Ison of the Isles (10 page)

“I knew I could count on you,” she said.

*

Goth was wandering down the throat of a frozen amethyst wave when he felt the tug of reality calling him back. He pushed the call to the back of his mind; it smelt of time and physicality. He did not want to return.

Every day he was piercing farther into the circles achra opened to him. At first the drug had only given him respite from the ulcerous pain of separation from his bandhotai. But soon he had found that he could use it to vault free of this circle where ghosts always followed him, tugging at his limbs to bring him back.

For weeks a recurring vision had appeared to him, but only from afar. At first, he had taken it for a floating mountain of ice, glowing glacier-bright across a dark sea. It was jagged with multiple spires and pinnacles, and from time to time the sun glanced off its face, as if it were made of mica. It had taken two slivers of the drug to come close enough to set foot beneath its cliffs of polished ice, sculpted by rushing meltwater into enigmatic shapes. For a long time he had wandered amid the puzzling geometry of its translucent pilasters and rippling friezes, till at last he had realized that it was a deserted city around him, if a city could have been made of spun glass. It teased his brain with its almost-presence, as if it were only potentially there.

Three slivers it had taken to wander amid the echoing glory of spiral halls and intricately branching rooms. He discovered that the city was a world in miniature, a densely coded architecture of everything. At first the jewelled maze had overloaded him, left his mind quivering with intense sensation. Every keyhole was a theorem regressing to infinity, every leaf a lifetime.

In the moments when, inevitably, he returned to the circle where he was a prisoner, he wondered whether the dream were just a hall of mirrors reflecting back his own mind. There was no way to find out but to return.

Once a week—more frequently, in recent days—the soldiers would fetch him to dine or talk with Admiral Talley. Those conversations seemed surreal in a way the crystal city had ceased to. Something was needed from him, he knew; but what and by whom, he could not fathom.

That was what they wanted now. Already he could feel his limp spine, his sluggish organs in their bag of skin. Someone was rocking him to and fro—no, the whole room was rocking. He was on the ship. Each thought fell like a slow drip of water into his consciousness.

Presently, brisk hands were chafing his skin, helping him sit. He observed as they coaxed his body into standing, then as they washed and shaved it. He felt a detached amusement to see his arms and legs manoeuvring themselves into the intricate folds of Inning clothing. In a mirror he glimpsed the gaunt shadow of someone he remembered once having been.

Admiral Talley was working at his desk in the great cabin of the warship. It was late afternoon, but so overcast that two oil lamps were burning over the Admiral’s desk. When he looked up, their light cast shadows on his alert face. But Goth didn’t need the light; he was seeing with an uncanny clarity.

“I’m sorry to have interrupted your pleasure,” Talley said sardonically. His eyes travelled up and down Goth’s body, appraising him critically. “I wish you would have some self-restraint in regards to the achra. You are deteriorating into a pathetic addict.”

“I am only what you have made of me,” Goth said. The Admiral was keyed up, his unease like a sharp camphor scent in the air. Goth knew this man well by now.

“When I gave it to you, I did not expect you to take to it so enthusiastically. The objective was not to destroy you.” He laid his pen down in its silver tray and sat back. The only refreshment on his own desk was a glass of lime water, part of the strict regimen that was his personal discipline.

“What does it do for you, the achra?” he asked.

He didn’t expect a serious answer, but Goth found he wanted to talk about it. It had become the most important thing in his life. “I thought at first it would give me freedom,” he said. “I thought that was what I wanted—to roam the circles free of all the human bonds that tied me down, to pierce farther than I had ever gone before. But now I think I was wrong. Those bonds were my sustenance, my past. I drew life from union with those I cured. To be free of them is a sterile release. No, I want them with me still, but not ruling me as before. I want to be simultaneously with and apart from them, engaged and detached. Does that make any sense?”

The look on Talley’s face was one of old frustration. Somehow, Goth had once again thwarted his desires.

“What do you want from me?” Goth asked.

The Admiral looked away, shaking his head. When he looked back, his stare was fixed and unreadable. “At the moment, if you can possibly focus, I need your advice on a strategic issue.”

They never spoke of military matters. Goth said, “I cannot help you. I know nothing of strategy.”

Talley’s sparse smile looked like a pencil line. “I’ll teach you some, then. The first law of warfare is, know your enemy. I need some insight into Harg Ismol.”

No one had uttered that name in Goth’s presence since he had left Yora. He had expected never to hear it again. His ears buzzed with the shock of hearing it from Corbin Talley. Through suddenly awkward lips, he said, “What has he done?”

With a humourless laugh, Talley said, “What
hasn’t
he done? Humiliated the Inning nation, and me in particular. Captured our ships, conquered our forts, routed our best commanders, well nigh united the Torna and Adaina against us.”

Not wanting to believe it, Goth whispered, “No.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Someone must stop him,” Goth said.

“I am trying my hardest.”

That was not what Goth had meant. He searched the Inning’s face for some understanding. “Why is he fighting you?”

“I had thought perhaps you could answer that.”

Slowly, Goth shook his head. “I have not seen him in seven years. I didn’t know he was back in the Isles, or even alive. We’re utter strangers, now.”

With a restless gesture, Talley said, “I would not ask you this in company, but we are at war, and I cannot afford to be delicate. Where do matters stand between you and him?”

Goth was silent, not out of reticence, but because he was perplexed by the question. How
did
he stand with Harg? He had been asking himself that question for almost thirty years, and was no closer to an answer.

“Come, come,” said Talley impatiently. “Is there animus or affection?”

Groping for something to say, Goth finally managed, “We are not bandhotai.”

“From my information, you are something rather more intimate than that,” the Admiral said.

Goth stared at him, uncomprehending. There
was
nothing more intimate than bandhotai. He had mentioned it to indicate that they weren’t close. “What are you talking about?” he said.

“It’s common knowledge that he is your illegitimate son.”

Thrown into confusion, Goth said, “Then common knowledge is wrong. Where did you hear that?”

“From the most improbable source,” Talley smiled ironically. “The
Fluminos Intelligencer
. Via an unimpeachable correspondent on Yora.”

“Then your newspaper is in error.”

“Well, let me ask it this way, if you will forgive the indelicacy. Did you sleep with his mother?”

“Yes, of course,” Goth admitted a little reluctantly. “We were bandhotai.”

“And she became pregnant after that?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you see, in Inning we call that a father.”

“In the Isles, we don’t. Immet Ismol was the man who acknowledged the child, and agreed to raise it. I never agreed to any of that.”

“Ah. Well, in Inning we just call that a father who is not living up to his responsibilities.”

Stiffly, Goth replied, “We have different customs.”

“Well then, let me hazard a guess. Would it be accurate to say there is no love lost between you and Harg Ismol?”

There was a long pause as Goth considered the question. At last he said, in a muffled voice, “No. That would not be accurate.” There were very few things he was certain about when it came to Harg, but this was one of them. There was love all right—guilt-ridden, ambivalent, reproachful, demanding, impossible to satisfy—but it was love.

Memories were flooding his mind, vivid as a vision. She had been so passionate, so recklessly human. They had loved each other like people on the edge of madness for months, till all the village buzzed. They had crept out to meet on the hills when she was large with pregnancy. Lying there on the sand, he had pressed his cheek against her naked belly to feel the child kick inside, both of them laughing.

And after her death, how hard it had been to see her child growing more like her every day. Everything about the boy had drawn him—most of all the pain just under the surface, given away in a thousand unconscious signals. Goth had longed fiercely to enter that mind and soothe it, especially since he was the source of so much of its trouble.

“I couldn’t have a child,” he said, almost to himself. “It was too dangerous. Any child of mine would have been a pawn, a tool, just as I have been, as I am now. I could not create a living soul, just to resign it to suffering. What I did was necessary to protect him.”

He looked up; Talley was watching him with a strangely complicated expression. “And I suppose it never occurred to you that he would want any say in the matter?” the Inning said.

“I could have solved it all,” Goth answered. “I could have made him content with his life, if only I could have given him dhota. But he would never accept it from me. It was the only thing he could control, the only way he had to reject me back, to hurt me as I had hurt him. I only wish . . .” His voice trailed off.

Softly, Talley said, “You wish?”

“I wish I knew if he has forgiven me.”

Talley said nothing. He simply sat watching until at last Goth became aware of him. “I’m sorry,” Goth said, shaking his head. “This is not what you needed to know.”

Shrugging, Talley said, “How simple the world would be if we had no fathers.” And Goth realized he had not been thinking of Harg at all.

Looking out the stern window, Goth longed for the soothing bite of achra under his skin. When he returned to the mosaic halls of ice, he would remember none of this. There would be no responsibilities, no old mistakes to pursue him.

And yet, if Harg was walking the world unhealed, driven by old wounds, he would have to be stopped. Otherwise he would dash himself to bits against the unyielding wall of Inning power, and quite possibly take half the Isles with him. Goth felt an awful premonition. He had created this monster himself, out of his own folly and fear.

“You have to release me,” he said, standing unsteadily. “I must do something about this.”

“Sit down,” Talley said with a trace of impatience. “As long as they haven’t got you, there can be no Ison. Do you think I’m going to let you perform some barbarous sacrifice so this madman can become a god to all the Forsakens?”

“Is that what they are saying?” It was an arresting thought—half appalling, half appealing. It was almost impossible to imagine—and yet, it might be more dangerous to leave things as they were.

“Would you do it?” Talley was watching him appraisingly.

“He would never ask. Not from me.”

“Not even to have the adulation of all the Isles?”

“Adulation means nothing to a true Ison. The Isons do not act from pain, or ambition, or any inner compulsion. They act only for the Isles. That is why people follow and trust them. Only the unhealed act from personal motives. That is why we do not allow them to have power. An unhealed person with power can be terribly dangerous. Like Harg. Like you.”

A frown glanced across Talley’s face, sharp as a knife. “What a pernicious system, to bind your leaders’ hands so.”

“It is no different than yours. You are bound by the law.”

“Only if one believes in it.”

“But you do,” Goth said seriously.

For a moment Goth saw a furtive flicker of introspection in the Admiral’s eyes. Then the frost was back, opaquing the windows of the man’s mind. “I believe in success,” he said. “I believe in what works, by whatever means.”

Talley rose. “Come here. I want to show you something about leadership.”

He led the way up on deck. Goth followed, squinting and shading his eyes even in the cloudy gloom. As the Admiral came on deck there was a flurry of brisk salutes. Talley nodded absently at them, and led the way aft.

The ship was anchored with a fleet of others in a broad harbour protected on the west by a long spit of sand. In the back of the bay a town lay—or what had once been a town. It was now a smoking rubble.

Talley called for a spyglass and handed it to Goth. “Here, look more closely,” he said.

Goth scanned the scene. It had once been built of whitewashed brick and red tile roofs. Scarcely a building was left standing now. Goth could pick out a few figures moving about in the ruins. On the beach a row of corpses was lined up like cordwood.

“Did you do this?” Goth asked.

“Yes,” Talley said dispassionately. “Two days of bombardment from the sea. Then we landed a force to finish them off.”

“Why?”

“It was once the town of Pont. They assisted Harg Ismol, allowed him to refit his ships here. We informed them of the consequences, then carried them out.”

On the headland to the south, the ruins of an ancient Altan fortress lay guarding the entry to the harbour. An Inning flag now flew from it. On its tumbledown walls, outlined against the sky, was a forest of spikes. Goth trained the spyglass on them, then recoiled. On each spike was an impaled body, guarding the harbour entrance in a ghastly vigil.

“Rebels,” Talley explained. “The local resistance. Most of them are still alive.”

There were dozens of them. An act of cruelty this enormous had a terrible power, a power that echoed down through history.

“You are shifting the balances,” Goth said softly. “It will take centuries to shift them back.”

Talley’s face had no expression at all. “I mean to make the price of rebellion too high to pay,” he said. “It is the quickest way to cut this conflict off— to make it ugly beyond their imaginations. I have nothing to lose; I can raze every town and burn every field in the South Chain. I can make this place a smoking waste. You see, it doesn’t matter how many battles Harg Ismol wins; he can win a thousand, and I will still win the war. Because he is shackled by wanting to save something. All I need to do is destroy.”