by S L Farrell
“. . . they won’t . . .”
“. . . they know they are too many for you . . .”
But they did. She felt the Clochs Mór close, one by one, and she cautiously let the wall fade, trying not to sigh with relief, trying not show her weakness. She had never felt an agony like this: three passages through the mage-lights in a night, using them to open herself to Kayne, to force her way past Ennis’ defenses, and now to hold off so many clochs . . .
None of the previous torment had been anything this massive. Her body was awash in molten fire coursing through her scars, her mind crackled and pounded with the power, her eyes were aflame. Every muscle in her body was quivering and she thought that at any moment tendons and ligaments might snap. She was afraid to let go of the wall, afraid to release Mallaghan, afraid that if they came at her again she wouldn’t be quick or strong enough, afraid that if she held on for much longer that it wouldn’t matter anyway for the pain would entirely overwhelm her. She was afraid that they would see her vulnerability and her torment and know that she lied, know that if they all came at her at once she could not hold them back.
“. . . they know you’re bluffing. They’ll guess . . .”
“. . . your pride will kill you . . .”
“. . . you’ll be in here with us, ranting at some new Holder . . .”
But none of the Riocha moved. “What do you think, Rí?” she crooned to the man in front of her, pretending confidence. “Do you think the Mother would cast me into the hands of the soul-shredders for killing you, or will She instead take me in Her arms for a just vengeance? Gram, Mam, Da, my brother and sister, my marriage-sister—do you think that the Mother might ask them to be your soul-shredders? Why, I think She might.”
Mallaghan’s face was bright red now, his eyes bulging, his mouth wide in a soundless scream, the tendons on his neck standing out. She took a step back from him, so that she was at arm’s length. She watched him, watched him struggle to breathe, to try to tear the constricting mage-lights away from his throat. The Riocha were nervous now, and she knew she had only a breath before they would come at her again. “I want to do this,” she told him in almost a whisper. “You don’t know how much I hunger for it. And maybe one day I will. But not today.”
With that, she loosened the noose of mage-lights around his neck enough that he could take a shuddering, choking breath. The color of his face lightened.
“The Arruk have come,” she told Rí Mallaghan, told them all. “They’re already in the Finger. And because of that, I offer you a truce between us.”
“The Arruk?” It wasn’t Rí Mallaghan who spoke, still rubbing at his neck, but Morven Mac Baoill, and Sevei could see in his face that the Rí Airgialla didn’t want to believe her, knowing that if this were true, it was Tuath Airgialla that would suffer first. “You lie. You lie so that we’ll scatter ourselves.”
“I tell the truth so that you won’t,” she told him. “If you doubt me, then have Tiarna O Blaca take himself to Dún Laoghaire and have Edana Mac Ard show him the message she’s received, or have him go to the Finger himself and see. The Arruk have left Céile Mhór and come here. Scatter yourselves?” She laughed bitterly. “I want the opposite. I ask each to do this: go to the Narrows. Go there now while you’re close, and help us make a stand there with your clochs.”
“Stand against the Arruk without first raising our own armies? We need weeks to prepare . . . Months . . .” She could see that he wanted to say more, but she let Lámh Shábhála’s energy slip into her voice and the hand that she lifted. He went silent.
“You don’t have months or even weeks. You have only days and what troops can reach the Narrows in time. Banrion Mac Ard is bringing anyone she can raise, as is Rí MacEagan of Inish Thuaidh.”
“Inishlanders?” That was Rí Mallaghan, his voice strained and cracked. “The Inish will come to plunder the Tuatha, not to save them.”
“. . . You see . . .”
“. . . You should have killed him . . .”
“. . . They won’t believe you . . . ”
“Be quiet!” She was speaking to the voices and not Mallaghan, but he closed his mouth. Her shout pounded in her head, like a hammer against her skull: be quiet . . . be quiet . . . quiet . . . She could not stay here much longer. She had to go, had to go where she could give in to the torment that was going to be her payment for tonight and not have them on her like wolves on a downed doe. Sevei’s vision seemed to be narrowing. She could see only Rí Mallaghan’s face in front of her, as if she peered down a long corridor toward him. “Believe what you will,” she said. “Go to your homes and wait, then. I tell you this: if you go to your homes and we win at the Narrows, then I will come to you afterward, and I’ll give each of you the proper payment for your cowardice. If you go to your homes and we lose at the Narrows, then it won’t be me who comes but the Arruk, and you won’t have the gardai or the clochs to hold them back. Either way, you will still have your payment for your cowardice and stupidity.”
Her vision contracted even farther. She could see only Mallaghan’s eyes, the gold flecks like fallen leaves on the brown, suspicious earth of his pupils. Lámh Shábhála was a wild creature trapped in the cage of her ribs and tearing at them to get out. Her body trembled and her knees threatened to give way.
“Look at her,” she heard Mac Baoill say to the others and she knew they saw it also. “Look . . .”
“You must go to the Narrows,” she told them all desperately. “Not for me. For yourselves, your families, your people, and your land.”
She could feel their doubt. She could sense them waiting, their hands close to their clochs. Sevei opened her own hands, letting them see the green gem in its fury inside her, glowing amidst the network of scars. “You must do this,” she said, and her voice was only a whisper.
She didn’t know if they heard. Didn’t know if they would obey or ignore her. She could feel her vision darkening, her world narrowing as if she were looking through a rolled-up parchment. The muscles in her back and legs tightened and knotted. She put a fist to her chest above Lámh Shábhála, gathered what was left of its energy and prepared to leave.
They struck then, all of them at one time, a massive concerted attack that broke through the defenses she hastily erected and sent the shattered remnants of Lámh Shábhála’s energy into bright shards that lanced through her. Sevei screamed, a despairing, lost wail. She could feel the clochs gathering themselves again, and she plunged her awareness deep into the nearly-empty Lámh Shábhála, scrabbling for some tithe of power, some forgotten pool within it. There . . . there was a glimmer, and she sent her mind rushing toward it, taking it into her and willing herself to be gone, to be anywhere but here.
And at the same time, Rí Mallaghan and the others came at her a last time and the impact of their attack sent her spinning away.
55
A Meeting of Friends
“WHATISBOTHERING you, Ennis Svarti?” Cima asked.
Their litter was lurching and bucking, tilted at an uncomfortable angle that pressed Ennis back into Cima’s hard-scaled and smelly body at the rear of the carrier. The road was rising steeply toward the high pass that marked the end of the Finger, and the footing was treacherous. The Arruk army filled the road as well as the passable ground to either side, stretched out for miles from vanguard to rear. Behind them was smoke and ruin and destruction, and not a few Arruk bodies. What villages they’d found had been abandoned and left with their gates open well before they’d arrived, though Kurhv Kralj had ordered them torched anyway. The Fingerlanders had made them pay for every step along the way. As they had ever since they entered the Finger, the Arruk had endured nearly constant ambushes and skirmishes all along their flanks: sudden flights of arrows or a rush of armed men from concealed places. The Fingerlanders struck and then melted back into the landscape from which they’d emerged. The Arruk had lost perhaps a fifth of their forces over the days it had taken them to slog along the seemingly endless road twisti
ng crazily through the Finger. In the last day, however, the attacks had ended as they began the ascent toward the Narrows.
And last night, the White Beast had attacked Ennis as the mage-lights flared above. Since then, Ennis had been unable to shake off a sense of dread. The blue ghost of himself sat in the litter with him, stoic and confident, and did nothing. He could not match that expression, couldn’t feel it.
“What is it, Ennis Svarti?” Cima asked again. “Don’t think of the White Beast. You’re stronger than it. You are.”
“The White Beast will be there,” Ennis muttered. “When the Tuatha army comes, she’ll be there.”
“And you’ll defeat her,” Cima answered, his voice full of confidence that Ennis didn’t share. “You have the sky-stone and your spell-stick, and you have Kurhv Kralj’s army with you. These Perakli will be no different than the other ones we’ve met, and we’ll cut through them until we reach Cudak Zvati and Cudak rewards us with our own sky-stones.” The litter lurched again as one of the bearers stumbled, and Cima leaned out through the curtains to snarl at them in quick Arruk. “The bluntclaws will continue to run from us, like the cowards they are—all except you, Ennis Svarti. You’re as brave as any Arruk and more skilled than any of our Svarti, and I’m proud that Kurhv Kralj has allowed me to serve you.”
The blue ghost sat unmoving, but Ennis allowed himself a brief smile. He patted Cima on the shoulder. “I’m glad you’re here, also, Cima. You . . .” He stopped, not quite knowing what to say. Without Cima, he would be totally alone here. Even Kurhv Kralj treated Ennis as if he were somehow diseased; the other Arruk might fear him, but fear was the only thing that kept them from showing their disgust toward him and his kind. Only Cima acted as if he truly were Ennis’ friend. That may have been because Cima had been treated much the same way as Ennis, but it didn’t matter.
Do you really want to go where the blue ghosts will take you? Do you really want to sit on the Arruk throne: where you will rule only because of their fear, where you will have no friends?
Ennis grimaced. The litter tilted and straightened again, and this time Ennis pushed back the curtains. Ahead of them, through a rainy mist, he could see the heads of the Arruk army marching through the broken landscape. Close by was Kurhv Kralj’s litter, and scattered ahead the litters of the various Mairki and their Svarti. Grayed by mist, the double peaks of the Narrows loomed in the middle distance, and there was nothing beyond them: no more distant peaks. It was as if the world ended there.
And there were blue ghosts everywhere. Ennis had never seen so many of them: the land swirling with possibilities and futures. He could barely see through their furious, chaotic movement. He saw himself hands upon hands of times, saw Cima and Kurhv Kralj, saw the Arruk and the gardai of the Daoine embroiled in battle, saw the Svarti’s spell-sticks arrayed against the clochs na thintrí of the Riocha.
Saw the White Beast. She was there also, far too often.
Ennis gasped and fell back onto the litter’s cushions. “What is it, Ennis Svarti?” Cima asked for the third time, alarmed now.
“She’s a liar. She’s not your sister Sevei. She’s a danger to you, and you must kill her. That’s what the blue ghosts are telling you.”
“I know, Isibéal,” Ennis said. “But what does Mam say? Mam would know. Let her talk to me.”
“She’s a liar . . .”
“What?” Cima asked, and Ennis shivered.
“There’s a battle coming,” Ennis told him. “A bad one. I can see it.”
Cima’s eyes blinked—the sideways eyelid movement of the Arruk. “We should tell Kurhv Kralj.” He pushed aside the curtains, shouting at the bearers of both their litter and Kurhv Kralj’s. As the bearers halted and set down the litter, Cima leaned close to Ennis. “You don’t need to look so concerned, Ennis Svarti,” he said. “I’ll stay with you. I’ll always stay with you. If the White Beast wants to hurt you, she will have to first kill me.”
The blue ghost in which he had wrapped himself did nothing but nod and stare straight ahead. But Ennis forced himself to break away. He hugged Cima, surprising the Arruk. “Your eyes are leaking again, Ennis Svarti,” the Arruk told him. Ennis sniffed and dragged a sleeve over his eyes. He found the blue ghost again, sliding down from the litter onto the ground and walking toward Kurhv Kralj’s litter. The blue ghost was already fading, nearly lost among the welter of futures here. Ennis hurried to catch up to it.
“Hurry,” he told Cima as he slipped into the pattern. “It’s nearly time.”
Carrohkai Treemaster sang under the oaks in the night, her voice lifted in the windlike melody of the Seanóir. They were answering her, calling out to her in the leaf-cloaked darkness of the forest, their low, earthy voices swaying the boughs above her. She stopped her singing then. Her head lifted as if she were sniffing the air and she turned. The moon lifted above the trees to the east, rising swiftly enough that Sevei could track the movement.
“Tráthnóna maith duit, Sevei,” Carrohkai said.
The Bunús Muintir’s hair was white, her body—like Sevei’s, naked to the world—was covered with the same scars, though her body was heavier and wider and her face broader. Her eyes held night, and her smile was tinged with sadness.
“How did I come here?” Sevei asked, and Carrohkai shrugged.
“You’re not here. Not really. Nor am I. Or perhaps you are. It’s difficult to tell.”
“Am I dead?”
“Perhaps. Sometimes that’s also difficult to know.” Carrohkai touched the stone between her breasts. As with Sevei, there was a glow there underneath the skin that was undeniably Lámh Shábhála, so like that of her stone that Sevei’s hand went to her own body. The gem was still there: She could see the emerald gleam on her fingertips, a twin to that illuminating Carrohkai. Sevei gave a breath of relief, though she knew that Lámh Shábhála couldn’t have been taken from her without her knowledge—no Holder could ever lose Lámh Shábhála without suffering. Carrohkai was staring at Sevei with the same fascination.
“I remember being here and doing this,” Carrohkai said, “and yet I also know the rest of my life . . . and I know you. So I’m dead, at least.” She gave a sigh. “You’ve come to me. What can I teach you that you don’t already know or that Issine hasn’t said to you?” she asked.
“How did you bear it?” Sevei asked. “After you passed the Scrúdú, how did you manage to keep living through the pain?”
“I didn’t live long,” Carrohkai answered. “None of us do. The truth is that the Scrúdú kills all of us who attempt it. It just leaves a few alive for a bit first.”
“Then what am I supposed to do? What good is the Scrúdú if those who pass the test have so little time?”
“Aye,” another voice intruded, a familiar one to Sevei. “Answer that for both of us.” Jenna—Gram—came walking through the trees toward them, dressed in the royal clóca of Inish Thuaidh, with the torc of Dún Kiil and the chain of Lámh Shábhála both around her neck. Her face was wrinkled and old, but seemed to be without the additional creases of pain that had eroded its features for as long as Sevei could remember. Sevei found that she wasn’t at all startled to see Gram here. Her appearance seemed natural. “Tell us why our family has endured this burden for so long. Tell us why we and so many others suffered.”
Carrohkai seemed to be listening to the songs of the trees more than to Gram or Sevei. There were no mage-lights here in this night, and the moon raced across the summit of the sky toward the west, while the eastern sky was already brightening with dawn, masking the stars. The curve of the sun brightened the eastern sky. “There’s always a price for power.”
“I didn’t want the power,” Gram said vehemently. Sunlight touched her face and she shaded her eyes. “I never asked for it. Neither did Sevei.”
Carrohkai turned to regard them calmly, serenely. “You may not have asked for it, Jenna Aoire, but when the power called you, you took it. And you, Sevei—you wanted it also, or Bhralhg would not have
given you the stone. You wanted it. Both of you. As I did.”
“What did you do with it?” Sevei asked.
Carrohkai laughed, and the Seanóir’s song rose with a rising wind. The sun was already at zenith and beginning to fall, their shadows moving visibly on the ground. Two shadows: Sevei looked around, but Gram had vanished.
“I did very little, if you listen to those who lived when I did or came after,” Carrohkai said as Sevei glanced around to see where Gram might have gone. “I heard the life within the Seanóir and I brought them to Awareness. I allowed them to see the mage-lights and use them for themselves. My peers, those who held the other clochs, all said I wasted Lámh Shábhála and the test of the Scrúdú and my life. I helped Others when I could have done more for the Bunús. They called me a failure. They called me a traitor. They said I had no loyalty to my own. They said that a traitor is always a hero to the other side, and so they called me ‘Treemaster’ and the ‘Hero of the Oaks,’ and their titles were a mockery. They ridiculed me, they said they were glad that I was in pain and would die soon, because someone more worthy would take Lámh Shábhála from me when I died.”
“I’m sorry,” Sevei said.
“Don’t be,” the Bunús Muintir answered. Carrohkai inclined her head, listening to the Seanóir’s lament as the sun began to set and the first stars emerged. “When you Daoine came to Talamh an Ghlas, long after the mage-lights had failed, and many generations of Holders after I died, the Seanóir were alive and half-awake there in the deep woods, and they protected us because of what I’d done for them. They gave my people a refuge where we could stay and survive. The Bunús would all be gone now, if the Seanóir had not been made Aware.”
