by S L Farrell
The Bán Cailleach vanished . . . and reappeared on the ground as the dragon wheeled overhead spouting thick fire. The wave of energy from Treoraí’s Heart, intended for Kayne, struck Sevei fully and she shuddered with the impact, closing her eyes as Lámh Shábhála took the mage-power in and vented it out again. Crouching, Sevei caught the Heart’s energy in a mage-hand of bright emerald before it struck Kayne and threw it; one of the spires of the Narrows well to the west shattered and collapsed in a fiery gout of molten and broken rock.
She stood between Kayne and Ennis, shaking out her white hair as she rose and standing naked in the rain. She enjoyed the coolness even though the drops battered her like small fists; the moisture slaked the heat in her body, soothing her enough that she could ignore the clamor of the voices in her head.
“. . . Aye, this is what you must do . . .”
“. . . No, Sevei. Listen to me! Take the power you have and use it . . .”
“. . . you’re foolish and don’t deserve the gift you were given . . .”
“Enough,” she said to Ennis, to Kayne, to all of the contentious voices in her head. “It’s over now.” She existed mostly in the mage-world: she saw Kayne and Ennis through the colors of their clochs na thintrí; there also, close by, was Demon-Caller with Aunt Edana, Snarl with Padraic, Firerock with Greada, and Winter with one of the Fingerlanders. None of the Riocha who had attacked Kayne and Séarlait were there, she realized: none of the other Ríthe or the green-robes of the Order of Gabair except for Padraic.
She grimaced sadly. The world around her was murky and mist infested. She saw movement in the shadows: the Arruk Kralj, rushing at her, and she flicked a bare tithe of Lámh Shábhála’s power toward him. He fell back into his attendant warriors with the crack of bones, and she turned from him no more bothered than if he’d been an insect.
“No!” Ennis screamed at her—a boy’s shrill cry. But the attack that came at her from the Heart was full and masterful, and she barely managed to snare it with Lámh Shábhála. The two Great Clochs’ power burned together, searing, the forces within them intertwined and locked together. Both Sevei and Ennis were swept up in the furious tidal eddies.
“. . . The Heart is as strong as Lámh Shábhála when I held it . . .”
“. . . He could slay you if you’re not careful . . .”
“. . . Stay outside of the boy! This is folly . . .”
Time had stopped around them. Sevei could see, through the furious glare of the clochs, the Daoine soldiers and the Arruk in the field of the Narrows standing frozen in mid-motion, Kekeri caught in mid-turn in the sky above them. The energy of Lámh Shábhála flooded out from her, a constant stream holding this moment within itself.
In the light, a boy’s form was sitting.
“Ennis? It’s Sevei, Ennis. It’s your sister.”
The boy looked up, his movements stiff, as if his joints were so stiff and bound that he could only move in limited ways. “No, you’re not Sevei. Sevei’s dead. You’re the White Beast. Isibéal says you’re horrible and I need to kill you. That’s the pattern. That’s what the blue ghost means.”
“No, Ennis. I’m truly Sevei. Here . . . let me show you.” She extended the power of Lámh Shábhála toward him, fashioning an opening into her mind through which he could step and look into her thoughts and memories. But he scrambled to his feet like a puppet whose strings had been pulled, and the mage-energy within Treoraí’s Heart slammed into her once more. The impact shattered the opening she’d made, sending shards hurtling back toward her. Sevei gasped at the raw, visceral power of the attack. Spears of blood-red thrust gore-dripping points toward her, and though she shoved them aside with folds of Lámh Shábhála’s power, the droplets spattered on Sevei’s skin where they hissed and boiled and stripped away the flesh down to muscle. The smoldering burns, atop the already throbbing hurt of wielding the cloch, tore an unwilling scream from her throat, and she heard Ennis laugh. The spears came at her again, a new wave, and this time she threw a blanketing curtain around herself from which the spears rebounded. The acid of the drops sputtered and fumed against the protection but did not touch her.
With reflexive anger, she sent lightning arcing out from the stone in her hand, lancing toward Ennis in crackling, brilliant white streaks. The first few he shoved aside, laughing at her, but she continued to pour them out, faster and more powerful, until one shattered the walls he was furiously erecting and sent him falling backward from the shoulders of the Arruk who carried him. The Arruk went sprawling one way, and Ennis another. Sevei rushed forward through the breached defenses of her brother . . .
. . . and into him.
It was night inside Ennis, a twilight illuminated by candles. Ennis was sitting at a table set as if for a feast with fine plates and silver. Sevei recognized the room: one of the rooms in Mam’s chambers in Dún Laoghaire. The supper steamed on the table, half-eaten. A Taisteal woman in bright, foreign clothing was seated at the table with Ennis, and Mam was there also, slumped in her chair with her face on the delicate linen of the tablecloth, her body unmoving. Her wine was spilled, the goblet just out of the reach of her white fingers and a red pool staining the white cloth. Mam’s plate had lifted under her head, meat and sauce spilled and smeared in the red tresses of her hair. The Taisteal woman was staring at Meriel’s corpse, smiling and giggling like a mad thing. Her amusement punctuated Ennis’ greeting.
To the rear of the room, standing against the tapestry-decorated walls as if they were attendants at the meal were hand upon hand of people, Daoine and Arruk both. Their features were bloodied and broken, their skin as pale as that of maggots.
“Sit,” Ennis told Sevei. “Did you come to join us? Did Isibéal invite you?”
Sevei waited in the shadows, not wanting to come closer to the tableau. She lifted her hands and heard the rustle of a silken clóca falling back; her hands and arms were as they once had been. She touched her face; it was the face she remembered, scarless and smooth. “Ennis,” Sevei said softly, “you know me. I’m Sevei, darling. Remember? You cried so hard when I left to go to Inishfeirm; you were just five then, and you wouldn’t let go of my clóca, trying to keep me there. Do you remember that? Look at me.”
Ennis shook his head. “I don’t know you. Isibéal says I can’t trust you. She says you’re a monster.” He held up Treoraí’s Heart in his hand; she could see the jeweled facets gleaming through his thin, grimy fingers. “She talks to me through this. I can hear her in my head even though I killed her.”
The Taisteal woman giggled loudly at that, raising her hand to her mouth. She saw Sevei staring at her, and her eyes narrowed and her mouth snapped shut in a manic frown. The pool of wine crawled toward a vase of dead and decaying flowers set at the center of the table. “What does Mam say, Ennis?” Sevei said. “She must be in the Heart also. What does she tell you?”
“She doesn’t talk to me,” Ennis said, almost angrily, glaring at the body next to him at the table. “They won’t let her.”
Sevei took a step toward the table, toward the vision of her mam’s body. Isibéal hissed warningly and began to rise from the table, her mad eyes gleaming. The corpses against the wall moved with her, all of them converging on Sevei. “Maybe I can help her,” she said softly to Ennis, watching Isibéal and the others carefully. Ennis sat, not moving, locked in position. Sevei saw that her skin was metamorphosing, turning back to the scarred white skin of the Bán Cailleach; she could feel the changes crawling across her face, also. The power was still draining from Lámh Shábhála in an effort to keep them together in this place while holding back the true world, and Sevei knew she couldn’t sustain this much longer.
“Listen to me, Ennis. You shouldn’t listen to Isibéal or the others. I know the voices. I know how dangerous they are.”
In her own head, the voices of the ancient Holders cackled with mad laughter. Isibéal hissed again, and she flung her arm out across the table before Sevei could reach her mam. Isibéal’s fingers
locked in Meriel’s hair, lifting her face up from the table. Her face was a rotting skull with grave worms crawling from her eyes and her nostrils. Her mouth opened; a black, swollen tongue protruded. “You lie! You’re the White Beast. The Enemy,” it shrilled, the voice a foul wind that carried the smell of carrion. Isibéal’s mouth moved with the same words at the same time.
Sevei ignored the apparition. She watched Ennis. “That’s not Mam, Ennis. We both know it. Let me try. I can find her in the Heart. She’ll tell you the truth. Mam would never lie to you.”
“It’s too late,” he said urgently. “I’ve found the pattern and I have to dance to it or I’ll die. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Mam would help you, Ennis. She would tell you what’s right to do.”
“The pattern . . .” Ennis said, and aqua shades of him shivered around him. “The blue ghosts . . .”
“Mam can send the ghosts away.”
“No!” he shouted, and the corpse of her mam shouted with him, the two voices intertwined and strong with the power of the Heart. Ennis ran to his mam, putting his arms around the skeletal figure. As Sevei watched, the light of the Heart in Ennis’ hand enveloped her: the death process reversed itself and it was her mam standing there again. Isibéal, standing next to him, smiled at Sevei. “You see,” they said, all of them in the room: Ennis, Mam, the Taisteal, the Daoine, and the Arruk. Their united voices battered at her. “You lie! You’re the White Beast, the Abomination. You should be destroyed like a wild animal. That’s the pattern. That’s the way.”
“Ennis . . .” She took a step toward him, toward them. He was melting into Mam’s body, his body glowing the color of a storm sea and drawing the azure light around him until there were two images of Ennis glaring at her. Sevei reached toward Ennis/Mam with her hand, with Lámh Shábhála. He pushed her back with the Heart, but she continued to force herself forward, to take one step, then another. She touched the blue image. Touched him.
She could see Ennis, held in a cobalt shell: fractured and broken, his mind all angles and razored edges, the Ennis that she’d once known scattered in this new image and held in by the gleaming cage. “Oh, Ennis,” she whispered with a sob. “What have they done to you?”
“Go away!” he screamed at her, his voice shrill.
“Let me help you.”
“Go away!” With the throat-shredding bellow, Ennis sent the energy of the Heart pouring out at her. The unexpected assault threw Sevei out of his mind, hurled her past the dining room and the cowering Taisteal woman and the dead onlookers, slamming her to the ground in the rain and mist of the Narrows. The armies lurched into motion around her; she heard swords clashing against jaka, the howls of the Arruk and the war cry of the Daoine, the chants of the Svarti and the thunder of the Clochs Mór. Kekeri roared overhead and vanished into the clouds. The Arruk Kralj was pulling himself to his feet with the staff of his jaka. Kayne was astride his horse, staring at Sevei in confusion and shock.
And Ennis was there also, as well as the stunned Arruk who he’d ridden. Ennis lifted the Heart in one hand, his spell-stick in the other. He seemed to glow like a moon in fog. “Die, White Beast,” he said to her, and gestured.
The power of the Heart collided with that of Lámh Shábhála, and the sound of Sevei’s wail was lost in the thunder of the mage-energy crackling about her. The voices of the Holders and the voices of memory cried with her.
“. . . you let this happen because you’re afraid . . .”
“. . . afraid . . .”
“. . . weak . . .”
Yet two voices came strong and vivid to her. One was her gram. “. . . he’s your brother. My great-son. You have to save him . . .”
“Only those who come long after can truly judge us . . .” She heard Carrohkai’s voice loudest of all.
Sevei rose. She accepted the pain, feeling it but not letting it touch her. She touched Lámh Shábhála as Ennis sent a new attack cascading from the Heart toward her. He wanted to crush her, to annihilate her. She could feel his intent and desire welling from him, from the blue shell that held him.
“. . . You could heal him yet, bring him back . . .”
It was what she wanted most: to heal Ennis and bring him back. It was what she wanted for all those she’d lost: for Gram, for poor Dillon, for Da and Mam, for Tara and Ionhar, for Séarlait, for Máister Kirwan. But she couldn’t bring them back.
Yet she might be able to save Ennis. She might be able to plunge back into his mind and find the child Ennis who was lost and locked deep inside. Perhaps she could pull him from the madness. Perhaps she could banish the ghosts that haunted him. Perhaps.
But if she did that, there would be nothing left in Lámh Shábhála, not if she had to hold off the Heart for the time it would take. And there was too much to do here. Too much . . .
“You must choose . . .” It could have been Gram speaking, or Carrohkai. She could no longer tell.
“Ennis,” she called again, desperate. “It’s Sevei and Kayne. We’re here, right in front of you. You have to stop. I’ll take the Arruk where they need to go, I promise. But you have to stop now.”
“Listen to her,” Kayne shouted at Ennis, then to Sevei. “Sevei, please don’t hurt him!”
The only answer to them was a grimace from Ennis. The spell-stick in his hand shifted as he aimed it toward Kayne. The Kralj rose from the tangle of his attendants, loping forward with his jaka upraised. The space that Kayne had carved out with Blaze was closing, and the battle would overtake them again in a few breaths.
Strangely, the Arruk who Ennis had rode pushed himself to his feet at the same time, and his jaka caught the Kralj’s weapon, stopping the Arruk chieftain in full charge. Sevei had no time to wonder at that.
“. . . you can be traitor or hero . . .”
She reached deep into Lámh Shábhála and dredged out the power with her mind—all the mage-energy within the stone—and shaped it. In her mind, she was Lámh Shábhála, holding it . . . holding it . . .
And bringing it smashing down.
Ennis shifted his focus too late. The spell-stick shattered in his hand, the energy within the Heart flaring. He screamed as Lámh Shábhála crashed past his defenses, Sevei pushing more and more of the cloch’s reservoirs into the effort. The pain was nearly intolerable, and the scars on her skin glowed as if a smithy’s forge burned inside her body. Sevei closed her eyes; she saw only with the mage-vision as the whirlpool of maddened force spread over the Narrows from the two of them. They fought to control it: Sevei and the blue-shelled Ennis. “Don’t hurt me,” the blue thing that held Ennis pleaded. “I’m your brother, Sevei. Don’t hurt me.” Then it smiled, as if expecting her to hold back the onslaught, and it grasped for the energy itself.
But she hadn’t listened to it or let go. She caught Ennis in a hand of emerald and pushed him back, and he gasped in surprise. “The pattern,” he said. “It’s not supposed to happen this way . . .”
Uncertainty trembled the Heart. Sevei saw the opening and pushed forward.
“Sevei!” Ennis called in that instant, and she finally heard the true Ennis—the child, her brother—in his voice. The blue shell around him crumbled to powder and dust. He was crying, sobbing. He held out his arms toward her pleadingly.
Lámh Shábhála fountained in white sheets of flame around Ennis; Treoraí’s Heart caught within it. Sevei heard Isibéal’s wail, Gyl Svarti’s cry, the screams of all the murdered ones trapped there, and she plunged past them to another presence, one pushed far down into the stone. “Mam,” she said. “I miss you so much.”
Meriel’s figure emerged from shadow, limned in cold fire. “Sevei, my love,” she said. Her face was twisted with sadness, her eyes dark from weeping. “Ennis . . .” she said, and she turned from Sevei to him. “Oh, Ennis, my poor baby.”
“Mam!” he said, and it was the cry of a child, touched with a wail that became a racking sob. “Oh, Mam, they wouldn’t let me hear you, and I was so scared, and I had to s
tay with the blue ghost’s dance.” He stopped. “The dance is over now, isn’t it?” he said.
“Aye, my dear,” Meriel told him, and she looked at Sevei as she spoke. “Aye, finally it is.”
“Mam?” Sevei said, her voice choking. Meriel smiled.
“I know, my love,” she said, hugging Ennis. “I know.” Meriel nodded to Sevei.
The light from Lámh Shábhála enveloped them both, and Ennis cried out as Meriel’s form hugged him. Sevei heard Kayne and the Arruk whom Ennis had ridden scream. Ennis’ cry ended in a strange, falling wail, and when the light faded from around him, there was only a charred, twisted body on the ground.
Cima saw Kurhv Kralj recover himself. Their leader snatched up his fallen jaka and charged toward the White Beast with a howl. Cima hesitated. “I’ll take the Arruk where they need to go,” the White Beast had said, and she had called Ennis Svarti by name, had called herself his sister. Cima knew the importance the bluntclaws gave to their family relationships, and he saw how Ennis reacted.
He remembered Ennis leaking water from his eyes in the night. He remembered the grief the boy felt over his losses.
And yet here were some of his family, miraculously alive again, and they were trying to help him.
“I’ll take the Arruck where they need to go.”
Cima tightened his hands around his own jaka. He moved to intercept Kurhv Kralj. Their jakas met in midstrike. “No,” he told the Kralj. “You can’t.”
Kurhv Kralj only glared. He stepped back and lifted his jaka again, and this time the blade would have come down on Cima. A true Arruk would have stood there, would have met force with force, and the strongest would have won. Kurhv Kralj would have won.
But Cima did something that a Daoine warrior might have done. He stepped to the side, sliding forward at the same time and slicing his jaka in a long, horizontal blow that caught Kurhv Kralj in the abdomen. Kurhv Kralj grunted, his jaka dropping from his hands in midstrike. He made a strangling, choking sound deep in his throat as his blood spattered over Cima’s scales, as a flood of it poured over Cima’s blade.
