They rested there that day, and Seancoim roused Jenna before sunset. They broke camp and trudged northward, toiling steadily upward be-tween walls of gray rock spotted with lichens and garlanded with slick green mosses. To Jenna, it seemed that Seancoim wandered, moving left or right at random, their progress erratic. He said nothing, but seemed to be waiting. As they trudged on, walking in deepening twilight while the peaks above them were still touched with the last rays of the sun, Jenna had the sense of being watched, though she saw nothing and no one. The feeling persisted; it was so strong that she touched Lamh Shabhala and opened it slightly, letting the cloch's energy be her vision. She could sense life around them, but she recognized none of the patterns it made in the cloch-vision. Somewhere, near the edge of the cloch's sight, though, there were pinpricks of radiance less bright than a Cloch Mor: some of the clochmion, the minor stones. She started to mention it to Seancoim, but he simply grunted and shook his head at her, and she subsided into si-lence.
They walked on, and the feeling of being watched persisted and strengthened as the sun vanished and the sky above darkened to ultrama-rine, then black. The crescent moon had yet to rise, but the constellation of the Oxcart wheeled ahead of them. The birds had settled into their roosts and Denmark was nearly unseen as he moved from rock to rock ahead of them.
Suddenly Denmark gave a caw of alarm and
hopped quickly into the air. The mound of rocks on which he perched seemed to shiver and lift and change, until. .
… the mound shifted like molten glass and solidified again, taking on the shape of a bulky, humanlike form standing shorter than Jenna o
Seancoim, nearly as wide as it was tall. It raised its arms, then cracked them together again with a sound like two boulders smashing. A few seconds later, there was an echoing clamor to their right, and two other rock piles began to move, flowing slowly into similar forms. In the dark-ness, their exact shape was difficult to see, but there was a scraping sound as they walked forward with a rolling, side to side gait. They wore no clothing, their bodies a light brown-gray color like slate yet with a glossy sheen like fired pottery, their limbs thick and muscular. They stopped a few yards from Jenna and Seancoim as Jenna reached for Lamh Shabhala, ready to use the cloch at need. Thick eye ridges curled downward on the lead creature’s face; its rough-hewn features frowned. Again, it clashed hands together, and this time Jenna saw sparks jump as the hands came together.
Seancoim answered with a like gesture, the sound of his handclap al-most comically soft in contrast. The creature uttered a low, warbling tone and seemed to nod, its head inclining slowly first to Seancoim then Jenna. It stretched a thick-fingered hand out to Jenna, beckoning once.
'Seancoim?'
'They are Creneach,' he answered. 'Have you never heard of them?' Jenna shook her head. 'If you’d been brought up here, you would have,' he continued. 'They belong to yet another one of the old tales: the Clay People who live in their mountain fastnesses. The Hewers of Rock, the Eaters of Stone, the Dwellers In Darkness, the Boulder-folk. There were a dozen names for them in my childhood.'
Jenna touched the cloch as the Creneach gestured again to her, its voice a liquid sibilance almost like a bird’s call. As she did so, she felt that same presence of a clochmion, focused in all of the Creneach before her-not hung about them like jewelry, the way she carried Lamh Shabhala, but inside. A part of their being.
Glancing back once at Seancoim, she went forward slowly, stopping an arm's length from the creature. Now that she was close, she could see umber eyes that reflected light back at her as it stared up toward her, as a cat's eyes might. The skin was unnaturally smooth, flecked with color like polished granite, and muscles bulged in arms, the torso, and legs. The unclothed being in front of her seemed to possess no gender at all; like its two companions, there was only a smoothness where she would have expected to see genitalia. The Creneach had no nose; instead, twin fissures ran between the eyes, each curling outward and under the deep eye sock-ets. The nasal openings flexed as the creature inhaled deeply in Jenna's direction, still venting its warbling noises. It leaned closer to Jenna, its head level with the cloch hanging on its chain. It snuffled and a trill of musical notes came from its mouth. A long tongue flicked out, a flash purple. Before Jenna could react, the creature licked at Lamh Shabhala the long, thin tip snaking between the silver wire of its cage before retracting. The creature smacked its lips, its eyes half closed as if considering the taste as Jenna's hand went belatedly to the cloch. She closed her hand around it, stepping back. The Creneach gave a final smack and turned to its companions; they conversed loudly in their own language for a moment.
Jenna opened Lamh Shabhala, and in the cloch-hearing, words mingled with the warbling voice as the Creneach swiveled to face her again. 'Soft-flesh bears the All-Heart. She returns to us. Soft-flesh will follow.' It beck-oned as the trio turned and started to waddle away between the rocks.
'Wait!' Jenna called to it, wondering if it could understand her through the clochmion inside it as Thraisha had understood her. 'Who are you? What do you want?'
It looked at her. 'You may call me Treorai, for I've come to escort you,' it said, then continued to walk away.
Jenna glanced at Seancoim. He was already shuffling to follow them, his staff clattering against the rocks. She released the cloch, not wanting the Creneach to overhear her. 'You're going to follow them?' she asked. 'Seancoim, we don't know them or what they might intend to do.'
'They seem to know where they're going,' he
He smiled at her. Denmark cackled on his shoulder.
Jenna grimaced, but she followed.
Chapter 51: The Tale of All-Heart
TREORAI and its companions led them on a winding, upward path between two peaks. After a long climb, Terrain turned abruptly, de-scending by a set of steep and narrow stone steps into a barely-visible cleft. They followed the stairs down, then walked another mile or so be-fore again turning through a jagged fissure into a short passage and out into a small valley. The moon had risen by then, and Jenna could see a few other Creneach there as well as the black openings of caverns set in the overhanging, furrowed cliffs that lined the hidden spot. There were no more than fifteen of the creatures; in the cloch-vision, Jenna could sense that each of them held within it a clochmion. . and that there was one spot of greater brightness: a Cloch Mor.
She had stopped at the entrance, though Seancoim continued on. Terrain gestured for her to come forward. 'Soft-flesh, bring the All-Heart,' it said, the words sounding in her head while her ears heard the musical trill of its voice. Jenna hesitated, but Seancoim was standing there also, with the Creneach around him and seemingly unconcerned. Denmark flew over to Jenna, circled her once with a harsh caw, then flew back to Seancoim. She took a hesitant step forward as the Creneach gathered around her like a crowd of strangely-sculpted children. They sniffed and their tongues flicked out to touch her right hand, curled protectively around Lamh Shabhala. The touch of them was strange: cool and smooth, yet strangely hard-like fired and glazed pottery that was impossibly pli-able. She could hear the whispers as they huddled close, their voices crowding inside her head.
'. . the All-Heart. .'
'. . ahh, the taste. .'
'… it comes back to us…'
'… bring the Littlest to see…'
Jenna saw one of the Creneach push forward as the others made way It carried a small form in its arms: an infant Creneach, the tiny body smooth and marbled with color, its arms waving as each Creneach they passed touched it with its tongue.
There was a brilliance in the cloch-vision: the Cloch Mor was within the child.
'This is our Littlest,' Terrain said. 'Given to us in the return of the First-Lights. It carries a Great-Heart within it, so we know that the All-Heart is pleased with us and our long wait.' Terrain took the infant from the other Creneach, cradling it close. 'It will have life while the First-Lights stay, and when the lights return to their search, it will go with them.'
'I don’t understand,' Jenna said, shaking her head. 'The All-Heart, the lights… I don’t know what you mean.'
'Then listen,' Terrain answered. Its tongue ran along the child’s face, like a caress, and the infant mewled in soft contentment. 'You bear the All-Heart, so you should know…'
Back when there was only stone in the world and the First-Lights gleamed, before the coming of the soft- flesh things, there was Anchead, the First Thought. Anchead wanted a companion, and so took a pebble from Itself and let the First-Lights wrap around it. The First-Lights gave the pebble of Anchead life and awareness, and from
