Isles of the Forsaken (5 page)

“I see,” Nathaway observed noncommittally, then turned back to the stone he stood on. “They must weigh several tons apiece, but the natives then had no wheeled vehicles, no pulleys, and no ropes strong enough for the task. It must have been an extraordinary feat.”

Since she had already told him how it was done, Spaeth wondered if she were not expressing herself very well, or if perhaps he were a trifle stupid.

He was studying her, though when she looked at him he glanced quickly away. She knew he was curious. “You’re not Adaina, are you?” he said at last.

“No.”

He jumped down from the boulder and came over. Fascination and morbid curiosity mingled in his gaze.

“You’re one of the Grey People. Lash—how do you pronounce it?”

“Just the way it’s said. Lashnura.” She still sat on the boulder, but their eyes were almost on a level.

“Are you the only one on the island?” he asked.

“There was Goth Batra, but he has gone somewhere.”

“So it is your duty to perform the sacrifices?”

She didn’t have the faintest idea what he meant. When she didn’t answer, he grasped her left wrist and turned her arm so he could see the veins. Her grey skin was unblemished. With a pang, she remembered the sight of Goth’s arms, so scarred there was scarcely a place left to cut.

“They haven’t preyed on you,” he said, with evident relief.

Offended, she pulled her arm away. His ignorance cheapened and desecrated the whole idea of dhota. Though only moments ago she had denied it, she now felt a need to defend the custom. “A dhotamar gives willingly, as a gift to those he loves,” she said. “It is a beautiful act, a sacrifice of loving kindness, and Goth is honoured for it.”

The Inning seemed arrested by what she said. He pinned her with startling, earnest blue eyes through his shaggy bangs. “Truly? It is voluntary? You are not forced?”

She wanted to say,
No, a Grey Person is never forced
; but that was only the ideal, not the flawed reality. She had to look away, disconcerted by the strange intensity of his gaze.

Gently, he said, “Well, you don’t need to fear that you will be forced now. The law forbids it.”

The presumption of this statement was seemingly lost on him. Did he really believe that he could come from some faraway land and make a rule forbidding something woven into every strand of Yoran life? It was like saying that eating was now forbidden. “I suppose you think that everyone will obey you,” she said, mocking his certainty.

“Well, yes,” he said, clearly startled by her tone. “It’s not me, it’s the law.”

“Your law has nothing to do with us.”

“Oh, but it does!” The subject seemed to really interest him, because his face suddenly became animated, as if he had forgotten all about himself and his own discomfort, in his zeal to inform her. “The law is the great gift we are bringing to your people; it will benefit you beyond anything else, if you use it wisely.”

Spaeth had always assumed that “law” meant just a batch of rules, but in his face she could read that there was more to it. She had an intuition that, to an Inning, law was like a set of magisterial spells that could be used by learned practitioners to control the behaviour of others. If an islander had claimed such powers, she would have thought him foolish; but this Inning was a very peculiar sort of man, and might have abilities she knew nothing of.

“Are you a lawster?” she asked.

“Lawyer,” he corrected her. “No, I’m just a student of the law.”

Even Goth, a great namora who had powers of creation and curing, never claimed to be more than a student. It now seemed significant to Spaeth that even Ridwit had feared and hated this Inning lawgician.

“Will you take apprentices to learn your law?” Spaeth said.

“Yes!” he said, delighted at her interest.

“Teach me something simple,” she said.

“All right.” He seemed to cast about in his mind. At last he hitched himself up onto the boulder beside her, his long legs dangling.

“In a simple society,” he said, “everyone cooperates for the mutual good. But as society grows complex, it’s necessary to set up rules and procedures to govern disputes, to prevent concentration of power, and to insure equity and promote the general welfare.”

He glanced at her to make sure she was following. She recognized his words as the preamble every tutor of esoteric knowledge used to explain the origins of his powers, and nodded.

Reassured, he continued, “Now, you and your neighbours have been living without law, except your customary practices. This served you well as long as your needs were simple; but now things are going to change, and you need the protection of Inning law. It will be like a shield, a roof over your heads, something you can use to defend yourselves even if someone tries to exploit you or take away your rights. The thing you need to know is that in the Inning lexarchy, everyone is equal under the law: rich or poor, Adaina or Torna, woman or man, young or old. It is the most beautiful and just system ever invented.”

Down at The Jetties there was another explosion. The concussion rolled up the hill.

“So,” Spaeth said slowly, “if we wanted to protect Yora from the Tornas digging their mines and cutting the trees, could we use the law to drive them off?”

Nathaway seemed uncomfortable with this question, from which she knew it was the right one. “Well, yes,” he said, “but you’d have to convince a court the Tornas had done something wrong. At the moment, there is also an obstacle because there are no property titles here. In fact, the real estate records are nonexistent: everyone agrees there are private claims, but there are no deeds, no surveys, no probate records—it’s a complete mess. We have to set up everything from scratch, and in the meantime there is a window of vulnerability.”

His language was incomprehensible, as the language of the arcane often was. “What’s a property title?” Spaeth asked.

“It’s a document, a piece of paper that guarantees your ownership of something, say your home.”

“But we
live
in our homes.”

“Yes, of course, but what if someone dies? What if they want to sell, or get in debt, or there is a dispute?”

“Oh. Then people feud. For generations, sometimes.”

“Well, you see, we can put an end to that.”

Spaeth mulled this over. “You will give us pieces of paper, and then we will all agree?”

“Oh, no. But instead of shooting each other, you can hire lawyers.”

“And they will shoot each other instead?”

“No, they’ll argue before a court.” Ruefully, he added, “For generations, sometimes.”

Spaeth was having a hard time understanding. Seeing her expression, Nathaway said, “Look, the law is all about making sure the world is fair. It’s about seeing that no one feels cheated or unhappy with the way they are treated.”

Even dhota could not cure unhappiness. “Law must be a great and powerful thing, then,” Spaeth said.

“Yes! Yes, it is.”

As he sat beside her, she had been trying to intuit his mora—a thing Goth could have done in an instant, but which she was less practiced at. Mora had no single translation; applied to a person, it meant something like fundamental character, but Spaeth thought of it as a governing
mood
. Her own was joyful and thoughtless; Goth’s was a vast sadness that seemed to encompass all creation. As for Nathaway, there was something yearning about him—a feeling of incompleteness, as if he were homesick for a home he had never known. It felt half spiritual, half sexual, and Spaeth suddenly wondered how such a rigid, angular Inning made love.

“Would you like to have sex with me?” she asked.

He stiffened as if she had slapped him, and a flush crept up his neck to his face. Spaeth had never seen anyone react so strangely. It made her feel defensive. Did he think there was something wrong with her?

What he said was, “I . . . you see . . .that is . . .it’s . . .”

Perhaps he couldn’t do it. Now she was wildly curious, but feared he might have a convulsion if she asked.

“I know your customs are different from ours,” he finally stammered out. “But in my country, we don’t just . . . do it with anyone.”

Spaeth couldn’t resist saying, “Is that one of your laws?”

“Well, yes, in a way. Marriage laws.”

Spaeth stared in disbelief; she had thought it was a joke. “You have
laws
about who to make love to?”

“In a way. You get a marriage license. I’m not explaining this very well.”

Probably he wouldn’t be very good anyway, she decided. Jerky. Awkward. Or maybe methodical, like a machine. She thought of the pile driver the Tornas had set up at The Jetties. Yes, like that. As if he were thinking the same, the Inning twitched nervously.

A new thought struck her. “You’re not expecting us to go to you for a piece of paper every time we want to—”

He interrupted hastily. “Once you understand our ways, you’ll see it’s really better. It protects women, encourages fidelity. Harmony. Commitment.”

The thought of Innings peeking into bedrooms to see who was with whom was too absurd to contemplate. Spaeth slipped off her rock. This conversation’s usefulness had ended.

“Stop!” he called out as she started down the hill. She turned to see what he wanted, but he seemed at a loss for words. “What’s your name?” he asked at last.

“Spaeth.”

“Where do you live?”

“In Yorabay, with Goth.”

“Are you his daughter?”

“No, I’m his lover,” Spaeth said. Then, mocking him, “But we don’t have a license.”

The grass whispered ribald comments around her as she started down the path to the village, and a seagull was laughing somewhere.

Yorabay looked tranquil and idyllic in the morning sun, but Spaeth felt uneasy as she entered it; there were a faint scent of tension in the air. The cottages were nestled back in the trees on either side of the main path. Because it was such a fine day, the shutters and doors were thrown wide, and people were working in their gardens. A dog rushed out from one house to greet Spaeth, and she waved at its owner. When she came abreast of Agath’s house she walked faster, hoping to get by without being seen, but Agath was out splitting firewood, and hailed her.

“Any sign of him?” Agath asked.

Spaeth didn’t have to ask who she meant. She shook her head.

“Did he ever say where he was going, or why?”

“No. But he has to get away from all of you sometimes. You ask too much of him.”

Agath was one who had abused Goth’s gifts. She had claimed dhota again and again, till he was deliriously blind to her faults, unable to refuse her anything. It had galled Spaeth to have to live with his love for such a demanding, bitter woman.

Now, Agath’s face looked strained and pallid, as if years had been added to her burden in just the time Goth had been gone. Her hands, gripping the axe she had been using, looked bony and mottled. “Yes, Goth takes on too much,” she said. “He should let you share his work.”

It was a reproach, very nearly an accusation, and it shocked Spaeth. She wondered how many people had been thinking this, and not saying it. “It’s not why he made me,” she said defensively.

“Yes, I know what he made you for,” Agath said. “But we’ve all got to grow up. Life isn’t all pleasure.”

There was something hungry in her eye that terrified Spaeth, and she took a step back. She had seen that look before, but never directed at her—only at Goth. It made her feel not like a person, not like Spaeth, but like a source of blood.

“I’ll let you know if he comes back,” she said, and turned away. She could feel Agath’s eyes on her back as she hurried on down the road.

After that, she felt watched as she passed the homes on either side—and it was not the secure and protected feeling she had always had. Now, she felt the whole village’s needs and longings following her, pushing her onto a path she didn’t want to take. By the time she reached the home of Strobe the shipwright, opposite the dock at the very heart of Yorabay, she was quivering with nervous tension.

Strobe’s was a rambling, driftwood-grey board house that seemed to be sinking into the grass around it. It was surrounded by the carcasses of half a dozen derelict boats that the shipwright was scavenging for parts. The mossy door was standing open to the sunlight. Spaeth entered the main room, a large, homey kitchen presided over by Tway, Strobe’s daughter. At the moment, Tway was in the midst of canning some vegetables.

They didn’t greet each other; that would have seemed too formal, as if not-welcome were the normal state of things and Tway were making an exception for Spaeth. In fact, normal was people wandering in, sitting for a talk, then going on. Spaeth sat down at the table and helped herself to some nog that stood in a pitcher on the table for everyone.

Tway was a vigorous, solid young woman who wore her fine brown hair cut short just at her jawline. She had not yet married, but few criticized her for it, since she was like everyone’s sister. It took her only a glance to see that Spaeth was upset. “What is it?” she asked.

Spaeth poured out the story of her encounter with Agath. At the end, she said, “Dhota’s supposed to be a gift, not an obligation. It’s supposed to be given freely. I don’t want to be her dhotamar, milked like a cow for blood. I want to be me.”

“You know Agath,” Tway said. She sat down and poured a mug of nog for herself. “Her life is all about blaming other people for her ills. She’s been like that ever since Jory left.”

“But it’s not just Agath!” Spaeth said. “Do you think I don’t see them eyeing me? Do you think I don’t hear the conversations breaking off when I come near? They’re all thinking it, all wanting it. All but me.”

Tway cradled her mug between her hands. “It’s not everyone. There are people on your side, Spaeth. There are some of us who think this has gone far enough. Too far, in fact. I used to think Yora was a blessed island, because we had so many healthy, rugged old people, so full of opinions. But now I see them all getting querulous and peaked, and Goth’s only been gone a couple of weeks.”

Her voice dropped low, and she leaned forward. “He’s been prolonging their lives beyond what’s natural. You know, for seven years no one has died on Yora for any reason other than their own choice. It’s a problem, but we’ve never talked about it, because Goth was always there, always willing.” She gave a little, humourless laugh. “Who would have thought it was such a curse to have a saint in our midst.”