Ison of the Isles (16 page)

When she was gone, he went over to look at the clothes she had brought. They were loose, wrap-around body cloaks made of grey silk, in layers that could each be removed in one dramatic motion. He would look like a sham Grey Man in them—which was doubtless the purpose, to gild him with the Lashnura nimbus, to show that he was to be reshaped in their image. Fine as the raiment was, he could not imagine wearing it without feeling like a blatant fraud.

Restlessly he paced over to the other window, the one looking out on the cloister and the Isonstone. There was a line of people waiting to pass by it, as there had been for days now. Harg watched as a father lifted his child up to touch the scar where the stone had been chipped. He had heard that pieces of the chip were selling for exaggerated prices in the city. A risky investment, he thought. After today they might be worthless.

In the past six hundred years, sixteen men and women had struck the stone and become Ison, and four more had tried and perished. He wondered what they had felt. Had they been filled with the great missions before them, too full for doubt? Had their nobility of soul sustained them? Or had they all been as abject as he?

By early afternoon the Isonsquare was packed, the bleachers full, and still no one came to fetch him. The day dragged by, the sun skimmed the western hills, and the crowd grew restless, for everyone in the Isles knew the ceremony had to start before sundown. Harg paced his room in a state of tension that grew more corrosive with each minute.

The square had fallen into shadow but the sunlight still lit the tops of the buildings when Harg could stand it no more. Leaving his room, he went downstairs to the main door that opened onto the cloister. A cluster of young Lashnurai were in the hallway around it, talking tensely. No one in authority was present. As Harg arrived, there was a thunderous pounding on the door. Outside it, men’s voices were raised demandingly. One of the Lashnurai peered out a window and said in a strained voice, “It’s a troop of armed men.”

Just then, Agave arrived. “Bar the door,” she ordered. “They must not come in here.”

“Stop,” Harg countermanded. He turned to Agave, feeling calm for the first time all day. “Don’t trouble yourself, Namenda. I’ll handle it.”

“You!” she said. “It’s you they’re after.”

“Which is why I’m best to handle it,” Harg said.

“No. It’s not safe—”

Harg didn’t wait to hear her argument. He went over to the door and stepped out.

There were perhaps twenty men gathered outside the door. They were Adaina, armed with clubs and cutlasses. They stood there dumbfounded to see him in front of them. Harg followed his first impulse. He laughed.

“Quite an army you’ve got here for hunting a one-eyed bird like me,” he said. “Maybe you’d better haul up some cannons. Did you think I was going to fly away?”

The men lowered their weapons. “Not now you’re not,” one of them said.

“Not now, not ever,” Harg said. “Why, what would I do? Sneak off into hiding while you and the Innings race to find me first? How am I going to hide with this kind of a face?” His voice veered between wry and bitter.

The men were all looking to the one who appeared to be their leader. He glanced around as if to reassure himself they hadn’t behaved like fools. “Your time’s almost up,” he said. “There’s no Heir of Gilgen here.”

“Yes, I’ve noticed that,” Harg said. “Listen, put away your weapons before someone gets hurt. I’ll go wherever you want, and wait with you till the sun sets.”

“Out into the Isonsquare,” the leader commanded.

“Whatever you want.”

They fell in, surrounding him in a tight knot, and started marching out through the gate into the tight-packed crowd. There was a roar of anticipation when people saw Harg appear, and the men around him had to push and jostle their way forward to the wooden dais set up in the centre of the square. When they reached it, they formed a cordon around the steps that led up to the platform. Unwilling to climb them before the time came, Harg sat down on the third step. From here he could see down the Stonepath to the harbour, where the sun was still hovering above the horizon. It would be about half an hour till evening came.

He felt strangely detached, even relieved that there would be no more choices for him to make. From the number of weapons he could see, it appeared that a good share of the audience had come expecting to see him unmasked as a tool of the Mundua and Ashwin.

“Were the bookmakers taking bets on this?” he asked the man nearest him. It was a stupid question, as the man’s expression let him know. “What were the odds, do you know?”

“They were about even till noon, then they started running against.”

“Did any of you make a wager?”

They mostly wouldn’t look at him, but one dark, heavyset man scowled belligerently. “I did,” he said. “I bet against. No one could have beat the Innings without unholy help.”

“Oh, it just seems that way till you know how we did it,” Harg said. “They’re really not that hard to beat.” So he started telling them stories to pass the time. He tried to keep the tone light, as if it had all been nick-of-time victories and pluck over power. As he talked, he kept one eye on his audience and the other on the sinking sun.

As the edge of the sun’s disk touched the horizon, a gust of wind blew in off the sea. Some men came forward to light a pile of wood that had been set up for a bonfire, their torches streaming out in the wind. “Looks like they’re planning on a barbecue,” Harg said with a grim smile. He felt a quiver of nervousness in his chest. As the fire flared up, the faces of the surrounding buildings shifted in the flamelight, and the windows winked. Harg looked over at Tiarch’s house. The shutters were all closed, the rooms dark. She was not seated in the spot reserved for her on the stands, either. Tiarch had withdrawn from this battle, just as the Lashnurai had. He was on his own now. As he always had been.

The thought passed through Harg’s mind of how like Goth it was to decide everything simply by not being here when he was needed.

He stood up. He had only meant to stretch his legs, but everyone took it for a signal. The guard closed in around him, and a stir passed through the crowd, as the people carrying bludgeons pushed to the fore, and the ones with children began to leave.

Over by the Pavilion gate, there was a stir. Some people were shouting to hold off. Then the crowd parted and in the waning light Harg saw a column of tall, grey-clad figures emerge from the gate, coming across the square, Namenda Agave at their head. The Adaina melted back before the Lashnura. Where a moment before, armed men had circled him, now a picket of shadowy grey figures took up position.

“What are you here for?” he said to Agave.

In a ringing voice pitched for all the multitude to hear, she answered, “Harg Ismol, we have come to summon you to dhota-nur.”

As she said the last word, the sun slipped below the horizon.

*

Half an hour before sunset, Spaeth had been forced to take matters into her own hands.

When she entered the room she and Nathaway shared, carrying a closed tin canister, he was standing at the window looking out on the Isonsquare. She put the canister on the bedside table, then went over to him, putting her arms around him from behind and resting her head against his shoulder. His whole body was strung tight, rejecting what was going on.

He took her hands in his and raised them to his mouth to kiss them. “Let’s leave here,” he said. “Let’s go back to Fluminos. I don’t care if they arrest me; it’s better just to get it over with. I can’t stand being here any more, not if . . .” He didn’t finish, but they both knew what was going to happen in the Isonsquare at sunset if no one intervened. His sense of injustice was so strong, it was corroding him from inside. He was responsible for the miscarriage, but it wasn’t in his power to correct it.

“Come away from the window,” she said. “You’re just torturing yourself.”

He let her lead him over to the bed, where he sat on the edge. “Lie down,” she said.

“No. I can’t.”

“All right.” She knelt on the bed behind him to massage his tense shoulders.

He was being pulled apart, his Inningness separating from whatever it was in him that Goth had seen and judged fit to waken. She had watched him carefully over the past few weeks, trying to discern it. At times, he seemed no different—just as stubborn and obtuse, just as
Inning
as ever. But in other ways he was wearing well, like a shoe that had pinched a little at first, and was now beginning to fit her perfectly.

The thought gave her a pang of regret. They had become so good together. He was bound to her like a float to a net; he would always be there to buoy her, to lift her head above the water. This time, she felt perfectly confident she would not be abandoned. She trusted him to the roots of her being.

And now, she had to betray him.

He was relaxing a little as she kneaded his back, so she began to rub his tight jaw muscles and neck. At last he consented to lie back on the bed, and she rubbed his temples soothingly. His eyes drifted shut, so she reached over to open the tin canister Auster had given her and took out the sharp-smelling piece of cloth inside. She leaned forward to kiss him lingeringly on the lips, then clamped the cloth down firmly over his nose and mouth.

His eyes came open and he clutched at her arm, but he didn’t struggle or try to resist. The drug worked fast, as Auster had promised. His last expression was one of such pained disappointment that Spaeth’s resolve wavered; but then his eyes lost focus and his muscles relaxed as consciousness left him.

She kept the cloth on his face for several seconds to make sure he would not waken, then returned it to the canister. She unbuttoned his shirt and took the green pendant from where it rested against his chest, slipping it over his head and placing it around her own neck. For a moment she sat, steeling herself for the next step. A sound from the crowd in the Isonsquare outside called her back. The sun was almost setting.

Locking the room behind her, she raced down the steps to the door. Agave was waiting there, surrounded by students and staff. “Do you have it?” she asked tensely.

Spaeth showed her the tablet. “Yes. He finally gave it to me.” She said it so no one would know that a conspiracy was unfolding. On Agave’s part, it was a conspiracy to preserve the power of the Lashnura. On Spaeth’s, it was simpler: to save Harg, even if she had to do it with a desperate deception.

Agave led the way out. Across the cloister they all passed, through the Pavilion gate. Ahead, the Isonsquare was a shifting sea of windblown torches. Rising in its centre was an empty stage, luridly lit by a roaring bonfire. At first it seemed as if the press of the crowd would block their way, but the people parted and a path appeared to the steps of the wooden platform. It was like walking down a long tunnel of faces.

They arrived. In a ringing voice, Agave spoke the ritual words and stepped aside for Spaeth. Swept forward by her own impetuous momentum, Spaeth seized Harg by the hand, mounted the steps, and led him up on the stage. As they came into view of all, a sound passed through the crowd: not so much a cheer as a huge collective sigh. It was like a wind blowing, lifting her. The platform made her feel raised very high up above the crowd. The sound was different here, somehow muffled. She could see them all, the whole firelit mass of faces, turned to her. It never entered her mind that they would not adore her.

“I am Spaeth Dobrin,” she announced, and her voice echoed from the faces of the buildings. “Goran, son of Listor, created me. I am of his flesh. I have come to you bearing the Emerald Tablet of Gilgen.”

She held it up then, turning in a circle so all of them could see it dangling from her hand. The sound that rose then was like thunder, battering against them, reverberating off the front of the Pavilion. For a moment it seemed as if the building itself spoke, and Spaeth listened with a sudden apprehension that it would expose her as a fraud and a thief. She looked up at the window where the real Heir of Gilgen lay unconscious on the bed. But the sound died to a mutter without an accusation.

“I have come here tonight because the balances of the world are in peril,” she went on. “Someone must act to set them right. I call upon you all to witness dhota-nur.”

In the noise that followed her words, she turned to really look at Harg for the first time. Up to now, Agave had not allowed her to see him, and she was shocked by the change. It was not just the eye patch and the livid scar seaming his cheek. His whole mora had matured, grown deeper, as if all the pain of the Isles had come to dwell in his body, in his scarred face. She still felt the sharp stir of attraction he had woken in her before; but now it was mixed with a dawning fear that this was more than she could handle.

Agave had come up onto the platform, carrying a bundle, and now grasped her arm to steady her. “Remember what I told you,” the Grey Lady whispered in Spaeth’s ear. “Don’t take on too much. Do what you can, but save some strength for the end; it is the most dangerous part. Remember, if it comes to the worst, it is better he should suffer than you. You will not feel that way once you are in him, but keep saying it to yourself.”

The reminder helped Spaeth steady her resolve. It was not really dhota-nur she had come for; it was a sham to convince the crowd. She needed to do only enough to bind him to her. Had anyone ever undertaken such a dangerous bluff as this?

Without another word, Agave unwrapped the worn red velvet casing and held out a black glass knife. “It is the one your grandfather used,” she said. “We took it from the reliquary this afternoon.” Her eyes strayed to Harg, then pulled away. He looked tense as an over-tight spring.

As Spaeth took the knife, she heard the crowd stir. But before using it, she turned to Harg. “You will need to take off your coat and shirt,” she said.

He didn’t move. Agave said to him, “Remember what I told you. You no longer belong to yourself. You belong to the people of the Isles. Your body has become a symbol of that sacred bond, and symbols must be seen. Tonight, all the Isles will come to dwell in you, and what you feel, so will they.”