. The landing had begun.

HE CLIMBED THE
paths up Drakeman’s Hill, and the gradual change was striking. At the bottom, many of the buildings had shattered windows, wrecked doors, stripped roofs, and sometimes blocks missing from wall corners and window surrounds. He could see into many of the buildings, and most of them were all but stripped of character. Furniture was broken and strewn across the street, clothing mixed in, and here and there thick pools of mud and silt had collected. Some of the pools were crawling with sea things, though most of the creatures washed up with the wave were dying. Their deaths added to the stink.

Around one corner, a boat had been deposited between
two houses. The path there was narrow, and the boat—hull holed, mast missing, wheelhouse gone—was resting across the two roofs. It had crushed the roof structures when it hit, burying itself in the buildings as though they were sandbanks. Kel had to duck to pass beneath the shell-encrusted hull, and he splashed through a puddle of seawater.

There was an old man sitting beside the path just beyond the boat. Kel recognized him as a farmer from the plains atop Drakeman’s Hill—one of the oldest men from the village and someone trusted and revered. He leaned back against a stone wall, looking at his hands as though they were guilty of a terrible crime.

“Kel Boon,” the man said. “I like your carvings. They are always fine and detailed, and more importantly, they have soul.”