Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3)

by S L Farrell

  . . . and she’d let the mage-lights take her here.

  “He’s a good man,” Gram’s voice whispered in her head. For the first time since Sevei had known her, she sounded free of pain, her voice young and vibrant. There was a joy in her that had never been present when Sevei had known her, a gentleness and empathy. “Even if we couldn’t love each other as husband and wife, he was the best of my friends, my support, and as good a da for Meriel as my Ennis would have been . . .”

  Kyle was still staring. He seemed to realize it suddenly; he turned so that she saw him in profile as he gazed down at the town and the harbor caught in silvered moonlight. “I wondered,” he said. “I wondered when I felt Lámh Shábhála again a few nights ago who might be the new Holder. All of us with clochs saw an image of you—Bán Cailleach, some have named you. But no one saw the person clearly enough to know who it was. I thought, hoped, that it was Jenna somehow hiding herself.” The corners of his mouth turned in a soft smile touched with sadness and concern, his lips closed. “So it’s as I feared. Jenna . . . ?”

  “Gram’s dead, Greada. I’m sorry. But she’s in here—” Sevei touched her breast, where an emerald glow burned under her skin, “—and she says to tell you that she loved you, and will forever be grateful for what you did for her.” He gave a nod at that, and she saw his eyes shimmer with sudden moisture. He touched the sleeve of his clóca to his face. Sevei wondered why she wasn’t crying herself in sympathy, but she was dry inside, all the grief burned away leaving an arid void behind. “She’s with me all the time, Greada, in the cloch,” she told him

  He nodded without looking at her. The light of the oil lamps on the wall of the balcony glittered in his eyes. “I knew. I heard the rumors, and I knew she wouldn’t have given up Lámh Shábhála easily. When I couldn’t feel the Great Stone in the mage-lights for over a moon, when we heard that Uaigneas had been sunk, when the horrible news came out of Talamh An Ghlas about Meriel and Owaine and all you children . . .” He gave a gasp and leaned over his hands fisting around the rail of the balcony, and she heard his voice break on a sob. “Oh, Mother, so many of my family gone. I feel so sick . . .”

  “At least some of the Ríthe were involved,” Sevei told him. “It was the Order of Gabair who came after us and killed Gram. Uncle Doyle was there and so was Padraic, along with a whole double-hand of the green-robes. The Ríthe have named Uncle Doyle as the Rí Ard in payment. I don’t know who controlled it; maybe Rí Mallaghan; this smells of him, and I know Mam never trusted him. I don’t think Aunt Edana was among the conspirators. At least I hope not.”

  A nod. Kyle sniffed and wiped at his eyes again as he straightened. “I suspected as much; the spies we have among the Riocha said the same. My poor Meriel—the long peace she brought us was only a lull . . .” He blinked and wiped at his eyes again, and this time they remained dry. After his first stare, he hadn’t glanced at Sevei again—his gaze kept slipping to one side or the other. “Are you . . . cold?” he asked, and she remembered her nudity. The scars were no longer glowing and the touch of the wind on her skin raised goose bumps along her limbs.

  “Aye,” she told him. “I’m cold, Greada. And I hurt.” “Ah, andúilleaf,” more than one voice whispered that in her head, but it was Gram’s that scolded them and sent them into silence. “No, you must be stronger than I was, my darling. That path leads to madness, and I was mad—I know that now. You must bear it. I’ll help you as much as I can . . .” Sevei gave a short bark of a laugh; even to her ears, it sounded like the cough of a seal. “I understand Gram better now than I ever did. Some kala bark . . . ?”

  “Certainly,” he said, his voice as formal as if he were addressing a stranger rather than his great-daughter. She could sense that he wanted to hug and embrace her, but that he was also afraid of this Bán Cailleach. He walked past her carefully without touching her, avoiding looking directly at her, and gestured to the arch of the balcony. “Let’s go inside, then.”

  A half-stripe later, Sevei sat gingerly in Greada’s softest chair, sipping the hot kala bark tea that Kyle’s long-time attendant Alby brought. Alby’s intake of breath was audible when he first saw her, and he seemed to retreat gladly from the chamber when Kyle asked him to leave the two of them in private. Sevei told Kyle everything, from the attack on the Uaigneas to the trial of the Scrúdú. Kyle shook his head.

  “We Inishlanders will have our revenge for this,” he said grimly. He fingered Firerock. “Doyle Mac Ard and the Ríthe will have to answer to the ghosts of those they murdered. You should be able to do that easily, Sevei. Follow the path from the mage-lights to Snapdragon as you did to Firerock, and strike Doyle Mac Ard before he even realizes that you’re there. Or send me to do it, if you can.” Greada’s face was set into what was almost a smile. “I would make him pay for what he’s done, gladly.”

  Voices screamed in agreement inside her, and she could feel a sympathetic surge of anger in herself from their emotions, but she shook her head. Her gram, though, easily overrode the others. “Wait,” she said. “Wait until you’re certain who did what. Wait. Here, listen to someone else who would tell you the same . . .”

  And now another voice rose alongside Gram’s, a voice she’d begun to hear since the Scrúdú, one that, like Jenna’s, she could easily pluck from among the others: Carrohkai Treemaster. The ancient Bunús Muintir whispered to her: “Those who pass the Scrúdú have so little time. A few years, no more and quite possibly much less, and you’ll die. Yet the changes you make will last for centuries. You will be remembered, but it’s your choice as to how. . . .”

  “I’ve nothing to fear from one Cloch Mór, Greada,” Sevei told him, fixing her pupilless gaze on Kyle. “If I were going to strike down Uncle Doyle, I’d make certain that he saw me. I’d want him to look into my face—this face, Greada, the Bán Cailleach’s face, the one you have so much trouble looking at—and make him take that vision back to the Mother-Creator.” With Sevei’s rebuke, Kyle looked down at his hands folded on his lap, then lifted his chin until his eyes met Sevei’s. He blinked heavily, but he kept his gaze there. She almost smiled; inside, Gram and Carrohkai Treemaster laughed with her. “I know what I look like, Greada. I saw it in Thall Coill. No one takes the Scrúdú untouched and unchanged, even those who survive. I know that now. That’s why I won’t go to Uncle Doyle and strike him down, even though he deserves less mercy than I’d give a mad dog.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Sevei shrugged. “I don’t either. Not really. But when you can see the heart of your enemy, it’s difficult to hate them. Uncle Doyle isn’t so different from you or me. Well, maybe different from me, now.” She laughed, and she could hear the bitterness that edged it. “I suspect he believed that what he was doing was right.”

  “Sevei, what’s happened to you?” He leaned forward in his chair. He reached out toward her and placed his hand on her arm: gingerly. She could feel his fingers, as if a great stone had been placed on her arm, nearly crushing it. “Ah, my poor Sevei . . .”

  She wanted to sob with his sympathy, wanted to let go of herself and collapse into his embrace as she had dozens of times over the years. She wanted to be a little child crying in his arms over a scraped knee or a cut, and have him kiss away the tears and reassure her that it would be all better soon. She wanted him to cocoon her against the world; she wanted him to take her back three months to when her world had been simple and free of this pain and grief, to when her world had been circumscribed by the routines of the White Keep and her love for Dillon, when she’d been looking forward to returning to Dún Laoghaire and Mam and Da and introducing Dillon to them, to when she’d seen her future as wife and lover and mage, with their own children. She wanted to rid herself of the voices that scolded and mocked and screamed at her from behind Gram and Carrohkai Treemaster.

  Greada could do none of that, she knew. No one could.

  “You are Lámh Shábhála now, like us,” Gram said. “You have no choice, my dear. No choice . . .
”

  “. . . great things. You can do great things . . .”

  “. . . you’ll die in agony and terror . . .”

  “. . . you’re marked, and no one will ever know you or love you or understand you . . .”

  “. . . you’ll be alone. Always alone . . .”

  “. . . no, not alone. We’ll always be with you. Always. You can’t ever be rid of us . . .”

  Gram’s voice returned last. “. . . when you’re here, when you’re with me again, the pain will be gone. I promise you that much, my love. That’s the gift of the Scrúdú: when you’re with those who have passed the Scrúdú, you’ll be whole again.”

  Sevei bit at her lip, forcing back the cry she wanted to make. “I don’t know who I am right now,” she said to him. She could hear the tears trembling in her voice, but her night-cloaked eyes remained dry. “I’m not Sevei—not the Sevei I used to be. But I don’t know what I am or what I’m to do.” She stopped herself then, taking a long, slow breath. “Kayne’s still alive, Greada,” she said. “He’s in the Fingerlands and he holds Blaze, so I know Da is dead. And Treoraí’s Heart is in Céile Mhór.”

  “Who holds the Heart? Was the Thane part of the conspiracy against Meriel?”

  Her shrug rubbed her stiff skin against the chair’s cloth, making her grimace. The kala bark was dulling the pain of her scarred body, but she could still feel the throbbing, constant ache. She knew now how easy it must have been for Jenna to have fallen into the terrible embrace of andúilleaf. “. . . the leaf, the leaf . . .”

  “I’ve felt Treoraí’s Heart in the mage-lights,” she said, “but I can’t see who’s wielding it. Whoever it is pushes me out and I can’t break through the shield.” She gave another short, mirthless laugh. “Gram always seemed scornful of Mam’s choice, and Máister Kirwan always called the Heart a clochmion, even though it scarred Mam’s arm worse than a Cloch Mór. I think they were both wrong, Greada. I think the Heart is potentially a rival to Lámh Shábhála.” She frowned as her words brought Máister Kirwan’s face into her memory, and that reminded her of another thing. “Greada, Padraic Mac Ard holds Snarl, so Máister Kirwan is dead, too.”

  “Perhaps not,” Kyle told her. His hand tightened on her arm and she nearly screamed from the pain. He seemed to realize it and let go of her. “There are rumors that he’s imprisoned in Lár Bhaile, in the Order of Gabair’s Keep, though, without his cloch, he’ll be in torment and may be wishing for death.” Kyle let out a long, shuddering breath. His face seemed older and more lined than it had even half a stripe ago. “But I’m glad to hear about Kayne. All your other sibs are gone: Tara and Ionhar are dead—I’ve had confirmation of that from someone who saw the bodies. We’ve heard that Ennis was with Meriel when she died and was taken from Dún Laoghaire by the Taisteal woman who poisoned your mam, but no one knows what’s happened to him. I don’t have much hope for him, though, especially if Treoraí’s Heart is in Céile Mhór. It would make sense for a Taisteal to go there, and from Céile Mhór all the way to Thall Mór-roinn, if she can get through the Arruk. We may have lost Treorái’s Heart forever.” He stood and paced the room. “The Comhairle’s in an uproar, Sevei. The Inish clans are concerned that the Ríthe might be sending an army here soon, and we have too few resources to resist them with the Order of Inishfeirm in disarray, Lámh Shábhála lost, and our Banrion dead. They’ll be glad to know that you’re here, that you have Lámh Shábhála . . .”

  “. . . war! Aye, let it be war! . . .”

  “. . . Aye! Bathe your misery in blood as I did . . .”

  “. . . it is what Lámh Shábhála has always done . . .”

  “. . . great things. . . . Great things . . .”

  “. . . war is not great,” Gram and Carrohkai Treemaster scolded the voices in unison. “War is sadness and failure ...”

  “I only came here to see you again, Greada,” Sevei interrupted. “So you’d know for certain what happened to Gram and me. I’m not staying here. I’m called elsewhere.”

  He spun about at that, his face limned in the glow of the hearth. It reflected dismay as well as heat. “You have to stay, Sevei,” he said. “Inish Thuaidh needs you.”

  “The Comhairle and the clans don’t want me, Greada. They want Lámh Shábhála,” she answered, touching her breast where the stone glowed. “In that, the Inishlanders aren’t much different from Uncle Doyle.”

  She thought he might display outrage at that. His eyes widened, his mouth opened. But his voice was soft and gentle and understanding. “Jenna would never have understood or agreed with that,” he told her. “But your mam ... You sound like her, Sevei. How long will you stay? I should let the Comhairle know . . .”

  “Until the mage-lights come tomorrow night,” she told him. “No longer. But I’ll go and talk to the Comhairle with you....”

  35

  Arrows and Trees

  HARIK ACCOMPANIED KAYNE as they rode through the pass and down toward the still-ascending army. The wind raked the slopes; the rocks of the mountains tore open the low clouds and tossed spatters of rain down on them; the horses skittered gingerly down the muddy slope until they reached a wide straight road well down from the Narrows where they could see for a long distance. Massive rocks tilted in the stony soil all around them, like the gravestones of giants. One of them had fallen recently, the torn ground at the base as black as old blood. Seeing it, Kayne stopped.

  Glancing behind and up, Kayne could see the ragged jaws of the pass where the laird and the Fingerlanders waited. They could hear the clamor of the approaching vanguard. At Kayne’s gesture, Harik unfurled the white banner; the advance riders of the Airgiallaian force saw them—they could hear the shouts of orders faint in the distance, and one of the riders below was given a hastily-made flag of parley. He rode quickly ahead to stop just out of easy arrow range—though, Kayne noted carefully, not out of range for the bows that Séarlait and the Fingerlanders used—and hailed them. “The Tiarna Maitiú O Contratha, commander of the Southern Army of Tuath Airgialla, demands to know who requests parley,” the man called.

  “I am Tiarna Kayne Geraghty of Dún Laoghaire, son of the Banrion Ard, Commander of the army of Dún Laoghaire and heir to the throne of the Ard,” Kayne shouted back. “I would speak to Tiarna O Contratha.”

  The rider stared at Kayne for a long breath, then turned his horse and rode back through the ranks of the gardai. Not long after, the front row of the troops parted and two horsemen rode forward under a white banner. Kayne recognized the man on the left, dressed in gold-stamped leathers: Tiarna O Contratha of Airgialla, a nephew of Rí Mac Baoill to whom Kayne had once been introduced. A cloch hung around his neck on a golden chain. “The words of a pretender mean nothing,” O Contratha declared without preamble. “But I see you, Kayne Geraghty. You ride with Fingerlanders who are traitors to their Rí—that makes you a traitor also. There’s no parley for traitors; you know that law as well as I do.”

  “That’s it, Tiarna? That’s all you have to say?” Kayne frowned, raising his voice so that his horse fidgeted nervously. He wanted the soldiers with the army to hear him, though he had little enough hope that it would do any good. “The Ríthe murdered the Healer Ard and the rest of my family without warning or cause, and you dare, you dare to call me traitor, Tiarna? My loyalty is to Talamh An Ghlas and all the Tuatha. I am the heir to the Healer Ard, and I name Rí Mac Baoill and the other Ríthe as true traitors. I’ve come to see if there is anyone here who will admit the truth, who is willing to ride with me to Dún Laoghaire. Ride with me, Tiarna O Contratha—ride because that would be just and right, and the Mother-Creator and all those who are honest realize it.”

  He could see that the gardai were listening, and that there were stirrings in the ranks and a few nodding heads. He could imagine their whispers even if he couldn’t hear the words. “The Healer Ard’s son . . . They say that she still heals, even from the grave . . .” For a moment, Kayne felt hope rise within him—that he wouldn’t have to do wh
at still struck him as somehow dishonorable, that the affection Mam had for all Daoine might reach out even in death and end this peacefully.

  But O Contratha glared back at his men, and the whis perings went silent. “You’re deluded with grief, Tiarna Geraghty,” O Contratha answered coldly. “I’m sorry for the Banrion Ard’s death, but the murderer wasn’t the Ríthe, only her Taisteal nursemaid.” O Contratha’s gaze went up to the pass above Kayne, pointing with his chin. “Everyone knows that the Taisteal are as untrustworthy as Fingerlanders.”

  “I am married to a Fingerlander,” Kayne told the man. “Insult them, and you insult her. Insult her, and you insult me.”

  “Then you’ve made yet another poor choice, Tiarna,” O Contratha sniffed, “and we’ve nothing more to say to each other. Get out of my way and let me do what I must.” He pulled at the reins of his horse, turning its head.

  “We shouldn’t be fighting each other, Tiarna,” Kayne called out, caring more that the other soldiers heard him than O Contratha or the other Riocha, trying once more to end this. “Our true enemy is out there past the Fingerlands in Céile Mhór, and it’s coming to us. The Arruk will laugh if they find we’ve slaughtered each other before they even arrive. The Banrion Ard knew that, which is why she sent my da to Céile Mhór. Yet we come back after fighting for Talamh An Ghlas, and find that our own cousins attack us—without warning. We find the Healer Ard assassinated. My mam healed, Tiarna. She healed anyone who came to her: tuathánach, céili giallnai, or Riocha, from the commonest to the most royal.”

  The whispers had begun again. “Aye . . . She did that . . . My own cousin was healed by her . . .”

  This time Tiarna O Contratha turned and shouted back at his men. “Be silent in the ranks!” he barked. He gestured to the rider with him, and the man yanked on his reins and rode quickly back to the waiting army. Kayne heard him snarl at them.