It was a pleasure to crawl out from under shelter, and stand in the evening breeze—fresh and cleansing as a snowfall. In this solitary cove on the barren island, where the rock cliffs rose at their backs and descended at their sides to the sea like enclosing arms, they were, he judged, safe. All they could see was the empty water, stretching eastward, stretching southward.
He stood, looking eastward and southward. Griff came to stand beside him. “You kept your word,” Griff said, “for which I thank you. I never believed you’d be able to do it.”
Surprised, he asked, “What word?”
“You promised me I’d never be sold in the slave market, even when I grew old enough.”
“I don’t remember.”
“The third winter,” Griff said.
“But I was a child, a little boy, just— How could you even think—? You shouldn’t believe a little child.”
“Why not?” Griff asked.
He laughed, and the sound sailed out over the darkening water. “Because a child can’t—”
“But you kept your promise.”
“I have. I did, didn’t I?”
He bent down, to pick up a small rock and throw it high out over the water, then bent to pick up another. Griff did the same and they stood there, pelting rocks into the approaching darkness. “We’re free of the island,” he said, hurling a fist-sized rock so high it almost could have been mistaken for a bird.
“Free of the Damall,” Griff said.
“No, because that’s me, that’s who—”
“No, I mean free of the fear, fear of the Damall, and fear of the other boys. You’re not a Damall to be feared, you’d never be.”
“First my name was lost to me,” he said.
“You never were such,” Griff said.
“Now the title, too, a title is almost a name.”
“What will you do?” Griff asked.
He considered. “Take a name,” he decided.
Griff didn’t ask What name?
He wished Griff would ask, in case he held an answer on his tongue to answer that summons. He waited, but Griff didn’t ask that question. Instead, “I’m hungry,” Griff said.
“Tomorrow. In the morning, we’ll eat again.” He didn’t mind hunger. Griff didn’t protest.
EVEN THOUGH THE RAIN HAD ceased, they slept that night under shelter. They awoke to a low, receding tide, and pale sunlight, and a breeze that blew lightly from the south. They divided the carrots equally between them and passed the one onion back and forth.
“I thought of taking one of the kitchen knives,” he said.
“Nikol would have seen you. He was watching everything, those last days,” Griff said. “Watching. Waiting.”
“The Damall shouldn’t have given me the dagger that second time,” he said. “But I wonder why he didn’t teach us how to fight.”
“Maybe he thought he didn’t need to, because those who knew by nature how to fight would take what they wanted. Would you have taught your boys?”
“I think so,” he said. “If pirates were to attack me, I wouldn’t know how to defend myself or what was mine.”
“It was the fifth Damall the pirates killed, and that was long ago,” Griff said. “Pirates haven’t been seen since.”
“Because he wouldn’t show them the treasure.”
“Is there a real treasure, then?” Griff asked.
But he was thinking, for the first time really thinking, of that event—which he had always known of but never thought about. “But he’d have told them, Griff. The fifth Damall. He would have. Any man would. When they hold your hand in fire to make you tell, and if the hand burns away and so they hold your arm—he died in the fever of burns and the pain had burned away his mind—that’s what they said, isn’t it? So he must have told them.”
“Under such compulsion, I’d speak,” Griff said. “But I don’t think you would.”
“It’s only gold. Silver. One beryl. It’s only wealth. It isn’t life.”
“Would you give the island’s treasure to pirates?”
“I would, and I should,” he answered. “But afterwards, unless there was urgent need not to, I would chase after them, track them down, come upon them when they suspected nothing and—take back what was my own. I think the fifth Damall must have told them where the treasure lay hidden. Under torture. Under the pain.”
“Then the pirates would have taken it. Was there any treasure on the island?”
“There was. Gold, silver, one beryl.”
“So,” Griff said, “the pirates didn’t take it. The fifth Damall didn’t tell. Neither would you.”
“Unless,” he answered Griff, “the treasure wasn’t where the fifth Damall thought it was. Unless he told them where it was and when they went to find it, it wasn’t there.”
They sat on a long flat rock, watching the sea. They were on guard, although neither had spoken of it. If Nikol were following them, this was a day he would use.
“Who else knew where the treasure was hidden?” Griff asked. He answered himself, “No one. Except the heir, if he’d been named. And he—” Griff didn’t want to finish the sentence. Griff had never wondered; he had only feared. “What about the others,” Griff said then. “Not Nikol but—what about the other boys?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I mean, because they’re still there on the island, under the new Damall.” Griff looked out over the water, his eyes dark. “With Nikol,” Griff said.
He tried to separate his thoughts. “I couldn’t do anything. Because of the way they were. What they expected,” he said. “I could have been Damall, I don’t mean that. But—I have to make my own way, choose for myself and make my own way.”
“What about me, then?” Griff asked.
“You taught me to swim,” he said, which seemed to him enough. Then, “It seems so far away, doesn’t it? And long ago? Even though this is only the second morning, and we aren’t even safely away.”
They sat on the sun-warmed rock, with sea birds wheeling above. He wondered if Griff was also remembering fear, and helplessness, and—
He rose to his feet. “I wasn’t powerless.”
But he had chosen to be. In the circle around the whipping box, each boy was alone. But each boy shared the shame, his heart shriveling up like a leaf on the fire, like his shriveled-up man-part, everything that might have been strong about any of them shriveled up and useless, like the discarded skin of a snake.
“You couldn’t have done anything. What could you have done?” Griff asked.
“I could have attacked him, and I thought of it. With a log. Or the whip.”
“He’d have set the others on you.”
“You’d have stood by me.”
“But I am only one.” Griff thought, and then spoke the truth, because Griff would always speak truly, if he could. “Some of the others, too, they might have.”
“And I never tried. Because I was afraid. I never have to be afraid again.” He realized it.
Griff turned to smile at him. “Maybe you don’t. Who can tell? But the sixth Damall never will be.”
It took him a time to understand Griff’s meaning, while waves washed up at the base of the rock, a time of staring down at the back of Griff’s head, where the brown hair hung down over the shoulders of the dark cloak.
It took him a time to understand, again, what it was not to have any name.
It took another time, more waves rolling up, to understand that he had no idea what it would be like to live without fear at his elbow, warning him, keeping him safe, keeping him frightened. Fear was stones in his mouth, their grey dry gritty taste, and stones a weight in his stomach, and stones pressing down on his heart so he couldn’t breathe. In a world where everything changed, the sky and the sea and even sometimes the land, and especially the mood of the sixth Damall, and even the faces of the boys changed as the older boys were tied at hands and ankles and taken to be sold—
In that world,
only fear was the same one day as it had been the day before, and would be the next day. It was fear of seeing sails on the water, sails that drew closer and became recognizable as the Damall’s boats, that governed him now, even though he had made an escape from the island.
He couldn’t watch patiently, as Griff did. If they were to be pursued, and captured, and taken back—
He couldn’t sit and wait. He walked off the rock and down along the water’s edge. Stones cut at the soles of his boots. He looked up at the stone cliffs. He looked across to where Griff sat watching the water. He looked out over the empty sea.
Without their boat, this island would be a sentence of death. The high cliffs were too smooth to climb. The water was too shallow and stony for fish; there was no sand or mud for burrowing skals to live in; no blue-black skals clung to the rocks here, because the sea ran too strongly for seaweed to attach itself. No food, no water, no escape—this island could be a killing place.
He crossed the beach to the cliffs. When he looked up from their base, they seemed to sway over his head, they seemed about to fall over onto him. Almost dizzy, he reached out to the stone.
There were letters cut into the stone. His fingers felt them, and now he knew what to look for he could see them clearly, lines cut deep into solid rock and worn by weather. The letters formed words. The words were names, he thought, two of them close together while the other three were separated, each one alone.
The two together were cut more deeply into the stone. They might have been carved with a knife, he decided, whereas the others were hacked roughly. A rough solitary name was under his hand. SANDO, he read, and then another solitary name, MILLAR, and then—its initial C as ragged as a scream—CORBEL. These names were at different heights and the letters differently shaped; these three must have come to the island at different times.
The two names together, cut more narrowly, worn more smoothly, one above the other, were two who had been together, he thought. ORIEL, he read, and BERYL.
He wondered—his fingertips tracing the O, the sun warm on his back—which names had been first carved, and how long ago, and if those made at a later time had been inspired by the sight of the earlier. Then he thought, he must be more weary than he guessed, not to recognize the gift.
BERYL and ORIEL, weathered yet clear. He knew beryl, and he ran back to where Griff sat, looking seawards.
“I found names carved in the cliff face,” he said. “As if people were maybe shipwrecked here. From a long time ago, but there’s no way of knowing how long, but—look—” He reached up under his shirt and his fingers worked their way down into the strip of cloth he had wound around and around his waist, concealed by both trousers and shirt. “There were two names together, Oriel and Beryl and—see?” He brought out what he had carried hidden among the windings of cloth, and unwrapped it.
The green stone lay in the palm of his hand. Shafts of light seemed to lead the eye into its green heart.
“You can hold it if you want to.”
Griff reached out his hand and took the beryl. The stone was as long as his thumb, and twice as thick.
“This is the last beryl.”
“They said,” Griff said, “that as long as there remained one of the Great Damall’s beryls, the island would be safe from harm.”
That wasn’t the response he expected, or wanted. “They also said,” he reminded Griff, “that the Great Damall would rise from the sea, his sword in his hand and Death himself at his shoulder, if danger threatened the island. What of that? They also said there were nine stones given to the Great Damall, each one as large as a man’s fist. But I know better. I read what the Great Damall wrote: There was a Prince from a distant Kingdom, in the northern lands, who bought the giant from the Great Damall. The Great Damall had saved the giant from drowning in the sea, and the price the Prince paid was three beryls. The Great Damall wrote down what the Prince told him. This giant had been stolen from the Kingdom by pirates; the Prince disguised himself as a beggar and followed after. When the Prince saw how well the Great Damall treated the giant, he revealed himself, and offered the three beryls. Two bought the island. This is the last of them.” He didn’t believe all the Great Damall wrote, but that last he did believe. The giant, the Prince, the distant Kingdom, the Great Damall wearing honor like a cloak—those he might doubt; but the beryl he could touch.
“I take Oriel for my name,” he said. “Shall I?”
“For what reason?”
“Isn’t it reason enough to see the name carved here? And beryl with it? Isn’t it reason enough that I must have a name?” He gave himself the name, silently speaking it, Oriel. “Can you name me?”
“Yes,” Griff said. At the waiting silence, he looked up. “Oriel,” Griff said. “I can name you that. Oriel.”
At each saying, the name fitted him more closely. “Name me again,” he said.
“Oriel,” Griff said. “Did you bring the Great Damall’s treasure with you then, Oriel?”
“I did. Not all, though. I left some gold pieces, and silver. For the well-being of those who stay behind.”
“Now what will happen there?”
“I named an heir.”
“Nikol?”
“If I hadn’t named him . . .”
Griff remained silent for a long time. His fingers turned the beryl over, and back, and over again. “There’s something—” he held it up before his eyes—“Look, Oriel, isn’t there something carved?” He returned the stone.
“A bird?” Oriel tilted the stone so the sun shone onto it. “This looks like a beak, head, and the wings outstretched— Tomorrow we leave this place, Griff, and when we have paper we’ll see what there is to see. But who would carve into such a stone?”
Griff didn’t know.
“And why?” Even Oriel, who had read the Great Damall’s book over and over, couldn’t guess.
The day passed slowly, until afternoon faded into evening. Darkness crossed the sea, slowly, approaching. Oriel was hungry and restless. Beside him, Griff was probably just as hungry although neither spoke of it.
The stars came out, faint as distant sails, then clearer. Griff went back to the shelter of the boat to sleep. Oriel remained at the shore, with the sound of little waves for company. In a while the moon would rise up into the black sky. On such a clear night, the moon’s light would be so bright it would cast shadows.
They might, Oriel’s restless mind thought, set sail on such a night.
But nobody sailed at night. Night sailing was dark and dangerous. Besides, were Nikol to search for them, he’d never look at this stony, eastward-facing cove, at the back of this uninhabitable island. He wouldn’t care enough to search. Except—
For the treasure. Nikol wouldn’t have read the Great Damall’s book, because reading was too hard for him. Nikol would think there were many beryls stolen. Nikol would search long and hard for beryls, and for imagined riches of more gold and silver than the treasure boxes had ever held.
Oriel was on his feet. He turned, staring into the darkness that was cliffs, then back over the water. They should sail this night, and sail by night.
It was already too late, the wind had sunk, if they didn’t make a harbor by morning and if Nikol were searching—
But it would be foolhardy to sail out blind, and at night on unfamiliar waters he was as good as blind, and worse if the wind rose up.
Here, everything was known. Everything was stone. Here lay safety, here safety was sure. Here, night shielded them.
Nobody ever sailed by night. Everybody knew better.
Oriel turned back to the shelter of the boat. Sleep came swiftly, as if she had only been awaiting his summons to lie down beside him and wrap him in her soft arms.
Chapter 6
THEY WERE LATER THAN THE sun in rising, and clumsy at righting the boat. It was, Oriel thought, the weakness of hunger and thirst. He hadn’t brought enough food when he stocked this cove for their sheltering. But he had taken all the food h
e dared risk removing from the storeroom. If failing to take the greater risk meant that they failed—
But they hadn’t failed. They were here, safe, on the third morning. They might not live, but they wouldn’t have failed. A surging effort, beyond his own strength, enabled him to lift the stern, while Griff shifted the bow onto his shoulders and back. They were breathing heavily and could only carry the boat twelve paces before they had to set it down.
When they had regained strength, they crouched down and once again lifted, settled the boat’s weight, and bore it twelve slow paces before setting it down again.
In that fashion they made their way down to the water. Once the keel was buoyed up by water, there was only the mast to lift and set into place. Oriel locked the mast into place with its wooden pin.
Oriel and Griff climbed into the boat and each took an oar to paddle them out into deep water. Then Griff lowered the boom from where it had been lashed against the mast, and thereby unfolded the sail. The wind came from the northeast. The sail swelled with wind. The sun shone down, dancing along the uneven surface of the water, reflecting light into their faces. The sky was empty and blue. The cove fell away behind them, and the rocky island fell away.
Griff didn’t ask where they were heading, not even when Oriel brought the bow around to point as close to direct west as the wind permitted. This slowed their pace, and the wind—dying into noonday calm—slowed them further. At the pace of a leaf floating on still water, they approached two islands that seemed only a hand’s breadth apart, but which they knew from familiarity lay hundreds of paces separate. From those, the Damall’s island lay close. Beyond those islands, to the north, stretched the green horizon of the mainland.
“Sails,” Griff said, pointing to the east. “Do you see three?” Both knew how unclear vision over distance is, at sea. “Two?”
Oriel bent his head to look under the boom. He saw at least two, and maybe three, or four. He saw tiny dots that were red sails, the same color as the sail over his head. “Coming closer?”
“I can’t tell,” Griff said. “Oriel—?”
The Tale of Oriel Page 6
