Heir of Stone (The Cloudmages #3) (7 page)

Sevei followed Máister Kirwan through the twisting hallways. The stones under their feet had been polished to a slick patina by countless soles, a visible double groove eroded in the thick granite flags. They walked in silence, their footsteps echoing hollowly. The acolytes rarely came here; the few bráthairs and siúrs they passed nodded to Máister Kirwan and went silently about their business. The White Keep had been built in slow stages over centuries, and Máister Kirwan now led Sevei to the most ancient section of the rambling building which held the Order’s library, with its history of Talamh an Ghlas and the clochs na thintrí, the stones of power. But he didn’t take the stairs leading up to the library; he continued on into the dark bowels of the building.

Máister Kirwan brought her to a closed door. He put his hand on the door and whispered a ward-word she couldn’t hear; the door swung open with a groan of hinges. He lifted his hand and spoke a phrase of slow magic—in response, witchfire pots burst into flame down the passage beyond, illuminating a long staircase winding downward. Cold air spilled out from the doorway, bearing the scent of must and dampness. “Where are we going, Máister?” Sevei asked, her voice a whisper.

“Just stay close,” he answered; he led the way down, the door closing sharply behind them, the bolt of the lock clanging into its hole without being touched. Sevei followed Máister Kirwan down the stairs, which ended near another door. Máister Kirwan again put his hand on the door, and a disembodied voice spoke as if coming from the thick planks of iron-banded oak. “Máister Kirwan . . .” The door’s lock clicked and it opened.

The chamber inside was small and dark. Máister Kirwan took a few steps inside, and witchfire brightened. She could see that the room’s furnishings were few and plain: a small table with a few chairs pulled up to it, the witchfire guttering in a glazed pottery bowl in the center. “Come in,” he told Sevei, his face seemingly amused in the ruddy glow of the witchfire. “You needn’t hang out there in the damp.” Sevei stepped inside; the door shut behind her, untouched.

The walls, ceiling, and floor of the chamber had been cut from the stone of the mountain on which the White Keep sat. Though the floor had been polished so that it reflected the light from the witchfire, the walls were rough, still showing the grooves of chisel marks. Máister Kirwan’s head nearly brushed the low ceiling, also roughly cut. Sevei felt a moment of slight panic at being enclosed in the space. She took a long, slow breath, trying to calm herself. “Máister?”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “There’s nothing sinister about to happen. In fact, you should find it rewarding. Sit, sit . . .” He gestured to one of the chairs. As Sevei sat, Máister Kirwan paced to the back wall of the room, ducking his head as the roof above brushed the few wisps of hair left on the crown of his head. “Do you know why your great-mam is going to Dún Laoghaire?”

Sevei shrugged. “I assumed it was to see my mam,” she said. “And to see some of the land she came from.”

“That, aye,” Máister Kirwan answered, “and more. Mostly, she’s going because your mam invited her to come for the political impact it would make. It’s time that Inish Thuaidh was acknowledged as its own domain by the Tuatha. But there’s more.” He paused, exhaling a long breath. “Your great-mam doesn’t believe she will live much longer,” he said abruptly. He raised his hand against Sevei’s protest. “That is something we can only say here, and I pray to the Mother-Creator that she’s wrong.”

“Why would she believe that?” Sevei asked. A suspicion came to her suddenly and she felt coldness grip her throat. “Is it something she’s
seen
with Lámh Shábhála?”

Máister Kirwan shook his head. “No, it’s not a foretelling. At least, none that she’s shared with me.” The way he said it, so proprietarily, as if he and Jenna regularly shared confidences, made Sevei look at him with sudden curiosity.
Just how close are they?
she wondered, and then quickly banished the image from her mind. “But that’s what she believes,” Máister Kirwan continued, “and I see how the years have taken their toll on her. Lámh Shábhála weighs heaviest on the First Holder, and she’s borne that burden for many years. Let’s see how well you’ve paid attention in your studies—how long did Caenneth Mac Noll hold Lámh Shábhála?”

Sevei blinked, trying to recall the long list of Holders she’d been forced to memorize in her first year on Inishfeirm. “Umm . . . nine years?” she answered.

Máister Kirwan nodded. “Aye, though Caenneth was the only other Daoine First Holder. However, the Bunús Muintir lore says that their First Holders’ lives were also short. I can see how frail Jenna’s become over the years, especially since Falcarragh. I hope she’s mistaken, aye, but I’m afraid that she may be right. What weighs on her mind now is who will hold Lámh Shábhála after her. She wants it to go to the heir of her choice, not to whomever can claim it after her death. She wants Lámh Shábhála to go to someone loyal to her, and to have the chance to pass it on herself.”

“Then she wants to go to Dún Laoghaire to give it to Mam,” Sevei said firmly, but Máister Kirwan’s head moved slowly from side to side.

“No. Your mam’s already refused Lámh Shábhála once, years ago. She has no interest in clochs beyond Treoraí’s Heart. She would have been a good Holder, perhaps as competent as Jenna, but . . .” A shoulder lifted under the white robe. “I don’t think that is what she wants, even now.”

“Then Da?” Sevei ventured but the look on his face told her she was wrong. “Or you, Máister?”

Again the headshake, this time with a wan smile. “Not Owaine, and my own time has passed, I’m afraid, though I’d certainly take Lámh Shábhála rather than allow certain others to have it.”

Sevei sat silent, realizing what Máister Kirwan was implying.
Then it is Kayne or me, and I was the one sent to the Order to learn the art of the cloudmages . . .
She felt fear grip her chest, making it hard to breathe. “Máister,” she began, but Máister Kirwan lifted a hand. He went to the rear wall of the room, speaking a word she could not overhear. A section of the stone swiveled outward: a tiny door at shoulder height to Máister Kirwan. He reached inside; when he withdrew his hand, the door closed again, leaving no indication that it had ever been there at all. He came over to the table and laid down a small pale yellow stone on a necklace in front of Sevei. “This is a clochmion,” he said. “It was once your da’s, when he was here. Jenna gave it to him and he kept it until your mam gifted him with the Cloch Mór Blaze.”

She knew, but she asked anyway. “Why are you showing me this?”

A faint smile touched his lips under the beard. “It’s yours now. If you want it. Your great-mam wants you to have it and it’s time to see if you can truly handle the mage-lights.”

Sevei imagined the glowing curtains and tendrils of power that came nearly every night. She’d watched—all the acolytes often did—as the cloudmages with their clochs filled them with snarling, vibrant energy. She’d watched Jenna do the same with Lámh Shábhála. The lights gleamed brightest around Gram, around the great cloch that had opened the way for all the rest. Jenna would stand there, seemingly snared in brilliant colors, the deep scars on her arm glowing also. Sevei had often wondered what that must feel like. Her fingers started to move toward the clochmion. She stopped them before they touched the gleaming facets. “Do
you
think I’m ready, Máister?”

“Aye, I do. I think you’ve
been
ready, Sevei. You’re already older than Jenna was when she first took up the stone. I think you have the same kind of strength both your great-mam and your mam have.”

Her fingertips came close to the stone and hovered over it, nearly touching. “What does it do?”

“For your da Owaine, it was a finder of lost things. But clochsmion are different than the Clochs Mór. It takes an exceptionally strong and well-trained mind to turn a Cloch Mór from the manifestation that has been worn into it by centuries of use; few Holders even try. A Cloch Mór has great power and carves a deep path and only rarely can someone force it to a new road. But a clochmion . . . often a person can turn it to what is in their own mind. Someone with your training and strength will almost
certainly
change it, but I don’t know what this one will do for you until you take it.” He smiled again. “Go ahead,” he said.

Sevei closed her hands around the small jewel in its cage of silver. With the touch, she drew in a breath. The clochmion was a presence, a brilliant spark in her mind. Her vision was doubled for a moment: she saw her hand holding the clochmion yet at the same time she saw the light rushing toward her, growing larger until it held her whole body in its glow. It closed around her,
became
her. The sparking energy filled her, as warm as blood and as vital. Her entire body sang with it.

Sevei gasped.

“Aye,” she heard Máister Kirwan say. “It quickly becomes part of you.”

“How will I choose what it does?”

“You don’t know?”

Sevei shook her head as Máister Kirwan shrugged. “Your mam, with Treoraí’s Heart, knew right away. But it doesn’t matter. You—or you and the clochmion together—have already chosen, in the moment you became one. Exactly what it is . . . well, if you don’t know now, you’ll know when it happens. The clochmion will call you.”

The cloch was part of her already. She could feel the clochmion as if it were an organ of her body, a second heart or a set of eyes—and she could sense how terrible it would be if it were ever taken away. “I knew what it was like to hold one of the stones, even the clochsmion,” she said wonderingly. “I mean, you and the bráthairs and siúrs all taught us what it was like, but I could never have imagined what it would actually
feel
like. This is only a clochmion; a Cloch Mór, or Lámh Shábhála . . .”

“Aye, their presences are more powerful still,” Máister Kirwan finished for her. “You really can’t imagine the connection, not unless you actually hold them.” He moved to the door. “One day, I suspect, you
will
know.” He spoke the opening word and the door swung open, the cold and damp air of the corridor sweeping inside with the movement. “Come on,” he said. “Put the clochmion around your neck, and we’ll go to Siúr Cullinane—it’s time to change your red léine for a white one.”

KAYNE ENDURED the feast and the speechmaking in Ceangail’s town hall. The fire pit in the middle of the hall radiated a suffocating heat through the packed room and the drone of voices made Kayne simultaneously sleepy, irritable, and nauseous. “. . . and it was only by the providence of the Mother-Creator that we came here at this crucial moment,” his da said, his voice stentorian as he stood at the head of the massive long table down the center of the room. “We of the Tuatha must stand together with our cousins in Céile Mhór to stop the menace of the Arruk, which Ceangail has now experienced firsthand. We’ll report the bravery of the citizens here to the Rí Airgialla and the Banrion Ard . . .”

The speech didn’t seem to be having the effect Kayne thought it might have. Some were listening intently, but there were frowns and bored looks among the Fingerlanders present in the hall.

Kayne pushed away from the table. His da glared at him, but Kayne ignored the silent rebuke, striding down the long table toward the entrance as Owaine cleared his throat and picked up the shards of his interrupted speech. “. . . so that they know that Ceangail has made certain that these Arruk, at least, will never return to their homes to tell of what they saw here, in our green land . . .”

Owaine’s voice trailed into silence as Kayne left the building. A crowd of the townsfolk, unable to find seats inside, moved aside from the doorway as he came out. He thought their demeanor and stares too arrogant, almost as if they were judging him, but as he came close, they ducked their heads respectfully and mumbled in their rolling, thick, Fingerlander accents: “Excuse me, Tiarna.” “A good evening to you, Tiarna.” “We’re grateful to you, Tiarna.”

Kayne grunted in answer and stalked away as the onlookers closed in again behind him. The western gates of the town loomed dark against the sky, still touched with the dying gleam of the sun, already below the western mountain ridges. The mage-lights would come in the next stripe or two, and Da would come out to fill Blaze along with Harik, who held a clochmion that could strengthen his voice so it could be heard a hundred strides away as if he were standing next to you—a useful trick for a Hand who often needed to address large groups. In Dún Laoghaire, his mam would be standing on a balcony of the keep with Treoraí’s Heart, and in Lár Bhaile, the mages of the Order of Gabair would gather under the mage-lights with their clochs. Away beyond the far coast of Talamh an Ghlas in Inish Thuaidh, his great-mam Jenna would be doing the same with Lámh Shábhála, and it was to her that the greatest power would flow.

Kayne went to the open gates, nodding to the gardai placed there, and walked out a few paces, gazing at the mountains around them, now wrapped in deepening shadow. He wondered what it would be like to hold Lámh Shábhála, to have the power of the sky-magic at his beck and call. If the stories he’d been told over the years were even half-true—how the great cloch had defeated the armies of the Tuatha at Dún Kiil, how Gram had nearly destroyed the city of Falcarragh against the massed power of the Clochs Mór . . .

If
he
held Lámh Shábhála, its power would not be wasted. Its strength would not be languishing in Inish Thuaidh. No, he would use it to unite the Tuatha and ride with its power to Céile Mhór and drive the Arruk all the way back to Thall Mór-roinn, and if the Thane seemed ungrateful afterward, then Céile Mhór itself could become a dominion of Dún Laoghaire.

He would be remembered as a Rí Ard who was truly the Ard. The One.

“A son should be more respectful of his da.”

The voice came from behind him, dissolving the vision of Rí Ard Kayne Geraghty. Kayne didn’t turn; he continued to stare out at the crumpled landscape before him. “What’s between me and Da isn’t your business, Hand MacCathaill.”