Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2) (18 page)

Rhusvak scratched at his beard under the bearskin. The man smelled strongly of pungent oils and musk. Doyle wondered whether all the people of Céile Mhór exuded the same odor. If so, he was glad that the wind rarely blew east to west across the Tween Sea. The ride from Dun Laoghaire had been a trial for Doyle’s sinuses. “I must say that Tiarna Ó Riain seems less impressed with the Order of Gabair,” Rhusvak said carefully, the smile on his leathery face taking away the edge the words might have had. “He didn’t seem to think that Céile Mhór would find the help we want from your Order.”

“Tiarna Ó Riain is...” Doyle paused, allowing himself a small smile. “. . .
older.
Most of the cloudmages who have come out of the Order of Gabair are within a few years of my age. Also, his allegiance is to those Ríthe who have historically been Tuath Gabair’s enemies: Tuath Connachta and Tuath Éoganacht. Tiarna Ó Riain was also
at
Dún Kiil, and his Cloch Mór Wolfen was one of those that were defeated by the Inish cloudmages. So perhaps his opinion . . .” Doyle paused again, deliberately, and this time said nothing.

“So you believe your dragon is stronger than his wolves?” Rhusvak suggested. “Because of your Order’s training?”

Doyle lifted a shoulder. “Perhaps if the Order had been in existence twenty years ago, your Thane wouldn’t have to be asking for help against the Arruk. Perhaps the Holder of Lámh Shábhála would also be one of the Order of Gabair’s cloudmages and there would be no question about sending a force into Céile Mhór to help our cousins.”

“Perhaps,” Rhusvak mused. “Still, Tiarna Ó Riain seems inclined to offer us aid in our plight where the Rí Ard continues to avoid giving me a direct answer. How did Tiarna Ó Riain say it the other day...? ‘The young mages look west and north with the Rí Ard, while I see that the true threat is coming from the east.’ ”

“When an enemy is holding a knife to you, it’s not wise to ignore them no matter what you suspect might be at your back,” Doyle told him.

“And you’d deal first with the enemy before you,” Rhusvak nodded. “You believe that Lámh Shábhála is that knife.”

Doyle shrugged. “You’ll forgive me if I must think of Talamh an Ghlas before Céile Mhór. But come,” he said, “let me show you the Order’s Tower and let you talk to my good friend Tiarna Shay O Blaca, who teaches there now.”

“Tiarna? Not Máister?”

“No Bráthairs or Siúrs, either,” Doyle answered. “We’ve all traveled the same road; we’re all peers.”

Behind the screen of bear’s teeth, Rhusvak smiled. He glanced down at the wreckage of the bridge in the ravine far below. “It seems our road ends here.”

Doyle grinned. “It does—for those who aren’t friends of the Order or Rí Gabair. Which are you, Toscaire Concordai?” With that, he grasped the reins of Rhusvak’s horse and kicked his own mount. Rhusvak shouted in alarm as the horses galloped onto the broken span of bridge and rushed toward empty air and the long fall.

But as the hooves struck the last stones, the air shimmered before them and the furious crash of stone against stone boomed in their ears. The missing span was suddenly
there
under their feet, gleaming white and solid. Rhusvak still shouted, but his shout was now one of glee and surprise. More slowly and cautiously, the rest of the entourage followed. When the last horse had ridden across, the bridge vanished once more; before any of them could draw breath, the sound of thunder rolled down the ravine.

“They say the Mad Holder destroyed this bridge after she killed the Banrion Cianna and set the keep on fire,” Doyle told Rhusvak. “Tiarna Ó Riain and those who think like him would have simply rebuilt the bridge as it had been. The Rí Ard, though, saw a better way. I’d ask you to consider, Toscaire Concordai, that the right solution isn’t always the obvious or the easy one.”

Rhusvak’s lips twisted upward momentarily. He stared at the empty air where the bridge had been. “Ah, spoken like the Rí Ard himself.”

“I’ll never be Rí Ard, Toscaire Concordai. That’s not one of my ambitions.”

Another brief smile. Rhusvak leaned over toward Doyle, whispering so that none of the others could hear. “But perhaps your future wife is interested in putting the Ard’s torc around her neck, eh? As to your ambition, I think I can guess at it.”

He looked pointedly at the Cloch Mór on Doyle’s chest. When Doyle only shrugged, silent, Rhusvak chuckled and scratched at his oiled hair again, leaning back once more. “Tell me, Tiarna, is your Order strong enough to stand against the Order you intend to replace?”

“That,” Doyle told him, “we’ll find out sooner than some might think. But for now, it’s enough that the keep has a fire, warm food, and cold stout after a long ride. If you’ll come with me, Toscaire Concordai . . .”

I
F MERIEL harbored any hope that she would still be able to slip away from the keep, it was dashed quickly. One of the Bráthairs or Siúrs was always within sight of Meriel whenever she ventured from her rooms, and none of them bothered to conceal the fact that their task was to watch her. Generally her shadow was one of the senior mages, sometimes Máister Kirwan himself. Even the other acolytes’ attitude toward her had shifted from a cloying deference to a more distant attentiveness, especially among the fourth- and fifth-years, and she suspected that Máister Kirwan had passed a warning to them. Only Thady seemed unaffected, and—unfortunately—Bráthair Geraghty, whose strange and awkward attention to her remained unflagging.

Worse, Siúr Meagher was a far more vigilant presence than Siúr O’hAllmhurain and a much lighter sleeper. After an exhausting day that the mages of the keep seemed determined to fill with tasks for her to complete, Meriel heard the seals and tried to leave and go to Dhegli. She managed to slip out of her bed, dress, and move into the parlor without actually waking Faoil, but Siúr Meagher’s door opened the instant Meriel’s did. No words were exchanged; under Siúr Meagher’s eyebrow-raised stare, Meriel closed the door again.

As the latch clicked, there was the scrape of a footstep behind her; Meriel turned and saw Faoil standing in the doorway to her room. “I don’t care who you are or that your mam’s the Banrion,” Faoil said, her voice still groggy with sleep. “I won’t let you ruin my chances of being a cloudmage. If you leave, or if I find you gone again one night, I won’t cover for you or pretend not to notice. I
will
go to Siúr Meagher.”

With that, she turned and went back to her room, leaving Meriel standing in the parlor, cold despite the glowing embers of the night’s fire.

“It wouldn’t have done you any good, anyway,” Thady told her the next morning, catching Meriel as she hurried down one of the long corridors of the keep with a pouch of aromatic herbs for Siúr Khennhi. “Máister Kirwan had put additional spell-wards on the door. He evidently gave a demonstration to the acolytes while we were in the midden—had one of the fifth-years try to open the door. The warding held his hand fast to the handle while the door shrieked like a mad thing until Máister Kirwan released him with the ward-key.” Thady shook his head. “No, no one will be going out that way again. Not soon.”

“That’s not all the Máister’s done.” The voice was Bráthair Geraghty’s, who seemed to have materialized an arm’s length away, his arms again full of scrolls that exuded the scent of must. He nodded to Meriel and gave Thady a long, lingering glance, his eyes narrowing as if he were trying to focus on the young man’s features before he turned back to Meriel.

Despite wishing that Bráthair Geraghty wouldn’t look at her so fixedly, Meriel couldn’t help asking the question. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that there are other eyes watching, not all of them like ours, if you take my meaning,” Bráthair Geraghty answered. “Be careful, Meriel. You don’t want to alienate those who only want to help you.” The scrolls shifted in his arms; he adjusted them, causing a pouf of dust to rise around him. He sneezed. Nodding again to Meriel, he moved past them, the leather soles of his sandals slapping against the stone flags.

“What a strange man,” Meriel said as he left. She shivered. “I hate the way he stares at me.”

“Don’t worry about him,” Thady said. “Don’t worry about the others, either. They don’t understand you, Meriel.”

Meriel, watching Bráthair Geraghty’s receding back, turned to Thady with a smile. “And you do?”

She thought he’d grin, and perhaps return her question with a jest. He didn’t. His face was solemn as he looked at her. “I understand how the name a person has or what their family’s history is can force someone to take paths they don’t want to take. And I can understand how desperately someone can try to find another way.” Then the solemnity vanished, and he did grin. “You’d better get those herbs to Siúr Khennhi,” he said. “Unless you’re interested in going back to the midden.”

He touched her arm, as if shepherding her past him. His fingers lingered there; she could feel them through the cloth of her clóca. Then his hand dropped away. “Thanks, Thady,” Meriel said.

“For what?”

“For being a friend. For understanding.”

He blinked. His lips moved as if he were about to say something. Then he nodded and walked away.

Night, and the sound of seals . . .

Meriel awoke, sitting up abruptly in her bed. The room was silent, and yet her head echoed with the calls of the Saimhóir and the swirling currents of the sea. She wrapped her blanket around her and slipped from the bed quietly, not wanting to wake Faoil. Going to the window of her room, she pushed open the shutters.

The night was clouded, the stars and moon hidden, the landscape wrapped in fog and shadow. Yet . . .

She saw him, in the high grass near the base of the keep: Dhegli. As if he felt the pressure of her gaze, he looked up to her and she could see his smile, though his eyes were closed and his hands raised. Sparkling light shimmered around him, as if he were standing in a cloud of wind sprites. The air smelled as it did during a lightning storm, full of power.

And the fog . . .

It was rising, as if it were the breath of the ground itself, swelling and thickening. Dhegli, naked, was awash in it, standing in a pool of swirling white cloud, and still it rose until it swallowed him entirely, engulfing the base of the Low Tower and rising toward Meriel’s window far too quickly for any natural mist. Meriel closed the shutters as the first tendrils snaked over the sill, writhing like ghostly fingers. The keep was encased in spell-fog now, the sounds of the outside world lost.

The mist filled the keep and held it in its white hands.

She heard the door in the parlor open, then footsteps. He stood at the door to her room as she turned, still clutching the blanket to herself. She went to him in a rush, kissing lips that tasted faintly of brine, her fingers tangled in his wet curls. His body pressed against hers. “I couldn’t go to you,” she said to him in her mind-voice. “I wanted to, but they’ve made it impossible.” Then she stopped, holding him at arm’s length. “You have to leave, Dhegli. You can’t be here. Máister Kirwan—”

She heard the laughter in her head. “Do you think I worry about some stone-walker’s cloch? There are other magics in the world, just as powerful as those you’re studying—did you forget that I hold Bradán an Chumhacht? If your mam were here with Lamh Shábhála, then perhaps I’d still be standing outside, but only then. Don’t worry about the Máister or the others. They all sleep and dream of the sea.” He kissed her again, more softly this time, and when he drew back, she tried to move with him but he shook his head. “I came because I have to tell you something: I have to go away for a time. I have to leave tonight.”

A tightness gripped Meriel’s chest. “Away? Why? For how long?”

“For a time,” he answered. “We Saimhóir don’t try to bind time as you stone-walkers do. I’ll be gone for as long as I must be—I don’t know more than that. As to why . . .” His shoulder lifted. “That’s simple enough: because I hold Bradán an Chumhacht and because the gift of power also gives me obligations and duties I can’t refuse, even when I’d much rather ignore them. Even when part of me says that I should stay here.” He touched her face, stroking her cheek softly with the back of his hand. “Your mam knows that. It’s the same with her.”

“You’re going into danger,” she said, knowing suddenly that it was true.

“Aye, that may be,” he agreed, but she could hear a soft amusement in his mind-voice. “Just living is a danger. And there’s danger here, as well. I’ve seen it in the dreams Bradán an Chumhacht gives me.”

“But if there’s danger for you, what if . . . if . . . ?” She couldn’t finish the sentence.

He touched her forehead and she felt a tingling, a burning that remained even when his hand left her. It faded, slowly, but the warmth remained, like a banked fire in her mind. “There. Now you hold a tiny scale of Bradán an Chumhacht’s power yourself and you are linked to me. If Bradán an Chumhacht ever passes from me, you’ll know it because the connection will fade from you. And if you begin to worry too much, then come to the sea and call for me with the power in the scale. I’ll hear you, even at great distance, and I’ll come as quickly as I can.”