The Gray Isles

by F. T. McKinstry

  The shadows of sails and clouds faded as the sun sank into the western gray. Lorth breathed deeply to ease the tension in his spine. Everyone in this situation stood on either extreme of belief and disbelief. It bore the mark of a thin veil, if anything did.

  “So,” Samolan said. “Are we hunting Eadred or the boy?”

  “Both,” Lorth replied. “Unfortunately, I need to find Hemlock first, before he makes a right mess of this.”

  Samolan put the side of his face to the wind. “If Eadred did go after him, he’ll find him. Perhaps we should start with the wizard.”

  “I would agree, except I’ve no way to track Eadred out here. Wizards don’t leave imprints. Hemlock, however,” he reached into his pocket and drew forth the turtle charm, “that could be easier. Because I have this.” The men peered at the stone hanging in the air. Lorth lowered the charm and curled his fingers around it protectively. “I want to find him before the new moon rises. If he did see a loerfalos, and that’s as ominous a thing as I’m told it is, we’ll not want to be caught between.”

  “Would Eadred risk that?” Samolan asked.

  “Depends on what he knows about it.” Faena’s words came to his mind: He knows so much about the sea; he could write books himself. “He could know a great deal, which could send him either way. But if I know where Hemlock is, it might be easier to predict Eadred.”

  “I don’t like it,” the warrior said quietly.

  “Och!” Cimri spat. “Doan let tales of the Mistress spook ye, now.”

  “Hemlock claimed to’ve seen her four times,” Samolan reminded him.

  “Ballocks,” Cimri snorted.

  Samolan cocked his head in doubt. “The stories come from somewhere. I say we make for Mimir and look for them on land. These waters bother me.”

  “We lost too much time on Urd,” Lorth said. “They got a start on us. If Eadred is hunting him, Mimir will be too late.”

  Cimri got up and moved a loving hand along the boom. “They canna outrun this young lassie, start or no.”

  Lorth said, “Let me see what I can find in the shadow realms.”

  Samolan pushed himself up and went below.

  Lorth hunkered down and sat firmly on the deck against the hull. He brought the turtle charm between his palms and breathed into it until his mind cleared and the landscape of interior perception came into focus over the surrounding sea, fading to dusk. Impressions began to flow, turbulent and without bottom. Aengus, his expression wild with sadness and trouble, holding out his hand; the grief and wrath of a woman searching the surf through a veil of tears...

  As Lorth stared into the water, the impressions vanished.

  The stone turtle swam into the depths beyond mortal sight, chilled in the wintry current of the Otherworld. He descended until silence stole the light from his mind. A great, wild presence like the sky between the stars turned and opened one eye, emerald green and slitted like a crocodile’s. The turtle withdrew, sending a ripple through the night. Her gaze held him.

  Panicked, he uttered words that focused the formless substance of the dark moon, the rift in the veil. Fleeing upward, color flickered into motion around him: water, rocking and swirling with blood, shock and disillusionment; the light of a white sun striking the earth with the voice of an age; protective, eternal emptiness.

  Lorth opened his eyes to utter darkness, as if the sea had rushed in and flooded them with pitch.

  “Bloody hell!” he heard Cimri say. “‘Bout time. Sam, hand me that.”

  “What’s wrong with his eyes?” the warrior whispered.

  Lorth’s vision shifted. Light from a small glass lantern hanging near the hatchway danced on the interior of the hull. It rained softly. Cimri and Samolan leaned over him. The sailor held a leather flask to his lips. “Drink.”

  Lorth coughed on whisky as it hit his throat. He felt nauseous, and foreboding weighed on him like a soaked blanket.

  “Damn you!” Samolan growled. The faint light caught in the lines on his face, making him look grim. “You were out for hours.”

  “Did ye see anything?” Cimri asked.

  “Get back,” Lorth warned them. As his bile rose, he leaned over, splayed his hands on the deck and emptied his stomach. The turtle charm skittered under the tiller seat. “I’ve done something right bad,” he rasped, and then threw up again. When he finally gathered himself, he leaned back with his arms over his belly. His body shook with an uncontrollable chill, and the spider scar on his neck screamed with fire.

  Samolan risked a glance at the inky sea. “What did you do?”

  “I couldn’t find him,” Lorth said hoarsely. “Even with an imprint. What I found when I focused on Hemlock wasn’t human.”

  After a pause, Cimri said, “Did it see you?”

  Lorth coughed on a laugh. “Bloody gods, something did. Huge and older than time. Stared right through me. I had to use a trick Leda taught me to get back.”

  For several moments, his companions said nothing. They balanced on the slanted deck and gazed into the darkness.

  “Loerfalos?” Samolan said finally, voicing their fears.

  For once, Cimri didn’t scoff. He said, “Maybe she got Hemlock.”

  Lorth put his face in his hands and rubbed his eyes as the night bore down on him like slow breathing, hollow and vast. The feminine presence at the bottom of the world hadn’t left him, and he knew the feel of it, if he knew anything. “Lads, I don’t think she’s after Hemlock.” He looked up and swallowed against a bone-dry throat. “I think she’s protecting him.”

  After a stunned pause in which his companions calculated the implications of that statement, Cimri said, “That’s no’ good.”

  “No, it bloody well isn’t! I suggest we get off these waters as fast as your ‘young lassie’ will take us.”

  “There’s some sense,” Samolan muttered. He held out his arm and helped Lorth to his feet. His knees nearly buckled beneath him. “C’mon now,” the warrior said, hustling him towards the cabin steps. “You really have to stop going into the dark like that.”

  Lorth let the warrior help him into the hatch.

  A short time later, he lay in his bunk, unable to sleep under crushing fatigue. His mind blanketed the sea, settling into the rhythm of the waves. The darkness clutched him, and then softened its grip as he remained there on the edge, one eye on the stars and the other on ground. She is protecting him. The impression had settled over his heart with that eerie quality characteristic of the Old One, as if he had seen it with a different pair of eyes.

  Why would an immortal lower herself to look after a mortal?

  She wouldn’t.

  Unless Hemlock was not as he seemed. Touched, Aengus had said. Eamoire. Immortal offspring. Why had Eadred brought that up with Faena? From what Lorth knew, Eadred wasn’t wont to share his thoughts with others in that way. It had to have been on his mind like rough seas. Of all the mysteries surrounding Eadred, that one stood out. Had he known something about Hemlock?

  How? And why would Eadred attack him?

  The questions hung there like leaves fluttering in the breeze, unanswered. Lorth dozed; as night fell, the sky thickened with clouds and the air became heavy and damp. He awoke as the new moon pulled on his mind. He got up and went above.

  His companions sat in the cockpit, hovering like shades in the faint lamplight. Samolan sat on the dry side of the deck with his knees propped up. Cimri held his place by the tiller, his gaze touching every sheet and line, looking for potential adjustments. As Lorth approached, the sailor leaned back with his arms akimbo and his head resting on his hands. He cocked one finger skyward.

  “Our wily storm, she’s on her way,” he said.

  “When were you going to tell me that?” Lorth snapped. He had been far less concerned about Cimri’s storm before talking to Leda.

  With an eye on his sails, Cimri leaned forward in his seat and rubbed his hands together. “She changed her ways. Didna feel like this before.”

&
nbsp; A storm. Lorth had to work to push Leda’s soft voice from his mind. You know the Destroyer doesn’t always discriminate. And know he did. He’d lost his heart and nearly his life on more than one occasion at the hands of Dark Mother. As animals knew, survival depended on never hoping for or assuming anything about her intentions.

  “You’re making this up as you go along,” Samolan accused Cimri.

  The sailor barked with laughter. “Och! That’s some soldier talk. Just a wee bit o’ weather. Where’d you leave yer spine?”

  Samolan leaned around the boom in a squall of irritation. “Maybe it’s with your balls on that rock face in Black Tooth.”

  “Even you weren’t up for climbing that demon’s ass,” Cimri shot back.

  “But I didn’t whine about it, did I.”

  “Peace,” Lorth said quietly. “This could work to our favor. Most likely, Eadred also knows about the storm and won’t risk being out here, either.” He lowered himself next to Samolan. “How far off is it?”

  Cimri shrugged. “Hard to say. It’s shifting around. Could be dawn, or day after tomorrow.” He sniffed. “Uncanny one, this.”

  Silence fell between them as they huddled in their woolens, swaying against the movement of the boat as Cimri worked the sails downwind. The lantern squeaked on its hinges as they shared some food. But the cold crept more deeply into their bodies than ordinary air, lowering their voices and stealing their spirits. Finally, Lorth said: “Cimri, how about a song to clear this gloom.”

  The Albatross grunted and stared into the night. Samolan handed Lorth a whisky flask. He took it, noting how much lighter it had become.

  “Give us that one about your woman,” Samolan said. It was an old joke between them.

  After some moments, Cimri lifted his voice and sang:

  “My woman has a wandering eye;

  “Yarrow, thyme and thorn.

  “She eyes the ocean and the sky

  “While stitching sails, forlorn.

  “I got a kiss, and then a tear

  “As she bade me go;

  “But on the waves, my heart’s in fear: “My woman’s in the know.”

  As his voice fell away, Lorth turned to him with a shiver. “That’s not as amusing out here as it is in a tavern onshore.”

  “Och! It’s no’ about a bloody loerfalos, is it.”

  “It could be,” Samolan said. “What made you bring that up? I’m not drunk enough yet for sea serpents.”

  “I canna help it!” Cimri complained. “She’s on my mind like an angry lass!”

  Lorth reached into his boot, snatched out Leaf and held her up by the blade. The silver curves glinted in the light. “Your angry lass won’t be cat shit compared to this one if you don’t snap out of it.”

  Samolan laughed. “Take it easy, Wolf. You don’t want me to sing.”

  Lorth sheathed his blade. “Buck up, Cimri. Give us a song about the falling star. You must know one.”

  The sailor put his head in his hands. “I dinna ken.” He looked up and around, his gray eyes wild. “I canna smell nothin’ right.”

  Lorth handed Cimri the flask. Since Lorth entered this realm, his animal senses had gone edgy and intensified so gradually that he no longer perceived the gap between well-being and foreboding. But to his memory, no amount of war, sea, storms, or cliffs had ever brought Cimri this far off his laughing, ornery ways.

  “There better be more of that,” Samolan said in a foul tone, gesturing to the flask as Cimri tilted it high. When he had drained it, the sailor got up and shuffled to the cabin stairs. He slammed the door behind him. Samolan took the tiller seat.

  “Never known a Northman to go short on whisky,” Lorth said distractedly. His belly prickled with unease. “Sam, drop into your center and tell me what you feel.”

  The warrior leveled an empty gaze in his direction. “Cold. I don’t like this place.”

  A large swell tilted the Spring Gale stern to bow at an oblique angle and then dropped her down again, driving her into the wind. Cimri emerged from the cabin. “What was that?”

  Samolan grabbed the line on the mainsail. “Who knows? Jibe ho.” Lorth ducked as the boom swung over him.

  “Think we bloody well ought to!” the sailor returned. He handed the flask to Samolan and then moved towards the bow, disappearing into the darkness behind the straining sails.

  Lorth got up and leaned over the beam. “Maern.” The water swirled and heaved around them with unnatural agitation, rocking and groaning in his gut like a curse. His spider bite had numbed the side of his neck.

  An enormous splash resounded off the bow. Samolan swore an oath involving some mountain god as the sky lit up, followed by a thunderous crack. Rain pelted the lantern, sending hissing smoke into the wind. A gust slammed into the mainsail. Samolan eased it out and changed course slightly to avoid running downwind.

  “Cimri!” Lorth shouted. “Can you calm this?”

  “Go see what he’s doing,” Samolan said.

  Lorth was already heading forward. He held onto the boat, shielding his face as the wind shifted and pummeled him from the west. Waves crashed around the hull in chaotic fury, splashing over his feet.

  When he reached the foredeck, he clung to the edge of the cabin and stared into the dark. “Cimri!” The sky lit up again.

  The foredeck was empty.

  Cimri. Lorth spoke a word to merge his body with the wind as he whirled around and ran aft, his feet slipping on the deck. The wind carried him, gave him balance, but scattered his thoughts with wrath. He imagined the first mate on the port side of the cabin, but only the dark figure of Samolan stood near the boom, reaching up for the sheet.

  “I can’t find Cimri,” Lorth said.

  The warrior looked over his shoulder. “Not too many places he could...” He trailed off as he realized what he had just said.

  Lorth leapt into the stairwell to the cabin hatch and flung it open. He knew he wouldn’t find Cimri there. He stumbled as the Spring Gale lurched under some new onslaught. As he returned to the deck, the sky flashed again, revealing Samolan gathering in the mainsail. His face was hidden beneath a soaking hood, but the methodical way he moved spoke of a warrior’s detachment in the thick of a battle turned sour.

  Lorth moved to the beam and leaned over it. “Cimri!” he shouted, bringing the force of a wizard’s will into the sound. The sea devoured it. Thunder ripped the sky as he moved to help Samolan lash down the sail. Lightning shot across the void, illuminating the tossing sea.

  A swell rose up around the Spring Gale, lifting her as it surfaced.

  “Lorth?” Samolan said, his voice rising in alarm. “What—”

  The rolling waters parted to a slick, sinuous coil, a mountain ridge lined with dead-tree thorns.

  “Get down!” Lorth shouted. They hit the deck as the boat listed violently to one side and back again. The lamp went out. Lorth slammed into the cabin hatch; Samolan cried out as he struck the inside of the hull. Lorth hauled himself up, crawled to his friend and grasped his arm with an iron hand.

  Time slowed; the wind stilled and the rain turned to icy mist. Something darker than the moon filled the sky, stirring the mist with a long, deep breath. A pair of eyes opened slowly. Green as sunlight touching deep water, and slitted with a sword blacker than Void, each eye exceeded the size of the boat. As it studied him, the towering presence hit Lorth’s open channels with the complex vibration of a god, nearly shattering his mind. From a great distance, like a vanishing dream, the serpent spoke a word in the tongue of the Old One: Hunter.

  It was not a greeting.

  By his side, Samolan whispered, “You’re a Destroyer. Appeal to her.”

  Lorth thought that a bad idea. But it did bring Leda’s words to mind: When confronted with one of Maern’s creatures, don’t assume you’re dealing with the goddess herself. Believing it would be the last thing he did—based as it was on some shaky assumptions, indeed—Lorth got up on his knees, gazed into the serpent’s eyes and
replied, in the Dark Tongue, “I am a servant of Menscefaros.” Unable to speak the Old One’s ancient name, he drew it into his mind from a bottomless pool of desperation. “I swear on her heart, I mean Hemlock no harm.”

  The immortal regarded him for a moment as if deciding whether to believe him. Then her eyes closed and she withdrew, taking the mist, rain and wind in a mighty rush of force that left the two men gasping for air.

  As silence returned, they relaxed into an unholy blend of grief and mortal reprieve beneath a shimmering veil of stars on the moonless sky.

  Dirala’s Tea

  Water moved in the sky, enveloping the light. She spoke softly, a sinuous presence, eternal and alone. The entire ocean knew her name, yet none could utter it.

  On a bed of woven hemlock boughs, a baby drifted to sea, carried by an autumn current.

  A man’s voice bounced across the water from the shore. “Have ye lost your wits, woman? How could ye’ve done such a thing?”

  The woman wept. “How could I?” she cried. “Idgit! Who was it made an offer in blood to her? Her! Mistress doan give such gifts freely. We canna keep him.”

  “He’s just a wee bairn!”

  “He’ll be the ruin of us all!”

  The child gazed up at the afternoon sky, gray and gathering rain. Mother? She rocked him, singing softly. A presence he had always known, she held him in the damp air, to breathe. Her hands touched his throat, his bones, his flesh. The sun set, and rose again. She fed him milk and soothed his fears. And then she submerged, leaving him on a bed of seaweed moving to and fro in the rhythm of a receding tide, whispering, “The sea knows its own.”

  *

  Hemlock opened his eyes. He lay on a shore, his face pressed into a bed of stones, crushed shells, and seaweed. Cold water rolled against his feet and thighs. Realizing he could breathe, he reached up and touched his neck, then withdrew with a start. The knife wound stretched over his throat, but had somehow sealed. His nose had returned to its previous shape. He pushed himself up and rolled over. He wore the same clothes he had worn on his departure from Urd: plain gray breeches, dark belt, and rough white tunic. His body ached in every joint, muscle, and sinew; his belly yawned with hunger and his mouth swelled with thirst.