Tales of Noreela 04: The Island (24 page)

The Komadian sighed, eyelids fluttering half-open. Kel flicked his finger at the man’s left eye, and when he did not blink Kel went through his clothing some more. In one deep pocket on the thigh of his trousers there were a few crumbs of fledge, stale and old. His eyes had not seemed tinged with the drug…but then the realization that the man carried something that came from Noreela, but not Pavmouth Breaks, hit Kel hard.

“Fledge,” he said, flicking the crumbs from his fingers.

“So?” Namior asked. Her tone and stance were confrontational. Kel did not look at her, afraid that her eyes would take off the back of his skull.

“So, they’ve visited somewhere else in Noreela.”

“Which is just what their emissary said.”

Kel nodded, then went through the unconscious man’s two shirt pockets. One contained a mass of dried root of some kind, and the other held a few strands of shredded, colored rope. He threw the root to Namior.

“What’s that?” he asked.

She closed her eyes, sniffed the root, and frowned. “I don’t know.”

“Rope charm,” Kel said, turning the rope strands over in his hand. “What’s left of one, anyway.” He nodded at the root. “Keep that.”

“Why?”

“Because we don’t know what it is.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, Kel.” She stared at him, hard and harsh, and his shoulders slumped. The tension was still there, and there was a weight pressing him down as well.

“Please,” he said. “I can’t make your mind up for you, but
I need you to stay with me, for a while at least. Just until I’m sure.”

“Sure of what?”

Kel shrugged. “I really don’t know, Namior. But that thing they’re building back there …” He pointed past her up the hillside, but did not have the chance to say any more. The man at his feet rolled from his back onto his front, elbows rising as he groggily placed his hands against the ground ready to shove.

And then Kel heard the sounds of people coming through the undergrowth.

He dashed to Namior, grabbing her hand and breathing a sigh of relief when she let him lead her toward the cliffs. Once they were out of sight of the fallen man he paused, holding his breath as he listened. Footsteps, the swish of clothing against undergrowth, a few subdued words and a burst of laughter. Whoever was coming had no reason to be cautious.

“Can you try to hide us?” he whispered, mouth pressed close to Namior’s ear.

She nodded and pulled him down into a patch of bracken. From the pocket of her slacks she produced a long ground rod, the metallic sliver all witches used when trying to draw on the magic in the land for some purpose. She slid it into the soil between bracken roots, then clasped one hand around the metal end, holding Kel’s shoulder with her other hand. She closed her eyes and started to chant quietly, and Kel looked away.

They were coming closer. He counted six people at least, making no real effort to keep quiet. And then, hissing through the morning air but barely interrupting their conversation, the gush of steam erupting from a machine.

He looked back to Namior and she was staring at him, panicked.

“It won’t work!” she said.

That was all Kel needed to hear. He glanced around, saw that they were in as much cover as they could hope to find
anywhere close by, and pulled Namior down beside him. “Keep as still as you can.”

He moved only his eyes. He could see too much of the trees above them, too much sky, too many clouds. Even if the Komadians did pass them by without seeing them, as soon as they met their winded and bruised companion the search would be on. Namior’s magic had not worked, and the two of them would have only one way to go: to the cliffs, then back toward Pavmouth Breaks.

They would be trapped.

I should have slit his throat
, he thought, then a shadow fell over him, and he stopped breathing.

NAMIOR STARED DIRECTLY
at Kel, trying not to blink, trying not to breathe, trying not to see this stranger lying before her.

The night before he had given her a gift and they had made love, but only moments ago she’d watched him readying to shove a knife into a man’s back. Now he was lying there before her, staring just past her shoulder at whoever walked by, his jaw clenched and his right hand holding something cool and sharp across her leg.

If we’re seen, he’ll fight
, she thought.
No matter that he found stale fledge in the man’s pocket, and part of a rope charm, which are both things of Noreela. He’s focused on his Strangers
. She blinked and tried to catch his eye, but his own eyes shifted only slightly, following shapes she could not see as they walked by.

The Komadians chatted softly, making no effort to keep quiet. Whatever they were doing there, surely it was of no harm? She heard the soft hiss of a machine venting steam.

Kel’s eyes glittered. She had yet to see him blink.

Namior closed her hand around the ground rod piercing the soil between her and Kel. She shut her eyes and breathed
softly, deeply, inviting the flow of the language of the land through her, but it was barely talking in echoes. It was like listening to someone speaking from a long way off, their words stolen by the breeze, meaning lost to the lazy sunshine bathing the ground between them. She listened harder, but the interference was strong.
It’s never been like this before
, she thought, and that was true. Even as a little girl, when her mother first taught her to commune with the magic in the land, she had been able to sense its flow. Understanding had come later, but magic had always been available to her.

When she opened her eyes again, Kel was looking at her. He put a finger to his lips. Namior nodded.

When Kel slowly sat up and watched the Komadians walking toward the hill, she remained where she was, working the ground rod out of the soil. She ran it between two fingers to clean it off, then slipped it back into the sleeve in her pocket.

Kel leaned over her and pressed his mouth to her ear. So quietly that she could not even feel his breath, he said, “We have to leave now.”

They stood and dashed through the undergrowth, lifting their legs high to avoid making too much noise. After a few beats Namior caught up with Kel and grabbed his arm.

“What did you see?” she whispered.

“Eight of them,” he said, still moving. “And a floating machine I haven’t seen before. It had tubes projecting from it, but they didn’t steam. I think it was a war machine.”

“How can you know that?”

Kel did not answer.

“So what now?”

He held up a hand and they stopped. Kel tilted his head sideways, listening, turning so that he could discern direction.

“What?” Namior asked.

“They’ve stopped walking and talking,” he said. “They’re trying to be quiet now, which means they’ve found him. So we have to go.”

“Where?”

Kel’s eyes darted here and there, and for a moment Namior was afraid he was losing control. She was surprised at how much that worried her. She feared him and what he had done, but somehow he was still very much in charge.
I’m no soldier
, she thought, though she could not hide the sick excitement that had seeded itself deep down.

“The Throats,” he said. “Come on.” They started again, emerging from the small wood and rushing through heathers and bracken toward the area where the first of the holes broke the surface.

“That’s mad!” she said.

“They go down to the beach, yes?”

“Some of them, but no one ever goes in there. You
know
that. You know
why!”

“Dangerous. But not as dangerous as returning to Pavmouth Breaks.”

He’s still set on the island
, she thought. She looked left, past the cliff edge and out to sea, and the island sat there as though it had been there forever.

Someone shouted behind them. Namior did not turn around, afraid of what she would see.

“Here!” Kel slid behind a slight rise in the land and she followed him, skidding down on the gravel and wincing as it scratched her legs.

“Are they coming?” she asked.

Kel lifted himself up, then dropped down again quickly. “Not yet. Maybe they won’t. But they can’t know where we’re going. They see us go down into a drop hole, they can block both ends and send in their machines.”

“By the Black, Kel, can’t we just get back to the village?”

“I need to see for sure,” he said, his voice suddenly calm and full of reason. “They’re not the Strangers I know, but I need to see the island. And you really don’t have to come with me, Namior.”

“I don’t want to go back on my own.”

“Well, you’ve always wanted an adventure.” He actually smiled, and she was amazed to feel herself smiling as well.

“True,” she said. “But I thought of traveling across Noreela to find it.”

“What’s better than an adventure in your own village?” He looked over the small rise again, then nodded. “We can go. Not far to the holes. Do you know which is the best one to go down?”

Like many children of the village, Namior had explored the Throats when she was a child, a mixture of curiosity and dares from other children encouraging her descent. And like most children who went down, she had never gone very far beyond the influence of sunlight. For people from a fishing village, being underground felt similar to being beneath the surface of the waves: it was not a place they were meant to be.

“They all lead down, and I’ve heard they all join up at some point.”

“So let’s go down the closest one to us,” Kel said.

“I’ve never been all the way through.”

“As a friend of mine always said, there’s a first time for everything.”

Namior liked that, but it did little to dispel the frisson of fear. Most children had started down the holes, yes, and few had gone far. But
everyone
in Pavmouth Breaks had heard the stories and rumors. Ancient, angry wraiths, deadly dark-snakes, poisonous fumes from the land’s mysterious innards …

She took one more look at the island. Then Kel stood and ran for the first of the Throats.

Trying not to hear her mother’s voice berating her foolishness, and her great-grandmother’s confused tears, Namior followed.

THE HOLE STARTED
as a bowl-shaped dip in the land. There was a rough path that led into it, worn over time by sheebok and the occasional daring child from the village. All the way down Kel felt horribly exposed, and when the sun was blocked out by the edge of the dip, that feeling only increased. As the hole, and escape, drew closer, the prospect of being discovered grew even more terrible.

The entrance to the Throat was dark and forbidding, sitting in one wall of the dip and curtained with trailing plants spotted with sharp, bright red flowers. Several bird corpses were speared on these hard blooms, their fragile bones a stark white against the petals. A sheebok’s skeleton lay partially
hidden beneath heathers in the bowl’s base, and the ground was soft and boggy. The sun rarely seemed to touch the place.

Namior was standing back, looking at him uncertainly.

“It’s the best way,” he said. “If they
are
looking for us up here and in Pavmouth Breaks, we can be down onto the beach and out to the island before they realize we’ve gone.”

“If we
can find a boat that wasn’t smashed by the waves.”

Kel smiled and nodded, but said nothing. She was right. The chance of finding a seaworthy craft was negligible.

He went first, lifting the undergrowth aside, taking care not to touch the birds’ bodies. A faint smell of the sea wafted from the hole, brine and decay brought up from far below. Beneath that he smelled other things he could not quite identify—a stale spicy must, and something rich and meaty. He took a deep breath and entered the tunnel.

Namior came in behind him, lowering the plant tendrils carefully so that they formed a perfect cover across the tunnel entrance. They shut out a lot of the light, and Kel felt a brief but intense moment of panic.

He breathed deeply, and Namior stood close behind him, her hands on his shoulders. “We’ll need light,” she said. “Have you even thought of that?”

“Of course,” he snapped. Namior stepped away, and Kel sighed. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

“I’m going.” She turned and lifted the trailing plants again, and in the silence between them Kel heard the clatter of hollow bones.

“Namior. Please come with me.” The desperation in his voice was not false, and as he spoke he realized just how lost he felt. All the Core training could not change that, and it was because he had found a home and a love. He had settled, and the first thing the Core did to its members was to make them wanderers—homeless and adrift. “If you leave me here, I’m not sure what I’ll do.”

“You’re the soldier,” she said, but there was no aggression in her voice. “You’re the Core fighter, trained for this.”

“I’ve changed.”

“Looked to me back there that you’ve never changed.”

“Fighting someone is easy,” he said. “Killing, more difficult. But without you, I think I’d only end up fighting myself.”

She looked at him, truly staring, as though she were trying to see inside him, past the surface where lies and inconsistencies could exist and down deep to his soul.

“I might be able to give us some light,” she said at last, and Kel breathed a huge sigh of relief.

He moved on, and a few steps into the tunnel the floor sloped gently into the drop hole, rough stone walls curving down like the insides of some waiting giant’s throat. It looked dark down there, and every few beats there was a breath of stale air, and the sound of something roaring in the distance.

“The sea,” Kel said.

“Maybe.” Namior stood beside him, looking down into the darkness. “Maybe it’s something
before
the sea.”

“Everywhere like this has stories and legends,” he said, realizing with a smile that he was almost whispering. “Maybe adults start them to frighten their children, or maybe children make them up to scare themselves.”

“And what about frightening the adults?”