Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3)

by S L Farrell

  The eruption of light sent afterimages dancing in everyone’s vision. Rocks and dust and broken Arruk bodies cascaded forward a hundred strides into the meadow beyond. For a moment, the world halted, the noise of the battle beyond made insignificant as everyone’s attention went to the pall of dust rising from the northern side of the canyon. The blue ghost laughed, and Ennis laughed with it—he didn’t know how many of his own army he’d just killed, but it didn’t matter; they were only soldiers, after all, and death was their eventual fate anyway.

  The blue ghost continued to chortle, and Ennis pointed with it to the newly-widened opening. “There, my Kralj!” he cried, and Cima called out the translation. “Forward!”

  Ennis prodded Cima as if he were a mount, and Cima pushed forward with Kurhv Kralj, and the Arruk poured through the rent toward the battle line beyond.

  “Hold!” Kayne shouted to the mounted gardai. They could see the Arruk beginning to push through the gap into the high meadow that marked the start of the final climb to the Narrows. They’d spent the day and much mage-energy making the gap as small as possible. Rodhlann had placed Fingerlander archers all along where they placed the barricade, who were pouring deadly fire down into the Arruk force. No more than a double-hand of Arruk could move along the High Road abreast. Already there were a hundred or more of the creatures spilling out onto the plateau.

  “Kayne?” Padraic asked alongside him. The young man still wore the perpetual scowl that he’d borne since Kayne had appeared, and Kayne still wasn’t certain if Padraic would follow him if there was a need. “Why are we waiting? If many more get through . . .”

  “I know.” Kayne glanced at the line of Riocha and gardai astride all the warhorses. They were but a few hundred themselves, the rest of the force still waiting up at the Narrows. Kayne had no illusion that they would stop the Arruk here—if the Bunús Wall could not keep them out, then this hastily-constructed barrier would hardly suffice. All he hoped to do was to make them pay, and then try to stop them at the top of the Narrows, where the rest of the Daoine force waited with Banrion Edana and Rodhlann: two Clochs Mór in case their own fell here. Kayne had given Rodhlann Winter: “Séarlait would have wanted a Fingerlander to have this, and she thought much of your courage,” he’d told the man, but it still hurt to see her Cloch Mór around someone else’s neck.

  But their few Clochs Mór wouldn’t be enough. Maybe, maybe they could delay the Arruk enough that Sevei would arrive with Lámh Shábhála, or the Ríthe might come with more troops, or the Inishlanders might arrive. Maybe. But Kayne expected none of those maybes to come to pass. He told himself that he didn’t care. He told himself that if he fell here, at least he would be with Séarlait again.

  Padraic stirred impatiently next to him. Though Padraic was but a year younger, Kayne felt much older. Padraic still seemed to be a youth: inexperienced, convinced of his own immortality, far too eager to prove himself in this battle.

  The way you were yourself, a bare few moons ago . . .

  Kayne grimaced and rose up, waving the banner of Dún Laoghaire so that all down the line could see. “Now!” he shouted. “Make them pay for every stride they take!” He gave the war cry of the Inish—the caointeoireacht na cogadh —and dug his heels into his horse. The stallion neighed and burst into a gallop as Kayne took Blaze in his hand. His cry was echoed down the line on either side, and the line charged as one, the turf tearing under their hooves as they bore down on the Arruk, who shouted challenge and waved their long-bladed weapons at them, snarling.

  Kayne released a burst from Blaze just before the lines met, and Padraic did the same with Snarl. Red lightning flared and blue energy snarled: Kayne had to admire Padraic’s skill as a cloudmage, for just as the first riders struck the Arruk, the Clochs Mór sent the first rows of Arruk hurtling backward. The impact of the Daoine riders against the Arruk was like stone striking stone. In the next breath, Kayne was lost in the chaos of battle, using Blaze as if it were a massive sword wielded by a demigod, casting bolts down on the Arruk before him, clearing a space around him and striking down the Arruk who leaped at him from all sides. Around him, he heard the familiar chaos of battle. He could smell the blood, hear the shouts and cries and screams. Where he and Padraic rode, in the center of the curving line of riders, they were already pushing the Arruk back, only the dead left behind them. The Arruk advance broke on the Daoine line and began to give way. Kayne had already advanced far enough to see the gap and the pile of arrow-adorned bodies there, the Arruk boiling around them like mad ants storming from their hole.

  “We should have the rest of the army here!” Padraic shouted to Kayne. The young man’s eyes were wide with the excitement of the battle, his nostrils flared. Blood spattered the hem of his clóca. He sent another blast from Snarl through the Arruk, and a hand of them screamed and went down. Horses trampled them underneath. “We could hold them! We could take them!”

  “No!” Kayne shouted back. “Be ready to fall back.”

  Padraic shook his head. “Why? We can hold . . .”

  It happened then. Kayne felt the power a breath before it erupted: a sense of a presence rising, rising; a gathering of energy that was eerily similar to the pull of Lámh Shábhála. Then, before Kayne could react or warn the others, the entire north side of the gap erupted outward. Boulders the size of cottages shot backward into the meadow, crushing the unlucky Daoine riders who were nearest, but killing far more of the Arruk. For a few moments, the battle halted as Daoine and Arruk alike turned to stare at the billowing, ugly cloud that lifted from the gap. Then there was a roar of a thousand throats from beyond the gap and the Arruk started to pour through, hands upon countless hands of them with their jaka waving. The Svarti howled their chants, and now lightning flickered in the dusty pall, and Daoine gave cries of horror as rider and horse alike were broken and torn and cast down. For an instant, most of the Daoine riders were free of their Arruk attackers, but it would not last. It could not last. The Arruk who had fallen back turned again, and their jaka hissed as they cut air.

  “Retreat!” Kayne shouted. “Now! Give way, give way! Back to the Narrows!”

  The call was relayed down the line, and the riders turned their horses as the Fingerlander archers sent more arrows down from their ledges, hoping to give the riders in the valley time before they themselves retreated. Kayne turned his horse as well, but Padraic had not moved. One of the Daoine riders had been hurled backward as the crude barrier was breached, landing nearly at Padraic’s feet with his spine broken so that that man lay curled backward impossibly, the corpse’s mouth open in a soundless cry. Padraic was staring at the dead man.

  “Padraic!” Kayne shouted again, but now he could feel that presence emerging, coming closer. Through the dust, the Arruk charged, and with them was a boy riding on the shoulders of one of the Arruk, very near the banner of the Kralj. Kayne clenched his fist around Blaze and sent a bolt arcing toward the Kralj, but the Heart was aware and the energy fizzled and failed before it reached the Kralj, smashed down and diffused. Kayne peered through the fog of dirt. Ennis? Is it really him? He could see the child, but not clearly enough. In his mage-vision, the Heart was a throbbing brightness and the Holder of the stone was cloaked in it, his features unseen. “Ennis!” Kayne shouted to him. “Ennis, it’s Kayne!”

  There was no answer, or rather the answer that came was sobering. The brightness that was the Heart became even more brilliant, a pulse of light that made Kayne raise his hand to his eyes even though the glare was only in his mind. He heard a guttural chanting, and then the light rushed outward. Kayne brought up a wall of crimson energy, knowing that he could not stop the assault but only hoping to deflect it. Padraic had lifted his head to look also, but tardily. To the side of his vision, Kayne saw Padraic start to respond with Snarl, but he was already late.

  The wave of light hit Kayne like a storm-driven tidal wave; Blaze’s shield blunted the worst of it, but the force still nearly tore him from his mount, and the heat of
it made him gasp. A double-hand or more of the Daoine horses around him went down as well, and the Arruk rushed forward to kill the fallen riders. There was a cry near him, and Padraic went down also, his horse falling with him as Padraic shrieked with the weight of the beast on his leg. The horse rolled off him and Padraic tried to get to his feet, but immediately fell back down. Kayne could see that Padraic’s leg was broken. The Arruk were swarming toward the green-clad youth.

  Kayne’s gaze met his, and saw in Padraic’s eyes the realization that he was about to die. Kayne sent fireballs arcing out from Blaze to slay the nearest Arruk to Padraic, but there was little energy left in Blaze now. Padraic shook his head. “Go!” he shouted at Kayne. “Here—”

  Padraic did something that Kayne didn’t know that he could do himself. The cloudmage tore the chain of Snarl from around his neck and flung it toward Kayne. Ennis and his Arruk-mount were striding through the gap, and Kayne could feel his brother gathering energy again. “Go!” Padraic said. His face was twisted with doubled pain, both the physical toll of his injuries and the anguish of losing the Cloch Mór. “Go before they take both of our clochs.”

  A trio of Arruk charged toward Padraic, and Kayne howled in fury. Blaze tore at the Arruk, clearing a space around Padraic. Kayne kicked his horse forward, leaping down from his mount and grasping Padraic. He put Snarl back in Padraic’s hand and some of the agony in the youth’s face eased. “You’ll have to help me,” he said to the Padraic, and pulled. Together, they staggered to the horse. The Arruk nearest them came howling forward once more and Kayne sent mage-lightning into them as Padraic pulled himself up. There was nothing but the shreds of mage-power left in Blaze now; he could not divert another burst from the Heart; Snarl seemed just as drained. Stupid. You should have retreated while you had the chance . . . Kayne shook the thought away. He took the reins and hauled himself up after Padraic, kicking the horse into a gallop away from the Arruk.

  Howls and taunts pursued them, and the mind pressure that was the Heart built up to the breaking point again. Kayne gathered the dregs that were left in Blaze, ready to bring it up against the hammer blow of the Heart and knowing that he would fail.

  Ennis! He tried to reach his brother in the web of the mage-energy, tried to make him hear his voice. You must stop this! You don’t know who you’re hurting . . . but the fury of Treoraí’s Heart tossed his words away. He felt the pressure release, and turning his head to look back, saw in mage-vision the wave of fuming energy come at them again. He loosed Blaze’s power at it: a reed against a hurricane.

  But a mage-wind rushed past them toward the Heart’s power, a cold, cold wall that felt different than a Cloch Mór. Slow magic . . . he realized. The wave from the Heart met the wall in an explosion of golden fire that was bright even in his true eyes. The wall of slow magic cracked and fell, but not before it dissipated most of the power of Ennis’ strike. The power buffeted them, burned them, raked claws across their skin and sent a few of the riders down, but Kayne and Padraic managed to hold to the horse.

  “Who?” Padraic husked, and Kayne saw them at the same moment: farther up the High Road, there were several figures dressed in the white clóca of the Order of Inishfeirm, and with them—impossibly—was his greada: Kyle MacEagan, with the Cloch Mór Firerock bright in his hand.

  Kayne felt, for the first time, a surge of hope. “To the Narrows!” he shouted to the riders. “Back! Back!”

  The Daoine riders thundered in retreat toward their rescuers, who turned with them as they all fled up the High Road to the Narrows.

  57

  The Unstoppable Flood

  OUTSIDE, THE SUN was failing and the first stars had already appeared in the east. In a few stripes or less, the mage-lights would crawl the roof of the night.

  “We lost nearly half of those with us,” Kayne told the officers, mages, and assorted representatives crowded in the tent. “That’s a heavy cost. Still, the Arruk must have lost three or four for each of ours. We could hope for no better.” He turned to his greada, standing with arms crossed over his chest in the midst of a crowd of Inishlanders. “It would have been far worse had the mages of the Order not been there.”

  Kyle MacEagan nodded to his great-son with a smile, and his servant Alby, standing alongside him, also smiled, but few of the Riocha officers of the Tuatha army responded and the Fingerlanders stared stonily. There was a rift in the tent, but not of fabric—the Inish stood in one place, those of the Tuatha in another, and the Fingerlanders in yet a third, and between them all there was air and the lone figure of Banrion Edana. “In truth, we were lucky to be here at all,” Kayne’s greada responded. “That we made the voyage so quickly was due to Maestra Caomhánach and Stormbringer, as well as the magic of Bhralhg of the Saimhóir, who shepherded us here.” He shook his head. “Having seen what you’re facing, I wish we could have brought more than the few we did.”

  “We’re grateful to Rí MacEagan, the people of Inish Thuaidh, and the Order of Inishfeirm for coming to us in our greatest need,” Edana said. She smiled, but her smile was alone. The Riocha nearest her glared suspiciously at their Inishlanders counterparts. Edana’s glance toward her peers told Kayne that she realized it as well. “The Inish have done more to protect the Tuatha than most of the Ríthe,” Edana added loudly.

  Rodlhann O Morchoe scoffed loudly. “And the Fingerlanders have done nothing, I suppose. It’s us who have had the Arruk crawling through our farms and villages for the last hands of days.”

  Edana nodded to Rodhlann. “Aye, I apologize. The Fingerlanders have done most of all, and deserve much credit.” Her attention turned back to the Riocha. “I look at those who came here to defend our land against the Arruk, and I wonder: where are the Clochs Mór that should be here? Where are the green-robes of the Order of Gabair? Where are the armies of the other Tuatha?” The Riocha shuffled uneasily at that.

  “They may come yet,” Kayne said, but none of them in the tent believed that, and he didn’t believe it himself. “So might Lámh Shábhála. We don’t know. All we can do here is hold as long as we can, and take as many Arruk as we can with us to the Mother.”

  “It’s that abomination with them that we’ll have to kill,” muttered one of the Riocha, and that brought Kayne’s head around sharply.

  “If it comes to that,” he said, and everyone in the tent heard the emphasis on the first word, “then I will do what has to be done.”

  “Ennis is just a boy,” Edana agreed. “A child. He doesn’t understand what he’s doing or who he’s fighting, and he may yet be turned.”

  “And our people die while Kayne Geraghty and the Inish decide?” another of the officers commented, but before Kayne could answer, the flaps to the tent opened and Padraic Mac Ard limped in, holding heavily to a crutch. His face was pallid, drawn with lines of pain, but he moved slowly next to his mam, turning awkwardly to face the Riocha as Snarl swung on its chain around his neck.

  “I would have been the one saying that, not a half-day ago,” he said. “But I stand here now only because of Kayne Geraghty. I’ve seen what those who love him will do for him. I’ve witnessed his judgment and leadership in battle and I tell you this: he will make the decision that needs to be made, whatever it might be, and I . . . I will follow him without question or hesitation.” His breath hissed inward, his face twisted, and his hand tightened around the crutch that held him up. “So will the rest of you, if we’re to have any hope at all. It’s time to forget that we’re Riocha or Inishlander or Fingerlander. We’re all Daoine—that’s enough for the damned Arruk. It should be enough for us.”

  “It’s still Geraghty’s brother out there with the Arruk,” one of the tiarna shot back. “With the Heart.”

  “Aye, ’tis,” Padraic agreed. “And it was my da . . .” he hesitated there, swallowing hard, and everyone saw the anguished glance he gave Edana, “. . . my da who was part of the conspiracy that caused that to happen. But he . . . he saw that he was wrong in the end, and he was strong enoug
h to try to rectify that. Kayne has that same strength; he’ll do what he must. You will, too, all of you—or if you won’t, you should go now. Go back and wait for the Arruk to come to you. Mam—Banrion Mac Ard—will give you leave.”

  Padraic waited, leaning heavily on the crutch under his shoulder. No one spoke. Finally Padraic nodded. He hobbled around slightly to face Kayne. “You’re the Ard, Kayne Geraghty,” he said, “no matter what the other Ríthe say. Give us your orders. Tell us what we need to do.”

  Kayne grasped Padraic’s shoulder, his fingers squeezing. For the moment, that was enough. Then he began to speak.

  The Narrows was painted with a palette of black and white. The sky was the gray of wood ash, and the clouds were heavy and somber. A thin rain fell, gray curtains flowing over a gray landscape, all the colors muted in the mist. In the hidden distance, down the slopes that led up to the long plateau of the pass itself, there came the slow, insistent beating of the Arruk drums: implacable, relentless, unstoppable, like the beating of some great beast’s heart.

  In the long climb to the summit of the Narrows, the High Road moved through a sequence of sections where cliff walls rose high on either side, so that any large force using the road was forced to slow and elongate its column. A force sufficiently familiar with the territory might have been able to split into several components and follow the convolutions of the wrinkled, folded landscape through to the rolling hills around Lough Tory, but their army would be split and the various units would take days to reassemble on the far side of the mountains. Following the High Road through the Narrows Pass was the only viable alternative. The Fingerlanders had taken advantage of the physical properties of the Narrows for generations.