Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3) (78 page)

“No.” He heard the word, but he ignored it. When she spoke again, there was mage-power in her voice. An unseen hand took his chin and forced him to look at her. She was wreathed in the mage-lights, the scars on her body carved in the radiance. “No,” she repeated, her voice booming in several octaves. “I have no experience in war or in command, Kayne; you do. You’ve fought the Arruk before; you understand them. You need to be the Rí Ard you were intended to be.”

Kayne laughed again: the same empty laugh devoid of any humor. Winter’s chain rattled in his hand, a dull clanking. “Mam should be the Ard, Sevei, and Da the commander of her army. But they’re both dead like Séarlait. A few hands of hands of hands against the full might of the Arruk—that would make a wonderful, heroic song, wouldn’t it, Sevei? Only no Daoine will live to sing it.”

“You might be right,” she told him. “I don’t know. But I’m sure that Séarlait wanted you to live for a reason. She was a Fingerlander and you’re Inish—both people who know what it means to struggle against the odds. Take Winter with you. The Maestra of the Order will be there, and there will be cloudmages who can use Séarlait’s cloch. Or give it to someone else who’s worthy of it. We’ll need all the Clochs Mór. It’s what Séarlait would tell you, also. Listen to her, Kayne. She’s there with the Mother, watching you. You can hear her if you try.”

“Let me give you this gift . . .”
The memory of Séarlait’s voice drowned out everything else: Sevei, the chanting of Beryn, the song of the Seanóir deep in the forest.
“Dying doesn’t matter, my love. Only how we die . . .”

At least in dying, he might be with Séarlait again. Still, he hesitated. He saw his sister frown, saw her move the mage-lights as if they were a rope that bound her. Too late, he realized that she moved the light to him, that she snared both of them together. He fell into the light.

Into her.
“Kayne . . .”
Sevei’s voice filled him. Was him.
“I understand. I do . . .”
Memories rushed at him, memories that weren’t his but Sevei’s, and the emotions she’d felt hammered at him, as if they were his own.

. . . the pain of the transformation of the Scrúdú, the agony of her own body, the constant wash of pain that would never,
could
never be banished . . .

“I understand,” she/he whispered together. “Oh, I understand . . .”

And he found himself alone again. Entirely alone. Kayne was weeping unashamedly, the tears streaking down his face, the sobs racking him. He took a deep, long breath that shuddered with their twinned grief.

“This is not hopeless, Kayne,” Sevei said, her own voice choked with her weeping. “Not yet.”

He didn’t believe her. Looking at her mutilated face, he knew she didn’t believe it herself. “You’re hurting already from coming to me,” he told her. “And now you’ll go to them, and then somewhere else? You can’t do this, Sevei. Every time you use the power so fully, you injure yourself more. You won’t be able to stand it.”

“I can,” she told him. She gave a helpless, sobbing laugh. “I must.”

He wanted to hold Sevei, wanted to embrace her as he had when they were younger, and he could not—her body wouldn’t allow the touch. He could only do as she asked. “How do I get to the Narrows?” he asked. “I can’t ride the mage-lights, as you do. Can you send me there?”

It wasn’t Sevei who answered, but Keira. “The Bán Cailleach needs her strength elsewhere,” she said. Mage-light mingled with ruddy firelight on her face. “Beryn and I will take you. There are other ways, as your mam and da might have told you.”

They were all looking at him and mage-light poured down on Sevei. He could see her impatience, her weariness, her pain. “Go,” he told her. “Do what you must do.”

“I will see you at the Narrows, Kayne,” she told him. The tears on her face glittered in mage-light. “If the Mother wills it.”

Light erupted and washed over the hillside and the cairn. She was gone.

SHE COULD FEEL Treoraí’s Heart in the mage-lights, cloaked as always, but now she knew it was Ennis who hid behind the cloch.
. . . So terribly young and yet so powerful . . .
She heard the voices, all of those inside her and especially Gram, marveling at that.

She pushed the thoughts down. She extended Lámh Shábhála’s presence toward the barriers around Treoraí’s Heart: hard, solid, and the color of spilled blood. Sevei pushed hard at the barrier, using more of Lámh Shábhála’s power than she had before; the walls around Ennis yielded for a moment, thinning and giving her a momentary glimpse of the presence behind them:
male, aye, and young . . .
She caught a whirl of chaotic thoughts, a sense of—strangely—many presences there, all of them echoes of Ennis’ own mind fluttering in sea-blue hues around him like salt spray caught in a twisting sea-spout. Somewhere, far inside, she could hear a boy’s voice, a frightened wail, but it was drowned out by the others.

Then the wall pushed back at her, throwing her away into the cold brightness of the mage-lights. Sevei rested there a moment, surprised at the ability within the Heart, feeling the mage-lights rake her body at the same time they sustained her, realizing that the effort had exhausted her more than she’d realized. She wondered whether her mam had known how much power was in the Heart. Almost certainly she had, yet she’d chosen to use that power only for healing.

Not Ennis.

That was Gram. Weary, Sevei could not ignore her, couldn’t push the voice away. “He’s my brother, Gram. Your great-son. If I can reach him and make him realize who he’s hurting, then perhaps I won’t need to do the rest . . .”

The voice subsided. From inside, from the others, there came the sound of laughter and ironic applause.

Sevei followed the river of light from the sky back to Treoraí’s Heart until she floated again before its walls. “Ennis!” she shouted with the power of Lámh Shábhála in her voice, as if shouting up at the ramparts of a citadel. “This is Sevei! Ennis, please! Open yourself to me!”

There was no answer, no change in the blood-hued walls. Insistent, she opened Lámh Shábhála like it was a vessel, letting the mage-lights pour their radiance into it and then funneling it back out again. The few times before that she’d tried to go to the Heart’s Holder and been rebuffed, she’d thought it was the Taisteal woman who held it, and she had not persisted. But now she knew it was Ennis, and she took the power and sharpened it, hewed it into a battering ram and hurled it against the walls that held her away from her brother.

The collision nearly broke her. She felt the impact in every bone, in every joint. Sparks exploded where Lámh Shábhála touched the Heart, and she felt their scorching heat pattering on her like a burning rain. She heard a wail from the far side of the wall as well, a boy’s cry. In her mage-vision she could see a faint crack in the wall and she threw herself at it, but it was healing itself even as she moved. She plunged Lámh Shábhála’s energy into the fissure, clawing at it and forcing it to open.

“Ennis!” She could see him in her mage-vision: a boy, crouching huddled over Treoraí’s Heart as if trying to enfold himself in its crystalline depths. His head turned, looking at her. “Ennis, it’s Sevei.”

“No!”
he shouted back at her, his face snarled with rage and disbelief and fear. “You’re not. Isibéal says Sevei’s dead and you’re trying to trick me. You’re the White Beast. You’re the one who killed Gram and Mam and all the rest so you could have Lámh Shábhála.”

“Ennis, that’s not true. I know I’ve changed, but look at me.
Look
at me.”

He stared, his face still a rictus. He seemed to be listening to something or someone that she couldn’t hear. He hissed, like some animal hiding in shadow. “No,” he spat. “You lie.” He lifted his hand, and she could see the Heart in his fingers, could see the cloch gathering itself. Captured mage-light lanced from him toward her; she barely managed to deflect the energy in time. Even so, the impact threw her screaming back against the red wall. He was on his feet now, rushing at her, and in the mage-sight he seemed to carry a staff carved with strange symbols that glowed angrily with captured power. She could see him ready to strike her with the staff. “Ennis!” she cried, but he kept advancing. He swung the staff, and she interposed a bolt from Lámh Shábhála. The staff shattered, but she felt the impact as if it had slammed into her own body. The ghosts of the Holders within her marveled.

She knew then that if she stayed here, she would be forced to use Lámh Shábhála fully, that she would have to hurt or kill Ennis if she were to survive herself and she was already weak from what she’d done this night. He was gathering himself up, the Heart glowing madly in his hand and Sevei fled, forcing herself back through the fissure in the wall even as he flung another attack at her, even as she used yet more of Lámh Shábhála’s power to deflect it once again.

The mage-lights were already beginning to dim, and she had much more to do before they were gone. She could not stay.

She retreated, leaving the red wall behind to the sound of mocking laughter, and she wept again as she traveled the cold interstices of the mage-lights. Her tears fell like broken stars.

Exhausted already and with a sense of dread futility coloring her thoughts, Sevei turned her back on the Heart and followed the radiance of the mage-lights, letting her awareness travel down to each of the clochs. In the mage-vision, she could see Torin Mallaghan standing with the others outside a hovel near Lough Tory. His hand was still upraised to the mage-lights, the Cloch Mór Rogue gleaming through his fingers. Over two double-hands of Riocha were there with him: nearly a double hand of Cloch Mórs and a scattering of clochsmion, most in the hands of green-clad mages of the Order of Gabair. She recognized many of them: Rí Mac Baoill of Airgialla, Shay O Blaca, others she had glimpsed at court in Dún Laoghaire over the years. Elsewhere in the village, there were gardai and troops, several double-hands of them.

She let herself fall into Mallaghan’s energy-stream, materializing behind him before he and the others realized she was there. Sevei slid her bare forefinger over his throat as if slashing it with a dagger—with the touch, her finger felt as if she’d drawn her own skin across the honed edge of a knife. She leaned close to his ear even as he started to react. “You’d be dead now, Rí, if I wished it. Remember that.” He spun around as she stepped back from him. She laughed at the distress and fear on his face, laughed because it had been so easy, laughed because the sound helped to hold the pain away, laughed because the sound assuaged the sense of defeat in her.

Two of the Clochs Mór came alive, one on either side of her. She felt them, a pressure within the mage-lights, and she contemptuously threw their own manifestations back at them without looking at them. Behind her, there were screams, but her gaze stayed on Rí Mallaghan. Other clochs opened, and she let out Lámh Shábhála’s power, forming a dark-hued wall around herself, a wall as scarred as her own body, as white as her own flesh. Their attacks battered at the wall—giant creatures; arcing lines of energy; great howling winds; skeletal armies—but though she could feel the blows, she held them away. And she held Rí Mallaghan inside the shell also, as if in a gigantic, unseen fist.