Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3) Read online

  The accusation brought blood to Kayne’s face. “That’s not true, Da. You don’t understand. You’re still thinking about Ceangail.”

  “Aye, I am,” Owaine answered, “and the way you spoke out after the battle at Lough Scáthán, and the dozen other times you acted as if you wanted to be a dead hero rather than a live soldier. A hero doesn’t do things for his own glory. A hero doesn’t get to choose his time or even to know whether he was successful. For all he knows, he’s just another nameless dead garda . . . and that’s all you would have been.”

  “Da, I’m talking about taking less time to get home. That’s all. You’re making this much more than it is.”

  “You’re talking about your own comfort over those who have given their own blood in our service. I think—”

  Owaine stopped. He peered up at the lip of the pass ahead of them, dark against the lowering sun. Kayne saw nothing, but he also knew that Owaine’s sight was keener than most. Then he saw it: the glint of sunlight on a banner and the cloud of dust raised by riders. Kayne could see no colors or insignia on the banner; it was simply a piece of cloth. “Who are they, Da?”

  “Red and white,” he answered, though Kayne could see no colors at all. “They’re from Tuath Airgialla. I’ll bet the Rí has heard of what happened at Ceangail and has sent gardai to reinforce the borders. Good. Then Harik and the others can return home, too.” Owaine waved to the rest of their group, pointing to the summit of the pass where the riders could now be seen cresting the lip. There were already at least three double hands of gardai visible, and more kept coming: it seemed to Kayne that the Rí Airgialla had sent out a small army and he frowned at that, wondering why.

  “Let’s go meet them,” Owaine said to Kayne. “It’ll be good to get some news from the Tuatha.”

  9

  The Coming Storm

  UAIGNEAS ROLLED IN a heavy, restless sea. Sevei tried to ignore the freezing rain that found every crack in her reed coat, soaking her hair and clóca underneath. The wind smashed into the rising waves and tore streaks of white from their crests. The captain had ordered the sails furled and the crew were struggling with the long oars, keeping the ship’s bow into the wind so that Uaigneas laboriously climbed the slope of each wave and then streaked down the other side into a new green-foamed valley. The storm had roared in from the Ice Sea, driving them rapidly south. They’d been planning to skirt Talamh an Ghlas’ west coast and thus come around to Dún Loaghaire, but the storm had risen the second day out. Before the clouds and rain had closed around them, they’d glimpsed the rocky humps of the Stepping Stones, a chain of islands that curved from the southern borders of Tuath Infochla northward toward Inish Thuaidh. Now they could see nothing, and the captain had ordered them to turn back north, not wanting to be driven unwittingly onto the rocks of one of the islands.

  There had been fright in the eyes of the servants who accompanied them, but Sevei thought of it more as an adventure, conjured up for her enjoyment.

  The sea could not harm her. She loved it too much.

  “You shouldn’t be out here.” She felt arms go around her even as she heard the voice, and she leaned back into the welcome embrace.

  “At least I’d have a chance of survival if I fell over the side,” she told Dillon. “You wouldn’t.” He sniffed at that, or perhaps it was only the wind, and his arms tightened around her. “I thought you were staying in the cabin, love.”

  “The Banrion’s come out, too,” Dillon told her. “Said she’d had enough of being tossed about and was going to do something about it. I wanted to watch.” He pointed to the bow of the ship near the small, roofed cabin. Sevei saw Jenna there, with Máister Kirwan at her side and the captain of Uaigneas looking concerned near them. Jenna appeared to be frail and in more pain than usual, and Mundy held her left arm carefully. But Jenna reached under her clóca for Lámh Shábhála, and as she lifted the cloch, her demeanor and attitude changed: in Sevei’s vision, she seemed to grow larger, her back straighter, all her pain banished under the caress of the power within the stone as the years fell away from her. Sevei glimpsed Jenna as she must have appeared when she was Sevei’s age: young and vibrant. Her hair whipped about in the wind as she held Lámh Shábhála high, displaying it defiantly to the storm. Light flared as if Jenna held a small sun in her hand and shadows dashed madly over the ship as the vessel lurched in the waves. Coruscations of bright, saturated color flickered, ribboning northward and up into the mist and cloud, spreading outward. Sevei could see the reflections of the power, glimmering in the gray expanse above and before them.

  Jenna cried out, words that Sevei couldn’t hear in the gale. The ribbons of color brightened, steadied, and then seemed to explode, sparks flying away above them as if the gods had struck a hammer to molten steel. Sevei and Dillon both lifted hands to eyes to shield them from the glare. Sevei couldn’t see well even after she let her hands drop again as spots of wild hues chased themselves in her vision. But she could hear the difference immediately: the wind had eased and the rain had stopped; as her vision cleared, Sevei could see blue sky overhead and the evening sun sent shafts of light through shredded clouds near the horizon. The storm still raged a few leagues or so away all around them and the waves were still huge, but Uaigneas rode in a clear, circular space within the storm.

  A cheer went up from the sailors, and the captain barked the order to raise sails again. “Come on,” Sevei said to Dillon. Taking his hand, she went to where Jenna leaned into Máister Kirwan’s embrace, her face now sallow and old, the pain etched again in the lines around her eyes, mouth, and forehead. “Gram,” Sevei said, “that was amazing. I knew Stormbringer could control weather, but—”

  “Lámh Shábhála can do anything any of the other Clochs Mór can do, and more,” Jenna told her. “Stormbringer couldn’t have done all this.” She nodded to the open sky above them. “But storms are larger than even Lámh Shábhála’s power. I gave us a respite, that’s all. A chance for the captain to find a harbor and a place to anchor so we can ride out the rest of it.”

  Uaigneas was already turning around, heading south once more. They could see two large islands close by, both with high cliff walls against which the waves were breaking in furious white spray—they’d been blown even farther south despite their attempts to make headway north. Wisps of darkness were fraying the edges of the clouds lining the clear space around the ship, promising that the storm would return in a stripe or less. A ring fort perched on the promontory of the larger of the islands, and a wind-torn banner fluttered there: green and gold—so these were islands owned by Tuath Infochla. “Can we reach them?” Sevei asked.

  Jenna shrugged. “Only the Mother knows. At least we might be able to put one of them between us and the storm waves.” She stood away from Máister Kirwan, glaring up at the sky. “You see, Sevei?” she said. “What does it matter if you hold Lámh Shábhála? The world is still stronger than you are. Nothing is permanent. Nothing. Even the walls of the White Keep will fall one day. Nothing lasts—nothing we create.” She glanced at Sevei’s hand, still holding Dillon’s. “And certainly nothing we feel.” Jenna grimaced, her eyes closing as she clutched at her soaked clóca. “I need that special tea, Mundy,” she said. “I need it now.”

  “I’ll make it for you, Banrion,” Máister Kirwan told her. Jenna grunted and started walking toward the cabin, but Máister Kirwan lingered. “She’s not feeling well,” he told them, “and draining Lámh Shábhála this way is a strain and makes her feel vulnerable. She’ll be better once the mage-lights come again.”

  “I know, Máister.”

  He nodded. “You ought to get into some dry clothes—you wouldn’t want to catch a chill or worse.”

  “I know that, too,” Sevei told him. “Despite what Gram says, death, at least, is permanent.” The words seemed to come to her without thinking.

  Máister Kirwan’s mouth turned down under the beard and he cocked his head quizzically. “Why would you talk of death?”

>   Sevei shook her head. “I don’t know . . .” She looked at the sky again. The storm was clutching at the open sky with fingers of gray-black. A sense of dread had wrapped itself around her and yet she didn’t know why. She thought of her family: her mam, her da, Kayne, her brothers and sister, and the feeling of dread increased, yet no images came to her.

  “I don’t know,” she said again. She let go of Dillon’s hand. “I should go change,” she said. “Why don’t you get your harp out and sing us something cheerful? We could all use that, I think.”

  10

  Fiodóir’s Meal

  “HERE,” Isibéal said to Ennis. “Eat this.”

  “What is it?”

  “A treat,” Isibéal told him. She held out the small ball covered with honey and spices toward him. She held up another in her other hand. “See, I have one, also.” She placed it in her mouth, chewing the confection. It was perfect, the honey camouflaging the sharp, bitter taste of the nugget at the center. Ennis took the piece from her hand and put it in his own mouth.

  “ ’S good,” he said, the words obscured by his chewing. He swallowed and she smiled. “Do you have more, Isibéal?”

  “No, I’m afraid I only had those two. One for you, one for me.”

  “Too bad Mam can’t have one.”

  Isibéal forced herself to smile at that. “Aye, ’tis indeed. Ah, here’s your mam now. Shh, we’ll let the treat be our little secret, eh?” Ennis smiled at Isibéal as she moved to greet the Banrion, just stepping into Isibéal’s small chamber. Meriel stopped and looked at the table. “It looks wonderful,” she said. “And smells wonderful, also.”

  “Thank you, Banrion.” Isibéal had spent the day preparing the meal and arranging her chambers. The keep’s kitchens had supplied her with fillets of plaice and white pollack from the cold waters of the Inner Sea and allowed Isibéal to prepare and cook the fish herself, though the cooks had watched her suspiciously and warily when she brought out the packet of spices. They’d wanted to know the names of each, and Isibéal had told them what they were and where they were from: Taisteal spices that had originated from Thall Mór-roinn, though the Taisteal had been planting small patches of the herbs in secret here and there through the Tuatha for decades. She’d also made a salad of sea campion, wildflowers, pepperroot and young stonecrop, tossing the leaves gently with oil she’d purchased from Asthora on her first visit to the herbalist’s shop. She allowed the cooks to prepare two vegetable dishes under her supervision—in Isibéal’s opinion, the cooks for the keep, like most cooks in the Tuatha, tended to boil everything into bland mush. There was cold soup and warm bread of specially milled flour, and for dessert a cake drizzled with molasses and berries. For drinking, she’d chosen a new mead, sweet and strong.

  And she’d prepared the two pieces of honeyed confection: one for herself, and one—for reasons she could not even explain to herself because it went against both her judgment and her true employer’s orders—for Ennis. The piece for Ennis had slightly different ingredients than the one Isibéal herself ate. It’s because he’s so much like Adimu. Too much like him . . .

  She’d draped the chamber, attached to Ennis’ rooms by a back stairs, with blue cloth—“That’s Fiodóir’s color,” she told Ennis, “because he lives in the sky”—and made the air fragrant with pots of burning incense. She’d laced circles of pine branches in the center of the table with butterwort and sundew flowers as decoration. Each of the plates held a single stalk of lady’s bedstraw as accent. Isibéal had been pleased with the look herself—she could imagine that a Taisteal table at festival time might look like this, back in the homeland, though she’d never been there herself. “Please, sit,” she told the Banrion Ard, gesturing to the chair at one end of the table.

  “I wish Owaine and our other children could be here for this,” Meriel said as she sat.

  “I do also,” Isibéal responded, “and I’m sure Ennis feels the same way, don’t you?”

  “I do, Mam,” Ennis said energetically, bounding into his seat. “Can we eat now? It looks so good and I’m so hungry,” he said with exaggerated impatience, and both women laughed.

  “We can eat now,” Isibéal told him. “Just make sure you leave room for the cake. And you, too, Banrion. On Fiodór’s Feast, you must eat the cake.”

  “Oh, I will,” Ennis promised solemnly. Then, as Isibéal, sitting alongside him, placed some of the fish on his plate, he turned to his mam. “When are Da and Kayne going to be back? And what about Sevei and Gram? They should be here by now. What about Tara and Ionhar? Are they coming here, too?”

  Meriel laughed again. “So many questions . . . Let’s see . . . I don’t know when your da and Kayne will be back, but it should be soon. And aye, Sevei and Gram are due here in a hand of days now, though you never know about the weather at sea. Tara and Ionhar won’t be here, though. Now, will you pass me that fish, Ennis—it smells delightful, Isibéal.”

  Ennis reached for the plate and handed it to his mam. As she reached for it, he held it for a moment too long. “Mam, you’ll always be with me, won’t you?”

  Meriel’s eyes widened slightly and Isibéal felt the breath catch in her throat. “Why, what a question, Ennis,” Meriel said. “I’ll always love you, aye, but as you grow older, you won’t want to be around me. You’ll go to fosterage, like your brothers and sisters, and probably to Inishfeirm like Sevei or maybe you’ll learn to command the gardai like Kayne, and you’ll be married and living somewhere else, in time—”

  “No, Mam,” Ennis interrupted. “I mean, no matter where you are, will you think of me?”

  Meriel took the dish from Ennis and placed a fillet of the plaice on her plate. Isibeal watched, her breath shallow. “Of course I will, Ennis. Always. I promise. No matter where I am.”

  Ennis nodded quietly at that. “Good,” he said. He looked at Isibéal. “We can eat now,” he said.

  “. . . I remember Fio . . . Fiodóir from when I . . . when Sevei . . . the old Sevei, I mean, not . . . my daughter . . .” Meriel stopped. Blinked. Her voice had become increasingly slurred over the last half a stripe. “. . . when I was . . . with the Taisteal,” she finished. “The God of Fate,” she said, and giggled. “Had too much . . . mead, I think.”

  She looked at Ennis, curled up in one of the stuffed chairs in the corner of the room, asleep. “He must have been . . .” Her eyes seemed to roll upward, showing Isibéal the whites. Meriel started as if jerking from sleep. “I’m sleepy,” she said, her voice barely understandable.

  Her eyes widened, her breathing became ragged. She collapsed sideways to the carpeted floor, dragging her plate down with her. The remnants of the meal spilled over the Banrion Ard’s clothing. For a moment, Isibéal held her breath, afraid that the noise would bring one of the hall gardai to the door, that they would open the door—in the keep, only the Banrion’s private chambers were allowed to be locked. But no one came. In the silence, she could hear the stuttering of rain starting to fall on the flagstones of the keep.

  Isibéal rose from her chair. She stooped down alongside Meriel, listening. The woman’s breathing was labored and thin. As Isibéal touched Meriel’s neck, she felt the pulse there flutter and stop. Meriel’s eyes were open—she stared blindly at the woven fibers of the carpet and the scattered leaves of the salad. The goblet of mead, tipped over, dripped golden droplets in front of her nose.

  “I’m sorry,” Isibéal whispered to her. “Go now to the Mother.” Reaching down, she closed Meriel’s eyes. She slipped her hand down farther until her fingers touched Treorai’s Heart on its chain of fine gold. The cloch, her employer had told her, was to remain behind. But she had already disobeyed him by leaving Ennis alive, for reasons she still didn’t entirely understand. She pulled hard at the chain and the clasp broke. She held the stone in her hand for a moment. She gasped at the touch, as the stone seemed to reach deep into her and she into it. Suddenly, she wanted the stone more than anything else, and she could not imagine anyone else havin
g it. So that’s what it feels like . . . Well, it’s mine now . . . She placed it, reluctantly, in a pocket of her clóca, knowing she had to hurry now.

  Straightening, Isibéal took a long breath. Going to Ennis, she picked up the child, cradling him in her arms. He stirred slightly, his eyelids fluttering.

  “Mam?”

  “Shh,” Isibéal told him. “Your mam’s asleep. It’s all right.”

  Ennis’ eyes had already closed again. He nodded against Isibéal’s shoulder, his breath deepening, his legs dangling below her waist. He was heavier than she’d thought. She hurried away from the table in the outer chamber to the rear stairs. She’d placed a bag there, filled with a few essentials and a change of clothing. She set Ennis down long enough to place the bag around her shoulders, then took him again, swaddling him in a blanket pulled from the bed. She took a candle from the mantle, opened the door and hurried down the stairs in the warm yellow circle of light.

  She figured she had another half-stripe at the most before someone would wonder where the Banrion Ard was and discover the murder. Isibéal would be doing well to be out of Dún Laoghaire before the alarm was raised. Even though her employer would try to protect her, she also knew that he wouldn’t hesitate to let her be killed to protect his own identity—and he had the power to have that happen, especially when he discovered how she’d disobeyed him with Ennis and now with the Heart.