The Aware (The Isles of Glory Book 1) (26 page)

He was also a well-read, educated man with a fund of knowledge he was always willing to share. I learned much from him about history, politics, trade, treaties: there was no end to his store of facts. I took the opportunity to question him about the fate of the Dustel Islands, for example, and he told a story that I have never forgotten.

The last human Rampartlord of the Dustels had two sons and a quarrelsome archipelago of low-lying coral islands and atolls to rule. In order to maintain order he sent his eldest son, the Rampartheir, to the furthest island to help with the governing. The heir was a sylv called Willrin, and the island, unusually fertile and beautiful for the Dustels, was called Skodart. It was inhabited by fiercely independent islanders who, unlike most Dustel Islanders, were farmers and herders rather than fishermen. They produced almost all that they needed and hated the taxes and restrictions imposed on them by Dustelrampart, which had laws that were more biased towards the welfare of fishermen, cockle farmers and seaweed growers.

Willrin was a young and impressionable man when he departed for Skodart. Within the first year, he had fallen in love with an islander, and married her without the royal consent that was mandatory for the heir. He then compounded the error by having twin sons, both in line for the throne, but unrecognised by his father back in Dustelrampart. In addition, he undermined his father’s position by supporting the islanders in many of their causes. It was a situation with all the ingredients for tragedy even then, but as the years went by, it worsened.

The second eldest son, named Vincen, was kept by his father’s side, and gradually came to think of himself as his father’s favourite. The Rampartlord demanded Willrin’s return to the capital; he refused and stayed where he was, gathering huge support in Skodart as a champion of the islanders’ rights. In his anger, the Rampartlord tutored his second son in all the things that a Rampartlord needed to know about ruling…

Vincen may have been popular in Dustelrampart and the main island where people knew him, but on the outlying islands, people looked to Willrin. It was clear that no matter which son the Rampartlord favoured, there would be trouble. Had he been a wiser man, he might have preempted revolt by good rule and diplomacy, but he was a tyrant with little idea of governance except absolute obedience to his rule.

The Keepers, of course, supported him. Tor and Flame were right: Keepers hated any thought of revolution or change, believing that such things were destabilising. They sent Keeper sylvs as advisor-warriors and sold the Rampartlord the weapons he needed, turning the islandom into an armed camp. The Menod, on the other hand, had a vested interest in Skodart; they had a large monastery there that was the centre of much of their intellectual life. There was a huge library, a seminary, and so forth. While they strove to give the appearance of remaining neutral, the patriarchs on the island actually had a good relationship with Willrin.

The Rampartlord declared Vincen his new heir and stripped Willrin of his title of Rampartheir. Willrin declared his island and the surrounding atolls free of Dustel Island rule and named them the independent Islandom of Skodart.

The Rampartlord declared war on his elder son, and sent his younger son Vincen to subdue Skodart Island. Vincen landed on a neighbouring atoll and sent a conciliatory message to his brother, reminding him of their kinship, and telling him that he had no wish to harm his childhood playmate. Vincen was perfectly willing, he said, to consider a compromise. Perhaps they could discuss the matter. On the basis of this promise, they agreed to meet on a small island offshore from Skodart, just the two of them and a couple of personal pages.

However, unbeknownst to Willrin, Vincen was planning treachery; he sent some of his troops, led by Keeper sylvs, to capture Willrin’s family while he himself was meeting his brother. Using magic, they were able to do just that…except they missed one of the twins, a sylv boy named Gethelred, then aged about thirteen. They took the rest of the family: Willrin’s wife, the other of the twin boys and two younger daughters. As soon as Vincen received a message on the success of the kidnapping, he attacked and slew Willrin. He then took the rest of the family back to his father in Dustelrampart. The Rampartlord put out a proclamation saying that if the missing twin, Gethelred, turned himself in, then he would spare the rest of the family.

According to Alain, Gethelred, with the help of Menod patriarchs, tried to do just that, but the ship he was on was delayed by storms and he did not make it to Dustelrampart before the deadline. His mother, twin brother and two sisters were all brutally killed and their bodies nailed to the city walls. They were the first thing that Gethelred saw when his ship eventually reached the harbour and sailed up to the Dustelrampart’s docks.

‘And how long after that did the Dustels sink?’ I asked. I was thinking to myself that these people were all Ruarth’s ancestors. Perhaps Vincen was his grandfather…or would it be his great-grandfather?

‘About ten years,’ Alain replied. ‘Gethelred escaped, by the way. The Menod hustled him back on to the ship and took him straight to Skodart. They say he went mad with grief when he saw what was done to his family… The Keepers and the Rampartlord launched a punitive attack on Skodart and wiped out almost all the population. It was a particularly brutal war because so many of the people on both sides were sylvs.’

‘Sylvmagic can’t be used to kill,’ I said, my defence automatic.

‘No, but there are so many innovative things they can do while using normal weapons. Blur their presence, sneak into places and wreak havoc, confuse with illusions. It makes for a nasty war. In the end, the population of Skodart was decimated because the Rampartlord managed to enlist many Awarefolk.’

‘All wars are nasty,’ Tor said quietly. ‘What’s the point of the story, Alain?’

‘I don’t have one really. Blaze was asking, that’s all. I suppose the odds are excellent that, if the Dustels really were submerged by the magic of one man, then it all had something to do with that war.’

‘Probably only because it provided the confusion that enabled a dunmagicker to take advantage of the situation,’ Tor pointed out.

‘Perhaps. And perhaps it gave rise to the reasons that Morthred so hates the Menod, the Keepers, sylvs, Awarefolk. They were all elements that were at work during the war.’

We all thought about that, but it was pointless to speculate. We would never reach any conclusions, because we didn’t have enough information. I could not help feeling that Alain was right: the dunmagicker had suffered once, just as he made people suffer now.

I remembered that look in Janko’s eyes…

And then there was Eylsa…

The ghemph and I spent a lot of time talking while it worked on my pole. I had to lie on the floor, or sometimes tilt myself into a semi-reclining position, depending on which side Eylsa decided to tackle. Tor had been right: it was a long job. The wood of the yoke was hard. Eylsa’s claws were stronger and sharper than fingernails, but they were hardly made for this kind of work. Worse still, when the wood did split, it came away only in tiny splinters. God knows what sort of wood it was, but from our point of view, it couldn’t have been worse.

We talked while Eylsa worked and somehow at those times I was actually glad of the darkness. It made me less conscious of the physical differences between us. In the darkness, I couldn’t see the ugly flat face, the greyness, the hairlessness; in the darkness, even a ghemph seemed human. In the darkness even a halfbreed could have innate dignity. While we were both prisoners in that hell, it seemed important that I was aware of our similarities, not our differences.

I remember one of my first questions: I wanted to know Eylsa’s gender.

That provoked a laugh. It paused in its clawing and answered, ‘At this precise time? I am in a period of transition. Neither one nor the other. We are all born female Blaze, every one of us. Then, when we’re about thirty, we commence to change. By forty we are wholly male. Of course, we put much less emphasis than you do on the importance of sexual differences. Young ghemphs can bear and feed young, older ones can father them and are more experienced workers, but otherwise we make no differentiation between the male and the female work tasks or lifestyle. Perhaps it would be better if you thought of me as female; it will be a few years yet before I can consider myself male.’

It was just as well that Eylsa couldn’t see my face just then. I said, finally, striving for neutrality: ‘That is not something that is generally known to us.’

‘No. We try as much as possible to disguise the differences between ghemph and human. We do not normally discuss such things with humans—it is not considered wise.’

‘Why not? And why is it that you are telling me?’

I did think she might refuse to answer that, but she didn’t. After some consideration she said, ‘To begin with, I do not think you would tell others beyond the confines of this oblivion, if I were to request you to refrain from doing so—which I do. Moreover, perhaps our present unpleasant circumstances warrant a change of what is customary. And I would like you, specifically you, to have more knowledge of us. You were the first human who spoke to me as if—as if I were your equal. You wanted something from me, but you respected my refusal; you weren’t even angry. You don’t know how refreshing I found that.’

I was assailed by guilt, remembering how unsympathetic I had felt towards all things ghemphic at the time. And I wondered about what it was like to be a ghemph, that normal politeness from a human could be so memorable.

She sighed. ‘It is not in ghemphic nature to be garrulous. Even now, I find it somehow—
onerous
to state these things, although the darkness helps. You see, we ghemphs do not converse much even with one another. We have no need to do so. We
know,
without words. If a mother touches her young in passing, then the young one knows it is loved; it does not need to be apprised of the fact. If someone bestows something on me, I incline my head in thanks. A movement of the head, a fluttered finger: all these things mean much more to us than they do to you. We leave conversation for only the most formal of occasions.

‘And then, our lives are so very ordered that there is very little that needs to be discussed. We have an aversion to change. We hate uncertainties. We try to live as we have done for centuries: it is…necessary. We are so few, and humans are so many and despise us so much. We must be wholly predictable to survive. We must never present you humans with a threat. Thus we are unchanging, subservient, meek. Yet we must never be useless, for that could also lead to our demise as a race. And so we help to perpetuate the citizenship tattoo. We have steadfastly refused to show anyone the secret of the process, so we will never be redundant, and we have never made an illegal tattoo, not for anyone.’ She made a sound that might have passed for ghemphic laughter. ‘And that is definitely the lengthiest speech I have ever made in my life.’

I considered what she had said, and the more I thought, the more appalled I was. I’d never given a thought to ghemphs before, except to resent their rigid support of the citizenship laws; now I had a picture before me of creatures who had to live in a state of anxious uncertainty, knowing that we humans could wipe them out entirely—and that we were stupid and cruel enough to do so if we thought we’d been provoked.

I said politely, ‘I used to dislike you ghemphs. It always seemed to me that without you, the whole system of rigid citizenship would fall apart. Without you, people like me would find ways to circumvent the system. I still think that, but at least I know now why you do it. I can see that it isn’t for some trivial reason of conservatism. I’m sorry now that I asked you for a tattoo; I didn’t realise what such a request meant.’

‘And I’m sorry I couldn’t give it to you. —Could you turn your hand slightly? I want to twist the chain out of the way.’

I moved, quelling a grunt of pain as she continued. ‘We ghemphs know exactly how iniquitous the citizenship laws are. But we lack the courage to change the system. It grieves us, it shames us, but I don’t think we will ever change; you are right to despise us. In the presence of a halfbreed we can only be shamed.

‘But
you
don’t need the symbol of an ear tattoo to prove your worth, Blaze. You have the dignity of being the kind of person you are. No one can ever take that away from you.’

Perhaps not. But citizenship laws could make it very difficult to live.
I held the bitter words back. Eylsa had, after all, uttered what amounted to an apology for her whole kind and it would have been churlish to point out that an apology didn’t alter anything as far as I was concerned. I changed the subject. ‘Where do you come from? Ghemphs I mean.’

‘Come from? Why, nowhere! We were here first. You humans are the ones who came from somewhere else. More than a thousand years ago…’

I gaped.
That
was a new concept.
We
were the interlopers, the strangers?

Tor and Alain had caught this last, and I was aware that they both turned to listen. It was a surprise to them, as well.

‘How many people came?’ Tor asked, fascinated. ‘And how did they arrive?’

‘And from where?’ Alain added.

‘A place to the west, far, far to the west. Or should I say, from many places. There were many names…you would know some of them, because they named their new homes after the old: Cirkase and Breth, for example. And you came in waves…canoes, dhows, rafts. Fleeing what was behind you. Many of you were fiercely independent and didn’t want to mix with those that came before or after. In the end, though, it was impossible not to have some contact, for trade, because each islandom is too small to produce all the things it needs.

‘For many years you spoke of returning to your original homes once the Kelvish had gone…but you never did. It was one thing to sail east with the current; quite another to sail back again against it.’

‘Kelvish?’

She shrugged. ‘It meant nothing to us. We were sea people, not land people.’ That remark did not mean anything to me at the time; it was only many years later that I understood what she meant. But that’s another story…

Alain gave a grunt of amazement. ‘Kelvish? Don’t tell me all those old legends about the warrior demons of Kelvan were true? I was brought up on those! I had this old Fentower nursemaid who knew them all. “Behave yourself, little Alain, or the Kelvish warriors will ride in on their beasts and give you bad dreams”…’

‘It would explain much,’ Tor said softly. ‘I thought we started on one island and spread outwards, so it always puzzled me how it developed that each island was so adamant about having its own citizenship, and not interbreeding. And I wondered too why there are physical differences, not to mention so many linguistic differences, even though we have always traded with one another.’

‘Linguistic differences?’ I asked. ‘You mean things like calling porridge
muckie
in Mekaté and
scunge
in Quiller? And why the Fenlanders roll their ‘r’s and the Calmenters squeak?’

‘Yes. And how all islands used different words for their walled cities: haven, fort, shield, castle, bastion, tower, citadel.’

‘Barbican, hold,’ I added. ‘Yeah. I never thought about all that before.’

‘It wasn’t because we were the same and then developed differences: just the opposite. We were originally different but are now slowly becoming the same…’

Alain said softly, thoughtfully, ‘And if there really are Kelvish who pushed people out of their original homes: how long before they come after us?’

There was a moment’s still silence, then Tor gave a half-laugh. ‘Somehow, Alain, I think we’re in enough trouble right here and now without thinking about that one! After all, it’s been a thousand years.’

My thoughts went off on another tangent. ‘Eylsa, you said you were sent to find Morthred—who sent you? Do your people have some kind of central organisation?’

She shook her head. I heard the movement, although I couldn’t see it. ‘No. But if an important matter like this arises, then a message goes from community to community—a warning if you like. There has never been another such in all my lifetime. This one about Morthred is the first in over a generation.

‘Once the message has been considered, those who desire to reply send suggestions back to the person who issued the original warning. It is up to that person to act on the most frequently mentioned course of action—in this case, that an attempt should be made to find Morthred, to keep an eye on what is happening, so that we would not be taken unawares by any change that he wrought. You, see, we felt that a dunmagicker who ruled widely in the Isles of Glory would not care too much about citizenship laws, and even less about ghemphs.’

‘It was you who sent the original warning?’

‘No. Ouch! Sorry—just a splinter in one of my toes. No, it was not I. It was my grandfather, but he is too old for journeying, so I chose to go in his place.’

‘That must have been…difficult for you, if you do not like change.’

She sighed. ‘It was. Home is always so much more comfortable. So much safer. We are staid creatures. Although, to be quite truthful, I have always been a shade more venturesome than most of my kind, a little more curious than most—all grave failings of character. And now I am finding I even have a liking for the sound of my own voice! It must be all this darkness… I am thirty-five years old, you know, and am coming to the end of my female years. In all that time, no male ever wanted to set up house with me. They thought I was too unpredictable. Perhaps they were right—look at where my adventuresome nature has landed me!’

‘Why did Morthred have you put down here?’

‘I learned too much, came too close… He found out and had me captured.’

‘But why not make a slave of you like the others?’ Tor asked.

I heard the surprise in her voice as she replied. ‘Did you not know? He couldn’t make a slave of me because ghemphs cannot be dunmagicked. We don’t have Awareness quite like you Awarefolk, but no one can magick us. So he put me in here instead. The real wonder is that he didn’t just kill me.’ She sighed again and sat back away from me. ‘Blaze, I am going to have to stop for a while. My claws are beginning to tear.

Still later, Eylsa told me something more about ghemphs. She said that although they were all given a name at birth, they didn’t use it the way we use names. A name was only used by ghemphs to refer to others, to talk about others. They never used it to someone’s face. Many ghemphs never, in fact, learned what their own name was! Eylsa had only learned hers by accident.

However, each ghemph also had what they called a spirit name. This they chose for themselves some time in their childhood. But they only ever told it to those they loved. It was a very secret name, to be used in only the closest of relationships.

There were other things Eylsa told me about the ghemphs too, but they have no bearing on this story and I don’t intend to relate them now. They are secrets that are better kept.

###

Of course, most of the time that we spent talking, all four of us contributed to the conversation. Our most popular subject was the politics of the Isles of Glory, especially the relationships between the islandoms and the whole question of Keeper influence.

Tor and Alain were united in their condemnation of the Keeper greed, specifically Keeper sylv greed, for wealth and power. Tor was particularly worried by what he called ‘increasing Keeper sylv amorality’. ‘Look at Duthrick,’ he said. ‘He’s a Councillor, one of the rulers of the Keeper Isles. As such, he’s supposed to uphold the essence of their motto “Liberty, Equality and Right”, but what have we been watching him do just lately? Try to find the Castlemaid so he can take her back to a marriage she does not want. So much for liberty of choice. Refuse to cure Flame until such time as it suited him. So much for what is right. Be delighted to help Ransom, but only once he found out who he really was. So much for equality.’ I knew he was looking in my direction as he added, ‘Sylvtalent is perhaps just as bad as dunmagic. Worse, in a way. Dunmagic at least doesn’t pretend to be anything but evil. Sylvmagic in the hands of the Keeper ruling class is clothed in hypocrisy and is used to put down the poor, to boost Keeper sylv wealth and power at the expense of both their own sylv citizens and those of other islandoms as well—’