Tales of Noreela 04: The Island (37 page)

Lemual’s face darkened, then the smile broke out again. But this time it was sad. “I’ve told you everything, yet still you cannot understand.”

“I’ve got quite an imagination,” Kel said.
Maybe you can use their magic against them
, Namior’s great-grandmother had said. He looked down at the table and saw the nugget of crystal from Namior’s chest, but he did not require that. He possessed his own source of power.

“If the woman dies,” Lemual said, “it’s because of your anger, and your fight. If she survives, we’ll take her.”

Kel tried to hide his surprise at how much Lemual knew about him. “You’ll take her, drive out her soul, give her body to something else.”

Lemual looked away. “The core of her will remain.”
That’s the first thing he’s told me without looking me in the eye
, Kel thought.
And the first time he’s betrayed his lies
.

Kel reached into his pocket and brought out the communicators.

Lemual tensed and opened his mouth, ready to call the soldiers back in.

“Nuts,” Kel said. “I’m hungry. If I could kill you with one of these, they’d be on the table before you.” He picked up one communicator, held his breath and put it into his mouth, tucking in into his cheek. He pretended to chew. The moisture would keep it wound.

“Where is the crystal you took?” Lemual asked.

“So that’s it,” Kel said. “Why? Friend of yours?” He held the other communicator in his hand.

Lemual glanced aside.

Kel let the first communicator drop from his mouth, and as he raised the other one in his right hand, he reached for a knife with his left.

The man had not lied about one thing; he
was
very fast. Before Kel’s fingers had even touched the blade, Lemual was pressing his hand to the table.

Kel breathed on the communicator, letting its curled tail unfurl and harden along his forearm.

“I told you—” Lemual said.

“—only what you want me to hear.” Kel tugged, trying to free his hand, and when Lemual looked down again he struck.

The tip of the communicator parted the man’s skin at the nape of his neck. Kel pushed hard, and it cut through flesh and bone like the sharpest of knives.

Lemual coughed blood. He tried to stand, but Kel kept his hand on the communicator. He leapt across the table, turning the man as he went, then pushed him to the ground.

No alarms sounded, no steam vents gushed, no Strangers streaked into the building.

Lemual was moaning softly, his hands reaching beneath him where the spike protruded from his stomach.

Kel kicked his legs from under him, driving him down to
the ground. He felt the impact through the communicator’s head as Lemual struck the hard soil, then he pushed with both hands.

This is when I live or die
, Kel thought. Because he could not leave. He had to wait and see whether the communicator worked, and if this man died the same way as the Strangers, his wraith would rip from his body and tear Kel apart. But there were no arcing limbs streaking white lightning on Lemual’s back.

“Work,” Kel said quietly.
“Work!”

“What… ?” Lemual whispered, but talking hurt him too much.

“You’re not getting us,” Kel said. “All the other worlds you’ve visited, all the people you’ve taken, they’re nothing to Noreela and Noreelans. We’ll fight until we’re dead or you’re dead, and fuck you both ways.” He touched the communicator head, twisted, then jerked his hand away.

It was growing hot.

It’s working!

Lemual vomited. It was a violent, unexpected action, and Kel stepped back in surprise. There was a lot of blood in there. The dying man’s arms thrashed, pressing at the ground to try to lift the communicator’s tip from the soil, but whatever held him there was strong. His legs kicked, and Kel sat on them so that he did not make too much noise.

Kel reached up to the table, grabbed as many of his weapons as he could, and watched the communicator as it began to glow.

Then he lifted his sword, turned its blade flat and brought it down on the communicator’s head.

It smashed.

There was an explosion inside Kel’s mind; a rush of heat, an expansion of light, a blast of realization. It would have woken him if he was asleep, sobered him had he been drunk, and for a beat he felt a welcoming link to hundreds of other people all across their vast land.

He gasped, then fell to his knees beside the dying man.

“Message sent,” he said.

“What… have you
…?”

Kel did not even bother to reply. He shoved his sword into the prone man’s back, piercing where he assumed the heart to be. Lemual’s body stiffened and went limp. Kel withdrew the sword, then used the blade to lift the dead man’s clothes away from his back. There were no proboscises, no gills.

His own sickness rising, Kel turned away and tried to calm himself. Killing was never easy. But the war had begun. He only wished O’Peeria could be there to fight it by his side.

HE HAD TO
get away from the place as soon as possible. Strapping on his weapons once again, priming his crossbow, keeping the short sword to hand, Kel tried to imagine what was happening across Noreela.

If the communicator had worked as the Core’s witches had intended, it would have sent a signal directly into the minds and dreams of every Core member. A warning, telling them that the long-expected invasion had begun, and planting a seed of direction that would bloom as soon as they set out on their way. Several hundred Core, many in Noreela City and others much farther out, would hurry there by the fastest means possible. They would ride their transport machines until they reached the place where Komadian interference interrupted the flow of magic and language in the land. Then they would walk, warned by the failings of magic that something momentous was happening, and that this was not a false alarm.

They would likely not be there that day, or the next. Help was coming, but it would not be quick.

He was faced with a stark choice: leave and await the Core, or go back into Pavmouth Breaks. But even before deciding
that, he first had to find his way out of the machine-building, and the compound surrounding it.

Footsteps.

Kel held his breath and crouched, rushing to the sidewall of the large room. The doorway was a few steps from him, curtained by a fall of gauzy material, and the footsteps came closer, metal scraping stone. A Stranger… and all Kel had on his side was surprise.

The guard paused outside. Kel heard the very faint whisper of metal on metal. He thought of Namior, tried to imagine her lying in her house with her mother fussing over her.
Core?
her great-grandmother had asked Kel, and she obviously knew far more than she had ever revealed. Then he remembered O’Peeria, and though he wished her by his side, her mere memory aided him, making him angry and determined.
The time has come
, he thought, and he saw O’Peeria grinning, her pale face and dark hair beautiful in the strange light inside the machine.

Kel closed his eyes and breathed deeply.

The curtain shifted aside and Mell entered.

He could kill her within a beat, his crossbow aimed directly at her face. Mell… who he had yet to tell what he’d seen happening to Trakis, back on that damned island.

She looked at him, let out a huge sigh of relief, and smiled. “You made it!”

“Mell?”

“Who else were you expecting?” Her voice sounded flat. She looked down at the body, and it was just too dark for him to see how her expression changed. “You’ve been busy.”

“Are you one of them?”

“Of course not. I’m Mell. You said so yourself.”

“How did you—?”

“I heard they were keeping people here, came here to see if I could do anything.”

“What’s your favorite ale?”

“As if you didn’t know.” She smiled, but it was not Mell’s smile. Too easy, and too wide, because she’d never liked her crooked teeth.

“I
know,” Kel said, raising the crossbow again. “But do
you?”

Mell came closer then paused again, glancing across at Lemual’s body. Kel saw such grief on her face that it knocked his guard aside, just for a moment.

A metal-clad Stranger breezed through the door, aiming its projectile weapon at his head.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Mell said.

Kel dropped to the floor before her. The Stranger would not shoot through her body, and he still desperately needed that surprise, that element of shock that would set him half a beat ahead of the soldier.

He aimed the crossbow at Mell’s face.

She gasped and dropped to one side, and Kel fired past her left ear.

The bolt struck the Stranger’s face and ricocheted into the gloom. His head flicked back and his weapon fired, the projectile passing above Kel’s head and impacting the machine’s wall.

The whole room shuddered, and a tapestry of weak blue sparks appeared across its surface before quickly fading away.

Kel rolled, priming and reloading the crossbow as he went. Back on his knees, aiming again, and he was already looking into the black tube of the Stranger’s weapon. He gasped and looked up at the ceiling, glancing down again quickly, amazed that the Stranger had fallen for his deception and looked up as well, releasing the bolt, hearing the screech of metal turn into a scream of pain as it passed through the plates across the thing’s neck. Its shiny chest glimmered as blood flowed, and it went to its knees, dropping the weapon and clasping both hands to its throat.

Don’t die yet
, Kel thought. He went to run past the
Stranger, but Mell—or who-or whatever had taken her body for its own—reached out and tripped him.

Perhaps she thought he would still be reluctant to hurt his friend. Maybe all their studies, their spies, their covert observations of Noreela had told them that Noreelans were so attached to friends and family that confusion would be his reaction, not action. But Kel was Core, and the past days had confirmed everything the Core had ever suspected.

As Mell crawled for him, he drew a throwing knife and launched it at her face. It pierced her left eye. In her right eye, as she died, he saw nothing of the Mell he knew.

The Stranger was gargling and croaking, blood spewing from its mouth and pulsing between the metal plates across its throat. It would die soon, and if he was still inside when it did …

There was at least one more outside.

Kel grabbed the thing’s projectile weapon, surprised at how light it was, knowing he was a fool even to try using it. But it was much more powerful than knives and bolts, and though the Strangers had their soft spots, he had many more.

The weapon was as long as his forearm, and the back of it expanded into a bubble the size of his fist, its surface hot and damp. The front part of the tube was thin and pointed. It had fired once, and he only hoped there were more projectiles inside. Did it take the Stranger’s magic to fire it? Was it a machine, like the thing building those huge columns, or a tool, like his crossbow?

He went outside to find out.

The other Stranger must have been patrolling around the chain compound when it heard its companion’s weapon discharging. It was running, close to the chains, and it fired at Kel as it moved. That saved him; he felt the projectile pass by his head, close enough to flick up a tuft of his hair.

Kel steadied the tube against his hip and pulled the curved metal trigger. It jerked in his arms and spat a gush of
steam, and the Stranger tripped and fell. In the poor light from the floating light balls, he saw the jagged hole on the back of its metal-clad head.

Dead
, he thought, then the change began.

It was close to the chain compound, and Kel could see the shadows of people moving in there as they came close to see. He glanced up at the ever-growing column arching over them, saw the machine still moving up there, and wondered who or what was controlling it.

“Get back!” he growled, running a wide circuit around the fallen Stranger. He waved at those behind the fence, gesturing for them to move away, but their pale faces showed no comprehension.

“Wood-carver?” he heard someone say, and he almost laughed out loud, thinking,
Do I look like a fucking wood-carver?

From behind he heard the vicious wailings of the first dead Stranger’s wraith. And beside the compound, the metal man he had just shot burst open and the long limbs rose from its back, blue light sparking and arcing from tip to tip.

“Back!” he shouted again, retreating himself. He looked up at the tower again, and the machine up there seemed to have stopped, pausing on the edge as though gazing down. Kel ran up the slope, away from the compound and the rampaging wraiths. He could do nothing for those within the chained areas, not yet. Maybe when the mad wraiths went down …

The screaming began, and he fell to the heathers and covered his head.

KEL WATCHED WITH
one eye. He had to, in case one of the wraiths came up the hillside after him. There was no way of telling whether the things had any memory of the existence they had so recently departed, but if they did, perhaps vengeance would be their prime motivators. But the one inside
the building remained there, and the spectre outside raged and twisted and roared without apparent direction, as had all the others he had seen.

In the poor light, he saw those in the compound backing away from the mad thing.
Good
, he thought,
let them know the fear
.

Kel looked up at the flat top of the tower. The machine extruding the material to grow the tower remained motionless, and he knew that its controller must be watching from somewhere.

He scanned around the tower’s base, then back past the chained enclosure and the raving wraith to the low building he had so recently fled. Three dead in there, and one more outside, and suddenly the impact of his escape hit him. He’d killed four of them to get out, two almost-humans and two of the deadly Strangers. He actually smiled, and heard a voice telling him that they’d write songs about him. O’Peeria or Namior; he could not decide.

But he could still not see the Komadian controlling the building machine.