The water quickly turned dark as she descended, and she could feel the pressure flatten her body and push against her ears. Twenty feet down, she could barely feel the pull of the waves. Instead, she could taste a salty current washing in from the west, warmer than the surface water and laden with clouds of tiny plankton. The bottom here, another twenty feet down, was rocky with stands of kelp waving lazily back and forth like trees in a fitful wind. Sevei despaired, seeing that. The stone on its necklace could be anywhere here. It could be right under her and she wouldn’t see it; the chain could have been caught in the strands of kelp above or the stone might have drifted far away in the strong currents. It could have been swallowed by some sea creature. Bhralhg could be mistaken about the location and Lámh Shábhála might be laying on the bottom a half-stripe’s swim from here. The sea floor was as vast as an unexplored continent, and Sevei needed to find one singular pebble on it. It was an impossible task.
She noticed that Bhralhg stayed on the surface, waiting for her. When she looked up, she could his dark form as a shadow on the bright top of the water.
She searched, with increasing pessimism, until her need to breathe drove her to the surface again. Bhralhg came over to her as she panted. “You won’t find it, Sevei. You’ve done what you needed to do, and you’ve seen how futile it is. Let Lámh Shábhála find who it wants. We should return to the dry stones so you can rest in your own form.”
“I can’t. Not until I find the cloch.”
The sun sparked blue on his wet fur. “Don’t you think that if Lámh Shábhála wished to stay with the First Holder that it wouldn’t have allowed her to throw it away so easily, or that it would have been there for her when she dove after it?”
Sevei hesitated, Bhralhg’s words feeding the unease inside her. She swam a few strokes away from him and took several quick breaths, filling her lungs, and dove again. She returned to the sea floor, searching in an ever-widening circle among the crannies of the rocks and the sandy floor under them until she could stay down no longer. Her injured body trembled with the threat to return to human form, but she sought the air once more, then again returned to the calm infinity underneath.
And this time she found the
Uaigneas
. The ship was canted over on its side, its masts broken, the tattered sails shredded and fluttering in the currents. Sevei swam over a field of debris scattered on the ocean floor near the ship: trunks, dishes from the galley, ropes, pulleys, an ax, furniture she recognized from the small passenger chamber in the ship. . . .
No stone on a bright golden chain. No Lámh Shábhála.
She swam closer, feeling the remembered terror welling up inside her. Much of the decking was charred as if a fierce fire had burned there before it sank, and as she approached, she could see worse: bodies, arms outstretched as if waving to her. The sea creatures had already come to dine on the feast sent down from above: starfish, crabs, lobsters, a bright welter of fish. The scavenger fish fled at the sight of her seal form. She swam along what had once been the ship’s deck. There, that was the railing where Gram had stood as she threw Lámh Shábhála into the sea. That body there, in clothing she recognized, must be the captain. She veered away, not wanting to see him closely.
And there . . .
... there . . .
It was the white clóca first, and the shape of his head, turned in profile to her and ghostly against the burned timbers behind him.
Dillon
. Her snouted mouth opened with his name: a plea, a prayer, a curse.
His leg was snared in a coil of rope and his left hand gripped the railing that was now the top of the wreckage as if he’d been trying to climb up to the surface as the ship heeled over as it sank. His body was bloated, his hair drifted like smoke, his mouth was open in a final water-stoppered shout; as she stared, a tiny fish darted out from the tooth-lined cavern. The full shock rippled through her body then. She felt her awareness shifting, felt the hammer blow of seeing Dillon start to send her body back to its human form. She wanted to scream, wanted to wail, wanted to do anything to stop the pain that threatened to tear her open from the inside.
Something, someone struck her hard from underneath, pushing her, nudging her upward, and she realized that Bhralhg was there, guiding her up toward the surface and away from the wreckage of the ship. She reached down for Dillon, and the hand that stretched out before her eyes was furred like a Saimhóir but had her own fingers. Then, in a rush, they broke the surface of the water and Sevei gasped at the cold bite of the air. She struggled, trying to dive back underneath the surging waves, but Bhralhg’s head butted against her, driving her back up.
“You must stop.” Bhralhg’s body was warm against the freezing cold of the water. “If you change out here, you will die. There is nothing you can do for those down there. You must stay in Saimhóir form.” His voice was sympathetic and understanding. She felt a prickling of the fur that encased her and she knew he had loosed some of the energy of Bradán an Chumhacht. Against her own will, she felt herself calming. Seeing Dillon seemed somehow distant and long ago . . . She fought against the imposed tranquillity.
“Why?” she railed at him, though now she could hold back the change that threatened her. “At least I’d join the rest of my family with the Mother. We’d all be there together: Kayne, Gram, my mam, my da . . .”
“Not your da. Your da died long cycles ago.”
The waves lifted them, dropped them again. His words banished the horrible image of Dillon, replacing it with confusion and uncertainty. Despite the serenity he’d forced on her, she felt as if her entire world had shifted. “What do you mean? I felt the attack, I felt Kayne’s despair. Da was there; I could feel him through Kayne.”
“You feel those of your blood, Sevei. You dream of them.”
“Aye,” Sevei admitted. “But I never told you that.”
“Bradán an Chumhacht knows,” he answered. “You dream of your mam and of your brother Kayne with whom you shared a womb. You see them the most, and sometimes you can even glimpse your gram and your other brothers and sisters. But the one you call your da—do you ever dream of him?”
Sevei gave a wriggle of her head. “No.”
“Are there ever Saimhóir in your dreams?”
She remembered the times that images of the Saimhóir drifted through the images in her head. “Aye, but . . .”
Bhralhg gave her no chance to continue. She realized what he was going to say then, before he spoke the words and she shook her head as if she could stop them with the denial. “Your mam was a changeling like you. Meriel swam with Dhegli, who carried Bradán an Chumhacht before me and before Challa. And Dhegli, unlike Challa and me, was also a changeling.” He hesitated as a wave pushed them momentarily apart. “Like you,” he finished when he swam back to her. “Can your brother change, Sevei? Does the WaterMother call to him? The two of you are really so different, so unlike each other . . .”
Even Bradán an Chumhacht couldn’t hold back the turmoil in her mind at the implications. Again she struggled to retain the shape of a Saimhóir. She swam away from Bhralhg.
“No,” she said.
She heard the word come from her mouth as a seal’s grunt.
16
The Voice of Vengeance
LIAM O’Blathmhaic wasn’t what Kayne had expected in a clan-laird. He seemed no more well off than O Leathlobhair: his house was in a state of eternal disrepair, the stone fences around his pastureland half-falling down the steep slopes on which they were set. Sheep stared placidly at them as they approached, and Laird O’Blath mhaic came from his house bearing a large cudgel that he waved at O Leathlobhair. A black-and-white herding dog which looked to be almost as old as O’Blathmhaic himself growled at them from his side.
“What is it now, O Leathlobhair, you crazy old man?” the laird shouted down at them. “I told you the last time: the ewe was more than enough in payment for the trampling of your field and that settles it between you and young Odhougnal. That was my judgment and I’ve not changed my mind. I don’t care who you bring to argue with me . . .”
The tirade broke off in mid-sentence as Laird O’Blath mhaic stopped and squinted down the worn dirt path up which Kayne and O Leathlobhair were laboring. He brought the cudgel down and leaned against it as a cane. The dog sat. “The red-hair with you is no one I know. I see blood on his fine clothes, and he has a warrior’s bearing.”
“I am Kayne Geraghty, son of Meriel MacEagan and Owaine Geraghty,” Kayne answered, giving his name. Behind him, O Leathlobhair hissed quietly: “Careful, boy . . .”
“I saw a great fire sending smoke from up on the Narrows earlier today, and crows gathering there,” O’Blathmhaic said, nodding. “They were feasting on your companions, I would guess, from what I see in front of me.”
Kayne grimaced. An image came to him: a huge black bird sitting on his da’s chest, the beak open as it lowered its head to peck at his open eyes . . . He forced the thought away. “Aye, Laird O’Blathmhaic,” he said. “We were cowardly attacked as we were riding in peace back to Dún Laoghaire from the wars in Céile Mhór. My da was the commander.”
“And your attackers?” His massive, ancient face folded into a bearded scowl. “If you’re accusing Fingerlanders, then you’d better be quicker with that sword than you look, boy. Old I may be, but my stick here has beaten the heads of stronger men than you, even if they don’t bear fancy names and titles.”
Kayne drew himself up at the insult and threat, but O Leathlobhair touched his shoulder and he held his temper with an effort. “The gardai wore red and white, Laird. There were Riocha from Dathúil with them, and at least one Cloch Mór.”
O’Blathmhaic spat at that, sending a massive globule splashing against the stones of the path. “Come inside,” he grunted. “I’ll hear more.”
A stripe later, Kayne had finished relating his tale, his throat eased somewhat by a tankard of bitter dark ale O’Blathmhaic set in front of him. The steep-hilled landscape outside the window was cloaked in night’s shadow by that time, and the peat fire in the hearth filled the small dwelling with its ruddy heat. The dog slumbered, snoring audibly, under the table. O’Blathmhaic’s pudgy fingers prowled his snarled and braided gray beard; his eyes glinted in the deep hollows of their sockets. In close proximity, the man smelled of peat and dirt and sheep, and the few teeth he had left were brown and tilted in the bed of his gums. “My companions and I need your help, Laird,” Kayne finished, hating to say the words, hating the way the man seemed to leer at him with the statement. Liam O’Blathmhaic was the epitome of the tuathánach, the class of person that Kayne had always ignored when he rode past their hovels, had turned his head away at the sight and smell of them. Like most Riocha, he’d felt himself better than these common creatures; in truth, looking around the filth that this man called home, he still felt himself better. He longed for the keep at Dún Laoghaire: for its spacious chambers, its bright hangings and hordes of servants, its light and glory and majesty.
Here, in the dirt, he was begging a filthy graybeard for aid, because he had no other choice. The indignity of it made him scowl. “I need to warn Hand Harik of the treachery. Perhaps with the men we left at the Bunús Wall . . .”
“And why should we help?” O’Blathmhaic interrupted. “This is Tuath Airgialla, is it not?—the Rí Mac Baoill’s land, not yours, even if you be who you claim to be.”
“You don’t believe me?” Kayne said, pushing his chair back as O Leathlobhair squawked in alarm and O’Blath mhaic watched with bland amusement in his gaze. “Then there’s nothing to gain here.” He rose to his feet, unable to stifle the groan as his ribs protested, as the deep wound in his thigh threatened to rip open again. His head brushed the low beams above him as he forced his body to straighten. He took a limping step toward the door as O’Blathmhaic’s dog growled and nipped at his feet.
“And how are you going to find your way back in the dark, boy? You can barely walk as it is. We’ll find your broken body in the morning after you fall over one of the cliffs. Sit, and listen to someone older and wiser than you—or is that something you Riocha canna do?”
Kayne glared at O’Blathmhaic, who gazed back at him placidly as he reached to the center of the table to tear off a piece of the bread loaf that sat there. The clan-laird pushed the wedge into his mouth, chewing noisily. Kayne looked at O Leathlobhair, who didn’t seem inclined to leave with him. The dog sniffed at his boots.
Kayne sat again.
O’Blathmhaic chuckled softly to himself. He tipped back in his chair. “There now. You
can
think with that handsome head of yours.” Now he leaned forward again, and Kayne could smell the man’s breath: ale and bread and rotting teeth. “Listen to me now, and listen well. O Leathlobhair here has already told you that we Fingerlanders don’t care for the Rí Airgialla. Mac Baoill can claim the Finger if he likes, but he also knows that he can’t hold our land except in name. He can tithe us, but if he makes the tribute too burdensome, it won’t come to him and he’ll be forced to either look impotent in front of the other Riocha or start a war in the highlands that he can’t win. Oh, he sends his gardai here when he has to, but they don’t stay.” O’Blathmhaic grinned gap-toothed at that. “Mind you, a few of ’em always
do
stay—or rather, their bones do. Help you? Maybe I can. It depends on what you’re asking of us, and what the clans would get in return. The wars of the Riocha aren’t our wars, Tiarna Geraghty. All we want here is to be left alone.”
“Help me, and I make you this promise: the Finger will become its own Tuath, not under Rí Mac Baoill, but under whomever the clans wish to call Rí. Maybe even you, Clan-Laird.”
O’Blathmhaic roared at that, pounding the table with his fist as the dog barked and O Leathlobhair grinned. “That’s a good one, Tiarna. A good one. The likes of
me
as Rí. I’m sure you’d love having me visit your fancy chambers in Dún Laoghaire, eh?” The mirth seemed to die as quickly as it had come. He frowned, leaning forward toward Kayne. “A promise that can’t be kept means nothing, boy. If Mac Baoill feels safe enough to attack the Banrion Ard’s husband and son, then I doubt that Dún Laoghaire has enough power to take the Finger from him. You’ve been away, and everything has changed in that time. Why should I have any confidence in you and the few remnants of your troops?”