Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2) (10 page)

Thady has asked me if I want to come with him and few other acolytes one night—they intend to slip out of the Low Tower door and visit the tavern down in Bitten Bay. Supposedly the proprietor doesn’t inform the Bráthairs and Siúrs when acolytes visit them for a drink. About what you’d expect of a MacCoughlin. He said Faoil could come if I wanted, but I wouldn’t even want to ask her. I told him no, of course.

When will I hear from you? It seems ages ago that we were last together, and I hate that most of all.

Sweetest:

I had hoped to receive a letter or letters from you by now. Whenever I hear that a ship has come into Inishfeirm Harbor, I wait for the Order’s carriage to bring back the mail and supplies that have come, but so far there’s been nothing from you. I hope my letters have been reaching you, and that the next ship will bring me your words.

I saw the naked young man again last night. Again it was the racket of seals that woke me, and I went to the window and saw him. I was awake this time: person or wight or ghost, he was real and not my imagination. He seemed to be coming from the Low Tower and the door there—the ward-locked one. He moved quickly across the grass toward the head of the trail, glancing back over his shoulder once or twice at the keep, though I don’t think he saw me watching as I leaned back into the shadows. I could see his face clearly—black-haired, black-bearded, and thin—and it was none of the acolytes or Bráthairs here. That much I know. He ran strangely, as if he were drunk or slightly dizzy, but quickly disappeared into the heather near the beach trail.

I thought that I might follow him (I know; I can hear you saying it now: that was foolish and dangerous, but somehow he didn’t seem frightening at all) and went to the door of my room. When I opened it, I stopped. In the moonlight that came through the corridor windows, I could see wet footprints on the stone flags: not boot prints, but the prints of a bare foot. They were drying quickly, even as I stared at them.

Whoever he was,
whatever
he was (and I’m beginning to suspect I know) he had come down this hall. He’d been there, just on the other side of my door. Somehow, that changed everything.

I shut the door. For a long time, I lay awake in my bed.

There are a dozen or more ghosts reputedly haunting the White Keep, if you believe the tales I’ve heard from the acolytes and mages. I asked Thady if any of them involved a young man wandering about at night (I didn’t mention his lack of clothing). The only ghost on the grounds is supposedly an old Bunús Muintir who stays near the stand of old oak trees on the eastern flanks of the mountain.

And I wonder . . .

Would a ghost would leave footprints? Especially wet ones?

I probably should tell Máister Kirwan about this, but somehow I don’t want to. Whoever it is, he doesn’t seem dangerous to me . . .

Dearest Lucan:

I hate this place. I hate the endless lectures, the interminable classes. Hate the other acolytes, half of whom (like Faoil) are so infatuated with the process of becoming cloudmages that they can’t think of anything else, and the other half of which are bored Riocha here because their families either can’t marry them off or put them in the service of their Rí. (And half of those ask me constantly if I can somehow intercede with my mam to get them a position in the court of Dún Kiil or an introduction to one of the Comhairle or a commission within the gardai.)

I hate the boredom: first-years aren’t permitted to leave the White Keep at all until the Festival of Láfuacht, and even then we must stay on the island. The Mother knows that a Festival on this miserable island will be nothing at all like the grand fun we had back in Dun Kiil during Láfuacht. Even the sheep here look bored.

I hate the petty intrigues: all the talk about who is important and who isn’t, the unspoken hierarchy based on who your family is, and who might betray whom or who is allied with someone else. Oh, I know you enjoy listening to that kind of talk, but I don’t. Everyone’s speculating on who might be the next Rí Ard since Rí Ard O Liathain’s health is failing and he still hasn’t named a Tanaise Ríg. There’s constant talk of the friction between the Tuatha and Inish Thuaidh, and they seem to think that I should know all about it since Mam is the Banrion.

I, for one, don’t much care.

I heard the Saimhóir again last night, and started to sneak out of the room to go see them. But I nearly tripped over one of the stone flags and stubbed my big toe, and that woke Faoil and she came running out of her bedroom. She asked me what I was doing and I made an excuse about needing to use the midden, but I’m sure she didn’t believe me. I went back to bed, and a while later the blues stopped making their racket. I once asked my mam about the Saimhóir because I’ve always heard about how they came and helped during the battle of Dún Kiil, and everyone always says that Mam is one of the changelings, that we have Saimhóir blood. “Not everything people say is always true,” she told me. That’s all she’d say. I asked my da, too. He said that he didn’t know for certain. “If you believed what people say, then the entire population of Inishfeirm and half of those here on Inish Thuaidh can swim with the blues,” he said. “But your mam . . .” He smiled at me. “Your mam has done more than I ever believed she could do. And your twice great-mam
was
an Inishlander.”

Thady has asked me if I want to come with him and few other acolytes one night—they intend to slip out of the Low Tower door and visit the tavern down in Bitten Bay. Supposedly the proprietor doesn’t inform the Bráthairs and Siúrs when acolytes visit them for a drink. About what you’d expect of a MacCoughlin. He said Faoil could come if I wanted, but I wouldn’t even want to ask her. I told him no, of course.

When will I hear from you? It seems ages ago that we were last together, and I hate that most of all.

“S
TUDYING the slow magics, eh? Most of the acolytes find studying the forms tedious, but I enjoyed them, myself.”

Meriel glanced up from the thick sheaf of parchment on her lap. She’d sought out the little garden with the statue of the tormented woman—no one else seemed to use it much, or perhaps they simply avoided doing so when Meriel was there. In the few weeks that she’d been here, it had become her small quiet place where she could go and be away from everyone.

Owaine Geraghty was standing near the statue. “Mind you, I’ll absolutely deny it if you ever say I told you this, but it doesn’t help that they have Siúr Bolan teaching the first-years,” he said. “Her voice is more effective than any sleeping potion ever made.” He had a slightly quizzical expression on his face and his eyes were half-closed as he squinted—since he was assigned to be under Bráthair Maitias in the Order’s library, his myopia was likely to only get worse peering at faded ink on yellowed parchment in dim rooms. Meriel had already decided she didn’t like Bráthair Owaine, who seemed somehow thick and clumsy compared to most of the others here at the White Keep and who was too often around her. It was a rare trip through the corridors when she didn’t seem to encounter him, a rare day when he didn’t find some reason to seek her out and try to talk with her. She treated him politely because her mam seemed to like him, but cold politeness didn’t seem to have discouraged him at all.

His accent was solidly that of Inishfeirm, slow and drawn out, not at all like the speech of the Riocha in Dún Kiil or the thin, clipped tones of her roommate Faoil from the Tuatha. Despite her mam’s evident patronage of the young man, Meriel had already noticed that the other Bráthairs and Siúrs also seemed to regard Owaine with a certain disdain. He didn’t have the pedigree that the rest of the mages possessed; he didn’t have the name or the lineage.

Meriel shrugged and looked back down at the parchment without answering. She thought he might leave after his initial attempt at conversation, but he remained there staring at her and she finally looked up again. “I can help you, if you’d like,” he said. “Bráthair O’Therreagh said that I was well-suited for the slow magics and Bráthair Maitias has put me in charge of cataloging them. Bráthair O’Therreagh figured I’d never hold a cloch,” Owaine touched the clochmion Jenna had given him and smiled, “but he was right; I have a knack for keeping the spells in my head. I might be able to tutor you.”

“No,” Meriel said sharply, then tried to soften the disappointment that showed visibly in his face. “Thank you for the offer, Bráthair Geraghty, but I need to do this on my own.”

His head lifted. “Ah,” he said. “That’s like your mam—Máister Kirwan hints occasionally that she was a, umm, difficult student who always wanted to do things her own way.”

Meriel looked down at the parchment again, pretending to read the letters there. “I’m sure she was,” she said. She waited, hiding her face behind the red screen of her hair, listening for his footsteps. Instead, she heard his voice.

“I don’t care for Peria’s statue,” he said. “It’s so realistic that it bothers me to see someone trapped in such pain. And yet . . . I still come here often to look.”

Meriel sighed audibly. She looked up again, glancing once at the figure of the woman with her mouth open in a tormented, eternal scream. “I always feel like I want to help her,” Owaine continued. “Even though I know she died.”

“Who
was
Peria?” Meriel asked despite herself. “My mam seemed to be fascinated by it.”

“You don’t know?”

Would I have
asked
if I knew?
she wanted to retort as she might to one of Nainsi’s remarks, but she held back the words. “No, I don’t.”

“Peria Ó Riain,” Owaine answered. He seemed to be waiting for her to acknowledge the name, but Meriel shook her head. “If you don’t know the name yet, you will—the names of
all
the Holders will get drilled into you when you take Bráthair Maitias’ class later this year. Peria was a Holder of Lámh Shábhála and the lover of Tadhg O’Coulghan, the Founder of our Order. She died in 671 attempting the Scrúdú, the mythical test of Lámh Shábhála, and that’s what this represents. Tadhg became the Holder after her death, but he never tried the test that killed Peria.” Owaine touched the statue reverently. “They say your mam did, though, and that the Scrúdú very nearly killed her, too. Some say she passed the test and that’s why she was able to call the stone creatures, the Créneach, at Dun Kiil. Máister Kirwan says not, but . . .” He stopped, squinting in her direction like a mole snared in sunlight. “I’m sorry, you already know all this.”

No, I don’t. My mam doesn’t talk much about that time. . . .
The truth was that most of what Meriel knew of her mam’s past she’d learned from others. But she wouldn’t admit that to Owaine. She simply nodded acceptance of his statement and looked back down at the parchment on her lap. She heard his feet shuffle on the flagstones as if he were turning to go, then he stopped once more. Meriel muttered a curse under her breath.

“Oh,” he said. “I nearly forgot. This came for you; I was going to put it under the door of your room on my way to the library . . .”

Meriel look up to see Owaine holding out an envelope to her. The wax seal was unbroken and pressed into the red globule was the sigil of the O Dálaigh clan.
A letter from Lucan . . .
“Thank you,” she said, brightening despite herself. Owaine smiled back at her.

“You’re welcome,” he said. He gestured at the parchments on her lap. “Remember, if I can help . . .”

“I’ll remember,” she said hurriedly, wanting to do nothing else but rip open the envelope and read Lucan’s words. All those long letters she’d sent to him, telling him everything that had happened to her; she wanted to hear how
he’d
been, all he’d gone through since, how he was feeling . . . “Thank you, Brathair Geraghty,” she said again, this time with impatience in her voice. Owaine’s cheeks colored, lines creased his forehead and smoothed again. He nodded his head.

“Well, if you need me, you can find me in the library, or . . .” His voice trailed off and he smiled, quickly, before scurrying off. Meriel had looked away before he reached the garden’s entrance, ripping open the seal and pulling out the thick paper inside. Lucan’s writing was large, the handwriting clumsy and hasty, with splotches of ink from where the quill pressed too hard and had to be blotted. It was dated the 11
^th
of Silverbark, four days previously.

That was all. The writing ended halfway down the page. Meriel turned it over, her smile fading to puzzled frown. She looked inside the envelope: it was empty.
He’s not gifted with words the way you are,
she told herself.
It’s harder for him. This doesn’t mean what you’re afraid it means.