Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3) (44 page)

Kayne wanted to believe the man, but he knew it wouldn’t happen that way. There were so many, and the mage-stones . . . “I don’t mean any disrespect to Rodhlann, but you won’t be able to whittle them down, Laird, not with the Clochs Mór they have, and you underestimate the morale of the conscripts—or maybe their fear of what will happen if they turn their backs on the battle. This will be slaughter, no matter how we try to fight them.”

“You sound like a frightened old doe, Tiarna,” O’Blath mhaic answered. “What does it matter? Then if we die, we die taking out as many as we can. Either way, the bastards will remember us.”

“Are you Fingerlanders always so stubbornly optimistic?”

O’Blathmhaic and Rodhlann both chuckled grimly. “Are you Riocha always so stubbornly gloomy?” Rodhlann said. “We fight. Here. In the Narrows where we’ve fought a hundred times before.”

“No,” Kayne insisted. “We shouldn’t meet them at all. We should retreat entirely. Go into the mountains and wait. Melt away so they can’t find us. Maybe pick them off in ones and twos, but never confront them directly. We need to know more before we try to truly fight them: find out for certain what’s happened to Lámh Shábhála, determine who is allied with whom back in the Tuatha. Maybe I can get help from some of the Riocha, those who aren’t happy with what’s happened . . .”

Both men were already shaking their heads, from the first word. “Boy, you don’t understand,” O’Blathmhaic roared, so loudly that Kayne was certain that the entire encampment must hear him. “If we send our people back to the clans to wait, it’s over. They won’t be coming back. The clan-lairds have made the decision to fight
now
. So now we fight.” Laird O’Blathmhaic pointed a stubby finger at the carpets.

“If we fight against the force that you’ve just told me is coming for us, then we’ll also die here.”

“That doesn’t bother me, boy. Does it bother you?”

“Aye, it does,” Kayne insisted. He wondered if Harik would find this ironic, to hear Kayne advising caution when he’d spent so much time accusing his da of being overcautious, when he’d always been the one who wanted to plunge headlong into battle.
Da, I think I’m beginning to understand . . .
“This is needless death. There will be a better way, at another time and place.”

O’Blathmhaic was still shaking his head. “I thought you half a Fingerlander when I let you marry my great-daughter. I’m guessing now that I was wrong.”

“I love Séarlait, Laird. That’s another reason not to make a stand here.”

Rodhlann started to speak, but O’Blathmhaic raised a hand and the man went silent. “Listen to me with the heart of a Fingerlander, Tiarna,” O’Blathmhaic said. “We’ve made our decision to resist now when we could have waited. We can’t unmake that decision—not if you ever want the lairds and the clans to listen to you again. You can take your gardai and leave if you’d like, but then you leave Séarlait and your promises behind with you, and you and your descendants will be forever our enemy. The Fingerlanders
will
stand here,” O’Blathmhaic insisted, “and Séarlait will stand here with us. If you love her . . .”

He left the rest unsaid. He waited.

Kayne sighed. “Then I stand here also,” he said.

Kayne stared out over the sloping plain into a rare, clear night where it seemed he could have seen as far as Lough Tory. He found that he wished it were raining and cloudy, for the landscape in front of him was dotted with a thousand flickering motes: the campfires of the Airgiallaian army, all spread out along the High Road until they vanished into a blur on the horizon.

It was easy to feel gloom and despair, looking out on the campfires scattered like grounded stars on the plain. He heard Séarlait come up behind him but didn’t turn. Her hand touched his shoulder and he heard her sigh. “I know,” he said. “It doesn’t do any good to sit out here and watch. It’s depressing.”

Her arms went around him, and he leaned back, reveling in the warmth and the closeness. She moved his hair aside and kissed the back of his neck.

“I love you, too. That’s what scares me, too—I wonder how we’ll both come out of this.”

She turned him in her arms so he couldn’t see the campfires. Her eyes held him, almost angry. She nodded once, harshly.

He smiled at her. “Aye, we will live, somehow,” he told her, kissing her. He hoped he was right. He leaned in to kiss her, and for a moment lost his thoughts in the warmth of her mouth. But she pulled away after a few moment. “What?” he asked, but he already knew the answer by the multicolored lights that played over her face and glimmered in her hair. They both looked up: the mage-lights snaked between the stars, brightening faster than was usual for them. With the sight, Kayne felt the pull of Blaze, yearning to be filled with the energy above. Kayne and Séarlait stood, together, and both took their clochs in their hands, opening them to the sky. Last night . . . last night they’d felt Lámh Shábhála once more, even though the pull of it was distant and the Holder had seemed tentative and uncertain. Kayne—like every other cloudmage, he was certain—had tried to sense behind the Great Cloch’s presence the person holding it, but whoever it was remained hidden. He wondered who held it: friend, enemy, or neither. The stone had felt far enough away that Kayne thought it might even be somewhere beyond Inish Thuaidh.

Perhaps you’ll know more tonight . . .
Kayne sighed at the feeling as snarling curls of light shot down to wrap around his hand and Séarlait’s; as the clochs began to feed hungrily on the power of the lights.

The double landscape of the mage-stones opened in front of him, as if he were staring out from the center of Blaze through its ruby facets at another world. He could follow the path of the mage-lights out toward the other clochs: Séarlait, next to him; the Clochs Mór and clochmions out in the firelit landscape beyond. Doyle Mac Ard wasn’t there—he could sense Snapdragon well off to the west and south, probably in Lár Bhaile or Dún Laoghaire—but several others were close by. He could not only feel them, but he could see with his own eyes the tendrils of mage-lights swirling down to them like brilliant tornadoes.

Then . . .

They must have all felt it, as strongly as Kayne. He heard Séarlait’s intake of breath and he could sense the distress of the others. Out there, far to the west, Lámh Shábhála came again, a far more powerful presence tonight than the night before: an enormous maelstrom that sucked at the power of the mage-lights, that tugged at each of them. It was purest emerald, that aura, the rich, saturated green of the brightest mage-lights, and it was more potent than any hand of the Clochs Mór together.

Kayne let Lámh Shábhála pull him toward it. He searched for the mind behind the stone, searching for it within the blinding radiance of the stone itself. There was a familiarity there, someone . . .

An image rushed from the emerald light to him and suddenly he wasn’t sure. It seemed to be Sevei but . . . Her face was changed, horribly scarred with raised white markings that reminded him of the patterns of the mage-lights themselves. Her eyes were the featureless black of a seal’s, and her hair was the white of new-fallen snow. She seemed a fey thing, powerful and yet terribly dangerous. She was standing on a windy plateau, entirely naked, and every finger’s breadth of her body was scarred with the same patterns. Behind her, he could glimpse a gloomy, murky statue of some creature. She reached for him, almost yearningly, or perhaps—Kayne thought—threateningly.

“Wait,”
her voice said.
“Wait two days, Kayne . . .”

The surprise and shock of her appearance and her voice sent him reeling backward. The vision of her was lost. He thought he heard her voice calling to him again, but the mage-lights were already fading and with it the contact between the clochs. Kayne released Blaze and watched the last tendrils of light trailing a line of sparks as they receded into the sky. His vision returned to normal. He was staring out at the campfires of the army again.

He felt Séarlait’s soft touch on his shoulder and turned to her.

“You felt that, too? You saw her?”

A nod. Her eyes were wide and frightened.

“Did she speak to you?”

A single shake of her head: left to right and back.

“They’ll also know.” Kayne looked back at the campfires. Down there, the green-robes and the Riocha would be buzzing with wild speculation and, aye, probably the same fear he felt himself.

Lámh Shábhála had returned, and it was Sevei—who he thought was certainly dead like his parents and siblings—who wielded it. But this was a Sevei altered and changed, and he didn’t know her.

He was afraid he might not know her at all.

The dawn brought news from a Fingerlander scout.

“There are troops quick-marching back down the High Road to the west,” the scout said as he drank gratefully from the waterskin handed him by Séarlait. “At least a hand of the green-robes are with them, and a double-hand and more of Riocha in the colors of Gabair, Infochla, and Dún Laoghaire.” He took another gulp of the water, then let the remainder drain over his sweating head. “There’s confusion among the remainder of the army. They didn’t break camp this morning as we expected. I crept down as close as I could, so I could see the officers’ tents, and they’re busy with people coming and going and looking grim.”

“How many green-robes are left?” Kayne asked him, and the scout shook his head.

“I don’t know if there are any left at all, Tiarna. Nor are there too many Riocha with mage-stones around their necks either. Something seems to have happened last night.”

The immense pull of the stone on the mage-lights, her scarred face, her changed features . . .
Kayne exchanged glances with the four other people in the tent: Séarlait, Laird O’Blathmhaic, Harik, and Rodhlann. “Aye, that it did,” Kayne told the scout. He slapped the man on the shoulder and opened the tent’s flap for him. “Go get some rest while you can.”

Kayne could feel the others staring at him as the scout left. “It would seem that the Riocha are rather concerned about this new Holder,” O’Blathmhaic said. “Séarlait tells me that you believe it’s your sister.”

Kayne nodded. “I
know
it’s Sevei. She opened herself to me and I heard her voice and realized that it was her, but just looking at the face she showed us all . . .” He shivered with the memory. “I don’t know that anyone else would recognize her. It’s not the new Holder that has the Riocha concerned, though—it’s Lámh Shábhála itself. The stone was missing for over a moon; all of us with mage-stones felt its absence. Now it’s returned. I don’t know what happened to Gram, but she wouldn’t have given up Lámh Shábhála willingly. I’d wager that Uncle Doyle thought Lámh Shábhála was lost, or that he or some other green-robe would acquire it. They expected it to end up in their hands or be lost forever, and now they see a bigger threat at their back than we represent. All the mages are rushing west to deal with it.”

“So . . .” Rodhlann pursed his lips. “Then we find a way to use that. If they’re looking the other way, then we can strike at their backs.”

Kayne’s own thoughts drowned out the Fingerlander commander’s words; he heard none of it. “We expected to fight today,” Harik said, and Kayne started. “We still should. But instead of waiting for them to come to us, let’s go down to them. Now. While they’re still confused and disheartened. Take the battle to them if they won’t come to us.”

“Ah, finally one of your flatlanders says something that makes sense,” Laird O’Blathmhaic grunted. “Aye, ’tis a grand day to fight. Rodhlann, let’s tell our own Hands . . .” O’Blathmhaic started to move toward the tent flap with Rodhlann; Harik, with a nod to Kayne, started after them.

“Hold a moment,” Kayne called out to them, and O’Blathmhaic spun about like a lumbering bear, his face flushed.

“You can’t be saying no, Tiarna. Not now. We’ve already had that discussion, and all the arguments you gave us are dust. And don’t be saying we should wait here for them—they may never come through the Narrows. Not now.”