Tales of Noreela 04: The Island Read Free

the voice carrier and stepped back, smiling. She might be good at avoiding certain questions, but Namior was also adept at saying exactly what she meant.
I look forward to it
, she had said. Five words that drove away the cold and made Kel feel warm all over.
    He shrugged on a heavy coat, a scarf, and a hat made from furbat skin, and strapped a knife to his belt. Storms reminded him of that terrible night in Noreela City. With every blink he’d hear the screams and see the children dying, and if there was lightning, it would imprint those memories on his mind even more harshly. He’d once told Namior that he hated storms, though he could never tell her why, and she had laughed as she asked why he chose to live next to the sea.
    Same reason I fell in love with a witch when I don’t trust magic
, he’d responded.
I’m a man of contradictions
. She had smiled as though he’d made a joke, but he often spent deep moments considering this, and thinking that he’d been hiding for so long that he no longer knew himself.
    PAVMOUTH BREAKS WAS a fishing village on the western shores of Noreela. It was built on either side of the River Pav where it merged with the sea, extending up the slopes of the valley on both sides: a gentle rise to the north, with a slow fall to the sea; and a steeper rise to the south known as Drakeman’s Hill, ending with a sheer cliff into the sea on that side. The harbor was natural, enclosed and expanded centuries before with a long, curving stone mole projecting out into the sea. The river was spanned by bridges in two places. The first, oldest stone bridge stood closest to the sea at the harbor throat, while a mile upriver was the newest crossing known as Helio Bridge—a hundred steps high and half amile across, spanning between the sides of the steepening valley inland.
    Namior Feeron lived in the northern part of the village, her family home perched on the shallow hillside and built so that it had views both out to sea and across the narrow river mouth to the south. From Namior’s room on the roof she could see far up Drakeman’s Hill, though Kel Boon’s rooms were hidden from view by other buildings. Still, she liked to sit at her window sometimes and imagine him descending the steep paths and steps to reach her.
    She’d climb, but that sometimes seemed too eager.
Eager sends them away
, her mother told her, and she should know; Namior’s father had sailed west with nine others two moons after her birth, never to be seen again.
Give them a chase
, her mother would say.
And sometimes, give them a catch
.
    Namior stared out at the darkening, rainswept village, feeling violence in the air of the storm yet to come, and she knew that tonight she would be happy giving Kel several catches.
    Her mother and great-grandmother were in the main downstairs room, gathered about the groundstone, still scrying to see whether they could assess the coming storm more accurately. They’d excused Namior when her nose started to bleed—she still had much to learn about magic and its gentle, deep manipulations—and her mother knew that soon she would be going out.
I’ll take care
, she had told her, and her great-grandmother, blind in one eye and deaf in one ear, had said in one of her less troubled, saner moments,
Find a secret each day, and in a few years you may know him
. Namior knew that her great-grandmother did not approve of Kel Boon.
Eyes the color of blood
, she had once complained. But like all witches in the Feeron family, past and present, Namior was blessed with freedom and gifted with choice.
    A machine drifted up the narrow path below her window, reaching out jointed metallic arms to relight oil lanterns that had gone out and turn up their flames. She saw rain patterdown in a hundred spots across its gray-stone hood, and it sped up as though to escape the downpour.
    She should dress. Kel would not be down for a while, but she’d like to be at the Dog’s Eyes before him. Trakis and Mell would