Tales of Noreela 04: The Island (41 page)

“Weapons,” Kel said. “We need to go house to house, Chief, and tell people to prepare. The Komadians are not here to help us, they’re here to …” To what? What could he tell the proud, ignorant Chief Eildan that would make him believe?

“To what?”

“Invade,” Kel said. “Form a beachhead.”

“And help is on its way?”

“I hope so.”

“How do you—”

“Chief,” Kel said, “I have to go. Many more homes to visit.” Eildan was not used to being interrupted, and he stood up straight, ready to berate.

Kel walked past him and continued along the path.

“Kel Boon?” the Chief called after him, his voice suddenly very small.

Kel turned around.

“Have you seen my wife?”

“No, Chief,” Kel said. “Maybe she’s already made it out.” He turned and walked away before he could see the hope in Eildan’s eyes turn to doubt.

NAMIOR WAS STANDING
outside her house when Kel returned. She saw him emerge from the shadows with the thing still wrapped in his jacket, and a moment of panic seized her.
I’ve been cured by magic from that place, so does that make me closer to whatever he carries?

Kel paused before her, and she could tell that he was holding his breath. He looked exhausted and afraid, but his main concern right then was her.

“She told me,” Namior said.

“And?”

“And I came out here to wait for you.”

“Does your mother know?”

“She says not.” Namior looked down at her hands, clasped
before her stomach and twisting together. If she separated them, she was afraid that she’d hit something. So many lies, but she did not know where or how to begin considering them.

“Namior, she made you better,” Kel said.

“I know.”

“She says she feels as Noreelan as any of us.”

“Yes, I know.” She looked up, feeling a brief and irrational anger at him for trying to defend the woman.
She’s lied to us all these years… and maybe her crazes are a result of the pain of lying, rather than old age
.

“She’s going to help us, then we can—”

“I don’t care, Kel.” And she truly did not. The waves, the floods, the deaths, the island, the Stranger Kel had fought and killed, all of them had been terrible and terrifying, and yet when her great-grandmother revealed her secret, Namior’s world had fallen apart. “I’m not Noreelan.”

“Of course you are!” He came closer, lowering the bundle and resting it on the ground between his feet. He reached for her, but Namior lifted her hands, ready to push him back.

“I have Komadian blood in my veins,” she said. “You can’t deny that. And you
know
what we saw out there! Those things, not
human.”

“But
she’s
human.”

“No, Kel. She told me about the curse, and the Elders who survived it. Wherever her body might have been taken from, her heart and mind were Komadian, and even her blood’s been turned that way. I don’t see how anything can change that.” She pointed at the thing wrapped in Kel’s jacket. “She was one of
those.”

“Maybe,” Kel said. “But it doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t
matter?”
She could barely speak, so heavy was the weight of what she had just discovered. And the heft of that knowledge crushed her, because she could not consider telling her mother, exposing her, denying her history. “How can you
say
that? You’ve lied to me, and now she has too, and what of everyone else? Am I the only one who really knows
who I am?” It was foolish, Namior knew that, an overreaction; but many things she had taken for granted were no more. Waiting for Kel, she had been trying to work out what proportion Noreelan she was, and what proportion Komadian. She felt tainted.

“She says she’s all Noreelan and against the invaders, and I trust her.”

“Why?”

“Because once out of her craze, she’s only tried to help. And she cured you.” Kel sighed and came closer, leaning against the wall of the house beside her. “While you were unconscious, I tried to get out of the valley to send a message to the Core. I was caught and … I killed some of them.”

“Those Strangers?”

“Some of the others, too.”

“Who were they?”

Kel seemed to pause, and she saw his haunted look as he stared up at the starry sky. “Just Komadians,” he said. “So they’ll be looking for me. And if she wasn’t completely on our side, she’d have turned us in by now.”

“She knows what you did?”

“Some. But come in with me now. This will be the proof.” Kel lifted the crystal and walked past Namior, reaching for the front door with his other hand.

“Kel!” Namior said, too loud. “No!” But he had already opened the door, and as he went inside, Namior heard her great-grandmother’s hoarse voice mutter something. And the old woman began to cry.

YOU HAVE TO
wake your mother,” Kel said. “Everyone has to go.”

Namior stood inside, looking around the room. Her great-grandmother was sitting on a floor cushion, staring wide-eyed at the thing Kel had put uncovered on the floor before her.
Its strange colors were muted in the poor light. She was still crying.

“Namior?” Kel said.

Her great-grandmother looked up at her. “Do as he says. I know how I can help you, now.”

“How?” Kel asked.

The old woman looked at the crystal again. “Where did you find this?”

“The island, of course,” Namior said.

“Where
on the island?”

“By the coast,” Kel said. “There were thirty there, maybe more.”

“You’ll have to draw me a map. Komadia changes.”

“What do you know?” Namior asked. She could not keep the anger from her voice, and her great-grandmother glanced up a with very old, very sad face.
She knows it can never be the same again
, Namior thought, and she felt a sudden, intense sense of loss for the love that had changed between them.

“These things only survive on certain parts of the island. Something about the ground they grow on; something that seeps up from below.” She leaned closer and looked at the crystal, the dark swirls and shapes inside, the dull surface, sharp edges and the glimmer of something deeper. She was shaking as if in pain. “Unknown centuries I was trapped. I knew existence, and the passage of time… like one long craze.” She reached out and almost touched the crystal. “I wonder who this is?”

“They’re destroying our village,” Namior spat, “stealing our
bodies!”

“Never pity your enemy,” Kel said, and the old woman glared up at him.

“I’ll smash it,” Namior said. She darted at Kel and reached for his sword, determined to swipe down at the crystal and break it open, casting out the sick thing trapped inside. But Kel caught her hand and held her, staring at her but talking to the old woman.

“How do we get it out of the village?” he asked.

“That?” the woman said, pointing at the crystal. And she shook her head. “I have no idea.”

“You said you could help,” Namior said. She looked at her great-grandmother, and she saw someone else. She remembered old times—myth singing, storytelling, the woman teaching her to cook biscuits and longgrass pie—and she could no longer associate such good feelings with the wretched old woman sitting before her. That unbearable sense of loss hit home again, and she almost went to her. But she did not know whether she would hug, or hit.

“And I will,” the woman said. And Namior realized that the old woman felt the same sense of loss. “Namior …”

Namior looked away. She caught Kel’s eye, and he glanced back at the old woman.

“Yes?” Namior said.

“Just because I’m from somewhere else, that doesn’t mean I’m not me.”

Namior fought it hard, but she began to cry. There was a warmth in her chest that could have been left over from her injury, or perhaps it was grief, and she clasped her hands before it.

“I love you more than you probably believe,” the woman said, “and my deceit has no bearing on that.”

“Not for you, maybe,” Namior whispered, and it sounded cruel. She looked down at her feet and heard the rustle of clothing.

When Namior looked up again, her great-grandmother was standing by the door, holding the handle. In her other hand she carried the blue metal box, and a trail of steam issued from it and rose in the dimly lit room.

The old woman smiled. Namior could feel Kel’s gaze upon her, the heat burning in her chest where her life had been saved. And it was a lifetime of love that helped her smile back.

With a contented sigh the old woman opened the door
and stepped outside. “Join me, Kel Boon,” she said. Then she closed the door gently behind her.

“Where is she going?” Namior asked.

“To help,” Kel said.

“How?”

“I don’t know. But I suspect we’ll find out soon.”

Namior sank down next to the groundstone and reached out, touching the cool surface, feeling and sensing nothing at all.

“She saved my life,” she whispered.

“Namior, wake your mother. We need to leave. I have to meet the Core before they come in, and—”

“And that thing?” She looked at the crystal and wondered who it was and what history it possessed. Did it carry the memories of lost loved ones? Had it spent so many centuries mourning those it knew might be dead?
Never pity your enemy
, Kel had said, and search though she did, she could feel no pity inside her for the trapped thing.

“I’ll hand it to the Core,” he said. “They have witches.”

“I’m a witch.”

Kel looked at her, and his silence asked,
Would you like to touch it, know it?

Namior stood and stroked the groundstone one last time.
I’ll be back
, she thought.
When all this is over I’ll be back, and I’ll talk with magic again
. She held back more tears but felt empty inside. “What do I tell my mother?” she said, looking up at the ceiling.

“The truth.”

Namior met Kel’s gaze. “You need to go to her now.”

“I won’t be long. Wake your mother, prepare her. We’ll try to get out of the valley, head for the stockade I left earlier, with luck the Komadians won’t have noticed what happened there yet. And if they haven’t, that should give us a clear path up onto the plains.”

“And if they have found out?”

“Then we go another way.”

Namior watched him leave and close the door. She climbed the staircase and stood for a while at the top, absorbing the changed feel of the house. It was uneven, upset, and the realization hit her with a thump that she would never see her great-grandmother again.

“Yes, I love you,” she whispered to the still air, too late. And then she went to wake her mother.

NAMIOR’S GREAT-GRANDMOTHER WAS
waiting for him in the shadow of the house. For a beat he feared her, but when he drew close he saw that she was only the little old lady he had known. The craze had faded, yes; but the fear in her eye remained.

“I must get to Komadia,” she said. “Help me find a way. And tell me where on its coastline you saw the crystal field.”

“You can help from there?”

“Perhaps I can limit the loss.”

“Then I’ll come with you. I know a way, and I can—”

“No.” The woman’s voice sounded different—stronger—and Kel caught his breath.

“But you’ll never make it there alone.”

“Perhaps, but you can’t be risked. After this, you might be the most important person in Noreela.” Her voice softened, and when she reached out for his face, he let her touch him. “And for my sweet Namior, you already are.”

He told her about the beached boat, and where they had come across the crystal field, and when the woman turned to leave Kel reached out and held her shoulder. He could not remember ever touching her before. Beneath the clothing, he felt her bones.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

She began to cry. Real, wrenching tears that shook her shoulders and stuck in her throat. She looked past Kel at the
house, up at the window of her granddaughter’s room, then higher at Namior’s window.

I need to know
, Kel thought, but she was crying so hard that she could barely speak. She shrugged off his hand and left, walking into the shadows until the only evidence of her ever having been there were her echoing sobs.

Kel thought to go after her. But then the door behind him opened, and Namior’s pale face appeared. He went to her and held her close.

“Mother doesn’t believe me,” she said. “And she’s not leaving.”

NAMIOR’S MOTHER SIMPLY
shook her head at Kel, which had been her first reaction when Namior had told her the story. “The Core? I’ve heard of it. Its purpose is a myth. They’re murderers and drug dealers, not protectors of Noreela. And you, Kel, a soldier? Carrying those weapons doesn’t make you one. As for my grandmother being someone from…beyond Noreela? None of it makes sense, and none of it is true.”

“If you had magic—” Kel began, but Namior’s mother snapped in quickly.

“But we don’t, do we?”

“And why do you think that is?”

“Kel?” Namior asked.

He sighed. “We have a little time.”

What is she doing? What did she tell Kel out there?
But it was not the time to ask. Namior raised her chin, indicating that he should go back outside. He sighed and did so, pulling the door to behind him but not closing it completely.

She turned to her mother again, desperate, frustrated and fearing for her more and more. “You
have
to believe me,” she said. “You
have
to believe Kel. Look at that.” She pointed to
the crystal, unveiled on the floor between them. “Does that look like anything Noreelan?”

“He’s poisoned your mind,” her mother said. She looked down at the crystal. “So you’ve been out to the island and stolen something that might be precious to them …”

“They almost killed me, Mother! Yet look at me now.”

Her mother looked away, and Namior felt like reaching out and shaking sense into her. Was she really so scared? Did she know more than she could possibly imagine admitting to?