Tales of Noreela 04: The Island Read Free Page A

be there already, downing Neak’s stormy brews and debating whether to spend some of their hard-earned on the Ventgorian wines he kept in his cellar. A storm like this one seemed to raise the village’s blood; partly excitement and partly, she suspected, the idea that they were defying nature. The sea would rise, the rain would fall and the wind would blow, but Pavmouth Breaks clung to the coast, boldly facing the tempest and waiting for morning to arrive.
    She frowned, remembering her great-grandmother’s sickness that afternoon. Her mother had administered ceyrat root, but it had perturbed them, and set a chill in the air that Namior had still not shaken. The old woman was subject to periods of madness—she called them her crazes—brought on by age and the stew that time made of the brain, and such a sickness was usually the beginning.
She’s just old and ill
, she thought.
Bad meat for supper yesterday. Too much scrying
.
    A blast of wind gusted in from the west, and Pavmouth Breaks seemed to shudder beneath its force. Namior stood and moved back from the window. The glass flexed slightly, distorting the village and warping her own reflection so that she looked to be in pain. She turned away and went to wash and dress.
    NAMIOR DESCENDED THE twisting staircase at the heart of the house. She’d changed from her loose witch’s robe to a pair of tight canvas trousers, soft sheebok-wool shirt and a long leather coat, and she felt ready for the night. She could still hear her mother’s voice chanting softly as she sat by the groundstone, and she slowed to listen to the words. There was something not quite right, and it took Namior a dozenheartbeats to figure out what that was: her great-grandmother was silent.
    “Namior,” her mother whispered. “Come down; come in.”
    Namior descended the last few stairs, not surprised that her mother had been aware of her presence. The two women had sat around the groundstone for most of the day, her mother touching surfaces smoothed by hands for decades, gathering strength from the land’s magic and using that strength to try to discern things yet to happen. Namior’s senses still felt heightened from the time she had spent with them. Noises rang inside her head, and she could smell the anger of the sea.
    Her great-grandmother sat across the room from her, huddled down in a mass of blankets. She twitched and mumbled in her sleep.
    “Sit,” her mother said, patting the floor cushions beside her. Namior sat cross-legged and lowered her head, paying respect to the groundstone.
    “Storm’s getting harsher,” Namior said.
    “Yes. There’s something …” Her mother shook her head, setting her many earrings jangling.
    “Wrong?”
    Her mother nodded. “A blank spot in the storm. There are waves and rain, breakers smashing the shore, and a waterspout farther along the coast that may touch land.”
    “I saw most of that, too,” Namior said, and she felt a brief flush of pride in her expanding abilities. They exhausted her—if it were not for the lure of Kel, she would be happy staying in and sleeping for the evening and night—but they also excited her. Her mother and great-grandmother knew that, and they encouraged it, though the older woman was always the one to urge caution.
Life’s too short to rush
, was one of her favorite sayings, and it had taken Namior a long time to see the sense in that. Life was short, so she needed to do things right.
    “And we should have seen more,” her mother said. “There’s something missing. A weight. Something out to sea.”
    “A weight of what?”
    Her mother frowned, staring at the groundstone. “I’m not sure.” Then she smiled. “Probably just the storm stirring the magic. It happens sometimes, especially when there’s lightning.”
    Namior looked at the groundstone—as high as her chest, planted deep in the family home generations before, polished and smoothed by centuries of her ancestors’ contact—and she almost