Isles of the Forsaken

by Ives Gilman, Carolyn

  “What essence is that?” Goth asked.

  “Justice. The provable, objective, empirical principle of justice.”

  His face was like a carving—severe, planar. “It is a principle, not a reality,” he continued. “An ethical principle so demanding, so rigorous, that the corrupt humans on this earth can scarcely comprehend it, much less frame their lives by it.”

  “I do not believe we are all so corrupt,” Goth said.

  Talley gave him a searching look. “You do not know as much about the race as I, then.”

  Goth half-smiled at the hubris of this, but it was a bitter smile. Perhaps the man was right, and a long lifetime spent steeping himself in other humans had produced no knowledge at all. He said, “But if you are right, and we are all corrupt, then how can we presume to judge one another?”

  “That,” said Talley, “is the central lie all the trappings of law were created to hide. If I could find just one genuinely good man in this world, then I could rip down all this mummery, burn the very courts; they would no longer be necessary. But that day will not come. There are no good men. Many are called good, but they all have some taint of pride, or self-indulgence—elementary faults I even deny myself. They told me you were a good man.”

  He had come face to face with Goth, only the rail between them. His eyes held such a demanding expectation that Goth felt dwarfed. Talley went on, “You have been represented to me as a man who can create just kings and topple pretenders; who can see into hearts and declare who is fit to lead. You can sort the deserving from the merely ambitious, the false from the sincere. You can assay the gold in men’s hearts, and refine them into saints.”

  Goth could no longer stand the look in those eyes, the sense that he was facing a hunger that almost matched his own. “I fear I must disappoint you,” he said, looking away.

  “Don’t worry, I’m used to it,” Talley said with a brittle, belittling humour.

  Slowly, Goth said, “Your belief is in justice. Ours is in a thing called mora. Our teachings hold that in life, a person accumulates pain in his or her soul. Every harm we have suffered is still with us in some way. The scars make us stiff and unsupple; they cut off ways of moving and acting that we might otherwise be capable of.”

  “What does this have to do—”

  “Let me finish. An unhealed person is a dangerous thing. The unhealed are susceptible to hatred and unreason; they are not truly free. The Adaina call the forces of imbalance the Mundua and Ashwin. However you think of them, they are real. They are always on the thresholds of our minds, waiting to seize control through the inroads of our pain and disappointment. That is why dhota exists: not just to cure, but to keep the forces of imbalance powerless, by robbing them of human collaborators.

  “Ordinarily, an unhealed person is only a danger within his or her sphere. But a person with stature, someone fit to lead, affects us all. An unhealed leader becomes a terrible node of imbalance, a tool to destroy not just himself, but the world.

  “That is why we believe leaders must pass through dhota-nur. Just as dhota erases present pains, so dhota-nur strips from a person’s soul all the scars that could be inroads of imbalance. An Ison must be released from the bondage of pain. He or she must become a truly free being.”

  Talley studied him in silence for several moments. At last he said, “If what you say were true—if there were a magic ritual to free a leader from evil—then it would be a pernicious thing. A leader who cannot bear to do small evils in order to bring about great goods is impotent.”

  Frowning, Goth said, “That can be true. But acts are neutral things; they are never intrinsically wrong, in all cases. There are only acts driven by pain and those that are not.”

  With a slight, cold smile, Talley said, “Let me show you something.” He opened the gate in the rail between them and gestured Goth to follow him to the window. Outside lay an open market square, deserted except for a few figures hurrying through the hazy air. “Down there,” Talley pointed.

  Below them lay a raised wooden platform. Goth’s fingers tightened on the windowsill when he saw that two sharpened stakes stood upright on the execution stage, each with a naked human body impaled on it. The stakes had been thrust right through the men’s bodies, up their spines. One of them hung limp and senseless, the tip of the stake protruding from the skin at his neck. But the other one was moving. As Goth watched, the victim’s head rolled back, his mouth stretched open in unendurable agony.

  “They are rebels,” Talley said in a calm, detached voice. “They threw a bomb into a police station south of here, on Grora. We tried and spitted them yesterday, as an example. You can see, one is still alive. Our technicians can insert the stake in such a way that no vital organs are harmed. The poor devils can last for

  days.”

  Goth had never before witnessed such an extremity of pain, so deliberately inflicted. The compulsion to heal was so strong, his whole body shook with it. His heart was racing. He pressed his hands against the window glass, longing to get through.

  “It gives no one pleasure to see such a sight,” Talley was saying at his side, “but justice must be done, and occasionally it must be cruel and degrading, so as to prevent the fools from idealizing martyrdom. It is one of those regrettable but necessary acts of leadership.”

  Goth scarcely heard him. All his attention was focused on the man below. Madly, he thought of breaking the window to get to him. But no. To give dhota to a dying man would be fatal. What a joyous death it would be. Unable to speak, he sank to the floor, eyes closed, hands over his ears, trying to blot out the sight. He wanted to sob with denied desire.

  Whatever the admiral was saying, Goth heard none of it as he grappled with himself, trying to regain control. “Medic!” he heard Talley calling out, and soon another man was kneeling beside him. There was a sharp, phantom pain in his forearm, where the dhota knife would cut. The Innings would never give him a knife.

  When he managed to look up again, the doctor was closing a leather case, and took his wrist to feel the pulse. Finding it satisfactory, the man nodded to the admiral and left. Talley was watching with a curious but remote expression. Goth stared back into those keen blue eyes with a dawning horror. “You are responsible for that,” he said, gesturing to the window, not daring to look again. “To inflict such suffering puts a terrible burden on the soul.”

  With a mechanical smile, Talley said, “Then it’s just as well that the nation has men whose souls are not overburdened with goodness.” He looked out the window again; his refined features did not change at the sight. He looked like his heart had never warmed to compassion. “Inning law is even-handed but inexorable,” he said. “If you drop a china dish, it will break. If you break the law, you will suffer. It is very simple.”

  What kind of man would perform the inner surgery it must have taken to make himself capable of such acts? The thought chilled Goth’s spirits. Simultaneously, he had the curious realization that his own pain was gone from inside him. The air seemed clearer; the sun burned with a more piercing light. He felt giddy with relief.

  “Your justice will not work here,” he said.

  “It works everywhere,” Talley said.

  “Threats of punishment are good only against people who are motivated by self-interest,” Goth said.

  “That includes everyone but deluded fanatics.”

  “What about people who simply believe in something more important than themselves?”

  “As I said,” Talley gave a cold smile, “deluded fanatics.”

  Perhaps it was the clear light, penetrating from truth to deeper truth. Goth gathered his legs under him and rose to face the Inning. He could hear a roaring in his ears, as of a powerful wind. He felt it swell inside him, and walked forward till he faced Talley like a cross-examiner. “You cannot dismiss me that easily,” he said. “I challenge every
thing you think is true. You cannot explain me away, Admiral, nor mock me into insignificance. I defy your categories. That is why you have no power over me.”

  Talley’s face was unyielding. “Only I do have power over you,” he said softly. “Look at your arm.”

  Goth looked down and saw in his forearm a milky sliver, like a broad toothpick, just under the skin.

  “You didn’t even notice when the doctor inserted it, did you?” Talley said.

  Wordless, Goth looked up from his arm to Talley’s face.

  “It is a drug,” the admiral said. “I see it has taken effect.”

  Goth stepped back, his heart labouring. “What will it do to me?” he asked faintly.

  “We call it achra. I cannot tell you what it will do. They say it gives each man his heart’s desire. All I can tell you surely is that when you wake up tomorrow morning, you will want it again. You will want it more than anything you have ever wanted in life. And I will give it to you, again and again till you have no will left. You will do anything I ask of you.”

  He turned to the door and called for the guards. “These gentlemen will take you back to your quarters now. Enjoy yourself.”

  “How could you do this to me?” Goth whispered through a dry, constricting throat.

  “I told you we were all corrupt,” Talley said calmly. “It is your own fault for not believing me.”

  As the soldiers were leading Goth away down the aisle of the temple of justice, he looked back over his shoulder and saw that Talley had turned around to face the empty judge’s bench, his hands clasped behind him like a prisoner’s.

  13

  City of Crooked Ways

  Harg stood at the Ripplewill’s prow, scanning the eastern horizon. Out there somewhere was the Fairweather Friend, hidden by distance and the coming dusk. In a night and a day of skimming the trade lanes they had seen no sign of her. They had lost time stopping in Port Fair to ask after her, only to find that the cog had not been seen. But they had picked up rumours that an embargo was in the offing, and navy ships might already be patrolling to cut off trade to the South Chain. The news had forced them to alter their route, which would cost even more time. The chances of catching up with Spaeth were growing slimmer.

  He couldn’t let her go to Tornabay. The city would eat her alive. She would never survive. Damn these Lashnurai, he thought to himself. How did I end up responsible for them?

  The two Grey Folk in his life had forced his hand. Spaeth’s reckless flight from Harbourdown had thrown all his careful thinking into disarray, and forced him to set out before he was ready. He had wanted to have a plan to win Goth’s freedom. He had wanted to make contact with an Adaina underground, or a corrupt official in Tiarch’s notoriously bribable government, or even that old standby, a disgruntled worker ready to betray his employer for revenge and profit. Now he would just have to improvise on the spot.

  Torr was sitting in the cockpit smoking a pipe when Harg came astern to join him. Behind them, the coppery sun was setting past Romm, the last island of the South Chain.

  “Ripplewill’s going as fast as she can,” Torr said before Harg could ask. “Maybe you should try talking to the wind.”

  Harg settled down beside him. He had chosen the Ripplewill because she was a fast boat, and Torr knew how to be inconspicuous. It was important to sneak into Tornabay without so much as a wake. But it had severely limited the number of people he could bring. Barko had been needed in Harbourdown to train all the raw recruits. Instead, Harg had brought two Yorans he could trust—Tway, who would hunt for Spaeth like a bloodhound, and Gill, who had arrived on Thimish just the week before. He was a sensible, mature man, but inexperienced at fighting, if it should come to that. And then Calpe had volunteered, and Harg had said yes for all the wrong reasons. Now he wished he had brought one of his old navy comrades instead—not because he didn’t trust Calpe, but because he didn’t trust himself around her.

  The last two people on board were their bargaining chips: Nathaway Talley and the Torna turncoat, Jobin Dugall. Jobin was the only Tornabay contact they had. There was no choice but to trust him until they could find a more savoury ally.

  Tway emerged from the galley. “Your supper’s ready, Torr. Want me to take the helm?”

  Torr tapped out his pipe and rose to go below. Tway settled down on his seat. For a while she was silent, looking at the arch of evening sky above them. Then, quietly, she said, “I caught Jobin talking to your Inning.”

  “Did you hear what they were saying?”

  “No, they broke off when they saw me.”

  The Ripplewill was too small to conveniently devote a cabin to keeping the hostage separate, so while they were still in the South Chain Harg had given him the run of the ship in exchange for a promise not to make a break for it. This was the consequence.

  “Do you trust that Torna?” Tway asked.

  “I trust him to act in his own best interest,” Harg said.

  “Yes, but what’s that?”

  Calpe emerged from below and walked toward the bow. Harg watched as she clasped her hands over her head and stretched, clean limbs flexing. When they had set out, her husband Torin had clapped Harg on the back and told him to look out for her. There had been a worried awareness in his eyes. Now she unpinned her hair and shook it, gleaming, in the wind. Her skin was a golden brown. At Harg’s side, Tway tweaked the tiller, making Ripplewill tilt so that Calpe lost her balance and had to grasp for a stay.

  “I think I’ll grow a beard,” Harg said thoughtfully, running a hand over his chin.

  Tway gave him an appraising look. “Good idea.”

  “Why, you think my face isn’t good enough as it is?”

  “No. I think your face might be dangerous to you as it is.”

  That night and all the next day they sailed on east, out of sight of land, far beyond the range of any Inning patrol boats. At some place in the wide sea—only Torr and the stars knew where—they turned almost due north. After a day, hills as gold as a cat’s eye rose slowly before them, and they came to Rona, the garden isle. The fields were sown in strips and whorls, patch overlapping patch as far as the eye could see. “Look, they have drawn pictures on the land with plants!” Tway said. Torr knowingly explained that the patterns had to do with ownership rather than art.

  The Inner Chain had been in Inning hands for sixty years, but it still seemed like the heart of the isles. They put in at Larbot for water and news, and gazed at the castle where Barrow had held a poisoned feast for his brother’s followers. Then it was on to the tumbled rock cliffs of Tirol, covered with a shaggy growth of pine and maple. This was the wild, rocky isle where Larse had found the door to the land of death, and made a bargain with the king who dwelt inside. In the afternoon of the fifth day they rounded Tirol’s shores and saw the low blue lines of Rusk in the west, and the bay of Sandhaven. They lined the deck to gaze at the site where Ison Orin’s fleet had made its last stand against the Innings.

  The next day they came to Tornabay. They knew where Mount Embo lay long before they drew near, for a towering, flat-topped cloud stood motionless over the mountain’s peak. All morning the cone-shaped mountain rose higher. When they came into the strait between Embo and the jagged cliffs of Loth, they found a yellow haze hanging over the water, and the day darkened under the ashen cloud.

  Their eyes smarted as they neared the great harbour. In the Outbay they passed three warships from the Southern Squadron. By now, their hostage was securely locked in the aft cabin. As they nosed into the crowded inner bay, thick with the shadowy shapes of other boats, Harg peered anxiously through the murk for any sign of Fairweather Friend.

  Their plan was to stop at the dock long enough for a few of them to debark; then Torr would take the Ripplewill back to the Outbay to wait with the hostage till he saw a signal from his companions on shore. But as they n
eared one of the long-fingered docks, a rowboat drew up to them. An official-looking figure stood and summoned the Ripplewill to stop.

  Leaning over the gunwale, Torr blinked to see who spoke. The oarsmen had cloths tied over their faces. Even the Torna in charge held a linen handkerchief to his nose.

  “Customs!” the man called. “You cannot land until you have declared your cargo. I need to come on board.”

  “Let me land my passengers first,” Torr said.

  “If you have passengers, they must register with Immigrations.”

  “Since when?” Torr objected.

  “It was always the law.”

  There was nothing they wanted less than a curious Torna bureaucrat on board, but Jobin whispered, “Don’t argue!”

  The customs man had sheaves of papers under his arm and a pocketful of pencils. The exertion of clambering across made him cough hoarsely.

  “This normal weather here?” Torr asked.

  The Torna shook his head. “The mountain has been smoking for a week,” he said. “Can we go below?”

  For an instant the captain hesitated, then led the way below to the main cabin. The official, a little disgruntled at not being shown to the privacy of the aft cabin, set himself up to write on the end of a cask.

  “Ship’s name?”

  “Ripplewill.”

  “Commander’s name?”

  “Torr Bolgin.”

  “Port of origin?”

  “Torbert of Grora.”

  “Purpose in coming here?”