Dirala made a sound of astonishment. “Well. You’re of like kind.” Her tone was dry enough to crack dirt. “His name is Baltos. Do have a seat.” Waving gracefully at a chair, she moved to the stove and began to prepare tea.
Lorth rose and sat down. Baltos rolled up with a contented grumble, moved to the stove and plopped down on a rug. “I’m looking for a man named Hemlock,” the hunter said.
The priestess placed a plate of biscuits on the table, and then reached up to a shelf and pulled down a pair of earthen mugs. “He’s a foolish page in some kind of trouble. Upstairs, asleep. I asked Wychmouth to take it in hand.”
Lorth rubbed his forehead. “Tell me you didn’t mention what kind of trouble.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “If I’d given them details, they’d have thought me drunk and ignored the call.”
“Dirala. I was sent by the Aenlisarfon on a mission to Urd. Hemlock is involved.” The priestess turned around. “I need you to tell me exactly what happened, what he said, what you saw in him, everything.” He gestured in the general direction of the courtyard door. “Do make it quick. I’d rather not involve your guests.”
“Is that what your friend is doing? Keeping watch?” When the hunter didn’t answer, she said, “We have time. You could invite him in for tea.”
“He hates tea.” He leaned forward and plucked a biscuit from the plate. “He wouldn’t do well with Baltos, either. Used to hunt wolves, as a boy.”
“Cheery sort,” she muttered, placing a steaming cup by his side. It smelled like something Leda would make: chamomile, wild basil, hawthorn berries. She sat down with a heavy sigh. “I’ll tell you what Hemlock told me. He recalled it as vividly as if he were making it up on the spot. So I do wonder...”
She spoke in a quiet voice undisturbed by the highs and lows of her tale. Hemlock had seemingly left out few details—on the surface. A subtle, deeper river of unseen information flowed beneath, and Lorth couldn’t say if this perception came from the manner of Dirala’s explanation or the content of the information itself. What Hemlock had told her matched Aengus’s story, as far as it went. But after that, it began to sound less like the adventure of a frustrated youth and more like sailors’ legend.
When she began to relate the supposed interchange between Hemlock and Eadred on the Dark Mistress, Lorth watched his net fill up with fish. Eadred hadn’t been idle with his folciel sphere, and what’s more, it had evidently allowed him to see across time. He had deduced that Hemlock was an eamoire hidden in a mortal body, with mortal parents who had been frightened enough by him to set him adrift on the sea.
When Lorth heard the part about Eadred being tricked by a witch, he froze like a cat spotting a finch within its reach. That Eadred had told Hemlock about his experience on Solse—not to mention his resentment towards the Aenlisarfon for knowing something Lorth felt very sure they hadn’t—said more about the assassin’s belief that he wouldn’t survive the day than the fact he had actually said it himself, at the end.
Tapping his fingers on the table as if to keep a beat, Lorth spoke the first thing that came to his mind. “You said when Hemlock arrived he was ‘in shadow’. What did you mean?”
“He had one foot in the Otherworld. Whatever happened to him, he saw death. I’ve seen this before, with shipwreck survivors. He wasn’t all here yet. I gave him some tea to bring him into focus.”
“As a mortal,” Lorth noted.
Her dark gaze flattened him. “Tell me you aren’t taking this seriously.”
“Leki didn’t think him human.”
She rolled her eyes. “Leki is fey. She sees shades in everything.”
“What Hemlock told you about his flight from Urd is true. I left the island to find him, and Eadred, who went missing around the same time. I saw the boat Hemlock stole tied up in plain sight, in Gefion—and yet you say he washed up in Roskva. Much as I’d like to disregard Hemlock’s tale as paranoia or subterfuge, I now have to assume Eadred is loose on this isle.”
“It’s possible he had nothing to do with it,” Dirala demurred. “Hemlock could’ve lost the boat to someone else and come by that injury another way.”
“I don’t think so. I have reason to believe Hemlock is an eamoire.”
She laughed like a girl. “Hidden as a mortal? Eamoires are rare enough, but that’s—”
“A myth?” His memory of the empty foredeck of the Spring Gale flooded his heart with grief. He leaned forward intently. “Two nights ago, I lost my first mate—a good friend—to a loerfalos because I tried to find Hemlock in the Otherworld. She would’ve taken us too, had I not appealed to her and sworn an oath not to harm him.”
Dirala’s lips parted in astonishment and sadness as she absorbed this. “I am sorry.” After a respectful pause, she said, “Hemlock bears a tidy, expertly placed scar on his throat. I don’t believe a Master of the Eye did that—but someone did. I think he got into trouble with a bad lot and invented a colorful story to cover it up. Mortal or not, how easy would it be to hit an eamoire?”
Lorth sipped his tea, mildly fascinated by her matter-of-fact assessment of a violent encounter. “Eadred is a siomothct, blackringed and banished to Urd. I was sent there to try to find out what went between him and the witch he mentioned.” The priestess stared at him like a hawk. “Whatever it was, it broke his mind. But I will tell you this: Eadred is quite capable of taking an eamoire in a mortal body—and he wouldn’t leave such a kill to chance, trust me. Hemlock wouldn’t have survived his attack without otherworldly intervention.”
“So I’m to believe Eadred took it upon himself to murder an eamoire for the purpose of arousing the wrath of its mother?” she said in disbelief. “To force her hand in taking vengeance on him?” She tilted her head back as if to laugh. “Maern, what arrogance to think an assassin—even a siomothct—could succeed at that! She would’ve devoured him at the thought!”
“So I learned,” Lorth said quietly. He moved his teacup to the side and turned it around. “I can’t imagine why she spared him—but he took great pains to make sure she wouldn’t. He discovered what Hemlock was. He went after him with grim purpose and, according to you, he made a great noise about it—hell, he all but banged on a dinner bell.”
“What manner of anguish would drive him to seek death by killing her child?” Dirala breathed, aghast.
“I don’t know that yet.” He studied the ceiling, hung with pots, drying plants, and roots. “What did you tell Hemlock?”
“That I’d arrange for a ship to return him to Urd.”
Lorth lifted a brow. “You lied to him?”
“Not exactly.” She shifted in her chair. “I asked Wychmouth for an escort, that’s all. In case he tries to give us the slip.”
A prickle crept across Lorth’s spider bite. An immortal half-breed, hidden in plain sight. Seen only by children and animals. Eluded the knife of a siomothct. Protected by a loerfalos—and now he slept upstairs under the pall of mortal tea? Not likely!
Lorth rose from his seat. “I think he might have done that already.”
“A sand flea couldn’t pass through the weaver spell I put on that room.”
The hunter tilted his head with a black expression of challenge. Dirala got up, called to Baltos and went out into the hall. The wolf jumped up and glided out the door, and Lorth grabbed the lantern and followed them. At the top of the stairs, down a short hall, stood a low portal shimmering with power. Dirala leaned close and knocked. “Hemlock?”
“Save that,” Lorth said. He spoke a word that shattered the spell, opened the door and held the lamp high to reveal an empty room. Wind whispered through the open windows.
Dirala swore something in Asmoralin that would’ve made a sailor blush.
“Believe me now?” Lorth said. He handed her the lamp and walked to the window. Thick, well-tied drapes had provided Hemlock’s escape. “Still mortal,” he said dryly. “Just invisible to Keepers.”
Dirala came to his side and leaned out. �
�What will you do?”
“Unfortunately, I don’t have the strength—or the nerve—to hunt for him.” He turned around and studied the wolf, sniffing around the bed. When in doubt, follow the senses of beasts. A smile touched his mouth. “But he does.”
The Netweaver’s Tale
A man and his wife rocked upon the vastness like a final breath.
“It’s fey out here today,” she said, nervously fingering the red scarf at her throat.
The fisherman tied off the foresail and looked up. “The sea is always fey.” He sniffed the breeze. “There’ll be a storm come in, ‘fore long.”
“How long?”
“Who can ken.”
Her gaze swept the empty horizon. “She’s watchin’ us.”
Voices rippled the surface above like the wings of a mayfly, an irritating vibration caught in the rays of the rising sun filtering into the surrounding darkness. One voice she knew; the other, she knew as the blood of an offering cast into the infinite flow of her creatures. Untold shades, hunter and hunted, the souls of drowned sailors, thousands of pearly eggs for every one that breathed, they whispered of chaos in balance.
The tiny, tooth-shaped hull of a boat stained the surface far above. In it, the mother of a dead child buried in the earth huddled, trembling with the knowledge of all mothers. Her blood knew death; it spread into the waters like a tear, and it did not ask. But her man had asked. His voice had rent the Void like a sword, bright, sharp and strong against the flesh of mortals, yet no more than a reed to the sea.
The Destroyer curled her body with supple grace, caressing the depths. She moved up towards the shimmering surface in a silent spiral, hungry and inexorable. To be worthy of providing a vessel in which to hide her child, these mortals would surrender to the forces that gave him life.
*
For a time, Hemlock just ran, to distance himself from Dirala’s house. Once he realized nothing came after him, he stopped and leaned over to catch his breath. Dirala’s tea had grounded him but not given him any additional strength; he winded easily, his thighs burned, and he ached everywhere. His throat tightened around the wound, causing him to wish he had fetched something to wrap around his neck. He would be easy to identify.
He began walking in the direction of the sea. He couldn’t return to Urd, and he couldn’t be seen around here, as the word would be out against him. He wished he hadn’t gone to Dirala’s house. Now they knew he was here.
If Eadred had spoken the truth about knowing the movements of the loerfalos, then he might know Hemlock had called to her—and now walked on Mimir.
He slammed a hand into his forehead. Stop it you fool. Loerfalos never had anything to do with this. Damned wizard is mad.
The sky flashed with lightning, followed by a crash of thunder that shook the ground. A drop of rain struck his face as he stumbled over the rocky, brushy terrain. He walked for an hour or two, avoiding houses and farms. He spooked every time the sky lit up, a dog barked, or the wind rustled the brush around him. Once, he thought a pair of eyes gazed at him through the blowing leaves of a stunted tree. He kept moving, glancing warily about. His nerves spun up every manner of creature stalking him.
When human habitation became harder to avoid, he picked his way down to the shore. The sea crashed around him: once a sanctuary, now a threat. As the tide rose on one side and the clutter of dwellings, wharves, and establishments thickened on the other, Hemlock turned and headed inland, to the outskirts of Gefion.
He saw the animal eyes twice more, once in the rocks above the shoreline and again on the edge of a path. That time, he thought a hulking shape slipped just out of sight, but he couldn’t be sure. The creature only appeared when his mind wandered away from the fear of the hunted and just as his gaze touched it. Then it vanished, leaving him in the void of uncertainty.
His first thought was of Baltos. But if Dirala had sent the wolf after him, why did the beast only shadow and not apprehend? Hemlock wanted to believe Baltos still feared him from their initial encounter, but he knew better. Dirala’s tea had done something to remove whatever the wolf had seen.
Best to get into the city. There, a wolf would get more notice than he would.
Rain swept over the streets as Hemlock slogged through shipyards and narrow passages that stank of shellfish and rotting vegetables. Gulls wheeled on the sky above the rooftops. He searched for clotheslines and rubbish piles, hoping to spot a rag or something he could tie around his neck. He would’ve liked different clothes, as well. But that wouldn’t easy without committing a rather unsavory crime.
His sister Alys would help him, if he could find her. Aside from giving him food and shelter, she might know the truth of what his parents had done to bring him into the world. The thought gave him little more sustenance than weak tea—practical to a fault, the sister he remembered wouldn’t have asked questions or discovered the truth even if she had seen or heard something odd—but Hemlock had to try, if only to satisfy his longing.
And that would be the end of it. If Alys did validate his story, he had little hope of convincing anyone else, let alone the Master of Wychmouth. And to what end would he tell his tale of a barren womb, abandonment, and supposed rescue? It wouldn’t mean he had seen a loerfalos four times, nor justify stealing a high wizard’s property and then accusing him of murder.
You are quite a storyteller.
He shuddered as Dirala’s words slammed him down. He dared not assume his dreams told him the truth. Even surviving death at the hands of a wizard didn’t convince him of that. Not anymore. Ironically, his lifelong desire to be a wizard had also given him implacable faith in their refusal to believe him. If the Keepers of the Eye, guardians of the mysteries, didn’t accept his dreams, then who would? That offered him more proof than miraculously washing up on a beach.
Dawn touched the air as Hemlock turned onto a street lined with stone houses, shops, and offices. People moved quickly to early duties, pulling their cloaks and hoods against the rain and wind. Hemlock headed across the street towards a window hung with woolen goods.
A short time later, he stood in a basement, gazing up at the broken window through which he’d entered. He adjusted the plain cloth over his throat and drew aside the stone-gray cloak he took from an unseen corner in the shop above.
Twice a thief. He had to find his sister before hunger made it three times.
He grabbed a rickety box from a pile in the corner and set it before the window. As he looked up, something dark fled through the alleyway outside. He stepped onto the box, teetering as it bent beneath his weight, and peered through the fist-sized hole in the glass. Cold wind whistled over the ground, level with his face. Raindrops splashed in puddles and pattered on the stones. Nothing else moved.
Above, he heard the tinkling of a bell, then a closing door. Heavy footsteps sounded on the floor.
Hemlock pushed the window up as quickly as he dared without making too much noise, then, with the strength of panic, lifted himself and pressed his chest through the opening. As his feet left the box, it rattled out from under him. Once he got his elbows over the frame, he glanced up and down the alley to make sure no one saw him.
Something fled past the opening to the street. Hemlock’s imagination told him it was shaggy and huge, but as usual, it moved too fast to tell.
His hunter had found him. He couldn’t return to the basement, or he would be trapped. He hoisted his body through the hole, but in his fright, he moved without care. A shock hit his left side as something cut into it.
The alleyway darkened as if dusk had fallen. Hemlock dragged his body onto the muddy stones and whipped his new cloak out of the window, tearing it. Pain shouted in the flesh between his ribs. On the edge of the window casing, a wedge of wood had come loose and hung in the air like a knife glinting with his blood. He rolled over and put his back against the wall, clutching the wound.
No time to rest. He got up, pulled his cloak around his body and limped towards the brighter murk o
f the street beyond. Just as he reached it, he realized he’d forgotten to close the basement window. Best not to leave this too obvious.
As he moved back into the alley, darkness gathered around him and made his steps heavy. His breath caught. Forgetting the window, he spun back around to leave, sure that some wizard’s enchantment had found him. It whispered like a river under barren trees, pulling reeds, soaking hollows, and watching the sky with a clear black gaze.
An animal entered the alley in a slow blur. Hemlock stumbled back, then tripped, slamming to the ground as the river flowed into the shape of a man, clad in black. The heavy air parted to his step, and the rain and wind didn’t touch him.
“Here you are,” he said in the voice of a grave, pushing back his hood. He had pale skin, long graying hair and the greenish-gold eyes of a predator. Blood-red stitchwork trimmed the edges of his cloak. He motioned with his hand and spoke a strange word. A wolf came into focus, sitting obediently as the fleeting sense of subtlety around it dissolved.
“Did Dirala send you?” Hemlock demanded, his heart racing.
“I came from Urd,” the wizard replied mildly. He leaned down with graceful ease and held out his hand. “I mean you no harm.”
Hemlock hesitated between the wolf and the outstretched hand. Holding the damp, throbbing pain in his side, he reached out with his free arm and let the wizard pull him to his feet. “That’s Baltos,” he panted.
“I needed his assistance.” Though his mood was thoughtful, the darkness in his bearing spoke of a deeper intention. “You are as hidden from my mind as the very sea, Hemlock. You shouldn’t have noticed Baltos under my influence. But you did.”
You have the eyes of the sea. “Who are you? What do you want with me?”
He pursed his lips as if deciding whether to answer the question. “My name is Lorth.” The name carried a breath of roots and water. A weird glimmer touched the wizard’s eyes. “I came here to find Eadred—and discovered you. Dirala told me what happened.”
The Gray Isles Page 10