Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3)

by S L Farrell

It was a gloomy and overcast morning that promised a foul and wet afternoon, and there was an apparition in the road ahead of Tiarna Cairbre Kavanagh. The scouts for the vanguard had come back with the news, and the new commander of the Airgiallaian army, Tiarna Barra Rámonn, had ordered Cairbre out to see for himself, while Rámonn stayed well back with the main force. The person—whoever it was—was cloaked in a dark gray cloak that made it seem to be a piece of fallen cloud. The outriders pulled back on the reins of their horses, their sharp, suspicious gazes going from the lone person to the canyon walls around them. Cairbre, leading the group of two double-hands of riders, had heard how the cowardly Fingerlanders fought. He’d also seen vividly how they preferred ambush to honorable open combat, how their arrows could reach farther and strike deeper than those of the Tuatha, and so his group proceeded cautiously and slowly toward the person in the roadway.

  The main force was yet several hundred strides down the torturous, winding path leading up to the sharp-spired crown of the Narrows. The wind shrieked through the confines of the pass, snapping at their clothing, and carried with it the clanking of armor and the groaning of the wagon wheels from the advancing army. Cairbre knew the waiting person could hear those sounds, too, yet whoever it was hadn’t moved.

  Cairbre gestured to the closest riders and they pulled already-strung bows from their holders and put arrows to the strings; the outriders on the flanks gave him their hand signals: clear. Cairbre touched the Cloch Mór around his neck: Darkness, which could cast a pall of impenetrable night in which only its Holder could see. But enough arrows can defeat even a cloch—as Tiarna O Contratha had unfortunately discovered—and Cairbre wasn’t about to let himself fall prey to another of the Fingerlanders’ dishonorable traps. The vision of Tiarna O Contratha falling under the assault of the traitor Kayne Geraghty’s Blaze and the arrows of the Fingerlanders was all too present in his mind, and he wished that Tiarna Rámonn were also here. Had another Cloch Mór been with O Contratha, the former commander might well be alive.

  Cairbre stayed well back, out of arrow range—even, he hoped, for the damned Fingerlander bows, and he was ready to throw false night around him and retreat behind the line at need.

  The figure ahead appeared to be some ancient hag, but the scouts had told Tiarna Rámonn and Cairbre that she hadn’t responded to their challenges. “Did you try to move her?” Tiarna Rámonn had asked, and the scouts had shaken their heads.

  “Tiarna, there was something about her. I didn’t want to get too near . . .”

  Tiarna Rámonn had sighed as if disgusted at the scouts’ cowardice, but he also didn’t go himself. No, he sent Cairbre . . .

  In the dim light, the wind flattened the dark clóca against the seated figure’s body and Cairbre could see the curve of breasts; the wind also plucked a lock of long gray-white hair from under the cowl and pushed back the cowl enough that Cairbre could glimpse a shadowed face that looked to be covered with wrinkles. “Out of our way, Aldwoman,” he called out loudly, his horse skittering nervously, “or today will be your last.”

  The woman lifted her head at that and the wind caught the cowl, sliding it entirely back from the face. Caibre sucked in his breath. What he had taken for wrinkles were the netted lines of white scars marring an otherwise young face, and the unbound, long hair was not the sad gray of age but a pure white, and the eyes . . . The eyes were a horrible, unrelieved blackness in her face, darker than the storm clouds above. Cairbre realized who he faced in that instant, knew because he’d seen that face nearly every night when he’d lifted Darkness to the mage-lights, knew it because he’d felt her vast, awful presence sucking greedily at the lights from afar. The breath he took in left him.

  The Bán Cailleach . . . the Pale Witch . . .

  The other riders heard his gasp, and several bowstrings t-thunked angrily without his command. The Bán Cailleach lifted one hand (the other clasped to her breast) and the double-hand of arrows went to sudden flame and dissolved to ash. The witch grimaced as if pained and let her clóca slip entirely from her body, standing as she did so. She was lithesome and might have been handsome but for the fact that her entire body was covered in the same scars that marred her face. A glow the color of swamp moss radiated from her torso. The Bán Cailleach didn’t seem to notice the wind or the cold nor care about her nudity.

  “Do you command the army, Tiarna, or is it another?” she asked Caibre. Her eyes of starless night stared at him, seemingly boring into his soul.

  “Tiarna Barra Rámonn has taken command since Tiarna O Contratha’s murder,” Caibre answered. Had to answer; he felt as if the Bán Cailleach tore the words from his mind.

  “I know his family, if not the man, and I would hate to see them grieve,” the Witch-Holder said. “Go back to Tiarna Rámonn. Tell him that the war against the Fingerlands is over, and he is to take his army back to Dathúil.”

  “Over?” Caibre answered, the word coming out before he could stop it. “After what the Fingerlanders have done, this war has only started. The Rí Airgialla—”

  The Bán Cailleach’s right hand tightened to a fist at her breast and the words died as if the fingers had gripped Caibre’s own throat. “The Ríthe have made a terrible mistake,” she said. “They have slain the Healer Ard and the First Holder; they’ve ignored the true threat in pursuit of their own greed, and now they’ll pay for that arrogance. I won’t let them make another mistake now. Tell them that. Tell them that the Bán Cailleach refuses to allow them to come here and war against the Fingerlanders and my brother.”

  Caibre blinked. “Your brother . . . ?” It struck him then. “You . . . you claim to be Bantiarna Geraghty?”

  “Aye,” she said. “Not a claim, Tiarna, only the truth. I’m now the Holder of Lámh Shábhála and the one you call the Bán Cailleach. Tell them that also, Tiarna. Tell them that they needn’t bring their armies here to find me, for I will come to them. I’ll come to them very soon. Now—Go!”

  Cairbre’s companions had been struck dumb. They sat on their horses in a jangling of anxious livery and armor. “Tiarna . . .” one of them whispered, and the fright in his voice made it quaver like that of an old man. “Maybe we should go back . . .”

  Cairbre wanted to do exactly that, very much. He wanted to turn his horse and flee to the main mass of the army at full gallop. But he could also imagine giving his report to Tiarna Rámonn: We were turned back by a lone woman who claimed to be the Bán Cailleach. . . .

  The Bantiarna Geraghty—if that was who indeed she was—laughed as if she’d heard his thoughts. “Do you want proof to carry back with you?” she asked Cairbre, and her hand tightened again. Cairbre would have sworn that the scars on her body began to glow, radiating out from her center as if a fire had risen inside her. Aye, she was glowing, for he could see the shadows moving on the walls of the Narrows around him. Someone’s horse nickered in fright. “Do you need to see what the Pale Witch can do?” she asked, and now her voice boomed like thunder, so intense that it pushed them back, the horses retreating before the sound, their eyes showing white and large. “I will show you, then. I’ll show you so that they can all see it.”

  The Bán Cailleach’s body was so bright now that it was like looking into the sun. Cairbre looked up and saw the storm clouds were rotating above her, two whirlpools of cloud that thickened and darkened until it seemed that two eddying, baleful eyes stared down from the heavens, storm-eyes as black as those of the Bán Cailleach. The moan of the wind had risen to a howl. The banner of Airgialla was torn from the hands of the young rider who carried it; the staff and banner went careening away, smashing against the cliff wall.

  “I am Storm,” the Bán Cailleach called out. The voice boomed so loudly that Cairbre was certain that Tiarna Rámonn and the army below could hear it. The eyes far above suddenly wept: a torrent of rain lashing at them, a wind-driven burst that left them drenched and blinking from the fury of it. Cairbre wiped desperately at his face, trying to see through the downpour. The Bán
Cailleach was walking forward toward them and Cairbre instinctively retreated with the others, backing slowly toward the two spires that marked the lip of the pass.

  “I am Lightning,” she called, and in response twin flashes burst from the mage-eyes above, shattering the walls of the Narrows and sending boulders the size of cottages hurtling down. One struck the ground not three strides in front of Cairbre and just to the left of the Bán Cailleach; so close that Cairbre wondered for a moment if she’d been smashed. But no . . . she walked forward through the rain and mud, an emerald sun below the storm, and the storm-eyes above watched her.

  “I am the Caller of the Filleadh,” she shouted, the din of her voice shaking more rocks from the walls of the pass, and Cairbre heard an answering shriek in the storm. Below the storm-eyes, two winged shapes fluttered down, seeming to be no bigger than birds at first but growing rapidly larger as they descended until Cairbre saw that their batlike wings were like the great sails on a warship and their scaled bodies—one red-black marbled with orange; the other darkest blue swirled with deep yellow—would have dwarfed the keep tower in Dathúil, and the claws on their feet were blades longer than a man. Their shrieks sent the blood in Cairbre’s veins to ice, and they landed on the spires of the Narrows, coiled snake heads glaring down from either side. They reared up, and the passage of the Narrows was roofed with an arch of awful fire from their mouths that fell thick and bright to the ground behind the Bán Cailleach. The horses whinnied in panic, a hand or more of Cairbre’s men turning their horses entirely and retreating at full speed.

  “I am your Death,” the Bán Cailleach roared, and the wind became a hurricane and the rain a torrent, and the dragons belched fire toward them. Caibre cried out in terror, his voice utterly lost in the clamor, and yanked at the reins of his horse. He gave no thought to his Cloch Mór or to challenging the Bán Cailleach—he fled from the pass and the Pale Witch’s presence toward the banner and front ranks of the army just now approaching the Narrows, not caring whether his men followed him or not. Fire, wind, rain, and the Bán Cailleach’s mocking laughter pursued him.

  “Tell them!” she shouted in a voice so loud that it nearly tore Cairbre from his mount, hammering against his back. “Tell them that I will not permit them to come here! Tell them that they have created me, and now they must deal with what they’ve made!”

  Cairbre risked a glance back as he fled. Above him, the dragons reared, their tails curled around the spires of the Narrows. The eyes of the storm clouds, the Bán Cailleach’s eyes, turned in the sky, glaring down at them in defiance and fury. Thunder boomed, the sound rolling over the mountains and the land, and in it were the words of the Bán Cailleach.

  “Tell them!”

  Grozan Kralj’s palace was once the keep at Torness. Ennis, comparing it to the keep at Dún Laoghaire, realized that this place must be much changed from when the Thane’s Ionadaí had been installed here. The Arruk had torn down the hangings that had adorned the stone walls; the ragged weavings remained where they’d fallen, torn and dusty, with mice prowling in their folds and chewing holes in the once-bright fabrics. The stone flags were littered with the refuse and excrement of the Arruk, so that there wasn’t a clear path for Ennis to walk without fouling his shoes. Kurhv Ruka didn’t seem to mind, striding barefoot through the mess; the blue ghost of Ennis walked determinedly behind him, so Ennis did the same, shoving his distaste deep in the back of his mind. He tried to ignore the stench, the sight of the Arruk who glared at him as he passed, the sounds that emanated from the bowels of the place, the taste of the sour air in his mouth. He focused instead on the blue ghost and Kurhv Ruka’s back, and the promise that the pattern he’d chosen had given him: the future that he’d glimpsed at the end of the path.

  In the dim, uncertain distance of the future, he saw himself on a throne, and around him the Arruk bowed down and the Daoine trembled. He saw himself in a place where no one could hurt him again, and where he could punish those who had wounded him in the past.

  “Follow the path.” He could hear Isibéal’s voice speaking to him through Treoraí’s Heart, and he listened. “You will do to them what you did to me,” Isibéal said. There were other voices in the Heart, too. He thought he heard Mam, crying far down, and that ancient, graveled voice was there, and the voices of the gardai and Artol Jantsk and the sailors and Haughey and his wife. . . . All of them that he had taken with the Heart.

  “Let me talk to Mam. I want to talk to Mam.”

  “No,” those he’d slain all shouted back to him. “We won’t allow it.”

  He tried to shut his ears to them, but he could hear them still. “Listen to the Taisteal,” Noz Ruka howled, close by. “Death. That is what we Arruk understand best. . . .”

  “Follow the path . . .” Isibéal admonished him. “Follow the path of the blue ghost and perhaps we’ll let you speak to your mam.” He nodded, though he wanted to cry, wanted to flee and run from here. He would do as Isibéal said. He had no choice.

  The keep’s throne room was worse than the corridors. The hall had evidently been the site of a battle during the capture of Torness, and the bodies of Daoine soldiers still lay there, desiccated and skeletal now, the bones and rusting armor and weapons shoved to one side of the hall near the door. The room smelled of their corruption, strong enough that it overpowered the Arruk reek and made Ennis gag and nearly vomit as he entered.

  The room was crowded with Arruk. Ennis had certainly seen his own mam’s throne room full with supplicants and officials and delegates, all clustering about waiting for their moment to approach; it seemed that the Arruk treated their rulers much the same. Many of the crowd had turned to look as Kurhv Ruka entered the hall—from the way their nostrils twitched in their reptilian faces, Ennis suspected that they smelled him as he could smell them. There were whispered comments and waving of taloned hands, but they gave way and made room for Kurhv Ruka as he strode forward.

  Grozan Kralj sat on the dais, the once-embroidered cushion of the throne seat now torn, the stuffing falling from rips and tears in the cloth. The Kralj was not what Ennis expected: Ennis had thought that the Arruk ruler would be old and withered, like Rí Mas Sithig back in Talamh An Ghlas, whom he’d once met. But Grozan Kralj appeared to be hale and healthy and strong, as finely muscled a specimen as Kurhv Ruka. He realized then that it was probably a rare Kralj who lived to old age among the Arruk.

  Another Arruk stood to the right of the dais: shorter by a head than Kurhv Ruka or Cima, his scales paler in color and smaller—more like Cima’s—his entire frame slight and thin, rather than thickly padded with muscle. The creature held a knob-ended staff in his left hand, the wood carved with what seemed to be a snarl of animal forms, all curled about one another and painted bright colors. “That’s Gyl Svarti,” Cima whispered to Ennis, evidently noticing the boy’s stare. “Watch him carefully. He’s killed more people with his spell-stick than I can count, Arruk as well as you bluntclaws, and he’s always at Grozan Kralj’s side.”

  Grozan Kralj, slouching carelessly in the throne made for a Daoine occupant, watched them with hooded eyes as they approached through the mob of supplicants. Ennis could see the guards on their stations around the dais stiffen and tighten their grip on their jaka. Kurhv Ruka stopped a careful three strides from the dais. Gyl Svarti’s slitted eyes narrowed and he tilted his spell-stick noticeably in their direction. Kurhv Ruka lifted his snout toward the dais, exposing the loose skin under his long chin—Cima had already told Ennis that showing the vulnerable throat was the proper sign of respect to a peer or higher-ranked person, rather than the Daoine bow of the head, which the Arruk would have interpreted as an insult.

  “Ah, Kurhv Ruka,” Grozan Kralj said, with a distinct emphasis on the title as Cima translated urgently in Ennis’ ear. “So you’ve come to show us this bluntclaw pup we’ve heard about? I wonder, why did you come directly to me and not go to Lieve Mairki as would have been proper?” Grozan Kralj seemed to nearly smile at that; even Ennis cou
ld hear the taunting in his voice. Gyl Svarti snickered openly.

  “Lieve Mairki wouldn’t have understood the importance of this bluntclaw,” Kurhv Ruka answered easily, and the undisguised scorn in Kurhv Ruka’s face widened Grozan Kralj’s eyes and pulled him upright in his chair. A ripple of quiet astonishment stirred the onlookers, and Ennis slid close to Kurhv Ruka, uneasy. Gyl Svarti leaned over to Grozan Kralj and whispered.

  “Does Kurhv Ruka ask to challenge Lieve Mairki, then?” Grozan Kralj asked. “Interesting. I’ll send for the Mairki . . .” He started to lift a hand to summon one of the guards, but Kurhv Ruka gave a cough of denial.

  “I’ve no interest in Lieve Mairki,” he said. “I will deal with him when he is under my command.”

  That brought twin hisses from both Grozan Kralj and Gyl Svarti. Grozan Kralj stood slowly, uncoiling from his easy posture in the seat. Ennis could see the muscles sliding under his scales and the scars from his previous battles. The Arruk was massive, half a head taller than Kurhv Ruka and wider by a hand. His legs looked like twin pillars, and the talons of his fingers and toes gleamed sharp and white. He leered, showing his teeth. “You’ve always been arrogant and rash, Kurhv Ruka, and always too forgetful of your place. I’d hoped that breaking you to Ruka would teach you humility and caution, but it has not. You’ve overreached yourself this time. I’ll send your head back to your mates; I’ll have the rats feed on your entrails.”

  Grozan Kralj yawned, stretching his arms out and flexing his hands so that the talons clashed with a sound like ivory daggers. The crowd in the throne room, sensing the conflict, stepped back. Cima slid away with them, leaving Kurhv Ruka and Ennis standing alone before the throne. Ennis wanted to go with Cima, to hide and lose himself in the crowd if he could, but the blue ghost would not move, and so he stayed where he was, trembling and terrified.

  He knew what Kurhv Ruka wanted him to do. He knew. He could already feel Treoraí’s Heart burning against his chest, a searing brand that linked his heart and his hand and made him want to close his fingers around the stone. “Don’t worry, Ennis,” he thought he heard Isibéal whisper. “It’s your power and your destiny.” Or perhaps it was Haughey or Artol Jantsk or Noz Ruka talking; he couldn’t tell. Ennis looked down at his left hand. The scarred flesh there seemed to glow, the curled pattern rising well above his wrist. He reached for Treoraí’s Heart, fumbled with the cloch under his clothing and brought it out.