Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3) (88 page)

Cima slowly lowered his gaze from Beryn to the stone. He wondered what the man was talking about it.
Fall into it . . . ?
The facets glimmered in the dying light, and in the gathering darkness above him, a wisp of Cudak’s Web curled, green and faint. He saw the light reflect in the stone, seemingly deep inside. His vision shifted; he was suddenly seeing not only with his own eyes, but with some other, different vision, and Treoraí’s Heart was bright, so bright . . .

“Ah,” said a deep voice. It rumbled; it shook Cima’s body with its power. “So as Treorai once gave his Heart, it’s been given again. . . .” Cima looked away from the gem, startled. The clearing was no longer the same. Beryn was gone, the cliff ended many strides farther away, and the statue of Cudak . . .

It was statue no longer. Instead, a great creature stood there, a winged body that held elements of a dozen beasts or more. It kneaded immense, clawed forepaws on the ground, tearing furrows of rich, black earth; its golden eyes as piercing as those of a hungry eagle as it stared at him. “Cudak,” Cima whispered. Involuntarily, he lifted his snout, exposing his throat.

“Cudak . . .” the beast repeated, as if tasting the name in its mouth. “Aye, that is one of my names. So your kind have awakened again, and this time you’ve finally come to me. I’ve been calling, all this time . . .”

“We heard your call,” Cima told the creature. “But only I have come. The White Beast—”

“I know,” Cudak said. “She has chosen, and because of the path she took, this will not be the Age of the Daoine but the Age of all the Awakened. And you, Cima, you will go back to your people as the First.” The spell-stick quivered in Cima’s left hand as Cudak looked at it. “So that will be the way of your people. You will call the power from the mage-lights with your carved staffs, and yours will be the First Staff that opens the others. You will have but a few precious spell-sticks that will be capable of this, and your people will treasure them as the Daoine do their clochs.” The spell-stick was changing in Cima’s hand, no longer the dead brown of cut wood, but the pale yellow of a goldenwood sapling, as if it were a tree and he were the earth in which it grew and to which it was bound.

“Is this what you want, Cima?” Cudak asked him. “Because you must know that holding the First Staff will be a burden like Lámh Shábhála was to the one you called the White Beast, or as Treoraí’s Heart was to Ennis. The First Staff will consume you. It will eventually kill you. Are you willing, or should your people remain half-awake until the next cycle?”

The mage-lights brightened above them. Impossibly, it was full night already, with the stars above and the sweeping band of the Egg-Mother’s Milk dusting the zenith. The curls and eddies of the mage-lights snaked down, as Cima had seen them do with Ennis and Treoraí’s Heart, but they went not to Treoraí’s Heart but to the transformed spell-stick he carried. There they hesitated, as if waiting for him to speak. Cudak was staring at him; he could see nothing but the beast’s huge, patient eyes: eyes that now looked like Ennis’.

“I’m willing, Cudak,” he said.

The beast sighed; its wings cupped and swept cold air over him. Cima gasped as the mage-lights wrapped around and finally touched the wood, sliding past to envelop his arm to the elbow. The mage-lights were an exquisite blending of pain and pleasure: searing cold that burned their patterns into the scales of his skin, yet filling a hunger within him that he hadn’t known he possessed. He could feel . . . no, he
was
. . . the staff taking in the power within the mage-lights, soaking it into deep recesses and pockets within the wood. Cima shouted as the mage-lights brightened and deepened in color, forcing more and more of the sky-power into the staff. It seemed to be a few breaths; it seemed to be an eternity.

And it was gone . . .

It had
all
vanished: Cudak was only a gull-spotted, rain-streaked statue of smooth, black again, wingless and forlorn on the cliff edge in twilight, and Beryn was still leaning on his staff. But . . .

Cima looked at his left hand, holding the spell-stick. His skin was marked as Ennis’ arm had been marked, the swirls and curlicues of the mage-lights burned in scars in his scales, and the stick was still like a living sapling, feeling as if it were part of him. He could feel the power caught within it, waiting for him to release it.

“Use the First Staff,” Beryn told him. “Think of your people. Think of your home and it will take you there.”

Home . . .
It had been so long since he’d been there. He could recall it: the lakes, the forests, the villages with the Egg-mothers . . .
Home . . .
Something inside the First Staff stirred, and Cima took the rising power and touched it to his memories.

He departed Cudak Zvati.

When the Arruk was gone, Beryn sighed. He went to the statue of An Phionós and touched its flank with his hand, smiling at the feel of the frigid stone. Then he went to where the Arruk had stood. Bending down and holding onto his staff, he picked up a blood-red stone from the grass. He could feel the pull of it, the sudden attachment and bonding of his mind and the Heart.

For the first time since the Daoine had come to Talamh An Ghlas, a Bunús Muintir held a cloch, and this one a true rival to Lámh Shábhála.

“Thank you, Treoraí,” he said. “Thank you, Sevei. This is a gift like none other.”

He clutched the stone in his hand. Turning his back, he left Bethiochnead and slipped quietly into the deep woods as the sky darkened and the Seanóir began to sing.

Kayne stepped back from the entrance to the tomb. He nodded to the Draíodóiri with their incense and incantations, and the priests began a final chant as the attending gardai slowly rolled the closing stone over the mouth of the tomb. Kayne watched as the darkness enveloped the passage inside to hide the ashes and bones of his mam’s and Ennis’ bodies from sight once more.

The great statue of the Healer Ard loomed over Kayne, her spread arms and gentle smile embracing all those who had gathered to see the interment of the Healer Ard’s youngest son. He touched the statue’s foot, feeling the disconcerting warmth of its flesh. There were over a thousand people there: the Riocha standing nearest Kayne, the céile giallnai next, and then the tuathánach in the plain, simple clothing—the ones, Kayne knew, who came to this place to pray, to talk with Mam as they might any of the Mionbandia, the demigods of the Mother-Creator. Most of Dún Laoghaire seemed to be here today.

But except for Aunt Edana and Greada Kyle, none of the Ríthe were here. They waited elsewhere in the city, and they did not want to be seen.

“This is where Ennis should be. It’s where he’d want to be,” Aunt Edana said alongside Kayne. Her hand brushed his hair gently. Greada Kyle clasped his shoulder. Kyle lifted his head; as he did so, his fingers brushed against the stone on his chest.

He grimaced. He hated the voices: Sevei, Gram, all the others going forever back in time. He hated knowing that he’d one day be one of them.

“Why did you do it?” he asked Sevei.

“What?” Greada Kyle asked, and Kayne realized he’d spoke aloud.

“Nothing, Greada. I was just . . .” Kayne took a deep breath. The torc of the Ard was heavy around his neck, but Lámh Shábhála seemed heavier. He looked up at the statue of his mam. Except for the fact that she was ten men high, she looked alive, looked as if she might at any moment bend her head down to see him or go striding away from Cnocareilig. The Draíodóiri were still chanting, and the crowd of tuathánach around the tomb were chanting with them—a song he hadn’t heard before, a paean to the Healer Ard, a prayer asking for her favor.

“Rest in the Mother’s arms,” he said to Ennis as the stone grated into place and gardai stepped back to their stations on either side of the tomb entrance. With Edana and his greada, he turned to face the crowd. They sang to him, sang to the tomb behind him. He wondered if they would ever love him as they’d loved his mam.

“Come,” Edana told him. “The other Ríthe are already at Tuatha Halla. Tonight, they’ll acknowledge you as Rí Ard.”

“Only because I hold Lámh Shábhála,” Kayne said, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice. “Only because they’re frightened. Only because they think it might keep me from slaying them for their betrayals and their cowardice.”

“Not all of them,” she reminded him. “Not me.”

“Nor me,” Kyle told him. “Nor Rí Rodhlann of Tuath Méar. You will be Ard over all the Tuatha, as it should be. You’ll be the Rí Ard and Holder, together, as perhaps it always should have been.”

. . . Aye,
he heard Gram say in his head, and Sevei also.
. . . Aye . . .
But the voice he’d most like to have heard was never there: Séarlait. That voice was gone forever. He would never hear her again and no power in Lámh Shábhála could change that.

“Are you ready?” Edana asked him.

“No,” Kayne answered. “But no one is ever ready.”

He strode away from Cnocareilig into the night and the swelling chant, and the tuathánach parted to make way for him, their hands outstretched toward him. He heard their voices: “The Healer Ard’s son . . . Make way for the last of her family . . .”

He touched them in return, and didn’t care if they saw his tears.