Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3) (80 page)

The blue ghost in which he had wrapped himself did nothing but nod and stare straight ahead. But Ennis forced himself to break away. He hugged Cima, surprising the Arruk. “Your eyes are leaking again, Ennis Svarti,” the Arruk told him. Ennis sniffed and dragged a sleeve over his eyes. He found the blue ghost again, sliding down from the litter onto the ground and walking toward Kurhv Kralj’s litter. The blue ghost was already fading, nearly lost among the welter of futures here. Ennis hurried to catch up to it.

“Hurry,” he told Cima as he slipped into the pattern. “It’s nearly time.”

Carrohkai Treemaster sang under the oaks in the night, her voice lifted in the windlike melody of the Seanóir. They were answering her, calling out to her in the leaf-cloaked darkness of the forest, their low, earthy voices swaying the boughs above her. She stopped her singing then. Her head lifted as if she were sniffing the air and she turned. The moon lifted above the trees to the east, rising swiftly enough that Sevei could track the movement.

“Tráthnóna maith duit,
Sevei,” Carrohkai said.

The Bunús Muintir’s hair was white, her body—like Sevei’s, naked to the world—was covered with the same scars, though her body was heavier and wider and her face broader. Her eyes held night, and her smile was tinged with sadness.

“How did I come here?” Sevei asked, and Carrohkai shrugged.

“You’re not here. Not really. Nor am I. Or perhaps you are. It’s difficult to tell.”

“Am I dead?”

“Perhaps. Sometimes that’s also difficult to know.” Carrohkai touched the stone between her breasts. As with Sevei, there was a glow there underneath the skin that was undeniably Lámh Shábhála, so like that of her stone that Sevei’s hand went to her own body. The gem was still there: She could see the emerald gleam on her fingertips, a twin to that illuminating Carrohkai. Sevei gave a breath of relief, though she knew that Lámh Shábhála couldn’t have been taken from her without her knowledge—no Holder could ever lose Lámh Shábhála without suffering. Carrohkai was staring at Sevei with the same fascination.

“I remember being here and doing this,” Carrohkai said, “and yet I also know the rest of my life . . . and I know you. So
I’m
dead, at least.” She gave a sigh. “You’ve come to me. What can I teach you that you don’t already know or that Issine hasn’t said to you?” she asked.

“How did you bear it?” Sevei asked. “After you passed the Scrúdú, how did you manage to keep living through the pain?”

“I didn’t live long,” Carrohkai answered. “None of us do. The truth is that the Scrúdú kills all of us who attempt it. It just leaves a few alive for a bit first.”

“Then what am I supposed to do? What good is the Scrúdú if those who pass the test have so little time?”

“Aye,” another voice intruded, a familiar one to Sevei. “Answer that for both of us.” Jenna—Gram—came walking through the trees toward them, dressed in the royal clóca of Inish Thuaidh, with the torc of Dún Kiil and the chain of Lámh Shábhála both around her neck. Her face was wrinkled and old, but seemed to be without the additional creases of pain that had eroded its features for as long as Sevei could remember. Sevei found that she wasn’t at all startled to see Gram here. Her appearance seemed natural. “Tell us why our family has endured this burden for so long. Tell us why we and so many others suffered.”

Carrohkai seemed to be listening to the songs of the trees more than to Gram or Sevei. There were no mage-lights here in this night, and the moon raced across the summit of the sky toward the west, while the eastern sky was already brightening with dawn, masking the stars. The curve of the sun brightened the eastern sky. “There’s always a price for power.”

“I didn’t
want
the power,” Gram said vehemently. Sunlight touched her face and she shaded her eyes. “I never asked for it. Neither did Sevei.”

Carrohkai turned to regard them calmly, serenely. “You may not have asked for it, Jenna Aoire, but when the power called you, you took it. And you, Sevei—you wanted it also, or Bhralhg would not have given you the stone. You wanted it. Both of you. As I did.”

“What did you do with it?” Sevei asked.

Carrohkai laughed, and the Seanóir’s song rose with a rising wind. The sun was already at zenith and beginning to fall, their shadows moving visibly on the ground. Two shadows: Sevei looked around, but Gram had vanished.

“I did very little, if you listen to those who lived when I did or came after,” Carrohkai said as Sevei glanced around to see where Gram might have gone. “I heard the life within the Seanóir and I brought them to Awareness. I allowed them to see the mage-lights and use them for themselves. My peers, those who held the other clochs, all said I wasted Lámh Shábhála and the test of the Scrúdú and my life. I helped Others when I could have done more for the Bunús. They called me a failure. They called me a traitor. They said I had no loyalty to my own. They said that a traitor is always a hero to the other side, and so they called me ‘Treemaster’ and the ‘Hero of the Oaks,’ and their titles were a mockery. They ridiculed me, they said they were glad that I was in pain and would die soon, because someone more worthy would take Lámh Shábhála from me when I died.”

“I’m sorry,” Sevei said.

“Don’t be,” the Bunús Muintir answered. Carrohkai inclined her head, listening to the Seanóir’s lament as the sun began to set and the first stars emerged. “When you Daoine came to Talamh an Ghlas, long after the mage-lights had failed, and many generations of Holders after I died, the Seanóir were alive and half-awake there in the deep woods, and they protected us because of what I’d done for them. They gave my people a refuge where we could stay and survive. The Bunús would all be gone now, if the Seanóir had not been made Aware.”

The first mage-lights slid between the stars: too bright and too fast. Reflexively, Sevei touched Lámh Shábhála; Carrohkai echoed the gesture.

“. . . none of what she says matters . . .”
It was Gram’s voice, in her head now as it had been since her death, caught in Lámh Shábhála.
“. . . your family and your people are what is truly important. They need you now. You must think of them . . .”

The mage-lights brightened, so intense that they blotted out the landscape. Their fire flickered behind the landscape, as if she were looking at a funeral pyre though a painting on thin paper. The sheets and curtains of bright colors moved through and around Carrohkai and the forest, and the singing of the Seanóir was the crackling of the mage-energy in her ears.

“. . . we never see the consequences of our lives,”
Carrohkai said, her voice, like Gram’s, in Sevei’s head. She seemed to be admonishing both of them, gently, with the sound of a quiet smile in her voice. Sevei could see only the stars and the mage-lights now, and a surge of pain made her cry out, made her fall and pull her body into a tight fetal curl.
“. . . only those who come long after can truly judge us . . .”

The intensity of the pain ratcheted higher and Sevei moaned, clutching herself and screaming, screaming so loudly that she barely heard Carrohkai finish.

Sevei groaned. Something moved near her, but she kept her eyes pressed shut against the hammer blows inside her head and the fire that burned her skin.

“This time I come on my own, Soft-flesh,” she heard a voice say.

“WHAT DO WE DO now, Mam?”

Padraic paced as Edana watched, not wanting to show her impatience. The army—less than a thousand hastily assembled gardai and soldiers with a bare handful of Riocha and céili giallnai among them—crowded in the narrow canyon between the cliff walls of the Narrows. There had been a battle in this place already: there were unburied corpses here and there, the bodies picked over by the crows, wild dogs, and other scavengers. The stench of their rot had made Edana drape a perfumed cloth over her face. The corpses wore the colors of Airgialla, and the conflict seemed to have torn the very stones from the cliff walls of the Narrows. The road was blocked here, and it seemed as good a place to stop as any.

As the Hands of the army supervised the creation of an encampment upwind of the carnage, Edana watched Padraic pace. “This is where Sevei wanted us to come. She’ll be here.”

“It’s been days since we saw her. She should be here already.” Padraic shivered under his woolen clóca. “This place is haunted. This whole land is haunted—there was that siog mist that went past us two days ago, and some of the gardai swear they saw a dragon circling the Narrows yesterday as we were climbing up from Lough Tory . . .” He scuffed at the ground, glaring at the rocks as if they might be Créneach waiting to rise up and attack him.

“She’ll come.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

“Then we fight the Arruk alone.” The voice, deep and weary, was a new one, startling both Padraic and Edana. A man approached them from the rocks to the east. He was filthy and bedraggled, he limped as if injured, but there was something about his bearing and his face, and on his breast a ruby stone gleamed. Several of the gardai noticed him at the same time: seeing him so close to Edana and Padraic, they started toward him and unsheathed swords; an archer picked up his bow and nocked an arrow—but Edana waved them away.

“Kayne!” Edana said. “Praise the Mother! You
are
alive.”

“
Dia daoibh,
Aunt Edana, Padraic. Well met at last. It’s been a long time, Aunt . . .”

“You’re hurt,” Edana said, and Kayne gave her a smile that dissolved in the next moment.

“Aye, that I am, and in worse ways than you can see, Aunt. But we’ve no time to worry about that. Who’s in charge here?”

“I am,” Edana answered. “And Padraic.” Edana saw Kayne’s gaze—hard and coldly appraising—go to Padraic.

“I’m sorry about your da,” he said to Padraic before his attention moved back to Edana, “and your husband, Aunt. If not for him, I’d be dead. I didn’t trust Uncle Doyle, to be honest, but in the end . . .” He stopped. “There’ll be time to speak of him later, perhaps. For now, I’d ask you to come with me.”

He turned and walked away up the slope toward the very summit of the pass, Edana and Padraic following him through the tumbled landscape. Several gardai started to escort them; again, Edana waved them away. They walked for nearly a quarter-stripe, silently, before Kayne paused and motioned to them. Edana came alongside him. From their vantage point, they looked down along the mountain-spiked expanse of the Finger, and below them the High Road twisted and turned as it descended into a deep valley.

Edana gasped, her hand flying involuntarily to Demon-Caller at her breast. A dark, seething mass crawled along the High Road and well to either side of it, a huge and long gathering. At this distance, she could just begin to make out the individual creatures at the head of the column, and see their flags and the litters of their officers bobbing among them. Faintly, she could hear the slow, insistent beat of drums, pounding out the cadence of their march.

“I never thought . . .” she began. She looked at Padraic and then at Kayne, stricken. “There are so many of them.”

“This is hopeless,” Padraic said firmly. “Even with a double-hand or more of Clochs Mór, we wouldn’t be able to stand against that. We need more time. We need to get the Ríthe to send all their armies.”

“There is no time,” Kayne told them. “And once the Arruk are through the Narrows, there
will
be no stopping them. They’ll do to us what they did in Céile Mhór. But if we stand here, if we can take three or four Arruk for every Daoine life, then perhaps we’ll have weakened them enough that the Tuatha
can
defeat the rest, even though we leave our bones here. The Fingerlander army, such as it is, is here, too—Rodhlann O Morchoe commands them, and he has them stationed farther down the pass.” Kayne looked back from the advancing force to Edana and Padraic. “What are your battle plans?” he asked. “Where are you going to place the troops? We’ll want to retain the advantage of height and use the land. There are ledges where archers can hide, and a canyon up near the Narrows where cavalry might be able to make a flanking attack . . .”

Edana felt more than saw Padraic shaking his head at her side. “The tiarna captains are meeting this evening . . .” he began, but Edana interrupted her son.

“You were to be the Rí Ard,” she told Kayne. “That’s what was promised to you by the Ríthe in the Tuatha Halla. I was there, and I heard them give their oath to Sevei—an oath that they’ve broken, but an oath proclaimed before the Mother nonetheless. I say that you are Ard.
Be
the Ard here, Kayne. You have experience none of us here have. You’ve fought in the Finger, and you’ve fought the Arruk. I give you command of our troops.”

“Mam,” Padraic began angrily, and she lifted a finger to him, a gesture she hadn’t made since he’d been a child.

“No,” she told him, her voice rising to meet his. “You’re a cloudmage, Padraic, not a warrior. So am I. Kayne is both. He can give us what little chance of victory we have. I am Banrion, this is my army that I’ve brought here, and I say now that Kayne is my commander.”