Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3) (62 page)

“Not eight against one,” Edana called out loudly. “It would be seven against Lámh Shábhála and Demon-Caller. I stand with the Bán Cailleach today, not the Ríthe.”

“Not seven either,” Doyle interjected. “I won’t put my cloch against that of my wife.” He was staring at Edana. “Snapdragon would defend Edana against anyone who would try to hurt her.”

Sevei forced a smile to her face. “You surprise me, Uncle,” Sevei said. “But I thank you. And you, Aunt Edana. So it would be six against two even if the Rí Ard simply keeps Snapdragon out of the fray. One of you against Demon-Caller, and five left for me. Now,
those
odds I’m willing to chance. Are you, Rí Mallaghan? Rí Mas Sithig? I tell you this, my Ríthe: as you would take Lámh Shábhála from me if I lost, I will take the clochs from each of you here afterward, while you still live to feel that anguish. Open your clochs, then, if you dare. Go on . . .” She spoke with a confidence she didn’t feel inside. In truth, Lámh Shábhála had been drained of a good portion of its reserves from the passage here. She could feel the mage-power still potent within it, but whether there was enough for her to take on all the Ríthe, if her body and mind could stand the pain and abuse . . .

She waited. The Ríthe all glanced at each other. Then, slowly, their hands dropped back down to the arms of their thrones.

“Hush, Gram . . .”
Sevei forced down the moan that wanted to escape her lips:
you can’t show your vulnerability here, in front of them. They can’t know how much you hurt.
She drew herself up, lifting her chin—showing weakness would be fatal, she knew. They would be on her like a pack of dire wolves on a crippled deer.

“I did as you asked and brought the Ríthe here,” Doyle said to her. “What do you want of us, Sevei?”

“I want very little,” she told them. “First, there are too many empty thrones here in Tuatha Halla, and I would fill two more of them.”

Rí Mallaghan scoffed openly at that, interrupting her. “You want
nine
Ríthe? So you want Inish Thuaidh seated with us. That hardly surprises me. And who would take the other seat?”

“Inish Thuaidh has deserved its seat here in Tuatha Halla for generations,” Sevei answered. “The Inishlanders kept safe the knowledge of the clochs and the slow magics through the dark generations, when the Tuatha would have forgotten. If it weren’t for the Tuatha’s cowardly theft of the clochs, the Tuatha Halla might be in Dún Kiil rather then Dún Laoghaire. But I’ll see Rí Kyle MacEagan or his successor seated here helping to make the policies of the Tuatha and electing the Ard. And I would see a Rí of the Fingerlanders here also, as they once had.”

“The Fingerlands are
mine
.” Rí Morven Mac Baoill of Airgialla nearly came out of his chair. “Airgialla has owned the Fingerlands for two double-hands of the Ríthe of my family.”

“And for that same amount of time, the clans of the Finger have fought against Dathúil’s rule. But you own them no longer, Rí Mac Baoill. My brother defeated your first force and I’ve sent your latest army running home. The Finger is empty of your troops, Rí Mac Baoill, and I won’t allow them to return.”

“
You
won’t allow?” Mac Baoill’s face was suffused and his stout body quivered in his seat. “You have neither the right nor the power to allow it or not.”

“The right? Perhaps not—at least no more right than you had when you sent your son to kill my da. But the power . . . ?” She touched her breast and the glow of Lámh Shábhála increased. Sevei ignored the pain as the scars pulled and tore at her shoulder with the movement. She could see the swirling patterns in her skin, glowing softly in the dimness of the room. “The power I have here. And those were the least of my demands. Aye, demands,” she said into the hubbub of protest that came with the word. “Hear me, for this is what the Bán Cailleach wishes.”

She opened Lámh Shábhála slightly, so that the energy within it flowed out to strengthen her voice, startling doves roosting in the Halla’s rafters: they fluttered about the roof in panic. She drowned out the sound of the rain and the protests of the Ríthe. “Doyle Mac Ard will resign as Rí Ard, and for his murder of my great-mam the First Holder, he will exile himself from the Tuatha. For his part in the murder of Owaine Geraghty, Rí Morven Mac Baoill will do likewise. One or more of you here, I’m certain, planned the murder of the Healer Ard and Ennis. I will discover who that person is; I will hold that person responsible, and for him or her, I also demand exile. Those Riocha responsible for slaying my siblings Tara and Ionhar will have their lands and titles forfeited and be exiled also. Be glad that I ask only exile when I might have as easily asked for your lives in return for theirs.”

The voices of old Holders yammered in her head at that. Only her gram’s voice was louder, but also gentler.
“I, too, would kill them, Sevei. But my choices weren’t always the best ones, I know now. Trust yourself, great-daughter . . .”

The uproar in the Halla matched that in her head, as Mac Baoill, Torin Mallaghan, and Allister Fearachan rose to their feet shouting. Only Doyle sat silently in his throne, his face ashen above the gold sheen of the Ard’s torc. Sevei opened Lámh Shábhála a little more and they all went silent, sitting back in their seats as if unseen hands had shoved them down. The voices still clamored in her head, but Sevei ignored them. “I haven’t finished,” Sevei told the Ríthe. “I will have my brother Kayne as the new Rí Ard.”

“Kayne?” Torin Mallaghan managed to croak out against the force that held him to his seat. “Not yourself?”

She gave him a smile rimed with frost. “Not me,” she said. “I have other tasks, and other fates—and I return to them now. I will give you a hand of days to give me your response.”

“You ask for nothing less than our total submission to you,” Torin Mallaghan said angrily.

She bowed mockingly toward him. “Aye, Rí Mallaghan. That’s exactly what I ask.”

“You can’t have it. You
won’t
have it.” Mallaghan said it without looking at the others, but Sevei could see the apprehension in their faces. Doyle slumped on his throne as if he were hearing nothing; Edana stared at Doyle with a surprisingly gentle look on her face. Mac Baoill was as defiant as Mallaghan, but the others watched Mallaghan with varying degrees of shock on their faces. Sevei shrugged.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Rí Mallaghan. If I must, I will make an example of one of the Ríthe. I would prefer not to have to do that, but since you volunteer . . .”

Sevei couldn’t keep the voices down. She was tiring, and she was in terrible pain, and she could not stay here. The energy captured in Lámh Shábhála burned in her mind, yearning to break free of her. “But I don’t wish your answer now,” she told the Ríthe. “I’ll give you time. Talk among yourselves and send the Comhdáil Comhairle’s answer to the Narrows: to the new Tuath Méar, the Finger. But before you talk, I would urge you to remember this: I can destroy just as easily as I can create.”

With that, gratefully, Sevei opened Lámh Shábhála fully and let the power inside bear her away.

The news came to the Ríthe even before they left the Tuatha Halla. One of Doyle’s aides, a fosterling from the O’Murchadha family staying at Dún Laoghaire, peered nervously through the open archway of the Halla. They had all heard his quick footsteps, and the contentious argument that had engulfed all of them but the silent Doyle now subsided as they turned to him. The aide’s gaze went from Edana to Doyle but avoided the others, as if their glares could cut. Water dripped from his long hair onto the floor, and his clothing was sodden. “Rí Ard, Banrion, I don’t mean to interrupt, but on Cnocareilig . . . at the Healer Ard’s barrow . . .” He stopped at the sound of sucked-in breaths, as if the name had been an invocation, and his expression slid from nervous to puzzled. “I thought you should know . . .”

The feeling of slow dread that had consumed Doyle since Sevei’s appearance deepened. He stroked the Torc of the Ard as he had since the Bán Cailleach had recited her demands, feeling the cool smoothness of the gold. His own voice sounded like the croaking of a frog in the marsh. “Go on, Auliffe,” he told him. “Speak. What’s happened?”

The young man visibly swallowed. He pulled his clóca tight around him. “I was on my rounds, checking in with the gardai on duty at the keep gates. My back was to the grave-hill, but suddenly I could see my shadow on the keep walls. I turned: a brilliant light was playing over Cnocareilig—like the sun had burst through the rain clouds. Then it was gone, so quickly that the day seemed darker than before. I wasn’t certain what to do—whether I should wait or to send a few of the keep’s gardai to Cnocareilig to investigate. I’d summoned your Hand, and we were about to go ourselves when the first of the people came running back down the Cnocareilig road. We’d seen at least a double-hand of double-hands of supplicants walking up there in the morning, even with the rain. But that’s usual, ever since the Healer Ard’s statue—”

He stopped, and a hand came up to prowl the thin beard on his chin. Auliffe had been with Doyle when he’d received the news of the statue’s appearance and undoubtedly had just remembered the Ard’s reaction. The Ríthe were grumbling again, though Edana was staring at Auliffe with interest. Torin Mallaghan slapped the arm of his throne with an open hand, and Auliffe jumped. Doyle waved a weary hand at the young man. “Auliffe, please continue.”

Auliffe dropped his hand and shook beaded rain from the ends of his hair. “Well, it seemed at least half the supplicants were coming back down toward the city. Running, Rí Ard, as if all the ghosts that haunt Cnocareilig were chasing them, shouting and screaming, the mud of the road splattering under their feet. We thought they were frightened, but when they came closer, we realized what they were saying, and that they weren’t frightened but joyous.” He stopped again, and this time the Ríthe waited. “They were saying that the Healer Ard had appeared herself—in the sky as a bright, shining star—and that she had created a temple for herself on Cnocareilig. They were coming down to tell the others, the tuathánach of the city.” He paused. “The rain is just a drizzle now, my Ard. You . . . you can see yourself if you step out of the Halla.”

Edana was the first to move. She was out of her throne and striding past Auliffe before any of the rest of them had stirred. Torin Mallaghan glared at Auliffe as if the boy were personally responsible for the news, then followed, the other five Ríthe in his wake. Doyle took a long breath before pushing himself up from his throne. Doyle felt, suddenly, very old. He shuffled like some decrepit ancient across the sunken floor of the throne circle and past the central fire. Auliffe watched him, and Doyle patted the young man on the back as he came up to him. “Thank you, Auliffe. Don’t worry. You did what you should have done.” With another sigh, he left the throne circle and went outside.

The Ríthe had gathered in a cluster with all their gardai—waiting obediently outside in the weather—gathered behind. All of them were staring south: from the summit of Halla Hill, and to the left of the hill on which the twin keeps of the Rí Ard and Banrion Dún Laoghaire sat, to the steep, barren hillside past the Old Walls where the barrows of the ancient Ards rested. There, through the gray mist of the rain, Doyle could see a structure of pure white gleaming, with four towers dotting its ramparts.

He knew the architecture. He’d seen it before: it was a replica of the main section of the White Keep on Inishfeirm, home of the Order of Inishfeirm and where all three generations of the Aoires—Jenna, Meriel, and Sevei—had been educated in the ways of the cloudmages.
I give you your last chance for hope,
it said mutely.
You must choose.

“ ‘I can destroy as easily as I can create.’ ” Edana breathed the quote for all of them.

“This is an outrage,” Torin Mallaghan was saying. “A mockery. It must be torn down.”

“Tear it down?” Edana repeated. She laughed. Her graying hair, uncovered by the cowl of her clóca, was frosted with the drizzle, and beads of water were on the torc of Dún Laoghaire around her neck. “And what would that accomplish, Rí Mallaghan, except to rouse the tuathánach who still love the Healer Ard? Do any of us have the power in our Cloch Mór to take down the building as quickly as the Bán Cailleach built it? How foolish would we look, destroying this temple to her mam stone by stone when she created it in a moment? I won’t allow it, Rí Mallaghan. This is my Tuath, not yours. I say the Bán Cailleach has sent us a clear message, and I prefer it remains there so that we’re not tempted to forget.”