Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3) (36 page)

They rode for most of the day, through occasional curtains of soft rain interspersed with bright sunlight, keeping the horses to no more than a walk so that the pony would have no trouble. Ennis rode in silence for the most part, answering occasionally when one or the other of the men would ask him a question, but never initiating conversation himself. There was no need. He was locked into the pattern he’d chosen, the new dance, and he could allow himself no deviation from it, or the blue ghosts that guided him would vanish into the confusion of possibilities. “Poor child,” he heard Daighi say once to Brett. “He’s seen too much too young. They say that he was at the dinner when the damned Taisteal woman Isibéal poisoned the Healer Ard. To have watched his own mam die in front of him . . .”

I didn’t see it, but I knew it would happen,
he wanted to tell the man. But he couldn’t say those words; the pattern wouldn’t allow it. Instead, he watched the emerald hills of southern Dún Laoghaire slowly pass, looking always to the east where the Tween Sea glimmered occasionally between heather-clothed mounds, and waiting.

He waited until it was nearly evening.

They came to an intersecting lane that led off to the east. The smell of the sea was strong, even though Ennis couldn’t see the ocean. There was a sign there, and Daighi peered wearily at the painted, fading words on the well-weathered plank. “ ’Tis the road to Maithcuan—there’ll be soft beds at the inn,” Daighi said to Brett. “We can have a courier sent ahead to let the Banrion Mac Ard know that we’ve found the boy. If the gods are with us, we might even find one of the royal boats there and let them sail us back to the city. It’s either that, or spend the night out here, which I don’t want to do with the boy.”

“Aye, and there’s none better than the ale at The Laughing Heron,” Brett agreed. Then he grimaced, stroking his bandaged forehead. “It’s been a long ride today. What say you, young Tiarna?—the comforts of Maithcuan, or these rocks alongside the High Road?”

As Brett spoke, Ennis saw the blue ghosts appear around them, whispering of possibilities. He watched them, heard their whispers and their gestures, and saw himself among them.
No,
he wanted to tell the visions, though he knew that the blue ghosts couldn’t hear him or respond to him.
I don’t want to take this path . . .
But he saw where the other most likely path led, and in the hazy distance of the future, realized that if he continued on with Daighi back to Dún Laoghaire, it would mean his own death. Peering at the ghosts, he saw Aunt Edana pledging to keep him safe, but Ennis’ existence was a threat to too many others. He saw the faint image of Uncle Doyle, glaring at him, and there was a knife and his own still body. . . .

His hand sought the Heart on the chain around his neck.
“Go back and they’ll kill you as I was supposed to kill you,”
he heard Isibéal say.
“You’re a threat to them and they can’t let you live. But that doesn’t have to be, does it? Not when you have the Heart. Not if you use the Heart in your own way.”

“Let me talk to Mam,”
he thought back to the voice, but Isibéal only laughed. The ghosts of all his futures surrounded him, and he had to choose. He let himself fall into the pattern.

“It’s getting dark and the mage-lights will be coming,” Ennis said. “You’re both hurt and tired.” He lifted Treoraí’s Heart on its chain, showing the cloch to both of them. “I can make you better and fill the cloch again later. Let me do that for you.”

Daighi looked at the caged jewel, then at Brett. “Our evening
would
be more enjoyable if we weren’t injured. You can do that, Tiarna, young as you are?—you can heal with the stone as your mam did?”

“The Heart was my mam’s; now it’s mine,” the blue ghost that was him said and Ennis let his own mouth echo the same words. The azure shape of the future slid down from the pony and Ennis did the same, as the other blue ghosts around him faded, the futures they represented now extinguished. The pattern smiled; he smiled—it was all part of the new dance. “I watched her, and she taught me. Here, I’ll show you. Brett, come here . . .”

Both men dismounted, hitching the horses to the signpost. Ennis took Treoraí’s Heart in his right hand, closing his fingers around it as he’d seen his mam do a hundred times. The energy held within the stone surged through him and he nearly sighed with the delicious, comforting feel of it. He swayed on his small legs at the searing interior heat that welled outward from his right hand. “Here, Brett. All I have to do is touch your head where you’re hurting . . .” Brett knelt on the ground in front of him so that his head was level with Ennis’. Ennis reached out his left hand, laid it over Brett’s bloodstained bandage, and released some of the power.

He
was
Brett. Ennis could feel the ache and soreness in the garda’s head, the constant wash of pain. He could have stopped it, easily. But it was also just as easy to tear the injury open farther and deeper, to plunge deep into the man and rip him open from the inside, from here where the Heart had taken him. . . .

He saw Brett’s eyes roll up until only the whites showed. The man’s mouth opened in a soundless cry. He toppled to the ground. “Brett!” Daighi called in alarm, rushing over to kneel next to the man. “What happened here?” he asked Ennis. Ennis touched Daighi gently on the shoulder as the garda glanced at him. “Is Brett—?”

Power flowed from Ennis into the garda. Daighi’s face convulsed, all the muscles going rigid. A moment later, he fell atop Brett.

The blue ghost vanished in a soundless pulse. Ennis looked down at the two men, releasing Treoraí’s Heart as if it burned his hand. He sat abruptly on the ground, crying as any young boy might when confronted by death. He looked at Daighi and Brett, afraid now, afraid to touch them or look at them, afraid that he might see the Black Haunts gathering over them to take away their souls, afraid they might somehow stir, afraid that they might point at him accusingly. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he whispered to them. “I had to. Don’t you see? I
had
to. I didn’t have a choice.”

He scrambled away from them, running to the signpost. He unhitched the gardai’s horses and shouted at them so that both steeds bolted. Then, still sobbing, he pulled himself astride his pony. He moved carefully around the two men half-hidden in the grass alongside the road, and turned down the lane toward Maithcuan. He was shaking with fright and the tears were still running hot down his cheeks and Treoraí’s Heart burned like a brand on his chest.

Maithcuan slumbered in a wide, shallow harbor sheltered by tall headlands. It lay in purpled shadow in the last light of the sun as Ennis looked down on it from a small rise. The town was far smaller than Dún Laoghaire, but he noticed that several ships were anchored in the harbor; one of them—one that he’d glimpsed in his visions of the future—flew a strange banner he’d seen once before.

After staring at the ship for a moment, Ennis slapped the reins of his pony and continued down the slope.

There were gates along the road and a low stone fence encircling the town. Ennis could see two men trudging slowly up the slope from town, both bearing lanterns in the growing gloom. He assumed they were gatekeepers like the gardai who patrolled the four passages through the great wall that girdled Dún Laoghaire, but these gates were just simple planks of board nailed to leather hinges. They hung askew and open; Ennis urged his pony through the opening before the men reached them. They looked at him curiously as he passed. “We’re closing the town gate for the night, boy,” one of them said as he came abreast them. “Do you know where you’re going?”

Ennis nodded. “My da’s down at the market buying fish. We’re staying here tonight.”

A nod. Ennis could already see the man’s interest fading. “Good,” he said. He gestured to his companion. “Let’s get the gates shut, then. Don’t know why the Ald insists on keeping ’em closed—the troubles in Dún Laoghaire ain’t gonna come here. I heard that the Riocha executed a triple-hand of those who rioted when the Healer Ard was killed, just as an example. . . .”

Ennis let the pony find its own way into the town, moving through narrow streets toward the scent of brine. The blue ghosts rose up again around him: the city was full of possibilities and turns, but he could have walked through it with his eyes shut, following the path that he’d already chosen.
Stay with the pattern. Just follow it and you’ll be where you want to be. You’ll be safe. You’ll stay alive . . .
He wouldn’t let himself think about what he was doing or what he’d done. If he did that, he’d be lost. He could feel it all pushing inside him and he wanted to cry and wail and sob, wanted to let himself sink into Mam’s arms or Isibéal’s or Unnisha’s and be comforted, but they were all gone now and he had no one.

Only the blue ghosts and the voices in the Heart.

Ennis let the pattern guide him through the streets, ignoring the woman who clutched at him as he passed, saying nothing to the merchants who called out, forcing himself not to look at the enticing bundles on the tables of the still-bustling market that ringed the harbor. Not thinking, just matching the steps of the pattern’s dance. Above the houses of Maithcuan, he could see the masts of the larger ships at anchor out in the harbor. The banner of Céile Mhór still fluttered from the top of one.

By the time he came to the quays where the small fishing boats were tied up, it was full dark and the first hints of the mage-lights were beginning to glitter below and through the rain-heavy clouds. There, he let himself half-fall down from the pony and took the little pack that Daighi had made for him back in Dúnwick. Several of Maithcuan’s inhabitants were watching him curiously—an obvious stranger and a very young one, dressed in plain but obviously fine clothes. Among those at the quays was a man who was bright with a blue ghost—Ennis knew that meant he was connected to Ennis’ own dance. He was dressed in a léine cut from some cloth Ennis had never seen, and his clóca was shorter than those the Riocha wore and was trimmed in fox fur. His long, tanned features were subtly different from most of those around him, and he had a black tattoo curling down one side of his face: a fanciful bird with a wide, toothed beak that looked as if were about to close on his left eye. Ennis glanced at the man with the shy smile he knew the pattern required, then scampered off through the crowds toward one end of the harbor, leaving the pony behind. He knew without looking that the man would be following him.

At the edge of the town, he clambered up among the rocks of the shore, sliding down into a small ravine where he could no longer see the light of Maithcuan. There, he pulled Treoraí’s Heart from under his léine and lifted it to the brightening mage-lights. They danced toward his upraised hand, curling around the stone and his clenched fist, and he gasped again at the cold wonder of the energy there as it filled the Heart.

When it was done, he reluctantly let go of the cloch and the mage-light slid upward toward the clouds. Ennis took a shuddering breath, waiting, and he heard the expected voice, echoed by the blue ghosts.

“You’re taking chances doing that out here in the open, young Tiarna, with no one around.”

Ennis let himself start as if surprised, his mouth open in fear, his eyes wide. He let himself speak the blue words. “Who . . . who are you? Stay back. I’m warning you . . .”

The tattooed man was on the rocks above him, his form dimly outlined in the watch fires along the harbor. His face was shadowed and dark, not even the eyes visible, but his voice was like the sound of a horn, rich and sonorous, and thick with an accent Ennis had never heard before. “No need to trouble yourself. I mean you no harm. I’m only surprised at seeing a boy, without his parents or guardians, holding a cloch na thintrí up to the sky. It’s rare you see anyone with a cloch who’s not a Riocha, even a clochmion. There’d be those who’d wonder how you came to have it, who’d wonder whether you stole it, for example, and from whom.”

“I’m not a thief,” Ennis said, the blue ghost giving his voice the heat of someone unjustly accused. “I’m not. I didn’t take it from anyone. It was given to me. It’s mine.”

The man laughed gently at that. “From what I know, that’s what anyone with a cloch would say. I understand that once you hold one, you can’t willingly give it up. Is that true, young Tiarna?”

Ennis shrugged, a quick lift of the shoulders. He sniffed, as if he were cold and tired and scared. He heard a scraping of rock as the man came down the rocks into the little ravine, moving with the grace of someone used to walking on rough terrain. “Where are the ones who should be watching you?” he said. “Back at the harbor? At the inn? They must be worried about you, especially with the mage-lights. Come; I’ll take you back to them . . .” The man held out a hand.