Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3)

by S L Farrell

  The first mage-lights slid between the stars: too bright and too fast. Reflexively, Sevei touched Lámh Shábhála; Carrohkai echoed the gesture.

  “. . . none of what she says matters . . .” It was Gram’s voice, in her head now as it had been since her death, caught in Lámh Shábhála. “. . . your family and your people are what is truly important. They need you now. You must think of them . . .”

  The mage-lights brightened, so intense that they blotted out the landscape. Their fire flickered behind the landscape, as if she were looking at a funeral pyre though a painting on thin paper. The sheets and curtains of bright colors moved through and around Carrohkai and the forest, and the singing of the Seanóir was the crackling of the mage-energy in her ears.

  “. . . we never see the consequences of our lives,” Carrohkai said, her voice, like Gram’s, in Sevei’s head. She seemed to be admonishing both of them, gently, with the sound of a quiet smile in her voice. Sevei could see only the stars and the mage-lights now, and a surge of pain made her cry out, made her fall and pull her body into a tight fetal curl. “. . . only those who come long after can truly judge us . . .”

  The intensity of the pain ratcheted higher and Sevei moaned, clutching herself and screaming, screaming so loudly that she barely heard Carrohkai finish.

  “. . . and even they may have it wrong . . .”

  Sevei groaned. Something moved near her, but she kept her eyes pressed shut against the hammer blows inside her head and the fire that burned her skin.

  “This time I come on my own, Soft-flesh,” she heard a voice say.

  56

  Maneuverings and a Skirmish

  “WHAT DO WE DO now, Mam?”

  Padraic paced as Edana watched, not wanting to show her impatience. The army—less than a thousand hastily assembled gardai and soldiers with a bare handful of Riocha and céili giallnai among them—crowded in the narrow canyon between the cliff walls of the Narrows. There had been a battle in this place already: there were unburied corpses here and there, the bodies picked over by the crows, wild dogs, and other scavengers. The stench of their rot had made Edana drape a perfumed cloth over her face. The corpses wore the colors of Airgialla, and the conflict seemed to have torn the very stones from the cliff walls of the Narrows. The road was blocked here, and it seemed as good a place to stop as any.

  As the Hands of the army supervised the creation of an encampment upwind of the carnage, Edana watched Padraic pace. “This is where Sevei wanted us to come. She’ll be here.”

  “It’s been days since we saw her. She should be here already.” Padraic shivered under his woolen clóca. “This place is haunted. This whole land is haunted—there was that siog mist that went past us two days ago, and some of the gardai swear they saw a dragon circling the Narrows yesterday as we were climbing up from Lough Tory . . .” He scuffed at the ground, glaring at the rocks as if they might be Créneach waiting to rise up and attack him.

  “She’ll come.”

  “And if she doesn’t?”

  “Then we fight the Arruk alone.” The voice, deep and weary, was a new one, startling both Padraic and Edana. A man approached them from the rocks to the east. He was filthy and bedraggled, he limped as if injured, but there was something about his bearing and his face, and on his breast a ruby stone gleamed. Several of the gardai noticed him at the same time: seeing him so close to Edana and Padraic, they started toward him and unsheathed swords; an archer picked up his bow and nocked an arrow—but Edana waved them away.

  “Kayne!” Edana said. “Praise the Mother! You are alive.”

  “Dia daoibh, Aunt Edana, Padraic. Well met at last. It’s been a long time, Aunt . . .”

  “You’re hurt,” Edana said, and Kayne gave her a smile that dissolved in the next moment.

  “Aye, that I am, and in worse ways than you can see, Aunt. But we’ve no time to worry about that. Who’s in charge here?”

  “I am,” Edana answered. “And Padraic.” Edana saw Kayne’s gaze—hard and coldly appraising—go to Padraic.

  “I’m sorry about your da,” he said to Padraic before his attention moved back to Edana, “and your husband, Aunt. If not for him, I’d be dead. I didn’t trust Uncle Doyle, to be honest, but in the end . . .” He stopped. “There’ll be time to speak of him later, perhaps. For now, I’d ask you to come with me.”

  He turned and walked away up the slope toward the very summit of the pass, Edana and Padraic following him through the tumbled landscape. Several gardai started to escort them; again, Edana waved them away. They walked for nearly a quarter-stripe, silently, before Kayne paused and motioned to them. Edana came alongside him. From their vantage point, they looked down along the mountain-spiked expanse of the Finger, and below them the High Road twisted and turned as it descended into a deep valley.

  Edana gasped, her hand flying involuntarily to Demon-Caller at her breast. A dark, seething mass crawled along the High Road and well to either side of it, a huge and long gathering. At this distance, she could just begin to make out the individual creatures at the head of the column, and see their flags and the litters of their officers bobbing among them. Faintly, she could hear the slow, insistent beat of drums, pounding out the cadence of their march.

  “I never thought . . .” she began. She looked at Padraic and then at Kayne, stricken. “There are so many of them.”

  “This is hopeless,” Padraic said firmly. “Even with a double-hand or more of Clochs Mór, we wouldn’t be able to stand against that. We need more time. We need to get the Ríthe to send all their armies.”

  “There is no time,” Kayne told them. “And once the Arruk are through the Narrows, there will be no stopping them. They’ll do to us what they did in Céile Mhór. But if we stand here, if we can take three or four Arruk for every Daoine life, then perhaps we’ll have weakened them enough that the Tuatha can defeat the rest, even though we leave our bones here. The Fingerlander army, such as it is, is here, too—Rodhlann O Morchoe commands them, and he has them stationed farther down the pass.” Kayne looked back from the advancing force to Edana and Padraic. “What are your battle plans?” he asked. “Where are you going to place the troops? We’ll want to retain the advantage of height and use the land. There are ledges where archers can hide, and a canyon up near the Narrows where cavalry might be able to make a flanking attack . . .”

  Edana felt more than saw Padraic shaking his head at her side. “The tiarna captains are meeting this evening . . .” he began, but Edana interrupted her son.

  “You were to be the Rí Ard,” she told Kayne. “That’s what was promised to you by the Ríthe in the Tuatha Halla. I was there, and I heard them give their oath to Sevei—an oath that they’ve broken, but an oath proclaimed before the Mother nonetheless. I say that you are Ard. Be the Ard here, Kayne. You have experience none of us here have. You’ve fought in the Finger, and you’ve fought the Arruk. I give you command of our troops.”

  “Mam,” Padraic began angrily, and she lifted a finger to him, a gesture she hadn’t made since he’d been a child.

  “No,” she told him, her voice rising to meet his. “You’re a cloudmage, Padraic, not a warrior. So am I. Kayne is both. He can give us what little chance of victory we have. I am Banrion, this is my army that I’ve brought here, and I say now that Kayne is my commander.”

  Padraic turned away, snapping his mouth shut. She saw Kayne watching him, his battered and bruised face cocked to one side. “There’s no chance of victory here, Aunt Edana,” he said to her. “You need to understand that. We don’t fight here to win ourselves. We fight so there’s the chance of making victory possible for someone else.”

  “Then that will have to do,” she told him.

  He nodded. “Then my first order is that you leave, Aunt Edana. Go back to Dún Laoghaire. You can speak to the Ríthe. You can begin to gather the armies of the Tuatha together, all of them, to be ready when the rest of the Arruk come spilling down from the mountains. Padraic can go with you or
he can stay here, but if he stays . . .”

  He didn’t need to finish the statement. She knew. “We stay,” she said. “Both of us.”

  “Didn’t you hear me?” Kayne asked. He pointed down into the valley. “Didn’t you look down there? I know these Arruk, Aunt. They’ll keep crawling toward you with hatred in their eyes even when their entrails are dragging behind on the ground. They’ll strike at you with their last breath. They have Svarti, spell-casters whose skill with the slow magics is as good as any cloudmage from either Inishfeirm or Gabair. No, they don’t have the power of the clochs, but their spells are all ones of destruction. Their war drums will deafen you and send their blood to boiling and they’ll come at you in their thousands. They kill those who fall—their own or ours. They won’t take prisoners.” He stopped, his chest heaving, and Edana wondered if he were remembering the battles he’d been in with his da. “And there’s worse,” he said.

  “I know,” Edana told him. “Ennis is with them, holding Treoraí’s Heart. Sevei told us. We know what he did at Bunús Gate, and at Ceangail and the other towns.”

  Kayne nodded once, miserably. He was glaring down at the Arruk as if he could crush them with his gaze.

  “We can turn Ennis, Kayne,” Edana told him, soothingly. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing, or he’s confused. He couldn’t strike at his own brother and sister. By the Mother, Ennis is still just a child . . .”

  “I hope you’re right.” He looked over his shoulder at them. “Stay, or not. I won’t blame you, either way.”

  “Dying doesn’t frighten you?” she asked, and Kayne shook his head, finally turning his back to the Arruk.

  “No longer. The one I most want to be with has already gone to the Mother. Why should I fear going to her again?” The side of his mouth lifted in what might have been a smile.

  “I understand,” she told him gently. “And we’ll stay.” She glanced back at Padraic. He stared at her but said nothing. “Tell us what we need to do, Rí Ard Geraghty.”

  Ennis felt panic. Blue ghosts swirled around him, thick and dark, and he hoped that he’d aligned himself with the one whose future held the throne. He was no longer certain. The air was thick with patterns and possibilities, and he was confused by them.

  The Arruk army was still advancing, but more slowly now, and Kurhv Kralj—after Ennis’ warning of an impending battle—had sent scouts out well in advance of the main force. As the road lifted higher, cliffs rose on either side of them: steep, broken crags with brush and wind-stunted trees clinging precariously to the fissures. They were hungry, the Arruk—for two days now, there had been no herds of sheep or pigs to slaughter, no towns or farm, only the unrelenting path upward. The Arruk clogged the road as the space between the cliffs narrowed, stretching out the Arruk line.

  The blue ghosts were agitated, all of them. They flitted around him, shapes of himself and Cima and Kurhv Kralj, and among them Daoine Riocha in clóca and léine, with Clochs Mór on their chests and riding battle steeds, and gardai with bright swords and spears. They all crowded around Ennis on all sides, howling and screaming and overlaying his own sight so that he blinked into the wind as if to clear his eyes.

  “Soon,” Isibéal crooned in his head as he stroked Treoraí’s Heart nervously. “Soon,” all the other voices in his head whispered also.

  “Soon,” Ennis echoed, and Cima grunted near him, peering out the litter’s sides, the curtains now tied back all around.

  “The battle comes,” Cima agreed. “Even I can feel it now. Here, Ennis Svarti. You’ll be wanting this.” He slid Ennis’ spell-stick along the cushions with the fang-laden grimace that was an Arruk smile. “And I’ll stay with you, as I promised,” he added. “You shouldn’t worry. I’ll bear you into battle as I did before. I’ll be your legs and your jaka and your voice for as long as you need me.”

  The blue ghost to which he was locked nodded, forcing Ennis’ head up and down. “Soon,” he repeated. It seemed to be the only word he had left. “Soon.” A single syllable, sounding like the drumbeats that pounded outside the litter as the Arruk marched.

  A horn blew, calling the advance scouts back to the Kralj for a report. The Kralj’s litter, with Ennis’ following, was still moving forward though more slowly now as the pass narrowed. Long breaths passed as they were jostled and rocked forward, the call horns sounding between every drumbeat, their brassy shriek ringing from the rock walls. The scouts could not have failed to hear them, yet none of them returned. Ennis saw Kurhv Kralj turn in his litter, looking back at them. He seemed eager and happy, already grasping his weapon in his hand.

  “They’re up there, the bluntclaws,” he said. “As you said. They’ve slain our scouts and now they wait for us.” He gestured to the bearers and they set the litter down, Ennis’ bearers doing the same. The Mairki and their Svarti came scurrying over. Kurhv Kralj pounded the pole end of his jaka into the ground. “Good,” he grunted. “It’s about time the Perakli showed some courage. Let them come. Forward!” he shouted to the Mairki, and they went running back to their charges.

  The drums began pounding out an urgent, insistent cadence, and the Arruk army began moving forward again, more quickly this time. The blue ghosts all shivered in response to the beating of the drums, their forms shattering and reforming again and again. Ennis could barely see for the chaos as he climbed on Cima’s shoulder and followed at Kurhv Kralj’s left shoulder. Ahead, the walls of the canyon came within a double-hand of strides, the narrow gap made even smaller by piles of boulders and huge rocks. Beyond the opening, the pass opened up into a grassy verge and the ground leveled out before resuming the climb to the top of the Narrows Pass, still well up ahead. The Arruk surged through the gap like water foaming and roaring through a steep rapids. The drums pushed them; those behind pushed them; the thought of the battle ahead pushed them. Ennis clung to Cima and to the blue ghost of his throne vision, equally.

  The Kurhv Kralj and Ennis were still well back from the mouth of the gap when the attack finally came.

  There was the shower of sudden arrows, like a deadly cloudburst above them, the feathered shafts descending in arcing flocks—the type of ambush they’d dealt with all through the Finger. This attack was directed toward the Arruk at the opening of the gap, evidently intended to block the road with the Arruk’s own dead. Several of the minor Svarti had placed warding spells in their spell-sticks—Ennis heard them shouting the release words and at least half of the arrows erupted into flame, the wooden shafts going to quick ash and the arrowheads pattering among them like hard rain. Those Arruk who were unlucky enough to go down were quickly trampled underneath. Ennis felt Cima rise slightly as one foot stepped on a fallen soldier. Kurhv Kralj, the Mairki and their Ruka, the Ured and Nista all screamed challenge at the canyon walls around them. “Come and fight!” they bellowed, clashing jaka shafts on chest scales. “Come meet our blades.”

  All through the Finger, their constant challenges to their hidden assailants had met with no response. But this time there came an answer.

  A trumpet blast sounded far up the pass, and above the heads of the Arruk and through the opening, Ennis could see a line of horse-mounted gardai in leather and rings under their clóca—clóca, he saw, that were primarily the gray of Dún Laoghaire. Memories flooded him with the sight—Da and Kayne clad in the same color, the gardai with them a sea of gray as they rode out to Céile Mhór to fight the very creatures that Ennis now marched with; Mam wrapped in a soft clóca of the same color with the torc of Dún Laoghaire around her neck, and enfolding him in the fabric as she hugged him . . . Ennis cried out even though the blue ghost sat silent on Cima’s shoulder. “Are you hurt, Ennis Svarti?” he heard Cima call out below him.

  The blue ghost was silent, as if it hadn’t heard, but Ennis forced himself out of the pattern to answer. “I’m fine, Cima,” Ennis said. “I see . . . I see the bluntclaw horsemen coming.”

  Cima growled, and Ennis could feel the rumble through his legs.

 
; No more than a few hundred of the Arruk had spilled through the gap into the high meadow. Ennis saw the Daoine gardai wheel their horses and strike the Arruk in a long crescent. Kurhv Kralj, along with Cima and Ennis, were jostled in the crush as Arruk pushed from behind while the Daoine attack halted the Arruk advance. Kurhv Kralj howled orders to the war drummers. The beat changed, becoming insistent and driving, but the Mairki couldn’t respond. There was no way through the gap, and now Ennis saw a new barrage of arrows coming down on the Arruk pressed together helplessly at the opening. He could no longer see the battle in the meadow ahead of him, only hear the screams of Arruk, Daoine, and warhorses alike. Ennis grasped at Treoraí’s Heart; through it, he could feel Clochs Mór—at least two of them—open in the meadow, and the sound of false thunder came to his ears. The sound of the Arruk shouting changed: there was desperation now in the cries that came from the battle beyond the gap. Kurhv Kralj continued to scream orders; the arrows from the hidden archers poured down on them, many still consumed by spell-fire as the Svarti countered, but too many now striking their targets. An Arruk next to Cima and Ennis grunted as an arrow found skin between the bright orange scales of his chest. Blood spurted from a torn artery, but the Arruk couldn’t even fall, pressed too tightly against Cima and others of his kind. The pressure was intense; Ennis’ legs were trapped, and he could feel the push not only from the back, but from the front as the Arruk were forced back through the gap by the Daoine charge.

  The battlefield was also crowded with blue ghosts. Ennis was no longer sure which was his, but he clung to the one he’d chosen as tightly as he clung to Cima.

  “Ennis Svarti!” Ennis and the blue ghost turned their heads at the same time. Kurhv Kralj pointed ahead to the gap. He continued to shout instructions in the Arruk tongue, none of which Ennis understood, but his intention was clear. The blue ghost certainly understood, for it grasped his spell-stick and Treoraí’s Heart at the same time, and Ennis did the same. The power came rushing out from the Heart, making Ennis gasp with its cold heat. He pointed the spell-stick at the boulders and rocks at one end of the opening to the meadow, letting the mage-power gather in his mind. In a burst, he released it through the spell-stick, releasing several of the spells he’d stored there.