The Gray Isles

by F. T. McKinstry

  Startled by the eamoire’s sudden resolve—and too panicked to question how he thought he could stop a deluge—the men helped him to his feet. Lorth grabbed the blanket and threw it over his shoulders, and then they helped him through the mess of food, feathers, wood, and rags.

  As they brought him through the door and out into the hall, Lorth said, “Where are my weapons?”

  “Your friend has them,” Eadred replied. He glanced sidelong at Hemlock. “If the loerfalos wasn’t a threat, why did Ciron hide you from her?”

  “He didn’t. I hid from her after my parents died.”

  “You used the earth to do that?”

  Hemlock nodded. “I didn’t realize it at the time. When she told me to remember the earth, I thought she was punishing me. She kept returning me to the shore. But I’d have drowned in the water.”

  They reached the end of the hall and stopped in front of the gate that Olaf had mentioned. Wind and crashing surf echoed in the distance, and the air was cold and smelled of brine. Hemlock leaned against the wall and slid down as if under a great weight, his skin pale as a fish’s underbelly.

  Samolan strode out from the adjacent passage. He wore Lorth’s weapons in addition to his own. With one brown eye on Hemlock, he began to remove them. “Men above, in the halls,” he said to Lorth. “They ran into your spells, but it won’t be long before they come down here.”

  Lorth took his weapons, slipped Leaf into his boot and handed the rest to Eadred. “Watch my back.” He lifted a brow at Samolan. “Where is Olaf?”

  “I let him go to warn his people. He can’t do any more damage than he already has. According to him, we’re all doomed.”

  “That could be.” Lorth faced the gate. It had an elaborate iron mechanism embedded in the rock. Sedarius had not only locked it, but also sealed it with a powerful spell. Lorth studied the thing as he might the inner workings of Sedarius’s mind. No doubt, given what Lorth and his companions had done to him under their threadbare banner of diplomacy, Sedarius had ordered his men to kill them. By telling him he was siomothct, Lorth had destroyed any quarter he might receive under the usual tenets of wizardly decorum. If Sedarius survived this, he would have no trouble justifying their deaths in the name of protecting Hemlock—who, as Olaf would be sure to tell him, was trapped in his cell as a monster.

  “Lorth,” the eamoire said uneasily. “You need to open that now.”

  “Are you changing?” Eadred asked, tightening the strap of Lorth’s sword.

  Working hard not to envision the scaly bulk of Hemlock’s watery side filling the narrow passage, Lorth closed his eyes and uttered a mindkey spell that carried the force of battering ram. The bars shuddered, but didn’t move. “Can you control the change? Keep it from happening?”

  Hemlock leaned over his abdomen, gripping his arms and wheezing breaths through an open mouth. “Don’t think so!”

  “Do try.” Lorth dropped down several layers in his mind until he found a still, black pool. Then he hissed a word in the Dark Tongue that sounded like mud splattering against a wall.

  The gate stood there, as if to mock him.

  “That should’ve worked,” Eadred said. “Sedarius is weak in the air. Try raising the vibration.”

  Lorth spoke the next command, altering the structure from beneath with an emphasis on the airy element. A spiraling serpent of energy shot out from his chest and hit the ground beneath the gate like a dead bird.

  Hemlock screamed. Blood trickled down his arms where he had dug his nails into them.

  “Incoming!” Samolan shouted.

  A company of red-cloaked warriors filled the end of the hall. They rushed forward, their voices raised into a battle cry. Growling an expletive through his teeth, Lorth faced the gate again. Behind him, Samolan and Eadred clashed arms with Wychmouth’s Raptors.

  The gate clicked open with a sigh.

  “Och.” Lorth blinked in surprise, and then shoved the gate open. He brought Hemlock to his feet, got his shoulder under him and staggered through the opening. Though still in the form of a man, the eamoire weighed twice what he had earlier.

  Samolan and Eadred fought off their attackers with enough intensity to make it through the gate and slam it before anyone got through. Lorth shouted a nasty command that heated up the bars and sealed them to the stone with a crack. The men on the other side cried out and jumped back. An arrow whizzed by Lorth’s shoulder.

  Hugging the wall, they helped Hemlock into the dark towards the faintly lit opening some hundred paces ahead. Once they escaped bow range, Eadred got on Hemlock’s other side so they could move more quickly. Samolan took up the rear.

  As they neared the light, the passage began to fill up with broken rocks, uprooted shrubs, and woods debris deposited there over years by spring tides and storm surges. In several places, they had to climb over, under, or around an obstacle. Lorth moved along with methodical care, eyeing the size of the passage, wondering whether Hemlock in his mother’s form would fit in it and knowing it wouldn’t matter if the wave hit the shore before they got there.

  “Are you with us?” he asked Hemlock. The man had said nothing since they passed through the gate. He continued to grow heavier, the texture of his skin had changed, and the pupils in his blue-green eyes had lengthened to scythes.

  “I’m fine.” He spoke in the Dark Tongue, in a voice no longer human.

  Every moment stretched into a dying breath as they finally reached the end of the passage. Too much sea and sky appeared above the edge. Lorth dropped a serviceable energy wall over the rough opening as they passed through. Then they stopped, panting and burning with fatigue.

  “God’s balls,” Eadred swore.

  The path—a bare term for it—dropped steeply down through a heavy tangle of trees, brush, and boulders. Far below, the vegetation thinned to a field of broken rubble over which the sea crashed and writhed, hurling floating debris against the rocks.

  “How close do you have to get?” Lorth asked Hemlock.

  The eamoire made a weird sound and urged them forward.

  Rallying their strength against the wind and rain, Lorth and Eadred began their descent, straining under the weight of the creature in their charge. Samolan pulled his bow around and nocked an arrow.

  When they got roughly halfway down, the ocean suddenly began to withdraw, lengthening the distance in a ghostly, slow-motion drift that drew pale calm over the darkening sky.

  “Not good,” Eadred said, his voice rising in alarm. “Hemlock!”

  “Let me go,” the eamoire said.

  Lorth barely heard him over the roar in his ears as he realized what was happening. In the wake of the receding tide, red-cloaked soldiers flooded the rocky, sandy strand. In a line, they faced Lorth and his companions, knelt, and drew their bows, aiming skyward.

  “Get down!” Lorth shouted. He and Eadred grappled for Hemlock and dragged him into the shelter of the boulders, scrambling beneath anything they could find as a cloud of arrows sprang into the air. Lorth merged with the wind and cried a command that blasted the shafts off course like a shifting flock of birds; but the wind was unruly, hard to control, and several of the arrows struck the earth around them.

  Behind him, on a flat rock between the opening where they had emerged and the far western point of the keep stood a figure in black, his arms raised to the wind. Sedarius. For a moment, Lorth thought the Raven intended to blast them.

  Then his mind filled with an immense, deep-throated roar that caused his blood to freeze.

  The men below screamed and scattered, clambering up the rocks to get higher. Eadred shouted Hemlock’s name. Sedarius chanted at the top of his lungs; but no spell or plea in any language would appease the sky as it turned to water, some three hundred feet of it, moving towards the shore like a rolling, grasping cliff face.

  Hemlock stood slowly, his legs now solid as trees on the island rock, his arms opened as if to receive an embrace and his palms facing down. Glinting with sea spray, his muscl
es rippled under flesh as pale and smooth as pearls, and his hair blew on the wind in rich brown waves. He spoke the Old One’s name and then knelt, pressed his palms on the rocks and spoke in a language known only to the stars.

  Lorth’s mind went blank as energy in shades of red, black, and brown rippled through his head and down like the roots of a willow tree. It shivered beneath his feet, loosening, flooding, and nourishing the ground, bringing it alive. It rose up with such force that he shouted in alarm. The ground dropped and shifted beneath him, tumbled him head over heels and rocked in a spiraling geometric pattern of stars and void that shattered his focus like a stone hammer.

  The earth groaned and struck the mountainous wave in deafening resonance.

  Lorth tried to get up, to move, to run, but it was too late. A wall of water crashed into him, lifted him up and pounded him over the shore like a rag. Time slowed; the images of his life spread into eerie silence; blood and light, forests, swords and wolves, the sapphire tower of Eusiron shining in the winter sun, Leda’s touch on his face as she kissed him, whispering, Death is life.

  The raging waters shifted direction as if a voice had called them back to the sea. Lorth dropped into the air as the surf vanished beneath him. His forearm landed beneath his weight with a dull snap. Clutching it against his ribs, he rolled over and gagged the brine from his lungs.

  Soft rain fell. Wincing under a throng of bruises and scrapes, Lorth got to his feet and surveyed the surroundings. The sea had returned to its restless, rolling gait along the strand. Here and there amid the devastation of uprooted trees, branches, brush, and stones, soldiers either lay still or stirred to life. Sedarius had disappeared. High above, Wychmouth Keep still stood, though some of the walls had cracked and the western corner had broken from its foundations and crashed into the sea. Rubble covered the opening to the passage from which they had emerged with Hemlock.

  “Sam!” Lorth called out.

  The Raptor’s head and shoulders appeared a short distance away. Blood covered the side of his face. “I’m here. Eadred?”

  “Here!” the wizard’s voice called faintly from somewhere below. “Hemlock?”

  Lorth hoped the eamoire would surface on the shore with the rest of his companions, but his heart told him otherwise, even as they joined in a search. The rain stopped, the wind calmed, and the clouds shifted and rolled in dreamlike sorrow as the three men gathered on a high point overlooking the sea.

  “What just happened?” Samolan said, giving voice to the numbness in their minds.

  For a time, no one spoke. Finally, Lorth said, “Hemlock remembered the earth.”

  Eadred leaned on Lorth’s shoulder to take the weight off a sprained knee. He had lost his cloak and half of his shirt and had a bruise the size of a small animal on his chest. “Is the treecloak gone?”

  “Aye,” Lorth replied. “Inner space is quiet.”

  A large gull wheeled overhead and released a mournful cry. It circled down, alit nearby and folded its pure white wings with elegant calm.

  “I know that bird,” Lorth said.

  Eadred pointed westward. “Look. There.”

  Far offshore, something dark rose up from the water and then submerged in a greenish swirl. Lorth squinted as the waves crested and fell, absorbing the disturbance and leaving him in the clearing mists of mesmeric distraction.

  “That could be anything,” Samolan said, his voice hovering between awe and disappointment.

  The seagull lifted into the air. With the splendor of a healing touch, the sun emerged and cast a universe of glittering stars across the water.

  Birth of an Immortal

  Shade of Moon: The tide brings light.

  Evening settled over the Isle of Urd like a subtle fragrance. The Midsummer moon rose in pale gold song on the horizon of a quiet sea. Roses, lavender, and broom rippled in the wind, blending with the tangy scent of wide shores bared to the sky by a low spring tide.

  His arm in a sling, Lorth stepped up to the edge of a steep path on the eastern shore between the conservatory and the White Drop, home to a large, clamoring colony of seagulls and ravens. Farous, Samolan, and Eadred stood by his side. Behind them, the people of Urd walked down from the conservatory in meandering groups—wizards, cooks, gardeners, fishermen, and woodsmen alike—content as all warm-blooded creatures at the height of a preciously brief summer in a far northern clime. They spoke of the weather, their tasks of the day, and the beauty of the moon. Forlsc’s barking rang out over the hill.

  Eadred turned to Farous. “This is the place.” The siomothct took Faena’s hand as she moved up by his side.

  “Are you sure it happens on this moon?” Farous asked, his dark hair stirring in the breeze.

  “The folciel sphere is more vivid in the present.”

  Farous nodded, and began to descend the crumbling steps that wound down to the shore. Filothin remained on top to guide the people down; Eadred, Faena, Lorth, and Samolan followed the Master of Urd.

  Faena placed her hands on Eadred’s shoulders. “How do you know it’ll happen here?”

  “I had to guess that part.”

  “The sea will know where we are,” Lorth said.

  Samolan moved behind Lorth with soundless ease. “Thorin told me the crew is ready to go home,” the Halnsman said.

  “So am I.” Under the first quarter moon, the crew of the Oak Leaf had stood on the graceful foredeck and sung farewell to Cimri, their first mate. They dropped to their knees and bowed their heads to the Destroyer’s silent gaze as Lorth spoke a blessing for his friend in Aenspeak. For a week since, the sailors had celebrated Cimri’s life in story and song. To a man, they had only now become sober enough to sail.

  Farous reached the end of the path and stepped onto the stretch of rocky sand glinting with pools, shells and seaweed left by the receding tide. The air cooled as they neared the water. They spread out onto the rocks to wait as the others began to thread down the path. Lorth moved north and stood alone, his heart thumping evenly as he scanned the sky for Ciron, the heart of the Swan.

  A presence neared with the subtle grace of a hunter. “I understand congratulations are in order.”

  Lorth smiled. He and Eadred had spoken little since returning to Urd, content with the space around their personal affairs. “Aye, the Council finally caught up with me. Came to me in a dream last night. They recognized my involvement in Hemlock’s integration and offered me the ninth seat.”

  Eadred lowered himself to sit, draping his arms over his knees. “I’m surprised Sedarius didn’t try to discredit you.”

  “Oh, he did. Shortly after we left Mimir, he projected to Eyrie with a full complement and warmed their ears about our behavior in Wychmouth.”

  “You knew he would. I’m puzzled you waited so long to speak to them.”

  “I wasn’t of a mind. Do you know Sedarius told them he had dropped the wave?”

  Eadred looked up with a flattening stare. “Ealiron’s balls, he told them that.”

  “He did.” Lorth stepped one foot on the rock and leaned his good arm on his knee. “He didn’t believe us when we told him Hemlock did it. He still thinks it was the loerfalos.”

  Lorth had known that once the treecloak parted, the Aenlisarfon would organize, align, and weigh their visions of this realm with or without reports. They had felt the emotions of the islanders as the waters receded from their shores; the love of the loerfalos warming the seas; and above all, the shining pattern of a newborn eamoire focused in the world. They had seen the identity of the protective cloak Lorth had held around Eadred for the last fortnight, a cloak that had upheld the respectful silence between them. He continued:

  “I needn’t tell you Sedarius discredited himself with that. Hunters know it pays to wait; I didn’t have to tell them anything. They saw the fractured earth beneath the shores of every isle in the path of the wave and knew only an immortal could’ve accomplished that with such precision. They also put it together that we had to knock out Sedariu
s in order to get Hemlock out of there. They sent him back to his body with more bruises than he left it with.”

  Eadred blurted a laugh. “He’ll consider you an enemy, now.”

  “He’ll have to get in line. My distaste for his sort of posturing was the reason I was invited to sit on the Council in the first place.”

  Comfortable in each other’s presence, the two wizards watched the moon rise. Behind them, people filed down the path and gathered on the shore, their voices rising and falling. Lorth spotted Cleary, clutching his hat in his hands. The netweaver had questioned around Gefion, found Lorth just before his departure, and inquired after Hemlock with such love in his eyes that Lorth had asked Farous to send someone to fetch him.

  Eadred said, “I still haven’t thanked you for allowing me to honor your friend Cimri.”

  “The honor is mine.” Eadred had rowed out to the Oak Leaf alone, taken his place behind the crew, walked before the prow and spoken a phrase in the Dark Tongue that intertwined the powers of life, death, and healing. The act had said more to Lorth about the quality of the hunter’s resolve than any apology or remorse.

  “So,” Eadred said. “What of your original mission?”

  Lorth stepped down and straightened his back. “The Council asked me if I believed it to be satisfied.”

  “I should think saving the Gray Isles from annihilation would quell any argument.”

  Lorth rested his wolf’s gaze on him. “Do you think I would take full credit for that and not acknowledge you? I told the Council you had fallen under a curse that split your heart and mind. I could scarce describe their expressions when I repeated the words in that spell. I asked them to appeal to Ealiron to lift your blackring.”

  Eadred fell silent. “That has never been done,” he said finally. “Ealiron grants no concessions on that law. The balance must be kept.” He flipped the edge of his cloak over his thighs. “I knew that when I went after the sphere.”

  “Balance is not fixed,” Lorth returned calmly. “Every action you took after killing the shadecaster laid fertile ground for the Old One’s seeds. Had you not strayed as you did, for the reasons you did, Hemlock would’ve drowned himself, this entire realm, or both. My involvement simply brought the threads together.