by S L Farrell
What he did next was nearly the hardest thing he’d ever done.
He inclined his head to Harik as he would to another Tiarna. “Then we know your decision, Harik MacCathaill,” Kayne said, amazed that his voice could be calm when the anger still seethed inside him. “If that’s the fate the Mother-Creator has for me, then fine. You served Da well as his Hand, but I never knew you were a seer as well.” He forced himself to smile to cushion the bite in the statement, and a few of the men laughed softly in response. “Everything you said was true, Hand Harik, but I think you underestimate the clansfolk. I think you discount them because they fight using tricks and deception and ambush as well as force of arms. I know that wasn’t the way we were taught to fight—but I think it’s a way we can and should learn. Had Séarlait not done as she did . . .” He shuddered: Mac Baoill’s intense glare, the ice closing around him . . . “As to our enemies in the Tuatha . . .” Kayne sniffed, the inhalation loud in the cavern. “They will be like crows squabbling over the remains of Mam’s legacy and too busy fighting themselves to worry about us for a time.” He gestured to Harik, who stared at him with the puzzled, uncertain look of a man who expected confrontation and found agreement.
“You served Da and me well and loyally, Harik. For that, I’ll always be grateful. I’ll sorely miss your counsel, your sword, and your honesty. But I’m staying here where I have allies with the clansfolk. I’ll stay here and I’ll fight and I will one day come out of the Finger to claim what is mine.”
Kayne lifted his head, turning from Harik to sweep his gaze across each of the men in the cavern. “If any of you are thinking of staying here because of loyalty to the oaths you gave to my da and the Banrion Ard back in Dún Laoghaire, I release you from those oaths now. You’re all free to stay or go, and no one, no one here will think less of you for following Harik back to your homes and your families. I’ll leave the decision to you. Stay or go—you should do what your heart tells you to do.”
With that, Kayne nodded again to Harik and turned abruptly, taking one of the torches from its sconce off the wall and striding toward the ragged arch that led into the hall and the long, twisting passageway that led down, and then up again to the outside. He heard the men begin to talk as he reached the arch. He hadn’t gone more than a few dozen strides down the passage before he heard Harik’s gruff voice. “Tiarna Geraghty!”
He stopped and half turned to look back over his shoulder. In the flickering, guttering light of the torch, Harik’s battle-scarred face was as hard-edged as the rocks. “The decision’s made,” he said.
Kayne let his breath out in a quick exhalation; he could see the cloud emerge from his mouth in the cool dampness. His shoulders sagged. He nodded. “I’ll tell Laird O’Blath mhaic that you’ll be leaving with the gardai this evening,” he said. “May the Mother-Creator be with you, Harik. I hope all of you find safety. Truly.”
“We’re staying, Tiarna. Every man.”
Kayne blinked. He could hear the crackling of the torch in the silence. He wanted to stutter his confusion, wanted to ask why. But he knew that wasn’t what his da would have done. Owaine would have expected the obedience and accepted it. So Kayne nodded, though he was unable to keep a smile from his lips. “Then that’s what I’ll tell the laird,” he said. More silence. The torch hissed and spat. “Thank you, Harik Hand.”
Harik’s face remained stonelike and solemn. “You’ve nothing to thank me for,” he answered. “Today, for the first time, I saw the man and not the child. I don’t follow children, nor all men. But Tiarna Geraghty . . .”
His chin lifted, his eyes glittered under dark eyebrows. “I would follow him wherever he asked.”
26
The Pattern’s Dance
THE BODIES OF UNNISHA and Clannhra Ata swung gently back and forth in their tight iron cages, the chains that suspended the cages from a wooden beam creaking and protesting as the wind pushed them. The gibbets had been set where the lane from Dúnwick met the High Road. The corpses appeared to be clothed in writhing black cloaks: the crows were at the bodies, pecking at them and tearing off bits of flesh, squabbling with each other as they fought over the choicest bits.
Ennis stared up at the cages, his eyes wide.
“ ’Tain’t a pretty sight, young Tiarna, an’ I can understand your being upset by it,” said the tall, red-haired garda, whose name Ennis had learned was Daighi. “But ’twill serve as a warning to others of what will happen if they try to hurt you.”
Ennis nodded blandly. He stared at the crows, watching as one stabbed its beak into Unnisha’s gaping mouth and ripped out a piece of gray flesh. He cocked his head to one side, wondering what it must be like to be a crow, wondering what they might be thinking as they ravaged the corpses. The sun peered momentarily from between the massed gray clouds and struck the gibbets, and the crows flapped their wings as if enjoying the sudden warmth. Ennis could barely recognize Unnisha or the Clannhra now, blood-streaked bone starting to show through the patches of skin on their faces.
There’d been a scuffle when Daighi tried to arrest the two women. Two of the Clannhra’s sons and a few of her great-sons had resisted, and both gardai had been slightly wounded. But when the villagers realized that the gardai were accusing these Taisteal of being among the conspirators who had killed the Healer Ard, when they realized that the boy was none other than the beloved Ard’s son, the inhabitants of Dúnwick had come to the gardai’s aid. The Clannhra’s wagon had been torched and the residents had been allowed to plunder the remainder of the Taisteal wagons of whatever they wanted before the surviving Taisteal were ordered to take their now-empty wagons and leave. But before they departed, the Taisteal had been brought here to watch as Unnisha and Clannhra Ata were stuffed screaming into the cages quickly prepared for them by the local smithy, hung on the beams, and then dispatched with quick stabs from Daighi’s spear. Ennis hadn’t witnessed the executions himself, but he’d heard them described by the Aldwoman of Dúnwick, in whose house he’d slept that night, in a bed with a thick, soft blanket bearing the colors and patterns of the Taisteal.
Now, Daighi and his companion—Brett—were to take Ennis back to Dún Laoghaire. “The Banrion Mac Ard will be most pleased to see you,” Daighi said “It was she who sent gardai out everywhere to find you. Come now, Tiarna Geraghty; a boy your age shouldn’t dwell on a sight like this. You’ll be back in Dún Laoghaire in two days.”
Ennis forced his gaze away from the fascinating swarm of crows. His face was solemn; his eyes were dry. “I’m ready, Daighi,” he said.
He walked over to where Daighi sat on his horse, his shield arm bound and the bandages stained with blood; Ennis’ movement sent the crows into the air, cawing raucously. Brett, wearing a wrapping of cloth over a long, ugly cut on his forehead, helped Ennis up onto the pony they’d taken from the Taisteal, then climbed onto his own horse. They started northward along the High Road. As he followed along just behind the two gardai, Ennis glanced backward at the gibbet where the crows had now settled once more around the cages like a shroud. He touched the Heart, and inside he heard Isibéal chuckling.
He smiled.
They rode for most of the day, through occasional curtains of soft rain interspersed with bright sunlight, keeping the horses to no more than a walk so that the pony would have no trouble. Ennis rode in silence for the most part, answering occasionally when one or the other of the men would ask him a question, but never initiating conversation himself. There was no need. He was locked into the pattern he’d chosen, the new dance, and he could allow himself no deviation from it, or the blue ghosts that guided him would vanish into the confusion of possibilities. “Poor child,” he heard Daighi say once to Brett. “He’s seen too much too young. They say that he was at the dinner when the damned Taisteal woman Isibéal poisoned the Healer Ard. To have watched his own mam die in front of him . . .”
I didn’t see it, but I knew it would happen, he wanted to tell the man. But he couldn’t say those words; the p
attern wouldn’t allow it. Instead, he watched the emerald hills of southern Dún Laoghaire slowly pass, looking always to the east where the Tween Sea glimmered occasionally between heather-clothed mounds, and waiting.
He waited until it was nearly evening.
They came to an intersecting lane that led off to the east. The smell of the sea was strong, even though Ennis couldn’t see the ocean. There was a sign there, and Daighi peered wearily at the painted, fading words on the well-weathered plank. “ ’Tis the road to Maithcuan—there’ll be soft beds at the inn,” Daighi said to Brett. “We can have a courier sent ahead to let the Banrion Mac Ard know that we’ve found the boy. If the gods are with us, we might even find one of the royal boats there and let them sail us back to the city. It’s either that, or spend the night out here, which I don’t want to do with the boy.”
“Aye, and there’s none better than the ale at The Laughing Heron,” Brett agreed. Then he grimaced, stroking his bandaged forehead. “It’s been a long ride today. What say you, young Tiarna?—the comforts of Maithcuan, or these rocks alongside the High Road?”
As Brett spoke, Ennis saw the blue ghosts appear around them, whispering of possibilities. He watched them, heard their whispers and their gestures, and saw himself among them. No, he wanted to tell the visions, though he knew that the blue ghosts couldn’t hear him or respond to him. I don’t want to take this path . . . But he saw where the other most likely path led, and in the hazy distance of the future, realized that if he continued on with Daighi back to Dún Laoghaire, it would mean his own death. Peering at the ghosts, he saw Aunt Edana pledging to keep him safe, but Ennis’ existence was a threat to too many others. He saw the faint image of Uncle Doyle, glaring at him, and there was a knife and his own still body. . . .
His hand sought the Heart on the chain around his neck. “Go back and they’ll kill you as I was supposed to kill you,” he heard Isibéal say. “You’re a threat to them and they can’t let you live. But that doesn’t have to be, does it? Not when you have the Heart. Not if you use the Heart in your own way.”
“Let me talk to Mam,” he thought back to the voice, but Isibéal only laughed. The ghosts of all his futures surrounded him, and he had to choose. He let himself fall into the pattern.
“It’s getting dark and the mage-lights will be coming,” Ennis said. “You’re both hurt and tired.” He lifted Treoraí’s Heart on its chain, showing the cloch to both of them. “I can make you better and fill the cloch again later. Let me do that for you.”
Daighi looked at the caged jewel, then at Brett. “Our evening would be more enjoyable if we weren’t injured. You can do that, Tiarna, young as you are?—you can heal with the stone as your mam did?”
“The Heart was my mam’s; now it’s mine,” the blue ghost that was him said and Ennis let his own mouth echo the same words. The azure shape of the future slid down from the pony and Ennis did the same, as the other blue ghosts around him faded, the futures they represented now extinguished. The pattern smiled; he smiled—it was all part of the new dance. “I watched her, and she taught me. Here, I’ll show you. Brett, come here . . .”
Both men dismounted, hitching the horses to the signpost. Ennis took Treoraí’s Heart in his right hand, closing his fingers around it as he’d seen his mam do a hundred times. The energy held within the stone surged through him and he nearly sighed with the delicious, comforting feel of it. He swayed on his small legs at the searing interior heat that welled outward from his right hand. “Here, Brett. All I have to do is touch your head where you’re hurting . . .” Brett knelt on the ground in front of him so that his head was level with Ennis’. Ennis reached out his left hand, laid it over Brett’s bloodstained bandage, and released some of the power.
He was Brett. Ennis could feel the ache and soreness in the garda’s head, the constant wash of pain. He could have stopped it, easily. But it was also just as easy to tear the injury open farther and deeper, to plunge deep into the man and rip him open from the inside, from here where the Heart had taken him. . . .
He saw Brett’s eyes roll up until only the whites showed. The man’s mouth opened in a soundless cry. He toppled to the ground. “Brett!” Daighi called in alarm, rushing over to kneel next to the man. “What happened here?” he asked Ennis. Ennis touched Daighi gently on the shoulder as the garda glanced at him. “Is Brett—?”
Power flowed from Ennis into the garda. Daighi’s face convulsed, all the muscles going rigid. A moment later, he fell atop Brett.
The blue ghost vanished in a soundless pulse. Ennis looked down at the two men, releasing Treoraí’s Heart as if it burned his hand. He sat abruptly on the ground, crying as any young boy might when confronted by death. He looked at Daighi and Brett, afraid now, afraid to touch them or look at them, afraid that he might see the Black Haunts gathering over them to take away their souls, afraid they might somehow stir, afraid that they might point at him accusingly. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he whispered to them. “I had to. Don’t you see? I had to. I didn’t have a choice.”
He scrambled away from them, running to the signpost. He unhitched the gardai’s horses and shouted at them so that both steeds bolted. Then, still sobbing, he pulled himself astride his pony. He moved carefully around the two men half-hidden in the grass alongside the road, and turned down the lane toward Maithcuan. He was shaking with fright and the tears were still running hot down his cheeks and Treoraí’s Heart burned like a brand on his chest.
Maithcuan slumbered in a wide, shallow harbor sheltered by tall headlands. It lay in purpled shadow in the last light of the sun as Ennis looked down on it from a small rise. The town was far smaller than Dún Laoghaire, but he noticed that several ships were anchored in the harbor; one of them—one that he’d glimpsed in his visions of the future—flew a strange banner he’d seen once before.
“That’s the banner of Céile Mhór, Son,” Da had told him as he held him in his arm. They stood on the ramparts of the Banrion Ard’s Keep, looking down at the harbor. “You remember when Mam introduced you to Toscaire Concordai Ghalai last night in the Great Hall? Well, that ship brought the Toscaire here, and Kayne and I are going to be going to his country ourselves very soon, to help them fight the Arruk. . . .”
After staring at the ship for a moment, Ennis slapped the reins of his pony and continued down the slope.
There were gates along the road and a low stone fence encircling the town. Ennis could see two men trudging slowly up the slope from town, both bearing lanterns in the growing gloom. He assumed they were gatekeepers like the gardai who patrolled the four passages through the great wall that girdled Dún Laoghaire, but these gates were just simple planks of board nailed to leather hinges. They hung askew and open; Ennis urged his pony through the opening before the men reached them. They looked at him curiously as he passed. “We’re closing the town gate for the night, boy,” one of them said as he came abreast them. “Do you know where you’re going?”
Ennis nodded. “My da’s down at the market buying fish. We’re staying here tonight.”
A nod. Ennis could already see the man’s interest fading. “Good,” he said. He gestured to his companion. “Let’s get the gates shut, then. Don’t know why the Ald insists on keeping ’em closed—the troubles in Dún Laoghaire ain’t gonna come here. I heard that the Riocha executed a triple-hand of those who rioted when the Healer Ard was killed, just as an example. . . .”
Ennis let the pony find its own way into the town, moving through narrow streets toward the scent of brine. The blue ghosts rose up again around him: the city was full of possibilities and turns, but he could have walked through it with his eyes shut, following the path that he’d already chosen. Stay with the pattern. Just follow it and you’ll be where you want to be. You’ll be safe. You’ll stay alive . . . He wouldn’t let himself think about what he was doing or what he’d done. If he did that, he’d be lost. He could feel it all pushing inside him and he wanted to cry and wail and sob, wanted to let hi
mself sink into Mam’s arms or Isibéal’s or Unnisha’s and be comforted, but they were all gone now and he had no one.
Only the blue ghosts and the voices in the Heart.
Ennis let the pattern guide him through the streets, ignoring the woman who clutched at him as he passed, saying nothing to the merchants who called out, forcing himself not to look at the enticing bundles on the tables of the still-bustling market that ringed the harbor. Not thinking, just matching the steps of the pattern’s dance. Above the houses of Maithcuan, he could see the masts of the larger ships at anchor out in the harbor. The banner of Céile Mhór still fluttered from the top of one.
By the time he came to the quays where the small fishing boats were tied up, it was full dark and the first hints of the mage-lights were beginning to glitter below and through the rain-heavy clouds. There, he let himself half-fall down from the pony and took the little pack that Daighi had made for him back in Dúnwick. Several of Maithcuan’s inhabitants were watching him curiously—an obvious stranger and a very young one, dressed in plain but obviously fine clothes. Among those at the quays was a man who was bright with a blue ghost—Ennis knew that meant he was connected to Ennis’ own dance. He was dressed in a léine cut from some cloth Ennis had never seen, and his clóca was shorter than those the Riocha wore and was trimmed in fox fur. His long, tanned features were subtly different from most of those around him, and he had a black tattoo curling down one side of his face: a fanciful bird with a wide, toothed beak that looked as if were about to close on his left eye. Ennis glanced at the man with the shy smile he knew the pattern required, then scampered off through the crowds toward one end of the harbor, leaving the pony behind. He knew without looking that the man would be following him.