Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3)

by S L Farrell

  “So . . .” Rodhlann pursed his lips. “Then we find a way to use that. If they’re looking the other way, then we can strike at their backs.”

  Kayne’s own thoughts drowned out the Fingerlander commander’s words; he heard none of it. “We expected to fight today,” Harik said, and Kayne started. “We still should. But instead of waiting for them to come to us, let’s go down to them. Now. While they’re still confused and disheartened. Take the battle to them if they won’t come to us.”

  “Ah, finally one of your flatlanders says something that makes sense,” Laird O’Blathmhaic grunted. “Aye, ’tis a grand day to fight. Rodhlann, let’s tell our own Hands . . .” O’Blathmhaic started to move toward the tent flap with Rodhlann; Harik, with a nod to Kayne, started after them.

  Wait two days . . .

  “Hold a moment,” Kayne called out to them, and O’Blathmhaic spun about like a lumbering bear, his face flushed.

  “You can’t be saying no, Tiarna. Not now. We’ve already had that discussion, and all the arguments you gave us are dust. And don’t be saying we should wait here for them—they may never come through the Narrows. Not now.”

  “I’m not saying no,” Kayne answered. “You’re right—if the green-robes and half the army have left, then there may not be a better time. But . . . everything changes now that Sevei has Lámh Shábhála. Think of what the Fingerlanders could do if Lámh Shábhála were here. With us.”

  O’Blathmhaic laughed derisively. “It’s not here, or haven’t you noticed, man? Séarlait’s already told me that Lámh Shábhála is probably in Inish Thuaidh or beyond. The Inishlanders have the stone and my guess is that they’ll keep it. It’ll stay there rotting on your sister’s breast, as it did with the Mad Holder.”

  Kayne felt the insult to Jenna like a slap to the face. He could feel the heat rise to his face. Séarlait saw it, too; he felt her hand touch his arm as he took in a great breath. Harik watched him, the Hand’s face impassive and unreadable.

  “I give the orders here, not you, Tiarna,” O’Blathmhaic continued. “Fingerlanders don’t wait for possibilities when our homes and families are threatened. We fight so we can live. The Mother-Creator has gifted us with this opportunity and I’m not going to waste Her gift.” O’Blathmhaic glared at Kayne.

  “Even with their army in disarray, going down to them will cost lives. There are lives here I wouldn’t care to sacrifice,” Kayne told them. He stroked Séarlait’s face, and she smiled up at him. “Especially now.”

  Rodhlann, holding the tent flap behind O’Blathmhaic, shrugged. “I’d wait here in the Narrows for them if I had a choice, too, Tiarna,” the man said. “It’s better ground for us, and we know it. But they know it, too, and now they may not come to us until they’re stronger again. That’s what the laird is telling you: they may turn tail and go home, and they’ve been greatly weakened if the clochs are gone. This may be our best chance.”

  Kayne nodded. “I agree with you,” he said. “But I still ask you to wait. Another day and night. No more. They won’t break camp that quickly. A day and a night. Then we’ll go down to them.”

  Laird O’Blathmhaic scowled. “You contradict your own words, then.”

  “No,” he told them. “Listen . . .”

  33

  Arruk Encounter

  ENNIS could feel the shift in the landscape.

  Even though there were fields wrested away from the pine-dominated forest on either side of the road he walked, the farmland was knee high with weeds and grass, unplowed and unsown. The houses he glimpsed up the lanes were mere roofless shells, some of them with smoke-blackened walls.

  And even though the world was alive with birdcalls and the sudden howls of wolves, and he glimpsed a herd of huge storm deer grazing at the edge of one of the fields, nothing of the Daoine moved here. He was alone walking the road—itself half overgrown. There was no one in the meadows, no fragrant cook smoke rising above thatched roofs, no bright calls of children, no sheep or cows grazing, no chickens or other tamed fowl in the yards. Haywagons moldered in the fields. It was as if all the Daoine in the region had decided to leave one day.

  Which they may well have done. The Arruk swarm had swept through here only a few moons before. The last Daoine travelers Ennis had seen—three days ago and well to the west, before the land had become vacant and empty—had been a hand of farmers carrying pigs and sheep to the markets at Cairnmor. They’d been fearful and edgy when Ennis had walked into the light of their campfire. They’d brandished axes and scythes immediately, but then grew more sympathetic as Ennis—listening to the blue ghosts—told them a tale of being the lone survivor of a family whose farm had been destroyed by a roving band of Arruk. Ennis claimed to be trying to reach his uncle’s house in Cairnmor.

  “Aye, boy,” one of them said as he finally laid down the cudgel he’d held. “You’re indeed blessed by the Mother-Creator to have been spared. Them Arruk don’t leave anyone alive if they can help it. I’ve seen that too many times out here.”

  “You’ve seen the Arruk?” Ennis asked with feigned horror. “Near us?”

  “Near enough. Just two days ago, there was a group of the awful things near the lough to the east, near the old road to Dúnbarr—may all of those there rest in the Mother’s arms.” He made the spiral of the Mother over his heart. “We could smell them, we were that close, but luckily the wind was in our favor and they didn’t notice us.”

  Ennis shuddered, and the man hugged him sympathetically. “Don’t be afraid now, boy. We’ll take you to Cairnmor and your uncle’s house . . .”

  He’d killed them before he left, of course, because the pattern insisted on it. He wasn’t certain why that was and he was sorry to do so, but he didn’t question the blue ghosts; he only followed in the dance they designed. He killed them, sniffing away tears as he did so, grieving for them and for himself.

  Afterward, as the mage-lights gleamed above, he filled Treoraí’s Heart . . .

  . . . and he felt, for the first time, Lámh Shábhála, and with it a glimpse of a horribly disfigured woman with white hair and black eyes. He wondered who it was: she was far too young to be his gram, whose face he didn’t know. The only time he’d met his gram, when Mam had gone to Dún Kiil to visit, he’d been only a babe in arms and remembered nothing of it. He could sense that this Holder also felt the Heart and was startled, that she let her awareness drift from Lámh Shábhála down the spider’s web of the mage-lights toward him. Ennis saw the blue ghosts appear, and in their patterns he realized that he must not let this White Beast see him, realized that Treoraí’s Heart was strong enough to hide from Lámh Shábhála. He created a barrier between them just before her mind touched his, and he felt her wonder at that, felt her probe and dig and pry at the shield until the mage-lights failed and the feeling of her vanished again.

  He hid. He could not look out from behind the barrier, couldn’t see all the other wielders of clochs na thintrí, but neither could they see him. He was safe, masked, as the Heart fed on the mage-lights.

  He was crying afterward, kneeling in the dirt with the lifeless bodies of the farmers sprawled around the dying campfire and the sheep and pigs grunting in their carts.

  But now someone other than his gram held Lámh Shábhála. Mam had told him once that she thought Sevei might be the next Holder, but Sevei must be dead too. Ennis wondered why the blue ghosts hadn’t shown him the new Holder.

  The corpses of the farmers stared at him with empty eyes. There were no answers there. The only answer would be at the end of the dance, the end of the pattern, which was too far away for him to see. He would have to follow the path to know.

  He wiped the tears away from his eyes and went to one of the corpses, grimacing as he pulled from it a short bow and a quiver of arrows. Then he climbed into one of the wagons to sleep until morning.

  Now, three days later, Ennis was well into the empty land between the Daoine and the Arruk. Once already, he’d caught the scent of Arruk on the
breeze, but the pattern had told him it wasn’t time yet, and so he’d hidden until the troop of Arruk soldiers had passed. He watched them curiously from his hiding place off the side of the road: staring at their rude clothing—a simple loincloth around the hips, at the reptilian skin and snouted faces, at the slime-lathered nostrils and the great clawed hands, their flesh painted with strange marks and sigils. He found himself wondering whether the pattern was leading him to the right place.

  These were creatures from his nightmares. These were the monsters from a Songmaster’s tale. These were beasts who were the grandchildren of the Seed-Daughter, the spawn of the Miondia, the lesser gods who were the result of the Seed-Daughter’s rape by Darkness. Ennis had heard the sinister tales of the Days of Creation, chanted by the Draíodóiri during the gloomy Festival of Gheimhri. Some of the older children sometimes laughed at the stories, whispering that this was all they were: stories.

  Now Ennis believed them. He shivered, not from the cold, and wished he could go back the way he’d come: to Cairnmor, to Talamh An Ghlas and Dún Laoghaire. But he couldn’t. The blue ghosts had sealed that way from him—they showed him that if he tried to go that way, he would certainly die. He could only go forward, following the steps of the dance that he’d chosen.

  When the Arruk passed, Ennis came out from the brush and bramble. For a moment he stood in the road, as uncertain and scared and lonely as any child of his age would have been. “Mam . . . Da . . . Gram . . . Kayne . . . Sevei . . . Ionhar . . . Tara . . .” He whispered their names as if they were incantations that could bring their ghosts to stand before him, but nothing happened. He touched Treoraí’s Heart on its chain, remembering how it would gleam on his mam’s clóca. “You will wield the full power of the Heart,” Isibéal’s voice whispered to him. “You will be stronger than your mam ever was, and no one will be able to kill you the way they killed her and your da and your siblings. The Heart might rival even Lámh Shábhála.”

  That didn’t comfort him. “Let me talk to Mam,” he said. “Let me hear her.”

  Isibéal only laughed in response.

  Ennis wiped his nose. He sniffed.

  He started walking east once more.

  It was late afternoon when he smelled them again, and this time the scenery around him was overlaid with the traces of the blue ghosts. He knew that this was the moment. He hopped quickly over the stone fence bordering the road, just to where it curved southward around a bare-topped hill where sheep had once grazed, and whose lower slopes were now blanketed with high, seed-topped grass. He pulled the bow from his back and strung it as he’d seen Kayne do in the practice yard of the keep. He heard the Arruk talking as they loped down the road at a quick pace. There were seven of them: four huge, naked Arruk with a litter on their shoulders; two far more slender ones walking on either side of the litter with silken blue cloth wrapped around their waists and an orange crescent moon intersected by a jagged lightning bolt prominent at the front of their waistcloths—one of them also carried a long pole topped with a curved blade. The final Arruk was dressed in a tanned leather skirt dyed a bright blue with the same orange symbol embossed on it, and he reclined on the open litter. Ennis immediately recognized the attitude of the slender Arruk walking alongside the litter; he’d seen it in the servants who worked for his mam in Dún Laoghaire Keep.

  Wait . . . the blue ghost told him. The Arruk passed the place where he crouched. Ennis fit one of the arrows to the bow and stood. Now . . .

  “Hey!” Ennis shouted.

  The servants jumped with twin squawks, looking back over their shoulders. The litter bearers came to a stumbling halt. But the Arruk on the litter hissed like a snake and, with one fluid motion, leaped down from the litter and snatched the pole arm from the Arruk carrying it. It snarled a challenge as it brandished the weapon, showing yellowed, pointed teeth. Ennis couldn’t understand the words, but the intent was clear enough—the Arruk was daring Ennis to take his shot. His reptilian eyes seemed almost amused, staring at the tiny human accosting him alone. Ennis’ arm shook with the strain of holding the arrow at full draw and the tip wavered. He wondered if, should he release the string, the arrow would even come close to its target.

  Emerald outlines of possibilities danced all around the roadway, and Ennis looked for the correct one, letting himself mold to its pattern. The blue ghost of himself shook its head; he did the same.

  “No,” he said, knowing the creature couldn’t understand the words but hoping that the intention came clear in the tone. “We’re not enemies. I don’t want to hurt you.” Slowly, glad that the stone wall was between himself and the Arruk, he placed the bow down on the top of the wall and backed away a step from it. The Arruk growled quizzically. The litter bearers had set down their burden and were standing uncertainly in the road, looking horribly large but stupid, while the servants in their waistcloths hovered just behind their master. He waved them all back. The Arruk scythed the air with the pole arm, an ominous, low whoomp following the movement. Ennis, in lockstep with the blue ghost, stepped back again, pulling the chain with Treoraí’s Heart from under his léine.

  The Arruk slammed the end of his weapon onto the ground. He leaned forward and stared at the gem, his mouth half open as if in hunger, a red tongue slithering over ivory.

  “Aye, I have a cloch,” Ennis said an instant behind the blue ghost. Their two voices mingled in his head. “You know what this is, don’t you?” He closed his tiny hand around it and the Arruk visibly flinched, a semitransparent membrane flicking over the eyes and then rolling back again. Ennis opened his fingers again and let the stone fall back. He spread his hands wide, showing his empty palms. “See?” he said. “Nothing. I don’t want to hurt you. We’re going to help each other.”

  The Arruk handed the pole arm back to the servant. Grabbing one of the litter bearers, he shoved the huge Arruk toward Ennis, gesturing to the creature at the same time as he stepped back. The invitation was obvious enough, even if Ennis didn’t have the pattern of the blue ghosts to guide him.

  Ennis climbed slowly over the stone wall and back onto the road. He put Treoraí’s Heart in one hand as he approached the litter bearer. The stench of the creature made Ennis want to gag. The thing stared at him, snarling softly in the back of its throat, its mouth slightly open and exuding the odor of raw meat. Ennis touched the bearer’s arm with his free hand—he could feel the Arruk trembling, the finely-scaled flesh slick with a sheen of oil. The blue ghosts wailed in his mind, making Ennis’ head pound. He felt the surging power of the cloch rising up, and he took it, shaped it, sent it lancing forward into the Arruk.

  . . . He felt mostly a compulsion to obey Kurhv Ruka. He felt hunger, and weariness from carrying the litter, and a fright he was struggling not to show. And then . . . then . . . the pain.

  The thing gasped. It howled, lifting its head to the sky. As Ennis stepped back, gasping as he pulled himself out of the Arruk’s mind, the creature’s body quivered, every muscle going tight and strained. It made a horrible, strangling sound and fell over. The other bearers and the two servants all scrambled back a few steps; the master—Kurhv Ruka, Ennis knew now—leaned forward curiously. He said something in a soft voice, looking at Ennis.

  Ennis released the cloch, showing the Arruk master his empty hands again. “I can do this for you,” he said. “I can do this to those who oppose you. Together, think of what we could do.”

  The Arruk was staring at Ennis thoughtfully. The blue ghosts were moving, and for a moment Ennis resisted, feeling himself fall out of the dance, but the fright of what might happen if he lost the pattern here made him move again. Without the pattern, anything might happen. Without the pattern, he would almost certainly die, alone. Without the pattern, he would not achieve the destiny he’d glimpsed.

  He showed the Arruk his empty hands as he walked to him, stepping carefully around the body of the dead bearer. The stench filled his nostrils, and the top of his head was barely higher than the Arruk’s waist. Ennis re
ached toward the Arruk, his breath fast and his heart pounding. He touched the scale-armored stomach—the Arruk staring down without moving—then his own chest. He looked beseechingly up at Kurhv Ruka. The blue ghost said nothing, but Ennis licked his lips and forced himself to speak. “Together, Kurhv Ruka? You and me? Do you understand?”

  For a moment, Ennis thought that the Arruk did not. Kurhv Ruka went to his litter and sat down again. He gestured to the three remaining bearers, and then spoke to his servant, who placed the master’s long weapon alongside him, then—looking distressed—stood beside the pole that had been the dead bearer’s. The master’s gesture to Ennis was unmistakable: come sit here with me.

  Ennis went to him as the blue ghosts faded and the world returned in all its normal hues. He sat next to the master on the litter. The Arruk barked an order, and the bearers and servants reached down to pick up the litter as Ennis steadied himself on the cushions. He smiled up at the Arruk. “You really stink. Did you know that?” he said to the master. “My name is Ennis Geraghty.” He tapped his own chest. “Ennis Geraghty.” He touched the Arruk’s chest. “Kurhv Ruka?” he asked.

  “Kurhv Ruka,” the Arruk grunted in assent.

  As the Arruck gave his answer to Ennis, the bearers set off at a trot, the litter swaying and rocking gently with their motions.

  They left the body of their companion laying in the road, unmourned.

  The Arruk didn’t have settlements—or rather, they seemed content with the remnants of the towns they’d captured. Ennis and Kurhv Ruka were borne to a village that might once have been picturesque and quaint, but was now changed. There was a market in the town square, but the booths seemed to sell only flyblown carcasses of unidentifiable animals and drying sticks of what might have been herbs. Only Arruk walked the streets now, and the lanes were littered with droppings and foul-smelling puddles. The Arruk seemed to have no domesticated animals—Ennis saw several other litters carrying Arruck dressed in leathers similar to Kurhv Ruka’s, though with other designs and insignia; other entirely naked Arruk—all branded with a circle on their hips, Ennis noticed—acted as beasts of burden, carrying huge bundles on their backs or pushing wheeled carts that were obviously of Daoine manufacture. The doors and shutters had been ripped from all the houses, the entrances and windows open to the air. The windowboxes, which had evidently once been bright and alive with flowers, were overgrown with weeds and filled with dead and brown stems, but brilliant colors were splashed on the stone walls, adorned with what Ennis assumed were words painted in an oddly curlicued alphabet. The town shimmered in the sunlight, painted in vivid hues.