“Where are they?” Connail interrupted. “The Arruk, I mean? I’ve . . . we’ve all heard awful tales about them at home, and my da went . . .” He paused, looking confused momentarily. “Da said that he’d heard they were terrible, savage creatures that drink the blood of the people they kill.”
Haughey chuckled at the obvious terror in the boy’s face. “I don’t know about that,” he said, “but they are terrible and savage, and far too close, if you ask me—no more than a few days’ ride to the east, not far past Lough Bogha.”
For a moment, he thought he saw something almost eager in Connail’s face, then it was gone. “That close?” the boy asked, and shivered. He looked around as if he might see one of the Arruk lurking in the corner of the room.
“Not to worry,” Haughey told him. “The Arruk don’t seem to much care for the sea, though I suppose them in Torness believed the same and thought themselves safe. And your Banrion Ard, the Healer—may the Mother bless her and keep her safe—well, she sent help from the Tuatha and with their troops and the Cloch Mór that came with the Banrion Ard’s husband Tiarna Geraghty, we stopped the Arruk and even pushed them back some, even if we couldn’t drive them entirely from our land.”
As Haughey spoke, the boy’s face clouded and seemed almost angry. He put down the bread; his knife clattered onto the table. “The Banrion Ard is dead,” Connail said.
“What?” Haughey sat bolt upright. “Dead? The Healer Ard?”
“Aye,” Connail told him. “And Tiarna Geraghty and her entire family. They’re all dead.”
“No . . .” Haughey realized that his report would now most definitely be seen by the Thane, that in fact he would need to compose it tonight and send it tomorrow by courier pigeon and fast ship both, to be certain that it arrived. “You’re certain of this? It’s not just gossip?”
“Aye, Ionadaí.” The boy nodded solemnly. “It’s all the talk of the Tuatha. They were assa . . . assass . . .” He blinked.
“Assassinated?” Haughey shook his head—if true, then this may have been what Jantsk had that was so important: the news of the Banrion Ard’s death. “From what I’d heard, the Banrion Ard was well-loved by her people, but not necessarily by the Riocha. I suppose I’m not entirely surprised. Who is the Ard now?” Connail shrugged and shook his head at the same time in answer. As he did so, the léine he wore shifted, and Haughey caught the glimpse of a golden chain around the boy’s neck under the cloth. He leaned forward. “What’s that?” he asked. “You have something under there?”
Connail grimaced, a surprisingly adult look on the child’s face. He placed his hand on the collar of his léine. “You shouldn’t have seen that. It’s not in the pattern. The blue ghosts . . .”
“Pattern? Ghosts? What are you talking about?” Haughey suddenly became suspicious. Why would an itinerant Songmaster’s son have a chain of gold, and why would he hide it so carefully? “Let me see that, boy. Bring it out.” Haughey reached forward and Connail sprang backward off his chair, the wooden leg scraping loudly across the flagstone. Brina and the scullery maid came from the kitchen at the noise. “What’s going on here . . . ?”
Connail was shaking his head and holding something at the end of the chain in his hands.
“You weren’t supposed to see this,” he said. He was crying, sobbing, staring wildly around the room as if looking for something. “You
shouldn’t
have seen. Now I don’t have any choice.”
“What are you talking about, child?” Brina asked. She leaned toward him, glancing from the boy to Haughey and back.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but I have to. I have to.” It was the only answer Connail gave. He closed his hand more tightly, and touched Brina with his other hand.
Haughey would never forget the sound his wife made then, but fortunately he would have only a few breaths of life in which to remember it.
31
The Scrúdú of Bethiochnead
THE CLIFFSIDE OF THALL Coill was bright: with the buttery light of the full moon; with the autumnal flicker of the fire Beryn had built against the cold wind off the Westering Sea; with the searing, cold beauty of the mage-lights that looped in pale aquamarine and furious emerald and eerie blood-red around Sevei’s arm.
The riot of illumination was reflected in the glossy, utterly black sides of the statue of Bethiochnead.
“Oh . . .” The exhalation was all Sevei could manage as the mage-lights curled away from her and snaked their way back into star-pricked darkness. She opened her fingers and let Lámh Shábhála drop to her breast, nearly falling at the release. Beryn’s arms came around her in support. “I’m fine,” she told him, almost angrily, and the Bunús Muintir let her go, retreating a few steps as Dragoncaller, around his neck, glittered in moonlight. She gave him a weak smile in apology. “I’m sorry. I just didn’t expect . . .” She took another slow breath, seeing it pulse cold and white from her mouth in the evening chill. “This was nothing like it was with Dragoncaller. I could feel every cloch na thintrí out there: Dragoncaller, all of them . . . It was like they were all part of Lámh Shábhála, all connected to it somehow. I could feel the person behind each stone, and I could hear all the voices of those who have ever held Lámh Shábhála, and I could feel its power . . .”
She looked at her right arm. Curling white scars swirled on her wrist. They seemed to glow, faintly, though it was difficult to tell if that wasn’t some trick of the full moon, and her arm—it felt cold, stiff, and impossibly heavy. She forced protesting fingers to close again, and twinges of pain radiated out from her arm to her chest.
So this is what it was like for Gram, all the time,
she thought, and then:
This is what it will be like for me, from now on . . .
She moaned softly and Beryn looked at her anxiously.
“Can I help you? Some kala bark tea . . . ?”
She shook her head. “I’m . . . just a little overwhelmed, that’s all. Those with Clochs Mór . . . They’ll all know that Lámh Shábhála’s been found, though they don’t know by whom yet. I could feel Doyle and I know he felt my cloch. I felt Snarl, also, but it was Padraic wielding it, not Máister Kirwan and it was far away in the Tuatha . . .” Involuntary tears filled her eyes—for Máister Kirwan, for Dillon, for all those she’d lost, as well as with relief at knowing for certain now that Kayne still lived—and she wiped them away with the cold, dead right hand. It felt like ice against her skin. “And Treoraí’s Heart, it was there, too, but even farther away and the person who had it kept his or her face hidden . . .” She closed her eyes, sighing.
“If you’re tired, you could wait until morning for the Scrúdú; get some sleep first.”
Sevei glanced sidewise at the statue looming above them, blotting out the stars like a darker night. She could see a muted reflection of the campfire in the great beast’s flanks, and the moonlight glittered in the curve of its eyes. “No. If I wait . . .”
I might never do it at all,
she finished inside, but Beryn’s nod showed that he’d guessed the thought. “How do I begin?” she asked.
“Open Lámh Shábhála,” he told her. “That’s all.”
Grimacing, she brought her cold and stiff right hand over the gem at her breast. As her hand cupped it, it seemed to warm her so that her fingers could close again. The new scars at her wrist
did
gleam white, she noticed.
She closed her fingers around the stone.
“Hello, darling . . .”
her gram’s voice whispered in her head.
“I will help you through this, as much as I can . . .”
But she heard the other voices as well.
“. . . Fool . . . !”
“. . . Stupid thing . . . !”
“. . . How sad to hold the stone for but a few breaths . . .”
Her vision doubled, the emerald facets of Lámh Shábhála overlaying what she saw before her like a new landscape, and she let herself fall into it . . .
. . . a black shape, gigantic as the shadow of a mountain, stirred . . .
. . . she heard a purring growl that made the dirt tremble at her feet, that shook pebbles loose from between the rocks of the cliffside . . .
Bethiochnead
moved
and it was no longer a broken eroded carving, but a living creature. The head shook itself like a great cat waking from sleep, and there were wings on its leonine back, and a barbed red tail thrashed the ground. Claws gouged stone, digging furrows in the rock. “Ah,” it said, and eyes the color of summer grass stared at her from an impossible height. “Welcome—I am An Phionós. I am the First, and you are now in my world. I wondered when the First Holder’s whelp would want to try where she failed.”
“
I did
not
fail,
” another voice protested—Jenna, speaking through Lámh Shábhála, and Bethiochnead laughed.
“But you also did not succeed,” An Phionós answered with the same mild, almost scornful, amusement. Sevei could feel the beast’s presence in her mind and though she tried to shut it out, she could not. She realized that the very landscape around them had changed: the cliff now ended several feet farther away from the statue-creature, and the forest seemed to have vanished. She could not see Beryn at all. “You’re not the one I expected,” An Phionós rumbled. “I had thought you would be the one who was in Jenna’s womb, but you’re the daughter’s daughter. Strange. But no matter—you desire to pit yourself against the Scrúdú?”
Voices cascaded in her mind (
“No!” “Don’t be foolish, child!”
) and she had to force them down before she could answer. “No,” she told the creature. “I don’t desire it. But I gave my word that I’d attempt it.”
The creature laughed. “A vow? Then I release you from it, for you couldn’t have known what you promised. The Scrúdú is death—ask those inside your stone.”
“I don’t care if I live or if I die,” Sevei told it, and voices echoed from inside:
“That, at least, is the proper attitude . . .”
“Hush!”
her gram’s voice scolded them.
“Be quiet and let her listen . . . !”
“That’s what those who haven’t yet died say,” An Phionós answered Sevei. “I thought the same until I was actually dead.” Mage-lights were circling above the cliff, a banded whirlpool of them brighter than any Sevei had ever seen. They flashed like a lightning stroke and for a moment An Phionós was lit from within, as if its skin were black glass.
“Careful,”
Sevei heard Jenna say in her head.
“It’s ready to attack. Shield yourself . . .”
Sevei felt the frigid heat of the gathering mage-lights, and suddenly An Phionós roared, spitting out energy in a blast that nearly caught her despite the wall she suddenly imagined between them. The mage-lights struck the barrier in flares of awful primary colors. Sevei felt them pummeling at her, felt the shield bending and nearly cracking, but then the light was gone and she panted, blinking as her eyes readjusted.
“Now that was impressive for someone so new to Lámh Shábhála,” An Phionós said grudgingly. “Even with Jenna helping you. So, as with your gram, this won’t be simple. That’s good. Good. Too many times it was just that easy for me. I enjoy a challenge after such a long wait. It keeps me awake longer.”
An Phionós was pacing now, prowling from side to side of the open area before the cliffs, the barbed tail lashing and the feathered wings unfolding from its back. It seemed to be considering what it would do next, and Sevei watched the beast warily, her fist held so tightly to Lámh Shábhála that she could feel the silver wires caging it pressing deep into the skin of her palm. The end of the deadly tail flicked close to her once and Sevei flinched, ready to send the cloch’s energy flooding out.
“You don’t really know how to use Lámh Shábhála, do you?” An Phionós peered down at her, its huge eyes glimmering with moisture, its voice genuinely sad. “Not like your gram—when she came here, she’d been holding the cloch for many months and was fairly skilled with it. Or poor Peria; she’d had Lámh Shábhála for years. So had most of the others. You . . . You’re only a fledgling. How could you hope to succeed here when they, who knew the depths of Lámh Shábhála so much better, failed?” An Phionós stopped and sat on its haunches as muscles corded in its powerful body. “I’m not without compassion. Let go,” it told Sevei. “Let go and we will forget the Scrúdú.”
“Do it!”
the voices wailed inside her.
“Listen to the beast or you’ll die!”
But Sevei listened only for one voice: Jenna’s. “
An Phionós made me the same offer,”
she said.
“I refused. And I lived.”
“Your gram says that only to bring you in here with us,”
one of the ancient Holders said, a woman’s voice, and Sevei knew it was Peria.
“Beware! You’ll just be one of us, whispering to the next Holder.”
“I would never do that to you, Sevei,”
Gram answered, her voice louder than the others.
“I’ll help you . . .”
“Shut up!” Sevei shouted. “All of you but Gram! Let me think.”
“Sevei . . .” She glanced up at the sound of her name. The huge body of An Phionós was gone; it was Dillon standing there, his face sad and full of longing. “Don’t do this, my love,” he said. “Let go of Lámh Shábhála. Stay with me.”
“Dillon!”
He ran to her and she felt his arms go around her, felt the warmth of his body and the taste of his lips on hers. Her hand, holding the cloch, was nearly crushed between them, hard and uncomfortable. “I thought . . . I thought you were dead.”
“What’s death?” he asked her, laughing gently, and bent his head down to hers again. He kissed her long and deep, and afterward his breath burned hot on her ear. “I was dead,” he whispered and pulled back from her. He cupped his hands around her right hand and Lámh Shábhála, the scars glowing in the dark. “Aye, I was dead but I’ve come back. If you want me to stay, let go of the stone. That’s all you need do, I promise. Let go of the stone and I’ll be alive again and with you. With you and loving you forever. It will be the life we wanted. I promise, Sevei.”
His eyes were the color of summer grass . . .