The Aware (The Isles of Glory Book 1) (32 page)

The idea that came to me was born of desperation and exhaustion. I was killing people who didn’t deserve to die, and I couldn’t stand it any more. ‘Why are you doing this?’ I shouted at him. ‘It’s not me who’s destroying your village and your people! It’s the Keepers out there!’ I pointed to where the Keeper ships were now silhouettes against the darkening sea of evening. The bombardment had not resumed, but I didn’t draw his attention to that. ‘Why don’t you turn your dunmagic on
them?
Or are you so weak that you can’t sink a couple of ships? You, who once sank the Dustel islands under Deep-Sea? What’s the matter with you, Morthred? I thought you were supposed to be the greatest of all dunmasters!’ And so on. That kind of taunting drivel wouldn’t have worked with anyone with the slightest sense, but Morthred wasn’t sensible. Clever, yes. Cunning, yes. Sensible, no, not when he saw all he’d worked for slipping away between his fingers. Not when he saw the sylvs he had worked so hard to subvert dying around him. His madness controlled him now.

He did what I suggested. He shouted for another couple of ex-sylvs to attack me, then turned from me to fling what he had at the Keeper ships.

And I went cold. What if the Keepers didn’t have the ships properly warded? They
were
warded, I knew that. I could see the filigree of sylv blue that stretched from mast top to waterline, but what if it wasn’t enough? What if I was wrong about just how much power Morthred had at his disposal? If I had miscalculated, then Flame and the Keepers could very well die. The fact that three fingers had reverted to their previously deformed state was hardly overwhelming evidence that Morthred had over-extended himself by his profligate use of power. I was gambling with other people’s lives. If I’d had more time to think, I would never have provoked him. I would never have risked killing so many people, Flame among them, on the basis of so little evidence. I wake up sometimes at night even now, in a cold sweat, just thinking about the chance I took. And wondering: did I do it just to save myself? Perhaps. I don’t know. When you’re scared and tired…

I didn’t see all that happened. I was still fighting. But I saw enough: the swell of red-brown that brightened to crimson, the way the colour enveloped Morthred, then the stream of foul, stinking light that ripped from him and shot across the water towards the ships like wind-driven flames in a forest fire. He was doing what no ordinary dunmagicker or sylvtalent could do: sending his magic away from his immediate vicinity, attacking from a distance. In growing horror, I watched and remembered that it had been a week’s sail from one end of the Dustels to the other, and he had submerged all of them at once…

Distracted, I was slightly wounded in the arm by one of the ex-sylvs and had to drag my eyes away from the Keeper ships back to my own fight. I killed one of my opponents and concentrated on the other, telling myself that unlike the slaves, these ex-sylvs were better dead.

This last man was a fine swordsman and only the advantage of a Calmenter sword kept me alive. He attacked in quick bursts, then disengaged when I managed to parry, so that the fight was a series of short engagements. Each attack was different, and sooner or later he was going to find one that I didn’t know how to counter. I was tiring badly by then.

But luck ran against him; he stumbled over the body of one of the slaves I had killed. It was all the advantage I needed to slip under his guard and send the blade into his heart.

I looked back at Morthred—and found him gone.

I ran down the middle of the street. It was almost dark but I could see him. He was a reddish silhouette against the darkness of the buildings, a scuttling figure that dragged a lame leg and dripped the blood-coloured remains of his spell behind him like the slime-trail of a sea-pony. I pounded after him.

As I ran, I spared another glance at the Keeper ships; they were still there, thanks be, although I was appalled to see that the
Keeper Fair
seemed to have lost its foremast and the other had a sail on fire. Morthred’s power had indeed been enough to penetrate their shields. Even as I watched, Keeper sailors cut away the burning canvas and it dropped harmlessly into the sea. My gamble had paid off, but only just. One part of me had not really thought Morthred’s spell would even reach the ships. I started to shake with reaction. It had been so
close
. If Morthred had had just a shade more control—

###

If I had been less tired, I might have caught Morthred. As it was, I had several wounds and all my muscles seemed to be screaming their fatigue.

The dunmaster left the village to the east, running into the dunes close to the beach. I thought I might have him trapped, as I recalled there was an inlet in there, close to where I had been tortured. I was right, but Morthred knew what he was doing. By the time I had struggled up to the top of the dune that overlooked the small bay, he was on his way. Someone had been waiting for him there at the edge of the water with a laden sea-pony: a short man. Domino? As the sea-pony swam out into the ocean with the two men on its back, I saw Morthred’s features lit by his own dunmagic. The right side of his face was no longer as handsome as it had been; some of the features seemed to have run together as if they had been melted into one another. I felt a surge of triumph rise up through my defeat: in his madness he had indeed made the same mistake a second time, just as I had hoped. He had over-extended himself and, once he had realised that, he’d been forced to flee. Of course, this setback was nothing compared to what he had done to himself when he had submerged the Dustel Islands, but it would be a while before he’d be strong enough to challenge the Isles of Glory again. Or so I hoped.

I stood watching as the sea-pony disappeared into the gloom with its burden. My sense of victory dissipated, leaving behind a discontent, a sense of having unfinished business.

I turned and limped back through the dunes to the village.

There were Keepers there everywhere now: unsubverted ones. And what they were doing wasn’t pretty. They were scouring the place for dunmagickers, real and subverted, and when they found then, they killed them. All the dunmagickers capable of doing so fought back of course; I could see splashes of dunmagic and sylvpower flaring in isolated spots around the village or in the dunes. The Keepers weren’t having it all their own way and some of them died.

One of the first sylvs I saw was Mallani, the pregnant woman who had come to see me about her baby. I stared at her in shock. She was huge, and she looked tired. ‘In the name of all the islands,’ I said, ‘What are you doing here? This is dangerous! You should be resting.’

‘Duthrick said I had to come,’ she said, and her voice dragged with fear. ‘If I am in Council service, then a pregnancy should make no difference. Service comes first…’

‘That’s utter eel-slime,’ I told her. I was as wild as a fish on a hook. ‘There’s too much stinking crimson shit around here—you’ll expose your unborn child. There are still plenty of dunmagickers. I’m getting you back to the ship now.’ I looked around, and saw Duthrick was in the main street, directing his underlings, his long aristocratic face without expression, or compassion.

I marched up to him, dragging the protesting Mallani behind me.

He spoke before I could, a brisk, ‘Do you know what happened to the dunmaster?’

I told him and he looked seaward, but it was completely dark now. There was no point in sending a ship after Morthred. The Councillor’s lips tightened into a hard line. ‘Another failure, halfbreed,’ he said. ‘If he gets back to the Docks, he can force a ship to take him elsewhere. You have not distinguished yourself in this whole matter.’

I shrugged indifferently. His disapproval had no more power to hurt or disconcert me. He would never make me feel like a half-grown adolescent again. ‘How’s Flame?’ I asked, still grasping Mallani’s wrist so that she couldn’t walk away.

‘Recovering. We have rid her of the spell. It hadn’t spread much. She will, I trust, be grateful enough to tell me where to find the Castlemaid. This is the second time we’ve saved her, after all.’

I didn’t like his chances. I blessed Ransom; God knows what arguments he had used, but they had persuaded Duthrick.

‘You look weak,’ he continued. ‘The
Keeper Fair
is sailing back to Gorthan Docks shortly, with our wounded. Why don’t you go with them? Go down to the beach, and tell the men on the boat there that I said you were to be taken on board.’ Doubtless it wasn’t concern for me that prompted such compassion; he still thought I might help him extract the information he wanted from Flame. He hadn’t cared much if I’d been killed during his bombardment of Creed, but seeing I had survived, he thought he may as well keep me healthy enough to be of use.

I glanced past his shoulder. I could see Tor in the distance, still administering to some of the slaves. Ex-slaves now, I supposed, or they would be once the spells wore off. I doubted that the magic in them had been of too permanent a kind; that would have involved too much expenditure of power.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think I will. Tell Ryder I’ve gone, will you?’ But I was so tired I didn’t care whether Tor knew or not. ‘Oh, and I’m taking this foolish child with me,’ I added, indicating Mallani. ‘She didn’t want to be left out of things, but I’ve told her you wouldn’t be happy to have a pregnant sylv exposed to all this dunmagic.’

I nodded amiably and turned away before he could reply. Mallani had to run to catch up.

‘You’re
sneaky,’
she said. A child’s word, but she wasn’t a child. She was a woman about to have a baby.

I felt old enough to be her grandmother. ‘That’s right.’

‘I don’t think he likes you very much.’

‘I don’t think he likes me at all,’ I said.

Extract from a letter to Masterman M. iso Kipswon, President of the Royal Society for the Scientific, Anthropological and Ethnographical Study of non-Kellish peoples.

Dated this day 10th/1
st
Darkmoon / 1793

Dear Uncle,

Thank you for your comments on the packet of Blaze Halfbreed’s recollections that I sent you last week.

In view of several of your remarks, I thought you may be interested to know that much later we did visit the village of Creed. We found it utterly deserted. In fact, we had trouble finding a guide in Gorthan Docks who would actually take us there. It was described variously as a bad place, a haunted graveyard, a home to evil spirits and a place where the Sea Devil spawns his young. We finally prevailed on a Kellish aetherial-level priest doing missionary work in Gorthan Docks (the Docks is still a place in need of salvation!) to show us the village. He himself thought Creed was a place that was spiritually dead and therefore not to be visited lightly.

We found it in a state of dereliction, although it was possible to see the scene as it had first appeared to Blaze: the crushed blue shell paths, the white shell buildings. Many of these latter appeared to have been blasted with cannon fire, just as she described. In fact we found some of the cannon balls! We dug out one of the larger buildings and actually came across the oblivion she described. It was all an interesting confirmation of her story.

Of course, in the papers I sent you, she relates events which took place over fifty years ago (did I tell you she is now over eighty?) and we have to make allowances for poor memory as well as her tendency to romanticise the past. Combine that with the innately superstitious nature of these island peoples, and you have this story of good and evil and magic.

You wanted to know more about Blaze as she is now. —Well, she is still magnificent. Tall, ramrod-straight in spite of the rheumatism that obviously attacks her joints from time to time if the way in which she rises from a chair is anything to go by. I guess she could still best be summed up as formidable. It is very easy to believe that she did indeed do the kinds of things she describes. I made the mistake of once hinting that I didn’t believe in dunmagic and sylvmagic. She was amused, and made a point of mocking me at every turn ever afterwards, with a decidedly wicked gleam in her eye.

She would say things like, ‘You won’t believe this, of course, but…’ Or, ‘I then imagined that Morthred flung a spell…’ Needless to say, I edited these comments out of the interviews!

I know, Uncle, that you will say it is my own fault, for I broke one of the golden rules of scientific ethnographical studies: I showed disrespect for local beliefs, and I therefore deserved all the mockery I received! Certainly I learned from Blaze a salutary lesson about field work. She is still a feisty lady. Sometimes I look at my sisters with their needlepoint and fashion magazines, and wonder what she would think of them if she met them. I suspect: not much. She has not mellowed with age. And there is an enormous sword, which is kept well oiled, over the fireplace…

I enclose the next set of Conversations for your perusal. I am almost finished the text of the next talk, and isi Doth has been kind enough to prepare the magic- lantern slides based on the drawings made by the botanist-artist, young Trekon. I have included a drawing of Blaze—or rather, of how she may have looked when she was about thirty.

I look forward to seeing you next week at the Society’s meeting.

Aunt Rosris will be delighted to hear that I am escorting Miss Anyara isi Teron to the meeting, and that I will not have need of accommodation with your good selves—I shall be spending a day or two with Anyara’s family at their town house. It is just around the corner from the Royal Society, in Second Moon Crescent.

I remain,

Your respectful nephew,

Shor