Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3) (51 page)

As the husband of the Banrion, Greada Kyle had been named as Rí Inish Thuaidh in her absence, but where Jenna had been able to command the Comhairle through a coalition of clan heads among the Comhairle and because she held Lámh Shábhála, Kyle MacEagan had neither advantage. The alliance had shattered under the pressure of the current crisis, Kyle’s cloch was but a Cloch Mór, and the torc that Kyle MacEagan wore gave him little more than a title. The Comhairle had been unable to even coordinate a plan for defense. Half the clan leaders were ready to pull back to their ancient mountain fastnesses and hiding places should the Tuatha come with an army to take the island, as seemed likely.

And now Lámh Shábhála returned around the neck of Jenna’s transformed great-daughter—the Bán Cailleach—and the Comhairle was more confused and rancorous than ever. Sevei was seated next to Greada Kyle, wearing a clóca of the softest cloth that could be found, though it felt as though she wore a robe of needles. Even clothed, they stared at her as if she were something from a nightmare. Whenever she caught someone looking at her, they quickly turned their heads and would not meet her gaze. None of them had yet addressed her directly.

The Comhairle met, as it had met for generations, in the Weeping Hall of Dún Kiil Keep. Even before this, in her visits to Dún Kiil, Sevei had found the ancient chamber to be depressing and cold, with the slow beat of water falling from distant ceiling to stone floor like a wet heartbeat in the background. Now the dripping was nearly unheard through the passionate speeches punctuated by shouts of agreement or objection from among the Comhairle.

“. . . we can’t stand against the Tuatha. Not this time, and not even with Lámh Shábhála. The Order of Inishfeirm is in shambles and utterly failed in its task to protect Inish Thuaidh,” proclaimed Ronat Ciomhsóg of An Cnocan to a chorus of mingled support and disagreement. Siúr Alexia Meagher of the Order of Inishfeirm, not a member of the Comhairle but in attendance as the representative of the Order in Mundy Kirwan’s absence, rose immediately. Her white clóca and léine swirled about her as she shouted down the representative of Na Clocha Dubha who tried to speak before her.

“The abilities of the Order of Inishfeirm have been damaged, aye, but we’re not helpless,” she snapped at Tiarna Ciomhsóg. Sevei remembered that voice from her time as an acolyte: searing and harsh, her head and her voice both quavering from a palsy of age, but as strong as an ancient oak.

“What does Inishfeirm have now?” Ciomhsóg shouted back at her across the chamber. “A few clochs and a bevy of helpless acolytes? You stand here for the Order, and you don’t even have a Cloch Mór.”

Siúr Meagher touched the clochmion around her neck. “I have a stone of Truth-telling. Here in the Comhairle, that’s more powerful than any Cloch Mór.” There was laughter at that, and one of the tiarna near Sevei clapped his hands. “The Order still has a few Clochs Mór and several clochsmion, and we have the slow magics that all the cloudmages are taught, and if Máister Kirwan has indeed been killed, we’ll soon have a new Máister or Máistreás to direct us.”

Tiarna Ciomhsóg scowled. “The Tuatha are hardly going to be frightened by a few slow magics.”

“With those spells you ridicule, I could pull down your keep around you while you cower inside,” Siúr Meagher scoffed. “I’d be happy to demonstrate for you, Tiarna, if you’d like.”

Both sympathetic laughter and disgruntled jeers answered Siúr Meagher, but Tiarna Ciomhsóg had no opportunity to respond. Bantiarna Aithne MacBrádaigh rose slowly to her feet, and the Comhairle went silent. Aithne MacBrádaigh was easily a hand and four of decades old, older by far than any of them here. A few scraps of white hair clung thinly to her spotted scalp, her spine was bent and her body slow, but the Cloch Mór called Scáil hung around her neck. She had been married to Ionhar MacBrádaigh, Rí of Inish Thuaidh before Jenna, and Aithne still ruled the townland of Rubha na Scarbh. Her voice was a rasp, a husk of what it had once been; her left eye was clouded by the white circle of a cataract and, unlike any of the others, her gaze rested unflinchingly on Sevei. “We can sit here and yowl at each other like cats squabbling over a dead mouse, but there’s no decision we can make—not until the new Holder speaks,” Aithne said. “Any action we take depends on what Lámh Shábhála does, and we all know that.” The cataract-dimmed stare stayed on Sevei, and the old woman nodded at her, as if she understood what Sevei was thinking and was inviting her to speak.

“Aithne knows. She could have been a good Holder herself,”
Gram’s voice said.
“I should have been a better friend to her . . .”

“Lámh Shábhála belongs to Inish Thuaidh and it must protect us,” a male voice interjected before Sevei could answer: Neale MacBreen, the son of Jenna’s Hand Mahon MacBreen and the representative of the townland of Dún Kiil. Sevei had met the man many times; he was no more than a hand of years older than her, and she’d even flirted with Neale on one visit until Gram had scolded her. It all seemed so long ago: now he wouldn’t look at her for more than a breath before his gaze went elsewhere. “The task of the new Holder is first to protect us, as my da served to protect the First Holder.”

“So you’d name the Holder as Banrion, like her gram?” Tiarna Ciomhsóg grunted. He’d remained standing. “Well, that’s not . . .”

“Speak . . .”
Two voices called to her: Gram and Carrohkai Treemaster.
“Speak now, or they will argue forever . . .”
Sevei rose from her chair alongside Greada Kyle’s, her hand placed over the glow of Lámh Shábhála inside her, and allowing the barest tithe of the power within it to flow out to strengthen her voice.

“It doesn’t matter what the Comhairle wants.” Her statement boomed in the chamber, shaking more water down from the ceiling to splash behind the cold stone throne where Greada Kyle sat uncomfortably, the torc gleaming under the chain of his Cloch Mór.
“. . . my seat. For so long, I sat there . . .”

Sevei sent Gram down in her mind, back into the babble of eternal voices. She cleared her throat. “Lámh Shábhála doesn’t answer to the Comhairle, and Lámh Shábhála is not Inish Thuaidh’s,” she continued. She forced them to look at her, the horrible Bán Cailleach, turning their heads with the energy flowing from the cloch buried inside her. The scars on her arm glowed softly, and she could feel the angry, painful scratch of cloth against her skin, making her want to rip the clóca from her and stand naked before them.
“. . . so let them see you. Let them be truly afraid . . .”

“I’m not my gram,” she continued. “I’m an Inishlander, but I’m also a Riocha of the Tuatha. I’m tuathánach. I’m Saimhóir. I’m dragon and eagle, dire wolf and fia stoirm. I’m the Bán Cailleach. Look at me—I’m not what I once was.”

“If you don’t protect Inish Thuaidh, then you’re also a traitor,” Tiarna Ciomhsóg spat back. Kyle leaped to his feet at that, and Aithne glared at Ciomhsóg. Sevei waved her greada silent and fixed her gaze on Tiarna Ciomhsóg. He struggled to meet her eyes. “What would you do, Bantiarna Geraghty?” Ciomhsóg managed to continue. “Can the Bán Cailleach defeat all the Tuatha? Even the First Holder couldn’t do that.”

“I can do things that Gram could not. I can do the things Gram perhaps should have done.”

Ciomhsóg scoffed loudly. Her greada’s face reddened with anger, and he shouted at the man. “Insult my great-daughter and you insult me, Tiarna Ciomhsóg.”

“I will show you . . .”
Carrohkai Treemaster whispered, a stronger voice among all the others in Sevei’s head. Sevei put her hand on Greada Kyle’s arm. She gave him a brief shake of her head. “Follow me if you want to see what the Bán Cailleach is capable of doing,” she said loudly to the Comhairle, and began walking from the hall. Slowly, they obeyed her: passing through the great wooden doors, down the flagged stone corridor hollowed with centuries of passing feet, out into the courtyard and across the north gates of the Keep Wall. The courtiers and servants in the keep stared as she passed—“Look! The Bán Cailleach . . .”—and seeing the procession, several turned to follow.

The gardai opened the gates as Sevei, the Comhairle, and the growing crowd approached. They walked out onto Battle Heath, where two decades before Jenna had led the forces of the Inishlanders and stormed Dún Kiil Keep, held then by the forces of the Tuatha. The outer walls of Dún Kiil Keep were still cracked where the Stone Folk, the Créneach, had torn open the gates. The heath itself was a rocky and windy plateau; sheep now grazed on the grasses and the wildflowers growing between the rocks. Sevei walked out onto the field for several long strides. She could hear the Comhairle grumbling behind her as they walked, accompanied now by the gardai at the gate as well. They complained, but none of them stopped, not with ancient Aithne MacBráidaigh hobbling determinedly behind the Bán Cailleach and Rí MacEagan. Sevei finally stopped by a menhir set well away from the keep: a standing stone carved with battle scenes, a commemoration of those whose blood had watered this earth. Panting, muttering, the others closed in around her.

“. . . I’ll help you. . . .”
Carrohkai Treemaster whispered again, and Sevei heard her gram’s voice lift inside also.
“I planted Seancoim’s gift here, under the stone, but nothing sprouted. I thought it was dead,”
she said.

“Let me see, Gram . . .”
Sevei thought back to her gram’s voice, and she felt Jenna’s memories open to her: an elderly Bunús Muintir, handing a young girl an acorn from one of the ancient oaks, the Seanóir who lived in the heart of the old Coills.
“Take this with you when you go, and plant this where you find your new home,”
she heard the old man say.

Sevei crouched down and put her hand on the earth; she could feel the acorn buried below: not dead at all, but alive and filled with a slow vitality, still awakening from a centuries-long sleep—awakened by Lámh Shábhála and Jenna when the mage-lights had first returned.

Still crouching, Sevei looked at them: Greada Kyle, Siúr Meagher, Aithne, Ciomhsóg and the others. “It’s different now,” she said. “Gram could fill Lámh Shábhála with the mage-lights of a night, but there are crannies and wells within the cloch she couldn’t see and they can be filled, too—night upon night upon night. And that power can be shaped in more ways than lightning and winds. Watch . . .”

She stood. Lámh Shábhála next to her heart, and the cloth of her clóca felt like knives on her skin. She loosed the clasp and let the clothing fall down her shoulders to pool on the ground; underneath, she wore nothing but the scars of the mage-lights. There were gasps and cries from the onlookers. “Sevei!” Greada Kyle called as the others reacted, but she listened to none of them. She placed her hand over Lámh Shábhála and closed her eyes, seeing the green landscape of cloch-vision open around her. The voices of the dead Holders filled her ears, and she listened for one among them.

“Here . . .”
Sevei caught the husk of Carrohkai Treemaster’s voice and followed it. Far, far down inside her, memories that weren’t Sevei’s opened: another time, another place.
“Shape the power this way. This is how I did it . . .”

In her cloch-vision, Sevei reached deep into the well of Lámh Shábhála, filling herself with mage-energy that sparked like a false sun, hissing and fuming. The pain of gathering it radiated through her, and she quickly thrust the power into the ground in front of her, plunging it toward the acorn in its bed of earth. In her mind, she imagined the Seanóir breaking free of the shell, sending its first shoots thrusting skyward as hair-thin roots began to dig into the ground: years of growth passing in a moment. She let the sapling suckle itself on Lámh Shábhála rather than sun and earth. There was both satisfaction and urgency in the Seanóir’s climb toward the surface, and Sevei shared it: the thickening of root and limb, the feel of rich soil sliding past living wood, and then, the exhilaration of finding the sun . . .

Sevei heard the Comhairle gasp once more. A writhing trunk emerged from behind the standing stone, coiling around it like a thick brown snake and ripping the menhir from the ground with the sound of cracking stone, bearing it upward. The Comhairle retreated, though Sevei stood there, her body caught in pale green light. The trunk split into new limbs and bloomed with dark green oak leaves, still rising toward the sky, entire decades passing in a few breaths. With the new oak now twice Sevei’s height, the limbs shook as if in a heavy rain and acorns rained down. More trees sprouted where they fell, curling up from the ground a breath later. Sevei closed her eyes again, seeing only with the cloch-vision and letting the energy cascade like a nourishing rain from Lámh Shábhála’s deep wells. Sevei could feel the sentient life within the oak: slow, bass thoughts in a language she could not understand. The Seanóir’s awareness raced through the branches of the first tree, moving out from the tree holding the standing stone and receding away from them toward its children, which were now sprouting their own children. Sevei was dimly aware of the hubbub from the people watching, but she barely noticed it. Controlling the power in the cloch was like restraining an avalanche: it tore at her, it yearned to be break free and go where it wanted—
“Aye, using the power of the mage-lights to destroy is easier than using it to create . . .”
—and Sevei forced her concentration to stay on Lámh Shábhála, keeping the energy focused and gentle where it touched the Seanóir. The tree-mind was moving far from her now, crouching and settling in the center of the new wood, and she emptied Lámh Shábhála over it, thrusting the power deep into the ground underneath. She could feel the flow spreading, imbuing the soil with its potency, but as her mind pushed the energy ever deeper, the earth seemed to scrape over her body like sharp, broken rocks.
“. . . let it go, let it go . . .”