The Aware (The Isles of Glory Book 1)

by Larke, Glenda

  As I ran, I spared another glance at the Keeper ships; they were still there, thanks be, although I was appalled to see that the Keeper Fair seemed to have lost its foremast and the other had a sail on fire. Morthred’s power had indeed been enough to penetrate their shields. Even as I watched, Keeper sailors cut away the burning canvas and it dropped harmlessly into the sea. My gamble had paid off, but only just. One part of me had not really thought Morthred’s spell would even reach the ships. I started to shake with reaction. It had been so close. If Morthred had had just a shade more control—

  ###

  If I had been less tired, I might have caught Morthred. As it was, I had several wounds and all my muscles seemed to be screaming their fatigue.

  The dunmaster left the village to the east, running into the dunes close to the beach. I thought I might have him trapped, as I recalled there was an inlet in there, close to where I had been tortured. I was right, but Morthred knew what he was doing. By the time I had struggled up to the top of the dune that overlooked the small bay, he was on his way. Someone had been waiting for him there at the edge of the water with a laden sea-pony: a short man. Domino? As the sea-pony swam out into the ocean with the two men on its back, I saw Morthred’s features lit by his own dunmagic. The right side of his face was no longer as handsome as it had been; some of the features seemed to have run together as if they had been melted into one another. I felt a surge of triumph rise up through my defeat: in his madness he had indeed made the same mistake a second time, just as I had hoped. He had over-extended himself and, once he had realised that, he’d been forced to flee. Of course, this setback was nothing compared to what he had done to himself when he had submerged the Dustel Islands, but it would be a while before he’d be strong enough to challenge the Isles of Glory again. Or so I hoped.

  I stood watching as the sea-pony disappeared into the gloom with its burden. My sense of victory dissipated, leaving behind a discontent, a sense of having unfinished business.

  I turned and limped back through the dunes to the village.

  There were Keepers there everywhere now: unsubverted ones. And what they were doing wasn’t pretty. They were scouring the place for dunmagickers, real and subverted, and when they found then, they killed them. All the dunmagickers capable of doing so fought back of course; I could see splashes of dunmagic and sylvpower flaring in isolated spots around the village or in the dunes. The Keepers weren’t having it all their own way and some of them died.

  One of the first sylvs I saw was Mallani, the pregnant woman who had come to see me about her baby. I stared at her in shock. She was huge, and she looked tired. ‘In the name of all the islands,’ I said, ‘What are you doing here? This is dangerous! You should be resting.’

  ‘Duthrick said I had to come,’ she said, and her voice dragged with fear. ‘If I am in Council service, then a pregnancy should make no difference. Service comes first…’

  ‘That’s utter eel-slime,’ I told her. I was as wild as a fish on a hook. ‘There’s too much stinking crimson shit around here—you’ll expose your unborn child. There are still plenty of dunmagickers. I’m getting you back to the ship now.’ I looked around, and saw Duthrick was in the main street, directing his underlings, his long aristocratic face without expression, or compassion.

  I marched up to him, dragging the protesting Mallani behind me.

  He spoke before I could, a brisk, ‘Do you know what happened to the dunmaster?’

  I told him and he looked seaward, but it was completely dark now. There was no point in sending a ship after Morthred. The Councillor’s lips tightened into a hard line. ‘Another failure, halfbreed,’ he said. ‘If he gets back to the Docks, he can force a ship to take him elsewhere. You have not distinguished yourself in this whole matter.’

  I shrugged indifferently. His disapproval had no more power to hurt or disconcert me. He would never make me feel like a half-grown adolescent again. ‘How’s Flame?’ I asked, still grasping Mallani’s wrist so that she couldn’t walk away.

  ‘Recovering. We have rid her of the spell. It hadn’t spread much. She will, I trust, be grateful enough to tell me where to find the Castlemaid. This is the second time we’ve saved her, after all.’

  I didn’t like his chances. I blessed Ransom; God knows what arguments he had used, but they had persuaded Duthrick.

  ‘You look weak,’ he continued. ‘The Keeper Fair is sailing back to Gorthan Docks shortly, with our wounded. Why don’t you go with them? Go down to the beach, and tell the men on the boat there that I said you were to be taken on board.’ Doubtless it wasn’t concern for me that prompted such compassion; he still thought I might help him extract the information he wanted from Flame. He hadn’t cared much if I’d been killed during his bombardment of Creed, but seeing I had survived, he thought he may as well keep me healthy enough to be of use.

  I glanced past his shoulder. I could see Tor in the distance, still administering to some of the slaves. Ex-slaves now, I supposed, or they would be once the spells wore off. I doubted that the magic in them had been of too permanent a kind; that would have involved too much expenditure of power.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think I will. Tell Ryder I’ve gone, will you?’ But I was so tired I didn’t care whether Tor knew or not. ‘Oh, and I’m taking this foolish child with me,’ I added, indicating Mallani. ‘She didn’t want to be left out of things, but I’ve told her you wouldn’t be happy to have a pregnant sylv exposed to all this dunmagic.’

  I nodded amiably and turned away before he could reply. Mallani had to run to catch up.

  ‘You’re sneaky,’ she said. A child’s word, but she wasn’t a child. She was a woman about to have a baby.

  I felt old enough to be her grandmother. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I don’t think he likes you very much.’

  ‘I don’t think he likes me at all,’ I said.

  Extract from a letter to Masterman M. iso Kipswon, President of the Royal Society for the Scientific, Anthropological and Ethnographical Study of non-Kellish peoples.

  Dated this day 10th/1st Darkmoon / 1793

  Dear Uncle,

  Thank you for your comments on the packet of Blaze Halfbreed’s recollections that I sent you last week.

  In view of several of your remarks, I thought you may be interested to know that much later we did visit the village of Creed. We found it utterly deserted. In fact, we had trouble finding a guide in Gorthan Docks who would actually take us there. It was described variously as a bad place, a haunted graveyard, a home to evil spirits and a place where the Sea Devil spawns his young. We finally prevailed on a Kellish aetherial-level priest doing missionary work in Gorthan Docks (the Docks is still a place in need of salvation!) to show us the village. He himself thought Creed was a place that was spiritually dead and therefore not to be visited lightly.

  We found it in a state of dereliction, although it was possible to see the scene as it had first appeared to Blaze: the crushed blue shell paths, the white shell buildings. Many of these latter appeared to have been blasted with cannon fire, just as she described. In fact we found some of the cannon balls! We dug out one of the larger buildings and actually came across the oblivion she described. It was all an interesting confirmation of her story.

  Of course, in the papers I sent you, she relates events which took place over fifty years ago (did I tell you she is now over eighty?) and we have to make allowances for poor memory as well as her tendency to romanticise the past. Combine that with the innately superstitious nature of these island peoples, and you have this story of good and evil and magic.

  You wanted to know more about Blaze as she is now. —Well, she is still magnificent. Tall, ramrod-straight in spite of the rheumatism that obviously attacks her joints from time to time if the way in which she rises from a chair is anything to go by. I guess she could still best be summed up as formidable. It is very easy to believe that she did indeed do the kinds of things she describes. I made the mistake of
once hinting that I didn’t believe in dunmagic and sylvmagic. She was amused, and made a point of mocking me at every turn ever afterwards, with a decidedly wicked gleam in her eye.

  She would say things like, ‘You won’t believe this, of course, but…’ Or, ‘I then imagined that Morthred flung a spell…’ Needless to say, I edited these comments out of the interviews!

  I know, Uncle, that you will say it is my own fault, for I broke one of the golden rules of scientific ethnographical studies: I showed disrespect for local beliefs, and I therefore deserved all the mockery I received! Certainly I learned from Blaze a salutary lesson about field work. She is still a feisty lady. Sometimes I look at my sisters with their needlepoint and fashion magazines, and wonder what she would think of them if she met them. I suspect: not much. She has not mellowed with age. And there is an enormous sword, which is kept well oiled, over the fireplace…

  I enclose the next set of Conversations for your perusal. I am almost finished the text of the next talk, and isi Doth has been kind enough to prepare the magic- lantern slides based on the drawings made by the botanist-artist, young Trekon. I have included a drawing of Blaze—or rather, of how she may have looked when she was about thirty.

  I look forward to seeing you next week at the Society’s meeting.

  Aunt Rosris will be delighted to hear that I am escorting Miss Anyara isi Teron to the meeting, and that I will not have need of accommodation with your good selves—I shall be spending a day or two with Anyara’s family at their town house. It is just around the corner from the Royal Society, in Second Moon Crescent.

  I remain,

  Your respectful nephew,

  Shor

  TWENTY-FIVE

  On the sail back to Gorthan Docks in the Keeper Fair, Mallani went into labour.

  I had managed to go to sleep—in fact, the moment I came on board, I just collapsed into the first hammock I found, closed my eyes and was dead asleep in seconds. Some time later I was aware that I was being violently shaken. At first I thought there was something wrong with the ship, and only gradually did I surface to the realisation that someone was calling my name and telling me that I was needed. I rolled out of the hammock and followed the sylv responsible, still not fully conscious.

  He took me to a cabin with a bunk, and it was only then, when I saw Mallani lying there, that I really woke up. ‘She wanted you here,’ one of the sylv women in attendance said.

  ‘I don’t know the first thing about delivering a baby,’ I replied in protest. That was true enough; I’d done a lot of things in my life, but I’d never been present at a birth. Besides, my heart was sinking: I’d just remembered that I was ten to one certain that her baby was nonsylv—and I’d have to be the one to tell her.

  Someone said, ‘She just wants to know if it’s sylv or not.’

  ‘That could have waited until morning,’ I grumbled, but the truth was that I was soon caught up in the wonder of what was happening. By the time it was all over I was deeply grateful that I had been there.

  I suppose I should have felt the pain of knowing that I could never have children; but somehow all I could do was marvel at this delivery of life, and take joy in seeing a baby’s first breath, hearing its first cry. Somewhere along the way, as the head pushed towards freedom, it registered with me that the babe had no sylvmagic, just as I had expected; minutes later when it slithered out and the last life-giving blood pulsed to it via the cord, I realised this was not so. Blue light skittered in fanciful swirls over the child. He was leaking sylvmagic all over the place, so intense that it seemed almost purple. I stared, puzzled over what I was seeing. Then someone was tying and cutting the cord; the flow of magic to the baby stopped, the colour calmed.

  In the chaos of the room full of Keeper sylvs all exclaiming over the baby and hugging the new mother, I had a moment to examine the placenta, to touch it, to feel the remains of the magic that had been there. I shivered, hating the feel of the residue left. It was wrong. Horribly wrong. It may not have been crimson-coloured, but I felt the touch of dunmagic, smelled its stench nonetheless.

  All the pleasure I had felt during the birth drained away.

  Mallani called my name, and someone pushed me forward to her bedside. She was holding the child, now cleaned and swaddled. She pulled back the blanket from around his head, and a bland little face peeked up at me making kissing movements with his lips. He looked pretty much like all new babies look, except that sylvlight played over his features. ‘Is he—?’ she asked. ‘Tell me, quickly!’

  ‘He’s leaking sylv blue all over the place.’

  Mallani gave a squeal of delight and hugged the child to her. Then she looked back at me. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. He’s a strong sylv.’

  There was laughter, exclamations of delight over the baby, a buzz of sylvmagic as the women around the bed relaxed. I edged my way out of the door, leaving them to it.

  Up on deck it was good to breath in the sea air, to feel the cleanness of the wind. I knew if I looked behind me I would see the glow of fire and magic that was all that remained of Creed, so I didn’t look. I wanted to think ahead, to a future that was safe and full of things I’d never known: friendship, love. Joy. Happiness. Freedom.

  No Keepers. No dunmagic. No Duthrick.

  It should all have been mine. I should have been happy.

  So why did I feel so uneasy, so fettered?

  ###

  I sat in Flame’s room in The Drunken Plaice and watched her as she stuffed her belongings, what little she had, into her soft leather bag. She was having trouble holding the bag while she put things inside, but I knew better than to offer to help. She would have to learn to cope.

  She was as beautiful as ever. Nothing of what had happened seemed to have touched her face, except perhaps to give an added depth to her expression, an added touch of maturity that was beautiful in itself. Inside there were scars, too many of them. She hadn’t lived hard enough as a child to be unscathed by what she had suffered. Occasionally, very occasionally, I glimpsed something in her eyes that made me want to hold her, to tell her that it didn’t matter, that the part of her that counted was still inviolate. I hadn’t done so, and now it seemed I never would. I hoped that Ruarth was wise enough to give her the reassurance she needed.

  ‘Where’s Ruarth?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, around somewhere. I believe there was a local lovely he wanted to say goodbye to.’ She meant a Dustel, of course, but it took a moment for me to understand. She smiled, a lovely smile of love, and my heart caught at the tragedy—and her courage.

  ‘Doesn’t…doesn’t that worry you?’

  She looked surprised. ‘Why, no. Of course not. He’s a bird. And I’m human. How can we have more than we have at the moment? But we both have…other needs.’

  ‘It doesn’t make you jealous?’

  She shook her head. ‘No more than Ruarth was jealous of Noviss. Holdheir Ransom, I mean. What Ruarth and I feel for each other is too special to be changed by such affairs. Ruarth knows that I live for the day when he can hold me in his arms. In the meantime, I use his name as mine.’ She said all that lightly enough, but there was still something in her eyes that told me of her pain. I didn’t think she was ever free of it, not really.

  ‘I have found a passage on board a mullet boat going to Mekatéhaven,’ she added. ‘It sails with the tide, around sunset. So…I suppose this is goodbye.’

  She clumsily tied the strings at the top of her bag and straightened, then she conjured up some sylvmagic and made herself a make-believe arm. She held it out to show me. To me, it flickered with silver and I could see right through it, but it was good enough to deceive the non-Aware. ‘Not bad, eh?’ she asked. ‘Although…I’m not sure why I bother. It doesn’t seem as important as it did at first.’ Then she looked at me, serious, and said again, ‘I guess this is goodbye, Blaze.’

  I felt almost sick with sorrow. ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘You�
�ll stay with Tor?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I’m glad. Although…well, I’m sorry about the two thousand setus.’

  I shrugged. ‘I still have part of what the Holdheir gave me.’ I was leaning against the wall, watching her, thinking how much I’d miss her. She was friend, sister, family, all the woman that I wasn’t and would like to be; with her, I was somehow whole.

  And in those last moments I couldn’t hide from her the truth that I’d kept hidden so long. Something in my expression—a hint of cynical laughter in my eyes?—told her.

  ‘You know, don’t you,’ she said quietly, and it was a statement, not a question.

  I nodded.

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Ever since you told me about Ruarth. And Ruarth’s mother. You see, the main reason I felt sure you weren’t the Castlemaid was that you knew how to use sylvtalent. I thought the Castlemaid could never have learnt, even if she had been born sylvtalented. Then you told me about the Dustels, and how Ruarth’s mother had sylvtalent, and I realised that she could have taught you as you were growing up. Would have thought it her duty to teach you, in fact. And the Castlelord and his staff need never have known.

  ‘That was why I didn’t want Duthrick to find out about Ruarth—he could have reached the same conclusions as I did. He met up with Ruarth yesterday, of course, when I sent that cloth message to him, but I’m hoping he thinks the connection is between me and Ruarth, not between the two of you. As Keeper Councillor, he must know a fair bit about the Dustels, I would think. You must be careful.’

  She looked rueful. ‘No matter how much I admire you, I still seem to end up underestimating you, Blaze. You’ve been laughing at me all this time, you sodding great lunk of a halfbreed.’

  I grinned. ‘Rubbish, I’m not so petty.’

  Lacking any other weapon, she hurled her coin purse at me. I caught it and threw it back. ‘Of course, once I realised that you could talk to the Dustels, that you had been in close contact with them ever since you were a child, then a lot of things about you that had puzzled me fell into place. At times you were so innocent, so lacking in knowledge about the realities of the world—just as a Castlemaid, brought up in close seclusion, would have been. At other times, you could be as shrewd and as cunning as an octopus after the bait in a trap—just as someone taught by the Dustels, who must surely see so much human folly and cruelty, could have been.