The Gray Isles

by F. T. McKinstry

  The cave was so large they couldn’t see the other side. Even if Eadred had been here, he could’ve been swept away already, or even fled. Lorth drew a deep breath, summoned the force of his will from the starlit chasm of his identity, and raised his voice over the roar of the rising sea.

  “Eadred!” The sound echoed away, trembling in the rock.

  Samolan pointed. “Look. There.”

  Something moved in the distance, a pale thing, like a face or a head, so faint it could’ve been a reflection on the far wall. Lorth handed Samolan the torch, then dropped his pack and rummaged around for a small rock he had earlier stowed there. He slipped it into his tunic. “Give me your rope.”

  The warrior handed it over. “What will you do? Rope’s not that long.”

  Lorth looped the rope over his shoulder. “I’ll have to shapeshift. I might need the rope to get him back. Be ready.”

  The Raptor cast a glance at the black, swirling water. “Mad as a rat, you are. Is he worth it?”

  “I’ll be all right. If the tide swamps this place before I return, get out.”

  “Sod that. Get on with it.”

  Lorth began to draw deep, steady breaths. He focused on the space between the ebb and flow, the center of the circle. There, he reached into the air for the essence of flight. At once, the soul of a tern surrounded him. He spoke a word that collapsed his body and effects into a sidelong realm.

  On pale gray wings, he rose up over the heaving water, darkness enveloping him as the torchlight faded behind. The pressure of the earth closed around his body, its roots twining into the depths. He flew into a damp pocket of cold rock, then opened his claws and dropped onto a narrow shelf.

  Lorth rose to his feet, straightened his back and shook off the dizzying wave of upheaval caused by his shift in focus. Leaning against the wall, he pulled forth his rock and uttered a spell that gathered light from the earth. The stone began glow, dispelling the shadows.

  Deep in a crease formed by the roof and floor of the cave, only a pace from the edge of the shelf, huddled a figure with dirty white hair, his face ducked away from the light. He shivered with the anguish of a wounded animal, cornered and dangerous. Aware of the sea at his back and the hilts of his blades, Lorth moved closer, and knelt.

  “Eadred.” He spoke as softly as he could and still be heard.

  A pale green eye, rimmed in red, gazed from beneath the folds of the assassin’s cloak. “You,” he growled. A deep laugh grated from his throat. “A Web in wolf’s clothing. And here I thought my death would come by the sea. How elegant!”

  “I’ve not come to collect a mark,” Lorth informed him. “While I’m flattered you think the Destroyer would send me after you, why would she need to do that?”

  “She cares nothing for the simplicity of mortal suppositions,” he returned, clutching his cloak around him as if to claw it off. “She is cruel and without mercy.”

  “You are refusing her mercy. She plainly doesn’t intend to take you—even after you tried to kill her child. You know what Hemlock is. Why didn’t the loerfalos dirty the sea with you for that?”

  “I knew he wouldn’t die!” he rasped bitterly. “Far worse punishment to let me suffer, knowing that.”

  Inflamed by grief, passion, and a hunter’s reflexes, Lorth leapt forward and grabbed the cloak at the wizard’s neck so quickly the man had no time to react. Lorth hauled him up, tightened his fist, and put his face close. “I lost a friend to the Destroyer for nothing but scrying for Hemlock’s location—all because you defied the Council and went after him on some fucking personal mission driven by self-pity? I don’t know what put your nose in this, Eadred, but you aren’t drowning yourself on my watch. Get up.”

  He dragged Eadred out of the crack and brought him to his feet. As Lorth released him, however, he realized that, in his anger, he had confused self-pity with weakness. Eadred lashed out with a knife, just missing Lorth’s chest and striking his arm with a rusty shriek. Lorth drew his sword and parried the next blow, then jumped back as Eadred threw a kick at his face that would’ve put him over the edge of the shelf, had it made contact.

  In the space between that realization and the next, Eadred dove into the heaving waves.

  “Son of a—” Lorth sheathed his blade and dove after him, his heart nearly stopping as the cold bit into it. Something grappled him as he came up for air and pushed him down again. Swift as an otter, he twisted from Eadred’s grasp and hit him in the gut, but the water’s friction weakened the blow. The swelling, ferocious tide swept them up and slammed them into the edge of the shelf. Choking on brine as his knife wound hit the rocks, Lorth swung out and punched Eadred on the jaw, knocking his head hard enough to glance off something solid.

  As Eadred went limp, the current grabbed his body and dragged it out of Lorth’s reach. He put his feet against the rocks and kicked out with a powerful thrust, just catching Eadred’s cloak in his grip. Weakened by the cold water, Lorth managed to get the rope around the wizard’s torso. He secured the other end around his chest. Then he gathered his breath, spoke a word and assumed the shape of the first big fish that came to mind.

  *

  Night had fallen by the time Lorth and Samolan rode into Gefion. The inn above the Wily Pike had no rooms left when they came through the door half-carrying Eadred, starved, weak from the blow to his head, and stricken with chills. Lorth paid one of the patrons to leave, an offer sweetened by his sword as the man attempted to hedge on the amount.

  They brought Eadred into a small room and laid him on the bed. A nervous chambermaid brought food, extra blankets, and supplies to treat wounds. Samolan returned to the stable with a workable excuse for why they had taken so long. Lorth didn’t expect to see the warrior for a while, if at all that night.

  Eadred had come around on their return journey, bound and strapped to the extra horse Samolan brought. The wizard had cried out, puked gray water all over his saddle, and forced them to stop so that he could sit upright. He hadn’t put up a fight or spoken on the ride back; whether because of resignation, physical exhaustion, or Lorth’s well-designed threat to hand him over to the Master of Wychmouth, Lorth couldn’t say.

  A fire crackled as wind drove rain against the windowpanes. Wet clothes hung from the rafters and boots sat neatly on the hearth. It had taken Lorth the better part of the journey to relax after their harrowing trek over the cliffs above the cave. His feet and hands had only just started to feel warm again.

  Pale and gaunt in the wavering light, Eadred sat beneath a heavy woolen cover and spooned soup into his mouth with a shaking hand. Lorth wondered when the wizard had last eaten. His head was bound with a cloth stained with an herbal salve the innkeeper’s wife had put on it. Lorth had had to catch her in the hall and state his rank and business to get her to help them quietly, without fuss or report.

  His belly full, Lorth leaned back in his chair and rolled his shoulders to loosen the tension around the bandage on his arm. The cut wasn’t deep; he would’ve left it alone, had the innkeeper’s wife not insisted otherwise.

  Eadred set his spoon in his bowl. “Why did they send you?” It was the first thing he had said since awakening face down on his horse.

  “To talk to you,” Lorth replied. “Nothing more.”

  Eadred snorted softly. “A First Regard siomothct with the eyes of Maern sailing all the way to this forsaken realm for a chat?” He took another mouthful. “What are they punishing you for?”

  “You underestimate yourself, Eadred. Surely you didn’t think the Council would let you fade into obscurity up here without knowing what happened.”

  Eadred lowered his spoon in midair, and then nodded as if putting something together. “I see. They sent you to question me.”

  Lorth studied the threads fraying on the edges of the blanket around him. “Originally. I wasn’t of a mind to play rough. I was curious why one of your stature would defy the Wizard’s Code and isolate yourself from Eyrie. Now, unhappily for you, I’m perso
nally involved.”

  “No death is mine,” Eadred said dryly, quoting the Shade of Attachment.

  “The Hunter’s Rede is more forgiving to an assassin with an attachment than it is to one with a conscience, Eadred.” The wizard’s jaw flexed beneath the snowy tangle of his hair. “Your conscience drove you to abandon the Eye just to obtain a folciel sphere. On that, I would question you.”

  Eadred looked up slowly, his bitter mood fleeing like a shadow. “Do you have it?”

  “It’s still in Urd. Faena found it.”

  “How did she get into the tower?”

  “She didn’t. I did.” Lorth leaned back in his chair. “Did you actually believe she could break through a portal to Void?”

  The wizard shook his head. “My death would’ve broken the spell. I didn’t assume she would find the sphere—but I thought it best suited to her, if she did. Her heart is pure.”

  Lorth snorted a laugh. “By Maern, did you see nothing in her eyes? You captured her heart with your self-serving attentions and now you’ve gone and left her an object designed for wizards beyond her ability. She has no idea how to use that thing. It could devour her as easily as illumine her.”

  Leaning forward with an intent stare, Lorth continued, “What do you think was the first thing she used it for? To find you. As an afterthought, I suppose, she used it to find me. She led us to Hemlock’s trail, and I learned everything you said to him. But I’ve not heard from Faena since, and given that the loerfalos is loose in the inner space hunting down anyone she considers a threat to her child, I’m not feeling very good about it.”

  Eadred set his bowl aside and folded his hands together. “Faena is not that foolish. I wouldn’t have left her the sphere if I’d thought it would endanger her.”

  “This isn’t about what you think, Eadred. A woman operating from love is beyond your ken. Faena lost her innocence to you, now she’s grieving and her reason isn’t in the equation anymore.”

  Eadred rubbed his forehead with an impatient breath. “This wouldn’t have happened without your meddling.”

  “Meddling,” Lorth echoed flatly. “Let’s return to the reason I’m here, shall we? I set sail from Sourcesee under tiresome orders to pry your secrets from your grip without using a knife. I arrive to find the seas treecloaked, you’ve vanished into them, there’s an immortal serpent hunting the inner space for a child she lost—that child is roaming this island even now with the intention of going to Wychmouth to report you”—at this, Eadred tilted his head tiredly against the wall—“and I find you in a cave like a deranged votary to the Destroyer praying to a killing tide.

  “I’m not asking on duty to the Council, now, Eadred. I’m asking as a hunter. Off the record. What happened to you on Solse?”

  The cloud of despair that descended over Eadred could have snuffed the candles. His breath quickened, and his nostrils flared. “The witch had a child,” he said in a gravelly voice. “I didn’t see him until after I killed her. He knew Dark Tongue. Seed of a wizard.”

  “You’re a hunter, Eadred. Are you telling me this is the first time you’ve made a kill and not experienced secondary casualties?”

  “You don’t understand. She summoned a loerfalos. I saw it in the waters, felt it on the wind. I couldn’t imagine how the witch had the power to do that. I was stunned, and once I’d realized what it was, it was too late.” His hands shook. “The child cursed me. I left that place marked by the Destroyer herself.”

  “But you weren’t, evidently.”

  His expression turned wild. “There’s no predicting the Old One, you know that! She’s the essence of a hunter. She toyed with me as a cat stalks a mouse. I got the sphere in order to track the loerfalos. When the Aenlisarfon sent me to Urd, I thought that would be it. Every day, I expected those waters to take me. And then I discovered Hemlock.

  “I saw him in the sphere months before I knew who he was. When he told me he’d been seeing the loerfalos, I recognized him.” He leaned his forehead on his hands. “I spent three years like a mark looking over my shoulder for the killing blow. I deserved it. In my ignorance, I failed to see the greater pattern and to abide by the Mistress’s laws to the exclusion of all else, even the commands of the Aenlisarfon.”

  “You thought attacking Hemlock would insure your own destruction.”

  “How could it not?” he exclaimed. “An eamoire, hidden in a mortal body by his father! If the Mistress didn’t take me, he should have!”

  Lorth stilled at that. “Who is his father?”

  “Ciron, the heart of the Swan.” He cleared a bitter laugh from his throat. “That foolish boy is one of the most powerful eamoires ever to walk Ealiron.”

  “Why did his father hide him?”

  “I’m not sure. It may have to do with the kind of eamoire he is. I came across a legend in Urd’s library, in a book on the history of Ealiron’s northern waters. An eamoire such as Hemlock was born, a being that would pass between earth and sea. As a child, he had to learn how to do that. He had trouble dealing with the earth because of his origins; but if he tried to live in the sea, he would die. His mother experienced such anguish when her child was on land that she rose up in a rage and destroyed the better part of a continent. The child died with it.”

  “So you think Ciron hid Hemlock to protect the Gray Isles from the loerfalos?”

  “To protect the Isles—and the child. In the sphere, I saw her pining and searching for him; for years, she searched. Over a month ago, on the new moon, she found him. That’s when the sea went dark.”

  “When Hemlock first saw her.” Like a sunrise, he recalled what Samolan and Cimri had seen at sea. “On the evening of the last new moon, my men saw a falling star to the west. We had no idea what it was. My first mate spoke of a legend about stars coming to earth to take women.”

  Eadred’s mood calmed as if he realized something paramount. “I kept seeing a pattern of constellations in a very rare alignment. It came to me in dreams. The night before the new moon, it wheeled in the sky like tumblers in a lock. I was sure it had something to do with Hemlock.” His throat jumped as he swallowed. “His father must have hid him until the stars aligned. Then he would emerge.”

  Lorth picked up the thread of thought. “Hemlock would have to go through a death, a transformation in order for that to happen. Perhaps Ciron came down to bring him across.”

  As this dawned on Eadred, his cheeks flushed and his eyes filled. “You think the Destroyer used me to do that? To kill him so he could leave his mortal shell?”

  “You mentioned the witch’s child spoke in the Dark Tongue,” Lorth said quietly. “Do you remember the words?”

  Brushing away a tear, the wizard focused inward. “I recall ithminos, and areathct. Something else that felt like”—he moved his hand as if to unravel a thread—“something bleeding in the dark. The words were arranged in reverse pattern, as in a curse.”

  Lorth’s spider bite tingled as he gazed through the lens of his inner eye. “The words aren’t pure; they’re blended with more developed meanings. Ithminos means predator. Areacthct is blindness, being enclosed. The image you describe feels like something caught. Wounded.” He focused on the words, and flipped them around. Then he considered the motive behind them, spoken by a child. The curse shimmered into focus.

  “Hunter will become hunted under a cloak of blindness.”

  Eadred’s face turned white as a sail. “How—”

  “It’s a complex, malignant use of the Dark Tongue. I don’t think a child said that to you.” He paused. “The Aenlisarfon marked that woman for summoning apparitions. Perhaps that’s all the child was: a shade. If it was created with the seed of a wizard, you’d have sensed that and been tricked into thinking it was real.”

  Eadred pushed himself up against the headboard. “I watched her, Lorth. She approached those stones, faced north and summoned a damned loerfalos! On my honor, it was no apparition moving those waters.”

  “I believe you.” Lort
h leaned forward with earnest attention. “But what if the witch didn’t summon her? Whatever else she is, the loerfalos is a creature of Maern; balance is inherent in her being. She might have come in response to the presence of evil.” He breathed a laugh as light filled his chest. “Eadred, I think the reason she didn’t take you is because you were on her side. By killing the witch, you not only fulfilled your mission to the Eye, but also balanced a claim by the Destroyer herself!”

  Stunned silence filled the room. In a shaky voice, Eadred said, “The witch cursed me so I’d think the opposite. So I wouldn’t see it.” He lowered his face in his hands with an anguished groan. “By Maern! What a fool I’ve been.”

  Lorth rested his arms on his knees. “Perhaps not. The Void loves nothing. She often masquerades as tragedy and folly.” He stood up. “Get some sleep. In the morning, we’ll decide what to do.”

  *

  Lorth awoke on the edge of the fire’s glow as the door to the room opened and closed. Years of hunting and war stilled his body and brought his mind to the knife in his boot.

  Samolan leaned over him. “It’s me. We’ve got trouble. Wychmouth Guard in the city.”

  “Great,” Lorth muttered. He rose, bundled up his blankets, and glanced at the bed, where Eadred still slept. “What time is it?”

  “Hour, maybe two before dawn.”

  Eadred rolled over, blinking. “Why are they here?”

  “They’re looking for someone. Hemlock, by the description.”

  Eadred swung his feet to the floor, leaned down, and rubbed his face, as if relieved.

  “Worried?” Samolan said.

  “You should be,” Lorth put in.

  Eadred looked up. “You said you covered for me.”

  “I did. You are my business, and I don’t need the Master of Wychmouth involved. But while we were dealing with you, Hemlock was in this city. Who knows what he did to bring attention to himself.” He released a heavy breath. “The only thing comforting me is that he didn’t go to Wychmouth as he had planned. If he had, they wouldn’t be here looking for him.”