by S L Farrell
Time moved again. She saw An Phionós’ great paw above her like a thundercloud, and she opened her arms to accept the blow. An Phionós’ paw slammed down from above, but it could not crush her. The ground shuddered underneath, the very stones cracking, and yet she was whole. Coruscations of grass-green light flared, as if An Phionós’ paw were a smithy’s hammer striking molten steel.
Sevei blinked as the light failed. An Phionós was grovel ing before her, lying flat on the ground with its head lowered. Its wings fluttered and then folded on its great back. “Holder,” it said. Its voice was full of sorrow and grief, full of the lives it had taken over the long centuries. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited.”
It lifted its head, sitting up on its haunches again in the pose of the statue. As Sevei watched, the creature stiffened and turned to stone before her eyes, aging and weathering in a few moments: as the cliff edge seemed to melt toward her, as the trees of Thall Coill grew and marched in her direction.
And she was back where she had started. The statue of Bethiochnead loomed broken and tilted in front of her.
“Sevei?” Beryn rushed over to her. She felt him start to put a hand on her shoulder, then stop himself. “You’re alive! I thought . . . I saw you fall, and the mage-lights were crackling all around you . . .” His voice changed then, to a tone of awe. “You’ve endured the Scrúdú and you’re alive. But . . .”
He was staring at her: at her face, at her arms. Sevei looked down. Her hands were covered in a knotted pattern of white, swirling scars—scars that she remembered from Gram’s right hand: the mark of the mage-lights. She pushed her léine back from her right arm, then her left. The scars ascended on both arms as far as she could see. She put her fingers to her cheeks and felt hard raised lines there. “My face . . . ?” she asked.
Beryn nodded. “Aye,” he said softly. “Your face, too. And more.” The way he averted his eyes told her how she must look, and she gave a cry of despair. She felt for the chain around her neck; it was gone, but with her probing fingers she could feel the nodule of Lámh Shábhála under her skin, on the inner slope of her right breast: hard and unyielding.
“You didn’t tell me it would be this way!”
“I didn’t know,” he answered.
“No,” she said. “No, this hasn’t happened. It’s another illusion like Dillon, still part of the Scrúdú.” She was crying now, staring at him, pleading with him to tell her that, aye, she was right and this was only part of the test, and knowing that it wasn’t. She moved, and the feel of her clothing was like the slashing of a hundred cats’ claws on her skin, so unbearable that she cried out at the sensation. She tore at the cloth, ripping it from her body, not caring that Beryn saw her. The only thing that mattered was to take the pain away. She stood naked in the air, and even the touch of the wind hurt, and looking down at her body, she saw the mage-scars everywhere on too-white skin. “No . . .”
The answer came from inside, from the voices caught in Lámh Shábhála, Gram’s among them.
“You’ve been marked,” they said. “Lámh Shábhála has claimed you. . . .”
32
The Battle of the Narrows, Reprised
A MESSENGER RODE breathless into the Fingerlands through the Narrows Pass, his horse blown and nearly dead. He was rushed to the laird’s tent. After giving his tidings of double ill news, the messenger was sent to his well-deserved meal and bed, and Kayne was summoned. He found Laird O’Blathmhaic huddled with Rodhlann O Morchoe in a grim but strangely pleasant mood. “Here it is,” the man said without preamble. He tapped the table placed on the soiled carpets under the tent’s covering. The table wobbled, mugs with the dregs of the previous night’s ale clashing. “The army of Rí Mac Baoill is on the move toward the Fingerlands, coming fast up the High Road. There were green-robes in the ranks of the Riocha riding with the army, mages of the Order of Gabair. The scouts also are telling us that there are troops from Dún Laoghaire and Gabair with the army, sent at the order of the new Rí Ard to help put down the ‘insurrection’ in the Finger.”
“The new Rí Ard?”
Kayne could feel the grizzled old man’s gaze on him. Rodhlann, standing beside him, frowned tightly. “Aye, Tiarna,” Rodhlann told him. “A new Ard.”
“Then it’s certain. Mam is dead.” He clamped his jaw down against the cry that wanted to escape him. This isn’t the time. You knew. You knew when they killed Da that they couldn’t move against him alone . . . “Who is Ard?” he asked.
“The Óenach of the Ríthe has elected Doyle Mac Ard,” O’Blathmhaic told him.
The name made Kayne grunt as if he’d been punched. “Uncle Doyle?” Kayne had never cared that much for Doyle Mac Ard, a man he’d always found glum and somewhat curt, though he’d loved Aunt Edana and had spent much of his childhood hours playing with their children Padraic, Alastríona, Ula, and Enean. Padraic, in particular, had been only a year younger, and he and Kayne had often played at cloudmage and gardai; Sevei had liked Padraic also—more than was good for her, Kayne had sometimes thought. And Alastríona . . . He knew that court gossip had often advanced Kayne and Alastríona as marriage partners; that had never occurred, but Kayne had once overheard his mam and Aunt Edana discussing a possible betrothal between Kayne’s sister Tara and Enean Mac Ard when the two of them reached their hand of hands birthdays.
If everything that Kayne feared had come to pass, then little Tara’s last birthday—a double hand and four—had been her last. Kayne shook his head, trying to fathom why Uncle Doyle would send an army against him. If Doyle Mac Ard was Rí Ard, then he must know what had happened. No, it was worse than that: if Doyle had the influence among the Ríthe to become Rí Ard, then he almost certainly had been involved in the machinations. Which meant that he would, at the very least, have known about the assassinations, if not been actively involved in planning them. And if Uncle Doyle was involved, then Aunt Edana most likely was too . . .
Kayne felt the beginnings of a sick headache.
“This changes everything,” he said to O’Blathmhaic and Rodhlann. “If troops from three of the Tuatha have come here and the Order of Gabair’s riding with the army, then Harik was right. Our two Clochs Mór won’t be nearly enough. We stand no more of a chance than a sand castle against the tide.”
“Not if we meet them openly,” Laird O’Blathmhaic agreed. He tapped his forehead with a crooked finger.
“You’re still thinking like a Riocha who makes war like a Riocha,” Rodhlann agreed, nodding to the laird. “But that’s not the only way. You saw what we did in Ceangail.”
“There’s no similarity,” Kayne said, harshly enough that O’Blathmhaic’s eyes narrowed and Rodhlann snapped his mouth shut. “That was a small troop of gardai. This is a true army. Those tactics won’t work, not this time. In fact, they will get us killed.”
O’Blathmhaic cleared his throat and started to spit, then glared at the carpets that covered the ground. He swallowed and gave Kayne a sour grimace. “You have a better way, then?”
Silently, Kayne shook his head.
His marriage-da snorted. “You forget that most of those troops are conscripts, and they won’t be so eager to fight when they see their companions dying around them. They’ll advance to the Narrows tomorrow, if I know them at all. Once they’re in the pass, Rodhlann will start to whittle them down, and when they’re here, in the Finger proper . . .” Laird O’Blathmhaic grinned evilly.
Kayne wanted to believe the man, but he knew it wouldn’t happen that way. There were so many, and the mage-stones . . . “I don’t mean any disrespect to Rodhlann, but you won’t be able to whittle them down, Laird, not with the Clochs Mór they have, and you underestimate the morale of the conscripts—or maybe their fear of what will happen if they turn their backs on the battle. This will be slaughter, no matter how we try to fight them.”
“You sound like a frightened old doe, Tiarna,” O’Blath mhaic answered. “What does it matter? Then if we die, we die taking out a
s many as we can. Either way, the bastards will remember us.”
“Are you Fingerlanders always so stubbornly optimistic?”
O’Blathmhaic and Rodhlann both chuckled grimly. “Are you Riocha always so stubbornly gloomy?” Rodhlann said. “We fight. Here. In the Narrows where we’ve fought a hundred times before.”
“No,” Kayne insisted. “We shouldn’t meet them at all. We should retreat entirely. Go into the mountains and wait. Melt away so they can’t find us. Maybe pick them off in ones and twos, but never confront them directly. We need to know more before we try to truly fight them: find out for certain what’s happened to Lámh Shábhála, determine who is allied with whom back in the Tuatha. Maybe I can get help from some of the Riocha, those who aren’t happy with what’s happened . . .”
Both men were already shaking their heads, from the first word. “Boy, you don’t understand,” O’Blathmhaic roared, so loudly that Kayne was certain that the entire encampment must hear him. “If we send our people back to the clans to wait, it’s over. They won’t be coming back. The clan-lairds have made the decision to fight now. So now we fight.” Laird O’Blathmhaic pointed a stubby finger at the carpets.
“If we fight against the force that you’ve just told me is coming for us, then we’ll also die here.”
“That doesn’t bother me, boy. Does it bother you?”
“Aye, it does,” Kayne insisted. He wondered if Harik would find this ironic, to hear Kayne advising caution when he’d spent so much time accusing his da of being overcautious, when he’d always been the one who wanted to plunge headlong into battle. Da, I think I’m beginning to understand . . . “This is needless death. There will be a better way, at another time and place.”
O’Blathmhaic was still shaking his head. “I thought you half a Fingerlander when I let you marry my great-daughter. I’m guessing now that I was wrong.”
“I love Séarlait, Laird. That’s another reason not to make a stand here.”
Rodhlann started to speak, but O’Blathmhaic raised a hand and the man went silent. “Listen to me with the heart of a Fingerlander, Tiarna,” O’Blathmhaic said. “We’ve made our decision to resist now when we could have waited. We can’t unmake that decision—not if you ever want the lairds and the clans to listen to you again. You can take your gardai and leave if you’d like, but then you leave Séarlait and your promises behind with you, and you and your descendants will be forever our enemy. The Fingerlanders will stand here,” O’Blathmhaic insisted, “and Séarlait will stand here with us. If you love her . . .”
He left the rest unsaid. He waited.
Kayne sighed. “Then I stand here also,” he said.
Kayne stared out over the sloping plain into a rare, clear night where it seemed he could have seen as far as Lough Tory. He found that he wished it were raining and cloudy, for the landscape in front of him was dotted with a thousand flickering motes: the campfires of the Airgiallaian army, all spread out along the High Road until they vanished into a blur on the horizon.
It was easy to feel gloom and despair, looking out on the campfires scattered like grounded stars on the plain. He heard Séarlait come up behind him but didn’t turn. Her hand touched his shoulder and he heard her sigh. “I know,” he said. “It doesn’t do any good to sit out here and watch. It’s depressing.”
Her arms went around him, and he leaned back, reveling in the warmth and the closeness. She moved his hair aside and kissed the back of his neck.
“I love you, too. That’s what scares me, too—I wonder how we’ll both come out of this.”
She turned him in her arms so he couldn’t see the campfires. Her eyes held him, almost angry. She nodded once, harshly.
He smiled at her. “Aye, we will live, somehow,” he told her, kissing her. He hoped he was right. He leaned in to kiss her, and for a moment lost his thoughts in the warmth of her mouth. But she pulled away after a few moment. “What?” he asked, but he already knew the answer by the multicolored lights that played over her face and glimmered in her hair. They both looked up: the mage-lights snaked between the stars, brightening faster than was usual for them. With the sight, Kayne felt the pull of Blaze, yearning to be filled with the energy above. Kayne and Séarlait stood, together, and both took their clochs in their hands, opening them to the sky. Last night . . . last night they’d felt Lámh Shábhála once more, even though the pull of it was distant and the Holder had seemed tentative and uncertain. Kayne—like every other cloudmage, he was certain—had tried to sense behind the Great Cloch’s presence the person holding it, but whoever it was remained hidden. He wondered who held it: friend, enemy, or neither. The stone had felt far enough away that Kayne thought it might even be somewhere beyond Inish Thuaidh.
Perhaps you’ll know more tonight . . . Kayne sighed at the feeling as snarling curls of light shot down to wrap around his hand and Séarlait’s; as the clochs began to feed hungrily on the power of the lights.
The double landscape of the mage-stones opened in front of him, as if he were staring out from the center of Blaze through its ruby facets at another world. He could follow the path of the mage-lights out toward the other clochs: Séarlait, next to him; the Clochs Mór and clochmions out in the firelit landscape beyond. Doyle Mac Ard wasn’t there—he could sense Snapdragon well off to the west and south, probably in Lár Bhaile or Dún Laoghaire—but several others were close by. He could not only feel them, but he could see with his own eyes the tendrils of mage-lights swirling down to them like brilliant tornadoes.
Then . . .
They must have all felt it, as strongly as Kayne. He heard Séarlait’s intake of breath and he could sense the distress of the others. Out there, far to the west, Lámh Shábhála came again, a far more powerful presence tonight than the night before: an enormous maelstrom that sucked at the power of the mage-lights, that tugged at each of them. It was purest emerald, that aura, the rich, saturated green of the brightest mage-lights, and it was more potent than any hand of the Clochs Mór together.
Kayne let Lámh Shábhála pull him toward it. He searched for the mind behind the stone, searching for it within the blinding radiance of the stone itself. There was a familiarity there, someone . . .
“Sevei!”
An image rushed from the emerald light to him and suddenly he wasn’t sure. It seemed to be Sevei but . . . Her face was changed, horribly scarred with raised white markings that reminded him of the patterns of the mage-lights themselves. Her eyes were the featureless black of a seal’s, and her hair was the white of new-fallen snow. She seemed a fey thing, powerful and yet terribly dangerous. She was standing on a windy plateau, entirely naked, and every finger’s breadth of her body was scarred with the same patterns. Behind her, he could glimpse a gloomy, murky statue of some creature. She reached for him, almost yearningly, or perhaps—Kayne thought—threateningly.
“Wait,” her voice said. “Wait two days, Kayne . . .”
The surprise and shock of her appearance and her voice sent him reeling backward. The vision of her was lost. He thought he heard her voice calling to him again, but the mage-lights were already fading and with it the contact between the clochs. Kayne released Blaze and watched the last tendrils of light trailing a line of sparks as they receded into the sky. His vision returned to normal. He was staring out at the campfires of the army again.
He felt Séarlait’s soft touch on his shoulder and turned to her.
“You felt that, too? You saw her?”
A nod. Her eyes were wide and frightened.
“Did she speak to you?”
A single shake of her head: left to right and back.
Wait two days . . .
“They’ll also know.” Kayne looked back at the campfires. Down there, the green-robes and the Riocha would be buzzing with wild speculation and, aye, probably the same fear he felt himself.
Lámh Shábhála had returned, and it was Sevei—who he thought was certainly dead like his parents and siblings—who wielded it. Bu
t this was a Sevei altered and changed, and he didn’t know her.
He was afraid he might not know her at all.
The dawn brought news from a Fingerlander scout.
“There are troops quick-marching back down the High Road to the west,” the scout said as he drank gratefully from the waterskin handed him by Séarlait. “At least a hand of the green-robes are with them, and a double-hand and more of Riocha in the colors of Gabair, Infochla, and Dún Laoghaire.” He took another gulp of the water, then let the remainder drain over his sweating head. “There’s confusion among the remainder of the army. They didn’t break camp this morning as we expected. I crept down as close as I could, so I could see the officers’ tents, and they’re busy with people coming and going and looking grim.”
“How many green-robes are left?” Kayne asked him, and the scout shook his head.
“I don’t know if there are any left at all, Tiarna. Nor are there too many Riocha with mage-stones around their necks either. Something seems to have happened last night.”
The immense pull of the stone on the mage-lights, her scarred face, her changed features . . . Kayne exchanged glances with the four other people in the tent: Séarlait, Laird O’Blathmhaic, Harik, and Rodhlann. “Aye, that it did,” Kayne told the scout. He slapped the man on the shoulder and opened the tent’s flap for him. “Go get some rest while you can.”
Kayne could feel the others staring at him as the scout left. “It would seem that the Riocha are rather concerned about this new Holder,” O’Blathmhaic said. “Séarlait tells me that you believe it’s your sister.”
Kayne nodded. “I know it’s Sevei. She opened herself to me and I heard her voice and realized that it was her, but just looking at the face she showed us all . . .” He shivered with the memory. “I don’t know that anyone else would recognize her. It’s not the new Holder that has the Riocha concerned, though—it’s Lámh Shábhála itself. The stone was missing for over a moon; all of us with mage-stones felt its absence. Now it’s returned. I don’t know what happened to Gram, but she wouldn’t have given up Lámh Shábhála willingly. I’d wager that Uncle Doyle thought Lámh Shábhála was lost, or that he or some other green-robe would acquire it. They expected it to end up in their hands or be lost forever, and now they see a bigger threat at their back than we represent. All the mages are rushing west to deal with it.”