Tales of Noreela 04: The Island (51 page)

Kel?
Namior stood, legs still weak, and she saw him immediately, walking up the slope to their right. He came slowly,
pausing every few steps to look around in shock and wonder. It seemed that he had not yet seen them.

“Kel!” she shouted. Kel paused, startled.

Namior stood and ran down the slope, leaping over a fallen tree, feet rustling through burnt heathers. “Oh, Kel, I thought I’d lost you!” He looked beaten and confused, covered with wounds and blood, and as she wrapped her arms about him, his legs gave out.

“Namior, I thought …” Dry, wracking sobs finished the sentence for him.

“I’ve got you, I’ll hold you.” She appraised his wounds even as she kissed his swollen lips.

“We’re still alive,” he whispered, managing a dry chuckle.

“The Core is here,” Namior said. “Come with me. Away from here, we have each other, and we can go away, now.”

He struggled to his feet again with Namior helping him, and she wondered just how badly he had been hurt. As they walked up the slope and approached the two Core, she felt him dragging some more, finally holding back.

The two women and the man stared at each other, Core past and present, and as yet they were too far away to hear each other speak.

I WAS GOING
to ask you to be my wife,” Kel said softly. He heard Namior’s sharp intake of breath. “When I gave you the sculpture, the cliff hawk, but it’s gone now, it’s …”

“It’s somewhere else,” Namior said. “It could be anywhere.” There was wonder in her voice, and an undercurrent of fear. That was good. They all needed to be afraid.

Pelly and U’Nam stared at them, and Kel could tell nothing from their stances. He could make out the terrible scars on Pelly’s face, and he remembered the sound her slingshot had made as its weight impacted her cheek. He heard the
confused excitement in the children’s voices, and the stench of blood as Rok took a knife in his throat. When he blinked he saw the brightness of the Stranger’s demise, not the darkness behind his eyelids, and O’Peeria was screaming at him to kill her, because she knew what was to come.

“… away from here,” Namior was saying.

“What?”

“That’s when we can talk, when we’re away. It’s just too … strange, right now, Kel.”

I asked her to marry me
, he thought. And something inside him smiled. His head throbbed, his wounds were blazing, and he felt Pelly’s stare cutting into him to add one more. But with the island gone, he had a future.
They
had a future.

“Help me walk,” he said. “I need to talk with them.”

Namior helped him walk up the slight incline. As they approached the two Core, Pelly’s pained voice emerged from the background grumble of the wounded land. “Five years I’ve nursed this scar and blamed you, Kel Boon. I think back now, and I can’t remember
why.”

“Hello, Pelly,” Kel said. He nodded down at her smashed leg. “Namior can heal that.”

“I’m chewing fledge and aker root. Can’t feel a thing.”

“You’re the deserter,” U’Nam said, and Kel looked at her sharply. Any Shantasi reminded him of O’Peeria. “But everything’s changed. I believe we have much to thank you for, Kel Boon.”

He sighed as Namior lowered him to the damp grass. Turning, he looked downhill at the great coastal scar once more, still barely able to comprehend the enormity of what had happened. She sat close beside him, and that felt good.

“Not me,” he said. “Lots of us put up a fight.”

“Some are still alive!” Namior said. “Mother made it out, and Mygrette. Hundreds more.”

“Only hundreds?”

She nodded sadly. “There might be others, perhaps. Up
on the plains, too scared to show themselves.” But they both heard the desperation in that idea.

“Your great-grandmother,” Kel whispered, and he turned so that Pelly and the Shantasi could hear as well. “The island shifted before they were ready. Namior’s great-grandmother, she left Komadia years ago and—”

“Namior’s told us,” U’Nam said.

“Well, she went back. That pit we saw, Namior? On the island? There must have been a mechanism, something to work with their magic and aid in the island’s shifting. I think she returned and initiated it before they were ready. That old woman, fighting through her crazes, rowing out there on her own… she wouldn’t let me go.”

“You were going to?” Namior asked, and Kel looked at her without answering.

“How can you be so sure they didn’t move on purpose?” Pelly asked. She nodded at the hole in Noreela. “Looks to me like they got what they came for.”

“I’m sure because I was with one of them when the lightning began,” he said. “Their emissary, Keera Kashoomie, who came to Pavmouth Breaks and fooled so many. She panicked, fled. Left me with two Strangers who almost killed me, and every moment from when I awoke, to when Namior saw me, I was hoping to find her corpse. But even without that, I know that
we’re
the proof. Me, Namior, the others. I’ll bet they’ve never before left a survivor behind. Noreela knows about Komadia now. The
Core
knows.” He lay back on the grass, leaving that to sink in for all of them.

“She didn’t only save us,” Namior said softly.

“No,” U’Nam said. “She moved things on. Gave us an advantage.”

“It’s not a Blind War anymore,” Kel said. “Next time, we can be ready.”

“But we can’t let
everyone
know,” Pelly said. “Noreela won’t stomach the truth.”

They sat silently for a while, warriors and witch nursing
their own thoughts as nature settled around the land’s new shape.

“She was right about something else,” Kel said at last.

“What?” Namior asked.

And as he looked at her, his vision began to swim.
After this, you might be the most important person in Noreela
. He was not sure he could ever leave Namior behind again.

THEY WALKED UPHILL
together, toward the plains where the survivors from Pavmouth were gathered mourning their town and its dead, letting Core healers tend their physical wounds and knowing that the mental ones would last forever. They maintained a steady silence for a while, but there was something heavy hanging among all four of them.

“That crystal,” U’Nam said at last. “We have to get it to the Core witches.”

“What will they do with it?” Namior asked.

“It’ll be examined,” Pelly said. “Aggressively. See how much more we can find out about those bastards.”

Kel breathed heavily against the pain, but his head was clearing. He saw what he had to do, and knew that there was no other way. But he was terrified to say it. Terrified, because Namior was beside him, and he did not want to drive her away ever again.

But she said it for him.

“You have to go with them, Kel. You’ve been to the island, seen all those
things
out there.” He felt her shiver. “There’s so much you can tell them.”

“But you’ve been, too,” U’Nam said.

“Yes, but …”

“Come with me,” Kel said.

“But I’m not Core.”

U’Nam laughed, and her throaty, strong voice reminded Kel so much of O’Peeria. “After all this, the Core will be
looking for recruits. Pelly’s right, Noreela can’t know, and the survivors… they’ll have to be talked to. Maybe even recruited themselves.”

“Me, in the Core?” Namior asked, as if she had never even considered it. “I’m no fighter.”

“But I’ll bet you’re a good witch,” U’Nam said.

She turned and looked at Kel, and he thought,
Say yes
.

“Yes,” she said.

“And the other thing?” he asked.

Namior shrugged, then smiled. “Show me Noreela, Kel Boon.”

The mist was clearing, the sun was burning through. Kel heard voices ahead of them. And from far beyond those voices, across the plains and rivers and mountain ranges, he heard the wild, amazing places he’d believed he would never see again calling him back.