Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3)

by S L Farrell

  Kayne remembered how he’d shivered the first time he passed the Bunús Wall, riding through the magnificent remnants of Bunús Gate. He could well imagine how his long-dead ancestors must have felt seeing this for the first time. “The clansfolk all have Bunús blood in ’em. Most of us, anyway. That’s where we get—” The old man stopped as Séarlait waved at him from farther down the wall. “She’s found your people,” he said. “Let’s go meet them.”

  The men in the encampment Harik had established near Bunús Gate stared uneasily at the clansfolk even as they gathered around Garvan, Sean, and Bartel with cries of mingled greeting and alarm. Kayne led Harik away from the group toward the High Gate as Garvan began to relate their own tales of the ambush at the Narrows. Kayne found that it was difficult to even talk about that day, that when he spoke of his da the tears burned in his eyes, heated by the inferno of rage in his heart. Harik flushed, his hands making impotent fists as Kayne related the tale. He slammed one of those mailed fists against a gargoyle’s skull, breaking off an ear flap as Kayne spoke of Owaine’s last, futile charge into the Airgiallaian ranks.

  “That is what I’d expect of Tiarna Owaine. He was always a man who thought of those around him first,” Harik said, his voice oddly quiet. He took a long breath, his exhalation a cloud in the cold air of the mountain ridge. “I’ll miss your da, Tiarna, and I will grieve a long time for him. So will the rest of the men. Unfortunately, I think Laird O’Blathmhaic’s right: if Rí Mac Baoill would send his gardai and his own son here to attack us, then I’m afraid the situation can’t be good in Dún Laoghaire. The Ríthe couldn’t move against us unless they also moved against the Banrion Ard herself, and probably the Mad—” Harik stopped. “I mean the Banrion Inish Thuaidh.” He shook his head. “And we have a bare hand of double-hands of men here. That’s all.” He lifted his chin. “What now, Tiarna? You’re now the commander in your da’s place. You have my loyalty, as he did.”

  Kayne scoffed. “Do I deserve the gift of your loyalty, Harik?”

  Harik started to answer, then stopped. He regarded Kayne for several breaths. “You’re Riocha,” he said. “You’re the son of Owaine Geraghty, who was husband to the Banrion Ard. For all we know out here in this Mother-forsaken place, you may be the only one of the Ger aghtys—” Again he snapped his mouth shut. Kayne felt the sense of loss and grief pounding at his chest. The world has changed underneath me. The ground is no longer safe.

  “Riocha, Banrion Ard, Tiarna: those are just words and titles, Harik. Is that why you gave your loyalty to Da, for his title? Is that why you would take the chance and scold me like a misbehaving child not four days ago in Ceangail? Is that why Da loved you so much? Because of the titles he held?”

  “You have my loyalty,” Harik answered simply.

  “Because of me, Harik,” Kayne persisted, “or because of Da?”

  Harik’s gaze was fixed somewhere just above Kayne’s eyes. “Because of your da.”

  Kayne snorted. He turned, looking back over the encampment of Harik’s men, knowing that if—if—they would follow Kayne, it would be because Harik MacCathaill the Hand ordered them to do so. Ahead of Kayne were the humped, blue spines of the Fingerlands, and beyond . . . Was there open war in the Tuatha, or had it all been settled already, with perhaps a new Ard sitting on the throne his mam had once occupied? Was the smoke from the pyres of his mam and his siblings already rising out there? For Sevei? For his gram?

  Harik must have guessed at his thoughts. “We could go back to Concordia, Tiarna Geraghty,” the man said. “The new Thane would give us refuge in Céile Mhór for the help we gave his father against the Arruk, no matter what has happened in Talamh an Ghlas. A life spent fighting the Arruk wouldn’t be a wasted one.”

  The clouds, scudding over the sky, cast mesmerizing sun-shadows over the peaks. Kayne could glimpse the Tween Sea from here, where the Bunús Wall vanished to the south: a fragment of calm in a landscape where everything else was jumbled and broken.

  “Tiarna?”

  Kayne shivered.

  “You and your men can make your own choices, Harik,” Kayne said without turning. “Go back to Concordia if you want, or continue forward to Talamh An Ghlas if you think that you’ll be safe—Rí Mac Baoill wants me, not you or the gardai. I won’t ask anyone to risk themselves for me.”

  Behind him, Harik grunted. “And you, Tiarna?”

  Kayne felt a leaden certainty settle around his shoulders. Blaze seemed to tug heavier on its chain. “I have questions I need to ask of the Ríthe who did this to my family,” he said, “and I also have hard answers I intend to give them.”

  Kayne heard Harik turn to go back to the camp. The wall was a thick, cold presence on his left, but he hadn’t followed it for more than a few strides when he saw Séarlait leaning there half-hidden in shadows. She was watching him. “You heard?” he asked.

  A nod.

  “It was none of your business,” he told her, but he could not make the words sound as sharp as they should have been. Séarlait gave a shrug and continued to gaze at him, as if she were trying to judge him. He wondered what she saw, what she thought. He stared back at her, trying to imagine her as she could have been: a comely young woman, with a low, honeyed voice and a laugh that sparked with joy and delight . . .

  She nodded again, as if he’d spoken. Leaning down quickly, she plucked two leaves of grass from the ground. She came closer to him, an arm’s length away, and held one of the blades to her breast, placing the other against Kayne’s chest. Her gaze never allowed his eyes to leave hers. Her lips relaxed into a brief, fleeting smile. She brought the two leaves together between them, tapping her hands together. She gestured at the grass below their feet, then pointed at him, then her. It came to him suddenly, what she was trying to say.

  “We’re alike, like two blades of grass? Is that what you mean?”

  Séarlait nodded once, emphatically. The smile returned, vanished like the sun behind fast-moving clouds. She let the twinned leaves fall to the ground. She hesitated, as if she wanted him to say more, but he could only look at her: her face, the terrible scar across her neck showing above the top of her léine. She started to turn away, but he reached out and touched her arm. He felt her tense and he thought that she would slap his hand away. He looked down at his fingers instead, and he let his hand fall back to his side. She brushed hair back from her face and rubbed her hand on her arm where he’d touched her.

  “You may be right,” he told her. “More than we both realize.”

  17

  Meeting the Taisteal

  ENNIS SAID VERY LITTLE after he awoke.

  Isibéal thought initially that it was because the boy was understandably shocked by what had happened—she hadn’t yet told him that his mam was dead, but with their frantic ride through the night away from Dún Laoghaire, even at his age he must have known that he’d been kidnapped and spirited away. She’d expected tears or tantrums or sobbing panic when the boy woke up from his induced sleep. She’d expected disorientation and screaming accusations. She expected him to demand to be returned to Dún Laoghaire and his mam.

  But Ennis did none of those. He woke during one of her brief pauses to rest and determine where she was. He blinked and looked around him with bright curiosity. “When will we be there, Isibéal?” he asked, as if they were out on some scheduled jaunt to one of his cousins’ holdings. There was no accusation on his face, nor any fright; he seemed older than his few years. He stared at her with an intent curiosity, as he might some juggler’s entertainment and a songmaster’s concert. His sober gaze unnerved Isibéal.

  “I don’t know yet,” she told him, and he nodded, accepting the answer and saying nothing more. That night, Isibéal lifted the Heart to the mage-lights, and felt for the first time the exhilarating and intoxicating pleasure of filling the cloch. She also knew then that she could not ever willingly give up Treoraí’s Heart. It would be hers until she died—and she was afraid that would be far too soon. She pushed t
he horse hard through the rest of the night, forcing herself to stay awake and touching the Heart over and over again.

  As the sun started to rise the next day, she kicked the exhausted horse onto the willow-draped hummock. They were in a bog pooled in the hills south of Dún Laoghaire, not far enough away yet for Isibéal’s comfort. Ennis sat quietly, watching as she struggled with the packs, as weary and battered as their mount. “Get over here and help me,” she snapped at the boy.

  He continued to stare, his eyes widening just a bit. “I mean it, Ennis. Out here, there’s no one to hear you, and I don’t have to answer to your mam. If I need to beat you, I will.”

  “No, you won’t.” He said it calmly, with a soft certainty. Annoyed and angry at his refusal, she lifted her hand, and finally shook her head.

  She was too tired to argue. The ride during darkness had been tense and frightening. More than once she’d thought she’d heard pursuit behind them and she’d glanced back, terrified, knowing that it was not only the gardai who would be looking for her, but also those who had hired her.

  I couldn’t kill him. I know I should have, but I couldn’t. That would have been too much like having Adimu die all over again. The Mother knows that I wouldn’t even have killed the Banrion Ard if I thought I could have found any way to stay alive afterward—not after I knew her, not the Healer Ard. She didn’t deserve that, and I wish I could have changed it. But I certainly couldn’t kill poor Ennis. . . .

  She knew the choice she’d made meant her death if she were captured now—by gardai or by those who had hired her. Those loyal to the Banrion Ard would want their vengeance; the Order of Gabair and the Ríthe would want the same. There was no place for her here. No place she could vanish, not even among the Taisteal. Her only hope was to leave Talamh an Ghlas entirely.

  She felt a hand on the pack as she pulled it from the horse: Ennis had risen and come over to help her on his own. “I’m sorry, Ennis,” she told him. “I’m just so tired . . .”

  “I know,” he said with that same unnerving seriousness. “I understand.”

  “You remind me so much of my own son . . . I couldn’t . . .”

  “I know that, too,” he said, the words sounding too adult for the little boy’s voice.

  “How could you? I’m certain I never told you . . .”

  “I just know,” he answered confidently. “Get some sleep. The ones you’re waiting for will be here soon. The Taisteal.”

  “The Taisteal . . . ?” she began, but he just stared at her as if watching a dragonfly on a rush. She shuddered; his gaze wouldn’t leave her, but she was so tired, so tired. She quickly hobbled the horse and let it graze, then rolled up the blankets. She made a bed of them and snuggled down in the woolen folds. “Here,” she said. “Sleep with me. We’ll keep each other warm.”

  They lay together, cuddled in the early morning fog and light. She fell asleep quickly, drifting into dreams in which the Banrion Ard awoke from her death and pursued her and Ennis, her hands reaching out like claws, all the while with a strange smile on her face as if she knew exactly what Isibéal was thinking and what she had done. Her voice sounded like dull clanging bells as she shouted at Isibéal. The Banrion Ard reached out, and Isibéal felt the dead woman’s hand close around her shoulder and the touch burned like fire.

  “No!”

  Isibéal sat up, gasping. Ennis stood beside her, his hand still raised from shaking her. She panted, blinking into the afternoon sunlight that dappled her clothing.

  “They’re here,” Ennis said.

  The old Bunús woman looked at him as if he were some strange insect she’d found. “Come away with me, Ennis,” she said. “I want to talk with you. . . .”

  He was four. Nearly five. They were taking Sevei to Keelballi on the western coast of Tuath Connachta, where there was a ship waiting to take her to Inish Thuaidh. Sevei could have sailed from Dún Laoghaire, but Mam and Da had wanted to take them all to see Doire Coill. Ennis had thought it mostly boring—one forest looked like another, even ones that were reputedly haunted—but the Bunús Muintir were at least interesting. “Her name is Keira,” Mam had told him, “and she’s the Protector of Doire Coill. She even helped me give birth to you—if she hadn’t been there, I don’t know how I would have gotten through it.”

  Ennis mostly thought Keira smelled funny, like the spices in the kitchens.

  In the fog-cloaked morning, Keira led Ennis away from the cave where she lived, away from the others. She stopped, finally, and sat down on the ground, motioning for him to sit in front of her. She unfolded a piece of parchment she plucked from a leather bag. On the paper, something shriveled and dried-up clung, its edges hard and brown but showing a faint pale blue in the translucent center. Keira stretched out a hand and placed a yellowed fingernail in the center of the leathery thing. “You were born with that caul over your face,” Keira said in her shivery, old lady voice. “I took it from you.” She sat back again, leaving the paper between them. Ennis stared at the caul. It smelled, too, but not good. “Do you know what it means to be born with a blue caul?” Keira asked him.

  Ennis shook his head.

  “It means you’re different,” Keira told him. “It means you’ll know things that no one else will know. You may know what someone might do before they do it. You’ll be able to see the possible futures that are before you.”

  He must have looked confused, for Keira frowned and sighed. She gestured at the misty landscape around them. “It’s a dangerous and tempting gift,” she said to him. “The more distant things are from you in time, the more vague and confused they’ll be until they all blend together, like looking through the fog.” She pointed to a path leading down to a valley. “What if I told you that if you followed that path, you’d find a lovely golden sword that you could keep, a magical sword? Would you want to go that way?”

  Ennis’ eyes had widened. He nodded, imagining the sword.

  “Aye,” Keira told him. “You’d go, because that way leads you quickly to something you want. But you can’t see far enough ahead. Go that way, Ennis, and though you’d find the sword, you’d also meet the Seanóir, the eldest trees of the forest, and they would sing you their songs to draw you to them, and then they would eat you.” With the last words, Keira leaned forward so abruptly that Ennis startled and began crying.

  The old woman clucked in sympathy and pulled him into her spice-laden embrace. She stroked his hair. “I’m sorry, Ennis. I didn’t mean to scare you . . . well, actually I did. I want you to remember this, remember it when you’re old enough to understand what I’m telling you. You’ve had a great gift bestowed on you, but it’s also a dangerous one, and it will be tempting for you to make the wrong choice.”

  Keira went silent. She pulled Ennis away from her and pointed up the hill from where they’d come. He could see figures in the mist walking toward them: his mam, his Da, Sevei. “They’re here,” Keira said. . . .

  “They’re here,” Ennis said. He pointed through the overhanging curtain of the willows. Several strides away, a man stood at the edge of the bog, staring in at the hummocks rising from the black swamp. Behind him, on the road that curved through the hills, were a quartet of horse-drawn wagons around which Ennis could see several other people, dressed in bright, strange clothing. The breeze brought the sound of pans clanking together as one of the thick-bodied workhorses stirred in its traces. Taisteal, he realized. He’d seen Isibéal’s people in Dú Laoghaire, selling herbs and spices and items from strange and distant lands, and before his sister Tara had left for fosterage, she’d told Ennis about Mam and the Taisteal woman that their older sister Sevei had been named after, who died helping Mam. Mam liked the Taisteal and always went to see their wares. (“And she always pays far too much for them, too,” Da had told Ennis once before he left with Kayne for the war. He’d laughed, sharing the jest between them.)

  Ennis watched Isibéal rise to her feet. He could see the relief in her face as she noticed the Taisteal; she was
ready to hail the man, but Ennis was already moving, sliding through the drooping branches of the willow to stand in the high grass near the edge of the water. He waved. “Hallo!”

  It felt as if he’d done this before, like when Isibéal had taught him one of the Taisteal dances: he’d practiced it every day for a week until he didn’t have to think about the steps at all. His body fell into the motions, without his even knowing it. This felt the same though he’d never seen this man before. He just knew, the way he sometimes knew things back home.

  He knew a lot. He knew more than Isibéal thought. The blue ghosts had shown him. They’d shown him the dance of what could be, the dance that would protect him.

  The man waved back at Ennis and Isibéal, then turned his back and began walking back to the wagons. By the time Isibéal had unhobbled the horse and put the packs on the beast, the Taisteal had brought the wagons down toward the bog. An older woman stood a little apart from the wagons, waiting for them.

  “Clannhra Ata! It’s good to see you!” Isibéal called to her as they approached, the horse sloshing through the peat-blackened, opaque water, with Ennis seated in front of Isibéal. The old woman sniffed and spat once on the ground as the horse plodded from the swamp onto the drier ground of the meadow. She ground the spittle into the soft grass under her booted right foot. With the expectoration, Isibéal seemed to shudder at Ennis’ back.

  He knew why. He knew. He saw it.

  “I have no doubt that you’d be glad,” the Clannhra answered, her voice heavy with a distinct accent that sounded dark and sonorous to Ennis’ ears. “Especially since you’ve managed to get yourself into so much difficulty. I won’t say that we’re happy to see you, Isibéal. I laid out the cards last night and they were ominous and angry, almost as if someone were interfering with them. Now I look at you and I see great trouble for Clan Kahlnik.”