The Tale of Oriel Read online

  He could do nothing for Griff. He couldn’t even drop a crust of bread as he passed the door, because Nikol watched. He couldn’t even sneak out in the darkness of night to bring water, because Nikol slept across his doorsill. If he had been caught trying to help Griff—

  He had to be strong as stone, and pretend it didn’t matter to him. Nikol watched him, to catch his weakness. The Damall watched him, too. He was as strong as stone, and no one saw the anger that burned inside him.

  It ended, the punishment, and the memory of both punishment and cause faded. Griff was kept in the kitchen, and made no more mistakes like that. The years rolled by, spring to summer to fall to winter, and over again, and the older boys were sold and new boys came to the island. One day, the Damall promised, he would name his heir, he would choose the boy who would stay on the island and be the seventh Damall. The heir would be master of the island. The heir would be told the secret hiding place of the treasure, which he must never reveal until he told it to the boy he had chosen for his own heir. The Damall’s eyes glittered in firelit winter darkness as he told the boys this.

  He didn’t know why the Damall kept looking at him, whenever the story turned to the heir. Until he finally did understand. He would be the boy named. He would be the heir. He would be—and his chest swelled with it—the master. He would be the seventh Damall.

  Chapter 2

  WHY ELSE DO YOU THINK I never had a name?” He spoke in a whisper.

  Griff shook his head, denying it. Griff’s hair was pale brown, the color of dry leaves in fall. Griff was tall and bony faced. His eyes glistened like pebbles darkened in the sea. He and Griff sat by the fire, for light, working on their letters and numbers. Nobody could hear what they said when they whispered. The other boys were ranged back against a stone wall, allowed no nearer, on the Damall’s orders. The Damall had taken his tankard of wine into the warmth of his own room. They had heard the carved wooden bed creak when the Damall stretched out on it.

  He might be nameless, but he was fourteen winters now, and now when he heard one of the little boys whimpering about the cold he thought of tossing the whiner outside, for a night of real cold, and now he could judge to the minute when he should start crying out under the whip so the Damall would be satisfied. He was fourteen winters now, and better at everything than anybody. “There’s no other reason, except if I’m to be the heir.”

  “It troubles me,” Griff said. Griff was carefully copying a sentence from the pages the Great Damall had written down, to use in teaching his boys to read and write. The King rules, for his father was the King. Griff finished copying that sentence, then said, “There’s no mention of you in the record books, no price paid, no place of purchase. No date, no age at arrival. Nothing.”

  “Because I’m going to be named heir,” he repeated.

  Griff wrote the next sentence, slowly. The Queen rules, for she has wed the King. “Do you remember anything?” Griff asked.

  He shook his head, but tried because Griff asked it of him to search out something from the darkness of memory. “I was afraid,” he said, and in his mind there rose darkness, streaked with red and orange flames, heavy grey smoke, a storm of chaos, screams, a blinding fear. It was no clearer than the memory of a dream. Like a forgotten dream, it rose into his memory and then sank away again. He swallowed, as if he might weep. “I was afraid,” he said again.

  “There are no women on the island,” Griff said.

  “What does that matter?” he demanded. “And besides, the Damall brings women back, sometimes, for anyone who wants the pleasure.” Those women were as sharp as stones, and besides, Griff was right. “What does it matter?”

  “Women have a man’s sons,” Griff said. “He hates you.”

  “I don’t mind.” That was true. “He can’t hurt me.”

  “That’s what I mean,” Griff said, his eyes troubled.

  IT WASN’T MORE THAN TWO days after that cold fall evening that the weather blew in mild from the south, as if summer had traveled halfway home across the sea and then changed her mind. Such a season wasn’t unknown on the Damall’s island. Lady Days, they called it. This Lady Days, the Damall gave orders. Griff and Nikol would stay at the longhouse to care for their master, but the others must go to the other end of the island. They could take with them nothing but their clothing. They must feed and shelter themselves, which would be no great hardship, the Damall told them, not in this fine Lady Days weather. He did not wish to see any of them back before the weather broke.

  They stood around, staring at the Damall, staring at one another, dumb with surprise, stupid with confusion.

  Angry now, the Damall pointed at him, jabbing the finger into his chest. “You’re in charge. Now, go. Are you all deaf? Does every one of you want to be taken to market and sold?”

  It was a long morning’s walk. He led the boys, through the woods, over the stony hills. At the island’s end, looking down a short cliff to the sea where it fed among the rocks, he found a patch of woods. The leafy trees held branches bare as arms up to the sun. The firs never shed their needles, so those were the trees under which to shelter. He sent the boys to gather armloads of dried leaves, for warmth at night. All of the ten boys, even those who were older, obeyed him. He spoke, and they obeyed.

  They had brought no fire nor tinder with them, so he set two of the older boys to rubbing dry sticks together to make sparks that would ignite a handful of leaves, on which they might blow—gently, just a whistle of breath—until the little pile of twigs beneath caught fire, and so by slow steps they would have a fire large enough to cook over, and to give them warmth.

  Some of the remaining boys he sent back into the woods to find branches to feed the fire, and the rest he led down the cliff and out onto the rocks, to gather the blue-black skals that clung under beds of seaweed and clustered at the bases of boulders.

  They slept that night huddled under piles of leaves for warmth.

  He kept their fears at bay by insisting that each boy find his own food. He showed them how to catch a gosta behind its hard-shelled head, where its snapping claws couldn’t reach a boy’s fingers. He showed them how to burn a stick’s end in the fire, and scrape it to a point with stones and shells, so that a boy could spear the fish, if he waited patiently and a fish appeared.

  He kept their fears at bay by concealing his own fear—What if they were never allowed to return to the longhouse, for example, then how would any of them survive the winter months? If one of the smaller boys were to slip into the icy water, and drown unnoticed, then how would he be repaid by the Damall for his carelessness?

  He kept their fears at bay by telling the old stories over again. He told about the Great Damall, and what he didn’t know or remember he made up. He told them about the market town, and the Old City—although not about the slave market and the collars worn by slaves in the cities of the mainland. He told them tales of the faraway Kingdom, hidden away among mountains, a land that didn’t have four seasons every year like other countries but was always in harvest season, the orchards always in fruit and the goats always giving milk and sweet cakes always in the oven. In the Kingdom, he told them, the King had no whipping box, for he executed evildoers and all the others served him gladly. In the Kingdom, the children were the last to go hungry.

  He kept their fears at bay into the long nights, until they moved from the fire to the sheltered leaf piles and into sleep. He locked his own fears away in a stone prison as he looked up at the cold and empty sky, black above him, and the cold and empty sea black before him.

  Sometimes he could see trouble building. When the boys understood that there was no drinking water on the northern end of the island, no spring nor stream, they wanted to drink from the sea. He forbade it. They obeyed him for a day, and then grew sullen. He told them what he knew: “The Great Damall’s book says seawater is poison. As well pour oil on flames to drown them as try to slake your thirst with seawater. That’s what the Great Damall knew.”


  Why, they wanted to know. He said he thought it might be because so many creatures lived in the sea, and so many things grew in it, like earth. They wouldn’t be nourished by eating earth, would they? Or it might be because of the salt, so strong in seawater that you could taste it.

  But salt was good, wasn’t it? they asked. Didn’t the Damall sprinkle salt on his food to make the taste better?

  He said he didn’t understand and he didn’t know. He said he expected obedience and if any boy disobeyed him, that boy would be left alone, to live or to die.

  They were silent.

  He said there was liquid in blue-black skals, there was juice in gostas. He said he wouldn’t let them die for lack of water.

  They obeyed him. And didn’t complain.

  When almost a fortnight had passed, the wind shifted to the north, accompanied by a cold rain that pelted down from the low grey sky, driving through the fir branches. Their fire was drowned. Their beds were soaked. He led them back to the Damall’s house. Later in that winter, the Damall took him aside to say, “You will be my heir. Tell no one. Be patient.”

  He wasn’t surprised, except at the swelling of his own heart, as if it were not made of stone. Every tree and meadow on the island was his, every room in the house, each boat, each fowl, each pig . . . everything. He kept the secret even from Griff. He had given his word.

  On one of the last long nights of winter, he was seized out of sleep by a hand like a vise on his shoulder. The Damall’s face hung down over him, as pale as his hair in the lightless night. “Come,” the Damall said.

  He followed without a word, without a question, out into the black night, without a cloak. The Damall crossed the yard to the three-sided shed where the fowl slept on shelves and rafters. The two of them stepped warily into the dark stinking air, and the creatures stirred in their straw beds. The Damall gave him a candle to hold, then struck a tinder and put the lighted twist to its wick. The Damall’s finger was across his lips in warning, and his eyes glittered.

  The Damall pointed with a finger to the stones that floored the shed, then tapped with the toe of his boot at the rear corner, stretching his leg out to reach under the shelves. The birds didn’t wake and cry out. With his toe, the Damall counted off five stones towards the center rear of the shed, then—backing up—eight stones towards the front. The Damall crouched down there, and dug with his fingers around the round-topped eighth stone. It lifted out easily, as did the six stones that encircled it.

  An uneven cloth-wrapped shape was revealed beneath the stones. He obeyed the Damall’s gestured command to bend down and hold the candle closer.

  The Damall lifted the shape up, out of the ground, and removed the cloth wrapping to reveal three lidded boxes, lying one on top of the other. One after another, the Damall lifted off the lids and let him look in.

  The largest box had a layer of silver coins over its bottom, the middle-sized box held a handful of gold coins, and the smallest had only a leather bag, gathered together at the top. He reached his hand down to take the bag, but the Damall’s strong fingers wrapped themselves around his wrist.

  The Damall himself opened the bag, and shook it, until a green stone lay on the palm of his hand. As soon as the stone lay there, the Damall closed his hand around it.

  The treasure. He was being shown the treasure, and in its hiding place. He was being shown this because he was the heir.

  While he held the candle, the Damall closed the boxes, wrapped them in the cloth, replaced them in their earthy cave, and set the stones back in place. The Damall stood then, and took the candle from him. A puff of the Damall’s breath plunged the two of them into darkness again.

  Out in the empty yard, the Damall spoke, low voiced. “Southernmost corner. West five. North eight.”

  He nodded his head. He wouldn’t forget.

  THAT SUMMER, HE DECIDED TO build a boat. The island had anywhere from four to six boats tied to the trees that edged its small harbor, small enough so that a boy could handle one on his own, large enough so two or three boys could go out for a day’s fishing and carry back the catch. Boats were sometimes lost, to bad weather or a bad mooring knot or bad seamanship. If a boat floated away from the island, or sank when thin planking gave way, often pieces of it would float back onto the beaches; but that was all the good the island got from it.

  He saw no reason, studying the little boats, why the island couldn’t build its own boats, rather than spending precious coins on the mainland for a boat. The boys already sewed their own sails and mended leaking hulls. It seemed to him that he could build a boat as well as any mainland man, and it seemed to him that the Damall approved of the idea. For helpers, he had the boys who had been in his care during the Lady Days. They had learned how to obey him.

  The finished boat floated buoyantly. He fixed its sail between mast and movable boom and set off alone. The boat sailed as if it were a bird on wings.

  It was only a week later that the boat was lost, in a squally night. His was the only mooring line the squall pulled loose. In the morning, all the other boats floated on a quiet sea, the long ropes leading from their bows to the shore still in place. The rope that tied his boat was gone, too, but he had no one but himself to blame, since he always knotted it himself. The loss was sharp. But since he knew that he could build another, starting the next spring, he consoled himself. The Damall whipped him lightly for carelessness, and then seemed to forget all about it.

  As soon as the last of the shoats had been slaughtered and smoked that fall, he accompanied the Damall to the Old City. He hadn’t expected the journey. One morning, the Damall took him aside to speak into his ear, “Fetch me three silver coins. We take Tomas to market today, and I don’t know what he will be worth so I must be sure to have enough coins to get another boy or two. Do it during the midday meal, while everyone eats. You won’t be missed.”

  He thought to argue and say that Griff would note his absence, but decided not to. He remembered where the treasure boxes were buried, and removed three silver coins without even counting how many were left, without even lifting the lids of the other boxes, without trying to hold the beryl in his own hand. He tucked the three silver coins into a cloth he had wrapped tight around his waist, and hid the boxes away again.

  When he returned to the main hall the Damall merely nodded to him. “Tomas,” the Damall said then, and Tomas stepped forward. “Nikol, bind Tomas. Today you go to market, Tomas.”

  “But it’s only my fifteenth fall,” Tomas said.

  “Not true,” the Damall said.

  “But Griff is older,” Tomas said.

  “Not true,” the Damall said.

  “But—” Tomas said.

  “All of you, help Nikol, hold Tomas until he is bound,” the Damall said, then rose and left the hall. By the time he returned, Tomas was bound and ready, and they set sail immediately.

  He had the tiller, following the Damall’s directions even though he thought he could probably guide them to the Old City without help. Not a word was spoken, as the wind pulled the boat through the water. Tomas watched him, as if hoping to catch a glimpse of hope, or a glimpse of some reason that hope shouldn’t die. The Damall watched him as if to catch a glimpse of weakness. He sailed with a stone face that neither of them could read.

  That was the way of the island—the older boys left, and new boys arrived. There was no reason nor use to question the way of the island, established by the Great Damall and carried on by his successors. The way things were was the way things had been. He would be the seventh Damall—he named it to himself—to hold rule over the island.

  The wind blew brisk and favorable. They were in time to exchange Tomas for five silver coins, and the Damall was pleased with the day’s work. The Damall was in good spirits as they left the enclosed slave market and headed for the market square. “What shall we get for you?” the Damall asked. “Dinner in a tavern? A tankard of wine? A woman?”

  The market spread out before them. At its cen
ter a tall stone column pointed like a finger at the sky, and at its back broad buildings stood in a line.

  He could make no response to the Damall’s questions, and then he thought he could. “A dagger.”

  The eyes glittered. “You may think I’ve forgotten what happened to the last dagger you were given, but I haven’t. I won’t give you another dagger so that you can lose it, as you did the other.”

  The words wanted to tumble out—that he hadn’t lost it, it had been stolen, he suspected stolen by Nikol. But he held his tongue, warned by the glittering eyes. There was something dangerous here, something he didn’t understand. He would say no more.

  “A dinner, wine, and a woman it is, then,” the Damall said. “In the morning we’ll stop by the slavery again, and you can choose.”

  He did not ask what it was he was to choose.

  The next morning, after buying a full cone of salt at market, and two of the delicate loaves of sweetened bread the bakers put out in the mornings to tempt the hungry, they returned to the fenced slave market. He was to make the selection alone, the Damall told him. He was to spend no more than one silver coin and five coppers. They needed the rest of the silver truemen to feed them across the winter, the Damall said, and hadn’t he noticed that the treasure boxes were not as full as they might have been?