The Gray Isles

by F. T. McKinstry

  Eadred. Hemlock briefly considered a bold move of walking around the wizard and moving on. “I told her the truth. She didn’t believe me.”

  “I do.” He folded his arms over his chest, his gaze lingering around Hemlock’s throat. “We found the Dark Mistress. She is here, in port.”

  Hemlock’s heart sank like a weight. Somewhere inside, like a prayer he feared to release to the stars, he’d been hoping the loerfalos took Eadred—but why would she do that? As it was, Hemlock couldn’t believe she had saved his life, though death seemed certain at the time. His existence still failed to give him proof that his dreams and visions were anything but delusional. It only upheld the reality of his madness.

  He swallowed against a stone dry throat. “Are you trying to scare me?”

  “You escaped him once. I’d be interested to know how you did that.”

  “I don’t know what happened. Anyway, why aren’t you going after Eadred? He’s a madman, a rogue to your kind. I’m nothing.”

  The wizard raised his brow as if to challenge a claim. “I wouldn’t expect you to tell Dirala everything, considering you didn’t know her intentions. But I have another view. Do you not know what you are?”

  Hemlock stepped back as dizziness swept through him. I am wounded and hungry, he wanted to say, but saw no need in giving this man any openings. “I was in service to the Keepers of Urd. Now I’m a thief. Will you haul me in for justice?” He straightened his back and held up his hands in a cavalier motion of surrender. “Be about it, then.”

  “You misunderstand me.” He started to say something else, and then turned as a shout rang out into the street. The door to the woolens shop slammed. The wizard said something to Baltos that caused the wolf to fade into the surroundings.

  “I’ll deal with this,” Lorth said. He turned on his heel and stepped into the street as a tall, gaunt man came into view and demanded his business.

  On the back of the wizard’s cloak glimmered a symbol that Hemlock recognized as the Order of Raven. Farous wore it, though his cloak had no red borders.

  Hemlock edged back into the shadows of the alley, pressing his body against the wall so the wizard’s form blocked the shopkeeper’s view. He couldn’t hear what the two men said.

  Seized by a surge of strength with no logical origin, Hemlock fled into the alley.

  Baltos came up behind as a disembodied presence. When Hemlock reached the end of the passage, he leapt up onto a pile of crates with a desperate, foolish intention of getting over the wall that towered behind them. Rain struck his face. He clamped his hand on top of the wall and hauled himself over it. He landed on his feet with a grunt, just missing a garden in the corner of a small courtyard.

  But he had underestimated Baltos. The sound of a clattering crate came from the other side of the wall, followed by a pair of giant, shadowy paws slamming onto the top. The wolf muscled himself up with powerful ease and leapt into the garden, crushing the tender greens. His rough growl burned the ground with a heated breath. Hemlock scuttled back and prepared for an attack; but the wolf hesitated warily, pacing back and forth across the yard as if he were under someone’s control.

  Sure enough, the wizard’s voice called out from the alleyway. He spoke in a weird tongue that resonated with the darkness of the earth, penetrating and shaking the structures of Hemlock’s will like a deep, slow-motion tremor. Hemlock doubled over as the command hit him in the bowels like a fist.

  Choking on rain, he got to his feet, opened the gate to the yard and stumbled into a narrow street lined with stone houses. He ran across, ducked behind a thorn hedge, and peered back in the direction of the alley. The street was empty: no wolf, no wizard. Hemlock’s stomach turned. Lorth would be harder to elude than Eadred had been. So where was he?

  Hemlock slipped out from behind the hedge and fled between the houses towards the southeast side of town. The storm worsened as he threaded through the streets looking for landmarks. The heavy weather helped him to stay unnoticed, as the folk about were more interested in getting out of the elements than in spotting details of others they passed. Every shadow, black cloak, and animal set his nerves on edge until he found himself wishing the Raven would show himself and be done with it.

  The city had changed enough to render it unfamiliar to Hemlock’s childhood memories, but the stiff wind at his back guided his way. His weakness returned with doubled force. The wound in his side throbbed with fire that spread over his abdomen and chest, causing him to limp. He reached the ragged edge of town where the likes of his erstwhile family lived—fishermen, stonemasons, brewers, deckhands and prostitutes—and headed for the marshy shore beyond the salt-gray houses.

  He trudged through the blowing grass until he reached the slippery, seaweed-strewn rocks that edged the sea. Whitecaps raged over the ashen horizon, and waves heaved and crashed against the stones. He gazed sullenly at the wild ocean, cold, vast, and holding as many secrets as she did layers of gray. No fisherman in his right mind prayed to the sea and expected an answer he could understand. She ruled thieves, tricksters and assassins.

  She devoured dreamers.

  Hemlock found a spot near a boulder that protected him from the wind. He eased his shirt aside, exposing the bare flesh over his ribs to the cold, salty air. A bloody gash glistened there, swollen and aching red. He splashed the icy seawater into it, gasping as the brine stung his open flesh. Once he had cleaned it, he tore a long strip from the cloth around his neck and tied it around his abdomen, over the wound.

  He reached up and touched the scar on his neck. Somehow, though he couldn’t be sure, it felt less ragged, smoother, as if it had begun to heal. Another fantasy.

  He knelt there before the sea as if to ask an estranged lover for forgiveness. Gulping, slamming boards over the bloody gush of his dreams and visions, he rose unsteadily and stepped into the wind. A shuddering sensation of heightened awareness passed over him.

  Do you not know what you are?

  Damned wizards. Knives, tea, wolves—riddles, secrets, and threats—nothing was simple with that lot. Hemlock had desired the truth of his origins badly enough before speaking to Lorth; now, the truth was a gate through which he must pass to survive.

  A familiar clamor rang out from the sky. A large white seagull swooped down, balanced on the north wind. Hemlock felt oddly glad to see his mysterious companion, though he still suspected Eadred in shifted shape. The gull released a cry, wheeled up, and vanished into the feather-gray mist.

  The ocean clawed at Hemlock’s back as he slogged through the marsh. The storm had a presence he hadn’t felt earlier, a beautiful pattern of emotional identity like that of a girl, laughing and mischievous as she carelessly destroyed whatever annoyed her. Avoiding the cobbled path that led to the shacks and cottages bordering the marsh, Hemlock kept to the fringe until he reached a field.

  He stopped and blinked through a vision of the stilted house where he had lived as a child. Tall grasses caressed the void.

  Something pale moved on the edge of the field. As he looked, it vanished.

  The north wind took his breath as he trudged on. When he reached the place where his home had once stood, he found the granite pillars that had held the stilts. Years of tides and storms had removed all other traces of the house. On the far side of the field, he discovered a cairn surrounded by wild ivy. A board lodged into the top contained a carving of a thistle bloom painted with woad.

  Protection, a ward against evil. With a shiver, he recalled his father throwing the bloodstained rag into the sea. The carven thistle crept into Hemlock’s mind like a rising, velvet howl. His heart pounding, he reached towards the carving, to touch...

  Something whispered over his shoulder. He jerked back his hand as the white seagull flew past his face and landed on the board. It arranged its wings and opened its beak, releasing a soft sound. Hemlock stared into its yellow eye. “Are you following me?”

  The bird took to the air again. The protection charm hadn’t bothered it. P
erhaps the bird had nothing to do with Eadred—but then again, Hemlock couldn’t picture a wizard with his kind of power being daunted by village witchcraft.

  Hemlock, on the other hand, wasn’t welcome here. He backed away from the cairn, and then studied the empty air over the earth of his childhood home. High vibration pressure buzzed between his eyes as his vision shifted. Raging fire tore the clear afternoon sky. His breath caught as the vision wavered in the gale. Dark-clad men wandered slowly away, heads bowed, some holding torches, others clutching thistle and rue.

  The townsfolk had burned the house.

  What had happened to Alys?

  He turned as something caught his eye again. Pale mist wavered on the knoll beyond the cairn. As before, it vanished and left him with a sensation that he had imagined it.

  Chilled to the bone with loneliness and the wrath of one spooked to the gut, Hemlock walked to the nearest street, where the houses huddled together. Surely, someone here knew where Alys had gone. He hadn’t walked far when he spotted a woman in a fenced yard, carrying a bucket. A small barn stood nearby; goats bleated inside.

  “Ho there!” Hemlock called out. The woman paused and turned. She reached up and held her hood close to her face as Hemlock approached the fence. “I’m looking for someone who once lived here.” He pointed over his shoulder towards the empty field. As he took a breath to continue, the woman stepped back and uttered a strange word, then hurried into her house and slammed the door. Her face appeared briefly in a window, and then vanished.

  Hemlock looked down at himself, then at the field. Someone had put that cairn there to ward off darkness. Or had the woman fled from him? You’re not human, Leki had said. Perhaps Dirala’s dirty tea had worn off. He did feel strange, less substantial, since cleaning his wound in the sea.

  He moved into the street like a feral cat, starved, cold, and desperate. Mist had crept into gutters, alleys, and doorways. Most of the people he passed took no note of him. Some eyed him warily, though whether they suspected his bearing, his being a stranger here, or something otherworldly, he couldn’t guess. He prowled through the rain, looking for anything or anyone that might lead him to Alys. He passed a dog and got the same bristly response he had received from Baltos upon arriving at Dirala’s house.

  Finally, he mustered the nerve to approach a younger woman hurrying from a market. She didn’t ward him off with a charm as the first one had, but simply shrugged at his sister’s name and kept moving. Shortly after that, a middle-aged man with whisky on his breath suggested Hemlock check the brothels. He considered it. Then he remembered Cleary.

  A netweaver and friend of Hemlock’s father, Cleary had lived on the edge of a shallow cliff that overlooked a chain of outcroppings in the sea. Hemlock had loved to watch the seals gather there. Cleary was old at the time, to a boy’s eyes anyway. But if Cleary still lived here, he might know what had become of Alys. Hemlock found his way to the Black Otter, a tavern with small round windows that made it look like a ship’s cabin. He crossed the narrow street and stepped on a path that led to a familiar wooden cottage in good repair.

  He approached the door and knocked. No answer; no smoke came from the chimney, and no light shone through the window. He knocked again, and stood there for a time before deciding no one was home. On the lee side of the cottage stood a woodpile covered with a rusty tin sheet. Hemlock hunkered down beneath the overhang, and sat. He wouldn’t be able to wait long; hunger and cold would drive him on at some point. But for now, he would rest and hope for Cleary’s return.

  As he huddled inside the drip line coming off the woodbin roof, he thought wistfully of the Black Otter across the street. The tavern would offer a nice, warm place to wait. But he had no money, and his appearance would invite questions. The pain in his side had dulled to an ache that worked his mind, hunger sat in his belly like a silent cave, and his feet were cold. Now and then, an errant gust of wind blew rain in his face. It would get colder as this storm passed.

  Underneath his animal discomfort, Hemlock settled into the green, violet, indigo, and gray hollows of his longing. Even if he found Alys, the best he could hope for would be warmth and food. Perhaps he could find work as a deckhand and get passage off the island. He could sail to another isle, Solse or Falor, and start a new life free of wizards and dreams.

  He rolled his hopeful possibilities for escape through his fingers like a string of shells as the wind blew and the sea heaved upon the shore in rhythmic song, drawing him down.

  *

  Hemlock awoke with an icy shock as something slammed him in the left side. He rolled over, nauseous and weak as sleep fell reluctantly from his bones.

  “Shove off,” said a gruff voice above him. “This is no’ a gutter.”

  Hemlock got to his knees, holding his side. A man towered over him, clad in gray and brown, his face and hands rough with many decades of sun, salt and wind. He wore a tattered green cap, and carried a net over his shoulder that dragged the ground. “Cleary,” Hemlock rasped. He pulled back his hood and tilted his face. “It’s me, Hemlock.”

  The old man peered down with his bright blue gaze as if frightened, or stunned. Then he jerked into motion as if something had awaked him from a spell. “So ye are.” He leaned down and held out his arm. “Weel get up lad, come in!”

  As Hemlock let the man help him inside, he noticed a paler mist against the evening fog hovering on the far side of the street.

  A short while later, when dusk had rolled in with the storm tide and the rain tapped in rhythmic swells against the window panes, Hemlock sat before a dancing fire with a bowl of warm rye in his lap. He had removed his wet clothes and boots and donned one of Cleary’s woolen nightshirts and two layers of blankets, but the cold in his body had settled in more deeply than his friend’s kindness could allay. He clenched his teeth as a wave of shivering swept through his limbs and chest. His hand shook as he spooned a bite of meal into his mouth.

  Cleary hadn’t asked him to explain his condition; not even the scar on his neck or the gash in his side. The netweaver tended him with fatherly care, muttering this and mumbling that like an old woman fretting over a sick child. But Hemlock recognized the shade of pale in his cheeks, which had always been so ripe and red with warmth. He knew the fear trembling behind the wall in the old man’s eyes. Hemlock’s otherworldly senses had returned with the night, as they had in Dirala’s house, and Cleary sensed it.

  He took another bite.

  “I dinna ken where ye been, lad,” Cleary said finally. He set a steaming mug by Hemlock’s side, and then settled himself with a pipe and a grunt into a well-worn chair by the fire. “An’ I’m no’ sure I want to.”

  Hemlock swallowed and cleared his throat. “I’m looking for Alys.”

  The old man grabbed an iron rod and plunged it into the fire, then put another piece of wood on the flames. The scent of woodsmoke and tobacco filled the room. “Been dead these seven years, poor lass.”

  Hemlock set his bowl aside. “Was she taken too?” he said without thinking.

  Cleary regarded him sidelong for a moment. “She died giving birth. Wee bairn was buried with her.” He drew several puffs from his pipe. “Maybe ye can tell me the real reason yer here.”

  Loneliness settled over Hemlock’s shoulders like a heavy sail. The last thing he wanted to do was involve this man in his troubles, or relate his tale and risk one more backhand of skepticism. But he had no place left to turn. He took the mug into his hands and drank. A strong brew of chicory with a hint of brandy, it relaxed him.

  “Do you know what happened to my parents?”

  The old man placed his hands on his knees and hung his head, as if to recall a tale. Then he took his pipe from his lips and rocked forward slightly. “Only the sea kens that.”

  “The villagers here, they burned the house. Why?” When his friend didn’t respond, Hemlock pressed, “I’ve seen things I don’t understand. What happened?”

  Cleary’s eyes glistened in the firelight.
“Yer askin’ questions no one asks, laddie. The ones who ken, they dinna tell.” He nodded. “Ye’ve been touched and I ken ye see a bit already. But I’ll tell ye a thing.”

  Hemlock took another swig of his tea. Another fisherman’s tale. Hardly what he needed—and yet, he had asked the question and he wanted an answer, even if it did feed his madness.

  Cleary rose and reached up into the shadows above the mantel. He set his pipe there, then brought down a dusty bottle, half-full of golden light. He gathered it close, pulled out the stopper and handed it to Hemlock. “Whisky. You’ll need it.”

  Without hesitation, Hemlock took the bottle and drank. It burned his throat and filled his head and chest like a warm, windy summer’s day. He coughed and handed it back with a nod.

  Cleary sat again with his pipe, puffed it once, and took a drink for himself. He sniffed and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “Now then,” he began. “Yer father loved young Alys, but she had too much of her mother in her. Full ’o sense and dirt-wise, them women. No interest in what that couldn’t be knit, cooked, or pulled from the ground. Now yer good mother, she got wi’ child, but it didna want this world, and returned to the Mistress. Old Morag up the way, she told yer mother her womb was done, and if she birthed another, she’d die. Your father’s heart was the worst for that. He wanted a son.”

  Morag. For some reason Hemlock had never fathomed, the midwife couldn’t suffer the sight of him. He had thought of her as a toad with two teeth, half-bald, always warding him off with some word or other. He envisioned the crone squatting over the board in the cairn with a kitchen knife, carving the charm and smearing woad into it.

  Cleary handed him the whisky. He took a long pull before returning it.

  “Now yer father,” Cleary resumed, “he didna hold much with Morag’s ways. He believed the wizards had better sight—but he ignored their good lore too. Nothin’ stood ’twixt him and the Mistress, not even the Eye. Woe and dreams to anyone who invokes her...” He put his hand on his chest. “I tried to warn him! But he went to her anyway.”