Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3) (32 page)

He heard Séarlait’s sigh as the last tendrils of the mage-lights left her upraised hand, climbing back toward the clouds even as they began to fade. He sighed also, Blaze full in his mind. Séarlait released Winter; as the cloch fell back on its chain, she wobbled on suddenly weak legs. Kayne steadied her, his arms around her waist as he came up behind her.

“It’s all right,” he whispered into her ear. “I nearly fell the first time, too.”

She leaned back against him, and he was aware of the smell of her hair, the touch of her skin, the softness of her neck contrasting with the unexpected ridge of scar. He bent his head down to her, his lips brushing the cords of her neck as she inclined her head. Her breath shuddered as she breathed in, then rushed outward with a gasp as she pulled away, spinning around. He let her go. She stood in front of him, her eyes shining with moisture. She shook her head—slowly, back and forth—and he remembered what had happened to her.

“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I don’t want to hurt you . . .” She stared at him.

She held out her right hand, palm up.

He put his hand in hers. For a moment, she just held it there, staring at his fingers as if trying to read something there. Then she pulled him toward her with a gentle tug, releasing him. Her hands clasped his face and brought it down toward her.

Her lips on his were soft and warm and gentle. When he finally pulled back, he heard the breath catch in her throat and saw the tears on her face. He brushed them away with his thumbs.

You’re becoming too involved with her,
Harik had said.

You be careful that you keep any promises you make her,
her great-da had warned him.

“If this isn’t what you want . . .” he started, but she touched her finger to his lips, stopping him. She stared at him, and he saw the tears there even as her eyes challenged him. He knew what she would ask, if she could. He knew that this couldn’t be a tumble into bed and a good-bye the next morning. He thought he might even understand how much courage this took on her part, to leave herself open and vulnerable to be emotionally wounded, to trust him this much.

“I won’t ever hurt you,” he said. “I promise that. Ever.”

He hoped it was a promise he could keep.

CLANNHRA ATA AND UNNISHA had transformed Ennis by the time they reached the first town. His hair was cut in the short fashion of the Taisteal, his curls gone and the hair turned coal black with an evil-smelling dye that also blackened the leather gloves Unnisha wore while rubbing it into his hair. An unguent darkened his skin, as if he’d been days out in the sun. The last of the clothing he had from Dún Laoghaire was burned, and Unnisha relentlessly schooled him on his accent. He learned quickly; even Clannhra Ata seemed pleased.

He even seemed happy, laughing like any of the other children and playing with them as the caravan slowly made its way south along the rutted roads of Tuath Dún Laoghaire toward Tuath Éoganacht, stopping occasionally at farms and tiny settlements to trade and sell cloth and spices, to tell fortunes, or to have their tinkers repair pots and other metal implements. It was the nights that bothered Ennis, for at night he would find himself taking Treoraí’s Heart in his hand, and listening for his mam’s voice inside it and weeping because he could not find it. He heard her, faintly, a few times, as well as the low gruff voice that seemed far older and more distant, but it was Isibéal whose voice was dominant in the Heart, drowning out the other two.

“I won’t let you have her,”
Isibéal crooned to him softly.
“You can’t have her, ever again. I told you that we’re linked together here. You killed me just as I took in the power, and I used it to make me powerful in death. It’s me you’ll hear, Ennis. It’s me who will whisper to you when you use the Heart. It’s me you’ll remember, every time . . .”

Yet, faintly and far away, he sometimes heard the whisper:
“Ennis, I love you. I miss you so, and I’m so sorry for you. So sorry . . .”

He would cry afterward in the bed with Unnisha, and she would sometimes awaken crying herself for her own lost son.

They would hold each other, taking some comfort in their mutual grief.

And when the mage-lights came, Ennis would be there to take them in. Clannhra Ata would sometimes watch him with appraising and suspicious eyes, and he knew she wondered what the cloch did and why it needed to be filled again when he hadn’t used it.

But except for Treoraí’s Heart hidden under his clothing, Ennis was for all appearances simply another Taisteal child by the time the slow caravan rattled into Dúnwick, a small village on the coast south of Dún Laoghaire. In the few days since he’d taken Treoraí’s Heart as his own, the blue ghosts had left him alone. Ennis thought they’d forgotten about him.

They hadn’t. They were waiting for him in Dúnwick.

Dúnwick perched on a low shingle of rock, the Tween Sea opening its wide gray sweep to the horizon just beyond the rocky mouth of a tiny harbor. The smell of rotting fish and brine lay over the village like a transparent fog; the stones of the houses seemed to be imbued with the stench. The town slumbered, asleep, with its fishing boats laying tilted on muddy tidal flats, anchored to large stones that jutted out from the mire like an old man’s teeth. Huge nets hung like torn lace curtains from long poles just onshore, with several villagers repairing the ragged holes in them; a nearby market was busy with inhabitants from nearby villages and farms buying the freshly-caught fish.

As seemed to be required, the Ald of Dúnwick scowled as if irritated by the appearance of the Taisteal caravan, accepted the usual bribe with as little good grace as she could muster, then directed them to a small field just north of the town, where the Taisteal set up their tents and tables. Ennis helped Unnisha bring the bolts of strange and exotic cloth out of their wagon and array it on the drop-down shelf on the side of the vehicle. By midafternoon, well before they’d finished, the first curious townsfolk had arrived in the meadow and were wandering around between the wagons.

The ghosts arrived with them.

“Where did this come from?” inquired a woman’s voice, and Ennis turned to see an older woman fingering a bolt of red cloth on which darker swirls of near-black coiled like drifting smoke. Unnisha was in the wagon retrieving the last few bolts, and the woman was looking directly at Ennis. The bright outlines of blue ghosts accompanied her: the shifting glow of maybes and possibilities. Ennis blinked, staring at the landscape of the future she represented and seeing himself there. “Boy, did you hear me?” the woman asked, and a dozen of the ghosts echoed the same phrase with her. Her voice seemed more amused then annoyed, and Ennis shook himself.

“I’m sorry, Iníon,” he said, addressing her politely. “The cloth is from Kallaigh in Thall Mór-roinn,” he answered. He had no idea if that was true; it was a phrase he’d heard Unnisha use the day before when they’d stopped at a tiny crossroads hamlet. He mimicked her accent, sounding the hard consonants deep in his throat and rolling the “r’s.”
“The truth doesn’t matter, as long as they think it’s something exotic,”
Unnisha had told him that first time.
“In fact, all the cloth is from here in Talamh an Ghlas—traded for or bartered for what we brought over the Finger from Céile Mhór.”

“Ah,” the woman said appreciatively. “So far away . . .”
... far away . . . far away . . .
the ghosts whispered. “It’s very beautiful.”

“Indeed it is,” Unnisha said, stepping out from the wagon with more vivid bolts of cloth gathered under her arms. “That’s an excellent choice. Not many people have such an instinctive flair. You obviously know quality when you see it, Iníon; this is rare cloth, indeed. It feels marvelous to the touch, doesn’t it? So soft, and yet so strong.”

The woman managed to look pleased and suspicious all at once, but she continued to finger the bolt. “But the color’s not good for everyday use,” she said.

“Perhaps not,” Unnisha said, coming up beside her. She took the bolt and unwound a length of cloth from it, draping it around the woman’s shoulders. “But a person wearing a léine from this cloth would stand out from everyone else’s drab appearance. And that red would be so striking against your hair and your skin. Don’t you think so, Fiodóir?”

Ennis nodded enthusiastically, as he knew he was supposed to. “Oh, aye, it does. Here, Iníon, look . . .” He took a disk of polished bronze from where it hung on the door of the wagon and brought it over, holding it before the woman. “See? I think it’s very pretty.”

“It is, isn’t it?” the woman agreed. Then she seemed to realize that she was undermining her own position, and she shook her head. “It wouldn’t be warm enough, though. Too thin.’Twould probably tear through the first time it snagged on something. I couldn’t possibly pay more than four coppers for the bolt, for all the trouble it would give me.”

“Four coppers?” Unnisha repeated in an aggrieved and hurt tone, taking the bolt and wrapping the cloth again. She placed it back on the shelf. “Why, that would barely buy an arm’s length of this. I sold a bolt exactly like this to the Banrion Ard’s personal house servant for two gold mórceints, and ...” Unnisha stopped, her cheeks flushing. Ennis was watching her. The blue ghosts moved strongly between them, and Ennis wondered which of them he should choose to follow. He tried to find his future self in their flow. Tried to find the pattern where he would be safest.

“Ah, the poor Banrion Ard,” the woman said, noticing Unnisha’s distress at her mention of Ennis’ mam, but attributing her hesitation to recent events. “We just heard the news yesterday ourselves, from the gardai who came here. Such an awful thing: the Healer Ard murdered, and all her children but the one that was kidnapped were killed, too, they’re saying. The ones who did it will be gutted alive and displayed when they’re found, and it’s less than they deserve. I don’t mind saying to you that I think it’s because the Healer Ard loved us tuathánach too much.” She winked at Unnisha and nodded conspiratorially. “That’s why they killed her. The rest of the Riocha didn’t like her, didn’t like that any of us common folk might go to Dún Laoghaire and be healed through that cloch of hers. Why, she cured a man just up the coast of the horrible boils he had all over his body . . .”

She stopped and leaned forward toward Unnisha. “I’ve also heard that there have been riots in Dún Laoghaire,” she whispered. “Some of the tuathánach rose up after the Healer Ard was murdered, but the Riocha used their damned sky-stones and killed those who dared to protest. It’s bad times in the cities, they say. Bad times.”

Neither of them was listening to her. Ennis touched Treoraí’s Heart under his léine.
“You’re destined for great things . . .”
Mam’s voice whispered in his mind before Isibéal drove her away again, and at that moment he saw the blue ghost he wanted: the shade that would lead him to his future. He also saw what that pattern would mean for Unnisha, but it didn’t matter.
“You’re destined for great things . . .”

He aligned himself with the ghost. Unnisha was looking at him with sorrowful eyes. He let himself fall into the new pattern: he smiled at her so that she knew he understood her slip and wasn’t hurt by it; after a moment, she smiled back at him, pulling him to her and hugging him.

“. . . and anyway, those gardai are staying in the village today. They’ve been traveling down the Coast Road in search of the Geraghty boy—Ennis, they said his name was . . .” the woman was saying. The blue ghosts merged into reality again with Ennis’ decision, fading even as he watched. The woman stroked the cloth again. “The Riocha can afford to overpay for such things. For those like me, it’s too dear.”

The course was set. All he had to do was follow the pattern. He reached up to tug at the woman’s sleeve. “My mam will sell it to you for but a single mórceint, Iníon, because you love the Banrion Ard as we do,” he said, still cradled in Unnisha’s arm and knowing that after a few more minutes of haggling with Unnisha, the woman would buy the bolt for a silver half-mórceint and four coppers. She would leave pleased with her “bargain” and Unnisha would pocket the coins, which were three times what she’d paid for the cloth in the first place.

That’s what the blue ghosts had shown him, and Ennis waited for them.

They walked in their own clear space in the now crowded area between the wagons. They either didn’t notice or didn’t care that the villagers would lower their eyes and purse their mouths as they approached, and cast suspicious glances at their backs once they passed. Ennis thought he even recognized one of the two—a tall and thin man with curly red hair that verged on orange and a mouth that was set crooked on his sallow face—a keep garda that he’d glimpsed before, though he didn’t know the man’s name. The other, shorter and with hair the color of dry earth and eyes of the same bland color, was a stranger. They strolled slowly through the camp, glancing occasionally at the wares the Taisteal had out for sale or barter, but looking more closely at the people around them. They wore swords, dangling from wide leather belts under clóca dyed the dark gray of Dún Laoghaire, the color that Ennis’ own small clóca had once been, and their chests were covered in leather vests that jingled with rings of steel.