The Aware (The Isles of Glory Book 1) (31 page)

He opened his mouth to refuse.

Behind me someone said, ‘I suggest you do as she asks.’ I turned, to find Ransom standing there. He was pale, but determined. ‘You will find me grateful, Syr-sylv.’

The promise of his words was clear and I could see Duthrick thinking them over. To have the future Holdlord of Bethany further indebted to the Keeper Isles was not a possibility to be passed over lightly. The Councillor stared hard at the Holdheir, then looked back at me, and finally nodded. He gave the signal to his men and the firing stopped. A flag signal went up to the other ship as well. The noise had somehow turned the world upside-down, so that now the ensuing silence seemed deafening.

‘I’ll come with you on the boat,’ Ransom said to me. ‘And I’ll wait for you on the beach.’

I nodded, too surprised and worn-out to feel gratitude. It was the first time he had shown real courage; his need of Flame was giving him backbone, it seemed. In the boat on the way to shore, he asked me if she was all right. He was trying to sound calm, but his voice shook.

‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘I think the dunmagicker has placed another subversion spell in her. If he has, you’re going to have to persuade Duthrick to let some of his sylvs use their powers to save her before it spreads. She won’t give them what they want to know, not now, so you’ll have to press Duthrick to heal her anyway. It won’t be easy.’

He nodded, his lips closed tight in a way that boded ill for Duthrick if he didn’t help. It appeared that Ransom was beginning to grow up.

I bent over so that I could speak in his ear without being overheard by any of the six sylvs who were rowing the boat. ‘What are those terrible things the Keepers are using against Creed?’

He answered in a whisper, pleased to be able to show off his knowledge to me. ‘They call them cannon-guns. They put a flame to some black powder inside the barrel and it sort of bursts out.’ He looked puzzled. ‘I don’t really understand how. Anyway, the bursting blows a stone ball down the tube and through the air.’

I looked from the ship to the shore. ‘All that way across the sea to Creed? And can mere stone balls do
that
much damage?’ It seemed an unlikely story, not that I could think of a better explanation.

‘Some of the, um, projectiles are made of metal and they are filled with the same black powder, or something similar. And some of them have metal nails inside as well. They burst when they hit the target.’

‘Burst?’

‘That’s what Duthrick told me. They sort of explode, just as the seed pods of jump-beans explode when left in the sun. Only these things spew forth fire and smoke and nails, as well as the metal that encased them. They do a lot of damage.’ He shuddered slightly as he looked back at the ship. The mouths of the cannon-guns all seemed to be pointing in our direction.

‘What is this black powder?’

‘I don’t know. They won’t talk about it, but I do know where they get it, or perhaps where they get some of the ingredients in it: Breth. I overheard some of the sylvs talking.’

Breth. Black powder that made cannon-guns bark and throw things. Cannon-guns so important that the Keepers kept them secret and wrapped up in sylvmagic as though they were the state treasure. Cannon-guns so powerful they could flatten buildings many, many paces away. Cannon-guns and power. The Keepers desperate to give the Castlemaid to the Breth Bastionlord to keep him happy, against all rules of decency.

Everything fell into place.

I knew now why the Keepers wanted the Castlemaid so badly.

###

I left Ransom in the boat on the beach, together with the sylvs who had rowed us across. I didn’t doubt that if there was any threat whatsoever to the Holdheir, he would be rowed back to the
Keeper Fair
promptly, whether or not he wanted to go—and I would be left to fend for myself.

I didn’t know what to expect as I approached the village. The
Keeper Fair
had continued its bombardment as we rowed in and this had kept people under cover, but true to Duthrick’s word, the shooting stopped again the moment I disembarked. I approached the village cautiously, choosing an inconspicuous route through the empty cockle trays stacked in rows between the beach and the first of the houses. Ruarth flew ahead of me, leading the way.

‘Do you know where she is?’ I asked him.

He perched on a cockle box long enough to shake his head.

‘In that case, we’ll split up. If you find her, come and get me.’ When we reached the first street, I pointed to the right. ‘I’ll go this way.’ He nodded and flew off.

The place was a mess. So many of the lovely white buildings were wrecked, with holes through roofs and walls. Some houses were on fire. There were wounded everywhere, and several bodies as well, most of them slaves. The air was full of shell-dust and feathers, the latter being all that remained of someone’s wader flock. Slaves were aimlessly rushing this way and that; dunmagickers, real and subverted, were giving contradictory orders. No one took any notice of me. I suppose I didn’t look too different from most of the slaves: my hair was salt-matted, my clothes torn, my face ravaged with fatigue and worry. I was barefoot too, but that didn’t worry me. I’d spent much of my life without shoes.

I grabbed a slave who didn’t seem to be doing anything. I had to harden myself just to touch him; the dunmagic bonds that kept him subservient were foul enough to have me gagging. ‘What’s happening?’ I asked.

He wrung his hands. ‘I don’t know! The buildings fell down! They say the Master is under that one—’ He pointed at the building that contained the torture room.

I was far from elated. Tor was probably also in that building. ‘Where’s the Stragglerman with Awareness? And the Cirkasian sylv?’

The slave didn’t know and began to look at me suspiciously, so I left him. I knew that none of the slaves had any will to help me; quite the reverse. If I aroused suspicion, they would tell the nearest dunmaster.

I sniffed the air, looking for traces of sylvmagic, not so easy when the place was saturated with its opposite. When I couldn’t smell it, I went instead into the dining hall, which was still intact. My sword was still suspended above the throne and it was the work of seconds to have it down and in my hand. I took Tor’s as well. Better yet, away from the people outside, I could smell the sweetness of sylvmagic. It was almost swamped by the dun, but it was there. Flame had to be in the building.

I found Morthred’s living quarters on the other side of the hall. There didn’t seem to be anyone about. I went from room to room, following the sylv scent.

Without Awareness, I would never have found her. She was in a bedroom on the corner of the building, and the corner had been blown away by Duthrick’s damn cannon-guns. The shell blocks of much of the outside wall had disintegrated into white powder and shell-grit; the bottle-glass windows had blown out; the furniture was just so much firewood. Dust hung in the air like stirred-up silt in a wave, and about as breathable. I followed the glimmer of blue.

Underneath all the litter I found Flame.

She was conscious, but shaken. I heaved away some of the debris and gently brushed off the worst of the dust, expecting to find her terribly injured. When I couldn’t find anything broken I was afraid to believe it and examined her again, just to make sure. Then I decided that she was suffering more from the force of the explosion, which must surely have flung her across the room, than from any more obvious injury. She was not, however, entirely unscathed: there was still the harm she had incurred before the building had been hit—at the base of her throat there was an angry red patch of dunmagic contagion.

She was beginning to collect herself and smiled weakly at me, but her eyes didn’t reflect anything that resembled amusement.

I knelt there beside her, my throat tied up in knots. I couldn’t believe how brave she had been, how much she had been willing to do to save Tor and me.

It was a while before I found my voice. ‘Of all the crazy, barnacle-skulled
idiots
—do you think I pulled you out of his stinking scarlet shit once, just to have you walk back in?
Deliberately?’

‘It was worth a try. Duthrick wouldn’t help. I did try… But he said he couldn’t attack immediately. So I came myself.’

‘God, Flame!’ I helped her to sit up, supporting her as she swayed. ‘Look where it’s got you—and we can hardly amputate this time. Unless you have a hankering to carry your head under your arm instead of on top of your neck.’

‘You wouldn’t have had much fun in bed with Tor next time around if I hadn’t come. Allow me that much.’

‘They’ve probably done it all to him anyway.’ Terrified I was right, I was ungracious.

She shook her head. The bleakness in her was wrenching. ‘No. Morthred is waiting for me to do it—of my own accord—once this subversion takes full effect. He loved telling me that. His idea of fun. Tor’s still intact somewhere.’

My relief was intense. ‘You don’t know where?’

She shook her head.

I helped her to her feet. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I think so. A little confused. What happened?’

‘I’ll explain later. Right now I’m taking you to the Keepers.’ I gestured at the new sore on her body. ‘Ransom will put pressure on them to use their magic to stop that.’

There was a gleam of hope within her. ‘Will they do it this time?’

‘They’d better, or I’ll carve them up personally. Starting with Duthrick,’ I said grimly. ‘I’m
through
with asking nicely. Anyway, let’s get out of here.’

‘Oh, but I can’t! Morthred’s warded me again.’

I gave a chuckle. ‘He must have put one of his wards in the corner. It’s not there any more.’ I waved a hand at the ruins of the wall. There were a few lines of dunspell red flickering aimlessly in the gap, but they had no strength or purpose.

‘It’s gone?’ she asked, hardly able to believe it. ‘Just like that?’

‘Apparently. Believe me, Flame, there’s nothing there to stop you walking through that hole in the wall. Let’s go.’ I took her arm and helped her across the wreckage of the room to the gap. But when I peered out I saw a dunmagicker standing nearby giving orders to some slaves. I drew my head back in. ‘We’ll have to wait a moment,’ I said.

‘What’s happening here anyway? What’s all the noise? Where’s Morthred?’

‘Trapped under one of the ruined buildings apparently. The Keepers are attacking. Ask Ransom to explain the details.’

‘What about Tor?’

‘I shall try to find him.’ I remembered the collapsed buildings and wondered if he was still alive anyway. My hope bottomed as quickly as it had crested.

‘I can help—’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. You can hardly stand up straight.’ I was having trouble doing that myself, but at least I hadn’t been half-buried under a wall and I didn’t have a poisonous dunmagic sore eating away at me. ‘You’ve got to get that spell fixed as soon as possible. The smaller it is, the less energy has to be expended to cure it, and the more inclined Duthrick will be to allow someone to fix it.’ I sounded as snappish as an irritated crab, so I softened the tone a little and added, ‘Flame, you’ve done enough. It’s my turn now. All I’ve been doing so far is sitting around in a variety of prisons playing with my toes.’ I touched her hair gently. ‘You’ve been through quite enough.’

Her glance darted involuntarily to what remained of the bed.

I added, ‘Nothing can touch what you are inside—nothing. Unless you let it.’

‘Yes. I know. You showed me that. Although…it’s hard.’

I nodded. She slipped her hand into mine, and we gazed at each other in understanding, trying not to remember things that were better forgotten. A chirping from beyond the hole brought us back to the present. ‘Ruarth!’ she cried and he came to perch on her shoulder.

I turned away as her fair head bent towards him and he spoke to her. I didn’t need to understand the language to see that this wasn’t a moment for a third person.

There was a crash nearby as a burning house collapsed in on itself. I looked out once more, and found the street clear. ‘Come on,’ I said.

Flame and I crawled out through the gap in the wall, Ruarth fluttered out behind us and we all headed for the beach; in the confusion, no one took any notice of us.

I took Flame to the boat and left her in Ransom’s care. When I told the Holdheir I wasn’t coming back to the ship, he shrugged indifferently; it was one of the Keepers who pointed out what I already knew: ‘The Syr-Councillor will resume the bombardment of the village as soon as he sees the Cirkasian is safe.’

I nodded. ‘I wouldn’t have expected anything else of him.’ My sarcasm was probably lost on the man; those Keeper sylvs all thought Duthrick could do no wrong.

No sooner had I returned to Creed, than the situation changed yet again. Morthred’s acolytes had managed to find their master and they were now pulling him out from under the wreckage that had trapped him. And he wasn’t hurt. In fact, by the way he was seething at his dunmagickers, it seemed that he’d had to do most of his own rescuing, using his own powers.

Hidden behind some rubble, I watched from a distance. He stood up, rather shakily, and some trembling slaves brushed off the shell dust that covered him. He was already barking orders and dunmagic billowed forth in his rage. I couldn’t help feeling that the bastard had divine protection.

I kept out of sight and debated what to do.

I listened as he shouted at those around him. One of the ex-sylvs had apparently pointed out the Keeper ships and explained that it seemed they were to blame. Not surprisingly, Morthred put the damage down to some kind of sylvmagic, although (like me) he really ought have known better. As I have said before, sylvmagic has no destructive power.

I have to admit that he had the situation summed up in an instant. He spent a moment looking at the ships, frowning, while I wondered—heart in mouth—whether he had regained enough power to simply blast them out of the water. After all, this was the dunmaster who had sunk the Dustel Islands under the Deep-Sea. But perhaps he remembered the result of that, because he turned away and began to give orders for Creed to be abandoned. It seemed he was cutting his losses. I waited to hear if he mentioned Tor or Flame or me, but we were apparently not on his list of priorities. He ordered slaves to pack up the things he viewed as valuable, and in the midst of all that chaos, I saw some women rolling up bolts of Yebaan silk inside Mekaté wool carpets, and others carrying a carved sea chest inlaid with mother-of-pearl. When a jewellery box was dropped, a cascade of whale-ivory necklaces strung with amber spilled out.

While the packing was being done, Morthred sent several dunmagickers to scout out the perimeters of the village, to find out what opposition was hidden in the dunes, and he told several others to find a way to get to Gorthan Docks so that they could place spells on a couple of ship’s captains. The man didn’t bother to ask or pay for what he wanted: he took. He needed transport, and he would get it his way. Or he would try. Whether the dunmagickers would be able to pass the sylvs gathered in the dunes was another matter.

I didn’t hear any more; Morthred moved away into one of the buildings.

I dithered, wondering how in all the islands I was going to find Tor. I couldn’t home in on him the way I had done with Flame.

After a little thought, I decided that the best method would be the most direct. I hid the two swords, then singled out one of the real dunmagickers, one I couldn’t remember having seen before, and approached him with the same subservient sidle that the slaves always used. ‘Syr-dunmaster sir, the Syr-master has told me to see if the Stragglerman, the one with Awareness, is still alive, but I don’t know where he is…’

The dunmagicker didn’t even glance at me. I was a slave, and not worthy of attention. He gave a dry laugh. ‘You’ll be lucky to find him—he was trussed up in the torture room.’ He indicated the remains of the building behind us and walked on.

I retrieved the swords and went to investigate. In the end, it wasn’t difficult to find Tor. It was only the upper part of the building that had collapsed. The underground part, where he had been, was almost undamaged. I slipped in through one of the ground level windows and dropped down into the torture room. Tor was stretched out on the table, his arms and legs bound in leather thongs, but someone was there before me, working on his bonds.

It was an old man, painfully thin, with a blue-tinged cadaverous face that hinted at the imminence of his death, and a beard that looked like frayed sun-bleached rope. He was shabbily dressed in black, smelled bad, and although he wasn’t wearing the chain and pendant of the Menod, I thought that must be his allegiance.

‘Alain,’ I said. I might have known that the patriarch wouldn’t stay hidden once the Keepers started flattening Creed.

He nodded, his smile strained. ‘And you must be Blaze. You are very much as I imagined you. Ah, you have a sword. Can you cut these bonds? I have been unable to untie them.’

I approached the table reluctantly, knowing I was afraid to see what they had done to Tor.

But he was grinning at me, that rare grin that lit his face and showed me that he could still laugh at life, that he wasn’t always weighed down with the seriousness of it all. ‘Ah, love, maybe you can tell us both what in heaven’s name is happening? Alain here maintains that this is God’s punishment for dunmagic evil; my thoughts are more prosaic. I feel that the God does not usually indulge Himself with such abrupt expressions of disapproval, as much as He would probably like to.’

I explained briefly as I cut the leather and Tor rolled off the table. He took it almost casually, and he made the same connections that I had. ‘So that explains the Keeper interest in the Castlemaid, eh? And I see you’ve brought my sword. Good. You’d better tell me some other time just why you look like you’ve been shipwrecked.’ He touched my cheek in tender concern. ‘Where’s Flame?’

‘With the Keepers. But Eylsa’s dead, as you probably saw.’

I didn’t get any further. There was a far off rumble, and a second later the ground shook nearby. Duthrick hadn’t waited very long before restarting his bombardment. He’d delayed until he’d seen Flame, but he’d obviously put no great faith in my ability to produce the Castlemaid.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ Tor suggested equably.

We pushed Alain out of the window ahead of us and once outside, we scuttled away towards the edge of the village. ‘If we leave Creed through the dunes, we may be shot by Duthrick’s archers,’ I warned, shouting. The noise of the guns was distant enough, but the village was full of screaming people, falling masonry, thuds—I felt the whole world had gone mad. ‘Shall we swim to the
Keeper Fair
?’ I asked.

‘I’d never make it—’ Alain began. I glanced back at him, and then, suddenly, he wasn’t there any more. He was cartwheeling through the air, tossed by something unseen, a ragdoll. A split second later Tor and I were flung backwards by a blast of air and dust, as helpless as butterflies in a winter’s gale. For a moment I stayed where I was on the ground, winded, paralysed with shock. It was Tor who ran to Alain, who knelt at his side, who took the old man’s hand as he looked up with surprise etched in every wrinkle of his face.

‘He’s dead,’ Tor said blankly. ‘Just like that.’ He turned distressed eyes to me. ‘What sort of weapon is this, Blaze?’ He didn’t expect an answer; he wasn’t wanting technicalities, but a reason, and he knew I had none to give.

I staggered to my feet, trying not to look at Alain. It sickened me. He didn’t have any legs any more. He didn’t have anything left below the pelvis.

‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ I said.

‘I want to say the prayer for the dead, for Alain.’

I was incredulous. ‘Tor, the world is breaking into dust around us, and you want to
pray?’

‘It would mean a lot to him,’ he said simply.

‘Tor—he’s
dead!’

‘Blaze, there was a time when Alain and I were very close. I must do this for him.’

I threw up my hands. ‘God preserve me from idiots!’ I wanted to be angry, but I kept on seeing myself with Eylsa’s body in my arms. I know now that humans are never rational where death is concerned; it is the time when we come face to face with our own fragile mortality…

I peered around the corner of the nearest building and looked into hell. The bombardment of Creed was crushing it. People were dying: slaves (many of them still so young), dunmagickers, ex-sylvs. When I looked behind me, out towards the sand dunes, I could see slaves running, carrying baggage, only to be cut down under crossbow fire. Sylv silver arced along the dunes in lacy curtains between twisting ward pillars of silver-blue. I thought I caught a glimpse of Morthred blasting dunmagic at one of the wards. Crimson met silver and intermingled in a clash of light and sparks; I could not tell if the ward succumbed or not. I glanced out over the ocean: the two ships, confident of the lack of retaliation, had actually moved in closer to shore. They were raining their death on us, not caring who it was they killed.

A slave collapsed at my feet, blood trickling down his face. I stood there, shaking, outraged. It was the slaves who were suffering the most. Caught in dunmagic spells, they had no sense of self-preservation. They wouldn’t even take shelter, but worked on, trying to do what they had been ordered to do. I felt impotent. I wanted to fight—but I didn’t know who to battle.

Then Tor was at my side again, still ignoring the danger, seeing only the carnage. ‘God damn them,’ he said softly. ‘God damn them all.’ I wasn’t sure whether he meant the Keepers or the dunmagickers; perhaps he meant both. He bent down to the slave at my feet. Then he began to drag the man into the shelter of a nearby wall. ‘Blaze,’ he said, ‘I can’t leave. These people don’t have anyone to help them. Some of them are bleeding to death for the want of a little attention—they never hurt anyone.’

I wanted to scream at him:
They aren’t our business!
Hadn’t we been through enough? I wanted to rest. I was sick of it all.

He didn’t even seem to notice my hesitation. He had shoved his sword through his belt and now he moved on to another slave, a woman sprawled in the middle of the street with her tattered skirt rucked up over her head. Silence—of a kind—suddenly cloaked us. The rumble of the cannon guns ceased, along with the corresponding crunch of buildings being hit. The screaming faded and stopped. There was a crackle of flames nearby, a low moaning from a nearby house, the heart-rending whimpering of a girl—that was all. Tor didn’t seem to notice the change. ‘Blaze, do you know where we can find some water?’

‘I’ll get some,’ I said numbly. I didn’t want to stay. I didn’t have Tor’s compassion. I’d been surrounded by the poor and downtrodden all my life and I’d learned that if you wanted to survive you had to fight, not stay and be a martyr. I didn’t want to die in this madhouse of death and dunmagic. And yet I couldn’t leave. Not when Tor was still there.

And so I stayed.

I never did get his water to him, though. I found a well, filled a bucket and was on my way back when I came face to face with Morthred and several subverted Keeper sylvs. Morthred was unarmed, but the Keepers weren’t. Morthred couldn’t believe it was me at first. When he did, he was so enraged he forgot I had Awareness and flung a spell at me. It was a horrible thing, alive with malevolence. It shattered harmlessly against my shoulder, but I felt its evil. When he realised his mistake, he waved his ex-sylvs on to me and I was fighting for my life in a savage clash of sword on sword, a furious onslaught of cut and thrust that was going to exhaust me if it went on too long. It was all I could do to parry and parry again.

It was really Morthred who won the fight for me. Almost insane with anger, he kept on throwing his spells into the fray, as if he could wear down the protection my Awareness gave me; instead, he confused and weakened the ex-sylvs when some of the dunmagic rebounded from me onto them. When they faltered I moved in and killed them as cleanly as I could.

Then I turned back to Morthred and what I saw in his face shook me even more. I recognised there the beginnings of the kind of thing that he must have unleashed on the Dustels: his face glowed red with power, but the power was warped with madness and, as yet, only in its infancy. It had been a diabolical insanity that had made the impossible possible a hundred years before; left alone I knew he would one day have recourse to that kind of power again.

I went for him with my sword, but he was too quick for me. A passing slave was coerced with a spell and the man threw himself between me and Morthred, clawing insanely at me with his hands, trying to rip the flesh from my body with his fingers alone. I tried to ward him off with my blade, but he had been maddened by the spell. When I accidentally slashed his arm he hardly seemed to notice. He fell to the ground and attacked me with his teeth. I kicked him, hard, under the chin, and he was out of it. But it made no difference—that man was followed by another, sucked in by the magic, drawn to death on my blade. And all the while, Morthred watched, dashing this way and that, shouting encouragement to the men, and women, he lured to me. He knew what he was doing. He could have coerced twenty of them to fall on me at the same time so that I was overwhelmed by numbers alone, but he didn’t want it that way. Even in the middle of the bedlam that was Creed just then, he wanted me to suffer. He knew I hated what I was doing. He saw the desperate ways I tried to avoid killing and maiming—and he laughed.

All I could think of was that while Tor was saving lives, I was taking them.

And then I noticed Morthred’s hand, his left hand. The three fingers he had were curled into a deformed twist, y
et a moment before they had been straight.
I sought to make sense of that, even while I fought off his slaves. What did the old stories say about Morthred the Mad? He had over-extended himself, used too much power and thus been hopelessly weakened. And I had myself thought that it was the uncontrolled release of his own power that had deformed him, twisted his body…just as those three fingers were now gnarled.
He was weakening himself.