Tales of Noreela 04: The Island (45 page)

She was going to shoot.

“Kel Boon sent you his message! He brought you here, and now they have him.”

“Boon?” the scarred woman said, obvious recognition in her voice. The Shantasi glanced at her, then back at Namior, confused once again.

“Pelly,” the ginger man said, “who’s Boon?”

“He was with me in Springchain Park,” Pelly said. “When all those children died. You remember that? When I got this?” She touched her face. “It was all his fault.”

Mallor sighed, the softest sound. “I’ve heard of him. Everyone thinks he’s dead.”

“He ran away,” Namior said, her voice low. “He’s been living here for five years. I only knew… he only told me about the Core after the waves came.”

“Waves?” the ginger man asked.

“Him,” Pelly whispered, stroking the ruin of her cheek and looking somewhere far away in place and time.

“Deserted,” the Shantasi said. “That’s as good as dead, in my eyes.”

Namior stared at the pale woman, past the arrow aiming at her face. The Shantasi stared back. It was Mallor’s voice that broke the silent stalemate.

“U’Nam, keep her covered. The rest of you, ease down. And you … what’s your name?”

“Namior Feeron.”

Mallor touched the machine’s controls and it lowered him to the ground. He was very tall, and older than Namior had thought at first. When he walked to her, she felt the weariness in his every step and breath.

“Namior Feeron,” he said, “I’m Mallor, General of the Western Core. You need to tell us everything.”

AS SHE TALKED,
the sun burned the mist away, and the landscape was slowly revealed. She told them about the storm and the waves, the island that had appeared out to sea, the visitors. She told them everything, and she was disturbed at how calmly they listened to all that she said, even when she relayed information about their strange steam machines and the Strangers with their projectile weapons. She cried when she talked about her great-grandmother’s revelation, certain somehow that the old woman was already dead. Her observers should have been standing in fear and shaking their heads in wonder. But these were Core, and she knew that they had seen and done more than most in Noreela. Theirs was a world within a world: their wider understanding of Noreela and what might lie beyond existing within the constraints of a blinkered and inward-looking land. Cynicism, she supposed, must come naturally to them.

When she explained about their sea journey to the island of Komadia, what they had seen, and what they had brought back, the ginger man and Pelly unwrapped the crystal from the jacket and gasped. Its surface was pale and dull, and Namior could see nothing of its depths. Perhaps beyond the scope of Komadian magic, the thing inside had died.

They quickly put it down and covered it again, wiping their hands on their clothes.

“We should go in,” U’Nam said.

Mallor shook his head. “There are not enough of us.”

“Even so, who’s to say what’s happening in there right now?”

“More’s the reason to wait.” Mallor raised one hand when the Shantasi went to protest some more. “U’Nam, you’ll get your fight. But right now it’s contained, and these Komadians seem only to be concerned in forming their beachhead.”

“And the longer we leave them,” Pelly said, “the stronger they’ll be when we attack.” She nodded at Namior. “You heard what she said about those towers, or whatever they are. They’re building defenses. Leave it another day, and maybe we won’t be able to break in at all.”

“And without magic?” the ginger man said. He hefted his crossbow. “I’m as good as any hand to hand, but if we’ve no machines to back us, where’s the hope?”

“We can’t just sit here!” U’Nam said.

Mallor was quiet, staring past where Namior still sat toward the village beyond, hidden behinds hills and down in the river valley. Namior sensed a sad wisdom in the old man, and she wondered how long he had been preparing for that day.

“This is all new to us,” Mallor muttered. “The Core has always known the day would come when we make contact with more than single, solitary Strangers. We’ve become efficient at finding, tracking and killing them. But this …” He nudged the crystal with his foot. “All new. So we send the news to the other Core, tell them all to get here as quickly as possible, and when we’re strong enough, that will be the time to act.”

“It’s the whole village at risk!” Namior said. “My family, friends, and if you just leave them—”

“Your great-grandmother is one of them, you said that yourself!” Mallor did not raise his voice, but confusion was evident in his eyes. He was doing his best, feeling his way through the maze of new information and into an event he had, perhaps, thought would happen after he was dead. He was tall, confident and wise. But he was also terrified.

“She left them willingly, which means they must have
their weaknesses. If you can only
find
them, take advantage, then maybe—”

“And they happen to appear where your old relative has made her home?” U’Nam asked.

Namior looked down at the ground. “Maybe there are refugees from Komadia all across Noreela.”

“Speculation,” Mallor said. “That’s not what we need. Caution is required here. If we expose ourselves now, they’ll come at us with everything, and that will leave nothing between them and the rest of Noreela.” Mallor’s voice brooked no argument, and when he turned away Namior could find no words to call him back.

“Boon,” Mallor said to Pelly. She blinked, wide-eyed.

“Kel’s talked about you,” Namior said, looking at the scarred woman. “His guilt brought him here.”

“He’s a fucking deserter and deserves to die,” U’Nam hissed. “And when this is over …”

“He’s been fighting them every step of the way!” Namior said. “When their emissary stepped off the first boat in front of the whole village, he was at her with a knife, checking her for gills and those
things
on their backs. She had none. But he could have been killed by his own people, as well as by theirs. We were ready to welcome them in, because they were helping so much after the waves, and they made themselves out to be just as much victims as we were, and we fell for every word. All but Kel. If he hadn’t been living in Pavmouth Breaks, no one outside would know what’s happening. None of you would have been called here if it weren’t for him.”

“No excuse for cowardice,” U’Nam said.

Namior held her shirt and jacket shut and stood. The ginger man raised his crossbow and pointed, but she ignored him, taking three steps forward and standing nose to nose with the diminutive Shantasi warrior. “It’s his failures that torture Kel,” she said. “The Komadians have him now, and he won’t say a word.”

“He’ll likely have no choice,” Mallor said. “We have to assume they know the Core has been contacted.”

U’Nam stared at Namior, but her words were for Mallor. “I’m not for sitting around playing with myself,” she said. “So what do we do?”

“Very well.” The old man sighed. He nodded at Namior. “You can help.” When he smiled at her his eyes twinkled, and Namior thought she saw confidence in his expression for the first time. “You know Pavmouth Breaks, so you can lead three of us in to reconnoiter, ready for when the rest of the Core arrive.”

Namior sighed, her shoulder slumping with both fear, and relief.
I can do something to help
, she thought. Ruined though her village was, and living through its darkest time, she could already feel it drawing her back.

“And Boon?” U’Nam asked.

“You don’t know him,” Pelly said. “I once did.” And that seemed answer enough.

THE BEATING IS
torture enough. Disparate pains meld into one, the world turns around him, confusing up and down, left and right, and the time soon comes when he wishes for death, craving an escape from the pain the two Strangers are subjecting him to while Keera Kashoomie watches, the bruises and cuts, and the sharp heat of other things they’re doing to him; touches with steaming tendrils extruded from their metal forearms, and a scorching blue light that dances across the hairs on his arms and hands and is so cold it’s hot. As yet, they have asked him nothing.

Torture enough, but the voice that mocks him is worse.

“Fucking weak and fucking useless,” O’Peeria says. Somehow he can see her through the trees, sitting at the base of the Komadian tower and shaking her head as the beating
continues. He’s not sure
how
he can see her, because the Strangers are throwing him around like two foxlions playing with a sheebok before the kill. And besides, he’s sure his eyes must be bruised shut, the skin and flesh around them weeping tears of blood. But still she’s there, armed in her full weaponry as if she has come to help.

She can’t help. She’s dead. Yet she stares at him as if he’s nothing, and he feels his body flipped around and dragged across the ground, and he cannot escape her gaze.

MALLOR AND THE
others had been traveling all night, so they took time to eat, drink and rest. U’Nam and the ginger man had come from a village fifty miles to the north, and their machine had ground to a halt ten miles away, its internal gears and fluids seizing under the constant strain. No amount of cajoling or magical channeling could urge it onward, and they had left it in the shelter of a copse of trees. Pelly and the other man had come all the way from Pavisse, the mining town that gave the River Pav its name. It sat close to the source of the river, and Namior had heard many tales of the great machines run by the miners; digging things, swimming constructs, and machines that reached miles underground to bring mined goods to the surface. They had traveled by boat, leaving it moored down on the river when they’d come into contact with Mallor. The four did not seem overly familiar with each other, and Namior wondered whether they only met when pursuing or killing a Stranger.

And there was Mallor himself, the Core’s western general, tending his machine and sending gentle whispers of magic into its internal workings. He revealed no origin and told Namior only that he had ridden across the plains. She imagined him wandering Noreela’s western extremes, waiting, watching, bringing Core to him if a Stranger was tracked, living on his own in the wilds during those times when they
sensed nothing of threat from beyond the land. A forlorn existence, but one she suspected he had lived for years. He seemed uncomfortable in company, preferring to sit beside his machine and share its magical drive.

They ate and drank in silence, Namior feeling suspicious glances thrown her way. The sound of the insect sizzling and spitting came back to her, and she shivered in dawn’s growing warmth.
My blood did that
. But her blood had also saved her, when the Stranger had caught her and sampled it on the way out of Pavmouth Breaks. She hoped these Core understood how useful she could be.

When the silence grew uncomfortable, Namior asked about the signal that Kel had sent.

“A calling,” Pelly said. The woman seemed intense and severe, and Namior was still uneasy about her comments concerning Kel. “It’s something we’re all trained to listen for, but none of us hopes to hear.”

“What did it sound like?”

“Not as it should,” Mallor said. “The first one, at least.” He left the shadow of his machine and came to join the group. Even squatting down, he was almost as tall as Namior. “But the second was clear enough.”

“Not as it should?” U’Nam asked.

Mallor shrugged. “There was something… askew. None of you heard that? None of you sensed it?” Heads shook.

“Guess that’s why you’re the general, Mallor,” the ginger man said, and soft laughter fluttered around the group.

“He sent the first signal using their own magic,” Namior said. “I’m not sure how. But the land back there is silent.” She nodded behind her, back the way she had come, and for a beat Pavmouth Breaks existed in her mind as an unknown and unknowable place. The feeling soon evaporated, but it left her cold and afraid, with a hollow in her heart yearning to be filled.

“We’ve so much to learn,” U’Nam said. “These are great times.”

“Great?” Pelly said, almost a shout.

The Shantasi waved her hand. “You know what I mean. Important.”

“You want them to write songs about you, Shantasi?” Namior said, but she immediately regretted the comment. She shook her head and looked down at her hands.

“I need to send word to the Core still journeying here,” Mallor said, standing to go back to his machine.

“How many?” Namior asked.

“In the next day, perhaps a hundred.”

A thrill of hope rushed through her.
A hundred! And all trained fighters, many of whom had experience killing Strangers. Maybe there’s hope yet!
But then she thought of Kel, and wondered where he was and what was happening to him, and the hope dwindled to something negligible and unimportant.

“There’s a vulnerable spot in their armor,” she said, pointing at her throat. “Just here.”

“Armor?” U’Nam said. The Core glanced around at each other, confused, unnerved, and Namior’s hopes shrank some more as she realized she had plenty more to tell.

ONE OF THEM
holds him down while another pours something into his mouth. It’s hot and insubstantial, like steam, but has a defined taste that he cannot place.
Because I’ve never tasted anything like this before
, he thinks. At least they have ceased beating him, for the moment.

“Oh, that’s right, just lie back and enjoy yourself,” O’Peeria says. She’s standing behind the Stranger leaning over him, poking toward the metal armor with a thick spike from her belt but never quite touching.

Then the stuff hits his stomach, and he wishes they
were
beating him again.

It burns, it melts, it seems to explode in a continuous,
everlasting eruption through his flesh and bones, breaking his skin and bursting out in showers of meat and blood and gristle… and yet nothing about him changes, not on the outside. The Stranger continues to pour, and when Kel starts to cough and gag, the other one grabs his chin and forehead and holds his mouth open wider still.

O’Peeria is saying something to him, but her voice is lost in the buzz of pulsing blood thumping at his ears. She seems keen to tell him something, pointing and prodding at the air with the spike, and she’s just as beautiful as ever.