Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3) (58 page)

A gray dawn was just brightening a dull sky. The city was starting to awaken around her. She passed the market square near South Gate, where the sellers were just opening their stalls and shop owners were sweeping out the floors of their shops. Many of them called out to her, smiling.

“Maidin maith, Hand Áine!”

“It’s a fair day that starts gray, aye?”

“The favor of the Healer Ard be with you!”

She smiled back to them, nodding, walking through South Gate and up the steep slope that led past the twin keeps of the Ard and the Banrion. She scowled up at the tower of the Ard as she passed it and the balcony she knew led to the Ard’s bedchamber, though she smiled at the gardai at their stations and received quick smiles in return.

Cnocareilig lay across a valley, then up and around several long bends, the approach to the Healer Ard’s barrow hidden behind the folded slopes. Áine walked with her head down, still not yet fully awake. She turned the final curve in the path as the drizzle stopped and the clouds parted enough to let the sun peek out. A long morning shadow that shouldn’t have been there touched her.

She stopped. She felt her mouth fall open.

The Healer Ard gazed down at her, backlit in the dawn.

It took a moment for Áine to realize what she was seeing. It
was
Meriel: her features, her hair, her coloring, clad in the clóca of the Ard with the torc around
her
neck and not that of the traitorous Mac Ard. Treoraí’s Heart lay on its chain on her breast. Meriel was smiling and her hand was lifted as if she were about to speak. Then the scale of this vision struck Áine: the Healer Ard stood a good five men tall in front of her barrow, perfectly formed but gigantic and still—not Meriel herself but an image of her that dwarfed her own barrow and those of the dead Ards around her. Áine thought she saw the vision—if that’s what it was—move slightly, but she blinked and stared and no, the image was as unmoving as stone. If it was a statue, it was like nothing that Áine had ever seen, far more realistic and convincing even in its enormous scale than the carvings by the famous artisan MacBreanhg that adorned the Dún Laoghaire’s Sunstone Ring. Holding her breath and gazing up at Meriel’s distant face, Áine slowly approached. The eyes seemed to follow her. She knelt down before the statue and touched the sandaled feet.

Áine drew her hand back with a cry. The skin was warm and yielding to the touch: not stone at all, but amazingly like flesh. The surface didn’t appear to be painted, and the sandals looked not carved but genuine, as if Áine could remove them from the Healer Ard’s feet, and the leather of those sandals pressed into the earth without a base, just as if the Healer Ard were standing there. She could see the pores of the skin and the hairs set there . . . “Healer Ard,” she whispered, gazing up at Meriel’s face. “Speak to me. Speak to your Hand of the Heart. Tell me what you want me to do.” But there was no answer, and Meriel gazed serenely off to the west, unmoving.

Áine stood, her head at a level with Meriel’s knees. She half expected to see the stone-sealed barrow opened, but the great stones were still there and still sealed with pitch, the sigils of the Draíodóiri unbroken.

This . . . this was a gift of the Mother-Creator, a sign that Meriel was indeed a Miondia and favored by the Mother-Creator, a sign that Áine’s role as Hand of the Heart was indeed not over, that she had done the right thing continuing to serve the Healer Ard even in death. “Thank you,” she whispered: to the Mother-Creator, to Meriel herself. She touched the statue again, marveling at its warmth and its feel, the clóca seeming to ripple slowly and yield under her touch.

She heard a gasp and a wail from the path. The first of the day’s supplicants had arrived, an entourage carrying a litter on which an old woman rested. They had stopped, the litter on the ground as they all stared—half in fright, half in awe—at the apparition of the Healer Ard. Áine hurried forward, gesturing to them.

“Don’t be afraid. Please, come forward. I’m the Hand of the Heart, and the Healer Ard is here to listen to you and perhaps to help. . . .”

SOMEONE WAS CRYING in the darkness, an inconsolable, hopeless sobbing that welled up from the very center of the pain to touch every fiber of his existence.

Ennis realized that it was his own voice he heard.

He huddled in the farthest corner of the doorless room that Kurhv Kralj had given him, curled into a fetal ball with his body shaking from the force of his weeping. The blue ghosts had vanished into nothing. He couldn’t see their dance and so he could be himself, but he was frightened and alone and terrified and he couldn’t hold the emotions back any longer.

He wanted to be held. He wanted to be comforted. He wanted to be in his mam’s or da’s arms, or Sevei’s, or even Gram’s, who Kayne had said frightened him terribly the first time he’d met her. Ennis wanted to be with anyone who was like him and not one of the Arruk.

But he couldn’t. Not even in this place, which the Daoine of Céile Mhór had built and then lost, and which reminded him too much of home.

He wept, because crying was all he could do.

Within the ball he’d made of himself, his fingers clutched at Treoraí’s Heart, because he could hear the voices within it—Isibéal’s voice, mostly, but at least she spoke Daoine and her tones reminded him of home, when Mam was still alive. The other voices—Daighi, Brett, Jantsk, Haughey, Brina, Noz Ruka, Svarti Gyl, all the ones he’d killed—clamored for his attention too, but he ignored them.
“Do you want me to feel sorry for you, Ennis?”
Isibéal crooned.
“Do you want me to tell you that it will be all right? Do you want me to say I forgive you for killing me and taking the Heart from me?”

“I want Mam,” he told her. “Let me talk to Mam.”

“Is that what you want?”
Isibéal asked, and her voice shifted, took on the familiar tones he remembered so well.
“You can cry if you need to, my darling. It’s all right.”

“But I’m . . . so scared . . . Mam,” he said between choking sobs. “I’m . . . all a . . . a . . .
alone
. . .” The last word was a wail, and then he could say nothing more, shaking as the weeping overcame him again. He closed his eyes until they hurt, trying to shut out the world around him.

“I’ve . . . I’ve done . . . bad . . . things . . . Mam . . .”

“You only did what you had to do, my dearest one. All the rest of us are dead, but you stayed alive. Now you have to stay alive for all of us.”
Her voice went deeper and huskier, and it was Isibéal speaking once more.
“You have to punish them, all of them. You’ve been given power; now use it. Hush, now. Hush . . .”

“What is that sound you’re making? Are you ill?”

It took a moment for Ennis to realize that the voice wasn’t one of those in his head, but Cima, standing at the open doorway to the room and peering in at Ennis and speaking in his heavily-accented Daoine. Ennis sobbed again and sniffed, still huddled in his corner. He looked for the blue ghosts to tell him what to do, but there were none here and the voices in the Heart had gone quiet. He blinked, sniffing again and dragging the sleeve of his tattered, dirty clóca over his nose. “I’m not sick,” he said. “Just . . . leave me alone.”

“Can’t,” Cima told him. “Kurhv Kralj told me to find you.” He paused a moment, his eyes narrowing as he stared at Ennis in the gloom. “Your face is leaking,” he said. “Are you broken?”

“I’m just . . .” Ennis sniffed again, trying to control the sobs. “. . . crying,” he finished. “Don’t Arruk cry when you’re hurt or sad?” Cima had never told him the Arruk word for the emotion. Looking at Cima, he wondered if perhaps there wasn’t one.

Cima gave the yawning hiss that was an Arruk negative. “Do you know the story of the Three Hearts?” he asked. Ennis shook his head, sniffling. “Then listen . . . It’s said that in the Oldest Time, three gods came to the Arruk, and each gave us their heart. There is the heart that is in our mouths which is the one we show to others, and that heart will say whatever is best for us. With that heart we feel nothing and show nothing. Then there is the heart in our chests that we show only to those we trust and love: our mates, our families, our closest friends, and with that heart we
can
show our feelings—though I have to tell you, Ennis, that Arruk do not spill water from their eyes when they are sad.”

Cima was silent for a time then, and Ennis thought he had finished. “What about the third heart?” he asked.

Cima gave a slow exhalation. “Ahh, the third heart. That heart is in the deepest part of ourselves, and it is open only to each Arruk alone, and that is where we keep our deepest feelings. That heart is the one we will take to the gods when we die, that They weigh on the scales of life to judge us. I can’t show you that heart, Ennis, but I will open my second heart to you, because I know the Perakli have only one heart and I see yours in front of me now.”

I have two hearts,
Ennis nearly said.
I have my own, and I have Treoraí’s Heart too.
But he said nothing as Cima came over and crouched in front of him. The Arruk reached out with one hand and stroked Ennis’ face, his claws fully retracted so that Ennis felt only the brush of soft scales against his skin. “I understand,” Cima said. “In my second heart, I am often sad, too. I wonder if we do the right thing here. I wonder if Cudak is really calling us to come to Him. Once, I was so sure. I believed He called to me personally.”

Ennis wanted to cry again. He let Cima pull him in and cradle him in his strong, scaled arms. “I once held my own pups this way,” Cima whispered into Ennis’ ear. “My sons.”

“You have sons?”

“Six sons from my first Hatching,” he answered, “and one that my season-mate kept cool so that she would have a daughter to teach to bear more eggs, which is as it should be for the Arruk. My season-mate is far away in the place your people call Lower Céile, and should have borne a second Hatching by now to some other male. I enjoyed her company, that cycle, and I shared my second heart with her, too.”

“I wish I could meet your sons.”

“Maybe some day you will,” Cima told him. “But for now, Kurhv Kralj has called the Mairki and their Svarti here, and he wants you in the Kralj’s Hall by the time the Shadowlight rises. You’re to bring Gyl Svarti’s spell-stick with you.”

The voices of the dead ones clamored in his head again, Gyl’s most loudly, and Ennis held his hands over his ears, trying to stop the sound of them even as Cima’s arms relaxed around him. “I don’t want to go to Kurhv Kralj,” Ennis said. “He’ll make me use the Heart again, but there’s too many of them inside already.”

Cima blinked. His long throat pulsed under his snout. “This isn’t the time for second hearts, Ennis, but our first. I’ll tell Kurhv Kralj you’ll be there,” he said. He sat back, and touched his finger to Ennis’ cheek, seeming to marvel at the wetness there. “Whether you’re still leaking or not,” he said.

Ennis knew that the other Svarti hated him. He could feel their enmity wash over him as he stood beside Kurhv Kralj. They glared at the spell-stick that he held, Gyl Svarti’s spell-stick, and they clenched their own staffs all the tighter. Their spinal frills were erect and flared, displaying the colors of barely-subdued anger.

The four Mairki stood in a line before the dais, each with his chief Svarti arrayed behind him. The Mairki were naked except for the painted insignia of their divisions, but the Svarti all wore loin coverings with a tribal crest on the right hip, and the scales covering their left hips were marked with lines of brilliant green, blue, and yellow. Cima had told Ennis that each of the Svarti in turn had several Nesvarti, (who Ennis thought of as being like the Bráthairs and Siúrs of the Order of Inishfeirm) under them.

The Svarti of the Mairki were ostensibly under the control of the Svarti of the Kralj—who was now, supposedly, Ennis. They didn’t look at him the way the gardai had looked at his da, or the way people had looked at his mam. There was no respect or even fear in the way they stared, only a sullen defiance. Even some of the Riocha who Ennis knew didn’t like his mam or da wouldn’t have dared stand in front of them this way; they would at least have pretended. In that, he thought, maybe even the Daoine have more than one heart.

Ennis knew they all hated him: Svarti and Mairki. He knew they hated that he was a Perakli, a bluntclaw who was their enemy; they hated that he’d struck down Gyl Svarti; they hated that Kurhv Kralj protected him; they hated him because each of the Svarti wanted to stand where he now stood.

Ennis shivered. He wanted to go back to the room and huddle in the corner again. He wanted to cry. But he couldn’t.
“You can’t show them weakness,”
Isibéal’s voice whispered as he brushed Treoraí’s Heart with a shaking hand.
“Cima said you must use your first heart, and he’s right. You must be brave, or else you’ll die . . .”
Ennis looked for the blue ghosts, but though there were wisps of them around, everything was muddled, especially near the Svarti and their spell-sticks. There was no pattern into which he could fall. He wondered if he’d lost the future he’d glimpsed.