Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3) (31 page)

Fire shattered ice. Séarlait fell from her horse, but Kayne saw her stagger back up. He sent another fireball toward Mac Baoill, but now the tiarna realized that a rival Cloch Mór had entered the battle. Almost contemptuously, Mac Baoill turned his horse away from the false outriders and rode back to the vanguard; in his head, Kayne felt a shifting of attention in his suddenly-doubled vision as Mac Baoill found him in the waves of cloch-energy. Directing the energy within Blaze was more than Kayne had expected, even after practicing with the cloch the last few days: the fireball that arced toward Mac Baoill was weak and unfocused and poorly aimed; the tiarna deflected it with a wall of arctic frost and the red fury struck earth frighteningly near Séarlait: Kayne heard a scream from one of the clansfolk—a man’s voice, not Séarlait’s. Then the bitter cold wrapped around him, the deadly chill of it making Kayne gasp in pain, a wall of blue cold gripping his chest. He shouted, his voice a vapor torn away and lost as he grasped with his mind for the power within Blaze. He could barely handle the force of the captured mage-lights; they burned at him as if he were handling molten lava with his own hands, but it was at least warmth within the frozen air around him and he threw it wildly in Mac Baoill’s direction.

The Mother-Creator was with him; he saw a fireball explode at the feet of the tiarna’s horse just as he was about to vanish within the milling vanguard. His stallion reared in fright and pain. The cold wall around Kayne vanished and he managed a grateful breath before more ice slammed into him like a fist, throwing him backward. The impact loosened Blaze from his grasp. For a moment Kayne saw only with his eyes: the swirling chaos of the battle and the cries of mingled rage and pain. Even with Mac Baoill’s Cloch Mór engaged with Kayne, the battle was still far too even. Rodhlann was screaming at the Fingerlanders; the gardai who had begun to retreat had stopped and were returning. Kayne saw as many gardai in Airgiallaian colors as clansfolk, and he knew that what might be an evenly matched battle otherwise would turn into a rout for Airgialla if the fury of Winter was turned against the Fingerlanders.

Mac Baoill was rising to his feet many strides away, his high forehead bloody under the shock of black hair, but with Winter still in his hand. As Kayne fumbled for Blaze, dangling on its chain, the ice formed around him again, crushing down on him, the cold burning his flesh. Kayne screamed with the pain of the assault against his already broken ribs and injured legs. He couldn’t find his own cloch, and Mac Baoill was striding through the fray toward him, pushing everyone aside with fingers of blue ice, his ruddy and thin face a furious mask. Kayne could see that the false outriders nearest Mac Baoill were either dead or engaged in the struggle. And Séarlait; Mac Baoill passed her, her body draped over the gutted corpse of her horse, her bow still grasped in an unmoving hand. Mac Baoill’s attention was focused on Kayne; Kayne could see it in his mage-vision: the two were locked together; there was nothing else around them for Mac Baoill, the battle constricting to their own duel.

Kayne knew what the man intended: Mac Baoill would kill Kayne, then shift his attention to the others. When that happened, the battle would be lost. Kayne could feel the man’s strength, his skill, his concentration all now focused on Kayne. . . .

In the moment of that realization, Kayne heard Mac Baoill grunt and saw his eyes widen in shock. The ice melted around Kayne. As the man turned, Kayne glimpsed an arrow protruding from the folds of his clóca; another feathered shaft struck Mac Baoill in the throat even as he turned his head to look to his right, to where—from behind her downed horse, a bloodied Séarlait knelt with her bow in her hand. Mac Baoill gave a strangled cry; Winter dropped from his hand.

She watched him fall, and Kayne glimpsed a strange, sorrowful pleasure in her face. She had little chance to celebrate; two gardai had also seen Mac Baoill fall, and they rushed toward Séarlait with notched and stained weapons raised high as Séarlait belatedly plucked another arrow from the quiver on her back.

Kayne found the heavy weight of Blaze; there was still power within it, and he let himself touch it with his mind, to shape and hold the energy for an instant. The fireball rushed away from Kayne and enveloped Séarlait’s attackers; he heard them scream, saw them fall blackened and dead to the ground even as his mind tore at Blaze again, taking the mage-energy and hurling it at a squadron of gardai in red and white. The fireball exploded in their midst: men ran with their clothing aflame, dropping their weapons as the mage-fire blistered and charred their flesh. With the explosion, loud even in the midst of the battle, the other gardai realized that their commander and his Cloch Mór had been lost. The mood of the battle shifted as Kayne emptied the cloch and Rodhlann and the clansfolk and Harik with his men pressed into the remaining gardai. The battle rapidly became a bloody slaughter.

Perhaps three or four double-hands of Airgiallaians managed to escape, turning their backs on the battle and running up the High Road toward the mountains and Airgialla. The clansfolk jeered at the gardai as they fled, waving red-stained weapons in the air.

Kayne watched only for a moment. He went to Séarlait, standing and staring down at the corpse of Mac Baoill. Deliberately, she spat on the man’s body. “Séarlait, are you all right?”

A shrug. Blood had smeared across her face, but the long scratch on her forehead hadn’t cut deep, and most of the blood on her appeared to be from her horse. She was still holding her bow. “I saw you on the ground, you with your horse. I thought you were dead, I thought I’d lost . . . we’d lost . . .” He stopped, the memory of that feeling sweeping back over him, surprising him with its intensity. “We would have had no victory here without you,” he told her.

A smile curved her lips and vanished. She reached out and touched his hand: his right hand, where he could see faint, glowing swirls and curliques: mage-scars, which he’d seen on the hands of other cloudmages. Séarlait gestured at the field around them: the dead, the wounded moaning and crying out, the survivors walking through the battlefield exhausted and bloody, the remaining gardai retreating at a run. She touched Kayne’s hand again, and nodded.

“None of them will make it home.” Harik, Rodhlann, and Laird O’Blathmhaic had come up to them, and it was O’Blathmhaic who had spoken. He glanced appraisingly at Séarlait, standing close to Kayne, before looking back at Kayne. “Without your cloch, Tiarna, it would have been different. It would have been us retreating back into our mountains. The clans will sing of this for generations.”

“Your great-daughter made it possible,” Kayne told the man. “Not me.”

Kayne crouched down next to Mac Baoill’s body and found Winter: sparkling crystalline facets with veins of pure ultramarine, caged in silver wire hanging from a hammered silver torc. Reaching down, Kayne took the jewel from the man’s neck. “Aye,” Harik said behind him. “Take the cloch, Tiarna. We’ll hold it until we’re back in Dún Laoghaire and can find a better holder for it than a Mac Baoill.”

Kayne didn’t answer. He straightened and went to Séarlait; he stood in front of her, silent. Her gaze stayed with his, and after a moment, he smiled. He placed Mac Baoill’s torc around her neck; taking her hand, he closed it around the stone. “Winter is yours,” he told her. “Tonight, you can fill it with the mage-lights.”

She looked at the cloch wonderingly, turning it in her fingers, then at him. Laird O’Blathmhaic and Rodhlann chuckled.

And Harik . . . He gave no protest, but his gaze was hard and angry, and there was disappointment and contempt in his eyes when Kayne looked at him.

“Go on, Harik,” Kayne said. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“You don’t want to know, Tiarna,” Harik answered.

“Tell me anyway.”

They stood outside the town hall of Ceangail. Inside, they could hear the raucous and drunken celebration of the clansfolk and their own gardai. The main street of the small town was alive with people this night, walking in pairs and groups and laughing. For the second time in the last moon, Ceangail had escaped an attack, and they were rowdy and drunken and giddy. If the inhabitants seemed to think themselves blessed by the gods, that was something Kayne could understand.

Harik glanced back at the hall with disgust. “They act like they’ve won the war. This was just the first battle, and not the hardest. Rí Airgialla will send a full army the next time, with several clochs. He’ll have the other Ríthe send troops to help. The Tuatha will be back, and next time these Fingerlanders won’t have it so easy.”

“That may be true, but it’s not what you brought me out here to say,” Kayne told him. “Say it. Talk to me the way you’d talk to my da.”

“If you
were
your da, I wouldn’t need to say anything,” Harik retorted. The insult stung, but Kayne remained silent. “The girl doesn’t deserve to hold a Cloch Mór,” Harik spat out finally.

“Then it’s good it wasn’t your choice, isn’t it?”

“Don’t mock me,” Harik answered. “You know what I mean.”

“You mean that she’s not Riocha. Well, my da wasn’t born Riocha either, even if he ended up that way. And neither are you, Harik—but would you have complained if I’d given
you
the cloch?”

In the darkness, Kayne couldn’t see the man’s face flush, but he heard the controlled fury in his voice. “Aye, she’s a tuathánach and that’s part of it. I’m at least céili giallnai, with cousins who are Riocha. I was at least raised in the Tuatha and understand how our society works. I’ve served your da and your mam loyally, with every breath.”

“And Séarlait served us today. Without her, it might have been Mac Baoill who had another Cloch Mór to give, and you and I would be out there moldering in the battle’s barrow-grave.”

“Aye, she served us. Today.”

“Which means?” Kayne grunted the question between clenched teeth, trying to rein in the temper that wanted to flare, that made him want to strike at the man.
You asked for his honesty, and he was Da’s friend as well as the Hand of his gardai. Listen to him. Control your anger.

Harik’s eyes narrowed, glittering like twin shards of glass. “This Séarlait’s not trained to a cloch na thintrí and never will be. No, you haven’t been trained either, but Tiarna Geraghty, the Banrion Ard, and your sister were. You will be also, once we’re back. This one . . . she’ll be at best a wild talent; at worst, she’ll be dangerous to everyone around her when she uses the cloch. Most importantly, she’s clanfolk and her loyalty’s only to them. I know the clansfolk better than you do. I was raised an Inishlander, where things aren’t much different than here, and I was stationed in the Finger for a year when I was just a boy, in old Mal Mac Baoill’s army during one of the constant clan insurrections. I know that if the situation changes, you may find Séarlait using the cloch against you. She’d do it, Tiarna. She would. That’s where her loyalty lies: to her clan. To the Fingerlanders. She’d turn on you without even thinking about it if she perceived you as a threat to her people. You don’t know her and her kind. You may think you do, but you don’t.”

“Is that all, Harik?”

“No,” the man said. “You’re becoming emotionally involved with her, Tiarna. I can see it, and so can everyone else. You’d know that if you were thinking with your head instead of—” Harik stopped at the sound of light footsteps behind them and a wash of lamplight from the doorway. Both men glanced toward the newcomer. Harik nodded, a barely perceptible motion of his head. “Séarlait,” he said. He glanced at Kayne. “Are we done here, Tiarna?”

“Oh, we are,” Kayne told him, keeping his voice tightly controlled. “Completely.”

Harik’s lips pressed together. He touched right fist to chest in a quick salute and strode swiftly away—not toward the hall and its drunken celebrants, but toward the gardai tents just inside the town wall. Séarlait watched him go. Her eyebrows were raised when she looked back at Kayne.

“It’s nothing,” he told her. “A little disagreement about tactics.”

She nodded, but her expression looked decidedly unconvinced. She touched the Cloch Mór at her breast and pointed upward. Even as she made the gesture, Kayne felt Blaze awaken in his mind. Above, light crawled between the stars.

“Come on,” he said to Séarlait, holding his hand out to her. “I’ll show you how to call the mage-lights. We’ll do it together.”