Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3)

by S L Farrell

  He was so earnest, and so young . . .

  “ ‘My own children,’ ” Sevei repeated. “That’s something I’ll never know.” The Bán Cailleach’s voice sounded cold, so cold—like Jenna’s, Edana realized with a start. Very much like the First Holder’s. As if Sevei were afraid that if she lost control of her emotions, she would lose control of herself.

  Meriel chose the right way, choosing Treoraí’s Heart instead of Lámh Shábhála. . . . “I’m sorry,” Edana said, taking a step toward Sevei. The woman moved back, almost like a wild animal afraid of the touch, and the unalloyed panic in Sevei’s face made Edana sigh. “Sevei, I’m so sorry. I wish . . .” She stopped. Shrugged. “But there’s nothing either one of us can do, is there?”

  “No, there isn’t,” Sevei answered, but some of the frost had evaporated from her voice.

  “Is Kayne . . . ?” Edana was afraid to say more, afraid of what it would mean.

  “He’s still alive,” Sevei told her. “Right now, I don’t know more than that.” Behind her, the mage-lights had faded entirely. Against the blackness of the sky, Sevei seemed to glow faintly, as if her skin was lighted from the inside. “I should tell you this also, Aunt. I didn’t feel Snapdragon in the mage-lights tonight.”

  The room was suddenly cold despite the peat fire blazing in the hearth. Edana wrapped her clóca more tightly around her. She was afraid to ask the next question, but knew that she must. “I . . . I didn’t either. Doyle’s dead, then? You know this?”

  A shake of her white head. “I don’t know. But, aye, I suspect so.” Her gaze went past Edana to the doorway of her chamber, and at the same time Edana heard a new voice.

  “I suspect it also, Mam.” Padraic was standing there, and Edana felt her breath catch in her throat. The chamber servants must have gone to him; Edana had hoped he would stay hidden in his room. But Padraic was glaring at Sevei—a glare that Edana had once seen Doyle use with Jenna, and his hand was far too close to his Cloch Mór. “I was there,” he told Sevei.

  “Padraic—” Edana started, but Padraic shook his head.

  “No, Mam, let her hear.” He turned back to Sevei. “Da didn’t want me to be there because he knew what he was going to do and he didn’t want me to be part of it—he had Shay O Blaca send me away with Quickship against my will. And I know why, even if Da wouldn’t talk to me about it—he didn’t like what Rí Mallaghan and the others were going to do, and he was going to try to save Kayne and the woman with him. He was afraid that when he did that, the Riocha would attack me also—and he’s right, because I would have defended Da gladly. You can say what you want, Sevei, but I know the truth. If your brother’s still alive, it’s because of my da, not despite him. Da isn’t a perfect man, the Mother knows, but he also isn’t . . . wasn’t . . .” Padraic swallowed hard. “. . . he wasn’t the evil person you and your gram seem to think he was.”

  That was what Padraic had told Edana when he’d suddenly appeared here in the keep, confused and disoriented. She still wasn’t sure she believed him, and now she saw the same doubt mirrored on Sevei’s death-white face.

  Edana realized she was still clutching the narrow roll of parchment in her hand, now much crumpled. Sevei seemed to notice it also, her gaze going to the paper. Edana hurried to explain, hoping it would divert Sevei’s attention from the scowling Padraic. “I received this earlier today,” Edana said, unrolling the parchment again. The paper was partially torn and so thin that she could see the firelight through it. “A message bird brought it—the bird arrived at your mam’s section of the Keep; the bird-keeper said it was one of the Ard’s flock, that your da took that particular bird with him when he left for Céile Mhór. This—” Edana lifted the parchment, “—was banded to its leg. It’s from Garvan O Floinn; do you know him?” Sevei shook her head, and Edana continued. “I didn’t either, but I made inquiries and learned that he was one of your da’s gardai. Listen . . .”

  Edana began to read: To Tiarna Geraghty and the Ríthe of the Tuatha: Bunús Wall has fallen to the Arruk army. Their numbers were overwhelming—beyond count—and they have a Cloch Mór in addition to their normal spell-casters. The Cloch Mór is held by a Daoine boy, a young child. I saw him closely at the gate, and I believe him to be—

  Sevei spoke before Edana could finish. “Ennis.”

  Edana let the parchment flutter to the floor. “You already knew?”

  “No, not until just now. But I should have. I should have . . .” Sevei shook her head, lashing her shoulders with her white, unbound hair. “And it’s not a Cloch Mór he holds. It’s Treoraí’s Heart.” Her eyes, the dark holes in the brightness of her death-pale face, seemed to search the flames in the hearth. She seemed to have forgotten Padraic and even Edana. “It’s the only answer that makes sense. I knew someone had taken the Heart from Mam, and Ennis was with Mam when she died, and Ennis . . . well, he was always precocious.”

  “Born with the blue caul,” Edana whispered, remembering the day of the boy’s birth. Sevei’s gaze came back to her.

  “Aye,” she answered. “How he came to be with the Arruk and why he’d help them, I don’t understand, but I might have guessed that it’d be someone with Aoire blood who could hide himself from me behind Treoraí’s Heart . . .”

  Her hand came up to her mouth as she gave a quick, choking sob, and in that moment she was no longer the Bán Cailleach but simply Sevei. Edana could see the unsatisfied and deep grief in her, as well as the hope. Tears glittered in the empty pools of her eyes and dropped like white pearls from her cheek. “Sevei . . .” Edana husked.

  “I didn’t want this, Aunt Edana,” she said. “I truly didn’t. If I had it to do over again, if I’d known what it would mean, I wouldn’t have taken Lámh Shábhála.”

  “I know,” Edana told her soothingly, as she would have spoken to her own daughter. Then the moment passed as Sevei drew herself up again.

  The Bán Cailleach glanced at Padraic, watching near the door, his hand still ready to take up his cloch. Her eyes blinked, the tears vanished, and she was the cold Pale Witch again. “The Arruk have come to Talamh An Ghlas,” Sevei said. “That can’t be allowed.”

  “No,” Edana said carefully. “It cannot.”

  “I will need the Riocha and all their Clochs Mór.” Sevei turned to the balcony, stepping to where the curtains rippled in the night wind. Edana thought she might take herself away with Lámh Shábhála, but she heard Sevei’s voice speak into the darkness. “Aunt Edana, would you have forgiven Uncle Doyle, as his wife?”

  “I might have,” Edana told her. “Aye.” She knew the answer; she’d mulled it over every night for many months now. She could hear Padraic’s slow breath behind her.

  “Mam, you don’t have to tell her anything.”

  Edana shook her head. “No, Padraic, I do. Your da and I . . .” She turned away from Padraic to Sevei. “You’ve known love?” she asked Sevei, and the Bán Cailleach nodded solemnly.

  “I knew it,” she said, “until it was taken from me.”

  “Then you understand,” Edana told her. “I loved Doyle, and that doesn’t ever go away, not entirely. He could be a good man. I won’t pretend that we had a perfect relationship—we didn’t. There were times when I didn’t like him at all. There was an ambition and bitterness in him that I could never touch or temper, and sometimes . . . sometimes all that came too close to the surface. But he was a good da to our children, almost always. Padraic’s already told you the same. Very few people are entirely monsters, Sevei, no matter what they do or what they might look like. Doyle . . . what he did, he did either because he had no choice, or because he truly believed that what he did was justified or best.” Edana paused. “But like any of us, he could sometimes be wrong.”

  Sevei turned at that, her scarred body casting a light as bright as that of a candle—Edana could see the illumination on the embroidery of the curtains. “I’m sorry, Aunt. Sorry for you and Padraic. But if Uncle Doyle’s dead, I don’t think I’ll mourn. Not a
fter I watched him kill Gram and Dillon.” Again her gaze went past Edana to Padraic. “You remember that, don’t you, Padraic?” she said to him. “I remember how you looked. You were as frightened and uncertain as I was.”

  “I don’t hate my da, Sevei,” he told her. “Nothing you can say can make me feel that way. You don’t understand him.” Edana saw a reflection of Doyle’s steel in her son’s face.

  Edana thought that Sevei would be furious, but she only shook her head as if saddened. “Perhaps I didn’t understand him,” she said to Padraic. “All I know is what he tried to do to Gram, to me, and to those I loved. I saw that. I was there. I don’t know if he had anything to do with Mam’s death, or if—as you say—he put himself on Kayne’s side yesterday. I don’t know. But I can’t mourn him if he’s dead. There are no tears in me for him; he burned them all away.”

  Edana hurried to speak before Padraic could answer. “I won’t blame you, Sevei. But I’ll grieve, and so will Padraic and the rest of our children.” The fire was warm on her back, and the heat made it feel as if someone were standing close behind her. She wondered if it was Doyle’s haunt, if it watched her. “Sevei, I don’t know that I could do what you may have to do. But you need the help of the Riocha, and if Ennis is helping the Arruk—”

  “I know what you’re saying,” Sevei said sharply, the Bán Cailleach again. She touched the green gem between her breasts. “I know what I have to do.”

  Edana nodded. “What can I do to help you? What can we do?”

  “Mam—” Padriac began, but Sevei stopped him, lifting her hand.

  “Padraic,” she said. “When we were younger, I used to wonder if one day we might marry each other. I was half in love with you from the earliest days I can remember. Even when I went away to Inish Thuaidh and Inishfeirm, even when I found another lover—” Edana saw Sevei’s face shift at that, tightening with remembered pain, “—I still had a fondness for you. For all of your family. Mam . . . she never once spoke anything ill of your da to me, even if Gram did. Mam knew that she couldn’t govern without the other Ríthe and Riocha.” Sevei grimaced, and Edana started to go to her, but the Bán Cailleach shook her head. “I don’t blame you for supporting your da and believing in him even when others didn’t. I’ve done that myself, many times, with Gram.”

  Padraic remained silent, the frown painted on his lips, but his hand fell to his side.

  “We’ll need soldiers and we’ll need them now, Aunt Edana,” Sevei continued. “Muster what you can in two days from Dún Laoghaire and the surrounding Tuatha, and send them hurrying north. There won’t be as many troops as we will want, but we don’t have time to wait. Come with them yourself to the Narrows—both of you. I’ll need Demon-Caller and Snarl and your support. That’s our best chance to make a stand against the Arruk, where they won’t be able to bring all their numbers against us.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ll go first to Dún Kiil to rally the Inish clochs, and then when the mage-lights come tomorrow, I’ll go to where the Ríthe are waiting.” A faint smile flicked over Sevei’s lips. “These will be meetings that none of us will like, I think. And if I learn more about Uncle Doyle, I’ll send you word. To both of you.”

  Edana came forward to stand close to Sevei. Her hand reached out and stopped just before she touched Sevei’s stark-white hair. “What else can we do for you, Sevei?” she asked.

  “You can wish me luck, Aunt.”

  “I wish you all that, and more,” Edana said softly.

  52

  The Defense of Ceangail

  GARVAN O FLOINN STOOD with Laird Liam O’Blath mhaic on the heights to the southeast of the town of Ceangail. The morning was misty, with gray veils of drizzle off the Ice Sea to the north, but they could still see, far below on the twisted ribbon of the High Road, the colorful mass of the Arruk army. They spread out for more than four miles along the road, spilling well off either side, and their raiders were foraging into the valleys on either side, taking the sheep and cattle that still remained in the pastures and torching the houses they found. There were at least two double-hands of smoke smudges rising into the wind and smeared across the sky. The Fingerlanders had done what they’d always done in such circumstances: they had melted into their hidden fastnesses among the mountains well away from the High Road. The Arruk had killed few Fingerlanders after the battle of Bunús Wall, but they were razing the land and killing the livestock to feed their army. The Arruk didn’t need their long jaka and claws to slay the Fingerlanders; starvation would follow their path as their most effective weapon.

  “They’ll overrun Ceangail in a few stripes of the candle,” Garvan said to O’Blathmhaic. He rubbed a hand over the broken arm bound to his body with windings of cloth, remembering Bunús Wall. “Ceangail can’t hold, nor can Enbow or Tain. There’s nothing to stop the damned Arruk between the Bunús Wall and the Narrows.”

  Laird O’Blathmhaic sniffed. He scratched his balding, liver-spotted head and spat on the ground toward the oncoming Arruk. “The Tuatha think too much of their walls and cities,” he said. “The strength of the Finger isn’t in our town and their walls, but in the land. That’s what’s always eventually defeated the armies you’ve sent after us.” He shook a fist at the front column of the Arruk and then turned to walk back to his horse as Garvan took a last look at the invaders and, limping on his injured knee, followed O’Blathmhaic. “We’ll do what we’ve always done. We’ll harass and ambush them. We’ll take them down by ones and twos. They’ll see their fellows dying every mile they march, and they’ll wonder if they’re next. Let them have Ceangail. Let them burn the town to the ground. There’ll be no one there and nothing for them to plunder. We’ll spit at them and tell them what we Fingerlanders have always said to those who come here unwelcomed: Titim gan éirí ort—May you fall without rising.”

  “Laird,” Garvan said. “You can’t empty Ceangail. I don’t have enough men to defend it.”

  His hand already on the horse’s traces, O’Blathmhaic frowned at Garvan. “You’ve already said that we can’t hold Ceangail, man. We both know that.”

  “I agree, we can’t hold it, but we can delay them here. We can make them pay with time. We can leave ourselves an exit to the high plain and take it when there’s no more hope. We could cost the Arruk a half day’s march, maybe more.”

  “How many lives will that cost us, and to what end? Then the Arruk only stay longer in the Finger.”

  “Aye, but we give the Bán Cailleach, Tiarna Kayne, and Bantiarna Séarlait time to gather their forces. I’ve sent message birds to them . . .”

  “And if they didn’t get them? Or if the Riocha don’t care to help?” O’Blathmhaic scowled. “Fingerlanders don’t count on the Riocha coming to our aid. They come here for the same reason as these damned Arruk: to steal from or kill us.”

  “Not this time,” Garvan insisted. “Not with Tiarna Kayne and your great-daughter. But we need to give them more time. They’ll be thinking of stopping the Arruk at the Narrows—just as we stopped Rí Mac Baoill’s army there. But we have to give them the days they need to gather and ride there.”

  “Why?” O’Blathmhaic answered. “The sooner the Arruk pass through the Finger, the less damage they’ll do and the fewer of our people they’ll kill. Who knows, maybe the Finger itself may even turn them back. If not, then let the Tuatha deal with them. Let them bloody their own damned lands.”

  Garvan was shaking his head. “The mountains of the Finger won’t stop the Arruk, Laird. I know them; I’ve fought them in Céile Mhór, and the whole breadth of that land didn’t turn them back. And if you let them into the Tuatha, there may be no stopping them at all. They don’t leave our kind alive in their territory. Eventually, they’ll finish what they’ve started, and then there will be no one to help the Fingerlanders at all.”

  Laird O’Blathmhaic tightened the straps on his horse without answering. Grunting with effort, he mounted. “So you think Fingerlanders should die to let the Rioch
a live? ’Tis not a proposal that any of the clan-lairds will like.” He jerked the reins of his horse and rode off.

  Garvan stayed on the mountain for another stripe of the clock-candle, cradling his arm and watching the Arruk approach through the mist and rain.

  The town, set at the mouth of a pass in the mountains with a high valley spreading out behind it, seemed deserted. There were no soldiers waiting before its flimsy wooden walls, no rows of sentries along the ramparts, no sounds of occupation at all. For the last few stripes, the Arruk army had marched along the High Road without contact from the Fingerlanders. The ambushes, the sudden storms of arrows that would arc down from high above on the ledges where the Arruk couldn’t reach, had stopped. The army marched on, a plague on the land, following the curving and twisting High Road.

  Ennis, riding with Cima in his litter, looked out from the curtains at the town and felt a touch of homesickness. Ceangail reminded him of villages in the hills south of Dún Laoghaire, and the thatched roofs that peaked above the walls were shaped like the houses of home, not the rounded and low buildings of Céile Mhór.

  For a moment, he regretted what would happen here, but then he remembered what had happened to his mam and he heard Isibéal’s voice in his head. “They wanted me to kill you. Now you’ll give them your revenge, for what they did to your family . . .” “I know,” he answered. Cima stirred on his pillows.