Ison of the Isles

by Ives Gilman, Carolyn

  “They were about even till noon, then they started running against.”

  “Did any of you make a wager?”

  They mostly wouldn’t look at him, but one dark, heavyset man scowled belligerently. “I did,” he said. “I bet against. No one could have beat the Innings without unholy help.”

  “Oh, it just seems that way till you know how we did it,” Harg said. “They’re really not that hard to beat.” So he started telling them stories to pass the time. He tried to keep the tone light, as if it had all been nick-of-time victories and pluck over power. As he talked, he kept one eye on his audience and the other on the sinking sun.

  As the edge of the sun’s disk touched the horizon, a gust of wind blew in off the sea. Some men came forward to light a pile of wood that had been set up for a bonfire, their torches streaming out in the wind. “Looks like they’re planning on a barbecue,” Harg said with a grim smile. He felt a quiver of nervousness in his chest. As the fire flared up, the faces of the surrounding buildings shifted in the flamelight, and the windows winked. Harg looked over at Tiarch’s house. The shutters were all closed, the rooms dark. She was not seated in the spot reserved for her on the stands, either. Tiarch had withdrawn from this battle, just as the Lashnurai had. He was on his own now. As he always had been.

  The thought passed through Harg’s mind of how like Goth it was to decide everything simply by not being here when he was needed.

  He stood up. He had only meant to stretch his legs, but everyone took it for a signal. The guard closed in around him, and a stir passed through the crowd, as the people carrying bludgeons pushed to the fore, and the ones with children began to leave.

  Over by the Pavilion gate, there was a stir. Some people were shouting to hold off. Then the crowd parted and in the waning light Harg saw a column of tall, grey-clad figures emerge from the gate, coming across the square, Namenda Agave at their head. The Adaina melted back before the Lashnura. Where a moment before, armed men had circled him, now a picket of shadowy grey figures took up position.

  “What are you here for?” he said to Agave.

  In a ringing voice pitched for all the multitude to hear, she answered, “Harg Ismol, we have come to summon you to dhota-nur.”

  As she said the last word, the sun slipped below the horizon.

  *

  Half an hour before sunset, Spaeth had been forced to take matters into her own hands.

  When she entered the room she and Nathaway shared, carrying a closed tin canister, he was standing at the window looking out on the Isonsquare. She put the canister on the bedside table, then went over to him, putting her arms around him from behind and resting her head against his shoulder. His whole body was strung tight, rejecting what was going on.

  He took her hands in his and raised them to his mouth to kiss them. “Let’s leave here,” he said. “Let’s go back to Fluminos. I don’t care if they arrest me; it’s better just to get it over with. I can’t stand being here any more, not if . . .” He didn’t finish, but they both knew what was going to happen in the Isonsquare at sunset if no one intervened. His sense of injustice was so strong, it was corroding him from inside. He was responsible for the miscarriage, but it wasn’t in his power to correct it.

  “Come away from the window,” she said. “You’re just torturing yourself.”

  He let her lead him over to the bed, where he sat on the edge. “Lie down,” she said.

  “No. I can’t.”

  “All right.” She knelt on the bed behind him to massage his tense shoulders.

  He was being pulled apart, his Inningness separating from whatever it was in him that Goth had seen and judged fit to waken. She had watched him carefully over the past few weeks, trying to discern it. At times, he seemed no different—just as stubborn and obtuse, just as Inning as ever. But in other ways he was wearing well, like a shoe that had pinched a little at first, and was now beginning to fit her perfectly.

  The thought gave her a pang of regret. They had become so good together. He was bound to her like a float to a net; he would always be there to buoy her, to lift her head above the water. This time, she felt perfectly confident she would not be abandoned. She trusted him to the roots of her being.

  And now, she had to betray him.

  He was relaxing a little as she kneaded his back, so she began to rub his tight jaw muscles and neck. At last he consented to lie back on the bed, and she rubbed his temples soothingly. His eyes drifted shut, so she reached over to open the tin canister Auster had given her and took out the sharp-smelling piece of cloth inside. She leaned forward to kiss him lingeringly on the lips, then clamped the cloth down firmly over his nose and mouth.

  His eyes came open and he clutched at her arm, but he didn’t struggle or try to resist. The drug worked fast, as Auster had promised. His last expression was one of such pained disappointment that Spaeth’s resolve wavered; but then his eyes lost focus and his muscles relaxed as consciousness left him.

  She kept the cloth on his face for several seconds to make sure he would not waken, then returned it to the canister. She unbuttoned his shirt and took the green pendant from where it rested against his chest, slipping it over his head and placing it around her own neck. For a moment she sat, steeling herself for the next step. A sound from the crowd in the Isonsquare outside called her back. The sun was almost setting.

  Locking the room behind her, she raced down the steps to the door. Agave was waiting there, surrounded by students and staff. “Do you have it?” she asked tensely.

  Spaeth showed her the tablet. “Yes. He finally gave it to me.” She said it so no one would know that a conspiracy was unfolding. On Agave’s part, it was a conspiracy to preserve the power of the Lashnura. On Spaeth’s, it was simpler: to save Harg, even if she had to do it with a desperate deception.

  Agave led the way out. Across the cloister they all passed, through the Pavilion gate. Ahead, the Isonsquare was a shifting sea of windblown torches. Rising in its centre was an empty stage, luridly lit by a roaring bonfire. At first it seemed as if the press of the crowd would block their way, but the people parted and a path appeared to the steps of the wooden platform. It was like walking down a long tunnel of faces.

  They arrived. In a ringing voice, Agave spoke the ritual words and stepped aside for Spaeth. Swept forward by her own impetuous momentum, Spaeth seized Harg by the hand, mounted the steps, and led him up on the stage. As they came into view of all, a sound passed through the crowd: not so much a cheer as a huge collective sigh. It was like a wind blowing, lifting her. The platform made her feel raised very high up above the crowd. The sound was different here, somehow muffled. She could see them all, the whole firelit mass of faces, turned to her. It never entered her mind that they would not adore her.

  “I am Spaeth Dobrin,” she announced, and her voice echoed from the faces of the buildings. “Goran, son of Listor, created me. I am of his flesh. I have come to you bearing the Emerald Tablet of Gilgen.”

  She held it up then, turning in a circle so all of them could see it dangling from her hand. The sound that rose then was like thunder, battering against them, reverberating off the front of the Pavilion. For a moment it seemed as if the building itself spoke, and Spaeth listened with a sudden apprehension that it would expose her as a fraud and a thief. She looked up at the window where the real Heir of Gilgen lay unconscious on the bed. But the sound died to a mutter without an accusation.

  “I have come here tonight because the balances of the world are in peril,” she went on. “Someone must act to set them right. I call upon you all to witness dhota-nur.”

  In the noise that followed her words, she turned to really look at Harg for the first time. Up to now, Agave had not allowed her to see him, and she was shocked by the change. It was not just the eye patch and the livid scar seaming his cheek. His whole mora had matured, grown deeper, a
s if all the pain of the Isles had come to dwell in his body, in his scarred face. She still felt the sharp stir of attraction he had woken in her before; but now it was mixed with a dawning fear that this was more than she could handle.

  Agave had come up onto the platform, carrying a bundle, and now grasped her arm to steady her. “Remember what I told you,” the Grey Lady whispered in Spaeth’s ear. “Don’t take on too much. Do what you can, but save some strength for the end; it is the most dangerous part. Remember, if it comes to the worst, it is better he should suffer than you. You will not feel that way once you are in him, but keep saying it to yourself.”

  The reminder helped Spaeth steady her resolve. It was not really dhota-nur she had come for; it was a sham to convince the crowd. She needed to do only enough to bind him to her. Had anyone ever undertaken such a dangerous bluff as this?

  Without another word, Agave unwrapped the worn red velvet casing and held out a black glass knife. “It is the one your grandfather used,” she said. “We took it from the reliquary this afternoon.” Her eyes strayed to Harg, then pulled away. He looked tense as an over-tight spring.

  As Spaeth took the knife, she heard the crowd stir. But before using it, she turned to Harg. “You will need to take off your coat and shirt,” she said.

  He didn’t move. Agave said to him, “Remember what I told you. You no longer belong to yourself. You belong to the people of the Isles. Your body has become a symbol of that sacred bond, and symbols must be seen. Tonight, all the Isles will come to dwell in you, and what you feel, so will they.”

  He still didn’t obey. Spaeth realized then that it wasn’t defiance; he was frozen into immobility. Whether it was terror, a fog of mind, or sheer indecision, she couldn’t tell—but regardless, she needed to jolt him out of it. Tucking the knife into her belt, she went up to him, right into the radiant field of his mora, till it raised the prickling hairs on her arms and face. Then she dared to touch him.

  She had intended only to run her finger along his ruined cheek, but the intensity of the sensation almost overwhelmed her senses. Before she knew it, she was pressing her lips against the reamed skin as if she could draw the pain out of him that way. Her heart was beating light and fast. She wanted him for herself more than anything in the world. She had always wanted him.

  Laying her cheek against his, she whispered in his ear, “Harg, I will need your help. Dhota must be performed by the cured as much as by the curer.”

  He didn’t answer, but she could feel him gather himself together. She helped him unbutton his shirt and jacket, and remove them, and then his pants and shoes, until he stood naked except for his shorts. He was shivering, but she knew it was not the cold wind.

  “Kneel down,” she said.

  “Spaeth, I can’t do this,” he said seriously.

  “Yes, you can,” she said. “You have to. Kneel down.”

  She pressed down on his shoulder, and he knelt abruptly, as if his legs had given way. She took out the knife again. It was so sharp it slid into her vein with scarcely a prick. The blood welled out eagerly, wanting what she wanted. She knelt facing him. Dipping her finger in her blood, she touched it to his forehead and temples, then below each ear, to his throat, then to the centre of his chest, above the heart. As the blood touched his skin it turned instantly from wine-red to clear, disappearing as it sank into him.

  While the blood was working on his mind, loosening his defences, she took the Emerald Tablet from around her neck and put it around his, so that it lay against his heart, as it had lain against Goth’s for so many years.

  “Do you recognize this?” she whispered to him.

  “It’s Goth’s,” he said.

  Another quaver passed through him. The blood had linked their minds enough that she knew he was reacting to the knowledge that he was now wearing something of Goth’s. She put her hand over it, pressing it against his warm skin. “It will collect all the pain you are carrying around,” she said. “You must will your pain into the stone.”

  The blood was taking effect. His mora was almost visible to her now. It glowed ruddy like the reflection of firelight on smoke, flickering with dangerous, unruly power. It sent thrills chasing through her body. She would be the first, the only dhotamar to have him. Finally, after all these years of denying Goth, and denying her, he had been brought to his knees, to the end of his defiant, independent existence.

  Her mind reached out, but when it touched him, a shock of energy coursed through her. It flung her away, and the next thing she knew she was crouching on the board floor, thrown back several feet by the force of his mental blow.

  The watching crowd was murmuring; they had never heard of anything like this. She breathed deeply to calm the pang of thwarted desire. Harg was sitting back on his heels. “Harg, you have to let me in,” she said.

  “I told you, I can’t do it,” he said desperately.

  It hadn’t been deliberate, just a reflex. She picked up the knife and made another cut in her arm, then touched the blood to his face and chest again. His pupils were already dilated from the first dose, and his skin was clammy with cold sweat. She put her hands on his shoulders and said, “Breathe along with me. Concentrate on your breath.”

  Together they breathed, together they fell into the blood-trance. This time she saw a pattern in his mora, a rhythm. Like a child skipping rope, she waited for the perfect spot in the cycle, then leaped in. For an intense, exhilarating moment all his fierce energy flowed through her. Then he was fighting again; but this time she yielded, rippling like seaweed in the current. Unable to grasp her, he grew exhausted and fell quiet, breathing hard. She floated inside him, doing nothing.

  She could see into him now, better than he saw himself. Everywhere she looked there were old wounds, scars barely healed. They were woven into his being, as if he had created himself out of broken things.

  Scarcely daring to breathe, she reached out to touch his withered eye socket. He caught her wrist. “I can give you back your sight,” she said. “I can erase all this.”

  He swallowed hard. Already, she knew, he had begun to reconfigure himself around it, to create a new Harg who was half-blind and loathsome, a person he almost hated, yet couldn’t escape. “If I give you that, will you let me be?” he asked.

  “Give it to me first,” she said, “and then I’ll answer.”

  She knew she would never be able to stop after such a partial cure. He knew it, too, and shook his head.

  “It’s not your choice,” she said. “An Ison must be free of his past. You are Ison, and so you must.”

  She touched his eye, and he went rigid. He was reliving the moment when he had lost it, feeling again all he had felt then. Soothingly Spaeth stroked his back, whispering words of comfort, till his grip on the pain loosened, and she was there to ease it gently away from him, to let it flow into the stone, then into her. The healing bond began to form between them, knitting them together as if into a single being.

  When he had given the wound away, she saw what lay below it—a mangled scar of guilt and shame. She reached out for it, but again Harg stopped her. “Not that,” he said.

  “Yes,” she answered, “that one too.”

  It was like prying his fingers from around it, but at last he let go, flinching as it all flowed through him again, then into her. She stroked his face, covering it with kisses. She had to relax him. She had to make him willing to let her go deeper, down to the most secret, private parts of his mind. And yet she already wondered how much of this battle they could bear. He was like a person who had set all his own broken bones, and set them crooked, but to have them straight must break them all again.

  On she went, opening door after hidden door, going places in him he had never wanted to set foot again. She felt the three floggings that had left his back a rubbled mess of scar tissue. The moment when Jory’s brain had been
blown away. The insane cruelties Harg himself had committed in revenge. There were hundreds of scars, each one a thread woven into him that she had to wrench from the pattern till it lay raw and bleeding, then knot it into her own heart, till they were woven together at a thousand places.

  As time went on, he weakened. His heart was beating far too hard, and he was drenched in sweat. When he stopped fighting, she became worried that she had gone too far; and yet she still could not help going on.

  A dim light was shining in her eyes, telling her it was time to stop. She blinked, then realized it was the dawn lighting the sky past the rooftops of Lashnish. They had been at it all night.

  Harg was slumped in her arms, his head resting on her shoulder. She shook him gently and he roused. His face looked a decade older than the night before. She loved him tenderly for every hurt he had ever suffered. But she had not yet cured him.

  She took the stone from his chest, and put the cord around her own neck. Nearby, the crowd stirred. She realized, vaguely, that there were still hundreds of people around them who had sat watching the whole night through.

  Spaeth reached for the knife. She had to cut him loose now, free him from his past.

  “All your hurts are half in me now, half in you,” she said. “With this knife I will cut you free. All the pain will be mine then, and it will trouble you no more.”

  She bared her arm. “Come close,” she whispered to Harg. “Don’t leave me now.”

  She clenched her teeth and sawed across her arm with the knife. Blood spurted out, falling to the floor. Instantly she realized that something was wrong. She felt only her own pain. She whirled around to look at Harg. His face was a sheet of sweat. He was still holding onto it all. “Let go!” she screamed at him.

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “You have to, or all of this is for nothing!” She felt hysteria rising in her throat.