THE ISLAND
On sale in 2009

WHEN KEL BOON entered the tavern, a score of faces turned his way. Such was the atmosphere in a small fishing village. Even on a day like today—when the skies were opening, the sea was battering them and the rest of the world felt very far away—Pavmouth Breaks's residents feared the stranger.

Kel smiled and received a dozen smiles in return, but some of the older men and women turned away. He'd been here for only five years, and it would take a lot longer than that for him to become one of them.

“Kel!” Trakis called from a smoky corner. The big man stood and waved his arms, and Mella—sitting beside him smoking a huge pipe—nudged him in the ribs.

Kel looked around quickly but saw no sign of Namior. Maybe those witches had held her back.

“You look like a drowned furbat!” Trakis said. As Kel drew closer, his friend's face grew stern. “You need ale.” He strode toward the bar.

“Hello, gorgeous,” Mella said. “You're dripping on the table.”

Kel stepped back and shed his coat, hanging it on a hook set into one of the tavern's many rough timber columns. It was one of the oldest places in Pavmouth Breaks, so the landlord Neak said, and he also claimed it was home to the most wraiths. Kel always smiled when he heard Neak telling that to a visiting fisherman or a newcomer to the village: Most haunted place in Noreela! Kel had visited a dozen places in Noreela City itself that also laid claim to that dubious title.

“No Namior?” Mella asked.

“She's coming. I spoke to her earlier.”

“Storm from the deepest Black,” Mella said, taking another draw on her pipe. She gasped, then exhaled a stream of pure green smoke. “You can almost hear the wraiths screaming in the wind.”

“No wraiths out there,” Kel said, perhaps a little too harshly. “It's just weather.”

Mella nodded and stared at him a little too long. Out of everyone, she was the most suspicious of his past. Sometimes, he thought she could see deeper than he knew.

Trakis returned and lowered a tray of drinks carefully to the table. Four jugs of Neak's Wanderlust ale and a dark bottle of wine. “I'm splashing out,” Trakis said. “Tonight it's us against the world.”

“A militiaman who affords Ventgorian wine,” Mella said admiringly. “You must be corrupt.”

“Eat sheebok shit, fisherwoman.”

Kel raised his jug and offered his squabbling friends a toast. “To us,” he said, “against the world.” He drank, closing his eyes as the initial bitter taste changed into something sweet and wonderful. Neak swore that he brewed naturally, without the help of magic or machines, and Kel believed him. Nothing tasting this good could be so false.