by S L Farrell
The man took a step forward into the light. She saw the flattened face, the skin the color of bark, the thick eye ridge below the high forehead, below which deep-set and dark eyes regarded her: a Bunús Muintir. He appeared to be as old as Jenna or Máister Kirwan—not yet a true ancient like Keira, but with hair rapidly graying, a beard that extended to the middle of his chest and a face that showed the carved lines of the years. In his right hand, as a staff, he clutched a long oaken branch stripped of its bark. The flaring top was carved with filigrees and knots. He had a leather bag draped over one shoulder and, like Keira, he wore furs rather than cloth, bound around him by leather strips.
“You saw me because I allowed it,” he told her. He spoke in the Daoine language, in a pleasant alto voice that was colored with an odd accent. “And my name? I’m called Beryn. I am the Protector of Thall Coill. And I know you: you are Sevei, the great-daughter of the First Holder.”
“How do you know me? Have we met?”
“We’ve never met, and I know because we Bunús speak to all those who can talk,” he answered. “I also know the First Holder and the Holder of Treoraí’s Heart are dead. I’m sorry for your loss, Sevei, more than you know.”
Sevei blinked back sudden, unbidden tears, not wanting the man to see her cry. “Thank you. Did you know Gram or Mam? I know they knew Keira and I met her once myself, when . . .” She stopped. The man was smiling at her.
“I met your great-mam Jenna long ago, when I was pledged to Lomán, who was the Protector here before me. I was even younger then than you are now. The First Holder frightened me and I think Lomán as well, though he tried not to show it and wouldn’t admit it. She was so powerful already . . .”
Sevei gave a short laugh that sent a tear tracking down her cheek. She smeared it away with a finger. “She scared many people, I’m afraid. Me, too, sometimes.”
“She could have been more than she was,” Beryn said.
Old anger and irritation flashed in Sevei. “What do you mean? She was the First Holder, and Máister Kirwan said that she held Lámh Shábhála far longer than most First Holders. I know those with the Clochs Mór feared her.”
Beryn didn’t answer. “You must be hungry and cold, Sevei. Come with me.”
“Did you know I was coming?”
“I know everything that touches this place,” he told her. He turned away from her, walking slowly back toward the darkness under the trees. He used the walking stick, she saw, leaning on it, and she could see that he limped as if with some old injury.
“Wait,” she called after him, but he continued to walk. Sevei glanced back once at the sea and to the distant line of mountains across above which the dragon had vanished. Then she hurried after the Bunús Muintir, following him under the seemingly endless canopy of trees.
Under the trees, the sunlight turned cold and thin. The air she breathed tasted as ancient as the trees themselves, as if it had been trapped there for centuries, held in by the weight of the leaves and branches above. Beryn moved with surprising grace and ease, making almost no sound as he slid through the shadows, while Sevei stumbled along behind him, tripping over unseen roots, her booted feet cracking dead branches and scuffling the carpet of dead leaves. As they walked, Sevei became aware that something was padding along close behind her and off to her left. She turned to look and almost immediately fell to her knees as the toe of her boot caught under a hidden vine. At the same moment, there was motion to her right: gray fur dappled with brown, and a body larger and far more muscular than her own. The head, a toothy muzzle, leered at her, a red tongue panting over the teeth as yellow-shot eyes regarded her hungrily.
A dire wolf. “Beryn!” Sevei managed to call as the wolf slid with fluid, muscular grace to stand over her. Its breath smelled of raw meat. Beryn stopped, and the wolf’s head swiveled to glance at him. It growled.
Beryn growled back and received a snarling response. Sevei realized that the two were conversing. The wolf’s claws dug at the soft earth, digging deep furrows, and Sevei could all too well envision those claws tearing at her flesh the same way. If the wolf chose to attack, there would be no time for Beryn to respond. She would be dead with the first slash of talons or crush of teeth. She started to back away and the wolf glared at her with baleful eyes and slavering jaws; she stopped. Beryn snarled something to the wolf and it lowered its head. The creature sniffed once in Sevei’s direction, then bounded away, vanishing into the forest’s gloom.
Sevei began to breathe again. “How did you do that?”
Beryn laughed—she found the laugh as pleasant as his voice. “That was Kiraac, the current pack leader of the dire wolves who live here. He smelled you and wanted to know whether you were under my protection or not.” Beryn grinned. “I told him you were.”
“Thank the Mother for that.”
Beryn nodded and the smile slowly melted away. “There are things here that I can’t protect you from. There are more intelligences out there than either you or I realize, and more continue to awake from long slumbers with each turn of the seasons. I think that’s what most Holders of Lámh Shábhála have never realized—that the power they wield is not only for Daoine or Bunús Muintir, but for all.”
“Gram knew,” Sevei protested, but Beryn shook his head.
“No, she didn’t. Not enough. But she might have, if . . .” He stopped. “We’re close now,” he said finally. “Just several double-hands of strides.”
He turned and continued walking. Sevei wanted to ask him more, but he gave her no chance, moving so quickly that she had to hurry to keep up. He stopped at last before what seemed to be an impenetrable screen of tangled, snarled vines hung between two gigantic oaks. There, Beryn raised his staff and called out a phrase in the Bunús tongue. As Sevei watched in amazement, the vines began to writhe like leafy snakes and an opening appeared. Beryn stepped through, then gestured to Sevei. “Come,” he said. “This is my home.”
She entered, marveling.
It was a house made entirely of living plants: the roof overhead was like the doorway, a tightly-woven roof of vines. The walls were three massive oak trunks with saplings and vines filling the gaps between them, the floor a deep carpet of soft green moss. A dead oak stood in the center of the wide space, its branches hung with herbs and drying meat. A pile of stone near the rear was a hearth, and a thin, white strand of smoke curled upward and vanished into the leaves overhead. Beryn’s bed was a mound of soft straw over which a woven blanket had been laid; another bed was placed against the far corner of the room. “You may have that bed tonight,” Beryn said. “It belongs to my pledge-daughter Saraigh, but she’s away to the north for the next few days on an errand.”
Beryn set his staff against the oak tree and hobbled over to the hearth, blowing on the coals to kindle the turf he placed on the ashes. “I have a stew I started earlier,” he said. “In that pot there by the roots. Would you bring it here?”
Sevei took the handle of the heavy black iron pot, the thick liquid in it sloshing and giving off a wonderful fragrance, redolent with spices she couldn’t identify. Beryn set it on the hook of a tripod over the fire, stirred it once with a wooden spoon, and stood up with a groan and a crack of knees. “There. A half-stripe and you can eat, unless you want it cold. I have some bread and cheese until then . . .” He went to a cabinet near the hearth and brought out a loaf and a round of yellow cheese. He stuck a knife in the center of the cheese, broke off a bit of the loaf and handed the rest to Sevei. “Go on,” he said. “I can see the hunger in your face.”
She didn’t hesitate, breaking off a large hunk of the hard-crusted bread and cutting a generous slice of the cheese. She sat on Saraigh’s bed, eating and watching Beryn as he shuffled around the dwelling, taking herbs from the bag he carried and placing them on racks to dry, sniffing the herbs that were already hung up. He busied himself for a time without speaking, sometimes singing to himself as he worked: songs with words in the Bunús Muintir language and melodies that sounded disco
rdant and strange to Sevei’s ears. Finally, he stopped and came over to her.
“You don’t seem frightened of me,” he said. “I thought you might be.”
“Both Gram and Mam considered the Bunús Muintir friends. They were both helped by your people more than once.”
“Lomán had a pledge-son before he took me. The boy attacked the First Holder when she was weak and tried to take the cloch from her. And Lomán wasn’t particularly helpful to the First Holder either, except under duress.”
“I suspect that if you wanted to kill or hurt me, you could have done it easily. Am I wrong?”
A smile. “No. There are many ways to die here, and those who come to Thall Coill without being invited often find them.”
“That implies I was invited.”
“You’re welcome here, aye.” He went to the fire, stirred the stew again, and tasted it. The spicy odor filled the room and Sevei’s stomach growled in response. “It’s ready. Would you like some?”
“Please,” Sevei answered with such fervor that Beryn laughed. He filled a bowl, found a spoon and brought them over to her. She ate hungrily; he ate also, more slowly, sitting on his own bed and watching her. When she was done, she set the bowl down on the floor. “Thank you,” she said. “That was very good.” When he nodded, she held his gaze. “Are you going to tell me why I’m here?”
Beryn set down his bowl also. “You don’t know?”
She shook her head.
“You’re here to see whether you can succeed where your gram failed.”
“I don’t understand.”
He gave her a quiet, almost shy smile. “You will. Tomorrow. For now, rest, and I will show you more of Thall Coill.”
25
Choices Made
NOT MANY OF THOSE who weren’t Fingerlanders had ever heard of the Hall of the Clans, and even fewer had ever glimpsed it. The first time he glimpsed the hall, Kayne found himself gaping around him like a child as he looked around, clutching at Séarlait’s arm, wound through his own.
The “hall” was a large cavern at the end of a long, twisting cave. “Once, ages ago, a river flowed through here,” Laird O’Blathmhaic had told him as they entered the cavern. “Centuries ago, after carving out these tunnels, it broke though the floor a few miles on the other side of the hall; now it runs through caverns a hundred strides below us. It left this behind . . .” He swept his arms around the cavern.
The hall glimmered like a jewel in the glow from a hundred torches set around the chamber. The walls gleamed with brightly-colored flowstone, polished and so smooth that the rippling columns appeared to be liquid themselves. The cavern sloped sharply downward toward them, so that they stood at the bottom of a natural amphitheater with uneven rows of flowstone “seats,” many of them covered with cloth pillows in the plaid colors of the various clans. At the rim of the amphitheater, a quartet of pale white stalactites and stalagmites had grown together to create massive columns. The ceiling of the hall was studded with snow-white, sparkling nodules like heavy frost.
For the last several stripes, the amphitheater had been noisy and crowded as the clansfolk had discussed (though Kayne felt that “argued” was perhaps the better description) their strategy in the wake of the Battle of Ceangail. Kayne, Harik, and their gardai had been allowed to attend the gathering but were not permitted to speak.
The clans had come away with a declaration, signed by all the lairds and banlairds and to be delivered to the Rí Morven Mac Baoill in Dathúil, a declaration that the Fingerlands no longer accepted the Rí’s control of the Fingerlands, that henceforth the Fingerlands were free and independent of Tuath Airgialla.
The declaration would be delivered to him in a box containing the head of his son Mal.
Laird O’Blathmhaic had emerged as the political leader of the nascent rebellion, not in little part because his great-daughter now held a Cloch Mór. Rodhlann O Morchoe would remain as commander of the Fingerlander forces and be responsible for strategic matters.
Now, the hall was empty of clansfolk, even—reluctantly—Séarlait. Only Kayne and the rest of his gardai remained. Barely more than three double-hands now, with nearly two double-hands of them falling during the Battle of Ceangail, they looked insignificant against the natural majesty and beauty of the Hall of Clans. Kayne stood and walked down the broad stairs carved in the flowstone until he stood at the bottom of the half bowl, looking up at them.
“We’ll speak freely here,” he said to them, though his gaze stayed mostly on Harik’s frown. “Not as commander to gardai, not as Riocha to céili giallnai or tuathánach, but as peers who have a common problem. You heard here that the clans will go to war against Tuath Airgialla—because that’s certainly what their declaration will mean. It may also mean that they will go to war against all the Tuatha, not just Tuath Airgialla. It means that those who stay here will be considered traitors and even if the clansfolk manage to win their independence, any of us who fight with them may well never be able to return to our homes. Back there, back home, everything has changed. I’m certain that the Banrion Ard, my mam, has fallen. The mage-lights tell me that my gram the First Holder no longer has Lámh Shábhála. Your Commander, my da, is now with Mam in the arms of the Mother-Creator. You’ve all seen how the Riocha will treat those who follow me. I brought you here to say this: you have a choice before you now. If you leave, on your own, I have a promise from Laird O’Blathmhaic and Rodhlann O Morchoe that you will be allowed safe passage from the Finger as long as you take an oath never to reveal any of what you know of the clans. I can’t be certain of what you’ll find awaiting you in the Tuatha, but if you say to them that you renounced me because of your loyalty to your own Rí, I suspect you’ll find forgiveness and mercy. If you stay, I can promise you nothing except more war and more battles and possibly exile here in the Finger for the rest of your life—if you survive. As for me . . . I’ll stay here and fight with the clansfolk—I’ve already made that decision. I’m staying because I need to gain vengeance for those who murdered my parents. I’m staying because I saw my da and the men who trusted and followed him cut down by those we thought were friends. I’m staying because I am no longer Riocha and no longer Tiarna and those back in the Tuatha wish the same fate on me that they gave to my da. But you . . .”
Kayne lifted his hand, grimacing a bit as healing muscles pulled. “Each of you needs to make his own decision: to stay or to go. You need to make it now. Here. Today.”
“I stay.” The voice came from the midst of the gardai: Garvan, with Bartel nodding vigorously next to him in agreement—even one-legged, Bartel had insisted on being lashed to a horse so he could fight in the battle. “Bartel, Sean, Uilliam, and me already talked about it. You pulled us out when we would’ve died, Tiarna Kayne, and then the clansfolk helped us. We’re staying.”
“Those are brave words, Garvan,” Harik said, and as the Hand rose, Garvan sat down abruptly. Harik glanced at Kayne, then to the others. “Since we’re talking as peers, I’ll be blunt,” he said. “Kayne Geraghty might say that he’s not Riocha, but that changes nothing. The blood of the First Holder and the Banrion Ard still flows in his veins, and he will always have that claim to the throne in Dún Laoghaire. If the clans should win—” the twist in his lips gave his opinion of that possibility, “—or if the political winds shift, who knows what that might mean? Tiarna Kayne also stays because he now has . . . ties with Laird O’Blathmhaic through his great-daughter—so he may become ‘Riocha’ here as well, for what that’s worth.” He scowled, and there was scorn in the glance he gave Kayne. “As to the Fingerlanders’ promise of safe passage . . .” Harik sniffed. “Those are just words, and who will know that their vow wasn’t kept if along the road those who leave all happen to die? I know that if I were laird here, I wouldn’t care to have those who know some of my secrets walking into my enemy’s camp, oath or not.”
Kayne started to protest angrily, but Harik raised his hand with a glower and a shout. “No, Tiarna! You s
aid we could speak openly and as peers, and I will speak. You had your say, now let me have mine. Let me tell them what you won’t.”
Kayne had to clench his jaw to keep from shouting back at the man. He took two long breaths, then nodded to Harik. “Say it, then.” And you will no longer be my Hand, he thought.
“The clansfolk will be crushed like ants beneath a boot,” Harik continued. “That’s the reality. There are two Clochs Mór here, aye, but the Riocha have far more clochs and far more soldiers. They probably also have Lámh Shábhála, for they wouldn’t have moved against the Banrion Ard unless they’d also made certain that the First Holder couldn’t retaliate. The clansfolk have won a single, small battle against a tiny force, that’s all, and now they’re ready to piss in the face of a hurricane. What happens when the Riocha come in force? What happens when they bring a real army to crawl over the mountains in their thousands? What happens when a dozen Clochs Mór are arrayed against the Fingerlanders’ paltry two, or when Lámh Shábhála itself takes the field under its new Holder? What happens? I’ll tell you—the clansfolk will do as they’ve always done: several of them will be killed, but most of the rest will throw down their weapons and grovel, and the lairds and banlairds will take to their mountains and caves and hide like criminals for the rest of their lives. Those who are captured will be hung on gibbets as a warning to the others, the Clochs Mór will be back in the hands of the Riocha as they always have been, and in another generation this will all be just another failed, half-forgotten Fingerlander rebellion: the story of Kayne the Traitor and his all too brief time. Kayne, who looked to the west for his enemy when he should have been looking east.”
Kayne wanted to rage. He wanted to launch himself at Harik and the man’s undisguised scorn, wanted to vent the fury he felt with fists and blood. Do as your da would have done. He was right—you can’t simply rush into decisions based on your emotions . . . . His eyebrows lowered, lines carving themselves in his forehead and he forced the muscles of his face to relax. The calm part of him knew that if he showed anger toward Harik now, most of the gardai would go with the Hand. Many them would do so anyway, but those who were still uncertain or afraid of the reception they might find back home . . .