Tales of Noreela 04: The Island (48 page)

She felt Mallor’s hand on her shoulder, and saw Pelly ready to pounce if she cried out again; but she bit her lip and remained silent.

U’Nam searched the house quickly, and when she came back downstairs she shook her head.

Mother isn’t here
, Namior thought. And those three words repeated again and again as they left, their repetition surrounding her with silence and shutting out the terrible, overbearing sense that everything was about to end.

The rain fell harder than ever. It tasted of Komadia.

Fifty steps after leaving Namior’s home open to the elements, she and the Core met the first Strangers hiding in the shadows.

O’PEERIA WAS NO
longer there. That was Kel Boon’s first thought as he came around. His second was that his back must be broken.

He was lying on his stomach, head turned to one side so that he looked down the hillside toward the valley, and he could not move. He could see nothing other than rain striking the ground before him, and the mist it formed as it splashed back up. It was warm and intimate, trickling down his neck and sides, across his legs, and the smell was something he could not quite place—the sea and somewhere else.

Sheet lightning thrashed overhead, lighting the scene in brilliant starkness for beats at a time. Every raindrop was pinned to the air, each flash-frozen into a stilled moment in time. In those moments, through puffy eyes, Kel saw the scorched remains of one of the Strangers.

He blinked, trying to remember what had happened. He recalled Kashoomie, apparently startled and running away.
Then the fight, stabbing, punching, the Stranger’s head coming toward his own, and the explosive sound of a wraith tearing its way from one of their bodies. After that, nothing.

Is one of them still alive?

He tried to bring his hands beneath his chest to heave himself up, but his arms belonged to someone else. Listening, hearing only rain and the echoes of thunder, he pushed with his legs and hands, finally rolling over onto his back. He winced in pain, squinting against the rain battering at his face.

Kel’s breath stuttered, and he gasped. It felt as if someone else had been breathing with him. “O’Peeria,” he whispered. She had been there, visible, taunting, then urging him to fight the Strangers. If it hadn’t been for her …

He turned and looked up toward the dark tower, and twenty steps away he made out the second Stranger, armor melted down into a hissing slick.
Still cooling. Only just dead. I can’t have been out for long
.

Kel had heard his dead love many times before, berating or scolding him in her own harsh style, and every word had been bestowed to her voice by him. He knew that, but it comforted him still. She’d been chanted down by one of the Core mourners soon after the fiasco in Noreela City, but he still liked to think that a part of her was with him always. And it was guilt that fueled that desire. If O’Peeria
was
still with him, then she did not blame him for her death, as others had. As
he
had.

But that was the first time he had ever seen her.

Groaning, Kel managed to sit up. His limbs were feeling like his own again. He touched the mess of his face, and felt a soft, sticky lump on his forehead, the swelling half the size of his fist and painful to the touch. Rainwater seemed to soothe the wound, and at least it did not bleed down his face and blind him. He took in several deep breaths, then tried to stand.

Lightning flashed and thunder cracked, and somewhere in the haze above him, an explosion shook the air. Kel looked
up, biting his lip as wooziness swayed the ground. The top of the tower spat blue sparks and smoke, and a hail of shards was falling with the rain. Beats later he heard them landing at the tower’s base, rattling onto the ground amongst the heavy raindrops.

“I hope it hurts,” he whispered, not quite sure whom it
could
hurt, nor how.

Blue sparks. They had been similar to the lights dancing around that small box controlled by Namior’s great-grandmother as she healed the injured woman.

Keera Kashoomie, surprised and running away, leaving him—her prisoner, her source of information—to the mercy of the Strangers.

The old woman, walking in the direction of the rowboat, crying, heading home.

“She did something,” Kel muttered. The lightning did not sound, look or smell natural, and if the view across the valley had been clear, he was sure he’d have seen it arcing from the other towers as well. “The crazed old woman did something.”

Kel knew then that he must leave. He had to find his way beyond the Komadians’ influence and meet up with Namior.

He touched his forehead again, cringing at the rush of pain. The wound was soft. His skull might be fractured. Perhaps, when they reached a place where Noreela still spoke through the land, she would be able to heal him.

ONE MOMENT THERE
was silence, but for the storm; the next, chaos. Mallor pushed Namior to one side, and the terrible violence began.

She huddled in a doorway, not recognizing whose house it was, trying the handle and finding the door locked, feeling ridiculously exposed, while the three Core melted away. Namior was mere witness to the carnage, not a contributor, but nothing could make her close her eyes.

She thought there were three Strangers; she could see two behind a walled herb garden thirty steps along the path, and a third was firing from the window of a house on her side. Their weapons coughed, and chunks of masonry and cobbles exploded from all around Namior and the Core. Lines of steam marked the projectile’s routes through the air, quickly washed down and absorbed by the ever-increasing downpour.

Mallor lay in the gutter on his side, a few steps ahead, while Pelly and U’Nam had disappeared behind the wall across the path. As Mallor fired his crossbow, Pelly leapt up to fling throwing stars, but U’Nam remained out of sight. Namior thought she must be working her way forward, but then the Shantasi slipped over the wall and streaked up the narrow street, faster than Namior had ever seen anyone moving. Above the sound of thunder and the roar of the Strangers’ weapons, Namior heard the protesting squeal of metal against metal. Someone screamed—a screech that rose higher and higher before being cut off—and then the Shantasi flitted back along the path and shouted at them to get down.

Mallor glanced back at Namior, eyes wide, but she nodded; she had seen a Stranger die before.

She curled into a ball, trying to huddle deeper into the shallow doorway. Harsh blue light flashed, reflecting from countless raindrops and splashing across the slick cobbles. Something spat and crackled, sharp sounds in the fluid cadences of the storm, and as the final explosion came, it was matched with a crash of thunder and a flash of lightning. Then the screaming of a Stranger’s wraith, delving this way and that through the downpour without disturbing the falling patterns of raindrops.

Namior glanced across the path, seeing the Stranger’s demise cast in rainbows through the rain. U’Nam was looking over the top of the wall and she caught Namior’s eye, touching her throat and offering a small smile.

The wall beside U’Nam’s face erupted in a shower of
sparks, steam and stone shards. The Shantasi fell back, hand to her face, and disappeared behind the wall.

Mallor dashed across the path, firing the crossbow on his left arm and flinging a throwing knife with his right. The Strangers’ shooting subsided for a beat, then the angry coughs of their guns began again.

The cobble a hand’s width from Namior’s right foot shattered. She felt stone pieces impact her lower legs, then another projectile hit the stone jamb behind her, dusting her head and hands with splinters and dust. She shoved hard against the door, cursing whoever had left it locked.

A shout. Someone else screamed. Namior looked up and saw U’Nam streaking up the path again, and this time Pelly was following her, moving slower but with a snakelike grace.

Mallor sat against the wall across the path, legs stretched out before him, right hand pressed across his mouth as if to hold back a belch. He was staring across at Namior, and his throat was torn open.

Another projectile struck the side of his head, shattering his skull and knocking him onto his left side. One more hit his thigh, kicking his leg out and turning him on the wet cobbles.

“Mallor!” Namior said, appalled at what she had seen. His hand was still somehow pressed to his mouth. Blood and fluids leaked from his head. The rain washed them into the runnels between cobbles, channeling them down the path toward her home.

“Down!” Pelly yelled, and Namior responded without thinking. She pressed herself back against the door as a hail of projectiles slammed into the wall and jambs around her, peppering her with stone fragments that sliced her face and hands.

More shooting, more shouting, breaking glass, then pouring rain reflected the portentous flash of a second Stranger’s imminent demise.

U’Nam dashed back down the path for the second time, slower than before, Pelly draped over one shoulder. The Shantasi threw the woman over the wall and followed, stepping in a wash of Mallor’s blood without looking down.

Lightning thrashed across Pavmouth Breaks, splitting the sky in two, its roar thudding at the land. And in its brief, terrible illumination, Namior saw it touch the pinnacle of a tower just visible above the valley ridge.

From nearer came a familiar explosion, and the dead Stranger’s wraith tore along the path in a death frenzy.

Namior had never felt so exposed and so terrified.

The wraith howled and screeched, dreadful and pitiful. Its voice seemed to be drawing closer. The storm cried out again, and even through eyes squeezed shut and with her arms clasped across her head, the lightning impressed itself through Namior’s eyelids. Thunder rumbled, thumping at her through her knees, feet and elbows where she squatted, echoing from the doorway, across the path and from one side of the valley to the other. Everyone in Pavmouth Breaks would be hearing the sound, and Namior tried to imagine how many other people were huddled in fear.

Great-grandmother, did you do this?
she thought.
Mother, can you hear this also?

As the sound faded away, so too, it seemed, had the wraith.

Namior looked up, and there was no sign of the Stranger’s tortured spirit. She saw movement to her right, and Pelly and U’Nam peered over the wall. U’Nam held up a finger:
One left
.

This time, the Stranger came to them. It ran down the path, stealth impossible with its heavy metal feet, and paused a dozen steps from Namior. It glanced at Mallor’s corpse, then swung the steaming barrel of its weapon toward Namior’s head.

Namior elbowed the door beside her. “Let me in!” She glanced across at the wall, but neither Core member appeared
above it to tackle the Stranger.
Are they using this chance to get away? Let it kill me, escape while it does…
?

Thunder rolled, the Stranger leaned forward slightly, then something whipped through the night and wrapped around its neck. A shadow rose behind it and pulled it back, and the weapon discharged into the sky.

U’Nam stood atop the wall along the street, tugging hard on the slideshock tangled around the Stranger’s throat. Sharp though it was, it could not cut metal. The Stranger dropped its weapon and thrashed, waving its hands, leaning forward and pulling U’Nam from the wall.

She hit the ground face-first, then rolled sideways, rose to her knees and pulled again.

Pelly slid over the wall and crouched down, waiting for her moment.

“Bastard!” Namior shouted. The Stranger paused in its struggles and turned her way, and Pelly struck. Again, the squeal of metal against metal as she slid a blade into the soldier’s throat.

Namior ran across the path and climbed the wall close to Mallor’s corpse. Dropping down into the narrow garden on the other side, she looked up the slight incline and saw the two Core do the same. U’Nam even threw her a cautious smile as they listened to the Stranger’s agonized death.

When the only sound was the cry of the storm once again, U’Nam crawled down to Namior and asked if she was injured.

Namior shook her head. “Mallor.”

“He was a soldier,” U’Nam said. “We have to get out. There could be plenty more of those things.”

“My mother—”

“We have to get out!” the Shantasi said. “Come with us, or stay behind and search for your mother. Your choice. But we’re leaving.”

Namior nodded, but before going with them she picked up Mallor’s short sword.

U’NAM TOOK THE
lead, Namior next, with Pelly bringing up the rear. They moved quickly, using the storm for cover. U’Nam frequently dashed ahead of them, disappearing into the gloom faster than Namior could believe. Each time she returned, she looked more worn.
Nothing ahead
, she would say, before leading them off again. Namior could see that the Shantasi’s exertions were draining her energy, but they were also ensuring them a safe route out of Pavmouth Breaks.

The storm was the worst Namior had ever seen. Water poured along the streets and paths, gushing down between buildings from the valley slopes, falling from roofs in great sheets, surging around their ankles as they walked ever upward. The wind urged them on, roaring in from the sea and funneling between those buildings still standing. Behind the downpour, Namior could hear whistles, roars and groans as the wind twisted around and through the ruins farther down the valley. Lightning thrashed overhead, jagged lines of power scarring the sky in the same place, again and again.