The Aware (The Isles of Glory Book 1)

by Larke, Glenda

  ‘No,’ I said harshly. ‘He was better dead.’ I added inanely, ‘And if he were himself, he would tell you that. —Confound it, he wasn’t carrying anything useful.’

  Alain looked shocked at my callousness. ‘How can you think of that now?’ he asked and bent his head to murmur the prayers for the deceased; something I’ve always thought was a totally useless procedure. Even if there was a heaven, the man’s soul was either there or it wasn’t; no prayers from the living could possibly change its destination.

  ‘Is the rope tied?’ Tor asked.

  ‘I’m doing it now,’ Eylsa replied. ‘I just hope it’s strong enough to hold you.’

  ‘You go first,’ Tor said to me and I did as he asked. Once again my weakness shocked me. A simple rope climb, that would once have been child’s play, had become an effort.

  Tor didn’t follow immediately. He stayed to say something to Alain and then the two men embraced. Not for the first time I had the feeling that the patriarch and the Stragglerman knew each other better than either of them had ever said.

  I put a hand on Eylsa’s arm. She was trembling. ‘Don’t let it bother you.’

  ‘It is one of our strictest rules—no human may be harmed by any action of ours.’

  ‘Dunmagickers,’ I said practically, ‘are not human. They certainly do not practice humanity. Not even subverted sylv dunmagickers. The man he was has been long dead.’ I reached down to help Tor up through the trapdoor. ‘That man did not choose to be a dunmagicker, it’s true, but he was no less evil than Morthred for all that. You have put him out of his misery, Eylsa. You did him a favour.’

  Tor, now standing beside me, nodded in agreement. ‘She’s right.’

  ‘Great Trench below!’ I exclaimed, getting a good look at him for the first time in days. He looked awful—bruised, dirty, wretched—and I’d never seen him with the beginnings of a beard before. ‘You look like one of those Breth Island hermits!’

  ‘Probably smell like one too. Mind you, you should take a look at yourself some time.’ He grinned at me. ‘God, it’s good to be out of that place!’ He bent down to lower the food and water, and the candle, through the trapdoor. When we’d finished, Tor knelt at the edge of the hole and looked down on Alain’s upturned face. ‘Goodbye, my friend. One of us shall be back for you.’

  The frail voice came echoing up: ‘And may God walk with you, lad. With you all.’

  Tor closed the trapdoor and we were once more in the dark.

  ‘Somehow,’ I said softly, ‘I have the feeling that Syr-patriarch Alain Jentel doesn’t altogether approve of me.’

  I sensed Tor’s grin. ‘You’re too godless for him, my love. And he thinks you’re a bad influence on me.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s a failing of most patriarchs, alas. They are so damned good themselves that they manage to make us lesser mortals feel like eternal sinners without a hope of getting even a peek in heaven’s door. —Come, let’s get out of here.’

  We felt our way across to the door and opened it up. There was light outside, dim daylight filtering in through windows somewhere ahead. We were playing it by ear from there on; we had no plan. It was just as well, because anything we’d contemplated would never have eventuated anyway.

  We crept (Tor and I didn’t have much choice about creeping, since we were still shackled about the ankles) down the passageway looking and smelling like three slum-dwelling rats. The room at the end was a torture chamber of some kind, built mostly underground, with the windows high up just under the ceiling. It was filled with all the despicable paraphernalia of torture, but there was no one there. At one end there was an open-hearth fireplace—at the moment unused—built at waist level, with a large chimney above. ‘The bastards,’ Tor muttered, looking around. ‘The utter bastards.’ He picked up a hammer and chisel. ‘Maybe we can remove these damn irons,’ he said. ‘Come here, Blaze, and let’s have a try.’ I was only too happy to oblige. It took us a while, but eventually both of us were free of our manacles and shackles.

  The relief was enormous. I began to feel human again as I flexed my arms and legs, feeling at last the returning strength.

  ‘Weapons,’ I said and picked up a pair of long-handled pincers. Their purpose was probably to take hot coals out of the fire. Tor, with a little less enthusiasm, helped himself to something that looked like a cross between a roasting spit and a sword, and held on to the hammer as well. Eylsa looked with distaste at everything that was available, then went over to the fireplace where there were several long-handled pokers and morosely picked up one. She didn’t say anything; in fact being free seemed to have put an end to her loquacity.

  I was still looking for something more useful than the pincers when the door swung open—not the one we had come through, but one on the other side of the room, and we were fairly caught.

  I felt we were all frozen, like tadpoles caught in pond ice after a sudden cold snap. Although I suppose it didn’t take more than several seconds before the room exploded into action, in that brief moment of stillness, I was aware of so much.

  The first person into the room was Flame.

  I felt as if I’d been hit in the throat and punched in the stomach at one and the same time. Flame! Morthred did have her. Why? How? She was as good as dead. No, worse. Shit!

  She was accompanied by Domino, now able to walk, although he was dragging a leg. He had a proprietary hand on her arm and was laughing at something she’d said. And she—she was smiling down at him, those beautiful blue eyes of hers sparkling like sea-wet periwinkles glistening in the sun. There were four other dunmagickers with them, at least one of whom was the genuine article, but it was Flame who had all my attention.

  She was dressed immaculately in clothes I hadn’t seen her wear before. I’ve never been one for noticing what other women wear, but even I saw that the material matched her eyes perfectly. She looked lovely. Regal. As though she belonged in some royal court somewhere. Come to think of it, it was the first time I had seen her wear a dress of any kind. It had long sleeves and she had built herself a sylvmagic arm to replace the one she had lost. Dunmagic red whispered along her skin, mixed in with sylv silver-blue.

  I was confused.

  What in God’s name had happened?

  Thoughts rushed through my head one hard after the other. (Fortunately, thinking on my feet had always been one of my talents; sometimes it was when I had more time to mull things over that I made my worst mistakes.) My first thought was: she couldn’t have been subverted; we had cut off the spell along with her arm, and Duthrick, who could see the end result of a dunspell even better than I, had confirmed it was gone. Then: but Morthred’s had time to subvert her again. Then: but she would have killed herself if that had happened. Then: not if he’d stopped her. Then: but if that was so, what in all the islands is that sylvmagic I can still see? None of the other subverted sylvtalents showed so much sylv colour…

  Then I knew what must have been the truth, and my heart dived. An anguished ‘No!’ tore from me almost at the same time as we all moved.

  Flame turned to Domino and drawled, ‘Why, it seems that your prisoners have escaped, my friend. How can you have been so careless?’

  Domino’s hand dropped to his sword, and the dunmagicker behind him sent a spell zipping across the room to splash harmlessly against my chest; one of the others tried something similar with Tor. He sent his hammer hurtling through the air just as Flame said, ‘Dunmagic is not going to hurt them; they are Awarefolk.’

  Tor’s hammer smashed into the face of the dunmagicker and he died on the spot. It seemed the Lance of Calment had surfaced in Tor once again; I guessed that the torture chamber had upset him.

  I was already into the fray with my pincers, holding them splayed open as I lunged forward. I brought up a foot against Flame and sent her tumbling against Domino, who now had his sword out. Then I was upon the dunmagicker behind him. He hadn’t yet drawn his weapon when I snapped the pincers together on either side of his face—hard. He screame
d and raised his hands to his head—a mistake, because it enabled me to go for his sword.

  I had it out of its scabbard, but never did get to do anything constructive with it. The last of the subverted sylvs had been shouting for help and now help arrived in the form of nine or ten others. In the confined space I went down under an onslaught of clutching hands and striking fists. I was dimly aware of Domino shouting helpfully, ‘Don’t kill them, don’t kill them!’ and didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry. Then both Tor and I were on our backs on the floor, surrounded by a ring of sword blades, all pointing at us.

  ‘This is becoming a habit,’ I muttered to Tor.

  ‘One I’d break if I knew how,’ he said in a disgusted voice.

  I heard Flame’s drawled: ‘How very amusing, Domino! I had no idea that when you suggested we go and get the prisoners it would be so exciting!’ The periwinkle-blue eyes that looked down on me contained none of the bleakness of those of her fellow one-time sylvs. Hers were triumphant glitters, as hard as the shells they resembled.

  I didn’t want to think of her.

  Instead I thought: Where in all the islands is Eylsa ?

  TWENTY-ONE

  They took us to Morthred’s mock-up of a throne room, really not more than a dining hall.

  There I was shackled once more, arms and legs spread-eagled against the wall at one end, while Tor was similarly chained at the other end. Fortunately they hadn’t actually suspended us—we both had our feet on the floor. That was unintentional, I think; because both of us were above average height, the rivets for the shackles were too low on the wall for us to dangle from them.

  It was growing dark and slaves lit torches on the side walls that stretched between us. Others stacked the long tables down the centre of the room with food: no sign here of the unappetising staples of smelly shrimp paste and seaweed that we’d had in the oblivion. There was fresh lobster and grilled ocean trout; crispy fried seahorse, sea-cucumber stuffed with crab meat, cockles braised in oyster sauce. There was kelp-lettuce salad sprinkled with fish-roe, and squid stewed in its own ink and flavoured with algae spices. I was hungry just looking at it all.

  When all was ready, Morthred led his court into dinner. He’d used dunmagic to make his deformed left side match the rest of him. Through the blur of his dunspell I could just make out how he would appear to everyone else except Tor; his body straight, his limbs normal, his face handsome but very ruggedly so—the angular planes of his face were like pieces of sun-baked granite. He escorted Flame, his good right arm intertwined with her illusory left one. That was enough to tell me he didn’t know her hand did not exist; he would not have held her that way had he known she could not feel his hold—indeed there was no hold. He gripped nothing but empty magic. For all his great powers, he lacked Awareness. He could not see the silver-blue of her magic, and the illusion was as real to him as her own flesh and blood.

  She had changed her clothing; the dress she now wore was red and it was a little too large for her. The neckline plunged almost to her waist at the front and the way she played with the folds of it told me she was self-conscious about wearing it.

  He led her before me, smugly triumphant. ‘You see?’ he mocked. ‘All you strove for is now mine, Blaze Halfbreed.’ He dropped Flame’s hand and stroked that lovely golden hair of hers instead. Then he let his hand trail down her body, touching her insolently and intimately. She shuddered with involuntary distaste and he laughed. ‘She doesn’t like it, does she? She knows how I plan to enliven my nights. She knows it well, don’t you my precious?’ He turned his attention back to me. ‘She’s a dunmagicker now, and she’ll never be anything else. And because it’s my dunmagic power that has subverted her, she will always be subservient to my will…she can only obey. You would have liked her to be your bedmate, wouldn’t you? Perhaps if you’re a good girl, I may let you watch one day.’

  I didn’t know whether to be glad that he had mistaken my sexuality and therefore didn’t know of my love for Tor, or to be appalled that I might have to watch what he did to Flame, or to be sickened even to contemplate what he had already done to her… How long had she been in Creed? What had she endured? It might even have been better to have been the object of his attentions myself—but there was no likelihood of that. He did not desire me. I was too large and I was one of the Awarefolk. Come to think of it, when Janko looked at me his leer had always been one of mocking insolence rather than lust.

  He turned to Domino who was standing at his side. ‘You let this halfbreed escape again, and I’ll feed you to the blood-demons.’

  Domino gave me a hate-filled look. ‘What do you want done with her, Syr-master?’

  ‘If you want her for the night, take her—but as she is, understand? She’s not to be unchained.’ He looked at me, his twisted mouth vicious. ‘I think I know how best to hurt her kind. Tomorrow morning put her in the blowhole and leave her there for a week or two. Alone. Let’s give her time…to think about what we’re going to do to her.’

  ‘And Ryder?’

  ‘Cut out his tongue first and then his balls. Blind him and put him among the slaves. That should be enough to curb his activities, eh? Show him to Blaze when you’ve finished with him. I want her to see what happens to her friends.’

  Flame’s eyes lit up and she ran the tip of her tongue over her lips in a sickening gesture of a dunmagicker’s perverted lust. ‘Let me work on Ryder,’ she said. She turned to look at him where he was chained, not so far away that he couldn’t hear every word that was spoken. ‘He used to a friend of mine. I do so like to show my friends how I’ve changed.’

  Morthred roared with laughter. ‘Of course, of course!’ he said. ‘Let that be your reward for the pleasure I shall have tonight.’ That wiped the smile off her face, as he had intended. Morthred wasn’t a fellow who believed in his underlings becoming too happy.

  He turned away and led his party of dunmagickers to the table.

  The dinner seemed endless.

  Tor and I were not, of course, fed at all. When the hall was emptied of its diners, Domino came to gloat. He stood facing me, staring up, his hands on his hips, looking like a belligerent crab. ‘You heard what the Syr-master said, eh?’ he asked.

  I returned his gaze calmly enough. I was fairly certain that he would not act on Morthred’s suggestion: he found me too repulsive. I asked, ‘Are you going to get me down from here first?’

  ‘Not likely, is it?’

  ‘Then you had better get yourself a box to stand on, little man, because there’s no way you’re tall enough to reach what you want here. That would take a real man.’

  I thought he was going to run me through there and then. His sword was in his hand and his face was red with fury.

  Tor hurriedly intervened. ‘You kill her, and Morthred will have you for breakfast. Toasted.’ Then he added in a flat voice that was deadly in its menace: ‘In fact, if you touch her at all, Dominic Scavil of Hethreg Cove, you’ll have to watch your back for the rest of your life. No matter where you hide, no matter how far you go, I will find you.’ Domino looked shaken, whether because Tor knew his full name and his home town (how, for heaven’s sake?) or because of the nature of the threat, I couldn’t tell.

  I closed my eyes in annoyance. We had agreed not to show the bastards we cared too much about one another.

  ‘Fat lot you’ll be able to do ’bout it,’ Domino mocked, turning on him. ‘Tomorrow you’ll have no balls, ’n no eyes, ’n no tongue even. You won’t have nothing left to pleasure the ladies with, and even less to trouble me.’

  ‘Don’t forget I’m Syr-aware, my little man,’ Tor said calmly. ‘We Awarefolk are not like others, and it doesn’t do to forget it. Touch her, and one day I’ll find you and carve you up into little pieces, even if I have to crawl on hands and knees and sniff you out like a dog to do it.’

  There was something about that tall Stragglerman of mine that could be deathly chilling; a hint of ruthless drive that he usually kept sheathed. I
’d had glimpses of it from time to time whenever he had spoken of Keeper sylvs, but now it rimed both his stare and his voice. He looked and sounded dangerous. Even if Domino had originally had any desire for me, I think it would have vanished with Tor’s words.

  He turned away and shouted for guards. When two subverted sylvs, both males, came in answer to his summons, he gestured at us. ‘You are to guard them both tonight, understand?’ Then he turned and limped out of the hall.

  I eyed the two ex-sylvs, both Keepers, cautiously.

  They looked at me without interest. They refused to be drawn into conversation but they did stay, and they did stay awake, so Tor and I were not free to speak. There was so much I wanted to say to him, and no way I could say it. I could only hope that he already knew all that I wanted to tell him…

  I actually slept a little that night. I worked out a way to balance my body so that I was just comfortable enough to doze.

  There was little else to do. I could worry about what had happened to Eylsa. I could worry about what hell Flame was enduring. I could worry about whether Alain was safe. I could worry about what the blowhole was. I could worry about what was going to happen to Tor the next day.

  Tor. Cut out his tongue first…

  It was easier to sleep than to think.

  Dawn came far too soon.

  ###

  I had no chance to say goodbye to Tor. I was taken down first and led away. Neither Domino nor Morthred was there, but presumably it was on their orders that I was led outside. I was hungry, thirsty and in desperate need of a privy, but no one took any of those needs into account.

  They took no risks:

  I had my hands tied behind my back with rope, and there were no fewer than eight subverted sylv guards surrounding me, all with drawn swords. I was gaining a reputation, it seemed. I even heard one of them mutter about the only woman he’d ever come across who frightened the shit out of Domino. It might have been funny, except I wasn’t in a mood to appreciate it.