by S L Farrell
A smile curved her lips and vanished. She reached out and touched his hand: his right hand, where he could see faint, glowing swirls and curliques: mage-scars, which he’d seen on the hands of other cloudmages. Séarlait gestured at the field around them: the dead, the wounded moaning and crying out, the survivors walking through the battlefield exhausted and bloody, the remaining gardai retreating at a run. She touched Kayne’s hand again, and nodded.
“None of them will make it home.” Harik, Rodhlann, and Laird O’Blathmhaic had come up to them, and it was O’Blathmhaic who had spoken. He glanced appraisingly at Séarlait, standing close to Kayne, before looking back at Kayne. “Without your cloch, Tiarna, it would have been different. It would have been us retreating back into our mountains. The clans will sing of this for generations.”
“Your great-daughter made it possible,” Kayne told the man. “Not me.”
Kayne crouched down next to Mac Baoill’s body and found Winter: sparkling crystalline facets with veins of pure ultramarine, caged in silver wire hanging from a hammered silver torc. Reaching down, Kayne took the jewel from the man’s neck. “Aye,” Harik said behind him. “Take the cloch, Tiarna. We’ll hold it until we’re back in Dún Laoghaire and can find a better holder for it than a Mac Baoill.”
Kayne didn’t answer. He straightened and went to Séarlait; he stood in front of her, silent. Her gaze stayed with his, and after a moment, he smiled. He placed Mac Baoill’s torc around her neck; taking her hand, he closed it around the stone. “Winter is yours,” he told her. “Tonight, you can fill it with the mage-lights.”
She looked at the cloch wonderingly, turning it in her fingers, then at him. Laird O’Blathmhaic and Rodhlann chuckled.
And Harik . . . He gave no protest, but his gaze was hard and angry, and there was disappointment and contempt in his eyes when Kayne looked at him.
“Go on, Harik,” Kayne said. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“You don’t want to know, Tiarna,” Harik answered.
“Tell me anyway.”
They stood outside the town hall of Ceangail. Inside, they could hear the raucous and drunken celebration of the clansfolk and their own gardai. The main street of the small town was alive with people this night, walking in pairs and groups and laughing. For the second time in the last moon, Ceangail had escaped an attack, and they were rowdy and drunken and giddy. If the inhabitants seemed to think themselves blessed by the gods, that was something Kayne could understand.
Harik glanced back at the hall with disgust. “They act like they’ve won the war. This was just the first battle, and not the hardest. Rí Airgialla will send a full army the next time, with several clochs. He’ll have the other Ríthe send troops to help. The Tuatha will be back, and next time these Fingerlanders won’t have it so easy.”
“That may be true, but it’s not what you brought me out here to say,” Kayne told him. “Say it. Talk to me the way you’d talk to my da.”
“If you were your da, I wouldn’t need to say anything,” Harik retorted. The insult stung, but Kayne remained silent. “The girl doesn’t deserve to hold a Cloch Mór,” Harik spat out finally.
“Then it’s good it wasn’t your choice, isn’t it?”
“Don’t mock me,” Harik answered. “You know what I mean.”
“You mean that she’s not Riocha. Well, my da wasn’t born Riocha either, even if he ended up that way. And neither are you, Harik—but would you have complained if I’d given you the cloch?”
In the darkness, Kayne couldn’t see the man’s face flush, but he heard the controlled fury in his voice. “Aye, she’s a tuathánach and that’s part of it. I’m at least céili giallnai, with cousins who are Riocha. I was at least raised in the Tuatha and understand how our society works. I’ve served your da and your mam loyally, with every breath.”
“And Séarlait served us today. Without her, it might have been Mac Baoill who had another Cloch Mór to give, and you and I would be out there moldering in the battle’s barrow-grave.”
“Aye, she served us. Today.”
“Which means?” Kayne grunted the question between clenched teeth, trying to rein in the temper that wanted to flare, that made him want to strike at the man. You asked for his honesty, and he was Da’s friend as well as the Hand of his gardai. Listen to him. Control your anger.
Harik’s eyes narrowed, glittering like twin shards of glass. “This Séarlait’s not trained to a cloch na thintrí and never will be. No, you haven’t been trained either, but Tiarna Geraghty, the Banrion Ard, and your sister were. You will be also, once we’re back. This one . . . she’ll be at best a wild talent; at worst, she’ll be dangerous to everyone around her when she uses the cloch. Most importantly, she’s clanfolk and her loyalty’s only to them. I know the clansfolk better than you do. I was raised an Inishlander, where things aren’t much different than here, and I was stationed in the Finger for a year when I was just a boy, in old Mal Mac Baoill’s army during one of the constant clan insurrections. I know that if the situation changes, you may find Séarlait using the cloch against you. She’d do it, Tiarna. She would. That’s where her loyalty lies: to her clan. To the Fingerlanders. She’d turn on you without even thinking about it if she perceived you as a threat to her people. You don’t know her and her kind. You may think you do, but you don’t.”
“Is that all, Harik?”
“No,” the man said. “You’re becoming emotionally involved with her, Tiarna. I can see it, and so can everyone else. You’d know that if you were thinking with your head instead of—” Harik stopped at the sound of light footsteps behind them and a wash of lamplight from the doorway. Both men glanced toward the newcomer. Harik nodded, a barely perceptible motion of his head. “Séarlait,” he said. He glanced at Kayne. “Are we done here, Tiarna?”
“Oh, we are,” Kayne told him, keeping his voice tightly controlled. “Completely.”
Harik’s lips pressed together. He touched right fist to chest in a quick salute and strode swiftly away—not toward the hall and its drunken celebrants, but toward the gardai tents just inside the town wall. Séarlait watched him go. Her eyebrows were raised when she looked back at Kayne.
“It’s nothing,” he told her. “A little disagreement about tactics.”
She nodded, but her expression looked decidedly unconvinced. She touched the Cloch Mór at her breast and pointed upward. Even as she made the gesture, Kayne felt Blaze awaken in his mind. Above, light crawled between the stars.
“Come on,” he said to Séarlait, holding his hand out to her. “I’ll show you how to call the mage-lights. We’ll do it together.”
He heard Séarlait’s sigh as the last tendrils of the mage-lights left her upraised hand, climbing back toward the clouds even as they began to fade. He sighed also, Blaze full in his mind. Séarlait released Winter; as the cloch fell back on its chain, she wobbled on suddenly weak legs. Kayne steadied her, his arms around her waist as he came up behind her.
“It’s all right,” he whispered into her ear. “I nearly fell the first time, too.”
She leaned back against him, and he was aware of the smell of her hair, the touch of her skin, the softness of her neck contrasting with the unexpected ridge of scar. He bent his head down to her, his lips brushing the cords of her neck as she inclined her head. Her breath shuddered as she breathed in, then rushed outward with a gasp as she pulled away, spinning around. He let her go. She stood in front of him, her eyes shining with moisture. She shook her head—slowly, back and forth—and he remembered what had happened to her.
“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I don’t want to hurt you . . .” She stared at him.
She held out her right hand, palm up.
He put his hand in hers. For a moment, she just held it there, staring at his fingers as if trying to read something there. Then she pulled him toward her with a gentle tug, releasing him. Her hands clasped his face and brought it down toward her.
Her lips on his were soft and
warm and gentle. When he finally pulled back, he heard the breath catch in her throat and saw the tears on her face. He brushed them away with his thumbs.
You’re becoming too involved with her, Harik had said.
You be careful that you keep any promises you make her, her great-da had warned him.
“If this isn’t what you want . . .” he started, but she touched her finger to his lips, stopping him. She stared at him, and he saw the tears there even as her eyes challenged him. He knew what she would ask, if she could. He knew that this couldn’t be a tumble into bed and a good-bye the next morning. He thought he might even understand how much courage this took on her part, to leave herself open and vulnerable to be emotionally wounded, to trust him this much.
“I won’t ever hurt you,” he said. “I promise that. Ever.”
He hoped it was a promise he could keep.
23
The Shape of a Future
CLANNHRA ATA AND UNNISHA had transformed Ennis by the time they reached the first town. His hair was cut in the short fashion of the Taisteal, his curls gone and the hair turned coal black with an evil-smelling dye that also blackened the leather gloves Unnisha wore while rubbing it into his hair. An unguent darkened his skin, as if he’d been days out in the sun. The last of the clothing he had from Dún Laoghaire was burned, and Unnisha relentlessly schooled him on his accent. He learned quickly; even Clannhra Ata seemed pleased.
He even seemed happy, laughing like any of the other children and playing with them as the caravan slowly made its way south along the rutted roads of Tuath Dún Laoghaire toward Tuath Éoganacht, stopping occasionally at farms and tiny settlements to trade and sell cloth and spices, to tell fortunes, or to have their tinkers repair pots and other metal implements. It was the nights that bothered Ennis, for at night he would find himself taking Treoraí’s Heart in his hand, and listening for his mam’s voice inside it and weeping because he could not find it. He heard her, faintly, a few times, as well as the low gruff voice that seemed far older and more distant, but it was Isibéal whose voice was dominant in the Heart, drowning out the other two.
“I won’t let you have her,” Isibéal crooned to him softly. “You can’t have her, ever again. I told you that we’re linked together here. You killed me just as I took in the power, and I used it to make me powerful in death. It’s me you’ll hear, Ennis. It’s me who will whisper to you when you use the Heart. It’s me you’ll remember, every time . . .”
Yet, faintly and far away, he sometimes heard the whisper: “Ennis, I love you. I miss you so, and I’m so sorry for you. So sorry . . .”
He would cry afterward in the bed with Unnisha, and she would sometimes awaken crying herself for her own lost son.
They would hold each other, taking some comfort in their mutual grief.
And when the mage-lights came, Ennis would be there to take them in. Clannhra Ata would sometimes watch him with appraising and suspicious eyes, and he knew she wondered what the cloch did and why it needed to be filled again when he hadn’t used it.
But except for Treoraí’s Heart hidden under his clothing, Ennis was for all appearances simply another Taisteal child by the time the slow caravan rattled into Dúnwick, a small village on the coast south of Dún Laoghaire. In the few days since he’d taken Treoraí’s Heart as his own, the blue ghosts had left him alone. Ennis thought they’d forgotten about him.
They hadn’t. They were waiting for him in Dúnwick.
Dúnwick perched on a low shingle of rock, the Tween Sea opening its wide gray sweep to the horizon just beyond the rocky mouth of a tiny harbor. The smell of rotting fish and brine lay over the village like a transparent fog; the stones of the houses seemed to be imbued with the stench. The town slumbered, asleep, with its fishing boats laying tilted on muddy tidal flats, anchored to large stones that jutted out from the mire like an old man’s teeth. Huge nets hung like torn lace curtains from long poles just onshore, with several villagers repairing the ragged holes in them; a nearby market was busy with inhabitants from nearby villages and farms buying the freshly-caught fish.
As seemed to be required, the Ald of Dúnwick scowled as if irritated by the appearance of the Taisteal caravan, accepted the usual bribe with as little good grace as she could muster, then directed them to a small field just north of the town, where the Taisteal set up their tents and tables. Ennis helped Unnisha bring the bolts of strange and exotic cloth out of their wagon and array it on the drop-down shelf on the side of the vehicle. By midafternoon, well before they’d finished, the first curious townsfolk had arrived in the meadow and were wandering around between the wagons.
The ghosts arrived with them.
“Where did this come from?” inquired a woman’s voice, and Ennis turned to see an older woman fingering a bolt of red cloth on which darker swirls of near-black coiled like drifting smoke. Unnisha was in the wagon retrieving the last few bolts, and the woman was looking directly at Ennis. The bright outlines of blue ghosts accompanied her: the shifting glow of maybes and possibilities. Ennis blinked, staring at the landscape of the future she represented and seeing himself there. “Boy, did you hear me?” the woman asked, and a dozen of the ghosts echoed the same phrase with her. Her voice seemed more amused then annoyed, and Ennis shook himself.
“I’m sorry, Iníon,” he said, addressing her politely. “The cloth is from Kallaigh in Thall Mór-roinn,” he answered. He had no idea if that was true; it was a phrase he’d heard Unnisha use the day before when they’d stopped at a tiny crossroads hamlet. He mimicked her accent, sounding the hard consonants deep in his throat and rolling the “r’s.” “The truth doesn’t matter, as long as they think it’s something exotic,” Unnisha had told him that first time. “In fact, all the cloth is from here in Talamh an Ghlas—traded for or bartered for what we brought over the Finger from Céile Mhór.”
“Ah,” the woman said appreciatively. “So far away . . .” ... far away . . . far away . . . the ghosts whispered. “It’s very beautiful.”
“Indeed it is,” Unnisha said, stepping out from the wagon with more vivid bolts of cloth gathered under her arms. “That’s an excellent choice. Not many people have such an instinctive flair. You obviously know quality when you see it, Iníon; this is rare cloth, indeed. It feels marvelous to the touch, doesn’t it? So soft, and yet so strong.”
The woman managed to look pleased and suspicious all at once, but she continued to finger the bolt. “But the color’s not good for everyday use,” she said.
“Perhaps not,” Unnisha said, coming up beside her. She took the bolt and unwound a length of cloth from it, draping it around the woman’s shoulders. “But a person wearing a léine from this cloth would stand out from everyone else’s drab appearance. And that red would be so striking against your hair and your skin. Don’t you think so, Fiodóir?”
Ennis nodded enthusiastically, as he knew he was supposed to. “Oh, aye, it does. Here, Iníon, look . . .” He took a disk of polished bronze from where it hung on the door of the wagon and brought it over, holding it before the woman. “See? I think it’s very pretty.”
“It is, isn’t it?” the woman agreed. Then she seemed to realize that she was undermining her own position, and she shook her head. “It wouldn’t be warm enough, though. Too thin.’Twould probably tear through the first time it snagged on something. I couldn’t possibly pay more than four coppers for the bolt, for all the trouble it would give me.”
“Four coppers?” Unnisha repeated in an aggrieved and hurt tone, taking the bolt and wrapping the cloth again. She placed it back on the shelf. “Why, that would barely buy an arm’s length of this. I sold a bolt exactly like this to the Banrion Ard’s personal house servant for two gold mórceints, and ...” Unnisha stopped, her cheeks flushing. Ennis was watching her. The blue ghosts moved strongly between them, and Ennis wondered which of them he should choose to follow. He tried to find his future self in their flow. Tried to find the pattern where he would be safest.
&nbs
p; “Ah, the poor Banrion Ard,” the woman said, noticing Unnisha’s distress at her mention of Ennis’ mam, but attributing her hesitation to recent events. “We just heard the news yesterday ourselves, from the gardai who came here. Such an awful thing: the Healer Ard murdered, and all her children but the one that was kidnapped were killed, too, they’re saying. The ones who did it will be gutted alive and displayed when they’re found, and it’s less than they deserve. I don’t mind saying to you that I think it’s because the Healer Ard loved us tuathánach too much.” She winked at Unnisha and nodded conspiratorially. “That’s why they killed her. The rest of the Riocha didn’t like her, didn’t like that any of us common folk might go to Dún Laoghaire and be healed through that cloch of hers. Why, she cured a man just up the coast of the horrible boils he had all over his body . . .”
She stopped and leaned forward toward Unnisha. “I’ve also heard that there have been riots in Dún Laoghaire,” she whispered. “Some of the tuathánach rose up after the Healer Ard was murdered, but the Riocha used their damned sky-stones and killed those who dared to protest. It’s bad times in the cities, they say. Bad times.”
Neither of them was listening to her. Ennis touched Treoraí’s Heart under his léine. “You’re destined for great things . . .” Mam’s voice whispered in his mind before Isibéal drove her away again, and at that moment he saw the blue ghost he wanted: the shade that would lead him to his future. He also saw what that pattern would mean for Unnisha, but it didn’t matter. “You’re destined for great things . . .”
He aligned himself with the ghost. Unnisha was looking at him with sorrowful eyes. He let himself fall into the new pattern: he smiled at her so that she knew he understood her slip and wasn’t hurt by it; after a moment, she smiled back at him, pulling him to her and hugging him.
