Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3) (60 page)

“I thought the Bán Cailleach left to stop that,” Rodhlann said.

“She did,” Kayne admitted. “But if she’s not successful, then they will come here again, and this time they will bring all the force the Tuatha can muster. We won’t be able to stop them.”

The laird sniffed skeptically. “Perhaps. But that’s for then. Not now,” O’Blathmhaic insisted. “For now, there is home and family, and the land and animals we’ve neglected.”

“It’s not just the Tuatha, Laird,” Kayne insisted. “There are the Arruk to the east. We need men here, and we also need men at the Bunús Wall. The Finger may become like a snail caught between two stones. This is not the time to go home, Laird. That would be a fatal mistake.”

O’Blathmhaic’s face visibly reddened with that. “This isn’t the Tuatha,” he answered. “You may be Riocha and expect that because you say something that it must be so, but that means nothing here. We don’t do the Riocha’s bidding, and each clan-laird will make their own decision.” The old man’s grizzled face was set in hard lines, and he stared at Kayne without blinking, as if daring him to argue further. It was Rodhlann who continued.

“By the Mother, Tiarna,” the Fingerlander said, “just a few days ago you were advising us to leave the Narrows. Now you’re insisting we stay?”

“I wanted us to retreat before we were killed, aye, but I never wanted the force you’ve put together to dissolve,” Kayne told Rodhlann, then turned to face O’Blathmhaic. “We need those who can fight to stay together now. And I’m not speaking as a Riocha, Laird. I gave that up when they killed my da. I’m saying this because I
know
them. Haven’t I shown that?”

“Aye, you have. You may know them, but you don’t know us well enough yet.”

“I’m here. I married Séarlait, and I gave her my word that I won’t leave her. My loyalty is to her and through her to all the clans. But returning to your homes . . . that
is
a mistake, Laird. If we can hold together for a just a month, or two . . .”

“It’s not possible,” O’Blathmhaic growled. “Another month, and the harvests will go rotten in the field. Flocks won’t have been sheared, roofs thatched, hay put up for winter.”

“Laird—” Kayne persisted.

Harik put his hand on Kayne’s shoulder. “Don’t bother, Tiarna,” he said. “The Fingerlanders might be strong and fearless in a single battle, but they don’t have the stomach for a war. That’s why over all these generations they’ve never been able to cast away the yoke of Airgialla and the Tuatha. They’re weak.”

“Weak!”
The word was a roar. Laird O’Blathmhaic straightened and his hand flew to his sword hilt, as did Rodhlann’s. “You’ll not be calling me weak when I’ve finished with you, Harik-Hand. Draw your sword, man, or put the steel aside and let us use fists—I don’t care. Come, and I’ll show you how weak we Fingerlanders are, when even an old man can put an impertinent pup like you on the ground.” Rodhlann and Séarlait both put their hands on O’Blathmhaic’s arm, but the clan-laird shrugged them aside. He pulled his sword from its sheath, pointing the tip of it toward Harik. The heavy weight of water-hardened iron was firm in his hand. “Steel or fists? Choose, man, or be called a coward from this day on.”

Séarlait moved to stand directly in front of her greada, shaking her head desperately at his anger. Kayne in his turn swiveled to confront Harik. “You won’t insult those who have given us back our lives, Harik,” he said, and Harik’s face darkened with blood. “You’ll apologize to the laird, or you’ll fight me first.”

“Apol . . .” Harik choked on the word. “My Tiarna, I only spoke what’s obvious to all of us.”

“You’re my Hand, not my Mouth,” Kayne told him. “You don’t speak for me to the clan-lairds, or for our troops. I gave you the choice back in the caverns to go or stay. Are you saying that’s a choice you regret now? Apologize to the laird, Harik-Hand, or you’ll no longer
be
my Hand.”

A movement caught his eye: Harik’s hand sliding up his léine toward Bluefire around his neck. “You want that, Harik?” Kayne said to him in a whisper, so that only he and Harik could hear. “You want to use the gift I gave you against me? That would be a betrayal of all the trust my da and I have ever put in you.”

“You’re not your da,” Harik said. “You’re not anything close.”

A few months ago, that would have brought a rush of anger from Kayne, and he would have flown at the man in a rage. Kayne was surprised at the calm he felt, at the way he bowed his head once into the accusation, accepting it. “No, I’m not,” Kayne agreed. “I can only hope to one day be worthy of being called his son. But imagine Da here, now, in my place. What would he tell you, Harik? Would he have allowed you to speak that way? Would he have been pleased with his Hand? Would he have let you break apart the only alliance that gives us any hope at all?”

Harik’s jaw clenched against unspoken words, but his hand dropped from the cloch. He looked past Kayne to Laird O’Blathmhaic, still holding his sword, though he’d lowered it under Séarlait’s pressure. “I apologize for my boldness, Laird,” Harik said. “I spoke without thinking and because . . .” He stopped. His throat moved with a hard swallow. “The Fingerlanders have proven their worth in battle, many times over. I was wrong.”

Laird O’Blathmhaic still glared, but he grunted and the skins around his shoulders moved with a shrug. “And for my part, I’ll admit that you’re at least partially right, Hand Harik,” he said. “The clans have never been able to sustain a war against the Tuatha, and perhaps this is the time we must try.” O’Blathmhaic turned to Kayne. “I’ll do what I can. I can’t hold them all—some of the clansfolk will be leaving. I need to leave myself. But I’ll ask those who can to stay, and I’ll send word to Banlaird MacCanna that Rodhlann should remain here as well, and we’ll see. We’ll see.”

Séarlait moved aside, and the man shoved his sword back into its well-worn scabbard with a grunt. “Thank you, Laird,” Kayne said. “Do what you can.” O’Blathmhaic nodded and strode off with a final long stare in Harik’s direction.

“I should go see to our own men, Tiarna,” Harik said. Without waiting for Kayne to speak, he spun about and walked away in the opposite direction. Kayne started to call after him, but Séarlait touched his arm and he looked at her to see her shake her head once.

“I don’t like it either,” he told her. “I don’t know if I can fully trust him. I don’t know where his loyalty is.”

She stroked his arm and he pulled her into him.

Sevei followed the thread of Blaze’s connection to the mage-lights back to Kayne. In her mage-vision, she saw her brother and Séarlait standing together, still encamped in the high Narrows though many of the tents that had once dotted the landscape were gone. She let herself materialize a bit away from them, in the shadows of their tent. She looked at them, trying to ignore the racking pain and cold of her passage, shivering in the night air. They’d filled their clochs from the mage-lights, and as she watched, Kayne turned to Séarlait and gave her a soft, long kiss. There was such tenderness and love in the gesture that Sevei felt a stirring within herself, a deep regret that filled her with melancholy. She remembered Dillon, remembered holding him that way . . .

“I’m so sorry . . .”
she heard a voice say in her head, rising above the constant low murmuring inside.
“You can’t ever have that again yourself. It’s not fair. I wish I could take the pain from you, darling. I wish I could bring Dillon back for you. All I can promise you is that when you’re here with me, the pain will be gone and you’ll be whole again . . .”

“Be quiet, Gram,”
she snapped back almost angrily.

But another voice arose: Carrohkai Treemaster.
“The First Holder is right, you know. Physical love like that is something you’ll never have, even if there was someone who could see past the scars. You are the Holder of Lámh Shábhála, you are the great-daughter of the Mad Holder and the daughter of the Healer Ard who was slain as an enemy of the Riocha, and you are the Bán Cailleach. Even if you could find someone, even if your body could manage to bear the touch of another person, you have too few years left to you.”
Carrohkai Treemaster’s voice was filled with a deep, sad empathy.
“I know. I know too well. You have little time and much to do, and that affection you’re looking at now is the payment you’ve given for what you have.”

Kayne and Séarlait were holding each other tightly, Séarlait’s head nestled against Kayne’s chest, his hand caught in the strands of her hair. The mage-lights painted them with shifting blue and gold. Despite the lingering pain of her usage of Lámh Shábhála to return here, she found herself smiling, looking at them. She could feel tears at the corners of her eyes, and they burned like acid against her skin.

“I wish it were different for you . . .”
Gram and Carrohkai Treemaster whispered together.

“So do I . . .”
Sevei answered them silently, then stepped forward from the cover of the tents. “Brother,” she said. “A beautiful night, isn’t it?”

Kayne started, breaking apart from Séarlait and his hand going to the Cloch Mór reflexively. Then he smiled, though she noticed that he kept his eyes slightly averted from her nakedness. “Sevei! I wondered, when you didn’t return last night . . .”

“After I spoke with Uncle Doyle, I went to Doire Coill and spent the day there with Keira, telling her what has happened. Do you remember Keira? We were so young then, and Mam . . . Mam . . .”

Sevei stopped, her voice choking. The wound within her that was her mam’s death and the death of so many in her family broke open again. She tried to take a breath and couldn’t. She thought of Meriel and the statue that now stood before her grave. Sevei looked at the stars, at the fading mage-lights, and she saw Kayne start to reach out to her, to touch her scarred, tormented skin. She nearly cried out, snatching her arm away from him.
“. . . you can never know love. Never again. . . .”

“I know,” Kayne whispered. “I know how you feel.”

Séarlait stood next to Sevei, also, and the woman’s face was filled with sympathy, starlit tears on her cheeks. She looked at Sevei, unafraid, her hands lifting as if she wanted to touch her, but staying carefully away.

The tears in Sevei’s eyes had evaporated. Sevei couldn’t cry, somehow, though she ached to do so. The changes within her seemed to have dried up the tears and they wouldn’t come, though the ache in her throbbed with the need. “Since . . . since this all happened, I haven’t had time to think about it,” she told them. “I haven’t
wanted
to think about it.” She looked at Kayne, stricken. “Oh, Kayne . . . I miss them. I miss them all so much . . .”

Kayne nodded. Séarlait nodded also, and her hand came up to touch the side of Sevei’s face before she could react or turn aside. Sevei felt the heat of the woman’s hands, the Fingerlander’s fingertips feeling like a rasp against her skin. Séarlait brushed Sevei’s stark white hair; with the touch, Sevei also felt a stirring within Lámh Shábhála, a tugging that brought her hand to the glow under her skin. She could nearly feel the hard facets of the stone. She let the energy flow outward, and her awareness went with it. Her eyes widened, as did those of Séarlait.