Tales of Noreela 04: The Island

by Tim Lebbon

  “You’ve all killed a Stranger,” he says—a statement more than a question. He can likely see the truth of that in the eyes of those before him. Kel says nothing. “How many?” Verrin points to a woman to Kel’s left.

  “One,” she says. “And another I wasn’t sure about.”

  “If you still weren’t sure after the killing, then he or she wasn’t a Stranger.” He points at O’Peeria. “How many?”

  “Two,” she says. “Definitely Strangers.”

  Verrin nods. Then he points at Kel and raises his eyebrows.

  Kel thinks of lying, but Verrin is glaring at him, the old man’s eyes home to so much more than Kel will ever likely know. “None,” he says. “But my time will come.”

  Verrin grins. “It will. It will come, soldier. And you already have the look of a killer.”

  He laughs a little, then looks up over their heads, as though addressing someone much farther away.

  “They look just like us, with their clothes on. Hide their gills and those cursed things on their backs, and sometimes you can spend days with them without becoming suspicious. They’ll just seem like someone from a long way away, who perhaps isn’t aware of local customs, religions or laws. Noreela has many travelers and rovers, and this is not so unusual. But more often than not, a Stranger will give himself or herself away to those looking for them, even with the very subtlest of signs. You’ve all met someone you feel is just…out of place. Someone who unsettles you. They have a strange manner of communicating, gesticulating oddly as they speak. They look at you for too long after pausing in their conversation, or too intensely, or not for long enough. Their eyes can be cold, as though whatever unknown distance they’ve traveled to reach Noreela has affected their stare. And the one constant I’ve learned, the one thing that has kept me alive and killed so many Strangers, is this: trust your instincts.” He falls silent, still staring away over their heads.

  “You unsettle me,” O’Peeria says.

  Verrin’s eyes droop, hooded by the threat of violence. He touches his collar and starts to pull it back.

  The Core soldiers gasp. All of them. Kel can’t help himself, and he is instantly sobered. He reaches for the short knife on his belt, as yet untainted by a Stranger’s blood.

  Verrin tilts his head to one side and shows them the side of his neck. It’s brown as an old saddle, and just as worn. No gills.

  Verrin smiles, and the soldiers’ laughter is painfully nervous.

  “Trust your instincts,” he says directly to O’Peeria. “Though also trust that sometimes, they might be wrong.”

  Then he looks at the woman who killed someone she believed to be a Stranger but who evidently was not. “You can’t afford to take the chance.”

  Chapter Four

  only steam

  PEOPLE BEGAN TO claim the bodies of their loved ones. They came singly, in couples or family groups, most of them dirty and disheveled, bloodied and bruised from digging through rubble or hauling mud by the bucket or shovelful. They approached the Moon Temple slowly, looking at that extravagant building with new gravity and uncertainty. For some it was a regular site of worship, for others simply a place they passed day after day without a second thought. In Pavmouth Breaks, as in most of Noreela, the choice of which deity to worship, or the decision to worship any at all, was still a free one.

  As they came in through the gate in the wide stone wall, each of them looked the same: haunted. The wraiths haunting these villagers were not the ghosts of their dead relatives but the hope that they were not dead at all. The village had been shattered in the night, and missing people could just as easily be helping dig at a collapsed building, or buried beneath one still alive, as lying dead on the grass in the Temple gardens.

  Like most ghosts doomed to roam, hope was a wretched thing.

  Most of Namior’s work had happened in the Temple itself. The worship mats were spread in concentric circles around the central marble moon image inlaid in the floor. That marble shone yellow or white, depending on which moon was in the ascendant, but now it was splashed blood red and mud brown, and the worship mats were beds for the wounded, and the dying. She had not become used to the smells or sounds, and the sights she would dream about forever. Namior had watched three people she knew die, one of them beneath her own hands as she tried in vain to heal ruptured organs and stitch smashed bones. She saw four people she did not know pass away as well, and Mourner Kanthia moved back and forth across the Temple like a disembodied wraith herself, her chants an almost constant counterpoint to the crying, sobbing and occasional screams.

  Once, Kanthia leaned on Namior’s shoulder when she was sitting at the rear of the Temple, trying to take a break. “So many sad spirits,” Kanthia said. “I hope there’s room in the Black.”

  “The Black is endless,” Namior said, because that was what everyone believed. The Black was everywhere and everywhen, and Noreela was a speck of grit compared to its enormity.

  “Endless,” Kanthia said, and she uttered a sob as she went in search of another wandering spirit.

  Namior was exhausted. As the sun began its journey down toward the watery horizon, she was working in a fugue, letting necessity guide her rather than her own observations. To begin with, when the language of the land spoke in terms she did not quite understand, she had put it down to her tiredness. But it happened several times during that long afternoon—times when it took longer than it should for the healing urge to take her and the power to touch her fingertips strongly enough for her to begin. Interference, her great-grandmother had said, and Namior’s mind kept flitting back to the strange new island that had appeared in their waters.

  With the Moon Temple full, Namior at last began to feel she had done everything she could. Several carers were administering potions to the sick and injured, and another trainee healer was going about fixing minor injuries, concussions and shock. Namior saw the boy’s unsettled look as well, but she did not talk to him. Enough had gone wrong without making their fears solid.

  What she craved most was a return to her home, some of her mother’s fishtail bakkett, then sleep. But she knew that was selfish, and unlikely. However tired she felt, events would not let her rest, and the more she healed and the more weary she became, the stronger her sense of duty to the people of Pavmouth Breaks.

  When three men arrived, pulling a cart loaded with several injured people, they told her that the village’s main healer had been killed in a landslide upriver. That settled Namior’s mind. After checking that the men were healthy, and assessing the wounded in the cart as all bearing minor injuries, she set off down toward the harbor. People had come from there telling of dozens of wounded, and hundreds more searching the ruins for any survivors. That was where Namior was needed most.

  And then, there were the visitors. Scared though she was, her unrelenting sense of curiosity was urging her to go and see them.

  So tall, one woman said, and their clothes are so fine!

  Streaming ashore, another report came. A hundred visitors now, some of them digging and searching for survivors, others already starting repair work to the bridge and some buildings.

  Machines! one young boy gushed. Machines like you’ve never seen before!

  That boy’s enthusiasm stuck with Namior, and disturbed her. As Noreela’s magic seemed to be disturbed and drawing away, so the visitors had apparently brought their own. It chilled and terrified her, but it fascinated her as well.

  “Mourner Kanthia,” she said. The Mourner was sitting outside, staring at the row of dead bodies as though waiting for them to stir once more. There were several gaps in the line where families had claimed their own, and Namior could already smell the unmistakable scent of funeral pyres rising across the village.

  “Namior. You’ve done your family proud today.”

  “Thank you, Mourner Kanthia.” Kanthia always spooked her; she would likely chant Namior’s poor great-grandmother’s wraith down into the Black someday soon. But her pronouncement
made Namior tingle with gratitude. “Your eyes…?”

  The Mourner waved a hand. “I see nothing. A blow to the head did that, but perhaps it was a blessing. There’s little to see now the sea’s washed us away. And the wraiths …” She raised her face and looked up at Namior. “In blindness, I see them clearer than ever.”

  “Perhaps it will fade,” Namior said. “But now, Mourner Kanthia, I feel I’m needed down at the harbor.”

  “Yes,” Kanthia said. “Of course. Plenty of work for you there, girl. But don’t wear yourself out.”

  “I can keep healing.”

  “I’m sure. But magic is hesitant today.”

  “Hesitant?” Namior asked. But she already knew what the old woman meant.

  Kanthia’s dour face was even more serious than usual. And she shook her head, as if to say anything more would be unwise.

  Namior left, following in Kel’s footsteps from earlier. On the undermined path, there were people going back and forth with food, water and tools. When she stopped one of them, the man looked startled, as if he had not even seen her.

  “What’s happening at the harbor?” she asked.

  “They’re here,” the man said. He pointed downriver at the broken bridge. “I can see them there, building and mending. One of them smiled at me, I think. But I’m staying on this side, helping down at the seafront. I don’t feel …”

  “Safe?” Namior asked.

  “Ready,” the man said. “They look just like us, but I don’t feel ready to meet them yet.”

  Namior nodded and went to say more, but the man turned and continued on his way. He wore a set of backpack straps hung with several full skins of water, and he was sweating under the load.

  She followed him along the path, heading toward the bridge. She kept pace behind him, noticing how he walked with his head down, avoiding looking across at the harbor, the destruction, the visitors. Two women hurried from the opposite direction, passing the bridge from the northern shores. Each carried a small baby in a sling across her chest, and the man ignored them both.

  “How bad is it around there?” Namior asked when they drew level. One of the babies was crying, but she was glad to see that neither was hurt. Both women had also been crying.

  “Just like here,” one of them said, nodding across the river. “But none of them are there yet.”

  “I’m going over,” Namior said.

  “You’re the healer witch, aren’t you?” the second woman asked.

  Namior nodded.

  “You and your family… what have you seen? What do you know?”

  “About the visitors, very little. The storm and the waves have made things difficult. The land has suffered a blow, and its language has become confused.”

  “Magic is confused?” the first woman said, skeptical. “The waves did that?” Her child stopped crying and looked at Namior, as though silently asking the same question.

  “They’re helping,” Namior said. She looked at the babies again and smiled. “Take your children somewhere safe. They look tired.”

  The women left, but she could feel the air of suspicion and uncertainty they had left behind. She breathed in and it tasted of the sea. Dead things decaying.

  Where the bridge began, Namior paused for a moment and watched what was happening across the river. It seemed that, more than ever, the waterway cut Pavmouth Breaks in two. On the near side was destruction and death, with the residents hurrying around like frightened insects as they tried to start the recovery process. On the other side the destruction was even worse, but already there was an air of organization. And as she looked along the bridge at the smashed span, she caught her breath with surprise.

  Three visitors were there, tending to the wounds in the bridge. And they had their machines with them. Two of them floated way above the ground, obviously not in contact with it at all. The size of people, the machines were shiny and light, as though made of glass, and every now and then they vented some clear gas at the air with a small hiss, audible from that distance even above the flow of the river. They dipped down at the mountain of debris piled against the bridge and lifted out branches, rocks and parts of buildings as though the detritus weighed nothing at all. Their arms were made of the same material and also vented gas.

  The third machine worked on the bridge’s surface. It was larger and more solid-looking, but still it vented at the air, more frequently than its flying counterparts. It ran on wheels connected by heavy chains, and its body seemed to be formed from sleek, smooth metal. There were several lifting arms, all of them working in concert. Wreckage had been pushed aside against the bridge parapets, and the machine seemed to be laying a series of long, metallic supports across the ruptured span. It was not clear where the supports had come from, and they were forged from a bluish metal Namior did not recognize.

  The visitors each concentrated on one machine, and in their hands they held small devices that reminded Namior of the voice carriers she and Kel used to communicate. Their fingers moved, though from where she was Namior could not make out exactly what they were doing, and small puffs of gas issued from the undersides of these handheld objects. Controlling their machines like our Practitioners, Namior thought, pleased at her leap of logic. It’s like they’re using voice carriers to tell their machines what to do. But… such machines! Just who are these people?

  She had never seen such machines before. They seemed independent of the land, and she saw no ground rods in sight. So where did their magic originate?

  One of the visitors saw her watching. The woman was dressed in fine-looking attire: leather jacket and woollen trousers, with polished buttons and clips.

  Namior offered a hesitant smile.

  The woman beamed back at her, lifting a hand from the device and waving. One of the floating machines drifted slightly to the side, tilting and almost dropping the heavy branch it carried. The woman rolled her eyes skyward and quickly touched and tweaked the thing in her other hand. The machine vented two spurts of gas and righted itself.

  It’s all magic, Namior thought, though they use it differently. Just magic. Trying very hard to convince herself, she took her first hesitant steps out onto the bridge.

  The silt and muck deposited on the bridge’s surface had developed a thin crust, and most of the way she walked on it without breaking through. In those few places where the surface did rupture, she cringed at the smell that wafted up. It was not quite rot, though she knew she would be smelling that soon, but a heady reminder of the sea.

  Closer to the break in the bridge, where the backwash had cleared all the muck away, she saw the bodies placed carefully on the other side. The visitors must have lifted them from where they were tangled in the mess, placing them gently on the bridge with their hands crossed on their stomachs. There were four corpses, mostly naked, battered, torn. Namior hoped she did not know them.

  A floating machine hissed clear gas, lifting above parapet level with a twist of broken metal in its grasp. Hinged limbs hung from the ruin, and Namior recognized it as a part of a dead machine. Its fleshy parts, once existing beneath the limbs and around the shelf of its stone shell, were already swollen with rot. The visitor’s machine lifted it delicately aside, then dipped down below the bridge once more.

  Namior stopped a few paces from the gap in the bridge, spanned now by several long metal struts. The crawling machine working across the collapsed section ground to a halt, as if in deference to her, and a visitor lowered his hands and briefly bowed his head.

  “It’s safe to cross,” he said, looking up at Namior again. He swung the controller box by his side and smiled softly. Namior was surprised to see nervousness in his expression. It gave her a burst of confidence.

  She looked down at the space where the bridge had fallen away. The river raged ten steps below, still heavy with silt and wreckage, and there was no sign of the blocks of stone that had been smashed away by the waves. The new struts were spaced a step apart, and each one was just wider than her foot
. She could walk across two adjacent struts, and if she stumbled, she would be able to spread her arms and land safely. But if that failed and she did slip through, the angry river would carry her into the harbor, and perhaps out to sea. She looked in that direction and saw several of the visitors’ boats bobbing at anchor.

  “He’s right, I’ve walked it myself many times.” This came from the woman who had waved to her. She had long raven hair, tied in a bunch across one shoulder. Her jacket was beautifully stitched, trousers well fitting, and she wore fine brown gloves. She waved her fingers slightly across the controller in her left hand, and one of the motionless machines rose and snapped two long arms at the air. “And if you did fall, I’d catch you.”

  “You speak perfect Noreelan,” Namior said.

  “Of course!”

  “Those machines… I don’t recognize how they work.”

  “Come across and I’ll show you,” said the woman. “It’s only steam.” She walked out along the metal struts, placing her feet without even looking down. When she got halfway she turned, performed a small bow and walked back.

  Namior could not help smiling. Whether they were reassuring her or making fun, she got the message. She walked across, moving fluidly but carefully, placing her feet on the struts and feeling a surprising amount of grip. The metal seemed to display many colors as the sun reflected from it, like a boat’s lamp oil spilled into the sea.

  When she reached the other side, the woman was holding out her hand, her machine hovering in a haze of steam. Namior took it.

  I’m touching a visitor, she thought. And it feels no different from touching a Noreelan. The two other visitors, both men, threw curious glances her way, but they continued controlling their machines.