“If Faena saw truly, that will indeed happen.”
Lorth glanced at him. “Would you call it fate? That an eamoire such as Hemlock comes along just to herald the end of an age?”
After a heavy pause, Eadred replied, “The idea of fate often poses for lack of perspective. The gods experience ages as we do the years of a life. What to us is the annihilation of a civilization could to them be simply a lesson learned.”
“Well said. But I don’t want to confuse my natural aversion to death with the nagging belief that Hemlock is different. I think Faena’s vision isn’t as Sedarius interpreted it.”
“Agreed.”
As the three men wandered through the halls of Wychmouth, they encountered men-at-arms, servants, and wizards on various errands. They were allowed to pass without questions until they got farther down. Samolan used his seal to convince a captain of the guard that they were on an errand from Sedarius to the holds below. They even managed to get directions. But after a short time, they became lost.
“My father would be horrified by this place,” Samolan complained. At Eadred’s questioning look he said, “He builds war halls.”
“Wychmouth wasn’t built to keep out men,” Eadred said. “It was built to keep out the sea.”
As they fell silent under the chilling pall of that observation, a man in Osprey blue whisked around the corner in front of them and stopped in his tracks in surprise. “Master Lorth!” Olaf said. He furrowed his brow. “Where are you going?”
“Master Sedarius gave us permission to visit Hemlock,” Lorth said.
Samolan held up the seal.
“I fear we’ve become lost,” Lorth added. “Perhaps you can tell us the way.”
His gaze fixed on the seal, Olaf said, “My father would never give his seal to anyone. Not even me.” His eyes narrowed, and a shimmering net of power came into focus around him like raspberry runners spreading blindingly fast.
Feeling more distaste than usual at the direction this was taking, Lorth uttered a word that uprooted Olaf’s spell with the force of a cyclone. The Osprey clutched his gut and doubled over with a bark. Lorth and Samolan drew their blades and held the shining points to his throat before he could gather his wits to speak.
“Let’s try this again,” Lorth said. “I did not harm your father, and I won’t harm you. But for the sake of all you love, I suggest you take us to Hemlock. Now.”
“What did you do?” Olaf demanded, straightening his back. “Where is—”
They froze as a rippling, inhuman scream shook the keep from below.
“We’re out of time,” Lorth said, moving his blade.
“Very well,” Olaf said in a trembling voice. He stumbled into the hall in the direction from which he had come. “But you aren’t going to like what you see.”
The Destroyer’s Own
Shade of Forsaken: The Void loves nothing.
As Lorth entered the cold passage that led to Hemlock’s cell deep beneath Wychmouth Keep, his spider scar began to sting as if burned by salt. Deep, raspy breathing scraped the walls in uneven rhythm. As Lorth extended his mind into it, his heart plunged into a gory river of suffering that weakened his knees and caused his heart to skip a beat.
A lone door loomed at the end of the hall. In the light of a torch, two men stood guard. By their expressions, Lorth guessed only direct orders and some sort of threat kept them in their posts. Olaf spoke to them. One nodded; the other murmured a reply and gestured to the barred opening near the top of the door. Olaf said something too softly to hear. The guards moved away, passing Lorth and his companions without glance or greeting.
Lorth leaned close to Samolan. “Get ready for company.”
The Halnsman responded with indifferent concern.
Not good for company, Lorth thought. Even so, he hoped the tangled net of obfuscation and blocking spells he had cast over the passages on the way here would gain them enough time to avoid any further ugliness.
Olaf peered through the grate, and then withdrew with a start. “Too late,” he muttered under his breath. Visibly panicked, he whirled around. “I have to warn—”
Lorth held up his hand. “A moment. What were you planning to do, here?”
Olaf pointed to the far end of the hall, where they had earlier passed a tall iron gate. “That passage goes to the shore. That’s why we put him here. We were going to release him when the time came.”
“That won’t work,” Eadred informed him. “Hemlock is grounded. He can’t move.”
Lorth said, “When what time came? What are you waiting for?”
Olaf hesitated on a precipice for several moments. After reaching some tormented conclusion, he said, “My father planned to go to the shore and appeal to her. Beg for mercy in return for her child.”
Lorth’s mind went blank.
“What?” Eadred choked. “Have you lost your fucking mind? You can’t bargain with her!”
Lorth bowed his head under the weight of Eadred’s passion, which still pumped from the wound the siomothct had sustained in his own attempt to force the Mother’s hand. Lorth had done the same, when he had pleaded with the loerfalos for his and Samolan’s lives. But while no one here could claim innocence, Sedarius’s bargain excelled the heights of presumption.
“We’re talking from experience,” Lorth said. “You can’t do this. You have to free him.”
The Osprey paled. “You don’t understand. He’s...” He moved aside and pointed to the grate. “Look.”
Given the force and intensity of the energies flooding from the cell, the sound of Hemlock’s cries, and the now distractingly intense ache in his neck, Lorth didn’t expect to see the same man he had left in the streets of Gefion.
What he did see crushed the strength from his limbs like a rip current.
His first thought was cruel: he should have left Eadred in the cave to drown and stayed with Hemlock. That decision, prudent as it had seemed at the time, would condemn them all.
Filling what would have been a large, drafty chamber for a man, coiled the Destroyer’s own: an impossible combination of something that resembled the crocodiles that haunted the swamps of Tarth; a dragon, whose existence even Lorth doubted; and some creature of which only an eamoire’s mother would know the origins. Its four massive limbs splayed on the floor under its weight, its ebony claws had left deep scratches in the floor and blades sparkled along its spine from head to tail. Resting in blood, its long, ancient head glistened with scales. Teeth hung in crooked rows from between its lips. Its eyes, blue-green as Hemlock’s had been, were slitted like a reptile’s.
No trace of Hemlock remained, aside from anguish. The creature stared into Lorth as its mother had, stripping his soul from its sheath and clutching his heart like icy water. Tears bled from its eyes, red-rimmed and glowering in pain. When it spoke, its voice rumbled in the walls and caused Lorth’s abdomen to contract as if someone had put a fist into it.
“You betrayed me,” the creature said in the Dark Tongue.
Lorth backed away, his throat dry as ashes, his gaze and the creature’s locked in animal challenge.
Olaf stirred at his side. “You shouldn’t have interfered.”
Lorth gripped the Osprey’s tunic and slammed him against the wall. “Sodding whoreson! I could’ve handled this. Now I’ve no way to get him out of there. Sedarius has sealed our fates in a watery tomb!”
Lorth released the wizard with a shove. As he lowered his hands, he jerked them into an angry crossing motion. Olaf’s eyes widened as Lorth hissed a command that walled in the wizard’s aura, temporarily disabling his powers.
“You—dare!” the Osprey sputtered.
“Sam, take him to the gate down there. If anyone comes, hold him to the blade. I don’t want any interruptions.” He began to remove his weapons.
Eadred casually watched Samolan hustle Sedarius’s son down the hall. “What are you going to do?”
Lorth gave him his sword, and then his bow and quiver. “
Who knows? He won’t fit through the bloody door, so I’ll have to do something to calm him down.” He removed his longknife and handed that over. Then he leaned down and snatched his silver girl dagger from the sheath in his boot. As Eadred held out his hand, Lorth hesitated and said, “This is Leaf. Take care of her or I’ll kill you with it.”
The siomothct said nothing as Lorth set the knife into his hand. He spun it through his fingers a few times to test its weight, and then nodded appreciatively.
Thus divested of anything threatening, Lorth stepped up to the door with a deep breath, gathered his energy, and hoisted the heavy bar. He lowered it to the floor and breathed, “Stay out of sight.”
Their gazes touched. Only the dark presence of their kind passed between them.
Lorth pushed the door open and stood on the threshold. He widened his arms, palms out, in a gesture of surrender. Hemlock didn’t move, but Lorth dared not assume he was unable to. In a steady voice clear of any wizardly influence he said, “I didn’t betray you, Hemlock. I had nothing to do with this. I came to help you.”
“You lie,” the creature snarled. “He is here.” He parted his jaws like a hound catching a scent, and gazed past the door with crocodilian perception.
Lorth’s breath caught as he realized he hadn’t taken into account Hemlock’s heightened senses. The eamoire had probably heard, smelled, or even sensed Eadred in the keep before the hunter had as much as passed through the gate. Now, Hemlock felt too much pain to understand what was happening to him. Bringing Eadred here would count as betrayal enough.
Before Lorth had a chance to explain, however, the door opened behind him, and Eadred entered the cell. He had left Lorth’s weapons outside.
With a mighty thrust, Hemlock recoiled against the far wall and screamed like a panther. He hovered there, breathing heavily, his claws clacking on the stones and his deep-sea eyes burning with hatred. He uttered something Lorth didn’t understand. The words passed over him like molten rock, incinerating his resolve.
Whether undaunted or beyond caring, Eadred stepped towards the beast and knelt, his head bowed. In the Dark Tongue, he said, “Please hear me.”
All of Lorth’s wizard-sense scrambled up into his throat to stop Eadred from whatever he was about to do, but his hunter-sense kept him still. Having done his share of unsavory things in the course of his dark business, Lorth wouldn’t begrudge another hunter the chance to make a bad decision good, even if he did have poor timing.
Hemlock growled, “Mother was never after you. You were deceived in thinking my death would bring her.”
Eadred looked up slowly. “I knew she would save you.”
The eamoire’s laughter sounded like trees blowing down. “And that is your comfort? Cruel as you were. Knowing I would survive that?”
“I had no comfort,” Eadred said to the floor. “I was cursed into believing I had violated the Old One’s trust. It broke my heart.”
“That doesn’t explain your hatred.”
“I hated myself.” A tear crept down his cheek. “That was the nature of my deception.”
“You could’ve thrown yourself into the sea. And yet you came after me. Why?”
Eadred huddled over himself. “I knew you were an eamoire in a mortal body. I attacked you thinking you would change; she would take me; no harm done. I cannot ask your forgiveness.”
At this, Hemlock became agitated. His voice cracked as he cried, “You cast me into the sea to die!” He spoke in a nearly incomprehensible dilution of Common, Dark and Aenspeak. “She took my parents—Alys—Morag—why didn’t she take you?”
As the creature ranted, Lorth sensed a change. He slipped into trance. For a split second, the body of a man lay before him. It fled so swiftly he didn’t trust his perception.
Eadred leaned back and wiped his face, breathing heavily. “You were born as a mortal. You had to die as one. I didn’t understand this until I realized the Mistress wasn’t after me.”
The change happened so swiftly and with such dreamlike fluidity, Lorth had to blink and shake his head for a moment before he realized a man huddled on the floor, nude and curled into a fetal position. On his thigh bled a ragged arrow wound.
Eadred swore something, jumped up and fetched a blanket from the surrounding mess. He approached Hemlock and draped it over him with shaking hands.
The youth wept, clutching his limbs as if shocked by trauma. “Why you? So cruel—why couldn’t she have just taken me herself?”
Lorth recalled what Leda had told him in the garden. “The loerfalos is an expression of the Old One,” he said gently. “Not the goddess herself. Only the Old One knows all the connections between things. Had Eadred not been involved in this, you would never have learned what you are.”
“I saw the whole thing in dreams!” he roared back. “I saw it and I didn’t believe—how could I? My life was built on visions, stories, promises—lies—none of it was real and everyone but my father scorned me for it!”
“It was real, Hemlock. In a mortal shell, you couldn’t accept it. It looked like fantasy. This is the nature of the time-space matrix: from within it, the Otherworld doesn’t make sense.”
“So I was supposed to believe him?” He twisted around and threw a long-nailed finger at Eadred. “A madman?”
“The Destroyer often moves in the madness of men.”
For a moment, Hemlock lay there, still as a moon. Then, he began to tremble. “Bitch,” he whispered, his voice wavering on the edge of a disaster. He doubled over and screamed as if something had rent his heart from his breast. “BITCH!”
Lorth stumbled as the floor rocked beneath his feet. The chamber groaned, the walls shook and the oak door rattled on its hinges. “Look out!” Eadred shouted. Lorth leapt back as the eamoire changed again. Eadred tried to jump out of the way, but the creature’s tail swept his legs out from under him and tumbled him into the wall.
The earth stilled. Dust floated down from the ceiling. Lorth went to Eadred and helped him to his feet.
The creature had grown longer, more sinuous, its legs were shorter and it appeared to have gills. In the voice of a nether god, it rumbled, “No mercy in her heart! My father made an offering to her with my mother’s blood in exchange for my life and this is what I am? She devoured them both and I am paying the price!”
Lorth brushed himself off and approached the eamoire again. With fragile tenacity, he said, “Your true father is a god. His name is Ciron.”
A man lay again on the floor, clutching his hair as if he might rip it from his scalp. “That’s a lie!” he sobbed. He curled up tighter, as if to hide.
“With his offering, your mortal father opened a path for you to come into the world under shelter, because you needed time to learn how to change. He didn’t know what he was doing—but Ciron did. You aren’t paying a price for anything, Hemlock. You are awakening.”
“What have I learned? I gave my life to the Masters of Urd and they taught me nothing. I was worthless to them”—he settled a red-rimmed, burning gaze on Eadred—“to you, less than worthless. A fool. My dreams died in that place, and I was right in the middle of them!”
“I was the fool on that day you came to me,” Eadred said. “I didn’t look down on you; I feared you. And as I understood it, you were loved on Urd. What did you do there? You worked the earth. You moved stones, built things, grew things, tended animals. You loved a woman. Ciron placed you just where you needed to be to ground you.”
Hemlock withdrew from his own clutches and placed his hands on the floor. He panted, “Just before they captured me, I heard the Mistress. She told me to ‘remember the earth.’”
Lorth mouthed the words. Remember the earth. “It’s your nature to move between earth and sea. Do you understand?”
Hemlock lowered his head and dug his fingers into the stone. “I should, but I don’t. I can’t stay here, but I can’t go there either. I am trapped between.”
“Maybe not.” Remembering a promise he had made,
Lorth knelt at Hemlock’s side, reached into his pocket and pulled out the turtle charm. “Maeve asked me to give this to you and tell you to come home. She and Aengus defied the Masters of Urd to protect you. Look at it, now. What is a turtle? It lives both in water and on land. It has a protective shell. What does this mean to you?”
Hemlock took the charm with a trembling hand. “My sister Alys gave this to me on the morning she sent me to Urd. After my parents died. She told me a turtle always knows home.”
“No coincidence, that,” Eadred remarked.
Hemlock gazed at the stone in his hand. “Alys had no care for anything beyond the ground.” With the other hand, he touched the turtle’s shell. An air of comprehension came over him. Then he looked up, and all the color left his face.
“The earth,” he breathed with eerie softness. “In my passion, I struck her.”
The men exchanged puzzled glances. “Struck who?” Lorth asked.
“The earth!” He pressed a hand on the floor.
Lorth’s heart flipped over with a triple hammer beat. He rose to his feet. “Eadred. Just earlier—the tremor.”
The wizard’s lips moved. He backed into the wall behind him, and then swung his gaze on Hemlock. “You did that? Made the earth move?”
“Earth and sea are not separate,” the eamoire said.
The statement, while obvious, had such far-reaching implications that Lorth watched all his suppositions fall apart and scatter like mice. “That’s it! The legends have it wrong. The loerfalos never caused the floods; the eamoires did! In trying to ground, they shook the earth beneath the seas and made the waters rise!”
“Where did you strike the earth?” Eadred asked.
Hemlock lifted one hand towards the southeast. “That way,” he said with chilling certainty. “Fifty miles.”
“Center of the Gray Isles,” Eadred said. “From that place, the sea will rise and hit every shore in the realm.”
“I can stop it,” Hemlock said. He maneuvered his legs under him and tried to stand. “Help me to the shore.”
The Gray Isles Page 16
