The Drowned Ones Read online

  For Doris Shallcross.

  “I have nightmares about the cold. Such cold that my flesh turns to ice and my bones shatter. I scream and scream, but in the dreams I cannot die. Cold was meant to be the end – it was meant to kill me. Instead, it was the beginning of everything.”

  The woman watched the encircling sea as she spoke. Waves of fear and loathing washed over her face. There was no land in sight, nothing but water and the raft town upon which they sailed.

  “I was an innocent child, betrayed by those who should have loved and protected me. I was abandoned, left with only cold for a companion. You can’t imagine it, can you? You had your mother’s arms to keep you warm. I had nothing but my hatred.”

  The speaker seldom glanced at her audience, a girl squashed inside a cage made of bamboo and rope. The cage was too small. That was part of the punishment. The prisoner was forced to keep her neck bent in submission. Only her hands moved, massaging the muscle cramps that had become constant after nine days’ imprisonment.

  The woman had been talking since dawn. It was now nearing midday, and the sun’s heat was fierce. Managing the cramps, the thirst, the hunger – these things had become routine for the girl. But patience born of desperation has limits. The worst torture was the woman’s presence. She was terrifying; her story even more frightening, in a way the girl didn’t want to understand. With each retelling, its hold on her imagination grew.

  All nine mornings of her captivity, the witch had come. She had told the same tale in the same words. Today, the prisoner’s resolve to endure broke. Frantic for silence, for solitude, for peace, she quoted her dead mother: “Love creates; hate destroys.”

  “Exactly!” A triumphant hiss.

  The prisoner shuddered. Weakness was justly punished.

  The rain of words continued: “I breathed cold, ate and slept it. It etched cracks in my skin, turned my tears and snot to ice. I still have nightmares… Ah, cold is cruel!” At last the witch stopped speaking and bent her head. Plaits of black hair curtained her wolfish face. The only noise was the swoosh of waves caressing the wooden hulls of the outriggers. This silence had not happened before.

  Has she finished? The prisoner tried not to hope – not even in this small thing.

  The woman roused from her memories. For the first time that day, she looked her victim in the face. With a thrill of horror, the girl once again saw her captor’s strange eyes – red irises in a sea of bloodshot white.

  The witch spoke: “I was a child, weak and small, but I vowed that some day I would destroy those who had banished me to that place!”

  The girl shivered. These words were new! Something told her they were important. Dread battled curiosity.

  The witch’s gaze shifted and, though she stared at the prisoner, she did not seem to see her. “And I will,” she muttered. “By the breath of the Salamander, I swear it!” The red eyes refocused. “It would have been easy to die, to give up. Do you feel that?”

  The girl did not answer.

  “Yes, I thought you must.” The woman chuckled, an unlikely noise. Razor-sharp fingernails tickled bamboo bars. “I grow almost fond of you. I have never told anyone the story of my childhood, and you are so attentive.” The Fire-witch draped an arm round the girl’s cage. “Imagine that child, sent to die alone on a frozen rock. Imagine yourself in my place. Would you have found the strength to survive? Would you have hated enough to go on living?”

  Against her will, the girl felt the long-ago child’s terror as her own. She too knew loneliness. “Why would anyone do that to a little girl?”

  “They feared me!” The voice grew harsh. “My own people. Some fool of a seer spun a lying tale when I was but a Seven-year. Said I was dangerous … that I would destroy the Balance of All Things.”

  The prisoner drew a steadying breath. So it had been foreseen – this war between the Elemental spirits! The war she had been supposed to stop. She hugged herself, feeling the sharp bones beneath her skin, bones that still ached with growing pains. She was too young, too ignorant and untried. Was it any wonder she had failed?

  “But still,” continued the Fire-witch, “the Elders of my island feared to kill me themselves. Instead, they banished me to a rock on the edge of the western sea. There the ground is sharp with frost year-round, and the waves carry ice like spears.”

  The girl had seen the witch kill without mercy – had stood over the charred remains of her victims. Even so, the woman’s tale played out in her mind’s eye. She saw a seven-year-old girl standing on a frozen rock in the middle of a lonely sea, watching a boat vanish over the horizon.

  Her heart spoke before her mind could stop it: “Didn’t your parents try to save you?”

  She had said the wrong thing. The woman’s expression grew so terrifying that the girl gabbled question after question: “How long were you there? How did you finally escape? Did someone rescue you?”

  Heartbeats measured the interval of danger. At last the witch regained colour. “I was there through the monsoon – half a year of torment. Escape was impossible. Even if you survive the cold, even if you bash enough limpets from the rocks to keep from starving, the sea ice imprisons you on that place. A swimmer would be cut to shreds long before the cold of the water could kill them.”

  “But you did escape in the end. Did you make a raft?”

  “From what? Rocks? Nothing but sere-grass grows there.”

  Deep in the witch’s pupils, fire flickered. The captive said: “Someone must have rescued you.” She was ashamed to hear her voice shake.

  “The Salamander.” Red-lit eyes watched. “It Chose me before I was born. My banishment was a test. I proved worthy, and the Fire spirit set me free.”

  The prisoner’s heart pounded. She too had been Chosen before birth by an Elemental.

  “Don’t you want to know how the Salamander rescued me?” The woman grabbed the cage, pressed her face against the bars. Her prey flinched, and the witch opened her mouth in a silent laugh. Red lips drew back to reveal white and oddly pointed teeth, and the girl thought of the hungry mouth of an anemone.

  The woman let go, leaned back, still smiling. “The sea around my piece of rock was shallow. The Fire spirit caused lava to flow again from the volcano that had given birth to the mini-islands there. Molten rock boiled into the sea for days upon days. When it was done, there was a path across the waves. The Salamander’s gift smouldered and spat flame and ash, too hot to touch and survive – but I could not wait. I walked barefoot over the burning bridge!” The witch’s face became, for a moment, that of an enraptured child. “And I was unharmed! I may bathe in fire and take no hurt. The Salamander is my mother and my father!” Her eyes shone. Their pupils erupted with the red-black of seething lava – miniature volcanoes – and the girl’s mind emptied of everything except terror.

  “I walked across the burning bridge to the nearest inhabited island and was greeted as a god by the people who lived there. Because they feared me, they gave me all that I demanded. A boat loaded with supplies. Clothes made from the finest cloth – red silk. I never wear anything else. Red for fire, for the Salamander. Red for revenge! Soon … soon!”

  Long-nailed fingers reached, clenched the bars until the knuckles gleamed. The Fire-witch shook the cage. She was incredibly strong. “I could kill you now.”

  The captive froze. She didn’t hold her breath – she simply couldn’t breathe.

  “Incinerate you as you cower there. So easy…”

  “Why don’t you?” Almost a plea.

  “When it is the right time.” The witch rose to her feet in a sinuous movement and strode away with a flourish of scarlet silk.

  As soon as she was out of sight, a small orange monkey emerged from a coil of rope and scurried across the tilting deck. It carried a half coconut shell in one hand. The creature crouched beside the cage and pushed the shell through the bars. It held a few mouthfuls of water. She took it eagerly and sipped the warm, fishy-tasting water, trying to make it last. The sun beat down on her cage from dawn to dusk, and she was always thirsty.

  “Thank you, Scoundrel,” she said. The monkey reached through the bars and stroked her arm. Its touch was so comforting that she had to fight back tears. The cling-monkey’s huge amber-orange eyes never left her own, almost as though it was trying to tell her something. She smiled at its mournful face and wondered how it managed to find food for itself, let alone water for her. Why did the Drowned Ones tolerate a pet monkey on their raft town? Whatever the reason for Scoundrel’s survival, she was grateful. Every day since her capture the monkey had come. Its daily visit was the one thing that gave her hope.

  Nine days a prisoner of her most hated enemies, the Drowned Ones. Nine days squashed inside a cage on one of the hundreds of outrigger canoes roped together to create the pirates’ raft town, only let out morning and night to use the privy bucket. Nine days without magic, without a sign from any of the three Elemental spirits who had Chosen her as their human champion in their war with the Salamander – a war that would determine the fate of the Balance of All Things, and therefore life itself.

  The witch visited her daily, drawn by some fascination the prisoner could not understand, for she was no longer a threat to the Fire Elemental or its agent. The Dolphin and Albatross had abandoned her. Worst of all, the Tortoise was gone too. She felt the Earth spirit’s absence like an aching hole, almost as big as the one left by her mother’s death.

  The cling-monkey made a soft cheeping noise, reminding her to drink.

  As she swal
lowed the last mouthful, a figure rounded the corner of the canoe’s hut and the girl looked up to see Nim, the Drowned One boy.

  An old and fierce hatred rose at once. It was Nim’s fault that Dain, her mother, was dead. The boy had been shipwrecked on her home island, Yanlin. She had saved his life and hidden him from her Elders, who would have killed the pirate boy on sight. In return, he had set half the town on fire and helped his people invade her island. She had defeated the Drowned Ones in the end, sinking a raft town in the harbour and sending the remaining two scuttling back to sea, but her mother had been killed in the battle.

  Storm hated Nim for betraying their friendship and ignoring the life-debt he owed her, but now she felt a shameful relief that he had come to see her at last. For nine days she had seen no human beings except the Fire-witch and the guard who brought her privy bucket. Isolation was part of her punishment. So what had changed? Was she about to find out what her enemies had in store for her?

  He looked different from the boy she had saved on Yanlin. A year older and taller, of course. But more than that … there was a confidence that had not been there before. Nim had not let the witch kill her nine days ago. He had seemed to be in charge of the other Drowned Ones, but that could not be true. Nim was a mere youth, newly Chosen. He would be the most junior of apprentices. His Elders would not let him decide her fate, for she was their greatest enemy. She was the Weather-witch of Yanlin.

  “Hello, Storm,” said the pirate boy. “We need to talk.”

  “Why should I listen to anything you have to say?”

  “The Elders want to see you, but we need to talk first.”

  “They’re wasting their time. The Elementals have abandoned me. I have no magic.”

  “I know you believe that, but I don’t.” Nim squatted on his heels, eye level with her, his freckled face annoyingly calm. The monkey immediately darted to the boy, climbing on to his shoulder.

  So Nim was the reason the pirates tolerated Scoundrel! Storm’s eyes grew hot. It was stupid to feel jealous, but the cling-monkey was her only friend in this place. She watched the tiny creature wrap a confident arm round her enemy’s neck before turning to gaze at her with huge eyes. Usually, she could tell what Scoundrel was thinking. Not now.

  He’s only a monkey, soothed her mind-voice. But he wasn’t. Scoundrel was the Tortoise’s emissary.

  “Trust the spirits. Trust yourself.” Nim was watching her too. The boy and the monkey – two pairs of amber eyes wearing the same patient expression. Old eyes, ancient, knowing.

  “Earth!” she breathed. “You were Chosen by the Tortoise!”

  “More than Chosen. The Tortoise made me an Earth-witch.”

  Her stomach twisted. How could this be? How could the Tortoise…? Her mother, Dain, had also been a Child of Earth.

  Storm was once more holding her mother’s dead body, looking into the familiar face made strange by death. The Tortoise, beloved spirit of the Earth, had sacrificed Dain for a Drowned One! For this sea-cursed pirate, who had killed her mother as truly as if he had struck the blow. Why? To prevent war between their peoples? But there was still war! Worse, there were signs that the fighting between the Drowned Ones and Islanders was about to get so bad that the Salamander – who fed on hate – would grow strong enough to break the Balance of All Things. Nothing had changed. Only Nim lived and Dain did not.

  Scoundrel leapt down and ran to her, thrusting his hand through the bars of her cage. His warm fingers gripped her goose-pimpled arm. Storm shivered with rage. “Earth-witch? You? Why a—”

  “Filthy Drowned One? Do you think the Elementals never grant my tribe the favour of magic? You Land Grubs!” Nim surged to his feet. “Arrogant, privileged—”

  The boy cut off his tirade and grimaced. “Look at us? See how easily we fall into the old patterns? If we do not learn a new way the habit of hate will kill us.”

  The truth of his words drained her resentment. She had flared up so quickly. It had felt good to be angry, to have someone to blame. Nim knelt in front of her cage. His face was inches from hers, his amber eyes insistent. “Why anyone, Storm? The Elementals Choose, not us. Look, I have kept away since your capture because my Elders suspect that my loyalties were affected by … my experiences on your island. I have managed to convince them to keep you alive for now, but I don’t know how much longer I can do that. We need to work together, you and I—”

  Work together? What did Nim want from her? Before he could explain, a new voice intruded.

  “Work together how, young pirate? You and yours work for me. Don’t forget it!” A familiar figure emerged from the shadow of the hut.

  Storm gasped in surprise. The woman’s face was unmistakable: broad cheekbones sliced in two by a knife of a nose, nostrils quivering as though sniffing for profit. Waffa? Here? For a heartbeat, Storm wondered if her captivity had addled her brain. But she wasn’t seeing things. The woman advancing on them was the tally-keeper of the Pact – the Fifteen Families that were the hereditary rulers of Bellum Island.

  Head of one of the aristocratic families, Waffa kept the trading accounts for the island. The last Storm had heard, the tally-keeper had been maneuvering to oust the Pact’s leader, Talon, and take charge of the island herself. What reason above or below seas could Waffa have for being here?

  Rich and fortunate Bellum, called the belly button of the word because of its location in the middle the Inner Sea, controlled trade between the islands. The Pact’s Fifteen Families had grown rich by extorting unfair taxes from the less powerful islands. In the past few generations they had even begun to steal from their own people, impoverishing the common folk and setting their island on a course for revolution.

  Storm quickly realised that Waffa’s bid to lead the Pact must have failed. Whether from fear of the coming revolution, or a simple desire for more power than the Pact was willing to grant her, it seemed that Waffa was actually working with the pirates to betray her island!

  Nim shot Storm a warning look. The Drowned One boy jumped to his feet and turned to face Waffa, confidence in his every movement. He was almost unrecognisable as the desperate boy she had rescued last year. But then, Nim was no longer a No-thing, an orphan and social outcast. He was an Earth-witch, arguably more important than his Elders, or even the Pact’s tally-keeper.

  “We work together, Mistress Waffa,” Nim said firmly. “We Drowned Ones will take our share of the spoils of Bellum. You would do well to remember that.”

  Waffa huffed, then shot a calculating look at Storm. “And you would do well to remember that this girl is an unknown quantity. Her power might win Bellum Island for us, but only if we can control her. If we can’t, she is better off dead, as the Fire-witch desires.”

  “Of course.” The casualness in Nim’s voice made Storm’s skin crawl.

  Fool! she berated herself. She had actually begun to let herself believe the pirate boy wanted to help her.

  “A nine-day in the cage should have persuaded the Weather-witch to work with us,” Nim said. “My Elders wish to speak to her. I will take her to them.”

  “And I have come – with your Elders’ agreement – to make sure she does not trick you.” Waffa beckoned. Two Drowned One warriors suddenly appeared, moving towards them a few canoes to Storm’s right. They advanced quickly, leaping across the wood and rope bridges that connected each canoe to its neighbours, like so many threads of a cobweb.

  The warriors, a man and a woman, dropped lightly on to the deck of her canoe and moved forward until they stood behind Waffa. They carried bows on their backs and long knives at their hips. Their eyes fastened on Storm’s face, and she saw both fear and hatred.

  “I have no magic,” she said. “I cannot hurt you.”

  “I hope, for your own sake, that you lie.” Waffa barely glanced at her. “In any case, it is best to make sure.” She attempted to draw back the bolt that secured the door of Storm’s cage. It stuck, and the tally-keeper swore and thumped the door. Scoundrel growled low in his throat and the tally-keeper kicked out at the animal, nostrils flared with anger and contempt. The monkey yelped in pain. Before she even knew what she intended to do, Storm was up and out of her prison, slamming the half-open door into Waffa. “Leave him be!”