“Tell me again, why was he going to do that?” Eadred asked.
“Let’s start with the way you treated him on Urd. He took your boat and sailed for Mimir to tell Sedarius about the loerfalos and to report you.”
Eadred laughed. “They would lock him up if he went down there with that.”
“Maybe,” Lorth said without amusement. “Maybe not. Sedarius is of a long line of wizards who’ve ruled these isles. If he brings Hemlock in and questions him, he might come to the same conclusions we did—especially if he recognizes that Hemlock is changing. He would also know about you.”
“He has no jurisdiction over me,” Eadred said tiredly. “And he can’t touch Hemlock.”
“You tried to murder a citizen of the Gray Isles. If Sedarius believes Hemlock’s story, he’ll claim jurisdiction and I won’t be able to intervene on your behalf.”
Samolan cleared his throat. “We still don’t know why they’re looking for Hemlock. Do you think Dirala told them something?”
Lorth cocked his head in doubt. “She gave me her word.”
“What else would prompt them to send an armed force at this hour?”
“Why would Dirala be loyal to you?” Eadred said to Lorth. “Did you threaten her?”
“Certainly not,” Lorth snapped. Then he conceded, “But maybe you’re right. If put to it, she wouldn’t defy the Master of the realm.” He pulled his leggings from the rafter, sat down, and began to strap them on. “We have to find Hemlock before they do.”
“I’m coming with you,” Eadred said.
Lorth and Samolan exchanged a look. “If Hemlock sees you, we’ll all be serpent fodder.”
Eadred stood and fetched his tunic. “Then you’ll have to cloak me. Because I know where he is.” As Lorth turned around in question, he said, “I can still project my consciousness. I’ve been following him.”
“What for?” Samolan asked.
“Because,” the siomothct said quietly. “If Hemlock cannot change, his mother will destroy Mimir.”
Remember the Earth
The sea ran red.
Ciron called to himself the forces of light as the vortex of mortal anguish opened wide. He plummeted with a roar that shook the foundations of quiescence—the seed of a god, the cataclysm of awakening. He fell through the fiery nimbi of suns and the patterns of constellations shining one moment and vanishing the next, until the bloody sea opened her arms and embraced him.
In the depths, green, blue, and twilit gray, he gathered up the broken chrysalis of his mortal child and touched his heart with breath.
*
“Hemlock!” a voice growled in the darkness. Something shook him. “Wake up, laddie!”
Stars fell away as Hemlock became aware of the room. A shudder shook his body from head to toe, causing him to groan.
Cleary knelt beside the pallet, his features dim in the flickering light. “Trouble’s afoot.” He dropped a pile of clothes on the floor. “Get dressed. Quick!”
Still steeped in his dream, Hemlock rolled up and fumbled for his breeches. His head felt light, his stomach uneasy. Cleary moved around the cottage, gathering things and stuffing them into a sack.
Hemlock pulled on his boots and stood, swaying on his feet. “What’s happening?”
The netweaver approached and shoved the sack into his hands, then grasped his arm and drew him to the window. “Look! Doan be seen, now.”
Careful not to stir the rough curtain, Hemlock peered through the thin opening between the hem and the window casing. Across the street, in front of the Black Otter, an armed company holding torches milled about as if waiting for something. They wore red cloaks over the grayish livery of Wychmouth.
Raptors.
The tavern door opened and another emerged. He also wore red, but his leggings were black and his tunic bore a larger standard. A commander. He drew the hood over his face, then turned and gazed at the cottage. Hemlock moved away from the window with a start. “They’re coming.”
“This way!” The netweaver moved towards the back of the house, where he opened a hatch in the floor. Hemlock threw the pack over his shoulder and limped after him. “Down wi’ ye, now. Door’s unlocked.”
“Cleary...”
Someone pounded on the front door.
“Go!” Cleary choked.
Hemlock didn’t need to be told again. Like a fish startled by a vibration in the water, his nocturnal senses flitted into edged focus, sidelong, obscure, and hunted. He moved down the rickety steps and found the door on the far side of the cellar. Bitter wind met him as he slipped through. His feet found the way over the path crowded by rocks and the prickly shrubs that grew wild on the island shores. As he moved through the dark, the wind carried the sounds of men on his heels. Eerie confidence guided him on.
The sea crashing over the rocks whispered to him like a cauldron of broken dreams. Wild, unattainable, and perilous, it bore the same pitch and color as his yearning: a beautiful story, a wizard’s mantle, the love of his father. Like withered flowers, his desires had gone into the pot to make some sweet, intoxicating brew that smelled good but made him as sick as a drink from a stagnant pool.
With this sensation arose another, more alarming one. As his feet struck the earth, something he couldn’t identify weighed him down, as if a large sack of grain lay on his shoulders, or the ground itself drew the strength from his limbs. It reminded him of Dirala’s dirty tea, only this hit him from a deeper place. Though he eluded his pursuers easily enough, his confidence sagged under a frightening thought that the heaviness in his limbs hadn’t come by tea, but by something else, such as whatever had given him the senses of an animal.
As Hemlock moved along under the weight of the earth, he expected more soldiers to flood onto the beach in pursuit. None came, though now and then he heard a shout. The town stood above the sea wall on his right; nothing but wind moved up there, and few lights twinkled, as everyone either slept or sheltered from the storm.
It started as foreboding, the impression that rippled up to the surface of his mind. A presence, though mortal, it shone with the kind of power Hemlock had only discerned in Ravens. But this presence didn’t bear the pattern of anyone Hemlock knew or had brushed with, including Eadred. Someone, Lorth probably, must have reported his whereabouts to Wychmouth. He had certainly given enough people that information.
Ducking out from under the unfamiliar wizard’s energy like a cat that didn’t wish to be touched, Hemlock moved undaunted through the dark, wind and rain lashing his face. Just ahead, if his boyhood memories held true, the cliffs sheltered a cave that had an entrance to a tunnel that led up into the city. Stumbling under the weight of a fresh grave, he quickened his pace.
Torchlight flickered between the stone buildings above. He skirted the raging waters, his attention on the dark smudge where the sea wall abutted the edge of the cliffs. Protected by the tide, the cave he sought would be inaccessible. But he had survived worse things.
In the distance, a row of flaming torches spread over the rocks as soldiers moved to cut off his escape. Illuminated impressions, flowing orbs of voices and blades, men moved behind him, and above, on the street. He had once heard the warriors of the Eye had skills beyond other men-at-arms, that they could use their minds to focus arrows on targets or to imbue a sword with hidden patterns of movement.
Fire tore the air, reflecting on swords. An arrow hit the waves. The mists flowed out, revealing deeper shadows. Hemlock moved into them, avoiding the hands and blades of warriors attempting to surround him. A man slipped and splashed into the surf with a curse.
A pale, wavering mist stood on the shore behind the soldiers, as if to oversee the action.
Something struck him in the thigh with the force of a hammer blow. A shout ripped from his throat as he stumbled into the surf. He hit his other knee on a rock hidden beneath the foam. Gagging on pain, nausea rising in his belly, he untangled his cloak from the arrow shaft, grasped it near the entry point and pulled wit
h all his strength to remove it from his flesh. His cry echoed the howling wind as fire and blood burned through. Dizziness swept over him like a wave.
Several men splashed around Hemlock, grasping for a hold. One of them found his arm and clutched it in an iron grip; another growled something about madness. As they heaved him up, Hemlock shifted his weight to his good leg, shook them off with a roar and dove into the heaving surf, leaving them with his cloak and pack. Shouts vanished into the wind.
Floundering in the waves, numb with cold and yet curiously calm, Hemlock started to swim, though weakness and disorientation made that difficult. A wave slammed into his head and engulfed him. He found the air again, coughing. With a weak plea to anything that cared, he released his body to the current.
Rolling waves swept him against the rocks along the cliffs several times before the tide whisked him into an open space hissing with echoes. Shapes and shadows loomed in the darkness. A powerful current spun him around and sucked him deeply into the cave, where he managed to grab onto a jumble of stones that edged a landing. Beyond, shallow steps ascended to a low gate made of crusty bars in the shapes of twining fishes.
Try as he might, he couldn’t lift himself out of the water as it tugged wildly at his wounded body. He considered asking the sea for help, but then abandoned the idea. His difficulty with the earth left him more unclear than usual as to the intentions of the watery vastness, with her arms and breasts, scales and empty questions. She gave him no comfort a mortal could use.
So why had the loerfalos delivered him from death at the hands of Eadred?
Or his mother, for that matter?
Hemlock choked on laugher as it washed over him, the freezing realization that his entire existence stood on the shaky, stilted foundations of prayers, dreams, magic and a woman’s hysteria.
The cold pulled at his arms and hands, luring him to surrender to the water. The earth, though less tricky, threatened to crush him. And yet the earth, where he had spent his mundane life, offered him sanity.
“What do you want from me?” he cried over the inky swells. The shudder in his wounds took the last of his strength, causing his hands to slip from the rocks. He flailed out and fell short. His head went under and he lost his sense of direction. Unable to find the surface, his breath ran out. The icy water rushed into his throat like a hand reaching for his heart.
Just then, the sea surrounded him with the strength of an abyss, soft and alien. You will return to me soon. He didn’t understand her language, but he knew what she said.
Something brushed against his shoulder. After a moment in which Hemlock dimly sensed a commotion, someone grasped his shirt and pulled him against the current. He gagged, unable to breathe as strong hands clutched him beneath the arms and hauled him up and over the slippery stones like a net full of fish.
“Bring him away from the edge,” a man said in a resonant voice that matched the presence Hemlock had sensed earlier. Warriors holding torches crowded around; two of them dragged Hemlock a short distance, and then lowered him. He rolled over and vomited the sea from his lungs.
“He’s wounded,” said the first man in his wizard’s voice. “I told you not to harm him.”
One of the warriors stepped forward. “With respect, Master, you also told us not to let him into the water. One of my men thought to stop him.”
Catching his breath, Hemlock looked up as the black-cloaked wizard knelt by his side and pushed back his hood. He had dark hair peppered with gray, an aquiline nose and eyes the color of kelp. “It wasn’t my intention to harm you,” he said. “Have we angered her?”
Hemlock erupted into a violent coughing fit. Gasping between shallow breaths, he returned, “Angered who?”
The wizard’s eyes glittered in the torchlight. “The Mistress.” He glanced pointedly at the stormy sea beyond the mouth of the cave.
Hemlock tried to push himself up, but didn’t have the strength. He laid his face on the cold, pulling stone and said, “How should I know?”
“Can’t you hear her?”
You will return to me soon. “You are mad.”
The Raven rose and gestured. “Bring him.”
As the warriors lifted Hemlock up and carried him over the landing to the steps, a wave swelled into the cave and crashed over the rocks, soaking the company in a legion of hisses. The Raven shouted something unintelligible. One of the men holding Hemlock swore and dropped his legs. Hemlock tried to put weight on them, and collapsed.
The water receded, gathering itself for another strike.
“Quickly!” the Raven boomed. At the sharp tone of his voice, several men grabbed Hemlock roughly and dragged him up the steps. At the top, the wizard opened the gate and hurried them through, just as another wave roared into the cave with enough force to shake the stones. Men cried out as water rushed into the corridor.
His captors carried him on. As Hemlock grew lightheaded beneath the cruel forces of transformation, he clearly heard the Mistress’s voice:
Remember the earth.
It felt more like a curse than a command.
*
The stormy sea and the maelstrom of Hemlock’s deteriorating consciousness flowed together in a confluence of dark colors, illusions, and lies—not the least of which took shape as the cold stones beneath his frame as he huddled, shivering and dreaming awake, in the lower reaches of the mighty hold of the Keepers who ruled the Gray Isles. In the half-light of his deeper mind, the Beryl Waeltower stood above him in the night, slick with frozen rain and brine, a mocking beacon of his dreams and folly. It gazed straight through him, a light that couldn’t touch the darkness that absorbed it.
Remember the earth.
“Why?” he moaned. I’ve spent my life trying to forget the earth.
The Raven with the growly voice couldn’t have been any colder as he ordered his soldiers to drop Hemlock here by a stone pit burning with fire he didn’t feel. The Keeper had swung around like a wind and departed, his last glance revealing doubt, fear, and unanswered questions.
Two armed guards stood beyond the oak and iron door of his cell. The iron caused Hemlock’s heart to scream and snarl like a chained wolf; the oak still murmured to the saplings that had grown to height around the edges of a rotting stump; and the warriors’ blood pulsed in their veins with a quickened pace.
In rhythmic, building wrath, the sea pounded the foundations of the isle. Hemlock rolled over, wincing with pain. He questioned the solidity of his cell. His nose and stomach didn’t respond to the tray of food by his side, but his weird senses did. The shrunken eye of a roasted trout on the plate gazed through the morning air as it heaved a dry, fatal breath; a potato dreamed of the earth’s silence; a sun-ripened apple on a high bough, a woman’s hand.
He wouldn’t lie on the pallet by his side; the heartbeats of the geese that had given their feathers rapped in his mind like rain. The animal skins his captors had laid on the floor smelled of musk and blood; the woolens folded on the pallet smelled like fresh grass and shivered with the wariness of sheep.
Why had they brought him here? If they had discovered his history with Eadred, and known him to be a thief and a liar, they wouldn’t have given him animal comforts. He rolled his head to one side and leveled a burning gaze on the door. One of the guards peered through the grate as if to make sure the prisoner was still there, and then withdrew quickly. His steps grated over Hemlock’s skin as he shifted on his feet.
Do you not know what you are?
The raging sea surrounded him, strong and cruel, suffocating him. “Leave me alone!” he cried. As the sound emerged from his throat, he doubled over into a fetal position. Now unfamiliar to him, his voice had the timbre of a falling tree; it whipped the flames around and raised a thorny chill on his flesh.
You’re born to nothing but a fishing net.
He slammed his hands on the floor and tried to push himself up. Between his fingers, pale webs glistened. His legs would no longer bend, and his chest hurt. His arms co
llapsed, causing him to strike his chin on the floor and bite his tongue. It had changed in shape; that and the taste of his blood made him retch.
“Stop it!” he choked against the floor. He could no longer be sure in what language he spoke; nothing sounded right. But in any language, the wizards didn’t care, the gods didn’t care, and the sea—the Mistress!—she had devoured what remained.
You are quite a storyteller.
Releasing a roar, he dug his fingers into the floor as if to rip it up. A claw broke with a snap. He had no power over this whatsoever. He couldn’t go into the waters now that he knew the Mistress had abandoned him to the earth, leaving him to be cursed by the likes of Morag, attacked by the likes of Eadred and ignored by the Keepers of the Eye—and yet he had drifted so far away from the earth he could no longer return. The very stars had touched him, and left him wanting.
He hung between hatred and need, two sides of an abyss he couldn’t cross. His flesh split with the pain of it, rending his mortal shell to grow scales and muscle that could bear the northern seas.
To gain the Mistress’s favor, one must believe the impossible.
All his beliefs had brought him was suffering. And the Mistress’s favor? She had shit him back onto the earth again and again. Back to his life as a servant, a dreamer, a thief—and now? A monster.
And still she wooed him. Like a breathtaking vision, a beautiful maiden moist and swollen with desire, a fantasy that made his heart yearn until it broke, she whispered his name, healed his wounds and gave him milk even as she turned away with the cruel indifference of the immortal, just another breath in the life of a cosmos. How did she dare?
Remember the earth.
Hemlock’s rage rose up from the center of his being as a molten shift in the bowels of the ground. It vibrated in his bones like laughter, growing new flesh, new senses, a blinding array of lines amid the stars; an impossible source of life on an ashen battlefield. He wept under the force of it: no prayer, plea or curse appeased the dragon, but only fed its hunger.
The Gray Isles Page 14
