Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3) (39 page)

She snatched her hand back again, cradling it to her chest. She felt a touch of fur on the back of her leg.

“It wants
you
to take the Scrúdú.”

She thought Beryn said it and turned around quizzically, but she realized that she heard the voice not through her ears but in her head. A blue seal lay on the grass behind her, startlingly close. Its dark fur was marked with the swirls of the mage-lights. “Bhralhg?” She remembered then. “Of course. You had me brought here. That’s what Kekeri told me.”

Bhralhg leaned his head forward again, brushing her side. “Aye.” A cough came from the Saimhóir’s throat though the voice sounded clear in her head. His head bobbed down and she saw the glint of silver as a chain slipped from his thick neck onto a bit of bare limestone at her feet. A hint of emerald glittered in the sunlight.

“Lámh Shábhála!” Sevei shouted. “You found it!” She started to lean down to pick it up, but Beryn raised his hand, palm toward her, shaking his head, and Bhralhg waddled forward so that his body shadowed the stone. She stopped. “Where was it? When did you find it?”

“I found the cloch the day before your gram died,” Bhralhg told her.

“
Before
Gram died?” The excitement Sevei felt shifted to suspicion. “But that means . . .”

“Aye,” Bralhg answered. “I had the cloch and I didn’t tell you. I had the cloch and I chose not to give it back to her.”

“Why?” She didn’t trust herself to say more than the bare syllable.

“Because the First Holder was already broken and dying, and I didn’t know that I wanted you to have it.” The lack of hesitation in his answer indicated that hers was a question he’d expected. “Because I didn’t know if you were the one who
should
have it.”

Suspicion flowed into anger. “
You
didn’t know? Lámh Shábhála belonged to Gram. What gives you the right to choose, one way or the other?”

Bhralhg lifted his snout, rising up on his front flippers. “If you think that Lámh Shábhála doesn’t have some choice in the matter, then you’re more foolish than I thought. The cloch came to me when it could have just as easily let you find it. That tells me that it wanted me to make the choice.” His snout dropped back down, and his voice softened in her head. “If you’d found it while your gram was alive, what would you have done with it, Sevei?”

“Why, I would have—” She stopped. The seal’s head lifted, the folds of thick fat around his neck smoothing, and she knew he’d seen the answer in her face.

“Aye, you’d have given it back to your gram—and that’s why Lámh Shábhála hid itself. It was done with Jenna.”

“You make the stone seem alive.”

“Bradán an Chumhacht, the Salmon of Power that I swallowed, is definitely alive. Why wouldn’t Lámh Shábhála also be alive?” The Saimhóir blinked heavily, the hairs at the end of his snout twitching. He snuffled, his nostrils flaring.

Beryn had been silent as he leaned on his staff and listened to the exchange, seeming to understand both the Saimhóir’s language as well as Sevei’s. He cleared his throat. “Your gram would have told you that it was alive, too,” he said to Sevei. “It contains the voices of all the Holders. Your gram is there now, with the others.”

That sent Sevei’s gaze back to the cloch. “Why did you bring me here?” she asked them.

“To give you Lámh Shábhála,” Bhralhg said. “To see you put it on
here
”—his gaze went to the statue whose color was that of his own eyes, “—where Bethiochnead will test you.”

“Here is where I’ll die, then.” She said it scornfully, as if she were refusing the gift of Gram’s cloch, but her gaze would not leave the gem. She wondered what it would feel like to put it on, to use it . . .

“Perhaps,” Bhralhg answered placidly. “That’s certainly possible. Even likely.”

“Then why? Give it to Beryn—I’m sure the Bunús Muintir would love to have the cloch back again.”

“We would,” Beryn told her. “And we
will
have it if you refuse to take it or if you fail the Scrúdú. But I’d rather see it in your hand, and so would Bhralhg.”

“Then I still don’t understand.”

“When the First Holder brought Lámh Shábhála back to life, we rejoiced.” The voice was accompanied by the grunting tones of the Saimhóir: Bhralhg. “We were pleased because the First Holder was more than Daoine: she was Saimhóir also, and she was Bunús Muintir. The mingled blood of three races of the Aware flowed within her. Finally, we thought, here was someone who could pass the Scrúdú, who could take Lámh Shábhála’s power and do more than just war with it, who would be a champion for all races already awake or yet to be awakened. In that, we were wrong.”

“Gram loved the Bunús Muintir,” Sevei said angrily. “And the Saimhóir. If you think she didn’t, then you obviously didn’t know her.”

“Neither of us means any insult to Jenna,” Beryn said. He used the tip of the oaken staff to prod the cloch. The chain clinked faintly. “She held Lámh Shábhála longer than most Holders could. She survived the Scrúdú when no other Daoine had.”

When Beryn said nothing more, Sevei raised an eyebrow toward him. “But?”

“Jenna took the power of Lámh Shábhála and made herself a ruler who served your people well. I would like to see the next Holder make herself a ruler who serves
all
peoples well.”

“And you’d do that, Beryn?” Sevei asked him. She could not keep the scorn from her voice. “Then why don’t you take Lámh Shábhála without waiting for me? Since you and Bhralhg share the same concerns, I’m sure Bhralhg wouldn’t stop you. Why, you can bring your people back to prominence with it—at least until the Riocha send an army and the rest of the Clochs Mór to stop you.”

Eyes the color of stained, old oak regarded her sternly and she thought he was going to retort, but it was Bhralhg who answered. “I offered it to Beryn already. When I found it, after you left to go back with your people, I came here immediately. He convinced me that an Aoire was still the proper Holder.” The Saimhóir hunkered down close to the cloch, as if tired. Glossy fur rippled as he shifted his weight “Jenna survived the Scrúdú. Beryn and I think that her progeny might be able to do more.” He nudged the chain with his snout. “Take it. Take the legacy of your gram. She’s there inside, waiting for you.”

Bhralhg pushed himself awkwardly backward with his flippers. Lámh Shábhála gleamed on the limestone, snared in its cage. Sevei took a step toward it, feeling their gaze on her: watching, appraising. She crouched down in the sparse grass beside the jewel.

She’d never seen it anywhere but on Gram’s breast, had certainly never touched it or held it. Her Da had said that once Gram offered it to Sevei’s mam but that Meriel had refused it, preferring instead the healing ability of Treoraí’s Heart despite the greater power that holding Lámh Shábhála would have given her. There was no such hesitation in Sevei; she knew that she would give up Dragoncaller without a qualm if it meant she could take Lámh Shábhála. But yet she paused, seeing in her mind the constant pain that had hounded Gram and turned her face into a twisted, angry mask. She saw the white pattern of mage-scars that reached from Gram’s hand nearly all the way to the shoulder. She recalled the agony that Gram endured after Lámh Shábhála was lost. She wondered what Máister Kirwan, if he was still alive, would tell her. She could nearly hear his voice:
“You’re not ready, Sevei. You’ve barely learned how to handle the clochmion. How can you possibly think you’re capable not only of controlling Lámh Shábhála, but of meeting the challenge of the Scrúdú? It will consume you, girl. Look what it did to your gram.
”

“It’s not a gift. It’s a burden,” Beryn said, as if guessing her thoughts.

“Are you trying to convince me to take it or to leave it?”

Beryn’s face creased into a smile. “Neither,” he answered. “And both.”

“And if I pick it up, will the Scrúdú start?”

“Not yet. Not until you’ve taken it as your own and filled it again with the mage-lights. Then . . . that’s when it will start.”

She looked up at the Bunús Muintir, unable to keep the apprehension from her voice. “What will it be like?”

“I don’t know. But perhaps those inside Lámh Shábhála can tell you.” He looked at her with sympathy. “You’re right to be afraid, Sevei. In fact, that’s the paradox: if you’re not afraid to take up Lámh Shábhála, then you’re not the right person to hold it.”

“My great-uncle Doyle would disagree.”

“Aye, he would.” Beryn spoke with some satisfaction. “And you’ll notice that he doesn’t have the cloch.”

From the woods, they heard a dire wolf howl. The shadow of Bethiochnead slid closer to them. Bhralhg grumbled low and guttural in his massive throat. “No one will think less of you if you make the same decision as your mam.”

That brought her head up. “Mam’s dead,” she said to them. “Da, Gram, Ionhar, Tara, Ennis, Dillon, Máister Kirwan: they’re all dead, those I loved, all of them but Kayne. I wonder—is revenge a good reason to want power?”

Doubts rose in her head like wisps of fog from a bog. Before they could overwhelm her, she pulled Dragoncaller from around her neck and in the same motion, reached down and plucked Lámh Shábhála from the ground. She closed her hand around the cloch.

“Oh . . .” she breathed, her eyes widening. “Oh . . .”

The world around her faded away, lost in a lattice of green crystal. Lámh Shábhála surrounded her, and it was alive with voices: a hand, two, a hundred, a thousand or more: all yammering at her. Sevei forced herself to concentrate, to find the one voice she wanted most to hear.

Then:
“Sevei . . .
” The voice was simultaneously sad and pleased.
“I’m here, my dear. I’m here . . .”

“Gram! Is that really you?”

A dozen different voices answered.
“Aye!”

“
Lámh Shábhála holds the shape of all its Holders.”

“Quiet!”
Jenna’s voice shouted, and the other voices receded.
“So you hold Lámh Shábhála now . . . That means I’m dead. But at least the pain is gone, and I can think again. And you . . .”
Sevei felt something brush her mind, memories shuffling unbidden. When Jenna’s voice returned, it was with a tone of sorrow. “
You mean to take the Scrúdú . . .”

“Aye,” Sevei told her. “Will you help me, Gram?”

There was a long hesitation and again the other voices intruded.
“You’re too young and inexperienced . . .”

Then Gram’s voice banished the others.
“I can show you the place inside Lámh Shábhála that I found. Beyond that . . .”
Her voice faded and returned. “
Oh, Sevei. You don’t know . . .”

“
You’ll die . . .”

“Bethiochnead will crush you . . .”

“. . . you’ll be here with us . . .”

“. . . with us . . .”

“. . . dead . . .” the voices whispered.

Sevei forced them away, shoving them to the back of her mind. The emerald walls faded around her, and she was standing again next to the broken statue with Beryn and Bhralhg. The Bunús Muintir and the Saimhóir stared at her.

“I’ll do it,” she said. “As soon as the mage-lights come.”

A TAP ON THE FOREHEAD, a fist touching her heart, and then a tap on Kayne’s own forehead: Séarlait’s gestures were accompanied by a kiss to the side of his neck.
I love you ...
Kayne stirred—groaning as still-healing ribs pulled—and Séarlait took the opportunity to snuggle into the curve of his back, her arm around him. He could feel her fingers gently tracing the raised lines of the battle scars on his chest. He was warm under the fur that covered them, but the tent above drummed with the patter of rain and it was bright enough to see. Kayne watched the shadows of droplets hitting the fabric and washing away to join the small river that poured from the overhang. A steady drip plonked from a leak in the tent to form a small, dark pool in the carpet-covered grass just past their feet. Kayne yawned and kissed Séarlait, luxuriating in the feel of her.