Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3)

by S L Farrell

  Bhralhg pushed himself awkwardly backward with his flippers. Lámh Shábhála gleamed on the limestone, snared in its cage. Sevei took a step toward it, feeling their gaze on her: watching, appraising. She crouched down in the sparse grass beside the jewel.

  She’d never seen it anywhere but on Gram’s breast, had certainly never touched it or held it. Her Da had said that once Gram offered it to Sevei’s mam but that Meriel had refused it, preferring instead the healing ability of Treoraí’s Heart despite the greater power that holding Lámh Shábhála would have given her. There was no such hesitation in Sevei; she knew that she would give up Dragoncaller without a qualm if it meant she could take Lámh Shábhála. But yet she paused, seeing in her mind the constant pain that had hounded Gram and turned her face into a twisted, angry mask. She saw the white pattern of mage-scars that reached from Gram’s hand nearly all the way to the shoulder. She recalled the agony that Gram endured after Lámh Shábhála was lost. She wondered what Máister Kirwan, if he was still alive, would tell her. She could nearly hear his voice: “You’re not ready, Sevei. You’ve barely learned how to handle the clochmion. How can you possibly think you’re capable not only of controlling Lámh Shábhála, but of meeting the challenge of the Scrúdú? It will consume you, girl. Look what it did to your gram.”

  “It’s not a gift. It’s a burden,” Beryn said, as if guessing her thoughts.

  “Are you trying to convince me to take it or to leave it?”

  Beryn’s face creased into a smile. “Neither,” he answered. “And both.”

  “And if I pick it up, will the Scrúdú start?”

  “Not yet. Not until you’ve taken it as your own and filled it again with the mage-lights. Then . . . that’s when it will start.”

  She looked up at the Bunús Muintir, unable to keep the apprehension from her voice. “What will it be like?”

  “I don’t know. But perhaps those inside Lámh Shábhála can tell you.” He looked at her with sympathy. “You’re right to be afraid, Sevei. In fact, that’s the paradox: if you’re not afraid to take up Lámh Shábhála, then you’re not the right person to hold it.”

  “My great-uncle Doyle would disagree.”

  “Aye, he would.” Beryn spoke with some satisfaction. “And you’ll notice that he doesn’t have the cloch.”

  From the woods, they heard a dire wolf howl. The shadow of Bethiochnead slid closer to them. Bhralhg grumbled low and guttural in his massive throat. “No one will think less of you if you make the same decision as your mam.”

  That brought her head up. “Mam’s dead,” she said to them. “Da, Gram, Ionhar, Tara, Ennis, Dillon, Máister Kirwan: they’re all dead, those I loved, all of them but Kayne. I wonder—is revenge a good reason to want power?”

  Doubts rose in her head like wisps of fog from a bog. Before they could overwhelm her, she pulled Dragoncaller from around her neck and in the same motion, reached down and plucked Lámh Shábhála from the ground. She closed her hand around the cloch.

  “Oh . . .” she breathed, her eyes widening. “Oh . . .”

  The world around her faded away, lost in a lattice of green crystal. Lámh Shábhála surrounded her, and it was alive with voices: a hand, two, a hundred, a thousand or more: all yammering at her. Sevei forced herself to concentrate, to find the one voice she wanted most to hear.

  “This one’s too young . . .”

  “She’ll die, like all the others.”

  “She’s not even been adequately trained. She doesn’t know . . .”

  Then: “Sevei . . .” The voice was simultaneously sad and pleased. “I’m here, my dear. I’m here . . .”

  “Gram! Is that really you?”

  A dozen different voices answered. “Aye!”

  “Lámh Shábhála holds the shape of all its Holders.”

  “But a shape isn’t the reality.”

  “We’re not real, only reflections caught forever.”

  “Quiet!” Jenna’s voice shouted, and the other voices receded. “So you hold Lámh Shábhála now . . . That means I’m dead. But at least the pain is gone, and I can think again. And you . . .” Sevei felt something brush her mind, memories shuffling unbidden. When Jenna’s voice returned, it was with a tone of sorrow. “You mean to take the Scrúdú . . .”

  “Aye,” Sevei told her. “Will you help me, Gram?”

  There was a long hesitation and again the other voices intruded. “You’re too young and inexperienced . . .”

  “The First Holder failed the test herself . . .”

  “Hope? There’s no hope in this . . .”

  “You’ll be with us, very soon.”

  “Just another lost voice in the stone . . .”

  Then Gram’s voice banished the others. “I can show you the place inside Lámh Shábhála that I found. Beyond that . . .” Her voice faded and returned. “Oh, Sevei. You don’t know . . .”

  “You’ll die . . .”

  “Bethiochnead will crush you . . .”

  “. . . you’ll be here with us . . .”

  “. . . with us . . .”

  “. . . dead . . .” the voices whispered.

  Sevei forced them away, shoving them to the back of her mind. The emerald walls faded around her, and she was standing again next to the broken statue with Beryn and Bhralhg. The Bunús Muintir and the Saimhóir stared at her.

  “I’ll do it,” she said. “As soon as the mage-lights come.”

  PART THREE

  ALLIANCE

  29

  Another Binding

  A TAP ON THE FOREHEAD, a fist touching her heart, and then a tap on Kayne’s own forehead: Séarlait’s gestures were accompanied by a kiss to the side of his neck. I love you ... Kayne stirred—groaning as still-healing ribs pulled—and Séarlait took the opportunity to snuggle into the curve of his back, her arm around him. He could feel her fingers gently tracing the raised lines of the battle scars on his chest. He was warm under the fur that covered them, but the tent above drummed with the patter of rain and it was bright enough to see. Kayne watched the shadows of droplets hitting the fabric and washing away to join the small river that poured from the overhang. A steady drip plonked from a leak in the tent to form a small, dark pool in the carpet-covered grass just past their feet. Kayne yawned and kissed Séarlait, luxuriating in the feel of her.

  “We have to get up,” he said. “As much as I don’t want to . . . It’s an important day, eh?”

  She grinned at him and yanked the fur away from him, grinning as she did so. She stared at his body, naked except for Blaze on its chain around his neck, but her gaze was directed lower than that. The grin widened.

  Kayne shivered at the assault of cold air. “You’re evil, you know that?” he told her, and tried to snatch the fur away from her also, She laughed and hugged it tighter to herself. “Maybe I should change my mind.”

  As Séarlait pouted overdramatically, boots squelched in mud outside their tent flap and they heard the careful clearing of a throat. “Tiarna?”

  Séarlait made a face at Kayne. “Give us a moment, Harik,” Kayne said, and the boots retreated a judicious distance. As Kayne quickly performed his morning ablutions and dressed himself, Séarlait grimaced and let the fur fall away from her. She smiled at him, seeing him watching her as she, too, started to dress. All around, they could hear the encampment coming to life. A cook fire sent fragrant smoke wafting through the rain, and a kettle whistled for attention.

  When Séarlait was ready, Kayne lifted the tent flap, blinking at the gray morning.

  They were camped high in the mountains of the Finger. The South Road, leading away from the High Road that ran down the length of the Finger until it reached the town of Colkill on the Tween Sea, curved in the valley below them through a thin stand of beeches and elms, following the twists and turns of a river thrashing furiously in its bed of dark stones. No one moved along the road in either direction as far as they could see. Yesterday, Kayne could look out to the south and see in the hazy d
istance the endless waves of the Tween; today he could barely see a mile before the rain and clouds turned everything to gray soup. “Lovely weather,” Kayne said to Harik, pulling the hood of his oilcloth cape over his head. Harik stood bareheaded, the rain turning his thinning hair into straggling dark strands that dripped water from their curled ends.

  “Bad for us; worse for them,” Harik grunted. He nodded to Séarlait; if he was thinking anything, he kept it from his face. “One of the clan scouts has come back with word that there’s a good-sized force on the High Road near Lough Tory, flying the colors of Tuath Airgialla: a thousand men or more, and several Riocha among them. She said she suspects at least some of them have clochs. We’ve had a moon of peace, now it looks like Ri Mac Baoill intends to have his vengeance for Mal’s death. The Rí himself isn’t with the column, though—he might want revenge, but he’s not going to risk his own life to gain it.”

  “How’s the response been to the clan-lairds’ call?”

  “We had another few hands of volunteers arrive overnight,” Harik answered. “Boys, old men, a few women. That gives us maybe three hundred up in the Narrows, most armed with farm implements and rusty swords that belonged to their great-great-das.” Harik kept his scarred face stern and noncommittal, but Kayne could hear the worry and pessimism underlying his voice.

  “We don’t need numbers, Harik,” Kayne told him. “We need this land that the clansfolk know so well, we need to use the clansfolk’s tactics, and we need to warm our hearts and our courage with the memory of those who have already died in this treachery. We’ll harass them and whittle them down a hand at a time as they come through the passes and down the High Road and then slip away where they can’t follow. They can’t win here, not in the home of the clansfolk. Remember Ceangail.”

  “Aye, Tiarna.” He didn’t sound entirely convinced.

  “Well said, young Tiarna,” Laird O’Blathmhaic’s voice boomed. He strode up to them, leaning heavily on his cane. He ignored the rain that muddied his boots, beaded on his furs, and plastered the few strands of hair to his age-spotted scalp. Séarlait ran to him and hugged him. “ ’Morning, Séarlait, me darlin’. A glorious day, ’tis,” he said, then laughed as Kayne involuntarily glanced up at the sky. “Ah, that?” he said. “ ’Tis no bother at all. Another stripe and rain’ll be gone and the sun’ll be drying all.” He pointed to the west, where indeed it seemed that the clouds were more broken, with a hint of blue behind them. He stared hard at Kayne, his bearded chin lifting as he blinked into the rain. “An’ you, Tiarna—do you still intend to keep your word to me?”

  Kayne took Séarlait’s hand. “Aye, I do, Laird.”

  The man grinned and slapped Kayne on the shoulder, sending water flying. “Good!” he shouted. “Then let’s make ready. The Draíodóir should be here by midday.”

  With that, O’Blathmhaic took Séarlait by the arm and walked toward the tent covering the main cook fire. Kayne started to follow him. “Tiarna,” Harik said. When Kayne turned to look, he saw Harik watching Séarlait and her great-da. “Are you sure of this?” He spoke low enough that neither the clan-laird nor Séarlait could hear the question.

  “Aye,” Kayne told him. “I am.”

  Harik’s lips moved as if he were about to speak, but he took a breath instead, looking down at the ground before returning his gaze to Kayne. “It’s not my business to know, Tiarna, but I’d ask your da the same if he were here. Are you doing this because you love the woman, or because it’s the best way to bind the clansfolk to us?”

  You’re right. It’s not your business to know. Kayne nearly said the words aloud. But he looked at Harik’s solemn face and saw the man who had been at his da’s side for the last several years, who had kept the gardai here with Kayne. He deserves more than that. “You still worry that she’s not my peer, Harik?”

  The man’s head moved in a brief and careful nod.

  “I understand, Harik. But I’d remind you again to remember that my gram was nothing but a tuathánach.”

  Harik was already waving his hand. “I know all this and we’ve had the argument before. But I would ask you to consider this: if we do fight our way back to Dún Laoghaire, if we do prevail, then you will have a claim to the throne of the Ard. I may not be Riocha, but I know that marriage is more often an alliance than a romance. The one who will be Ard may need to make such an alliance, and not with the clans of the Finger.”

  “Mam married for love, not politics.”

  “Aye,” Harik said. “And your da was a good man, and worthy. But—”

  Kayne cut off Harik’s response, holding out his hand palm up between them—like a Riocha gesturing to someone beneath his status, Kayne realized belatedly, but Harik closed his mouth. “I’m my da’s son, and also my mam’s,” Kayne told him. “I’m tuathánach and céili giallnai and Riocha all, and I’ll marry who I want and not worry about what others might think. I want my Hand to feel the same way. Does he?”

  Slowly, Harik’s face relaxed into a grudging smile. “Aye,” he told Kayne finally. “He will, because he must.”

  The Draíodóir was there in a stripe and a half, by which time the rain had gone from downpour to drizzle to mist while the sun peered from behind wind-shredded clouds and sent rainbows scattering behind the eastern mountains. The priest was an old woman whose face was as deeply wrinkled as the bark on an old maple tree. She rode up to their encampment on a mule who looked to be similarly old and slow. When Laird O’Blathmhaic made as if to hurry her along, she simply glared at him through dark eyes nearly lost in the ruddy folds of her cheeks. She spat on the ground and handed Laird O’Blathmhaic her pack as if the man were a servant. “Take that up to the menhir,” she said brusquely, though she gave Séarlait a quick smile and her eyes glittered as if amused. She slapped away Kayne’s hand when he tried to help her dismount.

  “I’m old, not dead,” she snapped at him. “If you want to help, hold this miserable excuse for a beast still.” With a sidelong glance at Séarlait, who was concealing a smile, Kayne held the mule’s bridle while the old woman grunted and groaned and finally slid from the mule’s back. The top of her head was no higher than the bottom of Kayne’s rib cage as she stretched. Her hair was pure white and long, plaited in four strands tied together with a length of tartan cloth. She yawned, showing teeth still amazingly white and strong. “You’re the tiarna?” she asked.

  “Aye,” he answered

  “Bring the mule with you, then,” she said. “You both probably have the same temperament.” She went to Séarlait and took her arm, following Laird O’Blathmhaic up the mountainside and away from the encampment. The mule was gazing at Kayne with placid, large brown eyes. Kayne rubbed the gray muzzle. “Come on, then,” he told the animal. “Only the Mother knows what she’ll do if we’re late.”

  A menhir loomed at the top of the hill, a standing stone nearly twice as tall as Kayne, its black sides carved with stylized animals. Kayne could recognize seals, wolves, eagles, and dragons, though there were also creatures he did not recognize at all. The creatures were entwined in vines and adorned with letters that he could not read: the Bunús Muintir language. The stone, O’Blathmhaic said, had been here since before the clansfolk came to the Fingerlands. In the center of the stone, about two arm spans up from where it met the earth, a large hole had been bored entirely through the stone, the arc of an eyebrow carved above it so that it seemed that the stone watched the valley below.

  Most of the encampment had gathered near the stone: rudely-dressed clansfolk and the tattered remnants of the gardai, all forming a rough circle around the stone. Rodhlann O Morchoe nodded as Kayne passed, the Fingerlander commander’s cheek lined with a jagged brown scab where an Airgiallaian sword had grazed him. Harik was there also—he touched his chest in salute to Kayne as he passed. The Draíodóir had taken her pack from O’Blathmhaic. From its leather mouth she produced two wide and shallow pewter bowls, into which she poured water from a wax-sealed flagon. She dropped a silver half-m�
�rceint into each bowl.

  “You first,” she said to Kayne. “Take off your boots. Sit here.” A long-fingered, arthritic hand waved toward a large boulder alongside the menhir.

  Kayne did as directed, sitting on the boulder with his feet bare. The Draíodóir handed Séarlait one of the bowls along with a white cloth. Séarlait knelt in front of Kayne and washed his feet, smiling a bit as he grimaced at the touch of the cold water. She dried his feet with the towel, then stood facing the menhir and flung the dirty water over her left shoulder, the half-mórceint clinking as it struck rocks and bounced. There was a commotion as the nearest onlookers rushed to grab the coin, one of them finally holding it aloft in triumph. The Draíodóir grinned. “Good luck will follow both you and the lovers,” he told the man, the words spoken with the cadence of a ritual. Then she looked at Kayne. “Your turn,” she said.

  Séarlait took off her own boots and sat on the boulder, and Kayne washed her feet as she’d done his. When he finished, Séarlait nodded to him and then the bowl, and he stood facing the menhir as she had, tossing water and coin over his left shoulder. Again, there was a scramble for the coin, this time from the women among the onlookers. When one of them held aloft the coin, the Draíodóir gave her the blessing and then looked at Kayne. “Do you have your bride-gift, Tiarna?”

  Séarlait came to stand alongside Kayne. She lifted her Cloch Mór to the old woman, and the Draíodóir’s eyes widened. “Ah,” she breathed. She reached out with a trembling finger, stopping just short of touching the clear stone. She raised her eyebrows to Kayne. “Now that is a rare gift. And you, Séarlait? What is your husband-gift?”

  Séarlait slipped a ring from her thumb. It was formed of hard jet, polished and smooth and carved with the sigil of a bear. “That was her da’s—my son’s,” Laird O’Blathmhaic said as Séarlait handed the ring to Kayne. “I gave it to him when he was married. She took it from his hand after he was killed.”