The Silent Isle (29 page)

She stepped closer
to him as she did.  “What is it about me that
vexes
you?” 

“Vexes?” he
laughed.  “No. 
Awes.
 
Just you.
 
The utter mystery of you.
 
Would you talk for me?”

“What would I
talk of?”

“Anything;
so
long as it’s you. 
Your hopes,
dreams.
 
Your favorite color.
  All I
ask is to listen.”

“Then first tell
me something about yourself.”

“Anything.”

She put her hand
to his which still held her chin.  “Why doesn’t your father trust you?”

“You ask a lot.”

“Perhaps another time, then.”

“No, there is no
other time.  If you want to know, then I’ll tell you.”  He released
her chin and dropped his eyes and sat down on the bed. 

“It happened
three years ago.  My father was building a border fortress near
Loshōn, on some land he had wrested from House Felcrist.  Felcrist is
bigger and wealthier than our house and I think my father wanted to flaunt his
victory.  He put everything he had in terms of wealth and technology into
that fortress.  It was beautiful in its own way.  It stood on a low
hill and its base was ringed in a wall of stones and mortar higher than a man’s
head.  Logs formed the upper wall, like the walls here, but broader and
anchored into the mortar and stones.  The walls were guarded by towers and
each tower held a ballista.  Bailus, his best commander, and his best
troops were housed there.  Everyone was talking about it.  That’s
what my father wanted.  But it made two things inevitable.  One was
that, Avery, my little brother, wouldn’t stop talking about it.  He
wouldn’t eat, he wouldn’t sleep.  He said he’d never be happy until he saw
it.  On my father’s orders I was away to the east, dealing with the
nomadic raiders who come off the plains when the grass is poor.  I told
Avery I’d take him to Loshōn as soon as I returned.  I guess that
wasn’t soon enough. 

The second thing
that was inevitable was Lord Felcrist’s attack.  I just didn’t think both
things would happen at once.  I don’t know what angered House Felcrist
more, my father’s victory or his boasting about it, but they must have been
making their plans even as my little brother was making his. 

Avery left home
one night and made his way to the fortress.  I guess he walked, but it was
sixty miles.  Bailus had a mind to send him straight home, but before he
could do that, the fortress was besieged.  In addition to the garrison,
there were many workers, men and women, even children, who had come to put the
finishing touches on the buildings.  While Felcrist’s men battered down
the front gate, Bailus ordered the civilians out the rear postern.  My
brother was with them.  In a fair fight, they would have made it. 
But Torin, Lord Felcrist’s younger son, rode his cavalry right over them.”

“And your father
blames you for not being there?”

“No, not even he
would do that.  He blames me for what I did afterwards.  I challenged
Torin to single combat.  He had no choice but to accept; people knew what
he’d done.  We fought outside the ruined gates at Loshōn. 
Bailus’s men had held the fortress and Lord Felcrist had pulled his men back when
he learned what had happened.  I think he was embarrassed. 

The fight was
short.  I broke several of Torin’s fingers and disarmed him.  I was
all set on killing him; I’d thought about it, dreamed about it.  But
something happened.  He was laying there before me and, as I raised my
axe, he started to plead.  It started with his eyes and spread over his
whole face and then his lips moved and finally they made a sound.
 ‘Please.’  I hesitated.  I still would have done it, but then
he looked at his father and turned the same look he’d used on me on him. 
His father shifted in his chair.  Then he shook his head and turned
away.  Torin just lay there looking at his father’s profile for a long
moment.  Then he got to his knees and lowered his head for my axe. 

I don’t know
what happened, but everything was suddenly so clear.  How my father’s
boasting had incited Avery’s wanderlust and Felcrist’s lust for revenge. 
How Lord Felcrist had ordered the attack and Torin, his underachieving younger
son, had been overzealous in carrying it out.  And I wondered what my
grandfather had done to my father and what Felcrist’s father had done to him to
make them the men they were.  It didn’t excuse what they’d done, but it
changed the way I looked at it.  I suddenly wanted to kill all of them or
none of them.  But I was tired of walking in the blood-filled ruts our
forefathers have carved for us.  I walked through the crowd and everyone
got out of my way like I was a god or a leper and I got on my horse and I never
returned to Loshōn again.”

“What became of
Torin?”

“He laid low for
a few months.  The next spring, he rode out against some rebels on their
southern borders.  He was shot through the eye before the battle was even
joined.  I guess if I’d known he was going to do that I could have saved
myself a lot of trouble with my father.”

“What a world we
live in,” she said.  “Where men repent more heartily of the good they do
than the bad.  And what became of you?”

“I rode to
Avery’s grave, which sits in the hills above our house.  I could lie in
the hills there in such a way that I could see his grave and little else and no
one could see me.  I stayed there for days.  Leech was the only one
to find me.  Maybe he was the only one looking.  He rode up and stood
studying me from the saddle.  Then he tossed me a sack and said, ‘There
are quicker ways to kill yourself than starvation, you know.’  Then he
rode off, without ever having dismounted.  I knew then he was the best
friend a man could have.  It took me another day to be able to open the
sack.  It was full of food.  It took me another day before I could
bring myself to eat any of it.”

As Dane had been
talking, Mirela had drawn closer to him.  He wondered what would happen if
he would go on talking for another five minutes.  But he could not. 
He had said all there was to say.

She placed her
hand on his cheek and he marveled that the touch of one who had suffered so
much could be so warm and gentle.  “I trust you, Dane Hallander.  I
trust you with all of me.”

“What reason do
you have to trust me?”

“For the same
reason your father does not.”

A knock sounded
at the door.  Reluctantly, Dane slid off the bed and past Mirela to open
it.  Paul Johnson stood there. 

“Sir,” he said,
“There’s something out here you need to see.”

“What were you doing out here in
the first place?” Dane asked as he and Paul trotted down the path to the beach.

“Can’t you feel
it, sir?”

“Feel what?”

“The quiet.”

“It’s always
quiet here.”

“But it’s more
than quiet.  It’s calm. 
Real calm.
 
Bailus asked me to walk down to the beach with him to see if there were extra
nets laid up in a lean-to or anything nearby.  But I think what we really
wanted was just to walk in the woods at night.  Like a couple of boys back
home.  Tonight just feels different.  I don’t think there’s a single
one of them for miles.  I think they’ve fallen clear back to the other
side of the island.”

“You think we’ve
beaten them?”

“I’m not that
big a fool, sir.  But I do think we’ve won ourselves a breather.”

“Why don’t you just tell me what’s out here?”

“I saw it with
my own two eyes, sir.  And I’m still not sure I believe it.  I think
I’d rather just wait till you can see it for yourself. 
If
it’s still there.”

Dane and Paul
came out of the woods. The gravel of the beach crunched beneath their
feet.  Bailus stood in the center of the beach.  He turned and nodded
to them, but they were looking at what Bailus had been looking at.  There,
in the middle of the harbor, a ship lay at anchor.

Dane cupped his
hands to his mouth. 
“Ahoy, there.”

“I’ve been
watching that deck since we first laid eyes on her, and nothing’s stirred,”
Bailus said. 

No light shone
on the deck.  The ship was discernible mostly as a dark hulk that loomed
against the star-studded sky.

Dane turned to
Paul.  “Can you swim?”

“Like a fish.”

“Then let’s go.”

The two men
stripped and waded into the water.  When the water reached his waist, Dane
dove in and started swimming in long, sure strokes.  The prow of the ship
was pointed at the beach.  Dane drove around it to the port side. 
This side was bare and the sides were higher than the ship’s of Dane’s
people.  He swam around the stern to starboard.  A cargo net hung
down from the top of the gunwale into the water.  He called to Paul,
then
started up the net.  As he climbed, it occurred to
him the owners of the ship could be waiting in ambush on the deck.  This
fear did not outweigh his curiosity and, more than that, he felt the peace Paul
had spoken of.  He imagined the ship’s crew descending the net into
rowboats and departing for who knows where.

He pulled
himself onto the deck and looked around.  The deck was open save for a
small cabin in the back.  He checked this and the hold below.  Both
were so empty they made him think of new-wrought vessels launched from the
shipyards.  Paul joined him on the deck.  Paul loosened a rope
secured to the deck and unfurled the sail from the yard.  It ruffled and
billowed in the light breeze.  Dane, standing in the prow, hailed Bailus
on the beach to let him know all was well.  Paul was saying something but
Dane could not hear him as he shouted answers to Bailus’s questions. 

“Sir?”
Paul said, but Dane shushed him to try to hear
Bailus. 

“Sir!”
Paul said more emphatically.

“What?” Dane
said. 

“I think we
should get back to the beach.”

Dane turned
towards Paul and found the young man staring up at the sail.  It bore the
mark of the
shriken
.

***

“Burn it,”
Bailus said.  “That’ll send them a message.  You’re stuck with us
now, you bastards.”

“Anyone care to
second that idea?” Dane asked.

They’d come
straight back from the beach and called everyone together.  They were
sitting around the table in the dining area.  The fire crackled in the
hearth.  Many of them had mugs before them but few of them had drunk from
them yet.  They were unanimously agreed the
shriken
had intended
for them to find the ship.  There was a general consensus the
shriken
wanted
them to use it.  The only question remaining was ‘Why?
’.
 

A minority,
Bailus included, maintained the
shriken
had been properly chastised by two
days of honest combat and had meant the ship as a peace offering, a means of
begging the men and women to leave the island. 

The others
thought there was more to it than that.

“There will be
other fights back home,” Dane said to Bailus when no one moved to second his
suggestion.   
“With better odds.”

Bailus, alone
even in his minority, seemed to crave the chance to plague the
shriken
the way they had plagued them. 

“With respect,
sir,” Bailus said, “I’ve been fighting your father’s wars and his father’s wars
all my life, regardless of the odds.  Most of my enemies, most of the men
I’ve killed, were just boys who hardly knew what they were dying for, much less
what they were living for or why they’d ever been born.  But this is
something different.  No slaves, no masters; just ordinary folk going toe
to toe with the darkness to carve out a place in a new land.  I think this
is the fight I’ve been looking for all my life.”

“Speak for
yourself
,” Pratt said.

“I don’t know
why you’re all so concerned about the ‘Why’ of them giving us the ship,” Paul
said.  “I don’t think there’s a need for us to look a gift horse in the
mouth so long as we’re sure it won’t magically spring a leak or disappear out
from under us when we’re halfway home.”

“You all can do
whatever you want,” Josie said.  “I for one am not willing to let them
tell me when to stop fighting.”

“What bothers
me,” Dane said, “Is where did the ship come from?  Forsythe circled the
island and saw nothing.  My only guess is it was hidden somewhere on the
backside of the island.  There could be dozens of such ships hidden
there.”

“To what end?”
Rawl asked.

“Invasion,”
Elias said.  He was sitting beside the hearth and staring into the fire
and had not said a word until now.  Even now he did not turn his gaze from
the flames.

“Not against the
mainland,” Paul said.  “There’s no way there’re enough of them on this
dinky island to overrun the mainland.”

“The mainland is
divided,” Dane said.  “There could easily be more of them here than the
armies of even the biggest houses.  And besides, even if they couldn’t
take the mainland, Tira, and a host of other islands, lie in their path.”

“I guess we’ve
been wrong,” Rawl said.  “This whole time we’ve been thinking they’re
afraid of water.  I guess now that’s not so, or at least they’re willing
to cross it in boats.  So I guess we can stay and fight and maybe life
will be short, or we can run and spend the rest of our lives looking over our
shoulders.”

“It’s worse than
that,” Paul said.  “It’s not just death we face in staying here. 
They could turn us into those deathwalkers and send us against our own
families.”

“But I think
Rawl’s right,” Mirela said, speaking for the first time.  “I think that’s
what they wanted to teach us in giving us the ship:  We can leave the
island, but we’ll never be free of them.”

“We’re all
together now,” Dane said.  “Why don’t you tell us what you know of them?”

“I don’t really
know anything,” Mirela said. 
“But there are stories
still told on my island, handed down out of years long past.
  For many
generations now my people have lived on Alistar, but before that, all the
refugees from the Great Exodus, and their descendants for many years after,
lived on our mainland, on Dim.  They say when our ancestors first came
there from Draconia, the land was already inhabited.  There were small
tribes of Men, scattered across great tracts of wilderness, and in between them
lived something neither fully man nor fully beast.  The netherwights we
call them, beings from below.  In most of our stories they bear the form
of giant wolves, but imbued with
an intelligence
that
rivals Man’s and a cruelty that far exceeds his.  And beyond that, they
are said to have other powers, powers not natural to men or beasts. 
Stories tell of them freezing the blood of living things in their veins.”

“And you think
these two are related?” Dane asked.

“I don’t
know.  But there is something in the old stories which reminds me of what
I have seen here.  The netherwights were wrought in the image of that
which is lower; we, men and women, were made to resemble and know that which is
higher.  To Man is given choice.  It is part of his high nature, to
know and choose between good and evil.  For anything to be truly good, it
must have the choice of evil.  Man can plant and harvest, heal and hope,
burn and kill – he can do all these nearly at the same time.  The
netherwights know only death and destruction, and they delight in it. 
They would choose nothing else even if they could.  And that is where I
think they resemble the creatures here.  They have no choice, no
creativity.  Maybe it’s the one weakness we can exploit.  They can’t
handle change; we’ve seen this.  When we two entered the fort in the first
battle, they fled before us like we were a company of cavalry.  Crane’s
fear had given them a foothold, but when he defied them, it kicked their
footing out from under them.  As individuals, maybe even as a whole, they
lack the ability to adapt to sudden change – they don’t know how to handle
man’s ability to surprise them – especially to choose good suddenly over evil –
to choose sacrifice over safety and selfishness; to choose courage instead of
cowardice.  Both times they had to fall back and regroup. 
Doubtlessly, they’ll attack again.  If we’re going to beat them, we’ll
have to use their ship, but use it in a way they could never imagine.”

“So, basically,”
Paul said, “We need a miracle.  Some divine inspiration.  That’s
Elias’s department.”

“Don’t look to
me,” the priest said, without taking his eyes from the fire.

“But you’re the
Rain-Maker,” Rawl said. 
“The Man of the Mountain.”

“Would you like
to know what happened on the mountain, Rawl?” Elias asked.

“We know what
happened on the mountain,” Paul said.  “We were in the worst drought the
land had ever known.  Crops had failed, animals were dying,
people
were starting to go, too.  Then you went up on
the mountain, the Seat of Kran, and you prayed, and before you came down the
next morning, the skies broke and our land’s been green ever since.”

“Those are only
the events that happened around the time I climbed the mountain,” Elias
said.  “I asked if you wanted to know what happened on the mountain.”

There was
something in his voice that made Rawl and Paul lose theirs.  For a moment,
no one spoke.  Dane found he was staring at his hands, which rested on the
table before him.  He realized, too, that this was the whole reason he had
asked Elias to risk such danger in coming, because he believed he held some
special favor with the gods – that he knew something Dane and the others never
would or could.  Now that it came to it, he was afraid to ask what that
thing was. 

“Tell us then,”
Mirela said gently.  “What happened?”

Elias turned
from the fire to look her in the eyes.  There was a sunken, glazed
expression about his face.  “Nothing happened,” he said. 
“Absolutely nothing.”
  He sighed and turned back to the
fire.  He was silent for so long they all thought he would never speak
again but no one dared speak in his silence.  Finally, he said, “I went up
the mountain for my own reasons. 
Perhaps selfish ones.
 
Yes, I was worried about the people and the drought, and it was my job as
priest to stand between them and disaster, but I had my own reasons for
going.  I wanted to meet Kran. 
To see him face to
face.
 
Or at least to hear his voice.
 Everyone was crying out to him in those days, making pacts, offering
sacrifices, and I thought I could ride that wave of anguish and devotion right
into his presence.  I thought if there ever were a time to truly know him,
it was then.  But I sat there all night, sometimes praying, sometimes
begging, sometimes in silence, and I never heard him speak.  I’ve often
thought many men want nothing more to do with the gods than what it takes to
keep them happy.  Now I know the gods feel the same way about us.  In
the morning the rains came.  But, at best, it was only a weary master
tossing a bone to a barking dog.  Not from affection, but from wanting him
to shut up.  At worst, well, I’ve never been sure the whole thing wasn’t
just a coincidence.”  He sighed again.  “Do what you think
best.  But don’t bother trying to trouble the gods about it.  They
won’t be troubling themselves.”

Rawl felt
miserable.  He realized now he had been hoping all along Elias would know
how to get them out of this.  Maybe that was why he had been so concerned
about saving his life.  But it seemed now that even if Elias did know, he
did not have the heart to try it.  Rawl felt they were utterly alone, that
they had only themselves to depend on.  And he had never realized how
terribly inadequate that was.  But in the midst of his doubt, a thought
occurred to him.  “But what about
Her
?” he said
to Elias.  “What about this Woman you spoke of from your slumber?”

Elias looked
back into the fire as he spoke, as though he’d lost interest in the
conversation.  “When I sank down, the darkness clung to me.  It was
not solid darkness or a single thing, but many shapes, like shadows, that held
me, and they held me in a place that was neither life nor death.  I lay there
for what seemed like years, lifetimes.  And then
She
came.  The most beautiful thing I have ever seen.  She was like a
woman, but somehow more; more than human, but not less.  But to look at
Her
was like looking at the sun.  It hurt my eyes; it
hurt clear back to the back of my skull.  My whole body ached with the
sight of
Her
.  I turned away from
Her
.  When I did, my body cast a shadow, and the
darkness clung to that shadow.  I forced myself to look at
Her
again and when I did Her light passed through me and I
made no shadow.  The ache did not go away, but the longer I looked the
more pleasurable it became.  And the darkness departed.  It screamed
in my ears and pulled at my hair and shoulders, pleading with me to turn
around.  But the longer I looked upon
Her
, the
fainter their voices became, until the last of them blew away like smoke. 
Then
She
disappeared as well.”