by S L Farrell
“. . . I’ll show you. . . .”
Still crouching, Sevei looked at them: Greada Kyle, Siúr Meagher, Aithne, Ciomhsóg and the others. “It’s different now,” she said. “Gram could fill Lámh Shábhála with the mage-lights of a night, but there are crannies and wells within the cloch she couldn’t see and they can be filled, too—night upon night upon night. And that power can be shaped in more ways than lightning and winds. Watch . . .”
She stood. Lámh Shábhála next to her heart, and the cloth of her clóca felt like knives on her skin. She loosed the clasp and let the clothing fall down her shoulders to pool on the ground; underneath, she wore nothing but the scars of the mage-lights. There were gasps and cries from the onlookers. “Sevei!” Greada Kyle called as the others reacted, but she listened to none of them. She placed her hand over Lámh Shábhála and closed her eyes, seeing the green landscape of cloch-vision open around her. The voices of the dead Holders filled her ears, and she listened for one among them.
“. . . they’re frightened of you and they’ll kill you as they did me. . . .”
“. . . you’re no stronger than me and I couldn’t handle the power after the Scrúdú. . . .”
“. . . You’re a fool! The only power they’ll respect is that which destroys . . .”
“Here . . .” Sevei caught the husk of Carrohkai Treemaster’s voice and followed it. Far, far down inside her, memories that weren’t Sevei’s opened: another time, another place. “Shape the power this way. This is how I did it . . .”
In her cloch-vision, Sevei reached deep into the well of Lámh Shábhála, filling herself with mage-energy that sparked like a false sun, hissing and fuming. The pain of gathering it radiated through her, and she quickly thrust the power into the ground in front of her, plunging it toward the acorn in its bed of earth. In her mind, she imagined the Seanóir breaking free of the shell, sending its first shoots thrusting skyward as hair-thin roots began to dig into the ground: years of growth passing in a moment. She let the sapling suckle itself on Lámh Shábhála rather than sun and earth. There was both satisfaction and urgency in the Seanóir’s climb toward the surface, and Sevei shared it: the thickening of root and limb, the feel of rich soil sliding past living wood, and then, the exhilaration of finding the sun . . .
Sevei heard the Comhairle gasp once more. A writhing trunk emerged from behind the standing stone, coiling around it like a thick brown snake and ripping the menhir from the ground with the sound of cracking stone, bearing it upward. The Comhairle retreated, though Sevei stood there, her body caught in pale green light. The trunk split into new limbs and bloomed with dark green oak leaves, still rising toward the sky, entire decades passing in a few breaths. With the new oak now twice Sevei’s height, the limbs shook as if in a heavy rain and acorns rained down. More trees sprouted where they fell, curling up from the ground a breath later. Sevei closed her eyes again, seeing only with the cloch-vision and letting the energy cascade like a nourishing rain from Lámh Shábhála’s deep wells. Sevei could feel the sentient life within the oak: slow, bass thoughts in a language she could not understand. The Seanóir’s awareness raced through the branches of the first tree, moving out from the tree holding the standing stone and receding away from them toward its children, which were now sprouting their own children. Sevei was dimly aware of the hubbub from the people watching, but she barely noticed it. Controlling the power in the cloch was like restraining an avalanche: it tore at her, it yearned to be break free and go where it wanted—“Aye, using the power of the mage-lights to destroy is easier than using it to create . . .”—and Sevei forced her concentration to stay on Lámh Shábhála, keeping the energy focused and gentle where it touched the Seanóir. The tree-mind was moving far from her now, crouching and settling in the center of the new wood, and she emptied Lámh Shábhála over it, thrusting the power deep into the ground underneath. She could feel the flow spreading, imbuing the soil with its potency, but as her mind pushed the energy ever deeper, the earth seemed to scrape over her body like sharp, broken rocks. “. . . let it go, let it go . . .”
With a cry, Sevei released Lámh Shábhála, almost emptied now. She nearly collapsed, holding herself up only through sheer will. Greada Kyle rushed over to her, placing her clóca around her shoulders, and she gasped at the rasping touch of the cloth, unwilling tears starting from her eyes. She started to throw off the clóca, but realized that they were all staring at her. She bit back the tears, holding the cloth around herself and trying to see past the bloody veil in front of her eyes, beyond the hammer blows of her pulsing temples. On her hands, she could see the scars standing out like white ropes under her skin. Behind and around her loomed a forest, the trees the height of a dozen people, the green leaves flowing out onto the slope of the nearest mountain.
“This is what you brought us to see?” Tiarna Ciomhsóg. His voice sounded as if he wanted to scoff, but the mockery was frozen in his throat as he gaped at the trees. “So you can pull a few oaks from the ground . . .”
“You should think before you talk, Tiarna,” she told him, “These are the Seanóir, the eldest trees, who can speak and think. This—” she gestured at the forest,“—this will be called Jenna Coill. My gram planted the seed; Lámh Shábhála has given it the start of untold hands of years. Aren’t you awed by that, Tiarna? You should be. This forest will still be standing when the mage-lights fail again, it will survive through the darkness, and it will still be waiting when the mage-lights return once more. It will be here when we Daoine are nothing but whispers and legends and ghosts. You’ve just seen ages pass before your eyes and still you shrug? I’m sorry for you, Tiarna, if you’re so blind.”
“You play with your power,” Tiarna Ciomhsóg’s voice sputtered, “and you forget your family, your country, your loyalty, and your legacy.”
Sevei saw her greada’s eyes narrow at that as his hand reached for his cloch, and through the haze of pain she forced a laugh. “Tiarna, I know my legacy perfectly. I’m what the First Holder could have been. I don’t ask or expect you to like that; in fact, I don’t really care. Your mistake—the mistake all of you make—is thinking that Lámh Shábhála is only meant to do a Holder’s bidding.” The pain was growing worse and she wanted only to retreat to her chamber and gulp a mug of kala bark. “. . . those who pass the Scrúdú don’t have much time . . .” Sevei heard Carrohkai Treemaster’s voice and nodded. “Aye,” she said as if conversing with the long-dead Holder. “Not much time.” Then she shook her head, shivering as if cold. She looked at all of them: her greada, Siúr Meagher, Aithne, Tiarna Ciomhsóg, all of the Comhairle and those who had followed them out from the keep.
“I’m tired and I hurt,” she said, “and words . . .” . . . are useless, she would have finished, but even as her mouth formed the words, she felt a great, ripping pain along the right side of her chest and her vision doubled again, as if she were still wielding Lámh Shábhála.
She gasped and stumbled; she felt more than saw Greada Kyle take her arm. She was herself, and she was, she realized, Kayne. She saw his hands before her and she could smell blood and see an army arrayed before him in the colors of Airgialla. The pain was intense and awful, different than the pain of Lámh Shábhála, and she knew he had been terribly injured. “Kayne . . .” she whispered to him in anguish and fear. She wanted to go to him, but Lámh Shábhála was empty now and even if it had been full, she could not go to him without the connecting web of the mage-lights. “Kayne . . .” she called again as if she could make herself heard, but he didn’t answer. She felt the pounding of hooves on a broken, rocky path and the stern black rocks of the mountains, then the vision was gone. That terrified her more, for it was as if Kayne had closed his eyes.
“Sevei, are you all right?” she heard Greada ask. She took a breath, and this time there was no empathetic pain from her side. She straightened, frowning.
“I must leave,” she said. “Tonight, when the mage-lights come.” With that, she took her greada’s ar
m and pushed through the crowd, walking back toward the keep, ignoring Tiarna Ciomhsóg’s continuing protest and the murmuring speculation of the others.
Voices called to her in her head, her clóca tore at the scars on her body, and she could feel the cool breath of the forest at her back.
36
The Terrible One
ENNIS CRIED WHEN he was alone, nearly every night.
He hadn’t realized how horribly alone he would feel here, the only one of his kind among all the Arruk. Surrounded, he had only the blue ghosts to keep him company, and they were silent, wraithlike companions of no comfort at all: phantoms of what-might-be.
After the killing of Noz Ruka at the temple of the ruined city, Ennis had been taken to a field where Kurhv Ruka’s troops were bivouacked. For his part, Ennis clung to the pattern the blue ghosts had shown him, not daring—out here and isolated—to deviate from the path on which he was set. He saw the blue ghosts rarely; when he did, the paths they offered often led visibly and quickly to his death or mutilation. Ennis shivered and bound himself more tightly to his ghost, his pattern, the one that showed him safe.
He had learned several things in the intervening days, to be certain. He learned that the Arruk, like dogs or wolves, marked their personal territory with their urine, which made their cities reek to his nose. He learned that in their mythology the Arruk were descended from Macka, the Cat-Father, who lay with a female dragon. He learned that the Arruk ate few vegetables or fruits, and that they preferred their meat fresh and bloody. He knew that the title of Ruka was similar to “Hand” or “Sergeant” among the Daoine. He learned that only the higher-caste Arruk used a birth name followed by a title, and that the lower castes were referred to only by their birth name—there were no families among the Arruk as there with the Daoine.
He learned all this through a titleless Arruk named Cima, who had been ordered by Kurhv Ruka to teach Ennis the Arruk language. Cima was smaller than Kurhv Ruka, and his scales were less colorful, as if someone had scrubbed him too hard and worn off the hues and shades that touched most of the other Arruk Ennis had seen. From the fervor with which Cima threw himself into the task, Ennis suspected that Cima’s life would be the penalty if Ennis failed to learn quickly or well enough. Luckily for Cima, Ennis was an apt pupil. Even if his accent and slowness still made Kurhv Ruka scowl whenever he came into the tent where Ennis stayed and tried to converse with him, Ennis quickly became able to understand a significant portion of what was being said around him.
Cima told Ennis more important things as well, things whispered only when Kurhv Ruka wasn’t about to overhear. “Kurhv Ruka was once Kurhv Mairki, one of the four Mairki who lead the Arruk forces under the Kralj—and the Kralj rules all the Arruk lands in Céile Mhór.” The Arruk’s whisper sounded like a hissing teakettle, and Cima kept glancing out of the tent in which they sat to see if Kurhv Ruka were in sight. Ennis had decided that if a Daoine could ever like an Arruk, Cima was one he could learn to tolerate. There was something about him that reminded him of his older brothers; a rough attentiveness and a decided intelligence. He spoke the Daoine tongue with a distinct accent, but his words were perfectly understandable.
“That’s terrible,” Ennis said. “It must have been hard for Kurhv Ruka to be treated like that.” Ennis remembered the scoldings he’d received from Mam, from Da, from his various nursemaids and how awful he felt afterward. “Will Kurhv Ruka become Kurhv Mairki again?” Ennis asked, and Cima hissed even louder and his already pale scales slid to nearly gray.
“Perhaps,” Cima answered. “But a Ruka becomes Mairki only by killing his predecessor.” Cima shuddered. “But you don’t understand. The worst insult Kurhv Ruka endured was not that Grozan Kralj took his title, but that Kurhv Mairki wasn’t allowed to kill himself rather than endure the shame of becoming Kurhv Ruka once more. That . . . that is truly terrible. I know this.” His snouted face wrinkled as if he scowled.
“Do you mean that the same thing happened to you, too? Were you with Kurhv Mairki then? How do you know?”
“I know,” Cima spat. It was obvious he wasn’t going to answer with any more detail than that, another mystery. The first day, he’d asked Cima how he’d come to understand and speak the Daoine language. Cima had only stared at Ennis and given him the same response then: “I know.”
The two of them were startled as the tent flap was thrown back roughly and Kurhv Ruka strode into the room. Blue ghosts entered with him, leading to several futures; with them, he saw also himself and Cima as well. Cima seemed to draw down into himself as Kurhv Ruka approached, becoming even smaller and paler. That seemed to amuse Kurhv Ruka, who sniffed in their direction as he sat down on the bed in the tent. Ennis stared at the blue ghosts, glimpsing the dim visions they represented. There. That one. In that one I’m safe for now . . . He shifted position so that he matched the ghost of himself and sank into it.
“We go north and west tomorrow,” Kurhv Ruka told the two of them. “To the city your people called Torness before we took it from them.”
Cima, huddled next to Ennis, started to whisper to him and help with the translation, but Ennis shook his head. Ennis had heard the question in the blue ghost, and he spoke a single word of Arruk back to Kurhv Ruka. “Why?”
A sniff. “Your accent is terrible. Cima, can you do no better than that with this bluntclaw? That is where we have been ordered to go by Lieve Mairki.” Kurhv Ruka was speaking too fast for Ennis to understand easily. Cima translated, his voice unemotional. The way Kurhv Ruka had spat out the name told Ennis that Lieve Mairki must have been the one who took Kurhv Ruka’s old position—the one Kurhv Ruka would have to kill to become Kurhv Mairki again. Kurhv Ruka pointed with his snout to the stone on Ennis’ chest. “ ‘Gossip travels faster than feet.’ Is that a saying with the bluntclaws?”
The blue ghost shook its head and Ennis did the same. “What does Lieve Mairki want?”
“To see you for himself, no doubt.” Kurhv Ruka smiled, showing fangs. “Perhaps to see if he is stronger than a Perakli pup with a stone. If so, he’ll have made the same mistake that Noz Ruka made.” There was no mistaking the satisfaction and ambition in Kurhv Ruka’s voice. Cima heard it, also; the smaller Arruk laughed with him, mirthlessly, the careful, protective chuckle of an underling laughing at his master’s joke.
“I won’t do it,” Ennis wanted to say. “I won’t hurt this Lieve Mairki unless he tries to hurt me. I won’t do it just because you want me to.” But he could see the blue ghost who did say that, and glimpsed the claw that raked across his face, and the blood and the way he cried out, and so Ennis only sat there, silent, until Kurhv Ruka nodded and walked out of the tent, and the smell of hands upon hands of Arruk flooded in from the encampment.
“Pay attention to me, young bluntclaw,” Cima said. “Kurhv Ruka wants you to be able to understand everything by the time we get to Torness . . .”
Ennis nodded because the blue ghost nodded, and Cima started yet another lesson, but Ennis didn’t listen. He gazed out from the still-open tent flap to the meadow where Kurhv Ruka’s troops were settling down for the night, and he fingered Treoraí’s Heart on its chain, waiting for the mage-lights to come.
The Arruk moved impossibly fast, loping over the emerald, sea-swell hills of Céile Mhór for stripes at a time and covering more ground in a day than Ennis believed possible. Ennis’ own litter was borne by a quartet of stout and tireless bearers, following just behind Kurhv Ruka’s own litter in the midst of the moving army. Ennis remembered taking a trip in a carriage the year before with his mam, traveling from Dún Laoghaire to Lár Bhaile in Tuath Gabair to see Uncle Doyle and Rí Mallaghan, and that journey had taken three days. Torness was easily twice as far, and yet they managed it in the same amount of time, moving swiftly day and night, pausing only for a few hours of sleep each night when the mage-lights swept over and through the clouds.
Torness . . . Torness was worse than anything Ennis could have imagined. It looked as if a great drag
on had come and ravaged the city, tearing roofs apart with immense claws, knocking down walls with a huge, lashing tail and belching fire to blacken the stones. But there’d been no dragon, only the war machine that was the Arruk. Cima, riding in Ennis’ litter with him, had told him what it had been like.
“It was a glorious four days, some of the most glorious since we came into these lands. Meidi Kralj led us then, who was killed by a bluntclaw soldier less than a cycle ago. Our army came full force on the trembling city. Often, the Kralj will move with only two Mairki around him, but here all four Mairki were in attendance, with all their Rukas and all their soldiers, something that we’d not done since Dúnbarr, nearly nine full cycles ago when Barat Kralj was still alive. The bluntclaw army arrayed themselves in the valley before the town in their thousands, clad in the false scales you bluntclaws use to protect your soft bodies and their little hand-stabbers that are so much shorter than our jaka. Some of them were riding four-legged beasts—very good to eat, afterward—and those bluntclaws used long poles with stabbers set on their ends for weapons, and the four-legs were also clad in false scales. There were a series of battles during those four days, and finally we had pushed them back and Meidi Kralj entered the city.
“Your bluntclaw cousins ran like scared furhoppers when we came. The injured ones they left behind completely dishonored themselves, cowardly begging for their lives. Kurhv Ruka, who was Kurhv Mairki then, didn’t allow them to disgrace themselves. For their bravery in the long battle for the city, he rewarded them all with death so that they would find their place with Macka in the afterlife instead of forever wandering the world as meat-animals.” Cima sighed at the memory. “We ate well that night. . . .”
Ennis decided that he didn’t want to ask what they ate. “You were there, too, then.”
Cima’s head dropped at that. “I was,” he said, as if admitting something shameful.