by S L Farrell
“Thank you,” Séarlait said. The words were hoarse and ragged, but they were audible and understandable. She sank to her knees in front of Sevei, grasping her hand. The clasp was like fire and knives on Sevei’s skin, but she endured it.
“. . . aye, my love,” Gram whispered. “I should have used Lámh Shábhála in that way . . .”
Sevei shook her head, pulling the woman up. “I did it for me, Séarlait,” she told her, she told Gram. “I’ll need your voice soon. I’ll need everyone.”
“Sevei says that none of the Ríthe are safe from her if we betray her, Rí Mallaghan. I believe that’s true. When the mage-lights come, she can follow the lights down to any of us she wishes. We can’t each of us have a half dozen Clochs Mór around us every night for protection, and frankly I don’t know that a half dozen greater clochs would even be enough. She’s strong, my Rí, as strong—nay, stronger—than the Mad Holder was at Falcarragh. I know all of us remember that.”
Doyle knew Rí Torin Mallaghan and Shay O Blaca remembered Falcarragh all too well. None of them would ever forget it: the tremendous glow of the mage-lights as the Mad Holder took them all on, Doyle’s mage-vision bright with the aspects of a dozen or more Clochs Mór, all of them shattering against the wild defenses Jenna threw up against them, the booming of thunderous explosions and the rain of debris, the very ground shuddering underneath them as if the land itself were flailing in pain . . . Doyle shuddered.
“The Bán Cailleach—Sevei, of all people; that damned Aoire family is infuriatingly resilient, isn’t it?—is as mad as her great-mam, then,” Rí Mallaghan said.
Doyle shook his head and shrugged at the same time. “Perhaps. I don’t know, my Rí. I only know that with three of us there with Clochs Mór, trained and experienced, we could not have stood against her.”
“Then you’re fortunate that she took pity on Edana and decided to use the Rí Ard as a message boy,” Mallaghan spat back. Doyle flinched at the rebuke, his eyes narrowing as if the Rí had slapped his cheek. Shay O Blaca, standing near the window, turned his head to look outside as if fascinated by the landscape he’d seen a thousand times before.
They were in Rí Mallaghan’s chambers high in the keep of Lár Bhaile atop Goat Fell: Doyle, Rí Mallaghan, and Shay O Blaca, head of the Order of Gabair. Through the window, in the morning sun, Doyle could see the Tower of the Order, the stones painted a green as vibrant as the grass around it, gleaming nearby. The servants had set breakfast for them, obviously awed at having to serve not only their own Rí and the Order’s head, but also the Rí Ard. They scurried gladly from the room at Rí Mallaghan’s growl as soon as the table was set. The food sat untouched and the tea cooled in their mugs. Doyle was the only one still seated at the table. Rí Mallaghan had gone to one of the more comfortable chairs, while Shay O Blaca stayed by the window near the hearth, where—Doyle knew—the heat from a peat fire could warm joints that grew more painful with gout each year, the gout Meriel had refused to cure.
Rí Mallaghan scowled. “Lámh Shábhála can be taken,” he said. “No matter how powerful this Bán Cailleach has become, she’s not invulnerable.”
“Labhrás Ó Riain took Lámh Shábhála from the Mad Holder only after I’d already defeated the Mad Holder on Knobtop,” Doyle said. The memory was still as bitter as the day it had happened. “And Jenna took it back. I would have taken Lámh Shábhála from Jenna again this time, but she cast it into the sea. Aye, Rí, I know the Holder’s vul nerabilities better than anyone.” Doyle picked up the mug in front of him. In the dark glaze of the pottery, he could see his own dim reflection: a face older than he remembered, with the golden glint of the Ard’s torc around his neck. He remembered it tightening around his throat, choking him as Sevei watched . . . “But Sevei has been through the Scrúdú. She isn’t Jenna. She’s . . . worse. All you need to do is look at her to know.”
“She says she’s been through the Scrúdú,” O Blaca said from the window.
“Aye, and perhaps that’s all it is: words,” Rí Mallaghan agreed. “A bluff that’s supposed to make us afraid to move against her.”
“We’ve all felt her in the mage-lights, and I’ve met her in the flesh.” Doyle shuddered at the memory and set the mug down on the table hard. Tea sloshed over the rim and pooled around it. “If it’s a bluff, it’s not one I’d be comfortable ignoring.”
“Are you saying that she can’t be brought down?” Rí Mallaghan asked. “I’ve known you since you were a boy, Doyle. I know that you’ve lusted after Lámh Shábhála since the time you were old enough to understand what had happened to your da. With my help, you’ve gone from being a bastard half-Riocha child to a tiarna wearing the Rí Ard’s torc. Twice now, you’ve almost held Lámh Shábhála. Are you saying that you no longer want that? Are you bending your knee to your great-niece?”
They were both watching him now. Doyle shook his head. With a forefinger, he smeared the tea on the table, a swirling pattern like that of the mage-lights. “I’m telling you what she said, that’s all. She said we would do as she asked or she would hunt each of us down, that none of us would be safe.” He touched his neck, tugging at the torc. “I believe that, my Rí.”
“You sound like your wife,” Rí Mallaghan scoffed. “She was too close to the Healer Ard.”
Doyle forced down the anger and shame that flooded him at the mention of Edana. “The Healer Ard is like the rest of the Aoires. You heard about the statue that appeared on Cnocareilig the day after the Bán Cailleach came, how it looks not like a carving but the Healer Ard herself, how its touch is warm and soft, and how hands upon hands of healings have occurred there since. The Hand of the Heart has more supplicants every day than the Rí Ard and the Rí Dún Loaghaire’s courts combined. Aye, my Rí, I’m beginning to wonder if we shouldn’t all have listened to Edana. We risked nearly two double-hands of peace in the Tuatha because we saw that the Healer Ard was becoming stronger than any Rí and because we didn’t want the Mad Holder walking here among us adding to her strength. Maybe . . .” Maybe we were wrong. He didn’t say the words. “I’m finding that the torc of the Ard isn’t as comfortable as I thought it would be,” he said instead.
Shay gave his attention to the window again; Rí Mallaghan rubbed his beard and stared at the wooden beams of the ceiling. “Let’s assume the Bán Cailleach is as powerful as she hints she is,” Rí Mallaghan said finally, as if he hadn’t heard anything that Doyle had said. “She’ll do nothing as long as she thinks she’s being obeyed. So . . . we’ll do as she asks.”
“My Rí?” Shay asked, startled. He turned from the window, but Rí Mallaghan only smiled.
“Aye, we let her believe she’s won. We wait, and we’ll discover her weaknesses and her faults, and we’ll take her down when we’re ready, as we finally took down the Mad Holder.” He sat back in his chair, tilting his head at Doyle. “What say you, Mac Ard? I need to know now. Where does your loyalty lie? Your da’s spirit still walks in the night only partially revenged. I know what he would tell you. Do you listen to him, or do you listen to the Bán Cailleach and your wife?”
You have to choose now. If you tell him ‘aye,’ then you’ll lose Edana forever . . . But he had already lost Edana and he didn’t know if he could ever truly get her back. Perhaps, if he had Lámh Shábhála at last, then all the ghosts that haunted him would be put to their final rest. Perhaps then he could be what Edana wanted him to be. Perhaps then he could heal the wounds between them . . .
Perhaps.
“Aye,” he told Rí Mallaghan. “I say aye.”
43
The Bán Cailleach’s Demands
TUATHA HALLA WEPT under the stormy sky. It was an inauspicious day for a meeting and the Ríthe shifted on their cold stone thrones, set in a ring around the central hearth of the hall while a peat fire attempted vainly to leach the chill from the stones. The roof, ancient and many times repaired, displayed a new leak, a steady plonk-plonk-plonk that splattered on the stone flags near Rí Eóin O Treasigh
of Tuath Locha Léin, the youngest of the Ríthe. The dripping of the water was louder than the grumbling of old Rí Brasil Mas Sithig of Tuath Infochla, troubled by piles for the last few years and uncomfortable in his hard seat.
The directions from the Bán Cailleach had been explicit: the hall was empty of any spectators, and a Comhdáil Comhairle—a meeting of all the Ríthe of the Tuatha—had been convened. That each of them was concerned about the Bán Cailleach and her power was evidenced by the fact that none of the Ríthe were missing: all of them had made the sometimes-arduous journey to Dún Laoghaire, as they had all too recently to elect Doyle as Rí Ard. Now the Ríthe sat staring at each other in the circle of stone thrones around the fire. “This is ridiculous,” Mas Sithig said, glaring at the pooling water as if it had personally offended him. “To have the Ríthe ordered about like tuathánach and kept waiting like supplicants . . .”
“The Ríthe created this problem when they decided it was better to rid themselves of the Healer Ard and the First Holder rather than to allow the Banrion Inish Thuaidh to come here,” Edana snapped quickly in return.
“I had nothing to do with that,” Mas Sithig responded quickly, but everyone saw his glance at Rí Torin Mallaghan to his left.
“Perhaps not,” Edana said. Her own eyes weren’t on Rí Mallaghan, but on Doyle, who sat directly across the circular room from her in the Ard’s chair. “But others here did, either directly or because they kept silent when the plan was broached to them. Now we’re served the meal from the seeds we planted—if it’s bitter, the blame lies here in this room, because it was here that the treachery began.”
“The Healer Ard was killed by a renegade Taisteal, not by one of us,” Banrion Caitrín Taafe of Tuath Éoganacht said. Her voice was nearly a whisper, as if she were afraid to wake the ghosts that haunted this place.
Edana scoffed loudly and bitterly. “Oh, please, Caitrin. We don’t need to keep up the pretense here; not even the tuathánach believe that. We all know in our hearts why the Healer Ard was killed. And it certainly wasn’t a Taisteal who killed the Mad Holder, was it?” Her gaze had not left Doyle. He didn’t answer. For a time, the Ríthe lapsed back into silence.
Rí Allister Fearachan of Connachta gestured to the guttering clock-candle set near the central fire. The brass cap-weight atop it was touching one of the pale red lines set within the white beeswax . “We’ve been here a full stripe of the candle already. If the Bán Cailleach doesn’t arrive soon, then I suggest we return to the keep.”
“The Bán Cailleach is here,” a voice said, and with the sound, a wind rippled the flames of the fire and a swirling column of jade green and pale white light appeared beside the clock-candle. The light coalesced and took shape as the Ríthe shaded their eyes. A final gust of wind, a flare of emerald: a woman stood there on the stones—long hair of unblemished white cascading like sea spray over skin mottled with spiraling scars; eyes as dark as polished coal; her body clothed only in the scars and Lámh Shábhála glowing inside her. She turned slowly to look at each of them. Sevei could see each of them staring at her, and she noticed the nods and the narrowing of eyes as they saw beyond her appearance to the young woman they remembered. “Aye, as my uncle no doubt has informed you, you once knew me as Bantiarna Sevei Geraghty, daughter of the Healer Ard. Child of Meriel and Owaine and great-daughter of Jenna MacEagan, all of whom you killed.” They were silent at the accusation and Sevei laughed. “Oh, I see the guilt on your faces, and I’ve witnessed some of it myself, haven’t I, Uncle Doyle?”
She saw hands creeping toward the Clochs Mór each of the Ríthe wore, and she laughed again, even though the intense cold of the passage here made her shiver despite the fire’s heat, and the scars of her body screamed with the punishment of using the cloch-magic. The voices of ancient Holders yammered in her head.
“. . . strike them now, before they gather against you!”
“. . . there are eight Clochs Mór here—not even you could stand against that many . . .”
“. . . they deserve to die. All of them. They killed me, they killed poor Meriel, and they would have killed you just as casually. Be careful, you may have to fight here even though I know it’s not what you want . . .”
That last was Jenna, and Sevei sent soothing thoughts to the spirit. “I know, Gram. Hush. I know . . .”
“Do we need this futile exercise?” she said aloud to the Ríthe. “I’d really hoped this wouldn’t be necessary. Eight Clochs Mór against Lámh Shábhála . . .” She shook her head. “Kayne told me that it was foolish to even try this, that the only thing the Ríthe understood was power and until I demonstrated the power I now hold, you wouldn’t listen. Eight against one—well, I’m not so foolish or vain to attempt that. If you open your clochs here, I will assume you prefer open war between us to a possible peace, and I’ll leave before you can touch me. But I tell you this: I will come to each of you afterward, no matter where you go or where you hide, and I swear you will regret your decision this day.”
“Not eight against one,” Edana called out loudly. “It would be seven against Lámh Shábhála and Demon-Caller. I stand with the Bán Cailleach today, not the Ríthe.”
“Not seven either,” Doyle interjected. “I won’t put my cloch against that of my wife.” He was staring at Edana. “Snapdragon would defend Edana against anyone who would try to hurt her.”
“. . . that leaves only six. You could do it . . .”
“. . . Don’t let them attack first! Take them! . . .”
“. . . I once held off four for a time, but they killed me . . .”
Sevei forced a smile to her face. “You surprise me, Uncle,” Sevei said. “But I thank you. And you, Aunt Edana. So it would be six against two even if the Rí Ard simply keeps Snapdragon out of the fray. One of you against Demon-Caller, and five left for me. Now, those odds I’m willing to chance. Are you, Rí Mallaghan? Rí Mas Sithig? I tell you this, my Ríthe: as you would take Lámh Shábhála from me if I lost, I will take the clochs from each of you here afterward, while you still live to feel that anguish. Open your clochs, then, if you dare. Go on . . .” She spoke with a confidence she didn’t feel inside. In truth, Lámh Shábhála had been drained of a good portion of its reserves from the passage here. She could feel the mage-power still potent within it, but whether there was enough for her to take on all the Ríthe, if her body and mind could stand the pain and abuse . . .
She waited. The Ríthe all glanced at each other. Then, slowly, their hands dropped back down to the arms of their thrones.
“. . . They gave me no such chance, great-daughter. Isn’t it tempting, to take them now . . . ?”
“Hush, Gram . . .” Sevei forced down the moan that wanted to escape her lips: you can’t show your vulnerability here, in front of them. They can’t know how much you hurt. She drew herself up, lifting her chin—showing weakness would be fatal, she knew. They would be on her like a pack of dire wolves on a crippled deer.
“I did as you asked and brought the Ríthe here,” Doyle said to her. “What do you want of us, Sevei?”
“I want very little,” she told them. “First, there are too many empty thrones here in Tuatha Halla, and I would fill two more of them.”
Rí Mallaghan scoffed openly at that, interrupting her. “You want nine Ríthe? So you want Inish Thuaidh seated with us. That hardly surprises me. And who would take the other seat?”
“Inish Thuaidh has deserved its seat here in Tuatha Halla for generations,” Sevei answered. “The Inishlanders kept safe the knowledge of the clochs and the slow magics through the dark generations, when the Tuatha would have forgotten. If it weren’t for the Tuatha’s cowardly theft of the clochs, the Tuatha Halla might be in Dún Kiil rather then Dún Laoghaire. But I’ll see Rí Kyle MacEagan or his successor seated here helping to make the policies of the Tuatha and electing the Ard. And I would see a Rí of the Fingerlanders here also, as they once had.”
“The Fingerlands are mine.” Rí Morven Mac Baoill of Airgi
alla nearly came out of his chair. “Airgialla has owned the Fingerlands for two double-hands of the Ríthe of my family.”
“And for that same amount of time, the clans of the Finger have fought against Dathúil’s rule. But you own them no longer, Rí Mac Baoill. My brother defeated your first force and I’ve sent your latest army running home. The Finger is empty of your troops, Rí Mac Baoill, and I won’t allow them to return.”
“You won’t allow?” Mac Baoill’s face was suffused and his stout body quivered in his seat. “You have neither the right nor the power to allow it or not.”
“The right? Perhaps not—at least no more right than you had when you sent your son to kill my da. But the power . . . ?” She touched her breast and the glow of Lámh Shábhála increased. Sevei ignored the pain as the scars pulled and tore at her shoulder with the movement. She could see the swirling patterns in her skin, glowing softly in the dimness of the room. “The power I have here. And those were the least of my demands. Aye, demands,” she said into the hubbub of protest that came with the word. “Hear me, for this is what the Bán Cailleach wishes.”
She opened Lámh Shábhála slightly, so that the energy within it flowed out to strengthen her voice, startling doves roosting in the Halla’s rafters: they fluttered about the roof in panic. She drowned out the sound of the rain and the protests of the Ríthe. “Doyle Mac Ard will resign as Rí Ard, and for his murder of my great-mam the First Holder, he will exile himself from the Tuatha. For his part in the murder of Owaine Geraghty, Rí Morven Mac Baoill will do likewise. One or more of you here, I’m certain, planned the murder of the Healer Ard and Ennis. I will discover who that person is; I will hold that person responsible, and for him or her, I also demand exile. Those Riocha responsible for slaying my siblings Tara and Ionhar will have their lands and titles forfeited and be exiled also. Be glad that I ask only exile when I might have as easily asked for your lives in return for theirs.”
