by S L Farrell
“You want this battle to end without blood, Tiarna Geraghty?” O Contratha continued. “I’m willing to allow that. Tell the Fingerlanders to lay down their arms and go back to their hovels,” O Contratha answered. “And surrender yourself to me to be taken back to Rí Mac Baoill.”
“I’ve done nothing that deserves surrender, Tiarna. I’m the Healer Ard’s son, and I served her well and loyally. She brought peace to Talamh An Ghlas for nearly two double-hands of years. I say that we should return to that. I say we should heal rather than kill, and if you turn your army back now, we will let you go unharmed.” Kayne pointed back to the Narrows above them. “There’s nothing but death for you and your gardai there, Tiarna. The ghosts of the last force Rí Mac Baoill sent to the Fingerlands are howling in the air for you. If you listen, you can hear them.”
The Airgiallaian soldiers nearest looked to where Kayne pointed, but O Contratha laughed derisively and loudly. His horse whickered in response, its front hooves tearing at the ground. “Let them howl,” he spat. “You’ll soon be with them. I’m done with you, Tiarna.”
Kayne’s faint hope faded and he realized that they must do what they had planned to do all along. He frowned. “No, you’re not,” he told O Contratha. He nodded to Harik, who tossed the white banner aside. “The truce is over. Take your cloch, Tiarna.” As O Contratha scowled and his hand flew to the chain around his neck, Kayne took Blaze in his hand, opening the cloch.
Blaze tinged the world red, and in the midst of the bloody wash was a blue star: the Cloch Mór known as Bluefire. It bloomed and brightened even as Kayne took Blaze and hurled its power toward O Contratha. Twin meteors belched smoke and flame, roaring away from Kayne and arrowing toward O Contratha, but the cobalt star flared also and the fireballs hissed and split to either side, striking the ground to the right and left of O Contratha. The tiarna laughed. “I was schooled by the green-robes of the Order of Gabair, Geraghty,” he said. “What are you? Just an untrained Inishlander pup . . .” With that, the azure radiance raced outward like the ripple on a pond. Kayne pulled energy from Blaze, desperately throwing it between the wave and his small group, but where the ring touched the power that Kayne held, the impact was a physical blow that tore Kayne from his horse’s back and threw him to the ground. Blue fire and red sparks exploded around him and Kayne cried in surprise and pain. His ribs, not yet fully healed, tore in his chest so that he could hardly breathe, but he saw that Harik was still on his horse. “Go!” he managed to shout to Harik as he struggled to get to his feet. “This is what we came for. Go!”
He saw Harik hesitate and then obey, turning his horse and fleeing back up the road toward the Narrows. O Contratha saw him as well, and Kayne saw the blue sun bloom again. In desperation, Kayne took the power of Blaze and wrapped it around the sea of O Contratha’s cloch. He could feel the energy in the cloch yearning to break free, but though the snarled energy crackled and hissed and Kayne could feel each spark as if it were a flame touching his own skin, he held. He screamed: he couldn’t hold it back, not with the agony of trying to contain the magic. He could hold it only a few breaths, but even as he let it go, he pushed it aside and the energy broke well to the side of the road.
Harik galloped on.
Kayne stood uneasily. He could see, with his true eyes, the nearest soldiers readying bows, and the rider who had accompanied O Contratha riding hard back to his commander.
Kayne limped toward his own horse, his ribs stabbing at his lungs with each jolting step, and he flung a firebolt toward O Contratha as he ran. “Now!” he shouted to the air, as if calling on ghosts that only he could see. “Now!”
Kayne held fire in his mind even as he took the reins of his horse. He pushed it at O Contratha, not caring if he managed to get through the man’s shield, wanting only to snare the man’s attention and make him use more of the power within the Cloch Mór. Blood met sky between them in a fury, and it was all Kayne could do to continue to keep his hand around his own cloch. He could feel the power draining from it, too quickly, and he despaired, thinking that it was too late, that he was lost.
Bowstrings sang the single note of their death song; black darts arced in the sky from either side—the long bows of the Fingerlanders, lying in ambush for O Contratha as they had for Mac Baoill. Belatedly, O Contratha realized what was happening and he tried to pull the cloch-power away from Kayne, but Kayne held him desperately, sending more fire at him from Blaze. “Coward!” he shouted at Kayne. “So you are indeed a Fingerlander!”
The other rider went down, arrows sprouting in his chest, but blue fire consumed most of the bolts directed to O Contratha. But not all. An arrow buried itself in his thigh, another in his chest, and one arrow took him in the throat. O Contratha’s hand went to his neck, releasing Bluefire, and Kayne saw blood spouting from between the man’s fingers. His eyes widened; his mouth opened as if he were going to shout once more, but only blood emerged.
Harik had turned and come back at Kayne’s call—now he pounded past Kayne. Even as O Contratha started to fall, Harik leaned over in his saddle and tore the chain of Bluefire from around the man’s neck. He lifted the Cloch Mór high in triumph even as the shorter bows of the Airgiallaians loosed and a wave of riders came through the ranks of the soldiers to be cut down in another storm from the two double-hands of Fingerlander archers in the rocks to either side of the road. Séarlait was among them—she had insisted on coming, though Kayne had told her not to use Winter unless there was no other choice: let them think they faced only one Cloch Mór.
Despite the arrows, riders were still charging toward them, and some of the foot soldiers had pulled swords and were following them up the road. Worse, Kayne felt a new Cloch Mór open somewhere close by, behind the ranks of the army but moving forward.
“Back!” Kayne shouted. “We’ve done all we can do now. Back!” Harik turned his mount hard at the command, glaring defiance at the onrushing Airgiallaians. The Fingerlander archers fired a last volley and melted back the way they’d come, into the hidden paths that only they knew.
As he saw Harik turn, Kayne released Blaze and pulled himself astride his own horse. As he did so, he felt something break inside and a terrible pain lanced through his right side, so strong that he nearly fell backward to the ground again. He managed to haul himself the rest of the way up, but he couldn’t straighten. He coughed in surprise and pain, and flecks of blood spattered from his mouth to dapple the neck of his horse. “Tiarna!” he heard Harik yell from alongside him. “Can you ride?”
Kayne tried to speak and found that he had no voice—he could barely draw a breath against the pain. He nodded, still hunched over. He kicked feebly at his mount, who didn’t move. He felt Harik take the steed’s bridle. “Hang on!” he said to Kayne. “Imigh!” he shouted to the horse. “Go!”
Kayne clutched desperately at the reins and his mount’s neck as they galloped up the road in full retreat. Each stride was like a knife in his side and the world slowly darkened around him as they rode.
The news that Lámh Shábhála had returned to Dún Kiil spread out like a spring flood, rushing everywhere that it could possibly flow. The Comhairle—the council of thirteen, the heads of all the townlands of Inish Thuaidh—had been in nearly daily session since word had come of the sinking of Uaigneas and the death of the Banrion Ard. From the point of view of the Inishlanders, until today the news had gone rapidly from bad to worse. The initial report that the Banrion Ard’s death had been an accident in the storm had quickly been debunked; like the rest of the Tuatha, they soon realized that this had been a concerted attack on the entire family. When Lámh Shábhála failed to appear with the mage-lights in succeeding nights, when it was apparent that Snarl, the Inishfeirm Máister’s Cloch Mór, was somewhere in Talamh An Ghlas under a new holder, when it was learned that Doyle Mac Ard had been named Rí Ard, the Comhairle had erupted into fearful and accusatory arguments as old clan alliances—submerged for long decades under Jenna’s reign as Banrion Inish Thu
aidh—emerged once more.
As the husband of the Banrion, Greada Kyle had been named as Rí Inish Thuaidh in her absence, but where Jenna had been able to command the Comhairle through a coalition of clan heads among the Comhairle and because she held Lámh Shábhála, Kyle MacEagan had neither advantage. The alliance had shattered under the pressure of the current crisis, Kyle’s cloch was but a Cloch Mór, and the torc that Kyle MacEagan wore gave him little more than a title. The Comhairle had been unable to even coordinate a plan for defense. Half the clan leaders were ready to pull back to their ancient mountain fastnesses and hiding places should the Tuatha come with an army to take the island, as seemed likely.
And now Lámh Shábhála returned around the neck of Jenna’s transformed great-daughter—the Bán Cailleach—and the Comhairle was more confused and rancorous than ever. Sevei was seated next to Greada Kyle, wearing a clóca of the softest cloth that could be found, though it felt as though she wore a robe of needles. Even clothed, they stared at her as if she were something from a nightmare. Whenever she caught someone looking at her, they quickly turned their heads and would not meet her gaze. None of them had yet addressed her directly.
The Comhairle met, as it had met for generations, in the Weeping Hall of Dún Kiil Keep. Even before this, in her visits to Dún Kiil, Sevei had found the ancient chamber to be depressing and cold, with the slow beat of water falling from distant ceiling to stone floor like a wet heartbeat in the background. Now the dripping was nearly unheard through the passionate speeches punctuated by shouts of agreement or objection from among the Comhairle.
“. . . we can’t stand against the Tuatha. Not this time, and not even with Lámh Shábhála. The Order of Inishfeirm is in shambles and utterly failed in its task to protect Inish Thuaidh,” proclaimed Ronat Ciomhsóg of An Cnocan to a chorus of mingled support and disagreement. Siúr Alexia Meagher of the Order of Inishfeirm, not a member of the Comhairle but in attendance as the representative of the Order in Mundy Kirwan’s absence, rose immediately. Her white clóca and léine swirled about her as she shouted down the representative of Na Clocha Dubha who tried to speak before her.
“The abilities of the Order of Inishfeirm have been damaged, aye, but we’re not helpless,” she snapped at Tiarna Ciomhsóg. Sevei remembered that voice from her time as an acolyte: searing and harsh, her head and her voice both quavering from a palsy of age, but as strong as an ancient oak.
“What does Inishfeirm have now?” Ciomhsóg shouted back at her across the chamber. “A few clochs and a bevy of helpless acolytes? You stand here for the Order, and you don’t even have a Cloch Mór.”
Siúr Meagher touched the clochmion around her neck. “I have a stone of Truth-telling. Here in the Comhairle, that’s more powerful than any Cloch Mór.” There was laughter at that, and one of the tiarna near Sevei clapped his hands. “The Order still has a few Clochs Mór and several clochsmion, and we have the slow magics that all the cloudmages are taught, and if Máister Kirwan has indeed been killed, we’ll soon have a new Máister or Máistreás to direct us.”
Tiarna Ciomhsóg scowled. “The Tuatha are hardly going to be frightened by a few slow magics.”
“With those spells you ridicule, I could pull down your keep around you while you cower inside,” Siúr Meagher scoffed. “I’d be happy to demonstrate for you, Tiarna, if you’d like.”
Both sympathetic laughter and disgruntled jeers answered Siúr Meagher, but Tiarna Ciomhsóg had no opportunity to respond. Bantiarna Aithne MacBrádaigh rose slowly to her feet, and the Comhairle went silent. Aithne MacBrádaigh was easily a hand and four of decades old, older by far than any of them here. A few scraps of white hair clung thinly to her spotted scalp, her spine was bent and her body slow, but the Cloch Mór called Scáil hung around her neck. She had been married to Ionhar MacBrádaigh, Rí of Inish Thuaidh before Jenna, and Aithne still ruled the townland of Rubha na Scarbh. Her voice was a rasp, a husk of what it had once been; her left eye was clouded by the white circle of a cataract and, unlike any of the others, her gaze rested unflinchingly on Sevei. “We can sit here and yowl at each other like cats squabbling over a dead mouse, but there’s no decision we can make—not until the new Holder speaks,” Aithne said. “Any action we take depends on what Lámh Shábhála does, and we all know that.” The cataract-dimmed stare stayed on Sevei, and the old woman nodded at her, as if she understood what Sevei was thinking and was inviting her to speak.
“Aithne knows. She could have been a good Holder herself,” Gram’s voice said. “I should have been a better friend to her . . .”
“Lámh Shábhála belongs to Inish Thuaidh and it must protect us,” a male voice interjected before Sevei could answer: Neale MacBreen, the son of Jenna’s Hand Mahon MacBreen and the representative of the townland of Dún Kiil. Sevei had met the man many times; he was no more than a hand of years older than her, and she’d even flirted with Neale on one visit until Gram had scolded her. It all seemed so long ago: now he wouldn’t look at her for more than a breath before his gaze went elsewhere. “The task of the new Holder is first to protect us, as my da served to protect the First Holder.”
“So you’d name the Holder as Banrion, like her gram?” Tiarna Ciomhsóg grunted. He’d remained standing. “Well, that’s not . . .”
“Speak . . .” Two voices called to her: Gram and Carrohkai Treemaster. “Speak now, or they will argue forever . . .” Sevei rose from her chair alongside Greada Kyle’s, her hand placed over the glow of Lámh Shábhála inside her, and allowing the barest tithe of the power within it to flow out to strengthen her voice.
“It doesn’t matter what the Comhairle wants.” Her statement boomed in the chamber, shaking more water down from the ceiling to splash behind the cold stone throne where Greada Kyle sat uncomfortably, the torc gleaming under the chain of his Cloch Mór. “. . . my seat. For so long, I sat there . . .”
Sevei sent Gram down in her mind, back into the babble of eternal voices. She cleared her throat. “Lámh Shábhála doesn’t answer to the Comhairle, and Lámh Shábhála is not Inish Thuaidh’s,” she continued. She forced them to look at her, the horrible Bán Cailleach, turning their heads with the energy flowing from the cloch buried inside her. The scars on her arm glowed softly, and she could feel the angry, painful scratch of cloth against her skin, making her want to rip the clóca from her and stand naked before them. “. . . so let them see you. Let them be truly afraid . . .”
“I’m not my gram,” she continued. “I’m an Inishlander, but I’m also a Riocha of the Tuatha. I’m tuathánach. I’m Saimhóir. I’m dragon and eagle, dire wolf and fia stoirm. I’m the Bán Cailleach. Look at me—I’m not what I once was.”
“If you don’t protect Inish Thuaidh, then you’re also a traitor,” Tiarna Ciomhsóg spat back. Kyle leaped to his feet at that, and Aithne glared at Ciomhsóg. Sevei waved her greada silent and fixed her gaze on Tiarna Ciomhsóg. He struggled to meet her eyes. “What would you do, Bantiarna Geraghty?” Ciomhsóg managed to continue. “Can the Bán Cailleach defeat all the Tuatha? Even the First Holder couldn’t do that.”
“I can do things that Gram could not. I can do the things Gram perhaps should have done.”
Ciomhsóg scoffed loudly. Her greada’s face reddened with anger, and he shouted at the man. “Insult my great-daughter and you insult me, Tiarna Ciomhsóg.”
“I will show you . . .” Carrohkai Treemaster whispered, a stronger voice among all the others in Sevei’s head. Sevei put her hand on Greada Kyle’s arm. She gave him a brief shake of her head. “Follow me if you want to see what the Bán Cailleach is capable of doing,” she said loudly to the Comhairle, and began walking from the hall. Slowly, they obeyed her: passing through the great wooden doors, down the flagged stone corridor hollowed with centuries of passing feet, out into the courtyard and across the north gates of the Keep Wall. The courtiers and servants in the keep stared as she passed—“Look! The Bán Cailleach . . .”—and seeing the procession, several turned to follow.
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The gardai opened the gates as Sevei, the Comhairle, and the growing crowd approached. They walked out onto Battle Heath, where two decades before Jenna had led the forces of the Inishlanders and stormed Dún Kiil Keep, held then by the forces of the Tuatha. The outer walls of Dún Kiil Keep were still cracked where the Stone Folk, the Créneach, had torn open the gates. The heath itself was a rocky and windy plateau; sheep now grazed on the grasses and the wildflowers growing between the rocks. Sevei walked out onto the field for several long strides. She could hear the Comhairle grumbling behind her as they walked, accompanied now by the gardai at the gate as well. They complained, but none of them stopped, not with ancient Aithne MacBráidaigh hobbling determinedly behind the Bán Cailleach and Rí MacEagan. Sevei finally stopped by a menhir set well away from the keep: a standing stone carved with battle scenes, a commemoration of those whose blood had watered this earth. Panting, muttering, the others closed in around her.
“. . . I’ll help you. . . .” Carrohkai Treemaster whispered again, and Sevei heard her gram’s voice lift inside also. “I planted Seancoim’s gift here, under the stone, but nothing sprouted. I thought it was dead,” she said.
“Let me see, Gram . . .” Sevei thought back to her gram’s voice, and she felt Jenna’s memories open to her: an elderly Bunús Muintir, handing a young girl an acorn from one of the ancient oaks, the Seanóir who lived in the heart of the old Coills. “Take this with you when you go, and plant this where you find your new home,” she heard the old man say.
Sevei crouched down and put her hand on the earth; she could feel the acorn buried below: not dead at all, but alive and filled with a slow vitality, still awakening from a centuries-long sleep—awakened by Lámh Shábhála and Jenna when the mage-lights had first returned.
