Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3)

by S L Farrell

  “Is that how you’ll govern as Rí Ard?” she asked him. “Not doing what you think is right or best but what you think is expedient?”

  “That’s not fair, Séarlait,” he told her. He stepped past her into the tent. “Come in,” he said. “Let’s talk.”

  “I don’t need to talk,” she told him. “I went years without talking. I prefer to act. I thought you did, too.”

  Séarlait released the tent flap. The day was hidden in the twilight of the tent, and he heard her footsteps as she walked away.

  46

  Conclave of the Aware

  SEVEI SAT ON the beach, her hand over Lámh Shábhála and letting just a touch of the energy inside waft out over the waves, letting it carry her thoughts out and down into the quiet of the sea. We need to talk with each other again, Bhralhg. . . . I ask you to come to me . . . Please, Bhralhg . . .

  The water, in a protected cove not far from Thall Coill, was a flat and translucent green through which she could see the flitting, darker shapes of small fish. Beyond the curving spit of rocks and in the driving wind, the water quickly become choppy and frothed with whitecaps. In the two days she’d been here now, she’d been alone except for the company of a small group of brown harbor seals who came over curiously when she’d changed to seal form, swimming with her as she chased and caught the sweetfish in the cove.

  But though she could feel the presence of blue seals and, especially, Bhralhg carrying the magical salmon of power, Bradán an Chumhacht, they’d not shown themselves or answered her call. “They’ll never answer,” she heard her gram say inside Lámh Shábhála. “I used them poorly and I used them hard—Thraisha, Garrentha, Dhegli, Challa—and they won’t trust the Holder of Lámh Shábhála ever again. It’s my fault . . .”

  “Hush, Gram,” Sevei said aloud, the sounds of her own voice surprising her in the cool air. She could see her breath in the air. She allowed a trickle of Lámh Shábhála’s energy to radiate over her to warm her skin. Her body glowed like a moon in the dusk, her flesh as cracked and marred as that of the pale disk. “The sun’s almost gone. When the mage-lights come tonight, I’ll leave. But for now there’s still time.”

  She cast the power of Lámh Shábhála like a net over the sea, searching for Bhralhg. Though she couldn’t feel him, she could feel the absence of him, as if he were using Bradán an Chumhacht to actively deflect her. She kept feeling the not-Bhralhg, a void that slid through her mage-vision like a movement glimpsed in peripheral vision and then gone when she looked at it directly.

  There was laughter in the air, and a darkness in the growing dimness of the water, and the scent of fish. “Come swim with me, Holder,” a voice said in her head as she heard the deep coughing moan of a seal and saw him, the noble head rising from the surf a few strides from the shore. “Come swim with me.” Then the head dipped into the water again.

  “. . . Don’t trust them . . .”

  “Be quiet, Gram,” she said to the ghost, and she walked quickly down the wet shingle until the waves lapped at her ankles, her calves. As the water splashed, it first felt impossibly cold, then just as strangely warm and she was no longer running but swimming with powerful wriggling of flukes and body. She saw Bhralhg in the quickly-dimming light of the sun and followed the trail of his wake, out of the cove and into the rolling, vital surge of the ocean, tasting the salt and the faint sweet wash of rainwater from the shore. The world underneath the surface was deep blue and would have been too dark for Daoine eyes, but she could see from the shimmering cap of the water above to the kelp-laden rocks of the deepening floor. The light of the failing sun painted steeply-angled, waving columns that bloodied the water; fainter wedges of silver were moonlight, growing stronger with each moment. There were clouds in the thick atmosphere of the water: heavy silt kicked up from the bottom by the waves; the pale, drifting snowfall of plankton and algae; the flashing, swiftly-passing schools of fish.

  They flew through the hues of day and night above the landscape that the stone-walkers never saw, side by side. Bhralhg said nothing but swam strongly, heading out to deeper water before curving north. Night fell as they traveled, and Sevei thought that at least a few stripes must have passed before they came to land again, hauling out on a rocky shelf. “Here,” Bhralhg said. “I brought you here to meet Issine, the Eldest. He has been here since before your people came to this land, before the people before you and the people before them. He existed even before the Saimhóir, the Earc Tine, the Daoine, the Bunús Muintir, the great eagles, or the dire wolves became Aware.”

  “What is this Issine?” Sevei asked Bhralhg. She looked around the shelf of dark stone and up the steep, rock-strewn slope in front of her, letting herself shift back to her normal form. She saw nothing and no one. “Where is he?”

  “Issine is Créneach,” Bhralhg told her, “and he is right there before you.”

  “Créneach?” She heard the word echoed by the ghosts in her head. Gram had told her of the Créneach—the Clay People, the Eaters of Stone, the Boulder-folk—and certainly all the tales of the Battle of Dún Kiil mentioned how the Créneach had appeared when it was thought the battle was lost and turned the tide. Treoraí, who had given her mam the Heart, had been Créneach. Sevei squinted in the moonlight, searching the jumble of rocks for anything vaguely man-shaped.

  “They can look like no more than a pile of ordinary rocks until they decide to stir themselves,” Gram whispered. “If Issine is the Eldest of all Créneach, then he must be old indeed, for Treoraí told me that he had been alive for twelve cycles of the mage-lights, and he also said he was the Eldest of his own tribe . . .”

  Sevei imagined that Issine must look massive and huge, a hoary great-da of rock as tall as a hill and as powerful and enduring. “Where—?” she started to ask Bhralhg again, when she heard a sharp k-crack like two pebbles struck together and saw a spark flare in the darkness to her left. She turned and saw movement, but what stepped out into the soft moonlight stood no taller than her knee, though its body was nearly as wide as it was tall. The creature looked as if it had been crudely fashioned from clay, glazed and fired and then left out in the rain for centuries until the polished, glassy tan glaze become pitted and stained. The face atop the stocky body was noseless, though there were twin cracks where it might have been. The eyes were dark pits lurking under thick ridges, and deep within them light glittered as if from some hidden well. She could hear it breathing, and it warbled at her with pursed mouth. It looked more like an infant than an Elder. Bhralhg must have caught her thoughts, for she heard his voice in her head as the seal moaned.

  “What did you expect? The Eldest has been here in the wind, the rain, and the surf watching the world for more years than there are grains of sand on the beach. How could time not have touched him, eroding him like the rocks of the shore?” Bhralhg laughed.

  Issine warbled again, and this time Sevei allowed Lámh Shábhála to open, and in the mage-energy she heard his words. His voice was as low and ancient-sounding as she imagined the very mountains might be. “We begin as small infants; we return to that form at the end, worn back down by the years. Time is full of cycles within cycles, and this is just another. Let me taste the All-Heart again. It has been so long . . .”

  The Créneach moved forward, walking with an odd side-to-side lurching gait. “Crouch down,” he told Sevei, and she knelt before Issine. His tongue flickered out from his mouth, running quickly over the skin between her breasts before she could react. The creature’s tongue felt frigid, smooth, and strangely dry, yet the touch was pleasant. Issine sighed, as if savoring the taste in his mouth “Ahh, aye—that is the All-Heart. So strong, so sweet . . .”

  In the mage-energy that surrounded them, she could feel a presence like a Cloch Mór buried within him, burning bright in her mage-vision—brighter, in fact, than any Cloch Mór she had ever seen. As bright as Lámh Shábhála itself . . .

  Issine chuckled—linked as they were, she realized that he had overheard her thought. �
�Lámh Shábhála is the All-Heart, the essence of the goddess Céile Herself,” he told her. “Lámh Shábhála is all that is left of Anchéad’s Pebble, and so it is and always will be First. But the Great-Heart within me will be nearly as powerful when one day I leave it behind.” Issine looked at her. “As Treoraí’s Heart is powerful, for Treoraí too was old, though not so old as me.”

  “Gram . . . the others . . . they always thought Treoraí’s Heart was just a clochmion, though the way it scarred Mam’s arm, like a Cloch Mór or the way Lámh Shábhála did to Gram . . .”

  Issine clapped his hands together percussively; sparks flared and expired on the wet rock. “The soft-flesh one who holds it now—can you see that person? Nay, you shake your head. But even those with the Great-Hearts you call Clochs Mór can’t hide from the All-Heart, can they?”

  Sevei felt a shiver, remembering the way Treoraí’s Heart cloaked itself in the mage-lights, how elusive its Holder was to her, how she could not seem to follow the thread of the mage-light back to see the face. Sevei let her mage-sight play over Issine’s Heart: a jewel of pure yellow, gleaming like a sun in the chest of the Créneach. She wondered what it would be like to hold that stone, to feel its power . . .

  “Very soon, my Heart will leave me,” Issine told her. “By the time the mage-lights fail again, certainly. And then, when the lights return in their cycle and the All-Heart once more wakens the Créneach and our Hearts from a long slumber, perhaps one of your people will find it.”

  When the mage-lights fail again. . . . That would be long centuries yet, Sevei knew, yet for Issine, that seemed “very soon.” Old, so old . . . She glanced back at Bhralhg, lying patiently where the salt spray washed over his dark fur. The seal’s black eyes blinked as a wave crashed over the rocks. “Thank you for bringing me here. I would not have wished to miss meeting Issine. But why . . . ?”

  “Because you will be making decisions soon that will affect all of the Aware races,” Bhralhg answered. “You were right, Sevei; we do need to talk, because those decisions are already upon you. I heard you call me, but before I answered, I went first to the others and brought them here.”

  “You have passed the Scrúdú,” Issine told her. “What any other Holder might do with Lámh Shábhála matters less if they haven’t come through that test. Even Jenna First Holder never completed the Scrúdú, and so her power was limited. But what you might do . . . This hasn’t happened for what is a long time, even for me.”

  The last time, it was me . . . Sevei heard the voice inside her: Carrohkai Treemaster. And I didn’t do all I could, or that I should have . . . But Sevei had no time to listen to the dead Holder’s voice. “What you do in the time left to you will affect your people greatly,” the Créneach continued. His head lifted up to her; his tongue flicked out like that of a snake tasting the air. His hands clapped together once more, and this time the resulting spark was far stronger and lasted for several breaths. Sevei heard the rustle of huge wings above, and a darkness blotted out the moon for a moment. “But there are more than Daoine awake in the world,” Issine said, “and what you do will affect all of us.”

  As he spoke, a dragon wheeled around the rock shelf and cupped air with its great leathery wings on the rocks above. It hovered there for a moment and seemed to lay something down gently from the claws of its rear legs. Then it lifted again with a rush of air before landing heavily several strides off, sending a cascade of rocks down to the sea. The gigantic head peered down at her, and she recognized the frill and the patterns of the scales, and especially the bright red tail that curled around the boulder on which it rested: Kekeri, who had brought her to Thall Coill.

  “Hello again, soft-flesh,” Kekeri said. Another shape, far smaller than the dragon and man-shaped, appeared next to Kekeri. It struck a staff on the ground, and the knotted end shuddered with greenish light that illuminated his face. In the glow, Sevei recognized that man as well: Beryn, the Protector of Thall Coill. He picked his way down the slope toward Sevei, Bhralhg, and Issine, using his staff for balance and sight.

  Sevei shook her head. “No dire wolves? No eagles?” It was difficult to keep the incredulity from her voice.

  Beryn made his way through the loose rocks at the foot of the slope. The Bunús Muintir let his staff-light die so that the cold moonlight returned. “Kiraac of the Wolves knows that we’re meeting, as do the eagles. And there are others who know as well, those you’ve never met and don’t yet know.” He stared at her, and Sevei thought she sensed a quiet sympathy in his expression. “How are you, Sevei?” he asked.

  “I hurt,” she told him. “I hurt all the time, and most especially when I use Lámh Shábhála.”

  The empathy deepened in his eyes. “I’m sorry. I truly am. There is . . .” She saw more than heard his hesitation. “. . . andúilleaf. I could find it, give it to you . . .”

  In her head, the voices of the Holders crooned, yearning. “. . . aye, the ’leaf . . . it was the only thing that made the pain bearable . . . . . . aye, to have all the hurt pushed away . . .” Her gram’s voice shoved them all away. “No!” she shouted, so loudly that she was surprised that none of those around her could hear. “That was my mistake, and I won’t let you make it, Sevei . . .”

  Sevei was already shaking her head before Gram had finished. “No,” she told Beryn. “I can bear it.” The moon went away behind a silent cloud and she shivered as if the sun had gone. The air was cold on her teeth as she sucked it in. “So you’re all here. Why?”

  “Because we chose you and now we want to know if our choice was a good one,” Beryn answered.

  Sevei felt a stirring of apprehension and worry; as much as holding Lámh Shábhála hurt, it was also something that she could not give up willingly. To lose the cloch would be worse than any pain using the stone could inflict. “Could you do anything about it if I wasn’t?” she asked him. A slow smile tugged at his mouth, but it was Kekeri who answered.

  “Aye, we could,” the dragon said, its voice hissing sibi lantly in its own tongue while a similar voice spoke in her head. “Even Lámh Shábhála of the Scrúdú couldn’t stand against the power gathered here. We would smash you.” Kekeri yawned, and there was a yellow shimmering glow like a smithy’s forge deep within the beast’s cavernous mouth.

  Issine clapped his hands, sending golden sparks through the air. Kekeri hissed and went quiet, his tail lashing. “The dragons have yet to learn tact since they’ve become Aware,” Issine said. “But he’s correct. You are stronger than any one of us, but not than all of us. If we thought you were a danger to us, we could end the threat.”

  “What threat am I to any of you?” Sevei asked.

  “Anything you do that benefits only your own people is a potential threat,” Issine answered. “Your people have spread everywhere over the land, and as you create more farms and towns, you leave less room for the other Aware races, who are also still awakening. As your people increase, you’ll fish the waters where the Saimhóir find their own food; you’ll cut down the forests and destroy the meadowlands where both the dire wolves and great eagles hunt. The dragons will eat your sheep and cattle because it’s easier than hunting, and you’ll in turn hunt them.”

  “And we will burn and kill those who try,” Kekeri hissed. Issine waited, and Kekeri subsided to a grumble that sounded like steam rattling the lid of a kettle.

  “I’m Daoine,” Sevei answered, unable to keep the irritation from her voice. “Do you expect that I won’t help my own people, or that I’d help any of you in preference to them? Do you accost all those who passed the Scrúdú this way?”

  “No other Daoine has passed the test,” Issine answered calmly. “And no other race has been so successful as the Daoine. Many of the Aware, like the dragons, sleep when the mage-lights sleep; you Daoine continue to increase in those times. So did the Bunús Muintir, but not as you do. And now there is another race on the edge of Awareness, a race that—like the Daoine and the Bunús Muintir—can live strongly in the be
tween-time. They come into conflict with your people as your people came into conflict with the Bunús Muintir.”

  “Aye!” shouted a hundred voices within Sevei, all with the tone of the Bunús Muintir. “You Daoine came when we were weak without the clochs, or we would have driven you back . . .”

  “But the Daoine are stronger than the Bunús were then, Sevei,” Bhralhg interjected, almost as if he’d heard the voices. The seal waddled forward, just out of the spray of the breakers. “The WaterMother has given me glimpses of the near future, and in those visions I see that you could choose to elevate your own kind over all the rest of the Aware. And I see that to do this you may have to kill a person with whom you share blood.”

  “Kayne?” Sevei asked the Saimhóir. “Is that what you’re saying, that I might be set against Kayne?”

  Bhralhg gave a wordless moan. “I don’t see the face; I only feel the kinship between the two of you.”

  “I can’t do that,” Sevei said reflexively. “Kayne and I shared a womb, shared our whole childhood together. We knew what each other was thinking and feeling. I can still feel him in my dreams.” Sevei was shaking her head in denial, her white hair, still damp with the sea, clinging to her neck and shoulders. “I’d never hurt him. I won’t do that.”

  “The choice is always yours,” Issine told her. The heart inside the Créneach was glowing furiously in Sevei’s mage-sight. “We can’t make decisions for you or force you to choose one way or the other.”

  “No,” Sevei said, the word snapping angrily. “You can’t.” She looked at each of them. “. . . Aye, they can’t! . . .” the voices inside echoed in agreement. “None of you can make my decisions for me. You say you picked me to take Lámh Shábhála; well, that may be, though it felt more that it was Lámh Shábhála itself who chose me, not any of you. But I have the cloch now. It’s my burden to bear, and my choices to make.”