“No,” she said.
“I wouldn’t lie to you, Sevei,” he said, and she heard two voices speaking as one: Dillon overlaid with An Phionós. “It’s not possible for me to lie; the gods won’t allow it. You can have me back, forever, but you must give up the Scrúdú to have me. Do it, and we can be together.”
“Why?” Sevei asked, her eyes narrowing. Dillon’s form shifted, the hands becoming claws, the face elongating, the body swelling and turning dark. “Because you’re afraid I might succeed?”
Now it was only An Phionós in front of her. “Ah,” it said. “You have Jenna’s arrogance, too.” Then the creature was Dillon again, his face sad and mournful. “I’m not enough for you?”
Sevei was crying, the tears flowing down her cheeks. “Dillon, I miss you so much, and I wish . . . I wish I could truly have you back again.”
“You
can,
“ he insisted. “I’m here. Now.”
She touched his cheek. It was warm and soft and she wanted to lose herself in his embrace. “No,” she said.
He sighed, and his features ran like melting snow until he became An Phionós again. “So be it,” An Phionós said. Its clawed forepaw slashed at her. Belatedly, Sevei drew power from the cloch—lightning arced and spat and thunder boomed and An Phionós hissed and drew back. Wielding Lámh Shábhála was like holding fire in her hands: the power throbbed and pulsed, difficult to contain. She might as well attempt to bridle a hurricane. An Phionós snarled and leaped toward her.
Clumsily, she formed the energy into a tangled wall of glowing vines. The obstruction slowed An Phionós only a moment, the creature snarling in the nest of clinging power before shredding it with claws and teeth, moving toward her step by step. Sevei felt each blow from the talons as if it struck her. She screamed in terror and anger, retreating backward under the assault.
“You think this will stop me?” An Phionós roared at her, its voice matching her fury. A forepaw snatched at a loop of energy around its neck and threw it aside; it vanished in a crash of thunder that reverberated inside Sevei’s skull, pounding against her temples. “Can you do this forever, Sevei? I can. Don’t you feel the power failing already? Can’t you feel it draining from Lámh Shábhála? Once it’s gone, what will you do then?”
Lámh Shábhála held the beast, but Sevei listened to An Phionós and despaired. The cloch had finite power, and she was wasting it with half measures. Desperate, weeping unashamedly, she emptied the power within Lámh Shábhála upon An Phionós, a great, flaring torrent of mage-energy in any shape she could imagine: flights of great spears as close together as blades of grass; shrieking winds that tore rocks from the cliffside and ripped the great oaks from the very ground; ferocious lightnings that crawled on the land like a spider’s legs; gibbering armies of black nightmare creatures, shrieking madly and waving glowing swords as they charged. Sevei plunged ever deeper into the emerald depths of Lámh Shábhála, finding all the crevices with their pools of mage-energy and flinging them at An Phionós as if the creature contained all her pain and grief, her hatred and her sorrow. The landscape around them was ablaze: brighter than the moon, brighter than the mage-lights, a furious glare that rivaled the dawn. Sevei’s assault was relentless, and now it was An Phionós who retreated, roaring and wailing. She pursued him, step by slow step, pushing him backward with the cloch, snarling like an animal herself, her lips drawn back from her teeth as she lifted Lámh Shábhála high.
An Phionós shrieked in pain and torment. A step, another . . . Her adversary backed grudgingly, its head low, the blood-colored tail tucked under the body, black blood pouring from its ravaged flanks. A rear leg tore rocks from the edge of the cliff to crash into the sea far below; the other dangled over open air.
“Aye! You can do this!”
she heard Jenna crow inside her. An Phionós reared up as Sevei plumbed the depths of Lámh Shábhála searching for the last reserves of its power. She took what was left and hurled it at her adversary. It screamed and fell backward, vanishing over the cliff edge. Sevei ran forward toward the lip of the precipice, expecting to see the creature’s broken body on the jagged rocks below, hope rising up in her.
She stopped, hearing laughter.
An Phionós rose above her in the empty air, magnificent and terrible, its great wings thrusting. “I have not had an opponent like you in far too long,” it said. “Not even Jenna was able to do so much.” It landed gently a few feet from her as Sevei slumped to the ground, exhausted. The place of Bethiochnead was dark again, the moon struggling against the afterglow of the mage-power she’d expended. An Phionós was a black mountain, only its eyes aglow, and from its massive chest came a low purring. “You shouldn’t have been able to do that,” An Phionós continued, “not as inexperienced as you are. That was a work of true greatness and potential. A shame, then, that such talent is now to be wasted.”
In her mind, desperate, Sevei searched the verdant facets of Lámh Shábhála, trying to find lingering remnants of the energy.
“There’s nothing,”
the voices of the past Holders whispered.
“Nothing . . . nothing . . . nothing . . .”
“Are you ready to die, Sevei?” An Phionós asked, almost gently, almost sadly. Its paw lifted, eclipsing stars. “I will be quick. You won’t have time to scream or hear the crack of bones. Are you ready?”
“Go deeper . . .”
a voice whispered: Gram. Jenna.
“Find the very heart of the stone . . . Let yourself fall . . .”
“Aye,” Sevei said, not knowing who she was answering. In her doubled vision, she let herself tumble into Lámh Shábhála even as she cowered below An Phionós.
The paw loomed over her, a final and eternal night, its cold skin just touching her . . .
. . . she plunged into green darkness, opening herself, letting Lámh Shábhála rip into her soul and her very being. Images flashed past her, and she felt as if she were falling not into some unimaginable void but into the past. She fell into herself. She heard the voices of the Holders, but they were no longer Daoine or even Bunús Muintir. They spoke in tongues older and stranger. Back, back, back . . . and here, here in the darkness there was an ending and a beginning and a light . . .
. . . time itself stopped.
“Oh, Mother,” Sevei whispered. “Mother, I hadn’t known . . .”
Lámh Shábhála filled her. She filled Lámh Shábhála. There was no difference. The necklace that held Lámh Shábhála burst into flame, the gold spattering and fuming; the cage of silver holding it running like bright water. Sevei released the stone as the molten metal burned her, but it didn’t fall. It hung there before her, then turned and arrowed at her chest. The jewel struck above the heart and burrowed into her. Sevei screamed as Lámh Shábhála ripped into her, as it tore through muscle and bone. Then it stopped. She took a breath.
Time moved again. She saw An Phionós’ great paw above her like a thundercloud, and she opened her arms to accept the blow. An Phionós’ paw slammed down from above, but it could not crush her. The ground shuddered underneath, the very stones cracking, and yet she was whole. Coruscations of grass-green light flared, as if An Phionós’ paw were a smithy’s hammer striking molten steel.
Sevei blinked as the light failed. An Phionós was grovel ing before her, lying flat on the ground with its head lowered. Its wings fluttered and then folded on its great back. “Holder,” it said. Its voice was full of sorrow and grief, full of the lives it had taken over the long centuries. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited.”
It lifted its head, sitting up on its haunches again in the pose of the statue. As Sevei watched, the creature stiffened and turned to stone before her eyes, aging and weathering in a few moments: as the cliff edge seemed to melt toward her, as the trees of Thall Coill grew and marched in her direction.
And she was back where she had started. The statue of Bethiochnead loomed broken and tilted in front of her.
“Sevei?” Beryn rushed over to her. She felt him start to put a hand on her shoulder, then stop himself. “You’re alive! I thought . . . I saw you fall, and the mage-lights were crackling all around you . . .” His voice changed then, to a tone of awe. “You’ve endured the Scrúdú and you’re alive. But . . .”
He was staring at her: at her face, at her arms. Sevei looked down. Her hands were covered in a knotted pattern of white, swirling scars—scars that she remembered from Gram’s right hand: the mark of the mage-lights. She pushed her léine back from her right arm, then her left. The scars ascended on both arms as far as she could see. She put her fingers to her cheeks and felt hard raised lines there. “My face . . . ?” she asked.
Beryn nodded. “Aye,” he said softly. “Your face, too. And more.” The way he averted his eyes told her how she must look, and she gave a cry of despair. She felt for the chain around her neck; it was gone, but with her probing fingers she could feel the nodule of Lámh Shábhála under her skin, on the inner slope of her right breast: hard and unyielding.
“You didn’t tell me it would be this way!”
“I didn’t know,” he answered.
“No,” she said. “No, this hasn’t happened. It’s another illusion like Dillon, still part of the Scrúdú.” She was crying now, staring at him, pleading with him to tell her that, aye, she was right and this was only part of the test, and knowing that it wasn’t. She moved, and the feel of her clothing was like the slashing of a hundred cats’ claws on her skin, so unbearable that she cried out at the sensation. She tore at the cloth, ripping it from her body, not caring that Beryn saw her. The only thing that mattered was to take the pain away. She stood naked in the air, and even the touch of the wind hurt, and looking down at her body, she saw the mage-scars everywhere on too-white skin. “No . . .”
The answer came from inside, from the voices caught in Lámh Shábhála, Gram’s among them.
“You’ve been marked,”
they said.
“Lámh Shábhála has claimed you. . . .”
32
The Battle of the Narrows, Reprised
A MESSENGER RODE breathless into the Fingerlands through the Narrows Pass, his horse blown and nearly dead. He was rushed to the laird’s tent. After giving his tidings of double ill news, the messenger was sent to his well-deserved meal and bed, and Kayne was summoned. He found Laird O’Blathmhaic huddled with Rodhlann O Morchoe in a grim but strangely pleasant mood. “Here it is,” the man said without preamble. He tapped the table placed on the soiled carpets under the tent’s covering. The table wobbled, mugs with the dregs of the previous night’s ale clashing. “The army of Rí Mac Baoill is on the move toward the Fingerlands, coming fast up the High Road. There were green-robes in the ranks of the Riocha riding with the army, mages of the Order of Gabair. The scouts also are telling us that there are troops from Dún Laoghaire and Gabair with the army, sent at the order of the new Rí Ard to help put down the ‘insurrection’ in the Finger.”
“The new Rí Ard?”
Kayne could feel the grizzled old man’s gaze on him. Rodhlann, standing beside him, frowned tightly. “Aye, Tiarna,” Rodhlann told him. “A new Ard.”
“Then it’s certain. Mam is dead.” He clamped his jaw down against the cry that wanted to escape him.
This isn’t the time. You knew. You knew when they killed Da that they couldn’t move against him alone . . .
“Who is Ard?” he asked.
“The Óenach of the Ríthe has elected Doyle Mac Ard,” O’Blathmhaic told him.
The name made Kayne grunt as if he’d been punched. “Uncle Doyle?” Kayne had never cared that much for Doyle Mac Ard, a man he’d always found glum and somewhat curt, though he’d loved Aunt Edana and had spent much of his childhood hours playing with their children Padraic, Alastríona, Ula, and Enean. Padraic, in particular, had been only a year younger, and he and Kayne had often played at cloudmage and gardai; Sevei had liked Padraic also—more than was good for her, Kayne had sometimes thought. And Alastríona . . . He knew that court gossip had often advanced Kayne and Alastríona as marriage partners; that had never occurred, but Kayne had once overheard his mam and Aunt Edana discussing a possible betrothal between Kayne’s sister Tara and Enean Mac Ard when the two of them reached their hand of hands birthdays.
If everything that Kayne feared had come to pass, then little Tara’s last birthday—a double hand and four—had been her last. Kayne shook his head, trying to fathom why Uncle Doyle would send an army against him. If Doyle Mac Ard was Rí Ard, then he must know what had happened. No, it was worse than that: if Doyle had the influence among the Ríthe to become Rí Ard, then he almost certainly had been involved in the machinations. Which meant that he would, at the very least, have known about the assassinations, if not been actively involved in planning them. And if Uncle Doyle was involved, then Aunt Edana most likely was too . . .
Kayne felt the beginnings of a sick headache.
“This changes everything,” he said to O’Blathmhaic and Rodhlann. “If troops from three of the Tuatha have come here and the Order of Gabair’s riding with the army, then Harik was right. Our two Clochs Mór won’t be nearly enough. We stand no more of a chance than a sand castle against the tide.”
“Not if we meet them openly,” Laird O’Blathmhaic agreed. He tapped his forehead with a crooked finger.
“You’re still thinking like a Riocha who makes war like a Riocha,” Rodhlann agreed, nodding to the laird. “But that’s not the only way. You saw what we did in Ceangail.”
“There’s no similarity,” Kayne said, harshly enough that O’Blathmhaic’s eyes narrowed and Rodhlann snapped his mouth shut. “That was a small troop of gardai. This is a true army. Those tactics won’t work, not this time. In fact, they will get us killed.”
O’Blathmhaic cleared his throat and started to spit, then glared at the carpets that covered the ground. He swallowed and gave Kayne a sour grimace. “You have a better way, then?”
Silently, Kayne shook his head.
His marriage-da snorted. “You forget that most of those troops are conscripts, and they won’t be so eager to fight when they see their companions dying around them. They’ll advance to the Narrows tomorrow, if I know them at all. Once they’re in the pass, Rodhlann will start to whittle them down, and when they’re
here,
in the Finger proper . . .” Laird O’Blathmhaic grinned evilly.