The Gray Isles

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The Gray Isles Page 12

by F. T. McKinstry


  “I saw him do it. In a dream.”

  The netweaver cast him a glance. “Ye have the eyes of the sea.”

  Hemlock hung his head as he recalled Aengus telling him the same thing. Somehow, he no longer needed an explanation for what it meant.

  “Weel yer mother got with another bairn,” Cleary said. “Och! I could hear her wail of despair from here. I didna ken what went on under that roof, but I heard she went to Morag for a pennyroyal brew, to cast the seed from her womb. I canna say if she drank it. But her belly grew, and she bore you, a healthy lad, and lived to see ye. For a while.”

  “She cast me out to sea. I dreamed that too.”

  “Aye, she tried,” Cleary growled. “Yer father nearly beat her for it. A long fortnight, he looked for ye. He’d vanish on the water for days and wandered the strand. I dinna ken what he prayed or to who. I brought him food and wood to keep a fire. I sat wi’ him as he gazed at the cruel ocean and spoke naught. But on the new moon, a ship put in to port. They’d pulled a bairn from the tide, afloat on a bed of reeds.” He nodded, as if satisfied. “Ye were as live as if you’d been held to yer mother’s breast the whole time.”

  The netweaver held out the whisky bottle; Hemlock declined.

  “Now yer mother,” Cleary continued, “she was no’ a bad woman. She served the Mistress, in her way. She drove hersel’ to sickness for settin’ ye loose on the waves. When she got wind from the docks, she made Morag come wi’ her, for proof—doan ask me how she did that!—but she brought ye home. And she loved ye, for all her fears of it.”

  Hemlock’s last dream gathered like a cold, wet skin around his heart. “They paid for it with their lives. The Old One knows. The power of creation doesn’t come without a price.” The flames in the hearth darkened as the words left his lips. As the flames returned to light, a shudder passed through his body.

  Cleary sat there with his pipe and contemplated the fire as if nothing had changed. “There’s a legend,” he said quietly, “of children born to the sea.” He lifted his face to the ceiling. “To the stars. Babes who look like us, but aren’t.” He looked at Hemlock with a twinkle in his eye, and smiled. “I heard tell ye were such a one. But I ne’er believed it.”

  “Why not?”

  The netweaver tilted his head in thoughtful regard. “Weel, there’s touched, and then there’s taken. One who’s been taken, he’s no’ with the rest of us. He’s no’ mortal.” He looked Hemlock up and down. “Yer a fine young man, whate’er else ye are.”

  Well-meaning as it was, the claim left Hemlock feeling queasy. Do you not know what you are? What had that damned wizard meant by that? It had been easy to toss Eadred’s rants onto a compost pile of madness and unlikelihood, but another Raven—one without a blackring, presumably—had hinted at the same thing. Hemlock could no longer ignore the seeming fact that the Mistress had twice saved him from those who would’ve cast him into the sea and been done. There had to be a reason for that. The Mistress had no traffic with mortals beyond providing them with stories and fears.

  Cleary’s eyes glassed over in recollection. “Morag didna let it rest, after ye came home from the docks. She called ye cursed, and had the folk ’round in strife over it. ’Twas her idea, to give ye to the wizards, after yer parents were lost. She talked young Alys into it—aye, stripped the lass from her wits, she did. Then she led an ugly bunch up that hill and burnt yer house down.”

  “Is Morag still alive?” Hemlock asked quietly, his heart beating to a wolf-stare rhythm.

  Cleary looked up quickly, and then took another draught of whisky. “Och! That’s the queer of it. Shortly after that, she met with an accident. Rogue wave, they say. Gwen from down dockside saw it. Said it came up from the swells like a mouth and snatched Morag from the rocks without a sound. Folks were the worse afeard for that! Many said ’twas you.”

  Hemlock snorted a laugh. “I was weeding gardens, tending goats, and emptying piss pots, not devouring witches.” Watching my dreams slowly die. Ironic, that Morag had banished him to wizards when his father had so lovingly promised him the same.

  “To gain the Mistress’s favor, one must believe the impossible,” Cleary said. “Though I reckon many a drowned sailor tried that.” He rumbled with laughter and peered at his eldritch guest with a fading smile. “Ye always had a way about ye, Hemlock. Yer father once told me ye belonged in Wychmouth.”

  Hemlock stared at the floor. “My father was a fool.”

  Cleary shrugged offhandedly. “Perhaps. But ye must believe in somethin’, or ye wouldna be here.” He corked his bottle. After returning it to the mantel, he knelt before the hearth and tapped the ashes from his pipe.

  Hemlock pulled his blankets around his body and shivered with loneliness. He would’ve thought twice about seeking the truth if he had considered what it would mean. He couldn’t pick and choose; nor could he ignore the insistent dissolution of his conscious boundaries to the waters of visions and heightened perception. Once, he had believed in the impossible. Now? He wanted nothing to do with it.

  The Rising Tide

  Shade of Kind: The laws of the lawless are certain.

  Late morning hung over the port of Gefion like a dripping cloak. Lorth stepped from a tavern called the Wily Pike and yanked down his hood against the rain. A full belly and a whisky tingle in his chest did little to ease his sense of impending trouble.

  Samolan joined him. “Plenty of taverns in this town,” he commented. He scowled at the heavy sky. “Little wonder. Stable is this way.”

  “You’d better be sure about this,” Lorth said.

  “Since you’ve decided to leave off stalking Hemlock, it’s worth a try.”

  They crossed the street, shielding their faces from the wind.

  Lorth’s initial concern that Hemlock would go to Wychmouth had fallen to deeper questions. Given the lad’s startling ability to shift with the surroundings, a skill that had not only risen to the surface of Dirala’s focusing tea like oil on water, but also appeared to strengthen under the forces of wind and rain, Lorth no longer doubted he was dealing with something otherworldly. But he couldn’t understand what would bring Hemlock to a crowded city.

  He never got the chance to find out, once the youth had slipped from his grasp. Lorth had no sooner set out after him, than Samolan found him with news that he might have located Eadred on the southwest coast that curved down to Wychmouth. Lorth was forced to leave Hemlock to his own devices, send Baltos home, drop his Raven’s shield, and resume the mission at hand.

  The decision worked on him like a thorn. The storm that bore down upon the isle had a supernatural bent that extended beyond his private instincts. A seasoned sailor in the Wily Pike with frizzy white locks and a harelip had grumbled it: weather from nowhere, a bad wind if ever he had seen it. Cimri had sensed it too. Like grief, the cruel prophecy was tangible and impossible to ignore.

  “Here we are,” Samolan said.

  Travelers, messengers, and soldiers, some on foot, some mounted, moved in and out of a wide entrance framed by oak carvings of rearing horses. As Lorth entered the stable, he deeply inhaled the smell of hay, leather and animals. The scent calmed his nerves.

  “I’ll be a moment,” Samolan said. He vanished into the dimness of a corridor lined with stalls. After a short time, the Raptor emerged leading two horses, a dappled gray and a rust-colored gelding with white fetlocks. Lorth took the gelding, fastened his things to the saddle and mounted, appreciating the warmth and strength of the horse beneath him. Just then, a stablehand brought out a dark brown horse, which Samolan also took.

  Lorth lifted his brow. “You got three? More sure of this than you let on, ay? How much did that cost?”

  “Relax,” Samolan said. He looked furtively over his shoulder and lowered his voice. “My informant got me a deal. Her father runs the stable. We have to return them by nightfall.”

  “Your informant?” Lorth echoed dryly.

  “Her name is Hilda.” Grinning, he fastened the rein
s of the third horse to his saddle.

  Lorth rubbed his eyes and released a long breath. “I send you here to get information about Eadred and you go into a rabbit hole.”

  The Raptor mounted, and maneuvered his horse around. “Stables are full of news. She heard talk.” He nudged his horse into motion towards the stable entrance.

  Lorth rode up to his side. “Does Hilda’s father know she’s servicing his patrons?”

  “This patron doesn’t ask such things.”

  “I would.”

  “You’re an asshole.”

  They rode out into the rain with their extra horse and a sketchy plan. Lorth had never known such plans to fare well in tracking a wizard, though he did appreciate Samolan’s efficiency. He had done such things himself enough times. He also had to admit that, while annoying, the treecloaked sea provided him with an effective curtain behind which he could operate freely in this realm. He doubted the Aenlisarfon would approve of negotiating with immortals, using wolves, and bedding women to accomplish their mission.

  Lorth had regained his strength and cloaked himself, Samolan, and the horses with an obfuscation spell that made them appear as ordinary travelers and not Keepers of the Eye and a horse with no rider. They took the west road out of the city, a well-traveled way splattered with mud, sodden grass and stones broken apart by frost. Hilda had provided them with detailed directions that led them into a dense forest of oak, aspen, maple, and pine.

  “Have you heard from Faena?” Samolan said, raising his voice over the clatter of hooves.

  “No, and I’m wondering why. I don’t like it.”

  “She couldn’t control the folciel sphere. Maybe she can’t find you, now.” He ducked to avoid a low-hanging branch. “Or maybe she’s avoiding you for rapping her.” He coughed on a laugh.

  Lorth frowned. The Halnsman could take just about any messy situation and find something dry in it. Lorth had thought the same things, but his heart continued to skulk around Faena’s feelings for Eadred. He couldn’t ignore the connection between Eadred’s madness and his use of the sphere—hence Lorth’s harsh treatment of Faena for using it lightly. He could only hope she was off nursing her pride and not drifting rudderless in a foggy, deceptive sea of visions for want of a man she had loved and lost.

  The woodland opened up into a glade thick with wild roses, wych elm, purple osier, and clumps of rowan and birch. The road narrowed and branched several times, allowing the men to take less-traveled paths around villages and farms. As they neared the coast, they left the shelter of the trees. The horses grew skittish under the wind’s onslaught, forcing Lorth to call a halt several times to calm them down.

  Samolan directed them to a narrow track used by farmers to get fish from the markets below. Rain soaked the grasses and tumbled in rivulets along the muddy way. They passed a fishing village marked with a green pillar and began looking for a field with a circle of stones. It took them the better part of an hour to find it; the stones, square and no higher than a man’s shins, had been overtaken by weeds and brush.

  “What is this place?” Samolan asked, circling one of the stones on his horse.

  Lorth dismounted. “Let’s find out.” As his feet touched the ground, a faint ripple of energy shot up his legs. He located the rest of the stones and then walked to the center of the ring. The force in the ground strengthened. “Moridrun fore sarumn,” he said, to reveal its nature.

  He turned to face west...and then north. A rush of energy flooded his chest. His forehead grew light, as if shifting positions relative to his skull. His surroundings vanished, and silence fell. He expected to perceive an image or an impression, but only emptiness surrounded him.

  “Maern.” As the word fell flat into the darkness, his vision cleared. Water rose, echoing in a hollow space. Black and slick as the gullet of a snake, the jaws of the cavern enveloped a small light, a candle in the vastness of mortal despair. A soul flowed out as the sea flowed in, driven by the unnatural wrath of the storm. “Siafoch.” The darkness parted around a man huddled near the ceiling of a large cave.

  He opened his pale eyes and stared.

  Lorth broke from his trance with a start. He swayed on his feet, lost his balance, and dropped to a knee, blinking the vertigo from his mind.

  Samolan stood a short distance away, holding the horses. “Master?” he said, using Lorth’s title, which he rarely did.

  “Bloody hell.” Lorth rose and moved away from the center of the ring, then turned around and studied the matted grass where he had stood. “It’s a Darkeye. I’ve heard of this. There are places in the earth, naturally occurring areas of formlessness. It’s like a vortex of energy in the ground. Someone found this and marked it.”

  The Raptor shifted on his feet. “What’s it used for?”

  “Depends. Have to tap into the Old One to use it, so it’s not reliable. A bit like the folciel sphere. I think I just saw Eadred.” He took the reins of his horse. “What’s worse, I think he saw me. Where to next?”

  Samolan climbed into his saddle. “Did you see where he was?”

  “All I saw was the inside of a cave flooding with the tide. What did Hilda say?”

  “Southwest from here. After that, she didn’t know. But we’re on the coast, so it can’t be far.” He paused. “She said her source grew nervous with the telling. That’s why she thought of it, when I asked her if she’d heard anything.”

  Lorth mounted and swung his horse around. As they rode from the place, he said, “Why would he’ve told her that?”

  “She said he was scared. Needed to tell someone.”

  In the shelter of a woman’s arms. Ironic. The Darkeye had been hidden from Lorth’s mind initially, forcing him to invoke Maern. That meant the Old One governed it—which put his vision in her domain. Suddenly, the fragility of his mission became clear. The Old One’s domain: birth, transformation, death. Given Hemlock’s account of Eadred’s last words before throwing him into the sea, Lorth could only surmise this involved the latter. But what was Eadred doing in a cave? Trying to freeze?

  Drowning. Coldness clutched Lorth’s heart as he tried to imagine what would drive a siomothct to that. Had the shadecaster put a spell on him? Lorth didn’t think that would be possible. But he had no other explanation.

  The cliffs along the Bay of Ascarion rose treacherously high over the shore. The men had to find not only a path down, but also a safe place to leave the horses, and it took them longer than Lorth would’ve liked. He felt the tide rising into the cave.

  The path they found, pointed out to them by a wary yet kindly woman in a battened down farmhouse, was more suited to goats than to men. Holding the threads of the elements in his hands like a skilled weaver, Lorth merged his mind with wind, water, earth, and sun as he and Samolan picked their way down.

  A sharp prickle lit up the scar on Lorth’s neck. “Sam!” he shouted over the wind singing in the crags that hung over the cliff.

  The Halnsman—whom Cimri had often joked had the hooves of a mountain goat in his boots—moved ahead, quiet and undaunted. He stopped and started to turn, then drew his blade as something leapt from a hidden gap in the path ahead of him. In a swift blur of red and gray, he fought his attacker, his feet solid beneath him. The man fought with reckless determination. The Raptor sent his knife clinking down over the drop and then knocked him to the ground with a punch that could’ve broken a stable door.

  As Lorth approached, he released his obfuscation spell into the earth. A young man with soaked blond hair trembled at the end of the Raptor’s sword at his throat. Rain trickled through the blood on his face. Lorth stood over him in his black cloak, his wizard’s gaze stripping the flesh from his bones. “Where is he?”

  The man gulped, tightened his lips and said nothing.

  Lorth brushed by Samolan with feline disregard. “Kill him.”

  “Wait!” the man choked.

  As Samolan hesitated, Lorth turned with a bored expression.

  The man pushed hi
mself up, cowering against a boulder. “He told me if I let anyone near he’d cross from the Otherworld and take me wi’ him.”

  Interesting threat, Lorth thought. “Well,” he mused. “He could do that. But if you don’t take us to him, I will do it. Your choice.”

  The man licked his lips and glanced nervously at the white-capped sea. “The tide, it’s—”

  “Rising?” Lorth cut in, approaching him close enough to smell his breath. “Aye, that is a problem, isn’t it?” He pointed down the path. “Move.”

  Holding his jaw, the man stumbled out in front of them.

  As they followed, Samolan’s voice came behind, just loud enough to hear. “He does have a point. Tides come up damned fast and hard in these isles.”

  “I’m working the water,” Lorth said over his shoulder. “I can’t hold back the tide, but I can keep it from sweeping us away out of hand.”

  “Did the Darkeye weaken you?”

  “Not too bad.” He turned around. “Tell me you brought some rope.”

  A deadpan stare. “I always bring rope.”

  Their guide led them a short distance over slippery outcroppings surrounded by hardy bushes, through a flooded tidal pool, then up away from the shore. They had to squeeze through narrow gaps in the crags. When they had climbed roughly forty feet, the blond man stopped before a towering cleft.

  “He’s in there,” he panted.

  Lorth reached back and pulled a fresh torch from his pack. “Go. Tell no one about this—and that includes Hilda.”

  As the man moved away, he cast a look over his shoulder as if to sort out which one of them the stablemaster’s daughter had brought between the sheets.

  Samolan smiled pleasantly.

  *

  As Lorth stood on the edge of the cave he had seen in his vision, flaming torch held high, his heart sank in his breast like a plummeting stone. The tide swelled, crashed and climbed against the walls, reaching for the ceiling. In another half hour, it would engulf the step on which he and Samolan stood and flood through the cleft outside.

 

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