Mage of Clouds (The Cloudmages #2) (29 page)

“Ow!” He jolted himself out of sleep abruptly, striking his head on the rocky overhang. He rubbed his bruised head, blinking his eyes in the daylight, wondering if the Bunús Muintir had also been a dream brought on by the nearness of the oaks. He pushed aside the screen of branches and clambered out, shading his eyes at the dawn. The forest was wrapped in mist and fog.

At the edge of his shelter, closest to the trees, he saw a pile of objects. Crouching down alongside, he found leather breeches and shirt, and a clóca of rough wool such as a farmer might wear. Underneath the clothing were sandals of soft fur and a small pouch out of which tumbled a knob of flint, a striking steel, and a wooden tinder holder. Another packet of the jerky was there as well, and a skin filled with cool water.

Owaine picked up the gifts. He looked at the trees. “Thank you!” he called. “I’m in your debt, Cataigh!”

There was no answer.

The road stayed near the forest all that day, never far from the ranks of gnarled oaks, but even looking for signs as he was, Owaine would have missed it.

As the sun neared its height on the second day of his search, Owaine suddenly walked into an invisible wall with an audible
thump.
At the same moment, a pair of invisible hands grasped his temples and turned his head gently but firmly to the right.
“Look!”
a half-familiar voice said, seeming to come from the air in front of him.

“Cataigh?” Owaine called to the air, but no answer came. The hands held his head and Owaine squinted. In a field on the forest side of the road, there were marks in the grass. The invisible hands released him, and Owaine stumbled off the road, trying to see the field clearly. This was evidently a campsite: wagons had been pulled off the road here and the remnants of black, stone-encircled campfires marred the lush grass. The deepest layer of ashes were still slightly warm—given the weather, they could have been a day, or perhaps two, old. None of that, though, was a guarantee that these were the same people who had Meriel. Owaine let the power of the clochmion drift out around the area. Nothing came back to him. If she’d been here, she was still too far away for him to find. Some huge herd had crossed here as well—the earth was pockmarked with the imprints of hooves twice the size of Owaine’s hands, coming from the direction of the forest and moving over the road toward the northern hills.

He wandered about the old campsite. A few shards of broken pottery had been abandoned in the heather; the pieces were like nothing Owaine had ever seen. He turned them over in his hand, squinting at the lines of blue-green glaze that marked the fired clay.

“They’re the ones you call ‘Taisteal,’ Bráthair Lost.” Owaine glanced up hurriedly to find the Bunús Muintir from the night before watching, leaning against the nearest oak while the squirrel Léimard clucked and fussed in the branch above him. “My people call them Corrthónach, the Restless People. They wandered here even before you Daoine came.”

“Cataigh? Did you . . . ?” Owaine put his hands to his own head and turned it as the unseen hands had done on the road.

The Bunús grinned and pushed himself erect. Owaine realized that the Bunús was short, the crown of his head no higher than Owaine’s shoulders—somehow he’d seemed huge last night. The man came forward, a large staff of yew in his hand. “Aye, I did that. And I’m pleased to see you remember my name.”

“Aye,” Owaine told him and plucked at the clothing he wore. “I wanted to thank you for this.”

The staff prodded the ashes of the campfire, sending a pout of ash swirling into the breeze. “Then reward me for my efforts. Tell me why the Taisteal would come all the way down to the sea to this lonely road when the nearest village is a full two days’ walk north on the coast. Tell me why they met a ship that flew the flag of the Rí Ard, and why several tiarna with their clochs na thintrí rode with the Taisteal as far as this place before leaving them and riding on that way alone.” Cataigh jabbed the sooty end of his staff eastward. When Owaine hesitated, Cataigh frowned at him. “This is my place to protect, Owaine Geraghty. If you have an answer, I would hear it. I could have as easily let the forest take you last night as helped you.”

Owaine had listened to the tale with increasing certainty. Dhegli had brought him to the right place, and it seemed he had managed to find the correct path. “The ship and the tiarna you saw brought a young woman here—a bantiarna—against her will. At least that’s what I suspect happened,” Owaine told him. “Tell me, when the tiarna left, did they have a woman with them?”

Cataigh shook his head. “It was late afternoon when they rode off. There wasn’t a woman with them; I would have known. The Corrthónach—the Taisteal—stayed the rest of the night, then went eastward in the morning. There were women enough in the clan.”

Owaine let out a sigh. “Then she’s with the Taisteal for some reason.”

“Perhaps.” Cataigh shrugged. He brushed back his long, bedraggled hair. His heavy-boned face looked back toward the forest. “Why is the young bantiarna so important? Is she your lover?”

Owaine could feel heat on his cheeks. “No,” he answered quickly. “I mean, I could wish so, but . . .” He stopped awkwardly. “She’s the Banrion MacEagan’s daughter.”

Cataigh blinked. “The daughter of the First Holder, of Jenna Aoire?” he asked, his face turned up to Owaine’s, his eyes narrowing and his head cocked to one side. Owaine remembered the tales of the First Holder, recalling that she had stayed with the Bunús Muintir for a time after she found Lámh Shábhála, and Cataigh was one of the Protectors.

“Aye,” Owaine answered. “Though the Banrion’s name is now MacEagan. Meriel is her only child.”

The man hissed between yellowed teeth like a boiling teakettle. “I should have realized . . . This Meriel has hair as red as a cloudy sunset, is perhaps as tall as me and as thin as a sapling. And she holds a cloch.” He paused, as if thinking of something. “A strange stone, that one.”

“The person you describe sounds like her,” Owaine said, puzzled, “except for the cloch . . . As far as I know she doesn’t have a cloch na thintrí.”

Cataigh didn’t seem to be listening to him. “I must tell Keira; she will want to know this.” He nodded as if to some inner voice. “I did well to listen to my heart when I saw you,” he said. “You bring interesting news with you, Bráthair Lost.”

“Who’s Keira?” Owaine asked, but Cataigh was staring upward, sniffing as if scenting the wind.

“There will be mage-lights late tonight,” the Bunús Muintir said. “And tomorrow will bring rain.” He looked at Owaine with eyes the color of soil. “I’d take you with me, but your way lies along this road, I think, and not yet to the south. May the Greatness walk with you, and give you Her blessing.” He shook his head. “Tell me, Bráthair Lost—how many crows are there on that tree over there?” He pointed to a tree fifty or so strides away; Owaine could see the tree and—barely—the limb, but though he tried, he couldn’t distinguish any birds in the blur. “I thought so,” Cataigh said. He gave a sigh. “Come, Léimard . . .” The squirrel, which had been foraging in the mistletoe curling around an oak’s trunk, scampered over to him and clambered up his leg to his shoulder. He spoke to the squirrel, a soft whisper in words Owaine couldn’t understand. The squirrel chattered, almost angrily it seemed to Owaine, then when Cataigh spoke again, skittered down Cataigh’s body and up Owaine’s to perch on Owaine’s left shoulder. He looked at the squirrel, which was staring back at him.

“The squirrel has far sharper eyes than Bráthair Lost,” Cataigh said. “And Léimard knows what you’re searching for. He’ll stay with you for a time.” Cataigh seemed amused. “Unless you think a squirrel is a poor companion,” he finished.

“No,” Owaine said. He glanced at Léimard’s furry face, in focus because it was so close to him. “I don’t think that . . . I just don’t understand . . .” He looked back at Cataigh, but the man was gone. He caught a glimpse of the Bunús Muintir walking toward the forest, already almost among the trees.

“Wait!” Owaine called after him. “Where are you going?”

“To where you couldn’t walk alone,” Cataigh answered without looking back, his words coming back to Owaine on the breeze. “The roads are the way of the Daoine, not the Bunús Muintir. Perhaps we’ll find each other again where the oaks and the roads meet, or perhaps not. Take good care of Léimard.” His voice drifted away as he walked between two oak trunks. In Owaine’s fuzzy vision, the man seemed to merge with green-brown shadows under the leaves.

“Cataigh!” he called again, but he couldn’t see him anymore. “Wait! I still have questions to ask you!” There may have been a shifting of light where he’d gone, but then even that was lost.

A
S the last of the villagers were wandering away from the encampment, Sevei escorted Meriel to Nico’s wagon.

Though she watched his face closely as Sevei told him about the incident with the girl, Meriel wasn’t sure what Nico was thinking. The Clannhri sighed and grumbled through the story, rubbing his stubbled jowls and fidgeting on the other side of the little table in the wagon that also served as his home. Keara, Nico’s wife, chatted with one of her daughters, sitting on the bed at the front of the wagon as several grandchildren ran about underfoot. “So our little Cailin has a clochmion,” Nico said finally, grabbing one of the granddaughters and putting the child on his lap. “And not just any clochmion, but a healing stone. Damn Tiarna Mac Ard for handing me such trouble without telling me,” he finished, though he said it without the heat that Meriel might have expected, and if he didn’t quite smile neither did he frown.

“We won’t be able to keep this quiet, Clannhri,” Sevei said. “It’s already too late for that. The woman has no doubt already been telling all her friends about the healer in our camp. They’re probably all in the tavern now discussing it.”

“Which means that tomorrow morning, anyone with anything from a hangover to the Bloody Cough is going to be coming around looking for Cailin of the Healing Touch,” Nico sniffed. He ruffled the head of the grand-daughter and set her down with a kiss. “Well, it’s done and can’t be undone, so we might as well gain what we can from it.” He gazed at Meriel the way he might examine a bag of coins. She could see him toting up her value in his head. “Let me think on this. The girl will do what I say?”

Meriel started to protest, but Sevei kicked her ankle sharply under the table, causing Meriel to gasp and close her mouth. “She will, Clannhri,” Sevei answered, “or she’ll answer to me.”

“You can’t do this,” Meriel said, glaring once at Sevei. “I’m not one of your clan performers, doing tricks for the peasants or bartering worthless merchandise.”

“No,” Nico nodded. “You’re a hostage we’re holding for Tiarna Mac Ard, and the merchandise
you
have around your neck is potentially worth more than you are as a hostage. I’d remember that if I were you.” He shrugged. “If you’d rather be treated as an unruly hostage, well, that can be arranged. It doesn’t matter to me. In fact, just keeping you hidden and quiet when we’re in one of the villages would be simpler and more profitable. I could take the clochmion from you and sell it—the selling would have to be done carefully, but when we reach one of the cities there will be a surplus of Riocha who would be
extremely
happy to buy a clochmion from us. None of them would care or ask questions about where or how we obtained it or what might have happened to its previous Holder. Of course, you’d have to bear the pain of losing the stone. But if that’s your preference . . .”

He cocked his head toward her, his eyebrows lifting in question. Meriel felt a cold finger brush her spine and her hand went involuntarily to Treoraí’s Heart under her léine. “I won’t deceive anyone, Clannhri.” She tried to keep her voice steady. If he had made a motion toward her, she would have bolted. “I’m not a thief and liar like you.”

“Oh, I know,” Nico answered. “You’re completely honest with everyone. That’s why you wear your clochmion so openly. That’s why you ran away when you gave your word to Sevei that you wouldn’t—you think I didn’t know about that? That’s why you answer to the name we’ve given you.” The mockery was so gently and sympathetically spoken that it took a moment for the sting to color Meriel’s cheeks. Keara and the daughter chuckled at the front of the wagon.

“The trick,” Nico said to Meriel, “is to let those who come to you deceive themselves, and that’s easier to learn than you might think—your mam is likely as good at it as we Taisteal: most successful Riocha are. You’ll find that it’s a rare person who actually wants the raw truth. Most of us would much rather believe a comforting half-truth or outright lie, if it matches what we want to believe.” He paused. “Just like you want to believe that someone will find and rescue you tomorrow or perhaps the next day.”

Máister Kirwan and my mam know that I have the clochmion. If they heard of a True Healer traveling in Talamh an Ghlas, perhaps they’d wonder if it was me. . . .
The thought came to her suddenly, giving her a brief moment of hope. The realization must have shown on her face, for Nico smiled. “Aye, now you see, I would be wanting to believe the same thing in your place,” he said. “But I’d also be making certain that until such a rescue actually occurred I was as comfortable as I could be, even if that meant cooperating with those who held me. You should make the same decision.” He raised an eyebrow in question.