Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3)

by S L Farrell

  “Your burden, aye, Holder,” Beryn said. “But everyone bears the consequences. Not only you.”

  “I haven’t told you all that I saw in Bradán an Chumhacht’s dream,” Bhralhg continued. “I saw that those who sit on your cold stone thrones have more than one face, and what they spoke with one face, the other denied. I saw the sky-stones gathered together against you, enough of them that they hid the light of Lámh Shábhála. I saw a trusted person betray their loyalty. I saw you caught between two forces.”

  The voices of dead Holders chattered in her head. A wave tossed spray over her and the cold sea burned where it lashed her skin. The pain throbbed in every limb, in her temples. Gram’s voice was there—”. . . listen to yourself first, darling. You’re the Holder; you have passed the Scrúdú;. The power is yours, and I trust your judgment. I trust it better than my own . . .”—but she listened in the chaos for another voice as well.

  “. . . I was given choices, and they were also difficult,” Carrohkai Treemaster said quietly. “You must look past yourself, Sevei; past your own desires, past your own people, past even those who brought you here . . .”

  “You’re telling me that I should betray my own people in favor of you?”

  “We’re asking you to do what benefits all,” Issine answered calmly. “And you are not only Daoine, Sevei. In your line there are Saimhóir, and there are also Bunús Muintir—who are really only an older tribe of your own people and who share with you the ability to use the clochs na thintrí.”

  “What do I gain from this?” Sevei asked them. “You ask all this of me—what will you do?”

  Fire glowed on the hill above them as Kekeri hissed. “In return, we will come when you call,” the dragon said. “You will continue to have our support, as I have already given it to you, Sevei Dragoncaller.”

  “Listen to your gram inside you,” Bhralhg told her. “She’ll tell you that the Saimhóir have helped her, and your mam, and now you.”

  “As have the Bunús Muintir,” Beryn added. “Seancoim and Keira of Doire Coill, Cataigh of Foraois Coill . . . And the dire wolves came to your mam’s aid in Doire Coill.”

  “Treoraí of the Créneach gave his Heart to the First Holder, and your mam used it also,” Issine finished. “I would say that the Daoine Holders have been much helped by the other Aware races. We’ll give you that aid, as long as we know that our own interests are also not in danger.”

  The Créneach lifted his head slowly to the night sky and clapped his hands together again. The spark that leaped from the stony limbs soared high into the sky. It seemed to linger there, growing and twisting, the color changing from yellow to green and soft blue. “The mage-lights have come,” Issine said. “We’ll take them together.”

  Sevei could feel the hungry pull of Lámh Shábhála, and she touched her hand to herself, opening the Great Cloch to the sky. The light responded, brightening and falling down from the zenith like curling ribbons to wrap around her upraised arm. She could see the mage-lights snaking down to the others also: Issine seemed to stand in a cauldron of colored lights, lapping at the brilliance with his tongue; Bhralhg’s scarred fur gleamed with the lines of the mage-lights; Kekeri’s mouth was open, and a river of scarlet and orange was flowing into the dragon as if it were taking a fiery draught from the heavens; the mage-lights wrapped Beryn’s hand in phosphorescence as he opened the clochmion that had once been Sevei’s own.

  In her mage-vision, Sevei could sense the lines that connected her to the mage-lights above, and from them to the other clochs na thintrí and Beryn. She could feel the power that surrounded her from the others, but there was no direct connection from Lámh Shábhála to Bradán an Chumhacht or Issine’s Heart, to whatever was within Kekeri that linked the dragon to the mage-power.

  She wondered how many others were out there—the Aware races—also feeding on the mage-lights and unknown to her.

  “There are more ways than this one. Lámh Shábhála might be the First, but it’s not the Only . . .”

  Sevei reached into the mage-lights, searching. She could feel Kayne and near him Séarlait and Harik, as well as two other Clochs Mór. She knew they felt her presence too: the Bán Cailleach. And aye, there . . . far away and yet powerful . . . there was Treoraí’s Heart, hidden as always behind its wall. Her mam’s cloch seemed closer now than it had been, and Sevei wondered at that. Sevei sent herself moving through the mage-lights, taking some of the power of Lámh Shábhála with her, and she slammed the power into the wall of the Heart. The mental fortress shuddered and she caught a momentary glimpse of a mind behind it—a human mind, but whether it was Daoine or Bunús Muintir or Taisteal, she couldn’t tell—then the wall slammed shut again. She sent more power toward the barrier, but whoever held the Heart was doing the same, and this time Sevei’s mage-power splashed over the Heart like water on stone, falling away harmlessly.

  “Let me see you!” she thought-screamed to the cloaked Holder. “You’ve stolen what was my mam’s. You have no right to hold it! Show yourself if you’re not a coward!”

  There was no answer.

  Sevei let herself fall away from Treoraí’s Heart and back to herself. The others were reluctantly letting the mage-lights slip back to the sky, though Lámh Shábhála still sucked at them hungrily, as if it were hiding the energy in places she’d not yet discovered within the crystal.

  Issine clapped his hands together a final time as the mage-lights vanished. The ancient Créneach glowed softly in the night, like breaking surf in moonlight.

  “We are linked, all of us who are Aware,” he said to Sevei. “We share the bright storm within the sky. And you hold our fates.”

  47

  Memories and Maggots

  THE MOUNTAINS WERE BLACK, cracked teeth set against the sky, with white snow crammed in their high furrows. The peaks seemed to lift themselves higher from the earth with each step the Arruk army took. Ennis had heard the grumblings of the soldiers over the last few days, wondering how they would ever find a way over the rocky spires.

  Ennis found that the Arruk didn’t care for mountains any more than they liked the water. On the third day after the battle, Lieve Mairki and Daj Svarti had come to the Kralj’s tent not long after Kurhv Kralj, Cima, and Ennis woke. Kurhv Kralj’s attendants had already begun striking the tent, the tattered skin fluttering to the ground behind them.

  “I’m only giving you the concerns of all the Mairki and Svarti, Kurhv Kralj,” Lieve Mairki said. “Grozan Kralj—may Cudak send him back as an ewe for his failures—ordered Likva Ruka along with Barat Svarti, two of Barat’s Nesvarti, and several soldiers into these mountains, several moons ago. They never returned, Kralj, and Daj Svarti cast a spell that told him they were all dead.” Lieve Mairki’s snout curled away from his teeth as he glared at the offending peaks and Cima translated the fast torrent of Arruk for Ennis. “How do we know that Ennis Svarti is not taking us to the same fate? There may be other ways to Cudak Zvati than through cold mountains or over the cursed sea. There must be other ways.”

  Lieve Mairki carefully avoided looking at Ennis as he spoke, standing near Kurhv Kralj, but Daj Svarti stared at him as if trying to assess weakness. All around them, Ennis could hear the sound of the Arruk breaking camp and preparing for another day’s march. The attendants were carefully ignoring them while they packed the Kralj’s litter. Inside, Ennis heard Gyl Svarti’s sullen voice: “Daj Svarti hasn’t forgotten what you did back in the city and on the battlefield, but that’s only made him more interested in you. He’ll watch you all the more carefully for that, hoping to catch you unwary and take the power you have.” Gyl seemed to laugh. “It’s what I would have done,” he said.

  All around him, the blue ghosts were swirling with possibilities. Ennis kept himself grimly locked to the Throne pattern. That ghost was silent, but it glared at Daj Svarti and Lieve Mairki as if angry, and so Ennis did the same. His right shoulder throbbed, bandaged by the Mender and bound for the moment to his chest. Under his ha
nd, through the cloth of his léine, he could feel the comforting hardness of Treoraí’s Heart.

  “Ennis Svarti says there is a High Road—a path through the mountains that the bluntclaws use to visit each other,” Kurhv Kralj told the Mairki. “There will be Perakli villages and towns on that road, and where there are Perakli, there will be battles and there will be food. This road is the fastest and best path to Cudak Zvati. Ennis Svarti promises us that.”

  “To the west past the mountains is where Cudak Zvati waits,” Daj Svarti agreed. “Yet there may be a less direct but better way for us to go there. That is what we wonder, Kralj.”

  “You believe you’re a better Svarti than Ennis.” Kurhv Kralj’s response was more statement than question.

  Daj Svarti’s eyes flicked over to Ennis, then quickly back to Kurhv Kralj. His head lifted slightly, the loose skin under the neck wobbling. “It’s only that he’s Perakli, Kralj, and . . .” Daj Svarti’s voice trailed off then as Kurhv Kralj hissed audibly and the blue ghost made Ennis slam the end of his spell-stick down on the ground. Cima chuckled.

  Kurhv Kralj leaned forward toward Daj Svarti, and the Svarti instinctively bared his throat to the Arruk leader. “Ennis Svarti is a bluntclaw and a pup, but in one battle he’s killed more Perakli than you have in a hand of moons, Daj Svarti. Should I worry about your sympathies?”

  Daj Svarti’s throat pulsed as he swallowed. “No, Kurhv Kralj.”

  Kurhv Kralj took a step back and Daj Svarti lowered his snout. Lieve Mairki stared straight ahead, as if doing his best to ignore the confrontation. “Good,” Kurhv Kralj said. “Then I expect that the two of you will take care of anyone who has similar misgivings. You may go, Lieve Mairki, Daj Svarti. We have a long march ahead of us.”

  Ennis heard the blue ghost speak, and he hurried to match it. “Wait, Svarti,” he called out as Lieve Mairki and Daj Svarti turned to go. Cima translated, and Daj Svarti turned slowly. Ennis saw the pattern move and he moved with it. He stood in front of Daj Svarti, tiny against the Arruk’s far larger bulk. Daj Svarti stared down at him, the lowered head showing no throat at all, and Cima hissed at the bald insult.

  “You’ll never have what I hold,” Ennis told him. “I know you want it. I can feel it. But I’ll never let you take it.” Ennis saw the Arruk’s nostrils flare; the red eyes stared with silent hatred. “I know you, Daj Svarti.”

  “You don’t know me at all,” Daj Svarti grunted. “You know nothing.”

  “I know you,” Ennis repeated. “And I’m not frightened of you. Cima, here, take this . . .” He handed Cima his spell stick. His bandaged right hand clutched at Treoraí’s Heart and he opened the cloch, letting the comforting power wrap around him. Before Daj Svarti could react, Ennis grabbed the Svarti’s arm with his left hand and opened the Heart fully.

  He fell into Daj Svarti. He was Daj Svarti . . .

  Ennis stood in a thick forest of emotion: trunks of blood-infused anger, clinging burrs of emerald jealousy, ropelike vines of frustration. He pushed through, going deep in toward the third heart where dark memories lurked. Daj Svarti tried to hide from Ennis’ intrusion, sending recollections bounding away like storm deer in the forest, but Ennis leaped after them, a snarling dire wolf of the mind, and bore one down . . .

  . . . he was young and frightened, cowering with his chin frantically lifted as high as he could as he stood before his Svarti mentor. The old Arruk shook his spell-stick at Daj. “Are you hopelessly stupid?” the Arruk railed. “I thought you had some promise. Three days! Three days you had to memorize a simple spell, and you still don’t have it. I’m giving you one more day. Do you hear me, you dullard? One more day, and if you can’t recite the spell for me—perfectly, without a mistake—then I’m sending you back to your Life-Weaver. Perhaps you’d be better off apprenticed to a tanner. The stench might improve your attitude . . .”

  That memory was delicious, but it wasn’t what Ennis was after, and so he plucked at another even as Daj howled at the invasion. . . . the battle between the Arruk and the bluntclaws in Thall Mór-roinn who called themselves the Garifali had been long and furious. Daj was now a Nesvarti, his spell-stick so new that it still stank of varnish. He’d been assigned to a squad sweeping a field on which a minor skirmish had taken place a few days before, sent to make certain that the Garifali had truly retreated. Daj Nesvarti let the others move ahead, for the truth was that he’d botched his spells the night before and his spell-stick was empty. He was terrified that the Svarti to whom he reported would find out, and he also hoped that any lingering Garifali warriors would be taken care of by the soldiers and he wouldn’t need to deal with them. The stench hit Daj first, the sweet, ripe, and sickening smell of rotting flesh. He nearly stumbled over the body, a Garifali whose abdomen had been ripped open by an Arruk spear. The body was bloated, and the crows and the jackals had been at the body. So had the flies, for a wriggling mass of white maggots slithering over the wounds. The sight brought the gorge to Daj’s mouth, and he remembered . . . he remembered . . .

  But Daj sent that linked memory bounding away from Ennis, and Ennis pursued it, bringing it down with a mental bound. Aye, that was it, the one he wanted . . .

  . . . he was but a pup himself, still with his Egg-Mother. His Egg-Mother kept a dog for a pet in their nesting-house, a black-and-white mutt that would sometimes bring back a rabbit or possum to enhance their larder. One day the dog went out on its usual hunting routine, but didn’t return. The next morning, Daj went out with his Egg-Mother looking for the dog. They found the animal not far from the house, curled up under a bush. Daj thought it was just sleeping, and ran to it, sinking down beside it. Gleeful and rejoicing, he reached down to shake it awake, but his hand found a horrible wound in the dog’s side. When he pulled back, horrified, there were knots of living maggots on his hands. Daj shrieked in alarm, shaking his hand frantically to get them off his skin. He caught the smell, then, too, and for the next several nights, the scent and the images of the maggots eating his own flesh inhabited his nightmares . . .

  Ennis knew that this was the memory he could use. “Ennis, this is not . . .” he thought he heard his mam say, but then the others in the Heart clamored more loudly and he couldn’t hear her anymore. Isibéal’s voice came over the tumult. “Your mam used Treoraí’s Heart to heal,” she said, “as you’ve used it to destroy. It can do either. The Heart can create whatever you’d like—it is even stronger for you than it was for Meriel. You can create whatever you’d like. Go on. Do it . . .”

  Ennis felt his eyes narrow and his brow wrinkle. He would tell himself later that it was the pattern. All he was doing was following the blue ghost.

  “Here . . .” he whispered to Daj Svarti inside, and he allowed the mage-energy within Treoraí’s Heart to flow out, shaping it. “The maggots,” he whispered inside Daj Svarti’s mind. “The maggots will have you. Look . . .” They were the pale white of the grave, plump and ugly creatures the size of Ennis’ little finger: hand upon hand upon hand of them, and more coming as the mage-light trickled from the Heart. “They’ll eat from the inside, Daj Svarti. They’ll consume you alive, and you’ll feel them in your belly as they feed, wriggling and hungry and growing larger. Maybe you’ll even still be alive when they burst out through your skin. Maybe you’ll see them, wriggling and slipping through your fingers as you try to hold them in. Won’t that be horrible, Daj Svarti? Won’t that be terrible?”

  Linked with Daj Svarti, Ennis felt the revulsion and shock radiate through him as Daj Svarti recoiled. He felt the pain as the maggots began to do their work, and the suffering was so intense that Ennis released Treoraí’s Heart in sympathetic shock. He heard Daj’s scream with his true ears, not through the mage-vision. Blinking in disorientation, he saw Daj Svarti double over alongside Lieve Mairki as Kurhv Kralj and Cima stepped back. Daj Svarti was clutching his stomach, his claws extended and digging into his own flesh so that blood flowed.

  “Kill me!” Daj Svarti hissed to Lieve Mairki and Kurhv Kral
j, his eyes wide in panic. “Kill me now! Please!” He moaned and howled again. All around them, other Arruk dropped what they were doing to watch in horrified fascination.

  The blue ghost moved Ennis. He stepped forward again, standing before the terrified Svarti. “I can help you,” he told Daj Svarti in his halting, uncertain Arruk, “if you’ll lift your chin for me.” He cocked his head, staring at the contorted body of the Svarti. “Will you do it, or will you die?” he asked.

  Daj Svarti was frothing at the mouth. His claws had dug long furrows in his scaled abdomen and he’d fallen to his knees so that Ennis could see the frill along the top of his head. Slowly, in obvious agony, Daj Svarti lifted his head, his eyes half closed. His snout lifted until, trembling, his nasal slits pointed at the sky.

  “Good,” the pattern said, and Ennis echoed the word. He took Treoraí’s Heart in his hand again. “Then let me heal you, Daj Svarti. Let me take away the nasty, awful maggots . . .”

  Afterward, Kurhv Kralj stared at him strangely, as if pondering something Ennis didn’t understand. But none of the Svarti or Mairki or any Arruk below him would ever again fail to lift their chin when standing before him. . . .

  By afternoon, they were in the foothills of the mountains, on the strangely-deserted High Road that led out of the mountains girdling the Finger and running down to the plains eastward toward the Céile Mhór’s capital of Concordia. They’d seen riders from Céile Mhór, but the Daoine scouts seemed content to watch the Arruk army without engaging it—the Arruk army was, after all, leaving Céile Mhór for Talamh an Ghlas. They were the Rí Ard’s problem now, not the Thane’s

  Ennis and Cima rode together in their litter alongside that of Kurhv Kralj. Cima had been strangely quiet since the incident with Daj Svarti, and he stayed well away from Ennis, carefully not letting their bodies touch. The blue ghost had left Ennis for the time being, and he leaned back against his pillows, tired and pensive, afraid to think about all that had happened because he was afraid that he’d start to cry. He moved his leg and it brushed against Cima’s scaled one; the Arruk nearly jumped.