The Aware (The Isles of Glory Book 1) (16 page)

Domino bent to check my bonds—and took an arrow in his rump. The feathered shaft stuck out like a make-believe tail for a make-believe animal in a strolling players’ masque, but the arrow was real enough to have him howling with outrage and pain even while it seemed an absurdity. He bucked through the haze of my pain, a pantomime ass, braying to the audience… Then Sickle, still gaping at Domino, went down with an arrow in his shoulder and I stopped lying there passively as if I’d been lightning-struck, and began wrenching at the already loosened bonds and stakes.

Another arrow, in the thigh this time, had Sickle rolling on the sand screaming. Domino was scrabbling away on all fours, a second arrow in his backside waggling beside the first in an even more ridiculous caricature of a tail. I had my right arm free, stake still attached, and was fumbling for my sword where it lay, just out of reach, with my clothes.

‘I’m here, love,’ someone said in my ear. ‘It’s all over.’

His voice was heaven.

I closed my eyes and stopped fighting, stopped hurting, stopped the desperate struggle to look after myself. For the first time in my life I gave myself over to another’s care.

He cut the bonds and raised me gently against his chest. ‘How badly are you hurt?’ he asked, and his voice ached for me.

‘Lucky…I don’t get sunburned easily. I’m a little…tattered…here and there…but it’s not as bad as it looks.’ Or feels. Not any more.

‘Do you want me to stake these fellows out and feed them to the blood-demons?’ His tone, coldly clinical, made it clear that he had recognised the wounds on my body—and knew what they signified.

I opened my eyes and looked around. Domino had vanished, but he couldn’t have gone all that far. Sickle was trying to drag himself towards the sea-ponies, but his injuries were severe and he wasn’t making a very efficient exit.

‘That would be…a sort of poetic justice, Tor. But…no. I don’t think it’s…quite your style. You don’t have to do that for…me.’

He hesitated. ‘My style? No, I wouldn’t have said so…but it’s tempting, Blaze, very tempting. I would if it would help you. I would do anything.’

‘Just kill them, Tor. People like that shouldn’t be allowed to exist.’

He left me briefly to execute Sickle with my sword, knocking him out and then slitting his throat with ruthless efficiency. When he turned his back on the body as if he didn’t want to acknowledge what he had done, the look on his face jagged at me like sharp coral.

I held out my hand and stayed him as he moved to go after Domino. ‘No, Tor. Leave the other one.’

He couldn’t bring himself to hide his relief, although he tried. Something didn’t quite match up with what I knew of him, but I was in no state to mull over it just then.

He was back at my side, lifting a drinkskin to my lips, tending the wounds, helping me to dress, chafing my wrists and ankles to restore circulation, touching me with gentle care, concealing his pain.

‘Flame?’ I asked, finally giving voice to the fear in me.

‘She was still hanging on when I saw her last, about four hours ago. It was she who told me where to find you. When you didn’t come back this morning she was worried. She sent a flock of Dustels out looking for you all over Gorthan Spit. One of them saw you and returned to tell her. You
do
know about the Dustel Islander birds?’

‘I do,’ I said, and added talking Dustel birds to my growing list of things he ought not to have known about, but did. ‘The dunmaster’s bastards were waiting for me, Tor. Outside Niamor’s house— They knew I was the one who had saved Flame. I don’t know how they knew. And I don’t know how they knew where to find me this morning.’

‘We found the tapboy with marks of a dunmagic whipping. Could that have had anything to do with it?’

‘Shit.
Oh yes. That could have everything to do with it. My fault—I asked him the way to Niamor’s. And he knew Flame was back; he told me he saw her come in. And he knew I went after her last night.
Damn.
The poor boy.’

‘He’s still alive. Do you know who the dunmaster is yet?’

I shook my head. ‘Perhaps we should have waited in that prison of Flame’s, seen who it was coming up those stairs.’

‘And if he’d had enough company, maybe we’d be dead by now.’

‘Perhaps. I think he must have seen us go out through the window after all, Tor. He knew we were Awarefolk. The dunmagic bolts he sent after us were sent in anger, not with any real hope of killing us. But I must get back: Flame.’

‘Ransom went to ask the Keepers for help. Perhaps they have done something by now.’

Gently he helped me to my feet. I looked around; Domino had disappeared into the sand dunes. ‘You came alone?’

‘Yes. I hired a sea-pony.’

‘The Lance of Calment strikes again… You fire a mean arrow, Tor.’ He still wasn’t wearing a sword, but at least he did have a knife in his belt as well as the bow and arrows.

He smiled slightly. ‘On the contrary. I meant to kill them. All I managed to do was stick them full of shafts like spice-sticks in a pomander. I’m out of practice. I haven’t shot an arrow since—since those days in Calment Minor.’ Come to think of it, he had probably loosed a few in my direction back in those days. Perhaps the same thought occurred to him because there was suddenly something remote about him, a withdrawal.

I touched his arm in question. ‘What’s the matter, Tor?’

He turned stark eyes to me. ‘I was too late to help you. I don’t know how to help you now.’

It was only half the truth, and I knew it. Something else troubled him, but I let it ride and dealt with the problem he had mentioned. ‘You saved my life. You stopped my torture. What more could a lady in trouble want? As for now—you can go on loving me. That’s all I ask. I’m as tough as dried rayfish, Tor. I was born a halfbreed, and there’s nothing much anyone can teach me about survival. But to have someone love me—that is a joy I’ve never known before.’ I quelled the pain that standing up had aggravated and told him the truth: ‘Just to have you look at me the way you do is to make life worth anything fate throws my way, even a torture or two.’

I took a deep breath, as if that would bring order to jumbled thoughts and chaotic emotions. I let my hand fall away from his arm. ‘But we don’t have time for this—I must get to Flame.’

He was back to his efficient self. ‘Can you ride a sea-pony?’

‘Of course. How far are we from Gorthan Docks?’

‘Three hours ride along the beach. Are you sure?’

I forced a grin. ‘Stop playing mother, Tor. I’m not used to it.’

He smiled reluctantly and took my hand.

###

I don’t know why those animals are called sea-ponies; they don’t resemble the real meadow ponies I’ve seen on the Keeper Isles. Those are shaggy things hardly bigger than a dog. Sea-ponies swim better than they gallop. They have fins along their sides and a fin for a tail—and no legs at all. They’re rare outside Gorthan Spit nowadays. People prefer those animals you introduced us to: horses. You haven’t seen a sea-pony yet? Well, they resemble oversized earthworms as much as anything, I suppose, but even there the resemblance is only partial. Earthworms don’t have necks, and sea-ponies do. They have long bodies with many segments, each one covered with a hard shell that conceals body tissue; the necks rear up from the ground to a height well above that of a tall man, and the head is very little different to the neck below it. The stalked eyes, feelers and mouth parts are there on the front side; the breathing apparatus is on the same segment but on the other side, facing the rider. Or riders. One sea-pony can carry five or six people—more than your horses can!

Anyway, I was grateful for the use of a sea-pony that day, I can tell you. Tor settled me in front of him, both of us sharing the same body segment. He knew how weak I was and wanted to give me support on the ride: the rhythm of a sea-pony can be tricky. On land they move by contracting their segments from the rear and then shooting their front half forward; if you weren’t careful, you could end up with a snapped neck when they reached top speed. Riding one is an art, but I’d ridden every animal there was to ride in the Isles of Glory, including sea-ponies, and mastered them all. I hooked my feet into the man-made hollows on the segments and leaned back against Tor’s chest. He gathered up the reins that fitted on to a halter around the head.

‘Ready?’ he asked.

I turned back to assent, and drew a sharp breath instead. From where we were then, at the top of the dune, I could see what hadn’t been visible from where I’d been staked out at the water’s edge: a village. Its outline against the sky was just discernible in the crepuscular light of dusk. But it wasn’t the realisation of its existence that made me gasp; it was the angry red glow that seemed to hang over it. I heard Niamor’s words echo in my head:
those who go there don’t seem to come back—

‘In the name of all the islands,’ I whispered, ‘what abomination is that?’ I knew it was dunmagic, of course; what appalled me was the extent of it. Surely no one dunmaster had caused all of that.

Tor urged the animal forward by poking it in the soft skin between the segments with a riding-prod. ‘There’s more than one dunmaster here,’ he said, ‘that’s obvious.’

‘The Keepers must be told—’

‘I imagine they know.’

‘There’s something you’re not telling me.’ I hadn’t meant to say that; I hadn’t wanted to force him to tell me his secrets, but my fear had overridden my respect for his privacy.

‘There have been many disappearances of sylvtalents over the past year or so,’ he said with an oblique neutrality.

I thought of Flame. Sylvtalent under a spell of subversion. To be forged by dunmagic into a perversion of herself. I glanced back once more at the village and my stomach tightened with nausea. The red was more than the contamination of dunmagic; it was a disease eating at what had once been true, evil forged from good, a cancer wrought from healthy flesh and healthy minds. ‘Oh sweet God—’ The words jerked out of me. In my horror, I turned on him. ‘And you would condemn the Keepers? They are the only people who can stop this.’

He shook his head, implacable. ‘No, Blaze. Only Awarefolk can stop this. Sylvtalents can be corrupted, just as Flame is being corrupted.’ He prodded the sea-pony again and its pace quickened.

I couldn’t think of anything to say. Every thought I had appalled me.

Letter from Researcher (Special Class) S. iso Fabold, National Department of Exploration, to Masterman M. iso Kipswon, President of the National Society for the Scientific, Anthropological and Ethnographical Study of non-Kellish peoples.

Dated this day 13/1st Double/1793.

Dear Uncle,

Yes, I would be delighted to stay with you and Aunt Rosris before and after my presentation to the Society. And I have taken take note of your warning about the charming Miss Anyara isi Teron, and shall be on my guard against her smile. My aunt always has impeccable taste and I am sure it will take all my powers of resistance! I was, by the way, delighted to hear that Aunt has had her first religious aetherial. I know how hard she has prayed over the years that she would be one of those blessed to have such a transcendence at the holy Menara festival. Cousin Edgerl writes that Aunt’s face was quite transformed by the wonder of her visual experience. I live in hope that one day I will be blessed in a similar fashion and that my face too will shine with the miracle of seeing God before me.

As to the anomalies in the conversations I have sent you so far, you are quite right, of course. It has been a source of considerable puzzlement, not only to us researchers aboard the
RV Seadrift,
but to numerous Kellish traders and missionaries who have been dealing with the islanders much longer then we have. What are we to make of people who talk of magic as though it was something with which they themselves have had intimate contact; what are we to believe when people speak of the Dustel Islands existing and then not existing; what are we to make of people who all say that the tattoos in their ears were made by a race of alien people that none of Kellish origins has ever seen?

Are Blaze Halfbreed and others of her ilk just congenital liars, who love to weave improbable stories? Or do they believe what they tell us, no matter how unlikely it seems to our ears? Herewith is another packet of conversations; yet more tales of intrigue and, I hope, an insight into a culture that—alas—no longer exists in quite the same form. Partly the fault of Kellish contact, partly the fault of this weird episode in their history, the period they call the Change.

Yes, I have tried so hard to keep an open mind, and not to let my own cultural leanings influence the oral history we have recorded here, but God knows, it is difficult sometimes.

I remain,

Your dutiful nephew,

Shor iso Fabold

One look at Flame drove all thought of my own pain out of my mind. She was fighting what was happening to her, but she was losing the battle. Her arm was a vicious red, swollen as far as the elbow, the skin stretched hot and taut. And yet it lacked any signs of putrefaction that a dunmagic death sore would have caused by then, and she did not seem to be suffering much pain. It was fear her eyes held, not pain; so much fear I could hardly bear to meet them.

Ransom clutched at my arm the moment I entered the room; the wretched man always seemed to be clinging to me. ‘Where have you
been?
Don’t you
know
how she’s been suffering? Why weren’t you
here?
The Keepers wouldn’t listen to me!

How could you go off and leave her?’

It was Tor who soothed him, leaving me free to go to Flame. She did not reproach me but her muttered words seared anyway. ‘The bad grows inside me,’ she said. ‘I begin to hate— I think awful things about everyone.’ She looked down at her arm. ‘It’s like this because I’m trying to fight it; once I’ve given in, the swelling will go away. But inside…Oh God,
Blaze
, the inside of me!
Blaze, don’t let me live like this
. Promise me
. If the Keepers fail—’

I scarcely recognised my voice as I gave her the promise. ‘I’ll see you dead before I’ll see you succumb to dunmagic. I swear it.’

‘You kill her and you’ll have
me
to contend with,’ Ransom spat in my direction.

Tor interrupted, voice smooth. ‘We have a sea-pony downstairs. Can you carry Flame down, Noviss? We’ll take her to the
Keeper Fair.’
He touched me on the arm, acknowledging my slim hold over my emotions. Too much had happened that day. I wanted a bath to wash away the contamination, I wanted to be held and cosseted, I wanted to feel safe.

Instead we took Flame to the Keeper ship.

When Tor and I had returned to
The Drunken Plaice
from the beach, I had insisted that he not be seen with me. Once we had reached the first of Gorthan Docks’ houses, I had made him walk back to the inn by himself. Now, too, he slipped away by himself to the docks. It was the only way I knew to keep him safe, but we both knew it was a fragile safety at best. I hadn’t wanted him to go to the
Keeper Fair
with us at all, but he insisted, probably because he knew how close to collapse I was, how much in need of his support. He arranged to meet us at the ship while the Holdheir helped me with Flame.

###

The Keeper on shipwatch was a woman with a hooked nose that spoiled the balance of her face. She had woven a sylvspell to replace the offending beak with a cute retroussé and she didn’t like meeting me face to face one little bit. The retroussé was just a silver shadow to my Aware eyes; in fact, if anything, it drew attention to her flaw. And she knew it. She knew who I was and she knew I saw her exactly as nature had made her and she hated it. She was surly and didn’t want to let us on board.

I insisted Syr-sylv Duthrick be consulted, and finally we were allowed up the gangplank. However, the moment we all stood on the deck, Tor and I exchanged startled glances and began to wonder if the Keeper woman had had another reason for keeping us off. Somewhere below us, deep in the ship, something reeked with sylvmagic warding. The amount of effort that must have gone into the raising of such wards was extraordinary, and for the life of me I couldn’t think what the ship could be carrying that could possibly warrant such a tangle of protection spells.

We were all shown into the wardroom: Ransom, Flame, Tor and myself. Flame was on her feet, but had to be heavily supported by Ransom. While we waited, the two of them sat down in adjacent chairs. Ransom could hardly keep his eyes off Flame’s arm, which did little to reassure her. Tor stood gazing out of the porthole, thoughtful and unobtrusive. I strolled around to examine the room. It was wood-panelled throughout, with intricately carved cornices on the ceiling, and patterned inlay on the floor. The walls were decorated with oil paintings of Keeper Isles scenery: bucolic scenes of gambolling children, red-cheeked milkmaids and neat haystacks inhabited by impossibly cute mice; or clean cobbled streets filled with impeccably dressed men and their smiling wives, going about their business while their red-cheeked children in spotless pinafores rolled hoops and played with dogs. Somehow it left me with the same feeling I would have had if I eaten a whole jar of honey at one sitting.

Some ten minutes later Duthrick entered, alone, his violet eyes flashing his annoyance. He glanced at Tor and dismissed him from his consideration almost immediately. He had no way of knowing that Tor was one of the Awarefolk, and apparently found nothing in the way the Stragglerman dressed or held himself that might interest a Keeper Councillor. He nodded to Ransom, prepared to be marginally more polite, perhaps because the expensive cloth of Ransom’s coat proclaimed him to have the status of the rich, if nothing else.

I explained what had happened to Flame and he glanced down at her, indifferent to both her fear and her beauty. He cut me short with a brusque, ‘I can see what the matter is, Blaze. I am not blind. And this young man was here earlier today telling it all at great length, although a little incoherently. But as I explained to him, to treat her would require more power than that of any one Keeper.’

‘You have more than one,’ I snapped. ‘Consult them.’

He arched an eyebrow in that intimidating way of his, but after a measured moment of thought, he left us to do as I asked and did not come back for almost an hour. I spent most of that time wondering why I was making an enemy of Duthrick. Was I saltwater mad? What possessed me to be rude to the one person I depended on for so much?

When he returned he was more urbane, but he was still alone.

‘We have discussed the matter at length,’ he said. He looked at Flame, not me. ‘We wish you to know that your cure would cost us dearly. We need our sylvpowers to deal with the dunmagic here; to treat you would be to deplete ourselves, at least temporarily. Nonetheless, we are willing to do it. There is however a payment to be made.’

‘I’ll pay it,’ Ransom said in immediate reaction, and then added hurriedly, ‘if the sum is reasonable.’

‘The price is not one you can pay,’ Duthrick told him. He turned his attention back to Flame. ‘We wish to know where the Castlemaid can be found. That is our price.’

I held my breath. I was sure she would tell, and I could see any chance I had of benefiting from the situation vanishing.

Flame was silent so long that Ransom could not restrain himself. ‘If you know,
tell
him, Flame. He won’t hurt her.’

Flame ignored him and addressed Duthrick. ‘You would have me sell her to you for all time.’

‘We want only what is best for her. She, or her children, will be in a position one day to inherit Cirkase
and
Breth—most people would hardly consider that a burden.’

‘You already have both islandoms under your sway: she would be your pawn forever.’ Sweat beaded along her forehead; her voice was weak but her resolve held.

‘Even if she were never found, we’d still be in a position to influence those islands.’

‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘You need her. If the Bastionlord can’t have her, he’ll not have anyone. And he might blame you for not bringing him the Castlemaid. He has craved her alone of all women, ever since he glimpsed her without her veil at Cirkasecastle last year. She’s the only one he could ever bring himself to breed from; his interests normally lie in other directions. Besides, if he has no heir of his own get, the line will fall to his much younger cousin—and his cousin does not favour Keepers. Without the Castlemaid, you’ll definitely lose influence over Breth Island eventually. With her, you’ll have the Bastionlord’s gratitude and cooperation for as long as he lives.’

Was that enough to explain Keeper interest in the Castlemaid? I doubted it. Besides, there was a tenseness underneath Duthrick’s bland urbanity that told me there was more to it than that.

Duthrick continued, still addressing Flame, ‘All that can hardly matter to you. Anyway, you are a sylvtalent. You know us—you are of our kind. We do not use our talents for evil as the dunmagickers do. Our influence is not to be
dreaded.’
He managed to sound both hurt and bewildered.

Flame, however, was implacable. ‘Castlemaid Lyssal matters to me. She does not want to wed the Bastionlord. She also glimpsed
him,
you see, and he wasn’t veiled either.’

God, I thought, she can still joke.

Duthrick looked amazed. ‘You would rather be subverted to dunmagic than tell me where she is?’

She looked him straight in the eye with unself-conscious dignity. ‘No. That I will never allow.’ I tried to intervene, to stop the words I knew she was going to utter, the words that would condemn her, but she continued to hold Duthrick’s gaze and never saw the warning look I threw her. She said, ‘But I
would
rather die.’

Duthrick pulled himself up, as regal and forbidding as only he knew how to be. ‘Then die.’

His callousness made me draw breath sharply, even though I had sensed it was coming. If he thought he would eventually have to deal with yet another dunmaster, he might have considered curing her before she succumbed; but if she was going to kill herself, then he had nothing to lose by refusing her. She hadn’t seen the trap; she lacked my guile and understanding of what other people could be.

Duthrick didn’t leave the matter there either. He said, ‘Don’t think the death of the dunmaster will free you from the subversion spell. It won’t. Not unless he dies very soon indeed. Once you are a dunmagicker, you will be a dunmagicker for all time. Of your own volition.’

I wondered if he was lying, but then decided he was not. It made sense; subverted sylvs would not want to change back to what they had been, because they would now
be
dunmagickers, and dunmagickers hated sylvs. So—if the dunmaster died—they would use their own dunmagic to make sure they stayed the way they were. A self-perpetuating perversion. That subversion spell was diabolical.

Ransom, for once, was silenced. It was Tor who spoke. ‘There is nothing to be gained here,’ he said softly to me. ‘Neither Flame nor the Syr-sylv will ever change their minds.’ He nodded at Ransom. ‘Help Flame out.’

Dumbly, Ransom obeyed and Tor followed. Just before he left, he turned to look at me. ‘Some prices are too high,’ he said. I couldn’t decide whether he was offering me the words as an explanation or a warning.

I stayed behind. I felt flayed. My heart had contracted into a hard and painful gall in the middle of my chest. I knew how to save Flame—but she didn’t want to be saved at that price. Haven’t I had enough pain for today? I raged to myself. Must it go on and on?

‘How can you do this?’ I asked Duthrick, in my pain unable to do more than whisper; the feeling of betrayal was almost more than I could bear. ‘It is inhuman.’

He shrugged. ‘It’s your fault. You should have had the Castlemaid in your hands by now.’

‘And if I had, you would have cured Flame without a price?’

He shrugged. ‘Perhaps. But what I said was true: we do not want to deplete our powers just now.’

Bitterness twisted in me, tightening the gall. I knew I’d never be the same again after this day; the guilt would last forever. I made my decision, and blanked out the alternative so that I could go on living with what I did. I didn’t tell him what I knew, and Flame paid a terrible price.

I changed the subject. ‘Do you know about the village of dunmasters to the west of here?’

‘Of course.’

‘Ah, yes. Of course. And don’t tell me—you will deal with it.’

‘That’s right.’

‘There’s enough power there to turn the lot of you into creatures like Flame, the corruption corroding your souls and your bodies until you either kill yourselves or succumb.’

‘We will prevail.’

‘I hope you are right, Syr-sylv. I really do. But let me give you a warning: the dunmaster, the one who is responsible for all this, has put you at the top of his list of people to be dealt with first.’ Of course, it was unlikely that the dunmaster would take my naming of Duthrick too seriously when he heard it from Domino; I had only done it because the Syr-sylv was the one person I could think of who might just have sufficient protection to keep himself safe—reasonably safe, anyway—from a powerful dunmaster. From Morthred, if it was Morthred.

Duthrick looked at me uneasily. ‘How do you know that?’

I grinned. ‘I told him to. More or less.’

It was as good an exit line as any and I turned to walk out of the cabin—but he had to have the last word.

‘Blaze,’ he called after me. ‘What we have warded below: it is physically guarded as well.’

I stopped and looked back. He’d read my next move as if I were an open book, and had aborted it before I could even plan it. ‘Damn you, Duthrick,’ I said quietly. ‘Damn you to the Trench below.’

###