Isles of the Forsaken Page 4

“No.”

  “Then answer the question yourself.”

  It was true. If Goth had gone forever, he would have left a stone for her to keep his soul.

  “Why should you care about him?” Ridwit asked a little peevishly. “You have me.” She rubbed her sinuous body against Spaeth’s, then jumped down and rolled playfully onto her back in the grass.

  “Because,” Spaeth said softly, “he is my lover and my creator. He is my bandhota.”

  Ridwit twisted around into a crouch, glowering at her. “Oh, you Grey People and your dhota. It makes me sick.” She rose, bits of grass clinging to her fur, and stalked between the stones, into the centre of the ring.

  Spaeth had always known what the Grey Man did. She had often come with him, carrying the tools of dhota, the bowl and the knife. She had sat silent in the shadows, watching as he used them. He had told her about dhota, how it came about and what it meant.

  Oh yes, she had known. She had seen his face chalky and drained after losing too much blood, and held him as he tossed in his bed in the grip of someone else’s pain. She had fed him when his hands were too palsied to lift a spoon. She had seen the feverish longing in his eyes when his bandhotai were too long gone, and the foolish, unjudging love that made him a victim of their ills again and again. He had taken on all the hurts of Yora, little and great, for forty years. It was not healthy or right, but he was as addicted to giving dhota as the Adaina were to receiving it.

  The panther was sitting in the stone circle with the tip of her tail twitching. Spaeth climbed down from the rock to sit beside her.

  “You Grey People have gotten degenerate,” the god said. “Once, you had the power to protect the isles. But you will never use your power again. You don’t care about the world any more. All you think about is giving dhota.”

  “Don’t talk as if I am one of them,” Spaeth said.

  “Goth is Lashnura. He made you from his own flesh. So you are Lashnura. But you’ve never given dhota, so you don’t know. Once you do it, you’ll turn like all the others, soft and sentimental. There won’t be any outside world for you; all you’ll care about is your bandhotai. You’ll just be a slave.” She looked at Spaeth mournfully. “I like you now. I wish you didn’t have to change.”

  “I won’t change!” Spaeth said fiercely. “I’ll never give dhota.” The idea made her horribly uneasy. Goth, wonderful man that he was, was helplessly bound to the tiny community of Yora. Spaeth felt panic at the thought of becoming like him, enslaved by a thousand invisible bonds. She didn’t want to be just an ignorant village dhotamar. She wanted freedom.

  “You all say that,” Ridwit growled. “You all think you’ll stay free. But it only takes one claim, and you change your minds.”

  “If anyone asks, I’ll refuse to do it,” Spaeth said. “I’ll deny their claims.”

  “You won’t be able to,” Ridwit said. “Your ancestors saw to that.”

  Spaeth put her hands over her ears. “I’m not listening to you. I’m not one of them.”

  The cat suddenly stiffened as if a shot had gone through her. In a single contortion of muscle and fur she was crouching between two of the stones with her tail lashing to and fro, her amber gaze directed down the hill. “One of them is coming,” she snarled.

  Startled, Spaeth followed her gaze. A tall, lean figure dressed in a frock coat and broad-brimmed hat was making his way toward the hilltop with a stiff, purposeful stride. Spaeth gazed, transfixed. She had never seen anything like this novelty before. It could only be one thing. “They say the Tornas brought an Inning with them.”

  “Is that what you call them?” Ridwit’s eyes narrowed. “He’s wearing a very ugly body.”

  “I think all Innings look like that.”

  “Didn’t he get enough sun? He grew spindly.”

  Spaeth stroked down the cat’s bristling back fur. “Be still, or you will start a hurricane.” All the world knew it was the lashing of Ridwit’s tail that stirred up the wind.

  “I want a hurricane,” Ridwit said maliciously. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Go north, then, and don’t trouble us. We have enough worries.”

  Ridwit’s keen eyes turned from the approaching figure to Spaeth. “They are our enemies, you know,” she growled low in her throat. “They want to keep me from my kingdom, to tie me in bonds. I hate them. If you bring this one to me, I’ll help you.”

  Spaeth frowned. “What do you want with him?”

  “To feed on his terror.”

  “I can’t do that. You know that.”

  The Inning was at the base of the steep dirt path that led to the Whispering Stones. Ridwit turned to hiss at him with primeval malevolence, then with a single movement stepped out of reality into myth. Where she had been, a dried bush of wild pea rattled in the wind.

  The young man climbing the grassy slope was tall, rawboned, and blond, with an awkward gait and spectacles that gave him a slightly baffled look. He had not yet spied Spaeth, so she crouched to slip away. But curiosity stopped her. She had never seen someone from beyond the isles. And so when he reached the crest of the hill she was perched on one of the granite boulders with her arms around her legs.

  He stopped to catch his breath, leaning on the oak walking-stick he carried. By now Spaeth had remembered what the islanders called him: Nathaway Talley, the Justice of the Peace who had come to teach Yorans about Inning law.

  “Hello,” he said breathlessly.

  “Hello,” Spaeth answered.

  After a tortured pause he said, “I came up here to see the ancient curiosity.” He waved his stick at the stones. “What are they, a fortification?”

  “I don’t think so,” Spaeth said.

  He waited a moment for her to say more, but when she didn’t, he went on, “Are they a holy site, a shrine?”

  “No,” said Spaeth.

  “Is it all right if I look at them?”

  “You have to ask them,” Spaeth said.

  He gave her an odd look, and didn’t follow her advice. Instead, he began to walk around the circle, taking out a small notebook to record the positions of the boulders. He paced out the diameter and circumference of the ring, writing down numbers. Spaeth crouched like a cormorant, watching him. Ridwit was right: he looked uncomfortable in his body, as if it fitted him too loosely. It was a ramshackle assemblage of limbs and defensiveness.

  At last he climbed atop the largest boulder to survey the view. “Granite isn’t native to the South Chain,” he said. “Do you know where the stones came from?”

  “From the north,” Spaeth said, repeating what Ridwit had told her.

  Shading his eyes with one hand, the Inning looked down the steep slopes and ravines between the beaches and the hill. “How did they get up here?”

  “Up the path from Lone Tree Point. The stones came of their own accord.”

  He turned to her with such a sceptical expression that she felt obliged to explain. “The Altans caught the stones in nets and sang them to the surface of the sea. When they reached the land, the stone-fishers danced ahead along the path, and sang so sweetly that the stones came after to hear.”

  “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 m
ake 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.”