Isles of the Forsaken

by Ives Gilman, Carolyn

  Across the room, Calpe had tired of waiting, and now came over to join them. “It’s time,” she said. “We need to go.”

  Harg went to the bar to pay their bill. As he was putting down his money there was a boom, like distant artillery, that shook the cracked window panes. “What’s that?” he asked tensely.

  The tavern keeper gave an oily grin. “Calm down, outlander. It’s just the crack under the mountain.”

  When the four companions reached the street outside, they saw a black cloud rising into the sky from the mountain’s peak above the city. Calpe eyed it darkly. “I wish we were well out of here.”

  As they headed toward the palace, the cloud rolled swiftly down the mountain slope, and soon the air was filthy with falling ash. Shopkeepers rushed to close their doors as an unnatural evening settled on the city.

  Near the Gallowmarket the four friends split up, so they could come into the square from different routes. Soon Harg and Tway stood together at the easternmost entrance, where an ancient stone bastion arched over the street, remnant of some outgrown fortification. The ash was falling like a heavy snow; they paused to tie kerchiefs over their faces. The few lit streetlamps had eerie haloes around them.

  Harg had wanted Tway to walk to the Gallowgate with him so they would look more like innocent pedestrians; but the market was deserted now. The ash had begun to mask the sharp edges of building and curb. He could barely make out the motionless shapes on the execution stand. As they set out across the empty pavement, their feet raised little clouds of dust at every step. Tway’s brown hair was prematurely grey with ash.

  The iron-studded gate was closed, but a light glowed in a guardhouse window. It went against instinct to boldly attract the attention of a palace guard, so Harg paused outside the guardhouse. A small window swung open and a Torna soldier peered out. “Yes?”

  Tiarch had given him no password. Pulling down the kerchief so he wouldn’t look so much like a brigand, Harg said, “I was told to come here for entry to the palace.”

  After a sharp look at his face, the guard said, “Right. One moment,” and closed the window again. Harg saw him give a signal to someone else.

  There was a small postern door next to the guardhouse, and as Harg waited nervously he heard someone unbolting it. But just as it swung open, a tumult broke out on the other side. There were shouts and running feet, and suddenly the great gate began to swing open.

  Harg didn’t wait to find out what was going on. He bolted for the nearest street out of the square, shoving Tway away from him to take another route and draw off any pursuit. Behind him, someone shouted an order; then a huge black carriage raced noisily across the square, raising an obscuring cloud of ash. Harg glanced over his shoulder to see a troop of soldiers who had emerged from the gate, lining up to fire after the carriage. But no guns went off. Instead, just as he was reaching the safety of a dark side-street, he heard a shout behind him: “Pursue that man! Over there!”

  As he dove for the mouth of the alley, there was a gunshot and Calpe’s voice shouted a pirate taunt. He spared no breath to praise her bravery, but ran.

  The buildings whipped past in a blur. He flew down a steep staircase and through a crumbling arch where cressets guttered in the heavy air, past a glowering stonework tower with an iron-barred gate. At every turn he headed downhill and east, toward the harbour. His footfalls sounded muffled on the ashy pavement.

  But the soldiers knew the city better than he. As he emerged into a cross-street he heard shouts and saw a troop rounding a corner, hot after him. He dodged back the way he had come. Through the murk he spotted a place where a cast-iron fence barred a narrow space between two buildings. With a leap and a scramble he was over the fence and into the garbage-strewn passage. Rats scattered into the street. Behind him the soldiers shouted; the vermin had given him away. He raced down the passage and broke through into a little garden surrounded on all sides by high brick walls. The place was filled with painted wooden whirligigs, all of them stunned into stillness by Harg’s appearance. He clumped like a giant down a path lined by little soldiers with windmill arms. A miniature wooden fort stood in one corner, its battlements manned by clockwork dragonflies. Harg leaped onto its roof and jumped for the wall, dragging himself up. He was about to go over without looking when a snarl from the other side made him pull quickly back. He caught a glimpse of yellow teeth and slitted eyes. He crawled along the top of the wall till he came to the corner and dropped over into the alley.

  There was shooting in the streets off to his left. He jolted to a stop as a troop of soldiers marching double-time in formation passed along a cross-street just in front of him. He dropped into a window well to avoid them, and found himself looking into a bare basement room. A grimy child looked up and pointed at him, but the woman in the room lay insensible against the wall, a bottle in her arms. Then the troop had passed and Harg slipped down the street after them.

  He knew he had reached the harbour when he smelled tar and kelp. He paused in a cluster of barrels to catch his breath. Far up the hill, some sort of battle had broken out; a barrage of gunfire went off like a string of firecrackers. The city seemed to be teeming with soldiers; he would have to make his way to the Ripplewill, and trust his companions to follow on their own. He slipped out onto a dock, looking for a rowboat to steal. Too late, he heard footsteps behind him, then a shout. He dropped behind a bale and saw the soldiers, carrying torches, crowding onto the end of the dock in pursuit.

  He brought out his pistol, but held his fire as he saw a tall figure step forward. “Surrender, Captain Ismol,” the Inning called out. “We have you trapped.”

  Many words of defiance sprang to Harg’s mind, but he used none of them. The commander paused for an answer, but hearing only silence he ordered, “Take him. Alive if you can, dead if you can’t.”

  As the soldiers started down the dock, Harg took aim past them at the Inning. But as he pulled the trigger, a Torna soldier got in the way. He took the bullet in the rib cage, and his blood spattered on the commander’s uniform.

  The moment Harg’s pistol was empty the soldiers broke into a run. Harg left his cover and dashed down the dock. As the end loomed near, he said an inward prayer, then jumped into the ash-scummed water.

  The pursuit clattered up to the spot and scanned the surface for a sign of him. The Inning was close behind. “Shoot, damn you!” he ordered. “Don’t let him come up again!” The whole troop lined up and fired a volley at the spot where Harg had disappeared, peppering the water with bullets. A plume of bubbles rose to the surface.

  “Get some boats. Get a net,” the Inning commanded. “The admiral wants proof this man is dead.”

  *

  Just before sunset, Spaeth stood at a window high in a southwest wall of Tornabay palace, looking out. The setting sun burned like a blister against the sky. She had been in Tornabay only a day, but it was enough to plumb the desolation that brooded over the mouth of the Em.

  In the room behind her, Provost Minicleer’s rangy body was laid out naked on the rumpled bed, insensible. It bore the marks of the previous night and day. His hair was matted with sweat, there were dark circles under his eyes, and a sallow cast to his face. His genitals looked bruised and swollen.

  Spaeth felt no remorse at his condition. It had been a kind of experiment. She had been interested to find out whether sexual arousal could be intensified to such a pitch, and prolonged to such an extent, that it could become a kind of torture.

  Her curiosity was now satisfied. In hindsight, she had almost certainly taken it too far; but it had been so amusing to play with him, especially at the end when he had begged and whimpered. Causing pain was a novel new experience for her; and there was little doubt that the pain had been excruciating by the end. Even now, in a stuporous sleep, his body flinched away from her touch as if to protect itself.

  The episode, however
entertaining, had diverted her from her true purpose. Looking out the window, she struggled to bring her errand back to mind. It had something to do with Goth. No, not Goth—the Heir of Gilgen. She had come to find him.

  Outside, Mount Embo’s bulk loomed against the sky. If she just reached out, she knew she could tap such destruction that Tornabay would never again raise its soiled head, but remain a smoking scar through the centuries. The balances were stretched to the limit, held only by a dwindling thread.

  “Now,” the mountain’s growl reverberated in her skull. As she watched, a black cloud swelled from the peak, billowing skyward. A sound like thunder tumbled down the slope.

  She turned to where she sensed the thread binding the Mundua and Ashwin was anchored—here in the palace somewhere, below her. Now was the time to act, now when her thoughts were clear and pitiless. She picked up the bag she had brought from Yora, and her hand closed over the hilt of the obsidian knife. It pulsed with blood-hunger. She slipped out the door as ash began falling against the window.

  The palace was not one building but many, and where they connected, logic died. There were stairways to nowhere, mazy traps, and U-turn hallways that took her back to where she had started. With only instinct as a guide, Spaeth wandered blindly. At last, frustrated, she took out the knife and held it in her hand. It felt as if alive, tugging her down dimly lit corridors toward her goal. When she passed windows, she saw the ash collecting like snow on the panes. The halls were shadowy and quiet.

  The quarters of the Heir of Gilgen were guarded, but she passed through like a shadow. The guard stirred uneasily, but saw nothing. She came into a long, unlit gallery with windows at the far end looking out on an ashen garden. Silhouetted against the windows was a tall, white-haired man.

  She took a step forward, and he turned. His face was invisible in the grey light, but his voice was quiet: “I have been expecting you.”

  There was mora in him, Spaeth saw. She shifted the black knife in suddenly sweaty palms and took another step forward. The darkness condensed around her. Still her quarry just stood like an ordinary man, waiting for the thrust of her knife. She took another step, and the nearness of his mora prickled her face and raised the hairs on her forearm. It stirred a deep memory.

  The windows suddenly blazed with lightning; the thunder crashed around them, hiding Spaeth’s gasp as recognition flooded back into her. She stood staring at the face she had seen for the merest instant.

  “Goth,” she whispered. “I found you.”

  He looked at her as if his heart had stopped beating. “Spaeth?” he said. “My precious girl. Is it really you?” He took a step toward her, then stopped unsteadily. He was looking at the knife in her hand. “No,” he said, “I am dreaming again. You are a tool of the Mundua.”

  The name of her allies flared on the air, sending cold fire through her veins. She held the knife up. “Yes, I am here by the power of the Mundua. You cannot stop me, Goth. I have come for the Heir of Gilgen.”

  “It is you,” he breathed, shaken. “By all the gods, Spaeth, what sort of terrible bargain have you made?”

  She could feel the Mundua in the ashy air, in the restless ground, in her own heartbeat, waiting for her to do their bidding.

  “I can’t do it!” she screamed. She tried to fling the knife away, but instead her arm raised it to attack. Her lips curled in a bitter snarl, and she heard her own voice say, “I will do it.”

  The white-hot rage that had filled her last night now surged to her head again. She began to circle him, her knife ready. “You are no fit guardian,” she taunted. “You have no passion for your land. You spent all those years on Yora, giving dhota to anyone who came by, while the isles cried out in pain.”

  He stood like a man stricken, though her knife had not yet touched him. “Spaeth, I had to serve another way.”

  He no longer seemed sure of his own words. He raised a shaking hand to his forehead. “Gods, if only I could think! It’s not you talking; the Mundua have your mind. You must fight them, Spaeth. Be yourself again. Think of our times together. Please—you loved me once. Think of that.”

  What did he expect—that she would rush blindly into his arms and trust him to put everything right? He thought of her as a child, then. But she was not. She had learned about betrayal.

  He held out his arms to her. “Let the Mundua go, Spaeth. Come to me.”

  A tiny voice inside her pleaded, Help me, Goth! Stop me!

  She lowered the knife, hesitated, then stepped forward into the circle of his arms. Those same arms where she had once felt safe, invulnerable, wrapped in his all-encompassing love. Behind his back, her hands met over the hilt of the black knife. Slowly she turned the blade inward, toward him. If only the blade were long enough, she thought, then I could pierce both of our hearts in one thrust.

  *

  When Nathaway returned to his luxurious prison room, he lay on the bed in a state of nervous distraction. He could not shake the feeling that something truly awful was happening.

  Corbin’s suspension of the courts was deeply disturbing. Without courts, neither he nor anyone else had a defence against abuse of power. He felt a rebellious conviction that the navy had no right to suspend the courts. If anything, the opposite was true. Corbin might have the raw power, but he had no legitimacy.

  But composing legal arguments in his mind, as he automatically started to do, was pointless. There was an urgent need for him to do something—but what or how, he didn’t know. All he knew was that time was running out. In the morning he would be deported back to Fluminos, his attempt at independence ignominiously aborted. He would leave behind a host of people to whom he had made promises of impartial justice that would never, now, be fulfilled. His own country had betrayed him, made him into a liar.

  There was a commotion out in the hallway. He sat up, listening. Footsteps hurried past; then a man’s voice said, “What are you doing, soldier?”

  “Guarding the admiral’s brother, sir,” said the man outside his door.

  “Is the door locked?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then come with me. I need you for a moment.”

  As the footsteps of his guard receded down the hall, Nathaway went to the door and studied it. The room had never been meant as a prison. The door was intended to be locked from inside, since the iron box with the lock mechanism was on his side of the door. He scanned the room for some tool. The bedroom held nothing useful, so he wandered into the study. There, the attentive servants had laid out some pastries and butter for him to nibble on—and, luckily, a butter knife. He seized it up and took it back into the other room, then carefully used it to extract the screws holding the lock box together. Once the cover plate was removed, he reached in and shot back the bolt with his finger.

  He paused with his hand on the knob. Ordinarily, Nathaway was a law-abiding person; but at the moment his feeling of injustice overcame his respect for authority. He was not being imprisoned by any legitimate power; quite the opposite. It was almost his social duty to disobey.

  The hallway outside was empty. From the sound of it, all the activity seemed to be on the front side of the building, facing the courtyard where he had arrived. Carefully closing the door behind him, he turned the other way.

  The method of taking whatever route seemed most deserted soon led him into an older part of the palace, where the lucid geometry of the Inning wing gave way to oblique pathways where there was no plan. He wandered randomly, searching for some exit. Coming to the top of a stair well, he glanced down to make sure no one was approaching and saw, on the flight below, a figure descending silently, ghostlike, in a grey cloak.

  The windows were dark with dust, so the light was poor, but even so he felt a shock of recognition. It was something about the way she held herself, her flowing, almost feline motion. He watched until she rounded the corner
and he glimpsed the silver braids coiled in snakes around her head. He didn’t dare attract attention by calling out, so he followed her, walking as fast as silence would allow.

  He had known that Spaeth would be in Tornabay; it had been a topic of worried conversation on the Ripplewill. How she came to be in the palace was beyond his imagination. But here she was, unless he was very mistaken. Her strange, trancelike demeanour made him suspect that all was not well with her.

  She left the stairway when it opened onto a ground-floor hall. He followed her around a series of turns, drawing ever closer, still not attracting her attention. At last, focused almost entirely on the pursuit, he rounded a corner and had to pull hastily back, for there was a Torna soldier posted in the hallway outside a door, much as there had been outside his own. He waited, listening for the guard to challenge Spaeth; but there was only silence. At last Nathaway took the risk of peering around the corner. The guard was lounging at his post, staring off into space. Of Spaeth, there was no sign. She had vanished as if she had slipped through the doorway without the inattentive guard even noticing. As Nathaway weighed his options, he was interrupted by the sound of someone down the cross-corridor trying to attract the guard’s attention. He flattened himself against the wall.

  “Hey, Collum,” a voice hissed urgently.

  The guard answered, “Robey. Say, what’s going on? What’s all the shooting?”

  “We’re leaving. Come on.”

  “What? I can’t leave. I’m on duty.”

  “No, you’re not. Haven’t you heard? The Innings tried to arrest the Gov.”

  “No! Are you serious?”

  “We’re to rendezvous in Croom.”

  “They tried to arrest Tiarch?”

  “Accused her of conspiring with the enemy. Now they say she’s not governor any more.”

  “Like hell.”

  “Right. Coming?”