by S L Farrell
“It begins now,” Jenna said.
“And it can end as quickly,” a voice answered, “if you’ll let it, my sister.”
Sevei whirled around to see a red-haired man in the dark green clóca and léine of the Order of Gabair, in age close to her own parents. She recognized him even as Jenna gave a cough of wry surprise—Sevei had seen him often, talked with him many, many times over the years. Uncle Doyle . . .
“I should have known you’d be involved in this, Doyle Mac Ard,” Jenna said. “And that false Máister O Blaca’s out there with his cloch, too, to send you over here. I’m surprised you’d expose yourself this way—it’s not your style to be in front of the troops.”
“I’m only part of it this time, my dear sister,” Doyle said. “This wasn’t my plan—well, not entirely. I’m only following orders.”
“And whose plan would that be? O Blaca’s? No . . . One of the Ríthe, then, or all of them?”
Doyle shook his head in answer. “It’s over this time, Jenna. You know what I want. Give it to me and we can still avoid bloodshed. You have Máister Kirwan here and my great-niece; I should think you wouldn’t want them hurt.”
Jenna laughed. “If the Order of Gabair thinks it can take Lámh Shábhála with just a few Clochs Mór, then you haven’t learned any of the lessons from your past.”
Sevei saw a brief smile drift over Doyle’s lips. “That’s a poor bluff, Sister, but it’s one I would have made also, in your place. I know the clochs na thintri as well as any cloudmage of Inishfeirm and that wasn’t Stormbringer that cleared away the squall. You’ve used up most of Lámh Shábhála’s power and the mage-lights won’t come for a stripe or more yet. There’s no hope here, Jenna.”
Sevei heard the rustle of cloth behind her, and Doyle’s gaze went to Máister Kirwan. Doyle’s hand rose immediately to the red-and-gold stone around his neck. “Don’t, Máister. I remember from Falcarragh the skill you have with that cloch, but even if you could defeat Snapdragon, there are two full hands of Clochs Mór out there waiting.” Doyle gestured at the ships, now very close to Uaigneas, close enough that Sevei could see the gardai crowding the rails and the grim faces of the Riocha mages beyond. One of them was familiar to her: Padraic Mac Ard, who she’d once imagined might be her future husband, now wearing the green clóca of the Order of Gabair. He saw her too, and his face tightened.
Sevei clutched Dillon’s hand tightly. “That many clochs . . .” Sevei breathed. She didn’t realize she’d said it aloud until Doyle’s grass-green gaze went to her.
“Aye, Sevei,” he said to her. “That many. Enough even if Lámh Shábhála were full. Enough for Máister Kirwan’s Snarl and whatever that clochmion you’re wearing might do. And we’ve spent a week preparing slow magics as well. Jenna, don’t be a fool. You know what I want. Give it to me so we can end this.”
The grief and fear washed over Sevei as Doyle stared at her gram. Sevei was trembling, and her fingers stroked the cage of her clochmion. She opened the stone with her mind, letting the power slide out, searching. I could bring a dragon. I could have it smash their ships and send them to the bottom, and I wouldn’t care if it took me down with them. . . .
But there was no answering call. The energy of the clochmion spread out to its limits and found nothing. Why did you give me this useless thing? she raged to the Mother-Creator. Why are you allowing this to happen to me? To us?
“Am I wrong?” Doyle was saying. “Go on, Sister. Open Lámh Shábhála and strike me down—you know you could do that much before the other clochs retaliated.” When Jenna didn’t move, Doyle nodded. He held out his hand. “I’ll take it now,” he said. “I’ll take what should have been my da’s.”
Jenna looked at the hand without moving. “You killed Meriel. My daughter and your niece. And Owaine, too. And no doubt all the rest of my great-children. Sevei’s already told me.”
Doyle’s gaze rested for a moment on Sevei again. “Ah, so the rumors are true—she can sense what happens to her mam and her twin.” He took a breath. “Dead they might be, but I didn’t kill them, Sister. I’m here, across the Tuatha from them. Nor is it what I wanted. I argued strongly against that, but I was only one voice . . .”
“The blood’s on your hands, Doyle Mac Ard, however far away you are. You’ve committed fingal—you’ve slain your own kin. The Mother-Creator will never forgive you.”
“An odd accusation, coming from you,” Doyle retorted. “And I’m tired of the chatter, Sister. I want my cloch. Now.”
Sevei saw a strange expression come over Jenna’s face, one of almost frightening calm. Jenna took a step backward from Doyle, then another, until her back was to the railing of the Uaigneas. The waves rose green and frothing behind her. “What makes you think I would ever give the stone to you, Doyle? I’d rather it was lost at the bottom of the ocean for the rest of eternity than see it in your hand.”
With that, before any of them could move, Jenna took the necklace from around her neck and flung it into the waves. She started to dive after it—Sevei knew what she intended, even as Jenna crouched: Jenna would turn into seal form and find the cloch once again as it drifted down, with eyes that saw much better than Daoine ones and a form that could stay submerged for long minutes. Doyle must have known it as well: as Jenna started to jump, Sevei felt the prickling of magical energy being released. A golden dragon shimmered in the air just alongside the ship; the long neck arced back and it vomited fire that enveloped Jenna. She heard her gram scream, a wail of torment that made Sevei open her mouth to cry out in sympathy. The dragon’s claws raked over Jenna’s body, sending her bloody and broken to the deck, her clothes smoldering. Sevei launched herself at Doyle even as Máister Kirwan opened his cloch, as the energy of the Clochs Mór erupted all around them.
She would never be entirely certain what happened in the next few chaotic breaths. She saw the dragon reach down with its gaping, dagger-jawed mouth and snatch up her gram, but then Máister Kirwan’s cloch attacked, its power snarling the dragon in blue-white ropes that hissed and crackled like mad things. Doyle’s mage-dragon reared back, roaring in pain, and as its mouth opened, Jenna’s body went tumbling into the roiling sea.
“Gram!” Sevei cried out, struggling to reach the rail on that side even though Dillon held her arm to stop her. She could feel the tingling pressure of magical energy all around her. The air above them wavered like the air above sun-heated metal; Sevei caught the faint outlines of a great hand hovering there for just an instant, and then a giant fist slammed itself into the deck of Uaigneas just in front of them, shattering the oaken planks and tearing Sevei away from Dillon. She half-fell, half-flew across a deck that was no longer level.
Sevei crashed hard against the railing on the seaward side of the ship, the breath going out of her with the impact, and she heard ribs pop and crack under her clóca. Uaigneas groaned like a wounded beast, sluggishly righting itself. Not far away, Sevei glimpsed Doyle, somehow still on his feet and unhurt. Her great-uncle’s gaze found her, and she saw in his eyes a raw, unpitying anger. She started to try to rise, to run, but he called out to someone she couldn’t see, pointing to her. “Don’t let the girl reach the water! Make sure she’s dead! All the Aoire spawn must be dead.”
She saw a thicket of bright yellow spears appear in the air, rushing toward her. Sevei threw herself between the broken uprights of the ship’s rail, but even as she fell into the air, she felt the stunning impact of a spear point in the back, and another ripping through the muscles of her arm.
She heard Dillon call for her, saw him fling himself toward her and then the fist came down again, smashing her lover to the deck.
Sevei didn’t remember anything after that: not the pain, not the fall, not the final cold embrace of the sea.
13
In the Bracken
A HAND AND ONE of them managed to stagger away from the carnage into the brush-laden darkness of the hillsides. Kayne, Bartel, Garvan, Sean, Uilliam, and Flynn. Garvan had taken arro
ws in his right arm and left leg; Sean and Uilliam were both so badly wounded that Kayne knew they might as easily die as live; Flynn was only barely alive. Kayne managed to pull the unconscious Flynn from under the carcass of his horse and that of an Airgiallaian rider, who lay dead beside him. With the help of the others, he half-dragged, half-carried the man away from the scene of the battle.
Limping, sometimes crawling, they managed to slide and careen down the muddy hillside of the path and into a bracken-infested ravine. They could hear the sounds of the battle above them subside; not long after, Kayne saw a hand of gardai in red and white make their way slowly down the hillside, obviously searching in the darkness for survivors. Flynn was moaning in his delirium, and Kayne gestured to the others to keep him silent. The gardai stopped several strides upslope of the ravine. “Nothing here but mud and bramble,” he heard one of them say. “I don’t fancy getting myself all scratched up or having a leg broken looking for poor bastards who might or might not be out here. Let the damn Riocha come look if they want them.”
The others grunted agreement, and the group went back up to the road, sheathing their swords and grumbling all the while as they climbed.
“They’ll be back, Tiarna,” Bartel said, lifting his hand from over Flynn’s mouth. They were all looking at Kayne. “When the sun comes. They’ll see the marks where we slid down here. They’ll find us if we stay, if we aren’t frozen or already dead by then.”
None of the others spoke. They only looked at Kayne, waiting for him—waiting, he realized, for his orders. He stared upward through the thicket toward the terrible silence above them, the quiet of the dead. He imagined his da’s corpse there among the others, his once-keen eyes open and staring out at nothing, his body mutilated and bloody. He felt rage surge through him and a keen desire to rush back up there, to cry the caointeoireacht na cogadh and charge at the mass of Airgiallaians with waving sword, to take with him to the Mother-Creator as many of their blood-bonded souls as he could.
And if he did that, then what did Owaine’s death matter? If he did, then those here who looked to him for answers in this night, would also die.
The mage-lights would come, not too long from now, and he could take Blaze as his own. The Cloch Mór Owaine had given him felt heavy around his neck, a burden more weighty than lead.
“We need to move as far from here as we can during the night,” he said to them. “No use going west, not with the Airgiallaians holding the pass. We’ll try to head east, back toward the Wall, Harik, and the rest of our people. How is Flynn?”
Garvan glanced down, then placed his ear near the man’s mouth. “Dead,” he answered. He glanced at Bartel, who shrugged.
“Then we’ll put his body there, in the open.” Kayne pointed to the lip of the ravine above them. “With the sun, they won’t miss that someone came down from the pass this way. Maybe they won’t look farther than poor Flynn’s body.” He doubted the subterfuge would work, but the other men stirred and he glimpsed the first signs of a faint hope in their faces: despite the rain that poured down on them, despite the cold and the darkness. With the sight, he also felt the same hope kindle in himself. “I don’t know why we were attacked by our own, but I do know that our companions gave their lives so we’d have a chance to escape and avenge them, and we won’t fail them.”
He scowled up into the storm. “We won’t fail, we won’t forget, and we’ll make certain that no one else forgets either,” he said. “But for now, let’s leave here.”
They moved eastward as well as they could given the difficult terrain and their injuries. They clung together in a group, each helping the other. Kayne found that his leg grew worse, not better, and he began to wonder if it hadn’t been fractured. His ribs gave him sharp, angry pains any time he tried to draw a deep breath. Bartel and Garvan each found a stout limb to use as a crutch, hobbling one-legged as best they could. Sean staggered along with them; he and Uilliam had been in the wagons, both previously wounded during the campaign, and now again. An Airgiallaian arrow had caught Sean in the belly. Uilliam had the most trouble, with a leg broken two weeks before during a battle with the Arruk and now his sword arm dangling useless and dead from a cut that gaped open to the bone in his shoulder. They’d bound Uilliam’s wound as well as they could, but the bandage was soaked with blood and Uilliam’s face, even in the fleeting moments of moonlight through the fast-moving rain clouds above, was pale and drawn. Kayne tried to keep them to a path that involved the least climbing, but the mountains flung jagged feet in front of them, forcing them to either trek north or south around them or drag themselves over sharp inclines slick with rain.
Less than a stripe into their retreat, the mage-lights came, illuminating the banks of clouds with multicolored light. Kayne could feel Blaze pulling at his mind with its yearning to be filled with them, and he couldn’t ignore it. “We’ll rest here,” he told the others, who sank down gratefully. Kayne pulled Blaze out from under his léine. It seemed to nearly leap into his hand with eagerness, and Kayne gasped—his ribs protesting—at the sensations as his fingers closed around the gem. It was like being with a lover, a needy lover who demanded your full presence and insisted on being the center of your world. Kayne had wondered whether he would know how to fill a cloch na thintrí with the power of the mage-lights; he knew now that the stone itself would show him the way. He could feel it guiding his clumsy mind, showing him the way to open the cloch to the lights. Above him, tendrils of orange fire and yellow flame circled, then leaped toward his upraised hand, wrapping around him. He gasped again, this time because of the fiery touch that was at once painful and wonderful.
The contact with the mage-lights seemed to take but a few minutes, though he knew from having watched his da that it might have been as long as a half a stripe. He could feel Blaze drinking in the power, and at the same time he felt the connection with all the other clochs na thintrí throughout Talamh an Ghlas. His da had told him that he could always feel the presence of Kayne’s gram and Lámh Shábhála, “like the sun through a thin haze of clouds” was the way he described it. But though Kayne could sense the other Clochs Mór—and especially the one called Winter all too near to him—he didn’t feel anything that could have been the overriding presence of his gram. He wondered at that even as the mage-lights reluctantly left him and faded from sight.
Blaze was full and seething under his touch. He wondered how he could handle that power. He had no idea how to actually use the cloch; his da had rarely spoken of it. He knew that there was indeed mental skill involved in the wielding of Clochs Mór, and that inexperienced mages inevitably lost the battle should they be pitted against a trained mage from the Order of Inishfeirm or the Order of Gabair.
He hoped he wouldn’t need to learn that lesson firsthand, and soon. Regretfully, he released Blaze and placed it back under his léine. “We need to move on,” he told the others. “They’ll be looking for us, and the mage that’s with them knows I’m here now. They’ll be moving this way, if they weren’t before.”
He limped over to them, feeling even more exhausted now than he had before and trying not to show it to them. He reached down to help Uilliam to his feet, but the man shook his head. “Leave me, Tiarna. I’m just slowing down the rest of you.”
Garvan, Bartel, and Sean said nothing. Kayne realized that if he nodded his acceptance of Uilliam’s sacrifice, they wouldn’t protest. He was the leader of their bedraggled troop; the guilt of any decision would be his to bear. Uilliam was right—if they left him behind, the four of them could travel somewhat faster, despite their own injuries.
Kayne found himself thinking about his da. He knew what Owaine would have done in the same circumstances. There was no question in his mind about that. Even a day ago, Kayne might not have believed that his da’s choice would be the right one. But now . . .
Kayne reached down with his hand again. “We’re slow enough on our own, Uillliam,” he said to the man. “I’m not leaving a companion behind to be killed,
not when he can still walk and fight if he has to. We’re going to make it, and you’re going to be with us when we do. Now, take my hand . . .”
Uilliam, grimacing, clasped his finger around Kayne’s wrist and allowed himself to be helped up. “Put your arm around my shoulder,” Kayne told him. “I’ll take your weight for a bit. Once the sun starts to rise, we might be able to find shelter . . .”
In the light of false dawn, they came across a small river chattering white-watered and fast through a valley. The walls of two great hills pressed in on either side, green-covered, with hidden rivulets cascading down under ferns, bushes, and small trees. A meadow of tall grass spread out along one side of the stream and they heard the dull clanging of bells, the baaing of sheep, and the barking of a dog. Someone was singing—a decent baritone, the song touched with the accent of the Fingerland—and as they came to a bend in the river, they saw a cottage in a copse of trees beyond. Peat smoke curled from the stone chimney to the rear, and the thatch roof looked old and in need of repair, the walls retaining only clinging fragments of the whitewash that had once brightened them. A fieldstone fence marked the outline of a tiny planted field, and sheep roamed in the grass near the water, with a black-and-white dog watching the herd from the top of the low wall. The dog noticed them at the same moment, barking loudly, and Kayne saw a gray-bearded man in a dirty clóca and furs rise from a stump in the yard, trailing tendrils of pipeweed. The man stared in their direction, then walked slowly toward them.
He stopped several strides away, his bushy eyebrows raised, one hand brushing back the straggling long locks of white on the sides of his bald skull, the other still holding the smoldering pipe. “We need help,” Kayne, still holding Uilliam, called to him. “Come here, and help me get this man to your cottage.”
“Aye, I would say you need help,” the man answered thoughtfully, without moving. “The question is whether I should be giving it or not.”