Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3)

by S L Farrell

  Doyle saw Torin lean over to Mas Sithig and touch the old Rí’s arm with a warning shake of his head, but Mas Sithig had already started to speak. “And Dún Laoghaire?” Mas Sithig asked Edana.

  “The Óenach doesn’t need Dún Laoghaire’s vote,” she answered. She looked up at Doyle, and he saw nothing but glacial ice in her eyes. “I can count as well as the rest of you, and you already have your Rí Ard. And I hope your lives with him end up happier than mine.”

  With that, her gaze dropped away from Doyle and she walked out of the Halla.

  “I’m sorry, Mam. I truly am.”

  Edana turned from the window to find Padraic—dressed in the green clóca of the Order of Gabair, and with his new Cloch Mór lying there on its chain—standing at the door to her inner chamber. “Your maids tried to announce me, but I just came in,” he continued. “Da’s really upset, you know.”

  Edana lifted a shoulder. She made no attempt to hide the blotches of red on her cheeks or the trails of moisture from her eyes. “Your da is hardly the only one,” she said.

  “He wants what’s best for the Tuatha, Mam,” Padraic said. “He’s also doing what he must do to protect us—you and me and the rest of our family. I believe that, even if you don’t.”

  Edana tried to smile at her son. He sounded so much like Doyle. Looking at him, she could see a reflection of the Doyle with whom she’d fallen in love nearly two decades before. Padraic had the same brilliant red hair, the same intense eyes, the same way of standing with his weight shifted to one foot, the same unconscious presence. “I know you believe that, Padraic,” she told him. “And I’m glad that you’re so certain about your da’s intentions. I truly hope you’re right.”

  “But that’s not what you believe.”

  “No.” She said it more sharply than she intended and she saw him flinch. “I don’t. Not anymore.”

  “Da cares very much about you, Mam. He loves you still.” Padraic tilted his head slightly to the right, lifting his eyebrows as if inviting her to believe him. It was a gesture she’d seen Doyle make a thousand times over the years, and she found herself smiling softly in answer. “I’ve heard him say it,” Padraic continued. “Just today at the Óenach, in fact. I’ve seen his face when he talks about you. It’s just . . .” Padraic shrugged. “Da says that good rulers are married first to their Tuath. That’s why they often have trouble in their other marriage.”

  So I’m to blame for us being apart, because I was Banrion and abandoned him . . . She thought it, but resisted saying it to her son. “You’ve grown up so much,” she said instead. “Your voice, the way you stand and walk . . . Sometimes I forget that you’re not the little boy who used to hold up a pebble to the mage-lights at night and pretend he was a Holder.”

  “Mam . . .”

  “I’m sorry, Padraic. It’s just . . .” She went to him, putting her arms around him. She felt him resist for a moment, then allow her to embrace him. Their clochs lay together, a hard barrier between them. “I always loved your da and our children first,” she told him, whispering the words into his hair. “I always loved you. And your Aunt Meriel . . . I knew that it was the same with her, that she loved Owaine and her children ferociously, without any excuses or reservations.” She stepped back slightly, holding his head in her hands so that they gazed in each other’s eyes. “Aye, sometimes a ruler must put her duties first. But that doesn’t mean she can’t love or that any affection she feels toward someone else is doomed.

  “Do you still love Da?”

  “I don’t know.” She saw the hurt in his eyes at her honesty. She kissed his forehead and then hugged him once more before stepping back. “The truth is that your da has a jealous and demanding mistress.”

  Padraic shook his head. “No, Mam. I’ve never seen him with anyone else. Ever.”

  She smiled at his defense of Doyle. “She’s not a person,” Edana told him. “She’s his Ambition, and once I thought that I was stronger than she was. Once I thought that I’d driven her away. I was wrong. I underestimated her determination and her influence and the lengths to which she would go, and because of that, Meriel and Owaine and Jenna and all the others are dead.”

  Padraic shook his head. “I don’t like that either, Mam. Aunt Meriel was a good woman and I loved her also, and Kayne and Sevei . . .” He ran the tip of his tongue over his lips. “That act wasn’t Da’s doing, Mam. Aye, he attacked Aunt Meriel’s mam, but in that there wasn’t a choice. The Mad Holder would never have given up Lámh Shábhála voluntarily.” If Edana had closed her eyes, it could have been Doyle speaking. “You know that. But even so, Da didn’t kill them, Mam. I was there when he confronted the First Holder, remember? It was all so chaotic, with all the clochs fighting. The Holder threw herself into the sea, and then poor Sevei leaped after her . . .”

  He stopped. She could see the pain and grief in his face, and she remembered, a few months before Sevei left for Inishfeirm, finding Padraic and Sevei laughing as they sat and talked with one another, their hands intertwined, and walking away softly before they noticed her. Edana could well imagine how conflicted and confused and hurt Padraic had been, being there when she’d been lost to the waves. “You can’t blame Da for everything, Mam. You can’t. This wasn’t his doing or his plan. He had no choice.”

  Your da used the same words, and I didn’t believe him either. He touched his cloch, and Edana realized that it was no longer a clochmion her son wore, but a Cloch Mór: the one named Snarl, which had once belonged to Máister Kirwan. So there was yet another casualty.

  We always have a choice, she started to say to him, but swallowed the words instead. She lifted her hand to his cheek again, feeling the downy stubble there. “I don’t entirely blame Doyle,” she told him. “You can tell your da that. I don’t blame him for all that happened.”

  She hoped it was true.

  28

  A Binding to Stone

  “I KNOW THIS PLACE,” Sevei said. She stared up at the gigantic statue perched on the edge of the sea cliff.

  The trees of Thall Coill moved well away from the cliff here, as if the oaks themselves were somehow afraid to approach too closely to the statue of black, glossy stone, a material unlike any Sevei had ever seen. She couldn’t quite decide what the huge carving was supposed to represent: the creature it depicted—four-legged and sitting like a cat perched on a sunlit ledge, contained feline elements but also seemed part dragon, part dog, or perhaps winged creature, since there were long broken ridges alongside its spine that might have been the remnants of long-lost wings. The stone was weathered and eroded from long centuries, the features blurred by time, and it looked as if the entire statue, rearing thirty or more feet above her head, had been ripped from the ground and then smashed down again at an angle. Its back legs were buried in the earth, the front paws resting on air, and a jagged crack stuttered along its haunches.

  Far below, she could hear waves crashing in foam against the rocks and the barking cough of seals.

  Whatever the statue was intended to be, it was impressive. Staring up at the distant head, Sevei shivered though the day was warm and the sun glinted on the polished stone. There was a sense of hidden power, something greater than mere mortality.

  “I know this,” Sevei repeated, her voice hushed with awe. “Or rather, I’ve heard of it. This is Bethiochnead. This is the place of the Scrúdú, the test that Holders of Lámh Shábhála have taken. That my gram . . .” She blinked, unbidden tears rising at the name.

  “That your gram underwent,” Beryn finished for her. “And that she, like all the rest of you Daoine who have tried, failed.”

  Sevei’s eyes narrowed in annoyance at Beryn’s tone. “She didn’t fail. She passed the Scrúdú. She must have. Those who fail the test die. That’s what I was taught.”

  “Aye, all the others who failed perished here. I don’t know why Jenna lived, but I know that she didn’t succeed with the Scrúdú. I would know. We would all know if that had happened.”


  “But Máister Kirwan said—”

  “Did the First Holder herself claim to have succeeded?” Beryn interrupted gently.

  Sevei thought back to the conversations that she’d had with Jenna. Her gram rarely discussed the time surrounding her rise to Banrion of Inish Thuaidh, but on a few occasions, usually when she’d had more wine or ale than usual with her supper, Jenna had talked about those days. But even then, Jenna had remained reticent to talk about what had happened in Thall Coill. Sevei recalled the time that Máister Kirwan had spoken to one of her classes about the Scrúdú. “Our First Holder underwent the Scrúdú, which few holders of Lámh Shábhála dare to even contemplate,” he’d said. “We don’t truly know the histories of the Bunús Muintir holders, but we do know that of our Daoine ancestors. Caenneth Mac Noll in 241, Heremon O Laighin in 280, Ioseph MacCana in 333, Maitiú O’Doelan in 517, Garad Mhúllien in 662, Peria Ó Riain in 671: they all died undergoing this test. Only once has a Daoine survived the Scrúdú, whatever it might be—and that person was Jenna Aoire who is now Banrion Jenna MacEagan, the First Holder . . .”

  She realized now that Máister Kirwan had never said Jenna had passed the test, only that she, somehow, had managed to live through it.

  “It was Jenna who broke the statue, years ago,” Beryn said. “I was a young man, then, and I watched her lift Bethiochnead with the power of Lámh Shábhála and bring it crashing down again. I felt the ground shudder underneath me as it struck.”

  “That was the Scrúdú, then?” Sevei asked. “She would never tell us what it was. Even Máister Kirwan didn’t know for certain.”

  But Beryn shook his head. “No. I know that wasn’t the test. Whatever the Scrúdú might be, it’s something that the holder of Lámh Shábhála faces inside. What they struggle against, we can’t see with our eyes. And they die. They have always died. Except for Jenna. Your gram.”

  “Even the Bunús Muintir who have tried?”

  Beryn gave a small smile at that, his brown, wide face creasing. “Most, aye,” he said. “Bethiochnead—the statue—was here even when we Bunús Muintir first came to this land long, long generations before you Daoine arrived. We found Bethiochnead already here where we also found Lámh Shábhála, and it seemed immeasurably old even then. It’s said that Carrohkai Treemaster, who was the third Holder of Lámh Shábhála, passed the Scrúdú though she lived only a few years more afterward. But in that short time, she performed wonders: it was she who brought the eldest trees to full life and gave them the voices that they keep even today. It’s her magic that allowed the old forests like Doire, Foraois, and Thall to remain alive and vital through the centuries when the mage-lights vanish, that keep them active even now. Who knows what she could have done had she lived longer. But she was old when she underwent the Scrúdú, and the ordeal weakened her body. She was buried here, where she could be near Bethiochnead. See—that faint rise there, near where the trees start? That’s her barrow, though it looks hardly different now than the rest of the land.”

  “She was the only one?”

  A shrug. “Not the only. But one of the very few.”

  When he didn’t elaborate, Sevei stared back up at the blank, towering creature. “Bethiochnead,” she whispered. She walked up to its enormous flank and placed her hand on a glassy paw, then withdrew it abruptly, sucking in her breath. “It’s cold,” she said, glancing up at the sun.

  “Bethiochnead is always bitter cold, even on the warmest days,” Beryn told her. “It always has been.”

  The mage-lights are always cold, and Gram always complained at how frigid her poor scarred arm was. Sevei put her hand gingerly back on the stone. The coldness was deep and surprising, like plunging her hand into an ice-crusted stream in the mountains. And with the touch, she thought she heard laughter.

  She snatched her hand back again, cradling it to her chest. She felt a touch of fur on the back of her leg.

  “It wants you to take the Scrúdú.”

  She thought Beryn said it and turned around quizzically, but she realized that she heard the voice not through her ears but in her head. A blue seal lay on the grass behind her, startlingly close. Its dark fur was marked with the swirls of the mage-lights. “Bhralhg?” She remembered then. “Of course. You had me brought here. That’s what Kekeri told me.”

  Bhralhg leaned his head forward again, brushing her side. “Aye.” A cough came from the Saimhóir’s throat though the voice sounded clear in her head. His head bobbed down and she saw the glint of silver as a chain slipped from his thick neck onto a bit of bare limestone at her feet. A hint of emerald glittered in the sunlight.

  “Lámh Shábhála!” Sevei shouted. “You found it!” She started to lean down to pick it up, but Beryn raised his hand, palm toward her, shaking his head, and Bhralhg waddled forward so that his body shadowed the stone. She stopped. “Where was it? When did you find it?”

  “I found the cloch the day before your gram died,” Bhralhg told her.

  “Before Gram died?” The excitement Sevei felt shifted to suspicion. “But that means . . .”

  “Aye,” Bralhg answered. “I had the cloch and I didn’t tell you. I had the cloch and I chose not to give it back to her.”

  “Why?” She didn’t trust herself to say more than the bare syllable.

  “Because the First Holder was already broken and dying, and I didn’t know that I wanted you to have it.” The lack of hesitation in his answer indicated that hers was a question he’d expected. “Because I didn’t know if you were the one who should have it.”

  Suspicion flowed into anger. “You didn’t know? Lámh Shábhála belonged to Gram. What gives you the right to choose, one way or the other?”

  Bhralhg lifted his snout, rising up on his front flippers. “If you think that Lámh Shábhála doesn’t have some choice in the matter, then you’re more foolish than I thought. The cloch came to me when it could have just as easily let you find it. That tells me that it wanted me to make the choice.” His snout dropped back down, and his voice softened in her head. “If you’d found it while your gram was alive, what would you have done with it, Sevei?”

  “Why, I would have—” She stopped. The seal’s head lifted, the folds of thick fat around his neck smoothing, and she knew he’d seen the answer in her face.

  “Aye, you’d have given it back to your gram—and that’s why Lámh Shábhála hid itself. It was done with Jenna.”

  “You make the stone seem alive.”

  “Bradán an Chumhacht, the Salmon of Power that I swallowed, is definitely alive. Why wouldn’t Lámh Shábhála also be alive?” The Saimhóir blinked heavily, the hairs at the end of his snout twitching. He snuffled, his nostrils flaring.

  Beryn had been silent as he leaned on his staff and listened to the exchange, seeming to understand both the Saimhóir’s language as well as Sevei’s. He cleared his throat. “Your gram would have told you that it was alive, too,” he said to Sevei. “It contains the voices of all the Holders. Your gram is there now, with the others.”

  That sent Sevei’s gaze back to the cloch. “Why did you bring me here?” she asked them.

  “To give you Lámh Shábhála,” Bhralhg said. “To see you put it on here”—his gaze went to the statue whose color was that of his own eyes, “—where Bethiochnead will test you.”

  “Here is where I’ll die, then.” She said it scornfully, as if she were refusing the gift of Gram’s cloch, but her gaze would not leave the gem. She wondered what it would feel like to put it on, to use it . . .

  “Perhaps,” Bhralhg answered placidly. “That’s certainly possible. Even likely.”

  “Then why? Give it to Beryn—I’m sure the Bunús Muintir would love to have the cloch back again.”

  “We would,” Beryn told her. “And we will have it if you refuse to take it or if you fail the Scrúdú. But I’d rather see it in your hand, and so would Bhralhg.”

  “Then I still don’t understand.”

  “When the First Holder brought L
ámh Shábhála back to life, we rejoiced.” The voice was accompanied by the grunting tones of the Saimhóir: Bhralhg. “We were pleased because the First Holder was more than Daoine: she was Saimhóir also, and she was Bunús Muintir. The mingled blood of three races of the Aware flowed within her. Finally, we thought, here was someone who could pass the Scrúdú, who could take Lámh Shábhála’s power and do more than just war with it, who would be a champion for all races already awake or yet to be awakened. In that, we were wrong.”

  “Gram loved the Bunús Muintir,” Sevei said angrily. “And the Saimhóir. If you think she didn’t, then you obviously didn’t know her.”

  “Neither of us means any insult to Jenna,” Beryn said. He used the tip of the oaken staff to prod the cloch. The chain clinked faintly. “She held Lámh Shábhála longer than most Holders could. She survived the Scrúdú when no other Daoine had.”

  When Beryn said nothing more, Sevei raised an eyebrow toward him. “But?”

  “Jenna took the power of Lámh Shábhála and made herself a ruler who served your people well. I would like to see the next Holder make herself a ruler who serves all peoples well.”

  “And you’d do that, Beryn?” Sevei asked him. She could not keep the scorn from her voice. “Then why don’t you take Lámh Shábhála without waiting for me? Since you and Bhralhg share the same concerns, I’m sure Bhralhg wouldn’t stop you. Why, you can bring your people back to prominence with it—at least until the Riocha send an army and the rest of the Clochs Mór to stop you.”

  Eyes the color of stained, old oak regarded her sternly and she thought he was going to retort, but it was Bhralhg who answered. “I offered it to Beryn already. When I found it, after you left to go back with your people, I came here immediately. He convinced me that an Aoire was still the proper Holder.” The Saimhóir hunkered down close to the cloch, as if tired. Glossy fur rippled as he shifted his weight “Jenna survived the Scrúdú. Beryn and I think that her progeny might be able to do more.” He nudged the chain with his snout. “Take it. Take the legacy of your gram. She’s there inside, waiting for you.”